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Best Band Name Ever weds Best Valentine's Day Card Sentiment Ever

Thanks to action-squad, via stereogum.

Standing In The Way Of Control

This is my first find in London-and they're from Oregon! Or somewhere in the States. I think. For all I know The Gossip has been all over Stereogum and Pitchfork, but they're new to me, and rowdy and jangly and pretty fierce.

"See his pug-nosed face.."

On Series Two of Extras Ricky Gervais makes the point that success is not necessarily better than obscurity, particularly if it leads to David Bowie writing a song about how pathetic you are. Gervais recounts how he told Bowie what kind of song he wanted for the scene(“..maybe it could be quite retro, something off Hunky Dory, with an anthemic chorus, like Life On Mars..“) and Bowie’s masterfully sardonic response in this interview with the Onion A.V. Club.

Gently Weeping Prince

“One of the first YouTube clips I ever saw was lost performance footage of a godhead ax solo Prince performed at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. If (this) performance were given to me as an MP3 file I wouldn’t have cared about (it). This illuminates one of those depressing paradoxes about rock ‘n’ roll: very often, profoundly exceptional guitar playing is boring to listen to.” Chuck Klosterman in Esquire. He goes on to describe how flawless, masterful guitar playing just sounds effortless, or studio-enhanced, unless you can actually see the sinewy, athletic and uninhibtedly sexual act of rocking that shit out. Case in point is said Prince performance.

Reader's Tips

Here's a list of great things online, many of them pointed out to me by friends and readers; I’ll update as I get them together.

Really fine mp3 site that’s truly eclectic but soul driven, with classics from Change, Ella Fitzgerald and De La Soul as well as startlingly good remixes and mash-ups: dilate.choonz

If you’re in need of some funky fresh lyrics to put you in the spirit check out eight fantastic old school hip hop video.

It would be unfair to Daniel Craig and Clive Owen to enter Scottish rugby player Sean Lamont into their little competition; follow the link to see him from the front and do make sure your boss isn’t standing behind you. Always a good idea to assume our links are NSFW as that’s just how we roll here at meerkat. Thanks to omg.

Pete Wentz interviews Robert Smith and they discuss South Park. Entertainment Weekly did it but Stereogum extracts the meaty pulp.

In a neat coincidence Esquire's music critic Andy Lager’s weekly podcast features lullaby versions of Cure songs.

Colt Brennan, U of HI star quarterback. I have really got to start getting into ESPN2. Thanks to Kenneth in the 212.

Shark Jump Live.

Saturday Night Live’s sole redeeming value at this point is in occasional rad musical performances like this one from Beck. Sadly SNL’s legal stormtroopers jump all over YouTube the minute anyone posts anything from the show so enjoy this while it lasts.

Many Rivers To Cross

Tracey Thorn’s let me know (Along with everyone else who subscribes to her MySpace blog) that her 1982 solo album A Distant Shore showed up on another installment of The Guardian‘s 'The greatest albums you've never heard' list. A couple of the singles from the lovely acoustic album are available on a Cherry Red compilation on iTunes, and there’s a least one copy of the  CD at Amazon. And as usual the Guardian’s selects are challenging and suitably erudite, leaving you with the wonderous, daunting sense of infinitely expanding musical waters to explore.

Nokia Kool Aid: Delicious.

Nokia held one of their typically dazzling press launches on Tuesday at the 66^th street Armory. The main thrust was for the N95, another impressive step forward in the move toward Total Convergence. This little baby has incredibly juicy multi-connectivity,  and a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and 30 frames/second video. The really cool element, however, was built-in GPS and a “World Map” with the potential for all sorts of open-platform applications that could be added on. I have to say, I’ve totally drunk the Kool Aid on the Nokia brand. Their consistent innovations always feel truly user-orientened, and I have this sense of the entire nation of Finland working as a hive of ideas and creativity, pushing the limits of technology’s human applications further and further. Plus they put on really, really good press events.

But the big news from my perspective was a new music service they’re launching in the next couple of months called ‘Music Recommenders’. They’ve gotten David Bowie to sign on to oversee/guide/promote the service, and the event featured Bowie chatting about MR in a short film made by Wim Wenders that was shot in his typical multi-continent style. They’ve scouted out and recruited 40 of the coolest independent record shops around the world, and principals from those shops will be posting their monthly picks for the choicest new stuff from their genre of expertise on the Music Recommenders site. In the next few months downloads of the tracks will become available, first in the U.K, then in Australia, then everywhere. The track listings and the DJ’s notes will be available shortly though, and while you could get similar information by combing through twenty different magazines and sites this is a marvelously eclectic and meticulously chosen kind of music curating. It’s sort of the anti-iTunes, driving you away from the center of the commercial music superhighway and back onto the dusty, funky roads where the sounds are fresh and the artists who may never chart onto the top 40 are superstars. I talked to DJs/record store dudes from Philly, Atlanta and London who were on hand to spin and explain, and their sincere enthusiasm was evident and their chops legit. The electricity that comes from sharing amazing music got me psyched to use the site when it’s up and running. I looked at a beta version and it’s simple, effective and to the point. As an avid music listener who’s become a little paralyzed by the bland digital marketplace this stands to re-invent my online sonic experience. The address is musicrecommenders.com; you can read a bit more about it there and check out the impressively pan-global array of stores in the mix. Don’t worry, I’ll be reminding you about it when it’s fully functional. 

Tracey Thorn Goes Solo

Tracey Thorn has a MySpace page with 3 different songs posted--there’s the acoustic number ‘Goodbye Joe’ from ’82, the trip hop classic ‘Protection’ from Massive Attack and a nervous slice of electronica from Tiefschwarz that she provides vocals for. The exquisite melancholy of that voice always hits a raw nerve of yearning and heartbreak regardless of the genre. Her inspirations are beautifully eclectic: Astrud Gilberto, Sandy Denny, The Specials, The Smiths (83-85), 'Ceremony' by New Order and 'Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves' by Cher. She also mentions singing with Jeff Buckley at Gastonbury-does a recording of this exist? Very Holy Grail of vocalists, that. Since Ben Watt’s busy buzzing around the globe mixing and spinning party house she’s taking a break from Everything But The Girl and has a solo album coming in February. Thank Christ. Now: D’Angelo and Sade, it’s time to get off your asses and get back in the studio.

Ladies And Gentlemen, Our New Guest Reviewer Weighs In On Young Master Timberlake's Purple Fantasia

Remember when Prince albums were totally cohesive and thematic? When Parade dropped you topless in the South of France, Sign O' the Times got you stoned on psychedelic black hippie/beat poet love and The Black Album left you stranded on some gritty street corner, bobbing your head to funked-out horns, sick beats and... "Blackness?" Well, there's a new Black Album out this month, almost 20 years after the original was yanked off the shelves for being too raunchy and experimental. Except this one plays like a drunken stroll through a sex-drenched, urban nightclub… and it's by a skinny white boy from Tennessee named Justin Timberlake.