I wish people would stop talking about Tiger Woods’ “demons”. Are you fucking kidding me? Demons? He was having sex with tons of hot chicks. He’s not a director drugging and boinking little kids or anything. No, he’s a dude worth a billion dollars having sex with porn stars and cougars. In my land we call people like that “awesome” and demons like that: “Guardian Angels”. So basically the two top sports related stories of the past twenty years involve two SUVs. One going top speed in a Ford Bronco… away from the cops and one traveling at almost negative speed into a golf club fire hydrant.

Now, after all the numbers started coming out – only one actually shocked me. While everyone else was saying things like “OMG! SIX WOMEN! OMG! That’s so many…” my only thoughts were “Six? It has to be higher than that.”
If you’re worth a billion dollars – no number of people you are currently sleeping with would surprise me. None. It could be 275. You are not getting a pulse.
So, it wasn’t ‘how many women tiger has sexted’ or ‘fucked’. No, there was one number that was so ridiculous, I had to triple check it. And let me put it this way: I don’t often check facts.*

Question: Do you know how much Tiger Woods’ house in Orlando is worth? Take a guess. Nope.

Answer: Two point four million dollars.

2.4

2.4

2 point fucking 4.

Seriously.

If you think Ms. “I used to be a model” Woods came after Tigre because she found out he was cheating…you’re fucking kidding yourself. She came after him because she found out how much their house cost. 2.4 million dollars is like…30 decked out Escalades. She deserves better.

All I know is that I’m officially boycotting any company that drops him as a sponsor (insert AT&T joke here**). If you can’t support the greatest athlete of our time having tons of awesome crazy sex with hot chicks…I cannot support your product. Not in good conscience.

I think it’s only fitting that I introduce you to two things right now. 1) The song Promiscuous as remixed by Flying Lotus. 2) The band Liechtenstein.
Liechtenstein is from Sweden. Promiscuous is a song about having sex with a chick you meet in a club. If I have to beat you over the head with the parallels here I will. I seriously will. Step closer.

Flying Lotus makes sounds that are just plain heavy. They measure his beats in richter. And they are good. I don’t know how else to describe his stuff. I won’t try. Just know that Promiscuous is one of my favorite songs ever because Nelly Furtado is so hot I would…ahh the list is too long and I’m too lazy to type it out. She’s really hot. Like I can’t stand up right now because I’m thinking about her hot. Flying 7/8 mast just thinking about her kind of hot. I hope you understand where I’m coming from here. This version is better than the original. It’s a fucking crime that Flying Lotus isn’t being recruited to produce every major hip-hop album for the next three years. Is there anyone we can arrest for this ungodly act of horror?

Nelly Furtado – “Promiscuous” (Flying Lotus remix)
Liechtenstein – “All At Once”
Liechtenstein – “Stalking Skills”

* Seriously
** Dear Katie, I’m aware I didn’t make that joke up
*** Taylor Swift fucking blows. Google it.

Here’s something interesting. This came up on Reddit a week or so ago and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Someone (or something) made a graph of the most successful musicians of the past year, and they compared it with the most successful acts in New York. New York being, of course, the only music scene that matters. All New Yorkers from SoHo to Shaolin are American-Apparel-and-shutter-shades-wearin’, social-media-expertin’, indie-rock-listenin’, designer-bud-smokin’, iPhone-sportin’ alternativo cool kids who know what the fuck is up with music. The rest of the world is, by contrast, made up of salt-shakin’, behind-your-back-speakin’, record-criticizin’ cock-blockin’, in-the-club-costume-jewelry-wearin’, valet-parked-Lexus-rentin’, undercover, star-struck, no-game-havin’, fake-Versace-shirt-wearin’, motel-hell-livin’, false-Muslim-bein’, jungle-fever-havin’, pork-eatin’ demon people, whose purpose on life is to bring you down.

What struck me is that New Yorkers are, according to the chart, totally in-line with what the consensus tells us is the biggest and best indie acts. Also, the public-at-large have surprisingly good taste, and it’s not as out-of-line with good taste as us latte-sippin’, health-care-havin’ liberal elites may believe. Alright, they listen to Britney Spears and none of us give a shit about her anymore, but they paid attention to Grizzly Bear and Phoenix too. Hell, “the masses” even dug Animal Collective and La Roux. And I had no idea that The Lonely Island had such a significant amount of legitimate success. Well done – you’ll be able to buy a boat of your own some day.

Another surprise: Muse was MASSIVE among the peasantry and I’ve never heard of them. The aristocracy loved Passion Pit and Dirty Projectors and the rest of the world didn’t care about them, which is fine with me cos both of those acts – in my opinion as a music journalist – suck bags of dicks.

Anyway, it’s an interesting empirical sum-up of what folks actually listened to this year, when they listened to it, how much, and with a dash of classism on top. Interesting stuff. The actual chart is huge and detailed, so if you want to take a closer look I recommend downloading the PDF which you can find here. While you peruse it, here’s what I’ve been listening to all year.

Kool Keith – “Intro (from ‘Black Elvis’)”
Kid Cudi – “Alive (feat. Ratatat)”
King Khan & BBQ Show – “Tastebuds”
Radiohead v. Dave Brubeck – “Five Step”

It is indeed Christmas, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t keep up with that kind of thing. Chances are, whatever your Christmas plans are you’re probably already doing them, and I certainly hope they’re going well and you find that today is a pleasant day. Do take care, now, to make sure you’re listening to good music. Personally, I’m not a fan of Christmas Music in general; it can be schmaltzy and saccharine-sweet and I’m just not a fan. In my family we go jazz or maybe a little Handel’s Messiah. Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown piano music. The classics.

Well, come to think of it there is one Christmas album we keep going back to. I referenced it in an earlier post, and it’s topical so I’m going to mention it again: James Brown’s ‘Funky Christmas’. God it’s good. It really does feel like James didn’t know any Christmas songs going into the project, so he dashed out a few dozen of them and recorded them in one take. And he kills. It is basically James Brown masturbating into a Santa hat and it’s the critical ingredient for any truly merry Christmas. That and boxed wine.

Special bonus track is Big John Greer with ‘We Wanna See Santa Do the Mambo,’ better known simply as ‘Mambo Santa Claus.’ Stuff that in your stocking and see if it fits. And hey, if that sounded dirty, I meant it that way.

Big John Greer – “Mambo Santa Claus”
James Brown – “Santa Claus Go Straight To the Ghetto”
James Brown – “Let’s Make Christmas Mean Something This Year”

I feel like I’m late to the party for not checking out Them Crooked Vultures until this weekend. The album’s only been out a month, so it’s not like I’ve been sleeping on the job, but people are buzzing about them and I really truly could have been first out the gate on this one.

I’ve got a friend whose taste in music is unimpeachable but nevertheless doesn’t quite line up with my own. He trends toward metal, and I don’t know anything about that shit — I still listen to Faith No More for fuck’s sake — but it seems like he knows what’s good and what sucks. I trust him on these things. He’s had promo art for Them Crooked Vultures as his laptop background for six weeks now, and he’d talk about how the band is awesome and blah blah blah. I didn’t listen. I figured it was just another metal band I’d never have time to listen to, something else that guy likes. WRONG. Wrong wrong wrong. It is awesome. It is awesome and you will like it.

First of all, it’s a supergroup. I know what you’re thinking: “When’s the last time a supergroup worked out?” All the fucking time, that’s when. Matter fact, this is a compound supergroup. You got Dave Grohl, of Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, obviously, but he was also in Killing Joke for awhile, which counts if you ask me. Then you’ve got Josh Homme of Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age. QotSA was itself a supergroup: look it up if you don’t believe me. Then you got John Paul Jones of Led Motherfucking Zepplin. The upper echelon of rock is as fluid as the bottom, it seems. If you’re a no-talent sleazeball in Frog Balls, Arkansas or a multi-Grammy session guitarist, you can slut around with any band on your tier, no problem. There’s a thousand-mile climb between those two points, but you have to admit they share a common feature.

Of course, naming people and bands and peppering in a few curse words doesn’t make a review. But I’m not really trying to do a review here. They’re on Interscope and their tour sold out and it’s a supergroup. There’s mad reviews out there about them. And hey, spoiler alert: they all say it’s good. And it is. All I’m doing here is giving them the Too Much Happiness seal of approval. We’re some fucking tastemakers over here. If you were waiting to see if I liked it before you gave it a listen, well, wait no longer.

All I’ll say is that it’s kind of prog. I immediately regret saying that, because it’s not really true and it will instantly turn a lot of you off. I said Grizzly Bear was prog too, and it pissed people off. It’s not prog. It is complex, though. There are some creative chord progressions and time signatures, some very interesting creative choices. There aren’t any obvious singles. It’s basically three talented guys trying to impress each other. It’s not posture and it’s not a product, it’s straight-up music. This is highbrow hard rock, and I really like that. I think it’s a sign of sophistication for a rock album to do really well despite being . . . arty. The masses might be getting smarter. Or at the least, the people the masses pay attention to are getting smarter. I’m fine with it either way.

Them Crooked Vultures – “Dead End Friends”
Them Crooked Vultures – “Caligulove”
Them Crooked Vultures – “No One Loves Me and Neither Do I”

I feel like I’m late to the party for not checking out Them Crooked Vultures until this weekend. The album’s only been out a month, so it’s not like I’ve been sleeping on the job, but people are buzzing about them and I really truly could have been first out the gate on this one.

I’ve got a friend whose taste in music is unimpeachable but nevertheless doesn’t quite line up with my own. He trends toward metal, and I don’t know anything about that shit — I still listen to Faith No More for fuck’s sake — but it seems like he knows what’s good and what sucks. I trust him on these things. He’s had promo art for Them Crooked Vultures as his laptop background for six weeks now, and he’d talk about how the band is awesome and blah blah blah. I didn’t listen. I figured it was just another metal band I’d never have time to listen to, something else that guy likes. WRONG. Wrong wrong wrong. It is awesome. It is awesome and you will like it.

First of all, it’s a supergroup. I know what you’re thinking: “When’s the last time a supergroup worked out?” All the fucking time, that’s when. Matter fact, this is a compound supergroup. You got Dave Grohl, of Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, obviously, but he was also in Killing Joke for awhile, which counts if you ask me. Then you’ve got Josh Homme of Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age. QotSA was itself a supergroup: look it up if you don’t believe me. Then you got John Paul Jones of Led Motherfucking Zepplin. The upper echelon of rock is as fluid as the bottom, it seems. If you’re a no-talent sleazeball in Frog Balls, Arkansas or a multi-Grammy session guitarist, you can slut around with any band on your tier, no problem. There’s a thousand-mile climb between those two points, but you have to admit they share a common feature.

Of course, naming people and bands and peppering in a few curse words doesn’t make a review. But I’m not really trying to do a review here. They’re on Interscope and their tour sold out and it’s a supergroup. There’s mad reviews out there about them. And hey, spoiler alert: they all say it’s good. And it is. All I’m doing here is giving them the Too Much Happiness seal of approval. We’re some fucking tastemakers over here. If you were waiting to see if I liked it before you gave it a listen, well, wait no longer.

All I’ll say is that it’s kind of prog. I immediately regret saying that, because it’s not really true and it will instantly turn a lot of you off. I said Grizzly Bear was prog too, and it pissed people off. It’s not prog. It is complex, though. There are some creative chord progressions and time signatures, some very interesting creative choices. There aren’t any obvious singles. It’s basically three talented guys trying to impress each other. It’s not posture and it’s not a product, it’s straight-up music. This is highbrow hard rock, and I really like that. I think it’s a sign of sophistication for a rock album to do really well despite being . . . arty. The masses might be getting smarter. Or at the least, the people the masses pay attention to are getting smarter. I’m fine with it either way.

Them Crooked Vultures – “Dead End Friends”
Them Crooked Vultures – “Caligulove”
Them Crooked Vultures – “No One Loves Me and Neither Do I”

This is MY personal list of my top 20 favorite albums of 2009. Mine and mine alone. I’m sure Paul and Adam would take exception to many of these (Metric over Phoenix? Paramore over Miike Snow?! Animal Collective is HOW FAR DOWN?!?!), and I’m not even saying these are what I believe to best the BEST 20 albums of the year, just my own musical preferences splayed out for your critical pleasure.

In order, they are:

1. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz (March 9th)
2. Florence and the Machine – Lungs (July 6th)
3. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest (May 26)
4. Metric – Fantasies (April 7th)
5. The xx – xx (August 17th)
6. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (May 26th)
7. Paramore – Brand New Eyes (September 25th)
8. Brandi Carlile – Give Up The Ghost (October 6th)
9. Miike Snow – Miike Snow (October 23rd)
10. Here We Go Magic – Here We Go Magic (February 24th)
11. Silversun Pickups – Swoon (April 14th)
12. Lily Allen – It’s Not Me, It’s You (February 9th)
13. The Swell Season – Strict Joy (October 23rd)
14. Passion Pit – Manners (May 19th)
15. Various Artists – The New Moon OMP Soundtrack (October 16th)
16. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion (January 6th)
17. Bat For Lashes – Two Suns (April 6th)
18. Anya Marina – Slow & Steady Seduction: Phase II (January 20th)
19. Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes – Up From Below (July 14th)
20. Mos Def – The Ecstatic (June 9th)

And of course, what’s looking back, without looking ahead? I’m already jazzed about a bunch of things on the horizon for ought ten: Vampire Weekend, Editors, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Hot Chip, Arcade Fire, Crystal Castles, Little Boots, et al.

What are you excited about that’s coming?

Florence + the Machine – “Drumming”
The xx – “Shelter”
Miike Snow – “In Search Of”
Silversun Pickups – “Panic Switch”
Lily Allen – “The Fear” (Duke Dumont Remix)
The Killers – “A White Demon Love Song”

One X is just a multiplication symbol. Three are too dirty.

No, it had to be two.

And lower case. Yes, lower case so as to lessen confusion with Dos Equis there. Not to mention they were a bunch of twenty years olds, branding themselves with a dated stamp. Do we care? No. Especially since it’s absolutely flabbergasting that a band will such wizened, unique sounds and styles could be of such tender, inexperienced age. The whispery, dreamy music belies far too much baggage/damage for musicians under twenty-five. I would venture a guess that they are really all well-preserved 40 years olds and they are fooling everyone with age-defying Revlon lotions and cutesy southwest London accents.

Regardless of this ruse, the band is blowing me away in their debut eponymous album. It tells a story, almost like a dream-pop version of a melancholy alternative rock opera. It’s hard to even think about posting one or two songs, because it’d be like flipping a book to the 224th page, reading to page 319, and putting it back on the shelf. Who does that? No, this is an immersive album that deserves a start-to-finish situation. However, due to bandwidth limitation, despite my best protestations, I will be doing just that.

I’m sitting here trying to make some comparisons (an 80s version of Explosions In The Sky bred with a simpler less-epic bent? A depressed, more electro Pink & Noseworthy? A threesome between Chris Isaac, Interpol and Bat For Lashes?) but all comparisons fall short. These guys are influenced and yet wholly unique, which seems to be a near impossibility these days. With all the THOUSANDS of bands out there, the musical vocabulary gets stretched thin and everyone starts to speak the same language. Melodic dialects get lost in the proliferation.

But no, The xx have a language all their own, and it’s like music to our collective ears. Take a deep breath, eliminate any white noise, and then click play on these gems below…

The xx – “Crystalised”
The xx – “Infinity”

I post a lot of music that I put in the grey-day-depression category. It seems to be a growing trend in my music collection. But, after hearing the sweet, sunny-day-merry-playful sounds of San Diego local, Anya Marina… I might have turned the corner.

The singer-songwriter chick has done a little acting, a little jockying of the discs, and is now poised to strike gold on the national level after becoming one of the darling new favorites to music supervisors like Alex Patsavas (the best, the brightest, la crème de la crème of all the music supes).

Listening to her sophomore album, “Slow & Steady Seduction: Phase II,” I, for the first time in a while, I’ve found myself really connecting to the lyrics, because they stand out as “real world”. They’re accessible, yet not simple, and all centered around raw relationships and feelings and all that. Which, in turn, makes her cover of T.I.’s “Whatever You Like” such an interesting and stark contrast to the rest of her repertoire. Makes sense then that she grew up in the Jungian household of her psychologist father. (I’ve always felt very in touch with my Anima)

Thankfully, she’s breaking through the Collective Unconscious as we speak. Get ready for all Anya Marina, all the time, 2010. Mark me.

Now, “Satellite Heart” is not really a good indicator of her bright-playfulness as previously mentioned, but it’s not exactly sad. It sits somewhere in between in it’s own beautiful way. The other two will give you more of an idea of what I meant earlier…

Anya Marina – “Satellite Heart”
Anya Marina – “All The Same To Me”
Anya Marina – “Whatever You Like” (T.I. cover)

I don’t have that many questions for you tonight. Mainly just: Why the fuck can’t more bands make music videos like this? And how does Michael Bay still have a job? Hollywood people know there are kick ass directors like Isaiah Seret just wandering around Los Angeles with nothing better to do but make videos that are a bazillionty times better than anything else out there right? I mean Bad Boys was super super good and all…but that latest Victorias Secret commercial that I haven’t even seen but am going to trash anyways? That was a fall from grace like no other.

Buckle up. This video is like 9 minutes long. It’s worth it’s weight in gold – I can definitely tell you that. If you don’t like Edward Sharpe and the magnetic Zeros after watching this: just turn around and go home. We have no hope for you here.

You may have noticed that we don’t have any ads here. Kinda conspicuous by their absence, I guess. Probably a couple of reasons why. Number one: they’re an eyesore. They’re all flashy, trying to get your attention and so forth, distracting you from the content you came here to see. That’s probably the biggest reason. You also have to consider that we would sort of be making money off of artists, you see  — you come here to hear awesome music, for free, and we make a little coin off you on the side. Doesn’t feel right. Of course, that’s assuming that the ads even work, which they don’t Have you ever clicked on an ad on purpose? Have you ever bought something based on an ad that you wouldn’t have purchased anyway? Have ads ever served as anything other than a reminder that Samsung still makes televisions?

I’m obfuscating the real point here. The real reason is that I’m not very good at ads. I know, you don’t have to make the ads, other people do that; it’s more that I don’t have very good taste in ads. See, I always thought I’d be a great advertising executive, because I know what gets people’s attention. You know what gets people’s attention? Acting out. Weird shit. Stuff that seems . . . off, somehow. Scary stuff, not like surprises and Lovecraftian horrors, but more like “I’m sure that company would have fired the person responsible for that if they weren’t afraid there’d be an ‘incident.’”

I always wanted to make this ad: it’s a typical middle-American well-to-do family at a summer barbecue. Sunny day, steaks and hamburgers on the grill, kite-flying and other pastoral activities. Everyone talks to the camera about how much they love Heinz 57 Steak Sauce, about how it makes anything taste better. Everyone, EVERYONE sports massive, prominent erections. Nobody acknowledges them in any way. The blonde housewife — nipples protruding like frozen olives — makes a marinade out of steak sauce and lemon juice. Her grilling husband kisses her on the cheek, and they smile. All their friends get together for a communal joyful exclamation: “Heinz 57 is the best!” Huge erections everywhere. You like it? Here’s another one. It’s the adoration of the Magi. The first wise man presents Mary and Joseph with gold, the second with frankinsense, the third with Heinz 57 steak sauce. Mary and Joseph exchange glances — it’s been a long hard winter, and they’re hungry. When the Wise Men leave, they cook and eat the baby Jesus with steak sauce. That would get your attention. You wouldn’t like it, but you’d notice it, and you’d talk about it at work, and you’d buy a lot of fucking steak sauce.

Our ads would suck, because I would pick them. I’d pick the ads that make the products look bad. Because, frankly, most things you can buy are not worth buying. You had a Starburst lately? What would you do if you woke up tomorrow and the only thing in the world left to eat was Starburst? You would kill yourself, wouldn’t you? Suppose you got in trouble with the Yakuza and you were abandoned in the middle of a highway in rural Japan, minus a finger, and you had to walk for six days to the nearest gas station. You haven’t eaten, you drink half-empty beers you find on the side of the road, you sleep in leaves. You get to the gas station and all they have is Starburst. How many would you eat? You’ve got a million yen you stole from the Yakuza, so you can have as many as you want. I bet, after all that, you would eat about a pack and a half of Starburst in the gas station, and that’d be about all you can stand.

You know what, I changed my mind. I want Starburst to advertise on this site. I’m going to ruin your brand, and you’ll love me for it. I’m going to make your brand appeal to the wrong demographic. I’m going to make a bunch of crazy right-wing Starburst ads. Like, okay. It’s a banner ad, it just has two rifles crossed over  the American flag, and it says in big letters “OBAMA WANTS TO TAKE AWAY YOUR STARBURST.” Or maybe an animation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor spanking Glenn Beck while Nancy Pelosi gives all his Starburst to minorities. We’ll figure something out.

Anyway. Here’s what I was listening to while I wrote this.

Volume 10 – “Pistol Grip Pump”
Wale – “The Grown Up”
Stereolab – “Household Names”

My posting has been intermittent lately; I’m being throttled by the Learned Hand of law school finals. They’re quite stressful: I find myself fantasizing about the catastrophic bout of drinking I’m going to tumble into as soon as I turn in my Entertainment Law shitstorm. I’ve been thinking about devising some indie rocktails. It’s self-explanatory. Let’s get to it.

The NEON INDIAN
4 oz. Riesling
4 oz. Lemon-lime gatorade
For best results, drink while wearing an enormous, racist Indian headdress.

The XX
One bottle of Dos Equis (or, truthfully, several)
2 oz. tequila (multiply by number of bottles of Dos Equis)
Drink the Dos Equis until the volume of liquid falls below the bottle neck. Fill the bottle back up with tequila. Put your thumb over the opening and give it one good shake.

The GUCCI MANE
1 full-size can of Four Loco (any flavor, they all taste like the Devil’s asshole)
Barbecue sauce to taste
DRINK IT, BITCH.

The HOT CHIP
2 oz. bourbon
1 oz. limoncello
1 oz. boiling water
Stir together with a thin copper tube. Garnish with the copper tube and a spray of Pine-Sol.

The RAINBOW ARABIA
1 oz. EACH of Absolut Raspberri, Citron, Kourant, Mandarin, Peppar, and Apeach
1 plain Sno-Cone
Crush Sno-Cone. Pour the vodkas over the ice. Garnish with chocolate chips and pencil shavings.

The PISSED JEANS (’Half Idiot’ variation)
5 oz. Jose Cuervo (two double-shots)
1 can Pabst Blue Ribbon
Drink all the Jose Cuervo. Then, drink all the PBR. The ‘Full Idiot’ variation substitutes Jose Cuervo for Southern Comfort, thereby doubling your chances of an embarrassing blackout drunk incident, such as pissing your jeans.

Hot Chip – “Take It In”
Pissed Jeans – “Half Idiot”
Rainbow Arabia – “Holiday in Congo”

Alright alright alright alright alright, listen to me for a second. Listen! I figured out a trick! You’re going to love this! Alright, so. You know YouTube, right? You’ve heard of YouTube? Okay, you know how they have a lot of videos on there? I mean, duh, of course they do, but I’m talking about music videos. You know, artists put music videos on there, or record labels, or maybe fans upload videos that contain pieces of music, all that stuff. And, well, okay, you’re not allowed to put other people’s music on there. I think. Pretty sure. But look around you: it’s all over the place. I DJ, and whenever I get a request for something I don’t have I just fire up the ol’ YouTube and I guarantee you I can find it instantly. Whatever it is. It’s on there.

Okay, and you know how you can download those videos and convert them into mp3s, right? THAT’S RIGHT, SUCKERS. Here’s what you do.* Download ffmpegX; it’s this all-purpose file format converter, drag-and-drop, piece of cake. Now. Go to the YouTube video you want. See that URL bar at the top of your browser? Simply type in ‘pwn’ before the word ‘youtube’ and download away. It’s literally that easy. Then pop it in ffmpegX, tell it to convert that sombitch into an mp3, and there you are. Bob’s your uncle. It’s that easy.

Here’s why I’m telling you this. There’s so much wonderful stuff on YouTube that’s pretty much YouTube exclusive. Adorable indie-pop Beyonce covers, disturbing chopped-and-screwed remixes,** divinely-inspired mashups, it’s all there. Anything you want. And I know you’re like me: when you hear something you like, you want to hear it over and over again. It’s frustrating when YouTube is the only medium I have to hear something I like. If I use my trick, I can put it on my iPod or play it through my car stereo. I love that.

Just do us all a kindness, will you? Don’t abuse this godsend. This shit is probably illegal. Like, fourteen kinds of illegal. If it isn’t, it should be. Don’t go downloading whole albums by major artists with big legal budgets. Because, you realize, you totally could. And then the RIAA would torpedo deturl.com and we couldn’t do this anymore. At all. PwnYouTube is this massively ballsy dare; they’re daring the powers that be to shut them down. Don’t make it easy for them.

The way I see it is that we can do this responsibly with independent artists, people just doing it for fun and putting it on YouTube. All the songs I’m posting today I processed in this way, and you’ll notice they’re covers or remixes. The people who put them on YouTube aren’t making money from it. They’re not in it for that. They’re doing it because they love to do it. And I love what they do, so much that I want to bathe my ears in it at all times.

Alright, go nuts. Within reason.

Pomplamoose – “Single Ladies” (Beyonce cover)
Flosstradamus – “Overnight Star” (Sigur Ros v. Twista)
T.I. – “What You Know” (chopped and screwed)

* I’m sure there’s an easier way to do all this. I’m a mac user. When I have a problem I google it and the first solution that comes up is the one I go with. If you know an easier way, go with it.
** I love chopped-and-screwed. It sounds like the devil and he’s drunk.

Science Machine from Chad Pugh on Vimeo.

Okay. First of all, this is old. Like, it’s been in the tubes for two years now if Vimeo is to be believed. In fact, I saw this a full year ago, so it’s not even new to me. But, then again, I didn’t write for a snazzy music blog a year ago, did I? Plus I forgot about it until the other day. Plus Adam and Garrett are thoroughly accomplished designers of the graphical nature and I know they appreciate good graphics. So here it is again; the best unofficial music video I’ve ever seen.

And look, so-called “unofficial videos” are a mixed bag, to put it charitably. For every creative re-interpretation that does something interesting with no money, there’s a dozen busted-ass Lego versions and a hundred weak-ass webcam videos of college freshmen lip-syncing in a dorm room — which invariably has 340,000 view for some reason. Good videos reinterpret the music in a novel way, and since it’s just some fan doing it, s/he’s got to use whatever tools s/he has at hand.

So here. Here’s a fan video for Portishead’s “We Carry On,” a time-lapse of a hideously complex computer-assisted drawing this guy’s doing. The best part is that the video isn’t called “We Carry On Tribute” or “Portishead Fan Video,” or anything like that. It’s called “Science Machine.” That’s the name of his drawing. Meaning: he could care less about Portishead. He just wanted to make a time-lapse drawing of his own shit, and he picked the Portishead song for it because, I dunno, it was about the same length as the video. And there’s no visual that could be more skin-crawlingly disturbing than . . . some guy doing a drawing, I guess. It’s hard to express why I find it so disturbing.

Also, it seems that Portishead lends itself particularly well to fan-made videos. While I was trying to find ‘Science Machine’ on Vimeo I came across another fan video for their song “Biscuit,” and the video is just . . . well, it’s just naked ladies. And it’s, oddly, also a perfect match. I imagine we’d all expect nothing less from a video with naked ladies writhing to Portishead. I almost hesitate to link to it, since it’s clearly NSFW, but if you’re mature enough to handle the above video you’re all set to handle anything.

Portishead – “We Carry On”

We all love Thanksgiving. Kind of. We all like overeating, though your mileage may vary when it comes to traditional American-style Thanksgiving-themed foods. Many of us love seeing family, though again, there’s serious issues with diminishing returns when it comes to pressing flesh with countless members of the extended clan. For most people, it’s about the quiet pleasures, like watching lots of DVDs and starting your drinking at lunchtime.

The quintessential Thanksgiving song is, of course, Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant,” which, don’t worry, I won’t post here because a) it’s twenty minutes long, and b) everybody on The Hype Machine already posted it, I’m sure. It’s a gimme, just like “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” is the quintessential Thanksgiving film. Let’s put that aside, though; I’m looking for the Thanksgiving sound. That’s different. What do you want to hear when you’ve been eating tryptophan for every meal, not smoking for two days, watching football with your uncle, and it’s dark by five o’clock and you have to go to work in a day or two? That’s a long and rambling question, I know, and rather grammatically unsound (frankly this post doesn’t have the best syntax [and now I'm going out of my way to make it unreadable {Sorry, haters!}]) but seriously, what do you want to listen to? For me, I’m looking for something dark and brooding with some lonely, pissed-off guitars. And also, oddly, Austrialian bands seem to have more appeal than usual, though this could be selection bias on my part.

Oh by the way, I’ve had a great Thanksgiving. Homemade everything, and made right, son, for serious. Low-key, immediate family only, watching DVDs with my brother visiting from Mississippi. We watched “Boyz N the Hood,” it was great. Been an awesome Thanksgiving. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want to listen to dark, pissed-off music. It makes it all feel more festive somehow. Maybe it’s that Thanksgiving commemorates this one time where a bunch of religious fanatics survived a brutal winter thanks to the kindness of strangers, whom they repaid with smallpox, conquest, and, eventually, casinos.

Don’t give me that look. It’s a vaguely gothic holiday, so you need vaguely gothic music. What, do you listen to Christmas carols or some shit over Thanksgiving dinner? To my mind that’s significantly creepier.

Link Wray and his Wray Men – “Rumble”
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – “Do You Love Me”
Sisters of Mercy – “Lucretia My Reflection”

Ahhh man. I can’t believe I missed the American Music Awards. I can’t believe it. How did this happen. My life is so horrible. I hope I didn’t miss anything really crazy. Like a sexually suggestive dance performance or something. As soon as I figure out which hot ass intern of mine was in charge of my tv schedule this week I’m going to have one less intern that isn’t fully engulfed in flames. I’m not even fucking kidding about this.

I live for music award shows. How else am I supposed to find out about new and awesome music? Like this Diplo remix of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is one of the best remixes I’ve heard. Ever. Hold on Kanye’s about to let me finish. Ok, and obviously the only reason I know about it was because it was featured on all of those award shows. Like…hmmm, I can’t remember right this second. But I’m sure it happened. They wouldn’t miss something this awesome. I’m sure of it. They have the best crack team this side of the Windows ad campaign wizards.

Get the new Diplo.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Gold Lion (Diplo Remix)”

Sunday was my Thanksgiving. Since some of my near-and-dears and I will be apart this year, I decided to host “Little Thanksgiving” the Sunday before. On the menu was a sage butter turkey with white wine gravy and sausage apple chestnut stuffing, my world-famous sweet potato casserole, some Brussels sprouts here some apple pie there and a lot of pinot noir… The Cowboys even played the Redskins which is normally the TDay game. So it felt very right. I’m eating leftovers as I write this.

Being my first major dinner party, the background playlist was essential to success. Uncharacteristically, I wasn’t even thinking about it until I was in the middle of slipping the skins off some boiled yams, when I realized I didn’t have a playlist set up for this sort of occasion. So while the casserole baked (350 degrees for 30 minutes or until the marshmallows are a nice golden brown), I worked to fix that mistake.

At the end of the night, I realized some of the added songs didn’t quite fit after all. “Gravity” by Sara Bareilles or “Watchman, What Is Left of the Night?” by The Greycoats may have been a little too minor-key driven for friendly foodie company. “The Rain” off the New Swell Season album “Strict Joy”, however, worked well. As did a little “Rich Woman” by Robert Plant and Allison Kraus (a generally phenomenal album if you aren’t familiar), which gives a nice funky little groove.

“Your Ex-Lover Is Dead” by Stars and “Sylvia” by Miike Snow are even more upbeat and are probably somewhere slightly above “ambient” and below “obvious”. Other honorable mentions go to the DeVotchKa, Crash Kings, Edward Sharpe and The Temper Trap. Mix these musical ingredients in a medium sized playlist bowl and cook for seven hours hours at room temperature. Serves 6 to… All.

The Swell Season – “The Rain”
Crash Kings – “Come Away”
Stars – “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead”
Miike Snow – “Sylvia”

Honestly I’m so in love with Leighton Meester I could throw up. She could put out an album that was just her reading dumb children books like “Where the Wild Things Are” or “Blueberries for Sal” over and over again and not only would I buy it I’d probably give it three thumbs up*
Who the fuck am I kidding – there wouldn’t even have to be sound on the compact disc. At this point as long as it has her picture on it, I’ll buy it.

A lot of people think that I watch Gossip Girl for the gripping plot and cunning dialogue. They’re flat out wrong. I watch it for Leighton Meester. She is so hot. And legit.
A lot of people think I think she’s cool because she was born in prison. Listen. Anyone can be born in prison. It doesn’t make you cool, it just means your parents were dumb enough to get caught.
Leighton Meesters parents got thrown in prison for trying to be American Heroes though. So it’s a completely different story.

What did they do? They tried to bring 13,000 pounds of weed from Jamaica into the United States. 13,000 pounds. Does anyone understand how much weed that is? True American heroes. I can only imagine her parents saw how relaxed, awesome, and calm everyone in Jamaica was… and figured the only thing they could do was bring as much of that sweet nectar back to the States as they could fit in their backpacks. If their backpacks were fucking enormous and had enough space to fit 6.5 tons. If I saw that much weed and Leighton Meester at the same time I’d have a heart attack and literally die as the happiest man on the face of the earth. In the history of the world. If I could actually stay awake it would be a fucking miracle. I’d have to smoke half that weed just to keep my heart rate under a thousand beats per unit of time. In a related story: Holy fuck they have to be the most amazing in-laws ever.

I still don’t know what this song is about or if it’s any good. All I know is the past 72 hours have been the best of my life. And all I’ve done is listen to this song on repeat and stare at the above picture the whole time. I’m fairly certain this is the way to her heart.
Get her single here. She’s so hot. Just do it. You should always do what hot chicks want. It’s good karma.

Leighton Meester – “Somebody to Love”

* Skiing accident. Don’t ask. It’s rude.
** Not nearly enough

Fact: If you added up all of the land in Sweden you’d come up with some number that was pretty close to like 173,745 square miles. 9.3 million people live there. 9.3. That’s it. Los Angeles County has 9.8 million people living in it. It’s also only 4700 square miles. The United States of America on the other hand has 307 million people distributed over 9.8 million square miles. Point being we are fucking huge. And we have tons of space for practice garages. We have numbers. We have size. We don’t have excuses. Maybe this is like some crazy version of the cold war and the Swedish government has kidnapped all of the good musicians and brought them back to Swedish music labs. I heard a rumor they were using all of the various best parts to put an army of super musicians together. I’m not going to lie – the day that Sweden announces they have an army of super musicians – I’m fucking retiring. It’s game over after that.

Taken by Trees (the solo work of Swedish(surprise) singer Victoria Bergsman) dropped a cover not too long ago of that song by that other band. Oh yes – My Girls by Animal Collective. It’s pretty bad ass. But what I’m really doing a lot of debauch (of the after hours variety) to these days is this jam by Tough Alliance featuring previously mentioned Victoria Bergsman. You might vaguely remember her name as she was one of the singers on that song about young people… I think it was called Young Folks. I don’t have exact wikipedia records on this or anything but I’m pretty sure everyone and their mother remixed that song. So if you haven’ t heard it yet – you either learn to read And speaking of Young Folks…Peter Bjorn and John are jamming out at the Nokia Theater tonight in L.A.

Taken By Trees “My Boys (Animal Collective cover)”
The Tough Alliance – “Taken Too Young ft. Victoria Bersgman “

Get the Album here

We’re coming up on the end of a year, the end of a decade, and if Dan Brown and Roland Emmerich are right, on the end of human existence. And in case you haven’t picked up on this through context clues, this is a music publication. That means it’s time for the latest round of end-of-time-period wrap-ups. Us music pubs LOVE best-of lists; we’ll do a best-of for any category you care to name, provided we’re about to hit a calendar milestone. This time, I’m digging a little deeper. I’m going to try and list the top five songs in the past 500 years of recorded music. I’m not going to go back further than that, since there’s a legitimate chance David Bowie is an ageless, undying lich who left demo tapes buried in the La Brea tar pits that we have yet to uncover. 500 years ought to cover most of what’s there to listen to. Let’s do this thing.

1. James Brown, “Sex Machine”
Number one with a bullet. And, frankly, an obvious choice. Hardest working man in show biz, that’s what they called him. And man, out of his massive body of work it’s hard to pick a stand-out, but “Sex Machine” is the end-all-be-all of fuck-you-funk-me R&B&S&M righteousness.

2. James Brown, “Sex Machine”
I listed it twice because we always play it twice. Don’t we? As soon as you “HIT IT AND QUIT!” you wanna bring it back to the beginning. It gets you ready to get up and do you thang. You wanna get into it, man. You know, like a, like a sex machine, man? Movin’, doing it, you know. Can I count it off? One two three four A-BAMP BAMP BAMP BAMP BAMP BAMP BAMP

3. James Brown, “Sex Machine”
Because it’s so minimalist, and it’s all you need. Prince knew what was up. “Kiss?” Great song, wasn’t it? Not top five great, mind you, but great. Just a wiggidy-wack bass, a stutter of bass drum, a fiddly guitar now and then, and Prince squealing. That’s it. That’s all you need to get moving. James added a few more ingredients, not many, just what we need and nothing more. Piano. Horns. Maceo Parker playing the echo game. Perfect. This song could be two weeks long and I wouldn’t mind.

4. James Brown, “Sex Machine”
SHAKE YO MONEY MAKE-AH! SHAKE YO MONEY MAKE-AH! SHAKE YO MONEY MAKE-AH! SHAKE YO MONEY MAKE-AH! SHAKE YO MONEY MAKE-AH! SHAKE YO MONEY MAKE-AH!

5. James Brown, “Sex Machine”
And the hell of it is James wasn’t even trying. He used gold records for dinner plates. I have his Christmas album and it’s hilarious. “Let’s Make Christmas Mean Something This Year” was obviously done in one take, was probably improvised, James was probably drunk during recording, and it’s the secret sauce for any merry X-Mas. “Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto?” Heartbreaking. James was the king. He will be missed. I don’t pretend to know what the next 500 years of music will bring, but if we can use stem cell nanobots to revive him, he’ll be all over the 2509 A.D. best-of list. Guess what song is going to dominate.

Honorable Mention: The Smiths, “This Charming Man.”

James Brown – “Sex Machine”

(This will probably be showing up in the upcoming print edition of Vinyl Tap, in case you’re from the future and confused.)

I don’t like to toot my own horn too much (this is a lie), but I know a thing or two about biking (this is also a lie). I biked across these United States several years ago, and I learned a valuable lesson: 95% of this country is boring as shit. No, seriously. Do you remember driving across Iowa when you were a kid, finding entertainment only in drawing boundary lines with your brother in the backseat, the threat of war constantly a slight breach of fingertips away? Try biking that shit.

My point is, of course, that the Left Coast is truly where the enjoyable sights are to be found. Attractive ladies, salty sea smells, evergreens and redwoods. So it’s no wonder that the folks behind Blind Pilot are more popular than me; they were smart enough to only stick to that side of the country when they did their own musical bike tour. Last year, they traveled from Washington State to San Diego, Cali, carrying their instruments along the way.

Too Much Happiness caught them at Washington, DC’s Black Cat last week, and they delivered a rousing, bluegrass-meets-indie-meets-attractive-ladies-playing-nontraditional-instruments set. Their numbers have grown from two dudes to more than I can count on one hand, which leads me to believe that they’re either using their success to add new members or are part of some freak government indie music breeding program, hell-bent on providing the world with music that doesn’t suck.

I’m fearfully optimistic that the latter is the case.

Blind Pilot – “One Red Thread”
Blind Pilot – “Go On, Say It”