He’s known more by way of who’s sampled him than on his own merits (”Grandma’s Hands”=Blackstreet’s “No Diggity”, “Just the Two of Us” = Will Smith, “Lean on Me” = Club Nouveau for the film of the same title) which must be quite the double-edged something or other for Bill Withers. He didn’t start playing [...]

Hijacked long ago from the master of a BBC performance (hence the timecode burn up top), this is a great version of “Village Green” (m4v) that doesn’t get buried under the hefty weight of that nice brass arrangement. This is about the point (1972—right after the swell Muswell Hillbillies) that I tune the band [...]

Cool things about this clip (which, mind you, is not of the quality of the picture above, from the same show):

XTC “Life Begins at the Hop” (m4v) (right-click and save as)
1. XTC pulled a Beatles (or is it a Steely Dan) and quit touring after Andy Partridge collapsed from exhaustion while on the road in [...]

What were you doing on January 15, 1994? Personally, I can’t remember—I was 17, so it probably involved Pavement, Frank Black, marijuana, or some combination of the three. It was, however, on that date that a guy named David went to a Guided by Voices concert in Memphis, and it changed his life. [...]

Unfortunately, events have conspired to disallow my driving 2.4 hours southeast to see Of Montreal in Picasso-land (Newport, KY). The next-best thing, I figured, was to watch, on a lazy Saturday morning, a live set from a few years back. The next-next best thing, I surmised, would be to share the opening track [...]

Ween managed to massively disappoint me and several of my friends last year (the first such disappointment since 12 Golden Country Greats) by cancelling the remainder of their fall tour (including a stop in Bloomington), due to a crucial band member (read: Gene) falling ill. A Ween concert, for the uninitiated, is a 3-plus-hour non-stop [...]