More cowbell! [link]

More cowbell! [link]

I love the test drive!

I do like their self-titled album and the "Tales from an Acoustic Planet" duo.

Obviously, track 12 of Tales From an Acoustic Planet is a must have.

Huh. So the Cure are releasing a new studio album in October. And going on tour. I have no idea if the album will be good, but you'd better believe I'm going to go see them.

Sweet!

I emailed the photographer who did the original Swordfishtrombones cover and he just sent me the contact sheets for the original shoot! So cool.

I'm trying to talk my editor into using one previously unpublished pic for each chapter (14 in all).

We'll see if the money's there. At the very least I'll get one shot for the interior.

So at the last minute, the evil capitalist bad-people decided to be nice to us:

The basic gist is that web radio is saved. SoundExchange promised in front of Congress Thursday that they will NOT collect the disastrous new royalty rates from webcasters, and the two parties will negotiate new rates going forward, without webcasters being driven offline on Monday, when the royalties were due. Yay!

[link]

more info: [link]

Another Tom Waits video: [link]

For "Starving in the Belly of a Whale." It was an graduation project animation. Bonus points for musically-inclined monkey.

eta: No music, but the classic scene with Tom Waits in Fishing With John. [link] I'd describe it, but I don't want to spoil folks who haven't seen it.

Something I snagged from the Zoilus blog which will interest Buffistas:

Michael Barthel, known to Zoilus readers for his Clap Clap Blog, one of my favourite music blogs, gave a great paper about how Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah has gradually been reduced by successive cover versions (beginning with John Cale and then multiplying exponentially with Jeff Buckley's cover of John Cale's cover, which was then itself used as the source of uncountable covers), and their use in film and TV soundtracks. It's gone, he said, from a drily sceptical, wry, multifaceted work into a one-dimensional "sad" song to use whenever you need to show a montage of various characters in various places being sad. "It's become the auditory equivalent of a silent-film actress pressing the back of her hand to her head." The effect, he said, was like "making a Matisse into a washcloth" - but, he added, a song isn't a Matisse: "Wring it out and it's ready again." Then he demonstrated this by playing his own recording of Hallelujah, using verses Cale and Buckley cut from the original (which no one ever sings) and a panoply of wild, cheerful musical styles. Now there's a critical manoeuvre you wouldn't get from an academic. It was great finally to meet Mike, who's as bright-eyed and wry himself as any reader would expect. His paper is up on his site now.

Despite being a huge Velvet Underground fan, I've never heard this recording before:

One of the secret weapons of the Velvet Underground was Lou Reed's Ostrich Guitar Tuning, where all the strings were tuned to D. It got its name from the 1964 novelty single "The Ostrich" by The Primitives, a pre-Velvet Underground band fronted by Lou Reed. Originally only a studio project, the song about a fake novelty dance generated enough interest to put together a band for a few live gigs. And amazingly enough, that touring version of The Primitives featured John Cale, Tony Conrad, and Walter DeMaria. While I am not aware of any surviving live recordings of these guys, here are both sides of the studio recording in MP3 format: The Ostrich | Sneaky Pete

Only one year later Lou Reed and John Cale would form the Velvet Underground and never record a novelty dance number again.

[link]

eta: I have a bootleg recording of The Falling Spikes called Screen Test: Falling in Love With the Falling Spikes. (The Falling Spikes were a precursor to the Velvet Underground, with all the original VU members except Mo Tucker.) Even though the sound is awful, I just love the version of "Oh Sweet Nuthin'" on that record.

Thanks, David! Mike Barthel is a great guy. His analysis of the Fiery Furnaces' Blueberry Boat led me to write my own for the Hat.

Tommy, I have an mp3 of the Primitives' "(Do The) Ostrich," but it's probably not worth your time. The guitarist in my old band American Cosmic (who's now the guitarist for the excellent Dexateens) had an old Danolectro that he kept in Ostrich tuning just for the hell of it.