Hot Fun in the Summertime

Massive props go out to the Needle Point Records family: Cat-A-Tac's latest effort, Past Lies and Former Lives, checked in at #66 on CMJ Top 200 chart (after claiming the #9 spot on last week's Top 20 adds chart), while Rabbit Is a Sphere's Laps in the Sleep Saloon earned the #13 spot on this week's adds chart. Nice work, gang! And right on for Spiv, whose song "Everybody's a Rockstar" is prominently featured in the promos for The Next Best Thing: Who Is the Greatest Celebrity Impersonator, ABC's latest reality vehicle, which the network describes as "diabolically outrageous and raucously entertaining." What a score for Chris Barber and company. Let's hope that this one lasts longer than, ahem, the last One I wrote about in the August 3, 2006, Beatdown.

Fooking brilliant. Those were the exact words that came to mind when I heard the Swayback's recent cover of "I'm Waiting for the Man." The band's treatment and Eric Halborg's vocals more than do justice to the original; check it out for yourself at myspace.com/theswayback.

Finally, I'm sending best wishes for a speedy recovery to Augy Zhivago (aka Augy Rocks). When Zhivago -- who once fronted one of my all-time favorite Denver bands, Pil Bug, as well as a slew of other acts, including MK Ultra -- and I spoke last week, he informed me that this past December he'd suffered a major heart attack. Since then, he's been taking it easy and is steadily getting back to health at his home in North Hollywood. The timing of the attack couldn't have been more craptacular, as just a few months prior he was stricken by a bout of E. coli poisoning. "The whole time, all I kept thinking was that I had to keep my eyes open," he reports. "They say it's like a pain in the chest. It's more like getting hit with a sledgehammer."