Here’s a few other music documentaries to tide you over while you wait:

• Dig – A fascinating look at two bands trying to “make it”.  One succeeds, the other not so much.  In addition to the music, a great character study of the two lead singers.
• Power of Salad – A little harder to find, but a great short documentary about noise rock pioneers Lightning Bolt.  Shows off the adrenaline and racket (I saw them once and it was definitely the loudest show I’ve witnessed) of their live show, as they rock anywhere from small clubs to some dudes’ kitchen.
• The Filth and the Fury – Telling the story of the Sex Pistols makes for good film, and Julien Temple does not disappoint with candid comments from the surviving members.
• Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii - Of course Pink Floyd would play a live set in the ruins of an amphitheater at Pompeii.  Filmed in 1972, before Dark Side, this covers material from Saucerful of Secrets and Meddle, with some in-studio cut-aways to the making of Dark Side.

I could keep on going, but that should be a good start.  Any one else have any favorite music documentaries?

…Perry Farrell’s band had to get famous enough to get people to buy into his idea of a traveling festival of alterna-rock and hip-hop.  With the first single off their second proper album, they were on their way, cementing that fame with the even more popular Been Caught Stealing (though I’ll never quite understand that song’s popularity, that song irritates the hell out of me).

As an album opener, Stop definitely draws you in.  A female voice, speaking in Spanish, introduces us to “Juana’s addicion.”  And then, unlike it’s title suggests, Stop is off to the races.  In terms of tempo, the album starts off at a 10 and slowly winds down to the positively mellow Classic Girl.

Dave Navarro’s guitar riff sets you up, and then Perry knocks you down as he shouts “Here We Go!”  and the drums and bass kick in.  The frenetic pace continues until about halfway through the song, when the tempo, but not the intensity, slows down to let you catch your breath.  Dave then has a wild guitar solo while drummer Stephen Perkins’ hi-hat and snare hits bounce off the walls.  Throughout Perry’s lyrics, which when you read them on the page make absolutely no sense, are given a good amount of echo that kinda of takes away from the somewhat nasally delivery he has.

I also like at the end of the song, the band gives you a gotcha moment, since when the music fades out and Perry is left singing alone, you’re expecting the song to end.  Instead, they hit you one more time with all their fury.

The band has recently reformed, minus original bassist Eric Avery, and released new material.  Predictably, the album has not gotten much love.  This is in no small part to the legacy left to critics and fans alike by songs like this one.  Older and relatively more sober, I think it’s unfair to expect bands that were so raw in their prime to create another Stop or something with the epic sprawl of Mountain Song.  But therein lies the rub.  Those great songs give bands freedom to keep trying, much like previous success on the gridiron will ensure that Dan Synder will try to sign you to his football team. The results aren’t usually pretty and you go back to your music vault for those classics (or in Synder’s case you go to the NFL Films vaults to watch video of when his veteran players were actually good):

• Following up on my mini-rant about Spotify, I did have a little back and forth with customer support on email that resulted in a suggestion to try downloading their new Beta version.  Not exactly fixing the existing problem, but for now it seems to have done the trick.  The new beta seems to be functioning well; still puzzled what happened with the production version I was running.  As I said before, I like the huge library they have and the ease of use, but I’m worried about the long-term viability of their service.

• This week I started my Google Music account and downloaded a few free songs from their for sale collection on the Android Marketplace.  There’s some decent songs for free download that you might not have in your library.  It moved out of a beta version in November, I just hadn’t had the time to check it out until now.  The interface was easy to jump into and the ability to store up to 20K songs is intriguing.  I haven’t yet uploaded my music library, but probably will at some point, if for no other reason than to have it stored somewhere else than on my computer.  A good introductory how-to guide is on CNET.

• In my thoughts on best of, I probably should have put another album that has gotten a lot of rotation in our house since it came out, the Civil Wars’ Barton Hollow.  It’s become a go-to album when you just want to relax and be soothed by some great voices accompanied by spare but beautiful guitar.  And the Cults self-titled debut is top-to-bottom filled with some really good tunes, try Bad Things for a track you probably haven’t heard from that album.

• I’m just finishing up another Rough Trade music book, this one was called The Best Music You’ve Never Heard.  I really enjoyed this; while there are quite a few names that I recognized (though hadn’t necessarily listened to a great deal), there were also quite a few new singers and bands that were covered that I had never heard of.  Skewing a bit heavy on 60s era bands, there is still a lot to find for lovers of most music genres in here (section titles range from “I Write the Songs” about singer-songwriters to “Not for Export” covering reggae and world music).  I found enough stuff in here that I would at least like to check out to cover all of 2012.

• I haven’t written much at all about soundtracks in this blog, but I recently bought my first full soundtrack in awhile.  I grew up with the Muppets: the TV show, the first Muppets Movie is the first movie I recollect seeing in the theaters, and I distinctly remember collecting the souvenir glasses from McDonald’s that were a tie-in to the Great Muppet Caper, I even dressed up as Animal for Halloween this year.  I recently went and saw the movie, and it was very good, suprisingly so.  Part of why it was so good was the music, which has always been an integral part of the Muppet experience.  Jason Segal and Amy Adams both have some good numbers and we’ve definitely been singing Man or a Muppet around our house.  My personal favorite is Fozzie’s bastardization of Rainbow Connection for a Reno casino lounge act.    Waka waka!

• Leave you for the year with a track from the new Roots album (still digesting this one, not sure if it measures up to Things Fall Apart as a whole, but definitely some good grooves):

Best (and worst) music platform – Since it came to our shores earlier this year, I’ve been a big fan of Spotify.  One of my recurring posts this year revolved around recounting what I’d been listening to on Spotify.  Easy to use with a huge library, it was a great way to listen to new albums in their entirety as well as catch up on old albums I haven’t heard since I had a cassette player.  So why’s it also get a worst nod.  A few weeks ago, it started crashing my computer any time I tried to run it.  Like total freeze-up crash, have to manually power down and restart the machine crashes.  In trying to find an answer, I’ve uncovered a wealth of problems others have with the app.  I also found that customer support is spotty (sorry).  I finally found a customer support email; I did finally get a response after two weeks, asking me what version of Spotify I was running.  We’ll see if they can come up with a solution.  Wonder if the expansion to the US has overextended the service and its employees?  Only time will tell.  In the meantime, I’m going to be checking out turntable.fm and rdio to see what they have to offer in 2012.

Best Concert – Ben Folds at The Wiltern.  I loved the stage banter, the energy, and the music was phenomenal.  I went in with only a little bit of knowledge about his music, but I left wanting to hear more and learn more about him.  That’s the mark of a good concert.  Honorable mention to Portishead and to John Vanderslice.  I didn’t write about the Vanderslice show, but I’ve seen him three times now and each show has been distinctly different.  And his drummer, Jason, was amazing to watch.  I ended up missing the Bon Iver show, but Sarah told me that it was very good (I believe her).

Favorite Album – Rome by DangerMouse and Daniele Luppi.  I feel like a lot of year-end lists become top heavy with material released toward the end of the year, which I understand since the songs are fresh in reviewer’s mind.  Rome came out in May, which is a long time ago in today’s millisecond attention-span world.  I also am also only basing my choice on albums I actually listened to in their entirety, which I admit isn’t a lot.  But, I come back to this one because, like his collaboration last year as Broken Bells, as an entire album, the songs meld into a cohesive unit and he can just really create a vibe.  Here, he’s wisking you away to the set of spaghetti westerns with a tribute to the soundtrack sound of that era (most notably Ennio Morricone).  Honorable mention to Little Dragon’s Ritual Union, for the same reason basically.  A lovely arrangement of electronic music that makes you stop thinking of individual songs (much better than the sprawling and Pitchfork-loved M83 album, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming).

Biggest Surprise – The Whole Love by Wilco.  After Sky Blue Sky, I kind of lost interest in Wilco and didn’t even bother to listen to their next album.  They seemed to have lost a lot of their bite, both lyrically and musically, from previous records.  I had heard nothing of their new album, but decided to give it a listen when NPR was doing a free preview of the album.  To my amazement, I heard the rockin’ Wilco from Summerteeth days.  I’ve seen Wilco twice, now I have a new reason to go see them a third time other than Jeff Tweedy’s amusing stage talk.  Honorable mention to the Beastie Boy’s new album, Hot Sauce Committee Part 2.  Another group that I had just lost some interest in, but this re-ignited interest.

Best Music Book – Read the super comprehensive history of the Velvet Underground put out by Rough Trade.  Not knowing much about the band other than the songs on their greatest hits albums, this was a good and thorough introduction to the band, as well as the solo careers of all its members.  Can be a bit overwhelming, but overall a good read.

I’ll try and come back with a few more year end thoughts before the year actually ends, but if not, have a great new year filled with good tunes and good times.

As a remixer, if you’re presented with a song that’s already really good, there’s probably some trepidation about taking that one as a project.  There’s a very good chance you’re not going to live up to the original with its fans, and with something that’s good already why mess with it.  You probably have to try to do something radical to try and get people to reexamine their conception of song, which I usually find pretty bad (I’m looking in the general direction of anyone remixing Radiohead).

In the case of Mad Professor’s remix of Massive Attack’s Karmacoma, a standout from Attack’s excellent album Protection, he doesn’t go for a remake, he goes for an addition.  As in, let’s take this spacy, dubbed-out track and let’s add on to that.  Let’s make it spacier, let’s make it dubbier, way dubbier.  Now this probably wasn’t a stretch for Mad Professor, as the London by way of Guyana producer is an heir to the dub throne of pioneers like Lee Perry and King Tubby.  According to the little I could find about the record online, Massive Attack approached the Professor to remix a track, which then eventually morphed into asking him to remix the entire album, which he did (more or less, one album track and a live track from the original aren’t on the remix).  This seems plausible, especially since the trip-hop of Massive Attack seems right in the wheelhouse for a dub producer to tackle.  This remix album has got to be one of the best all-time, as every single one of the eight tracks he takes on is entirely listenable and as a whole the album is every bit as cohesive as its source material.

With Karmacoma, he doesn’t wast time, taking the existing beat which is already pretty beefy, and giving it that calling-card dub echo that cascades away into nothingness and a more booming bassline.  Stabs of synths, like lasers shooting through space, pierce the layer of bass.  Noticeably missing are Tricky’s lyrics from the original.  While they are key element of why I like the original, they are oddly not missed here.  I get so lost in all the dimensions of sound in Mad Professor’s version that lyrics would take away from that feeling.

This is probably the only song I can think of out of Michael Jackson’s catalog where the music clearly is the star.  Ok, it’s mostly an instrumental track from their 1971 TV special, but he does sing so I’m sticking to my statement.  I’m not familiar with much of the 5′s discography beyond their number 1′s with Motown, but the first time you hear this, I don’t think they would be the first band that comes to mind (this ain’t ABC).  Maybe Parliament at their rockiest or maybe the Stooges trying to get their funk on.

The guitar riff is actually lifted from Isaac Haye’s 1969 funk epic Walk On By, though the Jacksons’ version is even more fuzzed out than the original.  The snare hits provide a snappy compliment to that guitar, all the while surrounded by meaty bass drum kicks and an ominous organ/keyboard.  The song’s funk-rock vibe is made even clearer when the song quickly transitions to the upbeat and poppy The Love You Save (a great song in its own right).

I think the greatest testament to the groove that the Jackson 5 created here is that Public Enemy sampled a loop from the song for their 1991 politically charged By The Time I Get to Arizona from Apocalypse 91…The Enemy Strikes Black.  Interestingly, the loop includes the screaming teenage fans heard on the live recording.  While crowd noise on live records can sometimes be a distraction, for some reason I can’t imagine Walk On without those screaming kids and it serves PE’s song well too.

Jackson would go back to guitar-driven backing in his solo career, with Beat It being the most obvious example, but nothing ever as heavy as this.

Here’s the live clip though not with the best audio.  Enjoy the dance moves:

On their website, Amoeba dubs its Hollywood store as the world’s largest independent record store.  That’s no joke, walking in I was struck by the size of the store.  It reminded me of some of the old Tower Records locations (RIP).  Rows and rows of bins with CDs confront you after you get past the cash registers.  They sell both new and used CDs, as well as records, cassettes (!), DVDs, books and magazines.  The rock section dominates the main floor, including smaller areas for rock subgenres (you’re not going to find a death metal section at Best Buy).  Toward the back of the store is another whole section with jazz, blues, classical and soundtracks.

That back section, which played jazz selections over a PA, offered some respite from the frenzy of the main floor.  Their CDs being encased in plastic guards, there was a steady CLACK CLACK CLACK as patrons shuffled through CDs.  While we were there, the main PA was playing Aphex Twin (again not something you’d hear at Best Buy), which I thought was very cool.  The people watching was good too, skate kids, goths, hippies all milled around each other, searching for their musical match.

The selection was good, the prices were a little more expensive than you could get online for the new stuff, but their were good deals to be found in the used bins.  Wanting to get something new, I picked up My Morning Jacket’s Z.  I was also looking for some older Sharon Jones stuff but initially couldn’t find anything.  I thought that was odd, but then I found a whole Soul section tucked away on the other side of the main floor.  I ended up getting Sharon Jones and the Dap King’s Dap Dippin’ With… and for some local LA flavor, the Thee Midniters In Thee Midnite Hour and needed to vacate the area before I bought a lot more.

I am definitely going to head back to Amoeba in the future, if for nothing else to remember that feeling of glee that I had as a youngster thumbing through CDs and records at local record stores.

• Black Lips, Arabia Mountain.  The latest album from the Atlanta garage rockers, I was relieved to see they’d ditched some of the darker, slower numbers from the second half their last album.  I was wondering whether Mark Ronson’s influence (he produced the album) would be evident, but I didn’t really feel this was anything much different than other Black Lips albums, which is fine by me.  They still are standard bearers for the latest generation of garage rock bands.  Favorite song so far, the whistle-driven “Raw Meat.”
• M83, Hurry Up We’re Dreaming.  Garnering a 9.1 review from Pitchfork that included some rapturous praise, I decided to check out this double-CD.  There’s some good stuff on here that veers toward shoegaze (my favorite track was “Wait”), but overall I wasn’t understanding the “epic”-ness that this album was characterized with.
• Justice, Audio, Video, Disco.  Another album from an electronic artist, but this one is a serious curveball.  The French duo’s first album was full of some club-ready bangers, most notably the true-to-its-name “D.A.N.C.E.”  Their followup, while referencing disco in the title, has its main influence in the progressive rock of the 1970s (think Rush, Yes, Queen, etc.).  While I applaud their effort to pay homage to music that they obviously love, I have a feeling they didn’t really care if this alienated fans of their first album.  While songs like “Canon” are enjoyable as  pastiches of prog stomp (think Queen) and noodling, as an album it just didn’t hold up.
• El-P, Rush Over Bklyn.  Continuing the prog revival is El-P with his latest single.  Ummm, yeah you probably weren’t expecting to ever read that sentence.  The independent MC and producer is known for dense, complicated beats and equally complex rhymes.  Released on Legitmix, a new outlet for artists to legally sample copyrighted music without going through sample-clearing process, El-P actually makes a hip-hop song work with the main samples consisting of Rush’s “Tom Sawyer”.  You can listen to it here.
• Black Keys, Lonely Boy.  Since this single came out, several other songs from the forthcoming El Camino have also been released.  So far, this would be the stand out track from the ones I’ve heard.  Continuing some of the more upbeat, less bluesy tunes on the fabulous Brothers album, this is a hard-charging tune that still packs in some cool riffs and a very catchy chorus.  And much like the Keys, a simple yet effective video accompanies the song:

• A good chunk of the time period for the list was a dark ages of finding new music in the “indie rock” world as I generally had other stuff going on in my life and what new music I was into was mostly in the East Coast independent hip-hop scene and electronic music.  So, there’s some stuff from this list that I definitely want to check out.  The Foals and the Libertines each have a song in the top 20 and I don’t really know anything about them, much less have heard these two songs in particular.
• Radiohead clocks in with 5 songs, including #1 Paranoid Android.  My thinking is that over a time period of 15 years, there’s so much music getting put out that any one band getting more than 2 songs in a list like this leaves me skeptical.  As for Paranoid Android, I can think of several songs on OK Computer that I would have put ahead of that song, so obviously it wouldn’t be my #1.
• I’m a big Blur fan, so while I understand the inclusion of Song #2, it’s not really representative of some of the really good music in their post-1996 output.  Coffee & TV, if I had to choose one song, would be it.
• I’d flip-flop White Stripes’ Fell In Love With a Girl and Seven Nation Army.  Seven Nation definitely would be in the top 10 for me, I can’t get enough of that beat.
• Nothing from DangerMouse’s Grey Album?  The king of mashups didn’t have a song better than Crystal Castles?  I don’t think so.
• Also no love for Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings.  I could think of a few tracks that could easily make the list.  From their last album, say Money?
• And probably the biggest omission, no Black Keys.  What?!  Their last album is an absolute classic, and opener Everlasting Light would be a top 20 track for me.
• Glad that Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony got such a high rank.  Such a good song and kudos such is this is pretty much all the band gets from the song, thanks to Allen Klein.

Fast forward 17 years, and before Tuesday’s Portishead  show, I’m telling my girlfriend that this would probably be the only time I got to see Portishead in my lifetime.  They’ve put out three albums in the past 15 years.  They tour even more infrequently than they put out albums, the last time they did a tour in the US was over a decade ago.  I’m not sure they’ll ever actually release another album (though they’re rumored to being working on one), which means they’ll probably just play big festivals, which I usually don’t attend.

So, combine that rarity and my admiration for their music, and well I was pretty jacked about this show.  And I did not leave disappointed.

We got to the Shrine Auditorium part of the way through opener Thought Forms.  The auditorium is cavernous and from the look of its parquet floor, it must have been a gymnasium in the past.  A second level above the auditorium floor was already rung with people.  We ended up going outside for the rest of the opener’s set, their dirge-like instrumentals didn’t really appeal to us and they seemed to get lost in the enormity of the room.

Having played plenty of festivals, Portishead showed no such troubles.  They owned the room.  The setlist veered more to their last album, Third, which makes sense given its by far their newest material.  Those songs have a spacier vibe than the older material and there were a few times I had the thought that I was hearing a cross between hip hop and Pink Floyd (this is a good thing).  But, for me the highlights were in the material from the aforementioned Dummy and their self-titled follow-up.  Sour Times, the song that broke the band into semi-fame in 1994, was given a tempo boost and a more bouncy musical accompaniment (it could have been the Daptones playing with Gibbons) than the melancholy album version.  I think quite a few people didn’t even realize they were playing it until the chorus as it didn’t get the sort of raucous greeting some of their other “oldies” did.  The LA Times reviewer yesterday hinted that they sped through the song because they wanted to get back to their new material rather than play the hit song.  I didn’t see it that way, I just saw a band showing their versatility and putting a new spin on one of their most recognizable tracks.

The highlight of the show though, was a stripped down version of another stand-out from Dummy, Wandering Star.  The trio was joined for most of the night by three additional musicians, but for this track it was just the three of them.  Barrow left his turntables and keyboards and took up a guitar, kneeling before Gibbons.  Gibbons seemed to be singing directly into his guitar, her voice mingling with the sounds emanating from Barrow’s instrument which took up the slack for the vinyl scratching and samples of the original.  The bassline from the original was only a faint heartbeat here.  Gibbons voice was the star, and this song more than any other spotlighted her spectacular voice, clear while at the same time conveying a sweet fragility.

Besides the band, the other star of the show was the tremendous visual package that accompanied the music.  The only other show I can think of that did such a good job with visuals was a Jesus & Mary Chain show back in my early 20s.  It was not so much a light show, like the good one Lykke Li did earlier this summer, though there was a little of that, but mostly a use of a large video screen that was an integral part of the show.

Cameras had been placed at various places on the stage, so that you could get a black and white image from the stage magnified onto the video screen.  The first shot of the concert was the hi-hat cymbal, and throughout the show other images such as Gibbons singing or a bass drum pedal view (which I thought was really cool) were projected, often in connection with other visuals (see the image at the top of the post with Gibbons superimposed with an instrument meter).  At times, the images would pulsate and rotate in concert with the music.  Squiggly lines that danced with the beats appeared at other times.  The most captivating visuals came during The Rip.  Another track from Third driven by a brooding synth groove, the screen showcased hand-illustrated images that continually morphed from one thing into another, often with disturbing results.  It was as if Gerald Scarfe (of The Wall movie fame) had been given a box of crayons.

The concert ended with an encore of Roads and We Carry On, combining another Dummy stand-0ut with my favorite track from their newest disc.  As the house lights went up, a camera from behind the drummer’s view showed the cheering crowd and gave a cool view of what the band was getting to see during their set (last photo).  If this was indeed the only time I ever see Portishead, I’m satisfied that I saw a great performance by them.

Video of Wandering Star: