I Just Changed Comedy With This Video
This Guy Keeps Saying He Was The Drummer In Letters to Cleo. I really do love Letters to Cleo.
This Guy Keeps Saying He Was The Drummer In Letters to Cleo. I really do love Letters to Cleo.
Listening to Exile in Guyville. What is it about this CD that blew everyone, including me, away when it came out so hard that we all still love it. And yet everyone younger who discovers it seems so underwhelmed? I guess it needs all the weirdness of 1993 wrapped around it to make perfect sense. Related by separate: Kim Deal and Pixies singing Gigantic live in 1988.
My shyer cat now likes to crawl on me and sleep when I’m on my couch typing on my laptop. It’s been a six year long battle of constantly-being-nice to get to this point.
I am going to film a small part for the new Electric Company on Wednesday. Cool, right?
Tomorrow night I meet [...]
Just re-listened to They Might Be Giants first album and, no surprise, loved it. What I especially loved was re-hearing all the short, weird songs that pepper that playlist. The reference to Phil Ochs in “The Day”; the super upbeat harmonies for “Hope That I Get Old Before I Die”; the put-on rednecky tone of “Alienation’s For The RIch” and atonal harmonies of “Toddler Highway” and literally phoned-in guitar of “Absolutely Bill’s Mood” and Johnny Cash sample in “Chess Piece Face.” I love that stuff.
That’s what you miss on greatest hits collections or mixtapes or best-of lists. The strange not-as-good filler tracks. But they are the ones that really give the album its life! Sure “Don’t Let’s Start” and [...]
Answer any or all:
I kid the Pitchfork top 100 of 2009! I give Pitchfork top 100 of 2009 a hard time with all its meandering electronic crap blankets! But it introduced me to the hilarious/awesome song “Rockin’ That Shit” so we’re even! We’re even Pitchfork top 100 of 2009! EVEN!
I think “You Won’t See Me” might be my favorite song on Rubber Soul. For the Oooh La Las, of course.
My favorite personal Beatles memory is hearing “I’ve Just A Seen A Face” for the first time, which happened in my friend Dave’s room in 1987 when the first batch of Beatles CDs came out. At that time, I was 16 years old and not really a Beatles fan. I had a copy of The White Album on cassette which I thought was cool, and I had tried to figure out what the big deal was with Sgt. Pepper’s and couldn’t. The Beatles were very squarely an “oldies” band in my mind and hopelessly out of date. Also, they were synonymous with “the 60s” and I was sick of the 60s.
When my friend Dave bought all of the [...]
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Almost three years ago, I wrote a post about how that Great Britain seemed to produce great bands whereas America produced great solo acts — and was that indicative of the two cultures? I threw in how I couldn’t understand why British music magazines made a big deal about the Oasis album “What’s the Story Morning Glory?” About once a month someone adds a comment, usually just listing their favorite bands. Sometimes I get a fun one from someone angry and me and at American for being so shitty with their music. Like this last one:
morning glory’s up there on most british music charts solely because of its cultural significance and its meaning. Definitely Maybe’s a much better [...]
Red Shoes, by Elvis Costello and the Attractions on Top of the Pops, 1977. Probably my favorite of all his songs if I had to pick one. The music is happy and soaring, the lyrics are bitter and self-impressed without being too complicated. Me likes! The first line “I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused” is an almost-too-on-the-nose description of the philosophy of everyone that I know!
Here’s a fast punky live version from 1978, and then a solo version he did two years ago in Albany.
YouTube had it on my personalized front page and I am now sharing it [...]
I was never really into Michael Jackson, but I respected how powerfully pervasive his popularity was.
1) My friend Greg Lancaster could reproduce with impressive accuracy Michael Jackson’s dance from the Motown 25th Anniversary show where he did the moonwalk the first time. We had all been about 12 when that special was on and I for one didn’t give a crap about it. Bloom County made fun of Michael Jackson and so therefore so did I. But I guess Greg had been spellbound. In the fall of 1988, during our freshman year at UConn, at a party with people who would become my best friends in the world though at that time they were mere acquaintances, Greg at one [...]