The Walkmen — Pussy Cats

For their fourth album The Walkmen are definitely going their own way. It’s a “note-for-note cover” of eccentric singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson’s 1974 LP “Pussy Cats,” famously produced by notable drinking buddy John Lennon. You can listen to it for free here. So far, it’s great in spots and trying too hard in others, kind of like their last album. It’s definitely worth checking out in any case.

So far my favorite track is “Loop de Loop,” if only because you can practically smell the fun they must have been having as they bid farewell to Marcata Studios in Harlem (damn you and your gentrifying ways Bill Clinton!).

Archive of the Now

 

The Archive of the Now is an online and print repository of recordings, printed texts and manuscripts, focussing on innovative contemporary poetry being written or performed in Britain. It is part of the Brunel Centre for Contemporary Writing, at Brunel University in west London, UK.

Americans Like Me

Via digby, Michael J. Fox made this ad for Claire McCaskill running for Senate from Missouri regarding the tendency of many Republicans to oppose stem cell research, if not try and scare people into believing it will lead directly to human cloning. It’s powerful and sad. Here’s hoping it makes a difference.

Pavement — Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition

Pavement’s third album, 1995’s Wowee Zowee, is being reissued by Matador. This makes me very happy. The PFM link here also goes to some free mp3s from the two-disc collection.

The standard narrative goes likes this: Slanted & Enchanted (1992), their debut, is the twisted pop masterpiece that was better but less accessible than the raw blast of Nirvana’s Nevermind. 1994’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (the title suggested by poet and Silver Jews frontman Dave Berman) sees Stephen Malkmus tightening his songwriting and clamping down on the cryptic flourishes, and his band improving in ways that allow them to reach new musical territory. Then we get to this release. At the time, more than a few people thought it was a step backwards. If bizzaro song titles and even stranger lyrics turned people off the first two times, Malkmus unapologetically forged ahead into some seriously baroque territory.

Will Oldham — Comedian

What do you call something that’s not funny, but not not-funny?  But it is funny, because Will Oldham writes some pretty great, depressing music and he was the preacher kid and moral center of John Sayles’ Matewan.  But it’s not funny, because the jokes are pretty tired.  But it might be funny, because Zach Galifianakis is involved.

Please hope me Jedidiah Purdy.

The Worst Congress Ever

Matt Taibbi strikes again.  I’m sure Peggy Noonan doesn’t approve.  The old bag.

Previous Taibbi excitement on David Brooks.

Jonah Goldberg: “Iraq Was a Worthy Mistake”

You can’t make this stuff up.  Well, actually you can, but only if your initials are “George Orwell.”  Billmon responds.

Money:  I must confess that one of the things that made me reluctant to conclude that the Iraq war was a mistake was my general distaste for the shabbiness of the arguments on the antiwar side.

Obvious Godwin retaliation: I must confess that one of the things that made me reluctant to conclude that the Final Solution was a mistake was my general distaste for the shabbiness of the arguments on the anti-Holocaust side.

My Spacious, Right-Wing Closet

If you’re gay, why be Republican? Serious question. My first guess is that it has something to do with a Libertarian/Fiscal Integrity streak that died out in that party along with Ronald Reagan.

From The National Journal: “A Calamity for Gay Republicans”

From Digby, the Dobson factor. Money: That’s an allegedly professional child psychologist and religious leader there, adopting Drudge’s GOP approved talking point that this whole sordid affair is nothing more than an elaborate joke perpetrated by the victims. No harm, no foul, no evidence. Let’s have some tolerance for powerful Republicans who can’t be bothered to stop a drunken congressman from hitting on teenagers. The kids are alright.

Why I approve of J. Dennis Hastert staying on as pimp Speaker: more Americans trust the Democrats than the GOP on moral values and the war on terror (Newsweek).

And while it’s long, it’s worth watching in full (yet again): Olbermann on Predatorgate as a metaphor for everything that’s rotten about Bush and the GOP leadership.  (He makes a point I hadn’t realized — Foley’s sexual abuse was going on before and during Clinton’s impeachment.)

Predatorgate

There’s so much to say about Mark Foley and the GOP Leadership follies that have ensued. I made some comments at an ongoing thread at another place if you want to get your snark on. As usual, Glenn Greenwald nails most of the important issues with aplomb and no restraint at all: “Does the Foley Scandal Prove the Existence of a God?” In any event, here’s a little historical exercise regarding the last six years of our nation’s great history:

The Party of National Security has made our country less safe.

The Party of Fiscal Responsibility has spent its way from a surplus into a huge hole.

The Party of Small Government has made the Fed a more bloated and expensive beast than ever. (Flown on a plane lately? Do you really feel your tax dollars are being put to effective use?)

The Party of Personal Responsibility refuses to acknowledge errors, nor properly discipline those who have failed in their duties.

And now the kicker: The Part of Family Values aids and abets a known child predator, presumably out of a fear that they might lose a single seat in the House. (That doesn’t really hold water though — it’s a Republican district. Why not nip this quickly in time to run a viable candidate?)

In Soviet Russia, Futurist Poetry Reads You!

As long as I’m being lazy on a Friday, here’s more fun from PennSound: clips of Vladmir Mayakovsky.

(And I didn’t realize he was Georgian — Stalin’s place of birth.)