I could watch this all day long.  Is there anything actually like this on the BET?  Because if there were, then I would watch the BET.  I would watch it all day long.

Butch Walker, "You Belong with Me"

As if Taylor Swift's own ascension to the center of mass market consciousness hadn't fucked with this song's insider-outsider legitimacy enough, Butch Walker -- who has produced work for Avril Lavigne, Pink, Katy Perry, Fall Out Boy, Weezer, list go onnnn -- grabs the pom-poms and shoves the bleacher brats outta the auditorium.

Walker (myspace) -- who once had a band with its own hit song -- has always cast himself as the victim, and inasmuch as he's not a label executive he's right.  If he needs to shoulder a chip to keep himself from complacency (and "Freak of the Week" has that "tell me I sold out" dare for a bridge) that's fine, but as conflict it's bluster.  Bleacher-boy would at best be armed with a copy of ProTools and a Casio; Butch has a full home studio and a dozen instruments and  documentary footage.  He's about as safe as Taylor Swift's Fearless, we all want what we can't have, they belong together.  (Swift may be more modest about her outsider role, or might be less modest in general; she plays both cheer cpt. and band geek in her song's video.)

Bleacher-boy would probably also choose something more obscure to cover, just like Bleacher-Girl would be dancing around her room to something other than Taylor Swift.  For a self-styled rebel, Walker is relentlessly mainstream.  "You Belong to Me" belongs in his repertoire as another regular grab at pop culture.

And none of that's meant as criticism.  I've no doubt Walker goes after songs he likes.  He likes pop songs.  He also wants to be inclusive, he wants people to sing along.  A glut of product seems to have made the circle of Songs We All Know smaller and he's trying to hold center.  The classics he's included in his live show have been conservative -- Queen, "Born to Run," a post-Almost Famous stab at "Candle in the Wind" -- but he doesn't have to stray too far before he loses some of the room.  When he was signing copies of his excellent glam retread, The Rise and Fall of Butch Walker and the Let's-Go-Out-Tonites, he agreed with me that most of the kids in the room probably had no idea who Marc Bolan was.  The chorus for one of the cuts from his Marvelous 3 days, "Cigarette Lighter Love Song," was pretty much swiped wholesale from Bowie/Mott the Hoople's "All the Young Dudes;"  when he reverted to the original during a concert I attended, some of the fans around me were confused by the homage.  "He's getting the words wrong," one said.  "All the Young Dudes!"  Crazy.  So forgive him for not wanting to wow folks with obscure b-sides.

Walker's "Belong" starts at 2:47 in the video at the top, but the set-up makes more claim to the lyrics than the original video's by-the-numbers interpretation.  The construction of this track is depicted as a solitary obsession, not a team sport.  He mocks himself for his lyrical gender-swap (leaving "high heels" is odd, though, and maybe mean).  The final product -- there's some irony that it's more stripped-down and acoustic than Swift's "country" single -- feels, like Walker's best work usually does, both tossed-off and exact.  Finger snaps, hand claps, of course.  By the end it is, like the original, irresistible.  You can buy the MP3 at Amazon or on iTunes and, fuck me, I did.

Gene Watson - Still They Call Me Love (mp3)(buy)

"The truth," Gene Watson (myspace) sings on the title track of his latest record, "don't satisfy me like I thought it would."  This is country music, so he elaborates upon a metaphor until it's overstuffed:  "In fact, it leaves me hollow, with a bad taste in my mouth, it's hard for me to swallow, tears won't wash it down."  Happy Thanksgiving.

A Taste of the Truth turns out to be, by design or happenstance, a testament to the power of denial and a celebration of country music's role in serving that power.  In "It's My Lie," the narrator sacrifices his f in favor of a radical reinterpretation of evidence his spouse has left him; "in this empty house tonight, there ain't no room for the truth."  He'll hide out in old songs - "Three Minutes at a Time" ("I drop a quarter in the jukebox and for a while you're still mine," "It's heartache in rhyme, but it helps me hang on") - and crave new ways to live in the past ("'Til a Better Memory Comes Along").  It's his duty to keep miserable:  "Staying Together" is a duet celebrating a commitment to loveless marriage; in "We've Got a Pulse," a rousing country-ain't-dead anthem, Watson declares that "Just as long as I'm alive, there'll be songs about grieving."

The album's unassuming presence and direct delivery make Truth hurt.  Watson's got guest stars -- Alison Krauss, Trace Adkins, Rhonda Vincent -- but nothing to distract from his own earnestness.  The production can sound rinky-dink or cornball ("Pulse" pauses for a heartbeat sound effect), the CD cover almost screams "Not Available in Stores" (it is available in stores), and that almost helps.  There's just enough self-awareness to make the self-delusion devastating; wrapping the record on "I Know an Ending" both seems simple logic and a way out of the escapism.

"Still They Call Me Love" -- recorded previously, just last year, by Ken Mellons -- is surface-silly.  Love, the emotion, is sucking up adulation and chiding its victims.  Shove that aside and see it instead, in its place here, as country's "I Write the Songs."  "I make people... cry like little babies, I just watch and smile, I make 'em all unhappy, still they can't get enough.  You'd think that they would hate me, but..."

You can stream the full album here, buy it here.

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Surprise, rare Magneta Lane tour!  They (well, 2/3rds of them, plus guest bassist) have been added to Sloan's upcoming dates in the Northeast and Midwest US and Western Canada.  They'll be at Maxwell's in Hoboken on November 30th (tix) and Brooklyn's Bell House December 4th (tix).  Other dates are on their myspace. 

You still can't buy the band's very good new record from their label -- hopefully they will have piles of copies in the merch booth.  Go there and get yourself one and make yourself happy.

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Fela! is now on Broadway, and even though Broadway is usually only for tourists and old people, too many people are saying too many good things about this one for you to wait until you age or move away.  Antibalas has released a coupon code so that you don't have to wait until you're wealthy, either.

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James Brown, Live in Kinshasa, 1974.  Merle Haggard & The Strangers, Live at Opryland, 1981.

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Sticky .

Friday!  Quick-hit thoughts of the week!  QUICK-HIT THOUGHTS OF THE WEEK!

1.  Whatever Brains - Gross Urge (mp3)(buy)

BAM!  Whatever Brains (myspace) is a Raleigh, North Carolina band called WHATEVER BRAINS.  That automatically qualifies them to be AWESOME, but this song - along with a lot of the rest of their Trim-Jeans and/or Gross Urge Plus Ten CD-R  - qualifies them to be DOUBLE AWESOME.  I'm more comfortable thinking of them as traditional lo-fi punk than as part of the current reverbed-up shit-fi tsunami, but I'm probably just fooling myself there.  The song below, which comes in at a blessed sixty-one seconds, might sound a whole lot like a song I've already forgotten from The Intelligence (whom I prefer to think of as art-punks than as part of the current reverbed-up shit-fi tsunami, but I'm probably just fooling myself there).  But that song probably sounded like a billion awesome others, anyway.  PILE IT THE FUCK ON.

Whatever Brains - Village Sewer (mp3)(buy)

A slowed version of "Village Sewer" at the end of the CD-R -- which you can (and should) order for four dollars American I kid you not by Paypalling the band through their myspace -- clarifies that the sewer is overflowing "with love and caring and friendship."  I think.  Their Neutral Milk Hotel cover is awesome, their Double Negative cover is awesome, their Donovan cover is acceptable.

I should probably mention that I first saw the name WHATEVER BRAINS over at Pop Jew.  Because I did!

2.  The Intelligence - The World is a Drag (mp3)(buy)

Which isn't to say The Intelligence (myspace) should be forgotten or anything.  When I caught them at the In the Red CMJ showcase a couple years ago they suffered from a serious case of flop sweat, but I'm told they have gotten better since.  I still like their third record, Deuteronomy, best -- though it's been hard to keep up with the onslaught of material.  They're not as bad as far as that stuff goes as Thee Oh Sees, but I really wish bands would refrain from releasing every single thing they've recorded.  Count slowly to five before you press a 7" and maybe the urge will go away.  As a consumer and fan, sometimes it's better just to step back from the mound of releases and wait for the good stuff to cry out for attention.  DON'T PILE IT THE FUCK ON.

3.  What is Gwen Stefani doing to these dogs?!  I pay my Science Taxes and expect them to go towards protecting me from things like this.  Awoooooooo!  Also:  Awwwwwwwwww.

4.  Rebecca Brey is the best thing to happen to sports since steroids.  <3 x 1000.

THEY ARE ALL THAT GOOD.  Some of them are EVEN BETTER.

5.  Don't mess with the keytar. (via)

Everything that was ever right with rock music and everything that was ever wrong with rock music, right there.  Shock and awe motherfuckers shock and awe.

6. One minute three seconds.

 

7.  Reviews!  Reviews!

"[Precious]is a Takashi Miike film for the Oprah Winfrey crowd... twisting human suffering into a game of unblinking one-upsmanship, feeding upon the stunned gasps of audiences: not enough that her mother just berated her and threw a heavy object at Precious' head? What if we make her fall down the stairs... while holding a newborn infant... then drop a television on their heads from above?" (via)

'Davies is at heart a miniaturist, a sensibility that the choir often blunts. In the case of "Autumn Almanac" and the suite of songs from "Village Green Preservation Society," the songs were flattened out by the choir, losing their delicacy. And too many times, the effect was like the episode of "The Simpsons" where Bart replaced the hymnal with Iron Butterfly's "In A Gadda Da Vida," only without the wit.'

"i am sorry to disagree with you but i believe that your rating was way off. yes i am a big fan of the twilight saga but if you read the books and really read the books and tried to understand Bella and her love for Edward the movie would have made more sense. if anything the movie should have gotten four stars. no i have not seen it yet but when you think about it why would all these people that show up for this movie show up if they didn't see something in the twilight Saga that others didn't ."

8.  I think this record has held up remarkably well.  I'm remarking!

9.  It's hard to gauge just how creepy this is because I can't get past the Gandhi t-shirt:

10.  I do not understand how Taylor Swift has a deal to write greeting cards and Edith Zimmerman does not.

11.  This:

"One thing that has happened is that an Elvis impersonator has started working out at my gym. He sets the elliptical machine to zero resistance and receives phone calls and has conversations. It turns out he is trying to get in shape for an upcoming 50s Elvis appearance. Now, when I go to the gym and he's not there, I will maybe unenthusiastically jog on the treadmill for a few minutes and maybe go back home. Sometimes he smells like beer. I thought for a second that I was the one who smelled like beer, but I'm pretty sure it was him."

12.  "Shipley recalls how it took several years to win over Ed McCoy of the Big Mack label (another Eccentric Soul release). "That wasn't even to do with his 1960s experiences, it's from British soul collectors coming over in the 1980s and buying up records for $5, and then he finds out later they're being sold for a thousand bucks each. At the same time, when you're negotiating with these guys, you have to scale back their expectations. We never over-promise, we're always clear that a Cadillac isn't in their future. But McCoy is always seeing his music appear on TV these days. Thirty per cent of our business is licensing things on TV shows or in advertising."

and

'"Soul culture was like the DIY scene in indie rock today." Every region of the US had about 100 independent labels doing soul and R&B during the 1950s and 1960s, he says. Many would have liked to get on to the national stage but were either too regional or too ethical (they wouldn't do payola to get on to the radio). All this musical overproduction is a boon for reissue labels.'"

So very sorry that I decided I have to stop going to shows right before the Numero Group Soul Revue at the Music Hall of Williamsburg.  Oh, well!

13.  My support system would BLOW YOU AWAY.

14.  Look, it's a shame Conan does not have the easy charm of a Craig Ferguson or the easy awfulness of a Jay Leno.  There are a billion mitigating factors - NBC is in free fall, the network has devalued its late night schedule by diluting it, and Letterman's "scandal" (remember that?) scored his Late Show a rating higher than anything NBC had in prime time - but O'Brien's lost FORTY-SEVEN PERCENT of the audience Leno carried in that same time slot.  I feel bad for the guy, but it might be time to make him the first-ever fired Tonight Show host.  The desperation he tries to project as part of his shtick has been revealed as a sad fact and that's an uncomfortable thing to watch.

(via)

So.  That's what the Blood Simple remake from Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) is going to look like.

Needs more M. Emmet Walsh.

Also, I do not think there's any possible way the "real" Contra could top this "fake" Contra mixtape thing.

It's disconcerting how seamlessly the new single from Tokyo Jihen, "Noudouteki Sanpunkan," subverts its electro-funk opening with smoov jazz.  Shiina Ringo will always be the coolest person in any room, and we don't need to watch her rotate through her bandmates as proof; these Jihen songs pare down her personality to the point where she's almost uninteresting.  (But then I'm one of the three people who still keeps Superficial Gossip in regular rotation.)

There are nice things going on.  It is catchy.  The "raise the dead on your turntable" line evokes both passed rock stars and past relationships.  It's a cooking song cutely timed to perfectly prepare your Ramen.  But ultimately it feels like nothing more than music to cook noodles to, gets limp as it goes along.  The video adds another level of ugh with the ham-fisted Michael Jackson homage -- this song's already a chewing gum jingle (via), and the move is there, too.  In all, a song I'd probably rather hear Maxwell sing.  He'd keep the water boiling longer, sure, but everything would still stick to the wall.

11:35 - Oh hey look it's that woman from The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.  Kidding!  Never a good sign when the monologue is devoted to establishing Who This Person Is.  JJ looks eager to break up.  Mad Men jokes include mentions of cigarettes... and drinking!  The Black Eyed Peas are here!  The Black Eyed Peas are everywhere!  God is punishing us.

11:41 - Oh hey look it's Kristen Wiig as Kathie Lee Gifford!

11:42 - *click*

Wipers - Up Front (mp3)(buy)

For the last week I've been trying to sit down and write up a Very Best/Sleigh Bells concert.  But I've been unable to get past how miserable the show made me.  This had nothing to do with the performers, everything to do with the now-standard legion of photographers that were trying either to erect a shield of light between the crowd and the stage or inspire a series of epileptic attacks.

I've had enough of that.

Years -- years! -- ago, this page mostly consisted of concert coverage.  Going to shows was a good deal of what I did with my spare time.  Four or five nights a week, sometimes multiple shows a night, and a representative fraction of what I saw out there made it on here.  There are a lot of reasons that stopped, not all of them matters of choice.  Time, money, travel, and health concerns.  My natural laziness.  The recognition of diminishing returns.

But there was one particularly discouraging night in Union Hall's homey basement, during one of Laura Marling's early rounds of NYC shows.  Marling's a British folk singer with all the stage presence of a rotting eggplant, so it was quiet, stiff stuff; the audience was hushed and respectful.  And the entirety of the performance was overwhelmed by FLASH FLA-FLASH FLASHFLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH.  A lot of this came from one photographer, someone who might have even been with Marling's label.  When she stopped -- I tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to, nicely -- someone else started.  The only impression I left with that night were the little green dots that had been stabbed into my eyeballs.

I wondered then as now:  Why bother buying tickets to concerts if the press and pseudo-press presence is just going to make me miserable?

This is no new concern.  Others have mentioned it before, I've mentioned it before.  Nonsense has been going on as long as the technology has existed.  Please enjoy this screen shot...

...from the Dead Boys: Live at CBGB 1977 video.

It only makes sense that, in an age of Cameras Everywhere, behavioral norms err from paralyzing self-awareness toward self-parody.  We're all stars of our own reality television program.  So you have idiots elbowing out space in crowded rooms and posing and taking, then checking and re-taking, then re-checking and re-re-taking, pictures of themselves so that everyone following them on the social network of their choice -- their audience, at their show -- can see where they are and how much fun they are having.  (Twitpic is too aptly named.)  The enjoyment of live music has bonded at a molecular level with the documentation of the performance to the extent that it's okay for the audience to aggressively distract from the stage; the only outrage comes when someone else distracts you from your documentation of that same event - when they get in your shot.  For an extra five dollars, Ticketmaster will swap the band's name on the ticket for your own, that day is coming, you betcha.

There's no reason bands should discourage this; their priority should be promotion, not performance.  No one knows how musicians are supposed to earn a living any more, everything's a loss leader.  They don't sell records, we're told.  (I buy records.)  Most small bands, we're told, only break even or lose money on the road, so in the end what they want to do (other than, hopefully, get better at being bands) is get their name out as much as possible.  So that maybe one day they can be one of the dozen or so acts that makes so much money at their concerts that everyone resents their wealth.  The only reward beyond obligatory audience applause (and those people are only enthusiastic because they're justifying their own presence, the band's only great because the audience has chosen to be there) and a job well done (oh YAWN) is every Googleable mention they can muster.  A photo is a scrap of text is an mp3.  It's all advertising.  Who knows how customers will find you?  A band has to be YouTubed and Flickrd and blogged and Dugg and StumbledUpon, must maintain an active presence across every social network platform.  A band should friend you on Facebook and follow you on Twitter in the hopes that, when you take pictures of yourself at their shows, you're generous enough to let them share the frame with you.

Bands:  Tried/true way to amass mentions and ensure the best (though quality is a questionable variable, these days, quantity is the priority) pictures of your act is to load the guest list with all willing press and "press" and pros.  Nothing sucks the fun out of a room better than a waft of workplace stink, but this is your job, too!  The dupes who actually paid to get in surely won't mind being pushed farther from the stage and herded away from roped-off Very Important Freeloader sections.

For list-ordained photographers, a concert presents an opportunity to annoy the fuck out of a band's fans while creating product for self-promotion.  They may or may not be getting paid, but photographers will be building a portfolio and driving traffic to their site just as soon as they can slap their bug on a pic and get it online.  These photos of the band aren't for the band - though maybe if the subject requests permission they could use it.  These photos are Copyrighted and Do Not Post on Your Blog!-ed to imply that they're not endlessly and easily copied (which they are) or inherently redundant (because everyone is a photographer now).  And because these folks are there purely to shoot the concert, they will shoot without rest, they will shoot and shoot and shoot.  Some venues or bands will only let them shoot for the first three songs; at the Very Best/Sleigh Bells show, that means the photographers would have ruined only half of each band's set.  Luckily, there was no kind of enforcement, and the photographers got to ruin the whole of each band's set.

Still!  More people are likely to see their product than can fit in some shitty basement.  And, because concertgoers were blinded by a flash at the time, the only way they'll be able to see what was happening in front of them is by checking the photoset afterward.  Without the shutterbugs how would you ever know what a band looked like from that close up?  Other than to sack the photo pit and allow fans up there.

But then those fans would probably just take shitty cell phone pics anyway.  Someone's always going to be the worst person in the room.

And if you are taking flash photographs in a darkened concert hall, you -- barring the presence of rapists, child molesters, or a representative from FOX News -- are the worst person in the room.

*

(Practical plea:  Do you have one of those attachable flashes that rises up from the body of a camera, is topped by a diffusion box?  Either cover the back and sides of the box with gaffer tape or build a hood out of blackwrap or duvateen.  Those flashes are the worst of the worst, they send the light shooting backwards and upwards, I hate you.)

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I have been the worst person in the room!

Years! ago I took my camera to shows and I took pictures there.  I enjoyed doing so very much!  Very occasionally I took flash photos.  Sometimes more than occasionally.  That crummy snap at the top of the page is one of mine, and it wound up on the band's site.  You're welcome, band.  That Arctic Monkeys show Lindsay called out?  I was part of the problem!  I rubbed out a quick one in the back.  This was when affordable cameras didn't get past ISO400, but that's no excuse.  I never felt less than self-conscious about it, and pretty soon I realized I felt self-conscious about it because I was doing something wrong.

I restricted the photo-taking to outdoor events where there'd be enough light, figuring that other people could take the indoor stuff, or not, it really didn't matter.  Newer camera models appeared with like ISOinfinity, good on us, flash pictures could stop happening.  Only they have not.

There have been times that, after reaching over rows of people who've spent a show shielding their eyes and complaining, I've asked photographers, please, stop with the flash.  Some do, some nod and then don't, some go home and blog about me being "condo-fied" and an "idiot."  (We met and laughed about that later.)  But more and more it seems like behavior that's beyond correcting.  Once people start peeing in the well, it's easier to call it a toilet than to clean the thing out.

Look:  All these worst people are not evil.  If I seemed cynical up there it's because that's the way suffering through these shows makes me feel.  A lot of these picture-takers are real fans, a lot of them do fine work.  That doesn't mean that all the inconsiderate moments don't pile up.

And I realize that there are choices for me in the matter that aren't all/nothing.  Crawl to the chatter-filled back of the room, climb to the detached distance of a balcony.  Sick of watching the show via the LCD screen on the camera that's been hoisted into your view by the dude in front of you?  Retreat to a larger, more impersonal venue where you can watch everything on giant video monitors.

It's not like I was looking to give up and get away, go hide in my headphones.  Even with all the blah bands making meh music, I still think something holy can happen when someone gets on a stage and picks up an instrument.  That's where music happens, for me.  You need to be able to look a band in its eyes to cut through the bullshit.  I love the people in the crowd who are touched, who lose themselves and caterwaul along and force their bodies beyond composure.  Love that.  In the past, when people have told me they stayed away from live shows because of all the annoying cameras, I've been incredulous. But now I'm giving up, too.

Picture-taking has also become a way to interact with music.  I get that, I understand that.  I just can't stand it.  Every time someone holds their camera over their head, it's a reminder of how gadgetry has won out over music; excusing the act by noting that it's good exposure for a band just reinforces the unpleasant notion that we're all just part of someone's PR process.  I'd much rather walk out after a show slippery with others' sweat or caked in layers of nicotine or with someone else's vomit running down my pant leg than how I left this show:  Seeing spots, my memory consumed by images of digital recording devices.

I had tickets to two concerts, two days later.  Girls and Real Estate at Bowery, Freelance Whales at Pianos.  Blew them off.  Wasn't worth it.  I have one more ticket in hand, I mean to use it.  And I'll make exceptions for something necessary.  Local H will come back to town eventually.  But other than that, I'm out.  This way you won't have to worry about torturing my delicate eyeballs and I won't have to waste half a show fantasizing about destroying your equipment.  It's no big deal, in truth I walked away a long time ago.  It's just weird to hear myself saying it out loud.

*

"Seriously, will somebody tell me what people expected other than 158 minutes of apocalypse BUKKAKE? Roland Emmerich knows how to destroy himself some world and sure it isn't so much a story but a sprayfest of rapid-fire money shots but what else would it be? And what else would make it THIS AWESOME? It's like the movie has ultra-oxygenated blood and sleeps upside down in a hyperbaric chamber and eats tiger penis like it's its job because it has psycho endurance that feels GREAT in your brain."
I printed out fifteen copies of this review and ate them and waited and waited and shat them out and rubbed them all over myself because it was just that good.

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David Byrne likes adverbs.  (via)

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"To mention something that you know is untrue in order to stimulate conversation is an act of patriotism."

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"The only good use for this disc would be to use it to dig a hole for its own grave. I've seen more 'natural terror' in a bottle of bad milk. Better acting too."

*

The naughty boys come home from their crazy adventures and find that their mommies still love them. (That's a plot summary of "The Hangover," by the way, not of "Where the Wild Things Are.")

*

Performances are characterized by a certain nostalgic stiffness, resembling those of the TV shows ("What's Happening!!", "Alice") seen in the background, that keeps the viewer at a distance. Langella's Steward particularly feels like the product of another era, and his diabolical wizard is far from terrifying, especially when he starts quoting Sartre.

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*

"Does this mean that in 10 years, Cobra Starship is going to record an earnest cover of "Dick in a Box"?"