Listening • The New Re-Appropriation of Hip-Hop

A few years back I tried pushing this concept to DJs called “the new re-appropriation,” wherein they should take rap away from the mumbling, punch-drunk death threats it’s become by removing the vocals, leaving only the backing track and R&B fill-in, and then distributing it. Also known as “instrumentalizing,” “karaokafying,” or “demashing,” this technique would set right a musical genre that lost its way and now just yells at you in an ill-timed manner.

» Listen to Kool Moe Dee at Cocaine Blunts & Hip Hop Tapes

It didn’t catch on. There’s a large industry of beat producers—your Scott Storchs and your Timbalands, people who make high-end production studios dedicated to making original beats and then selling them on the auction block for millions—who put a lot of effort into their work so somebody else can say something on top of it. Otherwise it’s almost techno, and techno doesn’t sell.

» Listen to “Crank it Up” by David Banner

Which is not to say I have anything against violent lyrics, stupid lyrics, or just plain terrible lyrics, but my theory is that there was a dividing point somewhere in the mid-’90s, when MTV started censoring drug and gun references in videos. After that, people began taking advantage of the awkward miscues by intentionally cursing, or just pre-censoring their songs, so that you didn’t have to rap at all. You just mumble here and there, overlay something in reverse over every other word, and nobody is the wiser. Rather than reject it as ill-timed, jittery confusion, audiences went along with it as if it were a new trend in avant-garde time signatures.

» Listen to “Run” by Bone Crusher

The sacrifice of terrible lyrics is wasted if the end result is generally unsatisfactory and un-danceable. Isn’t that the whole gesture of music since the ’50s? Teen dance/sex anthems. So when a DJ starts toasting over “Do the Train” mid-wedding and spoils the beat, should they be rewarded? I say no.

» Watch Hali Halisi: Rap as an Alternative Medium at AfricanHipHop.com

I wonder what it feels like every time somebody like a Gil Scott-Heron or a Watts Prophet or a Last Poet happens to hear the current fruit of their musical origination. Somebody who thought it was a good thing to minimize the musical backbeat and emphasize their political lyrics must cringe everytime they hear something by 2 Live Crew or Young Jeezy. They’re not responsible for these lyrical crimes, but if they could travel back in time and change the course of history, they might.

» Listen to Bridges by Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson at Invisible Record Archive

 —Llewellyn Hinkes, Oct. 10, 2007

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Watching • Video Digest: September 28, 2007

Like revenge fantasies, anti-drug videos are a creative bonanza for those visionaries who know how to exploit both sides of an issue; righteous indignation at the social ills while simultaneously indulging in their lurid details ills. There’s a treasure trove of anti-LSD educational films out there that depend on a quick simulated psychedelic experience to inform the youth so they know what to avoid.

If you were a filmmaker stuck making bland instructional videos that are forced down the necks of bored schoolchildren, some visual garage psychedelia could supply a great opportunity to actually exploit this filmcraft for once. This is essentially the history of B-movies in the U.S.—carnivals that would show National Geographic nature films of topless Polynesian women as stag reels and anti-LSD films with the same oil-drip special effects as an Electric Butterfly concert.

Sadly the crack epidemic of the ‘80s didn’t provide the same cinematic possibilities. Because the aesthetics of cocaine abuse share much of popular culture, there’s not much room for exploitation. At that point it had already permeated everything, from Miami Vice on down to Fleetwood Mac, so the logical next step had to applied: a musical supergroup of semi-celebrities.

Is there anything musical supergroups can’t do? If the RIAA had their druthers about them, I imagine they’d be putting together a supergroup right this very minute to combat the scourge of internet music piracy. Maybe an updated rap-metal version of “Don’t copy that Floppy” would work? The Linkin Park breakdown alone would be worth the price of admission.

This video of Claude Lelouch driving like a very controlled madman at ungodly speeds through the streets of Paris has been at the back of my mind for the better part of a week. There’s something so calm and collected about the whole process. This is what games like Gran Turismo try to emulate, but these efforts are best left in the hands of professionals.

I have a lot of ideas for movies (ask me!) that will never, and should never, be made. Really, they’re only theoretical pieces meant only for art-house audiences who still won’t “get it,” which is the only real reason to make a movie in the first place. Then when I’m rich and famous I can look back on those peons and laugh in their faces that they couldn’t realize the genius in my presentation of Alan Thicke rapping the pledge of allegiance in Urdu, the poor savages.



 —Llewellyn Hinkes, Sep. 28, 2007

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Listening • Hunting the New Agitprop

We had just come back from a trip to Tower Records and sat down to play a couple tracks from what we had bought, with plans to skip around and listen to the rest later. The first track on one album, by whom I don’t remember, started out like this: “We’ve got to save the rainforestssss…”

Took it out of the player, broke it in half, and threw it away. We never listened to the rest.

There’s nothing wrong with saving the rainforests, or even singing about it—but have some decorum, please. Otherwise you’re just doing a disservice to the baby seals you were trying to save in the first place. Political art can be done well (Crass, Woodie Guthrie, early Dylan, Phil Ochs), and in general I’d argue that 90 percent of anything has some element of politics to it, but in the end, the laws of showbiz triumph over agitprop.

It’s a delicate balance between giving people what they want and what they don’t know they want yet. Not putting the cart before the horse, not shitting where you eat, and not shitting in the cart. It’s good to have some obscurity to ease the abrasion of the obvious. Mix the metaphors around with some confusion and imagery so people can taste the message. And like a French schoolgirl’s taunt, they’ll never know what you were actually saying, but they’ll like how it sounded.

» Listen to “Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe” by Okkervil River at Ear Farm


* * *

There’s a general confusion about why people were upset with Dylan going electric. It wasn’t that people thought he crossed some sacred acoustic threshhold by making a deal with the amplification gods, but that loud electric rock would hinder people from hearing his lyrics. It still doesn’t make any sense, but it puts the logic into some context. Sometime in the way-gone past, the folkists had an agreement that musicians would be judged on their lyrical content first. That way they would never again align with amoral, slick musical con artists who just have one hit song and never call them back.

» Listen to Kevin Drew at Cause=Time


* * *

There’s a real need for some angst-ridden agitprop right now, or at least there’s a need to know that some is being made, without having to actually listen to it. Then you know that at least somebody out there gives a damn! It makes you feel better about not voting. That’s why I rename all of my techno albums from “Lollipop Space Voyage” to political slogans like “Perot in 2008” and “Up with People.” It gives you a warm feeling all over.

» Listen to Turzi at MySpace


* * *

There’s been plenty of opportunity and room for protest music, but the larger trend of the last few years has been to run into the woods and scream until you’re AIDS Wolf. In the battle for relevancy, they’re winning out. I mean, I actually like AIDS Wolf, if you can get into the experimental scream thing (although deferring to Marnie Stern for a tighter prog-spaz jaunt), and wouldn’t that be fun to just go into the forest to yell and mumble whatever comes to you?

» Listen to “Boyz Donut Cry” by Japanther at Sucka Pants


* * *

And yes, there are Phil Ochs-inflected folk singers out there singing the socialist anthems and drifter adventure ballads to try and inspire the workers to strike for better pay as they always have. Some of them are making great vocal rebel music with just an acoustic guitar, but most are just playing the same old Woodie Guthrie melodies. I know it’s terrible that I can’t bring myself to be enthused by something that I agree with just because of the melody and sound, but that’s how it is.

» Listen to “Eye for Eye“ by the Popular People’s Front at American Athlete

 —Llewellyn Hinkes, Sep. 19, 2007

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Listening • The Creole You’ve Been Waiting For

What I try to tell all of the black nationalists, white identity groups, and Polynesian isolationists I meet—we have a weekly potluck—is that cultural integrity is a musical dead-end. It’s your fringe cultures that are responsible for the majority of creative output. Cohesive group identities don’t make anything new, they just rehash tradition. It’s only when you get to the miscegenated peoples, who are a bit more ready and willing to create their own traditions, that any actual progress can be made. It’s also really hard to play a flute with a Hapsburg chin. And just forget about cutting yourself onstage if your blood won’t clot from years of inbreeding to protect your racial identity. Somewhere along the line you have to make a choice: cultural identity versus creative freedom, Charles II of Spain or Iggy Pop.

“Creole” is essentially another term for said miscegenation, along with all the other ethnic combinations: cholos, castizos, zambos, octoroons. Half of which were probably insults at one time but are now badges of honor. Cajun music is that stuff you hear in the background of Popeyes Chicken commercials. Those weird people who live in the swamp and procreate across ethnic lines are now one of the few caricatures this country can lean on, either because they were unique enough to stand out or their genetic makeup was a dominant gene jambalaya that could resist the constant onslaught of malaria. Let’s remember back when their music wasn’t a hokey backdrop for a biscuit stand.

» Listen to Cajun music from the 1920s and ’30s at Cajun Music Mp3


* * *

And of course rock and roll itself is the amalgamation of country and blues, which you can read about in a library’s worth of music criticism by ex-Rolling Stone writers who like to point out that there will never be another Beatles and Elvis didn’t write all of his own songs. Well the Korean Black Eyes didn’t write this Elvis song and I don’t go around pointing it out. I just enjoy the amalgamation.

» Listen to “Burning Love” at The Calico Wall


* * *

There’s some weird connection between Brazilian psychedelia and German krautrock for which Cymande may be the best example. Afro-latin minimalist soul, odd time changes, hand-drawn cover art that looks like something by Krokodil, and then just straightforward ’70s funk. They were Guyanese and Jamaican musicians playing in Britain, which may not have been a huge cross-cultural shift at the time, but it layers in enough traditional Caribbean music to make something altogether new, for which they were promptly ignored until De La Soul started sampling their beats in the ’80s.

» Listen to “Bra” by Cymande


* * *

Somebody once told me that Jamaica has the largest per-capita musical output of any country. Not sure how you measure that or what it means, but it sounds right. There’s enough dub, rocksteady, dancehall, mod, and ragga tunes out there to last a lifetime. It’s even more amazing to realize how much of it sounds similar. Not in a bad way—they make the finest art out of the variations on a single beat. And yet Light of Saba sounds like something else: a clean Rasta orchestra. The composer, Cedric Brooks, was a Jamaican parallel of Sun Ra in a way, sans the space worship, that mixed Caribbean sounds with modal Ethiopian jazz.

» Listen to “Axum” by Light of Saba


* * *

If you wanted to find the music of pure breeding as a counter-example, you’d probably reach for your classic composers—your Bachs, your Mozarts—but even those guys were mooching off mixed European cultures. It’s all Hungarian waltzes, German polyphonic chorales, and some Swiss Appenzell rhythms dropped over a harpsichord melody—then a hundred years later Mort Garson makes a small ditty with an electronic harpsichord and you wonder why you’re killing yourself to be so complicated.

» Listen to Mort Garson at undomondo

 —Llewellyn Hinkes, Sep. 5, 2007

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Listening • What Was Once Was Lost, Now Is Found

MTV owes me my youth. Most of my ’90s memories are a hazy blur of Lenny Kravitz videos, Mountain Dew commercials, and news about Madonna that will all come back to me in a giant rush of Dutch Schultz jump cuts on my deathbed. I’ll never recover that lost decade, but I can make my later years less of an epileptic seizure via the numerous internet music video sites that are now available, such as Antville, Indeed Fantastic Music Videos, and a hundred other places. As it turns out, there’s actually a lot of small musical novellas out there to divine the new sounds from, not just five in heavy rotation. Why, just recently I happened upon this delightful video that made me reconsider the art of trampoline gymnastics. Quite informative.




Speaking of surliness, guitarist John Fahey is said to have punched out Michelangelo Antonioni while the director was trying to convince him to play on the soundtrack to Zabriskie Point. Then again, Fahey is said to have made up a lot of stories in his book, How Bluegrass Saved My Life, so maybe he wasn’t necessarily a proponent of truth over tact, but just anti-tact.

» Listen to John Fahey at WFMU’s Beware of the Blog


* * *

Thankfully, Music for Maniacs has reupped their David Koresh mp3s. Those are really hard to find. And now they’re promoting something called “Foolklegs”—mash-ups of traditional folk songs, oom-pa classics, and French chansons with larger beats. Two steps away from Turbo-folk, but more like Weird Al Yankovic. I hope the creators were soon beaten with their own electric mandolins.

» Listen to David Koresh at Music for Maniacs


* * *

Good minimalism is like pornography: You know it when you see it. That is, that there’s such an undervaluation of technical skill in minimalism that it’s hard to distinguish what’s good except purely by personal taste. Good minimalism is like a fine broth that takes a few days in a pressure cooker to create—it can’t be achieved by blowing all your heroin money on effects pedals.

» Listen to Burning Star Core at Raven Sings the Blues


* * *

Sometimes an album falls by the wayside just because the single overwhelms the other tracks. But people need to recognize that there are other tracks on this Peter, Bjorn & John album that are substantial and need to be distinguished. It’s a sampler platter of ’80s pre-Britpop, Radiohead, and their own variety of indie rock.

» Listen to Peter, Bjorn & John live on NPR at Minneapolis Fucking Rocks

 —Llewellyn Hinkes, Aug. 8, 2007

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Listening • A Personal History of Audiophilia

In the long summer days around high school, we used to get stoned and wander into the local hi-fi stereo showroom. Without a car, it was the closest thing we had to a record store. We’d stroll through, pretending that we might actually purchase a $10,000 quadrophonic laserdisk player, but our cover was blown when we’d stare at a giant Blaupunkt amp pulsate on and off for far too long. Eventually, once the store cleared out of other shoppers, the pony-tailed salesman would feel generous and let us sit in the demonstration room and give us a bit of the hi-fi spiel. “Multi watt channel, surround system, banana leaf speaker cones…blah blah blah…” These are all great things, but in the store they had a total of four albums to listen to all of this on (Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” Tubular Bells, a Beethoven collection, and that ‘70s album with the waitress on the cover). They wouldn’t listen to anything that couldn’t be produced on gold cds because the oxidation could affect sound quality.

When we returned another time to see if they would play a CD we brought—I think it was something uncontroversial like A Love Supreme—they let us in, but seemed to roll their eyes at the music as if to say “why would you listen to anything that hasn’t been remastered to death?” They then kicked us out under the pretense that paying customers were waiting to hear The Great Gig in the Sky one more time. It seemed a sad, expensive, little corner they had painted themselves into, and we never went back.

» Listen to Pharoah Overlord—Slow City


* * *

I’ve lost track with the world of hi-fi audophilia. I imagine at this point the new generation vinyl fetishists who appreciate good fuzz and grit can afford ridiculously overpriced sound systems to play Shellac records at full blast with no hiss, pop, or flutter. Personally, there’s a whole world of animistic ur-drone that I’d love to hear through a good sound system; there’s an opportunity for somebody to open up a hi-fi store that caters to that musical segment. It will go bankrupt within a week, but the precedent will be set.

» Listen to Shellac—Kittypants


* * *

About 10 years ago, I went to see the Flaming Lips’ audio experiment called Zaireeka. It’s the one where four people sit in a circle with their own boombox playing a giant swirling cacophonic blend of sound that builds on top of the others until everybody vomits in unison. A great idea, but it was an overdose of effect. At the end of the night, all I wanted to hear was the smallest, quietest music possible as some sort of counterbalance.

» Listen to Look Blue Go Purple—Safety in Crosswords


* * *

The whole concept of stadium rock concerts really seems so foreign to me nowadays. I still remember them being fun at times, but the idea of somebody getting on stage to emote or sing nonsensical lyrics to thousands of screaming fans becomes ludicrous from a distance. That plus the sound was always terrible. Gigantic speakers echoing against bleacher seats, watery bass, and completely inaudible vocals. I sometimes wonder if maybe it was all intentional to confuse and distract everybody from realizing that there was no chance the lead singer was going to emote onstage in front of 50,000 people no matter how much he or she made off ticket prices. If only they could get their echo on a better level they could effect a better stadium-level acoustic reverberation.

» Listen to Panda Bear—Comfy in Nautica at The Yellow Stereo

 —Llewellyn Hinkes, Jun. 27, 2007

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Listening • Now That’s Cult Music!

Religious cults tend to get a bad rap for the organized murders, weapon stockpiling, brainwashing, and mass suicide—but nobody focuses on the good they do. For example, nobody ever mentions the musical output. If you’re going to be stuck on the same compound with brainwashed denizens for long periods of time, you’re going to need some entertainment to keep everybody occupied, and it has to be something that’s not from an oppressive outside world that looks down on your leader’s polygamy. So pick up a guitar, bring the young believers over, and get everybody singing the transcendental lyrics of the Allfather before the forced tantric sex begins.

Ya ho wha 13/Father Yod may be the best example of a quality hippie religious sect. Nothing too crazy: a fruit and vegetable diet, only white garments, sex without orgasm, and the resulting extended blues punk jams. There’s lots of lyrics about projected energy flowing though the mind’s eye, and album covers featuring Father Yod posing on Rolls Royces with naked women that were shot when Master P was still in diapers. Way ahead of its time.

» Listen to Ya Ho Wha


* * *

Before his tragic hang-gliding death in 1975, Father Yod was able to put out a reasonable discography, mainly because he pulled in musicians from other groups—like Sky Saxon of ’60s garage band the Seeds. I’d imagine that, with all of the artistic differences that arise in recording, it must be nice to work with agreeable followers focused on the music and not whether the bass player cut into the vocal track.

» Listen to “Pushin’ Too Hard” by the Seeds


* * *

At times I imagine cult life could be quite idyllic. You live on a compound where everybody is your friend and you can forget all about modern troubles and get back to the soil. And at night, you take part in a Stevie Wonder-inflected religious choir. Then the mass murder-suicide happens and you realize the choir wasn’t worth it.

» Listen to the Reverend Jim Jones and People’s Temple Choir at WFMU


* * *

Of course, these are the exceptions to the rule. Lots of cults never put out music. Some have castration ceremony chants but never think about recording them. And not all cults are started by frustrated musicians. Then there’s a few gems out there like Elizabeth Claire Prophet of the Church Universal and Triumphant who reads new-age scripture like a farm auctioneer through a vocoder. She belts a yodel against rock music like a great cantor, but when she predicted a Soviet nuclear strike against the U.S. that never materialized, things fell apart for the group.

» Listen to “ Dedication to the Tackling” by Elizabeth Claire Prophet

But not all is lost. Elizabeth Claire did have children, and those children had children, and those grandchildren went on to make emo grindcore, which is sort of like a cult, but without as much castration.

 —Llewellyn Hinkes, Jun. 13, 2007

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Listening • Hate Thy Neighbor

The word “scene” makes me retch something awful. As in “what about the scene, man?” It’s right up there with “society.” Besides being vague and meaningless, it carries with it the unwritten rule that, independent of quality or substance, you’re supposed to appreciate your local band before all others. It’s an amalgamation of parochialism, sports-team association, and general guilt. There is a logic behind it: If people don’t support their Musicians Local 131, there will be no local music and therefore all music will be manufactured in Orlando. But the end result is that people are guilted into liking garbage just because their neighbor made it.
If only there were an allowance for the vagaries of opinion in local music, then maybe more people would take to it rather than suffer through another Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band for the sake of locality. I only mention all of this because it’s taken me some time to look back and recognize that some of the local bands I heard growing up were really, objectively good—not just yokels pandering for attention.

Ignoring the name, Trans Am are kings of the champion prog sound. Somewhere between Kraftwerk, Goblin, and Van Halen, they’re like American krautrock. Similar to the German originators but stronger and faster. No longer a D.C. band per se, they’re grandfathered here by putting time in like it was community service.

» Listen to Trans Am at undomondo


* * *

Influence-wise, I’m not sure who the Impossible Five might resemble. Maybe a bit like the Cure or Nation of Ulysses, but it swings rather than mopes or screams. Members of the Impossible Five have since taken a 180-degree turn and formed Dead Meadow, whose droning psychedelia has gained some popularity. I can’t help but yearn for more of the active element they once had.

» Listen to the Impossible Five at Despite These Times


* * *

Everybody loves Ted Leo, and how could they not? He’s agit-prop and pop all in one. Some songs can mix in too much politics with the poetry, but otherwise he’s a gold mine. His original band Chisel sometimes gets lost in the shuffle, but it’s cut from the same thrift-store T-shirt.

» Listen to “The Guns of Meridian Hill” by Chisel


* * *

El Guapo used to make some excellent dramatic/melodic punk-something-or-other until they got sued by another band named El Guapo and had to change their name to Supersystem. Somewhere in there they also gave up the jagged style, decided to make blipping bleeping nonsense, became a dance-punk band, and then broke up. Oh well, it’s still great to go back to the original album and reminisce.

» Listen to “Jacob West Hartman” by El Guapo


* * *

Just as jagged and melodic but much more spastic was Skull Kontrol. “Drunkenly cartoonish speedcore” makes it sound like a bad thing, but don’t let that dissuade you from listening. Make a mix tape of this with some E Pak Sa and Melt-Banana and you’ll be ready to disassemble your television just to see what’s inside.

» Listen to “Primitive Offerings” by Skull Kontrol

 —Llewellyn Hinkes, May. 2, 2007

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Listening • Our Quarterly Review

The book’s closed on the first three months of 2007, which makes now as good a time as any to take stock of the quarter that’s just ended. Here are our favorite tracks from the year thus far.


* * *

Rosecrans Baldwin

“Fake Empire” by the National
The digital revolution has turned me into a single buyer, but I’ve really enjoyed this entire album. A single song doesn’t do it justice, not the way an afternoon does.
» Listen to “Fake Empire” at Minneapolis Fucking Rocks


“Rich Girls” by the Virgins
Lots of Brooklyn sounds like this. Want to eat this. Put the tiger pants on. This is sidewalk music for the moment in the same way “Chicken Noodle Soup” was sidewalk music last summer (though probably for different people).
» Listen to “Rich Girls” at Red Blondehead


“Fluorescent Adolescent” by the Arctic Monkeys
How long have these guys been playing together? It sounds like they were born in the same room. The Arctic Monkeys carbon-date a big portion of my brain at permanently 21.
» Listen to “Fluorescent Adolescent” at Your Head’s Not Right


“Valerie” by Mark Ronson featuring Amy Winehouse
Loved the original by the Zutons, love this even more. Winehouse skins it. You can hear another take on the song, jazzier and apparently the way Winehouse plays it live, on Ronson’s East Village Radio show two or three weeks back.
» Listen to “Valerie” at Pop Tart



* * *

Llewellyn Hinkes

“Saltwater” by Beach House
I recently saw the lead singer of a popular band stop in a song, mid-mope, to berate the sound guy. “Oh mommy, you never loved me…HEY I said no effects on the vocals!” I won’t say the name, but suffice it to say his music has lost all suspension of emotional disbelief. Live shows are good lie detectors like that. Beach House, on the other hand, were more like an amplifier than a lie detector live.
» Listen to “Saltwater” at SixEyes


“Some Summers They Drop Like Flys” by the Dirty Three
How did Explosions in the Sky and Godspeed You Black Emperor get so popular while the Dirty Three got left behind? It’s the same sombre-to-epic rising cauldron of sound with a different style. Though they didn’t exactly get left behind, they still deserve better. Please, this summer, won’t you think of the Australian instrumental post-rock bands and give to the charity of your choice?
» Listen to “Some Summers They Drop Like Flys”


The Generation Exploitation Podcast
Comedy is such a fluid thing. There are no absolutes. Except for Moms Maybelle, who is the agreed-upon queen. She tells some raspy stories about spiders getting high and then a lounge tune and then repeat. She makes it look like an exact science. And the only way I could have found out about her is via the Generation Exploitation Podcast. Fine comedy content in there.
» Subscribe to the Generation Exploitation Podcast


“Drei Zinnen” by Niobe
It’s about time somebody started bringing some Glenn Miller into the modern experimental day. It needs to be recognized for the surreal, drowsy jazz orchestration that it is. Niobe loses a bit of the ’50s terroir in the process, and replaces it with the abstract soundscape.
» Listen to “Drei Zinnen”



* * *

Andrew Womack

“Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse” by Of Montreal
I have reversed my position on Of Montreal. I love the new album, and I also love the Outback Steakhouse commercial. I believe Of Montreal, with five-plus mouths to feed in one tour bus, can appreciate what a value-dining establishment like Outback can offer budget-minded musicians on the go.
» Listen to “Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse” at SixEyes


“Kid Gloves” by Voxtrot
In what has been the fastest backlash in the history of the record industry, the public has reacted lukewarmly to Voxtrot’s debut album—which won’t even see official release for another six weeks. For those of you who haven’t heard the album yet, that’s like going to the ultrasound to find out you’re having a Republican.
» Listen to “Kid Gloves” at Baby, You Got a Stew Goin’!


“The Nights After Fiction” by Mice Parade
The Beatles kept Ringo in the back, so ever since drummers in pop bands have been relegated to the same spot? Led by head mouse and percussionist Adam Pierce, Mice Parade turns the melody-rhythm pop formula on its head. This song shows what happens when percussion takes center stage and everything else turns into a rhythm synthesizer, rhythm vocal, or rhythm guitar.
» Listen to “The Nights After Fiction” at Herohill


“Pick Me Up on Your Way Down” by Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard & Ray Price
Last month I saw this trio of country legends play Radio City Music Hall—if you were walking up Sixth Ave. that night you may have noticed all the tractors parked out front. Price and his 81-year-old vocal cords warmed up a crowd that was getting pissed (and drunk) with every moment passing between them and “Pancho and Lefty.” But during the show’s finale, when all three were on stage, Price’s lead on “Crazy” left everybody wondering who that guy with the bandana was. (Roadie, maybe?)
» Listen to “Pick Me Up on Your Way Down” at In House With Jeremy Petersen


 —The Writers, Apr. 11, 2007

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