I was at the majority of the Mars Volta's set at the generally bummed-out Detour fest this year, so I missed the live debut of the local electro/DJ duo Guns N Bombs on an opposite stage. That said, upon catching wind of this video, I have decided that "Butt Naked Lazers" will be my new general expression of positive emotion, i.e. "These oregano-dusted home fries are butt naked lazers, you guys."
Early Wednesday morning, Randy Randall of local fuzz-punkers No Age sent out an e-mail to a wide group of journalists, friends and fans stating that on Oct. 2 he had been asked to take off his pro-Obama T-shirt for a taped performance for “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson,” slated to run Oct. 27.
With only a few minutes before the scheduled taping, “the talent booker told me I couldn’t wear my Obama T-shirt,” Randall said, speaking from No Age’s practice space. “She took one look at it and called the suits in New York, who said it was against the equal time rule. I asked her, what if I didn’t take it off? She said then that they couldn't tape us.”
Randall and fellow No Ager Dean Spunt quickly hashed out the tough situation. “We’re an underground band without a lot of publicity -- there was still an opportunity to take advantage of. We'd be able to say something versus nothing.”
First, the band asked if they could write the names of John McCain, Ron Paul and Ralph Nader somewhere on the stage or on their clothes, but CBS reps said no -- there would still be other candidates who wouldn’t get included.
So, at the last minute, Randall took off his Obama shirt, turned it inside out and wrote “Free Health Care” with a Sharpie marker. He put it on underneath his open flannel and performed.
We don't need to tell you that the most promising career options in America right now are boxcar-hopper, petticoat tailor or shepherd of hungry one-eyed alley cats. Fortunately, the condition of being stone-broke is a perennially popular theme in music (unless you're T.I.), and regardless of your taste in genre, there is a tune to accompany cooking canned beans over a street-corner bonfire. We took to our dusty archives to find a treasury of the best tunes for such times, and in no particular order, here are 15 of the most soot-blackened, pink slip-crumpling, rail-riding songs for you to sing to yourself in the unemployment line because you pawned your iPod weeks ago.
Surely there's plenty we forgot (sorry, Jeezy, next time!), because we were too busy mournfully playing our harmonicas. Tell us below in the comments!
L.A.'s played host to a lot of great shows lately -- Beck, Nick Cave, My Bloody Valentine. Even Sky Saxon and the Seeds at Club Ding-a-ling! last week were pretty fun in an antic, "is that a tab of acid in my beer?" kind of way. (If you don't know Club Ding-a-ling, it's Hyperion Tavern's Tuesday concert series featuring the weird and the inspired in Los Angeles, and it's worth a visit.)
And now there's more good news for me and lots of Depeche Mode fans who have not been enjoying the silence from our favorite British purveyors of snap-tight electropop. The Mode has not only signed a deal with Mute/EMI that will get their next album due April 2009 to the U.S. at the same time as Europe, they are also launching a stadium tour. It'll start in Israel in May, but according to an EMI representative, the trio will make it to an L.A. stadium (Staples?) sometime in the late summer.
The rep also said, though he hasn't heard it himself yet, that the Mode's new album will sound like "old-school Depeche Mode, with a big sound... upbeat and electronic." Here's hoping this particular rumor is true.
Beyoncé may be a married lady now, but she's still all caught up in the drama of love's first glances and final door slams. It's refreshing that she's staying in character: When artists such as Mary J. Blige start making music about how happy they are with their chubby hubbies, it may be sincere, but it also serves the function of feeding the tabloids. Beyoncé and her Hova have always kept business and pleasure separate, which imparts dignity to their relationship -- and lets her be an artist first, a personality second.
Beyoncé's emotional reserve also allows for hits that still appeal to her core fan base of independent women. "Irreplaceable" was a masterpiece of that ilk, the finger-wagging summation of mercenary, "Sex and the City"-style post-feminism. That song made Beyoncé pop's Chairwoman of the Board, as worldly wise and merciless about love as Sinatra was in the wee small hours of the morning.
Her new club banger, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)," elaborates on "Irreplaceable's" theme of love as sport, if not war; sounding a lot like a Destiny's Child song, it has Beyoncé doing call-and-response with her backup singers over a rump-shaking beat provided by The-Dream and Tricky Stewart. More than most female singers, Beyoncé understands the funky art of singing rhythmically, and this is a prime example.
My Morning Body Cast? Jim James of My Morning Jacket took a tumble off the stage last night during a show in Iowa City, Iowa, and evidently landed pretty hard. That’s causing the band to postpone a few shows in Chicago that were on tap later this week, as well as benefit performances for Sen. Barack Obama tonight in Chicago and next week in Louisville, Ky.
"We were finishing up the last few bars of 'Off the Record,' and just like any other night we were all having a great time,” according to a statement the band issued today. “Jim went to get closer to the audience on his side of the stage, and as he moved forward to step onto the sub-woofer, the lights darkened, and he inadvertently stepped off the stage.
“Upon falling, he suffered traumatic injuries to his torso, and was immediately taken to the hospital,” the statement continued. “Per the doctor's orders, Jim will be off the road and recovering from his injuries for the next two to three weeks. Sadly, we must postpone the two shows in Chicago on Thursday and Friday until further notice… We take our fans and performances very seriously, and would never cancel a show unless it was absolutely necessary. Please know that we will be making every effort to return to your fine city.”
There’s no word on whether the doctor gave James the news to the tune of MMJ’s “Lay Low.”
Rapper T.I. has blazed a golden road to the top of the national sales chart with his new album, “Paper Trail,” which qualifies for gold certification in its first week of release with sales of 568,000 copies.
It’s the Atlanta rhymer’s third collection to enter the chart at No. 1 and also the third best opening-week sales of 2008, behind Lil' Wayne’s "Tha Carter III" and Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends,” which sold 1 million and 721,000 copies, respectively, during back-to-back weeks in June.
T.I. earns another chart distinction by becoming the first performer in four years to replace himself in the top spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart. “Live Your Life,” the second release from the new album, has just taken over the top of the list, knocking out “Whatever You Like.” Usher last did the same when “Confessions Part II” replaced “Burn” at No. 1.
“Jennifer Hudson,” the long-gestating debut album from the “American Idol” contestant turned Oscar-winning actress, showed up at No. 2 with sales of 217,000. Robin Thicke’s “Something Else” comes in behind Hudson at No. 3 on sales of 137,000 copies. And James Taylor’s new collection with his versions of some of his favorite rock and pop songs, “Covers,” lands at No. 4 with first-week sales of 95,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
--Randy Lewis
Photo: T.I. performs at Key Club on Friday. Credit: Michael Park
We caught up with Liz Phair earlier this week after the second show of her sold-out performance of "Exile in Guyville" at the Troubadour (read Ann Powers' take on Phair's re-issue of "Exile" here), and asked her to confirm a sneaking suspicion we had that she might be writing something other than songs these days.
"I thought to myself, what can I do better than other people?" she postulated post-encore from the side of the stage after greeting friends and fans. "I'm not the best singer," she demurred, adding that "I'm not the best songwriter, either. But I do tell stories well."
Phair's publicist confirmed Tuesday that the Connecticut-born singer hasa literary agent, but Phair, currently a South Bay resident, was adamant on Monday that nothing is currently in the works, so don't expect to see anything at your local Barnes & Noble just yet. The songstress did say that she was not interested in pursuing a memoir, a la Juliana Hatfield's just-released offering "When I Grow Up" or Chris Connelly's "Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible and Fried," but rather, a work of fiction.
Phair, who penned a book review of Dean Wareham's "Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance" earlier this year for the New York Times, clearly has a talent for sketching out characters (listening to "Exile in Guyville" is akin to reading a novel, with memorable dialogue and a richly drawn cast), and it's not a huge stretch to imagine her writing a contemporary novel. Maybe we'll see Phair's literary debut in the fourth quarter of 2010?
They’ve bottled and sold Elvis’ sweat, so I guess there’s a certain logic to offering rock fans a shot at some of Bob Dylan’s spit. Once you get past the initial “eewww!” factor, though, the new collaboration between rock’s poet laureate and the Hohner harmonica company holds a certain fascination.
It’s the first time Dylan has ever endorsed any product, in this case a signature line of the Hohner harmonicas he’s been wheezing into for the better part of a half century. The Bob Dylan Collection is on exhibit at the Sam Ash music store on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and boasts the answer of what to get for the truly expectorating, er, discriminating Dylan fan: a harmonica actually played by the man himself.
There’s a hand-signed set of seven harmonicas — one in the key of each note of the C major scale — and they’re authenticated to guarantee that Dylan not only owned them but blew into them at some point in time.
Hollywood Palladium: The Jonas Brothers, Nov. 30 (Sat.)
Gibson Amphitheatre: The Temptations and the Four Tops. Nov. 28; La Gira Durangense Light, Nov. 29 (Sat.)
Club Nokia: George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Jan. 2; Simply Red, March 13 (Sat.)
The Grove of Anaheim: Jim Brickman, Nov. 18; Cradle of Filth, Feb. 12 (Sat.)
El Rey: Lykke Li, Nov. 3; ohGr (from Skinny Puppy), Nov. 19; Deerhunter, Nov. 25 (now); Jon McLaughlin, Nov. 18 (Thu.); Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman, Dec. 9 (Sat.)
Echoplex: Herbalizer with J Boogie, Dec. 1 (Sat.)
House of Blues: Ballentine, Oct. 16; Danny Chaimson with BigBang, Oct. 17; Ozomatli, Dec. 18-20 (now); John Hiatt & the Ageless Beauties, Nov. 10; Blues Traveller, Nov. 16; Who’s Bad, Nov. 21; Los Lobos with the Blasters, Dec. 12 (Sat.)
Beyoncé may be a married lady now, but she's still all caught up in the drama of love's first glances and final door slams. It's refreshing that she's staying in character: When artists such as Mary J. Blige start making music about how happy they are with their 
My Morning Body Cast? Jim James of My Morning Jacket took a tumble off the stage last night during a show in Iowa City, Iowa, and evidently landed pretty hard. That’s causing the band to postpone a few shows in Chicago that were on tap later this week, as well as benefit performances for Sen. Barack Obama tonight in Chicago and next week in Louisville, Ky.
