Records to Watch For in '09 (subject to revision)

THE RENTALS -- Songs About Time (self-released; all year)
Charter Weezer bassman Matt Sharp's Moog-and-viol-driven troupe has not put out a full-length record in ten years. In that time, loads of indie bands and their mothers lifted his synth-driven style like he lifted it off The Cars and Gary Numan, "indie" largely changed from an ethic to an aesthetic perverted by wannabe photographers, and distribution of music shifted to the Internet. So the band's playing catch-up, not with a new album, but with three mini-albums, 52 short films, and 365 photographs, all spread out over this year at their website. "Seven Years," heard in one video, is looking to be a standout track.

THE CRIBS -- TBA -- this summer on Wichita Recordings
The fraternal trio from the great north of England made a defining statement with 2007's "Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever," that you could clean up your sound and build up your fanbase, and still make your best record, probably the album of the decade. Just as I became a fan (just over a year ago), guitar god Johnny Marr was announced as the Jarmans' new collaborator, hoping to get at least an EP out. Now the former Smith is an honorary Jarman brother, even though he's barely old enough to be their dad. (Thank Modest Mouse and the city of Portland for that, otherwise the lone expat Gary Jarman would not have met Marr by pure chance.) The first new song that The Cribs played publicly, "Victim of Mass Production," bears Marr's old pop sensibilities while Ryan Jarman continues his ongoing assault against corporatized indie. After all these years of bandhopping, perhaps Marr has finally found the right new fellas to work with.

SUPERDRAG -- Industry Giants -- March 17 on Superdrag Sound Laboratories (in other words, self-released)

By the time I rediscovered Superdrag in 2006 (their lone hit "Sucked Out" was a fixture on the radio in the summer of '96 when there was such a thing as a good rock radio station), they had been on hiatus for about three years as their notably-agnostic frontman had finally found Jesus, produced a very good (?!) Christian record, and was about to switch it up and make a very good rock record that dealt with the spiritual far more accessibly. The next year, they were back together with their original lineup and went on a reunion tour that was really for the fans. (Of the several rock shows I've been to, theirs had the biggest emotional connection between band and audience, there had to have been some people crying in Chicago that night.) John Davis has pledged not to make a sucky comeback record (did he miss out on Dinosaur Jr. or something?); I have heard four of the new tracks, and they're just as hooky as anything they ever made. The production harkens back to "Respectfully Yours" more than their other LPs. The whole album's been played track-by-track each week on a station in Knoxville, their hometown, and nobody seems to be complaining.

THE DECEMBERISTS -- The Hazards of Love -- March 24 on Capitol
As long as there's no Obama love-anthem on here, this should be straight.

ART BRUT -- Art Brut vs. Satan
Black Francis is producing the album. They're also against Satan, which is everything against Art Brut. So if you don't dig Art Brut... guess what you are. "Alcoholics Unanimous" is different without truly being so.

DR. DRE -- Detox
Just think, ten years ago, he made an album about becoming one of the old G's, and that was seven years after ("my last album was") The Chronic.

ARCTIC MONKEYS -- TBA -- some time on Domino
"Favourite Worst Nightmare" was a great triumph for the Sheffield kids; they bucked sophomore backlash and delivered what is probably a better record than their debut. It was a disappointment that they couldn't bring another album out in '08, though frontman Alex Turner did just fine with the Last Shadow Puppets record, which brought out his fascination for 60s English pop that had only been covered by the Monkeys' version of "Diamonds are Forever." The fact that they're working with Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) is interesting enough. The one new track that they've played live, "Crying Lightning," sounds like a continuation of the last album's sound with a bit of a western feel.)

CHEAP TRICK -- TBA -- likely in '09, on Big3 (IIRC)
Rockford was the best record the greatest American rock and roll band had done in a long time, but it still contained some production flaws that dated the album fast. Hopefully these legends of power pop will finally take the gated reverb off Bun E.'s drums and get back to CT '77 levels of legend. However, they seem more content playing support-act to bands who should be lucky to open up for THEM, as well as the denizens of casinos all across America. Last I heard, they were planning to do a Las Vegas show where they would play Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in its entirety.

JAY-Z -- Blueprint 3 -- first half on Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam
It's the Roc. What more can I say?

AUTOLUX -- Transit Transit -- maybe this year, on some kind of label?
This record is fast becoming the Chinese Democracy of indie, but not on the part of laziness and development hell. The sublabel that released the stellar "Future Perfect" folded, and now the parent Epic Records appears to have dropped them.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE -- TBA -- pie-in-the-sky?
Remember late 2007 when Kevin Shields said MBV was gonna put out a record before the year ended? Speaking of late arrivals...

LIL JON -- Crunk Rock
You can always dream.

Mk II

From now on, 260/517 will exist only for holding infrequent, longer posts that might be worth reviewing in future. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, as is evident, I do not update regularly due to lack of time and often interest, making a blog-in-flux impossible. Secondly, the idea I had in starting this particular one was to keep a cultural chronicle of my time in college. That hasn't worked. It would be better to use a huge batch of free time to concentrate on a particular subject, or at least submit a set of entries of medium length, such as record reviews. The biggest reason, however, is the obsolescence created by a website called Facebook. What used to be called Posted Items (now Links) have made short-form blogging practically obsolete to those who aren't 100% public. I highly doubt there was traffic to this site from Facebook anyway, so Links are far more effective for my purposes: putting people on to good bands, putting people on to bad but hilarious music videos, and making fun of Barack Obama. These links can fade into the ether, but they'd get stuck here, which makes for a bit of deadweight. Whether I'll keep the old posts up or not, I'll figure out later. If you don't see anything before now, now you know.

Let's go again.

The obligatory Fun with Wikipedia

Take note, I'm no vandal, but I am bored. The purpose of this post is not to try to be funny (Blogger image formatting ruins the joke anyway), but to spite some goon over at Wikipedia who has clearly been assigned nightwatchman duties on the Mike Jones page of all things. (Not high enough in ranks to guard the Obama page, I guess?) So the edits I made for my own stupid little 15-second amusement were gone in just as long. Tried it a second time, same result. Any attempts to censor this more permanent post will be punished with a YMTND with some music by the man himself. PURPLE DRANK I'MA PO' UP! GOT THE RAP GAME SEWED UP!

Critical annotations to the new DJ Khaled video

Out Here Grindin, a re-re-re-retread of an old theme, and a re-diculous video with the production value only a tip-hopping DJ can merit.



:00-03 : By now, you should tell that this is going to be a bad video. I don't know what the hell Khaled is flapping his arms at. Maybe this is a Batman homage and he's the Hood Penguin?

:13 : White person count: 1.

:14 : Looks like this guy shaved off the beard and starting singing hooks for a living. I guess that would explain his penchant for 15-year-old girls.

:18 : Khaled starts his echolalic shtick.

:30 : Quick, somebody push him over! Oh wait, it's a green screen set... damn!

:40 : Officer Ricky Ross is out of uniform and singin' in the rain. Nice pink parasol, Boss.

1:02 : Hard cut to Plies. Another textbook verse of deep-seated racist paranoia (and only because he says "feds" and not "crackas"). I'd give him 100 years for crimes against rap, but only going gold is punishment enough in this business.

1:20 : Algernod, this is supposed to be a jail cell, not a slave auction. Get those ridiculous chains out of here, please. If there's any redeeming note about this verse, he actually recognizes there's a beat.

1:30 : At least he's not singing on this track. Lil Jon needs to come back.

1:45 : Boosie's mega-talented. He can spell, run from fire (really in place), AND shoot dice at the same time! I suspect Officer Ross caused the combustible reaction.

2:00 : Genius move, Khaled, make yourself useful in a video. "DJ KHALED! WE THE BEST RESCUE TEAM, MAN!"

2:30 : That verse showed Boosie's apparent inability to rap over anything other than a beat like Independent.

2:31 : White person count: 2.

2:35 : What is that Khaled's carrying? Didn't somebody get busted for trying to carry rosewater onto a plane at Fort Wayne Intl. Airport a few years ago? Way to boost up your image, Mr. Terror Squad.

2:45 : Oh, it's Nuvo. Sparkling vodka. Keep it hood, K!

2:51 : Ace Hood looks like a straight Lil Wayne. Raps better too.

3:14 : First the Young Jeezy Raiders silver/black flags in Put On, now this straight-up black. I'm sick of these rap videos trying to be hood campaign commercials for Obama. SKIP VERSE.

3:39 : Damn, Kazaam really slimmed down.

3:55 : No clear-cut winner in the Best Thug Pretender contest. Plies however does get the Shortest Shawty title.

"...groupies with cameras, they come out like leeches, and bleed us, oh Jesus."

This is nearly two weeks overdue, but since The Cribs from Wakefield, just about wrapping up a tour of these United States, would not stop in Indiana (or even Detroit for that matter), I made the trip to go see them in Cleveland. I say this about almost every show I've seen (still in the single digits), but I dare say it was the best I've been to. Northern and plastered, just the way it should be. They sure don't seem to like that their new album is gaining buzz, once they finished "Men's Needs," the elder Jarman brothers were glad to get "the hit" out the way, "thank f*** for that." Peep these horrible cell phone vids (there is assumedly better quality video, but it has not been sent to me yet):


http://youtube.com/watch?v=dRiVbFHw1S0


http://youtube.com/watch?v=Aq2U3gJalo0


http://youtube.com/watch?v=-vZhh0cVuLE


http://youtube.com/watch?v=BhD6okBsOlQ

The G-Spot, One Week Later

Now that the student union's been open for a week, it's become very clear that two problems need fixed:

1) The PA music. Hillsdale gets it from XM, a valuable service to me in the car, but not particularly on campus. Going downstairs to the lower level, particularly where the coat cubbyholes are outside the dining room, can yield anything except good tunes. This morning, going from modern country music (aka more homogeneous pop for red-staters) in the entrance, through the serving area, and into the dining room with the sounds of contemporary jazz (aka homogeneous guitar-octave jazz) was especially disorienting. Also heard this past week was bad contemporary rock and "Baker Street" by Gerry Rafferty.

Advice to whoever coordinates these things: turn all the receivers to channel 43 and keep them there for the sake of consistency and (mostly) new, quality music. I would say 66, but not everyone's a meanmugger like me. Keep it indie, whatever that's supposed to mean.

2) The service area. The one good thing about the old SAGA food service was that it went in a line and provided for early acquirement of the main course if one did not desire dessert, then allowed the student to walk around out of the way to pick up secondary selections (i.e. pizza, hamburgers, the like). The new place operates on separate stations which place the secondary items near the entrance then put the main course at the BACK of the room. This may not be so bad were it not for the fact that the big plates also are at the back of the room. This layout makes for an awkward journey back and forth across the room, often on a collision course with others. Finding knives is easy, but you'd better memorize where the spoons and forks are, else you'll be going around the whole room, looking under the stations and trying to collect cutlery like easter eggs. Also exacerbating the problem is the elimination of trays, leaving us to awkwardly balance a plate, food, and cutlery in one hand, and a drink in the other, providing one doesn't want his dinner sabotaged while he makes a second trip. According to the latest edition of the Hillsdale Collegian, this is supposed to save SAGA about $20K (which has just been refunded to the students for use in the snack bar). I'm willing to pay an extra $15 to avoid an embarrassing situation -- bring back the trays, guys. Wouldn't want your slightly improved food to go to waste.

They did solve one long-term issue for us, now we have PS3s and 360s and Rock Band apparatuses at our disposal, not to mention a big-ass HDTV projection screen. So much for the whole intellectual bunk they lured me with....

Up with Musical Elitism!

Pardon my relative lateness with this posting, but instead of being a responsible blogger and actually covering this year's Hillsdale College skirmish of the bands, I just chilled back in the WTL and waited for videos to pop up on YouTube! (Man, blogging's become so much easier without the high standards and the Statcounter.) Anyway, here are the winners, a group of '08ers called The Narrows.



Nice to know that there's a life beyond scene. Or maybe that's just a Fort Wayne thing.