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Screams-n-Dreams

Housecleaning time! A bunch of bits and pieces of things...

( I once heard John C. Reilly talk about how he worked in the deli of a grocery store and he advised his friends never to order the ham salad because that was where the store hid all the old cuts of meat that weren't sold by the butcher.  Isn't that what delis are? Places to recycle unsold food? Anyway, bits and pieces:)

-Orth (see sidebar), has posted his year end list of top songs. I liked this one, off the Dark Knight Soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and James Newton. It's melodramatic, in a Muse kind of way. I didn't notice the song during the movie but can see how it added to the film's menacing tone.

-Does every jukebox in America now come automatically stocked with Journey and Zombies music? I've noticed this one more in the past few years.

-Danny Masterson, AKA DJ Momjeans, was on some talk show last week and was asked to name the ultimate party song that is guaranteed to get people out on the dance floor and before he could answer, I knew what he was going to say. An answer I've heard 2 other DJs give long before him, while rolling their eyes:

-Renowned artist/Illustrator David Shrigley is from Glasgow and he rolls hard for his city mates, Correcto. Soo much music coming out of Glasgow lately.

Heavy Armament

When John Popper isn't busy getting arrested on gun and taser charges, covering Paula Abdul or playing a socially repugnant character on Z-Rock, he's still out there blowing the bejesus out of his harmonica. Here's some footage from earlier this year of Popper shredding a harmonica solo, if that's possible, on No Woman No Cry w/Ziggy Marley:

Blues Traveler's latest album North Hollywood Shootout, came out in August, and named for the famous Bank of America bloodfest that occurred in 1997. Blues Traveler have been together for 20 years!

(Really. Foofle it.)

 

Quickies

-Brooding, Thoughtful, Sophisticated: Elvis Perkins in Dearland have posted a few new songs from their next album. Is it me or does the guy standing behind Perkins look like a blond Stephen Colbert? E.P., Blond Colbert and friends will be performing at Terminal 5 on New Year's Eve.

-Japanese Jimi Hendrix cover band plays Auld Lang Syne.

-A.A. Bondy 2009 tourdates.

-Funniest. Twitterer. ever.

-David Berman: Reluctant Model.

 

-Jenny Lewis' contribution to the *other* doggy movie of the season, Bolt:

 

Road Dog

 

Today's L.A. Times has a profile on Ben Harper's new side project Relentless 7. Harper will still be doing his more mellow solo work, see song below, while Relentless 7 will be more of an outlet for a "groove that's heavier and more teeth-baring."  Gone are the suits, replaced by denim and cargo shorts. R7's new album White Lies for Dark Times is due late spring on Virgin. Relentless 7 is on tour now.

Video from a recent show at Spaceland:

Hipdate

Aha! So it's old news but I've discovered why Shakira's been in the news more than usual lately. It's because there's a rumor that Shaki, the Alanis sing-a-like, may be performing at Barack Obama's inauguration along with many, many others.

 

Quickies

-Gossip Girl Leighton Meester has plans to release an electropop album.

-A picture from Matisyahu's Festival of Lights show at N.Y.'s Webster Hall. He will return for another performance there on 12.25. Matisyahu's album Shattered is out now. Check out that huge "Disco Dreidel!"

-If I: Stream the new track by Justin Timberlake ft. T.I.

Searching For Shakira Ripoll

Has anyone else noticed that Shakira has been a top search term on Google for about the past week or so? Puzzling. As far as I can tell she hasn't been doing anything new or particularly newsworthy.

Huh. 

It's as if the internet is collectively wondering : Hey, what happened to that girl that used entertain us by pasting together cornball sexual notions in which something was inevitably lost in translation? The girl who named her album "Oral Fixation", sang "Underneath My Clothes" and penned probably one of my all-time favorite lyrics: "Lucky that my breasts are small and humble so you don't confuse them with mountains."(Where is the Thomas Guide when you need it?)

Suddenly Susan Totally Michael, a new-ish artist featured in Tokion's Fall Issue, might be one of the people Googling Shakira. The Indiana native (that's him pictured above) has a self-titled album out (through IHEARTCOMIX) and in the video below does a little dance tribute to Shaki's hit Hips Don't Lie.

Totally Michael places a high priority on fun (again, see picture above) and sometimes invites his audience to participate in Drill Team vs. Cheerleader competitions at his shows.  A couple of songs by Totally Michael below; the second one is NSFW.

Little Buckets

Here's something to warm the cockles of your heart on these cold days. The incredible Bryn Christopher, Amy Winehouse's former backup singer, who I blogged about many months ago performing at a benefit at Covent Garden.

Batmanguitarclock

-Above, a video by the cutely named dd/mm/yyyy (How great is that??) who hail from Toronto. I like random video images that are pasted together. It's like taking a box full of miscellaneous photos, tossing them in the air and when you put a couple of them together they're somehow related, and a theme emerges, anyway.

Low Church of Laddism

I've been hearing a lot of buzz on the Scottish band Glasvegas as of late. Spin's blurb on them was especially well written:

Lads. Yobs. Scallies. Neds. In Britain, a culture has grown up around urban, working-class white guys that's almost religious in its fervor. Its sacraments are boozing, brawling and "chasing birds"...and its patron saints are the Gallagher brothers.  Glasgow quartet Glasvegas are a product of this world.

It's a world that frontman, former semipro footballer James Allen, describes in their songs. Says the Telegraph: "Allan sings about knife crime, social workers, depression, jealousy and parental failure in a language that is at once gritty and poetic, while lifting the spirits with old-fashioned melodies and a big, dramatic wall of sound."

This song, as airy and ethereal as it might sound is actually about a social worker(!):

(They will be on the David Letterman show on January the 5th, and their shows at the Bowery in New York and the Troubadour in LA are already both sold out!!)

Quartz 'n' Physics

 

Celebration is yet ANOTHER band from Baltimore, Maryland. A few weeks back I wrote about how Ponytail, Dan Deacon and Beach House all come from that area and specifically the "Copycat Building" scene.

Not much in the way of new news about Celebration as far as I can tell. It's unclear whether or not they have broken up.

In the year-old video above, singer Katrina Ford brings to mind a grittier, New Age-ier Jenny Lewis. The story involves a game of crystal quartz Jenga gone awry, setting off a chain reaction in which rock formations (or rock candy if you are hungry like I am right now..) sprout up all around the band's domicile. I must admit that I was hoping that there would be some Fortress of Solitude action at the end, Marlon Brando...Will.i.am...anything.

So Hey, What's Rufus Wainwright Up To These Days??

...Is precisely the question I asked myself this morning on the drive to work after the iPod randomly shuffled on to his song, Going To A Town. And then I wondered if he was thinking about me, a perfect stranger, at the very same moment, too. Like, over his morning coffee, while adjusting his lederhosen.

Anyway, as I suspected, because he is such a rabblerouser, not only has the honeyvoiced singer jumped into the gay marriage debate, siding with Elton John (and then correcting himself!)... he was also just recently on the Martha Stewart show! Worlds colliding! Here are the two clips for my amusement more than anything because I'm a big fan of both Roof and Martha S. (Warning: these are long, 10 minutes each. Kate McGarrigle was there as well. The entire clan sings at the very end of the 2nd clip. Beautiful.)

Get On the Bus

Wow, Taylor over at Music For Ants is killin' it with his year-end lists! That's where I discovered this video by CSS from September of this year for the song Move. The concept is simple, but entertaining: Optical Illusions with Polaroids. It reminds me of sleevefacing, though the two ideas don't have much to do with each other. I guess the point here is that you can have all kinds of cheap fun if you are creative enough. And who *hasn't* done that thing where you put your flat outstretched hand underneath a statue like you're carrying it?

Quickies

-"Jonathan Coulton has released his greatest hits compilation "JoCo Looks Back" on limited edition USB drives that come stocked not only with the standard mixes of the album's songs, but also the unmixed audio stems (i.e. separated vocal track, guitar track, drum track, etc.). All of the material is under a CC BY-NC-SA license and ready to share and remix. The drives are available to people who contribute $50 or more to Creative Commons before December 31."

-"The pop star, who keeps his nose in a gift bag..." (via Soup)

-Yay! Ben Kweller's next album will be called Changing Horses (a "full blown, straight-up country affair') and he'll soon be announcing tourdates that include the left coast.

Rodeo Roundup of Favorite Songs Posted This Year.

 A friend asked if I was going to do a "Best of '08" list and I told him that I don't usually do these things. For one thing, I tend to post a lot of music that is either pop, mainstream (and hence played out by year's end) or songs that are more than a year old. So rather than calling it a best of '08, I'm calling this the accurately and glamourously named "Rodeo Round-up of Favorite Songs Posted This Year Period."

(What's that? Why the "period"?  Ummm, it's called an 'Element of Style.' Duh, Vance. Look it up.)

I'd also post MGMT's songs (and Cut Copy's! Beck and Hot Chip!) which were my true favorites of '08 (along with Brit Brit's Womanizer and Lollipop by Lil Wayne) but don't want to risk sounding like a 14 year old girl. Well, more so than usual that is...

The Top 5: Gnarls Barkley Going On, Beach House Gila, Lykke Li I'm Good I'm Gone, Liam Finn Second Chance, The Raconteurs Many Shades of Black, TV On the Radio Golden Age, Emmy the Great Where Is My Mind, Annie Girlfriend, Vivian Girls Where Do You Run To, Laibach Rossiya, Grizzly Bear He Hit Me, No Age Eraser, The Muslims Extinction, Julian Nation Linda Linda, Sam Sparro Black and Gold, Womack and Womack Teardrops and Weezer Ms. Sweeney mp3s were all here.

Your Economy Wears Army Boots

Continuing on with Cheez Week: What's sad is that if this video were taking place today, Gavin Degraw and Kristin Cavallari wouldn't have any merchandise to play with..just empty store racks, boxes of red plastic price tags and miscellaneous pot lids. Some mismatched combat boots; one size 13 and one size 5. Some weird offputting flavor of floss (Curry?). If that. Oh, the carefree days of May '08.

++Gavin DeGraw is asking fans to donate to Nothing But Nets.

You're In Your Hands

I might have already posted on this, because I spend a great deal of time thinking about the 90's classic Everything You Want by Vertical Horizon. I'd never really listened to the lyrics though. All these years I only paid attention to the chorus which appears to be coming from the P.O.V. of the girl's homely, helpful male friend giving some advice, which is really the only value of homely people when you think about it:

He's everything you want
He's everything you need
He's everything inside of you
That you wish you could be
He says all the right things
At exactly the right time
But he means nothing to you
And you don't know why

Listen a little closer and there's poetic magic in there, Hello..:

You howl and listen
Listen and wait for the
Echoes of angels who won't return

And some less magical, angelic parts. This is the real stuff. Relationships have their gross moments

But under skinned knees and the skid marks

Adviceboy returns, though, and he's sincere:

You're waiting for someone
To put you together
You're waiting for someone to push you away
There's always another wound to discover
There's always something more you wish he'd say

As do the angels, who are no longer echoing, but also angry. The drama!:

Out of the island (Maybe the dude in question is Dennis Haysbert?)
Into the highway
Past the places where you might have turned
You never did notice
But you still hide away
The anger of angels who won't return

But all that superior poetry is just smoke and mirrors for the mind-blowing, Sixth Sense ending:

I am everything you want
I am everything you need
I am everything inside of you
That you wish you could be
I say all the right things
At exactly the right time
But I mean nothing to you and I don't know why
And I don't know
why
Why
I don't know

BOOM! He was talking about himself all along.

Quickies

-Marnie Stern's bandmate plays a dog. Not as advanced as an Azn.

-Vampire Weekend's next single will be called The Kids Don't Stand A Chance. That and info on other new releases here.

It'll be interesting to see if VW can accurately time their next album in anticipation of the backlash to the backlash to the backlash. I imagine it's a little like timing ovulation to the moon's cycles while eating yams for these guys. Between this and all the cardigan upkeep I don't know how they manage.

-Folkheads will appreciate the tiny magic of Angus and Julia Stone and their songs about Pinocchio, the Von Trapps and the Little Mermaid. Her voice reminds me of the long lost Edie Brickell and a time when girls wore hats.

-Empire of the Sun's album Walking on A Dream will come out on Feb. 23rd. The band is composed of Sleepy Jackson's Luke Steele and Pnau's Nick Littlemore.

Finally!

Strap yourselves in, coming in at 7 minutes, the Amnesty International/LINK video I talked about tripping out over this past weekend has finally made it to You Tube! Now with 25% more Larry Fishburne! And the song has totally grown on me:

The original version of the song, Cancion Protesta, isn't available anywhere online for free but you can buy it here.

Plain Rumor

-First pix of Beyonce and co-star in Obsessed. A "stalker thriller in the vein of Fatal Attraction. That's a whole lotta Light Auburn Excellence goin' on right there.

-Katt Williams has beef wit Jermaine Dupri. Katt Williams confusion. Family thinks Katt Williams is crazy.  Katt Williams retiring? Yeah, he might be a lot of things, but he's definitely not dead.

-Built to Spill vs. The Rapture.