Today's Hotness: The High Price Of Robert Palmer, And Et Cetera

>> How insane is it that Robert Palmer's Clues is out of print on CD? Best price at Amazon right now is $30 for a used copy. EBay's got a copy that you can order from some fellow in Australia for about the equivalent of $15 USD, but if we're going to spend that kind of money we'd rather get a brand new copy. And considering we just binged at Forced Exposure on the most recent Pop Ambient collection as well as the hotly anticipated new sets from The Field and Pole, we shouldn't even be having this conversation. Incidentally, in all that looking around for Robert Palmer CDs we came across a cover of "Johnny And Mary" by Placebo we'd never heard before. Not bad. We've posted Mr. Palmer's original video above; here's Placebo's version.

>> Old Guy Rant: The best Modest Mouse song is it's first single "Broke," which we first encountered with the flipside "Whenever You Breath Out, I Breathe In" when Sub Pop serviced it to our college radio station in 1996. Stream the teeth-rattling, heart-stomping version from the live record Baron Von Bullshit Rides Again for free here via Rhapsody. It deserves #1 status more than anything found on We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank. Just sayin.'

>> Does anybody remember the show HBO Video Jukebox from the early '80s? It played music videos for about a half an hour. At least in our house it was a pre-cursor to having MTV. We're pretty sure we first saw The Clash's "This Is Radio Clash" on HBO Video Jukebox. We were certainly confused as hell, because at that point -- at the ripe age of 7 or whatever -- we only knew the band by reputation, and we couldn't fathom why this punk band was making an electro-funk track. Anyway, another tune we remember getting played on the show was called "Questionnaire." We don't remember who sang it, and it is therefore virtually Google-proof. The clip for the song featured an oscilloscope, if that is what it is called. Basically it was all black and then the sound waves or something caused a neon green line going across the screen to, well, oscillate. Anybody know what I am talking about?

>> Opinion presented as fact: the best Peter, Bjorn & John song is "Chills." It's the only track of theirs we find ourselves listening to over and over again right now.