This guy has taken it to the next level recreating covers in MS Paint and I especially appreciate his subject choices. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge.

you can also find a huge collection of these MS Paint renditions in this set which has been collected from various user submissions on music forums. it’s a goldmine!

Went to Day 2 of the Treasure Island Music Festival, didn’t bring my main camera but posted a few on the Tumblog from my phone. Flaming Lips headlined and their set was so much fun in an eternal pizza party sort of way: an LCD backdrop literally gave birth to the band as the entrance, lots of gospel dancing Yetis on the sidelines, Wayne crowd surfing inside a giant beachball/hamster ball, lots of robots and George Lucas looking creatures, lots of confetti and balloons and then confetti in balloons exploding every 4 bars…. I’m really digging the new album Embryonic which is a little dirtier sounding, way psychedelic, more percussion oriented, sparse with instrumentation but not with the spacyness or fuzz. Some of the songs sound like more thought out Silver Apples tracks off of the Contact LP with a hard driving low-end pulse. My kinda sound

Here’s some pics I found from doing a search on flickr:

and here’s some video:

Now that I got a hold of the 10CD 13th Floor Elevators Box Set, I can share two incredible previously unreleased live versions of songs that sound so amazing and dynamic from the disc titled “Death in Texas” recorded in Houston in 1967.

Turn the volume knob to 11 and set your lasers to stun:

“She Lives in a Time of Her Own”
[audio:shelives.mp3]
“Reverberation”
[audio:Reverberation.mp3]

God I adore this band.

Deerhoof are easily one of my favorite local bands and this Daytrotter Session is seriously blowing my mind. They picked some of my favorite songs for this acoustic set.

1. Buck and Judy

   Download Deerhoof playing Buck and Judy
   - original version appears on Offend Maggie

2. Chatterboxes

   Download Deerhoof playing Chatterboxes”
   - original version appears on The Runners Four

3. Fresh Born

   Download Deerhoof playing Fresh Born
   - original version appears on Offend Maggie

Before Birmingham, England natives Roy Wood, Bev Bevan and Jeff Lynn became ELO, they were in The Move, an idiosyncratic & proggy pop band who crafted songs that have surprising moments of intensity and beautifully dramatic orchestration sandwiched between silliness and an anything goes attitude (can i please coin “drive-by beauty” or “retarded garden of eden” for this kind of music?) They tried to emulate the West Coast sound at the time but couldn’t conceal their British humor (I actually believe they were celebrating it) which is, for me, a major part of their appeal. And they are one of those tragic bands that I have a lot of albums from but never think to play until they come up on the randomized player and then find myself easily listening to many albums in one sitting due to the catchyness of the harmonies and content with a consistently high entertainment value.

The allmusic.com bio is much better at the descriptors:

The Move were the best and most important British group of the late ’60s that never made a significant dent in the American market. Through the band’s several phases (which were sometimes dictated more by image than musical direction), their chief asset was guitarist and songwriter Roy Wood, who combined a knack for Beatlesque pop with a peculiarly British, and occasionally morbid, sense of humor.

It surprised me when I learned how popular they were in the UK during their run but never achieved commercial success in the States for the reason that Cheap Trick blatantly uses the The Move’s “Brontosaurus” riff on “California Man,” one of my favorite sing-a-long tracks off of the Heaven Tonight LP. But perhaps that just further illustrates how cool Rick Nielsen was despite his cartoonish bow-tie nerd image. I recommend checking out the Looking On, Message from the Country, and Shazam LPs as they are solid from beginning to end. Here are 4 songs that I love off of them, (the absolute minimum, mind you):

Title track off Looking On
[audio:looking.mp3]

about objectionable age-inappropriate love
[audio:beautiful.mp3]

Title track off of Message from the Country
[audio:message.mp3]

the outro is a swaggering & epic finish (starts @ 4:20 mark)
[audio:open.mp3]
and it sends chills down my spine

this hans keller guy kills me. doctor kindly tell your wife that i’m alive.

I need you to forget that Weezer covered this. File under guilty pleasure – I played this (& “Down in the Park”) to pieces while roaming London streets by my lonesome and it was great. Yay minimoog!

[audio:friends.mp3]

In celebrating the 40th anniversary of the First Man on the Moon, the NYT blog recently posted about this Pink Floyd Moon-Landing footage that I had no idea about. This atmospheric instrumental aired on BBC TV during live coverage of the moon landing.

David Gilmour had this to say:

We were in a BBC TV studio jamming to the landing. It was a live broadcast, and there was a panel of scientists on one side of the studio, with us on the other. I was 23. The programming was a little looser in those days, and if a producer of a late-night programme felt like it, they would do something a bit off the wall.

Pretty amazing, because that would never fly on network tv these days. God bless the 60s. I get goosebumps watching this.

This is a blatant steal from Jesse Pollock, but it’s okay because real friends steal from each other. This group called Steel Harmony played Joy Division’s Transmission during this artist Jeremy Deller’s Procession in Manchester earlier this month and it’s blowing my mind.

I don’t know how to explain my feelings. I’m laughing because it’s such an odd and joyous rendition due to the inherently beachy & carribean nature of the instrument but it also is pretty freaking good and fun to hear it in this context. I would be in heaven if I were walking down a street in Manchester and randomly stumbled upon this performance. According to Jesse, this band also played other Joy Division songs as well as the Buzzcocks. Man oh man.

the object fetishist in me can’t stop thinking about this limited run 13th floor elevators box set. it’s 10 discs. 10 DISCS! remastered to their full potential (if you know these orig mono recordings, you know how much better they can sound) and a beautiful comprehensive hardbound book too boot. It will be mine!

They were the first to introduce me to the fact there was a creative psych scene in TX during that time and I had a nice WTF moment recently when I heard a Spectrum cover of one of these obscure TX psych bands. Maaaaan, some of these innovative music scenes in townie settings like cleveland and austin make me really proud of american rock music.

Attention bookworms and record geeks! Look at this set called Cover Versions. so creative!

Classic records lost in time and format, re-emerged as Pelican books.

I saw Shellac play at the Great American Music Hall last Wednesday night. Steve Albini is still an amusing asshole, Todd Trainer is still a freak and Bob Weston still solicits questions from the crowd between songs while Albini tunes the Travis Bean guitar strapped to his waist like it was a tool on a utility belt.

One highlight question to Weston, probably joking, was “How often do you use your Pro Tools rig?” It prompted the response “I don’t own a Pro Tools rig, my friend,” which made the audience giggle. Albini and Weston are two renown recording engineers who are still very much Nazis when it comes to being hardcore analog loyalists. Albini who has only recently caved in to the pressure of having a digital set-up in his Electrical Audio studios refuses to use it himself or even talk about it. Other questions from the crowd were gear related as one guy asked “Where’s the Harmonic Percolator?”, referring to a rare distortion pedal that is now holy grail material for hardcore audio nerds thanks to Albini championing it. This was truly the nerdiest/fanboy rock show ever but highly satisfying and cathartic for someone who had a very stressful day at work (AKA me). Going to this show alone and being one of the very few women there kinda made me feel like a perv.

Anyway, I don’t know why I feel this is worth mentioning, but Albini repeatedly did these pump fake b-ball moves towards the audience during “A Minute” but in a really intense and straight-faced serious manner. I was dying of laughter and really wish I got video. Here’s some other video instead

If it seems at all weird that I like this kind of dark and depraved rock music, here’s an old disclaimer post I made about Shellac in 2007

in 1970. makes perfect sense if you are familiar with Kraftwerk off-spring groups such La Dusseldorf and Neu! (See early Stereolab discography) but still…it’s kraftwerk. These german youth didn’t know what hit em

Ripped this footage of The Jam doing All Around the World on Marc Bolan’s show from my dvd.

Classic

The Sleeveface photo pool on Flickr is an endless stream of record nerd fun. Covers with giant faces on them are so much fun to use this way.

And here’s the book for your coffee table.

OK last one for tonight, I promise. I’m so grateful that quality old music television programs like Rockpalast, Musik Laden, Beat Club, It’s Lulu, Revolver, Top of the Pops & Old Grey Whistle Test existed for me to visit my favorite parts of history in moving picture form.

Van Morrison’s first band THEM. He was only 19 here.

//photo by jeff luger

Remember that footage I took of Deerhunter back during Noise Pop? There was a song they did that I’ve never heard before that I really liked. My friend Jesse, who incidentally is the third person in the last month and half to compare me to an old man, ripped the audio from my video, played it for others and miraculously located the original version. Nice one, Sherlock! And it hasn’t even been released yet. It’s a cover of a Tears for Fears song called Famous Last Words and it rules, although I agree with him that his vocals were actually sweeter live. Anyway, I’m not going to pilfer audio from Jesse like he does from my site (kidding), so here is the direct link to his Secret Deerhunter song entry on his site where you can listen and download:

Jesse’s 50th Deerhunter post on his blog

Enjoy.