Hello. Well, right on cue, the dog comes right up. Here's Marshall. Right on cue. It's like he knew. It's probably weird if you're listening just on the audio podcast. Yeah, you can't see the dog. If you're watching on the YouTube, you can see the dog. He's in a lot of these videos. His name's Marshall. He's a baby dog. Yeah. And my name's Mike. I'm Stephanie. This is the Punk Rock Pinball Podcast. Episode 24. Episode 24. Um, yeah, here we go. Today we're going to talk about the five best record albums of the year 2025. Top five of 2025. So it's not going to be a pinball heavy episode. But do you want to share anything? Do we get any club updates? Yeah, we have some club updates. Let's know the club updates. Well, this week on the Club Updates, we have a new game in here called Knight Rider. And this is not Michael Knight of Knight Rider. This is a 1977, I think. Is that a Bally? It's a Bally. It's a Bally classic for player. And the theme is trucks, semi-trucks. He's a trucker. And there's like a foxy lady. It looks like she's like a waitress or something. Yeah. But maybe fixing to take his order. There's a copper. There's a cop car. Yeah, there's a cop car. In the back glass. Super 70s. It's pretty awesome. That thing rips. The spinner's ripping. I can't hit him. I can. Yeah, Steph can hit him. It's really nice. Beautiful play field. We picked that up. And Mike and I learned this week that EMs weigh a lot. Suckers heavy. Yeah, we almost pooped our pants. Yeah, because we've got, what, six steps to get in here? They're pretty kind of steep steps, I would say. And it was in the back of my truck. As soon as we took it out of the truck onto the ground, I thought we might be in trouble. Me too, but there was no turning back. No, I was like, oh shit. But like, we can do this. Yeah, we can do anything. We can do this. By the third step. We were halfway up and we were effed. I almost hollered because there's a neighborhood here. And I did see a guy walking his dog earlier. And I was looking around because if I had seen somebody walking by, I was going to like, hey, can you help? Well, we got it up. We got it up those three steps and then we decided to just lay it down onto the landing of the stairs. and then push it off the dolly which sort of worked it sort of it took us a little bit but we got it to work and uh yeah we got it up there put it on a different dolly because we broke our first dolly and i'll wield it in here and it set up pretty easy yeah and it was i mean it took like how many miles is that from chicago water and fire to here maybe 120 so it took like 120 mile ride 1977 EM machine and it really just has plays almost flawlessly it has a couple switches that need to be adjusted yeah they all work and you never know with the EM bouncing around 120 miles down the road what you're going to get well this one's a beaut yeah that's it's gorgeous it's awesome so we have a new game that is added to the classics collection yeah that gives us how many are back in that room back there i think they're five i think four five five because you got close encounters we got cj's two ems and um firepower is four back there okay right yeah then we got gorgar here no there's three of cj's back there he's got three what's he got he's got grand prix grand prix the pink one alpha target alpha and then there's another one in the center of that. Oh, I haven't even seen that set up yet. I don't know if it's set up. I didn't even look. Okay, so there's five classics back there. We got Knight Rider out here. We got Gorgar there. We got seven classics. Joe's talking about bringing in another, so we'd have eight. Perfect. Because here's what I'm thinking about. Do tell. Maybe later in December or maybe in a January tournament, probably not an IFPA, but to do like a card style like the papa tournament but less formal because i don't want to have scorekeepers going around where like if you play your game you just go enter the score and it's the honor system but we'll have enough we can have like a moderns and the classics separate divisions and these are all single you play single player games so i think for the folks that come down that are like newer newer players I think that's like a it doesn't give a noob a better chance to win but it's more noob friendly in that like you get to play a single player game and not like have to wait for Joe Sharp to play 10 minutes on a ball in between playing your ball so we're going to do that soon that'll be fun we have our next monthly tournament scheduled when is it december 19th let's see friday i don't know what day it is it's a friday friday december 19th come visit us yeah yeah i gotta um yeah we're just scheduling out all the december and some maybe a little bit of january stuff we're gonna do a league and then if you're a member in the club pretty much every thursday and december we're gonna be here um every thursday night like six to nine just for open play because our our league it's going to start in january that's going to be on thursday so i want to get people in the habit of pre-league it'd be pre pre-league nights where people can come in and learn the games yeah that's going to be just for members yeah we got yeah so there's a lot going on here we also um had thanksgiving we had thanksgiving i had a rock show you had a rock show on friday i got this cool new hoodie yeah i need to show it off you should show it off are these available anywhere you can get those on anxious and angry.com hopefully that's in focus anxious and angry.com is also the place you can get the punk rock pinball merchandise so there's that um what else we were supposed to have two rock shows we postponed Milwaukee. Yeah. Because there was a big snowstorm. Somebody on Instagram called us pussies for doing that. I don't care. I mean, I care a little bit. It's kind of rude saying, oh, well, we've done this. It's like, dude, I've driven through more snowstorms times 10 probably than what you have. I've toured the country. I've lapped this country hundreds and thousands of miles. So don't give me your shit about I'm a pussy for not going to the snowstorm. Well, you know what? It's just not safe for anybody. No. The band or really I don know how much snow ended up hitting up in Milwaukee But from what I understand up in the Chicago area it was kind of gnarly Yeah And we got a shitload down here For us. For us. And they don't clear the roads the same. No. But hopefully everybody was safe on their holiday traveling. Mm-hmm. And we promised everybody last week that we were going to do a top five. Top five albums. Yeah. Of 2025. Of 2025. Five. Is there anything else we're forgetting on the updates before that? Probably not. No, it was nice at the Rock Show, though. I can't wait to see. We saw a bunch of friends came out and played. There was pinball at the Bottom Lounge, and the owner of the Bottom Lounge put all of the games on free play for us, which was super cool. That's what I was forgetting. What's the date of the Devin K. and the Mustard Plug show? December 28th, I believe. December 28th. It's a Sunday. at the bottom lounge in Chicago. I don't know the time yet. I think like 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock. We're going to do a punk rock pinball meetup and some kind of high score challenge at the bottom lounge before the mustard plug in Devin K show. Yeah. So come see us there if you're a Chicagoan. Yeah. So we played. Jenny Spinner came out. Aaron and Jess. came out. There were some other punk rock pinball folks and our favorite rock photographer also came out. Yeah, MXV. Yeah, that was cool. We were going to stay at Mike's house and then once we postponed Milwaukee, we decided to just come home and beat the Carl Weathers down, which was the right choice. It was the right choice, but I would love to jam on Mike's games. Yeah. Mike will get up. We'll stay. We'll come for a sleepover. You know what? We should do. We should take this thing and go do an episode from his basement if you'll let us do that, Mike. Yeah. Or in front of his record collection. Yeah, because we want Mike on the show, so we'll just bring this stuff up there and do it at his house. That'd be cool. Yeah. So, Mike, if you're watching, I know you watch some of these. Can we invite ourselves over to record a podcast at your house? He's going to say yes. He's so nice. All right. I'll get into the top albums. Okay. Oh, wait. One other thing I want to mention. So the the show on Friday night, Menthol, one of like a band that we love from the 90s, came out of the woodwork and played at Bottom Lounge. And Scott Lucas of Local H also played on on Friday before the before Smoking Popes took the stage. very funny scott lucas not into sports he says so he's not really into pinball he says however he joined punk rock pinball facebook did he join the group uh-huh scott lucas is in the group he's in the group everybody tags scott lucas welcome to the group scott lucas yeah yeah that was the first he told you the same thing i'm like are you do pinball at all he's He's like, I don't know. I don't do sports. That's what he said to me, too. He doesn't do sports. We just got to get him on the Jaws pinball, and then he'll be in. He loves Jaws. He's got a Jaws sticker on his guitar. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll get him. We'll get him. We'll nab him. But without further ado. Tell me the top five. You can cover one of them. Yeah, my favorite album of 2025. Steph's number one is on here, which I have at number three. It's my number one. I'm going to go number five. This is self-promotion. And it's also because the artwork is a pinball play field when you fold out the album. I wish we had one. Right here to show it. Maybe we'll have to. I don't even know if we have one at home. I don't know if I have this album. It's the Smoking Poets, Lovely Stuff. the front record cover is like the back glass of of a pinball machine like a classic pinball machine is done by jenny how do you pronounce her last name cotterill i think so uh from california she made this thing the physical thing of it yeah it's not digital art it's she actually made a physical play field and back glass. And she lit it. And lit it and photographed it. Yeah. I know you have digital pictures of it, so I will try to pop them in here so you can see it. But it's very cool. Yeah. It's very cool. So just on artwork alone, it's just shameless self-promotion I'm putting it on because it's my show and it's my band. I think it's... It's our show. It is our show. I apologize. It's our show. It's the band I play in. I know, it's your band. And I think it's one of our better albums. I think it might be our best album to me. I like it. Okay. So yeah, number five, Smoking Pope's lovely stuff. Pinball artwork. So it has to be, and it's got pinball in the artwork. Number four is the Beths. We've talked about them on here before. Their album is called Straight Line Was a Lie. Very good album. It sounds like the best, like super catchy, great, catchy, hooky songs. Not my favorite best album, but their other three albums are flawless. So you can't just make a flawless album every time. It's great, though. It is great. It made the list. Top song on there for me is called Mother Pray For Me. Okay. Beautiful song. It's just like her and a guitar. And it's just beautiful song, kind of a tearjerker of a song. And that song alone would, all the other songs are good. Just that song would put it into the top five. Is it on the Punk Rock Pinball playlist? Every album on here has songs on the Punk Rock Pinball playlist on Spotify. Okay, good. I don't think Mother Pray For Me is on there, but I could add it. You should add it. I'll add it. Yeah. It's maybe not a song you want to play pinball to, but I'll put it on there anyway. Okay. It'll give you a nice little breather. Okay. Maybe it's like post-pinball song, driving home. Post-pinball song, winding down. Yeah. Cool down, a cool down. A cool down song. Okay. All right. Number three, Stephanie's number one. This is my number one album of the year. Angie Baird probably agrees with me on this one. it's rodeo boys l album junior it's great it's a ripper front like start to finish awesome and tiff the singer of rodeo boat boys came over over the summer did some fishing with you yep and then tiff did a performance in our basement after a very hot day fishing and cranked out a couple songs which are on our channel, on this YouTube channel. You should check it out. Yep. It was awesome. What's your favorite song on it? I don't know song names. I like the second track Okay Because the first one kind of like a little interlude in I don know what my hang on I tell you Okay I going to look it up right now My favorite song on it while you're looking is All-American Man. I love that one too. And Tiff did that song on the channel. If you look, scroll down our videos, it's, I don't know, probably five or 10 or 12 down. Okay. I like Sam's song. I like Speedway. Yep. I like Pump Six. Okay. I like Peonies. I like them all. Samsung also, she did Samsung on the... She did. She did. Yeah. It's just, it's great. Oh, and I need to look... And she's on tour right now. They just played Chicago. No, it got canceled. Oh, they canceled it? Yeah, pussies. Pussies. I can't believe in 2025 someone's going to call us pussies for a canceling show. She's playing the Rock House in Dundee on, or the band, on December 20th. They're playing Dundee? Yeah. Who are they playing with? I think they're playing with, it's with Teenage Bottle Rocket. Okay. And Boris the Sprinkler. I don't know Boris the Sprinkler. They're a local kind of classic band. Okay. Well, that's cool. Yeah. But you should go see Rodeo Boys. They rock and you will not be disappointed. Great live show. The live show is phenomenal. The records are good. The live show is even better. awesome the bands that are that good live it's really hard to capture that on on record like the new album i think is great but like you see them live and it's even better than the record because they just have like an energy that unless you're watching it happen it's hard to capture that yeah just great all right who else you got the next one this is number two the number two best album of 2025 from Australia. So the best, they're from New Zealand. Yeah, down under. Down near Australia. These fellas are from Australia called the Smith Street Band. And the album is called Once I Was Wild. I love that guy's voice. I think his voice is great. The Smith Street Band is kind of, he sings with like a, like an urgency, like a sense of desperation. Yeah. Right, he's just putting it out there. Mm-hmm. Because, like, technically, he may not be, like, technically a great singer, but he's got, like, a soulfulness and an urgency to his voice, and his lyrics are very kind of earnest and heartfelt, and it seems like he's been through some stuff. I could listen to him sing all day long. Feels like a kind of guy that's been through some stuff. Do they ever tour here? I don't know if they do tour here. I don't know when they're coming back to the USA. Are they big? Are they a big band? They're bigger than, like, the Smoking Popes. They are. Smaller than the Beths. Okay. Kind of, I don't know, maybe, like, and they kind of remind me, like, of the Front Bottoms. Yeah. If the front bottoms had clinical depression. Okay. And were a little bit more angry. I could see that. Because they're heavier than the front bottoms. But the way he flows his... The way his vocal melodies are rhythmically is very similar to the front bottoms. And I'd say they're not as big as the front bottoms, but they're bigger than the smoking popes and probably bigger than off at their heads. so in the upper mid-level bands almost above a mid-level band because like up at their heads in Smoking Popes I'd say were like mid-level bands to low mid-level bands and like the Smith Street band I would assume would be playing like 400, 1000 cap rooms whereas like the up with our heads and popes types headlining we're outside of chicago we're playing like you know 150 to 300 cappers so they're like the next level up okay from us in terms of bigness i have no clue so thank you yeah i don't know how big they are in australia probably bigger probably bigger than they are here but they've got several good albums i think this might be their best one a few songs on there the title track once i was wild uh phenomenal song phenomenal song a little bit more somber it's not as angry as a lot of the smith street band song kind of a prettier song and then you got star child which is just like a rocker and then there's one called American Heaven, which is like really kind of a pissed off song. It's a really good one. Like the hook line he's saying, I think he says, like, I don't think that I would get into your American heaven. He wouldn't get into your American heaven. He wouldn't. And he doesn't really want to. OK. Yeah. Doesn't want in. I can appreciate that. Appreciate it. Great band. Number one. Drum roll drummer. Number one. This album blew my mind. It blew my mind. And it's a band I've known about for quite some time. Where are they from? They're from France. Yeah. Which is weird. It's a French band. How'd you find them? I found them from, what's their last name? Lauren Mills? Uh-huh. Thank you, Lauren. You probably don't listen to this podcast. So Lauren Mills turned me on to them like 2017. From their album, they had an album called Leave Stickers on Our Graves, which is a hilarious album name. This band is called Not Scientists. They're from France. The album is called Voices. Okay. And it's just, first of all, like sonically, the production is insanely good. Like the bass guitar tone, every rock album, the bass should sound like the bass on this album. And the bass player should probably play like the bass player on this album. Okay. It's just perfect. And then the drums are just like smashing drums. And the drummer is phenomenal. He does a lot of stuff. So you think like, oh, he's, but it's not too busy. It's like just what you should do. It's like just right. It's like just right. The drummer is like just right. And he plays, because I listened to it. It's one of those albums where, and I always listen to the drums because I'm a drummer. And like, if I could play what he plays, he does some things I probably can't play. but if I could do it like I would do it just as he did as he did it I wouldn't change anything perfect about the drums again it's another one that this album has it kind of atmospheric where when I hear these songs like I can like picture them I can picture like the scene like you see like colors and there like a just a mood and it another one like the Smith street band where there like a sense of urgency to everything It like driving And a lot of the songs I feel like they would go in like a movie where the, like, if there's like a super cool lead character and they're like in an intense dramatic situation, this song would be playing in the background. Like it's that kind of music. Yeah. yeah like i don't know who the cool lead character would be but if it was somebody super cool it's nighttime and they're playing pinball or if they're playing pinball and they needed to crush a game of pinball top songs on it for me um i remember is great hurricane phone and then the title track the voices all phenomenal but i like start to finish like the whole record so not scientists from france number one scientists from france who knows if we'll ever get to see them do you know what they call pinball in france what what flipper flipper so not scientists they're probably not watching do you all play flipper they might i'd love to have them come to the united states do they ever i feel like they maybe have played fest before but i wrote them and i asked if they were coming to the usa anytime soon they said no but i mean they're not a pop they're not like a big band well you know what maybe we'll put it out there we're gonna put it out there maybe they come next year like on the scale of these of these five bands like not scientists and rodeo boys are probably about the same size bands okay where they're like they're trying they're doing they're trying to be mid-level bands and probably will be rodeo boys is probably well on their way to being a mid-level band yeah not scientists i think are a little bit older and they've been around a little longer and they may very well be a mid-level band in europe could be but in the usa i think they have Spotify listeners, I think they've got like 12 or 15,000. Whereas like Smith Street Band, I think has a hundred some thousand. And the Beths these days might have a million. I don't know. So that's are kind of huge. The Beths are huge. Well, everybody has some new music. If you haven't listened to these things to get through the holidays. Yeah. Yeah. Not scientists. I heard that one. I listened to the album straight through like twice the first time I heard it. And then going up to Aurora for band practice, I listened to Not a Scientist and the Smith Street Band all the way through. And then coming home, I did the same thing. Those two albums again. Yep. Yep. So those are the two for me. Marshall agrees. And Marshall says he likes all five of those albums. Don't you, Barsh? He is dropping farts like nobody's business. Yeah. It stinks. He's a stinky guy. I think it's because I gave him Brussels sprouts. Good thing we don't have smell-o-vision. It's something over here. You make your eyes water. It is. So we do the next episode, the top five pinball machines. Of 2025? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm going to preemptively thank the Loser Kid podcast. Oh, yeah? Because they did their top five pinball machines. Mm-hmm. So now when I want to get the list of all of the pinball machines from 2025, I'm going to go about 33 minutes into the Loser Kid episode. Because when he was reading off the list, I was watching it last night. He was reading off the list. I paused it to see the timer. Because I don't want to go and look up what were all the 2025 pinball machines. So I paused 33 minutes into the Loser Kid. How many are on the list? There's like 12. Oh, all right. Well, let's not talk. We're not going to talk about them. We're not going to talk about them, but I'm thanking Loser Kid for already doing his top five list. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Loser Kid, because I'm going to look at your video and then write down all the 12 from there. I think our top five is going to differ from them a little bit. I don't even know what his are. I don't want to know what his are. Marshall really needs to get out. Marshall's knocking stuff down. Marshall's knocking stuff down I mean it's fine I don't need it he's a good boy he has a he's a good boy but I think that's all we have for this one until we think this week about our top five pinball machines from 2025 yeah we're back to the grind tomorrow Monday December 1st oh my god yeah so I think we're gonna once we turn this off we have a insider connected leaderboard in here oh my golly we've got an insider connected leaderboard in here and we're not very high on the leaderboard on most games so we're going to pick a couple games try to remedy that yeah there was a all skate and all play here on friday we missed it yeah because we're at the rock show and a bunch of people got on the leaderboard yeah it's our time now we're on they're like kind of low on some yeah i'm on a couple i'm on beatles i'm on x-men monsters and i think that's it yeah so we got we got some work we got work to do we're gonna crank on this insider connected leaderboard it's fun to have an insider connected leaderboard right in your place yeah it's pretty cool and now we're here no one else is so we can just jam until trying to decide what game i might do mandalorian i think the top score is 200 mil right now i feel like we can get that What are you going to do? I think I'm going to go for Beatles. Beatles was just under 5 million, CJ? Yeah, I can do it. Can you do it? Yeah. Have you got it? Do you have what it takes? I have what it takes. Okay. I think I do. I think I do tonight. But I got to tell you, I think I have arthritis or something that's happening in my joint muscle by my thumb. It's like burns. I need some joint rightus. You need some joint rightus? or some Aleve. You should have taken an Aleve before we came over. Yeah, I really should have. Oh, I know one other thing I wanted to mention. Our friend Ryan from Off With Their Heads, who does all of our merch, I don't think you said this at the beginning, he just got back from a big tour. Okay. So I think some of the stuff that had been out of stock on the website might get stocked. So if you're looking for Christmas presents, for loved ones or for yourself, you should head over to anxiousandangry.com. And hopefully he has time. He's in between tours. Usually they do a little promo code for merch during this season. So I'll try to find out tomorrow. And then hopefully if he does, like next episode, we'll talk about the top. Okay, cool. Good? Yeah, I'm good. Okay. So we're going to go get on these leaderboards. And hopefully the dog doesn't wreck any more things. He knocked everything over. He knocked everything over. He's a good boy. So thanks for watching. Join that Facebook group. Like and subscribe here on the video. Leave a comment. All that crap. All that good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll see you next week. Toodaloo. Bye.