Doc on RATM and Protesting

They are arguably the best band of the 90's. Not only was the music great, but Tom Morello's guitar playing was innovative and forward thinking. You can't ignore the influential power of the their music and message either. I am lucky to have seen them live and I would have to say it was one of the best shows I have ever seen, possibly even THE best show I have ever seen. It was definitely the most intense and had the most energy.

The Best Thing to Come Out of Akron is Dan Auerbach, Sorry Lebron

Here is Dan Auerbach's (of The Black Keys) debut solo album from 2009. You may recognize Goin' Home from the new Budweiser ad about a soldier returning home to his family.

Keep it Hid

Home

Just at home for break. Sometimes its nice to get away from the circus and just go home. These are songs are about going home/wishing you were home or about my home.











I'll let The Chairman of The Board close out this post.

Smashing Pumpkins- 1979

I know that I have said this before, but 1979 is probably my favorite song and the Pumpkins are one of my favorite bands.  The music video for 1979 is also one of the best music videos of all time. I don't think many other forms of art have captured the essence of youth and it's carefree attitude as well as this song and it's video.  The song was not even supposed to be on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. On the last day before they chose from the 56 Corgan penned songs for the double album, 1979 was a little more than a few chord changes and Corgan singing a melody without any words.  The producer wanted to drop it from the record which fueled Billy to finish the song in 4 hours. (((Genius)))  I also just found out the other day that the video for Perfect follows the same characters from the 1979 video in the their lives a few years later.  I was just browsing around on the suggested videos on the side of YouTube (which I highly recommend) while watching this video the other day and found some other great interpretations of this song.  Have some patience with the remixe










and the original

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrivjzw0RlI
embedding was disabled by request.

Great Quote on Collecting Music from James Murphy

"I remember taking a good class in English, with a good professor, and he said, "I can't imagine being you." What do you mean? He said, "Well, I went to college in the 50s. You could count all the books you needed to read on two hands." You read your Shakespeare, your Chaucer, read the moderns, maybe you read a couple Russians, couple French, couple translated Germans, you know. And by the time you were 20 you had a good sense of literature. And by the time you're 21 you can read contemporary, 22, contemporary, 23, contemporary, and you're riding the wave. Now, I'm 35, I'm an avid reader, I'm still reading backwards, still getting my groundwork to get on top of the wave. Still too many books come out every week to pay attention to. If the fat TV lady doesn't recommend it who knows if it's even gonna get sent to the book store.

The same thing goes for music. There's so much more work [involved] to pay attention to what's new. It becomes really hard for a band to have a good sense of its history. Doesn't mean that's bad. Just means, I don't know. I think there's a reason why good bands were 19 and 20 in the 70s, and in 1966, they were 17. And that's very hard right now. New bands that are very young, they're not as good, they're not as new. Because they inevitably sound like the Who or, you know, AC/DC. They sound like something else. And it's very hard for them to crawl out from that and do something unusual. Or they're forced to be like, quirky individuals. It's very hard to find your own thing right now. I mean actually it took me till I was 29, 30 years old, to have any sense that I was doing anything my own. Any sense at all. Maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm just a hack, but it just took a long, long time to swim my way out of history, swim my way out of indie rock. Swim my way out of everything. I don't really know what could possibly be the solution to it. There are just so many tripping points into ego, so many tripping points into compromise. I don't know how people do it. I don't know how bands do it. Everything feels very very compromised.

At the same time, I get really angry when people get angry about there being a canon. White Male Canon thing. I always thought a canon's a great way to start cause then we can argue against it. The internet, I read a story on the internet-- "Fuck Shakespeare." What? That's an interesting argument only because you have Shakespeare. If you don't have that canon, there's nothing to talk about, there's total chaos. For me, the canon of rock when I was young wasn't that important. The Cure were important, the Minutemen were important. But being past all of that, I had to find what I loved about music, I had to dig farther. And luckily, like certain things, the Violent Femmes were a big question mark in there, and Jonathan Richman was a very good question mark in there for me that led me to other things being more interesting.

I think a canon is important, but you have to grow into it. That stuff can overwhelm you. You're 24 years old, you're in a band, and suddenly people are saying, "Hey, you guys sound a lot like Chrome. You should check out Chrome," or "You guys sound a lot like Roxy Music," and you're like, "I've never heard them," and you go find it and it can just overwhelm you. It can destroy a band. Because it's powerful stuff. I mean, the Strokes are swimming up some incredibly serious stuff: Velvet Underground. Television. It's kinda soul-crushing in a way to go listen to "Perfect Day" and say, "I'm gonna go write a song like that," and it'll be fucking horrible by comparison. I don't know, it's-- I have no insight into what people are gonna do. I guess for advice, not to be Alcoholics Anonymous about this, but just try to make one song at a time. Try to make the songs actually really good. It's a really funny testament-- I'm 35, an artist with a debut record. I feel like a grandfather."

-James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem) 2005

Well that'show i feel about collecting music too.

Here is the link to the entire article.http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/6036-jukebox-james-murphy/

Paul Simon

Here is the new Paul Simon album, So Beautiful or So What .  He is quoted as saying it's his best work in 20 years.  I would have to agree Mr. Simon, still bringing it at 69 years old.  For good measure here is his masterpiece, Graceland.

Pearl Jam- Ten 20th Anniversary Festival

Pearl Jam will be playing a 20th Anniversary "Festival" at Alpine Valley on Labor Day Weekend.  2 Day Event. Expect the announcement soon. I hope to see you there Claire Stevenson.

Beastie Boys New Album Teaser and Single

Too many celebrities to name in this one. This promo trailer has me excited. Maybe they come back to Lolla after having to skip their show last year?

Here is the complete cast list for the video above.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1791504/fullcredits#cast


Make Some Noise

http://www.mediafire.com/?gy1g1drz2o877

A Little Bird Just Told Me...

Daft Punk will be playing a set Saturday night of Lollapalooza this summer. That goes along nicely with this article.  Sound like House is coming home.


http://www.relix.com/news/2011/03/21/perry-farrell-electronic-act-to-headline-lollapalooza

Best Covers of Beatles Songs

Justice- Civilization

Civilization

The New single from Justice.

EDIT: I have listened to this track about 10 times now.  The Adidas commercial led me to believe it was going to be a straight banger all the way through, but it's still a solid follow up to Cross and to an extent Planisphere.

Neil Young- Live at Massey Hall 1971

Neil Young, solo, acoustic, in Toronto. It doesn't get much better.

Live at Massey Hall 1971

Ladder is Invincible

The Social Network and The Last Waltz

Here's a double dose since I have not been very active on this site. I finally saw The Social Network for the first time. It was a very good movie and the soundtrack was amazing, what else would you expect from Trent Reznor.

The Social Network



The Last Waltz was a concert/film/documentary chronicling the last performance by The Band in 1976. It was directed by Scorcese and features a slew of musical giants performing alongside The Band who were gods in their own right. Neil Young, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Ringo, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Wood, and Dylan. It may be the finest musical documentary (or possibly Stop Making Sense) or even documentary in general that I have ever seen. The stories and comments from the interviews are fantastic as well (getting their name from being Dylan's backing band). Young had a coke rock so large hanging from his nostril on stage that it had to be edited out before the film was released. Read about "The White Room" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Waltz#Drug_use

The Last Waltz

Justice and Adidas

Justice- Civilization in Adidas "All In" ad featuring Derrick Rose, Lionel Messi, David Beckham.

Hilarious Re-Cut Trailer for Ferris Bueller's Day Off

The creator said they were trying to channel Sofia Coppola or Jean-Luc Godard,personally I would like to see Wes Anderson take another crack at this movie.





I also found this re-cut Titanic trailer that does a great job of incorporating shots of other films to advance the new plot. I understand it is a little old, but still funny.

Step Into Liquid

Step Into Liquid is a great documentary on surfing released in 2003.  I recommend it and the soundtrack is great.





^ Sweet Jane?

Phish Summer Tour 2011

http://phish.com/#/tours/summer-2011-tour

Some New Tracks To Get Through the Week

This last song is by a young group out of Florida, one half of which goes to W&L. If you like it, they have some more great tracks on their myspace page. Coyote Kisses

New Radiohead Album Being Releases this Saturday

http://pitchfork.com/news/41561-radiohead-to-release-new-album-this-saturday/

D'arcy's Mugshot

http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/2011/02/smashing_darcy_mug_shot.php

Disappointed in the Lollapalooza Headliner Rumors

The big rumor is that the main three headliners for Lolla this summer will be The Foo Fighters, Muse, and Eminem. Hopefully the other three headliners will pick up the slack because of those three I am only interested in Muse. It looks like I will be spending all three days at Perry's again.









Flosstradamus is spinning King of Africa by Douster

New Single from The Strokes

The Strokes have released the first single from their new album, Angles, set to be released in March. I am not a huge fluffer of the The Strokes, but I do like them and am glad they are making new music. After the first listen I am not blown away.

Super Bowl Commercials

I wasn't totally blown away by this years crop of Super Bowl commercials but here were some of my favorites.



I really liked the idea for this commercial, but two things brought down this commercial. First of all, I am not ever going to get excited about Chrysler, sorry, just not going to happen. If this was a Mustang or Corvette, then maybe. Secondly, you have Eminem being overly dramatic as he always is trying to be when he is put into some sort of serious situation on film. You just tried to sell me Brisk in a claymation commercial about 30 minutes before this, do you really think I am going to take you seriously?




This commercial has been getting a lot of buzz and deservedly so. It is simple, hilarious, and provides common ground for pretty much anyone (Star Wars). There is absolutely no monologue or dialogue in the entire commercial and it still works. This was probably my favorite commercial from the Super Bowl.




I like this NFL commercial mainly because of the fact that I am a pop culture savant. It was fun to see the NFL choose so many iconic shows that also had a strong identity tied to the place in which they were set.




Come to think of it, there is nothing really great about this commercial. I just really like most of Budweiser's ads. Plus it combines two of my favorite movies; the main character is the blonde hitman that works with Stever Buschemi in Fargo and the commercial ends with the whole bar singing Tiny Dancer a la Stillwater on their tour bus in Almost Famous.




Self explanatory.




Also self explanatory.

Ghostland Observatory Was Fantastic

Last night Ghostland Observatory came to W&L and needless to say it was a great show. Its just too bad they had to play in an airplane hanger, worse sound than The Aragon.



ZE LASERS!







I don't know if The Last Waltz is better than Stop Making Sense, but it's pretty close. This is my favorite performance from the documentary. Van kills it, gotta love the leg kicks.

Meg and Jack are Done

http://www.whitestripes.com/

New Finds

A range of songs i have heard for the first time recently.







You actually may recognize the previous song from the pilot episode of Eastbound and Down.

Pearl Jam- Live on Ten Legs

Pearl Jam released Live on Ten Legs today.  Also 2011 will be the 20th anniversary of Ten, which I consider one of the best American made albums  of all time.  I also consider PJ to be one of the best live bands of all time.

4 a.m. Tron Raves

Tron Legacy director Joe Kosinski: We met [Daft Punk] early on about three years ago, before there was any script, before there was the visual effects test. It was one of the first meetings of the project. I quickly realized that the guys and I had a good creative vibe. We wanted to create a classic film score that sounded like nothing else. We started on the music very early and built the soundtrack as we were writing the script and storyboarding and pre-visualizing the movie. I was very lucky to have tracks play on set while we were shooting. The film was edited when the music had been composed — there's a connection between the music and the visuals in this film [...]

Producer Sean Bailey: Here's a cool little anecdote. One night one of the cameras went down so we couldn't shoot for a couple hours. So there was this impromptu rave in theTron warehouse in the middle of the night with Daft Punk deejaying.

Joe Kosinski: Everyone was in costume!

Sean Bailey: We just had a dance party at four in the morning.

2011 Albums

Here are some of the albums I am very excited about coming out in 2011

Cut Copy- Zonoscope

Lupe Fiasco- Losers

R.E.M.- Collapse Into Now

The Strokes- ???

Beastie Boys- Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2

The Third Twin/Daft Punk-Homemade



http://consequenceofsound.net/2011/01/07/report-daft-punk-will-appear-as-the-third-twin-at-spanish-festival/

CAKE-Showroom of Compassion

How to Destroy Angels-??? Trent Reznor's new band

Rage Against The Machine- ???

Itching to Go Back to Lexington

thanks to meat paws on this. i really like the 1990's agassi vs. sampras vibe in the video.




re-work of some old house




and some more house.

R.E.M.- Automatic for the People

I am too tired and sick to write up a synopsis for this album. It's great and one of R.E.M.'s best/most popular albums. It lead to them signing (at the time) the largest recording contract in history. Automatic for the People

In Case You Missed It

Phish - "Meatstick" 12/31/10 New Year's Eve from Phish on Vimeo.

Let's Go Bears

have not listened to this song since high school. wow. the picture in the video is awesome, xavier, pedro winter, and is that uffie in the background?







sort of reminds me of

Happy New Year