Sigh.

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because I [heart] this post.

clicky

Intrigued By This

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.

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

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!

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?

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???

Rain Down On Me

It's raining in New York; has been for, oh, 18 hours now. From inside my apartment, I'm imagining it as a biblical deluge-type downpour as I scrounge through my music for my favorite rainy day tunes.

How long, I wonder, could I stay inside these four walls before I went crazy? Stay tuned...stay tuned.

On the topic of rain, how excited am I that Radiohead is playing Liberty State Park again in August at All Points West or whatever it's called? Last time they played there (twice), it was August of 2001, and I hauled my butt the six-mile roundtrip walk from my then-apartment in Jersey City to see them. On the more sublime end of my memories of those nights is the World Trade Center lit up behind the stage...on the more banal end, the cheeseball near me who turned to his friend just as they got to the "Rain Down" chorus on Paranoid Android and said, "Wouldn't it be cool if it rained right now?

Sia - Breathe Me

Film School - Activated

Alexi Murdoch - Home

Sunshine Underground, Indeed

I heart, heart, heart, heart, heart this song. Since I stumbled onto Sunshine Underground a few days ago, this song has catapulted to the very top of my list of favorite songs of 2006, and into heavy rotation on my iPod. It has sent me dancing moronically around my apartment while brushing my teeth. It has turned me into one of those irritating people that sing to themselves while in public.

Pisser that I left my headphones at home or at work twice this week and so was deprived on my subway ride to and from work. Even more of a pisser that the band's CD is only available as an import. That is happening to me more and more often...yet another sign of the bastardry of the U.S. music industry...

Sunshine Underground - I Ain't Losing Any Sleep