Does anyone remember this shit?!

For some reason I was talking about Scott Wolf this morning and I found out that he married a blonde girl from The Real World New Orleans. Then I remembered this douchebag.....

Maybe Your Baby

Some Songs with Baby in the Title
screenshot, color.

Mozart of Madras

Who is A.R. Rahman?

According to his very modestly designed and unpretentious official website, he "is the pride of the Indian nation and a role model for millions around the world." Further perusal of the biography section (which is accessed through a flash-animated marble-arched doorway and flanked by Pegasi and seagulls) also reveals that he is a prolific film composer with scores of Bollywood and western studio films to his credit.

Most recently, he did the music for Danny Boyle's thrilling and awesomely sentimental Slumdog Millionaire.

Here's one of his older and more popular songs, "Chaiyya Chaiyya," (I believe Spike Lee appropriated it for Inside Man) from the film Dil Se:

The Perfect Christmas

Christmas might be all about the big, family-focused celebration on the 25th, but if you slack off during the crucial Christmas Spirit Prep Phase you might as well not even show up at Mom's doorstep on Christmas Eve.

I will be taking the following steps in the coming weeks to guarantee that 2008 is remembered as "The Year Josh had the Perfect Christmas."

1. Wear Holiday Flannel - as Vince Vaughan movies will attest, any asshole can wear a Santa hat; true Christmas fashion is a more subtle thing. I will be wearing my new green and red flannel for a few hours most (if not every) day between now and December 25th to establish a solid power base of Christmas Spirit. Its festive grid of overlapping green and red squares will be spreading subliminal seasonal cheer to store clerks, bank tellers, and bartenders all over the Seacoast Region.

2. Pound Christmas Tree Cakes - Christmas Tree Cakes are the most disgusting, over-sugared, confectionery poison in the Little Debbie line-up of snack cakes. No matter how pure your Christmas Spirit, it is impossible to eat an entire cake without feeling just a little ill. Nevertheless, I will manfully commit to eating at least one entire box of these snack-sized delights before Christmas Eve.

3. Get Serious About Your Soundtrack - I've chosen A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector as this year's Official Christmas Soundtrack - all your Christmas favorites belted in full Wall of Sound, high-octave, Girl Group force. I'm giving this the edge over other Christmas albums based on the inclusion of The Greatest Christmas Song Ever, Darlene Love's "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)."



4. Pound Holiday Brews - I can't really stomach eggnog (at least in concept; I've never actually tried it) and so will be turning to seasonal beers to get my Christmas buzz going. This year's chosen brew: Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale.

5. Start but Don't Stop at Home - As the Christmas Spirit I generate at home begins to snowball and gain momentum, I plan to let it avalanche into my 9-5 life. Maybe a Christmas tie? Maybe a miniature Christmas tree in the cubicle? Definitely candy canes in all my pockets.



If all goes according to plan, one day I will leave my desk, pluck a candy cane from my tree, drive home with the Ronettes belting out "Sleigh Ride" (traffic be damned, I'll listen to it twice), return home, don my Holiday Flannel, and kick back with a Christmas Tree Cake and a Celebration Ale and watch Home Alone. And in that perfect moment when the shards of broken ornaments pierce Marv's bare feet and my lips taste of candy cane/beer/pastry, I will look down to brush the green and red sugar crystals from my green and red checked chest, and The Perfect Christmas will be mine.

Joan of Arc

I don't wanna be a poet / Cuz I don't wanna blow it

This guy is the real deal.


Lyrics:
Everywhere you look these days,
It's bound toe around
It's in the air, it's in our food
It's trampled in the ground
Down the block and near your house,
A reactor near your town
Geiger counters round-the-world
Record the deadly sound

Do it left do it right
Do the Radiation Shuffle,
Do it with all your might
Flap your arms we do the dance of death
The Radiation Shuffle to your dying breath

Babies drinking it casually
With their mothers' milk
Dumped in Oceans stupidly
The fishermen pays the bill
Fallout's just another name
For nothin' left to lose
Just wait until the alcoholics find
It's even in their booze

Do it left do it right
Do the Radiation Shuffle,
Do it with all your might
Flap your arms we do the dance of death
The Radiation Shuffle to your dying breath

Everywhere you look these days,
It's bound toe around
It's in the air, it's in our food
It's trampled in the ground
Down the block and near your house,
A reactor near your town
Just wait until the alcoholics find
It's even in their booze

Do it left do it right
Do the Radiation Shuffle,
Do it with all your might
Flap your arms we do the dance of death
The Radiation Shuffle to your dying breath

Not only does Robert Berger rock the shit out of the keys and look almost painfully awesome, he makes his own wine when he's not simply looking awesome (although I'm sure he looks awesome when he's making wine).

Also - he did not write the lyrics to this song.

Playlist

Rather than pick and choose music to suit my mood throughout the day, I went full shuffle at work today. Results were mixed. Tracks that elicited a silent "fuck yea" are in bold and those that were less well received or skipped altogether are in italics.

Isis (live) - Bob Dylan; Wu Tang Clan Ain't Nuthin' to F' Wit - Wu Tang Clan; Midnight -Tribe Called Quest; Make the Night a Little Bit Longer - the Palisades; C.R.E.A.M - Wu Tang Clan; Avalanche - Leonard Cohen; Country Pie - Bob Dylan; Try a Little Tenderness - Otis Redding; It's Your World/Pop's Reprise - Common; Flying - Regina Spektor; Macbeth - John Cale; Spot in my Heart - Josh Ritter; The Natchez Burnin' - Howlin' Wolf; We Don't Belong - Sylvan; Incarcerated Scarfaces - Raekwon; Sleep Walkin' Blues - Ma Rainey; 9 Milli Bros. - Ghostface Killah; Purple Rain - Prince & the Revolution; Funny Feathers - Louis Armstrong; The Blast - Talib Kweli; Three Hundred Pounds of Joy - Howlin Wolf; I Touch Myself - the Divinyls; Hotel Arizona - Wilco; P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Things) - Michael Jackson; It Was a Dream - John Brim; Idiot Wind (NY) - Bob Dylan; Dark Eyes - Bob Dylan; Evil (is Going On) - Howlin' Wolf; My Melody - Eric B. & Rakim; What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong; St. Louis Blues - Django Reinhardt; Whip You with a Strap - Ghostface Killah; Life on Mars? - David Bowie; Raspberry Beret - Prince; 25th Floor - Patti Smith; Still Beating - Josh Ritter; I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues - Louis Armstrong; You're So Fine - Dorothy Berry; Too Late - Talib Kweli; Ain't Gonna Kiss Ya - The Ribbons; If You'll Come Back - Jessie Derrick; Definition - Black Star; Lost Someone - James Brown; Miss Being Mrs. - Loretta Lynn; I Left My Wallet in El Segundo - Tribe Called Quest; Harvest - Neil Young; Blame it on the Sun - Stevie Wonder; Clipse of Doom - Ghostface Killah; Somedays - Regina Spektor; The Blues are Brewin' - Louis Armstrong; He's a Bad Boy - Carole King; Protect Ya Neck - Wu Tang Clan; How Does it Feel? - The Ronettes; Midnight Mood - Bill Evans; Les Trois Valses Distinguees Du Precieux Degoute - Erik Satie; One More Time - The Majestic Arrows; (Night Time Is) The Right Time - Ray Charles; Hello Dolly - Louis Armstrong; Don't Ever Let Me Know - Bobby Fuller Four; Lonesome Day Blues - Bob Dylan; Date Bait - Blue Smitty; Winter Lady - Leonard Cohen; Egyptian Shumba - The Tammys; Pense a Moi - France Gall; Girl - Prince; Try the Worryin' Way - The Fabulettes

"Never put me in your box if your shit eats tapes"

Presently the highlight of my work day is the ten mile commute, which depending on traffic takes anywhere from fifteen to forty five minutes (yesterday an accident on the bridge into Newington stretched the ride home to almost ninety minutes). I've learned to pack an extra snack for the drive and I've been using the time to rediscover some old favorite albums.

This week's soundtrack:


Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid: Bob Dylan Soundtrack - If I could only take five Bob Dylan albums with me to a deserted island, PG&BtK wouldn't make the cut. Give me six and this shambling, ambient afterthought would be a lock. Three chord instrumentals bleed into three chord western fairy tales ad nauseam - multiple songs named "Billy" with only the slightest of variations - but the effect as a whole is oddly moving. Having seen the movie definitely improves the experience; every time I hear the opening of "Knocking on Heaven's Door," I see Slim Pickens, gut-shot and brokenhearted, staggering down to the river to die in his baby's arms and I get all choked up.

Key track: "Final Theme," woodwinds carry the melody and Dylan harmonizes a wordless, moaning eulogy for the dying West.




Illmatic - Nas - "Stop fucking around and be a man" advises the intro sample (from the graffiti film Wild Style) and stuck in traffic, pondering the wrinkles in my business casual attire, the grim existentialism of Illmatic resonates in a far different way than it was probably intended to. Illmatic stands head and shoulders over other hip hop classics in both lyrical and production consistency; the beats are uniformly forceful and Nas transitions seamlessly from documentary style street narratives to metaphysical musings. No skits, no bullshit dance tracks for MTV, just line after line of tough, thoughtful hip-hop.

Key Track: "Life's a Bitch," AZ and Nas trade verses about a world where "fuck who's the baddest/a person's status depends on salary."



What's in your car or on your headphones on the way to and from work?

That Crap Danny Listens To

What was the number one song on your birthday? You can find out here. Mine was "Let's Go Crazy" by Prince & the Revolution from the motion picture soundtrack to the movie Purple Rain. Do I remember this? Of course not.


"Prince is lame," cried the world when I was growing up and I believed it. Perhaps he was everywhere in 1984, but by the early '90s when my memory began he was nowhere to be found. I didn't consciously listen to a Prince song again until freshman year in college.

Now I listen to a Prince song nearly every day.

"Prince is lame?" But we were perfect together. As an infant did I subconsciously absorb the then ubiquitous Purple Rain soundtrack over FM radio, only to have it repressed during my childhood?

Innocent unconscious > repression > rediscovery > guilty pleasure > unrepentant conscious celebration.

A few years later I discovered that Jonathem Lethem's Tourettic private eye, Lionel Essrog, was a kindred spirit. He hears "Kiss" on the radio for the first time:

... twitching and throbbing within obsessively delineated bounds, alternately silent and plosive. It so pulsed with Tourettic energies that I could surrender to its tormented, squeaky beat and let my syndrome live outside my brain for once, live in the air instead.
"Turn that shit down," Minna said.
"I like it," I said.
"That's that crap Danny listens to," said Minna. Danny was code for too black.

Too black but too powerful to be ignored and Lionel tracks the record down. His reaction to what he finds makes perfect sense to me:

Prince's music calmed me as much as masturbation or a cheeseburger. When I listened to him I was exempt from my symptoms. So I began collecting his records, especially those elaborated and frenetic remixes tucked away on the CD singles. The way he worried forty-five minutes of variations out of a lone musical or verbal phrase is, as far as I know, the nearest thing in art to my condition.

Faced with the absurdity of rational life in the modern world? Let's go crazy indeed. Zizek must have had Prince in mind when he advised us to enjoy our symptoms. Simultaneously unrepentant and devout, there is no line between prayer and orgasm. Horror movie screams live side by side with trite romantic couplets; wanton dominatrices masturbate in public, luring unsuspecting innocents back to their castle for a night of mind blowing pleasure; the drives and desires are looped ad infinitum, endless variations on endless themes.

A throbbing, twitching world, exulting in exhaustive repetition. Nothing is complicated.

One week later, "I Just Called to Say I Love You" by Stevie Wonder was number one ...

Paper-Doll Pop Star

Making fashion pop/pop fashion.

Fin.

On roule à 160 - Mareva Galanter

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side"
-Hunter S. Thompson

Choreography Not Included

Holy gallic amateur dance party.


Sylvie Vartan - Garde moi dans ta poche 1965

So, You Wanna Be Hardcore?

Check out "A Blaze in the North American Sky" by Brandon Stosuy (Stereogum, Pitchfork) in the July/August issue of The Believer. Stosuy provides a brief retrospective on the murder and arson tainted Norwegian black metal scene, explores the distinction between black and death metal, and muses on the sociological importance of the US black metal scene. Compelling stuff.

Or check out this little radio interview.



"We refuse to comment on details but let's just say that we are not normal people."

Disturbing stuff. I'm sticking with R&B.

Ladytron at the Paradise

I went to see Ladytron Monday night (June 30th). It was amazing. Unfortunately I spent $75 on Red Bulls and Vodka so I could dance and possibly get a heart attack. They are currently touring on their new albulm entitled Velocifro. This Liverpoool based electronica band is simply amazing (if your are in the mood to dance and shit). Fortunately enough my friend Amanda bought me a ticket. Phil Chaney (another good friend of mine) lives a few blocks away from Commonwealth Avenue. I was able to sneak him into the concert. The night ended with me asleep in the back of my Mother's Chrysler 300. I advise all of you to take a listen to this band. They have been around for a while. I highly reccomend the album The Witching Hour, it is absoulutely fabulous. Great show, great acoustics. The Paradise is possibly the cleanest club in all of Boston. I love the Middle East(Cambridge), but it is a dive. Give them a listen.

Album Review: Home Schooled: The ABCs of Kid Soul

The Numero Group's Eccentric Soul series compiles the forgotten treasures of American regional soul labels in neat little compilations complete with meticulously prepared liner notes, discographic information, and rare photos. Each set chronicles a particular small town label or soul sub-genre and though they occasionally lack consistency, I have yet to find one that doesn't contain at least half a dozen gems.

Given the company's track record, I purchased 016 Home Schooled: The ABCs of Kid Soul without reservation. Aside from the promising cover art of an unsmiling preteen dutifully playing the drums in a suit and tie, the set featured "Sweet Pea" by Altyrone Deno Brown, the most haunting and memorable track from 003 The Bandit Label; if half of the songs in the set lived up to that track, the purchase would be worth it. I unwrapped the CD on the walk back to the car, eagerly anticipating what I assumed would be a mix of lo-fi Jackson 5 imitations and spooky Langley Project-esque R&B; I was sure it was a can't miss.

Unfortunately, The ABCs of Kid Soul failed to deliver on nearly every level. Aside from "Sweet Pea," most of the tracks lack not only polish but also passion. Most of tracks are either woefully underwritten and poorly produced or completely lack any focus as they try to blend lyrics about recess and puppy love with more adult R&B tracks. The prepubescent vocalists sound lost and confused as they try to navigate their way through the poorly conceived visions of their adult producers and the songwriting itself is more amateurish than the singers. I imagine some poor kid in a rented studio, trying to balance an over-sized pair of headphones on his head, one eye on the lyric sheet and one eye on the expectant parent/manager in the booth, wondering how he got sucked into wasting his Saturday inside while all his friends play kickball.

Overall, The ABCs of Kid Soul is an occasionally intriguing novelty but one that wears very thin after only a handful of listens and the liner notes detailing the history of the groups (all of whom have excellent names like Little Murray & the Mantics and Jack & the Mods) have more of a lasting appeal than the songs themselves. If you're looking to get your eccentric soul fix, I advise you to try elsewhere.

Making Headlines - Complete

The complete headlines from the "Ballads" section of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. Outside links to the recordings provided beneath the headline when available; all songs 1927-1932.

Henry Lee - Dick Justice
Fatal Flower Garden - Nelstone's Hawaiians

The House Carpenter - Clarence Ashley
Drunkard's Special - Coley Jones
Old Lady and the Devil - Bill and Belle Reed
The Butcher's Boy (The Railroad Boy) - Buell Kazee
The Wagoner's Lad - Buell Kazee
King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O - Chubby Parker
Old Shoes and Leggins - Uncle Eck Dunford
Willie Moore - Burnett and Rutherford
A Lazy Farmer Boy - Buster Carter and Preston Young
Peg and Awl - Carolina Tar Heels
Ommie Wise - G.B. Grayson
Bandit Cole Younger - Edward L. Crain
My Name is John Johanna - Kelly Harrell
Charles Giteau - Kelly Harrell
John Hardy Was a Desperate Little Man - The Carter Family
Gonna Die With My Hammer in My Hands - Williamson Brothers and Curry
Stackalee - Frank Hutchison
White House Blues - Charlie Poole w/ The North Carolina Ramblers
Frankie - Mississippi John Hurt
When that Great Ship Went Down - William and Versey Smith
Engine One-Forty-Three - The Carter Family
Kassie Jones - Furry Lewis (link is to Lewis in '68)
Down on Penny's Farm - The Bently Boys
Mississippi Boweavil Blues - The Masked Marvel a.k.a Charley Patton
Got the Farmland Blues - The Carolina Tar Heels

Arcade Fire's "My Body is a Cage"/ Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West"

An unauthorized video of Arcade Fire's "My Body is a Cage" soundtracks a climactic scene from Sergio Leone's classic Once Upon a Time in the West. I think it works pretty damn well.

Making Headlines

... coming up next time:

Just to let you know...

I'm in love.

Bye Bye, Bo Diddley

When I was in middle school I walked into a used music shop intending to buy a Rolling Stones CD, picked up all three CDs in the Stones' sections and sat down at the listening booth to test them out. I've since forgotten the names of the first two CDs but the third was Stone Rock Blues, a compilation of the original versions of songs the Stones covered by Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Arthur Alexander, and, of course, Bo Diddley.


I didn't think of it as a revelatory experience at the time but in retrospect leaving those two rock records on the table in favor of Stone Rock Blues proved to be the most fortuitous and formative moment in my personal music listening history.

Bo Diddley died Monday at age 79 and while the whole world of popular music owes him a tremendous debt (listen here for his explanation of the "Bo Diddley Beat", seriously, LISTEN, he's a fun guy), I feel personally obliged to him for opening my ears up to a whole world of music that a decade later still has new thrills and surprises to discover.

Bo Diddley gets it RIGHT

Waitin' Round To Die

From Heartworn Highway