DIANE, I’M READING JEFFREY MORGAN’S MEDIA BLACKOUT #394!

Nirvana – In Utero: The 20th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition (DGC) :: As if it wasn’t already one of the most intelligently and psychotically abrasive fingernails across a chalk board rock albums ever recorded, along comes Big Black guitarist and original producer Steve “Skinng” Albini to make it an even more intelligently and psychotically abrasive fingernails across a chalk board rock album. Ah, but is it the most intelligently and psychotically abrasive fingernails across a chalk board rock album of all time?

Big Black – Songs About Fucking (Touch & Go) :: Of course not.

SIZZLING ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Ollie Vee – Lonesome Girl (Dang Snapit) :: Here’s a tattooed up the wazoo chicka-boom trio that knows how to slap an album design together and then slap a like-minded record inside it that easily evokes the album cover aesthetic that shows a tarted up solitary skirt longingly looking out a hotel room window at the obligatory blinking red neon sign that’s bathing her deep blueness in shards of cascading crimson like she’s in an Edward Hopper painting.

Lissen, any song that begins with the line: “Well, we get hopped up every night” like “Looking For A Fast Time” does is my kinda album. But lest you go thinkin’ that this is some kinda Tonight’s The Night dour downer, lemme tell ya that it’s an uptempo rock-a-billy rave up that owes its more melancholy moments to the David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti produced Floating Into The Night album that songstress Julee Cruise waxed way back in 1989. In fact, this entire baker’s dozen of slinky swinging songs would be right at home on the jukebox at the Double R Diner. And if you don’t believe me, just ask Norma Jennings the next time you drop by for a slice of cherry pie and—excuse me—a damn fine cup of coffee.

So if any wiseacre tries to brace you into thinking that Ollie Vee’s Lonesome Girl is some kinda tremolo tribute to the late lamented likes of Roy Orbison or Handsome Ned, well, you just blow a thick pardon my dust plume of second hand smoke into their smug mugs ’cause hep cats like us, we both know a whole heckuva lot better, don’t we? That’ll be the day.

John Wayne – The Searchers (Warner Bros.) :: Exactly!

Kyle MacLachlan – Diane... The Twin Peaks Tapes Of Agent Cooper (Simon & Schuster Audio) :: Available, appropriately enough, only on analog audio cassette and nominated for a best spoken-word performance Grammy Award in 1990? Even the Lynchpin himself couldn’t dream up something as wonderfully wonky as that.

I’ll see you again in 25 years. Meanwhile...