Frank Politics! Three steps to ending gun violence...

If I became president the first three things I would do are enact the following edicts...

1. Every school (public and university) must spend at least twice as much on mental health services as they do on sport programs.

2. Convert at least half of the churches in the US to mental health facilities.

3. Make all guns illegal. Citizens can exchange their firearms for tasers, baseball bats, pepper spray or other non lethal defense.

Did I miss any? Please continue the list in the comments.

Musical Advent Calendar Day Seven - Beachwood Sparks : Tarnished Gold

After an excruciating eleven year hiatus Beachwood Sparks return to the always barren psychedelic country indie pop scene. I know there are many "roots rock" or "alterna-country" or "shit kicking pop dust bowl ballad" type bands out there but no other contemporary band captures the feeling of the Sweetheart era Byrds like Sparks. They don't just emulate but build upon the style, stripping away the linear storytelling of later era Byrds and infusing it with early Byrds songwriting.  So glad to see them back.

Musical Advent Calendar Day Six - Magnetic Fields : Love at the Bottom of the Sea

Big surprise the new Magnetic Fields album is amazing.  Unlike Distortion and Realism which each musically tackled their respective titularity, Love gets back to the sythn/acoustic swap of their earlier work. More of the same? Yes, but no one writes a song like Stephen Merritt and the world continues to become a lonelier place. We need all the bitter sarcasm we can get.

Musical Advent Calendar Day Five: Air : Le Voyage Dans La Lune

An amazing score to the restored version of the 1902 French film. The music here is more reminiscent of  the duo's earlier work (Premiers Symptomes) than their work on The Virgin Suicides or anything else lately. It is nice to hear them get back to their moon roots. Oh yeah and the chick from Beach House comes in at the end. Such a good album. 

Musical Advent Calendar Day Four: Aaron Freeman : Marvelous Clouds

If you grew up in Austin during the nineties and smoked cigarettes with the cool kids behind HEB then you were undoubtedly a Ween fan. I took music way too seriously in high school so I often scoffed at the silly duo and their drug fueled, scatter brained psychedelic pop. It was still devastating to hear  that they finally broke up  this year. Aaron Freeman aka Gene Ween went and got sobered up, broke up the band and released  this beautiful collection of songs originally recorded by 60's poet/troubadour Rod McKeun. This collection lacks the tongue in cheek approach one might expect from the author of such songs as Spinal Meningitis (got me down) and Bananas & Blow. These tunes all have a cathartic feel to them and were obviously chosen with great care. They dabble in the abstract and poetic, but the souls of the songs are all perfectly articulated by Aaron's interpretation. He sounds like a man who has been through some shit but has not given up on music. Most of my friends who still listen to Ween seem to hate this album, labeling it as a soft rock snooze fest. They can piss up a rope cause this album is fantastic.