Flight of the Conchords Tonight at Amoeba Music

Damn I want to see these guys. They're playing a show in a month or two, but tickets evaporated way too fast.

Flight of the Conchords @ Amoeba Hollywood - 6pm

Reviving the Music Blog That Never Was

So here is my brand new and improved Super Awesome Music Blog that is totally gonna start rocking. You just wait. It's gonna rock your face off. Even harder than Rodrigo y Gabriela.



OK, maybe it won't rock your face off, but it might rock your hair off. At the very least, it will rock your shirt off.

Jurassic 5 Go the Way of the Dinosaurs

"Yo, I'm maintaining with Jurassic 5, ya know whamsayin? With my peoples up here, Bigga B, one love."

Well, apparently this is old news, but after their current tour, Jurassic 5 is calling it quits. I was just listening to KCRW, they were playing "Radio" from their newest album Feedback. When the track ended, Nic Harcourt came on and briefly said something like, "that was Jurassic 5 from their album Feedback, they just broke up."

I felt like Steve Z when Elanor told him a rattlesnake bit his cat in the throat.

Godammit, Harcourt, why'd you have to say it like that? You couldn't try to break it a little bit nicer?

It was bad enough last year at the House of Blues, when they did a Monday night show to launch their album that was coming out the next day. I knew Cut Chemist was working on solo stuff, but I had no idea that he had actually left the group. What the hell? Why are there only 5 of them on stage? There are 6 people in Jurassic 5, damnit! It's just a clever name!




Look how lonely Nu Mark looks back there with that whole table to himself.

Granted, it was new material they were performing, but this was the most disappointing, low energy show of theirs I had ever seen. By no means was their new album terrible, but Cut Chemist left a big hole.

I guess its no surprise they are breaking up. From SOHH.com:

"After the tour, that's basically it," Soup explained. "I don't want to sit here and fake around with it--we're not seeing eye to eye right now. People see us as a harmonizing, loving group, but that's far from the truth."

Ouch. Well so long Jurassic 5 and thanks for all the memories. I remember the first time I saw you live at the Reggae Festival at the Greek Theater. Your harmonies blew me away - hip hop barbershop quartet was a great description for your unique sound. And I loved how you always saved the best tracks for last: Swing Set, Acetate Prophets, Canto de Ossanha.

Then there was the incredible show you played after Power in Numbers came out, at Northwestern's Patten Gym. I got there a little late, but with plenty of time to make my way up to the front. It was so sick when Nu Mark and Cut Chemist came out from behind their tables, with portable turntables hanging around their necks, and came right up to the edge of the stage for some scratch solos. Or when Soup, Akil, 2na, and Marc 7 broke out 4 long twisty straws, and swung them around really fast to make that whistling noise from Acetate Prophets (after the girl says "Menage a trois").

Jurassic 5 goes out as one of my most beloved bands. And probably the band I've seen live more than any other. I wish I could give a better eulogy, but this is just too sad for me today.

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots: The Musical

The Flaming Lips and Aaron Sorkin are turning one of my all time favorite albums into a stage musical. Brilliant. It always pissed me off that a band as shitty as ABBA could have a hit musical that runs for 8 fucking years.

Of all the people who deserve musicalization, the Lips are at the top of my list.

Shitting on Peter Bjorn & John

You gotta hand it to him. It's not a popular thing to do, spearheading a campaign against such a beloved group of indie rockers. Common reader complaints go something along the lines of, "You're just giving them more publicity!" but the author really does put forward a strong argument for stopping PB&J.

"Right now, as I type this, reporters for national magazines and newspapers are looking through music blogs, looking at download charts, trying to draw up a short list of potential buzz bands that they can flog to their readership.

As much as we would all like to just ignore the whole "buzz band" phenomenon -- to chalk it up (correctly) to the meaningless machinations of a press in need of a story -- the fact is that those decisions matter. They matter in terms of what bands get played, what bands get signed, what bands get associated with indie rock as a genre. Whether we like it or not, the sound of the "buzz band" gets attributed to us, in terms of what we supposedly like. We, the indie-rock fans, suffer when the buzz band is bad.

Which brings us to the question: Do we want Peter Bjorn and John to be hailed as the standard bearers for a whole genre of music? And the answer is: NO WAY. As I acknowledged in the previous post, "Young Folks" was catchy and harmless, but this band is not a significant band. Peter Bjorn and John must be stopped."

The only thing I really hate about Peter Bjorn & John is their poor use of punctuation. I thought Peter Bjorn was the main guy, and John was like his sidekick. What a genius band name! But no, theres 3 of them.

I Say "No, no, no"

Amy Winehouse may check into rehab. Ahh, the irony. Can't wait to see her at Coachella. Go pick up her new CD, Back to Blackthat just came out yesterday. What a voice. If she was around in 1997, she would have been on the Jackie Brown soundtrack.

Favorite tracks: I'm No Good, Tears Dry, and Addicted (oh yeah, and REHAB)

Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame

According to his own calculations, Eddie Vedder says he listened to R.E.M.'s album Murmur about 1260 times in the summer of 1984. According to my own calculations, I listened to Pearl Jam's Vs. about 2250 times in the first half of 1994.

So I guess that means I'll be speaking when they get inducted in 2017.

Other inductees were Grandmaster Flash, The Ronettes, Patti Smith, Van Halen

NY Times: Hip Hop is Rock 'n' Roll, and Hall of Fame Likes It