Tagged: thingsweactuallylike

Two icons of the '90s, Alicia Silverstone and Alanis Morrissette, have teamed up for a cause that affects all of us (especially knowledge-worker types who have extra time on their hands to read blogs): Movies with no discernible purpose other than throwing a bunch of highly bloggable artists on the soundtrack and using those songs to score long stretches of dialogue-free "pondering" about "life." (Oh, and their cutesy credit sequences give work to animators, I guess.) They teamed up to make a trailer for a movie called MY Mother's Red Hat (you can already figure out the "plot," [...]

Apparently, the news that George Michael was a pop genius is so big, The Guardian 's music blog had to let Alan McGee take time out from his usual My Bloody Valentine bashing to pen a 650-ish paean to his brilliance: " Faith (the album) was classic pop. It found Michael moving into Brian Wilson Pet Sounds territory. Seriously-Michael co-produced, wrote all the songs, played most of the instruments and sang backing vocals and harmonies." So basically McGee is trying to placate the Guardian audience by appealing to their rockist tendencies, and getting into the semi-dicey [...]

Attention fans of R & B: The latest entry in Tapemasters' The Future Of R & B ziptape series has made its way online, and it looks to be a doozy, with a Ne-Yo/Brandy collaboration , Amerie's new single , Maxwell's outstanding "Pretty Wings," and a track by the all-over-the-Internet Drake in the mix. (This blog has links to other entries in the series as well, in case you missed a few volumes like I did over the past few months.) [ The Piff ]

Dear Sub Pop: Thank you for making the site where you can download your latest label sampler compatible with Netscape 1.0. Of course, downloading 14 songs over a 14.4 connection is probably going to tie up my phone line for the better part of a day, so I'd better make sure that I set up my modem to dial star 70 before it connects to my PPP hookup. [ Sub Pop ]

YouTube + the concept of the round = just click. (And keep clicking.) (Also, sorry in advance about the incoming earworm.) [ inbflat ; HT Tyler ]

"I imagine we are all, like cassettes, thoughts wrapped up in awkward packaging. : )," says Erika Iris Simmons of her art project Ghost In The Machine -in which portraits of musicians are crafted from the innards of cassettes-and you know, she might have a point. Simmons has crafted images of musicians like Ian Astbury and Tom Waits out of this pretty ingenious source material, but my favorite one has to be Robert Smith , because his hair looks absolutely perfect . [ Flickr ; HT Dan R.]

Idolator's former Anono-Critic Rob Kemp looks back on his 10-year tenure as a member of the Punk Rock-Heavy Metal Karaoke backing band, during which he helped countless everyday people play out their rock and roll fantasies. He once backed up Soy Bomb! The band is throwing its 10th-anniversary party tonight in New York City, in case you want to give your dreams a whirl this evening [ Decider ]

I'm not even going to let the fact that this was basically an extended ad for a sugarless gum hawker dim my enthusiasm for the spectacle that descended on Piccadilly Circle yesterday, when 100 Beyoncé lookalikes took over the square to perform the "Single Ladies" dance / promote the free show she's giving at the O2 Arena this fall. Because honestly, if I could look that good in a leotard? I would have definitely participated. Hell, I would have even chewed gum the whole time, just to prove my "team player" status. [ YouTube via think [...]

Any day that I'm on blogging duty, I wake up with the hope that the internet will have something magical for me that day. Most days, my level of satisfaction with what's out there is around a five or six on a scale of one to ten. But a day when I happen to stumble upon an entire episode of Solid Gold from Jan. 11, 1986—complete with commercials? That's a solid ten. Take in the other five segments below the cut, complete with performances by the Judds , Whitney Houston [...]

It's easy to hate high ticket prices at shows, especially with the economy descending even more fully into the crapper, and at this point, I don't even spend a second browsing merch stands at shows. I enjoy sporting an ill-fitting t-shirt as much as anyone, but when the opportunity to promote across my chest a band I enjoyed for a month or so crossed the $30 barrier, I checked out. To her credit, however, critical fav Lucinda Williams is giving concertgoers a break: If you buy a ticket for one of her upcoming shows, you'll receive a [...]

Sunday will be the 50th anniversary of the death of Lester Young , one of the great saxophonists of all time. I'm not going to pretend to be a jazz expert, but Young's cool, relaxed style of play has always been one of my favorite things, while his hard luck story (including a brief and disastrous stay in the Army) is depressing even in a sea of heartbreaking jazz tales. The selections of Young's music available on YouTube are a little limited (and skewed towards his later, more troubled work), and while it's far less than a talent of [...]

I've really tried to be a little more positive about music in 2009, which is a little bit challenging when your cruising the Internet for news results in you running across one ridiculously hyped act after another. Still, there are moments when I'm reminded why I care so much, and reading about a Gary Louris / Mark Olson show at my beloved Club Congress in April was one of them. Although my enthusiasm for alt-country has diminished rapidly since the beginning of the century, the output of the [...]

Perhaps as a way to provide balance to the blander-than-bland Dove Awards , the Festival of Faith and Music at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., looks like it'll actually be a vibrant, interesting weekend. Presenters include Cornel West , the guy from Danielson's dad (a noted songwriter in his own right), critic/blogger/author Jessica Hopper , and Christian music's Peter Gabriel (in the best sense of that label) Charlie Peacock . On the performance end, Pedro the Lion's Dave Bazan and Over The Rhine are as close to traditional [...]

Sure, most people have heard Plastic Bertrand 's "Ça plane pour moi" (whether during the KROQ golden age of alternative music or plugs for the CW's slate of dramas). But who spends a lot of time thinking about what the man born Roger Marie François Jouret on this day in 1954 is up to these days? As a way of wishing Mr. Bertrand a happy 55th birthday, let's see what he's been up to. There was probably a six-month period when I would have told you I was a Plastic Bertrand [...]

I've used my bully pulpit on this site to complain about the endlessly delayed release of Charlie Wilson's Uncle Charlie , so it only seems fair to mention that Jive finally put the album out, eight months after the commercial release of the spectacular T-Pain-assisted single "Supa Sexxy." (It's also been a year since that song leaked.) Amazingly, an album with a bankable urban star and a deluge of guest appearances actually seems to be selling; trade rag HITS is projecting that the former Gap Band singer's solo effort will make next week's top [...]

Not Sun Records head Sam Phillips , but former Christian pop singer/ Gilmore Girls "la, la, la" supplier Sam Phillips, who turns 47 today. I'm not sure if the word "underrated" really fits in the Internet age of overinformation, but Phillips' seven (!) albums since her name change from Leslie and split from Christian label Myrrh are all of a high quality and consistently seem to be released under the cloak of night. I would consider myself a fan, and somehow I missed the fact that her most recent album, Don't Do Anything , hit [...]

Sure, the video for Still Flyin's "Good Thing Its A Ghost Town Around Here" would have been a much better fit if I had actually found it around Halloween, but the song is still a fun distraction for the weekend. The San Francisco "surf/surf/surf" outfit has an album coming out soon, and it might also have one of the most irritating aesthetics of any indie act in recent memory—their "Hang Loose" determination to rid the world of harsh buzzes is seemingly assembled from a collection of early-'80s Ocean Pacific t-shirts—but there are a few hooky tracks up its cotton [...]

Idolator-approved electronic artist Max Justus just posted eight remixes of songs from Kanye West's controversial 808s & Heartbreak (Maura and I like it!). Justus adds beats and synths and ultimately turns it into the electronic record it may have always been, blowing out the vocals in either direction–-toward the literal or toward the figurative–-but never playing them very straight. [ therecordmachine.net ]

How did that Maroon 5 remix album, with the Rapture-biting cover and the cameos by the likes of Deerhoof and Of Montreal and Just Blaze, come to be? A possible explanation awaits. [ Sound Of The City ]

Last week, the on-the-lam DMX was arrested in Florida after having a bench warrant issued against him in Arizona. As it turned out, Earl Simmons was taking refuge at the pad of fallen superproducer Scott Storch, who hasn't been having the best luck lately either . What would happen if the two turned their frowns upside down by entering into life as a sitcom duo? The Real imagines that future for us. (Clip after the jump.) My Dog Earl [Vimeo [...]