Blog: Things I'd Rather Be Doing

A member of the Iowa legislature has proposed a bill that would make it unlawful to advertise or produce a concert by an act claiming to be a classic group if it didn't have at least one original member. Bob Dvorsky said he introduced the legislation after talking about the idea with Jon "Bowzer" Bauman, a former member of Sha Na Na, during a recent tour stop. Similar bills have passed in 33 other states. The bills differentiate between "performing groups" and "recording groups," with the latter being seen as legitimate because at [...]

While I love checking out the hundreds of best of the year lists (and Largehearted Boy is the best aggregator I've found), all of that pales in comparison to the rush afforded by release of the Village Voice 's annual Pazz & Jop poll. I have voted in the poll the past couple of years, and find it interesting to see where my pick fall on the overall list, and what kind of support my favorites garnered from other critics. This year's list was topped by -- surprise, surprise -- Animal Collective's [...]

I'm not a fan of OK Go. That's not backlash against the band's impossible-to-avoid videos from a few years back, but rather a reaction to the band's music, which I find cloying, and it's stage presence, which is annoying. A slot opening for Fountains of Wayne several years back left me aggressively hostile toward the band. But this week it offers another of those benchmark moments in the shift from tangible plastic to intangible bits in the world of popular music. This might not hit the history books the way Radiohead's pay what you want model did (or [...]

I started reading Ed Gorman because I felt I should; I keep reading him because his books are always entertaining and captivating, and I love his voice. As an arts & entertainment writer for five years with the daily newspaper in Gorman's hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, I somehow never read Gorman's work. I'm a mystery and crime fiction fan, but there was another guy on staff who was a Gorman fan who snapped up his books to review. Practicing the same snobbish conceit that I find so distasteful in others, I decided that someone from [...]

Surprise, surprise: album sales continue to drop in the U.S. Industry folks will blame illegal digital downloads, and there is certainly a case to be made. But the real culprit is likely the abundance of free and legal ways to hear music coupled with the disposable nature of what is produced. When you can hear a bad song once, you've no need to drop money on the right to hear it again and again. According to industry figures, album sales dropped for the eighth time in nine years, falling 12.7 percent to 373.0 million units in [...]

A new Spoon album is a big event, so I carved out time to give the stream up on NPR this week a listen. The verdict? I'd say it's not what I expected, but with Spoon, it's difficult to know what to expect. It feels like both a logical progression from the last two albums and a retrenchment of sorts to the sound of the two before that. Somehow, it is all of those things, and yet what it most resembles is the new Spoon record. How's that for circular logic? Here is a track-by-track first [...]

This is exciting: the first trailer for " Treme ," David Simon's first foray since the wrap-up of "The Wire" (which was unarguably the best show on television). With that high bar set, it will be interesting to see what Simon delivers. The show, which debuts on HBO in April, features some Simon regulars, like Clark Peters and Wendell Pierce (Freamon and Bunk from "The Wire") and Melissa Leo (from "Homicide"), as well as folks like Steve Zahn and Elvis Costello, playing himself. The show reportedly deals with the difficult path of musicians in a post-Katrina New Orleans, [...]

2009 was the year that I "got" the Knife, thanks to the marvelous solo debut of Karin Dreijer Andersson under the name Fever Ray. That led me back to 2006's Silent Shout, which placed high on many best-of lists that year but which eluded my ears. With that background, I'm primed for whatever the duo has to offer from here on out, and it seems as if I'll be handsomely rewarded with their next effort. The pair, in collaboration with performance artist Mt. Sims and [...]

Is a pending greatest hits disc from Pavement the final sign that indie rock is all grown up or that it's dead? However you see it, Quarantine the Past will signal that event upon its March 9 release. The obvious thing for a blogger to do at this point is to nitpick and/or parse the tracklisting. Alas, the folks at Matador have turned that exercise into a game. Or rather, a contest. The collection will feature 23 tracks, the first of which is "Gold Soundz." If you're the entrant who comes closest to picking the correct [...]

2009 was a very good year to be a Big Star fan. Rhino graced us with a boxed set that gathered up seemingly every stray sound recorded by the band, while a limited-edition two-CD version of Chris Bell's lone solo album (the posthumous I Am the Cosmos ) rescued every scrap he laid down. But, strangely enough, the best Big Star-related thing wasn't something you could listen to, but rather something you read. Bruce Eaton's entry in Continuum's excellent 33 1/3 book series dealt with Big Star's Radio City, the band's sophomore outing. In the [...]

Perhaps it's the fact that I turned 40 this year, or that my job was busier than ever, or that playing with my kids takes up a lot of the time I used to devote to music. Whatever the case, I found my tolerance for challenging music that required multiple listens before I would "get it" was limited. At the same time, I probably listened to more albums all the way through than I have in years. It was a case of constantly seeking out the new thing and being disappointed. So many bands were hyped this year (which is, [...]

It's a shame that it took Chris Knox having a stroke to lead to this, but the new 2-CD tribute to Knox, Stroke , is a fantastic collection of songs from the New Zealand songwriter performed by 34 simpatico artists. The proceeds from the set go to help Knox, who suffered a life-altering stroke on June 11 of this year. Albums like these are usually a bit spotty, but the participating artists all seem to not only understand Knox and his music, but are able to approach it with the same wild and wooly [...]

I'm not sure why I first picked up Anders Parker 's music. The first time I heard him was on a Space Needle album, but that's about as far from indicative of his sound as you could get. Perhaps it was the appeal of that disc, however, that led me to the debut of Parker's other band, Varnaline's 1996 album Man of Sin. The disc was appealing, but because it was essentially four-track demos, it didn't feel like the unadulterated voice of the artist. Not yet. That came soon enough, however, with the band's self-titled sophomore album [...]

• Anders Parker - 72nd St Horses
• Anders Parker - Calling Out To You

For a moment, I thought Deer Tick was doing more with its new EP, More Fuel for the Fire , than offering a stop-gap between albums. After opener "La La La" faded out on iTunes (the only way to get the EP at the moment), a slinky guitar came in and the rhythm section sounded like something out of an early Santana track. What was this? Then came the vocals, which found John J. McCauley sounding like... Captain Beefheart? OK, so I unknowingly had the thing set on shuffle, and it was indeed Beefheart's [...]

What's the bigger surprise: That Warner Brothers records is duplicitous at worst, callously ambivalent at best, or that Too Much Joy has an active web site ? For me, it was the latter. No knock against the fellas in TMJ; just haven't heard about them in a decade or more. I was surprised, then, to see a link to the band's blog where leader Tim Quirk shares the band's most recent royalty statement to highlight the laughable digital sales tally listed. And not just a month, or a quarter or even a year, mind you. [...]

Better late than never, here's my take on the "Bored to Death" season finale. I'd guess I have all the time in the world, because HBO rarely sticks to any sort of schedule (unless it's an aggressive one with a true hit like "Entourage" early on), so I wouldn't expect new episodes of BTD for at least 12-18 months. Either way, things ended with a bang, or rather, a punch, as the boxing match among writers and editors promised in the seventh episode was held in this, the eighth. Things began with another stunt casting, as the annoying [...]

With the penultimate episode of "Bored to Death"'s debut season, the show seems to have reached a nice equilibrium, with the characters and premise established. That makes it easier to watch, but it means challenges for next season (HBO picked it up for a second year weeks ago). How to keep it fresh, particularly as Jonathan and his ex grow further apart and the foibles that caused trouble this season have faded? In this episode, Jonathan's case hits close to home: It seems the lesbians that had been getting Ray's sperm in the hopes of having a baby [...]

Two giants took the unusual step of releasing Christmas albums this fall, and the surprise is who did it better. Was it the sentimental fool with a sweet pop croon who knows his way around traditional music, or the craggy voiced Jew whose music seems to eschew sentiment? Surprise! In the battle of superstar Christmas albums, it's no contest: Bob Dylan bests Sting. The intent of these two discs is different. Dylan surely hopes his disc will bring Christmas cheer, while Sting probably imagines his ideal listener in front of the hearth of a stone castle's [...]

Week 6 of "Bored to Death" felt like it should have come much earlier in the season thanks to the significant backstory dropped into the plot. it was funny, again focusing most of its attention on George and Ray, allowing the two to interact for the first time as they were brought together on one of Jonathan's cases. It begins promising, with Ray pulling up outside a diner in his Subaru Outback, discharging passenger Jonathan, who emerges in a trench coat and sunglasses. He enters the diner to some pleasingly "Shaft"-like music, setting a nice tone... that is [...]

One of the benefits of living in Iowa City is that you get to hear a lot of your favorite authors read and discuss their work. Such was the case last night and today as I heard my favorite poet, Mark Strand, read from his work and then sit for an intimate Q&A about writing. Strand is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, so he visits from time to time. It has been several years, however, since his last visit (in support of Blizzard of One , if I recall), so it was good [...]