I think she was anticipating a political band that brought her back to her youth the way that "Where is the Love" did.

Will she be happy to know I saw them perform at a benefit concert for a minority-focused GOTV (get out the vote) organization sponsored by MoveOn.org and featuring keynote speaker William Jefferson Clinton? And they sang "We Shall Overcome" with Odetta? (Who made us all sing along. I cannot say no to Odetta.)

At that same show, Savion Glover "sang" a version of Hendrix's "Star-Spangled Banner" as he tapped. It was surprisingly moving. He is so astonishingly, amazingly, jawdroppingly genius.

Now I am listening to Rhett Miller and Ben Kweller do a plangent cover of "I Wanna Be Sedated." It is cracking me up. Thank you, Acquisition.

oh an aside, and I apologize if I am mistating what happened, but were backchannel things brought up here? cause that makes me uncomfortable.

I think it's stuff from other threads, not backchannels. At least as far as I know.

Are you talking about what I said? Cause that was spillover from the book thread.

See, I actually went back and forth on whether they had a hyphen or not. Thanks for enlightening me :-).

There's none. The name comes from the police code for indecent exposure, with which at least one of the band members is familiar.

ok, I skipped in there which is why I wrote it the way I did. my bad. carry on.

There's something about that Blackeyed Peas song that rubs me the wrong way, but I can't put my finger on it. Part of me realizes that it's nice to hear some hip hop with a positive message, but ... I don't know. It's almost like they're trying too hard.

Which reminds me of the local Seattle adult-alternative station (The Mountain, for you locals) who had a song showdown one day when I was driving home. "Hey Ya," which wasn't a song they'd normally play on the station, vs. a song by Michael Franti (I'm fairly certain it was him, but I can't recall for sure) called "Everyone Deserves Music."

Now, this was the height of "Hey Ya"'s popularity, and I can understand why it's not everybody's piece of cake, or they're just sick of it already. But all the callers they chose to play on the air said they vastly preferred the Michael Franti song, because "Hey Ya" was "stupid" or some other disparaging adjective.

Now, let me tell you -- that Michael Franti song was the most self-important piece of crap I've ever heard. I can't quote lyrics to you, but I remember being outraged listening to the calls come in in its favor.

I was frantically trying to get through, just so I could go off about a good song vs. a self-important piece of crap, and how music is supposed to be fun, not utterly humorless and self-important like that Michael Franti thing was.

I was unsuccessful. But it made me feel good that I never did hear that Michael Franti song on that station again.

I like most of the BEP stuff that I have heard. It reminds me of the hip-hop I used to listen to back in the early 90s. Also I think Fergie is fun to watch. She makes me want to grow my hair long and steal all her clothes.

Also? people who hate the "Hey ya" are crazyheads. it may have been overplayed within an inch of its life, but it's not stupid, it's fun.

"Come Into My World (Fischerspooner remix)"

Ooh, I love this! And I probably would never have heard it if it hadn't been on Alicia's Buffistamix.

I was listening to my copy of Dance Raja Dance last night (while doing a MASSIVE pile of dishes, ugh) and remembering how awesome that album is. Anyone else heard it? I admit to having a weakness for Bollywood tunes, and Indian music in general, but there's some really excellent stuff on there.

"Hey Ya" took me completely by surprise. I was watching Fuse, and the video came up, and I saw it was OutKast, so I was all ready to change the channel because generally, I'm not into hip-hop/R & B, but the music was so infectious and fun. And there was a guitar! And interesting lyrics! One listen and I was addicted. Then I discovered it was like the popularest song ever and I was all, "Oh."