She went with a Girl Power mix, starting with Sara Bareilles' "Brave," which is certainly more upbeat than Donald's "You Can't Always Get What You Want." LOOK OUT MILLENNIALS, WE'RE COMING FOR YOU!!!
(It was extremely hard to find embeddable video of this moment, so I had to steal it from LA Times reporter Mike Memoli. Thank you Mike Memoli.)
If you're old, you couldn't help but remember the First Clinton Balloon Drop.
Man, everybody looks a lot younger. But come on, even if you're not old, that is some pretty good shit. Those Clintons know how to get nominated for president, that's for sure. By the time it's Chelsea's turn, her song will probably be "What If The Mirror Is Real And We Are The Reflection" by Jaden Smith.
Speaking of political music, here's "DonaldTrumpMakesMeWannaSmokeCrack." (Donald Trump also apparently took my space bar.)
This song, which actually isn't nearly as bad as it should be, is currently #2 on Spotify's "Viral 50" chart. Here's a boring article about how Spotify determines what goes on the Viral 50 chart. Here's a more interesting article about the actual human people who compose playlists for Apple and Spotify and Google Play.
Hey, guess what? My friends in the Morning Line are making music again. Woods is playing at the Chapel tonight. And next weekend, of course, is Outside Lands. This year I'm finally doing what I threaten to do every year and leave town so I don't have to listen to Outside Lands in my living room when I'm just trying to watch Dateline. We're going to Guerneville for the weekend, so will there even be a Music Friday next week? I don't know. I don't know.
Not to dwell too much on the apocalyptic, flaming-rats-are-falling-from-the-skies-to-devour-your-children's-limbs speech by that dimestore Manuel Noriega last night, but since this is Music Friday I'm allowed to say that choosing "You Can't Always Get What You Want" as the song for the celebratory balloon drop is either the Biggest Fucking Troll of All Time or shows a frankly breathtaking lack of awareness or, fuck it, who knows, maybe both, given this shambling shitshow of an election.
I didn't see it, actually. I was at the Fillmore watching They Might Be Giants, which is the exact opposite of Donal Trump.
TMBG is sui generis in American music: a band that writes clever, quirky, catchy songs, doesn't take itself seriously at all, and has a wry sense of humor. It's music for science geeks and (former) record store clerks and mathletes. In fact, at one point during last night's show, the audience began chanting "SCIENCE! SCIENCE! SCIENCE!" like we were at a crazy Republican rally is bizarro world where they just nominated Neil deGrasse Tyson and were dropping carbon offsets instead of balloons. I am not kidding, they actually chanted this, in response to some stage patter about science. I am also not kidding about the stage patter about science.
I haven't listened to a lot of TMBG lately (and by lately, I mean since the mid-90's), but I quite liked "Apollo 18," their 1992 release. Among other eccentricities, it has a song about mammals that contains the words "nuclei," "monotreme," and "allotheria;" a whole set of seconds-long song sketches smashed together at the end, and perfectly fine pop songs like "I Palindrome I," a catchy ditty about matricide. TMBG is basically kid's music for adults. It's charming and happy, which made it the perfect antidote to what was going on in Cleveland. Couldn't they just leave Cleveland alone? They have enough problems already.
Speaking of "Apollo 18," the show was billed as "They Might Be Giants plays Apollo 18," but, being They Might Be Giants, they played a bunch of other songs first and then played the album, in order, but backwards. I mean in backwards order, not playing all the songs backwards.
It occurred to me while watching them that it's kind of perfect music for people on the spectrum because, other than mirth, I can't see TMBG generating any kind of emotional response, like some music does. The last time I saw the Weakerthans I was moved almost to tears by the song "Left and Leaving" (go ahead, listen, you might burst into tears). I can't imagine any TMBG provoking that kind of reaction. And there's nothing wrong with that! God knows we could use a little levity. It was a fun, if tiring, show (they didn't go on until after 9 pm, and I had to leave around 11:30; they still weren't done).
We were also talking about pre-show music last night because TMBG had a nice mix going on the house PA before the show, with everything from Kendrick to Lily Allen to the Offspring and I happened to mention my Theory of Pre-Show Music, which is: The harder the pre-show music, the more twee the band. EXAMPLE: I saw Belle & Sebastian years back and they played Geto Boys as their pre-show music. Twee band, hard rap. Conversely, I've seen some pretty aggro rock and they played classical or something before. Try it and see.
THE OTHER MAJOR MUSIC STORY OF THE WEEK had something to do with Kanye, Taylor Swift, and Snapchat. The Wife explained it to me but I wasn't really paying attention but I think it has something to do with some behind-the-scenes dealing and skullduggery and now everyone hates Taylor Swift? I guess go to Buzzfeed or something to learn more.
DID I GET TICKETS TO FYF FEST YET: No. Saturday tickets are currently $194 on StubHub. Humorously, 2-day tickets are $190, which means more people want to go Saturday than go Saturday and then discard a Sunday ticket. Throwing something in the trash is not worth $4 apparently.
I'm not 100% sure, but I believe the first long playing record album I bought with my own money was "Wings Over America" by, you guessed it, Wings.
[Brief explanatory note: Wings was a band fronted by kindly grandfather Paul McCartney, who you may know as Stella McCartney's dad. He was also in a band before Wings called "The Beatles."]
This was before the Vinyl Renaissance, when it was just vinyl and that was the only way you could buy music. WOA was an impressively heavy gatefold TRIPLE album with, IIRC, a poster and some stickers inside, along with the record. It's actually a really good album!
Back then - and by "then" I mean the late 70's, early 80's, live albums were really A Thing. I think everyone I knew had a copy of either "Alive" or "Alive II" by Kiss. Neil Young's "Live Rust" isn't just a great live album, it's a great album album. "Cheap Trick at Budokan" was playing all the time everywhere. James Brown's "Live at the Apollo" is a legend. It's a Pitchfork 10! And of course, every kid's older sister had Frampton Comes Alive, or at least the poster.
And today? Crickets. You just don't see live albums that much any more! There was a spate of MTV Unplugged discs that were pretty good (Jay-Z's "Unplugged") to certifiably classic (Nirvana's), but the era of the live album is essentially over. Once in a while something big drops - like maybe LCD Soundsystem's "The Long Goodbye," in 2014 - but they're no longer the ubiquitous cultural omnithings they used to be.
I found this List of Live Albums Recorded in the 2010s. Make my Metamucil a double, bartender, the dance floor at the assisted care isn't going to pack itself! A sample:
HOLY SHIT REO SPEEDWAGON STILL FUCKING EXISTS. They were Classic Rock when I was mowing lawns for snack bar money. Slash pressed "record" at two different gigs and I guess enough people bought the first one to inspire a second. Status Quo, who I thought broke up in 1975, is apparerently still giving the fans what they want and what they want is MORE LIVE ALBUMS.
Bruce Springsteen I understand. Why the world needed a The Prodigy live album I don't.
So what happened? Part of it, I'm sure, is that music is so fractured now that no single album is big enough to be a Huge Thing like Frampton Comes Alive anymore (with certain exceptions like Tay and Adele). I read somewhere once that in today's market, you only have to sell like 4,000 records in a week to crack the Billboard Top 100. (Incidentally, the biggest selling and therefore best album of the 2000s is The Marshall Mathers LP. Oh well.)
Also, when you can go on the YouTube and essentially watch a Video Live Album for free anytime, why bother just listening? Visuals, that's what we want. So live albums, dead.
DID I GET TICKETS TO FYF FEST YET: No, but they fell from $200 on StubHub to $180, so the dream is not yet dead.
Sorry MF is late, I had a work thing to do. It's still Friday and you have a whole extra day to read it anyway.
Speaking of patriotism and tradition, I'm glad to see the New York Daily News getting on board with FINALLY stopping the singing of "God Bless America" at baseball games.
But it wasn’t long before heartache became headache. The Yankees still play it at every game, but most teams, like my beloved Mets, play “God Bless America” only on Sundays or holidays. But even that’s too much.
Part of my outrage stems from ponderous Mussolini-esque introduction of the song, when fans are asked to rise, remove their caps and place them over their hearts.
Reality check, friends: “God Bless America” is not the National Anthem. The only songs Americans should stand for are “The Star Spangled Banner” and “Here Comes the Bride.”
Not that there aren't a host of excellent America songs to pick from! No 4th of July party is complete without Kim Wilde.
Oh that reminds me, here's a great interview with Kathy Valentine of the Go-Go's about the song "Vacation." This has nothing to do with July 4th or America except in the sense that Kathy Valentine is an American but for some reason "Kids in America" always reminds me of the Go-Go's so you can see my train of thought here. Anyway.
Then there's your dad's America song:
Or maybe your grandad's. "Comments disabled until after the election." GREAT JOB, GARBAGE PEOPLE.
There are lots of others. If you're making a killer playlist for your cookout, you can find some here and here. Those lists are boring and predictable, though. Esquire has a better version here, with stuff like Kendrick's "Alright" and Father John Misty's "Bored in the U.S.A."
Did you watch Aziz Ansari's very very very funny show "Master of None"? If you didn't, you should watch it right away. Apart from being funny, it also had a killer soundtrack. There's a Spotify playlist you can use if you have Spotify. If you don't have Spotify, you probably feel smug because you're not ripping off artists. Anyway, one plot point in one (or maybe two episodes) is a Father John Misty show and how hard it is to get tickets and how everyone wants to go to the Father John Misty show and I like FJM just fine but really? It's not like a surprise Beyonce show at Mezzanine or something. It's Father John Misty. Calm down.
Somehow I'll find a way to wedge and Elliott Smith song into this feature every week. This one for obvious reasons.
That's about it. Get your pets into Thundershirts and your sausages on the grill because IT'S JULY FOURTH MOTHERFUCKERS. Be safe out there.
Baby Britain feels the best Floating over a sea of vodka Separated from the rest Fights problems with bigger problems
Did Elliott Smith predict Brexit? PROBABLY! There's no way he could have predicted Music Friday, though, because nobody could have predicted Music Friday.
You know how people who are older than the target demo for whatever kind of music is most poplular always say "Bahhhh all those songs sound exactly the same"? Do they say that? They say something like that. I was taking one of my occasional spins through the Top 20 and you know what? THIS TIME THEY'RE RIGHT. In fact, two of the Top 20 songs in the US are almost exactly the same song.
Here's Rihanna's "Work," which has seeped into your consciousness one way or another even if you studiously avoid popular music:
And here's "Work From Home" by Fifth Harmony, a video that makes softcore porn look like The Godfather:
What the fuck. I guess "Repeating the Word Work Between 4 and 28 Times" is the hot new genre.
The rest of the Top 20 is Drake songs and "Panda" by Desiigner or "Desiigner" by Panda, I'm not sure. As far as I can tell, there isn't a song that could reasonably be called "rock music" in the Top 20, or maybe even the Top 50 or Top 100. In fact, the first rock song might be "The Sound of Silence" by Disturbed at #66 which, amazingly enough, is really and truly a cover of the Simon & Garfunkel song. I was all set to write that it "disappointingly is not a cover of the Simon & Garfunkel song" and then I went to watch the video and now I can't stop laughing. Here is a picture of a man singing "Sound of Silence":
That was fun, Disturbed! Do "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" next PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!! Then cover "Work Work Work Work Work."
In summation, the Billboard Top 100 is not really for me.
We should all collabo on a Worst Covers of All Time list. I'll get you started:
Sorry! I'm sorry. I had to do that. I want you to hurt like I hurt.
TELL ME WHAT IS THE WORST COVER YOU HAVE EVER HEARD.
The Treasure Island Music festival lineup was announced this week (or, "dropped," I guess. The lineup "dropped" on Tuesday.) and it is EVEN MORE DISAPPOINTING THAN USUAL.
Sigur Ros, really? I mean, even if you like Sigur Ros, they don't jump to mind when you think "festival headliners." Maybe the Kill Yourself Festival, with Nine Inch Nails, Mark Eitzel and a hologram of Joy Division. I remember seeing Spiritualized at TI one year - during the daytime, no less - and thinking about how incongruous it seemed. Spiritualized should only be experienced in a dark and smoky club with ample whiskey, not on a beautiful sunny day from the top of a ferris wheel. Sigur Ros should only be experienced in a teenage cutter's room with lizards in formaldehyde in jars and an unopened bottle of Wellbutrin.
I guess Ice Cube could be fun.
But honestly, there isn't another band on there I would pay money to see. What the fuck happened, Treasure Island Music Festival? There used to be some good lineups. I mean, in 2008 (the aforementioned Spiritualized year) you had TV on the Radio, Vampire Weekend, Okkervil River, Fleet Foxes, Hot Chip. That's a good lineup! Now we get "Glass Animals," whatever the fuck that is. I know a lot of people like Car Seat Headrest, but it just doesn't do anything for me.
Don't tell me it's because I'm getting old. I'M NOT OLD, YOU'RE OLD. I LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU.
Speaking of festivals, I recently learned that there is such a thing as the Animal Collective Camping Weekend in Big Sur and that sounds like it might be like taking acid inside a mescaline factory. Nothing I'd rather do than sleep on the ground with 333 Animal Collective fans talking to each other in Bjork lyrics and whatever else people who would camp out to watch Animal Collective do.
Then on the other end of the spectrum you've got Desert Trip, popularly known as "Oldchella," because FINALLY someone is catering to Baby Boomers. Haven't they labored in resolute silence long enough? The lineup includes the Stones, Bob Dylan, The Who, Neil Young, and other proto-Mesozoic acts. I have no idea how whatever the remaining members of the Dead are calling themselves today escaped this bill. Apparently the olds are going to camp out, just like the kids!
You better have an "on-site locksmith," because there is no way Peepaw goes 3 days without locking his keys in the Seville.
Finally, the #1 "viral track" in the land, according to Spotify, is "Fuck Steph Curry," a nuanced and incisive analysis of Stephen Curry's faults as a basketball player and citizen. Not really, it's actually just a guy saying "Fuck Steph Curry" over a backing track. There are some other lyrics too. It's not very nice.
Here's "You Can't Hide" by Maktub. It sounds like drinking beer in the sun. Have a great weekend!
Why do I hate Train so much? Is it their blandly calculated Mom-rock, which sounds engineered in a lab and specifically designed by a team of specialists to appeal to suburban white women, 29-54, who still think of themselves as edgy because they have half a joint left over from a party a few years ago and enjoy the occasional shot of Mezcal and softcore porn? It should come as no surprise, on that front, that some of their biggest "hits," like "Hey, Soul Sister" and "Drive By" were cowritten with Norwegian production team Espionage, who generally make their scratch writing for American Idol lower-tier finishers, which are about comparable to Train's level of competence and/or enjoyability.
Or is it the utterly insipid and often laughably inane lyrics, which sometimes, for example, feature singer Pat Monahan portraying himself as a "shy guy looking for a two ply / Hefty bag to hold my love," which would make him eligible for sex offender registration in several states? Or their continued and desperate-seeming need to connect themselves to San Francisco, where they got their start, despite the fact that they have long since decamped to Seattle or whatever?
I don't know. All of it, I guess. But just in case you need a little more, Train has gone and released a song-by-song cover of Led Zeppelin II. Even if you're not a huge Led Zeppelin fan - and I'm not really, although of course I was once a 16-year-old pot smoking youth and thus have done more than enough Led Zeppelin listening - this news should frighten and confuse you. Why?, you might ask. Why would you do such a thing? Led Zeppelin never did anything to you.
Because I love and respect you and would never want you to be hurt, I went and listened to some of it. It's not terrible. It's extraordinarily faithful to the original. Which means, what was the fucking point? Last year, Ryan Adams released a song by song cover of Taylor Swift's 1989, which I enjoyed quite a bit, largely because he Ryan Adams-ized the songs so completely that it sounded like a decent new Ryan Adams album. This sounds like when a TV show can't get the rights to the original recording of something and hire studio musicians to cover it as closely as possible.
They're playing it at the Great American Music Hall on Tuesday. It's sold out, of course.
Speaking of existing in a hellscape of heat and pain, Bonnaroo is this weekend! I was just in Middle Tennessee and I could only be outside for 25 minutes at a time under the blinding sun and searing 90 degree heat and 50 percent humidity but if you want to stand in that to watch Jason Mraz, go for it. Actually, there are some bright spots in the lineup - Waxahatchee, Tame Impala (playing from 1 am to 3 am! They don't make enough cocaine), the always fun LCD Soundsystem, Vince Staples, Father John Misty - but what with the heat and the hippies and the camping, I can't even. I'm stuck with urban festivals only from here on out.
Finally, have you ever discovered a band that you've never heard mentioned by anyone before and you can't figure out why they're a big secret and man, this album is pretty good! That just happened with me and the band is Ultimate Painting and the album is Ultimate Painting. Predictably, there's also a song on the album called Ultimate Painting, but here's a different song.
Hey everyone, welcome to Music Friday, a new feature here where you can take advantage of integrated social network posting to reach job seekers on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Oh wait, no, that's not right. That's someone else. Actually this is a new feature where I will talk about music every Friday. You know what they say, it mix the bourgeoisie and the rebel. So let's go.
Recently Spotify Discover Weekly (more about which below) served me up something surprising and cool. Now, if I said to you "how about a reggae cover of a Radiohead song" you'd probably say something like "they don't make weed big enough" or "can you reload for me I accidentally fired that one off the side of my head" but BELIEVE IT OR NOT this cover of "Let Down" by Toots & the Maytalls (under the Easy Star All Stars aegis) is actually pretty great.
It's not just me! According to reliable sources like their marketing agency, "Thom Yorke, 'in a rare moment of onstage chatter' according to USA Today, praised Toots and the Maytals' version of 'Let Down,' while Yorke's bandmate, guitarist Jonny Greenwood, calls it 'truly astounding.'" Listen for yourself; I think it's pretty great, and I'm the kind of person who would normally break out in hives at the phrase "reggae cover."
(Why did SDW serve up this odd choice to me? Probably because I listened to some Radiohead. Did I listen to some reggae at some point? I don't think so, but BLACKOUTS HAPPEN!!!!)
Turning to matters more conventional, as you know, I love Sturgill Simpson a lot, which is to say more than other modern country music and less than beer. I didn't love his latest album, "A Sailor's Guide to Earth" as much as his prior 2 albums, but it's still better than a lot of things. Anyway, Sturgill did a WTF podcast with Marc Maron and it's illuminating and fascinating, not just because I'm a fan of the artist but also because he's just had an interesting life, going from rural Kentucky to the Navy to working for the railroad in Utah and other country-music-type-stuff. Worth a listen.
(That being said, I might be heretical here but I don't really care for Marc Maron's interviewing style, which often seems to be Marc Maron talking about Marc Maron while the guest patiently listens. He's like a rougher, recovering alcoholic Terry Gross.)
Listening to that led me to the catalog of Jason Isbell, an artist I have tried out once or twice but never really followed up on but then hearing Sturgill talk about him like he was God I went back and checked some stuff out again. HOLY SHIT, I should have paid more attention the first time. This blew me away:
Trigger warning, don't listen to this if anyone you know has ever died, or if you're a person on the Earth. It is fucking DEVASTATING.
I promise I don't exclusively listen to reggae covers and morose alt-country! While recently listening to someone's show on BFF.FM, the Only Station That Matters, I happened to hear Warm Soda's "Tell Me in a Whisper." What a fun song!
Cool, huh? Wait, was there something else? Oh yeah, Spotify Discover Weekly, the service where Spotify serves you a playlist specifically tailored to what you might like. Or should like. Unlike every other one of these type things, Spotify Discover Weekly actually prodcues results. It's magical! Here's a great article about how they do it.
Finally, I really want to go to the Saturday set at FYF Fest in LA. Seriously, check out this lineup:
Unfortunately, it's sold out. Maybe I'll be the tenth caller or something, who knows.
If you go see Brian Jonestown Massacre this weekend, CONGRATULATIONS! You're probably older than me.
TK lives and works in San Francisco. He occasionally travels to places east of the Caldecott Tunnel, but not very often. His interests include bars, reality TV, and irony. Things seem to be going fine.
