Every Little Thing

I can't tell you how happy this makes me:

Original Beatles Digitally Remastered

Most Beatles music for sale is the same stuff that was put down in the late 80s on CD. Inferior transfers done on an emerging technology. We've seen just about every other major artist get the proper remaster treatment done on their stuff, except for The Beatles. For years I've held off buying the remaining albums I don't own, because I've wanted stuff that sounds better.

This is a photo of The Beatles Albums Wall, which gets a little bigger every year.

Click it to go to the Flickr page, where I've embedded a few notes, which tell the story of the individual albums in more detail.

If I ventured in the slipstream...

Holyshitholyshitholyshitholyshit!

Van Morrison To Deliver a Complete 'Astral Weeks' Concert

If you know me, if you've known me at least for the past ten years, then you know that this is my favorite album of all time. I've fallen in love over this album, bonded in friendship over this album, and written a play partly inspired by this album.

When I'm happiest, I listen to this album, and when I'm at my lowest, I listen to this album.

I pine for the long-rumored remastered edition more often than I do for the long-delayed remastered Beatles albums.

When the Duders and I went north this summer, all we did is listen to Van on the long drive to Door County.

Lester Bangs wrote a brilliant essay on this album, which I read to my Heroes and Villains cast in order to get them in the proper mind-set of the story I was trying to tell.

Just today I was listening to the last three tracks on Into the Music over and over and over again, because I was in a mood, and it helped.

I could tell other stories about this album, but they're personal.

Goddamn. I think I would rather see this concert than watch the Cubs win the World Series.

I have to figure out how to go to this show. In California. At the Hollywood Bowl.

Tickets go on sale this weekend. Wish me luck.

She Can Sing Like a Bird in a Cage

In Which I Present in Great Detail the Stuff I Listened To in the Year 2007; Wherein I List Certain Songs, Albums, or Concerts That Mattered to Me This Year; And Where I Ponder Whether Or Not I Still Pay Attention to New Music

The first fact is a cause for concern: I only saw one concert this year. The Pogues in March at the Congress Theatre.

Seriously?

No, wait. I saw Camera Obscura in February.

Still, only two concerts. Damn.

That's important, though. My mind and spending money was elsewhere this year, but that's for another post.

Okay, here's the list, making its triumphant return after taking a year off in 2006. (The winners were Belle and Sebastian and Mates of State, by the way.)


Rilo Kiley: Under the Blacklight

It might be their best album, but I don't listen to it all that much. Maybe because it makes me feel horribly dirty after I finish it. It's all random sex and skanky L.A.

The Darjeeling Limited Soundtrack

Yes, I liked the movie. And yes, I got the soundtrack. Which I like a lot. I accept my position as one of the Anderson Faithful. He is Mighty.

LCD Soundsystem: Sound of Silver

I didn't spend a lot of the year listening to new music (mostly a lot of Bob Dylan and Wagner opera, to be honest.) The albums assembled for my 2007 faves are mostly the latest offerings of bands I got into several years ago. The last time I found a new band that I went ape-shit for was Mates of State, a couple of years ago.

At least I made the decision to buy Sound of Silver, because "All My Friends" kicks fucking ass, to paraphrase Barry at Championship Vinyl. Best single I heard all year.

Paul McCartney: Memory Almost Full

I struggle with my belief in Paul McCartney like some people struggle with whether or not there's a Jesus. Over lunch on Sunday I spent a good twenty minutes discussing with my friend Eric whether or not Paul should have messed around with Let it Be.

But anyway, Paul put out a new album this year, right after a fairly decent one the year before. So he's kind of on a roll. A few songs are kind of bleah, but a good chunk of 'em are some of the best stuff I've heard Paul do in a long, long time. (The folky stomp of "Dance Tonight", for one.)

There's still the sappy, needy Paul, who wants to forever escape from Lennon's long shadow, and there's also the Paul that drags out John's name every time he starts talking about how "this album was written like me and John used to write!" And of course there's "Ebony and Ivory."

But then there's "Here, There, and Everywhere", "Jet", and now "Vintage Clothes." And that early frenetic-Little Richard-howling-mad energy that seemed to possess him until '65 or so. That has to count for something.

It was freezing outside while I loaded the students onto the bus, and to keep warm, and to entertain the kids, I belted out "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" at the top of my lungs like some crazed evangelist. I still believe in Beatles.

The New Pornographers: Challengers

It's great. They're always great. The Dan Bejar songs are brilliant. Neko is a sexy force of nature. But that's about all you can say about Challengers. Still, a good New Pornos album is 99% better than anything else out there.

The Shins: Wincing the Night Away

Predictably indie brilliance. Does that make sense? "Turn on Me" was lovely, and they were great on Saturday Night Live. A band I have yet to see live.

Wilco: Sky Blue Sky

Some lovely tunes on here, and I understand why Tweedy wanted to write some really nice songs for a change, but it really drags in the middle. If it wasn't for "Impossible Germany" and "What Light" this would have been kind of a shitty record. I spent more time listening to the live tracks from Sunken Treasure.

Radiohead: In Rainbows

This past summer I directed an original adaptation of Julius Caesar. I tried to merge Shakespeare and Hail to the Thief, and it more or less succeeded, because both were about power, corruption, and lies (a quick nod to New Order, which also played a part in the production.) For the longest time I couldn't wrap my head around Thief properly, not like I had with The Bends or Kid A (still their best album.) But it all fell into place perfectly while I was working on that show.

In Rainbows is another great album, but once again I don't think I have it quite figured out yet, and that's what's great about Radiohead: they're so far ahead of everything else out there, it sometimes takes a few years to digest it all and catch up to what they're doing.

The Arcade Fire: Neon Bible

I didn't really get what the big deal was about The Arcade Fire when I bought Funeral a while back. Heard they were good live, the album had a few bright spots, but overall.....eh?

Then I bought Neon Bible and I became a convert. After a bunch of decent half-albums from the old standbys, this was the only album that I really, truly cared about this year. "Antichrist Television Blues" makes me pee my pants it's so good.

Good Music That Made Me Say Meh: Or, Gee, That Wasn't As Great As I Thought It Would Be

Modest Mouse: We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

More of the same. I haven't heard anything truly outstanding by them since most of the stuff from The Moon and Antarctica.

Bruce Springsteen: Magic

I'm not sure why people thought this was so brilliant. I still stand by Devils and Dust as the better album. And the Seeger album was fun, and different, at least. Magic is growing on me, though, so we'll see.

Feist: The Reminder

Well, it's kind of good, but because of the iPod commercial and fucking Grey's Anatomy I can't associate the songs with anything else.

Album That I'm Sure I'll Love Because I Got All the Rest, But For Some Reason I Haven't Gotten Around to Purchasing

The White Stripes: Icky Thump

But the fact that I haven't bought it yet says something, doesn't it...?



So there was, what--one album that I really got into this year? That can't be right. There was plenty of music that really got to me this year, but a lot of it didn't come from the year 2007. Right now I'm listening to Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home, and there's this song on there called "She Belongs to Me," and I have to admit--I've never heard that song before. Or at least I never noticed it before.

And it's brilliant. It's so good, and it's like hearing a Dylan I never knew before. I had that moment a couple of years ago when I heard "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" for the first time. I was at rehearsal, and Brems was playing some music, and the song just jumped out over whatever I was doing, and I was like, "Jesus, I never heard that one before."

I would have, had I gotten around to buying Highway 61 Revisited. But I hadn't.

You see, I hold Dylan back a bit. I could have gone out and bought all the essentials a while back when I really started getting into him, but I held off, just buying an album here and there, every year or so. I want there to still be surprises left in a guy like Dylan.

I do the same with The Beatles. That's what The White Album, or A Hard Day's Night is for me: that last bit that I don't quite know backwards and forwards, the stuff that'll still sound new to me.

Nick Hornby had it right when he talked about that moment when you hear a song by an artist that hasn't been played to death on classic rock stations:

If you can hear Dylan and The Beatles being unmistakenly themselves at their peak--but unmistakenly themselves in a way we haven't heard a thousand, a million times before--then suddenly you get a small but thrilling flash of their spirit, and it's as close as we'll ever get, those of us born in the wrong time, to know what it must have been like to have those great records burst out of the radio at you when you weren't expecting them, or anything like them.

from Songbook.

Tweedy in your House

This is for all you Wilco/Jeff Tweedy fans:

Jeff Tweedy Swings By Your Living Room

Kristine, Duder, Watts, Diana, etc. This would be a good link to click on. All the songs are downloadable.

Anyone got $17,500 to lend me? Because having Jeff Tweedy play in my living room would be pretty fucking awesome.

Popp, did Bill Mallonee charge this much?

Damn

14 hours of callbacks, 3 hours of a damn-fine Damn Yankees! production, a lot of scotch, a lot of Radiohead, a lot of conceptualizing and Caesar-y goodness, and a Sunday morning playing theatre games with Maria and Mike from The House.

What did you do this weekend?

A Thousand Mesas

I think I would like to get on a plane and go far, far away for a while. Bring a couple of good books, do some writing. Stuff like that.

Oh, and listen to "Jet" a lot.

JET!

I suddenly have an overwhelming desire to hear "Jet" by Paul McCartney.

Loop and Lil Agree

Flipping around the stations, trying to find something to keep me awake, came across Be Here to Love Me, a film about Townes Van Zandt. He was a Texas songwriter, one of the good ones. (Although, I'll never get why Texas can simultaneously produce some of the biggest bastards and some of the greatest artists of our time. )

Townes was kind of both. Amazing lyricist and big-time drunk and manic-depressive. First heard one of his songs on a Cowboy Junkies album: "To Live is to Fly", song about wandering and love and the inability to stay by the ones you love. Summed up a lot about my college years, and probably says more about my life in general.

Somewhere along the way I picked up a live album he did in a small club, and got to hear all the good ones: "Tecumseh Valley", "Pancho and Lefty", and one of the most beautiful love songs every written, "If I Needed You." Lots of famous people like Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris covered Townes' songs, but the songs usually overshadowed the man himself.

First time I traveled overseas on my own I was sitting in a pub in London near Victoria Station and I got talking to an Irish guy and told him I was headed to Galway. Made sure to tell me to head to the Roisin Dubh, west-end pub, good for trad music on Sundays.

I was sitting in that pub about a week later, having a drink, and I noticed Townes' picture on the wall, a light illuminating his troubled face.

"Is that Townes Van Zandt?" I asked the barman.

Guy next to me says yeah, he played his last gig here.

That's one of many reasons why I loved that pub. But this story ain't about the pub, it's about Townes.

I was watching that documentary and it just sucked me in. Townes' last years were a bit of a mess, and the film ends describing his last night alive, sitting in his armchair on New Years Day, dead from heart failure at 52.

Closing credits start and a song I had never heard before plays over home-movie footage of Townes trying on all these hats. "High, Low, and In-Between." Cowboy hats and seed caps and big grins from this guy that gets to me more than I understand. Thanks to the miracle of DVR technology I watch those credits over and over again until I run upstairs to find the song online and now I'm listening to that damn song for at least the tenth time tonight, eviscerating me, like it's going to somehow give me all the goddamn answers to all the problems I've ever known.

Scotland's For Me!

Scotland's music is taking on the world

EDINBURGH (Billboard) - Since Franz Ferdinand burst onto the international scene three years ago, Scotland has become the United Kingdom's leading hotbed of new talent.

In the past 12 months alone, Paolo Nutini, the Fratellis and the View have all stormed the U.K. charts, while Snow Patrol -- which relocated to Glasgow from its native Northern Ireland -- scored 2006's best-selling U.K. album with "Eyes Open," racking up more than 1.5 million sales, according to the BPI, a U.K. music label trade group.

"More Scottish artists are achieving success than have done in the past 20 years," says Geoff Ellis, CEO of Scotland's largest live promoter, Glasgow-based DF Concerts.
"Franz Ferdinand started it all," says Jon Lawlor, singer with the Fratellis. "It was great to have a band from Glasgow that wasn't Simple Minds or Texas -- one that you could listen to and enjoy." (Article continues here.)

Franz Ferdinand, Paolo Nutini, Snow Patrol, etc. etc. No mention of Belle and Sebastian? Seriously? What the hell does that band need to do to get some respect and recognition?

(And don't say make a decent record.)

The Pogues

March 5, 2007
The Congress Theatre, Chicago

Last night The Pogues played Chicago as a complete unit for the first time in over 15 years. I had the great fortune of seeing them last year in New York over Paddy's Day weekend, but once I heard they were coming here I scooped up a couple of tickets and convinced Duder to come check 'em out.

If there's anything that Duder loves, it's big crowds and a crappy part of town. Oh yeah, and I made him stand down in front with all the big obnoxious drunk guys. The crowd itself was pretty interesting: a lot of Chicago Irish mixing with next-gen youth apparently living the 80s punk scene all over again.

Girl in a Coma opened the show, a trio of Texas girls who tore that shit up.

The band finally took the stage and it was great. I was down in the thick of it, singing along with every word and still amazed that Shane MacGowan looked pretty good, all things considering.

Set list hasn't changed much from a year ago, and well, it hasn't changed much in 15 years. Rumors of new music float around, but Shane says it might be best to stay out of the studio if they want to stay together. Fair enough, I suppose, but I hope more comes out of this than a few rounds of reunion concerts.

"Fiesta" closed the show, we ate The Greatest Burritos Ever, and headed home, grumbling about having to get up and go to work in the morning. Thankfully we kept our Guinness intake to two apiece.

Incredible show, from start to finish. It was the opening night of the tour and they sounded tight and seemed to be having a good time. Shane had trouble keeping up with some of the faster songs ("Bottle of Smoke" was a bit rough), but then they slowed things down with "A Rainy Night in Soho" and Shane proved that he can still get it done.

Here's a quick bit of video from the show: the first 60 seconds of "The Body of an American" for ThePhoenixNYC. Enjoy the show next weekend, my friend.

NOTE: Video link was showing up funny in IE. Apologies for those of you not using Firefox; I imagine the pictures sometimes are coming up a bit oversized. I only use IE at work and don't notice when things are off-kilter in different browsers. I'll work on this later and try and get it fixed.

HA - Ha!

I didn't watch much of the Grammys, because what I like and what is honored on that show are usually miles apart.

Dixie Chicks cleaned up, though, and what a better fuck you to the Redneck Right than that? Natalie Maines even quoted Nelson Muntz, which is okay in my book.

The Police sounded pretty good as well. Used to love, love, love that band. Synchronicity, first album I bought when I was a kid, from the drugstore on the highway. The vinyl album, but not the one with the naked Asian chick on the cover. I was too afraid I'd get in trouble for owning an album with boobs on it.

Keep wanting to post my favorites of the year, like I usually do, but no one ever seems to read the music stuff, and I didn't buy a lot of good shit until I had some extra money around Christmas, so for most of 2006 my favorites consisted of old New Order songs and that Mates of State album.

Lots more to write about, but it's Golden Ticket week at work for me, and so I have to get some letters out. Back soon.

The Pogues are Coming

Thanks to thephoenixnyc who just tipped me off about The Pogues playing NYC on St. Patrick's Day again this year. Brems and I headed to the big city last year to see 'em play Times Square and it was simply awesome.

Turns out they're playing Chicago this year as well, on March 5th and 6th. So now I sit here and try to decide what I should do: see The Pogues on my own turf, but on a Monday night, or make another weekend trip to New York and maybe meet a fellow blogger or two.

Chicago tix are already on sale so I need to act fast. $50. Damn. Good thing I got a roommate now.

I am also off to see this tonight. More to follow.

QUICK UPDATE: Looked into getting a ticket for that Paddy's Day show in New York, but it appears to have sold out already. Too bad, because a plane ticket was next to nothing. Got two tickets for March 5th at the Congress in Chicago instead. Second ticket hasn't been claimed yet, so if you're reading this and want to go, you know what to do.

Camera Obscura at the Logan Square Auditorium

Camera Obscura
Logan Square Auditorium
2/3/07


A belly full of Greek food does not prepare you for the biting, awful cold that hung around Chicago Saturday night. A three-minute walk from car to concert hall felt so, so much longer.

Inside the young bundled-up city-smart fashionables ordered their drinks and listened to The Essex Green open the show. Brooklyn band, one of the many pop-heavy male-female combos around these days that plays that lush 60s-influenced sound that's heavy on harmony and bouncy melodies. Good stuff.

Logan Square Auditorium--third floor ballroom, still in pretty good shape. Probably an old dance hall where people did the Jitterbug and the Lindy Hop while they saved the world from European fascism. Wood floors and ceiling fans, and no one's smoking so the air is clear and fresh.

Camera Obscura are a quiet indie pop band from Glasgow, Scotland. You could easily write them off as a pale imitation of Belle and Sebastian or just one of the many 60s-centric indie bands I talked about earlier, but they usually rise above that pat description to make some pretty gorgeous music.

Center spotlights weren't on for the first part of the set, so Tracyanne Campbell played her quiet, pretty songs in the dark for a while. Lighting in general wasn't great and so the pictures I have are the best I could do. The band stuck to the new album, mostly, and only dipped into the older stuff here and there. I was happy to hear the B-side "Lemon Juice and Paper Cuts" and kept hoping to hear "Lunar Sea" and a few others, but their set ended too early for the deep cuts.


"Razzle Dazzle Rose" ended the encore and the show was over. Good song to close with, too; simple lyrics, written by Tracyanne, but they read like some adventurous 19th century Scottish love poem mixed with a shuffling drum beat and a lone trumpeter that sounds like some Mexican mariachi player that lost his way a long, long time ago.

I Like Things That Are Great

Had my first 21st Century Dinner Party tonight, over at the Nevills', where the beer is always cold and the conversation is so good my throat is sore right now.

Phil played stuff from his iPod on something only slightly larger than a beer coaster, then I brought mine out and suggested some good music to him and so he got out the laptop and bought the albums right then and there at the dining room table as we finished our dessert.

Because that store is open 24 hours.

Conversation drifted here and there and suddenly I was trying to describe Alec Baldwin's killer Tony Bennett impersonation and then we just called up YouTube and there it was and we all gathered around the glow of the laptop and laughed our asses off.

Somewhere during the night we bought tickets for Camera Obscura and Joanna made Creme Brulee and Elliot fell ill and Di the expat was missed but everything else was just perfect, like it always is whenever I'm over there. Just great great great great people.

And as I was walked out the door, telling a story about mentoring a guy and teaching him how to conduct yourself in the working world I came up with the phrase "that's not how you get the milk to market."

Now I'm ripping some Aluminum Group albums that I only ever had on cassette, given to me back in the late days of the 20th Century from my buddy Randy, and it's so good to hear "Rrose Selavy's Valise" again.

Stars from the Darkest Night

Friday night was Bob Dylan at the new Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates. Due to an undersold show our balcony-level tickets were upgraded to Club Level and so we got to be big fancy Hollywood types and sit in padded chairs and watch people eat chicken satay while the Kings of Leon opened up.

Drank some Stella and got talking to Joe and Charlie, a couple of guys in their mid-40s. Talked music and shitty Chicago radio and missed all of the opening band because the conversation was so good. Those guys were all right.

Dylan's set was by-the-numbers but still good, and I give him lots of credit for leaning heavily on the newer stuff. "Thunder on the Mountain" and "High Water" were just as good live as "Highway 61" and "Tangled Up in Blue." Hard to enjoy a show in a place designed for hockey, though, stuck up in the Club Level where the padded seats haven't absorbed years of nicotine and liquor spills.

While the show wasn't as memorable as other Dylan performances I've seen (the Illinois State Fair show remains the highlight for me), he did play "Boots of Spanish Leather," which nearly brought tears to my eyes. Big fan, big fan of that song, folks.

The concert ended and Dylan and the band lined up in front for a bow and we all filed out of the arena. Some drunk dude from California mixed in with our group and complained that his night was ruined because he didn't hear "Lay Fucking Lady Lay!"

Played parking lot politics with the usual chaos and confusion of getting out of a concert and drove south through the western suburbs and thought about "Boots of Spanish Leather" the whole way home.

Johnny Cash Lives

Greatest. Live Performance. Ever.

Give it a minute...wait for Robbins' speech to end, and enjoy. Pure awesomeness.

The Pogues, Remastered

You can now get every single damn song The Pogues ever recorded on iTunes.

Okay, most of 'em, at least. A bunch that weren't available before. And all of the albums are now remastered.

My freshman year of college, I was playing a Pogues album. Probably Peace and Love, since that's about all I owned at that point. This guy knocks on my door. Indian guy. "Are you playing The Pogues?"

Yep.

His name is Sujit. And he has a copy of their first album, one of the ones that you can't get in the U.S. (This is back in the days of Imports, kids.) I make a taped copy of it and it lasts a year or so before getting eaten by a portable stereo back home in the shower.

I eventually found Red Roses For Me at a record shop, but it was missing three songs that I knew from Sujit's version. Apparently he had an Asian version that had bonus tracks or something.

But thanks to iTunes, after 15 years, I now have those missing tracks, plus a dozen or so new ones that I never heard before.

The Pogues fucking rock, ya'll. Yes, Donal, it's just a variation on diddle-ee-ii music, but I love that shit, because that's what created American bluegrass, and that's what my grandpa loved, and that's what my mother loved, and because that's the way these things work, that's what I love as well. That crazy drunken folk music that people sing in the corner together and understand their present and their past all at the same time.

Wilco at The Auditorium Theatre

For those of you with good musical taste who live in the Chicago area...

Wilco, the Best Band in America, is playing at the Auditorium Theatre over Thanksgiving weekend. Just so you know.

Kristine, you should totally come see them play! I'm sure it's no sweat getting here from the Philippines.

Click here for touring information. Peace out.

--The Boy With Poetry Power