Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

Went with friends to see BBVD last night at the new Snoqualmie Casino that opened up down the road and man can those guys put on a good show.  Hard to believe the band will be turning 16 years old already this February, but, judging by the three new songs they played from the album they recorded in November, they don't seem to be slowing down much. As an aside, to my Garden State readers, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy will be playing at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City on January 10th.

The Snoqualmie Casino's ballroom is a nice enough place, but the lack of a dancefloor made the venue a little odd for a swing band. Seats were lined up 21 rows deep and although we had decent seats (row 19 -- there are no bad seats in this place), the four of us chose to stand in the back so we weren't packed in like sardines. Not to mention this gave us more room to dance (i.e. sway back and forth in traditional white-folk fashion). Other than the lack of a dancefloor, the room was good. Nice and cozy, great acoustics, and a pretty large stage with plenty of lights. Drinks were cheap too.

As for the music, BBVD is obviously struggling with the success of the holiday album they released three years ago because they were practically begging to not have to play any holiday songs. It's primarily all they play from November through Christmas, so they were anxious to play some other stuff. Nevertheless, they did play "Mr. Heatmiser", "Is Zat You Santa Clause" (which was actually far less annoying live than on the holiday album), and a BBVD version of "Frosty the Snowman".

Much to Kristin's delight, they also played "I Wanna Be Like You" which is a super-catchy take on the song from The Jungle Book and I was happy to hear "You & Me & the Bottle Makes Three Tonight" which is one of my favorites of theirs. They also played "Minnie the Moocher" and -- I didn't catch the name -- the first song they ever wrote as a band. And they recorded a new album right before going on tour and played three songs from that. One was a bit slow, the others were more up-tempo.

What really stands out about this band, aside from the singing, is the extraordinary horn section. The five guys on sax, trumpet, and trombone took turns rotating to the front of the stage for a nonstop series of phenomenal solos, at one point straying into what can only be described as dueling horns. Not to be outdone, the pianist, drummer, bassist, and, of course, Scotty on vocals/guitar all had their shining moments too.

They're a really fun band to see and certainly attract a wide range of showgoers. I spotted people in the crowd ranging from the barely-legal age of early twenties to more than a few couples of retirement age.

Check them out at www.bbvd.com or look to Ticketmaster for show times.

Stop, Drop, and Roll!!!

Been listening to the Foxboro Hot Tubs album Stop, Drop, and Roll!!! almost daily for the past few weeks and am completely comfortable recommending it to anybody who considers themselves a fan of Green Day. Why Green Day, you ask? Because Foxboro Hot Tubs is Green Day.

That's right, it's Billy Joe, Tre Cool, and Mike Dirnt, etc., playing what they call "garage music".

The album is an unmistakable off-shoot of Green Day -- Billy Joe's vocals give it away in seconds, even if you didn't know who Foxboro Hot Tubs were -- but it's not nearly as polished and, dare I say, as mature as their last album American Idiot, which I thought was one of the best albums in recent memory (of any band).

If you're an iTunes kind of person, you can get the 13-track album for $9.99. Check out the free previews for "Mother Mary", "Ruby Room" and "Pedestrian" to get a good feel for the album. I could best describe the sound (something I'm admittedly not very good at) as a sixties-rockabilly translation of older Green Day with a touch of lounge-music thrown in. It didn't blow me away from the first listening like American Idiot did, but it definitely grew on me. Give it a whirl.

Accelerate

All I can say is wow.

R.E.M is back. Their new album Accelerate is damn-near fantastic. Easily the best album they've released since Monster back in 1994 and possibly as good as some of their even better earlier stuff. Can this band really be 30-years old?

I never thought I'd buy another R.E.M album after the disaster that was Up -- and I haven't until now -- but Accelerate has a 4.5 star average rating on iTunes from well over a hundred user reviews, and when I saw that I had to give in.

I'm not big on giving song-by-song blows because I'm a pretty poor music critic. I can't describe much at all, I only know what I like. And I like this. Some of the songs definitely remind me of the harder (relatively speaking, of course...) stuff from Monster and Automatic for the People, but there's definitely shades of Life's Rich Pageant and Out of Time on here as well. Gone is the whiny fluff from the previous albums; dispatched is the techy-experimental stuff they dabbled in between Monster and Up and in their place is classic early-to-mid 90's R.E.M.

The only thing marring this otherwise fantastic discovery is that I made the mistake of downloading it from iTunes. The lousy 128k bit-rate sounds like crap and it's not available via iTunes Plus. I should have bought the disc when I saw it in Starbucks tonight. After all, it would have been a nice addition to my collection of 14 other R.E.M albums. I might have to go back and buy the album after all, at least that way I can rip it to to my iPod at a higher bit rate so it doesn't sound as tinny.

But that's all besides the point. If you've ever liked R.E.M, particularly back in the 90's, then you have to pick this up. At the very least, give the songs "Accelerate", "Hollow Man", and "Living Well is the Best Revenge" a listen for a feel of the album. I think you'll like it.

Fun With iTunes: An Exception

I swear I'm not making this up.

I closed my eyes, thumbed through the pages of the dictionary, and pointed to a spot on the page. The word I selected?

The

I kid you not. So I typed it into the search field in iTunes and it spat back 1858 matches, mostly due to album titles and an extensive collection of music by The Beastie Boys. So I hit random play and lo and behold the the first song played was "Ice, Ice, Baby" from the album To The Extreme. No, I don't have the entire album (although I did in high school).

The silver lining to all of this is that I won't have to take out the dictionary and peform this ridiculous method of music selection again for 5 days. And that's if I leave the music playing continuously.

Fun With iTunes

Do you keep your music collection on your PC? Do you use iTunes? Are you tired of creating playlists?

If so, grab a dictionary.

Open to a random page, close your eyes, and point to a word.

Type that word into the Search field in iTunes (make sure you're viewing your entire music collection) and hit enter. Voila! Instant playlist.

Obviously, this works better for those with thousands of songs and, depending on the word, you might get 3 songs and you might get 83, but give it a try. Not only does it produce some pretty odd mixes, but it might just get you listening to stuff you had long since forgotten about.

Update: This tends to work even better if you just type the first four or five letters of the word into the search field, or if you make sure to use the most basic form of the verb. For example, I pointed to "Masticate" in the dictionary and came up with nothing in iTunes. No surprise, there. But when I typed in "Mast" I got about 25 songs, including a Christmas song by Run-DMC and a bunch of Van Morrison! Don't forget the search will return matches from all searchable fields including composer and genre and also any subtitles in parentheses. Good luck.

The Way You Dream

I don't listen to them as much as I used to, but I was a huge R.E.M. fan throughout my high school and college years, otherwise known as the '90s. I had all their albums (Up was the last one I bought, and for good reason) and a 2-disc live recording (i.e. bootleg) I have of theirs from a show they did in a cafe in London -- they went by the psuedonym Bingo Handjob for this show -- with superb sound quality remains one of my favorite albums in my collection. Right up there with U2's Achtung Baby which, for those who don't know me, is saying a lot.

That was a really difficult paragraph to read, I apologize.

So I was sitting at my desk last night listening to the "At Work: Chill Out" station on Yahoo's Launchcast music service and I suddenly found myself listening to Michael Stipe's haunting voice. It's unmistakable. Just like there's no confusing Billy Corgan's voice or Layne Staley's -- they're just too damn unique. I checked the player and the song was listed as being by a group called "1 Giant Leap". The song was The Way You Dream. The blurb on the Launchcast website made no mention of Stipe, yet instead said the self-titled album was the result of a musical tour around the world by two musicians I had never heard of. Apparently there's a documentary film to coincide with the project. The group is categorized as making "world music."

My mind once again drifted to John Cusack and Jack Black's attack on Tim Robbins in High Fidelity and I suddenly wished to own a music shop, or a shop of any kind, just so I could tell someone to "get their patchouli stink outta my store."

World music has strong connotations, obviously.

Well, at the risk of having constant Cusack recollections, I downloaded the nearly nine-minute-long The Way You Dream tonight on iTunes and am tempted to get the whole 1 Giant Leap album. Even if Stipe only guest-sings on that one marathon song. Not that I'm a fan of massage music per se, but there is something damn soothing about this group especially when writing. And yes, this statement is based entirely on exposure to the 30-second clips iTunes feels fit to dole out.

But that's a big committment. I usually wait for Launchcast to introduce me to at least two songs on an album before I take the plunge. So, with that said I opted instead to download Jack Johnson's new album, Sleep Through the Static, as well as Death Cab for Cutie's Plans.

My click-and-shop left me feeling sad though for the shopkeeps of yesteryear who no longer have that opportunity to insult their patrons. I felt as if I stole from them the one thing that kept them coming to work every day, their ability to espouse us with their elitist views.

Perhaps iTunes needs to implement a random-insult generator pop-up. Or, better yet, audio-based commentary linked to what you're browsing! It's not enough for them to post their "Staff Favorites" when the potential exists for "Staff Jerks!" How comforting would it be to have snarky, elitist comments lobbed your way through your PC's speakers based on the albums you're previewing? The biggest complaint against shopping online is the lack of the personal experience one gets from shopping in brick-and-mortar stores. This could silence the critics once and for all! Making people feel insulted and uncomfortable in their own home is the final frontier... if only Apple thought bigger!

Alas, it's probably not to be. But at least the fine employees of Gamestop and Electronics Boutique will always be there to fill this void.

And for that, I feel better already.

X360 iPod Connectivity Issues

I'm really hoping someone else has this problem and can email me a solution. My sanity is in your hands.

I'm having a bit of a problem with my Xbox 360 as it relates to the music on my iPod. It seems that the console took a bit of a "snapshot" of my iPod when I first connected the two for our Labor Day party and now, no matter how many songs I add to the iPod, no matter how many new playlists I create, and even if I rename the iPod, everytime I reconnect the two the X360 only sees the music and playlists that were there back in September.

I've since added a fair number of songs and albums, created new playlists, and even renamed the iPod device in iTunes in hopes that it would cause the game console to refresh, but no. None of my new content appears in any of the search fields on the X360 dashboard display and none of my new playlists even show up on the list. It's as if my console grew very attached to the order of things back on Labor Day and doesn't dare want to allow them to change. I've tried rebooting the iPod while it was connected; I've tried logging out of my gamer profile and seeing if that would cause it to see it for the first time, and I've even rebooted the X360 while the iPod was connected, but nothing seems to matter.

Please let me know if this has ever happened to you and what you did to fix it. Thanks.

Even White Boys Got to Shout

Please don't ask why. Just go to iTunes and spend your 99 cents downloading Jonathan Coulton's rendition of "Baby Got Back".

Even if you absolutely hate Sir Mix-a-Lot's version and, like me, think it set Seattle back a decade in the music scene, you still have to download this song. It's hysterical. And if you do find it enjoyable and want to sample some other Coulton music, I would also recommend "Tom Cruise Crazy", "Pizza Day", "Ikea", and "SkyMall". They're all fantastically catchy and funny and guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

Just be sure when you search iTunes for his stuff, that you type in his full name "Jonathan Coulton" since typing in just his last name will cause your search results to be polluted by the under-sexed histrionics of the devil itself, Ann Coulter.

Unless you're into that sort of thing, in which case I really hope I don't know you. Seriously, you're scaring me.