Never Clever

has replaced deadspin as the one place where I read the comments. The first 100 or so in the earth-shatteringly important Square Pegs review are terrific. I’m guessing it’s as much a function of being close in age to the majority of the posters as it is any great coming together of Internet humorists. I’m basing that assumption on scant evidence: the number of people who remember an 80s show and the fact one of the posters has a nick based on a MC Paul Barman line. Speaking of MPB, he has new tracks out but they didn’t do it for me on first listen. Don’t take my word for it though; I tend to immediately stop listening whenever someone on the ‘net starts a foreskin debate.

In the interest of patching up, E from the eels has invited the President to a concert (or three). No word from W’s lady-in-waiting yet.

Literally. Somehow in the course of a year, the online music sampler from SXSW went from 60 songs to 48 hours of songs, so I’d given up hope of finding anything new from this year’s SXSW. Fortunately for me, Paul Ford was willing to step in and act as a filter. All via his 6-word limit Twitter feed.

Interesting to me for the bits they discovered in well-known songs’ master tracks:

Even a seminal punk band like the Clash yielded some surprises. Even wonder why the drums sound so good on “I Fought the Law”? Because there’s two drummers on it (or more likely, drummer Topper Headon recorded his part twice)—something that became clear when Brosius picked the mix apart. Thus, the drum parts you play in Rock band are a composite of those two original drum tracks. The Spanish backup vocals that you’re used to hearing on the middle verse of “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” originally ran through the whole song; and the parts are still there on the tapes—You can hear a little more of the Spanish bits on Rock Band than you can on the record

Once wins Best Original Song at the Oscars last night (here’s the song in the movie) and today the soundtrack is the best overall selling album at Amazon. Cool. I still wish he didn’t always go to the falsetto when he needed something extra.

This might be enough for me to forgive them for what they did to me in Rock Band with “Electric Version”.

Streamed here. Join me in crushing their servers, won’t you? That video still weirds me out. At least it’s a semi-original spin on the Dylan ripoff.

Damn you, chico, there goes Friday afternoon. Ladies and gennlemen, presenting Starlet Sea Anemone!

Guess no one would have paid attention if Peter Tosh wrote about “Reggae Bursitis”.