"I can't explain the sheepish grin in the mirror..." - Small 23

Here is the playlist from my first two-hour webcast last night:

1. Ad Council - WESU PSA "Ridiculous."
2. The Inside of the Outside/The Outside of the Inside - Echo
3. They Might Be Giants - Hey Mr. DJ I Thought You Said We Had A Deal
4. Volcano, I'm Still Exited!! - In Green
5. Xiu Xiu - Ceremony
6. The Lemonheads - Anyway
7. The Halo Bit - Stay Away For Awhile
8. Archers of Loaf - Scenic Pastures
9. Bigger Lovers - Half Richards
10. The Fall-Outs - Zombie
11. Karl Hendricks Trio - Foolish Words of a Woman in Love
12. Torgo - Hands to Ribbons (Live)
13. T.W. Walsh - Top of the Food Chain
14. Garden Variety - Clean Sheets
15. The Small Hours - Something About Coffee
16. Schneider TM - Frogstears
17. The Trouble With Sweeney - That's What I Was Wearing That Day
18. Modest Mouse - Baby Blue Sedan
19. Kam Fong - Get Behind Me (Satan)
20. Wendyfix - Ridge
21. The New Year - 18
22. Eggs - Rebuilding Europe [Request]
23. Interpol - Untitled
24. Psychedelic Furs - Until She Comes
25. Belle & Sebastian - The Model
26. Shannon Worrell - The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
27. Me + Dave - Adam's Living Room
28. Manta Ray - Speaking to Me Through My Self
29. Lambert, Hendricks and Ross - Twisted
30. Silkworm - Garden City Blues
31. Texas Is The Reason - If It's Here When We Get Back, It's Ours
32. Dinosaur Jr. - Whatever's cool With Me
33. Kptmichigan - Fon

Tune in next week for more of the same, with perhaps an extended section of live cuts.

That is all.

"Feel blind, sunshine..." - Monsterland

I'd like to heartily endorse the products and/or services of one Eli "Paperboy" Reed, a 20-year old roots-rock wunderkind who has hit the new scene at the CanTab Underground, the new incarnation of that which is below the Cantab Lounge. Reed plays the guitar like crazy, and specializes in pre-white people rock, rhythm and blues. Apparently the guy collects vintage 45s and listens to them obsessively until he learns the tracks. Then he teaches them to his band. They really are great. Dance music for cool people, similar to the programming on WMBR's superb "Backwoods" radio program -- though not the C+W stuff. Anyway, I would encourage everyone to get out and see this act.

EMusic relaunched and is offering 50 free MP3s to folks who sign up for their trial. So I spent part of my Friday night downloading records by T.W. Walsh, the Aislers Set, the Lemonheads, and various tracks from other bands. When EMusic first hit the streets in 1999 or so, their MP3s sucked, quality-wise. The EMusic MP3 of today is 192 Kbps VBR, and sounds great, so far as I can tell from the 50 free ones I got from them. Anyway, go check the new EMusic out.

Before seeing the Paperboy last night we met up with the Zozman and caught a raucous set from The Mobius Band. I have seen these guys probably a dozen times, and the last couple times I saw them they were slightly lackluster. Last night was the first time I have probably seen them in 6 months. They were excellent. Many old songs have new arrangements. Particularly benefitting from this is the song "Compass" that bass player Peter Sax sings. The cut used to lack dynamics, but has really truly blossomed into one of their stronger numbers. Drummer Noam Schatz unleashes some powerful beats, and electronic sections break up the number into more distinct sections. Also reworked is their song "Taxicab," which used to be a spacey, postrock meditation with a jarringly rhythmic conclusion that rocked like crazy. The new version, which I saw for the second time last night, inverts the descending guitar phrase and has a softer touch. The version they are playing now, which they closed their set with last night, is re-imagined as a feedback-laden, shoegazery guitar epic, similar to something like Yo La Tengo's "Blue Line Swinger." It's really quite spectacular. Make a point to see them.

Went with Jonny Surmacz Thursday night to see Zippy Milstead's Carbon Leaf. They were really on, and also are boasting new arrangements and jam sections and segues in their set. Particularly affecting was the reworked "Desperation Song." These guys are touring hard until Thanksgiving to support their new record on Vanguard. Make a point to check them out too. They have mid-October dates in Missouri and I am hoping to be able to catch them out there in the likely event we will be out there the week they are. We'll see.

Many readers will already be familiar with the transcript of Jon Stewart's appearance on Bill O' Reilly's show. For those of you who haven't read it, this is really a must-read.

Do check out this excellent web page devoted to Monsterland, the pre-Lilys/Pernice Brothers project of Thom Monahan who released a string of great records and single in the early and mid-'90s. This site has numerous MP3s, though it doesn't include my favorite Monsterland song, "At One With Time." Still, there is a lot of good stuff here, include some of the other cuts from the "At One With Time" EP. This site is an example of what is right with the Internet, in that it preserves something that otherwise might be lost into the mists of time. Or something. Anyway, check out some of the songs, particularly "Jane Wiedlin Was a Go-Go As Far As We Know."

Be sure to tune in to my next webcast, Tuesday at 9PM, at http://radio.teapothill.org -- and prepare for good things from newest RTH spinner H-Dawg from Accounts Receivable, who has not set spinning time as of yet.

That is all.

"Moonlight on your neck." - Haywood

Kool Things:

1. Troy's zombie movie Flesh Crawl. Check out the pics of the zombies on the site, the makeup is really amazing.

2. The Top 100 Philly Records of All Time.

3. HIPSTER JENGA!

4. Radio TeapotHill. Listen In. I spin music Tuesday nights. My next show will be next Tuesday, the 28th, at 9PM. My first two-hour set for RTH.

As promised, here is the playlist for my first show:

1. Ad Council PSA (WESU) - Ridiculous
2. Pavement - Starlings In the Slipstream - Brighten the Corners
3. The Coctails - Starlings - Peel
4. The Mendoza Line -Either Way You Lose - Sent Down to AA
5. The Nels Cline Singers - He Still Carries A Torch For Her - The Giant Pin
6. Polvo - Street Knowledge - Exploded Drawing
7. Destroyer - Modern Painters - This Night
8. Rob V - Shut the Fuck Up - La Affection Affection
9. The Replacements - Lookin For Ya - Unreleased
10. The Dambuilders - Colin's Heros - Encendedor!
11. Sheryl's Magnetic Aura - Making New Friends - S/T EP
12. Haywood - Ten Gallon - Unreleased
13. Small Factory - Hi Howard, I'm Back - For If You Cannot Fly
14. Spinanes - Sunday - Manos
15. American Football - Never Meant - S/T
16. The Shins - Kissing The Lipless - Chutes Too Narrow
17. Belle and Sebastian - The Boy With the Arab Strap - The Boy With the Arab Strap
18. The Wannadies - Hit - The Wannadies

That is all.

"And if I learned her language she could tell me all her dreams." - The Dambuilders

Another absolutely gorgeous Sunday. Just back from Portsmouth, NH where we spent our weekend at the biannual Firm shindig. Which involved a lot of drinking and standing around and taking taxis from the hotel where all the paralegals were stationed to the hotel where the main base of operations was located. It was nice on the whole, I met and fraternized with folks who I pass in halls everyday but never knew. It rained like hell Saturday, but that did not deter Lopez and I from getting out onto the main drag in Portsmouth and taking lunch at the Friendly Toast (this link curiously name-drops Carman's Country Kitchen in South Philly, which was close by my old pad on Ellsworth and, perhaps more notably, claimed to put the "cunt" back in "country." But I digress...). Afterwards I shuffled across Congress Street to while away the hours in what I have decided is my current favorite record store, Bullmoose Music. I bought about a half dozen records from their ample used stacks, all of which are great. Particularly The Dambuilder's Encendedor, which I had a tape of back in college but never the CD. The tape is long gone, and I am very pleased to have the disc because it is even stronger than I had remembered (It looks like some third-party at Amazon will sell it to you for $.13 -- this is likely the best deal you'll get this year on hot rock, so I suggest you take it). The band synthesized Jawbox and the Pixies and other sounds into an indie rock delight that boasted a lot of violin, which sounds zany, but it works. I saw the Dambuilders a few times around the time this record came out, once in Bethlehem, PA and once in NYC at CMJ, and they were really hot then. They got snapped up by Atlantic/TAG or something like that and released another full-length or two that I don't remember anything about. I'll have to look into it.

Also got a bunch of other good records. Hooray for me. On a related note, I plan to launch Tuesday a webcasting venture through a partnership woth Logie's Teapothill.org. Go to http://radio.teapothill.org on Tuesday nights at 10PM, where you will be able to access a Shoutcast stream of music I will be spinning for one hour. We tried the experiment out Thursday night and it works pretty well. My show complements other extant Radio Teapot Hill programming, including jazz from Topher and punk and indie from Rob. Check in now and again to see what is spinning.

Need to settle back in here. I feel like we have been away for months. Fortunately this week's trip to St. Louis appears to have been postponed, which means I can go see Carbon Leaf on Thursday and Mobius Band on Saturday. The big Wilco show is coming up too. Rockity rock rock.

That is all.

"There's no way to collapse the lung, breathing down on everyone." - Dinosaur Jr.

Getting settled back in on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. KCMO ended up being a really good time, insofar as we had to spend the workday in a conference room looking at some pretty dull stuff. We had a pretty grand Wednesday evening, starting off with free drinks in the VIP loung at the Fairmont before heading off for an expensive but just average meal. From there we bumbled over to The Beaumont Club, which books national acts but that night featured a Texas-style blues quartet, Walter Trout and The Radicals, that went real heavy on the guitar and drum solos. No joke. Full on drum solos. It was sort of nuts. As we were unable to ride the mechanical bull therein, we hoofed it over to the Grand Emporium, where we were just in time for BR-549. Who DESTROYED. They were awesome. The whole room was bouncing off the walls. As I said to the Good Doctor the other day, I always thought they were kind of a shiny tie-telecaster C+W outfit. Boy was I wrong. These guys deliver high octane rockabilly like it is going out of style, which of course it did, 21 years ago almost to the day.

Lucky us, we apparently have about five more trips to Missouri this fall to look forward to. Between that and trips to New Hampshire this weekend and PA Columbus Day weekend, things is busy.

I've rediscovered the charm of chocolate milk.

The Good Doctor supplied me with the final version of the Mendoza Line's Sent Down to AA odds and sods compilation. Just as good as the early set I have, though some of the songs are different. This is a record you can currently only get when you see them live, but lucky for you they just started a month-long tour of the states. Their new joint "Fortune" debuted at 365 on the CMJ 200, for those of you that still keep track of that sort of thing.

The other day I read about Mozilla's Firefox browser for the ten millionth time, so I have downloaded it and am using it. It works great, renders the comics on my My Yahoo! page crisply (something IE wouldn't or couldn't do), and has thwarted the burgeoning pop-up problem that has manifested itself somewhere on my computer, such that traditional pop-up software wasn't stopping the pop-ups. I am glad to stick it to The Man by using Firefox, and I recommend you all get with the program pronto.

Have spent a fair amount of time listening to Bjork's new joint "Medulla" this week, in addition to all the electronic stuff I got to review for Junkmedia last week. The Monkey has an on-point review of Medulla at JM.

Stayed in last night to re-group and finally got down to the business of ripping some 7 inches to my computer, including The Halo Bit's "Stay Away for Awhile" +2, Finger's "Ship Full of Holes" +1, Fitz of Depression's classic reading of "Jenny / 867-5309" +1 (which apparently was expanded to become
"Pigs Are People Too"), and the Parade of Homes Comp from Two Peters Records, featuring cuts from Haywood, Kim Bashing, Barnabys and my first "real" "band, Lampshade. Anyway, the Halo Bit jam is pretty great -- check it out.

The MP3 bloggers have been hyping The Arcade Fire, and I have downloaded about six cuts from their forthcoming record. Everything sounds pretty great. Go take a look around for some of that rock and roll music.

That is all.

"The shape we meant to make is gone." - Iron & Wine

Back in Cambridge for the night before jetting off to KCMO tomorrow afternoon. Had a grand time in PA, particularly at Toshio's moving-to-New-Orleans party, where in addition to chilling with T+T and Karim, I was also treated the company of Bring-The-Keg-In Geoghegan and Graziano, who both had infants in tow. Reminiscing and beer drinking ensued. Etc.

Anyhoo. I was shocked to learn through an email exchange with the Good Doctor last week that the early Lilys records are out of print and can fetch as much as $50 from Half.com. I will come out and boldly say that each of the first three Lilys records are worth this sum, but I think everyone who knows me knows that I am totally biased as the Lilys are one of my favorite bands. Anyway, this whole conversation was part of a strong sell of these records to the Doctor. I was even bold enough to just come right out and say that "Claire Hates Me" from the Slumberland release "In The Presence of Nothing" is my favorite song, hands down. And I stand behind that. So if that sort of thing interests you, download the song. And play it really, really loud.

FYI Buddyhead is still really funny. A classic comic excerpt about that nu metal producer recording the recent Cure record: "You can tell the drummer is thinking, “Dude, when you thought Korn was the next Nirvana, I had already been doing this for YEARS B*TCH! GET THE F*CK AWAY FROM ME SO I CAN RECORD MY DRUMS!”"

I may have reported this a year or two ago, as I can't imagine it slipped me when I reviewed the Scheider TM ep "6Peace", but Schneider TM was in the band Hip Young Things, which released an amazing indie rock record in the 90s called "Shrug" and were part of the so-called trash scene that also produced The Notwist. Interesting, huh?

Speaking of Schneider TM, I've just received the forthcoming Kptmichigan record. Kptmichigan plays in the live Schneider TM unit, and put out an AWESOME electronic record last year called "Player, Player." Anyway, the new record is self-titled, and frankly, it is phenomenal. This guy has shown up with a record that has grown beyond the electronic stuff he was doing to include noise, psychedelia, feedback, and more prominent vocals. The sound is definitely kind of singular, though I have read some stuff about Animal Collective and even the Liars that make it seem like it isn't a unique viewpoint right now. Anyway, I'll be reviewing that soon, as well as a new Tim Hecker and a new Keith Fullerton Whitman, both also faves of mine among the practitioners of contemporary electronic music.

That is all.