dance force one: goerge bush gets a remix from best week ever

if you haven't already seen wolf blitzer's cnn coverage of george bush's foray into interpretive dance, you should 1) ask yourself what the hell you have been doing for the past two days, 2) watch the clip on you tube below, and 3) remind yourself and everyone you know that malaria awareness is, indeed, a cause for dancing.




and if you're really feeling adventurous, alex blagg over at bwe has given us a very clever take on that same dance...because there's nothing like a remixed president to bring a smile to your face.

not so secretly canadian: sunset rubdown at the troubador

please note the lamp. (i promise, it will be important later.)

when spencer krug joined band mates michael doerkson, camilla wynne ingr (pony up!), and jordan robson cramer (xy lover) on stage at the troubador last night, he introduced the band with a gentle voice and an unassuming greeting. “ah, hi. so, we’re not wolf parade,” he said. the audience laughed and so did the band. and then sunset rubdown launched into some of the most unique and wonderful live music i have ever heard. (though i can't lie, i did go into the show with a positive bias; i'm a huge fan of wolf parade and am also enjoying the new handsome furs album. gorilla vs. bear has more on that here.)

it is the band's strange combination of characteristics, krug’s soft, often humorous and always unassuming persona and the band’s tormented, otherworldly sound that made sunset rubdown's performance so effective -- something like the musical equivalent of the tales of edgar allen poe -- as read aloud by mother goose.


at the troubador show, krug used a bedroom lamp (see picture above, as promised) to light his keys and the soft, homey glow of its light made the show feel all the more intimate. it was as though we had all been invited into his bedroom, into his most intimate thoughts and moments. the effect of the light was soft and warm, a striking juxtaposition with the music and lyrics the poured out of the band.

despite the darkness of their sounds, in the lamplight, sunset rubdown had a comforting, almost hypnotic effect on the audience. you wouldn’t expect to be comforted by a band that sings songs replete with images of graveyard skeletons, drowning sailors, and the unknowable carnivorous things that reach out from our dreams to drag us into the shadows near death, but despite these figures of loss and hollowness, sunset rubdown managed to live up to the glow of the lamp. their effect was almost indescribable, dark and warm, terrifying even as it consoles.

mmm...sunset rubdown...

(shut up, i am blogging)

with a huge sound and a constant, toe-tapping drum beat, sunset rubdown managed to defy all of my musical expectations, keeping time without a base and rendering songs that are as haunting as they are friendly. Each one was delivered beautifully by master musicians, each almost clearly a product of krug’s extraordinary brand of oddball genius. if we could sleep with our eyes open, as krug intimates, sunset rubdown is most assuredly the band that would greet us from the dark, strange depths of our most wonderfully aberrant dreams.

a+

for more on sunset rubdown, check out passion of the weiss' top 25 albums of last year...right around number one.

a funny bit of chemistry: the hold steady, live at fingerprints

anyone who has listened to a hold steady record knows that the brooklyn group’s brand of updated rock relies heavily on spiraling guitar riffs and aggressive drums. on their three albums, that hard, clean sound has provided a backdrop for front man craig finn’s simple but poignant lyrics, resulting in aggressive, upbeat songs that have the strange ability to make you want to dance while simultaneously capturing the sad, hollow ache of a pained and desperate america.

it is that dichotomy, the tension between bruce springstein-type bar rock and new york school-type poetics, that has given the band it's unique flavor and made the hold steady a polarizing force, a band that is alternatively loved and hated by the intellectual set. (apparently, there is some ongoing debate about whether or not bands that use melody are too plebian for the more advanced folks.)

the hold steady in black and white. black and white!

looks pretty arty to me...

featuring five songs including citrus, chips’ ahoy, you can make him like you, and the cattle and the creeping things (and no, this one’s not about the current administration vacationing at the summer ranch), their recently released acoustic ep, live at fingerprints, allows the band’s polarizing hard rock sound to fall away, leaving listeners with softer melodies and a whole lot of accordion. the shift also lays bare the spare, haunting words of finn’s truth-heavy lyrics.

although the band sounds a little tired on the live recording, all of the songs translate well, some coming through better than others. “citrus,” a softer, more heavily picked song, accoustic in its original incarnation, sounds almost effortless. and the jaunting, bluesy “you’ve gotta dance with who you came to the dance with” is a surprisingly fun addittion not featured on any of the band's other albums.

overall, the hold steady’s unplugged sound is milder than their usual fare, which may disappoint those looking to this ep for their signature bar rock americana. instead, the ep shifts the hold steady's tone, softening their sounds and losing some of their usual, captivating tension. but against this gentler backdrop, finn’s voice and words are even more decisive and indelible, not having to compete against heavy guitar riff’s for the listener’s attention.

like the drugs they refer to often in their lyrics, the hold steady is powerful medicine and this ep, though perhaps not as potent as some of their other work, is still strong stuff, wild and warm. and, as with all of the hold steady’s songs and albums, in the center there is a hot, soft light.

the ep is a limited edition and only available at record stores that are part of the think indie consortium

the emperor's new band

the following is based on a danish fairytale by the late, great hans christian anderson. it was originally titled keiserens nye klæder rock band.

once upon a time, in a gentrifying neighborhood, far away (at least it seemed far if you had to get there in traffic), there lived a group of very progressive, intelligent people called hipsters. the hipsters ruled their bohemian kingdom well, patronizing non-corporate establishments and cooking with all organic ingredients.

then one day, a band called deerhunter came to see the hipsters. deerhunter, or more specifically, deerhunter’s exceptionally thin front man, bradford cox, told the hipsters that the band could make a very special kind of music – music so unique that it would sound like the cacophonous wail of a dying chimpanzee to everyone who was stupid or unfit for his position. (most of the hipsters didn’t have day jobs, so they weren’t too worried about that last part, but they were deathly afraid of being singled out as stupid.)

and deerhunter had promised the hipsters that this music was so magical, it could separate the critics from the fan boys and the vegetarians from the vegans…

so the hipsters listened to the music and found it sounded like a very untalented rendition of the music from hedwig and the angry inch, but they were afraid their friends would judge them and their MFA degrees, so they praised deerhunter and wrote positive reviews of their albums in their trendy indie magazines. eventually they turned deerhunter into “trindie” rock darlings.

(almost clever 80's images anyone?)

deerhunter played large, well attended shows and each time the audience pretended to enjoy the nails on a chalkboard mania that the band performed. But then, one day, a very small-time blogger (a.k.a. me) went to one of these shows and proclaimed, “deerhunter has no rhythm! deerhunter has no style! deerhunter isn’t making music – that’s just noise.”

the whisper of truth was passed all around the internet, from blog to blog to myspace comment until, finally, the hipsters realized that they had been taken advantage of and, had they not embraced separatist nerd culture, wanting to prove themselves smarter than everybody else to mask their childhood insecurities, they could have spent their money on tickets to a show they would have actually enjoyed.

alas, they could not get a refund on their tickets or reclaim the wasted hours of their lives, but from then on, the hipsters realized that the smart thing to do was to actually tell the truth about their musical preferences. (this seemed like an especially good idea when they considered that their SAT, ACT, and CTBS scores, along with their regular viewing of the colbert report, had already confirmed that they were pretty smart. (or at least that they knew the vice president's name.)

and so they lived happily (a.k.a. organically) ever after -- their closets full of vintage tees, their fridges full of PBR, and their i-pods full of music they could actually enjoy.

the end.

god bless you, mr. vonnegut

today we are the same america we were yesterday, but we have lost ourselves one very important writer.

even so, the new york times today reminds us that, at the end of his last book, a man without a country, kurt vonnegut wrote:

when the last living thing

has died on account of us,

how poetical it would be

if earth could say,

in a voice floating up

perhaps

from the floor

of the grand canyon,

“it is done.”

people did not like it here.

this is the first morning in 84 years that saw the sun beating down an vonnegutless earth. whether he liked it here or not, he was one of this planet's greatest human storytellers.


share sadness and favorite vonnegutisms here or here.


read kurt vonnegut's article on the new millenium via rolling stone online


buy his books in bookstores everywhere.


and remember, the only rule we have babies, is that you must be kind.


so long mr. vonnegut, thanks for hanging on, and thanks for all the stories.

you're up in heaven now.*