Katy Perry

John Legend

Sheryl Crow

At Good Morning America...

The Boss

Pachelbel Rant

Truer words have never been spoken (/sung).

In Rainbows

While I very much appreciate the fact that Radiohead managed to cut out the middle man altogether with their most recent album In Rainbows -- which you can download from their site in return for an unspecified and unsuggested donation (mine was $0) -- I still don't get why everyone is so crazy about their music.

Literature & Music; Assorted Notes

After showing up for my first day at Wired yesterday only to find that my boss was in San Francisco (I probably should have remembered that), I wandered around Midtown for a while and finally settled down in Borders to get some work done. Predictably, I got only a few pages into my architecture reading before I realized that a copy of Ann Patchett's latest book -- The Magician's Assistant -- was sitting on the table beside me. Though not as glued-to-your-seat-riveting as her earlier Bel Canto, the premise is equally unusual and just as finely executed.

Later in the evening, I met up with some friends and made my first pilgrimage to Jersey on the PATH train for a Decemberists concert in Jersey City. Tragically, I only realized at 8 p.m. that I had forgotten to put a CF card in my camera that morning (the picture to the right is actually from their October 2005 concert in New York City), but my idiocy aside the concert was brilliant. I haven't found a posted set list/mp3 list yet of the performance, but Meloy & co. started with 'Oceanside,' went through almost all of their latest album The Crane Wife, and ended the night with two of my favorite songs -- 'Eli, the Barrow Boy' and 'Sons & Daughters' as their encores. (I did find, however, that someone put up their October 2006 concert at the 9:30 Club in DC ... the set list isn't quite the same, but you get the idea.)

Also, Ani Difranco is coming to Prospect Park this summer. After managing to miss every single one of her shows for the past three years, I will be at that concert.

Motion Theory & Modest Mouse

The Motion Theory music video for Modest Mouse's 'Dashboard' is one of the best I've seen of late: clever narrative, really striking cinematography, and fairly decent music (I guess that part's important). I'll be interested to see if their new album -- We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank, which releases on March 20 -- returns to the days of The Moon & Antarctica, before they started producing lyrical disasters like "Float On."

Bandwagon

Ever lost all of your music to a faulty iPod or a hard drive crash? The soon-to-launch Bandwagon software will provide online backup for your entire iTunes library. And better still, it's free for bloggers if you post their logo and site URL by tomorrow night and send them the trackback. (Sorry, PC users, right now the program only works with OS 10.4+ and iTunes.)

Plug 2007

I spent about 12 hours on Saturday shooting various bands at the Plug Music Awards in Irving Plaza, along with a slew of other iStockers. Good times were had by all. Above: Tokyo Police Club, El-P, Deerhoof, host David Cross, and a 17-foot-tall puppet of David Cross. It was an interesting evening. Still to come: Stephen Malkmus!

The Best (And Worst) Ideas of 2006

The New York Times Magazine's 6th Annual Year in Ideas documents some wonderful, funny, and downright weird creations of 2006. My personal favorite:

"The popularity of the iPod has given new urgency to an old criticism of the portable music player: namely, that it isolates the listener by tuning out the world around him. As one response to this problem, Noah Vawter, a graduate student at the M.I.T. Media Lab, has created a pair of headphones that tunes the listener back in.

The device, which Vawter calls Ambient Addition, consists of two headphones with transparent earpieces, each equipped with a microphone and a speaker. The microphones sample the background noise in the immediate vicinity — wind blowing through the trees, traffic, a cellphone conversation. Then, with the help of a small digital signal-processing chip, the headphones make music from these sounds. For instance, percussive sounds like footsteps and coughs are sequenced into a stuttering pattern, and all the noises are tuned so that they fuse into a coherent, slowly changing set of harmonies."

Some other favorites from the list: Reverse Grafitti, Phantom Pianists, and Spit Art.

Call Your Grandma

From Sufjan Stevens, a slightly bizarre but naturally wonderful animated video to accompany one of the songs from his holiday album, Hark! Songs for Christmas Volume 2.

Jazz Sampling

I've been poring over my jazz collection recently and felt like sharing a few old favorites:

Jesse Sharps Quintet - Mike's Tune

Brad Mehldau - River Man (Nick Drake cover)

Modern Jazz Quartet - Vendome

Thelonius Monk - April in Paris

Blank CDs for £10?

"In an audacious and unprecedented move, Superthriller proposed to sell a fully artworked and exquisitely packaged, yet entirely blank CD for £10. So far, so bad. But rather than being a cold hearted scam, The Blank Album offers Superthriller fans access to a world of new material, B-sides, remixes and outtakes, and the chance to tailor the album to their own specifications."

While it seems unnecessarily roundabout, this is a pretty clever idea.

Mix of the Week

01 Brad Mehldau - River Man
02 Vienna Teng - Blue Caravan
03 Devendra Banhart - Now That I Know
04 Liz Phair - Listen Here
05 Born Heller - The Left Garden
06 Cafe Tacuba - Las Flores
07 The Falsies - Judy and the Dream of Horses
08 Regina Spektor - Summer in the City
09 The Decemberists - Sons and Daughters
10 Seu Jorge - Una Mujer
11 Cat Power - The Greatest
12 Beck - Devil's Haircut
13 The Mountain Goats - I Will Grab You By the Ears
14 Iron & Wine - Bird Stealing Bread
15 Sufjan Stevens - Sister
16 Ani DiFranco - Glass House
17 Django Reinhardt - Swing
18 Dave & Tim - When the World Ends

Far From Blog of the Week

Gawker has launched a new music blog, Idolator.

Quoth Gothamist:

So far they have shed light on things that already have glaring spotlights on them, such as: blogs create buzz about bands, and sometimes those bands aren't worth the buzz! Nothing new there, though they promise to step in and "cover the people who are manufacturing the latest band buzz, whether it's an old-guard standby (Rolling Stone), an absurdly powerful new-media turk (Pitchfork), or an agenda-pimping blogger (take your pick)."

I am less than impressed.

The Decemberists - The Crane Wife

Thanks to Jon, I've managed to secure a copy of The Decemberists' newest album (not scheduled for release until October 3, actually), The Crane Wife. The album's title (and a quarter of the music) is derived from a Japanese fable, quoth Wikipedia:

The Crane Wife is an old Japanese folk tale. While there are many variations of the tale, a common version is that a poor man finds an injured crane on his doorstep (or outside with an arrow in it), takes it in and nurses it back to health. After releasing it, a woman appears at his doorstep who he falls in love with and marries. Because they are in need of money, his wife offers to weave great silk cloths that they could sell at the market, but only if he agrees never to watch her when she is making it. They begin to sell them and live a comfortable life, but he began to make her weave more and more. Not noticing his wife's diminishing health, his greed increases and he eventually peeks in to see what she is doing that makes the silk she weaves so desirable. He is shocked to discover that at the loom is a crane plucking feathers from her body and weaving them into the loom. The crane, seeing him, flies away and never returns.

The music is a far cry from some of their earlier, cheerily-upbeat-yet-slightly-snarky songs, but certainly enjoyable. Have a listen:

The Decemberists - The Crane Wife 1 and 2
The Decemberists - Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)
The Decemberists - Sons and Daughters

Music Plugs

Two local bands worth investigating, thanks to MySpace's sole redemptive function as an online music community:

The Falsies, a Brooklyn-based "powerpop" group featuring my co-worker and xylophonist extraordinaire, Collin. Definitely listen to "Judy and the Dream of Horses." Their shows, scattered through Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan, are (usually) free, very entertaining, and completely worth the subway ride. Check the "Upcoming Shows" section for more details.

Farm to Market, a folk trio of Columbia undergrads with an incredible lead singer and a simple but beautiful acoustic mix of guitar and cello. Give "In Silence" a listen (but don't forget the other songs, too). They periodically upload new music, so keep checking the page for updates.

I Spoke Way Too Soon

Apparently, both Nick Hornby's High Fidelity and "hit-movie" (not my term) The Wedding Singer are also coming to Broadway.

(Hat Tip: Gothamist)

Musical Theater is Officially Doomed

Anne Rice's vampire book, Lestat, is coming to Broadway.

I'm not sure if the fact that Elton John wrote the music is a point of redemption or damnation.