Prepare for disappointment. Steel yourself for heartbreak.

The more seriously you get in to music, the more times you’ll be faced with the following scenario: a band or artist will come out with a debut you love, it will speak to you in ways you didn’t think possible, every song will sparkle like a diamond. (Sometimes this will be a sophomore album but the end result will be the same.)

You must then cross your fingers and pray. Pray hard. Otherwise, the band will immediately break up. Or the songwriter will drown. Or the band will kick out the lead singer and become a much, much less interesting band. Or the lead vocalist will become a heroin addict. Or the bandleader will turn into a perfectionist control freak and never release anything else again. All kinds of things happen.

There will never be a second album. You will only have 45 minutes of music by this artist. Forever.

And the artists you hate? You’ll have to change the radio station every five minutes in order to escape them. They’ll release 20 albums, stick around for 40 years, and end up in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.

Ambulance Ltd released their brilliant debut album 8 years ago with a followup EP (basically a quarter- to half-length album, usually about 4 to 6 songs) 2 years later. As of this writing, only the lead singer/songwriter remains of the original group. Supposedly he’s in litigation with his record label or something (I’m sure there’s no perfectionist control freaking going on). Anyway, six years and counting . . .

Ambulance LTD – Arbuckle’s Swan Song

(Six years isn’t even close to the record, though. The La’s hold that—supposedly still working on the second album last time I checked—22 years and counting . . .)

Note: This will likely be my last post for a (hopefully short) while since I don’t know when my next consistent internet connection will arise. I’ll try to post as soon as possible though—probably after arriving in Vermont, where I will continue to build my mighty army of music geeks. (Didn’t even realize you’d been drafted, did you? It’s okay, we’re generally a peaceful army. Unless someone tries to argue that the echo chambers at Sunset Sound were superior to those at Gold Star . . . then we pop a cap in a mofo.)