art is the new religion

Hallucinating to The Mars Volta

Hai!  I'm back from a week working in San Francisco. I apologize for disappearing like that, pls forgive me?

Let's talk about The Mars Volta.

I've never actually been on any sort of hallucinogenic drug trip, but listening to The Mars Volta's new record The Bedlam in Goliath is making me feel like I'm on something.  I've enjoyed their first three albums, but the sounds on this one are even more frantic, distorted, jarring and not-of-this-world than before.  It sounds like rewinding a cassette tape.  Picking up outer space transmissions on a transistor radio.  Car stereo wars.  Free jazz.  Like open mic night on Neptune.  The Mars Volta should replace the band in the cantina scene in Star Wars.

Thanks to my Rhapsody subscription, I'm able to listen to the record without purchasing it, and honestly I'm not sure I need to buy this one.  But I do, as always, salute their brazen, almost kamikaze creativity and mind-blowing stage presence.  And I recommend this record if you need to be out of your comfort zone - or your mind - for a little while.  This time around they just might have drifted out so far on their own sea of inspiration as to be ultimately out of my reach.

Get a load of them performing "Wax Simulacra" on Letterman:

My favorite parts of this video are:

• the brief Bruce Willis cameo (wha?)
• white microphone cord
• Cedric's bangs combed so smooth
• the one camera angled solely to capture the drummer's bad-assery
• walking away with that feeling of "What the hell just happened?"

Buy The Mars Volta's The Bedlam in Goliath.  If you can handle it.

Cut Copy

No time for a proper post today, so here's a quick note:

Cut Copy's Bright Like Neon Love was one of my favorite albums of 2005 and I've been anxiously awaiting their follow-up.  The Australians recorded In Ghost Colours in NYC and it looks like it'll be released some time in March?  (No time for fact checking today!)

Head to Cut Copy's MySpace for a preview of a few tracks and stop by their blog for news & downloads.  Gottagobye.

Tonight's Showalter

Tonight's show is of the comedy variety, as I will be seeing Michaels Showalter and Ian Black at Mohawk.  It's going to be on the outdoor stage which would be a lot of fun if it weren't 36 degrees and raining in Austin right now.

Michael Showalter has his own show, The Michael Showalter Showalter, on College Humor.  Here's the episode with Zach Galifianakis (I would have linked to the episode with David Wain but half of it was really gross):

Bonus:  Michael Ian Black has a TypePad blog.

Speaking of Engelbert Humperdinck...

On my record shopping excursion last weekend, one of the LPs I picked up was Engelbert's King of Hearts.  Whenever I recognize or remember an artist's name but can't bring their music to mind, that's usually a cue for me to start exploring.*  After all, they became famous (or infamous) for good reason, right?

King of Hearts was released in 1973 and consists of lite rock love songs with sweet sentiments like "sun, come on down and dry the tears of the girl in my garden, sittin' with me, poor little thing" (from "My Summer Song").  Humperdinck croons about innocent romance and the album includes a zippy version of "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World".   After I listened to this record I thought, Oh, Engelbert's well-known for these harmless pop ballads.  How quaint.

Then YouTube informed me of how wrong my assumption was.

I did a quick search on his name and scrolled through the results YouTube offered up.  A live rendition of "You Make My Pants" seemed the most intriguing, so I watched.  I apologize in advance for the extreme creepiness you are about to witness:

Brings a whole new meaning to "Humperdinck", no?  I am aghast.  There are so many questions:

• Did I hear him say the concert was being televised?
• Were those women planted in the audience, or really chosen at random?
• Does the act of swabbing your mouth off with a little red handkerchief make you instantly ready to tongue kiss another stranger?
• Why did they have to sit down on the floor?
• Why is he so sweaty? 
• How did he get in to those skintight pants in the first place?
• Is the correct order really (1) tongue kiss, (2) handshake, (3) introductions?

If the video didn't already tell you enough about Engelbert, here are some other fun facts courtesy of Wikipedia.  His real name is Arnold Dempsey.  In a Svengali-like revamp of his image, former roommate (and manager of Tom Jones) Gordon Mills renamed Dempsey after the German composer.   He's sold over 150 million records and kept The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" out of the #1 spot in the UK with his signature version of "Release Me".

According to his website he still tours, perhaps with a supply of red handkerchiefs at the ready?

*I know I've been writing about a lot of old school stuff lately, so I want to assure you I do listen to a lot of new music.  It's just that ever since I left my post as the Music Editor of SFist, I haven't been getting many promo copies of new records to check out.  But I promise, I'll write about newer music next week.

Wherefore Bill Withers?

As promised, I will now tell you why you should own Bill Withers' Greatest Hits. 

You likely fall into one of two camps:
Camp 1:  Bill Withers?  Duh.  He rules.
Camp 2:  No idea who you're talking about.

Ah, but dear members of Camp 2, you do know Bill Withers.  You have undoubtedly heard Club Nouveau's rendition of Withers' "Lean On Me" far too many times to count.  If you're like me, you may even have a vaguely sad or embarrassing memory attached to the song.  Mine involves a gradeschool birthday party in Brooke Blass' garage where we stood around singing along to the radio, eating cake and dreaming up reasons to mix and mingle with the boys in attendance.  When "Lean On Me" was blasted over the boom box speakers, someone had the bright idea to stand in a huge circle and put our arms around each others' shoulders.  Yes, Withers' songwriting gave us that exciting and elusive reason to touch each other, which is kind of a big deal when you're twelve.  A much better anecdote about this song is that Withers wrote it before he became a recording star, penning it as an ode to the camaraderie he experienced growing up in a West Virginia coal mining town (source).  The sentiment in the song is real, and Withers' version is obviously way better than anything Club Nouveau could ever imagine.  (Henceforth, I will never mention Club Nouveau again.)

But let's ignore "Lean On Me," because we can probably hear that song plenty of times in this life without ever having to own it.  Here's a look at some of the other amazing songs on his Greatest Hits:

"Just The Two Of Us" - Another song you've probably heard, it features a lovely soft rock sax solo, whispery backing vocals and Withers' signature lyrical style of simple and sweet.

"Use Me" - You may not know or expect this funky side of Withers, but the main melody plunked out on an electric piano is mesmerizing.

"Lovely Day" - Best listened to when you're already in a really good mood, or looking to get there.

"Ain't No Sunshine" - The polar opposite of "Lovely Day", this song is beautifully depressing.  He's singing the blues in a non-blues format:

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
It's not warm when she's away.
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone,
And she's always gone too long, anytime she goes away.

Those are some incredibly romantic lyrics.  Also, I love it when an artist can make something totally wrong (here, the repetition of "I know I know I know...") and make it sound right on.  My only beef with this song is that I wish it were longer than two minutes, but he sure does make those two minutes memorable.

Here's a great live version of "Ain't No Sunshine", starting with a short intro with Withers explaining his inspiration for the song (note how awesome his drummer is): 

Finally, if the track listing hasn't convinced you to own this record, I offer up the album cover (you might recall I bought it on vinyl this past weekend) for your enjoyment:

Front Cover:

Back Cover:

I understand this is supposed to depict a sort of sexy, decadent, devil-may-care theme of indulgence, but I can't help but feel bad for that little prawn that somehow became estranged from his dinner plate.

• Buy Bill Withers - Greatest Hits from Amazon.

Here's a recent interview with the spry, handsome, nearly septuagenerian Withers:

Record Shopping

Though I did finally upgrade my car stereo last year, my setup for listening to music at home has been bleak for years.  It's never been good, really. 

The main piece of listening equipment (I can't justify calling it a "stereo") that served me for the last several years was purchased shortly after I moved to New York City.  I walked to the nearest electronics superstore I could find (not knowing the city very well), and bought the smallest, cheapest CD player that had built-in speakers.  A boom box, if you will.   It is tiny, cheap and it sounds terrible, but it survived for almost eight years.

Until I moved back to Texas, that is.  Now one of the speakers is on the fritz, so the little boom box is officially dead.  The death of my little radio prompted me the other night to plug my portable record player into my little computer speakers and break out some of my records for the first time since I moved. 

(What kind of record player do I own, you ask?  The Vestax Handy Trax Portable Turntable! It has a handle on the top, you know, in case I'm walking somewhere and need to bring my record player with me.  For the hundred bucks I paid for it at the time, it's been a decent little player.  I'd recommend it if you're looking for something compact and affordable - and don't forget, portable! - for your records.  You have records, right?)

I know the thought of this setup sounds perhaps even worse to you than the boom box arrangement, but it actually sounds really good!  I'll admit my standards are pretty low, but it's something about the concrete floors in my house that carries the sound well.  And really, a good song will still sound good on the crappiest of systems.  Or, it should.  Regardless of whether or not you're judging me right now, just know it was an upgrade for me and an excuse to go record shopping this weekend.

I ended up at End of an Ear on South 1st Street here in Austin.  They have a wide selection of new indie rock records, but I found myself wondering when vinyl got expensive again.  I feel like maybe two or three years ago you could buy a new LP for $9.99 from an indie label, but maybe I'm romanticizing the past?  In 2008 you'll pay anywhere from $12.99 to $19.99 for a new release on vinyl, which quickly shattered my "vinyl is so much cheaper" belief.  I should probably acknowledge that I haven't bought much music over the past three years while I was the Music Editor for SFist (promos galore!), so maybe I'm just now catching up with inflation.  And yes, I know it's a pricey gamble for labels to press vinyl these days, but boy am I glad for the ones that do.  At End of an Ear, I bought brazos' a city just as tall EP and Bill Callahan's Woke On A Whale Heart on CD, and on vinyl I bought Stevie Wonder's Talking Book and Tom Petty's Long After Dark.

On my way home, I passed by Cheapo on Lamar and decided to stop in and peruse their used vinyl selection.  Part of the fun of buying used vinyl, in my opinion, is the ability to (re)discover really great old albums on the cheap.  You can buy classic stuff often for just $1.99-5.99 so the stakes are pretty low if you don't like what you end up with.  It can be an adventurous pursuit.  Cheapo had a pretty extensive selection of used vinyl but their new vinyl offering was smaller than End of an Ear's.  At Cheapo I bought used vinyl copies of Sam Cooke's You Send Me and Englebert (yes, Humperdinck!)'s King of Hearts.  I purchased two new albums on vinyl too:  My Brightest Diamond's Bring Me The Workhorse and Bill Withers' Greatest Hits.  I'm thinking that I should have gone ahead and bought that Cameo record, but I bet it'll still be there when I go back.

Tomorrow (or the next time I post):  Why you, too, should own Bill Withers' Greatest Hits.

Meet the New Steve Perry

I missed Journey's episode of "Behind the Music" so I don't know the exact story of why Steve Perry and Journey went their separate ways.  What I could glean from a quick scan of this Wikipedia article is that the band has endured despite a revolving cast of characters, and Perry was ousted ten years ago when he refused to get some necessary hip surgery, which made him unable tour, or perhaps because he spent too much time with his ill mother?  Wikipedia, you are not much help today.

Whatever caused his exit from the band, no one can deny the impact Steve Perry's voice has had on rock and pop music.  His vocals are instantly recognizable, his range is remarkable, and most Americans probably know the words to at least one Journey song.  Sure, Perry took some lessons from Sam Cooke, but he developed a style that was all his own.  (Here's Sam Cooke singing "A Change Is Gonna Come", for sake of comparison.)

If imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, Perry must have been really flattered when he heard about his replacement as the lead singer of Journey, Steve Augeri, who was reminiscent of Perry in name, stature and most of all, voice. 

Augeri's turn lasted about eight years, but he was canned when he experienced some throat problems (these Journey guys are harsh, no?)  Jeff Scott Soto was brought in, but failed to stick.  So last year Journey found themselves once again in need of a lead singer.

So where did they look?  YouTube!

In a modernday rock n' roll fairytale, singer and Journey fanatic Arnel Pineda was minding his own business, singing Journey covers with his band The Zoo in his hometown of Quezon City in the Philippines and uploading performance videos to YouTube.  And then one day, his dreams came true when he was contacted by Neal Schon himself and asked to be the new lead singer of Journey.

Says Pineda about his new dream gig:
“It’s so exciting to sing with one of the best bands in the world. It’ll be a lot of hard work on my part and I’m actually looking forward to the scrutiny I’ll get from the hardcore JOURNEY fans. I know they’ll expect me to sound exactly like ‘the voice’ (Steve Perry), but that will never happen. I know there’s only one Steve Perry in this world.”

Congratulations, Arnel Pineda, and you're right -- there is only one Steve Perry in this world.  And I salute him.

• Buy Sam Cooke's Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964 or Journey's  Greatest Hits from Amazon.

CBC Radio 3: A Trip to the Great White North

With the snowballing success of artists like Feist, Arcade Fire and Tegan & Sara, it's no secret that tons of great music comes from Canada.

A friend just turned me on to a Canadian indie rock radio station CBC Radio 3.  They describe themselves thusly:

CBC Radio 3 is available 24/7 on satellite radio. Beamed across North America on channel 94 of the Sirius Satellite Radio network, the station features artists from across the country in multiple genres, including rock, pop, hip-hop, electronica, and alt-country.

Radio 3's podcast is truly unique: it's full of amazing, 100% Canadian music from new and emerging artists. This is great news for music fans, and it's even better news for independent Canadian musicians. We are extremely excited about the potential for exposing Canadian artists to a wider international audience and are proud to be one of the top podcasts worldwide.

Listening over the past two days, I've heard a ton of new music and have been fully entertained by the DJs' banter.  The fact that they're also blogging, podcasting and broadcasting on satellite radio shows they're embracing all the new technology at their fingertips, which surely helps spread their music and message a lot further.

Why doesn't Austin have a forward-thinking radio station that embraces new technology like this?  Do we?  Austin, of all cities, really should.  We claim to be the "live music capital of the world" and we have amazing talent here, but even our best musical outlets - "Austin City Limits", SXSW, the ACL Fest, we even have our own local access music channel - haven't mastered the technology to become accessible and relevant year-round and worldwide.  I've seen a few stations who understand the importance of a good web presence and adventurous programming but I don't see a clear winner yet.  Who or what will step up to be the outlet that gives the world access to Austin or Texas music?  I'll keep investigating and let you know when I find one.

Wainy Days

Wet Hot American Summer is one of my favorite movies of all time, and it's one of the rare ones I could watch over and over.  So when I discovered that David Wain, the film's writer and alumnus of The State, had a new online comedy series, I had to check it out.

I ended up watching every single episode of "Wainy Days" in one sitting. 

Do I need to get out more?  Perhaps.  Or maybe the show is just. that. good.

The premise is that David Wain's looking for love and we join him on his dating misadventures with a series of women.  The comedy is absurd, ridiculous and sometimes horrifying and/or unbelievable, and the shows feature cameos and writing turns from other members of The State.  Of course I also love that the theme song was written by my friend Craig Wedren.  Many of the episodes have different writers, so even though there is a narrative that links them all together, the tone can vary from episode to episode (and some of them get a little risque so beware if you're watching at work).  Here's the first one, to get you started.

I don't know the story behind why Wain chose to release this series online, but I love that he's doing it this way.  Releasing it online means the show will have more artistic freedom, a quicker turnaround time, and as long as they can get the word out about it, anyone who is interested can watch it.  So here I am, doing my part to spread the good word and support creative comedy.

David Wain's blog just told me that a new episode is out, so I'm off to watch it.  Enjoy!

• Buy Wet Hot American Summer from Amazon because it's genius and you love to laugh.

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

Until I heard about Julian Schnabel's film adaptation of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, I'd never heard Jean-Dominique Bauby's story.  In case you're not familiar with it, Jean-Dominique Bauby was the Editor of French Elle, a successful man with kids and a full life, until one day at the age of 43 he suffered a stroke and lived the rest of his short life with "locked-in" syndrome.  His entire body was paralyzed except for one eye, but his spirit and intellect remained whole.

Think about that for a minute.

We have no way to fathom what we might do in that situation, how we might have felt.  But Bauby lived to tell us how he felt, what he did, what it was like, by writing a memoir.  His speech therapist devised a tablet with the letters of the alphabet listed in order of the frequency of their use (in the French language) and he dictated his entire memoir to her, letter by letter.

The memoir is short; I finished it in less than two hours yesterday. The writing is rich, moving from simple to lyrical, from angry to ebullient.  Each chapter is no more than three pages or so, but he captures full emotions, truths and experiences in those short swatches of prose.

''One day when attempting to ask for my glasses (lunettes), I was asked what I wanted to do with the moon (lune).'' 

At one point I stopped myself mid-page and thought about how long it might have taken Bauby to craft one sentence: first forming it in his head, editing it in his mind until it was ready, then holding it there and dictating it to his transcriber, one letter at a time.  How long would it take to create one sentence as short as this one? 

Bauby died two days after the French publication of his book.

I know there are a lot of aspiring writers in the world, and we give ourselves all kinds of excuses why we can't write.  But reading this book will make you laugh at your own excuses.  It will transmute many of the hardships and problems we think we endure every day.  In fact, it might be the perfect book to start off the new year and remind ourselves how very much we all take for granted and how we should appreciate life in the moment.  Just what are we determined to be or do or finish, and through what circumstances will we persevere?

If you have any interest in this story or Schnabel's film, please take the few hours of your time to read Bauby's book.  It's a triumph and a legacy that deserves to be shared and celebrated.

• Buy The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death from Amazon.