This Two Will Change Your Life

According to Pitchfork, the little indie-pop band that could has the #2 album on the Billboard charts, with 118,000 units sold on its first week of release. Even if they might not be your thing, someone like the Shins selling that many albums (and iTunes downloads) out of the box can't be anything but good news for fans of all kinds of good music.

And now I feel like I'm a part of something! I picked up Wincing The Night Away last Tuesday at Best Buy. It was just an $8.99 impulse buy, but I can't remember the last time I bought an album at the store on the day of release.

I've listened to Wincing a handful of times, and the jury's still out on my final views. I like the first "side" (everything through "Phantom Limb") a lot more than the second. It starts out with four or five great songs in a row. Then it drags a little on the second half. Not anything I'm tempted to skip or turn off, but the songs all blend together. This seems a lot more "dense" than their first two albums. The best songs on Oh Inverted World and Chutes Too Narrow were the stripped down and bare ones, but everything on this one has layers of stuff going on under the surface. I still haven't decided if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

And not to get all older-school-than-thou, but my first exposure to the Shins was in March 2001 at the SF Noise Pop Festival, sandwiched between the Orange Peels and the Aislers Set at the Bottom of the Hill. That was six months before Oh Inverted World came out. Most of the BOTH crowd loved them, but I thought the singer was trying to channel Robert Smith or Ian McCullough a little too obviously. Plus they're kinda boring live.

But #2 on the album charts on the first week is nothing to scoff at! (Pitchfork). Hooray for our side!

Rubinews

A bunch of Rubinoos CDs were added to emusic this week, including their most recent one Twist Pop Sin. This came out last year, and was previously available only as a costly Japanese import. I found a copy during Tower Records' going-out-of-business blowout sale for 75% off the $29.99 list price ($7.50), mostly because I've always wanted to purchase a CD for $20 off list price!

I also just found out that their 1983 mini-LP Party of Two (a collaboration with Utopia produced by Todd Rundgren) is scheduled to be reissued in March, with six bonus tracks.

These guys have been together for nearly 35 years without changing their sound, despite their brand of pop being out of fashion for most of those 35 years. According to their myspace page, they still list Berkeley as their home, but they haven't played more than two local gigs in the last ten years (and I missed them both times). I've only seen them once, at the Starry Plough in the early 90s, and hopefully will see them again before they hang it up.

I've been a Rubinoos fan since the first time I heard "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" on the radio (KFRC AM) . It didn't really sound like anything around at that time, and that song had a timeless 8th grade innocence that spoke to my 8th grade self. I went to buy the record, and told the clerk at the Record Factory I was looking for an album by the Rubynews with "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" on it. He ended up giving me the first Ramones record (which also has a song called "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend"), either by mistake or maybe just to mess with me. The band names (Rubinoos, Ramones) were close enough that I thought I'd just misheard the name, but that was not the case.

All these years on, the Rubinoos still exude the same junior high innocence they did when they started, even though they're all pushing (or maybe even pulling) 50. If the power pop genre has lifetime achievement awards, these guys have definitely earned theirs!

Killing me by degrees

I've been meaning to comment about this article about lala.com from last week's East Bay Express.

Now, there's a new player in the game, one that might likely change the way music is heard and possessed.

Lala is an online swap service where people trade CDs they don't want for ones that they do. Evidently this is such a revolutionary idea that it will make us stop listening to CDs with our ears and storing them on shelves. Used record stores have been around for a long time, and lala is just like trading in your unwanted CDs to Amoeba. The main difference is that at a used store, you can get cash or store credit for your purchase, and at lala you get "credit for a free trade". Good karma. You send a CD to someone, they pay $1.75 to a third party, and you get "good karma", which near as I can tell, is the chance to pay pay $1.75 to that same third party for a CD that you want. So one unwanted CD + $1.75 = another user's unwanted CD.

Another difference, and one of lala's PR selling points is that 20% of each CD trade goes to "the artist". That's after the shipping costs. This works through lala's non-profit Z Foundation which establishes a trust fund that provides health care to "working musicians" (defined as "any individual who has performed live or on a recorded release in the last year and whose music-related income accounts for more than half of their total income"). Their monthly contributions (somewhere between $10,000 and $50,000) could provide health care to somewhere between 50 and 250 working musicians. Better than the cup of nothing that artists get when someone buys a used copy of their disc at Amoeba.

Lala discourages "rip and ship", or ripping a disc to your computer then shipping it to another user. This is "both illegal and against Lala policy". Bad karma. Their terms of service states that "if you ship the CD, you must delete the files". The buyers at Amoeba don't care what you did with your CD before you sold it to them. Because a used music retailer has no control over what users do with their music. And retaining a digital copy of a music CD before trading it away probably strains the boundaries of "fair use" and "first sale", but it's not really illegal. You can't go to prison for ripping and shipping. And the artists get the same %20 cut from ripper-shipper trades than they do from honest trades, so it doesn't "hurt artists" either. It's condescending to users, just like Apple putting "don't steal music" on every iPod.

And I'm still scratching my head over the final paragraph in the article.

In this latest David vs. Goliath battle for the heart of the cultural-technological nexus, vote your conscience and your wallet and back the small mobile intelligent unit over the lumbering monolithic Man. The bastards can't win all the time.

Of all the lala.com hype I keep hearing, the "stick it to the man" rhetoric is the most confusing. Lala's business model ("trade in your unwanted CDs for ones you want") isn't the Bastille. It won't alter the way we listen to music. It's just another way to dump your old Weezer CDs!

Australia Day Hangover

When I said earlier that "Friday on My Mind" was the only Easybeats song I had on CD, I forgot that I have "Gonna Have a Good Time Tonight" on Rhino's More Nuggets Vol. 2 CD. Which is a great compilation, with lots of the second attempts-at-hits by 60s one hit wonders.

The Easybeats - "Gonna Have A Good Time Tonight" [MP3]
(this should be a music player)

GoodTime.mp3

If this works, I should also be able to embed this youtube footage of the 'beats performing "Good Time" on Beat Club in 1968.



In 1987, "Good Time" had dueling cover versions by Jimmy Barnes w/Inxs (on the Lost Boys soundtrack) and the Hindu Love Gods (the R.E.M./Warren Zevon "supergroup") just for fun.

Someone I know just blogged about the new You Am I CD that Miles mentioned. I noticed that earlier this week. You Am I's meat & potatoes (meat pie & chips?) rock & roll might be back in vogue now that the Hold Steady are topping critics' polls. My emusic downloads were supposed to refresh on January 28th (today), but haven't yet. As soon as they do, Convicts will be the first thing I grab.

Meanwhile, to make up for not including You Am I on my Australia Day playlist, here are both sides of their 1993 debut single linked from other places on the internet. "Berlin Chair" b/w "I Can't Explain". The flip side was the debut single for another band.

Friday on My Mind: Aussie Aussie Oi

Today is Australia Day, so I've posted five antipodean tunes from my iTunes library to esnips for the enjoyment of my dozen readers. January is Summer in Australia, so they celebrate the same way that Yanks celebrate the 4th of July; with fireworks, and barbecues with Eskys full of cold VB (since Foster's is Australian for "making love in a canoe"). Here are five antipodean songs from the last five decades (1960s - 2000s) that would rock up any Aussie Day barbie!

From the 1960s:
The Easybeats - "Friday On My Mind" [mp3]
If you ask someone to name an Australian group from the 60s, most of them would name this band. And if you ask them to name a song by this group, most of them would name this song. One of the greatest TGIF songs ever. Its wikipedia description of minor-key verses building up to a major-key refrain reminds me of "Senses Working Overtime" by XTC. I'll bet this was one of Andy Partridge's motivations for writing "SWO".


From the 1970s:
The Go-Betweens - "Lee Remick" [mp3]
This is the Go-Betweens first single from 1978. Robert Foster's ode to an actress. He seems to be more fond of the B-side "Karen", which is on the 1978-1990 compilation and the Sunlight Striped Sound live CD/DVD. Both the A and B sides of this single are on their '78-79 Lost Album CD. This single sounds completely different than the GBs sounded later.



From the 1980s:
Paul Kelly & the Messengers - "Before Too Long" [mp3]
A ton of Australian bands made it internationally in the 80s (the Church, the Hoodoo Gurus, Midnight Oil, Men At Work, Air Supply), but Paul Kelly never really did. He's a Dylan/Springsteen level icon in Australia, still largely unknown in the Northern Hemisphere. This is from his 1987 album Gossip. His band were known as the Coloured Girls (from Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side") down under, but changed their name to the Messengers for the US market, since they were neither coloured nor girls. This song came out in 1987 at the height of US Aussiephilia (America's Cup, Crocodile Dundee, etc ) so I've never understood why it wasn't a huge Inxs-level hit.

From the 1990s:
The DM3 - "1 Time 2 Times Devastated" [mp3]
The winner of a coin-flip with You Am I, the DM3 were the brainchild of popmeister Dom Mariani, previously of the Stems and the Someloves. "1 x 2 x Devastated" is their best-known song, their "Friday On My Mind" if you will. This version is from an Australian power-pop compilation CD called Pop On Top!, which has a picture of a kangaroo playing a guitar on the cover. Kangaroos, Australian.. I get it!



From the 2000s:
The Chevelles - "Lost In Love" [mp3]
The Chevelles also have a song on that Pop On Top! compilation, but this is from their 2000 album Sun Bleached. It's always interesting when a band decides to cover another great song from their country's past, but sometimes it's even more interesting when they decide to rock up some sappy Air Supply love ballad.

I might keep doing this (posting five songs around a common theme) on future Fridays if it generates "positive feedback". Which means someone leaving a comment or email saying they like this.

The songs:

1. The Easybeats - Friday On My Mind
2. The Go-Betweens - Lee Remick
3. Paul Kelly & the Messengers - Before Too Long
4. The DM3 - One Time Two Times Devastated
5. The Chevelles - Lost In Love

I heard my mama cry

Earlier, I mentioned how I used to be a Chicago Bears fan when I lived in Illinois. That was 20+ years ago. I'm not a Bears' fan anymore. When it comes to sports teams, I'm like a chameleon adapting to my current locale. And after I moved to the SF Bay Area in 1987, I became a 49er fan (as I discovered when found myself cheering as the Niners stomped the Bears 41-0 on Monday Night Football that year) and have stayed one more-or-less ever since. Until recent years when the 49ers weren't very good. This year they were 7-9, which isn't very good, but better than the 4-12 they were last year or the 2-14 they were the year before that. So things are on the upswing in 49erland.

And if I were a Bears' fan last week, I would have stopped being one after last Sunday's NFC Championship game against the New Orleans Saints at Soldier Field. The city of New Orleans was ravaged by a hurricane and a flood last year. The Saints had to play all their games on the road. This year both the team and the community are recovering. They nearly made it to the Super Bowl. It was the football feel good story of this year. Except for the Bears fan who hung this sign up at Soldier Field last Sunday.


For the graphically challenged, the sign says "Bears Finishing What Katrina Started". Which is not cool. Not at all. I know this is just one idiot (or group of idiots) out of 60 thousand fans, but it makes the Super Bowl more relevant when you have a team to root for. Or against, as the case may be. I've found a team to cheer against in Super Bowl XLI. Go Colts!

Venus the goddess of love can thank all the stars above

Last week I complained that Robyn Hitchcock hasn't played in San Francisco since Feb 2006. This week Robyn & The Venus 3 announced a U.S. Tour for the Spring that will take them to our fair city. I've only been doing this for a few weeks, and I'm already "making things happen".

Go see them if they're near you. Near here, they're playing at Slim's on April 10th, one day before the 30th Anniversary of The Beach Boys Love You. Maybe Robyn's Venus 3 mates Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck (who wrote the sleeve notes for the 2001 CD reissue of Love You) could persuade him to work up a cover of "Solar System" or "Johnny Carson" for its anniversary? Let it be so!

Around the same time, a new documentary on Robyn Hitchcock called "Sex, Food, Death, and Insects" (a nod to Amy X.'s "Death & Love & Insects"?) will debut Tuesday March 27th on the Sundance Channel. It's by John Edgington, who directed the most excellent Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story, so you know it's going to be a good one.

Speaking of upcoming 30th anniversaries, I just noticed a version of the 1977 Give It To The Soft Boys EP with a naked breast on the cover? If I'd seen that at a record shop when I was 12 or 13 years old, I'd have become a Robyn Hitchcock fan at a much younger age!