A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to see David Byrne live in concert. It was purported to be a celebration of the work he did with Brian Eno, famed producer and musical renegade, encompassing Eno’s production on classic Talking Heads albums as well as their collaborations like My Life In The Bush of Ghosts and a new, currently digital-only release Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. The show was composed of Byrne, a backing band, a trio of backup singers and a trio of interpretive dancers, and while that sounds like a bad, pretentious idea the whole thing came off very entertaining and ended up being a fine night of live music.

Another big plus was the lack of squirrels in the road. Come on, if you go to see bands with an extensive and memorable back-catalog you know about the squirrels. A pace is building, the classics are rolling out and the audience is having a grand old time, then suddenly the performer announces, “We’d like to play something from our new album” and suddenly it’s all screeching brakes and momentum sliding to a halt. Damn squirrels, they’ll do it every time.

That’s what’s so great about the new collaboration: nary a squirrel to be found. All the songs, even if they’re not immediate attention-getters, are very good and surprisingly song-like. I hesitate to use the word ‘conventional’ because it would tend to paint Everything That Happens… as by-the-numbers, which it definitely isn’t. These songs sat side by side with tunes like “I, Zimbra,” “Once In A Lifetime,” and even “Help Me Somebody” and never interrupted the flow, never incurred massive pee-breaks and beer raids. The album is an album, and not an excuse to tour based around weak product, thank God.

The story goes like this: Byrne found himself in the company of Eno unexpectedly, as both hadn’t co-created in awhile. Eno, over the years, made his bones by becoming an ambient artist as well as the big-time producer of several classic albums, including U2’s The Joshua Tree. Byrne mixed his sound with massive multiculturalism and founded the Luaka Bop label. Now here they were in the company of each other and the inevitable happened: one asked the other if they were up for doing something. The result? Eno sent Byrne some instrumentals he had worked up, yet these frames were distinctively song-based. (more…)

Jonatha Brooke is one of those artists whose name always sounds familiar - if only because, really, how many people named “Jonatha” do you know? - but whose music you may not be familiar with…though, frankly, you really should be. She’s a talented singer-songwriter who first got her career rolling in the early ’90s as a member of a duo called The Story, with collaborator Jennifer Kimball, but Brooke soon stood on her own two feet and has trotted out album after album … some on major labels, some on indies … to critical acclaim and a decidedly diehard following. Popdose had the opportunity to speak with Brooke, and we took full advantage of it, asking her about as much of her back catalog as time allowed, quizzing her about how she recently came to collaborate with the late Woody Guthrie (and whether she could even concentrate with the awareness of what Billy Bragg and Wilco had already done with the man’s lyrics), and wondering where she stands on the state of the music industry today.

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I was eleven or twelve. I was riding with my dad. We were driving back from somewhere. We were listening to the radio. It was just my dad and me. All of the sudden, a strange kind of music comes on. The vaguely-Eastern sounding keyboards and guitar arpeggios sound cool enough, then the vocals start: “IF I HAD A ROCKET LAUNCHER, I’D MAKE SOMEBODY PAY.”

Whoa.

Here was a song about a guy who is singing about getting a rocket launcher — a rocket launcher — and after asking “how many kids did you kill today?” was going to make somebody pay. It was like somebody took the plot to Commando and made a song out of it. Already this was the most badass song I had ever heard, but nothing could have prepared me for that final verse.

“If I had a rocket launcher, some son of a bitch would die!”

This was on the radio! The guy not only said “son of a bitch,” but he said “some son of a bitch would DIE!” He was gonna take that rocket launcher and he was gonna kill that son of a bitch! This was in a song! The most intense lyric I had heard on the radio before that was that “the union of the snake was on the prowl.”

My dad and I got home and I ran into my room, totally energized with pre-adolescent macho awkwardness. I turned on my radio and slowly, very slowly turned the knob up and down the radio dial until I could catch that song.

Well, days went by, weeks went by, months, years. I don’t think I ever heard the song on the radio again. Then, ten years ago, I remembered the song and I went looking for it on Napster.

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You know, there are times when even I’ve had enough of ’80s music. It’s hard to believe that since I’m still acquiring “new” music all the time, but sometimes I need something more.

One of those times occurred this past Saturday as I was sitting at a poker table in Atlantic City, New Jersey. My iPod contains every Hot 100 hit from the ’80s plus many more ’80s tunes, some random great albums from the past two decades, and a ton of metal. I rarely ever choose a single artist or a full album and listen to the whole thing since I love the randomness of the shuffle option. There’s just something about hearing a 17-minute track from doom metal masters Electric Wizard followed by a Flock of Seagulls tune that does it for me. But as I was sitting at the table, I actually started to see a trend — when Tiffany came on, I was playing passively and poorly, but when it shuffled to Slayer I was nice and aggressive and winning hands. So, there came a point when I got tired of losing money and just chose to listen to Exodus albums for the rest of the night. I never thought there would be a point where the ’80s just didn’t work for me, but I guess I’ve found it.

NEW SOUNDS FOR THE COLLECTION:
Isaac Hayes, Lifetime Thing
Captain Sky, Concerned Party No. 1
Tease, Remember
The Flirts, Made in America
Gayle Adams, Gayle Adams
Kano, Kano

Back to a full post this week as I invade your speakers with more Billboard Hot 100 Bottom Feeders from artists whose names start with the letter C.

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Mind if I freak you out here? Yes? Too bad; I have nothing else to write about. Well, that’s not entirely true. I have a lot to write about, judging by all the files I’ve put up on the handy-dandy Popdose FTP.

1) No, you cannot have access to the Popdose FTP.

2) I mean it, NO, you cannot have access to the Popdose FTP.

See, when you write for a forum such as this, you can overload yourself fairly early, clogging the works with all those notions you’d like to tackle, restraint be damned. Then life gets in the way and you find yourself getting all topical and current and, very quickly, your digital cabinets runneth over. So I think it is time to do a little spring cleaning, with an added bonus of providing outlet for democracy.

(Get to the point, damn it!)

There are a few candidates on my list that I’m just not going to get to. As much as I love the music from these artists, it just seems more and more unlikely that they’re going to get their day. That’s where you come in. Your petty little vote may not mean much when compared to a mighty Superdelegate, but it means something to me. I swear, and not just because I’m trying to get to second base with you. I’ve decided to give you a choice for whom I next tackle. Simply drop a comment with your choice from the following artists and the act with the largest popular vote gets an expanded column. It’s that simple, and you’ll respect yourself the morning after. And yes, you have lovely eyes.

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