FYI, dudes, you can find occasional bloggings from me over at ChordStrike.com

Put that in your RSS reader and smoke it.

Lupe Fiasco:
I like Lupe’s records, but he was absolutely terrible the first time I saw him. I didn’t expect much and keeping that bar low opened the door for him to impress me with a thoroughly workmanlike set. Matthew Santos was on board doing his cut rate Adam Levine impression, but if you were Matthew Santos, where else would you be?

N.E.R.D.
They sounded like Horny Rage Against The Machine. They also had more jams than I remembered.

Rihanna
I guess she’s a star, but young lady doesn’t have the stage presence to fill an arena. It didn’t help that she made some questionable wardrobe/set/choreography choices. “S.O.S.” looked like a showstopper number at Chippendales. Rihanna is either a sexy robot or a leftover from a Robert Palmer video. I can’t tell which.

Kanye West
His show had this ridiculous spaceship-crash-on-unknown-planet theme that was basically an excuse for him to drop seven figures on an admittedly awesome stage set. It’s hard to imagine another name rapper putting on a performance as solid as that, though. A personal highlight was an apocalyptic version of “Heard ‘em Say,” muscled up with a much harder beat, which sounded absolutely murderous on the massive system. My ears are still ringing an hour later. He was on stage completely alone for about 90 minutes (dude had a pit orchestra and Lupe didn’t even come out for “Touch The Sky”) and was captivating the whole time– even when the onboard lady computer of his crashed spaceship kept calling him the biggest star in the galaxy. The show was a spectacle–something I’ve really never experienced before. Absolutely worth seeing.

P.S. Not that all zero of you who read this care, but I moved to Seattle nearly a year ago and have been busy helping to launch and maintain this beast, so I apologize for neglecting this space for so long.

Stories like this somehow make me feel a whole lot better about stories like this.

Also, thanks to Henry Abbot for the link. I can pretty much guarantee that’s the only time I’ll ever be quoted on ESPN.com, let alone quoted anywhere next to Sherman Alexie. If you love basketball and don’t already regularly check TrueHoop, you are likely a dangerous moron and should probably be hunted down by the government. Save yourself and read it already.

Pink Nasty – “Burn” (Left-click to Download mp3)
About once every two months I get a craving to listen to some Usher slow jams and wonder why Confessions isn’t on my iPod, then I realize it was one of those Sony BMG rootkit discs loaded with spyware, which prevented me from ripping it. That drives me to try to illegally download a CD I already own, which I eventually forget because I don’t have the patience to wait eight hours to unlawfully procure something I should be able to legally grab in a matter of minutes. It’s very frustrating.

What does this have to do with Austin-based singer/songwriter Pink Nasty? It’s usually hearing this cover of “Burn” that triggers those Usher cravings. Hearing her recontextualize this R&B song into something that sounds very adult alternative, like something that would sound at home playing after an epic Dawson-Pacey-Joey love triangle showdown makes me think about two things:

1) A lot of urban pop tracks are really not that far removed from contemporary country, which is interesting because there is virtually no crossover between fans of those genres. Maybe my memory is failing me (and it’s entirely possible, as I paid these genres pretty much zero mind for several years), but I haven’t spotted this kind of convergence since All 4 One and John Michael Montgomery both had a hit with “I Swear.” This could definitely happen again. If you’re telling me “When It Was Me” by Paula DeAnda isn’t waiting for some country chick to knock it out of the park, you’re out of your mind.

2) Maybe the ubiquity of “Burn” during the summer of 2004 had less to do with Usher’s voice, personality or abs and more to do with it being, at its core, just a damned good song, which is something I would’ve never guessed until I heard this cover.

Mara Carlyle – “1Thing/Hey” (Left-click to download mp3)
In much the same way, I always figured the only appealing thing—and don’t get me wrong, it is a very appealing thing—about Amerie’s “1 Thing” was the impeccable Rich Harrison beat. Amerie’s headache-inducing terrier-yip vocals on this song always drive me bonkers, but I never changed the radio station any of the thousands of times I heard it during the early part of 2005, and that had everything to do with the drums, man.

You might have heard Mara Carlyle’s solo ukulele version of “Game for Fools” at the end of Jamie Lidell’s remix album, Multiply Additions (which you can and should cop on the cheap if you get a chance). Here, she turns the Amerie song into a slinky makeout joint, ditching the hyperactive beat altogether, instead, matching it against “Hey,” by The Pixies. Surprisingly enough, it totally works. Amerie’s version is all about nervous sexual tension, while Mara Carlyle’s is all about lust and I definitely prefer the latter. Regardless, Carlyle’s cover made me realize there’s actually a song in here. It also made me reconsider the original, which is something any good cover should aspire to do.

Part of the reason this bothers me is that there are dozens of early ’90s R&B videos that are actually funnier than “Dick in a Box.”

For a good laugh, you don’t even have to go to easy targets like Color Me Badd or a nutball like R. Kelly, whose video for “Honey Love” features not only some prescient pee party imagery, but also headlamps fashioned into mock-headset microphones.

For a less likely but no less funny source, ou could turn to H-Town and their video for the classic, “Knockin’ Da Boots” instead:

My three favorite things about this video:

1) The definition of “Knockin’ Da Boots”
Dude claims it’s “two boots coming together to make tasteful lust.” I know he couldn’t just come out and say, “IT MEANS HUMPIN’,” but isn’t there a more graceful or at least comprehensible way to say that? I love how he slapped “lust” on the end of that instead of “love” to save himself from appearing too sensitive. Also, if you didn’t know what “knockin da boots” means and only had that definition and the video to go on, the shots of a baseball bat smacking the hell out of waterlogged Timberlands might lead you to believe it actually has something to do with shoe abuse.

2) They play strip 3-D chess
Seriously, this is on some Star Trek meets BET Uncut shit.

3) The Intermission
Right around the 3:50 mark, H-Town decides it’s time to take a little break to get up, do a little stretching, maybe hit the bathroom and, oh yeah, ladies, you go get a towel. H-town is going to need one to suggestively clean their sports equipment while leering at you, ’cause it’s laid out like that, y’know?

There are plenty of great ’90s R&B videos floating around out there on your pal YouTube. Next time you get the urge to post a video featuring JT and his junk, please think better of it and go with something from Bill Bellamy-era MTV Jams instead.

If you’re not on imeem already, it’s certainly worth checking out. If you’re there already, go ahead and add me as a friend. We can share good music with each other. It’ll be like some sort of hippie commune based on pals and sweet jams, except awesome.

(Also, if you’re seeing this on an RSS reader and there’s nothing between those two paragraphs, you might want to visit the actual site. Sorry for putting you out.)

Now that I’ve probably totally turned you off, let me give you a practical use for this album: this is the perfect soundtrack for getting drunk and depressing yourself by looking up your high school graduating class on MySpace.

Paul Larson, who’s played with Jimmy Tamborello in Dntel and Strictly Ballroom, is the driving force behind The Minor Canon, but there are a bunch of dudes playing on this album and the sound is dense. The horns, which would sound at home on an old Aretha ballad, are what draws me in and keeps me listening once I’ve wrapped up my pity party.

If you’re lucky enough to live in Los Angeles, they’ll be playing at Spaceland in Silver Lake every Monday in April. Check them out and tell me how they are live.

* The Minor Canon on MySpace
* The Minor Canon – “It Never Was” (left-click mp3)

Bombay Bicycle Club
I listened to Bombay Bicycle Club’s debut EP virtually at random. I pretty regularly cruise the weekly new releases on Rhapsody and listen to anything with cover art or a name that catches my eye, which sometimes leads me to listening to a band like Fangboner (awesome name, dudes!), but it’s also led me to some real gems with surprising frequency.

Anyway, I put The Boy I Used To Be on in the background while I did some work, but it kept me from concentrating. I couldn’t help but stop everything and listen closely. This pretty much never happens.

The EP is four brisk, breezy tracks of wind-in-your-hair Summertime rock and roll. When I looked them up, I was legitimately surprised to discover none of Bombay Bicycle Club’s members are eighteen years old yet. If you can listen to this without that depressing you, I wholly recommend it. They have the whole EP available for streaming on their MySpace page.

* Bombay Bicycle Club on MySpace

Sleeping In The Aviary
Sleeping In The Aviary is another band I listened to at random and I’m glad I did. Their album Oh, This Old Thing? is just under a half hour of totally exuberant punky pop songs, like if The Thermals decided to set aside the politics for a minute and just get down. On the few occasions when they dial back the tempo a bit, they end up sounding like The Strokes for people on downers instead of uppers. If there was ever music to drink Sparks and spazz out to, this is it.

* Sleeping In The Aviary on MySpace
* Sleeping In The Aviary – “Another Girl” (left-click mp3)

The Federalists
I considered taking a wood shop or metals class so I could craft a trophy for The Federalists because they are the first and only band to spam me on MySpace whose music I actually ended up liking. They deserve some sort of recognition.

Now, I haven’t heard anything aside from the songs they have streaming on their page, but I am cool with every one of those. Their twanged-out rock reminds me of Old 97’s, Apollo Sunshine and The Trouble With Sweeney (who should probably be on this list themselves—they only have 15 friends!), all of whom I love. I feel comfortable endorsing The Federalists without hearing a full-length.

* The Federalists on MySpace

Declan O’Rourke
A singer/songwriter from Ireland, Declan O’Rourke reminds me some of Damien Dempsey, who released a couple albums here on Morrissey’s Attack Records. To my knowledge, O’Rourke doesn’t have distribution in the States, which is a real shame. He has some of the same vocal qualities as Rufus Wainwright and Jeff Buckley, and that makes a song like “Galileo” sound absolutely perfect, even though there’s a bit of moon-June-spoonery in there that would irritate me otherwise. It’s too bad he took down his cover of Antony and the Johnsons’ “Hope There’s Someone,” because it works as an effective tool to show people who can’t get past Antony’s vocal weirdness what a great song it is.

* Declan O’Rourke on MySpace
* Declan O’Rourke – “Galileo (live)” (left-click mp3)

BONUS – Rodney Brillante
I can’t say anything objective about his music because he’s a buddy of mine, but you should head over to Rodzilla’s MySpace page, check out his music and add him as a friend. I won’t ask you for anything for my Christmas next year if you go do that.

* Rodney Brillante on MySpace

It stars Corddry as a thirty-something dude who still lives with his parents and is stuck in a delayed/perpetuated adolescence. He’s finally driven to get his life started when his childhood crush moves back to the neighborhood with her quirky son. Presumably, we’ll get to see the kid and Corddry “grow up” together, you know, should the series actually make it past a half dozen episodes.

The show features some good, off-beat humor. You get nice hard twists and the eager, half-aware dumbassery Corddry perfected on “The Daily Show,” but to get to those jokes, I have to wade through some truly heinous sitcom devices. The laugh track is loud, obnoxious and omnipresent, the simple exclusion of which would make the show roughly a billionty times better. Also, the bits with his parents are just awful, hacky, played-out family humor you’ve seen variations of since the dawn of television, which is a shame because Lenny Clarke is usually very funny.

“The Winner” certainly has potential, but its faults and my general bias against traditional multi-camera sitcoms may be strong enough to keep me away.

In other midseason TV news, “The Black Donnellys” is a solid B+, but it looks so expensive to make, it’ll almost certainly get yanked if it doesn’t immediately find a sizeable audience. Don’t get too attached.

* Picnik is a free online photo editing tool that’s extremely easy to use. You can upload pictures from your hard drive or, even better, allow it to talk with Flickr. Now, you don’t have to drop several hundred dollars on Photoshop to blow out the contrast on pictures of yourself so nobody can see your acne. Not that anyone I know would ever do that. Nope. Here’s a picture of some flowers I tweaked with Picnik:

* Entertonement offers tons of audio you can embed into Web pages or use as ringtones, which they’ll send to your phone for free. They have everything from commercial jingles to quotes from Anchorman. Eventually, they plan to allow uploads and the first person who allows me to hear the music from RBI Baseball when someone calls me will be awarded whichever of my internal organs will fetch them the most cash on the black market. I can’t wait!

For Jackson, here a special Hamm’s ringtone just for you:

* LinkedIn isn’t a secret or anything, but it is extremely useful. It’s a social networking site for professionals, which is something I occasionally pretend to be. It’s cool to see how I’m connected to people who might want to hire me, but it’s also cool to be able to get information about future potential coworkers. Example: if everyone at your possible new place of business is looking for new gigs, maybe that isn’t the best work environment. Regardless, if you’ve worked with me or know me or, better yet, would like to hire me, holler at me on LinkedIn. We can be work pals.