“Feel the Pain” by Dinosaur Jr.
This live version has a painful introduction- It’s a bit scratchier than the studio version. The instrumental arrangements are so complimentary. The bass and guitar were born to play like this together. This song comes off of their lesser-known gem of an album Without a Sound.

“Give Me Strength” by Neil Young
Straight from the scenes of an unreleased 1997 album Chrome Dreams, this is the acetate that is a bootleg that is a recording with the “Rust Edition” tacked on the Chrome Dreams title. A soft delivery of a powerful tune.

“Powderfinger” by Neil Young
This comes from the same series. Here he is no longer 22, but he manages to not blow his career being old; and he still has guitar playing skills; and he didn’t need to bring up politics to yield a response from anybody. My favorite line is the reference to the title “Shelter me from the powder and the finger // Cover me with the thought that pulled trigger.” The background echoes during that part detract from how it sounds compared to the bootleg, but it is still intensely stirring.

“Shadowland” by Youth Group
I didn’t realize they would have a video for this. The lofi art production is a sight for sore and boring performance eyes. Just a frolicking song by artists of this decade.

“Oh, Glory How Happy I Am” by Rev. Gary Davis
Commentary and interview by Pete Seeger from the Rainbow Quest show in the 60s. Donovan gets to hear this blues/gospel master. Gary Davis is a blind man who can see more than I can. He gives credit to the Holy Spirit for the birth of this song in New York. It must have come from somewhere heavenly- I am always touched by the might of his voice. This song is becoming one of my favorite songs. It can make my eyes water. I don’t consider myself an expert at listening to explicitly religious format of music that has a systematic and mechanical structure today, but some of the old gospel songs and other pre-commercial christian songs really speak out on such a real and personal level. Godliness in song has rarely penetrated the timelessness of the truth quite as much as the uplifting bittersweet praise of “Oh, Glory How Happy I Am.”

“Where Did Robinson Crusoe Go with Friday on Saturday Night” by Al Jolson
Al Jolson has a charming accent. Directly from the noisy artifact of a 78. It’s hard to imagine that such music was being made in 1918. What ever happened to this sort of talent? There are many things that are contemporary and likable, but it seems like the gap between classical and “oldies” gets ignored. And why do oldies stations play nothing in the 40s or earlier. In my city, I’m lucky (if I was to ever turn to an oldy-station) to hear something from the early 50s.

“Ol’ Man River” by Paul Robeson
Made famous in Showboat in 1936. I have not heard such a bellowing voice. The clarity of his bass register is astonishing. I am not fortunate enough to actually have a recording of this. I only have Al Jolson’s take of this in 1928, where Paul Robeson made his first recording of it.

“There’s a Rainbow Round My Shoulder” by Al Jolson
Happiness. A pure boppin classic. I feel a bit deranged staring at a frozen grin of Jolson during the duration of the swinging number.

“forever longing the golden sunsets” by The Appleseed Cast
Horrendous sound quality in the vid. The repetitive guitar solo/jingle seems to work well with the song. They come across as a vocal-fronted post-rock instrumental band where the singing integrates seamlessly.

“Into the Mystic” (originally by Van Morrison)
I’ve got a live version of this from 1970 that packs an amazing punch. The instrumentation is performed as graciously as the recording and the slight variations are so inspiring. This version presented is by Warren Haynes, which isn’t exactly the same magnitude, but it isn’t butchered either. I want to rock your gypsy soul…

“Feels Like Home” by Randy Newman (singing commences around 2 minute mark)
You either know of Randy Newman or you’ve just heard his songs (”I Love L.A.,” “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” in Toy Story). He’s a bit different, but he has a unique voice (just the right amount of awkward perfection) and a sit-in-their-shoes lyrical style. He seems to take on different personas and that is what is captivating to me.

“She Knows” by Thin Lizzy
This has one of the absolutely lively riffs in history. Thin Lizzy have amazing harmonizing guitar abilities and this is just a single example. Are Thin Lizzy Catholic?

If you have your hands on the Basement Tapes bootleg, you will have a fragment of a song called “I’m Alright.” Below are the lyrics transcribed by me (most likely off a bit as Dylan is good at mumbling). Bob Dylan and the Band are playing here for about a minute. Possibly they ran out of tape in the middle of the performance. If this song reached a more complete recording, I’m sure more people would have pounced on the glory of it.

Listen

Now when I call her by her name, you know,
She don’t come
She don’t lead me down easy child
But I don’t
I’m gone, the man he’s standing on is
Maybe some
But I don’t have a leak and
‘Cause she knows she don’t

(Chorus 2x)
Alright
I’m alright
I’m a three-time loser
But I’m alright

Whoa, it’s so hard so defensive
It’s ok
I swear she’s gone, you know
She’s gunna be the death of me

And someone else’s take on the words?

Just when you thought Google was satisfied with search simplicity, it now has another way of mining data on a massive scale, hopefully to improve the results of their searches. I just stumbled across this in the morning, and I’m not sure if this is a permanent public module or not. There are two new buttons next to each search entry, Promote and Remove. There’s even a new commenting bit for every single result. I’m a little weary to jump in on all of this though. Do I really need to manually weed through results to get what I want in the future?

If you choose to participate by clicking those links (must have a Google account), they offer this warning:

Customize your search results with your rankings, deletions, and notes — plus, see how other people using Google have tailored their searches.

Please remember that your SearchWiki notes will be visible to other users, identified with your Google Account nickname.

You will also see this on the bottom of the page:

See all my SearchWiki notes – See all notes for this SearchWiki

You can apparently add results, but who knows if this will contribute to the overall pagerank of sites or if this is just a local addition. If the latter, which I think it is, it is pointless unless you need to ask google the same questions all the time.

Broken Social Scene – “Superconnected”
A band I will have to put on my unwritten “bands I want to see live” list. I had the unfortune (very different from misfortune) of being too busy to see My Morning Jacket and Vampire Weekend perform in my town in the month of September. My Morning Jacket’s new album is much weaker than their others. The funk and falsetto (which I am a big fan of normally) seems a bit forced and over the top. But I would have seen them if I could have. I ended up saving a hefty wad of cash by missing the show. Instead I repeatedly listened to songs that would make me feel superconnected. I might sound pretentiously hip by by mentioning this song has a theme of postmodern distaste with hyperinvolvement, the information technology that consolidates individuality.

Lewis & Clarke – “Before It Breaks You”
This song drew me in instantly. It’s softness reflects Iron and Wine, but without the cold harshness of the iron and the luxury of the wine. A guitar somehow speak like a harp. The words might get judged as being overly poetic, but there is never a shallow boy-girl moment (like a deeper Rocky Votolato). This was a treasure in the haystack that I found for free. I should really figure out if the album is worth purchasing, which I’m not going to act on yet given my budget.

The Black Swans – “I. D. W. 2 F.”
A stranger voice than Tom Waits. There’s a non-accented deepness of a bizarre nasally gorilla. I should remind myself to write a song for this type of singing. They’ve got another recording of this when they were phoning in it (song is just past the middle of the track). If I’m not lazy I’ll look into more of this, because I was guttering this song all month. This song changes my outlook on desiring silverware.

I don’t wanna fork.
I just wanna spoon.

The Promise Ring – “Electric Pink”
Pre-Neo-Millennium emo. I’m not a scenester, but I’ll appreciate the occasional song that gets pigeon-holed into the emo genre. The fellow from Cap’n Jazz is in this band.

The Appleseed Cast – “Innocent Vigilant Ordinary”
This song was sitting in iTunes with a mediocre rating, but it grabbed me when shuffling through my playlist of dust-collecting songs. And it seems to transition well from the previous song.

Andrew Bird – “Heretics”
Bird makes his second appearance in my Monthly:Mixtapes. Another piece of greatness. If I was retired, I’d spend a year just traveling to see bands play.

Marching Band – “For Your Love”
A little cheesy instrumentation and song overall, but the right amount of catchiness. No legal listening version exists, but I got it for free somehow, I just can’t remember how.

Lucinda Williams – “Everything Has Changed”

I don’t want to talk to anyone

I guess there’s a sorrow that comes with change. I’m become more and more accepting of change. Taking a line from a science fiction B-movie: “The future is where we’ll spend the rest of our lives.”

mewithoutYou – “January 1979″
The chorus is the poorest part of the song, but because it isn’t so heightened, the whole song has a dynamic range that amplifies the depth of the song. The singing style is quite unique to this band, although you might compare them to At the Drive-In’s raw delivery. And January is still far enough away, but I’ve got it sitting in my September mixtape.

Dashboard Confessional – “Screaming Infidelities”
I am welcomed to be made fun of for this one. I like(d) Dashboard before they blew up later in the year. This has a high school nostalgia that I can’t get rid of. I can immerse myself in those feelings, no matter how cliche and overplayed this band is. If I were discover this on my own, I might have enjoyed it as much as I do. I don’t know if it’s a good thing that I can withstand being “anywhere with anyone making out”. My hair is everywhere. I’ve got curly locks.

Radiohead – “House of Cards”
Because I think that their latest record may be one of their very best.

And I’ll throw in “Reckoner” because it’s just as good and works well before or after this song.

Sonna – “Frone Taj”
This is included because I ended up playing so many times within a week (9 plays). It’s a nice instrumental post-rock tune.

Colour Revolt – Mattresses Underwater
A band with the smooth swagger of the Strokes, the intricacy of Andrew Bird, and the stirring power of I don’t know who (I’ll have to brainstorm and earstorm). They are not classical music in any way, but they seem to harness the ambient range in volume that implemented in classical pieces.

Golden Smog – “Cure For This”
I’m not sure what female is singing here, but it works. I can hear some Jayhawks singers in the background. It’s pretty.

Radiohead seems to fit well as a poster child of the current Pop Music. They have taken the sentiments typical of Pop Art and electromagnify it. The attitude of ambivalence and conflicted duality seem to be expressed in the sonic compositions. They blend electronic transformation with traditional instrumentation of rock or alternative music. They utilize unconventional and uglier tones melded together with pretty pitches. The realistic but slightly morphed singing creates a strong contrast with how the tracks are laid down that continues a saga of music. They might not be creating a new genre or anything, but I can see today’s culture being reflected in a good light by this band.

They are popular because of balance of tastes. I can’t say I like a fifth of what plays on pop radio, let alone all radio, but some artists are capable of a wide fan reach. I think Radiohead’s In Rainbows is one of 2007’s best albums, but that is irrelevant to the rest of the monologue.

Indie is Post-Pop

I can guarantee this term (indie) is the delimiter within the continuum just like Postmodern was/is to modernism. You don’t hear terms like Pop Film or Pop Books much these days. Indie Films, indie music, indie writers, indie-anything really. And Radiohead is considered “indie” by many last.fm users… I don’t need to get into an argument about what indie means, because it means many things. It’s a classification and a description that can describe anything such as a brand of sound (just like Christian music has a branded sound detached from the lyrical content). Independence (the unabbreviated indie) will never stay put in terms of terminology and in terms of dissecting for explicit exposition. Anybody who is on an independent record label is Indie. Anyone with a D.I.Y. approach is Indie. More broadly speaking– anyone who is in an independent nation is Indie!

The Indie debate normally ends up with the fact that it’s for hipsters. It’s also for whoever enjoys listening to such a classification. If it sits well with snobbish music hipsters and extends to others who just the the general style, then it is the new pop (as in “neo-popular”- aren’t I hip for using those words together?). Pop music evaded crisp definition too. Pop Music is not just the type of music that is cookie cutter crisp and in the C-Ionian scale with a familiar major key melody that will awaken “a genie in a bottle baby.”

I am not defending the use of indie (although I accept the term in a relative way) or the quality of things described as such. I know very well that this not-so-new but still vulnerable term changed and changes. Culture is going to push the envelop of meaning with any word, and being aware of this will calm the swelling of pointless argumentation that is never resolved of its sociolinguistic instability.

That’s the only way I can describe the chillingly odd voice of Jerry DeCicca, the singer for The Black Swans. The Black Swans borrow some of the Midwestern folk style with some extraordinary additions that make me say “Interesting.” The voice is like nothing I’ve heard. It’s not that it is so deep, it manages to be a bit nasally at the same time. There is a drawing out of words like Forrest Gump backed by the gritty smoke of Tom Waits. It comes across as a dust-breathing lumberjack who can bellow like Johnny Cash but has an airy flu of Bob Dylan with the vocal range of Louis Armstrong. I can mimic his singing easily enough, but I can’t get enough of the bizarre sound.

One of the members who violinned his way through the band is resting in peace. They are playing a show this October in their homestate of Ohio. Their lyrics are amuzingly awkword, yet crudely heartfelt.

You can get the printer driver offline easily!

I know this is petty, but I find it humorously bothersome (not really though) when someone says “You can preorder Aqualung’s new album Words & Music offline.” So I can order by phone or reserve one through the postal service because it is offered OFFline? Disconnect your modem! The internet is not required. There is a trick going around the not on but off of the internet showing a hack to access google.com offline (no cache required). ISPs have been a scam all these years. We don’t need to suffer speeds of dial-up or even cable internet services. And forget local disk space; everything can be stored remotely offline.

Maybe I’m wrong though. It’s possible the use of “offline” is meant to remove items from the internet.

You can get firefox offline.

In this example, the user is trying to say you can delete firefox from the internet so nobody can download and install it from the Mozilla website. This strategy is like a takedown of a website that will give you a 404 Error when visiting reliable sites such as youtube.com.

Kim Taylor is a better candidate for incessantly repeated airplay than Sara Bareilles. I wrote about this song over a year ago stating that I had heard it a year before that. Unfortunately, the studio mp3s are no longer hosted on her site, but I was lucky enough to catch her demo version when it came out, then her album version, as well as a live version. Her live sets are available with good listening quality at archive.org.

Tegan and Sara are another pair of females that I have been flooding into my August ears. Their latest album The Con is probably one of my favorites of the 2000s. Minnesota’s radio station The Current was gracious enough to capture a drum-free version of the title track for us.

Tegan & Sara are at it again in the same session with “Back in Your Head.” The simplistic piano reminds me of a criticism against David Albarn’s easy pop-like piano instrumentation. To me, it all sounds good. I would put up half their CD if I wanted to ruin the fact that a mixtape should have a mix of artists.

Andrew Bird is brilliance. I can appreciate his style more than Sufjan Stevens (I admit the skills, but it sometimes doesn’t do it for me), although they both have that special virtuosity to their compositions. I think it is because Sufjan can’t whistle like a hybrid bird/theremin. If Andrew Bird didn’t have a behind-the-scenes mastermind mixing in the live pieces, he is one of the best arrangers I’ve ever come across. He seems really in tune with the motion of his work. This live cut is utterly different sounding from the version on Armchair Apocrypha. How about a another take closer to the original?
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