So I watched NOVA last night for the first time in a long time (possibly since high school, when teachers would occasionally tape it and show it in class). The Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives special on Eels leader Mark Oliver Everett and his father was well done. It's available online for only a week (this probably has to do with the music rights, as it's pretty much entirely soundtracked with Eels songs).
There are 4 live Eels songs available for free download in exchange for an email address here.

I'm enjoying the new Lambchop.

Here's a Tiny Desk concert with Kurt Wagner at NPR.

Here KW tells the AV Club what is on his ipod.

Tonight there's a PBS Nova special featuring Mark Oliver Everett of the Eels learning about his famous physicist father.

There's a new Mountain Goats EP available as a pay what you want download, although given its title, there's a "devotee level" payment option of $6.66.

“If you’re going to be a rock star, I think this is how your house should be”

Fred Armisen on Wayne Coyne's house. The pictures do look like a fairly tasteful approximation of where a Flaming Lip would live.

The 2007 Believer Music issue had an article about Bill Fox, who had been the lead singer of The Mice and then had a couple solo albums, before disappearing. (The disappearance/demise of Spin Art records, which put out Fox's solo albums, probably didn't help.) In that Believer article, Joe Hagan managed to track Fox down and it seemed that Fox was pretty disinterested in revisiting his music career. It seems that Fox agreed to talk to Hagan only if the article wouldn't end up on the Internet, so the Believer didn't publish and extract from the article.

Anyway, the CD compilation that accompanied that Believer, had this nice song "My Baby Crying", and of course the out of print BF albums got harder to find and more expensive on places like amazon and half.com.

Last week, I got Transit Byzantium for $4 on ebay, and it's a nice album. Apparently Scat Records is rereleasing the other BF album next year.

There's a 1998 interview and performance by Bill Fox at KCRW's site. It was a bit patchy through my internet connection, but there's a few unreleased songs played live as well as a discussion of the prononuciation of Transit Byzantium and Bill Fox makes it clear that he didn't care for grunge. He sounds pretty normal.

Hopefully the Scat rerelease comes through.

Daniel Handler reviews children's book sequels

News about a new Jennifer O'Connor album and a promo mp3

My Morning Jacket on Saturday Night Live

Here's a recent David Berman interview with the Village Voice, in which he discusses why Silver Jews are not good background music, googling "I hate the silver jews" and criticizes My Morning Jacket

Bowerbirds take away show videos

The creator of Captain America

A brief article on She & Him

Some youtube of Malkmus in Brooklyn from a few weeks ago

youtube: paperbag sculptures that come to life over subway vents

youtube: Mr. Met at an Indian wedding

Here's an interview with S Malkmus and Janet Weiss

The Rosebuds have a free remix album for download

Colin Meloy is writing a song with help from internet readers of the Guardian
here's an article on his process
here's what they've got so far

Here's a Ray Davies interview, in which he says he'd consider doing a project with Chrissie Hynde if it could be done by email instead of in person

NPR on LibraryThing, GoodReads and other bookish sites

Billy Bragg on the internet "royalty scam"

A rundown with video etc of Yo La Tengo at SXSW

Malkmus and Jicks on Minnesota radio

Every article about every r.e.m. album in the past dozen years: they kind of dismiss the album immediately previous to the new one, reassert the quality of some of the songs from the 2 or 3 albums before and claim that the new album is new/challenging/different with echoes of the great past. The band and journalists seem to be pretty good about agreeing on these talking points: here's another article.

The Village Voice throws some cold water on the idea that the new r.e.m. album might be good

George Saunders prefers the descriptor "comic" to "satire":

"Satire always -- to me anyway -- implies that the writer knows something and is trying to bludgeon the dullard reader with it," he said. "But comic implies a more joyful approach -- like you're just trying to distill some of the crazy beautifulness of life into your story."

Here is recent Saunders from the New Yorker on "washboarding" as torture

Last week's New Yorker also had an article on Lenny Dykstra, the kind of baseball player who could convince you to like baseball when you were a kid. I remember being very sad when he was traded to Philadelphia. for Juan Samuel, why oh why?

Of course, Dykstra doesn't really seem to be that great a human being.

Here's an interview with She & Him

Here's an interview with Stephen Malkmus

There are a bunch of Malkmus video clip interviews at Snow Ghost Youtube

The Village Voice reviewed Mountain Goats at Webster Hall. Not really into the drums, it seems.

John Darnielle talks a bit about his upcoming book

Chris Ware writes in Publishers Weekly about Rodolphe Töpffer, who invented the graphic novel

The free Matador download sampler has some pretty good stuff on it
including a new Shearwater song

This article links to a photo gallery of the new Marcel Dzama show

Elf Power recorded an album backing Vic Chesnutt

Can Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah (via Jeff Buckley) be over-covered and overplayed on TV?

Wired: Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos
(some of them are good, anyway)

NY Times: r.i.p. print encyclopedias, although Britannica suggests they are becoming a luxury item

Eels are inviting politicians/royals to their shows in the US and UK, and then hiring impersonators when necessary

New Spoon video and pics of the cut paper process

Dan Bejar:

"Most of what Destroyer records have been about for the last while is just kind of taking the tradition of the first 10 Lou Reed solo records, and taking the tradition of the first 10 John Cale solo records, and trying to smush them together,"

streaming r.e.m. from sxsw

streaming my morning jacket from sxsw

The Guardian has some 20th century poetry going on

Here's an article about the upcoming Destroyer album

Mountain Goats as a trio

Re: Spitzer, David Byrne wonders why the identities of clients 1-8 and 10+ have not been released..


Apparently the Archdiocese of NY is (was?) holding a contest to design a papal skateboard in honor of Benedict's visit?? (I can't get through to the actual? site right now)

Robyn Hitchcock is up to a bunch of stuff: something with Andy Partridge, another small part in a Jonathan Demme film and another reissue box set

My Morning Jacket's new album will have a song called "Librarian"
I somehow doubt that it relates much to my daytime existence.

Stereogum has all kinds of youtube on new songs, but not Librarian.

Here's an article about stolen books from independent bookstores

There's an underground economy of boosted books. These values are commonly understood and roundly agreed upon through word of mouth, and the values always seem to be true. Once, a scruffy, large man approached me, holding a folded-up piece of paper. "Do you have any Buck?" He paused and looked at the piece of paper. "Any books by Buckorsick?" I suspected that he meant Bukowski, but I played dumb, and asked to see the piece of paper he was holding. It was written in crisp handwriting that clearly didn't belong to him, and it read:

1. Charles Bukowski

2. Jim Thompson

3. Philip K. Dick

4. William S. Burroughs

5. Any Graphic Novel

This is pretty much the authoritative top five, the New York Times best-seller list of stolen books. Its origins still mystify me. It might have belonged to an unscrupulous used bookseller who sent the homeless out, Fagin-like, to do his bidding, or it might have been another book thief helping a semi-illiterate friend identify the valuable merchandise

Finns are quite active library users

The David Hajdu book on comics sounds interesting; I put in a reserve claim.
The Paper Cuts blog revisits the NYT's 1954 take on comics

Basia Bulat covers Sam Cooke and Daniel Johnston at Daytrotter
and here's a Basia Bulat Radio K session with downloadable songs

New Mountain Goats song

John Darnielle gives some thoughts on some songs

Stephen Malkmus on fantasy baseball and living in NY

The NY Times on Brooklyn bands

Here's an article on the new Batman movie

Ibelieveinharveydent.com has been updated

ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com has not been updated

The Wall Street Journal with a small article on the Justice League New Frontier dvd movie

The Daily Mail has an article about Sleeveface

I don't mind providing free advertising for Mission of Burma:

There's a new Marcel Dzama gallery exhibit opening

Here's a Dzama zine from last year

Here's a Malkmus interview

Jeff Tweedy on migraines

Here's a selection of Malkmus/Jicks videos including a medley of R.E.M. covers

Stephen Malkmus plays scrabble

Top 5 Tips
1. "Save your X and Zs so you get at least 70 or 80 points when you use them."
2. "Don't waste your wildcards (blanks) because they're really precious."
3. "I don't switch letters very often. I think it's probably smarter to do that more than I do. Don't be afraid to change your tiles."
4. "Learn your two letter words."
5. "Keep yourself up to date with the new words that are added to the Scrabble rulebook."

Paper Cuts blog on Ray Davies

Here's the setlists for this year's Yo La Tengo WFMU cover-a-thon

And here's video of YLT playing "The Passenger" with improvised Jack Nicholson referencing lyrics

Controversy at the Horn Book blog about characterizations of adults who find reading fulfillment solely in children's books

Neil Gaiman posted Dave McKean's neat cover sketches for the upcoming Graveyard Book

news on Colin Meloy solo stuff and new Decemberists

An article on Paul Auster, and here is a PA timeline

I don't play video games, and I don't really understand the underlying concpet ,but this Lego Batman thing seems kind of neat.

Apparently the Lemony Snicket project The Composer is Dead , will become a book sometime in 2009. Carson Ellis is doing illustrations.

Here's a review of a Michael Chabon talk at Yale

Here is an interview with Brett Morgan about the Chicago 10 film which seems like a pretty interesting project; apparently Steven Spielberg has already purchased remake rights with Aaron Sorkin to write.

Jeff Mangum is the JD Salinger of indie rock, according to Slate

Stephin Merrit performs songs from Distortions on Fair Game, with downloadable mp3sw of the songs

Grizzly Bear Live on KCRW:


The Guardian on Black Cab sessions

time magazine on the new malkmus album, which is apparentlyone of "5 things you should know about":

Long a master of erudite word salads and gee-tar stews, the former Pavement leader dives deeper into his love of abstraction by jamming for minutes in search of a groove and twirling words like Bal-ti-mo-wo-wo-wore. None of it is urgent or important, but none of it is stupid, either--a Sammy Hagar album if Sammy Hagar had a Ph.D.

The NY Times on the Justice League of America movie, which is having some problems getting done because of the various actual and potential strikes in Hollywood