I can Fly; I will Scream; I will Break my Arm

A Show that Got Away (GbV edition)

Arrgghhh. I really wish I could have been at the Guided by Voices show at First Avenue (Minneapolis) last night. I can't believe I am missing all the dates on their reunion tour. I saw 8 GbV shows between 1996 and 2004 (including 3 at First Avenue*), but couldn't make this one.



*Other 5 shows were: The Dingo Bar in Albuquerque in 1996, The Cotton Club in Atlanta in 1999, The Launchpad in Albuquerque in 2001, and the "final two" GbV shows at The Metro in Chicago on NYEE and NYE 2004.

This Week is a Week for "Acronyms" by Bee vs. Moth (2010)

I have been listening to some of the tracks off of Acronyms, the second studio album by the Austin, TX-based progressive jazz band Bee vs. Moth in preparation for their show later in the week. Austin Sound calls their music a cross between jazz and Zappa: jazzappa if you will. NPR music labels it a cross between Ornette Coleman and Television.

Here is how the band describe themselves: Bee vs. Moth is a multiple-genre, weirdo instrumental rock band from Austin, Texas. Our mission is to bravely explore the little-traveled and oft-neglected territory between Ornette Coleman's doom metal band and Mr. Rogers' dude ranch. Along the way, we'll tromp through a few Latin tunes, knock over some perfectly good chords, and spill improvised solos on our nice, clean shirts. Or as our friend put it, "You guys sound like Sonic Youth meets the Tijuana Brass." Intrigued? Appalled? Come see us soon!

Hells yeah! Regardless of the description, it is good stuff Maynard.

*First vid and single is "Ugly is the New Black" :


You can stream some songs from their 2010 release and some live tracks from 2008 and 2009 on the band's website here.

I am looking forward to picking up a copy of the CD at their show.

UPDATE #1: the vid for the second single from the album was released today...




UPDATE #2: And these guys kick out the jams live, mofos. Their show tonight was one of the best lives sets of music that I have seen in the last several years. Do yourself a favor and go see them live if they come to a town near you. At the show I picked up Acronymns on CD and a t-shirt with their "CD & Shirt for $20" promotional price. It was a $20 wisely spent. The album will most certainly make it somewhere towards the top of my Best Albums of 2010 list at the end of the year...

Tonight is a Night for "Approximately Infinite Universe" by Yoko Ono (1972) [I Know I'm Probably in the Minority on this one...]

[...and also on the fact that I vastly prefer Yoko Ono to Paul McCartney. John made the right choice.]

I really dig this album.

Here's the first cut "Yang Yang" off of 1972's Approximately Infinite Universe:



Over the course of the past couple of years I have fallen in love all over again with Lennon's post-Beatles work and with much of Yoko's solo work, and can hardly bear to listen to the Beatles at all (even though I own the Mono Box). [As to Macca's post-Beatles work? I find all of it to be absolutely dreadful save for one song. One song? That's right, one song. I'll reveal which song that is down the road.]

Here's song #2 on Side 4 of the double-LP:



Gosh, who is Joel Nohnn on this song? He sure is a great guitar player!

This Morning is a Morning for "Some Velvet Morning" by Lee & Nancy

One of my favorite songs (perhaps my favorite duet) of all time, 1967's "Some Velvet Morning" by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra:

Today is a Day for "Mines" by Menomena (2010)

Another album that has been in heavy rotation day and night at Jams, Mofo headquarters the last week or so is the fourth album, entitled Mines, from the Portland, OR group Menomena. A friend gave me the MP3s and I liked the album so much I purchased the vinyl record. Here they are doing TAOS, the second song off the album, on Oregon Public Broadcasting's music show:


Menomena - TAOS (Live at OPB) from opbmusic.org on Vimeo.

While this is an album that is best heard on the home hi-fi with the volume level way up, you can also check out the complete album for yourselves at grooveshark, mofos:

Today is a Day for "The Very Best of Wynn Stewart 1958-62"

I have been on somewhat of a Wynn Stewart jag the last couple of days. Wynn was an early adopter of what would come to be known as the "Bakersfied sound" in C&W music--some of the first country music to incorporate the backbeat and shiny electric instrumentation. He paved the way for the Bakersfield scenesters Buck Owens and Merle Haggard who followed in his musical footsteps. Stewart was born in Missiouri in 1934, moved to California with his family soon after WWII, and died of a heart attack at the age of 51 in 1985 in the middle of an attempted musical comeback. If you want a collection of his material, find yourself a digital or physical copy of this album: The Very Best of Wynn Stewart: 1958-1962.

Today is a Day for Grinderman 2 by Grinderman (2010)

Even better than Grinderman 1. Check out the latest release from this side project of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds for yourselves, mofos (and check out the guitar playing by guest Robert Fripp on track 3):



I have been listening to Nick Cave for 20+ years now and it makes me strangely happy that he is still relevant and kicking ass.

Wish I Could be There (Matador Records 21st Birthday Party "Lost Weekend" edition)

Jeebus, the final lineup for the 3-day celebration next month in Vegas looks simply incredible:

Oct. 1
Pavement
Sonic Youth
Fucked Up
Chavez
Cold Cave
Guitar Youth

Oct. 2
Belle & Sebastian
Spoon
Superchunk
Cat Power
Perfume Genius
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Come
Girls

Oct. 3
The Clean
Times New Viking
Kurt Vile
Guided By Voices
Yo La Tengo
Liz Phair
The New Pornographers
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
Shearwater

Tonight is a Night for the nice FM recording of Luna, 6-12-1998, Hultsfred, Sweden

Good stuff Maynard.
.

Let me know if you want it.

Today was a Day for Of Montreal on the Cemetary Gates Sessions

I have been listening to the new of Montreal album a whole bunch this last week and am bummed that I will likely miss seeing a show on their joint tour with Janelle Monae.

Today is a Day for Frank Zappa (Age 22) on the Steve Allen Show from 1963

It just doesn't get much better than this. Here we find Frank in his TV debut only a short 2.5 years before the March 1966 sessions that would result in his first album entitled Freak Out.

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:

Today is a Day for "Expo 86" by Wolf Parade (2010)

Sometimes it is the case that a band is better than the sum of its parts. For me, the band Wolf Parade is a clear example of this. I like Dan Boeckner's other band Handsome Furs pretty well. Likewise, Spencer Krug and his recordings with Sunset Rubdown are darn good. As well, I have fond memories for a couple of the Hot Hot Heat albums from earlier in the last decade and Dante DeCaro's guitar playing. But I like Wolf Parade better than these other bands. And I like the new Wolf Parade album Expo 86 a whole damn bunch. Though it came out in late June, it is only the last week or so that I have been listening to it on a regular basis.

I think it smooths out some of the raw edges (for better and for worse) of the band's first album (2005's Aplogies to the Queen Mary) and kicks out the jams as compared to 2008's At Mount Zoomer.

Listen for yourself, mofos:

Tonight was a Night for Richard Thompson Shooting Out the Lights with Elvis Costello

If you want to know what my guitar playing sounds like today, take a listen to Thompson's two solos on this recent rendition of "Shoot Out the Lights."

RT with Elvis, December 2009:

Tonight was a Night for Lou Reed Covering Kurt Weill & Bob Dylan ("September Song" and "Foot of Pride" edition)

Here we have Lou on the 1985-released tribute album Lost in the Stars: Music of Kurt Weill. This is the upbeat and rockin' version. [For the multi-artist Weill biopic soundtrack album from 1997 entitled September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill, Lou rerecorded the same song, but that recording is a more low-key affair.]


Here is Lou from the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration. [Has it really been almost 18 (October, 1992) years since that pay-per-view broadcast and subsequent (in 1993) album/video release? I chipped in at a viewing party in a friend's Austin, TX house. Good times.] Anyway, here is Lou from that night:

Tonight is a Night for Tom Waits Covering the Ramones ("The Return of Jackie and Judy" edition)

or here:


Track #15 on the almost completely atrocious release from 2003: We're a Happy Family: A Tribute to the Ramones. [The other songs on this are awful, just awful. This is perhaps the worst tribute album ever recorded. A great Tom Waits cover and 16 other horrible tracks. U2? Late-period Metallica? Rob Zombie? The Offspring? Green Day? Peter Yorn? Kiss? Give me a break. Tom Waits and the Ramones are easily better than all of the other bands/musicians on this album combined. Bono singing "Beat on the Brat" is f&%$ing atrocious. Seriously, this might be the worst tribute album ever made. Can anyone name one that is worse?]

The song was also released as track #12 on Disc 1 of the 2006 Tom Waits rarities boxset entitled Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards. If you don't have this 56-song set in some format, your life is incomplete, mofo.

Today is a Day for Janelle Monáe's new "Cold War" Video

The simple and stunning new video for "Cold War" off of Janelle Monáe's stellar 2010 release The ArchAndroid:



I have had a half-finished review of the album sitting around for nearly 3 months now. I'll post it soon and I am sure the album will be near the top of my year-end "Best Albums of the Year" list. So, in sum, you are guaranteed at least 2 more postings about her before the end of 2010...

Today was a Day for "Live MCMXCIII" by the Velvet Underground (1993)

I hadn't listened to Live MCMXCIII, the VU "reunion" 2.5 hour-long double-album from 1993, in a fair bit of time. It is quite the fun listen. Suprisingly so. It isn't where you would want to start with the band, but if you are familiar with the band and at least part of the VU story, it is a compelling listen. The double-CD set is a compilation of songs from a three-night series (mostly the second night) of reunion shows that the VU did at the L'Olympia Theater in Paris on June 15th, 16th, and 17th, 1993. These dates were part of a longer European tour that the reunited Reed, Cale, Tucker, and Morrison did during the summer of 1993.

I think wikipedia has the 1990s VU reunion timeline about right: In 1990, Reed and Cale released Songs for Drella, dedicated to the recently deceased Andy Warhol. (“Drella” was a nickname Warhol had been given, a combination of “Dracula” and “Cinderella”.) Though Morrison and Tucker had each worked with Reed and Cale since the V.U. broke up, Songs for Drella was the first time the pair had worked together in decades, and rumors of a reunion began to circulate, fueled by the one-off appearance by Reed, Cale, Morrison and Tucker to play "Heroin" as the encore to a brief Songs for Drella set in Jouy-en-Josas, France.

The Reed–Cale–Morrison–Tucker lineup officially reunited as "The Velvet Underground" in 1992, commencing activities with a European tour beginning in Edinburgh on June 1, 1993, and featuring a performance at Glastonbury which garnered an NME front cover. Cale sang most of the songs Nico had originally performed. The band's opening act was Luna. As well as headlining, the Velvets performed as supporting act for five dates of U2’s Zoo TV Tour.

Given the success of The Velvet Underground's European reunion tour, a series of US tour dates were proposed, as was an MTV Unplugged broadcast, and possibly even some new studio recordings. However, before any of this could come to fruition, Cale and Reed fell out again, breaking up the band once more.

On August 30, 1995, Sterling Morrison died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

I spent most of 1994 thinking that we were going to get a reasonable U.S. tour by the VU and would have done anything in my power to make it to one of those shows, but it was not to be. I have seen Lou several times, but I am still holding on hope for a Reed/Cale collaboration some time down the road...

The "first set" from Live MCMXCIII jumps across all different VU albums and settles into a nice groove on "All Tomorrow's Parties" and "Some Kind of Love." The "second set" starts with a shot across the bow in the form of "Hey Mr. Rain" and thrashes some more later on the disc on "Black Angel's Death Song" and "Heroin."

Listen for yourself at grooveshark, or find this for yourself online mofos...

disc 1:


disc 2:


P.S. Hey Lou, John, and Mo. How's it going? Not to rush you or anything, but could you maybe put out Vol. 2 of the VU bootleg series? Vol. 1 came out in 2001, and it would be great to have another release. Send me an e-mail and I'll make some suggestions on what should be remastered and released from the VU archives...