Hey, there's a long tradition of two-chord classics. "Sister Ray," "Roadrunner..."

Bob Quine: "[White Light/White Heat] completely changed my life. 'Sister Ray,' 'I Heard Her Call My Name.' I spent thousands of hours on headphones wearing that out. That was a big influence on me. They were starting to make a big deal about people like Larry Coryell, rock musicians playing jazz, but there was no real fusion going on. What Lou Reed did, he actually listened to Ornette Coleman, and deliberately did off-harmonic feedback and the deliberate monotony of it. This stuff is like Jimmy Reed- it's monotonous or it's hypnotic. For me, it was hypnotic."

On the box right now

Brian Lehrer and Diana Somethingorother talking about the NY state legislature's inability to pass a budget on time (20 years and counting). AIFRocks!!

Okay, it doesn't really rock. But I do like the Brian Lehrer show.

that THE BIG GUNDOWN lp? Love that stuff.

Yep, but actually it's on a mix I made for a friend who's driving from TX to ME this week. I burnt a few comedy albums, a couple of Firesign albums, a Ska/Dub mix (from the Trojan boxes, which I'm listening to now), a couple of short-fast-catchy postpunk mixes, and a mix of long, spacey songs (which has the Zorn/Quine/Ribot song, the krautrock song on the new Wilco, a Neu! track, one of the long Fiery Furnaces songs from the new album, and The Tain) with a few Coyle & Sharpe interviews in between songs.

Fiery Furnaces!

Damn straight! It's the smartest album I've heard in a long, long while. I absolutely love it.

And yeah, I agree with Quine. I've been on quite the free jazz-fusion roll lately, and the Velvets got the single chord harmonic structure down pat, which was only one of the great things in their bag of tricks.

Huh. Jon, I just discovered there's a theremin on that Guster song I was listening to, "All the Way up to Heaven."

Jeez, seems like anyone's using a theremin, these days. ;)

I was totally unaware of this lawsuit: Wilco Pays Up for Spycasts. Apparently, the label has used the settlement to put the Conet Project back in print.

The Wilco thing annoys me.

Fernandez is trumpeting his victory as a "classic David and Goliath confrontation." But copyright lawyers and intellectual property activists aren't so sure. How exactly, they're wondering, does a guy get ownership over something he taped off of the radio?

Apparantly under British law you can copyright something you recorded off the radio. But then, the guy who sued didn't even make the recordigs himself; they were given to him.

Sounds like it was easier and cheaper for Wilco to settle than to fight it out.

I agree that the copyright issues are murky at best. At the same time, it was pretty stupid of Wilco not to approach Irdial while they were making YHF to ask about using the samples. They probably would have gotten the rights for a lot less money.

True. It also sounds like they could have gotten them for nothing from the guy who gave Irdial the tapes.

Has there been any discussion here of One Ring Zero? I listened to them today on Fresh Air because the name sounded familiar. When they started talking about Brooklyn I realized that it sounded familiar because they play semi-regularly at a local club whose mailing list I am on. But I still wonder if they've popped up here, too.

Much of the interview dealt with the claviola, which is at the heart of their sound. It's also extremely rare; I think they said 14 were made. They know about it and have one because they were both Hohner technicians and grabbed it when it showed up at the warehouse.

NYCistas (or anyone who'll be in town), they're playing at Housing Works on Wednesday as part of the Paris Review event. Paula Fox, Nathaniel Bellows, and Melvin Jules Bukiet will be reading. I'm going to go support the cause so look for me if you go.

The claviola sounds pretty cool. I tried for a while to grab a Pianet T (made by the same guy) off of eBay, but was always outbid.

BTW, I had my first practice as a band keyboardist yesterday, and it went well, although I stayed up half the night working on my all-synth concept album and sewing a cape. Jon, why didn't you tell me that this was going to happen?

Jon, why didn't you tell me that this was going to happen?

It would've helped had you already been playing with an improvisational multi-keyboard drone-rock band. Takes the edge off.