For the love of God, if you don’t own this album then you need to buy it in its entirety on Grooveshark immediately. It makes me feel like I’m driving on the moon…in the best possible way. With oxygen. And possibly Harlan Williams.
Jesse Malin is a fantastic, extremely underrated artist who has been championed by myself, and slightly more importantly Bruce Springsteen. He’s released three solo albums, all of which contain brilliant, introspective songs in the vein of Neil Young or Paul Westerberg. He also has a really cool website where he lists his favorite things for that particular month(jessemalin.com). Because I’m extremely derivitive, here is my list…
1. The Ice Storm(movie)…Ang Lee directs an incredible cast in a movie that is both extremely sad and funny.
2. “Wise Up”-Aimee Mann(from the soundtrack to Magnolia)…I’ve been listening to this a lot at work. The scene from Magnolia that uses this song is one of my favorites.
3. Watching Youtube clips of The Replacements drunkenly Giving Interviews: There are several of these on youtube. Watching the band get progressively drunker as they make self depreciating remarks and alienate journalists is a great way to kill time.
4. The completely unneccesary volleyball scene in Top Gun. Many questions come to mind upon viewing this scene. 1. Why are they sweating so much? 2. If they’re sweating so much, why are they all wearing jeans and leather jackets? 3. Why the HELL are they playing volleyball?!
5. Beautiful Freak-eels(album)…I love this band.
6. Logic Will Break Your Heart-The Stills: I saw this band play twice last month and really enjoyed it. It helps that they were extremely cool to us when we conducted the interview on Grooveshark, but this really is a great record.
7. THE HIVES LIVE SHOW: They’re touring with Maroon 5 right now which I guess is a bit of a hinderance, however I will go out on a limb and say they’re the best live band in the world right now, and you can always just leave before you get slapped in the face with the AOR rock of “Harder to Breathe” and “This Love”.
8. “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”-Dave Eggers: My favorite book.
9. “I Don’t Want to Go(to Chelsea”-Elvis Costello
10. “Challengers”-The New Pornographers
Today I had the distinct pleasure of talking to former Mudcruth guitarist Danny Roberts. For those of you that don’t know, Mudcrutch was the initial incarnation of the band that would become Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.
Because my dad was the music writer for the Gainesville Sun for something like 48,000 years I heard a lot about Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers growing up. What began as a mild affinity for a damn good band gradually grew into full fledged obsession when I became 14. I remember sneaking out of my room to raid my dad’s cd collection late at night just so I could play songs like “Straight Into Darkness” and “Strangered In the Night” over and over again.
It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that I listened to those songs over 300 times. My dad eventually wised up when he discovered all of his cds contained glaring scratches from my consistent playing, so I had to explore other avenues to get my fix. This is where Napster came in handy. I was looking at my old Napster library the other day and I’d wager to say that 90% of it containted Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers songs. If you can, find the song “Keeping Me Alive” from the box set “Playback”…it’s fucking brilliant.
My enthusiasm for the band’s back catalogue has tapered off, but only because I listened to them too frequently and for too long. With that being said, I was still really excited to hear that Peter Bogdanovich was doing a 4 hour documentary on the band’s career(“Running Down a Dream”). This is where Danny comes in. It was Danny’s van that the band used to make that oft-discussed trip to Los Angeles in the mid 70’s, and it was Danny who accompanied the band on the epic journey that eventually found the band signed to Denny Cordele’s Shelter Records.
Danny Roberts is completely absent from the documentary. Not just absent, but blatantly removed from photos and video clips. Not one mention is made of the man who was an integral part of the first version of “America’s Most Consistent Rock Band”. “Selective Memory Loss” has effectively erased Danny Roberts from the history books.
The extremely long interview will take some time to transcribe, but it will be on Grooveshark by Sunday at the latest. It was nice to be able to indulge my inner 15 year old fanboy for once. It will be a good read…Danny had a ton of hysterical anecdotes to relate.
Also, look for an interview with Against Me! sometime late tomorrow. Great band.
Hello adoring public! My name is Jack DeYoung and I’m a mildly egomaniacal employee of the music distribution giant Grooveshark.com. I’m hoping to use this site to promote music, movies, and a litany of other things I find interesting(the trend may be that I talk about myself a lot).
I have a theory that I got hired by Grooveshark solely because when I met everyone that worked here I was in the process of inviting drunken strippers over to the office. This is not to say that I frequent strip clubs or brothels or what have you, I just happened to be at one when I met the majority of the people in the company. I suppose I just charmed the scantily clad dancers enough with my big talk(read: lies) and rapier wit(read: fat wallet) because they accepted my invitation to rendezvous at Grooveshark HQ(a place I’d never been inside in my life at that point).
The girls eventually met me downstairs at the Grooveshark office with a burly, muscular fellow who I quickly ascertained played the role of pimp in their business model. So what could have started as a night of drunken, sexual discovery with what I assumed were intelligent strippers became a potential felonious, money-sucking night of horror. Needless to say, I bid them a fond farewell with promises to call them should I ever feel the irrepressable need to pay for sex.
Every employee of Grooveshark witnessed this exchange. I was hired two months later.
Anyway, I’ll post stuff about bands I like or dislike. The latter is probably going to be more fun for me to right(upcoming post: How The Eagles Have Ruined Your Life In Ways You Can’t Begin to Fathom). I’ll also keep this updated with insights on what goes on within the company(chain smoking, name calling, and the occasional Music Revolution).
Grooveshark.com
