Sunday Post #1

The Postmarks - Goodbye

(Photo by Tina Barney)
The Postmarks available at amazon.com

No I Was Wrong - This Is the Flavor of the Moment

Forget it, Donovan. it's all about Three Dog Night, the most successful cover band of all time. (And I mean that in a good way.) For two nights this week, Three Dog Night was all over the tube.
Wednesday night, the hills and valleys of the Lost island were alive with the sound of "Shambala" as Hurley and Charley careened crazily down an impossibly steep hill in a beat-up VW bus. Then on Thursday night, those crazy kids from American Idol did a cheesy Up with People version of "Joy to the World."
Can SXSW be far behind?
Three Dog Night - Shambala
The Best of Three Dog Night is available at Amazon.com

Mott the Hoople - Brain Capers

Mott the Hoople achieved its greatest commmercial success after David Bowie "discovered" them, gave them the song "All the Young Dudes," and produced the album on which that song was included. But I believe Mott was at its best on the four albums prior to that, culminating in Brain Capers, released in 1972, an album that is, in my opinion, a hard rock classic. (Hard rock was a genre, not a casino hotel in Vegas, in those days. I don't remember exactly how it was defined, except that hard rock meant good rock, and plain rock could mean anything from America to the Grateful Dead. I don't think the term soft rock had been invented.)
Mott was never a band that could be easily classified. Their first album, called Mott the Hoople, came out in 1969 on Atlantic Records, and I suspect that the record company thought they were getting the next Humble Pie or Spooky Tooth. However, one could see that Mott was anything but the standard issue English blues rock band ( even if they did do an instrumental version of "You Really Got Me"). Their albums were chaotic and messy, with instruments and vocals flying all over the place, sometimes out of tune, sometimes buried in the mix. Their frontman, Ian Hunter, was a sunglass-wearing keyboard-playing Bob Dylan wannabe with a punk sneer. Their choice of covers reflected a post modern sensibility years before anyone but Lou Reed had the right to lay claim to that term: Sonny Bono's "Laugh at Me!" Doug Sahm's "Crossroads!" Melanie's "Lay Down!" Plus, their bass player's name was Overend Watts!
(I saw Mott at the Boston in the summer of 1970 at the Boston concert venue, The Ark, opening for Ten Years After. Of course, Mott blew them away. I remember I had to dodge Hunter's piano, which fell off the small stage during "You Really Got Me.")
Brain Capers captured all the joyous chaos of their previous albums, and yet rocked even harder. The vocals were more intense, the guitars shrieked with more urgency, and the rhythm section pounded away with more fire and assurance.
More importantly, Brain Capers also marked the maturing of Hunter as a songwriter. The obvious Dylan references were there, but they were clothed in truly great pre-punk rock music.
Brain Capers, like the previous three Mott albums, was produced by Guy Stevens (who appropriately enough produced the first three Clash albums). His ability to communicate the sense that the music was this close to flying completely out of control, and yet never allowing that to happen, was one of the reasons the Brain Capers may be one of the hardest rocking albums of all time, unmatched except by a few classics like Raw Power and The Clash.
"The Journey" is the centerpiece of Brain Capers. It is over nine minutes long and is, in some ways, a classic power ballad, with a long intro, slow build-up and several big crescendos. But one of Ian Humter's songwriting gifts, clearly evident in this song, was his ability to stay very personal even when the power chords were flying. That's why the song still sounds fresh.
Mott the Hoople - The Journey

Brain Capers is available from Itunes and Amazon.com

Story of a Band Chapter 2

A few months ago I posted a note about my nephew Robby Miller's band, Mister Loveless. Mister Loveless just recorded a new song called "Good Story," and posted it on their MySpace site. As good as their first album was, I think this song shows amazing growth in Robby's singing and songwriting. It's also a great showcase for the maturing of the band as a whole.
I feel like Mister Loveless exists for all the right reasons. It is made up of people who got together to play music because music is the only thing that makes sense to them. It is the only thing worth being passionate about. I believe they would walk through fire to be heard, and yet at the same time, they would shut it down overnight if they didn't feel like they were growing both as individual artists and as a group.
It is fascinating to watch this band grow; I can't wait for the next chapter.
Mister Loveless - Good Story

Mister Loveless' MySpace site

Flavor of the Moment

In the space of five minutes, I saw two commercials featuring songs by Donovan. One was for Fruity Cheerios ("with a touch of real fruit flavor") and used the song "Happiness Runs." I switched channels and came upon a GE commercial that used "Catch the Wind." There was nothing terribly original about either choice, but they both worked well in context. Is it time for a Donovan revival?
Donovan - Happiness Runs
Donovan - Catch the Wind

Feist and A Girl Called Eddy

It's hard not to like Leslie Feist, dba Feist. The most prominent member of Broken Social Scene, she released a great record two years ago called Let It Die that was post modern pop at its most assured and sophisticated, featuring covers as disparate as the BeeGees' "Inside and Out" and "Tout Doucement," a song best known (at least to me) for the version by Blossom Dearie. Before that, she collaborated with Peaches, Gonzales and Kings of Convenience.
Lately she seems to be focussing more and more on the blues. I recently heard her kick-ass live version of the Nina Simone arrangement of "See Line Woman," and the download she has made available from her soon-to-be-released album, The Reminder, is very bluesy as well.
As cool as Feist is, and as much as I like her, I need to remind you of A Girl Called Eddy, who shares many traits with Feist, and released an absolutely brilliant self-titled album a year or so earlier than Let It Die came out, an album I would describe as "Dusty Springfield Sings Truly Sad Songs by Burt Bacharach, Produced by Scott Walker." (In fact, it was produced by the great English singer-songwriter, Richard Hawley.) There is a deceptively languid sadness to her songs that draws you in and then spits you out, leaving you emotionally spent. (That's what music should do, right?)
Perhaps because I feel like A Girl Called Eddy hasn't received the recognition that Feist has, I have a deeper appreciation of her music.
Feist - My Man, My Mountain
A Girl Called Eddy - Tears All Over Town
(Check out the little lift from Prefab Sprout in the middle of "Tears All Over Town," it's awesome.)

Purchase cd's by Feist and A Girl Called Eddy at Amazon.com.

Another Excuse to Mention Asobi Seksu

Asobi Seksu, Brooklyn's 21st Century answer to the Ronettes, and the only band whose t-shirt I own, are on tour and playing Bowery Ballroom tonight (2/21) at 8:00 PM. Their album, Citrus was one of my favorites last year.
They are offering a live cd at their website.
Asobi Seksu - Then He Kissed Me

Jonathan Lethem's Article in Harper's Magazine

Jonathan Lethem, author of the very fine novel, Fortress of Solitude, has a fascinating piece in this month's Harper's, called Ecstacy of Influence. In it, he explores the nature and morality of appropriation of artist's work by other artists.
I think we are all inherently appalled by the idea of plagiarism, in any form. Yet, as Lethem says, there are many acts of plagiarism that are, in fact, works of art themselves, and that (in his words) ultimately "make the world larger."
As Lethem points out, many art movements of the 20th and 21st centuries embraced plagiarism in one form or another. Surrealism, Dada and pop art all borrowed freely from the real world, in ways that could easily be interpreted as stealing.
Writers like William Burroughs (and, up in the ivory tower) Pound and Elliott championed the lifting of quotes from other sources to make double points, contextual and symbolic.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of appropriation in both classical and popular music. As Lethem says in his article, blues and jazz are part of an "open source" culture, in which new ideas develop directly out of old.
Pop music is, by its very nature, plagiaristic. There is undoubtedly a totally original chord sequence out there, but it is rare. "Sweet Jane" is an amazing song, one of the greatest songs ever written, in my opinion. Yet it's basic chord structure can be found in hundreds of other songs. And that does not detract in any way from the beauty of "Sweet Jane." If anything, it magnifies it.
In the early '70's, I was living in Albany, New York, working in a record store. I became acquainted with a group of SUNY Albany music students, and one day I went with them to a music lab on the campus. Someone there was painstakingly splicing audio tape together, and when he played it back, I heard a wonderful collage of drones, sound effects, voices and, buried deep in the mix (although it wasn't called that at the time) a snippet of Tommy James' "Mony, Mony." I had never heard anything like that before, but it instantly made sense to me. The idea that you could put together a bunch of already existing sounds, including a piece of a pop song that was, certainly at that time, something barely worth listening to, to create a totally new piece of music, was exhilarating as hell. It was simultaneously high art and pop culture, composition and commentary.
A year later, after I had moved to New York City and started a rock band called Jack Ruby with one of those Albany music students, my principle contribution to the group's first magnus opus, "Bored Stiff," was the line "I couldn't hit it sideways," which I lifted whole from the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray." I didn't (and don't) see that as plagiarism at all, because I felt that by singing that line, I was sending a message to people who would hear the song: those who recognized the origins of the line got Jack Ruby (and Jack Ruby got them), and those who didn't weren't worth our time.
Today, technology has made it possible to create entire songs (whole albums, actually) out of samples and splices of other music. (Listen the The Avalanches, posted below.) There is no question in my mind that the composers and musicians employing this methodology are expanding the definition of art.
Lethem's article explores all this, and many other things. It's thought provoking and provocative, entertaining and educational.
(My only objection is to his unnecessary epilogue, which is a Rick Moody-esque list of footnotes in which he proudly demonstrates that much of the article was written by lifting sentences and paragraphs from other writers.)
The Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatry
Jack Ruby - Bored Stiff (1974)
(Please note: I appropriated the "ivory tower" reference from Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row.")

Oh Sweet Nuthin'

A friend of mine told me recently that he thought I was posting too many medium tempo songs on Be Hear Be Now, that it was getting all "Morning Becomes Eclectic." This post is not going to change his mind, since it is based on Sweet Nothings - Love Is a Mixtape, a sweet, medium-tempo Valentine's Day mix of love songs from artists on the Nettwerk label.
There is some stuff that's a little iffy (Barenaked Ladies) but there is also the Submarines, the Weepies and Great Lake Swimmers, a Canadien band with a new, already heavily-blogged album coming out in May called Ongiara.
I'm posting "Your Rocky Spine" by Great Lake Swimmers, partly because it's a great song, but also because Great Lake Swimmers recorded a song last year called "I'll See You on the Moon" for a an anthology of kid's music by indie bands (called I'll See You on the Moon), and it is one of my family's favorite car songs - it's the place where my taste meets my son's taste.
Great Lake Swimmers - "Your Rocky Spine"

Babies

I am posting this song in honor Johan Agebjorn, the producer of Sally Shapiro's sparkling Italian-Swedish disco pop records, who just had a baby girl, my friends Lew and Ina, who are now in China adopting a two-year old boy, and my wife Sara and our little Nemo, due in June.
Lovin' Spoonful - Younger Generation

Lily Allen

Lily Allen's album, Alright Still, was finally released in the US this week. (It was released last summer in England, and quickly went to the top of the charts.) As many people know, Lily Allen was one of the first MySpace success stories. She dropped a couple of demos on her site and very quickly started collecting friends and hits at a rate that freaked out the mainstream record business, leading to major label envy and then major label success. (Whether she can duplicate that success in the US remains to be scene. So far, her fan base here seems to consist mainly of a few lonely bloggers and and some hipster girls.)
Whatever. Lily Allen has everything going for her: she is smart, pretty, genuinely funny (in an English Sarah Silverman way) and she writes very witty pop songs. Whether she makes it in America is beside the point.
Since everything on her album has been posted and reposted several times over, I'm attaching a mixtape she posted on her own website last year. It contains bits and pieces of her own songs, as well as a lot of her obvious influences.
Lily Allen - Mixtape #2
(Warning: This file is almost 60 mg. That's pretty big.)
It's been interesting to observe the Lily Allen phenomenon at my office. I work at a company that edits television commercials. Last summer I started pushing Lily Allen songs on the editors, trying to get them to use her music as needle drop. Initially, I met a lot of resistance. Most people weren't familiar with her and didn't listen that closely; the people who had heard of her thought she was an English Britney. As time went on, an awareness of her began to seep through. All of a sudden editors are using her music in rough cuts. You can hear her music being played behind closed Avid suite doors. If you took a poll of the editors and their assistants (who are younger and maybe more aware of whatr's going on in the world of music), she has gone from a "Who's that?" to "She's awesome."

Hot Air Balloonists

I came across this band on MySpace months ago, listened to their posted songs, loved them. Also loved their name and their logo (pictured). Periodically, I've tried to find out more about the band, via Google and Hype Machine. No luck. And very few clues on the MySpace site. No band members listed. No other website listed. Once in a while they would post an announcement of a concert. I emailed them via their MySpace email address and asked for more info. No response.The best I could do was listen their songs (and only on their MySpace site, since there is no cd and no other place to find the songs.) Finally, they made "Cosmos" available for download. I love this song. I listen to it a couple of times a day, and still haven't gotten sick of it. It is great dream pop, with a perfect melody and an arrangement that make you feel like you are indeed floating over a small mountain range in Europe in a hot air balloon as the sun comes up.
Hot Air Balloonists - Cosmos
Visit the Hot Air Balloonists MySpace site.

Paul Weller

Paul Weller has been playing shows in New York this week. The first night he did a concert of Jam songs. The second night was dedicated to the Style Council, and the third night he performed songs from his (now quite long) solo career. I liked the Jam a lot back in the '70's. I still remember a show I saw at the Academy of Music featuring the Dwight Twilley, Cheap Trick and the Jam. And I've liked a lot of Weller's solo stuff, although not as much as most critics have, judging from the almost universally positive reviews his albums always get.
However, I love the Style Council, and still listen to them a lot. The moody, neo-romantic redefining of soul music continues to sound fresh, and Weller's voice seems perfectly attuned to the style.
The Style Council - You're the Best Thing
Fred Perry has a Paul Weller line of clothes. That seems very appropriate for the founder of the Style Council.

Two Gifts from the Internet

Ever since I heard Sally Shapiro's cover of "Anorak Christmas" I have been trying to find the original, by a Swedish pop band named Nixon. I looked in all the usual places: Itunes, Emusic, Amp Camp, Other Music, Amazon, but no luck. I kept checking Hype Machine, the music aggregator, but no luck there, either. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I found it, posted on a blog called Spiked Candy. The collector in me is very happy. However, as much as I like Nixon's version I still much prefer Sally Shapiro's.
Nixon - Anorak Christmas

I met Adele Bertei back in 1979 or 1980, when she was playing keyboards in the Contortions with my friend and former bandmate, George Scott. I lost track of her when that band broke up, but a few years later, her Madonna-esque, vaguely European disco 12" called "Build Me a Bridge" became something of a hit.
At the time, it felt like the whole '70's New York scene had petered out, without much impact outside of the East Village. The clubs that had supported the scene had closed. No one (other than Talking Heads) had sold many records. Most of the bands, both punk and post-punk, had broken up. Drugs had destroyed a lot of lives (including George Scott's) and AIDS was beginning to destroy a lot more. So to see someone from that scene break out into the more commercially viable dance music scene was something of a novelty.
It's interesting how time changes things. Punk and post-punk are now seen as defining movements in popular music, and '80's dance music 12" records are collector's items prized by people like Sally Shapiro. And it's a lot easier to find Contort Yourself then it is "Build Me a Bridge."
Adele Bertei- Build Me a Bridge
I want to thank Dalton Oxfam Shop for reposting this. Check out this blog - it's fascinating.

Great Lost Pop Masterpieces #5 - Alan Price - O Lucky Man!

There is not much to say about this, except that it's brilliant. Came out in 1973. Title song to a film starring Malcolm McDowell. In any discussion of music involving three or more people, at least one will agree with you if you say that it's one of the greatest overlooked songs of all time.
Alan Price - O Lucky Man!

Yachts - Suffice to Say

Idolator recently posted Bram Tchaikovsky's "Girl of My Dreams ," which reminded me of another pop punk song from around the same time. I don't know what happened to the Yachts, but this song still sounds great. (Great lines: "I never wrote a middle eight, so we'll just have to do without/But there's an instrumental break...just after this!")

Yachts - Suffice to Say
"Suffice to Say" is anthologised on Stiff Singles Volume 1, which is available on Itunes.

NEWS FLASH! MAN LISTENS TO WHOLE ALBUM ON WAY TO WORK...3 DAYS IN A ROW!!!

This week, I found myself doing something I haven't done with any regularity in a long time - I listened to a whole album by a single artist on my Ipod on the way to work. The next day day I listened to another album. And then the next day, I listened to a third album in its entirety.
When I first got an Ipod, four years ago, my listening habits did not change significantly. I played cd's on my cd player, connected to an amplifier, connected to a pair of speakers. I listened to cd's by individual artists in my car. My Ipod was secondary, and when I did listen to it, I did so in the same way I listened to music on my stereo or in my car - album by album. I hardly ever used the shuffle selector on the Ipod wheel.
At some point, this changed. I discovered that, for me, the real attractiveness of the Ipod was in its ability to surprise. It was like listening to a really cool radio station that only played songs it either knew that you liked or that you were planning to like as soon as you could get to it.
Gradually my Ipod (and Itunes), set on "shuffle," became my primary source for hearing music. When we moved last year. I didn't even set up my stereo.
The idea of listening to a whole album began to seem more and more foreign. Once in awhile, I would leave my apartment with my Ipod set to play a new album I had just downloaded, but chances are I would change to shuffle before I even reached the subway stop.
This week that changed. For three days in a row, I set my Ipod to play an album, and i listened to that album (quite happily) all the way to my office. (The trip takes about 45 minutes.)
I've been trying to figure out if this marks a change in my music listening or that I just happened on three albums I really liked. I mean, I obviously liked the albums. (The first day I listened to Malajube's Trompe L'Oeil - see the previous post. The next day it was the Submarine's Declare a New State, which I had never heard of until the day before, when I came across a track of theirs on a blog, and then bought the album on Emusic. The third day I listened to Lewis and Clarke's Bare Bones and Branches, an album I've owned for several months but never listened to all the way through.
As I said, the quality of the music is not in question. All three albums are great. But I've bought other albums I've liked a lot over the past couple of years and haven't listened to them all the way through. So I'm wondering if I've suddenly developed (or rediscovered) a Zen mind music listening consciousness that allows me the patience to listen and enjoy a full album without constantly thinking "What's next?" Or am I just feeling particularly passive and tired this week?
I don't know the answer. I do know that today, after reading a review in Pitchfork, I downloaded The Hammock's Raising Your Voice...Trying to Stop an Echo and enjoyed it tremendously with my New York Times.
The Submarines - Peace and Hate
Lewis & Clarke - Bare Bones and Branches
The Hammock - Raising Your Voice...Trying to Stop an Echo

My New Favorite Band

Malajube is a band of musicians from Montreal who record in French and whose music has an intense, hectic kitchen-sink feel that reminds me of early XTC. They play what you might call chaos rock. You feel that, at any minute, their songs might spin out of control. But of course, they never do.
Like Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene, they bury strong melodic and rhythmic threads in a maelstrom of disparate voices and crazy instrumentation. The sense of confusion is abetted by the fact that they sing in Canadien French. But slowly, over the course of each song, the melody rides to the surface, all the elements lock into a groove, the craziness suddenly makes sense, we are swimming with the current.
Malajube - La Monogamie
Malajube's latest album is called Trompe L'oeil and is available from Itunes.
Find out more about the band here.

Velvet Underground Tracks

Remember the whole story about the lost Velvet Underground album that ended up selling on Ebay for about $25,000? FM Shades has some tracks from the album (which is an acetate of an early version of the first album) posted here.

New Music

I love the Internet. I love mp3 files. I love music blogs and MySpace and the Hype Machine and yes I love Itunes. I love them all because on any given day I can discover great songs floating in the Internet ether (or on my desktop) just waiting for me to listen to them.
The other day, as I sat at my desk eating lunch and browsing through my Itunes, I came across "Walk In the After Light" by a band called Nobody and the Mystic Chords of Memory, from their album, "Tree Colored See." I had no memory of downloading the song and no memory of where I downloaded it from (although it was probably Motel de Moka.) I liked the name, so I clicked on it, and a glorious pop song, half Moby Grape, half Stone Roses, with ringing guitars, Beatle-esque harmonies and an undertone of anxiety filled my office.

That evening, my wife and I had some friends over for dinner, and I had my Itunes set on Yuppy Shuffle: shuffle-at low-volume-so as-not-to-get-in-the-way-of-conversation. All of a sudden my friend, a musician with excellent taste, interrupted our conversation about the pain of quitting smoking, to ask what was playing. I had to strain my ears because the volume was so low. It was a lovely, guitar-based instrumental, almost but not quite blues, almost but not quite folk music. I had to look at my computer, because I didn't recognize the song. It was a song called "Play Delicate, Desire Quiet," by Grace Cathedral Park, from the album, "In the Evenings of Regret." Again, I have no memory of downloading the song, nor do I remember listening to it previously. But, as with Mystic Chords of Memory, discovering the song felt like the opening of a whole new world with unlimited potential.
Nobody and the Mystic Chords of Memory - Walk In the After Light
Grace Cathedral Park - Play Delicate, Desire Quiet


"Tree Colored See" and "In the Evenings of Regret" are both available from emusic.com

Lost Pop Masterpiece #4: Trash Can Sinatras - Obscurity Knocks

"Obscurity Knocks" came out in America on the "Cake" album in 1990. It's a pop song through and through, with obvious roots in indie pop. Along with a great melody, there are production flourishes that make the song still sound great 17 years later. Check out the doubled accoustic guitars on the intro, the wall of sound vocals on the chorus, and the slightly cheesy but entirely memorable single note guitar solo about 2/3 of the the way through the song. And finally, the line, "Oh I like your poetry, but I hate your poems." What else can you say?
Trash Can Sinatras - Obscurity Knocks

The Departed

I went to see "The Departed" a few weeks ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. More than I thought I would, as a matter of fact, since, after seeing "Gangs of New York" and "The Aviator," I had begun to believe that Martin Scorsese had lost his ability to tell a story.
However, that's not the reason I'm posting about it. About half way through the movie, I heard a Van Morrison song I didn't recognize. That surprised me, because I thought I knew Van Morrison's oeuvre inside and out. When I got home I checked out the soundtrack and discovered it was a version of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb," which Morrison had sung as part of an all star ensemble when Roger Waters played "The Wall" live in Berlin in 1990.
I'm not a big Pink Floyd fan, especially from "Dark Side of the Moon" onward. I don't think I'd ever heard "Comfortably Numb" before and I only listened to their version to compare it to Morrison's. However, listening to Van Morrison sing it, I am reminded of: a) how good a singer he is, and b), how much of a difference a great singer can mean to a song. There is so much natural drama in Morrison's voice he invests this fairly lugubrious song with passion and tension and actually makes it dynamic.
Roger Waters Band Featuring Van Morrison - Comfortably Numb

Sally Shapiro Redux

Pitchfork gave "Disco Romance," the fantastic Sally Shapiro album, an 8.5, which is my excuse to post another great track by the pseudonymed-Swedish singer and her producer, Johan Agebjorn.
This is their cover of the the Swedish band Nixon's indie pop hit:
Sally Shapiro - Anorak Christmas

Kuryakin - Quiet pop

Kuryakin is A.G.F.S.P.B. (another great fucking Swedish pop band.) They are: Petter Gjöres (vocals, guitar, computers) and Johan Norberg (guitar, computers), with additional vocals and synthesizers by Kristina Dahlman
They play brilliant quiet pop: lush waves of strings and background vocals, quirky synth samples, a steady restrained drum beat and whispery vocals. Perfect music if you live in New York City or have a child (or both).
Kuryakin - Take a Stand
More downloads at their website http://www.lostminds.com/users/kuryakin/

RIP Dennis Linde

Songwriter Dennis Linde died on December 22, of lung cancer. Linde wrote for country music artists, but many of his songs had a sense of rhythm and energy that was rooted in rockabilly and pop music. Linde, based in Nashville, first came to prominence in 1972, when Elvis Presley recorded his song, "Burning Love," which was, of course, a big hit (and, in my opinion, the best of the later Presley performances.)
Linde stuck around Nashville and had many hits for country artists through the years, enough of them to get himself elected to the Nashville Writers Hall of Fame. But his biggest claim to fame probably came in 2000, when the Dixie Chicks had a huge hit with his witty "Goodbye, Earl."
My appreciation for Linde came about as a result of a song on his 1973 solo album on Elektra Records, called "Hello, I Am Your Heart." It's always been one of my "really obscure but that only makes it better" pop gems. In fact, if I could have found a digital version of it, I would have posted it as a Great Lost Pop Masterpiece. But the album has been out of print for years, and no one ever saw fit to issue it in CD form. It has been covered a couple of times. There is a truly atrocious version by Manfred Mann, and Sara Hickman covered it on the Elektra 40th anniversary compilation from the '90's. The best version I can find is by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, from their 1994 "Acoustic" album, but even that doesn't do the original justice, having neither it's balls nor its pop sensibility.

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band - Hello, I Am Your Heart

SCRAPPY JUD NEWCOMB AT FREEBIRD BOOKS

Jud Newcomb, a singer/songwriter and guitar player from Austin, Texas will be at FreeBird Books, 123 Columbia Street, in Brooklyn, on Saturday, January 6, at 7:00 PM.
Jud (or Scrappy, as he is known) is an ace guitar player who has been winning "Best Guitar Player in Austin" awards since he was a teenager. He was one of the leaders of the Loose Diamonds in the '90's, and also backed up the singer Toni Price for years. He's played with everyone is Austin, and has produced albums for, among others, Beaver Nelson and Mike Hall. He currently plays with Ian MacLagan, the Resentments, Jon Dee Graham and a lot of others he can't remember without checking his datebook.
Scrappy is also a gifted (and probably under-appreciated) songwriter and singer, who uses his encyclopedic, Dylan-like knowledge and love of country, blues, gospel and rock to create beautifully constructed songs, which he sings and plays with restraint and elegance. And most importantly, his songs swing with the grace of Willie Nelson and the swagger of the Stones.
Scrappy is the embodiment of all that is great about Austin and its music.
FreeBird Books and Goods is a wonderful bookstore in "West Carroll Gardens" that is definitely worth a visit any time.

Jud Newcomb - I Think of You

Jud Newcomb - New Location

"I Think of You" is from Jud's latest album, "Byzantine," and is available from Freedom Records. "New Location" is from "Djakarta," which may be out of print. Check that with Scrappy.

James Brown

I was saddened to hear about the death of James Brown although, honestly, I hadn't listened to any of his stuff in a long time. I went through a James Brown phase in the late '70's, after I got my hands on a couple of import compilations that were amazing. (The heighth of my respect and admiration for James Brown came on New Years Eve, 1980, when a couple of guys from the band Madness somehow ended up at my apartment in the East Village, and we played - alternately - songs by Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra and James Brown, all the while drunkenly yelling about how they "swung," and how no modern singer could hold a fucking candle to them. Or words to that affect. It was really hard to understand what those guys were saying.)
Eventually Brown's insane, angel dust-fueled behavior, and having to hear people tell me what a fucking genius he was over and over, made me lose interest in him.
What still amazes me, however, is how astoundingly good Brown's back-up musicians were, best evidenced, in my opinion, by the work of Fred Wesley and the JB's. They found a groove that was like the rhythm of the universe, and then they decorated it. Oh yeah, they swung like a motherfucker.
Fred Wesley and the JB's - These Are the JB's
Fred Wesley and the JB's - It's the JB's Monorail (Parts 1 & 1)

Motel de Moka

I want to recommend a music blog I discovered, called Motel de Moka. From what I can tell, it is written and edited by a 21-year old Mexican woman named Moka. The variety of music she posts, the breadth of her subject matter, the striking artwork and even the poetry she uses as leads is always surprising, entertaining and thought-provoking. Her latest post, about her family's plans for vacation, includes mp3's by, among others, Panda Bear and the Poppy Family. Her Top 12 of 2006 is by far the most interesting end of year wrap-up I've seen.
Check it out.

Countdown 2006 - Songs

My list is actually 99 songs long, but I'm only going to post my Top Ten...okay 11.
11. Lewis and Clarke - "Before It Breaks You"
10. Asobi Seksu - "Thursday"
9. Venice Is Sinking - "Pulaski Heights"
8. Camera Obscura - "Let's Get Out of the Country"
7. Sally Shapiro - "Anorak Christmas"
6. Hot Chip - "And I Was a Boy From School"
5. Jason Collett - "We All Lose One Another"
4. Fujiya and Miyagi - "Collarbone"
3. Daylight's For the Birds - "Worlds Away"
2. Lily Allen - "LDN"
1. Monsterbuck - "Arto Monaco"
Please note: These songs have all previously been posted on the web. All the same, I am only going to keep this list up for two weeks. Have a wonderful holiday!

Lost Pop Masterpiece #3: The Mighty Gabby - Jack

In the early '80's I took a trip to Barbardos. The song "Jack" was playing in the airport when I arrived. I heard it in the taxi on the way to my hotel, I heard it at the bars on the beach, I heard it on the party boats. Every bar band in every club I went into played it at least once a set. It was all over the place, and everyone loved it. One of my lasting images of that trip is dancing drunkenly down a gangway on the Bajan Princess party boat in a line of tourists as this song blasted out of the boat's Radio Shack-speakers. It's ironic how much we all loved that song considering how anti-tourist it was.
Back then, one of the things that distinguished Barbados from other Caribbean islands was that all of the beaches were public, including the ones in front of the expensive resorts. There were rumors that the government was going to change that, and this song was a protest directed at Jack Dear, an attorney for the board of tourism .
Mighty Gabby - Jack

The great thing about calypso is its ability to camoflage - or at least soften - extremely subversive messages in its sunny, steel drum-based sound. "Jack" certainly illustrates that. So does Lily Allen's "LDN," if you want to check out a current example.
Lily Allen - LDN

Countdown 2006 - Albums

I've been reading a lot of posts saying that 2006 was kind of a blah year for music. For me it was exactly the opposite. I discovered and enjoyed more new music this year than I have in the last ten years combined. I found something new and interesting literally every day.
The result is that my top album list (same goes for my top song list) for the year is a hodge podge of stuff, bouncing between genres and, I guess, somewhat shallow, in that I didn't spend too much time with any one album. But, looking over my Itunes playlists, these are the albums that stuck with me, in an order that seems to make sense:
27. Joanna Newsom - "Ys" - Pretentious overly-long songs. She sounds like she wants to be Joni Mitchell after she discovered Mingus. Van Dyke Parks' strings are so disconnected they sound like they are coming from the studio down the hall. And yet... all this words, and all those notes. As much as I want to hate it, and as easy as it is for me to find reasons to hate it, this shit is just so damn interesting. A year from now I will either blush with shame that I put it on this list or listen to it all the time. I really don't know.
26. Arctic Monkeys - "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" - The album survived the hype. I found that the band's thin angry tone and off the cuff lyrics made for really effective social commentary. Remember when rock was, by definition, angry? These guys get that.
25. Mylo - "Destroy Rock and Roll" - Some kid in Scotland creates an album on a Mac. I think it actually came out in Europe a couple of years ago but didn't make it to the States until this spring.
24. The Lucksmiths - "Warmer Corners "- I'm embarrassed I'd never heard of this band before. Satisfies the twee in me.
23. The Glaciers - "The Moonlight Never Misses An Appointment" - Associated with the Mendoza Line and Essex Green. One of the first bands I discovered on MySpace. Very melodical.
22. Hot Chip - "The Warning" - Spiky electronic music with a melodic sheen.
21. Paper Moon - "Broken Hearts Break Faster Every Day" - Lush melodic folk rock from the Canadian Midwest. I imagine them as a band very popular in Winnipeg, and pretty much unknown outside of that. Although they were nominated for some Canadian music award.
20. My Brightest Diamond - "Bring Me the Workhorse" - Sings back up for Sufjan Stevens. Don't hold that against her.
19. The Weepies - "Say I Am You" - Melodic folk rock from LA. Loved by "Grey's Anatomy." Don't hold that against them.
18.Feathers - "Feathers" - Oddball '60's throwback. Great album cover references the Incredible String Band. Songwriting credits are first name only. Hippies from Vermont. Jeez.
17. Islands - "Return to the Sea" - Pleasant
16. Beirut - "Gulag Orkestra" - Liked it. Then disliked it because of the hype. Now like it. Can't wait to hear what's next.
15. Essex Green - "Cannibal Sea" - Smart melodic folk pop from Williamsburg
14. Fujiya and Miyagi Not Japanese.
13. Final Fantasy "He Poos Clouds" Ethereal intel-pop. Unfortunate album name.
12. Camera Obscura "Let's Get Out of the Country" Brilliant pure pop from Scotland.
11. Dirty on Purpose - "Hallelujah Sirens" - Tough street smart multi-textured pop music. Nick Hornby would love this.
10. Album Leaf - "Into the Blue Again" - New band by the guy from Tristezza. Reminds me of "Music for 18 Musicians." Makes me feel like I'm floating on a cloud.
9. Lewis and Clarke - "WPRB Live" - Probably shouldn't be included in albums, because it was an EP. Amazing folk rock for 2006. Long songs, smart lyrics, interesting arrangements. Made me enjoy long songs again.
8. Daylight's For the Birds - "Trouble Everywhere" - Folk rock with a nasty edge.
7. Band of Horses - "Everywhere All the Time" - Solid
6. Hotel Lights - "Hotel Lights" - A guy I see every five years walked by me at a party. "What are you listening to?" he asked. "Lewis & Clarke," I said, "How about you?" "Hotel Lights, check 'em out."
5. Venice Is Sinking - "Sorry About the Flowers" - Bought this early in the year and it's never let me down
4. Asobi Seksu - "Citrus" - Phil Spector and Blondie recaptured. Best album art of the year. Even though is got an 8.4 in Pitchfork and was constantly blogged, it's the most under-appreciated pop album of the year.
3. Destroyer - "Destroyer's Rubies" - It keeps sounding better and better. A year from now I'll be sick of Number 1, but I'll still be listening to this
2. Espers - "II" - Lie back and enjoy it.
1. The Knife - "Silent Shout" - As soon as I heard it, I knew I was going to love it. It has a sense of familiarity combined with surprise that only the best music has.

Velvet Underground Album (Back) on Ebay

The test pressing/alternate recording of "The Velvet Underground and Nico," which had seemingly been auctioned off for over $155,000.oo is back on Ebay. The winning bid turned out to be a prank bid by someone using a friend's computer.
The new auction has some built-in bidder limits designed to prevent fake bids. Auction ends December 21. Current price: $.99. The perfect Christmas present!

Velvet Underground Album on Ebay

An extremely rare test pressing of an early version of the first Velvet's album is currently being auctioned off on Ebay. As of noon on Tuesday, December 5, the high bid is $124,640.50. Auction ends December 8.
The test pressing was found at a garage sale in the Chelsea area of Manhattan a few years ago. The discoverer paid $.75 for it.
As much as I personally value the Velvets in general and this album in particular, I'm having trouble believing someone would actually pay $125,000 for it.

Youngbloods - Sunrise

I always felt "Elephant Mountain," the Youngbloods' second album, and the album on which "Sunrise" appeared, was tremendously underrated. It got some airplay when it came out in 1969, particularly the song "Darkness, Darkness," (later covered with typical knowingness and taste by Mott the Hoople on "Brain Capers) but in retrospect it seems to be much more sophisticated than a lot of the music in the post-Lovin Spoonful, post San Francisco stew to which prog FM radio consigned it. (It didn't help that the Youngbloods' follow-up, a live album called "Festival," was unlistenable.)
What I remember thinking about the album when it came out was that it had a lot of electric piano (tinkly, monotonic, pre-synthesizer electric piano) and I didn't like electric piano. Now I hear that sound and love it. A lot of neo-eloctronic folk stuff I'm listening to these days builds on a base of that kind of electric piano. (Check out the band called the Album Leaf.)
"Sunlight" is one of those songs that seems so familiar you're certain you've heard it a million times, but in fact that's not the case. You've NEVER heard it! (Well, maybe you've heard it a few times.) It reminds me of a slightly less-edgy Tim Harding song. Jesse Colin Young's jazzy vocal works very well against the pop melody of the chorus, and the arrangement is nicely understated and restrained.
Youngbloods - Sunlight
"Sunlight" is available on a Youngbloods greatest hits package at Amazon

Italo Disco

It's always nice to discover a new sub-genre of music to obsess about. All of a sudden there are artists I've never heard of, new songs to experience, obscure websites I never knew existed.
In this case, the sub-genre is something called Italo disco, which, it turns out, has been around since the early '80's.
Italo disco, as you can guess, was an outgrowth of regular disco. It's emergence coincided with the introduction of cheap synths and drum machines. It was greatly influenced by European disco producers like Frank Farian and the great Georgio Moroder.
What I love about the Italo disco of the early to mid '80's is the long slick melodic lines (ala ABBA and the Eurovision song contests - European pop has always seemed to favor melody bordering on bubblegum). There is also a hint of that French MOR trashiness I would hear in songs that European MTV used to play in the '90's. Finally, because the rhythms were defined by the drum machines, there is a slight up and downess to the beat that is less sophisticated but more rocklike than American disco of the '70s.
I was actually a fan of Italo disco without knowing it. Back in 1984, I worked on some off off Broadway one act plays directed and produced by a friend of mine and written by his wife. I was the stage manager, or production manager, or something like that, but more importantly, I also programmed the music. One of the plays, called "Slam," involved a couple of guys slam dancing at a club that, as I remember, was supposed to be a suburban CBGB's that had somehow degenerated into playing disco. The disco-ish music starts playing and one of the guys goes into a rant about disco. Somehow, they end up listening to Flipper ( I was so cool!) , and slam dancing their happy hearts out. But the record I chose to signify the club's descent into disco was a 12" single by a band called Club House that was a medley of Steely Dan's "Do It Again" and Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean." (Same bass line, check it out.)
Club House - Do It Again/Billie Jean Medley

I discovered (or re-discovered) Italo disco when I read about a Swedish singer named Sally Shapiro and her producer, Johan Agebjorn. Ageborn is an electronic music composer and producer who discovered Italo disco when he was in school and never lost his affection for it. Shapiro is, apparently, a singer so shy no one is allowed in the studio when she is recording.
Her album, "Disco Romance," is out this month. Shapiro's voice is sweet but distinctive, and works perfectly with Agenborn's updated electronic disco tracks.


Sally Shapiro - By Your Side
There are a several more excellent free downloads on Sally Shapiro's website, including a cover of "Anorak Christmas," as well as some great posts by Agebjorn, including his "10 Favorite Drum Machine Sounds."
Find out more about Italo Disco at Euro Flash.
(Thanks to Big Stereo for introducing me to Shapiro and Agebjorn.)

Dirty on Purpose

I don't know much about Dirty on Purpose. I know they come from Brooklyn. Their most recent album is called "Hallelujah Sirens." They are melodic, but with an interesting noise component and an aggressive, messy rhythm section that is much heavier than you would expect in a band that makes music this sweet. (It reminds me of a less doctrinaire Teenage Fanclub.)
I like this song because it makes me think about Texas.
Dirty on Purpose - Marfa Lights
"Hallelujah Sirens" is available on emusic.com.

Monsterbuck to play Lakeside Lounge in NYC

Ellen Willis

Ellen Willis died last week at the age of 64, from lung cancer. She was a feminist writer and social critic who wrote for a long time for the New York Review of Books and The Nation. However, I remember her as the rock music critic for the New Yorker in the late 60's and early '70's, before there was any serious rock criticism to speak of in mainstream journalism, and I was desperate to read anything I could find about music.
Ellen Willis turned me on to, among others, Big Star (long before they became critical faves) and Five Dollar Shoes, a band that created one of my top-five never-gonna-be-released-on-cd-unless-I-do-it lps.
At a time when most rock criticism seemed like it was written by ten year olds for ten year olds, Willis never patronized. She took the music seriously, she had good taste, and her writing was strong enough to stand alongside that of Pauline Kael, Roger Angell and John McPhee.

Tim Hardin

In September, 1971, I was a freshman at Windham College in Putney, VT. Not very happy, didn't really know anyone, was in the middle of a slow but painful break-up with my girlfriend.
One weekend, I got a call from my friend Michael, who worked for a company that supplied the sound equipment for most of the rock concerts that were produced in the New England area. He was coming to Windham to do the sound for a Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen concert and wanted to know if I would help him out. Which I was, of course, happy to do, since it meant I could hang oout backstage and act cool. (Even if it was a Commander Cody show, and I was definitely moving from a hippy, San Francisco/Allman Brothers thing to a Velvet Underground/Stooges/Alice Cooper thing.)
So Michael showed up Saturday afternoon in a big truck with the PA, and I met him and we unloaded the equipment into the student union, and then hung out while the Cody band sound checked. While that was going on, a slight wiry-haired guy wandered into the studen union with a battered guitar case and a little Fender VibraChamp amp. I asked Michael who that was and he said that it must be Tim Hardin, the opening act.
I had heard of Tim Hardin; I knew of him as a 2nd generation New York folkie, but I don't think I'd heard any of his songs. I knew he'd written "If I Were a Carpenter," which had been recorded by both Bobby Darin and Joan Baez. But I didn't know he also written "Reason to Believe," and "Misty Roses," and "How Can You Hang On to a Dream?" and "Black Sheep Boy" and "Lady Came from Baltimore" and "Red Balloon."
Hardin went and sat on a metal chair in the corner of the backstage space (which was just a curtained-off area to the side of the stage.) He kept his head down, didn't speak to anyone, just sat there. Even in the midst of the Commander Cody band's stoned vibe and hippy-commune antics, he remained completely isolated.
At the time I didn't know about Hardin's drug problems. I don't even know if he was high. All I remember thinking is that he was a very sad, lonely person. I remember being puzzled by that, because I thought of performers as incredibly cool and therefore incredibly lucky. But at the same time, I had had enough experience with both sadness and loneliness to feel a certain amount of empathy with him.
I don't really remember his performance, although I have the feeling it probably wasn't very good. (Turns out he suffered from stage fright.) It certainly didn't make me go out and buy a Tim Hardin album. But the image of him, isolated and miserable, haunted by demons I didn't know but could imagine, has stayed with me ever since.
It wasn't until 20 years later, when I bought a greatest hits compilation, and then a couple of years later a live album, that I began to appreciate his songwriting ability, and to make a connection between that small sad man sitting on a chair waiting to go play for an unappreciative audience and the performer who so profoundly expressed that sadness in his songs.
Tim Hardin's songs bridge the gap between folk music and its antecedents - blues and country - and American popular songwriting, with it's roots in jazz and European lieder. (It's no accident that the two most popular covers of "If I Were a Carpenter" were by the leading folksinger of the time - Joan Baez - and the 50's pop idol who most resembled a throwback to Frank Sinatra - Bobby Darin.) At the same time, they are entirely personal. Once you listen to his versions of his songs, it's impossible hear them as anything but Tim Hardin songs, no matter who sings them.
Tim Hardin - Misty Roses

Okkervil River released an album called "Black Sheep Boy" this year. The title song is a great cover of Tim Hardin's song.
Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy

Tim Hardin last released an album in 1973. He died of a drug overdose in 1980.

My apologies to anyone who has tried to download from my site lately. The web hosting site I was using underwent some changes, the end result being that it no longer supports MP3's. I'm in the process of finding a new site to store my MP3's.

Mister Loveless

A couple of years ago, I flew out to Walnut Creek, Cailfornia to visit my sister and her family, who I hadn't seen since I'd moved back to New York in 2002.
When I got to their house the first thing I heard was a deep, driving bass guitar tone coming from the garage.
"That's Robby's band," my sister said. I thought it was someone playing PIL's "Poptones" really loud. It sounded strange hearing that in this bucolic, tree-shrouded suburban neighborhood.
Robby Miller is my nephew. When I had last seen him, he was an 11-year old skate rat in Dayton, Ohio. Now he was a 17-year old singer, songwriter and guitarist in a band called Mister Loveless, with an incredibly sophisticated ability to express himself musically and impeccable tastes in influences. He and his bass player, Charlie Koliha, had immersed themselves in the sounds of 1979-1980 - Joy Division, Gang of Four, Echo and the Bunnymen, PIL.
It's very weird to meet your musical past 25 years later in your nephew's rock band. Weird but also great. All the stuff Robby and Charlie were listening to was stuff that I had listened to obsessively 25 years earlier, and still think of as some of the most exciting, profound music I've ever heard. (More so two years ago than now, I must admit. Hearing the Gang of Four in "Marie Antoinette" is a little like hearing "Lust for Life" in a cruise line commercial.)
Over the next year or so they continued to refine their sound. They also made a connection between post-punk and surf music, which seems obvious in hindsight but, to my knowledge hadn't been done since the Raybeats, the 70's New York no wave instrumental band.
It's great to have good taste. That will take you pretty far as a musician. But good taste alone doesn't make you great - it doesn't even give you the option of being great. Combining great taste with serious commitment to a vision does give you the option to be great. That's what I love about Mister Loveless. Everything about this band is life or death. The lyrics matter. The playing matters. The band's fans matter. I suppose you could make fun of that, but it's probably wiser to take them as seriously as they take their music.
Mister Loveless - Scatterplot.mp3

Mister Loveless' first album, "My Share of Losing," is available at the band's website: http://www.misterloveless.com/
You can check out other songs at their MySpace site:
www.myspace.com/misterloveless

Lost Pop Masterpieces #2: Andy Pratt - Resolution

Andy Pratt was from Boston, Massachusetts. In 1973, he had a minor hit with a song called "Avenging Annie." In 1976, he released an album called "Resolutions." It was obvious that someone at his record company thought this was a chance to present him as a slick, mature entertainer. The album was produced by Arif Mardin, who had been responsible for some of Atlantic Records' most sophisticated recordings, from Aretha Franklin to the BeeGees. (In 2001, he produced Norah Jones' first album. And in Jones, unlike Pratt, he found an artist who could blossom commercially as a result of his sophisticated touch.)
The song "Resolution" was not a hit. I don't know if it was even released as a single. The album it came from got great reviews but didn't sell terribly well.
I bought the album when it came out - and took a lot of shit from my punk rock friends for that - but there was no question in my mind that it was great. It supports my theory that, lost in the rush of new musical forms erupting out of the '60's and '70's, were a bunch of great American songwriters who could compare favorably with the classic songwriters of the '30's and '40's - the Cole Porters and the Irving Berlins.
Andy Pratt - Resolution

October, Welcome

In the future, I will write more about Jon Dee Graham, a singer-songwriter and philosopher from Austin, Texas for whom I have a great deal of respect and affection. For now, I just want to post his celebration of the month of October.

Jon Dee Graham - October.mp3

Lost Pop Masterpieces #1: Everyone's Gone to the Moon

Jonathan King wrote and recorded "Everyone's Gone to the Moon" in 1965 at the heighth of the Beatles frenzy. In America he was a one hit wonder, but in England he had a long career producing weird pop rip offs and cover versions of hit songs. I've always thought of him as the English Kim Fowley. (He was also the original producer of Rocky Horror Picture Show.)
The song is a great post-Beatles pop song with slightly surreal lyrics and a reverby guitar tone.
http://ezarchive.com/kingwinter/AlbumSpace/32YOFXNPAF/.m4p

Monsterbuck

I first heard about Monsterbuck when they were mentioned in an article in Esquire that discussed the great music to be found on MySpace. I checked them out because of the fact that they were from Upper Jay, NY., since I grew up in the Adirondacks and I was frankly surprised that anyone would think that a band from up there could be any good. Plus, the article spoke of their songs' "gorgeous melodies," and I'm a sucker for gorgeous melodies.

Not only are the songs great, but there are a couple of fascinating back stories going on with this band.

One is that these guys are not your typical Williamsburg indie-pop types. They've been around. Chris Kowanko, the singer and songwriter, first came to New York City in the mid 80's, and actually put out a Lenny Kaye-produced solo album in 1991. From then until he settled in Upper Jay a couple of years ago, he moved arounf the country a lot. Probably had a lot of jobs. But he never stopped writing songs. He put out another fine solo album a couple of years ago, produced by Seattle's Steve Fisk. He moved to Upper Jay with his wife and daughter because the bass player from his New York days, Scott Renderer, and his brother Byron (who happened to be a drummer) had moved there and opened an furniture upholstery business. When Chris arrived, they started Monsterbuck.

I've always admired songwriter/musicians who didn't know when to quit. It's part of that romantic idea that the music is so important that you would starve, you would neglect your family, you would give up everything as long as you could keep playing music. Kowanko seems like one of those guys. And the fact that the music he and the Renederer brothers is creating now is so cool just makes it that much more amazing. And in a town like Upper Jay, with a population of a couple of hundred people.

The other interesting backstory concerning Monsterbuck also concerns Upper Jay's most famous resident, Arto Monaco, who, in the '50's and '60's, was kind of the Walt Disney of the Adirondacks. He designed and built amusement parks, including Storytown, Gaslight Village, and his pride and joy, the Land of Make Believe, which he built in his backyard in Upper Jay. All these places were familiar to any kid growing up in the Adirondacks. Land of Make Believe was perhaps the most truly amazing. It combined fairy tales, and cowboys and pirates and other kid-centric fantasies and made them all come to life, often interracting with each other in ways that, in the real world, would have made no sense. (A cowboy saloon next door to a medieval castle, next to a paddle wheeler docked on the "Mississippi River.")

The members of Monsterbuck have adopted Arto Monaco as a spiritual forebear. The name of their ep and first album-to-be is "Land of Make Believers." And one of their best songs is called is "Arto Monaco."

The Land of Make Believe was destroyed by a flood in 1979, but you can still see the shells of some of the buildings in Upper Jay, along the banks of the Ausable River. Arto Monaco died in 2003, but his spirit lives on in Monsterbuck's quirky, beautiful songs.


Monsterbuck's first ep, "Land of Make Believers," is available at http://www.monsterbuck66.com/.

The song "Arto Monaco" isn't on the ep but you can download it:
Monsterbuck - Arto Monaco.mp3

CMT Crossroads: Steve Earle and Rosanne Cash

I've been Tivo-ing the CMT show "Crossroads" for two years, and I had never come across an episode that I thought was worth watching, until last night, when the two guests were Steve Earle and Roseanne Cash.
It was a perfect combination of artists - Earle was his usual gruff but sensitive self, and Cash was folkie-sincere and obviously really intelligent.
Cash gave Earle some shit about showing up stoned at a concert 20 years ago, and Earle, now famously sober, seemed a little chagrined. He, in turn told a funny story about hanging out with Johnny Cash right after he got out of jail.
They sang a bunch of songs together and to be honest I wasn't crazy about either Earle's or Cash's later stuff, but "Seven Year Ache," "Guitar Town," and especially "Goodbye," were sensational, and reminded me of why I used to listen to both of them a lot, and go to see them any time they were in New York.
I'm sure CMT will rerun the episode - it's definitely worth checking out.

I posted this on MySpace a month ago. I'm reposting it here because I need to fill up space and also because it's really the first of my rock and roll experiences.

Monday, August 07, 2006

RIP Arthur Lee Almost exactly 40 years ago, in the summer of 1966, my friend Mickey Leonard and i hitch hiked the ten miles from the small town we lived in, Warrensburg, NY to the equally-small but way more interesting tourist trap town of Lake George. I had just come back from a summer in Europe, courtesy of a camp-sponsored exchange program, and was two or three weeks away from going away to prep school. Mickey Leonard was my best friend from junior high school, kind of a fuck up, and the coolest guy i knew. A couple of miles outside of lake George, a beater of a car pulled up, smoke curling out of the exhaust pipe. We pried open the back door and got in. I remember we had to climb over a stack of lp's. In the front seat were two long-haired scary looking guys, unshaven and dressed in crazy shirts and vests. I had some guys who looked like that in Germany and France, but never this up-close. The driver, was dark and had kind of an Afro (I call it that in hindsight, because I'm pretty sure i had never heard the term before). He asked where we were going, then without waiting for an answer asked if we had 50 cents, because they had to get to NYC. Mickey and I scraped together 50 cents and handed it over the seat. Then Mickey asked if the two guys were in a band. One of them said yeah. Mickey said, "I saw your album in the drugstore. You're in Love, right?" The blond guy sitting in the passenger seat said yeah. It was Arthur Lee and Bryan McLean. I had been to Europe and knew who the Animals were and the Stones and the Kinks, but I had never heard of Love. And to be honest, even though I liked the Stones and knew all the lyrics to "Dirty Water" and "Psychotic Reaction", I was really a nerdy Herman's Hermits and Dave Clarke Five fan at heart. As nerdy as I might have been, I still knew that these two guys were the coolest guys I had ever met. I bought the first Love album as soon as I could, and fell in love with it. I even managed to find a place that sold the suede boots with fringe on the top that a couple of the band members were wearing on the cover of the album So I've been listening to Love for 40 years. I've been a Velvets fanatic, a Stooges fanatic, a NY Dolls fanatic, a Big Star fanatic, a Television fanatic, a Feelies fanatic. But my appreciation of Love has lasted longer and has been more profound. I'd have to say that their first three albums are maybe my favorite albums of all time. Even objectively, if you listen to "Forever Changes" now, it's hard to date it. The genre hopping is perfectly in tune with the kinds of stuff Calexico and Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire are doing. The sophisticated melodies and arrangements make it hard to believe that Love, in its heyday, was never really more than a struggling garage band making a living in clubs on Sunset Strip. I saw Arthur Lee in the early 90's at Trammps and he hadn't lost a thing. His voice was, if anything stronger than it was on the albums. The songs rang as true as they had 25 years earlier. I know Arthur Lee was fucked up in a lot of ways. (I also think he got treated like shit by just about the whole world.) But there's no question that may still be the coolest person I ever met. And probably the most brilliant.