Song obsessions are those songs that we listen to on repeat. I noticed that my obsessions are often a week long. I also thought that other people might have similar obsessions. I’ve collected a panel of a few like-minded individuals and gotten their “song obsessions of the week.” Quite often it’s easy to explain why the song is good; it’s much hard to explain why we’re obsessed. Maybe you’ll become obsessed with one of these.

–

Adrian (me):
Adem - Loro (mp3) (pre-order)

I finally got to listen to Takes which I’ve been excited to hear. The album is a set of covers of Adem’s favorite songs.

When I got it I knew I had to listen to two covers of some of my favorite songs first: Pinback’s “Loro” and Low’s “Laser Beam”. I love both Adem versions, but “Loro” reminds me of the amazement I felt when I first heard the Pinback version. I had such a wide grin on my face listening to it for the first time in both cases. The grin stayed for the second time through…and the third…and the fourth…and….

–

Keith:
Brendan Benson - Insects Rule (mp3) (buy)

Before Brendan Benson released a handful of highly regarded indie records (or teamed with Jack White in the Raconteurs) he had his own shot at the brass ring with Virgin Records in 1996. The resulting record was an unfortunately ignored infectious celebration of power pop teamed with deft and daring songwriting such as this tune about an infestation.

–

Oz:
Black Diamond Heavies - Bidin’ My Time (mp3) (buy)

I’ve been spinning Black Diamond Heavies’ upcoming release, A Touch of Someone Else’s Class, for a few days now. This track channels Tom Waits and serves as a reprieve from the the band’s powerful, gritty blues style.

–

As I mentioned, the Botticellis (myspace) came down to KZSU last night to do an in-studio session. They played a great set of tunes off of their recently released album Old Home Movies (which came out Tuesday on Antenna Farm Records) as well as some new songs and a cover.

Here’s their setlist and some exclusive mp3s from the session:

• I Feel Betrayed
• Table by the Window
• Stay with my Brother
• Old Home Movies
• Lucy Lucia
• New Room
• When I Call
• Up Against the Glass
  the Botticellis - Up Against the Glass (live at KZSU) (mp3, exclusive)
  
• Flashlight
  the Botticellis - Flashlight (live at KZSU) (mp3, exclusive)
  
• Awaiting on You All
  the Botticellis - Awaiting on You All (live at KZSU) (mp3, exclusive)
  

I think the sound turned out really well, thanks to Smurph, KZSU’s live sound engineer, and Alexi and the Botticellis. I’ve heard a lot of live sets at KZSU and none of them have sounded quite like this. I think it turned out pretty well.

The new tunes sounded great, especially the lead off tune, “I Feel Betrayed”, which I’ll be looking forward to hearing a studio version of.

You can check out my photo album for a few more shots of the band.

Make sure you tune in next week’s live session with Two Sheds.

Posted every Thursday On Sale Soon is a weekly series of the tickets going on sale that weekend.

Where to get tickets: The Independent, Great American Music Hall, Slim’s, Fillmore, Warfield, and other Livenation venues. Another Planet booked venues like Greek Theatre @ Berkeley, Palace of Fine Arts, etc. Bimbo’s.

On sale now/ Thurs May 15:
6/11 Judy Mowatt @ Slim’s

Pre-sale Thursday May 15:
7/4 San Francisco Symphony @ Shoreline Amphitheatre
7/25 Toby Keith. Montgomery Gentry, Carter’s Chord, Mica Roberts, Trailer Choir @ Shoreline Amphitheatre

8/16 Rock The Bells w/ A Tribe Called Quest with Nas, The Pharcyde, Mos Def, Q-Tip, Rakim, Redman, Method Man, De La Soul, Raekwon, Spank Rock, Ghostface, Dead Prez, Wale @ Shoreline Amphitheatre at Mountain

On sale Friday May 16:
7/24 Jay Brannan, Annie Stela @ Bottom of the Hill

On sale Saturday May 17:
7/17 Boys Like Girls, Good Charlotte @ Berkeley Community Theatre

8/9 Slightly Stoopid, Pepper, Sly & Robbie, The Expendables @ The Greek Theatre

On sale Sunday May 18:
6/30 Prezident Brown & the Solid Foundation Band @ the Independent

7/6 Todd Rundgren @ Great American
7/8 Tilly and the Wall @ Great American
7/11, 7/12 The New Mastersounds @ the Independent
7/17 The Long Winters @ the Independent
7/17 Blue Highway @ Slim’s
7/18 Jimmy Eat World @ The Fillmore
7/19 The Grouch, The Bayliens @ Slim’s
7/20 Warrior King @ Slim’s
7/29 Chromeo @ The Fillmore

8/4 The Hush Sound, The Cab, The Morning Light @ Slim’s
8/4 The Faint @ The Fillmore
8/22 The Waybacks @ Great American
8/25 Extreme, Kings X @ The Fillmore

On sale Monday May 19:
7/7 Boston @ Mountain Winery
7/17 Tom Jones @ Mountain Winery

10/19 Tina Turner @ HP Pavilion

Double check all information as venues and promoters often change on-sale times and days up until the last minute.

This blog isn’t about taking up causes, it’s about music. But I will take this quick opportunity to plug the Bay Area Bike to Work Day which is tomorrow Thursday, May 15. I’d encourage you to at least consider it.

There will be energizer stations (read: free snacks) around the City and the region. Download a bike map if you want to figure out the best route.

Oh No! Oh My! - Bike, Sir (mp3) (buy)

Lymbyc Systym - Fall Bicycle (mp3) (buy

Jaime & Becky - Rusty Bike (mp3) (buy)

This is not my current ride that I’ll be riding to work tomorrow, but this sweet ride was my trusty stead for many a month in Taiwan. The seat left bits of itself on my pants and the kickstand was so rusted out that it wouldn’t always stay up while I was riding, but it (usually) got me from A to B.

Update: Rocketing down the streets of SOMA, I had two questionable interactions with buses slamming to a halt or cutting over to make a stop. But I’m as of yet unscathed and I will live to see another post.

cred: me

My radio show is on the air right now until 5pm PDT on KZSU, 90.1 FM in the Bay Area or online. Tune in!

You can play along at home with my playlist, updated as I go.

After quite a bit of anticipation, the the Botticellis (myspace) album Old Home Movies is out today on Antenna Farm Records! I first heard it quite a while ago and I listened to it a lot for long periods of time. A lot of people are describing the band/ album in terms of “surf rock”, but I think that doesn’t give proper due to the depth of this songs; while these songs are indie pop, they aren’t bubblegum pop or all sunshine.

The Botticellis live at the Bottom of the Hill, August 2007

As you may remember, I have a string of four bands down at KZSU in five weeks on Wednesdays from 9-10pm PDT. This week’s band is the Botticellis. You can listen at 90.1FM in the Bay Area or online[1].

• April 30: Geographer
• May 14: the Botticellis
• May 21: Two Sheds
• May 28: the Ian Fays

If you want to read, hear or see more about the band, check out the Bay Bridged feature podcast, the Mercury News ‘Merc Session’, or the the Daytrotter session.

[1] The newish 192kps AAC+ stream sounds gorgeous, very clear, by the way. I’d recommend trying it out.

Three different friends independently sent me this video in the last few days, so it seems people are pretty into the idea.

It’s a UK band called the Get Out Clause that apparently filmed their video with 80 of Britain’s CCTV cameras and then got copies by invoking the Data Protection Act. Edit it all together and–boom–done.

It wasn’t the first in the style, though. The Frames, which includes everyone’s current favorite indie wunderking Glen Hansard (of Once fame), also shot a video in this manner, but apparently just using the cameras at a friend’s workplace, a post office.

Apparently, my mixtapes come out every month. This is what I’m told, at least. Oops.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2008march-april playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one was a long one in coming. I’ve listened to it a lot of times and I like it. There’s a mix of local (the Dodos, the Botticellis, Speakers), national (Deer Tick, Unwed Sailor) and international (Adem, the Rational Academy) bands.

Adrian’s March-April 2008 mix tape (rapidshare link [1])

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) wait till the counter gets to zero 4) enter the letters in their graphic into the box 5) click “download”

What good is music if it doesn’t help you deal with your reality? Recent events have brought this song to mind.

Edvard Grieg - Funeral March in Memory of Richard Nordraak (mp3)

I played this piece many years ago, when I was a budding trumpeter in a brass ensemble in school. It’s stuck with me because it was both so somber and so beautiful. There is a fittingly agonized tone to it. It had been tucked away far in the back reaches of my mind until it was jarred by these events.

To round out my San Francisco International Film Festival 2008 coverage, I have a couple more movies I saw in the last days

Glass: A Portrait of Philip in 12 Parts (which I somehow missed in my music-related film overview, but I caught on thanks to the Deli SF) is obviously a film about modern composer Philip Glass.

I’d heard a reasonable amount of Glass’ stuff. I was always sort of more of a Reich person, at least among minimalist or repetitive phrasing composers, so I thought I might not like the film because I wasn’t a big fan of his music. As it turns out, that was turned out to be wrong.

It’s a very well put together film in 12 parts, each acting as somewhat of a vignette about a specific event or topic, but there are characters and themes that carry through many of them giving it an overall story arc instead of entirely an episodic feel.

Glass came across very interestingly. He appears down to earth and straight forward except he thinks and speaks on an entirely different level than everyone else. The editing is really fantastic. At times it appears they left in mistakes or things other directors would have cut, but these extra bits reveal Glass’ and other people in his life’s humanity.

Despite expecting that the film may not be for me, I found it interesting and compelling, even at it’s 125 minute length.

If you aren’t able to catch the film and want to know more about Glass, I recommend checking out this great feature in the Guardian from a few years ago.

Medicine for Melancholy starts out with a familiar plot: ill-thought-out one-night-stand threatens to turn into something more. That’s what you have on the surface. Below that there is a lot of racial tension and discussion between the two African-American-but-that’s-all-that’s-similar leads. One sees her raceas one part of their life and the other sees it as the primary part. I liked the movie a lot, in the end. It was endearing and engrossing. There was a nice balance between the two sides of this film: the discussion of race and the romance.

Medicine was filmed in and around San Francisco in a style that was one of desaturated color–sort of like halfway between color and black and white. It was a cool style and seeing recognizable landmarks from your town gave the audience a further connection to the characters. On the #38 bus the other day, I realized I was passing one of the main characters’ apartment, which was across the street from the Angel Deli and Cafe on Geary.

The movie isn’t about music, really, but it does have a great soundtrack. The use of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone’s “New Years Kiss” in the moments after the initial post-one-night rejection is just perfect. Further along in the movie, there’s a wonderful moments with Octopus Project, Oh No! Oh My! and other indie favs.

The other somewhat-music-related point of the movie is the brief discussion of race in the indie scene, about how, essentially, indie music is primarily a white pursuit. I think there could be further discussion on this topic.

Though they’re entirely different, I’d recommend both of these films.

Other SFIFF ‘08 coverage:

• Black Francis to accompany silent film
• overview of music related films
• Fados
• Cachao Una Mas
• Faubourg Treme

See you next year, SFIFF!

Song obsessions are those songs that we listen to on repeat. I noticed that my obsessions are often a week long. I also thought that other people might have similar obsessions. I’ve collected a panel of a few like-minded individuals and gotten their “song obsessions of the week.” Quite often it’s easy to explain why the song is good; it’s much hard to explain why we’re obsessed. Maybe you’ll become obsessed with one of these.

–

Adrian (me):
Joe Pug - Hymn 101 (mp3) (free at the artist’s site)

I heard this over at hearya. Immediately I felt the same way the first time I heard Dylan’s “When the Ship Comes In”. Similarly, it has a certain timeless melody and lyrics that one can tell, even before one start processing the lyrics, that they have some well of depth that they’re drawing from.

–

Keith:
the Katydids - Always (mp3) (buy)

This week on my favorites of the 90’s list @ #90 is the 2nd album from American singer/British pop-band hybrid Katydids. This particular cut is masterfully produced by pop auteur Ian Broudie, just listen to the sumptuous interlocking backing vocals in the chorus. This album was pure obsession for me in 1991, pretty vocals and glistening guitars were an irresistible combination.

–

Oz:
Joe Pug - Hymn 101 (mp3) (free at the artist’s site)

I think I’ve listened to “Hymn 101″ about 101 times in the past week. Joe Pug is a relative newcomer to the Chicago music scene and a shockingly good lyricist for a songwriter in his early twenties. Listen to this song and you’ll see what I mean. It still gives me chills on my 102nd listen - “The more I buy, the more I’m bought. And the more I’m bought, the less I cost.”

His debut EP, Nation of Heat, is incredible from start to finish.

–

Rob:
David Bowie - Sense of Doubt (mp3) (buy)

For the last few weeks basically every time I’ve found myself wondering what to listen to next I’ve been putting in “Heroes”. As has no doubt been noted before, the whole album is stellar and I had a
tough time picking one of the tracks. I thought about “Blackout” due to the slight edge that my mishearing the lyrics gave it (he’s under the Japanese influence of his mother’s estate?) but settled on “Sense of Doubt” for the sheer I’ve-never-heard-anything-else-quite-like-it factor; this song more than almost any other instrumental I’ve ever heard paints a definite picture in my mind, and it is at once more hopeful and more desparate than any song I can think of off the top of my head that tries deliberately to be one or the other. Really wonderful.

–

Andy:
Kepler - Loose Ground (mp3) (buy)

Kepler was the best quiet band you’ve never heard. Beautifully clean guitars, half-whispered vocals, nicely reserved brushed drumming, and the piano from your parents’ living room hiding just below the surface. I first found Fuck Fight Fail while working in college radio- it immediately became one of my favorites. “Loose Ground” is one of my favorites from the record, along with the 9-minute “Upper Canada Fight Song”.

Since their breakup, Samir Kahn (who I believe sings on “Loose Ground”) has gone on to form Tusks, who are excellent as well.

–

This is the first time two people have had the same song obsession in the same week. It’s kind of like two friends having a crush on the same girl. It’s pretty awkward. Not really–music’s not a zero-sum game like that. But if it were, Oz would have “dibs” as he found the song first.

On Tuesday I saw the Morning Benders play an in-store Virgin Megastore. They put on a solid set as always including many from their new album. People even danced (after a little encouragement from Chris).

Posted every Thursday On Sale Soon is a weekly series of the tickets going on sale that weekend.

Where to get tickets: The Independent, Great American Music Hall, Slim’s, Fillmore, Warfield, and other Livenation venues. Another Planet booked venues like Greek Theatre @ Berkeley, Palace of Fine Arts, etc. Bimbo’s.

Pre-sale Thurs May 8:
8/16 George Benson, Boney James, Ramsey Lewis, Norman Brown’s Summer Storm featuring Chante Moore, Paul Taylor & Alex Bugnon @ Sleep Train Pavilion

On sale Sunday May 11:
6/3 The Cool Kids@ the Independent
6/7 The Dan Band @ the Fillmore
6/12 Vopli Vidoplyassova, Russian Solution @ the Independent
6/18 The Fratellis @ the Fillmore
6/22 Morgan Heritage @ the Independent
6/26 Billy Idol @ the Fillmore

7/3 the everybodyfields, Jim Bianco @ the Independent
7/5 Th’ Legendary Shack*Shakers @ the Independent
7/6 We Are Scientists @ the Independent

7/9 Israel Vibration @ the Independent
7/11 James Hunter @ Bimbo’s
7/18, 7/19 Lettuce, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue @ the Independent
7/26 Cute Is What We Aim For, Ace Enders, Danger Radio, Powerspace @ Slim’s
7/28 No Age, Mika Miko, Abe Vigoda @ Great American
7/31 Cavalera Conspiracy, Dillinger Escape Plan, Throw Down, Bury Your Dead, Incite @ The Fillmore

9/12 Nightwish with Sonata Arctica @ The Fillmore
9/13 Dr. John & The Lower 911 with Shannon McNally @ The Fillmore

9/22, 9/23 Spoon @ The Fillmore

On sale Monday May 12:
6/26, 6/27, 6/28 Butch Whacks & The Glass Packs @ Bimbo’s

7/5 Stevie Wonder @ Shoreline Amphitheatre
7/8 Stevie Wonder @ Sleep Train Pavilion

8/14 Alan Jackson @ HP Pavilion

Double check all information as venues and promoters often change on-sale times and days up until the last minute.

Last night I went over to the the Bottom of the Hill to see Laura Veirs (myspace) and Liam Finn (myspace).

I’d seen Liam before, at the same venue, in fact. The set was quite similar, as was my reaction: I liked some of his loop-heavy songs and disliked others and many of my favorites were his more straight-forward songs.

One notable new happening: he ended one song with a solo on an odd instrument. After the song he announced his new “toy”, a Stylophone. To a fan’s cry for “more Stylophone!”, he said “ok”. His next song, his last of the night, was completely improvised and built around various loops of Stylophone along with drums and vocals. It was pretty impressive.

Veirs came out with just her guitar. It was just her, that guitar and looping pedals all night (with one exception, see below). She started with “Pink Light”, one of my favorites of hers. After that first song, the appreciation from the crowd was obvious–this was a very receptive crowd. She even noted it: “Wow, it’s nice to hear that, especially on a Monday night”.

The talented Ms. Veirs continued the entire evening, playing a great selection of songs from her “five good albums” (the last one is “bad”) skillfully. Additionally, she played two traditional songs that influenced her greatly, like Mississippi John Hurt’s “Spike Driver’s Blues”

She brought out the banjo for one song, Cluck Old Hen. She played it deftly in clawhammer style. Here’s a teaching version of that song, first slow and then full speed.

Laura Veirs - Cluck Old Hen (mp3, via stereogum)

P4K’s reporting that reunited My Bloody Valentine will be playing the SF Design Concourse in September.

Wait, so you’re putting the most perfectly distorted band ever in a large and long metal box? I recommend against going to shows there anyway, but this one just takes the cake. That place will offer absolutely zero definition in sound[1] and I really doubt that the majority of people who end up going will be happy.

[1] Yes, this is a bad thing. I call them the most “perfectly” distorted because it’s a wall of sound but you can still distinguish the sound clearly. If you add in thousands of echoes, it’ll probably be just muddy and noisy sounding.