Artists featured include THE DIRTBOMBS, the late great JAY REATARD, THEE OH SEES, NOBUNNY (pictured), BASS DRUM OF DEATH and many more.  (There’s plenty of time for “many more” when the average track duration is roughly 1:48.)  Plus hear the answer to the eternal question, “What the heck is garage rock?”

Ben Folds – Rockin’ The Suburbs
Bass Drum Of Death – Get Found
Bass Drum Of Death – Heart Attack Kid
The Charming Snakes – Ammunition
The Charming Snakes – Teenage Kut Out
The Exploding Hearts – Throwaway Style
The Exploding Hearts – Shattered (You Left Me)
The Marvelous Darlings – I Don’t Want To Go The Part
The Marvelous Darlings – The Only Ones For Miles
Nodzzz – I Don’t Wanna (Smoke Marijuana)
Nodzzz – Is She There
Nobunny – Motorhead With Me
Nobunny – Gone For Good
White Wires – Pretty Girl
Peach Kelli Pop – Do The Eggroll
The Okmonics – I’m On My Own
The Okmonics – Not That Good
Jeff The Brotherhood – Growing
The Unwed Teenage Mothers – No One Wants To
The Unwed Teenage Mothers – Change Your Mind
Super Wild Horses – Fifteen
The Dirtbombs – Brand New Game
The Dirtbombs – Wreck My Flow
Thee Oh Sees – Maria Stacks
Thee Oh Sees – Friends Defined
Mystery Girls – I Took The Poison
Jay Reatard – My Family
Knoxville Girls – Butcher Knife
Reigning Sound – You’re So Strange
The Undertones – Teenage Kicks

A-Trak at the 2010 Movement Festival / Flickr: dailybeatz

This week’s show features a preview of the artists appearing at this weekend’s Movement Festival in Detroit’s Hart Plaza.  Since 2000, the festival (under an ever-changing array of names, managers and corporate sponsor headliners) takes place every Memorial Day in the very cradle of American techno.  It has grown to be America’s most important electronic music event.  Well, electronic music event that says it’s an “electronic music event” unlike say Burning Man or Coachella which are pretty core, too, but aren’t really “electronic music events” per se.

To go through the highlights of this year’s roster, I am joined in studio by DJ Bunnystyle and Dr. Sleep from the fine indie/dance show Dots & Loops.  In the course of two hours, we go through this year’s lineup highlights and prove once again that a “techno festival” has a wider variety of artists and styles than that rubric would imply.  Not just techno, but classic disco, pop, and some ugly dubstep sounds that will probably make you throw up.

This year’s festival will stream at ResidentAdvisor.net.  You may also enjoy this Carl Craig profile from the Detroit Free Press by San Francisco’s own Timmmii.

SET LIST
69 (Carl Craig) – Rush
Deniz Kurtell w/ Jada – The L Word
Flying Lotus – Do The Astral Plane
Little Dragon – Looking Glass
Soulclap – Rock The Boat
Venetian Snares – Masadnik Galamb
Felix Da Housecat – Ready 2 Wear
DJ Harvey (mixer) – Doc Severinsen – Be With You
Monolake – CarbonHudson Mohawk – Fuse
Paul Kalkbrenner – Platscher
Ricardo Villalobos – bahaha hahi
Com Truise – Pyragony
Cashmere – Percolator

SET LIST

The Damned – I Just Can’t Be Happy Today
The Specials – Man At C & A
Nick Drake – Pink Moon
ABC7 Report on Family Radio
Curtis Mayfield – If There’s A Hell Below, We’re All Going (interrupted, sorry)
Prince – The Cross
Bob Dylan – When He Returns
The Beastie Boys – So Whatcha Want
XTC – This World Over
Harold Camping speaks out on giving refunds
The Clash – The Sound Of Sinners
Cabaret Voltaire – Sluggin Fer Jesus
Uncle Tupelo – Atomic Power
Lowell Blanchard and the Valley Trio – Jesus Hits Like An Atom Bomb

Jon Stewart says The Rapture = Free Clothes
The Smiths – Ask
Barbara Lewis – Baby I’m Yours
Super Furry Animals – It’s Not The End Of The World?
Barry McGuire – Eve Of Destruction
Flux Of Pink Indians – Tube Disasters
The Stranglers – Second Coming
Slayer – Jesus Saves
Rianovosti New – “North Korea threatens’sacred’ nuclear war”
Tom Waits – Earth Dies Screaming
Randy Newman – Political Science
Johnny Cash – The Man Comes Around
Kate Bush – Breathing
Sonic Youth – Do You Believe In Rapture?
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Death Is Not The End

Podcast temporarily offline

Standing at the crossroads of incendiary racial politics, American history, and a revolution in music’s means of production and distribution, Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back remains an absolute must-hear almost a quarter century since its original release.  In this episode, I delve deep into its sonic roots and how this team of untrained musicians rallied from its desultory debut album to become one of rock’s most important, hardest-to-imitate artists.

SET LIST

James Brown – Funky Drummer
Clyde Stubblefield interview, 2008
The J.B.’s – The Grunt (Parts 1 & 2)
Bobby Byrd – I Know You Got Soul
Run-D.M.C. – Hard Times
Beastie Boys – Hold It Now, Hit It
Public Enemy – Timebomb
Eric B & Rakim – I Know You Got Soul
Public Enemy – Rebel Without A Pause

Public Enemy – Bring The Noise
RZA on Chuck D
Chuck D on Flavor Flav
Public Enemy – Cold Lampin’ With Flavor
Hank Shocklee on finding his sound
Public Enemy – Night Of The Living Baseheads
Hank Shocklee and Chuck D on record collecting
Bobby Byrd – Hot Pants – I’m Coming, Coming, Coming
Bar-Kays – Son Of Shaft
Public Enemy – Caught, Can We Get A Witness?
Hank Shocklee on the Public Enemy sound
Isaac Hayes – Hyperbolicsyllablecsesquedalymistic
Public Enemy – Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos

Show starts about five minutes into the file

In addition to stalwarts BRATMOBILE, BIKINI KILL, and SLEATER-KINNEY, the RNRN will play selections from some of the bands who set the stage for the female-fueled rebellion like X-RAY SPEX, the SLITS, YOKO ONO, the RUNAWAYS, and many others.  Revolution Grrrl Style Now!!!

Not quite post-punk, not quite glam, not quite hair band. Duran Duran is its own genre.

With this episode, I make the ultimate Valentine’s Day sacrifice.  My show. My credibility.    Hang on, I meant to say Gift. Yes!  A Valentine’s Day Gift of course!

For two hours, my wife’s all-time favorite band Duran Duran is the subject of this week’s episode.  As always in my artist profiles, I begin with a bunch of roots and influences to set the landscape.  Then – believe it or not – I’ve got a ton of rarities, alternate mixes and other Duran-related stuff that might just surprise you.  The wife joined me in studio to keep me in line.

You know, guys (and I do mean guys since their fan base has got to about 96% female), they aren’t that bad when you dig beneath the big hair.  Honest.  Tune in tonight to find out why.

In this episode, I explore the cover song through the good graces of my colleagues at The Chemung County Enlightenment Society, a global ragtag group of music dorks that tried to do the impossible last year: narrow down their favorite covers to just 10 each, then post to a shared folder.  This show dives deep into that folder and finds treasures both weird and wonderful.

The post title, by the way, is a quote from Pete Seeger.

SET LIST

Justin Townes Earle – Can’t Hardly Wait (The Replacements)
Adriana Calcanhotto & Daniel Jobim – Music / Impressive Instant (Madonna)
Lizzy Mercier Descloux – Funky Stuff (Kool & The Gang)
Cibo Matto – About A Girl (Nirvana)
The Raincoats – Lola (The Kinks)
Cat Power – (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (The Rolling Stones)
Mark Eitzel – No Easy Way Down (Dusty Springfield)
The Flying Lizards – Sex Machine (James Brown)
Lb – Superbad (James Brown)
Katzenjammers – Cars (Gary Numan)
The Dirtbombs – Livin’ For The City (Stevie Wonder)
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – What’s Goin’ On / Mercy Mercy Me (Marvin Gaye)
The Slits – I Heard It Through The Grapevine (Marvin Gaye)
Stevie Wonder – We Can Work It Out (The Beatles)

Vince Guaraldi & Bola Sete – I’m A Loser (The Beatles)
Tito Puente Orchestra – The Simpsons
Senor Coconut – Beat It (Michael Jackson)
Toots & The Maytals – Let Down (Radiohead)
Steel Vibrations – The Hustle (Van McCoy)
Cowboy Junkies – Ooh Las Vegas (Gram Parsons)
Johnny Cash – Rowboat (Beck)
The Specials – Maggie’s Farm (Bob Dylan)
The Bad Plus – Film (Aphex Twin)
Rickie Lee Jones – Show Biz Kids (Steely Dan)
Ken Boothe – Ain’t No Sunshine (Bill Withers)
Taken By Trees – My Boys (Animal Collective)
Van Morrison – I Believe To My Soul (Ray Charles)
Nina Simone – Just Like A Woman (Bob Dylan)

Tim Armstrong – best known for his work with Berkeley’s Rancid – is 0ne of the biggest-selling and most influential figures in pop-punk over the last 15 years.  He has been a key member of Operation Ivy, Rancid, Lars Frederiksen & The Bastards and The Transplants, among others.  As a producer and songwriter, he’s been a hit machine for artists better known as popsters than punkers, like Pink and Gwen Stefani. All that and he operates his own record label, too.

SonicBoom takes through Armstrong’s work – everything from cassette-only demos to hit singles – and calls out his Tim Armstrong favorites.

Show starts about two minutes into the MP3.

FIRST HOUR
Operation Ivy – Uncertain (1987 demo)
Operation Ivy – Officer
Operation Ivy – Bankshot
Operation Ivy – I Got No
Operation Ivy – Bad Town
Operation Ivy – Unity
Operation Ivy – Unity (demo version)
Downfall – As One
Downfall – Step In Line
Dance Hall Crashers – DHC
Dance Hall Crashers – Keep On Running
Rancid – Adina
Rancid – Get Out Of My Way
Rancid – Unwritten Rules
Rancid – Holiday Sunrise
Rancid – Radio
Rancid – Salvation

Happy birthday! Great hair!

This week’s episode celebrates the shared birthday of two American originals with pretty darn awesome hair: Amihr “?uestlove” Thompson of The Roots and filmmaker-musician-painter-webmaster-iconoclast David Lynch.

In the first hour,  I showcase great hip-hop and R&B from The Roots.  One of the best and busiest bands going today, The Roots do a magnificent job of rolling together the last 40 years of R&B history with a modern hip-hop sensibility.  And they’re mighty fine players, too.

Stay tuned for the second hour when I hit the reset button and feature music from the films, works and weird worlds of David Lynch.  Fans of his films know that the sound design and Lynch’s musical sensibility are a foundation of what makes his cinematic world so unique.  Plus we’ll take a listen at his new career in electronica.

How’s that for adventurous programming, yeah?

FIRST HOUR – THE ROOTS
Sacrifice
Stay Cool
I Will Not Apologize
The Great Pretender
WAOK Role Call
Here I Come
You Got Me (ft Erykah Badu)
The Day
Criminal
Thought @ Work
Wake Up Everybody (w/ John Legend)
Now Or Never

SECOND HOUR – DAVID LYNCH
Angelo Badalamenti – Theme From Blue Velvet
Ketty Lester – Love Letter
Angelo Badalament- The Bookhouse Boys
Thought Gang – A Real Indication
David Lynch talks about the iPhone
David Bowie – I’m Deranged
Angelo Badalamenti – Fats Revisited
David Lynch – Good Day Today
David Lynch – “Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit”
Jimmy Scott – Sycamore Trees
Angelo Badalamenti – Country Waltz
David Lynch – “Angelo Badalamenti”
Angelo Badalamenti – Red Bats With Teeth
Julee Cruise – Falling
Roy Orbison – In Dreams
Tuxedomoon – In Heaven

James Murphy, the driving force behind LCD, will be the first to tell you that he’s standing on the shoulders of giants – everyone from Harry Nillson to Giorgio Moroder.  In this show, I roll through a lot of the bands that Murphy is influenced by, borrows from and pays homage to in his music.  Which is a really a music nerd way of saying: I’m playing punky disco and it’s hella fun.

Image 'borrowed' from Eater.com

Continuing on from last week’s show that concentrated on last year’s best in R&B, Dance and Jazz, tonight I’ll run through some of the year’s best indie & rock.  (Actually, since the server ate last week’s Part 1 show, I repeat a couple of artists and genres in the interest of playing catch-up.)

If you’ve been looking to catch up with some of 2010′s hidden treasures, there are a lot of goodies in here, everything from a My Bloody Valentine/Beach Boys mash (not really) to the years’s best Michael Jackson imitation to a slew of 80s revivalists.

FIRST HOUR

The Besnard Lakes – Chicago Train
jj – And Now
Deerhunter – Coronado
Lindstrom & Christabelle – Can’t Stop Now
LCD Soundsystem – One Touch
Beach Fossils – Golden Age
Harlem – Gay Human Bones
Best Coast – Boyfriend
The Drums – Best Friend
Wild Nothing – O, Lilac
Twin Shadow – Shooting Holes
Janelle Monae – Cold War

SECOND HOUR
Steve Mason – Boys Outside
Teenage Fanclub – Baby Lee
Yahzarah – Why Dontcha Call Me No More
Hot Chip – Take It In (Osborne Remix)
Four Tet – Love Cry
Owen Pallett – Red Sun No. 5
A Sunny Day In Glasgow – How Does Somebody Say When They Like You?
Christian Scott – The Eraser
Sharon Van Etten – One Day
The Tallest Man On Earth – King Of Spain
Elvis Presley – It’s Now Or Never

There’s only one way to properly deal with it – and that’s just to draw a circle around a few favorite things and say simply “This is dope.”  

In this episode I take you through a few of my favorite things that got me through this very strange year.  For the most part, I avoid the acknowledged great stuff that every critic is going to write up, like LCD Soundsystem, Kanye West and Arcade Fire.  I love them too, but you can hear that stuff elsewhere.  Instead check out this podcast for some great unearthed gems from the worlds of R&B,, jazz, and electronica.  Next week I’ll go deep into indie and a few select other genres.

Due to a server error at FCCFree, the podcast for this episode is not available.

FIRST HOUR – R&B
The Roots ft. Phonte & Dice Raw – Now Or Never
Yahzarah – Come Back As A Flower
Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings – I Learned The Hard Way
Big Boi ft. Big Rube – General Patton
Janelle Monae ft. Big Boi – Tightrope
R. Kelly – Love Letter
Erykah Badu – Window Seat
Drake ft. The Dream – Shut It Down
Cee Lo Green – Wildflower
Jamie Lidell – Enough Is Enough
John Legend & The Roots – Wake Up Everybody

SECOND HOUR – ELECTRONICA & JAZZ
Hot Chip – Take It In (Osborrne Remix)
Underworld – Always Loved A Film
Shit Robot – Take ‘Em Up
Caribou – Sun
Tony Allen – Nina Lowo
Christian Scott – The Eraser
Vijay Iyer – Human Nature
Brad Mehldau – Don’t Be Sad

Put on a sweater, fire up the yule log and, um, grab a twist-off capped bottle of wine and settle in for two hours of seasonal music featuring guest DJ Susie Smith.

So here – the night after the close of the 2010 (AD) Festival Of Lights – there’s no reason to stop the music now. This podcast covers Jewish contributions to the pop music canon – along with a few hangers-on.

SET LIST

Beastie Boys – Right Right Now Now
Ben Kweller – Walk On Me
The Clash – Lost In The Supermarket
Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins – The Charging Sky
Bangles – Going Down To Liverpool
Amy Winehouse – Tears Dry On Their Own
Dionne Warwick – Are You There With Another Girl? (Bacharach/David)
Jefferson Airplane – 3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds
Elastica – How He Wrote Elastica Man
Lou Reed – NYC Man
Raspberries – Go All The Way
Van Halen – Janie’s Crying
Ike Turner & His Kings Of Rhythm – The Rooster
Elvis Presley – Trouble (Leiber/Stoller)

Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot – Bonnie and Clyde
Ramones – Beat On The Brat
Sleater-Kinney – I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone
Bob Dylan – My Wife’s Home Town
Yo La Tengo – I Wanna Be Your Lover
Yo La Tengo – Periodically Triple Or Double
3rd Bass – Pop Goes The Weasel
Drake – Light Up
KISS – Strutter
Randy Newman – It’s Money That I Love
Marianne Faithfull – Why d’Ya Do It?
Charlotte Gainsbourg – The Songs That We Sing
William Shatner – That’s Me Trying
Bill Frisell – Kochot
Terry Hall & Mushtaq – Ten Eleven

Back from my Thanksgiving-forced hiatus, you are not going to believe this show’s topic.  After two weeks in a row mired in the 60s with Phil Spector and Neil Young, you could never have seen this one coming: The Beginner’s Guide To Wu-Tang Clan.

According to the unofficial website Wu-International, Clan members have been directly involved in over 300 albums since their début in 1993.  Their empire also extends to books, video games, fashion and chess.  (Seriously!)  I’ve always admired their sound but never really knew where to start .  Surely this is one of the biggest-selling and most influential ‘underground’ acts the world has seen.

With no true mainstream radio smashes since 1993 and literally hundreds of records in their catalog, you need an expert to know where to begin.  Lighting the way and joining me in studio was DJ Bass 77 of The Bass-ment, leader of FCCFree’s old skool hip hop show that airs Tuesdays at 10pm.  He took us through the history of the Wu, the influential production style of its sound leader The RZA, introduced us to a few of the strong personalities in the group and their solo work, and gave his personal view on where to start digging.

Meanwhile, Wu was right up the block at Mezzanine kicking off their nationwide tour as we started the show.  This was the next best thing to being at the show – that is, if you were standing next to the chatty guys while the band played only their greatest hits.

This edition of The Entroporium features two hours of politically-themed anger and sadness – all the way from The Carter Family to Marvin Gaye to Lou Reed to Sufjan Stevens – with some words of wisdom from GW Bush and Noam Chomsky.

(Bottleneck Cafe ran a little over, so my show starts about four minutes into the file.  The sound’s too hot until 8 minutes in.  Sorry!)FIRST HOUR

Spend two hours with the master of indie rock, Uncle Bob!  In celebration of the Guided By Voices reunion show that came to town earlier this week as part of the mini-tour following their appearance at Matador 21, this podcast episode is wholly dedicated to the music of Robert Pollard, the band’s leader and mastermind.

While the tour’s set list is dominated by old favorites from the band’s ‘classic period’ from 1994-98, my mission was to spotlight other lesser-known parts of his catalogue – pretty easy to do for an artist who puts out as many as eight albums a year, does all his own cover art and produces a zine!  Spend a couple of hours with The Entroporium and catch up with the remarkable output of this great artist working at the intersection of Britpop, American indie, classic rock and post-punk – two minutes at a time.

My apologies for the dropouts on this one.  I think it’s back to the drawing board with my on-board mixer software.

As a taster for this weekend’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, I hosted local stars of honky-tonk country and western swing Emily Bonn & The Vivants live in studio.  A full set by Emily and her band, plus a sampling of some of the great artists that will be featured out in Golden Gate Park, October 1-3 2010.

Formerly of the late lamented Whoreshoes, Emily Bonn & The Vivants perform original foot stompin’ tunes about riots, hollers and hopping train cars.  The Vivants play their own brand of American roots music, shining up dusty melodies with modern arrangements.

The bass is a little heavy through The Vivants’ first two songs, but I get it down to a manageable level in the third.

SET LIST
Elvis Costello & The Sugarcanes – Femme Fatale
Dave Alvin – King Of California
Gillian Welch – Only One and Only
Nick Lowe – Let’s Stay In And Make Love

Emily Bonn & The Vivants (live in studio) - Riot At The Rite Spot, Georgia Johnny, Jockey Full Of Bourbon, Big Apple, Will You Miss Me, RC Cola

T-Bone Burnett – Shake Yourself Loose
Emmylou Harris – Boulder To Birmingham
Patty Griffin – Stolen Car

Emily Bonn & The Vivants (live in studio)  - Long Hot Summer Day, Accidental Stomp, Gospel Ship, I Saw The Light

Patti Smith – Dancing Barefoot
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings – 100 Days, 100 Nights
Clinch Mountain Boys & The Stanley Brothers – Loving You Too Well
Flatt & Scrubbs & Foggy Mountain Boys – Salty Dog Blues
Steve Earle – Hardin Wouldn’t Run
Rosanne Cash – Black Cadillac
Randy Newman – God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)

Pamela Z - Photo by Lori Eanes (lori@lorieanes.com)

Pamela Z and Matt Davignon were in studio to discuss the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival and preview some of its featured artists, including Alessandro Cortini (ex-Nine Inch Nails), Joseph Hammer, Stephan Mathieu, MKM and John Chowning.  The second hour also features tracks from Massive Attack with Gui Boratto, Autechre and more.

SFEMF ran Thursday, September 9 through Saturday, September 11 at the Brava Theater with a satellite show on Friday the 10th at the DeYoung Museum.

The show starts about 4:30 into the file.

This was my first show on FCCFree Radio.  A few technical errors here & there, but I’ll stand by this one.

In celebration of today, August 19, the first full 24 hours of legal weddings for all, it’s The Marriage Show! Pull a loved one close for two hours of tunes and more about love, devotion and gettin’ hitched.

Wait, this show got delayed until 8/26? And marriage equality is off until at least December? Damn it, I’m doing the show anyway!!!

The show starts about five minutes into the full file! (Don’t let the heavy metal fool you.)  The set list is after the jump.
FIRST HOUR

Magnetic Fields – It’s Only Time
The Intruders – We’ll Be United
Dionne Warwick – This Girl’s In Love With You
Teenage Fanclub – Your Love Is The Place Where I Come From
XTC – Big Day
Nas – Getting Married
Smiley Lewis – The Bells Are Ringing
The Orioles – Crying In The Chapel
The Platters – With This Ring
The Isley Brothers – My Love Is Your Love (Forever)
David Bowie – Be My Wife
Antony & The Johnsons – Be My Husband
The Ronettes – Baby I Love You

SECOND HOUR

Marvin Gaye – Time To Get It Together
Tim Easton – I Would Have Married You
Wanda Sykes on Gay Marriage
Frank Sinatra – Love & Marriage
The Velvet Underground – I Found A Reason
The Stone Roses – This Is The One
Bob & Marcia – Really Together
The Ebonys – It’s Forever
Cassandra Wilson – Harvest Moon
The Muppets – Kermit & Miss Piggy Get Married
Jim O’Rourke – Close To You

Cute non-threatening boys vs independent single mom. Guess who wins?

As American Idol winds down its season tonight and bids adieu to its most formidable long-running participant, this is a great opportunity to put the spotlight on the show and what it can teach us about social media. AI actually predates what we’ve come to think of as social media by several years, but its overwhelming success is founded on many of the same principles that govern brand marketers every day.

Every week the viewers of American Idol comprise the world’s largest product development focus group. While it’s easy to focus on it as a Survivor-style game show, it can easily be forgotten that AI’s real purpose each season is to discover and groom a new pop artist for the show’s owner, which just happens to be an entertainment conglomerate. Sure, the judges will try to guide audience response, but AI fans can name numerous occasions when the vote didn’t go the way the judges wanted

The audience’s buy-in is another peculiar element of the show.  By encouraging participation, the audience has an emotional stake in the winning product before it even launches. What marketer wouldn’t love that?  The product (in the form of a pop singer’s debut album) arrives mere months after the show’s finale with little risk to the record company, certainly compared to sending out A&R people meant to guess what The Next Big Thing might be.

There are also inherent danger in letting the audience take control.  For me, the ost frustrating aspect of reality competition shows is the lack of clear rules to the game.  Without standards or ideals to apply, the audience – and sometimes the judges – can become confused over what exactly they are judging, especially for something as qualitative as ‘pop stardom quotient.’

The result can be a mess: sometimes ingenious in its preferences (Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood), other times selecting dud winners that offered only short-term satisfaction (Ruben Studdard, Taylor Hicks).  It’s the noisy American polity celebrated by DeToqueville writ large.

That’s appropriate for something called American Idol.  Is it right for your product?

One of the key reasons to register with Lala is the right to stream music that you own to any computer: a great service and potentially world-beating if you can make it happen on portable devices as well.  (‘Ownership’ is defined as having a copy, regardless of how you might have acquired it.)  The catch – and it’s a big one – is that you have to download a program from Lala that reads your MP3 library and uploads ID information from each of your files.  If you have a large library, it’s an absurdly long process – I gave up in an hour with less than 5% of my collection read.  Even for a modestly-sized library, the upload routine is still odious, time-consuming and puts the onus on the user to do too much work.

(Aside: Why is this legal now for Lala but when the original MP3.com had a similar service back in the early years of the decade it was immediately sued out of existence?  That was even worse for the user; you had to download software and then insert all of your CDs for identification. At least in that model you had to prove you actually owned a physical – and presumably ‘real’ – CD. Puzzling.)

Apple, however, via its Genius feature in iTunes already knows what MP3s are in its users’ collections, which means it could be just a flip of a switch to allow users access to their music anywhere on any connected device.  If the purchase price really is as little as $17mm (as Techcrunch reported today), this is a total bargain to bring down one of the chief barriers to quick leadership in the “Stream Music Everywhere” market – not to mention avoiding all the negotiations Apple would have needed to go through with the copyright holders.

Pandora, Mog, Spotify, Last,fm and everyone else in the market may have just been trumped.  Lala’s current feature set added to iTunes takes Apple from nowhere to everywhere in single update for software that’s already ubiquitous. Small wonder that today’s gossip sees Pandora running like hell to expand its business into the car stereo market.

Shuffle play has its place, but I still love to listen to albums start to finish, letting the artist present their music in their own context.  After playing around a bit last week with Smart Playlists, I’m pleased to offer this post on filling your iPod/iPhone with random albums.  Doing this has brought up a lot of forgotten favorites and released space on my portable device from newer albums that I liked, was tired of but couldn’t bring myself to delete.  It’s entirely refreshed my whole portable listening experience by digging out records I haven’t thought about in years.

Here is an easy step-by-step for getting it done:

1)    In the Control Menu, set Shuffle to “by Album”

2)    Create a new Playlist Folder for your iPod or iPhone.  (For the rest of this post, I’m just going to call it an iPod, OK?)

3)    Create a regular Playlist for your “Musts,” the albums that you still feel like you absolutely must have handy – or perhaps albums you’ve recently acquired.

4)    Drag your Musts into that list and note at the bottom of the iTunes screen how much hard drive space they take up.

5)    This is the critical step. Create a Smart Playlist.  Use the three setting shown in the illustration below:Artist contains [press Space Bar once], Media Kind is Music (to keep out pesky Audiobooks and Podcasts) and Playlist is not [the name of your Musts Playlist], which prevents duplicates.  Use the “Limit” line at the bottom to be however many GBs are remaining on your iPod after you subtract the amount of space reserved for your Musts from Step 4 plus anything else you keep on your iPod (Podcasts, Photos, Videos, etc).  You can add on more lines to fine-tune it for your needs by adding lines like “Last Played is more than 90 days ago,” excluding certain artists or genres, or whatever you fancy.

6)    Now plug in your iPod and select it from the left sidebar.  On the Music tab, select Sync Music: Selected Playlists and deselect the “Automatically fill free space with songs” button.  Down below select the Folder that has your Musts and Random playlists.

7)    Sync and be happily surprised next time you’re out & about with your iPod.

You likely wound up with a few dud albums on your Random Smart Playlist.  Use the Grid View to delete it.  The list will automatically refill to your level of GBs.  Sync again and you’re set.

An important note about maintaining your Random Smart Playlist:  Because you are filling with Albums to some level of GBs, you will inevitably have an incomplete album at the bottom of the playlist.  My suggestion is tonever sort the random playlist in List View.  That way you can always go into List View to delete those fragments from the bottom of the list.  If you don’t do this, after refilling your Random Playlist you will wind up with a number of incomplete albums, obviously an undesirable situation.  Of course you can always Go Nuclear and delete everything in your Random Smart Playlist to refill from scratch, too.  Happy listening!

Sell Out was The Who’s fourth LP and the band’s first attempt at a full-length concept album.  The schtick was that the album was really a radio show complete with interruptions for station IDs and commercials.  (This also made for a clever way to gloss over the production problem of the album’s schizophrenic body of songs – everything from Beach Boys pop to proto-metal.)  Underlining the “sell out” concept, many of the ads were for brands they loved with the hopes that Premier Drums and [ahem] Jaguar would shower the boys in the band with free product.

The album’s conceptual centerpiece is the track where it all comes together.  “Odorono” sounds like a sweet if overdone Byrds-y pop track with a curious narrative about a female singer’s big debut.  It’s not until the last line of the song that the curtain is pulled back to reveal that the whole 2+ minute song is an advert for deodorant.

Listen: The Who – The Who Sell Out

Of course that’s all performed as a sly joke.  But recent events have brought product placement in pop songs into the spotlight as a legitimate brand-builder.  Most notably Chris Brown’s “Forever” was revealed to be a jingle for Wrigley Doublemint Gum only after the track had already launched into the Top 10.  (Perhaps we should have noticed earlier because of the chorus: “Double your pleasure/double your fun”). “Forever” also shows in the most dramatic way possible the pitfalls and opportunities inherent in latching your brand to a pop song.  As anyone who has passed through a supermarket checkout lane in the last five months would have seen, Brown’s reputation is now tattered following a domestic violence incident with his then-girlfriend, Rihanna, and Wrigley subsequently pulled his spots out of rotation.

Out of the blue, “Forever” was hijacked by a viral video that has become one of 2009’s biggest hits, “JK Wedding Entrance Dance,” now standing at over 25 million views and providing Brown’s song an unexpected return to the iTunes Top 10 singles chart.  Reflecting on how the private lives of artists impact their professional output is often a fool’s game, so we should probably look past using a love song by a convicted girlfriend-beater for a wedding.  But one wonders if Jill & Kevin were aware how much of a role Wrigley played at their (now very public) nuptials and how much free publicity they would be giving the gum.  (Or do they work for Wrigley?  Nowthat would be brand dedication: product placement at your wedding.)  One thing’s for sure: Google noticed – and turned “JK Wedding Entrance Dance” into a case study for monetizing YouTube content.

Def Jam, meanwhile, is taking a different tack by reminding publishers that its products often have many more eyeballs than famous magazine and web brands.  To that end, Mariah Carey’s new album will include a 34-page mini-Elle magazine – while Elle will feature a 14-page spread about the album.  “We sell millions of records, so you should advertise with us,’ ” said Antonio “L.A.” Reid, IDJ’s chairman. “My artists have substantial circulation–when you sell 2 million, 5 million, 8 million, that’s a lot of eyeballs. Most magazines aren’t as successful as those records.” And, he might add, hit records have a lot more shelf life.  Just ask Chris Brown.  Or The Who.

Every last square inch of the parking lot was branded. There was no entertainment that didn’t have a logo on it, ranging from the obvious (Schwinn) to the ominous (Toyota Land Cruisers) to the downright bizarre (an inflatable jumpie — brought to you by US Air Force recruiters). There was nothing in the least edgy about this set-up, even though it was sold as the theoretical edge of American youth culture. Hardly anybody was drunk or otherwise messed-up. Having missed Burning Man the week before, I could only think that somehow I’d fallen into its evil doppelganger.

After the extremely loud BMX event ended, we were herded off into another corner of the lot to face a stage and a huge branded TV screen. After a few moments, opener Dilated Peoples appeared. Featuring a white guy, an dreaded Afro-American guy and an Asian-American DJ, the Peoples gave the impression that if they did not already exist, they would have been invented by a Dew Action Sports marketer for just such an occasion. With songs that stayed relentlessly on the positive tip, the crowd loved them, but I thought they were bland at gest. It didn’t help that that the DJ totally blew his obligatory spotlight scratching and then blamed it on the wind. They also made the opening act cardinal sin of running overtime, which seems particularly egregious for a hip-hop group that really should know exactly the length of every song they play. Song lengths aren’t going to vary performed in front of a programmed beat track.

After a brief delay, The Roots tookthe stage, all business, no chattiness. Opening with “Here I Come” off super-dope new album Game Theory, The Roots did not stop for their entire 50-minute set. They were tight, charismatic and entertaining, and are touring behind their strongest album in several years. But it was just too weird to hear these songs in this place.

I guess I have to give credit to The Roots for seizing the opportunity to go where the money and the audience are. This was the second time I’d seen them at a presumably poorly-paying festival situation, the first being when they played the “Other Stage” at Moby’s tour several years ago. (Remember Moby, anyone?) Nevertheless, it was surprising to see them doing their conscious-hip-hop-meets-The-Meters thing surrounded by logos and product placement and more logos. And they certainly got their message out to a diverse audience of kids in an environment that was non-threatening (if you find conspicuous consumption non-threatening). But if this is the future of concert-going — and mass-market entertainment in general — something has been lost. It’s not news that major music label artists are no longer counter-cultural, but until recently at least they tried to pretend.

But the kids at the show, many with their parents, did get to see a great live band doing edgy material in a safe, sober place — and that you can’t fault. Will they know quality & authenticity when they see it or does the uber-marekting context ultimately defeat it?

MP3: The Roots – Here I Come

The Onion AV Club interviews ?uestlove
Metacritic: Everybody Loves Game Theory (except the NYT)

http://entroporium.com/mp3/01%20On%20the%20Transmigration%20of%20souls.mp3

From Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul:

Ours is a time of connection. All must be touched. All touch corrupts. All must be corrupted.

Foreign Policy: The Day Nothing Much Changed

[I]f you look closely at the trend lines since 9/11, what is remarkable is how little the world has changed. The forces of globalization continue unabated; indeed, if anything, they have accelerated. The issues of the day that we were debating on that morning in September are largely the same. Across broad measures of political, economic, and social data, the constants outweigh the variations. And, five years later, the United States’ foreign policy is marked by no greater strategic clarity than it had on Sept. 10, 2001…. Perhaps the truest thing that changed because of 9/11 was the way in which the Pentagon’s budget soared.

From In The Shadow Of No Towers by Art Spiegelman:

Martin Amis reminds us in The Guardian that the Iraq War may be but a distraction to the war in which we have been engaged:

Suicide-mass murder is astonishingly alien, so alien, in fact, that Western opinion has been unable to formulate a rational response to it. A rational response would be something like an unvarying factory siren of unanimous disgust. But we haven’t managed that. What we have managed, on the whole, is a murmur of dissonant evasion… Contemplating intense violence, you very rationally ask yourself, what are the reasons for this? And compassionately frowning newscasters are still asking that same question. It is time to move on. We are not dealing in reasons because we are not dealing in reason… The opening argument we reach for now, in explaining any conflict, is the argument of moral equivalence. No value can be allowed to stand in stone; so we begin to question our ability to identify even what is malum per se. Prison beatings, too, are evil in themselves, and so is the delegation of torture, and murder, to less high-minded and (it has to be said) less hypocritical regimes. In the kind of war that we are now engaged in, an episode like Abu Ghraib is more than a shameful deviation – it is the equivalent of a lost battle. Our moral advantage, still vast and obvious, is not a liability, and we should strengthen and expand it. Like our dependence on reason, it is a strategic strength, and it shores up our legitimacy.

Brazil is a country with two distinct musical sides. First, there’s the elegantly sensual Brazil of samba and Getz/Gilberto. As easy to love as this is, the lazy-day saxophone and breathy vocals of “The Girl From Ipanema” are practically a cliche of an early 1960s space-age bachelor pad; as great as the performance is, you still I can’t help thinking about wood paneling and cocktails from the living room wet bar. My friend Marc Time profiled Astrud Gilberto earlier this year and I will defer to his expertise in this matter.

Neverthless, the artists that have taken up this cause are still among Brazil’s most popular mainstream musicians. One that I’ve glommed on to recently is Marisa Monte. She’s has very few releases in the US, but is undoubtedly one of the country’s top sellers. With a subtle and deceptively straightforward delivery, Monte’s sudden flurries of expressiveness and her tasteful self-production make for some very tasty listening.

After being one of the country’s biggest acts since the early ’90s, Monte went into semi-retirement for the last five years and has now blasted out with two (count ‘em: two!) excellent new albums. The first track below is from the more accessible and fun album, Universo Ao Meu Redor, which counts David Byrne among its guest stars. Infinito Particular is a more quiet and emotive affair, seemingly dedicated to songs about motherhood, the underlying reason behind her recent creative dormancy. I guess this makes her the John Lennon of Brazil.

Marisa Monte – O Bonde Do Dom.mp3
Marisa Monte – Vilarejo.mp3
Several Marisa Monte videos here

…and then there is the funky, dirty, party Brazil. Or a bunch of guys yelling about sex (or sounding like they are) over stripped-down beats and simple sample. Diplo has been the biggest proponent of Favela Booty Beats, pushing out three mixes since 2004. (Yes, two years ago is eons in music blogosphere time. Remember Arular?) When most casual football watchers hear that the Brazilian team “dances” as they play, they’re probably thinking of music like Marisa Monte or Joao Gilberto. The nasty dirty secret of the squad, though, is that this is more like what they have on their mind.

MC Jack E Chocolate – Pavaroty.mp3 — yes, the great Pavarotti!

If you like this, Cokemachineglow hosts Diplo’s original Brazil Booty Beats mix, Favela On Blast. My friend Peter, an accomplished composer who uses notes and time signatures and fancy stuff like that, found himself totally paralyzed by his brush with Favela On Blast. “It’s like a car crash and I can’t turn away.” Yes, but can you dance to a car crash?

Ecuador is one of several countries that completely bedeviled me as I’ve assembled the World Cup World Tour over the last few weeks. I’ll just come right out and admit: On Ecuador, I got nothin’. Call Me Mickey has the right idea on this one, though: cop out! Christina Aguilera’s father is from Ecuador. Maybe, just maybe, she has retained dual citizenship for tax purposes. Maybe Xtina — via her tax contribution — is one of the world’s great contributors to preserving the Galapagos. Buy a Christina Aguilera album, save a turtle!

But seriously, Aguilera’s new single is surprisingly kick-ass. One of the best things about the mash-up revolution has been the willingness of producers to again sound like our pop music heritage. "Ain’t No Other Man" is less modern pop than it is a hyperactive re-casting of a traditional Girl Group song. My favorite part is the chorus, which gives a clear picture of three pop-princess Christina-alikes waving their fingers and moving their side-to-side hips in unison like a Motown girl group, flirtaciously beckoning "You’ve got style, you’ve got class…" It’s thrilling and winning. Thank goodness she got away from Linda Perry.

Christina Aguilera – Ain’t No Other Man.mp3

Los Brincos – Baila La Pulga.mp3
Los Salvajes – Las Ovejitas.mp3
These first two tracks are from Beat Espana, a compilation that a friend who used to live in Spain gave me. I’ve searched for information on this album, but come up absolutely nil. There are only three bands on the record– Los Brincos, Los Salvajes and Los Cheyennes — trading off tracks, one after the other. It sounds like 60s Merseybeat with the overriding problem that it’s pretty awful. I don’t mean Gerry-And-The-Pacemakers bad; I’m thinking more like Herman’s-Hermits bad.

No more proof of Beat Espana’s not-so-rightness is needed than this video of Los Brincos making a variety show lip-syncing appearance. The mop-topped band is performing a dull song called “Oh Mama.” Normally you’d think that a song called “Oh Mama” would be about some hot chick. (Think Prince singing “Hot Thing”; you need not actually hear the song to know what it sounds like.) No, “Oh Mama” is really about Mamas — thus, the band members are pushed around the set in baby carriages. By hot chicks. I’m not kidding. If you like a little Freudian conflict with your 60s pop, this is the video for you.

Mus – Al Debalu.mp3
Now this is more like it. Mus is another band about which I could find virtually nil. This track is taken from their second album El Naval. For those of you pining for another Mazzy Star album or the glory days of 4AD, this album is well worth your time to seek out. Understated and mysterious, you can check out more of their stuff at Epitonic.

All props to the plucky Socceroos! Italy is leading a charmed life.

Here is something I’ve been wanting to know for a long time. I lived in Los Angeles during the great mid-80s PR push for Australian pop; Australia was the Seattle/Montreal/Omaha of the moment. (Midnight Oil! Men At Work! InXS! Aaaaargh!) One of these new import bands — I believe it was Mental As Anything? — was offered by KROQ as a contest prize to come to your house do your yardwork if you won. I always loved the image of these guys getting off their tour bus at some San Fernando valley tract home and being ordered to cut the lawn and haul the trash by some 14-year old.

Was this real? Did the band actually show up? Were they hung over? Please if you know anything about this, I’m dying to know. Suffice to say, Mental As Anything did not make much of an impact in the US. (…and, wow, what an awful band name. I can only imagine the discussion in the record company board room: “We need a band like Men At Work!” “How about Mental As Anything?” “Never heard ‘em, but sign ‘em!” This did happen back in the day: A-Ha was signed because of the band’s photogenic looks without the record company ever having heard their music.)

The Church – Too Fast For You.mp3
Long before the wonderful but overplayed “Under The Milky Way,” The Church already had their sound and aesthetic down pat. They made several great records and are still putting out moody albums, but if you live in the US, you’d never know it.

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds (with Kylie Minogue) – Where The Wild Roses Grow.mp3
Extracted from the vaguely insane “Murder Ballads” album, this is easily one of the creepiest records I’ve heard, not least because in listening to it I’m forced to imagine Nick & Kylie’s love life.

The Saints – (I’m) Misunderstood.mp3
“(I’m) Stranded” was the hit — and possibly the finest single out of the first wave of punk, but it’s been profiled by World Cup bloggers elsewhere. At least I go with the “(I’m)” in the title by selecting this tune.

Though they are allegedly embarassed by it, the biggest music in Poland these days is Disco Polo, a weird hybrid of vulgarized folk songs (Wikipedia’s definition, not mine) and the very worst in Eurodisco. An MP3 doesn’t quite get it across; you’ve got to see it for the full effect. Thus, I’m forced into posting my first video in the World Cup World Tour, “Jeste? Szalona PV” by Boys, apparently the biggest act in the genre. Yikes.

Boys – Jeste? Szalona PV

More fabulous Disco Polo videos here

Daphne Carr is the US’s biggest authority(!) on Disco Polo, having presented an paper on it at last year’s EMP Live. She wrote recently in The Village Voice about Brooklyn’s burgeoning Polish nightclub scene. If you’re looking for a big Disco Polo dance night, Greenpoint’s the spot.

Random thoughts on a day of defeat:

Isn’t it appropriate that I have the US entry following the Saudi entry? We’ll follow those guys anywhere. (rimshot) I’ll be here all the week, don’t forget to tip the waitresses.

Rant coming: If people get so upset about American flag-burning, why is it OK to wear Old Glory as a bandana or a T-shirt or facepaint or a bikini top or a towel or…? I am always shocked when I see alleged patriots displaying old faded flags, flags touching the ground, faded flag bumper stickers, flags left out at night, unlit… It’s fundamentally wrong and easy to see & know that it’s wrong. When the military has elaborate routines about how the flag should be hung, folded and destroyed with honor, surely my fellow citizens should easily see that wadding up their faded American flag t-shirt and throwing it on the bedroom floor or drooling ice cream on it is disrespective and certainly not patriotic. Am I wrong in thinking that the people who are most likely to “wear the flag” are closely related or perhaps even the same people who get so upset over flag desecration? Shouldn’t proposed constitutional amendments banning flag-burning also cover bikinis?

Which is all just a way of working to this next thought: When I see people from other nations at the World Cup wearing their national colors, I usually think “Wow, that’s so great that they have such spirit.” On the other hand, if I see a bunch of Americans with stars and stripes painted on their faces or chests or whatever, I’m embarassed. Am I wrong to feel shame? Or would it be worse to be at the stadium and not proudly display the colors?

My colleague Simon over at My Name Is Betty, who has some pretty great World Cup music coverage going himself, heard this same complaint from me and responded “As for the people in national dress, you’re embarrassed? English national dress seems to be a shaved head and a beer gut, maybe a novelty hat. I’m fortunate to live in London though – my street alone has Ghanaian, Trinidadian, English, Australian, Portuguese, Italian and even Jamaican flags out, and it wouldn’t take me too long to gather the rest. It’s good fun, every four years doesn’t come often enough.” It must be nice to live in a place where immigrants are considered pluses.

I worked for a Frenchman for a number of years and he told me several times how amazing he thought it was that there so many flags displayed in America. I plead ignorance until we looked out at the view from North Beach and, sure enough, every building in downtown SF was flying the colors. It was shocking to really see this, and this was long before 9/11. It’s nice to be patriotic, sure, but it looked more neurotic than anything else, like the old saw that nothing is Cool that has to continually tell you it’s Cool.

And now to the task at hand. It’s completely ridiculous to try to sum up my home country’s rich musical tapestry in a couple of songs. Just think of the musical forms that are indigenous and original to the US: rap, jazz, surf, tin pan alley, musical theatre, blues, country… When I think of how my “World Cup World Tour” is trying to put this same straightjacket on 31 other countries, it brings home that I’ve taken on an enormous task with at best well-meaning chutzpah and at worst total arrogance. (And doesn’t that make me so quintessentially American?) But just to be clear, I’m not trying to sum up or size up countries or their musical output with just a couple of songs, but simply trying introduce a taste of the musical life that floats through each nation’s cultural aether. Hey, I can try, right?

So in that spirit, I offer for the United States its greatest living songwriter ruminating on natural disaster & cultural collision and two of its most rockin’ clown princes having a cultural collision and just being silly. Enjoy.

Bob Dylan – High Water (For Charley Patton).mp3
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion with Rufus Thomas – Chicken Dog.mp3

Insult to injury: There was no baseball on the night after the US-Ghana game.

As in Iran, female singers are banned in Saudi Arabia, thus knocking out half the fun. I get the sense that fun isn’t a real high priority over there.

Abdulmajeed Abdulla – Al Gaid.mp3
Mohamed Abdu – Abaa’d.mp3

I think the Mohamed Abdu track kinda rocks — it takes a while to get going, it’s 20 minutes long and it’s not exactly pop — but 20 year-old Rima Mo in Jeddah can’t stand it. Here are Rima’s reasons why she hates Mohamed Abdu:

1/Every Friday we visit my grandmother from my fathers side, and only God knows how she loves mohammed abdu. So we are forced to listen to all his music EVERY FRIDAY!!! :O

2/On our way to visit the same grandmother and on our way back home my Dad plays mohammed abdu’s CD ALL THE WAY and EVERY FRIDAY!!! :O

3/It’s like he has the same Melody but only different words.:S

4/I feel sleepy whenever I hear him singing.

5/He never Smiles.This man is like that All the time.(not happy)

Hoo-wee, at least my father dropped the Jimmy Buffett habit after a while. But if I have to hear Eric Clapton "Unplugged" one more time…

Abdulmajeed Abdulla comes courtesy of Call Me Mickey, which also has excellent World Cup music coverage

BTW I’m superstitiously not doing the United States today because I’m trying to save countries that make the Round of 16 for later. USA! USA!

Look, I know all you indie kids would rather I posted a softie like Jens Lekman or some kind of retro rock like Soundtrack Of Our Lives or The Caesars or The Hives or somesuch. But I’m going to tell you right now: the best Swedish album I ever heard — and maybe one of my Top Twenty ever — is I Centrum by Bo Kaspers Orkester, 1998 winner of the Swedish equivalent of the Grammy for Best Album, whatever that is. I’d command you to get this album, but it runs $150 on Amazon and that just wouldn’t be fair. But you should try.
Bo Kaspers Orkester – Semester.mp3

Like BKO, Esborn Svensson Trio (which mostly works under the acronym EST), is a piano trio, but of a completely different stripe: jazz tinged with electronica and pop. One of Europe’s most popular acts, they haven’t quite made the leap over here yet. Their catalogue is definitely worth checking out if you dig Brad Mehldau, Christopher O’Riley, The Bad Plus and other cats like that.
E.S.T. (Esbjorn Svensson Trio) – Seven Days Of Falling.mp3

Iran’s President Bans Western Music

(AP, December 19, 2005): Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has banned Western music from Iran’s radio and TV stations, reviving one of the harshest cultural decrees from the early days of 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Songs such as George Michael’s "Careless Whisper," Eric Clapton’s "Rush" and the Eagles’ "Hotel California" have regularly accompanied Iranian broadcasts, as do tunes by saxophonist Kenny G…

Well, heck, who can blame him?

Today’s MP3s come from Googoosh, who was Iran’s biggest female pop singer through the ’60s and early ’70s until the Islamic Revolution put an end to women getting to express themselves in public. The revolution ended not just her ability to give live performances, but also barred her from entering a recording studio or giving interviews.

O-Hum is today’s other featured artist. Certainly you’ve heard of bands that can’t get signed and turn to the Internet to seek its audience. O-Hum have a whole different spin. Iran’s most popular alternative band, its record label was behind them 100%, but The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance "ejected the album a couple of times, describing O-Hum’s music as "Western", "cheap" and contrary to Islamic moral standards. Because of this, the record company broke off its deal with the band and cancelled everything." (Or at least so says O-Hum’s Wikipedia entry.)

O-Hum – Darvish.mp3
Googoosh – Shahrzad-e Qesseh-goo.mp3
Lots more Googoosh here, mostly LP and cassette rips

Susumu Yokota – Uchu Tanjyo.mp3
Puffy Ami Yumi – Track 2 from “Nice”.mp3

See more of the incredible art of Japan: Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mount Fiji

The Bambi Molesters – Theme From Slaying Beauty.mp3
(featuring Pete Buck and Scott McCaughey)

Surf music from Croatia? Sure, why not! Pitchfork gave it a 7.9.

Tunisia was the outskirts of the Roman Empire and its northern coast is dotted with ruins. Color me intrigued. You might know Tunisia best, unfortunately, as Tatooine.

Anouar Brahem – C’est Ailleurs.mp3

NPR : Singing of the World Cup, Off-Key and Off-Kilter
Bonus points for product placement honesty: Iran’s official video invites you to “Check Out All of Our Products Featured
in Arash’s new Video, “Iran Iran”"

Despite the excellent play of Drogba, the best player on the Premier League-winning Chelsea side, La Cote d’Ivorie looks headed for an early exit. Nevertheless, with the home country several years into one of those crazy multi-sided civil wars that plague many African countries, this World Cup appearance is probably one of the best things that’s happened this nation in a long time.

Alpha Blondy – Dictature.mp3

Washington Post: Ivory Coast Soccer Hoping to Spread Peace

Plankton Man vs. Terrestre – Gran Chapparal.mp3
Thalia – Seduccion.mp3

For those of you keeping up, I think Ghana & this one are my favorites so far. I also have to admit that I have become mildly obsessed with the Thalia track, which I first heard on the podcast for Stylus Magazine’s Singles Jukebox.
Subscribe to The Singles Jukebox podcast
Photo by John Fago

Kelly – “Shoes”

The Peel Box – the one that I promised to sample out and then didn’t post for a month – has a slew of White Stripes material. I’ve always taken them somewhat for granted and I’ll just come right out and say that the Get Behind Me Satan is a truly terrible record that will not stand the test of time. But via the Peel project, I’ve got a fresh appreciation for their early singles, which are forceful, funny and eccentric in all the right ways. Whatever you think of them, we should all be grateful for a band that is so refreshingly weird and finds it inspiration in ancient blues and punk. And despite all those strikes against them, The White Stripes are still popular in teenybopper America. An incredible and hope-creating triumph of marketing & smarts over the taste malaise of a nation.

Friday found Our Heroes in the unfriendly confines of San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium playing for the teenybopper crowd at Live 105′s Not So Silent Night. Coming off another big-selling album, a couple of hit singles, a first-time tour of Eastern Europe (where it’s hard to imagine they didn’t go over BIG) and victory lap around the New York late night talk show circuit, this night should have been an easy win for them. Stand up in front of the kids, show them how it’s done, play the hits, blow some minds with some Delta blues and Deeeetroit raunch. Instead, disaster ensued, leaving me and my friends wondering if we would ever see the Stripes together again.

Jack & Meg had the unenviable task of following Death Cab For Cutie, another band we’ve seen play umpteen times in good times & bad, in front of a crowd that hung on Ben Gibbard’s every word. DCFC played confidently and politely, running through most of this year’s desultory Plans while throwing in the odd chestnut from earlier indie-days records. Having followed their travails for a while, this is a band that truly seems to have arrived, full of confidence and with a big sound that occasionally (like a lot of the indie bands bursting through the airwaves) recalls U2. With their new fuller-produced sound, chestnuts like “Company Calls” sounded relatively compact and colorless. I’m not a big fan of Plans, but played live it did sound impressive and big, even in the cavernous echo-y Civic. Death Cab is not going away anytime soon.

One of my favorite things about seeing The White Stripes live is their road crew; it too is forced to wear the red, black and white motif as it putters about the stage set before the show. We were standing next to the soundboard, and even the soundman was in full regalia.

Another thing I like is that they are f***in’ loud! And on that count, they did not disappoint. After a long delay, Jack and Meg raced onstage and started slicing into their best-known material, like “Blue Orchid” and “Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground.” It wasn’t their crowd – only a few people were wearing red & black – but goddamn if Jack wasn’t going to go for it.

But something was deeply, weirdly wrong with Meg. She was completely off time, playing the wrong parts at the wrong times, and was generally blowing it. It was so bad, this could have been a first rehearsal with her never having heard the songs before. My friends and I all looked at each other dumbstruck. Could this be for real? Meg will never win any drumming awards, and any fan will tell you that that’s not really her M.O. as part of the band, but this was preposterously sloppy.

Jack felt it, too. After a terrible “Hotel Yorba”-”Death Letter” medley, Jack went over to Meg and whispered something at her. From my vantage, it looked like he was pissed and telling her “I’ll do a few songs, you take a break.” And Meg left the stage. This was also weird, because we’ve seen The White Stripes probably five times and never seen her leave the stage when Jack takes his usual solo turn.

Jack ran through three songs on his own, seemed to realize something was horribly wrong and ran offstage. We knew something was up because they were only 15 minutes into a 60-minute set and the sound guy next to us was freaking out, cuing the iPod for the between-sets music and whispering frantically into his walkie-talkie.

After a 3-minute delay with the crowd becoming restless, Jack and Meg reappeared and tentatively ran through a few more songs before calling it a night. Was Meg messed up? Was she just having a bad night? Or was Jack playing loosely enough that she couldn’t follow? Granted this was probably a tough night for them to get motivated for – stuck playing a holiday radio showcase in a crap venue in front of a semi-caring teeny-bopper crowd – but this struck us long-time White Stripes fans as a really serious event and left us wondering if this could somehow be a harbinger for the end of the band.

[Soundtrack]
An early 7″ highlight from The White Stripes, direct from John Peel’s wooden box.
Plus a Death Cab song from the new album that I didn’t think they could play, yet they pulled off with aplomb. This song for me highlights all the best and worst things about Plans: a relatively unmemorably DCFC song, played and produced beautifully.
The White Stripes – Hand Springs (7″ version)
Death Cab For Cutie – Different Names For The Same Thing

UPDATE: I’m not the only one who noticed.
The Modern Age: What Happened to Meg White at the San Fran Show?

This was inevitable, eh? Kanye West’s kick-ass new single mated with what’s quickly become the year’s top sound bite, narrowly beating out “Nobody anticipated the breach of the levees.”

Hear it here, there and soon to be everywhere.

Source: Boing Boing: Katrina: Kanye remixed, “George Bush Don’t Like Black People”

The news that Teenage Fanclub would release its first record in five years came as a welcome surprise. I had assumed that Scotland’s finest working pop band had thrown in the towel, and when the news rolled out that Tortoise’s John McEntire would be producing, this became easily one of my most anticipated releases of the year.

The new release Man-Made finds the Fanclub in a pensive mood. While both Songs From Northern Britain and Howdy! saw the band mix pop euphoria with a decidedly melancholic streak, Man-Made tends more toward subtlety than the release of some of their earlier records. Each of the songs have deceptively dense structures & productions that don’t initially bring the songcraft to the fore. Repeated listenings, though, bring out delicate touches – a harmony that zags when it should zig, hidden layers of strings and reverb, and indeed the same great songs and pop sense that the band has effortlessly brought to its music throughout its career. This is surely an album that I will return to many times in the next few years.

* * * * *

This weekend found me spending three straight days at my 20th high school reunion — a “pub crawl” on Friday, a dance party on Saturday and a family picnic on Sunday. It was pretty amazing – a word I don’t use lightly – to be among all those folks again, still so much themselves, but more self-assuredly so. At first it was almost embarrassing to make eye contact with people; how did they get so old? Surely that’s not true of me, too? Or was it that I was younger then than we thought we were? All those tired eyes, shifting hairlines,… offspring and lifemates! After the initial shock, everybody got along and had fun. So far nobody has confessed to melancholy, but then that’s not something you would send out in a mail to 120+ people, most of whom are strangers. No, that’s something you reserve for your blog.

Here’s a note about the picnic from my old friend Chris, who I’ve known since first grade but hadn’t spoken to in 20 years:

It was hilarious to see kids at the picnic and know instantly who their BHS mom or dad was. DNA is an amazing thing. Also fun to hear the kids trying to figure out together if their parents were friends.

Chris introduced himself Saturday by apologizing for whatever he’d done to me. Funny thing is, I remember doing more to him than he did to me. Refractionary tricks of the mind. Probably neither of had ever “done anything” to each other.

* * * * *

It’s a myth that your body’s cells are completely replaced every seven years; some cells can live up to 120 years. So that means that I haven’t been three different people since high school, which might have been fun to imagine and feels like its close to the truth. But, alas, as I learned over the weekend, we are all ourselves just so much more so.

* * * * *

Teenage Fanclub has a new song out about the inevitability of aging. “[It's] written about coming to terms with your place in the world, about dealing with ageing,” Norman Blake says. “When you’re almost 40 years old and you’re still in a pop band, you can sometimes have doubts.”

[Soundtrack]
Teenage Fanclub – Cells.mp3

I started the evening needing to dump an extra ticket. This was no problem as lots of folks were outside clamoring for that magic moment. Susie glommed on to a couple of nice looking young ladies – “Follow us to Edinburgh Castle. If our friend didn’t bring a date, his extra ticket is yours.” We learned along the walk that they were 18-years old (!) from Stockton (!!!) and neither had heard of Pitchfork nor MP3 blogs(??!!), but they loved Sufjan Stevens and jumped around like giddy schoolgirls when they realized they were getting our ticket. It’s pretty darn refreshing that ornate chamber pop has an avid audience of teenagers out there in a “middle of the country” area like Central California. Yes, I realize that Pavement and Grant Lee Buffalo come from there, but these acts still aren’t exactly approved for MTV or Clear Channel radio outlets.

With the crowd standing in riveted silence all night — which in itself was pretty amazing given the number of underage folks in the room — I may have been the only person in the room who was faintly disappointed (and only faintly, I should emphasize, before I go into my big semi-diatribe). The band struggled with some of the intricate songs – “Come On Feel The Illinoise!” was introduced by Sufjan as “the hard one” – and the mix was terrible, the bass and drums way too high and the ornamental percussion too low.

Since Stevens aspires to the compositional and aural complexity of Stereolab, Steve Reich or Stephen Sondheim, it may be worth his while to get a top-flight sound man and perhaps even a more accomplished band. I realize he’s just an indie fella and those guys don’t come cheap, but Stevens’ songs and performance really deserve the kick that this would give. A perfect example is the way that The Wondermints, Brian Wilson’s sidemen, have kicked his career into overdrive and allowed him to create and reproduce live some of his most ornate, formerly unperformable works.

So again I beg: Get this man a MacArthur Grant!

The other big mistake of the night was also economics-based, though this was a revenue shortfall rather than of a cost budgeting issue. I overheard a number of people lament that neither of the Illinois T-shirts featured onstage were available for sale. Sufjan, you’re leaving money on the table.

[Soundtrack]
Brian Wilson – Surf’s Up.mp3
Perhaps it’s not fair. How can I put Sufjan Stevens up against one of the great pop compositional achievements of the 20th century? Well, for one, I intend this as a high compliment – that Stevens can actually get here (and may be within shouting distance already). And let us not forget that Wilson was a mere 24 years old when he wrote and originally attempted to produce this track- and already had Pet Sounds and a few other indisputably great records under his belt. So it’s definitely possible for an indie artist to aspire to this.
But most of all what I’m trying to show here is what a difference it makes to have a truly professional experienced band and a top-notch sound person. Imagine Radiohead without the sonic excellence; it might just be the new clothes for the emperor.

Check out pictures and video from Sunday night’s show courtesy of Abir’s Concert Blog

Two different friends went to see Beck at the Civic Auditorium on Tuesday, and neither of them left as happy customers. “Too contrived,” hissed Darin. Both agreed that the sound sucked. (Somewhere Bill Graham rolls around in his grave knowing that that horrible concrete pit bears his name.)

Perhaps Darin & Veronica would have been better off if they headed out to the Mission for dinner. Kid Guero gave an improptu serenade at a burrito joint, apparently ticking off the usual crowd of mariachis pretty good.

SFist: Hey, Who’s That Gringo Mariachi?

Server trouble at home creates entry delays. Hi, everybody!

Even though it was just a limited edition of 5,000 on German label Raster-Noton, Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Vrioon still created enough fuss to become The Wire’s 2003 Electronic Album Of The Year. Noto took three simple piano themes from Sakamoto and treated them with all manner of clicks, whirs and drones to create a soundscape with no apparent connection to genre or ethnic musics. The result was a suite of beautiful tone-poems that seemed to fit into any situation; I can remember using this album as a soundtrack for a lonely rainy morning in downtown Seattle, for deep spreadsheet projects at work and any number of times and places as a bedtime calming device. Vrioon may be a distinct world, but it’s highly portable one.

Noto & Sakamoto’s new release, Insen, extends Vrioon by widening its compositional and aural possibilities beyond tone-poems to tighter pieces with a more traditional sense of drama and song. The Raster-Noton site describes Insen as a souvenir of a summer spent at a Berlin studio, and indeed Insen’s tracks do seem more bounded by time, memory and place than do Vrioon‘s.

The track I’ve selected for your review is typical of Insen, but atypical of the Noto/Sakamoto collaboration to date. “Moon” has the dramatic rising, falling, addition and subtraction of the best techno club tracks, but as if everything has been removed – no melody, no bass, nothing to grab on to, just piano and the whispering of machinery, a rave at a recital three blocks from your house on a quiet full moon night. “Moon” is also possibly the most plain fun that Noto’s been since the Transrapid EP. It must have been good times in Berlin last summer.

[Soundtrack]
Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto – Moon.mp3

BBC and Angry Robot like Insen, too

Raster-Noton’s Insen page

Get a hard copy of Insen or a soft copy of Vrioon, which is otherwise Out Of Print.

Got any room on the bandwagon for me?

Up until four days ago, today was to be the official release date for Sufjan Stevens’ new opus, Come On Feel The Illinoise! It’s been moved off again for another month because of issues related to copyright – a touch ironic for an artist whose success will have much to do with MP3 bloggers, who in turn have their/our own issues with ‘Fair Use.’

For fear of joining the madness of the crowd on this one, I have to give Illinoise my absolute highest recommendation. Stevens, who says that he will do an album on every state, here shows that he may be up to actually pulling out the mammoth task he’s set for himself.

Stevens’ most remarkable achievement is to convincingly breathe life into what could be a stale Disney-fied concept, like an “It’s A Small World” ride for the 21st century. As a person who has spent less than a week in my life in Illinois, I feel confident that this album provides me with a kaleidoscopic vision of the real life and history of the state, not just some simplified pop history version. Stevens’ ability to do this probably stems from his background in Creative Writing, as the closest analogues I can think of are all novels; two that leap to mind are Russell Banks’ Cloudsplitter and Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex. This isn’t some stereotypical portrayal of whining Cubs fans and closed stockyards; rather, Illinoise depicts a full breathing life of the mind of the state, both its historical undercurrents and modern day truth of its citizens’ lives.

Illinoise sees Stevens veering a little from his approach on 2003′s Welcome To Michigan, mostly because there was far more personal material available to him. It will be interesting to see if he’s able to keep his interest in the research and impersonality that this project will force him to keep up. And then there’s the material itself; it’s difficult to see how Stevens might get such complete works out of Wyoming or Vermont, while California, New York, Texas and Mississippi are such rich subjects that you could go on for years on each.

To make the 50 States Project happen, it will undoubtedly have to be the work of Stevens’ life. Can we get this man a MacArthur Fellowship so he doesn’t have to tour behind every record? If he’s able to keep this up, surely a Pulitzer is not out of bounds. I’m not kidding. This promises to be as major and important an American work as Angels In America or anything else you can think of.

Oh, and the music’s pretty great too. Blending pop dramatics, traditional American idioms – will he do zydeco for Louisiana and tejano for Texas? – with the rhythmic intricacy of Steve Reich & Stereolab, Illinoise is at its core a great listen, even at 75 minutes.

I can’t wait to see this as live performance later this month, and you shouldn’t miss it either if you believe in this project. Without any genius grants coming soon, let’s Save Our Sujfan!

[Soundtrack]
Sujfan Stevens – Come on! Feel the Illinoise! -Part I: The World’s Columbian Exposition -Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me in a Dream.mp3

Sufjan Stevens tour dates from Pollstar

Be sure to search NPR after July 6 to check out a new song,”The Lord God Bird.” NPR challenged Stevens to come up with a song on Brinkley, Arkansas based on a few phone calls to locals about the town’s history, and this will be the result.

Gang, we have to have a little talk. It’s about our beloved Kraftwerk. Yes, we all agree that they are the unchallenged leaders in the growth and acceptance of electronic music. I would take that further: that Kraftwerk were visionary about how we would come to use and accept technology as an essential, completely integrated part of our everyday lives. It’s hard to remember now, but when “Home Computer” was released in 1981, computers were still way out of anybody’s reasonable price range and required cassette tapes for data storage.

But I’m sick of the backhanded compliments for the live show. No, you object, you said you loved it. You gave strong reviews to the new live tour document, Minimum-Maximum. But you’re always slipping in something about “four guys standing around with laptops” or “what’s the point of a live performance by a band that’s just triggering their loops.”

Let’s start with what we mean by “Live.” I propose the following definition, as useful for a classical pianist as a drum circle as a guy with a laptop: A live musical performance is one in which the musician is 1) Performing music from a score or via improvisation; 2) Making conscious decisions about how the music is played as it is performed, and; 3) Injecting meaning through his/her actions, words demeanor and stagecraft.

With Kraftwerk, I don’t think anybody has any doubts about 1) or 3). It’s 2) that you might have a problem with.

My observation is that Kraftwerk does indeed make lots of decisions as the music is performed. I saw them last May at The Warfield, and even to say that they “are just standing there” is dishonest and wrongly dismissive. I stood at the very front towards Stage Right, just in front of Florian Schneider with a clear side view of the other three band members’ set-ups. Ralf Hutter has a MIDI controller that he uses frequently, playing the vast majority of the melodic parts. He also sings and is a might good dancer. The two fellows in the middle, newer members Henning Schmitz and Fritz Hilpert triggered bass lines and percussion. The one who does the bass lines had several foot pedals that emphasized and deemphasized different elements of the bottom tracks. And Florian … well, actually I’m not sure what Florian was doing. Everquest? Checking local maps for a bike ride tomorrow? He did cut some awkward dance moves during “Music Non Stop,” but otherwise your guess is as good as mine.

The cut from Minimum-Maximum I’m putting up today, “Neon Lights,” is a great demonstration of Kraftwerk’s musical ‘chops.’ Hutter sounds practically emotional, awestruck by the spectacle of a city lit up for the night. Above all, it sounds like he’s having fun, which is not something you can glean from any of Kraftwerk’s studio recordings post-Autobahn. There’s lots of interplay between the loops and lines; it’s closer to a group jamming than a simple triggering of a program. Most telling, it sounds like Hutter makes a mistake playing out the melody at the very end. Maybe the non-exactness is part of the art, programmed in to add humanity to the proceedings, but having seen how he operates on stage, I’m not buying it. It’s human error, right there in the middle of a Kraftwerk song. Given 30 years of dehumanization as an art form (in a good way!), that slip-up and its preservation by the artist who made it is worth noticing.

The song titles, which feature the city of the performance used on the album, are also a dead giveaway that there is something more going on here than pantomime with MIDI controller. If the guys in the band feel like the performances are different from city to city, we should take that seriously. We owe that to them as musicians. On the other hand, maybe it’s just another in a series of wry jokes going back through 30-plus years of recording and playing live.

[Soundtrack]
Kraftwerk – Neon Lights (London).mp3

Here is a great shot from above that gives a glimpse of each member’s on-stage set-up.

PS How come no enterprising computer company has gone and got the Kraftwerk product endorsement yet? What would Dell give to have had their name on their on-stage laptops? Thank goodness it hasn’t happened yet, really; every effort should be made to keep Kraftwerk from looking like a NASCAR team. Or maybe that’s next year’s joke. I was a little surprised to see that they were on PCs and not Macs, though.

PPS I concede that when the robots are on stage that that is not a live musical performance. Nice stagecraft, though.

This puts a whole new positive spin on Spinal Tap opening for a puppet show.

The Sippy Cups – I Wanna Be Elated(video/quicktime Object)
The Sippy Cups – Who Loves The Sun? (video/quicktime Object)

Check out The Sippy Cups on the afternoon of Sunday, May 29th at http://www.rickshawstop.com/.

Joe Pernice writes:

It came to me as if in a dream, but I was wide awake, coveting a mesh onion bag full of suet hanging from a bird feeder: There ought to be a show like MTV Cribs for indie musicians/actors. Maybe MTV2 could do it (if they haven’t already) and call it MTV2 Cribs. Think about it.

Joe Pernice presents: MTV2 Cribs

More importantly, Joe has posted streams of six songs from the next Pernice Brothers album. Reet petite! (Click on Discover A Lovelier You at top left.)

The Avalanches’ Since I Left You is my CD Club pick this month. This is a record that I have been completely infatuated with since I first heard it three years ago. Released initially in Australia in 2000, it is probably the finest example I’ve ever heard of sampling being used to create something else, not just to borrow or build on the underlying talent.

This is the sum total of my knowledge about The Avalanches: they are six Australian DJs, Madonna let them clear a sample, it took them two years to get Since I Left You released outside their homeland, they have not released a lick of their own music since then and don’t seem to be close now. Until I image-googled for this entry and went through to Page 5 of the images, I’d never seen a picture of them.

Usually the source of a sample is so obvious that the song just becomes a varation on the theme established by the originating artists. The Avalanches, who allegedly cleared over 900 samples to get this album done, take the process and the product a step further. The original source material is for the most part unrecognizable, even when Madonna’s “Holiday,” a song seared into our collective imagination, kicks in early in the album. As a pretty careful and knowledgable listener, it’s impressive that there is so little here that I recognize.

Like the best fiction or movies, Since I Left You defines a self-contained alternate universe with its own rules, logic and celebrities. Individual sounds and samples return again and again without being redundant, instead raising the entire album to the status of “Themes and Variations” rather than the simple drama-building repetition of most DJ projects. It’s a world where the radio plays every station at once, an amalgam of hip-hop, house and soul without ever committing to being any one or the other.

All the more remarkable that six DJs, each presumably with his own tastes and biases, were able to collaborate on something so seamless. Not to knock the estimable DJ Shadow, but this makes Endtroducing seem easy by comparison. It’s that good.

[Audio-visual]
The Avalanches – A Different Feeling.mp3
The Avalanches – Frontier Psychiatrist (video)
The Avalanches – Since I Left You (Best Video – MTV Europe Awards 2001)

Since I spoke of it somewhat dismissively in my last post about Petra Haden & Bill Frisell, it seems only fair to give equal time to Petra Haden Sings “The Who Sell Out”. It is admirably adventurous and well-performed, and some folks whose opinions I value are won over, but to listeners who don’t know the original source material, I’d imagine this is at best a head-scratcher. (The folks who seem most excited are probably ex-Who fans.) I guess it would come down to how charming you find “Neer-neer-neee-eeeer” as a substitute for a guitar solo.

I selected this track because it’s got the full treatment: guitar solos, soaring harmonies, lots of dum-dum-dumming bass lines and a great pre-pretense Pete Townshend tune. You make the call.

[Soundtrack]
Petra Haden – Our Love Was.mp3

…and now for something completely different. After talking about pretty much nothing but 1981 for the last few weeks, let’s blast back into the present. Almost. Because I’m recommending a re-issue.

Petra Haden has been getting a lot of ink lately for her side work with The Decemberists and her eccentric a capella interpretation of The Who Sell Out, but these may be only the 2nd and 3rd best of her recent releases. Sovereign Records has just picked up her 2003 collaboration with the great guitarist Bill Frisell. Taking on standards ranging from Gershwin and Mancini to, Elliott Smith and Tom Waits, Petra’s expressive and wondrously harmonic singing combined with Frisell’s thoughtful accompaniment makes for a really compelling and subtle listen.

It was difficult to pick a sample track off this one, but I chose “Floaty” because it samples all the disparate elements that make this so great: Haden’s harmonies, non-showy violin lines and Frisell’s fantastic combination of lush sound fields and restrained edges. Taking layers of multi-tracked sounds and convincingly teasing them into an organic whole, this is an album you should definitely consider purchasing before you go for the showier but ultimately less satisfying Sell Out. That one’s good for a laugh, but let’s face it, you aren’t going to play it that often.

[Soundtrack]
Bill Frisell & Petra Haden – Floaty.mp3
Petra Haden profiled on NPR
A 2-hour Bill Frisell concert, part of the excellent Creators At Carnegie series

The hottest club record in the world right now features a woman acting like a chicken and screaming about Paris Hilton. This I can get with.

[Audio-visual]
MU – Paris Hilton

Sometimes you fall for a band against what you know should be every reasonable instinct. The Bees are one such band for me. They genre-jump like crazy, everything from inventing new 60s dances (the “Chicken Payback”) to Bacharach-style fluff. It’s almost more of a party trick than a cogent strategy for developing new material. “Hey, let’s sound like The Small Faces today!” “Naaah, let’s do a country song!” …and so forth.

So it’s with slight hesitation that I offer today’s track — The Bees’ take on (I think) instrumental reggae. Except that it’s called “The Russian,” which sure isn’t a good name for a reggae song.

You know the old rating system on American Bandstand? “It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it”? This track posits a great alternative for 21st century listening: “It confounds me and it won’t leave my head.”

[Soundtrack]
The Bees – The Russian.mp3
The Bees – Chicken Payback.mp3

Click on the image above to buy this album.
nb – The Bees are known as Band Of Bees in the US.

I saw my friend Tom last night for the first time in umpteen years. I always associate him in my mind with The Jayhawks, and with the flurry of news about the band’s impending breakup, I couldn’t help but give them a shout-out today.

The Jayhawks’ last record, Rainy Day Music, has a whole slew of songs that would fit right in on Help! Tasteful production and playing, terrific harmony singing, there’s really nothing to object to here. Some of the songs are a wee tad thin on the content side, but the title says it all; this is comfort music pure and simple, like a stack of mashed potatoes on a windy night.

The really impressive thing to about The Jayhawks is that they are one of a very very few bands that survived the loss of their lead singer while keeping the essence of their sound pretty much intact. (Van Halen?) They also managed to survive some really bad cover art.

Oh, they’re not breaking up? Sheesh.

[Soundtrack]
The Jayhawks – Tampa To Tulsa.mp3

I Am Kloot’s self-titled second album has been out in the UK for something like 18 months already. It’s finally getting US release with a mini-tour to follow, including a stop at SXSW. It’s a nice undemanding record with some heartfelt performances. If you’re a fan of The Smiths, The Decemberists or Joe Pernice, you’ll find something to like on this one.

I first became aware of this band from a track on the excellent Rough Trade 25 Years compilation. It was a real “Wow, what was that!” kind of moment, which is what us music fans live for, right?

There are three tracks of length 2:46 on I Am Kloot. What are the odds of that? There can’t be that many albums with three cuts with the exact same length. Unintentionally. (So The Residents’ Commercial Album doesn’t count)

[Soundtrack]
I Am Kloot – Proof.mp3
More I Am Kloot tracks at Epitonic

First in an occasional series

Raphael Saadiq started out in Oakland’s Tony Toni Tone and went solo after they busted up a few years ago. The break-up was a shame because the band had evolved from Boy2Men-style juvenilia to sophisticated R&B pastiche and was purported to be a terrific live act. House Of Music, which I’ll reserve for a future post, is one of my all-time favorites. When it came on the scene at roughly the same time as D’Angelo, it looked like the annual rumors of ‘The Return of Soul’ might finally come true on the radio. But that’s another story.

Saadiq’s first album under his own name was 2002′s Instant Vintage. It had terrific production, an exciting roster of guest stars (D’Angelo, T-Boz from TLC and Angie Stone among others) and a number of agreeable if slightly samely potential hit singles. Since he is a bass player, I was willing to give him a pass for all the groove-based songs, but he showed a lot of growth as a songwriter and a producer, giving me hope that this would be a guy I could follow for a long time.

A live album followed, accompanied by his 9-piece band, but rumor had it that he’d been dropped by UMG. And when you’re dropped, that means no more band if you can’t pay them. And that means self-production. For some guys, this can work out great (John Cale and Mark Eitzel leap to mind), but for others the lack of creative partnership can be deadly.

It (may) follow then that Saadiq’s new album, As Ray Ray, is a complete production nightmare. It sounds like he’s just learned how to program MIDI. The instrument patches are all wrong, the mixes head-scratching and the beats sound like they’re not even tracked to against the rest of the music. It’s a disaster. (Oddly, As Ray Ray received several good reviews, but this makes me wonder if the critics even opened the CD before they wrote it.)

Worst of all, he seems to have lost his mind too – or at least his songwriting chops. Like Garth Brooks, Saadiq gives himself a false identity from which he can sing his new ‘nastier’ material. It’s a pseudo-blaxploitation gangster fantasy, but it doesn’t have much threat or make much sense. In the end, it’s an excuse to do lazily misogynistic material. And it just doesn’t work.

I’m not just picking on some half-baked track towards the end of the record, either. “This One” (today’s MP3) is the fourth track — but the first fully-realized non-jokey song on the record, in itself a pretty bad sign for a fourth track. The first time I heard this track I thought, Man! something is wrong! Is this a bad file?

Saadiq’s web site promises some good things ahead. I’m rooting for the comeback.

[Soundtrack]
Good Saadiq: Raphael Saadiq – Different Times (w/T-Boz from TLC)
Bad Saadiq: Raphael Saadiq – This One

(Aside for another discussion: Has there ever been another female Top 40 singer who has sold as many records with as little vocal range as T-Boz?)

I was reading on the couch last night with the dog’s head resting on my lap. Ambient music would be nice now, eh? I put on Kompakt’s Pop Ambient 2004 about medium loud.

When we got to this track, Ruby immediately sat up and started staring intently at the speakers. With each ‘wave,’ her ears would perk and then she’d start to relax until the next ‘wave’ came through. By the end of the song she’d adjusted, but it was a tense few moments for her and fascinating to watch. I’ll definitely need to be careful when I play Ruby her first glitch record!

[Soundtrack]
Andrew Thomas – Fearless Jewel (3).mp3 from Pop Ambient 4

It’s been bubbling on the blogosphere for a while, but the Tipping Point turned out to be right here at work. Somebody posted a single album on our iTunes network with the tempting question, “Are you an Anniemal?” A pun that horrid had to be checked out, especially in a place that makes its money off conjuring up intellectual property on a monthly basis.

The single album, of course, is Annie’s Anniemal, recipient of an 8.8 from Pitchfork and the Village Voice Pazz n Jop #31 Single Of The Year, all this despite no US release.

Where’s she from? Norway. Svenska, your time in The Entroporium has passed.

In Norway, apparently, time stopped for pop music right about the moment that Susan from Human League opened her mouth to sing “I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar…” Annie at least had the good sense to keep buying records after that one came out, went down to the record store and picked up Vanity 6‘s “Nasty Girl.”

[Soundtrack]
Annie – Me Plus One.mp3
Annie – Helpless Fool For Love.mp3
Here is a Norwegian Annie site to admire.

Gabriel wrote me yesterday and commented that I hadn’t name-dropped him in The Entroporium yet. You asked for it, buddy…

To celebrate today’s dropping of Gabriel’s name, I’m putting up a track from one of the albums he gave me via our CD Club. If memory serves, Gabriel was in Berlin, went into a local record shop and asked, “What’s the hot music around these parts?” (Or at least that’s what my friend Gabriel told me.) This was what they gave him — nice burbling electronics and melodic primitivism. Fans of Krautrock, glitch and earlier Bjork will dig this. Think along the lines of Barbara Morgenstern or SchneiderTM.

If this is the “hot music” around Berlin, that city’s only got stranger since I was last there in 1990.

[Soundtrack]
Quarks – Herz Schlagt.mp3

Every so often you get a little shock of recognition: “Hey, This was completely stolen from That!” I guess it shouldn’t be surprising when the same producer is involved, but still.

Here’s one that got me, though. The surprise isn’t that Madonna was aping Beth Orton on Ray of Light. If you’ve heard Trailer Park, you already knew that. What’s more surprising is Madonna’s source was more likely the little-known Superpinkymandy, which was a limited edition 5000 copies, Japan-only release.

It’s a perfect pairing really since neither Madge nor Beth have much vocal range to speak of (which doesn’t change the fact that I’d gladly spend time listening to Daybreakerthan the tortuous American Life). We could drop “Yesterday’s Gone” (c. 1993) right into Ray of Light (c. 1998) and you might never notice a different artist had come on the stereo. “William Daaaaarling, can you make me sound Just Like This? Thank you, daaaaarling.”

[Soundtrack]
Beth Orton & William Orbit – Yesterday’s Gone.mp3

I’ve been pushing this record on my friends for a while and now Susie has taken to playing it everywhere, too. Graham Coxon’s Happiness In Magazines has finally got a US release on Astralwerks and you heard it here first that it’s going to blow up BIG. The first single, “Freakin’ Out” finds Blur’s departed guitarist mining the same US indie vein where he found the football-stadium-friendly smash hit “Song 2″ (better known to most of the world as “Woo Hoo!” and not be confused with Imperial Teen’s “Yoo Hoo!”).

A lot of the album keeps to the same “I’d rather have been in Pavement” genre, but every so often Graham gives into his Britpop jones. I predict at least two very big singles off this record — the second will be “Spectacular” — but the average radio listener probably won’t get to hear the more reflective songs, so I’m featuring one of those today.

And of course as a proud member of the magazine publishing business, I can’t help but like an album with that title.

[Soundtrack]
Graham Coxon – Are You Ready?.mp3

Graham Coxon tour schedule is on this page (below Reba McEntire)

DJ Food – Raiding The 20th Century (words and music expansion).mp3

Thanks to 45::RPM for pointing at this thing.

Robyn Hitchcock has rallied from some really terrible sartorial choices to pair up with Gillian Welch & David Rawlings on his new album, Spooked. It’s far from a perfect record, but the tracks that hit home are really lovely and, well, spooky.

Today’s sample is the first cut, a love song by a lonely man to his television, pulling on one of my worst fears: to reach a point in life (illness? death? business travel?) where I’m stuck with nothing to do but watch TV. This track captures the feeling; it’s funny, poignant, a little scary.

Isn’t it amazing how when you see an abandoned TV on the street that it looks defiled, like it’s somehow lost its mystique?

[Soundtrack]
Robyn Hitchcock – Television.mp3

Robyn’s spooky story about how this recording came to be:

My wife Michele turned me onto Hell Among The Yearlings and Time (The Revelator), so we were thrilled to get tickets for their London show last September. It was a brilliant affair; Gillian and David walked on stage carrying their guitars and never once used pick-ups on them. They played music that seemed to come from no particular era, but was rooted back centuries ago. The deeper your roots, the longer your branches. One of the many highlights for me was a new song called “Miss Ohio.”

Afterwards I met David in the bar and he told me that I had signed his guitar at an in-store in Boston in 1989. It transpired that they both used to come and see the Egyptians and me, way back in the 1980s. In parting, we agreed it would be great to attempt playing together, and he gave me some of their phone numbers.

A month later, someone sent a photo in to David Greenberger, who runs my web-site. It showed a beauty contest, where the new Miss Ohio was being crowned: her name was Robyn Hitchcock. Michele suggested I call Gillian and David to tell them this. I spoke to Gillian, who duly introduced “Miss Ohio” onstage in New York with this story.

Next thing they knew, they were recording together!

Mark and I went last night to Recombinant Labs to check out Monolake and Deadbeat. (Mark loves it when I drop his name in here.) Monolake (aka Robert Henke) is the German inventor of Ableton Live, and he does this terrifically dense rhythmic techno that still has very much a live feel to it. If you think Autechre’s Tri Repetae is the bee’s knees, you should check this one out.

The crowd loved Deadbeat’s dubby Orb thing, but thinned considerably during Monolake’s set. True, it’s not exactly good-timey stuff, but c’mon people we were at Recombinant Labs! We’re there for the challenge!

The challenge got steeper later when the police shut down the show. I heard a panicky promoter telling another panicky promoter “I can’t take the hit for this one.” Seems that somebody complained about noise, which is astonishing for a space that was a good three blocks from any residences. Hopefully this doesn’t mean the end for SF’s best experimental electronic scene.

[Soundtrack]
Monolake – Linear.mp3

[Soundtrack]
Decemberists – Leslie Anne Levine.mp3

We were over at Mark’s last night in a Mah Jongg marathon and I mentioned how much I’d been enjoying The Decemberists, a band that I had inexplicably been missing out on. He informed me that one of my favorite songs of theirs, Leslie Anne Levine, is told from the perspective of a dead infant, which surprised me since I’m not given to listening to the words. This made for a pretty embarassing case of lyrics ignorance. Indeed I looked them up this morning and Leslie turns out to be an infant dead in 1842, 15 years on, singing about her lot in life.

Soooo I woke up this morning to the “Fuck You” guy. We have a halfway house across the street and every so often somebody imbalanced comes through there. From time to time, the FY Guy comes strolling down the street in the early mornings yelling FUCK YOUUUUUU!! FUUUUCCCCK YOOOUUUU!!! He sounds angry at somebody, but I suspect he’s just yelling, like Raaer from Berkeley in the 80s.

In turn all this talk of 19th century SIDS and crazy yelling folk got me thinking about Wisconsin Death Trip, a book that I read in Business School that had huge impact on my reading of historical photography. (My B-School classmates used to think I was nuts, reading books from the library during my education!)

Wisconsin Death Trip throws open a private photo archive from Black River Falls, WI, a 19th century middle-of-nowhere town cut off from pretty much everything and suffering through the fierce Wisconsin winters. At that time, almost all photographs were posed and only for the very most special occasions, and weirdly a hefty percentage of the photos seems to show people going nuts. The author, Michael Lesy, contrasts these with contemporaneous newspaper police clippings that show that, yes, pretty much everybody was losing it. Bestiality, arson, murder, you name it, it was happening up in Black River Falls. And a whole lot of people working on “perpetual motion machines.”

Especially poignant are page after page of photographs of dead infants and children. Often the only photograph — the only remnant of a child’s existence — might be a picture of it in its coffin.

It’s been in and out of print a few times, but you can still get Wisconsin Death Trip here (of course). The movie, which is not nearly as impactful as the book, but is still a really interesting piece of faux-documentary filmmaking.

Taken together, though, the book and film of Wisconsin Death Trip provide a fascinating window into the personal costs of expanding the nation westward in a big hurry, far ahead of any supportive social or economic infrastructure.

So it’s been a while since I’ve published, and for that I apologize. I spent all New Year’s Day going through the family picture box, so I should have some good silly scans coming up soon.

Things seem to be in flux for a lot of people I know — real serious life-changing stuff. I feel horrible for my friends with bad news and pleased for the ones with the good. Which is how I achieve this wonderfully synergistic mellow feeling I’ve been able to cling to lately. Or the meds are kicking in.

Here’s a record I’ve been playing to death at work, a perfect accompaniment for being happily efficient in emotional purgatory. Mojave 3 look like an Alt.Country band, but the slide guitar is there to evoke 4AD spaciness instead of quaintness. This one comes from their excellent 2003 release, “Spoon and Rafter.” As AllMusic put it, “It’s deserving of at least half of the attention given to anything released by Wilco.”

We’ve all got big stuff going on, the weather is oppressive. Pretend for a moment we’re in the car driving away from the city. The radiation and noise fade behind us as it starts to warm up…

[Soundtrack]
Mojave 3 – Starlight No 1.mp3

I don’t know how they do it, but the Swedes continue to hijack my blogging life. Today’s CD Club offering comes from Craig, our man in Pleasanton, the home of Safeway. Unlike ABBA, The Hives or insanely awesome Soundtrack Of Our Lives, Dungen doesn’t bother with all that “learnin’ English” stuff. This album is just great psychedelia right out of the late 60s with the knock-on weirdness of having the vocals sound like they’re all being sung backwards. That’s actually just Swedish, I hope. It’s got charm (and it’s certainly charmed the indie critics), but it also makes the album seem a lot weirder than maybe it really is.

The good news is that even with the lousy dollar, this import is not going to hurt you quite as badly the “Best of Puffy Ami Yumi” will.

[Soundtrack]
Dungen – Gjort Bort Sig.mp3

Here’s another fave from this month, sent to me from the suburbs of Seattle. I don’t know a dang thing about K-Os, except that he’s from Toronto (minimal cred unless your name is “Hawtin“) and that he’s on Astralwerks (massive cred). The album jumps around many different genres, but there’s no doubt that this is hip-hop first & foremost. The album leaves me in mind of “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” without all the goofy melodrama and semi-flat singing.

Plus, I’ve got a soft spot for love songs that announce right off the bat, “This is not a love song.” (Elvis Costello in Musician Magazine: “Somebody — I think it was Morrissey — said, ‘I could never write a love song without having a get-out clause in verse three.’” )

[Soundtrack]
K-Os – The Love Song.mp3

(This entry follows my pattern of following up really angry posts with the lightest-heartest things I can find on the spur of the moment.)

Readers who know me personally know about my affiliation with the CD Club, a little monster that Susie and I created two years ago. Each month a bunch of odd CDs arrive in the mail and we send some back the other direction. Over the next couple of days, I’ll be going through some favorites from last month’s haul.

Puffy Ami Yumi is the very definition of Big In Japan; from what I understand — and I don’t — this band seems to be the biggest pop band going over there for nearly ten years running. I don’t understand anything they’re saying, but they have an extremely talented set of folks working behind the scenes (including Andy Sturmer of San Francisco’s legendary near-misses Jellyfish) to bless them with unbelievable production and great songs. They’re working the back door to US fame at the moment, having launched a series on the Cartoon Network. I think I’ll be cuing that up on the Tivo.

Today I’ve got two tracks from their new Japan-only release, “Best Of Puffy Ami Yumi,” which you can get for a mere $45 at Amazon. Thanks to Robert for this one. Since there are no track listings or translations, I’ve had to come up with my own interpretations of what the songs are about.

[Soundtrack]
Puffy Ami Yumi – Track 2.mp3 – Ami and Yumi take The Beatles hostage and force them to write them a song about how happy there are to dance with you.
Puffy Ami Yumi – Track 18.mp3 – Ami and Yumi serenade a sad cowboy returning home from a hard day’s night out on the trail.

I’m still new at this blogging thing. After a couple of weeks of directed topics, it’s hard to restart. But enough excuses and on with today’s show.

Just when you thought it was safe to listen to mash-ups again, a whole new generation of goodies springs up.

First up, many props to The Classical Album. I’ve included a couple of tracks below. Once you’ve reached this point, there’s really nothing left to do unless somebody decides to do Jay-Z up with some Native American chants or aeolian choirs or something. (I am not suggesting that you do this.) A couple of choice tracks are linked below.

Even better is (was?) The Grey Video. Sadly this thing seems to have lasted one big day online before it was taken down for whatever reason — be it bandwidth or legal trouble. This mash-up of footage from A Hard Days Night and JZ makes the point far more effectively than the infamous Grey Album ever did. John breakdances. Ringo cuts. What more do you need to know? If the link is down, keep an eye out for mirrors. Gone so soon, it just seems like a lovely mirage now.

…and tidying a few loose ends, here are reviews of GBV’s final show from the Contra Costa Times and The Daily Cal. I’m glad these are here because otherwise I might not remember wha’appened. It was that kind of night. Props to the CC Times writer for getting so many song titles wrong (“Robot Boy,” “Demos Are Quite Real”), which just sort of seems to add to the authenticity, n’est-ce pas?

[Soundtrack]
Jay-Z vs. The Baker Bros – Glass Off Your Shoulder.mp3
Jay-Z vs. The Baker Bros – Piazzola’s My Thug.mp3

More Swedish significance today. Last Saturday I attended a wedding at San Francisco’s Swedish American Hall, a bizarre little auditorium over Café Du Nord constructed after the 1906 earthquake with many Scandinavian touches. I’d only been there one other time, to see M. Ward touring behind “Transfiguration Of Vincent,” a loose song cycle about the wasting death of a close friend dieing young. So here were these young people joyously celebrating their past & future life together with close friends and family, but the whole reception I had reminders of songs about life’s fragility running through my head. The only thing linking it together was the room itself.

The Swedish American Hall web site offers a brief history of the building. The original 1875 bylaws for the club behind its construction, The San Francisco Swedish Society, intriguingly ranks illness death above celebrations and entertainment: "It shall be the purpose and object of this society to assist the sick and bury its deceased members, to work for the maintenance of a choir, and to give literary and social entertainments.” Why was this? Was there a plague at the time? Or was there just something preternaturally gloomy about the founders of the SF Swedish Society?

I love it when halls provide histories of themselves — who played there, whose life was celebrated there, how was this space used for before it became what it is, why did the architects think it was a good idea to build what they did. I have no idea, for example, who lived in my 104-year old house. Shouldn’t it be a societal requirement for every building to keep a log?

The wedding — originally planned as an outside affair but moved inside to avoid the rain — was great fun. For another day, life triumphed over gloom despite gloom’s best efforts.

Apologies for the slow posting over the weekend. DSL is down at home until tomorrow night.

Last week’s most popular download (by far!) was Brian Jonestown Massacre. In the interests of equal time for the Dig! candidates, here’s a track from their more-successful, less-interesting brethren who still have their moments. Plus, today being Monday, I’m all for the sentiment of this particular track. Class, I expect a Compare & Contrast essay in 5-paragraph form due Wednesday.

Last Thursday’s auction for the Bridge School tickets went splendidly. I received 50 bids and a whole lot of “Are you for real?” The tickets (face value $120) went for $350, so Bridge School wins $230.

I had lots of E-mail conversations with folks (“I’m a teacher. Pick me!”) and I got to hear quite a few horror stories. The worst was a woman who was trying to bring her wheelchair-bound mother to see Paul McCartney. Some creep offered her handicap seating at 2x face… and the tickets turned out to be on the lawn. At a benefit for disabled folks, that’s a particularly tacky thing to do. I also had one fun IM conversation with a rockin’ 15-year old, which you can check out by hitting the “Continue Reading” link below.

I love that next gen folks are so open about IMing. We’re headed for a society where everybody is completely open with each other so long as they can stay anonymous.

blacklight317: hey…your selling bridge school tickets?>

xKingOfAmericax: hi, yes, I’m selling the tickets

blacklight317: cool…ive been looking for tickets for like the past month. i sent you an email and made an offer of $150 for the pair

xKingOfAmericax: thanks — out of respect for the fact that this is “blind bidding,” I don’t think I should tell you what the top bid is… but… $150 is less than 1/2

blacklight317: damn

xKingOfAmericax: ouchie, I know, I can’t believe it myself

blacklight317: im just a 15 year old i cant come up with that kind of money

xKingOfAmericax: anything to do with the Beatles, people bid crazy Sorry

blacklight317: I just trying to go see the red hot chili peppers, they are one of my favorite bands

xKingOfAmericax: you’re up against all the crazy oldsters! you’re Sarah, right?

blacklight317: yes

xKingOfAmericax: not to go all “when I was your age” on you… my brother’s first show was when he was 15. Oakland Coliseum. RHCP opening for RUn DMC on the Raising Hell tour

blacklight317: thats cool

xKingOfAmericax: so let’s see, that’s … 1984?

blacklight317: yeah my first concert was BB King when i was like 6

xKingOfAmericax: nice one. mine was Elton John at a really small place — Greek Theater in Berkeley

blacklight317: thats cool. yeah, heard of it

xKingOfAmericax: it was not one of Elton’s better years, but the show was great — the classic band from the 70s

blacklight317: yeah…old stuff is always good

xKingOfAmericax: wellll, yr probably not going to win… but rest assured, RHCP will return!

blacklight317: lol yeah, hopefully

xKingOfAmericax: I think there are lots of lawn seats around at face, so if worse is worse. another guy just IM’d me and said there were more tickets going on sale but I doubt that they are reserved, might be worth checking.

blacklight317: yeah….i sat in the lawn, only reason to go there is to smoke weed and lye on the grass……..nothing beats reversed seats

xKingOfAmericax: yeah, and it’s gonna rain, so it will not be much fun

blacklight317: yeah exactly

xKingOfAmericax: I need to get back to work, but it was nice meeting you. you’ve got mighty fine taste!

blacklight317: yeah thanks, have a nice day

Ben Folds has done the unexpected and made a terrific artist out of William Shatner. Anybody who’s heard his album from the 1960s, "The Transformed Man," seen his ridiculous self-parodying overacting since Star Trek shut down or his bizarre stints as the host of "Iron Chef" knows that Shatner’s moved way past acting and into some kind of weird court jester role. It’s sad to see actors forced into this position (even if it’s appropriate as for, say, Leslie Nielsen), but it’s a wonder sometimes that they can look in the mirror.

Not only does his new album "Has Been" manage to elevate Shatner back into respectability, it remarkably takes him way past it. Shatner has aged himself gracefully in public, much as Frank Sinatra did in the 1960s. In some ways, it’s even more remarkable than what Sinatra accomplished because he’s been able to successfully co-opt ‘modern’ styles (electronica, Britpop) while Frank was basically updating his by using different arrangers.

The songs work as mini-dramas, each its own distinct showcase. In the song I’ve linked to below, Shatner, Ben Folds and Aimee Mann combine to create a miniature Paul Thomas Anderson movie. It’s every bit as cinematic and poignant as Magnolia without resorting to raining frogs.

The Beta Band – Lion Thief.mp3

It almost passed unnoticed — almost no record company support and no US tour(?) — but the final album from the Beta Band is a great little piece of new century psychedelia. As on their best work (“The Three EPs,” natch), the songs are built up from little snippets of ideas that barely seem to make a whole. Yet somehow the songs and the whole album hold together. It’s a grower.

Every time I listen to this one I’m reminded of the shambolic nature of The White Album. It’s a bunch of shards, a bunch of mind-altered guys each off on their own trip in the studio, but still pretty empathetic in terms of the musical needs required by a given song. Is it any surprise that this band is no more? Heroes To Zeros indeed.

The title is a brain twister. Doesn’t it just look wrong? It sure hurts to type.