New CD

Ding Dong

by Grandmaster Famous J

• The Go! Team - Junior Kickstart

  Seriously, people, if you're part of the Go! Team bandwagon, get off now! Snap out of it! You need to come to grips with the reality that these people aren't very good!

  It's entirely possible that they might evolve into something good. I doubt it, but it could happen. But if you people keep swooning over the steaming pile that was their first album, what incentive do they have to try something different? Like something that might work? None! They just hear squeals of adoration from a claque of delusional idiots and think, "Hey, we're really onto something here! Let's keep riding this thing!"

  That said, however, this is a very good song. Spread the word! More of this, Go! Team!

• Interpol - PDA

  I think the "Best Albums of 2005" list ought to come out in December of 2006 at the earliest. I think there's something to be said for an album's longevity, and it's not always obvious which ones those are going to be. Sometimes you throw something in the CD player and it's explosive and rocks your world. For about a week. And then it drops into the memory hole and never makes another sound. And sometimes it seems mediocre the first dozen or so listens, but you keep putting it in there.

  I didn't think too much about Turn on the Bright Lights when it came out, but I kept listening to it. And here it is three years old, and I still throw it in from time to time.

  This is my favorite song on the album. They have this crazy thing where the bass and rhythm guitar are playing something interesting, and the lead guitar is just playing the same note over and over. It's very hypnotic.

• Marvin Gaye - I Want You

  This is a song that I hadn't heard until I watched the highly unfortunate Broken Flowers. This song has a real intensity behind it. It has the passion of the protest songs only without all the politics. Underappreciated classic.

• The Smiths- The Headmaster Ritual

  This is my new favorite Smiths song, because it's the first song I heard where you could tell for certain that this band has a bass player.

• Fischerspooner - Never Win

  Believe it or not, I heard the accordian version of this song before I heard the actual version.

  I was going to say that I had pirated this album and it was sitting zipped up on my hard drive waiting for me to have a listen for months, and I just hadn't gotten to it. But of course, I never pirate music, and if I did, I would never admit it in a public forum. No, what had actually happened was that I shelled out my hard-earned money for the CD, but hadn't listened to it.

  In any case, and whatever the reason for me finally getting around to it, the album is really good. I don't like it as much as the first album, but there was something magic about the first album, the shock of hearing a couple of Americans in the year 2000 composing 80's German techno music. I mean, unless their next album had been like a long-lost Judas Priest record, they weren't going to be as surprising and breath-of-fresh-air as at first.

  But be that as it may, this is the best song they've done. This song got stuck in my head for weeks. It still pops up in there from time to time.

• The Greenhornes - Satisfy My Mind

  This is another song I hadn't heard before I saw Broken Flowers. Well, not this specific song, but this band. Mid- to late-60's British invasion music. Like really early Kinks. Although these guys are from Cincinatti, and the song came out in 2001.

  Man, it's really a testament to how bad the movie was that it had all this good music but still only got two Charlie Heads.

• Ryan Adams - Love Is Hell

  I was listening to the new single "Bullets" by some English band called Editors. It's not bad, but I thought it really reminded me of something. And I realized, "Holy crap! These guys sound exactly like Ryan Adams, right before he went back to country!" And it occurred to me that all this time Ryan Adams had been doing British indie rock. And doing it well, in my hogtied opinion.

• The Meters - Just Kissed My Baby

  If there were any justice in this world, half the people who go out and pick up a George Clinton album would put it down and buy a Meters record. I know I bought a few from Paliament, Funkadelic, whichever solo one had "Atomic Dog" on it, and I'd have been way better off getting to know the Meters instead.

• Mission Of Burma - Academy Fight Song

  Here's another band I'm way late on getting to know. Mission of Burma. The scuttlebutt* on these guys was that they should have become what R.E.M. became. But one of the guys in the band came down with a hearing problem, and they broke up. So instead of being that band that sold out the Savvis Center, they're just some band who once played Mississippi Nights.

  Anyway, this is their Radio Free Europe. I keep meaning to pick up their album Vs., which is supposedly sublime, but haven't.

• Bloc Party - Banquet

  When I talked above about some band that rocks my world for a week but disappears without a trace, I might have been talking about these guys. They've got something, but there's something missing and lately I keep concentrating on the hole instead of the donut. Or maybe it's just because I can't figure out what they're doing wrong.

  Well, whatever they're doing wrong, they're doing it the least on this song here.

• ABC - Poison Arrow

  Who knew that 80's pop could be so funky? This song, despite being very gay, and very English, is also incredibly funky. It's about as funky as Zapp, and that's saying something.

  Okay, it's not even in the same ballpark as Zapp, but it'd get the same grade on funkiness if we grade on a curve for gay, English types.

• The Chemical Brothers - The Big Jump

  The Chemical Brothers haven't had anything new to say since their first album. Just new ways of saying the same thing. Well, despite not being groundbreaking, they're still entertaining. This is a good song to drive around to.

• Linda Ronstad & Aaron Neville - Don't Know Much

  No comment. I just like this song. Is that a crime?

• Three 6 Mafia - Put Cha D. in Her Mouth

  Not that anybody asked, but in my opinion the best rap there ever was and ever will be came out of New York in the late 80's and early 90's. Tribe Called Quest, Eric B. and Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, De La Soul, etc.. And then... I don't know. Maybe there are even fewer good ideas for rap than there are for pop, and they used them all up. The only real innovation I've heard since then is Eminem, who perfected the use of self-deprecating humor in lyrics. (While talented, the aforementioned rappers were highly estranged from humility.)

  Anyway, this Three 6 Mafia are from Memphis. It came out last year and it's not bad. It's also not "Ain't No Half Steppin'" but they do use the phrase "Ding Dong", which gives this compilation its title.

• Antony and the Johnsons - Hope There's Someone

  The way it's supposed to work is that I'm supposed to be driven nuts by the stuff that my kids listen to. This has been completely inverted with the Cub. I don't mind anything he listens to, but there are some things I throw on Marla the iPod that drive him batty.

  Like techno. He just doesn't get it. He's especially baffled by my newfound love affair with Kraftwerk.

  And then there's the non-techno stuff. Like this Antony character. His singing is something. I'm not sure what, but it's something. It kind of sounds like what you might get if the aforementioned Aaron Neville were Welsh. And retarded. And learned to sing by listening to Shakira.

  And then he does this three-part harmony with himself. So there's these three retarded, Welsh Aaron Nevilles with this bizarre vibrato style that sounds somewhat like a billy goat.

  Okay, as I read over that, it isn't exactly a ringing endorsement, but you have to trust me that he's not bad. Or maybe he is. In either case, there's something compelling about listening to him. You just can't stop.

  And he won the Mercury Prize, which is, um, I'd say it's like the British version of the Grammy for best album, but it's way more complicated than that.

• Wire - Strange

  This song almost made my head explode. I had picked up Wire's classic first album Pink Flag (which is, by the way, well worth picking up). And as I was driving around, giving it a listen on my outstanding sound system, one song ended, and another song came on, and it sounded kind of familiar. Then the singing started. "There's something strange going on tonight/ There's something going on that's not quite right" Without thinking, as they jumped into the chorus, I started singing along.

  Because this song was covered by R.E.M. On Document. Way back in the day when they just oozed indie cred from all their pores. The song right before "It's the End of the World..."

  I don't know how I could have gone 18 years without realizing that it was a cover, and without tracking the band that they'd covered it from. To think, if I'd pieced that together earlier, I could have been listening to these guys all through high school. They might have inspired me to form a band myself. Punk rock music does that to you. ("Hey, this sounds easy! Let me try!")

  Ah, well. The rock and roll career, the arm full of tattoos, the heroin addiction. I guess that's just the one that got away.