I could conjure a miracle or three for you because it's that time. Or I could link to the Andy Partridge-produced "Miracle of the Age" by Dr. & the Medics (famed as much for the lead singer's hair as for their 80s remake of "Spirit in the Sky") -- but I can't find it anywhere online.
Meanwhile, the streets may be clear in Vancouver, but over at Matador Records, it's snowing. Which somehow indicates that there's a new New Pornographers album out in a couple months... and with song titles like "Valkyrie in the Roller Disco" you know it'll be amazing. You can listen to or download the song "Your Hands (Together)" which has a very slow build, but explodes out of the gate about a minute in.
NBC has a broadcast television network (or at least what's left of it after the Jay Leno debacle), a Spanish-language broadcasting network, and dozens of cable properties.
But somehow they can't manage to broadcast any Olympic events live on the West Coast? And they can't have any live internet streams?
I gotta check my calendar because I'm pretty sure it's not 1976 anymore.
In a world of 500 cable channels and potentially limited bandwidth, this is the best they can do? And even though the coverage is slightly better than the 2006 Winter Olympics (where pretty much only medalists and American competitors got on the air), it's still pretty pathetic.
Hell, I'd even be willing to pony up $20 or $30 to watch things live on cable or on the web.
And now NBC is mad that other news outlets won't join them in pretending coverage of news is still stuck in the 20th century. (Do you think NBC is trying to get a Gold Medal in Stupidity?)
But while large media corporations are busy digging their own graves, savvy musicians are finding interesting ways to adapt to changing times. Camper Van Beethoven, another band that used to be on a major label and now are independent, are financing their trip to South by Southwest by selling sponsorship of songs in their set. For only $102, you can pick a song the band plays, then have a "Roller Derby Girl" walk across the stage with a placard announcing your sponsorship of the song.
I wonder if they'd charge extra if you chose this:
Let's put the bad news and sad stories on hold for a bit and concentrate on pure, sunny pop music.
I love Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont's 2001 movie Josie and the Pussycats. It's a real guilty pleasure -- with Rachel Leigh Cook, Tara Reid, and Rosario Dawson as the Pussycats, Seth Green as a member of a boy band, and Alan Cumming and Parker Posey as evil music industry tastemakers. The plot mixes a sappy love story with an over-the-top satire about putting subliminal messages (voiced by Mr. Moviephone himself) in pop songs to help sell products (and convince teen girls that orange is the new black).
It's a mixed bag, but has some wonderful moments (like Tara Reid's then boyfriend Carson Daily trying to kill the Pussycats on a TRL appearance gone very, very wrong).
Still, the music is a real pleasure -- no guilt necessary.
Kay Hanley (ex of Letters to Cleo) sings Josie's parts and the music comes from writers like Fountains of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger, Babyface, Jason Falkner, Matthew Sweet, Jane Wiedlin (of the Go-Go's), Adam Duritz (of the Counting Crows), and others. The sound is mostly power-pop, sweet but with an edge.
And it's hard to argue with the equation Rachel Leigh Cook + Kay Hanley = punk rock prom queen (not to mention a late-night head rush and no one's little red corvette).
We drove into the packed parking garage behind the building, pulled into a space, and looked out at concrete columns and support beams. As another car drove up behind us, I could feel the building sway.
I asked her if she thought it was safe. She said it was a miracle that any building could hold thousands of cars, supporting millions of pounds of weight.
"But the support beam looks bent," I noted. She looked, nodded, then said we should go.
Yes, the building would probably collapse, but it had been there for years, so it probably wouldn't collapse that day. And, she reasoned, if it did we really wouldn't want to be there in the garage.
Then she walked away, leaving me to watch in wonder. A few steps later, she turned back, smiled, and asked if I was coming with her. Her world made little sense to me and the weight of her insanity crushed and bent logic like it was that support beam in the garage. And I knew then and there that she'd snap someday, but she'd been functional for years, so she probably wouldn't snap that day. So I nodded. And I followed.(Link for Gmail subscribers.)
If Material Issue had come along 20 years earlier, they'd have been superstars. 10 years later, they'd have been stars.
But the band, formed in 1985 in Chicago, burst onto the national scene in the early 90s, when grunge ruled and there was little interest in power-pop trios singing songs of love and yearning (most of them with girls' names in the titles).
But there was always something edgy about this band -- they didn't play the sweet power pop of the Raspberries. No, this was a Power Trio, merging their pop with anger and irony and then filtering it all through a fuzzbox.
Too much? Probably. Jim Ellison, Material Issue's lead singer and songwriter, took his life 15 years ago at the age of 32.
And after that, what's left? A handful of albums and a legacy so strong that an annual power-pop festival was proudly named after the band's first album.
The verses meander as the singer desperately tries to convince anyone who'll listen that he's the only one he really understands this girl of his dreams. Each verse ends with words and lines crammed together, desperate to declare undying love and fighting the realization that he's not fooling anyone.
Then what passes for a chorus: revved-up guitar and the plaintive wail "Valerie Loves Me." And the anguish always makes me wonder who the singer's trying to convince: us or himself. And that's it (at least for the chorus). Because what more can you say?
The answer's in the other verses -- Valerie's dreaming of other guys, hanging around with other guys, not giving the singer the time of day. But that won't stop his echo-drenched cry in the chorus: "Valerie Loves Me!"
And that should be enough, but it's not. So the singer projects his dream girl decades into the future when she's old and gray and has nothing. And then, he rejects her retroactively from the future (even though careful listeners may long since have concluded that she might not even be know he exists) before one last primal scream of a semi-chorus: "Valerie Loves Me." Which leads into a tentative instrumental break that ends uncertainly, resolving nothing (and therefore perhaps underscoring that the singer is the ultimate in unreliable narrators).
*********************
Years later, I drive by the parking garage alone.
The entrance is taped off and a cop directs traffic around it.
I slow down to ask what happened. "A support beam buckled," he tells me. "They're gonna have to knock the whole garage down."
I nod, wondering if I should find the girl (whose own support beam buckled long ago) and tell her... or just keep driving.
Let's say it's 1979 and you've got a great band whose power-pop sound is the polar opposite of both the disco that's all over the radio and the underground punk rock radio is afraid to play.
Maybe, in the era where bands like Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles are spending years in the studio and millions of dollars to make bloated albums, you record your first record for $18,000 in under two weeks.
Perhaps, by some miracle, you get signed to Capitol records -- and you agree to dress up in suits (like the early Beatles) and the photos on the front and back of your first record are reminiscent of iconic Beatle poses. Then Capitol agrees to bring back its discontinued "rainbow" swirl in the center of your records (to further remind people of their old Beatles records).
And let's say Capitol isn't shy about pushing the "new Beatles" story and the press isn't shy about pumping up those comparisons. And then maybe your first single goes to number 1 and both the single and album sell millions of copies.
And your second single is incredibly catchy, but the record company convinces you to record a "clean" version with sanitized lyrics in place of "getting in her pants" and "she's sitting on your face."
If all that happens, is it inevitable that you endure a critical and popular backlash (and a "Knuke the Knack" campaign) and people slam you for smirking? And do you help or hurt your cause by naming your second record But the Little Girls Understand?
30 years later, it's hard to believe both the hype and the backlash were as strong as they were. Sure, the Knack weren't the second coming of the Beatles, but they also weren't the next Bay City Rollers.
They created some wonderful power-pop records filled with songs that sound as fresh today as they did back then.
And, more importantly, weren't you the guy who quit the Yardbirds because you thought this song was too commercial and you didn't want anyone to think you'd sold out?
Recently a number of music blogs (written and run by great, amazing people) have been shut down.
Now I'm not talking about the guy who posted all 27 volumes of the Have a Nice Day series for anyone to download. Or the guy who posted the new U2 album the week before it was released.
I'm talking about music fans and enthusiasts who post one or two tracks they love by bands they love. These bloggers do more to generate interest in music than almost anything else (short of having songs placed in a teen drama on the CW). And recent studies have shown that people who download music from those blogs turn around and buy music by the artists they like in numbers far greater than the general public at large.
(Also, I should add, almost all these bloggers post MP3s for a limited amount of time or have prominent notices offering to take down any music on request of any artist or record company.)
So what do blog-hosting companies like Wordpress and Google (parent company of Blogger) do? They take down blogs without warning, without telling bloggers which post (or which piece of music) they object to (sometimes wiping out years of archives in the process), then tell bloggers they can have their blogs reinstated if they can prove they did nothing wrong -- which is basically impossible since they neglect to mention which posts or pieces of music prompted their actions.
Plus, in some cases, bloggers are posting music that was sent to them to be posted by the record labels or their representatives. Then, the legal team of those same labels complains to Google or Wordpress (which kills the blogs without bothering to investigate the complaints or determine whether the bloggers had permission to post the tracks in question).
In the past several months, this has happened twice to bloggers on my blogroll (to your left) and numerous times to other music bloggers.
I asked her if she thought it was safe. She said it was a miracle that any building could hold thousands of cars, supporting millions of pounds of weight. 
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