5 Failed Starbucks Musician-Celebrity Collaborations

Starbucks has coffee and marshmallow treats, like a friend's house when you go visit his pool. Now they have CDs! Like celebrity-musician collaboration Scarlett Johansson & Pete Yorn or She & Him (Zooey Deschanel & M. Ward respectively, or unrespectively, however you want to look at it). Of course, 2009 had more to offer at coffee counter that you might have missed, their descriptions and titles below:

1) Amanda Peet & Ben Gibbard - My Mighty California Wife on the 405 (Sub Pop) Ben Gibbard would follow her into the dark of her small-budget indie phenomena.

2) Viggo Mortensen & Jason Mraz - We Ain't No No Lonely, but We Be Be Men (Columbia) A light rap enterprise from the Lord of the Rings star.

3) Amy Adams/ Her Alter-Ego "Shaky P" & Dan Auerbach - Werewolf (Jagjaguar) Feel the power of the Black Keys frontman's guitar, and Shaky P's Great-Gig-in-the-Sky like howl.

4) Grey's Anatomy Cast & Thom Yorke - Newspapers Are Dead (unsigned) Remember Eraser? This is like that, with more voice over.

5) Angelica Huston & Bon Iver - Florida, PA (Sub-Pop) A quiet introspective-retrospective of the beautiful town of Florida, Pennsylvania.

I wish these had made it, but I guess the economy squashed it.

Brendan Benson, Luxury Wafers: Don't Want to Talk

Brendan Benson - Don't Want To Talk - Luxury Wafers Sessions from Luxury Wafers on Vimeo.

Brendan Benson & Luxury Wafers posted a few live sessions that have good bite. To quote LW, "Deceptively simplistic, the melodic structure and meter of Benson's songs ply their way deep as the nursery rhymes we all know by heart."

For me, I grew up surrounded by the Old 97's. It was the polar magnet's other side of the P.O.S. country that flooded North Texas. Benson has the same quality Miller does: simple songs doused in good melodies with no complications. Sort of the opposite of The Antlers, or less worrisome (but just as broken) than Rhett Miller.

Concerts to Make You Bankrupt Report

Bank loans for concerts will be needed. MP3s are attached, listen away!

Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, Lola's Saloon, Fort Worth, TX

The Mountain Goats w/ Final Fantasy, Granada Theater, Dallas, TX

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Longhorn Saloon, Fort Worth, TX

Neko Case, Granada Theater, Dallas, TX

J. Tillman, Hailey's, Denton, TX

Fanfarlo, The Loft, Dallas, TX

Rural Alberta Advantage, The Cavern, Dallas, TX

Thao & Get Down Stay Down - Feet Asleep

Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

Final Fantasy - The Butcher

Jason Isbell & 400 Unit - Seven Mile Island

The RRA - Frank, AB

J. Tillman - Year in the Kingdom

Fanfarlo - Ghosts

El-oh-el-aye Lola la-la-la-la Lola

Thao and the Get Down Stay Down Friday. Lola's Saloon in Fort Worth. Is it required that I wear Larry Mehan's?

All this is what I listened to in 2009, pt. 1

What's going on right now? "Best of" lists surging on the internet like pyroclastic flow from St. Helens...I'm not fighting it. It's just overwhelming. "Best-of" lists are annoying, sometimes exciting, often arbitrary to the point of madness, and truly addicting as hell. Some days I find myself neck deep in them online, trying to pin-point the method to these lists. It really is exhausting. All of these bands & musicians that have released good, bad, and very disgusting music across the decade (and for this post's purposes, 2009) are different. Their music is original--in that they made it over a period of time, and than a record company put it out. So, really, the date it came out is completely arbitrary. How many writers wrote some of this decade's best music BEFORE this decade? Or on a napkin four years before it actually came out?

For sanity's sake in lists, I am enjoying the hell out of Aquarium Drunkard's "Decade" feature: contributors post albums that meant a lot to them over the past decade. Bands like My Morning Jacket, New Pornographers and the Microphones have come up. It's about sharing and the excitement to discuss music that changed their lives. It's not for ranking, numbers or social marketing.

So my hope is that I can come close to that notion with a mix of music that really changed me, helped me, made me weak, made me strong, angry, and more upset than ever. I'm sure for many people 2009 was a holy-fucking-shit year, new Presidents and falling economy's all abound, but below is a "Lala" mix of what made me a person this year, part one. These are the songs I listened to this year that will stay with me, probably forever, and embed themselves into my daily consciousness from now on. I'm not saying anything my choices are important or worthy of some anthology: I just want to share what means a lot to me. This is the first mix of three (arbitrarily), and, as best as I can do--they're in 19 tracks, no rank or order other than what I thought sounded good.

2009 in Reverse, pt. 1

Dear Death: Hey What's Going On

Dear Death,

Hey! The worst feeling in the world you gave us is to dream during a high fever. I fell asleep once with one a 103 and one of those waterfall-rock tumblers running- the sensation still leaves the taste of copper in my mouth of dread, fear and night terrors as sharp as teeth. The Antlers know what the hell I'm talking about. This is from their song "Shiva" (see attached).

"My femur was breaking was breaking in half / the sensation was scissors and too much to scream"

Yikes! A wise man once said, there is nothing darker and lonelier than a fever. You feel nails on dry wall, cotton in the mouth. If that's true, tonight's Antlers show in Fort Worth, Texas will induce an increase in body temperature. Can't wait.

PS, listen to The Antlers Daytrotter session and feel yourself wriggle.

The Antlers - Shiva (Daytrotter Session)

Stevie Wonder -Live on Sesame Street

Stevie Wonder - “Superstition” (Live on Sesame Street)

Posted using ShareThis



Goodbye Big Bird, Happy Anniversary Sesame Street and God Bless Funk in early 70's Stevie Wonder.