Real Music Alternatives

Perhaps it’s poetic license that has seen They Might Be Giants—Johns Flansburgh and Linnell—through a voluminous series of ups, downs and holding patterns over its three decades in operation. TMBG’s second adult album in five years and its 16th overall, Nanobots (Idlewild/Megaforce) boasts 25 new songs. Much of Nanobots takes advantage of what is now a fully acclimated quintet that also includes guitarist Dan Miller, bassist Danny Weinkauf and drummer Marty Beller. “We’d been functioning as a two-piece for 10 years, and we really just sort of talked ourselves into it,” says Linnell of the bumpy transition, which began in 1992. “It’s still John and I making the decisions, but we lean heavily on the other guys for a lot of the musical resources. It’s a benevolent dictatorship.” Flansburgh will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new TMBG feature.

Flansburgh: Kliph Nesteroff‘s blog is here. I found out about this blog through WFMU’s great website a while back. but Kliph’s site digs deep into the world of old-time comedy, which is cruel, strange and seedy. It’s also filled with philosophers, hot heads, weirdos and tough guys worthy of Guys And Dolls. Of course Marc Maron’s WTF podcast covers some of the same ground, and he even had Nesteroff on for what was a fascinating episode, but nothing beats the in-depth histories and ephemera included in the blog. Pat Cooper, Jack Carter and Norm Crosby provide some unexpected gossip, and the conversation with Dick Cavett revisits the Mel Lyman personality cult—the cult that didn’t kill people.

Video after the jump.

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Supergroup Atoms For Peace, which features Thom Yorke, Flea, Nigel Godrich, Mauro Refosco and Joey Waronker, recently put out debut LP Amok via the XL label. To see the rhythmic Yorke interpretively dance to album track “Ingenue,” watch the video below.

Perhaps it’s poetic license that has seen They Might Be Giants—Johns Flansburgh and Linnell—through a voluminous series of ups, downs and holding patterns over its three decades in operation. TMBG’s second adult album in five years and its 16th overall, Nanobots (Idlewild/Megaforce) boasts 25 new songs. Much of Nanobots takes advantage of what is now a fully acclimated quintet that also includes guitarist Dan Miller, bassist Danny Weinkauf and drummer Marty Beller. “We’d been functioning as a two-piece for 10 years, and we really just sort of talked ourselves into it,” says Linnell of the bumpy transition, which began in 1992. “It’s still John and I making the decisions, but we lean heavily on the other guys for a lot of the musical resources. It’s a benevolent dictatorship.” Flansburgh will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new TMBG feature.

Flansburgh: The internet has exploded in the past few years with demo clips in general, and for us guitar folk, good gear demos are especially useful.  While these videos can be almost clinical—where you see the pedal get engaged and see the knob on the fuzz box being turned up—they can have an odd charm! Personally, I find this one hypnotizing: it features a man named Burgs relentlessly hammering our the riff from the Ventures song “The 2,000 Pound Bee” on a fuzz box called (quite magnificently) One Ton Bee. The tone is super ugly, and changes ever so slightly, but the riff stays the same! When you need the sound of a one-ton bee, you know what box to use!

Video after the jump.

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One of the latest members to the elite club of Sub Pop artists, Seatle-based psych band Rose Windows will be putting out label debut The Sun Dogs on June 25. Download the album’s first single, “Native Dreams,” below.

“Native Dreams” (download):

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Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 29-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

My father and I were talking in the kitchen about a pair of stereo speakers that photographer Selwyn Pullan made for my parents, which, because they take up a lot of room, my parents want to get rid of. I had my eye on them until the point when my father blew out a bass cone when he decided, in a rage, to deal with a noisy neighbor by dragging one of the speakers to the back door and blasting said neighbor. I probably asked at the time, “With what?”

I will have to ask again. “Hey, Dad,” I’ll say. “Remember when you blew up Selwyn’s handmade speaker by cranking it at the neighbor?”

And he’ll say, “Yes, Jean. Yes I do.”

And I’ll say, “What were you blasting? Like, who?”

And maybe he’ll say Keith Jarrett The Köln Concert or Oscar Peterson or it would be better if it was a horn man. Lester Young, with whom I have the longest connection, spanning back to before I was born. In my late teens and early 20s, I got into jazz after having been subjected to it through childhood. I was all grown up at 20 or so, living across town with a man 10 years my senior, playing jazz and having people “over for dinner.” It is now quite likely that I will happily never have anyone “over for dinner” ever again, but that’s what I was doing back then.

My parents were coming over, and I’d bought a couple of new albums that I was going to play for them, one of which (I’ve told this story, I know) was Lester Young’s “Mean To Me.” It was at that dinner, that my dad told me that he had that same album and he was playing the hell out of it while my mother was pregnant with me.

I bought a fucking sax because of this album and set about learning to play it in the basement of that house. I was 21 or 22, I suppose. I still have the album. I really like knowing that I heard this exact music through the burble of blood and muscle and skin, while I was in the womb.

Anyway, so he wrecked the one speaker and I think Selwyn said to replace the cone with something from Radio Shack. Lordy. I looked at it in the early morning light Christmas day, the holes from where the original speaker had been mounted; shaking my head at some of the things my father has done.

“Something To Be Said,” from Sitting On Snaps (Matador, 1995; Smarten UP!, 2009) (download):

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Perhaps it’s poetic license that has seen They Might Be Giants—Johns Flansburgh and Linnell—through a voluminous series of ups, downs and holding patterns over its three decades in operation. TMBG’s second adult album in five years and its 16th overall, Nanobots (Idlewild/Megaforce) boasts 25 new songs. Much of Nanobots takes advantage of what is now a fully acclimated quintet that also includes guitarist Dan Miller, bassist Danny Weinkauf and drummer Marty Beller. “We’d been functioning as a two-piece for 10 years, and we really just sort of talked ourselves into it,” says Linnell of the bumpy transition, which began in 1992. “It’s still John and I making the decisions, but we lean heavily on the other guys for a lot of the musical resources. It’s a benevolent dictatorship.” Flansburgh will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new TMBG feature.

Flansburgh: Oldies radio has kind of destroyed the appeal of Motown for all of us, but soul music is still an amazing era—and if you are looking for a hearty blast of soul music, I have to recommend Gino Washington. Gino’s unusual story has been lost to the sands of time, but his music is worth a listen, and his bio seems worthy of a screenplay.

Gino was a soul singer out of Detroit making singles for various labels. His short career was put on hold when he was drafted into the Army. While Gino was doing stints in Japan and Germany, the “Northern Soul” movement in Britain took off—with record collectors and disc jockeys rediscovering obscure regional American records and making many of them legendary among their monomaniacal soul-loving audiences. But even as Gino’s reputation was growing in the U.K., he soon had the misfortune of finding his identity had been lifted wholesale by a British soul singer going by the name Geno Washington. The Geno with an e even ended up recording some U.K. chart hits. (“Michael The Lover” is not widely available now, but I have to say it’s a very exciting song, and judging by the sound, it sure seems like Geno was happy to be mistaken for Gino.)

So a few years back, the awesome Norton label set the record straight and made two great collections of Gino’s original singles, and they are fantastic comps filled with some of the catchiest songs you’ve never heard. Check out “Gino Is A Coward.”

Video after the jump.

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Singer/songwriter Mark Andrew Hamilton, better known by the moniker Woodpigeon, just released his fifth effort, Thumbtacks And Glue, via the Boompa label. Watch his new video for “Red Rover, Red Rover,” a subtitled and vintage concoction, below.

Perhaps it’s poetic license that has seen They Might Be Giants—Johns Flansburgh and Linnell—through a voluminous series of ups, downs and holding patterns over its three decades in operation. TMBG’s second adult album in five years and its 16th overall, Nanobots (Idlewild/Megaforce) boasts 25 new songs. Much of Nanobots takes advantage of what is now a fully acclimated quintet that also includes guitarist Dan Miller, bassist Danny Weinkauf and drummer Marty Beller. “We’d been functioning as a two-piece for 10 years, and we really just sort of talked ourselves into it,” says Linnell of the bumpy transition, which began in 1992. “It’s still John and I making the decisions, but we lean heavily on the other guys for a lot of the musical resources. It’s a benevolent dictatorship.” Flansburgh will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new TMBG feature.

Flansburgh: If you are part of the zombie nation that needs to know more and more about Beatles, the hours upon hours of gems included in this audio podcast will flip your Beatle wig. Episodes include countless rehearsal tapes, demos and interviews from every stage of their Beatles musical odyssey—and there is even an episode that compiles interviews with Beatle haters, which is filled with some pretty angry words about the fabs.

Video after the jump.

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