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I can’t describe the intense joy that I get when I hear “Karen Revisited” from the newest Sonic Youth LP. It just…shimmers. It starts off as a pop song with Lee Renaldo’s voice floating around over this wonderful riff, noise swirling around in the background. It builds up to a chorus, slows down, then moves along to this huge climax around the 2:23 mark with Lee singing “ask me if I care/ miscommunication/ Karen”. The song rides out on that wave and then crashes, turning into this droning blast of percussionless noise. After a minute and a half of that it mellows out and begins a reverb heavy passage which reminds me a lot of the ending of “Expressway To Yr Skull” from EVOL. The song ends by melting into a live recording of the band doing a very Sun Ra-ish improvisation, fading out into applause.

They really should be proud of themselves, especially Lee Renaldo – he certainly steals Murray Street for himself with this song. This man really needs to sing lead more often – his voice is just so lovely over that riff, his lyrics about revisiting an old stoner love really suit the motif of the music very well.

All hail the glory of Boom Selection, who have solicited bootleg mixes of the new Eminem single, “Without You”. They’ve started posting the best of what they’ve been getting – and some of them are really fab. I can say without hesitation that the best of the bunch is the one over the music of “Come On Eileen”, because it’s just so perfectly done and boppy and joyous. I’m pretty keen on the Led Zepelling “Wanton Song” mix, which is cut up just right, and just rocks like crazy.

The obligatory Kylie mix starts off pretty strong, and is generally pretty good, but wears me out a bit. The Human League “Don’t You Want Me” mix is an interesting failure – the mixer slowed down the vocals too much, and is sloppy with matching up Eminem with the beat. The one pairing it up with Michael Jackson’s “Burn This Disco Out” is marred by slowed-down vocals too, but does win some points with me for being a less-than-obvious MJ tune to bootleg. There’s a good electro bootleg (mixed with FC Kahuna) which is musically good, but the vocals are slowed down too… ah, what are you gonna do?

I still haven’t actually heard the original version of “Without You” just yet, so the mix with the X-Ecutioners which only uses the instrumental and not the a cappella is an interesting one – it just sounds like a good hip hop song to my ears without knowing either song. It sounds like Dre did a good job on this track, I wonder how the original compares to all these boots.

The Eminem rhymes are nice enough – pretty standard Eminem pop stuff, it sounds like he very conciously attempting to replicate the “state of the Shady address” thing he did on “The Real Slim Shady”, right down to the dissing of high-profile celebs – Moby, Limb Bizkit, Chris Kirkpatrick. Why does he go after such weak, irrelevant targets? Does he expect them to fight back? What does anyone gain from dissing Moby? Would that make anyone think yr clever, much less hard? It’s kinda like stealing a sickly kid’s milk money, or punching little old ladies. I don’t doubt that Eminem is talented and clever, I just wish that if he was going to battle someone, he’d really go for it.

As I’ve made clear in the previous post, the Pavement covers that I found on Audiogalaxy are a pretty miserable bunch, for the most part. I’m not sure why. I don’t think it’s because of my strong sentimental attachment to the songs of Pavement, because my love of most of those GBV songs is similarly intense. I think the running thread in why most of them are bad might be because how most of the bands don’t seem to get why Pavement and all those songs were so perfect in the first place. I guess I should get right to it…

I’ll start with Grandaddy‘s version of “Here”, for both it’s ubiquity and the fact that “Here” is by far the most-covered Pavement song in my findings. Grandaddy’s version is pretty likeable, they play the song in Pavement’s live-version arrangement, ie big and loud. Grandaddy are essentially simultaneously a poor-man’s Pavement and an even-poorer-man’s Radiohead. I give Grandaddy some credit for fucking around and being a bit playful with the song, to the point of making up their own verse – that’s very SM of them. They still manage to suck a lot of the greatness out of the song, and make it sound pretty ordinary.

Still, this is preferable to the horrible crime against music that is Richard Buckner‘s version of the same song. It pains me to hear this thing – the man basically turns the song into a Smog tune, which is just inexcusable. Contrary to popular opinion, absolutely nothing about Pavement was lifeless and smug, lazy or pathetic, though everything about Smog is. I hate Bill Callahan’s drab voice, and Buckner’s impression of it is only that much worse than the real thing. This is the outright butchering of a classic pop song, and Buckner should pay for this, do some hard time in indie jail or something. His version with Calexico is only marginally better, if just because Calexico adds a bit of faux-country texture to it, and Buckner sings a bit more melodically.

I can’t say that I quite like the Tindersticks version of “Here”, but at least I can respect it. They make it sound just like a soft-rock 70’s AM radio song, sort of like a Jimmy Webb song. I suppose it’s okay as a novelty – though I’m sure that it is not, it sounds a bit like a joke to me.

Holly Golightly‘s cover of “Box Elder” is pretty nice – they speed it up, make it rock a bit more. It’s pretty average indie-pop, nothing objectionable. The same goes for The Wedding Present‘s version – it’s likable, but nothing special. One thing that I noted listening to both of these versions is how when played with distortion and standard tuning, the main riff resembles Velocity Girl’s “Sorry Again”. Hmm.

Unquestionably the most likable and personalized of all the Pave covers that I’ve found, Cat Power‘s rendition of “We Dance” is as lovely as the best of Chan Marshall’s work. She makes the song her own without compromising the song’s greatness, something none of the other artists mentioned here even come close to. Tom Barman and Friends gives the same song a shot in a live recording and pales in comparison to Cat Power – it’s not awful, but it sounds very ordinary and pedestrian. Like most of the covers, it suffers from not being played in the same tuning that Pavement originally played them in. It doesn’t take much work to find out what tunings Malkmus used online – I’m not sure why more of these people don’t put in a bit more effort and find out so that they can play the songs the way they are meant to be heard.

Certainly the worst victim of the standard-tuning curse is the Dharma Sons version of “AT&T”, which sounds like a band of Professional Musicians cleaning up a song which is meant to be intentionally sloppy and punchdrunk. It’s just not right. It’s like being at a restaurant and getting a well-done steak when you asked for it to be medium rare. You just want to ask the waiter to take it back, you know?

Thankfully, some band called The Miracle of 86 manage to get it right in their cover of “Range Life”. It’s very true to the original, to the point that they even improvise the last verse and make up their own band disses on the spot, just like Malkmus would do live. Nicely done, guys.

Mallow is another band that I know nothing about, they sound like a garage band, and do a pretty straight-foward cover of “In The Mouth A Desert”. They sound like they could be a pretty good Pavement tribute band, really. If they were, I’d hire them to play at my birthday party, if I had one. This goes for Phish as well, though I’m sure they are way out of my price-range. Their live version of “Gold Soundz” feels just about right, but still has a nice feeling of amateurishness about it that brings to mind that of a tribute band. Trey Anastasio messes up the lyrics in the middle, but covers them up in a nice Malkmus-esque way, which wins them some bonus points in my book.

I’m not sure what to make of Bettie Serveert‘s cover of “Trigger Cut” – it straddles a fine line between being a nice personalized version of the song, and just being boring and average in a way specific to the band itself. I suppose I like their arrangement, but the personality of the band doesn’t work for me. My feelings about The Wedding Singers version of “Major Leagues” isn’t far off – it’s fine enough, I guess, but I just don’t like these guys. The Wedding Singers do get points for picking a song from Pavement’s least popular LP to cover, though.

Finally, I’ve got some nice things to say about Static Ritual‘s live cover of the song that gives this blog it’s name, “Flux = Rad”. Yes! This rocks! You guys rule! They did it right! Even Pavement themselves couldn’t pull this one off live – kudos, whoever you are!

On a whim, I decided to find as many Guided By Voices covers as I could on Audiogalaxy. Overall, it’s a competant bunch of covers (unlike the Pavement covers which I found, most of which verged on outright blasphemy – I’ll talk about them later), but nothing that really knocked me out.

One of the best of the bunch is Jon Auer‘s rendition of “Gold Star For Robot Boy”, which essentially answers the question “What if Elliot Smith wrote and recorded “Gold Star For Robot Boy”?” It’s a pleasant, melancholy version of the song; Auer’s voice sounds really lovely. You can tell that Auer must really love the song just by hearing it. Nicely done.

Local H‘s version of “Smothered In Hugs” is a lot cleaner than the GBV original, which I think is to it’s credit. I’ve always felt the Bee Thousand version was noisey/sloppy to the point that it obscured the loveliness of the melody. Still, the singer’s voice is kind of unpleasant, I much prefer Sparklehorse‘s version, if just because the melody of the song sounds a lot better when a guy who sounds like a half-asleep Michael Stipe sings it.

I’m pretty fond of Kitty Badass‘ cover of “Game of Pricks”, for a few reasons – one, because they just do a competant girl-punk version of the Alien Lanes original; two, because the lead singer’s voice has a really nice snarl to it; and three, because I appreciate the gender reversal of the lyrics. Kitty Badass do a nice job of picking up on the punk aspects of the tune, while Jim Adkins‘ solo acoustic version captures the early Beatles-ishness of the song. His version is pleasant, but a bit forgettable. Jimmy Eat World‘s cover is a version of the Tigerbomb/live arrangement, which earns them big GBV geek points even though I don’t really care for the unnecessary intro on that version. It’s such a faithful cover that it really does just sound like current line-up GBV with some other guy singing lead instead of Bob. My Vitriol‘s version is also the Tigerbomb arrangement, but they play it with a more ethereal intro, and heavier Nirvana-esque soft/load dynamics. I imagine that if Kurt Cobain wrote the song, this is how he would have played it.

Deus‘ “Motor Away” is a nice acoustic version with some pleasantly warbling vocals – it captures the sadness of the lyrics more than the original GBV version, but still doesn’t do much for me. Superdrag‘s version is a lot like Jimmy Eat World’s “Game of Pricks” – just like the original, but with a lesser singer. They do project a genuine love for the song in the recording, though. The Salteens, on the other hand, do a distinctive twee indie pop version that is cute, but maybe a little too cute for its own good.

Unquestionably the most amusing and unique GBV cover that I found is Kompressor‘s vaguely disturbing faux-German electro version. The synth arrangement is cute, and the angry-mad-scientist vocals are really funny. I like it a lot more than Join’R‘s straight-ahead garage band version, even though it’s nice and earnest enough. Join’R certainly embrace the big-giant-anthem nature of the song, which is much to their credit.

I give The Fastbacks a lot of credit for covering one of my personal favorites “Teenage FBI”, but I wish they’d done a better job. Their version is very fast and bratty, emphasizing the “someone tell me why” parts of the song. I also wish Chore had done a better job of playing “Subspace Biographies” – another big personal favorite, and also a lot more obscure than most of the other covers that I found, which gives Chore some bonus points. The problem with Chore’s version is not that it’s too sloppy; but that it’s far too polished and clean, it sounds too ordinary for my liking. They play the song a bit heavier than GBV too – I’m pretty sure the rhythm guitarist is playing in drop D tuning, making the song a lot beefier-sounding than it should be.

New Radiant Storm King‘s version of “I Am A Scientist” from a split single with GBV is an odd one – on one hand, the music is very faithful, and on the other the singer butchers the song with his mush-mouthed vocals which make it sound as though he is actually mocking the song. The pointless sloppy backing vocals they added to the arrangement at the end doesn’t help, either.

The Grifters‘ drunken live version of “Postal Blowfish” is very true to the spirit of live GBV, and is pretty fun, but doesn’t quite gel. Real Lulu’s version is a lot better – the girl who is singing sounds kinda creepy and possessed, almost like that girl who sings on all of the best A Certain Ratio songs. It’s got a really nice “we are members of an evil rock cult, the Branch Pollardians” vibe to it.

Finally, The Breeders‘ version of “Shocker In Gloomtown” is nice and smooth, and nails the song without surpassing the original. Just plain pleasant, really.

Again, this is pretty decent bunch of covers. I’ll get to the Great Pavement Song Massacre later on, or tomorrow…

Let’s talk about some recent Neptunes tracks, okay?

Last night I heard “Grindin'” by Clipse for the first time – I’m pretty amazed, it is one of the most naked, spare, minimalist songs I’ve ever seen on MTV. It’s all repetitive electronic percussion, no bass, there’s no keyboards, no nothing. On what passes for a chorus, Pharell from the Neptunes softly sings the word “grind-ing” while a percussive keyboard sound makes a brief little cameo. It’s so simple, so tense, so effective. It sounds primal. The MC isn’t special, I sort of wish this track was for someone a bit more charismatic – I get the feeling that this song would sound great with Mystikal or Ludacris.

The Neptunes-produced “Grimey” by N.O.R.E. (aka Noreaga) has a very similar beat (but hey, don’t all Neptunes tracks have more or less a variation on the same beat?), but with a really cool early 80s kind of keyboard hook, and a nervously pulsating bassline. Noreaga is a competant and passable MC, so he’s barely a factor in the quality of the song – the chorus is pretty good, once it comes in along with that keyboard hook, it really clicks. A good track, but not quite a classic.

The Neptunes remix of “Emotions” by Destiny’s Child is a really interesting one – what was originally a soft-pop acoustic ballad is now re-outfitted with a chugging keyboard riff, tambourines, a lightly thudding snare, and a politely funky bassline. It’s very satisfying, especially because Beyonce et al recorded a brand new vocal track for the mix, so it’s really smooth. I’m surprised that this wasn’t the regular single mix, really. Very strong.

Their remix of Angie Stone‘s “Everyday” is nice enough, and certainly improves upon the original version; but is more or less The Neptunes on autopilot. Standard Neptunes beat, standard Neptunes keyboard and bass, you’ve heard it all before. It’s the sort of self-parody that they could do for the rest of their careers, but thankfully they are avoiding that lately.

The Neptunes contribution to the “What’s Going On?” all-star benefit cd is pretty fair – some preachy MCing by LL Cool J, Fabolous, Da Brat, Mobb Deep, Noreaga, and Queen Latifah over some benign light-soul keyboards, an easy-going beat, and some crooning by Pharrell Williams. I like it, but it’s nothing really special. It’s certainly good for what it is meant to be…

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Neptunes mix of Mr. Cheeks‘ “Lights, Camera, Action” is really inspired and fun. It’s similar in feel to their mix of Britney Spears’ “I’m A Slave 4 U”, but with a nice catchy pop hip hop song, with that chorus quoting Outkast’s “Ms Jackson”… It’s a bit of a novelty song, I think, but it’s worthwhile and memorable.

Also fitting that description is their remix of N’Sync‘s “Girlfriend” with Nelly on guest vocals. This one is really great – smooth, slick, fun modern pop. This song is really all about Nelly being Nelly, Justin Timberlake doing his best Michael Jackson impression, and the rest of N’Sync crooning innocuously in the background. The acoustic guitar is a nice touch, too… I’m pretty sure that in 20 years, there will be folks working very hard to make a retro record that sounds a lot like this.

Finally, I bit the bullet and decided to check out the re-recorded-with-a-live-band versions of my favorite songs from The Neptunes’ N.E.R.D. LP, and I’m glad that I did. I never expected that live version of “Brain” could ever improve upon the electropop original, but hey, I’ve got to admit that it feels a lot more energetic and fluid without losing the basic sound of the main riff or sacrificing any of the original’s nervous twitchiness. In fact, the live band version sounds a lot more twitchy and manic. Similarly, the live version of “Things Are Getting Better” has some really well-done/well recorded percussion that automatically one-ups the original. Not bad – I guess it’s best to not be so quick to judge what seemed like a really insane decision to re-record the LP; they seem to know exactly what’s the best for them.

I really like this bit of this interview with Jarvis Cocker…

Q: Why don’t you get contacts?

JC: I have got contacts. I wear them on stage. I had to do that because my glasses used to fall off. There was one incident at a gig in Sheffield where I was crawling around the stage for about 10 minutes looking for them – they’d fallen into the bass drum. I’m very shortsighted and people always say, “Why don’t you get laser treatment?” But I quite like waking up in the morning and everything being soft and fuzzy. It’s nice to choose when to bring the world into focus and start your day.

Nicely put, Jarv.

Last night’s Best Show on WFMU was a classic – Tom Scharpling turned his show into a testosterone-fueled locker room jock-rock talk show, like something off of an AM sports station. Bring it!

I must say that I’m a bit afraid to see next week’s Gilmore Girls, what with the story including Rory and Jess getting into a car accident which is going to hurt Rory and cause Lorelai and Luke to get in a huge fight that will last the rest of the season. It’s depressing. I’ve come to love those characters so much, that I don’t want to see them get hurt or upset – sigh. And I read the spoilers for the upcoming episodes – it’s only going to get worse from here on out…

If you didn’t already love Sophie, you probably will after reading her response to this ignorant hateful man.

I’m listening to the new GBV LP Universal Truths and Cycles right now. I haven’t really formulated an opinion about the whole LP just yet – this one seems like a grower, but really, what GBV release isn’t? There’s some obvious keepers on the record – “Back To The Lake” and “Cheyenne” seem like Pollard was deliberately trying to write classics for permanent live staple status;”Eureka Signs”, “Everywhere With Helicopter” and “Christian Animation Torch Carriers” are all passable anthems. It seems like a good enough record, not nearly as strong as Isolation Drills, but way better than Do The Collapse or the last Airport 5 record. I suppose it most resembles Under The Bushes, Under The Stars in style, structure, and content… but I think it’s missing a bit of that record’s “ooomph”.

Damn, “Cheyenne” sounds so much like Lifes Rich Pageant-era R.E.M. that Stipe et al should get a share of the publishing royalties…

I can’t help feeling a bit creepy reading this blog every day; it’s such a pure voyeuristic thrill to follow the faux-trashy glamor of this cute girl from LA’s life. Especially when she’s so a) early Sonic Youth-poetic about it and b) so cryptic. And she changes the background template every day almost…

In other news, via Pitchfork:

Blur is in the process of recording a new album with an eye toward an early 2003 release, according to the Britpop quartet’s Damon Albarn. The still-untitled project was once to be produced by Fatboy Slim, though the Blur mainman is happy with the direction of the band’s own recordings, which sound “like Can meets Led Zeppelin,” Albarn recently told Rolling Stone. Nonetheless, Blur hope to have the recording finished this spring, with a possibility of a teaser single release in late summer. New song “Don’t Bomb When You Are The Bomb” has been mentioned as a possibility. The band reportedly have fourteen cuts completed and have booked studio time in May to finish up.

“Can meets Led Zep”? Nice. Sounds like 13, Part II…

Last night on Saturday Night Live, Andrew WK was the musical guest. I’d heard a lot of bad things about him, and I’d only heard a snippet of one of his songs before last night – he’s this huge macho musclebound jock-man, doing fast pop-metal songs about partying, but he barks hardcore-style instead of singing. It’s awful. It’s like the musical equivalent of a frat-jock date rape kegger.

I just finished up DJing a party – it wasn’t quite what I thought it was going to be, it was mostly FIT students chatting and steadfastly refusing to dance. Oh, and coming up and asking me for metal every ten minutes. This is what I played:

Jake Slazenger “Supafunk”/ Cornershop “Heavy Soup”/ Missy Vs. O Jays Vs. Happy Mondays “Step On Man”/ Deee-Lite “Groove is in the Heart”/ Michael Jackson Vs. Q-Tip “Breathe Don’t Stop”/ DJ Q-Bert “Demolition Pumpkin Squeeze Muzik”/ Mike Viner’s Incredible Bongo Band “Apache”/ Stevie Wonder “Sir Duke”/ The Rolling Stones “Let’s Spend The Night Together”/ David Bowie “Rebel Rebel”/ The Human Beinz “Nobody But Me”/ Sleater-Kinney “You’re No Rock N Roll Fun”/ Elvis Costello “Pump It Up”/ Gravy Train “Sippin 40z”/ Bitch and Animal “Best Cock on the Block”/ Strokes Vs. Christina “Stroke of Genius”/ James Brown “There Was A Time”/ Chuck Edwards “Downtown Soulville”/ Eddie Bo “Check Your Bucket”/ Jimmy Mamou “Funky Love”/ Iggy Vs. Beasties “Lust For Sureshot”/ The Strokes “Last Nite”/ The Beatles “I Saw Her Standing There”/ Missy Vs. Elastica “Connection Shots”/ Vanilla Ice Vs. Basement Jaxx “Where’s Yr Ice At?”/ The Hives “Hate To Say I Told You So”/ Joan Jett “Cherry Bomb”/ James Chance “Contort Yourself”/ Mos Def “Ms Fat Booty”/ Destiny’s Child Vs. Outkast “Jumpin Jackson”/ The Beatles Vs. DMX, Meth, Busta, etc/ Bjork “Big Time Sensuality”/ Cylob “Sex Machine”/ Sexual Harrassment “I Need A Freak”/ George Michael “I Want Yr Sex”/ Playgroup “Number One”/ Gonzales “Take Me To Broadway”/ Depeche Mode Vs. D12 “Just Can’t Get Enough Pills”/ The Clash “Rock The Casbah (remix)”/ ESG “Dance”/ No Doubt “Making Out”/ Grandmaster Flash Vs. Blackstreet/ Madonna “Material Girl”/ The B-52s “Love Shack”/ Peaches “Set It Off (remix)”/ Crossover “Extensive Care”/ Michael Jackson “The Way You Make Me Feel”/ Beastie Boys “Hey Ladies”/ Busta Vs. Missy Vs. ODB/ Daft Punk Vs. Kraftwerk “Daftwerk”/ Jay-Z “I Just Want To Love You (MTV Unplugged version)”/ Ol Dirty Bastard “Got Your Money” Vs. Will Smith “Miami”/ Otis Redding “Mr. Pitiful”/ Big Ella “Too Hot To Hold”/ Billy Hambric “She Said Goodbye”/ Gloria Jones “Tainted Love”/ Sugar Pie Desanto “Go Go Power”/ The Supremes “Can’t Hurry Love”/ Ike and Tina Turner “Bold Soul Sister”/ Wilbur Bascomb “Just A Groove In G”/ Loose Joints “Tell You (Today)”/ Tom Tom Club “Genius of Love”/ The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop”/ Dub Narcotic Sound System “Fuck Shit Up”/ The Make-Up “Pow! To The People”/ Taylor Savvy “Share The Dream”/ Peaches “Fuck The Pain Away”/ Peaches “Lovertits”/ Prince “Kiss”/ Le Tigre “Deceptacon (remix)”/ Britney Spears “I’m A Slave 4 U”/ Latryx “Lady Don’t Tek No”/ The Notorious BIG “Big Poppa”

This one didn’t really get going til most of the people finally started leaving, and people started to dance unselfconciously. But this matters not – we’re putting on a mega dance party in two weeks, and we’re pulling out all the stops. It’s going to be great. Oh, just you wait…

It happens EVERY time. Every time GBV play two shows in a row, and I only see one, the show that I don’t see, they play my favorite GBV song, “Choking Tara”. Adding insult to injury, the setlist also contained some other songs that I was dying to see: Whiskey Ships, Girl Named Captain, Skills Like This, Drinker’s Peace, Psychic Pilot Clocks Out, and Postal Blowfish. Fuck. This isn’t fair! Last night’s setlist was sooooo much better!

Gah.

Quick reviews of shows which I’ve seen in the past few days:

Guided By Voices at the Warsaw – great show, nearly three hours. They played almost all of the new songs plus the following in a non-specific order:

I Drove A Tank, Instrument Beetle, Edison’s Memos, Fair Touching, The Brides Have Hit Glass, Glad Girls, The Enemy, Twilight Campfighter, Teenage FBI, In Stitches, Things I Will Keep, Pop Zeus, Tight Globes, Soul Train College Police Man, Alone Stinking and Unafraid, Submarine Teams, Get Under It, Waved Out, Cut-Out Witch, Don’t Stop Now, Motor Away, A Salty Salute, Game of Pricks, Watch Me Jumpstart, My Valuable Hunting Knife, I Am A Scientist, Tractor Rape Chain, Hot Freaks, Echos Myron, Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory, Smothered In Hugs, Peephole, Liar’s Tale, Shocker In Gloomtown, and Baba O’Riley as the closer.

All of the Bee Thousand songs were played together as the first encore, or as Bob called it “The Bee Thousand Encore!” It’s really cool to have them all played together in a concentrated dose like that. I was especially happy to hear “Echos Myron” “Hot Freaks” and “Smothered In Hugs”, I haven’t seen them do those in quite a while now. I was also quite glad to hear “Edison’s Memos” and “Submarine Teams” again. The crowd was very intense, more so than usual even. I love the way hardcore GBV fans all bond in the crowd through high-fiving and pumping their fists in the air…when I see GBV, I feel like this is what rock shows and rock fans should be.

The Walkmen show at the Knitting Factory certainly exceeded my expectations. I knew that they would be good; but never thought that they’d be as tight as they were, or that the singer would be as handsome and charismatic as he is. I left that show liking the band even more, and wanting to see them again as soon as possible.

The Danielson Famile show at the Knitting Factory was a very interesting experience – they played on a bill with three other bizarre avant Christian groups, each more entertaining than the last. I was particularly impressed by Soul-Junk, who play this manic game of switching around from indie rock to improv jazz to hip hop to drum & bass etc and still manage to be quite good at all of them. They pulled it off nicely. I bought one of their records, and while it’s not as good as the live show, there’s some nice tunes on there.

The Danielson Famile were cute beyond all belief – I wasn’t expecting them to be as tight or professional as they were, but I was glad that they were. Daniel looks a lot like Luke Skywalker in person, and the girls in the band are so cute when they sing along and do little interpretive dances. They were so good-natured and fun, and at the same time, weird weird weird. They played a good setlist, but didn’t play my favorite “Fathom The Nine Fruits Pie”. I was in the front row, and asked the girls if they were going to play it towards the end of their set and one of them said “oh no, not tonight! that song is really hard to play, it’s like torture!”. I thought about it for a moment, and realized that they were right. That song must be kind of hard to pull off live. Too bad.

Hm. I just got back in from the Clinic gig at the Bowery Ballroom. They did it again – another good show marred by their refusal to play any longer than 45 minutes. There were some technical difficulties throughout the set, but nothing too distracting. I was glad to hear them do “Come Into Our Room”, but it’s really too bad that they don’t even bother with “For The Wars”, “Harmony” or “The Equaliser” live. “Mr. Moonlight” was unquestionably the highlight of the night for me, and the new tune “The Magician” was solid, even if it sounded like the horns from “The Equaliser” mixed with the rhythm section of “Welcome”…

The audience was a bit obnoxious – a few too many trendy people in my vicinity talking about how Clinic were “the biggest thing at SXSW” and the kind of “hype” they are getting – ugh! I just wanted to smack them and pull my elitist super-fan shtick, say to them “Hey motherfucker, I’ve been in love with this band since before Internal Wrangler came out – go away and take yr fucking digi-camera with you!”. Honestly, I get the impression that a lot of these people don’t even like music.

The first opening act, Denali, were incredibly tedious and awful – they more or less just strung together every obnoxious major label pseudo-alternative musical cliche imaginable with their array of expensive gear. The girl singer looked like she belonged on some show on The WB or something. Just you wait. These guys are going to be huge, I bet…

[anal retentive] Clinic’s setlist: Come Into Our Room | Pet Eunoch | The Second Line | Internal Wrangler | Mr. Moonlight | The Magician | Porno | Walking With Thee | The Return of Evil Bill | Welcome | 2/4 encore: Monkey On Your Back | Cement Mixer [/anal retentive]

I went to see Commedia dell’High School last night at the UCB Theatre. I highly recommend it. For those unwilling to follow links, it is an 80s teen comedy improvised live on stage; it’s incredibly funny, I could go on forever recounting all of the funniest bits, but you really just had to have been there. I really have got to go to that theatre more often…

Oh my… this is just awful. It’s a website showcasing hideous, cartoonish, gaudy paintings inspired by U2 lyrics. Say what you will about U2, but I think we can all agree that they don’t deserve having this sort of thing done to their songs….right?

I am heartbroken.

The two Wilco shows at the Bowery Ballroom have sold out, and I don’t have a ticket for either.

I am very upset about this.

Anyway, I’m fairly certain my blog posting frequency will be very low the next week or so, since Flyboy will be in NYC, and I will be playing host. I might be able to get a few updates up here and there, but in the meantime you should probably keep your eye on Jim Treacher, Videodrome, Wolk and Suds for high quality bloggage – not to mention the other links I have off to the side.

I’ve been listening to The Best of Both Worlds all day… I am really happy with this record, it’s far better than I would have ever expected, especially considering my bias against R. Kelly. After all, I wasn’t too eager to listen to the guy who is responsible for “I Believe I Can Fly”, which has got to be one of the worst hit songs in pop history. I wasn’t at all skeptical about Jay-Z…the man has been on fire lately, and that fire continues to blaze on with this record.

The record isn’t perfect – there’s a few songs which veer off too far into obnoxious standard R. Kelly territory, but even those are pretty tolerable. The songs that work, REALLY WORK. I’m talking about some sleek, state-of-the-art sexy funk with R. Kelly crooning solid hooks and Jay-Z rhyming just as great if not better than on The Blueprint. The stand-out songs on this record aren’t far off from “I Just Want 2 Love U” from Roc-La-Familia… “Honey” sounds like it was seperated at birth from that song in the best possible way, and “Take You Home With Me aka Body” even shares a verse with that song, though it’s sung by R. Kelly instead of rapped by Jay-Z. The track with Lil Kim is another keeper (“Shake Your Body”), as is the closer “Pussy”, which is far more clever than that Amazon.com review I linked to gives it credit for.

Lately, I’ve really fallen in love with the band Imperial Teen, but I find that it would be really hard for me to describe what I like about them without inadvertantly making them sound boring or ordinary. They are a pop rock band, nearly all of the songs have two or more members of the band singing… most of their songs just knock me over, they are so well-written and well-executed. I especially love when their lyrics take on a more sinister tone, or when they play up their queerness (all of the band members are gay or of ambiguous sexuality, and the band is two men, two women).

Their new record, On improves on their previous two records greatly…more subtlety, more harmonizing, more pianos and keyboards. The songs “Our Time”, “Sugar”, “Baby”, “Teacher’s Pet” and “Ivanka” are particularly wonderful, right up there with the best from their previous two records – “The Beginning”, “Yoo Hoo”, “Lipstick”, “Open Season”, “You’re One”, “Imperial Teen” and “Waterboy”.

I just want to listen to “Sugar” all day long and think of one particular person…