The Splatter Zone

Last weekend I saw Evil Dead The Musical, which was light-hearted good fun, although it would have been gooder and funner had I had a few more drinks ahead of time. My two favorite numbers were "What The F**k Was That" and "All The Men In My Life Keep Turning Into Candarian Demons," which, remarkably, was sung without any major tongue-tripping.

I would share them with you, but the BitTorrent is taking 15 hours to download. So instead, here are some other EVIL SONGS OF DOOM! [It's funny how many songs are out there with the search strings "evil" or "death" or "blood" or "spider" in them, but how few actually sound the least bit scary or demonic. I've tried to aim for the latter.]

Red Devil Dawn - Crooked Fingers

To Hell With Good Intentions - McClusky

Wicked Child - Radiohead live

This Train Keeps Running

My trip back from Boston yesterday was sort of a comedy version of what's wrong with Amtrak. First, a train in front of us hit a truck on the tracks (no injuries). We got moving again fairly quickly, but shortly ground to a halt again. The reason? The Acela train directly in front of us had hit a shopping cart, and it had gotten stuck under the train.

Princeton Junction - The Natural History

Subterranean Homesick Blues

I'm oddly obsessed by this new Walkmen cover album, Pussy Cats, despite the fact (here I display my ignorance of music older than 1990 or so) that I had no idea before I went and looked it up that this is an almost note by note replication of another album by Harry Nilsson and John Lennon, or even that such an album existed. And, if one believes what one reads on the Internet, the original album may have been recorded in the midst of the single largest drug/booze bender that has ever occurred in the history of time.

Judging by the outfits that the Walkmen are wearing in the promo pictures, they may have come close to that level bender in their own recording.

You can listen to the entire album - the whole damn thing - here.

The Walkmen appear to be playing CMJ in New York next week, although it is unclear how one procures tickets.

Sicko

I've been home all day today, since I dare not venture more than 20 steps from my bathroom. What on earth did I eat?

Anyhow, it hasn't been a day off; I've been working from home. The wonders of the Internet. Even more interesting/sad is how much more productive I've been here than I would have been actually at work. Perhaps corporations should look into sickening their employees - but not too much - as a legitimate way of allowing them to work from home while keeping them from getting distracted by bright lights and loud noises.

Anyhow, I've been listening to KEXP live all day on the Web, and they've been doing me right with an endless series of soothingly pleasant bands. They won't ever be my favorite bands, there's nothing special about them, but they're absolutely perfect for keeping a slightly nauseous tummy calm. The ones I bothered to look up: White Whale, Summer Hymns, and (my favorite), a live performance from Black Angels, who are playing NYC during the CMJ festival, in a double-black double bill with the Black Keys.

The First Vietnamese War - Black Angels

This Smells Bad! Here, Smell It!

Appalling. Sexist. Destructive of what ought to be a beautiful thing. And, frankly, not even a good song. Sin With Sebastian's "Shut Up And Sleep With Me" is the aural equivalent of a bad smell that you want to share.

This song, thankfully, was never a widespread hit in the U.S. But it was a massive smash Europe-wide (and in countries that like to pretend they're part of Europe) for at least a year in the mid-1990s, when I was living in Russia.

So, take a listen (oh go on! take a listen!), close your eyes, and imagine the following scenario:

You're walking through an open-air Russian electronics market in the dead of winter. It's cold enough that your fur-lined Russian boots haven't prevented your toes from turning blue. The path is icy. There are open air tables with bootleg CDs on either side of you, and the proprietors of both tables have giant stereos that they think will convince you to buy their stuff. From both sides, this song is blaring, just slightly out of sequence, and you are certain you are going to lose your mind.

Shut Up And Sleep With Me

99 Anthems

I tend to regard both mash-ups and later-era Jay Z as silly. Since I also tend to regard Radiohead as sacred, you'd think this particular mash-up would drive me crazy. But somehow, it doesn't. Instead, it works perfectly. Great driving blaring out the open windows song. Great grumpy riding on the subway glaring song. Great freak your friends out song. Would love to see them actually perform it live together. I bet they'd both do it.

99 Anthems

How Silly Of Me

One of the things I like about live shows is the way the artists interact with their audiences, whether it's telling a story about a song, or talking about something that happened to them that day, or chatting with somebody in the crowd. If I was at the show, finding a live version brings back the atmosphere. If I wasn't, it helps me imagine what it must have been like.

A great example is the Hold Steady's song "Don't Let Me Explode." Who knew Saint Barbara was the patron saint of landmines, or, "more specifically, not stepping on them"? You can find a live version of this song from Lollapalooza, on ITunes. I can't listen to it without thinking of that bottle of whiskey the band was passing around the stage a couple of weeks ago in NYC.

Of course, since I stalk Radiohead relentlessly, I can think back to a lot of songs with Thom Yorke babbling about whatnot on them. I like the one where he says to two chattering audience members, "Little boys, SHUT UP!" and also the one where he sings tunelessly to himself and the soundman, "Can't hear the f**king piano..." But I think this one is my favorite. It's from pretty early in their career (either 1993 or 1995, I can't figure it out from my crappy labeling system), and it's just so weird to hear Yorke refer to "The Bends" as a new song.

The Bends

Then there's the Frames, whose lead singer has a tendency to tell stories that have pretty much nothing to do with the actual songs, which is quite charming, really.

What Happens When The Heart Just Stops

And finally, there's this song of Jeff Tweedy's I just found on another blog, where the conversation goes:

Tweedy: I think from the sound of it you've had a few drinks.
Audience: (Indistinguishable)
Tweedy: You're judged? You're not judged...Did you say you're judged?
Audience: (Indistinguishable)
Tweedy: Oh, you're on drugs. How silly of me.

Please Tell My Brother

Silence = Golden

I live in Prospect Heights, a neighborhood in Brooklyn that some (mostly those who don't live here) call sketchy and others (mostly those who do live here) call a bargain.

I love Prospect Heights. I love its energy, its diversity, its proximity to Prospect Park, its crazy eateries like Tom's Diner and the Islands, and the fact that I have a choice of three train lines to get into the city. But I must confess that the energy is sometimes too much.

For instance: my upstairs neighbor seems to have untold amounts of energy for pacing up and down immediately above my bed at all hours of the night. My cross-the-back-yard neighbors have the energy for very loud rap music at 7 a.m. in the morning. The kids out front have the energy for basketball until 2 a.m. in the morning.

When I've had enough sleep, it's all good. But when I haven't, I feel like this.

Susanna & the Magical Orchestra - Enjoy The Silence

Big list of cover versions of the Depeche Mode original here.

Black Acres Are Claiming Me

I [heart] Princeton Record Exchange.

While its new CD selection can be a little irritating, this 25-year-old bastion of indie music does its NYC counterparts one better in the used category, pricing used CDs rationally, as if they might, in fact, have been previously listened to.

Its wall o' cheapo CDs, priced at not more than $4.99, has sucked many a music fan into determined scans of each and every title there. Not an insignificant task, given that the hundreds of CDs are organized only casually by genre, and not at all beyond that. Aerosmith lives next to Wilco, N Sync next to Jandek. But the hours of crossed eyes are worth it. My haul this weekend included the Outkast Speakerboxx/Love Below set for five bucks, the debut Vines CD for $1.99 (perhaps not really a bargain, upon a first listen), and - the real find - an Elysian Fields CD, Queen of the Meadow, for $1.99.

Singer Jennifer Waters' voice is so slinky, almost as slinky as the fiddles on this song. Listening to this song is like going to a bordello, wearing a red velvet dress, watching champagne bubbles, waltzing tipsily.

Black Acres

Say Huhh!

Follow me here through the tangles of my own Saturday morning mind.

I've been meaning to post something about Norah Jones for a while, simply because I have a funny story to tell. But I need a particular type of morning to inspire me to write about or listen to light jazziness: one like today in NYC. A gloomy, windy, definitely fall, sit around in your PJs shivering and sniffling cuz your heat's not on yet and you have a cold, think about a second cup of coffee, weekend morning.

I sit down fully intending to write about this funny Norah Jones story, and idly do a search on an mp3 blog aggregator to see if there's anything out there about her lately that's intriguing, and I stumble on this reference to a collaboration she did with the Peter Malick Group a few years ago called "New York City."

That leads me on a wild goose chase through the Internet frontiers of MySpace postings and probably illegal Russian language Web sites, after about 20 minutes of which I do some more stumbling onto Peter Malick's MySpace page. There, I find a song called "F Train."

If you dig back through the archives a bit [here], you will quickly spot a possible obsession on my part with the F train, which is the worst subway train on the planet. I was previously amused to discover that at least one musician shared my obsession. Imagine my surprise that there are not one, but two songs, out there on the topic. How many more might there be? How many more people share my obsession? I've been wanting to put together a mix CD of my favorite NYC songs for a while (more stumbling this morning: big list of NYC songs on Wikipedia), but might I be able to put together an entire CD of songs about the F train? The mind boggles.

So my apologies, but the funny story about Norah Jones will have to wait for another day. Instead, I direct you to Malick's page for his song, and repost Mike Doughty's song for comparison's sake. In my mind, Malick's take wins: as I've said before, the Doughty song is a little too cheerful and happy about the F train. Malick, instead, seems to be talking about the train through the ramblings of a possibly homeless, gruff, definitely drunk man, which is much more in line with my own experience. And there's a lot of standing around on the platform, waiting, too. "Say huhhh! F Train."

Mike Doughty - Thank You Lord For Sending Me The F Train

The Cult Of The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady were infectiously happy at their Irving Plaza show Sunday. You couldn't help but grin watching them. Sure, you may have also been a little terrified that they would fall on their asses as they passed a bottle of whiskey around the stage, topped it off with wine drunk straight out of the bottle, and sprayed the crowd with beer. But they didn't, and even if they had, they probably would have been happy about that too.

Happy because the Minnesota Twins are in the playoffs, occasioning, as singer Craig Finn said, "the first costume change in the history of The Hold Steady" (into a Twins shirt for the encore). Happy with their exceedingly active fan base of oddly tall 6'8'' boys crowding the floor close to the stage. Manically clapping happy. Arms spread wide, clutching their receding hairlines happy. Happy enough to invite the entire crowd out drinking at a bar on Avenue A with them after the show. It was almost like a cult, my friend muttered, but hell, this is one cult I'll gladly join.

Cattle and The Creeping Things (live on the Current)

Most People Are DJs

This Tuesday is the first time since The Eraser came out that I'll be dragging myself out of bed a little bit early in order to hit J&R Music on my way to work. That's because of the new The Hold Steady disc. I don't own any of this band's other CDs, but Boys and Girls in America is going to make a run for my favorite album of the year. They're at Irving Plaza tonight, and I'll be there. Hmmm, maybe the album will be there...

While I'm at J&R I may also pick up the new Beck, which sounds pretty good, judging from the four-fifths of it that is already available on the Web.

You can listen to songs from both these albums over at NPR. You can also listen to a song from a band I previously posted about, Forro in the Dark. Looks like they have an actual, professionally recorded, gonna-be-available-at-places-other-than-their-shows, album coming out in November.

Finally, the new Frames album is out - IN IRELAND. Sigh. Tiding myself over with a couple of links on their MySpace page.

Orphan No More

After watching the Green Day/U2 concert that was part of the overblown ESPN coverage of the New Orleans' Saints' first game back home in the Superdome, I stuck Green Day's Warning in my CD player for the first time in a long time.

This CD, for me, is an orphan. If you're a hardcore music fan, you know what I'm talking about. Perfectly good albums - even great ones - that you listened to three, maybe four times, liked a lot, and promptly forgot about because there were five more that were not so patiently waiting their turn.

Orphan CDs. They're just sitting there taking up space, but don't even try and talk yourself into getting rid of them, because you know it's not gonna happen.

Instead, let's rejuvenate the orphan CDs, and make them full members of our music collections. I'm starting with Warning.

I like Green Day, but I'm not an extreme fan. I only own this one album, and it had accumulated quite the layer of dust on it. For that, I apologize, because it's just wrong. This is a great album, filled with catchy riffs, numerous chances for a good head banging, and some great, smart lyrics to shout along with. This song in particular has it all.

Minority

Naughty With The Bisque

Not to date myself, but back in college I recall being on a campus bus on the way home from the library, and some schmuck was on a cell phone the size of my leg, having a conversation like this. "Hey man...what's up?"..."Nothin' man...hanging out on the bus!" And I recall swearing then and there never to have a cell phone, because, well, how useless.

Now, of course, I don't have a land line because I rely only on my cell phone. Instead, I've found a new subject to disdain: the blackberry. Who needs to be at work 24 hours a day?

I'm sure I'll be addicted within a month.

Anyhow, what a week. I could use more power lunches like this and less actual ones.

Har Mar Superstar - Power Lunch

It's My Life

This weekend I saw Jesus Camp.

Jesus Camp is a documentary about born-again Christians who take their kids to camp and teach them that ghost stories and Harry Potter are bad, that George Bush is doing the work of God on this earth, and that global warming is an invention of the liberals. It is about how America is increasingly mixing church and state. And it is about the deliberate teaching of intolerance. It is scary.

Afterwards, I went and got Egyptian food in Queens, and I got a drink, and I enjoyed me some life. I'm sure I'll burn eternally in hell.

This is by a guy who operates under the name Muslimgauze. It's hard to tell, from what's out there on the Internet, whether the guy who created this music is a Koran-thumping fundamentalist, or whether he's a peaceful guy from Manchester who likes Mideastern beats. That's really not the point - the point is, he has the right to believe whatever he believes, and make songs titled "Kabul is free under a veil," in peace. And I have the right to listen to it, whether or not I agree with him. And the world will be a better place if it understands that we're both OK people.

Shimmer, Then Disappear

How Come You Treat Me The Way You Do?

To properly listen to this song:

1) Move to the south side of Chicago as a student.

2) Live in a gigantic hovel of an apartment with six other people. Never do the dishes. Spend much time eating food that is bad for you and drinking Schlitz.

3) Discover the blues. Go to blues clubs in bad neighborhoods and listen to the blues. Congratulate yourself on still being alive afterwards. Then congratulate yourself on how cool you are.

4) Throw a party and invite some of the cool bluesmen you know so that other students can see how cool you are.

5) Wake up the next morning incredibly hung over. Wander out into living room where roommates are trying to finish the left-over keg of beer so it can be returned.

6) Put this song on the stereo. Listen. Realize that it's not you who's cool. It's the music.

Hound Dog Taylor - Sadie

Travesty Against Mankind

I see that T.A.T.U. has a best of album coming out. Pardon me, but didn't they have only one (and I'll be charitable here) "hit"? Maybe I'm just getting old and out of touch.

Anyhow, talk about a stupid creationist myth surrounding these guys. At least with the White Stripes, you might actually have wondered, briefly, whether they were husband and wife, or brother and sister, or neither.

As a cleansing ritual, I have to post some Russian music sans silly gimmick or gyrating hips. This song is about vodka, and like vodka itself, it hits hard, goes down with a little cough and some watering of the eyes, and could be better digested with some black bread and a pickle.

By a group called DDT, this is about two old friends running into each other and sitting down for a drink. It's beyond my ability to translate, but best I can figure, here's the chorus:

White river
Drops of life
Ah, river/hand
Give me wings
I'm drowning and in all this nonsense
You're a shotglass on the table
You're the sky in my hands

DDT - Belaya Reka

Flashback Friday

Nine Inch Nails may have been the music that introduced me to the alternative world.

Where I'm from, mainstream music is country. The few radio stations that played pop in the 1980s down south - well, it was a steady diet of such fine artists as Kylie Minogue, Bonnie Tyler, and Def Leppard. I think that last may be one of the first tapes I bought, and I still harbor a secret affection for "Pour Some Sugar On Me."

I was a band geek. I remember very few details of this one particular band trip - for instance, I have no idea why we went to North Little Rock, or how we wound up at the mall, or how my friends and I met this kid named Mac, a band geek from another school, or where he was from. But I do remember that he was really cute, and that he had this blue Corvette, and that we all got in it to drive from one side of the mall to the other, and that Pretty Hate Machine was in the tape deck. It may have been the first time I unabashedly asked somebody, "What is this?" and then went straight out and bought it.

I don't know what happened to the tape I bought. It's probably still in my bedroom at home. But I recently found a used copy of the CD and bought it. Listening to it, I was reminded of a line from a newspaper review of one of my favorite diners, which reads something like, "Like nostalgia itself, the egg cream is more fondly remembered than experienced anew." Just substitute the words "Nine Inch Nails" for "egg cream" and you've got it.

Nevertheless, this song still rules if you're just fricking angry.

Head Like A Hole

Soda On The Side

This is awesome.

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Chicken Noodle Soup

The Pantheon

"The pantheon" is the phrase an ex uses to describe his favorite bands. Ask him how he feels about the Rolling Stones, and he'll say, "They're in the pantheon."

If you go strictly by number of CDs owned, here's who's in my pantheon/favorite song:

4) Cowboy Junkies (9 cds)/Blue Guitar
3) Kronos Quarter (10 cds - tie): it was a tiny bit of a surprise that I have so many of these guys' CDs. I almost never listen to them. Nor do I have a single favorite piece.
3) Ani DiFranco (10 cds - tie)/Amazing Grace
1) Radiohead (11 formal purchases + numerous bootlegs)/The Gloaming

Near pantheon:

Calexico (6)/Tulsa Telephone Book (a cover)
The Frames (6)/God Bless Mom live version
Andrew Bird (5)/I
Wilco (5)/I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
Dandy Warhols (4)/We Used To Be Friends
Magnetic Fields/The Sixths (4)/The Dead Only Quickly Decay
Jurassic 5 (4)/Jurass Finish First
Modest Mouse (4)/Paper Thin Walls
PJ Harvey (3)/Rid Of Me live version
Spoon (3)/Anything You Want
M Ward (3)/Involuntary

(To be fair, I should also list other 3-or-more CD bands whom I snobbishly don't think are going to move up the list: Beta Band, No Doubt, Beastie Boys, Holly Golightly, Peter Gabriel, Hem, Prince, Police/Sting, Simon & Garfunkel/Paul Simon.)

Who's in your pantheon?