#music

Last night we watched Questo's new documentary, Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) on Hulu. It is undeniably worth watching if you have access to it.

I was actually acquainted with much of the early biographical information from A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs's two-parter on Everyday People. And I was at least vaguely aware of his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame appearance---I remember reading an article at some point in the early-to-mid '90s (when I still subscribed to Rolling Stone) that was describing him having to wear a back brace and other mildly harrowing things.

But to see his whole arc, from childhood through today, laid out in one place is pretty wrenching---especially combined with Questlove's conversations with a number of other well-known black musicians of many ages about what it even means and what it implies.

It's also sad to see some of it documented on video. Several chunks are taken from an interview from what I would guess was the early 80s---though I honestly don't know; he was taking so many drugs (at least according to George Clinton) and in so much legal trouble at the time, it's hard to square with him doing what seemed like a pretty vulnerable interview. Anyway, there's several points in the interview that really seemed to bring him some pain---a question would be asked and you can just see him freeze for a second as if he's tamping down the truth to try and come up with something "acceptable" to say.

It got me thinking about a recent topic of interest: self-actualization. This was largely provoked by Philosophy Tube's "Was Nietzsche Woke?" video:

One of Abby's comments is that Nietzsche's "Will to Power" could also be thought of as the "Will to Agency"---the wherewithal to assert your ability to do what you really want.

Perhaps it's just because it's the lens through which I've been viewing a lot of things lately, but I found myself wondering if the burden so many of us carry is that we know what we truly need to do, but despite everything, we don't do it out of fear of what others will think---and how freeing it would be to walk away from those expectations.

Sly Stone, like so many of us, seems to have failed to dispense with those expectations, and it led him down a road to try and drown out his discomfort.

For as long as I remember, I have been a fan of the Beatles.

But in my youth, that love may have expressed itself...in unnatural ways.

For instance, I can remember in 1979 or 1980 watching Sergeant_Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band repeatedly, almost obsessively on HBO.

Haven't seen it in the intervening 30+ years.

I noticed at some point in the none-too-distant past that it had showed up on Netflix, and I felt compelled to watch it...you know, For Science.

I would say that it hasn't aged well, but really, it wasn't good from the very moment it was released. Mess doesn't describe it---this may be the Plan 9 from Outer Space of musical movies.

Still, I will commend to you the three actual good parts: Earth, Wind & Fire performing "Got to Get You Into My Life", Aerosmith performing "Come Together", and Billy Preston performing "Get Back". They all come later in the film, so I recommend judicious use of the fast-forward option.

Oh, wait, I nearly forgot! You also shouldn't miss the utterly inexplicable group reprise of the title song at the end of the film---it includes, among others, Curtis Mayfield, Heart (though---I'm not making this up!---they only show the male members of the band; I saw these three rock-and-roll guys who seemed a little familiar, and it wasn't until I read the credits that I realized why I couldn't place them, because, you know, they're the least identifiable members of that band), Stephen Bishop (as the Awkwardest White Man In The Universe---you'll know which one I'm talking about), Rob Lowe (sorry, no, that's a young Robert Palmer), Johnny Winter, Tina Turner, a very confused Carol Channing...and a host of others.

It is magnificent in its randomness.

Mike.

I knew guys in college who, I think it's fair to say, worshipped at the altar of Lou Reed.

The truth is, I don't own a Lou Reed album. Not Songs for Drella, not Transformer, not New York, not Metal Machine Music or Berlin. None of them. And while I own all the Velvet Underground albums, I don't pretend to be all that intimately familiar with them.

Still, I know so many people I am personally devoted to---that I love and admire, whose music is burned into my soul---were among those mythical thousands who started bands after hearing The Velvet Underground & Nico.

And there are songs from the Velvet Underground that I love, that will be with me until I die. Some are the obvious ones, perhaps---"Sweet Jane", "Rock and Roll", "Beginning to See the Light". but I owe him for providing the platform for Sterling Morrison's wildly abandoned and intensely beautiful guitar break in What Goes On, a recorded moment that brings me to the verge of tears every time I hear it. And if only I could erase Nico's singing, the cacophanous swirl of "All Tomorrow's Parties" makes me want to drown in it.

So I owe him that.

I saw Questlove on The Daily Show. I knew who he was in a general way---in fact, his signature drumsticks are my favorite sticks when I'm playing---but I hadn't, to the best of my knowledge, ever heard a single thing by The Roots. Ever.

Thinking back on it, my memory of the interview was that it was a little awkward. Re-watching it on the web just now, though, suggests that my memory is shot to shit---I mean, I didn't even remember that it was John Oliver, and while it was a low-key interview, it wasn't really awkwardness per se, or at least not on Questlove's part.

Regardless, it convinced me to buy the book.

I was a third of the way through it, when I realized that I had to by a copy of it for my friend Paul for a couple of reasons.

The first is because Paul is two months younger than me, and Questlove is a month younger than that---so when Questlove is talking about his childhood, it resonated with me surprisingly strongly. I mean, no, I was not black, nor was I growing up in Philly, but we share a passion for music, and many of the musical touchstones of his childhood are ones that I remember, even if they weren't quite as much a part of my cultural identity. I mean, I didn't really come to an appreciation of Parliament until I was in my 30s (incidentally, I'm going to see them at the end of the month), but there are Earth, Wind and Fire albums that I have known down to the note as far back as I can remember. I remember Soul Train in the 70's, though I mostly remember just being...baffled, it was that far outside of my experience.

Anyway, that was the first reason---we're all contemporaries, and I figured Paul would feel a kinship with many of those same things.

The second, of course, is because Paul owned a hip-hop club in Atlanta in the 90's. And so I sorta wondered if he had ever met Questlove. In fact, he and his wife knew the whole band. Not fast friends or anything, but they knew them.

Anyway, I think this is probably my favorite book I've read so far this year. It's interesting to read his perspective on the roots of hip-hop, about which I know relatively little---I've always been a rock and roll baby. It's hilarious to read his meetings with Kiss and Prince and Tracy Morgan. it's profound to read how The Roots are grappling with trying to be a band after 40.

If you care about music even a little bit, why haven't you already read this book?

This has been a post a while in the making---one of the problems with writing the software that lets you post to your blog is that it puts you on the hook if something changes, and I wasn't timely about handling that, so I've got some posts that have been stewing.

Anyway, It's not without slight embarrassment that I admit that I like the new Van Halen album. It's not great, mind you---it's no Fair Warning, or frankly even a Van Halen II (what I think to be the weakest of their Roth-era albums)---but there's a swagger, coupled with a wink and a grin, that is really fun to witness.

And I'm realizing that the reason is unequivocally David Lee Roth.

When 5150 first came out, I liked it a lot. And I suppose it's not a bad album even now. And OU812 and even For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge are similarly not bad albums---but they lack a spark. Listening to them now, while the musicianship is great, the actual songs are...I dunno. They've become smaller than life; pedestrian; humdrum.

I guess at some level I recognized it even then. I never bought their last album with Sammy Hagar, Balance, or their one album with Gary Cherone, Van Halen III,

A Different Kind of Truth, on the other hand has plenty of flaws, but it also has lyrics like:

How many roads must a man walk down before he admits he's lost. And do you really, really drive this way just to piss me off?

It's inconsequential, but it's not without a certain cleverness. The Sammy Hagar era was trying to be significant (one need only look at the lyrics and/or video to Right Now for confirmation), but David Lee Roth, if he tries at all, is happy to undercut it with a good laugh:

Like the ancient immortals said Don't want 'em to get your goat Don't show 'em where it's hid But that's just what I did

I'm not going to have it on infinite repeat for months on end, but it's a fun little diversion, and it's almost like the intervening 25 years never happened.

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Where Are We Now? is not my favorite David Bowie song. Really, not by a long shot.

Favorite or not, though, I'm happy to see him making new music---I had all-but given up hope of ever hearing the words "new music from David Bowie" used in a sentence together, and that made me sad.

It's interesting to see him revisiting Berlin, the site of the creation (with some involvement of Tony Visconti, who is being credited as producing the new album) the three of his albums (Low, "Heroes", and Lodger) that would seem to most effectively bridge the gap between the avant-garde leanings he's always shown and the trim, effective pop songs he's always been so good at producing. So I'm interested to see where it all ends up.

Incidentally, I am amused by the mention of KaDeWe in the lyrics of the song. I remember the one trip my family made to Berlin when we lived in Germany, back in 1983. My grandfather bought a pair of Zeiss binoculars in KaDeWe. It's interesting to note that that same trip came up in a post here almost 10 years ago (and that on the 10th of February of this year, this blog will be 10 years old).

than an all-female Iron Maiden cover band (seen here performing Aces High) {{< youtube 16mf4m7v_hw >}} would be an all-female Metallica cover band. Oh, what's that? There is one, you say?

Of course, any cover of "Master of Puppets" has to be judged by the sheer heaviness of the lead-in to the big guitar solo (in that video, seen at 5:36), which should sound like it is about to roll over you and crush you under its wheels.

And, sadly, that's where the one shortcoming both Mistallica and Iron Maidens suffer from is on full display---although their instrumental prowess is significant, even with Bruce Dickinson's famously large vocal range, most of Iron Maiden's tunes generally skirt the low low end of most female singers vocal ranges. It's even worse with James Hetfield, to has spent most of his career barking more than singing.

but this live performance of "Wondaland" by Janelle Monae still makes it crystal clear why you should be buying her music.

So twice in as many days I've found myself channel surfing to the video for Neneh Cherry's "Buffalo Stance"---a song I hadn't heard in at least a decade:

Incidentally, did you know she underwrote Massive Attack's first album I didn't.

Anyway, that reminds me of one of my few regrets from college---the time I didn't go see Michael Hedges. This would have been in 1990, right after the release of Taproot---my favorite of all his albums.

There were plenty of good reasons not to see the show, like 1) I didn't really have the money for it, 2) I didn't hear about it until the day of the show, and couldn't get tickets 3) it was more than an hour away in Birmingham.

The stupid reason that I actually ended up not going was because I was too cheap to pay for parking so I could go see if there were any tickets or scalpers. Yes, I drove all the way to Birmingham, circled around within a few blocks from the arena, couldn't find a space free space, gave up and drove back to Tuscaloosa.

When Mike Nix got back the evening, he told me that, in addition to a number of other covers he was well known for doing, Michael had performed "Buffalo Stance".

Well, 20+ years later, I've heard his rendition:

It's a little heavy on the piezo quack, but otherwise pretty wonderful. For good measure, I leave you with him doing The Who's "Eminence Front":

It's good, though I don't think it's quite as good as the real thing:

I have to say, I also agree with his tagline redefining custom---some of his guitars are pretty damned strange, though still beautiful.

But what I really like is that he's done a series of videos on youtube taking an absolutely beautiful guitar from start to finish. It is fascinating.

Some days I forget how strange Frank Zappa was.

"From Bavaria."

Mostly, I'm having one of those, "How have I not heard of this guy?" moments.

Anyway, I was, no kidding, looking through some Guitar Center catalog I got in the mail, and saw an Ibanez 8-string guitar being endorsed by this guy whose name rang absolutely no bells at all. And I kind of wrote him off, because it seemed like senseless "more is better"-ness.

And then he, and his band, Animals as Leaders started showing up in my YouTube feed.

So, what the Hell, I watched one. And then another, and then a third. And for the last week I've been doing occasional bits of spelunking around.

I'm not going to pretend that everything he does interest me---a lot of it would have appealed to me more 20 years ago, when I was more interested in stuff that carries a lot of aggression. But he's wickedly articulate:

And some of the things he does solo I do find sometimes startling and beautiful (the first bit he runs through in this clinic is wonderful, the rest of it interesting but not entirely compelling to me):

And finally, he can also operate well out of his usual milieu very comfortably:

He has an album that he describes as more jazz-oriented that I'm thinking of---in the hopes that it will have more of what appeals to me and less of the noisy-double-bass-at-180bpm of Animals as Leaders that leaves me cold.

to suggest that it's ridiculous to learn to play "Flight of the Bumblebee" at 600bpm. And yet, I cannot escape the sense that it is just that.

The payoff, such as it is, is at 5:23.

I'm sure I could come up with a jazz cover of a rock song that seems more unlikely than this cover of Queens of the Stone Age's "Hanging Tree". But it might take a while. Of course I'd be lying if I said I didn't like it, especially as the saxophone is stating the vocal line in the first verse.

Update. OK, maybe this cover of Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun". But I think "Hanging Tree" still wins, just because is a more obscure song.

Apparently Brad Mehldau is making something of a career of this sort of thing. Here's him covering Radiohead's "Everything in its right place". There's a beautiful moment in it right at 2:18:

Needless to say, youtube has links to many others.

I've just TiVO'd and watched this for a second time in about nine months.

I have to admit to knowing a fair bit about Jeff Beck, while knowing almost none of his music.

The performance here convinced me to pick up some of his best-known albums...which mostly disappointed. I guess part of my mistake was getting some of the "Jeff Beck Group" albums, because while those are certainly well known, I wasn't particularly interested in his work with Rod Stewart. But even with the solo instrumental work, it seemed sometimes a little sterile.

But in the live context, I was blown away by his tastefulness, his craft, his absurd command of dynamics. For instance, not only is his solo on this track admirably restrained, but his backing during the the verse is amazingly rich.

And he had Vinnie Colaiuta of "Catholic Girls" fame playing drums for him. And Tal Wilkenfeld is both adorable, and able to keep right up with him.

I am fully expecting to suck at this for months if not years. But boy, there is something inherently fun in hitting things with sticks as recreation.

There's really not much of particular substance here, but I just wanted to call out that when you see the table with Sabbath and Rick Rubin, against all odds, Rick Rubin is the oldest looking guy there.

Insane Clown Posse would be just another act that I didn't care for--in a world littered with them--except for the Gathering of the Juggalos. Just watch the apparently legitimate "informercial" for the 2011 Gathering of the Juggalos:

(Incidentally, life must be rough for Vanilla Ice).

And then compare to the Saturday Night Live Kickspit Underground Rock Festival

"Everybody gets pitchforks!"

Ah, humanity.

TL;DR: You kids get off my lawn!

From 1981-1986, I was a devoted listener of Casey Kasem's American Top 40. We were living in (West) Germany at the time, and that broadcast on AFN was a primary means of keeping in touch with music back in the 'States--though MTV was rising to power back home, we didn't have it there, and besides, the alternative was hearing 99 Luftballons again (remember, Nena was German, and (rare for a Continental act) had a hit in the US. It was inescapable, and to this day that song still makes me cringe).

Anyway, I listened all the time, and with such devotion that I could remember well enough where a song I liked had been the week prior so that I could be ready to record it when it came on the next week. I have a vivid memory of being at an airshow at Ramstein AFB in 1983 (incidentally there's a site with pictures from the airshow one of which is the sort of plane my Dad was flying out of Ramstein at the time) with an AIWA "walkman" that had both a radio and the ability to record, ignoring the actual airshow because I really wanted to tape a copy of Little Red Corvette (though, truthfully, I can't quite make the chronology match up--surely it didn't take 6 months after LRC's release for it to make it up the charts).

(In fact, Billboard posts their charts, and has records going back to the '70s, including that week, and looking at the top 10 leads me to suspect that the song I was trying to record was Stevie Nicks' Stand Back, which, interestingly, has Prince performing on it, albeit without credit, and was partially inspired by Little Red Corvette).

Other acts I remember from that time--Hell, from just that year: Dexy's Midnight Runners (Hi, Chet!), Naked Eyes, Taking Heads (Burning Down the House, obviously), Tears for Fears, Michael Jackson, David Bowie (Let's Dance, of course), Thomas Dolby, Men at Work, Culture Club, Duran Duran, The Police, Eurythmics

Anyway, one of the biggest acts of that time period were Hall & Oates. Every time they had (yet another) single on ATF, there would be the recitation of how they had had more songs chart in the Top-40 than any other duo and various other distinctions. I could probably have recited the stats at the time.

So I was in Whole Foods the other day and the in-store sound system played Hall & Oates' I Can't Go For That, followed by the Bee Gees' Night Fever. Two songs that, 10 or 15 years ago I might have been embarrassed to admit I like, but now, hey, I've already got one foot in the grave, who cares what anyone thinks?

And I realized that as much as I have come to accept that half the pop music acts I hear these days sound like retreads of the '70s or '80s, I don't understand why they seem to choose to rehash the mediocre stuff. I mean, The Strokes sound like The Knack, but I don't understand who would consciously choose to do that? Where are the people who are trying to at least copy the well-crafted pop songs of the period?

Is this the culture of irony eating itself? People choosing to copy the second-tier artists as some sort of commentary?

To say that David remakes "Andy Warhol" in this performance is kind of an understatement. I mean, I love the original, but if I wanted to listen to that, well, I've got the CD. This is something that lives only on this tour, perhaps only in this moment.

"Andy walking, Andy tired, Andy take a little snooze."

Here is a link to the Wikipedia entry for the 1983 German Monsters of Rock concert, which was my first ever concert.

I have vague memories of Whitesnake, but couldn't even tell you what they played.

Blue Oyster Cult was what I was there to see, though I remember it being somewhat anticlimactic--I think I knew a lot less of their music than I had thought. I would probably enjoy it more now.

I remember enjoying Thin Lizzy a lot, though it's only in retrospect that I am glad I saw them in their last show with Phil Lynott.

I remember one Saxon song, but I won't name it for fear of dying of embarrassment.

I have remember "Paradise by Dashboard Light" only because the female performer ended up very scantily clad. John Scalzi recently tweeted wondering what a collaboration between Jim Steinman and Philip Glass would be like--I can tell you it would likely make my head explode.

Motorhead. I am sad to realize that I have seen Lemmy in the flesh and have no memory of it. Maybe that's appropriate, though.

I suspect that I left before Twisted Sister made it on stage, and I don't have any idea who the hell Cheeta were.

Thanks to my dad for dropping us off and picking us up afterward.

You know, I haven't seen any ukelele covers that have been less than respectful of their source material. Sometimes they are obviously showing off technical acumen--there's a couple of places in this video that might qualify--but it all seems done with a lot of affection for the original.

Part 1:
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Part 2:
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Pretty darn cool.

So, Jack White performed "Mother Nature's Son" at the White House. Not my favorite rendition of it ever--Jack's voice is great in other contexts, but doesn't quite work here for me--but still a particularly gutsy move, when you consider who's in the audience (look to the President's right at about 1:45):

So Kanye West samples King Crimson's 21st Century Schizoid Man for his new single power. But while I was watching a documentary about The Beatles today, it occured to me that what someone really needs to sample or borrow is the drum track to "Tomorrow Never Knows." That would beat the famous samples from "When the Levee Breaks" easy.

Despite growing up in the '70s, I had no clear memory of the 10cc song "I'm Not in Love"; my first encounter (as far as I knew) with the song was on Tori Amos' Strange Little Girls (and I'm going to try and ignore that this album is now 9 years old--where did the time go), where, frankly, it sounds like a musical rendition of a suicide note.

When BoingBoing linked to a documentary about the making of the song, I was intrigued enough to watch it.

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Suddenly, I realized that, in fact, I did know the original version of the song, in all its treacly, soppy glory. I had just never connected that with Tori's version.

What else have I missed?

Incidentally, there's an interesting article at Sound On Sound about the making of the track.

I was listening to Jeff Buckley's Grace, and was looking for lyrics to "Mojo Pin", and my quick google search included a link to a youtube video of a live performance video:

From there, I followed a link to footage from the same performance of "Last Goodbye" because, you know, it's a lovely song:

And then things started to get weird.

See, that had a link to a video of Scarlett Johanssen doing a cover of Tom Waits' "Yesterday is Here":

There was no way I couldn't check that out. Somewhat to my surprise, I was not repulsed.

From there, I follwed a link to a cover of the same song by Cat Power:

Didn't care for that one as much, but oh what it led me to: The Flaming Lips & Cat Power performing a pretty good cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs":

Which in turn led to video of TFL doing it with Peaches:

Which was interesting mostly for its oddity (the audio quality bites, too).

But the TFL & Cat Power video also had a link to Sabbath performing it in Paris in 1970:

That's pretty powerful.

It is also amusing to know that Ozzy's stage act hasn't changed a bit in 40 years.

but certainly not in recent memory.

The news that it's ceasing print publication and trying to make it as a web-only publication really doesn't impact me at all. But Mark Evanier linked to a post from Lee Goldberg about the magazine that includes an amusing anecdote about covering the premeire of "The Living Daylights" while writing for the magazine:

bq.. All the journalists were invited by the studio to the premiere, which Prince Charles and Lady Diana were attending as well. We had to wear tuxedos and were driven to the event in limos. There were huge crowds being held back behind barracades in front of the Odeon Theatre as we pulled up. I got out of the limo just as a short young lady was emerging from the limo in front of me, so we walked in together. People were going nuts, taking pictures of us and waving. I leaned over and whispered to her: "Makes you wish you were famous, doesn't it?"

She laughed, patted my arm, and we parted in the lobby. Almost immediately I was swarmed by my fellow reporters. One of them asked "Do you know who you were walking with?"

I had no idea. I figured she was another reporter. He told me it was Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders. I still had no idea who she was. So either she thought my remark was clever or that I was a complete dolt for not knowing who she was. But I like to think that somewhere out there is a photo from that event with a caption like "Chrissie Hynde with unidentified lover."

Can't beat that.

Listening to Blue Oyster Cult's "Cities on Flame", I realized that the reason all of these older albums I love have comparatively wimpy-sounding drum tracks is because the drummers are too good--to make a big goddamned noise, you have to hit so hard that you lose any notion of subtlety.

John Bonham is arguably the prominent exception. Even when he's beating the crap out of his kit--on "We're Gonna Groove", for instance (though listening back to it, its drum track is less in-your-face than I imagine it to be)--he's still got a very subtle way with timing.

I happened to catch Don Johnson's Heartbeat while surfing by VH1Classic's nostalgia programming. The only reason I stopped was because I had totally forgotten who played guitar on it:

Warning, this might not be worth it to find out.

Obviously, seeing the Beatles has been an impossibility for most of my lifetime. I saw the Stones on one of their last tours with Wyman, though, honestly, I fall on the Beatles side of the great divide.

Why, then, have I not bothered to see the band for whom I have more affection than either of those?

Yes, if the Kinks do a reunion tour, I will find a way to go.

On the Eagles of Death Metal's new CD, Heart On, there's a track named "Now I'm a Fool" whose vocal line is not without a resemblance to Steely Dan's "Only a Fool Would Say That".

The presence of "Fool" in both titles leads me to suspect this is intentional, not coincidental.

I actually rather liked TV on the Radio on SNL last night. The last musical guest who didn't annoy me into fast forwarding was, I kid you not, Duffy. Which kinda surprised me too.

Over on the Washington Monthly site, Hilzoy, in talking about some crazy conspiracy theorist stuff about Obama over at The National Review made a reference to When Prophecy Fails.

So, when you consider that the the name of this blog comes from a Blue Oyster Cult song, it should be no surprise (to those who know their catalog as well as I, at least) that I immediately assumed that he was making a reference to their song Extra Terrestrial Intelligence.

Of course, it turns out that he was making reference to the book that, one might guess from its description on Wikipedia probably inspired the song.

when I read that Richard Wright had died.

Weird coincidence.

I've been dividing my purchases of late between new material by artists I enjoy (Nine Inch Nails, Daniel Lanios, others) and old material that I used to be able to borrow from Chet and Patrick, and thus have had no real contact with for the last 16 years or so.

With that in mind, I picked up Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' Greatest Hits and the Doors L.A. Woman. It's funny, because I picked up the Doors disc in order to be able to, eventually, get rid of the Greatest Hits collection I have for the Doors--I still need Soft Parade and Strange Days--while I picked up the Heartbreakers disc because I didn't want to embark on the task of working through their catalog.

I'm really enjoying the Tom Petty, but I still can't figure out why I made what is a fairly uncharacteristic move--buying a collection. I usually like a lot of stuff that never makes Greatest HIts collections; I know it's definitely true of the two Tom Petty albums I'm most familiar with. Oh, well, I suppose I would be bored if I wasn't somehow a mystery to myself.

Apropos of nothing other than the fact that I'm discussing Petty, I will mention my favorite line on all of Petty's Full Moon Fever:

Well I've been to Booker,
and I've been to Micanopy,
I've been to St. Louis too,
I've been all around the world.

I remember well my surprise, the first time we drove from Miami north and passed a sign for Micanopy. It is, unsurprisingly, not far from Gainesville

How is it that I end up watching two things (Season 3, Pt 1 of Entourage and Superbad) inside a couple of weeks that have Ted Nugent's Stranglehold in the soundtracks?

You know: finding the images that need to be re-installed in the blog posts, removing ancient copies of the blog from its days running under Blosxom, so forth and so on--I ran across a .wmv of the song "Shake Your Blood" by Probot.

And I thought to myself, "Why am I keeping around a copy of this video--I know it must be up on YouTube."  And then I looked at the date, and realized that I had had it since before YouTube existed.

Yes, I know that Chet is the only one likely to get the joke. Still.

No, not Friday, the song by Big Star. I hadn't heard it in a long time, and it just showed up on the big shuffle.

Oh, and while watching some footage of the Sex Pistols, I realized that my Father-in-law has an eerie resemblance to Johnny Rotten. And no, I'm not making this up--Anne agreed.

I wanted it for walking around, where the 80GB Classic I've got is just too clunky and insufficiently solid-state.

There was the requisite monkeying with LInux and its somewhat fractious relationship with iPods, and then I started putting stuff on it.

I've been so used to dealing with my music collection in its entirety, or at least in very, very large chunks-I started ripping things en mass in mid'99--that it was sort of interesting to realize that I could get maybe 150 songs on the thing. I had to really think about what I wanted on there.

Some of it is obvious, at least to me: some Stevie Wonder, some Steely Dan, some Queens of the Stone Age, some post-Rattle-and-Hum U2 and all sorts of other eclecticism that has fascinated me for a long time.

Some of it was less obvious--for insance, I've been listening to Massive Attack's "Teardrop" a lot of late. I got there in a way both obvious and circuitous.

I watch House (I want to add, "of course", but, of course, there is no "of course" about it), and at one point in the season finale I heard a cover of a song that I recognized but simply could not place.

The internets know everything, though, so in short order I was able to find out that it was a cover of the aforementioned Massive Attack song. I was then somewhat embarassed to read that the original version--which I own, and, obviously, find fairly recognizable, is the theme for the show.

Oh, well.

And then there are the desert island tracks. King Crimson's "Discipline", Led Zeppelin's "Bron Yr Aur", a few other things that I think I could listen to every day for the rest of my life in tight rotation and never get tired of.

And then there's Jeff Buckley's "Vancouver". Everyone goes gaga over "Hallelujah", but there is an echo of pain in "Vancouver" that punches me in the gut each and every time.

I'm bad about noting the anniversaries of deaths--I had to look up his on Wikipedia--so I'm a few days late in noting that it's been 11 years since Jeff Buckley died, and not a week goes by that I don't wonder what he would have accomplished.

And just to illustrate the self-referential nature of my musical tastes, the vocals for "Teardrop" were recorded shortly after Elizabeth Fraser (the vocalist on the track, and a friend of Buckley's), got word of his death.

Which is why I've pretty much only ever used stuff I've ripped myself. I don't even like the way Nine Inch Nails has tagged their own stuff with the last couple of releases.

Thus I was amused to find out about a form that last.fm have to show you some of the wild-ass stuff that people's mp3s have tagged in them.

Via

Moog Music is making a guitar. As you might expect, it's all sorts of bizarre.

The absolute high-point of the show for me was the rendition of Blockhead, which, with 10 Crafties and Robert Fripp to boot, was quite powerful. The most beautiful was easily the piece done entirely acoustically as the final encore. The most whimsical was the theme from "Mission: Impossible".

There were pieces, certainly, that didn't move me. But at the same time, watching an ensemble like this perform holds its own energy--to watch a group of players working in such synchronicity is amazing.

Check out his drum solo:

One of the more interesting things about the Great CD-Ripping project (I'm within 30 discs of being done!) is realizing what I have never gotten around to ripping. Frankly, some of it baffles me. For instance, I had never gotten around to ripping my Stevie Wonder material, despite the fact that it's some of my favorite music on Earth (it's the stuff from the 70's, when Stevie could Do No Wrong). I never ripped either of the Who discs I have. Or the Los Lobos collection Chet got me umpteen years ago, even though I think that Kiko and the Lavender Moon may be one of the most perfect songs ever.

There have been any number of other single disc things that I've noticed, but those are the biggies that I remember right now.

I do have to admit that I worry sometimes that new stuff isn't going to get its due, in amongst the 30-days-of-continuous-music that I've currently got access to. For instance, Year Zero hasn't yet made a real impression, and I don't think I've even listened to the new Modest Mouse. Hmmmm.

...at least so far: I finally sat down and listened to the Ani DiFranco CD my sister got me, maybe a decade ago.

Before I continue, one funny note: I knew about Ani DiFranco before she did; I remember, albeit hazily, seeing video of a bald chick playing ferocious acoustic guitar in weird tunings on a public access channel in Boston. As is often the case with seeing things in weird venues like that, they never told me who the fuck it was I was watching. So, you know, years and years pass...

Anyway, I've had this on the shelf forever, listened to it once or twice, and I let it sit. For whatever reason, I wrote her off as too earnest, too literalist, I dunno, too unsubtle.

As often seems to be the case, I wish there were some effective way to reach back and slap the me of ten years ago.

Which isn't to say that I think the music will appeal to everyone; it's demanding in its lack of sentimentality--I think that's what I had perceived as earnestness before--and at least in her older material, well, it's mostly the narrative of intrapersonal relationships, so it's not entirely outre to suggest that it sometimes sounds like a few songs repeated endlessly. And it's all pretty specifically political. And sometimes It seems lyrically awkward, though sometimes that very awkwardness comes, after repeated listening, to seem inevitable and necessary.

But it's also music that speaks of joy and hope and possibilities in a very unambiguous way.

And she can play the fuck out of a guitar.

So maybe everyone else on the planet earth already knew about this, but the idea that one of Judas Priest's signature songs was originally a Joan Baez tune was somewhat, err, startling.

I am intensely curious to know what Joan Baez thinks of the cover version.