Music

Music news, profiles of bands or labels, the tunes that Monkey currently grooves to

Pick Up the Ball and Throw it to Naturally

Yeah, yeah, I know, the baseball season officially began last night… but technically the White Sox didn’t beat the Indians until today (the game ended at 2:10am EDT). In my book, that makes today Opening Day, my favorite day of the year (next to National High Five Day, of course).

Actually, in the book of the 28 other Major League teams, and in the appointment book of President Bush, today is opening day. W is throwing out the first pitch here in Cincinnati, so downtown is more of a mess than it should be.

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We’re Nothing And Nothing Can Help Us

The Real Heroes

I‘ve been doing the shallow water through the voluminous 2006 South by Southwest mp3 catalog (available as torrent file here) for about a month now (the conference ended two weeks ago) and I’ve made it as far as “T.” I’ve uncovered some good stuff so far, stuff I hope to revisit and write about at a later date, but I may be stuck on “T” for a while. Not only because this is where a bunch of bands whose names start with “The” reside, but because I’m too busy grooving out to The Real Heroes.

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Machine Translations “Happy”

When my wife and I were in Melbourne last year as part of our honeymoon, we made a point of looking for a good independent CD shop that might recommend some great local fare. As luck would have it, we found what we were looking for in the Fitzroy neighbourhood where many of Australia’s bands live.

Polyester Records (map, in Dynomite! It's J. Walker!case you’re ever in the neighbourhood) has a fantastic selection of local and national, independent and commercial acts. I explained that I like good indie pop and rock, but I fall in love with albums that require a lot of listens before appreciating, and the kindly gentleman behind the counter offered up quite a few recommendations. And all for acts I wouldn’t otherwise have known about in Los Angeles. I bought 3 of the recommended CDs: New Buffalo‘s The Last Beautiful Day, Mountains in the Sky‘s Celestial Son, and, my favorite of the three, Machine Translations‘s 2002 album Happy.

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Timewarp: Cornershop

Lately, I’ve been listening to the classic tunes of yesteryear and really enjoying the good old days. Remember 2002? Wasn’t that a crazy year? Remember the hairstyles? What were we thinking?

In 2002, Cornershop may well have robbed us all of our innocence when they released cornershoptheir long-awaited album Handcream for a Generation. Tjinder Singh, who basically is Cornershop, mixed funk, soul, disco, reggae, electronica, and rock into the tasty masala that is this album. Don’t let the reggae scare you off (it almost had that effect on me). It bears its ugly head in the song Motion the 11, but even I got captivated. Well, maybe I just got sucked in by the person dying in the background and blubbering like a perfect idiot. But really, for me the centerpieces of the album are the single Lessons Learned from Rocky I to Rocky III and the sitar/guitar psych-out Spectral Mornings.

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