Colbert Vs. The Decemberists

So perhaps you've all heard about the old timey feud between that champion of Brechtian TV news-anchorage Stephen Colbert and those sepiatoned singers The Decemberists. Right? Have you?

Lets take a few steps back to here:


Colbert, being the genius that he is, did his green screen challenge back in whenever the fuck (I dont feel like looking it up). There were some pretty awesome entries (I never saw the one that won, if someone wants to direct me to a link please do it) and there was much enjoyment and laughter.

The Decemberists, part-time lion tamers and taunters of media moguls, requested a suspiciously similar green screen challenge for their "O Valencia!" video. Colbert, claiming some sort of authentic control over this idea (God, I love that man and his floppy ear) would not have it and released a rebuttal: Colbert's Second Green Ccreen Challenge!

Aside from "Mulch!" being the most brilliant and hilarious thing I have ever heard this feud is maybe the best thing that has ever happened to the world and further proves that YouTube.com is one of the most important inventions within the last year. How many of us would have known about Michael Richard's racist exposion without that beautiful sideways iscoseles staring us in the face?

Anyway, The Decemberistshave now re-rebutted Colbert's challenge on Pitchforkmedia.com by challenging Mr. Colbert to an axe duel.

and finally a poor example of a contestant but a contestant nonetheless has emerged:


This is art at its finest folks. This entire thing is entangled in so many contrivances and acting styles and public garbage bins that there has to be some sort of Art buried in there somewhere, right? but I'm not going to be the one to pick those seeds out of that cottony substance, the internet.

Decemberists

50 shots

If ever there were a genre that produced the least amount of emotional value for me I'd say it would be hip-hop. Perhaps I'm ignorant, and I am, of a large portion of the genre but I've heard my fair share of the music. Aside from certain songs designed to cause a knee jerk reaction to racism or gang warfare I tend to search for other meaning in hip-hop besides body-shudder aural landscapes.

Thats not to say hip-hop holds less value for me than, say, Eno or Bjork. Its just that I'd rather put one of those two on when driving through a thunderstorm at night or, you know, doin it. In hip-hop I tend to search more for political or word jungle-gymming or booty shakin value. That, in turn, is not to say that none of those reasons do not equate to some sort of emotional value with me, but, like I said, I mean emotional as in seeing the center of all things in a well placed crescendo, plucking it from its stem and takin' a lil bite.

Perhaps it's the heavy beats. Perhaps it's the emphasis most hip-hop places on circular loops rather than linear song progression. Perhaps I'm a rockist at heart. Perhaps there is a fat, dripping, slimy wall of White Guilt in the way.

However! Papoose, a Bedford Stuysavant (okay. I giggled a bit at my own joke there) who has been around for several years creating buzz for himself in NY and turning down record deals because they "use gimmicks as well as fake street and jail images to sell records", recently produced a song called "50 shots." It's in response to the recent shooting in Queens of the 23 year old Sean Bell, the day before his wedding, by Police. I'll let you do the research if you haven't heard the news yet, but suffice to say: its some fucked up shit.

Papoose's response, though far far far from polished (no surprizes considering the time between), gives me the heartfeeling of pain and remorse and fear and harsh harsh deep deep anger that the black community in Queens, all over the US for that matter, must and should feel. Papoose welds his emotions and intelligence into his voice and words unlike anything I've ever heard in a hip-hop song before:
I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired son/
hope a change get here before a revolution come.

Drastic, maybe rash, words but deserved and poignant. And beneath it all Sam Cooke's beautiful and heart wrenching 'Change Gon' Come,' all Kanyetized but slowing back for a moment between verses to pause our concept of race relations and ask us, soulfully and sadly from inside the time bending musical wormhole if the change has actually come at all?

The most affecting moment of the song is the fifty shots, I counted them, played at the end over Cooke's strings.

Fifty is a number, until you hear how long fifty takes to shoot.

listen: 50 shots

Cap'n Guthrie hates on that damn snickering dog (and steals title template from Kitsch)

Thanks to the loverly Natalie I have discovered a loverly little festival goings on about the town this weekend called Blip Festival 2006.

As some of you may know and others may not know (as all of you may or may not know) I fancy myself a gamer when it benefits me. Actually, in the very same way I fancy myself a music blogger. Go figger. In fact, I had my first sex with a prominent video game's soundtrack playing in the background (starts with a 'Fina', ends with an 'antasy'). It was a night of slippy groping and uncomfortable apologies as first-intercourses are wont to be, but it was magical. And I think that videogame night, like an STD contracted, found its way into my bloodstream and turned several of those little inner-tube bloodcells into eight-bit red blocks. Which is precisely why the blipfest has me in its tractor beam.

It is a weekend of installation art, haxored NES cartridges turned into movies, and music written on gameboys and 8bit nintendos. Needless to say I am fascinated by this project, particularly because it has gone beneath my gamedar for, what appears to be, years. 8BitPeoples.com is a label slash all around Medici family to this strange peripheral music sphere and has been cultivating it since 1999. I think a large portion of this eight bit bonanza has been happening in Japan with Cloud Strife haired individuals and America with be-spectacled mom's-basement types twisting and turning and breaking open old grey gameboy compartments to get to the meaty musical substance inside.

Indeed, if you see any picture of people performing they look like any dude or lady on the Subway tinkering away at a gameboy or a PSP.
but trying to defeat Ganon they are not. Rather, they are taking those bling blings and dusty, lo-fi bassthumps, dipping napkins in club soda to wipe their little pixelated faces, and polishing them into dapper, young club tracks. Or sliding them into red shoegazy dresses. Or tieing little folky bow ties around their necks.

In other words, they are creating some pretty fucking interesting music. Some of it is novelty trash. Some of it is hysterically bad. But some of it could actually stand beside the likes of big name indie acts.

My particular favorite of the bunch is kind of like a sidescrolling, lessFrenchmoreJapanese version of M83 called Portalenz. They're incredibly polished for a band without a label and manage to pull off a splendid in-one-ear-then-the-other sound with their laptops and gameboys.

Bleeps Love Breaks is a dizzying context-defying song with IDM beats all created with that same fuzzy little thump that came out of that old grey boxy contraption sitting in your grandparent's attic.

Kill Me Sweetly, unlike the previous song, is comprised entirely of gameboy beats and sounds. Once again sweeping tweets wind from ear to ear spinning around your head and only vaguely reminisces the boyish little gamebox.

I will be attending BlipFestival tonight and tomorrow to catch these guys and all their fanciful, engrish speaking friends. It kills me that I've missed the first two days, but most of the groups I want to see are performing tonight and tomorrow so, I'm pretty psyched about that. Thx Natalie.

Stroke-a-Vision

Ever wonder what would happen if Television and The Strokes had sex and a baby? Neither did I until I heard this band, and then I didnt really have to wonder anymore. I suppose what I'm saying, then, is that I never wondered at all.

Here. There. Neither of those.

Born Ruffians have a kind of raw popness that Arctic Monkeys have, except with a little more brains and a little more red maple leaf. These guys spin the galloping one-chord-for-ten-bars style into a spirograph of sped up and slowed down beats and maybe a little in between. And it helps that they have a fucking sense of humor about their music or else they'd just end up sounding like Aneuretical: all that talent. all that emo. all that squandered.

"Piecing It Together" is a transitory feller, a lil shapeshifter of a pop song. It starts out with a dancy pop chord over and overing until they get bored of yelping and funk into slick little pinky finger chords, then a tiny sounding little breakdown, and back together with a nice poppy ribbon.

I'm interested to see what these gentlemen are doing in the future, . They could lose it or they could create a clever little pop album. I'm not expecting it to be brilliant, but I'd have a nice little glint in my eyes if these boys produced something that was. Warp has picked them up, which is kinda weird, right?

The Most Important Thing Happening Next Year

Andrew Bird new tour dates!!!

**2006**

DECEMBER 1 // Middlebury, VT
Sepomania Festival @ Middlebury College

DECEMBER 30 & 31 // Denver, CO
Ogden Theater

** 2007 **

JANUARY 13 // Chicago, IL
The Hideout

JANUARY 14// Indianapolis, IN
The Music Mill

JANUARY 15 // Cleveland, OH
Beachland Ballroom

JANUARY 17 // New York, NY
The Bowery Ballroom

JANUARY 24 // Melbourne, Australia
Northcote Social Club

JANUARY 27 // Sydney, Australia
The Basement

MARCH 22 // London, England
Bush Hall

MARCH 23 // Brussels, Belgium
Botanique

MARCH 29 // Paris, France
La Maroquinerie

MARCH 30 // Amiens, France
Musique de Jazz et d'Ailleurs Festival

APRIL 21 // Milwaukee, WI
The Pittman Theatre @ Alverno College

More commentary on how much Andrew Bird is probably Jesus or a direct descendant of Jesus to come.

Shit, I thought I would hate the new Sufjan Christmas box set but listen to “that was the worst Christmas ever”

But is it music pt. 2 (and a little of montreal)

So On my trip to Richmond I was awarded with a little gem of a musical game. My dear friend Jackie found this amazing game called "Ball Droppings" which sounds distantly sexual but I assure is only sexual in the soothing, post-coital haze you will encounter while playing it. and god knows you all need some post-coitus going on, you ugly fucks.

The idea is this: a ball drops, you draw a line as in windows paint lines, with the clicking and the dragging and such. The ball will hit the line (unless you're a moron and just want to draw lines where the ball doesn't hit) and play a tone. The tone's pitch depends upon how fast the ball is falling.

For example: the ball is falling like a shot-put on an idiot and you draw a line far below in its path. The ball is falling fast at the bottom where you drew the line so, when it hits, it plays a high pitch. visa versa too. You got slow balls? its got low notes. draw as many lines as you'd like, too, they're free!

My ultimate brass ring is to get so good at this game that I can create a series of lines that will play "Blister in the Sun." but, thats a bit lofty I think. Regardless, its hours of fun at work where I don't care anymore.

Additionally: the new Of Montreal album "Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?" is being streamed by their label polyvinyl here.

It sounds like the lush, dark, orchestral arrangements of the second half of The Sunlandic Twins, except a bit more attractive in the face. In other words, you don't feel like you're trapped in a synth organ pipe in a Norwegian cathedral. In more other words, its much more likeable. Its pretty raw lyrically too, more so than usual. Don't expect the perfection of Lysergic Bliss, though, nothing comes near that on this album.

But is it Music?

Just in case anyone forgets the fact that music is math coverpop.com has created an awesome and mind fucking little gadget.

The idea behind it is that each dot represents a note on the chromatic scale and the line represents the string that they "pluck" or, rather, "plucks" them. It's not that simple though, each dot spins at a different speed. The smaller the dot, the higher the note, the faster the speed. So, if the big bass dot on the outside goes around the circle once every three minutes, the next largest dot goes around the circle twice every three minutes, the next largest three every three minutes, and so on ad nauseum.

and naseuated you will be. This seriously breaks your mind the first time and then over and over again when they fuck with the timbre or tone or speed. My favorite is either the ethereal microtones or the prime numbers that look (and sound) like broken teeth. ooh ooh, or stereo 210 that just sounds like the inside of Stephen Hawking's brains.

holy shit, hours of wonderful goddamn zombification.

Just to further prove that I am not even in the Solar System when it comes to Hip-Hop news. Clipse has dropped an album that has apparently been in the waits for two years now. From the three tracks I've heard I'm sold like a baby on Ebay, which is very sold.

The production, done by Pharrell, is brilliant. All box-cutter-in-the-dark-alley like. Pharrell has always had it, we all knew that, but he never really flashed it too hard, dropping something smart from time to time but ending up sounding like the straight A student who dumbed himself down to hang out with the cool kids. The drumbeats are skipping and flighty but still manage to keep their clubability, and if not clubability then window blasting it with it's thick thumps down below.

Check out the single Mr. Me too ft. Pharrell, allegedly about Lil' Wayne, it's digeridoo synth far in the distance orbiting marimba synths bouncing back and lackadaisically forth. Simple. Clean. Distant. like Pusha T and Malice's rhymes.

Malice:

We cloud hoppers, tailor suits like we mobsters/ Break down keys into dimes and sell 'em like Gobstoppers/Who gon' stop us, not a goddamn one of ya

no, just negative

If ever there were a band to herald the dying whimpers of Rockism it would be Alient Ant Farm. And instead of quietly whispering it into the ears of their loved ones, or perhaps even silently ticking away about it on their livejournal, they decided to further prove that anyone who still believes that guitar > sequencer, drums > laptop, singing > rhyming, rock > not rock, is still a fifteen year old and/or says N00b a lot and/or adds the suffix -zorz to the end of everything to make it that much more hurtful.

The video below is Alien Ant Farm playing atop a building outside of the BET awards. I think Alien Ant Farm shouts for themselves when they drivel some sort of drivel about people playing instruments and then promptly begin to not play theirs very well.

Truth is I'm sick of this garbage. It's really just ignorant and not that racist until they put it into a racial setting like say...ah... the BLACK FUCKING ENTERTAINMENT AWARDS. There is another video of them at a Justin Timberlake concert and a Gay Rights parade, but nothing really hits as hard as seeing a whole red carpet of people confronted with the proposition that their music that they have slaved over is inferior to Alien Ant Farm, that bastion of musical innovention.

roxzorz:

sounds like Necronomicon

I'm not a big black metal guy but I had heard about this Agalloch band and decided to check them out. So far I'm digging the axes, but black metal vocals have always sounded like ... one of those highschool kids who thinks that drinking stuff out of novelty Halloween skull mugs is always fucking awesome. I can't really take it seriously all the time. We'll see. I'll take my patience out of its holster, use it like a shotgun on this album.

I picked it up at Plan-9 down here in Richmond, a pantry of delicious music. My friend Jackie got the new Christmasjan Stevens box set. I listened to it for a hot minute. actually a cold minute of annoyance. If I wanted to hear Sufjan jam out Christmas songs with his buddies... I wouldn't. Mitch Miller is the only bad sweatered christmas caroler I'll have in my life, and don't you forget it Mr. Stevens. and trying to cram your extra songs into the christmas canon is like plugging your christmas tree into too many outlets. Stick to the damn states man!

I also managed to pick up a (fucking) edited version of Enter the 36 Chambers because I felt bad about only owning a burned copy of such an incredible album. I will never do that shit again. Seriously "Shame on a Nuh" ? "Wu Tang Clan Aint"? What the fuck? Its like listening to Wu Tang play Taboo, except the buzzer sound is in my brains.

On the upside I got Fear of a Black Planet and a copy of Animal Collective's "People EP" as I've dubbed it (I think its actually called Tour EP) I'll come back with some more in depth sounds for you to read, my friend. All I know now is that Public Enemy makes me feel unconstitutionally white and Animal Collective makes me feel swelteringly punchy.

Here I come on the 1 AM chinatown careening back to E Broadway in the NYC. Yikes.

Dude. Do you think hummus would go good on a ritz cracker?

Okay. Someone forgot to send me the memo about this. Apparently Explosions In The Sky decided to record an album without telling me. The decided to forego all prior riff planning and to not stop in the middle to finnigle this and finnigle that. Sounds like it could be a disaster right? hmmm... well when you've got the chops and the handsomeness of this band I don't know if you can really come up with something thats not death-defyingly pretty like their last few albums.

Anyway, this E.P. called "The Rescue" came out in 2005 and is an attempt by the band to prove that they sometimes umm... suck? I don't think they were very successful at it. The worst of the album sounds like Sigur Ros at their most meandering on Takk or ... well pretty much any Sigur Ros track ever. Most of the ka-ka is pretty forgiveable too because they admit to coming into the album as an experiment and not as a real studio album, let alone a plain and simple and clean artistic statement.

Actually, I find the experiment quite refreshing from a band that has a tendency to sound frigid and ... falsely icelandic. Still, there is sometimes not very much room to breathe from the gorgeous imagery and snowy landscapes that each song depicts even when their initial mission statement for a song is to have it sound like "A fast rock song, maybe with a punk rock beat."

It really makes me wonder about EITS's ability to create music that doesn't sound like reeeeeally reeeeally slowed down versions of Don Caballero. Its pretty and pretty and pretty, all the time pretty, but nothing has really captured the fire and grit of their second album for me. Even though Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die dot dot dot has some real duds, I enjoyed the growling it had underlying and threatening each song's structure.

Don't expect any growling on this; it's mostly purring. It's great, but someone forgot that they were recording every song in a cathedral on top of a mountain in the snow with bunnies made out of cotton balls pasted to reverb pedals. It starts to kinda all sound the same.

Eat a damn quesadilla dudes, you're from Austin, not Reykjavik. Also, where can I get a damn copy because its damn good. Oh, you're not selling it at anywhere but shows these days? Count me in then.

Day 1

Day 2

Also this: new album Feb 20th, 2007 called "All Of a Sudden I Miss Everyone" and they'll be playing in Brooklyn on 2/19/07. Expect to see me at that show picking up a copy of the new one and the EP because I need new stuff to smoke pot to and say shit like "dude, why is this song so long?"

(props to Liz Hall)

Thanking for the Giving

Well, fine readers, here I am in the old VA cause thats how I do. I suppose I don't have much to say because I sit, now, at my friend Sarah's computer enjoying these days of homeslice fun.

I just wanted to let all (two) of you know that I have succesfully jumped from the world of corporate into the world of not job, aka permanent blogdom aka eating nothing but grilled cheeses aka near constant, self-loathing induced, tearful, spectacular craigslist browsing. I will lay prostrate before my shrine I intend to build around this website consisting of mostly tattered remnants of my self-esteem and poorly conceived trinkets cut from tin cans and shards of bazooka joe comics.

In other words I've gone freelance. freelance! never a finer word was sweet-nothinged into my ear by T-Ball of Parcell Press and never a finer word was created to rob me of any sort of ties to down-to-earthedness, reality that is.

Nevertheless, I supplicate myself before the God of the List of Craig and you, avid readers, to GET ME A FUCKING DOLLAR, or two. Actually, its not so bad, my job that I quit has offered me freelance work with their marketing department, so don't worry too hard I'll be able to afford rent and a beer or two (or three [or four]) .

I'll try and keep up w/ the music over the next few days but computers and internets are in short supply when I travel so... hopefully I'll get to it in Richmond, VA.

By the way, if you were wondering, The Letting Go by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy is probably the best thing to listen to when you're driving from DC to Fredericksburg with one of your best friends.

Stereophooey

Jody Rosen was a graduate student of Jewish History at University College London when he discovered and compiled a tad of early twentieth/late nineteenth century ephemera that parallels, and further complicates, an era of popular music that looms like...well... like blackface. That toxic style of music and entertainment from the primordial soup days of pop music that academia so loves to explore, albeit with tweezers at the end of a twelve foot pole, was called minstrel music. And it apparently stood aside another fierce pillar of racial prejudism: Jewish Minstrel shows. It's a strange testament to our great American culture. You know, the xenophobic one?

All the usual Vaudevillian suspects are here: Al Jolson of The Jazz Singer(whose parents were Jewish immigrants), Sophie Tucker (also a Jewish immigrant), Belle Baker, Fanny Brice (the Streisand's Funny Girl and daughter of, guess what?! Jewish immigrants), and countless other Jewish or non-Jewish actors and actresses. They would don their Jew apparel to appear like a Jewish man or Woman, with large nose and jutting ears, and play " a hodgepodge of Jewish stereotypes old and new, both a crafty grasper and a bumbling immigrant greenhorn" says Rosen in the liner notes.

Irving Berlin, the penner of "God Bless America" and "White Christmas," was the prince of Tin Pan Alley, and a Jew like many of the other Tin Pan Alley ragtimers. He wrote this shining piece of brilliance: "Cohen Owes Me 97 Dollars" about an old Jewish man that tries to collect all of the debts owed him before he dies. A real "Highway to the Danger Zone" of Jewish Minstrel music, a crowd favorite.

It is pretty well known that there were numerous black men and women performing in minstrel shows, but probably not to the same extent that there were white men (sometimes women) painting rouge lips, shining shoe-polish faces, spouting out a series of racially charged jokes on stage to not-shoe-polish-faced audiences. However, the racially charged Jewface (probably done less because shoe-polish was cheaper than prosthetic noses and beards) seems like it was ubiquitously written and performed by Jews themselves. Why?

Its a fascinating testament to the importance of the American music machine (versificator?) that Jews were making names for themselves while writing and performing prejudist songs about themselves. It appears a moment of simultaneous self-parody and a declaration of a unified "here"-ness. Was it perhaps because of a unified lack of Jewish cultural identification with America that these new Americans felt the need to resort to self-parody, self-deprecation to survive? Its obvious that blackface minstrelsy was so much harder to forget because it was much more widespread, but how is it that "Jewface" has utterly escaped 99% of our radars until 2006?

These are, of course, rhetorical questions that I have neither the gall, nor the research to answer in my humble music blog. (Pittman, you're in the bullpen for this one)

However, after exploring the awesome Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project based from UC Santa Barbara, I managed to find a couple of these for you to hear and ... enjoy?

When Mose With his Nose Leads the Band
This one is about a conductor named "Mose" who literally conducts a band with his humongous Jewish nose, because, you know, Jews have big noses. All of them.

My Friends, Morris and Max
Apparently Jews playing Pinochle is a stereotype that I have yet to use on a Jew. I can't wait.

indeed

HEY, AMERICANS, YOU SHOULD LEARN A LOT FROM OUR NORWEGIAN FRIENDS

WHO ARE HAVING REALLY GOOD TIME WITH NORTH KOREAN YOUNG SCHOOL BOYS.

Favorite Finds

George Harrison's first post-Beatles album was All Things Must Pass, which was a collection of music he had composed to be used as Beatles songs and released in 1970. A three disc album of nearly perfect song after perfect song. I'd label this one of my favorite finds of 2006 (thanks, as usual, to APitty).

There is, of course, the single "My Sweet Lord", a jovial little track about Harrison's maybe not-so-subtle but easy-to-swallow Christianity. It sounds like one of those moments when your head spins at the awful enormity of everything; except with autoharps, hawaii dripping guitars, and cathedral echo hallelujahs. And its not written in a Sufjan Stevens kinda showoffy, I-heart-christ bumper stickery way but in a healthy, Jesus-and-me-on-a-road-trip-smokin-ciggas kinda way. I've been stabbing the repeat button over and over on this one.

I Live For You is only available on the reissue of the album that came out in 2000. The clincher for me on this song is the steel guitar that bends and bows around the lazystrummed hallways of this song. He recorded this one in 2000 and you can really hear his threadbare vocals about to snap in pieces at any moment, which lends itself to the song itself which just sounds so... weary. Its a great testament to his talents right up until his death. Why he didn't include it on the original is a mystery, its better than a lot of the other tracks (especially the jam sessions at the very end).

It just goes to show that Harrison was the cool beatle, the Beatle you'd want as your cool older brother that was in a band and drank YooHoo.

Do it: the Harry.

I don't even need to try with this one:



on a related note, I heard that Jay-z's new album kinda bores.

whotube?

Alright. I know that I have, perhaps, overdone the Joanna Newsom thing. Other than the fact that I've had multiple orgasms listening to Ys over the past few days (Multiple! Multiple!) I should really cut back on bombarding you, my fanciful readers, with too much News-some (see what I did there?)

However! Finding this video was like stepping onto a landmine that, instead of blowing up and relieving me of this life, spewed shit all up in my pants and shirt. Even beneath my eyelids. I can't stop staring at it even when my eyes are closed. It stings. It stings.

I must share my pain with you, fanciful readers, because I hate all of you. But instead I mean the opposite of that, I love you all and I want you to see what this YouTube has wrought.

I don't claim to understand these strange people who bump and/or grind to the hip-hops on YouTube.com but I have always looked at them as if peering through a portal of stupidity; as if I, in some life, could have been one of those gentlemen shuffling and mouthing the words to Sexyback and imagining that I were, in fact, bringing the sexy back to our physical plane from an alternate dimension it was trapped in because it played ouija board and Magic Cards at the same time. These people I have always bemusedly viewed as absurd but harmless because their music tastes were like the jingling of keys to my jangling of chains. Chains made of out metal.

In other words, their apple shaped music tastes were so unlike my orange shaped music tastes that I was able to distance myself. but no more. The music I love has been pillaged, razed, raped, murdered, and, worst of all, forced to watch a non-stop marathon of That's so Raven.

An adolescent tribal dance to "Peach, Plum, Pear", verging on homosexual experimentation, awaits you behind that oh-so-familiar sideways isosceles. These girls know how to shimmy, hop, play patty cake, and wear their grandmother's jewelry!



Actually, I shouldn't be such an asshole. They're showing their appreciation for the music through meticulously crafted choreography. Plus Kitsch and I are going to do our own dance to Wolf Eyes.


Edit: Soon after posting:
~Binarynatalie: ps you're completely and hopelessly obsessed with newsom
clevabeans: I know
clevabeans: I know

45:33

Alright. I broke down. I purchased it. $9.99

Poor James Murphy. His fingers getting stuck in those knobs and sliders and the Nike representatives lashing and lashing him until his tiny knuckles break and he cries because he just wants to go home but all they've been giving him are Peaches and Herb records and Fruity loops
to work with.

Also the thought of it being advertised to the pilates inclined kind of makes me sick. Like listening to the swish swish swish of thousands of Aunt Peggy polyester tracksuits cry out all at once.

Other Musings: pt. 2

Another day, another oter musica spree. As you may or may not know there is a Junior Boys show occuring on Dec. 7 with Morgan Geist at Studio B in Brooklyn, NY. After plundering the used section, two Pavement CD's! two!, I realized tickets were being sold there. "Why not?" I said to myself "I like Junior Boys, I like to drink things, I like shakin' my tight little butt." No seriously, I said this out loud.

The lady behind the counter was surprised I think but sold the ticket to me and handed me a clever morsel of 12" single. She also checked out my butt as I retreated, my ticket clasped between sweaty fingers and 12" being held soft, carefully, like a half melted stick of butter, hot and sticky.

but really none of that is true. If I could squelch sex out of my pores like that in Other Music, I would. Most of the time I'm silent. Contemplative. Terrified that someone will jab a Can CD in my face, thrust a scantron sheet in my hand, and point to a little desk in the corner. " I ... I don't listen to krautrock...."

I would emerge, shamefully, with the collective auralgasms of several patrons and employees oozing down my face, a music snob bukkake.

Tangent. okay.

The 12" single I recieved from the pretty lady behind the counter was "In the Morning" one of our favorite little fingersnappin' beats on "So this is Goodbye." An Alex Smoke remix of "In the Morning," the B-side is "The Equalizer", and a remix of "The Equalizer" by Morgan Geist. It was like going to the rich kid's birthday party and getting the goody bag with tiger electronics and andes chocolates instead of plastic clown heads and loose Mike N' Ikes thrown in all higgledy piggledy.

I, of course, have no end of praise for the new Junior Boys album. It might not be as interesting as the last one, but there sure as hell are a lot more tracks I don't have to sit and wince through. "In the Morning" is a classic with its descending pinpricks in quintuplets being thrown off kilter with a 4/4 beat, fuckin hott. and "The Equalizer" second track on the new album, Bootyliciouser than anything off of their last album (I mean, come on, dancing to "High Come Down" would look like a cat trying to jerk its way out of a coke machine).

The remixes on the two songs are growing on me. Alex Smoke's rethinking of "In the Morning" is a lot more subdued than the original. Mostly constructed of beats, the song takes my favorite hooks (ie. the hacksaw bass and the descending pinpricks) and softens them into a scavenger hunt for similarities. I didnt like that at first. I was expecting a bigger, more booming remix; this sounds like the original song heard from the bathroom in a club. Its subtleties won me over though; I was just looking at it from the wrong angle.

The Morgan Geist remix of "The Equalizer" I like a bit less, simply because it reinvents the melody into something a little less catchy and a lot more note-octave, note-octave, note-octave. Its the oldest trick in the electrobook and the same one that The Faint has made a career out of. Also this: the "you'll never feel so sure again" sped up like a squirrel, or (the obvious simile) a chipmunk, is rediculousy. I don't hate this remix; the toothbrushing-in-a-can sound at the end is pretty sweet. Its passable but lags behind the other remix by quite a bit.

There aren't any MUST HAVE remixes on here. Stick to the album, the single is a rental.