Thanks to Danny for the tip.

Quincy Jones’ excellent pop-jazz LP Gula Matari (1970, CTI; issued on CD in 1999, but now apparently scarcer than innovative-thinking major-label execs) is selling for $80-$100 on amazon.com. Last week I bought a copy (in good shape) at Jive Time (Capitol Hill) for 99 cents.

Um, WTF?

So tonight in San Diego, Ben got stung by a SCORPION. Twice. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried, file this under “things that really happen on rock tours.” Ben’s okay, if not a little shaken, but we were worried for awhile because the scorpion was a little guy and when it comes to the wonderful world of scorpions, the smaller the deadlier.

Read more about the incident (and see a picture of the lil' bugger) here.

(Thanks to Matt for the tip.)

For more of Diddy's political thoughts/hopes/prayers/delusions, hop on the express train to the Diddy Blog and wave goodbye to your sanity at the station.

Sam kicks things off with what I read as sarcasm:

that's REAL music though, they're using guitars and drums and stuff.

Kerri Harrop responds:

That song is a hit because of the Clash. The Clash, like Built to Spill, played real instruments.

Cosby breaks it down:

@7: the clash (played real instruments) = real
big audio dynamite (used drum machines) = fake

also, were kids really getting pumped up to 'straight to hell' before m.i.a.? it's arguably one of the worst songs on arguably their worst album. 'straight to hell' would have retained b-side status if it weren't for samplers, recontextualization, and futuristic fakeness.

It all dovetails nicely with this choice quote from Megan Seling's interrogation of Against Me!'s Tom Gabel: "We’re not the Backstreet Boys. We’re a real band."

Do drums and guitars a "real" band make? Are the Monkees "real" because they played guitars? And if drums and guitars are "real" instruments, which instruments are "fake"? What about composers who write music but don't play it—are they "real"? Is Gabel right, is it merely a matter of writing one's own songs? M.I.A. wrote "Paper Planes"; the Clash wrote "Straight to Hell"—so, they're both "real"? How long of a sample do you have to use before you're not a "real" band writing your own songs? Are Public Enemy "fake," whereas James Brown is "real"? Are the songwriting teams that write the Backstreet Boys' pop songs the "real" band? Or are the pop stars "real" for their ability to sing (surely the human voice is a "real" instrument, right)? Is attempting to parse "real" and "fake" in an artistic/commercial medium like pop music just a fucking ridiculous endeavor?

The disc’s standout cut, “The Girl Ain’t Preggers,” sounds like Sly & the Family Stone’s “Dance to the Music” as translated by a rural white boy of limited means and amped up on fear of responsibility and meth. Asthmatic Kitty even has funded a video game based on the song’s lyrics, which deal with post-coital ambivalence and the financial worries that spring from the reality of a mouth to feed. “You Will Love My Boom” recalls ’60s wild guys the Godz, which is a very rare thing to recall in 2008. “Black Girls” is a bizarre paean to sisters who “do shit I can’t explain” and “convince the icecaps to freeze.” “I Will Save Young Michael” is a tender, too-little too-late pledge to help the “King of Pop.” And so oddly on…

Grampall Jookabox play with PWRFL Power and the Terrordactyls at Vera Project Nov. 14.

"The Girl Ain't Preggers"

Grampall Jookabox - The Girl Ain't Preggers from Asthmatic Kitty on Vimeo.

Four years ago, I was an American in Paris on the eve of an election that would inflict unprecedented presidential ignorance, armed violence, and corporate corruption upon the world. Bush's victory, his very existence soiled my sojourn in many ways-- but between the deep sense of defeat and geographically appropriate existential despair, I found a French band whose music countered my own ex-patriotic impulses. Singing in slightly accented English the sort of insouciant folk-pop that to me is more reminiscent of the "Indy" aesthetics of my Pacific Northwest, rather than the smoky chill of Paris and continental Europe-- Herman Dune was a band that reflected my own hang-ups about travel, indulgence, homesickness, and American ugliness in strange ways. Herman Dune's singer seemed taken with a particular sort of nostalgia for an imaginary America, and as I consider the band now I feel a nostalgia for an imagined/remembered France and those feelings of being far from home.

I have particularly distinct memories of watching Herman Dune perform on the same bill as Little Wings, the ethereal local-ish group whose best songs are akin to whispered dreams. The bands played a bar/club that was actually a converted Chinese Junk sitting on the Seine near the Bibliotech Nationale. This boat called La Guingette Pirate, slightly swaying on the river Seine seemed a surreal place to see any show, let alone one with an American band I had seen so many times in Seattle.

Now, in anticipation of an election that has the potential to bring the ideological antithesis of the past four years, its an odd coincidence that Herman Dune is playing my home, perhaps to witness the transition to a imagined ideal America? The band plays the Triple Door on this coming Monday night, a tough sell given that fans of folk-influenced Americana are potentially split between a few other high-profile shows. Between the Mountain Goats' soaring, acerbic story-songs and the o-vah enunciated swagger of the Kings of Leon, Herman Dune may have a hard time attracting folks to the Triple Door for their American-but-not-American French pop (especially with a ticket price of $19! Yeeeesh).

So, chalk this up as just another post of navel-gazing indulgence clogging up the blog-o-webs but Herman Dune is a band that has a strange and varied connection to my personal history, a soundtrack of sorts to a time and place but moreso a lens through which those now blurry early twenties can be recalled and examined. I think most music fans have bands just like this, music that follows them around appearing and disappearing at different times in their lives.

Read it here.

I woke to "Panic" by the Smiths ("hang the DJ, hang the DJ"). Then:

*"The Biggest Lie" by Elliott Smith (a suicide!).

*"Dear Prudence" by the Beatles (which Lennon wrote for Mia Farrow's sister, worried that she was depressed since she wouldn't come out of her room while they all stayed with the Maharishi).

*"Sleeping In" by the Postal Service (about escaping the inherent horribleness of the world and its inhabitants).

He's on to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and James Brown now, which is a good sign.

But he did say he's been having trouble sleeping—he wakes at 2 or 3 in the morning and stays awake. It's a little late for jet lag, John. Have you got an internal alarm clock etched in iron?

Or is it your subconscious sending out a cry for help?

UPDATE

"I need a vacation something fierce? [Long, loud sigh.]"

Should we be Live-Slogging this shit?

I didn't think much of it—a run of three aggressive songs is not a reputable measure of mental health—but then came this morning, when I tuned in to Richards' show and was treated to Gary Jules' Donnie Darko-soundtrack cover of Tears for Fears' "Mad World" (sample lyric in the subject line), Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" (five minutes of begging God to give your life to someone else), Eef Barzelay's "Could Be Worse" (about an inability to draw consolation from the fact that it could be worse), and They Might Be Giants' "We Live in a Dump" (self-explanatory).

I do not believe it's fair to diagnose DJs through their playlists. But if I did, John might be ready for an intervention, or at least a big hug.

If LL Cool J’s rapping skills have fallen off in recent years, it may be due to the once-phenomenal MC spending too much time answering fans’ emails.

To all of you out there wondering if it's really me on MySpace. It's really me. A hundred and thirty thousand e-mails, and I'm trying to respond to each one. Sometimes I feel like a secretary.

Via Mediabistro

Via Yahoo:

Courtney Love spent over $323,000 on her daughter's birthday party. The Hole singer – who is the widow of the late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain – spared no expense in ushering Frances Bean into adulthood at her 'RIP childhood' themed 16th birthday.

The event – held at Los Angeles' House of Blues restaurant – saw Frances sporting a dress previously worn by her father Cobain at a performance at Reading Festival.

Wow. And thanks to Matt Hickey for the tip.

Tip: Sarah S.