Blog: NPR Music: Monitor Mix

I saw this video on Boing Boing the other day and thought I'd share it here. It's a wildly trippy mash-up of VU's "Venus in Furs" and the Gaye/Terrell duet "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." » E-Mail This » Add to Del.icio.us

I saw the film Greenberg the other day. There's a scene in which Roger Greenberg (played by Ben Stiller) is talking to his younger would-be paramour, Florence (Greta Gerwig). He puts Albert Hammond's "It Never Rains in Southern California" on the stereo and says something to the effect of, "You have to overlook the kitsch." Greta responds vaguely, not recognizing the song. But I also wondered whether she'd even know the meaning of kitsch. After all, what is kitsch anymore, and does it even exist? At its core, kitsch feels like something less than art; [...]

In celebration of Saturday's Record Store Day , Merge Records is releasing an exclusive 7" from one of my favorite bands of recent years: Telekinesis . The single is the band's first release since 2009's self-titled album, and features the new songs "Dirty Things" b/w "Non-Toxic" and "The Drawback." Monitor Mix is fortunate enough to have an exclusive stream of "Dirty Thing." It's a catchy number full of serpentine riffs and sauce-pot lyrics, with fuzz gathering on the song like moss on a rolling stone. [...]

Saturday, April 17, is the third annual Record Store Day. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out recordstoreday.com. But here's a little history from the official site: [Record Store Day] is the one day that all of the independently owned record stores come together with artists to celebrate the art of music. Special vinyl and CD releases and various promotional products are made exclusively for the day, and hundreds of artists in the United States and in various countries across the globe make special appearances and performances. Festivities include performances, cookouts, [...]

(Thanks, Lia!) The first fan letter I ever wrote was to Ricky Schroder . I told him all about my life in the suburbs of Seattle: bicycling on weekends down to Marymoor Park, how many goals I scored in soccer, getting cast as Narrator #1 in Three Ships , a play about Christopher Columbus. Mostly, I told him that I loved his show Silver Spoons and that I wished so much that we could meet. Alas, I never heard back from Ricky. But, not to worry, nothing was going to stop [...]

I'll be the first to admit that I don't usually listen to music all day. Sometimes it's hours before I'll put a record on, fire up the radio or open my iTunes and make a selection. Often, it's not until I get in my car that music first reaches my ears -- and even then, it's sometimes talk radio. Truth be told, entire days go by without me hearing an entire song. Those, I've realized, are sad days indeed. Yesterday, however, I thought I'd try to determine what the day in songs would sound like. I [...]

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I know I talk about my love for Quasi a lot on this blog -- and I'll give you all a break-- but I do want to begin this entry with a quote from singer/guitarist/keyboardist Sam Coomes. In a recent NPR piece on the band (one neither penned nor initiated by yours truly!), while discussing the state of contemporary music, Coomes says: "There's an emphasis on professionalism, which was not only not so prevalent when we were younger, but it was frowned upon." It does appear that bands [...]

If you know the album to which this story's title refers, then you know that there isn't really a Broadway musical based on it. But there could be! (Though I'm not sure there should be). Recently, The New York Times ran an article detailing the process of how Green Day's Grammy-winning, platinum-selling album American Idiot was turned into a musical. I purchased American Idiot back in 2004. Despite being a casual and somewhat ambivalent Green Day fan, I was craving any sort of mainstream critique of [...]

Yesterday, I celebrated Easter by going to Disneyland and witnessing the resurrection of Michael Jackson. Before you call me a heretic, let me add that there was a 7.2 magnitude earthquake that lasted an entire minute. Trust me: Something awesomely holy was afoot. I hadn't seen Captain EO since 1987, the year after it premiered at Disneyland's Tomorrowland. I was in seventh grade, a pretty major Jackson fan, and a believer in the fact that those giant purple 3D glasses could both make me cooler and cover up my adolescent and volcanic pimples [...]

Yesterday, while recording the Spring Preview show with my All Songs Considered cohorts, we began discussing what songs were at the top of the charts on our respective birth dates. I had never heard of my song. It's Andy Kim's "Rock Me Gently." Please take a moment to listen to this sweet track from 1974: After proclaiming my ignorance of the song to my friends, I was bombarded with the following information: "Great '70s jam." "Neil Diamond impersonator." "Despite [...]

Depending on the day, the glass is half empty or it's half full. I'm either loving the world like a hippie on the beach, sitting atop a piece a driftwood and playing my didgeridoo, or I'm lambasting everything in plain sight, from puppies to kittens to rainbows. I can't possibly be alone in my vacillations, in my extremes. Right? I'm back in Portland for a bit, and the other day I was shopping in a local store, listening to the clerk tell me through sniffles and a hoarse, cracked voice that he refuses to take anything for [...]

Next week, the All Songs Considered team will get together to record a discussion of the spring music releases we're most looking forward to hearing, to air the following Monday. In recent days, music fans have already had access to previews of some of the most anticipated albums, from MGMT to The New Pornographers , and from The National to Broken Social Scene. MGMT is a guilty pleasure at best, New Pornographers are ace, Broken Social Scene [...]

• Holly Golightly - Forget It
• The National - Bloodbuzz Ohio
• The New Pornographers - Your Hands (Together)

Anyone who's old, or getting there, doesn't need a reminder. And most of us music fans see or hear enough great music throughout the year -- made by both 18- and 80-year olds -- to know that it's not the years that suck both the musician and the audience dry; it's cynicism, soullessness and, well, crappy songs. Personally, I don't feel that old. But if there's one thing that is a stark reminder of where I am now, compared to where I used to be 20 years ago, it's listening to songs that reference a [...]

I left SXSW before most of my intrepid NPR compatriots. I flew home Saturday morning, right as the storm rolled in. But, in my defense, I had been there an entire week, growing ever more tired of the resurgence of the li'l black leather jacket, and very close to flinging myself under the wheels of a pedicab if it would make women in bikinis stop hula-hooping in the streets. (I used to see hula-hooping as a childlike and innocent throwback to the '50s, but, thanks to SXSW, I now see the hoop as a stripper pole curved into [...]

River City Tanlines. ( Courtesy of the artist ) After watching six bands play at our own NPR Music showcase at The Parish , I took a short break from the music. Is that okay? I'm only asking because I actually feel guilty. You walk around 6th Street in Austin during SXSW, or along Red River Road, and you realize that at any given moment you are missing out on seeing hundreds of bands. In every crevice of this festival -- and a little more annoyingly, in the middle [...]

(thanks, Lance) Tennessee representative Steve Cohen speaks about his friend, Alex Chilton. » E-Mail This » Add to Del.icio.us

Live at the Rhythm Festival, Clapham, Bedfordshire, Aug. 2008 Alex Chilton is gone. And it hurts. After I read the news about Chilton's passing , I went onto Facebook to check in with friends I can't be with here at SXSW in Austin. Many of them are musicians and artists, and never had I seen an entire news feed filled with variations on the same despair. Alex Chilton's band Big Star changed lives. They changed lives because when you heard them, it unlocked an entire -- and utterly lovely -- world. [...]

At long last, I've seen some live music! I've been at SXSW since Saturday. For the first few days, along with my fellow cast and crew members of Some Days Are Better Than Others , I sat in dark theaters, searched for inspiration and kept quiet. (Best movie I saw: American: The Bill Hicks Story .) But now -- and with a sense of relief and release -- I can be in the sunshine, and I can be in the noise. It [...]

Sweet Lord, I love Chicago's HoZac Records . I am a relatively new convert to the label, introduced to it in late 2009 by Matador Records' Gerard Cosloy. But, trust me, it was love at first speaker blow-out. Since then, I find myself talking about HoZac bands all the time -- from Mickey to Myelin Sheaths to Wizzard Sleeve -- forwarding their MySpace pages to friends, dropping the label's name in interviews and mostly (and most joyously) listening to whatever I can get my hands on. [...]