MTV owes me my youth. Most of my ’90s memories are a hazy blur of Lenny Kravitz videos, Mountain Dew commercials, and news about Madonna that will all come back to me in a giant rush of Dutch Schultz jump cuts on my deathbed. I’ll never recover that lost decade, but I can make my later years less of an epileptic seizure via the numerous internet music video sites that are now available, such as Antville, Indeed Fantastic Music Videos, and a hundred other places. As it turns out, there’s actually a lot of small musical novellas out there to divine the new sounds from, not just five in heavy rotation. Why, just recently I happened upon this delightful video that made me reconsider the art of trampoline gymnastics. Quite informative.




Speaking of surliness, guitarist John Fahey is said to have punched out Michelangelo Antonioni while the director was trying to convince him to play on the soundtrack to Zabriskie Point. Then again, Fahey is said to have made up a lot of stories in his book, How Bluegrass Saved My Life, so maybe he wasn’t necessarily a proponent of truth over tact, but just anti-tact.

» Listen to John Fahey at WFMU’s Beware of the Blog


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Thankfully, Music for Maniacs has reupped their David Koresh mp3s. Those are really hard to find. And now they’re promoting something called “Foolklegs”—mash-ups of traditional folk songs, oom-pa classics, and French chansons with larger beats. Two steps away from Turbo-folk, but more like Weird Al Yankovic. I hope the creators were soon beaten with their own electric mandolins.

» Listen to David Koresh at Music for Maniacs


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Good minimalism is like pornography: You know it when you see it. That is, that there’s such an undervaluation of technical skill in minimalism that it’s hard to distinguish what’s good except purely by personal taste. Good minimalism is like a fine broth that takes a few days in a pressure cooker to create—it can’t be achieved by blowing all your heroin money on effects pedals.

» Listen to Burning Star Core at Raven Sings the Blues


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Sometimes an album falls by the wayside just because the single overwhelms the other tracks. But people need to recognize that there are other tracks on this Peter, Bjorn & John album that are substantial and need to be distinguished. It’s a sampler platter of ’80s pre-Britpop, Radiohead, and their own variety of indie rock.

» Listen to Peter, Bjorn & John live on NPR at Minneapolis Fucking Rocks