Could it be?

My blood pressure spiked today. Reports are coming in that Led Zeppelin is hitting the road on a reunion tour next year and by Led Zeppelin, I mean Jimmy, Robert, John and Jason (John's son). There is a reason why the Led Zep website's URL for the O2 show back in Dec 07 is "/reunion" - I think Jason is legit - he's family.

I first heard this rumor last Saturday - that John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page were in the studio rehearsing with Jason Bonham along with a mystery vocalist for a possible 09 tour. It made sense to me: Jimmy and John were tight when they played with Dave Grohl back in June but where was Robert?

On the Led Zep Reunion Tour, The Sun reports that,

They even rehearsed with stand-in singers — and one American was so impressive they were confident they could hit the road next year without Plant. That was what finally persuaded him to return. A source revealed: “The rest of the band had all but given up on Robert joining them, but they were determined to go ahead so had started to seriously explore other avenues. When Robert realized the band were serious about doing it without him, it made him think long and hard.

NME and MTV are quoting piece in the Sun but nothing official has been reported as of yet. In a New Yorker review I mentioned back in December, Sasha Friere-Jones mentioned,

"Rumors have floated that next summer Led Zeppelin is going to play at the Bonnaroo Music Festival, in Tennessee. This might seem like a good idea, but Led Zeppelin is a cover band now, covering its own material. Without John Bonham, the band can only sound like Led Zeppelin; it can’t be Led Zeppelin. The band should turn down the money and let its record stand."

That sounded really good at the time, especially when she had been at the show and I was merely reading about it and wishing I had been there, but now I am thinking that maybe it would be a good idea for me to see them in person and see if I agree with her, you know, see what the facts on the ground are. That would probably be best for all those involved.

Via Keith

Foo News

Two huge developments from Foo land. Working backwards, Foo Fighters have decided to take a holiday. It seems they want a break - and after 14 years of ass kicking music, they deserve one. I'm looking forward to them coming back better and badder than before. When Phish returned after their hiatus, they were rocking before Trey's drugs got in the way and I have no doubt that Grohl and Co. can pick up where they left off.

Where did they leave off? By kicking ass and taking names in England, that's where. One of their last shows was on June 8 when the Foos played Wembley Stadium and at the 55 minute mark it got very interesting as Dave said,

"Playing here at Wembley Stadium is the fuckin....its an honor...and if we take advantage of this opportunity, the greatest fucking night in our bands' lives, to do something special, for you motherfuckers, all you 86,000 motherfuckers who came out to see us play tonight...

\We knew from the beginning that this wasn't going to be any other show. We've been planning this shit for fucking six months, a long time - we knew that, this country, you guys, you made us the band that we are today...

So we'd like to invite a couple very special guests: Mr. Jimmy Page and Mr. John Pual Jones from LED ZEPPELIN!"

They played "Rock n Roll" and "Ramble On" (though only "Rock n Roll" for some reason made it onto the MSN site - more on that in a bit) and while Grohl was no Plant / Bonhaim (yes Dave jumped behind the skins for R n R) and Hawkins was no Plant / Bonhaim that definitely was not the point.

The point was that in the English National Cathedral (Westminster Abby is only it by a technicality), the Foo Fighters were able to play homage to and along with two of their childhood heroes. Led Zeppelin inspired them to start playing music in the first place. Grohl and Page rocking it out - down right sick. It really happened. Ka is a wheel.

The Foos were so fired up about the show after it was over that they quickly edited together a concert movie (the show was filmed by multiple cameras) and released it in 50 theaters in the UK. If it ended there I wouldn't have known about it. Luckily for those who do not live in the UK, MSN picked it up and has had it on their site since July 17.

Yes, so I'm two months behind time times and it took me looking up news about the Foo break up "rumor" to learn that this collaboration even took place. Then again, before I even get into my eternal "am I slipping?" debate which I seem to air anytime anything cool escapes my immediate notice, this event didn't happen in NYC so its not like I could have gone. Therefore, I'm just glad I found about it now and not a year from now. I'm also glad I can pass it on to you.

RO is my second favorite Zep song (it comes after "Stairway" - duh) but again, for some odd reason the Foo / Zep version, it didn't make it up on MSN, very odd especially since the song is on the concert DVD. That just means I have to buy the DVD now (though I'm not sure if it will play as the country code will be different). Is it legal to grab a bit torrent stream of the show if I own the DVD and it won't play in my Region 1 players? Hmmm. I just love our stupid copyright laws...

Regardless, whenever I get around to waiting all 18 tracks, not just the 13 tracks that are on the MSN site, I'm sure they will be classified as "kick ass."

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed & Something Phish

For those who wake up each day and pray that Phish gets back together like yesterday, the fact that they reunited Sat, 9/5 to play a three song set at the wedding of former road manager Brad Sands might be considered a good omen. Then again, this could be like Led Zeppelin playing Live Aid in 1985.

Via Dave

A SpOOOnful of Sugar

Lately I have been joining all sorts of music sites, like Last.fm and Imeem, because I am obsessed with not just sticking to my status quo. I gotta tell you though, it's tough finding good new stuff. First off, the radio aside from 101 RXP sucks and only plays either crap or songs I already have heard ten to a hundred times. Second, I don't have as much time as I used to to just troll around online looking for gems on e-Music or somewhere in the Amazon / iTunes catalog nether regions. None of the sites I've joined do a good job of recommending new music.

So, I was pretty jazzed when I heard about a new music site called SpOOOnful. It has a pretty simple concept which is perfectly suited for my way of life right now. They send out a free weekly email newsletter that:

"introduces you to one great new artist or band at a time. You’ll get a preview of what they sound like as well as links to buy a track, a whole album, even get out to a show. We hope to turn you on to some new sounds from across many genres including indie rock, singer-songwriter, dance/ electronica, hip-hop, and jam.

The best part of this site is that they say they will "never accept money for our editorial opinions and we’re not affiliated with any record label. Most importantly, we’re going to keep it simple and easy."

e-Music sends me a newsletter and while I read it, it's all over the place - a classic case of too much information. SpOOOnful on the otherhand is focused and already paying benefits as its very first newsletter turned me on to Santogold whose song L.E.S. Artistes has been keeping me grooving for a week now.

Yes, the three capital O's in the name reek of Web 2.0 nonsense and yes, I'm just dying for looming "Uma meet Oprah, Oprah - Uma" moment when SpOOOnful recommends something by Spoon. That being said, I'm really looking forward to seeing what is dished up as time goes by and I feel that overall if you care about music, this site is definitely for you. As the Tick says:

A Bon Ton Led Zep Review

Stairway to Here, a Led Zeppelin returns review in the NYer, by Sasha Frere-Jones is a quality review of the show. The genius of the piece is that she pens a turn of phrase that quite effectively sums up how I feel about the band: "My affection for Led Zeppelin is limitless and somewhat irrational."

I wish I had thought to say it that way. She also has a blog post about the Led Zep show as well.

The Rock Gods Return

On the outskirts of London yesterday, Led Zeppelin completely and utterly destroyed the rock landscape for the first time since I was a little lad. I was not there. I thought I would be okay with not being one of the supremely lucky 20k people who were on the inside but reading the reviews, viewing the photos, seeing the set list...let's just say that I am super & seriously sad that I did not see it live. Now I'm I am dying for either the DVD or a tour to arrive immediately. Immediately meaning yesterday.

In terms of learning what when down across the pond, you could turn to the UK Times has a good review and our own NYT has a decent review as well. So does New Music Express. I'm waiting some other good music publications to post their reviews. When they do, I'll update the site.

12/11 UPDATE: The Rolling Stone review is quite good.

In terms of pics, the NYT has an okayslideshow of photos from in and around the Ahmet Eretugan tribute show. Rolling Stone has a decent one too. By later today, a few hundred other news outlets will as well and again, if they are worth noting, I'll update this post.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll be listening to Zep a lot in the upcoming days... ["When the Levee Breaks" is on right now]

DRM is Going Down!

DRM stands for digital rights management, aka the utter bullshit that companies use to "protect" their content from the very people who gave them money for said content in the first place. DRM sucks and not just because the song/show/movie you bought will only play on certain "approved" device(s) - there are about 10 other good reasons why it sucks which I'm not going get into in this post. Not only do most music consumers hate the very idea of DRM, now music industry professionals are going on the record against this failed idea as well.

For instance, Ian Rodgers, the Head of Yahoo! Music, the #1 music destination on the web, stated two weeks ago that he won't spend a single dollar more on DRM. As he so eloquently put it,

"In the end you get what you pay for. I won’t spend another dime paying engineers to build false control, making listening to music harder for music-lovers. I will put all of my energy into making it easier and making the experience better. I suggest you do the same."

Now for a little history about this whole nonsense: DRM became "hot" due to the Napster and P2P phenomenon which caught publishers by complete surprise. Their only strategy for the last 8 years has been to circle the wagons and go into lock down mode while they try to figure out how to take advantage of this new digital landscape. I do not use "take advantage" lightly; what the music publishers have done over this almost decades worth of time is take advantage of their customers, by first rolling out poorly thought out and poorly executed DRM strategies and then by trying to get everyone to use subscription based models - you don't own any music, you just "lease" it - to make as much money as they can.

eMusic has always known what users want and has allowed them to buy DRM free MP3s since they first launched their site years ago. However, the eMusic song catalog has always been limited to the lesser (though still good) known acts of the world which has been one of its main drawbacks. The other main drawback is that you can only buy a package, like 30 tracks in a month for $9.99, and not individual songs from eMusic. So, I like the site but I don't love it.

Apple then got on the bandwagon a few months back by starting to sell DRM free songs in its iTunes store at a premium, which was a step in the right direction but still annoying and not just because Apple basically hid (from a information architecture / usability point of view) this whole DRM free section of the site. As an aside, I have been buying tracks off of iTunes for a while now - mostly because my wife keeps getting gift certificates to the iTunes store so hey, why not right? I love the store but hate the rights managed AAC format. This means that some of my great music can only be played on an iPod. While I do have an iPod now, who knows what the future brings? Being locked into a certain device in order to listen to music I bought and paid for is aggravating and upsetting. Trying to find the new DRM free iTunes tracks is almost as aggravating. Almost.

Then, just about a month ago things got very interesting. Amazon, praise Jesus, rolled out their DRM free MP3 store and hallelujah, there is a real player out there who can honestly compete with iTunes (i.e. the store has over 2 million songs) . Say it with me the way that Marv Albert says it: "Yesss!"

Finally, a major store exists that sells you a product that you, not they, control. You give them money. They give you control. I'm so in love with this new store and the idea of being able to buy individual DRM free MP3s from major artists that I even posted a small banner on my site to the new Amazon MP3 store to try and help our their business. Go check out their store and buy a track while you are at it - it will only cost you a buck (or less).

The even better news is that Amazon is being taken quite seriously. Apple has cut the costs for their DRM free music and I bet that these types of track will become easier to find / more heavily promoted as well.

Y!'s Mr. Rodgers said, "Convenience wins, hubris loses" and I hope he is right.

Zep is going Digital

At long last, Led Zeppelin is going to sell their music archive in a digital format. This event is coinciding with the release of the new Led Zep box set and will only stoke the crazy enthusiastic fan fires that have been burning bright ever since the group announced that they are playing as a band again for a one time only tribute concert in honor of Ahmet Ertegun (which I didn't get tickets to - boo hoo - but neither did about 998,000 people).

Led Zeppelin is known for not licensing their music, and knowing this, Richard Linklater filmed a plea by actor Jack Black in front of 1,000 screaming fans, imploring the band to let the film production use the "Immigrant Song" in the movie. The plea worked and the filmed request is included on the DVD. Said Randall Poster, a music supervisor on the film, “It’s a very special thing to have one in your movie. “It’s the holy sound of the temple of rock.”

Via Jessie

Stronger in Many Ways

Mr. "I've got a permanent beef with MTV" Kayne West is super hot and winning his album selling contest against 50 Cent because he took the beat from Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger and created a monster hit called "Stronger." This song is my current favorite hip-hop tune by very wide margin. If you haven't heard it yet, you are living in a cave.

For instance, it's so popular that 30 Seconds to Mars covered "Stronger" in a really decent way on BBC Radio 1's Jo Whiley show. You have to listen to some other music from the program but its worth it. You can skip ahead - the song is played about 25 minutes into the program.

Aside from the awesome opening of "Let's get lost tonight - You can be my black Kate Moss tonight," the start of the chorus is what I truly love about the song. The lyrics are, "N-now th-th-that that don't kill me - Can only make me stronger" which paraphrases an ultra famous Nietzsche quote - "Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger" - which also happened to be my high school year book quote.

The idea that as long as you are alive, you can rise above and get past whatever life throws at you has been a guiding principal in my life. It has helped me get over and get past a lot of bad shit over the years. Not only are the words powerful on their own, but with the added bumping bass and catchy Kayne lyrics, I see listening to this song as the aural equivalent of slamming down two freshly brewed cups of espresso.

Trent Says "Steal It"

Trent Reznor is still pretty pissed off at his record label for price gouging on his latest CD, Year Zero. At a recent concert, he said:

"Has anyone seen the price come down? Okay, well, you know what that means - STEAL IT. Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin'. Because one way or another these motherfuckers will get it through their head that they're ripping people off and that that's not right."

NIN's contract with Universal is almost up. It should be interesting to see what he's going to do as an independent artist.

Feel free to watch the clip below.

Via K-Rock

One Last Swan Song

Break out the air raid sirens and stop the presses or whatever you say in this digital age: Led Zeppelin will perform together for the first time in 19 years on Nov. 26, at London's The O2 venue, on the banks of the River Thames to raise money for Ahmet Ertegun's Education Fund. Run on sentence be damned: Led Zep is back!

The lineup is what it should be: singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist John Paul Jones and drummer Jason Bonham (John's son). The Who's Pete Townshend, Bill Wyman, Foreigner and young Scottish singer Paolo Nutini — the last British act Ertegun signed — will also play at the tribute concert.

I am not hording this info due to the fact that tickets are only available via a random selection process involving ballots. You can enter by going to the concert's site. I pray that fate smiles upon me and I somehow am selected with a golden ticket, or ballot in this case, because there is no stopping me from going if that happens. After I get my ballot, I hope that ka's wheel rolls in your direction as well.

"New" Led Zep In November

Mothership, a two-CD compilation of 24 remastered tracks culled from all eight Led Zeppelin studio albums is scheduled to be released on November 13th 2007 on the Atlantic/Rhino records label. The tracklist was handpicked by surviving Zep members Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones and will boast such signatures as Whole Lotta Love, Stairway to Heaven, Kashmir, Dazed and Confused and Rock and Roll.

Mothership will be offered in multiple media configurations:

• Standard Package – 2-CD set.
• Deluxe Edition – 2-CD/ 1-DVD featuring a 90-minute, premiere-version of the "Led Zeppelin" DVD.
• Collector's Edition – 2-CD/1-DVD ultra-deluxe, collectible limited edition.
• Vinyl Edition – 4 LPs, high-end, audiophile quality vinyl with collectible memorabilia.

Also scheduled to be released the same day is a new DVD version of the concert film The Song Remains the Same, in 5.1 surround sound and expanded to include all 14 songs that were performed during the 1973 Madison Square Garden shows in NYC. Among the extras are performances of Misty Mountain Hop, Over The Hills and Far Away, Celebration Day, and The Ocean; a 1976 BBC interview of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant and a Cameron Crowe radio show.

TSRTS will also be offered in multiple media configurations:

• Deluxe Edition DVD.
• Deluxe Edition HD DVD and Blu-ray.
• Limited Collector's Edition – A 2-disc set which will include a collectible vintage T-shirt with original album artwork design, Soundtrack CD, lobby cards, reproductions of original premiere invites, tour schedule, and more.

"We have revisited 'The Song Remains The Same'," says Jimmy Page, "and can now offer the complete set as played at Madison Square Garden. This differs substantially from the original soundtrack released in 1976, and highlights the technical prowess of Kevin Shirley, who worked with us on 'How The West Was Won'. When it comes to 'The Song Remains The Same', the expansion of the DVD and soundtrack are as good as it gets on the Led Zeppelin wish list."

Get the full track listing after the break. Depending on how much they cost, I actually want the collectors editions and even though this is Led Zep, I cannot believe I'm making that statement.

"Mothership" Track Listing:

Disc One:

01. Good Times Bad Times
02. Communication Breakdown
03. Dazed And Confused
04. Babe I'm Gonna Leave You
05. Whole Lotta Love
06. Ramble On
07. Heartbreaker
08. Immigrant Song
09. Since I've Been Loving You
10. Rock And Roll
11. Black Dog
12. When The Levee Breaks
13. Stairway To Heaven

Disc Two:

01. Song Remains The Same
02. Over The Hills And Far Away
03. D'Yer Maker
04. No Quarter
05. Trampled Under Foot
06. Houses Of The Holy
07. Kashmir
08. Nobody's Fault But Mine
09. Achilles Last Stand
10. In The Evening
11. All My Love

"The Song Remains The Same" track listing:

Disc One:

01. Rock And Roll
02. Celebration Day
03. Black Dog (including Bring It On Home)*
04. Over The Hills*
05. Misty Mountain Hop*
06. Since I've Been Loving You*
07. No Quarter
08. The Song Remains The Same
09. Rain Song
10. The Ocean*

Disc Two:

01. Dazed And Confused
02. Stairway To Heaven
03. Moby Dick
04. Heartbreaker*
05. Whole Lotta Love

Further details and Pre-Order information will be provided soon.

Brian "The Astrophysist" May

I loved Brian May, the lead guitarist from "Queen" before but now I love him even more. It seems that being a rock god isn't enough for him: he wants to finish the astrophysics degree which he put aside when "Queen" started to take off. While his thesis is titled "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud," I know I would enjoy it more if somehow he worked in "Under Pressure" or "Another One Bites The Dust" into the title.

Read more after the jump.

Brian May is completing his doctorate in astrophysics, more than 30 years after he abandoned his studies to form the rock group Queen.

The 60-year-old guitarist and songwriter said he plans to submit his thesis, "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud," to supervisors at Imperial College London within the next two weeks.

May was an astrophysics student at Imperial College when Queen, which included Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor, was formed in 1970. He dropped his doctorate as the glam rock band became successful.

Queen were one of Britain's biggest music groups in the 1970s, with hits including "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "We Will Rock You."

After Mercury's death in 1991, May recorded several solo albums, including 1998's "Another World." But his interest in astronomy continued, and he co-wrote "Bang! The Complete History of the Universe," which was published last year.

He was due to finish carrying out astronomical observations at an observatory on the island of La Palma, in Spain's Canary Islands, on Tuesday, the observatory said.

May told the British Broadcasting Corp. that he had always wanted to complete his degree.

"It was unfinished business," he said. "I didn't want an honorary Ph.D. I wanted the real thing that I worked for."

I'm Slipping

Paul McCartney played a secret and free show at the Highline Ballroom yesterday and I missed it. I have all the time in the world right now to sit and wait on a line for tickets yet knowledge of this show escaped my usual network of sources and I only found out about it today after the fact. Sure, it was only announced on his web site but still, come on - at this point either my minions or I should have been able to sniff this show out. He played 20 songs, a mix of Beatles songs and songs from his new album Memory Almost Full and from what I've seen in the "Watch" section of his site (where you can view clips of the the show), he sounded and looked great. And I missed it. Doh!

I wrote about a site called Tour Filter back in March of this year and how I was hoping not to "slip" anymore regarding rock shows because of this site. However, I wasn't tracking Paul McCartney on TourFilter - probably because his last tour's tickets started at $5,000 each (okay, I exagerated a tiny bit). I wonder when Tour Filter picked up on the show...

Regardless, in order for this to not happen again, I plan on now doing 3 things: add every single band I like to my Tour Filter profile, add these bands as my friend at MySpace (if they have a profile there) and sign up for their mailing lists from their own personal web sites. I would suggest you do the same except then maybe you'll snag my ticket in the future so instead I say simply do what you want. Only time will tell to see if I "slip" again in the future...

Via Dave

One Woman Bands Repeating Loop Style

I love one man bands - especially this one guy in the subway that somehow plays 8 instruments at once (he is around Grand Central a lot) - but had no clue that one of the catchier songs I've heard in the past year or so - KT Tunstall's "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" - was made by taping and playing back self made repeating sound loops while singing and performing over them.

My buddy Chris posted an entry about how Imogen Heep makes music this way and on that post, someone left a comment saying that KT did that repeating loop thing too but that Imogen's song is better.

I think both are really, really cool and impressive. I love the idea and execution. This is the digital era's version of the one man band, something much easier to pull it off in a studio than live. For instance, Trent Reznor is Nine Inch Nails until he tours. It is then that his group of 1 must become a group of many but these women pull off this live loop-style solo without a hitch. I won't judge one versus the other because they are different types of sounds/songs. Why don't you be the judge?

KT Tunstall performing her song "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" live:

Imogen Heap's performing her song "Just For Now" live:

Pretty cool, huh?

Via Chris

"I Love You More Than..."

Sarah Silverman is one of the hottest comics around right now. Some people love her. Some hate her. I'm on the fence - sometimes I think she's great and other times I think she is just being offensive for no reason (which I know is part of her charm and her style of humor - I just don't love it). The video for her song "I Love You More Than..." below though is decently funny, but its there is one part I just love because I feel the same way: "Jewish people driving German cars. Jewish people driving German cars. Jewy people buying German cars. What the cock is that shit?"

Check it out:

Via Chris

Dumb Lyrics, Catchy Tunes

Everyone has a pop song they love even though they hate it. I have two in my life right now and have decided to share my pain if you will because maybe these songs are inflicting you with delight and grief as well.

First off, I recently was in Reykjavik and heard for the first time Fergie's "Glamorous" as I had a drink or two before departing into the night air. I then proceeded to hear it over and over again through my stay there. Now, over two weeks later I still can't get that song out of my head. Yes, I've bought it from iTunes. In case you don't know, Iceland is ridiculously expensive so the song's chorus of "if you ain't got no money take yo broke ass home!" is especially apt for a trip theme song. Just like how Ithaca is gorges or gorgeous to some (depending on your preferred spelling), Iceland is glamorous to me. Someone please make it stop - I hear Fergie in my head now at weird moments...

Second, I do not listen to the radio unless I'm driving - which only happens maybe one out of every two weekends these days - yet I've noticed that "This Is Why I'm Hot" by Mims seems to be on every channel seemingly all the time. Overall, I think the song is just plain awesome. For someone with a creative writing degree, who loves language, who loves semantics and the nuances of vocabulary, this song's brazen straight ahead take on life is awesome in its ferocity. For instance, "I'm hot 'cause I'm fly/You ain't 'cause you not." is flat out brilliant. The nature in which this powerful message is compacted is akin to Einsteins E = M * C squared equation. Thankfully for me, the Village Voice has a great analysis of all the reasons why Mims is hot. I've read it and find much credence in its findings. Read for yourself and enjoy - it's pretty damn funny - and yes, I bought that single as well from iTunes.

Sad Kermit

To start off, ever since video sites started to provide embed code that makes it super easy for someone to add video to their site, I have been adding video left and right to my site. I hope it has improved things at WGTCTIP2 - I think it has...

In keeping with my trend of adding video, the little video of Kermit singing "Hurt" by NIN (one of my favorite NIN songs) below is pretty damn funny. It's not "ha ha" funny but if Johnny Cash can sing it (he did so on his 'American IV' album) why not Kermit? Unlike J-Cash, he curses! Johnny changed "crown of shit" to "crown of thorns" but Kermie had no problem dropping the S bomb which makes the entire video worth viewing. The person who does Kermie's voice is okay - not great - but good enough. Enjoy!

Via Phyll

Keeping Track of Your Bands Is Tough To Do

Or at least it used to be. That problem will hopefully be a relic of the past now that there is Tour Filter.

I for one am one of those people who gets tunnel vision from time to time and with all of my various responsibilities (job, school, etc) tunes out a lot of the outside world. This results im me sometimes only finding out last minute (sacrilege!) that my favorite band is either in town or even worse just played somewhere really cool and I missed it. I've felt like a complete schmuck; one example is when I learned that learned Robert Plant played Irving Plaza the previous week, that he was playing the Beacon the following night with tickets obviously soldout (how did this happen?!?) which left me scrounging around craigslist last minute and lamenting the lost chance to see him at Irving. While I got tickets to the Beacon show, it was stressful and annoying - two words I never want to associate with Mr. Robert Plant.

Well, hopefully this problem will not happen anymore. While I've signed up for Ticketweb and Ticketmaster's alert lists, they send me bands I don't care about. I want to track my bands or bands that others think I would like because I like band X. That is Tour Filter's promise. I'll give it a few months and see how it goes...

Via Wired Mag

Why did Prince cover Foo?

I like many people was pretty surprised when Prince covered the Foo Fighters song "Best of You" during the Super Bowl half time show. The Foo Fighters were just as suprised as you and me because Prince wasn't happy a few years back when the Foos covered his song Darling Nikki on an Australian release. He even said to Entertainment Weekly that he didn't appreciate the Foos (or anyone else) covering his work, and that Grohl and company should "write [their] own tunes."

So, was Prince covering the Foos because he's a fan or because he wanted to flip them the bird? Regardless of why Prince did it, it was awesome.

Via Jessie

"Shoes"

After being fearful about America's future in space, I thought "why not relax and watch a funny movie?" My sister crashed in my apartment the other night and brought knowledge of a great video with her. It's pretty dumb and funny, sort of like a cross between Right Said Fred and RuPaul. Enjoy!

Via Amy

Long Tail Music

I love the long tail and how nothing is every truly gone with the advent of the Internet. In case you didn't know, N.E.R.D. stands for "no one ever really dies" and the 'Net makes it so. Here is one application:

Online music fans have downloaded more than 250,000 tracks of previously out-of-print recordings by European artists since the launch of Universal Music’s pioneering digital catalogue reissue programme earlier this year. It was launched as the first step in a multi-year drive to reinstate more than 100,000 European deleted recordings. The initial offering comprised more than 3,000 out-of-print tracks from the company’s vaults in the U.K., France and Germany. They were made available through online music services in 20 countries, mostly in Europe.

Below are listed the top artists, albums and tracks. I didn't know most of these names and am still finding out info and/or listening to all of them. Cool to say the least, check it out:

MOST POPULAR ARTISTS BY TRACK

1. Noir Desir
2. Chris de Burgh
3. Gun
4. Eddie & the Hot Rods
5. Del Amitri

MOST POPULAR TRACKS

1. Gun, Word Up
2. Eddie & the Hot Rods, Do Anything You Wanna Do
3. Brigitte Bardot, Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus
4. Freak Power, Turn On Tune In Cop Out
5. Cast, Guiding Star

MOST POPULAR ALBUMS

1. Big Country, Steeltown
2. Fairport Convention, Meet On The Ledge
3. Jacques Brel, Ballades et Mots D’Amour
4. Freak Power, Drive-Thru Booty
5. Nana Mouskouri, Les Plus Beaux Noels du Monde

Weird! Lots of new music to listen to now...

"OK Go" Have Fun This Weekend

Enough doom and gloom for the week. I have been meaning to post this awesome clip of the group OK Go performing its song "Here It Goes Again" using synchronized treadmills. They did it in one take and its ridiculous - I especially like when they "swim" or "skate" from the back to the front - plus its a jazzy song too. Happy Friday!

Via Chris

Modern Dylan

"Modern Times," the first studio album by Bob Dylan in 5 years, is being streamed this week by AOL Music so feel free to "try before you buy." Thus far, I've listened to the first 3 tracks. He sounds, for want of a better term, strong. The first track is robustly bluesy, not stripped down like his Grammy winning "Time Out of Mind" album. The second track sounds like it could have been played at the "Enchantment Under The Sea" dance. The third track is bit bluesy and a bit rockabilly. Enjoy!

Rock & Roll Bookend

I wish I always could be so lucky: this past week I started and ended it at a concert. On Monday, I saw the Foo Fighters play an acoustic show at the Beacon Theatre (Frank Black - Pixies - opened). Last night, I saw Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) perform at the Theatre at MSG after two different people in my life, separated age-wise by over 20 years, both raved about their performance on this tour. While I immensely enjoyed both shows, I was struck by the amazing emotional gulf between the two, mostly in terms of relevancy and importance. One was simply music - the other was music and so much more.

The Foo show was great and left me all smiles. Dave Grohl was engaging, a regular chatty Kathy actually, and their expanded roster of musicians (Pat Smear was back w/ them - gotta love a punk rock dude who was in a band called the Germs whose name rhymes with pap smear) played a lot of the new tracks off of the acoustic side of their new record along with a good number of older songs - "Its all about the catalog dude!" Dave yelled at one point. The songs were all really well done but one song sticks out in particular after last night's show: "In Your Honor," the title track from their latest album. Dave wrote that in honor of John Kerry while he was out on the campaign trail with him. He sung it well and the band rocked it out but he never mentioned the campaign, the current world we live in, Bush or anything political at all. He simply played the tune and moved on to other tunes, like "Everlong." Looking back, it was like listening to rock & roll cotton candy - all fluff and no substance.

Comparabily, the CSNY show didn't feed you at all: it threw a bucket of cold water in your face and let you know that shits all sorts of fucked up and then worked up your appetite to do something about it. I thought that CSNY would stick to a "safe" show of their classic hits but instead they grabbed the show by the balls. In a surprise, the group played a ton of songs off of Neil Young's new album Living With War which completely slams the Imperial Bush Presidency and the GWOT (global war on terror for those not up on the lingo). I urged you months ago to listen to the Neil's new disc and I urge you again now. The group displayed on a huge video screen US deaths broken out by month and lambasted the president for not attending a single soldier's funeral. They showed a picture of every single dead soldier thus far - 2,607 of them (a fact I know because of last night's show) - while they played a song dedicated to the troops. They put the words to the new Neil Young song "Let's Impeach the President" on screen and urged the crowd to sing along. They played "Teach Your Children" and Crosby said "Every teacher's salary should be tripled!" before launching into it. They played "Ohio" and as everyone was singing "4 dead in Ohio" it felt in a way like Kent State could have just happened.

My friend and I over and over again just couldn't believe that it was 2006, almost 40 years after these gents made their debut, and that we were watching these 4 strong, clear voices belt out songs with such meaning, harmony and clarity, that we were watcing their fingers run wild and pluck out tunes that scarily matter more than ever. Their stamina too must be commended - they played for a total of 3 hours (with only a 20 min break in the middle so the show was almost 3.5 hrs long). Their message of peace is still a sound one. The peace symbol on the stage wasn't a dated relic of the 60's. It was a stark reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same. There is a battle for peace too and that battle needs to be fought and not ignored.

Sitting around reflecting this morning, I wish every concert now packed the same emotional punch that the CSNY show did. Art for art's sake in a world gone crazy sometimes is not enough. Someone has to be out there making art with a purpose, art with a message. It was like watching Lou Reed's perfomance at the Hurricane Katrina Summerstage benefit for 3 hours. I feel blessed, energized and motivated. Maybe if every show packed this type of punch I would feel battered but a good slap in the face once in a while to me is a good thing.

"Sunday, Bloody Sunday" as sung by W

Someone had a lot of time on their hands and spliced together this terrific video of George Bush singing U2's hit song "Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Its pretty damn funny and weirdly catchy. Enjoy!

Via Chris

Gnarly!

The Gnarls Barkley's performance at the MTV Movie Awards has to be seen to be believed. The song is pretty good but the performance is out of this world, literally.

Via Jordan

Living With War

Neil Young's new album Living With War is available on the 'Net right now. Even if you aren't a huge Neil fan (I'm not), the songs and especially the lyrics are powerful enough for you to pull up the album, turn on your speakers or plug in some headphone and lisen to them. "After the Garden" (track 1) is incredibly catchy and "Let's Impeach The President" (track 7) and "Looking for a Leader" (track 8) are especially damming. Actually, the whole album is pretty much a big FU to our current administration and you know what? Good. They deserve it.

Can you believe that we invaded Iraq over 3 years ago? Mission Accomplished my fucking ass.

Let My Paltrow Go...

Apple Paltrow has a new brother named Moses, just in time for Passover. Along with sister Apple, all Moses needs is for a few of his meshuganeh and movie rock star relatives to hang out together to form a family charoset ensemble.

Via Jessie

Music DNA

Pandora is a neat site run the people who set up the Music Genome Project. For those that haven't heard of this great idea, it captures the essence of music at the most fundamental level. Here is their spiel:

Hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" have been assembled into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like. Over the past 5 years, they carefully listened to the songs of over 10,000 different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time.

Based on a simple starting point, say "Jeff likes Led Zeppelin," Pandora serves up songs for your listening pleasure based on the genes that most closely identify with the chosen artist. For instance, "Cemetary Gates" by Pantera, one of my all-time favorite late 90s 104.3 FM songs, was played because it featured hard rock roots, mild rhythmic syncopation, minor key tonality, acoustic rhythm guitars and many other similarities identified in the music genome project. Based on user feedback (thumbs up, thumbs down), it further refines its suggestions until you are getting a steady diet of classics, recent classics and brand new songs and/or artists that you've never heard of that are just simply awesome.

I need some time to see how large the music database is because already I've heard some songs for the second time and I haven't been listening that long. However, right now I think its a much better version of Launch.com, which I stopped using after it was bought by Yahoo! because somehow my profile was deleted after the move. After weeks of saying "yes, no, yes, no, yes, yes, yes, no, etc" all of my effort was lost. For shame!

Via Jessie

James Lipton recites K-Fed's PopoZao

Even though this post is filed under "music," PopoZao, Kevin Federline's new soon to be hit single (because shit's a hit if its played enough these days) should not be classified as music. Chris posted this MTV clip of K-Fed grooving to his own song at a sound board and while many in the blogosphere are full of schadenfreude about it, what the hell would you look like grooving to your own song at a sound board? I probably would look just as silly. A better thing to watch would be James Lipton reciting the words to this inane song on Conan.

In other related news, I love the K-Fed moniker because its the first non-hispanic usage of the "first initial first name, first syllable last name" type nickname I've seen in the entertainment world. K-Mart was the first in the sports world (A-Rod, I-Rod, K-Rod and F-Rod all came before him) and even though I only know of J-Lo in the show biz world, (P. Diddy does not count and not because he has a period instead of a dash, rather because Diddy is not short for Combs) K-Fed does break new ground. I'm mulling the switch to J-Lip as we speak.

Mr. Lawn Guyland Sets the Record

Continuing on my recent kick of posting about LI, Billy Joel's 11th MSG show breaks the record for most shows at MSG sold out on a single tour. The previous record, 10, was held by both Bruce Springsteen and the Grateful Dead. As a music fan and knowing the history of the Garden, I'm suitablely impressed. Lawn Guyland's home of rock n roll, WBAB, has some good info about the shows, the tour and other news about the Piano Man.

Rock Out to "Canon in D Minor"

The internet has an entire universe of amateur video clips. They usually fall into the categories of Good, Bad and Ugly. Then again, every once in a while something is Great, like this electric guitar version of Canon in D minor. It's a nice little wake yo ass up pill on a rainy Monday afternoon.

Via Chris

Rumors

Yes, its the title of a famous Fleetwood Mac album. However, it could also describe some new I received from Jessie, who heard about it from a former coworker, who heard it from a friend who knows a guy....let's just say I received this link to a board with this news at the bottom of the page:

"ATO_Records is apparently a credible PTer. I am not familiar with him, but the general consensus is that he posted information regarding the NYE '95 CD and the Brooklyn '04 DVD before any information was released, making him a reliable source. New information supplied by gordeaux shows that ato_records quite probably stands for According to Our Records, an independent record company started by Dave Matthews and some Coran Capshaw fellow, leading some to believe that ato_records is the latter.

Anyway, he posts that he has gotten a list of dates Phish has booked for 2006 at Madison Square Garden - October 28th and 29th. On top of that, rumors have been circulating (though the source is muddled) that Phish has scheduled Halloween 2006 at the Spectrum in Philly and a summer tour that same year. On top of that, a new record label, JEMP records (Jon Ernest Mike Page?) has surfaced on Phish.com and has ownership of the domain jemprecords.com. Couple that with the latest talk by Trey of "not ruling out playing with Mike, Page and Fish" and (supposedly, I know little of this) claiming that he is "working on logistics of a Phish comeback" (any more info on that would be appreciated) and this rumor fits very nicely with the rest of the info circulating as of late.

Also, many third hand "My friend who told me about the breakup before it happened" sources are apparently claiming that Phish is returning - I have two of those going myself, but as always, take those with a grain of salt.

More news: Madison Square Garden Oct 27 and 28 of 2006 is booked. The hold says "Dionsyian Productions and JEMP." I assume its safe to assume that that has something to do with Phish. Talk about booking shows WAY in advance...

These are the reported Phish dates.

Camden July 24 and 25 (given to us by someone who works for Ron Delsener and said phish is booked for these two nights at the tweeter center in camden)

Festival in Maine (given to us yesterday by someone who claims they work for Greatnortheast Prod. and said permits are in the works)

MSG October 27 and 28 (given to us by ato records, a usually reliable source who told us about the dvd/cd releases as well as the may trey tour)

Halloween at the Spectrum (given to us by someone on the OKP boards who let us know about the breakup before it happened)

Also hampton 10-23,24 and Providence after Philly

"Rumor is a pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, And of so easy and so plain a stop That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, The still-discordant wavering multitude, Can play upon it." - William Shakespeare, from King Henry the Fourth, Part II (Rumor at induction)

I Want It That Way

Happy Friday! This video clip of two chinese students lip syncing to a Backstreet Boys song just made my entire day. I'm not sure I wanted it that way but I'm still happy that I got it. My favorite part is how there is a third jersey wearing guy in the background paying zero attention to the guys carrying on in back of him. Enjoy!

VMAs Win in the "We Suck" Category

At first, Jessie and I tried to keep a diary of the hell that was watching the MTV VMA show on Sunday night:

9:24: Between R. Kelly's bad lip syncing and listening to the lead singer of the Killers sound as if he ran a marathon before he sang a single word, all we can think is, "What the hell is going on? How low can the production value go?" I really liked Mr. Brightside before I heard it live - damn you MTV! A camera pans the crowd: Yeah, look at us, whoo! We're at a trendy hotel watching a bad reality show pretending to be a relevant music awards show! Some thoughts: Who is Hillary Duff dating and why is he so much cooler than she is? Why do we need to listen to Diddy explain his 27th name change? When did MTV start sucking this badly?

9:32: Thank god something good like a new Beavis and Butthead skit happened! I am Poseiden! I am the God of Poop! Love it. Maybe the show will improve. I pray that it will because I'm watching no matter what as my wife needs to see if certain ads actually air. Oh joy of joys. We even had to stop TiFauxing "Rome" on HBO in order to watch this shite.

End of log. There was no need to keep going. The show did not improve as hoped. The rest of the evening was even worse. MC Hammer? Why? My advice to you is to fade away senor. I can go on and on....I won't.

In Memory of Jerry

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the day Jerry Garcia passed away. I remember exactly where I was and who told me: in front of Lori's house and by Shrujal as he stood in front of his parent's Mercedes 2 door convertible. "Did you hear that Jerry is dead?, " he said almost happily (he was not a fan of long-haired freaky people). "Not just in the Dead but dead dead."

To mark this occasion, the NY Times has an article in today's paper about what has happened to his and his band's legacy since then. Feel free to read it after the jump.

Jerry Garcia: The Man, the Myth, the Area Rug

By SETH SCHIESEL
Published: August 9, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 8 - One of the icons of modern American culture now resides in a nondescript warehouse about 30 miles north of here, in a windowless, climate-controlled, heavily-alarmed room built like a bomb shelter that is called simply the Vault.

There, in towering rows of 13,000 audiotapes, 3,000 videotapes and about 250,000 feet of traditional 16-millimeter film lives the recorded history of the Grateful Dead, one of the seminal American rock bands.

The Grateful Dead ceased to exist on Aug. 9, 1995, when the band's lead guitarist and most recognizable figure, Jerry Garcia, died at age 53 of a heart attack at a drug treatment center. Yet 10 years later, the man and the band remain alive for millions of fans, and the once notoriously ad hoc Grateful Dead business operation has become a model for a music industry struggling with the Internet and digital democracy.

"When I first got into the record business I learned that it wasn't cool to be into the Grateful Dead," said Christopher Sabec, 40, a lawyer who said he saw the band more than 250 times and is now chief executive of the Jerry Garcia Estate L.L.C., controlled by Mr. Garcia's heirs. "But if you look at where the music business has been forced to go by technology, now it's not about selling records. It's about live shows and inspiring a fan base to be absolutely loyal. Hello? Who did that first? The Grateful Dead."

The Jerry Garcia company and Grateful Dead Productions are separate businesses each generating millions of dollars of revenue a year. Just how many millions is not publicly known. But consumers still buy more than a million J. Garcia-brand neckties each year, and Cherry Garcia is often the top-selling brand of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, each pint generating royalties for the Garcia heirs.

The band's four surviving members - the drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, the bassist Phil Lesh and the guitarist Bob Weir - have toured occasionally as the Dead, though not this year. They control the Grateful Dead's licensing business, which oversees thousands of products sold around the world, like gas tank caps, incense burners, golf club covers and sandals. (The Garcia company receives a share of the proceeds.)

But for cultural and practical matters, the heart of the Grateful Dead's legacy resides in the 10,000 cubic feet of space in Novato, north of San Francisco. The Vault feeds a continuing business based on regular releases of old concert recordings on iTunes, on the band's Web sites and in stores, feeding old Deadheads and creating new fans.

Physically, there is only one key to the Vault, and only two people know where to find it. David Lemieux, 34, the band's archivist, is one of them. Jeffrey Norman, one of the band's engineers, is the other.

"This is it, the key to the Vault," Mr. Lemieux said, holding up the gleaming shard of metal, a sliver that to some Deadheads may be more sacred than a splinter from the True Cross.

One major way the band and the Garcia company have kept the flame alive is by regularly releasing audio and video recordings of old concerts that have been restored with the latest digital techniques. Two years ago, for instance, the band released a DVD of its performance that closed San Francisco's legendary Winterland Ballroom on Dec. 31, 1978.

"There is just no way we could have done the Winterland release without the current technology," Mr. Lemieux said in his memorabilia-plastered office.
For fans used to fuzzy old cassettes, the new releases are a revelation.

"Many of us Deadheads are experiencing a renaissance now in our appreciation for the band because such high-quality recordings are available," said Amir Bar-Lev, 33, a filmmaker from New York who said he saw the band more than 100 times. "Ten years ago I was listening to 20th-generation tapes kicking around the floor of my car. Now, thanks to all of the technology, I can hear the band in all its glory."

Mr. Weir, the guitarist, said in a telephone interview on Friday from West Virginia, where he was on tour with his band RatDog, that although Mr. Garcia sometimes resented his own celebrity, he would have been pleased that his music endured. "I'm glad people can still enjoy it," he said.

He continued: "I am a big fan of Duke Ellington and I never saw him live. I'm a big fan of John Coltrane and I never saw him live. I don't want to put us on that level, but we don't play all of this music casually or callously, and of course Jerry would appreciate people being able to experience it."

More broadly, the Grateful Dead's emphasis on touring over selling records presaged the music industry's current predicament over file-sharing on the Internet.

The Grateful Dead was the first major band to allow fans to freely make and trade recordings of its live performances in the belief that spreading the music that way would ensure long-term success. That formula was later adopted almost wholesale by other successful bands, including Phish, and fans still avidly trade live Grateful Dead recordings online.

Even though there are now high-quality recordings for sale, created using the official sound-mixing boards used at concerts, fans are still free to trade recordings made in the crowd. The band used to offer a special section of seating for amateur tapers.

"They wanted to create a space for themselves and their fans to gather and play, and that didn't sit well in the offices of the record business," said Mr. Sabec, who is perhaps best known in the music industry for discovering and managing the 1990's teen-pop group Hanson. "Now I find myself sitting in meetings where other bands are using the Dead as a model."

In the years immediately after Mr. Garcia's death, Grateful Dead merchandising brought in more than $50 million in annual gross revenue. That figure may have declined a bit since then, and the band's licensing activities are now separate from the Garcia estate's business affairs, but both entities continue to thrive.
In addition to ties and ice cream, the Garcia company has expanded into rugs and wine. An artist as well as a musician, Mr. Garcia signed his work "J. Garcia."

"I'm not trying to turn the J. Garcia brand into something you find at Target, but I am trying to broaden it," Mr. Sabec said. "There are J. Garcia carpets that my mother would be happy to have in her house, and she's not a Deadhead. If you were to position it only for people who were fans of Jerry's music, it would be a much smaller market than what we're going for."

Yet even as the Garcia company has expanded its ambitions, the band's business wing, Grateful Dead Productions, has in some ways pared down its operations in recent years, like many United States companies.

For a few years after Mr. Garcia's death, as the technology bubble expanded (Aug. 9, 1995, was also the day Netscape stock went public, signaling the coming dot-com boom), the band pursued a vision of creating a business tentatively called Bandwagon, which would function as a one-stop merchandising and online distribution operation for a variety of musical acts. In addition, the band came close to creating what would have amounted to a countercultural theme park in San Francisco.

"The whole Bandwagon thing was a function of the dot-com mania, especially spectacularly in the Bay Area," said Dennis McNally, the band's longtime publicist and historian. "There was also an idea of creating a performance space and museum called Terrapin Station, which we figured we needed $50 million to do. And in the context of the dot-com revolution, that seemed perfectly doable."

In the end, the band balked at potentially having to cede final control of the projects to outside investors. And as the dot-com bubble burst, the band went in the opposite direction. It laid off dozens of longtime employees, closing its own warehouse and largely outsourcing the logistics of the memorabilia business.

Now, the band has only about 10 employees, including Mr. Lemieux at the Vault.

Although the theme park never came to be, on Sunday in San Francisco, the city unveiled the newly renamed Jerry Garcia Amphitheater in John McLaren Park, near the blue-collar Excelsior District where Mr. Garcia grew up before moving to the better-known Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.

Backstage at the event, Mr. Garcia's older brother, Tiff, seemed to share his sibling's somewhat ambivalent attitude toward the marketing of celebrity.

"They're trying to do an Elvis on him, with all of the garments and merchandise and different items," he said. "But I'm not surprised. He meant so much to so many people, and I'm proud of the fact that one individual could draw so much attention."

The Dave Matthews Band Is Lame

In keeping with today's music vibe, Jessie sent me a link about how the Dave Matthews Band is totally lame and said, "it's funny and sort of true (even though I love Dave - or should I call him Mr. Matthews)." As her favorite band is the Dave Matthews Band, I just had to post it.

Via Jessie

Mindless Self Indulgence

My friend and sometimes co-worker Gil knows the drummer in Mindless Self Indulgence and got me on the guest list for last night's show at Webster Hall which was awesome considering one of my favorite things in the world to say is, "I'm on the list." The show itself fucking rocked - I really liked their sound, the crowd was crazed (full of amped up angry punk-goth kids thrashing about) and the band played with so much energy they must have lost a few pounds during the performance. I especially liked it how at the end of the show, the guitarist played his axe w/ a slegehammer and then destroyed it with said sledgehammer. I hope to see them again in the future, even if I'm not on the list. Here is what the Village Voice has to say about them:

"MSI, the greatest punk-goth-industrial-rap-glam-electro-metal band of all time, recently released You'll Rebel to Anything, 26 minutes of spazzy misanthropic anti-corporate / conservative / misogynist anthems and a Rush cover [Tom Sawyer, which they played]. Buy it for the bitter, confused teenager in your life, especially if that teenager happens to live in your body. Go to the show for the the thrill, the danger, and the gravity-defying hair."

Watch Every Live 8 Performance, Whenever You Want

For the next few weeks, AOL Music has every Live 8 performance available for you to stream to your very own computer. Watch the biggest concert event in history, on-demand, as many times as you want. Some performances are obviously better than others. You decide which is which. Enjoy.

In Your Honor

The Foo Fighters have a new double disc titled "In Your Honor" which I am absolutely enjoying - so far I've listened to it a few times over the past 36 hours. I haven't been this pleased by a new disc by an "old" favorite of mine since maybe "Midnight Vultures" by Beck. I'm a huge Foos fan and this album, one disc rock (some metal, some pop, some hard rock) and one disc acoustic, is extremely satisfying.

I was very pleasantly surprised to read in the liner notes that John Paul Jones, 1 of 4 members of my all-time hands down favorite band Led Zeppelin played on 2 tracks. "Miracle" is okay but "Another Round" is very good. The Toronto Sun has an article about what it was like for Dave to play with John.

Some stand out songs me on these discs are "In Your Honor", "Best of You", "The Last Song", "End Over End", "DOA" (very poppy - will be a huge radio hit), "Cold Day In The Sun" (Dave is on drums in this one) "Another Round" (feat JPJ), "Razor" (which sounds very much like a Phish song) - hell, most of them are stand out songs. Buy the album or click on the Foo Player icon on there web site and tell me I'm wrong.

I've Been Mezmerized

I have not really liked any of the new bands that have entered the musicscape the past few years - I'm not sure if its because I'm getting older, if I'm not listening to the right bands or if its because most of the music today sucks. Its probably a combination of the 3 because recently my friends Jordan and Greg have turned me onto some good new music from the likes of Bloc Party and the Arcade Fire so to paraphrase the Descendents, "everything doesn't totaly suck today."

One band that has definitely caught my attention however is System of a Down. I have loved their sound, their style and their weirdness since I first heard "Sugar" on the radio in the late 90's. They recently released their third album "Mezmerize" and it is down right kick ass. I got it and I suggest you do too because its really, really good.

In the most recent Rolling Stone mag, an interview with the band has given me even more reason to love them - they are all full-blown geeks. For instance, their drummer John Dolmayan has storage space in a North Hollywood warehouse to store his collection of comic books, action figures and video games. At the start of the interview he said, "Dude, I like comic books. How cool could I fucking be? Dungeons and Dragons is badass. If I could find a good dungeon master, I'd play a game." So would I dude, so would I...

Rock fucking on!

New Foo Fighters Double Album In Stores 6/2005

"In Your Honor" will be the bands fifth album. Almost exactly a decade from the release of the first Foo Fighters record, it will come out in June. It is a double album, as promised. One CD rock, one CD acoustic.

As Dave Grohl puts it, "just so you know, I have a calendar in front of me that is a year long, fucking packed with tours that will spin us around the globe over and over and over again. It makes me dizzy just looking at it. I can't fucking wait."

Neither can I.

How Led Zep Got Their Name

In trying to prove my theory that Maroon 5's name is actually a subtle homage to Luke Skywalker's X-Wing's call signal during the Death Star attack stage of "Star Wars: Episode IV, A New Hope" ("...Red Leader, this is Red 5..."), I came across this simple and well worded explanation as to how Led Zeppelin, aka the greatest rock band eh-VER, got its name:

Keith Moon and John Entwistle of the Who were hanging out with Richard Cole (The Yardbirds road manager) one night at the disco �Salvation� in New York. Moon and Entwistle were burnt out on the whole scene with The Who and were talking about the desire to form a band with Jimmy Page and Steve Winwood. And Entwistle said �Yeah. We�ll call it Lead Zeppelin. Because it will go over like a fucking Lead Balloon.� Laughter followed and Cole told Jimmy about the discussion later. So when the time came to change the band�s name from The New Yardbirds they finally settled on �Led Zeppelin� after short stints as �Mad Dogs� and �Whoopee Cushion�. They changed the spelling of lead to �Led� so that people wouldn�t mispronounce the groups name as �Leed Zeppelin�.

If I ever form a band, I was going to name it Red 5. Now I can't do that because of stupid Maroon 5. Now I have to go with my backup name - Field Order 15. This is the formal name for General Sherman's order to give all freed blacks 40 acres and a mule, which in my opinion, while great sounding (Land to a former slave? Great!) added insult to injury. The mule, a cross between a donkey and a horse, is a sterile animal and can't reproduce. Its used as a work animal and let's face it, freed blacks in 1865 were used to working. So in reality, Sherman would have been much better off giving a plow to the freed slave to push instead of a mule. At least that way the field will get plowed and something might grow instead of just having a sterile animal sitting around, doing nothing except waiting to be fed by a freed slave that probably has no money for food. But that's just my opinion.

ROCK/DON'T ROCK

New York Metro reports this week that on the WALK/DON'T WALK sign outside CBGB on the Bowery, the orange DON'T WALK hand has had its middle two fingers and thumb obliterated with black tape, turning it into a devil's horns-the universal hand signal for "Rock!"

The white walking man is now wearing sideburns, a skull-and-bones T-shirt, blue jeans, and a pair of Converse. Across the street, the walking man has become a woman, with spiky hairdo, miniskirt, and high-heeled ankle boots. Nearby, at the intersection of Allen and Rivington, the man wears an Adidas tracksuit and Kangol hat, and carries a boom box. In all three cases, holes have been carefully punched in the pasted-on �clothing� (made from vinyl), so that the LED light still shines through.

Who has been doing this? Read the article to find out...

via Republica

Dance Party Europa

This video has been around for a while now - its a kid lip-syncing and rocking out in front of his web cam. I saw it back in 12/04 when Chris posted it to Blah Blah Blog. Since then, I forgot about it until someone else sent it to me last week when we were looking for the old hit "The Super Bowl Is Gay."

So, please watch and enjoy. It helps if you make you window smaller as the flash file will shrink/expand based on the window size.

If you are wondering, the song is called "Dragsotea Din Tei" and its by a Romanian group called O-Zone. You can even buy it on iTunes if you want to thoroughly annoy your friends and neighbors.

After the jump you can even read the lyrics.

Thanks Chris as the comments to your post provided the extra info

UPDATE (2/26):
Today there is an article in the NY Times about this kid. He's actually from NJ. After the jump, you can read the entire NY Times article. Also, I found a link to the actual music video as well. There are many other versions floating around as well but I don't think they are that good.

Translated Lyrics:

Hello [on a cellphone], greetings, it's me, an outlaw,
I ask you, my love, to accept happiness.
Hello, hello, it's me, Picasso,
I sent you a beep [cellphone signal], and I'm brave [or strong],
But you should know that I'm not asking for anything from you.

You want to leave but you don't want don't want to take me, don't want don't want to take me, don't want don't want don't want to take me.
Your face and the love from the linden trees,
And I remember your eyes.

I call you [over the phone], to tell you what I feel right now,
Hello, my love, it's me, your happiness.
Hello, hello, it's me again, Picasso,
I sent you a beep [cellphone signal] and I'm brave [or strong],
But you should know that I'm not asking for anything from you.

Internet Fame Is Cruel Mistress for a Dancer of the Numa Numa By ALAN FEUER and JASON GEORGE There was a time when embarrassing talents were a purely private matter. If you could sing "The Star Spangled Banner" in the voice of Daffy Duck, no one but your friends and family would ever have to know.

But with the Internet, humiliation - like everything else - has now gone public. Upload a video of yourself playing flute with your nose or dancing in your underwear, and people from Toledo to Turkmenistan can watch.

Here, then, is the cautionary tale of Gary Brolsma, 19, amateur videographer and guy from New Jersey, who made the grave mistake of placing on the Internet a brief clip of himself dancing along to a Romanian pop song. Even in the bathroom mirror, Mr. Brolsma's performance could only be described as earnest but painful.

His story suggests that the quaint days when cultural trinkets, like celebrity sex tapes, were passed around like novels in Soviet Russia are over. It says a little something of the lightning speed at which fame is made these days.

To begin at the beginning:

Mr. Brolsma, a pudgy guy from Saddle Brook, made a video of himself this fall performing a lip-synced version of "Dragostea Din Tei," a Romanian pop tune, which roughly translates to "Love From the Linden Trees." He not only mouthed the words, he bounced along in what he called the "Numa Numa Dance" - an arm-flailing, eyebrow-cocked performance executed without ever once leaving the chair.

In December, the Web site newgrounds.com, a clearinghouse for online videos and animation, placed a link to Mr. Brolsma on its home page and, soon, there was a river of attention. "Good Morning America" came calling and he appeared. CNN and VH1 broadcast the clip. Parodists tried their own Numa Numa dances online. By yesterday, the Brolsma rendition of "Love From the Linden Trees" had attracted nearly two million hits on the original Web site alone.

The video can be seen here.

It was just as Diane Sawyer said on her television program: "Who knows where this will lead?"

Nowhere, apparently. For, in Mr. Brolsma's case, the river became a flood.

He has now sought refuge from his fame in his family's small house on a gritty street in Saddle Brook. He has stopped taking phone calls from the news media, including The New York Times. He canceled an appearance on NBC's "Today." According to his relatives, he mopes around the house.

What's worse is that no one seems to understand.

"I said, 'Gary this is your one chance to be famous - embrace it,' " said Corey Dzielinski, who has known Mr. Brolsma since the fifth grade. Gary Brolsma is not the first guy to rocket out of anonymity on a starship of embarrassment. There was William Hung, the Hong Kong-born "American Idol" reject, who sang and danced so poorly he became a household name. There was Ghyslain Raza, the teenage Qu�b�cois, who taped himself in a mock light-saber duel and is now known as the Star Wars Kid.

In July 2003, Mr. Raza's parents went so far as to sue four of his classmates, claiming they had placed the clip of him online without permission. "Ghyslain had to endure and still endures today, harassment and derision," according to the lawsuit, first reported in The Globe and Mail of Toronto.

Mr. Brolsma has no plans to sue, his family said - mainly because he would have to sue himself. In fact, they wish he would bask a little in his celebrity.

"I don't know what's wrong with him," his grandfather, Kalman Telkes, a Hungarian immigrant, said the other day while taking out the trash.

The question remains why two million people would want to watch a doughy guy in glasses wave his arms around online to a Romanian pop song.

"It definitely has to be something different," said Tom Fulp, president and Webmaster of newgrounds.com.

"It's really time and place."

"The Numa Numa dance," he said, sounding impressed. "You see it and you kind of impulsively have to send it to your friends."

There is no way to pinpoint the fancy of the Internet, but in an effort to gauge Mr. Brolsma's allure, the Numa Numa dance was shown to a classroom of eighth graders at Saddle Brook Middle School - the same middle school that he attended, in fact.

The students' reactions ranged from envious to unimpressed. "That's stupid," one of them said. "What else does he do?" a second asked. A third was a bit more generous: "I should make a video and become famous."

The teacher, Susan Sommer, remembered Mr. Brolsma. He was a quiet kid, she said, with a good sense of humor and a flair for technology.

"Whenever there were computer problems, Gary and Corey would fix them for the school," she said.

His friends say Mr. Brolsma has always had a creative side. He used to make satirical Prozac commercials on cassette tapes, for instance. He used to publish a newspaper with print so small you couldn't read it with the naked eye.

"He was always very out there - he's always been ambitious," said Frank Gallo, a former classmate. "And he's a big guy, but he's never been ashamed."

Another friend, Randal Reiman, said: "I've heard a lot of people say it's not that impressive - it doesn't have talent. But I say, Who cares?"

These days, Mr. Brolsma shuttles between the house and his job at Staples, his family said. He is distraught, embarrassed. His grandmother, Margaret Telkes, quoted him as saying, just the other day, "I want this to end."

And yet the work lives on. Mr. Fulp, the Webmaster, continues to receive online homages to the Numa Numa dance. The most recent showed what seemed to be a class of computer students singing in Romanian and, in unison, waving their hands.

Mr. Reiman figures the larger world has finally caught on to Gary Brolsma.

"He's been entertaining us for years," he said, "so it's kind of like the rest of the world is realizing that Gary can make you smile."

Posted by Jefe at 9:28 PM | Comments (1)

Long Live The Pixies

I saw the Pixies on Monday night and they rocked so hard I couldn't believe it. It was "Death to the Pixies" (their live double album that I burn for you - post a comment if you want it) 20X better. They played all of their old songs, they were laughing and enjoying each other's company on stage (which was nice to see due to the public infighting that transpired the last decade while they have been broken up) and they simply just rocked the place OUT. The crowd was great, it was really into it and amped up and to top it all off, just when I thought that my voice was too hoarse and my neck was tired from thrashing, they encored with Debaser (my favorite song of theirs) and Gigantic which launched me into the air dancing and jumping like a fool.

Maybe as an homage to Channukah, they have been playing 8 shows in 8 nights. Tonight is the last night and they are so nice they are playing twice - one show is at 5:30 and the other one starts midnight. I may try and get a ticket to the midnight show. If it wasn't for finals this week, I would have made it to one of the other shows and in fact, I wasn't planning on going tonight but after reading a few reviews today, I'm so psyched to see them again that I'm probably going to suck it up and hit up the late show.

I would have to say that this was on of the top 10 shows I have ever seen. As Newsday put it, Their repertoire isn't legendary, but now you see fans go crazy for 'Bone Machine' or 'Gouge Away.' You see 18-to-22-year-olds singing every single word of every song. What the whole audience wants is what was obscure. Because of the way the band broke up, most of these people never thought they would ever get the chance to see The Pixies. So now, if you care about credible music from the underground, you have to see The Pixies. You have to get that notch on your bedpost."

If you have the time and you respect alt-rock, this is a show you have to see. The Pixies are dead! Long Live the Pixies!

Keep reading to read the NY Times and Newsday reviews of the Sunday, 12/12 show...

FROM NY TIMES
Once Upon a Time, There Was This Really Loud Band
By KELEFA SANNEH. Published: December 13, 2004

It's not hard to envy the Pixies. After more than 10 years apart, the members reunite, only to find that fans (and, if anyone cares, pop critics) love them more than ever. There are sold-out shows, glowing profiles, ecstatic fans. By now you've probably read at least one article about how the Pixies helped inspire a generation of bands, about how much Kurt Cobain loved them, about how water tasted different before they came along, about how the sky used to be a slightly different shade of blue.

But despite all that build-up - or maybe because of it - Saturday's Pixies concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom was a rude, often exhilarating shock. It had been all too easy to forget about the Pixies' ugliness: how fast they played, how loud they were, how nasty they sounded. Compared with the old-timers, the appealing postpunk act that opened the show, TV on the Radio, seemed positively quaint, even polite.

The concert was the opening night of a weeklong, eight-concert engagement, a tribute not only to the continuing popularity of the Pixies but also to the ticket-buying power of the many 30-something fans who remember the band from their college years. (It would be interesting to know how many devotees end up seeing more than one of the eight concerts.) The opening acts are different every night, ranging from pre-Pixies veterans (the reunited Mission of Burma tonight, the pioneering punk bassist Mike Watt next Saturday) to post-Pixies alt-rock bands (the shaggy Canadian collective Broken Social Scene on Tuesday, the feminist new-wave trio Le Tigre on Wednesday). Don't be surprised if the Pixies out-clamor them all.

In 1986, when the Pixies were formed, it made sense that an underground rock band would want to make lots of noise. Shrieked lyrics and guitar tantrums were two signs that you weren't angling to become radio fodder, two signs that you were part of the American postpunk movement - waving the flag, even if you weren't quite marching in step.

But sometime in the 1990's, things changed. The success of Nirvana helped introduce Pixiesish chaos to mainstream listeners who decided that screaming singers and screaminger guitars weren't so hard on the ears after all. From Nine Inch Nails to Korn, shriekers earned a place in overground rock 'n' roll, and the tradition continues today. Turn on your local modern-rock station and wait a few minutes; you'll probably hear the kind of racket that once kept bands off commercial radio.

Not surprisingly, some underground bands responded by getting quieter and sweeter. Those looking for an alternative to the high-decibel ennui of, say, Linkin Park can throw on a CD by the Postal Service or Interpol (to name just two big-name alternative acts), losing themselves in something quieter and more restrained. Emo bands and Ozzfest perennials still scream their lungs out, but lots of bands following in the Pixies' wake have decided to pipe down.

So where does that leave the Pixies? Exactly where they started: alone. On Saturday night, it was a relief to hear that they still sounded utterly and gloriously like themselves, barreling through songs full of elements that might once have seemed disparate but now seem inseparable: the ruthless, sometimes deadpan drumming of David Lovering (in "Bone Machine," he makes it almost impossible to find the downbeat); the precise disruptions of Joey Santiago's electric guitar; Kim Deal's warm slow-motion bass lines; the frantic strumming and gorgeous yelping of Black Francis, a k a Frank Black.

Most startling of all is how little the band's live show has changed over the years. The Pixies' old record label, 4AD, recently released a great retrospective DVD (it's called simply "Pixies") that includes a performance from 1988: Mr. Santiago and Mr. Lovering have hair, Black Francis looks a bit more streamlined, and Ms. Deal looks less like someone you might trust with your car keys, but the furious, off-kilter energy is exactly the same.

Age hasn't affected all of these songs the same way. When Black Francis sang "Where Is My Mind?" it was hard to remember that the phrase had once sounded vague and bitterly evocative; these days, it sounds more like someone making fun of the slacker-chic 1990's. But most of the songs sounded as mysterious and elusive as they always have, from the gently swaying "Caribou" to Ms. Deal's unsettling (and beautiful) sex song "Gigantic," which might be the best thing the Pixies ever did.

If you had to pick a concert for the inevitable live reunion DVD, it probably wouldn't be this one: the members sometimes seemed to be battling one another to establish the right tempo, and a few songs sounded even more ragged than they were supposed to. The band members didn't look as if they were having the time of their lives. They looked like four people working hard to create a marvelous racket; even after watching them do it for 90 minutes, you weren't quite sure how they did it. And as the fans filed out, ears ringing, no doubt some of them were already getting ready to return for another noisy night.

FROM NEWSDAY:
Pixies: enchanting after all these years
BY GLENN GAMBOA. December 13, 2004

There they were, The Pixies - a band that, for nearly a generation of alt-rock fans, had become mythic and almost as elusive as their name suggests - standing on a stage fittingly built to look like a post-industrial forest.

Before embarking on their current sold-out tour, singer Charles Thompson (aka Black Francis), guitarist Joey Santiago, bassist Kim Deal and drummer David Lovering had not played together in 12 years. The Boston band called it quits in 1992, just as the alternative-to-mainstream rock they helped build was about to take over the world thanks to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," a song Kurt Cobain said was his attempt at "ripping off The Pixies."

It's hard to compete with legend, especially when the audience is filled with folks waiting to see if the myth is true, if you are as great as nostalgia-clouded minds remember. But as soon as The Pixies launched into "Lady in the Radiator Song (In Heaven)" with Deal's cooing promise, "In heaven, everything is fine," it became clear: The Pixies were going to outperform their legend. Ripping through 29 songs in 90 minutes, that's exactly what they did.

They started off slowly, with a restrained, downtempo version of "Wave of Mutilation" followed by a gorgeous cover of Neil Young's "Winterlong" that showed how well Thompson and Deal's voices still fit together. But like a rock-and-roll freight train, The Pixies started picking up speed with the raucous "Bone Machine" and an extra-prickly "Cactus," where the combination of Thompson's excitable vocals and Santiago's stylish, elegant guitar riffs started to build momentum.

By the time they reached the meat of the set - the scorching-but-sweet "Debaser," the anthemic "U-Mass," where Thompson ended each line with a little extra snarl, the swooning "Levitate Me" and the off-kilter pop "Gouge Away," where Deal's bass lines eloquently explain why bassists are necessary in rock bands - The Pixies had made it clear that this was no greatest-hits cash-in. They were still emotionally invested in these songs and it showed.

The powerful version of "Tame" offered the proof of their influence on Nirvana, especially after stand-out versions of "Broken Face" and "Isla de Encanta" nicely displayed their hardcore roots, taking H�sker D�'s speed and shrieks and adding their own twists. "Monkey Gone to Heaven" was equally passionate, as Thompson laid out the spiritual world view - "man is 5," "the devil is 6" and "God is 7" - that hipsters have shrieked along with in countless dive bars around the world.

Pairing "Here Comes Your Man," one of the poppiest moments of the evening, where The Pixies seem to channel Hamburg-era Beatles, with "Nimrod's Son," one of their most experimental songs, with wailing, feedback-driven guitars, showed how they have managed to build their following throughout their years of dormancy - equal parts of comfort and challenge.

Blackalicious Shout-out

I awoke this morning to find a nice little shout out to me about my current favorite rap group Blackalicious on Blah Blah Blog. Here is the first sentence of the post:

"Maybe I am old and out of the loop, but I just discovered the genius of Blackalicious, and it took a Jewish guy from Long Island to introduce me."

My street cred has probably now increased at least 25% due to how I've helped spread the word about Blackalicious's delicious rhymes and deft beats. I can go on and on about how amazing this group is but really Chris's post says it all, plus, he provides an opportunity to download Alphabet Aerobics, the songs that first made me love the group, as well as Chemical Calisthenics, which actually makes physics sound gansta. As Chris put it, they are "like Kool Mo Dee with a master's degree."

Thanks Chris

Flashback: State Song Lyrics

I was going through a folder I have on my work PC which contains all sorts of random docs, such as a spreadsheet used to plan my bachelor party, a letter to my pediatrian requesting my immunization history, a list of places to eat around my office and a video, shot from the doomed Columbia Space Shuttle, of Israel from space (email me if you want this - I don't want to post it and get hit with the bandwidth overages). I also found the lyrics to a song I learned in 5th grade which I sang in some concert: The 50 States in Rhyme Song. For all those who are nostalgic, especially for a time when we thought of states as just states, not red states or blue states, here is the song:

Alabama and Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, and Connecticut and more.

Delaware, Florida, Georgia and Hawaii, Idaho. Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, still 35 to go.

Kansas and Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine. Maryland, Massachusetts, and good ole Michigan.

Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, and Montana, Nebraska�s 27, number 28's Nevada.

Next, New Hampshire and New Jersey, And way down, New Mexico.

Then New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, O - Hi - O.
Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, now let's see.

Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee.

Texas, then there's Utah.

Vermont, I'm almost through. Virginia, then there's Washington and West Virginia, too.

Could Wisconsin be the last one in the 49?

No, Wyoming is the last state in the 50 states that rhyme.

I for one can sing from memory the song up till the "#28's Nevada" part.