Review: Grateful Dead, Fillmore West 1969

Not much to say here, so I'll keep it brief: If you don't like the Dead already, this won't win you over (opt instead for American Beauty or Blues For Allah, the two studio albums most likely to be appreciated by casual listeners). If you do, though, this is pretty much indispensible. Actually, the serious fan already picked up the limited edition 10-cd box set from which the 3-cd Fillmore West 1969 package is culled. (Yes, I'm one of those people. Got my box this weekend.) These discs stem from the same 4-night run as the Dead's legendary 1969 Live/Dead album, the album which first broke the Dead for a (relatively) larger audience. And, as the band played a (for them) fairly consistent set of shows during that run (as they were recording them for the planned live album and anticipated using the best version of each song), the 10-cd box is highly redundant, something which is eliminated by this 3-cd highlights package. And apparently this does not duplicate any of the versions used on Live/Dead, so it really makes the perfect companion to that package. I personally find the pre-70s live material to be their best (with '74 and '77 close behind) -- they were still stretching, the music was trippy and unique, and their hearts were really in it. And the sound quality? It's like having them playing in your living room. So if you weren't one of the foolish 10,000 fans who shelled out megabucks for the box, there's no excuse not to pick this up.

Copy Protection Aims At The Wrong Target

Just came across an excellent column on Sony's misguided copy protection debacle by Rocky Mountain News columnist Mark Brown. Brown, unlike most writers who've jumped on the critical backwagon since the Sony backlash began, realizes that the issue isn't just the scary spyware that Sony puts on your computer, but copy protection itself, which, as Brown notes, tells the law-abiding music fan who actually buys the cd that he/she can't listen to the music the way he/she wants to.

Unfortunately, Brown's (100% correct) thesis -- that copy protection does nothing to stop diehard music thieves, but rather targets the people who are actually willing to lay down cold hard cash and buy the cd -- misses the point: that we music buyers are, in fact, the precise people Sony is out to attack. The industry has said as much in Sony's defense: copy protection is not about the people who mass-distribute music, either through pirated discs or online file sharing (who admittedly are tech-savvy enough to get around most copy-protection software) -- it's about the casual listeners who copy a disc for a friend. The very act that many of us consider relatively benign, if not actually helpful to the industry (I can't even count the number of discs that have been bought by people who were turned onto a song or a band by a mix I shared, cd's they absolutely would never have considered buying but for the introduction I provided), is the horror that the industry is attempting to curtail.

Anyway, great column. And I particularly like how Brown also targets for derision the latest industry practice of re-releasing albums with a couple bonus tracks. (I don't mean reissuing an oldie with remastered sound and bonus tracks; I mean the new trick of taking a 3-month-old cd and re-releasing it with a couple b-sides.) Talk about screwing the loyal fans...)

Incidentally, I was browsing through the archive of Brown's old columns, and there's a great one he wrote a few weeks back about Badfinger, a great band that had more than its fair share of tragedies. Check it out.

Yet Another Tasteful, Low-Key Half-Time Show

The Rolling Stones have signed on to play half-time at the 2006 Super Bowl... always a tasteful display of pure musical artistry. Personally, I'd rather have another micro-second glimpse of Janet Jackson's nipple than hear these aging behemoths plod through "Start Me Up." Of course, if they led the drunken Super Bowl crowd through a rousing, unplugged sing-along version of "Sweet Virginia," that's something I'd watch.

What Would Jerry Do?

The Grateful Dead built their reputation as one of the premier live bands in America by not just allowing, but encouraging their fans to tape their shows and share the tapes. And with the advent of the Internet age, this ethic was expanded to allow for the liberal downloading of free Dead shows (while the band continued, long after the death of Jerry Garcia, to finance its operations through a steady stream of archival releases). So it came as something of a shock to Deadheads when the band pulled the plug on the free music parade. Last week, the band's merchandising arm requested that all archived Dead shows on the free music download site archive.org be pulled, apparently in anticipation of a new paid downloading service. (The change does not, however, seem to impact the band's tolerance of live music trading among fans.) Deadheads are now starting to circulate petitions in protest.

As usual, I'm of two minds about the whole thing. I remain convinced that allowing easy and free access to live music does not hurt artists; to the contrary, speaking as something of a closet Deadhead, I have long traded (and more recently downloaded) Dead shows, and, if anything, it's led me to buy more, not less, official product, as the ready access to a steady stream of taped shows keeps up my enthusiasm for the band long after their demise. [Case in point: I recently bought the limited-edition 10-cd set from their '69 run at the Fillmore West, even though I could have just as easily (and much more cheaply) downloaded copies of several of these shows (albeit less sonically immaculate than the official box), and, indeed, already have some of them on cdr. Similarly, I recently picked up the new Wilco live cd, even though I have massive amounts of live Wilco I've picked up from trading/downloading. Of course, I'm obviously insane.]

On the flip side, the music belongs to the artists, and shouldn't they be able to profit from their music? Merely allowing taping & trading goes way beyond what most bands will tolerate; if the band's management wants to digitize the entire live music archive and make it available for (paid) download, it doesn't seem all that unreasonable to limit the ability to download it for free. (Again, I'm assuming that I'm still free to trade the shows I've already got for other shows; it's just the easy downloading that's being restricted at this point.)

Indeed, what the Dead apparently now plan to do is what I wish far more artists would do: open up the archives. As the steady trickle of bonus tracks sprinkled among reissue packages confirms, most artists are hoarding an awful lot of live material (and demos and outtakes, etc.), and I sure wish other artists were as good as the Dead (and Phish and a handful of other bands) about making it available to fans. Viewed that way, of course the band should be entitled to sell the music, and I sense the only reason the 'Heads are pissed is because they had a few years of being spoiled by the ready access to free music. If Yo La Tengo or Wilco or some of my other favorite live acts decided tomorrow to open their vaults to fans, I can't imagine any fans credibly insisting that the music be made available for free... so why should the Dead be any different?

What Do You Think?

From The Onion:

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Sony Recalls Risky CDs

Sony was forced to recall 4.7 million CDs this month because the copyright-protection software embedded on the discs left computers prone to hacker attacks. What do you think?

Cameron Feng
Electrician
"This won't be the first time I got a virus from that Sarah McLachlan."


Jesse Glass
Machinist
"I've been downloading bootleg MP3s for nearly three years and the first CD I buy fucks up my computer?"


Sonja Kelly
Custom Tailor
"I've always known that one day, Sony's unblinking commitment to artist's rights would come back to bite them in the ass."

Sony... The Coal In Your Christmas Stocking

A bit more bad press for Sony, this time in Rolling Stone... nice to see Trey Anastasio's manager (among other artist reps) complaining about how pissed off the artists are about having the copy protection crap shoved onto their cd's. (I'd fired off an angry e-mail to Trey's management noting that I had been planning to buy his cd -- indeed, it was sitting in my Amazon.com shopping cart when the whole Sony story first broke -- but declined thanks to the copy-protection software.)

Astoundingly, even as Sony is forced to recall millions of cd's (none of which are available for purchase during the Christmas shopping rush, surely a real delight for those bands) and faces multiple lawsuits, Sony continues to defend its actions, and refuses to take similar actions for millions of other discs which include a different spyware program (but one which has not yet been exploited by hackers).

Just something to keep in mind when deciding which companies to give your money to this holiday season.

New Mashup

My son has become a huge Beastie Boys fan (about the only rap I can play for a nine-year-old; it's one thing for him to hear the f-word every thirty seconds on a Green Day album, but I draw the line at having him learn the whole bitches & hos thing just yet). He proposed we work up a mashup using some Beasties. We ended up with the backing track from "Slow And Low" (sped up quite a bit), laying on top of it the Pixies' "I Bleed" and the Talking Heads' "Burning Down The House." No real thematic reason to put those three songs together except that rhythmically they work well. Here's the mp3:

Slowly Burning & Bleeding

The Great Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Swindle

Yes, a mere 5 years or so after eligibility, the Sex Pistols are finally being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, where they will join such other rock luminaries as Bob Seger, Billy Joel, Aerosmith, ZZ Top, and the Bee Gees. (And hey, when it comes to Rock & Roll, who doesn't think of Billy Joel?) No word yet on whether we'll get an all-star pick-up jam with the bloated corpse of Sid Vicious (deceased) or the bloated corpse of Johnny Lydon (not deceased, last time I checked).

Ok, just being cynical. The Hall, like most attempts to turn rock into corporate promotion, is a bit of a joke, but if any band that flamed out after one album deserved to be inducted, it would be the Pistols. And with Black Sabbath also getting the nod this year, it might be amusing to see Lydon onstage with Ozzy. In a very sick, sad way.

Review: Big Star, In Space

Ah, the dreaded reunion quandary. On the one hand, what's wrong with getting a chance to hear your favorite band (or at least the surviving member(s), or those that aren't tied up in litigation against each other) get up on stage one more time and take a run through a glorious back-catalog? On the other hand, there's something to be said for having a band's glory days preserved in perpetuity and not dragged down by an almost-certainly inferior reunion tarnished by old age and/or crass commercialism. Can there really be any doubt that the deaths of John Lennon and Joe Strummer saved us from what would have most assuredly been disastrous (or at minimum disappointing) reunion gigs, allowing the legacy of the Beatles and the Clash to remain unblemished?

So, yeah, I have mixed feelings. On occasion, the reunion can work. I've heard a few of the Pixies reunion shows on cd, and they sound every bit as tight and energetic as they did in their original incarnation (if not more so). (Then again, the Velvet Underground live reunion disc was pretty lame (at least if played alongside, say, The Quine Tapes...)

And then there's Big Star. Yes, I was ambivalent when frontman Alex Chilton and drummer Jody Stephens reunited in 1993 (along with Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of 90s power popsters the Posies) for a string of shows. But if anyone deserved a bit of cashing in, it was Big Star -- having recorded three of the greatest albums ever, to absolutely zero public appreciation, it seemed only fair that they get to capitalize on their rehabilitation among the indie rock elite of the 80s. I caught one of the reunion shows (as well as another one a decade later), and both were among the highlights of my concert-going life. Rough and ragged, sure, but just to hear those fantastic songs played live was a real treat, even if Chilton's voice was shot and Chris Bell -- who only stuck around for the first album but was still a core part of the original band -- had his parts sung by the Posies.

Now, a studio album, that's an entirely different story. We're not talking about a nostalgic trip through the past, but (arguably) an exploitive use of a much-loved name for new music wholly removed from the band's history. Sitting here today, it's hard to think of one studio "reunion" album of new material that lived up to past glories. And, needless to say, Big Star's In Space is no exception. Thirty years after the last real Big Star studio album was recorded, and even 12 years after the first reunion concert, Chilton/Stephens/Auer/Stringfellow invoke the Big Star legend for a (relatively short) album of new material... and, as predicted, it's somewhat disappointing. Alex Chilton's solo career has been a collection of intermittent pop highlights, all-out dreck, and workmanlike (if irrelevant) covers of soul, r&b, and pop standards. Which kinda sums up In Space. To its credit, about half of this is pretty damn good power pop. Had those songs been packaged as, say, a Posies EP (with special guests Alex Chilton & Jody Stephens!!), it would have been a pretty great purchase. While not quite reaching into Big Star's Radio City territory, there are catchy hooks, chiming and slashing guitars, and pleasant harmonies. "Dony" and "Best Chance We've Ever Had" are some of Chilton's more distinctive tracks in years, and "Lady Sweet" and a few others are decent Posies songs. Unfortunately, the other half of the album is largely forgettable, if not downright embarrassing. "Love Revolution" harkens back to Chilton's flirtations with disco and watered-down Motown; "Mine Exclusively" is basically Wilson Pickett (nothing wrong with that, but it's not Big Star); "Do You Wanna Make It" is as painfully dated and silly as it sounds; and the dull instrumental "Aria Largo" and noisy thrasher "Makeover" leave you scratching your head.

So, yeah, it's hard to justify paying full price for a handful if decent songs, and putting this in the same category as the three real Big Star studio albums is insulting, but somewhere over the course of 5 or 6 songs is a decent Posies/Chilton mini-album.

Now Playing: Death Cab For Cutie, "I Will Follow You Into The Dark"

As I noted a few weeks back, I wasn't quite as immediately enthralled by Death Cab For Cutie's 2005 major label debut Plans as I was by its immediate predecessor, 2003's Transatlanticism. But that doesn't mean I haven't been listening to Plans quite a bit, and, as I anticipated, it's really grown on me (though it still runs second to Transatlanticism in my book). Inexplicably, the song I seem to return to most often is the hushed, acoustic guitar-backed "I Will Follow You Into The Dark." I suppose I should chalk it up as something of a guilty pleasure, as the morbidly sentimental ode to love-after-death just reeks of dorm room banality... but damn if the song doesn't just suck you in nonetheless. The chorus manages to be just clever enough to rescue the song from the sappiness of a poem scrawled on the back of a notebook by a clove-cigarette-sucking unshaven faux revolutionary in a black turtleneck:

"If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark"

I know I really, really shouldn't be taken in by this sort of thing, but I am.



Incidentally, I read over my Saturday morning coffee that a California couple is suing some Berkeley professors for running an evolution-info website which dares to explain that evolution can, yes, be consistent with religion. "I believe God created the world," the aggrieved wife proclaims. (Just including this here for anyone who thinks all the fundamentalist wack-jobs are elsewhere (i.e. Kansas)... yes, we have our fair share even here in our sweet blue state of California.)

Review: New Pornographers, Twin Cinema

I know I'm supposed to like this album... but I just don't. Sorry. Sure, it's cool and edgy and poppy and all that... but it gives me a colossal headache.

Twin Cinema is the third album by Vanouver-based super-group the New Pornographers, and while all the quirky pop touchstones of the first two are still here, this time they push just beyond the line they'd always carefully walked. The infectious hooks are still here, the delightful boy-girl harmonies, the complex intertwined guitars and keyboards, and so on... but the band has always gone a few steps beyond power-pop, never settling for 3 chords when they could use 8, always threatening to throw down a weird and unexpected bridge just when you were ready to sing along with the chorus. Unfortunately, while the formula has worked before, particularly on 2003's largely sublime Electric Version, it's stretched past the breaking point this time. The pop isn't catchy, the hooks don't hook; instead, songs seem needlessly complex and meandering. It's like early 70s Yes interpreting Matthew Sweet... you want to hum along, but you just can't figure out the tunes. Sure, I don't expect too many songs to rise to the level of "The Laws Have Changed," one of the greatest songs of the past decade, but is it too much to hope for just one or two songs with a simple chorus? But, hey, I don't want to knock these guys. They've got talent and cleverness and invention to burn, all of which are lacking in most run-of-the-mill indie pop bands, but by the time I got mid-way through this I was pulling the disc out of my stereo and reaching for the Advil. Of course, if you enjoy indie pop but wish someone would stretch the genre, the New Pornographers are still your band, but I'll stick with the first two albums myself.

And In Other Formerly-Relevant Pop Icon News...

Found these two little tidbits back-to-back in the Entertainment news section of My Yahoo: The Anti-Defamation League is seeking an apology from deranged psychopath Michael Jackson stemming from his (latest) round of anti-semitic comments; and Elton John has announced his plans to marry his long-time companion David Furnish as soon as same-sex marriage becomes semi-legal in the UK next month. Personally, I'm not a big fan of either -- can't say I've cared for anything loony-tune Michael has done since puberty (his, not mine), and, aside from "Rocket Man" -- hey, what a great song -- I've never found Elton to have much bearing on my life. Still, for what it's worth, it's interesting to note that Michael, notwithstanding his (admitted) sharing his bed with little boys and (alleged) molestation of little boys, would still be welcome as a Catholic priest, as he is apparently heterosexual and does not support the "gay culture"; in contrast, Elton, who, as far as I know, is never alleged to have engaged in any improprieties with children, is deemed unqualified. What a great world we live in.

Liz Phair Blows, and Other Random Thoughts

I had a friend ask me recently whether I thought she should bother picking up the new Liz Phair album, Somebody's Miracle. Having concluded that Liz's previous, self-titled disaster was perhaps the worst piece of crap from a once-respected indie superstar since... well, since ever... I gently nudged her away from funding Liz's latest self-avowed bid for teenybopper superstardom. Hell, I'd rather invest my money on the collected works of, say, Kelly Clarkson, who, unlike Liz, did not previously record 2 1/2 cd's of truly stellar music (see Exile In Guyville, Whip-Smart, and half of Whitechocolatespacegg), only to flip off her loyal fans by hiring well-paid production teams to write an album's worth of mindless faux Top 40 pap and produce the living shit out of it. [NOTE: Let the record reflect that I have never actually invested any of my money on the works of Kelly Clarkson. That said, "Since U Been Gone" is the greatest guilty pleasure since Abba broke up. But don't quote me on that.]

As a testament to just how compelling a music critic I am, my friend nonetheless went out and bought the new Liz Phair album. Today I received a terse 3-word e-mail from my friend encapsulating her review: "Liz Phair Blows." Which, given Liz's substitution of tawdry double entendres for her earlier forays into sexual politics, not to mention her beyond-Madonna self-exploitation (not that I'm complaining about Liz's apparent gig as an amateur underwear model, but still), sounds like a likely title for Liz's next big single. In any event, I can't imagine I'll be buying the disc any time soon. I've got a cdr of a recent Liz concert, which wasn't bad (new tunes included), but this is one case where I'll gladly live in the past and continue to enjoy Exile and Whip and WCSE without further tarnishing her legend.


Speaking of things that blow, time now for the latest pronouncement from the Biggest Dick In America:

“One might also argue that untruthful charges against the Commander-in-Chief have an insidious effect on the war effort itself. I’m unwilling to say that."
--Dick Cheney

Glad that the man who got 5 deferments from serving in Vietnam is continuing to brand as unAmerican anyone who dares criticize the most dishonest administration since Nixon. Looks like Cheney is reviving former AG John "cover up the breasts on that statue pronto!" Ashcroft's posture that anyone who criticizes the Bush Administration "gives aid & comfort to the enemy."

And speaking of big dicks who can't accept reality, in case you missed it, the Vatican has decreed that gays with "deep-seated" tendencies and those who support "gay culture" cannot be priests. Personally, I'm not sure what this "gay culture" bit means -- is watching Will & Grace over the line? listening without embarrassment to Morrissey? and how many Judy Garland movies are too many? -- but the bottom line is that, unsurprisingly, the Vatican has once again revealed its own deep-seated ignorance and misdirection. Now, it's a religion, not a government, and religions are free to embrace whatever tenets they choose, whether it's treating women as second-class citizens or teaching its believers that the world was created in 6 days or revering Tom Cruise and John Travolta as prophets or hating them ol' queers -- but let's be honest here: there's something just a bit hypocritical about an organization that has spent decades covering up and conspiring in the sexual abuse of children by its leadership worldwide demonizing gays. Strictly as a matter of cause & effect, being gay is as much a cause of pedophilia as being Catholic.

More Pain For Sony

Jumping into the fray, the Texas attorney general has filed suit against Sony for its disastrous cd copy protection software, while the Electronic Frontier Foundation is planning a class action in California. Is it so very wrong for me to smile in glee every time I hear about more bad news for Sony?

Oh, and in entirely different news, it seems that every day or two I figure Dick Cheney can't possibly become even more of an asshole, and every day or two I'm proven wrong. Just saying.

History: The Action + Mighty Baby

Ok, kiddies, time for a brief detour, as we walk through a brief history of one of the great overlooked bands of the 60s. If there's anything better than discovering a new band for the first time, it's stumbling across an old band you completely missed (if only because there's already a back-catalog of music to dive into rather than having to wait for the next new release). One of my favorite discoveries of the past year or so has to be The Action, and if you're unfamiliar with them, you're not alone. But here's hoping you promptly remedy the situation.

No need to give you the complete history of the Action; you can always check a site like AllMusic.com for something like that. Briefly, though, they started out in the early 60s as something of a British Invasion also-ran. Beatles producer George Martin signed them; they even supposedly got kicked off a tour opening for the Who because they were "too good" (though you always have to wonder if such tales are merely apocryphal). In any event, while most of their peers looked to American blues and R&B for inspiration, the Action looked to Motown. Indeed, listen to their early tracks -- compiled on the great-sounding and all-inclusive Action Packed -- and it's hard to believe it's a bunch of white British kids. It's a great collection, although (a few decent originals notwithstanding) it's not exactly a cutting-edge piece of work. Still, for fans of Motown and early British Invasion pop, there's no good reason not to own (and love) this one.

However inexplicable, the band didn't really catch on, and they got dropped from their label. Which is really too bad, as that was when they started getting really good. They moved beyond their roots, recording a slew of tracks in 1967 that had a harder-edged, more psychedelic groove to them, placing them firmly in the Freakbeat camp alongside the Creation and mid-period Who. These tracks languished in obscurity for decades, finally seeing light of day in the Rolled Gold compilation in 2002. As these are largely demo recordings, the sound quality isn't exactly high fidelity, but we're talking some amazing music. Paul Weller is supposedly a big fan of these guys, and Rolled Gold goes a long way towards explaining why. The blueprints for the Jam are all over this thing. Lots of killer proto-punk riffs with a Mod sensibility. Tunes like "Brain," "Strange Roads," "Come Around," and a half dozen others are near-perfect mid-60's nuggets that are just shy of being absolutely essential for any fan of 60s Britpop.

Not surprisingly, recording some of the best songs of the era and never even seeing them released is not exactly conducive to morale, and the Action underwent various personnel changes. Nonetheless, the remnants of the band regrouped, trading one of the coolest band names of the 60s for one of the absolute lamest: Mighty Baby. Yet Mighty Baby, crappy name and all, managed to squeeze out a self-titled album in 1969 that is, if anything, even better than Rolled Gold. The band takes another step towards psychedelia, but like many 60s bands rooted in R&B, their brand of psychedlia was much harder rocking than a lot of the more twee flower-power meanderings of the time. New vocalist Ian Whiteman (who'd handled keyboards for the Action) was no less soul-drenched than original Action vocalist Reggie King, but the music was far more intense, with heavy duty Yardbirds-influenced guitar riffing, savage drums, and funky sax lines. At times, Mighty Baby sounds like the great lost Traffic album; at other times, they're nearly indistinguishable from Cream. Put the two together, and you essentially have what Blind Faith could (and should) have sounded like if Clapton & Winwood had a little less talent and a lot more passion. (Other songs find Whiteman sounding much more like Stephen Stills -- before Stills sucked, of course -- giving the album a Buffalo Springfield vibe as well.) Yes, it verges on the pre-prog that was just getting kicked off at the time, so it's a bit more badly dated than the Action's work. But it's still a killer album. The 1994 cd release includes a few additional unreleased Action tracks, which help explain a bit how the band transitioned from mod-pop to all-out psych-rock.

Three remarkably different cd's, any one of which will have you kicking yourself wondering why nobody's ever heard of these guys.

Review: My Morning Jacket, Z

The Good News: Best Album Of 2005 (maybe)
The Bad News: Sony Sucks Donkey Genitals

So let's set aside the Sony issue for a moment and talk about the music. Hoo-boy, the music. What a great f*ckin' album. And, really, it's hard to say that strongly enough. Some true moments of shock & awe here, folks. For me, the stepping off point had to be It Still Moves, MMJ's 2003 masterwork. Is this as good? Maybe, hard to tell. But it's pretty damn different, that's for sure, either as a result of growth of personnel changes or both. I'd viewed It Still Moves as more or less the best Neil Young album of the past 20 years -- or, more specifically, what Neil might sound like if he were just starting out today and hadn't already written his best songs. Z, in contrast, barely conjures up Neil at all. Sure, there is still a flavor of 70's FM epic rock and rustic Americana flowing through this, particularly in some of the rousing tracks in the center of the album (though for me they're a bit more reminiscent of, say, Born To Run-era Springsteen). But this time around the sounds have a much more synthetic, keyboard-based flavor (though guitars still dominate the better tracks), dense and enveloping and claustrophobic. The Radiohead comparison is inevitable, though if anything the album sounds most like the last few Flaming Lips albums. Indeed, at times singer Jim James sounds so much like the Lips' Wayne Coyne that you almost have to check the cd player to make sure you're not, in fact, listening to the Lips ("Knot Comes Loose" and "Into The Woods" being particularly vivid examples). Now, as a Lips fan (but less of a Radiohead fan), there's nothing wrong with this. But I do have to say that the first few tracks, which seem the most Lips-like and studio tricked-out, are less captivating than the more traditional, straight-rocking numbers that follow, like "Anytime" and "Off The Record." (Not to slag the first few tracks, which are at the very least truly stunning studio creations.) Now, they might get less credit for the classic rock-ish tracks here, which really do sound like updated vamps on 70s FM radio (strains of Jackson Browne and Bruuuuuuce, for better or ill), but a rousing rocker that grabs you by the throat is nothing to be ashamed of. If I have one complaint, it's that (as with some prior work), there's a bit of drop-off in quality at the end. But by then I was so exhausted by the prior songs that I felt pretty damn satisfied nonetheless.

Now, as promised, the Sony rant: This disc is copy protected. As a matter of principle, I can't recommend buying anything with this technology (although, at the moment, it does not appear that Z has the spyware technology that exposes your pc to viruses, and is not on the list of cd's that Sony has (only following lawsuits and unprecedented public outcry) agreed to recall. But if you, like me, like to listen to your music on an iPod, or a hard-drive-based component; or you like to make cdr mixes (and there are quite a few tracks here that are contenders for my annual Best Of The Year mix), then this is a pain in the ass. The band, to their credit, are opposed to the copy protection, and their website helps walk you around the copy protection, but it's a pain in the ass. So your call on what to do about it, and whether you want to support Sony by buying this. (I should note, however, that while most artists don't seem to give a crap about the whole thing, my e-mail to the band complaining about the copy-protection scheme was replied to within hours, and they were very cool about it; I somehow doubt that Celine Dion or Neil Diamond are as accessible.)

Review: Kingsbury Manx, Fast Rise & Fall Of The South

The fourth full-length release from North Carolina-based Kingsbury Manx sounds, for better & worse, pretty much like the last three. For better because they're an amazing band with a somewhat unique sound; for worse because, well, after three albums (and an EP) which aren't dramatically different from this one, the formula wears a bit thin. That said, it's hard to tell if I found Fast Rise & Fall Of The South a notch below the others just because they've covered this ground before, or because it's a slightly less solid album. Either way, it's another fine effort, certainly worth having, but doesn't necessarily add anything essential to their catalog.

For those who may have missed out on this band 'til now, do yourself a favor and check them out. Think early Pink Floyd (post-Barrett, pre-Dark Side, i.e. More/Obscured By Clouds), tempered with a bit of mellow acoustic Americana (i.e. the Feelies' The Good Earth) and some modern indie pop a la the Shins. Quiet (almost sleep-inducing) tempos, unintrusive harmonies, gentle guitars and keyboards. This is gorgeous stuff, though they do intermittently throw around a bit of distortion and discordance to keep things from getting entirely somnambulistic. A few of the tracks on Fast Rise drag a bit much, even for an album that doesn't exactly zip along at a rapid clip; and while there were a few slow spots on prior albums, for some reason it bugged me a bit more this time around. So if I've piqued your interest at all, I'd have to say go with one of their prior works first (and hard to say which, as they're all pretty great; the first two are almost indistinguishable, both wonderfully languid, while 2003's Aztec Discipline is a bit more upbeat and (almost) poppy. If at that point, like me, you're totally hooked on the band, then it might be worth grabbing the new one.

Sony Relents? Sort Of...

Well, as of Saturday, Sony (not entirely unpredictably, and only begrudingly... i.e. without admitting how badly it had screwed up) agreed to stop using its current copy-protection technology with the built-in and concealed spyware program. Of course, Sony's announcement begs the question: Will the company (and others) continue to use copy protection, albeit with modifications to the spyware aspect of the program? As I've been ranting all week, I'm not just pissed off about having spyware loaded onto my computer by Sony; I'm pissed about not being allowed to listen to music I PAY FOR in the manner I want (i.e. on my iPod, on a home-made mix, etc.). And even if Sony has been bitch-slapped about the former, the latter problem is still there. Bottom line: I still ain't buying the damn things until I know they're going to work on my hardware and that I'm going to be able to make 1, 2, or 500 copies for my own personal use.

At this point, I'm racking up a fair number of discs I'm stuck boycotting. I'm not sure yet whether I'll keep the My Morning Jacket disc or not; the band was nice enough to offer to work with me on a work-around, so we'll see. I was planning to buy recent discs by former Phish dudes Trey Anastasio and Mike Gordon, but, as both discs are copy-protected, those purchases are indefinitely on hold. (I wrote an e-mail to Phish's management, but as the band itself is no more, not sure if this will do any good. For now, I ain't buying, and about all I can do is post silly rants on the Amazon.com review pages.) I was also considering (and please don't laugh) checking out the new Neil Diamond cd, as it's drawn rave reviews from the sort of critics unlikely to rave about a Neil Diamond album... but it's on Sony, so forget it. (And the only contact info on the Neil website is for Sony itself, which has already completely blown off my prior e-mail, so I'm not going to bother complaining to them.)

Meanwhile, though I enjoy seeing Sony kicked around (and hope the litigation continues against them... and, dammit, where the hell is Elliot Spitzer?), I imagine we're still stuck moving in the direction of copy protection, and the days of making mixes and enjoying music in various formats without having to deal with God knows how many tech workarounds, are behind us. But I'm not quite ready to give up hope.

More Bad News

Not entirely surprisingly, Fox is pulling the plug on the funniest tv show on the air, if not one of the funniest shows ever -- Arrested Development. So if you're still looking for examples of rampant stupidity in America, the list has gotten a little bit longer:

1. George W. Bush
2. The fact that Yo La Tengo isn't the best known band in the world
3. "Intelligent Design" in the classroom
4. People who smoke around their kids
5. The failure of Arrested Development to catch on, while I can turn on my television at any time, day or night, and find Full House reruns somewhere on the dial

Fortunately, the first two seasons are available on DVD box sets.

Sincerely, your attorney,
Bob Loblaw

Sony Grows Ever More Evil

Well, the Sony copy-protection scam has garnered ever more attention this week. As noted earlier, the press has been all over Sony's scummy use of spyware technology hidden within its Digital Rights Managment copy-protected cd's; buyers who put the copy-protected cd's into the pc's will unknowingly be installing spyware on their hard drives. Reporters have noted that the Sony discs do not include any means of uninstalling the malware, and trying to do it yourself can apparently disable your cd drive. Sony tried posting patches, but apparently these can also screw up your computer. Today, the first reports started surfacing of viruses circulating that capitalize on the system corruption that Sony has surreptitiously caused to pc's playing Sony cd's. Yet Sony continues that cd buyers are too stupid to understand the issue.

Fortunately, several lawsuits have already been filed against Sony.

Unfortunately, while the media has focused attention on the spyware aspect of the copy-protected discs, few writers have taken up the issue of copy protection itself. Personally, I think the copy protection is every bit as much an assault on consumers as the spyware. If I'm paying for a disc -- and, yes, I'm still among those who dump tons of money on discs, preferring good old-fashioned music ownership to downloading mp3's -- I should have the right to make my own mixes and to listen on my own equipment, but Sony deprives me of these rights. Am I buying Sony products? No way. Which is ironic, isn't it? The people who spend the most money on music are those most harmed by the copy protection scam. People who tend to download without paying and engage in file-sharing are far more likely to have the technical savvy (and, arguably, lack of ethics) to hack the discs and find a way to circulate them on file-sharing systems. So Sony is essentially fucking over its paying customers while doing absolutely nothing to stop those most at risk of engaging in piracy.

[The Electronic Frontier Foundation has put together a partial list of cd's that have the spyware (and some tips to see if one of your cd's has it); however, my understanding is that the list of cd's with copy protection itself is much larger. I've already inadvertently ordered a couple of thse online, which I will be returning as defective.]

Incidentally, while we're on the subject of unbelievable idiots -- can we talk about Kansas for a second? I try to look at the bright side, assuming that by giving creationism (or its bogus imitator, so-called "Intelligent Design") equal footing with evolution, they are creating a generation of morons, which will make it that much easier for my own kids to get into a good college. What decent college is going to admit the product of the Kansas public school system (or any other school system where kids are given religious indoctrination in lieu of actual science)? Still, it's embarrassing enough having a barely-literate idiot serving as the President of our nation; do we really need a whole new generation of idiots?

Now Playing: Kirsty MacColl, From Croydon to Cuba

It's generally not a great idea to buy an overpriced box set for one song, but there are a handful of songs over the years that are pretty damn hard to put a price tag on... and one of them is most definitely Kirsty MacColl's "They Don't Know," a slice of perfect pre-New Wave pop from 1979 that holds up today as one of the catchiest songs ever. Though probably better known through the Tracey Ullman cover (and it's been covered a million times since), Kirsty's original remains definitive; you can hate yourself all you want for liking such a simple Motown-ish rip-off, and damn if the chorus isn't inane as all get-out ("But they don't know about us, and they've never heard of love"), but anyone who doesn't hit the replay button and sing along every time this comes on is clinically dead.

Alas, in her tragically brief life (cut short by a fatal speedboat accident in 2000), Kirsty never again wrote a song quite so perfect, but she did leave behind a sufficiently intriguing body of work to make her 2005 posthumous anthology, From Croydon To Cuba, a worthwhile investment. Stylistically, MacColl was all over the map. Her early work, which I prefer, was a mix between retro Motown/50s stylings and faux country (best exemplified by the mock honky tonk of "There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis," her second best song and one of my favorite country songs ever). Unfortunately, she then delved into a more mainstream-ish new wave sound, plagued by annoying 80s production and intrusive synth beats, though even there her full-bodied vocal stylings kept things somewhat on track. She followed this up with assorted forays into pop and country, what might dismissively be considered adult contemporary, vocal jazz, and Latin music. A few standout tracks aside, her best work may have been her fine way with a cover, from a fantastic take on Billy Bragg's "A New England" to the Kinks' oft-covered "Days"; also noteworthy are her stellar duets, including "Fairytale of New York" (with the Pogues) and a cover of Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" (with Evan Dando of the Lemonheads).

The Croydon box may be a bit too much of an investment just to check Kirsty out; unfortunately, the more concise Galore single-cd compilation is out-of-print.

Link: www.5ives.com

Back in the early days of the 'net (and by "early" I mean the initial Netscape IPO era, ca. 1995-ish, when we non-tech-types started surfing and putting up our own personal homepages, not "early" as in Xerox PARC and Arpanet and all that), a mandatory component of every non-commercial website was the obligatory links page, where amateurs like, well, me, would include a list of links to pages far more interesting than our own, so random folks who happened to stumble across our home page could get back on track with something worthwhile. My links page came down some time ago (probably around the time that the bubble burst, free server space started drying up, and the number of dead links seemed to double every day). Of course, it seems that most bloggers these days follow this rule as well, with a list full of like-minded bloggers in a separate column off to the side. Still, I do miss the shout-outs to silly pages of note... and the chance to point out fun little time-sinks that can suck up your entire day. Which is why I'm taking a second to mention my current favorite...

...The 5ives. Some blogger named Merlin who intermittently posts wholly random "Top 5 lists," usually focusing on snippets of his own life, snide observation of the people around him, and pop culture artifacts. As this Merlin fellow is a fellow San Francisco resident, and appears to have come of age roughly contemporaneously with yours truly (i.e. college circa mid-80s) and shares some of my musical taste and cultural touchstones, I find many of his observations particularly pointed. I could note a few examples here:

Five bad signs about the band onstage (i.e. "large gong behind drummer," "anyone wearing own band's t-shirt")
Five excellent TV girlfriends (including Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Jill Whelan, Martha Quinn)
Five things the yuppie on the Harley doesn't want you to know (i.e. "If it weren't for his wife's IPO, he'd still be kickin' it in the Caravan"
Five things I suspect I'm not supposed to think about when watching those bands with messy hair who sound like Joy Division (i.e. "That bass player has nice skin for someone who's so unhappy," "Would it kill them to get a tambourine?"

But that would take the fun out of it. Check it out yourself, but be prepared to blow an hour.

Rant: Why Does Sony Hate Its Customers?

Sorry, folks, but I'm gonna have to break from my prior practice of keeping this a thoroughly apolitical, entirely music-hyping rag. And no, I'm not going to make this into yet another political blog blaring my ideology to anyone who stumbles across it. (Curious? Fine, in case you haven't guessed: Proud card-carrying ACLU member and unabashed Liberal.) But music politics, that's another story. And man, am I pissed.

Now, it's no secret that the music industry considers music fans with complete disdain. Suing college kids who download mp3's was an obvious tip-off, though at least there the industry could argue it was truly cracking down on theft, not fans who were willing to pay for the music they wanted. But now comes the first major attack on paying customers: Specifically, the recent revelations that Sony is including copy-protection software on new cd's that not only limits the ability to copy the cd, but prevents purchasers from ripping cd's to other formats -- and, even worse, surreptitiously installs harmful software on the purchaser's pc that can cause serious damage. (You can get the details here.) Yes, there has been talk of copy-protected discs for at least a year or so, but this is the first instance of widespread use here in the US, and it apparently goes far beyond our worst fears.

Let's make no bones about it: Sony has just flipped us the bird. This is a great big "Fuck you" to us... people who actually BUY the damn things. We're not talking kids engaging in file-sharing, which I'll be the first to admit is legally and ethically dubious. We're talking people like... well, like ME, people who spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on cd's annually, and are prevented from listening to our own music. And it's not just hyperbole; certainly not in my own case. I buy tons of cd's, and NEVER LISTEN TO THEM. At least, not in the same format I buy them. What do I do? I rip them to my pc and put them on my iPod, so I can listen to the music when I commute, when I travel, and in my office. I rip them to my hard-drive based jukebox plugged into my home stereo, so I don't have to change discs when listening at home. And I put selected songs onto home-made mixes for listening in my car. And thanks to Sony (and, presumably, the rest of the industry that is likely to follow lock-step) I am now prohibited from doing any of these things.

Earlier this week, I ordered online the new My Morning Jacket cd, Z, which I subsequently learned includes the copy protection software. As soon as I receive it, I'm shipping it back. As far as I'm concerned, any disc that I can't listen to on my own music equipment is defective by definition. Not sure how that's gonna help the band win fans (or, more significantly, make any money, which you'd think the whole copy protection scam was supposed to ensure). A quick perusal of My Morning Jacket's website tonight reveals that the band and its label were wholly unaware of the copy protection, and includes links to a software patch (though my reading of the info is that the patch will only help expose and possibly remove the spyware; it won't remove the copy protection). Big whoop. It's their album, and it's not my responsibility to put my (very expensive) pc at risk for a frickin' cd. Sorry, but installing patches that may (or may not) counteract malicious spyware should not be part of the listening experience. And if the patch doesn't even do what I need (i.e. allow me to rip the disc to my iPod and jukebox and make mixes for my car), the disc is still essentially worthless to me.

Personally, I hope everyone who buys one of these copy-protected discs returns it. And lets the artists know exactly why you're doing it. (Am I about to fire off an e-mail to the MMJ e-mail address? You bet your ass.) Yeah, we may miss some good music (I was really looking forward to hearing that new MMJ disc, which has drawn some rave reviews). But fuck 'em. We're paying customers. I get better treatment from the minimum wage slaves at Burger King than I do from the RIAA, and I spend a lot more money on music than french fries.