Aubadecast 1.2

Well! Time does surely fly, and I can't believe it's already the beginning of February and time for another edition of—

What? Nearly the end of March, you say? Well, shit. I wondered why the weather was so uncharacteristically nice.

Without further ado, then, allow me to trot out the Aubade Podcast version 1.2. This month's installment features some very fine musics.

Track 1 is for David. I began two consecutive mixtapes for him in the late '90s which began with the studio version of this song, after which he wrote me something to the effect of "Please don't put this song on any more mixtapes for me. I like it, but it makes me want to go out and kill my kin."

Track 20 is for Jason.

Track 14 is extremely interesting in that I know of no other band who has ripped off the sound of Ringo Starr's solo albums. Don't you just adore it?

Track 18 is for those of you who got the idea from Aubadecast 1 that Oneida are some kind of techno band.

1. Caleb Meyer Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
2. Real Love American Princes
3. Groom's Still Waiting At The Altar (live) Bob Dylan
4. 100 Million Little Bombs Buddy Miller
5. Devastation The Besnard Lakes
6. Fourth Time Around (Bob Dylan cover) Yo La Tengo
7. New Orange Bike Sister Suvi
8. Nobody's Dirty Business Mississippi John Hurt
9. I Left My Heart in Iran Forgotten Rebels
10. Bring It On Home To Me (Sam Cooke cover) Britt Daniel
11. Aly, Walk With Me The Raveonettes
12. Stranger Than Fools Jesse Malin
13. Route 23 Chatham County Line
14. Who Cares What The Question Is? The Bees
15. Sidewalk Chalk The A Sides
16. Personal Stars
17. Heart It Races (Architecture in Helsinki cover) Dr. Dog
18. All Arounder Oneida
19. Can't Stand It (live with Andrew Bird and horns) Wilco
20. A World Of Hurt Drive-By Truckers

By popular demand, the 'cast is available in two formats.

Click here for the popular "uncrackable" 80-minute file for optimum list'nin pleasure.

Click here to receive a zip file containing the individual songs (via Megaupload; ignore the "find the girl of your dreams" advertisements, enter the code, wait 45 seconds and then feel the rock)

EDIT: P.S. Don't forget: this pawdcast is eggs-splicitly designed to be cramm'd onto an 80-minute blank CD.

Can you lend me 3 million bucks?

No, I'm serious. Can anyone out there lend me three million bucks? I'll pay you back, no problem.

There's something I need to buy.

Aubadecast 1.1

Well, after knocking myself out making mixed CDs all last year (which will, in a while, be archived on this site for those who feel they're missing out, or who have scratched theirs up, or something) I came to the conclusion that there must be a more efficient way of going about this whole business of sorting through and sharing music. Hence the first installment in an experimental series of podcasts. Each one is designed to be burned on an 80 minute CD and listened to like a regular mixtape, but there are no track breaks. This gets around the problem of you white-eyed devils who take my mixes, cram them track-by-track onto your iPods, and never hear them in their immaculately sequenced glory. Take that.

The first immaculately sequenced podcast is an only-ever-so-slightly-tweaked version of eighty minutes in the life of my iPod on shuffle.

This is what happened: during the course of getting the first Quarterly Report disc of 2008 ready (all the songs were in the playlist; I was winnowing the last 20 minutes of extraneous tunes out and assembling a sequence) iTunes crashed and lost my library file. All playlists: gone. "Last played" tracking back only to last September. In other words: royally hooped.

Gamely (I thought), once the weeping subsided I took this radical disorganization of my digital music collection as an opportunity to revisit some stuff I hadn't paid much attention to first time 'round. iPod: autofill randomly! Press play and...

The next two hours were spent with my hands in an electical panel (not live) and my ears on cloud nine. Tons of great stuff I hadn't given two thoughts about were laid out end to end like Dorothy Parker's girls at Brandeis in a pleasing and often surprising sequence.

Or maybe it's just me.

Download the inaugural Aubade podcast (via Megaupload; ignore the "girl of your dreams" ads, enter the code, wait 45 seconds, then cram the rawk into your hard-drive).

****

Track listing:

French Film Blurred Wire • Driver Surprise Me The National • War Pigs Cake • People Gonna Talk James Hunter • Billy Gillian Welch • Étienne D'août (version radio) Malajube • I'll Fly Away Goose Creek Symphony • All Over Again Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings • Hockey Monkey The Zambonis featuring James Kochalka Superstar • The Fool Neutral Milk Hotel • Dearest Forsaken Iron & Wine • Reservations Jeff Tweedy • The Youth Are Getting Restless Bad Brains • Stand Down Margaret English Beat • All The Old Showstoppers The New Pornographers • Lullabye Cracker • Up With People Oneida • Dark Star The Mabuses • Things Don't Change The Reivers • Get Ready To Ride The Lion Culture • Faraway You Marah

Cramm'd full

A woefully un-hung-over New Year's morning — er, afternoon — and still no sign of intelligent life in the universe... no, wait: what about this?

*edit* Wait! rbally is back! So there is some kind of providence.

Return of the son of Aubade

While this blog is still officially closed for lack of interest, I ran across this recording of Spoon live on NPR's World Cafe that I thought might interest some of you.


Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is easily one of my favourite releases of 2007. An easy choice, I know; it was one of the year's most hyped albums. But it's a funky good record, dammit, nearly as good as Gimme Fiction and Kill the Moonlight, each of which is a shoo-in for my top ten of the decade so far. (What is it with male music geeks and top ten lists? Has some anthropologist done a study on this phenomenon? Is it cultural or pathological?) While at first listen it sounded too stark and teutonic, all hard lines and sharp angles, like a drawing done with a thick Jiffy marker, repeated listens reveal its hidden subtlety, soul, and even warmth.

Anyhow, here's the live set. Songs are broken out as individual MP3s, or you can download the whole show, interviews and all, as one file. The files are direct-linked.

Spoon on World Cafe [direct-linked MP3] [via RapidShare]
"Don't Make Me a Target" [via RapidShare]
"You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb" [via RapidShare]
"Rhthm & Soul" [via RapidShare]
"I Summon You" [via RapidShare]

Spoon home emusic

Good News

Hüsker Dü were, as I'm sure you astute little Aubadelings all know, one of the key bands of the 1980s, a herald of the "Alternative Revolution" of the 1990s (note the ironic quotation marks indicative of the era) (note also the self-conscious aside indicating that I'm aware that I am a product of my environment and that I somehow transcend the clichés even as I employ them) — where was I? Let's start again.

Hüsker Dü were, as I'm sure you astute little Aubadelings all know, one of the key bands of the 1980s, a herald of the "Alternative Revolution" of the 1990s and a strong influence on what came to be called "the Seattle Sound" — an admixture of sensitivity and brutality, pop and punk, art and commerce. They were the first "Alternative Rock" band to sign to a major label (though they never had anything like a hit — or even a decently produced album) and paved the way for hungrier bands with more testosterone to dominate radio airplay a few years after their breakup in 1988.

Drummer Grant Hart was Lennon to Bob Mould's McCartney, the latter writing all the songs your grandmother would like if she was kind of into hardcore, while Hart followed his drug-addled muse into oblique corners, sometimes bursting forth with a pop gem and sometimes wailing over a wall of noise.


While Bob Mould's solo output has received consistent attention from fans and critics, and his band Sugar nearly made waves on rock radio in the 1990s, Hart's career has been more haphazard; both solo and with Nova Mob, he has recorded with successively smaller and smaller record labels, nearly disappearing altogether in a kind of Alice in Wonderland trick. His last album was 1999's Good News for Modern Man. About 14 people noticed when it came out.

The thing is a fucking monster, easily one of my favourite albums of the past 10 years.

While searching for information on it (few and far between), I stumbled across this interview. Good reading.

How about a contest? First person to name the "three" that Hart refers to in the following song gets something nice.

•Grant Hart: Nobody Rides for Free (via RapidShare)

Grant Hart home

Find: Yep Roc downloads

Besides being a very cool record label (hey, what else are you going to call Americans who dig Sloan?), the folks at Yep Roc are also very savvy when it comes to the world of internet promotion. They know that if they give you a little, you'll come back to buy more. So if you sign up at their website, they give you a "stash" — a bunch o' tracks, free as Willy!

Their roster includes the aforementioned Haligonians, plus Robyn Hitchcock, Jim Lauderdale, the sublime Go-Betweens, Robbie Fulks, Big Sandy, Marah, the Sadies ... the list goes on and on. Oh, and the new Nik Lowe will be out soon. *pant pant*

Then, when you buy records from them (right now they have a bunch of vinyl on sale for five bucks a pop!), they give you the digital version for free, too, and sometimes bonus tracks to go with it. Tres swell.

Tell 'em I sent you.

50th post: a protest moment

Nowadays they'd call this an incitement to terrorism.


•Barbara Dane and the Chambers Brothers: It Isn't Nice (via RapidShare)

Barbara Dane home eMusic

Notes from Banjo Underground

Here's a nice find: when Uncle Dave Macon died, he left a hole in the shape of John Hartford, which John Hartford nicely filled. When John Hartford died a few years ago, his hole was shaped like Chris "Old Man" Luedecke.

Old Man Luedecke's album Hinterland fills a void you might not have known existed – the need for you to own an album of solo singer-songwriter banjo tunes. Alternately tender and goofy, poignant and hilarious — and sometimes all that simultaneously — Luedecke's songs are surprisingly good. You're expecting novelty tunes, you get spicy rice and potatoes. These suckers are good for you, and tasty to boot. Dig it!

• Old Man Luedecke: I Quit My Job (via RapidShare)
• Old Man Luedecke: Joy of Cooking (via RapidShare)

Old Man Luedecke home radio 3 myspace

Hinterland available through eMusic's 25 free MP3 offer

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Double ewe tea eph?!