Blog: Crazy Talk

"...this spot takes you on a hilarious, ultra-violent, semi-pornographic tour through just about every famous album cover known to man." Enjoy (.mov file). (thanks, motiongrapher )

This is U2 doing "With or Without You" circa 1999. Watch this at home, not at work. Turn the lights off. Shut the door so no one can interrupt you. Turn your phone's ringer off. Watch this and tell me that your eyes didn't water a little.

The old: U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name": Fast, crowded, anthemic. A comedy troupe re-enacted U2's infamous rooftop performance: Check out their exploits here . The new: Jose Gonzalez's "Heartbeats": Slow, solitary, sleepy.

I’m checking out a panel today at San Francisco’s 1st Annual Summer Music Conference . I’m actually sitting in an oversized red chaise lounge right now at Ruby Skye where the conference is going down. This chair is comfy. Damn comfy. It feels like there’s a waterbed up in it. What you are about to read is coming to you LIVE! The panel is “Artists & Producers Guidance for the New & Emerging”. The panelists are Jeff Daniels (CEO, Rock River [...]

So The Shins show at ACL has come & gone (thanks for the pic Cam). Seriously, its over. Let it go. You can still be friends, just stop calling so much. What's that? Your love of The Shins is not like some light switch you can just turn on & off? Your affection is a pressurized valve that will surely explode scaldingly hot steam if left unattended? Well here you go then. A teaser video by our friends at Current TV's The Sonic Drop [...]

Some of you cats may have already discovered rbally , but I just did, and I'm glad for it. The man has the goods.

Given the current state of American foreign policy, "freedom" is a word that gets bandied about more these days than air hockey pucks. Since finishing the bar exam, however, "freedom" has taken on new and more personal meanings to me. During the summer, the sum total of my social life consisted of Buffy on DVD and a bottle of $7 Safeway-special wine. These days though I often find myself paralyzed in the face of the social buffet available to me. Here's a glimpse at the [...]

With corporate logos plastered everywhere, sometimes it's nice just to see blue skies and someone singing their heart out.

The Austin City Limits Music Festival was scorching hot yet again this year. In addition to throngs of clothes-shedding music fans, the artists also had something to say about shedding some layers. Cee-lo Green (Gnarls Barkley): [Unbuttoning his shirt] "I'm about to release a sexy beast!!!" Marty Crandell (The Shins): "I see a of skin in the audience, and let me tell you folks: I like it. It's so hot we might start taking our clothes off! And then your wildest fantasy just might come true. Imagine: eight Shins' [...]

Recently, I had the amazing opportunity of working with some friends who just recently got their documentary, Sons of a Gun , accepted to a film festival in New York. One thing that makes this such an exciting event is I have always been personally affected by the intersection of music and film, as it forces you to finally place visuals with a medium that instinctually inspires whole scenes to take place in some of our minds. However, this is a tricky task, because one can be devout in the practice and match up the song that focuses on [...]

The Shins need your help; they want you to film them during their set at next week's Austin City Limits festival. Note: Your weapons are limited to cell phone and digital cameras; auteurs with serious gear need not apply. What does this mean? The Shins are too lazy to make their own video or they are really into Web 2.0. And if you're a big enough nerd to know what that means, you really should get involved in this because "I just shot the new Shins video" sounds way cooler than "I'm into social networking [...]

Damn I love me some Wikipedia. And I've really been taking a shine to Lil Wayne lately (I just got The Carter II and it's consistently good, which is pretty much a miracle for a rap album these days). Who knows if any of this is true, but there are some real gems buried in here: At the young age of 13, Wayne would drop out of school to fully pursue a rap career. Precocious! It should [...]

Saturday night Kate and I sped across the Bay Bridge with a nice little crew of friends to check out a show at The Independent. The bill was Michael Zapruder opening for The Court and Spark opening for Sean Hayes. We initially bought tickets to see the latter, but the other two proved to be the more interesting to me. Of course its impossible to arrive on time or early for a show when you're going with more than one other person. I was there with 6. Needless to say, I only got [...]

It has been 1,052 days since The Shins released an album. Its going to be at least 114 days more until Wincing The Night Away hits the stores. At this point, the sharp pain of longing in my heart for new material by this band has receded to a nagging numbness that leaves me cold in the night. For those of you who also find yourselves despairing in the dark hours before daybreak, then by the hairs on your shinny shin shins GET YOUR [...]

Read this from Corporate-Casual.com . Prepare to get hot. "The other day I made my daily pilgrimage to Cup of Life, the local Fair Trade coffee shop that bravely struggles to show these sheep that there are alternatives to the exploitative monster that is Starfucks. I ordered my cup of “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go Blend” Honduran Green Mountain, when I heard a familiar voice behind me. 'Let me get this.' A man in a baseball cap stepped forward and said, 'Make that two.' [...]

Apparently the Oakland Art and Soul Fest is trying to woo the local Castro-cap-wearing kids to their predominantly R&B stages. Saturday, the Silversun Pickups played but I couldn't get off my ass to check them out. Sunday Calexico took the stage at 1:15 pm. I have decided that they should be hired to do a retroactive soundtrack to the movie Young Guns , Jovi be damned. I was fairly impressed with their show, which I would describe as "solid." Unfortunately I can't say the same for my No. 2 after I [...]

". . . The New Age people call it Folk; the Folk people call it New Age, but it is really neither. It's transitional. The style is derived from the country blues and string band music of the 20's and 30's, however much of the music is contemporary. Fahey referred to it as 'American Primitive' after the 'French Primitive' painters, meaning untutored." This is guitarist Peter Lang's description of American Primitivism, a genre combining elements of folk, blues, classical, Brazilian and Indian music and championed by Fahey, Lang, Leo Kottke and Robbie Basho in the 1960s and [...]

Don't sweat the disco pitter-patter intro; you'll be over it in two shakes. The bassline and the whistling start what the Lennon-style voice confirm: you're hooked. I want to go swimming in these vocals; they're dripping off the notes. When the girl's voice eases into the first verse you'll pause and let out a sigh where you're trying to not be in love with her by the end of the song. The chorus is the same dreamy vocals, bongos, and dancehall horn stabs over a bed of vintage keyboards. I don't know how they figured [...]

Iron and Wine some guy covers Outkast. Imagine: your friend says, "You've got to watch this! Some college guy just did a wicked version of "Hey Ya" at the local coffeeshop!" Yeah, me neither. But amazingly, this is actually pretty good.

I know I post to this music blog collective about once in a blue moon. But I had to track down my login and tell you all about the incredible surge of feelings I am experiencing about Bob Dylan's new album. Sometimes life just serves you something sweet and perfectly formed. It's like you're the first person to walk into the conference room and somebody left a giant basket of muffins. Don't ask questions. Just eat. I've got two little kids, and I don't find myself with a lot of time to enjoy music.I [...]