Brit Music Geek Does Good: Nic Harcourt

Purloined from The NY Times

Jesca Hoop is a striking, dark-haired 29-year-old from Northern California who writes and sings twisty, sprawling, lyrically abstract songs, featuring strange sonorities and offbeat rhythms. Her music sounds as if it comes from an imaginary country, and she sings in the accented English of someone from that country. In the fall of 2003, Hoop was living in a van in Sonoma County, 35 miles north of San Francisco, when late one morning she was awakened by a call on her cellphone. The voice on the other end belonged to Nic Harcourt, a disc jockey and host of a weekday music program, ''Morning Becomes Eclectic,'' on the Los Angeles public-radio station KCRW. Harcourt had received a copy of some unreleased self-produced ''demo'' recordings of Hoop's and had begun playing them on the air. Her song ''Seed of Wonder'' was especially popular: when it spun, the studio's phones lighted up and listeners in their cars pulled over to the side of the road, waiting for Harcourt to announce what it was. It would go on to become one of KCRW's top five requests for eight weeks running, a station record.
Hoop had no idea who Nic Harcourt was, what his radio show was like or even that he was in possession of a copy of her CD, but she could hardly have received a better break. ''Morning Becomes Eclectic,'' and KCRW as a whole, are renowned for purveying the contemporary music equivalent of art-house films or literary fiction, a genre the rock critic Robert Christgau calls ''semipopular'' music, marked less by style than by a certain base-line intelligence and tastefulness. (As the station's music director, Harcourt also oversees the rest of its music programming.) Harcourt, whose show is broadcast daily from 9 a.m. to noon, has a knack for finding interesting new music ahead of everyone else: he was the first in America to play Norah Jones and Coldplay on the radio; like Jesca Hoop, the platinum-sellers Dido and David Gray were unsigned artists whose demos Harcourt originally spotlighted on his show; and more idiosyncratic unsigned acts like Damien Rice, Sigur Ros and Jem have all also become the object of record-company bidding wars as a result of Harcourt's championing.
Programmers for larger commercial stations across the country now keep a close eye on what Harcourt plays. In Los Angeles, ''Morning Becomes Eclectic'' is ''appointment radio'' for film and television producers and the music supervisors responsible for finding hip songs for TV commercials, and it's no longer uncommon for quirky, under-the-radar artists favored by Harcourt to be catapulted into mass popularity as a result of their furnishing the key musical-emotional moment in shows like ''The O.C.'' and movies like ''Garden State.'' Some producers have even begun to hire Harcourt himself to select songs for their soundtracks.
Los Angeles boasts a great lineage of charismatic, near-mythical disc jockeys, including B. Mitchell Reed, whose intimate late-night FM stylings inspired Joni Mitchell to write ''You Turn Me On (I'm a Radio),'' and Rodney Bingenheimer, whose long-running show on KROQ served as the launching pad for Blondie, X, Hole and numerous iconic bands of the 70's, 80's and 90's. Harcourt, who just celebrated his seventh anniversary on ''Morning Becomes Eclectic,'' is more than just the latest incarnation of this figure. At a time in radio when D.J.'s generally possess little personality and no responsibility for choosing the music they play, he has emerged as the country's most important disc jockey and a genuine bellwether.
''He has impeccable taste,'' Chris Martin, Coldplay's lead singer and songwriter, says. ''Every time I talk to someone in L.A., whether they're a 16-year-old or a 40-year-old, if they're talking about some random band or the new Doves record, when I ask how they know about it, it's always KCRW.'' When Sasquatch Books, the publishers of the Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl's best-selling ''Book Lust,'' sought someone as passionate and knowledgeable about records to write ''Music Lust,'' Harcourt was the obvious choice.

For more, read here.

Punk's Dead, Let's Fuck

Man, what happened to punk rock?? I don't know either, but this guy's blog is some pretty good reading about the golden days of a genre that's been co-opted by Hot Topic clad wannabes. Snarl.

spinning: built to spill - keep it like a secret

One More Reason Not To Wear Nike

This is just piss-poor. Nike has stolen the album image from Minor Threat's Discography for use in their ad campaign. Read more about it here.

spinning: Fugazi - End Hits

New Banner

poetry, not mine, his

Been meaning to check out this guy, David Berman's, book of poems entitled Actual Air. Mostly because Berman (along with Bob and Stephen from Pavement) fronts the indie-folk outfit The Silver Jews. BUT also because the photograph on the cover is of two towers in Atlanta that I could see from my street where I grew up. Memories, baby.

Bring On The Night

I'm a night owl by nature. Soy nocturno. I have long believed that some artists and/or albums are best suited for night-time listening. Here are some of my favorites; I'd love to hear some of you own night spins...

• Morphine - Both the "Good" & "Cure For Pain" albums
• John Coltrane - "A Love Supreme"
• Galactic - "Coolin' Off"
• R.E.M. - "Automatic For The People"

you're my fact checking cuz

MP3 Blog Weekly Rec

Looka!

I'm a New Orleans junkie...I simply cannot get enough of the city. I make at least one trip a year, and have tried (several times) to convince Mrs. Satisfied to move there. She claims we would turn into alchoholic sloths spending our nights (and days) in dank music halls. Sign me up, says I. Alas, it's not to be, at least not now. So to make due I scout out obscure NOLA funk, r&b, and soul around town in record stores and online.

If you too have a New Orleans' jones that needs itchin', you are going to want to check out Dan Phillips' Home Of The Groove. His MP3 blog hosts some great and hard to find cuts available for download with a brief history of the significance of each pick. Laissez les bon temps roulez.

spinning: pavement - brighten the corners

Morrissey’s Latino Fanbase

Old article I dug up from a few years back discussing Morrissey's growing latino fanbase. Pretty interesting read. Purloined: Orange County Weekly...

Their Charming Man: Dispatches from the Latino Morrissey love-in
by Gustavo Arellano

YUMA
The crowd chants, "Me-xi-co! Me-xi-co!" in an attempt to get the singer to acknowledge that the majority of the audience is Latino. He does. "I’m going to sing a couple of more songs," he tells them, "then all of you can go back to Mexicali."
And the Yuma Convention Center explodes.
Only one white man in the world—and he’s not the pope—can tell a group of Mexicans in the United States to return to Mexico and not only avert death, but be loved for saying so.
His name: Steven Patrick Morrissey, former lead singer of the Smiths, current saint among countless young Latinos.
The same convention-center audience demographic greets him wherever he performs: Los Angeles, Colorado Springs or this desolate desert town. So he always makes sure to yell out "Mexico" or perform some grand ethnic genuflection to his adoring fans, letting them know that he knows. They always respond in ecstasy; grateful.
By the time you read this, there will have been numerous television reports, radio interviews and newspaper stories revealing that many Morrissey fans are Latinos. They will tell you that history—musical, cultural, transnational—will take place this Friday at the Arrowhead Pond when Morrissey shares the stage with Mexican rock en español titans Jaguares in the biggest crossover attempt since Drake burned the Spanish Armada.
And they will tell you that you should be surprised. You shouldn’t. There’s something logical in this Latino Morrissey-worship. Morrissey knows it, his fans know it, and even academics know it. What exactly "it" is isn’t exactly clear except that it’s there, as plain as the Morrissey tattoo on the left shoulder of the muchacha crying on the floor of the Yuma Convention Center.
NEW WAVE’S SERMON ON THE MOUNT
I received the call at about 2 in the morning: a weak, almost slurring cry for help. "Hey, Gustavo. It’s Ben. Man, I need my Morrissey CDs back. [Long pause] I really miss them. [Longer pause, voice now quivering the slightest bit] I need them."
Ben follows up the next day with an e-mail: "Please get me those CDs as soon as you can. I am being deprived."
Ben is Benjamín Escobedo, a 25-year-old Santa Ana Democratic Party stalwart. Across the back window of his car is the salute to Morrissey and his domination of the city in which the singer now makes his home, "Moz Angeles." He let me borrow his Morrissey/Smiths collection (every CD, even the bootlegs, imports and special editions) for only two days before sending those messages.
Ben’s devotion to Morrissey is a lesser example of what Latino Morrissey fans feel for their god. They wear pins, patches or tattoos with their charming man’s face. They dress like him (rockabilly chic to British mod), carry around his favorite flowers (gladiolas), and cite his songs as answers to every problem they might have. One particular favorite is ending e-mail messages with the line "It takes strength to be gentle and kind" from "I Know It’s Over," New Wave’s Sermon on the Mount.
Some fans, like Cal State Fullerton graduate student Patricia Godínez-Benjumea, go as far as visiting his house in the Hollywood Hills and dropping off stories they write about him. "His music is the soundtrack of my life," Godínez-Benjumea says. "He reaches my innermost thoughts and fears and aspirations and longing. For a long time, I felt isolated and alone. Only Morrissey comforted me."
Godínez-Benjumea wrote an article discussing how Morrissey saved her life for a school publication. "My friend Maggie told me where he lived and said I should go give it to him," she said. "Before, I never had the guts to do it. Even when we went to his house, Maggie put my story in his mailbox. I didn’t even tell my husband that I did that."
Ben has yet to visit Morrissey’s home, but he knows the address. His love affair with the Manchester native began when his brother and friends introduced him to Viva Hate. "When I first heard the album, it blew my mind," Ben says. "Every time I hear him now, he impresses me more and more."
Morrissey plays such a big role in Ben’s life that he has a death pact with his friend: whoever dies first will make sure that "Well I Wonder" ("Please keep me in mind/Please keep me in mind") is played at the funeral.
"Moz speaks to me," Ben says. "For almost any problem in life, I can think of a Morrissey song. For example, ‘Hand in Glove’ has that line"—and, here, Ben sings—"‘And if the people stare/Then the people stare/Oh, I really don’t know, and I really don’t care.’ That taught me to not care about what others may think of who I love.
"From the very beginning, I knew that Latinos liked Morrissey," Ben remarks. "In fact, I cannot name one white person who likes Morrissey."
‘A HEAVENLY WAY TO DIE’
What is it about Morrissey that attracts Latinos? It may be that it echoes the music of Mexico, the ranchera. His trembling falsetto brings to mind the rich, sad voice of Pedro Infante, while his effeminate stage presence makes him a U.K. version of Juan Gabriel. As in ranchera, Morrissey’s lyrics rely on ambiguity, powerful imagery and metaphors. Thematically, the idealization of a simpler life and a rejection of all things bourgeois come from a populist impulse common to ranchera.
The most striking similarity, though, is Morrissey’s signature beckoning and embrace of the uncertainty of life and love, something that at first glance might seem the opposite of macho Mexican music. But check it out: for all the machismo and virulent existentialism that Mexican music espouses, there is another side—a morbid fascination with getting your heart and dreams broken by others, usually in death. In fact, Morrissey’s most famous confession of unrequited love, "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out," ("And if a double-decker bus/Crashes into us/To die by your side/Would be a heavenly way to die") emulates almost sentiment for sentiment Cuco Sanchez’s torch song "Cama de Piedra" ("The day that they kill me/May it be with five bullets/And be close to you").
"I see Moz as something like Los Tigres del Norte," Ben says, referring to the conjunto norteño legends who’ve graphed and broadcast Mexican sentiment for the past quarter of a century. "They can take you through the day—make you laugh, smile and cry. And that’s what Morrissey does."
Comparing Morrissey with Mexican music is an interesting game, but it’s beside the point. Most of Morrissey’s Latino fans, while growing up with ranchera, don’t automatically relate Morrissey to anything Mexican. More immediate to them is the music of their Mexican-Americanized youth: 1980s New Wave, oldies-but-goodies, and the rockabilly rhythms that have been a part of Mexican culture in one form or another since the heyday of the zoot suit. It’s natural, then, for Latinos to find Morrissey appealing: he incorporates all of these styles into his music, in the process singing their life.
"A lot of Latinos in Southern California grew up to oldies and rancheras," Ben says. "But everyone also listened to KROQ, especially the flashback lunches. A lot of those artists on KROQ were English, and the one that really stuck to people was Morrissey. His music had the style of a lot of the music we were already accustomed to."
‘I WISH I WAS BORN MEXICAN’
Morrissey once told a Las Vegas audience composed of (what else?) mostly Latinos that "‘Mexico’ is the only Spanish word I know. But it’s the best word."
That concert was part of 1999’s "¡Oye Esteban!" tour. An advertisement for his concerts that year excitedly screamed, "¡El cantante! ¡El concierto! (The singer! The concert!)." On that tour, Morrissey performed wearing T-shirts and belt buckles emblazoned with "Mexico" and at times even the Virgen de Guadalupe, the spiritual embodiment of Catholic Mexico.
Morrissey’s most famous acknowledgement of his Latino fans, though, came here in Orange County during that same tour. "I wish I was born Mexican," Morrissey told an overwhelmingly Latino audience at UC Irvine’s Bren Events Center. "But it’s too late for that now." This is the Dylan-at-Newport moment of the Latino Morrissey crowd, the defining moment of the scene, something that everyone attended even if they were somewhere else.
The argument can even be made that Morrissey’s acknowledgement of his Latino lovers goes back as early as 1992’s Your Arsenal; on "Glamorous Glue," he wondered, "We look to Los Angeles/For the language we use/London is dead/London is dead/Now I’m too much in love." Elizabethan English and its people have perished, he tells us; long live the Spanglish race of Nuestra Lady de los Ángeles.
Regardless of when Morrissey discovered his Latino worshipers, it’s indisputable that he now tailors his career for them. He lives in Los Angeles, the second-largest city in Latin America, and attends rock en español shows in Huntington Park to see Hispanic troubadour Mikel Erenxtun sing excellent Spanish versions of "Everyday Is Like Sunday" and "There Is a Light that Never Goes Out." His current tour eschews the East Coast and Midwest in favor of Latino or nearly Latino enclaves in Arizona, California and Las Vegas. Morrissey’s participation in Jaguares’ Revolución Tour is another show of solidarity with the people who’ve made him a king.
"It’s no secret that he moved to Southern California where there’s a huge Latino base," says Javier Castellanos, who’s trying to get Morrissey to come to his Anaheim club, JC Fandango, and displays a smiling picture of the eternally dour Morrissey to prove it. "I told him, ‘You know there’re a lot of Latinos who love you.’ And he just nodded his head."
Anyone attending Friday’s show will most likely hear "Mexico," a new song he debuted on this tour. A slow ballad similar to the baroque horror of "Meat Is Murder," "Mexico" reads like a Chicano manifesto:
In Mexico
I went for a walk to inhale the tranquil cool lover’s air.
I could taste a trace
Of American chemical waste.
And the small voice said, "What can I do?"
I lay on the grass
And I cried my heart out for want of my love.
Other stanzas are just as radical, with the most memorable passage observing that Mexicans in the United States face a situation in which "It seems if you’re rich and you’re white/You’ll be all right./I just don’t see why this should be so."
After years of searching for contentment, Morrissey found it in the Mexican republic of Moz Angeles.
"Morrissey found us, and we bumped into him, and we fell in love with him," Ben says. "And he loved us back."
TURNING MANLINESS ON ITS CABESA
Despite such a devoted fan base, media treatment of the Latino Morrissey phenomenon is universally condescending, if not outright racist. Typical is the following passage from Big Brother magazine on one reporter’s attempt to try to crack the Latino Morrissey obsession at a Morrissey/Smiths convention:
As much as I enjoyed hanging out with Edwin and his friends, I have to admit I had an ulterior motive. I wanted to exhibit their acceptance of me, as a gringo who’s down with the southerners, to gain admittance into some of the other, more thuggier Mexican cliques that were scattered throughout the convention. I was fascinated with the monsters that filled their ranks, and I wanted to photograph them without arousing anyone’s suspicion that I was just another white man exploiting the beaners for his own gain . . . which, in a way, I was kind of doing.
Other articles on the Morrissey Latino phenomenon have called Latino Morrissey fans "an audience of East LA homeboys" (Spin) or "tattooed Hispanic LA gangs" (Select). They describe those fans as possessing "perfect Mayan features" and wearing "the standard barrio uniform of shaved head, baggy jeans and short-sleeved plaid shirt" (LA Weekly). They describe Morrissey’s divine powers to save Latinos from gangs (the British TV show Passengers). Or they’ll sum it up easily by saying that Morrissey’s Latino fans are "warm brown" (Los Angeles Times Magazine).
"It’s hard to tell if the [press is] more upset with Morrissey for not knowing when he was finished," writes academic Colin Snowsell, "or with the audience for not respecting—or being unfashionably oblivious, too—the tacit understanding that Morrissey was taboo."
Snowsell, a doctoral candidate at Montreal, Quebec’s McGill University, has made a study not merely of the connection between Morrissey and his fans, but also of the media’s perspective of both. He has presented his observations in major academic symposiums and in his master’s thesis, soon to be a dissertation, "‘My Only Mistake Is I’m Hoping’: Monty, Morrissey, and the Importance of Being Mediatized."
Ben:"He loved us back."Photo by James Bunoan
A lifelong Morrissey fan, the Canadian discovered the Latino Morrissey phenomenon through occasional articles in the press and his interest in Latin America popular culture. "I was interested first in the fan base itself, but after reading a lot of articles on the subject, I became fascinated with how it was reported," Snowsell says. "The media seemed to delight in pointing out this phenomenon so they could mock him and Latinos. They’re reporting it as a circus side story: the faded star appealing to non-mainstream audiences. But I say it makes perfectly good sense. I think Latinos have better taste than everyone else."
Snowsell theorizes that Morrissey’s appeal to Latinos lies in the fact that he represents for them the same hope that he offers to all: an opportunity to transcend your lot in life. "Morrissey was, in short, providing to lower- and middle-class Mexican-Americans the same dual utopian message that he had once provided a decade earlier to predominately Anglo fans in the United Kingdom," he writes. And what did he offer Anglos? "Escape from the injustices of a social order that confines them to the margin, but escape also from the limited identity options entrenched in peripheral, working- and middle-class culture."
"There’s something to the fact that the audiences that have liked him weren’t rich," he says. "His original British fans were poor and lower class. With Latinos, they’re certainly considered peripheral in their country. When they see someone who had a comparable experience, those themes of alienation and disenfranchisement come through. And Latinos pick up on those things and are drawn to him."
More intriguing for Snowsell, though, is Morrissey’s subversion of gender and sexual roles and what that means for Latinos in a culture where everything begins and ends with machismo.
"Morrissey’s macho, but in a different way," Snowsell says. "When you think of the archetypal North American male sex symbol, you think of rockabilly icons like Elvis Presley and James Dean. But he’s taken this most masculine of identities and remade it as a fey, wimpy, cardigan-wearing, gladiola-loving singer. When you present that to Latinos, whose culture offers very rigid gender models, it appeals to them because he uses this to show through actions that there are other identity options available. There’s no right or wrong way, and people can choose for themselves. They can be tough and sensitive at the same time."
DESCENT INTO MORRISSEY
My cousins and many of my Latino friends are Morrissey freaks, but they never introduced me to him. It’s as if people must discover Morrissey on their own terms.
I saw the light recently. With Ben as my Virgil, I descended into Morrissey as we drove through the Imperial Valley to his Yuma show. The plan was to listen to every Smiths album during the four-hour journey out and to Morrissey’s solo work on the way back.
Ben was of no help; all he did throughout the journey was sing every lyric, mimic Johnny Marr’s chiming guitars, and blurt from track to track "This song, only real Morrissey fans understand" or "This song is for Morrissey poseurs."
It didn’t matter. I’m immediately enthralled by everything that is Morrissey—the gentle yet intensely morose instrumentation; the velvety voice that spoke to me, only me and no one else; his (and my) sad tales of getting picked on in school, despising your environment; the nagging aspiration to be something much more—and in another place.
At the concert, it’s more of the same; the man wins me over, his words come to life and his acknowledgement of my culture is so beautiful. How could I not love Morrissey?
Morrissey sings to the disaffected, and God knows alienation is part of the assimilation tradition—the equal and opposite reaction of the immigrants drive to blend in. We ache; Morrissey soothes.
MALDONADO
Morrissey fans pack LA’s Knitting Factory and mouth every word that José Maldonado sings. He’s the leader of the Sweet and Tender Hooligans, a Morrissey/Smiths cover band with its own cult following in Southern California. Perhaps it’s because Maldonado sounds just like Moz, looks like him down to the pompadour and whipping of the mic wire. Or perhaps it’s because Maldonado is Mexican.
There are non-Latinos in the audience. But the overwhelming majority cheers wildly when Maldonado introduces his new bass player by revealing, "Tonight, the band is 20 percent browner!"
I tell Ben this story, and he smiles. He can. I had returned his CDs, and now I was a believer, too. We stage an impromptu sing-along to "The Boy With the Thorn in His Side."
"I knew you were going to like Moz," he beams. "All Latinos end up liking him."

Buddyhead

If you have not seen it, Buddyhead has updated it's kick ass gossip section.

another new banner

The Archivist's Legacy

My dad was a lot of things, one of them a serious lover of eclectic music. His appetite voracious and taste impeccable.

Last weekend I inherited the majority of his vast collection. The holy grail being his studio quality Teac Reel to Reel player and 50+, eight-hour reel tapes. Some of my first memories are watching those reels spin, hearing their contents. These hold more than music. They present a glimpse inside someone's soul, what got them off, what made them tick. I imagine it will take years to dig through it all, but I will try to update An Aquarium Drunkard with any gems I find along the way. Godspeed.

spinning: Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Spoon: the Pitch.com Interview

Purloined from Pitch.com

Gimme Spoon Britt Daniel discusses the pride and pressure of rock stardom.By Geoff HarknessPublished: Thursday, June 9, 2005

It's not easy fronting a band that's the darling of the rock press. Just ask Spoon frontman Britt Daniel, who's busy collecting five-star accolades for his group's latest effort, Gimme Fiction. The love that critics heaped upon Spoon in the wake of 2002's Kill the Moonlight helped make Fiction, which arrived in May, one of the year's most eagerly awaited discs. Daniel felt under the gun to create a worthy follow-up, so the positive reception Fiction has received comes as a major relief.

"There was pressure on myself, not pressure from a label or anything," Daniel tells the Pitch. "I thought that the last two albums were really good, and so when I started writing new songs, I found myself feeling like, Does this measure up?

"That kind of awareness can present a sort of psychological battle for you," he continues. "It's not the best frame of mind to be in to be creative. To be creative, you really need to be not thinking about the past, not thinking forward, just in the moment. There's a feeling -- you just know whether it's working or not."

Spoon is working especially hard these days, but with the anxiety surrounding Moonlight's follow-up behind him, Daniel feels exuberant -- as exuberant as it gets for a leader known for his meticulous approach to making music.

The Austin, Texas, band spent more than three months in the studio crafting Fiction, a Fleetwood Mac-ian amount of time in the indie-rock underground, where whole albums are sometimes tossed off in a weekend. The Mac comparison may be apt in other ways as well -- rumors circulated that the Fiction sessions were fraught with frustration and internal struggles galore.

The band rehearsed and then tossed dozens of songs, and heavy editing was standard operating procedure as the group struggled to make Fiction its greatest achievement to date. Early versions of tracks such as "Sister Jack" and "My Mathematical Mind" weren't deemed up to snuff, and lost songs such as "Landlord" will probably never see the light of day. Relations between Daniel and his bandmates (drummer Jim Eno and a revolving cast of bassists and keyboardists) were at an all-time low.

"It's not a Jimmy Buffet kind of vibe," Daniel deadpans. "It does get tense, but I try to make it so it's the least amount of tense that it needs to be. Whenever you have creative people or people with their own agendas trying to be creative, there's going to be conflict. And we've gotten better and better about it, I think. But there were still moments on the making of this record where we clearly weren't seeing eye to eye."

It wasn't the first time. Daniel pulled the plug one week into the initial sessions for Kill the Moonlight because he didn't think the songs were ready yet. But hard work and second-guessing yielded rich dividends -- Moonlight proved to be Spoon's most adventurous effort yet.
Nonetheless, experimentation is still relatively new to Spoon, though nail-biting precision and control-freak mentalities have always ruled the roost.

"We were so afraid of being uncool back then," Daniel says of the Moonlight sessions. "We thought reverb was uncool. We thought solos were uncool. We thought piano was uncool. I think all of that is just sort of early naiveté and insecurities. So we managed to get past that. The best bands are the ones that keep learning what they can do as they go along, and I keep trying to learn what we can do differently."

That wasn't always the case. When Spoon debuted with Telephono in 1996, it was just another run-of-the-mill alt-rock band that was overly enamored with Wire and the Pixies. An ill-fated union with Elektra Records didn't help matters -- the label reportedly found Spoon's 1998 album, A Series of Sneaks, so boring that the group was dropped mere months into its contract. But the band rebounded mightily.

Daniel's creative turning point came four years ago as he was penning tunes for Spoon's third full-length, Girls Can Tell. Instead of the usual indie contrivances, Daniel let his instincts run free, filling the record with starkly rendered songs about hand jobs gone awry and the difficulties of finding a proper-fitting shirt.

"I guess it's just been about becoming more and more willing to stick our necks out," he says. "At first, I was very unwilling to say anything vulnerable in a song. Around the time I was writing the songs for Girls Can Tell, I decided it was OK to do that and really jumped right into it headfirst."

Of course, it doesn't hurt when the press is swooning on the sidelines. Girls proved to be Spoon's critical breakthrough, with even stuffy tomes such as Time magazine suddenly raving about the group's "brilliantly minimalistic" sound.

"Honestly, I don't think it was the success of Girls Can Tell," Daniel says. "It was really just about doing it longer and longer and getting in touch with what kind of records are the most effective. But, yeah, it didn't hurt that we were being cheered on at some point. But I really feel like the turnaround for us musically was before Girls Can Tell, and we weren't necessarily being cheered on at that period of time, when I was discovering that I wanted us to sound a little bit more Motown."

No one will mistake Gimme Fiction for What's Going On, but it's still Spoon's most confident record. By juxtaposing art-school ruckus against Daniel's restrained passion, songs such as "The Beast and Dragon, Adored" solidify the band's sound and transcend its past. The track that has everyone talking is "I Turn My Camera On," an icy funk number for which Daniel adopts a breathy falsetto and gets in touch with his inner Prince. It may be Spoon's finest hour, if only because Daniel seems truly untethered for the first time.

"I do feel like I know what I'm doing, for the most part, and I trust that my instincts are the right ones," he says. "Then if something goes wrong, then I have no one else to blame but myself. My job only bothers me when things aren't going right. And then it can be overwhelming."

Read Pitch.com for more good shit.

Wilco @ The Greek, Los Angeles

Wilco. I really like Wilco, they are the namesake of this here blog. But until last night had never committed to seeing them. I somehow got it into my head that they wouldn't be very good live. I was wrong, they were good, great even. Tweedy's voice in a live setting may be even more convincing than on record, which is high praise.

The band: As you most definitely surmised in the Wilco documentary, Jeff Tweedy -- for all practical purposes -- is Wilco. It's his gig. Yeah, former bandmate and multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett was a badass, but Tweedy has since surrounded himself with if not equal, greater talent. He is a true bandleader, has vision and utililizes other's talents to gel what's in his head to fruition.

Set List: Wilco Base should have it up soon...

Let's not forget this is Hollywood: Thanks to an industry friend we had backstage access to the hospitality suite. Some famous and not-so-famous people standing in line for beer and buffalo wings.

• James Spader (guy just reeks cool)
• The midget Marshall on "Alias" (who's not really a midget it turns out...damn)
• Toni Collette (no comment)
• Jason Bateman (looking casually smarmy sporting a black hoodie)
• Pat O'brien (wearing a very age-innapropraite get up)
• Nerdy kid from "The Girl Next Door"
• Project Greenlight guy (I had no clue who he was either)

For related Wilco reviews, see: Sasefina and Martin

spinning: The Evens

Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs

So this freak I am friends with loaned me Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs last week...and it is turning out to be a pretty fine read.
Reccomended to fans of pop culture, or anyone who spent the past 5-10 years in a coma.

spinning: Iron & Wine - The Creek Drank The Cradle

Heaven Is A Honky Tonk

Dwight Yoakam and band were in fine form last night at the House of Blues....so was I.

spinning: Richard Hawley - Lowedges

Topanga

spinning: blur - 13

Vinyl

I find myself guilty of ignoring my records

Newfangled technology will never replace

But I am lazy

I don't like to flip sides

iPod is the Segway scooter for lazy music geeks

spinning (on iPod) : Ryan Adams - Destroyer sessions

Whiskeytown

Late Night in Raleigh, NC: A Reunion of Sorts

The Head Puppets Are Coming

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album du jour: Spoon - Gimme Fiction

Glorious Noise

*Perhaps my favorite piece ever written about Stones' fandom by one of the guys at Glorious Noise....

Death of a Junky: The Rolling Stones
by
Derek Phillips

Drugs are evil. Make no mistake. Queen of Darkness Marilyn Manson takes the stage in front of a huge 12-foot tall neon sign that reads D-R-U-G-S. Drugs turn people crazy, especially the people trying to outlaw them. Drugs are the evil Lord and the Stones worshipped at its altar for 20 years and reaped the benefits before they fell from grace and lost their souls to Billy Blanks.

"Sympathy for the Devil" may be the most evil song in the world. The Stones forced anyone who dared to listen beyond the jungle rhythms to face facts--you shit in your bed, now sleep in it. Everything about that song is great. It is rock and roll. It is everything parents were afraid of. I've seen clips of the recording sessions where Keith couldn't get up off the studio floor to listen to playbacks. They stood on the precipice of depravity and spit over the edge.

The Stones were bar-none the Greatest Rock Band in the World. They proved it time and again and were untouchable throughout the seventies and even into the early eighties. Some Girls was one of the best of their career, and though Tattoo You didn't reach the highs (and lows), of earlier records, it still had gems.

Then something happened.

Something wrong... Something ugly... Something vile...

They got healthy.

I have long had a theory that anyone who survives on large amounts of drugs should never, under any circumstance, get clean. If they do, they die. Mark my words. The examples keep coming.

Jerry Garcia lived like a king, taking every drug he could get his nine fingers on. His music grew, his performance excelled. People who saw the Dead in their last years saw Jerry at the top of his game. Like a hopped up, drug-addled line backer ripping through bags of smack until his eyes bled. This went on for thirty years. He died in a rehab unit surrounded by doctors trying to rid his body of tainted blood, like medieval barbers trying to cure him of vapors and spirits.

Kurt Cobain brought us back from the hairspray death of the 80s with the roar of music long thought dead. He cut his hands with furious chords motivating a generation of Ritalin zombies to care. And we cared. Don't fool yourself into thinking that we didn't. Suddenly, everything seemed important because we were told nothing really was. We had no wars. Our parents made great money. We were at the front door of this country’s biggest and longest economic boom and we were depressed to the point of violence. Kurt Cobain didn’t invent the 90’s apathy and angst; he perfected it. And he was pumped to the gills with heroin the whole time. Some people blame his suicide on drugs, but it wasn't until he tried to get clean that we found him smeared on the walls of his Seattle home. Some people feel the slight annoyances of life as death by a thousand cuts. Kurt Cobain needed to numb himself and found it in heroin. Drugs kept him sane.

The Stones, facing massive tax bills, concert deaths and fame beyond the limits of the human mind, dug deep into the sticky plastic bag of drugs and found the best music written in modern time. They wrapped the warm fuzz of heroin around their brains like a wet shaving towel and let the devil's music rise out with the steam.

Welcome to the Party

Beggar's Banquet is the invitation. The fore mentioned “Sympathy...” sticks its tongue out and licks your lips. You get so hard you can't help but push back. "No Expectations" gently caresses you and puts you at ease. It's just a set up. "Street Fighting Man" slaps you hard across the face and tells you you're a bitch...and you are. Like a woman with battered wife syndrome, you come back. You get fucked hard like one of the Hell's Angels' mamas. By the time "Salt of the Earth" is over you're on your knees draggin' yourself to the door. This was the first step into the dark, crowded closet of self-medication.
They say that Mick Jagger was never really that much into drugs, but that’s a lie. He may not have drenched himself in the strychnine bitterness of acid or the scratchy throat brightness of cocaine, but he loved the lifestyle. One hundred percent. Mick Jagger threw drug references around like they were posh names at a social event. Mick Jagger lived in the drug world and surrounded himself with junkies. He exploited the lifestyle for all it was worth. He walked the fine line of pushers by ruthlessly fronting his shit while never getting high on his own supply.
It’s a delicate balance though and Brian Jones couldn’t walk it. He stumbled like a clumsy cat and ended up a pathetic man at the bottom of his pool with a gut full of amphetamines. The band that was his soul went on without missing a beat throwing a huge free show just months after his death--Mick Jagger prancing mockingly in front of a huge poster of Jones’s head.

The Hooks Are Set

Sticky Fingers gets you hooked on the shit. They feed it to you. Your eyes swell and your stomach tightens. "Sister Morphine" gives you the shakes. By the time "Wild Flowers" comes around you’re so drunk you don't even know what order you're hearing things. Finally you sweat out the night with the soft caress of "Moonlight Mile." The Stones helped you through another binge. What you forget is that they brought it on in the first place.

If the last few albums were crazy nights you can’t remember but regret none-the-less, then Exile on Main Street is a five-day bender from which you awaken and find that your parents hate you. You take it in the tail pipe for four sides’ worth of abuse. The Stones hate you too and you can't turn away. Why? Because they tell you time and again that no one else will have you. They're the only ones who care. You're worthless but they love you. But now you're a junky with them. You can't get a job because no boss in the world can understand how important this album is. That hatred turns to bile and you puke it all over the gray carpet of that condescending fuck's cubicle.
Things do get better--In a way.

Death Before Disco

Your dirty lover switches drugs and takes you along. At least on coke you're motivated. You move. "Miss You" actually makes you dance. The Stones make disco sound rough, though you can‘t admit that‘s what you‘re listening to. Latin rhythms force you out on to the front stoop where you smoke weed and snort coke with Latino neighbors who moved into the neighborhood while you were zonked. They offer you grass and inexplicably you accept replying, "El gusto es mio."

The early eighties kind of blend together like a smeared pencil drawing. You love "Waiting on a Friend," though you don't even remember what album it's on. The neighborhood is alive and jumping. Things are happening.

Then it happens.

After years of backstabbing that would have turned the Osmonds into alcoholics, the Stones fall apart. Mick discovers clean living. He takes karate for Christ's sake. He records She's the Boss. This isn’t a hangover; this is a hemorrhage. You’re facing serious damage. Dear God, you actually see Her Majesty in a video called "Let's Work" that must be some kind of community service message, but it’s not. Mick is serious and that sends you into a furious depression that’s needs medication.

Surely Keith is still holding. Can't he hook you up for old times' sake? Shit, where is Keith? Rumors of an o.d. are rampant. People say that he's gone through rapid detox and had all of his blood drained, cleaned and replaced. One new rumor alleges he is a follower of Tae Bo and his new dark lord is Billy Blanks himself.
Charlie's gone back to jazz. No surprise there.

Bill Wyman is a pedophile. OK. That's good. There’s still some evil lurking in the bushes, even if it is in the form of an aging child raper. Never trust the ones who just watch from the side. They are the most deviant. But Wyman’s lechery can not stop the withdrawal and the spiders are really crawling.
There's talk of a reunion. It's a flop. They sold you a little baggie of Crystal Lite! You snort the shit and your nose bleeds for an hour. Now you're strung out and confused. You got a little off the Black Crows, but it‘s really just cut extra thin with a dash of the Faces thrown in. It burns your throat. Things are getting desperate.

Steel Wheels flattens you. Your guts are on the road. They backed over you again and again. You see them on tour with the hopes of hearing the old stuff and they give it to you. But it's laced with Drain-O and you shit for weeks afterward.

Withdrawal is hell. You give up on it cold, puking and shaking but in the end you're clean. You’re tempted in the late 90s by Stripped. Everyone tells you it's like the old days. The Stones playing a small bar, just kickin' it out. No production, no tricks. "C'mon baby, it's me," they whisper. You're fooled for a minute until you read "Like a Rolling Stone" in the set list. Nice try, prick. You have had it. And just in time. Bridges to Babylon is a buzz kill. Not as bad, but compared to the old stuff it is straight shwag.

Still the Stones are the best. The fact that they are no longer the dirty demons of rock does not change the past or fade their legend. Just as I know two girls who claim they’d still nail Brando because of what he USED to look like, I still let the stones nail me. I listen to Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street and Goats Head Soup like a middle aged woman pining over the faded photo of an old boyfriend long since wrinkled and fat. You can too.

Our days are numbered though, my friend. We've survived so long on the pure heroin the Stones have been feeding us that going clean may just send our bodies into shock. Thank God we can go back to the old records and lick the mirror for a little something. But that won't last forever. Mark my words.

I Need Stephen Malkmus Tickets

If some kind soul out there with any connections could assist I would be much obliged. Show is at El Rey on June 14th.....

Like good music? For free? Read on......

Embracing the realities of online music trading/downloading, Anton Newcombe of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, has uploaded his bands ENTIRE catalog onto their Web site http://www.brianjonestownmassacre.com/mp3.php .....for free. Donations to Paypal are accepted under the "keep music evil" fund.

Dig that, RIAA.

Music Is My Radar: iPod as of late

What I'm listening to this week: An Ongoing Series

Mark Kozelek - What's Next to the Moon
Luna - Penthouse
David Bowie - Hunky Dory
Ryan Adams - Cold Roses
David Crosby - If I Could Only Remember My Name
Air - Talkie Walkie
Grandaddy - Sumday
Red House Painters - Songs For A Blue Guitar

Sad Bastard Music

"Sad Songs Say So Much"

It's true. I am a complete sucker for sad bastard music. If you too are afflicted with this condition you might enjoy these.

Songs For A Blue Guitar - Red House Painters
More or less a solo Mark Kozelek album in all but the name. The voice, the tone of the guitars, the whole album just vibes loss and sadness. Plus the song "Make Like Paper" oddly namechecks the street I grew up on.


Pneumonia - Whiskeytown
Their finest moment was also their death rattle. May they all sound so bitter sweet. Front man Adams would go on reach a wider audience, but Pneumonia stands as his masterpiece.


Dressed Up Like Nebraska - Josh Rouse
His debut. The album's tempo is so downbeat and lethargic that at first few listens the songs are indistinguishable. And then the nuances begin to grab you and take hold. Which is how it is for any album worth it's salt.

I See A Darkness - Bonnie "Prince" Billy

Heavy. Southern gothic tales from Kentucky. I wish he'd write a novel.

Peter Case: How Had I Never Heard Of Him??

About six weeks ago I enrolled in an eight person songwriting workshop at McCabe's Guitars in Santa Monica. The instructor is Los Angeles based, Grammy nominated, singer/songwriter Peter Case. And guess what? I hadn't a clue who he was until three weeks into the workshop.

For those of you like me who were/are in the dark, Peter has been playing his music in one form or the other since the late '70s. Possibly best known as the creative force behind the early '80s new wave outfit The Plimsouls, Peter has since moved on to play his own brand of American folk-rock.

Folks like Peter are both a treat to discover and savor, and yet it frustrates me that such talents are ignored by the mainstream who favor the likes of a soulless John Mayor.

If you're into Dylan, Waits, etc. check out some of Peter's music on his Web site at http://www.petercase.com/

Must Have Been The Roses

I loved the Dead. I also loved Fugazi and the Smiths with equal passion. Guess what? So does Ryan Adams.

His last two efforts were a mix of mope-rock and Oasis/Nirvana rip offs. Both thoroughly enjoyable. His new double album "Cold Roses" (the 1st of three scheduled albums for '05) is a solid return to form. A seemingly effortless wash of pedal steel, Garcia notes, and southern gothic poetry.

Ignore the haters. Get past the drunken/drugged, brat behavior and check out the real "dylan" of our time. You can thank me later. Unless you are Cadien C, who just told me Ryan is "no DYLAN man." Well nobody is really Dylan, but that's another post in itself.

http://www.ryan-adams.com to stream the full album "Cold Roses" Technorati Profile