My Top Five

I wanted to let everyone know that "High Fidelity" is currently playing on Hulu. It's a great movie with a strong music theme, and I recommend it to anyone that hasn't seen it.



As a tribute to this movie, I thought I would list my top five movies about music.
1. The Last Waltz
2. Almost Famous
3. Stop Making Sense (this is an actual show, but I included it anyway)
4. High Fidelity
5. This is Spinal Tap

A clip from Almost Famous:


I think Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, and Cameron Crowe have some of the best movie soundtracks. Here's one from Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof:



.....maybe a little erotic for some viewers, but I like this song and had not heard it prior to seeing this movie.

The Suburbs

Arcade Fire has a new album out August 2nd. Here's a sample:

RTS by a435927

And just because:

Pursuit of Happiness x 2

You might recall a post a while back from Kimberly, introducing us (or at least me) to Lissie. I just came across this video of Lissie doing an awesome live cover. This is my favorite kind of cover, where it's not competing with the original, but twisting it a little and upping the intensity. For reference, I included a video of the original below, which is also quite good.

Lissie covering Kid Cudi's "Pursuit of Happiness":


Kid Cudi "Pursuit of Happiness":

Ray Lamontagne

Here's a new song from Ray Lamontagne's upcoming album (August release date).

Some of the lyrics...

"so your hometown's bringing you down
are you drowning in the small talk and the chatter
are you going to step into line like your daddy done
punching the time
and climing life's long ladder"

Welcome to Virginia

So, as referenced in the post below, Kim gave Nick and I the most awesomest of gifts for our first week in Virginia. Great show!!! Libby rated it in her top five, and, like many of us, she's seen a lot of shows. Kim mentioned that these guys finished the show with "The Weight". I thought this was pretty magical. Why? Well, I went with Nick to pick out a guitar, which was his graduation gift. The salesman was a bluegrass musician, and he played multiple songs on different guitars so Nick could stand back and hear the different sounds each one made. We were there for an hour or so, and he told me to YouTube (can that be used as a verb?) Gillian Welch, Dave Rawlings, and OCMS playing "The Weight" in London. He said it gave him chills thinking about it. So, here it is. Enjoy and go see these guys if you have a chance. It'll be worth it. Playing in Boulder on the 16th.

Dave Rawlings Machine

Saw them in Charlottesville at The Jefferson Theater last Wednesday night with Alycia, Nick, Libby, Dave, John and Jules. Great show. I love the way Dave Rawlings moves while he plays. Hips gyrating. Shoulders gyrating. Skinny skinny legs. Cowboy hat. Big grin. Clad in all denim. Opened with The Grateful Dead's "Monkey and the Engineer." Finished the encore with a cover of "The Weight." And of course in between those was a ton of their own great music... "Ruby," "Sweet Tooth," "I Hear Them All" to name a few. As well as Big Rock Candy Mountain, Ryan Adams' "To Be Young" - Rawlings co-wrote it, and another Dead cover - "Candy Man." I thought Alycia might bang a couple of obnoxious yapping silly girls' heads together. I'd have had her back but I'm pretty sure she could have taken them down alone. Other than that - all was awesome.

Jules sent me a link today ... NPR has their Bonnaroo performance online. Here it is to check out yourself.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127751523

The new Blitzen Trapper is boss.

I realize the term "boss" comes with heavy connotations when you are in such close proximity to Nick, but forget about Springsteen, just for a minute, not forever.

Listen to this, because it sounds nice and isn't released yet:

Kicking the tits.

I see Alycia already posted this, but I refuse to take this down since I was going to put it up last night, but blogger was broken for hours. Also her LCD Soundsystem link links to a story, but no music. Hear the music here:

This is Happening

iTunes Killed Lala

LaLa is no longer with us thanks to iTunes, so I have removed it from the blog. Considering this news, here are a few First listens I came across on NPR that I thought some of you might be interested in checking out:

Blitzen Trapper
Ratatat
LCD Soundsystem

There are some other gems available on Spinner