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]

Monday Music Roundup

It’s already a new week? One thing that flew past me in the craziness of last week was a mention of the new Contrast Podcast that I contributed to, where a bunch of us bloggers get together to virtually DJ a radio show. The theme last week was Who? and I finally contributed a most excellent Pearl Jam track (“Who You Are”). I held out on the PJ for a while but hey, what do you expect?

This upcoming week Tim will be putting together Contrast Podcast #18 wherein all of us were supposed to submit an instrumental track and then SING OUR INTRO. I confess, I recorded one and then buckled. I listened to it, buckled, and didn’t send it. I can sing, but geez that felt too vulnerable. I’ll be interested to see who had the cajones to submit for this week’s podcast. In the meantime, listen to last week’s for some mind-expanding variety & good tunes.

Chains
Danielia Cotton
Swanky, bluesy, delicious. Danielia Cotton hit the music scene with a bang last year with her Small White Town debut album (HipShake Music). This is a raw, soulful, dust-on-the-front-porch album from Danielia, who alternately shares some of the growl of Joss Stone, the blues-rock of the Black Crowes, and the vocal chops of Janis Joplin. She combines her skills on the guitar with an appreciation of all the musical greats that came before her, and the result is fresh and highly recommended.

So Good To Me
Sam Champion
Now despite the name, Sam Champion is a quartet from New York, not just one guy named Sam (they apparently named their band after a weatherman from a 1974 TV show). Thanks to my pal Chad for enthusiastically recommending this Ryan Adams-fronting-Pavement sound. He said I would be humming the main riff (from this track off their 2005 album Slow Rewind, Razor & Tie) and I have been all morning. A spirited alt-country shout-out chorus with handclaps & some fierce electric guitars; I like it.

Reconstruction Site
The Weakerthans
I am just rediscovering The Weakerthans; an old friend slipped me their Left and Leaving disc back in 2000, and I promptly lost it in a box of stuff when I was moving. I just found it this weekend and have been listening ever since, and catching up on what they’ve done since then. This track is off their 2003 follow-up to Left and Leaving, the weathered sounds of the Reconstruction Site album. If you’ve never heard these guys, give all their work a spin. They have a quirky blend of several influences, from country to punk to indie folksy — all wrapped with bitingly intelligent lyrics. It’s those lyrics that make me want to listen again and again. On this track, there’s a simple line that nonetheless conveys perfectly a sense of unease: “I’m your dress near the back of your knees and your slip is showing.”


Bucket Full Of Nails
Centro-Matic
I swore I wrote something about Centro-Matic a few months ago when I discovered the loose & beautiful sound of these Texas indie-alt-rock-country guys. But I guess not, so now I get to recommend that you take a listen to their newest disc Fort Recovery (Misra Records) which has a melancholy sweet air permeating the whole thing. One reviewer wrote that it captures “that time just before the sun goes down when everything looks burnished and beautiful, but also a little sad” and I completely agree. This piano track also has a lazy touch of Jagger or Wayne Coyne on the vocals.

Into The Groove
Sonic Youth. Covering Madonna. Seriously.
You all know that I love covers, and I will argue that the very best of the covers are the ones that take the original and turn it into something completely new — Exhibit A: Cat Power, “Satisfaction.” Exhibit B: This damn song. The torchbearers of mid-90s-fuzzy-rock, Sonic Youth, slog their way through Madonna’s slumber party favorite and, well, there’s something special about Thurston Moore’s voice cracking on the high notes. Whose idea was this? (thx Matt)

BONUS RECOMMENDED READING: I found that I could relate to about 20 things in this article by the Heather from Dooce, detailing her college years of loving ’90s music and BritPop, studying abroad in London and going on an Oasis history hunt, and reflections on how (to her Mormon ears), “the heartbreak in Kurt Cobain’s voice was to me what it would sound like to violate all the ten commandments at the same time.”

Ha.

“Monday” Music Roundup, holiday edition

Good morning, champs. Did everyone (in countries where they celebrate Memorial Day, i.e. the U-S-of-A) have a nice long weekend? Sunburns, BBQ-overdose, and hangovers? Check. Plus, Brad and Angelina had their new little girl (name translated means “New Messiah” – sign of the endtimes?) so, you know, I can breathe easier now. And maybe now I can schedule that trip to Namibia without needing written permission from them. Gotta love when rich Western celebrities are allowed to buy off the immigration officials in poor developing nations. It’s just so comforting.

Here are five songs that I rocked repeatedly on my recent California trip. By the way, I managed to squeeze in one more In’N'Out meal, bringing the total to two of the world’s best burgers in 3 days. Can you hear my arteries screaming?

Pink Steam
Sonic Youth
Nobody sounds exactly like Sonic Youth. They have a unique free-form sound all unto themselves that remains consistent (but fresh) over 25 years and more than a dozen releases. I am really, really liking this song (off their new album Rather Ripped, due June 13) for reasons I can’t completely articulate. Something about the volatile combination between the brooding heavy undertones and the harmonic accent notes, the fact that it is mostly instrumental, and the driving drumbeat. It is the perfect accompaniment to driving along a dark and winding California highway, looking at the crescent moon.

Move By Yourself
Donavon Frankenreiter
This is an enjoyable summer tune, a sonic hybrid reminiscent of the Isley Brothers and Jack Johnson getting down together. The opening minute is pretty smokin’ and the new album is more of a funk-groove manifesto than the laid-back surf sounds of his first disc. From Frankenreiter‘s upcoming sophomore release Move By Yourself (out June 6 on Lost Highway Records).

Broader a New Sound
Nobody & Mystic Chords of Memory
My eye was first drawn to this single because of Devendra Banhart’s involvement with it (he covers one of their songs called The Seed/La Semilla as a b-side here). But in the process I was introduced to a new artist. Nobody & Mystic Chords of Memory is a L.A.-based trio who has come out with a light and lively combination of toe-tapping trip-hop and summery folk music here, with slightly off-kilter Shins-eqsue vocals. Quirky and radio-friendly.

Where is My Boy?
Faultline (featuring Chris Martin)
c featured this song over at her blog, Scatter O’Light last week and I am loving it, the layered and fuzzy-dark feel. I have decided that for some reason, I apparently like Martin much better on guest vocals than as part of Coldplay. This is like the third guest vocal I’ve featured by him. He has such an emotive wail. From Faultline’s 2004 disc Your Love Means Everything.

L’Hotel
Michael Stipe
If I had to pick my three top vocalists EVER, Michael Stipe would be in that top triumvirate. He is unparalleled in sexy velvety smoothness, I could listen to him sing-talk all day (“Belong” is one of my favorite R.E.M. tunes for that reason). And then when he breaks into that naked and vulnerable falsetto, nothing compares. This is a mysterious Serge Gainsbourg tale, from the album of covers Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited, featuring everyone from Stipe to Cat Power to Marianne Faithfull to Jarvis Cocker and more. I love it. Check out that uber-smarmy album cover. If he doesn’t give you the Old-Man-Heeby-Jeebies, I don’t know what will.

Mike Watt: Ball-Hog or Tugboat?

I rocked this album probably hundreds of times in high school. All I knew is that it featured some of my favorite artists, which truthfully is why I bought it. I didn’t really know at the time the imitable punk-rock legend that Mike Watt (of the Minutemen and fIREHOSE) actually is. But it was a great introduction.

Released in 1995, Ball-Hog or Tugboat? wins for the most eclectic & confounding title in my collection. 17 tracks, Watt plays thud-staff (bass) on all of them and wrote 14 of the tracks. His steady, bumping presence is complemented by Ed Vedder, Evan Dando, Dave Pirner, Frank Black, Adam Horovitz, Mike D., Flea, Dave Grohl, Pat Smear, Krist Novoselic, Joe Baiza, J Mascis, Thurston Moore, Henry Rollins, Mark Lanegan . . . it’s just madness is what it is.

The thing that I like best about this album is its diversity. You have every type of song on here from classic pleasing (rocking) pop songs to hardcore rock, and punk, and jazzy funk, and Henry Rollins (angry! angry!). There are also great stories told throughout the songs, such as “Drove Up From Pedro,” which tells of Watt discovering punk at a Germs show in Los Angeles.

Here are three of my favorite cuts, but you gotta just buy the album because there are so many great tracks I didn’t post. I somehow got the big massively tall version (above) of the CD case, but it also comes in a nice square blue cover as well. Which would be easier to file in the ole IKEA CD cabinet.

Piss-Bottle Man – Evan Dando on vocals (golden)

Chinese Firedrill – Frank Black on vocals (*gorgeous* acoustic guitar )

E-Ticket Ride – with Mike D. and Flea (and the baby of Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore & Kim Gordon providing, uh, background vocals)

Other songs I like that I left off here are “Big Train” (little double entendre lyrical content with Dave Grohl, Ed Vedder, and J Mascis), “Against the ’70s” (with Ed Vedder, Krist Novoselic, and Dave Grohl – and didn’t that track get some radio play too?), “Sidemouse Advice” (swingin jazz with Carla Bozulich and Flea), and the title “Intense Song for Madonna to Sing” (and indeed it would be) always makes me laugh.

Mike Watt was instrumental in the Southern California post-punk movement of the ’80s, along with his band the Minutemen, and later fIREHOSE. He began playing music in his early teens, along with friend D. Boon, who would be a co-founder of the Minutemen. From his innocent beginnings (“I didn’t know what the bass was,” Watt says. “In arenas you couldn’t really hear it. But we saw on album covers that every band had a bass player, except the Doors and the Seeds. So we knew it was a big part of the band. In the pictures it looked like a guitar that had four strings. I didn’t know they were bigger. I didn’t know it was lower.”) Watt grew into a kickass & well-respected bassist.

Watt and Boon were in on the very beginnings of the Southern California punk scene, and the way it slowly began to change the face of music. Watt was there as bass became more of a crucial element in the music that he loved to make. “Before punk, bass was kind of where you put your retarded friend,” Watt theorizes. “Left field. It was a real inferiority complex dumped on me because of the bass guitar. But with punk, you had everyone lame, so all of a sudden the bass player was elevated and everybody was brought down. It was a lot more equal, and the bass drove the songs more. They were all learning, they were all beginning.”

The Minutemen released 5 albums before D. Boon’s death in 1985 in a car crash. Watt then went on with fIREHOSE to release more music (Watt says that he got the name fIREHOSE “from watching a film short of Bob Dylan doing Subterranean Homesick Blues using cue cards for the lyrics. I thought that it was funny when he held up the card that said ‘firehose’.” So there you have it.). Watt has jammed both solo and as a temporary member of bands such as Porno for Pyros, J. Mascis’ band Fog, and, most recently Iggy Pop & The Stooges. Not too shabby.

Turns out this is also a timely post because there is a wonderful documentary out about the Minutemen and their influence on the punk-rock movement. Titled “We Jam Econo — The Story of the Minutemen,” the film premiered last year in San Pedro, California, and is still making the rounds to cool venues across the U.S.

Tomorrow night (the 15th) it is playing at the Art Institute in San Francisco, and there are about a dozen other screenings worldwide in the next few months. Watt is on tour this Spring both solo and with Iggy Pop. Check out something of a punk-rock legend if he comes to your town.