Superman Was a Rocker

New/Old msuic from the most prolific indie rocker on the planet. Bob Pollard, frontman of the now defunct Guided By Voices, puts out a new record every three months on average. For this one, he is said to have found some earlier instrumental tracks on cassette, to which he added new vocals. Great Title!

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World Destruction, Kaboom!

The year was 1984 and Hip Hop and Punk Icons Afrika Bambaatta and Johnny Lydon had had enough! They channeled their rage and fear into this terrific single, the first "rapcore" release ever!

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What's that? More pop you say? Alright, take it easy, I'm happy to oblige.
Here's an early UK Top Ten Hit from The Cure, The Love Cats-1983.

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Pure Pop for Now People

Let's Start the week with a 1979 pop gem from Nick Lowe, who hit the US Top Forty just once, and with this track, Cruel To Be Kind. Lowe was the in-house producer at London punk/new wave label Stiff records, and produced Elvis Costello's first three records as well as one by The Damned. He also penned (Whats So Funny'Bout) Peace Love,& Understanding, from Costello's Armed Forces LP.

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There ain't no Devil, There's Just God When He's Drunk

It was that line that caught my attention back in 1983, when I first heard Tom Waits'growl while browsing at Vintage Vinyl in St. Louis. I asked the clerk who it was and he handed me this album, which I bought on the spot. Released in 1980, Heartattack and Vine was TW's last album for Asylum. It was also the last album released before he'd make a major stylistic shift with his career defining trilogy, beginning with Swordfishtrombones in 1983 and continuing with Rain Dogs and Frank's Wild Years. This album is filled with down and dirty blues and ballads, including Jersey Girls, which Bruce Springsteen would make famous playing live.

Here is the first song and title track

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Black Mountain Hop

Brand new music today from Black Mountain, whose new LP In The Future came out this week.Fans of 70's classic rock staples like Black Sabbath, Led Zepplin etc. and their post millenia disciples Wolfmother and The Darkness should dig this.

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Kids These Days

The kids at the southside's Fuller Park after school music workshop have spoken, and they have chosen No One, by Alicia Keys, as their first band project of 2008. It fits the criteria perfectly; its clean (the song, if not the pic) and there are very few changes throughout. In fact, I think its the same progression as U2's With or Without You, a song any aspiring bass player can master in approximately 30 seconds. Since I will now hear this song everyday for the next three months, its only fitting that you all get to know it too, if you don't already.

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Good Winter

David Berthy sent this one to FI.

From Bon Iver's Myspace page:

it wasn't planned. The goal was to hibernate.

Justin Vernon moved to a remote cabin in the woods of Northwestern Wisconsin at the onset of winter. Tailing from the swirling breakup of his long time band, he escaped to the property and surrounded himself with simple work, quiet, and space. He lived there alone for three months, filling his days with wood splitting and other chores around the land. This special time slowly began feeding a bold, uninhibited new musical focus.

This slowly evolved into days filled with twelve-hour recording blocks, breaking only for trips on the tractor into the pines to saw and haul firewood, or for frozen sunrises high up a deer stand. All of his personal trouble, lack of perspective, heartache, longing, love, loss and guilt that had been stock piled over the course of the past six years, was suddenly purged into the form of song. The end result is, For Emma, Forever Ago, a nine-song album.

Bon Iver (pronounced: bohn eevair; French for "good winter" and spelled wrong on purpose) is a greeting, a celebration and a sentiment. It is a new statement of an artist moving on and establishing the groundwork for a lasting career. For Emma, Forever Ago is the debut of this lineage of songs. As a whole, the record is entirely cohesive throughout and remains centered around a particular aesthetic, prompted by the time and place for which it was recorded. Vernon seems to have tested his boundaries to the utmost, and in doing so has managed to break free form any pre-cursing or finished forms.

For Emma's tracks consist of thick layers draped in lush choral walls, with rarely more than an ancient acoustic guitar or the occasional bass drum providing structure. Vernon sings the majority of the record in falsetto, which painfully expresses the meanings behind its overt, yet strangely entangled words. This newfound vocal path acts as each song's main character and source of melody.

Despite its complexity, the record was created entirely by Vernon with nothing more than a few microphones and some aged recording equipment. This homemade aspect shows itself in sections as creaks and accidentals are exposed in the folds of the songs, but is hidden well by the highly impressive and almost orchestral sound that Vernon managed to produce by his lonesome, within the creaky skeleton of his father's cabin.

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Great Debuts-Elvis Costello

In 1977, 23 year old Elvis Costello burst on the scene with his debut album, My Aim is True. I remember seeing his new wave Buddy Holly visage posted all over the local record store and being struck by his punk-geek attitude, with his oversized glasses and knock-kneed stance. The backing band for the sessions was Clover, who later become the News, Huey Lewis's backing band. Later that year, he would recruit the members of the Attractions through newslpaper want ads.

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Life is a Cabaret, Old Chums

A Ukulele cabaret to be exact. Dust off that uke you picked up on vacation in Hawaii and join yours truly and Tony B. for the inaugural Ukulele Cabaret just after Valentines Day on Saturday, February 16. Where? you guessed it, Silvies. The theme of course will be songs of betrayal and heartbreak, lust and love.

The Guidelines:
1. Each act may play up to three songs (at least one of which should relate to the theme)
2. A uke should be played in each song, other instruments are welcome and encouraged
3. bonus points for theatricality- costumes, props, skits, beatboxes, whatever

If you don't yet play the uke, take it from me, its simple to learn and very inexpensie too (from $30 at Andy's.) Or you can just come to watch, sing along, and throw back some brown-brown.

So don't delay, put those winter doldrums to work and scare up a song or two.
Hope to see you there.

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Here's the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra playing Hey Ya.
I'm quite sure that Brett from Flight of the Conchords is second from left

All That Scratching is Making Me Itch

That line, used in yesterday's post by the B-boys was taken from Malcolm Mclaren's 1982 hip hop influenced novelty hit Buffalo Gals, which was built around a square dance call. As far I know this track was the first record to feature scratching and its widely credited with popularizing hip hop in the UK. Prior to its release, notorious jagoff McLaren managed both the New York Dolls and the Sex Pistols.

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My Real Name is...Cookie Puss!

Three years before the release of their debut long player Licensed to Ill in 1986,
The Beastie Boys released this 12 inch single, Cookie Puss. Based around prank phone calls to Carvel ice cream store employees, it's little more than a curiosity, but a funny one at that. Steve Martin fans will get an extra kick out of it.


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Two Tone

Man, we were big into The Specials in High School. Their look-the suits, suspenders, and wing tips was both hip and elegant, and their sound was utterly refreshing amid the pap I had grown up with in St. Louis.

A Midwestern kid transplanted into the boarding scene of The East Coast, I was blessed with a roomate, Tim Smith, who was born and bred in Manhattan, and whose urbane taste in music was always spot on. Tim had the first Specials album, produced by a young Elvis Costello, which was released in 1979 and played like a greatest hits package. We played it until the grooves wore out.

Tim also had the vinyl maxi-single of 1981's non-album track Ghost Town.



The Specials were a multi-racial band who managed to flourish amidst severe racial unrest in Thatcherite England, and make it a central topic of their music. I found out recently that this track was written in response to Margaret Thatcher's policies, believed by the band to be responsible for increasing massive unemployment already present in Britain, and resulting racial tensions. It hit home for the Specials especially (like that?)as they were from Coventry, a city with unemployment at levels of 20% and higher at the time. It was also the summer of large-scale riots in Brixton, London and Liverpool, where there was alleged heavy-handed police treatment of young black men. Indeed the single was unusual in that it hit the top of the UK Top 40 at the exact time that the riots occurred. A crystalized moment where music mirrors society directly.


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Make a wish, baby

Lets start the week in a groove, yeah baby, nice and easy. We found ourselves in AM Gold Country last week and we're striking it rich, so there's no need to leave so soon.
Here's one from the California outfit Ambrosia from their 4th LP One Eighty. The track reached number three on the pop charts and garnered three grammy nominations that year.
The bands most stunning accolade came when Quincy Jones publicly declared it to be one of his all time favorite songs.

and no, that is not studio hack Michael McDonald on backing vocals, though they've replicated his trademark sound to perfection

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My head seems to be stuck in the Seventies this week. Here's one from Fleetwood Mac, before Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined, but after their straight up blues era. I remember hearing this song on AM radio in the wood paneled station wagon in my very early childhood. Its from the 1972 album Bare Trees. I was reminded of it when Autumn Defense covered it on New Years Eve.

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Bob Welch, Guitarist with Fleetwood Mac, Re-recorded the song for solo release in 1977, and it became a hit. This is the version I remember hearing in the car He's backed on the track by Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham. I couldnt find the actual track for download, but here's a youtube montage with this version of the song song. I prefer this version to the original.

For What Its Worth

Last night I had the pleasure of sitting in which Quickdraw's 60's cover band Revolution, as their drummer called in sick for rehearsal. We played three hours of 60's classics, including For What its Worth by Buffalo Springfield. As soon as we started it, I flashed on the Muppet Show version which I remembered from my Childhood.

Here you go...

Northern Lights

Yet another band spawned from the Broken Social Scene Collective, The Canadian band Stars released their 4th album, In Our Bedroom After The War, in September of last year. Here's the title track.

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AM Gold

The Autumn Defense is the other project of Wilco's John Stirrat and Pat Sansone. They played a handful of songs at the New Years Eve show and I was intrigued enough by their
nice harmonies and 70's light rock California sound to check out their record. Here's the title track from their debut album in 2003 Circles.


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Seventies pop (Fleetwood Mac, CSN) meets nineties vocal influences (Radiohead, Rufus Wainwright) with Midlake. This track is from the Texas band's 2006 sophmore album, The Trials of Van Occupanther.

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Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars

Over the holiday break jazz lost ones of its finest.
Enjoy Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars from Oscar Peterson's own covers album We Get Requests


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I Feel Fine

Here's a clip from the New Years Eve Show of Jon Brion playing The Beatles"I Feel Fine" with help from John and Pat From Wilco, Britt from Spoon, and Yes, friend and bandmate Howard Windmiller on drums!