Np: graham parker squeezing out the sparks. Such a great album.
I went to the fetus on Saturday with a list of parker albums I was missing. I found two of them in the "new" used sections (up escalator, the real macaw and struck by lightning--which I already had, but couldn't pass it up). For 5.99 each (import versions with bonus tracks). also found another grey area at cheapo. can't get much better than that.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
am i right? am i wrong? or am i just dreaming?
Psycho Soundtrack?
btw, as i was listening to Midnight Express last week, i couldn't help but think that i can't remember the last drop you in your tracks song from a movie. back in the 70's and 80's there wasn't a week that didn't have a movie theme song in the top 40 (hell...most times in the top 10). and now (other than those twilight soundtracks, which really aren't that memorable) it just seems like a movie theme ghost town (and the best song nominees from the last few oscars would seem to support my theory)
at least that is my impression. Any movie soundtrack fans out there care to debunk?
btw, as i was listening to Midnight Express last week, i couldn't help but think that i can't remember the last drop you in your tracks song from a movie. back in the 70's and 80's there wasn't a week that didn't have a movie theme song in the top 40 (hell...most times in the top 10). and now (other than those twilight soundtracks, which really aren't that memorable) it just seems like a movie theme ghost town (and the best song nominees from the last few oscars would seem to support my theory)
at least that is my impression. Any movie soundtrack fans out there care to debunk?
Monday, March 14, 2011
Happiness Is In Your Hand
short shot streams:
Dodos-In Color: so close but yet so far. animal collective have much to answer for
Pains of Being Pure at Heart-Belong: it's wrong to expect another "young adult friction" or "higher than the stars", but if progress is silversun pickups (i.e., smashing pumpkins) i'm all for creative rut and debut v. 2.
Le Sera-s/t: sounded so much better in a short sound bite.
Mountain Goats-All Eternals Deck: The MGs have almost become the indie equivalent to eating your vegetables. Lots to digest, purportedly good for you, and better off as a side dish instead of the main meal. 'cept i kinda hate green veggies (except for peas).
Noah and the Whale-Last Night on Earth: Wha???? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? I was ready to write this band off after the dreckian First Day of Spring and then they come out with this? which not only has a pulse, and songs, and charm and WTF? This is a really good disc, perfectly paced between some shockingly upbeat songs (almost disco, almost rocking) and some kinda seemingly po-faced ballads (wild thing, which i love, isn't even the best of the batch). There's even an inescapably catchy could be a single (although results my vary and your ICCBAS might not be the same as mine) that i could help but hit replay on a few too many times. this is a huge, delightful surprise.
Dodos-In Color: so close but yet so far. animal collective have much to answer for
Pains of Being Pure at Heart-Belong: it's wrong to expect another "young adult friction" or "higher than the stars", but if progress is silversun pickups (i.e., smashing pumpkins) i'm all for creative rut and debut v. 2.
Le Sera-s/t: sounded so much better in a short sound bite.
Mountain Goats-All Eternals Deck: The MGs have almost become the indie equivalent to eating your vegetables. Lots to digest, purportedly good for you, and better off as a side dish instead of the main meal. 'cept i kinda hate green veggies (except for peas).
Noah and the Whale-Last Night on Earth: Wha???? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? I was ready to write this band off after the dreckian First Day of Spring and then they come out with this? which not only has a pulse, and songs, and charm and WTF? This is a really good disc, perfectly paced between some shockingly upbeat songs (almost disco, almost rocking) and some kinda seemingly po-faced ballads (wild thing, which i love, isn't even the best of the batch). There's even an inescapably catchy could be a single (although results my vary and your ICCBAS might not be the same as mine) that i could help but hit replay on a few too many times. this is a huge, delightful surprise.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
To Show or Not To Show
Men Triple Rock 3/16
Dodos Cedar 3/23
RAA First Ave 3/25 (have tix)
BSP Cedar 3/29
Raveonettes Fine Line 4/7
Cults 7th St 4/8
Cut Copy First Ave 4/9
Wire First Ave 4/10 (back to back to back to back? OMG!)
Destroyer Cedar 4/12
Starfucker Triple Rock 4/14
TV on the Radio First Ave 4/23, 4/24
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart/Twin Shadow Triple Rock (have tix) 4/25
The Kills First Ave 5/5
Neon Indian 7th St 5/19
Friendly Fires Varsity 6/1
Architecture In Helsinki Varsity 6/9
Katy Perry The X 7/9
Dodos Cedar 3/23
RAA First Ave 3/25 (have tix)
BSP Cedar 3/29
Raveonettes Fine Line 4/7
Cults 7th St 4/8
Cut Copy First Ave 4/9
Wire First Ave 4/10 (back to back to back to back? OMG!)
Destroyer Cedar 4/12
Starfucker Triple Rock 4/14
TV on the Radio First Ave 4/23, 4/24
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart/Twin Shadow Triple Rock (have tix) 4/25
The Kills First Ave 5/5
Neon Indian 7th St 5/19
Friendly Fires Varsity 6/1
Architecture In Helsinki Varsity 6/9
Katy Perry The X 7/9
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Oh, To Be Justin's Hand
kinda demeaning to women innit?
if i had a band, i'd name it matt's beard.
i sorta miss Flight of the Conchords. but probably not really.
if i had a band, i'd name it matt's beard.
i sorta miss Flight of the Conchords. but probably not really.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Collapse into Yesterday
Finally got through R.E.M.'s new one (busy, highly distractable morning) Granted it was only one listen, but I liked it. Course, i'm totally not interested in the whole "their best since....." blah-dery, but at least i stayed interested throughout the whole album (even though at times i felt like i was listening to it from 2 rooms away...but that maybe be a function of me and my morning more than the album....and besides....on some of their best stuff, that was exactly the feeling i would get even when i had my ear pressed up the speaker). Michael sounds good, the band has a lot of energy, and even the ballads have some momentum to them. It seems as though ACCELERATE wasn't an abberation.
I do have to say though that from the first listen, nothing really jumped out at me, and i suspect their ability to write a drop dead great song has passed, but there were plenty of moments that have hook potential. it's earned another couple listens and we'll see how it fits into the REM canon.
I wonder what a fanclub member thinks about it.
I do have to say though that from the first listen, nothing really jumped out at me, and i suspect their ability to write a drop dead great song has passed, but there were plenty of moments that have hook potential. it's earned another couple listens and we'll see how it fits into the REM canon.
I wonder what a fanclub member thinks about it.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
How I Dearly Wish I Was Not Here
Went to ireland last week for work. The itinerary was awful, minneapolis to amsterdam, amsterdam to dublin, dublin to galway and then back again. Worse yet, we worked (and by worked, i include the 3 hour dinners each night) some long ass days, so i didn't have a ton of free time.
but i did stop in the HMV store in galway (15 minutes after arrival, unsurprisingly). they had the dvd release of THE ILLUSIONIST (oscar nominated animated feature). region two, but it does play on my computer, so good enough. and maybe i can flip it on amazon.
for music, the pickings were kinda slim. apparently, hmv-ireland doesn't dig Q magazine cos i wasn't finding many of the interesting releases, and the sticker shock of some of them (20 euros for a new cd?) rocked me back on my heels a bit.
i did grab a copy of the hurts disc (am deeply hooked into that "Sunday" song, although the rest of the disc is kinda ho hum). also got discs by the halves (they have such cool cd packaging), the hollows (not quite there, but intriguing) and windings (my favorite of the bunch).
dublin would have been fun, cos i'd have a tower and an hmv and i seem to recall a couple independent shops from another visit, but on thursday, when we were supposed to head back to dublin around 5, my companions decided it would be great to shop in the quaint little shops in galway town, so we didn't get to dublin until late (after all the stores there had closed) and with an early flight to amsterdam the next morning, i didn't have any time to pick in dublin. boo-hoo me.
but i delayed my flight back to the states on friday (so i could hang with my friend Paul) so i had some time to haunt the shops there. oddly enough, i didn't make it in the Free Record Shop. i saw one at the centraal train station, but i was weighted down with my bags then. and i did search for the one by the dam, but didn't find it until later on saturday when i didn't have time. i did find a Fame store (also close to the dam) and spent an hour flipping through the bins. in the middle of the store they had a big display of wounded bird cd releases. lots of fun re-issues (ellen foley, don felder, wet willie, gary wright, seals and crofts) good stuff, but spendy and it's all in print in the US, so no point in picking it up.
i did pick up the first OMD disc (remastered with bonus tracks of course) and the re-released viva hate (ditto on the bonus tracks) for 5 euros i figured what the heck. my cool find there was sitting on the boxed set shelf. Rupert Holmes' cast of characters box set (all his albums plus some rarities on a 5 disc set). of course, i checked with melloy before i grabbed it, so i knew i wasn't overpaying (hoo-ray for me, i listed it and it has already sold for $30 more than i paid!)
A guy at the Fame store told me about another store that had used, but the direction utterly cornfused me (i'm sure his directions were good, it was my understanding that was bad) but when i mentioned the store to Paul, he more or less (more or less means 30 minutes wandering around and asking random strangers) knew where it was (and he'd been there before).
Concerto was the name of the store and it was pretty cool. three building, three levels worth of new and new music. definitely a mistake to have left this place to the very last hour of free time i had, but fun to pick through the used pop/rock section. got some goodies, the first rifles disc, the diva release of icehouse's greatest, a disky version of LRB's backstage pass live album, vol 1 of the art vandelay stuff from graham parker (lots of rarities) and the infadels first disc amongst some other stuff. some worth more than others, but all cool stuff. fun shop, gonna plan for more time next time (and annoyingly, it was only a couple canals and maybe two streets away from my hotel.....so close, but such a tight trip)
and of course, i got to play DJ for paul again, but the mp3 version instead of the cd version with me sitting by the stereo and driving him nuts by playing 6 second snippets of songs. ("what, you don't have the bonus tracks from High Violet? what???? you've NEVER heard of Radio Dept? Who are you and what the heck have you been listening to besides beat up grateful dead albums? You would Love David Bazan!!!!") fun stuff. at least the back side of the trip had some upside. and although there's nothing that could be done about the long ass trip back home, at least i had a super cool mp3 player that kept me more than entertained.
but i did stop in the HMV store in galway (15 minutes after arrival, unsurprisingly). they had the dvd release of THE ILLUSIONIST (oscar nominated animated feature). region two, but it does play on my computer, so good enough. and maybe i can flip it on amazon.
for music, the pickings were kinda slim. apparently, hmv-ireland doesn't dig Q magazine cos i wasn't finding many of the interesting releases, and the sticker shock of some of them (20 euros for a new cd?) rocked me back on my heels a bit.
i did grab a copy of the hurts disc (am deeply hooked into that "Sunday" song, although the rest of the disc is kinda ho hum). also got discs by the halves (they have such cool cd packaging), the hollows (not quite there, but intriguing) and windings (my favorite of the bunch).
dublin would have been fun, cos i'd have a tower and an hmv and i seem to recall a couple independent shops from another visit, but on thursday, when we were supposed to head back to dublin around 5, my companions decided it would be great to shop in the quaint little shops in galway town, so we didn't get to dublin until late (after all the stores there had closed) and with an early flight to amsterdam the next morning, i didn't have any time to pick in dublin. boo-hoo me.
but i delayed my flight back to the states on friday (so i could hang with my friend Paul) so i had some time to haunt the shops there. oddly enough, i didn't make it in the Free Record Shop. i saw one at the centraal train station, but i was weighted down with my bags then. and i did search for the one by the dam, but didn't find it until later on saturday when i didn't have time. i did find a Fame store (also close to the dam) and spent an hour flipping through the bins. in the middle of the store they had a big display of wounded bird cd releases. lots of fun re-issues (ellen foley, don felder, wet willie, gary wright, seals and crofts) good stuff, but spendy and it's all in print in the US, so no point in picking it up.
i did pick up the first OMD disc (remastered with bonus tracks of course) and the re-released viva hate (ditto on the bonus tracks) for 5 euros i figured what the heck. my cool find there was sitting on the boxed set shelf. Rupert Holmes' cast of characters box set (all his albums plus some rarities on a 5 disc set). of course, i checked with melloy before i grabbed it, so i knew i wasn't overpaying (hoo-ray for me, i listed it and it has already sold for $30 more than i paid!)
A guy at the Fame store told me about another store that had used, but the direction utterly cornfused me (i'm sure his directions were good, it was my understanding that was bad) but when i mentioned the store to Paul, he more or less (more or less means 30 minutes wandering around and asking random strangers) knew where it was (and he'd been there before).
Concerto was the name of the store and it was pretty cool. three building, three levels worth of new and new music. definitely a mistake to have left this place to the very last hour of free time i had, but fun to pick through the used pop/rock section. got some goodies, the first rifles disc, the diva release of icehouse's greatest, a disky version of LRB's backstage pass live album, vol 1 of the art vandelay stuff from graham parker (lots of rarities) and the infadels first disc amongst some other stuff. some worth more than others, but all cool stuff. fun shop, gonna plan for more time next time (and annoyingly, it was only a couple canals and maybe two streets away from my hotel.....so close, but such a tight trip)
and of course, i got to play DJ for paul again, but the mp3 version instead of the cd version with me sitting by the stereo and driving him nuts by playing 6 second snippets of songs. ("what, you don't have the bonus tracks from High Violet? what???? you've NEVER heard of Radio Dept? Who are you and what the heck have you been listening to besides beat up grateful dead albums? You would Love David Bazan!!!!") fun stuff. at least the back side of the trip had some upside. and although there's nothing that could be done about the long ass trip back home, at least i had a super cool mp3 player that kept me more than entertained.
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