I Want to Ride My Bicycle

Happy Birthday Tony B!


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Into the Sunshine

New music today from Swedish chanteuse Sarah Assbring, who performs under the moniker El Perro Del Mar. The new album, from the Valley to the Stars, has a stronger spiritual essence and fuller arrangements than the debut, and makes for great Sunday morning music.

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Great Debuts-The Modern Lovers

Stumbling across Theres Something about Mary on cable this past weekend, I was reminded of how much I like Jonathan Richman, who plays the re-appearing acoustic troubador in the film. Today's track is from the 1976 debut album by Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers. The band, heavily influenced by the Velvet Underground, featured future Talking Heads member Jerry Harrison, and was fronted by Richman's Snot nosed adolescent voice, which would later be appropriated by Spoon's Brit Daniel and LCD Sound System's James Murphy.

The album's songs address dating awkwardness, growing up in Massachusetts, the love of life, and on today's track, Pablo Picasso.


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Feel The Love

Heres a new one from Aussie Indie-dance outfit Cut/Copy, from the recently released LP
In Ghost Colors. I like the way it switches back and forth between shimmering jingle jangle and vocoder laden techno pop.

refreshingly upbeat and and highly recommended!

DOWNLOAD FEEL THE LOVE

Doctors

Lets give a big FI MAZEL TOV to my bandmate and friend Dr. Dan Abrams, who successfully defended his dissertation up at the NU last week, and sadly will soon be leaving us for the sunnier climbs of California, where he's locked down a job at Stanford. Our loss will be Cali Neuropsych's gain.

But don't cry yet, dear readers, for tonight you have a chance to see the man in action for Hayward's second to last gig with Dan before the move (and before the move back Chicago to rejoin the band, of course). So come on up to the Green Room Session at the Edgewater Uncommon Ground, 1401 W. Devon. Our pal Nick Markos will open the show at 9 with Hayward to Follow.

To commemorate the occasion, we have a guest post today sent in by Dan himself. Its from another Doctor, of New Orleans music, that is. The track is "Those Lonely Lonely Nights" from Dr. John's 1972 album Dr John's Gumbo, a tribute to the music of his native city (Dr. John, not Dr. Dan). "Its my all-time favorite New Orleans album", writes Dan, "after spending many years as the Night Tripper, bringing snakes onstage and playing strange voodoo music, Dr. John got serious here playing crescent city classics with an all-star band". "


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Sequel Songs-Ashes to Ashes

Having lost contact with Major Tom at the end of 1969's Space Oddity, there are new rumours afoot at Ground Control by 1980. Word is that a message has been received from Major Tom from deep space "I'm happy... I hope you're happy too", but most suspect that he is now a junkie "strung out in heavens high, hitting an all-time low".

A Space Oddity's parable of the journey of no return into rock stardom at the onset of the Seventies is brought full circle by Ashes to Ashes, which speaks of the isolation and slandered notoriety in the aftermath of living through total excess.

Bowie himself has said that with this song he was "wrapping up the seventies really for myself, and that seemed a good enough epitaph for it".

Its one of my favorite Bowie songs ever.

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Blue Days, Black Nights

Apologies for the late post today, but my phone and cable were out until the nice man came to tweak it all. So, to tie it all in, we'll go with Telephone Line from ELO today. It was released as a single in 1976 and I loved it as a 7 year old, as I do today. The computer bleep beginning, telephone voice effect, phone rings, overblown strings, were all intriguing to my young ears.

we used to giggle at the way he say "teleephone".

On top of all that though, its a pretty harrowing portrait of heartbreak and obsession



Download Telephone Line

Music today from The Breeders, off their long-awaited new album Mountain Battles.While I'm underwhelmed by the album overall (its no Last Splash), this track's been growing on me.

DOWNLOAD WALK IT OFF

Theme Time Radio Hour

I'm incredibly excited, Fingerhutters, because someone has gone and made seasons one and two of Bob Dylan's terrific old-timey Theme Time Radio Show available for download in its entirety...all the shows, all the songs, all the priceless Bob banter, all free. Zipped, archived, MP3 files, hundreds of them!

It makes me want to get in my car and drive across the country, sleeping days in roadside motels, just so I can listen to these shows on the road in the middle of the night.

You can get them here

I've always love Pop Staples sweet voice and velvet guitar sound and so does Bob!
Todays download is from his "weather"show (each show revolves around a theme).

DOWNLOAD UNCLOUDY DAY BY STAPLE SINGERS

The next Ukulele Cabaret will be upon us in just over three weeks time, dear Fingerhutters, so if you you haven't bought your uke yet, quit stalling, cough up the 30 bucks, and head over to the Old Town School to pick one up. The theme this time around is water, in all its forms, so dive in and give us a ditty or two. Learning to play couldn't be easier, everything you need to know is here:

http://www.alligatorboogaloo.com/uke/tabs.html

and here too:

http://www.ukulele.nl/

of course, if you're chicken, you can just come to watch and enjoy the music!

A very special prize will go to whomever can play and sing today's song in its entirety at the uke cabaret!


DOWNLOAD EPIC NAUTICAL ADVENTURE ROCK NUGGET (NOT COME SAIL AWAY EITHER)

VDEO BONUS!!! Bon Iver

Thanks to Tony B. for sending this in. Its from the from the late show at The Lakeshore Theatre here in Chicago last week. I was at the early show and it was fantastic.

Rare Soul Grab Bag

David Berthy Guest Posts Today

I don’t know much about the Guerillas, and couldn’t find much out, but this track is a beautiful thing. It’s one of those really versatile songs that manages to be propulsive and restrained at the same time. I’m pretty sure I remember reading that the Guerillas were from the French Congo when I tried to buy this 45 on ebay, and that makes sense, but I’m not entirely sure. Anyway, this was one of my favorites from last summer, and I pick it here as a kind of prayer to seal the end of winter.

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Tax Day

Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) By Marvin Gaye

I Fought The War but The War Won

Emily Haines' debut album Knives Don't Have Your Back was one of my favorite rainy day albums of last year. As I'm also a fan of her other band Broken Social Scene Fan, I thought I'd check out her other other band, Metric, and came across this terrific track.

Monster Hospital is the first single from Metric's 2005 album Live it Out. In contrast to the piano based melancholia of Haines solo work, this one is a straight out rocker, with the kind of sound, energy, and angular guitar lines I'd hoped to hear from the Breeders on their latest
(No Dice There).

The refrain "I fought the War but the War Won, Stop for the Love of God!" is one of the great chorus hooks in recent memory.


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While we're mixing musicians with muppets, here's one I remember seeing when I was very young-Stevie Wonder playing Superstition on Sesame Street. Its astoundingly good.

Izzy Dilleski, Worlds Greatest Violinist

ooh-pa-pa dah!

I love Dizzy Gillespie...for his inventiveness, dexterity, utter hipness, warmth, incredible sense of humor, and iconic bent horn. My earliest memory of him was when he and his incredible bullfrog cheeks appeared on the Muppet Show. And my last was the priviledge I had of seeing him play once in a tiny new York Jazz club a year or so before he died. The feeling of love in the room was palpable.

In addition to being co-inventor of bebob and one of modern jazz'top trumpeters, he could scat like nobody's business, as on today's track.

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Quiero La Noche

H. and I recently held a Woody Allen movie marathon and she was really struck by the opening credit music to Bananas, his 1971 slapstick comedy about Fielding Mellish, a blue collar intellectual played by Allen, who unwittingly finds himself taking over a Latin American country in a Coup.

We searched far and wide for a copy of the song, but could only find it on Youtube. It was written by Marvin Hamlisch, one of only two people in history (the other being Richard Rodgers) to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, a Tony and the Pulitzer Prize.



PS. Fielding Mellish is one of the greatest character names ever. If you're starting a bluegrass/oldtimey or Indie Rock band, it would be a great name

Open My Eyes

Here's an obscure nugget from the classic rock pantheon.
Its Nazz, featuring a young Todd Rundgren, from their self-titled 1968 debut LP. Rundgren would later go on to become a successful solo artist and producer. The song Hello its me, the unsuccessful first single from this album, would become a hit later
as re-recorded by Rundgren.

DOWNLOAD OPEN MY EYES

Typewriter Tip Tip

I recently picked up the soundtrack to Wes Anderson's latest film The Darjeeling Express. Always terrific, WA soundtracks mine and compile the more obscure nuggets from the classic rock pantheon,along with original compositions from former Devo frontmant Mark Mothersbaugh (abesnt here for the first time) .

While I love the Kinks as much as the next guy, its the music composed by Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray and other artists from Indian cinema that make this a must-have collection.

Download Typewritwr, Tip Tip Tip

Freaky Friday

I played this song at my desk at work at least 15 times back to back this past Wednesday. Put it on in your car on your way home from work this evening and do some righteous headbanging at the wheel...start your weekend right. Its an early Indie rock Nugget from Dinasour Jr, Freak Scene, from their 1988 album Bug.

DOWNLOAD FREAK SCENE BY DINASOUR JR

Great music today from Psychedelic Popsters The Apples in Stereo. I've listened to three tracks from this album, Electronic Projects for Musicians, and it sounds like their best effort since the year 2000, which figures, since it a compilation of B-0sides and oddities from years past. AIS frontman Robert Schneider was the leader of the Elephant Six Collective, A pyschedelic pop movement in the mid-90's that also included Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control among others.

I'll never forget seeing these guys live at the Empty Bottle in the late nineties. Drummer Hilary was about 7 months pregnant and the audience watched her eat an entire Hoagie in about 15 seconds between two songs.

Interested parties should pick up 1997's Tone Soul Evolution, a shimmering, hook laden
masterpiece from start to finish.

You Can buy it here

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Like A River

New music by Neil Young disciple Sun Kil Moon, from the album April, released, oddly enough, yesterday, on April 1. SKM is Sunday Morning/Woodshop music at its finest, and on this one we get Will Oldham on backing vocals to boot. Upon first listen, its a return to form after the radical misfire of Ghosts of the Highway, an album of Modest Mouse covers released a couple years back.

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Me Want Berries From Bushes

Does this gray post-winter have you feeling down? Maybe this track will put a smile on your face...but beware, it may instead drive you further into the cave. Yes, its the Louisville joke rockers King Kong, The B-52's of Indie Rock, with the lead track from their 1995 rock opera Me Hungry. Its the story of a caveman who falls in love with a yak. Enjoy!

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