DJ Z-Trip does his thing at a 2006 event in Los Angeles. (Michael Buckner / Getty Images)
by Rob Sachs
Those of you who are thinking about having a great party this St. Patrick's Day may have a lot on your minds as the minutes tick down, but it's as good a time as any to remind you of the importance of the perfect playlist. And we thought that for some good advice, we'd try an expert.
Famed "mashup" master DJ Z-Trip says that preparation is key, whether he's spinning records for a Vegas nightclub or setting up his iTunes playlist for a BBQ with friends. Z-Trip offered us his top five tips for keeping a party going.
1. Build up your crowd to a moment of frenzy. To explain how important this is, Z-Trip employs a volleyball metaphor: "Set, set, spike." You set up people with songs they're familiar with -- ones that maybe follow a particular theme or genre -- and then you spike it down with a great hit. Check out how Z-Trip weaves together Beastie Boys, AC/DC, and Rush -- and then crushes it with Led Zeppelin, in this set (language advisory here).
No doubt for tonight, you'll probably want to spike with your favorite Irish Hip Hop song...
2. Don't overdo any one band or genre. Z-Trip says having a lopsided playlist is like having a lopsided massage where, after 15 minutes, your "whole shoulder's numb, and it has the complete opposite effect of what you were trying to do." So throwing in one or two Beatles hits is great. Throwing on their entire box set: not so cool.
3. Work in some curveballs. This could mean something you've recently discovered that you can't wait to share, or even a forgottenclassic. Crowds love and appreciate it when you going out on a limb. On the other hand, he says...
4. Watch out for getting too obscure. While it's great to introduce crowds to new types of music, you have to be judicious about it. "If you're too pretentious, it'll come off in your mix," he warns. But Z-Trip also advises against about being be too predictable and bland. Might sound easier said than done, but it's all about finding a balance between the two.
5. Consider the shuffle. If you're feeling really gutsy, Z-trip says you can consider hitting shuffle on your iPod and see where the night takes you. This can be a dangerous thing, depending on what's in the full archives of your home music library, but it can also make for some mind-blowing juxtapositions. Who says Metallica and Carly Simon don't mix?
If you're looking to discover some new songs for your playlist, check out NPR's Song of the Day, curated by NPR Music editor Stephen Thompson. But if you're looking to find tunes on your own, Thompson recommends the website Hype Machine, which aggegrates music blogs. Or, he suggests, you can just hop around MySpace or other music blogs to find bands similar to the ones you know you like.
To hear more from my conversation with Stephen (himself an experienced creator of playlists), check out the podcast below. And good luck with your next party, whether it's tonight or any other night.
Timber Timbre (left), Peter Wolf Crier (top right) and Grass Widow. All are part of the marvelous SXSW preview at NPR Music.
by Linda Holmes
I am a hooting, foam-finger-waving fan of a variety of things, including Neil Patrick Harris, the Old Spice commercials where the guy is riding the horse, and my absolute right to enjoy the occasional pink book with shoes on the cover. (WHAT?)
But one of the things I am a big fan of here at NPR is the series of All Songs Considered podcasts where Bob Boilen, Robin Hilton, Monitor Mix blogger Carrie Brownstein, and Official Friend Of Monkey See Stephen Thompson sit around and crack on each other while playing great music. Common topics of conversation include: hating the music Bob likes, hating the music Robin likes, hating the music Carrie likes, and hating the music Stephen likes. Also: Stephen's hair. Also: Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone." Also: jingle bells.
I am not making up any of this, I give you my solemn word.
This is the time of year when NPR Music gears up for its coverage of South By Southwest, where several zillion bands, some of which are good and some of which are merely in town, play at large venues and small venues and in backyards and, as I always imagine it, hanging from trees with their banjos suspended from the branches and their harmonicas clenched in their teeth.
Yesterday, the All Songs team posted their SXSW preview, wherein you can hear 20 (twenty, two-zero) songs from bands that will be playing at the festival, and also learn the results of the "Secret South By Santa" project, in which they attempted to choose songs for each other to enjoy. I personally feel this show is the pinnacle of their comic and musical greatness -- both a very good selection of music and A-level hilarity from all involved -- and I honestly suggest that whether you think you care about music or not, you fire it up and listen.
I realized a few minutes ago that already today, I have gotten to write about Neil deGrasse Tyson, Roger Ebert, Craig Ferguson, Mythbusters, and an imaginary Jane Lynch/Betty White collaboration.
So apparently, this is the day when we write about things that are great. Let's keep it going with this OK Go video, "This Too Shall Pass." It's not just that it's a Rube Goldberg machine, it's the kind of Rube Goldberg machine it is -- not for this video the limitations of tiny marbles and wee springs. There is some big stuff here, which is funny and loud and rather wonderful.
There are four making-of videos on YouTube. One is here, two is here, three is here, and four is here.
As I sat watching #2, they got to "Adam," one of the nerds who helped build the machine, and I thought, "Wow, that guy really reminds me of somebody, and I cannot figure out who it is." He introduces himself at about the 40-second mark, and it was making me crazy. "Who is that guy?" I wondered. "He looks so familiar." There was something in the face, in the voice, in the little smile after he says, "I hang out with a rock band to make me feel cool."
And when he started talking again at about 1:30, I thought, "That's Eli."
So I went and looked up who played Jason Bateman's friend Eli on the sitcom It's Your Move for all of 18 episodes from 1984 to 1985 -- a show I absolutely loved, in which tiny Bateman exhibited many of the same skills he has now -- and the answer was Adam Sadowsky, who is exactly who that is. I'm sure everyone in the nerd community in which he operates knows this about him, but when I started watching the story of the tech that brought the video to life, I was not expecting that.
Well, the Sunsays, and the Daily Mailsays that "You're So Vain," which Carly Simon has spoken about only coyly for almost 40 years, is about record producer David Geffen, who was running her label back in 1972, when the track came out. This is now being reported in terms such as "Carly Simon has announced" that the song is about David Geffen.
Here, I have two thoughts.
A. This seems like an enormous leap, based on the available evidence.
B. Who cares?
This entire theory is apparently based on the fact that she can be heard whispering "David" backwards during a new version of "You're So Vain" that's on her upcoming album Never Been Gone. Note that she does not say "David Geffen, record producer."
Doubts, and why it doesn't make any difference, after the jump.
Crystal Bowersox is only one of the women who got off to a rougher than expected start in the first week of the popular and popularly despised American Idol. (Michael Becker / Fox)
by Linda Holmes
Boy, oh boy.
Earlier this week, Stephen and I were quite optimistic about this season's American Idol finalists, in the same way one might be quite optimistic that this year's crop of gypsy moths might be less destructive than usual. That optimism did not last, so it is time to whip the contenders into shape before it's too late. Let us begin with the women, who sang on Tuesday night. (I have sometimes threatened to start an entire Internet empire called "WellHarumph.com," where I will give this kind of feedback to the universe every day, but have not yet followed through.)
Please note: For whatever reason, Fox has not ironed out how to do embedded video, so if these come up as blank squares, you can see all the performances here.
Ashley Rodriguez: Please back off the mike about a half an inch. I can hear the individual alveoli in your lungs expanding and contracting. Also, frosted lipstick is for older ladies who don't understand that frosted lipstick is actually for nobody. You are a decent singer, but you are singing everything in the same tone, wearing the same grin, and it's creeping me out. When your song is about how you are "trying to be happy," and contains the words "so what if it hurts me," it is very important that you not seem uniformly elated.
Crystal Bowersox: You are very good. You are one of my picks to win. I am on your side. I like you. But if you are going to play the guitar and also the harmonica, you want your harmonica playing to have a purpose other than pointing out that you can play the harmonica. If that is its only purpose, perhaps there is a "My Other Guitar Is A Harmonica" T-shirt you could wear.
Here are the American Idol Top 24. Spot the winner! (Fox)
by Linda Holmes and Stephen Thompson
Stephen: Hi, Linda Holmes!
Linda: Look, it's Stephen Thompson!
Stephen: It's-a me! [That was to be read in the voice of Mario on those old Nintendo ads.]
Linda: Oh, that's very much the way I read it.
Stephen: More like, "Eeeet's-a meeeee!"
Linda: Speaking of incredibly affected ways of saying things, I asked you here today to discuss American Idol.
Stephen: Wait, what? No.
Linda: You were hoping it was about French cinema.
Stephen: Well, I... sort of assumed as much. If there's one general subject on which I am an expert, it is All Things Fancy. The name of my new NPR program!
Linda: All Things Fanc-sidered.
Stephen: YES! Holmes FTW!
Linda: Okay. ANYWAY. We're down to the Top 24, and this is traditionally the moment where we try to figure out who's going to win. I should add that at no point last year did either one of us think that there was any chance that eventual winner Kris Allen would win, so that's the context.
Stephen: Well, yes. It's worth noting that the BIG reason you and I are trying to figure out who will win is that we participate in a friend's American Idol pool, which necessitates that we pick three (3) aspiring Idols and two (2) artists whose music we expect them to perform. And, as you noted, NO ONE thought Kris Allen was going to win last year. Not a single person in the pool picked him, and yet here we are, a country absolutely CONSUMED with all things Kris Allen in 2010. It's Kris Allen's pop-culture marketplace, and we're livin' in it!
Linda: Correct. But it's also the point where we try to figure out what, if anything, you can tell about where the crass marketing of completely commercial music is headed, based on the composition of the top 24.
Stephen: Right! You get a sense of where the great minds behind American Idol think we MIGHT be, as a listening public. And that's worth thinking about, because those people have squillions of dollars, which they obtained by more or less correctly guessing what people might like and/or unhealthily obsess over.
Linda: I would say that my first observation this year is that a surprising number of these people actually appear capable of singing.
Stephen: There's that, for sure. I noticed an uptick in the number of frontrunners who appear to at least aspire toward some level of authenticity -- or at least "authenticity." Crystal Bowersox can SING. Andrew Garcia is a less polished vocalist, but seems to have an advanced-level understanding of how to stand out on a show like this. Casey James has some of that, too, and all of the three people I just named are at ease holding at least one musical instrument.
Linda: I would say there are already three or four of them who, if I heard them in a non-American-Idol setting, I would think, "That's a talented and/or polished person." The ones you named, and also Lilly Scott with the white hair, and Didi Benami, who made even a Kara DioGuardi song sound good.
Stephen: Which: Wow. Janell Wheeler had a terrific run at "American Boy," too, though I'm not sure I'll be able to fully abide her week in and week out. There's definitely a pretty broad cross-section of people, also, in terms of race, age, ethnicity, and so on. They're throwing a lot of people against the wall to see what sticks. Interestingly, what seems to be in shorter supply than usual is people with very clear-cut youth appeal. Picking in the pool, I kept thinking, "Dude, you can't pick nothing but instrument-wielding sex-havers. There's going to be a wee, non-threatening boy, because there has to be." Which is why, in the interest of full disclosure, I picked Bowersox, Garcia, and tiny 16-year-old Aaron Kelly. WHO HAD BETTER NOT LET ME DOWN, DAMMIT.
Linda: Yeah, I don't know if he's actually a good enough singer, though. That formula isn't foolproof. He could go out there and sing "Part-Time Lover" like former teen contestant Kevin Covais.
Stephen: I've had Covais' face in my nightmares ever since I made the decision to pick Aaron Kelly! You hope he's David Archuleta, with whom he possesses a bit more of a physical resemblance. That tween/elderly vote that coalesced around David Archuleta -- and, yes, angry emailers, I know that David Archuleta's fans come in all ages, shapes, and sizes -- will coalesce around someone.
Linda: I think one of these years, the tween/elderly vote will gather around a girl, like Katie Stevens. Who is good, a teenager, and weirdly out of time, given that her favorite artist is Whitney Houston. And she's 17! I don't really get that.
Stephen: Yeah, I thought about picking her for the same reason. It's been a while since a Diana DeGarmo type broke through. God, I am such a geek.
Linda: I think you make an interesting point, though, in that there's a slightly more world-weary vibe to this year's group, I think. And interestingly, after last year's Adam Lambert phenomenon, there's really nobody who's like, "I'M DIFFERENT AND EDGY!" And that surprised me.
Stephen: For a while, I was trying to figure out who was going to be the most polarizing -- who was going to make message boards go mad with mass derangement -- and I couldn't think of anyone except maybe Casey James. Which is why I almost picked him. He's no Adam Lambert, on any number of levels, but he's going to attract some love-him/hate-him reactions. Everyone seems older this season -- especially me.
Who will be polarizing? And other polarizing topics, after the jump.
This shot of the recording session for the new "We Are The World" demonstrates the problem, which is located just north of LL Cool J. (Associated Press)
by Linda Holmes
Last night, during NBC's run-up to the opening ceremonies for the Vancouver Olympics, they premiered an abbreviated version of the remake of "We Are The World" that's been recorded to benefit Haiti disaster relief -- an unmistakably and unambiguously good and important cause that doesn't really change the fact that the recording is really, really strangely put together.
First of all, Justin Bieber, a singer who's 15 years old and looks much younger, kicks off the song, standing in for Lionel Richie's vocal in the original. Nothing against Bieber, but when Lionel Richie did this part, he had already been a Commodore. Bieber, on the other hand, was opening for Taylor Swift not long ago. Not exactly the same kind of iconic beginning.
And then Bieber hands off to Jennifer Hudson and Nicole Scherzinger. Hudson is an Academy-Award-winning actress and a very talented singer (as well as an American Idol finalist), yes, but Scherzinger is mostly famous for being the lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls. So at this point in the video, the roles of Lionel Richie and Stevie Wonder are being played by a 15-year-old, a Pussycat Doll, and an Idol. (In addition to Hudson, Idol is also represented by judge Randy Jackson and past runner-up Katharine McPhee.)
What happens next, and the part that's actually pretty great, after the jump.
Now, you have to understand, this is not an actual evaluation of sexiness in song. It is based on chart performance of songs that are about sex. In other words, rather than being the sexiest songs of all time, they are the most commercially successful songs of all time that happen to be about sex.
That murderously twisted logic is the explanation for what they have crowned the sexiest song of all time. Enjoy it, after the jump.
Phonogram is just one of the comics attempting to make sense of music.
By Glen Weldon
Comic books. Pop music.
Over the years, high-minded critics have assailed both for corrupting American youth and debasing the culture with cheap, mass-market junk-food-for-the-senses that forever ruins one's ability to appreciate, you know, Tartuffe and, like, um, Liszt, or whatever.
Of course, the "mass-market" for comics has grown considerably less massive in recent decades, while popular music in various forms (hip-hop, rap, country, American Idolatry, etc.) continues to live up to its adjective, and contains multitudes.
But comics and popular music have much in common: For many years, the people who actually published the comics and produced that bands that targeted the youth market were middle-aged dudes in business suits. The 1980s saw a new generation of creators attempt to wrest some measure of control from big publishers/music labels, birthing near-simultaneous (and regrettably named) "indie" movements.
Several articles have been written about musicians who make comics, and comic creators with bands. Entire wikis have been built around the appearances of comic book characters in pop songs. (You'd be forgiven for mistaking the band XTC's songbook for an issue of Who's Who in the DC Universe, for example.)
That's not what we're discussing today, nor are we gonna simply gonna list those comics that feature characters who are musicians. Instead, here's a (partial!) list of some comics that have wrestled with just exactly what it is that music does to you -- books that attempt to capture, on the printed page, how a song can make you feel.
After the jump: The Magnetic Fields, Johnny Cash, Tori Amos, Belle and Sebastian and many, many more. (And yeah, a bit about Dazzler, because she wears a disco-ball necklace and roller skates, and I'm only human, people.)
Taylor Swift performs at the 2010 Grammy Awards. (Kevin Winter / Getty Images)
by Linda Holmes
You know, normally, I wouldn't bother coming here just to go after Taylor Swift again over her disastrous performance at the Grammys on Sunday night (which Stephen and I discussed extensively during the liveblog). Everybody who watched the show knows about it, and if they care, they care. If they don't, they don't and won't.
This is a fact: Taylor Swift is a bad -- or at least an unreliable -- live singer. And on Sunday, people noticed. Now Scott Borchetta, the head of her label, has very foolishly decided to go on the offensive rather than just stay down and let it pass -- which it would have.
Here's the performance, if you missed it.
But as much as I see the merits of dropping it, practically every word that came out of Borchetta's mouth as he defended her is so ludicrous that I cannot help myself.
At last year's awards, Katy Perry did a fruit-inspired number. Can we expect the same this year? We'll find out. (Robyn Beck / AFP/Getty Images)
by Linda Holmes
Where will you be on Sunday night? I will be enjoying the Grammy Awards in the best way I know how: by reacting moment-by-moment in a liveblog with NPR Music editor Stephen Thompson. We'll be getting underway sometime shortly before the 8:00 start time of the telecast, so don't forget to join us.
If you don't know Stephen, in addition to being my dear pal, he is the fellow behind, among other things, the hilarious and terrifying "On The Wings Of Dreaming Eagles," a sort of frankencomposition cobbled together to serve as the prototypical American Idol coronation song. He invented the Tiny Desk Concert, he writes some of NPR's greatest content about being really bummed out, and I can tell you from personal experience that he was pushing Glen Hansard years before Once.
Will we take opposite sides in the Taylor Swift - Beyonce smackdown? Will there be a sudden surge by Dave Matthews Band? What will Lady Gaga be wearing? Will this be the best Michael Jackson tribute yet, of all the many Michael Jackson tributes that have already occurred? And what will Kanye do to keep the attention firmly riveted upon himself?
If you don't like the Grammy Awards, just watch the liveblog -- we'll tell you everything you need to know, only without all the commercials and the parts where there's bad singing. There are many, many people scheduled to perform, from the aforementioned Gaga and the 'Yonce to Roberta Flack and Elton John.
New York's Apple Store, seen here in 2007, shows off the logo of the company that is apparently set to save comics, as well as the rest of media. (Don Emmert / AFP/Getty Images)
By Glen Weldon
I mean, eventually it will. The device that Apple is announcing today (for the cavebound: You know that thing Yeoman Rand used to carry around on the bridge? Matched her Starfleet-issue go-go boots? Yeah. Pretty much that.) has got a lot of things to single-handedly save first.
I haven't been following the hype, and even I've read speculation that The New Flatness will save, in no particular order: Book publishing, newspapers, magazines, music, textbooks, games and the music industry. Also: The Whales, the Children, the Tiger, The Cheerleader/World, Energy, Ferris, and The Last Dance for Me.
So yeah, once it's got all that sorted, it's gonna save the comics industry. No, really; for months the comics press has teemed with forward-looking headlines both bold ("Apple Tablet Will Restore Comic Books to Former Glory") and coy ("Could Apple's iSlate Tablet Be a Digital Game-Changer?")
Prince wrote the Vikings a fight song. No, really. (Kevin Winter / Getty Images)
I am totally, utterly confused by Prince's new fight song for the Minnesota Vikings.
It sounds nothing like a Prince song, except for the sort of synth-y drumbeat in the background. It sounds a little bit like a Christmas carol, and a little bit like a graduation song, and a little bit like something Barney the Dinosaur would sing about the alphabet. (You can hear some of it by hitting the "play" button on the embedded video above.)
As the Vikings take on the New Orleans Saints this weekend, propelled forward on a fiery comet made up of the flaming cartilage fragments of Brett Favre's knees, it's good to know that Minnesota's other Sultan Of Purple is in their corner. Still, the official lyrics are a little, um ... you know. "4ever strong as the wind that blows the Vikings' horn"?
For me, the Vikings right now represent a very difficult internal conflict, because I count myself a transplanted Minnesotan, but I really, really, really do not like Brett Favre, especially when the announcers start talking about how he plays like a fourth-grader who loves shooting marbles and collecting polliwogs and just droppin' his fishin' line in the water to catch him a few little trout, because he's just that regular of a guy.
If only the song said, "In the name of the purple and gold, except for Brett Favre."
Here, fans hold up signs at a Jonas Brothers concert televised on Good Morning America. See, when it's on TV and it's the Jonas Brothers, it's okay. (Brad Barket / Getty Images)
by Marc Hirsh
The decade is ending! ("Which decade?" Yes, yes.) Sure, you've waded through the customary barrage of best songs/albums lists by now, and you've probably supplemented them with a heaping pile of stock-taking commentaries enumerating the ways that the ways that we listen to music have changed.
Most of the discussion has generally revolved around changes in the industry itself, from the rise of digital distribution to the implosion of the major labels, with the occasional mention of related issues like the decline of the album's primacy over the single and the shift towards television and commercials for exposure in a time of radio's increasing fragmentation.
Worthy topics for ponderation, all. Each one is a complex issue speaking to profound changes in technology and the cultural value we place on music, with implications and dimensions that haven't yet revealed themselves. But in my best effort to become a world-class curmudgeon (aw, just like Carl in Up!), I kept returning to a question raised by the NPR Music team's decade-in-review roundtable -- What was the worst musical development of the closing decade? -- and I got my answer at a recent Christmas concert sponsored by a Top 40 radio station: it's the proliferation of fan-made signs at concerts.
Yes, even worse than the increasingly ubiquitous Auto-Tune. As annoying as Auto-Tune may be, it's a tool, pure and simple. Like synthesizers or multi-track recording, it can be used for good or for evil. I refuse to blame the technology for the narrowness of the imagination of the people who use it. Concert signs, on the other hand, are pure evil.
In my day, we made concert signs out of rocks, and that's the way it was, and we liked it, after the jump.
Here's their gorgeous, luscious song for the season, which is so pretty and delicate that it makes my eyes leak sparkly Christmas water, and when it's over, they'll tell you how to do a little good (spoiler: you buy a goat!) and also get some music for your trouble.
Regular readers of the blog know that in a very slightly alternate reality, I become a music writer so I can hang out with everyone at NPR Music. Therefore, worming my way into a mention on the wonderful All Songs Considered show about holiday music counts as one of my great accomplishments of 2009. (This resulted from an observation I made to Bob Boilen about Bob Dylan's appearance in this video, "Must Be Santa.")
Even if I had not earned a shout-out, however, I would highly recommend the show, where official Pal Of Monkey See Stephen Thompson plays the breathtaking "Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing" by Sufjan Stevens -- you just gotta hear it, if you never have -- and you will hear lots of other holiday music, both cheerful and silly and not so cheerful and silly. And in some cases, the music is not silly but the conversation is very silly, which is just how I like it.
Highly recommended! Four stars! Exceeded expectations!
ABBA, seen here in 1979, clearly belongs in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. (Hulton Archive / Getty Images)
by Linda Holmes
The most interesting thing about the minor dust-up over ABBA's induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame is that I had no idea anyone still cared about who was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. But people really do! Which is great.
It is that part of winter where light griping about the weather becomes intense griping about the weather; where those of us stationed at home in our warm socks gloat about telecommuting while those who brave the streets of, say, New York begin to feel that they have entered a book called Slushy Wet Feet On The Prairie, and they are in the chapter with the sleet storm.
Thus, it is time to listen to versions of "Baby, It's Cold Outside."
Yes, I know. The sexual politics are questionable. If full respect was shown for never pressuring people for smooches, it would be a very short song. ("I really can't stay / I totally understand / I got to go 'way / Okay, that's cool; talk to you tomorrow.")
For those of you who don't know it, the storyline of this particular song (words and music by Frank Loesser, who also wrote Guys And Dolls and lots of other delicious things) is this: the lady does not want to go home, but feels that she probably "should," and the fellow thinks she should not go home, but should hang around so that they can listen to records together. (What? That's what I get out of it.) More than that, however, he is concerned about her health and well-being and wants to ensure that she does not go outside and come to harm from, for instance, frostbite or a sleet-driven taxi accident.
This song requires (in the traditional formulation) a man and a woman, and it since it's a holiday novelty bit, it lends itself to somewhat campy presentations. Not always -- the Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Jordan rendition is generally considered the standard, I think, and it's nothing less than delightful.
But it's a very stunt-friendly piece. The first time I personally heard it was when Sigourney Weaver and Buster Poindexter performed it on Saturday Night Live back when he was the bandleader. (Tragically, I cannot find this clip for you.) Done well, it's a marvelous winter confection.
But then there's ... Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson's version, for example.
The Black Eyed Peas performed on Wednesday night as the Grammy nominees were announced. Well, a few of them, anyway. (Robyn Beck / AFP/Getty Images)
by Linda Holmes and NPR Music Editor Stephen Thompson
Usually, nominations for awards shows are announced via some drab medium or other, whether it's a newly refreshed Web site, a hastily emailed press release, or a dry recitation of names in a dusty press conference. Wednesday night, CBS and the Grammy Awards decided to milk the awards-show magic for an extra hour, with a special telecast promising to unveil a bevy of surprises and magical musical performances.
Because there's nothing we love more than watching kudos hurled in the direction of The Black Eyed Peas, we decided to chat about the show online via Instant Messenger, in the spirit of our similar enterprise during last year's Grammy ceremony. For those seeking a commentary-free list of nominees on the Grammy Web site, click here; for those looking to skim the highlights, we've placed the nominees announced in the CBS special in bold.
STEPHEN: So what's getting nominated for Album Of The Year? I simply cannot wait to find out!
LINDA: Fortunately, LL Cool J just personally invited me to watch the nominees being announced.
STEPHEN: If only they were having some sort of television event informing me of the nominees! They could have a concert and everything, and perhaps even sell advertising during breaks in the action.
The thing with the Grammys is that I never spend a whole lot of time thinking about whether a given album will be nominated, but then, when they announce the nominations, I'm always like, "Duh. Of course. How could I have forgotten the Herbie Hancock album of Joni Mitchell covers?" Perhaps one heavily awarded artist made an album with another heavily awarded artist! There needs to be an album in which Sheryl Crow and Alison Krauss perform a collection of austere Michael Jackson covers.
LINDA: Hey, it's Sugarland! I know them from not knowing them during last year's Grammys.
STEPHEN: So what gets tons of nominations? It's hard to tell, in part because the window of eligibility is so screwy. Brand-new stuff isn't eligible yet, while stuff released a zillion years ago is still up for awards. I think Metallica's self-titled album from 1991 will get some nominations tonight.
LINDA: I am very confused by this opening number with LL Cool J and the candy cane dancers. And I realize it makes me seem like I arrived here on a Rascal scooter, but I really enjoy a little LL Cool J with my day.
STEPHEN: I love LL Cool J without reservation. "The Grammy Countdown begins NOW." This is more eventful than a press release, yes. But only just barely.
LINDA: The Black Eyed Peas are performing from their TABLE?
STEPHEN: I don't mean to rock your world, but elements of this performance may have been pre-recorded. Also, if you are the source of the song "My Humps," should you be performing at an event which ostensibly honors artistic merit in music? I realize that this makes me sound like the fuddiest of fuddy-duddies, but dude. "Welcome to our celebration of music's greatness. And, now, the band that does that stupid song from the commercials!"
LINDA: "Welcome to the Oscars! Please welcome the cast of All About Steve."
STEPHEN: Also, we have been getting this party started for 10 damn minutes. "WHEN ARE THEY GONNA GET TO THE FIREWORKS FACTORY?!"
LINDA: So far, we have seen The Black Eyed Peas and George Lopez. I actually feel cool enough to be here.
STEPHEN: Ha! Okay, so Song Of The Year. Are these the nominees? No. These are potential nominees. The hell?
LINDA: This is seriously going to be the longest hour in history.
STEPHEN: But it's already 20 percent over!
LINDA: They are completely blowing the suspense by putting these nominees' photos up in a different order from the order in which George Lopez is reading their names.
STEPHEN: Okay: "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga. "Pretty Wings" by Maxwell. "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" by Beyonce. "Use Somebody" by Kings Of Leon. "You Belong With Me" by Taylor Swift. Delivered with a lame Tiger Woods joke, putting this show within a 48-hour pop-cultural window. Oh, and it turns out that several of the nominees are pleased to have been nominated! Aaaaaaaand commercials.
LINDA: I endorse "Single Ladies." And I do so in spite of the commercials currently running in which it is sung by a gang of lady Chipmunks.
STEPHEN: Didn't that Kings Of Leon record come out, like, six years ago? I feel like it did. And I have to think "Single Ladies" wins this going away.
LINDA: I think if we are talking about impact, you can't possibly not give it to "Single Ladies."
STEPHEN: Agreed. I feel like all pop songs this year morphed into one giant performance of "Single Ladies," the way everything seemed to morph into Coldplay's "Clocks" earlier in the decade.
LINDA: Time for Sugarland! It seems that the message of this Sugarland song is that mothers are good. I endorse this message!
STEPHEN: Sugarland! Which has suddenly become country music's designated Grammy magnet. As Metallica is to metal, as Bonnie Raitt is to the blues, as Kanye West is to hip-hop, Sugarland has suddenly become to country, as far as the Grammys are concerned. You know how Alison Krauss has won, like, 27 Grammys? The Grammys seem to know about only a handful of gateway non-pop artists, and then reward them RELENTLESSLY.
LINDA: Yes, this keeps them from having to listen to too much music.
More nominees, and more bafflement, after the jump.
Love him or hate him, one thing Adam Lambert never was on American Idol was off-pitch. His singing style may not have been everyone's thing, but he tended to be technically on target. Not so last night at the American Music Awards, which is why it's a fortunate thing for Lambert that all the talk today is about the kissing and simulated you-know-what that took place on stage. If there weren't that to talk about, what you'd be reading about is that this was a pretty inauspicious beginning, musically speaking, for a guy who's been so highly praised.
Faith Hill's perfume isn't even on our list of 12 weird celebrity products, so we're actually giving you 13. Bonus!
by Linda Holmes
Have you always wanted to smell like Faith Hill? Have you always wondered what kind of shoes would best demonstrate your commitment to Jason Mraz?
NPR Music is celebrating the Decade In Music, and I've pitched in with this list of a dozen of the greatest, oddest, most confoundingly marketed (what is a "creamy accord"?) products that musicians have created in their own images.
So please pop on over and learn which celebrity is behind the earflap hat.
Okay, it's a very cheesy song, as the guy who produced it says several times, lest you believe he doesn't know. The history of this video is explained here at Mashable, but the short version is that it was put together as part of a challenge put on by the BBC to create a charting UK single for charity by using the noisy, inventive, intermittently literate community of YouTube users.
I know that for many of you, this is like creating an award-winning dish based on Gummi bears and Fresca, but this is actually ... not horrible, if you think of it as a novelty number created for charity and intended only to be fun. I'll say it this way: it could have been so much worse.
Adam Lambert didn't win American Idol, but he'll get plenty of exposure for his new video. (Kevin Winter / Getty Images)
by Linda Holmes
When Adam Lambert was on American Idol this spring, it was all about the gender-bending, mind-altering, rumor-stoking nature of his unusual persona. Now that he's out there trying to sell records, things are changing a little.
Not entirely -- he's still getting people talking with the new Details photo shoot in which he is tongue-kissing a lady and ... some other stuff (the photos are, in spite of appearing there in the Los Angeles Times, probably not safe for work in some places).
But today, he's also got a new video out called "Time For Miracles," which is the reportedly the closing-credits song from the apocalyptic 2012, which comes out next month. That certainly makes sense given the video, in which Lambert wanders through a world of burning school buses and falling debris singing about his broken heart. The best part is that other people keep fleeing the end of the world and therefore bumping into him while he's trying to sing. About you, and how much he loves you. It may be the end of the world, but he's still your fella, baby.
While it closes with about 45 seconds of screaming (as those who watched Lambert on Idol would expect), what's most striking about the song is how incredibly conventional it is.
See the video, hear the song, chat it up, after the jump.
Towering Ambitions: Bono's visage looms over Cowboy Stadium during a recent concert featuring the band's innovative new stage-set, dubbed "The Claw," which was designed to foster intimacy. (John McAlley for NPR)
By John McAlley
What happens when the biggest stage show in rock and roll history -- U2's 360-Degree Tour -- sets up in the biggest domed stadium in the world -- the new $1.2 billion Cowboy Stadium?
The answer is obvious: big problems.
Although they've scorched crowds with some of the most incendiary concerts of the past decade, the Irish rock band has not attempted a run of stadium shows since 1997's much lambasted and remote-feeling PopMart tour. The 360-Degree outing, with its massive in-the-round stage set known affectionately as "The Claw," is intended to solve the intimacy problems of playing to crowds upwards of 80,000. The thinking: if the stage is almost as big as the stadium itself, no fan will be left behind.
What do you do when you love someone else's wildly ubiquitous pop song so much that you're compelled to play and sing it and share it with the rest of the world, but there's still one particular part that hits you like fingernails on a chalkboard? If you're San Francisco-based jazz-pop duo Pomplamoose, you forge on ahead with a charming cover that magnifies the swing of the original while gently (and hilariously) making your displeasure known. See if you can spot the offending section!
Guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel is not your ordinary jazz guitarist, in a few different ways. Nevertheless, he made it to Jimmy Fallon's show last night. (Word Of Mouth Music)
by Patrick Jarenwattananon
Note: Patrick Jarenwattananon is the master of ceremonies and poobah nerd over at NPR's charming jazz blog, A Blog Supreme. As part of our continuing efforts to eliminate cultural separations by brow (high, middle, low), we are mixing our jazz into our pop culture today, as we may be mixing some pop culture into the jazz over there in the future -- stay tuned for possible future experiments in which Patrick attempts to make me jazz-literate. -- Linda Holmes
If you were watching NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallonlast night, you may have noticed the presence of another guitarist in the house band. Save for an afterthought of a shout-out before Miranda Lambert's performance, he wasn't prominently featured on screen. His name is Kurt Rosenwinkel, and he is good at music.
Many of us jazz folk hold Kurt Rosenwinkel in high esteem. He's something of a people's champion; he's easily the most influential guitarist of his generation. (Which is X, if you're wondering.) His dedicated following is legion -- they're the kind who transcribe his solos and post them on the Internet, the kind who care enough to shout down haters in YouTube comment sections. Put it this way -- he's big-time enough to be pranked, Sacha-Baron-Cohen-style, by a (seemingly cut-rate) French performance artist.
Come on, you know you want to see the video. And also hear more about this "Kurt Rosenwinkel." After the jump.
Anyone who seeks advice on how to behave from the MTV Video Music Awards will wind up deranged, baffled, socially isolated, and probably arrested. But last night, Kanye Weststill managed to make everyone else there look like a collection of Noel Coward characters, so ridiculous was his outraged outburst when Taylor Swift won the award for Best Female Video.
As you can see in the video above, when Swift was in the middle of her acceptance speech, West leaped onto the stage and grabbed her microphone. "Yo Taylor, I'm really happy for you, I'm gonna let you finish," he said. "But Beyonce had one of the best videos of ALL TIME!" And then he climbed down, and the crowd booed, and Swift stood there like she'd gotten the end-of-Carrie treatment until they played her off the stage.
Later in the show, Beyonce Knowles won Video Of The Year (for "Single Ladies," the same video Kanye West was so angry didn't beat Taylor Swift), and she handed the microphone off to Swift to make her belated acceptance speech.
Kanye West's unplanned trip to the stage was ridiculous, even for a ridiculous event. (Christopher Polk / Getty Images)
It's important not to make buffoonery into outrage -- the VMAs are famous for being the national meeting of the Glorious Unified Council Of Acting A Fool. It's not the Oscars, and it's not meant to be, and as tempting as it may be to compare it to recent decorum-related dust-ups taking place in Congress and at the U.S. Open, the fact remains that ... it is the VMAs. When The New York Times states that the awards were "marred" by West's behavior, it raises the question of whether it's really possible to mar a show that tries so hard to mar itself with outsized ... nitwittery, if you'll pardon the expression.
Why anybody cared, and the surprising winner of this battle, after the jump...
After months of drooling anticipation (even by folks like me who don't even own a game system), The Beatles: Rock Band is finally here. Much of the excitement surrounding the game involves its potential to do a great many things: remind a new generation of exactly why the greatest band in rock and roll history is the greatest band in rock and roll history (something EMI's been careful to do every seven years or so since John Lennon's death), slake the thirst of gamers who've already burned through two Rock Bands and countless Guitar Heroes, provide a wish-fulfillment fantasy of a nearly pornographic nature to Beatlemaniacs, and cause players to contemplate on the simple, iconic beauty of a Rickenbacker guitar and a Hofner bass.
Maybe the most important, though, is the potential the game has, more even than the remastered versions of the Beatles albums that were also released yesterday, to foster a new appreciation for Ringo Starr.
Taking a second look at the drummer, after the jump...
Bob Dylan circa 1965 was a young genius. Bob Dylan today may just end up inside your car. (Hulton Archive / Getty Images)
by Linda Holmes
Some news is bad, some news is good, and some news is ... fantastic.
How would you like to hear Bob Dylan coming out of your GPS, telling you where to turn, how far you are from your destination, and not to drive into a nearby lake?
That's right -- Bob Dylan claimed on his radio show that he was negotiating to turn up as a GPS control voice. It is news so wonderful that it causes a kind of joke-lock. Bob Dylan? As the "Turn left" guy? Really?
[Note: I should have known this was too good to be true. He was kidding. I shall now step up and take my licks. Fortunately, the badness of the invited jokes still stands. I profoundly apologize for not following it back far enough, though. I followed it as far as the reports of the broadcast comments, but not the original context. My fault, totally.]
(Side note: We're all friends here, so I think I can tell you that I can only get through about ten words of any article about Bob Dylan without loudly saying "Be groovy or leave!" in my Bob Dylan voice, which is entirely the fault of several guys I used to be friends with who quoted incessantly from Don't Look Back. Really, you should blame them.)
Let us break the joke-lock. I think we can assume all variations on the words "No direction home" are taken. That's too easy. That's just taking the joke they're throwing to you. It's beneath us all. All other attempts, however, are not beneath any of us. So far, I have most thoroughly humiliated myself internally with, "Don't think twice, babe, it's a right." (GET IT? I am so sorry.)
Now, it is your turn. In today's fictional universe, Bob Dylan is your GPS guide. What do you hear him saying?
Whitney Houston showed up at the 2009 Grammy Awards, and you'll be seeing a little more of her as she releases her new album and tries for an unlikely comeback. (Kevin Winter / Getty Images)
by Linda Holmes
Whenever a new kind of setback is invented, a new kind of comeback is invented. And leave it to Whitney Houston to make one of the first highly publicized efforts at a comeback from being the kind of celebrity that we didn't even have until recently: the train-wreck reality-show star.
It's one thing to reappear after a long absence during which nobody really knew what you were doing. That's the Mickey Rourke comeback: When he showed up in last year's The Wrestler, there was a certain "Oh, right, that guy" reaction. Because what you might call the First Mickey Rourke Era was in the 1980s, and little of note had been heard from him since then.
It's another thing when you were the subject of your own grotesque reality show that tracked your every move — and it wasn't that long ago. As she prepares to release her new album, I Look To You, that's where Whitney Houston is.
The line between different kinds of famous, the decision not to tour, and the recovering spectacle, after the jump...
Neda Ulaby has done a comprehensive piece on the death of legendary songwriter Ellie Greenwich, so I won't harp on the breadth of her career or her staggering number of memorable pop songs.
But as someone who has listened to Phil Spector-produced girl-group-style music -- especially that of Darlene Love -- with a brand of enthusiasm many people save for religion and giving birth, I would be a miserable ingrate if I didn't pause to mention just how much Ellie Greenwich music I have enjoyed over the years. In addition to the most famous songs she wrote -- "Leader Of The Pack," "Be My Baby," "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Chapel Of Love," "River Deep, Mountain High" -- she wrote some of my favorite lesser-known tunes that came out during the period.
She wrote or co-wrote "Today I Met The Boy I'm Gonna Marry" (above), which I listened to a lot around the time of my sister's wedding; "A Fine Fine Boy," which you will never forget once you have heard it, simply because it contains the spoken line, "He's a fine, fine, super-fine boy"; and "Give Us Your Blessings," which is the most hilariously over-the-top variation that ever was on the genre -- which really existed -- of songs about teenagers fantasizing about dying in car wrecks just to really stick it to their parents.
Seriously, go listen to "Give Us Your Blessings" right now. It is utterly absurd, but it is also almost impossible not to sing along with.
I've said it a million times and I'm sure I'll say it many more: pop entertainment that endures is so much harder than it looks. There's a reason why most music doesn't survive, but this particular music -- as much as it sounds like a lot of bubbles and hopscotch -- still sounds so great.
This is not for amateurs, trying to create something that deceives the brain into believing there's not much going on while bending the ear ruthlessly to its will. "You just relax," it says. "I'll just come over here and pitch a tent in your brain for the next forty years, so that every time you hear me, you will answer the call with your little tapping foot." (Da doo ron ron ron, da doo ron ron.)
Really, facilitating thisTina Turner performance is enough for anyone to rest on. But for this, and for everything else, and for all the girls with the wiggling hips and the big hair and the minidresses, for the call-and-response, and for "My folks were always putting him down (down, down)," I pause and say: Thank you, Ellie Greenwich.
If Miley Cyrus and Cher went up against each other, you can probably guess who would emerge as the actual diva. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images; Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
by Linda Holmes
Look, I don't mean to be a baby about the word "diva," which I understand has come a long way since it used to be applied solely to majestic, operatic women. I understand that, according to many, you can now be a diva just be complaining about the temperature of your bottled water. I understand about cats that are divas, ten-year-olds that are divas -- at this point, in common parlance, it's mostly about complaining.
But in the spirit of complaining, Miley Cyrus is not a diva.
Back in 1998, when VH1 first started the "VH1 Divas" series of concerts, not everyone was a diva, but there was a certain diva-esque quality to the proceedings, in that there was a lot of royalty floating around. Aretha Franklin was there, Carole King was there -- yes, Mariah Carey, Shania Twain, and Gloria Estefan were also there, but the concept that the show contained diva-like qualities did not seem absurd.
The next year included Tina Turner, Elton John, Cher, Chaka Khan, Whitney Houston, and Mary J. Blige (among others). Other years, Diana Ross has been there, and Cyndi Lauper, and Stevie Nicks, and Debbie Harry, and Gladys Knight, and on and on.
This year's lineup, so far: Kelly Clarkson, Miley Cyrus, Adele, Leona Lewis, and Jordin Sparks. I would point out that three out of these five are competition-show winners (Clarkson and Sparks from American Idol, Lewis from The X Factor in the UK.
Now, they're promising additional names between now and September 17. Perhaps all the divas will be added later. Perhaps this is just the teaser. But at this point, it must be noted that you are not looking so much at a lineup of divas, or even a lineup of faux divas. You are looking at an actual diva's breakfast menu. Let's get serious: if you send Cher and Miley Cyrus in for a cage match, I know which one is coming out alive, and so do you.
Now if you will excuse me, I am off to write my pitch letter to VH1 for my new series: Cher And Miley Cyrus In A Series Of Cage Matches.
You know what a thunderstorm looks like, but do you know what one might sound like? Now, you can find out. (iStockphoto.com)
by Linda Holmes
As the entertainment world's post-summer, pre-fall lull continues, allow your attention to drift to the most fantastically perplexing new online offering I have seen in quite some time: TheWeatherChannelMusic.com.
That's right. As of today, you can personally own -- you can download! -- the music that tootles away in the background as The Weather Channel tells you whether to wear a jacket.
Some of it seems to be more Weather-Channel-adjacent than Weather-Channel-specific (I don't think Benny Goodman ever actually wrote for The Weather Channel). But some of it is rather surprising: they have an album called P.M. Edition Evening Romance. That means, it would seem, that when you are trying to innocently see whether it's going to rain at 7:30 in the evening, The Weather Channel is attempting to get you in the mood. It is waggling its eyebrows at you, saying, "Sure, it might rain, but if it does, there's [waggle] room for two under that umbrella." (I encourage you to listen to, for instance, the sample of "Ooo Baby Baby," and tell me you do not feel romantically coerced.)
This is perhaps the greatest example of an unmet need you didn't even know was unmet until they told you. Imagine how long it would have taken you, had you just been asked to brainstorm about what's missing from your MP3 player, to come up with "the music they play in the background on The Weather Channel." But now you know.
In May 1967, The Beatles celebrated the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. They probably didn't know they'd still be making news 42 years later. (Hulton Archive / Getty Images)
by Linda Holmes
You may have heard about a hot emerging band with a lot of irons in the fire right now -- "The Beatles," anybody? I'm pretty sure they're going to be the next big thing.
Today's Beatles news is that Disney is working out a deal for Robert Zemeckis to access Beatles tunes to remake Yellow Submarine. Not only is a movie remake planned, but there's interest in a Broadway show.
In September, The Beatles will undoubtedly make huge headlines with the release of The Beatles: Rock Band, the new video game that will allow you to play along with the band. (For a whole lot more about the game, and about the Beatles, and about why people pick on guys who like to play Guitar Hero and Rock Band, see this marvelous recent article by Daniel Radosh from New York Times Magazine.)
All that is not to mention, of course, the fact that remastered versions of their entire catalogue on CD are scheduled for release in September as well.
Need more? "Why The Beatles Broke Up" is the cover story in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.
There's even some speculation that the Beatles' records could finally be coming to iTunes, but that still looks like wishful thinking as much as anything.
There tends to be a certain ebb and flow to interest in The Beatles, but this does seem like an interesting little uptick. I don't think there's any question that Guitar Hero has wildly increased the familiarity younger kids have with hair bands (I base this in part on my nephews' shockingly advanced knowledge of "Rock And Roll All Nite"); I'll be curious to watch for an increase in the visibility of Beatles tunes among ten-year-olds.
Fans of the musical Once will recognize its stars, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, in this enormously charming Tiny Desk Concert straight from NPR Music, in which they showed off six new songs before finishing up with "When Your Mind's Made Up." It's impossible to convey how lovely -- how warm and genuine -- this performance was in person, but seeing the video, which really does show them sitting behind Bob Boilen's real desk surrounded by Bob Boilen's real stuff, is really stunning. More about the show here.
At the World Science Festival in June, Bobby McFerrin did this demonstration with the audience. It's a little exercise using a pentatonic (five-note, rather than seven-note) scale, and it's really something.
Over at BoingBoing, which is where I saw it, they're having an interesting discussion in the comments about what can and can't be learned from it, but it'll give you a kick the first time you see what he's up to, and it certainly may make you think that people respond to music and musical scales in ways we only partially understand.
Writing on the fly (sorry): In this snippet, Steve Wynn of The Baseball Project sings about the men who -- until yesterday -- were the only ones to have pitched perfect games in Major League Baseball.
by Marc Hirsh
Normally at Monkey See, we don't talk much about sports, which is another world entirely from pop culture. But yesterday's perfect game pitched by White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle wasn't just a rare feat in baseball history (only 18 have ever been thrown in the majors), it forced one band to rewrite one of its songs.
The band is The Baseball Project, an America's-Pastime-obsessed supergroup of sorts featuring Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey, Steve Wynn and Linda Pitmon, who in various combinations can be found in the lineups of R.E.M., the Minus 5, the Young Fresh Fellows, Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3, the Dream Syndicate and Steve Wynn and the Miracle 3. The song is "Harvey Haddix," which I've previously discussed on NPR's Song Of The Day.
In the song, Wynn rattles off a list of every player who threw a perfect game -- a list that was complete 48 hours ago but out of date as of last night. It's one thing to have a mildly obsolete song on the band's album. But in a problematic/fortuitous bit of timing, the Baseball Project is about to head out on tour, where songs tend to stop being frozen in time and instead become living things.
Not to worry! Because I am a music nerd, my first instinct was to send a light-hearted email to the band's label to ask if Wynn would have to rewrite "Harvey Haddix" before the upcoming shows to account for Buehrle's achievement. Because Wynn is a baseball nerd, he was way ahead of me, according to Yep Roc Records publicist James Bailey, who informed me that "In typical Wynn fashion, he's already put his name in the song!"
So there you have it. Writing songs based on sports records that could very well change on any given day is a risky business, but the Baseball Project has met the challenge head on. If you happen to catch the band live in the upcoming weeks, you can rest easy knowing that they made sure to give you the most accurate song they could.
Rick Springfield: Seen here rocking out in 2007, he's still making music -- and now he's making music for kids. Kristian Dowling/Getty Images
by Rob Sachs
Over the years my podcast, What Would Rob Do? ,has allowed me to explore daily predicaments ranging from how to eat a hot pepper, to how to handle noisy neighbors, to how to avoid awkward moments while also getting a massage.
It's also afforded me the chance to live out the dreams of my seven-year-old self and talk to the biggest celebrities of the '80s by consulting them as experts. In the past, I've chatted with TV stars like Erik Estrada from CHiPs and Tom Wopat from The Dukes of Hazzard, and bands like Squeeze and Air Supply.
But recently, I managed to top even those mega stars by landing an interview with Mr. Rick Springfield. That's right: the guy behind "Jessie's Girl."
Few can argue with the fact that this is an amazing song, but for me, it's more than that.
Its my FAVORITE SONG OF ALL TIME.
I'm not quite sure how this happened, but I'm thinking it has something to do with the fact I cemented my selections for lucky number and favorite color right around the same time. Call me loyal (or perhaps lazy), but to this day, I remain a stalwart to the number 17, the color navy blue, and the ode to Jessie's elusive lady friend.
Having a strange fixation on a pop song that's more than a quarter-century old didn't seem enough of a reason to interview Mr. Springfield, but then I caught a news flash about his latest album, titled My Precious Little One: Lullabies for a New Generation.
I learned that Springfield had rediscovered an old recording of lullabies he had made for his two sons Liam and Josh, back when they were tots. He decided to re-record them (the songs, not the kids) and release the album -- a happy coincidence for me, a new dad with a precious little one of my own.
So now Rick and I had something to talk about, apart from my odd obsession with his music, fatherhood and the ever daunting task of calming down children.
So what advice did Mr. Springfield give me on lullabies?
Advice, gentle rejection, and the audio of the full interview, after the jump...
Public 'grief' on display: A fan writes on Michael Jackson's memorial wall outside the Staples Center, where tomorrow's memorial service will take place. Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images
by Linda Holmes
This was a Michael Jackson-free zone all of last week, primarily because most of what was happening was not pop culture, but paparazzi culture. Assorted grotesques related to drugs, child custody, and other things best consigned to the dustbin of None Of Our Business were really all that was happening.
Now, inevitably, we have entered the stage of intense public "grieving," just as happened with Princess Diana, and there's no ignoring the fact that the entertainment news cycle over the next two days will be not just dominated but steamrolled by coverage of the memorial service taking place at the Staples Center tomorrow.
It's highly questionable to use the term "memorial service," of course, because a memorial service is not typically attended largely by strangers. Nor is a memorial service typically an event to which you raffle off tickets. Nor is it an event where the ability to attend is greeted by an excited trip straight to your Twitter feed to say, "OMG OMG OMG OMG i got tickets to the michael jackson memorial service!!!"
Dear Michael Jackson: We got tickets to your memorial service. OMG.
Counterfeit grief and the winners of the raffle, after the jump...
Unless you're a weird-rock aficionado, it's likely that you've only heard of the Monks (if at all) if you shelled out the big bucks for Rhino Records' Nuggets boxed set from 1998. There, in the midst of all manner of garage bands trying their damnedest to ape the Rolling Stones and Yardbirds, was "Complication," a sonically aggressive, sloganeering, borderline fascistic stomp that sounded like nothing else on the collection's four discs.
It'd be hard to find four discs of anything that sounded like what the Monks were throwing down in 1966. The Monks -- five American servicemen stationed in Germany who helped pioneer the concept band by performing in robes and points-for-commitment tonsures -- couldn't pull it off themselves, folding after a single album.
But Black Monk Time (newly reissued) made the most of the Monks' one shot at glory. The beats anticipated the Stooges in their focused primitivism; Gary Burger's raspy tenor would have sounded amiable if he weren't so unsettlingly weird; the songs were built around bitter satire, cross-linguistic puns and, most disturbing of all, sex; and Dave Day's electric banjo was... wait, what?
Anyway, it was brilliant and fleeting. So what better way to toast the Monks' renewed availability than by celebrating the one-album wonder? Below, we honor those performers who were limited to a lone full-length release and took the opportunity to burn brightly before burning out. Or breaking up. Or vanishing. Or dying.
Note 1: This is not about releasing one good album during the course of the band's lifespan. It's about releasing one album, period. Accompanying the rerelease of Black Monk Time is a collection of unreleased Monks demos. Doesn't count. Nor do compilations of singles, B-sides, live performances or what have you. If it was put together after the fact to capitalize on an act's popularity or importance or continuing contractual obligation, it doesn't count. In terms of going into the studio for the purpose of recording and releasing a record, it starts and ends with one.
Note 2: This is not intended to be any kind of definitive list. It suffers from being limited by my own biases and tastes. So there's no claim that these are the best one-album wonders, only that one-album wonders exist, and these are some of them. I invite you to list your own favorites in the comments.
With that said, let's hear some music, after the jump...
Michael Jackson: In May of 1983, the world saw him become a superstar. Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank
by Linda Holmes
I don't think there's ever been anyone harder to write about than Michael Jackson. On the one hand, he was brilliantly talented. On the other hand, he gave every appearance of having destroyed himself.
On the one hand, there were allegations about him that were horrifying. On the other hand, he did nonsense things that were hard not to find amusingly bizarre. (The chimp, and so forth.)
I'm not sure this is one where, in remembering his life, there's such a thing as "putting aside what he did offstage" — simply because his offstage life has so thoroughly dominated his performing career for so many years, in such powerful ways.
So for me, there is just this.
Jackson's performance of "Billie Jean" on Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, the 1983 television special, caught him precisely at the moment when he was at his most amazing, his most otherworldly in a good way, his most lithe and eye-popping and wonderfully alien. Still recognizably the kid who sang "The Love You Save," but recognizably something entirely new as well. It was six months after the release of Thriller.
For many, many people, this was the first opportunity they had to see this incarnation of him. This is where everyone I knew first saw the moonwalk, and if you weren't there or didn't watch it or maybe weren't a kid at the time, you cannot imagine what a big deal it was. I was in middle school, and I think we all tried it. You can hear the crowd scream when he does it here — it's not a scream of recognition, like it would be when he did it later. It's a scream of shock.
Before YouTube allowed people to actually relive a performance like this at will and en masse, this was the sort of thing that spread as legend more than as reality. Watch this, though, and you can see that it was entirely real:
Michael Jackson has occupied a unique space in American popular culture, which has deteriorated from the perfect, infectious pop the Jackson 5 made when he was a child, to the increasingly strange, seemingly miserable images of him that emerged in the last years of his life.
To a lot of people, he was everything terrible about celebrity, but to a lot of other people — or perhaps to many of the same people — he was everything good about the summer of 1983.
If it's ever not made sense to you what the big deal was, this is what the big deal was. This performance, in May 1983, was, in its time, probably almost as significant as the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.
A lot of this stuff — all this regrettable, awful stuff with him over the last 20 years or so, and the continuing fascination with it, has roots in this moment.
The Avett Brothers: This is what they looked like at Coachella in 2007; they were a little cozier in the NPR offices. Karl Walter/Getty Images
by Linda Holmes
I'm never sure whether to assume those of you who make it here are also keeping up with the goings-on at NPR Music, but if you're not tuning in to the Tiny Desk Concert series, I feel compelled to make sure you don't miss it.
The way Tiny Desk Concerts work is that a band comes in to the NPR offices and plays at the desk of All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen. That's it -- a band and Bob's desk and a few songs. (It's maybe the single most profoundly NPR-ian thing that has ever been invented.)
They've recently posted a performance by The Avett Brothers, which I happened to be in the office to see live -- from my prime spot about three feet from the cellist's elbow.
I can honestly tell you that it was one of the greatest things I've ever seen live. It's hard to explain the visceral effect of a fantastic band that is not separated from you by amplifiers. And it made me think of the other performance I usually describe this way, which was a December 2007 show from The Swell Season, fresh off the success of Once, at the Beacon Theater in New York.
Guitars with holes, and a question for you, after the jump...
Behold, the video for "Weird Al" Yankovic's latest single "Craigslist," which hit the Internet in the past week. It's already inspired Michael Ian Black (of The State, Stella and Pets.com fame) to write an eloquent and dead-on post about how and why Yankovic has endured for three decades now. (Short version: he was never cool, which insulated him from the ravages of time and shifting trends.)
Yankovic, of course, is best known for song parodies like "Eat It," "Smells Like Nirvana," "Like A Surgeon" and "White And Nerdy." It's his m.o. of rewriting the lyrics to popular songs into paeans to junk culture (and junk food) that once caused rock critic Robert Christgau to refer to him as Mad Magazine for the ears.
"Craigslist," on the other hand, is the type of song he typically gets less credit for, where he takes on not a specific song but an artist's style (in case you missed it, it's the Doors). And it marks the latest appearance of a fellow I like to call Weird Al, Stealth Pop Musicologist.
Mythical species: If seeing what's attractive about Adam Lambert is what it takes to be a cougar, then cougars don't exist. Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
by Linda Holmes
It was this Newsweek piece, entitled "Why Cougars Crave 'Idol' Runner-Up Adam Lambert," that finally broke me.
It is time for the word "cougar" to go, preferably instantly.
The Newsweek writer, Joan Raymond, spends paragraph upon paragraph explaining why she and her "cougar court" spent an American Idol season sweating over the heavily hyped, extremely popular, out-without-having-ever-been-in Lambert. How could this be? How could it possibly be that they, as non-teenagers, could be interested in an American Idol who, at 27 years old, was young enough to be ... their nephew, if they had a significantly older sister?
When I first heard it, "cougar" was a crude slam; I think I first noticed it on the "Aldrin Justice" episode of How I Met Your Mother, which aired in October 2006, though this ABC story was chatting it up in 2005, and it surely is much older than that.
But interestingly, as the ABC story notes, it began as a putdown — a term of ridicule for older women who went home from bars with "whoever was left."
We could go through the sexual politics, the cultural baggage that comes with older men and younger women vs. younger men and older women. We could explain why seeing women gleefully referring to themselves the same way Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris) did on How I Met Your Mother is kind of disheartening.
But really, it's not necessary. The term "cougar" can be easily retired, simply on the grounds that it's so stupid.
Crazy fans, too many sex therapists, and never calling yourself "punk rock," after the jump...
The piano: You know, they use it in music, which is good for times when your favorite shows are in reruns. (Just kidding!) iStockphoto.com
by Linda Holmes
As NPR's collection of culture-related blogs continues to grow, I wanted to make sure you had all had a chance to see A Blog Supreme, the new project from NPR Jazz.
"Jazz? But...but I like television! They won't like me or want to be my friends!"
No, seriously. It's not that kind of jazz blog, I promise.
They're trying, in part, to do some of the same stuff we're doing here, which is to find ways to harness the power of the enthusiast without the occasional insularity that fans can demonstrate. Furthermore, if you liked talking about Pixar and girls, you'll love talking about women and jazz.
(And do not miss the awesome post about naming the blog, which I love dearly, because oh goodness, oh gracious, have I ever been there.)
If you're wondering whether you're going to encounter a solid wall of...I don't know, snapping hipsters or whatever the least pleasant and most silly stereotype of inhospitable jazz fans might look like, consider this passage from blog big cheese Patrick Jarenwattananon:
Educate as we might, jazz audiences will never be comprised of only highly-trained musician-types. So much of the barrier to entry of jazz is a perception that it requires a foundation of history and music theory to appreciate at any level -- a perception no doubt bolstered by the behaviors of typical jazz nerds (who have historically been male). Teaching more and more people jazz literacy will help, but more importantly, jazz needs to find a public tone of voice which informs but doesn't intimidate its potential new audiences (female or otherwise). [Meta-Editorial: I'd like to think that's what we're trying to do here, albeit in too many words.]
In other words, they'd still like you to listen to some great music, even if you don't have the time (or perhaps even the inclination) to become a full-time student.
I feel exactly the same way about getting people to watch Wipeout. (Not really. I'm only kidding. Don't e-mail me!)
More importantly, it's well-written and interesting, and you have to admire any project that involves regular conversations where a guy educates his own boss. (I don't know why I haven't forced Trey to sit through some episodes of Dancing With The Stars. Next season!)
So check it out, and listen to good music, and don't forget me when you become a sophisticated snapping hipster.
Kylie Minogue: A huge international star, she gave up on the U.S. a long time ago — until now. Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images
by Marc Hirsh
Not long ago, it was announced that Kylie Minogue will be embarking on a North American tour — the Australian pop singer's first in a career that stretches back to 1988, when her remake of "The Loco-Motion" hit #3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
In the 21 years since then, she's had a small handful of American hits and become a major gay icon. She'll play the United States and Canada for six scheduled shows starting Sept. 30.
So: Is this significant?
Why it is: Kylie is one of the biggest pop stars in the world. You know the world, right? Big place, located inconveniently outside U.S. borders? Yeah, Kylie's massive there. Like, Madonna huge. (Specifically, Madonna-10-years-ago huge.)
Plus, she more or less gave up on trying to break into the U.S. years ago, so an undertaking on this scale is something of a substantial policy shift for her. Not to mention a gift to Stateside fans who don't wish to shell out a thousand bucks or more to catch one of her legendarily lavish concerts overseas.
Why it isn't: Six dates doesn't sound like much of a tour. It sounds like six dates. And while her bookings at the Hollywood Bowl and Air Canada Centre stand to place her in front of nearly 20,000 fans at each, some of the other venues have a maximum capacity closer to 3,000. It's a safe bet that if Kylie were confident that she could pull it off on our shores, she'd aim for much larger venues all around.
As it is, it hardly looks like she can command the audiences she would if she were a Madonna-sized star in the U.S. Which, it bears repeating, she isn't.
If you're of a certain age and musical temperament, this week's DVD release of Dalton Trumbo's 1971 anti-war movie Johnny Got His Gun makes you think of one thing in particular, and that's Metallica's "One."
The film, which stars Timothy Bottoms and Jason Robards, is about a wounded World War I soldier whose mind is alive even as his injuries have turned him into a blind and deaf quadruple amputee with no way of communicating with the outside world.
The song, as metalheads and even the more pedestrian brand of rock nerds know, was inspired by the 1939 novel (also written by Trumbo), so much so that the band included scenes and dialogue from the film in the video.
Maybe "included" isn't the right word there: let's try "supersaturated." Even by the standards of the clip-heavy soundtrack videos of the 1980s (such as the Bangles' "Hazy Shade Of Winter" from Less Than Zero or Roxette's "It Must Have Been Love" from Pretty Woman), "One" was pretty extreme in its disregard for the boundaries between the video and the movie. So much so, in fact, that the casual MTV viewer of the time might have assumed that Johnny Got His Gun was in multiplexes right then.
Then again, of course it was extreme. It was freakin' Metallica. Even with Guns n' Roses having recently left most of the hair-metal pack in its wake the year before, there was nothing on standard-rotation MTV remotely as fast and heavy as this song.
I certainly hadn't heard anything like it before, even though I was familiar with the name Metallica through my metalhead friends. What's funny is that after I bought the cassette single (thus being on both the losing end of technological history and the winning end of musical history, as "One" became, amazingly enough, a top 40 hit), I always liked to pretend that it was the quote-unquote "folk" portions at the beginning of the song (yes, that's actually how I referred to them) that I loved.
But that was a lie.
The bond between movie and band, after the jump...
Everything about this clip of the students of PS 22 singing "Eye Of The Tiger" is utterly delightful, starting with the fact that they think this song is really good, and in the context of this clip, it is really good. I also love to death the teacher's expression at the very end. Much of why people teach is right in that grin.
Not a Survivor fan? How about this, then?
Now, excuse me while I disappear down the rabbit hole of watching PS 22 videos. (Check out their Coldplay! Thrill to their Crowded House!)
As we have discussed before, Justin Vernon is the man behind Bon Iver, the Official Bearded Moody Wisconsin-Based Band of NPR Music. But that doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy a good jam with his high school jazz band.
That's right -- on Sunday night, Vernon headed back to Memorial High School in Eau Claire, Wis., to his one-time home: Jazz Ensemble I. In this all-too-short clip, he and the band perform "Since I Fell for You."
Last night at Carnegie Hall, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra debuted under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, the music director of the San Francisco Symphony, who called the project "somewhere between a classical music summit conference, Scout Jamboree, with an element of speed dating."
For more about the development of the project, you can check out this March piece from All Things Considered.
Note that the group got a decent review from the New York Times, which admitted that it was "gimmicky" (file that under "stating the obvious") but also acknowledged that the group played "quite well," particularly given the short rehearsal time. In fact, Anthony Tommasini seemed mostly frustrated at not hearing a more straightforward concert from these talented folks who were rounded up via online auditions.
IFC has this up-to-date explanation of the overuse of just about every version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" to score everything from The West Wing to Watchmen.
But there are other offenders as well. I recall a moment in the late '90s when it appeared that just about everything was accompanied by Kate Bush singing "This Woman's Work." That whole business started here, in 1988, in a surprisingly sweet montage from the John Hughes film She's Having A Baby, for which the song was apparently written.
What would you nominate for the It's A Pretty Song, But Enough Already Hall Of Fame?
Amanda Palmer: She is either colluding with Pitchfork to pull a magnificent prank, or...she's not. AFP/Getty Images
Update: As explained in the comments, longtime readers of Amanda Palmer's blog had actually already heard of this project, so it apparently is real. You must admit, it's still pretty amazing timing. -- Linda Holmes
by Marc Hirsh
In an announcement dated yesterday, indie bellwether Pitchfork reported that Dresden Dolls singer Amanda Palmer will be involved in a high-school production of a play based on In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, the cult-classic Neutral Milk Hotel concept album driven in part by singer Jeff Mangum's fascination with Anne Frank.
(We'll let you digest that.)
Today, of course, is April 1, so it seems from the timing that the whole thing must be a hoax. Lexington High School even seems to have gotten in on it, with a listing on its Fine and Performing Arts Calendar of "Spring Play Performance" on the dates mentioned in the story. It has all the earmarks of a thoroughly planned April Fool's Day joke.
Careful listening: With the volume turned all the way up -- that's the only way to listen to one of this week's free downloads from iTunes. iStockphoto.com
by Marc Hirsh
If you've never signed up for an account at the iTunes Store, now's the time, because among this week's standard handful of free songs, videos and audiobook excerpts is one of the landmark compositions of the Twentieth Century.
That's right: for a limited time, you can own your very own copy of John Cage's 4'33" for nothing. The timing's a little suspect -- it's not April 33 yet -- and the audiophiles will surely argue over whether Apple's proprietary file format captures the piece with the same warmth and fidelity of vinyl.
But whoever wrote the description really understands the true essence of Cage's work, and the passage from 0:23-0:29 is genuinely gripping if you'll allow it underneath your skin. (No, really.) (No. Really.) Because it's only the first movement, though, it feels like it's over before it starts, just as it rises to a harrowing climax starting at 1:35. For the rest, you'll have to pony up another $1.98. Well-played, iTunes.
If you missed NPR's fantastic "What Makes It Great" discussion of Stephen Sondheim's "Send In The Clowns," I encourage you to listen to it immediately.
And then enjoy the above clip in which Sondheim teaches a singer to perform "Send In The Clowns." It's just wonderful; he's terribly generous and likable, and the things he tells her are entirely relatable even to a non-expert, despite the fact that it's information being passed from a legendary composer to a trained singer. This is the first of two parts; the second, involving a very different singer, is after the jump.
Hat-tip to the always surprising and impishly smart Metafilter, which offers even more like this in this post.
Late-night crowds: Two o'clock in the morning looks like this on Austin's 6th Street during South By Southwest. Nick Bischoff
by Elizabeth Nelson
We are driven back downtown, into the fray, leaving paradise for Oz. Not the "Wonderful City of." The prison. It is a chaotic, incoherent hell of people and wristbands and thundering Marshall Stacks.
We've been invited to a party hosted by a popular triumvirate of independent labels, co-hosted by You Tube. The club is insane. Ginormous. Labyrinthine. multi-level. Two-stages. Cacophonous. At all times, two bands are performing simultaneously at panic-inducing volume. It is impossible to determine if what we are hearing is a folk band or the sounds of jackhammers, drills and banshees tearing the place down.
Security intervenes, roosters crow, and what was lost is found, after the jump...
How to party: Revelry spills into the streets on a regular basis at South By Southwest. Nick Bischoff
by Elizabeth Nelson
Another early morning, another sweltering procession from hovel to downtown Austin. I tell Timothy I think we should "party," but I don't really know how. I need some indicator, a rabbit hole, perhaps a gateway drug of sorts.
Fortunately, strolling down 4th Street towards Red River, I receive just such a jarring slap to the senses, a harbinger of the reckless fun to come: A voluptuous woman in her fifties, standing in front of the convention center, fumbling with a pack of cigarettes, wearing a pair of stained acid-washed pants and nothing else. Her tattooed nipples heave in our general direction, beckoning us to follow her and find our bliss. Oh Mermaid! I will do thy bidding.
And should this clarion call not have been enough to lead us into bosom of temptation, our mission is crystallized shortly thereafter when we see our friend and NPR Music editor Stephen Thompson, weathered, resolute, storm-tossed, in the middle of the 6th Street sea of humanity, equipment strapped to his chest and microphone in hand, recording sounds of drunken revelry. I salute him as we walk past, but he will not acknowledge us. Dedication!
And in a war, one needs like-minded confederates. Our strongest ally is Tim Quirk. Frontman of beloved alt-rockers Too Much Joy and now an executive at the burgeoning Viacom subsidiary Rhapsody, Tim says he's been to every SXSW since 1998, and the very fact that he is comfortable referring to the entire event as 'South By' confers legitimacy on his claims. We call him and secure our first high-stakes invitation to a SX day party. All that is left is for us to plot our coordinates, scope out the venue, and have our faces melted.
Navigating Austin, the power of cab drivers, and why people really attend this festival in the first place, after the jump...
Wristbands: At South By Southwest, it's all about who you know. Well, who your wrist is allowed to know, really. Elizabeth Nelson
by Elizabeth Nelson
Early on Day 2, we descend upon downtown Austin. It is very hot here, and our walk is a two-mile trail of tears. I pass the pawn shop/check-cashing place near the cottage and head towards 6th Street, towards the action. Dubious-looking entrepreneurs who stop us to "just ask a quick question" give way to shrugging, hung over, skinny kids with green or yellow bracelets hanging off of their bony wrists.
Civilization turns to havoc shortly thereafter, with city streets closed to car traffic and monitored by non-threatening-looking city police. It is here that I first peep an unkempt beard and plaid shirt worn by the non-homeless and a preponderance of low-cut jersey tank tops worn with little else besides a pair of slouchy boots. It is exactly like being on either the set of Pirates of the Caribbean or on the ride of the same name, take your pick. Yo, ho, indeed.
It is noon, and already, people are drinking. They are alternatingly appearing not to care about what is happening, listening intently, and vomiting on one another. Area businesses have cloistered themselves with high white tents to facilitate the hosting of 'day parties,' a SXSW phenomenon that tacitly encourages drinking at this early hour.
Guitars, drums, and dirty Rhodes sounds punctuate the air. Is it possible to just walk into a day party without any credentials? It is not. Timothy has informed me that we need to go and pick up his credentials. I have decided to forego obtaining credentials for populist reasons, but evidently, he needs them for one reason or another.
Full NPR coverage at NPR.org/sxsw. Plus: the magic of credentials and the price of admission, after the jump...
Rock Band, indeed: These "partygoers" are rocking out playing Rock Band at the MTV And Rock Band Official Showcase at the South By Southwest music festival. Our correspondent is emphatically not doing this. Sasha Haagenson/Getty Images
by Elizabeth Nelson
Today is a travel day. A crying day.
Nine hours by train and plane to Austin with Timothy, my fiancé (who is accompanying me to play with a band) -- the sort of madcap itinerary that could only be devised by dint of late planning, "sky miles," and a broken pledge to never again book tickets following the consumption of a third vodka-filled "Health Smoothie." Why travel by train from Brooklyn to Baltimore-Washington International Airport in order to get to Texas? Well, I'm no travel agent.
Why do you think I am going to the SXSW festival for the first time ever this year? Am I performing in a rock band? No. Am I a music enthusiast anxious to marinate in the burgeoning talents of some promising and ascendant independent music favorites? Well, it's not that either. To be completely honest, I've had an incredibly hard time enjoying anything pertaining to popular music since Prince 'solved' the Problem of Excellence with his transcendent halftime performance at the Super Bowl a couple years back.
Full NPR coverage at NPR.org/sxsw. Plus: the real reason for attending the festival, and the hazards of air travel, after the jump...
Music and the brain: Research says studying music literally expands a child's mind. Now, go practice! iStockphoto.com
by Linda Holmes
It may not be good news for kids who don't want to experience a forced march to piano lessons, but it is good news for those who like to believe that skill in the arts can be acquired and does not entirely have to be foisted upon you by an accident of birth.
British researchers have found that areas of the brain related to auditory and motor skills grew in six-year-olds who studied music for 15 months, and not in those who didn't.
It's no secret that school arts programs are eternally imperiled, but it will be interesting to see what it contributes to that debate to have better evidence that, particularly for kids who can't afford private lessons, a lack of exposure to music in school may literally make for a smaller mind.
Some combination of looking around for that clip of "The Letter" yesterday and looking around at talk-show buffoonery has managed to land me, twice in the last two days, on clips of this afternoon's lull-buster: the Shangri-Las. It's a perfect example of one of the Internet's most wonderful hazards: the tangent that eats an hour.
If you aren't familiar with them (poor you!), the Shangri-Las were a '60s girl group best known for a series of songs that were mostly about teenagers dying in car crashes, often after being oppressed by their parents in some horrible manner or another. That's them up top, introduced by Steve Allen and singing to Robert Goulet, who's camping it up as Jimmy, who comes to a bad end in "Leader Of The Pack."
I don't think I can take a Michael Jackson comeback. Not as a music consumer, but as a comedy-product consumer. I cannot take the return of Michael Jackson to late-night monologues, The Onion, or, quite frankly, the entire Internet.
If this plays out as anticipated, all that's going to happen is that he's going to show up in public with the zoo animals and the oxygen tanks and the...whatever, Jedi costume, and there will be pictures of him in magazines where he's in a nun's habit, walking an ocelot and carrying a watering can, and then his nose will fall off during a charity benefit, and he'll make some weird new best friend like Joe The Plumber or Miley Cyrus, and we'll all be back on the Michael Jackson Express Train To Weirdsville, and I cannot take it.
Kanye West is a powerful performer and kind of a fascinating guy -- it's not for nothing that he's won twelve -- yes, twelve -- Grammy Awards. Tomorrow night, he brings his act to VH1's Storytellers, long a showcase for singer-songwriters. Based on the clip above, it may well be a fine show, but it's currently being eclipsed by controversy over what you're not going to see.
According to Reuters, you won't see either an airing of grievances about Radiohead's Thom Yorke or -- more interestingly -- a statement that the public should give singer Chris Brown "a break."
Brown is currently the subject of one of the ugliest public investigations in recent memory, and West's comments are likely the most headline-friendly aspect of the entire show. But you won't see them; they were cut along with the Yorke business.
Bill Flanagan, the show's executive producer, says that this is all perfectly normal as part of the process of editing a much longer performance down to what's usually a one-hour show -- but has been extended in West's case to 90 minutes. The idea, Flanagan says, is to encourage people to "keep talking" on stage, in return for which the show agrees to "eliminate any 'gotcha' moments."
Bruce Springsteen: Antitrust regulators are one thing, but the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger is up against this guy, too. Jamie Squire/Getty Images
by Linda Holmes
The big news in enormous corporate entities eating each other is that Live Nation and Ticketmaster have announced their plans to merge, meaning that instead of two giant entities in charge of most ticket sales for high-profile live shows, you'll have one.
New York Sen. Charles Schumer has already announced his displeasure with the deal, which he says would "give a giant, new entity unrivaled power over concert-goers and the prices they pay." As a matter of fact, shares of both companies fell after the announcement, apparently because many believe the merger is going to be squelched on antitrust grounds before any such "unrivaled power" can be unleashed.
One notable non-fan of the merger is Bruce Springsteen, who had a high-profile dispute with Ticketmaster last week after ticket buyers were automatically redirected from the Ticketmaster site to a Ticketmaster-owned subsidiary that resells tickets for substantially more than face value.
After that happened, Springsteen issued a letter to his fans expressing outrage about the incident and condemning Ticketmaster's actions -- for which they later apologized -- but he said something else too.
As Rolling Stonepoints out, Springsteen also took pains to mention, while the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger hadn't even been announced yet, that such a merger, and the single ticketing system it would create, would be "the one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan than it is now." Ouch.
In the (undoubtedly endless) chat below, please join me and NPR Music editor Stephen Thompson of NPR Music as we discuss the Grammy telecast from the comfort of our respective couches. We'll update from time to time, as fast as my typing fingers will carry us. (We don't actually speak live, lest one of us blurt out his or her Social Security number.)
Beginning at eight, we will share our knowledge, lack of knowledge, and feeling that we are too old for the Grammys. Or possibly too young. Depending entirely on the nomination in question. Join us, beginning as soon after eight as I post our first string of outbursts.
Jimmy Sturr: Seen here accepting a Grammy in 2003, he's up again this year. Mark Mainz/Getty Images
by Linda Holmes
While reading a CNN story about polka megastar Jimmy Sturr and other lesser-known Grammy nominees, I noticed that the Grammys have made a change to their format this year that might allow you to enjoy some awards presentations you might otherwise miss.
It turns out that this year, the Grammys are streaming a "pre-telecast" that will allow winners of awards that don't make the prime-time TV spectacular -- polka awards, for instance -- to have a moment in which their fans can watch them be rewarded. Beginning at 4 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, you'll have the chance to catch a lot of very good musicians you've probably never heard of take home awards in, the site claims, more than 100 categories.
So if your tastes lie outside the realm of the three-and-a-half-hour (yipes) Sunday night show, you might still have a shot at toasting the folks you're rooting for the most.
And a special note: I'll be helping out with this year's Grammy coverage, collaborating with Stephen Thompson of NPR Music. Stephen will provide the in-depth knowledge of music; I will provide the set-ups for Stephen's punch lines regarding my lack of in-depth understanding of music. And we will both provide the comments that will provoke angry letters from someone's fans, if history is any guide. It will be fun! More details soon!
In the "simple pleasures" column for the day, please enjoy this video from Oren Lavie. The technique on display isn't exactly new, but it's so smartly conceived and well-executed that it serves as a nice reminder that while technical innovation is all well and good, creativity and imagination still trump it.
It loses a point for the "edit" that occurs at the 2:37 point, which violates the reality that the rest of the video has worked so hard to establish. (So much so, in fact, that you'll note that I referred to it as an edit in a video that's nothing but edits.) But it gains that point back by the way the woman at the center of it all keep her eyes closed through the entire thing like the dream that it is.
If you've listened to the radio at all in the last two weeks, chances are you've heard U2's "Get On Your Boots." (Many, many times, if your radio stations are anything like mine.) It's also entirely possible that at some point during the song, you may have found yourself singing "I'm on tenterhooks, ending in dirty looks..."
It's not the first song that has ganked Elvis Costello's "Pump It Up" for inspiration; any child of the late '80s can probably recall the Escape Club scoring a #1 hit with the soundalike "Wild, Wild West."
But even with a radically different instrumental track and a chorus that veers off completely, it's hard not to hear Costello's song in Bono's vocal. It's most obvious when you compare Costello's snarl "You wanna torture her, you wanna talk to her" with Bono yowling "I got a submarine, you got gasoline." Same rhythm, same inflection.
Why Coldplay has the right to roll its collective eyes, and some thoughts on why nobody minds lifting when Bono does it, after the jump...
We're getting a late start this morning, but what goes with a late start better than an enormously entertaining harmonica video? Nothing, that's what. In the clip above, Buddy Greene explains that there is more to his instrument than "Oh, Susanna."
Madonna: This, surprisingly, is an almost-teenager's mother. But her Sticky & Sweet Tour hasn't lost a step, ticket-wise. Mauricio Lima/AFP/Getty Images
by Linda Holmes
The results are in from Pollstar magazine, and the highest-grossing concert tour of 2008 was Madonna's Sticky & Sweet Tour, which made more than $105 million. She's followed in the top ten by Celine Dion, the Eagles, Kenny Chesney, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Diamond, Rascal Flatts, the Police, and Tina Turner.
It's like my entire high-school class time-traveled 20 years into the future and dominated the year in ticket sales, except that the only thing we had to listen to in the time machine was contemporary country radio (you know how that happens in parts of, like, Wisconsin), so we emerged liking everything we liked back then, plus Kenny Chesney and Rascal Flatts.
Run for your life: What are the New York police worried about for New Year's Eve? The terrifying Jonas Brothers. Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
by Linda Holmes
Today in adolescent menaces: Peoplereports that the New York Police Department is very nervous about New Year's Eve in Times Square, because one of the performances on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve is the Jonas Brothers, the Disney-driven pop trio made up of (left to right in this photo) Tall Hair Jonas, Flat Hair Jonas, and Jonas Who Looks Like Tom Hanks In Bosom Buddies.
Johnny Cash: A new edition of a classic album has more to say about his performances at Folsom Prison than you may want to hear. Getty Images
by Marc Hirsh
As eagerly as music nerds await the release of collections like Johnny Cash's brand-new, probably-under-your-holiday-shrubbery-of-choice At Folsom Prison Legacy Edition, there's always a very real risk involved of shattering 40 years' worth of illusions. It's the same reason you don't look under the hood of a classic car you've always lusted after or take a gander at the inside of a sausage factory: sometimes it's just better to close your eyes and hang on to the myth.
That can be especially true of an album like At Folsom Prison, which for all its unimpeachable musical virtues owed much of its power to the combination of what was happening backstage (Cash's own career tailspin, which the original release effectively reversed) and in front of it (the release-valve rowdiness of the prison audience). But things look a little different once you open your eyes to a warts-and-all view of history. It turns out, there are warts. Let's look at some of the more surprising revelations to be found on the new two-CD/one-DVD set, which officially makes available the undoctored entirety of both concerts that Folsom hosted on January 13, 1968.
I think Gael Cooper at MSNBC correctly identified "Get dressed, ye merry gentlemen" as probably the champ, but I also like "Strike the heart, enjoy the florist" and " Barney's the king of Israel."
Sorting candy: If you're a powerful enough band, you can get people to do it for you. iStockphoto.com
There's been a legend for many years that Van Halen used to have a concert rider (the document laying out requirements for everything from lighting and ticketing to backstage food for the band and crew) that required a supply of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed.
For years, The Smoking Gun has been publishing various concert riders from various bands, many of which are deeply hilarious. I enjoy Christina Aguilera's accidentally funny request for Flintstones vitamins, as well as the intentionally funny Foo Fighters rider that includes fabulous lines like, "Artist shall not be required to share dressing room with any other performer, except Supergrass, Oasis, or maybe Led Zeppelin." (Read the whole thing -- helpful red arrows point out the highlights.)
But they never had the Van Halen rider -- until now.
Thanks to the family of a concert promoter, the 1982 Van Halen concert rider has surfaced, and it does indeed ask for M&Ms with the caution, "ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES." The supposed justification is that it's a test -- if the promoter doesn't read the rider carefully, the presence of brown M&Ms is how you can tell. But of course, that doesn't change the fact that some low-paid underling winds up sorting through a pot of M&Ms to pick out the brown ones, which seems sort of...humiliating, whether it's a test of the promoter or not.
But how many people listen to that stuff? Last.fm, as it happens, has released its "Best Of 2008" lists, which aren't so much "best of" lists as "most listened to" lists. The way Last.fm works, its software (if you choose) can make a note of what you listen to on your computer, in order to improve its understanding of what you like. They can also use the data to come up with these aggregations of what artists, tracks, and albums people actually listened to the most in 2008. Not what they said they listened to, but what they actually listened to.
So how did Last.fm users line up with NPR Music? You can look for yourself, and you'll see that among Last.fm's top ten artists are Santogold, Fleet Foxes, MGMT, and -- yes -- Bon Iver, The Official Bearded Mountain Band Of NPR Music, all of whom got mentions in the piece. Bon Iver is also featured in the clip above, performing "Dance, Dance, Dance" with Lykke Li.
Among the top albums, in addition to those from the artists already mentioned, are the records from Coldplay and Death Cab For Cutie, which were sort of the NPR Music flag-wavers for more heavily played music that was still good.
All in all, not a bad alignment between what was good and what was popular, although Bob Boilen will have to wait a little longer for the inevitable resurgence of Sparks.
As for me, I do not truck with people who hate "Jingle Bells." And I'm not sure I ever hear the Chipmunks anymore, except in the context of pieces about the least enjoyable holiday songs. If I did, I'd definitely vote for that.
For what it's worth, this is my current favorite holiday pop song: Barenaked Ladies' "Elf's Lament," in which we learn about bad labor conditions at the North Pole. What? Social justice is festive! On the record, they perform this with hokey crooner Michael Bublé, which makes it even more absurdly great.
So I'll throw the question out there: What's the most annoying song December inflicts upon you? Go.
A room full of excitable nerds with acoustic guitars is never, never, never a bad idea. This video of Ben Folds covering the Postal Service's "Such Great Heights" has been kicking around for a couple of years now, beloved by random YouTube stumblers and email link-followers. There's a lot of love in that room.
It's a good time to be Taylor Swift, as if there's ever a bad time. Last Sunday, she won an American Music Award for Favorite Female Artist, Country Music, which should sit nicely alongside her awards for Top New Female Vocalist (Academy Of Country Music), Video Of The Year and Female Video Of The Year (CMT), Breakout Artist (Teen Choice) and last year's Horizon Award from the Country Music Association. She also currently has the #1 album in the country, with her sophomore release Fearless topping this week's Billboard 200 chart. Plus, of course, the cuteness and the perkiness and teenagerness and the used-to-date-a-Jonas-Brother of it all.
Rolling Stone asked members of a "blue-ribbon panel" to name their favorite vocalists, and from their responses, it compiled its list of the 100 Greatest Singers Of All Time. Top of the list? Aretha Franklin.
It's an interesting list, and provided you understand that it's not terribly broad (as commenters quickly noted, there are no great vocalists who sing primarily in other languages?), it makes a nice, compact collection of mighty vocalists.
Be warned: They show a "playlist" for each artist, and it's very nice that they went to the trouble of setting it up, but it isn't ordinary streaming -- it plays through the Rhapsody music service. Rhapsody will give you 25 free streams a month, but you have to install their software, so think of the playlist as a nice idea more than a functional add-on for the average surfer.
That's a one-minute trailer for a remarkable thirty-minute film available through Folkstreams.net. The movie is called Gandy Dancers, and you can stream it live on your computer. (Another great thing to do instead of getting work done.) Gandy Dancers were railroad workers, almost exclusively African-American, who used music -- including spiritual, nonsensical, and raunchy songs -- to coordinate their track work. Long-retired workers not only explain how the whole thing worked to both practically synchronize movements and inspire very tired guys, but they demonstrate, as old men, what they did as young workers. It's about a half-hour long; watch it if you get the chance.
If you're among the many people who miss the days when MTV showed videos all day instead of reruns of The Hills and My Super Sweet 16, you may be heartened by the launch of MTV Music, where you can go and choose from a fairly substantial library of videos to watch online. Contrary to some of the suggestions I've read, it certainly doesn't contain every video MTV ever showed -- more on that later -- but it includes some good ones, and certainly enough to perk up your Wednesday, if you're flagging. Up there is the 1983 "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" video where many folks first discovered the unusual Annie Lennox.
Most of the obits for comedian Rudy Ray Moore, who passed away last Sunday at the age of 81, tended to note his extensive list of party albums, his penchant for working bluer than blue. They pointed out that Dolemite, his stage and film character, was an influence on any number of pimp- lovin' playas from Big Daddy Kane to Snoop Dogg.
But for those of you who've never heard of Rudy Ray Moore — and I'm guessing that's a lot of you — I'd like to recall none of that today.
Rather, in eulogizing the man, I'd like to remember his unforgettable 1979 film Disco Godfather.
Disco Godfather is one of the worst movies ever made. It also has a permanent home in my DVD collection. If you appreciate what Rudy was all about, you can't help but appreciate the film.
The allure of Disco Godfather explained, after the jump ...
This uparallelled YouTube treasure just popped up on my Facebook page, courtesy of an actor I know. I've played it four times now, and I'm thinking my day will involve another six or seven listens, minimum:
Looks like it's been up on the Tubes for about a year and a half, in which time it's racked up a mere 103,000 plays. Surely it deserves better than that, no? I mean, who'd have thought to mash those two up?
Where you'll find her: Rob Kapilow charts a landscape of yearning in 'What Makes It Great.' Hulton Archive/Getty Images
by Trey Graham
Ever seen a movie? Ever listened to music? Then don't miss Rob Kapilow's super-smart, eye-poppingly revealing, hugely entertaining deconstruction of a movie song you probably think you know. (I don't really have to tell you which one, do I?)
It's part of What Makes It Great, a new from-the-archives series from the good people at NPR Music. Watch for new installments once a week; each one will go deep on a piece of truly unforgettable music, looking at what makes it work so well. (Fans of Performance Today will remember these commentaries as being part of that program back in the day.)
Now, I've gotta confess, I was dubious about Kapilow's opening argument here: "Five minutes from now, you are not gonna believe the meaning of these first two notes," he says, and yeah, I was skeptical.
Almost as much fun as yesterday's round of recut movie trailers is today's literal music video. This is the then-state-of-the-art video for A-Ha's "Take On Me," rewritten so that you can follow the action a little more easily. Just watch it. It made my morning. Note that the video has some language in it that I'd classify as extremely mild, but depending on your location, you might still want headphones.
You could write a boring book — or a boring blog post, for that matter — about the countless ways the decline of the music industry has affected the way we listen to music. Record stores are disappearing, MP3 downloads are replacing CDs, piracy runs rampant, label mergers have consolidated artists' catalogs into ever fewer hands, and so on.
If that paragraph hasn't caused you to nod off like a herdsman bitten by a tsetse fly, perhaps you'll join me for a moment as I lament the decline of the CD release party, that wonderful byproduct of record stores that allows like-minded fans to gather in person and hear a much-anticipated album for the first time.
What any of this nonsense has to do with Bob Dylan, after the jump ...
The Pussycat Dolls: If their "brand-dropping" agency is to be believed, they'll sing your product's praises — for a fee, of course. So: What songs would you rewrite?
Illustration, Alice Kreit. Photo: Getty Images
Look, the national anthem is a hard song. It has a notoriously huge range, it's not particularly rhythmic, and right at the end, it does that la-and of the freeeee" thing to you that will just really cause pain to the unprepared.
Nevertheless, most people called upon to sing the national anthem on a public stage as prominent as the one Monday Night Football provides can be counted on to rehearse it enough that the experience doesn't wind up being ... too painful.
This is not always the case, however.
On Monday night, the anthem was performed by pop singer Kat DeLuna, who managed to hit enough sour notes that she was lustily booed by the crowd when the performance was over.
Granted, she made some choices about changing the mood of the song that not everyone would agree with. (A friend of mine commented, "I've always thought our national anthem needed more 'Unbreak My Heart.'")
But that really wasn't the problem.
The problem was the bad notes -- including the very last note, which is very, very bad indeed.
Billboard magazine has offered us all reason to despair: It has calculated the All-Time Hot 100, which is the magazine's attempt to explain what songs are the absolute hottest, the most hot, the tip-top hot songs of all time. (Well, "all time" since the Hot 100 started in 1958, which you'll notice mostly because a good chunk of the career of Elvis Presley is missing.)
This just in: I need to lie down, and so will you after you read this list.
No. 1 is "The Twist." Which...okay. It's "The Twist." I'm not offended. I don't know about putting it atop any all-time lists of hot songs, but if I were to get too wound up about it, it would sap some of the energy I will need to be outraged over the second-hottest song of all time, which is "Smooth."
Yes, "Smooth," that deathless collaboration between Santana and Mr. Matchbox Twenty himself, Rob Thomas.
Also among the Top 10: "How Do I Live," by LeAnn Rimes; Olivia Newton-John's "Physical," Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life," and -- yes, really -- "Macarena."
Who's That Diva? You've heard her biggest hits. But there's at least one you should really listen to.
In today's Song of the Day, my office-mate Stephen Thompson celebrates a wistful little Laura Gibson tune, not least for what the Portland Cello Project does by adding its "army of cellos" to what had been a bare-bones original.
"There's something about the instrument's soft, rich tone that supplies a sort of intravenous warmth, adding shading and texture without overwhelming the arrangement," Stephen writes.
Which made me think: Best chart-topping string arrangement ever?
My answer, plus where to submit yours, after the jump...
Rick Springfield: Seen here rocking out in 2007, he's still making music -- and now he's making music for kids. 
Public 'grief' on display: A fan writes on Michael Jackson's memorial wall outside the Staples Center, where tomorrow's memorial service will take place. 
Michael Jackson: In May of 1983, the world saw him become a superstar. 
The Avett Brothers: This is what they looked like at Coachella in 2007; they were a little cozier in the NPR offices. 
Mythical species: If seeing what's attractive about Adam Lambert is what it takes to be a cougar, then cougars don't exist. 
The piano: You know, they use it in music, which is good for times when your favorite shows are in reruns. (Just kidding!) 
Kylie Minogue: A huge international star, she gave up on the U.S. a long time ago — until now. 
Amanda Palmer: She is either colluding with Pitchfork to pull a magnificent prank, or...she's not. 
Careful listening: With the volume turned all the way up -- that's the only way to listen to one of this week's free downloads from iTunes. 
Late-night crowds: Two o'clock in the morning looks like this on Austin's 6th Street during South By Southwest. 
How to party: Revelry spills into the streets on a regular basis at South By Southwest. 
Wristbands: At South By Southwest, it's all about who you know. Well, who your wrist is allowed to know, really. 
Rock Band, indeed: These "partygoers" are rocking out playing Rock Band at the MTV And Rock Band Official Showcase at the South By Southwest music festival. Our correspondent is emphatically not doing this. 
Music and the brain: Research says studying music literally expands a child's mind. Now, go practice! 
Michael Jackson: It's like he's not even back yet, and we already have the fatigue. 
Bruce Springsteen: Antitrust regulators are one thing, but the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger is up against this guy, too. 
Jimmy Sturr: Seen here accepting a Grammy in 2003, he's up again this year. 
Madonna: This, surprisingly, is an almost-teenager's mother. But her Sticky & Sweet Tour hasn't lost a step, ticket-wise. 
Run for your life: What are the New York police worried about for New Year's Eve? The terrifying Jonas Brothers. 
Johnny Cash: A new edition of a classic album has more to say about his performances at Folsom Prison than you may want to hear. 
Sorting candy: If you're a powerful enough band, you can get people to do it for you. 
Pimpin' it Godfather style: Rudy Ray Moore rocks the snakeskin-and-glitter-frames look. 
Where you'll find her: Rob Kapilow charts a landscape of yearning in 'What Makes It Great.' 
