U-Dot Music's free digital singles series

Through much of the 00's, I was in a band called Continental. We had, and still have, a label called U-Dot. Even though Continental is no longer an active band, U-Dot continues to function as an outlet for Continental's archived recordings and for music by our close friends and collaborators. The label has abandoned making cds and is instead releasing a series of virtual singles designed to resemble 7" vinyl records. These singles are offered as free downloads and come complete with printable artwork and liner notes/credits.

The fifth single in the series was recently released and it is the best one to date. It's two new songs by Carta, a terrific band from the Bay Area. Carta deservedly garnered great reviews for their 2010 album, An Index Of Birds. These new songs are something of a sneak peak as Carta continues to work on a record that is due sometime in early 2012. U-Dot is very happy to be able to share this new music with you. Check it out: U-Dot

Bon jour!

I've been in Paris the past week or so, with a few days still to go. I have been searching for records high and low and my experiences have been mixed. There aren't nearly as many record stores here as there is in most major US cities, and the ones I have found have been decent, if not mind blowing. All that changed yesterday when GG and I ventured to the outskirts, just a few blocks north of the Parisian city limits.

We went to check out what is billed as Europe's largest flea market. I didn't really expect there to be many records there, but I like a good flea market so I was excited to go. Upon first arrival, the market was very underwhelming with only about 75-100 vendors mostly selling new clothes and athletic shoes. We were done wandering through it, when I looked way down the street and saw what looked like more vendors far on the other side of the freeway. We decided to head over there to take a peek. What we stumbled upon was a huge, no HUGE, flea market and antique/vintage/second hand/army surplus district. There were thousands of shops and vendors along dozens of streets that splintered off every which way. We walked here and there, in and out of tiny passageways loaded with stuff. We were there for four hours and we just scratched the surface.

There weren't too many record vendors, but there was a great one. He had thousands of records in his booth all neatly organized and relatively alphabetic. He even had an auxiliary booth across the aisle that housed his inexpensive, 1.5 euro each, bins. I scored a Rita Lee record from the "dollar" bins! From his regular stock I picked up The Ruts' "The Crack", Young Marble Giants' "Colossal Youth", the first record by Trust a French metal/hard rock band, an old Francois Hardy record. I can't tell you how excited I was. It was a really great day of record shopping and one that I'd been itching for since our plane landed a week ago.

ATP NY

I've posted about potential ATP NY lineups before. But, seeing as I'm not 100% stoked about the 2010 lineup thus far, I thought I'd take a stab at putting together a roster that would rule (and still be somewhat possible). Here's what a Cats On Holiday curated ATP would look like:

Day One: Don't Look Back series

Fugazi - perform The Argument
Buzzcocks - perform Love Bites
ESG - perform Come Away With ESG
Beat Happening - perform You Turn Me On
Greg Sage/Wipers - performing Over The Edge
Jawbox - perform For Your Own Special Sweetheart
Electrelane - perform No Shouts No Calls

Day Two:

PJ Harvey
St. Vincent
Dirty Projectors
The XX
jj
Konono no 1
Beach House
Jim O'Rourke
M83
Nels Cline Singers
Sleigh Bells
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Wild Nothing
Grouper

Day three:

Grinderman
Bonnie Prince Billy
Liars
Blues Control
Sunburned
Talk Normal
Woods
Dum Dum Girls
Abe Vigoda
Kurt Vile
Holly Golightly
Zola Jesus
Blank Dogs
Nina Nastasia

Comedy curated by Louis CK
Sound installation by Brian Eno



Is something like that possible? It's not too crazy is it (aside from Fugazi, who would never play a festival)?

Alex Chilton, thanks

I'm sure a lot will be written about Alex Chilton and Big Star in the coming days, but I've got to add a little post anyway. I, like many people my age, first heard of Alex via the great Replacements song, "Alex Chilton". The song was one of my favorites, as it was instantly likable and memorable. It also made me curious to hear what Alex Chilton and Big Star sounded like. I tracked down a cd containing #1 Record and Radio City. Needless to say, Big Star quickly became one of my favorite bands and have remained near and dear to me some 20-plus years later.

Goodbye Alex Chilton. Thank you for all those great songs.

"I never go too far, without a little Big Star" - P.Westerberg

The true story of how Nirvana's Negative Creep saved my life

When I was nineteen years old, me and my best friend Phil, moved from our little rural towns in the central California foothills up to Stockton to go to school and to start our lives away from our parents. I don't remember why we picked Stockton exactly, but it did have a nice community college, Delta.

We started going to Delta in the Fall of 1989, and we soon noticed flyers around campus advertising for punk rock and "college rock" shows in a place called The Cattle Club in Sacramento. We took note of quite a few shows that we wanted to go to, but we had no idea how far away Sacramento was, or how we would even find this club once we got there. On Feb. 12th, 1990 we finally felt bored and adventurous enough to get in the car and find this Cattle Club so we could check out a band I'd read about in Pulse! called "Nirvana". We'd never heard Nirvana, but we decided to go anyway. Well, we had our teenage minds completely blown away that night. Neither one of us had been to that many shows at that time because there simply was none where we grew up. We could barely even dial in the college radio station from our parent's houses. So, we were already freaking out when we walked in to the small, smelly, cramped room where TAD was in the midst of destroying eardrums with their sludgy metal. By the time Nirvana started, I knew it was going to be a memorable evening. I recall Nirvana being extremely powerful live, with a frenetic energy and tunes at once aggressive and memorable. As a matter of fact, here is a link to video of this show in its entirety. No need for me to try to describe it:

http://callenostalgia.blogspot.com/2008/12/nirvana-live-at-cattle-club-1990-video.html

In the weeks following this show I tracked down and purchased the sole copies of Bleach and the Blew EP that Tower had in stock. I played those records daily, for months and months on end. By the summer, I had a job working construction about a two hour drive from Stockton up in the hills. I had to leave our apartment by 5 am to make the 7 am start time. It was a rough, lonely drive on desolate country roads. Bleach was what I blasted out of my shitty stereo every day, desperately trying to stay alert and awake in the hours before sunrise. The cassette player was set on "auto-play" and I would let it roll through two or three times, back to back to back. It was between side 1 and side 2 one morning when I started to nod off. In those 30 seconds of silence I completely fell asleep.

Just then, Negative Creep came roaring in, scaring the crap out of me and shocking me wide awake. As I had fallen asleep, the car drifted to the right and was just about to head down a steep embankment. Startled and fully panicked, I jerked the car back on the road and whipped around a corner going way too fast. Luckily, I didn't overcorrect and I gained full control of the car at just about the last possible moment. I drove for a mile or so, stunned, confused, my heart pounding. I turned the music down, pulled over at the next turnout and tried to gather myself. I took a few deep breaths and it suddenly hit me, Nirvana had literally just saved my life. The music I had become rather obsessed with had had an actual impact on my life.

Now, I reckon it could have been any band or record or song in this story and things might have turned out the same way. But it wasn't. This experience not only deepened my fondness for the music, but made my connection to it seem even that much more personal. I guess that is what music is supposed to do. It's supposed to become part of our lives. To enrich them. To make them better. And even on occasion, to save them.

WFMU roools

WFMU is a great radio station out of New Jersey. They have tons of free music available for download on their website here: http://freemusicarchive.org/curator/WFMU/collections

If you live in the NYC area tune in at 91.1 FM. Or listen online: http://wfmu.org/

My favorite WFMU show is Diane's Kamikaze Fun Machine, Thursdays 3 pm to 6 pm (EST).

Currently, I am listening to Harmonia's incredible set from ATP NY 2008.

Thanks WFMU.

Hello? Hello? Testing. Is this thing on?

Stupefying.

Best Day Ever.

My Life With Records, Vol. 1, 11/2/08

My friend Gabe and I have been talking about doing a blog/podcast of records we have recently purchased for some time now. When we lived in the same city, the idea of such a podcast/blog was mostly for our friends and other nerdy record collector types. But, now that we live on opposite ends of the country, it can be a way for us to keep up with each others finds as well.

I'll try to work on a podcast so that you may be able to hear some of the records that I'll be posting here, but for now you'll have to settle for pics and descriptions.

Anyway, here is the first installment of what I hope to be a regular thing:

Last weekend I went to the New York Art Book Fair, where you wouldn't expect to find music, but of course I did. Amongst all the book, zine, chapbook publishers and art dealers at the fair, was a table by Fuck It Tapes. They had some cool zines and a whole bunch of rad cassette tapes. I wanted to buy five or six of their tapes, but having a limited amount of cash on hand, I decided on Sunburned Hand of the Man's "The Pegadrift". I just had to get it over the other tapes because I am a huge SHOTM fan and this cassette is a limited edition of 100. I had never seen it before or even knew that it existed. 

Side 1 of The Pegadrift is one long droney, blissed out, instrumental mess. It's wonderful. So much better than 2007's "Z" album, which is similar but not nearly as interesting.

Side 2 finds Sunburned in their freaky freakout mode. Clattering drums, guitar scrapes/feedback, strange rambling vocals and shouting. It's filled with angst and tension. It's the kind of stuff that drives my wife crazy, but I think is fun to listen to. 

check it out: http://www.fuckittapes.com/fuckittapes.htm

Next up is a group of 7" vinyl that I got at the flea market:

Carole King - One Fine Day b/w Rulers of This World 

Badfinger -  Come and Get It b/w Rock of All Ages

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Lookin' Out My Back Door b/w Long As I Can See the Light

Frjid Pink - House of the Rising Sun b/w Drivin' Blues 

"One Fine Day" is a classic Goffin-King pop gem. I love Carole King's voice. It reminds me of my childhood, even though I don't think my parents listened to her that much. I don't know what it is about her, but every time I hear that voice I'm nine years old again. "Rulers of This World" is a slow, somber song, asking for peace and an end to war. This song doesn't seem to appear on any Carole King albums or compilations. Written by King, Goffin and Goldberg, with string arrangements by Jack Nitzche. 

Badfinger's "Come and Get It" is a bouncy Paul McCartney song. Perhaps not Sir Paul's finest song ever, but Badfinger did it really well, making it is easy to see why so many people thought of them as Beatles clones. "Rock of All Ages" may surprise those only familiar with their mellower hit songs like "Day After Day" or "No Matter What". This is a rock 'n roll song by a band that didn't rock out often enough, especially given the excellence of this performance. That's not to say that I don't like their mellower stuff, "Baby Blue" is one of my favorite songs of all time. I just wished they would have recorded more straight up rockers like this, because they were really great at it too. This record is Apple 1815, released in 1970. It was Apple Records' 15th release and the first single by Badfinger for the label. 

A little online research dates this CCR record (FANT-645 for you collector types) as a 1970 release, with "Lookin Out My Back Door" as the A side. These are both great songs that everyone knows, or should know. 

Frijid Pink had a hit with "House of the Rising Sun". I hate that song, and I hate this version too. The B side, "Drivin' Blues", is bluesy proto-heavy metal akin to Ten Years After or Mountain. Neither track is very impressive, but I picked this 45 up because copies of the Frijid Pink album are expensive and hard to come by and I've always been curious to hear them. Anyway, this record is Parrot-341, released in 1969.

None of these records are earth shattering, but they were definitely worth the three bucks I paid for them. I'm sure I'll be breaking out the Badfinger 45 regularly, as I'm already humming "Come and Get it" after two plays. 

Black Candy