A Video While You Wait

February 14, 2008 by David Fountain

I'm currently putting together a post about a rather controversial topic. There's really only a few bands that can enter into the competition for "best band or all time". You've got your Beatles, your Rollings Stones, your Led Zeps. Somebody might say "The Replacements", but they are just trying to be difficult (sorry, Paul Westerberg, it's nothing personal).

Really though, there don't seem to be any American bands that belong on the shortlist. The British Invasion was without a doubt the most important few years of rock history. It melded the swing-shuffle rock of Buddy Holly with the gritty blues of Chicago and the Mississippi Delta. The effects of it are everywhere still. Britain upped the stakes and America never really matched them. The Ramones  more or less invented punk (USA! USA!), but then The Clash (a British band!) took the genre and gave it social relevance.

 So, who is the best American band of all time? Is it Aerosmith (no)? Is it Bon Jovi (dear god no)? The Eagles (Even if I weren't having a bad day, I would still hate the Eagles)? KISS (guhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)?

It looks like I have a lot of pondering to do.

Until then, please enjoy these videos from the ill-fated movie version of Sgt. Pepper's. Apparently there were a few months in 1978 when someone had John Lennon tied to a chair. The first one is The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton (seriously? The Bee Gees? I know they were hot at the time...but come on) completely ruining the Abbey Road medley. The second one is Earth Wind and Fire's version of "Got to Get You Into My Life", for which I recommend you turn up your speakers and turn off your monitor.

 

News! Info! Updates! Stuff!

February 07, 2008 by David Fountain

Hi folks!

Apologies for the lack of updates. It has been a crazy few weeks! Here is a rundown of what's going on in my life:

1) I Bought a House

Damn right! I'm closing tomorrow on an amazing place in East Atlanta, the coolest section of town, in my completely unbiased opinion. It's the WACKIEST HOUSE EVER! Here is what it looks like:

 

I don't know if you remember the show Dino Riders or not, but it looks a lot like the stegasaurus to me. The previous owner began renovating it about 10 years ago, then ran out of money. It's only about 70% of the way there, but will eventually be awesome. Details (and tons of pictures, all with better resolution than the one I have now) to follow.

2) I Became a Full-Fledged Producer

A bit of a band etymology (for lack of a better word) for you: In my high school, there were 3 pretty decent bands. There was Uncle Cha Cha and the Big Top Boys (my band), Portable 21 (my friends Jeff and Brent), and then a third band of guys a few years below us. After graduation, Brent started a band called The Letters Organize, which did a few Warped Tours, a few SXSW bids, did a European tour with The Offspring, and garnered rave reviews from the press, and more importantly, Dave Grohl. Jeff joined the third band and they became Cartel.

Since then, Cartel has stayed together and done pretty well for themselves (hello "Band in a Bubble"!). But The Letters broke up. I randomly ran into Brent shortly after moving back to Atlanta and met his new band, It's Elephant's. We hung out and clicked. SOOOO for the past week or so I have been with them in the studio, producing their first album. It sounds amazing. Enormous sound, especially out of a trio. Orrrrrr they might be a quartet soon and I might be a lot busier.  I will keep everyone updated.

3. My Album Went Up on the iTunes Store

Yes! I'm really excited about this. It's a big boost for me to see it there. Happy happy happy. You can check it out by clicking here :

Write a review or something.

 

Alright folks, that's all for now. 

 

R.I.P. 99x

January 31, 2008 by David Fountain

99x is no more

99x. The station that introduced me to Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam...pretty much every single band I liked between 1992 and 2000 or so. The only station I had programmed into my radio's memory during high school. It's just...gone. Poof.

For those of you who aren't Atlanta based, this news means nothing. I realize that. I just need to vent for a bit.

In 1992, 99x became one of the first (if not the first) stations in the country to shift their format to "all-alternative" music. It happened so quickly that no one noticed it. The 99.7 frequency had been occupied by "Power 99", a Top 40 station, for years. Without warning, the format and the name changed. I remember tuning in one night and hearing "Life is a Highway" by Tom Cochran. A few minutes there was this weird noise, and then "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was on. For better or for worse, 99x signaled a change. If Nevermind was a stone thrown into a lake, 99x was ripple that hit me. 

Since those glory days of grunge, 99x lost some steam. I will admit that. The original morning crew, (Barnes, Leslie and Jimmy, the ONLY thing anyone listened to during the drive to high school) disbanded and gave way to lesser incarnations. The concerts they sponsored went from being monumental happenings to just being OK. And that's understandable. The world changed. Success spoiled things. Alternative music gave birth to nu-metal and modern emo, and by locking themselves into "alternative" music, 99x was locked into playing bands that were the copies of the copies of the copies of the bands they originally played.

And this is where that ripple that hit me years ago hits you. That twinge I felt in my stomach over 99x's disappearance...if you haven't experienced this, you will.

Rock and roll's meteoric rise in the late 1950's happened in part because of the emergence of radio. The shift to FM radio in the following decade was equally important (and provided Steely Dan with a title for an awesome song). It was this new format that had few rules and could therefore serve as a vehicle for DJs to play interesting music. And because these guys did this, we got rock and roll. These days, analog radio is a barren wasteland of utter crap. It's become homogenized to the point that you can almost guess the next song before it plays. The single biggest instigator of musical change in the 50s 60s is dead. I guess it's been this way for a while, I just didn't want to admit it.

 

 

You Probably Already Know About This, But...

January 27, 2008 by David Fountain

Yesterday at work, I felt a sudden and desperate urge to hear the song "Care of Cell 44" by The Zombies. Had I been at home, I could have either popped in the CD, played it off iTunes, or plugged my iPod into the stereo and played it that way. Awesome. I love technology. Sadly, my work computer is terrible. I am stuck using a Windows ME system, on which I don't have the user privileges to do ANYTHING. On my first day of work, I turned on my computer and the 15" CRT monitor attached to it to discover this. The whole thing was a tech nerd's nightmare. The desktop was cluttered with shortcuts to AOL and MoneyMAX PRO 2000 and random mp3s that the previous user had downloaded. FROM LIMEWIRE. Oh dear. I figured the best thing to do was uninstall all the crap, install AdAware, and replace IE with Firefox. Unfortunately, I couldn't do that. I couldn't even delete the shortcuts from the desktop.

 Oh dear.

Anyway, as I was saying, I'm sitting in front of this hobbled piece of crap computer yesterday and all I want to do is hear this song. Then I remembered a fantastic little Google hack that allows you to search for files within open directories. I know that this has been around for a while, but it's a fantastic trick that I want to make sure everyone knows about.

Simply go to Google and type:

"song or artist name" intitle:index.of mp3 -html -htm -php -asp

Replace "song or artist name" with what you're looking for and you'll get a lovely page of results to comb through.

Now, it's really really hard to remember this code. That's why there are sites like Musgle that remember for you. Musgle is basically just this code with a nice looking GUI on top of it:

(click for bigger)

 

Now, searching takes me to this:

As you can see, there are two directories that have a song called "Care of Cell 44" in them. One appears to be by the Zombies and one is a cover version by Elliot Smith. I love Elliot Smith, but I really want to hear the original, so I click the first link and get this:

Bam. Click the link and you can listen. 

You'll run into a lot of 404's, but there are some AMAZING directories out there.  And if you had something like Downthemall installed, you could do some pretty interesting things. Just saying.

Alright, my first informative post! Happy hunting!

 

iTunes is for Lovers

January 15, 2008 by David Fountain

Oh internet, you bastard.
 

Sometimes this digital age of ours can just be too much. Sure it has its moments. We can find information on anything instantly, have social lives without leaving our houses, and download any movie or album for free. But unless movies and television have lied to me, then these machines will someday rise against and destroy us, then go on to create a nightmarish society where robots have absolute power and humans are forced to work as slaves in the resource-rich mines in the hills of West Virginia. Eventually, the humans will die and some robots will slowly become self-aware, believe they are"human", and destroy the "evil" robots. Though the self-aware robots seem very human, do not be fooled because they are still robots. And you can totally tell because Harrison Ford's eyes flash in that one scene.

I digress.

I'm sitting in my friend's apartment right now with a quandary. I was moving some music from my friend's iPod to my computer (that's right, I said it), when suddenly a shared library popped up. "Rachel's Library" to be exact. Score! I love shared libraries. It's a peek into the life of a person you've never met.  

So I opened it. And my jaw dropped.

Over 100 gigs. And I don't mean just random songs. These are all complete albums imported at at LEAST 200 kbps. Every Dylan album. "Pet Sounds" outtakes. Sinatra. Pages upon pages of Otis Redding and James Brown. Talking Heads songs I didn't know existed. THIRTY-THREE COMPLETE HERBIE HANCOCK ALBUMS!  I am staring into the files of a true collector, a rarity in post-retail music shop era. A kindred spirit in an electronic wasteland. A person that cares enough about good music to own THIRTY-THREE COMPLETE HERBIE HANCOCK ALBUMS. This wonderful human being, this "Rachel", is probably sitting within 100 feet of me.

And therein lies the problem.

The internet has shown me a kindred spirit but offers no possible way of finding her. If only she had included her last name in the library name, I could have done something. Google. Facebook. Myspace. SOMETHING. But no. There is nothing I can do short of knocking on every door in this complex and asking for Rachel. It's hopeless. Thanks to technology I know she exists. And as the song says, a taste of honey is worse than none at all.

Oh internet, you bastard.

 

The 5 Albums I Listened to the Most in 2007

January 04, 2008 by David Fountain

There are few things in life more painful than the New Year's Day hangover. Most hangovers can be cured with a greasy breakfast and some Powerade, but these things just anger the NYD hangover.

 

Anyways, I used my hangover time to put together a list of my 5 favorite albums from 2007. I know I'm a few days late here, but I think 2007 was a pretty good year and we can pretend it's still happening if we want.

 

5. Release the Stars - Rufus Wainwright

Rufus's first two albums (Rufus Wainwright and Poses) blew my mind. I liked Want 1 but couldn't stomach the too-ornate-for-its-own good Want 2. Release the Stars is Rufus finding the happy middle ground between organic and ornate. Gone is the whiny post-rehab material and in its place we get lush orchestration and an earnest, confident voice wrought with maturity.

4. Dwight Sings Buck - Dwight Yoakam

That's right, a country album. My sister and brother-in-law and I had a conversation the other day about "good country music" vs. "bad country music". The good side is Johnny and Willie and Hank and Waylon and the bad side is...well, pretty much any country artist from the past 20 years. Dwight Yoakam is a rare exception. This is an album of him singing the songs of Buck Owens (also on the good side), the legendary Texas who passed away in 2006. Unfortunately, there are no decent videos of this on Youtube. Boo.

3. The Flying Club Cup - Beirut

A 21 year old kid from New Mexico combines Tin Pan Alley with Baltic folk music. The result is one of the most amazing things I've ever heard. Watch this video and thank me later:

2. Werewolves and Lollipops - Patton Oswalt

A country album AND a comedy album in my list. Amazing. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Patton, but you should all be more familiar with him. Here's a sample for ya:

1. Sky Blue Sky - Wilco

I have listened to this album at least 100 times since its release and it's still in regular rotation for me. With the addition of the ungodlyfuckinggood Nels Cline on guitar, Wilco has morphed from an experimental country band to one of the few bands that really matter (we can include Muse in that company too, Aaron). Words fail me. Watch the clip:

 

How Did This Bustle Get in my Hedgerow?

December 27, 2007 by David Fountain

As cynical fans of music, we share a dirty secret. We've kept this secret under wraps for a while, and for good reason. If anyone finds out, we're through. No longer can we be regarded as "cool". But regardless of how much we try to forget it, it's still there. And every year, around this time, you will be forced to come face to face with it. You've made the trip home for the holidays and are surrounded by relics of your past. I'm sitting in my old room right now flooded with memories. They're brought on by the posters on the wall (Deion Sanders? Really?), the trophies on the shelf, and the lava lamp I bought right after I discovered The Allman Brothers. But the darkest secret of my past is in my old CD case.

 

So here's the secret: 

 

My old CD book is a treasure trove of incredible lameness. On one single page, you can find "Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em" (my first purchase), a "Best of Broadway" compilation, that one Hootie CD, and Weird Al's "Alapalooza". I would be embarrassed by this fact if it weren't for the fact that every single person reading this has the same secret. Go look. I will wait....(waiting)....(OK)...If you're a few years older, you might find the entire NKOTB discography. If you're a few years younger, hello pre-implosion Britney! Even if your parents surrounded you with Dylan and The Beatles, the media surrounded you with crap.

 

I think the best way to deal with our pasts is just to come clean with them (Leonard over at Manufacturing Nostalgia covered this a few days ago, check it). I mean, maybe it's not our faults! There was a point in my life where I listened to "Feels So Good" by Chuck Mangione several times a day because it made me really happy. Eventually I learned that schmaltzy music wasn't cool and I filed the album away in hopes that no one would ever find it. But you know what? It made me happy at the time and then I let what other people thought of it affect me. Fuck that noise. That's silly.

 

I've seen Chicago in concert. TWICE! You know what? Chicago is a pretty sweet band. I will no longer apologize for liking them. I will also no longer apologize for thinking Weird Al is a genius. In fact, I'm glad I found "Alapalooza". Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to sit in my room, turn on the lava lamp, and rock out to "Frank's 2000 Inch TV". Awesome.

 

A Conversation with my Old Blog, or, Why Myspace Blogs Suck

December 17, 2007 by David Fountain

I just posted something on my old Myspace blog as a way to get closure with our now-ended relationship. It's very personal, but I am going to post it here for all of you to read. I've got to start the healing process sometime.

 

A Conversation with my Old Blog

Hi blog. Sorry I haven't updated you in a while. I've really been neglecting you. The truth of the matter is that I've...wow, I don't know how to say this. OK, just gonna let it all out. I'm writing another blog. There, I said it.

I know. I'm sorry. My friend introduced me to a company called Iggli and...they made me offer I couldn't turn down. I hope you understand.

What's that?

Oh you WOULD say that. REAL mature. You know what, this is why I'm leaving you. You only care about YOU! Don't you see that this is good for me? More people can see my writing now and I can write more often and without being nagged by your lack of CSS customization! For god's sake, even HTML is a chore with you! You won't even let me run the advanced editor because my "browser can't handle it". REEAALLLY? You're going to say that the only browser sophisticated enough for you is Internet Explorer? You can say that with a straight face?

You're living in the past, bloggy. In the 3 years I've been using you, do you realize that you haven't even changed your layout once?

I've moved on. I'm sorry. I will probably write on you every once in a while...but from now on, I'm using the blog I deserve.  I'm sorry that things didn't work out the way we dreamed they would. You take care, OK?

 Be strong.

 

Musical Prodigies and YouTube

December 15, 2007 by David Fountain

If you're anything like me, you spend much of your day attached to a computer. You do work, check on the news/weather, talk to friends, etc etc. And if your friends are anything like my friends, you send links and force each other to watch stuff on YouTube. This is a good thing. There are millions of videos out there and you'll never be able to find all the good ones  by yourself.

So, in watching all these videos, I've noticed a disturbing trend that I would like to address - musical prodigies. They are everywhere and I don't like it. Before the advent of YouTube, young musical prodigies were confined to state fairs and the talk show circuit.  And what glorious days there were, dear friends! You'd wake up in the morning and go about your day. You were just living your life. You had no reason to believe that there was a 7 year old kid in Tulsa who could nail the Stairway to Heaven solo, and so you felt good about yourself.

But now, Pandora's box is wide open and we can't find the lid. And even if we could, what would be the point? We can't unlearn these things. We have to live with the fact that we will never be as good as these kids. All we can do now is hope that they stick with it and get famous. Let's be honest, most popular musicians have charisma and looks but too few have mind-boggling talent. At some point, labels began to give us gift-wrapped crap and we just said "Oh wow look at the pretty bow". We lowered our standards and music suffered. We're stuck hoping that the next generation of consumers won't make the same mistakes we made. It's bleak though. As long as there are people in the world who can do the "Soulja Boy" dance, we are in are trouble.

There's a line from "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen that I think sums it up nicely:

 "Waste your summer praying in vain for a savior to rise from these streets"

 Well I ain't no hero (that's understood), but I think I found one and I would like to share him with everyone. This is 11 year old Sungha from Korea. If you can watch this video and be unmoved, it's probably too late for you. Enjoy!

 

Tom from Myspace Shows You How to Get Friends!

December 11, 2007 by David Fountain

I knew something was up with this "Tom" character as soon as I created a Myspace page. Sure, it's nice to have a friend already there waiting, but that picture...Does it ever seem weird that Tom never changes his picture? I mean, I change my profile picture a few times a week and this guy probably has access to technology we've never even imagined. It's not a very flattering picture or anything...his head is cocked at that weird angle...Considering the fact that Myspace is so full of pictures that people painstaking take with the thought "man this is gonna look great on my profile", it's just a bit odd that the founder of the site never once had that idea. You know, maybe we're not using Myspace the way Tom intended. Maybe Tom just wanted some friends. And now he has 100 million of them, so he just doesn't care anymore. The way that married people will let themselves go because they don't have to impress their dates, you know?

 

Matt Besser of the Upright Citizen's Brigade made this brilliant video about the subject:

Even better, he made a followup where he just read the negative comments he received for the original. I would love to embed that, but the one visible frame before you clicked "play" would just be a bunch of animated genitalia. So...here's a link instead: Click!

Enjoy!

 

He's Back, And He Wants Your Mom's Money

November 28, 2007 by David Fountain

Dear Housewives of America,

Pull on your favorite holiday sweater and heat some milk for the cocoa, because Josh Groban’s first Christmas album is finally out! Come on, you can finish that chapter of Danielle Steele later. There we go. Oops, make sure you put that mug on a coaster! Now feast your ears on what your friends at Reprise Records have in store for you.

What is this album like, you ask? Well, imagine everything you would expect in a Josh Groban album and it’s in there. You want pointless duets with equally lame singers? Done. We got Brian McKnight AND the Mormon Tabernacle Choir all up in this! You want songs in other languages so that your friends will call your holiday party “classy”? Something in French maybe? Or Latin? What about BOTH!? Open up and say “Ahh”, cause the bad boy of the Adult Contemporary set is cooking with extra schmaltz.

The blogosphere is abuzz!  Please note this glowing review:

“The die-hard Groban fan will be particularly pleased with the CD; he stays completely true to form and offers no real surprises or out of characteristic turns.”

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/10/23/204724.php


Look, we know you want this and we know that you’re going to buy it. We’ve been finetuning your tastes for years, and the fact that you haven’t bought this yet is frankly just insulting. We know that you want music that takes less risks than you do. You want music so saccharine you’ll get cavities. You want the kitten from the “Hang In There” poster in soft lighting with strings swelling up in the background. So just give Josh Groban your damn money already, OK? 

 

Yours,

The Music Industry 

 

Tours are Tough!

November 16, 2007 by David Fountain

OK folks, I realize that I haven't posted any tour stories yet. Please be patient. This stuff is keeping me busy! I will write a megapost tomorrow. Hooray!

 

Going On Tour!

November 13, 2007 by David Fountain

I realized this morning that I haven't really said much about myself on this blog. In some ways that's good- I certainly don't want to turn this into a LiveJournal and just fill pages with MY LIFE SUCKS. But on the other hand, sometimes cool things happen and I want to be able to share it with y'all.



Over the course of the next few days I will be driving from Atlanta to the Northeast to do a few gigs in NYC, Boston, and Connecticut. I've finally got my digital camera working, so I'm planning on documenting the whole thing. If all goes according to plan, I will be posting up stories and pictures every day. Make sure you check back!

Ah yes, and if you would like to check out the kind of music I will be playing, you can check out my Myspace here



Thanks!

 

Steve Martin is My Hero

November 12, 2007 by David Fountain

 

I know you've all seen this a million times, but I just rediscovered it today. Is there a more perfect musical sequence in any movie, ever? I think the reason "The Jerk" stands miles above most "zany" comedies (see movies by: Sandler, Adam or Carrey, Jim) is because it has these amazing moments of subtly and sincerity.

 

As a sidenote, if you watch this, you will fall in love with Bernadette Peters. It will happen right after she sings "in the moonlight" and you will not expect it. There's really nothing more I can say. Ahhh.

 

Austin, Texas Waffle House

November 12, 2007 by David Fountain

I'm sitting in a Waffle House on the outskirts of Austin, TX at the moment. In the booth behind me are 4 guys who have spent incredible amounts of money to look as disshevelled as possible. They're wearing black and moodily drinking their coffee (also black), and it's a pretty safe bet that they weren't the ones who played "Jesus Take the Wheel" on the jukebox. In the booth in front of me are two older guys in Wranglers and boots discussing the pros and cons of life on the Pro Rodeo Circuit.

"A bull that size is like to kill a man for lookin' at him cross-ways." says the cowboy closer to the door. "Murray'd be lucky to get 6 on him. 8? He usetacould but he's gone soft."

The eldery waitress, Lilian, comes over to see if I need anything else. "More coffee would be great", I tell her. She nods and continues to look for her lighter, which I saw Duane, the short order cook, put in his pocket a few minutes ago.

Willie Nelson's "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" comes on the jukebox now. It's one of those songs that sounds good anywhere, but you have to hear the way it bounces off the tiled walls of a
mostly-empty Waffle House to really get it. One of the cowboys hums along, at which the kids in black snicker behind their hands.

"HOLY SHIT YOU'RE STILL HERE?!"

We all turn to see Mike stumble through the doors. We all know his name is Mike because it says so right there on his Waffle House uniform. He's had a few too many. Of what, it's hard to say. The mustache makes one think beer but the Metallica hat and lack of teeth speaks otherwise. If David Crosby had decided to make a career of cooking hashbrowns, he would be the spitting image of Mike.

"YOU'RE STILL HERE DUDE WHEN DOES YOUR SHIFT END?"

He's talking to Duane, who tells him that his shift ends at 7 AM, a good six hours from now. Mike sits down at the counter and announces that he wants pie. The exchange gets bored glances from the guys in black and disappointed head shaking from the cowboys.

The guitar intro to "The Thrill is Gone" comes on. Mike and the cowboys eye the hipsters, one of whom says that he likes BB King, which prompts instant laughter from his friends.

"He's not bad but I can't take him seriously in those suits. Jesus Christ it's like Morgan Freeman rampaged Al Sharpton's closet."

Duane steps outside to smoke but goes around the corner so the waitress won't ID the lighter.

I get up and go to the register, where I pay for my coffee and get a little bit to go.

"Where you from, sug?", asks Lilian while she pours my to-go cup.

"Atlanta", I say. "Heading back there tomorrow."

She smiles and gives me my coffee. "You a musician? Play the festival this week?"

I explain to her that I am a musician, but that I was just here to learn.

"Well you played Willie on the jukebox for us, so you must know a lot already."

I laughed, thanked her, and headed outside to tell Duane that Lilian would like her lighter back when he comes back from break.