...but not naming names. Trend seems to be afoot amongst a certain subsegment of our indie backyard (its unfortunate press-designated genre name rhymes with "bleak yolk") toward pseudo-"found" sound/field recordings as textures/voices within songs. Hey, cool, that's fine and potentially interesting or neat. But you wanna know what nobody gives a shit about? The sound of you choppin' wood or stirring gravel in the driveway, in your thrift-store vest and your Whitman beard an' all. I know, I know: some of the greatest music ever made was improvised, it's important not to stand in your own way. It is also important to know the difference between an outtake and an album track. That is all, you may now go back to listening to your SMiLE boots like they were transmissions from the heart of the Godhead or something.

Well man I'll tell you it was like this. First I guess I saw an ad someplace for the Septic Flesh album. I don't know if they spell it like that because on the album cover it is all one word which is not as cool by even half. Getting ahead of myself here OK so wait. I see the ad, it is for the Septic Flesh album Communion, it's a shared ad with like three other releases in it. That is how labels do shit so they can split the cost of billing the ad between multiple releases. When we all share the burden our load is light. You get the idea. Stick to the point man. OK cool. I see the ad, it has an album cover that looks pretty cool to me because it has some kind of wicked ram-human hybrid just staring out all ram-eyed. I am an easy man to please, OK? Give me a ram-headed human dude looking all wicked-ass and you are halfway home. I make no secret of my preferences here. OK? OK.

So I see the ad, and just briefly say to myself: "Fucking wicked!" I do not say "wicked awesome" because that is a New England thing, if you say "wicked awesome" but you are not from New England then you are POSING and you are requested to STOP POSING. PLEASE. And I think, "I hope somebody sends me that record because I probably will not remember it about five minutes from now." Why do I think that? Because it is true. I have reached the point where for an advertisement to leave any lasting impression with me it has to do one of two things. The first is, it can make me laugh hard. This almost never works because the shit that ad people think is funny is generally not very funny. The second is the advertisement can feature an endorsement from William Gass. I will let you know if this one ever happens.

So I see the ad, I move on with my life, maybe I see the ad once or twice more because I know the image kinda stuck with me. Then BOOM, MOTHERFUCKERS, I get a promo in the mail from Season of Mist and what is it? Fucking Septic Flesh. Exact same record I was hoping to hear. And I put it with all the other promos by stereo and wait for the right time to listen to it only then I get too damn busy to listen to new stuff so it just sits there looking evil.

That's all right about that but then I get it in my head that I heard it was lame. Bummer. I have no idea how I even got this idea, because one of my homies at Decibel gave the shit an 8, but somehow I get it in my head that it ain't all that. Maybe I was just trying to counterstrike against my natural "the cover rules so the record is morally obligated to also rule" misconception. Twice bitten, you know? But the worm's in the wood now. Every time I see it I'm thinkin' "It's not as good as you think it is." Only, today, I see that promo looking up at me like the unfeeling embodiment of sad Satan and I think to myself "well dude you gotta listen to it at least once." That's the contract with promos, right? They send you a free one, you listen to it, and if you have anything to say about it, you do that. OH MY GOD THE SYSTEM CAN ONLY WORK IF YOU LET IT.

Well I fire that bad boy up and what do I find out, these guys are using an 80-piece orchestra and a choir that rolls 32 deep. The band is from Greece, the orchestra & choir are from Prague, and the whole lot of them are free to hit my liquor cabinet any time they want, because they have got flow. They have got flow! Symphonic Therion flow sorta. But different, because they are Greek, and Greek metal has a thing goin'. I don't know exactly how to quanitfy the thing that Greek metal has goin' but Rotting Christ has it and so does Varathron. It has to do with the distortion being kind of even and measured, and it has to do also with the scales that the guitarists seem to favor. I would like to tell you that it's because they're always in Doric mode or some shit like that but honestly I don't know. They do seem to really know their way around a proper minor key. Mournful and grand, you know. Hott!

So that was how I was reminded that just because you think maybe you heard somebody say that something sucked doesn't mean you actually think that yourself. Unless you are an ant, in which case that is totally true for you, and everybody has to be OK with that because what are you supposed to be, not be an ant? Shit does not work like that. That is just how it is, ant-man. Don't even worry about it. Do what you gotta do to keep the mound happy. Nothing but love.

Sure, they made one of my favorite albums of the year so far, but - not to put too fine a point on it - Crystal Castles can go to Hell and stay there. Short version of the story: Crystal Castles finds a flyer with an image of Madonna with a black eye. The image is a painting by Trevor Brown, a well-known and somewhat controversial artist (among many other things, he paints images of injured women, children, etc; many of his images give off a bizarrely sexualized glow and resist easy interpretation). The band then uses this image on the cover or an early 7", and on their t-shirts besides. Trevor Brown finds out he's been involuntarily conscripted to do cover art for a band whose record he hasn't even heard, and is understandably pissed. He contacts the band and tells them they need to pay up. Meanwhile, the band has sold out the pressing and is still moving shirts. They offer to throw him a one-time-only we-get-to-keep-using-the-image-forever bone, but never actually send him a dime. To me the worst part, though, is the armchair market analysts on Mr. Brown's comments threads, who tell him he should be grateful for the exposure.

Grateful for the exposure! If somebody robs me, and I get my name in the paper when a story about the robbery of my house runs, am I to feel "grateful for the exposure"? I hate to be all "people are so damned stupid," but people can be awfully stupid, you will have to admit. Nicking an image for a flyer or in collage is one thing; appropriating generally-available icons is yet another; clip-art is a third. Standing far, far away from all this is stealing outright the work of a fellow artist and then seeking a blanket all-future-uses permission from him before you pay him for ripping him off. When it comes to ownership of artistic work, people like to pretend that everything's complicated; some things are complicated, for sure. This one isn't. It's a version of plagiarism, with the added ugliness of being ungraceful when caught at it.

Very disappointed by this band - I suppose I should know better than to expect much from music people; back in the right-thinking middle ages, musician was a hair above chamberpot-cleaner on the Great Chain of Desirable Jobs. Still. I loved their album, and I wish they weren't being pricks.

When I tell you that Mr. Brown's blog is not safe for work, this is what I mean: its sidebar image is of a winged girl in black latex piloting an enormous black phallus as if it were an aircraft. That is really only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Trevor Brown. Forewarned being forearmed, then, here's Trevor Brown to tell you this disappointing story himself.

It's not news that hip hop is to the world what rock and roll was a long time ago: a cultural lingua franca more immediate and pertinent than any competitors you might name, and one with worldwide reach. Go anywhere: you will hear hip hop. Thank God.

Still, it's been hard going trying to get American listeners interested in hip hop that isn't 100% American. Practically every country in the world has a thriving hip hop scene, but who besides real heads stateside can name a Senegalese MC? As in all genres, it's only every so often that somebody comes along who's both brave enough and good enough to break new ground without losing any potential audience in the process. This has virtually nothing to do with the genre itself: it's also hard to get Americans to see foreign movies, eat food that hasn't been Americanized for their convenience, learn a second language, etc. Back when rock was the biggest music in the world, most Americans took a pass on rock music that wasn't all-English-all-the-time. If the Beatles had written all their songs in French and sung them that way, most of us would probably never have heard of them. Which is a pity: who knows how much great music we've missed by insisting that we be able to understand the words? Words are important, for sure; I'd be the last person to dispute that; but if they were the whole story there'd be no point in setting them to music. Gotta give big ups to the punx on this front though, who in the early eighties made a real point of embracing the worldwide reach of their subculture.

All this is by way of urging any hip hopmusic fans in or near Austin or Houston to read this right now, and follow the links Matt's grouped for you - be sure to close the text comments on the YouTube video, though, unless you relish the real intellectual depth, ahem, of anonymous online political commentary. The songs on their Myspace are considerably better than the YouTube one in any case. And then GO TO THE SHOW, if it's at all possible, because it won't be every day you'll have the chance to see a crew from Palestine, and it'll be just as rare to hear melodies and scales like the ones DAM favors used this adeptly and cleverly. (Try "Ya Sayidati" is you're pressed for time - it's a solid, loping tune that gets under my skin.) I think it's a tremendous thing Matt Sonzala's doing in bringing these guys down south. Show up and show love if you can.

I thought maybe I wrote about it here once before, but maybe not. I know I wrote a blurb for the press kit, because I, like pretty much every songwriter I know, am pretty damn impressed by Mark Szabo. But I have to say, people, for real: I have been listening to this album off and on since a few months before it came out, and I listened again today, and I'm now pretty certain that it is a perfect album. You don't hear a lot of perfect albums, and they don't always come with a big sign on them saying "oh hi I am pretty much perfect." Perfect is a funny word, and I'd usually expect somebody using it about a record to reserve it for something big and grandiose and statement-making like OK Computer or Hounds of Love. That is not what The Szabo Songbook is really about. The Szabo Songbook is just eleven beautifully realized songs. There is not a dud in the bunch.

I have nothing else, really, to say about it, other than that, while listening to it today, for what must be the twentieth time in the past few months, I realized that I don't think it has any flaws. You don't get to say that very often, so I thought I'd let you know.

In case anybody didn't know, my book is available today. I'm only linking to Amazon incidentally - I'm sure they'll have it at Powell's, too, and in plenty of other places. If you enjoy Last Plane to Jakarta, especially the old longer-form entries that were sometimes as much fiction as criticism, then I think you will enjoy this book.

Blogging at Powell's all week about albums that might also have inspired an imagined narrator to go buck wild like the guy in my book, to which I here very craftily link just like a pro'd-out blogger and stuff.

Hardly any point in trying to add to Philip Sherberne's excellent analysis of Jamie Liddell's Jim - Sherberne has stuff to say about Liddell's growth as an artist, but I didn't get to know Liddell until December of '06, when I saw him play a set in Tasmania, of all places: I was completely knocked over by his visible, audible, palpable love for his music & the making of it & the communal experience made possible by it. My inconsequential two cents' worth, for what they're worth: one thing pop music is good for is remembering that somewhere inside us is the potential for unvanquishable joy: clearing a space for that remembering, broadening that space. Jamie Liddell's present project seems to be focused on illuminating that joy-containing space, hanging signs that point toward it. Consequently, the album-opener, "Another Day," is absolutely the most perfect song for putting on first thing in the morning that I have heard in ages: that piano! that melody! (I should probably confess that "Mouth Breather" by the Jesus Lizard also strikes me as a fabulous wake-up number, but don't let that give you the wrong idea.) The rest of the album is as good. It went directly to the year's-best list. Nobody who wants or needs the affirmation of goodness that great pop music can sometimes give should put off hearing this record for long.