Fine? Why Fine?

Ben

So last night I drove into the city to meet Chrissy after she was done teaching her class and we went and saw Ben Lee at Irving Plaza. It's funny/sad, we used to go to so many shows a few years ago, but now it's such a big event that we both actually took today off. I can't seem to find the article online now, but Chrissy's favorite local columnist wrote a piece a while back about the difference between going to a show in your 20s and going to a show in your 30s that would have provided me with a quote or two to move this post along. Anyway, while we weren't the oldest people last night, the crowed definitely skewed towards the mid-20s range.

But Ben Lee, yes, good solid Aussie kid. We first heard of him when he teamed up with Ben Folds and Ben Kweller to form The Bens (duh) a few years ago. At the time Chrissy thought she was going to get into Kweller's solo stuff but it didn't really happen and it wasn't until recently that Chrissy really got into Ben Lee and became moderately obsessed, checking in on his website regularly, including his blog and he just started doing podcasts too. So when tickets went on sale for the Irving Plaza show for $10 (+ the always nebulous finance charges) it was a done deal.

Ben put on a great show splitting the set between the full band and just him and his guitar. He covered "Brick" by "the other Ben." Thankfully, no one threw a bottle at him. His rapport with the audience was spontaneous and came with an ease and--aww hell who am I kidding as great as Ben Lee was the real story of the night is that for the first five songs or so we were standing next to this guy! The f'in' MILF Guy from American Pie!!!

You can listen to Ben Lee songs over on his myspace page. Check him out.

What Was That?

I've never heard of these guys but this headline is fantastic.

Mastodon LP Tackles Self-Cannibalism, One-Eyed Sasquatch

Variation on a Meme

Green and others are throwing up their Top 10 Most Played songs from their iTunes. Instead of going 1-10, I thought I'd go 1, 10, 20, 30, etc. through 100.

1. "Soco Amaretto Lime" by Brand New

10. "Freak Me Out" by Weezer

20. "Camera" by Wilco

30. "Moment in the Sun" by Clem Snide

40. "Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well" by Mike Doughty

50. "Superman" by REM

60. "I'll Be You" by The Replacements

70. "More Like the Moon" by Wilco

80. "Vertigo" by U2

90. "Answering Bell" by Ryan Adams

100. "We're Going to Be Friends" by The White Stripes

Free Show

I haven't checked it out yet, but Glide Magazine has a Wilco show available to download.

"I'm the Man Who Loves You"

All I can see is black and white
And white and pink with blades of blue
That lay between the words I think on a page
I was meaning to send to
You I couldn't tell if it'd bring my heart
The way I wanted when I started
Writing this letter to you

But if I could you know I would
Just hold your hand and you'd understand
I'm the man who loves you

All I can be is a busy sea
Of spinning wheels and hands that feel for
Stones to throw and feet that run but
Come back home
It made no difference
Ever known, it made no difference
Ever known to me

But if I could you know I would
Just hold your hand and you'd understand
I'm the man who loves you

All I can see is black and white
And white and pink with blades of blue
That lay between the words I think on a page
I was meaning to send to
You I couldn't tell if it'd bring my heart
The way I wanted when I started
Writing this letter to you

But if I could you know I would
Just hold your hand and you'd understand

If I could you know I would
Just hold your hand and you'd understand

If I could you know I would
Just hold your hand and you'd understand

I'm the man who loves you
I'm the man who loves you
I'm the man who loves you
I'm the man who loves you

(Lyrics from here.)

There & Back

I had to shoot over to Long Island City to drop off a check at a car dealer there and actually had a great ride. Without traffic, driving in the NY/LI area can be pretty enjoyable. During the week the ride would have taken easily an hour and half but I cruised this morning in under an hour.

I put the Reynolds's latest Podcast on the iPod and found it to be their best one yet. Not that Glenn and Dr. Helen aren't interesting in their own right, but the entire half-hour (approx.) is taken up by their guests Jim Dunnigan and Austin Bay. The hosts ask maybe a total of 3 or 4 questions--they even laugh when Dr. Helen's attempt to ask a question is completely talked over and missed by the guests--Dunnigan and Bay just banter about the Iran situation and the Insta's know better than to interrupt the natural flow of the conversation. Colonel Bay is excellent as always but Dunnigan is really entertaining. He was all over cablenews after 9/11 and in the lead-up to OIF, but I haven't seen him on much in last few years. The man's a character and he has a distinct voice--possibly a minor speech impediment--that I find puts an everyman quality to his always insightful analysis. Anyway, I recommend you make the time to listen to the whole thing.

Once that was over and I flipped back to the music on my iPod I caught a slew of great tunes while on random. Sure, I skipped some others but the first three were back-to-back-to back.

• "Land of a Thousand Dances" by J. Geils Band--In honor of Wilson Pickett.
• "Surfin' U.S.A." by The Beach Boys--Went through a big Beach Boys phase about 5 years ago.
• "I Just Wanna Make Love To You" by Etta James--Whoa. Seriously.
• "My Babe" by Narvel Felts--A few years ago I bought a 3-disc set of original Sun Studio recordings with the idea that I'd brush up on my early rock n' roll history. I haven't really immersed myself in it the way I had planned, but I put the discs on the iPod and made it a rule that when a song comes up on shuffle I have to listen to the whole thing.
• "Personality Crisis" by New York Dolls--"Personality, wonderin' how celebrities ever mend, looking fine on television"
• "Hold On" by Tom Waits--Althouse had a post up this week about Waits and his battle against imitators.
• "Not For You" by Pearl Jam--That line: "Like Mohamed, it's the truth" doesn't seem as cool as it once did.
• "Bernadette (Instrumental)" by The Funk Brothers--If you haven't seen Standing in the Shadows of Motown yet, buy it, rent it, Netflix it, do whatever you can do to see it. It's a great documentary. The music is the best and story is important as a piece of American history.
• "Cold Gin" by KISS--Saw them do this live, with full make-up, a few years ago. Althought the most memorable moment may have been when they played "I Was Made for Lovin' You" and a bunch of hardcore anti-disco mullett-heads held up their middle fingers and turned their backs to the stage. Ha.
• "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" by Jerry Lee Lewis--Also on the Sun Records compilation. If I had to choose I guess I'd take Lewis over Woody Allen in the incestuous pedophile category.
• "Change The Locks" by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers--A Lucinda Williams cover from the She's The One soundtrack.

Now since I don't know when it's going to be almost 60 degrees again here this winter, I have two cars to wash.

RA Looks at RA

When I posted on my favorites from the three releases Ryan Adams put out this year, Steve asked for some "starters" to get into Adams. I responded with a brief review of his albums, but it got me thinking: What would an Adams Greatest Hits look like? Or more accurately, what 15 songs would I put on one if it were up to me? So since I couldn't trim it to 15, here are the 16 I'd say are his best. (There are a number of songs I feel bad about leaving off, but since the only artist more prolific than a living Ryan Adams is a dead Tupac, I had to make my cuts. And I also did not count any songs from his old band, Whiskeytown.)

So here we go (and I couldn't come up with decent blurbs about all of them):

Tighten Up the Set

Ryan Adams has a history of rubbing people the wrong way and he's arguably the most frustrating talent in music. Here's why. (Via Kaus, sorry but I still can't quite figure out how his permalinks work.)

But instead of carefully cultivating the momentum, Adams seemed to subvert it, leaving the field open to new forces such as Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst. The last couple of years have been a dizzying collage of high-profile girlfriends (Parker Posey, Winona Ryder, Beth Orton et al.), public tantrums, battles with his record label, a broken wrist, an ear infection and canceled tours.

Adams' three albums this year — the two-CD set "Cold Roses," "Jacksonville City Nights" and the new "29" — are the products of the creative drive that Adams put into gear after recovering from the broken wrist — an injury he suffered early last year in a fall from a stage in Liverpool.

His moments of brilliance have kept fans hooked, but the volume and inconsistency of his output have created a consensus that he would be better off spending more time on one record and putting out fewer of them.

Adams goes on to be quoted about this view of his work.

"I am kind of quite sick of people going, 'If he would have just taken all three of these records and dumped them down to one album he would have a perfect double album.' It's like, 'Well you guys be my ... manager, then. I don't know, I like them all. I figure, you know, Mom makes too much meatloaf means we got leftovers. It doesn't mean that she did something wrong."

From his perspective as "the artist" you can't disagree with him. Even as "a fan" I tend to fall in line with his assessment. He's become one of the handful of artists that I'll buy whatever he puts out. But as his friends and record company people in the article claim, it's hard to grow an audience releasing 3 albums (one of which is a double-cd) inside 8 months. So as a "consumer" who is not a diehard fan you're screwed somewhat.

One of the guys at Hickory Wind put together his version of a Ryan Adams album culling the songs from the three releases down to 15 songs. I agree with most of his choices, but below the fold are the songs I'd put together to create The Great Ryan Adams Album of 2005.

Tommy, No

So Billboard just gave Tom Petty their Century Award. Glad they gave it to him, been a big fan for a long time, etc. But, did what is he doing with his face? I can't find a picture yet but when he was doing his acceptance speech it really looked like he got a facelift/botox or something.

I don't understand?

He's Tom Petty.

He's been, uh, "not good looking" for his whole life, presumably. And has had one of the most successful careers for the last 30 years with that face. Why try and fix it now, Tom?

UPDATE 12/7/05 8:10am

OK, couldn't find any pics from last night but go here and search for "Tom Petty" and compare the shots of him from 9/01 to 10/05. Yikes.

Something to Believe In

Do they want him dead or is someone *cough* Rikki Rockett *cough* just sending "a message"?

Poison singer Bret Michaels escaped serious injury Monday night when his tour bus was fired at in a drive-by shooting. Michaels was in Chicopee, Massachusetts, to perform at an invitation-only acoustic show at the Rumble Seat Bar and Grille and was sitting on his tour bus prior to the gig when a shot was fired from a white Ford F-150, according to a statement from his spokesperson.

The singer was struck in the face by broken glass, but was not seriously injured in the incident. "It is going to take more then a cowardice act like this to make me stop performing or stop my tour," Michaels said in a statement. "I plan on staying out and finishing the shows as scheduled. I want to thank all of my fans in the Chicopee area for staying out last night, and I will be back. Hopefully, with the help of many people, we will catch the person who did this and they will be brought to justice."

Michaels is playing an "invitation-only" gig.

At "The Rumble Seat."

In Chicopee.

Ooofa.

The '90s

I burned a quick CD for a friend this morning on his request for a few of the more random rock songs from the '90s. (i.e. not Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Smashing Pumpkins.) First, I culled the songs from my iTunes to a group of 64 that fit the criteria, then based on my friend's tastes I whittled it down to include these 20 songs.

I think that's a pretty solid list of songs from the era. (Here's a tip: The Filter song is available for free on their website, as is "Take A Picture.")

Also, I have about 7 more songs worth on a gift card at iTunes and I'm looking for songs to buy. Any suggestions?