Arcade Fire's "video" for The Wilderness Downtown is a fascinating HTML5 site, best viewed with Google Chrome. Seriously, check this out. It helps if you remember your childhood address.
Recently in Music Category
In response to a Facebook campaign, on August 27, Iowa State carillonneur (look it up) and associate professor of music Tin-Shi Tam played Bad Romance on the carillon. Enjoy. (Via MeFi.)
This just smokes: Talking Heads, "Born Under Punches," live performance, from nineteen eighty. That's Adrian Belew, apparently, on guitar, and "oh my God I can’t breathe Tina Weymouth looks so much like an angel. A gorgeous, muscular, platinum blonde angel" on bass. (Via Merlin, who is also the source of the Tina quote.)
This astounding sort of complex multilayered music is still arresting and unusual today, but compare it to, say, the top records of 1980 to get an idea of how weird it was thirty years ago. Make time for this today, especially if your name is "Frank" or "Mike" or "Rick."
F**K YOU. NSFW, but really toe-tappingly fantastic.
Deep Purple meets Hef, ca. 1968, on something called "Playboy After Dark."
In the 70s, [James Williamson][1] played guitar and shared songwriting duties with Iggy and the Stooges, most notably on on the seminal Raw Power record. The band subsequently broke up, despite the success of Raw Power, and Williamson went back to school before, eventually, joining Sony for the bulk of his electrical engineering career.
Last year, Sony was issuing early retirements, and Williamson took one. The Stooges had of course reformed around 2003, but when Williamson couldn't rejoin them they'd used their original guitarist Ron Asheton -- who died suddenly around the same time Williamson retired, and all of a sudden a former Sony VP was back playing punk rock again (Video link, but short and worth it).
Prince remains a deeply strange individual, as one Daily Mirror writer discovered in a long-form, short-notice interview now widely quoted online (i.e., in reference to Prince's antipathy for the Internet).
The aforementioned Zoe Keating has a new album out; download starts at $8, but you can pay more. The official Heathen price is $12. Go. Listen. Buy.
Ministry covers 'Radar Love'. (Via @richard_kadrey on Twitter.)
And, as it happens, a True Blood fan: Oh, Sookie.
Bootsy Collins has launched the world's first University of Funk.
Via Siege, we find this over on Youtube, from 1983. Brown was 50; Jackson and Prince were babes of 25.
The weirdest one actually turns out to be Prince, which is not what I expected.
It's a twofer:
- The Sunshine Bores The Daylights Outta Me: the Stones reissue of "Exile on Main St" drops today with damn near a CD's worth of extra tracks.
- Thirty Years Ago Today, Ian Curtis inadvertently changed Joy Division into New Order, with decidedly mixed results.
Enjoy as you see fit. I'm going with the Stones, me.
Just that this cover of a Wilco song has way more soul than the original. Christ, there's BRASS.
Also, the lead singer makes a leisure suit look dapper. WTF?
Today's best phrase: [H]ow a fourth-hand Rat pedal and a borrowed Peavey Bandit can save your life for a little while, from Merlin's post about music, heros, and saving your soul. (Also, Merlin has excellent taste in heros.)
I don't think I can overstate how completely TRUE this post is. He totally nails it in all sorts of ways. Plus, I had the "Kurt Bloch" experience with Pat DiNizio in a Memphis bar called Alex's one time, and it went pretty much the same way. For a certain class of misanthropic types -- especially folks like me, and Merlin, who grew up far away from the music centers of our youth -- Lou Reed wasn't kidding or exaggerating when he talked about lives being saved by rock and roll. He was telling the gospel truth.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to run the cats out of my office by playing the stereo as God, Lou Reed, Jonathan Richman, and Pat DiNizio intended. Roadrunner once, roadrunner twice...
Or, at least, I'll point you here, and you can relive the heyday of 120 Minutes yourself, courtesy of an obsessive fan and a whole bunch of Youtube links. Enjoy.
Widely blogged, I got it at Merlin's place. It's from an interview with Choire Sicha and Paul Ford, on the occasion of the latter leaving Harper's this week, originally published here:
Choire: What is your favorite Alex Chilton video, song or tale?
Paul: My favorite tale is from Our Band Could Be Your Life, when he shut down Gibby Haynes’s rampage through the Netherlands:
Moments later a man entered the dressing room and asked if he could borrow a guitar. “BORROW A GUITAR??!!! WELL, WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU???!!! [Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers] screamed, eyes flashing in delirious anticpation of forthcoming violence. But the man was totally unfazed.
“I’m Alex Chilton,” the man answered calmly.
Haynes was flabbergasted. After a long pause, he methodically opened the remaining guitar cases one by one and gestured at them as if to say, “Take anything you want.”
Icon Alex Chilton -- how cool do you have to be to get the Replacements to name a song after you? -- died today in New Orleans, they say of a heart attack. He was 59.
I need some time to digest this, but Chilton's music with Big Star and others defines the Heathen college experience as much as any artist other than U2 or the Velvet Underground. Mark Linkous I'll miss. Barry Hannah, too. But Chilton, man. Damn.
"Won't you tell me what you're thinking of / Would you be an outlaw for my love?"
(It occurs to me that many may not know that Chilton also was a Box Top, and sang The Letter, a song that every single one of you know.)
On 19 January, Brit band The Heavy was on Letterman. They blew the roof off; normally staid Letterman was so excited that he told them to "go again! go again!", and so they did.
Don't miss this. For SRS. It's James Brown meets hip-hop meets R&B meets, I dunno, the growl and smash of Zeppelin. TOP NOTCH, as a friend of mine used to say.
(Via MeFi, which also links the official video. MeFi also points out why you know this song already. Them kids is goin' places.)
Because with a video as awesome as this, there is completely ZERO reason not to. It features Beyonce and Tarantino's Pussy Wagon, for crying out loud.
Oh my god. It's a mirage. I'm tellin' y'all, it's...
Yeah, it's like that. A bit more context, in case you need it.
Miles Davis, What I Say, 1971. From, if I'm not mistaken, the Cellar Door Sessions. In addition to Davis, you'll see Keith Jarrett and no shortage of other luminaries in the clip.
Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous is dead.
More videos here.
Amanda Fucking Palmer is promoting and shepherding a band called Evelyn Evelyn comprised, we are told, of a set of Siamese twins.
There's virtually no chance this is authentic, but I love the whole idea either way.
Go check out these Prince rehearsal videos from about 1984 before they get C&D'd right off teh Intarwub.
Every mashup you can think of is not a good idea, okay?
So. Central Rain, October 6 1983. On Letterman, natch.
(More? Merlin posted a followup.)
Metafilter just ran a great omnibus post on Michael Hedges, chock full of great performance clips from YouTube. Go. Click. Watch. Listen.
Ok, not 12. Closer to 21. But it's still worth your time to check out this video, which captures a lineup gone now for almost 25 years. Dave Mustaine was kicked out by the end of the year, and original bassist Cliff Burton would die in a bus crash in Sweden before the end of 1986.
This song is not in English, but it sure sounds like it. Check it out.
Last night, during the U2 show at Reliant -- which, by the way, was amazing; it really takes something to pull off a credible rock and roll show at that scale, about which much later -- Mrs Heathen pulled my arm to yell in my ear:
"When's the last time we heard this?"
The song was "Beautiful Day." The answer: January 18, 2009. At the Lincoln Memorial. With about a million of our closest friends, in the cold and wet joy that was the pre-Inaugural concert.
Somehow, I'd missed this excellent video for Modest Mouse's "Float On." If you have, too, here's your chance to rectify that.
Sorta makes you miss the era when MTV actually played these things, doesn't it?
Most Heathen are already familiar with the concept of mondegreens, i.e. amusingly misheard music lyrics a la "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy."
When you cross languages, though, you can get a whole 'nother level of weird: Heathen nation, I give you Soramimi. Soramimi are English lyrics that can be misheard as weird Japanese phrases. There are examples at the link.
Punk icon and diarist Jim Carroll has joined his most famous composition; a heart attack is said to have been the cause.
If Ian had heard this, either he'd have hung himself sooner, or skipped it altogether. Hey, at least they're actually in Manchester.
I am T-Pain, now for the iPhone.
Bob Dylan to provide Some Direction Home after all?
Kind of Bloop: an 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis.
Especially For You, by the Smithereens. Go. Listen. Immediately, if not sooner.
(My reminder today was an entry at Merlin Mann's blog, which is also worth your time.)
People is talking about concerts, but they're all just lists. Lists are boring. Lists with context are more fun, so in that spirit, here's my list.
Glen Campbell
I have no idea of the year, but he was touring for Rhinestone Cowboy, so assume around '75 or '76. I was obsessed with the song as a tyke, and Campbell played Jackson (nobody played in Hattiesburg), so up the highway we went. It's the only time I ever went to a concert with mom and dad. I remember falling asleep during the opener (a standup comic), and being woken up later to hear the only song I cared about.
The Beach Boys
Or something like them; I was too young to know that, quite frankly, without Brian Wilson they're all harmonizing doofuses. It was sometime in 1980, when I was ten. My mom took me to the Gulf Coast Coliseum, which was a big deal at the time. I don't remember really wanting to go, but I must've.
ZZ Top
I can nail the year a bit better this time; they were touring on Afterburner, and it was spring semester of 1986. I got a ticket to go for my 16th birthday, but my mother - like any sane parent - wasn't about to let me drive myself to Jackson for the show. So she and my brother came up, too, and we stayed in the Ramada across the street from the venue. At showtime, I walked across to the concert, where I was almost immediately adopted by a pair of young Marines on leave. I was a small kid, and they kept me from getting hassled by the generous redneck contingent -- and also gave me beer. And pot. All in all, a delightful experience.
Eric Clapton
Several times in the early 90s, mostly around the Journeyman tours. The most notable show was in September of 1990, just weeks after he's played with Stevie Ray Vaughan on SRV's last night alive. There was no opening act; they just killed the lights, and a cigarette ember floated out on stage and proceeded to play the shit out of a guitar.
Sting
Also a few times, but the most fun was in 1990 or 1991 when, over spring break, I found out he was playing in New Orleans that night -- with Concrete Blonde opening. I got tickets for my brother and I, and called Mike in Florida to taunt him. "Fuck that," he said, "we'll meet you there." And they did. Amazingly, Frank and I ran into Mike, Joy, and Miche in the hallways between Blonde and Sting. It was also at this show that Sting was busily introducing the world to Vinx.
Concrete Blonde
Yes, as an opener for Sting in '90, but also as a headliner in Atlanta in '93 or early '94, and then again, in the early 21st century at Numbers in Houston. I sorta felt like the same people were at both shows, though we'd gotten a lot older in the intervening decade. Less weird hair. More golf shirts. Sad but true.
Bauhuas
In 1998 or so, I guess, in Houston. Same kinda vibe as the later CB show -- very Goth Goes Grey. Excellent show, though.
Rush
Pensacola, Florida, around 1993/early 1994. The other end of a "shit, we've already got these tickets" pact I made with my late college girlfriend. We broke up in early fall of 1993, but already had the Rush and CB shows booked (well in advance). The breakup acrimony was put on hold for the two road trips, weirdly enough.
Dave Matthews Band
Initially, for like $5 at terrible Tuscaloosa bars like the Ivory Tusk in the early 90s, when he was just getting started. Eventually, for like $45 for lawn seats out at the Woodlands in Houston. It's fun to watch a band get big.
Tom Waits
TWICE, bitches. For Chicago in 1999, I took Frank for his birthday. That was really, really cool. Then, again, last year, we went again here in Houston at Jones Hall. The Chicago gig was smaller and more traditionally weird-Waits, but the Houston gig was pretty damn fine, too. Any Waits is good Waits.
Pearl Jam
Do not miss this band. Even if you don't really dig them. They're worth the ticket price, and put on a fantastic show.
Foo Fighters
Same here.
When I last saw them, 5 or 6 years ago at Reliant Arena here in Houston, Grohl asked the crowd "Is that club Numbers still here? Man, I played there a long time ago with my other band, and I was on acid, and they were playing the most fucked up shit on the bigscreen projector."
Numbers is like that.
Big Head Todd and the Monsters
Numbers is also notorious for shitty acoustics, which sent Mrs Heathen and I to the door only about 20 minutes into a 2002 BHT show. Oh well. It doesn't bite all bands equally, but some of the worst sound I've ever heard has been there.
Son Volt
At the dear, departed Satellite Lounge in Houston, ca. 1997.
Sun 60
At the dear, departed Urban Art Bar (a/k/a Urban Aardvark), ca. 1994. I didn't know this at the time, but liner notes of S60's records make clear there's a connection between their and and Vinx.
Garbage
At Numbers, which comes up a lot, in support of their first record. This was one of those times that the sounds was good, and Shirley was close enough we could've touched her.
Cowboy Junkies
Twice, both in Houston. First at a hall at UH that was nearly perfect acoustically, and then again at (wait for it) Numbers a few years later -- though this time the sound was good.
Prince
I have seen god, and he is short. Sweet Fancy Moses, do not pass up a chance to see him. Hock something. Sell plasma. Seriously. At the brand-new Toyota Center in 2004, on seats so good we could tell what gauge strings he was using. With Maceo Parker on sax, I kid you not.
Kid Rock
Don't laugh; that rich kid faux-redneck does a pretty good show. Also, free tickets, since I was consulting for this guy at the time.
Rolling Stones
Twice at Legion Field (Steel Wheels in '89 and Voodoo Lounge in '94), one time almost at the Superdome. This is like a whole 'nother post. Seriously.
Counting Crows
Opened for the Stones in '94. Their act didn't mesh well with Legion Field.
Webb Wilder
Small act, sure, but worth picking up on. Many times, in many places, but best at the Satellite.
Gillian Welch
Houston's Continental Club, around 2000. It was a terrible and rainy night, so turnout was low. It ended up being kind of like about 15 people just hanging out with Welch and Rawlings as they played, which was very cool and very intimate.
Billy Joe Shaver
Also many times in many places, but the best was at historic Gruene Hall, Texas' oldest dance hall. I shook his hand; he did not shoot me in the face.
Joe Ely and Robert Earl Keen
They're really separate acts, but Keen does a big picnic show every year, and the encore featured both of them. It's some serious mainline Texasism, let me tell you. And that's a good thing. Now pass me a Shiner.
Lyle Lovett
A Houston native, Lovett told a story from the stage of playing honkytonks out in the rural wilds north of Houston as a then-unknown. A lady took advantage of a pause to scream "WE LOVE YOU LYLE." Without missing a beat, Lovett replied "Yeah, but where were you then?"
The Smithereens
There's a pattern to seeing some bands: once on the way up, and once on the way back to earth. It's especially true for acts with long lives, like this one. I saw them headline at Alabama in around 1990 or 1991, and they brought the house DOWN. They were just on FIRE.
Then, 5 or 6 years later, they headlined the music festival at Frank's alma mater, which was a much smaller gig. It was that night I got to drink beer with Pat DiNizio, which remains a pretty cool memory, especially since I wore out a copy of "Especially For You" in high school.
Poi Dog Pondering
Another headliner at Rhodes' Rites of Spring.
Cowboy Mouth
It's a shame they've apparently married the fucking House of Blues here, because that means I'll never see them in Houston again. That place sucks enough to keep me away from this band's magic; that oughta tell you something.
But if you can see them somewhere else, DO. I've seen them at Rhodes in a stone pit, at the old Satellite, at Fitzgerald's, and at Numbers, and they always turn in a great show.
Rev. Horton Heat
Someday, I'll tell you the story of how I got to be the coolest big brother on the planet for about 20 minutes.
Robert Plant
Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center, 1989, maybe? A then-unknown Black Crowes opened for him. None of us had any idea who they were when they took the stage, but we ALL went and bought that first record the next day.
The Chukker Set
In the late 80s or early 90s, some adventurous types bought Tuscaloosa's famed Chukker (now sadly defunct). They renewed the place's tendency to book interesting acts, which is the only way I ever got to see Sun Ra. They also brought in Clarence Gatemouth Brown and local acts yet to break wide like Man or Astroman?.
Big Audio Dynamite
No, really. Opening for the opener at a U2 show at Legion Field in the early 90s.
U2
Sadly, only twice so far. Once at Legion Field in the early 90s, supra, and then again in 2001 on the longest and best first date EVER; that story deserves its own post, too.
Living Color
No, not Jim Carrey. The other one with Vernon Reid and "Cult of Personality." Lots of fun, but I still don't understand why Corey Glover insisted on performing in a BodyGlove Shorty. I mean, it's fucking HOT in Alabama.
R.E.M.
Speaking of hot: at the Woodlands in Houston in 1994 or 1995, probably September. It was night, sure, but still stiflingly, blazingly hot -- so much so that this is my only really clear memory of the show. This night was a double-bill; we blazed back to the Urban Aardvark in downtown Houston to see Sun 60 (supra).
John Mellencamp
Son Volt was opening.
Elvis Costello
With Tom at Verizon; it was also the first time I've ever seen a line at the MEN's room and not at the ladies', which speaks to the demograhics of the show.
Steely Dan
Last year at Verizon. Oldest aggregate concert age EVER. Also, if the bathroom line metric holds, just as much of a sausage-fest as Costello.
Wilco
My erstwhile attorney and I, at Verizon. Tweedy and co. play a good show; see 'em if you get the chance.
Public Enemy
Once opening for U2 in Birmingham (after BAD), and then again in Jackson, Mississippi in a floating bar on the reservoir called The Dock. There are no words for how surreal that was. Chuck D pronounced the crowd "the off-beat-jumpin'est motherfuckers" he'd ever seen.
Daniel Johnston
Either you don't know and don't care, or know and care deeply. Speeding Motorcycle Uber Alles.
Sparklehorse
I'm a box of poison frogs. It's a wonderful life.
Kathy McCarty
A few times. Once, as a solo artist at Rockefeller's like 12 or more years ago. Then lots of other times as part of the Speeding Motorcycle affair.
Tori Amos
At Verizon in 2002. I don't need to see her again, but I'm glad I've seen her once.
Rufus Wainwright
He opened for Tori. I would, however, see him again.
Barenaked Ladies
Yet another Verizon show, this time with Mrs Heathen. They do a really good show.
Franz Ferdinand
Scottish punky power pop. I hope you can understand them when they sing, because you goddamn well can't understand them when they talk.
Warren Zevon
At Birmingham's City Stages, 1993, with (I think) Mohney and crew.
Indigo Girls
In August of 1989, after they'd broken wide open that summer. The concert had to be moved to a larger venue, and they were still pretty shocked and dazed by their sudden success. At one point, one of the said "You know, this is really surreal, since six months ago we were playing to 8 people at the Chukker." And I think I may have been there then, too, ignoring them, drinking beer on the patio.
The Alabama Homecoming Triumverate
In a shocking sequence, University Programs booked three years of genuinely good shows: Ray Charles, the Allman Brothers (who played forEVER), and Bob Dylan. Charles gave the best show, actually, in 1988.
Johnny Shines
A million times at Egan's in Tuscaloosa. Shines was one of the last if not THE last real Delta bluesman; he was a contemporary of Robert Johnson. That you don't know who he was just makes clear that Shines passed on the deal Robert apparently took at the crossroads.
I had not, until a YouTube review of Hughes' work last night, realized that the song playing while Cameron stares at Seurat's "A Sunday in the Park..." in Ferris Bueller was an instrumental cover of the Smith's *Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want. By "Life In A Northern Town" one-hit wonder Dream Academy.
Wacky.
Lady Gaga Is Not Ever Going To Go Away.
Seriously. If you know the song referenced here ("Poker Face"), watch the video. She's got chops. It's fun.
Yeah. This one's just as cool, if much more wacky:
Here.
(SFW)
Cheap Trick are releasing their new record on 8-track.
We Heathen have been occasionally enthusiastic users of eMusic for some time. They've been providing excellent access to indie or nonmainstream tunes in unencumbered MP3 format for years (well ahead of anyone else doing online music without DRM) on an "X downloads per month for $Y" plan, with varying values of X and Y that worked out to the best deal in (legal) online music.
That's over. In one fell swoop they've (a) gotten in bed with Sony and (b) basically doubled their prices without providing any additional value. Additionally, their previous policy of "redownload whenever you want" has been kicked to the curb. It's a complete conversion from helpful, sane indie provider to pain-in-the-ass faceless corporation.
My friend Hayden wrote this on Facebook. It sums up what many folks are feeling about the transition:
Yesterday eMusic began offering the Sony catalog to subscribers, and incidentally screwed over many of the same long-term subscribers. Here's what happened.
At the end of May, the eMusic CEO Danny Stein announced that eMusic had inked a deal to offer some of the Sony catalog to subscribers. This led to two changes:
New plans with less value for our dollar. Long-term subscribers were forced into new plans with fewer downloads for the same price per month. Some of these subscribers had plans that eMusic had grandfathered some years earlier. My former plan, for instance, was one I first bought in October 2005 for 90 downloads for $20/month. At at least one point afterwards, eMusic had modified their $20/month plan to include fewer downloads, but had allowed me to keep my plan. My new plan, however, is 50 "downloads" (I'll get into why I put scare quotes up in a minute) for $20/month. So my downloads have gone from 22.2 cents each up to 40 cents each. Still a better deal than Amazon or iTunes, but the effective cost to me has gone up by nearly 100 percent.
Album pricing. Some - but not all - albums with more than 12 tracks will now have a fixed price of 12 "downloads," a term that eMusic has changed to "credits" on some pages. Some albums with fewer than 12 tracks, especially those where at least one of those tracks is longer than 10 minutes, will now cost subscribers 12 "credits" to download. This really hurts in metal and jazz, where the bang for the buck has always been so valuable. For example, I had 4 Albert Ayler albums in my Save For Later list, each of which had 2 tracks per album. Now eMusic wants 12 credits for each. It's still a better deal than Amazon or iTunes, but a far worse deal than I was offered just the day before yesterday.
So I spent the evening going through the new Sony offerings. I should point out that this wasn't easy, because eMusic's website remains as clunky and unfriendly as ever. The only way to find out what eMusic had added from Sony was to scroll through the new pages, which list everything recently added in groups of 10. All the Sony additions were made on 6/30/09, and to go through them all, I scrolled through nearly 900 pages. Some of the additions are damn great (Skip Spence, the Clash, Dylan) and some aren't (wow, the whole Celine Dion catalog plus Kenny G plus the New Kids On The Block, oh my!). The thing is that like many of eMusic's long-time subscribers, I'm already a hardcore music collector and I already have most of the new additions that I would be inclined to buy. I ended up adding a few Dylan albums that I don't have to my list, plus some Ellington and Mingus albums. I expect that it will take me maybe 2-3 months to burn through all of the new additions that interest me. At least, at the rate of my newly enhanced plan.
Judging from the 1600+ comments on Danny Stein's original announcement on eMusic's blog, I'd say that I'm not alone in being less than impressed with what subscribers are getting in return for the new catalog and reduced-value plans. I understand that eMusic needs to do what it can to remain a viable business, and Stein said that eMusic had been under pressure from the indie labels for some time to increase its per-download charge. I don't like the suddenness of the change, nor the lack of a response to complaints from eMusic. It is as if they've decided that they don't care about keeping their often-enthusiastic long-time subscribers - or, at least, don't know how to show that they care - and that doesn't make much business sense to me.
eMusic also needs to figure out what the per-album pricing means to them and to customers. If many of the albums I was previously planning to download now will cost me either 12 or 24 credits (double-albums are twice the credits), why are all the monthly download plans and booster packs being offered in multiples of 5? Don't get me wrong: I prefer the base-10 idea, but why not make the per-album credit a flat 10 downloads, then? Not that eMusic would listen to me; I'm merely a long-time subscriber.
As another poster on Danny Stein's blog post noted, Sony isn't part of any long-term music business solution. They are part of the problem. See ya, eMusic. We'll watch you burn, and won't miss you.
Storm Large mashes up "In the Light" and "White Wedding:"
I agree with Electrolite that the two best bits about MJ are:
- This essay by Bob Rossney; and
- This cover of Billie Jean, by Amanda "Dresden Dolls" Palmer at an LA gig the night after he died.
From the Heathen Greatest Hits file, Hurra Torpedo:
(Called to our attention by Agent Rob.)
