Well, I'm going to play it again.  Because someone has to:

Eli "Paperboy" Reed and the True Loves - Take My Love with You (mp3) (buy)

Disappointed the band (myspace) didn't play this, more so than I could be when Radiohead didn't get to "Let Down."  Because of the odds - Reed and his band has one album and a couple singles, and even in a short set you'd think they'd play their best number - and because this is the song, kids.  Huge and bright, it slips into your stride, it sticks to your sternum, it does just what it says it do, it travels.  I've found myself bursting out singing this thing - yes, in the street, in the crowd, when I'm home all alone, like the man says - more than almost any other number this year.

It was a rainy day, and that's a shame.  Bill mentioned it would otherwise have been the perfect day for unassuming walk-ins, a straightforward and satisfying bill of Soul and Americana.  The wet hit hardest during Reed's set; the crowd was thin but seemed happy, the band was pretty tight.

I still think they'd impress more had they some style.  Suits n' shit.  Guitarist Ryan Spraker was wearing a sleeveless Red Sox T (which inspired some light back-and-forth with the crowd over who's going to lose the division to Tampa Bay) and water wings.  Because it's a pool, dig.  Dressing up might seem like playing hard at retro shtick, and I get that, it's good to make the point that this sound works just as well now.  But when The Sweet Divines came out to join the True Loves on "Satisfier" wearing uniform yellow, they were a giant batch of sunshine up there.

I could complain further - Reed needs to get out from behind his guitar more, something he didn't do at all during this show - but I complain because I love.  This was the third time I've seen these guys this year, I'm sure it's not the last.  There's plenty of good stuff on their record.

But they should never not play "Take My Love with You."  They should always play it.  They should always play it twice.

The only other time I've seen Langhorne Slim (myspace) was as a solo opener (I forget for whom) at Southpaw, where crowds traditionally drown out early acts.  There he seemed an intense, but not particularly memorable, folkie.  But stand him up and give him a backing band and he's quite the showman.  I still don't find much of his material impressive, but he hauls out his upmost, jumping and snarling and stuff.  Has his fans.

"This is a hillbilly song, because that's what we are.  Hillbillies."  The Felice Brothers (myspace) seemed a bit tipsy, did not fall down.  Two of the three siblings have the gaunt moonshiner/meth addict thing going on, the third is Country Bear Jamboree.  There's also a fiddle/washboard player, and a bassist who (apparently) also plays "dice" professionally.

They're more fun when they don't harp heavy on the Dylan, though they ramble across some good lines when they do. 

The drummer said this gig got them in trouble with TPTB at APW (which they played the day previous) because Brooklyn's too close to Jersey.  "Gotta play the pool!"  I think he added a "yo" after that, I'm not sure.

More pics.

*

Five most embarrassing songs I've caught myself singing in public lately:

"Intellectualize My Blackness," Skunk Anansie

"Queen of the World," Ida Maria

"You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman," Aretha Franklin

"I Feel Pretty" from West Side Story

"Rock and Roll Nas s/t album," Patti Smith

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If you're in New York and you go to anything other than this show tonight you sort of don't love music.  Sorry, it's true.  Hand in your license.

Don't be afraid that you might not know anything about it!  That never matters.  I don't know much of anything either!  Just go.  It's not exactly a common opportunity.  And it looks to be beautiful outside.  Also:  Free!

Or I guess you could go listen to the same shit you do every other day.

Here, maybe these will help:

Alèmayèhu Eshèté - Tchero Adari Negn (mp3) (buy)

Alèmayèhu Eshèté -  Yeweyn Haregitu (mp3) (buy)

Gétatchèw Mèkurya - Yègènèt Muziqa (mp3) (buy)

That stuff sounds old because it is.  Those tracks are taken from the 20+ volume Ethiopiques series (the best of is a good place to start).  What these guys sound like now - Eshèté was considered the Ethiopian James Brown, Mèkurya an incendiary jazz sax player - and what they sound like collaborating with the Massachusetts-based Either/Orchestra's longform jazz and Dutch punk innovators The Ex, well, I guess I'll find out in a few hours.

The concert will also be broadcast live on WFMU; schedule and sounds and actual info here.

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I know it's been established that this is like the most necessary alt-blog ever.  It can be hilarious and/or thought-provoking(!).  Also:  Annoying!  I know I'm not part of its mock-peer group/facebook friendbase/clique/fan squad/donkey hooker/street team/target demo/twittr coven/whatever.  (I'm going for my first walker-fitting next Tuesday!)  But Hipster Runoff tries so hard at being what it is, and - due to either the author's inability to extract himself from character, or a desire to bludgeon the audience into believing the wink-nudge satire is ironically sincere (or vice versa, whatever) - tries so much that it dilutes itself beyond tolerability.

I'd like you a lot more if there were a lot less of you.

Or maybe I'd just prefer not to be confronted by the suspicion that I'm going to spend the next ten years wanting to punch every member of that gen-alt-aught in the face.  Preferably while they're texting someone.

(Do u hate the youngs?  Do u rlly fear obsolessence?  Duzit bother u when i stand on ur lawn?  Are boundaries important 2u?  Is punctuation

This has been the first installment of a series I'm calling "Dropped From My RSS Reader."  Next week:  Me!

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• Everywhere You Go (Eli "Paperboy" Reed & The True Loves/The Sweet Divines, Union Hall, 2/16/08)
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Stars Like Fleas - I Was Only Dancing (mp3) (buy)

If you're at all like me - and if you are, support group meets Tuesday, bring cupcakes - your first thought after pressing that Play arrow up there was that it couldn't change into a Stop square soon enough.  Montgomery Knott doesn't sound like he was expecting the song to start, or like he's ever tried that falsetto before.  Get back to me when you're ready, go home and practice, take two, next.

Atalllikemes of the world are advised to stick with it.  A lot of what makes Shannon Fields' and Knott's gentle, noodley Brooklyn collective Stars Like Fleas (myspace) a good listen is that they stumble into, and around, and sometimes right past their songs.  "Dancing" is a lot less interesting when it comes together into its soaring happyshit chorus about sunshine or something (there's tambourine, of course).  This stuff isn't about waiting for inspiration to strike.  And it's not some sort of pointillistic journey-as-destination meant to congeal into a whole.  Just go soaking in it and hope your moods match.

What I like best about that song kicks around its edges.  The Americana instrumentation - the banjo, lap steel, fiddle (and it's played like a fiddle, not one of the 101 dull, earnest strings currently saturating Indiedom).  The weird way how, after the song should have ended, Knott comes back sounding like Eddie Vedder.  I'm less about the airy anthem and more about grounded fills.

Wanted to go "Dancing" first just as evidence that there are some songs on the band's latest record, The Ken Burns Effect, and there are more single-ready indie rock tracks ("Berbers in Tennis Shoes," "You Are My Memoir").  There's also the requisite amount of improvisatory dickingaroundness, which can be wildly hit-or-miss.  Submitted as a positive example:

Stars Like Fleas - Early Riser (mp3) (buy)

(Watch out.  It starts tea-kettle screechy.)

Okay, love this.  Could be operating under the power of suggestion, but the piece perfectly captures a state of morningness.  There's both a pre-caffeinated haze and an early hour crispness.  The la-la-las might be precious and xylophone might be too-obvious.  But there's something so unassuming and intimate about the piece.  One leg at a time.  It feels like a genuine private moment, and if you're not warming to it immediately perhaps that because I'm using it right now, wait your turn.

A spiritual cousin:

Pink Floyd, "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast" (div'd into two parts)

Atom Heart Mother existed solely for its titular Suite, a brass-riffed prog slog that filled the album's first side.  (And I love the Suite, don't get me wrong.  Post-pubescent me can still avoid stepping back and acknowledging that much of the band's determinations toward bombastic profundity were sorta silly.  I don't just admire or scoff at the effort, I get into that shit.)    Everything else is B material, though after weathering a twenty-three minute-plus piece it's nice to run into something as simple and unnecessary as "If" or "Fat Old Sun."

"Breakfast," though, has always been filler.  Thirteen minutes of dabbling, bridged by sounds of Floyd roadie Alan Stiles talking about, preparing, eating his Wheaties.  Some tinkering would pay off later, better; sounds like Gilmour's center section was a slide rehearsal for "Fearless," and less-specific (and therefore, again, pseudo-profound) captured chatter would enhance Dark Side of the Moon.

The last bit still feels a bit much for this time of day, but the first two-thirds are peaceful and unassuming and funny.  Stars Like Fleas gets the job done better in a quarter of the time, which is good, because you've got places to go and shit to do and no time to waste listening to a goddamn roadie masticate.

Pop tarts who crave sugar on their grits, here's your up'n@em:

Matthew Sweet - Morning Song (mp3) (buy)

2003's Kimi ga suki * Raifu was recorded quickly, at home, with Richard Lloyd and Greg Leisz ("essentially making this a Girlfriend-era line-up," Sweet notes in the CD booklet, though, um, Robert Quine, sigh).  It was meant to be a Japan-only release, and was for a while, but wound up being way too good for that.  "Morning" is a direct and lovely bit of carpe diem, looks to the light, refuses to loose its shadow.

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Before writing this entry, I bent at the waist in a ninety-degree angle and flapped my arms in a mighty condor-aping motion.  Just so you know.

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"Sounds like a horn full of mayonnaise."

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Keith Richards has really let himself go. (via)

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Have been enjoying the variety over at floodwatchmusic.

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Also, this Girl Talk essay.

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And no, this is not me.  Like, duh.  I have at least one too many blogs as it is.

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Celebrate Brooklyn's fifteenth annual all-day African festival was actually the third date on their schedule this summer highlighting artists from that continent.  I'd missed the shows with Salif Keita and Sibongile Khumalo (who'd been subbing for an injured Miriam Makeba). These six-and-a-half hours went very quickly, the two closing acts were exceptional.  Last to first:

I don't get the feeling Oliver "Tuku" Mtukudzi (dead? myspace) spends much time sitting still.  In his late fifties, his bio claims forty-six records, original music updating forms from his native Zimbabwe (Shona mbira music, Korekore rhythms, jit) and mixing in elements of soukous, soul, and South African mbaqanga.  Or so I've read.  Yeah, words words words.  Music:

Oliver Mtukudzi - Dzoka Uyamwe (mp3) (buy)

Warning:  That song will bounce around your head for days.

I'm a sucker for marimba and I love the way its rhythm bubbles under, and somehow connects with, the guitar line, how the vocals and bassline rock the song back and forth, how the drum sticks to fills and how its high-hat pops in and out of what seems like the only upper-register space available.  This song's a great example of what I like about a lot of Afropop; however heavily involved the interplay of elements and influences, it's bright and accessible and invigorating.

Live, Mtukudzi is the only guitarist in his band, which surprised me.  Tall and bony, he dances both with and without his instrument, going through loose routines with a pair of female percussionists/back-up singers, doing a bit of rock star back-to-back with his marimbist.  His act's the best sort of machine, where practiced but playful pros go at their work with a little sloppy love.

I'd wondered if Mtukudzi - known as much for his serious lyrical content as his light touch - might address the current situation in his homeland.  He did so gently, indirectly, with a brief story about how young people come up to their elders and complain how much harder their lives are.  "There's no easy life," he said, smiling.

*

The first half of Habib Koité's set was awesome in a way I'm unable to describe.  Nothing stunning happened, it wasn't boisterous or demonstrative or anything other than performers performing.  Everything just clicked.  (The second half got quieter and more serious and was only really great.)

Habib Koité & Bamada - Fimani (mp3) (buy Afriki)

Habib Koité & Bamada - Fatma (mp3) (buy Muso Ko)

Both Koité and Mtukudzi have had albums released domestically by Putumayo - full records, not just contributions to one of the label's many coffee clutch compilations.  That brand can be the target of scorn, due to its softness or success; Koité's latest record, Afriki, is smooth sounding, especially when compared with his first (the only one I currently have to compare it with).  And both artists have, weirdly, Bonnie Raitt connections (she has covered Mtukudzi, collaborated with Koité, performed with both).  Accessibility doesn't have to denote edgelessness or cultural detachment.  Koité's bio calls him a "modern griot," makes much about both his family's role as traditional musicians and the Malian guitarist's innovative tuning.

What matters most, as always, is what a legitimate live presence the music has.  And the music completely fills the stage, the audience.  Most of the band, Bamada, just stands there and goes to work.  Or sits:  Whereas Mtukudzi's marimbist is showy (plays behind his back!) and positioned at the front of the stage, Koité's elderly balafonist is tucked away on a stool in back.  Koité himself is fierce, poised, gracious.  Against all that, talking drum player Mahamadou Koné explodes all over the place like a sugared-up kid at an adult party, occasionally getting the bandleader to smile and break form to good effect.

I loved most these sore-thumb runs Koité would loose, which made me think less about any connection he might have with fellow Malian Ali Farka Touré than the connection between Albert Collins and John Lee Hooker.

It's great music-making, and if they're near you you should see them.  There are more U.S. dates on Koité's myspace.  They're play four straight nights in Seattle this week before moving on to California and Chicago.  Go.

*

Daby Touré - All is Full of Love (Björk Cover)(mp3) (buy)

Mauritanian Daby Touré (myspace) was frustrated for most of his set with the sound problems and crowd indifference.  He kept imploring people to get up and dance by saying, "This is not a film!"  That's not something subsequent acts would have to say, their music said it for them.  Touré's stuff is more coffee-clutch that theirs, very contemporary singer-songwriter stuff.  Occasionally he'll start using his acoustic guitar as a percussion instrument, which is good, but mostly his three-piece band rocks soft.  They walked off stage after a short set; they came back on, sort of awkwardly.  It felt less like an encore than as if someone told them they had better get out and earn their dough.  And they were better, then!

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Yossi Fine (myspace) is a Brooklyn resident, Paris-born, of Israeli and West Indian descent.  A bassist and producer, he spent some stage time looping together a song, more time jamming along to a conceptual Israeli-Palestinian collaboration he'd patched together.  Which was good, and a nice change of pace (though the day felt like it offered plenty of variety), but watching someone slap bass to playback doesn't make for much of a show.

Thank goodness he brought along kora player Balla Tounkara (myspace), who refuses to just stand there and thumb it in.

*

Extra Golden - OK-Oyot System (mp3) (buy)

Half-black/half-white half-Kenyan/half-US benga hybrid Extra Golden (myspace) have a high indie profile, a good story, and a song called "Obama," but they came off mostly lifeless and lacking.  Could have been the early start time, could be that a band formed as a collaboration between a couple dudes from an Ohioan rock band (one of whom does time as an ethnomusicologist) and a Kenyan musician loses more than a little something when the Kenyan musician passes away.  Guitarist-singer Opiyo Bilongo, who joined the band after Otieno Jagwasi's death, seemed like the only one who was out there enjoying himself.

I like this band's first record quite a bit - that's its title track, above, and it was one of the strongest songs that Sunday - and I'll give them another shot at this amazing WFMU-curated bill on August 20th.

I've never heard any other benga music!  I should probably find some.

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Also there:  AfricanLoft, Audiologo, Emonome, A gNat's World View, The Green New Yorker

More pics here. 

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That King Khan & BBQ show at Cake Shop last October?  The whole thing's on video, streaming at Pitchfork.tv.  Which I guess is a good thing?

And, um, no, I didn't get the date wrong, the thing knocked me right into tomorrow.

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Their show's conception and execution is top-notch, this is a great band, no arguments.  The set list was pretty much what I expected, if not what I'd hoped.  My bad for not seeing them back when they were making records I loved; it wouldn't make sense for them to include more than five songs that are over ten years old, right?  When they actually got to Bends material in the encore, "Paranoid Android" was one of the few songs delivered dully (the crowd reaction made up the difference).  They're not that band, anymore, I shouldn't expect them to be, my fault for not seeing them back when we were more like-minded.

So I'll let the rest of the internet go gushy over this performance.  I liked when the staging - staggered vertical lighting slats, quilted video of extreme close-ups from fixed onstage cameras - got minimal; "Nude" came from under amber icicles, "You and Whose Army" had Yorke mugging mock-ominously into a lens mounted on his piano.  Radiohead's very much a rock band, and Yorke is a warmer, more active presence than I'd expected (though between-song crowd interaction was pretty much limited to him trying to say "New Joisey" in an appropriate accent).  But so much of their material over the last ten years, including much from In Rainbows (which took up more than 2/3rds of the 2+ hour show) falls on me like filler.

I was talking with someone before the performance how, if I wanted to hear all the songs I wanted to hear, I'd pretty much have to see them a dozen times, now.  But I left tired - and a lot of that was fatigue from the venue and the day - and not wanting to see them again.  Great band, not my band, carry on.

*

Before Radiohead, Columbia U Prof and Uma-Dad Robert Thurman came out to talk about Tibet and... came off as a total flake.  "Tibet is a major thing happening now," was his opening line.  Then he said, "Oh, look at the moon, it looks really nice."  Which it might have!  But.  He paid a lot of lip service toward selling a charity CD that includes tracks from Sting and Vanessa Carlton, and got booed when he mentioned one of his books.

*

The rest of this festival's line-up consisted of opening acts for Radiohead.  I wasn't feeling jumpy/dancey, so wound up sticking with lower-keyed acts.  Quickly:

Duke Spirit (myspace) - They're exciting, energetic, the material really isn't anything special.  Passable fun.  Stayed for three songs, would have come in earlier and caught more of them, only I didn't.

Forro in the Dark (myspace) - Took a while for things to catch, but they did.  Entirely pleasant, you would want to be stuck in SOB's with these guys for an evening.

Michael Franti and Spearhead (myspace)- Haven't listened to anything from these guys since that "Hole in a Bucket" song (which they did not play, despite the appropriate economy).  Franti used up all his audience directives in the very first song - everybody jump, wave your arms, clap your hands, let me hear you sing la la la - and then repeated them endlessly.  You know, I appreciate the invitation to jump, nice to know it's out there, I will feel free to jump from then on when I fucking feel like it.  Pat your head and rub your tummy while making some noyeeeeeeez!

Anyway, good-spirited stuff, delivered with a lot of positive energy.  Okay mid-afternoon material.

Whoever did the video should be shot.  Crowd hoochie ogling, distracting ten cent f/x (during a protest song dedicated to our troops overseas, a giant hand of Zuul came up and crunched the singer's image), and throughout the performance, there was a half-beat delay between the live act and the video, a clap-along nightmare.  Luckily, the main stage was the only of the three to have video, and Franti and Radiohead were the only acts I saw there.

Duffy (myspace)- Was she the reason the middle stage was running a half-hour behind?  I only heard two songs, while I was in line too pee, which seemed the ideal circumstances for her act.

Grizzly Bear (myspace) - These guys make music that's very pretty or pretty dull.  The less straightforward they are, the better the cause.  The only other time I saw them was at the Bowery Ballroom; they were my third show that day, after Jerry Lee Lewis and Rodrigo y Gabriella, and they made for an engaging wind-down.  At that show all five musicians - Owen Pallett was playing with them - were looping themselves, and it worked.   This performance had much less of that.

One of the positives about APW's sparse line-up is that acts got longer-than-usual festival set-times.  Grizzly Bear got a full hour, only used half of it.

Andrew Bird (myspace) - So we waited a long time for Bird, because you need to be up close to totally enjoy what he does.  I'm a little angry at him, because when I saw him at Southpaw a few years back he declared that venue a good luck charm and said he'd always play it; he hasn't returned since.  Now he's playing the Beacon Theater.  And headlining a stage, here!  Good for him, but squeeze in a Park Slope stop please.

Bird's an incredible musician and watching him (and drummer/keyboardist Martin Dosh) loop together his lush stuff doesn't get dull.  Since I've last seen him he's gotten more confident and assertive; at Southpaw he had to restart a couple songs.  Here, full steam ahead.  He's even added a pair of completely superfluous backing musicians.

Bird's gotten bored with his material to the extent that much of it is too radically reworked.  By necessity, his songs change live.  Before, they were merely elongated.  Now they're stretched and picked at in odd directions, and you're sometimes deep in before you realize what you're listening to.  Which can be a fantastic display of creative restlessness!  And he remains a must-see act.  But it's also really nice just to hear a song that you love exist as you love it.

As I rushed by Girl Talk (myspace) on the way to squeeze in for Radiohead, there were giant inflated condom-like tubes being passed over the ecstatic crowd, and Gillis' chipmunked version of "The Weight" was pumping out of the speakers.  When you're not game, it sure does feel like a fanny-load, don't it?

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I really don't want to talk about the commute.  I REALLY DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT.

One thing aspect was a major let-down:  Festivals like these bring together a lot of different and different-sized acts... but from what I saw yesterday it never felt like APW brought any of them together.  Just allowed them slots and space.  Collaborations, crossovers, covers... nothing.  Just regular, solid sets.  Nothing extraordinary or special to warrant the inconvenience and discomfort of a "festival" experience.  It felt like a musical shopping mall.

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Local H (myspace) fall tour dates have been announced, confirming an (apparently extended 60-minute) opening slot for Electric Six.  Toronto's Golden Dogs will be the early opener.  They pass through The Khyber (yikes, should be packed - tix) in Philly on 11/20 and Webster Hall in NYC on Saturday, 11/22 (tix not yet available).

Go!

Before all that, there's a FREE appearance in Philadelphia at Penn's Landing.  Also at that one:  (will not judge will not judge will not) Candlebox.  Hey, "You" was a good song, right?

Dates:

• 8/13 - Merrionette Park, IL - 115 Bourbon St. (Scott Lucas solo)
• 8/30 - Philadelphia, PA - Festival Pier at Penn's Landing - FREE
• 9/14 - Chicago, IL - Q101 Block Party
• 9/20 - Maryland Heights, MO - Verizon Wireless Theater
• 9/27 - Salt Lake City, UT - USANA Amphitheatre
• 10/18 - Grand Rapids, MI - The Intersection *^
• 10/20 - Columbus, OH - Newport Music Hall *^
• 10/21 - Indianapolis, IN - The Vogue *^
• 10/22 - St. Louis, MO - FUBAR *^
• 10/23 - Milwaukee, WI - Turner Hall
• 10/24 - Dekalb, IL - Otto's Niteclub & Underground *
• 10/25 - Madison, WI - High Noon Saloon *^
• 10/26 - Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue *^
• 10/27 - Fargo, ND - The Aquarium *^
• 10/29 - Omaha, NE - The Waiting Room *^
• 10/30 - Lawrence, KS - Jackpot Saloon *^
• 10/31 - Denver, CO - Bluebird Theater *^
• 11/1 - Salt Lake City, UT - The Paladium *^
• 11/3 - Seattle, WA - Neumo's *^
• 11/4 - Portland, OR - Berbati's Pan *^
• 11/6 - San Francisco - Great American Music Hall *^
• 11/7 - West Hollywood, CA - Key Club *^
• 11/8 - San Diego, CA - Casbah *^
• 11/9 - Tuscon, AZ - Plush *^
• 11/10 - Tempe, AZ - The Clubhouse *^
• 11/12 - Dallas, TX - Granada Theatre *^
• 11/13 - Austin, TX - Emo's *^
• 11/14 - Baton Rouge, LA - Spanish Moon *^
• 11/15 - Atlanta, GA - Lenny's *^
• 11/17 - Spartanburg, SC - Ground Zero *^
• 11/18 - Carrboro, NC - Cat's Cradle *^
• 11/19 - Washington DC - Black Cat *^
• 11/20 - Philadelphia, PA - The Khyber (tix)*^
• 11/21 - Cambridge, MA - Middle East *^
• 11/22 - New York, NY - Webster Hall *^
• 11/24 - Buffalo, NY - Tralf *^
• 11/25 - Cleveland, OH - Grog Shop *^
• 11/26 - Millvale, PA - Mr. Smalls *^
• 11/28 - Covington, KY - Madhatter Club *^
• 11/29 - Detroit, MI - St. Andrews Hall *^

* - with Electric Six      ^ - with Golden Dogs

If you don't already own Twelve Angry Months, something is wrong with you.  Drink, you motherfucking horses.  The two performances below -the first time these two songs were played live, I think - are from the last night of the band's week-long Chicago stand in May.  "Kid" we've talked about before, "Taxi Cabs" is a real grower.  With fins on fire!

Local H, “Taxi Cabs” (live)

Local H, "The One with Kid" (live)

This might be least favorite song on Months, but that means it's still better than most everything else.  And it fits nicely with that Office Guy Freaks Out vid:

Local H, "Blur"

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Be Your Own Pet - Bunk Trunk Skunk (mp3) (buy Be Your Own Pet)

According to a brief (of course), polite (!) announcement, after a few European obligations are phoned in it's RIPBYOP (myspace).  We need more fun, sharp punk bands, more girls that rock out, more groups like this one.

The album that they'll end their career on, Get Awkward, was gutted of its best songs before release.  Someone at their label - Thurston Moore, or that fishchick on the Starbucks cup, or someone else - was shocked (shocked!) at the violent content in "Black Hole" ("Breaking glass bottles is oh so fun, let's go and kill someone") and the with-us/against-us j.d. anthem "Becky" ("me and her will kick your ass, we'll wait with knives after class," "now I'm going to juvie for teenage homicide... but I don't regret what I done because in the end it was fun").  This after Jemina Pearl Abegg drowned her boyfriend on their first record and sang "I'm sorry.  I'm not sorry.  I'm sorry.  I'm not sorry!"

Suffer thee, music fans smart enough to know the difference between urge and intent.  (The excised songs have since been released on the EP Get Damaged.)

The brief existence works for these guys, though.  Not because their music was centered on destruction, but because it celebrated passing enthusiasm.  At its best, Be Your Own Pet was about yelling at, or about, a moment.  Joyous tantrums.  There it goes!  No brakes!  As soon as Rolling Stone started touting the Nashville group as "Artists to Watch" their finger-painting days were numbered.

Be Your Own Pet - Creepy Crawl (mp3) (buy Get Awkward)

Abegg's usually convincing because the songs are terse and direct and she throws herself right at them.  "Crawl's" a shock - more so than any of the band's so-called violence - because it gravitates toward question marks.  There's the boldness of displaying indiscretionary guilt without caring about forgiveness, but there's no pride.  This relationship is over, the desire was a symptom, but the action wasn't a direction, where do I go from here?

Wherever.  This is a band that had at least two songs about zombies so they'll all be back in some form.  In lieu of flowers, punch the air, that gassy motherfucker had it coming, yeah.

Be Your Own Pet, "Black Hole" (live)

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Meanwhile, it's tea time for Chris Cornell.

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Wait.

Erykah Badu - The Healer (mp3) (buy)

Badu released a weird, indulgent, amazing record in February that will wind up near, if not at, the top of critics' lists come the end of 2008.  If people aren't talking about New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War as often as they're buzzing over mayfly indie bands, it's because the work is hard to talk about.  Like you need qualifications - doctorates and merit badges and an acquired level of chemical assistance/resistance - to do so.  Everything everyone is saying is right, and everything everyone is saying is not enough.

Not to scare anyone away.  This isn't difficult listening!  (My first reaction was Stevie Wonder's best period + early hip hop.)  It just requires listening.  It's substantial stuff, deeply political and personal, mood-driven, stream-of-consciousness-shaped.  It's the work of a unique (how often can you use that word?  seriously?) artist, but so situated in something larger that you feel you should know the entirety of the world to allow it its proper context.  Okay, not as expansive as all that, nothing needs that much hype, but Amerykah's power comes from its ability to imply connections to things outside itself - musically, politically, spiritually, people-ly - without losing any of its identity.

Bah, me and my hopeless vagueness.  Easier to say Get the Record! (it's less than $10 at Amazon) and let you mull it over yourself.  Let me know if you come up with a good word for the magic in that track up there.

Last night's live show was... well, it was odd, often in good ways.  If it wasn't the had-to-be-there show Sasha Frere-Jones described back in May, it ranked at least a should-have-been.  About a half-hour in, the Fort Greene resident bade Brooklyn "Good night."  Ninety minutes later, it seemed like she'd never leave.  Badu might be unstuck in time, or something.  Somehow the band (Which seemed sizable, from where I was sitting. There's a flautist.  Who sometimes switches to panpipes.) follows.  She breaks beats, constantly, with "Wait."  And it should be frustrating, at best playful, but instead it focuses, centers.  Badu has so much presence and power when she simply. stands. still.  Wait.  Watching her is sort of like watching one of those older, crazier Cat Power shows - but one where most of the spaghetti sticks, one where the spaghetti has a philosophy, one worth watching.

Philosophical spaghetti, sure, yes.

Just as New Amerykah flows on its own terms, Badu starts and stops and restarts songs wherever she thinks they belong.  Wait.  She sticks with "The Healer" even she forgets the lyrics, replacing them with "Shit/Oh shit."  Et cetera.  She reprises the song later in the show, not to cover lost ground, and not to close a circle, but because a little of that belonged back there, and now more of it belongs here, too.

Some things didn't work.  Several things, actually.  She stopped the show early on, tucked a drum under her arm and went off on a horrible, horrible solo.  And she spent a lot of time alone at an electronic drum pad, amusing mostly herself.  "What the hell is she doing?" someone asked near me.  "Whatever the hell she feels like" someone answered.  The crowd where I was got restless, Badu seemed testy.  Right after she seemed to threaten to shut the whole thing down, she hissed:  "I see what this is, Brooklyn.  I see what y'all are trying to pull.   Y'all came to have church.  Let's have church."

But she warmed up and connected as the show went on.  Standing there in a shiny sternum-baring jumpsuit, smiling out from under piles of (what I assume to be) someone else's hair, she speechified a bit, talking about the film that inspired the name of her new record, getting political in an initially flakey, ultimately knowing way.  (She thanked Obama for what he has already accomplished, but concluded that "We don't need a new president, we need a whole new system.")  She railed against an economy based on "fear and consumption," then introduced her new single ("Soldier").  When she did so, she first asked permission, then joked about demanding love.  "Keep in mind I'm an artist and I'm sensitive about my shit."  She was going to do whatever the hell she felt like, anyway.

When she made full contact kids in the street outside the fence put their hands up, there were fireworks, victory laps.  A staccato riff on the glock-cock-lockness from Worldwide Underground's "Danger" left bruises.  A climactic walk through the audience during "Bag Lady" - during which she joked/praised the enthusiastic, tone-free folks in the up-front friends-of section who got to "Ooooooo" into her mic as fearless - suggested she was hitting her stride two hours in.  Unfortunately, by then, the crowd back by me had thinned out.

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The crowd booed a pre-show invocation when it denounced marijuana.  It was okay with most of the other stuff it was for/against.

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Also there:  Daily Session (comments), DenseMedia Domain, Dip Dip Dive (ex-Status Ain't Hood), Dominic: The War Journal, Hello, Babar (for Vibe), Me & My Misadventures, move, My Cure for Insomnia, Ngala- Najla, The Next in Line, now_thendischord, Screaming Silence, The Sinner's Blog, You Damn Right

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The sin of these Marty Markowitz-produced concert series is that they treat ordinary people as second-class citizens.  Oh, they are free shows - like the ones at Central Park, Prospect Park, McCarren Park Pool, the River-to-River shows, the list now goes on and on.  But unlike any of those, regular people have no chance to get anywhere near the stage.  Huge seated areas are cordoned and copped off for very-importants and press; the VIP area at Wingate Field seems the size of three Bowery Ballrooms (though because of the seats, doesn't fit 1600 people).  Like all such sections, I'm sure that actual fans manage their way in, fans-with-connections, maybe sponsors have giveaways.  Markowitz, pre-show, enjoyed recognizing certain people in the section, fellow civil servants.  He also mentioned an armed forces unit three separate times, finally dedicating the show to them.  I'm sure there are some people who deserve to be in there, some people who need to be in there.  And I'm aware that free shows don't pay for themselves, and surely seats are offered as compensation (there was a giant Applebee's tent right off to the side of the stage in addition to the VIP section).  But the fenced-in area with its little white seats stands as the city's biggest Douchebag Pit, a testament to casual privilege when contrasted with the thousands of real fans who waited for hours in lines that stretched around the park.  These are free shows, but freer for some than others.

"You're always guaranteed a seat if you bring your own!" he announced helpfully as people with lawn chairs and blankets set up way, way, back from the stage.  First come, first serve?  First come, fuck you!

Markowitz, my borough's president, has hosted his concert series in Coney Island for thirty years; this series in Wingate Field has been going for twenty-six.  Bless the man for the intent, if not the execution.  I don't know much about him.  When introducing the events I've attended, he has spoken with an effusive love for his borough and its people; I'm sure some of that's genuine, some of it's probably politicking, I don't know.  And I don't mean any criticism to come from a place of ingratitude.  They're free!  But it's doubly unfortunate that his two series are the highest-profile free offerings off the hipster-trodden paths (plenty of white folks did make it to the Badu concert, which wasn't even mentioned in the Village Voice's print edition).

The Coney Island shows in Asser Levy/Seaside Park alternate long-established mainstream artists with campy wash-ups - this week it's Liza, the series ends with Huey Lewis and the News.  I saw Al Green there a couple years ago.  Behind the large VIP section, additional $5 or $10 seats were set up for paying customers - redefining the whole "free concert" experience.  The majority of these stayed empty as freeloaders spilled out into the surrounding streets, craning their necks to catch what they could from giant video screens. Before that concert, Markowitz mentioned a desire - soon to be realized -to build an amphitheater on the spot that would compete with Long Island's Jones Beach and Jersey's PNC Arts Center for outdoor summer shows.  Which is great, though I wonder if this Seaside series will become even less free than it has been.

Just south of Crown Heights, the Wingate shows - dubbed the Martin Luther King Jr. Concert Series - feature mostly black artists.  The only other show I've attended there was a couple years ago, The Mighty Sparrow (back, this year, on August 18th); it's the last time I was called "white boy" mock-threateningly.  Wish that would happen more often!  The atmosphere for that show was inhospitable.  I was bag-checked and frisked three times; the whole surrounding area was barricaded off like a war zone; when leaving the park before the end of the show, I was forced to walk several blocks out of the way.  A woman leaving at the same time as I, then, yelled at a cop, "You wouldn't be treating people like this if it was Park Slope!"  Last night, despite lines wrapped around the park, the approach and exit were far more friendly.

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I'm not usually one for music blogs that're all-tunes-no-talk, but this site popped up on yon Hype Machine the other day; it's packed with some very good, sometimes very odd, stuff.  If you want a feel, just stream through the playlist.  Anyone who puts Rahsaan Roland Kirk up against your ears is worth listening to.

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Benn loxo is in Beijing through mid-September, having the shit hosting out of him.

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I do not give a shit about Brett Favre or overweight kitties and I want that ON RECORD.

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This DVD set strikes me as necessary.

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"We'll back up Amy Winehouse."  (via Idolator)  My regrets over missing Sunday's King Khan/Deerhunter/Black Lips show at McCarren Park Pool were wiped away by (1) Habib Koité's amazing set in Prospect Park and (2) that video clip.  Let's face it:  The only difference between bad basic cable and your blog entries and Flickr'd snaps, now, is audience size.  Everything's one giant promotional schlong.  And I don't - you can't! - resent bands seeking to broaden their audience.  But making MTV part of your weekly shindig reveals the whole Pool Party thing (soon-to-be nationalized!) less a cool community place-to-go/thing-to-do than an elaborate 1.0 community-branding enterprise. I guess that should have been obvious from the start!  God, I'm a moron.

The longer I live, the more I realize that every moment spent under a rock is Quality Time.

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Related Entries:

• "Please Don't Close Your Door" (Oliver Mtukudzi/ Habib Koité/ Daby Touré/Yossi Fine/Extra Golden, Prospect Park Bandshell, 8/03/08)
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I've come to see if I can erase, or at least absolve, the guilt from the pleasure I've gotten from We Love You, the debut from garage glam rockers Semi Precious Weapons (myspace).  I wrote about them before, when they were giving the Tony Visconti-produced record away for free; everything I said there stands (the album is being officially released on Razor & Tie September 30th with additional tracks).  If you snoot your schnozz at wallow-in-basics rock music, move on; if you slobber over slick licks in polished songs, jump in, raise some horns, wag your tongue.

"We're very subtle."  SPW is Justin Tranter's band, everything good and bad about it comes from that.  The singer's tall - more so in stiletto boots - and lean and frighteningly limber (there are splits, and taint-stretching high kicks, and he's given to throwing a leg over his bandmates' shoulders when they solo).  A thick muss of platinum fooshes out on top.  Eye sockets gunked with black, torn sleeveless black t under a white dress shirt, black spandex stretch pants.  (I'm sure there are fancier names for everything he's wearing.)  "Can you believe I look this fabulous on a Monday?"  It's all about making sure everything's in place, teasing it out.  Even when he trips, he turns it into a meant-to-do-that crawl into the crowd, returning with a willing audience member and staging a quick make-out session.  His voice is reedy and accurate; he's got a very pretty falsetto.  Insults, compliments, he is obnoxious and sweet.  He is gloriously effeminate, he won't stop demanding that you show him your tits.

It's Tranter's band, but they're all up there playing rock star.  Guitarist Aaron Lee Tasjan (who looks a bit like Paul Rudd) is modest with his chops and has a lower-keyed demeanor, but he's not above strutting to the tip of the stage and working his rock face.  His upper half's swathed in layers of shiny disco gypsy stuff, waist down he's jeans and sneaks.  The bassist is disturbingly active, like he's either taken too much or too little of something.  Might have fleas.

Semi Precious Weapons - Rock n Roll Never Looked So Beautiful (mp3) (preorder)

All the songs are sturdy, but there's A and B material tucked into We Love You's thirty-six minutes.  Though folks might sort their columns differently.  I'm still a huge sucker for the power ballad "Time Zones."  Almost worth starting a three pack-a-day habit so you're sure to have a lighter handy when that one kicks in.  I'm not fond of the built-to-provoke "That's Kunt" or "Jesus."  And there's a problem with a band as calculated as this swinging for the Big Anthem too often.  All the choruses are plied as arena-sized cheers.  The otherwise awesome "Magnetic Baby" devolves into something like "Here's my fist, there's a song, do you want to sing along?  Yeah? Yeah? Yeah yeah yeah!"

The Jet-fronted-by-Hedwig dynamic makes this act interesting.  Whether you view the riffage as solid stew or rehashed loaf, Tranter's perspective keeps this from being meathead material.  Whatever his sexuality - and it would be pathetic if something like that kept this from radio playlists - he's in love with the style and size of the rock stage and can express that without seeming weak or dull.  "Sometimes I dream so big my life just seems so boring," he sings up there in "Beautiful" before art directing his own funeral ("Put me in a sequined coffin/Stuff me up with mink stole stuffing/Put me in a crystal casket/Before they mix diamonds into my ashes").  Even when the sentiment's off-the-rack, it fits.

Tranter delves shallow into fratboy shtick when he insists on audience nudity.  On other bitchy turns, he's likeable:  He begs for more applause, then says "Shut up!" to laughter; he mugs for every camera without messing with the music.  Ultimately he's impossible to not like, not when he's on stage, where the egotism is an act.  He's a dedicated and gracious natural.  But when he stops the show and refuses to go on unless he sees female flesh things just get sad.  "I know that 80% of you are industry," he says, and I'm sure he's right, it's an early Monday industry showcase and everyone's on the list, I'm on the list.  "Just because you work in a cubicle doesn't mean you don't have titties."  Eventually an attractive redhead whipped out a for-tat, negotiating the removal of the drummer's shirt.  And who doesn't love titties, everyone loves titties, I love titties.  But still.  "It's feminism!" decreed Tranter.  Especially when it's the reaction to an ultimatum!

Come on.  That's not rock and roll.  That's whatever Fred Durst is.  And that makes it awful hard not to feel embarrassed about liking this band.

Semi Precious Weapons plays a $4 show at Europa tonight with Theo and the Skyscrapers and Hopewell.  (tix)

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The Friendly Fires (myspace) are a UK dance band and I'm sure that's plenty ‘nuff for some folks.  Lead singer Ed Macfarland looks a little like Michael Cera, dances like his waist is a hinge.  Sounds like the proverbial wounded animal; if notes were ducks in a carnival game, he'd have a very empty kewpie doll collection.

Band's got good energy - by the end of their turn the stage was soaked and slippery and God I hope that was all sweat and spilled drink - but were only intermittently engaging.  Dance music is built on redundancy, and lyrics aren't important, they're just another rhythmic element; but too many of their songs feel like they have a single line.  This can be worked properly - LCD SS' "Yeah" can sometimes be the best thing ever - but much of the FF's material felt undernourished.  Hey, whatever happened to Professor Murder?  We liked the Professor Murder.

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Also there for one or the other or both:  Let's Play Fascination, Music Slut, Soundbites, Tearntan, 32ft/second

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Related Entries:

• "Please Don't Close Your Door" (Oliver Mtukudzi/ Habib Koité/ Daby Touré/Yossi Fine/Extra Golden, Prospect Park Bandshell, 8/03/08)
• Uno Amor Something Something Something (Erykah Badu, Wingate Field, 8/5/08)
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• “Too Kind of You to Be So Nice” (Stars of the Lid, Good Shepherd Faith Church, 5/2/08)
• Braids of Grolly (Emmy the Great, Bowery Ballroom, 3-11-08)
• "I'm Sorry, I Don't Understand What You're Singing" (Dengue Fever, Southpaw, 3-06-08)
• Everywhere You Go (Eli "Paperboy" Reed & The True Loves/The Sweet Divines, Union Hall, 2/16/08)

For three summers, now, the JellyNYC folks have hosted solid line-ups and provided a casual atmosphere for a series of free Sunday shows at McCarren Park Pool.  They're all worth attending, they're free, duh (upcoming shows include The Felice Brothers/Eli "Paperboy" Reed, Black Lips/King Khan & His Shrines).  But I miss more than I hit.  Because I'm loathe to rely on the G, because I'm a giant weather pussy, because I fear long lines.

So of course the first Pool Party I drag my ass to this year turns out to be the weatheriest, longliniest show ever.

The line to get in stretched all the way around the park.  According to Gothamist, they stopped letting people in on order of The Parks Department.  I don't think there were as many there as the Beirut show, but considering that before the bands went on there'd been downpours and lightning and other unhappy sky stuff, that's a mess of determined folk.  Good on you guys.  Though the humidity rising out of the crowd was a bit much to take.  During Black Moth Super Rainbow's set, the pot haze mixed with body odor and created something exceptionally foul.

Okay, quickly, music:

The Ting Tings (myspace)

What fun!  Plenty of energy, a perfect crowd-rousing opener.  It's a two-person band, spare pop punched up with basement punk bark.  The bad news would be that these sorts of bands come along fairly often.  The Ting Tings have an iPod jingle ("Shut Up and Let Me Go," which they might have introduced as their iPod song); another song, "That's Not My Name," sounds a lot like The Prototypes' iPod jingle.  The good news would be that these sorts of bands are always pretty welcome.  A Brooklyn jump rope squad joined the Tings before they skipped off.

Black Moth Super Rainbow (myspace)

What you should know is:  Live, they're neither better nor worse than you'd expect.  Their hippified take on Air has really won me over; Dandelion Gum was one of my favorite records from last year.  There's five of them on stage, drums, bass, a pair of synthesizers, and a lead who's got a pile of gadgets and a microphone.

Their weirdness is unapologetic but not obnoxious.  Not uniform, either.  Bassist looks like he was ordered from Hipster Central, drummer looks like she/he is about to rob a train, the lead wore a disturbing clear plastic protective mask.  It's not showmanship, it's just weird people being weird.  Good on them.  But a little showmanship would be nice, some swell, some oomph, something to rub this wonderful stuff in the faces of those who hadn't already snorted the Kool-Aid.

It's such happy music, but a lot of it is sun-oriented.  And there was no sunshine during their set.

MGMT (myspace)

What dull, un-special stuff this is!  Conventional wisdom has it that these guys are great on record, disastrous live.  I beg to differ:  They're nothing much, either way.  People were waiting hours in the rain for this?  Sure, hometown crowd and all, but...  NGLGBL.  Certainly nothing to get your panties in a bunch over.

I left in the middle of their set, between (nondescript song) and (nondescript song).

(Did want to mention that, compared to last year, the sponsorship product-placement at the pool seems less obnoxious now.  Thanks, guys.  I know it's unavoidable, and for the most part these Pool Parties have been nothing but positive events.  But when the most noticeable banners are for the Open Space Alliance of North Brooklyn, that's all kinds of better.)

When I got back to my stop, there was a girl playing a game on the subway platform.  The game consisted of saying "Hi!" to strangers and counting how many said "Hi!" back.  I was #25.  What a fantastic game!

I'll get more pics up on the Flickr, or not.  The Pool Parties group there was shut down, I don't see any explanation.

Also at the Pool:  Daniela's Lair, Marissa's faulous adventures..., Modern Age, Music Slut, Music Snobbery, Prefix Mag, Super Floss, Tastes Like Caramel, no doubt more tk

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This Thursday brings TOO MUCH FREE STUFF:  Flogging Molly & O'Death at Pier 54, The Long Winters at Castle Clinton, Semi Precious Weapons/Theo & The Skyscrapers at Europa (advertised as free in the Voice, but $4 on Ticketweb?).  And MORE.

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Related Entries:

• Whiskey in My Whiskey (Eli "Paperboy" Reed/Langhorne Slim/Felice Brothers, McCarren Park Pool, 8/10/08)
• "Please Don't Close Your Door" (Oliver Mtukudzi/ Habib Koité/ Daby Touré/Yossi Fine/Extra Golden, Prospect Park Bandshell, 8/03/08)
• Uno Amor Something Something Something (Erykah Badu, Wingate Field, 8/5/08)
• "It's Rock and Roll. Remember? Isn't it Fabulous?" (Semi Precious Weapons, Mercury Lounge, 7/28/08)
• "This is the Part Where We Beg Them. SARCASTICALLY." (Seun Kuti & Egypt 80, Central Park Summerstage, 7/06/08)
• Yellow is Not a Neutral Color (Devo/Tom Tom Club/Dan Deacon, McCarren Park Pool, 6/26/08)
• Ugly Americans (Firewater, Cordero/Skeleton Key, Southpaw/Bowery Ballroom, 5/24 & 5/27/08)
• “Too Kind of You to Be So Nice” (Stars of the Lid, Good Shepherd Faith Church, 5/2/08)
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• "I'm Sorry, I Don't Understand What You're Singing" (Dengue Fever, Southpaw, 3-06-08)

Every summer brings a ton of free shows to this town, and I've already missed more than my fair share.  But when the schedules went up, there was a single event which got circled and exclamation-pointed and gold-starred and kitty-stickered.  Tonight, in Prospect Park, Philip Glass and his ensemble are joined by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus in a live performance of his score to Powaqqatsi.  Tweet!

Philip Glass - Serra Pelada (mp3) (buy)

I wasn't conscious of Glass' music until stumbling across Koyaanisqatsi (1982) on PBS long ago in the wayback.  Director Godfrey Reggio makes plotless, and almost completely wordless, feature-length compilations of striking, manipulated images of man and nature.  His "Qatsi" trilogy has proven a perfect collaboration between filmmaker and composer.  Glass' minimalism doesn't demand or impose dramatic shifts, and the way he most markedly changes modes is through tempo - appropriate for a movie that shifts from stop- to slo-motion.  And because he's forced to tailor his work to accompany the film, the work is more succinct.  Minimalism demands time to define itself; otherwise its themes are hooks, not textures, its subtle changes are no more than grace notes.  But corralling the endless arpeggios into finite stretches of time makes a more reassuring experience for the listener.

It was the first film score Glass wrote, it might have been his defining moment in pop culture.  His place in high culture had been won, but five-hour operas like "Einstein on the Beach" weren't going to cross over.  And Glass has refused to relegate himself to the upper deck, building a pair of symphonies around David Bowie albums (Low, "Heroes"), doing an album (Songs of Liquid Days) of collaborations with Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega, Laurie Anderson, and David Byrne.  Koyaanisqatsi won his ensemble a place as musical guest on Saturday Night Live (the performance was intercut with images from the film) back when that program was more adventurous, less pandering.

My favorite thing Glass has ever done is the film score for Paul Schrader's Mishima.  Powaqqatsi might rank next.

Philip Glass - New Cities in Ancient Lands (China, Africa, India)(mp3) (buy)

Koyaanisqatsi (loosely translated from the Hopi as "Life Out of Balance") focused on imagery and activity - natural, manmade - from the United States, where technology necessarily regulated action (exemplified in the now-famous, much-copied stop-motion shots of traffic patterns at intersections).  The second part of Reggio's "Qatsi" trilogy, Powaqqatsi ("Life in Transition," 1988), shifts to third world or emerging nations where the introduction of technology is starting to modify, if not eradicate, traditional modes of living.  (The third film, 2002's Naqoyqatsi ("Life as War"), mostly presents digital manipulations of stock footage.)

The shift in location forced Glass away from a lot of the electronic music he used in the first film.  The instrumentation is warmer, the rhythmic sections more percussive.  It's still, undeniably, Glass' music, but it broadens and humanizes his palette.  Which makes it the perfect Glass piece to see performed live.

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And there should be time enough afterward to scuttle over to Music Snobbery's late show at Joe's Pub with Soundpool and Bell.  Neither of whom I'm familiar with.  Will there be cookies?

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"Daddy, what's an ‘X-Files?'"

I suppose there's an audience for the movie that's opening today.  Maybe obsessives are already waiting in a very short line somewhere.  But that late-20th century parade of aliens & etc. was a textbook example of overstaying your welcome.  By the time it finally went off the air in 2002, after its ninth season, The X-Files had lost its lead, mangled its mythology, exhausted its audience.  And now it's back for more!

I never cared about the little grey dudes running around creator Chris Carter's world, but tuned in for the Monster of the Week eps for a while.  Some were really good.  (Any script with Darin Morgan's name attached to it is a must-see.)  But stretch any mystery out long enough and it becomes a research project; a long regularly-scheduled stretch can make fantasy feel like another day at the office.

There's always somewhere to go for paranormal investigators - from Carter's inspirations Kolchak and The Invaders on through to Russell T. Davies' weak Torchwood, where things bump n' grind in the night, or J. J. Abrams' forthcoming Fringe.  If the truth really is out there, and you haven't found it by year five, maybe it's best to have someone else take a look.

But the new movie's a fine excuse to revisit this nugget:

Catatonia - Mulder and Scully (mp3) (buy)

It can be hazardous so closely associating any work of art with pop culture, lest it wind up so plastered in footnotes you can no longer see what it is you wuz getting at.  That Weezer "Pork and Beans" remake of the net neutrality promo is going to be the most over-Jiffied episode of Pop-Up Video ever.  (Pop-Up Video was a program on VH-1 where related factoids bubbled up over a music video back when music videos were on television.  VH-1 was a channel on basic cable television.)

But this ain't art, it's a pop song - I'd thought Republica recorded this until I had me a Google, wrong 90's femme-fronted UK band that ended in -uh - and pop could do worse than tether itself to a long-running cultural phenomenon.  People have always included current events and prominent cultural figures in popular music, not to keep things hot and now or insidery, but to keep them relatable.  This is a 1998 song from a Welsh group that might not have even gotten to 120 Minutes had its hooks not had their hooks in a pair of U.S. Prime Time personalities.

Also, pop culture's all anyone knows these days.  It would be far more dangerous to reference history or classical literature or something.  Witness the fate of The Killers' "Troilus and Cressida."

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Miley Cyrus, "Fly on the Wall"

(No mp3, duh.  Disney'd string me up by my nutsack and order merry, 2-D woodland creatures to gnaw at my innards.)

My father worked for the airlines.  Nothing glamorous - and at the start of the 30+ years he worked for Delta, I think there might have still been something glamorous about public air travel.  (Then it became serviceable, then a chore, then a nightmare.)  But he was just one of those guys behind a counter that you yelled at when stuff went wrong.

He took odd shifts because night differentials paid more, he worked overtime all the time.  We didn't have any money and there was a mortgage, and bills, and food had to get from market to mouth.  He worked holidays, as many as he could, they paid double time.  When I was very young we did Christmas morning at something like 2am which, for a kid, is awesome.  We'd suffer through stollen, my parents would watch me rip open presents, Dad would leave to go pay for them, Mom would sanely go back to bed.  I, high on powdered sugar and Santa droppings, would stay up and work hard at making my new things mine.

One year - I have no idea how old I was, five, maybe? - I had asked for, and received, the Super Jock Super Toe Football Game.  (I might have seen this ad.)  Super Jock was a foot-tall plastic blue statue; you pounded his helmet, a spring-action leg kicked.  I don't remember it looking this pathetic, but I guess it did.  He came with a hollow plastic pigskin and a set of uprights and the "game," I guess, involved a competitive kicking contest.  But the goal was to whack the dude's head and send the projectile at anything that presented itself.  Dangling ornaments, the dog, imaginary holiday-threatening beasties.

My mother never let me play with guns.

I stayed up, that Christmas morning, whacking the hell out of Super Jock.  Like, five solid hours of wham wham wham until Mom got up and made a proper breakfast and tucked me in for catch-up sleep.  After that, other than to include him in the ritual "What did you get?" parade for my friends, I never played with Super Jock again.  Didn't even have the decency to break the thing.  Just tossed it into the toy trundle and moved on to being bored with something else.

Fifteen-year-old Miley Cyrus is at the center of a Disney Channel industrial complex called Hannah Montana.  I've never seen its show, or watched its 3-D movie, because I am not a preteen girl and I do not have any preteen girl children.  Apparently the premise is that, like Angel, its main character leads a dual life:  By day, Cyrus is Miley Stewart, mild-mannered school girl; by night, she's Ms. Montana, pop star.  Cyrus toured under the Hannah Montana banner and managed all manner of hosanna(*); indulgent parents sold their second-born children so their firstborn could attend.

There was a Hannah Montana soundtrack, natch, and a second one that came bundled with Cyrus' first "solo" disc, Meet Miley Cyrus.  Hello!  Miley Cyrus' birth name was Destiny Hope Cyrus (her father is Billy Ray C of "Achy Breaky Heart" infamy) and Destiny HC, not Miley C or Miley S or Hannah M, got writing credit on a bunch of tracks.  I have not heard those.  Cyrus' "second" album, Breakout, is streaming at AOL, this week (for some reason you have to click every track individually, which is really fucking annoying).  So why not see what's got the kids in a tizzy?

Because there's not much on the record that's going to appeal to anyone over fifteen?  I guess that much of Cyrus' appeal is that an everygirl, and she comes off as nice enough, nonthreatening.  Uninteresting.  She's got a decent voice, some promising rasp and twang, some lousy habits (every vowel seems multisyllabic).  There's uptempo (though I suspect for its audience, it's just midtempo) post-Josie(**) galleria-punk pop, there's some slower, thicker stuff.  "7 Things" does a good job bouncing back and forth between those, has an agreeable amount of gloss; the pop country ballad "These Four Walls" capitalizes on Cyrus' simplicity.  (There's no numerical theme, that's just a coincidence.)

The words Cyrus plies throughout are banal, empty, whatevs.(***)  The title track, which has a nice beat and a single surprising keyboard moment, promises that "We're gonna have some fun, gonna lose control!  It feels so good to let go-oh-oh (oh-oh-oh)."  Agenda includes "break some hearts" and (good line) "dance ‘til the dance floor falls apart."  But the sound's so dully procedural, fun is mentioned but not actualized.

You hope for a record that's smart and exciting instead of capable and active.

"Fly on the Wall" stands out because it's better, odder.  The full-throated bridge ("A little communication!") is maybe unintentionally funny, but it's a good place for a laugh.  The fuzzy "Rock Lobster" riff - the only enticingly weird thing on Breakout - and applause sign file footage handclaps help distract from how hollow Miley/Destiny/Hannah's de-tarted Britless club hoochie really is.  "Hearsay!  Hearsay!"  Have you heard any good rumors?  She doesn't sound like she's got any secrets worth keeping.  Sort of brags about it.  Like most people, she thinks she's a lot more interesting than she really is.  Manufactured non-intrigue, not worth figuring out.  You would think an underage multi-millionaire with at least a couple aliases would do more than make you shrug.

It's the best song here, but it's not a keeper.  It's a toy, one I've enjoyed whacking on its head for a few hours.  Look for it at my next garage sale.

(*)  Whee!

(**)  Former Letters to Cleo frontwoman Kay Hanley, who sang the lead on 2001's seminal Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack, tours with a Cyrus as a back-up singer.

(***)  Lyrically, the record's nadir is a well-meaning bit of noise pollution called "Wake Up America."  "It's our home so let's take care of it.  You know that you want to!  You know that you got to!"  Eat your vegetables!  There are worse things to write anthems about, but it's terrifying to think tweens will take urgings like "every thing you do matters in some way" to ego; imagine a subgeneration more self-important than their twentyeverything elders.  "Clean up after yourselves, you little shits" would have made a nice chorus.

*

"One of the rules when we were making this record was, when we were doing the vocals and the lyrics, that it had to be embarrassing. If someone I knew was listening to it and I was in the same room, if I wasn't embarrassed to have them there listening to it, then it wasn't worth doing."

There've been rumors Local H will be touring with Electric Six this fall.  Woohooville.

*

"And tragically, Violence."

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We've always needed assumptions and projections and fantasies to survive.  We've always needed to sort events into predisposed options and progressions.  We need easily understood reasons, we need easy-to-follow storylines.  Either/Or, Three Acts, Fiscal Quarters.

One of the failings of human beings in the 21st Century is that, in our desperation to process massive fuckwads of information, the nature of these options hasn't spread so much as solidified.  Oh, we lingo like pioneers.  Paradigm shifts, the way we live now, outside of the box.  We can pretend that Millennial self-ratification and instant gratification is a new thing.  We have shiny new iShit!  But anyone old enough to know better knows better.  Everyone trying to gleam some tiny bit of identity from a different square nanometer on the long tail's still chasing the same pathetic consumption-based beast.  People around the very edges - that's not you, btw, don't flatter yourself - might stretch at different stuff, but the center still needs to believe in The Good College and The Stock Market and Justice.

The Song Corporation - We Found a Map (mp3) (buy)

The Rogers Sisters - I Dig a Hole (mp3) (buy)

So, yeah, these songs sound a smidge similar, both are held fast by their four titular syllabic bolts.  They're both fun/desperate/unhinged.  In the end, they both wind up the same place.  But then we all do.

The Rogers Sisters (myspace) track is from their 2002 CD Purely Evil.  The Song Corporation (myspace) just released their first record, Pirates! - there was a listening party Tuesday night at the Delancey, sorry, I'm slow - but "Map" has been kicking around for a while (Fluxblog made note of it back in 2006).  When TSC first sent me this mp3, about a year ago, something had just blown up somewhere; it's too easy to bury "Hole" under 9-11 yadda yadda.  Unrelated.  But we're programmed to want to put everything together as if it makes sense.

Deceptively flippant, "Map" has been drawn up to take you in circles, make you dizzy.  Map as art, art as clues - all random fun and games (scenic phonetic topography of "pesto on pasta," the sonic Burma Shave spacing of "handy. pneumonic. device.") until someone imposes the hopeless urgency of a bomb.  The only tool you have has admitted its inadequacy.  "I may have drawn it wrong."  Already having taken over your life, it consumes your body; map reader becomes mapmaker, skin becomes story, but you're gone without ever knowing the destination.

That map is why you got up this morning, what you had for breakfast, what you're reading right now.

I know nothing about The Song Corporation (I could ask, but that might ruin everything).   This particular song was written by Mike Barthel of clapclap.org; on an old site, he described TSC as a band that no longer exists.  This week they released a record.  The other songs I've heard - you can stream some here, download a couple here - don't sound anything like this one.  But trying to figure out what makes them all part of one thing made me listen and enjoy the other parts more than I might have otherwise.  Perhaps that's all part of the plan.

Going down, nothing for something.  I love The Sisters' "Hole" for completely different reasons.  I love how inarticulate it is, I love how it sounds like it will never stop digging.  Of course it's repetitive, he is convincing himself that he is doing something that needs doing.  Something used to be there, something should be there, now there will be, a hole, so there.  Miyuki Furtado's vocal ticks are cracks in the foundation of his thinking.  "Waah waah waah waah waah waah waah?"  "Wow wow wow wow wow wow wow?"

The Rogers Sisters' last album, 2006's The Invisible Deck, was fuzzier and louder and makes for a darned fine listen.

The Rogers Sisters - You Undecided (mp3) (buy)

The Rogers Sisters - Sooner or Later (mp3) (buy)

Unfortunately, that was the band's last album, they confirmed as much on their myspace page a few weeks ago.  A shame.  They were probably just as good as your favorite band, they could bring some real stuff on stage.  Furtado's got two other gigs going; no clue as to what the actual sisters Rodgers are up to.  There's no reason given for the break-up.  Who knows with these things.  Who needs reasons?

Maybe they weren't ever going to change the world, but face it you don't want your world changed, at least not much, do you.

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It's almost here!  It's finally almost here!

Fanboys have been all in a tizzy!  A tizzy!  Critics have been ejaculating buckets full of descriptive phrases and opinionry!  It's a movie!  A movie that opens this week!  A long-awaited movie you can see projected in a theater starting OMG2morrow (and then the next day, also the next day, and probably over the next week and for some weeks after that, and then in airplanes and on DVD and streaming over the internet and via cable subscription services and basic cable and regular broadcast television).

There have been advance ticket sales!  Have you heard?  Isn't that nuts?  For a movie!  A movie that's almost here!

This movie.

The promos say, "It will have you dancing in the aisles!"  Great!  Because there's absolutely nothing that makes the moviegoing experience more enjoyable than having folks get up and dance in the fucking aisles.  Hopefully, while singing!  That'll l'arn the kids with their texting and talking to each other and faxing and shooting up during a film.

Mamma Mia! sounds like a sunnier, gender-swapped version of that old miniseries Lace ("Which one of you bitches is my mother?!") substituting Streep splits and ABBA tunes for Phoebe Cates' swearing (like, "Which one of you bitches is my mother?!").

Not a fair trade.  Might come as a shocker, but:  I will not be in attendance.  Not unless I am kidnapped and waterboarded and promised an endless series of quality compensatory blowjobs while being showered with gold coin.

The critics agree!  Crazy Armond White says Mamma Mia Exclamation Point "seems to be made by people who have no instinctive connection to pop music."  That's not a very entertaining put-down!  David Poland of Movie City News claims that it's worse than Rent, as if such a thing were possible.  Glenn Kenny gushes, "Just about every production number looks like something you'd see on the satellite music video channel they have on all the time at that Uzbeki restaurant in Queens."  But is the food any good?

Even Rex "Where Are My Tits?" Reed doesn't like it.  "Bring earplugs," he says (in a very poorly written review, I mean, wow).  Reed makes the unfortunate mistake, though, of wagging his finger at the film's musical fount.  Of ABBA, he wags,  "The popularity of the jukebox blather of this gang of no-talents is only slightly less understandable than the war in Iraq."  Oh, Rex.

It's an easy trap in which to fall.  My generation was taught to hate ABBA because it was overpolished and unAmerican and was associated with a sort of discoey ickyness.  Luckily, there's a branch of music criticism call Poptimism that has come along and ordered us to reevaluate former musical prejudices.  Now, if you don't like absolutely everything, you're a racist homophobe!  That's much easier!  Sign me up!

I'm not sure if any country is responsible for more overpraised, mediocre crap than Sweden.  Try harder, UK!  Indie kids will roll over for the most nonexotic exoticism.  Aw, it's charming!  Seriously:  Fuck that whistling shit.  But Swedes do good by the Big Pop Song - just recently: "Toxic," "4ever," "Since U Been Gone" - you know, ABBAish stuff.  And if you need to strip away the sheen and the unfortunate 70's associations to get the Song, well, maybe this'll help:

The Yayhoos - Dancing Queen (mp3) (buy)

So now ABBA's an acceptable sort of exuberant.  Where you get beer spilled on you but everything's still okay.  Nothing shiny other than yr belt buckle.  The Yayhoos are a roots rock band, a sort-of side project from a bunch of musicians who did time in outfits like (gasp) The Georgia Satellites.  This record's from 2001.  Their follow-up was in 2006.  I think I noticed them swing through the Mercury Lounge last year, or the year before that.  Backburner weekend fun.

They have a song called "Monkey with a Gun."  Ain't nuthin' more American than that!

They also have this, which is awesome:

The Yayhoos - Baby I Love You (mp3) (buy)

I can almost feel the condensation from the can drip over my digits.  Honey, where's the remote?

I found The Yayhoos through that song, which plays out over the credits of an actual good move, Slither.  That's right:  Slither.  It stars Captain Shiny from Firefly and Henry of Portrait of a Serial Killer fame and the future Laura Bush (Elizabeth Banks deserves some sort of iconic role after being stuck as female hamburger in the Apatow grinder, but I'm not sure the Stone flick's the right fit) and a couple scenes with Pam from The Office who was married to the director at the time.

Slither's a very funny, properly gooey tribute to late-80's horror films.  It also very adeptly switches POV a couple times over its running time.  Smart script well played, despite the fact it comes from the dude responsible for writing that bad Dawn of the Dead remake.  Underrated, overlooked, etc.  Rent yourself that shit.

Oh, and don't forget that there's a new Batman movie.  You might have heard about that one?  Hurry!  See it first to see it best!  Because every time a print runs through the projector it loses a little magic, you know?  If you don't see it right away, it might not turn out to be all that good!

(Also, you wouldn't be able to take part in culturally relevant discussions.  Like, "Did you see that scene where the Joker did that thing?  Man, that was crazy!"  Or, "Wow!  Action sequence!"  Or, "I thought this superhero movie was better/worse than other superhero movie!"  The shame!)

(I wasn't impressed with Nolan's first Batman flick.  The Prestige was a better movie, Batman Returns was a better movie.  But yeah, I'll see Dark Knight some time.  I'll see it before Heath Ledger does.)

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