Our lives still change from the way that we were: 4/20 show

Notes on the music I played:
I play Zerostars fairly often, and there's a story behind that. Mainly it's because I like the music, and we are required to play 2 songs from local bands per hour. But there's more. Zerostars are a local band, and I work with the lead singer's sister, Suzanne. When I heard her brother was in a band, I didn't say "hey, somebody's brother has a band, I want to hear it!", I just kind of ignored it. I knew people in bands in high school; it was often not very interesting. In any event, one day I heard they were performing live on WLUW on the Razor and Di show, and so I gave the a listen, and I thought, "hey, these guys are good, I should be paying attention to this." So I talked to Suzanne about it, and got a copy of their first CD for the station, reviewed it, and got it into the catalog. I'm looking forward to their next CD, which I hear is coming along slowly. Some of the new songs can be heard on their MySpace page. Good stuff.

A couple of years ago Eric and I went to a free winter concert in downtown Chicago, featuring, among others, Mavis Staples. (Chicago does a series of free concerts in the winter that they call "Winter Delights".) Mavis Staples is a Chicago legend with a powerful voice, and the concert was a lot of fun. Now she has a new album out that we just got in the studio. When I saw that some of the songs featured Ladysmith Black Mambazo (perhaps best known for collaborating with Paul Simon on Graceland) I thought, well, I just have to play one of those songs! Great song.; very bluesy and rootsy. Without Ladysmith Black Mambazo it would still be a great song, but they add a layer of gorgeous harmony that really makes the song special.

Everybody's talking about Bright Eyes these days, it seems. I played Bright Eyes today because I had concert tickets to give away; I'm frankly not all that interested. I did hear a song I liked the other day (from another DJ also giving away tickets), but the one I played was not much to my taste, and I think sort of illustrative of what I was afraid it would be: generally mopey and with a quavery voice. (I don't mind sad songs, and mopey can be fine if it's done right — see the Smiths — but I don't think mopey in itself is a recommendation.) There is another angle to Bright Eyes, though. The band centers on one guy, Conor Oberst who has been recording since he was 14 (roughly half his life), and started Bright Eyes at 15. There is something potentially irritating about a child prodigy... that is, if you are not impressed, you are probably annoyed. It's a jealousy thing; it's unattractive, but there you are. Anyway, combine "child prodigy" with "mopey", and... well anyway, I have felt that I was probably not being fair, but I don't really plan to explore the band more. There are plenty of other bands out there that do interest me.

*: new stuff
(r): requests

artist	song	album	label
New Order	Confusion	Selections from Retro	Warner Brothers
The Rapture	The Pop Song	Out of the Races and onto the Tracks	Sub Pop
*Au Revoir Simone	A Violent Yet Flammable World	The Bird of Music	Moshi Moshi Music
*Bill Callahan	Sycamore	Woke on a Whaleheart	Drag City
Zerostars	The Good Can't Escape	The Good Can't Escape	Self-released zerostars.com
*CocoRosie	Rainbowarriors	The Adventures of Ghost Horse and Stillborn	Touch and Go
Matthew Sweet	Scooy-Doo, Where Are You?	Saturday Morning Cartoons' Greatest Hits	MCA
The Free Design	Now Is the Time	Heaven/Earth	Light in the Attic
Kaspar Hauser	Fossil	Quixotic/Taxidermy	Backwardmasking
*Mavis Staples feat. Ladysmith Black Mambazo	Down in Mississippi	We'll Never Turn Back	Anti-
The Mortal Coil	Help Me Lift You Up	Blood	4AD
(r)Sloan	I Wanna Thank You	Navy Blues	Murderecords
*Patrick Wolf	The Stars	The Magic Position	Tomlab
Tom Waits	Emotional Weather Report	Nighthawks at the Diner	Asylum
Everything but the Girl	Corcovado	Red Hot + Rio	Antilles
*Los Straightjackets	De Dia y de Noche (All Day and All of the Night)	Rock en Español Vol.1	Yep Roc
*Dntel feat. Conor Oberst	Breakfast in Bed	Dumb Luck	Sub Pop
Laurie Anderson	Coolsville	Talk Normal Anthonology	Warner Archives/Rhino
(r)Scissor Sisters	Comfortably Numb	Scissor Sisters	Polydor
*Klaxons	As Above, So Below	Myths of Near Future	Rinse/DGC
*Vieux Farka Touré	Ana	Vieux Farka Touré	World Village
*Henry Padovani	Y a plus d'saisons	A croire que c'était pour la vie	CIA
Canasta	All this Dust	We Were Set Up	Broken Middle C
Bright Eyes	First Day of My Life	I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning	Saddle Creek
*Idlewild	If It Takes You Home	Make Another World	Sanctuary
volcano!	Apple or a Gun	Beautiful Seizure	Leaf
Cliff and Barbara Thomas	Jumpin' Jack	The Legendary Sun Records	Castle Pulse
Les Séquelles	Crac! Boom! Hue! Oh! Hé! Hein! Bon!	Et tant pis si cela vous déplaît	Grenadine

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 6:12 PM