Pitchfork

Like Jonathan Richman before him, Daniel DiMaggio is in love with modern girls and modern rock & roll. "Hey!" opens with DiMaggio asking a "cute girl" how her week's going, then announcing that he's got "the gift that keeps on giving... it's called electric guitar!" This announcement is followed, of course, by a bitchin' solo. Over the last couple of years, DiMaggio has released a number of excellent home-recorded garage-rock 7"s and cassettes as Home Blitz, all of which are compiled on a self-titled CD just released by Gulcher. It's hard to pick a favorite, but the break in the middle of "Hey!" cinches it for me. Distracted by a "hot girl," DiMaggio stops playing altogether, interrupting himself with "whooooa... I gotta get some gum. One second..." A hilariously off-beat count-in later, he's going at full blast again, "but now I'm singing and I'm playing four whole songs in a row!" As his previous moment of distraction illustrated, though, "it ain't easy, takes dedication, oh baby you oughta know.... it's TOUGH." Funny, that seamless synchronized guitar solo at the end could've fooled me.