WhoTube Link Dump: The Who In The '60s

We're feeling pretty slack tonight, so we are probably just going to concentrate on listening to promos. In the meantime, and inspired by The Get Quick demos and outtakes we've been rocking all week, we thought we'd acknowledge recent news that The Who is recording its first new record in about a quarter century by nosing around for vintage clips of the band doing their thing during the best stage of their career, the pilled-up mod days. Pretty much any track you'd ever want to see performed is at the YouTube, but we'll list a few that we found particularly entertaining.

>> Here's the band doing "A Quick One While He's Away" from the Rolling Stones' Rock And Roll Circus in 1968. There's tons of windmill guitar in this one.

>> Here's "Anyway Anyhow Anywhere" from the 1965 Richmond Jazz Festival. There's a lot of Keith Moon drumming his ass off in this one. Daltry sticks his mic right on a cymbal at one point, Townshend trashes a guitar and picks up another, and all the while the girls are screaming bloody murder.

>> Heres's a great clip for "Can't Explain." There's a lot of great dancing in this one, mostly by young men. Sort of strange how few women you'll see in the clip.

>> Here's a clip of the band pretending to play "Substitute." Great track.

>> And finally here's the band lip-synching through Martha and The Vandellas' "Heatwave" for a German TV performance. Thing is, The Who's version of the track is pretty great.

Today's Hotness: Clark, Tom Vek, Dresden Dolls

>> Warp has released a new EP from Clark, f/k/a Chris Clark. The mini set is called Throttle Furniture, and it precedes a full-length expected before the end of the year. Mr. Clark rose to relative prominence in the electronic music community via his 2003 sophomore release Empty The Bones Of You. You can listen to Throttle Furniture here in those frustratingly brief thirty-second snippets that digital storefront Bleep.com doles out. The venerable label also announced it has signed Battles' Tyondai Braxton and plans to release a solo effort from the multi-instrumentalist later this year.

>> Startime International is prepping the masses for a fresh wave of Tom Vek-a-mania by offering a b-side for download ahead of Mr. Vek's appearance Thursday night on the American teen soap "The O.C." The label is also selling an EP at ITunes to capitalize on the hype a bit. Here's a link to the ITunes EP; right click and save as for an MP3 of the bumpin' track "Things Are Here To Stay."

>> Recent posts from Lou Barlow at the Loobiecore forum indicate that some things about the resuscitated Dinosaur Jr. are the same as they ever were. Mr. Barlow notes that the project is "J's deal and he's not exactly inviting me to write (not discouraging me either but..)... I think I may get 1 or 2 in if I really assert myself." More details at the FreakScene message boards here.

>> Cabaret punkers Dresden Dolls get the feature treatment here from Billboard today. Frontwoman Amanda Palmer discusses how being a more experienced songwriter makes her more comfortable with musical simplicity. The duo's next set, Yes, Virginia..., streets April 18 on Roadrunner.

>> Thurston Moore here tells Brit hypesheet NME that the forthcoming Sonic Youth record is influenced by so-called '70s bands like Blue Oyster Cult, the theme song to erstwhile television comedy "Friends," and early, thrashy Go-Gos. While this is likely true, it'd be really funny if Thurston was just telling them made-up crap for fun.

Coming To Your Local Bandstand: Measle Mumps Rubella

We don't remember where, but in recent days we read a critic, or at least an aspiring critic, take issue with the name of the band Measles Mumps Rubella. Way to engage the material, buddy. Material which, as it turns out, is well worth the attention. Straddling elements of contemporary dance-punk and classic darkwave, MMR's debut full length Fantastic Success is full of tunes that strain with the push of sonic exploration and the pull of propulsive rhythm. It makes for a pretty gripping listen. And you can hear the band do its thing live in the coming weeks as it treks toward and then away from the annual South By Southwest music industry conference that most every one won't shut up about. For those of you not situated near a highway connecting New York and Austin, the band has more dates in May. Check 'em all out below.

03/11 -- DC9 -- Washington, DC
03/12 -- Wetlands Dancehall -- Chapel Hill, NC
03/13 -- Drunken Unicorn -- Atlanta, GA
03/14 -- Whitewater Tavern -- Little Rock, AR
03/15 -- TBA -- Austin, TX
03/16 -- Velvet SpadePatio -- Austin, TX
03/17 -- Lennys Fucked Up Dance Party -- Atlanta, GA
03/18 -- TBA -- Greenville, SC
03/19 -- Haus Party -- Charlottesville, VA

04/02 -- Cake Shop -- New York, NY

05/02 -- Great Scott -- Boston, MA
05/04 -- Ground Zero -- Troy, NY
05/05 -- Over The Top Festival -- Toronto, CA
05/06 -- CAID -- Detroit, MI
05/07 -- DAAC -- Lansing, MI
05/09 -- Empty Bottle -- Chicago, IL
05/11 -- TBA -- Pittsburg, PA
05/12 -- TBA -- Philadelphia, PA

Rack And Opinion: Release Date 3.7.06

This is another one of those big weeks, music fans. It marks returns by some of the biggest acts in indiedom: Stereolab, Mogwai, Buzzcocks. And of course there's the debut from Witch, which is J. Mascis in an old-new package cracking the skins for a newish stoner rock act. The slam dunk this week may actually come from electroclashers Goldfrapp, whose excellent record has even made a convert out of Madge, if a current article at the RollingStone.com web site is to be believed. What the hell, we'll beleive it. We listened to the record yesterday along with the Mogwai and Stereolab joints and thought it was really solid. All of these titles and the rest of our picks for your weekly shopping trip are listed below. Links go to relevant commercial opportunities with our old camp counselors over at Insound. Spend spend spend!

Buzzcocks -- Flat-Pack Philosophy -- Cooking Vinyl
The Duke Spirit -- Cuts Across the Land -- StarTime International
Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid -- The Exchange Sessions Vol. 1 -- Domino
Glenn Kotche -- Mobile -- Nonesuch
Goldfrapp -- Supernature -- Mute
Mogwai -- Mr. Beast -- Matador
Stereolab -- Fab Four Suture -- Too Pure
Witch -- Witch -- Tee Pee

!Exclusive! The Get Quick | Unreleased MP3s

Last week's mail brought something exciting: two discs of unreleased recordings by Philadelphia's The Get Quick. When listening to the power pop act's debut How The Story Goes last fall we noted that the track "Happy" faded out just as it was getting crazy. It fades back in at the end of album closer "Here She Comes," but we couldn't help but wonder what sort of mayhem we were missing by having the track bifurcated like that. You know all the good stuff Nixon said was in those mysterious blank spots in the audio tapes of his Oval Office recordings, and we couldn't help feeling that some of the best parts of "Happy" might be similarly lost to history. Well, we've known The Get Quick's Erik Evol for a goodly while, so we hit him up to fish for an alternate mix or two. Imagine our excitement when we finally received the motherlode last week.

How The Story Goes stands out as a particularly glossy outing for Evol and band. With producer Mike Musmanno [Outkast, Lilys] onboard for the project, label Rainbow Quartz was looking to get something that sounded, you know, produced. As a result of that and some decisions by the band intended to make Story stand out among the Rainbow Quartz catalog, many of The Get Quick's rougher edges were left out of the final mixes. That's not the case with the dozens of demos Evol sent along. The act's pilled-up, dangerous side is front and center in the careening rocker "It's All Right Now," which we are able to offer you here exclusively. In addition we're also proffering "Out Of Time," a number recorded for How The Story Goes that was left off the final sequencing for the record. These will only be up for a week, so get 'em while they're hot. We're saving a few other choice cuts of a different conceptual stripe (think synths!) for a post over at Two And A 1/2 Pounds Of Bacon, so keep your eyes open over there in the next week or so, too.

The Get Quick -- "It's All Right Now" -- Unreleased
The Get Quick -- "Out Of Time" -- Unreleased How The Story Goes outtake

[buy How The Story Goes from Insound]

Free Range Music: Stereolab, Mogwai, Goldfrapp

AOL Music has the hook-up for full-album streams for records including the new Stereolab, Mogwai, Goldfrapp, Nightmares On Wax, Coldcut and Thievery Corporation joints. The first three are fairly crucial listens for the week, and we've got links to all the goody goods below.

>> Stereolab: Fab Four Sutures. Six old and six new tunes. Sufficiently and typically blissful, busy and groovy. That the band has been so consistently good for so long, and sometimes exceptional (Dots And Loops, in our humble opinion), is quite an accomplishment.

>> Mogwai : Mr. Beast. Definitely check out the track "Travel Is Dangerous," its our favorite track the band has done since it released the epic "My Father, My King," although it's an altogether different, uh, beast.

>> Goldfrapp: Supernature. Gets particularly good in the middle third, where the songs aren't as clunkily rhythmic as the opening stretch, before heading into area that can only be described as downright dreamy and Yaz-tastic during "Time Out From The World" and "Number One." The set concludes with the slamming marcher "Beautiful."

>> Also: Nightmares On Wax; Coldcut; Thievery Corporation.

Today's Hotness: Sonic Youth, Eazy E

>> Pfork had an exlusive on news today that Sonic Youth's next record will street on June 6, which also happens to be the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year (think number of The Beast, people). The band is expected to support the set via a tour with the Flaming Lips. In other Sonics or at least Sonics-related news, Thurston Moore has inked a deal to distro his eclectic label Ecstatic Peace's music through corporate megalith Universal's Fontana distribution arm. Moore also will be working with Universal proper to develop artists and release their records. Here's the link.

>> We hope everyone recognizes the Eazy E homage in the Natalie Portman gangsta rapper clip that has been blowing up on the Internets since it aired on Saturday night. Here's some discussion and a link to the clip at BoingBoing. If memory serves, there is some direct and paraphrased lifting from the N.W.A. classic "Gangsta, Gangsta." [UPDATE: BoingBoing asserts the Portman jam refers to Eazy E's "No More Questions," some cat at Stereogum's comments hears Sir Mix-A-Lot].