Some Songs Considered

“Game of Pricks (Album Version)” – Guided by Voices
(Words/music: Robert Pollard, available on Alien Lanes, Matador Records 1995)

I spent most of today helping my students finish compiling and editing their creative writing anthology today, so my brain is shot from tweaking fonts and fighting with formatting for most of the day.  Spending a day immersed in teen writing (some really excellent stuff, too) made me think back to the one “gimmick post” I wrote last August.  For whatever reason, Guided by Voices’ “Game of Pricks” inspired me to write a letter to my eighteen year-old self.  It’s that thematic spirit (and my tired brain) that lead me to re-share it today. 

(One note - the original post came with the 7” version, while today I’m posting it with the Alien Lanes version of the song - feel free to click through to the old post to hear the other version!)

Dear Brian,

First, let me say that few things change – you’ll start writing this letter three different times before scrapping the beginning.  It was supposed to start with some clichéd time travel commentary and a lot of “yes, you still like music” guffawing, but you never cared much for it at eighteen and don’t really tolerate it at twenty six, so I’m not sure how I ended up on that path.  You’ll still be a perfectionist and you’ll still try to bend over backwards to cater to others, even if it means blowing it in the first place.

Anyway, the whole point of this is to tell you about a song you’d like.  You don’t know Guided by Voices, but you’ll love them (trust me on this one).  You can look them up, but I’ll say they’re a very prolific band known for making the most of low fidelity recordings.  You know that Pavement record you found in the used bin a little while ago (Terror Twilight)?  They’re kind of like that, but not really.  More like the earlier Pavement albums (which you’ll love too, even more than Terror Twilight).  I’ve sent you the song “Game of Pricks” from an EP they put out in 1995 (although my version of it comes from their 2003 retrospective Human Amusements at Hourly Rates).  Ironically, it’s a cleaner, more streamlined version than the original – you’d probably like the original (from an album called Alien Lanes) once you got over the fact that your friends’ CD-R of cover songs sounds better than that album.  I think it’s something you’d enjoy – catchy, energetic, blistering pop music.  Yes, don’t be afraid of that word “pop” – it doesn’t always denote something on TRL. Also, it’s worth noting that this originally appeared on a 7” vinyl single – in 2009, you’ll have bought more vinyl singles (and a lot more vinyl LPs and MP3 albums) than CDs – but don’t worry about that right now.

Why “Game of Pricks,” you might ask?  I know it sounds like an angry revenge rant, but I see it slightly different.  This, at least in this case, is a song from your to yourself.  Eighteen is a very strange time, and I’m not sure you’ll realize it until you’re closer to my age, and my advice to you is to embrace honesty.   I don’t necessarily mean this in the “don’t lie” sense (because let’s face it, a half-truth saves a lot of trouble from time to time), but rather embracing and accepting reality, and that starts with yourself.  You’re a smart kid, but you’re a little delusional from time to time.  Yes, some of it is naiveté, but a lot of it starts with an understanding of yourself – your strengths, your limits, your friends (or who you want to befriend), your goals (or lack thereof), etc.  It’s very easy to make excuses to yourself, but it will only leave you frustrated and exhausted in the end (it’s a timespace continuum thing, and that’s the best time travel joke you’ll allow yourself).  I’m not saying that being truthful with yourself is the solution to your problems, nor an easy thing to do.  I’m saying what Robert Pollard’s singing in the chorus is kind of right – you owe the truth to yourself, otherwise you’re no better than all those pricks out there.

Anyway, keep your head up – believe it or not, every year gets a little bit better.  I’d write more, but I have a midnight deadline for this letter and I have only a couple minutes left before that time runs out.  Like I said – few things have changed.

See you soon,
Brian

More on Guided by Voices: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Learned to Surf” - Superchunk
(Words/music: Superchunk, available on Leaves in the Gutter EP, Merge Records 2009 / Merge Records 2010 Digital Sampler)

Saturday night’s post on the Strokes marked the 500th different song covered since starting this blog.  These five hundred posts include two I wrote last year as part of a now-defunct feature titled “More Songs Considered.”  This post is the second of those two and ran in a much longer form last July. 

From last July:

It’s now 2009 and Superchunk have reemerged with a new EP and a new single.  “Learned to Surf,” the lead track from the Leaves in the Gutter EP, springs forth with the same energy that inhabits the band’s best work.  I’ve listened to this song dozens of times over the past few months and I’m still in awe of the way it snaps so quickly from that opening riff into the muscular verses.  Drummer Jon Wurster is the secret weapon, particularly for the way he uses his toms efficiently in the first chorus. Rather than barrel through the song, Wurster dances across his kit, making it sound even stronger when he hits full speed.  This doesn’t sound like a band trying to recapture their golden days – this is a band that sounds completely rejuvenated and ready to contribute.

I especially love the sentiment in the chorus - “I stopped swimming and learned to surf.”  At this point, Superchunk could have made ripples by reissuing their albums and touring on old material.  However, true to form, it’s not merely good enough to tread water – Superchunk is back in the ocean and ready to tackle the waves.  It’s a great point about the difference between surviving and remaining vital.  At some point, we all feel like we’re content enough to just keep our heads above water.  However, sometimes we end up in a pattern where we get used to “good enough” and lose sight of getting better.    Once we hit some level of success, it’s easy to feel content and tread water for a while.  In a way, that’s how this blog came about – I’ve been swimming in music for more than half of my life, and it was time that I stopped swimming and learned to surf.  It means falling off my board every so often, but I feel like I’m getting better and (if nothing else) I can spot which waves I want to take in now.  So I can appreciate the risk involved with learning a new trick.  I should be amazed that Superchunk came back sounding as good as ever, but the band’s never been content to settle for treading water.

More on Superchunk: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Lisztomania” - Phoenix
(Words/music: Phoenix, available on Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Glassnote 2009)

Last night, I wrote about my 500th different song counting two extra posts I wrote last year as part of a now-defunct feature called “More Songs Considered.”  I have a longer, more thoughtful acknowledgment of these first 500 posts for tomorrow, but first I wanted to re-post those bonus posts with the song as well.  So here’s an edited version of my thoughts about “Lisztomania” from last May. 

“Lisztomania” demands attention, with the secret to its charm being the rare pop song that sounds meticulously arranged yet still maintains the groove of a looser, sloppier song. Sure, that repetitive guitar riff runs through the songs like its pulse, but it’s a series of tiny embellishments that make the song feel looser.  A few of these elements – the way that the different keyboard parts enter the song and cut out, the way Thomas Mars repeats certain words and syllables, or the way the tom-tom notes in the first verse seem to drop out of nowhere  - make the song seem like a series of happy accidents.  However, every note is intentional and functional, building to create the net effect with only the necessary parts.  In particular, I marvel at the efficient drumming – by keeping the drumming in the verse to the snare, bass drum, and the tom fills, the song feels faster when it’s added in to the chorus even though the tempo remains the same.  Phoenix pulls off all of these tricks with grace and skill, whether it’s dropping the beat right at the start of the chorus or adeptly shifting from one second to the next.

Most importantly, “Lisztomania” radiates fun – it’s hard to listen to the song and not tap along as a minimum.  Only rarely do we get a pop song that’s meticulously arranged, insanely catchy, and feels like it’s being played by a band that’s having fun.  There’s no doubt how comfortable Phoenix is as a band, even when playing to (perhaps) their biggest television audience yet.  I’ve watched this video at least a dozen times and every time I’m amazed at two things.  First, I’m impressed that they can nail a song that relies on precision without sounding entirely stiff.  Additionally, I’m drawn in by the way many of the band members move their feet – they’re bouncing around the stage with an unbridled, natural joy to be performing, and I have to think that this fun translates into their song.  They should have fun too, because they’ve created one of the finest songs of 2009.

More on Phoenix: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm | Twitter

“American Music” – Violent Femmes
(Words/music: Gordon Gano, available on Why Do Birds Sing?, Reprise 1991)

In celebration of Mother’s Day tomorrow, I wanted to repost the one I wrote for Mother’s Day last year (May 10, 2009).  Originally shared with a live version of “American Music,” tonight I will post the album version instead.

My brother and I were born about 20 months apart and according to my mom I rarely slept from my birth until my brother arrived.  My eye for revisionist history loves to spin stories out of this childhood fact, specifically honing in on the fact that when my brother arrived, I moved from a crib to a bed.  Whether using this story as justification for my nocturnal habits in high school or joking that my aversion to my crib was a statement about being “caged in,” I’ll joke about this with my mom when I should probably have more sympathy for her spending late nights with her restless child.  I was born a few months after MTV came on the air, so my mom tells me that she would sit up in the rocking chair with me and watch MTV until I fell asleep.  Again, I’m sure I barely paid attention to the videos, instead pondering the meaning of life or whatever else keeps a baby up late at night.  Still, part of me points to this moment as the groundwork for my musical obsession twelve years later, so to a small degree, I owe my mom for this decision.  I know cable was limited in 1983, but if my mom decided to watch HBO or Johnny Carson whatever else was on late at night, this blog might be about movies or comedy instead of music.

In addition to exposing me to the strange videos on MTV in 1983 (perhaps part of the reason I love VH-1 Classic), my mom always encouraged my musical pursuits, whether it meant sitting through grating middle school band concerts or reading my record reviews in my college newspaper.  When I went back to school to get my masters’ degree and picked up a Saturday morning timeslot on the college’s radio station, my mom would occasionally listen to the station’s internet feed.  On the days she’d listen, she’d tell me the songs that she liked and would occasionally ask me to put some of the songs on her iPod shuffle.  Her favorite, at least gauged by the number of times she would mention it, was “American Music.”  Needless to say, it’s a bit stranger than the Neil Diamond songs I helped her download off of iTunes.  While Gordon Gano writes it from the same slightly askew perspective that made his early songs cult classics, “American Music” bounds like a classic pop song and continues in the tradition of songs that celebrate music.  Even if the songs Gano wrote about those that aren’t quite in step with everyone else (and the ones that “remind me of me” in the song), they still capture an essential part of the human experience – the phase where we don’t quite fit in, mired in awkwardness – the kind of phase where only our mothers could love us.  Even if “American Music” came out in 1991, I’d like to think that somewhere in our late nights together we heard a few Violent Femmes videos on MTV and it made those nights a little less frustrating for her.  I suppose the least I could do to thank her is put a couple songs on her iPod for her and walk her through plugging it in every time the battery runs out, even though she knows how to do it.  After all, she introduced me to American music in the first place.

More on Violent Femmes: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Crazy Mary (live on 120 Minutes)” – Victoria Williams and Lou Reed
(Words/music: Victoria Williams, appears on MTV’s 120 Minutes Live, Atlantic 1998)

Tonight’s post is another one from the archive.  I originally wrote about this version of “Crazy Mary” on January 28, 2009 and heard it today for the first time since then.  Rather than re-run the entire (relatively long) post, I’ve excerpted just the end of the post focusing on her voice.  I’m sure if I had the time I’d want to edit or rewrite a lot of posts, but this would be near the top of my list.

From last January:

I’ve always been struck by how Williams sings the song in this version (from a compilation of live performances on MTV’s now defunct 120 Minutes).  Like many, I first heard Pearl Jam’s version from the original Sweet Relief compilation and they do an admirable job with the song, but Williams tells the story like she lived it first hand.  There’s the clever turn of phrase spelling out “loitering” followed by “a-llowed” and how she enters into a Crazy (Mary)-like shriek near the end of the chorus.  It’s the first verse after the chorus where Williams’ performance makes the story; she quickly speaks the first two lines of the verse (kind of like her duet partner Lou Reed might have done) before leaning into the word “dreaming” just for a split second longer than any other word.  Her voice lifts slightly higher just at the part where the narrator shares her dream of flight into Mary’s home.  At the end of the verse, Mary’s “rising up above” her run down shack, and after hearing how a car crashed into her house in the final verse, it seems like Mary’s ascended from life into the afterlife.  I might be reading too much into the biblical connotation of her name (which would strengthen the O’Connor comparison), but there’s a certain collapsing of the story onto itself at the end as the dream and reality blur.  The lines repeated right after the discovery of the accident – “that what you fear the most / could meet you half way” is vague enough to refer to Mary (who despite her exile from town met her demise from one of the citizens) or the narrator (who empathizes with Mary and thus probably sees something of herself in the demise) but pointed enough to pierce the song open, leaving the scars as a reminder of Mary’s story.

More on Victoria Williams: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm
More on Lou Reed: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Dirty Water” – The Standells
(Words/music: Ed Cobb, available on Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era 1965 – 1968, Sire Records 1972)

Tonight’s post, originally posted April 17, 2009, goes out to my friends in the Boston area.  Yesterday, a major pipe in the city’s water system broke, rendering the drinking water for Boston and surrounding communities undrinkable.  The “boil order” reminded me of one of Boston’s signature songs - the garage rock classic turned Red Sox anthem “Dirty Water.”  This one is for the folks boiling, cooling, storing, and repeating over the next few days.

Before I discovered music, I consumed sports voraciously.  During middle school – those awkward years in the lonely gap between the childhood friends I grew apart from and the teenage friends I was yet to meet – I watched a lot of SportsCenter replays.  I used every opportunity in school to study sports.  I remember carrying an oversized NBA history book in my backpack in sixth grade and writing my eighth grade research paper on the baseball strike.  Even though I lost track of sports for a while in high school (yes, around the same time I started obsessing over music – my in-school reading changed from the 1980s San Francisco 49ers to Sonic Youth’s Confusion is Next biography), I eventually came back around in a more moderate way.  I still have a few moments where music and sports cross paths – I remember going to my first game at Yankee Stadium in high school with my Dad and being excited because I could listen to K-ROCK on my walkman on the bus and in the stands.  Even now that the baseball season’s started back up, I’ll find that during commercials of Mets games on TV, I’ll mute the sound and open up iTunes for a couple songs.

While the Mets have a few solid musical connections (Yo La Tengo, Belle and Sebastian’s song about Mike Piazza, and even Piazza’s affinity for metal), the Boston Red Sox have music woven into the Fenway Park experience.  First, there’s Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” that leads the Sox fans to sing out the “bah bah bah” part in unison (a tradition that the Mets woefully tried to steal).  There’s also the Dropkick Murphys’ “Tessie,” referencing a song that fans of the Boston Americans (later the Red Sox) sang while rooting for their team in 1903.   The Dropkick Murphys wrote the new “Tessie” in 2004 – the same year the Sox made their improbable playoff comeback.

The most interesting of the Fenway music selection, at least to me, is the garage rock classic “Dirty Water,” a song by the Standells.  I don’t know the history of the Standells’ song being played at Red Sox games (let me know in the comments if you do), but I’d like to think someone upstairs at Fenway spins the Nuggets box set of “lost” 60s rock gems.  Aside from it’s obvious lyrical content (“Boston, you’re my home” probably earned this song its place in the Red Sox’s postgame playlist), “Dirty Water” plays as an archetype for the garage rock genre.  The song contains two key elements – the slow moving riff that snakes its way into our brains, and vocalist Dick Dodd’s charismatic performance.  Sure, he’s a little over-the-top, but with such a simple foundation, Dodd has the space to steal the spotlight.  This is the part that many of garage rock’s revivalists missed – most can replicate the straightforward riffs and the aesthetic feel, but too many mistook the idiosyncratic vocals by Dodd and others to mean that they don’t need to sing.  Even if Dodd goes a bit too far (and if the song topped three minutes, I’m not sure I’d let it continue), he deserves credit for charming his way into Boston’s hearts (even though the band was from Los Angeles). As a song for a specific moment (I’m going up to Fenway for a game tonight), “Dirty Water” serves its purpose and lets the crowd revel in the team’s victory.

More on The Standells: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“A Certain Romance” – Arctic Monkeys
(Words/music: Alex Turner, available on Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, Domino 2006)

Today’s post originally ran April 8, 2009.  Tonight I have a family obligation, so there will probably not be a new post until tomorrow.  Enjoy!

Back in January [2009], a Los Campesinos! song helped me come to the conclusion that our personalities may constantly evolve yet always retain some bit of all of our previous stages; in essence, there’s this thread within our evolving selves that runs from our youth well into adulthood.  If nothing else, this was my theory for why youthful energy in songs resonates so powerfully with me.  However, having elements of our youth embedded in our personalities isn’t always advantageous.  Sometimes, these strange things from our past reappear suddenly.  These events, or rather “these people,” aren’t people that we outright disown.  In fact, these are people that we share a lot of history with and are valuable friends even if we don’t see them that often.  However, the problem arises when this person becomes a sort of time capsule; perhaps this person brings out old habits or uncomfortable stories.  However, the worst version of this is when you’ve moved on and grown up and this person, like a time traveler, hasn’t given up his immature ways and become an embarrassment by association.

Alex Turner, the principle songwriter for the Arctic Monkeys, was twenty when this song came out – old enough to have experienced this phenomenon.  In “A Certain Romance,” he offers an explanation for these “time travelers” to his newer friends – these people are crude and ill-tempered, but he counts some of them among his friends.  While he’s quick to point out that they lack “romance,” Turner also makes sure to qualify his description with a slight admiration for their lack of pretension and ruthless authenticity.  It’s a tricky balancing act – Turner’s narrator tries his best to give respect to his hooligan friends while still distancing himself from their violent behavior.  Rather than come to a clear resolution, Turner treats the situation with a nod and a wink and hopes that we’ll recognize his predicament and let it slide without further comment.

Alternately, “A Certain Romance” works as a commentary on Turner’s contemporaries.  They’re too concerned with the immediate moment, whether it’s with fashion concerns, settling grudges, or engaging in hedonism, to look at the big picture.  Everything becomes a quest for status, whether it’s updating your ringtone or vanquishing the guy looking at you strange.  Turner respects their right to be different, and the wistful quality to his voice makes it seem like he either envies or pities their existence.  Chances are that it’s a mix of the two – wishing he could subsist on simple pleasures yet mourning the fact that he can’t convince them to go beyond the moment.  Instead, these friends provide constant opportunities to look inwards and question whether ignorance (or social ignorance, in this case at least) truly is bliss.

More on Arctic Monkeys: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam” – The Vaselines
(Words/music: Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee, available on The Way of the Vaselines: A Complete History, Sub Pop 1992)

Today’s song is a repost from March 25, 2009.  The selection is somewhat tongue-in-cheek due to the title on Easter, but it’s always worth hearing, especially if you only know the Nirvana version.  

I feel guilty starting this entry with a reference to Nirvana, but without Kurt Cobain’s repeated championing of the Vaselines, most of the world would not know them.  It makes sense that Cobain would be a fan, as the Vaselines shared the same love of wry, sometimes noisy pop music that Cobain rode to fame.  Throughout The Way of the Vaselines (which is being rereleased as Enter the Vaselines in May 2009), Kelly and McKee explore some strange sounds (the bike horn on “Molly’s Lips” being one of my favorites) yet always retain a sense of song structure.  It made sense that Nirvana would cover some of these songs on early singles and perform them faithfully (although, they played them a bit louder).  Still, it’s “Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam” from the MTV Unplugged in New York that pays the most loving homage to the band.  The Unplugged performance contained a lot of off beat covers (including a mini Meat Puppets’ set with actual members of the band performing with Nirvana), but it’s the Vaselines song and Cobain’s matter-of-fact introduction that stands out as a moment of pure reverence to a song (and band) that he admired.

The Nirvana version does the original (which the Vaselines would later rename to add in the “doesn’t” from the song’s first line), especially the string melody recreated by Krist Novoselic’s accordion.  The song, a parody of a children’s hymn, skillfully toes the line between poking fun at the original and standing on its own.  Even without knowing the original hymn, the song stands as an ode to being imperfect.  The narrator accepts his shortcomings and acknowledges that he’s not “sunbeam” material, yet he refuses pity.  While the song feels a little sad, I’ve always heard the chorus as a frank acceptance of the narrators’ imperfections, preferring to be taken as is rather than pitied for being flawed.  It’s the kind of song, one composed by a couple of melodically inclined outsiders, that Cobain, the quintessential outsider, would be drawn to, and it probably explains why he produces such a stirring performance.

More on The Vaselines: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Hopeless” – The Wrens
(Words/music: The Wrens, available on The Meadowlands, Absolutely Kosher 2003)

(Tonight’s post is another one from the archive - originally posted on February 24, 2009.  Still, it will be a “new” post for most of you.  Back to new posts tomorrow!)

Every six months or so, I put on The Meadowlands as a strange sort of challenge – not a challenge to my personal taste or to figure it out, but rather a challenge to the album’s near mythical status.  Every so often, something will make me think of the Wrens – a passing news mention on Pitchfork, a band dubiously compared to them, or even just a track popping up into my iTunes party shuffle.  Almost every time, I think the same thing – “there’s no way The Meadowlands is as great as everyone claims.”  Usually, I only pose these questions once and I’m content with being right or wrong.  However, I ask myself this question almost like clockwork, and every time I put The Meadowlands on, I’m convinced all over again.  The songs pull the band in different directions, but in a way that avoids cheap genre experimentations.  Instead, The Meadowlands adopts different modes in order to tell different stories – like many of the great pop bands before them, The Wrens take risks not for the sake of being edgy or playful, but rather to create a very specific sonic effect for their listeners.

The songs on The Meadowlands display the band’s diverse sonic pallet (often within the same song), but it’s the slowly building “Hopeless” that stands out the most for me.  A five note guitar figure runs through the entire song, ranging from the clean plucks the beginning to the overdriven rush in between verses.  It serves as an anchor for the song, letting different instruments enter and exit in the different parts of the song.  Sometimes, the guitars dominate and rush to the front of the mix, while at other points the piano or drums move to the head of the pack.  Still, the song moves along at a steady clip – musically, the band sounds more resentful and angry than hopeless or despondent. Lyrically, Charles Bissell sounds like a man hardened by heartbreak, as he promises “oh no, not this time” in the very first line of the song, later claiming to be the one “used and used to just about anything you would tell me.  When I think of “hopelessness,” I also think of helplessness.  Instead, the song is only hopeless in the sense that the narrator seems resigned to the fact that a past relationship is beyond repair.  However, the time to sit at home and mope appears to be in the past, as he sounds confident and convinced to learn from this experience, the same sort of resolve that this powerful arrangement conveys as well.

More on The Wrens: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Dirty Old Town” - Ted Leo
(Words/music: Ewan MacColl, appears on “Tell Balgeary, Balgury is Dead” EP, Lookout! 2003)

(In honor of the new Ted Leo and the Pharmacists album The Brutalist Bricks, I’d like to re-run the story of when I first met Ted Leo in February 2003.  This post originally ran on January 7, 2009.  Back to new posts tomorrow!)

I’ve been blessed to have been involved with college radio while earning both of my degrees (first at WDOM in Providence, later at WQAQ in Connecticut), and it was (and continues to be) an important factor in my ever evolving musical taste. This post, however, isn’t my love letter to college radio (that comes with a different song) but rather a reflection of my favorite experience as a DJ.

I was fortunate enough to meet and interview Ted Leo during February 2003, right after the Hearts of Oak album came out (and right after I discovered his music). It was a surreal experience for a college sophomore to have to plan questions and interview someone who would be on Conan O’Brien later that week. From the moment that we helped Ted cart in his amplifier and guitar case (the same ones he still uses years later), it was apparent that Ted was almost as grateful to have the opportunity to appear on our modest station as we were to have him come to us. Through all sorts of stumbling blocks – our station’s faulty heater (it didn’t work a lot that winter), a less than vegan friendly cafeteria, his nagging vocal chord problems, and my nervous propensity to mix metaphors (he signed a poster with one of my quotes - “top to bottom, front to back” - my attempt to complement the body of songs on Hearts of Oak), Ted remained upbeat, enthusiastic, and completely engaging. We had Ted on for an hour or so – a mix of discussions about ska music, going to Catholic school, listening to New Order, and other topics with about half a dozen performances of songs from The Tyranny of Distance and Hearts of Oak. By the end of the afternoon, everyone in the room not only became fans of his music, but became fans of the man. In addition to his kindness and wit, Ted’s personal ethics shine through everything he does. Few contemporaries champion their causes as earnestly and completely and it seems that he has time to play on behalf of people and causes that he supports (for example, playing a benefit for a local punk rock promoter who recently passed away).

“Dirty Old Town” was the last song that Ted played that day, introducing it as a “song for the city of Providence.” I didn’t know the song (I hadn’t discovered The Pogues at that point), but I was struck by how he sang someone else’s song with the same passion and conviction that he sang his own songs. Looking back at that day nearly six years later, I have two prevailing thoughts. The first is the refreshing realization that the people that we’re fans of are fans themselves. It’s clear that Ted has a passion for music (look at the wide body of cover songs in his repertoire – in particular the obscure songs he’s playing on his recent solo tour) and that even to this day he remains a fan. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I’ve learned that songs don’t belong exclusively to their authors – they belong to us all. We all have our own unique memories associated with individual songs – sometimes shared, sometimes private – and that some songs immediately can immediately bring us back to a specific place or time. I’m not sure what Ted Leo thinks of when he hears Shane MacGowan sing “Dirty Old Town,” but this song will always make me think back to that afternoon in Providence where I got to interview one of my favorite musicians.

More on Ted Leo: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

Very sad to hear about !!! percussionist Jerry Fuchs’ passing this weekend.  My thoughts are with his family and friends.

From Juan MacLean’s blog:

Jerry was one of my best and most loyal friends. He was hands-down the best drummer I have ever played with or seen for that matter. Jerry was with me from the start of The Juan MacLean, and we had countless adventures together all over the world. He was utterly sincere and fiercely loyal. During a particularly difficult time, while backstage in a club in Chicago, Jerry told me “Juan, I will follow you to the end of the earth and I will always be there for you.” That was Jerry, the greatest drummer in the world, the greatest friend you could ever have.

Originally posted (appropriately, while I was in Chicago) 14 July 2009 (tonight’s post in progress):

somesongsconsidered:

“All My Heroes are Weirdos” - !!!
(Words/music: !!!, available on Myth Takes, Warp 2007)

Lately, I feel like I’ve been paying a lot of attention to formative songs in my personal listening history.  It’s strange referring to these important musicians as “heroes” when I’m not writing or (currently) performing music, but there’s a definite element of admiration involved.  If nothing else, I admire their innovation – at least innovation in the sense that many of my favorites willfully went outside of their comfort zone.  Whether it’s through risk-taking or pushing the envelope, these are reminders that excellence often requires to step out of our comfort zone.  I’ve been told (more when I was younger) that these people produced “weird music,” and I think this is the reason they captivated me in the first place.  Even if I never got around to starting that noise rock band, there’s a strange comfort in watching something beautiful come out of something unconventional.

!!! pay homage to odd idols appropriately by turning a cacophony of jarring sounds into a fluid groove.  They play funk like a rusty bicycle – some of the parts might not please the senses, but together it’s a machine that moves adeptly as it weaves in and out of traffic.  Among others, the Talking Heads’ glitch-funk from the Remain in Light era serves as a prominent touchstone of weirdness.  Like the ‘Heads, !!! try to cloud the core of the song in an unconventional fog.  However, like their weird heroes, the groove cuts right through, letting the freak-show flood light illuminate the dance floor for the rest of us.

More on !!!: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm