Golden Dogs

Another Canadian pop band that I’ve forgotten to tell people about.

Luv the guitarz.

Lou & Elvis

Seems like this oughtta be up here. Great cover of ´Femme Fatale´, remedial instruction on ´Sweet Jane´, and more.

The Best Memphis Punk Band You’ve Never Heard Of

Happy Friday, you bastards, you.

In 2012, the documentary I directed about the Antenna club and the vibrant music scene which sprang up around it premiered at the Indie Memphis Film Festival. It had a successful festival run, but a commercial release of Antenna has been repeatedly delayed by music rights issues. With the help of J.D. Reager, we managed to convince Bob Holmes, who had become something of a recluse, to do an interview for the film. For three hours, he regaled us with some of the wildest Memphis music stories I have ever had the good fortune to hear. In order to honor the passing of a Memphis musical genius, I have uploaded the Modifiers segments from Antenna to YouTube and present it here for the first time since 2012.

Thus speaketh documentary director Chris McCoy.

New Strokes

I’m hearing good things about the next album, due April 10. I lost interest in The Strokes after First Impressions of Earth (2006?!), but I’d be hard-pressed to find a better debut album than Is This It.

Here’s a video for one of the new singles, “Bad Decisions.” If it sounds a lot like “Dancing With Myself,” it’s no accident. The band allegedly gave Billy Idol and Tony James songwriting credits to avoid litigation.

As near as I can tell, the message in the video is that The Strokes will be evolving musically, so if you want rehashed older albums (clones), too bad. Oh, and the band members’ faces are deepfaked onto actors playing the clones. Timely!

Rachael & Vilray

Feast your ears, bastards! Rachael Price from Lake Street Dive and songwriter Vilray V. Vilray (no surname) perform new tunes written to sound like those from the 30s and 40s. I’m reminded of a line from A Clockwork Orange, which I am currently re-reading for the first time since college …

Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!

And here’s the NPR podcast from whence I discovered them …

This Should Cheer Up A Certain Bastard

From The Guardian comes this bit of good news for Radiohead fans …

Radiohead have launched a new online archive of their work, called Radiohead Public Library … releasing previously unavailable rarities to streaming services.

Hosted at radiohead.com, the site features archival material grouped around each of the band’s nine studio albums, including music videos, live TV performances, artwork and the group’s quarterly w.a.s.t.e. newsletter series. It also links to the frequently bizarre, nightmarish and labyrinthine previous iterations of their website.

But wait, there’s more! You can order previously out-of-print T-shirt designs from over the years and even listen to Drill, the band’s 1992 EP.

Get to it, you bastard!