My home and native land...

Homesickness can do strange and sometimes productive things - hence the video above, a speedball paean to my birthplace (delivered in a neanderthal manner suitable for a native Albertan). My friends who've seen the video picked up quickly that what I evidently miss the most about Canada is, naturally, Tim Horton's. Yes, it is, and to my dying breath will I insist that they make the finest donuts on god's green earth.

But personally, my favourite part of the video is the Three Stooges-style hockey punch-up. Physical comedy at its finest!

The song is from my latest EP, Breeds With Anything, which is available - no strings - for free right here. As I explained before, the record is a deliberately troglodytic affair, all red-blooded machismo and screaming invective because, y'know what, that's fun. The Melvins have proven it's possible to play that music with more than a modicum of intelligence, and who doesn't want to be David Yow for a day?

In this spirit - Foghat, motherfucker! - I offer you the mix below... with one caveat. I enjoy all of the songs, if occasionally for nothing more than the bassline (I'm looking at you, Lil' Jon), but some of them are so patently offensive I can't even bring myself to quote the lyrics (ibid). There is more than a little misogyny among the songs, and I don't want anyone thinking that I endorse that nonsense. But such is a byproduct of relentless Manliness; after all, how can a man consider himself the pinnacle of all creation without necessarily disparaging the other gender? Jay-Z almost gets away with it by putting a war-of-the-sexes spin on Chris Rock's Black People bit - almost. I'm pretty sure that N.E.R.D.'s whole catalogue is an elaborate cross-genre satire, though I wonder if that's putting too much stock in Pharrell's self-awareness. The only band that acquits itself of all charges (and at face value, no less) is NoMeansNo.

So, honest question: is this treading perilously close to the equivalent cop-out excuse for listening to a NSBM band, "Yes it's deplorable, but they rock"?

Click on the title to download.

Hard-Headed, Fuck You All

1. Action Beat - "Meat Head"
2. Mayyors - "Metro"
3. Pissed Jeans - "Human Upskirt"
4. The Jesus Lizard - "The Art of Self-Defense"
5. The Chico Magnetic Band - "My Sorrow"
6. Jay-Z - "Bitches & Sisters"
7. The Stabs - "Never Going Home"
8. Los Saicos - "(Fugitivo de) Alcatraz"
9. Snoop Dogg w/ Lil Jon & Trina - "Step Yo Game Up"
10. Reek & the Wrecks - "Stoners On Fire"
11. N.E.R.D. - "Lapdance"
12. Sir Lord Baltimore - "Helium Head (I Got a Love)"
13. Karp - "D+D Fantasy"
14. Rye Coalition - "Stairway To The Free Bird On The Way To The Smokey Water"
15. Johnny Fortune - "Dragster"
16. Ministry - "Breathe"
17. The Dildos - "Fuck Off"
18. Soundgarden - "Ty Cobb"
19. NoMeansNo - "Big Dick"

And by the way, the new Pissed Jeans album - sweet merciful crap, does it rawk. It's out August 18th. Mark it on your calender and prepare to get messy.