People Who Matter or Nothing New So Here Are Some Videos

First This.

Now These:

Tom Waits: I Don't Wanna Grow Up


MC5: Kick Out The Jams


Iggy Pop: The Passenger


Joy Division: Transmission


Talking Heads: Warning Sign


Black Flag: Rise Above


Fugazi: Waiting Room


Real post coming soon, I promise.

New Logo

So if you haven't already noticed, I have a new logo designed by one Emily Spence. That's really all I have to say right now. I discovered the greatest book at work the other day. I'll be posting about it in the next few days. For now I'll just say that it involves really short sighted album reviews that more or less completely miss their mark.

That's all for now. Time to get ready for work.

Addiction

This image represents the 58+ CDs I've bought since I acquired my new job. 50% off is a horrible discount for someone like me. I thought about listing all of them, but I decided that was worth too much effort for something no one would read anyway. The point is I have a problem and my job only makes it worse, much worse.

That's all I have for now. Maybe I'll have a real update later on this week, and maybe I won't. Who knows?

Radio On the TV

If you’re like me, and for your sake lets hope you're not, but if you are you’ve noticed something lately: terrestrial radio is all but totally irrelevant. Now, honestly you don’t have to be anything like me to notice this, so if you have don’t worry, we’re probably nothing alike. It really doesn’t take much to notice that there are a rather exorbitant number of artists doing considerably well for themselves without the aid of radio. As a matter of fact lately it seems fans are more and more likely to cry “sell out” when they hear their favorite band on an FM station.

Of course the concept of underground artists surviving without the aid of radio play is certainly not something new. The Grateful Dead managed to sell out shows on the smell of patchouli oil alone. Lately however, it seems like the number of artists on the radio are vastly out numbered by the artists who are not being played on any FM frequency (excluding college radio, of course) and still having no problem with ticket sales. A lot of this is due in no small part to the internet, but for many artists there is another factor entirely and that is commercials.

It used to be that if your favorite band were suddenly being played on the radio you got excited and called your friends to tell them to tune in and listen. However, the moment you heard them in a diaper commercial you threw your albums away and started listening to Motorhead. This is what the American Medical Association has come to call the Motorhead syndrome. Apparently when the human brain experiences a loss of faith in any band it goes in to a fight-or-flight type of response where by one’s subconscious suddenly understands that the only band that can be trusted to never sell a song for promotional use is Motorhead. The mind thus assumes that Motorhead will never betray their fans, and therefore the only logically safe option is to listen to “Ace of Spades” at maximum volume.

However a strange phenomenon has occurred in the past few years. Suddenly artists are turning to commercial advertising as an outlet for their music and without a massive surge in Motorhead album sales. It seems that commercials are the new radio. My Morning Jacket can be used to sell beer and we don’t immediately think “hey, My Morning Jacket wants me to drink MGD.” We’re seeing it in the most random of artists as well from Mates of State to Andrew Bird to the infamous rewording of an Of Montreal song for the “lets go Outback tonight” campaign.

What’s so interesting about all of this is not so much that so many underground and Indie Rock artists are turning to commercials as an outlet for their music as the fact that we seem to be ok with it. There certainly seems to be a difference between The Arcade Fire in an NFL commercial and the Counting Crows selling soft drinks. Where we once used to see it as endorsement we also seem to understand that our favorite bands are just trying to make it.

I honestly am not really sure what this says about us. Should we be upset about this? It seems to me that either way the revolution is well over and marketing has won. All I know is I suddenly have a strong urge to listen to Motorhead.

Amplive Remixes Radiohead, I Finally Join the Technology Era

So if you haven't heard about the trials and tribulations behind Amplive's remixes of Radiohead's In Rainbows, here's the short and skinny of it. Amplive planned to release an album (of sorts) of remixes and reinterpretations of the new Radiohead album with help from such big names as Del the Funky Homosapien and Chali2NA without asking permission from the band. No problem right? After all the album was released to the public via the internet for basically free. Wrong! Apparently Radiohead's management felt that this wasn't the kind of forward-thinking progress the band would encourage and filed this.

Well to keep a short story brief, things have been worked out between the two camps and you can now freely download Amplive's Rainydayz Remixes here. All is right in remix land again.


In a bit of personal news, I finally bought an Ipod. Thanks to my job I was able to purchase a gently used 80G Ipod for less than half the price I would've paid for a new one. I can finally mark step one off my technology checklist. Now for step two: build army of robots who weap openly while listening to Leonard Cohen's Songs of Love and Hate. Why? Because I can!

Sources: Tiny Mix Tapes, Pitchfork.

Review: Boris with Merzbow Rock Dream

The first thing you must understand about a band like Boris is that they do not believe in stagnation. Since 1994 they have refused to stay put, testing the boundaries of Heavy Metal and pushing the genre beyond its expected limits. They are simultaneously the loudest and most subtle band of the genre. To call them experimental would only be selling them short. Boris simply refuse to be limited by genre definitions. One moment they sound like the darkest Drone outfit since Sunn O))), the next they’re tearing through riffs like a heavier Bleach era Nirvana.

In the past three years Boris have released four studio albums, three of which were collaborative efforts with other artists like Sunn O))) and Michio Kurihara. I managed to see Boris with Kurihara in October of last year and it was easily the loudest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. It also was a strong contender for the best show I saw all year.

In 2005 Boris released Sun Baked Snow Cave, a collaborative effort with experimental noise artist, Merzbow. This album was an absolute struggle to get through as it’s only track, clocking in at just over 62 minutes, seems more like an exercise in aural torture than anything else.

Fortunately Rock Dream is about as far removed from Sun Baked Snow Cave as you can get. Recorded live in Tokyo, Rock Dream is in many ways more reminiscent of the show I saw than any of the previous Boris/Merzbow collaborations of which, I understand, there are three. Granted the first track of this two-disc set is the 35 minute “Feedbacker,” which then leads directly into “Black Out” and then deteriorates into a cacophony of Merzbow’s noise (a track called "Evil Stack") before finally giving way to the much quieter “Rainbow” from last year’s Kurihara collaboration of the same name. Before you know it disc one is over, and that’s saying a lot for any album with a half-hour long opening track.

The second disc kicks you in the face with bone-shattering force as the band powers through the 1-2-3 punch of “Pink,” “Woman on the Screen,” and “Nothing Special” in their exact order from 2006’s Pink. After a few more Merzbow-driven tracks, including the beautifully epic “Flower Sun Rain,” the album closes with flawless back-to-back performances of “Just Abandoned My-self” and “Farewell.”

With the recent news that Boris will be releasing their first non-collaborative album since Pink later this year, Rock Dream is certainly something to wet the appetite. It’s also a perfect example of everything Boris are capable of, presenting the band in a peak performance. It also must be played at top volume. You don’t get the full Boris experience unless your hearing is irreversibly damaged.

Review: Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings 100 Days, 100 Nights

From note one of 100 Days, 100 Nights you know exactly what Sharon Jones is all about. This isn’t one of those records that requires some time to digest, and it certainly isn’t a concept album. No, this is an album about one thing and one thing only: Soul. This also isn’t about some kind of late 60s R&B revivalist movement. Jones and The Dap-Kings make their music as though Memphis Soul never went out of style in the first place. More accurately, this album literally sounds like it was made in 1969 at the Stax studios.

The songs themselves serve as such perfect examples of how to write Soul music, you’d almost believe Sharon Jones wrote the book on the subject. Every aspect of the genre is covered here. Songs like “Keep On Looking” and the title track have that fast shuffle-like groove that makes even the stiffest of people want to get up and dance. “Be Easy” on the other hand sits in a steadier groove that cruises rather than drives. The Dap-Kings are certainly in no hurry to get anywhere. “Humble Me” slows it down even further to give a bluesy performance that gives Aretha Franklin’s “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” a good run for its money. The real prize of this record comes at the end of the album, however with “Answer Me,” an epic Gospel number that features Jones on the piano.

Honestly the greatest thing I can say about this album is that had I heard more of it last year, it would’ve made my top 25 in place of Amy Winehouse. Winehouse's music may be steeped in Soul history, but Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings actually make it.

A Quick Update, Then Sharon Jones At The Cannery Ballroom

It’s been far too long since I last posted anything. I know I said I would get better about this, and I promise I will, starting now.

In a short update about myself, I got that job with the used bookstore. So far things are going rather spectacularly, and as long as I can contain myself and not spend my entire paycheck there (employees get incredible discounts), it should prove to be fairly lucrative for now.

In other news I saw Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings at the Cannery Ballroom two nights ago and for my first show of the year, I have to say they set the bar pretty damn high. For someone who is almost 50, Jones knows how to work a stage and an audience like James Brown in the early 60s. This seems to come as little surprise when you find out that like the Godfather of Soul, Sharon Jones is a native of Augusta, Georgia. Maybe it’s something in the water.

Just watching her move during “My Man Is a Mean Man” was enough to make me feel like I’d just run four miles. If you can picture a 33-year-old Tina Turner performing “Proud Mary” you’ll have some idea of what I’m talking about. Jones’s dancing was equally matched by her voice, bending some notes to their breaking point while belting others with that wonderful effortlessness and aching crack of someone like Etta James. Basically what I’m saying is that Sharon Jones is absolutely everything one could ever ask for in a Soul singer.

The Dap-Kings also proved to be not only a solid accompaniment to Jones, but a perfectly solid act on their own accord, performing a few of their own songs to warm up the audience before introducing the star of the evening. Once Jones took the stage the Dap-Kings went into overdrive, churning through song after song without stopping. Part of the reason they called James Brown the hardest working man in show business was because his band worked as hard if not harder than he did. The Dap-Kings definitely understand this. Of course Brown infamously fined his band members for any mistake in a performance. The Dap-Kings just seem to play that tight because they can, and Jones knows it.

Aside from Jones turning the entire audience into her own backup singers on “Be Easy,” other highlights of the show included stellar performances of “Nobody’s Baby,” “How Do I Let a Good Man Down?,” “Tell Me,” “Let Them Knock,” “Your Thing Is a Drag,” and an encore performance of the Godfather’s own “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World” turning the song on its head the way Aretha Franklin did with Otis Redding’s “Respect.”

If there was ever a candidate for the birth of a Soul revival, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings are absolutely it.

Having said all that, I’m reminded that I’ve been planning to do some brief reviews of a small selection of albums released last year that didn’t make my top 25 purely because I hadn’t heard them until now. I’m gonna try to knock those out this week so expect to see some pretty regular updating, finally. That’s all for now.