just after Record Store Day 2010

Life always does loops around us when we’re making other plans. I had grand intentions to blog about Record Store Day this year before the event. Since I got righteously distracted, here’s the summary post-game.

I’d read about what might be available, how most of the limited releases were pressed in quantities of 1000 or less. Even with the damn-shame decline in indie record shops that actually carry vinyl records these days, I’d like to think that 1000 copies of rare and affordable limited editions would sell out – just like that.

Ani Difranco dropped an EP, MGMT did a 10 inch and so did Hole (aka the Courtney Love band since it’s missing at least 2 key players from the last album’s lineup.) I actually saw the Stones 7 inch, the MGMT, and Them Crooked Vultures.

There were several of the Pantera reissues on double heavy vinyl and they looked niiice. I read about big deluxe reissues from Wilco and The Magnetic Fields, Green Day’s early records and a new Jimi Hendrix EP, but none of the stores I went to had any of those, either.

For an industry holiday in its infancy, it’s a largely social success, getting mention on many of the band forums I frequent, from Weezer to Ryan Adams. It just seems their distribution system -as some had criticized last year- scattered too many copies in a few places and none most everywhere else.

One woman working the counter commented that they can order whatever they want, but they only get whatever they get – there are no guarantees. In a perfect world, it might work better, everyone could find a copy of these limited releases in their own home town shops without resorting to ebay or torrents.

If I might wax optimistic for a moment, the simple fact that artists and their enthusiastic fanbase have a day just to come together and support their last remaining brick-and-mortar mom-and-pop retailers is enough to warm this critic-of-capitalism’s heart.

We nabbed a Jayhawks 7 inch to add to our collection. I found a copy of a record I’d worn out as a child and bought it for less than three bucks in nearly prime condition considering its age.

I’ve been feeling the urge to hear the stuff I couldn’t find. The Beastie Boys did a mystery 12 inch I think I read turned out to be some wild remixes. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists put out a 7 inch, but owing to the punk ethos those appear to be shared rather freely on blogs.

I had hoped to see the Weezer EP or vinyl or whatever it was gonna be, but neither of my record stores had anything new from them, despite one of them playing Weezer on the system in their shop.

I witnessed a drawing for prizes at one shop and at least half a dozen people pouring over the racks in another. I hope to see Record Store Day take off and become an institution like Comic Book Day has.

Last but not least, there’s a real new Blur song with all the original blokes in the band playing on it. They’re offering it for free at their website, so get over there and snatch it up quick!

music binges

From time to time I’ve been known to go on what might be called music binges in this life.

For filler between albums and remixes I download to listen/preview, I play streams or podcasts.

dublab.com bassdrive.com bassjunkies.com destroyer.net electro radio gremlin radio jungletrain.net philosomatika buzzoutroom incepdate

data transmission, juno breakbeat and some miscellaneous electro and techno podcasts I may or may not subscribe to.

I keep hoping Coastal Frequencies gets their archives sorted. Haven’t caught their set for a while now.

In the album realm, I’ve hunted down more Grieves and P.O.S. I hadn’t heard before, another mixtape from Cold Legistics, new Melissa Auf Der Maur, and some minimal-to-big-beat stuff that steadfastly refuses to be pigeonholed as electronica – from Pete Namlook and various collaborators.

This adds to the rhymesayers and doomtree artists I’ve been heavily favoring lately; Ted Leo, Knaan, blockhead, input, a little streetlight manifesto, and CYNE.

Then there’s the usual tide of commonality with everybody else: gorillaz, them crooked vultures, rjd2, mgmt. Stuff I wouldn’t miss like Johnny Cash, Drive-By Truckers and the ?new? Jimi Hendrix.

At last the post-december slowdown of album releases fades with the coming of spring. Now even non-geeks like me can have too much to listen to.

today’s tasks

I seem to be headed into processing the Public Enemy track “Can’t Truss It” for some of Chuck’s more choice vocal shouts. I’ve always wanted a clean acapella of that, but I don’t think such a beast exists.

And I’m about to try and seamlessly slice out most of the vocals in a Jason Isbell song – in essence creating a dubplate the quick and dirty way, to drop behind a Mos Def track.

Toward that end it seems I’m tracking out an ear worm that’s been hovering around inside my head for many months now. Although I have been overheard dropping the two tracks into each other from time to time.

Maybe I’ll remember to eat or something.

Bring the NOISE!

In an attempt to hide from the shark-infested social waters of the bus to school everyday, I employed the use of the cassette player and headphones. Like many of my fellows – whether they liked me or not – I wholeheartedly embraced rap and hip hop music.

One of the first tracks I loved was Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise” soon followed by De La Soul and Dream Warriors, Hammer and NWA. But those cassettes I saved up for, songs I recorded from the radio or taped from my records…I’ll never forget the sense of solace, of reward, of peace that came with listening to music over the ride to school, or returning to my locker after the last class.

To grab my walkman from my coat pocket and put my headphones back on…made all the previous indignities seem worth it somehow. Of course since nobody ever had to hear what I heard, those tapes were sonic journeys I haven’t heard in years.

Mostly I captured sound from the radio, sometimes teevee or movies. But I’d readily sandwich hip hop or gangster rap between soundtrack instrumentals and orchestral music. Phrases from audiobooks dropped in at random. I guess I’ve always been into audio collage and I haven’t had a decent dual tape deck in years – so it’s an art form I’ve abandoned, unfortunately.

I remember being confused back then from the people who were my age – call ‘em “peers” or classmates or whatever. Despite playing Run DMC and NWA tapes in their own front yards, they still had an interesting level of dubiousness about black culture. Because when I became as into Public Enemy as I did…mostly because of the track “Bring the Noise”, I wore a PE shirt to my high school.

One of the same guys I remembered listening to the same gangster rap saw me in that shirt, and later that day I found several “dips” of used chewing tobacco shoved through the slats at the top of my locker.

So what, right? I didn’t get my nose busted, get shot or stabbed. I oughtta be happy about that. (We’ll sidestep for the moment the vivid imaginings I had of shooting up the place, or winding up and smacking that redneck upside his thick head with a toilet tank lid.)

But I never forgot that some of my classmates thought rap was fine to listen to when skateboarding or doing bike tricks with friends, but it was something else entirely to admit to it in the light of day. Or worse, wear a shirt proclaiming that you’re “down” with Chuck D. (Even if he does have the neon-light of Flavor Flav in his permanent orbit.)

This morning I’ve been trying to pump myself up, get awake, shake off the blues and the allergies messing with my head. In the midst of Gorillaz, some thumping remixes, Input, P.O.S., and Atmosphere itunes drops Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise” and suddenly I’m 14 years old again riding the bus to hi skool with the soundtrack to “Less Than Zero” in my walkman.

I know every word to many a PE track. I’ve read or seen different artworks where characters develop an attachment to a certain song, or recite lyrics or words from a poem in a moment of peril, or as they die. (Picture Morpheus watching his ship destroyed in the Matrix sequels, ferinstance.)

I’m as apt to quote Chuck D at such a dire moment as I am Ani DiFranco (or Shock G, for that matter.)

I came here today to post memories and offer my respect for Chuck D and “Bring the Noise” still being just as awesome these years later.

everybody wants 2 find Graffiti Bridge

So I’m sitting here listening to music from the period that would be known as the Graffiti Bridge era of Prince’s musical odyssey. Anybody who knows me knows there are Prince songs written on the insides of my eyelids, if not the inside of my skull.

I wonder if “Can’t Stop This Feeling I Got” is where the riff in “Peach” came from? And if so, can I connect the dots between that and “Chaos and Disorder”, which literally starts where “Peach” ends? I had a tape with the Bagley’s Warehouse performance of Peach, raw and blistering, with a wicked solo at the end, and I loved it so much I wore it out. Hearing that again recently, I kept expecting him to go into the lyrics to C&D.

I can’t say if I’ve seen the Honeydogs or the Jayhawks more often than P, but for years he was easily the performer I’d seen the most often. All those awkward drama-tinged teenaged and early 20s times at the big white box of Paisley Park. (Sometimes in black lipstick and combat boots, which for a caucasian male surely clashed with the Vegas or-at-least-business-casual aesthetic of most of the attire worn therein.)

I felt a familiar sensation brush over me the other night. At college I had a period of intense bonding with Blur’s self-titled album, the one most know for “woohoo!” aka Song 2. There are several of those songs permanently chiseled into my DNA as well. I found myself singing along with ‘On Your Own’ in spite of myself. Mr. Albarn has a way with melody, let alone lyrics.

Today this song-inspired sharing vibe comes from Prince.

I feel a boundless release of tension when that descending noodly riff jangles out of “Can’t Stop This Feeling I Got”, the opening track of the GB soundtrack album. In my teendom I was well around the bend for some compilation albums of the era: one from Quincy Jones called “Back on the Block” and another called “Do It Acapella.” The multi-artist format really kept my scattered attentions.

Back in 1990 I remember local radio station KDWB pushing a semi-humorous “Prince for Governor” campaign. I had just begun putting together that the vast majority of what I knew as the Minneapolis Sound was Prince. Sure Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis helped add Janet Jackson to that mix. But their band The Time helped blur the lines.

I can hardly even point to all the stuff that fits under the Minneapolis Sound umbrella for the 1980s. But between Batman and Graffiti Bridge from Prince, it all began to fall into place for me.

Graffiti Bridge opened the door to the world of Prince for me. I haven’t lost interest in him since, despite his most fervent attempts to get me to (I’m looking at you, “1UwannaC”.) A few short years later I stumbled into the world of the internet, and began trading tape bootlegs with friends I met there.

The first boot I got was the “legendary” Black Album a few years before it got official release. It’s cute and has a few hooks, a few goofy spots, but is mostly a dry affair. The next boot I got was “crucial” which is far more worthy of the legendary label. It’s a mess, like all bootlegs, cobbled together from a bunch of different sources and sessions.

But the tracks as they were on that release began to get memorized that way. “Girl O My Dreams” is almost ska and “Movie Star” is a goofy and loose jam. The title track’s saxophone is immense, but that version didn’t get put on Crystal Ball – he chose the boring flat version without the sax, for some inexplicable reason.

Forward another handful of years, P releases a few of these songs in one form or another on Crystal Ball, the underwhelming official bootleg set that could’ve been so much more.

I just stumbled across a 2010 re-boot called Box O Chocolates that for some reason has nearly perfect versions of the tracks from Crucial that were also Graffiti Bridge era songs – or covers written in that batch that ended up going to other artists or other projects, or just getting dumped in the vault.

I realize this was probably my first and best Prince era, second perhaps is Gold if it’s not tied with NPGMC. The sheer volume of songs that are bumpin, thumpin, instant classics is high in this period. I’d love to hear a rip-roaring studio version of Prince doing the track that The Time get on the GB soundtrack – Shake!

The audiophile’s methods reap serious dividends over the basic configuration, the officially released package. But any person can find a copy of the impressive soundtrack to Graffiti Bridge at the pawn shop, the library, a thrift store or a garage sale (as likely as finding it at retail.)

Then: pop the disc in, put the windows down, crank it up and feel the wonderful sunny summertime groove of Can’t Stop This Feeling I Got!

incredible live shows, concerts of 2000-2009

I had this brilliant idea for a post about all the bands I’d seen in various incredible live performances as I was laying in bed last night. I should’ve just gotten up and written it all out then, when it was clear in my head and forestalling sleep.

Now I’m starting to blur the lines, forgetting that the Mill City Music Festival was before 2000, and that my trip to the defunct Quest to see Fatboy Slim wasn’t much later. That night I dragged Trent and his sister to see Tribe of Millions after Stuart Davis at the Fine Line…and remembering that not everyone likes funk as much as me.

Probably my favorite moments at first glance took place at the 400 Bar. I’ve seen Jessy Green, the Honeydogs, the Creekdippers, and others play there. But Shivaree was a special treat – the mostly unknown torchy voice of Ambrosia Parsley and band.

One show that stood out as instantly-classic, the kind of pinch-me, this-is-EPIC feeling one all-t00-rarely gets in this life? Jay Bennett and Edward Burch at the 400 Bar. I’ve rhapsodized about this elsewhere, but his sudden death causes me to underscore the point. The Palace at 4AM, Part One is an incredible album, but seeing Jay perform, hearing him sing, is something I honestly hoped would be around for decades to come.

So trust it when anybody says that-one-guy Jeff kicked-out-of-Wilco in the movie – he’s quite seriously more talented than Mr. Tweedy in several arenas. It’s just monumentally sad that his body of work is all that’s left of him now. The world needed more Jay Bennett pop songs, sweet and intricately constructed little gifts that they almost always were.

Bad Religion at First Avenue stands tall as a favorite moment. Really appreciating their stellar return to form on the last three albums, I had to go and I’m very glad I did. Nothing’s as energizing and inspiring as fast, hard, loud punk rock songs. The fact that the lyrics are intelligent is just like Megadeth – a bonus.

Jello Biafra did a spoken word performance there the night before Paul Wellstone’s plane went down. Tis a strange and bitter sensation to have mocked Paul’s few centrist planks the night before, and mourn him so completely before my next lunch break.

Hell, there was a while when First Avenue – pretty much the Minneapolis venue, appeared to be in danger of disappearing altogether. Clueless money opened a Hard Rock Cafe across the street, where once sat the shell of an abandoned building.

Anybody with two brain cells to rub together knows that the real history is at First Avenue, despite the plastic corporate neon tragedy claiming to be hard just across the way. I might drop a few bucks on surrounding establishments in downtown Minneapolis, but the HRC is a total joke.

The First Avenue mainroom is where I saw the Jayhawks filmed for a concert DVD that has yet to appear. Years before that watched Gary Louris jump into the crowd during Baby, Baby, Baby. I think it was their guitar tech who finished the solo…security buffering Mr. Louris away from throngs of grabby women.

Golden Smog…watching from the balcony across the stage as six or more fellows with guitars or basses were almost always playing. Eventually seeing Jeff Tweedy solo at the old Guthrie one March night with 8-10 inches of heavy slush to drive home in afterward. Gary came out to do a few songs with Jeff that night. Conrad, the stage manager from First Ave, watching and occasionally singing along like the rest of us, near the front of the center section.

The Honeydogs album release party for 10,000 Years at First Ave, getting drunk with my friends, shaking my ass. Being one of few who knew every word to Albe Maybe when Bard Meier opened for them. Amused at how Michael Penn read helpful tips from a book on public speaking between each of his songs in his opening set.

One of the definitive high points in the past decade was surely seeing Prince rock the Xcel in St. Paul from the front f-ing row – wristbanded for easy visual ID by stage-side security in case we ended up onstage. With my big fuzzy purple pimp hat on…

I saw Alejandro Escovedo play an in-store at an indie store in Uptown that has since closed. I can’t even remember if it was Garage D’or as it sputtered out, or someplace else. And I think it was just before 2000. Still, shaking his hand and thanking him for playing for us – and then running two blocks to catch the bus back home.

I stumbled across the Honeydogs warming up for a show with American Paint in the 7th St. Entry – First Ave’s siamese twin. Noah’s drum kit was close enough to the open door that we could see each other during their warm up. After they were done, he stepped out, thanked me for amusing him during soundcheck, and put me on the guest list +1. Even though I couldn’t even get a male date for the show that night, thanks Noah!

My wife and I saw Wilco at the Walker Art Center and sculpture garden a few years ago now. I remember the songs having much more life in a live setting. This and Jeff Tweedy’s constantly improving solo guitarist skills led me to check the band starting a tour over a year ago at the Mayo Civic Arena in Rochester. Hell, sometime I should upload the recording I made to Owl and Bear.

We saw Patty Griffin at The Fine Line music cafe, from the balcony. Her voice is a singular phenomenon, masterfully expressive, but her lyrics are what takes the experience to such a transcendent level. I’m not fond of the creaky voiced pop stars that often get picked to cover Patty’s songs, but her originals outshine them all.

Another brilliant performance of the last decade was Kelly Willis in the First Ave mainroom. Her voice owns a far different timbre than Patty Griffin, but I’d love to hear them duet. Kelly’s a charming woman whose voice has every ounce of power and majesty that Patty has. I’m stumbling over myself comparing when they aren’t comparable.

We ended up at a benefit-priced New Years show with Jessy Greene and Soul Asylum and Iffy one time downtown in a hotel ballroom. If the tickets hadn’t been a very nice gift, we’d never have afforded them, but the music was incredible. Soul Asylum are always an excellent live band.

I remember friends in high school going to Soul Asylum shows before I was much of a concertgoer. My senior year when Somebody To Shove and Runaway Train went giggidy at the radio. Seeing them a while later at Mill City, watching Dave change places and play drums for the Ohjeez. Again as our last show in Minnesota – seeing them play the Mound festival. Soul Asylum is almost a supergroup of its own now with former NPG drummer Michael Bland and Replacements bassist Tommy Stinson. (Here’s hoping for another album!)

I’ve seen Mr. Lif play several times in the last decade. The Def Jux Revenge of the Robots tour featured him solo and paired with Akrobatic in the guise of the duo The Perceptionists. It took me a while to absorb all the mad skills I took in that night. I’ve since developed appreciation for RJD2, Blueprint, and Cage. I can’t remember if El-P was there or not, but it was one hot show and it seemed to go on forever.

I can’t recommend indie hip-hop enough. It’s not even all that indie anymore. Brother Ali and Atmosphere are blowing up Rhymesayers. Def Jux helped propel El-P and Aesop Rock into the lexicon of the garden variety heepster.

The next time I saw Mr. Lif he was headlining, but the crowd was even bigger than the Def Jux Robots tour. Next time he returned with Ak and the Perceptionists put on a punishing live set at The Triple Rock to a nearly packed house. The most recent time I saw Lif was at the Cedar Cultural Center, just beginning a tour with a couple other artists. It does not matter if the room is small or large, the crowd is tired or hopping, Lif is gonna perform to the same standard and get you on your feet!

My first show in California happened to be Brother Ali at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz. I had been hoping for the rumored live band and choir from the title track of his latest cd, Us. But even without all that, he still stomped the house. Amid clouds of smoke and a sea of waving hands, Cali’s got the love for midwest hip-hop.

I passed 1000 words some time back, and dumped out most of the content that’d been rattling around my head in the first go. Cheers till next time I eject respect.

sure as people need sunlight, we need music!

So Ryan Adams did a song called People Need Sunlight on this pink record right here. Of course there’s a corollary there, because sure as people need the sun, they need music. I’m firmly convinced.

I re-read my post about the best music of the 2000s, now that everybody’s decided it’s time to reflect, based on arbitrary qualities of numbers that are basically meaningless themselves.

I remember reading Andy Partridge (from XTC) remark that Prince’s “quality control is busted” and wonder if he heard the incredible mostly-digital stuff that I liked the most of P’s output in this 2000-2009 block, those NPGMC albums.

I discovered Alpha Blondy, Ali Farka Toure, Tiken Jah Fakoly, FAC Alliance, Killpoint, Toumani Diabate, Brenda Fassie, and reconnected with Youssou N’Dour. West Africa has a lot to offer – musically, culturally, and it’s beautiful country.

African music blogs have been sharing a lot of incredible stuff in the past few years. I think I’ve linked them in my sidebar, but Matsuli Music and Benn Loxo Du Taccu come immediately to mind.

Soul Sides has been known to do excellent writing, bloggage on African musicians from time to time, if memory serves. I’ve done blog posts at my old site about FAC Alliance and there are countless other posts hidden in my “Afrikan” tracklist just waiting to be told.

I’ve recently discovered K’Naan via his song for the World Cup called Waving Flag. Many affirming and centering, grounding vibes in these lyrics, these words, this song. I saw him perform on Democracy Now one time.

I suddenly imagine a package tour all over Africa culminating in West Africa all over Guinée, Mali and Senegal. Featuring K’Naan, Ziggy Marley, Michael Franti/Spearhead, Tiken Jah Fakoly, FAC Alliance, with Ani DiFranco and Public Enemy.

—

We didn’t even have this indie music writer-blogger perspective 10 years ago. A large segment of the population who have been wired since before the original napster, they went and became their own branch of the media, however tenuous.

(Even if that first meant photocopied zeens, before the internet became commonplace.)

Jello Biafra implored us, among others, to “become the media” and not just whine about corporate perspective and power, but counter it somehow with our everyday actions.

I remember reading Boom Selection and various other long-departed “bastard pop” websites. Discovering dictionaroake and mashup culture, reviewing my history with negativland and chumbawamba, loving the shiggar fraggar show.

Writing about music or learning an instrument aren’t the only options for participation available to us anymore. Derivative works, collage, rough edits and low-res video productions, these tools were in our hands as the last decade turned us over to a new century.

Things have come a long way. Mashup culture went mainstream in a number of different ways, least of which is emptyvee’s mashup show. The massive mainstream success, even if it seems faddish now it’s ebbed a bit, of the guitar hero and rock band games has given us DJ hero.

DJ Hero brings the mashup scene to casual gamers. It’s the first of the music sim games I’ve wanted to actually try.

But to just think we could talk about published, safe, corporate  – even just indie labels and smaller artists, without discussing the meta aspects of mashup culture, people participating directly by making their own mixes and remixes and videos of these.

I think one of the most incredible things about the span from 2000-09 is the unprecedented degree to which just about anyone with even the most outdated, half-assed computer can still use basic digital editing software for audio and video.

Who could’ve dreamed we wouldn’t only end up with pro-tools but also ubuntu studio and garageband and audacity and countless other free or open-source homebrew or mainstream applications to level the playing field between artists and labels who own studios???

In 1999 and 2000 it was still the pinnacle of achievement for an artist to be able to have a home studio. Even with analog equipment, it represents freedom to record whenever inspiration strikes – like a painter having some space in which to paint. Pro-tools existed, but hadn’t caught on to major label production yet.

In 2010 digital recorders are so small and microphones are so advanced that just about any noob can make a professional-sounding audience recording in beyond-CD quality. F the studio, we can capture real-time high-definition sound from performances as they happen.

It has become regular, commonplace for “bootleggers” and those of us who get a charge out of recording concerts we attend, to see others who record shows post them within mere hours, not days or weeks, of the event having ended.

The indie recording scene has become populated by enough participants that taping-friendly bands usually have “matrix” recordings generated from several different microphones, sometimes layered over the soundboard master.

These details have come together with absolutely epic public miracles like the Live Music Archive at archive.org – with thousands of recordings from hundreds of musicians. The Cardinals, Mike Doughty, Elliott Smith, Ween, Cracker/CVB, Low, Mason Jennings, Michael Franti and Spearhead, and a cubic ton of Drive-By Truckers.

Just about any jam-band or arena act is represented here from John Mayer to the Grateful Dead. And there are tons of collections, like 8-bit chiptune music or historical recordings, classical music to choose from, as well. (Who could’ve imagined this massive treasure-chest online, lossless CD-or-better quality, and free for the downloading, in 2000?)

The revolution in having any computer be a recording studio meant that artists could record with a laptop. This meant a lot of mediocre independent music happened, but democratized the process so that prolific popular artists could create without the studio apparatus. Without all that related cost – rental and equipment.

Since we’re still in the midst of the latter-day digital revolution, it’s semi pointless to pontificate on this. But when the CD format began to erode in the face of DVD becoming dominant at the beginning of the 2000s, music and how we first heard it changed dramatically.

I used to tape songs off the radio as a kid – knowing that this was my only hope when the song wouldn’t be on a cassette single for weeks yet. These days those hours spent waiting to press record or letting tapes run in case the deejay played the Song You Wanted…that’s a joy of conquering impatience that no one remembers anymore.

Wilco’s famous clash with their label over Yankee Hotel Foxtrot amused me greatly. Everyone could stream the album from the website, if they hadn’t been able to download it from a friend already. The masses recognized the music without the pressing of plastic, and paid to come see Jeff and the band and sing along.

The corporate mechanism loses its grip on the artists, and any spectre of ‘control’ over the art they produce. It’s almost like the public knows, intrinsically senses, that music is ours – and coppywrong or legalese and con-tracts will never change this.

Radiohead’s “bold experiment” with their last album proved that the old ways aren’t the best ways. Ryan Adams is doing similar things. Ben Folds sold several indie EPs. Chuck D of Public Enemy had a digital label before Prince did.

The first gift of this new year, this new decade I’ve been given is a subscription to the new A-Z series from the band Ash. A new song every fortnight? And the ones already available are worth at least half of what I’ve paid already.

Weezer did a “itunes pass” with several weeks of new music last fall. I’d hope to see similar subscription models in their future, (especially if there’s a lossless option.)

Everybody is making the biz fit them, finally. The genie is out of the bottle. The old accounting tricks paired with owning the studio aren’t enough to keep artists under your thumb anymore. Thank Goddess.

—

I remembered the other day how blown away I was by the first New Pornographers album. I’d been blown away by Neko Case’s voice, but loved the crunch and bite behind her with the NewPo more than the folkier stuff she’d done previous. Thankfully the NewPo sound informed her approach to her own material thereafter, and she’s gained critical acclaim she’s deserved since the start.

Still, there’s no way to explain how out-of-nowhere the first New Pornographers album Mass Romantic struck me. From reading others who write about it, this is a common reaction to those of us outside Canada. Among their homebase, I imagine less surprise but just as much enjoyment. A powerpop masterpiece that keeps on giving, with nearly as perfect albums following it.

I imagine a retrospective best-of this band could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best of the Beatles or the Stones or whatever epic band you wanna bring. They’re that good, as anyone who hears them can attest.

I remember Beck’s Midnite Vultures being regularly played for a while, minus a few tracks. I respect the party-album concept for what it is, but don’t think Debra is worth the time to hear again – Mr. Hansen has a tall stack of b-side or non-album tracks far better than this goofy joke. A friend asked me which tracks to grab, and I told him “anything with the word ‘and’ in it.”

Ryan Adams brought me here with that lyric about how people need sunlight. Although like Prince, I’m sure he could’ve put out 25-30 albums in the span between 2000-09, but the 10+ albums he did wring from the record-label sausage-grinder showed a talented, if troubled, artist honing his skill and owning his potential.

I wish Mr. Adams the best, and hope that even if he can’t stomach returning to the music biz, he keeps sharing his demos with his base. We aren’t gonna stop listening anytime soon, even though we’re sometimes crotchety bastards too.

book reading and how it goes

I’m trying to get reading again. I’ve prided myself on years of heavy reading in this life. I’ve also worked long hours during some months, some years, and read less during those times.

Last year I read a good number of books, if half of them were pulpy mass fiction. I’ve never understood people who look down on you for reading popcorn like Grisham or King. At least we’re reading, dammit. And usually Michael Crichton or Patricia Cornwell kept it a little more cerebral, if still being easy to voraciously consume.

I’ve advanced past a fork left in the road over the last year, and began collecting books I’ve been interested in and wish-listing at amazon for a while now.

Exit mookbooch; enter swaptree. I’ve gotta put my account on vacation mode. Ever since lala stopped offering CD trades – which is what they started out doing exclusively…I’ve been getting as many hits on swaptree as I did in my best month at lala.

I love how the profile page at swaptree says I’ve “saved” $120+ on trading with them. Is that before or after the $42 in postage it took? Or what about the printer toner and paper for the printed postage, and the items I traded to begin with?

It’s nothing to get bent up over, I’m just making a point, is all…

As a result of this series of events, I’m 3/4 through a book by Cory Doctorow. He of boingboing.net and famously publishing the entire text of every novel he writes free online. I’d been pleasantly amused years ago to grab his Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom pdf and email it to a friend who was working graveyard shift at a copy shop.

Next time I saw my bald headed amigo, he handed me a plastic-loop bound copy of Cory’s book and I read it in one sitting. I found it fresh, the syntax a little strange and off-putting, and haven’t thought much about it since.

Enter “Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town” arriving via a trade for an old new-age CD.  I jumped on it, confused by the “Sci-Fi” channel logo prominent on the dust jacket.

This isn’t sci-fi. It’s a mildly gritty near-future freak fantasy. Add in semi-random technological subplot woven in to appeal to the internet users and the cellphone-equivalent of gearheads.

I did remark recently that the book initially shot past my disbelief with its bundle of odd and improbable things going on at once. It’s also a strange and challenging affair in a couple of other key ways, too.

First, the narrator and his entire family line cannot keep a name for even the length of one sentence. They keep the same first letter, but it seems no one can remember any character’s name. It’s somehow normal for the narrator to refer to himself and others by three different names in the same sentence?!?

If the plot intends to give sense to this madness, it’s taking its sweet time doing so.

Second major quirk Mr. Doctorow no doubt thinks is inventive, daring, endearing? The story jumps all over the timeline, proceeding through a mostly random series of connections in all different segments of the author’s lifetime.

I know he’s throwing out references to Hunter Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing”, but this story seems to owe a greater debt to Slaughterhouse Five for all the time shifting the reader is left to sort out. Add to this the penchant for changing the names of the characters so often, and I’m left re-reading segments of the story just to make sure I understand what the narrator thinks is going on.

I appreciate the brazen acceptance of, and the detailed description of the impossible, imaginary creatures and things that happen in this universe.

I do not appreciate being poked in the eye every other paragraph just because the author thinks he’s really just too cute for his own good. I could recite -solely from memory- a long list of authors whose work doesn’t feel the need to play syntactic games or get needlessly difficult in the process of telling a story.

Truth be told, if this keeps up I may table “…town” before I finish it and move onto something bound to keep me turning the pages. I would’ve finished this one by now if it weren’t for the off-putting methods and big meh-stretch in the middle.

I’m not into fantasy, as evidenced by the fact that I don’t play WoW, only enjoyed DnD for the companionship, and don’t feel The Princess Bride is an example of repeat-viewing.

Maybe I’ll have better to say if this fantasy book starts to encourage me to finish it…

…if not, recent acquisitions are piling up waiting for my attentions. “Breaking Rank” by Norm Stamper, “Darwinia” by Robert Charles Wilson (looks to be a lot more steampunky than I remember), “Interface” by N. Stephenson/George, “Cryptonomicon” by N. Stephenson, “Killing Floor” by Lee Child, “Humpty Dumpty in Oakland” by Philip K. Dick, “The Truth” by Al Franken, “I Am America…” by Stephen Colbert, and lots more.

best of 2000-2009

I had already begun to revile the notion of pre-packaged decade-sized chunks of time before I heard Utah Phillips say that it was absurd to let people convince you to package your memories by arbitrary lines of dates and numbers.

Nonetheless, I have friends who work in various walks of life that cause me to review my consumed media in this time. I just happen to be a member of the facebook group “unlike 99% of you, I was born in the 1970s!”

So reading people talk about shit I couldn’t care about, have undoubtedly heard and never noticed anything interesting about…Paramore, Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear. wtf!?! Like Death Cube for Cattie, this is more crap foisted upon the listening public primarily b/c they have good management, publicists, and organization…not talent, not substance, not spirit.

At least not to these ears. Not to this heart. Not yet anyway.

I have, however, noticed myself reflecting after seeing friends post their lists. Mainly music came to my mind, but I know I could come up with lists of movies, documentaries and fiction, and even books – that I’ve enjoyed over the last 10 years. The best of those times, if you will.

I consider it a herculean task to condense all that time into one post. It’ll be something I hope to come back to, revisit and add to.

But here are some incredible artists who gave us outstanding albums between 2000 and today that have endured for me, and become parts of my life to varying degrees.

And there are tons of singles, songs, and parts of imperfect albums that have also been essential listening, repeat listening, and therapeutic sonic experiences. But I’m focusing on albums that have been so perfect that they get listened to over and over.

For instance Ben Folds put out some unforgettable songs, but I can’t say I find any of his solo albums to be perfect listening, because some of the tracks grate on me for some reason, pandering to his inner Weird Al or Bill Shatner, and I skip (or don’t rip) them.

(And on the re-read I remember both the stellar Ben Folds Live and his recently stunning revision of Way to Normal called Seeds and Stems, which certainly IS one of the best albums of the 2000s!)

The Honeydogs, a Minnesota favorite, put out several stunning albums in the 2000s. Their perfect album for me is 10,000 Years, despite the horrific detail in some of the songs in the cycle. Also recommended are Amygdala and Here’s Luck. I can’t praise these guys highly enough.

Nobody’s been able to make it very far without shouting out to Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It’s a darn fine album, well deserving of the praise, as much for the manner in which most of us first heard it – as the music itself.

I found myself returning to – more often than YHF – former Wilco member and the late, great Jay Bennett’s album with Ed Burch, The Palace at 4AM, Part 1. Initially drawn in by an mp3 circulating well before any word of an album, I pounced on the pre-order when it was announced.

I’m glad I did. I even saw Jay Bennett and Ed Burch play the 400 Bar. I still hope to find a recording of that show. Jay had an incredible way with melody, a full-bodied tenor voice capable of intense sadness, and could play just about any instrument. Here’s looking forward to any posthumous releases. We miss you, Jay!

Ryan Adams dropped a ton of material, as anyone familiar with him might expect, in the years between 2000 and today. I know that cultivating a jam-band following with the Cardinals seemed to deeply inspire him and his fanbase. I experienced catharsis and energetic writing during NaNoWriMo 2009 while playing RA&TC sets from the Live Music Archive at archive.org.

His perfect album for me was Gold. There are a lot of other immensely rewarding moments in his catalog, but my first Ryan record I played front to back and over again was Gold. Before and after the tragedy in 2001, his songs became part of what got me through those confusing, maddening times.

Even now, after years of other favorites putting distance between me and Gold when I played it most, I remember the shape of the songs, the way his voice gilds the lyrics – like the back of my hand. And I sing along…

When I first heard it, Deltron 3030 struck me as revolutionary. First of all, I think 75Ark got it when few did. I believe this was one of the first albums intentionally available on the indie p2p phenomenon once known as Napster. All of it. Every track. In good 192k mp3 with proper filenames, and shared by tons of people from the get-go. One of the fastest downloads I ever got from napster.

I couldn’t believe, after years of reading 2600, that someone was finally crossing the line and rapping about viruses and rebel code. I felt like an idiot for missing their show at First Avenue, but I’d just gotten a new job and wanted to look good by not showing up hungover the next day.

I have since found a bootleg, so it’s almost okay. Anyway, I bought this on ceedee, I grabbed the 12 inch singles, I bought it on vinyl. I hunted down tons of Dan the Automator remixes and became a fan of much of Kid Koala’s work. Del had been familiar to be from his first solo album.

I find it hard to narrow down the more prolific types. Ani DiFranco released several albums that I nearly wore out. I’m still incredibly impressed with Revelling, Reckoning – but mainly because it defies being whittled down to one album, not because it’s a perfect expression of the Album as A Form.

She did do two albums that served as repeat listening long enough to become my familiars. Evolve and Reprieve both contain moments that touch my soul deeply.

I find it equally hard to narrow my choice from Michael Franti and Spearhead. I absolutely embraced and became energized and inspired by Stay Human when it came out. I’ve become just as enthused about Yell Fire! and All Rebel Rockers. Modern soul at its best!

Bad Religion were a band I was familiar with in high school, and heard on the radio on Rev 105. But I didn’t really get them, develop an intense understanding of them, appreciate them as I do now…until a few years ago.

My wife and I heard The Process of Belief together, and began to reconsider the band. She’d always been a fan, and has old albums on vinyl. I knew their singles, but we’d neither ever seen them play. We grew to know that The Empire Strikes First is as good.

Then New Maps of Hell came out. I have to consider them my favorite band behind the Honeydogs. We went to see them at First Ave on the New Maps tour. I couldn’t help but jump and shout and pump my fist.

I’m not much of a ‘dance’ type. I just don’t get it. But the “pit” that night, mainly consisting of kids running in a circle around the large, dense, fat bouncer like a bumper in a pinball machine, looked like a lot of fun.

Bad Religion are ace performers, not to be missed, and rebelliously inspiring. If every revolution had a BR, a Mr. Lif or RATM pumping up the crowd, Washington would be rubble.

Independent musician and spiritual powerhouse Stuart Davis gave us several albums of intelligent rock music, but I’d recommend either his self-titled album or Something Simple. I don’t hear enough about this guy, don’t know whose blacklist he’s on, but he deserves attention as I’ve been saying since college. He’s like a male Ani DiFranco with a buddhist streak and I’m dead serious.

Minneapolis powerhouse Prince is inspiring and I pray he never stops. (Or if he eventually has to die, he leaves us tons of vault albums free from posthumous editing.) I absolutely loved his NPG Music Club, and felt crushed when after the first year the experiment was discontinued. I felt sure he’d keep giving us an album’s worth of material spread over every three months forever. I’ve no doubt that he could.

Still, what came out that year in the NPGMC got sorted into proper albums eventually. I recommend either The Slaughterhouse or The Chocolate Invasion, but prefer the latter narrowly. I’ve maintained curiosity for his output since, and appreciated the Musicology tour from the front row at the Xcel in St. Paul. (thanx to stuArt!)

I just didn’t get his track “The 1 U Wanna C” with that refrain about “gotta lotta money” making me just wanna cut to a sample (from Jimmy Crack Corn) “and I don’t care!”

I just realized my notes say nothing about the Old 97s, who had that incredible Satellite Rides record, with the b-side that eventually became a Rhett solo song – Singular Girl. I also loved Drag It Up and almost all of Blame It On Gravity. The band can do little wrong.

Green Day scored such a massive hit with American Idiot that even though their fans knew they weren’t coming back from sh-t, no one could stop referring to it as a ‘return’ of some kind. As if it weren’t perfect enough an Album, they dropped an incredible b-side called “Too Much, Too Soon” on the titular single.

And just last year they did it again with 21st Century Breakdown, which if it hadn’t been preceeded by American Idiot, would’ve been just as highly lauded – I have little doubt. I keep playing several of these songs over and over, and honestly hope that it gets a remix album treatment eventually, just as American Edit did for Idiot.

I remember playing another album over and over during the same time frame as the NPGMC and Ryan Adams Gold. Dar Williams The Green World became an unconscious ‘first thing I play after getting home from work’ ritual. As more songs began jumping out of the album, I began playing them in my mp3 player on the mile walk each way to and from work.

Self’s album Gizmodgery, which I finally found on ceedee without having to pay fifty bucks on ebay, this last year…also an incredible piece of the early 2000s I’ll always remember.

I haven’t even gushed about There Is Nothing Left to Lose by Foo Fighters or anything by Cracker, Mike Doughty, Tori Amos or the Jayhawks yet. More for next time, then…

so much 2 say

My head’s been bubbling over with lots of random thoughts. Many of them are of the review kind. Some are just random mental flotsam. I wondered what Kurt Cobain might be up to in present day, if he’d loosened up and started doing less depressing covers.

I opined, spurred unto conversation, that there are as many ways to be an artist as there are human beings. But there’s something to be noted about the trajectory of performers, musicians, and whether or not they let the expectations of their audience have any noticable effect on the work they produce.

I submit that Jay Farrar and Mark Olson are pure artists, mostly unswayed by the fleeting notions of popular music and transient expectations of fans. I feel that John Lennon is an example of the former. Ringo Starr is more of the ‘play to the room’ style of artist, as is somebody like Jeff Tweedy – who rides the crowd like an expert surfer.

I make no preference between the two types of performer, just realize that pop artists usually leave little substance behind, and purists would exist in a vacuum – audience or no audience.

As a parallel, I discussed with a friend how I loved Nirvana’s Bleach album, but couldn’t get as into In Utero because half of it was noise intended to strip away the band’s immense popularity, and because Bleach and Nevermind had totally dominated my expectations from the band.

Nevermind was the radio-friendly side of the band, Bleach was their indie noise side that I preferred. I wonder sometimes what mister kurt might be up to today, if he’d found something that fought back the pain in his gut. Just like the previous generation’s Mr. Lennon, many of us still miss ya, man!

—

I also had occasion to comment on the acquisition model of corporate growth. I have come to accept that many of the indie brands at the co-ops and indie shops in the early 90s have been acquired by big-name food label brands seeking to dip their toes in the ‘green hippie’ waters.

If you haven’t yet seen it, drop whatever you’re doing and go see the doc Food Inc. For many of us who’ve been reading independent media about factory farming, patented life, and the evils of monoliths like Monsanto – this ties all those sundry stories together rather effortlessly. And without the pathos of PETA or Greenpeace.

I have noted as well that conde-nast – a publishing giant and dinosaur that refuses to die – began snatching up websites that I previously viewed in a positive light – beginning a few years ago.

I wonder sometimes just how many stories the average internet-novice remains ignorant to, because of the old-media bias of just about everything that isn’t online.

I hesitate to visit reddit anymore, knowing that the same two-faced schmucks who can’t stop sending conde-naste-traveller to every address I’ve ever had…intend to ruin TUAW, lifehacker, Ars Technica, and who knows how many other web properties.

I find myself happy to report that of all the properties they’ve absorbed in the past few years, lifehacker still appears to be itself – unzombified, if you will. I don’t know if conde’s deadening influence has yet spread to other favorite websites. I just hope their acquisition streak is over – for the love of Goddess don’t eff anything else up, pleeez?

Wired is another property that formerly had real cred online, but stopped doing really interesting covers long ago. I remember after Conde Ass acquired them, the majority of their design department quit. Some went to Adbusters. Most of them would rather resign than work for a magazine that was gonna begin taking cigarette and alcohol ads – after years of editorial policy otherwise.

I still find some useful articles in the print version, but usually anything of worth from Wired I’ve read online months before the print version hits paper. I used to subscribe to their print edition, but it’s dwindled in usefulness to me since.

While Make magazine causes a synergy between their print and web versions, Wired’s two versions ignore each other the majority of the time.

This leads me to conclude that there are three main definitions of the meme Wired:

a) the effect the Conde Nasst corp has on formerly-innovative properties they acquire;

b) a magazine worth grabbing if you don’t read their website and you’re gonna be stuck on an airplane or waiting somewhere without internet;

c) what you don’t want to happen to your publication if it gets gobbled up by bigger fish.

—

The Nintendo Wii keeps coming along. I’ve been reading for years about people running homebrew, independently written code on their corporate devices. Anyone uninitiated needs to go read about XBMC at wikipedia now!

However, XBMC is the only thing about the Xbox that interests me. There has yet to be a single game title I feel myself wanting to play on the Xbox 360. Not one.

The Ps3 is cute. A top-shelf, early-adopter, premium-priced pathetic joke. There are maybe four games I want to play on that mammoth tank of a system. And on all the time? Ha!

I would put my PS3 on a power strip and it would be on only when I was playing – probably Ratchet and Clank. Otherwise, off. I don’t care how powerful it is, unless it plays nice with Apple’s Xcode and processes for my network…it would remain off. What a whack, useless, power-sucking paperweight.

The Wii is the only console on the market that makes me want it. I had to get a DS, even a cheap old fat one, to play New Super Mario Bros. It was that good, really. Now they’ve come out with that for the Wii, I’m sold. Soon as I can find a used one, scare up enough money even if I have to hustle a pile of old games, cds, dvds…I’m'a get me one of them.

And I’m gonna play a lot of old classics on it, at least as much as anything new.

***

I participated in NaNoWriMo 2009 and “won” by writing 50,000 words in less than 30 days. I then pushed the stack of printed pages to the back of my desk and ‘took a break.’

Now I need to fire up the coffee maker, light a candle, and hammer out the last few thousand words. What is with me that I love writing, but hate finishing the story? It’s not like the characters go into stasis when I stop writing them…

Maybe this is some bizarre zen riff to convince me that it’s a blessing when we amuse our own selves?!?

Grabbed a copy of Kerouac’s Big Sur just before Christmas, in San Francisco. It turned out to be the book I needed at the right time. I read 20+ pages every night before bed, and finished it in no time.

Reminds me of what I thought when I tried to read – and stopped – On The Road back in jr. high. “I can do better than this. Or at least as well…with actual punctuation, too!”