never have i ever UPDATED WITH SUPPORTING FOOTAGE

Never have I ever in my life seen a more ludicrous television program than CSI Miami. That show brings "over the top" to a whole new level.

I blame Belle & Sebastian

Just for you, Serge, some babbling I jotted down a couple weeks ago and never finished, or edited. But better than nothing, right?

(Incidentally, most New Yorker content is now available on their website without subscription.)

Sasha Frere-Jones' recent article in the New Yorker about indie rock's lost soul is mostly spot-on, despite the usual music critic pretensions. And he makes some interesting connections (or tries to) between the splintering of pop music and the post-civil rights, p.c.-era "new segregation" or whatever you want to call it. But there is one thing I'd love to chime in on, strictly on the musical side of the discussion. Let me be totally blunt.

I blame Belle & Sebastian.

Sasha puts a lot of blame on Pavement and their early-90s ilk for the cerebral, back-beatless tendencies of present-day "indie" rock, but at least (and never mind here that I was a huge fan) at least they had energy, and yes, emotion. Sure, the lyrics were nonsense, but the tone of voice made clear what it really meant that you were a cigar stand, and I, a blue incandescent guillotine. And as the 90s wore on, at least we had some bands - I'm thinking mostly of the "math-rock" genre now, and specifically the more raw style of Unwound, rather than the too-carefully orchestrated sound of Don Caballero - some bands that despite their inscrutable vocals and downright alienating music, were LOUD for chrissakes. We also had the early Weezer, the early Radiohead, the Foo Fighters, bands that may have had no "soul" in the motown sense but had clearly recognizable emotions in their lyrics and their driving, urgent music. Then I guess two things happened. First (and here's where we blame the Scots, of all people): Belle and Sebastian, at least for me, ushered in the wimpification of indie rock. Where's the fucking distortion pedal!?!? Where's the ENERGY? I guess it probably started long before, with the Smiths or the Cure or whoever, but all of a sudden indie rock was goddamn BORING. Lullabies, for crying out loud!

Sorry, end of rant. (Also, what about punk, Sasha? The Sex Pistols lost their soul long before Pavement ever did.)

In honesty, I guess I sort of stopped paying attention for a few years there, so I might have missed some good indie ROCK (as opposed to INDIE rock - Stella, anyone?). But now that I've started paying attention again, I see the second event, and this gets back (finally) to what Sasha's talking about. When the indie kids wanted to put the soul back in, they couldn't figure it out. Arcade Fire are great, but Sasha's friend hit the nail on the head when (s)he asked, "Do they play every song in this end-of-the-world style?" Akron/Family and the neo-folk stuff are another great example of white hipsters trying to sound soulful, this time by using lots of voices in harmony (and then freaking out for twelve boring minutes). The other manifestation is the Killers/Franz Ferdinand/eighteen million other bands, who just want to make the disco of this decade. (It's straight dance music, right?) The Hold Steady are good, but that's because he actually IS Bruce Springsteen (at least that's my pet conspiracy theory), and the garage rock revival was a fine flash in the pan, but really just a rehash (nothing there the Monks didn't do better 40 - yes, 40 - years ago, and that REALLY includes the White Stripes, sorry). The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are lots of fun. They may have something there, actually. (Is Karen O. a 21st century Janis Joplin? Is that possible without the black music influence?)

The new indie ROCK may have some great songwriters, and some great performers even. But rock and roll had soul. And at least the mid-90s indie rock had something else, even if it was just noisily expressed angst. (Emo was the too-whiny dead end of the angsty branch of indie rock. I suppose you could call Weezer "proto-emo.") The new indie rock needs to find a way to express something that feels real, rather than like calculated emotion or, even worse, just plain calculated.

A Heartbreak Showdown

And now it's time for a showdown!
It Should Have Been Me - Gladys Knight and the Pips
versus
All I Could Do Was Cry - Etta James
Two great songs with a common theme. Vote in the comments.

Miscellaneous Musical Musings:

- Reason #141 to get around to ripping some vinyl: Deodato - Very Together (1976). Side two features not only I Shot the Sherrif and the Theme from Star Trek, but best of all the wonderfully named track Univac Loves You, on which one Rubens Bassini is credited with playing "Holiday Inn room keys."

- I recieved my Cake: B-sides and Rarities CD in the mail today. If you're a Cake fan, I think you have to have it. Preview and order it here.

- The R&B/soul binge continues. Check out the Lost In Tyme blog. I highly recommend Lorraine Ellison - Stay With Me (1969), especially her version of Try, and the scorcher You Don't Know Nothing About Love.


----------------
Now playing: Nina Simone - To Be Young Gifted And Black
via FoxyTunes

Beware the neocon encore

Read this blog, (especially posts 1, 2, 3) by Barnett R. Rubin, and keep an eye out for a reprise of the same arguments that got us into Iraq five years ago. This is madness.

Stax documentary on PBS

I was very lucky the other night to catch by chance Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story on PBS. The traditional montage of interviews, vintage footage, and (minimal) narration by Samuel L. Jackson served very well, as the music, and even more so the old concert footage, stand strong all on their own. I'm considering ordering the DVD, because I'd easily watch this several more times. So many great moments, from concert performances by Otis Redding, or the Staple Singers, or Sam and Dave on the European tour of '67; to Jesse Jackson in a dashiki raising his fist to a crowd of 100,000 in Watts, before introducing Isaac Hayes; to the old session player explaining that Stax at its height replaced cotton as the biggest industry in Memphis, Tennessee. Check your local listings, as this is a musical and cultural treat not to be missed. Not to mention the simple fact that the classic rise-and-fall storyline puts any hair band Behind the Music episode to shame. (See: auctioning off of Isaac Hayes' custom gold plated Cadillac to skeptical white southern businessmen.)

What, no opening band to warm up the crowd?

When I first heard about the "Live Earth" concept, of concerts on all seven continents on 07/07/07, I swear it was the first thought into my head: who the hell's going to play on Antarctica in the middle of winter?! Bono may just be that committed/conceited, but I'm pretty sure the rest of U2 would finally balk. (Although the Edge already has his winter hat on; maybe he's good to go...)

So who do you get for a gig too extreme even for rock stars? The only people more badass than rock stars of course: scientists! We're not talking about these posers either, we're talking actual nerds, far geekier than any horn-rimmed-glasses faux-dweeb record store clerk. Their name is Nunatak, and they earned the gig by having more satellite bandwidth than the other research stations (who also apparently have resident bands). Take that, Fossil Bluff Forward Logistics Facility! Read all about it at Nature News, and if that link doesn't work for you here's a pdf version.

YouTube post.

I don't even want to think about how many hours went into this.



As for music, you can listen to the new Smashing Pumpkins album at AOL. I am pleasantly surprised at both the rockingness of the album and the minimum hassle installing yet another plugin, from AOL no less. Perhaps they have grown less evil of late?

pterodactyl, in color

pterodactyl have made a fun fun "music video."

Animal Collective?

Animal Collective "rarities" are here. Found via SeeqPod (which is like Hype Machine but better).

Do you guys like Animal Collective? I'm giving them a second chance, and suspect they may grow on me. Alternatively, I may get bored quickly and leave like I did before the end of the Akron Family show.

I'm getting bored...


SeeqPod Music beta - Playable Search

a political aside

"When he was approached near the House floor by a reporter, Mr. Young responded with an obscene gesture."
NY Times, 7 June 2007

Rep. Don Young (R-AL) may be trying to set a record for longest-distance pork. NY Times article here. Key funny bit:

Asked in a telephone interview who had organized the fund-raiser, Mr. Mazurkiewicz, the consultant, said he was then at another fund-raiser with a member of Mr. Mack’s staff who would know.

“Aronoff,” the staff member told Mr. Mazurkiewicz, within earshot of his mobile phone.

“Just some local businessmen,” Mr. Mazurkiewicz said into the phone.

Pterodactyl are a band!

So, my friend's pterodactyl-- ha ha... that would be cool to have a pet pterodactyl.


Pterodactyl have released their first full-length album! Yay! Check out the review at the ever-ridiculous Pitchfork, or read something that actually describes the music in words instead of in band names at a place called Dusted. Pitchfork has a couple of tracks up for listening and the band has more mp3s scattered around their site. Warning: many people possibly including your neighbors or your girlfriend will not like this music. Some people just can't handle the rock and roll.

the best band you never heard of.

Seriously.

Jetpack were a band in Providence in the late 90s. They released one 7" single called Investigator Man (on clear vinyl with accompanying comic book), and one self-titled full-length cd, on their short-lived label Sampson Recordings. I saw them play a few times, including opening for Don Caballero and on their own at the very hip AS220. Then they lost their drummer, and the remaining two guys became Hya Kcha, playing drums and bass-with-many-pedals. I also have a two-track cd of Hya Kcha's, cleverly titled "A Demonstration," which I will happily dig out and share if anyone's interested.

But back to the point: the self-titled Jetpack cd is one of my top 10, maybe top 5 favorite albums of all time and ever, bar none, and I absolutely pull it out and listen to it with much regularness. Simply put, it ROCKS. To be a little more descriptive, this is very much in the Math Rock vein, with off-kilter syncopations and odd-length phrasings and so on, but with a firm emphasis on the Rock part as well. To contrast, I never got into Don Caballero that much because their stuff can be too focused on the math part, and end up feeling almost clinical. Unwound, one of my other very favorite bands, might be a better comparison except that Jetpack is less dark and grungy/metally (metallic?). Not that Jetpack would ever jam, heavens no. Every riff is repeated exactly as many times as necessary for you to get your head around it, and then the song moves on. The volume or tempo shifts in that way that I love, building and falling and building again so you can barely sit still, like good early Mogwai but without the feedback, if that makes any sense. And I almost forgot to mention - these guys were fucking tight as tupperware. Unbelievable.

Okay, enough talk. No guilt about sharing these tracks since the guys have made them available on the Sampson site, and I'm sure the cd is essentially impossible to buy. (The Jetpack on Amazon is a different one.) So get the tracks from them, or over at Multiply, or zipped up, and let me know what you think.

turntable music

The very decent music blog debaser recently posted a link to a large (3 cds) and apparently rare collection of turntable wizardry from Ninjatune, called Xen Cuts. The label's tenth anniversary compilation, from 2000, includes tracks from Kid Koala, Z-Trip, Coldcut, and DJ Food (subject of an upcoming post), along with many others. If you like turntable music or, even better, aren't a fan yet and want a good sampling of some of the best the genre has to offer, definitely grab this while you can.

Xen Cuts, from Ninjatune.

Stranger Than Fiction soundtrack

Apologies to all three of my readers (LALOL!) for the extended absence.

We finally saw Stranger Than Fiction this weekend. In addition to being a really super duper movie, it's one of those films that makes great use of an excellent pop music soundtrack. Coincidently, considering I'll be seeing them at Toad's this very Thursday night (all right!), the soundtrack was compiled by Britt Daniel and Brian Reitzell of Spoon, and includes instrumental sections written by them in addition to several Spoon songs, including one previously unreleased (The Book I Write).

Grab it here. Enjoy!

more lazy post

this is awesome. Here comes the marching band of The Future! make sure to check the videos.

via here.

lazy post

i'm busy. just to fill the void:



via here.

and I'm listening to rjd2.

Last.fm is quite okay.

Last.fm stations can now pop out to a separate window, or be embedded elsewhere. Are you underwhelmed?

Bands similar to The Crownhate Ruin:



Music tagged with "mash-up":



Geek note: blogger complains about the sloppy html provided by last.fm, so you have to add </embed> right before </object> for it to work.

must! buy! music!

My recent bender continued at CD Spins on Newbury St. this weekend. More in keeping with my usual habits, I managed to pick out 5 used cds for $30. The highlights were definitely the Rodan cd (Rusty, their only album, which I've been looking for for a while), and June of 44's Tropics and Meridians, which is in a similar vein (not surprisingly).

Jungle Jim - Rodan (Rusty)
June Leaf - June of 44 (Tropics and Meridians)

I also came across the second cd from Creeper Lagoon, which on first listen is pretty similar to, if a little less adventurous than (i.e. more radio-friendly, i.e. crappier than) their first album. Nonetheless a decent find for $6, and for the special place they hold in my heart from years ago.

Chance of a Lifetime - Creeper Lagoon (Take Back the Universe and Give Me Yesterday)

Then I found a single called Bang the Drum by Railroad Jerk, a mid-90s Matador band. I had one cassette of theirs in high school, and one track of theirs appears on the What's Up Matador compilation that I have. I'm no big fan or anything, but I had to buy it just to hear this cover.

Why Don't We Do It In The Road - Railroad Jerk

To top it off, my order from Dischord - Fugazi, The Argument cd and Furniture 7" - was waiting for me in the mailbox when I got back Monday morning. I feel like Cookie Monster these days. MUUUUUZIIIIIC!!! RA RA RA RA RA!!!!!

I promise more computer-web-music related stuff, as soon as I find the time. Preview: Musicast is asking for money, but still works great. Streampad is busted, but there are other options I hope to try out soon.

Forget Cassettes - The Catch cd single

New Royalty Rates Would End Internet Radio

If you like Last.fm, Pandora, Finetune, or any of the other streaming music services, you may soon be out of luck, as newly announced royalty rates would likely put them out of business. Interestingly, this could end up indirectly hurting the merger bid of satellite radio providers Sirius and XM, who argued the merger wouldn't create a monopoly in part because they were competing against internet radio as well as traditional radio.

Rather than regurgitate, I direct you to the following sources:

Consumer Affairs has an article, as does the LA Times. The latter points out in passing that this will put a huge damper on the diversity of music available to listen to online (obviously).

The Radio and Internet Newsletter has details in this post among others.
A legal perspective.
Save Internet Radio
Musick in the Head blog (more informative links)

2 other places to hang out on teh internets

I've been spending a little time at a couple of other sites lately. First, multiply.com is a community site that makes it really easy to share music & photos, keep a blog/journal, etc. It amazingly offers unlimited storage of your mp3s and everything else, which you can upload and organize into playlists. Then other users (everyone, or just your contacts) can listen and comment. My new page is here.

The other new (to me) hangout is Rate Your Music (RYM). I've been looking around for an easy and useful way to catalog my physical music collection (cds and vinyl). RYM is like a wiki for music, in that anyone can add or edit information on artists and albums. Plus, you can write reviews, rate albums, and most importantly, register which releases you own, and on what format. It looks like there are other features that could be cool, but that I haven't looked into yet, like compatibility with other users' ratings, etc. (Presumably like last.fm's neighbors.) If you want to see what I've entered so far from my collection (definitely a skewed sample), my user page is here.

If anyone has other suggestions on ways to catalog my music collection, please let me know. Delicious Library of course looks awesome, but I don't have an isight or barcode scanner and a lot of my vinyl albums don't even have bar codes anyway. Plus it costs money.

pick (podcast?) of the week

The Contrast Podcast is based on a cool idea. Each week, a theme is announced, and anyone is invited to pick a song based on the theme, record themselves giving a little introduction to the song, and send the intro and song in. The submissions are compiled on a first-come, first-included basis into a ~1 hour set for the week's episode. The handful of episodes I've listened to so far are somewhat hit and miss (songs by actors, for example, can range from somewhat funny to truly painful), but a good theme turns up some pretty cool stuff. My favorite so far is episode 45, My Favorite 45.

Next week's theme will be Why? (They've already apparently done who, what, when, and where.) So for kicks I typed "why" in my itunes search box. Check out what popped up.

a vinyl find

Big record store find this weekend! For ten bucks at Looney Tunes on Boylston St., in Boston:


Pixies - Velouria 12" single, promo copy!

Side A: Velouria, Make Believe

Side B: I've Been Waiting For You, The Thing

Years ago, I found the Gigantic and Alec Eiffel 12" singles within a relatively short time, the first at In Your Ear in Providence and the second I think somewhere in NY. I got excited at the thought of a budding Pixies vinyl collection, and ever after kept one eye out in every record store I visited. But this is the first one I've ever found since then, so it really made my day.

You can buy the Pixies "Complete B-Sides" collection at Amazon.

The Monks

The Monks - Black Monk Time

I don't remember how I came across this album, but I remember on the first listen being amazed that it was made as long ago as 1966 (same year as Pet Sounds and Revolver). I love this description (from here):

The one astounding album of proto punk/abrasive psych genius from the Monks! The album's wild organ washes, primitive drums and guitar, and harsh, bizarre vocal rants prefigured everything from the Stooges, to Rocket From The Tombs, to the more predictable punk stuff that arrived 18 years later. Outrageous and incredible!

I was sure that was meant to say Rocket From The Crypt, but no! Rocket From The Tombs, I subsequently learn, was a short-lived band that spawned Pere Ubu.

Wikipedia, as usual, has plenty more on The Monks. They were American G.I.'s stationed together in Germany. Interesting!



Marginally related trivia of the day: What band outsold the Beatles two to one in 1966, winning 4 Grammys and setting a Guinness Book world record with 5 albums simultaneously on Billboard's Pop Album chart? The answer's in the comments.

pick of the week

Check out the Kleptones' podcast, Hectic City. They usually do mixes and mash-ups, but the latest edition is just a great set of British 60's garage rock.

Stay tuned for more 60's proto-punk from The Monks.

Tom Waits

Musicast seems not to be able to deal with the aac format of the ripped Forget Cassettes album. So instead I put Tom Waits' recent 3-cd release Orphans on the player. I listened to most of it today, and Bottom of the World is a great song. Seems like everyone's either a lover or a hater when it comes to Tom. Which are you?



There are so many cool pictures of this guy. I used to have this one taped to the side of my computer in college. It was ripped out of Rolling Stone (I think) and on the other side was a picture of Brad Pitt in a shiny sparkly alien outfit.

some very good rock and roll music

I don't buy many new cds, but I just ordered several direct from Theory 8 records. I received Forget Cassettes' new album Salt for Christmas, and have been loving it. (I'll put it up in the streampad player soon.) Then today I was listening to their Theory 8 label-mates Apollo Up!, on their website, and they rock very much as well. So then I ended up at the Theory 8 site and just broke down and ordered a bunch of cds from both bands, plus one by The Sincerity Guild (check them out at purevolume or, sorry, myspace).

I'm going to try and completely avoid describing or reviewing bands here, since there's way too much of that clogging the tubes already. Besides, I think you get way more from 3 minutes listening to a song on a band's website than you get from reading Pitchfork. So there it is: I recommend these bands, and if you check them out I'd love to hear what you think. That's what the comments are for.

I have to stick this in here: here's a pandora station based on these bands.

Isn't this fun?

intro

this is just a rough list off the top of my head, but it gives you, the dangermusic blog early adopter, an idea of what i might post on, if i ever post.

the big news for now is combining itunes, musicast, and streampad to bring you the embedded player on the left, streaming a playlist from my home computer. (if it doesn't work at the moment, my computer's asleep.)

streampad is still getting the bugs worked out, but this was all very easy to set up. the only new thing i learned was how to forward ports through my airport base station. more on all these in later posts (maybe).

itunes
musicast
streampad

other stuff:

hype machine: music blog aggregator
pandora: custom internet radio
pandora stations: other people's custom internet radio
foxytunes: firefox music player extension add-on

itunes signature maker
ourmedia
(to make and host, respectively, the audio clip on my blogger profile.)

picasa web albums:

From dangermusicblog