happy halloween

">diary of a madman

copped this from the allhiphop halloween vids but...spooky good times, you know.
whatever happened to horrorcore?

and ">this really is the best video

Neil and the death of Oink

So apparently there was this site called oink.cd and it was supposed to be greater than Napster in the early days, but I never heard about it until it was shut down. Did you guys? Was it so awesome? Since the authorities stepped in, their site now has a pretty hilarious way of telling you how to get other music for free from the web, like this little tune here, which I found using Google.

If you don't have a copy of this yet, enjoy the riffsmanship.

So that's where Uma Thurmon's jumpsuit came from

Bruce Lee's final battle. He died while making this movie. Intense! Feel free to skip ahead to when the sweet theme music kicks in and Kareem starts bringing the pain.

J. Erwin's Blog

The keyboardist in my band has a great blog here, where he posts full albums and reviews them. Click on the album name to download the tracks.

byrne-in for you

david byrne's journal on the web
pretty much what you'd expect
so awesome

Before you thought about beginning, you didn't

In preparation for their Nov. 6 show at Toad's, I picked up the new Band of Horses album, Cease to Begin, the other day and was pleasantly surprised by both the songs and the packaging. I guess it's been a while since I bought a CD, so it struck me that this one had a series of CD-sized pictures instead of liner notes, all taken by the band's photographer. If one were so inclined, the set might make a tasteful addition to a wall near you. Hadn't seen anything like it, but it's got to be a necessary step in the post-"In Rainbows" era. Add something to the aesthetic experience or just give me the tunes.

As for the music, "The General Specific" and "Detlef Schrempf" are personal favorites in the South-Carolina-by-way-of-Seattle rock genre. Nice, melodic stuff, some of which is named for this former Sonics stud. If this were NBA Jam, he'd be on fire, with Shawn Kemp hooking up a sweet alley-oop.

Still funny

You don't know where you're going you cross the street you don't know why you did you walk back across the street

Why can't a heterosexual guy tell a heterosexual guy that he thinks his booty is fly?

Foux Da Fa Fa

Kohei Yoshiyuki

I stumbled upon one of Yoshiyuki's photos while I was looking into buying a lomography camera. He takes pictures of couples he finds making out in parks. I'm so glad I discovered them because I find them ethereal and touching. An interesting meta-voyeurism is happening in some of them. You can look at more of his photos here.


A recent NY Times article on Yoshiyuki.

In related news, Lomography is currently working with The White Stripes to make Meg and Jack specific versions of the Diana and Holga cameras. I just bought a Holga and I'm really pumped to see what the photos look like.

and also

bat for lashes - whats a girl to do

iron my fitted shirt, dust off my japanese cigarette case

cause tonight outside is all lit up.
in honor of the blog
in honor of rock 'n' roll
in honor of some good times
I'm seein Spoon tonight!
awesome

the band in question on SNL



You got Yr. Cherry Bomb

Smog / Monk

Rock Bottom Riser. Live w/Joanna Newsom.

and

Lulu's Back in Town.

Vintage Britney Spears

Britney used to be a force of nature.

Check out her bod and her moves in this video.

She was SO HOT!

I can't believe what's happened to her. Gimme More is maybe the laziest pop song ever written - thoughts? Can anyone think of a lazier one? Let's limit this to artists who make appearances at the top of the pop charts... meaning citing the band Justin Case, or the elder Duff sister does not count.

Current Britney makes me really upset, and almost want to take back the days when I was a superfan.

And for a hot minute I thought she really was going to have a solid comeback. I was SO WRONG!

Stephen Colbert is a God Among Men

He wrote Maureen Dowd's column today.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/opinion/14dowd.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

In (Fucking) Rainbows

Thoughts? Feelings? Discuss?

Did anyone pay > 0 for it?

Iron & Wine

Iron & Wine's new album The Shephard's Dog is really great.

I associate Iron & Wine with putting me to sleep, but this album has me awake and listening.

I feel just like a child

Last night I saw hippie love god Devendra Banhart at La Zona Rosa in Austin. (No, I didn't wear a dress. Or did I?)

He's been calling his band "Spiritual bonerz" (The z is silent--as he put it: "Its an endless z, therefore silent") but last night they were called both "Sorry we're pancakes" and "The fat boys."

The show was generally great and occasionally transcendent. He started the show soft and very gradually began to melt face. Everyone sang, and he gave a lot of room for folks in his band to play their own songs, some of which were excellent, others not so much. They hit a lot of Santana and Doors-type grooves, and there were a couple harder rocking tunes that blew me away. If anyone in the band was tripping balls (likely), they didn't let it affect their performance.

He did let someone in the audience come up and play a song--"Has anyone here written a song recently they want to share?" It was a cute gesture. Of course the song sucked, but whatevs.

Anyway, if any of y'all haven't checked out Devendra, I recommend giving him a fair shake. His albums are sprawling, and there's always a lot of throw-aways, but his songwriting is more clever than peeps generally give him credit for.

Look at this

and

this.

without much convincing...i was suede

this is old news but i'm listening to a lot of suede lately 
(or the london suede which sounds a bit more sheik if that's possible)
a friend of mine recently made fun of me for how much of a sucker i am for power pop
but if you are similar harken back to the early 90s with me
this and this are fun

i'd say they are SO 90s but rock videos really haven't changed at all since the promos of the 60s
for every 'fell in love with a girl' there are about a thousand bands fakin' the funk in a white room
(ie last strokes video...all strokes videos...the strokes...haha just playin strokes, you know i love you)

what's really unique is the band's dalliance with androgeny!
of course oasis blew up, they did this just less...faggy


i am psyched for darjeeling but also i fear this may be the breaking point at which i finally tire of the quirky-as-fuck world of wes anderson
i was almost groaing watching the trailer
even if i'm disappointed it will likely be in the manner that i think 'walking in your footsteps' is tiresome.  that is to say, still totally enjoyable and awesome by any other standard.

(on a mostly unrelated tip i believed i could not hate the outkast movie idlewild but thought that truly sucked...thoughts? or did it just suck?)

Wain etc.

Today Youtube featured the newest episode of David Wain's internet TV show, Wainy Days. Its funny, but some of the earlier episodes were better. This one features Rob Corddry doing his best David Wain impression.

Related recommendations: The Ten (obvs), Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story (especially the DVD extras).

Unrelated recommendations: The Mike Leigh movie "Naked" (especially the Criterion DVD extras), the most recent Pharoahe Monch record, "Desire" (taste).

Anyone seen the new Wes Anderson movie yet? Anyone excited?

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Daft Punk related recs:

1. my desktop background



2. the band Justice (I'll link it later)

3. Justice's music video for D.A.N.C.E.

Cold blooded clarity

For the past week I've been obsessed with this Smog (Bill Callahan) song called "Cold Blooded Old Times."

Here's a video clip of Callahan and Smog playing it at Emo's in Austin. The quality of the audio is excellent.

My current band is covering this song. For a long time I didn't know where it came from, and referred to it as, "that song with the Sister Ray jam at the end." (We generally jam the shit out of the G/G7 chord for a good 8 minutes at the end, and I usually play the song with mallets.)

Along with the clips of Smog on Youtube, I recommend checking out Bill Callahan's new(est) record, called "Woke on a Whaleheart."

Also, Callahan is dating Joanna Newsom. Add that to your list of power-couples-of-coolness.

These little guys can mellow-rock with the big boys

To assuage your burning anticipation of the new Radiohead album, I recommend you check out this little band from Marblehead called Gears. The lead singer/songwriter/drum programmer used to play in a band called Purpl Kool-Aidwith my cousin when they were in middle and high school. He's gotten much more mature since then.

These tunes--especially "Ask Me Questions"--sound like they were written by a younger version of the older Jeff Tweedy. I mean old as in age, not school. These guys approach songwriting so differently than I would have as a high schooler. My approach was much more about having a chord progression I could jam on long enough to bend my E-string into the stratosphere. These kids use glockenspiel!

P.S. Posting from work=bonus points!