Wow, two Nada Surf mentions in one week for me, that’s some kind of record. Following hot on the heels of the lovely Beatles cover by the shimmering indie-rock New York trio, we have a new song as well.
This is from the upcoming soundtrack of Ashanti‘s new movie (meaning: listen to this song now because, seriously, how many of you are actually gonna go see Ashanti in the theaters?) John Tucker Must Die. The soundtrack also includes People in Planes, OK Go (covering The Zombies’ “This Will Be Our Year”), All-American Rejects, Ben Lee (with his grand little “Float On” cover), and The Caesars.
“I Like What You Say” – Nada Surf (expired)
By the way, Ashanti’s character in the movie is named Heather. Represent.
I absolutely love stories behind songs. Knowing a bit of the background illuminates the song in a whole new way. That’s why when I was reading an article about Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, I found this irresistible (from Eye Weekly):
” . . .After chatting to his buddy Paul McCartney about Sexsmith, Chris Difford of Squeeze took Ron over to the ex-Beatle’s house for an impromptu jam session. Maybe you’ve heard this story, but you know you want to hear it again. Difford makes the introduction, they all have breakfast and before you know it, Ron’s singing ‘Listen To What The Man Said’ with Paul taking the harmonies.
‘Well, I didn’t know what to play,’ Ron says, ‘And [McCartney] does this thing when you talk to him — if you say something humorous, he’s got these huge eyes, and he sort of gave me this look like I was being a wise guy or something. Well, it’s a song I’ve always played for myself… and it was cool. I was singing lead and he was doing the harmonies and stuff.’”
I had to hunt down the cover, for me and for you. This version is live with Sexsmith only – I doubt a recorded version exists of them duetting. But I’ll bet that it would sound very nice because (although I have never realized this before) McCartney and Sexsmith have extremely complementary voices.
Here’s a few random things that I’ve found interesting lately in the music world:
Ûž Local Colorado music writer/longtime Pearl Jam fan Stephen Saint has written about an excellent little piece of forgotten Southern California history involving himself and Eddie Vedder. “Eddie’s Secret Show: A Pearl Jam Memoir“ remembers shows that Saint’s band (Club of Rome) played with Eddie and Bad Radio back in the early ’90s. Coming from California myself, I loved a lot of the little references: he mentions the hotel in San Diego where I met the band in ’95 (The Catamaran), and discusses the 1997 secret show at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz, CA that I attended (and, um, paid the same $200 that Eddie cites). So I found it to be fascinating & recommended reading.
Ûž If you were in a metal band, what would your name be? Here are some suggestions for me from the Metal Band Name Generator: Cryptic Winter, Weeping Gates, Thy Castle, Carpathian Blood. Right on.
Ûž Stereogum has the new Audioslave“Original Fire“ in streaming format. I agree that it seems neither original nor fiery. But speaking of my man Chris Cornell, I was listening to “Outshined” (Soundgarden) last night at the gym and THAT is some good stuff that I have let slide for far too long.
Ûž According to a completely unofficial source (a blog comment from “Kev in St. Louis”), here is some Counting Crows potential new album news: “Look for a new album sometime in the Spring of 2007. Tentative title is Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings. Part rocking guitar stuff and part soft acoustic stuff. Rumor is that they have re-recorded “Suffocate” – that was a song on their demo cd.” Take that for what you will (and thank you Kev).
This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while. I love the utmost heartfelt musical conviction that Aziz Ansari displays while he walks through the streets bumpin’ Paula Cole after losing a bet. Each song is better (and by better I mean worse) than the next.
Priceless. (From 2005, but hey, I am just seeing it now – thanks Stereogum!).
It’s been, what, a month since I posted any Ryan Adams? Long enough. Round two (ding!)
I read something today purportedly written this morning by Ryan which sounds molto interessante: “First record is getting mixed and mastered while we are on the road. Its the first of three. Its solo. Its called “Blackhole“. Johnny on drums, me on everythinbg else. lots of raw guitar and kinda sexy/ damaged tunes. My favorite easily.”
Sexy + damaged + Ryan Adams = some of my favorite songs in the world (Exhibit A: Love Is Hell album, tracks like “Hotel Chelsea Nights” & “My Blue Manhattan”). I can’t wait for this Blackhole business.
Anyway, here is a great old interview from SPIN with Ryan (if you’ve never gotten into him). It is a fascinating, layered, textured look at a complicated musician during his Love is Hell / Rock N Roll era. For those who stick to it until the end, there is a related bonus song goodie. ————————————————————————- Who The F**k Is Ryan Adams? By Marc Spitz SPIN Magazine: November 24, 2003
Outside it’s a Tom Waits world. Leaving our faded, yellow hotel — a former livery stable with hanging gardens, a goldfish pond, and circling bugs the size of small birds — we head down Marigny Street into “the Quarter,” New Orleans’ combination tourist trap/alcohol-fortified tar pit full of “one-legged fucking pirates and shamans and con artists,” as our guide, Ryan Adams, describes it. This can be a dangerous place, but especially so for a rock star at a personal and creative crossroads. Too many distractions.
At the moment, the distractions are benign: eggs and salmon. Breakfast. Adams pulls up the collar of his peacoat to ward off the early-April chill. His unruly black hair is hidden under a porkpie hat. We stride through the streets toward a cafe he spied the night before. “Look at the sky — it’s calico,” he muses. It’s easy to see why poet Ryan (one of his several personalities) is here, bunking in a cheap room on the outskirts of town. He’s always been this way. Put him in any major city and he’ll scout the perfect black-and-white postcard location inside an hour.
“When I’m in New York, I just want to walk down the street and feel this thing, like I’m in a movie,” he explains. In Los Angeles, he stays at the old, Montgomery Clift-haunted Roosevelt Hotel, instead of the more star-friendly Chateau Marmont or Sunset Marquis. Self-conscious as it may be, this fidelity to mythic Americana is part of Adams’ charm. It’s evident in his best songs, with their street-corner detail and bad-luck, sad-eyed ladies. It’s also part of his cliche.
Serious-musician Ryan (personality two, equally versed in Hank Williams, the Smiths, and Black Flag) has reason to be here as well. He’s trying to record a great album, the follow-up to 2001′s breakthrough, Gold, which sold 400,000 copies and made Adams a semi-celebrity. With the single “New York, New York” (and bittersweet video, shot across the river from the World Trade Center just days before September 11), the album elevated him from alt-country cult hero to bold-faced tabloid name (linked with Winona Ryder, among others). Then, before the former punk stoner kid from Jacksonville, North Carolina, could adjust to his fame, the backlash hit. Fans of his volatile country-rock band, Whiskeytown, and his earnest solo debut, Heartbreaker, cried “Judas” over Gold’s lustrous pop production (Starbucks soundtrack queens The Corrs later covered “When the Stars Go Blue”). The album’s classic-rock reverence warmed the Rolling Stones, who asked Adams to open shows on their Forty Licks tour.
Famous Ryan (personality number three, a childlike sketch of how an overnight rock star should act) was born. This Ryan was a smart kid who parodied celebrity superficiality a little too skillfully. Fun at parties. Can’t look you in the eye. Not the kind of guy who would make another Heartbreaker.
“On Heartbreaker,” he says, “I had to sing those songs. I drank the way I did those songs. I ate the way I did those songs. I communicated the way I did those songs. With Gold, I was trying to prove something to myself. I wanted to invent a modern classic.” On the strength of Gold, his 2002 compilation of demos (titled Demolition) went Top 30, a success that gave famous Ryan further license to ill. Soon, he was known less for his music than for his antics (covering The Strokes‘ Is This It in its entirety, trying to bounce people from his shows for requesting Bryan Adams, feuding with Jack White, whom he called a “little girl,” and babbling on his website about smoking Moroccan hash). “I used to be so excited when I saw my name in print,” he confesses. “I wanted to be a rock personality so fucking bad. But then I was looking at people like Patti Smith — people who had a purpose. I said to myself, ‘I should have a purpose, too.’ And what I figured out was that I don’t have one. I’m a goofball. I’m always changing my mind. I’m breaking my promises all over the place.”
By spring 2003, everyone was pretty sick of the goofball — the goofball included. Which is what brings us to New Orleans. Scores of artists have turned to this city for musical inspiration, from Duke Ellington to Nine Inch Nails. The ashes of country-rock saint Gram Parsons (one of Adams’ many idols) reside here as well. There’s music in the air. Train whistles, horse-hoof clip-clops, police sirens. “I wanted to go to an actual, real, American city,” says Adams. “Full of nameless bars. I didn’t want to work in New York or L.A. I just wanted to get away from that.”
And yet, as night stretches on into morning, it’s difficult to identify what 28-year-old regular-guy Ryan (personality four, a gifted, humble fellow who can do anything but commits to almost nothing) is getting out of this perfectly beat environment. It’s clear that talent, ambition, and art direction aren’t enough to produce a classic album. Ryan Adams — all of them — needs some inspiration.
It’s 3 a.m. We’ve eaten two large, time-consuming meals since breakfast. Browsed through junk shops, bought old albums and Look magazines. Attempted to track down a notorious caster of spells. Adams, a gifted mimic, has done his adenoidal Metallica-fan impression more than once. Anything, it seems, to avoid the problem at hand. The sign on the door of Piety Street Recording Studio, you see, reads: Do Not Disturb: Career-Ending Recording Session in Progress.
John Porter, a graying Brit with kind eyes, calmly listens to the playback. Some studio musicians wait around. A few of them, like former Small Faces keyboardist Ian MacLagan and drummer Rikki Fataar (beloved by Monty Python fans as the Rutles’ “Stig O’Hara”), are somewhat legendary. Porter made his name producing records by Roxy Music and the Smiths. Adams initially wanted Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr to produce some songs he’d written in New York, a collection of pain-streaked barstool ballads dubbed Love Is Hell. Tired of emulating mid-period Stones and on Marr’s recommendation, he enlisted Porter to wrap his white-boy blues in some authentic Mancunian raincoat rock. This should be an interesting hybrid, but some element is missing. The songs he plays for me over the studio speakers — like “Hotel Chelsea Nights,” with its melancholy keyboards, and an almost unrecognizable version of Oasis’ “Wonderwall” — are excellent. But Adams feels the tracks are adrift. He plays a guitar part to a new song, “This House Is Not for Sale,” over and over. “It doesn’t sound art faggy enough!” he frets. “It’s too Goo Goo Dolls! Too fucking Melissa Etheridge! I should be wearing a muscle T-shirt.”
A studio hand is dispatched to a local bar. He returns with a vintage, royal-blue Pepsi crate of Guinness pints, but even after getting loaded, the band is just too good. “There was no way to explain [that I wanted them] to validate these almost high school poems with some wrong notes,” Adams remembers later in New York. “[There was] no way to grease it up a little and make it interesting. I’d take this piano player and put him on drums and, like, goddamn, he’s really good at drums, too.”
When Adams and Porter finally packed up for L.A. to mix the sessions, they were no closer to the end. “Love Is Hell started splitting in two,” Adams says. “It was like I was recording the gravy and I already had the turkey. So we just started stripping it back. By the end of it all, I was so tired of recording. I was fried. I’d overdone it.”
“It was a big departure,” says Luke Lewis, president of Adams’ label, Lost Highway. The album wasn’t rejected, but the label didn’t rush to schedule it, either. “I told him I thought he could do better,” admits Lewis, “but I tell him that all the time. On a business level, I could’ve done fine with Love Is Hell. But we both knew…he was suffering from overhype. I said, ‘Are you sure this is gonna be the statement you wanna make?’… His young ass was hanging out there. If [the record] wasn’t good, he was gonna get whacked by a lot of people.” Lost Highway is releasing selections from Love Is Hell as a pair of EPs.
Back in New York, Adams went underground. Literally. Nobody saw him, but he would post Mariah Carey-like ramblings on his official website. He was quitting the music business. He was going to play guitar in someone else’s band. He was reuniting Whiskeytown. “I just shut everybody down,” he says now. “My biggest word in the last eight months was no. And I used the shit out of that word.” Adams broke up with his longtime girlfriend, singer/songwriter Leona Naess (who then sold My X is a Wanker baby Ts on her website). In New Orleans, he’d rhapsodized about their relationship: “My lifestyle changed when this wonderful person came into my life. I couldn’t sleep for years. All of a sudden, I don’t know why or how, but I slept.”
Now, it’s fair to say, he wasn’t sleeping much. Or writing much. He was hanging out all night at East Village bars Niagara and Black and White. One of rock’s most prolific songwriters seemed officially burned out. Then two things happened. First, friend and current drummer Johnny T (who co-owns the aforementioned bars) invited Adams to Motherfucker, a rock’n'roll dance party. “I remember going by myself,” says Adams. “[It] was one crazy music fest. They would play Sonic Youth and New Order, and I was thinking to myself, ‘I know how to play that stuff. Why am I not playing that stuff?’ Someone put on [the Smiths'] ‘How Soon Is Now?’ and I remember saying to myself, ‘Don’t get so caught up.’ I had boxed myself into a little place.”
Then, he staggered into a basement and rediscovered punk rock. Johnny T had rented a rehearsal space under Hi-Fi, a bar on Avenue A, and he and Adams started playing there after hours. “Any time, we could say, ‘Let’s go jam!’” remembers Johnny T. “It wasn’t work. It was like [Ryan] hadn’t played music for fun in a long time.” An initial recording, dubbed The War on Drugs, wasn’t promising. “God forbid this tape ever leaks out,” Adams laughs. “It’s some absurd shit.” (Adams is also rumored to be part of the piss-take punk band The Finger, with singer/songwriter/bar owner Jesse Malin; their 2002 indie release, We Are Fuck You, crams ten Germs rip-offs into 15 minutes. “I love that band,” says Adams, with a wink. “Those crazy kids from uptown.”)
Regardless, the liberation process had begun. Says Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, who stopped by to jam: “I imagined Ryan was your ‘perfect mess’ singer/songwriter guy, but he was dropping names of Green Day songs I’d not heard since I was 16. We were fucked up the entire time. [Rock photographer] Bob Gruen was down there in a Santa Claus costume.” Adams laughs as he elaborates. “Nobody knew what the hell I was up to,” he says. “The [record company] was like, ‘He’s in a basement?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Should we worry?’ ‘Do you always?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well, then worry.’”
Adams moved more sound equipment into the eight-by-twelve-foot room and began writing songs. By midsummer, he and Johnny T were jamming sober, during the day. Adams informed Lost Highway that he wanted to find a producer for his loud, fast, fun, new songs. Enter James Barber, veteran A&R man-turned-producer, who is best known as Courtney Love‘s boyfriend (he also produced five tracks on her yet-to-be-released solo debut, America’s Sweetheart). Barber was a fan of Adams’ capricious talent, if not what he’d done with it. “I’d known about Ryan,” says Barber. “[When Whiskeytown were signed to Geffen], I’d hear about him in marketing meetings. ‘Ryan did this. Ryan did that.’ He was the most flamboyant kid on the roster, but the records weren’t as exciting to me. Whiskeytown were an excellent band, but they were never as exciting as the energy the band created around them. Heartbreaker is a masterpiece, and Gold is beautiful, but they never seemed to be rock records. And in every interview you read with Ryan, he talks about growing up on hardcore and Black Flag and punk rock. It’s like, ‘Where’s that in your music?’”
The first thing Barber did was address the issue of the multiple Ryans. “I said to him before we started, ‘Who are you? If you had to make a record that defined you as an artist, what would it sound like?’” In Stratosphere Sound — where Adams and Johnny T, with help from Armstrong and former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur, recorded the songs — Barber put up a Sam Phillips quote: If you aren’t doing something different, you aren’t doing anything. Adams didn’t resist. “In New Orleans,” he says, “I would come into sessions at 6 p.m., and I’d leave with enough time to go out and get mighty damaged. This was different. I was eager to be in there and eager to stay as late as possible. We were able to make 11 songs in three days. They weren’t all classics, but they fucking all sounded great.”
The album, titled Rock N Roll, is punk like The Replacements or Oasis — in its attitude and energy. Tracks like “1974,” “Boys,” and “This Is It” (he insists it’s not a response to the Strokes) are hard-rocking stomps. Guitars mixed way up. Vocals screamed. But hooks are everywhere. There are only two downbeat tracks — the title song (with its homage to the Replacements’ “Answering Machine”) and the ballad “Anybody Wanna Take Me Home.” In this context, they simply provide some emotional texture. “There’s two ways to hear that song,” Barber says of the latter track. “One is the ‘I’m really lonely and devastated, and I don’t know how to communicate with women,’ and the other is that this is the best damn pickup line in the world. It works both ways. I love that about Ryan.”
Ultimately, insincerity is part of Adams’ sincerity, and embracing that with the help of some evil guitar riffs may restore his charm. Ryan Adams is a romantic poet. A gifted musician. A celebrity asshole. And a really nice guy. At the moment, all of his personalities are coexisting happily on record and inside his East Village apartment, where he drinks tea, smokes cigarettes, and prepares to reenter the pop-music world.
When he plays me the new song “So Alive,” with its gorgeous, soaring, falsetto chorus, famous Ryan laughs at serious-musician Ryan’s abilities, because regular-guy Ryan is a little bashful. For the time being, his mental house is in order; the parts are functioning together. He has a steady girlfriend, actress Parker Posey, whom he won’t talk about much, which is also a change. “Let’s just say I’m inspired,” he says. “She’s very special. I respect her greatly. She’s a good singer, too.” Posey appears on two of the album’s tracks.
If it is indeed only rock’n'roll that has provided Adams with all this career-saving discipline and lifesaving inspiration, then he’s in good company. Everybody from the Beatles to U2 has gotten back to where they once belonged the same way. He also knows that the ones who didn’t are in the ground, which may explain the title of one of Rock N Roll’s most powerful songs: “Note to Self (Don’t Die).”
MUSIC: Black Clouds (unreleased) – Ryan Adams Piety Street Studios, New Orleans
It’s been a while since I saw an advertisement that had the double-edge of being this clever AND this funny (it’s for a sleeping pill medication, caption “Your dreams miss you”). It took me several beats to get it, but then it made sense and I actually laughed out loud. (Ignore the weird page break, I had to fold it to fit on my scanner). Dreams about jumping rope with Abraham Lincoln and a badger beaver. That is SO right up my twisted alley. Perhaps because it reminded me of my INSANE & VIVID somniferous meanderings:
So, last night I dreamt that Chris Isaak was dying in my arms. This was immediately after Dwight Schrute (from The Office) injected him with a nerve agent. Which was, in retrospect, perhaps a jealous reaction from Dwight that I was canoodling a bit with Isaak. I woke up, pulse racing, and laid there in the early morning light for several minutes just processing my dream and thinking of how I could have saved Chris (Epi-pen! Mouth-to-mouth!) as if were all very, very real.
What in the WORLD does that mean?! Perhaps that I should stop dropping acid before bed. Just kidding. With dreams like that, who needs an interesting reality?
Toad the Wet Sprocket is out on the road again! Yes, you heard me right. If you remember them from the ’90s (or even if the name is brand-new to you) you should try and catch them on tour. I cannot begin to articulate into words the extent and the depth of my love for Toad The Wet Sprocket throughout my teen years, and let’s be honest – right up to today. They have definitely made a few of my desert island discs (but don’t ask me to pick which ones. Can I make a Toad mix to take along?).
I know the name of the band is silly (from Monty Python), but don’t let it stop you if you’ve never discovered this Santa Barbara foursome that has been making music together since their wee high-school days.
I gave them a spin the other day and they still sound as fresh and listenable and full-of-goodness as they ever did. Some of the really early stuff sounds kind of, well — late ’80s, but they were still in high school when they recorded that for the most part. It’s better than anything I made in high school, personally. All their mid-’90s stuff is very warm and rich-sounding pop, heavy on harmonies, with well-written lyrics often aching with vulnerability (as we all did in those years).
Oh, Matt Nathanson is opening a few of the West Coast shows.
TOUR DATES July 13: Westbury, New York (North Fork Theater; w/Big Head Todd) July 14: Hyannis, Mass. (Cape Cod Melody Tent; w/Big Head Todd) July 15: Cohasset, Mass. (South Shore Music Circus; w/Big Head Todd) July 16: Atlantic City, New Jersey (Borgata Music Box; w/Big Head Todd) July 18: Cleveland, Ohio (Tower City Amphitheater; w/Big Head Todd) July 19: Columbus, Ohio (Promowest Pavilion; w/Big Head Todd) July 20: Cincinatti, Ohio (Moonlight Gardens; w/Glen Phillips solo) July 21: St. Louis, Missouri (Live on the Landing; w/Big Head Todd) July 22: Council Bluff, Iowa (Star Cove; w/Glen Phillips solo) July 23: Kansas City, Missouri (Uptown Theater; with LUCE & Sister Hazel) July 27: Santa Barbara, CA (Marjorie Luke Theater – Rape Crisis Center Benefit) Aug. 9: Eagle, Idaho (Eagle Knoll Winery; w/Matt Nathanson) Aug. 10: Spokane, Wash. (The Big Easy; w/Matt Nathanson) Aug. 11: Veneta, Ore. (Secret House Vineyard; w/Big Head Todd) Aug. 13: Arlington, Wash. (River Meadows Park; w/Big Head Todd) Aug. 14: Seattle, Wash. (The Moore Theatre; w/Matt Nathanson) Aug. 16: Saratoga, Calif. (Mountain Winery; w/Big Head Todd) Aug. 17: Saratoga, Calif. (Mountain Winery; w/Big Head Todd) Aug. 18: Reno, Nev. (Hawkins Amphitheater at Bartley Ranch) Aug. 19: Santa Ana, Calif. (Galaxy Theatre; w/Matt Nathanson) Aug. 21: Los Angeles, Calif. (Mayan Theatre; w/Matt Nathanson) Aug. 22: Cabazon, Calif. (Key Club at Morongo; w/Matt Nathanson) Aug. 23: San Diego, Calif. (Humphrey’s; w/Big Head Todd)
If you want to heed me and give them a shot (and oh, how you should), I’ve tried to narrow down a few of my favorite selections here from each of their albums. There is SO MUCH MORE than the radio hits “Walk On The Ocean” and “Fall Down”:
PALE (1990) Liars Everywhere (melancholy little two minutes of perfection) Jam (TTWS takes a shot at the same lyrical ground that Pearl Jam covered with “Daughter” – that is, if you can understand through the early-’90s-mumble)
FEAR (1991) Nightingale Song (tambourines & sublime harmonies, with fantastic lyrics like “We might be different but our hearts won’t lie“) I Will Not Take These Things For Granted (“How can I hold the part of me that only you can carry?” A very simple and pure love song)
DULCINEA (1994) Crowing (This is a wonderful song, but now it makes me chuckle in a self-effacing way for the dozens of time I listened to it my sophomore year of high school over a certain high-drama relationship) Windmills (A song that somehow perfectly captures its subject matter. I can see a hillside of windmills in my head whenever I hear this. “We go side by side, laugh until it’s right“)
IN LIGHT SYRUP (rarities/b-sides, 1995) Brother (this is a phenomenal song, it is impossible to not smile when I hear this. One of the few few songs written about a brother that’s not lame or melodramatic) Good Intentions (I think this one somehow ended up on the “Friends” soundtrack, sheer pop goodness)
COIL (1997) Whatever I Fear (I had forgotten how much I liked this final release by Toad, this song is a great example) Throw It All Away (a song to celebrate the simple joys in life; “Tear up the calendar you bought, throw the pieces to the sky . . . Confetti fallin’ down like rain, like a parade to usher in your life.”)
I am going through slight World Cup withdrawal, and I thought that this piece of news/celebrity gossip so perfectly melded music and the Italian soccer team that it was a necessary bit to share (from The Sun Online):
“Noel Gallagher was the toast of the Italy team after their World Cup triumph on Sunday.
The footie-mad Manc has been the Azzurri’s lucky mascot through the key stages of Germany ’06 after striking up a friendship with goal ace Alessandro Del Piero. And the Juventus star invited Noel back to the team’s hotel to enjoy a champagne super knees-up after the big match.
Mop-top Noel, who was at more games in Germany than David Beckham, even borrowed new chum Alessandro’s acoustic guitar and belted out a rendition of “Don’t Look Back In Anger.”
The players thought it was bellissimo. A source tells me: “Noel has been in touch with Alessandro all through the tournament. He has been a lucky charm for the Italian team and seemed to do the trick again in the final. Del Piero invited him back to the team hotel to enjoy the party and Noel jumped at the chance. Not all the players know Noel from OASIS but they all seemed to pick up the band’s lyrics pretty quickly, and they were all singing along when he performed ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ in the hotel bar. The champagne was flowing and Noel was a big part of the party.”
And if defeat wasn’t bad enough for our boys, the England squad now have another reason to hang their heads in shame — having given one of our finest musical talents little choice but to defect to the opposition.
Noel befriended Del Piero and ex-Italian captain Paulo Maldini after an Oasis gig in Turin — the home of Juventus — three years ago. They kept in touch and Noel swaps gig tickets with them for seats at Champions League games. Noel said: “Alessandro is an Oasis fan and after one concert he gave me a pair of his boots. But I had to give one to Liam. I’d never seen Italy live until the semi-final against Germany in Dortmund last week. We went to the team hotel before the game and Del Piero was a bit upset because he wasn’t in their starting line-up.
“Then he told me, ‘I’m going to come off the bench and score’ — and that’s exactly what he did. Afterwards he said I’d become his lucky mascot and he’s so superstitious he told me I had to go to the final and wear exactly the same clothes to bring him good luck — right down to my socks and underwear.”
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Okay, that last sentence is maybe a bit weird. Here’s one final soccer-related tune, sent in to me by a reader. This main theme was used in the Adidas +10 commericals (“If you don’t give my football back, I’m gonna get my dad on you . . .”) that ran throughout the World Cup, from a musician named Jim Noir, also from Manchester. Playful & lovely.
Just a reminder for those of you of the U.S.A. persuasion who enjoy the occasional frozen refreshment of a Slurpee (cherry for me, thanks):
Today is July 11th, 7/11 – the day in which all of the land should pause for a Slurpee. For as long as I can remember, we have always gone as a family tradition on 7/11 day, and explained to the slightly confounded worker behind the counter that it was 7/11! So we were getting a Slurpee! Yeah, nothin’ in response except, “That’ll be $3.26.”
FINALLY this year, someone started listening to us and 7-Eleven is offering FREE (7.11 oz) Slurpees today. You still have a few hours left. Go! Go! They’re best late at night, anyway.
Just finding the pictures for this post made my mouth water a little bit.
A friend of mine told me I should check out the new song from Memphis alt-country rockers Luceroover at Muzzle of Bees, and it has just made my musical month.
This is an advance track from Lucero’s upcoming September release Rebels, Rogues, and Sworn Brothers, and I will have a hard time waiting until then to hear the rest of this album. Not to shortchange Lucero with endless comparisons, but to me it’s like the best signatures of a young, urgent Springsteen written all over this song. When Ben Nichols sings “I can get us out of here tonight,” it’s that same burning twinge that Springsteen makes you feel in your soul that makes you want to throw caution to the wind, roll down the windows, and take off on the interstate.
Gritty rock-guitar riffs pair with a thumping drumbeat that wildly echoes your own on that first date, with vocals that capture that manic raspy quality of Westerberg. While it doesn’t exactly compare with the poetic perfection & richness, the lyrical imagery echoes some of my favorite Springsteen creations like the dancing across the porch of “Thunder Road,” all the madness in my soul of “Born to Run.” There’s a sweetly-named girl (Jenny, Wendy, Mary, irrelevant), a fast car, and a need to escape.
Listen at 3:41 when the electric guitar cuts out, leaving just the sweetly nostalgic piano and these lyrics:
“Jenny lights her cigarette, wonders how she got in this mess Saturday night, wrong side of town Set em up, knock em down Well come on babe, don’t look so sad You know it ain’t half that bad . . .”
The way he sings it, I am in love. “Don’t look back, don’t hesitate. The car’s outside, we can’t wait. . . I can get us out of here tonight.” Let’s go. The night’s busting open, these two lanes will take us anywhere.
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California Giving context to the torrent since 2005.
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. Rock on.
Wow, two Nada Surf mentions in one week for me, that’s some kind of record. Following hot on the heels of the lovely Beatles cover by the shimmering indie-rock New York trio, we have a new song as well.
I absolutely love stories behind songs. Knowing a bit of the background illuminates the song in a whole new way. That’s why when I was reading an article about Canadian singer-songwriter 
Priceless. (From 2005, but hey, I am just seeing it now – thanks 
It’s been, what, a month since I posted any 
Just a reminder for those of you of the U.S.A. persuasion who enjoy the occasional frozen refreshment of a 
A friend of mine told me I should check out the new song from Memphis alt-country rockers 
Name: Heather Browne
