The traveling hands of time

While walking by The Continental Club yesterday--Gwen and I had just had lunch at the adjacent and delicious Tacos a Go-Go (the secret is the mayonnaise)--I noticed that Son Volt is playing there on May 16. While Son Volt has suffered in comparisons to Wilco as the less interesting and adventurous Uncle Tupelo spinoff, their music still has its virtues. So I will definitely try to catch that show. I don't have their last couple of albums, though, so I'll probably be That Guy who screams during the show for them to play songs from Trace or Wide Swing Tremolo (which will make people around me think wow, that dude's been into Son Volt from way back, but it's really just that I don't know any of the new stuff). Speaking of Trace, everybody loves "Tear-Stained Eye," and who am to argue: that song is pretty righteous. Here's a live version from 2005:

Where feelings, not reasons, can make you decide

In 1989, I was in ninth grade and spent the majority of my time drifting aimlessly through the halls of my high school, wistfully wondering whether the days of sweet youth and innocence were permanently behind me. (Answer: they were.) That same year, Ian Brodie was 31 and apparently juggling two careers: starring as honors program student Arvid Engen on the ABC sitcom Head of the Class, and fronting English pop group The Lightning Seeds, whose album Cloudcuckooland featured the UK Top 20 hit "Pure."

My buddy Logan refers to this song as a "guilty pleasure." I refer to it as hella sweet (because I'm really hip and up on how the kids of today talk--by the way, don't you guys just think that Zac and Miley are totally the most?!). Anyway, consider:

More cherry bomb

Pitchfork reports today that Spoon has posted on its website a demo of a "country" version of "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb," which, as I've mentioned before, is one of my favorite songs from the last year. This demo version doesn't come close to the quality of the final studio track (mainly because it has none of the Motown-y exuberance of the album version), but it's an interesting listen nonetheless.

Hear to it here.

One of my favorite websites of the last six years

This is an oldie but a goodie. For the past six years, whenever I've needed to re-center myself and get back in touch with an old friend named Me, I've gone to this website. The website is not mainly about music, but it's about pretty much everything else. It's just so incredibly boss (from the silly version of "Big Pimpin'" that plays as background music to the totally rad description of ninjas). If, for some strange reason, you haven't seen this site before, you're very welcome (you can pay me back later).

Real Ultimate Power

Two from BDB

One band name I forgot to include on my list of crappy band names is Badly Drawn Boy, the nom de sensitive rock of singer-songwriter Damon Gough. The bookish and coy stage name is actually just one of a number of things I find annoying about Gough. Another is the fact that his Wikipedia entry says that he was born "in Dunstable, Befordshire [and] grew up in the Brightmet area of Bolton, Lancashire, England." This is obviously fake, as no one comes from that many fruity-sounding English places. The next sentence in the Wikipedia page entry might as well just say, "The son of a cockney boot black, Gough spent his childhood working as a lovable chimney sweep, clean as a whistle, sharp as a thistle, best in all Westminster, until he was sent off to Mrs. Picklingworth's school for wayward lads, where he excelled in fourth form chicanery and ballyhoo." Another thing I don't like is the way Gough always wears a knit cap no matter the climate or circumstance--I read this as an overly committed homage to Elliott Smith (USA! but dead).

Despite all this, I do like a number of Badly Drawn Boy's songs, even if his catalog is uneven. And there are two songs of his in particular that I really do love--"Silent Sigh" (from his About a Boy soundtrack) and "The Shining" (from The Hour of Bewilderbeast).

I should like very much to play them for you now, m'lady:

The video for "Silent Sigh":



And a live version of "The Shining," from London's Royal Festival Hall in 2004 (note how he screws up the lyrics of the first verse and starts over):

Silversun Pickups sell Chevy

While watching Memphis choke on their free throws to hand Kansas the men's NCAA basketball championship last night, I noticed that Chevy is using Silversun Pickups' catchy mid-90s-inspired "Lazy Eye" (from 2006's Carnavas) in its commercial for the Chevy Malibu. While "Lazy Eye" is somewhat of an unconventional choice for an ad jingle, it actually makes sense. When I first heard the song almost two years ago, I remember immediately thinking how sweet it would be if there were a car that boasted 19 MPG city / 28 MPG highway, had the leading resale value in its class according to J.D. Power & Associates, and was a Consumers Digest Best Buy three years in a row. Well, that car exists, and it's called the Toyota Camry. Still, I heard if you ever take your Camry in for maintenance, some dealerships give you a Malibu as a loaner. Good on ya, Malibu!

Anyway, the video for the song:

Sign #18 that ours is a doomed planet

The first time I cracked the lacquer finish on my childhood guitar--a cheap Squire Stratocaster, received as a gift in tenth grade and dented long before eleventh--I stared at the dent for about an hour, ruefully meditating on how I could have prevented the injury. Over time, the guitar got more worn, faded, and ugly. I replaced the pickguard with one that didn't fit exactly right. I changed the bridge pickup, which then didn't match the color of the other two. Inspired by the bats on Billy Corgan's Strat (before he was cast as the lead in Powder), I put dozens of little bat stickers on my own guitar, somehow managing to make it look even less cool. What I didn't realize at the time, however, was that the gradual uglification of my poor little guitar was perhaps increasing its value (I bet that thing peaked at about $250).

Or so goes the thinking behind the perverse and insidious rise of the "relic" guitar--the hot new thing in guitar collecting. As explained in this Wall Street Journal article (of course), relic guitars are brand new instruments that have been deliberately scratched, dented, and aged to mimic years of rock n' roll battle scars. Rubbed paint caused by gigging in too many smoky bars, spidery cracks in the lacquer due to thousands of nights on the road, a lattice of little scratches on the back inflicted by the player's belt buckle, worn fingerboards from countless scorching solos--rather than going through the trouble of actually earning such signs of guitar commitment, dentists and soccer dads are just buying guitars with these badges of honor already built in.

The lameness of this whole thing cannot be measured by our primitive earth tools. It's as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced and what not.

To add to the perversion, these scratch-and-dent jobs actually cost--surprise, surprise--more than the normal, pristine versions. A lot more. For example, a Fender American Standard Telecaster currently runs about $1000. When Andy Summers, guitarist for The Police, bought his 1961 Tele in 1972, he paid $200 for it. But a 2007 Fender Custom Shop tribute version of Summers's guitar--complete with distressed body, broken bridge, and certain electronics tweaks--sells for about $12,000 (pictured above and below--remember, these are pictures of a brand new guitar). Similarly, Fender's relic version of Jeff Beck's Esquire also costs about $12,000. Given these exorbitant prices, and given the profound lameness inherent in relic guitars, is it really any wonder who the target audience is?

(Rockin' Robin customers, I'm looking in your direction on this one.)