Losing My (Gluten-Free) Religion

I love Trader Joe's.

It's always just weird enough to be interesting, but not so weird that they don't have (some) semi-normal food.

But I think they must have some kind of machine in each of their parking lots that causes what I call The Trader Joe's Effect, which turns normal people into blithering idiots with no ability to make simple turns, drive ten feet further to an empty space, or anticipate what might happen five seconds in the future. (The machine might also temporarily make people unaware that anyone else in the world exists, but that could just be a side-effect of living in Los Angeles.)

And The Trader Joe's Effect usually extends into the store as well, where people routines leave their carts blocking entire aisles or just suddenly stop and refuse to move for 45 seconds while they contemplate gluten-free pot pies and look for products they've bought for years which vanish as if they were never for sale anywhere.

So when a new Trader Joe's opened a few blocks from Casa Clicks and Pops, I was thrilled that I could walk there and buy cheap semi-gourmet cheeses or mango chicken sausage while avoiding the slack-jawed insanity of a Trader Joe's parking lot.

The staff was lined up at the front in their Hawaiian shirts, handing out balloons. I entered the large, new building (with wide aisles and big windows) and noticed a huge display of Charles Shaw wine (aka "two-buck Chuck"), arranged to resemble the Getty Museum (with gourmet white chocolate bars set up as an edible Getty Museum monorail). And this was blasting from the store's sound system:


I asked a manager what the music was and he had no idea. "But it's vaguely sad, right?" he said. "And sad makes people buy cheap wine and free-range eggs."

So I wandered through the aisles, where people still acted like idiots and blocked my way (only in this store it was slightly easier to go around them). I guess the music served its purpose: by the time I left the store, they were down to the last dozen free-range eggs, the white chocolate monorail had been ripped from its tracks, and the Two-Buck Chuck Getty Museum looked more like a Two-Buck Chuck tribute to condo projects abandoned halfway through construction after the economy went south.

When I got home, I learned that the music in the store was the Vitamin String Quartet, a "group" that doesn't really exist. Vitamin Records has been using the name (and a shifting group of players) over the past few years to release dozens of albums that reinterpret various rock songs with string quartet instruments.

I was crushed. I hoped the "group" was the brainchild of some half-mad symphonic refugee who'd undergone a musical conversion at a sweaty punk club in some city's seediest section.

Sometimes, the truth is enough to make you lose your religion.


PS: To further disillusion you, there's no guy named "Trader Joe," either. (And the jury's still out on that Santa Claus guy...)

The Ramones on Lithium and Ukulele

I scour the internet for weird shit so you won't have to.

Exactly 25 years ago today, I walked into one of the great used record stores in the college town where I grew up and bought four Ramones albums on vinyl. They were cutouts from Portugal (for reasons I never quite understood) priced to move at $1.99 each.

Thinking today about that store (sadly long gone), I couldn't help but wonder what the Ramones would sound like if the band was on Lithium reminiscing years later about their favorite hangouts that were now closed. Here's an approximation (with extra cello goodness):


That kind of bummed me out, so I turned (as I'm sure you do) to the upbeat sounds of a Japanese ukulele master playing "I Wanna Be Sedated" while Mr. Bean looks on. Wonder no more:


If you need a palate cleanser after all that weirdness, get out your cutout Portugese vinyl. Or the next best thing -- the Ramones sitting around a table eating cereal while Joey sings and the world goes crazy around them (link for Gmail subscribers).

Fedora? No (My) Way

Frank Sinatra always seemed old to me.

When I was growing up, the Rat Pack already seemed impossibly old and out of touch. And my friends and I puzzled over why people would ever pay attention to them.

Growing up, there was only one kid in school who listened to Frank Sinatra (and he would regularly wear a fedora, suspenders, and powder-blue boat shoes instead of scuffed-up jeans and sneakers). The school bullies thought his retro act was so weird that they left him alone (perhaps for fear of catching the virus that caused worship of Nelson Riddle).

So while most of our contemporaries needed a backbeat and electric guitars, my fedora-wearing friend was content with a big band and old Sinatra albums. And only the old albums. If you made the mistake of mentioning "My Way," he'd scoff and dismiss it as crap.

It was a feeling Sinatra shared. And yet that song fueled his live act for nearly 30 years (and stoked demand for that live-act in the post-Beatles era).

Sure, Sinatra was too much of a showman and too musical to ever completely destroy a song. But still I can't help wondering if Sinatra, when he was doing this...


...would have been happier doing something more like this:


And more importantly, what would Sid Vicious have looked like in a fedora, suspenders, and powder-blue boat shoes?

Ukelele + Vintage Zep t-shirt = Irony?

I hunt for the weird shit on UkeTube? so you don't have to.

I live in Los Angeles, which is well-known as an irony-free zone. But even the most hardened Angeleno will tell you that the surest recipe for irony is to combine a ukulele with a vintage Led Zeppelin t-shirt. Because happy, shiny, ukulele picking can turn the saddest dirge about junkies overdosing into a toe-tappin' happy tune!


Finland is not known for surf music (and, as a nation, they've never quite recovered from the fact that the Beach Boys snubbed them on the Holland album). So you may ask yourself what would Finnish Tweens know about surf music played on ukuleles... and the answer is plenty!


And it's hard to mention Ukuleles without posting something from the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (whose cover of "Shaft" is well worth a look), so here they are with Kaiser Chiefs (who might be my favorite recent band even if they didn't send me special videos on my birthday) doing a kick-ass version of "Ruby."

I Need Some Loud Guitar

To ease into summer.

Maybe a loud, nasty, fuzzboxy guitar sound is the only proper reaction to something like Theramin Killed the Radio Star:


Maybe all the problems in the country could be solved with a great lick on electric guitar. Preferably playing the theme from The Simpsons.


And if one guitar is good, shouldn't two guitars played at once be twice as good?

More Weird Stuff from the Internets

I scour the Internets for weirdness, then bring it back safely to you.

They're not booing, they're yelling "Tuba" (link for Gmail subscribers):


"The Final Countdown" on cellos?! Hell, yeah!


USB drive dressed up as mix tape for Halloween. And it still sounds okay after you leave it in your car's glove compartment over the summer!

They Call it "Dueling Banjos" for a Reason, People!

Before the Internet, I'd have had to learn about this stuff on the streets.

But now people can email me and I can search YouTube for... well, almost anything.

And so in some kind of harmonic convergence of weirdness celebrating misguided musical adventurousness, two separate people emailed me about versions of "Dueling Banjos" that feature the tuba.

I guess it has been a rough winter and everyone's gone a little stir crazy... so here we go:

Even I know that it's not cool to be barefoot in church wearing pants cut off at the knees, but tell that to the people in this Violin and Tuba version:


Flute and Tuba version:


And, as if that weren't scary enough, here's a version on pre-programmed Organ and Tuba:


This all makes me nostalgic for the days when Tubas were seen and not heard!

Smells Like Teen Ukulele Spirit

I never really understood why people worshipped Nirvana.

Maybe eight ukuleles and tuxedos would help.


Or a swing arrangement by the "Havin' My Baby" guy (link for Gmail subscribers):


Or a banjo version from Patti Smith and Sam Shepherd:

Getting Mugged at the End of Lonely Street

John Cale knows the power of a good dirge.

Cover songs are tricky. A good song (or even a bad, but well-known song) embeds itself deep into your memory. You may not remember all the words, you might not be able to sing it or know how it starts, but your memories kick in whenever the song is played. Neurologists will tell you that memories of music are different from other memories -- each time we hear a song we know (especially one we know well), our brains activate the memory of how the song sounded before. And our experience hearing each time we hear the song is colored by how what we're hearing in the present compares to our memories.

Musicians know this instinctively. And they know there's no real point in doing a cover that sounds like the original with a different singer. Successful covers almost always rearrange the song (which then creates an interesting experience for listeners whose memory of the original colors how they hear the cover).

Take "Heartbreak Hotel." The original version was a joyful rockabilly song, with Elvis Presley's mumbled singing more of an inviting come-on than an expression of sorrow. Despite the lyrics, it's clear this was a song from someone looking for a new love (and anxious to find it -- the song's over in 2 minutes and 16 seconds). (Youtube link

Give that song to John Cale (legendary singer, songwriter, producer, and former member of the Velvet Underground) and it turns into something completely different. Elvis's Heartbreak Hotel seemed like a fun place to visit, a waystation you pass through before you find true love (or at least great sex). But John Cale's Heartbreak Hotel is slower and more threatening -- a dark night of the soul from which you might never escape with your sanity intact. Head down to the end of Cale's Lonely Street and you're liable to get mugged, beaten, and left for dead. It's scary, middle-of-the-night stuff that creates an entirely different mood (and one that is a much better match for the lyrics).

But what makes Cale's version more effective is our memories of the Elvis Presley version. If Elvis never existed, Cale's "Heartbreak Hotel" would still be moody and memorable. But when John Cale sings and our brains activate the memory of Elvis Presley's version, the difference amplifies the desperation, changing the song and turning it into something new and wondrous. (Youtube link for email subscribers.)
(And yes, that is Andy Summers from the Police on guitar -- and if anyone knows how the hell that happened, I'd love to hear about it.)

Update: Apparently, this version of "Heartbreak Hotel" is powerful enough to be fatal to chickens. Details from the Fragments of a Cale Season blog.

California Dreaming

They sold us a dream of California.

Hat-tip to self-proclaimed "Icelandic music slut" Wim Van Hooste, who writes the terrific (and highly recommended) I ♥ Icelandic Music blog and mentioned that Rúnar Júlíusson from the band Hjálmar died earlier this month from a heart attack.

Today, thousands of miles from Iceland, Los Angeles had what locals call a "Chamber of Commerce" day. The air is clear and clean, it's not too cold, and you can see snow on the local mountains (courtesy of the storm that blew through here a few days ago). Add a couple palm trees and a blonde in a bikini and you've got what everyone thinks about when they imagine California.

Where do these images come from? Movies and TV, sure. But mostly from songs. The mythology of sun, sand, and surf is woven into the modern DNA of rock 'n' roll. Hell, Brian Wilson built his entire career on the sandcastle of the California mythos.

The Mamas and the Papas (formed when the Mugwumps and the New Journeymen imploded at the end of New York's folk boom) heard the siren call of California and quickly abandoned New York, high-tailing it out of the snow and cold to sunny California. And for over 40 years (flute solo notwithstanding), people have listened to the harmonies of the Mamas and the Papas and conjured their own dreams about Los Angeles. (Youtube link for email subscribers):


All of which brings me back to Rúnar Júlíusson (known in Iceland as "Mr. Rokk"), who played bass and sang for many years in Hjálmar, Iceland's most popular rock group. Hjálmar started in Keflavik (an hour outside of Reykjavik and home to the international airport and long the sight of a U.S. Air Force base) in the early 1960s when one of the members traveled to England, saw the Beatles five nights in a row, and returned to Iceland with a copy of a brand-new Beatles album.

Keep in mind that Iceland at the time was considered a real backwater. There was no television there and few local rock bands. Hjálmar (thanks to a quick mastery of songs popular in England and America) soon became a sensation, playing Icelandic versions of rock songs and writing original numbers that mixed Merseybeat, garage, and psychedelic rock. The band recorded in Icelandic for the local market and traveled to England to record a few records in English (now highly prized by collectors) using the name "Thor's Hammer." In 2001, Big Beat records released a collection of their English-language output (including their only U.S. single) supplemented with some Icelandic numbers on an album called From Keflavik with Love.

But what amazed me more than anything was the idea that Rúnar Júlíusson and Hjálmar, sitting on a snowy island thousands of miles away from Los Angeles were also dreaming of California (even if a little of the mythology gets lost in translation). The proof is here, in I ♥ Icelandic Music's 92nd song of the week (Youtube link for email subscribers):

On The Shortest Day of the Year

Today is the shortest day of the year.

Ancient societies gathered each year to celebrate the Winter Solstice. Today, as the darkness gathers around us and the weather turns cold, sadness and endings seem to be everywhere, and a plaintive melancholy blankets the earth like a new snow.

Sorrow drips into your heart through a pinhole
Just like a faucet that leaks and there is comfort in the sound
But while you debate half-empty or half-full
It slowly rises, your love is gonna drown

Death Cab for Cutie (a band named after a song the Bonzo Dog Band song performed in the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour movie) seems to understand this time of year perfectly as they create languid soundscapes of infinite sadness punctuated by a growing sense of hope:



The ancients created the Winter Solstice celebration to nurture and feed that hope. After today, the days get longer and light slowly returns to replenish the earth. Starting right now, by minutes (or sometimes even seconds) a day starting now we reclaim the world from the forces darkness.

Today, in Reykjavik, there is sunlight for 4 hours and 56 minutes. The economy is in tatters and people are uncertain of their future. Tomorrow brings only 10 more seconds of daylight. But gradually it increases until summer (where the sun technically sets but leaves behind enough light to see 24 hours a day).

Olafur Arnalds is a 21-year-old Icelandic classical musician who covers Death Cab for Cutie with a string quartet. Even without words, the mixture of hope and sadness seeps through (and what is it with the devotion of Icelandic bands to otherworldly sonic soundscapes anyway?), which is strangely appropriate on the shortest day of the year: