How come nobody ever told me about Mary Prankster!?! Like y'all didn't know I'd be madly in love!?!

I'll get one good pass to fix stuff and then it's done.

Go Hec! And I've already pre-ordered it.

David: congrats to the Not Crap Book being almost finished.

I've been listening to Emma Pollock's "Watch The Fireworks" today. Also Not Crap. Not Crap at all. Think I like it way better than the new PJ Harvey.

Congratulations, Hec! That is such a huge accomplishment. I cannot wait to buy copies for (at least) three of my friends who are die hard fans - then I will send them to you and you will sign them and then when I give them to the die hard fans, I will be like "check me out - I know the dude who wrote this book!" Very exciting.

Music for Elevators, the album by Anthony Stewart Head & George Sarah, has apparently just been made available on eMusic. I haven't heard it - is this worth the eMusic downloads?

[link]

Some of the songs are very pretty, but I don't listen to it as much as I expected to(How's that for a non- Music answer) Go, Hec!

So who's a fan of Michael Head's The Magical World of the Strands?

The result is an album that, while little known, is a classic, a masterpiece of modern chamber pop. Released in 1997, this disc walks the line between the deep, darkly expressionistic chamber work of the Tindersticks to the airy, classically augmented breeze-laden pop of Nick Drake à la Five Leaves Left -- long before the millennium obsession with Drake's work began anew because of a Volkswagen commercial. The disc's two openers, "Queen Matilda" and "Something Like You," are so striking in their seductive, tenderness. The ghost of Drake is everywhere, floating in and hovering with the string section. In the refrain to "Something Like You," one can even hear his voice in Head's phrasing. The difference is in how Head composes a lyric, more economical and more expressive; he gets to the essence of the very image he's trying to write about and leaves the listener to fill in the blanks with the musical arrangements. In many ways this music could have been recorded in the early '70s, but with its economic line and outrageously large harmonic terrains -- between the strings and the guitars -- it could have only been written and recorded when it was. The feeling in this music is timeless; it's a pop music that has never been made by Americans, though more than a few have aspired. What reverberates through it on every track -- from the direct lyrical reverie of "X Hits the Spot," with its jangling guitars and subtle backbeat, to "It's Harvest Time," which calls in the spirit of Dave Cousins and Strawbs with open, ringing 12 strings, and piping, echoplexed flute, to the electric-acoustic guitar tradeoff between Michael and James in "Fontilan," with its melancholic theme and spacious mix that has the strings swelling underneath the guitars -- is musical savvy, compositional classiness, and an aesthetic sensibility that is at once completely, utterly artful, while being completely accessible to anyone with an interest in well-written, -played, -produced, and -sung pop. This record will be selling for hundreds of dollars ten years from now, mark my words. - AMG review, Thom Jurek

I think it sounds as much like Belle & Sebastien as Nick Drake, but you get the idea.

I've posted "Queen Matilda" & "Something Like You" up at BR1.

Hint to Jon: Feel free to play "Queen Matilda" on Matilda's birthday, 9/26.

This is really cool. You can make your own custom Subterranean Homesick Blues video: [link]

Hint to Jon: Feel free to play "Queen Matilda" on Matilda's birthday, 9/26.

Psst. I'm on Fridays, not Wednesdays.

Psst. I'm on Fridays, not Wednesdays.

For her birthday, then instead of on her birthday.

See how flexible I am?

Junk drumbot and thereminbot perform "Crazy"

Gord sez, "Brooklyn artist/musician/way-out thinker, Ranjit Bhatnagar, rigs up a home made tin can orchestra and Theremin to perform Gnarls Barkley's 'Crazy.'" Man, that's one crazy junk drumbot -- like the Fat Albert percussion section.

Actual video: [link]

Wow. Thereminbot is awesome!

eta: Obviously, thereminbot is preprogrammed with the notes to play, with MIDI or something similar. So one could easily control thereminbot with a keyboard via MIDI.