Revenge of the Nerds?
Yes, it's true. Two of the world's richest men admit that free market capitalism is incapable of doing anything about poverty.

My quick Intonation festival top five:

1. Blue Cheer, not the original guitarist but I sure couldn't tell. They might have relaxed the tempo on a few tunes but were otherwise powerful, charismatic and real... which couldn't really be said of any of the other live acts.

2. Lupe Fiasco, skateboarders on stage, more paranoia about people downloading or recording his tracks, but he has a vibe and some pretty catchy tunes... okay, really just "Kick Push" but he was on.

3. Free-flowing 312.

4. the poster tent... I'm really into those skill-screened rock posters, even though I think it's hard to find one that both looks good and has good bands on it. I have a small collection that I have carefully unstapled from boarded-up walls on Division Street. There was a nice Tristeza poster but I can't even remember who that is. There was a killer screen for a Sonic Youth show in 2002 that I actually went to. But Sonic Youth?

5. The BBC fake Masterpiece Theatre tent. Guerrilla marketing can be annoying, but I really want to go in this tent and play pool, I just didn't quite drink enough to do that.

6. MSTRKRFT and Jordan spinning on Friday night at Smartbar with tons of sticky, nasty people dancing like some kind of futuristic pagan tribe.

Strummer in 20/20
I gave a certain magazine editor a hard time a few years back for publishing an inaccurate bio piece on Joe Strummer. I knew that Strummer wasn't "working-class" as he was repeatedly described in the piece. The ed's excuse was "the writer has a lot of experience" or something like that, and "we don't pay our writers." Nice. Anyway, I was recently vindicated in a big way in Mojo magazine, which really got to the heart of the Strummer land of make-believe and even gave us the lowdown on Cut the Crap, that weird Clash album with the drum machine that I bought on cassette the day it came out. Crap was crappy, but it primed me for B.A.D. whom I still really like. The magazine with the shoddy fact checking and lots of freak folk in it still exists.

A lot of stoner rock out there is bullshit, but I'm really digging on Danava, coming to Chicago in July.

Frere-Jones is the crunkest member of the Magnetic Fields
I think he's on fertile ground in this piece on why recent British pop (or indie) exports don't often connect with mass American audiences, but I'm not sure what it is. He seems to say (let's infer) that a puritanical American music biz can't handle the social realism of songs about prostitutes, certainly a stretch. He cites examples of inoffensive, upifting fluff like James Blunt that has gone into the charts. Thankfully, he doesn't mention the Spice Girls, even once. Is he saying that Americans prefer uplifting fluff? When I was living the UK (early 90s), uplifting, schmaltzy fluff was all you heard on the radio. The Brit indie scene was ace but in retreat and post-grunge dominated the music press, except for Suede who laid a lot of the groundwork for the resurgence Britpop.

What he doesn't get into wondering is why are some American bands able to go over to the UK, get big (so quickly) and use that as a launching pad for US success while others seem to fall flat in the UK. I'm not sure I have an answer. I do have some anecdotal knowledge of how the British music industry sometimes worked in the ’90s which might be a contributing factor. At least one band I know had their label pay off a British music journalist to write glowing profiles of the group before its UK tour. Voila... a cheap investment produces a five year career! Does it still work that or did it ever? I have no idea. Can anyone explain Adam Green for me?

Another thread to be explored is the government programmed radio angle. The BBC has only a few channels and manages to expose a massive amount of people to a wide variety of music and styles often programmed by experts and actual DJs rather than commericial-funded corporate monoliths. Why do British people give a shit about dance music, for instance? On the other hand, why has commercial hip-hop failed to get a foothold in the UK? Traditionally, the music press in the UK has more influence, but radio also matters more there than it does here. Man, I'm rambling...

I know a famous person
Erik Wemple is a super solid guy and ace editor who also falls into the slim category of newspaper men that actually take my calls. I congratulate him on his new gig at Village Voice.

Make-up time
So backpedaling on yesterday's post, Jay let me know that he didn't do what I suggested he did in the interview and he's correct. Thanks Jay, you've given this blog some much needed gravitas. I can't talk about sneakers, Belgian ales or drum wraps for at least a week.

In the interest of making good, I should tell you that Babcock is
appearing on AirAmericaRadio's "the Marc Moran Show" on Monday, May 29 in a 20-minute segment discussing the Arthur v Godsmack episode and also Arthur's forthcoming CD (curated by Chicago's Josephine Foster) which benefits anti-military recruiting campaigns.

Judgment day for Godsmack?
This is almost a month old but it's been a hot topic this week.
The guy from Godsmack definitely deserved to get some serious flack for this and props to (we don't do fact-checking, we just love pentagrams) Arthur magazine's Jay Babcock for going for the throat. But sometimes when music writers do politics, they forget to do so journalistically. Babcock doesn't stop to consider that the administration and the military are really two different, conflicting entities these days. He is subscribing to a Vietnam-era idea of a monolithic government/military complex. Anyone who has followed the lead-up to the Iraq invasion should know that the administration ignored the advice and dissent of top military advisors and also that many retired military officers have publicly opposed the war from the outset. I think Babcock could have done what he wanted to do without introducing unsubtle radical politics into the discussion. At the same time, I like the idea of some radical left O'Reillys out there shifting the angle of the debate. I just like it better when they are a bit more logic-bound and informed.

Also, anyone seen this doc Baghdad ER? is very well done, horrifying but not sensationalistic at all.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Good Lordi.

The Finnish band Lordi won the Eurovision song contest with its original song 'Hard Rock Hallelujah.'

The band bears a striking resemblance to the costumed metallurgists GWAR who originally hailed from my home country of NoVa.

One rather curious (but obvious) sidenote to the hip-hop/race discussion going on is that political hip-hop's audience consists largely, if not overwhelmingly, of white folks. Here's a Village Voice piece from a while back that gets into it.

More on Merritt/Hopper/Frere-Jones.
Wishing I had the Prince on my playlist so I could play "Controversy."

The not-so-rare seven-inch that inspired a movie.
Some old friends hit me up about a split single from the ’90s which I did the graphics for way way back in my Indiana days. Evidently, the record or the performances around the time it was released inspired an indie rock doc film (which neither of the bands on the single appeared in). This mp3 posting is pretty hilarious for its alternate history (ie: none of these musicians have passed on to my knowledge).

I will post some listening station suggestions. I can’t tell you the racial make-up of all the musicians involved. You’ll just have to figure that out for yourself, or not.

Camera Obscura Let’s Get Out of this Country (Merge)
Country-tinged forlorn female stuff with some Joe Meek-esque production details, much better than that snoozey new Neko Case record.

The Lee Boys, Say Yes
Gospel with a shredding steel-guitar that sometimes turns psychedelic.

Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped (Geffen)
Hey this is melodic, this isn't that weird, this kinda rocks.

Monsieur Gansbourg Revisited (Verve Forecast)
The songs of the one and only Serge Gainsbourg are redone by the likes of Jarvis Cocker, Portishead, Gonzales, Marc Almond in English for our listening pleasure. It’s one of those tribute records that ranges from the super weird (Sly & Robbie with Marianne Faithful) to the predictable (the Kills sounding like Blonde Redhead).

Radio 4 Enemies Like This (Astralwerks) Way more rockin’ than the last album which was a stinker in my book. Good guys, though.

Tony Allen Lagos No Shaking (Honest Johns)
The extraordinary Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen (longtime Fela Kuti associate) does his thing well here, but its more about simmering and grooves than seething intensity. It falls on the laid-back end of Afrobeat, maybe slightly on the smooth touristy side rather than the raw freaky side.

Okay, now this is just getting crazy.
No, I don't like watching car wrecks. The responses should be showing up here and here.

And flash, Albini weighs in as only Albini can and will do.

Kristol has his day.
This guy usually gets away with murder on TV but Colbert (who's Report is actually often hit-or-miss) gets him on the ropes and keeps him there. Cobert vs. Kristol (QT).

Talkin' Nat Geo World, y'all
Er, yeah... I contributed a bunch of stuff to the fresh, hot, online National Geographic World Music Guide.

The Tax is playing with E'Nuff Z'Nuff.

Zizek anyone?
I'm thinking of heading over to In These Times for the Zizek panel tomorrow night. Who's in? The other option is to go sell stuff down at Hyde Park Records.

Hit the archives at Hyde Park Records for MP3s of some of the rarest stuff they've sold lately. An LP called The Mail Must Go Through by the Cult (not the She Sells Sanctuary one) and a D.R. Hooker album that went for a cool grand.

While last week was a social and sonic overload, this one seems to be about work, dull interviews, fascinating interviews, Elizabeth miniseries immersion (love the Helen Mirren, didn't need the graphic decapitations) and few frustrating scheduling conflicts for the rock bands. And what is up with the arctic backlash weather around here? I froze my ass off today in v-neck sweater, windbreaker and wrinkled-up Burberry dress shirt.

And I almost forgot... a new feature of this blog will be to track newspaper stories that jack from articles I've already published or something like that. The New York Times recently ran two pieces on modern auction house Wright 20 and Richard Wright in what seemed like the same issue. I profiled Wright in the Chicago Reader back in 2002 or something like that.

Opening band blues
I'm not talking about being the opening band, which is its own kind of blues I suppose but watching an opening band blues. The New York talent pool is running a bit shallow right now and Blood on the Wall has found that its number has come up (mixing metaphors, I know) and its time to tour with Karen O's band, whateveryacallem, er, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. BOTW just don't have it, nothing to offer really but some tired Pixies-isms and proto-metal grunge. Miggy is a cool guy and good drummer, but sorry pal, they're not giving you much to work with. I think New York bands voted them their favorite local band... possibly they meant to say favorite local band to drink beer with and tour with, because the other night they made the YYYs look good, really good. KO was bouncing gold-sparkly something that you couldn't take your eyes off. Some tunes didn't go anywhere but mostly it was worth driving up for and leaving early from. James Murphy kicked out an early DJ set later that night, bursting with disco both obscure and classic. He played a giant-drumbreak-sporting Rare Earth track, a band that you must respect simply because Motown named its sub-label after them, the first band signed to it.

It was a great social party weekend for me, highlights being the mime-styling dancing at Sound-Bar, the mind-expanding set (loads of Benelux goodies, Bad Brains, the Catherine Wheel soundtrack, a disco track called "Exercise Your Ass Off") from Nick Common Factor at Derek's converted bakery loft and the endless real lime and tangerine juice margaritas and gourmet homemade salsa bar at my in-laws easter fest. We made enough guac for 22 people and I think I ate half of it.

You'll be blazed by Average Homeboy.