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Archive for July 2006
The beautiful and sultry voice of Inara George and the pop nuanced musical stylings of Greg Kurstin are the components of my new favorite thing, The Bird And The Bee. A modern day Audrey Hepburn with the voice of an angel singing clever lyrics over a fiery combination of Jobim and Everything But The Girl, The Bird And The Bee are, in a word, it. Tracey Thorn, take notes please. Here’s the two tracks Keith featured over at Teaching The Indie Kids To Dance Again, gussied up slightly and re-served. Go be their fucking boyfriend over at MySpace by clicking here and try to keep cool — I think I’ve almost had heat stroke four or five times today.
Listen to The Bird and The Bee - Fcking Boyfriend
Listen to The Bird and The Bee - I’m A Broken Heart
Finally, Teaching The Indie Kids To Dance Again has resurfaced after a rather lengthy hiatus & nobody is happier than I am. I did a lot of coercing and coaxing because we all wanted him back. Stop by his site and check out a couple of tracks from the phenomenal indie jazz pop phenomenon of The Bird And The Bee a duo from Los Angeles so gorgeous to hear you might think you’re trapped in a clever ’60s french spy thriller, or waiting for the arrival of your James Bond from fighting the bad guys. Keith has two tracks up & as of now there is no release date for the record. That being said, the music begs to be heard. Gestated from the members collective love of those crazy Burt Bacharach and jazzz-laced ’60s styling, they create a familiar sound that is not entirely familiar in the way it is presented. It’s filled with warmth and comfort, like cuddling up with a book and a blanket on an autumn night.
Here is an .m4a of another track, “Birds And The Bees” that I discovered on their website. After you check this out, head over to IndieKids.Org and check out my favorite, “I’m A Broken Heart”.
This will be the band you’ve been waiting for all year while a lot of other stuff that sounded okay was released and you felt cheated. The cheating is over with, friends.
If you haven’t already heard about Spank Rock, I’m sorry. Spank Rock is the illest, freshest, sickest, dopest, fantasticest thing to come out of the Bmore/Phillyverse in a hot hot minute. YoYoYoYoYo is one of the freshest hip-hop albums of the century, destroying all notions of current hip-hop standards and completely resetting them with mind-blowing electronic beats and rhymes. The singles “Rick Rubin” and “Backyard Betty” have been killing dancefloors worldwide, bringing the Spank Rock message to the world.
Prepared to continue serving suckers worldwide with something new to rock past the bus stop, Spank Rock is coming at you with the already hard-to-get-your-hands-on Couche-Tard, an over-the-top punch drunk symphony of styles, initiating memories of unmade beds, Cristal corks, and fat booties in tight thongs slipping and sliding in hot tubs to jams that even the most on-point record diggers can’t revoke. One listen to this mixtape and you’ll feel like you took too many red pills, blue pills, and bottles that said “Drink Me” before hopping into your drop-top ‘57 Chevy on your way to the sock hop with Ms. Pac-Man. If there was any question as to whether musical satisfaction could be served through smart mash-ups and high-top fades, Couche-Tard gives out the only answer you need. This is guaranteed to turn your fucking party out 100% of the time.
Listen To Track Two from Spank Rock’s Couche-Tard Mixtape
Couche-Tard Is Available Exclusively From Turntable Lab by clicking here, but it sells out as fast as it comes in because it’s so damned fresh.
I’d like to start this intolerable rant by giving the giant ‘fuck you shitty magazine’ middle finger to the bathroom-ready Spin Magazine for giving bad reviews to almost every record I’ve liked any songs from in recent memory. I guess when you get paid to write reviews for a living, it’s important to write about stars like Thom Yorke to keep your circulation going. Not that I dislike the Thom Yorke solo album, I just don’t think it’s anything ground-breaking or comparatively interesting. I’ve heard Jeff Buckley and Bjork, I don’t need to hear them filtered through the mouthpiece of a band who’s greatest contribution to music happened 8 years ago or more.
So, obvs, I haven’t been updating on a regular basis and, believe me, it’s not just because I’m hard at work (which I am, mind you). It’s because the middle part of 2006 hasn’t exactly been all that exciting for music. A series of uninspired works have unearthed themselves that don’t bear mentioning in this column. Some might say that I’m jaded or I’m ‘being a hater’. Awwww, puddin’, did I hurt your feelings? I don’t rely on the income from advertisers to my blog in order to survive, so I’m not going to short sheet your musical bed in order to cop a few extra bucks from hawking crap to my readers that I think sucks. If that draws the ire of some who have come to rely on my taste in music, so be it. I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass…..is the name of the new Yo La Tengo album.
I have to think that the lack of inspired sounds stems not from the lack of valiant attempts on the part of musicians out there. It’s a very trying time in my country and my city. The music is reflective of the time from which it comes — war is here and all around us, the cost of everything is going up, and the value of everything is going down. According to the Wall Street Journal, the music business is a lot like the real estate market — that is, overall sales of real estate in the U.S. are down 7% for the 1st quarter of 2006, yet the price of new houses are still on the rise. Sound familiar? Touring bands can’t make any money, venues can’t make any money, records aren’t selling because the industry still releases too much mediocre product, artists can’t afford the cost of gas to get on the road, so the one outlet for musicians to make a living is now being stepped on.
I will say this for Spin Magazine, though — they did have the brains to publish an article about the potential dangers of putting your music on MySpace featuring one of my own heroes Billy Bragg. You do know that when you upload your music to MySpace, you give over your rights to MySpace to use that music for any means that they desire with or without your permission, right? I knew you already knew that, I was just checking! See? Yes, your music can be licensed to film and television, to publishers and CD’s and all kinds of stuff if MySpace wants to do that. Of course, they’re telling everyone that they would never do anything unsavory with your music except allow anyone that connects to MySpace to hear it.
Riiiiiiiight.
So what’s left to do when everything seems to being going to shit and your best friend in developing your craft could turn out to be your worst enemy? Well, keep making music. Duh.
Do you wonder why it is that so many people like Thom Yorke are embarking on solo careers? Why The Who is “reuniting”? Hard times are everywhere, from the Rockefeller Center to the Empire State, from the poverty-stricken inner cities to the beaches of Fire Island and Malibu. If you’re not feeling the pinch, you’re one of the lucky ones. Suddenly, the playing field has been levelled a bit, so the Pinto drivers now have something more in common with the guy who owns the Maserati — because you’re both paying too much for a gallon of gas.
Now you’ve got to stay home and do some work in your bedroom, turn the a/c up on high, sit down with Fruity Loops and your beat up microphone, crank out some jams to end the frustration you’re feeling at not being able to get past that certain point. You’ve got to tune your guitar, spend your savings on the perfect Fender Twin Reverb, put some more RAM in the old laptop and start that project you’ve always wanted to start. Sure there are too many people out there with some musical ability trying to make a living. Sure you know someone who knows someone who knows a guy who is friends with some huge band on MySpace. These are not reasons to quit doing something: these are reasons to start.
Nobody knows what the “next big thing” will be. Nobody’s even sure there is a “next big thing”. One thing everyone does know is that music soothes the savage beast. It tames what is worst inside of all of us and emphasizes what we most want out of the world we live in. Fuck all the bullshit naysayers and haters, fuck all the critics, fuck your parents who don’t like the music you listen to and fuck the parents who listen to the music you like trying to find a way to relate when they don’t know shit about the music or about you because they never bothered to listen until they didn’t like the way you dressed or acted.
Every year can’t be a golden age of music or the arts. Some years just aren’t that good as a whole. There have been some really bright moments in 2006 so far, but it’s hard to put all of those moments into perspective without recognizing that the sum of the parts is really not that amazing. Of the albums on my mid-year list, I can’t tell you how many or which ones I will go back to as time goes by. At least I can’t tell you yet. Only time will tell.
Here’s a list of what I’ve been able to tolerate from this year (so far):
(01) Destroyer - Destroyer’s Rubies
(02) The Knife - Silent Shout
(03) Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
(04) Priestess - Hello Master (Listen to Priestess - Talk To Her)
(05) Camera Obscura - Let’s Get Out Of This Country (Listen to Camera Obscura - Let’s Get Out Of This Country)
(06) Rose Melberg - Cast Away The Clouds (Listen to Rose Melberg -Take Some Time)
(07) J-Dilla Jay Dee - Donuts
(08) Zero 7 - The Garden
(09) Guster - Ganging Up On The Sun (Listen to Guster - Manifest Destiny)
(10) Spank Rock - YoYoYoYoYo
(11) The Futureheads - News & Tributes (Listen To The Futureheads - Fallout)
(12) Midlake - The Trials of Van Ocupanther
(13) The Pipettes - We Are The Pipettes (Listen To The Pipettes - Judy)
(14) Monsters Are Waiting - Fascination (Listen to “Last Goodbye” by Monsters Are Waiting)
(15) Frank Black - Fast Man/Raider Man
(16) Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped (Listen To “Reena” By Sonic Youth)
(17) Boy Kill Boy - Civilian
(18) White Rose Movement - Kick
(19) Juana Molina - Son
(20) Blair Combest - Blair Combest (Listen To Blair Combest -Her Eyes)
I know I’ve been bad about updating. Okay, well…life is happening. But I can’t just abandon the one thing that keeps it all together, can I? Summertime in Memphis is so hot, your feet can’t touch the pavement and nobody wants to move. It’s 103 in the shade, and it’s that swampy, nasty heat that makes you take three showers a day and still feel funky. So, in honor of the funky, nasty heat of summertime, I dug out some of my favorite jams for you to get you in the groove. Some of these you know, some maybe not. Whatever the case, this here is some random funky R&B, soul, and disco tracks that bring cool breezes. Jamaica funk, that’s what it is. I gotta get it into you. Strap on your roller skates, put on your hot pants, get ready to hit the boardwalk with boombox in hand. Summer is here, nothing left to do but dance.
Tom Browne - Funkin’ For Jamaica
Chaka Khan - Clouds
Change - Paradise
Denise LaSalle - I’m So Hot
Bobby Womack - Daylight
Two of these tracks appear on the compilation Journey Into Paradise: The Larry Levan Story which you can, and should, purchase for maximum enjoyment by clicking here and then buying it.
