Please, people walking down Broadway: Do not affect that angry/serious face when you want to seem importnat and good looking – it doesn’t work. Smile. You’re in NYC at the turn of the century, living in interesting times, positive or not, and you’re probably not too poor. Stop that awful squinting and cheek sucking. And […]

If Televison was the backing band for Arthur Russell: The Whitest Boy Alive — Done with You Another project of Norway’s Erlend Oye, he of the soft-folk, Simon and Garfunkel-esque Kings of Convenience, and of his own electro-dj collaboration solo albums, and of Odin knows what else. Whitest Boy Alive does a nice job surrounding […]

I’ve been Swamp Thing here at the lab, and also busy challenging interesting statements, like whether Beyonce is among the best songwriters of her generation, on other blogs. A futile endeavor, but time killing all the same. And I’ve been dunking my head in the hip-hop apple-bobbing contest a month early. The new Method Man, […]

Mail Call. Jagjaguwar sent some treats concerning Oakley Hall, and the following track, while my socks aren’t flying off, confirms said label’s dedication to good things. Oakley Hall does a quality job channeling their X influences. If they work hard and add some new wrinkles to what X has minted, I’ll still be listening. Oakley […]

Large change forthcoming in the world of J Phranc Parnell’s ghostwriter. Details never to follow. At least not here. Don’t ask yet. So these: Michael Hall – When September Comes Got this on a Safe House Records (site down?) comp known as The [W]rec[k] Room, Volume One. Hall hails from TX and did time in […]

In the NYTimes 9/2/06 Sunday Arts & Leisure section there’s an alright (albeit two years behind) arts& Leisure section cover piece concerning the shift, on the net, to user-controlled and influenced music buying. One such example proffered, the music genome project at Pandora, allows users to enter in a favorite act and then receive suggestions […]

Bob Dylan said this, about the quality of current music, in a new interview with Jonathan Lethem in the Shitrag Formerly Known as Rolling Stone: I remember when that Napster guy came up across, it was like, ‘Everybody’s gettin’ music for free.’ I was like, ‘Well, why not? It ain’t worth nothing anyway.” That’s a […]

I do prefer ‘disputant,’ although not because it’s less pejorative. Sebadoh – Skull Sebadoh – Vampire PS – an untimely event, in that it should have ocurred before Dando recorded “No Backbone.”

Broadcast – Poem of a Dead Song And PS: Unintentional T-shirt sighting #38: Homeless man, corner of Broadway and Thomas St, wearing black t-shirt with calm, clear-blue font across his chest stating simply : The Smoothest

Snowden – Time of the Season (demo/Zombies cover)