I'm No Guitar Hero (and other random musings on a Friday morning)

Just a few musical highlights from the past week:

Getting my fool butt kicked soundly and repeatedly on Guitar Hero by my ten-year-old son. Sure, I've been playing a REAL guitar for 26 years, but I just can't work these damn buttons! Incidentally, I was going to pick up the new 80's version, figuring it would have more of the music I grew up with rather than the 90s metal crap that dominates GHII -- but somehow the song selection is even worse. (Hey, at least the standard GHII has Matthew Sweet's "Girlfriend," a truly insightful pick.) Wish someone would hire me to assemble an indie rock Guitar Hero -- Built to Spill, Television, Yo La Tengo, Pavement, etc. Of course, I'd still get my ass kicked on that one, but at least I'd like the damn songs...

The Pixies' "Planet of Sound" coming up on the iPod Shuffle during my morning walk to the office. It's only about a 4-minute walk from the parking lot to the office, so I only get in about 1 1/2 songs each morning and each evening... but, I dunno, it's just something special when "Planet of Sound" makes it into rotation. Or "Debaser." Particularly "Debaser." Damn, why do I spend time rotating the 200 songs on the Shuffle when, really, I could just listen to "Planet of Sound" or "Debaser" every day?

Mid-70's Beach Boys. During that largely unheralded era between Smile and "Kokomo," the band actually had a fair amount of noteworthy (if sub-genius) music. Been listening to Carl & The Passions: So Tough and Holland in particular. Yes, I'm definitely a Brian Wilson guy, but Mike Love's "California Saga" is one of the catchiest things they ever recorded, tacky nature-loving lyrics be damned. I made a nifty mix of their '70-'77 output, and, in all honesty, I like it as much or even more than my mixes dedicated to their early 60's insane proliferation of surf sigles and their Pet Sounds/Smile-era artistic heyday.

Pop Kulcher F*cks With Your Summer: The Mix

Just a quick little mix to keep the summer moving in style. I kinda like how this one turned out. A few 2007 purchases, a few classics through the ages, a few novelty tunes to keep things interesting. You can find the tracklist up on Art Of The Mix if you're interested. I may have an extra copy or two lying around if you drop me a line and tell me where to send it.

Death Cab For YouTube

Chad of rock blog Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands has thoughtfully compiled a half dozen YouTube videos of assorted fans covering Death Cab For Cutie's "I Will Follow You Into The Dark" with the camera rolling. Like the song itself, the performances are maudlin and kitschy but ultimately so earnest and affecting you can't really help but get a warm feeling watching them.

I'm not sure if I should consider Death Cab a guilty pleasure (and, personally, don't really care). Sure, there's something self-important and overly weighty about them, and they seem to draw unusually strong adverse reactions from their detractors, but I happen to like 'em quite a bit. Transatlanticism is an outright classic, and Plans is pretty damn close. And, hey, if you're going to sing about love lasting even past death -- a sentiment that will necessarily come with a touch of blecchiness -- it's hard to picture doing it more poetically than this song.

Incidentally, the Everybody Cares post does NOT include video of the original. So, just to clear up that little oversight:

That Feelies Feeling

After an overlong absence (setting aside a few online samples from some side projects), Feelies frontman Glenn Mercer is back on the scene with his first solo album, Wheels In Motion. It's not exactly a solo album, strictly speaking, as the players include various friends and bandmates from the Feelies and other interrelated bands -- and thus, not surprisingly, it sounds like it picks up where the Feelies left off. The good news (to my ears) is that Mercer has left behind the more droning, hard-rocking sounds of the final Feelies album (1991's hit & miss Time For A Witness) and his sub-par 1990's band Wake Ooloo. Instead, there's much more of an organic, pastoral sound, not dramatically afar from mid-period Feelies and spin-off projects like the Trypes. At the very least, it's a healthy helping of pleasant background strumming and Mercer's trademark Lou Reed-inspired understated sing-speak. I wouldn't call it a great album; the melodic hooks and breathtaking beauty that made Feelies highlight The Good Earth one of the finest albums of all time are nowhere to be found. But for those of up who cut our teeth on the acoustic/electric post-VU guitar soundscapes of Mercer's myriad bands, it's a fine release and one worth a summer spin.

So, hey, anyone in the mood for a classic Feelies video? Thought so. (And, geez, can you remember the days when a Feelies video might actually get played on MTV, even relegated to a late-night slot on 120 Minutes? Ah, the glory days...)

Incidentally, I was trying to track down a video of the Volvo commercial that uses the Feelies' wonderful "Let's Go." No luck. But, hey, say what you will about selling out and all that, but I sincerely hope the guys make a shitload of money from it... unfortunately, all four of the Feelies' albums are out of print, so if you want to pick them up you've gotta track them down used. Un-freakin'-believable.

R.E.M. Lives???

Yeah, I know, every album since 1996's New Adventures In Hi-Fi has been hailed as the "comeback" album promising a return to the glory days... yet, let's face it, pretty much everything they've done since Bill Berry left the band has been rather weak. Yeah, sure, a couple decent tunes on each of the last three albums, and nothing all that offensive, but "largely inoffensive" is a bit off for the band that produced the best music of the 1980's, bar none.

So it's with some trepidation that I note -- and feel free to ping me for this if I turn out to be wrong -- that the new tunes they're working up for the next album are... well, kinda good. Like, actually rocking, tuneful, even downright garage-y. Sure, I'm basing this on previews I've heard of their recent run of rehearsal shows in Dublin, where they ran through a dozen works-in-progress (and, even more astoundingly, rounded out the sets with tunes drawn from their debut EP Chronic Town -- not exactly a mainstay of the band's shows for the past two decades). BitTorrent-types can download some of the Dublin shows from various sites; plus, my favorite music blogger, I Am Fuel, has one of the shows posted in mp3 format -- check it out now.

[Not sure when the album is due out; check the official site for updates. And, hey, even if the album ends up as watered-down as the last one, the live document is worth having.]

Rock 'n' Roll Kids

The little dude has been taking drum lessons for nearly a year, and definitely rocks... Rapidly creeping up on Moon & Bonham... Been a little tougher getting the little dudette into it, but she's in Rock & Roll Camp this week with big brother and, having convinced her that all the coolest women play bass (i.e. Kim Deal [Pixies], Kim Gordon [Sonic Youth], Tina Weymouth [Talking Heads], Laura Ballance [Superchunk], Britta Phillips [Luna]) ,she's giving it a try. So now we've got a serious rhythm section in the Pop Kulcher household. Unfortunately, they've deemed Dad way too uncool to jam with, so I have to bribe them with extra Gamecube time in exchange for a quick run through, say, "Back in Black" or "Walk This Way."

Pre-July 4th Catching Up

Taking my own sweet time writing... so here are a few random mutterings to get back up to speed... indulge me...

First off, I was psyched to find this clip of the delightful Amy Rigby posted on YouTube this week. From a recent trip to the States from France (where she's been living this past year), playing a Chicago house party while standing in mulch (or so she describes it in her blog), making an acoustic run through her bittersweet "As Is" (from the excellent Middlescence):



And, hey, as long as I was visiting ye ol' Tube, ran a Yo La Tengo search (something one must do every month or so to see what pops up)... here's a fine concert clip from 2003. I'll be catching them at a benefit show in San Francisco later this summer, which is really all I need to help me through a particularly arduous few months at work:



Anyway, speaking of my favorite female singers (see Amy Rigby, above), there are a few must-own archival releases hitting the streets this summer just waiting for you to grab. The late great Judee Sill, an early 70's West Coast folkie who is only now getting the recognition she should have had 30 years ago, is captured in some newly-unearthed BBC recordings from 1972 & 1973. Her odd blend of spirituality and inner pain, filtered through one of the more distinctive set of pipes around, is truly breathtaking. (If you don't have it, by all means pick up The Asylum Years, which compiles the two amazing albums she recorded before her untimely drug-related demise, plus plenty of alternative takes.)

Also getting special treatment this month -- Bay Area indie superstar Barbara Manning, whose early solo work from the late 80s & early 90s is being repackaged as a 3-cd box set with loads of bonus tracks and nice packaging. Some largely acoustic alt.folk-rock, plus some forays into more electric straight-ahead pop rock (but from the angle of a woman with a far more developed and interesting taste in music than your prototypical singer-songwriter). You can buy it at Parasol Records online. (Then go out and buy all her other albums, particularly her amazing work with the SF Seals -- Barbara is one of the coolest figures in 90s indie rock; give her the attention she deserves!)