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These five guys from California run their band according to the five pillars of Delta Spirituality. Check out the pillars on their official site (scroll all the way to the bottom). My favorite pillar is number V. “Pop is not the enemy”. I have a whole rant about pretentious bands, but they put it way better than I do: “No one was ever original by trying to be original… They just end up weird and self indulgent.” Hear, hear! They’ve been supporting Cold War Kids on their US tour, maybe they’ll tag along when they come our way in three months. Meanwhile I’ll be praying to the Gods of Gig to make it so.
Delta Spirit play socially conscious (not preachy!) indie pop with a southern twang. All four songs on their myspace are absolute gems and they’re so different that it’s hard to pin-point what direction they’re going in. “Children” is just beautiful, it starts with a steady low banging of a single drum, when the other instruments chime in the song seems to rise and rise to something untouchable. I’ve listened to it a couple of times now and it just keeps getting better and better. “Street Walker” is a dancy pop song, it makes me want to bust a move and it sounds happy at a first listen, but then I found out it’s about child sex slavery. Which is when I found out I’m not comfortable twisting the night away on a song about abused children, but it’s a great, catchy song. My favorite song on their myspace is “Crippler King”. It begs to be played in a big barn where all good rockabilly tunes sound best.
The Beatles - Three Cool Cats
The 5.6.7.8’s - Three Cool Chicks
Busta Rhymes, “Touch It (remix)”
Futureheads, “Skip To The End”
Peter Bjorn & John, “Young Folks”
The Streets, “When You Wasn’t Famous”
The Blood Arm, “Suspicious Character”
1990s, “You Made Me Like It”
Amy Winehouse, “Rehab”
Jeremy Warmsley, “Dirty Blue Jeans”
Jamie-T, “Sheila”
The Rapture, “Whoo! Alright - Yeah … Uh-huh”
Justin Timberlake, “SexyBack”
Kitty, Daisy & Lewis, “Mean Son Of A Gun”
The Infadels, “Toyboy”
Pearl Jam, “World Wide Suicide”
Good Shoes, “Never Meant To Hurt You”
Primal Scream, “Country Girl”
Eagles Of Death Metal, “Don’t Speak, I Came To Make A Bang”
Love Is All, “Make Out, Fall Out, Make Up”
Arctic Monkeys, “Mardy Bum”
Nelly Furtado, “Maneater”
Larrikin Love, “Cucumber”
The Coup, “My Favorite Mutiny”
Peter’s character is obsessed with an unusually big and crafty rat in his appartment like it’s the Moby Dick to his Ahab. I was thinking about this movie while we were having a verbal smack down with the helpdesk people of a certain shitty provider, I was internetless and pissed and I remember thinking ‘now i know how Bart Hughes felt’. Anyway, he thrashes the appartment completely trying to get to the gigantic rodent. In the end his wife comes home and he’s sitting in the middle of a war zone, so she asks him what the hell happened, and he says “I had a party”. Classic.
I always thought this movie would make a great low-budget play; all you need is one set, Peter Weller and a well trained dog wearing a rat costume. Sadly, the rat bites the big one in the end. I’m sorry I spoiled the ending for you, but the movie is really about the battle not the outcome. If the big rat in the movie had won, this is the song he would play with his rat friends while he was bragging about how he snuffed out that punk from Robocop. Which makes me wonder how a rat would kill a guy, other then giving him a bad case of the plague …
The Rats - Rat’s Revenge part 2
On to greener and poppier pastures! Remember the wonderful year of 1982? Yeah me either, but I do remember this excellent song by the two Brummie sets of brothers of Musical Youth. I always wondered what a dutchie was, and apparently it’s a Dutch oven. Why then do we have to “pass it from the left hand side”?
Well, the boys and their target audience were too young to be singing about weed or ganja or mary jane or grass or whatever we’re calling it now, so they changed the words of The Mighty Diamonds’s song “Pass The Kouchie” - which happens to be about sharing a blunt with your friends, to something less intoxicating and more kid friendly. Since it’s a true Poptastic song it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t make much sense, it’s all about squeezing the most out of a catchy tune and a cute bunch of kids.
Oh and yes, kouchie means marijuana … if you, like me, thought it meant something more naughty then get your head out of the gutter you dirty, dirty, gutter head.
The Decemberists - My Mother Was A Chinese Trapeze Artist
Harlem Shakes, on the other hand, just released their first EP and I even like them! Like I said last week, it’s difficult finding a band that you’re excited about every single week, but these guys are pretty cool, especially considering “Burning Birthdays” is their first release. They have an indie 50s-pop thing going on here and there, which makes me happy. A wee bit like what Special Needs were doing before they imploded. You can listen to a couple of tracks off “Burning Birthdays” over at (sigh) their myspace page and a few other songs as well - I liked “Carpetbaggers” right away, so make sure not to miss that one. Or you could download the whole EP from emusic, which is where I’m headed right now.
But did you know that (according to the wikipedia) John Travolta also released an album called The Road to Freedom in 1986, which is apparently a Scientology album. I have to wonder what makes an album Scientological exactly…
John Travolta - Easy Evil
Of course, it started off with panic and rushing - that’s how these things always go, isn’t it? I live about an hour away from Amsterdam and rely on public transportation to get me anywhere. But that morning, before I had even had any coffee, the Dutch newspapers were already reporting that half of all trains were pre-emptively cancelled due to severe snow warnings. I started having flashbacks of that day back in 2005 when a freak snowstorm in March kept us from seeing Adam Green. So I grabbed my stuff and left hours earlier than I’d normally need to, just to be sure I wouldn’t be stranded in my concert-less house.
We actually missed the very beginning of Elvis Perkins’ set, which was disappointing, because I enjoyed so much what we did get to hear. Perkins is a charming performer, and his slightly madcap band Dearland made everything just a little zany and exciting. Being joined by Alec Ounsworth didn’t hurt anything, either. “While You Were Sleeping” is my favorite Elvis Perkins song, at least until his album is released later this month, but, sadly, we must’ve missed it on the night.
Elvis Perkins - While You Were Sleeping
We’ve written about Cold War Kids so many times, there’s probably not much more to say. They were the main reason this show was so exciting for us, as much as we love the other two bands, and they didn’t let us down. I had actually worried that I’d built it up too much beforehand and that it wouldn’t be able to live up to my expectations. I understand that some people have to hate Cold War Kids (but that’s for another post) but that’s fine - more for me. CWK are most definitely my favorite of the recent batch of new bands, and in my opinion they beat out a lot of the ones who came before. Twice we’ve seen them play to audiences who didn’t know them, and both times they started out with a lukewarm response and left the stage to deafening applause. In all the concerts we’ve gone to, I’ve never seen any other band win over a crowd the way they do, with no fancy tricks or witty remarks - just their music. The real highlight of the whole evening was CWK joined by Elvis Perkins and members of Dearland playing Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come”, one of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing. I hope they release it as a b-side one day, but until then, here’s another (from their “We Used To Vacation” EP) which closed their set.
Cold War Kids - Quiet, Please!
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were, of course, as fantastic and fun as you’d expect. We’d seen them before so we knew we wouldn’t be let down. It seemed that a lot of the audience didn’t have Some Loud Thunder yet, and to say they appreciated the band playing songs from their debut album would be a serious understatement. But to me, the best part of their set was “Satan Said Dance”, during which little pockets of people all over the room shouted “Said Dance!” when needed, which made me (and the band, I think) very happy indeed.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Satan Said Dance
Someone mentioned that this tour was about halfway over, so if you still have a chance to get tickets for a show near you, grab some while you can. You’ll have a wonderful time, I promise.
Oh, and the snow turned out to be a big fat nothing. It had stopped by time we got to the venue and melted by the time we went home. Of course.
So, I’m just going to link to a blog I’m fond of, Keep Hope Inside and the fantastic three-part feature he did on new bands for 2007. Some of the mp3 links have expired by now, but Mr. K has written descriptions for each band he’s listed. That should be enough to inspire you to do further searching if anyone sounds interesting to you. So rather than me going through his list and telling you about what I liked, why not just have a look for yourself?
Keep Hope Inside: Bands I Want To Namedrop Because They Will Become Big In 2007 - Part One
1. Spending all day watching the original Star Wars trilogy (no fancy new graphics or edits, the old-school theatrical release) and doing nothing but that is Good. You should try it.
2. Princess Leia has a very dodgy accent (perhaps trying to sound posh, maybe English, it’s hard to say exactly what she was going for) through about half of A New Hope. It never resurfaces throughout the rest of the series, or at least not that I noticed. How did the people in charge not notice that?
3. Non-human creatures rarely speak English, but they all seem to understand it.
4. While many people think the Ewoks are crap, at least they have spears and stuff and helped beat down the Storm Troopers. That alone makes them at least ten thousand times more acceptable than Jar-Jar Binks.
5. It’s totally un-cool that I gave my Ewok Village Action Playset away when I was too old for it. That thing was badass and I would display it proudly if I still had it now. When aDawgg and I would play together when I was little, the G.I. Joes would come attack the treehouse, but the Ewoks were crafty and would always win. Or at least, that’s how I remember it.
6. The Darth Vader theme will be stuck in your head for days:
Star Wars - The Imperial March (Darth Vader Theme)

Sometimes you know you’re going to have one of the those days or weeks the equivalent of a Championship Fight or shady warehouse bareknuckle brawl. When those times roll around (and they will if they haven’t yet), you need to be on your game. Pumped up. Ready to roll, rough and ready. That’s when you need a Boxing Anthem.
Boxing Anthems mentally prepare you for the challenge. Imagine walking into the arena. The cheers for you or jeers against that will focus your energy, calm the nerves, feed the fire down in your belly.
For me, Earl Simmons, aka DMX, fits the bill. While I enjoy DMX, own three of his six albums, and plan on eventually rounding out the catalogue, he never really challenges standard Slangin-n-Cappin-n-Bitches hip-hop. Which is fine. I’m not making a judgement. I don’t think music always has to have a mission or purpose. Sometimes it’s just about the feeling it gives you. And for this reason a few DMX songs are on my Boxing Anthems soundtrack.
And for me, at least, when I close the door on the way to work and need to know I just gotta school these punks ass cheetos nothing feeds that fire like the heavy bass, horns, and growl of “X Gon Give It To Ya” off Grand Champ.
If the only thing you cats did was came out to play, stay out my way. Muthafu … Hit it with full strength … You against me. Me against you. Whatever. Whenever. What the fuck you gonna do?
That what I’m talking about. Grrr.
DMX - X Gon Give It To Ya

