[tws]

Why do I always need a REASON to do things? Did I really need a reason to buy a Barbershop Competition record from 1965 for 99 cents from Orpheus Records (R.I.P.)?

Why do I have to explain myself for ripping this record into mp3 and posting it on my website, you mindnazis? It's a unique historical document that for some reason I can't possibly fathom, never got reissued.

Seriously (somewhat), "Goodbye My Lady Love" just kills here. The rest of it is pretty pleasant, which is the way this music goes usually. Here's my impression of a modern music critic reviewing a barbershop concert:

"Um...there were a bunch of guys, well-dressed, with pleasant voices, singing old standards in multi-part harmonies. There's literally nothing else I can write about this."

There you have it. If any music magazines out there want to hire a Barbershop editor, please contact me.

Seriously (really), this is the first TDC vinyl rip, and I'm sure will be plenty of others. TDC is offering this as a service, too, if you or a loved one is interested in converting your vinyl to digital to upload, send to friends, or anything you can do with mp3s.

For now, break out the moustache wax.

Excuse the flash spot; the scanner isn't back in service yet.

1. Miamians - This Is My Country
2. Miamians - A Bundle of Old Love Letters
3. Miamians - Mother Machree
4. Thoroughbred Chorus - (Medley) When You're Smiling- Sunny Side Up
5. Thoroughbred Chorus - Roses of Picardy
6. Thoroughbred Chorus - Those Good Old Days
7. East York Barbershoppers - Canada
8. East York Barbershoppers - A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square
9. Dapper Dans of Harmony - Goodbye My Lady Love
10. Dapper Dans of Harmony - On the Banks of the Wabash (Far Away)
11. Smokyland Chorus - The Darktown Strutters' Ball
12. Smokyland Chorus - My Melancholy Baby

The Dapper Dans should have won. I think the Miamians bribed the judges with bathtub whiskey.

[tws]

Happy Monday, world.

Become a fan of TDC Productions on Facebook! We do vinyl rips now. A few of them may make their way on to this site here. Crazy.

I thought I'd post a few pieces of happy/sad fare for you all. Last month while traveling abroad, I found an original Sarah Records 7" of Another Sunny Day's "I'm in Love with a Girl Who Doesn't Know I Exist." I bought it on indie-nerd spec, based on what I'd heard about the "band" (read: just a young Harvey Williams). It was expensive but as soon as I got home and listened to it, I realized I still got a deal. It's a wonderful 1:40 of happy/sadness. Call it bipolarcore. Also, to smooth down your day, here's some Field Mice, and a Belle and Sebastian demo set above some industrial film from the 50's. I would love to have the time on my hands that these people do. Enjoy and leave comments if you wish.





And because I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH... (from a man who knows his subtle advertising)...



A lightbulb simultaneously pops over Bjork and Spike Jonzes' heads. Did all 3 of you who might get that reference get it yet? Ok, have a good one.

[tws]

I was thisclose to waiting until Monday, but I already put it up in the corner of the page, and I'm more than a little excited about this thing. Mucho thanks to my buddy Lance Smith for this.



And FUNNY STORY. I had the comments to the blog turned off for more than 3 years. I don't know how I overlooked that. So...anyway...let me know how you like the new logo.

[tws]

For those of my friends not stationed in the vicinity of our nation's capital, particularly those who have been living under a rock, MTV's The Real World is filming in Dupont Circle. I haven't been by the house (at least intentionally; ever since the P St. open mics stopped happening there isn't much that draws me back there, short of the Brickskellar's beer menu).

Because I don't have much time to write today and I haven't posted anything since Monday, I realized now was as good a time as any to plug my friend Adam's blog, Anti Real World DC. Clearly, MTV doesn't know or understand dick about the way the district is, and it's becoming less and less likely they're going to pull their stakes up and leave like "Radioactive Man," but every little bit counts.



On the comedy front, I'm going to be appearing at Joker's Wild Comedy Club on Wooster St. in New Haven on Friday, August 7th, so if you're around hit that up. Two shows at 8 and 10. I love doing comedy up in CT, and I wish I could more often. You meet some of the nicest people, including amiable funnyman Keith Alberstadt, who made the trip up to Milford to perform in a showcase a few years back that I happened to be on as well.

I don't think I ever posted Keith's Letterman appearance, and I don't know why. Enjoy some good clean jokes the way they're meant to be told. Keith's based in NYC so if you get the chance to see him, jump on it.

[tws]

Just a quick call to make sure anyone who may be interested in owning a copy know...

HEXAGON 2009: WHAT SO PROUDLY WE BAILED [OFFICIAL DVD] available now!

The top non-profit theater group in DC, 50+ years strong, was back this year with their edgiest show pretty much ever, and now you can own the Official DVD, produced by yrs trly. The DVD includes a 2-Disc Set, a bonus behind-the-scenes documentary, audio commentary from the director and production team, highlights from the Tech show (if you're in the organization you'll get it), an alternate version of "Old White Men with Jowls" and more! It also includes a free download of an mp3 recording of the entire show. It costs $30 and is available via paypal or email webmaster at tdcpresents dot com for questions on how to pay by check or cash.

Busy, gotta run.

Happy 40th Birthday, the Experience of Knowing that a Man Has Walked on the Moon.

[tws]

I wound up listening to a few tracks from Pulp’s 1995 centerpiece Different Class en route to work today, for whatever reason. Actually, I’ll tell you the reason(s). I am still on a firey Britpop kick (see previous entry) and Jarvis Cocker, despite his ascension to cult figure both in and out of the UK, is probably the best songwriter of his generation of artsy British weirdoes. What’s kept him relevant, even eight years after his band dissolved (he’d been doing Pulp since he was 15 for chrissakes), is that he’s kept on branching out into other galaxies as a songwriter and performer, all with a genuinely good sense of humor. That is to say, it’s a better sense of humor than Damon Albarn and much better than Noel Gallagher, whom he shared the stylish blue “Britpop” T-shirt I saw (and nearly bought) at Popland in Madrid last week.

But, I decided what to do better than assemble my latest nerd-list for July (this may as well be a monthly thing if I keep it on track), here I go, ranking a bunch of Pulp songs from 1995. Pull up a chair, you may learn something.

[listen along, then buy it]



12. F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E. (Track 9)
This is the only song on Different Class that feel at all overlong, which is odd since the song itself isn’t by any means bad. It has business being six minutes, but in the context of the second half/side of the album, it’s the one I skip over the most. Plus, it’s a pain in the ass to type. So, cellar.

11. I Spy (Track 4)
This song was my first exposure to Pulp. Sometime in the late 90’s, my friend Patrick came up from NYC for a visit, and brought the Mission: Impossible soundtrack with him. “I Spy” was a pretty cool song, but because, in the context of Different Class, doesn’t quite measure up to the rest of the album, it’s pretty low on my list. I wish I could be nicer to this one, mostly because it features Cocker saying “take your year in Provence; shove it up your ass.”

10. Monday Morning (Track 11)
It’s undeniably the weakest link within the dynamite trio of songs that closes the album, but it provides a good, almost uncertain, link. Nothing particularly different about the lyrics (you’re done with school, you don’t see your purpose, what now?) but it holds the whole thing together pretty well.

9. Sorted for E’s and Wizz (Track 8)
“Is this the way they say the future’s meant to feel?” I know how many classic rock songs are about drugs, but that’s the best line that’s ever opened any song about drugs. I don’t care if you disagree with me, hippies! Go suck on a bong and listen to String Cheese Incident. I remember when SPIN tried to be funny once they suggested never including this on a “Welcome Home from Rehab” mix. Your cleaned-up friend should be so lucky!

8. Live Bed Show (Track 6)
The halfway point, and has the whole mid-90’s kitchen-sink operetta desperation to it, if that makes any sense. Well, listen to it and you’ll get the idea. Probably the best “la la la la la” succession to come out of Pulp’s oeuvre. I dunno.

7. Something Changed (Track 7)
Probably the cleverest lyrics on the record: “I wrote this song two hours before we met. I didn’t know your name, or what you looked like yet.” It tackles that all-too-common WHAT-IF dialogues we have with our brains. What are the millions of different factors and choices I could have made that would have kept me from meeting someone important? A ridiculously good tribute to the concept of fate in a way that wouldn’t creep anyone out if you brought it up on a first date. It’s only down at #7 because, musically, it blends into the walls a bit more than some tracks on here.

6. Pencil Skirt (Track 2)
No one has ever made an affair sound so incredibly cool. I’ve been “the other man” before. I was unaware of my status at the time (just for the record, I’d thought she and her boyfriend had broken up), but I kind of wished I had known since it’s a pretty sweet and cheap thrill, at least as Jarvis and Co pulled it out. The chorus brings the chills.

5. Mis-Shapes (Track 1)
Hey there, we’re Pulp. Can we come in? Well, too bad, because we’re going to. We’re not trying to break anything, but we’re going to kick your ass unconventionally. Don’t understand? Well, we’ll make you understand! Check out this song about how spoiled rich kids aren’t much different than the cockney rejects who line the streets. Yeah, you like it? Well, you’d better because you have no choice!
Okay, so basically, when Britpop hit, Pulp had the window to put out a great album and immortalize themselves, and they completely nailed it.

4. Common People (Track 3)
Pulp had a handful of hits, and Jarvis is doing well now in his mid-40’s as a pop artist, but this is what he’ll always be known for. And for good reason. Simply put, it’s universal, outstanding songwriting. He skewers rich “culture tourists” who for some reason assign glamour to being dirt-poor and sleeping with roaches. A good domestic example would be the gutter punx who sit around in Cambridge Square in Boston. Most of their parents are high-powered doctors and lawyers. They can pose and pretend their lives are a constant struggle, but the second the shit hits the fan, “if you call Dad he could stop it all.” Classic.

3. Bar Italia (Track 12)
Whenever I’ve been asked about my favorite final track of any album, ever, this is my go-to. It has such a pleasant air to it without being too airy or vacuous. It’s basically about the horrid circumstances of a hedonistic lifestyle, and that no matter how close to the bottom we come, things are going to be alright. Considering how that’s the note that Pulp leaves you with to end the record, Different Class leaves you smiling unlike anything to come out of Britain in this era, even Supergrass’ early stuff. And Supergrass’ early stuff makes me incredibly happy, no lie.

2. Disco 2000 (Track 5)
This is probably the best pop single that Jarvis has ever written. Two star-crossed lovers, dealing with the reality that they aren’t meant for each other after all of these years, face some facts. That’s the sense I get from this song. That line toward the end "you can even bring your baby" gives you that piece of mind. All I know is that musically it rocks and moves you more than pretty much anything on here other than…

1. Underwear (Track 10)
Lyrically subversive, like most of Jarvis’ writing style, but musically a grand slam. I can’t really put my finger on what I like so much about this song, and why whenever I hear the opening chords and march of “Mis-Shapes,” I’m looking forward to hearing “Underwear.” Even just the title of the song has a certain campy value to it, but the words and exceptionally produced music here are all business. I think that this song, kind of like “Pencil Skirt” sounds exactly like a beautifully directed film noir scene looks. Does that make sense? Maybe a little?

If Jarvis Cocker somehow finds and reads this, I’m willing to accept the consequences for butchering the meaning of his lyrics on almost every song (probably). Is it disrespectful to Michael Jackson’s memory to put a giant post up praising the work of the one man who was ever willing to publicly knock MJ down a couple of pegs (other than Michael himself?) Nah. I just really like this record, like millions of others.



[/Britpop kick. Time for some more hockey and hardcore. I’m in a play this weekend, and performing in Richmond on the 27th. Come out if you’re in Gaithersburg or RVA, respectively!]

[tws]


HERE'S A VERY WELL PUT TOGETHER SETLIST. GO AHEAD AND LISTEN ALONG.

I have something to say. This may sound a little praise-y, I’ll admit, and this is about a band who doesn’t need an endorsement from this site, but they’ve had such an impact on my life recently I needed to legitimize this whole thing somehow.

I was driving home from Robb Loving’s high-quality, high-octane open mic at the Palace of Wonders in Northeast this evening, listening to Blur’s 1999 album 13. I started thinking about why I’m such a music nerd, and realized that for certain reasons, it’s because of bands like Blur and albums like 13. Blur are once again possibly the greatest band in the world now that their long-time guitarist Graham Coxon have rejoined the fold and they’re playing to 100,000+ screaming fans in Hyde Park (I was one of them in London last week). They grew up as a band and as twisted individuals throughout the 1990’s, and by the end of that iconic decade, they had burned themselves out. Unlike most bands who rose to the level of popularity that Blur did (outside the US, at least, where in most circles they’re still known as “that there whoo-hoo band”), they didn’t shit out a sub-par, contract-fulfilling collection of songs to commemorate their impending resignation. They collected their misgivings into 13 gigantic middle-fingers to convention that composed a noise-rock masterpiece. This is five years after they changed the world (arguably) with the dance-Britpop dandy “Girls & Boys” and the Kick Horns vehicle “Country House,” the latter having defeated Oasis in the so-called “Battle of Britpop.” (Take a few minutes to read up on this if you don’t know much about it).

Anyhow, fame and fortune had driven the band to madness or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Singer Damon Albarn, after their international success of “Song 2” (yes, whoo-hoo), and their self-titled album, broke up with his long-time girlfriend Justine Frischmann of the band Elastica (oh how the British press went apeshit). This was immortalized on the 13 songs “No Distance Left to Run,” “Tender,” and probably a bunch of others, but those are the two most obvious. Coxon hit bottom and decided, in what I’m sure took a ton of resignation, to quit drinking, which he sings about on their biggest single from the record, “Coffee & TV.” (If you haven’t seen the video for this song yet, kill yourself. Or just watch it here.) Bassist Alex James came to terms with the fact that he spent over a million pounds on coke during their time at the top between 1992’s Modern Life is Rubbish and 1997’s s/t record. I’ve never bought or used cocaine but what I can safely say is THAT’S A LOT. He actually hosted a BBC documentary in recent years about cocaine trafficking and the damage he did by patronizing the black market to that degree. Interesting stuff. And drummer Dave Rowntree…well, he seems relatively well-adjusted but for some reason he’s been running for public office in and around London and losing. Bizarre, but who wouldn’t vote for him? Old people, probably.

The reason that 13 appeals to the music nerd in me so much is because on top of it being a ruthlessly interesting and entertaining piece of music, it captures exactly where those four humans were, emotionally, politically, economically, physically, and could not have been made by anyone else, at any other time in history. And this document will be around for as long as human beings can hear and possess anything that generates sound. I don’t know when music and specifically this record would be phased out of the human experience but THAT’S A LONG TIME. Also, 13 has the songs "Trailer Park" and "Optigan 1." The first one is so awesome that you imagine it comes from some parallel universe where awesome songs are created. The second one, the album’s closing track, uses an optigan, so…see previous description.

After Coxon walked out of recording the band’s likely final (and in my opinion, best end-to-end) album Think Tank, Blur went on indefinite hiatus for various reasons, most of which have to do with the fact that Albarn, Coxon, James, and Rowntree all have a lot of money and plenty of shit to occupy their time. (GORILLAZcough*). It seemed impossible for this band to stay dormant forever, though, especially since, given the current state of British (and American) ‘alternative’ rock, the world needs them like America needs Captain…America. The music press and blogosphere went nuts whenever Coxon and James would meet for coffee, for crying out loud. At the end of 2008, though, the inevitable finally happened and they announced it was going down at Hyde Park at the beginning of July. I bought a concert ticket before my plane ticket.

I think I described the concert experience as “fucking unbelievable” for more than one friend, and it’s the best way I could describe it to put it in writing, too. I stood in place for more than 5 hours and 4 opening bands, two of whom were pretty bad, one possessing a singer who was shitfaced and could barely stand up. Do the detective work thyself. My trip to Europe was fun and extensive, but if you want to see any other pictures, just hit me up. I have plenty of great ones and saw plenty of great friends over there. However, one of the greatest bands in the world being about 30 feet away from me makes it notable enough on which to focus this entry. Also, if someone who doesn’t know me stumbles upon this page, Blur at Hyde Park holds a bit more cultural notability than “here is Tyler and Jim at a bar in Dublin!” (although both scenarios are awesome and produce a “badhead in the morning.”). Photographic evidence follows.


Crystal Castles singer Alice Glass, piss-ass drunk wearing her handmade “Oasis has AIDS” shirt. She's wacky and unpredictable OMGLOL.

Foals. The dude on the left is apparently a big sex symbol in Britain. Too bad his band sounds like Les Savy Fav without all the interesting. (I repeat: the world, especially the UK, needs Blur more than anything now). The bassist reminds me of Happy Gilmore’s first caddy who he beats up when he picks up his clubs.


A small fraction of the 100,000+ crowd, waiting for Blur to hit the stage. The guy in the wicker hat was a massive twat. If he ever somehow sees this, then I’m willing to accept the consequences.


They kick off “Girls & Boys.” This is a decent perspective on how close I was to Blur and you weren’t. Unless you own one of those arms.

Graham, Damon, and a bevy of backup singers, probably singing a song that is awesome.

Phil Daniels showed up to do the spoken word parts of “Parklife” just like on the record and in the video! This was the best picture I could snap of him because “Parklife” was a bigass hit and the crowd went nucking futs.


Damon gets into the crowd during “Trimm Trabb.” I’d forgotten how good that song is.

Albarn, after finishing a riveting melodion solo, shares a cackle with drummer Rowntree. Rowntree is obscured by bassmaster Alex James.

So, in conclusion, this is what happens when a band that was so good they rose above the oppressive British hype machine for years, hit something close to bottom as individuals, and then decide that they’re adults and they owe something to their fans for years of devotion. And if they keep on this track they’ve laid so far these two months, they’re going to repay the world in full. It’s no surprise that you can tell how much they’re enjoying being a band again.

Ok, I’ll write more soon once my brain is completely back in the United States, if that ever happens. Also, I’ll do my best not to mention this band for a long, long time now. After this exclusive clip of the ending of their final encore, “The Universal.” It really, really, really DID happen.

[tws]

And I've got stories and updates coming soon!

So what did I miss?