MUSIC THREAD

Been listening to Regina Spektor's "Far" a lot the past couple weeks. I think it's a really good mix of the more mainstream "Begin to Hope" and her earlier, quirkier stuff.

 

I'm looking forward to July 16, when Dead Weather's "Horehound" comes out. It's Jack White's latest project, along with one of the guys from The Raconteurs, another guy I can't remember and Allison Mossheart from The Kills.

 

Don't know how I missed them before, but I just stumbled onto a band called Golden Shoulders. Really nice indie pop in the vein of Pavement.

 

Been thinking about this. Took me a while to get into Kings of Leon, because I really didn't like Folowill's voice on the earlier stuff. Of course, I think the stuff from the more recent album (Sex On Fire, Use Somebody, etc.) is fantastic, if not a little poppy. So I've gone back to listen to some of the older stuff, now that I've kind of found an entry point. Cranked up Youth and Young Manhood at the gym and was taken aback by how, I guess, raw and energetic his voice is. Completely different perspective now. RS wrote a fine story on the Kings, and I guess they had to sell out to a certain extent to gain to more mainstream rock/pop fans. But as much as I disliked the old stuff before, I'm really starting to dig it now. May have to give Aha Shake Heartbreak another spin.

 

For whatever reason, I've been on a huge new wave/power pop kick lately.

I know all about Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe, but last week I discovered Graham Parker's Squeezing Out Sparks on eMusic. It's freaking fantastic and I have no idea how I missed it until now.

Hell, after about a dozen or so listens, I think "Discovering Japan" is as good as anything Costello and Lowe -- "Cruel To Be Kind" notwithstanding -- put out at the time.

Thanks to eMusic, which added the Epic/Sony catalog earlier in the month, I also discovered a few others from the era:

Any Trouble (Never got big ... maybe because of the lead singer's looks or that they sounded too much like Costello. Copycats or not, Where Are All The Nice Girls is an underrated album)

Shoes (Another group that somehow fell through the cracks)

The Only Ones (I haven't got into this as much as the previous two, but "Another Girl, Another Planet" is an undeniably great song)

 

Graham Parker put out some great records. "Saturday Night Is Dead", "Mercury Poisoning" and "Discovering Japan" to name a few.

As far as the opther stuff you mentioned, the Rhino DIY series is defintely worth a look. Some volumes are stronger than others but there are gems on all of them.

http://www.smoe.org/cgi-bin/mj_wwwusr?user=ivan%40stellysee.de&passw=&list=audities&extra=2005084/61%201&func=archive-get-part-clean

 

Panic at the Disco is no more, although two of its members think it still is:

http://www.aversion.com/news/news_article.cfm?news_id=12992

 

Graham Parker is pretty inconsistent -- a bit like Nick Lowe in that regard -- but "Squeezing Out Sparks" is flat-out brilliant. If you can find it, "The Mona Lisa's Sister" is my favorite GP record. Unfortunately it's not on eMusic. (eMusic does have "The Real Macaw," which is pretty good -- try "Life Gets Better", "Passive Resistance" and his cover of "I Want You Back" on that one.)

I also hadn't heard of Any Trouble before I subscribed to eMusic, and they're pretty good.

What do you think of the changes to eMusic? I'm pretty torn. It's great having the Epic/Sony back catalog, but I'm not happy that I lost 13 downloads a month in the process -- and it's starting to really aggravate me that so many songs are only available if you buy the whole album. There's a Springsteen 4 song EP that includes an acoustic "Born To Run." "Born to Run" is album-only, and the "Album" is 12 credits... meaning "Born to Run" will cost you 9 credits. That's absurd.

 

Damn, that new Wolfmother song "Back Round" that pops up on some of the banner ads 'round here is damn good.

 

I've seen Graham Parker once and it was mostly a solo electric show (solo on electric guitar, not acoustic) if memory serves me correctly. It was at the Stone Pony (Asbury Park, NJ) in 1992 and LaBamba & His Big Band were the opening act and then joined Parker for a high-energy three-song encore.

For those that don't know LaBamba used to be a trombone player in the Asbury Jukes, was with Springsteen for the Tunnel of Love tour, and is now in the Tonight Show band for Conan. He has two versions of his own solo band - the Hubcaps - which is your standard rock band with four or five horn players and - the Big Band - which is a rock band with 12-15 horn players.
For those that know Parker's material - imagine him playing Slash & Burn and Hold Back the Night backed by a band featuring over a dozen horns. Unfortunately no video exists from that night and I'm not sure where the cassettes a friend gave me are.
However for those that don't know those songs, here's a couple of YouTube links:
Hold Back the Night -

Slash & Burn -

 

Does anyone know of any sites to download indie music albums? I know of FreeIndie.com, but would love some others.

Thanks.

 

eMusic is the first thing that comes to mind. Don't know if you're looking for a strictly free site or not, though.