It's Jonathan Coulton's Birthday!

In honor of it, this piano medley of most of his best songs.

Freaks Vs. The Establishment

Like a lot of people who are interested in American politics, I'm reliving the culture wars of the late sixties. And to my credit, I give both sides a chance.

Narrowing down further, my internet radio tastes run almost exclusively to two stations: LuxuriaMusic.com and Technicolor Web Of Sound. Both focus on music from the late sixties/early seventies. Technicolor Web has the narrower mission, psychedelia all the time. Admittedly they pepper it (pepper! ha ha!) with period commercials and newscasts, and the playlist is about 20% sunny, undruggy pop but for the most part it’s a real trip, man. It’s the obscurities that all the cool kids listened to in college, before they went on to run America into the ground.

Those kids would have hated, hated the fare on Luxuria Music. Though the playlist is a bit more adventurous the meat and potatoes of these guys is easy listening/lounge music. Got a hankering for Enoch Light? Martin Denny? 101 Strings? Pour yourself a highball and come on in! Ever since SWINGERS came out I’ve been enamored of easy listening music. It’s top musicians working at the the peak of their powers to produce a dubious result, which is fascinating.

And the Luxuria people know that people like me don’t have the patience to take this stuff straight, which is why they find as many examples as they can of the aesthetic pushed too far. Last night I heard the theme to Bonanza, sung in German. In fact there is a whole three hour show on Mondays devoted to kitsch. Luxuria branches out a lot more, occasionally playing trance music and disco and garage rock. The week Michael Jackson died there were equal parts tribute shows to Jacko and Sky Saxon, lead singer of The Seeds.

If you wonder why the music business and commercial radio is on the way out, it’s because a guy like me can get everything he wants from these stations. And most of the artists they play are dead and don’t need royalties.

(h/t to April Winchell for Bonanza. I knew you wouldn’t believe it unless you heard it yourself)

"Wave" Bye Bye

You know how something can be so inoffensive, so bland, so nondescript that it winds up offending, grating at you and standing out like a sore thumb? The guy in the cubicle next to me has a radio just barely at audible level which plays "The Wave" all day.

I'm not sure you know what "The Wave" is. It's a "smooth jazz" format station. In Las Vegas, where I just was, they call it "The Oasis." I suppose in Alaska they call it "The Hot Spring." They playlist tends heavily toward R&B with something that you might define as jazz every couple of hours. For example, that remake of TAKE FIVE that someone cleverly arranged in 4/4.

Remember PICK UP THE PIECES by the Average White Band? That's odd. The Wave does! Not only do they play it on a daily basis, they also play a plethora of inexplicable covers by series of faceless saxophone artists. I'd have never imagined that there was a PUTP subculture out there. This daily basis thing is important - they play EVERYTHING on a daily basis. I know I'll hear two Anita Baker songs in the course of a work day, and about nine versions of Pick Up the Pieces, and a little Steely Dan, and some Hiroshima, and yes, Kenny G. It's like a country music station playlist, only more limited. It's not like there isn't enough material to fill out the genre - oh how I wish that were the case! - it's that the programmers have decided that familiarity breeds comfort. They've smoothed jazz to the point that you can skate across it.

They don't play any Miles Davis or Chet Baker or Ornette Coleman, perhaps out of fear of attracting the late greats' attention and causing unnecessary grave-spinning. My feeling is, for god's sake, let the spinning begin! I'm weary of David Sanborn. I'm no longer enamored of Enya. Maybe my problem with the station is that when I listen, I perpetually feel like I'm about to get a massage that never comes.

When I get home tonight, I'm going to pack the iPod with speed metal.

Bloody Well Wright

Let me establish my boomer cred by admitting that I was looking forward all week to the free concert-in-the-park by Gary "Dream Weaver" Wright. I went, I saw, I took some pictures. Not bad. In the photo, note below the prominent SOPRANOS logo on the man's hat. I Love L.A.!

Gary Wright is a perfect choice for a free concert. For one thing, he is not a one-hit wonder like the Little River Band, who performed last week. Gary had two hits, the other one being LOVE IS ALIVE. Thus he is able to have a 45 minute set with a climax, a break for people to buy more kettle corn and barbecue, then come back for another set with another climax. Furthermore his hits are still in pretty good rotation on certain radio stations, which means that the younger generation has a fighting chance of knowing him. Finally the material is catchy and light as a feather, listenable without being troubling.

However, it didn't really work. Gary and the band were fine. They sounded great although there were a few mic problems. Maybe it was the heat. At 6:00pm the temperature was around 90 degrees. So try though they might, Mssrs Wright and company were unable to raise more than a tepid response from the crowd. I think we all dug it and everything, but we were just like, you know, mellow.

I learned a few things. Gary Wright is not the least bit British. He's American! But he got established in England with the band Spooky Tooth, which I have heard of without ever having heard. I read a lot of Rolling Stone when I was young. Also Wright played on a couple of George Harrison albums, and a book of indian poetry inspired DREAM WEAVER, his best-known work.

Well, the important thing is I got out of the apartment for a couple hours. Maybe I'll do the same next week, for the Zydecats. Oh how I wish they were the Hamonicats!

This last picture is best appreciated in conjunction with another blog called SUICIDE FOOD. They meticulously document the phenomenon of advertising depicting animals happily inviting you to eat them.


From now on you'll notice it EVERYwhere.

STREET World Premiere

I am a genius.

I just wrote a SONG that you will enjoy. Yes, it's a little derivative, and you may find parts of it familiar. However, just roll with it and bask in the unforgettable fire that is me. Why can't the English write like this?

TalkDemonic, Candypants, Carolyn Edwards et. al.

I made the lonely trek out to Spaceland last night to dig the scene and hear a few bands, chief among them my beloved Candypants. Typically for me, the real crowd showed up to see another band, the Oregon-based TalkDemonic.

Didn't like 'em.

I can see how someone would. They have a very dense sound, and it's good solid trancey music. But it just seems wrong for a club date. First of all, there's only two people on stage. It's the only violin/drum band I've ever seen. The rest is supplied by a keyboard and a laptop, which means that much of the music was pre-sequenced. And if people aren't dancing, then it's not that interesting a visual unless you put the laptop on a light box or something. Second, no vocals. And to my ears, the music, while not sounding the same, did all tell the same story.

Still, the crowd was into it, perhaps because the violinist was with The Decemberists. I don't have any idea how many CDs they moved last night, but when TalkDemonic left the stage most of the audience went with them.

Candypants were fabulous as usual, though not particularly fresh. Maybe I just see them too much.

There was a band called Misfit Toys led by Carolyn Edwards and I found them appealing. Songs about mundane things, performed by people who resembled, in attitude, Shelly Long's character in CHEERS. Tasty keyboard work. (Carolyn just wrote to me to say that she introduced the band as the Misfit Toys, but she was only kidding.)

The closing band, The Sexies? Well, they're good at what they do but let's just say it's possible to be TOO retro.

I came in too late to judge Jeff Merchant's band, but I was impressed by the variety of instruments.