I was originally going to post a rumination about another great old song that's kicking my unemployed ass these days, but I just threw this on fairly recently, and damn if it doesn't pack a cathartic whallop. I was a passive fan of Julian Cope's solo stuff circa the admittedly pop-tastic St. Julian album in 1987, but it wasn't until 1991's Peggy Suicide that I became a furious Cope disciple.

Released when the rest of the music-loving world seemed to be furtively fondling itself over albums by Nirvana and Primal Scream, Peggy Suicide came along as this sprawling, whip-smart, ambitious concept album that restored all faith in Julian Cope's wildly erratic solo career. Simply put, Peggy Suicide has everything from balls-out rockers and blissful pop to loping "baggy" funk and bizarrely ambient stretches. It's a remarkably diverse record that had no business sounding as coherent and cohesive as it did (and still does), almost lending legitimacy once again to the maligned notion of 'concept albums'. Cope came across as focussed, furious and feral.In 2004, Julian's own website, Head Heritage saw fit to release Live Japan `91. Recorded on the Peggy Suicide tour, this amazingly fresh-sounding recording (formerly a bootleg?) found Julian in fighting form. Prior to the excesses of later work (the rest of his "eco-trilogy" is patchy, to say nothing about his last several albums of mind-numbing Krautrock-inspired dronathons and ironic demi-metal), the Peggy Suicide-era Cope still had one foot planted firmly in burly rock blitzkrieg and the other in effortless pop-hook mastery. Particularly amazing is Donald Ross Skinner's guitar, which is positively rollicking in comparison to his studio work.

"Hanging Out And Hung Up On the Line" opens proceedings with a relentless battery, some of Skinner's best guitar-bothering and Cope doing his best Iggy impersonation. Few tracks can find me air-guitaring and pogoing about as strenuously as this live recording. And I can't think of a song title that better encapsulates my particular circumstances these days. Enjoy.