I remember a time, which seems many years ago but was actually not that far back, when I used to sit in my school common room during break time and watch or play on the Gamecube. I remember racing speedily along with zero gravity tracks, sweaty boys, pulses, and the sound of Biffy Clyro’s third album Glitter and Trauma. I remember slashing and hacking and generally button bashing Nintendo characters, and even further back, ducking and sniping the day away to the likes of Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Rage Against the Machine, the likes of which were all extremely new (though old to the world) and strange to my ears but eventually came to constitute large amounts of my shelf space and my ongoing musical preferences. I remember a later time, huddled around the TV cheering along to a virtual football mega-tournament including half of the boys in the year, with the song, as titled at the top of this post, adapted to the currently favoured team. “I’m feeling so Iranian like you” has always had a hugely personal feel to it, despite having never consciously met an Iranian person, let alone imagined what it would be like to feel that way. I’m much more inclined towards Bohemia, but somehow it doesn’t feel as close.

All these memories are set to music. I seem to work that way… But today I think my evening formed a memory which will not be set to a soundtrack. This evening, though my Korean friends may not agree, I feel as though I had a very Korean evening. Here’s why:

This morning was unusually warm for Autumn, especially considering my girlfriend had warned me that today would be extra cold. Well, by the time I caught the bus home from school it had gotten unnaturally chilly, and the extra layer I had carried confusedly earlier now made a lot more sense. I, however, was not feeling all too great and was not particularly looking forwards to a quiet evening at home (which I feared would turn into an evening spent canoodling my computer and it’s associated gaming software) in what was now seemingly sub-zero weather. Relatively at least. To explain why I didn’t spend the evening conquering the virtual world, I must take you even further back than this morning.

Last night I stayed up unusually late writing unusually long emails to some of those back home in the UK, having no fear of needing to wake up because the next day was SATs day. This, from what I can gather, is a listening test which happens in High schools one morning every year, and all public offices – such as schools, government buildings etc – are closed until 9 40 so that the students can get to their (very important) tests on time, even if they happen to be running late. Apparently these are so important that if I kid is running late they’re allowed to ask a  policeman for a lift to school, whence they’re whizzed off on the back of a motorbike through the unusually traffic-less roads to their test. At any rate, this meant that I could get up a full hour an a half later this morning. Unfortunately this appears to cause my routine to shake too much, and I awoke at one thirty this morning and ate breakfast, thinking I’d better start getting ready to go. Thankfully I woke up properly halfway through, finished it off and didn’t get in the shower.

I also awoke at seven-thirty, eight, and quarter past eight thinking I was late for school.

When I finally did wake up at the (self-) appointed time of eight thirty, I finished off my cereal and showered and continued to school. This sounds inconsequential, however having eaten two breakfasts this morning, instead of one today and one tomorrow, meant that I needed to go shopping to buy some more this evening or go without breakfast tomorrow, which is, frankly, unacceptable. And so, there was at least one event planned for my evening which might otherwise have been spent neglectfully.

Before I arrived in my apartment, then, I swung by the Hana-ro mart and stocked up on various fruits and goods to restock my cupboards. After this I resisted the urge to buy a cheap and huge tub of ice cream, and instead bought a lovely doughnut from Dunkin’ Donuts! Unfortunately most people don’t realise that the name implies that you should dunk your doughnut in some coffee, however I occasionally fulfil this obligation. This evening, however, I didn’t, and continued they long journey to my room (Dunkin’ is in my apartment block). Before I got to the elevator though, I realised that, rather unlike me, I felt like buying some 떡볶이 (Ddeok-bokgi)!

This is a common snack in Korea and can be bought at roadside tents every fifty metres, and is effectively rice cake in rather spicy sauce. This I bought for the pricy sum of two thousand Won (one pound), and after successfully exchanging a few comments in Korean such as “Do you want it spicy”, “Yes, I like spicy Ddeok-bokgi!”, “Oh, you speak Korean well!” and ”Thanks”, I went up to my room.

Upon walking through my door I realised that the loud drumming and music I had heard outside (but haven’t mentioned until now) was actually across the road from my apartment block, and would continue to be loud and rhythmic for some time to come. You seem to be able to play extremely loud music on the streets occasionally with no consequences… I’m not sure if this is because they got a license or if it’s just the culture, however it provided a particularly Korean backdrop to my dinner, which was eaten whilst I sat cross-legged on my bed watching Power Puff Girls on TV.

Powerpuff Girls? Yes, but not as you know them, in fact, I watched 파워 퍼프 걸Z (Paweoh Peopeuh Geolzeuh), in which the girls were seemingly older than their English counterparts, had strange personal weapons, had as much leg showing as possible along with every other celebrity in this highly conservative culture and, in this episode, were fighting against strange mutant Sushi which had somehow gained consciousness, grown significantly and was devastatingly attacking the local city. After they had been defeated by the doctor’s clever chemical formula (one of which had probably caused the problem in the first place), the girls didn’t hesitate in eating the formerly-deadly fish. They celebrated in an appropriately cute Korean style as I happily munched on my chewy spicy ricey cakes and ignored the ever louder drums.

And when this had finished I flicked over only to find a strangely impressive Gordon Brown giving a speech at the Berlin Wall anniversary celebrations, which, if you missed them, included the domino-like falling of a huge amount of giant dominoes, which I can only assume was meant to symbolise the falling down of something a little more significant. And all this comes just a week before President Obama was due to visit Seoul to discuss a somewhat similar situation involving communists and a nation divided by a big line and political tensions. One couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take for the reunification of the Koreas to manifest itself, if, indeed, it ever does. I think I can hear on the wind that it might be becoming more likely in the near future…

Whilst I pondered these deep and complicated issues I sat and ate a persimmon.

Looking back, it was a completely ordinary day, but ordinary in what struck me as a Korean way. And, I guess, Korean is ordinary for me now. Come visit me, see if you can feel what I mean… And someone tell me how strange it is that being here is normal. I feel like it feels a lot less strange than it should.

톰

I love having a radio show, it’s always wonderfully surprising. Yesterday I was playing some songs by Left on Red and then the band CALLED me. It was awesome. Check out them on myspace http://www.myspace.com/leftonredtheband

I also adore the Dandy Warhols! They make everything feel like is in Technicolor.

We Used To Be Friends: The Dandy Warhols
I Am A Scientist: The Dandy Warhols

Listen to Skidmore Radio 24 hours a day on http://www.skidmore.edu/studentorgs/wspn/ for some great tunes.

On November 10, 1975, the Great Lakes bulk carrier S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald went down during a gale on Lake Superior while en route from Superior, Wisconsin.  She went down suddenly without sending a distress signal.  All 29 crewmen were lost.

I moved to the Great Lakes/Upper Peninsula area around a decade ago and learned how deeply the loss of Edmund Fitzgerald had affected the people and culture of the area, even in towns like mine that were hours away.  I suppose when a community’s livelihood is based on America’s third coast, any tragedy on the Great Lakes brings it home that the seas, even freshwater ones, are fickle.

Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, inspired by the article  “The Cruelest Month” from the November 24, 1975 issue of Newsweek, penned his 6:32 minute long opus, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and included it on his 1976 album, Summertime Dream.  It was a surprise hit, reaching #2 on the U.S. Billboard and #40 on the U.K. singles chart.

Here’s Lightfoot performing “The Wreck” on Soundstage in 1979.

Portland area rockers, the Dandy Warhols, have produced two covers of this song: a substantially different version (“The Wreck”) on 1996’s The Black Album and one more similar to the original on 2004’s Come on Feel the Dandy Warhols .  Warhol’s lead singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor’s cousin, Michael Armagost, was Third Mate on the Edmund Fitzgerald.

“The Wreck” by the Dandy Warhols

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” from 2004

The song has been covered a number of times (especially by Canadian bands, where it’s almost a standard), but here’s an unexpected version by Canadian bizarro, Nash the Slash.

(Partial play time and audio only; you might get the full song if you go to his myspace page without linking through the blog)

play#Nash+The+Slash:The+Wreck+of+the+Edmund+Fitzgerald:94231070:s46525762.11877731.21777840.0.2.53%2Cstd_42eb95a84da34997a4fd37098e4bec82

I’ve always thought the song had a heavy metal feel.   My music theory friends tell me it’s because of the Dorian mode and the Celtic pattern.  So it was nice to find this version by Colorado metal band, Jag Panzer.

The Legend Lives On.

(Above: Former NBA player and current ESPN music columnist Paul Shirley discusses some of his favorite records at Amobea Records in Los Angeles.)

By Joel Francis

Paul Shirley played in the 2005 NBA conference finals as a member of the Phoenix Suns and scrimmaged against Kobe Bryant as a training camp member of the Los Angeles Lakers, but he doesn’t want to talk about any of that right now. Shirley’s telling the story of when he first heard U2’s “Mysterious Ways” in the back of a school bus during high school.

“It dawned on me that I was old enough to have a CD player and I could play whenever I wanted,” Shirley said. “The first time I played ‘Achtung Baby,’ I thought it was the worst purchase ever, but after I played it 8 or 10 times, I thought it was the best.”

When “Zooropa” arrived a few years later, Shirley realized bands could grow and music could evolve. Nearly 20 years later, Shirley is still marveling at inventive new sounds and comforting old ones.

“Music and basketball were both my outlets,” Shirley said. “People don’t understand, but there’s a lot of catharsis in both of them. When I came home from practice, mad at the world, I could put on ‘The Downward Spiral’ and all my troubles would melt away.”

As Shirley migrated from Jefferson West High School in Meriden, Kan. – located about 15 miles outside of Topeka – to Ames, Iowa as a three-year starter for the Iowa State Cyclones men’s basketball squad and a professional ball career that encompassed Spain, Russia, Greece and several stops in the NBA, music was a constant companion.

“The music I have taken with me has allowed me to feel at home in all different places,” said Shirley, who makes his home in Kansas City, Mo. “The ability to put on my headphones and pop in a CD is priceless. It’s like having a set of friends I can take with me wherever I want.”

When not rocking with his aural amigos, Shirley was taking his friends to live shows. An early concert at the Granada Theater in Lawrence, Kan. made a big impression.

“One weekend my brother and I were home from college flipping through the Lawrence weekend paper when we saw an ad for (textural post-rock band) Mogwai,” Shirley said. “We did a little research and decided to check it out for, what, $12 or whatever. When we got there the show was so intense and focused, it was like nothing I’d ever seen. There were four guitars and no vocalist. It was just overwhelming.”

That fix turned Shirley in to a live music junkie, prowling the scene searching for the next high.

“I don’t think of myself as a person on the cutting edge, but there are moments when you see someone who you now is going to be good before anyone else. Like when I saw Ratatat open for the Killers at the Hurricane or the Secret Machines at El Torreon,” Shirley said. “Moments when you see someone destined for, if not stardom, then goodness and that’s really cool.”

Shirley’s pro ball career never took off as planned, but through those trials another passion emerged: writing.

“It never occurred to me that I could write about this stuff,” said Shirley, who saw “Can I Keep My Jersey?,” his basketball memoir, published in 2007.

After writing a column for the Phoenix Suns Website, Shirley was asked to write for ESPN.

“I think they (ESPN) were thinking I’d go back into the NBA and then they’d have a player on the inside,” Shirley said. “Instead I went to summer leagues and overseas.”

The column died when Shirley grew tired of writing about basketball, but when ESPN launched a new, non-sports section of their Website, they asked him to write a music column. Every Tuesday he interviews indie bands, reports on a festival like Austin City Limits or Lollapalloza, reviews a concert or shares his musical opinions.

“It’s nice to be able to contact a band and say, hey, I live in Kansas City and see you are coming to town. Could I go to your show?” Shirley said. “Talking to musicians is nice, too, like when I got to chat with the Dandy Warhols, who I’ve liked for 15 years.”

Today, Shirley juggles the expectations that come with being an athlete writing for the Worldwide Leader with his passion for music.

“There is a disconnect between the athletes and their fans and music nerds and book nerds, and it’s probably exaggerated for me because I write for a jock Website,” Shirley said. “People have a hard time understanding that for me, talking about basketball is like them talking about their day job. It’s not as interesting to me (as music).”

Shirley acknowledges he could be drop stories about star players, or work as an analyst, but that no longer interests him.

“Basketball doesn’t inspire me,” Shirley said. “I can only stay interested in things for so long. Right now writing – specifically writing about music – provides the spark for me.”

Keep reading:

Paul Shirley’s ESPN collumn archive

More music features on The Daily Record:

Peter, Bjorn and John Heart Hip Hop

Jamie Foxx brings it to Sprint Center on Saturday

The Derek Trucks Band makes old-school rock new

Kansas City Rocks Out

Modest Mouse: Johnny Strikes Up the Band

Hail Death Cab

Ever Fallen For The Buzzcocks?

Out of the Tar Pit Back Onto the Stage

Local Doctor Claims He’s Treating Elvis

Down on “Cypress Avenue”

Image, Marvel, Dark Horse: A Comics Renaissance Man

By Zack Smith

As Hollywood has recently discovered, everyone has an origin story. Here is mine. This blog is about my music obsessions, which change from week to week – sometimes from day to day. I’ve named the blog Mezz’s musings for my sometime screen name Mezz98. I took that name from Mezzanine, the third Massive Attack album, which was released in 1998. It’s one of the best albums you’ll ever hear by any artist.

Now that that’s out of the way, my current musical obsession (as in, just started today) is the song “Wonderful You”by the Dandy Warhols. It comes from their excellent 2003 album Welcome to the Monkey House. I can’t really pinpoint what it is I love about the song (is it the driving beat? the wailing sound effects that pierce the chorus?) Whatever it is, I’m up to 20 plays on of it on my iTunes.

- And so you’re back from outer space. I just walked in to find you here.

Finalmente (de novo). Teremos Cake no Brasil, caros. 16 de novembro, segunda-feira, no Via Funchal. Além da banda americana, o Indie Rock Festival também traz Gogol Bordello e Mombojó.

ps: sem querer pedir muito, mas bem que podiam trazer Dandy Warhols conforme prometido ano passado. Afinal, de festival sem palavra e desorganizado, o nosso país tá bem servido.

_update: uma salva de vaias pra organização inútil do Indie Rock Festival. Cake não vem mais ao Brasil. Teremos Super Furry no lugar.

Complementando o post abaixo, toda e qualquer oportunidade que eu tiver para divulgar esse mashup irei aproveitar. É bom demais. Atenção para o momento ápice do clipe (2’16’’) quando a bee da início uma coreô cheia de malemolência. Puro sucesso.

Outros imperdíveis:

Mousse T. vs The Dandy Warhols – Horny As A Dandy

Queen vs Outkast – Hey We Will Rock You Ya

Public Enemy vs AC/DC – Black is Back!

MC Hammer vs Black Eyed Peas – U Can’t Touch My Humps

Vanilla Ice vs  Eminem – Ice Ice Shady

Kylie Minogue vs Moloko – Bring It Back In Your Eyes

Rihanna vs New Order

E pelo meu momentinho leste europeu, segue a homenagem:

House of Pain vs Klezmer

In case you missed it – enjoy a streaming rock and roll gem this week on Pitchfork TV:  Dig! – It’s curious that this film is only 5 years old.  Not for the faint hearted. Rated NC-17.  Enjoy a timeless Dilettante tune, whilst you get sorted. “The Whole World” was composed by the global subterranean tambourine hero, Joel Gion.

As a Beatles fan, I would be quite happy to display all their album covers on my wall, if decorating my humble abode with LP sleeves was my thing (the putative notion of such interior design innovation, of course, being the premise for this series). I imagine the Beatles would appreciate the pun in my song selection: Beatles songs sung by others…

*    *    *

The cover photo of Beatles For Sale is probably my favourite of all Fab Four pics. The lads look as tired (because they were exhausted) as half of the hurriedly compiled album sounds. The photo evokes late autumn, mainly because it was taken at that time of the year during a session in London’s Hyde Park (the LP was released on 4 December 1964). The photographer was Robert Freeman, who shot the photos for four other Beatles album covers: Please, Please Me, With The Beatles, Help! and Rubber Soul

The cover versions: Both covers come from radio sessions at KCRW, recorded in 2003. The Eels version was released on CD on Sixteen Tons (Ten Songs); I don’t think the Dandy Warhols slowed down and quite lovely take has ever been issued on CD.
Eels – I’m A Loser.mp3
Dandy Warhols – Eight Days A Week.mp3

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Almost exactly a year later, on 3 December1965, the Beatles released another LP, Rubber Soul, with cover art that evoked autumn. I’ve always imagined that on the photo the four were looking down into a well. What actually happened was that photographer Freeman was projecting a series of photos he had taken at Lennon’s place on an LP sleeve-sized cardboard, to give an idea as to how each option would look as a cover. At one point, the cardboard had slipped, and the image was projected at an angle. According to Paul, the Beatles really liked the effect, and asked Freeman whether he could recreate it. As we know, he could. The title Rubber Soul was a pun of a criticism McCartney had heard from an American musician of Mick Jagger, whose singing was described as “plastic soul”. The Rolling Stones almost inspired a much worse pun when the Beatles considered naming their next album, which we know as Revolver, “After Geography”, as pun on the Stones’ LP Aftermath. Happily, sanity prevailed.

The cover versions: There are at least two wonderful remakes of In My Life: that by Johnny Cash on his American IV album (which every human being should own) and José Feliciano’s 1968 cover on the excellent Feliciano! album, a fiesta of outstanding covers (check out his version of Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying). I’m posting the José version. Buddy Rich’s 1967 jazz version of Norwegian Wood is just brilliant, preferable even to the original.
José Feliciano – In My Life.mp3
Buddy Rich – Norwegian Wood.mp3

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Much as we may take it for granted on account of its ubiquity, I like the Abbey Road cover a lot for its simplicity. It is a great snapshot in time: the particular movement, the way the cars are parked (especially the VW Beetle with its supposedly cryptic license plate), the transience of Paul’s cigarette. I enjoy looking at the photo, imagining the scene at that precise moment. Seconds previously, a car had gone over the zebra crossing — we see the back of it as our four friends parade in single file. The distance of the car to the zebra crossing would suggest that John began leading the guys across the road the moment the car had passed, doing so fairly briskly (George clearly is striding hard to keep up). And in the background, there is a group of people and a single individual (one Paul Cole, a tourist speaking to a policeman in a black van) witnessing the scene with some interest. They surely had no idea that they would feature on the cover of what may be the greatest album of the 1960s, nor probably did the owner of the legs and blue dress we see flying by on the back cover.

The photo was taken on 8 August 1969 at 11:35 by Iain MacMillan, a friend of John and Yoko’s, who stood on a step ladder as he shot the Beatles walking over the zebra crossing twice in both directions. Reportedly a police man stopped the traffic for a short while to let the shoot, all of six photos, go ahead (clearly he stopped the traffic only in the left lane; the sequence shows that as the four cross the road again, they have let a black cab pass as a doubledecker bus approaches). One of the photos, taken before the Fab Four cross the road, shows an old lady approaching the Beatles as Paul fixes Ringo’s collar.

The cover versions: Isaac Hayes did with Something what he did with so many other tracks he covered: taking the song on a musical detour of kinds that the composer never dreamt of before arriving back at the source material. This is no longer George Harrison’s song; it is very much Ike’s. Fans of German curiosities may enjoy Teddy Lee’s Maxwells Silberhammer, in which the singer (who apparently enjoyed a fleeting but not very successful career in around 1970) turns Maxwell into a teenage druggie who robs banks with the aid of the titular tool to support his habit. But not to worry, it eventually turns into the murder song we know and underestimate on Abbey Road.
Isaac Hayes – Something.mp3
Teddy Lee – Maxwells Silberhammer.mp3

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If I had to pick just one Beatles cover to decorate my wall, it would be that of With The Beatles, the group’s second LP. The photo was taken on 22 August 1963 in a corridor in the Bournemouth Palace Court Hotel, not an establishment generally associated with great moments in rock ’n’ roll. Photographer Freeman was given instruction to recreate the shadow-and-light effect often employed by their Hamburg-days friend Astrid Kirchherr, the girl in whose arms original Beatle Stu Sutcliffe died (see here for Kirchherr’s pictures). Freeman achieved the effect by using natural light coming through a window at the end of the corridor.

Kirchherr never shot a Beatles cover, but her sidekicks Klaus Voormann and Jürgen Vollmer were involved in cover art. Voormann designed the Revolver cover; Vollmer’s photo of Hamburg-days Lennon appeared on the cover of John’s 1975 Rock ’n’ Roll album.

Now seems also a good time to dismiss the story that Astrid Kirchherr “invented” the Beatles mop top style (known in German as Pilzkopf, or “mushroom head”). It was already a hairstyle popular among the art student set (the “Exis”, or existentialists) and sported by Vollmer, whose example the Beatles would follow.

Musically, With The Beatles shows only hints of the impact the group would have on music. Almost half of it comprised cover versions. It was a remarkable album for what it did not include: a single. At a time when releasing LPs as a clutch of singles plus loads of fillers was the norm, the Beatles took a conscious decision not to include their most recent hits, such as She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand, on the album. The gamble plaid off: the album was a massive hit in an age when pop LPs didn’t sell well. So it can be said that the success of With The Beatles helped raise the status of the humble LP. Within four years, the Beatles would release the benchmark LP of the 1960s, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The cover versions: The Rolling Stones were struggling for a first hit when John Lennon and Paul McCartney shared a cab with Stones manager Andrew Oldham and let his group have their song, I Wanna Be Your Man. The Stones recorded it first, so the Beatles technically covered their own composition. The Stones had their first UK Top 20 hit with it, reaching #12. During the Stones’ version’s 12-week run in the charts, the Beatles spent seven at #1, with She Loves You and its successor at the top spot, I Want To Hold Your Hand. The present version of All My Loving comes from that opinion-splitting film Across The Universe, of which I am not a fan. Sturgess version starts off quite nicely in a capella, then turns into a bass-driven exercise with a decent instrumental interlude. One of the better moments from a soundtrack that includes my friend Bono singing — oh, but of course! — I Am The Fucking Walrus. The tosser.
The Rolling Stones – I Wanna Be Your Man.mp3
Jim Sturgess – All My Loving.mp3

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More great covers

2 Color 11×17 silkscreen poster for a Dandy Warhols concert.

This was my first time to use silkscreen since High School. I decided to keep things simple since this was somewhat of a learning experience.

Will get any party started.

We’ve heard the clamoring all summer…”When are Silversun going to play an LA show?”

Since the release of Swoon, the band has criss-crossed the country playing numerous headlining shows and festivals, yet they still haven’t had a chance to play to their home crowd.

Ladies and gentlemen, the wait is over (almost). Silversun Pickups will headline LA Weekly’s first-ever LA 101 event on November 3 at the Gibson Amphitheatre, with two stages brought to you by the cherished local paper and KROQ.  The Dandy Warhols and Matt & Kim will join them on the main stage, with an additional acts to be announced in the coming weeks.

Tickets will go on sale Saturday, September 19 at 1pm, at LiveNation.com.

I’ve gotten a bit backed up on rock show reports:  here are a few capsules.

The Gomers. Rock Star Gomeroke:  simple idea, brilliantly executed.  Local band knows more or less every song ever.  You go up on stage at the High Noon, tell them your song (specifying, if you want to, the key, tempo, that you want to sing “Beat It” polka-style, whatever) and then you sing like a loon, backed up by the pros.  Every Tuesday night at 9, every other Friday at 5.  It costs 5 bucks.  For the nervous types, of whom I am one:  performers vary widely in on-key-ness and stage moxie.  And thanks to the lights you can’t actually see the people watching you.  Up-tempo and big goes over better than delicate and nuanced.  I’ve been twice:  I sang “Pretty in Pink,” the week John Hughes died, and “Just What I Needed” last week.  The latter is available on video for my Facebook friends.

Cover bands don’t have enough status.  We accept as a given that the great plays and symphonies are part of our cultural inheritance, and that groups of performers should perform them for us — that the works being presented and interpreted again and again, in different places and forms, is part of what keeps them alive.  Why don’t we have troupes of rock musicians performing Led Zeppelin IV in its entirety, every Monday night for a month?  Wouldn’t this be more enjoyable, and teach us more about rock, than nine out of ten sort-of-original rock shows that actually take place?  I think the Gomers are great and I think the city of Madison should give them a grant to form a repertory company.  On the other hand, they seem to be doing fine for themselves dressing up as zombies and playing Beatles covers.

The Dandy Warhols. All I knew about this band was “they recorded the theme song for Veronica Mars” before I watched the surprisingly gripping documentary DIG! about their half-comedy, half-depressing-waste-of-time feud with the Brian Jonestown Massacre.  (Watch DIG! free on Hulu.)  Their show at the Majestic was free, sponsored by Jack Daniels, who I guess are trying to up their cool factor by affiliating with a band whose last US chart appearance was in 2000.  All their songs sort of sound like other people’s songs — at various times I felt they were about to launch in to “Pictures of Matchstick Men,” or “Lithium,” or “White Wedding,” or, on multiple occasions, “Sister Ray.”  You get the feeling that the band’s method is to start playing a cover and then keep damaging it until it’s their own song.

And this formula is 100% successful, just because these people are professionals and know what sounds good.  As frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor wonderfully remarks in the movie, “I sneeze and hits come out.”

The Breeders. I was disturbed — no, really, disturbed! — when I realized I was familiar with only 42 of Pitchfork’s top 500 songs of the decade.  I like to think I keep up.  But what’s in fact meant by this is that I follow the current output of lots of bands who’ve been recording since the 1990s:  the Mountain Goats, the Magnetic Fields, Belle & Sebastian, and the Breeders.

And the Breeders might as well be a new band — they record so seldom that each new release sounds like a debut.   Here’s the great “Overglazed,” from their most recent album, which doesn’t sound a thing like old Breeders, or really like anybody:

Their set at the Majestic was heavy on old stuff, to the delight of the crowd.  Who knew so many people remembered “Iris,” or “Divine Hammer?”  The latter sounded terrific, drummed much more frantically than on record.  Kim and Kelley Deal both seemed, well, tickled to be on stage playing with their new bandmates.  You get the feeling they’ll be doing this until they’re 70, sloughing off and replacing the rhythm section every decade or so.  I’ll keep seeing them as long as they keep playing.

You know what’s awesome? Putting together a massive show, keeping things semi on track, watching people enjoy themselves, then for some reason deciding to chug multiple bottles of bourbon, and then acting like an idiot. You follow that up by waking up in a strange place, and deciding “Fuck it, it was a great time.”

I don’t remember much of Saturday, what I do comes back in snap shots, like Polaroids of the moment showing me mere bits of what happened. Ces’t la vie, it was all wonderful, no matter how wild it may have gotten.

Anyway, interesting week we’ve got coming up, and you should look for one, maybe two reviews up on the site, along with an announcement, or two.

Tuesday

I know I can’t be the only one who watched Dig! and spent the whole time thinking about punching Courtney Taylor-Taylor in the mouth. Of course after this Good Records host the Beatles release party, which then leads to a performance from cover group Hard Days Night. I think there’s free beer, you should go.

Wednesday

Neon Indian has more hype then really any band in the area, and their show at RGRS that’s being put on by weshotjr should be at, or near capacity.That said despite the growing swell of detractors I am a fan, I find Alan Polamo’s mix of taste similar to my own, and frequently find myself putting on his tracks while driving. I’d plan on getting there early.

Thursday

I know a girl who swears by She Wants Revenge, I’ve never listened, not even to write this, but I trust the girl, and the booking at the Granada, so it must be of some interest.

Friday

The Great Tyrant, Caddis, Magnus and The Me-Thinks are at Lola’s. Yeah slow Friday.

Saturday

Hey football fans remember that wildly annoying ipod commercial from last year where the girl sang about “trying to do handstands for you” well that was Chairlift, they’ll be at Hailey’s. Try to be nice.

Sunday

Little Gold heads yet another stellar Bee’s Fifth lineup that features Peoplodian (whom I’ve never heard) and The Hand Combine’s Angel Lenora. Look for it to be calm evening filled with warm music, good beer, and good people.

links will be added later.

opening for The Dandy Warhols

via Good Records: Courtney Taylor-Taylor & Brent DeBoer will be doing an acoustic and VERY mellow set of tunes at Good Records at 6pm. Pick up a copy of “Earth to The Dandy Warhols” and “The Dandy Warhols are Sound” while you are here and have them scribble on them. Make sure you catch them in all their electric glory at the Granada Theatre later that night.

Jack Daniels Studio 7 was in Madison Monday night, sponsoring The Dandy Warhols, with The Pale Young Gentlemen, over at The Majestic Theater.  The show is free so long as you win your ticket online or, in our case, had them handed to us after seeing The Breeders.

It was my first time seeing a full show from Madison’s own Pale Young Gentlemen and I very much enjoyed them.  Not every song was a diamond but there were more than enough very good tunes mixed in to hold up their end of the bargain.

The Dandy Warhols are a band that JNo introduced me to quite a while back so it was fitting that we (along with Chuck, Dan, and Joan) saw the show together.  The setlist wasn’t quite what I had hoped for but the show, sound, and company were good – even if the crowd wasn’t completely committed to the show.

Down home cooking next to an authentic Madison recycling container (from their blog):

Zia hangs, right before walking out on the stage. Well. There wasn’t a stage. Which made the show especially cool. Like a living room packed with haircuts.

Pre-show shots.

Courtney, Peter, crowd.

The show was advertised last minute via Twitter.

The Dandy Warhols play I Love You at Rontoms.