Another Year, Another Macromashup

Happy 2010, friends and lovers!

Last year at about this time, your favorite trio of clickwheel-touching ladies were all in DC, busy worrying about our theses, Med School FAFSAs, and our massive senior spring break plans. We also posted TMC-fave DJ Earworm's United States of Pop 2008. This year, we're more spread out, and our undergraduate days are over, but its comforting to know that some copyright-tweaking, mind-blowing, hit-sampling things remain the same ...

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present The United States of Pop 2009:

Streets of Philadelphia

This past weekend, I re-watched Philadelphia AND visited Bruce Springsteen's hometown of Asbury Park. It's only appropriate then that I post "Streets of Philadelphia" by Bruce Springsteen. He wrote it for the 1993 film Philadelphia and later won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

I was only 6-years-old when "Streets of Philadelphia" came out, so its awesomeness only struck me recently. I think a lot of younger folks might be on the same boat.

Check out this cheesy video for "Streets of Philadelphia." Embedding is disabled for the original.

TMC Likes... Kenny Rogers?

With "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town," TMC thought we were just adding on to the long list of Cake songs we loved. We have since realized our affections should be directed elsewhere: to Kenny Rogers and The First Edition. Kenny wasn't the first to record"Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town", but his version is perhaps the most popular. It climbed the charts reaching #1 in the UK and #6 in the U.S.

Before today, TMC was more likely to make fun of Kenny Rogers than to praise him (see his 1985 performance in "We Are the World"). Now, we honor Rogers with his inclusion on this extremely high profile blog.

Here's Kenny Rogers' "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town" and below, Cake's rather faithful cover song that got us hooked in the first place.

Steve Martin, BAMF and Banjo-Player

If you're a celebrity, you can record an album at any time regardless of talent: see Paris Hilton and David Hasselhoff. But if you're Steve Martin, you can release a good album and play a mean banjo. You can also write best-selling novellas (Shopgirl) and a screenplay based on aforementioned novella. Steve Martin released an album in January 2009 called The Crow: New Songs for 5-String Banjo. So if you like yourself some good ol' Americana, check it out.

When I grow up, or more realistically when I grow older, I hope I can be a little bit like Steve Martin.

Here's a performance from 2007 featuring Steve Martin. Enjoy!

Local Natives cover "Cecilia"

Local Natives does what few bands are able to do with covers: they take a song you love and make you love it more. Here's Local Natives doing an amazingly fun backyard cover of Paul Simon's "Cecilia".

Enjoy! (via You Ain't No Picasso)

More Metric Love

Unfortunately for me (and fortunately for my wallet), 9:30 Club's 6/18 Metric show is sold out. However, I continue to indulge myself in Fantasies. The next track that's grabbed my attention is "Gimme Sympathy." At first, I thought it was a little over the top with it's Rolling Stones and Beatles references, but I am won over. Here's the official video for "Gimme Sympathy" and a pretty good acoustic version below.

If you haven't bought a Metric album before, go out and get Fantasies. There's an acoustic version of both "Gimme Sympathy" and "Help, I'm Alive" included on the album.

St. Vincent in the Park

Ages and ages ago, my parents went to Simon and Garfunkel's Concert in the Park - their first reunion, featuring an appearance by Ed Koch. I've spent most of my life a little bit impressed and a little bit jealous. Now that I'm back in Chicago, it is possible to go to a concert in the park - Millennium Park, that is - at least once a week.

The city sponsors free performances three or four nights a week in the Frank Gehry-designed Pritzker Concert Pavilion, which looks out over a big lawn and gardens. This past Monday, St. Vincent and Allà kicked off their New Music Mondays series, drawing a young cohort even further from the candelabra-wielding, Ravinia-going crowd of outdoor-music-goers than the usual Millennium Park fare. While a slight rain kept the lawn crowd down slightly, the seats and most of the grass pretty much ran the gamut of hipsterdom, from steampunk'd men to gamine, Urban-clad ladies. It was the kind of crowd that had me wondering if I'd see someone I followed on tumblr. Even with worn out Chucks and a Manhattan Portage bag, your faithful correspondent was way outgunned.

Allà (pronounced "Aiya") opened with long jams that occasionally veered towards a 1970's fusion jazz sound. Their songs and their performance as a whole were notably light on words, except for a slightly misplaced shout of "viva México!" from the lead singer. Since I'm a sucker for lyrics and stage banter, I wasn't quite won over. While Allà's borderline psychedelic music wasn't something I'd normally seek out, their biggest problem may have been the setting. The crowd had to have been the largest they'd played for, and in spite of its relative responsiveness to the music, the performers had not quite figured out how to translate their music to such a large, open venue. I suspect they would have seemed much less awkward indoors, or in a club.

St. Vincent - guitarist/singer Annie Clark's nom de pick - had no such problem. I first saw her the summer of 2007 at the Rock and Roll Hotel in DC, just after her first album, Marry Me, came out. This venue is on the smaller, darker end of the three major DC indie rock options, and, after a shouty opening set by Scout Niblett, St. Vincent really made the room work. A friend I dragged along to the show bought her album because he "felt like [he] had to after she'd made that much eye-contact" with him. Clark, who is now touring in support of her album Actor, didn't quite manage this level of intimacy, but still commanded the venue well, with her violinist and saxophonist (extra points for good use of brass) fanned out across the stage. In an interview I recently saw, she described her guitar playing as "violent and dirty." Not typically = my cup of tea, but the rough instrumentals balance nicely with Clark's resolutely bright voice. Even having introduced "The Party" as a sad song, she kept it from real bleakness with her vocals.

The set was nicely balanced between new and old material, beginning with "Marry Me John" and "Now, Now," a song of which I was very glad to be reminded. I admit that Monday was also my first time hearing "Actor Out of Work" and "Save Me From What I Want," both of which encouraged me to give Actor a proper listen. My favorite new song by far, however, was "Black Rainbow," something which I haven't been able to track down online.

The real treat of seeing St. Vincent at the Rock and Roll Hotel was hearing her perform "These Days," her signature encore and one of my top-ever songs - sadly I had to run out a bit early to catch a train, so I'm not sure if Millennium-Park-goers had the same pleasure.

Check out Allà on myspace (link above), and a smattering of St. Vincent below.

"Now Now" by St. Vincent from Marry Me
"These Days" by St. Vincent which possibly appeared on an EP called Paris Is Burning?
Buy Marry Me from Insound here.