adrian is rad

So the One AM Radio is having a contest with their new song (found here or at the myspace page) and I’m trying to put off some other work, so I’m going to enter. The contest: Ok, let’s do this: the first person to transcribe all the lyrics correctly will get a prize. Type them out, and post them on your facebook page, your blog, website, or something like that, and send us the link.

It’s a good song, by the way. I recommend checking it out.

Oh oh oh oh oh (4x)

A old photo of your new lover
That you discovered in a book she left
Shot in some sun-drenched piazza
Or whatever in Rome or where ever it is she went.
There a sly glint in her eye
And you can only guess at what it might have meant

There’s a world without you.
There’s a world without you.
Oh oh oh oh oh (2x)

A new photo of your old lover
That you discovered to your chagrin
It’s been so long since it all went sunder
That you stopped wondering where she’s been.
Her hair’s changed. Her clothes are strange
At a party where the likes of you would never get in.

There’s a world without you.
Yeah, there’s a world without you.
There’s a world without you.
Yeah, there’s a world without you.

You don’t want the news if you’re not a part of it.
Even if it’s true you still fall apart a bit.
You don’t want the news if you’re not at the heart of it.
Even if it’s true.
Even if it’s true.

You don’t want the news if you’re not a part of it.
Even if it’s true you still fall apart a bit.
You don’t want the news if you’re not at the heart of it.
Even if it’s true.
Even if it’s true.

There’s a world without you.
Yeah, there’s a world without you.
There’s a world without you.
Yeah, here’s a world without you.

Oh

Oh oh oh oh oh (8x)

I’m going to tell you a story every day for the week.

How I came to talking to the agitated man on the other end of the phone at 2am starts three years earlier in a fourth floor rock club in Pittsburgh that–no joke–had a chain-link fence around the bar.

That bar was Club Laga where Andy’s dad had dropped us to go see Bonnie Prince Billy. I hadn’t heard of the band or the frontman Will Oldham, besides Andy’s warbly voiced impersonation of his song “I am a Cinematographer”, which he mostly used to poke fun at my own uncertain singing. But I watched the band, backlit with moody blue light, and enjoyed the show.

“That one song was really good”. Andy knew what I meant. “It’s ‘I See a Darkness’ and Johnny Cash recorded a cover of it.”

Three years later and I, like many other indie rockers–oh fine, I’ll say it, hipsters–had ‘discovered’ Johnny Cash, so when American IV came out, I was playing it on my new radio show.

I played “Personal Jesus”; the phone rang. The caller seemed agitated, almost irate. “Why are you playing Johnny Cash?!”

I wanted to defend my selection but suddenly I wasn’t sure. “Um, I dunno, because I like it,” I mumbled. “Because he’s good I guess?”

“Damn right he’s good! He’s fucking great!”

I’m going to tell you a story every day for the week.

I was in the men’s room on the second floor building 14N, the music floor of the arts building, and I was crying. You might imagine the day I learned how to cry again would have been filled with all-out bawling or hours of tears. Or that fourteen dry-eyed years would come to an end because some catastrophic event. You might be wrong.

I don’t remember when I stopped crying, but as a youngster I cried easily. I’m not sure why; I don’t think I was particularly insecure or sad. In fact, I remember being happy and care-free, but something minor would happen and my eyes would well up and I’m be sniffling and wiping my nose on my sleeve like kids are wont to do.

I don’t remember when I realized I’d forgotten how to cry. I thought I just didn’t have a reason to cry, perhaps. I do remember wanting to cry, curled up in a ball on my floor after my first girlfriend broke up with me and waiting for the tears to come. I waited for hours. They didn’t come.

But I do remember when I learned how to cry again. It was February. It was bitterly cold in Boston. I was halfway through my freshman year and to say things weren’t going my way is an understatement. Going from being a top student at a regular Joe high school to MIT could be the archetype of going from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a big pond.

And so my sense of identity started to erode. The Adrian Bischoff of my mind was a good student, the best student; I was doing okay in my classes. He was a good Christian; I spent my days doubting and questioning. He was a good friend; I had no grasp of how to help my friends cope with a recent suicide of a person close to many of them.

And he was a good musician, which brings us to the second floor of 14N. There was a spot open in the orchestra for fourth trumpet on the Mahler and I wanted it. The Italian director had me audition in his office and, though it didn’t go horribly, he picked apart my intonation and my phrasing. When he was finished, I speed walked to the bathroom and as I walked through the door, I put my forehead against the cold window and my shoulders shuddered and my eyes wet my cheeks.

I love this clip. Among other reasons why, it reminds me of how great it is to just open up and sing along with gusto.

It should be noted that Mark Kozelek (of Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon and solo) is the first to start singing.

A couple months ago I read two books in a row with different views of the American South and I’ve been meaning to review them together.

The first was Singing Family of the Cumberlands by Jean Ritchie. It was a recommended book for a class I took in the fall of 2002 and I’m glad I finally decided to read it.

Jean Ritchie was the youngest of thirteen children, growing up in Viper, Kentucky, in the Appalachian Mountains. Her family was well known–and well documented–for singing ballads, in the Anglo-American folk tradition. That is to say, they sang ballads that came over with English, Scottish and Irish settlers and could still be found on both sides of the Atlantic. The best documented of these were the Child Ballads, but that could take up a whole lot more space if I decided to talk about those.

Written in 1955, the book is a memoir of her childhood. As fascinating as her descriptions of growing up in the early part of the 20th century in an isolated part of the Appalachians are–and they are–what really makes this book special is the songs. Interspersed in the book are transcriptions of the ballads. Say there’s a vignette about learning a particular song around a fireplace on Christmas. Well, the song is there in the book, both music and words, if you want to sing along.

The writing is wonderful and evocative, too. She immediately sets quite conversational tone and it feels like she’s telling you her family stories from the armchair next to you. In that sense, it reminds me a lot of Cash by Johnny Cash. The stories of her childhood, drenched in music, of course, cover the gambit: the rough times, the hard work, and the good times. Overall there is a bit of rose-colored glasses for the simple old times, but she also doesn’t the reader from hearing about the hard times.

If you have any interest in Appalachian music or culture, I’d recommend this book. You can pick it up at amazon.

After having some of my favorite songwriters refer to Flannery O’Connor–particularly Sufjan Stevens and David Bazan–I decided I’d read some of her works.

If you’re unfamiliar with her writing, she was a classic Southern Gothic writer, writing stories of the South with dark, twisted characters and plots. The stories are written in a dense prose and some take quite a bit of effort to wade through, but the best among them are quite amazing stories. She really sucked me in to the lives and worlds of her characters and even when I saw a hint of the outcome, I still enjoyed reading it.

She’s also known as a Catholic writer, but more often than not, if religion enters the story at all, it’s much more ambiguous or complex than one might expect from someone so well known to be writing from a religious point of view.

She died quite young and the complete short stories covers a lot of her output. Besides the stories, she only wrote two novels. And with anything complete you get not only the greatest hits, but the stuff in between and the warm-up in the beginning. If I had to do it over, I might start with a selection of her short stories, but if you’re a completest, this is for you.

You can also pick this one up from amazon.

The day’s come and gone and I haven’t made any mention of my annual charitable giving. I’m not donating money this year, at least not yet. I will be returning to Ingwavuma, in rural Zululand for a couple weeks this time.

A family friend works there for an NGO and I’ll be helping out with the Children’s Radio Project through that organization. As you may have guessed, I was tapped for this because I am/ was a radio star.

I’ll be returning to Cape Town on September 18 via either St. Lucia or Hluhluwe plus Durban.

I have my malaria pills, bug spray, sun block, and a charged camera with an empty memory card. Bucket showers, here I come.

I’ll probably have intermittent internet up there, so I might not be posting a lot. Feel free to email me in the meantime to get the scoop.

When you’re not working, any weekend can be a three day weekend[1]. I decided this would be in–Saturday through Monday. It was a good one. Really good.

three girls in Khayelitsha

Saturday

Saturday I did not expect. A friend of a friend asked me to help with a podcast that she helps with at a school in Khayelitsha. (She wanted my help because of all my experience in radio.) I helped with it; that was pretty good but rather straight forward. Then, it turns out, one students’ mom was performing a sangoma ceremony so we went as unannounced (but invited) guests. I’d been to a sangoma ceremony before on a township tour, but that this was genuine–that it was not done for tourists was special. Twenty, thirty people packed into a tiny house watching, singing, clapping, dancing during the ceremony.

After that, a kid of my parents’ friends was having a birthday party and I went. I met some cool people, chatted, had a couple drinks and some good food. I may have someone to watch some NFL with and some other people to play pub trivia with now, so that’s good.

Cape Town CBD plus Green Point (stadium, in construction, at left)

Sunday

Sunday was clear–crystal clear blue skies–and warm for the first time in a while, so that meant going up Table Mountain by foot. After parking mid-morning, it was a beautiful but strenuous hike up. It’s just about straight up for 3km straight. There are more stairs (made of rocks) than switchbacks and it’s step after step, one foot in front of the others. At the top it was gorgeous, as always, but I think some of the best parts are on the hike up. I meant to take the cable way down, but the high winds forced its closure for the day, so hiking back down was the option and that’s what I did. I still ache…

the Atlantic plus wildflowers

Monday

Monday I went to the Postberg peninsula in the West Coast National Park[2] to see the wild flowers. The trip up there was wonderful: the R27–the West Coast Road as they call it–goes from city to nothing very quickly. It’s a dead straight shot with no buildings and nothing but plains and a glimpse of the ocean for most of it.

The national park itself is fairly plain, but it has nice unspoiled beaches and lagoons. The peninsula was filled abundantly with wildflowers of yellows, whites, oranges and purples. It was really beautiful and worth the day trip.

I didn’t really plan for a three day weekend or really any of this, but that’s how it turned out. Pretty nice, I have to say.

[1] It could be argued that it’s always the weekend in such cases, but I feel like that would require always doing weekend activities.

[2] Can you believe I got a card that will get me into every national park for a year for ~$30?? Ridiculous!

Three unrelated topics that are on my mind.

On race: I forgot how blunt people[1] can be about race in South Africa. Having lived in places where mentioning race is equated with racism, it’s a bit shocking. I wouldn’t say these people are racist just for being aware of race–it’s simply a nation that’s very conscious of race as it was a very prominent difference for many years. There’s still racism, of course, it’s just not always the same as the blunt language.

On baseball: I watched a baseball game this afternoon. ESPN World replayed last night’s BoSox vs. Tampa Bay game. I didn’t realize they aired baseball in this market–though I do remember them airing pennant-hunt and playoff games in Asia when I was there in the fall a couple years ago, but those markets are much more interested in baseball than this one. I also saw an ad for Sports Center, though it’s the world edition so we’ll see how it is. Maybe the top 10 plays will still be good.

On coincidental encounters: Yesterday at a small shopping center, I passed two American girls (judging by accents), one of whom was wearing a University of San Francisco sweatshirt. Not only is that that town I just came from, I was on the USF campus the day before I left. Not in South Africa, but there was nevertheless an odd coincidence on Tuesday. We ran into a friend of my aunt’s while out on a walk with her dog in a small town outside London and it turns out she’s about to go to San Francisco to visit her brother. Her brother lives in Noe Valley on 26th St., which is probably within five blocks of where I just lived in SF (also on 26th St.). And I’ve undoubtedly walked by his house as I used to walk up 26th when I needed some peace and quiet.

[1] By “people” I mostly mean people of my parents’ generation. I have had few lengthy conversations with people my age in South Africa and their attitudes are possibly/ probably different.

Okay, it’s just preposterous to call this a June mixtape. But I have something planned for July already.

This is the 32nd mixtape I’ve done since I started these three years ago. It may be my last for a while. I might get one more in before I leave for SA. We’ll see.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->library->import playlist and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2009june in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

Go ahead and check out the playlist (below) or the liner notes.

Adrian’s June 2009 mixtape (mediafire link)

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

The playlist:

1. The National Wasp Nest
2. Octopus Project Wet Gold
3. Bombadil So Many Ways to Die
4. Silver Scooter Goodbye
5. Weezer I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams
6. Grand Lake Concrete Blonde on Blonde
7. Leo Kottke The Driving Year of the Nail
8. Joe Pug A Thousand Men
9. The Woodlands Until the Day Dims
10. Two Sheds You (Live at KZSU)
11. Gillian Welch Look at Me Miss Ohio
12. Jeff Mangum My Dream Girl Don’t Exist
13. Oh No! Oh My! I Have No Sister
14. the Magnetic Fields All the Umbrellas of London
15. The Album Leaf Over the Pond
16. Mogwai Cody
17. Unwed Sailor Ruby’s Wishes
18. Riceboy Sleeps Boy 1904

I’ve done college radio for a long time now, starting September 2002 on WMBR and moving to KZSU shortly afterwards. But it’s coming to an end. Tomorrow (Tuesday June 23) will be my final show (for the foreseeable future at least). If you’d like, you may listen online or on 90.1FM in the Bay Area from 3-6pm PST.

This one’s quite overdue at this point. My apologies.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->library->import playlist and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2009may in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

Go ahead and check out the playlist (below) or the liner notes.

Adrian’s May 2009 mixtape (mediafire link)

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

The playlist:

1. Dawes When My Time Comes
2. J Tillman Earthly Bodies
3. Olof Arnalds Vi Og Vi
4. My Latest Novel Sister Sneaker Sister Soul
5. American Analog Set Punk as Fuck
6. mk ultra The Dream is Over
7. Archers of Loaf Web in Front
8. Les Savy Fav Precision Auto
9. The Twilight Sad Reflection of the Television
10. The One AM Radio The Landmine
11. Sebastian Schuller Midnight
12. At the Close of Every Day The Jesus Heart
13. Iron & Wine the Trapeze Swinger
14. Adele Hometown Glory
15. Camera Obscura My Maudlin Career
16. Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens What Have You Done?

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2009april in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

Go ahead and check out the playlist (below) or the liner notes.

Adrian’s April 2009 mixtape (mediafire link)

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

The playlist:

1. Seldom Can’t/ Must
2. Elliott Smith Say Yes
3. Cymbals Eat Guitars Wind Phoenix
4. Dr. Dog The Old Days
5. The Ad Libs He Ain’t No Angel
6. David Ruffin Anything That You Ask For
7. Ben E. King So Much Love
8. Jimmy Ruffin What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted
9. Damien Jurado and Gathered in Song Air Show Disaster
10. St. Vincent and the National Sleep All Summer
11. Joel P. West Bark and Feathers
12. Telekinesis Coast of Carolina
13. John Vanderslice Too Much Time
14. Garrett Pierce And The Ghosts Boarded Trains
15. Rural Alberta Advantage Edmonton (Hearya session version)
16. Songs: Ohia Blue Chicago Moon
17. American Analog Set New Equation

I uploaded my mixtape to an archive folder and included all of 28ish mixtapes over the last 2.5 years. Email me if you want access and I’ll send the location and password.

I forgot a couple music related things.

My music blog recently hit two milestones: two year anniversary (some of my favorite posts and comments; remember when it all started?) and 1000th post (10 desert island albums x 100 desert island songs).

Two Sheds @ Beauty Bar

A few weeks ago I went to SxSW and saw 46 bands and 23 shows in 4 days. I recaped it at my music blog but I got a number of questions about what the highlights were, so here’s some of that.

Top five shows:

1. the Rural Alberta Advantage @ Central Presbyterian Church
2. the Wooden Birds @ Okay Mountain
3. the Avett Brothers, the Wrens @ Radio Room
4. Fanfarlo @ Central Presbyterian
5. Tallest Man on Earth @ Red 7

Band that most changed my opinion about them: Mumford & Sons (I went from being blah to liking them)

Local band that I liked most: Two Sheds

Any questions?

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2009feb in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

Go ahead and check out the playlist (below) or the liner notes. It’s got all sorts of stuff: lots of folky stuff and intricate droney pop.

Adrian’s March 2009 mixtape (mediafire)

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

The playlist:

1. Shirley Ann Lee There’s a Light
2. Sam Cooke Rome (Wasn’t Built in a Day)
3. Gospel Supremes Sinner Man
4. Deer Tick Beautiful Girls
5. An Horse Little Lungs
6. Lucky Soul Whoa Billy
7. The Low Anthem This God Damn House
8. Bon Iver Brackett, W9
9. The Avett Brothers Die, Die, Die
10. The Welcome Wagon But For You Who Fear My Name
11. Mumford & Sons Little Lion Man
12. Ohbijou St. Francis
13. Great Lake Swimmers Pulling on a Line
14. Venice is Sinking Ryan’s Song
15. The Weakerthans Plea from a Cat Named Virtue
16. Viva Voce Octavio
17. Red Cortez All the Difference
18. The Wooden Birds Sugar
19. A Classic Education Stay, Son

I just realized I never posted this over here.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2009feb in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

Go ahead and check out the playlist (below) or the liner notes. It’s got all sorts of stuff: lots of folky stuff and post rock/ ambient.

Adrian’s February 2009 mixtape (rapidshare link [1])[2]

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

The playlist:

1. Fanfarlo I’m A Pilot
2. Bishop Allen The Ancient Commonsense of Things
3. Andrew Bird Tenuousness.mp3
4. Throw Me the Statue Ship
5. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone Old Panda Days (w/ Nick Krgovich)
6. Realpeople My Night With The Prostitute From Marseille
7. Birds & Batteries I’ll Never Sleep Again
8. Laura Gibson Spirited
9. the Gentle Guest Longfellow
10. Blind Pilot Oviedo
11. Iron & Wine Dead Man’s Will
12. Frontier Ruckus Orion Town 2
13. .tape. Rosa Luxemburger
14. Lymbyc Systym Processed Spirits
15. Grandchildren Cold Warrior
16. Riceboy Sleeps Happiness
17. Amiina Gl-mur
18. J. Tillman Kids

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) wait till the counter gets to zero 4) enter the letters in their graphic into the box 5) click “download”

[2] Also, I realize Rapidshare is sort of a pain. I’m trying to find other options. I’m open to other suggestions.

A few days ago some DJs at my radio station ran a fake NCAA Magic the Gathering tournament broadcast. It was pretty hilarious and nerdy.

Here’s a snippet.

KZSU – NCAA Magic the Gathering Tournament (mp3)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This guy does it every year: he rates and reviews–in exactly 6 words–all the mp3s bands post as part of SxSW. It was 1302 mp3s this year. It’s pretty fun to read through and all the mp3s are free to download.

NY Times reports that world music is expanding and using technology to spread itself. Amadou & Miriam, the band that they focus on, is pretty good.

This guy was on Jimmy Fallon last night. I went to high school with him, I think, but I knew his sister better–though, let’s be honest, she didn’t hang out with me.

I just remembered a funny story about him that a friend of mine told me. It’s a little bawdy–watch out. Andy Rock was his name. Funny funny guy. I wonder what he’s up to. Anyway. He was on the lacrosse team with Anthony. Around his 18th birthday, he got a tattoo of a sun on his right arm. He showed it to Anthony. Anthony said, “That’s a temporary tattoo! I’ll [vernacular for perform fellatio on you] if that’s real.” It was real. After practice Rock, as we called him, saw Anthony driving by and yelled out, “When are you going to give me that blow job?” Then he saw Anthony’s sister in the car…and her shocked look.

I’ve been interesting in traditional folk songs for a number of years now. I took a class on Anglo-American ballads in 2002 and I had some interest before then. Here are three I’m going to learn:

• “Bury Me Beneath the Willow”–melancholy and gorgeous.
  This version by Almeda Riddle.

  Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

• “Two Sisters”–a famous ballad, but I really like this version with a refrain
  This version is by Horton Barker:

  Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

• “Stick to the Craythur”/ “Humours of Whiskey”–great Irish drinking song.
  This version by Tim Lyons:

  Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I’m really bad at learning lyrics, so that’ll take some work.

These are still supposed to be monthly. I guess I can’t always get my stuff together.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2008dec-2009jan playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

Go ahead and check out the playlist (below) or the liner notes. It’s got all sorts of stuff: indie pop/ folk/ rock, soul and some African songs.

Adrian’s December 2008-January 2009 mixtape (rapidshare link [1])

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

The playlist:

1. Try Me Bicycle Big Small
2. Tallest Man on Earth the Gardener
3. Ohbijou Tender Bones
4. Karl Blau Before Telling Dragons
5. Marv Johnson Come to Me
6. The Swinging Tigers Snake Walk (Part 1)
7. Henry Lumpkin Don’t Leave Me
8. The Satintones Going to the Hop
9. Coconut Records I am Young
10. Shugo Tokumaru Green Rain
11. Grouper Heavy Water/ I’d Rather be Sleeping
12. The Gaslight Anthem The ‘59 Sound
13. The New Amsterdams Hover Near Fame
14. The New Year Seven Days and Seven Nights
15. Peter Broderick With Notes in My Ears
16. Koernag Namadlanga Ngiyalila
17. Kasai Allstars Kafuulu Balu
18. The Very Best Kamphopo
19. Mogwai The Sun Smells Too Loud

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) wait till the counter gets to zero 4) enter the letters in their graphic into the box 5) click “download”

Some people took sausage and wrapped it in bacon and slathered it in bbq sauce. Does anyone really need to ask why this has gotten some attention?

I found this article about transitioning White House style interesting.

It has fun quotes, like:

In the West Wing, Mr. Obama is a bit of a wanderer. When Mr. Bush wanted to see a member of his staff, the aide was summoned to the Oval Office. But Mr. Obama tends to roam the halls; one day last week, he turned up in the office of his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, who was in the unfortunate position of having his feet up on the desk when the boss walked in.

I’m once again heading to SxSW, which happens in a month and change. The preliminary list of bands is dizzying. I’m looking forward to it, though.

It’s Motown’s 50th anniversary this month. Popmatters put together a good list of their 25 top singles. It includes a streaming music player. On my other blog, I put together my favorite Motown songs from 1959, their first year.

View Larger Map

I did my first long bike ride in a while yesterday and certainly my first new route in a long time. It mostly hugged the water around the bay and coast of San Francisco. It was based on the SF Chronicle’s “Outer Limits” ride. It ended up being about 27 miles.

It was a gorgeous day yesterday. Warm, but not hot, clear, even out by Ocean Beach, and there were some gorgeous views throughout. I also went through a number of parts of San Francisco that I’ve never seen before: the Presidio, Seacliff, Land’s End, Lake Merced and parts of the Marina.

I also missed some turns, went the wrong way and blew a tire (while riding without a spare for the first time I can remember) and so I almost got stuck out on the Great Highway (among all those ghosts). It’ll be better next time.

I posted my best of 2008 list yesterday over at the music blog. Executive summary:

1. Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago
2. J Tillman Minor Works
3. the Rural Alberta Advantage Hometowns
4. Horse Feathers House with No Home
5. Two Sheds Two Sheds EP [EP]
6. James Hunter The Hard Way
7. Joe Pug Nation of Heat [EP]
8. Silian Rail And I You, to Pieces
9. Johnny Flynn A Larum
10. the Dodos Visiter
11. Raphael Saadiq The Way I See It

More description and mp3s over at the music blog.

I’ve also posted my best concerts of 2008.

My Blackdrop Portraits series has reached 22 photos of musicians. Here’s one of Justin Ringle of Horse Feathers

Justin of Horse Feathers by Adrian Bischoff

My monthly mixtapes were not quite monthly there. However I did want to get this up so you could put it on your ipod for your Thanksgiving travels if you wanted.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2008oct-nov playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

Go ahead and check out the playlist (below) or the liner notes. It’s pretty folksy but with some soul and things thrown in.

Adrian’s October November 2008 mixtape (rapidshare link [1])

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

The playlist:

1. Horse Feathers Curs in the Weeds
2. The Acorn Darcy
3. David Bazan Please Baby Please
4. Lewis & Clarke Be the Air We Breathe
5. Laura Marling Ghosts
6. Theresa Andersson Na Na Na
7. Frightened Rabbit Poke (live)
8. American Analog Set Born on the Cusp (demo)
9. Ben Gibbard Farmer Chords
10. Raphael Saadiq Seven
11. The Supremes Run, Run, Run
12. Ruby Andrews You Made a Believer Out of Me
13. Dorothy Berry You’re So Fine
14. Miriam Makeba Pata Pata
15. Crooked Fingers Solitary Man
16. Joe Pug Bury Me Far From My Uniform
17. Low Sunflower
18. Peasant Impeccable Manners
19. Deer Tick Ashamed
20. the Twilight Sad Some Things Last a Long Time

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) wait till the counter gets to zero 4) enter the letters in their graphic into the box 5) click “download”

Monday night I tried my hand at Sacred Harp singing. There are local groups that sing and I went to the one that meets weekly in Berkeley. I’ve written about Sacred Harp before here and more extensively over at the music blog.

They meet and sing in a small chapel in a theoligical seminary just north of the UC campus. Pews are moved around to make a square with a couple rows per side: basses are across from trebles, altos are across from tenors. Some started–the first person to lead got up in the center of the square and called out a number–28, I think it was. We all turned our books, the Sacred Harp, 9th Edition to that page. The leader–in this case, but sometimes it was another singer–sang the starting notes. We sang through the song once on “so la fa mi” then through with the words and then the cycle repeated. We repeated this process until the evening was up–perhaps 40 times in total.

I was a bit nervous about giving this a try. I haven’t sung from music in a number of years and even then it was quite briefly, with a lot of voices to hide behind and with a lot of rehearsals. It turned out to be fine, of course. I still can’t sight sing, but I could follow the strong singers in my section just fine. By the end I had even picked up the names of the shape notes. As it turns out, these help a lot–going from “fa” to “fa”, for instance is always either a fifth or an octave.

When it came my time to lead, I said I’d pick one–one of my favorites, “Sherburne”–but didn’t want to lead it. I got cajoled into leading that song with someone else.

Anyway, at this group at least, people sang. And loud. And without any pretensions or adornment in their voices. It was a lot of fun. Just letting your voice go and singing out. I was a bit hoarse the next day.

Alabama Sacred Harp Convention – Sherburne (mp3)

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Yup, a little late on this one, as if that’s unusual!

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2008august playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

Go ahead and check out the liner notes. This one has a bunch of folksy stuff, some soul and some slowcore, the new and the classic, like Johnny Flynn, Andrew Bird, Lykke Li, Unwed Sailor and Early Day Miners.

Adrian’s August 2008 mixtape (rapidshare link [1])

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) wait till the counter gets to zero 4) enter the letters in their graphic into the box 5) click “download”

This one’s on time! Holy crap! Unprecedented!

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2008july playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one’s sort of all over the show, but I feel like it’s a good one. It’s got some oldies and soul and old indie favorites and stuff I just found out about.

Adrian’s July 2008 mixtape (rapidshare link [1])

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) wait till the counter gets to zero 4) enter the letters in their graphic into the box 5) click “download”

At some point someone told me that it was endearing that I never posted my mixtapes in the month they’re named after. I’m not sure I buy that…Anyway, enjoy.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2008june playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one is pretty soft and acousticy (Damien Jurado, Neil Halstead) but there are some nice soul (Sam Cooke, Al Green) and rock tunes (Centro-matic) in there too. Like many of the mixtapes it’s a mix between local, regional, national and international bands.

Adrian’s June 2008 mixtape (rapidshare link [1])

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) wait till the counter gets to zero 4) enter the letters in their graphic into the box 5) click “download”

Only marginally late with this one.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2008may playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one was pretty easy to put together–just sort of made sense. There’s a number of soul tracks I’ve been enjoying by people like Sam Cooke and Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd St. Band. There’s also a handful of indie tunes from old favorites (Low, Mogwai), newish favorites (Fanfarlo, the Morning Benders) and a few that are pretty new to me (Lykke Li). Enjoy!

Adrian’s May 2008 mix tape (rapidshare link [1])

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) wait till the counter gets to zero 4) enter the letters in their graphic into the box 5) click “download”

Apparently, my mixtapes come out every month. This is what I’m told, at least. Oops. I’m finding it hard to get these together in a month.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2008march-april playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one was a long one in coming. I’ve listened to it a lot of times and I like it. There’s a mix of local (the Dodos, the Botticellis, Speakers), national (Deer Tick, Unwed Sailor) and international (Adem, the Rational Academy) bands.

Adrian’s March-April 2008 mix tape (rapidshare link [1])

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) chose a mirror (or you can leave it) 4) input the number/ letters they show in the graphic into the box 5) click on “download via…”

1. Coronado, a beach near the Hotel Del. Mid-afternoon. Walking across that area of sand that’s firm because water has run over it recently and dipping my fingers into the chilly Pacific and pondering aloud if the military planes roaring overhead on their way to the base were Harriers. I don’t think they are.

2. A bar in South Park. Night time. Between local bands giving it their all on a small stage in the dark club and packed in among the local young hipster population, discussing merits of a variety of many recent bands on the scene with a new friend.

3. Balboa Park, near the Moreton Bay Fig. Late afternoon. Lying on my back on the slightly damp grass, staring up at the deeply saturated sky, talking about finances and how it’s strange to be an adult with an old friend.

Here’s my show today if you want to listen.

I Once was Canadian – 4-15-08(mp3)

And here’s the playlist.

My radio show has now been scheduled for Tuesdays 3-5pm PST, that’s 6-8pm Eastern.

You can listen at 90.1FM or online.

Also of note: those streams have been updated so that you should be able to listen from behind firewalls and the such. Try them again if you haven’t in a while.

I just got back from “South by” as some (silly) people call it.

I saw around 38 bands in 5 days. It was pretty crazy. Some amazing stuff (like J Tillman (listen in, Tarky!), Two Sheds, and Fanfarlo) and some not so great stuff, but overall I was pretty thrilled with the stuff I saw.

But it got me thinking about music. I mean, even moreso than normal. After all, I had five days to basically only think about music. Here are some thoughts:

• label: seeing so many great bands that are unsigned or not signed in America got me thinking that maybe I should start a label. I don’t know the second thing about starting a label, though–I know the first thing, the first thing is that it’s a time and money sink–so I’ll need to talk to some people and get a better idea of what’s involved if I’m serious about it.
• self: I want to start recording and playing more music. I was even thinking about trying to get enough tracks together for a demo and maybe try to play a show sometimes. I don’t know what instrument I’d use. Maybe Wurly or banjo? I’m not sure. I need to get better at instruments as well.
• self, pt 2: I think I ought to get decent at trumpet again and ply my trade to the bands of SF to play for them.
• blog: I spend a whole lot of time on that thing. Is it worth it?
• presents: I should present more shows, I think. I was even thinking it’d be cool to be involved in a party/ showcase at SxSW next year. I’ll need to talk to some people about how to go about this.

I’m in Austin for SxSW. You can follow along at my other blog or my other blog’s corresponding twitter feed.

David Bazan recommended some nachos to me tonight. This is the sort of life I lead.

This is the February 2008 mixtape. It’s even almost on time!

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2008february playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one is really making me smile. I’m pretty happy with it. Great local stuff by bands like Two Sheds, Geographer and the Ian Fays plus some new and old stuff by (inter)national bands like Chris Walla, Basia Bulat, Pedro the Lion and Cat Power.

Adrian’s February 2008 mix tape (rapidshare link [1])

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) chose a mirror (or you can leave it) 4) input the number/ letters they show in the graphic into the box 5) click on “download via…”

This is the January 2008 mixtape; yup, it’s late. I took a bit of a break–there was no December 2007 one, the first one I missed since I started these in July 2006. I’m going to try to get back on track for this one.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2007Jan playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. I’m liking this one. A wide range of new stuff, some oldies and some old favorites.

Adrian’s January 2008 mix tape (rapidshare link [1])

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) chose a mirror (or you can leave it) 4) input the number/ letters they show in the graphic into the box 5) click on “download via…”

I thought I’d continue this reviewing everything while I still think it’s fun.

I like trying new candies and compact discs.

Hershey’s Kisses New York Cheesecake Flavored Creme Wrapped in Extra Creamy Milk Chocolate Wow. This is strange. Not great. Very sweet. Not enough of either flavor, really. It just ends up tasting really sweet and rather tasteless otherwise.

Snickers Dark Pretty good. Not as silky smooth as the milk chocolate version, but tastes good and has a sort of sweetness/ bite contrast to it.

Iron & Wine’s the Shepherd’s Dog Not good. Not even a shadow of his best work on Creek Drank the Cradle and Our Endless Numbered Days. Get Fionn Regan or any number of other artists instead.

Rivers Cuomo Alone I could hardly make it through this disc of demos from 1992-1997 (I think that’s the dates). Just buy the Blue Album or Pinkerton again…

I’ll be on the radio at KZSU on Tuesday mornings 6-9am (Pacific), doing my show “I Once was Canadian”, starting tomorrow.

You can listen at 90.1FM or online.

Number of days: 112

Number of days or parts thereof spent traveling: 47 (3 to/ from, 7 intra-Taiwan (3 Kaohsiung, 2 Taroko, 2 Kinmen), 37 intra-Asia (7 Indonesia, 5 Thailand; 15 Hong Kong, Macau, China; 10 Japan)

Number of countries visited (since moving): 6 (Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Japan, U.S.) + 2 special administrative regions with separate border controls (Hong Kong, Macau)

Number of countries visited (year to date): 8 (above + South Africa, Swaziland) + 2 S.A.R.s

Number of flights (since moving): 14 (SFO-> TPE-> CKG-> DPS-> CKG-> TPE-> BKK-> TPE-> HKG-> TPE-> NRT-> TPE, TSA-> KNH-> TSA, TPE-> SFO)

Number of flights (2007): 31 (SFO-> CVG-> IAD-> JNB, DUR-> CPT-> JNB-> JFK, BOS-> JFK-> SFO-> BOS-> DFW-> SFO-> HNL-> LIH-> HNL-> SFO + above + SFO-> CLT-> DCA)

Miles flown (since moving): 27,406 miles (44,106 km)

Miles flown (2007): 63,569 miles (102,304 km)

Number of high speed train journeys: 4 (Taipei->Kaohsiung->Taipei, Tokyo->Kyoto->Tokyo)

Number of train journeys: 6 (above + Taipei->Hualien->Taipei)

Approximate number of km ridden on scooters: 225

Best hotel (overall): Kamandalu Resort, Ubud, Bali. A connection to the cousin of the owner opened the door for staying in this swanky place. Gorgeous surroundings and really nice rooms. Private verandas looking over rice paddies. The service was also excellent. We went out riding bikes around the rice paddies one day and came back sweating. Pretty soon after we entered the lobby we had cool moist towels to wipe our faces with. Perhaps the only nicer place I’ve stayed is the ridiculous Schlosshotel Veir Jahrezeiten (Four Seasons Palace Hotel) in Berlin. (They had a Ferrari convention while we were there and it didn’t seem out of place.)

Best hotel (value): Hirano Guesthouse, Kyoto. 3500 yen a night in Kyoto is very cheap and besides a nice place to stay, the owner was very friendly, helpful and accommodating, making us tea when we came home for a break in the afternoons. She also made us breakfast every morning, let us use her bicycles and computer/ internet. Oh and there was a candy bowl and after we ate an unreasonable amount of it, she didn’t complain, she just refilled it.

Number of American chain stores patronized (not counting convenience stores, exact): 3 (2 Subways-Taipei, 1 Denny’s-Kyoto)

Number of American chain stores patronized (counting convenience stores[1], approximate): 22.2 (the above + Circle K’s in Taiwan, Bali, Thailand, ampm’s in Japan, plus 0.2 for a Mister Donut in Japan[2])

Oddest food obsession: Harbo’s Happy Cola gummy candies

Most common food eaten: rice (~ >1.5 servings a day)

Most common food product eaten: Kinder Chocolate (~ 0.6 a day)

Most “exotic” foods eaten: crickets, silk worms, frog

Number of Dr. Peppers consumed: 2 (one in Japan, one in Thailand)

Foods most missed: good bread, good cheese, Dr. Pepper, good beef, shelled shrimp, deboned fish.

Number of Hello Kitty products seen: in the thousands

Number of Hello Kitty products purchased: 1 (alarm clock, convenience store, Japan)

America: so quiet, so dark, so many English speakers, so many whites/ latinos/as, blacks. big supermarkets. low population density.

Least useful piece of clothing: dress shirt (the greenish one, never worn, given away at the end)

Most useful piece of clothing: shoes (the brown Adidas, nearly daily)

Most useful piece of clothing out of its original purpose (and new use): board shorts-style swimsuit (exercise shorts)

Piece of clothing I most immediately realized I’d forgotten: navy blue cotton boxers (that I use as warm weather pajama bottoms)

Number of books read: 5.75 (2nd 0.5 of Slow Man by Coeztee, Love is a Mixtape by Sheffield, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: a Story of the Hip Hop Generation by Chang, Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Klosterman, Born on a Blue Day By Tammet, You Don’t Love Me Yet by Lethem, first 0.25 of About a Boy by Hornsby)

Number of concerts attended: 3 (Emily the Band @ Underworld, Apples in Stereo @ the Wall, Sugar Plum Ferry @ the Wall)

Number of CDs purchased: 19 (5 in Hong Kong (Monitor), 5 @ WWR (1st trip), 5 @ WWR (2nd trip), 2 @ IMPO, 1 @ FINAC, 1 @ Roses(?))

Number of pieces of mail received: 6 (3 packages of promo CD(s); 1 each from Ian, Lauren, Gumbeaux)

[1] This is tricky because things are confusing. 7-11 is Japanese for instance.

[2] Mr. Donut is an American brand but the Asian stores are run by Duskin Co out of Japan under a licensing agreement.

This is the November 2007 mixtape. Yup, it’s December. I’m a bit late with it.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2007oct playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. It’s a pretty good ones. Some indie pop, some acoustic stuff, some post rock, some glitchy stuff. I’ve been listening to a lot of these songs a lot.

Adrian’s November 2007 mix tape (rapidshare link [1])

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) chose a mirror (or you can leave it) 4) input the number/ letters they show in the graphic into the box 5) click on “download via…”

I learned on Friday about the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival. Pretty much immediately after I found that some of the movies I most wanted to see (”Darjeeling Limited”, I’m Not There, Persepolis) were either sold out or at times that I couldn’t go to. Doh!

Another one that I was psyched to see (Ki-Duk Kim made the amazing “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring”) is only showing in Korean with Chinese subtitles.

However! Not all is lost. I did go to see Steve Buscemi’s Interview last night and I bought a ticket for the Sigur Ros movie. I’m still undecided about whether to see This is England or not.

I wasn’t actually expecting a ton from Interview, as it seemed like a pretentious indie two-person character piece, but it turned out to be alright. It was pretty engaging and well-written and the ending wasn’t quite what I expected.

I also found out that Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is showing in at least one regular theater here (not as part of the film festival, that is) so maybe I’ll go see that in the next few weeks.

dear or, the whale t shirt,

sorry I dribbled cola on you. I am sometimes careless at ensuring all the soda goes into my mouth; this was one instance like that. I also hate to inform you of the following: you’re going to stay besmirched like that for a while. I just did laundry last night so the next cycle is probably 10, 14 days off. I’d love to wash just you, but you know how these things are: all the others would claim I’m playing favorites.

I’d like to thank you for being comfortable despite all of this.

thanks,
adrian

I will talk about things that are Japan-related and things that are not Japan related. I had dreams of more well organized posts with photos and everything, but I’ll post now with possibly expanding on some of these topics later.

My ear is feeling (ie hearing) a bit better. I’ve started listening to ear buds again in limited (very quiet) contexts. First song back: “King of Pain”.

The rest of the Japan trip was pretty good.

I mean, it was great. It’s a crazy place. One coworker said something like it’s a very odd combination of a repressed/ conservative culture and a wild/ unashamed culture. Very strange.

Some of the stranger places included the hot bath that had a mildly electrified pool, the sushi place that required you to eat at least 7 dishes (of 2 pieces a piece) of mostly sushimi in less than 20 minutes, the Diago-ji temple that had a painting that I thought was a garden; either that, or it had a garden that was completely unreal in how beautiful and archetypal it was. They were also chanting in the part of the temple that’s at the top of the hill when we got there and I could hear it from maybe half a mile off. A strange beacon.

I’m not missing Thanksgiving. I mean, I’m not attending Thanksgiving and thus am missing it but Thanksgiving is such a non-event here that the only time I even think about it is when I talk to people in America. Also, I knew from May that I wouldn’t be doing Thanksgiving this year. I love Thanksgiving, but I’m prepared.

(Did you miss the Moon Festival this year? I didn’t; I participated.)

On the other hand, the prevalence of Christmas decorations, music and colder weather in Japan made it feel like mid-December, much close to when I would be leaving for the U.S. That caused many more pangs of homesickness.

During bouts of longing for America, it seems that any culture representing that will do, possibly with even the less sophisticated being better. No, I’m not talking about fast food; I’m talking about movies. Last night, I watched Must Love Dogs without shame; tonight may be 40 Days and 40 Nights. In Germany, I remember watching (possibly multiple) Freddie Prinze Jr movies. It’s crap.

I finished Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: a Story of the Hip Hop Generation last week. I’m not sure, but I think it’s racist. The book draws some distinction in various situations between pro-black and anti-white, but I think this book was possibly anti-white. For instance, the nomenclature was: Black, Latino, Asian, Korean (etc etc) and white.

Now I’m on to Chuck Klosterman’s Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, which is a book of Klosterman’s ridiculous pronouncements about culture, on everything from internet pornography to NBA basketball to Billy Joel. It’s entertaining, but I think I prefer his travel narrative, Killing Yourself to Live.

Sufjan’s having a contest in which you can win rights to one if his songs if you write the best original christmas song (which he then gets the rights to). I am thinking of something along the lines of a response song to a classic 1963 Christmas song. We’ll see if I can churn something out–I need to figure out how to do the instrumentation on this–maybe FruityLoops or something. My guitar through a built-in mic isn’t going to cut it.

The Steelers loss today was almost funny. It’s almost expected, the way the Steelers manage to botch the “easy” games. None of their three losses is even marginally excusable and if some columnist says otherwise, question his ability to analyze their games. On the other hand, they’ve been great in pretty much the rest of their games.

There is a baby crying down the hall. I hope this doesn’t continue. I don’t like crying babies.

On strange candies and confectionaries. Good: the two different Chocolate Pocky’s and Men’s Pocky, those weird mushroom-shaped chocolates that are sort of like Pocky, some Mentos (Fuji Apple, particularly and the Berry Blast and Sour mixes), mint Kit Kats, all Kinder chocolates. Interesting, but not great: Green Tea Meltykiss, those white + green tea chocolates, that incompressible Mentos that might have been cherry and also the strawberry and green apple ones, the mini-hamburger chocolates. Bad: apple Kit Kats.

A couple weeks ago I went swimming. The next day my left ear felt a bit weird and my hearing felt muffled. I thought there was some water still in it. After a few days it still felt weird so I had assumed it had developed into a minor ear infection, “swimmer’s ear”.

After two weeks, I decided I should have it checked out. I’m going to be place next week where it’ll be even harder to go to a doctor, so with the help of some coworkers I went to a doctor this evening and he checked me out.

There’s no water, ear wax or ear infection in there. The doctor things it’s noise trauma. Basically (hopefully) short term partial hearing loss. (Ironically, I’d light-heartedly talked about thinking I was going deaf in my left ear because my ear buds were breaking about 3 weeks ago.) His instructions: no ear buds/ headphones and try to limit limit noise for a few days.

The short term is unpleasant: no ear buds at work (at night I can play music softly on speakers that I have) means no music and I don’t like being without music. It makes me antsy. I’m going to be on planes and trains for most of Friday, alone and that would be a particularly nice time to listen to some tunes. More than it being nice, at times I almost find it necessary. After a bad or long day, after a frustrating decision, when I need to drown out this foreign world or mitigate loneliness, music is often my first resort. It may not be the best thing to turn to but it’s certainly better than turning to the bottle. This is a bit distressing.

The longer term, the prospects, the possibilities, at least, are traumatizing. That there’s even a possibility of longer term hearing loss is scary. Music is a big part of my life and between being a college radio DJ and having a music blog it’s more like a vocation. That that might be endangered or altered permanently is not a prospect I look forward to.

Just to note, I’ve always been very careful about the volume of my music on earphones and other people who try my headphones often think I listen to music too softly. I wear ear plugs at concerts, even advocating them publicly. If there’s one probable culprit here it’s listening to music on the bus and/ or while walking along streets here. Both are quite noisy and can encourage a louder-than-healthy volume on ear buds.

I’m trying to transcribe an interview and I can’t get this right. Maybe someone can help: I’m looking for a car make or model that sounds like prevos, prevost, prebos, frebos or something like that. It’s most likely fast and expensive and probably glamorous. It would fit into this sentence:

You want to be in a Prebos* driving 150 miles per hour while people are shooting heroin.

I don’t think it’s “Enzo”–that’s too far from what it sounds like on the recording, though it does fit the description. Prevost make car carriers but not cars, from what I can tell. Anyone?

update: mp3. Listen for yourselves.

double update: from the source: Prevost, as in a motorcoach or band tour bus. I was wrong in thinking it was a fast car–just a fast tour bus I guess!

You’re probably confused. I just posted another mixtape. Originally, the September mixtape was going to be delayed and the I was going to go right to October, skipping the Sept mix entirely. Well, when I was putting together October, I had too much music, by about a factor of 2, so the September mix was back on the table, albeit ridiculously delayed.

This is the October (October.2) 2007 mixtape. It’s more toward the acoustic side of things. For the straight up indie pop, make sure you get the September mixtape.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2007oct playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. I am really surprised sometimes that there is so much good music out there. It’s a mix of local and national, old favorites (Damien Jurado, Mark Eitzel) and new finds (N.Lannon, Seabear).

Adrian’s October (October.2) 2007 mix tape (rapidshare link [1])
(I’m trying this because hosting the zip was a significant bandwidth drain. Let me know your thoughts on it.)

As always this’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week), so grab it now.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) chose a mirror (or you can leave it) 4) input the number/ letters they show in the graphic into the box 5) click on “download via…”

This movie look great[1].

Here’s the soundtrack listing. Lots of Kimya Dawson and also Sonic Youth, Cat Power, and Belle & Sebastian as well as the old favorites Buddy Holly and Velvet Underground.

The song at the end of the trailer, if you were wondering, is All the Young Dudes by Mott the Hoople. Classic!

You can also check out four more clips from the movie.

[1] Hopefully it won’t be a Garden State-like great trailer, great trailer, okay movie situation.

You’re probably confused. This isn’t September. Originally, the September mixtape was going to be delayed and the I was going to go right to October, skipping the Sept mix entirely. Well, when I was putting together October, I had too much music, by about a factor of 2 [1], so the September mix was back on the table, albeit ridiculously delayed.

The October (October.2) 2007 mixtape will be posted probably Wednesday, so start listening to this one already! This one is more toward indie pop and October is more towards the acoustic.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2007sept playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. I am really surprised sometimes that there is so much good music out there. Great tracks from old favs Jose Gonzalez and Jens Lekman, new tracks from relative unknowns and up-and-comers like Caves, the Cave Singers and Octopus Project.

Adrian’s September (October.1) 2007 mix tape (rapidshare link [1])
(I’m trying this because hosting the zip was a significant bandwidth drain. Let me know your thoughts on it.)

As always this’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week), so grab it now.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[1] My online mixtapes are always between 60-76 minutes long so they can be burnt onto a single mix CD if you choose.

[2] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) chose a mirror (or you can leave it) 4) input the number/ letters they show in the graphic into the box 5) click on “download via…”

Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson are strange.

Chuck Klosterman is strange.

I slept late, later than I’ve slept in months probably. I was quite proud of myself.

Breakfast was cereal with “drinking yogurt”. That stuff is weird. I like cereal with milk or with yogurt. This was…okay..

Blue skies came out, albeit, not Palo Alto style–there were still a few clouds.

I left to seek out a few things I’d only read out online: taipei’s indie record stores and a store selling traditional chinese instruments.

(I’m abandoning capitalization except for I, because I am important. Okay, maybe I’ll still capitalize some.)

IMPO records is a small place on the 8th floor in the Ximen district. You couldn’t find this place unless you knew exactly where to look. Between that and their 2-6pm hours (closed Wednesdays and Sundays) and their out-of-the-way location, I’m not sure how they make money. They don’t have the newest stuff either and their prices are closer to the import prices in America for the most part, with a few deals. I liked the store and the owner, though. I got the Morr Music Japan Tour 2005 EP and an album by the Lodger out of the UK. We’ll see how they are.

I then went in search of a Chinese musical instrument store. The people on forumosa mentioned 3 locations that happen to be in a three block radius around the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial.. None turned out to be right. Literally right after I gave up on finding it, I found one at 9-2 Xinyi Rd., 1F, across from the CKS Memorial. I immediately saw the erhus and asked, in Chinese, how much they were. The proprietor proceed to presumably explain, in Chinese, how they were priced different based on material and quality of material. My blank stares led him to explain this in English. What I was more interested in were the double reed suonas, which I asked about. They had one and while it wasn’t expensive, it wasn’t cheap enough for me to buy it on the spot. Those things are possibly louder and shriller than their double reed cousins from Scotland. I want one.

I was walking back to the MRT and heard some sounds from Renai Rd. I went over there to discover a parade of sorts. I should note that this parade was going through the ZhongShen round-about, a very big intersection, but they hadn’t closed it to traffic. The parade would proceed whenever they had the green light and then stop when they had the red.

Anyway, this wasn’t any traditional parade or anything, more like a multicultural parade. Everyone had handmade costumes, everything from kids on stilts to storm troopers and jedis to flowers or angels to an African drummer and dancer (she was really good) to people simply walking with their flag and face paint of their country of nationality. It was very odd.

Looking down Renai Rd, lined in palm trees, I could see the blue sky and Taipei 101, which, I’ve mentioned, is not only the current tallest building, but a very attractive design, and all these weirdly costumed individuals.

Life is very weird. It makes me happy.

I continued on. White Wabbit Records was my next stop. It’s primarily a record label, but they also have a record store with records from other indie labels. As soon as I got there I knew I was somewhere I wanted to be. They had a indie good selection even by American standards, which compared to everything else I’d seen in my travels was an amazing selection. There were two taiwanese hipsters girls working behind the country. (I may have a crush on one or both now). Most of their prices were decent. They also exclusively license some foreign releases from other labels/ directly from the artists. Things like Giardini di Miro, Mum, Mice Parade and Explosions in the Sky are now produced for WWR in Taiwan. On these discs and on records by bands singed to WWR, their prices were great–a little under $12 new. They even had signed records from Saxon Shore and American Analog Set on the wall. I’m definitely going back there.

While I was there I was able to buy a ticket for the Apples in stereo, who inexplicably are playing in Taipei a week from Monday at the Wall (in the same building as WWR). Should be good. I saw the Apples for the first time over 7 years ago, as a freshman in college, and who I haven’t seen in probably five years.

It is/ was World Toy Camera Day, so while I was out and about, I shot a roll of Velvia 100 with my Lomo Fisheye camera, which, while it isn’t traditionally a toy camera (it’s not a holga or diana, basically), it’s not much above that. I think I got some decent shots. I miss shooting with film. I think I’m going to start carrying my N70/ 20mm f2.8 / Tri-x 400 around instead of my D80 sometimes.

I wasn’t able to get the mixtape done before I went traveling and now I don’t have the tools (e.g. my laptop) to get it done. Unless I figure out some technological work-around I may be severely delayed or I may have to simply skip the September 2007 mixtape.

Last week I got to see the Legong of Mahabrata @ the Ubud Palace, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. The group performing was Sekaa Gong Jaya Swara Ubud. It was balinese dance accompanied by gamelan. Gamelan is an Indonesian (Balinese and Javanese) music with tuned percussion instruments, instruments like (but not exactly) xylophones (metallophones), tuned gongs, cymbals, barrel drums (kendhang). Sometimes, like in the gamelan I saw, they also have fipple flutes and a two-stringed spike fiddle called a rebab. (It should be noted: gamelan is a set of instruments, not the players/ history. The Berlin Philharmonic is the people, not the particular instruments they play.)

The venue, the Ubud Palace, is a courtyard of a 16th century palace. Not to be flippant, but it’s sort of like making the Great American Music Hall a lot more historic and even more beautiful.

The group came in, some dancers and the gamelan players shaking these tuned bamboo rattles called anklung in addition to the barrel drums mentioned above. The players went to their seats and there was a pause before the music began.

Gamelan itself means hammer. That’s because most of the main instruments are struck with hammers of various sorts. The music often starts fairly simple and slow. One line on the metallophones and one on the cradled gongs. More lines come in. People with hammers are hitting the instruments with one hand and selectively damping them with the other. All this while amazing and tremendously precise dance was going on in in the middle of the U made by the instruments.

I was completely enthralled from beginning to end. I have to say, I’ve been to some great shows this year, some that I might even call “better” but quite possibly none that kept my attention as singularly as this one.

Gamelan “Gender” Wayang – Krepetan (mp3)

(I searched for a while I’m really not sure where you can get this CD other than in Bali. Amazon has other Balinese gamelan CDs, though.)

Gamelan Gong Kebjar – Hudjan mas (mp3) (buy)

My other music experience while on Bali was marching ensembles in a Balinese death parade and ceremony (amazing for many reasons, but I’ll just stick to the one here.)

They played similar instruments to the gamelan: tuned gongs, hanging gones, cymbals and barrel drums, but they also used whistles and their voices, even breaking into the ketjak rhythm for a moment. Here I was able to get right up up next to them and be almost surrounded by the sound. The tuned gongs were doing a slower rhythm while the cymbals were being hit together at a very fast pace, only to suddenly stop and all by thrust into the air. It was great.

It’s a bit late, but here’s the August mixtape. My excuses include moving to a new continent. Also, I did offer up a short mix earlier.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2007august playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one includes a lot of great indie pop/ rock and some oldies, including a lot of new finds (of new and old bands), CDs I’ve had forever and new purchases. Bands include Oh No! Oh My!, Bottom of the Hudson, Ted Leo, and Superchunk.

Adrian’s August 2007 mix tape (rapidshare link [1] with zip file, alternate link)
(I’m trying this because hosting the zip was a significant bandwidth drain. Let me know your thoughts on it.)

As always this’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week), so grab it now.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) chose a mirror (or you can leave it) 4) input the number/ letters they show in the graphic into the box 5) click on “download via…”

Barely barely into August, here’s July’s mixtape.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2007july playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one includes a lot of great indie pop/ rock and some oldies, including a lot of new finds (of new and old bands), CDs I’ve had forever and new purchases. Bands include Or, the Whale, Bishop Allen, John Vanderslice, Dr. Dog, Carissa’s Wierd and more.

Adrian’s July 2007 mix tape (rapidshare link with zip file)
(I’m trying this because hosting the zip was a significant bandwidth drain. Let me know your thoughts on it. I switched from zupload to rapidshare because of reader feedback from last month.)

As always this’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week), so grab it now.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

I did a radio show for the first time in three weeks last night.

Here’s the playlist.

I played it pretty loose and I was pretty happy with the results. I’ve found a lot of great music in the last few weeks and I got to share that.

Now for the musak:

I Once Was Canadian – KZSU – 7.11.07 (mp3)

Menlo Park is dead at 10pm on a Sunday.

[personal thoughts, ramblings after the jump]

(more…)

Here’s my playlist from this week.

here’s the mp3 of the show which you can download and listen to if you wish (mp3).

Local folksy band Beatbeat Whisper appeared on the show and play a live set.

Old Joy (wikipedia, trailer) is a minimalist story of two old friends who go camping for a weekend.

Kurt (Oldham’s character) is a free-floating and free-thinking friend who comes back into town and calls up Mark (Daniel London’s character) asking if he wants to check out some hot springs in the woods outside of town. Mark “asks” his pregnant wife(?)/ girlfriend (?) if he can go and then sets off. Kurt is that unreliable asshole friend that you have, the one that you love but you don’t count on for anything. Kurt gets them lost on the way to hot springs and delays the whole plan.

Friends change; that’s what this movie’s about. Mark is on the verge of fatherhood while Kurt has gone, it seems, from one hot spring and wild forest adventure to another. At the same time, it sort of shows you why those friends are still important even if the two don’t have that much in common.

Yo La Tengo’s soundtrack is great and works really well in the film. I must say, though, it didn’t quite floor me like their soundtrack to Junebug.

[1] “subtle” in critic-speak means the same thing as boring, but in a positive sense.

Here’s the playlist. Here’s the mp3 NEWSPECIALFUN.

I was listening again to NPR’s story about Brinkley, AR and the Ivory Billed Woodpecker (and the associated “Lord God Bird” song by Sufjan, I’ve posted about it before) tonight. It got me thinking (and I’ve thought before…

The SF Peninsula isn’t changing. I mean, it is, but it isn’t really. What am I doing here? There are places like Brinkley, serious small town America, that are changing irreparably and getting closer to extinction. Maybe I should plan a week next year (or in the fall) to drive around small town America, staying in small inn’s and talking to locals. Hopefully even catching some local music. It wouldn’t be exciting or crazy like vising NYC is, but it’d be pretty cool. It’s not like I Cache River National Wildlife Refuge and the Big Woods has been called America’s Amazon.

I’m serious about this. Let me know (here or offline) if you’re interested.

Last night I saw Jonathan Richman perform live accompaniment to the 1921 Swedish silent movie Phantom Carriage at the Castro Theatre.

I haven’t been to the Castro Theatre in a couple years and as I went in and saw the beautiful molding and ornamentation in the theater, I remembered how amazing that place is. There was an interesting mix of people milling around and finding their seats: Jonathan Richman fans, silent movie aficionados, indie movie people, etc.

If you’ve never seen a silent film with live musical accompaniment, I’d recommend it. It’s usually a pretty good experience. The semi-improvisational nature of the music adds a lot of excitement to the movie.

The movie itself is pretty complex for the time. The plot’s based around a Swedish folktale. The idea goes that the last to die in a year that has bad things has to spend the rest of the year being Death’s carriage driver. It employed a few techniques that I was surprised were employed then, including non-linear story telling and some fairly good special effects techniques for the ghosts.

On now onto the music. I’d seen Jonathan Richman before. He’s really quirky live and has a lot of charisma and stage presence, so I was really curious how it’d end up when these things were taken away. The set up was Jonathan on (nylon string) guitar and pump organ. Other players were two hand bell players, a trumpet/ baritone player, a bass clarinet/ saxophone/ flute player, a violinist and a cellist. I thought their accompaniment was really good and all the players were very talented. It worked really well with the movie. The main characters had motifs and there were parts were these two motifs were almost colliding when two characters were talking or arguing. A daring move was during certain particularly intense moments in the movie there they left it completely silent; I think it paid off.

View the full photo album.

Update: I’ve noticed the bad justification to the text next to the photos. I have tried to fix it, but it’s stubborn. Sorry!

Here’s the playlist of tonight’s show. I am a bit sick and loopy, but I think the music, at least, didn’t suffer.

There’s just so much good music out there right now. I’ve been picking about 1.5 hours too much music for my show pretty regularly.

I got multiple calls asking about the One AM Radio track, “Lest We Forget”. It’s a good track. (And it’s streamable at his myspace.)

I Once was Canadian, KZSU – 4/25/07 (mp3)

I forgot to post my playlist from this week’s show.

Also, here’s the mp3
I Once was Canadian (KZSU) – 4-18-07 (mp3)

I really liked the last set: Andrew Bird->Sigur Ros->Adem.

Here’s my latest mixtape. It’s a tad bit late, as usual. I hope you enjoy it. I like these songs a lot!

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2007april playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one includes a lot of great indie pop/ rock plus one soul number. There are great local bands like the Finches, the Dodos (what’s with SF bird bands?), and Beatbeat Whisper. I also have national acts like Andrew Bird (ah! more birds!) and Ted Leo. There are a few interesting quirky songs in there too.

Adrian’s April 2007 mix tape (zip file, right click and ’save as…’)

As always this’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week), so grab it now.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

I went to bed last night. I always fall asleep to music. I wanted to fall asleep to Beatbeat Whisper’s song “Play Me a Time” (a lullaby, so very appropriate), but I also wanted to hear their “Old River” (3:55) and “The Cowboy’s Lament” (3:02). If felt like a century trying to stay awake for that 6 minutes and 57 seconds before “Play Me a Time” was to come on. In the end I didn’t make it. I think I got into the middle “Cowboy’s Lament” before falling asleep.

I’ve always been able to fall asleep easily. If I have my head on the pillow for more than seven minutes before falling asleep, it’s a truly extraordinary night. The only times I can’t/ couldn’t fall asleep easily, at least usually, was the night before my first final and when riddled with jetlag.

My radio show will be at the same time this quarter: Wednesdays 10p-midnight (PST (or PDT?)).

Meanwhile, if you want to read me ranting about music in a different forum, you can check out my music blog.

Update: Here’s this week’s playlist

And here’s the NEWSPECIALFUN:

I Once was Canadian – 4-12-07 (mp3)

Last night’s playlist is there.

The mp3-rip (NEWSPECIALFUN) had problems and got split up into a bunch of small pieces.

I Once was Canadian – 4-4-07 (mp3, first hour)

I once was Canadian – 4-4-07 (mp3, last hour and change).

To some people, “Pittsburgh sound” might conjure up Don Caballero and other math rock groups. Other might think of Girl Talk. Now people might think of Wiz Khalifa. He’s a young Pittsburgh MC (a senior at Allderdice, in fact) with a song out by that name.

Rolling Stone has a write-up about him. Ed Masley at the Post Gazette talks much more about Pittsburgh.

I like the video because it shows a number of familiar sites. As for the music, it’s competent and listenable, but not great. I’ll give it time.

You can find out/ hear more at his his myspace page.

I scanned and uploaded a bunch of black and white photos to my picasa thing.

Galleries include Pittsburgh over Christmas, my first try at fisheye, the Oakland A’s last game of their sweep of the Twins in the playoffs, Jose Gonzalez @ Stanford, and John Vanderslice @ Stanford.

I’ve been doing this in stealth for a couple days, but I feel like it’s time to announce my other blog. It’s a music blog.

I’ve felt for a while that I was writing too little about music for this to be a music blog and too much about music for this to be a personal blog. In one case, outside readers see too much personal ranting and in the other, friends get alienated by the constant music talk , so I’ve split it off.

I’ll still be blogging here. I won’t be posting here about music, unless it’s related directly to me, like music I write/ record, radio playlists or if it’s a mixtape. I’ll be co-posting the last two of those.

I feel a bit weird about it—I’m always written this for myself and maybe a couple friends, but writing about any specific x is an admission that someone wants to read that. Now I have a whole blog where I pretend that people want to read my writing about music.

I had a 3 hour slot–from 6-9pm tonight. Playlist.

The streamripper had to reconnect so it split the mp3 into two parts for this week’s NEWSPECIALFUN:
I once was Canadian, KZSU – 3/28/07 [1/2] mp3
I once was Canadian, KZSU – 3/28/07 [2/2] mp3

For the record, it appears it split it right in the middle of Spanish Harlem.

My radio show will be on early tomorrow and next Wednesday, from 6-9pm Pacific (a reasonable hour for you east coasters!) on KZSU. You can even Listen online.

I might have a special guest tomorrow, Adem, a great indie folk artist out of England. It’s still a bit up in the air so check back here frequently for updates.

Last night I saw Elvis Perkins (in Dearland) at the Cafe du Nord. I got there a little bit before he went on when they were finishing setting up and sound-checking their mics. I was a bit surprised because they had large diaphragm condensers for his vocals, the harmonium and as an overhead for the drums (?!).

When Elvis and co. came out, they pretty quickly launched into “While You Were Sleeping” which was fine with me, as it’s my favorite track off of his album Ash Wednesday. The band consisted of Elvis on guitar and vocals, a guy that switched between guitar, harmonium and trombone; an upright/ electric bassist and a drummer/ percussionist. Everyone sang back up vocals. “Ash Wednesday” followed soon afterwards. His sound from the get-go was really good. His voice was clear and the mix was nice.

His set quickly veered away from album songs. “Weeping Pilgrim” was a great song. I think it’s a traditional song. It was rollicking and fun. On a few songs including that one, the drummer got out from behind the set and played a marching bass drum with a mallet on one side and a set of jingles (like on a tambourine, but in a line) on the other.

All in all, the show was a lot of fun and the band and sound were good. I’d definitely recommend it if you like Ash Wednesday or if you’re on the fence about Elvis Perkins.

Perkins did do a couple things that could be taken as arrogant or endearing, depending on how you look at it. The one that I’m mostly thinking of was before the last song he said “Well, the last song before we go backstage and you clap for a while and we come back out.” and then later while people were clapping he stuck out his head out of the dressing room and said “louder!” It was a little much

more photos after the jump

(more…)

A pretty good evening last night.

First Uncle Frank’s BBQ in Mountain View w/ andyl and liz. This place is awesome. You walk through to the back of Francesca’s bar to get there and it’s the sort of place where there are paper towel holders at the tables. They don’t mess around. Ridiculous brisket, good links and ribs, good corn bread. I couldn’t get to the sides (baked beans and greens) due to stomach capacity issues. Hilarious waitress.

Second, my friends the Light Footwork played at Make Out Room. They have cheap beers. When’s the last time you got two pints (Anchor Steam and PBR) for $6? (Answer only if you live in an overpriced city.) The Light Footwork put on a fun show, as always. I also ran into KZSU alum Nick Mirov again. We chatted about SXSW and various bands.

Really, I can’t complain. Good times.

I did my radio show last night (with some help). Here’s the playlist and the NEWSPECIALFUN:
I Once was Canadian – KZSU 3/21/07 (mp3)

Also, I never posted my playlist/ mp3 from last show. Part of it was there were some problems with the mp3. It was half Irish music (for St. Paddy’s Day) and the rest indie. Anyway, if you’re interested:
playlist
NEWSPECIALFUN
I once was Irish – KZSU 3/15/07 (mp3)

The mp3 has two bad edits where it was split up before and one part where there was a chunk of maybe 10 minutes missing (just showed up blank in the recording) so I just cut out all that dead space.

Here it is, a little late as always… (I should just say that I’ll post it on the 21st of every month instead of mid-month…maybe I’d be on time more often).

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file—I think the m3u file might actually be right this time)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list. you should now have the 2007march playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here (first time as a google doc). This one includes a strange variety of music. I have a few indie pop/ rock songs (Benoit Pioulard, The One AM Radio, etc.), a couple field recordings of prison work songs and then a few South African songs, given that I spent much of February there.

Adrian’s March 2007 mix tape [zip file]

This’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week) before being moved to a password protected folder.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

I’m a little backlogged as far as the concert review posts go, but here’s one I definitely wanted to mention.

[As a side note, does anyone but myself like these concert reviews?]

On Friday I saw Hrishi Hirway and the One AM radio at Fort Oregon in Berkeley. I’ve mentioned the One AM Radio before in this post about his kickball music video (which I still love) and this concert recap of his last Fort Oregon show.

Gumbeaux and I got to the Fort around 10pm. It’s just a house in Berkeley with occasional shows in the basement. As a venue it’s pretty odd–you’re standing under ducts or next to a furnace quite often. The opening band was the Golden Birds. It was quite a turnout for them and I think they have a following around here. The basement was pretty full. They were good indie pop but the sound seemed a little bit like a band playing in someone’s basement.

The One AM Radio’s sound combines the electronic elements with intimate vocals and colorful arrangements. Their live set up this time through was Hrishi on guitar, vocals and laptop operating; a tenor saxophonist, a tenor/ alto saxophonist and an upright bass player. The only things that were amplified were the vocals, guitar and laptop.

The One AM Radio started out with the Greatest of Ease (mp3). A really nice version of “Drowsy Haze” with the audience singing backups followed [1]. After a few songs from the new album (including In the Time we’ve Got (mp3)) he asked if there were any requests and after hearing a few, he played Flicker (mp3). He then played my favorite new song (”Echoing Airports”) and favorite old song (”All I Can Recall is the Haunting”) in a row.

His last show I was pretty tired and wasn’t all that into it. This one was completely different. I enjoyed it a lot. The mix was great (despite the fact that the mix was being done by the guitarist/ vocalist/ laptopist and the rest weren’t being amplified); Hrishi’s voice was great; the song selection and the songs were great.

[1] I have mentioned it before but I’ll mention it again: I like when bands ask the audience to sing along. I like it a lot.

Check it!. The presitigous Stanford Daily published an article I wrote about indie music on TV. KZSU is trying to get a regular column in the paper.

It’s marginally interesting.

(It’s an expansion of this post.)

First: Winner of the Noise Pop one day music video contest, the Blammos “Girl of My Dreams” video. The guy walks around the Mission and sings a love song to strangers.

Second: (for the jdawg, a pinball wizard) a Pepsi commercial with San Francisco as a giant pinball machine.

(both via sfist)

Last week, I saw Mr. Ted Leo a couple of times, first as part of Noise Pop and then as part Stanford Concert Network’s campus concerts.

I came to the first concert with a familiarity with Hearts of Oak and Shake the Sheets. I like those albums, but didn’t play them too often.

I got there on Friday just before the Georgie James set. They were competant musicians, but it was sort of take it or leave it in the end… I might post separately about some thoughts it got going in my head, but I don’t want to connect them directly with this band, because the thoughts aren’t.

After the usualy pre-headliner shuffle and push toward the stage, Ted Leo came up to much applause and excitement. Immediately he started rocking out with high energy. After a handful of songs, I started thinking “oh, he’s just playing the hits. what’s he going to do when those run out?” After a few more songs I realized he wasn’t just playing hits; his catalogue is just really good.

He bantered well between songs, answering people yelling out from the audience and whatnot.

Ted Leo live is like the best things from punk, indie rock, and folk. Punk: high energy and a DIY melody. Indie: great melodies and chord progressions. Folk: interesting and multi-layered lyrics.

Ted really goes all out with the whole show. I’m surprised he can put so much into his vocals and not completely destroy his voice. His falsetto is pretty amazing, too.

He played a handful of new songs, including a really great one called “Lost Brigade” with a really nice repeated line “Every little baby has its own song” (which doesn’t sound great when I write it, but you can check out a live version of the song here). They also did a live covers of Chumbawumba’s “Rappaport’s Testament: I Never Gave Up” and the old Irish tune “Dirty Old Town.”

I went in not knowing what to expect and in the end, I was pretty much floored by his performance.

Sunday’s concert (which the Stanford Daily covered) had different openers: Stanford bands. They weren’t really good at all, though the last, the Bee’s Knees were an interesting combination of 50’s throwback and modern pop.

It was in an odd venue, Kresge Auditorium. Immovable seats close to the stage made for awkward standing during the show. The crowd was not your standard indie rock crowd. Far more—what do you call them?—frat boys in attendence.

But for Ted’s part it was a fairly similar performance in that he brought his A game once again. There was a fairly similar set list, but he was still great. One amusing anectdote from the evening was when Ted started saying that their set was originally going to be longer but … (then he sort of trailed off, I think he was going to say that his voice was starting to go or that he wasn’t feeling well). Someone from the crowd then shouted “Fuck you!” to a completely stunned Leo and crowd. He then just said something like “Okay. I guess we’ll keep going” and then they rattled off another half dozen songs.

Overall, two really enjoyable shows.

Recommendation: go see Ted Leo when he comes to your town. He’s touring the US starting at the end of March. Check to see when he’s in your town and buy tickets.

Overheard at last night’s Mountain Goats show at the Bottom of the Hill.

Peter Hughes: You know, we’ve been playing at the Bottom of the Hill for so long that I remember a show where my now ex-wife’s best friend was buying us shots of liquor.

fan, from the back: yeah, it was Old Grand Dad

Peter: yeah, it was.

and later in the show

fan, diferent from the first: T SHIRT SONG!

John Darnielle: There is no such song!

fan: T SHIRT SONG!

JD: It was an improvisation and therefore not a real song!

playlist

NEWSPECIALFUN:
I Once was Canadian – 3.7.07

yup

that’s it.

I subbed for someone tonight on the radio. I did an hour and change of old-time music.

playlist

newspecialfun (mp3)

Grab the latest mixtape now. I’m moving it into a password protected folder a day from now.

So my ridiculous pursuit of the moment is my concert list

It’s meant to be a list of every concert I’ve ever been to. It’ll never be complete, but I’m trying. I have a lot of concerts on there already and then I have a lot of concerts that I don’t remember/ can’t find the dates of.

Fionn Regan topped my list of best albums of ‘06 and for the first time (I believe) he’s touring America.

Well, actually he’s just playing four dates. But if you’re in Austin (or will be for SXSW) or NYC, you really shoud go:

15 Mar Stubbs Austin SXSW
16 Mar BD Rileys, 204 East 6th St Austin SXSW
17 May Mojo BBQ (1-4pm) Austin SXSW
20 Mar Mercury Lounge (7.30pm) New York w/ Get Cape Wear Cape Fly

So buy tickets already!

From the same people that brought you that spectacular bouncy-balls-in-San-Francisco Bravia ad (which, incidentally, first alerted me to the amazing Jose Gonzalez) comes another amazing commercial. It’s basically a building demolition/ fireworks display, except done with paint.

The commercial is pretty great by itself, but go ahead and watch the making of as well. The actually did all of that (as they actually dropped a quarter of a million bouncy balls down the hills and streets of San Francisco). There’s something really cool about doing something that would be a little cheesy with computer graphics instead with real materials, people and dollars (or pounds, as the case may be). The Brits seem to have the corner on that market, starting with that ridiculous Honda ad a few years back.

Last minute^H^H^H^H^H^Hfew hours, I’ll be filling in for a sick DJ tonight from 6-9pm PST on the KZSU. Listen in!

Give it a listen—it’ll actually start at a reasonable time for you east coasters. Also, I won’t be on tomorrow in my normal slot because of the aforementioned Sebadoh concert.

[Update:] playlist

I meant to post this the one day I was back between South Africa and Mexico, February 14, but I got held up. I had a brilliant theme, given that it was St. Valentine’s Day: Love Songs: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Well, it almost worked out but I feel like it won’t have the same relavence or weight posting it today. Oh well.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file—I think the m3u file might actually be right this time)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list. you should now have the 2007feb playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. There are a bunch of great songs on here, from 60s girl groups, to Pedro the Lion (he sure is good at the Bad and the Ugly), to Jose Gonzalez. I also took this one apt opportunity to throw in a couple ‘emo’ songs.

Adrian’s February 2007 mix tape [zip file]

This’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week) before being moved to a password protected folder.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

Anyway, I hope you like this one even if it’s a bit past its due. I have a bunch of great songs in my mind for the next one, so hopefully I can get back on track for that one.

I haven’t been to a rock show in a while and all of a sudden, it seems like I’ll be going to quite a few, with Noise Pop this week, a couple of Stanford Concert Network shows and some random bands coming through (some of which I’m considering/ am seeing multiple times). Here’s what it looks like:

• February 28: Noise Pop: Sebadoh (original line up) at Great American Music Hall
• March 1: Noise Pop: Alexi Murdoch w/ Aqueduct at Cafe du Nord OR
• March 1: KZSU presents Hella at the 750 Pub, Stanford
• March 2: Noise Pop: Ted Leo at Great American Music Hall
• March 4: Ted Leo at Kresge Auditorium, Stanford
• March 7: Mountain Goats at the Independent
• March 9: Mountain Goats at the Bottom of the Hill
• March 10: Long Winters at the Independent
• March 16: the One Am Radio at Fort Oregon, Berkeley

There are also Badly Drawn Boy w/ Adem, Elvis Perkins, Adem (headlining) and other bands at the end of March. Goodness, life’s so hard.

I saw a review of I Belong to this Band: 85 Years of Sacred Harp Recordings in the latest Rolling Stone (which I apparently have a subscription to, maybe because I’m a world famous radio DJ.) I tried to find Rolling Stone’s review online, but I did find one in Stylus.

From that CD, I found a documentary about Sacred Harp, Awake My Soul. Did anyone see this? Apparently it aired on PBS recently. The trailer actually give a decent, quick introduction to Sacred Harp singing.

For a taste of it, listen to my favorite song in this style (from the Alan Lomax-recorded Southern Journey, V. 9: Harp of a Thousand Strings – All Day Singing From the Sacred Harp by the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers):

Alabama Sacred Harp Sings – Sherburne (mp3)

Sacred Harp (wikipedia!) is a form of shape note singing, which was developed as a form of notating music such that four shapes on either a line or a space indicate the eight notes of the scale. Sacred Harp was a hymn book written using shape notes in 1850s. It’s been sung in pretty much the same way since that time, largely in the American South. See also: how Sacred Harp is sung.

Usually there is a different conductor for each song. The singers run through the melody once on solfege before running through the song once. They then move right on to the next conductor and the next song. There’s no practicing or rehearsing songs.

My favorite idiosyncrasy the style are that the singers just sing. There are no pretenses of being polished.

In much the same way that it’s been sung for the last 150-odd years, it’s still sung today, in fact, I could (and am considering) sing in a group in Palo Alto though, I have to admit I’m not very good at site singing.

Last night I saw Ralph Stanley at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. Laurie Lewis opened. Tickets were due to my wicked smarts and quickness with the internet in responding to a flavorpill quiz.

Laurie Lewis (and Tom Rossum and the Right Hand Band) was up first. She’s a local bluegrass fiddler and singer. Her band’s set was good and her band’s tight. It went by pretty quick.

Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys came up next. Right at the beginning of the set, Laurie came back on and made a big deal because it was the eve of Ralph’s 80th Birthday. They had a cake and a proclamation from Berkeley’s mayor.

Once the festivities ended, the set started in earnest. Ralph introduced the members one by one (including Ralph Stanley II and Nathan Stanley, the grandson) and they did a short number featuring that member. They then did a few full band numbers, Ralph did ‘O Death’ solo and a capella, and then went back around featuring each member that had a solo CD out (which was most everyone). From there it was a couple more full band numbers before the set ended. Ralph didn’t do all that much in the set aside from singing on the full band numbers and playing clawhammer banjo for one song. It seemed a bit obvious to me that this was, at this point, a franchise. They were selling the Stanley name and artistic vision more than his actual musicianship. It sort of reminded me when I saw the Count Basie Orchestra 15 years after Count’s death.

All of that said, his band was tight. When you’re Ralph Stanley, you can get some good pickers for your band, certainly. Going into the show I was actually a bit afraid that the show would drag on a bit, but, even though the set was well over an hour, it didn’t bore or drag on. For Ralph’s performances himself, he certainly can still sing and play a mean clawhammer banjo. I enjoyed the night.

(more photos after the break)
(more…)

Daytrotter has some mp3s of a recent in-studio by Elvis Perkins. They’re four songs, all originally on Ash Wednesday. The voice recording is a bit boomy but they’re otherwise good.

I haven’t talked about music much lately. I’m about to unleash a slew, so steady yourselves.

NPR has Arcade Fire’s performace from last Saturday at Judson Memorial Church in NYC both streaming and download. The first few minutes are a bit rough fidelity-wise because the band starts the show in the audience for the first song.

Also heresay has mp3’s from the Friday Judson show, all split up nicely.

Ipod Breathalyzer with FM Transmitter

Better or worse than that ipod dock/ toilet paper dispenser?

Apparently the O.C. is over. I’m not sad. I hadn’t ever followed it or really cared about it other than for the music. Articles have been written on the effect the O.C. had on music buying habits related to small time bands. I’d heard so-and-so was going to be on the show here and there, but today I read down down the list of songs (or this one if you’d prefer) on the show and it’s really an amazing list in a way. I mean there are some really pretty small time bands in there, and many bands (and even songs) that I’ve put on my online mixtapes. The shear volume of music is quite amazing. There are 12 songs in some of these episodes.

Anyway, the other conclusion that I have from this is that it might be very very expensive to put out the DVDs of this show. It sort of depends. In the past a different license was needed to get the music for the broadcast as opposed to the DVD, but now, as far as I know, the contract usually covers both.

Now it seems quite common for indie bands to be well-represented in TV shows and, for that, I thank you, the O.C. For that and for the excuse to call my town, the MP.

I’m back on the radio.

the playlist

and the NEWSPECIALFUN
I Once was Canadian – 2-21-07 (mp3)

(yes, I’m clever: the first song on Ash Wednesday was Ash Wednesday)

Somehow I missed this: Pitchfork publishes a weekly list of bands and artists on TV that week.

For example, this week’s:

Monday, January 22:

ABC: “Jimmy Kimmel Live”: Nas (rerun)
CBS: “Late Show With David Letterman”: Nellie McKay with the Brooklyn Philharmonic
CBS: “Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson”: Lady Sovereign (rerun)

Tuesday, January 23:

CBS: “Late Show With David Letterman”: the Shins [1]
NBC: “Late Night With Conan O’Brien”: Cheap Trick (rerun)

Thursday, January 25:

CBS: “Late Show With David Letterman”: Gwen Stefani (rerun)
NBC: “Late Night With Conan O’Brien”: New York Dolls (rerun)

Friday, January 26:

NBC: “Last Call With Carson Daly”: Young Jeezy (rerun)

Saturday, January 27:

NBC: “Saturday Night Live”: Ludacris (rerun)

Monday, January 29:

MTV2: “Subterranean”: the Shins

Now you can totally be up on that stuff. Set your Tivos!

[Update:] [1] Did anyone else catch this? Did you see Gibbard playing with them? That man’s everywhere!

Grab the January mix tape while you can; I’ll be moving it to a password protected folder tomorrow (or Wednesday).

Here’s the playlist for tonight’s show.

NEWSPECIALFUN:
I Once was Canadian 1 -18-07 (mp3)

I am genius at coming up with band names. I don’t usually tell people because I may some day need 1,027 band names for my various bands, but tonight I’m feeling generous.

You want to know it?

Alright, here it is: Frick! Paper Cut!

No, no need to thank me.

I’m almost hitting mid-month on this one. It’s a bit hard to believe that this is the seventh online mixtape already. I hope you’re enjoying them. In a way, they’re a lot of work, but a lot of it (finding the music, making the playlist) has become part of my routine.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list. you should now have the 2007january playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. It’s mostly smaller indie bands this month, with a couple bigger names thrown in and one Motown song.

Adrian’s January 2007 mix tape [zip file]

This’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week) before being moved to a password protected folder.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

I like all the mixtapes I make. I like the songs on this one.

February’s mix tape (to be released valentines day-ish) is going to be mostly love songs of various sorts. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

[Update:] I once again messed up the m3u file. Jesse fixed it (m3u file).

There are a few links I’ve been meaning to put up. Things I find interesting but I don’t want to add to the sidebar on the right.

Random links:

• designverb: a blog about design related topics, largely product design and the like. fairly interesting stuff.
• rbally has a nice Cat Power show from Berlin for download [update: rbally seems to have taken this down/ broken]
• youtube has a great chemistry lab safety video explosion. (dylan, are you seeing this?)
• bitsandpieces silly college humor, but sometimes entertaining
• wikipedia has a list of African countries by GDP (adjusted for purchasing power parity) per capita. South Africa’s on top, but barely. For reference, the US is 3rd in the world for GDP (PPP) per capita at about $42,000.
• oregon trail is it possible you haven’t played this game? there are even shirts about it. And you can download an emulated version
• Tom Wilson I feel like I should add him to my list of best producers. He did Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Velvet Underground and more

[This was going to be one post with the above part 1 and below part 3, but it was too much, so I split them up]
There was recently the kottke best links of 2006. Here are some of my favorites from that list (including some I’ve seen/ linked to before):

• How to Care for your Introvert (from 2003; describes a lot of people I know and, well, me) and a current interview with the author
• David Copperfield gets mugged but doesn’t lose any property because of…slight of hand!
• old timey (WWII-era) color photographs of America
• the JFK assassination Zapruder film, stabilized even stranger and freakier
• songtapper tap a rhythm, it tells you the song. didn’t work as well as I wanted, but still interesting
• shiny mud balls only from Japan…and a how-to!
• Amateur a non-piano player or drummer makes a music video with himself playing those two instruments with clever editting
• a photo essay of female soldier in Iraq
• free historical sounds (as mp3s) “I Have a Dream”(MLK) to “Luckiest Man on the face of the Earth” (Lou Gehrig)
• Sheep Market 10,000 sheep drawn by online workers via Amazon’s odd Mechanical Turk service
• crazy aerial photos that look like tiny model cities
• Lake Peigneur disappears a 14″ drill bit made a lake and much of an island disappear
• 1964 New Yorker article on Dylan
• hilariously bad movie pitches
  

  Idea #1:
  What if the Internet Turned into a Were-Wolf

• Photos of European football (soccer) fields very diverse and often in gorgeous settings

There were a number of the links on that kottke best links of 2006 list that I had already seen, but I’d enjoyed.

• Simpson’s beginning, in live action (British made)
• when indie yuppie took off (a term/ concept created by Vice records honcho Adam Shore and pushed by stereogum
• Wes Andersen’s odd AmEx add don’t leave home without it
• how to get a human customer service representative at a lot of companies
• a Henri Cartier-Bresson photo gets trashed on flickr
• a picture of eyes above an honor-system drink payment box makes people more honest
• easily mispronounced domain names whorepresents.com? still hilarious
• Jimmy Kimmel’s hilarious ‘Unnecessary Censorship’ video put bleeps where there weren’t any before and it makes things very funny
• devastating photo of a homeless heroin addict in the Tenderloin (where I often go to the Great American
• Aries Spears rap impressions
• Noah takes a self-portrait everyday for 6 years and makes a video of it interesting, haunting eyes

I didn’t talk much tonight on my show because I’m tired and lethargic. Here’s the playlist.

Also, I once have the NEWSPECIALFUN, in mp3 form (for a limited amount of time):
I Once was Canadian – 01/10/07 (mp3)

People listen to the Beatles, maybe the Beach Boys, but not a lot else from the first half of the 60s and certainly not (usually) from decades earlier.

There are reasons to dig further back. Most of this is from emails to some KZSU list over the past few days.

50’s: the start (for all intents and purposes) of Rock N Roll, Motown, Phil Spector, R&B coming out of gospel as a twinkle
in Sam Cooke’s voice, folk as a traditionalist revival (and the release of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music), folk as a mainstream genre, cool jazz, hard bop, classic country, one of the only reasonable periods of musical theater, etc.

30’s and 40’s: perhaps one of the two most important collection of traditional folk music from the American South, the Lomax field recordings. the turning period of jazz from a dance genre to essentially an art music genre, the signature American sound in classical music and theater (in the Copland and Gershwin sense).

(As with all broad sweeping statements, these can be argued with, but they’re generally accurate)

For my upcoming South Africa trip:

• 3 X 2GB SD cards (in addition to the 2 I already have)
• 6 X Velvia 100 color slide film, 6 X Tri-X 400 black and white negative film

Just because:

• One Kiss Can Lead To Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost & Found
• one CD not to be named due to its embarassing nature (I’ll chalk it up to comfort music) [update: oh fine, it might be this]

[another update:] I also bought a few tickets to this year’s Noise Pop:

• Feb 28: Sebadoh (orignal line up) at the Great American Music Hall
• March 2: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists at the GAMH

I hope you’re paying attention, because this is really exciting; I’m a little giddy.

Possibly the second of many.

KZSU’s 60 hour 60th Anniversary Marathon starts tomorrow at noon PST and runs through Saturday night at midnight PST. It’s even doubly famous (and a small blurb here. You can listen online.

There’s an hour for each year from 1947 to 2006. I’ll be DJing 1963 and 1964 which will run from 4-6am PST (7-9am EST!) on Friday morning. I’m really about all the music that is from those years that I’m going to play. Tune in.

There will also be 25 or so alumni DJs that will be coming back on the air for the first time, in some cases, in 58 years. Some of them went on to professional careers in radio and media.

My New Year’s Eve activities included seeing Pan’s Labyrinth and later the Light Footwork at the Hotel Utah.

I was intrigued by Pan’s Labyrinth because it had one of the highest ratings I’d seen for a movie on metacritic. It also has a pretty interesting description in some of the reviews: it’s a fantasy movie and a war movie and a love story and… It seems like there’d be a lot going on but while you’re watching it, it doesn’t. It’s a fairy tale of sorts, but it’s possibly the most gruesome fairy tale you’ll see this year.

Post-Spanish civil war, mid-World War II, Ofelia and her very pregnant mother travel to the mountains of Spain to join the new husband/ step-father. He is a captain whose mission is to eliminate the remaining resistance in the area. We quickly learn that he’s not a nice guy. Ofelia is fascinated with fairy tales. During her first night at the mill, a fairy comes and leads her to a labyrinth on the premises. A faun explains to her that she is the long lost daughter of the underground king and that to return to her throne she must complete three tasks before the full moon (in a few days).

The rest of the movie is her trying to complete these tasks, the struggle of the resistance, a love story between one of the resistors and one of the people working under the captain, the struggle between her and the captain, etc.

I still don’t know quite what to make of it. It’s still swimming around in my head. It’s a light fairy tail and, yet, it’s heavy and affecting.

Later in the evening, Gumbeaux and I went over to the Hotel Utah. I’ve known the guys from the Light Footwork for a while and recently heard them live for the first time. They were playing their first gig “out”. The Hotel Utah is small venue which has apparently been around forever.

They put on a fun set full of their signature indie pop songs. Lots of energy. The one area I think they could work on is the banter. (Without some talented DJ leading the banter, it fell a little flat.) Gums and I weren’t in the mood for more, so we left after the Light Footwork.

Happy New Year’s.

I don’t know if you’re like me. Maybe you went out and had a blast…NYE (as they call it in the business) is particularly geared, it seems, towards large parties. I’m not a huge fan of huge parties so that’s one reason I have a feeling of dread as NYE approaches.

The other thing about New Year’s is that pesky reminder that time is passing. I’d like to say it hasn’t always been this way, but I think that’d it’d be a lie; I’ve always been too ambitious, had too many goals, to enjoy the fact that time is passing and that I have less time to accomplish them. (Birthdays also remind one of time passing, but somehow I mostly avoid that same dread with my birthdays and instead I meet them largely with joy.)

Another thought: Weezer’s Weezer (the first one) is a dang good album throughout.

I had to wait till after Christmas to post this (it was present-related), but the Phil Sector Back to Mono 4 CD box set is only $16.99 at amazon, brand new.

I have it (and paid a lot more it than that, used) and it’s fantastic. 3 great CDs with songs like “Be My Baby”, “He’s a Rebel”, “Da Doo Ron Ron”, “Then He Kissed Me”, “Spanish Harlem” and “Unchained Melody.” The fourth CD is the Spector Christmas CD, which is enjoyable during that season.

In any case, this is a great price for a great and worthwhile box set.

Today when I was sorting through my desk drawers, I found this receipt from Beluga Records:

[they said to save the receipt and I did]

Colin had told me that this band, the Coctails, had musical saw because he knew I was interested in it, so I decided to order The Coctails’ Peel. I’d also heard him talking about bands like Superchunk and Sebadoh, many of whom appeared on the Lounge Ax Relocation and Defense Fund CD.

I ordered those CDs and I believe they were my first indie rock CDs. I possibly bought Sebadoh’s Free Weed before that, but I’m not completely sure. July 1997 would place me at the end of my sophomore year of high school, about to enter my junior year.

Andy said that yesterday: “I had embarrassing teen years.” He was going through some boxes of stuff that his parents wanted to get rid of to make space. I laughed at him. I’m not embarrassed by my teen years, I thought. I did alright with them.

Here’s one gem Andy found yesterday:

[yeah, I should crop this and make it a smaller file.]

It’s the original lyric sheet to the Where’s Luke theme song. This was when we were preparing for the coffee house that they hosted at Westminster Presbyterian. I think we might have just been asking Colin if he’d be our drummer.

Tonight I went through my drawers in my desk tonight. I was laughing again, this time at myself. Despite myself I did have an embarrassing adolescence. I found all sorts of ridiculous things that I saved. The pot of gold at the end of the embarrassment rainbow was the half-drawer full of love notes, poems and drawings from a high school girlfriend. I was smiling so much at the ridicilousness of it that I almost cried.

Indie rock (in the broadest of senses) lives and dies on credibility, so much so that ‘indie cred’ is a common phrase. Sure image helps and gimmicks help and music/ songwriting ability may also help, but cred is important. I won’t go as far as saying that cred is king, but it’s certainly important.

And yet, indie rockers often take on genres they are not intimately familiar with. That is, they lack imediate credibility. Beirut takes on Balkan brass music. Iron & Wine take on southern folk.

Even when indie rockers are not taking on other genres, they are often tackling music that isn’t familiar to the listener. Sufjan’s epic folk, Joanna Newsome’s weird harp screeching, Andrew Bird’s experimental, looped violin pop and Neutral Milk Hotel’s emotive fuzz pop are all examples.

What do these people have in common? Unique voices. And they don’t lack credibility.

The unique voices lead to the listener to view these artists with more authenticity than otherwise. If they not going to sing normal then they must mean it.

I’m not sure this is a conscious thought on the artists part, but it’s more likely some bred by the culture.

calm down and don’t strangle people this instant.

yeah, I’m stuck in O’Hare.

a corrollary to this is, I believe, a new phrase I’m coining: comfort music which, like comfort food, may not be great in and of itself and probably isn’t good for you, but helps on those tough days.

I was delayed there a bit, but here’s the December mix tape. Hopefully there’s enough time for you to download it and get it on to your favorite digital audio player for your holiday travels. Play it while sitting around the Christmas tree with your family.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list. you should now have the 2006december playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. It’s a mix of normal indie fare along with indie and oldies/ Motown Christmas songs.

Adrian’s December 2006 mix tape [zip file]

This’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week) before being moved to a password protected folder.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

Enjoy and have a happy Christmas or other winter solstice-timed religious, ethnic or other holiday.

This sketch, from last year, is meant to be funny, and it is, but it’s also a good song.

Hypothesis: everyone has a bit of a soft spot for the music that (s)he liked in high school.

Discuss.

I did my top dozen albums of 2006 show last night. My picks and start-with-these tracks:

1. Fionn Regan The End of the World
   • Be Good or Be Gone
   • Put a Penny in the Slot
2. Beirut Gulag Orkestar
   • Postcards from Italy
   • Scenic World or Mount Wroclai
3. the Long Winters Putting the Days to Bed
   • Fire Island, AK
   • Seven
4. Bishop Allen Month EPs
   • Corazon [from January]
   • Flight 180 [from April]
5. Sufjan Stevens Avalanche
   • The Mistress Witch From McClure
   • No Man’s Land
6. Girl Talk Night Ripper
   • Hold Up
   • Too Deep
   • Smash Your Head
7. Damien Jurado And Now That I’m in Your Shadow
   • Hoquaim
   • Denton, TX
8. Cat Power The Greatest
   • The Greatest
   • Willie
9. David Bazan Fewer Moving Parts
   • How I Remember
   • The Devil is Beating his Wife
10. Eric Bachmann To the Races
    • Home or Genie, Genie
    • Lonesome Warrior
11. Hold Steady Boys and Girls in America
    • Chips Ahoy!
    • You Can Make him Like You
12. Elvis Perkins Ash Wednesday
    • While You were Sleeping
    • Good Friday

A little bit about each album after the jump.

(more…)

Just a reminder that the Light Footwork will be playing live on KZSU tonight at 9pm PST. It’s the first live gig of this blog-acclaimed band. You can listen at 90.1FM or online.

Update: If you missed it, check this out (and the playlist). It starts a couple minutes in.

I’m working on my top albums of 2006 list. I’ll have my list posted probably Thursday because I need to have it done Wednesday for my “Top Albums/ Releases of 2006″ special on my radio show. In the meantime, though, here is a list of some good albums from 2006. Have I missed any? What are your favorites?

In no particular order:

• Eric Bachmann To the Races
• Hold Steady Boys and Girls in America
• Girl Talk Night Ripper
• Damien Jurado And Now That You’re In My Shadow
• Beirut Gulag Orkestar
• Sufjan Stevens Avalanche
• Sufjan Stevens Songs for Christmas box set
• Long Winters Putting the Days to Bed
• Cat Power The Greatest
• David Bazan Fewer Moving Parts EP
• Soft Drugs In Moderation EP
• Johnny Cash American V
• Mountain Goats Get Lonely
• Fionn Regan End of History (came out in england at least)
• Bishop Allen Month EPs
• ms john soda notes and the like
• Danielson Ships
• V/A Eccentric Soul 9: Big Mack Label
• V/A Eccentric Soul 11: Good God! a Gospel Funk Hymnal
• Elvis Perkins Ash Wednesday
• Built to Spill You in Reverse
• Album Leaf Into the Blue Again
• Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy The Letting Go
• Swan Lake Beast Moans
• Belle and Sebastian Life Pursuit
• Mates of State Bring it Back
• Mogwai Mr. Beast
• Centro-Matic Fort Recovery

Thoughts?

[Also, I've been rediculous this year in CD purchasing. The only albums among that list that I don't personally own: Fionn Regan, ms john soda, Danielson, V/A Big Mack, Built to Spill, Belle and Sebastian, Centro-Matic. I've heard all of those extensively, though.]

[this is possibly the first of a series of 'vinyl gems', songs that are weird or wonderful and can only be found on vinyl records]

This is a total gem that the station’s music library. It’s from the b-side of “All the Umbrellas in London”, one of the best Magnetic Fields songs out there.

This song is just crazy and weird.

I’ll give on one reason to take a listen to this and it’s the only reason you’re going to need: the chorus is “We are the rats in the garbage of the Western world…so let’s dance!“.

Magnetic Fields – Rats in the Garbage of the Western World (mp3)

I’ve owned the first three and tried the last two at work the other day for a couple hours each. These are all pretty pricey.

1. Sennheiser HD600 open a classic and a benchmark. some of the brightest and clearest sound I’ve heard from a headphone. absolutely flat, though: you hear what’s in the music and it makes nothing sound prittier; if the music sound crappy, these won’t fix it. great for monitoring music while mixing or the like (but bad for recording because open headphones can bleed to the mic). modular cable a plus. openness can be annoying if you want outside sounds to be blocked out. fairly comfortable, can be worn hours at a time.
2. Beyerdynamic DT990 open great sounding, slightly bassy, still very clear. great everyday headphones. the ones with the velour earpads are super comfortable, possibly my favorite in terms of comfort level
3. Beyerdynamic DT770 closed like a closed version of the 990s. Not quite as clear but still sound very clear and nice. slightly bassy. similarly comfortable to the 990s.
4. Technics RP-DH1200 closed fairly clear but muddy sound. fairly bassy and optomized for a louder sound that I’d like. the force both down and in is too high so they’re fairly uncomfortable for longer periods of time. solid construction. Modular cable a plus.
5. Audio Techics ATH-AD900 open Fairly clear sound, but not as bright as the HD600s (probably not as good of a high-end response). Large earpieces that sit too low and the force from the headband is too light.

Overall, I’d say the HD600s are the best sounding, but the DT990s are my favorite everday headphone for comfort and listenability.

A couple weeks ago, I finished Body Piercing Saved My Life by Andrew Beaujon (named after the “clever” shirt.) (Amazon, , one review, two mp3-blog like posts by the author about Christian music)

It’s a look at Christian Rock, capital C, capital R, by an outsider. Beaujon is a writer for Spin so he comes from the mainstream rock criticism side of things. I’ve never been really involved in the scene he talks about although I stood at the edge of it a couple years, so I’m a bit of an outsider to it as well. (Which reminds me of a post about an article of the same topic and perspective…)

He spends chapters looking at aspects and events in the Christian music world. He looks at particular bands and people as well as other cultural forces like Mars Hill Church and Tooth and Nail Records. There are various people that come off earnestly and then there are some more slimey people. I’d heard some negative things about T&N (that they don’t give their bands a fair shake) and they were sort of confirmed in this book.

Perhaps my favorite section is the chapter about David Bazan (at the time of the interviews, still in Pedro the Lion). Where a lot of interviewees seem to sidestep questions that might result in controversial answers, Bazan seems to take any and all questions head on without flinching. Sufjan denied the interview request, apparently, so there’s only a brief section on him, which was a bit disappointing.

Overall, it’s an interesting, informative and well-written book about a large cultural phenomenon (Christian records easily outsell jazz records currently). I’d recommend it if you are curious about the scene or genre.

I’ve since moved on to the Dave Eggers editted The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004.

Here’s my radio show’s playlist.

Also, I got it started late and my show went on late as well (Wednesday Night Live ran late) so it’s a bit short this week, but I have the, as I’m calling it, NEWSPECIALFUN:

11 29 06 – I Once Was Canadian (KZSU) (mp3)

That Beirut show that I went to has has popped up at the Internet Archive.

It’s a really good show, even in repeat. There’s a woman screaming like an idiot next to the guy recording it for the first song and a bit of the next couple, but once you get past that, it’s a worthwhile listen. It’s available in a number of formats, too (mp3, ogg, FLAC). And it’s free.

I’m getting ready to leave the Phoenix airport and, appropriately, I’m listening to “Goodbye Sky Harbor“.

I did a bunch of fun stuff, today, some of which I may write about later, but, for now, it’s all about Paul’s Compact Discs in Bloomfield. Dave and I made the trek over to Bloomfield after a Primanti’s sandwhich this afternoon.

It’s a smallish record store, not giant by any means, but also not shoebox and very navigable. The way it’s laid out and the way things are organized made it easy to look through things. They had a good selection among indie music, including the classic stuff (they had 3 of the 4 Seam albums in stock). They also have a good vinyl (7″ and LPs) selection. Their used CD selection is small and flat-priced (all $8) so that’s not the greatest. The people behind seemed knowledgable (one geeky clerk informed me of a Girl Talk show tonight after I bought the album).

I’d say it’s perhaps on par with Aquarius or slightly lower on my list for small record stores, but that’s saying a lot: Aquarius is pretty amazing and I like Paul’s a lot too.

I got:

• Girl Talk Night Ripper
• Ida Will You Find Me [used]
• Sigur Ros Saeglopur

I was familiar with the Ida and the Sigur Ros sounds good from first listen. I had heard little snippets of the Girl Talk and had read the rave reviews and I figured I should buy it in Pittsburgh if I was going to buy it, given that he’s a Pittsburgh local. I listened to it in the car a few times while driving around today and, I must say, I’m impressed. He takes tiny samples of pop songs, often dozens for each song of his and mashes them together (quite different from a “mash up” in most ways) to make another song. The samples he mixes and the smothness with which he does it, for the most part, are pretty amazing. It’s good music and it’s fun to try to pick out the samples he’s using. Today I definitely heard, among others, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Pixies, Verve (itself a sample), Kanye West, Gwen Stefani, and Elton John. No one’s sacred.

I also found out today that Unwed Sailor has cancelled their tour, including tomorrow night’s stop at the Brillobox, so that’s sad. I was looking forward to that. If I’d know that it was cancelled (I just found out), I would probably have made more of an effort to catch Girl Talk tonight at Belvedere’s. Oh well.

I was delayed there a bit, but here’s the November mix tape. Hopefully there’s enough time for you to download it and get it on to your favorite digital audio player for your Thanksgiving travels.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list. you should now have the 2006sept playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. It starts out with a chunk of great, not super common oldies stuff and then goes into the indie rock. Bishop Allen, Polyphonic Spree, Mogwai and Phil Spector are all represented.

Adrian’s November 2006 mix tape [zip file] (moved to password protected folder)

This’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week) before being moved to a password protected folder.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

Just about every time I have an out-of-town guest, I propose going to Amoeba. They half-heartedly agree. I buy seven or eight CDs and they buy one or three.

Yesterday, I went with Liz. According to plan, she got three CDs and I got seven:

• Mark Kozelek Rock N Roll Singer
• Rogue Wave Out of the Shadow
• V/A The British are Coming, Vol. 1
• Polyphonic Spree Wait
• Red House Painters Songs for Blue Guitar
• Pedro the Lion Whole EP
• V/A Songs of the Old Regular Baptists, Vol 2: Lined-out Hymnody from Southeastern Kentucky

There are a couple entertaining videos that I found or ran across in the recent times:

Aries Spears impressions while freestyling. This is a guy doing impressions of LL Cool J, Snoop Dog, DMX and Jay Z while freestyling. It’s pretty dang impressive, though I’m not familiar with DMX at all and only somewhat familiar with the other three. I’m still very impressed. (A couple things of note: a) that’s Live 105, in SF and that’s the same studio where I did the college dj of the week thing and 2) it appears Woody, one of the hosts, is a Steelers fan as he’s sporting a hat and a Willy Parker jersey). (via stereogum)

Peyton Manning Mastercard Priceless Ad. I can see how you might not like Peyton Manning, but man, I love this commercial which started running last year. They have a second, similar one this season but it’s not as good. I laugh every time I see this one.

[Update:] Oh man, I found another Peyton priceless commercial and it’s hilarious too. Also, there’s a blooper commercial from the first Peyton video and the making of (including the actual commercial at the end) a third in the series.

I saw and ad for a touring production of this the other day. Why? Why must ‘broadway’ (or the west end or theatre or whatever you want to call this in general) ruin everything. Check out the ‘video clips’ (sorry no direct link—stupid Flash) on that site if you have any doubt if it’ll be horrible.

Two questions:

1. Has there been any originality[1] on the stage since West Side Story[2]?
2. Does the public demand unoriginal copycat works or does the broadway establishment impose them on people?

[1] Even ‘good’ productions currently on Broadway (e.g. Spamalot, the Producers) are not original.
[2] I will maintain that this is the best musical every made and the movie version is a great movie. What other Broadway musical can hold its own, musically, with the best ‘classical’ works of the twentieth century (especially if you limit it to American classical works)?.

My radio show, I Once was Canadian will be on in its old time slot this week: Thursday 6-9am PST, due to a visitor.

So, all you east coast people can listen live. I’ll be tired and it’ll be early, so you can listen to my deep, groggy just-woken-up voice on the radio. Tune in!

Do you guys still read this thing?

Everyone:

do I write too much about music? have I alienated you with my incessant talk about music?

do you have favorite types of posts on the old ab.com?

I am here to egotistically proclaim my greatness, but if I can do that while also providing something interesting to read, maybe I can tweak the formula.

I went to see Bishop Allen (their myspace page) on Thursday at the Bar of Contemporary Art. They were the second of three on the bill, the headliners being the Starlight Mints.

If you don’t know Bishop Allen, check out some of their mp3s on their webpage or listen to the ones I’m going to hand pick for you:
Bishop Allen – Same Fire [from June] (mp3)
Bishop Allen – Flight 180 [from April] (mp3)
Bishop Allen – Things are What you Make of Them [from Charm School](mp3)

They’ve announced (and so far followed through with, though sometimes a bit delayed) a plan to release an EP for every month until they release their next EP. I can’t imagine doing this, especially for months when they’re touring. I may or may not have bought all the months EPs they had for sale at the show (January-August). I’ll possibly post a review of all of them later.

Bishop Allen went on after a somewhat clever but ultimately unexciting opener. The stage at BoCA is basically tiny, so the drums were off to one side, instead of the usual behind-the-leadman and the bass player and guitarist were behind the drums. Sort of an odd set up. I feel like I’m fairly unfamiliar with Bishop Allen—I’ve only listen to Charm School a few times and then the mp3s that they’ve offered up for the month EPs, but somehow I went through the set knowing most of the songs they played (maybe all but two). That’s always kind of nice, knowing the songs a band is playing.

They played well. Particularly I liked the versions of “Busted Heart”, “Same Fire”, “Flight 180″ they did. It was a fun and energy-filled set.

After Bishop Allen, the bar cleared out before Starlight Mint came up and continued clearing out throughout their set to the point where about forty people were left. The sound for the first part of their set was really badl; well the vocals were too low for the whole set but sound at the beginning was particularly muddy. They did a number of halloweeny or horror movie sounding songs at the beginning and that, combined with the muddy sound, put me off for most of their set. I must say I liked the last few songs they did.

I’m pretty excited to say that super-local (Redwood City) blog favorite the Light Footwork will be performing live on KZSU’s Wednesday Night Live, its live local band show, on Wednesday December 13 at 9pm (PST). I’m going to be hosting the program. Let me know if you have any burning questions for the band; I can ask them between song.

If you don’t know the Light Footwork yet, check out some mp3s. (Or check out any of the aforelinked blogs.)

Also, Jay (of tLF) and I hit up the Bishop Allen show at BoCA in SF last night. Good show. I’ll write more about it later. Something I was pretty amused by: someone took one of those ‘Visitor’ stickers and filled out the rest ‘to the hipster indie world (please by nice)’.

Once again, tune in to KZSU (90.1FM or online) on December 13, 2006 at 9pm (PST) to hear the Light Footwork. (I’ll see what I can do about putting an mp3 up of the show after the date, but no guarantees.)

Here’s my playlist for tonight’s show.

Also! my NEWSPECIALFUN seems to be working so I have a recording of the show:

I Once Was Canadian – November 8, 2006

Grab it now! It’ll be gone in a couple weeks.

Just two. I had a short ska phase around the end of psychedelic classic rock and before I really got into indie rock. It’s tied in my mind to Boy Scouts and a few kinds who I talked about these albums with or listened to them with.

1. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones Let’s Face It
2. Skankin’ Pickles Green Album

I should listen to them again and see what I think now.

Members of the Columbus Blue Jackets (NHL) are recording a Christmas album.

The article’s interesting, but the best quotes are from the studio owner/ engineer:

In the engineer’s booth, as the players took a break and wiped their brows, DiCenzo commented: “I am shocked. It was not terrible.”

and then later:

“But all of them did way better than I expected. When the key would change, most of the time most of them hit it. I really thought I’d be hitting the Excedrin pretty hard by now”

(via largehearted boy)

I went to ten [1] (rediculous!) concerts in October, so I was pretty busy there. There were a couple I wanted to write about but didn’t and now they seem a bit irrelevant. Well, I’m going to write what I wanted to say about them, in brief, now:

• Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, October 7: You get to see great artists (Earl Scruggs, Gillian Welch, etc.) for free, but you have to put up with the worst crowds ever.
• The Long Winters at the Cafe du Nord, October 13: What Made Milwaukee Famous was entertaining, the Long Winters were good. John Roderick was very entertaining. I took some pictures and put them here.
• The Hold Steady at the Great American Hall, October 17: They’re a bar band. They’re loud and rawkus. Craig Finn was almost definitely very drunk. The vocals were too low in the mix for a band that I like largely because of the deep lyrics, but it was still a very fun show.
• Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy at the Great American, Oct 31: While I was standing outside waiting for some friends, who walked up to the will call booth but Mark Kozelek. I barely avoided turning into a total fanboy and played it cool. Oh and the show: Will Oldham is a fantastically weird guy. Parts of the show were great and parts of the show were a bit boring.

[1] for real:

1. Jose Gonzalez at EBF, October 6
2. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park, SF, October 7
3. Sufjan Stevens in Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, October 11
4. John Vanderslice at the 750 Pub, Stanford, October 12
5. Long Winters w/ What Made Milwaukee Famous at Cafe du Nord, SF, October 13
6. the Hold Steady at the Great American, SF, October 17
7. Damien Jurado at the Swedish American Hall, SF, October 20
8. Beirut at the Great American, SF, October 20
9. David Bazan at Swedish American Hall, SF, October 27
10. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy at the Great American, SF, October 31

Friday Night Lights just had Beulah (”Score from Augusta” I think) as background music. That’s pretty obscure.

(And they used Explosions in the Sky later as well.)

This morning I received an email from the nice people at insound letting me know I could pre-order the Mark Kozelek Live double CD Little Drummer Boy Live. A Mark Kozelek live CD? wow! I thought it’d be a Christmas live album. It’s not (but White Christmas Live follows the same fake-Christmas-album-that-only-has-one-Christmas-song-on-
it-and-that’s-the-title-of-the-album model).

From their email:

Just in time for the holidays, Caldo Verde Records will release a limited edition (10,000 North America), 20-song, live compilation from Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon songwriter Mark Kozelek

I would like to point out that, though 10,000 is technically “limited” in that there is a limit, it’s hardly limited in any real sense. A live double CD for a semi-obscure indie artist? I’m guessing it’ll sell right around 10,000 at most anyway. Indie kids love buying “limited” quantity records&mash;usually out of 500 or 1000— so it’s probably just playing off of that.

It comes out November 28 and it’s $15.99 for a double CD set and insound’s offering 10% off (your whole order!) with a coupon code, which I can tell you if you contact me privately. Mark, if you haven’t seen him live, actually does pretty different versions of stuff live than on the album. I’ll probably buy it because Mark Kozelek can do almost nothing wrong.

My radio show’s playlist for this week. Captain Dee co-hosted this special ‘folk’ show.

Also it appears the cron job or as I call it “SUPERMAGICSPECIALFUN” worked and recorded my show automagically:

I Once Was Canadian November 1, 2006 (mp3)

My show starts maybe 30 seconds in.

The mp3 will be up for about two weeks so grab it now while you still can!

On Friday, Laura and I went over to see David Bazan (ex-Pedro the Lion, Headphones) at the Swedish American Hall. It was an odd billing. I had never seen DB play anything but a headlining (or co-headlining) slot and here he was opening for someone I’d never heard of Kristin Hersch (of Throwing Muses, apparently). It was also an early show (doors at 7:30pm–DB was on by 8:30ish) which led to an odd mix of older people and even some infant kids.

We got there as the first opener was in her last couple songs. She was good enough but, honestly, I didn’t pay much attention. Tip to artists, by the way: say your name or band name fairly often, and at least once at the end of your set. I don’t know the opener’s name.

David came up next. It was immediately obvious that this was going to be the most laid-back show of his that I’d seen yet: he was sitting down and playing a nylon-string guitar. (Later I also learned that he was sober, apparently a new thing for solo shows.)

I can’t remember the exact order of songs he did but he definitely did a nice mix of old (Ptl) and new songs (DB) and even one Headphones (H) song, in no particular order: “Transcontinental”(PtL), “Hot Shit” (H), “Fewer Broken Pieces”(DB) (on which he tacked on parts of a new song that he was working on), “Cold Beer and Cigarettes”(DB), “the Longer I Lay Here” (PtL), “Priests and Paramedics”(Ptl), “The Poison”(DB/ PtL), “Of Up and Coming Monarchs”(PtL), “Bands with Managers”(PtL), and “Bad Things to Good People”(PtL) (which I hadn’t listened to for quite a while but had been actually listening to earlier in the same day—good song!). I’m sure he did half-a-handful of other songs, but I can’t remember them all.

He played well and sang well—it’s sort of snuck by me that he actually has a great falsetto. I missed that some how, or at least I’d never noted it before.

It was obvious that crowd was not all DB or Pedro fanatics as some of his ‘quirkier’ lyrics ellicited giggles from the audience.

He also did his usual question-and-answer session during songs. These are always fun. One of the kids (~5 years old) asked him why he said “smokes a lot” during one of his songs (I think). DB sort of winced like he does and then awkwardly tried to explain that he said that because he doesn’t have a very good vocabulary and instead uses hyperbole to try to say what he means. He also said he uses explitives in his songs for the same reason and basically apologized to the father for swearing around this kid. (A few minutes later he launched into “Hot Shit” of course…) The same kid also asked him if he was married and that got DB into a story about how the minister that married him left the church because he tried to go on a date with the secretary and the minister’s wife didn’t like that, “but that’s another story…”

The one question I asked was whether he regrets releasing any of his songs; if you’ve listened through his catalog, this question may occur to you as well as it sort of “switches gears”, one could say. His response was “the Promise”, the last song off of It’s Hard to Find a Friend. His reasoning was mostly that he likes the somber mood that he created with the three songs before that (”The Bells” to “Secret of the Easy Yoke” (still one of my PtL favorites) to “The Well”) and then it jumps into this “pop jingle” as he calls it. He we was too scared to end on a somber note then. He also doesn’t particuarly like “the Promise.”

After the show, it was still early so Laura and I headed over to Sparky’s for a milkshake and a slice of delicious pumpkin pie. I think I am currently suffering from a heart attack due to consuming these foods, but, dang, it was worth it. The milkshake was possibly one of the best I’ve ever had: a perfectly blended vanilla ice cream with a dollop of peanut butter shake.

After the break, check out more photos and my list of David Bazan/ Pedro/ Headphones shows.
(more…)

You have one more day to grab the Online Mixtape, Vol 4 (October) before I wisk it off to a sooper sekret location to never be seen by the public again despite any public relations campaigns you start or slanderous accusations you make.

I had a dream last night where something had happened where I’d been signed or discovered or been given a good review online or something and suddenly I was going to play a show as a headliner. I was trying to get enough material together. I was going to play some originals on wurly and guitar. I was going to play some old songs (Greetings from Johannesburg? Where’s Luke??) and some new stuff. I wasn’t very good at the songs and playing wurly and guitar (in the dream, of course not in real life) so I needed to practice. The night of the show came and the openers went and were good and I was thinking I shouldn’t be the headliner of the show. Then it was my turn to play and I realized that I really hadn’t practiced much and I was totally unprepared.

I don’t remember my dreams much.

I did my radio show tonight. Playlist.

And!!! the SPECIALNEWFUN: I recorded it and thanks very much to mim who’ll be hosting the mp3s.

I Once Was Canadian October 25, 2006 (mp3)

The recording starts a bit into the show this week (and might, actually, cut off a little bit before the end–ack!). I am trying to get it to automagically record it, but there was a hiccup this week. I’ll try again next week!

Here’s a clip of the Times are a Changin cast performing “Like a Rolling Stone” (the greatest song of all time) on the View.

I couldn’t make it all the way through. Can you?

Ouch. Ouch!

It takes talent to produce something that horrible.

(via stereogum)

Last Friday I managed my third (I believe) ever two show night [1] [2]: with Damien Jurado w/ Rosie Thomas followed by Beirut.

The night started with meeting Dave and Dasha outside the Swedish American Hall at about 8:15. We got inside and Rosie Thomas was on, having already started her set. Rosie is really funny in a goofy way. She has this tiny voice but has a huge voice, easily filing the hall when she wanted to. Her set was good: her music’s a bit on the sappy side, but it’s still nice. Her between set banter was very funny; I’m not entirely surprised she’s also sometimes a stand-up comic (as “Sheila”). Apparently she’s friends with Sufjan, which makes me happy.

[full write up and pics continue after the break]
(more…)

Yeah, I’m running a little late on these. Oh well. Here’s October’s mixtape.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list. you should now have the 2006sept playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. There are some old favorites here, some new discoveries and some new songs from old favorites. Pinback, Beulah, Damien Jurado and local indie pop stars the Light Footwork all make appearances.

Adrian’s October 2006 Mixtape [zip file]

This’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week) before being moved to a password protected folder.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

I’m all musicy lately, but here are three more things of interest:

• Sort of an update to that Sufjan @ Zellerbach post: the East Bay Express has an interesting article about how the Pacific Mozart Ensemble got to sing with Sufjan
• TW Walsh is now giving away (free! with artwork!) his band, the Soft Drugs’ latest EP, In Moderation. Solid stuff and I particularly like Defending the Paint (mp3)
• It looks like Dave and I (as Greetings from Johannesburg) are going to enter “Thaw” in Salon’s Song Search Contest

Pitchfork went at music bloggers this morning:

Zing!

I have no love for the Cold War Kids, but, man, that’s so petty and childish. It doesn’t even mention what kind of music it is, let alone if it’s good or not!

do you see this? Such a good playlist. I’m really good at this.

In the comments of my Rogue Wave benefit post, Mie from Our Lady of the Highway (who I saw open for Zach Rogue’s solo gig over the summer.) She sent me links to a few songs which I listened to.

OLofH is sort of hard to pinpoint as to what they sound like. They sort of stradle a lot of sounds: indie rock, alt country, dareIsayemo, folk, classic rock. “I get the sense” is a cool song with some Built to Spill-ish stylings. It’s a single off of their latest album and sounds sort of singley (that’s not always bad).

Our Lady of the Highway – I Get the Sense (mp3)

“Brown Dress” is folkie sort of song with a dark, distorted side. Man, I’m horrible with these descriptions.

Our Lady of the Highway – Brown Dress (mp3)

How local are they? They’re based in SF, I believe, but it appears Mie works around the corner at Stanford.

I’m still catching up from my crazy week last week.

On Thursday, I hung out with the nicest man in indie rock, John Vanderslice for a few hours and saw him play a solo gig at the 750 Pub at Stanford.

A couple weeks ago I talked to JV after the Rogue Wave show and since he played on my show we’ve had some rapport. I mentioned that it was cool that he was playing at Stanford and he asked if I wanted to hang out before the show. Well, yes!

I showed up at the 750 around 5:30. It’s kind of weird describing hanging out with someone, so maybe I’ll just skip most of that part. I met Chris, the guy from Pattern is Movement who was also on the bill, as well and he was pretty cool. JV is still just about the nicest person I’ve met.

A bunch of cool people showed up at the show, including KZSU DJs galore: Matt, Kirstle, Eel, and Megan, who helped organize it. Jay and much of his band, the Light Footwork also showed up and we got to hang out a bit again. I also met a few new cool people at the show.

First up on the bill was Pony Pants. They were sort of math-rocky with some classic rock influences and drum machine drums (played off an ipod) with female vocals. They were entertaining. The lead guitarist pulled out all the stops, playing being his head, standing on his amp and up in the face of an audience member.

Next up was JV. He was playing solo, acoustic. The room actually (somewhat surprisingly) got pretty packed. At some point during the show he said that earlier he was walking around Stanford with his “friend Adrian” and I felt pretty cool. He played a handful of new songs and a bunch of old ones. He got us all clapping along for a great version of “Pale Horse.” He is apparently doing a 7″ and wrote the B-side two weeks ago and recorded it the same morning as the show. He was saying that he’s never written a b-side before and he kept worrying that it was too good or that he was spending too much time on it. He played it and it was good.

Pattern is Movement was last; I missed most of their set chatting outside with JV.

All in all a great evening. Fun chatting with JV and a great set.

Starting last Friday, totally crazy 8 days:

• Friday:
  • Oakland A’s ALDS game 3: tons of fun
  • Jose Gonzalez at EBF, Stanford: packed and sweaty and good
• Saturday: Earl Scruggs, Gillian Welch and Jerry Douglas at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2006 (Day 2), SF: good
• Sunday: day of rest. (And watching the Steelers): disappointing
• Tuesday: ALCS game 1 @ Oakland: disappointing
• Wednesday: Sufjan Stevens @ Zellerbach, Berkeley: amazing
• Thursday:
  • hanging out w/ John Vanderslice: awesome
  • JV concert at 750 Pub, Stanford: tons of fun
• Friday: Long Winters at Cafe du Nord, SF: excellent. John Roderick is fantastic

Tonight I saw Sufjan Stevens in Berkeley at the Zellerbach Auditorium. He had a full choir (the Pacific Mozart Ensemble) along with a string octet, a brass trio and a backing band.

Holy crap. That was really good. Amazing, really.

I actually wrote down the setlist this time:

• unknown instrumental
• Sister
• The Transfiguration
• The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders Part I: The Great Frontier Part II: Come to Me Only with Playthings Now
• He Woke Me Up Again
• Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!) [1][2]
• The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get us[3]
• Abraham
• Casmir Pulaski Day
• Seven Swans
• That was the Worst Christmas Ever[4]
• Jacksonville[5]
• Majesty Snowbird[6]
• The Man of Metropolis Steals our Hearts[7]
• Encore: Chicago

The concert was so theatrical and, to use an entirely over-used word, epic. All the songs were added to in weight, joy or emotion by the massive number of musicians on the stage. There was certainly some surprise in the number of songs that ended in a cacophonous ‘freak-out.’ Notably, freak out at the end of “Predatory Wasp,” a particularly subdued song for much of it’s length, was a parculiar juxtaposition.

I’d also recommend being a nut and being online when the tickets go on sale for future concerts at the Zellerbach. I was in the third row in the wings (tiers) that come down and touch the stage and the vantage point was excellent.

One last note: the show was so good that even the usher, would was advanced in her years, gave the band a standing ovation at the end of the show.

[1] Acknowledging that it wouldn’t be a popular sentiment in this area before he said it, he dedicated this to the Detroit Tigers.

[2] He inserted the lyrics “Tigers Stadium” “‘84″ into that repeated section with the various locations in the middle.

[3] This was so incredibly gorgeous. My eyes literally welled up during this song.

[4] 100 inflatable Santas were throw off the balcony during this song. I did not get one.

[5] Funky. Move your booty.

[6] New song about the dark eyed junco. It’s pretty great. You heard it here first: my prediction is that Sufjan’s next album will be about birds. (Think about it: Majesty Snowbird and Great God Bird? Not a coincidence.)

[7] similar to [4], lots of inflatable supermen were thrown off the balcony during this song. I did not get one.

When I first heard about Jose Gonzalez playing at Enchanted Broccoli Forest from a fellow DJ I couldn’t believe it. Why would Jose Gonzalez be playing a weird coop at Stanford? Well it turns out that it was real and being put on by the Stanford Concert Network, which, it turns out, is being run by yet another fellow DJ these days.

The space in EBF where they had the concert was maybe a dining room or a living room. The posted maximum occupancy was 65. I’d guess there were closer to 222 people in there. It was packed and hot and sweaty. I couldn’t see Jose for most of the show.

But the sound was good and Jose played a good show. He didn’t say much and just ran through his songs and covers. He doesn’t have a giant repetoire yet, so he played most of Veneer and most of the covers he plays.

Final four songs:

• Heartbeats (the Knife cover)
• Crosses
• Hand on Your Heart (Kylie Minogue cover)
• Teardrop (Massive Attack cover)

Encore:

• Love will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division cover)

Pretty dang good final five songs.

So starting Friday, totally crazy 8 days:

• Friday: Oakland A’s ALDS game 3. Jose Gonzalez at EBF, Stanford (to be blogged)
• Saturday: Earl Scruggs, Gillian Welch and Jerry Douglas at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2006 (Day 2), SF
• Sunday: day of rest. (And watching the Steelers)
• Monday: nothing
• Tuesday: ALCS game 1 @ Oakland. Go team!
• Wednesday: Sufjan Stevens @ Zellerbach, Berkeley
• Thursday: dinner w/ Vanderslice, concert at 750 Pub, Stanford
• Friday: Long Winters at Cafe du Nord, SF

In 8 days, 5 concerts and 2 baseball games. Goodness.

So I’ll have plenty to blog about but probably won’t be blogging a lot, probably.

My playlist for tonight.

John Vanderslice also did a little call in (mp3) to promote a show he’s doing on Stanford’s campus next Thursday, October 12. We ended up chatting on the air for a bit.

My radio show is going to be staying on at the same time, Wednesdays 10pm-midnight (Pacific time) at KZSU until at least January.

Last night Rogue Wave hosted a benefit concert for Pat Spurgeon, their drummer, who was born with one kidney and now needs a transplat for his now-failing second kidney (the first failed in the early 90s). They are also taking donations at their website so you can donate if you have the means and feel compelled.

When I heard about this two weeks ago from Laura, I was floored by the line up: Rogue Wave, Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie,) Matthew Caws (Nada Surf,) Ryan Miller (Guster,) and John Vanderslice; it was to be mc-ed by the sometime Magnetic Field (on accordion) Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket. I like or love all of those bands and seeing them on the same bill would be incredible, I thought. It also helped that it was at the fairly intimate and cool Independent in SF.

(Incidentally, benefit concerts are awesome.)

We got to the venue right as it was starting, probably 5 minutes before Daniel came on to introduce the first band, the Wine Chuggers. They played a short set; they played some rock. It was pretty good. Next up were the Moore Brothers. Despite playing down this aspect on stage, they do sound sort of like Simon and Garfunkle. They traded off guitar playing duty and both sang, which brings me to a Rule for Rock Bands (#12): guys need an instrument on stage unless (a) they are backup singers in a soul band, (b) are Bono or Mick Jagger (and honestly, both of them look a bit silly too). It just looks stupid; you don’t know what to do with your hands and then just start doing bad dance moves. I’m sorry, that’s the truth.

I expected the bill to go in exact reverse order (Wine Chuggers, Moore Brothers, Ryan Miller, Matthew Caws, John Vanderslice, Ben Gibbard, Rogue Wave) of billing[1], so I was a bit surprised when my close personal friend [2] and nicest guy in indie rock John Vanderslice[3] came on next. He did a couple nice versions of recent songs solo acoustic (”Trance Manual”, “Angela”, “Radiant with Terror” among them). Then he brought on Ben Gibbard, who looked very English Professor with his glasses, scruffy hair and brown blazer, to play the upright piano on stage right and sing harmonies on an old mk ultra song (I think it was Letting Go). All the hipster were going crazy with the camera phones! Later he brought up 2/3 of Nada Surf (the bass player and the drummer) to act as his backing band on “Pale Horse” and finally the full Nada Surf with Matthew Caws doing harmony vocals on a song. All in all, it was an awesome set from JV.

Up next was Nada Surf whose latest, the Weight is a Gift, I’ve enjoyed a lot. Their basic set up was Matthew Caws on guitars and vocals, the drummer on a cajon box drum and the bass player on the bass (well, mostly on the smoking and drinking, but sometimes on the bass as well). They went through a good set of tunes mostly from their last album, like “Do it Again”, “Your Legs Grow” (see mixtape 1), and a really fun version of the gratuituously expletive-laden “Blankest Year.” (These guys were apparently a one hit wonder in the ’90s, but they didn’t play that song).

And then!! what all the ladies were screaming for: Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service, of course)! He started out on a borrowed guitar[4] playing a version of a Postal Service song, I think “Brand New Colony.” It’s cool to see him do PS songs live on guitar because they sound so different from the recordings. After that he moved over to the piano for a cool, slow, dark version of “Soul Meets Body” and a couple other Death Cab songs, including “Passenger Seat” Again the crazy cross-band collaborations happened with Caws helping out on a Harry Nilsson-penned Monkees number, “Cuddly Toy”. Daniel Handler came out next (insulting the “Cuddly Toy” choice of song, incidentally), to play accordion on a couple song with Ben switching back over to guitar. He finished up his set with “Title and Registration” and a folksy version of “Such Great Heights” (strummed, interestingly enough, because last time I saw him solo he basically did the Iron & Wine version, fingerpicked, even acknowledging that it was a “cover of his own song”.) I was probably about 12 feet from him during the guitar portions of his set (not to be all fan-boy about it) and I can’t imagine with the current stage of things ever having a chance to see him in such an intimate venue or at such a close distance again. I understand backlash toward Death Cab—they’re giant, by indie standards, they’ve jumped ship to a major—but Gibbard put on a thoroughly entertaining set: he was funny, good musicianship, good singing.

At this point, there were actually a bunch of people who left. I understand that Death Cab is a lot more popular than the other bands on the bill, but did you see the rest of the bill? Worth staying for, people.

I’ve talked a lot about music and before I get to Rogue Wave, I’ll talk about other stuff for a bit. There was a lot of talk of Pat’s kidney, Pat, people’s love for Pat. Gibbard referenced Woody Guthrie’s sticker that said “this machine kills facists” and suggested that all the guitars that night should have stickers that said “this machine buys kidneys.” Heck even Pat’s mom was there to talk about Pat’s story and to introduce Rogue Wave. The Small Stakes designed an awesome poster and shirt for the event with all the proceeds going to Pat. You can see the poster and buy it. I got a couple of the posters.

Finally, last up were Rogue Wave. They started out with Zach on the piano for “10:1.” After Zach switched to the guitar they then went into an interesting and not-exactly-like-the-recording cover of “I’m only Sleeping” which was good (an exception to the rule that Beatles covers are overdone and don’t add anything to the song). Around this point they talked about the bill and thanked all the other artists. They joked that they’d opened for all these bands and now they wrangled them into opening for Rogue Wave. They did a nice set of songs off of Descended like Vultures (”Love’s Lost Guarentee”, “Salesmen on the Day of a Parade”, among others) before bringing on Ryan Miller of Guster (whose “Demons” was my obsession song of October 2000) to play guitar on a freak-out jam version of “California.” They joked that he plays to a million people a night and now he was being relegated to playing with them. To finish up the night they brought up everyone that played that night (plus Dominic of Our Lady of the Highway who opened for Zach’s solo gig over the Summer) for a couple covers, the first of which was (What’s so Funny ’bout) Peace Love and Understanding). It was a indie pop style love-in there.

The crowd, I image, had to have gone home happy. An amazing bill with great sets and once-only on-stage collaborations. What more can you ask for?

[1]It all made sense, the strange order of the bill, when I realized later that Nada Surf was opening for Guster that same evening in Berkeley, so they were probably finishing up their sets and rushing over for their sets at the Independent.

[2] not actually. I do like making a big deal out of whatever affiliation I have with JV. During the last song, he saw me out in the audience and pointed out at me. After the show he said that when he saw me he thought “that’s my boy!” He also told a bunch of people around him that I was famous and that I’m rad. I can’t argue there, JV; I can’t argue there.

[3]Dug was complaining on Friday that I write too much on my blog about John Vanderslice (and someone else, I forget who). Well he’s awesome in so many ways it’s rediculous. So sorry, Dug.

[4] One of the cooler things about the show was that it was obvious that all these guys knew each other and were friends. They used each other’s instruments and joked around and gave each other hugs a lot. During the last couple songs with everyone on stage, I’m pretty sure they were having as much or more fun than the audience.

It’s time to take down the latest mix tape from public consumption.

You have one more day to grab it before it’s password protected.

I was on the ray ray radio.

New show assignments go out next Tuesday. I’ll let you know if my show changes times. Big changes may be in the future. Stay tuned!

It’s time for another online mix tape. This one was a bit later than I’d intended, but here it is.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an mpu file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list. you should now have the 2006sept playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one has a bunch of songs by unknown bands and a few by known great bands like Sigur Ros, Notwist and a time-appropriate one from the Mountain Goats.

Adrian’s September 2006 mix tape [zip file moved to password protected folder]

This’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week) before being moved to a password protected folder.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[Update] The mpu file above doesn’t work. Jesse sent a correct and working m3u file for everyone. Right click and save as.

Beck and Devendra are Friends

playslist from tonight.

[Update] The playlist may look a little strange; I am trying out a new radio show format: mixing indie and oldies. I traded off ~20 minute sets between sets. I’m also thinking of making the move to the morning again, particularly Friday morning. I don’t know if it’ll happen or if I’ll stay at my old slot. I’d kind of like to do a Friday AM oldie and indie rock morning show, completely with self-awaredly stupid schtick. Recorded sound effects!

As Drag City notes, Will Oldham’s Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy will be playing on Conan tonigth, September 19.

Inside of Bumbershoot 2006 was Flatstock 10 a silk-screened (indie rock) poster show from dozens of artists from around the country. It was really cool and possibly one of my favorite parts of the day at Bumbershoot.

There are a lot of artists with a variety of styles. There were two sort of camps, the ones that went for the old psychadellic poster style that’s common of posters in the late 60s—bubble lettering and bright colors—and then there’s the camp that’s more into simple graphical silk screens and more standard fonts. I personally like the second style a lot, but I saw good posters in each camp at the show. I could have easily spent hundreds of dollars there.

My local (Oakland-based) favorite, the Small Stakes was there. I love Jason’s posters. They’re simple but great. He may over-use the heart in his designs but that’s pretty appropriate for that sort of indie pop that he’s designing posters for. I picked up two from him: a Jose Gonzalez one from the Swedish American Hall show that I went to (normally I would have bought it from Jason at that show, but Jason was out of town for it) and an awesome Mates of State poster that he did:

That brings my total small stakes posters up to six (one, two, three, four, five, six). What can I say? I like his stuff and I like buying posters from shows I go to (which is the case for all but one).

I also ran into a few Pittsburgh artists, which I thought was pretty cool. Budai (Michael Budai) lives in Pittsburgh and does his work for Pittsburgh shows. It was cool seeing posters for places like the Roboto Project and Garfield Art Works. I ended up buying a cool hand silkscreened/ hand drawn little character (Monocle Man, who is saying “I really think monocles should make a comeback”) from him. Really cute. He was a really nice guy and we talked about Pittsburgh for a bit.

There was also Strawberry Luna (samples) who shares a space for Budai, but she produces show posters for Philly venues. Her stuff is good too. I ended up buying an art print (”E is for Elephant”) from her.

And finally, there was the Pittsburgh–>SF transplant Lil Tuffy (myspace, view samples). His work has a pretty big range from the surreal to the psychedelic to the simple graphics. He and I talked about SF Steelers bars and he gave me a Tuffy pin which has the US X hypercycloid (aka the Steelers logo) along with ‘Tuffy’ on it.

There were other cool poster designers there, of course. Some of the big ones and some little guys who were obviously just getting their start (one guy named Zack, in particular, was particularly fresh-faced and nervous looking). I had a fun time looking around at all the stuff that was displayed. I took particular note of the above ones but I’m sure if I’d kept more careful track, I could have written about a bunch more of the designers.

Last weekend whilst in Seattle, I went to Bumbershoot (Day 2) with Paul.

Here’s who we saw:

Spoon Spoon’s one of those stalward indie bands that’s been around for a chunk of years and they have their fan base, but they’ll probably not break into the mainstream. I was curious to see them live. They put on a pleasant set but it wasn’t incredible. Good enough.

Jeremy Enigk Jeremy Enigk (ee-nik) was the front man of the proto-emo-pop band Sunny Day Real Estate. Here he was doing a set under his own name and I was a bit curious to see what his current music sounds like. He put on a nice set of songs mostly on acoustic guitar, some accompanied by a band. His vocals have this sort of strange high-pitched strain to them. It was a nice set.

[Paul lent me his digicam for the day.]

Mates of State The Mates of State are so great live. This is at least my 8th time I’ve seen them and they always put on a very entertaining show live. Paul (unlike all the rest of the shows) did not seem to be completely bored. I can honestly recommend their live show without quals. Even if they’re not amazing, they’re still really good. They did a fun medly of “Like U Crazy” with Gnarles Barkley’s “Crazy.” They did a mix of new songs and older songs—in fact I was pretty pleased with the number of their “classics” they did.

Jose Gonzalez The hands-down worst scheduling of the day was having the Mates of State overlap with Jose Gonzalez. I thought I’d still be able to make some of his set after the Mates of State, but a 32 minute set (likely because he needed to go play with Zero 7 as well) meant I only saw one song by him. I’ll have to go see him at Enchanted Broccoli Forest.

Kanye West (with Lupe ) Kanye was day 2’s headliner. I’ve liked his music recently and his two albums are the two hip hop albums I own. He had a full string section and a harpist on stage with him. He put on a pretty good set—well he did the songs I like and then there was the normal hip hop fair of misogyny and marijuana—but the sound was pretty bad (vocals too low, percussion too high). The chunks of the set I liked, I liked and the parts I didn’t, I was sort of bored.

[space needle]

I was in Sealth (or Seattle, as you may call it) for the labor day weekend. It was a good time. I saw some of them old tEppers (including ppham) and saw some of the sites and some music.

Paul made us take this picture:

Recap:

• Tour of UW.
• Good dinner in Ballard
• Boeing wide-body plant tour: this turned out to be really cool. The building is the largest, by volume, in the world. It’s pretty incredible. I bought a model 747-400, the sexiest plane ever made.
• Drinks (and more drinks) with Squid
• Easy Street Records. The haul included: the new Jason Molina, the new Eric Bachmann, the new Mono, Elliott Smith’s Roman Candles, the KEXP live comp, Unwed Sailor’s Circles, an oldies comp, a soul comp and a 2-CD doo wop comp. I liked Easy Street a lot: cheap, great selection and a helpful staff.
• Bumbershoot (Day 2) [separate post later]
• Seattle Underground Tour: entertaining and informative. If you have any tolerance for puns, I think you’d enjoy it. I’d recommend it.

(I also ate a mufaletta.)

That was the weekend in short. The biggest lose of the weekend was that the Boeing Surplus Store wasn’t open on Monday. I was really hoping to go; it looks like a mech e geek’s dream.

Here’s my playlist from last night.

Sort of a pleasant last minute addition was the Light Footwork, a local indie pop band (from Palo Alto!), who came and guest DJed the first hour and change. I’d invited them on a while ago, but they only took me up on the offer yesterday. Turns out they’re fun guys (er, guy + girl). You can check out their new video, too.

As stereogum reported yesterday and pitchfork reported today, Sufjan’s coming out with a box set of his Christmas EPs (and other Christmas stuff). I’m a little of two minds about it. It’s good because I like sufjan a lot, but I also already have three of the five EPs and I’m not sure I want to shell out $$$ for a box set to complete the set. I probably will though.

Last night’s playlist for your glancing.

Incidentally, if you’re on the radio or otherwise DJing at some point, do not try to follow Thom Yorke’s “Harrowdown Hill” with Jens Lekman’s “Happy Birthday, Dear Friend Lisa.” The transition does not work and is quite jarring.

Two time co-host wicked child was back in town and he cohosted once more. It was a fun time. We are almost entirely non-sensical when we’re on the air.

(Andy, note that Band of Horses was formed out of the broken up bits of Carissa’s Weird.)

With my dad working for a coal company, I grew up around talk of mining coal veins and the like, but I was a little surprised to see this in an article about Centro-matic:

Centro-matic’s dynamic is intelligent, emotional American rock that mines some of the same veins as My Morning Jacket, Son Volt and the Drive-By Truckers.

How about that? Is that a common expression? Does your average San Jose (or other major city resident) know that coal (and other fossil remnants) is located in veins?

I always have moments like these because the linguistic hodge-podge that’s in my head: South African English, Pittsburghese, south-eastern PA dialect, geek slang. I know that 98% of what I say is understandable by the listener; it’s that last 2% that I’m never sure if it’s some specific or specialized term, phrase or way of talking that I’m not sure is in the common lexicon.

Tonight was the 826Valencia benefit show at the Palace of Fine Arts with Patton Oswalt, Zach Rogue, Mark Kozelek, Dave Eggers, Sarah Vowell, Jonathan Richman, and Aimee Mann.

The Palace of Fine Arts is a pretty big building. The auditorium area has very comfortable chairs in stadium-style seating and the walls are drapped in red velvet. (I’m getting that old that I’m really glad that this was a seated show.) The stage area is large and the visibility from pretty much anywhere seemed like it’d be good. The sound was excellent. That’s thanks to the sound guy, John Karr (seriously, that was his name). Thanks John!

Let’s go through the night:

Patton Oswalt: actor comedian guy. I recognized him. IMDB tells me it’s probably King of Queens (from the twoish times I’ve watched it). Turns out he’s very funny, in the offensive vein of humor, mostly.

Zach Rogue (Rogue Wave): I’ve seen him play solo before. He played a short set including “Publish my Love” and “Postage Stamp World”. He sounded great on the guitar and his vocals sounded really good too. He said a couple funny things and a few things about 826 and that was that.

Mark Kozelek: I feel pretty lucky I live in the same city (or metropolitan area) as Mark Kozelek (Sun Kil Moon, Red House Painters) and that I get to see him with some frequency. This guy is amazing. His voice is just so pure and incredible and his fingerpicked guitar playing is intensely good, though my concert companions wished “he’d just strum a chord sometime!” His set included “Trucker’s Atlas”, “Rock N Roll Singer”, and “Glenn Tipton”. I could listen to him singing about killing babies and he’s probably sound good. [I do no condone killing babies.]

Dave Eggers: He just showed a video about 826. It was fine. Then he showed some slides of the work of this kid named Alex who utilizes 826NYC. These were hilarious. He’s about 7 and does this collages of things like a peanut and a gingerbread man and then scrawls “A gingerbread man and a peanut got married. Can you imagine what their kids look like?” or a picture of a robot playing a trumpet and the scrawled writing says “Robots are the new jazz man. They are not good. If you want to go to a jazz restaurant, do not go, no matter how good the food is! DO NOT GO!” I’d buy a book of these if they made one.

Intermission: Hug Dave Eggers for $20, get a “buddy punch” from Sarah Vowell for $5 (or 5 for $20! bargain!). I did not partipate in these deals.

Sarah Vowell: She did a reading of a story she wrote about her favorite explorer, a German cartographer named Charles Preuss who she read about when she was on a book tour, reading a book about explorers. Patton Oswalt provided the voice of Preuss in thick German accent. He was quite funny about it. The story was entertaining and funny. I’m saying “story” but it was more like a report or something. There were many mentions of the Oregon Trail, but no mentions or jokes associated with The Oregon Trail. I was quite disappointed. You gotta pick the low hanging fruit!

Jonathan Richman: The last time I saw him was also a benefit show (and also with Mark Kozelek). He’s still as absolutely entertaining as always. He’ll move his hips to the music while playing Spanish-influenced guitar and singing in Italian while providing running translation in English or making off-handed comments. And then he’ll do an odd stage bow (or think of it as a figure skater at the end of a routine). I had a big smile on my face the whole time. I’m not overly familiar with his music but he closed with “Not So Much to be Loved as to Love.”

Aimee Mann: She was the only one to play with someone else, Paul Brion (any relation to Jon ?) He sang back ups, played bass (which was up way too much in the mix, only sound problem of the night), and guitar. I’m not incredibly familiar with her stuff, mostly just her Magnolia work and a handfull of other songs. She played a nice set, including “Save Me” and “You Could Make a Killing.”She’s got a great voice and the way her melodies work over her guitar is something else.

I’d heard reports of collaborations (Byrne/ Stevens and Gibbard/ Roderick) at other 826 benefits and so I had my hopes up for this one, but nothing materialized. Mann/ Richman? Mann/ Kozelek? Kozelek/ Richman? I wonder what any of those would have sounded like.

All in all a very good concert. What’s with benefit shows being great shows? I want my Small Stakes poster for this one, though. (I don’t think any were actually made.)

Five albums that I own but somehow have failed to rip from CD:

1. Beach Boys Pet Sounds
2. Low Things we Lost in the Fire
3. Beulah The Coast is Never Clear
4. Mogwai Young Team
5. Pedro the Lion The Only Reason I Feel Secure

Other albums that I missed ripping:
Creedence Clearwater Revival Chronicle Vol. 1
Rachel’s the Sea and the Bells
Mark Eitzel The Invisible Man
Beatles Let it Be
Matt Pond PA Green Fury
Modest Mouse This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About
Seam Headsparks

Last night’s playlist. it turned out alright.

(Andy, note the Kleenex Girl Wonder.)

(Note the appearance of the full length from Night Rally.)

Tide (with Febreze) is using the #22 great song of all time, Be My Baby, in one of their commercials. They start with the huge drums from the beginning at the beginning (as well they should) and then there’s an absolutely horrible cut to the first chorus.

The edit’s so bad it hit me like a train.

So not only does Ken Jennings have a blog (which is hilarious), but he likes the Mountain Goats and he writes about it. How cool is that!

I’m going to move mix tape 2 into a password protected folder in one day, so grab it now if you want it and haven’t gotten it yet.

If you missed it, email me (firstname @ firstnamelastname.com) and I can give you the password, location etc.

As has been mentioned, I saw Jens Lekman in a pizza parlor in Brooklyn before he played at Sound Fix. And there’s photographic evidence.

I also scanned some more pictures tonight of NYC (color, b&w) and Pgh.

This week’s playlist.

I used to post my playlists almost every week. Did people like that or not? Yay or nay?

“You rock!” may be an appropriate thing to yell between songs at an indie rock concert. Here are some things that may not be appropriate to yell:

1. “Not bad!”
2. “I am not bored!”
3. “I am undecided whether to buy your CD or not!”
4. “Your instruments seem to be in tune!”
5. “If you were on the radio I would not change the station!”
6. “You guys are OK!”

1 drink (sip) if:

• any member of the band says “thank you” or “thanks”
• the band asks you to applaude for the opening act
• the band illicits applause by mentioning the headlining act
• the band mentions the name of the town the concert is in
• each time you see someone wearing a winter hat inside
• each time you see someone wearing a hoodie or jacket inside
• the band says “this is a song about…” or something to that approximation

2 drinks if:

• a tall guy stands right in front of you
• the band is selling something hand-made at the merch table
• the band mentions drinking or buying alcohol
• the band responds to someone yelling from the audience
• the band ironically covers a mainstream song

3 drinks if:

• band asks for a place to sleep while on stage
• an audience member buys the band something to drink
• the band gets in an argument with a heckler
• the band seriously covers a mainstream song
• the band covers a song by another act on the bill

Am I missing any here?

It is mid-August 2006 and as such, it’s time for another online mix tape.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an mpu file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list. you should now have the 2006august playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one has ditties by the Decemberists, David Bazan, the Long Winters, Danielson and many more!

Adrian’s August 2006 mix tape [zip file] [moved to password-protected folder]

This’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week) before being moved to a password protected folder.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

Just a teaser here: Online Mixtape vol. 2 (August 2006) is coming up on Sunday night or Monday sometime. I’m in the test-listen stage. There’s one rough spot I want to iron out still, but it’s mostly ready. Then the liner notes and playlist (iTunes, mpu) files.

Here are some tickets I’ve purchased or obtained for the upcoming period of time:

• 8/13 Black Heart Procession Great American [kzsu free tix]
• 8/19-8/20 James Brown, the Donnas at the Fogg fest [kzsu free tix]
• 8/28 Book Eaters 826 benefit with Amiee Mann, Jonathan Richman, Mark Kozelek, Zach Rogue, Dave Eggers, Sarah Vowell.
• 10/11 Sufjan Stevens @ Zellerbach

Concerts I might get tickets for or go to:

• 8/12 Elvis Perkins at Great American
• 8/22 the Mountain Goats at Amoeba
• 9/5 Eric Bachman at Cafe du Nord
• 9/6 Centro-matic at the Bottom of the Hill
• 9/13 Laura Veirs and Karl Blau at Cafe du Nord
• 9/22 Andrew Bird at Great American
• 10/16 Badly Drawn Boy at Great American
• 10/17 The Hold Steady at Great American
• 10/20 Beirut at Great American
• 10/30 or 10/31 Bonnie Prince Billy at Great American

I was entertained in NYC.

Rye Playland. I went to one of two parks listed in the National Registry of Historic Places on Tuesday. It’s a great old park. It has a few newer rides including one of those vomit-inducing spin-you-around-while-already-spinning you-around-in-a-different-axis rides (I believe my quote to my ride companion liz was “it’ll be a bonding moment when we puke on each other”—yeah, I’m gross), but most of the rides are classic older ones, including the Whip, the Swing, the (Mind) Scrambler, the Derby Racer (wow! 25mph on a carousel-like ride) and a great old carousel. It’s pretty similar to Kennywood in a lot of ways, but smaller. It’s an extremely photogenic park, with a main promenade and a common color scheme throughout. I hope some of my photos from the park turn out. I recommend this park if you’re into classic amusement parks.

Conan O’Brien taping. Despite waiting in lines for approximately the same amount of time that the show filmed, I enjoyed this quite a bit. I laughed a bunch (a chunk of which was during the audience warm up by Brian McCann). The theater is a lot smaller than I thought it’d be. As has been observed by others, seeing a taping does ruin a little bit of magic, though for years I’ve realized that the interview portion of the show had prompted questions and Conan doesn’t do a great job of hiding it. It was still funny and fun to watch.

Jens Lekman at Soundfix Records. We headed off to hipster-central, Williamsburg, Brooklyn to see Jens Lekman play an in-store at Soundfix Records. We had some pizza at a place down the street from Soundfix which was mostly not noteworthy except for Jens Lekman sitting in the catty-corner booth. I wished him a good show as he was leaving. The show space was in a separate room from the actual store part of Soundfix and when we got there it was packed and really hot. This was during the heat wave so the outside temperature was probably still in the 90s and the temperature in the room was probably between 115 and 125. It was like a (swedish) sauna. I wasn’t surprised that it was packed—it was a hipster band in a hipster locale; only later I realized that the last NYC Sleater Kinney show (and the fourth-to-last S-K show ever) was the same night; that’s why brooklynvegan, hipster extraordinaire didn’t fill us in with pictures from Jens, I guess. After we realized that one could stand outside, in the relatively cool air, and still hear the show fine, it was a pretty enjoyable, but rather short, show. I like Jens a lot. Afterwards I bought a couple CDs at Sounfix (the Wrens, Kelley Stoltz, Masters of the Autoharp) and we headed back.

Monday:

1. Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island
2. walking the Brooklyn Bridge (west to east)
3. Grimaldi’s Pizza and Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory with Paul Koh of earbud clip fame
4. wandering around [and purchasing foam headwear in] Chinatown and Soho
5. aforementioned PowerDinner(TM) at Hallo Berlin with mim, liz, jdawg, perlick and qwdgbo

Tuesday:

1. Empire State Building
2. pastrami and dr. brown’s at katz’s deli
3. rye playland! with liz and later jonwerberg and helene [who, I'd like to make clear, despite earlier implications is no way a freak and whose school is only sort of a freak fest]

Wednesday [are you ready for it?]:

1. B&H
2. the Met, the Guggenheim, the Cooper-Hewitt, and the Moma
3. watched a taping of Conan with jweberg and liz
4. pizza in Williamsburg [/Greenpoint?], Brooklyn with Jens Lekman in the catty-corner booth with the above plus mim
5. Jens show at Soundfix Records with the above
6. drinks at d.b.a. with the above
7. a savanna dry cider with jdawg back in the bronx

I’m going to move Online Mix Tape, Vol 1 into a password-protected folder tomorrow, so you have one more day to download it. Get it now while you can!

If you’ve missed it, feel free to email me [first name @ domain.com] and I’ll let you know what the username and password are.

from Aquarius:

1. Beirut Gulag Orkestar
2. Sufjan Stevens Avalanche
3. V/A The Sound the Hare Heard [Kill Rock Stars compilation]
4. Ben Gibbard and Andrew Kenney Home Splits Series, Vol. 5

from Amoeba:

1. Built to Spill Keep It like a Secret
2. Built to Spill There’s Nothing Wrong with Love
3. the Long Winters When I Pretend to Fall
4. Nedelle From the Lion’s Mouth
5. Johnny Cash American V: A Hundred Highways

saw zach rogue at rickshaw stop STOP second trip to rs STOP jens lekmen previously STOP

zr acoustic and without band rogue wave STOP new and old songs STOP enjoyed both STOP intersong space filled with awkward humor STOP zr has singular gift at melody STOP

old telegraph style played out STOP any of you ever received a telegram?

The other day I finished King Dork by Frank Portman, (former) front man of the band, The Mr. T Experience who I remember coming through Pittsburgh a few times in my youth.

It’s a “young adult” novel, which is a genre that I don’t delve into often*. Tom Henderson is the main character. He’s a dork, surprise, who is well outside of the “normal” clique in his high school. He has one friend, Sam Hellerman, who he’s friends with largely becauses of alphabetical ordering. They’re in a band together. In fact, they’re in many bands together. Tom maps out his school year so far, in fact, by what their band was named at the time. They have lots of trouble finding a drummer (which I might relate to—my high school band, Where’s Luke?, got its name from our missing drummer). Tom gets harassed daily by the alpha males of the school. He has a bit of a disfunctional family, with a step-father that he doesn’t see eye-to-eye with, a mother that’s still disturbed by Tom’s father’s death some six years in the past. The book finds him struggling with the bullies at the school, his family, Sam’s new friends, his first experiences with girls, and mysterious notes left in some of his father’s books from his childhood.

It was a quick read and I liked it a lot. I related to Tom in some ways. I liked that it was sort of like taking an normal YA novel and jamming in a little bit of music geekery. And it was a good and interesting story. I found myself wanting to find out what happened next. It’s nothing groundbreaking but it was worthwhile.

* The last YA novel that I read was The Perks of Being a Wallflower (in a day back in the spring of 2003) which was written by a guy that went to my high school. I related to it for my similarities to the main character but also because of the connection to my high school, which was pretty subtle, small references to teachers I had and phrases we used. One of the acknowledgements at the beginnig of the book was of a person I used to play ultimate with. The main characters of King and Perks come down on polar opposite sites of whether Catcher in the Rye is a good book or not.

I’m pretty excited about this. I’ve decided to make an online mix tape and post it here for all of you guys. I want to do this monthly, but I’m not sure on that frequently.

They’ll be 60-76 minutes long so you can burn them onto a CD if you want.

They’ll always have a zip file with the following:

1. liner notes
2. mp3s
3. a song list .txt file*

*With the song list you should be able to import all the mp3s to iTunes and then say “import” and select the song list and it’ll come up as a playlist with all the mp3 in order. Let’s cross our fingers that this works.

I have also made a new category for online mixtapes so you can find all of these easily.

Lastly, these will be up for a limited amount of time (after which I will probably move them into a password protected directory) so get them now. If you missed one, email me (firstname@thisdomain) and I’ll give you the password, etc.

So that’s the concept. I wouldn’t just announce this and leave you dry, so here it is, mixtape Vol. 1.

Adrian’s July 2006 mixtape (zip file) [file moved to password protected folder]

If you want to check out the liner notes(pdf) before you download, go ahead. This one has some great new songs and good older ones too, by Laura Veirs, Beirut, Jose Gonzalez, the Soft Drugs and more. It totals 66 minutes of music.

One more thing: these are for evaluation purposes. I strongly encourage you to support these artists with your dollars. Buy CDs, go to shows, etc.

[Update:] Thanks to Jesse for making an mpu playlist file for all you non-iTuners.

[Another update:] I’ll welcome any feedback on the mixtape that you want to give. Except from you, Dug. I don’t care about what you have to say. [ZING]

Likely to not be of interest to many, but…

Touch and Go Records is having their 25th Anniversary Celebration. All the online peoples (for instance) are having themselves a fit because Steve Albini’s band Big Black will be playing and they just skim by other bands, including the underrecognized Seam (which doesn’t even have a wikipedia page). Seam hasn’t played in a while and might as well be broken up.

The T&G celebration includes a bunch of great acts, in addition to that, including Ted Leo, Black Heart Procession, Pinback, Man…or Astroman?, Shellac, Calexico, etc.

It’s pretty cheap too ($35 for the weekend). Maybe I should fly to Chicago.

Colin pointed the Album-a-Day project. It looks pretty cool. I remember Jesse and I were going record an album in a weekend once. That never happened.

see also: the covers contest

This morning, I finished Bob Dylan’s autobiographical Chronicles, Vol. 1.

It’s not your average autobiography by any stretch. It just arounds to a few different periods of his life and focuses on those. Those periods include when he first moved to Minneapolis and later New York and hadn’t been signed yet, a period shortly after his motorcycle crash in the last 60s and a period at the end of the 80s when he was recording Oh Mercy with Daniel Lanois.

He just between these, giving little reference to time and intervening facts. If you don’t know some of the Bob Dylan story going in, you’d probably get lost in these jumps. Reading the Dylan wikipedia entry would serve you well.

Even in these little parts that he focuses on, he doesn’t provide the reader with the facts and chronology as much as he provides his thoughts on what was happening.

It’s a funny biography. The reader goes in and comes out of it the same in many ways; he doesn’t give the Chronology of many events, he doesn’t talk about writing or recording his most famous albums; he doesn’t talk of his stint (or permanent change to?) christianity; he doesn’t talk about going electric; he doesn’t talk about “Blowin in the Wind”, “The Times, They are a-Changin’”, or “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

It is nearly three hundred pages long, so he does talk about something though. He somewhat extensively talks about the folk scene in NYC in the early 60s. He also talks extensively about his early influences, including, of course, Woody Guthrie.

He also writes quite a few pages about a new guitar playing style he developed in the late 80s and early 90s. Not so interesting.

In the way he writes the book and in various passages in the book, it seems clear to me: Dylan doesn’t want to be what people want him to be. He doesn’t want to be the Voice of a Generation and he doesn’t want to write about “Blowin’ in the Wind” or going electric.

All of that being said, for the most part, he writes interestingly and he really shows the hunger of his young self. Just don’t expect him to tell you all his little secrets.

Next up: perhaps King Dork by Frank Portman.

I like Neutral Milk Hotel a lot, but this might be a little rediculous.

There was a post on an Elephant 6 message board, apparently from Jeff Mangum, in which he talks about having new songs and thinking about recording them.

You Ain’t No Picasso picked it up, followed by Brooklyn Vegan, followed by Pitchfork and the previously reputable Billboard. No one actually knows if it’s even him, but everyone’s aflutter!

[Update: and Billboard retracts]

Walter pointed me to Matthew’s Celebrity Pixies Tribute. It’s a bunch of Pixies recorded in the style of, and with imitated production values of, various famous singers and bands.

It’s pretty interesting stuff and it’s a very impressive effort by whoever this Matthew guy is.

My favorite is:

Monkey Gone to Heaven as prefrormed by Frank Sinatra

also:

Levitate Me as preformed by the Beach Boys

A couple weeks ago, Dylan IMs me:

Dylan: what’s the girl that plays harp and sings like a cat in a blender?
Me: Joanna Newsom?
Dylan: yeah, that’s the one.

Today, there was a pretty well-wrtten post by Long Winters front man John Roderick covers Bonnaroo for CMJ. In part he talks about Cat Power:

I thought, “Great. I’ve been suckered in. Chan Marshall is backstage having kittens and we’re going to sit out here with building anticipation only to have her never leave her trailer.”

On Monday I saw the Mountain Goats at the Bottom of the Hill.

We got there a few minutes after the posted start time and there was a line around the block. It was a sold out show, but they held 50 tickets at the door for day-of and they hadn’t yet sold those out so there were a lot of people in line that wouldn’t get in.

When we finally got inside, Barbara Morgenstern was just starting her set. Her first song was promising: it was a sort of electro-pop song with nintendo-like stylings, sort of like b. fleischmann’s work and his work with Duo 505, but with female German vocals. After that first song, she continued with this electro-pop, but the rest of her songs didn’t really have the catchy melodic arts of her first song.

Before JD (John Darnielle) came on, I went to check out the merch table and who was there but John Vanderslice. I’m like “Hey JV!” He then goes to say that he loves KZSU and listens online all the time. And that the interview I did with him was the first and best he did after Pixel Revolt and that all the interviews he did later were framed in light of that one. Wow, didn’t I feel pretty good about myself.

JD and Peter Hughes (the MGs) came on to thunderous applause. I hadn’t seen them in probably three or four years. At the time I was familiar with approximately three or five of their songs, none of which were played at that show. At this point, I know three MG’s albums and I am familiar with about another three. Mountain Goats fans tend to be intense, slightly obsessive completists. I felt like I was in the minority in not knowing just about every song that they played. People were singing along to pretty obscure songs.

JD had the audience in the palm of his hand the entire show. It probably helped that everyone was an obsessive fan, but his stage banter and sometimes meandering talking drew people in.

Among the songs he played were “Your Belgian Things” and “Palmcorder Yajna” from We Shall All Be Healed (the latter of which had lead vox by JV who JD called onto the stage), “Broom Broom”, “Love Love Love” and “Dance Music” from the Sunset Tree, some new songs and some covers, most notably “The Sign,” originally by Ace of Base, which had the entire audience singing along.

They kept up a high energy show. I liked it a lot.

Update: They did two nights in SF. This wasn’t from the night I went to, but the second night the whole audience sang “No Children” (mp3) because JD needed to rest his voice. It’s pretty amazing.

3 songs or albums that I like whose titles include a state name and a cardinal direction:

1. All Hail West Texas by the Mountain Goats
2. “East Virginia”, version by Damien Jurado
3. “Sodom, South Georgia” by Iron & Wine

Any “North”-state songs or albums? North Carolina or Dakota don’t count. Any other examples for the other (already given) cardinal directions?

I had some backup in the blogworks so I’m doing a somewhat abbreviated and consolidated post here.

A few weeks ago now, I saw Mogwai play at the Fillmore. Mogwai is a Scottish guitar-based post rock band. Honestly this is a bit long ago at this point so I’ll do the executive summary. First trip to the Fillmore (I think): it’s good, better than the Warfield by a lot. Mogwai’s set: super loud and apocalyptic stuff->softer more minimalistic poppier stuff->loud stuff->20 noise fade-out from their encore. They played some of my favorites especially those from Rock Action like “2 Wrongs Make 1 Right” and “Take Me Somewhere Nice”. I mostly liked the softer more mininmalistic stuff.

Mogwai – 2 Wrongs Make 1 Right (ATP Version)

A week ago Friday I saw Danielson at the Bottom of the Hill. Danielson is sort of a quirky indie pop folk band with epileptic fits of craziness in the middle of their songs. The first openers were a band called Pants Pants Pants. They had a fun electro indie rock thing going. At one point their drummer came out from behind the drums and just started dancing crazy. The second opener, Young People, were just so bad that I’m not going to talk about them further. Danielson came on close to midnight in light-blue-with-navy-accents Salvation Army-style uniforms, each with a patch of the player’s name on the breast.

This band is just crazy. Quirky is probably a better term. They have these softer or sweeter parts to their songs interspersed with these intense, high-energy parts with often high-pitched vocals. It’s almost disorienting to see them play. Daniel Smith, the leader of the group, has this way of singing that’s half in falsetto, but the parts of his mouth and throat that he uses to sing aren’t normally used by people unless they’re imitating a cat meowing. His two sister and the keyboard player, Evan, all sing with such energy that it seems like they’re yelling into the mics. There were a couple probably unintentional funny bits where Daniel asked the crowd to clap along to the songs and then proceeded to show us incredibly complicated and rather long clapping rhythms that no one could follow. It’s the sort of music that you probably either hate or it puts a smile on your face. One guy whose face had a giant grin on it was John Ringhofer of Half Handed Cloud who was standing a few feet over to my left.

Already 1am by the time they were going back on stage for their encore, I took off. The next morning I was waking early for my Tahoe Century bike ride. It was fun while it lasted though.

Danielson – Did I Step On Your Trumpet

This past Friday I saw The One AM Radio at Fort Oregon, a house in Berkeley. The One AM Radio is an electro indie singer songwriter. I arrive just in time to see the last song by a kid called Hank May. When I say a kid, I don’t just me a “guy,” I literally mean, a kid. He was probably 15 or 16 years old. Turns out he’s the touring guitarist for the One AM Radio (and apparently a cousin of a friend of Hrishi’s) right now but he had a solo set to start out the night. The one song I caught, I was actually pretty impressed with. He wrote a song with skill beyond his years. I’m going to check him out further and probably keep an eye on him.

The next act, Earthen Sea, was a improvised guitar/ loops group/ guy. It was good and pretty relaxing and he played a multi-parted piece with smooth transitions and some nice parts. Michael Zapruder’s Rain of Frogs was next. They were an alt-country sort of group with cello and violin (and wurlitzer 140B!) in addition to the usual suspects. They had their more rock-based numbers, which I think they crowd liked the best, and the more folksy numbers, which I liked better.

Somewhere in there, I went back to the merch table and picked up a shirt and his split EP with Ted Leo. I mentioned that I’d gotten something in the mail designed by him, which was a wedding invitation for my best friend’s wedding. We chatted about the wedding for a bit and Hrishi said he wished he could go.

I said the “crowd” up there, but this was a concert in a basement about the size of my livingroom (which is a decent sized living room, but it’s no rock club). By the time the One AM Radio was on, I’d say about 40 people were there. I was sitting on the floor (like most people) about 3 feet from Hrishi’s (tOAMR’s main guy) mic.

The One AM Radio went on next. They warmed with “Drowsy Haze” and Hrishi asked the audience to sing a repeated back up part on it. First rule of winning over Adrian when he’s in your audience: ask him to sing or clap (rhythmically, not just on the back beats) along to your song. Just a FYI on that one.

They—Hrishi on guitar and vocals and manning the laptop, Hank May on guitar, a guy on stand up bass and two guys on french horn—continued with a set filled with mostly old songs but a handful of songs that I hadn’t heard before. I liked the old stuff, of course, and I liked most of the new stuff. I was a little tired and the One AM Radio isn’t dance music or high energy at all and I was sitting so I caught a couple winks here and there, unfortunately. Their last song was “All I Can Recall is the Haunting” where Hrishi once again asked us to sing along to a part, a part that went “The sea swallowed up the sky.” It’s a gorgeous song and it was the same song they closed with last time I saw them— that time with jdawg werberg in a basement at BU. Just like that time, I left the concert singing that phrase over and over again. This time the trip home was a bit longer so I didn’t sing it all the way home.

An Interview w/ The One AM Radio

The One AM Radio – Flicker

It took me a long time to like Bob Dylan. A lot of his famous stuff just isn’t that good—or rather, it’s good, I just don’t like them much. The first of his stuff that I really liked was off of the excellent first disc of the Bootleg Series, Vol 1-3. Here he was singing sparse acoustic songs that have ties to folk music (and when I say folk music, I mean the traditional type: songs have unknown authors and multiple versions) or actual traditional songs (like ‘House Carpenter’ and other ballads of the Child type). Here’s music I could get behind.

Over the next few years, in digging around for studio versions of music off of that Bootleg disc, I found myself going to a few of his early albums, particularly The Times, They Are a Changin’ and The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Earlier this year, I made The Times my first Bob Dylan album.

The instrumentation is constant throughout: Dylan, his guitar and harmonica (usually recapitulating the melody). The guitar parts are low in the mix, so these songs are sustained by their lyrics and melodies.

The quality of the songs ranges from good to amazing. Among my favorites are: “the Times they Are a Changin’”, “With God on our Side”, “Boots of Spanish Leather”, “When the Ships Come in” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.”

“The Times” is overused and misused (including a Kaiser Permanente commercial—that I actually like a lot—about an overweight guy getting in shape), but it’s still an amazing song if you step back and listen to it. Imagine hearing this song for the first time, how bowled over you would have been.

I first hear “With God on our Side” on Bootleg Series, Vol. 6 in a duet with Joan Baez (who I don’t like alone, but I love when harmonizing with Dylan). It’s a song with some immense gravity to it and a timelessness to it, despite the anachronism of the lyrics at this time.

“Boots of Spanish Leather” is a ballad, in the Child sense. It’s a pretty and fairly simple story about a lover leaving and possibly not returning. I love the melody, which is really similar to another Dylan favorite of mine, “Girl from North Country” (which is possibly even better in its this-is-a-really-old-song-that-I-wrote-ness) and apparently both draw melodic inspiration to Martin Carthy’s version of Scarborough Fair (which is Child #2 for those that are counting). It also has such longing in it.

“When the Ships Come in” is possibly my favorite Dylan song. I think it’s something about the combination of melodic and lyrical strength in the song. It’s another in the “The Times They are a Changin’” camp of the-world-is-changing songs; however I like this one better. I’m totally blown away that Dylan apparently wrote this one one quick angry stint in a hotel room after the clerk didn’t recognize him and treated him poorly for his unkempt appearance.

“The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol” is a modern narrative ballad about a society man accidentally killing a servant in a Baltimore hotel and the aftermath. I find in narrative songwriting, the true gift comes in which details to include and how all the details return back together at the end of the song to bring it to a conclusion. In this sense, Dylan triumphs on both accounts: the details are enought to develop the story and the characters without bogging it down and the conclusion hangs largely on the sentence from the judge.

So yeah, if you don’t know: The Times They Are a Changin’ is good.

Here’s a contest that can send you to Austin City Limits for three days to blog about the festival. I’m probably going to enter a spruced up version of this post. Wally, you should do this.

And this is a songwriting blog with some tips and whatnot on various aspects of songwriting. I’m not sure I’m picking up all that they’re putting down, but it gets the mind going.

Both of these, I think, I got from largeheartedboy.

I’ll be on tomorrow morning from 6-9am PDT as a fill-in for Matt. Listen live if you’re so inclined.

I plan on saying, repeatedly, “People of the morning rush hour, I have returned! Rally to me!”

Update: here’s the playlist.

I saw the Apostle tonight. I’m not sure why I put it in my Netflix queue, but I did.

It’s a film about a southern preacher who puts his wife’s lover into a coma and then flees to rural Louisiana. Robert Duval wrote, directed and starred in it.

There are few performances where there is no explanation for the transformation from the actor to the character. Which is to say, Robert Duval does an absolutely amazing job as the preacher. He has all the stylistic elements down and acts this complex character very well.

I have a soft spot for the charasmatic southern preaching style and good southern gospel and it’s nice to see it done right in this movie.

Anyway, a well made and well-acted movie. Also, the DVD has a good “making of” feature, but it basically has spoilers in it, so only watch it after watching the movie.

I did a pretty good show tonight. Here’s the playlist.

I’ll be making a return to the Lunch Special as the host on Monday, Memorial Day. The guest will be Ed Carryer, an old prof of mine. It starts at noon PDT.

The other week when Nedelle was on my show, she had a guy named Chris playing some additional guitars. At one point she said to me “He plays in the Curtains and he just quite—well, I shouldn’t say.” And then, I saw this and it all came together. That was Chris from Deerhoof. Not only am I hosting Nedelle, I’m schmoozing with rock stars here people!

• I should go to more risk concerts, fewer good concerts by bands I’ve seen before. For instance, I should see Danielson in a couple weeks and I probably shouldn’t be sad that I missed the Mates of State a couple weeks ago (I’ve seen them 8ish times)
• I’m trying to decide if songwriting taking into account all or almost all of my musical influences is possible. I like a lot of music. I like indie rock, post-rock, old-timey/ early american field recordings, celtic, african, other world music, motown (and other early R&B/ soul), oldies, some hip hop and the list goes on. In the past, I’ve managed to combine some influences together in my songwriting: the Greetings from Johannesburg stuff was largely an experiment in fitting world music ideas into indie pop (”Thaw” is based on the Balinese Ketjak rhythm, “Bitter” has Senagalese sabar drumming, “Nashville” cops a brazilian drumming line, “Drunken” has a 15 beat long beat-cycle). I also combined—in my opinion successfully—motown, indie rock, african drums and a banjo (which I couldn’t really call “old-timey” or country either) on one of the covers contest songs. But really, there’s a ton more stuff out there and floating around in my head. I always thought music had to be segmented a bit. Like Where’s Luke? was the folksy mostly-acoustic group, the Grievance Committee was going to be my post rock band. But many great bands aren’t like that: many of them combine a lot of disparate influences to make their music. I don’t know if I have the ability to do that.
• I’m thinking of trying to write some hip hop instrumental/ base tracks. I’ve been listening to a little bit of hip hop recently. I don’t like a lot of hip hop because a lot of it is a) musically crap and b) lyrically stupid (sometimes well-written but still stupid). Personally, I think a lot of the hip hop paradigms are stupid: songs about smoking pot and being misogynistic toward women aren’t for me. There is some hip hop out there that has good music and that tackles complex issues in the lyrics. I’m getting off on a tangent here. My point here is that a lot of hip hop has crap music and so I’m thinking of writing some hip hop music. I don’t think I could MC well, so I’ll either leave that for someone else or leave them as instrumentals. Any aspiring MCs out there?
• At a certain point I stopped really getting jazz. Most music has tension and release. Often in jazz the tension comes from dissonance in the harmonic structure and progressions. I don’t always find the way this is done in jazz satisfying. (On the other hand, I’ve really come to appreciate some “new” jazz, like Magali Souriau’s “Dersu Usala” which is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard.)
• I mostly don’t like this dance indie rock that is all the buzz (and has been for a year or so). It doesn’t get me going.
• I’m thinking of spinning of my music stuff into a separate blog and turn that into more of an mp3 blog. It’s probably be over at the new me. It probably me mostly indie rock mp3s, but I’d love it be a place where I could equally post Sacred Harp field recordings and rare Motown tracks. I don’t know what would be left here, though, as half of what I post here is music stuff and I’ve already moved most of my photo stuff over the godhatesmath.

So I saw John Vanderslice at the Independent again on Friday with Dylan and Gumbeaux. Opening were Laura Veirs and Division Day. The latter was supposed to be Nedelle but she had to cancel, unfortunately.

I only saw about a song and a half of Division Day after I got there, so I’ll just skip to the next bit.

We got there well into the first band and JV (as those of us that are his pals call him) draws a lot of people in his home town of SF, so I was surprised that we could get right up against the stage before Laura Veirs. I haven’t been right up against the stage in forever. I felt like a school boy.

Laura Veirs put out a solid album in 2005 called Year of Meteors. While we had in in rotation at KZSU I played it every week. I sort of didn’t think about it much since then, listening to it occasionally. Laura came on and it was just her; she sometimes tours with a band but I think this part of this tour was just her. It was just her and a guitar and a bunch of pedals. Oh and she had a really sweet drum machine. I should find out what it was. Anyway, she played through her set using a sampling pedal to great effect (much like my friend Jeff Miller does), sampling her guitar, drum machine and vocals and looping. Overall a very solid set. I’ll have to listen to more Veirs.

Incidentally, Laura Veirs is not only talented but she’s very attractive. Basically, I want to marry her.

JV came on after a bit of a break. Once again, he seemed overjoyed to be home after a long tour. He joked around with his band mates and the crowd. He’s touring with the same band two tours in a row for the first time in forever and they sounded pretty tight. They put together a marathon set (25-ish songs) that lasted almost two hours, but it was a good time.

Overall a good time. It would have been cool if Nedelle had been on the bill as well, but you can’t win them all. The only downside of going to this concert was missing Jason Molina across town at the Great American Music Hall and Elf Power over at the Cafe du Nord. Seriously, couldn’t they have scheduled all those bands a couple days apart?

So not only is this a sweet german indie rock blog, but it has a bunch of mp3s of a good band, Beirut, who I previously posted about.

Nedelle played on my radio show last night. It went pretty well. One minor problem: it seems I had some mic distortion here and there—mainly on ’s’ sounds. Any thoughts on that one? Just a mic placement? Popper stopper? I was pretty pleased with out it sounded otherwise—the guitars and the mix both sounded good to me.

The mp3’s online:
Nedelle – Live at KZSU

Her setlist:

• The Last Thing I Do
• I Hate a Mountain
• Spell the Night Right
• Heatstroke
• Blueberry Mineshaft

The rest of my playlist.

I’ve been pretty slow on the posts recently, large because I’ve been busy doing stuff that is sort of not-interesting-in-the-blog-way.

So I decided I’d turn all this stuff into a post.

One time things and whatnot:

• Nedelle’s pretty rad. She’s going to be playing on my radio show this Wednesday at about 10:15pm PDT. I’m pretty excited. I’ll see if I can get a copy of the show up for you east coast people to listen to.
• I’m getting ready for the Tahoe Century ride in about a month. I’ve been trying to ride a lot in preparation. I rode today and yesterday, but I’ve also been having problems with getting an inordinate number of flats, so I need to resolve that. But my goal over the next three weeks is 3 rides/ week: 2 x 30 miles and 1 x 15 miles, including at least one trip up Old La Honda or King’s Mountain per week. At this point, I alternatingly feel I’m screwed and that I’m doing fine.
• I’m going to be in Philadelphia/ DC, NYC and Pittsburgh for about 10 days total in late July for a couple weddings. It’s pretty exciting. I’m thinking about Rye Playland and Kennywood among so many other things. I might also try to catch a taping of Conan, try to catch a Buc’s game and, of course, see some fantastic friends and take lots of pictures with too many cameras.
• I just now found a weird and kind of interesting acoustic cover of Sigur Ros. I never considered that someone could cover Sigur Ros. They’re no Sigur Ros, but it’s cool.
• I’m going to South Africa again next February. February 2007, that is for my mom’s birthday. I’m going to spend a week in Cape Town, but I’m also going to try to spend 1-2 weeks on the road driving around South Africa. I’m looking forward to going back to South Africa.
• It looks like my laptop (Proud Owner of Brand New Canada) is near its end. Unless something changes about the situation, I’ll probably be getting a new one in the next few weeks/ couple of months.

Everyday stuff:

• I’m still taking spanish at the Palo Alto Adult School. It’s about 2 hours a week and the pace is slow, but I’m learning stuff so, yeah, it’s good.
• Lots of KZSU stuff. I’m doing my indie show. I’m not longer hosting the the Lunch Special but I’m still acting as the producer. Lots of interesting guests bringing their music. A schedule is on that page I linked up there. I’m also the Promotions Director, so I try to organize tickets for concerts for on-air giveaways. As the promotions guy, I’m also writing a custom PHP web app. This stuff is not obvious and not easy, at least not for me, the mech e. I’m getting the hang of it, but I’m also pretty much sick of writing this app.
• I’ve been challenged by lawn bowling and recently applied for membership at the place I’ve been bowling, the Palo Alto Lawn Bowling Club. The green is closed until the end of May, though, so no bowling for now.
• The BoSox are tied for lead in their division. The Pirates are a couple steps away from the bottom of the league. The Steelers got what look like a couple good WRs in the draft.

The other day, Stereogum had some mp3s by a artist called Lily Allen. I listened. This is interesting stuff. It’s a bit hard to describe. It’s sort of rap, sort of pop, but it also has a pretty great sample, probably taken from an old field recording or a 78. It’s definitely not what I usually listen to and it has grown on me to a guilty-pleasure extent.

Lily Allen – LDN

Interestingly, there’s another track by a different band that has a very similar base musical feel but ends up being entirely different. Starting with an upbeat ukulele part (note: the uke’s name is ukulele, not ukelele), Beirut’s Postcards from Italy ends up being something a lot more akin to Andrew Bird. It apparently has a middle-eastern feel to it, but personally, I think it’s got mostly a songwriter sort of feel: it’s much closer to Andrew Bird, than, say, Oum Kulthum.

Beirut – Postcards from Italy

Thoughts on either track?

I’m thinking about getting an analog drum machine, partly inspired by how awesome will oldham sounds with his Maya Tone one on some of his recordings. Any suggestions as far as models?

In the meantime, I found a pretty awesome virtual analog drum machine playground. I like a few in there. The Yamaha MR-10 has a nice set of features and sounds pretty good.

the decemberists and deerhoof. The decemberists are the softer, more acoustic and better of the two. I like the decemberists. Deerhoof leaves me wondering why people think they’re great.

I did a night of only music on vinyl (LP’s, 7″s, 10″s, etc) on my radio show tonight. Here’s the playlist. I ended up having way too much stuff, like usual and there was some stuff I wish I had time to play. I think I’ll have to play more vinyl on my show on a regular basis.

My dad’s retiring at the end of May, which is a bit of a shock. Not because he’s not “of retirement age”—I’m sure he doesn’t mind me saying he’s 61, as long as I add that he looks at least 10 years younger. He’s always invested himself in his work, so it seems odd that he’ll be done with that. I’m sure he’ll enjoy relaxing…for a few months. Then he’ll get antsy, I’m sure.

The earlier indicators also seem to say that he’ll be less frugal in his retirement—there’s been talk of a fancy car, which my real dad (before the alien imposter took over his body) would never think of buying. Hard-working and frugal, that’s my dad…for another month or so.

I guess it also seems strange because of the implications, if he’s retiring, if he’s 61, that means, I’m old, at least in my mind. He met my mom when he was about my age; my mom was younger than I am now when they got married. I guess I have no reason to feel or think I’m getting old; afterall, I have plenty of time. But, yes, it is strange; at some point, I became an adult and no one told me. I work and save money (for retirement no less!) and pay bills and pay rent and do my taxes. When’d that happen? It’s all been quite sneaky.

In any case, he’s retiring, and so I ordered him this (don’t click that link, dad, if you’re reading! it’ll ruin the surprise!). It’s pretty appropriate, given that it was his industry for the last 17 years or so. He’ll probably thank me; and then as politely as possible, ask how I thought of getting him such a thing. He won’t like it or put it to much use, I don’t think.

The BBC3 put on the Manchester Passion, a passion play/ musical in which all the music was by Manchester musicians, including New Order and Oasis. Some current local (to Manchester) rockers and actors play key parts in the play. It appears it was performed and broadcast live while roaming through the Manchester streets, ending up at the city hall.

It looks pretty cool. You tube has plenty of video of it, including Jesus singing “Love will tear us apart again” at the Last Supper.

Pretty cool idea, I must say.

Tonight’s playlist.

I played all of In the Aeroplane over the Sea after my recent reading of the book of the same title.

Man, what an absolutely amazing album. I restrained myself from listening to any NMH while reading it or since: I wanted the first time I listened to it to be all the way through, undistracted.

Yeah, I’m just a little obsessed with that album. Thank you, Colin Ashe.

In the last week I finished Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon and In the Aeroplane over the Sea by Kim Cooper.

Michael Chabon has become famous for books since Mysteries of Pittsburgh, most notably Wonder Boys and the Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay. It’s a story about a kid’s post-college summer, his gangster father, his gay friend and his retro-loving girlfriend. It also takes place, in part, in Junction Hollow, the “Lost Neighborhood”, an odd place in a ravine beneath CMU that one can end up accidentally, but rarely on purpose.

It’s a well-written book, interesting and engaging. It’s bittersweet; not too bitter, not too sweet. It’s like an indie movie.

Then I read In the Aeroplane over the Sea about about the best album of the last decade. It’s a small book, barely hand-sized and only a little over a hundred pages long, so you can really gun through this. But then again, it’s sort of like extensive liner notes and how many liner notes do you know that are a hundred pages long? The book goes through the history of the band and the Elephant 6 collective, and the events leading up to the recording of the album. If you are obsessed with this album, I’d recommend this book.

Next up: Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane.

gorilla vs bear links us to a nice storyboard music video by a band called Midlake for “Young Bride”. I like the song (most for the rumbling drums under the music) and I like the video.

also, you can head over to gorilla vs. bear to get a cool track from Oh No! Oh My! I have no sister. I like this one a lot.

Also, not from gorilla vs. bear, but doesn’t Kanye’s “Touch the Sky” just get your booty movin’?

Today I realized I had little idea of the difference between Kid Koala and Kid 606 but that I was familiar with both of the names. This set off a set of mental excercises and estimates. Here I write about them, just to put them down somewhere.

I estimate I am familiar with about 9700 bands/ groups/artists by name.

The breakdown of the estimate is as follows:

• 1500 bands that I like or have liked in the past
• 200 bands that have opened for bands that I like but that I otherwise have no opinion/ memory of
• 500 bands that I like the songs that I’ve heard on the radio but am unfamiliar with any of their other songs
• 1500 other bands that I like what I’ve heard, but haven’t investigated further
• 1000 bands that I haven’t liked what I heard, but have heard very little of
• 1000 bands that I have a distinct opionion that I don’t like
• 2500 bands that I’ve heard or read about in passing and have some idea of their genre, but haven’t heard them at all
• 1500 bands that I know I’ve heard of but wouldn’t actually have an idea of what they sound like
• 20 bands that friends have been involved in and band that they’ve been connected to
• 6 bands that I’ve been involved in or pretended to be involved in

In approximate decending order, the number of bands I’ve heard of come from the following genres: indie rock/ pop, oldies/ classic rock, radio rock/pop, old-timey/ bluegrass/ country, irish/ celtic music, jazz, hip hop, comedy/ novelty, classical musicians, (south) african, other world, indian music, electronica, metal. I’m probably forgetting a few here.

On Tuesday I saw Belle & Sebastian at the Concourse at the SF Design Center.

My main reaction to the evening was who in the world thought that this would be a good or appropriate venue for a concert? It’s huge, making for a very impersonal show. The acoustics are horrible (lots of flat metal walls). Many of the places you can stand have obscructed or no view of the stage. I’m not planning to go back to this venue.

Shame on Another Planet Entertainement for booking shows there.

I was a bit distracted during the concert, having paid a lot plus exorbitant “convenience” fees to see a show in a crappy venue. B&S were fine, playing some good old songs and some new ones. I think they made the most of a bad venue.

On Saturday I saw Jose Gonzalez at, appropriately, the Swedish American Hall.

This was my first trip to the Swedish American Hall, though it’s right above another venue that I’ve been to many times, the Cafe du Nord. It’s an interesting venue, to be sure. Imagine a Swedish Elks Lodge hall and that’s about what you’d have. Lots of tudor-like exposed beams and whatnot. It was a seated show, which was nice and appropriate to the music. The acoustics were pretty good, but it’s very reflective, especially of audience noise. Luckily the audience was pretty quiet and respectful, but all the applause sounded thunderous, even when it didn’t seem like people were clapping particularly loud or hard.

The opening band was the the Finches Have you seen the Jerk? Remember the scene on the beach where Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters sing “You Belong to Me”? The Finches are sort of like this. Simple and, in a way, old sounding songs with sweet lead female vocals and male harmonies. It’s just guitars and vocals. I picked up their EP for $5.

the Finches – Daniel’s Song

I talked to the guys from Cafe du Nord, who book the Swedish American Hall shows, a couple months back about this show and they were a bit worried that Jose wouldn’t fill this room. Well it ended up selling out a week or so before the show and by the end of the Finches set, it was standing room only.

I like Jose a lot. He’s sort of like the Swedish-Argentinean version of Iron & Wine. He doesn’t have a whole lot in his catalog yet, an album and a CD singles/ EPs, so maybe 15-20 songs, and they’re all about 3 minutes long. He ran through his main set not talking a lot and playing his songs without much of a break. He came back for an encore and did another 3 songs. All of this lasted about 50 minutes. I was pretty tired, so this worked out pretty well.

It was a good show, but not in the sense of Jose bringing a lot more to the live show than he brings to his recordings. He played his songs well and said a few short, funny things between songs, but that was pretty much that.

Jose Gonzalez – Crosses

I found an interesting and extensive article by Rian Milan, originally for Rolling Stone, about Soloman Linda’s song “Mbube”, written in 1939, which was later rewritten as “Wimoweh” and “the Lion Sleeps Tonight” with hardly any royalties going to Linda or his decendents.

It was fun. Played some music, got some calls. Got some crazy calls. But I’ll leave those off the internet.

As I mentioned before, I got to pick about 1/3 of the music.

The music I did pick:

• Seam “Get Higher”
• Johnny Cash “Hurt”*
• Jose Gonzalez “Heartbeats
• the Smiths “This Charming Man”*
• Jens Lekman “Maple Leaves”
• John Vanderslice “Up Above the Sea”+
• Oh No! Oh No! “I Have No Sister”
• Ted Leo “Since U Been Gone”
• Flaming Lips “Do You Realize”*
• Sufjan Stevens “Chicago”
• Rogue Wave “Love Lost Guarentee”
• Pedro the Lion “Magazine”
• Arcade Fire “Haiti”*
• Kings of Leon “Bucket”*
• Mogwai “Auto Rock”

* Songs from their collection. I had to pick one of my selections an hour from their collection.
+ I got at least five calls and an email about this song. So way to go for JV.

One reassuring thing was that I got probably fifteen or so calls on the songs I’d picked and maybe one or two calls on songs that they’d picked. And I have like four girlfriends from all the calls.

and so I did mostly irish music for the last 3/4 of my show last night in preparation for the day.

I was chosen as the college radio DJ of the week (showing they don’t actually have criteria) by live 105 which means I’ll be on a big 1 trillion watt* station this Sunday morning 8am-noon.

That’s the good news.

I get to pick about 1/3 of the music (badish news).

They even have streaming so all you east coast people can listen. 105.3 FM for you SF people.

* Actually 16.5KW

I haven’t posted a playlist in a while, mostly because they’ve been crap and also because I don’t think people really care.

But this latest one, from two nights ago, was pretty good. I’m pretty happy with it.

The first song, the A Silver Mt. Zion one, is a gorgeous piece I hadn’t listened to in probably three or so years and it popped up while I was playing music at work. So much of it is just seemingly random, unmelodic sounds, but the overall effect is so moving.

I saw Dave Chapelle’’s Block Party last night with the roomies, Raag and Jesse. Good times!

Quick summary: Dave Chapelle gets signed to a $50 million contract, decides to blow some of it. He throws a block party in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn and invites a bunch of people from his current hometown in south west Ohio. (NOTE ANDY: he grew up in Silver Spring for part of his time!) He also found some decent hip-hop acts to come and preform (the Roots, Kanye, Mos Def, the Fugees, etc)

And also! he invited a marching band, once again proving that marching bands are cool.

It happens that Michel Gondry directs, but that doesn’t have much bearing on the situation. Dave Chapelle’s funny as it turns out. The music is pretty fantastic. I loved a lot of the performances. I’m not the most familiar with either mainstream or underground hip hop and I imagine most of you are more familiar so you might enjoy the music even more than I do.

I loved the scene of Kanye watching the marching band play his “Jesus Walks” with a huge smile on his face.

There are also little stories of people through out. The old woman from Ohio. The two kids from Ohio that are out of their mind that they get to go. The very very strange couple that lives in the most-abandoned house right where the block party is going to be held. The marching band director and members. The neighborhood pre-school director.

In the end I sort of wish I could have seen more of all of it: the humor, the music and the people stories.

It’s good and surprisingly uplifting. I vote yes.

As Chris at gorilla v bear says, you probably need more mash ups like you need a heart attack, but these are some good ones.

Who would think of mashing up Jose Gonzalez, the Swedish/ Argentinean equivalent to Iron & Wine, with hip hop tracks? Not me certainly. But some dude did. And I like the results.

Go here to get them. I like 2 Words better (Kanye + Jose).

I tend to like hip hop in mash up form better, because sometimes I feel like the music part of hip hop is sometimes done without paying much attention to it. In mash ups, especially with songs that I know and like, there is attention paid to the music part, at least in equal parts to the lyrics in this instance.

And I like hearing soft acoustic music with hip hop drums on top.

This is the year of the marching band, I tell you. Gwen Stefani has one, I was talking about my indie rock marching band idea and now Kanye West and Jaime Foxx have one on the Grammy’s with them.

Maybe I should start this indie rock marching band now to catch the trend.

My friends in the Night Rally will be in Pittsburgh March 6 at the Garfield Artworks with the Triggers, Luke Doucet and My Sexiest Mistake. It’s $6, so you should consider going if you’re around the area. You can check out mp3s of Night Rally. Anyone know the other bands?

I’ll even pick out an mp3:
Night Rally – Humor is Non Sequitur

Here are other tour dates for those of you in other parts of the world:

03.07.06 in Bloomington, IN TBA

03.08.06 in Philadelphia, PA @ The Manhattan Room

03.09.06 in Boston, MA @ Bill’s Bar

03.25.06 in New York, NY @ Sin-e

03.27.06 in Cambridge, MA @ The Middle East (Upstairs)

These guys play good music and (as of last time I saw them at least) sport some serious and enviable facial hair. My friend Farhad, aka Yahktoe, is a fantastic drummer and producer (just check out his production on the hip hop album, Onomatopoeia on which I played trumpet on a couple tracks) and now plays some fantastic bass on the Night Rally stuff. Devin and Luke are the other two. Fantastic people. Devin and sometimes Luke would cohost my show back on WMBR a few times way into the early hours of the morning.

This quarter’s KZSU program guide has a lot of me in it.

Perhaps of note is that I’m in there as both “canuck,” my DJ name, and “adrian” which is the name I do Breakfast Special under.

Sigur Ros, who put out the excellent Takk last year are on Conan O’Brien tonight. It’ll be interesting to see how they’re received.

This is probably too late for most of you.

A NY Times op-ed piece about Pittsburgh, its relationship to the Steelers, and its low opinion of itself.

Sports Illustrated has some Super Bowl photo galleries up.

What are people getting as far as Super Bowl champions gear? hats? shirts?

Chicago Tribune has an interesting article about people listening to their ipods at work. I listen to mine (or my laptop) constantly. I assume everyone does. Do you?

here’s this week’s playlist, made up completely of covers.