TWIN CITIES OH YEAH MPLS/STPL ALL THE TIME ROCK FRENZY YAAAAAH ok maybe not rock all the time but uh WHEEE ok

So I probably remiss in making the case for my fair city(ies) on a regular basis, and yes, my pimping of Gay Witch Abortion is the exception to the rule, but what have I done for you lately awesome place where I live?

OK fine. I don't think that I have spent enough time talking about Maps Of Norway (rip) and Zebulon Pike which is mighty mighty mighty. But today I am focusing on something new (NEW!) to me that has crawled out of the back alleys of mpls/stpl, wet behind the ears, terribly handicapped by our lack of bitrate love and probably public transit.

Unicorn Dream Attack. gameboys. an MPC. a vocorder. love for you.

B34utifule 3y3s
Live
and for the unadverturous that can be swayed by this sort of thing, a cover of the Pixies

!!!!!

bonus: Future of the Left (who uh how many times do I have to tell you this) are mindpunching fantastic. Live at the Turf Club thanks to M@tt for pointing this out btw.

MY ahem MINE ALL MINE FAVORITE SONG I NEVER LISTEN TO

biting my co-bloggers steez here, but so here are my genius results for "Another Perfect Catastrophe" by Firewater

Another Perfect Catastrophe - Firewater
Tell Me When It's Over - Dream Syndicate
Little Drop of Poison - Tom Waits
Think Locally, Fuck Globally - Gogol Bordello
Guero Canelo - Calexico
Medication - Son Volt
Blown A Wish - My Bloody Valentine
I Got Stung - Elvis Presley
Paradise - Firewater
So Like Candy - Elvis Costello
T.V. Eye - The Stooges
When The Day Is Short - Martha Wainwright
El Picador - Calexico
The Long Cut - Uncle Tupelo
The Good Ones - The Kills
Engwish Bwudd - Man Man
Chocolate Jesus - Tom Waits
So Long, Superman - Firewater (no available youtube. this is a great song tho so find it plz)
I'm Not In Love - Tori Amos
Woke Up New - The Mountain Goats
I Only Said - My Bloody Valentine
I Think I Need A New Heart - The Magnetic Fields
Cure For Pain - Morphine
Deep Red Bells - Neko Case
Blindness - The Fall

my feelings on this are

unknown. huh.

clearing my throat

ok so yeah i am terrible at this blogging thing and i know that you have all been waiting breath baited on the next musical dribblings that might spill out of my um keyboard?

ok starting over, i have a bunch of stuff that is all thematically linked and clever and worthy of the blogosphere and whatever, but first i just have to get some stuff off my chest. of a musical nature. things you need to hear. now.

first up is Bloodshot Eyes - Wynonie Harris, which i only found out about because of one of those 2 cd copyright violation Cds you can find in cutout bins in your local not terribly reputable record store. THANK YOU PR1MO RECORDS (yes that is the real name! pregoogleproofed!) FOR SHOWING ME THAT THE CZECH REPUBLIC KNOWS HOW TO GET DOWN.

so yeah, i love me some Louis Prima and this is obviously a dude that is maybe sort of owed some checks from the estate - i will buy some legal versions of this soon so that the executor of the Wynonie Harris estate who is probably the second cousin with the best lawyer can get his 74 cents. DONT SPEND IT ALL IN THE SAME PLACE VULTURE DUDE!*

*yes btw, Pat Benatar (who i normally have some affection for) covered this song. it is terrible. i will not link to it, because it has nearly 10 times the views of the original. watch it if you want, but it sucks and you are a traitor.

Next, we have Portal - Glumurphonel which is awesome because A) EVERYTHING LOUDER AND FASTER THAN EVERYTHING ELSE B) serious note, this is really kind of mindnumbing levels of playing across the board and makes geek fucks like Meshuggah look like boring arrythmic douchebags C) the lead singer is wearing a cuckoo clock on his head and that is 10000% more metal than leather pants.

and to totally destroy my credibility, i cant stop listening to the acoustic version of Silversun Pickups - Panic Room. shut the hell up.

My favorite song (that I never listen to): Part 2 of an ongoing series.

1. "I Against I" - Massive Attack and Mos Def
2. "And It Rained All Night" - Thom Yorke
3. "Baby's Got A Temper" - The Prodigy
4. "I Feel You" - Placebo
5. "Use You" - Dave Gahan
6. "Race - In" - Battles
7. "God Given" - Nine Inch Nails
8. "Walk Away" - Sisters of Mercy
9. "Loose Fit" (12" Version) - Happy Mondays
10. "This Is Love" - PJ Harvey
11. "The Weeping Song" - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
12. "Then" - Charlatans UK
13. "Konichiwa Bitches" - Robyn
14. "Satellite" - Depeche Mode
15. "Music Is My Radar" - Blur
16. "Red Tape" - Agent Provocateur
17. "Skip Divided" - Thom Yorke
18. "Neighbors" - Gnarls Barkley
19. "Deeper and Deeper" - Dave Gahan
20. "Leyendecker" - Battles
21. "When The Body Speaks" - Depeche Mode
22. "The Beginning of the End" - Nine Inch Nails
23. "Big Fun" (Original "Magic Juan" 12") - Inner City
24. "To Hell With Poverty!" - Gang of Four
25. "Out of Time" - Blur

This is what iTunes Genius gave me when I plugged Massive Attack/Mos Def's "I Against I" into it. Some of these are expected, either by virtue of being in a similar genre or groove (Charlatans, Thom Yorke, Gnarls Barkley) or by being performed by an artist with an oblique relationship to Massive Attack (Agent Provacateur... Thom Yorke). I wasn't really expecting the HEAVY Depeche Mode bias, though. Also, the Nine Inch Nails, Battles, PJ Harvey and Blur songs leave me scratching my head. Admittedly, it flows pretty nicely (except for the last four tracks, which are kind of the aural equivalent of shaking a baby, only you are the baby) but I never would have put all these songs together like this.

Oh yeah, the Robyn track sticks out like a SORE THUMB yet still manages to be the perfect thing to put into that spot. It's like the Genius algorithm knew what I wanted despite what I was thinking, and it was right and I was wrong. Creepy.

EDIT: Links to videos (a mix of official, bootleg and fan-created) are now up for all of these. Check them out if you don't know them; there's some good stuff here.

Where my Hyrule thugs at?

One of my favorite things about 2000 was the mashup explosion; for a while it seemed that you couldn't venture out into the web's musicverse without stumbling over a laptop producer creating brilliance out of disparate sources. Soulwax and Richard X (aka Girls On Top) are among the biggest names to come out of this scene; personally, I have always been a big booster of Matt Tuozzo and Lance Lockarm.

I don't know if Team Teamwork was active during this time period and I don't really care. A link to their mashup album The Ocarina of Rhyme was posted on a gaming messageboard I like to read during my downtime and I haven't been able to stop streaming it since. A wide variety of hip-hop a capellas (Clipse, Common, Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes, Aesop Rock and MF Doom to name a few) have been spliced with music from various levels of the game "Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time" and the result really couldn't be any better. I wish I hadn't given up my DJ dreams because practically every track here would get incorporated into my sets, PARTICULARLY the reworking of Busta's "Don't Touch Me". I never played this game, mostly due to not having access to a Nintendo when it came out; I'm thinking I should hit eBay and change that.

Cosmetic goodies

John finally allowed me access to edit the blog template, so I've changed a few things:

• We now have a search box! Use this to see if we have talked about your favorite band; also use it to search the many sites we have linked.
• Our Last.fm profiles are now visible so you can see what we've been listening to (since we are fascinating like that).
• Our wonderful labeling system is now displayed on the right-hand side of the blog to help you filter down to a particular subset of posts. (How telling that the only label we've reused so far is "Depeche Mode".
• The blog template has been widened so that widescreen video embeds no longer spill over onto the right column. (If this makes the blog too wide for your screen, PLEASE let me know. I'll figure out something.)

I was going to throw Google Ads on the bottom as well just to see what madness they would put up as our topics drifted wildly but a) I know no one would click on them, and b) I don't really feel like haggling with John over the monthly 5 cents that would be rolling in.

Feedback is greatly appreciated; any suggestions for improvement will be considered.

Our founding fathers died for this

This Fourth of July, I think all Americans should celebrate the creative freedoms bequeathed to us by our founding fathers. Borne out of frustration with British taxation without a corresponding voice in how those taxes would be used, the brave men and women who started our great nation built a foundation upon which we are allowed to express ourselves as we see fit. It is a glorious thing, something that brings out the best in us and can create art that transports the connoisseur to an other-worldly place, fraught with emotions running the gamut from fear to ecstasy. In keeping with this fine tradition, I present to you one of the crown jewels of American art; a piece of music so singular that any description I could possibly attempt would not do it justice. This is something you must see/hear for yourself.

My dear readers, I present to you: "Tea Bag" by Tea Bag Boyz



It is a movement, indeed. I know our founding fathers are looking down on us now, teabagging all of God's creation in the name of artistic freedom. Their blood, sweat, tears and freakish thigh muscles set us on the road to this apotheosis of musical expression. Squat proud, America!