March 30, 2008

Baby we only got today, and then the moment’s gone forever

The Burn To Shine DVD series artfully combines two of my favorite things: cool old buildings and terrific bands, with a series of performances captured within the doomed walls of homes slated for destruction. The cameras roll for the band alone, and by the time we see the footage, the building no longer exists.

This series is a project of Fugazi dummer Brendan Canty and filmmaker Christoph Green (the pair also directed the Wilco Sunken Treasure DVD). Musicians representing the regional scene are selected by local “curators,” including Ben Gibbard in the Seattle film and Chris Funk of the Decemberists in Portland. The musicians set up shop in the condemned building, each performing one song, one take, on one day. Then the local fire department will receive the property and it will be destroyed by fire for training exercises.

What makes these films exceptional is the weighty sense of a fleeting, ephemeral moment that will never happen again. I’ve thought about this, but never been able to articulate the concept as finely and viscerally as the combination present in this series does.

So often I’ll see an exceptional performance in a venue, and the next time I’m there I might think of what took place on that very stage. But the moment is gone and will never happen exactly the same way again. This series crystallizes that into footage and teases it out to the forefront — the way that musical creations dissipate, and how they are fleeting by their inherent nature.

Baby, we only got today, and then the moment’s gone forever.

WILCO: Muzzle of Bees
(Burn to Shine Chicago, 2002)

Muzzle of Bees (Burn to Shine version) – Wilco

SLEATER-KINNEY: Modern Girl
(Burn to Shine Portland, 2003)

Modern Girl (Burn to Shine version) – Sleater-Kinney

EDDIE VEDDER: Can’t Keep
(Burn to Shine Seattle, 2005) – I love this house’s architecture

Can’t Keep (Burn to Shine version) – Eddie Vedder

Read the excellent full listing of who has played for this series, and if this concept interests you, you must listen to the podcast interview with Brendan Canty about the series. Canty talks about how the concept got started during a period when Fugazi was undergoing a time of flux and dissolution, and how he wanted to capture that feeling somehow through this old building that fell into his lap. It’s a fascinating and brilliant concept, and a series deserving of further development.

Vol 1: Washington DC (2001)
Vol 2: Chicago (2002)
Vol 3: Portland (2003)
Vol 4: Louisville (not yet released)
Vol 5: Seattle (2005)


Burn to Shine 4-DVD complete set

February 7, 2008

yeah all those stars drip down like butter

About fifteen minutes into the Kurt Cobain film About A Son, I realized that I was a little confused. This was not a traditional documentary-style visual narrative that I had been expecting, but rather something that unfolds slowly and rewards your patience.

About A Son has been on the film festival circuit since 2006, and is finally seeing DVD release February 19th (the day before Kurt’s 41st birthday) through Shout Factory. The film is narrated entirely by Kurt’s own voice (and, in the background, that of the interviewer/author Michael Azerrad) in conversations recorded in the after-midnight, predawn hours at Kurt’s home in Seattle. These were taped between December ’92 and March ’93 for Azerrad’s book Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana [Main Street Books, 1993].

Rather than trying to go back and recreate Kurt’s precise steps through a landscape that just doesn’t exist anymore, director AJ Schnack decides to accompany the story with an anonymous amalgamam of 35mm-shot images, panoramas, and stream-of-consciousness visual narratives. It reminded me of taking a car ride somewhere with Kurt and watching out the window as he talked. No images of the band even show up until 58 minutes in, no live footage of Kurt at all (other than some haunting still shots before the credits). As he muses, there are drive-by shots of rundown houses of Aberdeen, or a forklift loading a stack of logs, or a dead bird’s raw flesh on the seashore. There are faces of random people from the towns he lived, looking unflinchingly into the lens.

The images seem obscure sometimes; they’re often not tidily connected to exactly what Kurt is talking about, but as you watch, interesting parallels start to appear. For example when he’s sharing his thoughts on fame and the press and journalists, suddenly you realize we’re watching a sea lion swimming around in captivity through an aquarium glass in Seattle. In a way the visuals highlight the relative anonymity of most of his life, how he could have been anyone, just another alienated kid. It’s a thread that is echoed in Kurt’s own words, when Azerrad asks him, “Is yours a sad story?” He pauses and then he says, “It’s nothing that’s amazing or anything new . . . that’s for sure.”

Kurt talks circuitously through themes of alienation, sexuality, fame, marriage, success, art, community, and at several points he also makes reference to blowing his own head off to escape the pain in his stomach. Much is revealed about his life and his way of processing things that I had never heard. It’s intimate and sad at the very end where we hear Courtney’s voice break into the interview, middle-of-the-night, new-parent exhausted, asking Kurt to bring up a Similac bottle when he comes up, and not to forget.

The eclectic music used in the film goes admirably beyond the tired-out strategy of using famous Seattle music to talk about Seattle films. Instead, the music is a literal soundtrack to this particular story, to this particular life. There are some bands that Kurt talks about loving, ones like Queen from his early years, and also lesser-known musical contemporaries that he talks about admiring. It’s diverse: you’ve got Arlo Guthrie singin’ about riding on his motorcycle, and also R.E.M.’s “New Orleans Instrumental No. 1″ overlying a dizzyingly-colored surreal segment on drug use.

I appreciated how the songs tease out the conflicts between what Kurt saw and what he felt; for example, the brilliant juxtaposition of the Big Black song “”Kerosene” (“I was born in this town, lived here my whole life, probably come to die in this town”) and a cheery librarian shelving books at the golden glow of the Aberdeen public library where he would go when he had nowhere else to stay warm and occupied during his young & hungry days.

The original score by Steve Fisk and (Death Cab For Cutie’s) Ben Gibbard is ethereal, echoey, unsettling. I ripped the song that plays at the end of the film over the black and white pictures of Kurt laying on stage wailing his guitar, then held high atop the hands of the crowd, sitting on an unmade bed with mournful eyes, steadying Frances Bean as she tries to take a step. It’s the only images I recall of Kurt in the film. The score is out on vinyl through Barsuk, also on February 19th.

Ending Credits (Chaos & Resolution?) – Steve Fisk & Benjamin Gibbard

Star Sign – Teenage Fanclub
(this was in the film –when he’s talking about Courtney– but not on the soundtrack)

Asking For It (w/ Kurt on backing vocals) – Hole

ABOUT A SON TRAILER

PRE-ORDER THE DVD

GIVEAWAY: Leave me a comment with some thoughts and a way to contact you if you would like to be considered for the About A Son DVD I have to giveaway.

January 9, 2008

Into The Wild demos from Eddie Vedder

How in the world did I not consider Ed Vedder’s Into The Wild soundtrack album when I made up my best-of 2007 list? I think it’s a richly nuanced, evocative collection that’s perfectly suited to the weight of the film – you can read my thoughts on it here. Since the finished product is so grand, I was very excited to discover that some of his work-in-progress demos for the soundtrack have made their way onto the internet. Enjoy.

INTO THE WILD DEMOS
Guaranteed (Humming version demo) – Eddie Vedder
Guaranteed (demo 2) – Eddie Vedder [full lyrics jpg here]
Hard Sun (instrumental) – Eddie Vedder
No Ceiling (demo) – Eddie Vedder
Rise (demo) – Eddie Vedder
The Wolf (demo) – Eddie Vedder

ZIP: INTO THE WILD DEMOS

These are from the excellent new Pearl Jam b-sides site http://www.gremmie.net/bsides/

Also — a music video from Eddie? If you haven’t seen it yet:

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January 2, 2008

Gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle

This song keeps looping in my head tonight. I just finished watching Waitress which was more complex than I had thought, not just about baking pastries in a small town. Keri Russell plays a waitress with heart in a small town who bakes amazing pies. Her husband doesn’t support her dreams, the joy she finds in creating something small and sweet that makes people smile and brings joy into their day. As her belly grows with pregnancy, something begins to ferment and rise within her as she flirts with the ideas of other roads for her life to follow.

This charming melody is something that she sings a few times in the film while she bakes, a lullaby and a little love song. It’s bluegrass-tinged, a little sugary, and not at all rock and roll, but I’m a sap for good sweet singable melodies for kids, so I ripped this one and already do a pretty mean rendition.

Baby Don’t You Cry – Quincy Coleman
[there’s some good stuff on her MySpace, check it]

In addition to making me hum the Tori Amos song “Waitress” all day (which is not on the soundtrack), the film also included tunes from the likes of Cake, The Bottle Rockets, and these two:

You’re Gonna Get It – Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings [link]
The Electric Love Letter – Langhorne Slim [link]

December 21, 2007

Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova (Once) cover “Into The Mystic”

One of the most highly acclaimed musically-infused movies to come out this year, Once is the story of a Dublin busker who works part-time in a vacuum repair shop instead of living out his musical calling (Glen Hansard of the Irish band The Frames and The Swell Season), and the musical connection that he forms over the course of a week with a fellow struggling artist, a not-yet-twenty year old street vendor from the Czech Republic who happens to play the piano (Marketa Irglova, the other half of Swell Season).

You’ve probably seen the lush and lovely soundtrack that they made popping up on year-end Best of 2007 lists all over the place, and with good reason. This particular cover is a bonus track on some special editions of the soundtrack, and it is jaw-droppingly good. Although it starts winsome and delicate, it builds into moments of heartfelt intensity. The song always ends too soon, so I have to back up and listen to it over again.

Into The Mystic (Van Morrison cover) – Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova

The DVD came out this week in the U.S., which is something that my Netflix queue is thrilled about.

* * * * * * * * *
In unrelated news, this kinda restored some of my faith in humanity this morning as I read the paper over my cup of coffee. Religious or not, I thought it was an inspiring story of giving this time of year, and what we are capable of.

November 9, 2007

“Hey girl, does your mom sell insurance? ‘Cos I wanna have sex with you” (*kiss*)

In addition to humorously and gently mocking multi-instrumental indie rock spectacles (“Well, the band that’s playing tonight has three triangle players“), this short film will also help you bring your A-Game to whatever activities this weekend has in store for you.

Jake Troth (a musician we love ’round these parts) helped produce and stars in this 3-minute film for the Apple Insomnia Film Festival. It’s an innovative student competition where teams are given a list of elements to include in their film (props, dialogue, setting, etc) and they have just 24 hours to write, cast, shoot, edit, score, and upload their creation. Watch as Jake tries to muster up the stuff to pick up on a rocker chick out on the Georgia pier, then is magically transported to a desert, where he gets help from a very special mystical friend . . . his A-Game.

A-GAME

That made me laugh. I don’t recommend using those pick-up lines — although she might feel so bad for you, you’d win sympathy points.

Today is the last day to vote for this short film in the competition.
DO it.

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October 23, 2007

I now walk into the wild

This past weekend, Into The Wild finally trickled down to those of us not located in big glamorous cities. I promise not to wreck it for you if you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, these are just a few of my thoughts after having done both this past week.

Components of McCandless’ grand Alaskan adventure tug relentlessly and almost perniciously at some loose threads inside me. I suspect that elements of following your passion with such unbridled drive and joy touch many of us on some level, which is why the book sold so well, and why the movie was made. I was glad I had read the book first, shading the characters, the motivations, filling in the missing chunks, but the movie was very faithful to the book.

The movie review in our local paper said that McCandless was “sanctimonious and arrogant,” and that sat so wrong with me. I surely didn’t know McCandless, and it’s easy to forget after the book and the film and a big-name soundtrack that he was actually a real person. But more than anything to me, he seemed sincere, even if the misguided optimism about his odds of success in the wild ended up fatal.

As one interviewee in the book named Sleight said, while relating Chris with another wilderness wanderer who was profiled named Everett Ruess: “Everett was strange, kind of different. But him and and McCandless, at least they tried to follow their dream. That was what was great about them. They tried. Not many do.” That, for me, was the core of the story.

I noticed that McCandless seemed to deeply affect everyone whose lives he came into, like a bolt of lightning. Everyone interviewed for the book remembered him well, much better than your standard vagrant who enters your life for a few hours or days, for a meal or a ride. But you know, I found myself empathizing with the people that McCandless left behind at every stop along the way, after he took what he needed from them — be it conversation, a father figure, travel advice, a laugh, a discussion of literature, the bouncing off of ideas and philosophical concepts. Like a blue-green bolt of ephemeral electricity he lit up their skies for a moment. But very soon, the wanderlust inside him compelled him to travel on. Everyone seemed to feel a gaping void there after Chris left, something you see especially vividly in the movie. Maybe he’s one of those shooting stars that you almost wish you’d never crossed paths with at all because everything seems dimmer in their absence, the afterglow they leave behind radiating off the otherwise dull grey walls around you.

How does the music complement the film? Very well, as I suspected. Vedder’s scoring is bittersweet and powerful, especially a memorable scene with “The Wolf,” where Vedder sounds his barbaric yawp over the roofs of this world (or actually the treeline of the Alaskan wilderness) as McCandless stands with arms outstretched on top of his bus-home, feeling the pull and glory of the wilderness. Vedder’s unselfconscious animal cries made the little hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

One specific lyric on the soundtrack that I keep rolling around in my mind is found in the song “Guaranteed.” Vedder sings “Circles they grow and they swallow people whole…” I keep thinking of what he may have meant by this line. I come up with more than one circle. Anyone who has ever found a certain idea hard to leave behind knows the exhaustion that comes with continuing to revisit it, as it soaks up the attention and the circle gets stronger in our minds. I wonder if McCandless escaped the beige circles of mediocre daily living, only to find himself pursuing a more savage circle of Alaskan wilderness. Both will swallow you whole.

Which one is worse?

Guaranteed – Eddie Vedder

Now that I am done reading Into the Wild, I have moved on to Cormac McCarthy‘s The Road and it is currently scaring the absolute bejesus out of me with its incinerated post-apocalyptic vision. More on that later but sheesh.

October 20, 2007

Exclusive! Eddie Vedder & The Million Dollar Bashers, “All Along The Watchtower”

The new Dylan biopic I’m Not There takes the interesting, surrealistic angle of illustrating Bob at different stages of his life through the rubric of six distinctively different actors (including a black man and a woman): Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Ben Whishaw, and Christian Bale. I am very curious to see how this works itself out in the film – at least it’s a fresh angle (I mean, how many Dylan movies can you make?).

In addition to this creative lens used in the film to examine the man himself, the soundtrack is a double disc jamboree of some pretty cool Dylan covers, including disc 1, track 1 with Eddie Vedder & The Million Dollar Bashers covering “All Along The Watchtower.” Fuel/Friends is pleased as punch to get an exclusive stream for you guys to take your first listen of this!

EDDIE VEDDER & THE MILLION DOLLAR BASHERS
“All Along The Watchtower”

Stream FLASH
Stream QUICKTIME
Stream WINDOWS MEDIA

And who are said Million Dollar Bashers? It’s Wilco’s god-like guitarist Nels Cline, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley (from Sonic Youth), bass player Tony Garnier, keyboardist John Medeski (from Martin, Medeski and Wood), and guitarist Smokey Hormel (onetime Beck guitarist, Smokey & Miho). I never thought I’d hear musicians from those bands all jam together. The guitar solo (assumedly from Nels?) is pretty blazing, and Vedder’s got the seething caged scream goin’ on.

Historical tie-in from last summer: there was an absolutely scorching live version of this song that full-band Pearl Jam did in San Francisco (when Sonic Youth opened), climaxing in a very rock n roll moment of Mike McCready giving his guitar the Townshend treatment and then surfing on it across the stage. PJ has played Watchtower 4 times live before, but that was my favorite. If you’d like to hear that one as well, the link over on that old post still surprisingly works.

You can also stream four other full songs from the biopic over on the soundtrack’s MySpace (the ones by Sufjan Stevens, Cat Power, Jeff Tweedy, and Jim James with Calexico). Among others, I’m also looking forward to hearing Mason Jennings’ two contributions, The Black Keys cover of Wicked Messenger, and The Hold Steady enticing me to climb out my window. The soundtrack is out October 30, and the film opens Thanksgiving weekend.

NEW CONTEST:
Would you like to win one of two copies I have to giveaway of this lovely double disc? Of course you would. Leave me a comment to enter, make sure I have a way to contact you (might wanna spell out that email addy), and if you feel so inclined, please let’s talk about your favorite Dylan cover. So I can wrap this up before I head to NYC, this contest ends Wednesday at midnight.


I’M NOT THERE (FULL SOUNDTRACK LISTING)
Disc 1
1. Eddie Vedder & the Million Dollar Bashers: “All Along the Watchtower”
2. Sonic Youth: “I’m Not There”
3. Jim James and Calexico: “Goin’ to Acapulco”
4. Richie Havens: “Tombstone Blues”
5. Stephen Malkmus & the Million Dollar Bashers: “Ballad of a Thin Man”
6. Cat Power: “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again”
7. John Doe: “Pressing On”
8. Yo La Tengo: “Fourth Time Around”
9. Iron and Wine and Calexico: “Dark Eyes”
10. Karen O and the Million Dollar Bashers: “Highway 61 Revisited”
11. Roger McGuinn and Calexico: “One More Cup of Coffee”
12. Mason Jennings: “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”
13. Los Lobos: “Billy”
14. Jeff Tweedy: “Simple Twist of Fate”
15. Mark Lanegan: “The Man in the Long Black Coat”
16. Willie Nelson and Calexico: “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)”

Disc 2
1. Mira Billotte: “As I Went Out One Morning”
2. Stephen Malkmus and Lee Ranaldo: “Can’t Leave Her Behind”
3. Sufjan Stevens: “Ring Them Bells”
4. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Calexico: “Just Like a Woman”
5. Jack Johnson: “Mama You’ve Been on My Mind”
6. Yo La Tengo: “I Wanna Be Your Lover”
7. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova: “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”
8. The Hold Steady: “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window”
9. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”
10. The Black Keys: “Wicked Messenger”
11. Tom Verlaine and the Million Dollar Bashers: “Cold Irons Bound”
12. Mason Jennings: “The Times They Are a-Changin’”
13. Stephen Malkmus and the Million Dollar Bashers: “Maggie’s Farm”
14. Marcus Carl Franklin: “When the Ship Comes In”
15. Bob Forrest: “Moonshiner”
16. John Doe: “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine”
17. Antony and the Johnsons: “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”
18. Bob Dylan: “I’m Not There”

[Vedder photo credit Kerensa Wight, header image credit Playlist]

October 6, 2007

Live Forever & the Britpop explosion (“I’ve been on the shelf too long / now it’s time to hear my song”)

Britain in the mid-90s was a chaotic, creative, music-centric place to be. As Thatcher’s tenure as PM ended and a fresh start began under Tony Blair and the New Labour party, there was a simultaneous crackle and thrum of musical vibrancy that is explored in the 2003 documentary Live Forever (by filmmaker John Dower). On the surface it’s the story of the music, the “Britpop sound” and those who made it, but it also tries to get deeper underneath to look at the society at that moment and what fed this burgeoning supernova.

As a complete outsider to this specific moment in world history myself, but a fan of the music that ended up on my plate because of it, I thought it was fascinating to see one view of the context behind it. As Louise Wener from the band Sleeper says of those days, “There was a sense of a kind of excitement that something was changing — perhaps this music was foreshadowing something else.” The documentary undertakes the Herculean task of trying to examine the music through the social and political context of the mid-90s, teasing out its larger implications to the fabric of a generation. This is always tricky.

The story is mostly told through first person interviews from those who were there. You’ve got the big three represented in Oasis, Blur and Pulp, but also a number of other musicians and commentators. These conversations were illuminating and entertaining — not counting a few statements of general unfair snobbery related to my own culture, like “Americans have tremendous confidence, but not much talent,” and one remark that I obviously vehemently disagreed with regarding Seattle music of the time: “The only really decent group were Nirvana” (I said “Unh!” to myself and looked around at no one else sitting there with me, in indignation).

Along with snippets of music videos, concerts, newsclips and articles, the interviews carry the bulk of the story. Damon Albarn seems to have grown up quite a bit, his segments were pensive and thoughtful, accompanied by his strumming on a ukulele. Jarvis Cocker had some fantastic stories of those years and I enjoyed hearing his articulate reflection (but really, whatever he says, I just love his voice – deliciously smarmy and all rich velvet molasses). Liam was a complete wanker for most of his bits –so secure in his obvious awesomeness, relentlessly turning questions back around on the filmmakers, giving evasive answers, sitting there with that haircut and those mirrored shades sounding like he’s got a mouthful of marbles– but Noel was hilarious and awesome. Example: Towards the end, Noel’s talking about how they were in a studio one day next door to the prepubescent dance-pop of S Club 7, and how he seriously thought they were “special needs kids” there for a tour of the studios and for the free food. Touche.

The film goes through the peak years of the Britpop sound, which were right smack in the middle of my high school years — a time when pretty much every single act coming out of Britain making pop/rock music was tagged part of “The Britpop Movement.” As surely as so-called “grunge bands” of ’90s Seattle shrugged away from the label, many of these Britpop bands weren’t thrilled with the simplistic categorization, but it did create a crackling excitement and level of buzz for their music that took them places they otherwise wouldn’t have gone just a decade prior.

So which Britain was it?

Is it the carefree abandonment of youth epitomized by Supergrass frolicking on the beach, singing lines like:

We are young, we run green, keep our teeth, nice and clean
see our friends, see the sights, feel alright

We wake up, we go out, smoke a fag, put it out
see our friends, see the sights, feel alright

But we are young, we get by, can’t go mad, ain’t got time
Sleep around, if we like, but we’re alright

The disaffected uncertainty (yet faith in music) of The Verve in “This Is Music”?

I stand accused, just like you
for being born without a silver spoon
Stood at the top of a hill
Over my town I was found

I’ve been on the shelf too long
Sitting at home on my bed too long
Got my things and now I’m gone
How’s the world gonna take me?

. . . Well music is my life and loved by me
I’m gonna move on the floor with my sweet young thing
Down down down, down we go
till I reach the bottom of my soul
This is music

Blur’s cocky questioning of having it all in “Parklife”?
The paranoia and ‘the sound of loneliness turned up to ten’ of Pulp’s “Fear”?
The indomitable conviction that you and I are gonna live forever?

Listening to the variety of sounds coming out of Britain at the time –all classified by someone or another as Britpop– shows you a bit of how meaningless the term really was. In the film, an interviewer asks Jarvis Cocker of Pulp as he sits on his bed by an open window, curtain fluttering in the breeze, about how his song Common People was called by one reviewer, “the perfect encapsulation of the Britpop aesthetic.” Jarvis just shakes his head, sighs a little, and says, “Oh no.”

Regardless of what it all means (and really, who knows what it all means), this is good music, and the film is 86 minutes well spent.

I had a lot of fun putting this mix together after watching the documentary, combining songs I remember liking the first time around with new discoveries and recommendations from friends on that side of the Pond. According to the film, the Britpop sound inhabited a relatively ephemeral period of time, starting ’round 1992, hitting boiling point in April ’94 with the release of Blur’s Parklife, followed in August by Oasis’ Definitely Maybe. In a similar scene that echoes the film Hype!, bands were getting signed at the height of the frenzy after having played together for mere weeks, with only a handful of songs written.

Some say that the death of the era came with a resounding thud in August ’97 with the release of the cocaine haze manifesto Be Here Now by Oasis. Other say it ended more around the time that footballer Gareth Southgate missed a penalty kick in the Euro ’96 semifinals against Germany. Come on. Is an era that exact? Go ahead and argue either way, influences started before then and the sound carried on after, but I’ve tried to mostly focus my own little mix in the thick of things, from ’94-’97.

And as with any label, you can debate it til the cows come home who fits into the category or not, so some of these may not gel in your mind as Britpop. I lack the immediate expert knowledge in this area, being more of a “grunge rock” girl myself when this was all going down (I shudder at that term, see?!). Snag the whole zip, enjoy the flow for some perfect weekend listening. In general, these make me feel a jaunty sense of optimism — and maybe slightly disaffected, but such were the Nineties, right?



THE FUEL/FRIENDS BRITPOP MIX:
Waterfall – The Stone Roses
Alright – Supergrass
God! Show Me Magic – Super Furry Animals
This Is Music – Verve
Parklife – Blur
Kelly’s Heroes – Black Grape
Common People (live at Melkweg 1995) – Pulp
Interview clip from Knebworth ’96 – Noel Gallagher

(discussing Kula Shaker & Liam’s Musical Tastes)
Hey Dude – Kula Shaker
Alright (live at Glastonbury) – Cast
Change – The Lightning Seeds
Faster – Manic Street Preachers
Wake Up Boo – The Boo Radleys
Lenny Valentino – The Auteurs
Line Up – Elastica
Step Into My World – Hurricane #1
Animal Nitrate – Suede
Hundred Mile City – Ocean Colour Scene
Getting Better – Shed Seven
She Makes My Nose Bleed – Mansun
Girl From Mars – Ash
Be My Light, Be My Guide (live) – Gene
The Fear – Pulp
The Only One I Know – The Charlatans
Live Forever (live at Glastonbury) – Oasis

ZIP FILE: FUEL/FRIENDS BRITPOP MIX

It’s worth noting that although some of these groups didn’t survive the end of the decade, many of them have gone on continue recording music that is just as good (and in may cases better) than their mid-Nineties output. Verve is reuniting and touring, Jarvis Cocker has a swanky euro-cool solo album out now, I rather liked Ocean Colour Scene’s last one, and Ash just rocked my world with their newest single. Media frenzy or no, the talent lasts.

It’s as James (the band from Manchester) said in the fantastic smack of their 1998 song “Destiny Calling”:

So we may be gorgeous, so we may be famous —
come back when we’re getting old.”

September 27, 2007

I can feel the earth begin to move, I hear my needle hit the groove

[2003 Glastonbury photo credit]

Two nights ago I watched the 2003 Britpop documentary Live Forever (more on that later), which begins by laying a foundation of the music scene in Nineties England from the initial impact of the Stone Roses — so I smiled today when this fantastic cover version came up on a mix I’d made.

Yorn: “So like I said, this is hot shit for us to be over here at Glastonbury. We come from the U.S. of A and this is a very exotic festival that we love and we’re happy to be here and we’re huge fans of the music over here and blah blah blah . . . This is from Manchester, okay?

She Bangs The Drums (Stone Roses cover, live at Glastonbury 2003) – Pete Yorn
(apparently this is encoded at a rate that streaming doesn’t agree with. Until I can fix it, if you download it, it sounds fine; if you click the blue arrow, you get Alvin & The Chipmunks singing the Stone Roses, which is actually a whole different kind of interesting)

Speaking of she bangs the drum, I could not stop my own personal rhythm section pattered out onto my legs last night at the screening of the Pearl Jam documentary. Seeing and hearing Immagine in Cornice on the big screen with all the glorious surround-sound was an immense experience of live PJ fabulousness. My personal highlights were the renditions of Blood (ugh, love that song), Come Back (sheerly absurdly gorgeous), and a compelling ending of Rockin’ In The Free World with every single Italian audience member’s hands raised in the air, clapping along in unison.

In addition to the beautifully-done cinematic treatment of their live shows, the documentary also offered some very interesting behind-the-scenes glimpses: the urgent reorganization of the encore setlist backstage while the crowd screams for more, Jeff skateboarding at some deserted Italian skatepark, Ed and his daughter Olivia talking on the tour bus (and how cute is she?), a bunch of Italian kids sitting on the street belting out a passionate acoustic rendition of Porch. Stone barely made an appearance (it’s all Stone’s fault) and not surprisingly I would have liked for it to be longer so they could have shown more of what goes on that we don’t see onstage. But overall, solid A. If I can’t see PJ live this year, heck I’ll settle for last night. Thanks to all who came out for an awesome experience, it was moltissimo fun.

Finally, the road to Denver will again be my buddy tonight as I head back up to see the Ike Reilly Assassination at the Larimer Lounge. Last time he was here it was acoustic and still mind-blowing, so I am very excited to get the full band baptism. I highly recommend this show if you can make it out.

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Bio Pic Name: Heather Browne
Location: Colorado, originally by way of California
Giving context to the torrent since 2005.

"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

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. Rock on.

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