When I was studying abroad in Italy in 1999, Italian superstar Jovanotti (aka Lorenzo Cherubini) had just released his eclectic, electronic, pale-blue album Capo Horn, which I bought at Discoteca Fiorentina in a little cobblestone back alley next to the very best panino shop in all of the land. I’d first heard his music when my language teacher at Syracuse Florence had used his song “Per Te” as one of her “songs of the week” on cassette tapes to help us learn italiano. That song was a sweet lullaby to his newborn daughter, but the rest of the album, I came to learn, skated from bleep-bloop odes to extraterrestials, to sunny pop jingles, to rambling spoken word constructions.
I remember Jovanotti’s level of fame that autumn as being somewhere in the league of Bono, a man he actually counts as a friend due to social justice initiatives and songs that they’ve worked on together. Jovanotti first hit fame as a somewhat goofy 20 year-old DJ with ebullient, light-hearted songs, and has grown to be one of the most massive pop music stars Italy has produced in many years.
He’s long incorporated global sounds into his music (one of the most fun songs ever live is his “L’Ombelico del Mondo,” with its massive African drums), and I opened last year’s summer mix with his Spanish/Italian collaboration “Storia di un Corazon.” Lorenzo sold out a string of shows at NYC’s Joe’s Pub last year –packed with ex-pat Italians and Williamsburg cognoscenti alike– and The Philadelphia Inquirer called him “a musician whose time in the U.S. has come.” He also did a marvelous interview on NPR’s All Things Considered. I’ve never had a chance to test out for myself what a Jovanotti show will be like on U.S. soil — until now.
Buoyed by a cheap flight and a willing friend to greet me, I am headed to Los Angeles on Thursday to see Jovanotti play a free summer night concert at the Santa Monica Pier, presented by KCRW. I also get to interview him (in my mind, that is followed by about 30 exclamation points). I have no idea what to expect, I just know this makes me deeply, deeply happy.
I’ve loved watching his music develop from “Penso Positivo” rap songs (think positive! because we’re alive!) to a more rootsy, organic, socially-conscious body of work that collaborates with folks like Michael Franti (”Dal Basso,” among other songs) and Ben Harper, on this song from his 2008 release Safari:
(Io lo so che non sono solo, anche quando sono solo – I know that I’m not alone, even when I am alone)
Even if you don’t speak the language, anyone can find the mellifluous effect of “Fango” (”Mud”) soothing as it rushes over your ears — a phonetic maelstrom of earthy awesomeness.
There is something uniquely wonderful in the half-spoken, half-sung lyrics of Lorenzo, and the small observations he knits together. I can remember sitting at the small green kitchen table in my apartment near Santa Croce church with my host sister Elena, as she translated Jovanotti’s Italian lyrics from “Io Ti Cerchero” into English. I remember thinking how in my own language they might feel facile and rote, but in Italian they brought a hard lump into my throat and seemed, truly, like some of the most beautiful lyrics ever.
Call it the language of true poetry, the language of Dante, the actual sound of falling in love. Everything sounds like gospel in Italian. So you should read more about what this song means here. I appreciate the way that Jovanotti looks at mottled, cracked pieces of the world, and cements them together into something crazy and beautiful, flawed but absolutely worth admiring.
Last time I saw him in Bologna, he appeared on stage in orange pants, hoisted high above the crowd in a harness, flying back and forth while he sang the first song. His music has matured and deepened since then (he’s 43), and while he likely won’t have the flashy stage production on the pier, just him and his guitar will be enough to make me sing along.
Here are a few of his older songs as well. His newest album (2008) is called Safari, and is out on Mercury Records.
Give your ears something new:
L’ombelico del Mondo
Rome used to be called the “umbilicus mundi,” or bellybutton (center) of the world. This is Jovanotti’s pulsing African homage – when I saw him live in Bologna, a battalion of musicians wearing djembe drums around their waists ran out and Jovanotti played a huge tom with mallets.
Dal Basso (with Michael Franti) Tutto nasce dal basso e poi va su – everything starts from the bottom and rises up. A social anthem with a coiled, dense bass line and shared verses between Jovanotti and Michael Franti (in English). The song talks about all the places that revolutionary ideas will not be found (the classroom, the pages of the newspaper, in our heroes) but instead in vibration, joy, and freedom.
Per La Vita Che Verra (”For The Life That Will Be”)
Lorenzo recorded portions of his 1997 album in South Africa, and this song is such a glorious melding of continents, I never get tired of it.
Piove
This last one is on my playlist tonight because it is thundering and pouring big fat summer raindrops in Colorado today, and this is a song about rain. The rhythm of his words actually feels like rivulets and torrents.
JOVANOTTI U.S. TOUR – SUMMER 2010
July 21 – The Viper Room, Los Angeles, CA
July 22 – Twilight Dance Series, Santa Monica Pier, CA
July 25 – Stern Grove Festival, San Francisco, CA
July 31 – SummerStage, New York City, NY
I was clicking around on Threadless a few weeks ago and noticed their cool new “Living in Harmony” dual guitar design (acoustic? electric? how about both). I tend to be lamely paralyzed by indecision when buying clothing online and didn’t get it then, but serendipitously now the folks at Threadless have contacted me with a sweet little promo contest for you guys!
Fuel/Friends has a prize pack to give away containing the tshirt design by artist Josh Perkins, and matching Havaianas flip flops as well. You may or may not wear them together, depending on how completely dedicated to the idea of musical fashion you wish to appear.
TO WIN! I know this might cause you to groan, but you need to find a great joke to leave in the comments for me — one that makes you laugh out loud. The other night on a bicycle pubcrawl, I was talking about jokes and how hard it is to remember them when needed, and I realized I need some new fodder. Here’s my latest favorite: How do you get 100 Canadians to get out of a swimming pool? You say, “Please get out of the swimming pool.”
And because I like this song, both the original electric and this acoustic re-interpretation:
There is something so exquisitely elegant and hammeringly sad about the way that St. Vincent sounds on the verses of “Mistaken for Strangers” here. Matt Berninger of The National comes in with his weighty vocals as accent – like a marvelous “Sleep All Summer” redux.
The visuals are nothing exceptional (afternoon soundcheck at a Roman theatre in Lyon, France a few days ago) but the way this song is woven into some sort of suspended, breathless delicacy just simply breaks my heart.
Based on a recommendation from a friend who saw The Mynabirds last night at San Francisco’s Rickshaw Stop, I’ve googled and clicked and fallen in love with the toe-tapping sultriness and all these indie-rock goddess vocals.
Half of the former D.C. duo Georgie James, Laura Burhenn possesses a powerful alto voice that owns this album and every song on it. Ranging from dusty old soul to big gospel harmonies, with clattery percussion that evokes Spoon at times and smolders at others, What We Lose In The Fire We Gain In The Flood (Saddle Creek) is eclectic and thoroughly enjoyable. Burhenn’s voice channels the confidence of females like Dusty Springfield circa 1968, to Cat Power or Jenny Lewis in the modern-day lexicon. This song even has a touch of Cowboy Junkies?
I also strongly recommend that you listen to the piano-thumping fun of “Let The Record Go” and the echoey girl-group soul of “Numbers Don’t Lie,” among others.
What We Lose In The Fire We Gain In The Flood was recorded with lots of whiskey and dancing in an Oregon hillside cabin, and was produced by the uncannily flawless ear of Richard Swift (whose pop confections opened a Wilco show for me once). Nate Walcott (Bright Eyes) arranged the shiny horns, and my friend J. Tom Hnatow of These United States brings his wicked slide guitar. It is a fantastic record, been listening to it all day.
CONTEST FOR THE DENVER KIDS: Wanna come see the Mynabirds on Monday night (July 19) at the Hi-Dive? I have a pair of tickets to give away. It’s an 18+ show, with Dark Dark Dark. As usual, please email me if you can for sure for reals come. We’ll get you on the list.
For the non-Denver residents, here are your other options:
MYNABIRDS TOUR DATES * = w/ David Bazan
& = w/ Crooked Fingers
07/15: Seattle, WA @ Sunset Tavern
07/16: Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge
07/17: Boise, ID @ Neurolux
07/18: Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
07/19: Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
07/24: Omaha, NE @ MAHA Festival
08/01: Council Bluffs, IA @ Stir Cove (w/ Al Green)
08/07: Council Bluffs, IA @ Stir Live and Loud
08/27: Omaha, NE @ Outside at Slowdown ( w/ Built To Spill)
09/03: Austin, TX @ The Mohawk &
09/05: Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress &
09/06: San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar &
09/08: San Francisco, CA @ Café Du Nord &
09/16: Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall*
09/17: Detroit, MI @ Magic Stick*
09/18: Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Place*
09/19: Montreal, QC @ II Motore*
09/21: Burlington, VT @ Club Metronome*
09/22: Cambridge, MA @ TT The Bear’s*
09/24: Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Bowl*
09/25: Wahsington DC @ Black Cat*
09/26: Charolottesville, VA @ The Southern*
09/27: Carrboro, NC @ Cats Cradle*
09/28: Atlanta, GA @ The Earl*
09/29: Nashville, TN @ Exit/In*
10/01: Jacksonville, FL @ Jack Rabbits*
10/02: Orlando, FL @ The Social*
10/03: Tallahassee, FL @ The Engine Room*
10/05: Birmingham, AL @ The Bottletree*
10/06: New Orleans, LA @ One Eyed Jacks*
I’ve written several times that I believe Idahoan Josh Ritter is one of the most important and talented songwriters of our generation, making music that is weighty and beautiful, that will stand up to time. Each of his six albums over the last 11 years has trod different musical ground, from folksy acousticism to uptempo soulful rock, and all shades in between. Yet all of this is ballasted by his insightful, dazzling lyrics – drawing lessons from mythology, psychology, religious narratives, archaeology, and historical figures, but never inaccessibly so.
I am an unabashed lover of words. I’ve been known to fall for folks strictly on the basis of their vocabulary. For me, the way Josh can excise things deep within me using only a handful of words is truly rare. Here is a guy who gets it, who pursues stories and emotions relentlessly to evoke them powerfully in his music. He gets my highest respect – I mean, even how created his own major at Oberlin College in “American History Through Narrative Folk Music”; I’m incredibly jealous that I didn’t think of that. Plus, he just rocks, and is one of the most ebullient live performers you will ever see.
I walked into this interview with so much apprehension, not because I thought he’d be anything but marvelous (I’d been warned how generous his hugs were, and he didn’t disappoint) but because I am so deeply impressed with what he does. My usual types of interview questions seemed to fall so short it wasn’t even funny. So under some big trees in Telluride on a Thursday evening, we just talked instead. And it was warm and wonderful. It went like this:
JOSH RITTER INTERVIEW
Fuel/Friends:I have a whole jumbled bunch of questions that I would love to ask you, but hmmmm . . . I think I want to start with something that references your new album, something I’ve rolled over a lot in my head these past months. In “The Curse” . . . do you think it was worth it for her?
Josh Ritter: Ooh, wow. That’s a really good question. I don’t know. Well, let me think . . .
I think that love is like a trap sometimes. You get deep in and you think, “This is the wrong place to be,” and by that time, it’s all built around you. I’m not sure, but I typically tend to stay away from an idea like [says grandly] “But it was all worth it.” I mean, if it wasn’t right in the end, then it wasn’t worth it. My experience with love has been this: if it’s good, then it ends good or it continues good. But if it’s not good then it’s just . . . not good. I mean what is the difference between a tragedy and any other sort of genre? The tragedy ends badly. I think of that song as a tragedy, but the interesting part to me is that he knows the whole time that he’s doing this to her.
F/F: So he knew? I always couldn’t tell if he knew, or if he just somehow hoped that it would be different this time, that his curse wouldn’t be destructive.
JR: Yeah, I do like the idea that it could be interpreted a number of different ways. But I like seeing him as calculating, like he built this thing around himself (“Think of them as an immense invitation”) so that this one day this would happen. As much as there may have been periods when he was truly in love, he was ultimately using her.
F/F: See, I was thinking about how it might not have been a bad exchange for her — I think of the lyrics about how they talk of the Nile and girls in bulrushes, and I mean, through that relationship, she got to be as close as she would EVER be to that world of Egypt that she had dedicated her whole studies to.
JR: I never thought about it quite like that. That’s really cool.
F/F: And the video is amazing. I never expected puppets to make me cry, the way his eyes twinkle.
JR: I know, I know! I feel exactly the same way! Liam (our drummer, who made the video) is a ninja.
F/F: Do you think that you are telling old stories with a new voice? Or new stories?
JR: Oh, old stories, definitely. There is nothing new. Whether it’s Cormac McCarthy, or Mark Twain, or whoever, they are never telling a story that’s completely brand new. There’s always an archetype. It reminds me of that quote about: “See what everybody else has seen, think what nobody else has thought.” (Albert Szent-Gyoergi). Songs are just reimagining old stories, old feelings. It’s like in science how an electron microscope helped us to see things that had always been all around us since time immemorial, but now we saw it in a whole new way.
F/F: There was a time you considered a career in science. Is music at all like science?
JR: I think science is like art, yeah absolutely. There’s a tendency to put your own discipline on a pedestal, and hold it above all others, but there are so many similarities. There’s an idea that scientists wear these white robes on a mountainside and write down these massive truths, but science fills a societal need of figuring out answers to questions we have, just the same as art does. For example, my parents are studying appetite and how it affect diabetes and obesity, and that’s important research, but really it is filling a need – the same thing that happens in art. You see a need out there that interests you and you follow it, and there’s gotta be a reason why you are interested in it. They speak to different needs in different ways. Science and art and religion are all very similar – all trying to fill in the gaps.
F/F: You mention religion, and many of your songs almost strike me as parables, or at least allegorical fables.
JR: A parable is like a multi-faceted metaphor. To go back to what we were talking about with “The Curse,” you can see it a lot of different ways – and that’s what makes it so interesting. Elaine Pagels is an amazing writer about religion, and she talks a lot about the Gnostic Gospels, and this idea that a few parables of Jesus had been written down before he died, and then after Jesus was dead all these people came along who knew these parables, but they meant something different to everyone, whether it was Peter and Paul, or Mary Magdalene, or Mary, or James, all these people that claimed to have a secret knowledge about what that parable meant – Thomas, the gospel of Thomas is the best example of that, and the secret teachings. Even when we talk about something like the Sermon on the Mount, there are things that seem perfectly clear, and also completely mystifying the next moment. Like Leonard Cohen says, “from the staggering account of the Sermon on the Mount / which I don’t pretend to understand at all.”
But maybe it’s really holding a mirror up to yourself, and how you interpret something tells you a lot about yourself. If you think A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O’Connor is funny, are you being honest with yourself, or are you just a mean person?
F/F: Well, I think my last question is…..
JR: (interrupts, leaning forward) – I got a question for you. What’s your favorite song in the world, that you’ve ever heard? If you had to choose.
(I am stunned with the vastness of this question, and Josh asking it to me. I feel like I haven’t studied for a really cool test. I cannot pick.)
JR: I think mine would maybe be “I Dream A Highway” by Gillian Welch.
F/F: Oooh! Such an excellent, excellent choice. That song has everything you could ever want. Hmm, that kind of reminds me of a song I love that I was listening to on the way here, I don’t think it is my favorite song ever, by any means, but one that speaks volumes to me – “Mary” by Patty Griffin.
JR: Oh, yeah! Yessss, that song is a SICK song. “….Stays behind and starts cleaning up the place,” (we both say in unison). It shows so many facets of her . . . and it makes you mad that she’s just being used every which way.
F/F: Agreed. So I want to talk a little about the sticky intersection between art and commerce – do you think they are mutually incompatible?
JR: I certainly hope music is a commercial venture. I have no bones about the fact that I feel I deserve to make a living off my music. I mean, what else would I do? People who choose to follow art are often ill-suited to be anything else. The best writers or directors or comedians, you cannot imagine them doing anything else. I’m curious if I could do something else – I mean I wrote a book, but I guess we’ll see if I can do that well. What I do helps me survive; I definitely wouldn’t want to do anything else. Whatever there is about God or whatever, I think it helps to believe you were put somewhere for something. And if someone decides their profession will be one of an artist, that’s a noble choice. In the end you are selling something that you think is important, because you are spending your time doing it. And also, I think people can tell when you don’t think it’s that important, and there’s tons of artists that are doing that as well.
Commerce and art are only good when you have a level of trust with the people that are buying your music. What they are actually buying is a chance for you to spend more time doing what you do – playing shows, putting out albums. That is your responsibility to account for yourself, for the money they have given you. That that’s gotten a lot harder, I think, is not necessarily a bad thing. The last 50,000 years of human history have been about artists working hard for very little, and only about 50-60 years now where that hasn’t been the case. So it is a kind of historical aberration right now. But I definitely think that the amount of stuff that musicians and other artists go through, and the relatively small returns, you know, we all deserve the same kind of normal life that everybody else has. Like I would like to have kids and be able to support them. So to those ends, there’s probably not much I wouldn’t do to be able to keep up playing music and be able to support my family.
Certain decisions would need to be made on a situational basis, like commercials. I did a commercial for Crayola with my song “Great Big Mind,” which I was really happy with. But I’m not The Black Eyed Peas, I’m not gonna go out and do, like, the Camel Cigarette Tour or anything like that. It’s also sort of a thing that sticks with me a little bit because I feel like people in the last generation have always looked askance at making money from commercials, you know? There are people like Tom Waits, who I love in every way, except that I don’t agree with him (in his staunch opposition to commercials). He came up in a different time where people sold records, and made money selling records, and that’s not a thing that happens anymore so we have to look in other places.
F/F: Do you ever feel the struggle in the balance between writing something that will sell and something that is artistically true to you? Is there a conflict selling something that comes from the deepest parts of you?
JR: There’s that point when somebody is running for office, when they are attracting the people who will vote for them based on who they are, and I feel it switches at some point (I believe Hemingway calls that the “pilot fish” – the one swimming ahead of the pack and leading all the other fish to that place). At some point it flips and then the leader becomes the follower of the other fish in his pack, the other fish that supported him to get him to where he is now. You stop becoming a leader and you start becoming a follower, you become part of the mob.
You cannot allow yourself to become that. If you try to shape your music to fill a certain hole, it’s not gonna work that way, it just ends up sounding bland. You have to do your own thing because that’s all that anybody really wants. It’s harder, but at least you don’t feel like you’re a faker. The worst thing I can think of would be writing songs desperately, trying to get a hit.
F/F: It reminds me of the article I read once about Weezer trying to mathematically analyze their hit songs, what made them hits.
JR: Everything I’ve ever seen with music leads me to think that there is no way to know what people are going to like. I think I know, but I don’t have any idea of what happens once it leaves me.
All you can do is do what you do, and hope that the side effect of making music that you yourself love is that other people are going to love it too. And when I die, I’ll leave something behind that I was actually proud of.
[photos by the luminous Sarah Law. His hands in the top picture remind me of this. Thanks, Sarah.]
In addition to being a mile high, Denver is also known as the Queen City of the Plains, since we are regally awesome. We have a feisty and fertile music scene here, and this occasional feature aims to spotlight the best of our music to the rest of the world.
I’m a few weeks late on the draw with new Denver duo Tennis, and their summery lo-fi brand of fuzzed out goodness. They just played a packed show at the Meadowlark on Friday night (I was busy happy houring on my lawn as the sun set, so not entirely a bad trade?) and are the latest Denver band to garner a healthy amount of buzz.
Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley are married, and they fled the landlocked Denver (I know the feeling, guys) to head towards the pull of the ocean. They spent eight months sailing before returning to record songs like this one.
Recommended if you like Beach House, Wavves, Girls, and other summer things. They’re so new that they’re not playing Denver’s big Underground Music Showcase July 22-25, sadly.
TENNIS TOUR DATES Aug 10 – The Hi-Dive, Denver, Colorado
Aug 16 – The Slowdown, Omaha, NE
Aug 17 – Vaudeville Mews, Des Moines, IA
Aug 18 – DAYTROTTER, Rock Island, IL
Aug 19 – tba, Chicago, IL
Aug 25 – Cakeshop, New York, NY
Aug 26 – Glasslands, Brookyln, ny
Aug 27 – Subterranean, Washington, DC
Aug 28 – HEXAGON, Baltimore, MD
Aug 30 – The Layabout, Durham, NC
I love Clem Snideso much, and it just keeps getting stronger. You may have noticed my minor affinity for covers, and frontman Eef Barzelay can delight me with his straightforward, completely earnest renditions that find veins of truth in the most unexpected of places. So here even the #1 ironic-karaoke band Journey sounds almost wistful. It gets even better when his two bandmates come in whistling at the end, and no one cracks a smile.
Perhaps you remember the Clem Snide cover of Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful,” but my all-time favorite version he does is that of the Velvet Underground’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror.” Instead of Nico’s halting alienation, Eef’s sweet earnestness makes me believe good truths, laced through with that elegant and knowing cello.
I also never get tired of listening to their original song “Born A Man” – Eef’s a super smart songwriter, like an SAT study party soundtrack. The new Clem Snide album Meat of Life came out in February.
This year marks the most fun I’ve had yet putting together twenty songs to soundtrack your summer. The mix came together organically and joyfully while I did summery things, and the contentment I feel lately in these weeks is embedded in the picks. I declared on January 1 (when I did the Polar Bear Plunge) that 2010 was going to be a flippin’ fantastic year, full of new experiences — and it certainly is living up to the promise.
Enjoy these as I have, play them at the BBQs to come, and burn them on CD for your next trip to the beach. Bring enough firewood; don’t forget the sunscreen and the fuzzy blankets. Summer is here.
FUEL/FRIENDS SUMMER PLUNGE 2010
Bullet – Scarlett Johansson & Steel Train
I adore the two drastically different versions of this song so much that I am declaring them the anthems of my summer, and bookending this year’s mix with them. Starting this mix with ScarJo? Yeah, I’m as shocked as you are. This is actually a cover of the original (see track 19) from an album of all-female covers (Tegan & Sara, Amanda Palmer). When Scarlett croons over that immense, filthy-crunchy beat that she fell in love on the back seat of your car, can you blame her?
Bang Pop – Free Energy
Another song I want to listen to all summer: 100% pure bottled fun from these Philadelphia chaps — like Mentos in a bottle of Coke.
The Diamond Church Street Choir – The Gaslight Anthem
Snapping on the street corner because it’s too hot to go inside? A song that’s all at once immediate and urgent, as well as timeless, from these Jersey boys’ third album. “While I’m just waiting on the light to change / and the steam heat pours from the bodies on the floor.”
Heard It On The Radio – The Bird and The Bee
The lone original on an album of shiny Hall & Oates covers, it’s the standout tune for me, since I could never abide Hall & Oates anything. It perfectly encapsulates those summer crushes soundtracked to that one song on the radio all through August.
Heart To Tell – The Love Language This North Carolina band (on Merge Records, one of my favorites) has a poppy, effusive, beat-driven sound that fits perfectly in these months. They kind of reminded me of Voxtrot, before Voxtrot stopped trotting.
Kiola Beach – HOT SPA
I know nothing about this band except they made a wonderful video with this song and old home movie footage of beach trips and vintage surfing. That’s enough for me to have a permanently fabulous vision in my mind for this song. They’re Australian, unsigned, and I read about them here.
The Drying Of The Lawns – The Tallest Man On Earth
On last year’s summer mix, Kristian Matsson sang to us about bluebirds flying away, and this year it’s the drying of summer lawns, and waves, rivers, and mirages. I’ve spent the interim twelve months falling completely in love with him, because of songs like this.
Fairweather – Houses
The cover art picture above was taken by my friend Kinsey, the luminous woman in the Denver band Houses. As I was clicking through a few of her quintessentially-summer pictures online, showing a bunch of folks up at Echo Lake lounging on huge boulders in the sun, this song of theirs (from their Summer EP last year) came on randomly. And it was perfect: let’s leave this town behind, let’s go for a drive.
Lost In My Mind – The Head and The Heart
What’s summer if not a little time out of mind? This song shimmers and grows slowly, to the crescendo where the bass drum starts softly thumping, and it sings about the stars all coming out at night. It’s almost like that Fanfarlo track I loved last year, that helped me actually see the way the sky illuminates at twilight, one tiny pinprick of light at a time. I’ve been massively loving The Head and The Heart since I posted that song last week (their full-length album is just out this week). They also remind me delightfully of the Local Natives, if you love them as I do. I Will Be The Sun – Old Canes
Windchimes and hard-driving clattery percussion that you can dance around to, and this one sails right into the summer mix. The whole Feral Harmonic album sounds this joyous, and I love it. Great for roadtrips and gratuitous steering-wheel drumming.
Black and Milds – Cataldo
My criteria for summer is often a rubric of what songs might sound good sung around a bonfire, if I had exceptionally talented friends who played the banjo as well as they drank. We’ve also got plenty of handclaps here, in this song about missing someone (which surely we all do on occasion, even in the summer). Thanks Katie!
Hard Sun – Indio
The original version of the sweeping epic song from Canadian Gordon Peterson in 1989. Featuring Joni Mitchell on background vocals and an assortment of exotic African-sounding instruments, it just feels radiant.
Flaming Arrow – Jupiter One
NYC’s Jupiter One is a duo with folksy roots and Seventies AM radio leanings. This song is all lemondrops and summer street strolls, over lyrics about burning buildings. What an odd, totally successful juxtaposition.
Unattainable – Little Joy
Man, this entire album is the perfect summer accompaniment — that slightly kitschy, clattery sound from Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti and vocalist Binki Shapiro, along with Brazilian musician Rodrigo Amarante. I had a hard time picking just one track off this album for the mix.
Mirando – Ratatat
The video for this Brooklyn duo’s 2008 song consist of clips from Predator in reverse, so this song feels a bit like humid jungle warfare to me, in some exotic land. But, you know — humid jungle warfare you can dance to.
In The Summertime (acoustic) – Rural Alberta Advantage
I discovered this in the cold of November, and have been waiting for the sun to come and warm things up enough to enjoy it the way I think it was meant to be heard. A bittersweet, piercing, perfect little song, recorded off-the-cuff backstage at the Bottom Of The Hill in San Francisco.
Sunny Sunday Mill Valley Groove Day – The Sir Douglas Quintet
My friend Nick from London said I had to put this on the mix, and when he recommends, I listen. I’d never heard this before but it feels like something captured on a warm afternoon in the studio when the recorder was accidentally kept running. “When there’s nothing left to say, and all the clouds have faded away / And my mind wanders out there across the bay…”
Saturday Night (Pinkhearts session) – Ryan Adams
My friend Brian from San Francisco said I had to put this on the mix, and when he recommends, I listen. There’s something in the aimlessness and lazy midnight humidity of this song that sounds like a perfect summer night when you were a teenager. Also, the saxophone makes it sound for all the world like a cast-off demo from the Rolling Stones.
Bullet – Steel Train
Indie kids doing their best, brilliant shot at Springsteen. As soon as I burn this mix onto a CD, I am hitting the road with the windows open because holy heck how good will this song sound on a summer night with the car windows down?? It’s so good that I had to use this song twice on the mix. My new favorite summer song of 2010. [huge thanks to Brian in Portland!!]
Pursuit of Happiness (Kid CuDi cover) – Lissie
Finally, this one – I love Lissie, and I love how she had to take a shot of tequila before she covers hip-hop artist Kid CuDi’s collaboration with MGMT and Ratatat: “2am, summer night / Hands on the wheel — uh, uh, fuck that….” Ending on a perfect, if dangerous, note.
In 1985, R.E.M. were young lads preparing to record their third studio album in London in winter, far from the warm verdant tangle of Georgia. Twenty-five years later (!!) Capitol Records is digitally remastering Fables of the Reconstruction, and releasing it on July 13th along with a companion disc of the demos containing R.E.M.’s original vision for the album, rich in storytelling. Peter Buck also penned some new liner notes.
R.E.M. is teaming up with blogs to unveil exclusive streams of the remasters and the demos. Here is Fuel/Friends’ exclusive, a new look at a bit of mid-80s nostalgia from a band I heartily love:
This demo version of the penultimate song on the album finds Stipe’s vocals more meandering (think “Cuyahoga”) than the focused jangling tune that eventually made it to the album. I never tire of how demos reveal new layers of the narrative we know; the reissue double disc also includes one never-before-heard demo for a song called “Throw Those Trolls Away.”
I am pleased that R.E.M.’s earlier work is getting cleaned up shiny and new, and how can we believe that it’s been 25 years? I hope Life’s Rich Pageant is next – I still have that one on vinyl.
I’ve been enjoying the lazy warmth of summer these weeks, filling my off-hours with outdoor adventures (and, okay, an inordinate amount of soccer viewing in pubs). Partly because I’ve been working feverishly on my summer mix for 2010, but all I seem to want to listen to these days is airy, lilting, easygoing music to soundtrack the gorgeousness outside.
During the winter, I’m all about good-to-be-sad albums like Love Is Hell or Midnight Organ Fight, but dang it feels good to open up the windows and air out the other half of my musical collection. When I lived in California, it was almost always nice outside and I do believe I appreciated it less. Now I look out the window and remember when everything was covered in ice and snow, and I listen to songs like this new one from Philadelphia trio Good Old War. Last summer they kept me happy for months with their song “Coney Island,” and here they do it again with a visit to the Sargent House’s Glassroom Sessions.
Good Old War’s self-titled sophomore album just came out at the beginning of June on Sargent House Records. Stream the whole thing. The band is on tour all this summer (with Brandi Carlile, the Xavier Rudd, then someone else cool) and I hear from someone who just saw their show that “it felt like a campfire,” with everyone singing along to all the words.
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
“These chords are old but we shake hands / 'cause I believe that they're the good guys.”
—Josh Ritter, "Good Man"
"I am fuel, you are friends / we got the means to make amends."
—Pearl Jam, "Leash"
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. If you represent an artist or a label and would prefer that I remove a link to an mp3, please email me at browneheather@gmail.com
Submissions
Got something I should hear? Email me at browneheather@gmail.com. Digital's usually best, but music submissions can also be sent to: Fuel/Friends, PO Box 64011, Colorado Springs, CO 80962-4011.
Here are a few of his older songs as well. His newest album (2008) is called Safari, and is out on Mercury Records. 
CONTEST FOR THE DENVER KIDS: Wanna come see the Mynabirds on 
But I’ll make a point to be at their next show at 
STREAM: 
Good Old War’s 
Name: Heather Browne
