He was...

Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA

Artificial amateurs aren't at all amazing

Alphabet Aerobics from Eloi Collective on Vimeo.

Enjoy a student-made video for my current favorite hip-hop song, "Alphabet Aerobics" by Blackalicious. It can be found on the 1999 EP, A2G.

Everest climber hearts R.E.M.

I was watching episode 1.2 of the TV show, Everest: Beyond the Limit, and was excited to hear one of the climbers make a reference to R.E.M., the song, "King of Birds," specifically. Mogens Jensen (on the right in the pic above) says:

"You have to go back and look at the old R.E.M. song when they talk about standing at the shoulders of giants. The giants are up near the summit now and we're just dwarfs. That's the way it is."

The "giants" he refers to are the Sherpas who are blazing the trail for the Western climbers.

Listen here.

The Decemberists go crazy on Milwaukee

Last night's Decemberists show at the Riverside Theater here in Milwaukee was awesome. They failed to put on a bad show each of the four previous times I have seen them. Above is footage of the band doing Heart's "Crazy On You" in Kansas City; the band did it last night as well. That's Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond and Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond on lead vocals. The Hazards of Love portion of the show worked very well. I had intentionally avoided listening to the album because I wanted to experience the rock opera for the first time in a live setting. After a 15-minute intermission, the band came back to do old favorites and the Heart song. Colin Meloy invited some audience members on stage for the final song, "Sons & Daughters." What a great final song, mostly because I found it moving to hear a theater full of people singing, "All the bombs fade away," in the post-Bush era. I'm not naive enough to think that there won't be anymore bombs, but it's nice to know the White House is no longer occupied by an overt hawk.

I think it's alright (to listen to these Grizzly Bear covers at least once)

So, we have a bar band blues take on "Knife." And it sounds like Larry Norman and Kath Bloom duetting on a version of "While You Wait for the Others." Finally, I dare you to tolerate a homespun (i.e., crappy) cover of "Foreground," featuring some aggressively amateur "singing." Click to read more about these Grizzly Bear-endorsed Grizzly Bear covers.

Plus, I cannot stop listening to the Fred Falke remix of the new Grizzly Bear single, "Two Weeks." But I've found that I'm sometimes not in the mood to listen to the full-length version, so I made a shorter version.

mp3: Grizzly Bear - "Two Weeks" :: (Fred Falke Remix) (Timedoor Radio Edit)

Stereolab likes its velocity serene

My wife recently bought me a copy of the Stereolab compilation, Serene Velocity. It was good to hear "Jenny Ondioline" again (even if it is only the 7" "Part 1" version). While looking for some information about the collection, I came across a short film, "Serene Velocity," that is the likely inspiration for the title.

Rare Church-related music on YouTube

In 1997, Steve Kilbey, Peter Koppes, and Tim Powles recorded an album without Marty Willson-Piper. As a courtesy, they released it under the name, the Refo:mation. The album was cryptically titled Pharmakoi/Distance-Crunching Honchos With Echo Units. The album was preceded by the 1996 Church record, Magician Among the Spirits. Willson-Piper met up with the band in time to help write and record Hologram of Baal, which was released in 1998. Hopefully, the upcoming Kilbey biography will illuminate this part of the band's history; the mid-to-late Nineties were a rocky time for the Church.

"Chance" by Big Country

When I learned that Stuart Adamson of Big Country killed himself in late 2001, I was, like most, shocked and saddened. It's always a tragedy when someone chooses suicide. "Chance" popped up on my iPod today and it seemed like it could be the soundtrack to Adamson's final days. Here is a paragraph from an article in the Scotsman:

Adamson was last seen by his family early in November, when he left his home in Nashville, Tennessee, leaving a note for his son, Calum, which read: "Back by noon, Sunday." Apart from a phone call to his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor on 19 November, it is thought he did not speak again to any friend or relative.

I say the song could be the soundtrack not because all of the lyrics speak directly to his situation, but because of the song's mood. The sad, insistent beauty of the music combined with the dead-soul refrain ("Oh Lord, where did the feeling go? Oh Lord, I never felt so low.") make for a devastating song.

All the rain came down
On a cold new town
As it carried you away
From your father's hand
That always seemed like a fist
Reaching out to make you pay

He came like a hero from the factory floor
With the sun and moon as gifts
But the only son you ever saw
Were the two he left you with

Oh Lord, where did the feeling go
Oh Lord, I never felt so low

Now the skirts hang so heavy around your head
That you never knew you were young
Because you played chance with a lifetime's romance
And the price was far too long

Oh Lord, where did the feeling go
Oh Lord, I never felt so low

mp3: Big Country - "Chance" :: from The Crossing (1983)

"Troy" by Sinéad O'Connor

Sinéad O'Connor has never been afraid to open her scars and sing what's inside. Probably the best example of this is her song, "Troy," (from her 1988 debut, The Lion & The Cobra) where she plays the part of the scorned lover. In the live version below, the climactic lines are set aflame with some added profanity and uncomfortably real anger.

And the flames burned away
But you're still spitting fire
Make no difference what you say
You're still a liar
You're still a liar

mp3: Sinéad O'Connor - "Troy" :: live in London, from the "Three Babies" single (1990)

The video above is for a somewhat unexpectedly popular 2002 remix.

"Gouge Away" by Pixies

Last night on the season four finale of Lost, Jack returned to the funeral home (first seen in the season three finale) to see who was in the coffin. It was Jeremy Bentham! If you are a Lost fan but missed last night's episode, trust me, I've spoiled nothing. As he drove up to the "fun" home (apologies to Alison Bechdel), he was blasting "Gouge Away" by the Pixies. Last time we saw him bearded up and driving too fast, he was cranking Nirvana's "Scentless Apprentice." Here's Frank Black's cover of the song he originally sung as Black Francis* in 1989 on the Doolittle album.

mp3: Frank Black - "Gouge Away" :: live version from Nadine (2003)

*Real name? Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV. Jeremy Bentham's real name? It's...

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Songs in the MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 format are offered for a limited time only. Songs that are no longer downloadable can be streamed at the Timedoor page at Hype Machine.

Support your favorite artists by buying their music at your local independent record store. And read about 'em at TrouserPress.com.

"Lost" by The Church

In the spirit of that artless way MTV editors have of laying overly appropriate songs under moments of young adult melodrama in any one of the channel's "reality" shows, I give you the song, "Lost," by The Church, because tonight the season finale of, well, Lost hits the airwaves. Will it be as good as last year's third season finale? I'm hoping so. But it'll be hard to top the devastating final scene of that finale (see above).

Sometimes I'm wond'ring under prehistoric skies
I feel it's all beginning right before my eyes
I must go back, re-examine my love
And here she comes with the penetrated stare
I don't know when, but I wish I knew where
Quick calculation, there's not nearly enough

Because we're lost, because we're lost
Cold desert stars, feel them sparkle and frost
They are so lost

Follow her down to worship some god
Who never speaks to me, I wonder if that's odd
Then he says, "You're never listening"
The pursuit of adulation is your butter and your bread
It's an exquisite corpse and its lips are red
And its teeth are glistening

But you are lost, but you are lost
Now hang up 'cause the lines are all crossed
You are so lost

If you're alone and you're feeling blue,
Everyone in Persia probably feels like that too
I just hope they don't believe like you do
And here she comes with her unforgiving web
Almost forever I've been drinking these dregs
It must be time to change our brew, cruel, view

Before we're lost, before we're lost
Look at the map, add up the cost
Before we're lost

mp3: The Church - "Lost" :: from Starfish (1988)

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Songs in the MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 format are offered for a limited time only. Songs that are no longer downloadable can be streamed at the Timedoor page at Hype Machine.

Support your favorite artists by buying their music at your local independent record store. And read about 'em at TrouserPress.com.

"Cattle and Cane" by The Go-Betweens

I've been listening to a lot of Go-Betweens lately. One reason is the release of Robert Forster's album, The Evangelist, earlier this spring. It features three songs started by the late Grant McLennan, who died just over two years ago, and finished by Forster. Secondly, I'm currently reading David Nichols' biography of the band. "Cattle and Cane," found first on the 1983 album, Before Hollywood, is one of McLennan's most revered songs. In the liner notes to the 1978-1990 compilation, McLennan wrote:

"Written in summer on a borrowed guitar in a Paddington bedroom, London. The other rooms were occupied by unconscious friends. The rhythm struck me as strange, the mood as beautiful and sad. The song came easily, was recorded quickly and still haunts me."

An obituary at The Australian included these paragraphs about the song and its roots in McLennan's Australian upbringing:

It was normal practice in the Go-Betweens for the two men to write separately. And yet, as a device, it was the very essence of what kept them together for almost 30 years, albeit with an 11-year gap in the middle. For fans of the band it has rarely been difficult to pick which song came from which pen, but Cattle and Cane in particular, written by McLennan in 1982, has his name all over it.

McLennan grew up in Rockhampton in central Queensland. His father died when he was an infant and he was raised by his mother on a cattle station, where he developed a love of the landscape and the culture of the bush. His later periods at boarding school and then at the University of Queensland, where he met Forster, added poetry to his passions, and it was the combination of great writers and his cattle-station background that formed the bedrock of his songwriting skills.

As his former partner and bandmate Amanda Brown said yesterday: "Grant's songs captured an Australia that was influenced by his love for contemporary American writers like Cormac McCarthy, Richard Ford and Raymond Carver, and songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith. These writers inform his images of Australia, which range from the landscapes tinged with nostalgia and loss (Cattle and Cane and Bye Bye Pride), suburban life (Streets of Your Town), epic narratives (The Wrong Road, Black Mule) and of course, exquisite love songs like Quiet Heart, Stones for You and Bachelor Kisses."

Click here to read the complete article.

mp3: The Go-Betweens - "Cattle and Cane" :: live acoustic version from the "Surfing Magazines" single (2001)

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Songs in the MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 format are offered for a limited time only. Songs that are no longer downloadable can be streamed at the Timedoor page at Hype Machine.

Support your favorite artists by buying their music at your local independent record store. And read about 'em at TrouserPress.com.