Like lichen

They're growing on me, the Arctic Monkeys. I'm listening to the new disc released earlier this week. It makes the drive home from work better and gets me fired up to do what I do best once I get home: drink. I wouldn't say it's drinking music, though all music can be drinking music, especially music about drinking. But the Monkeys just kinda get the blood pumping a little.
Now if you're music budget is small, you probably want to wait for the new Wilco, and later in the year, Spoon and the New Pornographers. It's going to be a good year.

People Funny Boy

Speaking of Lee Scratch Perry, the recently released The Upsetter Selection: A Lee Perry Jukebox is awesome. 2 discs' worth of sunshine bliss. From what I've read, Scratch himself selected all the songs on this compilation, which includes about 12 tracks of his solo work, 6 songs he produced and mixed for Bob Marley and various tracks he mixed for other Jamaican artists like Peter Tosh, the Heptones and Prince Jazzbo.

But, a note of warning here, if you want to feel sad, pissed or suicidal, this will ruin your mood. I realize most of you would read the words "feel good music" and immediately turn the other way, but this is one you'll finally be happy with, you sad sappy sucker.

Check the video links out

I added a cool new video feature to the right sidebar on this page. It pulls footage from Google Video and from YouTube randomly of various artists I list. What makes it better is that the video you click on will play at the top of this page, it won't link you to their stupid sites. If you don't like the artist featured, hit refresh and a new artist will be up. If you don't love the Replacements' Bastards of Young, you will, dammit, oh you will. Let's just hope my coblogger won't add Steven Perry to the mix....
So far, I nominate Lee Perry - I am the Upsetter and Band of Horses - the Great Salt Lake. Any others?

TVOTR show

I realize that it has been awhile since my last post here, but I've been on a NyQuil binge that peaked April 4 in Dallas at TV on the Radio's Granada Theater show.

The show started perfectly because we got to our spot about 5 rows from the front, to the left side, just in time for the band to kick things off. A UK group called The Noisettes opened, but I wasn't too upset about missing them because I've never heard any of their stuff.

TVOTR sounded absolutely perfect. The only thing that I couldn't hear clearly was the mumbling banter between the songs. I was surprised at how they were able to exactly duplicate the sonic structure of their music. I wasn't sure if the wall of feedback was being duplicated onstage or if it was looped, but it didn't matter to me. The show was pretty uptempo all but for a few songs in the middle of their set, which I'd guess lasted just over an hour, including the encore. If any of you have listened to their stuff, you'd probably agree that TVOTR are usually melody-driven, yet it's usually hard to decipher exactly what the words are, so you're left to ID the songs by either the vibe their music conveys on that particular track or the chorus. They ended the encore with Staring at the Sun, easily their most addictive song.

The band itself was a show itself. After reading what I just wrote to describe what it was like watching them perform, I decided you'd be best served to look at the photo here.

TV and TV on the Radio

I could be writing about the TV on the Radio concert I saw this week, but my blog partner should do that. He's been going ga ga for those guys, and I think he would do a better job. I will say that they were great, loud, rocking and energetic from start to finish.

However, I will spend this time talking about how long it took for the third season of Entourage to come out on DVD. I missed a few episodes last season, so I was counting on the DVDs to catch me up before the new season started. But it just came out this past week, and the fourth season starts on Easter. The thing is that I don't have HBO and would need to coordinate with someone to see the new shows. But I can't do that if I haven't caught up on the old. I don't want to make any threats to HBO, but... But nothing. HBO is in good with the Soprano crime family, and hey, I'm just a guy trying to get by. So it's all good. I will take it how they dish it and ask for more. God bless you, HBO.