The Gloaming

The 5-Foot Assassin with the Roughneck Business

2011-07-04T08:45:00.000-05:00

So, I’m at the Tribeca showing of “Beats, Rhymes & Life” – the forthcoming movie about a Tribe Called Quest’s life, death and possible rejuvenation.

Prior to seeing this movie, I know not very much about Tribe. I mean, I like them. I have their “People’s Instinctive Travels” album. “Left My Wallet in El Segundo” gets stuck in my head when I’m looking for my wallet. I can make sly Facebook status update references to “Can I Kick It” (incidentally, Phife Dawg’s least favorite of their songs). But, you know, knowledge? Uh-uh.

So when this movie starts waxing eloquent about the significance of the first eight words of “Buggin’ Out,” which is on their second album, my instinct is to discount it. Say, with the tolerance of a parent listening to their five-year-old’s shrieking over Justin Bieber. The way my friends probably do with me when I start talking about Radiohead.

Says ?uestlove: “’The way that I would describe that ‘Yo’ is the same way that NWA busted through the Martin Luther King ‘I have a dream’ piece of paper on the ‘Express Yourself’ video. Like, they busted through that piece of paper like ‘What!’”

But on reflection: ?uestlove is right. He’s right. Of course he's right.

Yo, microphone check, one two what is this? This is the groove, is what.

Movie Videos & Movie Scenes at MOVIECLIPS.com

I Walked with Trouble

2011-04-02T10:56:00.001-05:00

Keren Ann song "My Name is Trouble" came into existence, I think, after Sufjan Steven's "I Walked." But it feels spiritually like a predecessor.

"My name is trouble/my first name's a mess," she sings, so sweetly. "If you let me love you/I will love you to death," she chirps. And later, a bit apologetically, "If you were to come back to me/in pieces or in melody/there couldn't be a better way through."

Listen to "I Walked" after this, and you can't help but feel that Sufjan's narrator is merely doing what he must. That doesn't in any way lessen the bit of grim horror felt as it dawns on you that the line "I'm already dead to you" is, it seems, literal. "I deserve more/At least I deserve the respect of a kiss goodbye" has to be one of the most heart-wrenching universal wails ever expressed.

Sufjan Stevens: I Walked (via Pitchfork)

Took My Melody

2011-02-19T12:46:00.000-05:00

"Is that all, then?" is the response of some Radiohead fans far more intense than I to the King of Limbs. Only eight tracks? Why you do us like you do, Radiohead?

It's leading to all sorts of conspiracy theories. Is there a second half of this album coming? Why are there going to be two vinyls when the physical album gets released? Why is the last song on the album titled "Separator," and why does it contain the lyrics, "If you think this is over/Then you're wrong"?

Then there's the below mysterious video clip of mysterious trees (You know, King of Limbs and all that), posted on YouTube on Feb. 18 by someone named "branchesandlimbs," whose profile says they live in the U.K. Complete with morse code that, translated, reads "BranchesBranchesBranches" and some lyrics looped in that plausibly could have come from Thom Yorke's brain, it has the AtEaseWeb message board - where the most hard-core of Radiohead fans lurketh and the rest of us tread only when we REALLY REALLY want some b-side or another - in a bit of a tizzy.

The ones who hope for more say it's evidence that the Radiohead MOTHERLODE is coming: a song called "Burn the Witch" that Thom has been teasing fans with for years, without ever playing more than a few bars of (click here for those few bars). The naysayers point to all sorts of reasons why this is just another fake (and Radiohead fans do love playing tricks on their hapless, gullible peers!): it's Separator reversed! I recognize those trees, they're in a park near my house! The technology behind this video is different than the technology behind the official video!

Time, I suppose, will tell. In the inbetween space, the new album is more than deep and wide enough for me to swim around in for a while. I'm enjoying listening to the songs that have had demos and live versions floating around for years that the band has finally managed to record to their liking. "Good Morning Mr. Magpie" in particular - what a gem.

Click here for the album version. And here's what it used to sound like:

My Favorite Songs of 2010

2011-01-05T21:17:00.000-05:00

One woman's trash is another woman's treasure. Who knows if these songs are the best of 2010? I mean, I couldn't get into Arcade Fire, so assuredly there's something wrong with me. These are my favorite songs, though, my friends this past year, my soundtrack.

Sleigh Bells: Tell 'Em. This song makes me wish I had a car. And not just any car. One of those cars with those stereo systems that are so loud when they drive by you, frames rattling off their wheels, you think it must be an alien driving, because the music would explode a human's head, splat. And on that system, I would put this song, and I would crank it up, and I would drive round, windows down, blasting it delightedly, splat or no splat.

Secret Sisters: Big River. Take 2 cups pleasant folk harmonizing, maybe just a tad too sweet. Add tablespoon vinegary Jack White strumming of guitar. Mix. Taste. Add more Jack White as needed.

Delta Spirit: St. Francis. I have been a fickle lover to the songs on this, my favorite album of the year, jilting one tune for the next and then the next and then the next. St. Francis, though, wrapped me up in its minor key modulations, its yelled chorus (live, it'll blow the plaid off a roomful of hipsters), its not-belongingness, and it won't let me go.

Gil Scott Heron + Nas: New York is Killing Me. Sometimes a song seems like it has been written at you. Not for you, at you. From the south via Chicago. In love with New York, but it's bad love, youknowyouknow? Yeah, I can see "why some get up and move where it's slow." Bet they sorta miss it though.

The Hold Steady: The Weekenders. You had me at "The theme of this party's the industrial revolution. You came in dressed like a train wreck."

The Hold Steady - MTV Shows

The Morning Benders: Excuses. If this song took physical form, we would saunter down Flatbush Avenue together, our arms draped around each other, our hands in each others' back pockets, until we reached the park, where we would lie on our backs, not touching, but close, and watch the stars come out.

The National: Conversation 16. Nothing particularly struck me about The National's new album until, at Prospect Park over the summer, the lead singer's giant, warm, 8-dimensional voice reached out directly into my head and sang, "I was afraid/I'd eat your. Brain." But by then it was too late for hesitation, for he already had.

Conversation 16 by The National from Ruthie Cristobal on Vimeo.

Menomena: Intil. Deceptively simple, this song. It stalks you, a soundtrack in the background, those simple piano chords, that repeated lyric. "Sometimes I say too much. I never thought I'd lie" until it cuts off, and you think, "Wait, what?" and hit replay.

Menomena - Intil (Live at OPB) from opbmusic.org on Vimeo.

The Dead Weather: Die by the Drop. If I could be a rock star, I would be Alison Mosshart. I would slink about the stage. I would strut. I would stalk. I would fling my hair. I would snarl and sneer. I would take Jack White's aura of cool in my teeth and fling it about, and demolish it, and leave it lying wrinkled up on the stage. And then during a break, I would bake cookies for the band.

Lindstrom & Christabelle: Lovesick. Forget all this artsy musical hooey I've been talking. This song makes me want to dance.

Also:

Matthew Dear: You Put a Smell on Me.

The Liminanas: Je Suis un Go-Go Girl.

Big Boi + Jamie Foxx: Hustle Blood.

Caribou: Found Out.

Belleruche: Bobby. This is my "I am irked that I didn't know about these guys three years ago" band of the year.

Warpaint: Shadows.

Breathe Owl Breathe: Own Stunts.

Besnard Lakes: And This Is What We Call Progress.

April Smith: Terrible Things.

Kid Cudi, Best Coast, Rostam: All Summer.

Bands That Sound Suspiciously Like Radiohead

2010-11-21T12:58:00.000-05:00

Exhibit A: Home Video. Moody piano? Check. Stuttering drums? Check. Ethereal, mysterious, oft-lingering-on-one-word vocals? Check. Yeah, it's missing, like, a 17/8 time signature or two, but whatever.

Exhibit B: Duologue. It's like Radiohead themselves, through a just slightly distorted mirror. All the elements above, plus some extreme falsetto and a bass line that seems more than a tad influenced by "I Might Be Wrong."

Duologue - Cut & Run by Freedom Or Death

Listening to this, I feel like I'm cheating on Radiohead. Quick quick, lads, get that new album out before this develops into a full-blown affair.

Have a Ghoulish Halloween

2010-10-31T10:21:00.000-05:00

I seem to have stumbled across a bunch of actually good sort-of Halloweeny music entirely by accident in the past few months. It would be ghoulish of me not to share.

The Dead Weather: Die by the Drop
"A little grave we can fill together."

Cat Power: Werewolf
She did this song a few years ago. I came across it in the context of Almodovar's latest, "Broken Embraces."

Liminanas: I'm Dead
Only the French could make being dead so lively.

The National: Anyone's Ghost
"Walk through the Manhattan valleys of the dead."

Salem: Frost
Well, if the music genre is called witch haus, of course it's going to be Halloween-appropriate. Get it via pitchfork here.

The Black Keys: Howlin' for You.
Because no Halloween playlist is complete without a little blues-heavy howlin' at the moon.

Five Shows In Two Weeks

2010-08-14T12:13:00.002-05:00

The National at Prospect Park, July 27

I can't figure out where the voice of The National's lead singer Matt Berninger comes from. He isn't a big guy. Certainly, his body isn't big enough to contain that delicious, warm, large voice. As he sang lyrics like "I was afraid/I'd eat your/brains" and "I'm sorry I missed you/I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain" (which latter would make an excellent corporate voicemail greeting) at the Prospect Park Bandshell, I came to this conclusion: There are, in fact, more than three dimensions, and in the fourth and fifth dimensions, Berninger is a giant.

This show was perfect in every way: relaxed crowd, pleasant evening, a local band - most of them apparently walked to the show - that knew their crowd. As they introduced their song "The Geese of Beverly Road," there was a dedication to the poor geese formerly of Prospect Park. And I'm still trying to figure out where the Veil of Cashmere is.

Morning Benders/Black Keys at Central Park, July 28

I don't quite get what all the fuss about the Black Keys is about. Yes, they're a good blues band, and I'd like to see them in a tiny, dim, smoky bar while licking BBQ sauce off my fingers and maybe have a conversation with the drummer at the bar later. But the sort of God-like status they've achieved in certain circles is beyond me, and this show did nothing to change this. Perhaps I need to become a boy in my early 20s and grow my hair down to my shoulders and wear a headband to truly understand.

The Morning Benders, on the other hand, were quite precious. "Promises" may be my favorite song of the year.

The Swell Season at Prospect Park, July 30

This free show was incredibly packed, so much so that I wound up outside the fence listening to it after deciding I didn't feel like defending my square patch of land within the fence with my fists. Which was fine: there was a nice picnic, and some annoying dogs, to add atmosphere. This is another band that I don't quite get the popularity of (yeah yeah cute little indie movie whatever yeah), but my night was made when they rocked out with a couple of Frames songs.

Basia Bulat/Tune-Yards/St. Vincent at Central Park, Aug. 1

Basia Bulat was adorable in an all-over-the-place kind of way, and she brought a little bounce to everything she played, including a cover of an incredibly depressing song called, appropriately enough, "I'm So Depressed," by Abner Jay, which was my favorite thing she did (thank you, YouTube taper - awesome video).

St. Vincent was the opposite: technically on point, but chilly to the point of alienating the crowd. There are few things that turn me off to music more than a band that doesn't look like it's having fun, and her band looked like they would rather have been chewing nails.

The highlight of this show, though, was Tune-Yards. Merrill Garbus was a hoot, with her amazing, warbling voice that she loops back on itself infinitely, and her multi-piece brass section that she brought special for the show. Here is a woman who knows how to get the audience involved, forcing us all at one point to do a gleeful shout-out to her Grandpa Lou. And when she bellowed "Grr-ah, grr-ah, we all fall DOOOOOWNN," I had the feeling that here was a star in the making.

The Dead Weather at Prospect Park, Aug. 3

The Dead Weather was so good they were able to overcome the distractions created by an obnoxious crowd that included a man who spilled at least two beers on me and a group of boys who decided to dance a poor version of Hava Nagila while we waited for the encore ("this is what they do in Brooklyn, right?" one of them said, accidentally kicking me). Oh, Jack White and Alison Mosshart, what I endure to experience your rock-star-god auras, completed by blowtorches on stage and stuffed rams heads, or something, mounted on the speakers.

They played all the big, bad, roaring anthems in epic style, but surprisingly, it was the impossibly sexy, sultry, sung-into-one-mike duet, "Will There Be Enough Water," a song I hadn't paid much attention to previously, that left me completely floored. Somebody videotaped it. Bless you, somebody.

You Don't Want To Know. So Now There's A Divide

2010-07-22T21:32:00.001-05:00

I am uncertain about how to pronounce Menomena, and I sort of like it that way. I hope it's pronounced such that it almost rhymes with "phenomenon," which is how I like to let it roll off my tongue. If it's not, and it's actually something that sounds like a child's chant about a bully, don't tell me. I don't want to know.

While we're on the topic of my own insecurities, I am also uncertain that I'm actually smart enough to be listening to this group. They're sort of the musical equivalent of what Winston Churchill said the one time about Russia.

One thing I am certain of, however, is that this group will always produce at least one song that I find to be perfect on each and every album they put together. On their last one - you know, the one with the puzzling cover art - it was "Running," which could be about exercising too much, or could be about starving in a post-apocalyptic landscape while being chased by cattle. You just can't be sure.

On the new album, Mines, there are plenty of options to choose from - including the second track, Taos, which I'd swear I just heard a Followill brother running naked through. But my personal favorite is "Intil." (Until? Intel?) It's a little bit the piano; oh, that marching bit that kicks in at 2:30 or so. But only a little bit; the vast, vast majority of my affection for this song is lyrics-driven. Or lyric-driven, if you prefer, since it's really just the one sentiment, repeated over and over until it penetrates passive listening mode, maybe not until the very end of the song, when, just as it concludes, you think, "Wait! What?" And listen to it eight times over again, in a row.

"Sometimes I say too much. I never thought I'd lie."

Mines is streaming at NPR for another few days. Intil is the last track.

B Flat Is Rather Odd

2010-06-26T13:52:00.003-05:00

Okay, so I am obsessed with vuvuzelas, and their B-flat-ish-ness.

First of all, why B flat, and not A sharp? Why vuvuzela, and not lepatata?

Nonetheless, B flats make alligators bellow. See?

B flats also continue after you are gone.

Black holes sing in B flat. Apparently, in basso profondo B flat.

Johnny B. Goode is a famous song in B flat. And, as NPR (which seems to be even more obsessed with B flat than I am) tells us, the opening guitar lick in "Welcome to The Jungle" is in B flat.

Thanks to YouTube's new vuvuzela button, which may possibly be one of the top 10 ~~worst~~ best ideas ever, you can now overlay vuvuzelas on top of these tracks. Just click the little soccer icon at the lower right of the video screen. You have to go to the YouTube site, it doesn't work with the embed code.

Johnny B. Goode

Welcome to the Jungle

And, saving the best for last, Vuvuzela Concerto in B Flat.

Welcome To The (Sort Of Creepy) World Cup

2010-05-29T08:57:00.001-05:00

BLK JKS' "Zol" should be - probably will be - a sure-fire World Cup hit. It's obviously geared for that: they're from Jo-burg, the lyrics are futbol-y, there's a call-response thing going on, the album drops two days before the World Cup starts, they're playing at the opening ceremonies...and for the first 15 seconds or so, it's, yeah, instant theme song.

But all the BLK JKS I've listened too (full disclosure: not much, just a handful of songs) has sounded a little minor key, a little discordant, and I'm hearing that here, too, once the lyrics kick in. Is there not something a little off about this song? Is that guitar line not a little too insistent, almost as if it wants to be in a different song? Are the lyrics not intentionally a bit flat at times? Is it an ANTHEM, yes, in all caps, like the band?

It's so subtle, I start to doubt myself. Is it me? Is my hearing and judgment finally starting to go? So I go and listen to something else, something major key, something sunny and Katrina and the Waves-ish...and then I come back to this...and...It's not me. I don't think.

Is it just that this is how the band plays, anthem be damned? Or is it on purpose?

New York, Sometimes It's Killing Me

2010-05-22T12:19:00.003-05:00

This song expresses my own mixed emotions towards my adopted home so well it's almost creepy.

You got that nice slow phrasing from Gil Scott-Heron, evocative of the southern transplant making their way (and I'm not from Jackson TN, but it is eerily close to the family homestead).

You got the New York patter from Nas, so fast you can't totally follow it, as fast as the city itself, loving the city, but hating it a little too - a more realistic representation than the Beastie Boys' paean.

Yeah, I too can see why some get up and move where it's slow. New York, have mercy on me.

Go download it here.

Oh The Irony: Sleigh Bells Produces Perfect Summer Album

2010-05-16T11:12:00.002-05:00

Most summers, there's an album that makes me wish I had a car, so that I could drive around, windows down, stereo blasting, and share my musical tastes with all those around me. Because I suffer from that same delusion of so many other Brooklynites, namely that everyone wants to know what my musical taste is, particularly as I drive past them, and will be forced to agree that, yes, (insert name of band I hadn't known of previously here) is amazing.

Last summer, there wasn't a summer album like that. Of course, there wasn't really a summer, either, in New York, so perhaps it was fitting.

This spring, I think summer's come early. This spring, I may just rent a car and drive around blasting the new Sleigh Bells album, and in particular this song, for a week or so. Because I'm especially convinced that YOU will thank me for it. Yes, that's me, driving around the block over and over again in my $20 rent-a-wreck.

Welcome back, summer. You were missed.

Thom Yorke Makes Manhole Covers Explode!

2010-04-09T14:30:00.002-05:00

Manhole covers exploding! Three-alarm fires! The threat of carbon monoxide poisoning! If it were any other band, I would have had doubts that the actual Atoms for Peace show could top the random events that came before it.

I emerged blinking and mildly disoriented, as one does, from the 7th Ave. B subway stop a little after 6 p.m. Tuesday, hoping to pick up my will call tix for Atoms for Peace from Roseland quickly and grab a bite to eat before the show. The only warning of the chaos awaiting was the comment by a tourist type to her companion as they exited in front of me: "Well, we found the fire."

Sure enough. Some random only-in-New-York transformer-blowing-up-manhole-cover-exploding thing had just happened, right smack dab in front of Roseland. 52nd Street was blocked off, along with several blocks of Broadway. Hordes of firemen were standing around in full gear. Dazed groups of tourists were sitting on their suitcases pondering the likelihood of being able to check into their hotels. The line to get into the Atoms for Peace show was winding along the back of Roseland along 53rd, rather than the front.

After fending off somebody who wanted to know if I was in line for Jersey Boys (later canceled) and hearing that there would be no word on whether or not the show was a go until 7 p.m., I opted not to torment myself by standing in line, and toddled off to dinner. There, I irked my companions by puttering around on my Blackberry trying to figure out what the hey was going on until a kind gent at a nearby table let us know that his friend, in line for the show, had tweeted that it was ON! but delayed half an hour (finally, I see the utility of Twitter...).

Back to Roseland, where the club had shifted their box office to a folding table outside the 53rd Street entrance. Chaos, yes, but organizedly so, with everyone basically filtering in through one small back door.

Inside, perhaps strangest was how normal everything was. Thom Yorke, looking as if he had climbed out of bed and wandered straight onto stage, addressed the day's events in normal understated fashion, declaring, "Well, that was an interesting afternoon." He and Flea and those other guys in the band then proceeded to create a cocoon of sound that blocked out every last New York distraction.

I was most curious at this show to see how Flea's hard-driving vibe would fit in with Thom's subtler one. While there were a few moments of "This Is Flea. Playing Bass. Watch, And Learn," it worked well for the most part. In fact, some of those bass licks on the Eraser seem made for him. The two men even dance sorta the same weird half-crazed way, making for an odd stage spectacle.

But the highlights of the show for me lay elsewhere. One came on "Skip Divided," where Flea used a blow-organ to lay down the harmony that Thom hums on the recorded version, leaving Thom to half-rap the lyrics and try to figure out what to do with his arms. Reminiscent of Amnesiac-era Radiohead, I came away with a new "so THAT's what that can sound like live" appreciation of the song.

The other was the solo version of "Everything In Its Right Place" that Thom did during the encore. Radiohead tends to swing through New York towards the middle or end of tours, as I recall, when the band is a little grumpy and Thom's voice is wearing down. But with this particular show on night two of the tour, Thom's voice was the purest I have heard it (I'm not sure I'd want to hear him attempt the opening notes on "Hollow Earth," for instance, even a few more shows into the tour), making everything, but "Everything In Its Right Place" in particular, sound like it was being beamed straight from heaven.

Was it Radiohead? No. But definitely the next best thing.

Videos from someone awesome named AllBearsRule's YouTube channel, embedded below.

And One. Mobile. Phone.

2010-03-05T08:23:00.003-05:00

I'm still dubious that Wall Street II: Money Never Sleeps is going to be able to meet the high bar set by its predecessor, but this rather clever preview does give me hope. It seems like it's not going to take itself too seriously, from the shot of the mobile phone (I REMEMBER that phone!) to Gordon Gekko getting outclassed by a random drug lord.

I also like the ominous driving music in the background. The wonders of Google quickly told me it's a song called Ricochet, by Shiny Toy Guns, whom I know nothing about since I ain't no club kid no mo'. It works better without lyrics in the preview, but the opening line's pretty appropriate for the movie, too: "Welcome back to where I'm gonna have you..."

You Found Another Way To Tell The Truth

2010-02-14T10:18:00.000-05:00

When did this win me totally over? When the (dreamy) lead singer sings, "We'll still be best friends when all turns to dust," and hits that unexpected note at "all," that's when.

Yours Truly Presents: The Morning Benders "Excuses" from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

The Spaces. Between. Words.

2010-01-30T13:20:00.000-05:00

It is good to see there's still a place for something like this in an A.D.D. world.

Then there's the top song here, which is possibly even better, in a sort of opposite way.

PolarBear on myspace

25 Songs That Befriended Me In 2009

2010-01-10T12:20:00.004-05:00

Warning: You will not find Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, or Grizzly Bear on this list.

(Loses 99/100 of potential audience...)

Now then. Here are 25 songs that I adored in 2009, in no particular order.

Mexican Chili Taco Fiesta - Tamales Oaxaquenos (via KEXP). If you had told me that I would include a mostly instrumental song about Oaxacan tamales, where the only lyrics I can understand are the title words of the song, on my year-end mix, well, I might not have laughed at you, but I would have been skeptical. But then again, yum, tamales oaxaquenos.

The Dead Weather - Hang You from the Heavens. Take Jack White and his affinity for dirrrrrty blues and side projects that obliterate other people's main bands. Add Alison Mosshart, the lead singer of the Kills, whose albums I could (and have!) listen(ed) to on repeat infinitely. Insert a simple guitar riff and some bass drum. Rinse. Lather. Result: this, my favorite song on my favorite album this year. Repeat.

K-Naan - America. He says it better than I can: that shit was cool in English (especially the Chali 2na bit, all you people pining for Jurassic 5), but give me that Somali verse.

Spinnerette - Ghetto Love. The hip online reviewers, they did not like this album. Me, I can't stop rocking out to this song.

Tuneyards - Sunlight (via Pitchfork). It's pretty rare, when you get to my doddering age, to stumble across music that is unlike anything heard before. So, Tuneyards - also, incidentally, unlike anything capitalized before. So much so that I'm not even going to try it.

Justin Adams & Juldeh Camara - Fulani Coochi Man. For the first 15 seconds, this is just a typical blues song, which, you know, yawn, just give me some Muddy Waters instead. But at 0:15 exactly, something extraordinary happens, and all of a sudden this is something new and fresh, and at the same time, so, so old.

Beyonce Ft. Lady Gaga - Video Phone. Oh Beyonce. I try, how I try, to keep your songs off my year-end lists, to retain some minimal sort of indy cred. But always, always, you end up making something amazing that I cannot ignore. The fact that it is a duet with Lady Gaga? Doubly insulting and even more ignominious. Curse you!

Muse - Uprising. This is an excellent anti-whatever-is-keeping-you-down anthem (You hear me, Beyonce???). They will not control us. We will be victorious. Handclap. Hey.

King Midas Sound - Darlin'. This song whispers of seduction like twilight in the tropics.

Mos Def - Quiet Dog. Making the best old-school hip-hop hands down year after year in and out without even thinking about it is Mos Def. Which I like to think is what the title of the song is all about.

Whitley - Poison in Our Pocket. And the winner of the Grammy for best depressing song expressed optimisticly is...Whitley! Wait a second, wait a second...What do you mean there's no such category? Well, invent one.

Petracovich - Heaven Help the Day. I already wrote this once, but I can't say it any better. I like this. I like the tinkling way it starts, the dissonance of the lonely lyrics and the warm music, the unexpectedness of the guitar strumming when it kicks in, the way she turns the tables, the acceleration into a torrent of fierceness, the emphatic full stop.
<a href="http://petracovich.bandcamp.com/track/heaven-help-the-day-2">Heaven Help The Day by Petracovich</a>

Ramona Falls - Russia (via Pitchfork). When this song, from the lead singer of Menomena, comes on, it sweeps me up and sends me soaring over the world, with cherry blossoms blowing in my face.

Here We Go Magic - Only Pieces. The jittery guitars sound exactly like my mind feels, skimming the surface of the questions this song asks.

Blakroc - Coochie. Why yes, yes, this is the second song on the list with Coochie in the title. No, no, it wasn't planned. Yes, yes, I do see some sort of rhythm and rhyme to it.

Das Racist - Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (via Pitchfork). This song is completely, utterly ridiculous. It reminds me of every pointless summer job I ever had, of every pointless quest I ever went on just to kill time, of time wasted, junk food eaten, of cruising the strip.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll. This album didn't grab me as instantly as the Yeah to the third's previous efforts have. But ultimately I installed a disco ball in my brain and embraced the glam.

Florence & the Machine - Cosmic Love. Because the music and lyrics match so perfectly.

Chris Brown - I Can Transform Ya. I feel vaguely queasy about including a Chris Brown song on my list, at least without some kind of balancing "I will survive" anthem from Rihanna, but I HAVE TO. I sing along, I shimmy, I am transformed from a human to a Carter, without any reluctance at all.

Fresh Espresso - Big or Small (via KEXP). If they did a remake of Saturday Night Fever, whoever tried to fill Travolta's shoes would dance to this, and not just because of the Stayin Alive sample.

The XX - Crystallised. Have you ever heard something so simultaneously simple and complicated?

Bat for Lashes - Daniel. A friend says this reminds him of Imogen Heap's "Glittering Clouds," which I had not heard before. So in some ways, this was like finding two great, gloomy, ominous songs in one.

Frankel - Anonymity is the New Fame. You had me at minor chord modulation number one. The lyrics are just the rose tied to the satellite.

Kurt Vile - Inside Looking Out. This song reminds me of trains. But not of actually being on a train. Instead, more like sitting at a railroad crossing somewhere that still qualifies as the wide open spaces, with the bars down and the red lights flashing and the train moseying by, not in any hurry, and neither are you, and neither is this song, and when the song is over maybe the train will be too, or maybe you'll listen to the song again.

Richard Hawley - Don't Get Hung up in Your Soul. Good advice for a new year.

It's Like The Monster Under The Bed Came Out And Asked For A Hug

2009-12-06T20:38:00.000-05:00

I'm working on a pop record in my bedroom, says this Aussie named Whitley on his blog quite some time ago. Oh heaven's no, anything but that, says a rather grumpy respondent. Thank heavens he persevered, because Go Forth Find Mammoth, from what I can glean, sings.

Her Name Was Prison, Her Name Was Free

2009-09-24T22:50:00.004-05:00

I like this. I like the tinkling way it starts, the dissonance of the lonely lyrics and the warm music, the unexpectedness of the guitar strumming when it kicks in, the way she turns the tables, the acceleration into a torrent of fierceness, the emphatic full stop.

<a href="http://petracovich.bandcamp.com/track/heaven-help-the-day-2">Heaven Help The Day by Petracovich</a>

A Few Odds And Ends

2009-09-05T10:59:00.007-05:00

Maybe it's just because I've stopped listening to the normal airwaves radio because NYC radio SUX, but has there been no real summer jam this year? There's a few indie things, sure, like maybe Das Rascist's Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (via Pitchfork) or The Temper Trap's Sweet Disposition (video), but what about the mainstream stuff? Where's the Lil Wayne Lollipop of this summer? Kid Cudi? Really? And that Flo-Rida song...first, it's nowhere NEAR as good as Low, and second, Eiffel 65??? Maybe Boom Boom Pow...maybe She Wolf (video) - it's got a nice throwback feel...but I don't know, nothing is really grabbing me.

But here's a fall jam you can get behind. This song reminds me of Menomena. Hmmm, maybe that's because Ramona Falls is a Menomena offshoot. Well, never mind, I'm a sucker for the picked strings and sweeping globetrotting epic. And any band which lists its influences as "chocolate, mostly" on its Myspace page.

Ramona Falls - Russia (via Pitchfork)

And finally: because I ALWAYS KNEW that there was hope for the bassoon as an indie rock music. Yeah, that's right. All you mariachi trumpet players ain't got nothin' on me.

The Photons: Where Were You Last Night

Dead Weather Obsession

2009-07-14T06:35:00.005-05:00

I like every side project of Jack White's better than I like the White Stripes themselves. His latest, the Dead Weather, is no exception. Primarily because I'm a huge fan of the Kills (last summer I listened to "U.R.A Fever" about 30 times in a row while stuck in Holland Tunnel traffic) - and this takes their punk-blues sound even down deeper and dirtier.

In honor of the release of their album, the band is doing playlists yesterday and today over at woxy.com. Great music (how sexy is that Captain Beefheart song?), and a couple of humorous nuggets on how they got together:

"We were playing a Raconteurs tour and I was losing my voice...the Kills were warming up and we asked Alison to come out and finish some of my songs because I couldn't sing 'em...so we could, you know, get paid (Alison: so YOU could get paid without working)."

Favorite song so far off the album is "Hang You From the Heavens."

Beauty Tips According To Forest Whitaker

2009-02-15T11:01:00.014-05:00

If one person whose musical taste I respect recommends me something, I'll get to it eventually, assuming I can remember what it was for long enough. But if two people whose musical taste I respect recommend me the same something in the space of three days, I'm gonna give it a shot almost immediately.

And so, Brother Ali, the Muslim albino rapper from Minneapolis. An unusual story, an old-school style, and of late some controversial lyrics and killer harmonica about the "United Snakes."

I like his song Forest Whitiker, about being your own person:

Ima be alright
You ain't gotta be my friend tonite
And Ima be okay
You would probly bore me anyway

You can listen to and download some of his stuff here.

Truth Is

Of Good And Not So Good Band Names

2009-02-08T10:10:00.011-05:00

I'm listening to KEXP at work, not really listening, you understand, but just on the headphones so I can concentrate, and the DJ comes on and starts going on about a band called Meth Teeth and what a great name Meth Teeth is. And I have to say, I agree. Even more awesomely, they are on a label called Sweet Rot Records. They have a song called "Unemployment Forever." I cannot understand the lyrics. Here is their MySpace page.

I email this band name to a fellow indy-music-loving coworker. He writes back and agrees that it is an awesome band name. Not, he says, like the name of a band he has just stumbled upon, the Brooklyn-based Sleigh Bells. However, I think Sleigh Bells could take Meth Teeth in a battle of the bands. Visit their MySpace page, where you can download some of their stuff. "At The Beach" is my favorite.

Radiohead + Marching Band = My Head Will Explode?

2009-02-08T08:28:00.001-05:00

Ateaseweb sez Radiohead has been rehearsing 15 Steps with the USC Marching Band. And they have a foto to prove it.

B-Boy Obsession

2009-02-01T11:13:00.004-05:00

Attempting to recover from the cold/cough plague of death that seems to be going around NYC, I spent all day yesterday on my couch watching TV. At some point, I video-on-demanded "Planet B-Boy." I was totally blown away by the creativity of this Ichigeki crew from Japan, and I'm happy that a clip of their full performance is available on YouTube (in the movie it gets edited down to half of this or so).

I really love the part around five minutes in when the b-boy playing the DJ comes out and dances, even tho' it's not the most amazingly physical part of the routine. He's one of the focal characters in the documentary; there's a bunch of stuff in his family's tea shop about his father's death and how he's dealt with it.

According to the movie, this crew disbanded. Sadness.

Whachadoin?

2009-01-24T12:43:00.011-05:00

This album from N.A.S.A., it would appear, features every hip-hop artist you might ever want to listen to, all in one place. Spin tips it as the party album of the year. Can't say I disagree. Downloads at the end of the link, or listen to "Whachadoin" here (via Pitchfork).

Go vote for your favorite album cover here.

A Year-End List That I Actually Waited Til 2009 To Publish!

2009-01-10T11:52:00.000-05:00

These are the songs I found myself listening to over and over again this year, roughly in order from least over-listened to most over-listened. Some of them struck a personal chord. Some are just too catchy to be ignored. And yeah, there's 26 of them, because I just couldn't whittle it down to 25. Enjoy, please!

26. Hazelwood Motel - Break Myself In Two. This song is dead last onto the list time-wise, and probably actually belongs somewhat higher on it listened-wise, but I'm too lazy to redo the numbering. I love its simultaneous loudness and quietness. That when they're done, they end. And of course the driving guitar, which seems to be a theme this year. (Previous post, with info on where to download.)

25. A.A. Bondy - Killed Myself When I Was Young. Whoo, boy, this guy is off somewhere deep in the black forest. This is actually one of his more cheerful songs. Here's the Daytrotter session. Below, something else.

24. Absentee - They Do It These Days. You just don't hear good rock and roll with piano and trumpets and smart lyrics much any more. More driving guitar, too.

23. Ketch Harbor Wolves - So Long To The Ground. Download their album - the whole peaceful thing - for free here.

22. Yoav - Yeah The End. This is a gorgeous mellow song on a gorgeous mellow CD that resides in my top five list this year. Listen to it here or check out a stunningly good live set that doesn't have this particular song on it here.

21. The Cotton Jones Basket Ride - Chewing Gum. This is an ambling, shambling tune, "Feeling softer than the velvet sky, longer than the sun." Download it here.

20. The Mae Shi - Run To Your Grave. I like the directness of this song. Here's the beat. Here's the chorus, yelled. Here's, err, some driving guitar. Here's the rest of the song, also yelled. Here's a video in primary colors.

19. Kanye West vs. Radiohead - Reckoner Lockdown. I thought Kanye was the bomb on the MTV music awards when he did this song with those crazy taiko drummers in the background. However, I hate the album version/just not a fan of vocoder. But this remix with Radiohead got it halfway back to decent again. Not to mention that I can't possibly have a year-end list that doesn't somehow have Radiohead on it.

18. The Ting Tings - Great DJ. Were it earlier in the year, this would probably be higher on the list, but these guys sort of faded for me. Still, check out the Daytrotter session.

17. Saul Williams - List of Demands. This song was the soundtrack to a shoe commercial that was on non-stop during March madness. I don't remember the shoe, but the song lingers on. The song itself was written some time ago, but this guy is no dummy, so he reissued it on a CD this year. This is an outrageously cool rockin' version from 2005.

16. Catherine A.D. - Carry Your Heart. This is late onto the list. I like the crazy key changes in the chorus. Visit her MySpace page.

15. The Subways - Rock & Roll Queen. This song did not worm its way into my head until I saw "RocknRolla". Since then, I've probably played it an average of once a day.

The Subways - Rock & Roll Queen
Uploaded by Yugis

14. Calexico - Two Silver Trees. If tumbleweeds could sing, this is what they would sound like.

13. The Bug featuring Warrior Queen - Poison Dart. I can't understand a word of it, but I love it. So very fierce. Another album that is in my top five (Via KEXP.)

12. Little Jackie - The Stoop. I love this song because it perfectly reflects how I feel about Brooklyn. So what if I don't have a stoop. NPR live session here.

11. T.I. featuring Rihanna - Live Your Life. The sheer audacity, to sample a not very good song from O-Zone, and turn it into a riotous ANTHEM. Here's the live version from the MTV video awards.

T.I. - New Music - More Music Videos

10. M83 - Highway of Endless Dreams. Appropriately named, is what. (On last.fm)

9. Raconteurs - Salute Your Solution. Good dirty South backwoods rock and roll with killer keyboard, some seriously cool reverb, and an even cooler video. Go here to watch it, since their record company no longer allows embedding. Or go here to listen.

8. Lil Wayne - A Milli. Lil Wayne is outrageous. The lyrics on this joint are insane. And the chant of "a milli" is a heartbeat that won't be ignored. I especially love this live version with ?uestlove doing the a millis AND playing the drums.

7. Eddy Current Suppression Ring - Colour Television (download here. All the characteristics of a song I'd love - strong driving bass line, jangly guitars, and ironic pop culture lyrics. Another wheel of fortune. Another million tortured. Acomin' from my color television. Another story televised. Another million hypnotized.

6. Atmosphere - You. Just a good recession-era jam. A late entry into the top five albums.

5. Kings of Leon - Closer. For three hours, I stood crammed like a sardine in front of the All Points West main stage, awaiting Radiohead. Luckily, Kings of Leon was playing for an hour and a half of that. That was all it took for me to go from "meh" to a fan. This song, it oozes sex. (Via Pretty Much Amazing.)

4. Nada Surf - The Fox. I liked this song, but then I happened to be playing it while I was reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," and now I love it. Funny how its meaning changed for me. I haven't the slightest idea what this video is all about, and it assuredly isn't the official video for the song, but it is suitably strange.

3. Michael Franti - Remote Control. I saw Michael Franti for the first time at All Points West, and the dude just oozed happiness. This song is an anthem for good, in a year that needed such an anthem. Hey world, you know you got to put up a fight. Download here.

2. The Kills - URA Fever. With driving minor key bass beat, thrash guitar and creepy point-counterpoint vocals, this was a perfect tune for driving along the shore at night this summer. It was also a perfect tune for getting stuck in Holland Tunnel traffic. Second favorite album of the year. (Previous post.)

1. Elbow - The Bones of You. This is my favorite song of the year, on my favorite album of the year. This song is about nostalgia, and is nostalgia. Download it here, and check out a great year-end list while you're at it.

White Rioja

2009-01-08T07:44:00.003-05:00

I have no idea just how unusual white rioja is (seems counter-intuitive though, no?) so I won't make a big stink about it. But I will say that you should run buy yourself a bottle of this hint-of-banana-oh-so-smooth-tasting 2005 Sierra Cantabria Organza before it is ALL GONE. I had it with a magnificent tasting dinner at Blue Hill, and I can't even remember which course I had it with, because the wine obliterated the food. I then ran out and bought two bottles of it the next day at Astor Place, which now seems to be out of it. Should have bought up their stock.

Checking Into The Hazelwood Motel

2009-01-08T07:32:00.003-05:00

I heard Hazelwood Motel on a KEXP year-end podcast, and I have had them on repeat ever since. I am not the only one; plays of this "Break Myself In Two" masterpiece have, like, doubled on their MySpace page in the last couple of days. Of course, at least 20 of those come from me...I lerv the snarly guitar so.

I wonder if these guys are named after one of the several Hazelwood Motels I found online while hunting a non-existent decent picture of them.

KEXP is giving away an MP3 of this and other good stuff here!

Another Pleasantly Unusual Year-End List

2008-12-16T08:13:00.002-05:00

Another great, unusual list of 2008 music here, from Drowned in Sound. I particularly like Dom Gourlay's list.

Backtracking To The Source

2008-12-06T11:54:00.004-05:00

I'm currently engaged in my annual time-suck of scanning other people's year-end music lists to make sure I miss as little good music as possible. It's a thankless task - mostly the same not-that-interesting indie-flavor-of-the-moment bands cropping up over and over.

But today I happened on a list with a bunch of stuff I'd never heard of before, and when I hunted down the bands' Myspace pages, I found myself lingering over nearly all of it. Two Sheds, A.A. Bondy, All Smiles...who knew? So good!

I don't usually pay much attention to who's picking the music I'm rushing through, but in this case I did. Twas a band called Everest. They're on tour with Wilco and Neil Young. And, surprise surprise, I like them too.

You can listen here; download here; and check out their favorite bands here.

A Few Definites For The Year-End CD

2008-11-23T09:56:00.002-05:00

After going through my music files, I have settled on a handful of songs that are definitely going on the CD. There are a few good ones missing here, thanks to the total computer meltdown I had in the middle of the year, which means I'm going to have to go through the physical music files as well...and buy a new burner. Sigh.

Anyhow, when I try to sum up this year, it feels like it should be with a combination of angry punk, rocking anthems of hope, a few mellow chill-out songs, and a few other random songs that are good just because they're good. I think that's represented in this list, presented in no particular order:

The Kills - URA Fever: I think I listened to this song 100 times on repeat in my lime green rental car over the summer. Hypnotically catchy.

Elbow - The Bones of You: I woke up to this song playing on my alarm clock one morning, and by that evening I owned the CD. The lyrics are about the nostalgia a song can induce in you...I wonder what nostalgia this song will one day induce in me? Listen to a live version here.

Michael Franti - Remote Control. Heard this song live at All Points West. What a great election-year anthem.

TI featuring Rihanna: Live Your Life. This song has been stuck in my head, off and on, for months now. It should be illegal to be so catchy. I'm not even going to post it here lest it get caught in your head too.

Kings of Leon - Closer. Didn't really get into these guys until I saw them at All Points West. That, plus this song - one of the 10 sexiest ever, I think - converted me. Listen here.

Catherine A.D. - Carry Your Heart. Love the creepy minor key modulations in her voice. And the lyrics. Put one foot in front of the other and pray that nobody will ask how you carry your heart. That one, and another one, here.

Eddy Current Suppression Ring - Colour Television. I don't know anything about these guys, but this song is like an updated, wiser "57 Channels and Nothing On". Available here.

Calexico - Two Silver Trees. I love everything Calexico does, but I particularly love this windswept song.

Lil Wayne - A Milli. I had this album on non-stop for a while this summer, but it somehow feels already like a relic of the past. This live version with ?uestlove of The Roots doing the "A Milli" chorus is inCREDible. Listen to the banter at the end.

12 Cameras...None Work

2008-11-22T12:05:00.008-05:00

This could be the coolest thing ever...but instead it is merely the most frustrating, thanks to pixellation, copyright issues, and the inability to view what other folks have done - or what you yourself have created once you close the window, despite what that handy little widget up there would seem to indicate.

Grumble. Fingers crossed for some improvements...

Was/Not Was: Picking The Best Of 2008

2008-11-22T09:51:00.002-05:00

Every year I put together a CD for friends of my favorite music of the year. I always feel a little presumptuous about doing it - who am I to tell people what the best music is? Everybody has their own taste - but I do it nonetheless, because of...well...because of my inflated ego?

Anyhow, it's picking time. Over the next couple of weeks, I'm agonizing over whether or not some of the songs on the borderline should go on the playlist. If you like them, tell me so.

This first one I just stumbled across today on someone else's year-end best of list. I know entirely why I like it. It's the beat, which gnaws at my memory familiarly. I was thinking that it must be similar to some Radiohead song, but only at this second, as I was writing this, did I figure out what it reminds me of. The bass beat, the note sequence, the spaces between notes, sounds like a slightly rushed version of the Buena Vista Social Club song Chan Chan (video below - speaking of - Ah! What a song).

The Oaks - Masood

Gnarly Indeed

2008-11-18T23:10:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago, as anyone who scrolls down on this page can easily discover, I fell deeply in love with Long Island's Channing Daughters winery. Last weekend, after quaffing the sole bottle (what was I thinking!) that I purchased of Rosso Fresco in just a couple of days, I went on a hunt to find some more here in the NYC.

I was rudely deterred on my first tedious outing to crowded, grumpy-inducing Soho, to the Vintage NY outlet there, which at some point between the summer and now seems to have closed. But last Saturday, I had more luck at Gnarly Vines Wine & Spirits in Fort Greene-ish. I live not so far from it, so trekked over with a friend, and found it to be totally chill and laid-back, not So-ho-haughty at all. More importantly, they had a few bottles of the good stuff, and I did not buy QUITE all of them. But you should.

Cage The Elephant

2008-11-15T14:19:00.002-05:00

Wherein a group of guys from the pseudo-south attempt to become the next Kings of Leon, with not insignificant success.

It Hugs Back

2008-11-15T13:54:00.001-05:00

It kind of does.

We're Not Your Grandma's Band But She'd Like Us

2008-11-09T11:59:00.004-05:00

Those Canadians. There's something in the water up there that generates indie pop goodness.

I intend to enjoy these guys now, because something about his voice makes me think he may not have it for long.

The Danks - Treaty Connector

A Basket Ride On A Moonlit Night

2008-11-08T13:02:00.005-05:00

A friend once asked me if I thought the Hold Steady was trying to bring Christian Rock to the mainstream surreptitiously. My response was that I doubted it, and even if they were, I didn't care. I feel the same way about The Cotton Jones Basket Ride.

Midnight Monday And A Telescope

Somehow, This Seems Appropriate

2008-11-05T08:22:00.001-05:00

Evil. Evil. Worse. Worse. Catchy. Catchy.

2008-10-26T17:31:00.006-05:00

I don't usually post about songs with lyrics that I don't have a prayer of deciphering (well, except for Radiohead) or musicians with long histories about which I know nothing or music types that make me scratch my head (Dubstep? What does that even mean?), but me gon make an exception for The Bug's London Zoo.

As in literature and film, I am in music occasionally a fan of things that carry an apocalyptic, end of the world, doomsday reek, but with a wink and a tongue ever so slightly tucked in cheek (think the sunglasses obsession in Terminator). And this suits.

Take this series of lyrics from "Skeng," pretty much the only lyrics I can decipher on the album unaided. "You don' wanna see me get Evil den...Then...Then...You don wanna see me get Evil...Evil...worse...worse...send for the nurse...nurse...doctor can't fix ya send for the hearse...earse...black."

Or the video, below, to "Poison Dart" - it's a tank, obliterating people with the bass line. It's an army, of grime dubstep warriors. Unh!

And, to take the tongue out of the cheek for a minute, "F**kaz" is an appropriately timed, angry rant about the state of the world:

"Fi all dem f**kin' people who ignore blatant facts just so dem maintain a order beneficial only to themselves..."

Check it.

And Now, Back To The Music!

2008-10-20T20:05:00.003-05:00

Now that I have emerged from a happy cloud of wine, it is time to Rock. NRolla.

I have heard the Subways' "Rock & Roll Queen" a few times, but not so's you'd notice. Enough that it was sitting in the back of my head, in a bin marked "just another too-cool-for-school Brit band."

But.

Introduce a Guy Ritchie movie to this song, and then insert the band playing it live at a random point in the movie - at an actual club in the U.K. called the Fire Station, if what I read here is to be believed. Follow up by splicing images of the band rawking out to the song together with images of a beatdown outside the club conducted with, well, a pencil, and NOW you have a memorable song.

Sadly, I cannot find this particular scene on YouTube. So just take the original video and...insert pencil.

Twenty Wineries In Four Days: And So We Come To The End

2008-10-18T17:45:00.018-05:00

1:45ish: As our tour of Long Island wine country comes to an end, we've decided to eat lunch at Modern Snack Bar, which is basically a diner. It's been around since 1950, and has remained seemingly true to its roots, serving good, simple food at affordable prices. Their mashed turnips are famous, so we order some even though they don't really go with my soft-shell crab sandwich or AMP's Caesar Salad. They're so good we slurp them up anyhow.

2:45ish: We're faced with a choice. Head home, or take a detour to the South Fork to visit Channing Daughters, tacking about an hour onto our trip? AMP's had their wine before and she loves it, and I'm obsessing over it after reading an article in Edible about their Mosaico wine and falling in love with the label. It winds up not really being a difficult decision: off to the South Fork we go. (Plus, we both kind of want to be able to say that we've been to the Hamptons and sneered at them.)

3:45ish: There's some weird art at Channing Daughters. But there's also a large, fuzzy, friendly dog who greets us at the door. He wants to be outdoors STAT. We herd him back indoors and check out the tasting room, which is nicely done, with seriously extensive notes about how each of their wines is produced, as well as about how it tastes. The Mosaico that I'm obsessing over, for instance, is made from 32% Pinot Grigio, 29% Chardonnay, 14% Sauvignon Blanc, 12% Muscat, 7% Tocai Friulano and 6% Gewurztraminer, the signage informs me. And it's fermented in an insane number of different types of vessels: "a stainless steel tank and stainless steel barrels, two Slovenian oak barrels, two Slovenian oak hogsheads and one Slovenian oak puncheon. A total of 27% of the wine saw new oak." I mean, damn.

As the above description indicates, these guys are doing different things then any other Long Island tasting room, that we've visited, anyhow. Most of the vineyards are growing Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay and Merlot grapes. Many of them share the same vineyard managers and winemakers. Inevitably, with the exception of a few stand-outs, they all start to taste much the same to someone with a less distinguished palate than Rober Parker's. No danger of that here. Tocai Friulano? I've never even heard of Tocai Friulano. The server explains that the owners think that Long Island has a similar climate to Northern Italy, so they've intentionally planted a lot of the same grapes that get grown there.

We've pretty much been sharing a single tasting at every single place we've been to since very early on, which works well except when we both really like a particular wine, in which case the tastings degenerate into open warfare. Here, there'll be no sharing. We start with the 2007 Sylvanus, which is a blend of Muscat, Pinot Grigio and Pinot Bianco. This is a field blend, which means that the grapes are grown intermingled in the field and harvested the way they're grown. I've never heard of this before and think it's totally cool; maybe I feel that way because the wine is soooooo good, and completely different from everything else we've tried.

Next, we try the 2007 Scuttlehole Chardonnay. This has been prepared in all stainless steel, which normally I don't like, but this time it works. (We've heard a lot of people out here sputter indignantly about Chardonnays that have been over-oaked; I don't know if this is really a problem or just a way of distinguishing their wines from California Chardonnays.) It also hasn't been through malo-lactic fermentation, a process our pourer takes the time to explain to us. Basically, wine can go through two fermentations: the primary one, which converts the grape juice to alcohol, and then malo-lactic fermentation, which changes one type of acid to another and which is common in red wines and the heartier white wines. Malo-lactic fermentation can be stopped by cold temperatures, and that's what they did with this Chardonnay.

We tried a couple other whites - both incredible - then a rose, then moved on to the reds. They don't plant a lot of red at Channing Daughters, but just like with the whites, what they do do with red here is completely different than any other vineyard. We tried the 2005 Sculpture Garden, which is 97% Merlot and 3% Blaufrankisch. I'd never heard of Blaufrankisch (which also goes by the name Lemberger); turns out it's grown primarily in Germany, Austria and the surrounding region. Our pourer said it's meaty, and maybe it was just her persuasiveness, but I swear I can detect sausage both in the nose and the taste of the wine. So good!

I bought four bottles of wine here, the most I bought at any vineyard: the Sylvanus, my Mosaico (which wasn't available for tasting), the Sculpture Garden, and another red, the 2007 Rosso Fresco, which she was kind enough to let me taste. It's basically a low-brow version of the Sculpture Garden, also with the signature Blaufranksich grape, and I'm drinking it and smacking my lips as I write this. Please, don't let this bottle of wine end.

5:30ish. So that's it. That's our four days in wine heaven. To summarize day four, Channing Daughters gets the largest smiley-face of all, Old Vine and Raphael get quite broad smiley-faces, Paumanok gets a smiley-face, and Jamesport gets a fairly wrinkled frowny-face. Four days wasn't quite enough to entirely do the North Fork; we definitely could've found another five or six wineries to go to (especially Peconic Bay, Shinn and Sherwood House). But since we already felt like winos, it was time to go. I leave you with a picture of a giant duck, the "hysterical monument," which we randomly drove past on our way out of Dodge - or Flanders, actually, which is where this fabulous roadside art is.

Twenty Wineries In Four Days: The Final Day, Part One

2008-10-18T12:06:00.013-05:00

Thursday on the North Fork of Long Island was SO FUN it's going to take two posts to do it justice. There are just too many themes here, from unusual wineries, to a theory of Merlot, to the best winery we went to.

10 a.m. We check out of our hotel sadly and wander around Greenport. This sleepy little town starts to wake up on Thursday as wine-heads head out for the weekend. All the coffeeshops are finally open, and I successfully order my necessary jolt of strong caffeine. The local bookstore is open too, and I buy a biography written by one of the founders of the first vineyard on the island, Hargrave.

11 a.m. We pull into Old Field, which is pretty much what it sounds like, a tasting room in a field. This place is so different from the rest of the wineries we visited this trip, just a shack in a field with a table set up on the porch outside. The server ducks in and out of the shack's window to get wine, which is served in plastic cups. There's a loud fowl strutting around. They sell eggs. (There's another place like this in the area, called Sherwood House, but we didn't make it there this trip.) What a treat!

Brief aside: As I've been writing this, I've been experiencing considerable angst about what to call the people who poured us our tastings. I even looked it up on Google, and there just doesn't seem to be an appropriate one. I've been using "server" and "pourer," but these don't really do it justice. Perhaps I should invent my own term? Any ideas?

11:45ish: We swore we were only going to go to three wineries before heading down the LIE, but after that taste of Raphael we had the previous night, we have to add it to our list. Boy am I glad we did - this was one of my favorite places. It's pretty much the polar opposite of Old Field in terms of presentation, with a giant, luxurious tasting room fitted out with a gorgeous circular bar in the middle meant to look like a wine barrel. Rather than go for a full tasting flight here, we opt to try just three Merlots from different years: 2001, 2002, and a 2005 "Fontana" that is 80% Merlot. I've already described their 2002 Merlot so I won't go into detail here, except to say that they're all just as good as the one we had at the Frisky Oyster.

Our server rocked - one of the bottles had been open for a couple of days, so she poured us a sample from that and from a brand-new bottle of the same year, which was a pretty interesting comparison in and of itself. And she warned us off one of their newer wines that she thought wasn't ready for tasting yet - honesty we appreciate. A lot of the winemakers out here bring out their latest vintage as soon as the previous one sells out, which, since they're generally making not very many cases, means some wines make it to the tasting rooms before they're necessarily ready.

One last thing: we asked why the 2005 wine we tasted was called "Fontana," since it was 80% Merlot. She hemmed and hawed a little bit and said it was because the winemakers wanted to name it after the fountain in front of the tasting room. We developed our own theory shortly later - more on that in a bit.

12:30ish: I finally find pumpkin fudge, at a little shop on the opposite side of the road from the Jamesport and Paumanok vineyards. The friendly proprietor has only one box, but beggars can't be choosers. He also gives us directions to a "historical - or hysterical - local landmark." More on that in the next post.

12:40ish: Here we are at Jamesport. We had high expectations for this place - almost everyone we asked told us to go here and try their whites - but sadly, our expectations were not met. The wines may very well have been decent, but our overall experience was so poor that they were overshadowed. First of all, the guy behind the counter was totally lame, not interested in human interaction at all. He told us almost nothing about their wines, even when we asked leading questions. (US: So, you had an oyster-fest here last weekend, how was that? HIM: Fine. US: Errrr...so, what wines go good with oysters? HIM: Oh, whites. (Thanks, who woulda guessed?) Also, this was the first place there were actually fruit flies IN our wine, which was just kind of gross. They were in three consecutive glasses, and I didn't see them fly in, which makes me wonder if they were in the wine bottles themselves. And when we asked him to pour one of the fruit-flied glasses out, rather than giving us another sample of the same wine, he moved on to the next one. Dude, go work in the back office and take your crap attitude back there with you.

1ish: Wow. After that experience at Jamesport, we're really hoping Paumanok can get the bad taste out of our mouths. We're thinking this may be our last tasting before we head back, and we want it to be good.

Paumanok doesn't disappoint. After our morose Jamesport server, the young lady here is a right treat. She's willing to chat, and she knows what she's talking about. We share a full tasting here, and we like almost everything we taste. They have a 2002 Merlot here too, and we try it, asking why the Merlots that people are serving are so much older then the rest of the wines available: do they take longer to mature, or what? No, says our pourer: it's that movie.

She is of course referring to "Sideways," which came out in 2004. Anyone who's seen it will not be able to forget the famous anti-Merlot speech made by the character played by Paul Giamatti: "If anyone orders Merlot I'm leaving. I am not drinking any f**king Merlot." Who knew it had such an effect on Merlot sales? Now the renaming of that 2005 Raphael wine as "La Fontana" makes a lot more sense.

I'm feeling a little guilty - I stopped drinking Merlot for a time around then, too. But the side effect is nice: because of the dip in sales, we get to taste appropriately aged Merlot on our trip, rather than wine which may be too young, which seems to be the case with some of the other reds out here. And it's good. Still, I don't buy any Merlot here, having been spoiled by the stuff at Raphael. I do pick up a bottle of Cab Franc though.

Part two, coming soon.

Twenty Wineries In Four Days: Day Three

2008-10-18T09:06:00.012-05:00

9 a.m.: We're both eating bagels this morning.

10 a.m.: All the cute little coffeeshops in Greenport are still closed, dernit!

10:30 a.m.: Pull into a coffeeshop called Eric's somewhere on Route 48. They don't have foamy fuzzy coffee but, promises the dude behind the counter, their basic coffee is darn fine. After getting a cup, I agree.

11 a.m. I came to the North Fork once before a couple of years ago. I have a vague recollection from that trip of a winery in a strip mall. Today, it turns out that wasn't just a wine-induced hallucination - it was Waters Crest. Their whole operation is in a strip mall - they're true "garagistes." They get their grapes from others' fields - a lot of the wineries out here do - and blend them all right there. In addition to good wine, they've got a neat story. Jim Waters was a home winemaker and volunteer firefighter before 9/11. After 9/11, he changed his life around and made winemaking his full-time career. The winery just released the 2006 Red Knight Red, named after a firefighters' motorcycle club that raises money for charity. The woman who poured our wine said it was quite an experience to see 100-some bike-riding firefighters show up at the wine's debut!

11:30ish: I am hunting fudge, but I cain't find any. All these cute little farm markets are pumpkin fudge-less.

11:45ish: We're at Roanoke now, which is somehow related to Wolffer, which we did not get to. Nice enough place, and the server brings out some cheese for us out of the goodness of her heart. She's also been on a fruit fly-killing rampage, which makes the tasting room so much more pleasant. Truthfully, this made more of an impression on me than the wine did, although I did grab a bottle of the Blend One, a tasty mix of Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot.

12:30ish: Maybe the reason I can't remember any of the wines at Roanoke is because of where we went next - Macari. I won't dwell too much on how good this place was, apart from to say that AMP and I were having a debate about what's better - winemaking as art, or winemaking as business - and that Macari, like Bedell, does both successfully. They've got really nice low-end wines - I bought a bottle of $10 Collina 48 Chardonnay - and even nicer higher-end things, like the just-released $27 2004 Cab Franc I bought or the $43 2004 Bergen Road Meritage that AMP sprung for. Our server was lovely, too, putting up with us tolerantly when we decided to do our own blind tasting with two of their merlots.

1:45ish: From here we went jauntily down the road to Lieb. I've got mixed feelings about this place. I have fond memories of it from last time I was out here. Back then, we had a great pourer who let us try some old vines versus new vines wine. This time, however, the guy behind the counter was a little bit of an obnoxious hothead. In between correcting our pronunciation - it's "Merit-udge" - telling us how much wine his manager likes to drink, and waxing on about Pink Floyd, he did serve us some pretty nice wine though, so we'll let it slide. I especially liked when he pulled out their newest release, a Merit-UDGE, and forced us not to drink it until we'd swirled it for several minutes to age it a bit. He also explained to us what Meritage is - a name for blended wine that winemakers can pay to use on their bottles. Lieb also, unusually for Long Island, have made a Syrah, in memory of their vineyard mascot dog of the same name. Ultimately, we passed on buying any bottles here, but we did buy a glass of one of their Pinot Blancs - it's one of their specialties - and sat outside and drank it and ate some cheese. Because we had no knife, we bit off chunks of the cheese with our teeth. Classy.

3ish: Still hunting fudge. Still no luck.

3ish: We stopped by Osprey's Dominion somewhere in here. It was just a quick in-and-out. We tasted a few wines, pleasant but not extraordinary, and I picked up a bottle of the Richmond Creek red table wine, which at $11 seemed well-priced.

3:45ish: I'd love to say we continued on our wine-chugging ways, but really, we needed a break. So we hightailed it back to Greenport, where, miraculously, the tea shop was open. In fact, they were closing their kitchen within 15 minutes, but they took pity on us and let us have some tea and scones.

7:30ish: Ever since I first came to the North Fork, I have wanted to go to the Frisky Oyster in Greenport, based solely on its name. In fact, I have in mind that it could be a franchise, with slight variations on the name: The Ornery Oyster (which would be mine)...the Boisterous Oyster...the possibilities are endless. All that aside, this was my favorite restaurant we ate at out here. Really interesting, good food: squash and apple soup, mussels in white wine sauce. They also had a Merlot wine flight on the menu that I ordered despite myself: a side-by-side tasting of three 2002 Merlots: Medolla, Raphael, and Osprey's Dominion, some of which are no longer available to buy anywhere. The Medolla (from one of those smaller vineyards that don't have tasting rooms) was unremarkable in comparison to the other two, both of which were fantastic. The Raphael especially was incredible: so dark and thick it was almost sludge-like, and it tasted that dark and thick, too.

Our waiter held extremely strong opinions, so when we asked him what to have for dessert, he was unequivocal: "The key lime pie, of course!" On the menu, they refer to it as "The best key lime pie." We were both a little skeptical - we've both been to Florida - but after tasting it, we had to admit that it was definitely the best key lime pie we've had in the tri-state area. Finally, if I may just add girlishly, the wallpaper in this restaurant is so cute!

So, smiley-face round-up: Waters Crest gets a moderate smiley-face and Roanoke the same. Macari gets a ginormous smiley-face, Lieb a flat robot face, Osprey's Dominion a moderate smiley-face, and the Frisky Oyster gets a fittingly frisky smiley-face.

KEXP's Top 903 Albums

2008-10-18T08:42:00.002-05:00

This is an ambitious project. I'm happy to see Radiohead with four albums in the top 20 (explaining why I love KEXP so much). A little puzzled by Arcade Fire at #3 and Neutral Milk Hotel at #6. And lest we fail to scroll down, New Order just snuck in at #903. Oh hey and wow, there's Love and Rockets at #899! Remember them? Although I would have picked their album with "So Alive" on it for this list, since that song TO THIS DAY still gets randomly stuck in my head. Your legs are strong and you're so so long and you don't come from this town...what does that even mean?

I just realized these guys have been touring this year, so lots of their stuff is available online. Start here.

I want a playlist...where's the playlist?

Twenty Wineries In Four Days: Day Two

2008-10-17T15:09:00.014-05:00

9 a.m. I have a bagel for breakfast. AMP does not. Shortly, the folly of her ways will become evident.

10 a.m. Dear Lord, Greenport is a ghost town on Tuesdays. All I want is a decent latte, and I'm not going to Starbucks, dammit!

10:30 a.m. We have to drive to do it, but I finally find me some froofy coffee, at a little place called the Blue Duck. As it turns out, we are there on its first day. Good thing it opened, otherwise all these wineries wouldn't have much liked seeing my cranky coffee-less face.

10:45 a.m. Hmmm. Pugliese says they are open at 10 a.m. So why aren't they open? Why? We drive over to Bedell instead, and sit in the parking lot waiting for them to open. How pathetic are we? There's a car parked in the lot with a custom license plate that I think says "Grapest," which would be awesome: "Grape! Graper! Grapest!" But no, it actually says "Grapes1". I take a picture to occupy the time.

11:03 a.m. Bedell is open!!! They have a beautiful tasting room with a genial fella behind the bar. The people who work at these places are interesting - some of them own the wineries and make more money than ex-Lehman Brothers' traders once did, some of them are hired hands who are clearly just collecting a paycheck and don't know the first thing about the wine or care for that matter, and some of them are folks like this guy - pretty young, interested in the industry, not sure exactly what they want to do (maybe a brewery, he says), but they know their stuff. Wineries really ought to pay more attention to who they put behind the bar - it's amazing how much of a difference this can make in whether or not you enjoy the wine.

Bedell - like Corey Creek - is now owned by Michael Lynne, who used to run New Line Cinema and was executive producer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. There's a certain cinematic flair in their presentation - the labels on the bottles, the design of the building, the view out on the vineyard. (Our pourer pointed out to us the difference between Bedell's lovely green vineyards and those next door, which belong to a winery that we won't name but that was mentioned already and rhymes with "Hen Bar".) No hobbits, although there is a timid dog. We spend full on an hour - maybe more - here, tasting the wine, wandering around their gorgeous building, and sitting on the porch in the sun watching some grapes being processed. It's pretty neat to be out here at harvest season; you get an idea for how much work actually goes into making good wine, watching the grapes being hand-picked and hand-sorted and just generally treated like small purple kings. I buy two bottles of wine: the First Crush red and the (wince) $48 2006 Bedell Gallery. I love me a big buttery Chardonnay, and this one makes my tongue water.

12:15ish - Back to Pugliese, which is now blessedly open. They have a vineyard cat, who shuns us. To be honest, it isn't really the wine that I like about this place - although it's more than decent - it's the bottles. They're all hand-painted, every single one of them. So pretty. I buy a bottle of '06 Cab Franc. Long Island originally planted Cab Franc as a blending grape but it turned out that the grape did really well in the climate, so now it seems like the island is obsessing over it. It's a rare vineyard where you won't find at least one bottle of the stuff, and lots of folks think that this grape is the future of Long Island. We've already had a good laugh over a headline in one of the rags we've picked up that starts off thusly: "Let's be franc."

12:45ish - Oh dear God, it's 12:45 and I think I'm drunk. Some of these wineries don't even have spittoons out on the counter. What's a girl to do? In our case, putter a hundred feet or so down the road to Lenz. Thank goodness these wineries are all scrunched together so you don't have to drive too far from one to the next.

Lenz is picturesque without being over the top. There are workers harvesting grapes in the fields, strategically placed, artfully toppled-over wine barrels, and a garage that you can peer into to get an idea of what's going on behind the scenes. In the tasting room, we get a real treat: a blind tasting of three different Merlots: the 2001 Old Vines Merlot, the 2001 "Estate Selection" Merlot, and a 2003 Merlot. I have been known to wax poetic about how much better wine from old vines is than from new ones, but I really got my comeuppance in this tasting. I guessed the 2003 Merlot was from the old vines, and entirely mixed up the two 2001 bottles. Our pourer gave us a tip: as wine ages, it gets darker...so you should, when tasting wines from several different years, be able to figure out the year based on which wine is darkest. But our utter confusion was yet more proof that you should just drink what you like, and who cares about the price or the vintage or the nose.

1:45ish: We put a moratorium on wine-drinking until 3 p.m. We - especially bagel-less AMP - need to eat. We drive over to Love Lane, which might be the shortest road on Long Island at maybe a quarter of a mile, and settle in at the Love Lane Kitchen, where neither one of us is tempted in the least by the wines by the glass on the menu. Just water please, and keep it coming. I'm pretty sure my chicken/avocado sandwich was tasty, but I can't really recall. After, we wander around Love Lane a little bit. There's a candy shop that has pumpkin fudge, but the store is a little creepy, so I pass. We do buy some cheese next door, where we are involuntarily sucked into a cheese tasting almost as serious as all the wine tasting we've been doing. (Blueberry cheese? Not for me.)

3ish: Honestly, if I didn't have my camera as evidence I wouldn't remember that Duckwalk is where we went next, but I have photos to prove it, so I guess that's what we did. The Duckwalk we went to is the Northern cousin of the main vineyard, which is in the Hamptons. It is owned by the same folks who own Pindar, and it's got the same commercial thing going on. Now, in snooty winemakerese, "commercial" seems to be a synonym for "bad," but I have to say that there's a little room in this world for commercial. I mean, why is slapping some cute ducks on your label a bad thing? And the wine? They make some perfectly fine stuff, and it is more reasonably priced than comparable mediocre wines at other vineyards out here. I bought a $12 bottle of red table wine that I am going to enjoy thoroughly with a pizza sometime soon.

One other comment on this place. I am not a big fan of dessert wines. I'm not a fan of sweet wines in general, so I don't bother with dessert wines - I'd rather just have dessert. Perhaps this will change as I get older and wiser, but for now my modus operandi is to taste the dessert wine, make a face, and let someone else finish it. But Duckwalk makes a truly lovely blueberry port - it was my favorite of all the dessert wines we tasted out here.

3:30ish: We are trying to go to The Tasting Room, a little store that pulls together a bunch of the smaller wineries that don't have their own tasting rooms. Sadly, it's closed Monday through Thursday, like rather too much of this silly island, so no tiny boutique vintage tastings for us. Instead, we tried pumpkin preserves (disgustingly sweet) at the shop next door and then headed for Castello di Borghese.

This is one of the oldest vineyards on Long Island, although it changed hands a few years ago. It's owned by Italian royalty now, and it gives off an impression of gravitas that can be a bit off-putting. But for us, that was lightened by the big truck advertising "Pinot Noir" out front, and by the guy behind the counter, whose idea the truck was. Turns out he's a Pinot Noir freak, and as such, he knows that fellow Pinot Noir fans will do u-turns in the middle of a highway to check out a bottle of the stuff. Pinot Noir is pretty rare on the island - I'm not even sure if we tasted another - so of course we had to try it. It was good but I wound up going for another bottle I liked more, the 2005 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.

3:45ish: We've moved just up the road to Vineyard 48. In retrospect, I'm not quite sure what I thought of this place. I guess my overriding impression was that it was a little odd. It is owned by several families who appear, in addition to their love of wine, to really, really, love chess. And it makes a mean peach wine, under the cheesy "NoFo" appellation. And that is all I will say about that.

4:29 p.m.: At Duckwalk, we got a free tasting coupon to go to Pindar, since they're owned by the same folks. So we try to go back. We think we've slid in just before their hard-ass 4:30 deadline. They appear to have a different clock. They've been wiping down the bar for the past five minutes. No tasting for us, but we're welcome to buy! Are you kidding me? I won't be drinking your wine any time soon, thanks entirely to your crappy attitude. As far as "commercial" goes, this place embodies all the bad aspects of it.

7:30ish: At several points during the day, we've asked people where we should go for dinner, and one place keeps coming up: Seafood Barge. The guy at Castello di Borghese even told us exactly what table to ask for. We drove past it on the way to our hotel on the first night, and thought, well, dive. Looks like a dive, has a dive name, so, dive. Au contraire: the only thing divey about Seafood Barge is its external appearance. Inside, it's very cute, done up in a nautical theme without being nauseating. And the food, oh, the food...curried crab spring rolls...pan-seared tuna with coconut rice in soy and ginger broth...yum.

So, smiley-face roundup: Bedell gets a giant smiley-face, Pugliese a moderate one, Lenz a moderately smilier than moderate one, Duckwalk a robot flat line, Castello di Borghese a moderate smiley-face, 48 a robot flat line, and Pindar a giant, giant frowny-face.

Twenty Wineries In Four Days: Day One

2008-10-17T13:14:00.009-05:00

My friend AMP and myself are setting off on a tour of North Fork, Long Island wineries. We leave Brooklyn Monday at 1:30ish, and are in the land of the wine trees, as I once drunkenly called them, by 3ish.

2ish: In the car, we listen to an NPR segment about how listening to music while tasting wine can influence how you like it. We hear about one winemaker who actually plays music to his grapes. Later, we listen to Kings of Leon and debate what kind of wine they would go well with. A big mean red? Maybe whiskey would be a better accompaniment.

250ish: We drive by a sign that announces the existence of pumpkin fudge. I am intrigued, but say nothing, figuring we'll find more of it later. We're on a mission here, and it isn't a mission to find fudge.

3ish: We're trying to find Schneider Vineyards, which is on the map in the Long Island wine book from 2001 that someone gave me, but that's the peril of old books, 'cos this place ain't here. Maybe they just don't have a tasting room? Ah well. Instead, we go to Palmer Vineyards. There are insane numbers of people here, which puzzles us, until we figure out that it's Columbus Day. We are also swarmed by fruit flies, which we will soon discover is typical for this time of year. Our unfriendly server discourages us from just having a taste. They're too busy, she says, so we should order a glass. Ummm...hello? The whole point of wineries is to sample a variety of what they have to offer. Their tastes are also excessively priced - something like $4 for an individual taste - but we nonetheless order a couple and sample them (they're not great, or maybe the experience has just soured us). We sit out in the back yard and listen to a live bluegrass band, which was pleasant enough, but overall, this place gets a black mark. (They do have a fun sign, on the way in, though - see the pix.) Moving on.

3:30ish: We pull into Diliberto and instantly feel happier. They have a cute tasting room, in the kitchen of the Dilibertos' weekend home in Jamesport (during the week he's a lawyer in Queens, or so the Internet tells me). The tasting here is also a little weird - rather than standing at the bar and sampling the wine, you order it and they come around to your table and pour it - but we're game. We settle in and while we're tasting the wine, the classical guitarist who is noodling around in the corner drops by and gets our life story out of us and a few of the folks at other tables. It's some one's birthday, so we all sing happy birthday to her. The guitarist starts another tune, and suddenly the owner of the place is standing next to him belting out opera. And he's good, too! I buy a bottle of the 2004 Diliberto Cantina red table wine, and later wish I'd bought more, but it's too late - this place is only open on weekends and holidays. Make sure you don't miss it.

4:15ish: A quick in and out at Laurel Lake. Nothing special, but at least they like you to taste all the wine.

4:32: We try and hit one last winery, Pindar. Their tasting room is only open until 4:30, and they're militant about it. There's not going to be any tasting at Pindar today, and they're not shy about telling us. But we can buy until 5! Thanks, but no thanks. Moving on.

5ish: We check into the hotel in Greenport where we are staying, crack open the Diliberto, and have a glass on the balcony. Perfection. We also start plotting out our course of action for the next day with the copy of Wine Press that we picked up. Essential reading, I'd say. Little profiles of all the vineyards and an up-to-date map (no Schneider's). I start making a smiley-face guide to the wineries we're visiting. Diliberto gets a big smile, Palmer a big frown, and Laurel Lake an expressionless robot face.

7:30ish: We wander over to Claudio's for dinner. Claudio's is pretty cool, a weird combination of dive bar and legitimate seafood restaurant. They have a sign saying they're the oldest family-owned restaurant in the U.S. A beautiful old wooden bar that they apparently got from a hotel on the Bowery. With a real marble railing, and some gorgeous glass details. During prohibition Claudio's was a hot spot for the bootleggers to bring in the liquor, or so they say, and there's still a trapdoor under the bar. The seafood here is good and fresh, and the pumpkin pie is nothing to sneer at. We both have a glass of local wine with dinner. I can't remember what the heck I had a mere four days later, so it must not have been anything worth mentioning. AMP had a glass of Bedell's 2007 First Crush. It's the first vintage of it, and you'd think 2007 grapes might be a little young, but this is pretty good. More on Bedell later, but for now, wine tasting is hard work, and it's off to bed for us.

Swamp Cabbage

2008-10-11T12:01:00.002-05:00

Swamp Cabbage, I just learned, is a recipe that involves hearts of palms (apparently best if freshly harvested your own dang self) and bacon - lots of it, with whatever other ingredients you want, stewed together.

While I have not (yet!) eaten swamp cabbage, I imagine it tastes like this band sounds.

Can't Believe TI Sampled O-Zone

2008-10-11T11:09:00.004-05:00

Sometimes, you should let sleeping Eurotrash dogs lie.

Maybe THIS Is The Sexiest Song Ever Written

2008-10-07T20:50:00.003-05:00

This song...it's plucked strings that hurt the fingers to listen to...it's sitting alone in a spooked-out empty room in an old house...it's a growl from the back of the throat that the voice can't recover from...it's one four-minute-long moan that you feel right down in the pit of your stomach.

Kings of Leon - Closer: Go here to get it.

'Exile In Guyville' Live

2008-10-07T06:53:00.002-05:00

I (like 99.9% of Liz Phair fans) mourn the death of the old Liz Phair, anything post-Whitechocolatespaceegg. But she lives again, sorta, by playing 'Exile in Guyville' live in a few cities 15 years post its release. (Fifteen YEARS??? Gulp.)

I dunno, she says she's "emotionally present" in it, but I'm not so sure. Streaming over at NPR, here.

Keep Bringing It The Rest Of Your Life

2008-10-04T14:39:00.003-05:00

I saw Michael Franti at All Points West, and while he might be too much of a cheeseball for me in general, this is one of my favorite songs this year. I'd like to figure out a way to blast it from the rooftops...

Don't ever doubt the power of just one man
The worldwide power of just one rhyme
Don't ever doubt the force of the bass line
Or a record gone round to burn the house down
You've got to let go of remote control

Janis Joplin On The Blues

2008-10-04T14:34:00.002-05:00

Studs Terkel: I gotta ask the cliched question about the blues being a black man's music.

Janis Joplin: Anybody can sing the blues. Well, I don't know whether they can sing them or not, but they can feel them. Everybody's got feelings inside of them. It's just the faculty of being able to transform it into music. I mean, everybody's got 'em. Everybody's got those things, they've just got to know what to do with it. You either repress it or you use it. Sort of. I feel better after singing, yeah.

-From 'And They All Sang'

Hang Me Up To Dry

2008-09-30T20:24:00.002-05:00

Have had this Cold War Kids song on repeat all day. Despite not caring much for this group generally, something about it is just grabbing me, randomly. I like the real simple riff, played emphatically, that carries the song all the way through. I like the weird "cat walking on a keyboard" piano that kicks in late in the song, which make me wonder if someone in the band was trying to engineer a Jonny Greenwood-esque destruction of it. I dig the lyrics, which you can make work for pretty much any situation you care to. I'm making 'em a soundtrack to a tough deadline. Careless in our summer clothes/splashing around in the muck and the mire.

In A Hurricane Without An Umbrella

2008-09-07T13:53:00.003-05:00

Yesterday morning was supposed to be wet and windy, as Hurricane Hanna rolled through, but instead it was just overcast and oppressively humid. So with a friend, I made the trek into Manhattan to pick up some wine and some fancy groceries, keeping a wary eye on the sky, mindful of what a little rain can do to the New York subway.

Come 3 p.m.-ish, Hanna got serious. Pulled out the cheap-ass umbrella I bought at the subway the other day and within instants - not even minutes - it was blown inside-out and busted. Picked up another umbrella at Kmart, which either teleported itself to a Caribbean island without me noticing or wandered away from me while I was distracted by some boots at the Union Square DSW (they were nice boots). Rather than go for umbrella #3, I gave up, took the subway home, and walked the half-mile from the subway stop in nothing short of a torrential downpour. The paper grocery bags, ever more sodden, finally gave out right at my front door.

Inside, we shut the windows, made dinner, drank two bottles of wine, and blasted some blues music. The hurricane did whatever it did outdoors, but we didn't care none.

This here is what we played. A super cool cover of Ri-Ri. And an appropriate message for those who would venture out in a hurricane without an umbrella.

Corona!

2008-08-24T21:47:00.008-05:00

I am at Brighton Beach with my friend AMP. It is a gorgeous August summer weekend. The perfect temperature. The ocean, a perfect shade of blue. The waves, not too wavey. The beach, not too packed.

Ahh, Brighton Beach. There is, behind me, a not-couple of gay man and not-gay woman drinking what would ultimately be five bottles of Sovetskoye Shampanskoye. Somewhere to the right, someone with a boom box playing, of all things, Russian accordion music - loudly. Several entrepreneurial types are plying the beach, selling water - "ice-cold water! Water that's almost TOO cold." - beer - "Ice-cold beer! Corona! Smirnoff Ice! Kholodnoye pivo!" - and solid advice - "All the pretty women, pay attention! Ladies - if your man beats you, leave him!" Seedy, yes, but somehow in a normal, non-threatening, "it's just Brooklyn" kinda way.

Eventually, surrounded by such temptation, we begin to want Coronas. We buy one apiece from one of our entrepreneurs. This one is lugging beer around the beach in black plastic bags, and having his two - daughters? - help him to make change and open the beers. We toast ourselves. We toast our befuddled champagne-drinking friends. We take pictures of our feet on the beach with the surprisingly cold Coronas and otherwise feel as if we have suddenly inhabited a beer commercial.

A watchful neighbor notices the beach police drawing near in their beach buggy. We hide our beers under clothes and in bags. The police take up residence 20 feet away from us, apparently hitting on a couple of women. The entire beach near us - all drunk, all - pretends to be asleep. My friend's phone rings, but she cannot answer it without taking the beer out of the bag. The police leave, undoubtedly knowing that they could bust every single one of us if they wanted to (the trash can nearby, filled to overflowing with empty Corona bottles, is a dead give-away).

A comic moment.

I know I just posted about Calexico, but I have to link to this. It is so perfect.

There on the beach.
I can see it in her eyes.
I only had a Corona.
Five cents deposit.

Miles Of Highway Poppies

2008-08-22T07:04:00.006-05:00

Liking the new Calexico stuff that people are posting. Just like always, the mariachi trumpets and gee-tars send my mind down an empty shimmering highway in a Cadillac, windows down, on my unhurried way to a dusty sun-baked Mexican bar - and I have a very specific bar in my mind's eye. Where there will be an outdoor area without any shade, with mellowed-out drunks and maybe someone noodling on an acoustic guitar. And cheap Christmas tree lights at night.

The stars in their slowness took us by surprise. Thank you, whoever posted this picture.

Here.

"Which One's The One?"

2008-08-11T20:35:00.007-05:00

My favorite stage banter of All Points West (liberties taken where memory fails):

Sia, to crowd: Well, hello there! How are you all? Can I get you anything? A cup of tea? No? Why, you're not very demanding, as crowds go...

Kings of Leon frontman Caleb Followill: Hey ya'll. I hear they're not letting you get very drunk out there. (Disapproving boo from crowd.) Well, they didn't say anything to me, so I'm gonna have a drink.

Radiohead's Thom Yorke: This one's dedicated to Kings of Leon. If we were better-looking, we'd be friends with them.

Girl Talk's Gregg Willis (with abnormally high energy): I just got back from Norway - I played with these guys Mayhem - those guys just go on stage and kill each other and they don't even care. Let's party!

Thom (to Jonny, trying to figure out the down beat to "Videotape"): Which one's the one? Which one's the one? Jonny! Wake up! Which one's the one?

Jack Johnson (peering at odd large balloon/bamboo animal being held aloft in front of him by the crowd, during an impromptu bridge in his first song): That thing is very strange. What is it? It's phallic, yet oddly feminine. I think I like it.

Thom (to crowd, apropos of nothing): Cool beans.

All Points West - The Money Shot

2008-08-11T20:32:00.002-05:00

Thom & Jonny on acoustic guitars.

Every picture I took before this one and most after were blurry messes. The Radiohead gods smiled upon me for one moment only.

Blackness

2008-07-23T20:56:00.003-05:00

Whoooo boy. It's been a long time since a book has made me cry, and that's all I'll really say about that, except to add that were I the one doing the soundtrack for the movie version (which one has difficulty imagining will be anything but a mess compared to the perfection of the book), I would secure the rights to these songs, in no particular order, except for the first one, which is, well, first:

Nada Surf - The Fox. (Here.) I just happened to hear this just as I was getting sucked into this book, and I found it cropping up in my head as I got further and further in. The more I listened to it, the more it seemed that the band must have written the song while reading this book. It would be good for any number of stretches of text that find our father and son struggling across their post-apocalyptic world. We're in a different war, with ourselves and some of you, so many things that don't hold true. With the fear that dims all light.

Radiohead - The Gloaming. Genie Lantern light a fire, this is now the witching hour. What if it were always the witching hour?

Arvo Part - well, anything, really, but how about Fratres...redemptive and cleansing, but still a little ominous. For the closing credits.

The Frames - Dream Awake. For a flashback or two. (Here.)

Massive Attack - Inertia Creeps. For when it does.

El-P. Flyentology. Or Run the Numbers. Or both. For when there are bad guys.

Liars - The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack. For aloneness.

Peter Gabriel - We Do What We're Told. For your random general creepy scene.

Pela - Rooftops. For, I think, the closing scene.

Menomena - Running. For the long stretches without food. (Here.)

It's a little creepy, how different all these songs are if you imagine them from another point of view. Now, off to stock up on canned goods.

Hmmm.

2008-07-22T22:02:00.002-05:00

I find this worrisome. Footloose as silly little movie about kids who just want to have fun in a small uptight town - yes. Footloose as tribute to deceased sibling? I dunno...

You can stream a wee bit from it here (scroll down) too.

My Perfect Driving Mix

2008-07-15T06:49:00.002-05:00

When driving a lime green rental car to Cape May and back, the following CDs hit the spot.

Bloc Party - Silent Alarm. Perfect for getting the hell out of the Avis parking lot and then immediately getting stuck in traffic on the BQE.

Massive Attack - Mezzanine. Perfect for zoning out across vast swathes of the Garden State Parkway.

Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III. Perfect for feeling vaguely bad about blasting out your windows as you roll into bucolic little Cape May - until you realize that you just passed two other cars also blasting it out their windows.

The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing. Perfect for frantically trying to get to one last winery before it closes at 5 p.m. (We made it!)

The Kills - Midnight Boom. Perfect for driving along the beach at night to. Also good for replaying the first song over and over again at any random point along the drive.

The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday. Perfect for the bittersweet sensation of having to leave Cape May. Wahhhh!

Joe Turner Been Here And Gone

2008-07-06T13:21:00.005-05:00

I'm reading this Studs Terkel book, "And They All Sang," which has to do with the musicians he interviewed on his Chicago radio show back in the day. And I'm considering that reading this book is a mistake, because I don't need any more stacks of CDs tottering precariously on the edge of my stereo, and I suspect that I'm about to acquire them.

Already, I am intrigued by a man called Big Bill Broonzy, and a song of his called "Joe Turner No. 2", which Terkel sets the stage for thusly:

This is the one. If ever there was a hush in the control room, the edge-of-the-chair anticipation, it is now. Bill is retuning his guitar. This one calls for extra-special tuning. "You guys can go for a drink while I'm doin' this." Now he's ready. We hear a guitar, but it's like no guitar we ever heard before. It's a human voice, not one but a whole ramshackle town...And now that chord - whang - only it isn't that - it's crying, everybody crying - a cry of salvation.

By chance, one happens to be able to hear this song in its entirety online at the moment, thanks to this fabulous replay of this fabulous Americana show that aired July 3. It's the third song in.

PS. Fast forward through the drugged-out DJ's vacant ramblings.

Adam Yauch Is My BFF

2008-07-05T08:48:00.003-05:00

According to a recent "My New York" column in the NY Post, Adam Yauch is my doppelganger.

Consider:

*"I actually find Brooklyn much more interesting than Manhattan at this point," he tells the paper. Well, duh. He also loves Prospect Park.

*He likes the fish cake and green papaya salad at Sri Pra Phai. I'm more a fan of the fried salad myself, but I would totally order the papaya salad for kicks.

*He says Regal Battery Park Stadium is his favorite big cineplex in NY for the same reasons I like it: "There will be like 25 people in a stadium that's made to hold 300 people." He also says he and fellow Beastie Boy Mike Diamond battle over whose personal theater is. Sorry guys: it's MY personal theater.

I'm totally going to also check out the Manhattan Special Coffee Soda he talks about: "It's this crazy, weird, nasty soda that they used to have commercials for when I was a kid."

I recently saw Yauch's movie "Gunnin' For That Number One Spot" with him in attendance to answer audience questions. Afterwards, as my friends and I walked to the subway, we were right behind him. He's like the anti-P. Diddy: just this normal guy that you wouldn't know was a rap superstar. Nobody recognized him. Given all the above, I wonder how many times I've walked by him and not even known it.

Just Somethin' About Sittin' On A Stoop

2008-07-04T10:14:00.003-05:00

Back in the days when I had a stoop, I used to do a lot of sittin' on it. There just aren't many better ways to spend a lazy summer evening. My Puerto Rican Social Club neighbors undoubtedly thought it was weird that I sat on it with a glass of wine rather than a 40, but damn, what's the point of a stoop if you can't do what you want while you're sittin'?

So when I first heard this frolicking Little Jackie song "The Stoop" no more than five minutes ago, it immediately took up residence on my soul's stoop. It encapsulates the whole experience. So frickin' good. I seriously need me some stoop sittin' time now, so I'm gonna go hunting for somebody else's to sit on. (Go here to get it.)

Sittin on the stoop in Bed Stuy
Always say hi when the brothers walk by
Just for the etiquette sittin on the top step
With a bag of chips sit back relax enjoy the bricks
We got a heavenly philosophy
I don't mess with you you don't mess with me
It is what it is it ain't all hard
Up in the hood sittin on the front stoop
It's all good.

No Longer Eating My Heart Out

2008-06-29T12:35:00.003-05:00

I confess to some jealousy of those bloggers who are eternally moaning about all the free review copies of music they get that they don't have time to listen to...but NO LONGER! I have just received my first review copy of a CD.

After I wrote briefly about Robin Danar's Altered States CD here, the nice folks over at Elemental Consulting/Shanachie were nice enough to contact me and I ask me if I'd like a copy. That was an easy enough question to answer. So now I have one!

This is mostly an album of covers, but I think my favorite is an original track by Jessca Hoop, which you can hear over here...

What's With...

2008-06-29T09:21:00.004-05:00

Blogs that when you land on them, start playing music at you without you doing anything? Grumble...

Although, I must confess that the last time this happened, I liked what I was hearing well enough to fumble around the Web page until I figured out what it was. And it has tilted me from being in the "I dunno about Santogold" camp into the "Alright, I'm digging Santogold" camp. Twas this, in less invasive format:

You'll Find A Way

Reasons #242 and #243 Why Lil Wayne Rules

2008-06-23T06:25:00.002-05:00

#242.

The lyrics!

Man I got summer hatin on me cuz I'm hotter than the sun
I got spring hatin on me cuz I ain't never sprung
Win-ter hating on me cuz I'm colder than yall
And I would never I would never I would never fall
I'm being hated by the seasons
So f--- yall for hatin with no reason

#243.

Wherein Lil Wayne thanks all the fans for buying his history book and gives a shout out to the book drive. Eh?

Not Duke Ellington's A Train

2008-06-15T07:15:00.004-05:00

Another stolen photo...

Gosh, I didn't know toting around a boom box was back in style. It is in the outer outer boroughs, at least, where not one, but two boom boxes were going on the shuttle back to the A Train after my trip to Rockaway Beach. Along with a guy drinking a Corona on the train, two barefoot kids (eek!) and several people eating chicken and rice out of styrofoam containers.

Sadly, neither one of our boom box entertainers had put much thought into their playlists: one was playing an abominable, abysmal, asphyxiating slow jam, and the other, more boppable but somewhat irksome gangsta rap.

If I were lugging a boom box on the A train and drinking a Corona at this very moment (and I kind of wish I were!), this would be what I would be playing.

Beastie Boys - An Open Letter to NYC (duh)
Bryan Adams - Summer of '69
Notorious B.I.G. - Anything. Everything
The Ting Tings - Great DJ
Def Leppard - Pour Some Sugar On Me
Lil Wayne - Lollipop
Smashing Pumpkins - 1979
Flo-Rida - Low
Ludacris - The Potion
The Replacements - Kiss Me On The Bus. Or maybe Bastards of Young
Foghat - Slow Ride
Santogold - L.E.S. Artistes
Billy Idol - White Wedding
M83 - Highway of Endless Dreams
Jurassic 5 - Quality Control
Dead Prez- Hip-Hop
The Raconteurs - Salute Your Solution
Nas - Made You Look
M.I.A. - Galang
Soul Coughing - True Dreams of Wichita
And of course, The Ramones - Rockaway Beach

Hot In The City Tonight

2008-06-09T22:53:00.002-05:00

Two small NY vignettes.

1. I am running in Prospect Park on Sunday. It is 7:45ish p.m. but it is still blazing hot. It is Puerto Rican Day, and the park is CROWD-ed and festive. I look to my left, see a guy lying face down in the grass in a very chalk outline-esque way. All around him, people partying, wandering, sitting, and this dude, face planted in the dirt. I ponder what to do. A half mile or so ahead there's an African drumming group that's always there on Sundays, and there's usually cops there to quell the drummers, should they, I dunno, start throwing drumsticks viciously. So I run along and find me a slightly pudgy cop, stop, and say, "there's a guy lying face down in the grass back there." He looks at me and goes: "drunk." I stare at him. "Maybe," I say. "Or, he could be dead..." Says he: "How far back is he?" I explain. He looks sad, and hot, and makes general noises about how he's going to check it out. I sure hope he did...

2. I am exiting the PATH train at the WTC station. There are two people at the turnstile next to mine, an unruly-looking guy coming in and a fierce-looking woman going out, who have reached an impasse. He has put his money in. She is halfway through the turnstile. Finally, she backs down and out, but he has already lost his money. "I lost my money!" he says, and as she breezes through the turnstile next to him, he slaps her in the back of the head. She hauls off and punches him. A flurry of half-hearted slapping ensues, as I stand frozen in the turnstile next to them, with my jaw on the floor. Two PATH employees are nearby, and they're like, "WTF?" And the guy is like, "I lost my money!" And they're like, "Dude, you just hit a woman because you lost your money???"

In the summer, in the city.

Like Being In Hell With A Cool Soundtrack

2008-06-08T20:55:00.003-05:00

(I had to link to this picture. Click here for the original post by its original author.)

Saturday I went to a music festival down near Atlantic City at a place called Appel Farm. It would have been awesome had it not been 250 million degrees in the shade. Oh wait, there was no shade. The last time I completely sweat through every piece of clothing I was wearing was at the Mermaid Parade a couple of years ago, and I had totally forgotten what a disgusting feeling it was.

Anyhow, I think Enter the Haggis was pretty good, but I was so hot I couldn't pay attention. By the time Suzanne Vega came on, I had resigned myself, and managed to enjoy her stage banter quite a bit ("Do I look like Alice Cooper up here? Maybe not the best idea to outline my eyes in black ink before coming out here...and now, we're going to play a song in a major key!")

She ended her set with "Tom's Diner". Now, when I was growing up I absolutely hated that song, mostly because local radio overplayed the crap out of it. But compared to what radio plays today - well, I'll take it. And the live version she did was surprisingly rock 'n' roll...lots of bass, lots of drums.

Then there was They Might Be Giants, who were enjoyable simply because they were clearly having a good time, and because, as they say, they might be the only band on the planet that employs a full-time confetti artist. And maybe because, by that point, the sun had retreated at least five feet away from my head.

My friend advanced a theory that with They Might Be Giants, you can totally date someone by what songs they're a fan of. In my case, it's "Istanbul Not Constantinople" and "Particle Man", but there were some people in the audience grooving to "Fingertips," which I found to be an incomprehensible mess. So what TMBG era do you hail from?

Yay!

2008-06-05T21:13:00.002-05:00

New Calexico album

Parental Apocalypse

2008-06-05T20:50:00.003-05:00

Spied outside my building in Brooklyn the other night: a small child, perhaps six or seven years old, skipping down the sidewalk singing about lollipops. Bucolic childhood scene? Maybe, if it weren't Lil Wayne's song about lollipops. Disturbing, seeing a child utterly absorbed in singing "She lick me like a l-l-l-l-lollipop."

Stoked/Not Stoked

2008-06-03T06:18:00.002-05:00

I am

Stoked: That Radiohead has 167,147 fans on Facebook (which I just joined!), currently 80,848 more fans than Britney Spears. All is as it should be.

Not stoked: That Coldplay has more fans than Radiohead. Which reminds me of a distasteful interaction I once had:

Me: (playing Radiohead CD)
Unnamed blasphemous one: They sound like Coldplay!
Me: (ominous silence)... ... ... Uh, nooooo, Coldplay sounds like Radiohead.

As a side note, Linkin Park, Justin Timberlake, and Chris Brown all have more fans than Radiohead, as does Victoria's Secret Pink. (?) And someone called 'The Stig'. (But not, thankfully, Tool.) Curious, this Facebook...

Stoked: To be going to All Points West.

Not stoked: In sign number 5,644 of the pending CD apocalypse, I was stalking the new Ting Tings album this weekend (i.e. too lazy to look up release date so just checking to see if it's out whenever I'm at a record store) and it was available, but only as LP or MP3 download. If want CD, must wait until June 3. Which happens to be today, but see, I wanted it Sunday, see.

Stoked: Waterfalls in New York! Really!

Yahhhhh!

2008-06-02T22:08:00.003-05:00

Okayyyyy, I might be a teeny bit obsessed with Soulja Boy Tellem. Or whatever their name is. First I frightened my neighbors by learning, slowly and clankily as a 30+-year-old woman trying to be cool does, how to do the Superman dance. Now, I can't stop laughing about this "Yahhh Trick Yahhh" song. In its lyrical genius, it outdoes "Supersoak that ho" (is that realllllly what they're saying!??!) by, like, a factor of one million. I think I will try the move at about 3:32 of the way in the next time someone messes with me on the subway.

The Million Dollar Quartet

2008-06-01T10:44:00.004-05:00

Another "how did I live this long and not know about this?" moment.

If you ever go to Memphis (and you should), your number one stop, even ahead of Graceland, must be Sun Studio. This two-room, 45-minute tour is one of the best I've ever been on. I got to hear great stories (Elvis lied about his mother's birthday to get that legendary first Sun recording), hear great music (sure, you've heard 'Hound Dog,' but have you heard 'Bear Cat'?), and stand in the studio itself, ground zero for rock and roll.

The picture here hangs in Sun Studio (several times). It's a shot of Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash. They randomly got together (Cash left) for a jam session. Sam Phillips recorded the whole thing, without anybody else knowing. The session sat, dusty and unheard, for some time; according to our tour guide, it was because Elvis was by that time under contract to RCA and no one else could record him. But after his death, the session saw the light of day. And it's great: as historical record, as music, as way of making legends real. It's got gospel. It's got blues. It's got Christmas music. It's got Elvis impersonating the first Elvis impersonator.

Click here for Sun Studio's own opinion of the top ten lyrics ever recorded there.

And, one of the best tracks on the CD:

And, speaking of Memphis, the Hold Steady is streaming a track from their new CD on their MySpace page where they depart their traditional northern U.S. climes and move south. Is that a joke, that fried reference?

Forever's Not So Long

2008-05-19T21:30:00.003-05:00

I have two favorite Devotchka songs so far - maybe three now - and they played one - maybe two - Saturday night at the Fillmore in Philly. It was a good show...I don't really feel like my life has been enriched by the odd encore of scantily clad gymnast, but oh the string section, and the intricate piano work, and the sheer temerity of the sousaphone. And the mariachi trumpets. And his voice.

And these lyrics.

How It Ends

My other old original favorite is "Too Tired." And my new maybe but lemme think about it a little while favorite is "Transliterator."

The Opposite of Dank

2008-05-19T21:14:00.003-05:00

Quite a tasty little wine, this odd combination of shiraz and viognier. It's a red wine that tastes fizzy without actually being fizzy...that makes your stomach sparkle...a mouthful of it is the opposite of dank. Which we can all use some of in New York this unsparkling, unfizzy, undelightful spring.

Check it out at this store.

The Bones Of You

2008-05-09T09:27:00.003-05:00

Every so often, I hear a single song and I know that I have to be able to hear it again whenever I want for the rest of my life, and probably whatever other songs it has been packaged with on a CD as well, and that I must possess this capability immediately.

This happens less and less often as I grow more cautious about all the previous CDs bought on a similar impulse that turn out to be, well, junk. But it remains a happy impulse when I can't rationalize myself out of it, and so it was yesterday morning.

Now that we've got a decent radio station in NY at 91.5FM, my alarm clock tunes in at 7 a.m., just in time for the NPR round-up, after which I usually drag myself out of bed. But yesterday this song comes on after the news and glues me to my mattress until it decides that it has had enough of me, and ends. Partly because of the determined guitar strum that kicks in at beat one and carries all the way through, building at around 2:20 to a great contemplative noise before pausing and then striding forward again. Partly because of the lyrics, which are simply true, and were especially true for me yesterday morning, and start off something like:

So I'm there
Charging around with a juggernaut brow
Over draft speeches and deadlines to make
Cramming commitments like cats in a sack
Telephone burn and a purposeful gait
When out of a doorway the tentacles stretch of a song that I know
And the world moves in slo-mo
Straight to my head like the first cigarette of the day

And partly because of the ending - is that "Summertime" being played so faintly in the background? Curious...

"The Bones of You," this song is called (listen here), by Elbow, who I had previously lumped into the "another indie band that I don't have time for" category. No longer.

Addendum

2008-05-07T22:10:00.002-05:00

As a postscript to my marching band post, I have just accidentally watched a video called "Talkin' Out Da Side Of Ya Neck" by a group called Dem Franchize Boyz, the Charming Olde Shoppes of the rap world. The video features a marching band and a repetitive brass line that could be played by a lone horn player who regrouped after proving unable to master, say, the C major scale in junior high band.

The song appears, fortunately, not to be about tracheotomies (tracheotomiez?), but instead to be about lying jerks.

Beh, I can't even bear to link to it.

Dirt Off Your Shoulder

2008-05-04T10:51:00.002-05:00

I usually don't listen to music when I run. For a lot of reasons: my ears I guess are weirdly shaped because the buds fall out; and they sweat and that's just kind of nasty; but mostly because the beat of the music interferes with my running. I find myself trying to keep time with the music, and I just can't get any kind of groove.

But a couple nights ago, I'm at my local NYSC, curse its raggedy soul, at the tail end of a run on the treadmill, and this Jay-Z song comes on the usually garbage in-house video network, and damned if it didn't exactly match my tempo, and damned if I didn't run for an extra five minutes because it was so perfect.

Sigh.

2008-05-03T13:54:00.003-05:00

Michael Beasley has disintegrated my desktop computer and probably all my music files therein (it's a long story). Now I must struggle with the unhappy decision of buying a new hard drive and taking the old one to a specialist to try and salvage my stuff, or just reloading the OS and starting over with a clean slate. The latter option is tempting considering my low tolerance for bureaucratic BS, but oh, the music I will lose...

A happier tale lies in the Hungry March band, New York City's off-kilter group of musicians of varying talent who play just because they want to. I ran across them - I think it was them - at the entrance to Prospect Park, pumping out a goofy version of something I recognized vaguely. "One, two, three, four!" they all shouted several times, over a rhythm that went "bam-a-lam-a-ding-dong."

I knew I knew that, so off I went to my computer. Typing in "bam-a-lam-a-ding-dong" turned up a variety of interesting things, including the news that this was a song by someone named Barry Mann, but I knew that wasn't what I knew, so I found myself on Wikipedia, where mass intelligence quickly led me to what I remembered that I knew I knew.

It's Le Tigre. It's Deceptacon. And it rocks.

My House Is Turning Into A Library

2008-04-26T12:17:00.002-05:00

I am inspired by Mr. Dan Kelly's list of books he has actually managed to kill off to post my own list of neglected books which are gathering dust on bookshelves or elsewhere and which I WILL read before I buy more books, dammit. Yeah sure (in my predicted order of actually getting read):

Sacred Games, Vikram Chandra

Wall Street Noir, featuring a short story by Henry Blodget??? Curious.

This Is Your Brain On Music, Daniel J. Levitin

Londonstani, Gautam Malkani

Abraham, Bruce Feiler

Maxium City, Suketu Mehta

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

Portraits and Observations, The Essays Of Truman Capote

Survivor, by Chuck Palahniuk: I have a funny story to tell about Chuck Palahniuk sometime.

The Facts Behind The Helsinki Roccamatios, Yann Martel

Amnesia Moon, Jonathan Lethem

The Granta Book of Reportage

Carter Beats The Devil, Glen David Gold

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith

These last three I have picked up and put back down. That typically bodes ill for me finishing them, but I actually do want to read these:

Collapse, Jared Diamond

The Journalist And The Murderer, Janet Malcolm

And They All Sang, Studs Terkel

And there are about another 20 that I ought to just put out on the curb because I am clearly never going to read them. I'm so uninterested in them that I'm not even going to list them here.

Marching Band Geeks, Rise Up

2008-04-26T10:30:00.003-05:00

For eons, I've been trying to build a playlist of marching band-inspired music - let's qualify that: an enjoyable playlist of marching band-inspired music - and was motivated by Vampire Weekend's recent incorporation of a high school drumline in their lineup to finally get this list out of my head and onto blog.

We aren't talking anywhere near CD length yet, and without Missy Elliott we wouldn't even be talking EP, but here ya go:

My favorite marching band-influenced performance evuh is Kanye West's Jesus Walks, which he did live with the Ohio Central State marching band for "Dave Chappelle's Block Party". Irritatingly, the only way to see or hear this performance is to buy the DVD (which I did, but still). It didn't make the CD, and there's no trace of it online. Grumble. Hating on whatever copyright laws are keeping me from enjoying this someplace other than my TV.

We'll just have to content ourselves with these other offerings. Can something be simultaneously whack and dope?

*JC Chasez: Blowing Me Up With Her Love. This song was made for marching band. Literally. It appears on the soundtrack to the movie "Drumline," a fine example of the movie genre of good teenager A faces off against bad teenager B, goes through trials and tribulations, and ultimately, unsurprisingly and tritely, triumphs.

*Gwen Stefani: Hollaback Girl. Gwen kind of lost me with the whole Harajuku girl thing, but I still dig this song. Wind It Up has a similar vibe.

*Missy Elliott: Bad Man. Missy loves her some marching bands in general. But she especially loves them on "Bad Man," which is all about the tuba. As anyone who's ever been in band knows, that's, well, whack.

A few other also-rans: Eve's Tambourine, which makes solid use of drum major whistle, but is devoid of energy, and Outkast's Morris Brown, which is a full-on marching band extravaganza and even talks about marching bands, but somehow completely lacks excitement. And Destiny's Child with Lose My Breath. Yawn.

I don't know why this list is all hip-hop. Is marching band inherently anti-rock? What am I missing?

Danzing!

2008-04-23T07:20:00.004-05:00

A friend I hadn't seen for nine years was, awesomely, in town last weekend. Needless to say, we had some catching up to do. One of the things we did was reminisce about Russian music - especially bad Russian music.

I reminded him of Ivanushki International (Little International Ivans), the Russian equivalent of the Backstreet Boys. I particularly love this song, which translates as "I'll be yelling about this all night," for its lovely combination of classical riff and disco beat and its tuneless screaming about something that ought to be romantic ("I seriously love you! I really hope you love me too! And I'll be yelling about it all night!" And then they put it in the third person for a chorus of screaming: "He seriously loves you! He hopes you love him too! Etc.")

He, in turn, introduced me to this wonderful horribleness, which isn't strictly Russian (it's Ukrainian) but certainly qualifies in terms of cheesy, huh?-inducing strangeness. Or wait, maybe that's just a characteristic of European popualar music...

This Song Sounds Like This Picture Looks

2008-04-06T09:49:00.002-05:00

Vampire Weekend meets Ra Ra Riot?

Say no more.

I'm only writing this post because I stumbled across "Osaka Loop Line" before the vast majority of the tune-oblogosphere, which never happens. I would also like to take this opportunity to brag that I saw Vampire Weekend for free - FREE - at some weird outdoor amphitheatre down on the East River by the F train East Broadway stop last summer. In the audience were lots of overdressed Williamsburg kids, some folks from Virginia on whose floor the band had crashed, and a guy with a video recorder who was maybe a dad? Vampire Weekend still was a little frayed around the edges, which made them even better. It was a beautiful day to take off your shoes and listen to a little ska.

I'll be real curious to see what happens to this band in the over-hyped new media world that we live in. I'm wondering if it's even possible to have a "next big thing" anymore, given the backlash to the backlash to the backlash environment that now dominates.

Now It's Said And Done

2008-04-05T17:04:00.005-05:00

I've been vaguely conscious of the Shout Out Louds as that band with the one song that you can sing along with loudly and that is easily confused with a rather similar LL Cool J song..."Let's call this the comeback...mumble mumble"...but otherwise I had pretty much ignored them. But when my Magnet indie rock magazine declared their follow-up album one of the top 20 of last year I revisited them.

This song is pretty good objectively. It also happens, for me, to be that rare song that burrows its way into your consciousness just because it happens to exactly match your mood the very first time you listen to it.

Normandie

Joey Dorsey Is A Monster

2008-03-31T07:16:00.002-05:00

Watching that Memphis-Texas game last night was painful no matter which team you were rooting for. As somebody down the bar from me put it about Texas' last five minutes desperation hack-a-Tiger strategy, "It's like Hillary Clinton's campaign!"

Let's go Tigers.

Big Mama Thornton - Hound Dog

A Small Angry Book About Work

2008-03-26T22:16:00.011-05:00

This book is so good, I can't describe it. Because when writing is really good, trying to convey it in my own lame words just diminishes it. So, this book is good. The chapter "The Thing to Do and the Place to Be" has blown a hole in my soul. Period.

Other things that are this good (in their own way):

Kublakai. Old-school throwback hip-hop.

Turn your head while it happens in your back yard
Put your tough face on go on act hard
Tell a story before you know what the facts are
But everybody knows the truth.

The Ting Tings. As some other blog wrote, who doesn't love a song with the chorus "The drums/The drums/The drums/The drums"?

This song. Turn the volume up. Properly position your speakers. The Mae Shi.

It's hard to say, but the new Raconteurs album might be. You can find it if you look for it. Lots of reverb-y goodness. And some trumpets? Let's see if this uber-cool (love the piano player's tat) video persists on Youtube. If it doesn't, you can see it at their Web site.

Oh, and this. As the email forward I got proclaimed: EVERYONE SHOULD SEE THIS.

Wanna Be Somebody

2008-03-22T12:38:00.004-05:00

With all the basketball I've been watching the past couple of weeks, the Nike commercial that's been in ~~heavy~~ CNBC-like rotation on ESPN and CBS was bound to sink into my consciousness eventually. "What is that?" I finally thought to myself this morning as the song stirred me off my couch and towards my running shoes (which aren't Nike).

With the wonders of the Internet, it took me about two minutes to figure it out, and another two minutes to download the song. It's called "List of Demands," by a guy by the name of Saul Williams. Apparently first a poet and second a rapper, and has been around for years. This returns me to my eternal question: how can good music go so unnoticed for so long?

Nice work, Nike. Make a better shoe and I'll run in it.

Go see him live April 9 at Irving Plaza. Meanwhile, go here to get the song.

List of Demands

Some Strange Area Codes In Which To Have Hoes

2008-03-17T22:32:00.003-05:00

Luda!

I have long been a fan of Luda's genius song, Area Codes, which, like Kanye's Gold Digger or Chingy's Dem Jeans, is just too funny to be offensive. So I can't stop giggling over the above map and link, which take the whole concept one step further. I'm particularly enjoying the Midway and Wake Islands speculation.

And, as my pal AMP points out, if you work in the media industry as we do, you can delude coworkers from afar into thinking you are staring at some weird delegate map, unless, of course, they overhear you snickering to yourself.

Music, Real Music, Is Happiness

2008-03-15T12:05:00.003-05:00

I never listen to New York radio, with the exception of WFMU, which technically is Jersey City radio. In the morning, I put on KCRW or KEXP archives streaming online. On the subway, my iPod. If I rent a car, CDs. I only rarely have the desire to listen to a--hole men on morning talk radio on K-Rock or latest vapid hit #45 on infinite repeat on Z100 or self-important yammerings on Hot 97 or anything on any Clear Channel station.

So this is the best news ever. Aptly titled Radio Liberation can't liberate me from death by NY radio soon enough.

Music Is Happiness - The Octopus Project

Yes, Another Radiohead Post

2008-03-15T11:41:00.002-05:00

I've been digging through my infinite Radiohead mp3 collection at the bequest of someone I think will become a friend, despite the fact that in one of our first meetings he blasphemed that he wasn't really into Radiohead. But he claimed redemption by declaring himself ready to be reconvinced, and asking what CD he should start with. Whereupon I of course offered a mix.

I'm still fumbling through my 24 versions of The Gloaming to find the perfect one, but I have already stumbled across a few random gems I had totally forgotten. Herewith:

UMass percussion ensemble covers Paranoid Android

Thom curses the sound system

Genius Jay Z mashup

Linkus

2008-03-15T11:24:00.000-05:00

Because I [heart] this post.

clicky

Intrigued By This

2008-03-10T06:59:00.002-05:00

I'm looking forward to this, which comes out next week and promises to be an album of really unique-sounding covers. It's hard to tell for sure, since the only stuff available online so far is the Pete Yorn/Kinky cover of "Use Me" - not as good as Grace Jones' campy version, but what is? - and a few snippets of the other songs. Still, promising.

Obama.

2008-03-09T11:00:00.000-05:00

My bud Dan Kelly posted this picture, which he stole from somewhere else. I'm stealing it from him, because it rules.

The Thrill Of The Hunt

2008-03-09T10:00:00.000-05:00

I heard this man, Yoav, on, I don't know, Morning Becomes Eclectic? Downloaded some of his stuff. Liked. Days passed, and so did the conscious memory of him. Fast forward. Have dropped by Kims after gorging self at cute little tea shop in East Village. One of Yoav's songs is bubbling in my head, but I can't remember his name. Does it start with a Y? Browse the indie Ys. Nothing there. Randomly browse all the indie stuff. No luck. Try the "listen here" stations, but can't search by the name of the song, which is the only thing I can remember. Give up. Hit the used bin. Success! It's a good feeling, finding first runs in the reruns.

Yeah The End

Hip-Hop Dance Craze!

2008-03-09T09:16:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago, I read an article in that bastion of trendiness, the Wall Street Journal, about how hip-hop artists are thinking up dances as part of the process of song creation, in yet another attempt to stave off diving music sales. (Having read that article and then seen "Step Up 2" - which ruled - I'm also wondering about the simultaneous success of that movie and its pseudo-theme, Flo-Rida's Low. Marketing genius? Random luck?)

Of course, after having read that article, I had to check out these dances, which led to an hour of nonsense in my apartment that any neighbors peeking through my back windows may have enjoyed, or may have been terrified by. My judgment?

Dude N Nem - Watch My Feet: Too freaking hard.

Chicken Noodle Soup: Too ridiculous.

Soulja Boy - Crank That: Just right. Plus, easy instructional video!

Finally, what the hell is this???

SXSW = Delta Blues?

2008-03-08T15:52:00.003-05:00

I'm always glad when SXSW rolls around because - even if I've never been - the wonder of the Internet means that a bunch of new bands pop up onto my radar. But at the same time, it's really all a bit much. Who has time to sort through all that music - most of it pretty much the same old stuff - to find the really fresh new bits? Not me. What typically happens is that six months later, I'll stumble across some band that I'll think is awesome and then realize I have at least a couple of songs on my computer from my SXSW browsings that I never bothered to listen to.

Enter NPR, which has done a little bit of sorting to help me out. Of the stuff they have available to listen to, I'm jamming the most to Honeycut and Magic Arm (like that eastern vibe).

My least favorite of the cuts on here is the Ironweed Project. Whoever Ironweed Project is, they claim to have followed the same path as Robert Johnson to the blues, but are proud of the fact that unlike Johnson, they cleverly avoided having to sell their souls. Don't they understand that that's the whole point???