Wanna Be, Gotta Be

Just finished this recording with my good friend Matt -- it's a cover of "Wanna Be Starting Something," and it was recorded in a staircase.



Cheers, Mike.

Ooh, how exciting! (feat. Surfer Blood)

Surfer Blood -- Take It Easy -- Astro Coast (2009)

Thanks to Steven Reilly for the jump on this one.

WTF: Renegade Edition

Anyone else find it ironic that the "Renegade Edition" of DJ Hero features two rappers?


"Looks dope."

Other absurdities:


Nothing like playing guitar with my fav DJ.

WTF: "Victim Impact Statements"

Okay, so I'm close to a year late on discussing this one, but this story from WNYC is amazing:

This week, the Supreme Court declined to review a case about whether it was legal to play Enya under a video montage of a murder victim’s life. Such "victim impact statements" serve as testimony submitted during the sentencing phase of a criminal trial. Public defender Evan Young discusses what she says is the regrettable art of swaying a jury.

The best part comes from 3:55 when they discuss the judges of the California Supreme Court as music critics (or "psycho-neurologists").

I won't give away the best part, but involves the phrase "soft, not stirring."

Discoveries Worth Sharing: Young Doseone

The one in the vampire costume is Adam Drucker.



Doseone -- Low Heaven -- Soft Skulls (2007)


Doseone -- Ghost Personal -- Soft Skulls (2007)

(via eMusic)

Discoveries Worth Sharing: You Can Sing Any Jazz Song...

There's a really enjoyable discussion over at NPR's Jazz Blog, A Blog Supreme, between Patrick Jarenwattananon and Anya Grundmann (a.k.a. "Boss Lady") that was posted Friday. Patrick and Anya collaborate on a regular feature called "Listening, Party for Two," wherein the former will pick out a "great jazz song" for the latter and the two will discuss it over the Internet. This latest post features an amazing live performance of Ella Fitzgerald in West Berlin, which features about 5+ minutes of straight scatting.

The vocal virtuosity is impressive in and of itself, but then you learn that it's chock full of song interpolation too:

[Patrick]: Surely, you heard "Poinciana" (start of the scat solo), or "Stormy Weather," or "Rhapsody In Blue," or "I Want To Be Happy," or "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" (her first hit in the '30s), or the interpolation of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" as "Sweat Gets In Your Eyes" at the end ...

Boss Lady: Looks like I'd better listen again. Because I was focused on Ella's voice and her pyrotechnics, but all of those references flew by unnoticed. Sigh.

[Patrick]: ...or Ferde Grofe's "On The Trail," or the Ethel Waters number "Tropical Heat Wave," or "El Manicero," or even a Charlie Parker tune called ["Ornithology"] which was based on the chord changes to this song.

I definitely sat through about 3/4 of the song and had no idea. To hear the song and read the full post, click here.

And in other news, Ella Fitzgerald and Jimmy Fallon have something in common:



(Err, I also owned one of those Stretch Armstrong dolls. Whoa. This post is spiraling out of control.)

Alliteration Monday: Dead Man's Bones

Ooh, how exciting! (The Funk Brothers)

Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch (Instrumental) -- Earl Van Dyke & The Soul Brothers

Forget the hook for a just minute and listen to how amazing this song really is.

Frrriday: Tera Melos

Tera Melos - Tame - Idioms Vol 1 - 2009

Shazam, We Genie

Attention nerds: Slate just published a pretty great feature about how the popular Shazam application works on Monday.

Just to give you a taste:

Shazam creates a spectrogram for each song in its database—a graph that plots three dimensions of music: frequency vs. amplitude vs. time. The algorithm then picks out just those points that represent the peaks of the graph—notes that contain 'higher energy content' than all the other notes around it...In practice, this seems to work out to about three data points per second per song.

Ahem, speaking of 'high energy content'...

Ooh, how exciting! (feat. Phaseone)

Animal Collective -- Daily Routine (Phaseone Remix) -- White Collar Crime (2009)

One of the better remixes of a Merriweather track in existence.

Alliteration Monday: Pete Nice & Daddy Rich

Fat boys just want to J-A-M.

Alliteration Monday: Red Red Meat

James Murphy was there.

Obits: John Rivas (1956-2009)

"It was all a dream
I used to read Word Up Magazine
Salt-N-Pepa and Heavy D up in the limousine
Hangin' pictures on my wall
Every Saturday, Rap Attack, Mr. Magic, Marley Marl."

Alliteration Monday: Washed Out

Just in case you don't follow Pitchfork news closely enough.