Download: L.A. RECORD "Pretty Sh!t Mix"

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I made a mix for L.A. RECORD to rouse dreamy girls and shy guys for the second in our series of Sh!t N!ghts at the Cha Cha in Silverlake. I may DJ but I may also better-valor and let Sian Alice Group (who are killer and did an upcoming L.A. RECORD interview that will win hearts forever) do something much better.

We are DJing at Cha Cha Wednesday night for the next installment of our acclaimed "Something Sh!t" series and we are following up last month's Heavy Sh!t with the logical next step: Pretty Sh!t. (Let's also call this an Eagle Rock Music Fest pre-party!) It's free to everyone to come see us and guests from Gangi and hopefully Sian Alice Group (if they're in town) DJ the most purtiest lovelies we can pry out of our library.

My liners below.

01. Os Mutantes “Panis Et Circenses”

One of my favorite bands. Up there with Roky. Me interviewing Sergio for a long long time here. I would also urge you to purchase their later "bad" albums because guess what? They aren't bad. Get some Sweet 45s and '70s Link Wray while you are in a missed-opportunity mode, too.

02. Stone Poneys “Different Drum”

Definition of "pretty shit." Written by Monkee Nesmith and probably beloved of Philip K. Dick, who wrote Linda Ronstadt into like two novels and a bunch of short stories as "Linda Fox."

03. Sid Selvidge “Miss Eleana”

Great orchestral bummerdom from the just-out Thank You Friends Ardent box set. I love Ardent and hope to sit in their control room chair one day. This would be a great comp already but they seeded it with some Big Star rarities—real rarities; some not even on the Ardent Sessions boot that came out—which really push this into that ultimate one-percent. This also blew out of print I think so grab it. 2XCD only as far as I know.

04. Nirvana “Rainbow Chaser”

The British band that Nirvana U.S. had to name-wrangle with. Canterbury psych-pop with an intro that surely must have been rapped over by now.

05. The Bee Gees “Red Chair, Fade Away”

From their first super-heavy record.

06. Daughters of Albion “Hey, You, Wait, Stay”

Post-Peppers studio-as-acrobat project from producer Greg Dempsey and singer Kathy Yesse. "Well Wired" is a real fun one on hear—plenty fast and stereo pans that will run your car into a ditch. But this is a sentimental favorite.

07. JK & Co. “Fly”

Supposedly a 17-year-old Canadian boy genius who came to L.A. and sessioned this out. I actually get certain basic nutrients from backmasking so I have to listen to this once a day.

08. The Millennium “The Island”

California pop that should have sat first-tier but somehow they got sidelined as re-ish treasure. Great album, tho. Drums that walk around the room by themselves. (But not on this track, which had to be pretty.)

09. Rogerio Duprat “Honey / Summer Rain”

Duprat was Mutantes producer and gave tropicalia its signature maximalism. This is a double from his only solo release. I was told once to buy anything that had his credit on it.

10. Bonnie Dobson “I Got Stung”

Canadian folk gal whose songs tend to slide psych/funk—try her "Light Of Love," which is the same formula of jilted-in-love-swing-in-the-drums. Sampled lots.

11. Soft Boys “Positive Vibrations”

Definitive "pretty shit" philosophy. Says Robyn in his liner notes: "I wanted to invert the way I was feeling. The Russians had invaded Afghanistan, my girlfriend took the dog to be put down. I thought, okay, let’s turn this upside down. I flipped myself over."

12. Os Mutantes “Panis Et Circenses” (Reprise)

When they played at the Bowl I got their late and heard only the last note of this last movement, and after that there was nothing worth remembering.

Right now, Poppermost is in Trimordial Studio finishing up a new version of our song "Erika." The song was originally a birthday present for a friend who worked in my favorite restaurant. I pretended to be Paul Westerberg and tried to write a song specifically for the Replacements.

I was introduced to the music of the Replacements via Clover Club Larry. The album was Pleased To Meet Me, and the song was "Alex Chilton," a tribute to the Big Star leader. The song was infectious and captured my ears right away. It was power pop married to oblique lyrics howled by a voice soaked in whiskey and cigarettes.

I listened to the Replacements for inspiration. I even started singing aloud more often because I wanted to sound like Paul. He could sound like hell-on-wheels on rockin' cuts like "I.O.U." and a drunken balladeer on "Valentine." He sounds broken and road weary in the beautiful "Skyway." "Can't Hardly Wait" brought back classic horn sections and strings to contemporary music.

After hearing Pleased To Meet Me, I had a sudden rush of "guts." All of a sudden, I wanted to write for myself, and have a great band to execute the songs with "grace and balls." The album also reminds me of having to say good-bye to my old band Below 37, and say hello to looking for other musicians to help build my songs and make them better.

Ultimately, Clover Club Larry and I would see the Replacements at the Hollywood Palladium for one of their last performances, and dance ourselves sweaty among the others in the 'Mats frat. He'd say, while chowing down on a hot-dog from Pink's, "It was good, but it's not the Replacements, man. Chris the drummer and Bob the guitarist weren't there." Maybe so, but I finally got to see Paul!

Ultimately, I'd find inspiration in the other Replacements albums and Paul's solo work. I'm glad Paul Westerberg is still around.

Sure, the Replacements were glorious and, like most rock bands, probably not meant to last. But there is pure, animalistic rock and roll magic in the Replacements' music. Check out the early, punky stuff. You get to see Paul's musical vision coming into focus.

Here's to you, Paul. Happy birthday!

(Lex Neon is the musical mastermind behind the music of indie sunshine pop / rock band Poppermost.  For more info, go to http://www.poppermost.com/)

Note: The date listed on the album shown below is for the remastered version. The original was released July 7, 1987.

Currently listening : Pleased to Meet Me By The Replacements Release date: 25 October, 1990

It's here a week late, but here's the report on the Big Star / Hitchcock gig from last Thursday at the Shepherds Bush Empire.

It will be no surprise to regular readers that it was Hitchcock, the support act for this gig, who was the main draw for me.  The 28th was his only fixture in England while I am also here (except for Rogues' Gallery; he does have a solo slot at the End of the Road festival, but that's just after I depart) and so I was keen to go.  I was chatting away to the BF about Hitchcock and he later overheard the people behind us talking; they were telling a newcomer that the people in front of them (ie, us) seemed more keen to see Hitchcock than Big Star, the main act of the night.  The newcomer all but sneered, saying "we can see him any time".  Grah.  I very much liked the Shepherds Bush Empire as a venue, though its reputation wasn't hurt by the fact that we had seats for level 3 (the gods) but were instead allowed to go to level 1 (the grand circle) and because I had made us get there so ridiculously early we were right in the front row of the grand circle.

Hitchcock had been given a very generous set for a support act, with an allotment of 45 minutes and / or ten songs (he only played nine, so I think he must have gone over).  I attach the set list to this post in a comment for those who are interested, but in brief, it was an extremely enjoyable set.  Hitchcock accompanied himself on guitar for his first five songs, his fret hand slinking about like a spider, particularly on "I'm Only You" (which was dedicated to Battenburg cake), almost as if he were making the song up as he went along, or rather learning it as he went along.  He finished his solo section, surprisingly, with one of my special favourites, "Full Moon in my Soul" - surprising because he could play anything from more than twenty albums, so I was prepared to just sit and enjoy, rather than be able to join in properly (I am, after all, only a new fan).  After five songs, he was joined on stage by his niece Ruby Wright to play the saw, which she did very well and with clear enthusiasm.  There's not a great deal else to say, as it was a truncated slot, but it was great fun and I hope to see a full show some time before I marry him.

After Hitchcock, Big Star were a bit of an anticlimax, though we both had a lot of goodwill toward them.  Unfortunately, neither the BF nor I knew anything about them; we had made an effort not to be completely ignorant before going, but sadly Amazon didn't get the CD out to us in time, and so sat there, enjoying what we could but not without the evident fannish relish of practically everyone else around us.  I did find them quite a strange concoction as a band - to me, they didn't look as if they were a band at all, though they worked aurally very well.  However, it was jarring to watch a band where one looks like a goth (bassist), one an escapee from a Christian rock band (lead guitar), one a dark Robert Redford (drummer), and one as if he's everyone else's granda (lead singer).  They included two odd covers, one of one of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance marches and another of the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice".  I thought both were sweetly done and both made the BF writhe in discomfort, so you can't please all the punters all the time.  I am sorry I didn't know them better before I got to see them, as the album has since arrived and is very good, but it can't be helped.

Hey, I'm back! Did ya miss me?
In case you were wondering...I had a wonderful time in London! But enough about that! Let's get down to business.

The next Juno is here! Well it's coming out in October. And it's not actually Juno but it is Michael Cera's new romantic teen comedy with an amazing soundtrack, entitled Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist. This soundtrack is going to give the Juno soundtrack a run for it's money. Just look at the list of bands on it:

-Chris bell (of Big Star)
-Devendra Banhart
-Bishop Allen
-Vampire Weekend (with Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo)
-The Dead 60's
-Takka Takka
-The Submarines
-We Are Scientists
-Band of Horses
-Army Navy
-Richard Hawley
-Shout Out Louds
-Paul Tiernan

What the? Not one song involving Kimya Dawson? Weird...Maybe it's not that kinda movie.

Anyways, i have no idea how the movie will be, but I am super excited for the music!

Here's the trailer:

Other than that, after visiting Rough Trade Records East in London or as I like to call it: the best record store I've ever been to, I've compiled a list of new bands and artists that I will be checking out in the coming days/weeks. Here is the list:

-The Jimmy Cake
-The Little Ones
-The Owl Service
-Paavoharju
-Josephine Foster and the Supposed
-Laura Gibson
-Jaymay
-Bodies of Water

So if you know any of these bands please tell me what you think, or what songs to listen to.

Ok now I'm going back to the opening ceremony of the Olympics, and then bed. I've been up for something like 20 hours. Go Canada!

[dailymotion id=x5hk3u]

Video Clip : Big Star

Singer : Reel Big Fish

I know his song "Motel Blues" from hearing Alex Chilton do it on one of those mid-90's Big Star rereleased live and rarity albums, of which, there were too many.  And I love Big Star, but I digress.  I liked the song fine, but  I didn't "get it."  I recently found a version of Loudon doing it while looking for Rufus Wainwright stuff, and was truly moved.  Chilton missed the self-loathing and desperation in his version.  The audience thinks it's supposed to funny, and then has no idea what to think.  And that's what they call "Art."  

He may very well be an asshole, but he is a talented asshole.

"Rules for 'Insight To My Heart':

Post the song that just gets to you every time you hear it."

Simple, huh? One song. But these days, asking me to list one song that "gets to me" is like asking me which grain of sand on the beach I like the most. It's impossible. Let's face it, I'm perimenopausal, I'm a hormonal mess, and if you've read this blog with any regularity, you know that even getting my oil changed can reduce me to tears these days. I listened to the B-52's Rock Lobster last week, and by the time Cindy Wilson started asking, "Why don't you dance with me? I'm not no limburger!" I was sobbing.

So I got all sidetracked with this one. I think Wendy wanted a song that told something about me,  something that touched my heart, a choice that may not make sense to others unless there was a little explanation. Simple, right? But once I started thinking about songs that made me sad, I got all ADD and just went all over the place with it.

I trimmed, cut, hacked, and I still ended up with thirty-one songs. Thirty-one.

One day, I'll come to terms with the fact that I'm a bad meme-er. I had a brain waft and changed the rules. Here are the videos for my top three songs, and below them a playlist of other songs that are the cause of a lot of tear shedding.

#1: Old Man River, Paul Robeson: I had a slight dilemma with this. I sing the short version of it all the time. It reminds me of so many things-- Memphis (where I grew up), the mighty Mississippi, heartache and racism, and the sound of Paul Robeson's voice is absolutely beautiful. But this video is the longer, original version, and includes some very non-PC lyrics. If you want to avoid hearing that part, you can stop after 2:05,  (Robeson later changed a lot of those lyrics).

By the way, Paul Robeson was a fascinating man. You can learn more about him here.

#2: Everybody Hurts, REM. This one was an easy pick. If you can listen to this song without crying, your heart may be made of cement. I was going through YouTube videos trying to find a decent one, and had to have a box of Kleenex on standby. I finally settled on the following video, because the lyrics were included.

Step away from the ledge!

#3:Rainbow Connection, Kermit the Frog: The sweetness of this one never fails to make me boohoo. This version is a duet with Debbie Harry, whose voice can also make me cry, so it's a double whammy.

That Kermit. So manly-- er, frogly.

A friend of mine used to call these "gas oven songs," because often, when you listen to them, you want to put your head in one. So here's my partial gas oven list. You can also listen to them here. I don't know why some of these make me cry. Sometimes it's a voice, an association with a person or period of my life, or beautiful lyrics. Sometimes it's Tuesday.

Blondie, Sunday Girl

Johnny Cash, Hurt

Thirteen, Big Star

Patti Smith, Because the Night

Paul Robeson, Old Man River

REM, Everybody Hurts

Jeff Buckley, Hallelujah

Elvis Costello, Alison

Joni Mitchell, Rainy Night House

Cowboy Junkies, Sweet Jane

Elliott Smith, Waltz #2

Cat Stevens, Father and Son

Fleetwood Mac, Dixie Chicks: Landslide

Don McLean, Vincent

Kermit the Frog, The Rainbow Connection

Roy Orbison, She's a Mystery to Me & Anything you Want

Jackson Browne Joan Baez, Fountain of Sorrow, I used to love the Jackson Brown version, but he hits women, so I like the Joan Baez version better now.

Cyndi Lauper, Time After Time

Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World. This one reminds me of my grandmother, who listened to it all the time.

Gary Jules, Mad World

Tracy Chapman, Fast Car

Linda Ronstadt, Long, Long Time & Black Roses, White Rhythm and Blues

Langley Schools Music Project, Desperado (NOT the Eagles version)

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Mr. Bojangles

Mahalia Jackson or almost anyone else (except for the crackhead version that Wendy links to at the bottom of this post): Amazing Grace

Etta James, At Last

Traveling Wilburys, Handle Me With Care

Kevin Kline, La Mer

John Mayer, Daughters. Not a fan of John Mayer, but I am a big fan of my daughter, and I miss her.This song makes me lose it. I wish they'd stop playing it at the grocery store.

I'm completely embarrassed about the length of this post, and the fact that I couldn't do my assignment properly. I'm tagging no one and everyone for this. Mostly, I'd just like to know one or two or ten of your own gas oven songs. What songs do you in? Can you name just one?

Oh, and about Dance this Mess Around. I decided not to include it. I wanted to end this with something that didn't make me cry, so here's a fun Rock Lobster video for you. It made me cry too, but they were happy tears, because it came out during a period of my life that I look back on so fondly.

(Hey, Botmo, let's go to the Antenna Club!)

*SHARK ATTACK: American Idol's Ryan Seacrest was bitten by a shark recently. On the toe. He took some aspirin to treat the wound.

*Jewelry: Jay-Z has been spotted wearing a wedding ring. Unrelated: He is married.

*If you would be interested in taking a leak: A new R. Kelly album (12 Play: 4th Quarter) has leaked. You can maybe go find a torrent of it. Leaked. Heh. [digital music news]

*Art: Banksy is Robin Gunningham according to Time magazine. Also, how about that feces painting!? Wild! [mediaeater]

*Musicals: The von Trapp family villa is finally open! Now considering a "Sound of Music"-themed vacation to Salzburg for late August. (Not kidding.)

*Intertwined industries: Ars Technica on Rock Band, Guitar Hero and music sales. [ypulse]

*Local: Peefork reviews St. Anthony Park barista Haley Bonar's "Big Star." 7.1!

*Local: Robert Zimmerman rarities released! Watch for Tell Tale Signs. Where was this local singer/songwriter when I was a child?

*Geek instruments: Zelda ocarina's on sale for $40 at ThinkGeek. [geekologie]

*I have been getting up around 5:15 am. FUCKERS.

Big Star - Thirteen

Won't you let me walk you home from school
Won't you let me meet you at the pool
Maybe Friday I can
get tickets for the dance
and I'll take you
Won't you tell your dad, "Get off my back"
Tell him what we said 'bout 'Paint It Black'
Rock 'n Roll is here to stay
Come inside where it's okay
And I'll shake you.
Won't you tell me what you're thinking of
Would you be an outlaw for my love
If it's so, well, let me know
If it's "no", well, I can go
I won't make you

Essa música é muito fofa, e o cover do Elliot Smith ficou ainda melhor:

[dailymotion id=xm1aa]

Video Clip : I'm In Love With A Girl

Singer : Big Star

P.S. I have no idea what to make of her expression on the cover of the album. Maybe it's the furry hat?

http://www.myspace.com/haleybonar

The funny thing, though, is just how influential some far, far lesser known artists became. Many people have heard of Velvet Underground, although comparatively few have actually listened to them, but if you factor VU's overwhelming influence out of our collective cultural history would we have had Bauhaus, Echo & the Bunnymen, Lenny Kravitz, Sonic Youth, Jesus & Mary Chain (and subsequently Black Rebel Motorcycle Club), Galaxie 500 (and the army of bands that followed their lead) and REM?

How about Big Star? I'd wager that not many contemporary listeners have even heard the name, but their influence on a generation of guitar pop musicians is just about impossible to calculate. Put it this way - if you hopped in a time machine, went back to Memphis in the early '50s and erased Alex Chilton from the ranks of the living, when you got back to 2008 almost nothing would sound the way it did before you left.

Influence is a funny thing. Huge artists can leave almost no footprint for future acts to follow and relatively obscure bands can change the audial landscape forever. Which leads me to another band that a lot of people these days don't know: Joy Division. Sure, everybody's heard New Order, which in 1987 released Substance, arguably the greatest dance album ever. But before New Order was Joy Division, which featured the guys in New Order plus their creative leader, Ian Curtis. JD was interested in expanding the sound of punk, and it embraced a range of dark, melancholy tones that served to comment on the bleakness of European industrial life in the '70s.

In May of 1980 Curtis committed suicide. There's no way of knowing how big Joy Division might have been commercially, and until the last couple of years I couldn't have imagined how great their artistic influence would be. But all of a sudden, over 25 years later, there's been an explosion of new acts that are clearly beholden to Curtis' brooding legacy of despair. Interpol and The Killers are easily the best of the lot (The Killers cover "Shadowplay" live and on their recent B-Sides collection), and if they were the only examples we could dismiss the Joy Division Effect easily enough. But the truth is that we're seeing a significant movement within "indie" rock that simply wouldn't exist without the influence of band that barely lived long enough to get off the ground and that died before Reagan was elected.

So today, in our inaugural TunesDay, we pay tribute to all those bands out there - the JDs, the VUs, and the Big Stars - whose vision exerted an impact on the world of music that far exceeded their individual commercial successes. Here's Joy Division with their video for "Love Will Tear Us Apart."

Here Interpol performs "Slow Hands."

The Killers' reverence for JD is evident in this homage.

She Wants Revenge is a lot of fun, but at times they're almost a tribute band.

Then there's Editors, whose An End Has A Start was one of my Gold Award CDs for last year.

And The Mary Onettes...

And finally, "1981" by The Flaws.

We'll conclude with a Rock 101 exam question: Enduring artistic influence is better than commerical success or critical acclaim. Discuss.

Been a couple of days since I posted something, I purchased a copy of Bob Baker's ebook, 'Guerilla Music Marketing tips', which I've been reading intently in the leadup to release of my latest single.

Man it's so interesting to think about how we were all taught to think in a certain way by the mass media. In particular the record companies, who's campaigns to sell us the latest big star or whatever, lead to a very insular way of thinking about music, i.e. if a band isn't signed, then they must not be good enough. I must admit, I'm a little guitly of this myself. Everytime I open up the Itunes store I just end up looking at the same label artists that I love, like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Megadeth etc etc. I'm getting better though and am starting to pay attention to more indy music like my own, it's just I've been brainwashed by the big wigs for so long, sometimes it's hard to think outside the square.

We'll get there eventually. I wander if whats happening to the music industry, will ever happen to the book publishing industry? I mean think about it, you can publish whole books online, is that not just as credible as getting published by some big publishing house. I'm not an author but I know someone who is...

And some of the shit they publish nowadays, yeesh!!

www.azumuth.com

www.myspace.com/azumuthmusic

www.trig.com/azumuth

www.reverbnation.com/azumuth

Ah, the Replacements—their legend precedes them, and it goes a little something like this…

From 1980 until 1986, the Replacements rose from the ranks of the thriving Minneapolis music scene to become one of the most beloved, frustrating, and notorious bands of the American indie rock movement that begat alternative, emo, and even alt country. Years of shambolic, inebriated, and totally thrilling, life-or-death performances in tiny bars, VFW halls, and house parties across the country earned them a near-fanatical fan base, and also the reputation of being the best and worst band in the world—a simultaneous title they could lay claim to in the same night, the same set, even the same song. From the maniacal and brilliant playing of guitarist Bob Stinson, who could simultaneously channel Yes, the Damned, and the Beatles into poetic non-sequiturs of guitar chaos, to the pure punk energy of his teenaged little brother Tommy on bass, the Stonesy gallop of drummer Chris Mars, and the staggering emotion of frontman Paul Westerberg’s voice and songwriting, the Replacements were a dysfunctional knot of musical misfits, and a band like no other.

All more or less true, in a rock-critic-meets-deadline-who-cares? kind of way, and it can all be boiled down to this: There have been better bands, louder bands, and drunker bands, but there has never been a better, drunker, louder band than the Replacements, and the second two qualifiers wouldn’t matter one whit without the first. Gang Green never changed anybody’s life and you know why? Because they sucked. And on any given night, so did the Replacements—unforgivably. (As can be attested by anyone who ever waited a year and paid $20 to see the band only to find them falling down drunk, with Paul Westerberg inhaling helium before launching into unrecognizable versions of “Born in the USA” and “Whipping Post.”) But in a heartbeat (it’s a lovebeat), they could transform into the American Rolling Stones, but better—all heart, with none of the flamboyant rock royalty nonsense, just cranked guitars, hopeless desperation, and some of the best songs ever written. This was rock and roll as dropout high drama, entrenched in the moment, gut wrenching to witness, with stakes and brilliance only hinted at by the records they left behind.

But honestly, here is what you really need to know about the Replacements: They blew it. For many reasons and in many ways. They wouldn’t have been them if they hadn’t. Right before they did, though (or maybe right after, depending on how die-hard the fan you talk to), they stumbled down to Memphis and made one of the best American rock and roll albums of all time. And it isn’t even their best record. This is the story of Pleased to Meet Me.

***

By the time the Replacements arrived in Memphis in January of 1987, they were just barely a band, which was fitting, because according to producer and raconteur Jim Dickinson, they didn’t go to Memphis to make an album at all. In fact, Dickinson says, the group had split up in the wake of lead guitarist Bob Stinson’s expulsion for being the most wasted guy in a very wasted group.

The Replacements previous album, 1985’s Tim, was their first for a major label after six years in the indie trenches and it had ratcheted up their notoriety thanks to now-classic songs like “Bastards of Young” and “Kiss Me on the Bus.” They performed both for their big network TV debut on Saturday Night Live, but mouthing obscenities into the cameras, dropping their instruments, and getting stumbling drunk got them banned from the show forever. In general their reputation for sloppy-stewed live performances didn’t endear them to the authority figures of the entertainment world.

But guitarist-songwriter Paul Westerberg, bassist Tommy Stinson, and drummer Chris Mars never really cared about any authority figures—except maybe their rock and roll heroes. Which is why, after apparently deciding they couldn’t go on without, and especially with, Tommy’s older brother, they decided to regroup when the opportunity arose to record some demos with Memphis music legend Alex Chilton.

The sessions with Chilton, who was co-leader of pop cult favorites Big Star and singer for the Box Tops, weren’t going much of anywhere when Dickinson was called in. Dickinson, who turned 66 this November, is a Memphis legend in his own right—a brilliant whorehouse piano player with the soul of a musical poet. His career arc goes from juke joints to session stints with Aretha Franklin, the Flamin’ Groovies, the Rolling Stones (“Wild Horses”), and Ry Cooder. As a producer, he’s worked with a slew of artists including Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Mudhoney, Big Star, and of course, the North Mississippi Allstars, featuring his sons Luther and Cody.

“I’m not sure if it came from management or A&R or whatever, but I had one meeting set up with the Replacements before I started,” Dickinson recalls. “It was a breakfast meeting and of course they were drinking their breakfast. I was dressed the way I usually dress, and Tommy said, ‘Look Paul, he’s got a flannel shirt. He’s just like us.’ And Paul said, ‘I don’t care what his shirt is. He’s not like us.’ ”

Westerberg was contentious. “He told me, ‘I’m not gonna give you 100 percent because you don’t deserve it.’ I’d heard R&B singers say that before, although not in exactly those words. Of course, he gave me 110 percent. He was just ripping his heart out on some of those songs. ‘Art’ was a word he wouldn’t let me use, and six months later he was calling himself an artist.”

“I thought they were brilliant,” says John Hampton, longtime engineer at Ardent Studios in Memphis, where Pleased to Meet Me was recorded. (“I started there on 7/7/77, how’s that? One of the first things I ever recorded was Alex Chilton’s album with the Cramps.”) “I thought Paul Westerberg was a genius, from the second I heard him sing. I said, ‘That is brilliant. Everything he is singing is brilliant.’ See, Jim didn’t turn me on to any of this before I went in. I was not expecting this. Most of the guys I have met in my life who were brilliant went to the record label, and the label didn’t give them any money, and they wound up being waiters down the street.”

As the main engineer on the album, Hampton recalls an incredible band at a crossroads

“I’d heard about Bob, Tommy’s brother, who was no longer in the band. And I never even met the guy, but I could feel his presence there,” Hampton says. “I could feel everyone else missing Bob—a kind of insecurity, a kind of ‘what do we do?’ An aura in the room is the best way to say it. They were all going nuts, but they were trying to be serious, trying to grow up at the same time. Trying to do things the way Bob would do it, but Paul was now more in charge.” (“I kept telling the guys, 'Bring me Bob,'" Dickinson remembers. "But they just shook their heads. I wanted to call the record Where’s Bob? Nobody thought that was funny.”)

“It was the first time they tried to play sober,” Dickinson recounts, “and it just wasn’t working. So we gave up. Every day they were like a sine wave. They wouldn’t be drunk enough early on in the day to get anything. Then they’d be good and drunk and it would be great. And then they’d be too drunk and they’d get useless. But at the end of the day Paul would start to feel good and want to play these awful covers, and that was fun, except we couldn’t really use any of them for the album. To this day he thinks he played on a bunch of those where I was really playing guitar.”

In addition, Dickinson and Hampton had to get used to Paul Westerberg’s approach to recording.

“There was one point in particular where Jim had gone home and Westerberg had asked me to stay so he could cut some vocals on something he wanted to work up,” Hampton remembers. “We cut a track that never came out on the record, but it was a song about … ah … either, I never put it together, but I think it was about his yet-born child. And he said roll tape and he started singing and he was kind of mumbling some spots, then some lyric would solidify and he would say something just intensely private and personal, but very warm, and he would say, ‘Nah, nah, screw that, go back to the top.’ And I would hit record again and it would be an entirely different lyric. And he keeps coming back to this one thing about ‘I’m cold’ and ‘toes are cold,’ that was something he kept going back to, and then ‘talk to you through the wall’ and ‘hear you through the wall,’ then ‘Nah! Take it back to the top.’ And then I suddenly realized that this guy is writing the song as we speak, right here. At least I had the presence of mind to start changing tracks every time he said to hit record, because every time I hit record, they were going off into infinity forever. I realized that this might be some important stuff.”

It is a kind of fearless spontaneity that Dickinson was no stranger to, having produced the brilliant and troubled Big Star’s Third. Dickinson’s ability to capture that kind of moment informs the album’s most raucous and most heart-breaking moments.

“There was a time when they were doing that song ‘Shooting Dirty Pool’ where Jim was trying to make it sound like a fight in a pool hall,” Hampton says. “Paul was trying to think of something to say, like, what would you say to somebody if you wanted to start a fight with ’em? So we recorded the bottle breaking—bam!—and by the way it was a bottle of Michelob from the little store across the street, and Paul threw it against a concrete wall as hard as he could, and the first time he threw it, it didn’t break! So Paul was trying to think of all these lines, and he said this one line that was the best line I ever heard, that didn’t make it to the record, but I’ll never forget it. He said, ‘What are ya gonna do about that lion haircut, sister?!’ Lion haircut! Like a mane!

“Luther came in and played on that [Luther Dickinson, just 15 at the time]. Everyone came in to play on it! Jim was trying to create this bar scene, this completely reckless out of control moment. Jim had to get it from a dead stop to a level of complete chaos, and so that was the part where he brought Luther in. He was walking down the hall grabbing people to come in and make some noise, whether they could play or not, and he added a baritone sax with too much compression on it.”

Dickinson’s deft touch also lent itself to the recording of “The Ledge,” a harrowing, first-person account of a suicide attempt driven by a haunting E-minor guitar riff and Westerberg’s stark emotion.

"Westerberg has been mad at me for years for saying this," Dickinson recalls, "but he's by far the most sensitive of any of those post-punk artists who I worked with. What he gave me on the microphone is amazing. He just reached inside and pulled it out. At the end of 'The Ledge,' he’s literally weeping. That’s a live vocal and a live guitar. The track itself was flawed, and he came out of the little booth I had put him in—we called it 'The Dungeon'—and said, 'I don’t have to do that again, do I?' I said, 'No, Paul, I’ll fix it.' He was obviously tearing something out of his soul. I sat there and felt a little guilty for a second, but then I thought, 'Hell, Quincy Jones sits there and listens to Michael Jackson sob; what’s the difference?'"

“Paul respected Jim,” Hampton says. “Just that he worked on Big Star’s Third. He almost idolized him I think. And the other two guys, Tommy and Chris, just kinda went where Paul went. If Paul was good, everybody was good. If Paul was bad, everybody was bad. But really, it was great. In fact it was fun. They were having fun, and as Jim would say, it was stickin’ all over that tape. They were having a ball. And when those guys were having a ball, everybody was having a ball. A great energy.”

For the sessions, Dickinson drew on his long Memphis history literally—calling in Alex Chilton himself to play on Westerberg’s tribute to him, the aptly titled “Alex Chilton.”

“Yeah, he was originally going to play on ‘Alex Chilton’ but he wound up playing on ‘Can’t Hardly Wait’ instead,” Hampton says. “Paul loved Alex. He loved him. But it wasn’t a mutual feeling. I don’t know. I’m gonna leave that one alone. There wasn’t a lot of admiration on Alex’s part, but that’s more about Alex.”

Also figuring prominently in the production, more so than on previous Replacements albums, was bassist Tommy Stinson. Through the years Dickinson has often said he learned more from the Replacements—and especially from Tommy—than the band learned from him. Though he was just 19 years old at the time of the Pleased to Meet Me sessions, the one-time brat who at age 12 had been bullied by his older brother Bob to take up the bass had developed a foolproof rocker's ear.

"Tommy was so intuitive," Dickinson says. "I really let him produce that record whenever I didn't know what to do. If I was puzzled by a situation, I would put Tommy in a position where he had to make a choice, and then I would just go with whatever he chose. His instincts were that sharp."

Hampton laughs out loud remembering an incident with Tommy Stinson during the recording.

“For the whole record, Paul was playing a black Les Paul with P-90s. Then, one day, they got their artist advance from Warner Bros. Across the street from Ardent was this place called Pyramid Guitars, owned by my friend Rick Rayburn, who was a collector. He sold some really sweet pieces—he had some killer vintage stuff, and Paul went over there and got a clear plexiglas Dan Armstrong with the replaceable pickups, so he came back over with one of those. So the guitar was mostly Les Paul on the tracks, but he picked up the See-Through a few times for coloration. But Tommy went over too, and he got a Thunderbird bass that he loved, so much that he decided he wanted to redo the bass on all the songs! Redo all the bass on all the songs now that he has a Thunderbird? You’re kiddin’ me!

“And I was just beginning to understand about cutting tracks and the importance of keeping that original feel over overdubbing. A three-piece band and you’re gonna take a third of it and redo it? No, you just don’t do that. See, they were all … ah … [stage whispers] drunk! Pretty much all the time. Most of the time it was red wine, though Paul did have a hankerin’ for the Heineken. But mostly it was just jugs and jugs of the red Gallo wine. So Tommy insisted on rerecording all his bass parts, and Jim was like, ‘Whatever you do, don’t lose the bass we’ve got.’

“You gotta get this picture,” Hampton continues. “We really needed rearview mirrors, ’cause we had just redone the control room. The console was facing the speakers and the glass was to your left. But Tommy was standing in the room, with an amp, and he was literally eight or ten feet behind us. And we didn’t have mirrors, so we just hit record and let him start playing. So Jim and I were sitting there, and Tommy was playing the song behind us with this Thunderbird bass. And man is that a boomy bass. Man can those things boom! And then all of a sudden we heard this hell of a noise! Just this huge crash, and man, I just lunged for the monitor knobs to turn it down. And I look and Tommy is on the ground, his Thunderbird bass—brand new—is also on the ground and it has snapped at the headstock. We don’t know what happened. Maybe he was dancing.”

For other recordings, Dickinson had to employ some psychology tactics to get the sound he wanted.

"They'd never had their amps separated in the studio before, which is one reason their first few albums sounded so terrible,” the producer recounts. “When I did it, they complained. ‘We can’t play like this.’ The discussion wasn’t going anywhere so I left the room for 10 minutes and came back, and they were playing. I did that a couple times. Paul said they couldn’t play ‘Nightclub Jitters.’ He said, ‘We need real musicians for this.’ I left the room for 15 minutes and they were playing the song.”

Perhaps the most contentious matter of all, however, was the decision to bring horns and strings into the mix. Although those instruments were used on just a couple of songs, such un-punk-like embellishments flew in the face of the Replacements' no-frills aesthetic. Dickinson says the directive came not from him, but rather from the powers that be at Warner Bros.

"I get nailed for those horns," he explains, "but they were not my idea. That order came from the record company, who thought it would be a good idea since we were in Memphis. On the first day, I got a telegram that I opened in front of the band. It said 'Can’t Hardly Wait: Horns.' So I built up to the idea slowly. The first horn player I put on the record was Prince Gabe, who did the saxophone solo on 'Nightclub Jitters.' He was a heroic figure to them. They really liked him, and in fact that applause you hear, at the end of the song, is the guys applauding him as he came into the control room. After that I brought in Teenage Steve Douglas to do the baritone sax stuff. Douglas thought the guys were funny. The band knew who he was, of course, from the Phil Spector records and everything. They respected him."

Dickinson continues: "Still, on the day I was to do the horns for 'Can't Hardly Wait,' they left town. That's the way Westerberg handled it. But it was the strings they really hated. The thing is, he was going for Big Star, and I was going all the way back to the Box Tops. I really felt the strings had to be there, or we weren’t going to say it all, or we weren’t going to make the whole statement. Later Westerberg did warm up to the horns, but to this day I don’t think he’s forgiven me for the strings.”

Strings or not, Pleased to Meet Me remains a masterpiece of the post-punk era—the disc on which Westerberg recorded his transition from gutter poet to, as he acknowledged after its release, artist. "What a writer," Dickinson says simply. "And the chemistry in that band was amazing. They didn't give me an anthem though. If I had gotten a 'Bastards of Young' or a 'Left of the Dial,' we would have had the record of all-time. Still, it's a great record. I'm really proud of that one."

“I tell you what, that Replacements record was a highpoint of my career,” Hampton says. “Something about that whole record had its own mojo. And everyday something would happen that was absolutely miraculous.”

And then Hampton debunks the tired old myth about the vomit on the ceiling: “If you want to know the truth, the real freakin’ truth about the barfin’ on the ceiling or barfin’ and throwing it on the ceiling, whatever you’ve heard, here it is: Paul Westerberg had one of those big jugs of red Gallo wine. And he had left about three quarters of an inch in the bottle, and the trash can was about 15 or 20 feet from where he was standing. He was throwing the thing away! He threw it in the air aiming for the garbage can. And God-sworn truth, that thing hit square-flat boom, absolutely perfect shot into the trash. And a little plume of wine shot out of the bottle and went up about six or seven feet and stained the wall. And that was the famous Paul barfed on the wall spot. He didn’t barf on any wall! None of those guys got that screwed up! It was just a perfect shot.”

-Ari Surdoval, with Ted Drozdowski and Russell Hall

The Replacements, with Bob Stinson's replacement Slim Dunlap, performing "Bastards of Young" in 1987.

I’ve got a terrible fondness for most Minnesota musicians anyway, and even though Haley Bonar’s from one of the Dakotas she’s known as a Minnesota musician (for her time in Duluth and, now, St. Paul), and so I’ve got a soft spot for her just as is. Still, geography’s not enough to make me love a song or an artist, and Bonar’s songs are freakishly pretty. I first heard her track “Am I Allowed,” off her first disc The Size of Planets, and that song might still be one of the prettiest, gutsiest, most honest songs of love and ache I’ve ever heard. The song’s action is of a lover returning to a lover she’s left, and though some of the phrases are sort of stock and simple, Bonar edges them into new territory with strange new additions to what the listener might be expecting: “Just let me see you, I sure miss your smile, we’ve both been lonely, we can kiss for awhile...” She sings that passage toward the start of the song and it’s unfair to even go too far into all this just because to understand the impact of Bonar’s singing you need to hear her soft, slightly sad voice—she sounds both exhausted and quietly determined, if that makes sense. Anyway: the song to get, if you’ve never heard her, is “Am I Allowed.”

Her new single is the title track from her latest CD. Another weakness I’ve got is for stuff titled Big Star—the band (obviously), the Jayhawks track (off Smile)—and so this track made me smile even before I heard it. The singer this time is not the one who has left, is not even the one who is leaving, but is a lover singing about her beloved’s desire to find “all the loving that you need.” In the chorus her voice takes off, assuring her beloved “You’re gonna be a big star,” and then later advising that “They’re gonna call you baby, treat you like a symbol, something that they’ll never understand...I’m gonna read your stories, spend springtime in the gardens...” There’s a weird lack of overt sentiment in the song—it’s not clear that Bonar’s happily wishing this lover well on his way to fame and glory or if she’s really really hurt by it. It seems to me to be both, simultaneously, which is all the more devastating. Anyway: download it, listen to it, buy her album, come to see her when she comes to your town.

The Rural Alberta Advantage “Don't Haunt This Place"

I know next to nothing about this band: I know that they are a trio (2dudes/1girl) from Canada, and that this song is from their debut album Hometowns, which they self-released this past fall and which should have a much wider release than it presently does, and at the end what I know about the band is sort of unimportant: I got this song a week ago and I haven’t gone a day without listening to it four or five or nine times a day, no joke. I can’t believe how crisp and cool the drums sound, how basically this sounds like a song with a folk lyric and melody and a pop guitar/strings part with techno drumming and somehow those three things work perfectly despite the fact that it’s not (I’m guessing) anyone’s idea of the perfect Neapolitan ice cream of music. Still though: believe it, the song’s perfect, it’s a great early evening summer song, and everyone should download it and listen and listen and listen.

Langhorne Slim “Spinning Compass"

I can’t speak with anything like coherency about this guy, so I’ll try to make it quick. This is a track of his recent self-titled release, which was supposed to come out on V2 but, of course, didn’t because there’s no more V2. Langhorne Slim’s apparently been around for 2+ years and I’ve known of him for 1+ month which makes me feel just stupid and awful because I’m sure at some point in the last 2+ years I could’ve used some of the music he’s made, but I had to suffer through with whatever I had. The other side of that coin, though, is that now I do know his music, and my life’s all the better for it, and from what I’ve read and found about the musician he’s worth plenty of attention and enjoyment and etc. Exhibit A: he’s buddies with the Avett Bros, which might be the greatest band in America at the moment and who also seem to be some of the nicest guys in the world (and seriously, if you don’t have Emotionalism, you’re missing way, way out). Exhibit B: in an interview with Daytrotter, Langhorne had this to say: “I wanna make peoples’ heads explode with good feelings. I would like to move people and be moved.” Is it even reasonable to not give a guy with that sort of idealism and hope five of your minutes for one of his songs? And it’s not even five minutes: “Spinning Compass” is a wild one minute, fifty-four second blast that is the perfect pop song—it makes you want to sing along and shake, and then when it’s over you want to hear it again right away (the first time I heard it I played it four times in a row). I don’t know what else to say about Langhorne Slim. Buy his discs. See him play. Do whatever you can think of doing to make sure he has more time and energy to spend writing music.

[audio=http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/1496480_tkizf/03-bigblackcar.mp3]

Driving in my big black car
Nothing can go wrong
I'm going and I don't know how far
So, so long.

Maybe I'll sleep in a Holiday Inn
Nothing can hurt me
Nothing can touch me
Why should I care?
Driving's a gas
It ain't gonna last.

Sunny day, highway
If it rains it's all the same.
I can't feel a thing
I can't feel a thing

I've got a big black car.

Nothing can hurt me
Nothing can touch me
Why should I care?
Driving's a gas
It ain't gonna last.

The lights above, oh yes.
I see the stars above

Hey Every body

 I notice target.com has a ablum in store under my name Hip hop mimi. It's not me. I do clean fun music , there no need for
 Parental Advisory please spread the word. thanks Hip Hop Mimi.

 

Click Here for Samples of the Album

 

 

*Fred Meyer stores bring the vinyl back (accidentally). I still buy all my vinyl from garage sales. [e-mail]

*SanDisk buys MusicGremlin, a service-cum-devic that allows users to browse and buy music at WiFi hotspots. This may sound weird, but the next (non-telephonic) music player I buy will probably be a SanDisk. Yeah. Weird.

*Listening Post on Converse, whom we have written about numerous times, due to the fact that they're hitting the music and retail scenes HARD. New: MP3s from N.E.R.D., Santogold and more.

*Best Week Ever collects 10 New Kids on the Block photos you should not miss. I used to have hair like this. Also, I used to have hair.

*Some people are calling iCarly the new Hannah Montana. Admission: I didn't even notice when Steve Jobs rolled this out.

*Buzzfeed rounds up disk drive music, in the spirit of other retro-tech mechanical melody making. Thank you.

*Minneapolis music mag Reveille covers "Big Star," Haley Bonar's latest release: "Haley Bonar’s Big Star is a shimmering bright spot too good for the coffee shop world." Also, she makes a mean mocha if you are ever in the St. Anthony Park area.

*Franz Ferdinand's web site features incredibly soothing record players. [d-prince]

*Required: Fleet Foxes are "modern hippies." The International Federation of Music Bloggers made me say that. [coerced]

*Off topic: NY Mag takes a deep dive into the meaning of Ashley Alexandra Duprey's tattoo. (I still don't know what it means.)

*Off topic and local: If you are in the Twin Cities, I suggest visiting Blondie's in St. Paul on Snelling. I HIGHLY recommend the carrot cake, and have the physique to prove it. I am not kidding. Thank you.

Everyone wants to know where to get the single. It's only on-line at Wal-Mart Mp3's. Go here for a direct link. Just click on Mimi's picture!

Your friend,

The Star Club

Also the STAR CLUB keeps getting bigger and bigger!

San Antonio goes for the BIG star!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Send us videos if you got'em. Nothing mean....be nice....even to your ex's....well at least don't be mean in the videos. LMAO!

KEEP'EM COMING GANG! <3  <3  <3