The Wily Filipino

My 15 Favorite Songs of 2008.

Every December or January, in a yearly ritual that somehow became more and more of a chore, I do a roundup of my favorite albums I heard throughout the year. Last year's sorry excuse for a list was the result of writing exhaustion: what else could I really write about Boxer or Sound of Silver that hadn't already been written?

Unlike the real critics, though, I included everything, old and new, in my year-end list -- for the simple reason that musical excavation was a lot easier (and many times a lot more rewarding) than trying to keep up with new releases. I don't get free advance CDs, after all. 2008 was the year I plunged deeply into irrationally different discographies: Led Zeppelin, Wilco, Ricardo Villalobos, Broken Social Scene, Arab Strap, and almost every compilation of '70s African music (especially the wonderful Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-Sounds & Nigerian Blues 1970-6) I could get my hands on.

This year it seemed even harder to write up a list because my musical consumption, and perhaps my attention span as well, had been downsized. I had caught up, finally, with the iPod Generation, and succumbed to the sonic implications of the shuffle function, my beloved MusicIP Mixer, the Genius Playlist, Last.fm, and downloadable tracks from iTunes and Amazon -- all features designed, it seems, to be at cross-purposes with the overarching framework of an album.

Such features make it easier to subvert and/or disrespect the artist's intentions somehow. Surely Radiohead, for instance, wanted you to hear "All I Need", a total stunner of a track, between "Weird Fishes / Arpeggi" and "Faust Arp". But random playlists and shuffles also work in the service of a song. One might say that the shuffle liberates a song from the confines of the album, recontextualizes it, and makes it new. Stateless' "Bloodstream" popped up that way (on a Last.fm Radio station based on Clara Hill), and Captain Audio's "Lemon" came bubbling out of the speakers on an Austin radio station like some long-lost Liz Phair track.

Hearing songs in different contexts played a huge part of my musical listening in 2008. My iTunes statistics tell a different story from the list later below: my most-played songs were the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Maps", OK Go's "Here It Goes Again" (really -- with 42 and a half million views on YouTube, you don't even have to click the link), and Weezer's "Say It Ain't So" -- and you players of Rock Band know why. Jill Scott's "Golden", a total declaration of independence, was one of my favorite songs this year since I saw strippers ironically dancing to it... in Grand Theft Auto IV.

So was Antony and the Johnsons' "Hope There's Someone", from an album that didn't make much of an impression on me until I heard the song at the conclusion of Wayne Wang's The Princess of Nebraska. (Here's my review, by the way.) Casiotone for the Painfully Alone's "New Year's Kiss" plays during the opening credits of Barry Jenkins' Medicine for Melancholy (another quick review here). And yes, also Neil Young's "Unknown Legend", from "Harvest Moon" -- an album I always thought of as being all about the gorgeous title track -- because Tunde Adebimpe sings it a cappella in Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married.

Which is not to say that there weren't any albums I played all the way through until I wore out the grooves -- oh wait, I haven't done that since "Dark Side of the Moon". Little Dragon's 2007 debut album was, hands down, my favorite album of the year (you all need to watch the video for "Test"), as were a couple albums noted below, and two older albums -- Houses of the Holy and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot -- which I had listened to back in the day, but only really clicked this year.

But here, nonetheless, is a sweet surrender to the joys of song, all released in 2008 for real (with the exception of the Vampire Weekend track, which Pitchfork cognoscenti probably found out about in 2007). They're actually ranked in order, too, which is something I've never attempted before. As it is, the order will probably change (as I type this, Point Juncture WA's "Melon Bird" is threatening to crack the top 15).

And yes, if you want the mp3s, there's a playlist with links to Amazon MP3 Downloads at the bottom of the post!

Enjoy!

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15. The Weepies, "Antarctica"

- From Hideaway.
- Official website.
- YouTube link (song only).

The Weepies are the songwriting duo of Deb Talan and Steve Tannen -- and, incidentally, the cowriters of my favorite songs on Mandy Moore's 2007 album Wild Hope. "Antarctica", a frozen enigma of a folk-pop song, features summery, warm harmonies in stark contrast to the wintry imagery: "Under ice there's a world moving slow", a howling desolation of nothing but "bone-white and sky-blue", and a crucial, if initially clumsy, pun in the chorus. "Antarctica", they sing in crystal-clear tones, is "my only living relative." I don't know what it all means, and I couldn't get it out of my head this year.

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14. Manhattan Love Suicides, "Things You've Never Done (WOXY Radio Live Session)"

- From Burnt Out Landscapes.
- Official website.

Because, god knows, every generation needs its own Transvision Vamp. Or The Primitives. Or Voice of the Beehive. But this year's version features overdriven Jesus and Mary Chain-styled fuzz with, say, the Pastels surfing on top. It almost sounds as if singer Caroline McChrystal is trying to catch up with the band, and it's what gives the song its breathless, infectious energy.

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13. Rachael Yamagata, "Sunday Afternoon"

- From Elephants... Teeth Sinking Into Heart.
- Official website.
- YouTube link.

A slow-burning mini-epic of a blues song, "Sunday Afternoon" is the emotional centerpiece of Yamagata's brooding second album. Just listen to her voice: seductive and pleading and furious and tender all at the same time.

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12. Journey, "Lights"

- From Revelation.
- Official website.
- YouTube link.

Great Moments in Rock And Roll History #249: The lighters and cell phones all dutifully came up -- and surely "Lights" is a push-up-your-lighters song par excellence -- when Arnel Pineda, the new lead singer of Journey, started singing the opening lines.

Everyone knows it's about San Francisco, of course. But we Filipinos in the audience knew at that moment -- we all knew -- that, deep in his heart -- hell, deep in all our hearts -- he was really singing about Manila. My city by the bay indeed.

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11. Ane Brun, "Big in Japan"

- Official website.
- YouTube link (song only).

What makes or breaks a good cover is not just a different arrangement, as all those cruddy bossanova renditions of Top 40 hits show. It's what the new singer brings by way of tone, or inflection, that forces the listener to listen differently. Alphaville's 1984 original was a chilly German synth-pop composition, more interesting to me back then for its keyboards rather than its lyrics. In this version, the Icelandic singer Ane Brun strips the song bare with her ancient-sounding voice; why it now seems evocative of weary sexual transactions under bare winter branches, I have no idea.

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10. Johnny Foreigner, "Eyes Wide Terrified"

- From Waited Up Till It Was Light.
- Official website.
- YouTube link.

From one of my favorite albums of the year, a track with all the crucial elements of a killer indie-pop-rock song circa 4AD / Matador's heyday: boy-girl vocals like Mr. Francis and Ms. Deal, guitar crunch, and -- break it down -- a refrain you could get the whole club to sing, vocal resemblances to Stephen Malkmus optional. "Your life is a song, but not this one."

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9. Sandwich, "Betamax"

- From S Marks The Spot.
- Official website.
- YouTube link.

On the surface, "Betamax" is a lazy song. It borrows its theme and structure from Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire": the half-sung laundry list, the sense of time marching by. But as a paean to Filipino pop music history, "Betamax" is a particularly poignant statement from the supergroup Sandwich, itself born from the ashes of bands that came before. Most important is how Sandwich allies itself, as it were, with the loser in the VHS or Beta format war; Betamax, after all, had the superior technology. You can have your iPods and cellphones and the internet, but all you need is three chords and Jingle Magazine, and the ocean waves float on.

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8. Ladyhawke, "Another Runaway"

- From Ladyhawke.
- Official website.

The New Zealand singer-songwriter Pip Brown was born in 1981, but if I put this song on a mixtape next to Kim Carnes' "Crazy in the Night" and Kim Wilde's "Kids in America" and Sheena Easton's "Telefone", you wouldn't know it was from 2008. Sure, it's mimicry, but of the highest order. If she sings a "We Belong"-style ballad on her next album, her poster definitely goes up on my bedroom wall.

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7. Taken By Cars, "Logistical Nightmare"

- From Endings of a New Kind.

- Official website.
- YouTube link (song only).

Here's an album review, and an interview with the band, with more about "Logistical Nightmare", from one of my favorite albums of the year.

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6. Kanye West, "Love Lockdown"

- From 808s & Heartbreak.
- Official website.
- YouTube link.

What a great and ornery first single from Kanye West: no busy arrangement, no Chipmunked soul samples, no rapping. Instead: a minimal electronic heartbeat and Auto-Tuned vocals, all sitting on my third-favorite piano riff of my year, sounding much like a Nina Simone sample. (Sorry: first on my list was the keyboard refrain from M-Flo's 2000 song "Hands", followed by those ten notes from MGMT's "Kids".) And as a kicker, West tosses in (literally as an afterthought!) an absolutely thrilling taiko drum barrage in the chorus.

The more you listen, the more the fascinating details appear: the guitar wail off in the distance in the outro; the slight reverb when his vocals first enter; the broken fuzz of "system overload"; or the fact that he sounds like he's literally shouting on the chorus, the drums stoking his anger. When he sings "If I be with you, baby I'm confused", here's a strategic warble in the last syllable, and it makes all the difference. It's his coldest, most distanced album to date, but it's paradoxically his most emotionally naked as well.

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5. Vampire Weekend, "A-Punk"

- From Vampire Weekend.
- Official website.
- YouTube link.

A warm Halloween night in Los Angeles, 2:30 in the morning. Had any of the 14,000 attendees at the music fest read the internet buzz beforehand, they would have read that a surprise guest was about to play right after Justice. The rumors flew: Madonna? Tiesto? Thomas Bangalter? Who knew?

Justice was wrapping up their somewhat lackluster DJ set with "We Are Your Friends". But before they left, before the huge white fluorescent cross behind them was turned off, they left the music on, as it were: a slow, stretched-out, piercing guitar line, looping over and over. At the five-minute mark, the sample started decelerating in millimeters, finally resolving itself into the greatest guitar riff of 2008.

The crowd goes nuts. People are jumping up and down, singing along to the chorus, yelling "A, A, A, A!" Alas, the special guest turned out to be Busy P instead. But for two minutes and seventeen seconds, you had an audience of a few thousand people in thrall to one of the best pop songs of the year.

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4. Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, "Bag of Hammers"

- From We Brave Bee Stings And All.
- Official website.
- YouTube link.

The song is ostensibly about a communication breakdown, but Thao Nguyen describes it in such intelligent, double-edged wordplay, wrapped in a jaunty calypso melody, that it's easy to mistake her for someone bringing good tidings. Indeed, her love for contradiction seems embodied in the band's name itself.) When she pairs the image of her "bag of hammers" with "the hole in your head / Spill your thoughts on the floor", one better be careful. And one almost wants to dance when she gets to the chorus -- she's singing "Shake shake shake" after all -- but then she follows it with "Shake the frame of this house / Distress the wood, make it shout", and one gets a good sense of the deliberate craft that went into the song, and into her fantastic album. One of my favorites of the year.

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3. The Dears, "Money Babies"

- From Missiles.
- Official website.
- YouTube link.

One song perfectly distilled the financial anxieties of 2008. With that insistent, vexing guitar riff, and the numbed repetition of "Our money is elastic" -- as broken promise, as a mantra, as a chant to ward off evil -- "Money Babies" drew the connection from one cataclysm (9/11, the War on Iraq, Hurricane Katrina) to our apocalypse now.

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2. Jamie Lidell, "Another Day"

- From Jim.
- Official website.
- YouTube link.

Ignore the lame video, and ignore the fact that he's a skinny white guy who kind of sounds like a deeper-voiced Stevie Wonder. (Maybe not the voice, but the phrasing, yes.) It's a perfect slice of musical sunshine, bird chirps and all, made to be included on every summer mix CD you make from now on.

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1. London Elektricity, "Just One Second"

- From Syncopated City.
- Official website.
- YouTube link (song only).

Funny thing about drum-and-bass: it's a nocturnal and aggressive beast by nature, evocative of darkness and sweat. But London Elektricity's ecstatic "Just One Second" is quite literally about daybreak and summertime and childhood and the fleetingness of memory and is just about the most exuberantly joyful song I've heard in a long time. It's a love song, really -- to a lover, a spouse, a friend, or a daughter. "If this second was your life / what would you do?" Yes, perhaps the stuff of high school philosophical musings on one's existence, but employed here on breakneck beats that aren't reminiscent of hurtling through urban nightscapes; instead, it's the sound of the heart leaping. "If this second was my life / I would love you."

My Bloody Valentine, The Concourse, San Francisco, 9/30/2009.

My Bloody Valentine was punishingly loud -- louder, perhaps, than the SUNN O)))) or Merzbow concerts I've attended. This isn't necessarily a good thing, even if I do enjoy the sensation of my ribcage and my nasal bone rattling the entire length of the concert; inevitably you'll have to wear earplugs, and if they're cheap Flents like mine, you run the risk of submerging MBV murk into non-trebly murk.

And at a venue much like an airplane hangar like the SF Design Center Concourse, it's diffused non-trebly murk, but Jane and Xochitl and Jens and I were about a fifth of the way up front, so it probably sounded better for us. And it then becomes hard to make out the thick layers of guitar, like the wobbly choral ocean bed to which "To Here Knows When" is anchored. (On the other hand, the guitar motifs are practically burned into your head: I woke up this morning and could still hear that ten-note riff from "When You Sleep" ringing somewhere back there.)

But nonetheless, this means that one could still enjoy the live My Bloody Valentine experience on a purely somatic level, your body vibrating in sympathy to the speakers and to everyone else. Add to this a whole array of flash strobes so bright you can see where the lights are attached to the ceiling through your closed eyelids -- well, you can see what I mean by "somatic". You could have been asleep and the music would have still burrowed through you.

I can't really provide a setlist -- Jens said he recognized songs from both albums and both EPs -- but as one can imagine, most of "Loveless" made an appearance. ("Loomer" was fantastic; MBV opened the set with "I Only Said" -- you know, it's the one with that repeating chirp -- went on for what felt like a blissful ten minutes.) They came on a little after 10:30, and finished right at midnight -- and as expected, around 11:35, "You Made Me Realise" began, culminating in 20-odd minutes of a tsunami of churning guitar feedback. One of my best concert experiences of 2008, in a year filled with them.

The Police / Elvis Costello and The Imposters, Shoreline, Mountain View, 7/14/2008.

At some point in your life, Dear Reader, you must have said to yourself -- and you probably wouldn't be reading this blog if you didn't -- you must have said to yourself, This is my favorite band. That band was The Police, back in 1983, at the tender age of [don't even ask], when I saved up my allowance to buy my very first album on cassette, Synchronicity, which was followed by a voracious rifling through their back catalog, beginning with Outlandos d'Amour. In hindsight I can see, even back then, the obsessive quality of my consumption: it wasn't enough to get the five studio albums; I had to go buy a bootleg Synchronicity T-shirt, and even that volume of The Secret Policemen's Ball, on vinyl for crying out loud, where a solitary Sting sings "Roxanne" without his fellow band members. (But my incipient critical faculties didn't cling to The Police for too long, fickle as they were; they were supplanted, in too-quick succession, by Talking Heads, U2, and The Cure (1984, 1985, and 1986 respectively) as my Favorite Band Of All Time, but no matter: The Police were the very first.

Just a few hours ago, with Son and Eloise, I finally fulfilled something of a lifelong and impossible dream of mine: to see The Police in concert. It feels odd to report that the highlight of the concert was Sting making a surprise appearance to sing a duet with Elvis Costello on "Alison", but the element of surprise gets me every time. (Costello also played "Pump It Up", "Radio Radio", "Watching the Detectives", "Everyday I Write The Book", "Clubland", "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding", and I swear they were playing "Accidents Will Happen" during the soundcheck, but he didn't play it.) But again, no matter: The Police gave a fantastic concert from start to finish, with my brain completely fried from what was technically 25 full years of waiting.

So, the setlist, as far as I can remember, below:

1. "A hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore."
2. "I hope my legs don't break."
3. "I'm a walking disaster."
4. "Echoes things that you said." / "Same tape I've had for years."
5. "Just like that old man in that book by Nabokov."
6. "Shame wells in my throat."
7. "I shake like an incurable."
8. "I resolved to call her up a thousand times a day."
9. "I will turn your face to alabaster."
10. "And no one's jamming their transmission."
11. "Looking like something that the cat brought in."
12. "And my LP records and they're all scratched." / "Rio riay riayo."


13. "I won't share you with another boy."
14. "There's a skeleton choking on a crust of bread."
15. "I always play the starring role."
16. "I keep crying baby baby please."


17. "I sold my house I sold my motor too."

Stevie Wonder, Shoreline Amphitheater, Mountain View, 7/6/08.

One of my earliest childhood memories ever -- come to think of it, this is the first time I've seen this clip from Sesame Street in color, since I watched it back in the day on a small black-and-white TV. I don't think it gets any funkier than this.

Three decades later, I finally saw him live for the first time at the Shoreline, just over the weekend with Joannie and Luna. An amazing concert all around -- not quite as tight a band as in the vintage video above, and with an audience a little more sedate than the kid in the red shirt, but with massive amounts of goodwill radiating outward from the stage, it wasn't hard to be swept up and feel overjoyed. (Despite the odd sequencing, at times: the crowd on their feet with "Higher Ground", only to sit back down with an extended jam on Chick Corea's "Spain". A great reminder, nonetheless, of Wonder's place as a titan of American popular music, one not "limited" to funk and soul.)

And I can't pick from my favorite 1-2-3 combos: was it the "Isn't She Lovely / Ribbon in the Sky / Overjoyed" combination halfway through, or "Signed Sealed Delivered / Sir Duke / I Wish" two hours in? Nevertheless: an unassailable selection of songs, a fantastic concert.

New American Pop Entry: Tongues Like Parrots.

A new entry, on Filipino musicians, on my American Pop blog, called Tongues Like Parrots.

You Wouldn't Get This From Any Other Guy.

Either Manila is the greatest concert city ever...

...or the most cursed.

Still: Rick!

When Did I Become Such A Music Fanboy?

A Musical Exercise: 6 from the '60s.

The rationale behind all this.

5 songs from the '50s.

And now 6 songs from the '60s, in chronological order:

1. Irma Thomas, "It's Raining"
1962

This is the second-greatest slow-dance song ever – second only to "Sabor a Mi" (also from a great movie, Wayne Wang's Chan Is Missing, and a decade later, John Sayles' Lone Star). Real-life spouses Roberto Benigni and Nicoletta Braschi danced to "It's Raining" at the end of Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law, and it was my first time to hear it.

I call it only the second-greatest because it's not really a slow-dance song. Irma Thomas is very much alone; if she's dancing at all, it's with herself. But you at least expect the song to end -- especially with the cheerful "drip drop" refrain echoing throughout -- with a knock on the door, or a sweep of the headlights across the window. Instead, there's a slight emotional shift -- just a little one, but it means everything -- in the third stanza: you think she's just waiting for an absent lover, but you realize the lover has left for good. And so she's left (and so are we) with a silent resignation, a surrender to the raindrops. "I guess I'll just go crazy tonight." What a last line.

Amazon link to the compilation Sweet Soul Queen of New Orleans

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2. The Spencer Davis Group, "Every Little Bit Hurts (Live)"
1965

I don't know the circumstances of this recording – probably a small club, people not paying much attention. And everyone messes up a bit, actually: Steve Winwood simply repeats the same stanza he sang earlier, the piano comes in a little late, the guitar plays the wrong chord at some point, an amp or speaker or something falls to the stage floor at 1:35. I have this image of Winwood singing his heart out while everything collapses around him.

The song -- a Brenda Holloway hit in 1964 written by Ed Cobb (who also wrote Gloria Jones' "Tainted Love") -- is anchored by a crystalline agony in Winwood's voice. He cries, he sighs, "yet you won't let me go," he sings, but we wonder who really keeps holding on.

Amazon link to the compilation Live Anthology 1965-1968

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3. The Beach Boys, "Wouldn't It Be Nice"
from the 1966 album Pet Sounds

It starts with a melody taken straight from a carnival roundabout, with an accordion thrown in. I've always wondered whether it was meant to sound parodic. But no, it's pure innocence, bursting with the thrill of youth and the wishful dreams of adulthood; divorced, no pun intended, from reality, the natural bloom of an endless summer. The song finally peaks with a crescendo of professions of love, and the romantic sweep makes you almost forget that the song ends with a parting ("Good night my baby / Sleep tight my baby").

Indeed, the song is driven by a simple, almost unassailable logic:

We could be married,
And then we'd be happy,

perhaps an equation that only young people in love could truly believe, and it's a testament to the Beach Boys' wide-eyed, eternal youth that you, jaded and older and carrying more baggage than you'd like to admit, even while you're listening to the overplayed song on the supermarket speakers as you pay for your groceries, can have faith in this if only for a moment.

Amazon link.

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4. The Beatles, "And Your Bird Can Sing"
from the 1966 album Revolver

When I was nine or ten the Beatles stole into my life. (Even before that, when I was three or four, apparently I used to dance to these four musical thieves, boogying down in the living room while my mom put "Taxman" on the turntable, my toes digging into the green carpet.)

But that year I was nine, an entirely new universe burst open from the speakers, a moptopped riot in my ear. Issuing forth from the hi-fi was this magic, the way colonial officials would enchant natives with phonographs, transfixing them with the ghost of the machine inside.

It was at that age that I was turned on -- not in the late '60s sense, for this was 1980 and I was too young and barely conscious of drugs -- but miraculously electrified, jolted, opened to a new magical sphere of listening and hearing and comprehending, as if my nine-year old skinny self had waited all that time for "Nowhere Man" or "Girl" or "A Hard Day's Night". Of course I understood none of it, and its relative emotional simplicities were still lost on a kid who was still deep into "The Electric Company" or Saturday-morning cartoons.

It was the young Beatles -- the baby-faced Paul McCartney -- that my mother adored. So did I, really -- singing along to "Yesterday", though I can't stand it now. My mother dismissed everything after Revolver – even Sgt. Pepper's was too noisy, too chaotic -- and it was more than a decade later that I really began to appreciate the joy of the White Album, of Lennon's acid tenor keening through the grooves. But Revolver was (and is) the touchstone, something my mother and I still share. I think she would pick "Here There and Everywhere" as her favorite; for me though, it's "And Your Bird Can Sing."

The lyrics, whatever they may mean, hover around the edge of comprehension and unattainability ("you can't see me", "you can't hear me"), but the guitar is not beseeching; it soars and dips in and out of the song with utter delight. "And Your Bird Can Sing" has a guitar solo that would be prolonged in other people's hands, but here it's cut deliciously short to fit the strictures of a pop single, with an insistent guitar riff sneaking through the bridge and chorus, running through my blood.

Twenty years later it is still Revolver that reaches out to a much older self. But in the car when I'm singing along to "And Your Bird Can Sing", it still feels like I'm nine years old.

Amazon link.

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5. Van Morrison, "Sweet Thing"
from the 1968 album Astral Weeks

There is a kind of corniness in the jarringly dated slang ("Hey it's me, I'm dynamite", "just to dig it all") that shakes you out of its timelessness -- Edenic images, promises of eternal youth, all the flutes and plucked strings and guitars, but it reminds the listener, who may look at Big Ivan now and see what looks like a portly, perhaps crotchety, old man, that he was once a wavy-haired hippie troubadour poet, dappled with freckles and spring foliage, the musical descendant of Yeats. It's the words that makes the song slip back and forth from 1968 to an eternal present, where Morrison continues to murmur to his "sugar baby." I don't know what everything in the song means, if not a song of praise to the gift of a woman's arms, but, as Morrison sings, "I'll be satisfied not to read in between the lines."

Amazon link.

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6. The Beatles, "Here Comes The Sun"
from the 1969 album Abbey Road

If you ask me, the utter beauty of this song alone (okay, this and "Something") almost solidifies an argument for George Harrison as the coolest Beatle. (Plus he was in Monty Python's Life of Brian.)

This is the saddest happy song ever, lighter than all your melancholies, radiantly lit from within.

Amazon link.

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The Spring 2008 Mix.

I haven't done this in ages, and I thought I'd try a simpler and more user-friendly, if somewhat less elegant, interface than Box.net for the music. No, you can't download these anymore either, but that keeps me off the hook.

And so: twelve songs, in no order except for a vague mixtape-y flow between them, that I loved in the first four months of 2008, at thewilyfilipino.muxtape.com:

1. Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, "Bag of Hammers"

- From the 2008 album We Brave Bee Stings And All.
- Official website.

"The trick is / You do not get on that interstate bus / The catch is / You stay and see what becomes of us." (I really will be writing a review of this album, I promise.)

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2. Donovan, "Get Thy Bearings"

- From the 1968 album The Hurdy Gurdy Man.
- Official website.

Donovan gets funky. And yes, that's also Biz Markie's "I Told You."

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3. The Budos Band, "Origin Of Man"

- From the 2007 album The Budos Band II.
- Official website.

This is what I imagine: Mahmoud Ahmed by way of Staten Island, to accompany the very beginning of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, but all the apes start dancing instead.

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4. Radiohead, "All I Need"

- From the 2007 album In Rainbows.
- Official website.

"I'm the next act / Waiting in the wings / I'm an animal / Trapped in your hot car."

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5. Taken by Cars, "Uh Oh"

- From the 2008 album Endings of a New Kind.
- Myspace page.

Quoting myself here: "The second track, "Uh Oh" (the album's real beginning) has a perfect opening, as instruments fall rapidly into formation: drum heartbeat, stabbing guitar riff, and suddenly, best of all, a synth refrain parachuted in from 1982."

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6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "Maps"

- From the 2003 album Fever to Tell.
- Official website.

I hadn't heard this song before until Rock Band, to tell you the truth. I love the way the notes cut diagonally across the frets: red red red red, yellow yellow yellow yellow, or something like that.

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7. The Cool Kids, "A Little Bit Cooler"

- From the 2007 album The Bake Sale.
- Myspace page.

"Does that belt say 'Star Wars'?" An ode to being a nerd: "I'm in the crib Saturday night with my Sega that's right / Playing a game of that Street Fighter, Street Fighter, Street Fighter / I guess that makes you think you cooler than me / But any girl you can pull I can pull 'em with ease."

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8. Fujiya & Miyagi, "Ankle Injuries"

- From the 2007 album Transparent Things.
- Official website.

I drove up and down from Oakland to Davis and back twice a week, and this song -- plus Can's "Uphill" -- provided the perfect driving soundtrack.

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9. m-flo, "Hands"

- From the 2000 album Planet Shining.
- Official website.

You'll be hearing that piano riff in your dreams, I swear.

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10. Little Dragon, "Test"

- From the 2007 album Little Dragon.
- Official website.

"A test, a test, a test. No rest, no rest, no rest."

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11. Captain Audio, "Lemon"

- From the 2000 album Luxury or Whether It Is Better To Be Loved Than Feared.
- Myspace page.

I heard this on UT Austin's college radio one morning: at first I thought it was some long-lost Liz Phair track, with wah-wah guitar and ragged "We Will Rock You" handclaps and footstomps thrown in.

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12. Led Zeppelin, "The Ocean"

- From the 1973 album Houses of the Holy.
- Official website.

"Now i'm singin all my songs to the girl who won my heart / She is only three six years old / now that's a real fine way to start."

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Again, the songs are here: thewilyfilipino.muxtape.com.

Thao with The Get Down Stay Down, Rasputin, Berkeley, 4/12/2008.

Thao with The Get Down Stay Down played for about 30 adults -- and one little girl dancing -- at Rasputin Records earlier this afternoon, and I hope you were there because it was fantastic. "I've never played at this level of heat before," Thao Nguyen told the audience. It was 74 degrees out on Telegraph this afternoon and possibly just a little hotter inside. But no matter -- their particular brand of witty, literate folk-pop, beatboxing and all, was perfect for an afternoon that felt an awful lot like summer.

The setlist, I think:

1. ? [new song, maybe, or something from Like the Linen?]
2. Big Kid Table
3. Swimming Pools
4. Beat (Health, Life and Fire)
5. Feet Asleep
6. Bag of Hammers
7. Violet
8. Fear and Convenience

Full album review of the band's Kill Rock Stars album We Brave Bee Stings And All coming soon on this blog, but if they're ever in your neighborhood (though the last show of their tour with Xiu Xiu is tonight at the Bottom of the Hill) do check them out.

Taken By Cars Interview.

This is my third Taken By Cars-related blog post -- the first was about a June 2007 concert of theirs, the second was a review of their superb debut album, Endings of a New Kind, my favorite album released in 2008 so far -- and this third post, I am thrilled to write, is an actual e-mail interview with the band!

The "interview" -- I'm hoping to actually see them in the flesh this summer -- took place over email in March 2008. The questions were answered collaboratively by all the members of the band.

And here we go:

1. Where does the name come from?

We wanted to use a name that will stick with us for the long term. So we were thinking of mixing and matching some terms, then Kong came up with 'Taken by Cars'. According to him, this was simply based on the fact that we all spend most of our time listening to music in our cars. We all thought that the name connotes movement and a certain sense of mystery so it was a perfect fit for the sound that we play.

The boys all went to the same high school and were in a band ever since. Back then we were covering 90's alternative rock and even classic rock. Then we met Sarah along the way and continued our stint as a cover band. None of us thought of breaking out really, we were just side entertainment in friends' parties or school events and such. Then by mid-2006, we decided to start writing our own stuff and taking the next step.

It's actually one of the happier songs in the album. It's dedicated to the promise that life should be about being grateful (thus the words "thank the letters, i thank you"), about making mistakes and learning from them (thus the words "kiss the ground where I fall"), about not taking yourself or other people too seriously and acknowledging that life is about the little things that move us sometimes ("out of breath, whispering a letdown, moving smile, signaling a turnaround, candid shot, a face to launch a thousand pieces of a dream").

We were listening to a lot of Bloc Party and Interpol prior to making the album and during recording also..but we were listening to a lot of other things as well. The energy and the vibe of those two bands inspired us no doubt. But then we all have our individual influences too. The things we listen to change constantly. We never really want to rely on a fixed peg for the sound we're trying to achieve.

Ya, we were definitely listening to Nirvana and Pearl Jam back in the 90's. But, I think there was more to the 90's than grunge..it was also the era of ethereal, dream pop, and shoegaze. Bands like Lush, My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Chapterhouse, and Slowdive, among many others, were around at that time. Other than that there's always been the 80's - new wave, dark wave stuff like Depeche Mode and Tears for Fears and Duran Duran. There's so much more to that too though. There were bands like The Ocean Blue, The Bible, The Railway Children... Presently we like the dance rock, electro stuff..that of bands like CSS, Digitalism, LCD Soundsystem and many other things. Some pop ( Madonna) and trance (Tiesto, ATB) and house as well. We could go on and on!

We're looking to come up with new songs very soon and hopefully be able to play them at gigs already.

If you put a gun to my head and asked me that question I still would not be able to give an answer. A compilation maybe! A cd containing one song from all the bands/singers I just mentioned! haha

Little Dragon, Elbo Room, San Francisco, 4/1/08.

For an hour last night at the Elbo Room, Little Dragon was the greatest band in the world.

Well, my new favorite band right now, at least. Their 2007 debut album on Peacefrog (it's also available on iTunes, by the way) is just the right kind of sublime -- an effortless downtempo RnB simmer, one of my favorites this year so far -- and their absolutely tight playing last night, at their very first U.S. concert ever, confirmed this.

Little Dragon is a band, first of all, and this is even clearer in concert. (All those tricky drum fills are performed live.) But there's no denying the fact that Yukimi Nagano's voice -- wonderfully wispy, soulfully expressive -- is the real draw. She's also totally riveting to watch on stage, especially when she seems to lose herself in the music, dancing and twisting just before she begins to sing.

They started the set off with "Twice". The last three songs were "Constant Surprises" (right before the encore), "Wink", and "Scribbled Paper" (about one of their favorite poets from Gothenburg).

"Test", of course, was somewhere in there. So was a ridiculously funky "Recommendation" (prompting an echo of "Recommendation" from the crowd during the chorus, all embellished with fluty keyboards and major hi-hat action), a slinky "Forever" (that "ha ha ha ho ho" refrain towards the end was even better live), "Turn Left" (and yes, the crowd was singing along to the "pa pa ra ro pa ra pa" refrain at the end as well), "After the Rain" (is this song about Hurricane Katrina or something?), and a few songs (one called "Tendencies", plus two new songs, "Roundabout" and "Looking Glass") that I didn't recognize.

Anyhow, as you folks can tell, I enjoyed the concert immensely. Only two U.S. dates left -- Goleta tonight, Los Angeles on Friday -- so catch 'em if they're in your area! (Here's a good idea of how they sound live -- a concert recording at Cargo in London earlier this year.)

p.s. Eloise and I were dancing up front right next to the stage, even to the music played by the DJ in between sets. (Geraldine and Kennedy and Stephanie were somewhere in the middle.) At some point Eloise wonders out loud why there were only five other people dancing in the club. (Everyone else was doing the hipster nod, which Little Dragon parodies so wonderfully in the "Test" video.) "Probably because we're from the East Bay," I said. She turns around to ask the woman next to us where she was from. We were right.

p.s. 2. Sorry, Darren: I didn't take any photos, though I was about three feet away from Yukimi's toes.

The Best Music I Heard All Year, 2007 Edition.

So yes, this list is awfully late. And it's rather odd, because the two bands I probably listened to most this year -- mostly because I did a massive, expensive-at-import-prices excavation of their discographies -- don't show up on this list. They happen to be two wonderful Japanese bands, Spangle call Lilli line (here's their profile on keikaku.net) and chatmonchy. I suspect this is because both may be best appreciated in terms of some amazing singles, some of which have been featured on this blog before). (Come to think of it, my favorite album of the year is also of Japanese provenance.)

And at the end of this year -- especially since I was so busy in December and January -- I found myself in the depressing position of being part of a weary chorus, led by Pitchfork and the late lamented Stylus and the Village Voice and every other music blogger out there, all trumpeting the praises of the same albums repeatedly and all swooning over "All My Friends". So did I.

Nonetheless, I'm a little reluctant to add to the verbiage, so I broke from tradition and did the next best lazy-ass thing. For a few obvious choices, I just took reviews from the usual places (actually, just the first page of reviews on Google or Metacritic), pasted the text into online software, and generated a word-frequency count. (This exercise would have been a little more productive if I had added more reviews, but again: too lazy.) The results are below, excepting articles and words like "drums" or "guitar", or song titles. And hey, it seems to work.

---------

And now, the best music I heard all year, in alphabetical order:

1. Battles, Mirrored (2007)

6 METAL, 5 JAZZ, 5 WORK, 5 PLAY, 5 SICK, 4 TECHNOLOGY, 4 DANCE, 4 MEN, 3 MATH, 3 ASTOUNDING, 3 AVANT, 3 ELECTRONICS, 3 TOGETHER, 2 HAMMERS, 2 ECSTATIC, 2 FUCK, 2 BOOM, 2 BIG, 2 JUMBLE, 2 VIRTUOSITY, 2 TECHNICAL, 2 PROFICIENCY, 2 LOOPS, 2 THRILLING, 2 BRILLIANT, 2 MACHINE, 2 ROBOT, 2 SKILLS, 2 SYMPHONIC, 2 PROG, 2 PROCESSED, 2 COLLECTIVE, 2 GLORIOUS

Amazon link.
Video for "Atlas" on YouTube.
Official website.

-----

2. Chillitees, Extra Rice (2006)

I don't think I'm the right audience for this album, which seems crafted as background music for making out at 2:30 in the morning with some hottie in your apartment after the bars have closed and the prospect of a snack at Goodah! isn't as appealing, as of course it shouldn't be, as a possible roll in the hay. But that's what Extra Rice sounds like: a polished slice of Pinoy after-club chill, with keyboards that wouldn't be out of place on an early-70s CTI album, and lyrics just lovingly drenched with post-coital afterglow. "Ikaw ang paglunas sa aking pangungulila," Uela Basco sings the morning after to a lover in bed who's not entirely hers to keep, if you know what I mean. Either way, it's consummately performed and produced, and, particularly for the Philippines, just sounds deliciously illicit.

Amazon link.
Video for "Sama Na" on YouTube.
Official website.

-----

3. Anna Järvinen, Jag fick feeling (2007)

It's not easy to write about song-based pop albums when one has no notion of what the lyrics are about. In this case, I'd like to think it's about love. Anna Järvinen used to be one of the lead singers for the band Granada -- pretty music, certainly, but nothing compared to the pristine beauty of her debut album, Jag fick feeling.

But I'll tell you about the songs anyway. It's hard to pick a favorite, and why: there's the torch balladry of "Nedgångslåten", complete with a forlorn whistled riff; the unpredictable flowing verse structure of "Götgatan"; the unashamed "la la la" ending of "PS, Tjörn", lighter than air; a flute intro to the lovely "Svensktalande bättre folk", which feels like a Roger Nichols - Paul Williams track cut for A&M (and I mean that with very high praise).

It's not easy to place a finger on the musical antecedents of this strummed folk-pop -- that's Dungen as her backing band, by the way -- though the inevitable comparisons are to Nina Persson back in the pre-Life days, though not as twee. (If I had to pick a reference point on the vocal-creaminess spectrum: Harriet Wheeler? Bic Runga? Though stylistically they're not even the same.)

Whatever it all means, it's one of my favorite albums of the year. Listening to it the first time, I was looking out my window at the orange leaves falling to the ground and it felt like a lonely love letter from Sweden had just arrived in the mail.

Amazon link.
Video for "Götgatan" on YouTube.
MySpace page.

-----

4. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver (2007)

8 DANCE, 8 PUNK, 7 EMOTIONAL, 4 ELECTRO, 4 DISCO, 4 ACID, 4 SONGWRITING, 4 TEENAGER, 3 RHYTHM, 3 OBSESSIVE, 3 DEPTH, 3 FUNK, 3 MELODIC, 3 TECHNO, 3 GROOVE, 2 CLUB, 2 FUNKY, 2 INFECTIOUS, 2 DETROIT, 2 KRAUTROCK, 2 HIPSTER, 2 EPIPHANIES, 2 LOSS, 2 REMINISCENCE, 2 REGRET

Amazon link.
Video for "All My Friends" on YouTube.
Official website.

-----

5. Midlake, The Trials of Van Occupanther (2006)

7 TIME, 7 TEXAS, 6 YOUNG, 6 ART, 4 LOVE, 3 OLD, 3 CONCEPT, 3 LIFE, 3 HARMONIES, 3 MAC, 3 SEVENTIES, 3 EARLY, 3 STORY, 2 FOREST, 2 ACOUSTIC, 2 MEANINGFUL, 2 CLEAR, 2 PASTORAL, 2 FM, 2 VILLAGE, 2 FLEETWOOD, 2 RETROSPECT, 2 MOODY

Amazon link.
Video for "Roscoe" on YouTube.
Official website.

-----

6. MONO & World's End Girlfriend, Palmless Prayer / Mass Murder Refrain (2006)

(Reposted from an earlier entry over a year ago, in January.)

A five-part chamber music suite for string quartet and post-rock band. A collaboration between Japanese composer Katsuhiko Maeda and the thunderous Tokyo quartet that is MONO, the album is surely going to be one of my favorites of the year (and it's only January!).

Doubtless a lot of music fans more knowledgeable than I would point to music from a different tradition -- say, Shostakovich, Pärt, or Gorecki -- as more complex, more profoundly moving. But the difference is that MONO rocks: the moment in "Part Three" when MONO's Mogwai-influenced wall of guitar comes crashing down on the orchestra is a cathartic sonic event, only made more poignant by the calm resignation of the finale.

It's hard to describe the widescreen sorrow at the core of this music. It's something as mundane as the inherent loneliness of automobiles stranded on the freeway at sunset. But the ineffable grandeur it evokes is not just exit music for a film, it's Exit Music for real: ruined cities, a threnody for the broken earth, the dying sun's last defiant flare before the beginning of a cold, dead universe. Or as C.K. Williams puts it in his poem "Light," "…everything ends, / world, after-world, even their memory, steamed away / like the film of uncertain vapor of the last of the luscious rain."

Amazon link.
Official MONO website.
MySpace page for World's End Girlfriend.

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7. The National, Boxer (2007)

5 BARITONE, 5 SUBTLE, 4 GROWER, 4 BRILLIANT, 3 SPACE, 3 IMAGERY, 3 MOOD, 3 POWERFUL, 2 PRETTY, 2 AMERICAN, 2 DRAMATIC, 2 METAPHOR, 2 BEAUTIFUL, 2 DENSE, 2 RESTRAINT, 2 NIGHT, 2 PERSONAL, 2 JOURNEY, 2 DIFFICULT, 2 ACCLAIM, 2 MASTERPIECE, 2 MODERN, 2 BED, 2 PUNCH, 2 MELANCHOLY, 2 LEONARD, 2 COHEN

Amazon link.
Video for "Mistaken for Strangers" on Youtube.
Official website.

-----

8. Kanye West, Graduation (2007)

9 HIMSELF, 8 LIFE, 7 GREAT, 5 HOT, 5 SOUL, 4 ELECTRONIC, 3 HOOKS, 3 CHICKS, 3 CELEB, 3 CONSISTENT, 3 SUMMER, 3 PRIDE, 2 ELECTRO, 2 TIGHT, 2 COOL, 2 PLEASURE, 2 CELEBRATORY, 2 PERSONAL, 2 SUBSTANTIAL, 2 FAMILIAR, 2 CARTOON, 2 LEGEND, 2 DAMN, 2 STATUS, 2 LOVE, 2 PUBLIC, 2 EGO, 2 ROCKING, 2 BOASTS, 2 JEWELRY, 2 VUITTON

Amazon link.
Video for "The Good Life" on YouTube.
Official website.

-----

The 2006 list, plus the runners-up.

The 2005 list, plus the runners-up.

The 2004 list.

The 2003 list.

The 2002 list.

The 2001 list.

The Best Music I Heard All Year, 2007 Edition: The Runners-Up.

As always, my (very late) list of favorite albums I heard in 2007 is limited to just that, which includes albums I missed the first go-round. (This is why none of these albums are actually from 2007.)

The three runners-up, in alphabetical order:

1. Eluvium, Talk amongst the Trees (2005).

Ghostly, static haze lingering at the portals of perception.

Amazon link.
Official website.

-----

2. Simon Dawes, Carnivore (2006)

Brash, immensely enjoyable power pop.

Amazon link.
Promo video on YouTube.
The Simon Dawes blog.

-----

3. Some Tweetlove, Cafard Mondial (2006)

If only for the shivering beauty of "La Nostalgie Des Hauts-Fourneaux".

Album link (on Matamore).
Official website.

Love Ko 'To!

Image taken from -- oh, you all know where it's from.

So there's this project I've been working on for some time (and to be roundtabled here next month -- oops, they have my affiliation wrong!) that deals with the question of Pinoys and music and how Pinoy performers explain why and how they do what they do. A big excerpt from my writings might explain this better:

In my interviews, Overseas Performing Artist returnees constantly spoke of a spontaneous and naturally Filipino ability to imitate. As a skeptical cultural anthropologist, I initially wanted to dismiss this out of hand. There was, of course, no such thing as a natural ability to imitate, much more a naturally Filipino one.

But the discourse that supported this supposedly inherent mimetic ability could be consistently drawn from over a century's worth of history. What was one to do, for instance, with Dean Worcester's assertion in 1900 that "the Filipino ...is endowed with great talent for imitation.... ...in a short time [the Filipino] learns how to play any sort of an instrument, but the bands...are poor because of their lack of knowledge of principles, and many of them play by ear without understanding a single note?"

Or of the New York Times reporter who wrote in the twenties, "Where music is concerned, the Filipinos are known as the Italians of the East. Add their own barbaric musical strain -- a blend of Oriental and Spanish 'ear culture' -- and you get an idea of their adeptness with the torturous instruments of jazz?" Or of essayist Pico Iyer, and anthropologist Arjun Appadurai after him, who, after watching a Filipino band play the music of John Denver, would pronounce Filipinos as "[creating] a nation of make-believe Americans?"

Or the countless Filipinos who would assert the seeming truism, "Magaling manggaya ang mga Pilipino [Filipinos are great at imitation]?" Or Danny, a keyboardist who had played in Tokyo and Pasadena, who told me, matter-of-factly, "Filipinos can imitate any sound?" Or RJ, a guitarist I interviewed in the summer of 2007, who said, "Ang Pilipino, sila lang ang tanging may dila na katulad nang loro [Filipinos are the only people with tongues like parrots]?"

So I am quite tickled by the idea that 3 out of the 14 finalists for the Voice of McDonald's II competition -- which I found out about via the New York Times -- are Filipino. (The third, if you even had to guess, is the Canadian guy.)

And I just love the fact that Mary Yu -- who does those cute hand gestures (and more) on "Son of a Preacher Man" -- is a choir member and "worship/song leader in our church." Holy Dusty Springfield! That's sure some church -- sign me up!

Meanwhile, speaking of other Filipinos, my friend Carolyn (who isn't Pinay but knows how to spot 'em) sent me this hilarious YouTube video of a Southwest Airlines commercial. That guy's gotta be Pinoy. What's even funnier is that I could totally see a Filipino guy doing this in real life, if I actually went to clubs.

Taken By Cars, "Endings of a New Kind".

My friend Ruthie, who's all the way in Manila, and I (over here in Oakland) have this ongoing exchange over IM: she envies my being able to watch, say, Explosions in the Sky, and I'm envious of her being able to see, for instance, Up Dharma Down, pretty much any evening of the week. She's probably right, of course, but I would love to be able to catch my new favorite Filipino band discovery, Taken by Cars, in concert again.

I do like championing music I hear on this blog, even if everyone already knows who they are, but it's especially cooler to me if they happen to be Filipino (for obvious reasons). I saw Taken by Cars live at saGuijo in June of 2007, and I realize now, looking at my old entry, that I didn't really write anything about them. This was probably because I was being the uber-fanboy with the two other bands, but I do remember asking their lead singer (Was it her, drinking outside? How could I have forgotten that? How much did I have to drink?) about when their debut album was going to be released.

Well, it's finally out. The name Taken by Cars suggests a soundtrack to an abduction. Or escape. Either way (and those contradictions are present in the music), their debut album Endings of a New Kind is a driving record, no question about it. The propulsive rhythms suggest a restless urban energy, speeding metal vehicles, dangerous sideswipes in the dark, streetlights reflected off kilter in windshields, shards of glass twinkling dully on the pavement. In Manila that kind of driving happens anytime, but this is an evening record for sure. There's a chill to this music, but it's great for dancing to: imagine a sweaty tangle of brown limbs on the dance floor, if people weren't so shy at saGuijo (and the place wasn't so small). Cold and hot: those contradictions again.

It's not necessarily groundbreaking music, but if the idea of, say, Bloc Party, fronted by a woman vocalist sounds appealing to you, then Taken By Cars should be worth checking out. Endings of a New Kind is full of a nervous, postpunk energy -- maybe a little too clean to sound like the bruised guitars of Gang of Four, but it's certainly from the same musical gene pool. And it's simply great stuff.

The second track, "Uh Oh" (the album's real beginning) has a perfect opening, as instruments fall rapidly into formation: drum heartbeat, stabbing guitar riff, and suddenly, best of all, a synth refrain parachuted in from 1982. "Here I am in full battle gear," sings Sarah Marco. "Here I am wanting you," she adds, and it's a tribute to her voice -- of limited range, maybe, but perfect for communicating this hovering between desire and defense, between languor and tension. It's slurry and drugged for one song (as on "Colourway"), breathy and poppy on another (as on "The Afterhours", with its swirl of crunchy electronic squiggles). (Her phrasings are from the same era, too -- Anja Huwe? Siouxsie? I can't tell.)

The guitar introduction to "All for a Tuesday" seems to steal a bit from Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" -- there's no hiding their musical influences, which is okay -- but this track showcases the twin guitar attack from Bryce Zialcita and Siopao Chua: chug and jangle on the left, soar and swoop on the right. "Logistical Nightmare" rests on a spiky foundation of driving rhythms and piercing guitar chimes, then positively levitates when it gets to the chorus. "Sexy confrontation" indeed.

If I have one small complaint, it has to do with the sequencing: all the fast songs are in a cramped queue on the first half of the album, with the second half being noticeably brighter and club-oriented than the first. ("Stereolove" is probably the weakest track in the collection, as if some DJ simply took the vocal track and plopped it onto a lackluster techno remix.) But we are at least rewarded with the concluding "Shapeshifter", though it does nothing of the sort, except that it builds into an uncoiling, multivocal crescendo that ends the album on a high note.

p.s. to Ruthie: Go get the album!

p.s.2. While the CD can be purchased at their gigs, mp3s can be downloaded at splintr.com, though I haven't tried it yet.

Song of the Day.

Just because: Eraserheads, "Huwag Mo Nang Itanong" (Cutterpillow, 1995)

Hika ang inabot ko
Nang piliting sumabay sa'yo
Hanggang kanto
Ng isipan mong parang Sweepstakes
Ang hirap manalo

Ngayon pagdating ko sa bahay
Ibaba ang iyong kilay
Ayoko ng ingay

Huwag mo nang itanong sa akin
Di ko rin naman sasabihin
Huwag mo nang itanong sa akin
At di ko na iisipin

Field trip sa may pagawaan ng lapis
Ay katulad ng buhay natin
Isang mahabang pila
Mabagal at walang katuturan

Ewan ko hindi ko alam
Puwede bang huwag na lang
Nating pag-usapan

Huwag mo nang itanong sa akin
Di ko rin naman sasabihin
Huwag mo nang itanong sa akin
At di ko na iisipin

Ewan ko hindi ko alam
Puwede bang huwag na lang
Natin pag-usapan

Huwag mo nang itanong sa akin
Di ko rin naman sasabihin
Huwag mo nang itanong sa akin
At di ko na iisipin

Huwag na lang
Huwag na lang

Ten Years Old This Year.

My friend Karen reminds me that I haven't updated my blog in almost a month. Well, I've been busy. I haven't even come up with my usual year-end lists (and this year, the music list is rather predictable). Stay tuned for those though; the post on my favorite movies is shaping up pretty nicely.

But since this is the first post of 2008, I thought I'd remind you readers of the inexorable passage of time: everything below is ten years old this year.

A list of some of the pop singles of 1998 tells me that very few of these have aged particularly well (not that they were ever very good in the first place):

- Shania Twain's "You're Still The One"
- LeAnn Rimes' "How Do I Live"
- Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" (okay, I actually really like this song)
- Madonna's "Ray Of Light" (this one too, plus it has the second-greatest Madonna video ever, next only to "Lucky Star")
- Stardust's "Music Sounds Better With You"
- Marcy Playground's "Sex And Candy"
- Aerosmith's "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing"
- Alanis Morissette's "Thank U"

and of course, the theme song from the biggest movie of 1998, and possibly even the decade, Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." The horror.

Meanwhile, some very good artists released some very middling albums: Whitechocolatespaceegg, Hello Nasty, Is This Desire?, Mutations, Angels With Dirty Faces. I bought them all that year and I don't think I've listened to them since then.

But for every single by Savage Garden, Matchbox 20, Third Eye Blind, Jennifer Paige, and Creed -- god, just typing these names makes my skin crawl -- there were at least a few bright spots: Lauryn Hill's debut album, Jay-Z's "Hard Knock Life", Black Star, Buena Vista Social Club, The Boy With the Arab Strap, New Radicals' "You Get What You Give", and Music Has The Right To Children.

But yeah, think about it: it's been ten years.

Best Concert Year Ever.

34. Shonen Knife, Slim's, SF, 12/11/07.

(Snagged by Laurel, since we were standing in front of the monitors.)

There used to be a time, back in those days when Kurt Cobain was still alive and saying things like "When I finally got to see them live, I was transformed into a hysterical nine-year-old girl at a Beatles concert," Shonen Knife was being derided as part of some Hello Kitty Orientalist Conspiracy, only valued for being petite and cute and not having real musical chops and playing sub-Ramones songs. Well. That's clearly because they've never seen Shonen Knife live.

Funny, too: I was properly introduced to Laurel about three years ago at a Shonen Knife concert, also at Slim's, and we've been carrying halves of a BFF medallion ever since, ha ha. (Just be gentle when you pull out the feeding tube.)

And with that, my concert year comes to an end -- 34 shows!!! -- with some of the most memorable concerts I've ever been to, period. (And since this is an end-of-the-year thing, I'd like to say "thanks" to my 2007 concert buddies too: Laurel, Rinna, Eloise & Son & Weiss, Lan & Juan, Jens, Randall, Karen & Craig, Romeo, Roy, Talaya & Ben, Jeannie, & the other Eloise (who calls the other Eloise "the other Eloise" too). Here's to 2008.)

Best Concert Year Ever highlights:

4. Midlake, Bottom of the Hill, 3/4/07.

I didn't write anything down, so here's Midlake's setlist, off the top of my head:

1. We Gathered In Spring
2. Roscoe
3. Van Occupanther
4. In This Camp
5. Balloon Maker
6. Some Of Them Were Superstitious
7. Children of the Grounds [at least that's what the title sounded like]
8. Young Bride
9. Chasing After Deer
10. Bandits
11. Head Home

[encore]

12. It Covers The Hillside
13. Branches

Exit music: Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne"

And I dug how people were singing along to America's "Sister Golden Hair" while Midlake was setting up the stage. Needless to say, Midlake was just fantastic.

Other random things:

- The new song rocked harder than most Midlake songs, i.e., big crunching guitar solo in the middle.
- The DVD projecting the films behind them broke down at some point, but I seem to remember something from Eisenstein's "Ivan the Terrible."
- I've never seen so much gear for a small-club performance before; they were unloading a U-Haul trailer and the equipment basically covered half the passageway in front of the restrooms at the Bottom of the Hill.

5. Gene Loves Jezebel, Red Devil Lounge, SF, 3/8/07.

Michael Aston, the lead singer, called me "a sick motherfucker," but that's okay. (I had yelled out for "The Motion of Love.") Later he elaborated: "No single heterosexual has ever requested 'The Motion of Love.' But then we're in San Francisco." (The woman next to me said, "I love that song, and I'm straight!" Maybe I should have asked for her number or something.)

Okay -- so I'm not the biggest Gene Loves Jezebel fan, and, I swear, I can probably only really recognize three songs in their entire oeuvre. So I was pleasantly surprised at how kickass Aston's backup band was.

What I remember, kind of:

- "Don't Fear The Reaper"
- an acoustic version of "Desire"
- a Doors song played on FM radio all the time, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was
- "Suspicion" somewhere in there
- "Exploding Girl" dedicated to "the people of Palestine and their struggle"
- "Gorgeous," of course
- women climbing up on stage and practically molesting Michael Aston

p.s. To the random drunk/high hot chick who danced with me, drank my beer, rubbed up against me, and gave me a kiss: thank you.

9. LCD Soundsystem, Mezzanine, SF, 4/30/07.

LCD Soundsystem's setlist, if my beer-fogged mind can remember:

- Us and Them
- Daft Punk Is Playing At My House (speeded up a notch)
- Time to Get Away
- North American Scum (great shout-along for this one)
- All My Friends (probably the highlight of the concert, just a slow-driving accretion of layers)

(note: here's where the order gets tricky, because it's late and I'm tired and I had a good amount to drink, so take it with a grain of salt)

- Tribulations (excellent)
- Watch The Tapes (more shout-along for this song)
- Movement (rawk!)
- Yeah (plus Murphy does a series of drum/cowbell solos on this one)

(encore)

- Someone Great
- (didn't recognize this one, though it sounded vaguely familiar, like something from the '80s; rocked harder than usual. A cover maybe? The refrain sounded like "I need it") [This turned out to be Joy Division's "No Love Lost".]
- New York I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down

10. Explosions in the Sky / Eluvium, Slim's, SF, 5/1/2007.

To see a nice chunk of Temporary Recordings' roster in concert -- including Mono -- in a span of five days is absolutely thrilling. So it was with great excitement that I caught this particular sold-out show.

Eluvium started the concert. Not sure how to describe the live experience, since it's just Matthew Cooper with a guitar, hunched over laptop and keyboards for the most part, plus projected loops of film in the background, featuring birds flying in circles around a smokestack. Interestingly, he didn't play any of the solo piano pieces, or even the Philip Glass-like compositions, but the long, droning melodies slowly being overtaken by cascading sheets of noise. Beautiful stuff, but loud -- members of the audience were pressing hard on their earplugs.

The setlist, I think (as usual, not sure of the titles):

- Ostinato
- Under The Water It Glowed
- Taken
- Zerthis Was A Shivering Human Image [if not, it sure was harsh and metallic like this track]

And then finally, Explosions in the Sky. Damn, they're great to watch live; like Mono, the audience was treated to the sight of the band swaying in unison (though a couple of the guitarists would disappear from (my) sight, presumably fiddling with the pedals on the floor). Fantastic show, with a respectful audience that stayed dead silent during the quiet passages.

I'm even worse with EitS titles, so I can write for a fact that "The Only Moment We Were Alone" was the last song, and the absolutely glorious "First Breath after Coma" was the first one, and "Catastrophe and the Cure" was the penultimate song, but everything else is a blur.

13. Up Dharma Down / The Dawn, saGuijo, Makati, 6/7/07.

Concert write-up here.

15. Battles, Slim's, 07/02/07.

Saw them twice this year, but the first time was the best: total eekamony-eekamony madness.

16. SUNN O))) / Earth, The Independent, SF, 7/4/07.

Concert write-up here.

18. The Polyphonic Spree, The Great American Music Hall, SF, 7/17/07.

Concert write-up here.

19. Sonic Youth, Berkeley Community Theatre, Berkeley, 07/19/07.

It's odd when you know exactly what the setlist will be -- in this case, Daydream Nation in its entirety -- which returns the concert-record experience to its original historical state, i.e., having the shellac / vinyl / 8-track / tape / minidisc / CD / mp3s be the musical record of the concert. Not the best venue for rocking out, but a stellar show all the same. And thanks to Eloise for the tickets!

20. Slint, Bimbo's, SF, 07/22/07.

Spiderland in its entirety; enough said.

21. The Smashing Pumpkins, The Fillmore, SF, 07/31/07.

This was actually a rather disappointing concert (write-up here), but made memorable for the way the tickets were purchased. Thanks again to Eloise for the tickets!

22. Mandy Moore, The Fillmore, SF, 08/22/07.

Concert write-up here.

24. The Treasure Island Music Festival, SF, 09/16/07.

No concert write-up, but I mention it in one of those monthly mix posts.

25. The National, The Grand, SF, 09/29/07.

Maybe not the greatest band live, but when they're playing music from my favorite album (Boxer) released in 2007, it's still quite an experience.

26. Charlie Louvin, Amoeba Records, SF, 10/06/07.

In the presence of a legend: Charlie Louvin, his voice, his band, and about 25 other people on a Saturday afternoon.

27. Boris / Damon & Naomi, The Independent, SF, 10/14/07.

Concert write-up here.

29. Mono, The Independent, SF, 10/28/07.

Second time to see them this year, and this was the best of all. No concert write-up, but you can get a sense of their live show in my DVD review.

31. M.I.A. / Cool Kids, The Fillmore, 11/7/07.

Just unbelievable: I've never been to a concert with a crowd this excited before. Maya Arulpragasam is a goddess. I think I've written that before.

32. Dengue Fever, The Independent, 11/9/07.

Third time to see the Coolest Band in America in 2007, and maybe the sixth or seventh overall? Concert write-up here. Chhom Nimol is a goddess. I think I've written that before too.

33. PUFFY, Slim's, 11/15/07.

Once again, snagged by Laurel, since we were standing in front of the monitors. (We did wait for two hours in the cold so we could be right up front.) The last time PUFFY came through SF, I stupidly blew them off for a terrible Claire Denis film, for which I had already bought tickets. Note to self: You never, ever do that for one of your favorite bands ever. And this Slim's gig was just about perfect.

The October / November 2007 Mix.

(For people who don't know how this works: a flash widget opens at the bottom of the entry. Sometimes it takes a long time. You can play them and do other things, like d--nl--d them. Then I delete the mp3s after a while.)

1. Bergheim 34, "Take My Soul"
from the 2003 album It's Not For You As It Is For Us

I love the cold, Teutonic, skeletal clatter: the metallic rattle of robot femurs in a disco laboratory.

Forced Exposure link.
Bergheim 34 discography.

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2. Caribou, "Melody Day"
from the 2007 album Andorra

I was totally unprepared for the twin-drum attack at the Caribou show at Slim's a few months ago, but you can hear it on the bridges of this track of swirly, sun-tinged electronic pop.

Video on YouTube.
Amazon link.
Official website.

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3. Wild Billy Childish and The Musicians of the British Empire, "Date with Doug"
from the 2007 album Punk Rock at the British Legion Hall

There are more things in the Billy Childish discography than are dreamt of in your philosophy, and this three-minute, eleven-second track is but a tiny fraction of Childish's output. The man's a jack of all trades: singer, painter, composer, poet, Stuckist, guitarist, "the king of garage rock" -- and purveyor of this ragged piece of pop bubblegum, with Nurse Julie on vocals. (It's an unnecessarily mean song though, but it's part of Childish's long war against the insipid.)

Amazon link.
Official website.

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4. Hem, "Jackson"
from the 2002 album I'm Talking With My Mouth

Something in the water in Brooklyn feeding all this talent -- check. (That's where Hem is from, and not somewhere a little more south.) You may be more familiar with the faster Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash duet from At Folsom Prison; Hem slows it way down and luxuriates over one of the greatest opening lines ever: "We got married in a fever."

Amazon link.
Official website.

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5. Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings, "What Have You Done For Me Lately?, Part 1"
from the 2006 compilation Daptone 7-Inch Singles Collection, Vol. 1

It's a 21-year old song made to sound 35, and the dance pop of Janet Jackson's original is channeled here into a furious Declaration of Asskicking.

Amazon link.
Official website.

----------

6. Jean Knight, "Do Me"
from the 1971 album Mr. Big Stuff

This song just sounds dangerous, a nice thick slab of sizzling funk that can't be healthy for you.

Amazon link.
Wikipedia page.

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7. Jesse Sykes and The Sweet Hereafter, "Your Eyes Told"
from the 2004 album Oh, My Girl

Tin roof shaking, crashing black
Well, i ain’t going back
Deliver me, take me in
Let me breathe your coarse wind
Day is empty, night too long
River hums a sweet song

Every song your lungs sang
Every lie your eyes told
Canyon whisper, canyon weep
I thought you were behind me

Tin roof shaking, crashing black
Well i ain’t going back
Deliver me, take me in
Let me breathe your coarse wind

Sublime music for driving in a dry country.

Amazon link.
Official website.

----------

8. The Zombies, "This Will Be Our Year"
from the 1968 album Odessey and Oracle

The warmth of your love
is like the warmth of the sun
and this will be our year
took a long time to come

don't let go of my hand
now darkness has gone
and this will be our year
took a long time to come

and I won't forget
the way you held me up when I was down
and I won't forget the way you said,
"Darling I love you"
You gave me faith to go on

Now we're there and we've only just begun
This will be our year
took a long time to come

The warmth of your smile
smile for me, little one
and this will be our year
took a long time to come

You don't have to worry
all your worried days are gone
this will be our year
took a long time to come

and I won't forget
the way you held me up when I was down
and I won't forget the way you said,
"Darling I love you"
You gave me faith to go on

Now we're there and we've only just begun
and this will be our year
took a long time to come

Yeah we only just begun
yeah this will be our year
took a long time to come

My first reaction upon hearing this song was, "Where has this been all my life???" People should dance to this at weddings.

Amazon link.
Wikipedia page.

----------

Dengue Fever, The Independent, SF, 11/09/07.

1. In what is clearly my Best Concert Year Ever, I met Chhom Nimol, the lead singer of Dengue Fever (the coolest band in America, as I've written many times) this evening. I bought her a shot of Jagermeister, which she requested ("Medicine for singers," she said).

(2. Imagine three exclamation points at the end of each sentence and you'll have a good idea of how I'm feeling.)

3. I was standing in the back of the venue when I turned around to look at the bar and saw Chhom Nimol. Who was waving at me. I turn back to my friends (Talaya, Ben and Carlo) and point her out. And she was indeed waving at me. I couldn't believe it.

4. Later she said she recognized me from seeing me at the shows (!). (I think it was a case of mistaken identity, but still! How cool is that?)

5. So she gave Talaya (who speaks Khmer, a good thing) her cell phone number and told her to call and wait until after the show, when she came out. So we all got to talk afterwards and have pictures taken and CDs signed. She was sooooo cool and friendly; she wanted photographs with everyone, and was giving us hugs right and left. (She started telling us a story about having a room next to Maya Arulpragasam during the Treasure Island Music Festival, and how she was wearing all blue, and bringing Cambodian CDs, but I didn't hear the rest.)

6. Oh, wait, the show: an excellent set, as always, with more new songs from the forthcoming album creeping into the list (I'm wondering if "Doo Wop" or "A-Go-Go" will ever show up on it).

(7. The opening night selection at this year's Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival was none other than John Pirozzi's Sleepwalking through the Mekong! I can't wait to see it.)

8. And Talaya sung "I'm Only Sixteen" with Dengue Fever at the encore! (There was no way she'd mess it up like I did before.)

Thanks For Making Me Feel Really Old, Pitchfork!

Give or take a year, I'm the same age as (my musical heroes) Polly Jean Harvey and James Murphy, who I presume are also in that big nebulous open-ended Middle Age / Senior Citizen group.

A Musical Exercise: 5 from the '50s.

Arranged by year of release, here are my five favorite songs from the '50s. (See also the rationale behind all of this.)

----------

1. Nat King Cole, "Red Sails in the Sunset"
1955

There are two distinct periods to Nat King Cole's long body of work: first, the pianist leading his swinging jazz trio; second, the "Unforgettable" crooner bringing his music to a bigger (and whiter) audience. My dad loved the latter Cole, his uncomplicated, unruffled songs now overlaid with strings and the most syrupy backing choral arrangements this side of, I don't know, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. (Listen to his renditions of "Ramblin' Rose" and "The Yellow Rose of Texas", for instance; they're irredeemably terrible.)

This was unfortunate, and I did not, in fact, find out that Cole actually played piano until the early '90s! It was, however, the Nat King Cole I grew up with: the Cole of "Smile" and "L-O-V-E" (though the fantastic "A Blossom Fell" is from this era too); the Cole played over and over on the stereo and later, once technology permitted, on long road trips; the Cole whose enunciation was held up by my father as a paragon of good singing, "unlike the music you listen to -- is he even saying anything?" he'd address me. (I might have been particularly obsessed with New Order's mumbly "Ceremony" at that point.)

And so "Red Sails in the Sunset" is from the wrong Cole period, but it's lovely nonetheless, and included here for all the right reasons: my dad sang me to sleep with this song, and I sing my daughter to sleep with it as well.

Amazon link for the compilation Unforgettable.

----------

2. Frank Sinatra, "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning"
from the 1955 album In the Wee Small Hours

The song is cinematically, melodramatically, solitary from the get-go: the ironic lullaby-like notes in the beginning, with the strings gently nudging the weary Sinatra into an effortless recitation of his loss. The languidness of the song's arrangement, and the odd, redundant juxtaposition of "wee" and "small" (but what the first few words do is shape the singer's mouth not into a caress, but into a kind of tired, slackjawed mourning, i.e., no plosives or fricatives), are in perfect consonance with the resigned melancholy of the lyrics. But the almost somnolent haze of the song belies what's most important: he is wide awake, he does not want to go to sleep, and he is waiting for a call which he knows will never arrive. And he is all alone.

Amazon link.

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3. Billie Holiday, "I Thought About You"
from the 1956 album Lady Sings The Blues

For me it's all about that purring lilt in her voice at the end of the line when she sings "The one going back to you." Sometimes, though, what does it for me is the couplet that goes

And every stop that we made
oh, I thought about you

The "we" of course refers to her and the train's passengers, but I like thinking she's with someone else.

Amazon link.

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4. Link Wray, "Rumble"
1958

I mean, listen to it! It even sounds filthy and dangerous and about to stab you with a dirty knife.

Amazon link for the compilation Rumble! The Best of Link Wray.

----------

5. The Teddy Bears, "To Know Him Is To Love Him"
1958

Phil Spector was all of seventeen years old when he wrote this simple, straightforward philosophical equation of "to know" and "to love" (he also arranged it, and sang in the background), and it's already a fully-formed marvel of adolescent longing from afar. (Though it's really a tribute -- like Bread's "Everything I Own" -- to Spector's late father.)

But we don't find out about the "from afar" part until we hear the second stanza, and we move from the present tense to the future conditional, and the bridge, when Annette Kleinbard finally lets loose, only accentuates the despair: "Why can't he see me?" This three-part structure is mirrored as well in that fantastic opening line, progressing from "know know know" to "love love love" and finally to -- what else, in 1958? -- "and I do and I do and I do."

Amazon link for Phil Spector's box set Back to Mono.

A Musical Exercise.

I wish I understood music better. That lack of vocabulary or technical background feels like it renders senseless my faux-critic writing for this blog: I can't tell a middle fifth from a particular piano chord, but I know when a guitar solo kicks ass. But I can't tell you exactly what makes the music good. It's easier on my part to chart the emotional trajectories of the music, to map out the avenues of sentiment, to write, if paradoxically, about the ineffable. I suppose it's an oblique testimony to what's best about popular music: its ability to better articulate words that can't be said. (Which is why pop music is also responsible for the phenomenon of the crappy mixtape.)

But maybe the inarticulable reveals itself in other perhaps less welcome ways as well. There are parts of my waking and walking life where half-remembered lines, fragments of lyrics, as if I were guided by voices, burrow through my head in a series of non sequiturs. And I did not think the girl could be so cruel. But how strange the change from major to minor. The arc of a love affair, rainbows in the high desert air. I'm on the lawn with someone else's wife. Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to. And your telephone's been ringing while you're dancing in the rain. Provided of course you're not dumb enough to actually try it.

Surely this aural affliction isn't just a result of my music geekery, a reminder that I don't consume music; it's the other way around. Being haunted by music is a wonderful thing.

And so, a musical exercise, or is it exorcism: pick an increasing number of favorite pop songs from each decade, maybe to nail down something definitive though inevitably mutable, as if a recitation would dispel these musical ghosts, an attempt to render into digital bits the swirl of words in the ether, or to intellectually justify making a list I would have made anyway. I've done different versions of this before, but this time it's even more restrictive: 5 from the '50s, 6 from the '60s, 7 from the '70s, and so on, with the net of choices widening in proportion to my familiarity with those years. (Granted, I could have picked from the '30s and '40s as well, but I just don't have that many songs. The lyrics cited above -- bonus points if you recognize them without googling! -- don't correspond with my choices either.)

There is no logic to the choices, really -- it's all emotion, with no consideration for historical significance or any of the criteria that musicologists deem important -- except that the songs show that I am clearly one big fucking sap. It's funny how most of these songs are somehow about longing -- I suppose it's what my research is about, in some ways -- but good lord, I'm clearly throwing out any ounce of indie cred I ever had with these selections. (I'd love to be able to boast that I was listening to the Dead Kennedys or the Minutemen or something when I was in high school, but no -- that's the Philippines for you. But true fact: I was the only one listening to Talking Heads in the entire school.)

While this is an essentially nostalgic endeavor, I still think about old friends who unplugged themselves from the radio after graduation, who never moved on musically, people who slipped quietly into a musical lassitude and pronounce, over their drinks, that they don't write 'em like they used to. But of course they do. Either that or they succumb to the sanitized, cheap embrace of Adult Contemporary. May I be struck down by lightning if this ever happens. But here I am, tempting lightning bolts to rain down on my head anyway.

(The first post in this 5-part series appears next week, and the rest -- who knows.)

Boris / Damon & Naomi, The Independent, SF, 10/14/2007.

Last Sunday night's show at the Independent was as pedigreed a concert as could be assembled on one stage in one evening: two-thirds of Galaxie 500 (one of my favorite bands ever), one-fifth of Ghost (yet another), one-sixth of Espers, one-half of nmperign, and all three of the mighty Boris. The "linchpin" for the concert, as Damon Krukowski put it, was none other than Michio Kurihara from Ghost, who was essentially playing that night for a couple of hours with both Damon and Naomi and Boris.

I can't say I envied Damon and Naomi opening for such a legendarily loud band like Boris. (The announcer at the Independent actually warned the audience to get earplugs -- the first time in three years, said the coat-check woman.) Their frail bedroom music didn't seem particularly matched for an audience mostly clad in black and in Pig Destroyer and Converge T-shirts. (I myself was wearing a Swans T-shirt.) But soldier on they did, augmented by folks including Kurihara on guitar, Bhob Rainey on sax, and Helena Espvall on cello; "We're the silent part of the Silent Thunder tour, if only to make Boris sound even louder," Krukowski told the crowd.

Things don't really get rolling until two guitar-related moments: first, when Kurihara launches into a beautifully Allmanesque guitar solo on the second song. And the second, when Naomi Yang leaves the keyboard and finally picks up her Gibson bass. (I'm not a guitar person at all, but Yang's bass lines are as immediately recognizable to me as, say, Peter Hook's.) Excellent set all in all, but slightly marred by all the folks talking in the back. (I haven't heard the latest album yet -- it's on top of my shopping list -- but one great song sounded vaguely familiar from their set list: a Sandy Denny / Shirley Collins / Pentangle cover, maybe?)

I didn't expect Boris's drummer Atsuo to do a stage-dive right on top of my head, but such are the wages of standing front and center. At least I wasn't directly inhaling all the liquid nitrogen from the smoke machines (note to the Independent folks: aim them up like you did at the SUNN O)))) concert!). But it was the perfect place to witness how all those slabs of drone / doom metal / hard rock were produced: Kurihara freaking out with his guitar during the encore, Atsuo yelling in delight, Wata very calmly playing furious solos on a guitar that (and I know this sounds patronizing) looked heavier and longer than herself. Too bad Takeshi was having problems with his guitar at the beginning of the set, but otherwise an excellent evening.

Modern Girls and Modern Rock & Roll.

It's Lack of Circumspection time at The Wily Filipino again! A few years ago I decided to give online dating a try -- which I had never done before -- and so one night put some thought into writing a description for myself (what I was like, my interests, who I was looking for, and so on). And I thought I'd toss in, as a tidbit (but probably also as an unnecessary "test" of sorts), the fact that I was still in shock that my favorite band, Guided by Voices, was breaking up.

So I wrote this all up -- these things take forever to write, by the way* -- and decided to send a copy to my good friend Jane so she could vet it -- and the following frustrating (paraphrased) IM conversation ensued:

me: what did you think?

jane: i think it looks good. except...

me: what?

jane: i think you should remove the guided by voices reference

me [genuinely shocked]: what? why?

jane: they're a real guy band

me: of course they're not

jane: no really

me: they happen to be all guys, but still

jane: you need to find someone more neutral, something women would like

me: but i already namedrop bjork!

jane: see, i'm having second thoughts about including her as well

me: why?

jane: you have no idea how many women hate bjork

me: but it's meant as a general reference to the kind of music i like. besides i really love gbv

jane: potential dates might think you broke up with your wife because you were more into male-bonding**

me: are you serious???

jane: think of someone more neutral

me: i already namedrop "In the Mood for Love!" who should i include, avril lavigne??

jane: not if you don't really like her

me [desperately thinking of my other favorite band]: how about yo la tengo?

jane: that's better. at least they have georgia hubley

me: but what's so wrong about gbv?

jane: potential dates don't like bands that throw beer bottles at the audience

me: they *hand* beer bottles to audience members. that's different!

jane: it's like telling someone on the first date that you're into heavy metal

me: but gbv isn't even close to heavy metal!

jane: but you see what i mean

me: no i don't

jane: you don't want to turn them off before they even meet you

me [getting really irate now]: gbv won't do that!

Suffice it to say that I quickly abandoned that entire avenue of possibility before it even began -- not because I refused to back down on the universal appeal of Guided by Voices, but because the whole online dating thing seemed kind of futile anyway. But not before accidentally coming across a couple of Filipino American academics' profiles whose names I will not divulge. (They were several pages deep anyway, and therefore far beyond any spheres of compatibility.)

However, this made me wonder about all this inordinate interest in music on my part. I mean, it's not as if a date's horrible musical tastes were going to be a dealbreaker... or were they? Is musical compatibility really all that important in general? Would I turn down a hot date just because she was, say, a huge Celine Dion fan? (Very likely, but I'm an idiot that way.***)

Last week a woman I'd never met or spoken to wrote me to say that my "cool taste in music alone would want me to date you." If that wasn't confirmation of, well, something, I don't know what is. (She was married though.)

But... maybe music in and of itself is important, period. About a couple of months ago my friends were regretting not bringing music to the Lake Tahoe cabin where we were on holiday -- not that there were any uncomfortable silences that needed to be filled or anything -- but, as one person put it, "One day we'll hear a song on the radio and it will remind us of this weekend. But unfortunately we don't have any songs to remember it by."

In this example the song seems more powerful a symbol than the referent, i.e., the experience of being in Tahoe, itself! None of us will be likely to forget the Tahoe experience any time soon -- I am still constantly harassed by my friends about my numerous half-drownings while kayaking and wearing a life vest in five feet of water -- but here, music is seen as crucial in creating memory itself.

Music not only serves as a memory-trigger, though. It's an illustration of the way in which music is imbued with the ability to structure and frame experience. (Clothing stores know this, therefore the pianist at Nordstrom's, the bouncy catwalk music at the Gap.) Music charges and changes a room; it creates atmosphere; it generates moods; it summons up memories; it elicits emotions -- all in ways perhaps more efficient, immediate, and sometimes even more indelible than our other senses do. It functions as an aesthetic overlay mapped onto our collective experience. Life in general may simply go better with a soundtrack. Maybe other people do too.

Still, this recognition of the aesthetic importance of music in the everyday didn't explain my unreasonable intertwining of the romantic and the aural. (As if She would walk into a room accompanied by, say, Luna's "I Want Everything." Or Built To Spill's "Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss.") In any case, an answer came to me, in the way that all good answers arrive, i.e., serendipitously.

A few weeks ago I was holding Pierre Bourdieu's "Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste" in one hand and weighing whether I should get rid of it or not. (In this case it was literal weighing; the book is the size of a small metropolitan area's White Pages, and takes up almost as much space.) And suddenly, there it was -- who would have known that a dead French sociologist would know exactly what I was talking about, and write about it in such cruelly hilarious detail?

Taste is a match-maker; it marries colours and also people, who make 'well-matched couples', initially in regard to taste... Hence the astonishing harmony of ordinary couples who, often matched initially, progressively match each other by a sort of mutual acculturation. This spontaneous decoding of one habitus by another is the basis of the immediate affinities which orient social encounters, discouraging socially discordant relationships, encouraging well-matched relationships, without these operations ever having to be formulated other than in the socially innocent language of likes and dislikes. The extreme improbability of the particular encounter between particular people, which masks the probability of interchangeable chance events, induces couples to experience their mutual election as a happy accident, a coincidence which mimics transcendent design ('made for each other') and intensifies the sense of the miraculous.

Those whom we find to our taste put into their practices a taste which does not differ from the taste we put into operation in perceiving their practices. Two people can give each other no better proof of the affinity of their tastes than the taste they have for each other.

I mean, what if she prefers late R.E.M. to early R.E.M.? What if she drags me to a Josh Groban concert? Or, god forbid, what if she doesn't like the mix CDs I make for her? And, if I were somehow extremely blessed, would she have Guided by Voices' Bee Thousand on her shelf?

*My "About Me" entry on Facebook, just to give you an example, ended up reading: "Must see! Charming, spacious and immaculate. Newly remodeled, granite counter top, utilities included, walk-in closet, views of the Bay. Great location, close to restaurants, MUNI, Safeway, 280 and 101, etc."

**Absolutely not true. But I did check her out and her music collection, and upon seeing Everything But The Girl and Rickie Lee Jones, I knew we'd be cool together. (Needless to say there were more things that attracted me to her than just the CDs, but you know what I mean.)

***Read: obviously *I'm* the one who's being difficult here, and I'm probably shooting myself in the foot because mendicancy doesn't leave people with many options, after all. Yeah, like I have to shoo women away with a stick. And as if all this music-geekery on display wasn't already Danger Signal #1.

The September 2007 Mix.

Only four songs this month (and about ten days late too), but rest assured they're of very high quality.

It would have been five, actually -- the fifth would have been the excellent "Long Summer Day" by Two Gallants, but it threatened to turn into this big disquisition on its lyrics, race, Quentin Tarantino, the "N-word", and one of the funniest scenes in Richard Wong's Colma: The Musical (one of my favorite films this year), and I couldn't hook it all together coherently enough, so I dropped it.

Also, I'm removing the files off box.net once the entry drops off the first page on the blog. They won't be here forever, folks!

1. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, "Underwater (You and Me)"
from the 2007 album Some Loud Thunder

Some songs see us sailing away
Navigating foreign borders, and climbing the waves
Someday your secret will be revealed
Either one you're thinking of when the sun goes down into the water

We're struck by the still of the moon
Hanging up there in the sky as though a balloon
Anchored by an astronaut's patriot tune
We will buy the ship and fly to the land that would be rediscovered

We'll design a clever disguise
We'll retreat to the bottom of the sea
We were destined to live out our lives underwater, you and me

We'll escape beneath the violet sky
Clouds come and night falls
You seem different on my mind
Upon an endless trail of moonlight
You'll never realize that we have gone, we have gone right out of, out of sight

We'll design a clever disguise
We'll retreat to the bottom of the sea
We were destined to live out our lives underwater, you and me

Fact: Alec Ounsworth is a terrible singer on record and an even worse one live. My friend Eloise and I saw them play live at the Treasure Island Music Festival (along with the aforementioned Two Gallants, a lackluster Au Revoir Simone (but I knew that coming in), a very cool M. Ward, an always-reliable Built to Spill, a very good Spoon, and Modest Mouse, whom we skipped. My humble pictures taken from the center here, by the way; scroll down to the 20 pictures at the bottom).

Our response, unfortunately, wasn't clapping our hands or saying "yeah"; it was more of looking at each other with puzzlement. (Though the lone, barely-sentient Filipino guy who just happened to be standing next to us made the concert way, way better with his generosity, for which I traded a couple of oatmeal cookies. The woman behind us commented that this was "the greatest thing I'd ever seen," referring to our exchange. "This restores my faith in humanity," she said. Eloise was happy too.)

The best thing about the concert was the excellent title track ("Some Loud Thunder"), which we hear in the shittiest mix imaginable on the record, but was now more intelligible through the wall of speakers. Unfortunately they didn't play "Underwater (You and Me)", which does restore my faith in indie rock, at least. There's nothing quite like a good Running Away Song -- like Born to Run is full of nothing but Running Away Songs -- and "Underwater (You and Me)" is a perfect example. If this ever came out as a single, Michel Gondry would do a great job directing the video.

Live version on YouTube.
Amazon link.
Official website.

----------

2. Monday Michiru, "Slo"
from the 2003 album Moods

I've said it a couple times before, and I'll say it again: Monday Michiru should be a massive, worldwide star. An already-glorious career as an acid-jazz diva, a hugely appealing lyricist, a bold and ambitious plunge into straight-up jazz, a genuine musical pedigree, a remarkably supple and sophisticated voice (not to mention the fact that she's drop-dead gorgeous) -- what's wrong with you people?

Amazon link.
Official website.

----------

3. Maria Taylor, "A Good Start"
from the 2007 album Lynn Teeter Flower

You're one with the burden of intuition.
You're one with the freedom of a blank stare.
You're one with the best friend you lost,
You wish was still there.

You're one with the dust on that old piano.
You're one with the strings on your new guitar.
You're one with the wind through the open window,
You are.

It was a faint line that brought you here,
And a pulse that kept you in time.
It was the comfort of a tradition,
Like the few that were not that kind.

It's a shame now, baby, you can't see yourself
And everything you're running from.
And it's the same world, honey, that has brought you down,
As the one that's gonna pick you up.
And pick you up.

You're one with the echoes of conversation.
You're one with the strangers you overheard.
You're one with the lesson that was the best one you learned.

It was a faint line that brought you here,
And a pulse that kept you in time.
It was the comfort of a tradition,
Like the few that were not that kind.

It's a shame now, baby, you can't see yourself
And everything you're running from.
And it's the same world, honey, that has brought you down,
As the one that's gonna pick you up.
And pick you up.

It was a cold, dark, sleepy morning walk.
You fell down facing up.
It was a good start.
It was a good start.

It was a cold, dark, sleepy morning walk.
You fell down facing up.
It was a good start.
It was a good start.

It's a shame now, baby, you can't see yourself
And everything you're running from.
And it's the same world, honey, that has brought you down,
As the one that's gonna pick you up.
And pick you up.

And it's a shame now, baby, you can't separate
Yourself from where you stood.
And it's the same world, honey, that made you feel so bad,
That makes you feel so good.
Feel so good.

I'm a not-so-secret admirer of indie female singer-songwriters (whatever that means), and this song goes straight to that indie-female-singer-songwriter-admiring part of my brain.

Video on YouTube.
Amazon link.
Official website.

----------

4. Kanye West, "Barry Bonds (feat. Lil Wayne)"
from the 2007 album Graduation

And finally, the best song, hands down, from my favorite album of the month and certainly one of the best albums of the year. "Only I could come up with some shit like this." Indeed. (But why Lil Wayne -- in a fantastic, even more gravelly-voiced than usual, guest appearance here, still feels compelled to stupidly say "no homo" in such enlightened times is a mystery.)

Why I love this song: lots of reasons -- "bow so hard till your knees hit your forehead," the way the instruments all tumble together slowly at the beginning, "ice in my teeth so refrigerated," the constant stop-start rhythm, but when it comes down to it -- it's all about the throat-clearing.

Amazon link.
Official website.

----------

New Routine.

Izzy is short for Isabella. I don't always call her with all four syllables, unless it's in a singsong tone ("I-sa-BEL-la!") or an escalation of a series of unheard "Izzy!"s. (Of course, her full name gets deployed only when I'm really angry, which rarely, if ever, happens. And her full full name only got trotted out to impress visitors when she was younger.)

A couple of weekends ago, we accidentally stumbled upon a new routine. (Izzy says she heard it on a summer day camp field trip -- the bigger kids knew the song, she said.)

Me: Isabella.

Izzy: Ella.

Me: Ella.

Izzy: Eh.

Me: Eh.

Izzy: Eh.

Ah, kids these days. When I was six my notion of pop music was probably limited only to the Pointer Sisters singing "1-2-3-4-5, 6-7-8-9-10, 11-12, doo doo doo doo..." And Ernie's "Rubber Duckie."

The August 2007 Mix.

It's The National month here at The Wily Filipino, but there's other music besides. So here goes: my favorite music of the last 30 days. (The mp3s can be played in the Box widget at the end of the entry. No, you can't download them, because I'm already violating enough copyright as it is. UPDATE: Oops. It looks like you can indeed download the stuff. Hmm.)

1. the brilliant green, "Flowers"
from the 2002 album THE WINTER ALBUM

Other than the fact that their lead singer, Tomoko Kawase, is the most beautiful woman in the world other than Rosario Dawson -- and feel free to navigate away from here and come back in 15 minutes -- the brilliant green specializes in straightforward, no-nonsense, radio-friendly guitar pop of the highest order. Tommy Kawase herself has two excellent side projects, Tommy February6 and Tommy Heavenly6, exploring different facets of her personality, but now TBG are together again. (Funny thing is, Tommy clearly can't sing live very well, and despite her danceable, creme-filled TF6 songs, is a rather lackluster dancer. I love her anyway.)

It's the brilliant green's midtempo ballads that really shine, though. Folks familiar with their singles would probably hear nothing very little in "Flowers" to differentiate it from, say, their hits like "Angel Song" or "Hello Another Way", but such perfectly calibrated, wistful pop -- particularly this song buried in the middle of the album -- shouldn't go unnoticed.

Lyrics in English transliteration.
Live version on YouTube.
Amazon Link.
Official website.

----------

2. Eggstone, "Against the Sun"
from the 1994 album Somersault

I've always had a soft spot for jangly indie pop, particularly in short bursts like "Against the Sun"; the fact that Eggstone comes from Sweden [insert gratuitous reference to IKEA, the Cardigans and Volvo here] seals the deal.

Lyrics.
Amazon link.
Official website.

----------

3. Maria João & Mário Laginha, "From Both Sides Now"
from the 2003 album Undercovers

Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" is as chestnutty as it gets, covered to exhaustion by different artists in the last four decades. (My first exposure to it was not to the original song, but to a Frank Sinatra version on his odd 1968 album Cycles -- which I remembered because of its front cover, showing a weary Frank.)

And despite the relative triteness of the song -- it's like the Beatles' "Yesterday" -- there's something awfully sweet about this version, all lovely piano tinkle and that soft but insistent percussion in the background. (It's not actually representative of João's work; in my favorite song of hers, "Pés No Chão", her vocals swoop and sputter like Bjork.)

Amazon link,
Official websites.

----------

4. Mandy Moore, "Looking Forward to Looking Back"
from the 2007 album Wild Hope

Drove to your house in the hills
Where I wanted to be
The lights were all on
And I knew you were waiting for me
And that road became familiar
Like the mystery shape of your heart

[CHORUS]
And I know you loved me in your way
I'm looking forward to looking back on these days
And I'm fine, but I'm not okay
I'm looking forward to looking back on these days

The fog in the morning clouded the world that we knew
It was almost enough being lonely and living for you
And the rain came to our window

And I wish I could've stayed

[CHORUS]

Let it go
Let it go sunshine
Now you know
Now you know it's time
It's time

You were asleep while I gathered my things in the dark
The burns on my fingers were all that was left of the spark
Didn't want to wake you
'Cause I knew I couldn't stay

[CHORUS]

I'm looking forward to looking back on these days

It's a remarkably simple song, but filled with little grace notes: the harmonies on the chorus, the great line "And I'm fine, but I'm not okay." As I wrote in a previous post, Wild Hope is Mandy Moore's largely successful attempt to be taken seriously as a singer-songwriter, and if the writing of the songs probably started off with her and an acoustic guitar rather than a producer with a synth and ProTools, then so be it. People grow up.

Amazon link.
Official website.

----------

5. The National, "Secret Meeting"

and 6. The National, "Mr. November"
from the 2005 album Alligator

All right, so The National is my favorite artist of the month, and I'll tell you why: it's not just Matt Berninger's baritone, but also the darkly ambiguous, vaguely romantic, evocatively filthy lyrics. Most of the time they don't make much sense; one gets the feeling that, like Yo La Tengo's songs, the lines refer to various private references, to glimmers of intimacies. "I won't fuck us over, I'm Mr. November," goes the chorus for the last song on Alligator. There's something both valedictory and despairing in his delivery, and it's this contradictory combination of elements that also animates the uplifting yet self-absorbed "Secret Meeting", with his vocals half-drowned out at the end by the voices inside his head.

Lyrics (scroll to the bottom for "Mr. November").
Amazon link.
Official website.

7. The National, "Fake Empire"

and 8. The National, "Mistaken for Strangers"
from the 2007 album Boxer

Fake Empire

Stay out super late tonight picking apples, making pies
put a little something in our lemonade and take it with us
we're half-awake in a fake empire
we're half-awake in a fake empire

Tiptoe through our shiny city with our diamond slippers on
Do our gay ballet on ice
bluebirds on our shoulders
we're half-awake in a fake empire
we're half-awake in a fake empire

Turn the light out say goodnight
no thinking for a little while
let's not try to figure out everything it wants
It's hard to keep track of you falling through the sky
we're half-awake in a fake empire
we're half-awake in a fake empire

Mistaken for Strangers

You have to do it running but you do everything that they ask you to
cause you don't mind seeing yourself in a picture
as long as you look faraway, as long as you look removed
showered and blue-blazered, fill yourself with quarters
showered and blue-blazered, fill yourself with quarters

You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends
when you pass them at night under the silvery, silvery citibank lights
arm in arm in arm and eyes and eyes glazing under
oh you wouldn't want an angel watching over
surprise, surprise they wouldn’t wanna watch
another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults

Make up something to believe in your heart of hearts
so you have something to wear on your sleeve of sleeves
so you swear you just saw a feathery woman
carry a blindfolded man through the trees
showered and blue-blazered, fill yourself with quarters
showered and blue-blazered, fill yourself with quarters

You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends
when you pass them at night under the silvery, silvery citibank lights
arm in arm in arm and eyes and eyes glazing under
oh you wouldn't want an angel watching over
surprise, surprise they wouldn’t wanna watch
another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults

You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends
when you pass them at night under the silvery, silvery citibank lights
arm in arm in arm and eyes and eyes glazing under
oh you wouldn't want an angel watching over
surprise, surprise they wouldn’t wanna watch
another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults

It actually wasn't very easy to pick my favorite The National songs; I ended up having to cull out "The Geese of Beverly Road" and "The Daughters of the SoHo Riots" and "Slow Show" (which contains the fantastic refrain, "You know I dreamed about you / for twenty-nine years before I saw you"). "Fake Empire" is the first song on their new album, which is very likely to be on my year-end shortlist of albums; "Mistaken for Strangers" seems like a dark companion piece to LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends", or at least the way Hua Hsu writes about it.

Video for "Mistaken for Strangers" on YouTube.
Amazon link.

Mandy Moore / Paula Cole, The Fillmore, SF, 8/22/2007.

It was Mandy Moore's first concert ever in San Francisco -- "at the Fillmore, can you believe it," she asked. I think a smaller venue would have worked better. Some people on Last.fm commented with surprise about my going to a Mandy Moore concert. But friends know I have a soft spot for pop. And yes, J-Lu dragged me there, but I do like her latest album: Wild Hope, is a remarkably strong bid for singer-songwriter status; it's a solid, if safe, collection of sober, mature folk-pop that gets better with each listen. It's a far cry, in any case, from her old teenybopper days, which is something clearly reflected in the setlist. In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. My only complaint: I honestly thought she was the headliner, but I was wrong (see more below).

The setlist, probably not in the proper order:

1. Slummin' in Paradise
2. All Good Things
3. Looking Forward to Looking Back ["a politically correct way of saying goodbye to a relationship"]
4. Moonshadow [Cat Stevens cover from Coverage]
5. Wild Hope
6. Ladies Choice [co-written with Rachael Yamagata, who apparently just ended a relationship like Mandy did]
7. Extraordinary [one of the last songs written for the album; preceded by stage banter about giving up coffee and drinking green tea instead, but being tempted to drink a beer with the guys in the band]
8. Can't You Just Adore Her
9. Help Me [Joni Mitchell cover from Coverage, plus Mandy playing an air guitar and rockin' out with a tambourine]
10. Nothing That You Are ["When I get angry, I write a song. So watch out"]
11. Few Days Down
12. Gardenia [she told a story about recording this in what sounded like a desacralized church, with nothing but the lights out, candles, a pianist, and her mic. This was as close to a show stopper as the set got]
13. Umbrella [Rihanna cover from, well, all over the net. As if the audience hadn't been yelling "Um-ba-rella, ella, ella" the whole evening. "Who would have known the lyrics were so romantic? You break it down and it's just so romantic. This is just a song I would only groove to when it played on the radio, you know?"]
14. Candy ["This song has no meaning for me," she said, "but I'll sing it for you anyway because we made a connection and I love you guys," or words to that effect, which she described as "a crappy pop song from 1999".]

Smashing Pumpkins, The Fillmore, SF, 7/31/07.

1. And so it ends: the concert I've been waiting to attend for so long. Eloise and Son and Weiss and I were standing there maybe 10 people from the stage. And alas, it was rather anticlimactic...

2. I never thought I'd write this, but the setlist was rather short on hits.

3. I mean, it was great to hear "Winterlong" dusted off and all, but when you unveil self-indulgent 15-minute long instrumentals (though the last one before the encore just rocked) about two and a half hours into the concert -- with the blood sunk way down into my ankles -- would it really have killed Billy to throw in "I Am One" or "Cherub Rock" or "Mayonaise" into the whole three-hour set?

4. "Zero" was great though. And so was "With Every Light" early in the set. And "Muzzle" in the first encore.

5. The highlight of the show for me, I think, was the slow-burning "Starla".

6. But jeez -- not even "Bullet with Butterfly Wings"?

7. Was that Ummagumma playing while the Black Angels were clearing their stuff?

8. And that light show was pretty amazing.

9. Plus the longest will-call line I've ever seen at the Fillmore -- all the way down the city block and down past the KFC on Geary and Steiner.

10. And yeah, the new folks were great and all, and Billy and Jimmy were fantastic, but... I think I want my D'Arcy and James back.

The July 2007 Mix.

It's the end of the month, so... my favorite music of the last 30 days.

1. Chatmonchy, "Otogino kuni no kimi"
from the 2006 album Miminari

No idea what it means, unfortunately (lyrics are here), but my heart just leaps once Hashimoto Eriko gets to the chorus about 35 seconds in.

Amazon link.
Official website.

----------

2. Chatmonchy, "Joshi tachi ni Asu wa Nai"
from the 2007 Joshi tachi ni Asu wa Nai single

I believe it's roughly translated as "There Is No Tomorrow For The Girls" (or "Girls Will Not Have Tomorrow?"). Chatmonchy is my new favorite Japanese band.

YesAsia link.
Video on YouTube. (Fantastic, by the way.)

----------

3. Chillitees, "Sama Na"
from the 2006 album Extra Rice

CHORUS
Sama na
Wag ka nang magtanong
Lapit na
Ipikit ang mata

Ibigay mo ang yong damdamin
At ibibigay ang iyong hiling
Walang tayong mapapansin
Walang iba kundi sarili natin
Magdamag tayong magsasaya
Nakatitig sa iyong mata
Hangang maabot natin ang ligaya
Kaya't sa 'kin ay sumama na

[repeat CHORUS]

Mula ngayon ay wala ng iba
Ikaw lang ang tanging kailangan
Wag ka nang mag-alinlangan
Sa buhay ko’y ikaw lamang

[repeat CHORUS]

Ako magbibigay ng ‘yong kaligayahan
Hawakan mo aking kamay di kita pababayaan
Gagawin ang mga bagay na di pag sisisihan
Lumayo kaman mananatili pa rin sa 'kin
Ang pusong inaalay at malalim na damdamin
Kahit anong gawin hindi ito maisasalin
Sumama ka at libutin natin ang buong mundo
Ang oras ay ating limutin
At ating ipanalangin na itong paglalakbay
Tuloy tuloy nating tahakin
Wag nang pag isipan pa
Lumapit ka’t tanggalin ang pangangamba
Pagkat ikaw at ako punung puno ng alaala

[repeat CHORUS]

No need to translate the lyrics, really; of course it's about sex.

Amazon link.
Official website.
Video on YouTube.

----------

4. Some Tweetlove, "La Nostalgie Des Hauts-Fourneaux"
from the 2006 album Cafard Mondial

First heard it on a Wire compilation, and it's been running through my head ever since.

Matamore link. (Couldn't find a US distributor for some reason, so I bought my copy here.)
Official website.

----------

5. The Thermals, "A Pillar of Salt"
from the 2006 album The Body, the Blood, the Machine

We were born to sin
we were born to sin!
we don't think we're special sir
we know everybody is
we built too many walls
yeah we built too many walls!
And now we gotta run
a giant fist is out to crush us

We run in the dark
we run in the dark!
we don't carry dead weight long
we send them along to heaven.
I carry my baby
i carry my baby!
Her eyes can barely see
her mouth can barely breathe
i see she's afraid
she could see the danger
we don't want to die
or apologize
for our dirty god
our dirty body

Now i spit to the ground
i spit to the ground!
i won't look twice at dead walls
i don't wanna white pillar of salt
I carry my baby
i carry my baby!
Her eyes can barely see
her mouth can barely breathe
i can see she's afraid
that's why we're escaping
so we won't have to die
we won't have to deny
our dirty god
our dirty bodies!

I'm jumping on the Thermals bandwagon late (thanks Allan!): a scary song from a scary album. (Though the song and the video sound awfully cheery.)

Amazon link.
Official website.
Video on YouTube.

The Polyphonic Spree, The Great American Music Hall, SF, 7/17/2007.

(No, it's not an attempt at poetry; just notes.)

And so, the beginning stages:

gimme some truth on red cloth
"I've had enough of watching scenes
Of schizophrenic, egocentric, paranoiac, prima donnas"
heart-shaped hole for the black-clad
fragile army to step through

and they wake up slowly to the american dream
they're running away and younger yesterday
they hang around the day and watch us explode
we crawl and get up and go
we gather around the campfire for "it's the sun"

and a slow departure:

as we, the audience
(all in good time)
raised our voices

procession of white robes
through the screaming crowd
together they're heavy

and the audience goes nuts at lithium
tim jumps into the crowd
beer spills
people jump
sweat flies
i like it
i'm not gonna crack

and the big 1-2-3 punch of total bliss:
soldier girl hold me now light and day

and frozen bodies wake as the fool becomes a king

and at the end of two hours
i got my religion
courtesy of The Polyphonic Spree

The first time I saw the Polyphonic Spree (perhaps a couple of years ago, at Bimbo's), I thought it was one of the best concerts I'd seen in my life. (It helped that I was close to the front, as I was this time, where I dragged Romeo.) Their two-hour Great American Hall concert was no different -- a perfect example of Durkheimian collective effervescence, with the crowd singing and cheering and jumping as one. A total antithesis to the dignified head-nodding at the Slint concert I saw a week later: with the Spree you learn to drop that indie hipster facade quickly.

If the spectacle of 24 musicians and singers crammed onto a stage (and showers of confetti!) doesn't move you, then perhaps Tim DeLaughter, working the crowd like a gospel preacher, will. It was then a welcome sight to see the band return for the encore not in their black militia uniforms, but in their choir robes. This was church, after all.

And the music never ends. As in the previous concert I saw, the band members left the stage one by one, leaving the audience singing "All in good time, raise our voices" -- all throughout until the Spree returned for the encore, walking through the ecstatic crowd. And that was the point: we were the choir too.

The highlights: a crowd-pleasing "Soldier Girl" / "Hold Me Now" / "Light and Day" sequence near the end (DeLaughter lists the songs, asking if the audience wanted to hear any of them, and goes, "Ah, let's do all three!"). John Lennon's lyrics projected onto a red banner covering the stage, then DeLaughter cutting a heart-shaped hole in the center and unveiling the band. And a fantastic cover of Nirvana's "Lithium," where DeLaughter jumps into the pit in front of him, the audience going completely batshit.

(YouTube video here.)

Seona Dancing, Again.

I swear, I still keep getting hits on my old blog entry about Ricky Gervais and Seona Dancing. A quick google search revealed that some enterprising soul had linked to my blog on Seona Dancing's Wikipedia entry. No wonder.

Alas, the mp3 for "More to Lose" isn't there anymore (server was simply too small) -- but technology has changed and all. Twist my arm, why don't you?

YouTube video of a live performance.

The lyrics, so emo in their heartbreaking New Wave melodrama:

We used to cry
About the day when one of us might fall
Weak and blindly into another's arms

Demands are gained from jealousies
Would flow like water drowning us
But leaving us with just another
Lover's false alarm

And now it's over
Both of us free
But I feel colder

A thousand tortured lives have fallen
Wounded dying cut down by the
Questions that we've sharpened
Just to save our losing days

We thought we'd nothing more to lose
We'd tear our hearts with jagged truths
And everything we'd hung to for so long
Just slipped away

And now it's over
Both of us free
And I feel colder

I was tired of thinking that
Our love can shine your thoughts
Of our arrangements
Were really not like mine

I thought it over
And it was plain to see the love you said
You once needed
Could just not come from me

And now it's over
Both of us free
And I feel colder

And now we're moving to new beginnings
But as we move we looked once behind
To see what we might find out
Lost loves and old thoughts of our nights of winnings
That lunge, tear and grasp
at lost wanting minds

And finally, the song, which you can all listen to via streaming audio now as often as you want if you haven't already downloaded it from numerous mp3 blogs:

SUNN O))) / Earth / Weedeater, The Independent, SF, 7/4/07.

1. This was my second sold-out show on a weekday (the first was the amazing Battles show, sold out on a Monday night). I arrived too late for Wolves in the Throne Room, a shame.

2. Weedeater: trio playing big lunkhead stoner riffs for the trucker cap and Bud (and bud) crowd. Most hardcore rock-and-roll moment: the lead singer / bassist (Dixie Collins from Bongzilla) turns to one side, proceeds to casually vomit at his feet, and continues playing as if nothing happened.

3. The first time I saw Earth was with the mighty lineup of Circle / Merzbow / Growing. And I thought they were rather dull before, though they must have been touring right after Hex came out. This time there was less fuzz, with Dylan Carlson creating entrancing desert soundscapes with his guitar.

4. And finally, SUNN O))). The setting: a fortress of amps, fog machines running full tilt, colored spotlights barely able to cut through the clouds of smoke. The players: five musicians in monks' robes. (Later the lead vocalist would return wearing a cowl and what looked like a bloody potato sack.) And the sound -- I could compare it to pinning your ears to a jet engine, but I've never done that myself. At some points I could feel a breeze on the hairs of my left arm -- and realized that the "breeze" was coming from the speakers. I can't emphasize enough the physicality of sound as a crucial element in SUNN O)))'s concert; I left the venue feeling pummeled and physically exhausted, though I was hardly moving. The series of YouTube videos from SUNN O)))'s Berlin concerts should give you a good idea, though they're not foggy enough. =)

The "set" itself is one long epic sludgy piece, but there's a beginning and end, to be sure. Guttural Lovecraftian chanting and cymbal scraping at the beginning; ear-piercing caterwauling and decaying piano at the end; time collapsing vertiginously in a black hole of bass rumble and guitar feedback in between.

(If this were an Italian horror film, the ministrations of the servant-monks would cause the altar of amps to crack open with an earthshaking roar, with the audience members convulsing in ecstasy and voiding their bladders in pure holy terror. Shafts of light would pierce through the opening, instantly blinding the audience, but not before they are bestowed with the vision of the gibbering, blind idiot god on its throne.)

SUNN O))) is clearly aware of the theatricality of their very deliberate musical gestures: raise the guitar pick high in the air, lifting it up for all the congregation to see, and bringing it down on the guitar with a flourish. Yes, it's cheesy and obvious, but such is the nature of ritual and worship. And if ritual's function is to unite its participants in collective, transcendent solidarity, SUNN O))) did just that: for 30 minutes (or 60 minutes, or 120 minutes, who knows), everything -- ribcage, cardiac muscle, nasal septum, bass, speakers, walls, everyone -- was vibrating and trembling as one.

The Concert Mix.

Some of my favorite tracks by these artists, all uploaded for you in a "concert mix." You Bay Area folks are going, right?

*****
1. The Album Leaf, "Another Day (Revisited)," from In a Safe Place (2004)
2. Under Byen, "Byen Driver," from Det er mig der holder traerne sammen (2002)

Saturday 30 June 2007
The Album Leaf
with Under Byen / Arthur & Yu
@ Slim's

*****
3. Battles, "ipt2," from EP C/B EP (2006)

Monday 2 July 2007
Battles
with Ponytail
@ Slim's

*****
4. SUNN O)))'s "0))) Bow 1," from Flight of the Behemoth (2002)

(Sorry -- encoded at 128 kbps because Box.net wouldn't allow a file over 10 mb.)

Wednesday 4 July 2007
Sunn O)))
with Earth / Wolves in the Throne Room / Weedeater
@ The Independent

Not my favorite SUNN O))) track (that would probably be something like "Bassaliens"), but everything else was over 12 minutes long.

*****
5. The Psychedelic Furs' "Pretty in Pink," from The Psychedelic Furs (1980)
6. The Fixx's "Secret Separation," from Walkabout (1986)

Sunday 15 July 2007
The Psychedelic Furs
with The Fixx / The Alarm
@ Mezzanine

*****
7. The Polyphonic Spree's "Section 9 (Light & Day / Reach For The Sun," from The Beginning Stages of the Polyphonic Spree (2002)

Tuesday 17 July 2007
The Polyphonic Spree
with Jesca Hoop
@ The Great American Music Hall

*****
8. Sonic Youth's "Teen Age Riot," from Daydream Nation (1988)

Thursday 19 July 2007
Sonic Youth
@ Berkeley Community Theatre

They're playing the entire album from start to finish.

*****
9. Slint's "Good Morning, Captain," from Spiderland (1991)

(Sorry -- encoded at 128 kbps because Box.net wouldn't allow a file over 10 mb.)

Sunday 22 July 2007
Slint
with Phantom Family Halo
@ Bimbo's

They're playing the entire album from start to finish too!

*****
10. The Smashing Pumpkins' "Glynis," from the No Alternative compilation (1993)

Tuesday 31 July 2007
The Smashing Pumpkins
@ The Fillmore

*****
11. Pelican's "Red Ran Amber," from The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw (2005)

(Sorry -- encoded at a horrible 112 kbps because Box.net wouldn't allow a file over 10 mb.)

Sunday 12 August 2007
Pelican
with Clouds / 400 Blows / Gargantula
@ The Great American Music Hall

*****
12. Wing's "For All We Know," from Wing Sings The Carpenters (2003)

Tuesday 21 August 2007
Wing
@ Cafe Du Nord

Plus Wing wrote to tell me: "please inform all my fans as many as possible since i come so far and spend so much money wich i don,t care. i just want to greet all my fans in sanfran. my first visit." I asked if there were any other concert dates in other cities and she wrote: "i just doing one singing for sanfransico only.see how my fans like me. i,ll come back very soon if all my fans want me." That means you.

*****
13. Midlake's "Van Occupanther," from The Trials of Van Occupanther (2006)

Thursday 27 September 2007
Midlake
@ The Great American Music Hall

Up Dharma Down / The Dawn / Taken By Cars / Paramita, saGuijo, Makati, 6/7/07.

I've only been dreaming about this for two years: to see Up dharma Down in concert. (First it was waiting for their first album to be released.) And my wish finally came true last night after seeing them at SaGuijo after travelling almost 7,000 miles. (There were about five bands who played -- Ruthie had warned me that club gigs usually didn't have headliners, but had bands play short sets one after the other -- but for me the evening was all about Up Dharma Down.)

Our group (earlier it included my brother and most of Eloise's siblings and their partners) arrived at saGuijo an hour after the concert was supposed to start (key locked inside the ignition, then driving up and down trying to find the venue, then the folks at the door had no change). But we made it in, thank goodness -- and there they were, the best goddamn band in the entire archipelago playing only a few feet in front of me. We may have missed the first or second song, but came in just before they started playing my favorite UdD song ("We Give In Sometimes"). Totally. Freaking. Awesome. Then they played a fantastic "Sleepwalk," and another song for an (unreleased?) movie soundtrack (Armi said she couldn't even find it on LimeWire or Soulseek). But just hearing them play "We Give In Sometimes" was enough. I was done for the year.

The Dawn played next -- perfect, in a way, because they were the very first band I've ever seen play live. (The late Teddy Diaz was still the lead guitarist at that point.) They were in excellent form, with Jett (in a Misfits T-shirt) sounding much like he did back in 1986, and the obligatory Carlos drum solo. Plus they played songs I hadn't heard in probably two decades: "Love Will Set Us Free" and "Living Seed."

(Taken By Cars and Paramita are going to blow up soon; keep an eye out for their albums. Taken By Cars' debut album will be out in July or August.)

I should also put in a good word for saGuijo: the place is tiny -- it's literally the living room of a house -- and so the musicians are always only a few feet away from you. There isn't a bad seat in the place, unless you're by the bar -- even if you’re outside you can see them through the window -- and you can sit on the floor up front, which is fine too. Beers are P50 (the first one is P10), and the sisig was outstanding. If I lived nearby I'd be here every night.

Blurry pictures here.

Campaign Against Atrocious Music.

Radioactive Sago Project's Lourd de Veyra, in a Pulp interview:

I... listen to everything from Basil Valdez to Justin Timberlake. Anything except the kind of emo-metal crap and today's nauseating brand of pop-rock -- it's just enough to chip away at one's sense of tolerance. I know it sounds bigoted but we must urgently engage in affirmative action against atrocious music. All the evils of the world can be traced to bad songs. Bad songs cause mental pollution, which can lead to social injustice, disrupted traffic systems, terrorism, environmental degradation, government corruption, and Kris Aquino.

Summer Songs.

Two of the greatest songs that mention the summer, not including five others, like Luna's "Indian Summer," Pavement's "Summer Babe (Winter Version)," Yo La Tengo's "The Summer," Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer," or even Richard Marx's "Endless Summer Nights."

1. The second-best Modest Mouse song ever (after "Dramamine"), "Summer," from the 1997 ep The Fruit That Ate Itself:

wake-up we're stealing cars.... bars

in 1996 and 1997
1998 we're all waiting for the year 2000

just the smell of the summer can make me fall in love

we go to the parties and listen to the DJ's
dance dance dance and go crazy

she's the party queen and she's in party heaven
her clock is stuck on late
got a first name basis at 7-11

we go to the parties and listen to the DJ's
dance dance dance and go crazy

just the smell of the summer can make me fall in love

hold the slip n slide taste the sweat it's salty
irrigation ditch and a swimming hole
nationwide loved the movie

just the smell of the summer can make me fall in love

2. This just has summer written all over it -- from Teenage Fanclub's 1997 album (about which I've gushed before) Songs from Northern Britain, "Ain't That Enough:"

If you can I wish you would
Only if you feel you should
Bring your loving over
All adds up with circumstance
All stood up with taking stands
Bring your loving over

Highlights glisten
Silence listens
Days that found you
Embrace that found you

Here is a sunrise Ain't that enough
True as a clear sky, ain't that enough
Toy town feelings here to remind you
Summers in the city do what you gotta do

Time can only make demands
Fill it up with grains of sand
Bring your loving over
Highlights glisten
Silence listens
Days that found you
Embrace that found you

Here is a sunrise Ain't that enough
True as a clear sky, ain't that enough
Toy town feelings here to remind you
Summers in the city do what you gotta do
Toy town feelings whose gonna argue
Summers in the city Summers in the city

Killer of Sheep Soundtrack Mix.

In musical tribute to Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep, hopefully playing at a theater near you, a soundtrack / mix of sorts, more or less in chronological order:

1. Paul Robeson's "The House I Live In," from Ballad for Americans (kids playing in the ruins near the railroad tracks)

2. Paul Robeson's "Going Home," from Live at Carnegie Hall (herding sheep, and also at the closing credits I think)

3. Elmore James's "I Believe," from Let's Cut It

4. Earth, Wind & Fire's "Reasons," from That's The Way Of The World (Stan's daughter singing to a doll)

5. Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's "Mean Old Frisco Blues," from That's All Right Mama (in the liquor store, I think)

6. Scott Joplin's "Solace," from The Entertainer (after carrying the engine)

7. Dinah Washington's "This Bitter Earth," from The Complete Dinah Washington on Mercury, Vol. 6 (slow dancing)

8. Faye Adams's "Shake A Hand," from The Herald Recordings (jumping from roof to roof)

9. Little Walter's "Mean Old World," from The Essential Little Walter (killing of sheep)

10. Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues," from The Louis Armstrong Collection, Vol. 4 (off to the racetrack)

11. and a bonus, left off the re-release because the rights couldn't be cleared, but was originally playing in the last slaughterhouse scene: Dinah Washington's "Unforgettable," from Compact Jazz

I left off the third movement from William Grant Still's Afro-American Symphony (playing in the first slaughterhouse scene), the section from Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 4 (playing right after "This Bitter Earth"), and Franz von Suppe's Poet and Peasant Overture (also playing in the liquor store scene). God I'm obsessed with this movie.

Your New Favorite Song.

Smog, "Say Valley Maker."

From the 2005 album A River Ain't Too Much to Love.

With the grace of a corpse
In a riptide
I let go
And I slide slide slide
Downriver
With an empty case by my side
An empty case
That’s my crime

And I sing (Say Valley Maker)
To keep from cursing
Yes I sing (Say Valley Maker)
To keep from cursing

River Oh
River End
River Oh
River End
River Go
River Bend

Take me through the sweet valley
Where your heart blooms
Take me through the sweet valley
Where your heart is covered in dew

And when the river dries
Will you bury me in wood
Where the river dries
Will you bury me in stone

Oh I never really realized
Death is what it meant
To make it on my own

Because there is no love
Where there is no obstacle
And there is no love
Where there is no bramble
There is no love
On the hacked away plateau
And there is no love
In the unerring
And there is no love
On the one true path

Oh I cantered out here
Now I’m galloping back

So bury me in wood
And I will splinter
Bury me in stone
And I will quake
Bury me in water
And I will geyser
Bury me in fire
And I’m gonna phoenix

I’m gonna phoenix

Smog's official site on Drag City.

Buy it from Amazon.

Video Quiz #1.

Which music videos did these video captures come from? Post your answers in the comments.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

(Sorry, Last.fm users -- you're officially barred from entering!)

Sembreak.

Just because I felt like it (okay, there are other undisclosed reasons as well) -- from the 1994 Circus album, this is "Sembreak," arguably the greatest Eraserheads song ever:

Dear kim kamustang bakasyon mo
ako heto pa rin nababato
bad trip talaga itong Meralco
bakit brownout pa rin dito
walang silbi sa bahay
kundi bumabad sa telepono
o kaya'y kasama ng barkada
nakatambay sa may kanto

chorus
naalala kita pag umuulan SEMBREAK
naalala kita pag giniginaw SEMBREAK
naalala kita pag kakain na SEMBREAK
naalala kita ilang bukas pa ba
bago tayo ay magkita
ako'y naiinip na bawa't oras binibilang
sabik na masilayan ka-ha-hah

sira pa rin ang bisikleta
may gas wala namang kotse
naghihintay ng ulan
basketball sa banyo
sana ay may pasok na para at least
meron ng baon
cutting classes dating raket
rock and roll buong taon

chorus

walang kayakap kundi gitara
nangangati sa kaiisip sa 'yo
hanggang sa mabutas 'tong maong ko
tsaka bibili uli ng bago
hanggang dito na lang ang liham ko
salamat sa atensyon mo
tsaka na lang pala ang utang ko
pag nakagkita na lang uli tayo oh wohh

chorus

naalala kita SEMBREAK
naalala kita SEMBREAK
naalala kita SEMBREAK

Check it out.

Giant Steps Are What You Take.

So I'm about to break my Concert Rule #1 (no arena/stadium venues) after hearing this bit of news. Holy cow. My very first "favorite band of all time" ever, back circa 1982-83 -- at least the very first band that inspired me to go save up my allowance and buy their entire discography. On vinyl even! (Indeed, the very first CD I ever owned* -- bought second-hand, still at a piggy bank-breaking price, from an early-adopter friend -- was Every Breath You Take: The Singles.)

I remember my dad -- who was the big Nat King Cole / Tchaikovsky / Richard Clayderman fan -- being quite skeptical of my new obsession. "Paulit-ulit lang 'yan, ah," he said, dismissing the repeating "Keep it up" coda of "Walking on the Moon." I tried in vain to point out how Stewart Copeland was clearly playing different drum patterns, but to no avail: my music had been dissed.

U2, Talking Heads, The Cure (in that order) then followed, in typically youthful hyperbole, as My Favorite Band Of All Time, but The Police was always the first. And now they're going on tour.

*Side note: I'm thinking now of how kids these days probably have little conception of their first CD, or even the first time they heard a CD. Ah, the days of record cleaning fluid and dipping a Q-Tip in rubbing alcohol to clean the rollers and heads... I still remember the first time I popped the Police CD into the player and almost fell back in shock -- perhaps too trebly, especially those early pressings, but sonically, a total revelation; Hugh Padgham's work on Synchronicity never sounded better.

And Now, One of the Best Albums I Heard In 2007...

…although this was released in 2006, is MONO & world's end girlfriend's gorgeous Palmless Prayer / Mass Murder Refrain, a five-part chamber music suite, as it were, for string quartet and post-rock band. A collaboration between Japanese composer Katsuhiko Maeda and the thunderous Tokyo trio that is MONO, the album is surely going to be one of my favorites of the year (and it's only January!).

Doubtless a lot of music fans more knowledgeable than I would point to music from a different tradition -- say, Shostakovich, Pärt, or Gorecki -- as more complex, more profoundly moving. But the difference is that MONO rocks: the moment in "Part Three" when MONO's Mogwai-influenced wall of guitar comes crashing down on the orchestra is a cathartic sonic event, only made more poignant by the calm resignation of the finale.

It's hard to describe the widescreen sorrow at the core of this music. It's something as mundane as the inherent loneliness of automobiles stranded on the freeway at sunset. But the ineffable grandeur it evokes is not just exit music for a film, it's Exit Music for real: ruined cities, a threnody for the broken earth, the dying sun's last defiant flare before the beginning of a cold, dead universe. Or as C.K. Williams puts it in his poem "Light," "…everything ends, / world, after-world, even their memory, steamed away / like the film of uncertain vapor of the last of the luscious rain."

Stung / For The Masses / This Charming Band, Slim's, SF, 9/22/06.

An old blog post that never saw the light of day until now:

So two things happened earlier this evening that may never happen again: 1. I saw J-Lu dance. 2. J-Lu saw me dance. In recent years I've expressed my distaste for the activity, and almost got into a useless argument with Smoothie and Big G. Al about the whole thing. J-Lu has asserted many times that she doesn't dance; clearly she was lying, and so was I. (But see an affirmation of my dislike here.)

The occasion was, of all things, a trio of tribute bands at Slim's. I had never dipped my toe into the entire tribute-band experience; there seemed something rather cheesy about the whole thing. Which may indeed be the whole point -- but I was proven wrong because I ate all the cheese up anyway.

First up was the very good This Charming Band, obviously a Smiths tribute band. The lead singer looked nothing like Morrissey, and didn't sound exactly like him, but had great stage presence regardless. (Their secret weapon was the guitarist, who simply nailed Johnny Marr's parts down.) For the Masses was up next -- a Depeche Mode tribute band -- and was even better: that cold '80s synth, and a vocalist who not only sounded like Dave Gahan, but whose lack of shame fortunately made him copy Gahan's moves as well (apparently pretty accurately).

So anyhow, I look to my left during "Just Can't Get Enough" and sure enough, J-Lu was dancing. (And not just doing the indie rawk shuffle either, which requires no use of the hips.) And she was singing, too, which she apparently doesn't do either. (Though I wasn't exactly dancing -- just flailing my arms and jumping up and down and spilling my beer on J-Lu.)

Stung was the best band of all -- a set that wasn't just Every Breath You Take: The Singles, but one that dipped into the tracks that lesser fans fast-forwarded through back in the day. And no, they didn't exactly look like the Police, and neither did the vocalist really sound like Sting (I blame Slim's acoustics, because he sounds fantastic here, including the break in Sting's voice after "I loved ya since I knew ya"), but they played incredibly well.

One side effect of all of this was that it made feel rather old -- well, okay, I am old: Stung started its set with an excellent "Walking in Your Footsteps," which reminded me that I was all of 12 when the song came out. But the point was that there I was, with a huge grin on my face, in a small club, surrounded by people yelling out the lyrics to "When The World Is Running Down, You Make The Best Of What's Still Around" -- a song I would otherwise never see or hear performed in such circumstances -- and the point of the tribute band became happily, cheesily clear.

The Best Music I Heard All Year, 2006 Edition.

Again, in alphabetical order:

Current 93, Black Ships Ate The Sky (2006)

David Tibet has recorded two undisputed masterpieces -- at least in my opinion, Dogs Blood Rising and All the Pretty Little Horses, though Thunder Perfect Mind and Sleep Has His House are close -- and this is his third. Representing, perhaps, the feverish, apocalyptic culmination of over 25 years of death-haunted meditations, Current 93 -- here augmented by an all-star cast -- weaves a stunning album, what Tibet calls "a Hallucinatory Patripassianist Dream." (Okay, the fact that my name is listed as one of the album's "subscribers" on the last page of the booklet is cool too.)

Dengue Fever, Escape from Dragon House (2005)

I've written about the coolest band in America many times on my blog, so this should be no surprise. Working off the same template that made their debut album one of my favorites of 2002 -- covers of Cambodian rock tracks -- Dengue Fever's second album makes a huge leap to original songs, albeit throwing in psychedelia, spy-movie chase scenes, surf guitar, and Cambodian lyrics into the mix. But you folks really have to catch them live.

Easy Star All-Stars, Radiodread (2006)

In which they follow up their song-by-song reggae cover of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon with an equally impressive reggae version of Radiohead's OK Computer. It's nowhere near as immediate as the former -- basically because Radiohead just isn't Pink Floyd -- but both Thom Yorke fans and reggae fans should enjoy this in equal measure. The highlight: an impossibly happy version of "Let Down," sung by Toots & The Maytals.)

Linus' Blanket, Labor in Vain (2005)

Delicate Korean twee pop, sounding much like a Siesta Records release from the late '90s but without the archness. Fifteen-minute EPs should be as perfect as this.

Mclusky, Mcluskyism (2006)

There's a ragged, furious, nasty joy to this compilation by the recently-disbanded (alas) Welsh band Mclusky, appealing to that ragged, furious, nasty part of you that would sing along to refrains like "Our old singer is a sex criminal." (Hunt down the three-disc set, as it comes with rarities and live versions, including some of the most withering put-downs of a heckler in the audience -- “You tape Sex and the City, you fuck?" -- I've heard on record.)

Spangle call Lilli line, or (2003)

It's not easy to describe this album: delicate vocals, guitar filigree, electronic crackle, the virtue of repetition and stretched-out instrumentals. Just gorgeous.

Bruce Springsteen, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006)

Springsteen hardly does studio recordings of songs he didn't write -- maybe a cover like "Deportee" on a couple of tribute albums here and there, "Jersey Girl" from the live box set, so that doesn’t even count -- so this new album was either going to be extra-special or evidence of a creative drought. Thankfully, it's the former; it's the most exuberantly angry and joyful music I've heard all year. Music to want the wide American earth by.

Up dharma Down, Fragmented (2006)

What I wrote earlier, on my favorite album of 2006, hands down:

It's only April, and I think I already have one of my favorite albums of the year. Up dharma Down's Fragmented is an urban soul chronicle from the streets of Manila, both tense and laid back, full of nervous energy one moment and suffused with post-club comedown the next.

I still remember the first time I saw the video for the fantastic first single, "Maybe." I was idly flipping channels one December night in Los Banos last year when the video came on, and I was transfixed by its evocation of claustrophobia, as the camera followed a near-hysterical woman pacing inside a hotel room, then down a narrow stairwell, tear-smeared mascara on her face.

But it was, of course, the music which kept me glued to the TV: an insistent, propulsive reverbed guitar riff; a skittering, distorted "Amen" break; a bass line turned up way high in the mix; and that voice which stretched "Maybe" into 27 different syllables. (I had to grab paper and pen to scribble down the name of the band; alas, their album wasn't coming out until a few months later, as the kind women at Odyssey and Tower Records had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.)

The rest of the album doesn't quite approach the succinct drama of "Maybe," but it's quite strong nevertheless, and I suspect more songs will float their way to the top as the year proceeds... I can't wait to see them live.

Yo La Tengo, I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass (2006)

Scattered, undisciplined, almost self-indulgent, uncontained, all over the place: my second-favorite band ever (after the Beatles) returns to the heights of I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One. And it has the best album title too.

Plus some more YouTube fun:

- Dengue Fever, "Sni Bong"
- Easy Star All-Stars, "Let Down"
- Mclusky, "She Will Only Bring You Happiness" (though I rather like the Flash animation for "Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues" more)
- Spangle call Lilli line, "nano"
- Bruce Springsteen, "John Henry"
- Up dharma Down, "Maybe"
- Yo La Tengo, "Mr. Tough" (Live)

The Best Music I Heard All Year, 2006 Edition: The Runners-Up.

Regular readers of my now-irregular blog would know that I usually include music from previous years, so not everything will be from last year.

And here we go, in alphabetical order:

The Backyardigans, The Backyardigans (2005)

What I wrote in a previous blog entry:

The real draw of the show of the same name is the music (and the excellent voice acting), which is just superb for a kiddie TV show. They're incredibly catchy and witty children’s ditties that are the functional equivalent of Broadway showtunes—each song within the show is totally choreographed, with dancing. The songs are thematically coherent for each episode, though they're not necessarily tailored to the plot; Irish music, for instance, accompanies the Backyardigans on their quest for the perfect cup of tea to Borneo and China (to ask the grumpy emperor for a cup). Across the series, however, the music runs the range from reggae to rockabilly to country to Dixieland to James Brown funk.

Anyhow, I finally got to see the scrolling credits by pausing the DVD (they get reduced to a tiny window when being broadcast), and discovered to my surprise that the list of musicians reads like a Tzadik session roster: Evan Lurie, Doug Weiselman, Greg Cohen, Smokey Hormel, Tony Scherr, Ben Perowsky, Steven Bernstein, Kenny Wollesen… Totally cool. (It's practically Sex Mob doing the soundtrack!)

Alex Chilton, 1970 (1970)

Early Chilton, coming off of the Box Tops and just before the jangle pop glory of Big Star: ramshackle rock and roll.

Shirley Collins and Davy Graham, Folk Roots, New Routes (1964)

The psychic connections between jazz, blues, ragas, and traditional British folk, explored by a spellbinding singer and guitarist.

Herbert, Scale (2006)

Experimental dance pop of extremely high quality -- at least for the first half of the album, anyway.

Junior Kilat, Party Pipol Ur On Dub TV (2005)

Dubbed-out reggae from Cebu City -- not touristy Bob Marley stuff either, but cave-like bass and reverb set to sky-cracking levels. Their secret weapon is Budoy Marabiles, the rasta-tammed lead singer who exhorts the audience like a manic street preacher.

Jim Noir, Tower of Love (2006)

I'm scrambling for references here: early '70s AM radio, early '70s A&M, mid-'90s Elephant 6. How about that?

Corinne Bailey Rae, Corinne Bailey Rae (2006)

Regina Spektor, Begin To Hope (2006)

Susie Suh, Susie Suh (2005)

It's an odd coincidence that three female singer-songwriters follow one another here, but there you go. Rae and Spektor could hardly be different from each other -- one's intimate and confessional, the other's, um, intimate and confessional (I'm getting lazy here) -- but both work in very different idioms: Rae in cozy R&B, Spektor in a delightful, but sometimes too clever, combination of Joni Mitchell / Tori Amos / Tin Pan Alley / Russian folk songs.

And here's what I wrote earlier about Suh:

I'm only really a casual fan of the women-with-acoustic-guitars genre, but there was something compelling about her 2005 self-titled album that made me take notice. There is nothing necessarily groundbreaking about it -- nothing you won't hear on a Lilith Fair compilation, perhaps, with self-confessional lyrics like "Oh I'm missing you / Or maybe I'm missing who I was when I was with you," and an urban-glossy production -- but there is an autumnal chill that runs through Suh's songs that gives the album an edge. Most important, Suh is gifted with an incredible voice, all husky and soulful, which breaks at perfect moments (hear the chorus of "Light on My Shoulder").

In concert that amazing voice is, unbelievably, even better, now embellished with a slight rawness that fits the emotional intensity of her lyrics. Indeed, the concert was completely stripped down: with her on guitar and vocals and another guy on drums. (You also get the chance to see how fine a guitar player she is.)

To my initial worry, Suh began the short set with four of my favorite songs on the album ("Won't You Come Again," "Your Battlefield," "Harmony," and "Lucille," if I remember correctly). But this anxiety was dispelled with a couple of terrific new songs ("Canopy," probably about her mother, and "Sweet Love," which began with lines like "Clap your hands if you love someone in this room," or words to that effect), and a few well-placed surprise covers ("Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," "Since I Fell For You," "Is This Love"). All together a most excellent experience; I highly recommend catching her in concert if she comes by your town.

Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs, Under the Covers Vol. 1 (2006)

My only disappointment is that some of the cover versions are somewhat safe and superfluous -- do we really another version of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue?" -- but Sweet and Hoffs revel in harmony-filled power-pop goodness here.

Francois Tetaz, Wolf Creek (2005)

This isn't exactly your traditional movie soundtrack, as there isn't a traditional "score;" it's a series of dreadful (in the good, literal sense) scrapings, bass rumbles, string quartet and prepared piano passages, and samples from Alan Lamb's wires in the Australian desert.

And some other albums that didn't quite make the cut, but were excellent anyway:

- The Little Willies, The Little Willies
- OM, Conference of the Birds
- PUFFY, Splurge
- Michael Shelley, Goodbye Cheater
- Various Artists, '80s Hits Stripped
- Windy and Carl, Antarctica
- John Zorn, Filmworks Vol. XVI: Workingman's Death

And some YouTube fun (if you had checked my page out earlier you would have seen my attempt at embedding the videos -- 12 open shockwave applications sure slows Firefox down though):

- The Backyardigans, "The Backyardigans Theme"
- Junior Kilat, "Original Sigbin"
- Jim Noir, "Eanie Meany"
- Corinne Bailey Rae, "Put Your Records On"
- Regina Spektor, "Fidelity"
- Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs, "Rain" (Live)

And some Amazon links:

- The Backyardigans
- Alex Chilton
- Shirley Collins and Davy Graham
- Herbert
- Jim Noir
- Corinne Bailey Rae
- Regina Spektor
- Susie Suh
- Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs
- Francois Tetaz

Om / Pearls and Brass / Grey Daturas / Mammatus, Slim's, San Francisco, 12/1/2006.

Posted this on last.fm a little while back:

My ears are still ringing from what is surely one of the best concerts I've been to this year -- I knew it would be good, but not so got-damn good as this was.

Some random notes:

First up was Mammatus. I'm at a loss describing this group and their music: heavy-ass riffs, psych guitar noodling. I can't even begin to write about what they looked like: one guitarist and the drummer looked like they stepped off the back cover of Trout Mask Replica, and the two vocalists were dressed in what looked like, I swear, tablecloths. Or curtains. One of the vocalists -- more like the guy whose vocals were permanently on reverb -- who I'll call The Shaman, reminded me of a cross between Brother Theodore and Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Except that he actually looked like an organic grocery store employee. Wearing a tablecloth. And waving a knobbly wizard stick, right out of the back cover of Led Zeppelin IV at the audience. Probably the best surprise of the night. (No insult meant by my descriptions, by the way -- these guys were fantastic.)

Up next: Grey Daturas, a trio from Australia. My description won't do their awesome one-song set justice, so I offer key phrases instead: layered feedback, jetliner roar, amplifier worship.

And then came Pearls and Brass, which I'll describe as "stoner boogie," anchored by long, sinuous guitar riffs and some amazing shirtless drumming.

And finally, Om. I've written about this band previously, so there's not much more to add, except that that sky-cracking-open moment when Al Cisneros steps on the effects pedal about 9 minutes into "At Giza" happened here too. I've since realized that perhaps a more fruitful comparison to Om's Conference of the Birds isn't really Sleep's Jerusalem, but Nurse With Wound's Soliloquy for Lilith or Coil's Time Machines; guitar and drum prowess aside, Om in concert is meant to be transportive. You close your eyes in the middle of the maelstrom and you see pyramids and ancient gods frolicking to cosmic ragas.

I think the ringing in my ears has subsided. But my neck will sure as hell hurt tomorrow morning.

Earworms, 2006.

Longtime readers of this blog would know that my year-end lists are usually composed of things from the year before -- or, indeed, many years before. Some are old (and new) songs I just discovered and burrowed themselves into my consciousness this year, some are old songs I've known for a while that finally clicked in this 12-month period.

It's in no order; the sequence is courtesy of an "anchored smooth shuffle" from MusicIP Mixer. All I picked was the first and last songs. (The whole thing also turned up as party favors for people this year.)

Maher Shalal Hash Baz – Stone in the River
Nina Simone – He Needs Me
Susie Suh – Won't You Come Away
Damien Rice – The Blower's Daughter
Shirley Collins & Davy Graham – Hares on the Mountain
The Ditty Bops - Pale Yellow
The Little Willies - For the Good Times
The Mountain Goats – No Children
Stereolab – Changer
Indigo Girls – Power Of Two
The Mountain Goats – Tallahassee
Jim O'Rourke – Naoru
Piano Magic – Bad Patient
Corinne Bailey Rae – Till It Happens To You
Corinne Bailey Rae – Put Your Records On
Regina Spektor – On the Radio
Rovo – Seer
The Mountain Goats – This Year
Herbert – Birds of a Feather
The Tammys – Egyptian Shumba
Skeeter Davis – Let Me Get Close to You
Stars – Reunion
YUI – Cloudy
Yo La Tengo – Pass The Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind
パーランマウム – リンダ リンダ
Nil – Come On Eileen
YUI – LIFE
The New Pornographers – From Blown Speakers
The New Pornographers – The Laws Have Changed
Tommy february6 – MaGic in youR Eyes
McLusky – She Will Only Bring You Happiness
Stars – Ageless Beauty
No Doubt – Simple Kind of Life
Tommy february6 – je t'aime ★ je t'aime
McLusky – Alan Is a Cowboy Killer
Elbow – Buttons and Zips
Weezer – Only in Dreams
Wire – Outdoor Miner
Kings of Leon – The Bucket
Belarus – Here, There and Everywhere
Jim Noir – I Me You I'm Your
The Left Banke – She May Call You Up Tonight
Maria João & Mário Laginha – Pés No Chão
Kode 9 & Daddi G – Sign of the Dub
Hot Chip – Playboy
Brightblack Morning Light – Star Blanket River Child
Fiona Apple – Criminal
Kath Bloom – Come Here
Crowded House – Fall at Your Feet
Bruce Springsteen – O Mary Don't You Weep
Up Dharma Down – We Give In Sometimes
Up Dharma Down – Maybe
The New Pornographers – Letter From an Occupant
Matthew Sweet And Susanna Hoffs – She May Call You Up Tonight
At the Drive-In – One Armed Scissor
The High Strung – Never Saw It as Union
bird – 髪をほどいて
Todd Rundgren – Couldn't I Just Tell You
Golden Boy with Miss Kittin – Rippin Kittin
Native Guns – Work It
Kelis – Milkshake
Gnarls Barkley – Crazy
LCD Soundsystem – Daft Punk Is Playing at My House
Primal Scream – Exterminator
Korekyojin – Poet And Peasant
aiko – 赤いランプ
BMX Bandits – This Lonely Guy
BMX Bandits – I Wanna Fall in Love
Jacqueline Taïeb – 7 Heures du Matin
New Radicals – Someday We'll Know
Boards of Canada – Satellite Anthem Icarus

Devo / Bow Wow Wow / A Flock Of Seagulls, Bill Graham Civic Center, SF, 10/28/06.

Sometimes concerts don't quite work. I and ten other people had met for dinner at Suppenkuche prior to a promising lineup of bands: When In Rome, Animotion, A Flock Of Seagulls, Bow Wow Wow, and Devo. Devo was perhaps the odd band out, a band whose big hit was somewhat contemporaneous with the other bands, but whose career had more in common with the arch, postpunk, agitprop bands of the previous decade.

The concert was supposed to start at 7, and it did not bode well that by the time we got to the venue a little after 8 pm, two bands had already played. (I had already seen When In Rome and Animotion previously, but still... I wanted to see them again!) The sad part was that the venue was literally only a third full; I suspect that by the time people actually arrived, all the opening bands had come and gone.

We caught A Flock of Seagulls do the last 4 songs of their set (granted, the set may have indeed been four songs long): "The More You Live, The More You Love," "Space Age Love Song," "Wishing," and "I Ran." They sounded good, but it sure looked like only the lead singer / keyboardist was left from the original lineup. (This touring version included a drummer who would stand on his stool at the end of each song and non-ironically point with a drumstick at the audience.)

Bow Wow Wow, however, was great. Annabella Lwin looked fantastic (a quick calculation on my fingers figured her out to be about a totally hot 40), and so was the band with an excellent short set. Quite a feat for a band whose biggest hit in the U.S. was a cover:

- I Started Something I Couldn't Finish (yes, the Smiths song!)
- Aphrodisiac
- Go Wild In The Country
- I Want Candy
- C30 C60 C90 Go!

Devo, alas, was something of a disappointment: yes, the band sounded great; yes, it was odd to see them riling up the crowd with bizarre walk-on characters like "Jihad Jerry" and a guy in an Osama bin Laden mask, and yes, it was great to hear my favorite Devo songs ("Gut Feeling" and "Gates of Steel" -- you can tell I like the jangly guitar songs better than the synth ones) -- but good lord, they looked way too... portly to still be dressed up in their yellow jumpsuits and wearing the red hats.

I wondered whether, in ten years, the same venue would be hosting, say, a big Weezer / Nada Surf / Third Eye Blind tour. In any case, it seemed that nostalgia had played us for fools, kind of. My friend Marco commented that the sparse audience was a clear comment on the survivors of the decade: if you hadn't gotten sick, or OD'd on coke, then you'd probably be there. But babysitters are expensive in San Francisco, I added.

Later Eloise and Sean and Romeo and I ended up at the Cat Club. Sixth beer in hand, dancing to "The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight" and "Tainted Love," looking around me at the people dressed up joylessly as Madonna and Slash, I started feeling this clumped-up ball of regret and inexplicable sorrow growing in my stomach, envisioning my metabolism screeching to a halt, imagining the grim reaper of middle age smoking cigarettes by the club exit waiting for everyone to file out. We could have been dancing to Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is?" and it wouldn't have made much of a difference.

10 Songs, 1990-1993.

For five years I lived in central New York -- Ithaca, to be exact -- which inaugurated a new phase in my musical listening education: the wonders of American college radio. WICB, beamed out of Ithaca College on the other hill (I was at Cornell), was something of a lifeline. (At Cornell I swear everyone played Spin Doctors' "Two Princes" 24-7; I think the band actually played at a frat house on campus once a semester.) WICB was chiefly responsible for saving me from lite jazz and afflicting me with a lifelong love for Guided by Voices, Yo La Tengo, Pavement, Superchunk -- much of early Matador, actually, surely one of the greatest record-label runs of the last two decades. (The other musical path came via the Nonesuch compilation Late in the 20th Century, but that's another story.)

Spin Doctors aside, though, the concert scene wasn't really terrible, considering that Ithaca was almost five hours northwest of NYC and therefore awfully out of the way. I did get to see Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, and Murray Perahia the same year (Cornell could attract more of the classical music superstars); jazz musicians like Branford Marsalis, Chick Corea, and Joe Henderson also came through.

Pop music was another matter, however: Matthew Sweet and 10,000 Maniacs were great, but the other bands (Squeeze, Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians, The Black Crowes, Spyro Gyra, Aztec Camera) I watched because I had nothing better to do. I think Ithaca College got the more interesting lineups, including the most bizarre touring combo -- Blue Oyster Cult / Violent Femmes / Fishbone -- I've ever watched in my life. I don't think I've ever seen so many bikers and scrawny Long Island indie kids in the same room ever.

For every Liz Phair or Dinosaur Jr or Bettie Serveert or Nirvana, however, there were bands like Nuclear Valdez, Too Much Joy, Young Fresh Fellows, Mary's Danish, Single Gun Theory, Bim Skala Bim, and Urban Dance Squad, all of which produced some killer songs on college radio (and possibly a video or two) but then sank with nary a trace.

This month's playlist is taken from those five years in Ithaca (actually, just 1990-1993) -- all from bands whose albums you can probably find in your local CD store's clearance bins, or for less than a buck on Amazon.com, if at all. Which is a shame, because these are fantastic songs that should have been massive hits. I don't really know what else happened to these bands; they have a fan here in San Francisco by way of Ithaca, though.

In chronological order:

1. The Cavedogs, "Tayter Country." From the 1990 album Joyrides for Shut-Ins.

2. Gear Daddies, "Stupid Boy." In another world this would have successfully rode the big No Depression wave, but apparently not. From the 1990 album Billy's Live Bait.

3. Animal Logic, "I Won't Be Sleeping Anymore." This had the most impressive pedigree: Stewart Copeland, Stanley Clarke and Deborah Holland. From the 1991 album II.

4. Dots Will Echo, "Sandra." Produced by Will Ackerman, of all people, and released on a subsidiary of Windham Hill. From their eponymous 1991 album.

5. Sun-60, "Middle of My Life." Catchy pop number. From their eponymous 1991 album.

6. Trip Shakespeare, "Bachelorette." Semisonic rose from the ashes of this band; call it commercial vindication. From the 1991 album Lulu.

7. Waterlillies, "Sunshine Like You." Kind of like a cross between Lush and Cocteau Twins. From the 1991 album Envoluptuousity.

8. Downy Mildew, "An Oncoming Train." Those guitars are most reminiscent of 10,000 Maniacs, but the lead singer's voice is something else. From the 1992 album An Oncoming Train.

9. Rise Robots Rise, "All Sewn Up." I can only imagine that the A&R folks simply didn't know how to market this band -- dark psychedelic R&Bish triphop that sounded like nothing else back then. From their 1992 eponymous album.

10. The Story, "So Much Mine." That's Jonatha Brooke singing there. From the 1993 album The Angel in the House.

And once again, folks: please don't leave the radio playing if you're away from your desk -- it sucks up bandwidth and I would have to take the songs off before the end of the month!

Yo La Tengo, The Fillmore, SF, 10/19 and 10/20, 2006.

There's really quite nothing like the sight of Ira Kaplan during, say, the 11th minute of "I Heard You Looking" -- body bent over his guitar, eyes clenched shut, neck snapping hard enough to cause an aneurysm, lifting the guitar over his head to elicit more feedback, but looking like he was paying obeisance to the speakers and the gods of rock in turn. The two Yo La Tengo concerts I attended last week (couldn't make the third because it was sold out) delivered their brand of rock-and-roll joy in spades: whammy-bar abuse on one hand, lullabies and heartbreak on the other.

The setlist was, of course, drawn from their latest album, I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass. (They couldn't say the title on NPR, so Ira thought he should repeat it for the audience, simply because it sounded good.) These remained in place, though in scrambled order, for the second night, although none of the old songs were recycled. (Note, then, to you lucky folks out there who will have them play more than once in your fair cities: go to both dates.)

From the latest album, in no order:

- Pass The Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind (this opened the first show)
- The Weakest Part (this opened the second show)
- Mr. Tough (this had the girls dancing)
- The Story of Yo La Tango (this was right before the encore)
- Beanbag Chair
- I Feel Like Going Home (Georgia on vocals and piano -- nothing better. But it's the quiet guitar solo at the end that's the icing on the cake)
- The Race Is On Again
- Sometimes I Don't Get You
- I Should Have Known Better
- Watch Out For Me Ronnie (Ira's a cappella shouting at the beginning is always a treat)
- Song for Mahila (I think)

The old songs, in no order, from both nights:

- Little Eyes
- Artificial Heart
- Stockholm Syndrome
- I Heard You Looking (which segued into TSOYLT on the second night)
- Four-Cornered Drone (I think -- this may have been the song played twice with the Chairs of Perception). Or was it Detouring America with Horns?
- The Crying of Lot G (not one of my favorites on And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, but damn, the live version was incredible)
- Big Day Coming (the fast version)
- Decora
- Deeper into Movies (perhaps my favorite YLT song ever; they played it just after I yelled it out)
- We're An American Band
- and there were more, but I can't remember. Did we get "Walking Away from You?" "Drug Test," perhaps?

And the covers, on both nights:

- Gram Parsons' "A Song for You"
- Sun Ra's "Somebody's in Love" (this ended the second show)
- Cat Stevens' "Here Comes My Baby" (this ended the first show)
- The Beach Boys' "Little Honda" (before segueing into TSOYLT, this turned into something like a 10-minute descent into total metal-machine-music guitar squall)
- a 13th Floor Elevators song?
- Richard Hell's "The Kid with the Replaceable Head" (folks up on front -- about two rows ahead of me -- asked for something to commemorate the closing of CBGB's)
- Daniel Johnston's "Speeding Motorcycle" ("We're playing the People's Choice," Ira said)

New Songs on the Radio.blog

Busy here at the Wily Filipino. No theme to the playlist, just 9 of the best songs I heard last year. (Please don't leave them playing all day long, as it'll suck up my bandwidth!)

The Human League, Red Devil Lounge, SF, 09/19/06.

(Pictures from my friend Eloise above, after the scan of the concert ticket.)

Write-up later.

The Japanese New Music Festival, Bottom of the Hill, SF, 9/8.

About a year or so ago, The Wire ran an article about humor in music -- I don't remember much about it, but I don't think they included Acid Mothers Temple and Ruins! I was prepared to have my mind blown, but I didn't expect to be laughing.

The Japanese New Music Festival is something of a misnomer / inside joke -- yes, there are indeed seven bands playing, but they're all composed of different combinations of the same powerhouse trio: Atsushi Tsuyama, Makoto Kawabata, and Tatsuya Yoshida. What made it even funnier was the recited / sung / chanted introduction prior to each "project:" "Welcome to the Japanese New Music Festival. In San Francisco. This first project is..."

Seikazoku (all three) was up first. In comparison to the acts that followed it, Seikazoku's blend of prog / hardcore / psych / plainsong seemed oddly normal. Great beginning to the concert.

Akaten (Tsuyama and Yoshida) came next, with contact-mic fun: short pieces for voice, a duet for toothbrush and grated daikon, zipper, crumpled water bottles, and my favorite, Yoshida fiddling with a camera and feeding the sounds through a sampler with lots of dubby reverb, and Tsuyama singing about Nikons and Minoltas. Quite compelling actually. (Here are sample videos, one in a park, and one in concert.)

Next: Zubi Zuva X (all three), a self-described "eccentric poly-rhythmic a cappella ensemble." Not sure if I'd watch a Zubi Zuva X concert on its own (not that that would happen anyway), but it was loads of fun to hear their coordinated babble (and watch them crack up during their performance). I can't exactly think of any parallels -- a trio of Bobby McFerrins performing a Magma song, perhaps?

Shrinp Wark was next, I think, with Kawabata and Yoshida. I don't remember much about this, except that it was fairly similar to Seikazoku.

After the 15-minute beer break, Yoshida stepped onto the stage for Ruins Alone. Truly an amazing drummer, Yoshida played (and sang) along with sampled bass. This was probably the highlight of the whole show; imagine taking 30-second excerpts from different Ruins songs, splicing them together into a 20-minute piece, and performing the whole cut-up mess live. Unbelievable.

Next was Zoffy (Tsuyama and Kawabata), described by Kawabata himself as "the most stupid rock duo in the world." While the first track was one of their trademark acid-folk renditions of (I'm guessing) an Occitan song, the next was a detourned rock cover. This was preceded by a hilarious, mimed critique of drinking and smoking policies in California delivered in a bizarre girly falsetto to "Dear Mr. Schwarzenegger" ("Smoke only outside. Drink only inside. The only thing you can smoke inside is marijuana."), and the introduction went something like this:

Tsuyama: This next song...

Kawabata: This next song...

Tsuyama: Is a very very famous rock song.

Kawabata: Is a very very famous rock song.

Tsuyama: Very very famous.

Kawabata: Most incredible famous rock song.

Tsuyama: Incredible amazing rock song.

Kawabata: This song is by Deep Purple.

Tsuyama: Very very famous rock song.

Kawabata: Smoke on the Water.

Tsuyama: Smoke on the Water.

Kawabata: Smoke on the Water.

Tsuyama: Played by Captain Beefheart and Bob Dylan.

In which Kawabata played the main riff completely out of tune and Tsuyama proceeded to sing as if he were Van Vliet and Zimmerman himself. Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" (introduced as above and "played Mongolian style") followed -- though the audience was asked to keep it a secret because Jimmy Page's royalties were expensive -- and then Tsuyama sang the song in a Tuvan throat growl, complete with overtones and all.

The next pieces (covers of Miles Davis's "Bitches Brew," "Agharta," and "Pangaea") were rather tiring because of the lame punchline -- Tsuyama, in dark glasses, forever putting the trumpet to his lips, but managing to blurt out only a couple of trumpet chirps before the song ends abruptly -- but the introductions were classic:

Kawabata: This next song is very very famous song.

Tsuyama: Very very famous.

Kawabata: Revolutionary song.

Tsuyama: By a jazz giant.

Kawabata: Jazz giant.

Tsuyama: Not San Francisco Giants.

Kawabata: Jazz giant.

Tsuyama: Jazz giant. Very very famous song.

Kawabata: Jazz giant.

Tsuyama: Not San Francisco Giants.

(Mind you, I'm not poking fun at their English -- which clearly wasn't limited -- because the sheer absurdity was clearly part of being "the most stupid rock duo.")

And wrapping up the whole festival over a couple of hours later: Acid Mothers Temple SWR. Though only a trio here (though a mighty one indeed), the band soldiered on with their patented psychedelic hard-rock swirl. (Kawabata made up for Cotton Casino's birdlike vocals by pulling what looked like a screwdriver across his guitar frets.) He also had trouble with the guitar plugs, but managed to fix them in time for a series of sky-splitting Mainliner-type solos to end the concert. Awesome.

[Update: Never tried embedding something before, so let's see how this works. Here's Ruins Alone:

And if you do a search for "KevinBrownsvideos" on YouTube, you get 10-minute excerpts or so from each "project."]

Dengue Fever, 12 Galaxies, SF, 8/31/06.

Note to self: When Chhom Nimol herself, the lead singer of the coolest band in America (Dengue Fever, of course), personally turns the mic towards you so you can sing along to the chorus of Ros Serey Sethea's "I'm Only Sixteen," you better know the lyrics. I, the only Asian-looking person front and center, couldn't speak a word of Khmer, so I could only muster an embarrassed shake of the head. I turned her down twice.

What can I say -- yet another fantastic (if truncated*) set from Dengue Fever in an oddly half-empty club. It was, at least, a great opportunity to see them up close (with my friend Jesse). Not as much clowning around as before, and no audience members dancing on stage this time, but still a great show. (Marc & The Casuals opened -- caught the last few songs, with Bacharach and what sounded like the Breakestra -- along with The Devilettes.)

*For the encore they went straight to "Ethanopium" and "I'm Only Sixteen" instead.

Links.

1. bebot bebot bebot bebot bebot.

2. Jean Vengua. Chapbook. Enough said.

3. Dan Coffey in MiPOesias.

4. David Tibet, in his latest mailout, writes: "This is the news I like to read." So do I.

5. Plus two new tracks on the radio.blog to the right, from two big contenders for album of the year: Up Dharma Down's "We Give In Sometimes," from Fragmented (previously written up here) and Easy Star All-Stars' "Paranoid Android," from Radiodread -- where the fellows responsible for Dub Side of the Moon (written up here too) do OK Computer. (Sorry for the poor quality of the files, as I was trying to save bandwidth.)

Om / Asunder, Bottom of the Hill, SF, 7/29/06.

Some time early during Om's set, Al Cisneros stepped on an effects pedal for his bass, and the sky cracked open, showering slabs of cosmic concrete from the vaults of space on the headbanging masses below, momentarily revealing the yawning black hole of consciousness with blind mutant creatures gibbering in the Ur-language. Om's recipe for its resinated rock is simple: take the thickest, mud-encrusted Sabbath bass riff imaginable; pair it with relentless, exhausting drumming from Chris Hakius; repeat the serpentine riff for 20-odd minutes (make it about 60, for the length of the set); deliver the fractured poetry of your vision-afflicted lyrics in a bizarre chanting monotone (think of Pink Floyd's "Astronomy Domine," only less tunefully); and channel the entire steaming sonic sludge through a wall of Green amps set up so loud to make your teeth chatter. On record, Om is intense, but necessarily muted; heard live, the Om experience -- the annoying distraction of couples making out and the constant flicker of lighters as flame is touched to weed notwithstanding -- is absolute, both within you and without you.

The opening band, Asunder, was worrisome at first: despite the fantastic gut-quivering bass rumble that preceded the musicians, the ultra-slow drum beat and chanting for the first couple of minutes just wasn't what I wanted to hear. But then the pace picked up, the deathgrowl vocals (from the drummer) began, the downtuned guitar chords crashed in, and what you had was doom metal, distilled to a simple purity.

Animotion / When In Rome, Red Devil Lounge, SF, 7/21/06.

So I'm a little jealous that my brother Bulletproof Vest met and chatted with David Sedaris. David Sedaris!

However, I did get to meet some celebs of my own over the weekend; I'll skip the best for last.

The risk one runs when watching a one-hit wonder band -- in this case, When In Rome -- is that you spend the entire set waiting for that song to be played, and of course it comes at the very end. (Yes, "Heaven Knows" wasn't a terrible song, and "Wide Wide Sea" could have been a follow-up single, but still...) That was, of course, "The Promise" (one of the hands-down best singles of the late '80s), but it doesn't bode well when your last song -- a cover of Madonna's "Like a Prayer" -- gets the quarter-full club more excited than it had been for the previous seven songs.

Animotion, however, was a different story (why they played first I'm not sure), as they had a long string of great songs: "I Engineer" (which I was yelling for), "Let Him Go" (a fantastic version of which opened the set), "I Want You," and of course, "Obsession" (surely one of the era's defining moments, period). The band simply rocked, despite a misbehaving Mac; by the end of the concert, I (and the band) was grinning from ear to ear, particularly after creative use of the big pole almost in the middle of the stage.

And then I met two of the band members! (Full disclosure: I wouldn't have been able to meet Bill Wadhams if it weren't for the mindblowing fact that the V-Monster's SO is his brother.) Plus Astrid Plane came and signed stuff at our table upstairs!

Pictures of the concert are at my Flickr "concerts" set.

No Theme.

There's no real theme to the mix uploaded on my radio to the right -- just songs I've seen performed live in the last six months. (I'll keep them there until I get messages from my provider about excessive bandwidth.)

Dengue Fever, The Independent, SF, 7/15/06.

Why I can't seem to successfully drag anyone with me to see the coolest band in America in concert I can't understand. Either people are about to pass out, or watching Pearl Jam instead, or, as J-Lu once said after seeing an excerpt of the "Sni Bong" video, "That made my ears bleed."

Anyhow, Dengue Fever was fantastic, with a set that began with --- er, one of the slower songs -- and ended with "I'm Sixteen" in the encore (complete with an extended sax solo from David Ralicke in the coda that was just perfect). In between, they played "Sni Bong," "Lost in Laos," "Flowers," "Tip My Canoe," "Hold My Hips" (this might have been when they pulled up audience members onto stage to dance), an awesome "One Thousand Tears of a Tarantula," "A Go Go," "Doo Wop" (both of which they should really record in the studio at some point), and what sounded like three other new songs (though they may have been covers, I don't know).

The band was in excellent form: one song had a show-stopping a cappella introduction by Chhom Nimol -- a reminder, as if it was necessary, of her classical training. Senon Williams and Zac Holtzman were totally goofing around all night -- jumping in unison, falling on the ground, messing with Ethan Holtzman's Farfisa solos. (I should also mention that Dengue Fever not only sound cool, they also look great on stage.)

Openers Elephone and Scrabbel were well worth seeing too -- lots of downloadable mp3s from the latter's website.

No Irony Here.

Back in my grad student days when we used to have house parties at 103 Spring Lane, Madonna was always on the dance mix tapes -- that's right, tapes -- that my housemate Big J would make. (We had generally sedate parties back then; one of the few times the cops came to bust us was when the Comp Lit folks came with their own mix tape -- a party no-no, if you ask me -- and cranked up Neneh Cherry's "Buffalo Stance" really loud.) Madonna remained a party staple even after the house changed from its early halcyon life as a predominantly interdisciplinary Southeast Asianist pad (two historians, an anthropologist (that's me), and the lone Comp Lit person) to a full-blown German Studies house. (At that point I was the only holdout, my German limited to the kind spoken in Jim Abrahams and David Zucker's Top Secret!)

During one of our dance parties, "Into the Groove" came on. People rushed to the floor (mostly the Government people -- they always crashed parties). My German Studies housemate, not necessarily in between vogueing moves, came up to me while we were dancing. "The great thing about Madonna," he confided, "is that you can dance to her with a sense of irony." I laughed, told him that I genuinely enjoyed the song, and repeated it to my anthropologist classmate at my side, who was quite offended at the suggestion. "I love Madonna!" she said.

"Even the Erotica album?" I asked skeptically.

"I love the Erotica album!" she said, in between vogueing moves now that "Vogue" had come on.

Thinking about it now, I'm interpreting my housemate's words about dancing to Madonna with a sense of irony to be a particularly early-'90s statement -- back when Seinfeld and Letterman were at the height of their ironic powers -- about cultural production in the '80s. But back then I crudely concluded that our exchange represented the difference between anthropology and comparative literature: praxis versus theory, gratification versus deferment, a joyful participation in sweaty physicality versus a constipated detachment.

Anyhow, I digress -- all this was merely an unconnected excuse to present the most insane site, clothes and haircuts and production values in varying degrees of quality:
1500 videos from the '80s (looks like they're actually hosted on YouTube), where I threw my productivity down the toilet for an hour and gleefully watched the Eurogliders and Climie Fisher and Fiction Factory and Cyndi Lauper and the vine-swinging in Haircut 100's "Love Plus One" and that fake telephone that John Waite smashes in "Missing You" and the Vegemite sandwich from Men At Work's "Down Under" back to back. And without the slightest smidgen of irony.

The Pillows, Slim's, SF, 6/28/06.

After being elbowed, pushed, trampled, and subjected to clammy sweat, armpit odor, and bad breath, I can still happily say that the experience of seeing The Pillows -- plus about two hours of waiting outside the venue with my friends J-Lu and Rinna (we were about sixth in line) -- was well worth it. The band tore through most of the FLCL soundtrack: "Beautiful Morning With You," "Little Busters," "Ride on Shooting Star," "Crazy Sunshine" (the first song of the encore), "I Think I Can" early in the set, "Sleepy Head" (this may have opened the set), "Funny Bunny," and a fantastic jump-up-and-down-like-crazy "Hybrid Rainbow" just before the encore, with the crowd screaming the chorus at the top of their lungs. Plus a Nirvana cover ("Breed") -- nothing like a surprise cover snuck into the middle of a set.

And other random thoughts:

1. That might be my last all-ages show in a while though; too many kids shoving, plus I found myself pushed from the second row to the sixth or so.

2. And dammit, bring some breath mints, folks!

3. Note to self: do not sing along loudly to Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Cities in Dust," especially when it seems that only you and the opening band (Secret Secret) are singing it.

4. The signatures on my FLCL booklet are from the meet-and-greet -- all ten minutes of it, really -- at Kinokuniya Bookstore earlier that afternoon. Whee!

Some Covers.

Some of you folks may have noticed the new radio.blog feature on the right-hand side; the theme for this month (or so) are covers:

1. First up: probably the song of the year, Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy," and three covers of varying quality from folks like Nelly Furtado and Ray LaMontagne. My money's on The Kooks' version, but as Bulletproof Vest would say wisely, though, "The original is still the best."

2. It's impossible to improve on perfection -- namely, the Beatles' "Here, There and Everywhere" -- but this cover by some band from Swindon called Belarus takes some interesting liberties with the melody. (Yes, the idea of Coldplay-does-the-Beatles sounds horrid on paper, but really, give a listen to the track first.) The high point of Mojo Magazine's latest freebie, a song-by-song cover album of Revolver, on the occasion of its 40th anniversary. (Though there's a cover of "Eleanor Rigby" by The Handsome Family that's darn good too.)

3. Sometimes there are songs that pop out of nowhere and you go, Where has this song been all my life? In this case, it's The Left Banke's "She May Call You Up Tonight," covered expertly by Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs. Their album of nothing but covers, Under the Covers Vol. 1, seems way too respectful and somewhat redundant (do we really need another cover of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue?"), but one can't complain about the overall summery vibe of the fantastic harmonizing throughout the album. Unlike other cover/tribute albums that make you run to your CD collection and pull out the originals, this one works quite well.

4. I should explain this a bit: every year, Yo La Tengo, my favorite American band other than the now-defunct Guided by Voices, plays a benefit concert for the radio station WFMU -- the schtick being, YLT plays whatever song the call-in pledger wants to hear, live, with no rehearsals. Their slaughter of Billy Joel's "You May Be Right" is from their latest album, Yo La Tengo Is Murdering The Classics, and they mostly deliver on their promise.

5. I'm a total sucker for the way M.Y.M.P. strips everything down to guitar and luscious vocals, and their sweet take on the Eraserheads' "Huwag Mo Nang Itanong" -- the highlight of the otherwise disappointing tribute album, UltraElectroMagneticJam: The Music of the Eraserheads -- is just as good as the original.

It's disappointing because it's a compilation filled with bands that are essentially the E-Heads' offspring, and so most of the album basically sounds like one big karaoke fest. The lead singers' vocals aren't particularly distinctive either -- unlike, say, Sweet and Hoffs above -- since I honestly can't tell the difference between Orange and Lemons, Cueshe or Sponge Cola. (The exception was Imago's "Spoliarium," which made me appreciate the original even more.) The trick to a good cover version, I think, is to make the song temporarily your own, as do South Border ("With a Smile" gets the r&b treatment) and the Radioactive Sago Project (a spazzed-out "Alkohol"). But not the others, unfortunately: Isha blows a great opening to "Torpedo" by returning to the same E-Heads arrangement; the otherwise very good Barbie Almalbis attempts to sing in Tagalog and fails (I think that's what happened on "Overdrive," but I'm not sure); and everyone else, including, most disappointingly, Rico J. Puno, churns out different variations of blandness.

The Backyardigans.

Speaking of more great music this year so far: Izzy is currently obsessed with the Nick Jr. TV show The Backyardigans. It’s easy to see why; the show is utterly charming, even for a jaded viewer like me. Five animal friends (a moose, a penguin, a hippo, a kangaroo, and one undefined creature named Uniqua) have adventures in their backyards which morph, Calvin-and-Hobbes-style, into jungles, Egyptian pyramids, medieval castles and so on. The CGI animation is somewhat soulless, but it's pretty and it works.

The real draw is the music (and the excellent voice acting), which is just superb for a kiddie TV show. They're incredibly catchy and witty children’s ditties that are the functional equivalent of Broadway showtunes—each song within the show is totally choreographed, with dancing. The songs are thematically coherent for each episode, though they're not necessarily tailored to the plot; Irish music, for instance, accompanies the Backyardigans on their quest for the perfect cup of tea to Borneo and China (to ask the grumpy emperor for a cup). Across the series, however, the music runs the range from reggae to rockabilly to country to Dixieland to James Brown funk.

Anyhow, I finally got to see the scrolling credits by pausing the DVD (they get reduced to a tiny window when being broadcast), and discovered to my surprise that the list of musicians reads like a Tzadik session roster: Evan Lurie, Doug Weiselman, Greg Cohen, Smokey Hormel, Tony Scherr, Ben Perowsky, Steven Bernstein, Kenny Wollesen… Totally cool. (It's practically Sex Mob doing the soundtrack!)

Best of all, Izzy gets up out of her chair to dance every time the songs come on! (She already kind of knows the choreography to "Please and Thank You.")

Up Dharma Down.

It's only April, and I think I already have one of my favorite albums of the year. Up Dharma Down's Fragmented is an urban soul chronicle from the streets of Manila, both tense and laid back, full of nervous energy one moment and suffused with post-club comedown the next.

I still remember the first time I saw the video for the fantastic first single, "Maybe." I was idly flipping channels one December night in Los Banos last year when the video came on, and I was transfixed by its evocation of claustrophobia, as the camera followed a near-hysterical woman pacing inside a hotel room, then down a narrow stairwell, tear-smeared mascara on her face.

But it was, of course, the music which kept me glued to the TV: an insistent, propulsive reverbed guitar riff; a skittering, distorted "Amen" break; a bass line turned up way high in the mix; and that voice which stretched "Maybe" into 27 different syllables. (I had to grab paper and pen to scribble down the name of the band; alas, their album wasn't coming out until a few months later, as the kind women at Odyssey and Tower Records had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.)

The rest of the album doesn't quite approach the succinct drama of "Maybe," but it's quite strong nevertheless, and I suspect more songs will float their way to the top as the year proceeds... I can't wait to see them live.

More Cover Madness.

This Mojo cover quiz is driving me nuts: I've only gotten 12 out of 25 so far (1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 18, 19, 22 and 23). (Smoothie told me what #12 was, so that doesn't count.)

Any guesses for the rest? I'm sure I own #17, but can't place it. (And #20 must be the first Weezer album, but apparently it isn't.)

Belle and Sebastian / The New Pornographers, Design Concourse, SF, 3/21/06.

The Belle and Sebastian set kind of peaked early for me; the first song was just perfect -- Stuart Murdoch, acoustic guitar, and "Stars of Track and Field." I could have gone home at that point. But instead I was treated to almost two hours of twee. Murdoch and Stevie Jackson's almost cringingly unselfconscious dancing were, in retrospect, perfect for all the lovable geekery on display. You almost wanted to give them a hug.

Here's the setlist, swiped from someone's hard work at a fan forum:

Stars of Track and Field
Another Sunny Day
If You're Feeling Sinister
Funny Little Frog
Sukie in the Graveyard (about a woman who went to the SF Art Institute? Or so Stuart said)
Song for Sunshine
Electronic Renaissance ("That sounded quite '80s, didn't you think?")
The Fox in the Snow (a little too intimate a song for such a large and ugly venue)
She's Losing It
Piazza, New York Catcher (the SF crowd ate this one up, what with all the City references)
Your Cover's Blown
We Are the Sleepyheads
Jonathan David (plus they pulled up some lucky woman to do an "interpretive dance" for this one)
Dog on Wheels
I'm A Cuckoo (with lots of blinding spotlights)
White Collar Boy (this was great live)
Judy and the Dream of Horses
---------
Simple Things
The Boy with the Arab Strap

I would have loved to hear "Woman's Realm" or ""The State I'm In" or Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying" (you can see I'm something of an old-school B&S fan here), but I can't complain.

But let's rewind about two and a half hours earlier to the opening act The New Pornographers, who were simply fantastic. (This was when I was still a third of the way in, but moved back to see my friends L&J at the soundboard when people inexplicably started pushing.) I think in the general scheme of musical things I enjoy them more; I'm a powerpop fiend at heart. I think the New Pornographers are Bejarless and Caseless this tour, which means, unfortunately, no songs with vocals stretched to the breaking point like the awesome "Letter from an Occupant." Kathryn Calder handled the singing well, though, particularly on "The Laws Have Changed."

The set began with "Use It," and even this early on the crowd was already pogoing. A few songs from each of their three albums (plus "Graceland" from the Matador comp) made it into the set, including (yay!) "From Blown Speakers" and "The Slow Descent into Alcoholism," ending their too-short portion of the concert with "Sing Me Spanish Techno."

(A fairly similar version of the concerts, from a Washington, D.C. date, can be downloaded from NPR.)

The Sippy Cups, Cafe du Nord, SF, 3/12/2006.

Great Moment in Rock and Roll #4,382:

The Sippy Cups are a band who has forged a career from astutely figuring out the cosmic link between hippie surrealism and kiddie songs. But it's not just Pink Floyd's "Bike" ("Syd must be riding his bike around Cambridge as we speak," dryly commented the lead singer, Sippy Paul) or "Space Oddity" or "She's A Rainbow" that gets the Sippy Cups treatment; "Bennie and the Jets," "Low Rider" and "Drive My Car" (even Elmo has a version of that one) all get trotted out on stage, with a few lyrics tweaked here and there, to the delight of parents and kids alike. (As proof of a similar mindset, the American version of the British-French film The Magic Roundabout, retitled Doogal on these shores, expunged the Kylie Minogue theme song and replaced it with Pilot's "Magic" and the Electric Light Orchestra's "Mr. Blue Sky.")

But I digress: the Great Moment in Rock and Roll #4,382 occurs about halfway through the set. The crowd of four to six year-olds up front and center -- hydrated by the juice boxes from the bar (Dad had his pint of Sierra Nevada), overstimulated by the lights and colorful costumes, entranced by Sippy Doug's juggling clown off to one side, perhaps a little sweaty and exhausted after trying to catch the big soap bubbles floating in the air -- are all geared up and excited. One of the singers, Sippy Alison, asks the audience if they want "a Velvet Underground sing-along" (this is "Who Loves The Sun") or "to jump around to the Ramones." There are various yells from the audience, and the singer says, "Sounds like you want the Ramones."

The drums kick in, that primitivist, elemental rhythm at 176 beats per minute. Sippy Paul crouches near the front of the stage: "I'm going to give you some vowels here, and you have to repeat them after me, okay? A! O!"

The kids shout, "A! O!" (The adults are grinning, because they know what will happen next, "Hey! Ho!" or not.)

Sippy Paul: "A! O! Let's go!"

The kids: "A! O! Let's go! A! O! Let's go! A! O! Let's go!"

And then Sippy Paul yells into the mic: "Now jump around!"

The kids go absolutely nuts. The band launches into "Blitzkrieg Bop," and it's as if someone pulled an electric switch and zapped the crowd. I don't think there isn't a single kindergartener on the floor in front of me that isn't jumping around like little Tasmanian devils, flailing with total lack of restraint. Over by the moshpit at the front of the stage I see my daughter Izzy's pigtails flying. The sheer energy of the moment is exhilarating, as if the kids all understood, on some deeper level, the thrill of collective abandon, of the primal joy of rock and roll made harder, louder, faster. The kids are alright indeed.

Dengue Fever, 12 Galaxies, SF, 3/11/06.

Somehow I managed to wriggle myself into the fifth row of Dengue Fever's concert last night. This was after I a) had abandoned friends up in the mezzanine, who had thought it was going to be too cramped, and b) was abandoned by other friends (including Special K) who were simply too wasted to make it through a set that didn't begin until midnight. (This was the result of Laszlo plus that bar next door, where Barbara Boxer apparently gave a speech a few minutes before we arrived.)

So it's official: Dengue Fever is the coolest band in America. They got the "hit" out of the way first ("Ethanopium," a cover from the Ethiopiques series, which made it onto the Broken Flowers soundtrack), then proceeded to unspool a setlist from their two excellent albums (including "Lost in Laos," a rockin' "Sni Bong," "We Were Gonna," "Flowers," "Escape from Dragon House," "Made of Steam," "Shave Your Beard," and Ros Serey Sothea's "I'm Sixteen" for the encore). It would be pointless to argue that the band's charm didn't primarily come from Chhom Nimol's impressive vocal range (and stage presence), but that would be to discount the limber Farfisa, sax and surf guitar-fueled groove laid down by the band. Their album from last year, Escape from Dragon House, is an amazing, heady, utterly unique swirl of music whose cultural influences are deliciously difficult to parse. In concert, Dengue Fever transforms that mix into a clear imperative: you have to dance.

Stereolab, The Fillmore, SF, 3/4/06.

The best reason to see Stereolab in concert is that they rock live. This was not what I expected from the band who overall has deviated little from the two-chord, vintage-organ, pop wonders they've churned out; when I last saw them on the Dots and Loops tour, their live sound is more aggressive, with the drums higher up in the mix. The emphasis was more on the groove; most people could have very easily danced, except that they chose to hold their beers and dance the indie-concert shuffle.

Last night's excellent concert was no exception, with a setlist mostly taken from the new Fab Four Suture album. (Although not my favorite track from the collection, "Kyberneticka Babicka Pt. 1!") The "groop's" playing was remarkably tight, with Laetitia Sadier receiving much appreciation from the audience. (Projected on the back screen were film loops reminiscent of Brakhage and Harry Smith.) The band started off with "Miss Modular," threw in a surprise "Pack Yr Romantic Mind," finished the set with "Cybele's Reverie," and then played perhaps my favorite Stereolab track (other than "Pinball"), "Outer Bongolia," which descended into a whirlpool of squelchy, droney noise. (Mary Hansen's vocals were sadly missed; in my head I kept filling in the background harmonies.)

(Unfortunately I missed almost of Hot Chip's set; I really wanted to hear "Playboy." Hot Chip was even goofier and unfunkier in person.)

Robert Pollard, The Independent, SF, 2/25/06.

Random notes:

1. This will sound blasphemous, but Uncle Bob was not in the greatest form last night. An hour into the concert, Pollard was already slurring his speech, staggering around on stage (and later, would forget the lyrics to "Don't Stop Now" at the encore) -- a result, perhaps, of the many Bud Lights and swigs of tequila (and a puff on a joint from an audience member). This didn't keep him from the flying kicks though.

2. Though the band certainly was in fantastic form: tighter, louder, more aggressive -- and as Pollard himself kept repeating throughout, "more professional." (After all, Tommy Keene was playing lead guitar and keyboards, and Jon Wurster from Superchunk was behind the drums.)

3. I was also, unbelievably, falling asleep! (This may be a combination of 5 hours' sleep plus various other things I won't name.) This was in contrast, I think, to the 1-2-3 punch of Guided By Voices concerts of old, where the hits kept on coming; the set (which was over 2 hours) more or less meandered through From a Compound Eye. (The album itself is worth checking out, but the sheer quantity of songs has made it difficult to remember most of them; the excellent live versions of the 5-minute epic "Conqueror of the Moon" and "U.S. Mustard Company" made me want to listen to the originals again.)

4. The High Strung was excellent: melodic power-pop nuggets in longer twisty musical suite wrappers. (Sorry, I can't think of another way to say it.) Plus a hilarious story about Arby's-related diarrhea.

5. "We're not playing 'Echos Myron.' No 'Echos Myron.' Fuck 'Echos Myron' fans. That's right, boo me."

6. "Did I say Liz Phair was an attractive woman?"

7. After long solos on (I think) "The Kingdom Within:" "That was our 'jam.' We did it because we're in San Francisco."

8. And so we finally got to the encore ("This is the GBV set," Pollard said) which comprised, in no order: "Sad If I Lost It," "Girls of Wild Strawberries," "Get Under It" (I think), "Game of Pricks," "My Kind of Soldier," "The Brides Have Hit Glass" (a surprise), "Choking Tara," "Little Lines," "My Valuable Hunting Knife" and (best of all) "Gold Star for Robot Boy."

9. The funniest part was one of the new T-shirts on sale, with a really cool Terry Gilliam-style image on the front. And on the back: "Gang of Four - $45 / The Pixies - $60 / Robert Pollard - priceless."

You Want More Pointless Lists?

Favorite Release from Every Year Since 1970:

1970: The Beatles, Let It Be
1971: Pink Floyd, Meddle
1972: Stevie Wonder, Talking Book
1973: Paul Giovanni, The Wicker Man
1974: Tom Waits, The Heart of Saturday Night
1975: Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run
1976: Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life
1977: Elvis Costello, My Aim Is True
1978: The Police, Outlandos d'Amour
1979: The Clash, London Calling
1980: The English Beat, I Just Can't Stop It
1981: The Police, Ghost in the Machine
1982: Roxy Music, Avalon
1983: U2, War
1984: The Smiths, Hatful of Hollow
1985: The Cure, The Head on the Door
1986: Anita Baker, Rapture
1987: 10,000 Maniacs, In My Tribe
1988: Pixies, Surfer Rosa
1989: Pixies, Doolittle
1990: Yo La Tengo, Fakebook
1991: Matthew Sweet, Girlfriend
1992: My Bloody Valentine, Loveless
1993: Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville
1994: Guided by Voices, Bee Thousand
1995: Eraserheads, Cutterpillow
1996: Guided by Voices, Under the Bushes under the Stars
1997: Teenage Fanclub, Songs from Northern Britain
1998: Puffy, JET CD
1999: Tom Waits, Mule Variations
2000: Guided by Voices, Hold on Hope
2001: Gillian Welch, Time (The Revelator)
2002: Puffy, Nice.
2003: Dengue Fever, Dengue Fever
2004: Kanye West, The College Dropout
2005: Robert Pollard, Zoom

Notes:

1987 was hard, what with "The Joshua Tree," "Sign o' the Times," Alex Chilton's "High Priest," "Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me" and "Franks Wild Years" being released that year as well.

1989 also saw "3 Feet High and Rising" and "Cosmic Thing."

1992: an easy choice, but "Slanted and Enchanted," Bettie Serveert's "Palomine," Guided By Voices' "Propeller" and Luna's "Lunapark" came out that year too. What a year.

1993: narrowly beating out "Rid of Me," "Frosting on the Beater" and Yo La Tengo's "Painful." Another amazing year.

1994: same year as "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" and "Fumbling towards Ecstasy."

1995: same year as "Alien Lanes" and "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?"

1997: easy pick again, but it meant "I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One," "Ok Computer" and "Mag Earwhig" had to fall by the wayside.

I usually listen to music way after the critics have picked them on top 10 lists and so on, so 2005 will probably change.

I should also add that these albums aren't necessarily my favorites from their respective artists; "The Unforgettable Fire" (U2) and "Reggatta de Blanc" (The Police) are my favorites, but both were released during years crowded with talent.

Also, interestingly, only 14 of the 35 albums above were listened to by me the same year they came out. Obviously I wasn't listening to Pink Floyd when I was a year old, but the majority of the list are belated discoveries. Exactly three were purchased the day they were released (Waits, West and Pollard).

Letter by Letter.

(I'm giving myself exactly ten minutes to do this, then it's back to work.)

Favorite songs, with titles beginning with each letter of the alphabet:

A - "Alapaap," Eraserheads
B - "Barnaby, Hardly Working," Yo La Tengo
C - "Crazy for You," Madonna
D - "Desperado," The Langley Schools Music Project
E - "Echos Myron," Guided By Voices
F - "Fourth of July," Galaxie 500
G - "Girlfriend," Matthew Sweet
H - "Here Comes The Sun," The Beatles
I - "In My Life," The Beatles
J - "Jockey Full of Bourbon," Tom Waits
K - "Kid Charlemagne," Steely Dan
L - "LONG BEACH NIGHTMARE," PUFFY
M - "More Than This," Roxy Music
N - "Never Let Me Down Again," Depeche Mode
O - "Ooo Baby Baby," Smokey Robinson and The Miracles
P - "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want," The Smiths
Q - "Queen of Cans and Jars," Guided By Voices
R - "Regret," New Order
S - "September Gurls," Big Star
T - "Thunder Road," Bruce Springsteen
U - "Under the Surface," Bettie Serveert
V - "Valentine's Day," Bruce Springsteen
W - "Wonderwall," Oasis
X - "XXX," Helium
Y - "You're The Best Thing," Style Council
Z - "Ziphim," Masada

Whew!

Willie Nelson, The Fillmore, SF, 1/26/06.

The musical world just became a little odder, now that Pansy Division and Willie Nelson are separated by only one degree. Nelson has recorded Ned Sublette's 1981 song "Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly (Fond of Each Other)" -- released on iTunes on Valentine's Day too -- apparently as something of a tribute to his tour manager, who came out to Nelson a couple of years ago. (Pansy Division was supposedly the first to cover the song.) The lyrics are funny, but not in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink sort of way (though queer theory folks out there would probably wince a bit); the music itself is played dead sober. (Yes, it looks like he's jumping on the Brokeback bandwagon, but there's apparently a song of his on the soundtrack already.)

I wish Willie Nelson had played the song in concert sometime last month at the Fillmore, but no matter. To be in the presence of a real-life, honest-to-goodness Musical Legend (or, as this blogger puts it, "Willie Fucking Nelson!") was enough; to be reminded of how good a guitar player Nelson is was icing on the cake. And a fantastic songwriter as well: one tends to forget that he actually wrote Patsy Cline's Greatest Song Ever, perhaps in keeping with the big introductory spiel he received at the beginning of the concert as "the Walt Whitman of our time." (Hmm -- Whitman.) His longtime band, of course, knew the songs inside and out, as road-tested as a band could possibly be, even if they were all blinking through the billowing clouds of weed smoke at the venue.

The highlights of the concert -- well, they were all highlights, really -- were a kickass "Whiskey River" (at the opening of the set, naturally), a triumphant "City of New Orleans," and a rollicking version of "The Harder They Come" ("about the Bush administration," my friend J said). But you can't go wrong with a set that included "Blue Skies," "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground," "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," "Pancho and Lefty," "Always on My Mind" and "Crazy."

In Praise of Last.fm.

I am absolutely loving Last.fm. I've added a "weekly chart" graphic to the bottom right of this webpage, which is precisely what Last.fm has done for me (for free!) since April 2004: keep track of the 68,800 songs I've played (as of today) on my computer. My Last.fm page tells me, for instance, that Guided By Voices is my top artist (no surprise, with 2,319 plays), and that PUFFY's "Long Beach Nightmare" is my most-played song (99 times in almost two years). (Though Izzy is actually the one who listens to PUFFY somewhat obsessively, which makes Teenage Fanclub's "Ain't That Enough" the highest non-PUFFY song on the list.)

One of the coolest features is Last.fm radio, which plays songs listened to by your "musical neighbours" -- in this case, music that's already weighted according to your own musical interests. It seems to work a lot better than Pandora's somewhat arcane "musical genome" system, as if I listened to, say, Tom Waits for his "repetitive melodic phrasing" and "major key tonality." Songs kind of function the same way: My Bloody Valentine's "Only Shallow" gave me Elastica's "Car Song," Stereolab's "Brittle," and "Falling Back" by California Oranges, which sounded nothing like the previous songs. Pandora wins the interface battle, however, since it uses Flash and plays in your browser. Last.fm, however, gives you more control: you can download plugins for pretty much every major music software program out there, but the Last.fm player is again a separate download.

And if you're a Last.fm subscriber, one of your bonus features is a personal radio -- one that plays a random selection of any of the 68,000-odd songs I've ever played (provided they're on Last.fm's streaming server). A listen to my own radio was quite satisfying, if a rather schizophrenic one -- Augustus Pablo, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Duran Duran, HYDE, Oingo Boingo, Os Mutantes, Warren Miller, Dillinger, Icehouse and PJ Harvey were the first 10 tracks. But one could play, for instance, Largehearted Boy's radio, and hear Neko Case, Elf Power, the Continental Co-Ets, Portastatic and Windsor for the Derby, in that order, and get something more stylistically coherent. (J-Lu's radio yielded Utada Hikaru, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Eraserheads (!), Glay, and L'Arc~en~Ciel; Smoothie's radio played the Alkaline Trio, HORSE the Band, Interpol, Nine Inch Nails, and the Juliana Theory.)

The "Similar Artists Radio" works pretty successfully too: the "Puffy" radio appropriately plays both sugary-sweet J-pop and J-punk from the Benten label. Typing in "John Zorn" -- someone whose work is all over the map -- queues up Otomo Yoshihide, Marc Ribot, the Fantomas Melvins Big Band, Ground Zero and Praxis. (Something wrong there, I think, as it represents only a certain aspect of Zorn's work, but typing in "Masada" got me closer to what I wanted -- Wadada Leo Smith, more Ribot, etc.) In an attempt to stump the player, I typed in "Eraserheads," and it told me that there was not enough content to play this station -- though the results happily displayed Siakol, Bamboo, Mayonnaise, and Parokya ni Edgar, among others.

The process isn't perfect. There are various server outages, which is probably to be expected, given all the data processing going on; the tags are also mostly dependent on the individual playing the music, so improperly-tagged music usually shows up on the site. But it's a fantastic site nonetheless, and I encourage you folks who use iTunes, or Winamp (or whatever else you use to play music on your computer -- I don't own a stereo, so my computer is it), to download the plugin and get hooked.

Susie Suh, Cafe du Nord, SF, 2/5/05.

It's been a spectacularly shitty week, but at least it began on an extremely high note. Almost on impulse I bought tickets to see Susie Suh perform live at the Cafe du Nord last week, and I was quite impressed. (So was J-Lu, I think, who was kind of dragged to go almost at the last moment.)

I'm only really a casual fan of the women-with-acoustic-guitars genre, but there was something compelling about her 2005 self-titled album that made me take notice. There is nothing necessarily groundbreaking about it -- nothing you won't hear on a Lilith Fair compilation, perhaps, with self-confessional lyrics like "Oh I'm missing you / Or maybe I'm missing who I was when I was with you," and an urban-glossy production -- but there is an autumnal chilll that runs through Suh's songs that gives the album an edge. Most important, Suh is gifted with an incredible voice, all husky and soulful, which breaks at perfect moments (hear the chorus of "Light on My Shoulder").

In concert that amazing voice is, unbelievably, even better, now embellished with a slight rawness that fits the emotional intensity of her lyrics. Indeed, the concert was completely stripped down: with her on guitar and vocals and another guy on drums. (You also get the chance to see how fine a guitar player she is.)

To my initial worry, Suh began the short set with four of my favorite songs on the album ("Won't You Come Again," "Your Battlefield," "Harmony," and "Lucille," if I remember correctly). But this anxiety was dispelled with a couple of terrific new songs ("Canopy," probably about her mother, and "Sweet Love," which began with lines like "Clap your hands if you love someone in this room," or words to that effect), and a few well-placed surprise covers ("Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," "Since I Fell For You," "Is This Love"). All together a most excellent experience; I highly recommend catching her in concert if she comes by your town.

(As always seems to be the case, I ran into a couple of former students at the concert as well; today Amy and I were pondering the lack of enthusiasm in the crowd, particularly the center. Maybe because it was on Superbowl Sunday night, and there was work the next day...)

The Best Music I Heard All Year, 2005 Edition.

In alphabetical order:

The Carter Family, In the Shadow of Clinch Mountain (2000)

A few weeks back a reader of this blog wrote to tell me that I was the only other Filipino he knew that was a fan of American folk music. I don't understand it either; certainly it stirred up no strands of any sort of racial memory! American folk, in short, was the music that was most culturally alien to me; I never heard it growing up, or on the radio then and now. But there was something about the Carter Family that spoke to me in ways I can barely articulate -- these rough-hewn, gorgeous voices calling from a faraway time and land, singing of the curt brutality of an interrupted life, the innocence of souls in love, and a faith in an incorruptible future.

M.I.A. & Diplo, Piracy Funds Terrorism, Volume 1 (2004)

Boomf boomf. Are there banlieue in London? I don't think so. Choco slick and a kick in the teef. Chika chika. Tamil tiger daughter. Jungle guerrilla graphics. Hip pop history, Bangles and Pepa remixed. Hip hop is all de tournament anyway. Galang galang. You could be a follower but who's your leader? Crank it up. Break that cycle or it will kill ya.

Robert Pollard, Zoom (2005)

It's been a good year for the fans of the Robert Pollard Experience: a concert DVD, a band biography, three side-project albums, a soundtrack for a Steven Soderbergh film, an art chapbook, an album coming out from Merge next year, a nationwide concert tour, a box set with a hundred new songs -- and this absolutely delightful four-song EP, sourced from some alternate '70s pop universe.

Puffy, Nice. (2003)

Let's get this clear: the vaguely Orientalist TV show on the Cartoon Network has nothing to do with their music. With that out of the way, let me talk about Nice. There are, of course, frequent moments of genius scattered all throughout their discography, but Nice. -- an all-Andy Sturmer affair, but that shouldn't scare you -- is simply bursting with pop sweetness: the clap-your-hands-say-yeah! joy of "Long Beach Nightmare" (sheer perfection), the irrepressibly happy "Atarashii Hibi" (Brand New Day). Naysayers will say that every other riff seems to be stolen from somewhere else, but that's part of the genius: a reclaiming of an international musical vocabulary that transcends all borders.

Teenage Fanclub, Songs from Northern Britain (1997)

Like most people, I first heard Teenage Fanclub when the cheerfully discordant anthem "The Concept" hit MTV; like most people, I (erroneously) figured they had more or less sunk without a trace as (again, erroneously) Glasgow's response to grunge, cranking out similar-sounding albums from then on; like most people, I rediscovered the band through Nick Hornby's Songbook, for which Hornby picked two songs.

Songs from Northern Britain is an album of transcendent beauty; the fact that it's composed of the simplest four-minute love songs makes it even more of a marvel. (Which makes it a different kind of transcendent beauty than that of, say, Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, but I digress.)

I will cop out and quote instead some anonymous music fan, who wrote this review on Amazon.com:

Part of the grandeur of this record is a point which nearly everyone has missed: many of these songs are hymns to God. Listen to the first line of the record: "I don't know if you can hear me, I'm feeling down and can't think clearly...." This is not written for a girlfriend; it is written to God; a bare human call to his creator. And they are beautiful songs. There are none about drugs, none about being in Teenage Fanclub; but all are about what it is to be a spiritual being on this earth... If you think it is about girlfriends, you miss the point and much of the majesty. "I can't feel my soul without you." I could go on--this record brings tears to my eyes. It is staggering and epic.

In any case, Teenage Fanclub's Songs from Northern Britain was my favorite album of this year. Sometime this summer I started living with it, listening to it before I went to sleep, or when I woke up in the morning, I went running with it, I played it in the car and sang at the top of my lungs, all with an ache and joy in my heart. It must be what it's like to be in love again.

TsuShiMaMiRe, Pregnant Fantasy (2004)

More details here. Key phrase: hair flying everywhere.

The Best Music I Heard All Year, 2005 Edition: The Runners-up.

In alphabetical order:

Ryan Adams, Heartbreaker
   "Ryan Adams??" At least two people questioned my choice of favorite albums, but Heartbreaker tided me over some: darkly romantic ballads straight from Dylan and Parsons territory.

Aitanna77, Spring Is Coming Soon
   I think, with something of a wince, that this is what is called "folktronica." Labels aside, this is quietly arresting music, all disc whirr and guitar wisp, tweaked lullabies for cold and dry seasons.

Laura Cantrell, Humming by the Flowered Vine
   Laura Cantrell's latest album is, to my ears, most analogous to Gillian Welch's Time (The Revelator): a detour from Nashville / Scrabble Creek that confirms Cantrell as one of America's finest pop singer-songwriters who chooses to work in the folk/country idiom (not that there's anything wrong about being strictly country!).

M.Y.M.P, Beyond Acoustic / Soulful Acoustic
   If the songs weren't so interchangeable and weren't mostly picked from the same bottomless trough of Mellow Ballads, I would unhesitatingly add this pair of albums (now available as a two-disc set) to my favorite music for this year. M.Y.M.P. has a winning formula: take a song ("Waiting in Vain," Ogie Alcasid's "Sa Kanya") and pair it up with elegant fingerpicking and luscious, buttery vocals. Don't expect radical interpretations, or of new insights into the songs revealing themselves, but when you already have a set of cover versions even better than the originals, it's some kind of gorgeous indeed.

The Polyphonic Spree, The Beginning Stages of the Polyphonic Spree
   Great sunshine pop, but you really really really have to watch them in concert to get the full gospel treatment.

Sleater-Kinney, The Woods
   The profane, overdriven din from your speakers is the new Sleater-Kinney album, brought to you by a band newly, terrifyingly, unleashed.

Kanye West, Late Registration
   Jay-Z calls him a genius, and maybe you should too. It may not be as fresh-sounding as his brilliant debut (my favorite album from last year), but Late Registration is still a sonic thrill: the urgent "Crack Music," the soaring "Touch The Sky," the hilarious "Gold Diggers."

Yura Yura Teikoku, III
   Mislabeled by its promoters (at least in the U.S.) as "psych rock" (and therefore disappointing all the White Heaven / Rallizes / Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. fans), Yura Yura Teikoku is straight-up irresistible pop-infused rock that works in any language.

Next: The Best Music I Heard All Year, 2005 Edition.

Earworms, 2005 Edition.

My brother Bulletproof Vest has made an impeccable mix cd for the car (Missy Elliott, Keane, the Cardigans, U2, Sun 60), and I responded with my favorite songs of 2005, the results of which are below.

He's not so impressed, however, with my ever-expanding 1600 Favorite Songs Of All Time List:

"I can't believe you don't have the New Pornographers' "Letter from an Occupant!"

"I can't believe you prefer the Iron & Wine cover of "Such Great Heights" over the Postal Service original!"

"I can't believe you don't have Guided By Voices' "Fair Touching!" (Its omission was even more egregious to him because I had about 60 GbV songs on the list.)

People who clickwheel through the list on my iPod invariably tell me I have the wrong songs anyway.

"You picked the wrong Bloc Party song!" (It's listed below, from the Bloc Party e.p.; Bulletproof Vest really likes "Like Eating Glass.")

Or, "You have all the wrong Liz Phair songs!" (But "Stratford-on-Guyville" always seems to strike a chord with people who sit in my rustbucket car.)

Or, "You actually have a song by William Shatner?" ("Mr. Tambourine Man," of course.)

So without any more chitchat, in alphabetical order, my Earworms of 2005. As in previous years, the list isn't about songs actually released in 2005, but music that came my way (or were rediscovered) this year:

Ryan Adams, "Come Pick Me Up"
Bloc Party, "The Answer"
Bonnie Pink, "Evil and Flowers (Live)"
Laura Cantrell, "Letters"
The Spencer Davis Group, "Every Little Bit Hurts (Live)"
The English Beat, "Hands Off She's Mine"
HALCALI, "Strawberry Chips"
Leela James, "Don't Speak"
Lali Puna, "Bi-pet"
M.I.A. and Diplo, "Pop"
MISIA, "The Glory Day"
Motorhead, "I'll Be Your Sister"
M.Y.M.P., "Sa Kanya"
Kitchie Nadal, "Wag Na Wag Mong Sasabihin"
The Pillows, "Hybrid Rainbow"
The Polyphonic Spree, "Light and Day"
PUFFY, "Atarashii Hibi [Brand New Day]"
Rilo Kiley, "Portions for Foxes"
Jimmie Rodgers, "Home Call"
Sleater-Kinney, "Jumpers"
Smoosh, "Massive Cure"
Matthew Sweet, "In My Tree"
Teenage Fanclub, "Ain't That Enough"
TsuShiMaMiRe, "Manhole"
Weezer, "Pink Triangle"
Kanye West, "Gold Diggers"
Yum!Yum!Orange, "Letter"

Next, if I ever get to go online again: The Best Music I Heard All Year, 2005 Edition: The Runners-up.

Echo & The Bunnymen, San Francisco, 12/5/05.

The latest Echo and The Bunnymen album, Siberia, is probably just what you'd expect from a couple of middle-aged, mellow friends who'd gone through hard times and weathered them all; it's almost satisfied, contented music, with little trace of their old tortured poetry, albeit with a current of nervous energy. (Lan said that they probably take yoga lessons together now.)

Live, however, the songs are a totally different matter; Will Sergeant's guitar still snarls to great effect, and Ian McCulloch's voice has turned into an expressive, somewhat cigarette-damaged instrument. But it wasn't exactly the new stuff I was waiting for. Back in Los Banos in the '80s, I wore out my cassette tape of Songs to Learn and Sing (I wasn't cool enough to own their music earlier); it was those culled tracks I wanted to hear.

I think, in any case, that I have great luck when watching concerts with Lan and Juan, because the requests in our heads almost always get played, even if they don't show up regularly on their setlists. (Lan wanted to hear "Over the Wall;" I wanted to hear "Viliers Terrace," and I couldn't believe they actually played it.)

Here's the set from last night (because I'm totally obsessive, I sat down and listened to the Instant Live CD and figured it out):

Going Up
Show of Strength
Stormy Weather
Bring On The Dancing Horses
Scissors in the Sand
All that Jazz
The Back of Love
The Killing Moon
In the Margins
Never Stop
Viliers Terrace
[T. Rex / David Bowie / etc. medley]
Of a Life
Rescue
The Cutter
Nothing Lasts Forever
Lips Like Sugar
Over the Wall
[Unknown Title]
Ocean Rain

You can't go wrong, I think, by ending your concert with "Ocean Rain," surely one of the most gorgeous songs from the New Wave era.

Dan Zanes, San Francisco, 11/26/05.

Dan Zanes and the rest of the house party gang. (I think they were singing "Pay Me My Money Down" here.)

Izzy's first few years are a blur now; somehow I can't remember what her very first concert was (Dan Zanes or Gillian Welch). This is her second Zanes concert, to whose music she grew up. Back when he performed in Berkeley last year (or maybe the year before) Izzy was too small to really jump around with the bigger kids. But here she is now, front and center at the concert (like father, like daughter).

Dan Zanes' music isn't just for kids. It's exuberant folk music that encompasses sea shanties, West African counting songs, lullabies, and gospel, plus a generous dip into the American Folkways catalog. (And his buddies, who just happen to be Sandra Bernhard, John Doe, Philip Glass, Suzanne Vega, Sheryl Crow, Lou Reed and Aimee Mann, among others.) The fact that he also sings "Skip To My Lou" and "Polly Wolly Doodle" shouldn't deter adult listeners; it's a reclaiming -- not that they needed reclamation in the first place! -- of the so-called "children's song" as an obvious part of the musical vernacular.

The whole point of Zanes' concerts is that it's a house party in his living room; the kids, therefore, get to jump and dance right up front (I sat along the back in the orchestra pit). Izzy was enthralled, standing right at Zanes' feet. The set proceeded much along the Berkeley show we saw previously (though with the addition of the Foggy Five (five kids playing wind instruments) and an African dancer); there was nothing wrong, though, with a show that included "Hello," "Wonderwheel," "Que Fortunidad," "Smile for a While," and "All Around the Kitchen." (I think at this point Dad was singing along more than Izzy was, who was still spellbound up front.)

The big guns were reserved for last, once Father Goose stepped up to the mic and delivered his nursery rhymes in a dancehall style. As before, they ended with "The Hokey Pokey" (much audience interaction for that one) and marched off the stage and into the audience with the always-grand "Sidewalks of New York." (Later Izzy met Dan Zanes outside and shook his hand. Fangirl for life.)

Your New Favorite Song.

Soundtrack for an Imaginary Wes Anderson Film, Track #9.

The Langley Schools Music Project's Innocence and Despair album is so 2001, but it's worth reintroducing to all you folks who missed it at the first time. All the information you need to know is right here: '70s pop songs sung by Canadian schoolchildren in a gym. It's a lot more than just the potential camp value, of course; as John Zorn put it, "This is beauty. This is truth. This is music that touches the heart in a way no other music ever has, or ever could."

The one song that everyone who has ever heard the album remembers -- and now that I'm surfing the net, it's the song that just about every reviewer singles out -- is a cover version of the Eagles' "Desperado," sung by a nine-year old Sheila Behman in a purely unaffected, heartbreaking vocal. I remember playing it to friends who literally stopped what they were doing as the song was playing. (In any case, they wanted to hear the entire album over again.)

I've never particularly liked the Eagles, though there are some songs ("I Can't Tell You Why," "Tequila Sunrise") that I do like simply because of their nostalgic pull. But otherwise the Eagles, who may have been well-meaning country rockers at the beginning but turned into slick adult-contemporary, were never real talents to begin with, and I could easily be happy the rest of my life without ever having to hear "Heartache Tonight" ever again. If you Americans think they're overplayed here, you didn't grow up in the Philippines, where every bar band has to have "Hotel California" in their repertoire, in case some drunken customer with a gun requests it. You then have a choice: "Hotel California" or death. It's not much of one. "Desperado" is the same way: unbearably sappy, with strings swelling in the background, and faux-cowboy lyrics.

In any case, this version of "Desperado" has a force of its own in the context of Innocence and Despair; peruse the comments and you read stories about grown men weeping uncontrollably, a radio programmer pronouncing it "one of the most sublime recordings ever made," someone on Amazon.com writing that the song "almost makes me reconsider my atheism," a reviewer calling it one of the saddest songs they have ever heard, a driver having to pull over because she or he was overcome by tears after hearing it on the radio. A little too much to burden this one song, but... well, you should hear it for yourself.

It seems, in any case, fitting for a Wes Anderson film: you approach it as slightly arch and distancing, perhaps, and then you're hit sideways by something genuinely moving. (There's apparently a scene in Jim Sheridan's In America that basically rips off the Langley Schools arrangement of the song.)

Hear it (4.93 mb, m4a).

[All mp3s on this site are posted only for a limited time and are for sampling purposes only -- buy the album! The rest of it is excellent: a mind-blowing "Space Oddity," a joyful "Saturday Night," a version of "The Long and Winding Road" that's better than the original (and there are at least a few more tracks like that).]

Your New Favorite Song.

Soundtrack for an Imaginary Wes Anderson film, Track #8.

Every Wes Anderson film needs a good British Invasion song for the characters to run around pell-mell to, preferably in some narrow hallway. So here's The Move's 1967 hit, "I Can Hear The Grass Grow" -- a great running-around-pell-mell-to-for-quirky-characters song if there ever was one -- brought to you by Roy Wood and Company before he and Jeff Lynne (who was also in The Move) co-founded the Electric Light Orchestra.

There's no mistaking what the song's about, but it's remarkably free of any psychedelic filigree (no sitar, no phasing, no stereo trickery); it's straight-up guitar crunch and drum fills apparently nicked by Keith Moon for "I Can See For Miles."

Hear it (4.56 mb, mp3).

What Band From The '80s Are You?

You're all about the music. Not too incredibly
mainstream, but not too incredibly underground.
It's awfully hard for anyone to oppose you,
seeing as how you rule.


What band from the 80s are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Andy Bell / Postcoitus / Viva K, SF, 11/10/2005.

Well, I figured I'd strike out at some point, given my amazing concert batting average this year. This one pretty much sucked. Encouraged by the blurb that this SF show was one of only two where Andy Bell would actually sing -- including, so they said, "a few Erasure classics" -- J-Lu (who calls herself a "psychotic fangirl") and I arrived at the Mezzanine at 9 and the place was almost empty.

The first band was Viva K. Sorry -- lose Ashlee Simpson.

I actually rather enjoyed the second act, Postcoitus: two Oakland guys in running shorts and striped tube socks, blissfully stupid electroclash rhythms, strobelight abuse.

Andy Bell finally comes on around 11:45 and announces, much to our disappointment, that he would be playing a 90-minute set and finish up with four songs from his latest album. Well, boo. The music was good (I'm ultimately a dancing-in-place kind of person; J-Lu, apparently, doesn't dance unless it's a class requirement), but unfamiliar to me. I think I picked out Lipps Inc.'s "Funkytown," Avenue D's "The Punk Song" and New Order's "Jetstream" at some point. Far and way the most frustrating thing about the whole concert was Bell playing this fantastic remix of "Oh L'Amour," which seemed completely superfluous; after all, the singer himself was standing right there, just inches away from the microphone. By this point the crowd had thinned considerably.

Finally, around 1:30 (aside: don't DJs bother to beatmatch anymore??), he steps up to the mic and sings, just as he had announced, four songs from the new album (a great "Crazy," the first single). The bears and buff boys went wild. And then it was over.

TsuShiMaMiRe / The Amppez / Red Bacteria Vacuum / All Ages, SF, 11/8/05.

Let me cut to the chase: for about 45 minutes last night (more if you count the drive home), TsuShiMaMiRe (or Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re, or Tsushimamire) seemed like the greatest band in the world. Go out and look for their 2004 Benten album, Pregnant Fantasy -- one of my favorite listens of the year. (You can preview/download it from the iTunes store; just do a search on the album title.)

All Ages was the opening band -- I didn't pick up their merchandise, so their name is near-unGoogleable -- and they played good basic power pop, though I think they'd be most remembered as "that band with the goofy Japanese guy with the big mouth and the mohawk who stripped down to his boxer briefs." (Later he would start a mosh pit, into which I was dragged at some point against my will.)

And then onto Japan Girls Nite proper: Red Bacteria Vacuum -- self-described, I think, as "a Monster Girls Rock band who plays Pop to Hard core with amazing performance" was first up. Headbanging hardcore, lots of screaming, with (I think I used this phrase to describe Om in a previous entry) hair flying everywhere.

Red Bacteria Vacuum.

Ranran from Red Bacteria Vacuum. (Later she would bonk her head pretty hard on my shoulder while dancing to Tsushimamire's set.)

Akeming and Ikumi from Red Bacteria Vacuum.

Marie from the Amppez.

The Amppez's set was unfortunately marred by a ridiculously loud fuzz guitar; I couldn't hear what sounded like rather pretty melodies over the guitar chaos (and no, I don't think it was a My Bloody Valentine move).

And then, TsuShiMaMiRe:

TsuShiMaMiRe in full nudge-nudge wink-wink Orientalist mode.

Mizue and Mari from Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re.

Yayoi from Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re.

I don't have very good pictures, simply because I was jumping around too much, as was everyone else, to bother grabbing the camera. It's hard to describe how damn good (and fun) this band is; style-wise, they run the range from Japanese disco-funk to hardcore to and yes, hair flying everywhere. Sometimes, in the space of one song (like the marvelous "Tea Time Ska"), a death-metal vocal interlude gives way to a pop ska chorus. They didn't have much material to draw from -- one 32-minute album and a CD of demos -- but they sure played the hell out of it. With, uh, hair flying everywhere.

J-Lu's making me and her friends wait for over an hour outside Studio Z.Tv paid off: one of the best things about being front and center -- other than being right there -- is that you get to yell your requests and actually make them heard. For the seemingly unplanned encore (it wasn't on the setlist), TsuShiMaMiRe played the song we were yelling out, the epic "Manhole" and "Lingerie Shop."

And so J-Lu's friend Kenny caught one of Mizue's drumsticks, J-Lu got her CD signed by all the band members, and I shook hands with them, got my CD signed by Red Bacteria Vacuum, got my chin "signed" (long story -- Akeming wanted to do it), and got asked if I was Japanese (Ikumi then grabbed my hand and yelled "Firipin!").

Current 93 / Om / Pantaleimon / Six Organs of Admittance / Maja Elliott, SF, 11/5/2005.

This was Night #2 of the big Current 93 lovefest; given that this was only the second time, in almost a quarter century of existence, that Current 93 has toured San Francisco, I bought my ticket the day it went on sale. (The fact that Om was opening for them made the concert even sweeter.)

First up was Maja Elliott: while her piano has, in essence, been the cornerstone of Current 93's sound in the last few years, Elliott solo is another matter; the music wouldn't seem out of place on a Windham Hill release circa 1982. (Not necessarily an insult, but you know what I mean.)

I have to confess I walked out once from hearing Six Organs of Admittance (he was opening for Ghost last year). This time, however, Ben Chasny started off with some serious effects pedals din, flailing around like Keiji Haino; by the time he would alternate this with relatively gentle and intricate fingerpicking, I was hooked. I'm not walking out on him again.

Pantaleimon, who is basically Andria Degens -- whose album I bought off eBay when I got home from the concert -- played haunting stuff: droney tone poems on harmonium (I think) and hammered dulcimer (I think). Too bad the audience was extremely, rudely loud at this point.

Then Om was next. I have Variations on a Theme (and of course all the Sleep albums), but listening to them on crappy computer speakers simply didn't prepare me for the sheer, brutal, lunkheaded purity of their vision: detuned bass guitar, a badly-abused drum kit, blown-out speakers, hair flying everywhere, and one hypnotic 45-minute track (or at least it seemed that long). This was straight-up, bludgeoning stoner rock right out of Jerusalem / Dopesmoker; considering that Om is basically Sleep minus one (i.e., Matt Pike's guitar), the new music is necessarily even more reductive, if that were possible. (I think they annoyed the hell out of the Strawberry Switchblade goths in the audience, so it was great to hear Tibet later call Om "my absolute favorite band in the world." A few around me had their fingers in their ears the entire time; that may have included the guy with incense up front who, I swear, was writing in his diary in between sets.) Their set alone practically wiped me out already.

Of course, the band everyone came to see was Current 93. The current touring lineup -- Elliott on piano, John Contreras on cello, Joolie Wood on violin, William Breeze on viola (one would think that the Caliph of the O.T.O. would be pretty busy, but hey), Baby Dee on harp, Chasny on electric guitar, the legendary Simon Finn on acoustic guitar, and of course, The Artist Formerly Known As David Tibet on vocals -- was a quite formidable one, at least sonically speaking. Because of this, in many ways, the highlights of the concert were the new apocalyptic songs from the upcoming Black Ships Ate The Sky album; the so-called Coptic single, for instance, is a collision of Soft Black Stars-style minimalism with the industrial crash of his earliest albums.

The last time I saw David Late Tibet was at the same very venue, though I was standing next to the bar and mostly hearing the clink of the bottles. This time, however, I had managed to wriggle my way into the second row, close to the center, right behind David's lyric sheet stand (one row away from where I was standing at the Merzbow concert a couple of months ago). This gave me the perfect vantage point to see him declaim and grimace and twitch like a preacher possessed, almost unrelenting in intensity.

The setlist, as one could have guessed, drew largely from the output of the last few years (see also How I Devoured Apocalypse Balloon and Halo), with a blistering "Oh Coal Black Smith" before the encore, from those days when David and Boyd Rice and John Balance and Douglas Pearce were all still buddies. (At some point some idiot in the audience yelled for "Freebird," to which Tibet replied, "We're no fucking covers band," but did do a scary version of Bill Fay's "Time of the Persecution.") The evening ended with one of my favorite C93 songs: piano, vocals, "Have pity for the dead / Sleep has his house." Amazing.

Hands.

I've noticed that some of my favorite lines from Dave Wakeling and Company involve hands:

I held your hands
rings but none on that finger
we danced and danced
but I was scared to go much further with it

And the best use of enjambment in an '80s pop song:

Just hold my hand while I come
To a decision on it.

Meanwhile, the English Beat concert at the Red Devil Lounge last night must have been the most cramped, hottest, sweatiest, beer-spillingest concert I've been to. Loved it anyway. Poor Smoothie got crushed, Candy got beer spilled on her, and when the band broke into "Tears of a Clown" and these middle-aged guys started moshing right in front of me, I saw D-Dog take his arms from around Candy and angrily shove one of the guys right smack into another. Lucky he didn't get ejected. (Dave said, "Gents, watch out for the ladies!") But really, you can't lose with a set that combines the best of the first and third albums (with a couple of dips into All the Rage, of course).

Today, Part 2.

Or Sunday, rather. Saw the following folks on Day #2 of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival:

- the first half of Eliza Gilkyson's set
- The Be Good Tanyas (excellent)
- Th' Legendary Shack Shakers (awesome spastic rockabilly hardcore)
- the second half of Rykarda Parasol's set (exploring the blues dirge / murder ballad / goth connection -- with great clothes too, like they stepped out of Dame Darcy's Meatcake comic book)
- the first half of Guy Clark's set
- the second half of J.D. Crowe and The New South's set

- Laura Cantrell (yes, my current musician crush. Oddly sparsely attended, so I snuck off near the front row again. Excellent, like the last time I saw her)
- the first half of Dolly Parton's set (!) (I could barely see -- though I caught glimpses of her in a bright powder-blue suit and a similarly-colored rhinestone-studded guitar -- but you can't beat the opening combo of "9 to 5" / "Jolene" / "Crimson and Clover" / "Me and Bobby McGee" / "My Tennessee Mountain Home" / "Coat of Many Colors." And she was funny too -- the hundreds of people at her stage were eating out of her hand...)
- the first half of Emmylou Harris's set (played with Buddy Miller! I was drinking Miller Lites with Special K and 40 though, so I wasn't paying much attention)

Today.

Played hooky for the first time in a long time (except for the good plays at Bindlestiff the other night with J-Lu), and saw the following folks today at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival (for free!):

- Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez (definitely checking out their CDs -- hot stuff)
- the first half of Patty Griffin's set (hers too)

- Toshio Hirano (someone get this man into a studio!)
- the first half of the Del McCoury Band's set
- Joan Baez and Steve Earle singing "Jerusalem"
- the second half of the Dry Branch Fire Squad's set
- Buddy Miller (with Emmylou Harris guesting on two songs!)

- The Knitters (basically, X and bassist Johnny Ray Bartel -- totally cool just to see Exene Cervenka and John Doe hamming it up, plus Dave Alvin shredding on lead guitar)
- Gillian Welch and David Rawlings (amazing, obviously; and yes, he sang "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" -- and she sang "White Rabbit!")
- the second half of Los Super Seven's set (basically Calexico, Joe Ely and Raul Malo -- excellent as well)

As you can imagine, my mind is still blown from all this incredible music! Tomorrow will be even more packed...

They Call Me Cormac?

From Bruce Springsteen's "Black Cowboys" (from the 2005 album Devils and Dust):

In the twilight Rainey walked to the station along streets of stone. Through Pennsylvania and Ohio his train drifted on. Through the small towns of Indiana the big train crept, as he lay his head back on the seat and slept. He awoke and the towns gave way to muddy fields of green, corn and cotton and an endless nothin' in between. Over the rutted hills of Oklahoma the red sun slipped and was gone. The moon rose and stripped the earth to its bone.

Picture Meme: The Answers.

Some of you folks might know that in a fit of relative turmoil about a year ago I ransacked my entire music collection for The 1100 Greatest Songs Ever. (It has now swelled to almost 1600.)

The songs on constant shuffle on my iPod -- at least before iTunes 5.0 destroyed my smart playlists -- are drawn from that pool of 1600. As one can imagine, from looking at my Last.fm / Audioscrobbler page, it would be heavily weighted towards certain artists, so Puffy, Guided By Voices and the Carter Family would inevitably show up on the list; not sure why this list contains a disproportionate amount of women with guitars though. So here are the answers, with the songs that happened to be on random shuffle:

1.
Arvo Pärt, "Spiegel im Spiegel"

2.
Prince and The Revolution, "Pop Life" (though this is obviously a still from "When Doves Cry")

3.
Guided By Voices, "Echos Myron" (my favorite GBV song ever)

4.
Beth Orton, "Central Reservation"

5.
Yo La Tengo, "The Whole of the Law"

6.
Alex Chilton, "Don't Be A Drag"

7.
Richard and Linda Thompson, "Withered and Died"

8.
The Carter Family, "The Wonderful City" (cheated a little here, since this is actually performed with Jimmie Rodgers)

9.
Puffy, "Long Beach Nightmare" (my favorite Puffy song ever)

10.
Jonatha Brooke, "Nothing Sacred"

11.
Nine Inch Nails, "Head Like a Hole"

12.
Slayer, "Angel of Death"

13.
Gillian Welch, "By the Mark"

14.
Daryl Hall and John Oates, "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)"

15.
The Velvet Underground, "What Goes On"

16.
Nat King Cole, "Somewhere along the Way"

17.
Captain Beefheart, "Moonlight on Vermont"

18.
Bruce Springsteen, "Independence Day"

19.
Stereolab, "Outer Bongolia"

20.
Laura Cantrell, "Not the Tremblin' Kind"

(I wasn't keeping track of who got more correct answers -- answers are posted publicly anyhow -- but thanks to torn, Dan, Rebecca, J-Lu, JP, juan tamad, skipscada and krangsquared for sending in their guesses. No one got Slayer!)

Picture Meme.

Tagged by J-Lu -- actually, I begged to be tagged, which doesn't count, so she deservedly called me lame -- but here goes:

1. open your winamp/itunes
2. put the shuffle -mode on
3. find a picture of the first 20 artists. if the same artist comes again, skip
4. why you should do this? so that other people would know what you're listening and how the bands look like
( 5. GUESS !!!!! )

[answers already up]

I feel a little bad not including credits for the photos, but will do that once enough people have tried their luck guessing. (I was tempted to cheat and select cool / difficult bands, but this is really it.)

Don't know who to tag -- this is a difficult undertaking (okay, it actually took me all of 20 minutes, maybe).

[Update: changed one picture for greater clarity, not that it mattered, since they were already identified...]

"George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People."

Just in case you haven't heard about it:

A celebrity telethon for Hurricane Katrina survivors took an unexpected turn when outspoken rapper Kanye West went off script during the live broadcast, declaring America is set up "to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible."

...West began a rant by saying, "I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they're looting. See a white family, it says they're looking for food."

While allowing that "the Red Cross is doing everything they can," West... declared that government authorities are intentionally dragging their feet on aid to the Gulf Coast. Without getting specific, he added, "They've given them permission to go down and shoot us."

After he stated, "George Bush doesn't care about black people," the camera cut away to comedian Chris Tucker.

Is this the Month (or Year) of Ye or what? Last week he drops an album -- yeah, I preordered the limited edition digipak with the poster and the T-shirt -- that is likely going to be on my favorites of the year (and will certainly end up on many others' lists as well), and then this. The man deserves a medal.

Growing / Earth / Merzbow / Circle, Great American Music Hall, SF, 9/2/05.

(Writing this, I realized I never did write about the fantastic Teenage Fanclub concert last month, or the PinoisePop concerts -- Ninja Academy, the Skyflakes, and the excellent From Monument To Masses -- that I saw with Special K and 40.)

I missed half of Growing's set -- two guitarists who were outfitted (almost hilariously) with a wall of six Peaveys and Ampegs: total MBV-like guitar drone, with loops feeding on themselves.

I've never really liked Earth, which is odd, considering how much I hold similar bands (and their albums) -- Sleep's Jerusalem, Corrupted's Llenandose de Gusanos, Naked City's Leng T'che -- in high regard. Live, their music translates to stoner rock at an excruciating, audience-testing, slow pace, with the same, not-as-chunky Black Sabbathy riff repeated a few hundred times. (Indeed, the best part was when some guy in the audience yelled "Slower!") It's music best appreciated if one is slumped, in a stupor, on a sofa, but I was sober, and a couch was nowhere near.

The real star of the show, at least in my book, was Merzbow, whom I'd never seen live before. (I'm something of a Merzbow nut; at last count I had about 120 Merzbow titles.) I managed to wriggle front and center until I was pretty much right in front of Masami Akita himself (who did not even bother to look at the audience at any point). The man in black -- black clothes, long hair, sunglasses, black New Balances -- sat at a table, and faced a small arsenal of wires and knobs and two Powerbooks (one with the big sticker "Meat Is Murder"). His music resists language; there are barely any linguistic referents for this sort of sonic assault of electronic screeches, giant slabs of bowel-loosening bass rumble, waves of chest-tightening, frighteningly amplified fuzz and feedback. This was literally violent music; at some point I thought my eyeballs were vibrating uncontrollably in concert with one particular loop towards the end of his set -- the sound of infernal machines on the brink of explosion. Awesome.

Circle was, in a sense, anticlimactic (the crowd had thinned considerably once they came on), but they were certainly the most energetic of the four acts. A Finnish postrock / krautrock band, Circle had two skinny shirtless guys, a big curly-haired rawk dude, and a masked drummer, beating a motorik groove to the ground. The vocalist, who looked oddly like Will Oldham, alternately orated and screamed like Keiji Haino. Much headbanging among the audience, which unfortunately inspired a couple of obnoxious drunk frat-boy types to push their way to the front. I think I like Circle's studio albums more, but maybe my eardrums were already ruined by Merzbow before they began. It's about an hour now since the concert and I can think my ears are still ringing...

Your New Favorite Song.

Soundtrack to an Imaginary Wes Anderson Film, Track #7.

Lee Morgan was all of 25 when he released this absolutely infectious Blue Note track in 1963, on the album of the same name. "The Sidewinder" is one of those tunes that worms its way into your head; doesn't matter whether it's somewhat overplayed or can be found on all those roots of boogaloo / roots of acid-jazz type compilations (because you can certainly hear it), because it doesn't dull its groovy vitality one bit. While I hate to say that it's perfect as background music for parties or cooking or, perhaps, a Wes Anderson film (but it's true), there's also some damn fine trumpet playing from Morgan, as well as Joe Henderson on sax.

Hear it (m4a, 14.1 mb)

More Musical Rambling.

Despite my "shin splints" -- the product of about two weeks' worth of running on already painful shins before I finally bought ice packs -- I went out about a couple of weeks ago to the Bitter End to see Special K. (Later 40, aka TOWGAA, aka That Other White Guy At APAture, joined us after biking up from Cupertino.)*

Anyhow, weird bits of musical half-truths and unsupported assertions became the topic of music-geek conversation.

1. The Red Hot Chili Peppers: did they suck or no? (I think they sucked.)**
2. This somehow devolved into a rather pointless RHCP vs Pavement debate, which must have happened while I was in the bathroom. (I think it may have to do with the notion of musical competence.)
3. Pat Benatar's "We Belong" is better than anything Stephen Malkmus ever wrote.***
4. We also came up with a list of "People We Would Probably Never Go Out With," but I'll spare you a specific enumeration. Suffice it to say that Republicans**** were on top, followed by some rather intolerant-sounding categories having to do with food and drink, and finally -- I'm getting to the musical point here -- people with bad musical taste.*****

Up next, if I ever get to it: even more rambling on Filipino Americans and hiphop, or maybe something on music and identity.

*Okay, he didn't, but it sounds cool, and he may have thought about doing it at some point.

**With the exception of "Scar Tissue" and the lines "Sentimental gentlemen / Are not afraid to show you when" from "Show Me Your Soul," but otherwise, the Chili Peppers' crimes -- that cover of "Higher Ground," Kiedis' manboobs quivering in the "Under the Bridge" video, the whole "Give It Away" video aesthetic ripped off from the Beastie Boys' "Whatcha Want" (which may have come from somewhere else too though) -- are unforgivable.

***Completely untrue, even if those Mark E. Smith mannerisms got worse and worse after Wowee Zowee, and so I regretted it instantly, leading me to do penance by putting on "Summer Babe" in the car really loud. It's Pat's best song though.

****There's nothing intrinsically wrong with them if you're say, sharing a beer or something, but the topic of politics will inevitably come up.

(40 really wanted to make a special case for "hippies" -- particularly those with blond dreadlocks -- on the top of his list. I don't particularly mind them (there's actually a cute woman wearing just those, sitting at the table next to me as I type this), and besides, Adam Duritz's dreads (though he wasn't blond or a hippie) clearly got him a lot of Courtney-Winona action when Counting Crows was huge.

*****We thought long and hard about this. People have certain musical thresholds, I guess: would I be able to stand to hear Celine Dion in the car? Maybe -- but just one song. Would I allow myself to be dragged to a Celine Dion concert? Forget it, I'll be drinking in the bar. Would I be able to simply move to another room if Celine Dion were playing at home? Bye, it was great to meet you.

(This actually resonates with more academic concerns I had, but I'll probably save it for another longer entry. Part of an ethnographic project I've been working on, that's been simmering for a while now, has to do with the Filipino voice, mobility and capital, and scattered thoughts about the production and consumption of music in the Philippines.)

Your New Favorite Song.

Soundtrack for an Imaginary Wes Anderson Film, Track #6.

Time to rescue this series from oblivion (this track has actually been sitting on my server for a couple of weeks!)-- though I'm actually itching to start a Bad Obscure '80s Singles series, and I have a Soundtrack for an Imaginary Quentin Tarantino Film as well. I think I'll be staggering them from now on...

You can't have too much Francoise Hardy, and this cover of a 1970 song, "Pardon," comes from the Hang Ups, about whom I know little. (It's taken from the excellent Emperor Norton compilation from 1999, Pop Romantique: French Pop Classics.) "Pardon" is a quick sweet rush of a pop song -- dig the guitars and drums split-channel thing going on -- and I love the lines "Je suis chez lui /
sans connaitre chez lui."

Somehow I envision Anderson finally letting loose and having his characters break into a spontaneous, Bande à part-style Madison -- you know, kind of like the "Kool Thing" scene in Hal Hartley's Simple Men.

Hear it (4.22 mb, .mp3).

Sap, Part 3.

A reader writes (I was doubling up with laughter while reading his message):

Reading your blog -- my first slow dance was to Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne" with sweet [name withheld to protect the poor woman's privacy], in some Jewish youth-group synagogue lock-in. She was adopted and shiksa-hot! (I disgusted her but was in the right place at the right time. And then her family moved out of town.)

I actually can't remember my first slow-dance at all -- more like first dance, period (see below); my second slow-dance was with L--- P--------- -- my old high-school classmates would probably know exactly what the initials stand for -- to Lionel Richie's "Truly." (Eek.) It's even sadder because she was so coupled up at the time with our (now) most prominent alumnus. Now if only I could remember who my very first slow-dance was -- actually, at this point, I don't care who, but what the damn song was...

The funny part is that all my high school dances were slow dances; I think my teachers were still coming from some odd '50s-type morality regarding "rock and roll music," so all the music was so-called "sweet music," i.e., the sap I've been writing about for the last four days. It wasn't until my senior year, I think, that boys finally stopped holding girls' waists and girls stopped holding boys' shoulders and starting dancing apart (or worse, in a circle, maybe even with handbags in the center). The joke was that teachers would go around with a ruler to test and see how far apart we were, but thankfully they didn't mention how far down one's hands could go. I think the rule was you had to be able to fit a fist -- nice image there -- between our bellies or something...

(This dates me, but our prom theme song was Fiction Factory's "Feels Like Heaven" -- that's because we were ultra-cool new wave types.)

Meanwhile, J-Lu ups the ante by sending me Paul McCrane's great "Is It OK If I Call You Mine?" It's actually a really quite sweet sappy song which I probably haven't heard in maybe two decades; I may have even slow-danced to it as well! (It isn't as good as Irene Cara's "Out Here On My Own," though, and J-Lu and I agree.)

In any case, I'm beginning to rethink my choice of "Same Old Lang Syne" for Sappiest Song. The Poeta called it "articulate," which is true; there is something appealing, after all, about sharing a six-pack with a former girlfriend, though I certainly wouldn't "drink a toast to innocence." (I almost wrote that I'd probably drive up to Twin Peaks, but that's really for the kids.) And so here are my new candidates (taken from suggestions from you folks), along with their criteria:

Air Supply's "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All":

- As I wrote before, "Bohemian Rhapsody"-like bombast, complete with Hair Metal Band Guitar Solo and dramatic structure (quiet first stanzas complete with tinkling piano, out-of-control falsettos sung in unison by the middle, post-orgasmic lull at the end).
- The choir singing "Making love!" in the background.
- "The beating of my heart is a drum and it's rough and it's looking for a rhythm like you."
- The choir singing "Making love!" in the background. Oh, wait, I already wrote that.

Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch":

- The most embarrassingly honest lyrics ever: "I wanna hold you till I die / Till we both break down and cry / I wanna hold you / Till the fear in me subsides."
- The most embarrassingly clunky lyrics ever: "A hesitant prizefighter / Still trapped within my youth."
- The worst opening lines ever: "You asked me if I loved you / And I choked on my reply."
- One pretty much has to sing this with one's eyes closed like Joe Cocker (who's responsible, come to think of it, with the very sappy "You Are So Beautiful." Remember that little oh-so-sincere voice quaver at the end?)

Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart":

- Features an absolutely psychedelic video with windblown big hair, billowing curtains and those fucking creepy "bright eyes."
- An almost prog-rock structure, with interludes and choruses and codas galore.
- "Once upon a time I was falling in love / Now I'm only falling apart." "Once upon a time there was light in my life /Now there's only love in the dark." Says. It. All.
- Lends itself best to karaoke screaming.
- Disco version released about a decade later.

Mp3s may be available by request, in case you need to make up your mind.

Sap, Part 2.

Update of sorts: J-Lu writes me to say that not only did I make her day (anytime, J-Lu!), but that the woman in Wang Lee Hom's song which I wrote about in my previous entry may not be asleep, but may in fact be dead. Which makes it just deliciously perfect; it's a moment almost as good as when I first heard that Barry Manilow's "Mandy" was actually about his dog (the truth about "Mandy" is revealed here, though).

(You can read the lyrics to Wang Lee Hom's "Last Night" here; I can't bear to listen to the song ever again. I'm sure some people out there would find it sweet -- but wouldn't it be great if the woman really was dead?)

Which brings me to Wily Filipino territory. I think Filipinos have some sort of special affinity with sappy; every karaoke party I've attended always featured some liquored-up brave soul -- actually, they were probably completely sober, which makes it worse -- getting up to sing that Horrible Love Theme From Phantom. (I usually go out of the room at this point to keep myself from beating heads with the karaoke mic.) I suspect, in any case, that Filipinos may simply have a higher tolerance for this stuff, but I'm not about to spin some grand cultural theory that links Castilian floridity with -- as Teodoro Agoncillo I think once put it -- "hot Malay blood."

Perhaps most indicative of this phenomenon was one of the more successful Manila radio stations back in the day (they apparently started broadcasting in 1973, right after Martial Law, and I can't think of anything better to lull the populace) -- okay, you non-immigrant Filipinos can tune out here and meet me further down the entry, because none of this will probably make any sense -- which played nothing but goo. The radio station was, and is, called the Mellow Touch (that already says it all), and the radio jingle went something like this (they also played some extended version every now and then):

You are the minstrel
I'm your guitar
I play what you sing
You are the star

followed by some guy purring, "The mellow sound. Of W double L."

You get the picture. This was where sappy songs lived and breathed and never died, where the song that would come closest to remotely mentioning booty would be the Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight." (We're not even talking about good sappy -- like John Travolta's "What Would They Say," aka the love theme from The Boy in the Plastic Bubble -- but really bad sappy, like "Can You Read My Mind," aka the love theme from Superman). Sure, you'd have old chestnuts like Bread's "Everything I Own" (a great, great song), but this would be jostling with songs from folks like David Pomeranz, Angela Bofill, Rex Smith, Michael Johnson, John Farnham, Michael Murphy, James Ingram, and Lani Hill in some special section of purgatory. Where they could probably play a Christopher Cross hour and listeners wouldn't bat an eyelash. Breathe's "Hands to Heaven?" Check. Barry Manilow's "Somewhere down the Road?" Check. Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch?" Here. Peabo Bryson's "If Ever You're In My Arms Again?" Definitely. Klymaxx's "I'll Still Say Yes?" Absolutely. Atlantic Starr's "Always?" Gawd. On and on -- hey, that's a sappy Stephen Bishop song!

(The "Bohemian Rhapsody" of Sappy Songs should be given a special mention here -- Air Supply's "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All," which I'm amused to discover I've actually written about before.)

I mean, here's the chorus of Rex Smith's "Let’s Make A Memory" (okay, this might just be about booty too):

Let's make a memory
Bright as the stars that shines above
Let's fill our cup with the wine of love
Just you and me
And memories of love

Awful, eh? People actually listened to this.

Or David Pomeranz's "King and Queen of Hearts," aka the love/prom theme from Zapped!:

Did I dream that we danced forever
In a wish that we made together
On a night that I prayed would never end?
No it's not my imagination
Or a part of the orchestration
Love was here at the coronation
I'm the King and
You're the Queen of Hearts

(In contrast, the greatest love/prom theme from a film ever must be Katie Irving's "I Never Dreamed Someone Like You Could Love Someone Like Me" from Carrie -- brutally perfect for what happens in the last half hour.)

But after much thought -- and you young folks who were born around, say, 1985, should consider yourselves privileged not to have experienced the scarring properties of this next song -- I've decided that the winner of Sappiest Song Ever is Dan Fogelberg's 1981 classic "Same Old Lang Syne." (Remember how Opus's hot hippie fiancee had a tattoo of Dan Fogelberg? Does anyone still remember Bloom County?)

I mean, you cannot beat a song that begins:

Met my old lover in a grocery store
The snow was falling Christmas Eve
Stole behind her in the frozen foods
and I touched her on the sleeve

And then the chorus is pure, unadulterated, mainlined cheese:

We drank a toast to innocence, we drank a toast to now
Tried to reach beyond the emptiness but neither one knew how

All right, I dare you folks to come up with something worse. Oh wait, there's Wang Lee Hom's "Last Night..."

Sap.

So I thought I knew sappy until J-Lu sent me the sappiest song ever this morning: Wang Lee Hom's "Last Night," which at least features a good line: "But I could not cross the ocean of your grace." But the rest of the song -- ouch. Men don't think things like that; we don't stand over sleeping women getting all frustrated and sappy!

But this evening the Poeta and I queued the sappiest of the sappy on the iPod --

- Bryan Adams' "Heaven" (I have fond memories of Bulletproof Vest playing this on the piano at Big J's beach house in North Carolina),
- Spandau Ballet's "I'll Fly For You" (not sappy, but just egregiously tacky with its punning use of prepositions: "Oh don’t you know that when I’m under you I’m overjoyed"),
- Dan Hartman's "I Can Dream About You,"
- Madonna's "Crazy for You" (maybe the greatest take-me-now song ever),
- The Style Council's "You're The Best Thing,"

and as a concession to some sort of rock cred,
- Iggy Pop's "Candy" (even the folks in the nearby car at the traffic light gave us a thumbs-up)

-- and sang them at the top of our lungs on the drive back to Oaktown. (The Poeta, a self-confessed karaoke Nazi, did a great job on second harmony. Someone give her a mic and a private room!)

I guess this is what fueling up at Jupiter's twice in a week does to people. Thank goodness we didn't get to George Michael's "One More Try," which has the most shameless chorus ever.

Album Cover Quiz.

And I thought I'd do better at this sort of stuff, but I'm drawing a blank on numbers 8, 11, 12, 14, 17, 20, 24, 30 (Ohio Players?), 32 (same photographer as 26, right?), 33, 34, 36, 40, 41, 46, 47 and 50. That's a lot of blanks! (Not that I really want the Greatest American Hero DVDs.)

At Random, #4.

All last week, Teenage Fanclub's "Ain't That Enough" was the greatest song ever -- finally knocked off its pedestal, at least temporarily*, by HALCALI's "Giri Giri Surf Ride" (thanks to J-Lu, who also sent me the incredible video).

*Not for long, as it found my way back onto iTunes; more later. But that HALCALI song is pretty irresistible...

Laura Cantrell, Cafe du Nord, SF, 07/06/05.

(Photo by Ted Barron, which I stole from WBUR.)

I've increasingly become a fan of American country / folk / bluegrass music in the last year or so. And so earlier this evening I found myself front and center, practically eye-to-eye in front of Laura Cantrell (my new musician crush), in a tiny club, at (incredibly) her first San Francisco performance.

I adored her debut album from 2000 when I first heard it only last year; her third album, Humming by the Flowered Vine, out on Matador, just came out sometime last month, and it's every bit as sweet as the first two. (It's more of a New York album than a Nashville one, if that makes any sense.)

And what a show it was: Cantrell, who has the voice of an angel, and her band (mandolin, bass and acoustic guitar with Mark Spencer, Jon Graboff and Jeremy Chatzky) played a fantastic set; she herself was quite chatty, introducing each song and referring, every now and then, to her former life as an investment banker. They started off with "When the Roses Bloom Again" (surely an antiwar song, from where I stand), then "Churches off the Interstate," and onto a good helping from her three albums for the next 90 minutes (maybe even longer). Highlights included a stripped-down "Not the Tremblin' Kind," a gorgeous "Khaki and Corduroy" (probably my favorite song from the concert), and an encore of "The Whiskey Makes You Sweeter," "The Early Years," and a beautifully hushed "Bees" to end the concert. In a perfect world, Cantrell would be a star...

There is a generous number of downloads at her website if you folks are interested. There are also some great photographs as well, where she seems to have this cute deer-in-the-headlights look every time. "Check this out! I'm actually standing next to Steve Earle!" (And I can't forget the interactive subway map.)

Your New Favorite Song.

Soundtrack for an Imaginary Wes Anderson Film, Track #5.

Nowadays you can't listen to Nick Drake without thinking of his impending suicide at 26; this is a mistake, as it seems to inadvertently cast a doomy shadow over everything he sang.

This music download is cheating somewhat; after all, Drake's "Fly" already shows up on The Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack. But this is probably my favorite song of his, from his 1970 album Bryter Later, and it wouldn't be out of place in an Anderson film. (Surprised it hasn't been prominently used in a movie, actually.)

It's one of those jauntily melancholic tunes that qualify for Sad Happy Songs ("Here Comes The Sun," "Wouldn't It Be Nice"). I've always liked that florid piano counterpoint, and the slightly surreal lyrics -- "could've been a signpost, could've been a clock" -- that vaguely reminds one somewhat of high school poetry. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Hear it (6.71 mb, .m4a).

Your New Favorite Song.

The greatest sing-along-chorus song of this century so far, live in San Francisco from about a couple of weeks ago. Heck, people in the audience are practically singing along already before it's even started -- which is perhaps entirely appropriate: it's about days that go too fast, after all.

Hear it (mp3, 5.59 mb).

(This one goes out to an RK fan in 12 Mile and points east.)

Lesson Learned.

So yesterday at Yerba Buena I learned a lesson: no more Maroon Fucking Five For Fighting jokes! I promise!

Going Around.

Sent to me by Dan:

Total volume of music files on my computer: I'm not at my home computer, but I have 2284 songs on my iPod (I think it's about 15 gigs).

Last CD I bought was . . .: M.Y.M.P.'s Versions and Beyond. My Japanese noise / black metal-listening self has an oddly soft spot for this Filipino guitar-and-vocals acoustic duo, which I'll be featuring in a Crash Course in Pinoy Pop mp3 download series one of these days. (Sorry about the Wes Anderson uploads -- I'm on a 28.8K modem and can't upload anything until I get back to SF.) I haven't listened to most of the two-disc set yet -- some of the covers seem rather superfluous -- but there are already at least a couple of tracks that are better than the originals (Kylie Minogue's "Especially for You" and Ogie Alcasid's "Sa Kanya").

Song playing right now: Just the awfully loud hum of my parents' Pentium III. But the last song I heard before going to sleep was a cover of Brian Eno's "Golden Hours," by Ida. (A former housemate of mine used to go out with Liz Mitchell, so that's -- what? -- three Kevin Bacon degrees?)

Five songs I listen to a lot these days: Teenage Fanclub's "Ain't That Enough," Puffy's "Hi Hi," M.Y.M.P.'s "True Colors," Parokya Ni Edgar's "Harana," and M.I.A. & Diplo's "Pop."

And I'm supposed to send this to two people? Hmmm...

Happy, Barb, and Karen, whose Tacit Diseuse blog has fallen into tacit disuse.

Recurring Fantasy.

I have this recurring fantasy: A Ford Expedition cuts me off in my rusty '89 Honda Civic, forcing me to lose control and hit a fire hydrant, and the driver, cell phone in one hand and peppermint latte in the other, runs out to ask if I'm okay. I beat him to the ground and, just before I kick him in the ribs, I say, "And I bet you listen to Maroon [kick] Fucking [kick] Five [kick]!"

Your New Favorite Song.

Music for an Imaginary Wes Anderson Film, Track #4.

Just got back from a night out with some friends -- a very good Cuban restaurant in Palo Alto was the highlight of the evening (apparently Bill Clinton's favorite, when he's in Silicon Valley). But alas, we ended up at the lamest-ass club in the world, Fanny and Alexander -- this was mistakenly called "Frederick and Alexander" by these two women smoking in front of Gordon Biersch who recommended it, which gave my gay friend some false optimism. The lesson: never trust the recommendation of a couple of drunken temps, who couldn't even recognize a Bergman film if it smacked them in the face, ever again.

Anyhow, this post has really no relation to the music, except that 1) Francoise Hardy's "Comment Te Dire Adieu" is cool, even if it's French; 2) it'll probably fit in a Wes Anderson film, in some, um, gently ironic scene.

All right, I gotta crash.

Hear it (3.33 mb, .m4a)

Your New Favorite Song.

Soundtrack to an Imaginary Wes Anderson Film, Track 3.

Nick Lowe's "So It Goes" will have to be played during some sort of montage: a quick rundown of our characters' backgrounds (or futures), perhaps. I love the hints of impending political apocalypse, the way Lowe hurtles through the chorus, the vague similarity to "Reelin' in the Years" -- a perfect little pop song.

Hear it (3.51 mb, m4a).

New Order, Kaiser Auditorium, Oakland, 4/29/05.

In some ways, the New Order concert was about wish fulfillment: the longing of a band to come to grips with what happened a quarter of a century earlier, or if you want to be more cynical, the wish of a band (with a new, relatively disposable album) to make big bucks off the nostalgia circuit.

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy it -- on the contrary, I was jumping up and down like a madman, yelling out the lyrics just like everyone else -- but the setlist seemed so stupidly unimaginative: a big chunk of Substance, a song each from Republic and Get Ready, a liberal helping of relative plodders from Waiting for the Sirens' Call.

But hey, that was what I wished for anyhow; I wanted the hits, dammit. Everyone in our gang got our wishes fulfilled. (I don't know what Barb wished for -- she and her posse were lining up for margaritas and were then swallowed up by the crowd.)

I wanted "Transmission," a song I never thought I'd ever hear live, and then there it was. Lan and Juan wanted "She's Lost Control," and got it on the first try; you can't beat a set that begins with the 1-2-3 punch of "She's Lost Control," "Love Vigilantes" and "Regret" one after the other. (Sean and Eloise really got into that last one; right now it's the New Order song running around in my head for some reason or other.) By the time the concert peaked with a "Bizarre Love Triangle" / "Love Will Tear Us Apart" / "Temptation" combo, you could practically imagine the audience screaming its thanks. (But imagine the jeers if they were never played!) And Tracy finally got her wish in the one-song encore with "Blue Monday," spare instrumentation and robotic glory intact, but with the added cheek of a Kylie Minogue sample (I think this was from a mashup from a couple of years back). Probably the highlight of the show.

(The Chemical Brothers were the opening act, and I was almost embarrassed to mention this to people. There's a reason, I guess, why I really loved Exit Planet Dust and can't bear to listen to it anymore -- or any of the following albums, for that matter -- because I'd outgrown the Chems. The lights and visuals were cool, though, but I don't know how much mileage one can derive from the same tension-and-release dynamic in a DJ set.)

Your New Favorite Song.

Soundtrack for an Imaginary Wes Anderson Film, Track #2.

I don't think this actually fits: a short meticulous and Baroque-sounding composition, like the ones Mark Mothersbaugh writes, would be better, but Robert Pollard's "Dr. Fuji and Henry Charleston (Zoom Variation)" is such a sweet instrumental gem that I just had to include it in the mix.

Pollard's album Zoom, by the way, is four tracks of sheer pop perfection, almost as if these were outtakes from Bee Thousand or Alien Lanes. In my book it's already some of the best music I've heard all year (you'll read a longer review in December).

Hear it (192 kb, 2.43 mb).

Your New Favorite Song.

Bull Schanen (the winner of the previous movie quiz) never did respond, so I decided to go ahead and figure out a new theme for the mp3 uploads. Not sure if I can fill up a CD like before, but we'll see.

The next few uploads will be called "Soundtrack for an Imaginary Wes Anderson Film." His films, while perhaps thematically similar in general (and almost all of them have a fussy and almost distracting attention to detail, which isn't necessarily a bad thing), are also distinguished by an impeccable taste in music, which I won't dare to replicate here. But think, for instance, of the transcendent opening credits of The Royal Tenenbaums, with the muzaky version of "Hey Jude," or the ending of "Rushmore" with the Faces' "Ooh La La," or Sigur Ros' "Staralfur" in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (which I won't spoil); it marks Anderson as one of the young directors who meshes what are essentially mixtapes almost perfectly, and inextricably, with the rest of the film. (The other possible theme would have been "Soundtrack for an Imaginary Quentin Tarantino Film" -- maybe next time.)

Anyhow, the opening credits will be running over John Cale's "Paris 1919," from the fantastic 1973 album of the same name -- a track suitably classy-sounding and enigmatic and inaugural (can't think of the right word) and evocative, at the very least, of a kind of wistfulness. (If I were to pick a favorite Velvet, it would certainly be Cale, who had a greater command of melody and willingness to experiment than the more lionized Lou ever did -- with the exception, I suppose, of Metal Machine Music).

It's not clear what the song is about -- there's a ghost, and Beaujolais raining on the Champs Elysees, and "William William William Rogers." Somehow I envision quick cuts of different people tying bowties to this song; I'm not sure why.

Hear it (5.62 mb).

Your New Favorite Song.

I don't know very much about the Finnish band Circle -- I think Aquarius Records gushes over each release, but that's about all I can remember -- but I happened to have this (apparently exclusive) track on a free CD given out by The Wire called Klangbad: First Steps.

And let me tell you, it's smokin': my friend Darren and I were driving, caught in a downpour, and the music was jumping out of the car speakers. Yes, it does kind of sound like Can's awesome "Vitamin C," as it mines that same, relentless, funky motorik groove, but there's this added guitar squall and psych keyboard flourishes and an overall paranoid urgency to the track.

(The next series of uploads will depend on who wins the Movie Quiz -- there'll be more of those in the future, by the way.)

Hear it (10.52 mb).

Shonen Knife, 3/26, Slim's, SF.

Just got back: Shonen Knife is, at heart, a punk-pop band, and their Ramones covers ("I Wanna Be Sedated," for one) bear that out. I went with my friends Sean and Eloise (Greatest. Winggal. Ever.) and had a great time -- the trio tore through "Konnichiwa," "Twist Barbie," and "Flying Jelly Attack" at the start, then revisited most of their discography ("Map Master," "Kappa Ex," "Rubber Band," "Banana Chips," "E.S.P.," and the two versions of "Tortoise Brand Pot Cleaner," one of which verged on speed metal). Great stuff.

(Somehow we ended up dancing at Studio Z.tv and the DNA Lounge later, where I ran into three of my current/former students. I was so embarrassed. They probably were too.)

Your New Favorite Song.

Continuing on the J-tip: Phrases like "black hole of noise," or "shaman summoning the ancient gods," or "exorcism of demons" are bandied about when describing the mighty Keiji Haino, and they're probably all true. (The fact that he's all dressed in black, with a long mane of hair, and sunglasses that never seem to come off, adds to the mystique.) I saw him live in a small club in San Francisco a few years ago and it was like one of the whirlpools from Higuchinsky's Uzumaki had materialized on stage.

What I really wanted to include was a rarity from the Purple Trap box set -- specifically, a track from the Forest Of Spirits project: electronic sighs and mutterings that sounded eerily like a field recording if it could pick up voices from the dead. But not only was it 24 minutes long, it was also atypical of Haino's output. (If one could actually call any of his albums representative, that is: one album-length track, for instance, is composed of a barely-changing sine wave for about 20 minutes, until he finally breaks the tension with his unearthly singing.)

What you get here is a track from the power trio Fushitsusha, from, um, one of their live albums (sorry, it's one of the untitled PSF double albums, maybe 15/16 -- you know, the one with the black-on-black cover). Again, it's unrepresentative, since the standard live track usually goes on for at least 15 minutes -- but it's a good example of their technique: seemingly meandering groove one minute, molten lava and the yammerings of a blind idiot god the next.

Hear it (8.6 mb).

Make A Joyful Noise.

Saw the Polyphonic Spree in concert last night -- the show was fantastic. I had a smile plastered on my face the whole time. Total crowd sing-along mania: "HOLD ME NOW, DON'T START SHAKING!" The folks up front and center were mimicking every freaked-out move the choir made.

Jon Brion also played with the Spree the whole time. (This was at Bimbo's in San Francisco -- fairly small club, so it was great.) It was almost the exact same setlist they've been doing this whole tour (starting off with the harp solo, then into "We Sound Amazed," and barreling joyously into the set with a rapturous "Light and Day," including the same covers, Bowie's "Memory of a Free Festival," a little detour into Prince's "Let's Go Crazy," and the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" at the end). It's also apparently the last concert of the tour; Tim promised the show would be different next time around, and alluded to a summer release of new music.

(Alas, I missed Toshio Hirano, who the bartendress ("my boyfriend is half-Filipino") described as "this 70-year old Japanese guy who sang old cowboy songs and did the whole yodeling thing." But I did get to catch From Bubblegum To Sky, whose album I have to check out; they played perfect little scrappy pop songs.)

(Confidential to Boyong: just for you, I touched Ms. Orange's robe. They walked through the audience just before the encore and happened to take a path right in front of me.)

And one last cool thing: the whisper went through the crowd that a certain indie-rock goddess was in the audience, and sure enough, on my way to the bathroom, I saw Polly Jean Harvey...

Your New Favorite Song.

Continuing the all-Japanese uploads: the Boredoms' musical career can be roughly divided into two phases: their early spastic punk, augmented by noisy electronic squiggles, and expansive, mind-melting Krautpsych.

I happen to like their second phase best: "Super Going," from their 1998 album Super Ae. The track here doesn't do the album justice, since the album is really an hour-long suite. At the very least, crank it up for the full effect -- phased vocals coming in and out (the lyrics are simple: "Shine in / Shine on"), keyboard chirps and twitters, and a relentless, trance-inducing drumbeat. (Wait for the part in the eighth minute or so when the whole thing gets kicked up a notch.)

Saw them a few years back with Karen when they toured as the Vooredoms: Eye on vocals and synth, three drummers (Yoshimi, ATR and E-Da), and one hour-long song -- the kind of concert that leaves bodies in its wake.

Hear it (17 mb).

Your New Favorite Song.

There are two phases to Monday Michiru: the acid-jazz phase, and the serious-jazz phase. This rather simplistic division can be traced to the release of the ambitious 2001 double "concept" album 4 Seasons; it's very good music, but ultimately somewhat too weighty.

More to my liking are her earlier albums, when she was right at the tip of R&B and neo-soul (do the marketers call it J-soul now?). "Conversations with Myself," from her 1996 album with the Paradox Band, Delicious Poison, is a great example, all sleek and sophisticated and irresistible.

It's beyond my comprehension why Monday Michiru isn't an international superstar; she's a talented songwriter, a fantastic soul and jazz singer, and she happens to be gorgeous to boot.

Hear it (8.4 mb, m4a).

Your New Favorite Song.

To combine the Japanese and cover song posts: The greatest pop cover version in the history of recorded popular music ever -- and by popular music I only mean music since the '50s, not "popular music" in the Richard Thompson sense -- is (of course) Shonen Knife's version of the Carpenters' "Top of the World," off the If I Were A Carpenter tribute album.

Hear it (5.44 mb, 192 kbps m4a).

Your New Favorite Song.

Somewhat in response to Liza's quite sad post, I'm temporarily scuttling the all-Japanese downloads plan to include yet another cover version of Spandau Ballet's "True."

I always loved Tony Hadley's histrionics, actually. In many ways it's the perfect karaoke song (for 30-somethings like me) because a) I was there, and b) it requires actual performance on the part of the singer, because of the way he holds the mic, and the way he closes his eyes, and the little break in Hadley's voice after "And I want the truth to be said!" goes up an octave after the bridge -- and then the dramatic pause, which means the performer has to, um, pause dramatically as well. Steve Buscemi got it totally right in The Wedding Singer. (The only downside: what to do during Steve Norman's cheesy sax break.)

Anyway, here's Filipina R&B singer Arnee Hidalgo, from her 2003 album Cold Summer Nights, which you US-based folks can get at Kabayan Central. This was a version when "acoustic" was all the rage in the Philippines (it still is): practically just vocals and guitar, kind of when "unplugged" was really unplugged. She changes the lyrics a couple of times, but that's all right; it's still a sweet cover, with the Cheesy Sax Break now turned into a slightly shorter Cheesy Guitar Break. In an ideal world her version should have been some sort of summer cuddle-anthem and done more for the original than P.M. Dawn's "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss."

Hear it (7.74 mb, 192 kbps mp3).

(Speaking of '80s covers, there's a fantastic cover of "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?" -- coincidentally, another Wedding Singer song -- done by The Last Town Chorus, which really makes me want to hear their album.)

Some GBV Links.

Got back from the Philippines last night. Listening to "Ester's Day" by Guided By Voices as I waited for my suitcase at the baggage carousel made me feel sad.

Some GBV-related links:

- Mindy Hertzon's beer-soaked Orlando concert photos.

- a tribute at Nude as the News (check out in particular the Top 100 GBV Songs of All Time link at the bottom)

- video footage from the last-ever concert in Chicago ("Over the Neptune / Mesh Gear Fox" and "Don't Stop Now" were the set openers and closers, respectively)

- and more videos from the day before (Sprout doing "Gleemer" is especially sweet)

- and if I had to pick only 49 GBV songs, in no order (though a good chunk of it comes from Bee Thousand:

A Salty Salute
Watch Me Jumpstart
Game of Pricks
Motor Away
My Valuable Hunting Knife
Blimps Go 90
Little Whirl
Real
Hardcore UFO's
Buzzards And Dreadful Crows
Tractor Rape Chain
The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory
Smothered In Hugs
Yours To Keep
Echos Myron
Gold Star For Robot Boy
Awful Bliss
Queen Of Cans And Jars
Ester's Day
I Am A Scientist
Peep-Hole
Teenage FBI
Things I Will Keep
My Kind of Soldier
My Impression Now
Fair Touching
Chasing Heather Crazy
Glad Girls
Don't Stop Now
Sad If I Lost It
I Am a Tree
Bulldog Skin
Now to War
Over The Neptune / Mesh Gear Fox
Weedking
Exit Flagger
14 Cheerleader Coldfront
Drinker's Peace
Cut-Out Witch
The Official Ironmen Rally Song
To Remake the Young Flyer
Atom Eyes
It's Like Soul Man
Wire Greyhounds
Back To The Lake
Pretty Bombs
Gleemer (The Deeds Of Fertile Jim)
Wondering Boy Poet
Choking Tara (Creamy)

The Best Music of 2004.

As usual my list is composed of the best music I heard this year, and is not limited to those released in 2004; I'm usually a few years behind the curve, so to speak, though my list is coming out a week or so early. (My old lists can be found at the bottom of this page.)

Laura Cantrell's Not the Tremblin' Kind (2000)

   This year I revisited / discovered to a lot of alt-folk and country music (not the classic albums -- that's next year's project): the sublime Daniel Lanois-produced albums Wrecking Ball and Teatro, for starters. A good amount of Gram Parsons, and, as usual, a lot of Gillian Welch. But one of my favorite discoveries this year was Laura Cantrell's Not the Tremblin' Kind -- a near-perfect mix of joyful melancholy. Though her lovely voice doesn't have the same... wise quality as Emmylou and Willie above, there's still something wonderfully appealing about this gem. Laura, where have you been all my life?

Wild Billy Childish and The Blackhands' Play Capt. Calypso's Hoodoo Party / Live in the Netherlands (1994)

   Billy Childish, one could argue, has a discography and work ethic that borders on the scarily obsessive, with a dedication to replicating an almost primitivist ethos to lo-fi garage/rockabilly again and again. This twofer CD from 1988 is something of an anomaly, because it doesn't revolve around 1966, but it's something out of time. This is Childish's shambolic Caribbean garage take on calypso -- and "Anarchy in the U.K.," and "I Love Paris," and "Rum and Coca-Cola" -- and it's an absolutely joyous affair. When rock and roll came to Trinidad, indeed.

Guided By Voices' Half Smiles of the Decomposed (2004)

   It isn't just because it's Guided By Voices' swan song: "Half Smiles of the Decomposed" is one of their most solid albums since Universal Truths and Cycles and, at least according to these ears, is up there already as one of the top ten GBV-related titles. It's also retrospective (in the same way "Mule Variations" was, mixing up echoes of their lo-fi glories) and innovative (the excellent "Sleepover Jack" was actually mistaken for an Interpol track by a colleague, not that that's necessarily a good thing). But it's a flat-out solid indie rock album -- chock-full of pop hooks (see "Girls of Wild Strawberries"), great Gillard guitar work (see "Sons of Apollo") -- from (at least for three hours last November) the greatest rock and roll band in the world.

Jolie Holland's Escondida (2004)

   Jolie Holland's Escondida is, again, one of those timeless albums -- or so one thinks. It digs into Harry Smith's anthology for atmosphere and swerves into folk-singer-in-a-coffeeshop delivery. And then something like "I got a couple of food stamps and a caffeine buzz" stops you in your tracks. The result: a stunner of an arch indie-folk album.

N.E.R.D's In Search Of... (2002)

   I completely slept on this one -- an even more egregious omission considering the fact that one of my people, Chad Hugo, is in it. N.E.R.D's In Search Of... is unlike any hiphop / R&B / rock hybrid you've ever heard; like the Childish album above, In Search Of... is simultaneously inflected with fat keyboard sound from '70s soul and '90s raunch (as heard in the excellent "Tape You").

The Streets' A Grand Don't Come for Free (2004)

   The Streets' A Grand Don't Come For Free isn't really hiphop, though it uses hiphop beats. Mike Skinner's shaggy-dog stories -- about popping pills, returning a video, getting drunk, fighting with his girlfriend, losing money, meeting women, breaking up -- seems to come from a more English tradition: that of the kitchen-sink, working-class, angry-young-man drama, like John Osborne's "Look Back In Anger." Consider it an anti-bling song cycle, if you like.

Kanye West's The College Dropout (2004)

   Kanye West's album The College Dropout breaks no new ground; it isn't distinguished by his lyrical delivery or ingenious samples (indeed, the sped-up chipmunky samples are getting kind of old). But there is no denying the brimming, talented vitality at work here. We hear about "assured debuts" all the time, but this one bolted out of the gate like a rocket. Listen to the transcendent "We Don't Care" and you'll hear what I mean. Probably my favorite album of 2004.

And some runners-up:

Ghost, Hypnotic Underworld
Not from Japan, but from another planet: Ghost melds prog, metal, psych and folk into one tight maelstrom.

Hot Club Of Cowtown, The Continental Stomp
It's described as Django Reinhardt meets Bob Wills; whichever way, it's joyous contemporary Western swing.

Diana Krall, The Girl in the Other Room
Her strongest work since her Nat King Cole tribute, this album sees Krall (helped by her hubby Elvis Costello) blossom successfully into a singer-songwriter-pianist.

Merzbow, Merzbird
Merzbow released maybe over a dozen titles this year. Can I tell them apart? Heck no! But this one, yes: a return to Merzbeat-style beat-noise.

Joanna Newsom, The Milk-Eyed Mender
Cockles and caravels, karate kicks and bean sprouts.

John Zorn, Filmworks XII, XIII and XIV
Caught up on the Filmworks series glut this year: this is gorgeous, vital music, and if it seems a little polite for Zorn -- XIV is practically dinner music -- they're nonetheless testaments to Zorn's astonishing musical genius.

And four that just barely made it:

The Arcade Fire, Funeral
Coil, Black Antlers
Eagles of Death Metal, Peace Love Death Metal
Les Savy Fav, Inches

Earworms 2004:

Belle And Sebastian, "I'm A Cuckoo (Avalanches Remix)"
N*E*R*D, "Tape You"
Bic Runga, "The Be All and End All"
Kanye West, "Through the Wire"
J-Kwon, "Tipsy"
Kanye West, "We Don't Care"
Emmylou Harris, "Wrecking Ball"
A Certain Ratio, "Do The Du"
Gillian Welch, "Black Star"
Shirley Horn, "Where Do You Start?"
Wilco, "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"
Aimee Mann, "Observatory"
Rilo Kiley, "With Arms Outstretched"

And finally, Disappointment of the Year:

Tom Waits, Real Gone

   Don't get me wrong; I love Tom Waits. But his albums since Bone Machine (including the wonderful Mule Variations) have been stamped with the same Waits template: rattly instrumental here, the two-hanky weeper there, the barfly song here, the hobo song there. It's almost like the formal equivalent of your run-of-the-mill hiphop album: slow jam, gangsta track, club song, mix and match as you please. This time around the gravel in his voice grates; the overdriven sound rankles; the clank and wheeze wears you out. At least it's a fantastic Marc Ribot album.

My Formative Music Years.

My formative music years were probably a little different, on account of having grown up in the Philippines; radio was different, for one, and releases were very selective. You couldn't buy any R.E.M. album earlier than Fables of the Reconstruction, for instance; there were, in effect, huge gaps in bands' discographies. There was very little old-school hiphop as well; for instance, the first time I heard Grandmaster Flash was in the '90s.

But as a child I grew up listening to my parents' music, most of which I consider excellent today; my mom claims I used to dance to "Taxman," and to this day Revolver is still one of my favorite albums ever. Simon and Garfunkel, Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole also rounded out that period (thankfully Richard Clayderman and Ray Conniff didn't affect my consciousness that much).

My very first record purchase was the "My Sharona" vinyl single, so that dates me. (Actually, it might have been on cassette, mixed with Patrick Hernandez's "Born to Be Alive.") I still remember quite vividly the day my mom gave me and my brother money to buy an actual cassette tape for the very first time. (My purchase was Synchronicity; my brother bought Huey Lewis and The News's Sports. Ha!)

So, my formative years: U2's The Unforgettable Fire, the Police's Reggatta de Blanc, Talking Heads' Remain in Light (I was the only Heads fan in my entire high school) -- and, obviously a little late, Pink Floyd's Meddle -- were all high school purchases, and they've happily passed the test of time. (Synchronicity is overplayed -- I can't be the only one who changes the station when "Every Breath You Take" comes on the radio -- but I happened to listen to it with a pair of great in-ear headphones earlier this year and it sounded like a totally different album.)*

By college I went through an unfortunate lapse into lite-jazz; it still sounds terrible now, and I can't imagine ever returning to that crap. But I also went hog-wild buying albums, some of which are still stellar (Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, Substance, In My Tribe) and some not (Seven and the Ragged Tiger, Make It Big -- though I will always have affection for many '80s hits).

The nineties (and grad school) finally set me on the path I'm on now, where my music purchases were mostly associated with record labels / distributors: Impulse, Tzadik, World Serpent, and especially early to mid-90s Matador.

*Having written this, I now realize why Bono, Sting and Michael Stipe (and Robert Smith to a certain extent) are all in a special circle of hell -- because in my mid-teens they were all part of bands that meant the world to me. And now they just suck.

Oh No.

Just saw this about John Balance. And I just fell asleep last night listening to ANS on my headphones... I'm wearing my Time Machines T-shirt today. And playing Coil all day.

JB and ODB in one weekend.

Guided By Voices, SF, 11/13/04.

Posted a shorter version of this last night (more like early morning).

Too messed up to remember
Eardrums still ringing
Head still aching
Feet hurt (from jumping)
Neck hurts (from headbanging)
Throat hurts (from shouting)

Met PBers at the Toronado
Sat with Spence and Kogan
Ended up six people deep from the stage
Saw Franken's back move farther and farther
from the middle
Keene played

Then sunsets and seagulls
1983-2004
GBV the crowd yelled
Bob with Cuervo bottle in hand
Beers aloft
Opened with Do The Earth
Lots of songs from SIAN
Bob rant on "old cuntry"
Willie Nelson and Rob Thomas
Called Lyle Lovett a pussy
Pissbreak during Window of My World

We got Gloomtown / Pricks / Jumpstart
We got Sad If I Lost It
We got Exit Flagger
We got Buzzards and Dreadful Crows
We got Beg for a Wheelbarrow
We got Redmen and Their Wives
We got loooong Secret Star
We got My Impression Now
We got Demons Are Real
We got Gold Star for Robot Boy

Mic troubles for Bob
Guy wanted to pass out next to him
Folks bumrushed the stage
on A Salty Salute
Woman bumped and grinded
Bouncers disarmed the settlers

Then homerun after homerun
Myron / Motor / FBI
Unleashed / Girls / Scientist
And the lights came up
And it was all over

Your New Favorite Song.

I used to be only a casual listener of Gillian Welch, but the last two years or so have slowly turned me into a big fan. (Seeing her in concert a few weeks ago cemented it.) I bought her very good first album, Revival, when it came out after hearing "Paper Wings" on some free compilation CD that came with a magazine. 1998's Hell among the Yearlings was merely okay, but it took the brilliant Time (The Revelator) -- including the mesmerizing, hope-it-never-ends "I Dream A Highway" -- to get me back on track. (Her appearances on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack also helped, since it was played practically nonstop back at the house for a long time.)

This particular track is sourced from a 2004 London concert whose bootleg torrent is here (sorry, you may need to log in to see the setlist). I've taken the liberty of converting this one track into a lossy mp3; if you want the whole thing, complete with Dylan / Parsons / The Band covers, and a few tracks with Old Crow Medicine Show, you should probably download the torrent yourself.

Other than her own stuff (the guitar/banjo duets with David Rawlings alone are well worth the download), the jewel here is a gorgeous and utterly heartbreaking cover of Radiohead's "Black Star," which I've been playing over and over the last two days. (There's a lovely version on Christopher O'Riley's True Love Waits as well, but not like this.) It's something of a nod, you cynics might think, to the indie kids in the audience, but I think Welch has always been beloved by the black-rimmed glasses crowd anyhow. I hope a studio version appears soon.

In any case, she owns this song now.

And because Thom Yorke's lyrics are brilliant as well, here they are:

I get home from work and you're still standing in your dressing gown
Well what am I to do?
I know all the things around your head and what they do to you
What are we coming to?
What are we gonna do?

Blame it on the black star
Blame it on the falling sky
Blame it on the satellite that beams me home

The troubled words of a troubled mind I try to understand what is eating you
I try to stay awake but it's 58 hours since I last slept with you
What are we coming to?
I just don't know anymore

Blame it on the black star
Blame it on the falling sky
Blame it on the satellite that beams me home

I get on the train and I just stand about now that I don't think of you
I keep falling over I keep passing out when I see a face like you
What am I coming to?
I'm gonna melt down

Blame it on the black star
Blame it on the falling sky
Blame it on the satellite that beams me home

Hear it (9.2 mb).

Your New Favorite Song.

Okay, Karen: I give.

(This is a six-minute live version, and yes, it kicks Gwen's skinny ass.)

Hear it (11.4 mb).

Jin / Hung.

Yesterday quietly marked something of a milestone in Asian American history: not one, but two, mainstream album releases -- Jin's The Rest Is History and William Hung's Hung for the Holidays. Discuss.

The Weekend.

Izzy was in a terrible mood all weekend: a tantrum when she didn't get to read an extra book before bedtime, a tantrum when she didn't get to wear the new dress; didn't want to get out of the stroller to see the clownfish or the turtle or the penguins being fed at the aquarium (she eventually did); didn't want to take her nap, and more general wilfullness, including, worst of all, biting me twice! Hopefully she snaps out of it, as she is usually positively angelic. =)

Saw Caetano Veloso at the Masonic on Saturday night, and he was absolutely fantastic. (I wasn't too enamored of his latest album, A Foreign Sound, quite frankly; the world doesn't really need yet another version of "Cry Me A River," but Veloso's unerringly beautiful voice makes it all worthwhile.) Highlights: an awesome "Baby" (one of my favorite songs of all time), Jacques Morelenbaum plucking out Krist Novoselic's bass line on his cello at the beginning of "Come As You Are," and -- of course he wouldn't forget the big crowd pleaser -- "Cucurrucucu Paloma," which was fucking sublime.

Played hooky (after much work today, and grading all last week, thank you very much) by going to SF MoMA with my friend and colleague Ben to the William Eggleston show, probably my favorite photographer. Much has been said about Eggleston's use of color and his "democratic" eye, but for me it has always been the unsettling manner in which his photographs transform your ordinary; one looks around one's world and sees Eggleston in the details.

A 747 in Your Living Room.

The now famous Ed McGowan, who bought a copy of the Guided By Voices album Propeller on eBay for $6,200:

I’ve seen a lot of bands in my day and GBV when they’re "on" are far and away the most exciting rock and roll experience you will ever have. Remember when you were a teenager, the feeling you got when you blasted "The Punk Meets the Godfather" into your headphones while looking in the mirror? Or, oops, was that just me? Expand that feeling over three hours in a room full of screaming, sweaty, jumping people and you have a typical GBV show. To paraphrase Bono, the live GBV experience is like having a 747 land in your living room.

Ghost / Gillian Welch.

Ghost was awesome -- who would have thought that their loose-limbed psych folk would create such a tight, rocking monster on stage? (The new album, in any case, is harder than usual, more Amon Duul II than Amon Duul I.) They started off with a whirl of guitar chaos and theremin feedback, and went on from there: the band stopping and starting on a dime, Masaki Batoh signalling the beats with each crank of his guitar -- not quite approaching the levitational intensity of Second Time Around, but producing a movement somewhat alien to a Ghost concert: headbanging. With flute. "Sun is tangging indeed," to quote an old review.

(The same, alas, could not be said for White Magic or Six Organs Of Admittance. I otherwise liked the former's Through the Sun Door album -- thoughts of a cross between Cat Power and early Helium came to mind -- but live, the songs weren't nearly as compelling. Dust and Chimes spent a good amount of time in my stereo this year, but Ben Chasny's solo, all-acoustic set -- maybe he was joined by other musicians at some point, but I didn't stay long enough -- was tedious and unbearable.)

[The next day, back at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.]

I can't say enough about Gillian Welch and David Rawlings -- their interplay on stage is amazing, and combined with a stellar repertoire of songs spread over only four albums (Welch already hit the ground running with her debut album Revival), this was for me the main draw of the bluegrass fest. A massive crowd (almost as large as the one that saw Ralph Stanley yesterday) greeted the duo, who started with "I Want To Sing That Rock & Roll." This was also Izzy's very first concert ever, and she was quite pleased, dancing to "Big Rock Candy Mountain" and the standing-ovation crowd sing-along "I'll Fly Away." What an awesome fifty minutes -- I'm really tempted to see them again this weekend...

Bluegrass etc.

Just came from Day One of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass fest in Golden Gate Park.

Highlights:

- Michael Peasall (I figure he's the dad) saying of the Peasall Sisters (they're teenagers now, much grown since O Brother, Where Art Thou?, "But if any young men looking for a girlfriend come by the merchandise booth to introduce themselves, I've got a gun and a shovel and I won't hesitate to use them both."
- The Hot Club of Cowtown was a revelation -- joyous, infectious Western swing. I gotta check one of their albums out.
- A blistering cover of "Cumberland Blues" from The Waybacks, with Darol Anger on guest violin. (Only downside: a ton of hippies in their fifties freaking out while this was playing.)
- Nick Lowe ending his mostly-solo set with a hushed, dead-serious version of "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love And Understanding."
- I had to choose between John Prine and Steve Earle -- went to Earle's moving though predictably downbeat set, though he opened with a hearty "F The CC." (Loved the way some parents had to cover their kids' ears, especially when he asked the audience to shout "F-U-C-K" with him.
- Ralph Stanley's hilariously immodest self-introduction. Well, he's earned it.
- Best of all: Buddy and Julie Miller singing the heartbreaking duet "Forever Has Come To An End" -- and then Emmylou Harris, in full Meg-Ryan-Goes-To-Safeway gear (she was wearing dark glasses and a baseball cap), jumps on stage to do third-part harmony. The audience seemed stunned, as was I.

Later tonight: White Magic! Six Organs Of Admittance! And best of all, Ghost!

Tomorrow, depending on whether my daughter Izzy will put up with it: Gillian Welch!

Your New Favorite Song.

My friend Karen and I have been e-mailing each other back and forth about "near-perfect songs," and it just so happened that they were from the "indie rock" world.

Her first offering: Grant Lee Buffalo's "Mockingbirds."

My response: Neutral Milk Hotel's "Two-Headed Boy." (Well, I had these, too.)

To which she responded: The Strokes' "Hard to Explain."

You'll need to register (if you haven't yet) to read this New York Times Sunday Magazine article -- it's about A.C. Newman -- but here's the opening paragraph:

A new one arrives every three years or so. It comes from somewhere like Chapel Hill, N.C., or Dayton, Ohio, ringing out of a nearby jukebox or college station, alive with static and melody, a three-minute burst of joyful noise you find yourself playing every day because it makes you feel young and unstoppable and you can never quite figure out the words.

This would be the Irresistible Indie-Rock Anthem, a prime example of which is ''Letter From an Occupant,'' by the Vancouver-based septet the New Pornographers.

one from Chapel Hill (Superchunk's "The First Part"),
one from Dayton (Guided By Voices' "Motor Away"),
and one from Vancouver (see above).

Your New Favorite Song.

Whenever I ask my students -- usually the ones in anthropology, since I almost always toss in an ethnography about music for them to read -- what music they couldn't stand hearing, and almost always the answer would be "country." It isn't hard to see why: the Twang-und-Drawl gets in the way, for starters, and I can't see how suburban kids would ever be enamored of the whole jacket / boots / hat image. It's a tough sell, and I'm sure they have visions of line-dancers whenever they hear "country music." (That or Toby Keith.) And I usually respond with "How about Patsy Cline?" and most of them have no idea what I'm talking about.

Through the years I've listened to a good amount of "real" country music, and I think there's something to be said about music to be listened to experientially -- "I wanna hold your hand" or "I like it like that, she working that back, I don't know how to act" most everyone understands, but not necessarily "The bottle let me down."

Lyle Lovett might not be "country" per se -- sorry, I couldn't think of a good segue -- but he draws deep from that idiom, and even on a slightly adult-contemporary song like the one below (picture sarcasm-quotes around "adult-contemporary," by the way), the sentiment is still pure Hank Williams Sr.

Lyrically, he seems to commit the error of the unforgiveable cliche -- but man, does it work here:

Now there is nothing so deep as the ocean
And there is nothing so high as the sky
And there is nothing so unwavering as a woman
When she's already made up her mind

Hear it (6.9 mb).

Wally Gonzales Writes Reviews.

This is, supposedly, Wally Gonzales writing on Speed, Glue and Shinki:

Those people who write the metal rock books some are fucking geeks with univerity diplomas. They laugh at metal while they write about it and take it without any serious expression. One man write slow stoner classic is Bang LP. Shit. Bang is one song band. Other songs of bang like smeard shit on Sabs boot sole. Some slag Grand Funk. Not clever enough. Mark Farner is a clever man with good intention for fans and al;l the people of the world. But no group got close to slow Sabbath stomp like the japanese trio Speed Glue and Shinki. Shinki Chen is the great jimi guitarist, which makes bass player and drummer into speed and glue. Hey great. Drummer is Mr. Joseph Smith of the Philipines. Hey Joe, you the man motherfucker. Like Sir Lord Baltimore singer John Garner, Joseph is also the mean Iggy Ozzy behind that kit. Squarks like MC5 and Blue Cheer and Stooges and hits the traps like he's punishing the man for building this world for assholes. Slow songs of Speed Glue and Shinki are perhaps the best and occupy in my head the larger place. Big double LP of big donkeys knob hanging and cool. Remember Kiss Hotter than Hell. Slower than those songs. Simple riffs for the moron to play but full of clever lyrics for the wise man to hear. Good combination to like with massive bone on the go and inhale the whole room staring at double LP sleeve of magical tiger with all the world of mystery in its eyes. Good record for studying the words. Get the words of Mr. Joseph Smith 1972. He os the Mother of Fucking Rock here. The words of Sniffing and Snorting say he's snorting out of the hands of a stgranger. That's pretty cool I guess. He's smoking a J on a beutuful day. He took a sip of wine and started loading his gun and shot it in his veins, By the time I pull it out I'm gonna feel so strange. No shit. I feel pretty strange too with I do that. Speed Glue is great when they play fast too, but we ain't talking about that right now. This double is for Dead george and those guys, you know. Lying in a pool of yourself on some hillside turning in to the earth and sucking up the vegetation and letting weather just happen. This is the fukcin ggroup man, Speed Glue and Shinki. Thankfull ball attention

For me they are an sect malignant of powerful desart magical and worship, and occupy in my head the larger place. To Amon Duul 2 I will be the lemming, and myself lead astray.

Your New Favorite Song.

Back at the turn of the century when the state of American R&B and soul seemed really dire (it isn't now, thanks to Carl Thomas), I turned, courtesy of the evil wallet-breaking people at Dustygroove, to Japan, where the torch remained gloriously alive, at least in an acid-jazzy, "neo-soul" capacity.

The Japanese singer Bird made quite a splash when she made her debut in 1999; she has since shed her blowoutcombed-plumage (you can check out what it looked like here), but her music is still essentially the same summery urban Tokyo soul.

The track I have here, entitled "Souls," is the first single off her excellent debut album, Bird, produced by the extraordinary Shinichi Osawa (more about him in later posts). It's a lot more radio-friendly and poppier than most of her soul-oeuvre, but if you're fogbound like me in San Francisco, it should brighten up your morning. (There's a video on her official Sony page, but I haven't seen it yet.)

Hear it (8.1 mb).

Your New Favorite Song.

Masami Akita is Merzbow, and Merzbow is the premier noise artist, period. With a crushingly massive discography (about 360 releases and counting), and albums that explore the same blasted electronic noise terrain, Merzbow is one of those take-it-or-leave-it musicians: you either know he's not for you upon first listen, or you come back begging for more.

(I figure this was an opportunity to share a bit of Merzbow, considering the fact that I seem to be the biggest Merzbow fan on Audioscrobbler.)

The problem with his tracks is that they're usually these 12-minute long affairs (sometimes even the entire length of a CD), with slab after slab of brain-drilling sonic terror, and I try to keep my selections fairly small. (I'm on 56 kbps dialup, after all.) But here's a track called "Octopus," off a 1999 album, Tentacle, that's short and sweet and encapsulates pre-digital Merzbow (i.e., before he started using his Powerbook, which has resulted in a slightly warmer sound): low thud rumble here, ear-bleeding screech there.

Hear it (2.4 mb).

Comments?

Your New Favorite Song.

It's the end of July, which means it's the unofficial end of Covers Month here. (But given the fact that I was gone almost half the time, it's a miracle I managed to post anything at all.)

Too bad -- I would have loved to have had more time to pull out some more cover songs, familiar and unfamiliar, from my boxes of burned mix CDs around here: Radiohead doing "Nobody Does It Better," Elvis Costello doing "Poplife," Prince doing "A Case of You," Richard Thompson doing "Psycho Killer," Lisa Loeb singing "Keep On Loving You," Natalie Merchant singing "Space Oddity," and so on.

So I end this month with a non-cover, made "famous," I guess, because it was covered by R.E.M. and buried, uncredited, as a hidden track at the end of their best album, Lifes Rich Pageant -- and was associated closely enough with R.E.M. so that non-diehard fans yelled "Sellout!" when it appeared in an IBM ad.

I know very little about The Clique (I just couldn't be bothered to look them up on the atrocious revamp that is AMG), but I like their sound: bubblegum-era rhythms, the constipated vocals (at least until you get to the bridge, sung in unison), with a garagey, ramshackle feel to the instruments. "Superman," in any case, is a nice precursor to the Police's stalker anthem "Every Breath You Take."

Next: the month of August has no official title to its theme, except that it's something along the lines of "Why aren't you listening to these people?" "You," of course, is the tricky part here, since I have no idea who downloads the mp3s -- jaded indie vets who own every Deerhoof EP, maybe.

Hear it. (3.6 mb)

Comments?

Your New Favorite Song.

I have no reason, really, for uploading this track, other than the fact that it shouldn't work, but it does.

To subject The Band's "The Weight," with all its mythic American resonance, to the analog chill of the Moog synthesizer just seems plain wrong. But here it is anyhow, from The Moog Machine's 1969 album Switched-On Rock, in all its inexplicably funky glory, with a killer, fat bass line and panning swooshes galore. Bunuel and Christian redemption aside, only the melody remains.

Hear it. (3.4 mb)

Comments?

Your New Favorite Song.

There are a couple of misplaced covers on Diana Krall's otherwise uniformly excellent -- no, really, it's her strongest album in years -- The Girl in the Other Room. One is a superfluous cover of her hubby's "Almost Blue" -- you would have thought that she (or Everything But The Girl, whose disastrous cover was on the execrable Acoustic) would have learned from Chet Baker how "Almost Blue" should be done. (See the Let's Get Lost soundtrack for details.)

The second wrong-headed cover is her slinky version of Tom Waits' "Temptation," completely lacking the wheezy, lurching, barroom ambience of the original. Sorry: Tom don't do slinky.

Speaking of "slinky" -- bad segue here, I know -- the Smashing Pumpkins' slinkyish cover of my favorite Depeche Mode song makes the original sound even more sinister. I've never been able to figure out what it's about: drugs? Sex? Riding in a car? What's the deal about "wearing the trousers?" Is it a companion piece to "Behind the Wheel?" Anyhow, Billy Corgan's strangled whine of a voice is great here, still suggesting Dave Gahan's detached monotone; along with the restrained guitar work (dropping the original synth riffs), it makes for a perfect cover.

Hear it. (5.6 mb)

Comments?

Your New Favorite Song.

Okay, I lied. Once again, in a virtual tip of the hat to Copy, Right?, I present three tracks: the Ornette Coleman Quartet's "Peace Warriors" (here, the classic Coleman / Cherry / Haden / Higgins lineup), a different version also by Ornette Coleman and Prime Time (his "double quartet" with two guitarists, bassists and drummers each, both from the 1987 In All Languages album), and a cover by John Zorn (with two saxophonists and drummers) from the 1989 Spy vs Spy: The Music of Ornette Coleman album.

Prime Time was conceived as embodying the principle of "harmolodics," as Coleman's website explains:

Breaking out of the prison bars of rigid meters and conventional harmonic or structural expectations, harmolodic musicians improvise equally together in what Coleman calls compositional improvisation, while always keeping deeply in tune with the flow, direction and needs of their fellow players. In this process, harmony becomes melody becomes harmony. Ornette describes it as "Removing the caste system from sound." On a broader level, harmolodics equates with the freedom to be as you please, as long as you listen to others and work with them to develop your own individual harmony.

I've always been a fan of John Zorn, though my interest in him has been flagging in recent years. Content, it seems, to release variation upon variation of the Masada songbook -- great stuff, mind you, but repetitive enough to test his fans -- Zorn, in my opinion, just hasn't made music as exciting as he did back in the '80s and early '90s, back when he was the real bad boy of Downtown. Granted, The Gift (Zorn's take on exotica / surf music) and Taboo and Exile (and probably IAO) were, by most standards, outstanding, but pales in comparison to Zorn's groundbreaking work with Naked City, Painkiller, early Masada, and some of his game pieces.

The concept behind Spy vs Spy -- one of those albums in Zorn's early, more thrilling phase -- seems to have been to play Ornette's compositions LOUD and FAST and HARD; Zorn's version of "Peace Warriors" is typically intense and brutal, more literally thrash-jazz than, say, the Peter Brotzmann Octet's Machine Gun ever was. As Zorn writes in his liner notes (where he thanks Napalm Death and Blind Idiot God, after all): "Fucking hardcore rules." Crank up your speakers.

Hear it: Quartet (3.8 mb), Prime Time (3.4 mb), Zorn (1.9 mb).

Comments?

Your New Favorite Song.

I'm rambling today. Foreign-language versions of English-language pop songs are the best cover versions of all, I always thought -- until I stepped back and wondered whether it was some form of exoticization on my part. After all, some of the best pop song covers, at least in my mind, happen to have been performed by Japanese bands (for instance, the Pebbles, or Shonen Knife -- the latter's version of the Carpenters' "Top of the World" has to be the greatest cover version ever) and some of the charm, I guiltily confess, does come from their English pronunciation.

But foreign-language covers are a little more difficult to come by, and the real pleasure in them has to do precisely with the unintelligible: . I have a number of versions of "These Boots Are Made For Walking" (back when I was still in the exoticaring), and I have a wonderful breathy French version somewhere around here. I have Tagalog versions of Beatles songs, but unfortunately they're on vinyl. I also have CDs worth of covers of "Whole Lotta Love" and "Red Red Wine," and most are interesting (some are wonderfully horrific) in different ways.

And so, in a tip of the hat to Liza from copy, right?, here's probably the most "famous" foreign-language cover version of a relatively recent English pop song (too many qualifiers there): Faye Wong's "Dream Person." I like her version of the Cocteau Twins' "Evangeline" better, but everyone knows this one because it was prominently featured in Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express. I'll have to ask Madeline whether

Moong joong yun yut fun joong po gun
Jeep sup fun (joong) dik mun

is similar to

Oh, my life is changing everyday,
In every possible way.

I will always be fond of this version -- and not really the Cranberries original -- because of the memories it conjures up of the film. "If memory could be canned, I hope this one will never expire."

Hear it (5.1 mb).

Comments?

Your New Favorite Song.

I'd like to think of the blare of feedback from the Beatles's "I Feel Fine" as a starting point, but it only shows how ahistorical I am. The relatively short history of music recording featured musicians and engineers that progressively obsessed over fidelity of reproduction, who only later learned to embrace the imperfect. Or, as the title of the eLpH vs Coil album put it, Worship The Glitch: the point being to incorporate those "imperfections" -- or, to flout the fidelity to the real -- and enfold them into the musical text itself.

Vinyl was of course an imperfect medium in and of itself; the first DJs who included the snap and crackle of scratchy records in their samples were well aware of this. Both Grandmaster Flash and Christian Marclay took that imprecision further, deforming and disrupting the original intention and meaning of the records by scratching, looping and weaving the musical passages into entirely different contexts. Since then, "glitch house," "electroglitch" and its other monikers have spawned entire CD-R spindles worth of music.

(On another parallel plane, folks like John Cage and the "composers" of Surrealist musics before him welcomed the aleatory, and the possibility of including the "imperfect" and dissonant as well.)

The advent of the digital compact disc changed all that; quibbles about the coldness of the sound aside, the CD was as close to perfect fidelity as possible. Its vaunted indestructability was such that sales people would step on a disc and play them for prospective customers; the high prices -- sadly, even now -- made the dreaded skip sound even worse. (It's easier for your ears to fill in the spaces between vinyl pops, or to treat tape hiss as background noise, but for a skipping CD you have little choice but to skip to the next track.)

This is why Oval's 1995 94diskont album still remains a landmark. The centerpiece of the album, the almost 30-minute "Do While," is a gorgeous epic of skipping discs, with clicks and loops mutating and shifting as if underwater, producing an unearthly warmth from digital coldness, generating an unsettled, unsteady peace out of machine chaos. It simply blew my mind the first time I heard it. (The track below is a shorter version entitled "Do While (Command X)" -- it's not really "command," because it's the symbol for the Apple key, but I couldn't reproduce it.)

Hear it (6.98 mb).

Comments?

Your New Favorite Song.

There isn't another album much like Comus's extraordinary First Utterance, and perhaps one should be thankful. While still deeply rooted in the wyrdfolk vein, First Utterance -- the title alone evokes magical incantations, or an initial quickening of the Logos -- is positively unearthly. With songs about hanging, rape, murder, the execution of Christians -- and, ultimately, the deep, dark woods -- Comus's 1971 album is an unsettling listen.

The first song off the album, "Diana," isn't really the best track; that honor goes to "Drip Drip" which is too long to be uploaded here. (That song also has the distinction of having one of its lines, "My arms your hearse," borrowed by the prog-metal band Opeth for one of its album titles.)

"Diana" chronicles a mad pursuit through a forest ("Lust he follows virtue close / Through the steaming woodlands / His darkened blood through bulging veins" the song begins); the near-hysteric quality of the vocals, the bizarre bongo drum break, and the overall tinge of psychedelic instrumentation make it one of the quintessential wyrdfolk tracks. (It is also famously covered by Current 93 on the Horsey album; David Tibet's declaimed vocals aren't as creepy as Comus's, but the cover version features a fantastic relentlessly looped violin.) The singers entreat the pursued Diana to "kick [her] feet up," but the virgin goddess, chased by lust (who "bares his teeth and whines"), can't be coming to a good end here: "Mud burns his eyes but desire burns his mind / Fear in her eyes as the forest grins..."

Hear it (4.17 mb).

Your New Favorite Song.

One thing you wouldn't get from my listening profile on Audioscrobbler -- as you can see, it makes me look like a total Guided By Voices obsessive -- is the fact that only a few years ago I was a huge fan of John Zorn, Morton Feldman, Keiji Haino, Current 93, Coil... All bands / musicians / composers with big discographies and all, but none of which even show up on my list.

I also used to be a big fan of wyrdfolk, whatever that really means; I've always thought of it as dark, generally pagan-themed (or Christ-haunted), deep-woods inflected, guitar strumming. In general this has been expanded, I think, to include psych and prog elements here and there, as well as more "trad-folk;" thus, in a different light, artists as diverse as Devendra Banhart, Steeleye Span, the Carter Family, Linda Perhacs, Will Oldham, Vashti Bunyan, Ghost and Donovan would qualify. While principally English, think of Harry Smith's "old, weird America" and you'll know what I mean. (Yes, I know it's Greil Marcus' description of The Basement Tapes.)

The ultimate wyrdfolk album, in my opinion, would be Comus's First Utterance; if pressed for only a few more, I would name Paul Giovanni's soundtrack for The Wicker Man (though the killer opening track is missing from the U.S. version), The Incredible String Band's The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, C.O.B.'s Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart, Stone Angel's Stone Angel, and perhaps, from a different time period, Current 93's Earth Covers Earth and Ghost's Lamarabirabi.

Which brings me to today's mp3 download, one of my favorite songs ever and, in my opinion, one of the quintessential "wyrdfolk" tracks: Trees' "The Garden of Jane Delawney," the title track of their 1970 debut album. (Their follow-up album, On the Shore, is the more solid work, however, complete with a creepy Hipgnosis cover.)

I have no idea what the song's about -- there are references to "a fire [that] will consume your hair," eyes turning to glass, the tears of the willow "drown[ing] you as you sleep," a "bloodfilled stream" -- but the song conjures, at least for me, an aura of quiet, overpowering, supernatural dread.

Hear it (5.93 mb).

[Update: The lyrics to the song -- apparently it's been covered by some goth-folk band named All About Eve.

And a bonus hay(na)ku, inspired by a comment on the song on the Bruton Town mailing list:

Like
a ghost
passing through you]

Musical Superlatives.

I'm in the mood for superlatives today. Three, to be exact:

The best music-related blog: largehearted boy.

The best mp3 blog: Copy, Right?

And (right now, anyway, because I'm feeling oddly euphoric and mushy) the greatest song ever (5.23 mb -- thanks again to Kid Carlomagno):

I could be discontent and chase the rainbow's end
I might win much more but lose all that is mine
I could be a lot but I know I'm not
I'm content just with the riches that you bring
I might shoot to win and commit the sin
Of wanting more than I've already got
I could run away but I'd rather stay
In the warmth of your smile lighting up my day
(the one that makes me say)

'Cause you're the best thing that ever happened to me or my world
You're the best thing that ever happened -- so don't go away

I might be a king and steal my people's things
But I don't go for that power crazy way
All that I could rule but I don't check for fools
All that I need is to be left to live my way
(so listen to what I say)

I could chase around for nothing to be found
But why look for something that is never there
I may get it wrong sometimes but I'll come back in style
For I realise your love means more than anything
(the song that makes me sing)

A Gift of the Eighties.

Just a week or so ago, I wrote about '80s "new wave," including a post on Seona Dancing, where, as you can read, someone offered (in jest, I thought) to send me a burned CD.

And today at the office, to my complete surprise, came a package from Rockland, IL of not one, but two CDs, chock-full of about 220-plus mp3s! The 3 O'Clock's "On Paper!" The Blow Monkeys! Identity Crisis' "Imagining October!" Flesh For Lulu! Propaganda! The Colourfield! All Sports Band's "Opposites Do Attract!" The Care! Friends Again's "State of Art!" I'm in total '80s heaven.

So Kid CarloMagno, whoever you are (is this a Steely Dan reference?), whatever your e-mail address may be (the one you provided bounced back -- interested in some mp3s?), whatever it is I did to deserve this: thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

So I'm giving back a little something to all of you readers -- well, at least Barb, who was looking for this before -- from Kid CarloMagno, a fantastic '80s song, whose religious symbolism seemed to escape me back then: The Icicle Works' "Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)." (The proper British title, by the way, and not the other way around as it was released in the U.S.)

Hear it. (3.44 mb)

Your New Favorite Song.

This has been sitting on my server for a while, and it's time I posted a link to it. I know very little about the singer Bic Runga, except that she's from New Zealand, she's part Chinese and part Maori, and one of her earlier songs ended up on the American Pie soundtrack. (I can't imagine it fit very well with the movie.) Her 2003 album Beautiful Collision is full of smoky, sharply-written, bittersweet pop songs, anchored by Runga's creamy vocals. "Creamy" sounds a little rude, except that it describes the soft caress of her voice quite well.

The song featured here, "The Be All and End All," is not representative of the album. It's a country song, for starters, but the arrangement gives her lyrics -- on that sweet, scary moment before the plunge -- a slightly ironic edge:

Flogging a rocking horse, getting nowhere
We are a pair to behold
You like a funeral me like a fair
Nobody cares for the show

But the real beauty of the song comes toward the end, after the earlier, gentle tussle of indecision, when the verse-chorus-verse structure shifts to a bridge:

I've had love come to nothing before
But it's all right, it's all right
I've welcomed it in and I've shown it the door
But it's all right, it's all right

And then the song simply ends, on that graceful note of both lyrical and structural hesitation (or surrender?), with Neil Finn's piano playing an entirely new melody.

Hear it. (3.2 mb)

Even More Online Music Geekness!

And I thought I already had all the cool plugins, but here's one more: while you're playing music on Winamp or iTunes (or my personal favorite, QCD), EvilLyrics automatically searches for the lyrics on the net and displays them in a separate window. Yes, it's completely dependent on your tracks being correctly tagged and all, and you're going to get empty windows for relative obscurities, but still -- this is awfully cool. Right now I'm listening to a Guided By Voices concert (a not very good one from Hamburg in 2003, where Pollard sounds completely wasted) and the lyrics to almost all the songs are updated in real-time. (Too bad it obviously won't have his little intros -- "Listen to The Ballad of Guided By Voices, kids!" -- before going into "Don't Stop Now.")

The Greatest Pinoy Pop Singles.

Back in the day when I first discovered the joys of html, I had folks vote on the "greatest Pinoy pop singles of all time," and they're listed here. (I finally shut it down a few years ago, when I had no time to tabulate the votes anymore.)

I had wanted people to write in, with longer comments, about why they chose a particular song, but no one ever did. (Some people spammed my mailbox with dozens of votes for Side A -- come on, folks, it's just an online poll.) Well, neither did I; I've written about "Magasin" by the Eraserheads before, but not about my absolute favorite, "Alapaap." (In case you're wondering, Rey-An Fuentes and Tillie Moreno's "Umagang Kay Ganda" and the Apo Hiking Society's "Mahirap Magmahal Nang Syota Nang Iba" are my other two favorites.)

Here's the top 20, taken from everyone who bothered to vote:

1. Freddie Aguilar: "Anak"
2. Side A: "Forevermore"
3. Eraserheads: "Alapaap"
4. Eraserheads: "Pare Ko"
5. Martin Nievera: "You Are My Song"
6. Eraserheads: "Ang Huling El Bimbo"
7. Gary Valenciano: "Sana Maulit Muli"
8. Eraserheads: "Ligaya"
9. Rivermaya: "214"
10. Rachel Alejandro: "Paalam Na"
11. Eraserheads: "Minsan"
12. Juan de la Cruz Band: "Himig Natin"
13. Rivermaya: "Himala"
14. Eraserheads: "With a Smile"
15. Dina Bonnevie: "Bakit Ba Ganyan"
16. Hotdog: "Manila"
17. True Faith: "Perfect"
18. Asin: "Masdan Mo Ang Kapaligiran"
19. Sharon Cuneta: "Ikaw"
20. Mike Hanopol: "Laki sa Layaw"

It's actually a decent mix (except for that Side A song) of old and relatively new, with different styles (folk, pop, big torch ballad, scuzzy 70's rock). But the topics are all over the place; in order, they're guilt, love, getting high, frustrated love, love, frustrated love, dying love, love, love, dying love, friendship, nationalism, frustrated love, love, puppy love, Manila, love, the environment, love, and... a kind of companion piece to "Anak." (In a sense it's all about love: love for a city, love for a country, love for drugs...)

There's no arguing with the choice of Freddie Aguilar's song; it was a massive hit all over Asia when it came out. It possessed all the right elements: it was easy to sing, Aguilar had a great voice, it had syrupy strings, it was weepy, it was about mothers. And while it didn't have the immediacy of a pop song about love, it still whacked you upside the head with guilt. (Though in my opinion his version of "Bayan Ko" is the ultimate Freddie single for sheer lump-in-the-throat goodness.)

Online Music Geekness.

I was going to post about the wonders of Listen-to.com, but unfortunately, it looks like they may be shutting down by the end of June. This is unfortunate; like Audioscrobbler (more about this in a moment), Listen-to tabulates the music you, uh, listen to, and breaks it down in endlessly fascinating ways. Endlessly fascinating to me, anyway.

Check out my profile, for instance: it says that I listen to 48 songs per day -- and that's only on the computer -- and that Guided By Voices (naturally) is my most-played group.

You can also look at the .jpg on the right side of my blog that tells you what I'm currently listening to. (I guess it'll be back to BlogAmp after June.)

[Update: the .jpg is now from Viralsound, which works like a charm.]

Audioscrobbler is extremely cool as well, doing much of the same things but displaying the results in neat bar graphs. Here's my profile, which has GBV leading by a mile. (Eileen may be amused to discover that she's right between Kanye West and Radiohead on my list.) Still unimplemented -- at least for people who signed on only recently -- are music recommendations and a display of other Audioscrobbler-enabled people who have your same musical tastes.

The problem with both sites/plugins are their constant outages; there are 226,418 submissions currently in the Audioscrobbler queue, which means that what used to be real-time reports now take hours before they show up in your profile. (As I write this at 10:22 in the evening, the songs I listened to this morning are only just showing up.) This, unfortunately, is the result of its popularity, and the fact that it's absolutely free.

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT FROM GUIDED BY VOICES

After almost 20 years, assorted lineups, and countless albums, EPs, singles, triples, stolen bases, misdemeanor convictions, and broken hearts, Dayton, OH's fortunate sons are taking leave of your senses. 'Half Smiles Of The Decomposed,' to be released August 24 on Matador Records, will be the final album from Guided By Voices, one of the most acclaimed independent rock bands of all time.

"This feels like the last album for Guided By Voices," explains Robert Pollard, GBV's lone constant member, lead singer, and famously prolific songwriter. "I've always said that when I make a record that I'm totally satisfied with as befitting a final album, then that will be it. And this is it."

We are the kings of indie rock. When we quit, indie rock will die.

Mix Tape: RT/NU.

I love a little brain dump every now and then; it reminds me of how much useless junk is stuck in my head. My brother has listed what he calls his favorite new wave songs.

My list is more like 48 definitive singles (not necessarily my favorites, and the titles may be wrong) from Philippine "college radio" from the early to mid-'80s (with some exceptions for the late-'80s). There were two stations that played this stuff, 99.5 RT (before it disappointingly switched to an American Top 40 format) and NU 107. (There was a third -- BX? -- but I could never get it in Los Banos on our dinky radio.) The "sound," luckily, spread to other stations, so some singles are bigger than others. This is, in any case, a little snapshot of that era.

I won't call it New Wave, but Filipinos sure called it that. And it's 48 because it's getting late and I can't free-associate any further. In no order:

1. The Cure, "In Between Days" [this should really be "Fire in Cairo"]
2. Psychedelic Furs, "The Ghost in You"
3. The Lotus Eaters, "The First Picture of You"
4. Wire Train, "Chamber of Hellos"
5. Prefab Sprout, "When Love Breaks Down" [better: "Cars and Girls," but that was later]
6. The Style Council, "You're The Best Thing"
7. Seona Dancing, "More to Lose"
8. Aztec Camera, "Still on Fire" [better: "How Men Are," but that was also later]
9. Fiction Factory, "Feels Like Heaven"
10. Modern English, "Melt With You" [though "Ink and Paper" is probably the better song]
11. Vitamin Z, "Burning Flame"
12. Fra Lippo Lippi, "Everytime I See You" [better: "Light and Shade"]
13. Cock Robin, "The Promise You Made"
14. China Crisis, "Wishful Thinking"
15. New Order, "Thieves Like Us" [better: "Temptation"]
16. The Smiths, "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now"
17. Orchestral Maneouvres In The Dark, "Secret"
18. Depeche Mode, "Somebody"
19. Tears For Fears, "Change"
20. A Flock Of Seagulls, "The More You Live, The More You Love"
21. The Icicle Works, "Birds Fly (A Whisper to a Scream)"
22. Red Flag, "Russian Radio" [awful]
23. The Care, "Whatever Possessed You"
24. The Fall, "C.R.E.E.P." [though "Cruisers Creek" and "No Bulbs" are my faves]
25. Gene Loves Jezebel, "The Motion of Love"
26. The Bolshoi, "Away"
27. The Sisters of Mercy, "Walk Away"
28. Big Country, "In a Big Country"
29. The Mighty Lemon Drops, "Inside Out"
30. Nik Kershaw, "Wouldn't It Be Good"
31. When In Rome, "The Promise" [a little later]
32. The Adventures, "Two Rivers"
33. Industry, "State of the Nation"
34. Simple Minds, "(Don't You) Forget About Me" [big everywhere]
35. Everything But The Girl, "When All's Well"
36. Alphaville, "Big in Japan" [horrible]
37. The Alarm, "Absolute Reality" [even worse]
38. Siouxsie and the Banshees, "Cities on Fire" [what a great goddamn song]
39. Xmal Deutschland, "Matador" [another great song]
40. Echo and The Bunnymen, "Seven Seas"
41. Talk Talk, "It's My Life" [way better than what's-her-face's version]
42. Cactus World News, "Worlds Apart"
43. Joy Division, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" [earlier]
44. Propaganda, "Duel"
45. The Primitives, "Crash"
46. Real Life, "Catch Me I'm Falling"
47. The Fixx, "One Thing Leads To Another"
48. Ultravox, "All Stood Still"

Sigh. I feel like firing up Soulseek and looking for this stuff now, but... Man, dial-up sucks.

Your New Favorite Song.

[Update from 2007: the mp3 is sitting here.]

I have a couple of mp3s ready for download and sitting on my server, but I'm interrupting it for an oldie from the early '80s. I had no idea that one of my favorite songs of all time (it's actually listed on my brain dump from last year) -- one of those drop-dead awesome, take-you-all-the-way-back-to-high-school, super-cheesy but oddly moving, Romantic New Wave singles -- was actually sung by one of the funniest people in the world, Ricky Gervais from The Office. (Thanks to Boyong Valencia for the forwarded info.)

Seona Dancing's "More to Lose" keeps being described in current profiles of Gervais as a "failed band," with their songs going nowhere on the charts. But the vagaries of the pop music business in the Philippines made the song a massive, massive hit.

It first popped up, if I remember correctly, on 99.5 RT as an odd "white-label" single of sorts; the DJ (and I can still hear Jeremiah Junior's perfect American accent to this day) would announce it as "Fade" by Medium, or at other times, "Medium" by Fade. Who knows why -- for about a year, they would also play an "exclusive" extended mix of the song, and insert a "99.5 RT" station ID into the middle of the instrumental break to prevent other radio stations from playing it. (This also meant that I couldn't tape the damn song on my little Sony portable radio.)

Finally, they revealed the real title of the song and band after much hoopla ("Is it 'Fade' by Medium? Or is it 'Medium' by Fade?") -- not that it mattered, since no one had heard of Seona Dancing anyhow. It was finally properly released on vinyl on a local New Wave compilation, which I think I still have back home, sharing a side with "Fire in Cairo" and "Hongkong Garden," and accompanied by this wrongly-scaled picture. Is the future David Brent the one cupping his chin? And surely he can't be the guy in the sailor hat?

Admittedly, the lyrics were bad. I've edited them a little, but I can't vouch for their accuracy because of that Slough accent. =)

We used to cry
About the day when one of us might fall
Weak and blindly into another's arms

Demands are gained from jealousies
Would flow like water drowning us
But leaving us with just another
Lover's false alarm

And now it's over
Both of us free
But I feel colder

A thousand tortured lives have fallen
Wounded dying cut down by the
Questions that we've sharpened
Just to save our losing days

We thought we'd nothing more to lose
We'd tear our hearts with jagged truths
And everything we'd hung to for so long
Just slipped away

And now it's over
Both of us free
And I feel colder

I was tired of thinking that
Our love can shine your thoughts
Of our arrangements
Were really not like mine

I thought it over
And it was plain to see the love you said
You once needed
Could just not come from me

And now it's over
Both of us free
And I feel colder

And now we're moving to new beginnings
But as we move we looked once behind
To see what we might find out
Lost loves and old thoughts of our nights of winnings
That lunge, tear and grasp
at lost wanting minds

But Good Lord, Ricky Gervais. Who would have known? So this is where free love on the freelove freeway comes from.

So here you go, folks: all six minutes and three seconds of this masterpiece.

Hear it (5.7 mb).

Catching Up.

I could write about the unexploded World War II mortar they found in Fort Funston this morning while we were walking the dog and the baby, or the Asian American Studies conference in Boston, or the deformed fetuses at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, or buying snacks at Zabar's, or hanging out with Happy and Clarissa in their Philly apartment, or the exceedingly comfortable beds at the Fairmont Copley Square Hotel, or playing in a playground in 40-degree weather on the Upper West Side, or the awesome Five Friends from Japan exhibit at the Children's Museum of Boston, or the tongue sandwich at Artie's, or the transplanted Chinese house in the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, or drinking a pint of Magic Hat No. 9 again with Romeo at the Westside Brewing Company, or procrastinating about the papers I'm supposed to comment on for a conference at Berkeley in a few days, or procrastinating about grading student papers on heavy metal (I'm trying to get them to think about how "the mainstream" is politically constituted), or procrastinating about reading an ethnography we're discussing in a few days, but I won't.

No, what I'll be writing about is how I removed my BlogAmp script on the right column and changed it to an Audioscrobbler link instead. I just registered (there were bugs with the server for a long time, but they're fixed now), but it tracks what you're playing and how often you play it. Unfortunately I won't get any recommendations or whatnot until I've submitted 250 songs or so -- but that shouldn't be difficult because I often have music playing anyway. The best part is that it works with the best players out there (QCD, Winamp, iTunes). Now loading up my blog page will take a little less time, and the two jpgs there will probably stay until the end of 2004...

Your New Favorite Song.

For those who were a tad disappointed with the follow-up albums to Matthew Sweet's masterpiece Girlfriend -- there have been a few songs here and there, but not much, though the epic In Reverse album comes close -- Sweet's latest release, Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu finds him near the top of his form. This album -- a love letter of sorts to his Japanese fans -- reunites the Girlfriend players on some tracks; the fact that the album was recorded in something like three days gives it a glowing, hot immediacy that his more recent output (particularly the collaborative Thorns album) lacks.

"The Ocean in Between" was one of my favorite songs of 2003; like almost all of Girlfriend -- and most of the tracks on the latest album -- the song is nearly perfect pop.

(I would have uploaded this last year, but there was some odd copyright stuff with the Japanese import CD I had, making it impossible to play in a computer.)

Hear it. (3.85 mb)

(Does anyone download this stuff, by the way?)

Jumping on the Music Geek Bandwagon.

I give up.

1. Your favourite song with the name of a city in the title or text.
"(Don't Go Back To) Rockville" by R.E.M.

2. A song you've listened to repeatedly when you were depressed at some point in your life.
"I Know It's Over" by the Smiths.

3. Ever bought an entire album just for one song and winded up disliking everything but that song? Gimme that song.
Surely this is what drove kids to Napster... let's see: "Take On Me" by A-Ha. I mean, good lord, how many people ever got past that first song off Hunting High and Low? (I know, there will be fans of "The Sun Always Shines On T.V." out there...)

4. A song whose lyrics you thought you knew in the past, but about which you later learned you were incorrect.
"Bad Sneakers" by Steely Dan. "One more chimp who isn't here?" ("Chick" would have been so much cooler.)

5. Your least favourite song on one of your favourite albums of all time.
"Love You To" by the Beatles, off Revolver.

6. A song you like by someone you find physically unattractive or otherwise repellent.
"Total War" by NON. Not physically unattractive, but repellent.

7. Your favorite song that has expletives in it that's not by Liz Phair.
"Straight Up Nigga" by Ice-T. ("I'm a nigga, not a Colored man / Or a Black, or a Negro / Or an Afro-American, I'm all that / Yes I was born in America true / Does South Central / Look like America to you?")

8. A song that sounds as if it's by someone British but isn't.
"Hardcore UFOs" by Guided By Voices.

9. A song you like (possibly from your past) that took you forever to finally locate a copy of.
"Umagang Kay Ganda" by Ray-An Fuentes and Tillie Moreno.

10. A song that reminds you of spring but doesn't mention spring at all.
"Is This Love" by Bob Marley and The Wailers.

11. A song that sounds to you like being happy feels.
"More Today than Yesterday" by Spiral Starecase.

12. Your favourite song from a non-soundtrack compilation album.
"Let Me Be The One" by Matthew Sweet (from If I Were A Carpenter).

13. A song from your past that would be considered politically incorrect now (and possibly was then).
"Wives and Lovers" by Burt Bacharach.

14. A song sung by an overweight person.
"Set Adrift on Memory Bliss" by P.M. Dawn.

15. A song you actually like by an artist you otherwise hate.
I'll be totally pilloried for this, but "Silhouette" by Kenny G brings back good memories of being utterly trashed on a beach in Boracay in 1990.

16. A song by a band that features three or more female members.
"Eternal Flame" by the Bangles.

17. One of the earliest songs that you can remember listening to.
"Sweet Caroline" by the Ray Conniff Singers.

18. A song you've been mocked by friends for liking.
"Mmmbop" by Hanson.

19. A really good cover version you think no one else has heard.
"The Nearness of You" by 10,000 Maniacs. (Okay, obviously I and a few hundred other people -- and thousands more on their last tour -- saw Natalie Merchant sing this a cappella, but the chances are you didn't hear it.)

20. A song that has helped cheer you up (or empowered you somehow) after a break-up or otherwise difficult situation.
"Free Again" by Alex Chilton.

Extra tracks, if you have more room:
21. A song you've listened to while fucking/masturbating. AND/OR
Too much information, sorry.

22. A song not in English—preferably a foreign-language version of an English-language hit.
Tons -- "Day Tripper" by the Pinoy Beatles kept buzzing around my head last year. I have around here somewhere a few discs' worth of cover versions of "Whole Lotta Love," "Red Red Wine," and "These Boots Are Made For Walking," and there's a Dutch version of "Red Red Wine" which totally cracks me up. (And a breathy French version of "Boots" that's even better than Nancy's.) Oh, and Faye Wong's cover of that Cranberries song.

All of the above sounds like an atrocious mix CD, though.

Your New Favorite "Song."

With all the talk of Satan and all I thought I'd give you some Satan for real. This track comes courtesy of A. A. Allen -- actually, he didn't give me permission, but you folks know what I mean: if you like what you hear, seek out the CD. (Other Allen recordings, including videotapes, are available online as well.)

The album, credited to the A.A. Allen Miracle Revival Ministries, is entitled Crying Demons and is out on the Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God label. No, it's not his label, but Allen did sell these recordings for $3 a pop until they all burned mysteriously in some warehouse fire. One of the most popular evangelists of his time, Allen is one of those people credited with the creation of the televangelist movement; as you see in his biography in the link above, there's even a Philippine connection!

Anyhow, I thought you folks might like this track -- to quote the album's subtitle, it's an "Amazing Recording[s] Of Demons Speaking Through People Who Are Possessed By Them." It doesn't matter, quite frankly, whether you believe it's a real exorcism or not -- it's both inadvertently silly and, most important, quite creepy at the same time.

The mp3 is 22 minutes long, but I've reduced the quality to mono and a low bitrate so it's a more manageable 5 megs. (The original source material was scratchy vinyl anyhow.)

Hear it. (5.04 mb)

Your New Favorite Song.

In partial support of Grey Tuesday, here's something for you folks to listen to: DJ Danger Mouse's "Dirt off Your Shoulder."

The Grey Album isn't that great of an album. For starters, you have to be a big fan of Jay-Z's The Black Album, and while Hova's in very fine form in it, it's just not The Blueprint or Unplugged