YouTube Rodeo: The Beginning Of The End?

>> Our savvy analyst and former-analyst friends are predicting the end of the Wild West days of YouTube, so we wanted to peruse the site today and dig up any gems we've missed heretofore in case YouTube becomes totally co-opted by and beholden to The Man. So above is a link to our favorite song by defunct Philadelphia-based sort-of supergroup The Bigger Lovers. The band features guys who play with The Pernice Brothers and Lefty's Deceiver and several other acts we discuss here with some regularity. Anyway, the tune is called "Bought Your Ghost" and it is from the band's excellent set Honey In The Hive, which came out on Yep Roc several years ago.

>> We've been keeping an eye on YouTube for the last year waiting for decent video of Meneguar to pop up. And while that day has yet to come, there are two recent clips from a show at the Spazz in Greenville, N.C., that are worth looking at if only because the sound and video isn't absolutely abysmal and there is so little else out there to watch. The video is choppy and splices together pieces of a couple different songs from the band's stellar I Was Born At Night record, which was first released in 2005. The main chunk is a song that is new to us. Meneguar is apparently working on finishing a second set that we seem to remember reporting that Troubleman plans to release next year.

>> Here's a live clip of The Jam doing an energetic version of "Down In The Tube Station At Midnight." There's not a lot to say about this clip, except it is sort of amazing to see Paul Weller looking so young -- probably younger in the clip than we are now, which is scary to think about; how did we get older than Paul Weller? There are lots of great hairstyles in the video, not the least of which is the bass player's hair helmet.

>> The are currently at least 1,600 clips of The Cure on YouTube. Which is a lot. Monitoring the number of those clips in the coming weeks and months might give the casual observer an idea of how a licensed, legitimate YouTube will look in the future. Here's the band as a trio in Dec. 1981 performing a haunting version of "The Figurehead" in a cramped room for a promotional clip. We've always preferred the more stripped-down Cure, and wished the same sort of musical economy that characterized the first few records carried over into their more popular ones. We harbor what is likely the rare opinion that Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me suffers under the weight of all the keyboards. Anybody know what kind of guitar Fat Bob is playing here? Can anyone recommend a definitive Cure biography? We know there are many, but we are looking for recommendations on the most thorough and up-to-date book, since we already know a lot about the band.

>> Finally, here's a live clip from July in which New Order performs one of our very favorite songs, "Ceremony," which has been featured prominently in promos for the forthcoming film "Marie Antoinette." This clip is woefully short, but we thought we'd throw it up given that we've seen every one of the other 600 or so clips currently on YouTube. Incidentally, this blog was almost called Avenues All Lined With Trees, and we still consider changing it now and again. OH SNAP -- here's the band performing the song in 1981, less than a year after Joy Division's Ian Curtis hanged himself. Bernard Sumner's vocal is pretty lackluster, but otherwise the sound and picture here is superlative.

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