Cute Band Alert

Last night I went to see Evan Dando and the two guys currently rounding out The Lemonheads play "It's A Shame About Ray" in its entirety. I'd seen Slint, Sonic Youth, and GZA do "Spiderland," "Washing Machine," and "Liquid Swords" last summer but I was never obsessed with those albums so it was a little lost on me. "It's A Shame About Ray," on the other hand, pretty much defined me at fourteen and the show did not disappoint (as soon as I was able to get past the fact that this nostalgia tour reminded me of the "Veronica Mars" episode where Paul Rudd plays the washed-up 90s rocker). Evan's voice is still pure rolled gold, and I'm so relieved that the years of hard living didn't damage his pretty pretty face. Plus as my friend Molly noted, it was nice and a bit strange to be at a show where everyone was our age and older, not the opposite.
Watch baby Johnny Depp in the "It's a Shame About Ray" video here.
And rounding out this Sassy nostalgia-fest, Juliana Hatfield did NOT lose her virginity to Evan...she lost it to Spike Jonze!

The Lemonheads - Rudderless

The Lemonheads - Buddy

The Lemonheads - Bit Part

buy it!

Toddla Time

Sheffield DJ Toddla T still has no plans to come to the U.S., and it hurts my feelings. Although Crystal Castles' show on Tuesday was pretty good (her vocals were too low but the beats were hott), I'd classify the dance party level as just "Some Dancing Situations" and not "All Out War," despite the fact that it felt like it because Studio B is a sweatbox and you leave drenched no matter what. Listening to this mix by Toddla (who is seriously about three years old, see above) reminds me it's been way too long since I danced to some dancehall, and I'm really into his heavily reggae-infused sound.

Toddla T Mix

Download the really good "Ghettoblaster #1" mixtape here:
(myspace)

She's my Rushmore

I just found out today that my second fave celebrity couple (after Carla Bruni and President Nicolas Sarkozy, DUH) broke up ages ago! I've been living a lie, a goddamn lie. Incidentally, if you've never seen "Slackers," rent it ASAP. Cool Ethan 4ever.

Coconut Records - West Coast (buy)

Phantom Planet - Know It All (buy)

Schwartzmanspace

She & Him - Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?
(buy)
M Ward and Zooey Deschanel are She & Him, and they're already halfway to being huge.

Twerkin' hard and hardly workin'

Seriously though, this week was a grind if there ever was one. I'm super glad it's Miller-time. All I wanna do is slip into these and snuggle with my friends.

Excellent use of a Weezer sample:

X.O. feat. CeeCee - Grind Baby

paperrouterecordz.com

I Missed You So Much I Followed You Today.

A number of people have told me that when they were a kid — in the 1980s, cause we're mad old — there was a certain song that spooked them so much that they became obsessed with it. For one friend it was Laura Branigan's "Self Control," for another it was Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me." It didn't help that both songs also had creepy videos: Rockwell's is a goofy pastiche of horror-movie cliches, and Laura's got a man in a featureless mask, a doll, a hallway full of grabby hands, and...a sexy mime-lady? Is that what she's supposed to be? Anyway, it was scary, sessy-scary.

The song, and video, that got fixed in my own tiny mind was "The Rain" by Oran 'Juice' Jones. What got my attention right away was the opening thunderclap; I was a kid and storms were frightening. Okay, the actual first thing that got my attention was my dad laughing to the point of near tears while saying "Oran Juice!" over and over again. But the next time I watched: the thunder. The crux of my fascination, though, was twofold. One, it introduced me to the concept of obsessive love ("Did you miss me? I missed you too! I missed you so much I followed you today!"). For the first minute or so of the video, I was freaked out by this man following a woman down dark alleys in the rain. By the end I'd realized that while his methods were unorthodox, they were entirely justified in the face of his girlfriend's romantic betrayal. I've carried that lesson with me to this day: Sometimes people violate your trust and force you to be shady. Hell, short of murder their cheating basically gives you carte blanche. While I'm almost entirely serious in saying that, "The Rain" also birthed my view of romantic obsession as a boundless comedic goldmine.

Which kind of brings me to the second reason for this song's hold on me: The amazing monologue at the end. You can almost hear the dings of a pinball machine as he hits all his points of vindictive awesomeness. It's the ultimate fantasy of a classic dressing-down, particularly the fact that when you're imagining really telling someone off, the other person just sputters and remains silent knowing how right you are. In reality, they so often ruin it with something like "...wait, go back to the part where you read my diary."

Oran 'Juice' Jones - The Rain

Laura Branigan - Self Control

Chicago, maaaayn.

I'm calling it a sabbatical. An audition, my Chicago audition. Framing it as such is really tempering my abject terror — I didn't even have another "stuck in transit, gotta get there, you're late you're late" type dream last night. I was, however, swimming with alligators while all of my friends were in a wave pool across the room. My ex-boyfriend used to make fun of me for how painfully obvious the symbolism in my dreams is. I argued that this was actually a testament to my purity of spirit, or what a well-oiled machine my subconscious is for being able to digest and repackage my daytime thoughts like that. Secretly, though, I was mad because I knew he was right.

Some notable Chicagoans:

Common - Resurrection (Large Professor rmx) (buy)

Lupe Fiasco - I Gotcha (buy)

Kid Sister - Girlie Rock (Flosstradamus rmx)
(myspace)

Smashing Pumpkins - Cherub Rock (buy)

Wilco - Handshake Drugs (buy)

Liz Phair - Go West (buy)

R Kelly - Sex in the Kitchen (buy)

Charlene's My New Hero

My old hero Spitzer (circa his ass-kicking days as AG) has fallen for good. I'm sad! As a fellow self-righteous prick, I had no problem with his sanctimony when I believed that he was clean as a whistle. Also, up is down and down is up because I'm liking Gawker's coverage of the whole scandal. This especially. Among the many "how could you be such a fucking idiot?" issues surrounding the mess, my least favorite is the fact that this is the best thing to ever happen to his enemy/piece of shizz Joe Bruno. Update: Newsweek rightly asks, "What Is It With the Wives?"

Eliot, you're out. Charlene's in. Buckle up cuz it's about to get mad ovarian in here. If you need me I'll be in the corner looking deep, deep inside myself.

Dream Deceivers

A few weeks ago some friends and I were talkin' documentaries and listing some of our favorites. We all agreed that the Maysles were the kings of the genre (I fear Drew Barrymore's impending performance as Edie Beale), but I lamented the fact that I've never been able to scrounge up a rental or purchase of two movies I love and haven't seen in years. The first, "Cannibal Tours," is a scathing and alternately funny and depressing look at white tourists culture-clashing with natives of Papua New Guinea in the 1980s. It's far and away my favorite ethnographic film, as anthropology's only worth a damn when it's completely subjective.
Watch a quick, awesome clip here, more info here.

I was really, really excited to discover that somebody posted the other doc I've been wanting to watch again on Google Video. "Dream Deceivers" tells the story of two teenage boys in Reno who shot themselves in the face after getting really drunk and convincing themselves that the Judas Priest song they were listening to was subliminally urging them to do it. Remember when everybody was really concerned with subliminal messages? That was like a genuine anxiety gripping the nation. Anyway, the boys' families subsequently sued Judas Priest, and the film captures the trial and the life of the horrifically disfigured surviving teen. I just learned that the comic "Preacher" based the character Arseface on James Vance. It's virtually identical actually.

Watch the movie here. Anyone with even a passing interest in Judas Priest, 1980s metal culture, issues of personal responsibility, and/or music censorship will find it fascinating.

Gang Starr - Full Clip
EPMD - Headbanger

in heavy rotation

MGMT - Electric Feel

(buy)
MGMTspace
image via Flickr

They Live! Well, they WILL live, really soon.

Today, in What's Freaking Me Out Right Now news: msnbc.com has a slide show confirming my suspicions (granted, suspicions largely crystallized by reading Ghost in Shell) that Japanese people have gotten way, way too comfortable with robots. They're directing traffic! They're ballroom dancing! They're adding levity to your anxiety-fraught hospital visits! Whatever. Don't you fucking look at me, Toaster.

Then in their sci-tech section there's this article,"Killer Robots....Friend or Foe?," on the possible dangers of giving military robots autonomy:

On one side of the issue is Ronald Arkin, a robotics researcher at Georgia Tech who is working on a Pentagon-funded project to build a sense of ethics into battlefield robots - "an artificial conscience, if you will," he told me.
"The basic rule is to try to engineer a system that will comply as best it can, given the information that it has, with the laws of war," Arkin explained. "And it's my belief that eventually we can do better than humans in this regard."

Uh-huh. You can definitely do "better," totally...you sir, are a race traitor. Stupid humans and their incessant curiosity. Somebody stop Ronald Arkin before he creates Skynet!

Tokyo Police Club - Citizens of Tomorrow
This band is excellent live, you should go see them. (buy)

To My Boy - Tell Me, Computer (buy)

Radiohead - Paranoid Android (buy)