File Under: Stuff I Happen Upon While Surfing the Net

Whenever 'artists' like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, or bands like Dream Theater come up in conversation (and you be surprised how often that is) I always say that my problem with such "virtuosos" is that as impressive as it is that they can play however many notes a second and in 65/19 time its boring. Its not music, its just a dexterity exhibition. Now fast-forward to today when I'm reading an article about the beginnings of Mtv. As everyone knows the first video played on Mtv was the Buggles 'Video Killed the Radio Star' but did you know that the first video played on Mtv in Europe was Dire Straits' 'Money For Nothing.' First I went and watched that video, but then I began watching more and that led me to this little gem. I believe that this is simply Mark Knopfler with backing band and not actually Dire Straits. Note how, while Knopfler plays incredibly intricate guitar parts, they are all as tasteful as you could possibly want. No lead riff distracts from the rest of the song, no solo goes on a second too long, and even the classical instrumental section at the end of the video fits perfectly and doesn't overstay its welcome. It's an incredibly dynamic little jam section.



Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing

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Dire Straits

Jenny Lewis vs. Everybody - Round II

A while ago I made a post in which I mentioned Neko Case (here). This led to a discussion in the comments, fueled by my fellow blogger Greg, about Neko Case's beauty and in particular how it compared to Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley. It was eventually decided that Jenny Lewis won. Now there is a new challenger to the throne; Alison Mosshart of the bands Discount, The Kills, and most recently, the Dead Weather. The format of will be as follows: live photos, staged photos, video, and finally music from each. As reigning indie-queen, Jenny Lewis will lead off in each category.

Rilo Kiley - A Better Son/Daughter

Rilo Kiley - Does He Love You?

Discount - On The Counter

The Kills - Cheap and Cheerful

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Rilo Kiley
Discount
The Kills

Songs to Blow Your Mind Pt. 7

I'm really on a tear with these songs with female vocals. This song gets stuck in my head every time I listen to it.



Tegan and Sara- The Con

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Tegan and Sara

This movie is going to be awesome.

Between being about roller derby's and starring Ellen Page (From X-men not Juno) and it appears Alia Shawkat (from the best television show ever made) this movie looks awesome. Course I've been wrong before. It just doesn't happen much. Like, ever.



Bikini Kill - Rebel Girl

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Bikini Kill

When it's time to party....

Its been quite a little while since we took a look at Keegan's blog reader, and today seems as good a day as any to remedy that. Today's blog is one I discovered while attempting to find out more about this video:

mostly because it looked like the coolest place ever. Further looking took me to the blog of the girl who had posted the video. About once a week, she posts a link to something I find fairly amusing such as the Sexy People Blog. And recently she posted this:




Andrew W.K. - She is Beautiful

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Andrew W.K.

A Dark Day

Hey Keegan, why do you get really grumpy when bands you like move to Major labels? Oh I don't know, everyone ever, maybe because major labels do stuff like this:

Punknews has informed me that EMI Group has begun informing small independent record stores that they will no longer be sending them new product. Because clearly the way to save the music industry is to only sell your cds in places frequented by music fans, like, you know, Walmart. I'm not going to say too much more about this lest I slip and spew bile and hatred across my keyboard but in closing, here is the list of bands you should no longer feel any compunction about downloading illegally (chalk that up to things I can say because no one really reads this).

Broken Social Scene - Major Label Debut

The Yarbles - Labels

Rise Against - Sometimes Selling Out is Giving Up (bit of irony there)

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Broken Social Scene
The Yarbles Old band from my youth in Vermont, this was the best I could do
Rise Against

Review: Lemuria - Get Better

A while ago I got my hands on the most recent album by the Buffalo, NY indie/punk (Wikipedia's words not mine) outfit Lemuria. If you'll recall, it was at around this time that I began seriously rethinking my ban on female fronted bands and this album had a huge amount to do with it. This was one of those albums where at first I really just liked the opening track, the soaring love song, Pants. But as I gave the rest of the album more of my attention I realized that I liked almost every song on the album.

It's tempting to call it straight ahead boy-girl vocals pop punk (the good kind), but with a little something extra whether that's the male harmony vocal on Buzz, the gender-bending lyricism on Lipstick or the poignant narrative of Wardrobe (can you tell I really like this album?). I would recommend this album for fans of The Smoking Popes, The Unlovables, and maybe the Mr. T Experience (but without quite so much whimsy). And yeah I threw The Unlovables in there partly because they have a female lead singer, but at least I didn't do one of those FFO lists like "Rilo Kiley, Rainer Maria, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Metric." Because I hate those.



Lemuria - Pants
Lemuria - Lipstick
Lemuria - Buzz

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Lemuria

Songs to Blow Your Mind Pt. 5

Let me start by saying that I am not a huge fan of Bob Marley and the Wailers (for one thing this is a Peter Tosh number). Nor am I that huge a fan of reggae in general. But good is good and I have had this song stuck in my head for days now. To me, this song has a lot of 60's Soul sound to it rather than straight ahead irie dub vibes.



Bob Marley and the Wailers - Stop That Train

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Bob Marley and the Wailers