Top 10 Random for 2006 by John Andrew Fredrick

Veteran shoegazers the black watch harken back the guitar heavy likes of Swervedriver and Ride. Frontman John Andrew Fredrick, who received his PH.D. in English at UCSB during the rise of college rock, has been known to teach occasionally at Santa Monica College. He was nice enough to put together a list of random coolnesses of 2006.

If you still haven't gotten anything for that hard-to-buy-for hipster on your shopping list, you might want to consider the black watch's Tatterdemalion on Stonegarden Records. Because there's no such thing as too much rock.

Top Ten Random for 2006 by John Andrew Fredrick:

1. "Just by Looking at You I Can Tell That Your Band Sucks" (T-shirt idea--patented, and mine, actually, so don't go getting any ideas of your own, if you don't mind!)

2. "Get Over Him By Getting Under Someone Hotter" (babydoll T-shirt idea--ibid.)

3. William Boyd's new novel, Restless

4. "Pulling our Weight"--single by The Radio Dept.

5. Tristram Shandy (the film--of course the film! the book's unreadable!)

6. Quynh Nyguyen, an impossibly beautiful, sexy and intelligent Vietnamese UCLA grad I met
when our record label head forced me into that dark, dank, loathsome sink of iniquity, the 4001
Bar in Silverlake, around six months ago

7. Walking out, within 10 minutes, of the latest fulsomely ornate travesty by Sophia Coppola (decision--"aye-d" by Quynh Nyguyen, which is one of the reasons why she's so beautiful)

8. Smart Brown Handbag, Harry Larry (their best record yet!)

9. Vermont Canyon Tennis Club Tennis Bums (who, clocking me reading Idylls of the King
courtside, gave me my new nickname: Lord Tennisbum)

10. Jack Rabid's review of our new CD, Tatterdemalion, in The Big Takeover (because, unlike this guy who has a zine called Dagger, not once did Jack refer to your less-than-humble servant as "the Rodney Dangerfield of indie rock)