Wake up music this morning was "We Are Family" by Sister Sledge, played for Atlantis Mission Specialist Leland Melvin.

One of the great things about all the Best of the Decade lists that have started circulatingly lately has been rediscovering records that you may have slept-on or too hastily dismissed the first time around. So it's been for me the past couple weeks with the Avalanches' sampledelic odyssey Since I Left You. Originally released in 2001, I errantly judged the record by the US single "Frontier Psychiatrist," which at the time—and recall, this was a crazy, pre-Girl Talk era in which people still enthusiastically employed the term "turntablism"—struck me as just another scratchy sample collage: a hip hop break, a big looming choral/symphonic part, a mess of spoken samples. (I also recall thinking that the video was annoying—it's in fact awesome.) And so I never really gave the record a chance.

So, yeah, it's an amazing album—crate digging as musical world tour, precursor of nu Balearica, etc, etc. Just the vocal on the introductory title track completely kills me. Or the chirpy dial cranking and ducking beat of "Radio." I've even really warmed to "Frontier Psychiatrist" in the context of the album, where it's pomp and chatter and humor land as not a relief but as kind of a detour from the half hour of breezy, beachy beats that precede it. I've come to appreciate the odd aleatoric effect of all those those dialogue samples (and they get bonus points for use of John Waters' Polyester).

I'm leaving on a little trip tomorrow night, and although I'm not sure how I'll be bringing my music with me—burn some CDs? buy an old, disposable iPod?—I know for sure that this record will be coming.

Julian Cope's celebrated, idiosyncratic, and inspirational study of German rock's 1960s/'70s zenith, Krautrocksampler, has been out of print for years and therefore now regularly sells for three figures on eBay and Amazon. However, penurious krautrock aficionados can read the damn thing on the 'net—in inglorious PD fuggin' F, suckas—thanks to Evan over at the Swan Fungus blog. Peep it here. (Warning: Portions of some pages are blurry. Schiesse!)

Covering his ass, Evan writes:

NOTE: IF YOU ARE JULIAN COPE (OR REPRESENT JULIAN COPE, OR PUBLISHED THIS BOOK) AND YOU WOULD LIKE THIS INFORMATION REMOVED, PLEASE CONTACT ME DIRECTLY, AND I WILL SWIFTLY AND GLADLY COMPLY (and, consequently, deprive literally TENS of fanboys from learning more about the bands they love).

Hurry! Read it before Sir Julian has Swan Fungus take down these precious pages.

ht: ChrisPorter via Twitter

Revisiting my Witchman records recently, I came to the realization that some of the material he was creating in the mid ’90s foreshadowed dubstep.

On his 1997 LP Explorimenting Beats and the EPs compiled on the double-CD collection Heavy Traffic, Witchman (Britain’s John Roome) fused illbient with drum & bass, forging expansive tracks that foreshadowed Burial's mournful, desolate atmospheres (but minus the soul/R&B vocal samples). See especially "Offworld" and "Amok II." And titles like "Chemical Noir," "Light at the Edge," "Post Trauma Blues, and "Heavy Mental" are redolent of Burial, too.

Sadly, no Witchman videos exist on YouTube. But the curious should seek out the aforementioned CDs or scan eBay and gemm.com for the vinyl. Witchman's work has aged well; he was a maverick during drum & bass' last really innovative phase.

(CNN) — A recipe that includes a nondescript New York University dorm room, a heavyset Jewish kid from Long Island and a street-wise black guy from Queens seems like an unlikely one to cook up musical history.

But when Def Jam Records came on the scene a quarter of a century ago, it did just that and more.

Common talk deserves a walk, the situation's changed/
Everything said from now on has to be rearranged.

The estimable Vodka Twist will be spinning at the next Studio 66 night ('60s mod, psych rock, soul, Brit pop, acid jazz, international pop, go-go dancers) Sat. Nov. 7 at Lo-Fi. Also on the bill: Phoenix's the Love Me Nots, the Fucking Eagles, DJ Chrispo, DJ Gort, and DJ E-Z Action.

Below is a segment on Kraftwerk, who are probably the best-known German group that flourished during krautrock's peak era (roughly 1969-1977); other artists featured in the film include Faust, Can, Harmonia, Popol Vuh, and Amon Düül II. If you're like me (or Julian Cope), watching this clip will give you a mentasm.

Fuck you very much class of '89.

I had engineered a last semester that was a double block of Humanities, then T.A.-ing for my french teacher. As she didn't really need me, and knew about the punishment I took at the hands of other students, she would let me arrive late, but mark me as "Present" on attendance anyways. Many days I wouldn't arrive at school until 10:30 and would be gone by 2 in the afternoon.

The reason I was allowed to have such a slack ending to my high school career, was a trip to Europe with my Episcopal Church priest to help him with his doctorate studies work at Oxford University. What school wouldn't jump at the idea of one of their students having that kind of oppurtunity?

Little did they know that the real reason my priest was going was so he could travel around Europe fucking hustlers and old friends under the guise of giving a young student from a small town the "Grande Tour" made famous in literature of yore.

After a brief stop-over in London, off we went to the south of France, where I: partied with tax-hating ex-pat Brits, with whom I would sneak over the Spanish border to buy cheap gin to stow back to the small Basque village I was staying in; stayed with members of the Le National Front and inadvertantly almost got myself kicked out of France by poster-ing the downtown of a small village with far-right propaganda in the middle of the night; and got wrapped up into the middle of a feud between opposing families on different hills on either side of the village.

On to Greece, where I learned to chain smoke cheap turkish cigs, stayed in the Grande Bretagne Hotel and flirted with hustlers that used Syntagma Square as a street corner waving to our balcony from the park, eventually culminating in the priest fucking a guy in the bathroom, while I, very homesick and weary of the priest's shenanigans, had a phone conversation with my parents next door in the living room.

My travels with the priest ended in London. He went on to Oxford, then home, and I, finally relieved of the stress of hiding his secret life, was left with a nice family in south London's Dulwich neigborhood, who's crazy son and neighbors proceeded to introduce me to the nascent arrival of the rave and Brit-pop scene.

The son in the family was a young man named Jeremy Deller. From the moment I met him, Jeremy took me under his wing, seeing that he had a visitor to his time and place that was completely wet behind the ears when it came to big city life. Jeremy was getting ready his first ever gallery show, giant photographs he'd taken from the television of famous british vaudeville actors that no young American had ever heard of before. Jeremy wore dapper suits and had a collection of neck ties that literally fell out of the tiny attic bedroom of his parents house.

So many "firsts" during that stay in London. First true shephards pie, first time I ever got so drunk I puked (thanks to Hungarian wine and a diet of peanuts and raisins at Jeremy's opening), first time to Heaven (the historic london nightclub), first true rave, first time in a gay bar, seeing the Queen, ....

Most importantly, though was the first time I ever was alone in a big city, left to wander in and out of record stores and galleries, museums and corner shops, without having anybody waiting on me or pulling my sleeve to leave.

Chris Estey has an essential piece on the Sunny Day Real Estate reunion in this week's music section, but there was a lot of interview material he couldn't fit into the piece. Today, tomorrow, and Friday, Line Out will be publishing some outtakes to help get you feeling appropriately emo for Friday night's show. Today: Religion, the media, and the roles both played in the band's break-up.

Jeremy Enigk:

Well, unfortunately I set it up that way in the letter I wrote, so I can’t blame people for pinning religion to the break up. It did play a huge part in my decision making, but wasn’t the direct reason.

[My faith is] constantly changing. That’s just life. Learning the lessons that make you a better being.

Nate Mendel:

I didn’t know what [it] meant, at the time. I mean, if you poll people in rock bands right now, have of them probably believe in Jesus Christ. There’s a big difference between a casual, half-held belief, that there’s an omnipotent creator, and being a full-on Bible thumper.

That’s one thing that we’ve tried to avoid, in this reunion, is going back over that particularly piece of history, because I think it’s really painful for Jeremy. It’s said that we broke up because he converted to Christianity and that really is not the whole story. Looking back on it and talking to everybody and seeing where everyone’s heads were at, I think we know that may have been a catalyst, it is a part of the story. But I think it had a lot to do with more traditional reasons bands break up.

We were very idealistic. We were like, “Why are we doing interviews? Who cares what we have to day, let’s not do any interviews and not take any photos, let the music speak for itself.” That’s a promotional outlet you don’t want to go down, and that just made sense to us at the time. Things like that. We wanted everything about the music to be something that we controlled, and that was something to do with art and not commerce.

That being said, we loved being in a band, and becoming adults at the time and changing how we looked at what it meant to be in a band. And basically striving for success, but not acknowledging it to ourselves in a way. Does that make sense? We very much liked the idea of having a big audience, and playing larger shows. At the same time we were sabotaging it by being self-managed, and doing it poorly, in our anti-relations with the media. So there was a lot of naivete there, and growing pains.

The scene was changing, we were changing, it was just an intersection in time, you know?

Finally, a word from Everett True regarding the reportedly crushing critical shrug he gave the band preceding its media black-out:

Um. I don't really recall. It was an unfortunate situation. JP [Sub Pop head Jonathan Poneman] insisted I interview them. I didn't like their music, and am fairly sure it showed. It put them off from ever speaking to another critic again ... so maybe it worked in their favour?! Who knows?

(ht: Matt Hickey)

Eh, we could nitpick this list till all the little fluffy clouds disperse, but overall the writer Terry Church chooses a lot of crucial cuts that, yes, you should know. That being said, which tracks would you include in this list?

ht: Ario

Ask yourself!

What's you stand on, say, Salt 'N' Pepa? En Vogue?

What about Queen Latifah, TLC, or Destiny's Child?

And then ask yourself: how did you never hear about SWV?

New York City's Tamara "Taj" Johnson-George, Leanne "Lelee" Lyons, and Cheryl "Coko" Clemons debuted as SWV in 1992 with the album It's About Time. Although their name has always stood for Sisters With Voices, they were originally going to go by TLC after each of the bandmembers, but lost the title to the other girl-group of the same name because they were just two weeks too late.

Throughout the '90s, SWV would work with The Neptunes, Puff Daddy, Lil' Kim, Redman, Foxy Brown, and Missy Elliott, but they never topped the guest-free triple-platinum It's About Time, particularly its singles.

"Downtown" and "I'm So Into You", the latter recently covered by Leona Lewis, skip like afternoon-on-the-stoop stones on the water of girl-group R&B, while the crisp and casual ballad emotions of "Weak" work like a sober follow-up to Whitney Houston's "Greatest Love Of All," which is a compliment you jerks.

And then there's "Right Here."

Most people apparently know the remixed version, which incorporated Michael Jackson's "Human Nature". But dear lord! The original!

Absolute '90s girl-group gem worthy of holograms.

How did we miss this?

So ashamed.

A YouTube video finds Rob Wright, clad in flannel pajamas, sitting on a dirty old couch, presumably in one of the rundown apartments normally built into European venues to house touring bands, smoking a cigarette while being interviewed by a young woman. The questions are standard fare, and a silver-haired Wright answers them with an admirable degree of animation. When the interviewer inquires about the evolution of Rob’s band, Nomeansno, he responds without hesitation “I don’t think the music has really changed a lot. There’s no progression in music. You’re not going anywhere. We’re not looking for the lost chord. Music… it’s just like a fire, you just stoke it and keep it burning. It doesn’t have to change. It keeps you warm just the way it is.”

As the annals of rock music expand and the number of bands and albums grows exponentially, it gets harder to get a hold of and maintain peoples’ interest. The increasing volume and density of rock inherently means more to sift through and an accelerated culture means a decreasing attention span. Even when we find something that we like, we inevitably begin our search for something new. It’s the vestige of 20th century artistry—the constant search for new modes and forms. Unfortunately, this insatiable demand for “new” is at odds with true art. Look no further than the one hit wonder phenomenon and its spill over into the underground. Fewer and fewer bands are maintaining prolonged careers or reaching their apex after several albums. The emphasis shifts from the trained and honed skills of the lifelong musician to the young and inexperienced outsider. We no longer believe in traditions, despite the undeniable part it plays in the act of creation. The traditional musician may be a thing of the past, the lifer but a sad joke.

But there are certain bands that achieve a certain institution status. They’ve been around forever. They know they can fill a room. They can put out a record and know it might not sell like their old ones did, but it’ll sell enough. The hardest lesson to learn, particularly in our capitalist culture that demands constant growth and expansion, is that all bands inevitably go through peaks and valleys. Some bands implode at the pinnacle while others will never make it out of the low points. The ones that endure, though, tend to be magical.

Yeah, the same group that went on to record such dentist-office fluff as "If You Leave Me Now" and "Hard to Say I'm Sorry" were on some proto-Sonic Youth (hell, proto-Glenn Branca and proto-Rhys Chatham, too) shit. Even Jimi Hendrix, whom Kath was homaging with "Free Form Guitar," reportedly thought the CTA axe master was better than he was.

Sometimes you admire music more when you're away from it.

In the '90s, the Manic Street Preachers were ascendant, both creatively, with the gash of 1994's The Holy Bible, and universally, with stadiums and records outselling the ones before, peaking with 1998's triple-platinum This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours, all while, for the most part, holding onto a reputation as Welsh situationist heroes against an encroaching culture of leisure music.

Back then, we didn't care that much.

We'd always enjoyed The Manics, but found it consistently difficult to latch onto them in the middle of a decade that was already heaving with sounds, brilliance bursting from everyplace. We'd first been exposed to their albums by a friend from across the country, who raved over them in letters and over the phone, periodically sending us discreet cassettes, and who eventually asked us to help out with material for her fanzine, one of the first times we ever wrote about music. Back then, if The Manics were interesting and important, we surrounded ourselves with so much else, not because it was wrong but because it was easy and just as right.

Only when the praise and the crowds died down did we go back and see what we'd missed.

Our reaction was the same as it was this week at Neumo's, where the band kick-started their return to the U.S., almost to the day, in over a decade. Their reason is to promote their latest, this year's Journal For Plague Lovers, based off of the writings of lost guitarist Richey Edwards and backed by a new, uneasy musical grace and no singles. It's here where, the whole night, we kept waiting for a song, any song, we didn't like.

In front of us for the first time, lead-singer James Dean Bradfield reminds us of a militaristic Sam Tyler from BBC's 'Life On Mars'. Drummer Sean Moore seems to have no ego. Bassist, and chief lyricist, Nicky Wire clashes with glam, wearing a white suit-jacket and black eye-shadow, and his sides are flanked by a speaker-stack of stuffed animals and a microphone-stand swirled around with a long, multi-colored feather boa.

Then there are the highlights.

The opener, 1992's "Motorcycle Emptiness". Bradfield doing Nina Persson's bit for 2007's "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough". The drum-machine of "You Stole The Sun From My Heart". An unexpected cover of Camper Van Beethoven's "Take The Skinheads Bowling". Wire leaping about, singing even when it's not his part, as if he's enjoying all this as much as the rest of us.

Halfway through, one of them says, "Richey never made it to Seattle, but I bet he would've loved it. Anywhere that's dark and rainy and pretentious." Adding, after another song, "And I mean pretentious in a good way."

"La Tristesse Durera," "This Joke Sport Severed," "Let Robeson Sing".

In a recent interview, Wire praised "Patience" by Take That.

This is not an ironic choice. It's the greatest comeback single in history. If Neil Young had written it, people would be calling it a masterpiece. I've always liked Take That, too. They looked so brilliant back in the day and did everything right, but this is something else. Gary Barlow is a genius; I won't have anyone argue against him. When Alex Turner slagged off Take That at the 2006 Q awards for getting an award, I nearly lost it. James was grabbing me by the arm, saying: "Don't lose it, Nicky." You get so many alternative bands banging on about how to make perfect pop, and this kicks all their arses.

There's a girl at the back with androgynous hair and colored tape on her face, dancing on her own the entire night, in her ecstatic world of one. She's The Spirit Of The Manics, we think. Still alive. Even after these years.

"Faster," from The Holy Bible, is madness.

"A Design For Life," the finale, breaks our heart.

It's all been a long time coming.

We know we're lucky to hear these songs now that we care and before it was too late, but we also wonder if our lives would've been any different if we'd let them get around to us when we were at the right age.

There's an uncomfortable sincerity about the band, which is difficult for a cynic.

We realize, when we listen to The Manics, live or on record, we listen to something we never had, a different adolescence, one that paid a different sort of attention when the time was ripe, that would've gotten to know people like our friend better, chasing through subways and jumping into cars in the dark, riding around the city together with band t-shirts and the top down, listening to pencil-scribbled cassettes and laughing at plans for the future.

Because there's only a small window to get into things like this, and we've already missed it.

Photo by Phil Rose.

"A number of niggers surrounded by noise..." (1918)

The rest of the entries in the two volumes are normal and even bland. Only the word "jazz" ignited some fire in the old Weekley. It must be a jazz thing.

At work? Do you know what to listen to next? Go here and listen to IQU's 1998 record Chotto Matte a Moment!.

We used to listen to this record in college, late at night while putting the daily school paper together. Track number two, "Yopparai (a Drunkard Who Fell From Heaven)," would crack us up every time. Sleep-deprived, slightly tipsy, slaphappy us.

One of the most popular indie rock rumor topics of this decade is the reformation of Pavement.

According to reliable sources, it's finally happening in 2010! There will be multiple, possibly four, nights of shows at NYC's Central Park Summerstage in September of that year. That could be part of a tour. That could be the end of a tour, the middle of a tour, or even the beginning of a tour, but it seems reasonable to speculate that they might make their official comeback at Coachella in April.

It's also time to start guessing who might be the big curator of September 2010's ATP NY festival (the job Flaming Lips had this year, and My Bloody Valentine the year before that). Might as well put Pavement high on the list of possibilities for that too.

Um...OMFG!?1! (The one time I was able to see Pavement was in the Key Arena at Bumbershoot one year, and because I was just a dumb kid I didn't know the band very well yet and I didn't pay nearly enough attention at the show—seriously crossing my fingers for this one.)

Last week, instead of Bumbershoot and bars, we stayed in and nerded it up with 'Made In Sheffield,' 2002's long-needed documentary about the post-punk and new wave experiments of bands from Sheffield, England such as The Human League, Cabaret Voltaire, The Extras, Comsat Angels, ABC, and Pulp.

For an interesting, low-key piece of pop-culture propaganda, the core story is actually believable. Sheffield always did have a unique sort of music personality. While the city's aging industrial climate has lead to a claustrophobia for youth frustrated to escape, just like endless others around the world, its people, particularly in the late '70s and early '80s, got away from it all through strangeness and futurism rather than clichés and rage.

Nearly thirty years on, Cabaret Voltaire's The Voice Of America is one of the most harrowing after-drug freakshows of shattered song-structures, nauseously modulated monologues, hostile searches for revolution, and single-tone sonic attacks. The early albums by The Human League are still extraordinary little things that pit unsettling but barely understood synthesizers against bright pop music like new wave Roman emperor-droids of blue-eyed soul.

Sheffield often flies just enough under the radar that you might never connect its bands, who you could've listened to for most of your life, with the same hometown. Which doesn't have to be a bad thing.

It's more than a city just elevating its own fiction. Although removed from the generation and thousands of miles away, you can still hear Sheffield's voice, and how it probably was never more clear as it was then. The city's been less consistent since: for every Moloko or LFO, there's 65daysofstatic and the Arctic Monkeys. But the voice remains there, if you listen. Difficult to define, but easy to enjoy, and yet another ingredient in the overall sound of post-war England just as much as London or Liverpool or Manchester or Leeds.

Don't assume 'Made In Sheffield' will demonstrate any of this.

'Made In Sheffield' is discouraging. It's ropey. It clocks in at only an hour. 'Made In Sheffield' is a documentary in the sense that there are interviews with a handful of the key musicians — mostly Philip Oakey, Chris Watson, and Jarvis Cocker — and ridiculously sparse footage of old riots and album artwork. Considering such a relatively niche subject-matter, it's good that a film on Sheffield's music exists, especially one so well-intentioned. But like John Dower's 2003 Britpop film 'Live Forever' or Lara Lee's 2004 electronic music film 'Modulations: Cinema For The Ear', there's no sense of history or flow and what little you're offered makes it feel more like leftovers from another film. What's there is good, but there's not enough of it. Total wasted opportunity.

For a better glimpse of Sheffield, thanks to Brian Geoghagan, run right over to Damon Fairclough's heroically personal write-ups "Destroyed By Gods," which covers the city's after-punk Year Zero, and "Brain Aided Dancing," which covers the more modern and dance-cultural voices released under the art-directors Designers Republic.

"Destroyed By Gods":

Some bands just had to come from a certain place. Others just happened to be there. The latter are often confused with the former — but it's the former that make city music scenes matter. It's a mysterious thing, but I'm afraid it seems true, that some cities take on a musical form and sing while others just offer up lists of bands that are... well... just lists of bands. Sheffield is a city that does exist in this ephemeral form. Its sound is industry. It's pop. It's electronic. And it's raw. It's a narrative with its feet on the ground and its head in the clouds. Somewhere, without or within, it's glamorous — but like all the best glamour, it only comes out at night.

"Brain Aided Dancing":

This was a Republic with two leaders, two citizens, two workers. Namely, Ian Stirling Anderson and Nicholas Giles Phillips. They had a handful of record sleeve designs to their name, a studio that was barely six months old...and yet, every statement they made was loaded with a palpable sense of destiny. This was no pub-corner chinwag; these weren't the purveyors of idle doodles, designers who just did a few bits for their mates. This interview bore witness to the birth of something self-consciously brilliant. It was part manifesto, part political broadcast, but framed as a gleaming corporate ID. They were giving local indie bands an image that was positively inflammable; but in turn, they were swiping the limelight for themselves.

And hey! Fairclough's made a mix for each.

"Destroyed By Gods"
[Pulp, The Human League, Sweet Exorcist, All Seeing I, Cabaret Voltaire, etc.]

"Brain Aided Dancing"
[Moloko, Age Of Chance, Sun Electric, Pop Will Eat Itself, Subsonic, etc.]

At least we know who should do the sequel.