Jesse Thorn, America’s Radio Sweetheart, is the man behind Public Radio’s The Sound of Young America, where he interviews wonderful creative people such as Jonathan Katz (the man behind Dr. Katz, professional therapist), Swamp Dogg, Sa-Ra Creative Partners, Ira Glass, The Upright Citizen’s Brigade, the drummer from Deerhoof, Steve Albini, Brendan Small, They Might Be Giants, etc, etc, etc. Yet, as great as The Sound of Young America is, even better is Jordan Jesse Go, Jesse Thorn’s rambling, aimless podcast which basically functions solely as a vehicle for witty banter between Thorn and his former TSOYA co-host, Jordan Morris, boy detective. But don’t take my word for it!
I fucking love Jib Kidder. Shit’s raw as hell, and you never know what the fuck is going to happen. Dude’s got more samples than you can shake a gangsta-ass stick at. His most recent release (as far as I can tell) is All on Y’All Da Mixtape, which is out now on States Rights Records with a killer Pen & Pixel-style cover (seen above). All on Y’All (not the mixtape) will be out on States Rights in December according to the Kidder’s virb profile (click on the album links on the side to hear preview tracks from all his releases).Here’s some tracks:
The first two mp3s from the yet-to-come Super Famicom epic “The Wandering Floret” have been posted on the sf myspace, and they sound wonderful. For those who aren’t in the know, The Wandering Floret is eight albums, all of which are going to be simultaneously released on eight record labels, on 08/08/08. I’ve never heard of anyone else doing this, and I honestly can’t figure out why no one’s talking about this, because it’s completely unprecedented. This dwarfs 69 Love Songs and just about any other indie rock concept I can think of, if only for the sheer magnitude of the undertaking. The record labels involved have not yet been announced, but I’m sure they’ll include some of the labels PJ has released on already such as Sanitary Records, Tract Records, Red Chair Records, and Pj’s own PJ Records. This is a big deal.”Sometimes” starts out with the killer line “sometimes you let someone ruin your life to see how far they’ll go,” and keeps loose time with the sounds of rustling brushes and moving water. “Nice Really Nice” reeks of delicious Super Famicom reverb, and keeps the lonely lyrics coming. From the looks of it, The Wandering Floret’s gonna be the best thing PJ’s ever done, and I’m way excited.
Manipulator Alligator is one of the finest musical projects I’ve heard that absofuckinglukely no one seems to listen to. What gives, guys? This man, one Matthew Hoppock of Kansas City/Salinas/etc., Kansas is the one behind Sanitary Records, and has put out bands like Saturday Looks Good to Me, Boo Hiss, Real Live Tigers, Nedelle, Quiet Bears, Half-Handed Cloud, Colin Clary, Grumpy Bear and lots of others. And you know what, he’s a damn near flawless songwriter, vocalist AND musician, and goes back and forth between acoustic songs and electronic patchwork pieces without it seeming strange at all. He can be super experimental one minute and the next write what basically amounts to a simple, heartfelt country song, and god dammit they’re all so good! Not to mention he’s one of the most kind, gentle, selfless people I’ve met. Oh, AND he’s married, has a kid, works, and is (was?) attending law school in addition to making amazing music and running a wonderful record label. Sadly, I’ve heard say that he’s going to stop making Manipulator Alligator songs, which I completely understand, given his situation, but still think is an EFFING CRIME, because there are so many people who have no idea, NO IDEA, how amazing this man is. Below I’ve posted two of his songs, two that I found on his website/myspace/purevolume, but I don’t even think listening to just these can give you a full idea of how wonderful Manipulator Alligator is. I’m not entirely sure what other releases he has planned other than a split with…ehm…Tinyfolk (which should be out on Sanitary within the next month or so), but I would recommend buying anything you can get your hands on from Sanitary.
Jonathan Goldstein is hilarious. I think. He’s got a dry sense of humor that is at times hilarious, though he’s constantly interrogating why exactly what he does is funny. He does this through a number of tropes, most regularly the tried and true “witty banter from a self-deprecating Jew” mode that made Lenny Bruce and Woody Allen so popular, but the format in which he does it is, I think, the most original thing about his material.
Jonathan Goldstein hosts a radio show on CBC Radio 1 and Sirius Satellite Radio called Wiretap. Basically the show is made up of a series of pasted-together audio snippets consisting of narrative monologues (most notably, Jonathan has done a number of hilarious versions of bible stories, including one in which David’s real reason for killing Goliath is because he didn’t like Goliath’s anti-semitic comedic stylings and thought killing him with a rock would be a laugh riot that would put both the Israelites and God in stitches), interviews with people who have strange occupations or goals, but mostly just recorded phone conversations between him, a number of his friends, and even his parents. There’s your run-on sentence for the day.
Before doing Wiretap, Jonathan worked on This American Life, which is where I was first exposed to him. He’s also written a wonderful book called Lenny Bruce is Dead that I would recommend to any Goldstein fans interested in reading his material as well as listening to it. Unfortunately, however, unless you’re a Sirius Satellite radio customer (I’m not), there’s no way to listen to his show in the states legally (unless CBC has begun podcasting it, which last I heard they were not), though if you do some googling you can find websites with illegal podcasts of the episodes.
To give you an idea, here’s a video featuring Jonathan and one of the regular guests, Howard:
Dustin and the Furniture is one of my favorite musicians. Lyrically, (and this holds true for a surprising number of his songs) he manages to talk about a single person’s role in the universe in a way that is effective and useful, and to do it unpretentiously, with humor and candidness. Dustin can sing a song about myspace and have it not come across as lame:
Dustin can rap in a folk song and not seem like he’s making a joke about it:
But most importantly, Dustin can also write a good song without any of those gimmicks, and he’s done it over and over. I’ve never heard a Dustin and the Furniture song that I didn’t like. His live performances are flawless, with him taking the “bang on your guitar to keep the beat”-style playing to the next level, and his vocals are really unique for the kind of music he creates. Dancing on Nothing is a great introduction to some of Dustin’s best material, though a few of his more recent tracks really show off his abilities with percussion as well as guitar, vocals and lyrics, just to throw some icing on the proverbial cake. Here’s one more song, just because I can, and because I feel like I could pick any track off this album to impress someone:
A band you people should check out is Jenny is a Boy. Yes, he went to high school with me, yes, we were roommates, but I think that that, if anything, gives me license to be more critical of his music than the average listener. Fans of The Mountain Goats (i.e. everyone) and Paul Baribeau will find some common ground here, but really Adam is doing his own thing here. His latest release is “Folkilla,” (whatever the hell that means) a split with the wonderful Life Under a Tree that you can buy over at Bob Heavens Records. Solo, Jenny is a Boy is a treat to watch for anyone who loves intense, earnest, personal acoustic guitar music, with equal doses of whispered lyrics and shout-alongs. But it is when he plays with his full band, The Proclamation where he really comes into his own and it’s a lot easier to see how original and versatile his songwriting really is. You can get one of his songs on the Real Live Tigers tribute comp (available from the wonderful Toby Foster’s myspace page), and there is a new album which should be out in two or three months on Bloomington, Indiana’s Let’s Pretend Records.
OH! And holly fucking shit guys (there’s a christmas typo for you), three of my favorite musicians in the word, Super Famicom, Redbear and imadethismistake, are all putting out a 4-way-split 7″ with me. And it’s going to be out on Fall of the West records in a couple months. How damn exciting is that?
In other news, the 001 collective is now home to lots of free recordings by lots of “free” musicians/bands, but if you head over to myspace.com/5432fun and scroll down to the “live recordings” section on the left side of the page, you’ll find tons of live recordings of amazing bands including Red Pony Clock, Watercolor Paintings, Little Wings, Real Live Tigers, Super Famicom, Redbear., Tinyfolk, The Robot Ate Me, Tinyfolk, Mt. Eerie, Cartoon Monster, Dear Nora, iji, Mirah, and more!!1 Not to mention you can listen to episodes of the actual 5432fun radio show, which plays all this shiz a lot.
