Those of us with access to the San Francisco Bay area will get a chance to relive those fabulous '90s on December 18 at The Bottom of the Hill when my official favoritest rock-and-roll band Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 get up and then get down again.

Given the rate of their recent appearances, I expect TFUL282 to show up next in 2010 or so. And these guys make Halley's comet sound like a celestial body with a central solid mass and a tail of dust and gas! Don't miss 'em, sez Cholly!

Special Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 Cross-Over Event: They may not have played out much recently, but at last Saturday's top-of-their-form Bottom of the Hill show, TFUL282 still sounded like they were born and bred together. And I don't mean like me and my brother; I mean like the Jackson 5.

Except loose like a goose.

And value-oriented like a goose bought at Costco.

For only eight bucks, we got two hours of solid value-goose-laid sonic gold: gorgeous, funny, sentimental, beat-crazy 100%-meat-based clockwork.

More surprising than the quality of the band was the quality of the engineering: this was the best sounding amplified-instruments show I've ever heard. Sometimes I think jazz or string quartet when I hear the Thinking Fellers, but this show made me understand for the first time what Lou Reed was getting at when he called loud rock "symphonic": big rich deep wide clumps and flows writhing precisely around each other like some special cross-over event between the Ballets Russes and the Lair of the White Worm.

And for results, we're proud to announce the acquisition and sharing of:

• A very rare single from Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, courtesy of the band and David Pille
• A very rare single from Tuesday Weld, courtesy of Jack C Stalnaker

As the latest in our continuing series of abdicated responsibilities, we're pleased as punk to announce that Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 has set up an official band-owned-and-operated website. Now they'll get rich for sure!

Aside from the obvious value of the reference material, I find there also Anne Eickelberg's tour diaries and (indirectly) account of life in the big leagues, and (also indirectly) a live performance video that I haven't seen yet 'cause my network connection has been down for two weeks....

Updates via updater:

The best Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 interview ever not done with Seymour Glass is available. All is expressed within the music, true; but here all or something like it is explained or something like it:

AE: I'd love to hear more covers. I'd love to hear bands totally make fun of it. Because that's one of things that's given us the most pleasure, totally fucking up our own songs in practice.
...
BH: When we were practicing [in late 1999] we started getting into that, and it was so much fun. I was singing like the guy from the Cure, singing "The Operation" [from Strangers] like that. That felt so good. And I was thinking, "I feel so stupid for not having started doing this eight, ten years ago, just pick someone and sing like them." It's a blast. Suddenly I felt really emotional. I was crying a little bit, like: "Oh, yeah, that's the voice I should have been using all this time. His."

A not-quite-something-like-Seymour-Glass interview also exists. The correct answer to how they sound, by the way, is "po(o)p music." Pronounced "Poeh, open parenthesis, oh, close parenthesis, pee period music."

Why is it that it (or something like it that it) only comes to me now that I never asked to interview TFUL282? Is it for the same reason that I told Samuel R. Delany that

Of course, my idea of a good interview question would be something like "So what does Lou Christie’s speaking voice sound like?" or "Why do you think poets are usually so much funnier in their writing than they are in person?"