The girls have voices I like better than the guys, but the guys sing on key better.

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What’d you think?
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2010 is shaping up to be a great year for music. (more…)

What’d everyone think of the top 12 girls? I haven’t quite watched them all, but from what I’ve seen, it looks like a pretty disappointing group.

Except for Chrystal Bowersox, who completely rules. She sounded like a combination of Linda Perry and Ani DiFranco last night. I don’t think she sounded like Alanis, do you?

This post is a shout out to my favorite saxophone player on the planet: Lenny Pickett. You might know him best as that shredding sax player who now runs the Saturday Night Live Band. But Lenny Pickett was somewhat of a legend in sax circles long before he landed that gig. At the tender age of 18 Pickett burst on the scene in 1971 as part of the great funk band Tower of Power. We get this from the Tower of Power wiki:

Lenny Pickett (b. Las Cruces, New Mexico, April 10, 1954) is an American saxophonist, flutist, clarinetist, composer, arranger, music director and teacher. He was a member of the Tower of Power Horns from 1972 until 1981, and since 1985 has been the tenor saxophone soloist with the Saturday Night Live band. He has served as the Saturday Night Live band’s musical director since 1995. He is known particularly for his skill in the altissimo register (executed by using a combination of embouchure control, air stream control, and alternate fingerings), which can be heard during the opening credits of each episode of Saturday Night Live.

Pickett grew up in Berkeley, California. He has no formal musical training, did not attend high school beyond the ninth grade and did not attend college. Except for a brief period of study with the jazz saxophonist Bert Wilson (another player known for his facility with the altissimo register) after dropping out of high school in Berkeley, he is completely self-taught in the saxophone.[4] While with the Tower of Power Horns, which he joined when he was 18 years old, he performed with Elton John and many other rhythm and blues and soul groups. He has also worked as a saxophonist and an arranger for artists including David Bowie, Talking Heads, and Laurie Anderson. As a composer, he has written for his group, the Borneo Horns, and has received a number of commissions to write works mixing classical and popular idioms for a variety of musical ensembles, including the New Century Saxophone Quartet, as well as music for theater and collaborations with dancers, poets and filmmakers.

He is a professor of jazz saxophone at New York University.

Here are a couple of Pickett clips for your enjoyment:

This is Tower of Power in a 1973 gig in Santa Monica. The band is busting out a version of the classic “Knock Yourself Out”. Not only is teen Lenny the featured soloist here but check out his killer dance moves as well. (The audio is not great but the clip is still really cool.)

Here is Lenny in 2008 along with alto player Eric Marienthal (who is no slouch himself) playing with some kind of high school all star jazz band from Utah. In this clip Lenny busts our the entire killer repetoire, including making some noises I heretofore had never even heard emit from a sax.

Just in case you were wondering, the SNL band led by Lenny Pickett is normally the best band of the night on SNL. The dude rocks.

What more can I say? (HT: Scalzi)

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It’s the rare rock band nowadays that rocks a baby grand as its primary weapon of choice, but Jack’s Mannequin is that band. (more…)

Brendan Benson is a different sort of cat. He has a pretty folkie image, plays an acoustic guitar a lot, lives in Nashville. But every now and then, he picks up his electric guitar and reminds you that he grew up in Detroit and hangs out with Jack White. (more…)

Hey! Your tape.  lt´s good.

I know. We made it. 

I  mean, it´s rough, but, unbelievably, it shows promise.  I’ll put out your record.  Any profits we split down the middle after I recoup expenses, okay?

Recoup expenses?  Man, you´re gonna recoup a big, fat Mercedes is what you´re gonna do.

We´re not there yet, Justin.

I’m Vince.

Whatever.

                                                      -High Fidelity

The brave new world of the music business just gave us another interesting peek behind the curtain through this open letter from the band OK Go. (more…)

Ok, here it is, because you demanded it: The list of the top albms of 2009. I was hoping we could do this in a dialogue like last year, or maybe a KulturCast, but that doesn’t seem like it’s happening. So, without further ado, and in no particular order (I’ll let you argue over that), I give you the best albums of 2009: (more…)

I was really out of it for most of 2009 when it comes to new music. So I’m hoping I can get caught up by checking out what everyone’s faves were this year.

Here are mine:
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Leave it to band of the decade nominee Stereophonics to capture the moment as this unfortunate decade winds to a close.  They are making their case for the brass ring with their new album, very appropriately titled, Keep Calm and Carry On.  I especially like the second half of this album, with the closing song “Show Me How” winning me over as the album eases to a melancholy but soulful close. (more…)

MCQ asked for it, so here it is. What are your nominations for the best bands of the last ten years?

(As always, links to songs and/or videos are welcome here at KB)

So we’re about to leave “the naughts,” those ten years no one was quite sure how to name. (The 90’s and the 80’s were easy). It’s overall been a pretty dismal period for music — although let’s be honest that goes back to the rise of the boy bands and Disney girls at the end of the 90’s. Still there have been some great music if you looked. But I come not to praise but to condemn.

So here’s the question. Who are the absolute worst bands? The criteria is that they have to have been nationally popular, often played, yet suck horribly.

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I was very lucky to grow up in one of the greatest music scenes there’s been. Seattle in the late 80s was really something to experience. I don’t think I appreciated how lucky I was back then, but I appreciate it now.
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There’s a British First World War propaganda poster that has a young girl sitting on her father’s knee asking, “Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?” The father looks wistfully into the distance. Will he admit to doing nothing, thus admitting cowardice to his beloved daughter? Or will he be able to proudly tell of his heroics fighting the Hun on the western front?

A day of reckoning is approaching, dear Kulturblogger, if it hasn’t already. Soon one of your children will ask, “Daddy (or mummy), did you like Nirvana?” (more…)

The BBC had this great show that I sometimes listened to as a lad back in Canada called Desert Island Disks. It’s reportedly the longest running music show in history. The basic idea is that you pick eight albums you take to a desert island. You then have to say which is your favorite. Then they say what book they’d take. (The show assumes you are allowed to take in addition the Complete Works of Shakespeare and the Bible so as to not get stuck in a rut with those) and one luxury item.

Here’s mine:

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I can’t take it anymore. Every cheesy pop song for the last several years is using that grating “robot voice”. Make it stop. Can’t these musicians/producers see that robot voice is the very thing we will be mocking about the music of the 2000’s in a few years? Sure, using Robot Voice is a way to hide the fact that one can’t sing but I can’t take it anymore. Robot Voice must go.

(Feel free to add links to songs that are egregious Robot Voice offenders in the comments…)

He recently had the Mountain Goats on his show. You can stream their new album on his website.

Other musical guests he’s had on:
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You know, it’s really nice to see a band that is just genuinely having a good time playing music and is just flat great at what they do. That’s Better than Ezra.

Just One Day


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Half of you will probably say I’m a Johnny-come-lately when it comes to U2 fandom, half will call me an old-timer. I’m a member of the “Third Round” of U2 fans, the ones who came of age and discovered U2 during the Achtung Baby years (as opposed to the First Round Boy through Unforgettable Fire fans, or the Second Round Joshua Tree fans).

The days of great U2 albums might be long gone, but I still shell out money to see the band play whenever they come to town. I saw them just a few hours ago at Giants Stadium (in the hideous freeway junction known as East Rutherford, NJ), and I have to say, while it’s been years since the band has made any relevant, interesting music, they’re still playing relevant music every night.

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I’m a sucker for mashups. In fact, almost any rearrangement of a song makes me happy if it is cleverly done. I found one recently that had me thinking of rearrangements of rock/pop songs into country. We’re more used to this going in the other direction, thanks to Taylor Swift, Faith Hill, and Shania Twain. Country is seen as a fringier market, I suppose, so it makes sense to make country songs sound poppier. However, I was cruising youtube looking for songs by one of my favorite “bluegrass” bands, Nickel Creek, and I found the following:

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Sure there are a lot of good Flight of the Conchords songs, but in my opinion this is the bestest, funniest, mostest awesomest of all:

I laugh hard every time I watch this and I have seen it scores of times now. Here is why it gets the gold medal in my opinion:

Tribute quality score — 10 of 10. It sounds just like one of those Marvin Gay early 70’s tunes
Song quality score — 9 of 10. The song is not only a good tribute but the actually has enjoyable melodies and harmonies in its own right. (Whereas something like Inner City Pressure is high on Tribute quality but has a melody that is lacking in my opinion)
Lyrical/comedy quality score — 10 of 10. Hits the perfect combination of subtlety, cleverness, and absurdity with the lyrics. Not as ham fisted as, say, Business Time and therefore remains as or more hilarious on the 50th hearing as it is on the first hearing. (Come on — forks? sick monkeys? overheads? “technically I am”? Brilliant.)

So do you agree that “Think About It” takes the gold medal? Or do you have other nominees for the bestest, funniest, mostest awesomest Flight of the Conchords song? Include your nominees for the top prize or for runners-up in the comments and be sure to include the YouTube links.

So I pre-ordered a CD recently, and as a bonus Amazon gave me a $1 credit for an mp3 download. I’m a big fan of Amazon’s music store. Not being an Apple person, and as someone who has always viewed iTunes as annoying bloatware, Amazon is a wonderful alternative. They were offering high-quality, non-DRM mp3s long before Apple finally gave in.

So now I’m looking for suggestions. What should I download? What mp3 would you bring onto a desert island with you, assuming you had the world’s smallest mp3 player and an unlimited supply of batteries? What song gets stuck in your head for weeks at a time without bothering you?

Help me out here people. This store credit isn’t going to be around forever.

(Want your own free song from Amazon? Go here. Thanks to Slickdeals.)

First there was She and Him.

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