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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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

11:42 - *click*

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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.

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(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.

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"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."

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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.")

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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"?"

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 New from Analog Africa!  Remember The Vodoun Effect?  Here's Echos Hypnotiques. (Stream samples here.)

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...with the snickering aside, "Well I guess everyone doesn't love a log."

But very quickly nothing was funny at all ever again.

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Answer:  No, Barack Obama is not a hope-peddling reptilian terrorist hiding under cloned human flesh and he does not plan to savagely destroy our good American ways of life.

But it's cool to see that the Visitors have brought with them awesome new big-screen TV technology.  How much for underside-of-the-mothership ad space?

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(photo by Nick McGlynn, more here)

What's awesome about the St. Louis Rams' first win of the 2009-2010 season -- their first win of all of 2009, for that matter, and their sixth win in their last thirty-four games -- is that it exhibited zero evidence of progress.  This wasn't any kind of turning point.  The players won't be able to shake the goat off their collective backs and win out the rest of the way.  We beat the Detroit Lions, and barely.  We only scored the go-ahead TD in the final minutes because of a questionable interference call against Detroit; they wouldn't have been tied with us before that if one of our own players, after having intercepted the Lions deep in our territory, hadn't run backwards into our own end zone and gotten tackled there.

Our first touchdown was scored on a pass from our kicker on a faked field goal attempt; the coach rewarded him by LETTING HIM PLAY THE WHOLE NEXT SERIES AT QUARTERBACK.  IN A CLOSE GAME.  (The second thing was apparently not true!  It was a play-by-play and box score error replicated in a couple different places.  Totally believable as Marc Bulger was every bit as effective as a place kicker on that series.)

This is not a good team, and I had to laugh when the St. Louis Post-Dispatch suggested that the Rams' 0-7 record had anything to do with the schedule.  Games on the road versus teams coming off bye weeks aren't allowed to be factors when your team is losing by an average of ten billion points each week.  We have loused opportunities against bad teams (Redskins, Jaguars).  The first commenter on that article very rightly pointed out that "As long as the Rams' schedule includes another NFL team, it has been a schedule that has been 'against the Rams.'"  This is a very bad team that just happened to barely beat another very bad team.  A commenter from Detroit, where I assume the game failed to sell out, said on NFL's Game Center, "I wish this game was blacked out on the radio also."

We had to have this one.  Not because it was an easy way to start a winning streak; it was practically our only opportunity to grab air from a sea of failures.  Following our bye week we get New Orleans; we will play Arizona twice.  Middling teams like Houston, Chicago, and San Francisco are insurmountable opponents for us.  Woeful Seattle already beat us by 28 points.  I have to think Fisher will have found something right with the Titans by the time we play them.

So even though it doesn't feel good in any way, I'm going to celebrate this lone win.  It's always good to be reminded that, on any given Sunday against any one of a very select batch of loser opponents, even the worst teams get the opportunity to feel like someone else sucks more than they do.

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I was about to post a word of warning, but by now you the drill... the pneumatic drill fast approaching your temple OH NO LOOK OUT thwokthududud schlup snap squishsquishsquish gurgle, gurgle.

End of October, another Nobel Prize-winning Halloween mix.

Play this one in public and people may worry about you.  (I'm fine, by the way, thanks.)  Sure, there's the mandatory psychobilly, some scattered novelty tunes, a few big names.  No thrash, to trash.  A happy ending!  But it's possible the people you know might want that one Sufjan Stevens song with "Zombie" in its title, or something from the New Moon soundtrack, and what you've got here is bands called "Tentacle Lizardo" and "Tractor Sex Fatality."

You just need to know better people.

Thing starts off pretty mad. 

Halloween was built for people you don't recognize, but as Lux left us this past year it only felt right to bring in The Cramps .  Other everyday people:  The Dolls bring the classic freak anthem from Norton's release of their 1973 demos;  The Fleshtones, straight outta Queens; both Screamin' Jay Hawkins and a cover of his anthem (Angola's Os Rocks somehow won a place over Arthur Brown and Diamanda Galas).

The Shrag song is great throwback UK femme punk, X-Ray Spex and all that, but it's sold as horror; they're followed by Mrs. Roman Polanski, who seemed an appropriate addition this year.  I don't regret the dip into sex and pregnancy, but do apologize for Lenny & Squiggy's sexist remarks.  Just because the 70's-pretending-to-be-the-60's was a different era don't make it right.

It's Halloween, but it's also Thanksgiving:  Due to technological frakkery, I abandoned plans to lace the list with fearmongering interjection from ultra-liberal performance artist Glenn Beck.  Without him, The Strange Boys' "They're Building the Death Camps" and Chris Jensen's "Torture" just didn't make sense.  We'll settle for having Beck as our MS Paint posterboy, this year, duded up as a Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell server.  (Don't these people look way too happy?  The economy's bad and all, but that's the sort of glee you get when someone's pointing a rifle at you off-camera.)

Download full mix:  Part One - Part Two.

Individual Tracks:

1. Lum Hatcher - Behind the Fear (mp3)(buy)
2. Los Saicos - El Entierro de los Gatos (mp3)(from Wild Teen Punk from Peru)
3. Tentacle Lizardo - Haunted Closet (mp3)(buy)(myspace)
4. Lost Kids - Watch Out for Spiders (mp3)(buy)
5. Tractor Sex Fatality - Judas Order (Blowtops Cover)(mp3)(buy)(myspace)
6. Necessary Evils - Hale Bopp (mp3)(buy)(label)
7. Screamin' Jay Hawkins - I Hear Voices (mp3)(buy)(fan myspace)
8. The Cramps - Blow up Your Mind (mp3)(buy)(site)
9. The Hunches - Explosion (mp3)(buy)(myspace)
10. Lenny and the Squigtones - Creature Without a Head (mp3)(from Lenny & The Squigtones Present Lenny and the Squigtones)
11. Killbillies - Zombie Love (mp3)(buy)
12. Kip Tyler - She's My Witch (mp3)(buy)
13. Os Rocks - I Put a Spell on You (mp3)(buy)
14. Spellbound - (You're the Devil in Disguise)(Elvis Presley Cover)(mp3)(buy)(myspace)
15. Elsa Cross - Zombie for His Love (mp3)(buy) (site-myspace)
16. Haunted George - Moaning Behind the Door (edit)(mp3)(buy)(myspace)
17. Nat Dove & The Devils - Zombie March (mp3)(buy)
18. The Horrors - Sheena is a Parasite (mp3)(buy)(site-myspace)
19. Shrag - Pregnancy Scene (mp3)(buy)(myspace)
20. Ultra Orange & Emmanuelle - Rosemary's Lullaby (mp3)(buy)
21. Janelle Monae - Come Alive (The War of the Roses) (mp3)(via)(site-myspace)
22. Lord Luther - Teenage Creature (mp3)(buy)
23. New York Dolls - Frankenstein (Demo) (mp3)(buy)(site-myspace)
24. Hollywood Flames - Frankenstein's Den (mp3)(buy)(myspace)
25. The Fleshtones - Dance with the Ghoulman (mp3)(buy)(site-myspace)
26. Remires! - Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (Sonics Cover)(mp3)

Looking for different shades of weird?  Sound Bites went Nouveau Goth; Gorilla v. Bear got creepy.

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You know who's in the area?  Well, sure, Future of the Left (myspace).  And you should see Future of the Left.  But!  Also:

Where's their goddamned Rock Band?

That's right, Wisconsin's Zombeatles are doing seasonal stops with their alter-egos The Gomers (myspace) at Asbury Lanes in Asbury Park tonight, and someplace called "Bordentown, New Jersey" on Saturday.  It's like Weird Al if Weird Al only did Beatles songs and cannibalism puns and played bowling alleys that aren't in New York City.

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"When I roll out of bed in the morning, my floor screams 'Oh no!' while my bed yells, 'Thank God!' My suits are made from discarded tarps used to keep baseball fields dry during rainouts. Sweet mother of Christ, I am a fat fuck."

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"If I can't look back at my career and course-correct, I am an idiot. I don't have to make s---, but I also don't want to lose people millions of dollars."

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Harlan Ellison to finally get his Christmas ornament residuals.

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1.  Dread the conclusion from the outset.  You know at least one person will die at the end.  Could be the matter of putting a period on an extended sentence of suffering which a character or a people or you, the viewer, has gone through.  Could be a totally random death thrown in to underline how "profound" this film thinks it has been, or how much Film is like Life, or how much Film is a construct, or how hard-up for a thoughtful, original ending the filmmaker was.

2.  Look forward to the ending, because someone French is going to die.

(Apologies if you happen to be French.  But I've seen two movies that have wrapped with double suicides in the past week.  Also:  Why doesn't Monsieur Hulot ever get hit by a truck, and then hit by another truck, and then have a giant FIN dropped on to his skull?  Comedy = Tragedy + Dead French Guy, that's what I always say.)

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Frankie Rose - Where Do You Run To (Demo)(buy)

This has nothing to do with that, obviously, but good gosh yikes is it pretty.  This is the demo Frankie Rose (myspace) -- formerly of Vivian Girls, formerly of Crystal Stilts, currently of her own self and maybe sort-of of The Dum Dum Girls -- recorded of the best song on the VG's debut record.  Both this and the lovely b-side to Rose's new single make clear how unnecessary the rudimentary surf chug piled on top of too much of this stuff can be.  Tide poolls, not wavves.

This track was included with much other goodness on the CD that accompanied Volume Six of YETI magazine.

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And the viola player was laughing.

I might be might be depriving myself of the opportunity to glutton away at C'fuckMJ, this year -- every band gets its 15 tweets of fame -- but I wasn't going to miss the musical highlight of the week:  The broadcast of Gustavo Dudamel's inaugural appearance as the conductor and musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  Even though It's been a long while since I've paid serious attention to classical music, the noise around the 28-year-old Venezuelan phenom has been unavoidable.  His youth and enthusiasm, his New World origins, and his commitment to education have drawn obvious comparisons to Leonard Bernstein.  (To play catch-up, try this New York Times Magazine profile or this breezy 60 Minutes piece.)

This program opened with the premiere of a John Adams piece inspired by film noir (nicely rhythmic, rewarding in parts, limp through others), was headlined by Mahler's First.

Dudamel first gained international notice by winning a Mahler conducting competition, and while the world may not be clamoring for more takes on Mahler's symphonies -- especially the relatively short, audience-friendly First -- they can provide an interesting tool to gauge an orchestra leader's personality and ability.  Because the composer aspired to capture the whole of the universe in his works -- it suddenly occurs to me that Shiina Ringo's Karuki Zamen kuri no Hana has more than a little in common with Mahler's symphonies -- they are packed with details and given to sprawl.  It becomes a matter of which trees you highlight to signify the forest.

Klaus Tennstedt and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra - Mahler Symphony No. 1 in D Minor, First Movement (mp3)(buy)

Mahler enthusiasts are only slightly less annoying than fantasy sports fanatics.  Whole collections amassed around a very finite number of compositions provide endless, irreconcilable arguments.  (I own six versions of the Ninth on disc after having heard many more than that; (1) I am hardly in the league of the real enthusiasts (2) it is not my favorite symphony.)  It gets properly personal.

My horse in the race is one of the slowest.  East German Klaus Tennstedt often conducted a weak orchestra, the London Philharmonic, but he always managed to put everything right where it belonged in an inspired, cohesive way.  As he got older, his running times stretched -- this live version from 1990 lasts six minutes longer than his 1978 studio recording -- and some listeners find that dull and unnecessary.  These things are long enough as is!  But I find a contemplative intensity to them absent in more excited interpretations.  Tennstedt was sickly for a lot of the latter part of his life, and confronting the death-obsessed Mahler from the downside of health brought perspective.  Moments are savored.

This live recording, my #1 #1 (apparently now out-of-print on CD, available on DVD), also gives Tennstedt a better set of performers.  Those Chicago horns were spectacular, and through this first movement they're by turns regal, chipper, cruel, heavenly.   (I've always found the Mahler of the CSO's resident director, Sir Georg Solti, to be blunt and uninteresting.)

(Tennstedt's studio recordings of Mahler's complete symphonies are available in an 11-CD box set for a pretty amazing price.)

So how'd the kid do?

If not revelatory, Dudamel's First was very convincing.  It came out of the gate very flat.  The first movement managed to seem stiff without evoking the opening's rising-dew sluggishness.  The woodwind bird calls felt awkward and isolated.  It came together by the end, goosed by a few swells, but didn't seem to have anything to say.

The second movement changed everything.  Dudamel started it with a very pronounced tempo, as if the lower strings were dragging a heavy undercarriage.  As the upper strings and woodwinds joined, he'd allow the piece to accumulate a natural momentum; but every time the music returned to the lower strings' procession, Dudamel brought everything back to zero.  It's very bracing to erase forward progress like that; it took what's often a simple repetition in the score and imbued it with struggle.  It's a section of the symphony that can very easily fly off and be no more than pleasant.  By holding pauses and letting the momentum fall as instruments dropped out, it almost became an ode to wholeness.  When the orchestration is full, it's playtime.  Extremely impressive.

The third movement is a funeral march built on a minor chord variation of "Frere Jacques;" it's interrupted by outbursts of folk music.  The two parts can be played to co-mingle, so that one rises out of the other.  Dudamel emphasized the steadiness and solemnity of the former by putting his spirit into the latter.  He pursed his lips and rose up and came this close to doing a jig at the head of his orchestra.

While conducting, Dudamel seems less a method actor than a grown-up making faces at children in an effort to get them to react.  Through the ticktockier portions of the Adams piece, he tightened his joints and almost popped into The Robot.  But one of the great things about this kid is that, for all the energy and attention, he's not (despite this flash version of Dudamel Orchestra Hero) there to play rock star.  A lot of the last movement of Mahler's First is rock and roll, big whamboombammy stuff, and Dudamel rocked that.  But a lot of that last movement is also the tormented, dreamy syrup the composer dunks you in when you've earned both his worst and best.  And, as he had every element since the end of the first movement, Dudamel navigated his players through that very surely.

He's there to communicate the full joy of this music and seems wholly capable of doing so.  After the conductor flashed one of his peculiar expressions, the camera showed one of his viola players laughing.  I can only imagine he thanked her afterwards and held her up as an example.

In New York, Channel Thirteen is rebroadcasting the concert this Sunday at noon.  For other digital options and local listings, etc., search the schedule here.

Great Performances' site is streaming a small selection of the program, and they're selling a DVD.  Audio of the Mahler performance - not the Adams, unfortunately -- is available exclusively through (ugh) iTunes.

Classical archives is streaming two other Dudamel performances with the LA Philharmonic, Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra and Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique.  PBS is offering two mp3s -- looks like the first movement of Beethoven's 5th and the fucking Nutcracker Suite - of Dudamel conducting his old Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra -- for free.

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"Review (n.): A form of online promotional activity. A portmanteau word, from "reblog" and "page view", coined mid 00s."

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I know this is weeks old and has been everywhere.  But even if you were to consider the entire history of Awesomeness as one single Earth year, this would earn its three-and-a-half minutes.

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"As I did nothing interesting yesterday I may as well tell you what Batman is up to at the moment. Batman is being AWESOME."

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"The first thing you need to know is that the internet is amazing." (via)

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"This marks the biggest collaboration between a vaguely transgressive 90s alt-rock star and a Fox sci-fi show since Shirley Manson played a killer robot on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles."

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"In between assignments, Martha earned WWII pin-up exposure in such magazines as Yank: The Army Weekly."

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Summing up the decade in music with mean, mean goodness:

"Early ’00s: Every boy band success story came with three mongoloid cousins in bleached tips. Creed dug up Kurt Cobain’s Eddie Vedder’s corpse, raped it, and spawned hundreds of hhhuruuurrgging monster babies. Heavy rock music became the macho soundtrack to movie sequels about revving motorcycles (that is, except for “real” rock music like the Vines). The Postal Service invented funk and soul for a generation. People convinced themselves they liked Sigur Ros for maybe a day.  Mid ’00s: Rock radio became a revolving door of sad, old ’90s bands releasing ballads you’ll maybe hear at your cousin’s wedding. Adult males wore eyeliner. Creed broke up, spawning the double-headed flaccid penis hydra of Alter Bridge and Scott Stapp solo records. Coldplay fucking existed. American Idol presented a sad farce of democracy even less convincing then the pathetic show that the American government puts on every four years. Bloggers got a sad, moronic superiority complex and convinced themselves that they ran the music industry—and they broke world-famous bands like Annie and the Octopus Project!  Late ’00s: The music industry and economy turned to dog shit… and then turned into that weird white dog shit. Labels handed out deals to whatever idiot famewhore had the most MySpace friends, and then churned out bloops in hopes that they’d sound good on a cell phone speaker that’s both smaller and worse-sounding than a spider’s balls. Your favorite band reformed as a balder, fatter version of itself, and became your fifth-favorite band. Rappers forgot they had to actually rap on songs. Creed got back together. Indie rock became so successful that Zooey Deschanel somehow found Ben Gibbard anything less than completely repulsive."

(I had trouble pulling quotes from that.  It'd be like drawing a dick on the Mona Lisa.  Click through , okay?)

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Renate Kern und das Orchester Kai Warner - Der Wassermann (mp3)(buy)

Contrived hippie anthems just haven't fulfilled their potential until they've been translated into the language of love and peace.  So let's raise a quick Prost to the compilers of Funky Fräuleins:  Female Beat, Groove, Disco, Funk in Germany 1968-1978 for somehow turning a collection of very wrong-sounding tracks into compulsive listening.

Despite the goodly string of categories in the disc's subtitle, and the stylistic turns the songs take, this is awkward, mock-hip pop.  The very concept of German pop music seems flawed to me.  Every love song must portray either tragedy or a cross-fingered promise to respect your boundaries.  There's nothing light about the language.  The frivolous elements of the traditional culture seem as retarded as shoving your dick in a cuckoo clock.  Speaking of which, have you seen their porn?!  By, like, accident?  There's this confusion between "fun" and "cruelty" that could explain way too much.  If you're as fiercely fond of stereotypes as I, you'll grant the Germans their darkness and their anger and look the other way when things collapse into coy cabaret or fail straight through to camp.  At least the songs will end on time.

(Disclosure:  I am half German, from my father's side.  One of my father's favorite jokes is:  "What's the shortest book in the world?  1,000 Years of German Humor."  I have only been to Germany once.  Out of curiosity, in one restaurant I ordered something called a "sausage salad."  It turned out to be a heap of shaved baloney and onions drizzled with oil.  I have only been to Germany once.)

It's embarrassing to think Hair's "Aquarius" might have ever been considered acceptable music.  (Disclosure:  I am a Pisces)  This overbearing, eager-elbows reading doesn't compound the embarrassment; it exacts vengeance on the original.  "Der Vasserman" sounds more like an illicit interrogator who has ways of making you squawk.  I picture Cheney-as-Burgess Meredith on the old Batman set, standing next to a brightly-colored inclined board.

Compounding the discomfort:  After scoring a handful of low-level pop hits in her native land ("Der Vasserman" was not one of those), Renate Kern remade herself as country singer "Nancy Wood."  Wood would be (with "Peggy Peters") one of two Germans to land on the American country charts ("Imagine That," #79, 1981).  A decade later she would hang herself.

Here she is lip-synching along to her recording of Loretta Lynn's "Lyin' Cheatin' Woman Chasin' Honky Tonkin' Whisky Drinkin' You."  You will watch it and you will enjoy it!

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"We'll eat you up, we love you so!" always had this primal, disturbing power.  Now it's a sniffy toodle-loo.  Boo.

Maybe the opera was better?

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MP3 and vinyl on Tuesday; CD on 11/09.  (myspace)

(Apologies to Jerry.)

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Oh, the new Flaming Lips is *psychedelic.*  While the urge to remake Dark Side of the Moon is understandable, Ummagumma might be more appropriate.

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Oh, Wes Anderson directed his animated film via e-mail, "providing short films of himself enacting certain scenes." "...it's a picture for people who would rather drive a 1953 Jaguar XK 120 than a new one ."  So, oh, fuck you little people stuck on mass transit.

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Oh, witches are *sexy.*

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Paramore, "Ignorance"

People keep trying to tell me this band (myspace) is really something, I keep hearing a lot of not much.

In tiny tuneful snatches, they're fine.  Paramore has a fine sense of melody and a singer with a forceful voice.  Their new record, Brand New Eyes, has a few standout moments.  There's a stunning, slurred run in "All I Wanted" that seams unreal (and who knows, might be).

Most of the time, though, their adherence to genre ensures an unexciting jog in place.  For all the crispness, how dull are those guitar parts?  Even if you're willing to grant the band sarcasm -- and I'm desperate to believe that more than a single thing is ever going on in their music -- how shameful is the audience-baiting in "Where the Lines Overlap:"  "I've got a feeling if I sing this loud enough you would sing it back to me" is a refrain, the stand-out line in its chorus is "No one is as lucky is as us."  When they back off for a ballad, like "The Only Exception," everything still feels presupposed, regulated.  If there's redundant purpose to making the "ba da pa ba da pa pa das" in "Brick By Boring Brick" sound trapped, it feels more typical that pointed.  (The album cover is also a literal depiction of a lyric from that song.)  Whenever the lyrics don't lock-step, Hayley Williams' phrasing gets awkward.  They need the cage.

I'm not saying that Paramore isn't as good as all the male-fronted pop-punk bands out there, but I'm certainly not ready to suck the Kool-Aid out of Williams' hair.  "Ignorance" has good punch, is well placed, and if it weren't made less interesting by the whole rest of their record I'd be willing to force it on more people.  Right now, this is just a genre band, a two-star Western that might never make its way to DVD.

Magneta Lane - Castles (mp3)(buy?)

Lexi Valentine's voice has such singular purity and controlled emotional range that she can get away with seeming several things at once.  She's the sarcastic romantic, she'll dole wizened advice while playing dress-up, she can roll her eyes while still looking straight into yours.  She incessantly appends affectionate terms of direct address (baby, darling, dear...) without giving gauge as to how affectionate or direct she's actually being.  Valentine drops the most leaden la-de-das since Diane Keaton.

I only saw her band, Ontario's Magneta Lane (myspace), once.  This was in April, 2006, an early slot at the Mercury Lounge.  (I think their most recent date here was August of the same year, at the same venue; it's possible their only U.S. shows have been in NYC and SXSW.)  I'd gone in having heard their excellent EP The Constant Lover (if you have twenty minutes and need to feel like all is right with the world, go stream that) and was desperate to walk away proclaiming a new Blondie.  And they were fine, a trio of girls who could've cut third-period algebra to perform.  (Valentine can sound like Debbie Harry, but she looks a little like Maeby from Arrested Development).  "They're like a female Strokes," I said, disappointed.  Someone (Baum, perhaps) said back something like, "That's good enough for me."

It sure is, now.  In 2006, Magneta Lane had followed the wow of that EP with a huh of a record.  Dancing with Daggers contained some good stuff, but made the weird choice to bury the vocals.  It's as if, to emphasize that they were a "rock" band, they had to hide their most distinctive element and become downright regular.  But their new record, released a month ago in Canada, sings.  Most of Gambling with God puts Valentine's sigh/purr back where it belongs, in the middle, wrapped around the hum of their songs.  It's a lovely piece of work.

And it has arrived with almost zero push.  It's unavailable, as of yet, in the States.  But the band's own label still lists Gambling as "coming soon."  The group is not presently touring.  Record's at least on Amazon Canada - but not digitally, and no one seems to have bothered to provide the store with the album's artwork.  The album's spent three years toiling in the promise bin; the fulfillment is there, the delivery practically invisible.

The Shivvers - Please Stand By (mp3)(buy)

Oh, The Shivvers (myspace).  While they're probably best known -- when known at all -- for "Teenline," it's this other phone song that gets stuck in my head.  The best thing about this little Wisconsin band -- which crumbled when they all knew they were ready for bigger things, and couldn't decide how to pursue them -- was how naturally songwriter Jill Kossoris naturally imbued their power pop with the spirit, and sometimes form, of girl group.  Her pinched vocals and relentless longing are as insidious as her melodies.  Never leaves your head, you won't want it to.

It's amazing how Hyped to Death's collection of everything the band put to tape (including a live set), Lost Hits from Milwaukee's First Family of Power Pop: 1979-82, plays like a greatest hits compilation.  H2D also named its line of comps featuring overlooked DIY power-pop gems after The Shivvers' biggest song.  So totally recommended.

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Baaba Maal (myspace) is in town!  He's at Joe's Pub tomorrow night; his myspace also has him at Irving Plaza next April.   He was supposed to be on Fallon the other night with The Brazilian Girls; don't know if their visa issues stopped that or if they got bumped.  Hadn't even heard about his new record.

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Tom Waits is offering the whole first half of the first CD from his upcoming live set Glitter and Doom for free download.  (The second CD is 35 minutes of stage banter, seriously.  I'm not sure which disc I'm more excited for.)

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Bold as Love is offering Fire in the Dark, "17 tracks from artists who represent the diversity of black rock, Afro-punk, and black alternative music," as a free download through Amazon.

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" The crowd was now smaller, but I think it was full of those who were most happy that Hope was back after all these years, and who knew that it might be 2016 before we hear from her (possibly with a mood swing or two) again."

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"Andersson sings in an unfiltered voice that favors an avian, hard sound. She also digitally alters the pitch of her voice, making it sound like the voice of male mummy, perhaps singing to himself as he looks through an album of water-damaged photographs."

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" I was smiling so wide I could hardly contain it! It felt like the smile was so wide it would rip off the sides of my face and peel backward until my entire skull was exposed in the biggest, happiest smile ever."

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"'I know a computer can't make a writer but I think it makes a writer better. Simplicity in writing and simplicity in getting it down, hot and real...'  One might think that a computer would lead to a longer line, an increased verbiage, not with Bukowski. The ease of the delete / edit functions was as important as the ability to get one's thoughts down quickly."

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