• Experimental music is in its gravy days. With bands from Animal Collective to Grizzly Bear taking on-its-face odd music to the Billboard charts, we figured we were due to look back at some of the roots of weird tuneage. Most of this stuff isn’t as listenable as, say, Lady Gaga, but there’s something to be said about the challenge they offer.

• 1. This is kinda accessible. Steve Reich is perhaps the most famous name of minimalist music. From magnetic-tape-looped early works such as “It’s Gonna Rain” to later instrumental and sampled works, he’s a huge influence on what indie rock has become. You can hear, for example, some of Sufjan Stevens’ musical left fields in “Pulses.”
• 2. Talk about acquired taste. The Residents may perhaps be the most acquired taste in the history of rock music, but not one without a great history. A bunch of experimental raiders, the band has managed to keep its public profile secret for about 40 years now – or about four times longer than KISS did. And in 1979, they even got nominated for a Grammy for “Eskimo,” an album of made-up Inuit folk tales. The comparisons to Animal Collective are myriad.
• 3. Also acquired taste. The Red Crayola/Krayola is a band that famously knew little about playing their instruments at first (but lots about freaking out), and now is a musical front for psych-rock survivor Mayo Thompson, who later worked with members of Tortoise. Fun fact: The guy playing keys on “Hurricane Fighter Plane” is Roky Erickson, a garage-rock icon who has a pretty interesting history of his own.
• 4. By this point, also acquired. Scott Walker’s early career – which leaned heavily on orchestral pop – was hugely influential on dudes such as Beck (“Scott 4” is one of the most underrated albums ever). But by the early ’80s, he started going off the grid, to the point that by 1995’s “Tilt,” his music was completely unrecognizable. “Farmer in the City” is a beautiful, cinematic tune, but it’s also a complete mind-screw.
• 5. This is acquired, too. Captain Beefheart‘s weird, off-key masterpiece, “Trout Mask Replica,” still isn’t very easy to find legally online, but debut album “Safe as Milk” still has a lot of the cluster-screwing elements that his later works did. If you had Howlin’ Wolf drop a lot of acid, you might get kinda close.

• And she wasn’t mad about a failed romantic relationship, as Geffen is openly gay. Instead, the paper speculates she was resentful of Geffen’s promotion of rival Joni Mitchell.
• An article in the Chicago Sun-Times • Regarding the fate of Carly Simon’s classic pop hit “You’re So Vain,” the greatest mystery song in the history of early 70’s folk rock. Simon, 64, been dropping hints for 37 years (and wow, the song is 38 years old!), and Warren Beatty was often the most-suggested name before now. In retrospect, it completely makes sense that it’s about a gay socialite, doesn’t it? Either way, we’re kinda upset it wasn’t us. It’s as if we have grounds in our coffee, grounds in our coffee … source

• 25% of Vevo’s traffic is due to Lady Gaga alone source

• restless
• loooong
• broad
• reverted
• smoooth
  

• 1. Expect Local Natives to become like catnip like blogs like ours for the next twelve months or so. They have all the elements of every big indie act here – the multi-voice harmonies of Fleet Foxes, the scale and trauma of The Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend’s ability to ride a groove, and the garage swagger of just about everybody else. And that’s all in one song, “Camera Talk.”
• 2. Adam Green has a lot to atone for, what with the calling card of the Moldy Peaches (and all the good and bad that entails) on his resume. But “What Makes Him Act So Bad?,” along with the Velvet Underground sparkle of new album “Minor Love,” goes a long way.
• 3. Speaking of Fleet Foxes, Mumford and Sons may be the first band to be directly inspired by them, if “Sigh No More” is any indication. That’s a lot of vocal harmony.
• 4. Phantogram has more than a little trip-hop influence in their sound, as the big fat beat at the beginning of “Running From the Cops” emphasizes. The calm female “Ooh…” in the mix has the effect of making the blunt effect of the rough beat seem a lot less blunt.
• 5. A pretty awesome compilation that came out this week, “The Minimal Wave Tapes: Vol. 1,” focuses on very minimal electronic from post-punk movement, as curated by Minimal Wave label-runner Veronica Vasicka and released on Stone’s Throw records. From the comp, Crash Course in Science’s “Flying Turns” has a lot of edge, a lot of simplicity and a dark groove.

• eight number of root canals the rapper/wannabe rocker had
• eight number of hours the surgery took on Tuesday (yikes) source

• 
  soupy
• 
  unnatural*
• 
  velvety
• 
  vigorous
• 
  vigorless

* – Peter Gabriel too

• Doug Fieger, the guy who turned a crush into a pop song that will never go away, died yesterday at age 57. Fieger, who died of cancer, put his mortality this way: “I’ve had 10 great lives. And I expect to have some more. I don’t feel cheated in any way, shape or form.” source

• Over the last week or two, a YouTube user named iamamiwhoami has been uploading these insane music videos, featuring a blonde singer who vaguely looks like Christina Aguilera (along with a bunch of Europop stars) The videos are simply insane. The music sounds awesome, all distorted and electronic. Who is it? Is it a hoax? Is it an alternate reality game that someone’s about to dish out? We want to know. source

• This weekend’s release of “We Are the World 25,” which features Michael Jackson taking on a few lines beyond the grave (both in the song and the video), got us to thinking about the artists with seemingly never-ending vaults, in part because we’re sure Jackson himself will be a victim of this kind of musical grave-robbing. Here’s a sampling of the state of posthumous releases:

• 1. Johnny Cash died way back in 2003, but he has a new album coming out, and “Ain’t No Grave,” held together by a rhythm made of dragging chains, is actually pretty good. Surprising it didn’t get a release back then, honestly (he recorded a lot of tunes with Rick Rubin in the years before his death). It’s one of Cash’s better late-period tunes.
• 2. Nick Drake’s “Family Tree” probably never would’ve seen the light of day had Drake lived to an old age, but the 2007 release of privately recorded demos stands above the fray of most of the grave-robbing reissues by the guitarist. On “Bird Flew By,” you can hear a lot of the blues influence in his guitar-playing.
• 3. Jeff Buckley may perhaps have the legacy most damaged by posthumous releases – even moreso than 2Pac. He had one amazing album and one aborted attempt at a second album that was released as an incomplete work. And a lot of live recordings. “Live at Sin-é” may be the key example: A short EP initially, it was reworked as a monster 34-track compilation in 2003. It’s not necessarily the worst release of his, just the best example.
• 4. 2Pac has tons of posthumous releases (including a live album for a show he wasn’t even headlining), but some of these at least have interesting approaches. In the case of 2004’s “Loyal to the Game,” Eminem produced the entire thing off of some tapes Tupac Shakur’s mom gave him, which means it has some interesting productions and top-of-their-game guests. But it still feels kinda grave-robby, even though it’s respectfully done.
• 5. Michael Jackson will likely follow the same path as the other stars here, and “This Is It” is really only the beginning. We gave the song a good review when it first came out, and the reason it sounds solid is because it was recorded during his still-interesting “Dangerous” era. We’re sure he has some huge vaults. And there are significant financial reasons for digging into them. We’d like to see them go the Elliott Smith route here, with compilations respectful of his legacy. But a Jeff Buckley-style “everything must go” is more likely.