Song In The Head: Matt Costa's "Sunshine"

An oldie - well, 2006 - but a goodie. (Sorry, no embedding on this one...)

PS Has it really been three weeks since my last post? Damn, this 9-to-5er is a serious time-sap! (As opposed to blogging, which is sacred and all-important and entirely useful...)

My latest story about post-election news flashes

Check it out. I got to interview a managing editor at Newsweek and generally rouse some rabbles.

The Roots: the new Late Night house band!?

Good news: the Roots will be the new house band for NBC's Late Night.

Bad news: with Conan O'Brien jumping ship to the Tonight Show, the new host of Late Night is (EEK) Jimmy Fallon.

You can't have it all...

Song In The Head: Paolo Nutini's "New Shoes"

This is about as perfect as pop music gets. Four chords and an indelible melody sung with a light Scottish lilt. For the sake of my mental health, I think I'll have to set this as my morning alarm. I'm sure I'll be sick of it by the end of the week. Until then, I'll be "short on money, but long on time / slowly strolling in the sweet sunshine..."

John Mayer gets his own talk show, and I'm pretty okay with that...

Sounds like an awful idea, right? Not once you YouTube him and realize that he's actually pretty damn funny...who knew?

Song In the Head: Sonny Jim's "Can't Stop Moving"

A happy song, for happy times...



Sounds like Daft Punk covering Jackson 5. Can't go too wrong with that...

Name-dropping hip indie bands in rock reviews

Check out my article in Gelf about the practice of name-dropping indie bands in rock music criticism.

I interviewed lots of music journalists about the topic, including New Yorker critic Sasha Frere-Jones, Blender music editor Rob Tannenbaum, Pitchfork contributor Matt LeMay, Washington Post critic Josh du Lac, Chicago Tribune critic Greg Kot and RollingStone.com editor Caryn Ganz. Post your thoughts either on this blog or at the Gelf site itself.

What's your favorite nonsense word in pop music?

And the nominees are...

-The Doo-Doo

Third-Eye Blind's "Semi Charmed Life"
Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner"
The Police's "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da"
The Rolling Stones' "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)"
Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson"

Some pretty solid candidates and memorable choruses. "Semi-Charmed Life" is, for better or (more often) worse, the standard by which all others are measured, though "Tom's Diner" always holds a special place in my heart for taking about 10 years to figure out the name to. YOU try asking all of your friends about "that song that goes "doo doo doo-doo, doo doo doo-doo...", and see how that goes...

- The Na-Na

Wilson Pickett's "Land of a Thousand Dances"
Cake's "Short Skirt, Long Jacket"
J. Geils Band's "Centerfold"
The Beatles' "Hey Jude"
The Counting Crows' "A Long December"
The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"

This might have to be the winner in terms of pure quality. Where the Doo-Doos have a couple bad apples in the bunch - the Stones tune is from the critically-assailed Goats Head Soup, and let's not try to pretend that "Semi-Charmed Life" isn't unbearably annoying about 75 percent of the time - but you can't argue with the Liverpool Four or Wilson Pickett, and even that Crows tune ages pretty well.

(I'm not the only one with a thing for the Na-Nas...)

-The La-Las

Bob Dylan's "The Man In Me"
Van Morrison's "Caravan"
Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" (noticing a trend?)
ATC's "All Around the World (La La)"
Kylie Minogue, "Can't Get You Out of my Head"
HONORABLE MENTION: Ashlee Simpson's "La La (You Make Me Wanna)"

An eclectic mix of old-school and new-crap, from Dylan's most joyous song to date, a couple of solid hits from Van and a couple of naggingly catchy electro-pop goodies. I don't even know what making someone want to "la-la" really means, but I'm intrigued and hoping that Ashlee will enlighten me....

The Others

-Hey!: Gary Glitter's "Rock & Roll Part II (The Hey Song)"
-La-Da: Jack Johnson's "Bubbletoes"
-Yeah!: The Flaming Lips' "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song"
-Fa!: Guster's "Fa Fa"

Can you think of any others in these categories? Johnson's frequent "Da"s skew very closely to the aforementioned "Do"s, and I'm sure I'm missing more. Usher's "Yeah" could qualify, though he doesn't really repeat the word like Wayne Coyne does. You'd think there would be more "Heys," wouldn't you? Which brings me to the double-espresso of the bunch...

Extra credit goes to star pupil...

Steam, for "Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye", which manages to swing both a "na na" and a "hey hey" into its chorus.

Where does your vote go? What songs am I missing? And isn't there something refreshingly cheery about a song that doesn't feel like it has to resort to these inane, loaded "words" that everyone else subjects us to?

Rock music and oil: do they correlate?

Some interesting food for thought.

This swings way harder than it should...

Paul Anka doing "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

Am I a bad person for liking a lounge-Nirvana cover...?

Review of Thievery Corporation's latest album

Here's my review of Thievery's Corporation's Radio Retaliation, for musicOMH magazine.

For one of their funkier songs, check out this live performance of "Hare Krsna."

Bill O'Reilly cites himself as proof of God's existence...

Can't wait for Bill O'Reilly's new book, which will be an undoubtedly heart-wrenching memoir about his humble beginnings. (Can you claim working class status if you went to a private Catholic boarding school? Hrmm...)

In Bill's words:

"Next time you meet an atheist, tell him or her that you know a bold, fresh guy, a barbarian who was raised in a working-class home and retains the lessons he learned there.

"Then mention to that atheist that this guy is now watched and listened to, on a daily basis, by millions of people all over the world and, to boot, sells millions of books.

"Then, while the non-believer is digesting all that, ask him or her if they still don't believe there's a God!"

Uh, okay, Papa Bear...

Song In The Head: Jens Lekman's "Your Arms Around Me"

This track's too catchy for words...

Shameless plug for my college band...

Yes, the Fuzz - that irresistible fusion of funk and jazz. (Because "the Fuzz" sounded better than "the Jank"). I found out last week that my six-piece combo from Pomona is magically on YouTube. I think it's only fitting that our last gig ever was also our first gig to be put up. It was a bittersweet show - it was right after graduation, and I for one got far more teary-eyed from this concert then from any of the hackneyed "do something with your life" speeches at the ceremony itself.

In any case, check it out below. This song ("Sewage") is an original, but we also do a cover of Average White Band's "Pick up the Pieces" and an extremely reworked version of the Youngblood Brass Band's funky-beyond-words "Brooklyn." I'm the one bobbing my head like a madman on the keys...

And if I play the same three chords, will you just yawn and say...

Yes, it's all been done. I wrote a story for Gelf last year about music plagiarism, where I explored some interesting issues about originality and ownership of similar-sounding songs. At what point can an artist get a song protected? If someone else steals the melody? The lyrics? The intonation? The same chords?

I was reminded of these perplexing questions when I saw the below YouTube clip of a stand-up at Penn State marveling at the fact that he can't escape "Canon in D" due to its chords' ubiquitousness in modern rock music. He took some creative liberties - not every tune he plays has that exact 1-5-6-3 chord progression ("Let It Be," "No Woman No Cry" and "With or Without You," are all 1-5-6-4) - but the point's well-taken.

Indeed, I can't tell you how many times I've been jamming on that 1-5-6 riff on the piano and come across a famous pop melody ("Under the Bridge," "Head over Feet," even Akon's "It Don't Matter"). Back in my freshman year emo phase - all three weeks of it- I was messing around with tunes by the eternally lovelorn Dashboard Confessional, and realized that "Hands Down" had the same chords as a slightly more optimistic love song called "Let's Get It On." (Not to mention Van Morrison's "Caravan" and the verses in "Here's to the Night").

Apparently, G-Em-C-D can be applied to depressed singer-songwriters, graduating from high school, making babies AND barefoot gypsies singing around the campfire. Go figure..

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Indie hits the dance floor...

An air of novelty has always surrounded the work of Omaha-based Tilly & the Wall, mostly due to its eccentric tap-dancing percussion. The group is invariably classified as indie even though the multi-layered female harmonies are more closely rooted in pop influences then anything else. (The "indie" moniker has all but lost its meaning: I popped Coldplay's X&Y into my laptop the other day - don't ask me why - and its genre was described as "Alternative/Indie"...)

Anyway, judging from new single "Beat Control" the group is now aspiring to reach the dance-friendly masses with an unabashedly catchy, slickly produced, bass-heavy rumpshaker. The song is the band's best bet for a top-40 hit - in six months it's already gotten twice as many YouTube views as any other T&TW tune EVER - and yet curiously enough it doesn't appear on the latest album (o). Go figure...

(and go enjoy, below)

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New Eagles of Death Metal leak

The Eagles of Death Metal has always been too much of a side project for Josh Homme (QOTSA) et al. to be commercially viable as a band of its own right, which is a shame since the group's first two albums, 2004's Peace Love Death Metal and 2006's Death By Sexy, deliver a slinky, sleazy mix of blues-rock come-ons, peppered with country influences, Elvis Presley posturing and a rambunctious cover of Stealer Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle With You" (also known as "that song from the ear scene in Reservoir Dogs").

The latest album, the ever-cheeky Heart On, has been in the works for a while, with the release date currently pegged as October 28. EoDM hasn't lost its sense of humor, judging by song titles like "Prissy Prancin'" and "(I Used to Couldn't Dance) Hot Pants." Also expect some guest appearances from Dave Grohl, QOTSA regulars (Nick Oliveri, Joey Castillo), and maybe even this dude you might have heard of named Jack Black.

Anyway, here's an early leak of "Ask Me Why" from the new album. (Thanks, MySpace hackers!)

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Lindsay: switching sides?

I had heard that Linds Lo had been mugging for the camera rather suggestively with socialite Samantha Ronson, but I never expected it to come to this...

Is this love, or this "I Kissed a Girl" bi-curiosity? Your guess is as good as mine...

Sniffing out bias, one website at a time...

We have filters for everything these days - you can filter out superfluous search results, report spam, protect your children from porn, and generally edit out anything you don't want to waste your time on...

The only natural progression, then, is a filter that checks for the political biases of an article on the web.

It's a promising premise, and it became a reality with yesterday's unveiling of Spinspotter. A BusinessWeek article gives a solid summary of the program. I just downloaded it, and haven't been too impressed - though, granted, it's a beta version, and it also depends largely on the contributions and commitment levels of its users (a la Wikipedia) to establish parameters for bias. In any case, it should be an interesting social experiment for objective journalism. I'm curious to see how it pans out, and encourage you all to give it a try.
(At the moment, it's only available for use with Firefox...)

From the producers who brought you the Tipping Point...

Malcolm Gladwell seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth after 2005's Blink, his second book after the wildly successful 2000 release The Tipping Point. He dabbled in some more New Yorker articles but has only written three stories in the past year.

But he's baaaack...



He is scheduled to publish his third book on November 18, titled Outliers: The Story of Success, which rather ambitiously tries to tackle ideas about genius and achievement. Sounds like it could be a bit too self-helpy, but as someone who has poured over the New Yorker archives and emptied its Gladwell contents, I'm always down for some fresh pop-psych reading...

In any case, here's a little sneak preview in the form of a speech he gave at the 2007 New Yorker Conference . It's a little drier than some of his other talks, but hey - Gladwell at 50 percent is as good as any talking head...

Musical qualities that automatically make any song better

-Handclaps
-Wordless background harmonies
-Upbeat acoustic guitar strumming
-Bright piano chords
-Slap-bass
-A healthy dose of spunk

Songs I've heard lately that have many of the preceding characteristics:

Noah and the Whale's "Five Years Time"

It's effervescently catchy, comfortable in its laidback, midtempo pace and likeable enough that the whistling at the beginning and end barely interfere with its execution. Plus, Charlie Fink somehow imbues his simple, silly lyrics with a certain whimsical grace (sample couplet: "In five years' time we could be walking around the zoo, with the sun shining down over me and you"). His voice sounds like a grainy love child of Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum and the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne.

Jamie Lidell's "Another Day"



White dude can sing! The lush keyboard riff is a bubbly bit of faux-Motown. Critics seem to hate on this guy cuz he admittedly rips off virtually every black soul singer from the 60s and 70s (album cut "Figured Me Out" is a pretty spot-on imitation of Jamiroquai, who himself robs Stevie Wonder more or less wholesale). That said, I challenge anyone to find anyone else who has come out with such genuinely buoyant R&B in the past couple years. It's usually all overbelted, overproduced or simply joyless (see anything by Mario or Ne-Yo). Give me some derivative Stevie-aping over shitty soul any day...

Ray LaMontagne: "You Are The Best Thing"

It's not particularly hip to dig Ray LaMontagne. His folkie blue-eyed soul is hardly revolutionary, and his grainy, worn voice is essentially a slightly heartier version of Sam Beam's. But his newest album, Gossip in the Grain, is out Oct. 16, and his new single "You Are The Best Thing" is an uncharacteristically cheerful R&B-tinged number that recalls Van Morrison more so than Iron & Wine. Give it a listen here.

Number one

Hey all,

I'm new to this blogging thing, but I think it will be a good exercise for me as a freelance journalist. I'm currently writing for a few different places but still always have one too many thoughts in my head itching to get out. This blog will serve as a venue for said thoughts, with a combination of irreverent opinion, offbeat web discoveries, and sweet new songs I've discovered (I write about music for The Boston Globe and musicOMH, among other places). Plus, I'm sure, a whole lot of other stuff. Stay posted and comment often!

Adam