Anne! Just got the Bebop. Many many thanks.

Yay! I can't wait to hear what you think about them. Vol. 3 still eludes me, which is irksome, since it is my favorite. I still have hope, though, that it will turn up as I continue to go through the Great Piles o' Crap that have been gathered in the basement.

A Wired article about The Grey Album controversy. I had no idea the album had generated such good reviews. Anyway, the article talks about people's outrage over EMI's cease-and-desist order.

Copies of the album are going for $81 on eBay, the article says.

A day or two ago someone (I think it was Jon) posted a link to some good quality (192 kbps) mp3s of the album. Don't know if the mp3s are still there.

Catching up:

Jon, I sent you Alicia's mix on Thursday; I often get bored at live shows (witness me nearly falling asleep at the Emmylou Harris show in October--and I love Emmylou!); and I adore logic puzzles, but the spreadsheet-types are too easy for me, so my favorites these days are Tsunami puzzles (you can find some on the Puzzler magazine website).

Huh. I'm now listening to Cal Tjader's vibes-with-Moog instro version of..."Gimme Shelter."

This is very weird.

I don't like live shows either! Sticky carpets, the smell of beer, yuck. Of course I don't really like rock music that much, so no real surprise. I like live DJs of course.

Jon, I sent you Alicia's mix on Thursday

Yep. Got it yesterday.

A day or two ago someone (I think it was Jon) posted a link to some good quality (192 kbps) mp3s of the album.

Yep. That was me. The original website also got a cease and desist order, but they're still up at Illegal Art.

If I'm not a fan of the performer, or they're playing a lot of songs I don't know/don't like, I often find concerts really boring and unpleasant.

If that slash is an "and" then I agree; if it's an "or" then I don't. I love it when bands play lots of songs I don't know! I get bored hearing the same old songs. As long as the songs are good, I love hearing new material. But I guess that goes with why I enjoy being a radio DJ -- I love seeking out new stuff I haven't heard before to play on the air.

I like live shows, for the most part. I tend to go to small folk venues, where you can chat with the performer at intermission or after the show. The larger arena shows, less so. Especially the venues with lawn seating. I've had to deal with too many drunk jerks at those things.(The small folk venues either don't serve alcohol, or tend to draw people who aren't looking to get drunk.)

There are a couple of bands/performers who I will go out of my way to see live, and it's all about the artist's connection with the audience.

The Mekons: I've said it all already here -- [link] . I'll also add that though I haven't liked their latest stuff as much, the Waco Brothers (a Mekons offshoot) put on one of the best shows I've ever seen done by a blind-drunk band, which included a version of "Folsom Prison" so fierce that a mosh pit developed.

Rhett Miller/Old 97s -- The Old 97s set their songs on fire when they perform them live. They're also a really good judge of the crowd: I saw them on two consecutive nights in two very different venues, and the sets were very different (only the stuff on the album they were plugging was the same, and even then it was played in a different order.) Rhett's solo live shows are very different -- as he himself said at the last one, which Martha C. and I went to together, "sometimes I forget I'm not just hanging out in my living room with my buddies." He's funny and charming and plays half-finished songs and tells the stories behind old ones.

Rufus Wainwright, who I saw for the first time Friday night, is also a great raconteur, and has developed into an amazing singer. Plus, he had Kiki and Herb performing with him! (Kiki claimed to have dated Loudon back in the day, and to have sung disco lullabies to young Rufus, which would explain a great deal. As Rufus said after Kiki left the stage after a joint performance of "Greek Song," "So glamorous. So horrifying.") And then of course Martha Wainwright came out for a duet during the encores, yay! So, clearly, I'm going to need to see a lot more live Rufus shows.

Stephin Merritt almost never speaks to the crowd, and is something of a diva. But if I hadn't seen him live, I never would have heard the ukelele -only version of "I'm Lonely (And I Love It)," nor seen him in a Pagliacci costume. So in this case it's less about the artist's connection with his audience, and more about my enjoyment of his theatricality. Which on a certain level holds true for all of the above as well.

I've seen Stephen Merritt do a live set at Amoeba - it was fantastic.

Anne, do you know about The Yoko Kanno Project?.

I'm listening to snippets of Blue until you unearth your Walkman. It's interesting tracking her musical influences through the Cowboy Bebop scores. "The Egg and YOU" sounds very Vince Guaraldi. There's a lot of Mancini and Elmer Berstein in the Crime Jazz. Morricone is a constant - not just in the obvious Spaghetti Western "Go Go Cactus Man" but in the open space allowed on things like "Real Folk Blues" or the harmonica on "Spokey Dokey." But mostly I hear a lot of Lalo Schifrin going on - particularly his early 70s stuff when he did the theme to "Medical Center" and "Bullitt" and "Dirty Harry." She's got tremendous range, obviously, doing really good work in everything from chorales to hard rock to bebop.

Rocket From the Tombs with Richard Lloyd sitting in has been released on CD:

AMG REVIEW: Three decades after their formation and 28 years after their initial demise, the members of Cleveland proto-punk band Rocket From the Tombs defied odds by regrouping for an exhilarating June 2003 tour. An outgrowth of those magical gigs, Rocket Redux is designed to capture the forceful set list from those shows in the studio, with the help of Television's Richard Lloyd. Alongside original Rocket vocalist David Thomas (who went on to form the iconic Pere Ubu), bassist Craig Bell, and guitarist Cheetah Chrome (later of the Dead Boys), Lloyd — who produces, records, and mixes — plays guitar for the late Peter Laughner, while Ubu drummer Steve Mehlman works the kit for this fiery 12-song disc. In the face of the crude demos and bootlegs that have been the only RFTT recordings to surface until now, it's a thrill to hear the raw, furious blast of "Frustration" loud and clear as it unfolds into the damn near soulful strains of "So Cold." If "What Love Is" is a testament to Chrome and Lloyd's guitar acrobatics or Thomas' captivating growl, Mehlman and Bell's Led Zeppelin-like stomp locates depth in these guttural anthems. Songs made famous after RFTT split into competitive camps, like "Sonic Reducer," "Final Solution," "Life Stinks," and "Ain't It Fun," get reborn here. And when Thomas inquisitively barks, "Ain't it fun when you get so high, you can't come?" it's practically 1975 all over again. These underground punk legends may all be well into their fifties, but there's no absence of energy on this edgy, discordant, and very necessary set. Come to think of it, most bands half their age would kill for the same kind of hustle and undying spirit. — John D. Luerssen, AMG