Sneaky, But Still Cool (Really I am)

Look over at the top of the right column. See that Bon Iver album? It's obvious I'm dripping with street cred. I'm hip to what all the young kids are listening to. No need to scan down the column. What, you have a problem with Stan Rogers? Maybe you need a drunken singalong to Barrett's Privateers to set you straight.

Oh, you saw The Carpenters, huh? I can explain.

I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Karen Carpenter's voice. It instantly transports me back to 1972, playing Pirates of the Caribbean with my sisters on our shag carpet. My dad is sporting extra-long sideburns and a bulky turtleneck sweater. Maybe there's a fire in the fire place. Chauncey, our matted-hair Collie, is circling and circling, OCDing on the perfect nap spot.

What can I say? Rainy days and Monday always get me down.

Gettin' Twitchy

My MP3 player, a 3-yr-old Creative Zen Micro, is officially on the fritz. Has been for months, though my state of denial might refute that. With nothing to play new tunes on, I temporarily killed my eMusic account and have spent weeks and weeks watching the tumbleweeds roll by.

I subscribed to the weekly Amazon digital music email in which they offer free songs and the occasional amazing deal. Hence the Led Zep and Pink Floyd albums you see to the right. Both were $4.99. And no, I am not hearing this music for the first time. I'm OLD.

Last week something else caught my eye: a new album by Paul Westerberg--for 49 cents! I'll admit I've been down on Paul's last few albums, but for 49 cents I thought I might take a chance, even if it's just him grunting on the can for 10 minutes.

Well, it's better than that, but not as good as all the gushing going on over at Amazon. More rough drafts, more sketches, more tinkering in the basement. There are definitely some cool ideas in the 43 minutes, but nothing I would call a finished song. I hereby refuse to buy any more Paul music unless he's recording with a full band and a producer in a real studio.

Meanwhile, I've got my eye on a new Cowon D2 and once the budget allows, I shall start chipping away at my (very) long eMusic list.

Brave Lady

There's a point during Rickie Lee Jones's Girl at her Volcano when a female fan shouts out, "You're so brave!" For years, I've often thought that was the oddest thing anyone's ever yelled at a concert.

Now I understand.

Last night I saw her at Johnny D's in Somerville on the second of her three-Thursday residency. I was kind of on the fence about going, but then I read that Petra Haden was a member of her backup band. That sealed it (I saw Petra play with the Decemberists on the Picaresque tour and she was riveting).

Rickie is 54 and looks 64. I was planning on making a crack or two about her appearance, but after hearing her, that felt really unfair. She opens her mouth and it could be 1978. And what comes out is so raw and pure and could not give the teensiest shit about what anyone else thinks. She stands up there and exposes, from the inside out. She was also extremely funny, in her deadpan, mumbly way.

The band was great, although under-utilized and in apparent fear of the boss lady. They were trying very hard to please her, and did. The bass player was especially talented. Petra was fun to watch, but seemed distracted or shy or maybe even a little bored by the limits of what she was allowed to do.

I don't think of Rickie as a guitar player, but other than 3-4 songs on keyboard, she spent the entire evening playing guitar. In fact, she was playing a Taylor 712, the same exact guitar I have. Amazingly, hers was able to produce songs other than "Tangled Up in Blue" and "House of the Rising Sun."

I think mine might be defective.

A Snowy Crane Wife

I saw the Decemberists on Saturday night at Avalon, along with a thousand or so other happy, completely satisfied fans. It was a terrific show, and Colin Meloy was in fine voice (something I was a little worried about given they're in mid-tour). The sound was typically full, though not quite as "big" as it was during the Picaresque tour. I also missed Petra Haden's violin and little pig-tails.

It was fun to watch Jenny Conlee. She's very talented, quirky, and shy and clearly loves being in the band and making their music. I wonder if she gets lonely being the only female on the bus. Given the social maturity of the rest of the band, it's probably not an issue, but still...

When we finally emerged after a rousing "Sons & Daughters" encore/sing-a-long, we were greeted by near-blizzard conditions. Kind of a nice exclamation point on the evening.

Pumping Iron to Monkey & Bear

In a cost-cutting move, I recently joined the town rec center ($180 for nine months) over the swanky Boston Sports Club ($105 per month). Yes, the pool often feels like an assisted living therapy session, and the weight room is something an early Rocky might have sniffed and walked away from. But all in all, I dig it.

When I lift weights (not often and not many), I'm usually in the company of several pimply, smelly high school kids who crank mostly rap music at lots of decibels. Last week, after having just downloaded Joanna Newsom's Ys from eMusic, I listened intently to her warbles and harp on my MP3 player as I made my circuit around the machines and free weights.

I never felt more like Niles Crane in my entire life.

My Christmas Present to You

...is sort of a re-gifting, except that I get to keep it too. You'll see.

Say what you will about Aaron Sorkin, but I say, "The man makes good TV." The past Christmas episode of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" was just fabulous entertainment made all the more so by the careful folding of music into the drama (A Sorkin trademark).

At the end of the episode, some displaced New Orleans jazz musicians play a rendition of "O Holy Night" in tribute to their fallen city. It immediately leapt into my top-5 TV moments of all time. Tough to swallow with that big lump in my throat.

Anyway, NBC gave the song to me (along with the other unwashed millions who wandered to their site) and I'm passing it along to you. It is four minutes of beauty and sadness and joy. Get it. Or go here and click "Watch Highlight" to see it in the context of the show.

Merry Christmas. Don't say I never give you anything.

Poor Paul

If you look in the right gutter at the Movies I've recently seen, you'll correctly guess that I've got two relatively small children and very little "adult" time. When rainy days hit, like they did on Saturday, we sometimes hit the theater and hope for the best.

Most kid movies these days are pretty atrocious. The stories are lame and continually go for cheap laughs with fart/feces jokes. My expectations were set a wee bit higher than normal for Open Season, given that Paul Westerberg did all the music. I'd heard a bunch of the songs and thought they were great for injecting some adult-though-safe edge into family-friendly film fare.

From a story in HARP, it seems Paul's work on the music was lucrative, but torturous. Sony continually made him go back and re-write and then even had other artists cover some of the tunes. It sounded like two of the longest years of anyone's life. After seeing the movie, I had to wonder what they even paid him for. There were snippets of maybe three songs and one of them, Good Day, was off 1996's Eventually. I was hoping that Right to Arm Bears, a raucous foot-stomper, would get free reign, but that, too, was cut to about a 10-second chorus.

And the movie? SU-UCKED. Awful story, terrible writing, boring animation. Both of my kids were climbing their seats out of boredom. Someone has to kill the "buddy" concept in these films. Eddie Murphy's donkey in the Shrek series sets the bar and everyone else--especially Ashton Kutcher here--comes up woefully short. Forget the flick; buy the soundtrack.

A Tale of Two Bands

I saw The New Pornographers and Belle & Sebastian last night at Avalon, the second of two sold-out shows.  How's that for a twin bill?  Two very different styles with a fair amount of overlap in their audiences.

The New Pornographers opened and were everything I was expecting--except for Neko Case's hair.  All that flowing, red hair was shorn down to pixieness.  But I digress.  The haircut certainly did nothing to constrict her voice which was full, warm, lively and very powerful.  Pairing her with Carl Newman's multi-octave range gives the NPs two of the best sets of pipes in pop music today.  Their hour-long set was action-packed, filled with power chords, catchy choruses, and a full-throttle rhythm section.  The audience, while certainly appreciative and well entertained, did not exactly knock the band down with applause.  They were there to see B&S, and that fact, coupled with being the opening act, seemed to take a little sting out of the NPs punch.

After a fairly lenghty equipment swap-out, B&S came out--all SEVEN of them (which is only one more member than the NPs sported).  Within milliseconds, Stuart Murdoch had the audience under his control.  He was confident, playful, comfortable and surprisingly charismatic.  Hard to believe all those too-shy-to-perform-live stories of the past.

The set list was strong and the musicianship impressive.  But most remarkable was how clean their sound was.  I guess one could attribute it to tight playing and great equipment, but whatever the cause it created the perfect meeting of live and studio worlds.  And unlike the case above, the audience erupted numerous times.

Side note: after getting skunked for weeks at Ticketmaster, I did some online sleuthing about 8 hours before showtime.  In less than 10 minutes I had a ticket at face value.  This Internet thing just might amount to something.

----EDIT-----

It looks like Neko might still have her long, flowing, scarlet locks.  C's comment indicates that Neko (and Dan Bejar) are not on this tour.  Kathryn Calder is the woman I mistook for Ms. Case.  It's funny her voice was strong, but not loocomotive strong which had me wondering...lots of people in my general area were asking each other if that was Neko, but no one knew for sure.  Thanks, C!

Catching Up

Man, this week has flown.  Somehow it's Friday afternoon and I just realized I haven't posted in over a week.  Work has been crazy.  No money coming in, but a slew of people wanting proposals.

I've gotten a few new albums and finished 2 books lately, so I thought I'd pop in with a few quick comments in lieu of more formal reviews.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
I really hate it when reviewers compare the band in question to some other band in the past.  Really hate it.  So I'm going to do it...because with this album I really have no choice.  Clap Your Hands sound so much like Talking Heads it's uncanny.  Not late-period Heads when David Byrne's ego was Saturnesque, but early Heads when they were a band.  This album is alive with quirkiness, odd beats and song structures and is completely captivating.

The National - Alligator
I considered downloading this album on eMusic for months and finally pulled the trigger.  You know how some albums are "growers," and they take a handful of listens to start making their impression on your brain?  Well this one is an ivy, or a WEED, or some other really fast growing plant.  It's dark, it's melodic, it's a head-scratcher and I totally love it.

Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous
I think I need a few more listens on this one.  Because right now, and I'm a little afraid to say this, I think it's kind of boring.

Michael Azerrad - Our Band Could Be Your Life
A friend sent this to me because he knows how much I like the Replacements.  Basically, there's a chapter on 13 different seminal bands from the 1980s.  These are the bands that quite literally invented the indie scene we all love today.  And they did it themselves as there was nothing there to help them along.  Azerrad is fine writer and a great story teller.  If you think life as a musician is glamorous, then you need to read this book.  It's more like starving to death and getting loogies spat in your mouth.  Quite the horrifying read, actually.

J.M. Coetzee - Disgrace
This guy can write.  I guess that's what they hand out Nobel Prizes for.  He tackles such complex themes and relationships with such simple, direct language.  And it's a deceptive book in that it appears so slight you start thinking that nothing is happening as far as plot.  But then you realize that a LOT is happening; he just deals with the monumental and the mundane with an eerily equal tone.  Kind of like life.

Nick Says It's Okay

For the past few months I've been feeling a little stressed out about something: my interest/consumption of music.  There is a strange closet in our house that is filled from floor to ceiling with hundreds of CDs and cassettes.  In the basement are four bins filled with an equal number of LPs.  As a paid subscriber to eMusic, I subject my hard drive to 40 new MP3 files each and every month.  Given that I have so little time to actually listen to this music, it often feels like I am either neglecting or being asked to sip from a sonic firehose.

I started asking myself why I subscribe to Harp and faithfully check out Pitchfork each day.  Should someone my age and place in life know about Nude as the News and Neumu and Glorious Noise and Pop Matters and Metacritic?  Maybe not.  Maybe all that energy could be better spent on my family, my business, that ethereal novel and screenplay.  Maybe it's time to shut it down like Pedro.

But then, over Christmas, I received and read Nick Hornby's Songbook.  In it he writes individual essays on 31 songs that are special to him.  They are not reviews, per se, but more glorious expositions on how those songs found him and where he was in his life when they did.  The writing is transcendent, and as I worked my way through the essays, I gradually found my stress and anxiety melting away.  The man clearly knows his stuff and his taste, at least as far as I'm concerned, is spot on.

Good music is an expression of what it means to be human.  Embracing that experience just can't be a bad thing, can it? This paragraph from Chapter 3 says 'no':

A couple of times a year I make myself a tape to play in the car, a tape full of all the new songs I've loved over the previous few months, and every time I finish one I can't believe that there'll be another.  Yet there always is, and I can't wait for the next one; you need only a few hundred more things like that, and you've got a life worth living.