i've added a new microblog to living the dream. it's called 'song of the day'. basically gives me a chance to share simple day to day stuff underscored by whatever music i happen to be listening to. it has the same flash player as this blog does. the cool thing is that on 'song of the day', it will aggregate all the songs and play them as one long playlist if you leave the window open. the latest posts will show up on this blog just to the right there -->. here's the info:

link: http://blog.daveaxelgard.com/song_of_the_day/

rss feed: http://blog.daveaxelgard.com/song_of_the_day/rss.xml

hope you enjoy it. -d

it's sunday night. the night when, tucked shamefully in the darkest recesses of the ill-lit stucco box i call home, i hunker down and wade through the minefield that is my hulu queue. these are moments i love and loathe. it's the only chance i get all week to catch up on the shows i actually like. but there are only so many of those. and when they're done, instead of turning off the computer and going to bed like a sane person, i let that damned fool continuous play feature drag me through half-hour after half-hour of rapidly denigrating television until suddenly it's 3am, my queue is empty, and i'm exhausted and angry and all i have to show for it is an empty box of gushers and 3 more pages of les moonves/jerry bruckheimer revenge fantasies. point is, this is going to change in 2010. and nothing inspires change like the embarrassment of full disclosure...

-- my queue --

community, 30 rock & [formerly] conan: the only reasons to feel good about turning on network tv. period. amazing how they can have so much good stuff can still manage to screw it all up.

the daily show (jump ahead to 3:15) & the colbert report: jon stewart and the first half of colbert offer arguably the finest political satire anywhere. but the last of colbert is just too awkward. even for me.

modern family: stereotypes are funny. really really really funny. too bad everything else on ABC sucks.

snl: kristen wiig. and that is all.

chuck: the plots are retarded. the acting is barely passable. and since buster got shot in the face, there is no reason for anything that happens at the Buy More to ever raise its head from the cutting room floor. but somewhere between the cars, the gadgets and the beautiful girls who usually end up fighting each other in showers, i do love this show. plus, it has without question the best soundtrack on television.

glee: i hate it. i hate how it makes me feel. i hate how patronizing the story lines are. i hate the idiot tingles i get from the inane writing. and i hate that in every episode, there are just enough impressive vocal performances and Sue pot shots at that idiot director guy's lesbian haircut to keep me from deleting the series from my queue. blech.

the simpsons: it amuses me less than the old ones do, but i feel like not watching it would be blasphemous. or at least racist.

family guy (american dad/cleveland show, etc, not even gonna waste time finding clips): it's stupid, easy, derivative comedy that unfortunately makes me laugh pretty consistently. also makes me wonder if censors even watch fox's shows anymore.

castle: captain mal. and that is all.

better off ted: ok, not everything else on ABC sucks. this show is usually pretty funny (and occasionally very very funny), but more than anything it fills the voids left by "arrested development" and "andy richter controls the universe" with portia di rossi and that funny white lab guy.

it's always sunny in philadelphia: like pretty much everything else on FX, you can't talk about sunny with everyone. i've found it's too loose, too weird and/or too repellent for most folks. (apparently people don't like mostly improvised shows about completely deplorable people.) but when you do find somebody else who laughs to tears at the mention of a priest cum crack addict cum exoskeletal homeless guy cum amateur wrestler, you know you've found a friend for life. -d

yes, it was a punk. "flyin' high" was a punk. well, less of a punk than a social experiment. well, less of social experiment than the result of a long day at work with not enough to do and way too much high-end recording equipment at our disposal. what happened was this. mwp had been working on a project that required the use of a piece of stock music. a piece of super generic guitar-and-strings stock music that sounded like a really bad collective soul outtake. which, on a long empty friday, was more than enough to get idle minds churning.  intern matt was given a few minutes to write the most generic lyrics he could come up with, and to manufacture a tune that spent at least 50% of the song on the same note. he succeeded in every way. so tallworm recorded him singing the track, then cleaned it up and mixed it. then they listened to their creation.  and unfortunately, it sounded just good enough to pass as contemporary pop music.

the decision to post it on the blog (and make up lots of lies about american idol and intern matt being talented and stuff) was the social experiment part. i knew that nobody who read my blog would really like the song. but i was curious to see how people would respond to it. and you guys surprised me. i expected most of you just to come straight out and say that it sucked. but it turns out you are too nice for that. the fact that i had way more conversations about the song with you guys off the 'comments' record is a strong indicator of that. you didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings, so instead of posting that the song sucked, you just told me in person. the few of you who did type out your feelings were priceless. just so nice. trying to find nice things to say. trying to give me the benefit of the doubt for backing this lame song. trying to be supportive to intern matt's doomed career, knowing full well that the song blew. you've restored my faith in humanity. and i apologize for betraying your trust. (and props to the 1 of you who guessed it was a punk due to the proper punctuation throughout. well played.) -d

So I've got this friend. He's a budding singer/songwriter, and he moved out to LA a little while ago to try and make a name for himself.  He's a super talented guy, but he doesn't have a web site or myspace page yet (we're working on it), so I told him if he sent me a track I'd be more than happy to post it on my blog, and solicit some honest feedback from my readers.

The track he sent is called 'Flyin' High'. It's from a forth-coming EP of the same name. He actually submitted it to the American Idol songwriting competition last season, and it was in the top 10. So. He's gonna go places. Take a listen, and let me know what you think. And be honest, you know? He's trying to improve, so any comments or criticisms will be welcomed.  Enjoy, and have a great weekend! -d

Title: Flyin' High
Artist: MGU
Album: Flyin' High EP
Time: 3:24

we can have the New Deal/national recovery conversation later, but first things first. for our purposes, WPA is a band. it's a band i've heard perform live (in various iterations) more than any other. it's made up of folks from Nickel Creek, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Elvis Costello and the Imposters, plus some of the best session musicians in the LA area. their shows are mind-boggling. and their first album, which was released about a fortnight ago, should be, too. and i want it to be. but i'm not sure it is. it has some nice moments. but not nearly as many as it should.

my concern is that i've been spoilt by the live shows, leaving me unable to appreciate anything less. so here's what i'd like to do. i'm posting a little streamer below. you can listen to the entire album on it. once you get a feel for things, let me know what you think. i'm hoping for 1000 comments saying that i am retarded (hopefully in reference to the album being excellent). -d

we've all been there.  you're in the car, you just heard a great song on the radio by one of your favorite bands, and all of sudden the dj comes back on and announces that they're giving away tickets to the first five callers.  for a split second you flail about madly in search of your phone.  but ultimately you think better of it, under the rationale that the slim chances of you beating out tens of thousands of other listeners to nab one of five pairs of tickets just aren't worth the risk of probably driving into oncoming traffic while you frantically try to pair your phone and bluetooth.  well turns out sometimes it is worth it.  a few weeks ago i was careening laterally across the 405 somewhere near the 10 interchange in an effort to win some tickets from KCRW.  it was for a new festival called Wanderlust that was taking place at lake tahoe, and the combination of lineup and location somehow struck me as worth the risk of death. but fate was smiling upon me that day, and not only did i not get into OR cause any fatal accidents, but i got through, won the tickets AND made it to rehearsal on time. those are good days.

and that was just the start of it!  a few fridays later, i found myself in the car with wendy, heading up into the sierras towards tahoe and a weekend of wonder.

for starters, if you've never taken the 395 route up to tahoe or reno, you really ought to do the last 2/5ths of it at least once. (the first 3/5ths, from the valley to bishop, are forgettable if you're lucky. except lancaster. which has a very family friendly in 'n' out.) but the last part really is a smashing drive. full of snow capped mountains to view and cool lakes to swim in. (if you're like us, you'll start feeling the urge to swim right around mono lake, which we found out later is the only alkaline lake in the state. fortunately we didn't indulge our baser instincts, and instead swam in a river that fed into the lake.) we happened to hit a particularly beautiful stretch called monitor pass just as the sun was setting. the orange light illuminated the smoke from a wildfire that was burning on the other side of the valley, which made for an incredible (and incredibly distracting) ascent up into the pass. after once again avoiding any serious collisions, we arrived in markleeville, ca a short while later. my cousin is spending the summer in a cabin there with his wife and was gracious enough to put us up for a few nights. it was lovely. and the only thing more spectacular than the homemade grilled cheese and tomato soup they served us, was the night sky. i haven't seen stars like that in years. maybe ever. endless stars. you could see the milky way before your eyes even adjusted.  if i had learned anything from old jack's stargazers club back at the ohs planetarium (other than a distaste for non-dunkin donuts and an abiding love of led zeppelin), i would have been able to clearly identify every single constellation in the summer sky.  nothing like it.  slept well.

next morning we headed up to the squaw valley resort, where the festival was held. a quick note on wanderlust: it's a music and yoga festival.  there were yoga classes from 6am to noon, then music from noon to 8pm. the passes i got from kcrw were for the music part only, which we were fine with. and given the lineup of bands, we assumed that most people would be attending primarily for the music. we were all kinds of wrong. these people were yoga people. the music was clearly an afterthought, as evidenced by the number of people at the concert stage 10 minutes before the first band went on (PIC). seriously, there were 11 people there, including us. which, again, we were fine with. oh, and a quick note on the stage: doesn't it rule? it was 9000 feet up at the base of a ski slope. we had to take a 15 minute gondola ride to get up to it. the stage was set up at the bottom of a bowl, which created a natural amphitheater. so people just filled in up the slope. here's another PIC. you can't really see it, but right behind the stage, about 20 steps away, there was a lake that you could swim in if you got toasty. so we'd watch a set, then while the next band was setting up, we cruise down to the lake and go for an icy dip.  it was great.  they'd also set up a little village of booths up there, including a giant canvas dome, wherein you could doodle on chairs and silkscreen tshirts, and whereupon you could paint anything your heart desired. (naturally the goatmasters left their mark.) a rather unique experience all around. (for further proof, please enjoy this video, in which wendy tries to not get caught filming crazy hula hoop lady.)

oh, and the music was pretty good too. here are the bands we saw, in order of awesomeness:

1. gillian welch. sweet sweet gill. she and her david rawlings buddy knocked it out of the park.  best part: she, david and jenny lewis did an a cappella version of 'go to sleep little baby' from 'o brother' (VID).
2. andrew bird. all of his equipment had gotten lost in transit. he had to borrow instruments and gear from other bands, and was clearly thrown a bit off his game in the shuffle. and yet he was still better than almost everybody there. best part: watching a bunch of crazy stoned hippies so transfixed by his music that all they could do was drop their hula hoops and stand in stunned silence.
3. jenny lewis. i'm not a huge fan of her music, but she and her band were so energetic and everybody was so into them that it was impossible to not have fun. best part: she, david and gillian welch did an a cappella version of 'go to sleep little baby' from 'o brother' (VID)
4. kaki king. just a strong live show. and that amazing slap guitar thing she does is even cooler and more amazing in person.  best part: that amazing slap guitar thing she does.
5. tie: broken social scene/rogue wave/spoon.  all pretty big bands.  all did pretty much exactly what we expected them to do. played their bigs songs. the same way they sound on their albums. enjoyable but not exceptional. best part: when we went swimming in the lake after broken social scene.
6. common. in the strangest lineup substitution ever, he came in last minute to replace michael franti and spearhead when franti came down w/ appendicitis.  not sure who decided that a huge hip hop star would make a good replacement for a treehugging reggae act...but it seemed to work. the crowd full of white hippies were either really enjoying themselves or so scared of appearing nonsupportive of an african american performer that they totally overcompensated. either way, it was crazy. the only reason he didn't score higher on the list was because about 4 songs in, he started scouring the crowd for attractive "of age" girls to bring on stage and sing to. he settled on a 19-year-old. it was awkward. we left. best part: when he passed on the 18-year-old and told her to come back next year.

we drove back to markleeville sunday night. drove home monday morning, stopping at some lovely hot springs outside of bridgeport to soak alongside a large and friendly naked man in the mercifully murky water.  unfortunately he soon decided the water was too hot, and consequently spent the rest of the time hanging around in the decidedly less merciful fresh air.  but it had been far too nice a weekend for our friendly nudist to be anything other than a funny little footnote. tahoe was stunning. the music, excellent. the company, second to none. so, who's up for next year? -d

PS. there's a little playlist of some wanderlust tunes for you hiding behind that grey tab at the bottom left of the page there for you to enjoy.

due to the europe trip, i missed father's day this year.  but only sort of.  father's day 2009 happened to fall on the same day as the summer solstice (june 21), which, for the rest of the world, is one of the biggest party days on the calendar.  some countries have dance parties around huge bonfires where they burn fake witches.  some repress their pagan urges in favor of religious festivals (ie, St John the Baptist day zzzz).  france does it right.  they have what they call Fete de la Musique (festival of music), during which every concert hall, ampitheater, and street corner in the whole country welcomes musicians of all types (and talent levels) to go crazy.  so at pere's suggestion, fiij and i spent father's day in paris.  it was completely righteous.  we filmed some stuff.  the quality is crap, but it's enough to put you there.  thanks for making it happen, pere.

---

we started at 5pm heading south on the metro in search of a tiny church where the choir was to perform two works by Gabriel Fauré - his Requiem and 'Le Cantique de Jean Racine', one of my favorite pieces of choral music of all time.  the church turned out to be farther away and harder to find than we'd thought.  we finally  found it - literally sitting on a roundabout in the middle of an intersection.  we got there for the final bars of the Requiem's 'Offertoire', but in plenty of time to hear the entirety of the Cantique.  which, despite what this video suggests, was smashing, and the perfect way to kick off FdlM.

(i wasn't supposed to record in the church, hence the "holding the camera in the lap" angle. my apologies.) from there, we wandered back towards the Bercy train station, and as we passed a handful of street bands warming up, we stumbled upon this little bit of magic:

from that moment on we were pretty sure this was gonna be the greatest night ever. and our next venue did not disappoint. we headed to the church of Notre Dame des Champs (not the big one) on the promise of gospel music. what we found exceeded even our fanciest fancies. it was a french gospel choir, composed entirely of white people (except for the conductor and one black guy they kept around for solos and street cred). they sang only english songs, in english (or something like it), and to be honest, they were pretty bad. but they sang and swayed in their robes and totally sold it. and to again be honest, hearing "Go Down Moses", Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" and "What a Wonderful World" sung in franglish by a bunch of earnest white folks in a beautiful parisian church can really only ever be a glorious experience.

from there we headed off toward the latin quarter, home to some of fiij's favorite churches and gyro places. en route we came across a variety of bands of varying degrees of quality, but all of whom contributed to the general feeling of goodnesss and merriment that the city teemed with that night. here are a few, in order of sweetness:

1) a groovy little brass band near Saint Sulpice:

2) a pretty standard rock band with a pretty talented guitarist singing a song from the STC sales tape:

3) a crappy punk band doing a hilariously awful Offspring cover near Saint Germaine:

after a quick stop for a Pita Extra Grecque, we crossed the seine and headed into Notre Dame (the big one), where a pretty radical contemporary organ concert was underway. again, the quality is crappy, but the blown out audio gives you a sense of how bombastic the whole thing was:

yeah, pretty nuts. after that we wandered around the city for a bit, with fiij leading the tour through some of his favorite places. we ended up at La Madeleine, where a concert by a really talented women's choir was underway:

by that time the sun was starting to set (about 1030pm or so), so after discovering a giant church that neither of us knew existed before, we made our way to the Louvre in hopes of seeing the National Orchestra perform under the glass pyramid. it was packed to capacity, so all we could do was watch from above. but it was cool. the real show was going on just off the main square, where a huge crowd had gathered around a tiny little kid who was, you know, just playing his violin:

we saw a few things after that (including a tight little jazz group just outside our hostel, and a raging techno party on the steps of the national treasury), but the violin kid kind of summed up what Fete de la Musique was all about. it wasn't really about the formal venues and organized concerts. it was folks using the pretty lame excuse of it being the longest day of the year to set down their super important lives for a second, to get out among smelly humanity and enjoy one of the few things that pretty much every human being on the planet enjoys in some form or another.  and it was a musical representation of exactly the kind of beautiful, boundary-less, unified and ultimately human ideal that pere has spent the better part of his life working towards.  needless to say a great great day.  happy pere's day, pere.

new songs. old songs. all goodness. just because i love you.

note: you can play the songs by clicking the little play button next to each track. a music player will pop up at the bottom, which will automatically run through the whole playlist if you leave this window open. handy right?

song: 1901
      artist: phoenix
      album: wolfgang amadeus

oh man, i like this album so much better than their last one. the last one was good, but this one is great. it's more like their early stuff. which was also great. it makes me want to dance. but like, all by myself.

song:A Meeting by the River
      artist: v.m. bhatt & ry cooder
      album: a meeting by the river

turn this one up. (seriously, the volume is really low for some reason.) so v.m. bhatt invented a sitar-y instrument called the mohan veena. it's beautiful and he plays it like he invented the thing. what makes this album even cooler is that he plays it opposite ry cooder's pedal steel. pretty smashing.

song: L.S.F. (feat. kasabian)
      artist: mark ronson
      album: version

a spectacular cover. you can find mark ronson's signature brand of neo-motown just about everywhere these days. from amy winehouse to sharon jones to countless remixes, he's got the style down. this album is basically a showcase of his producing skills. it also happens to rule almost entirely.

song: Long Hot Summer Day
      artist: sara watkins
      album: sara watkins

this is the first of two from her. the whole album is so quiet and so good. this is arguably the loudest track on there. and while this version of my favorite towboating song in the world doesn't hold a candle to the live watkins family hour version, it's more than good enough for me listen to pretty much all the time.

song: Give Me Jesus
      artist: sara watkins
      album: sara watkins

there are better songs than this on the album, but i love this one first because i'm nuts about that harmony line that just keeps going higher and higher forever. also it just shows the range of the album and the artist. she's so good. i love her.

song: Kid You'll Move Mountains
      artist: manitoba
      album: up in flames

this little gem came from cousin milk. it's one of those songs that somehow gets lost in the compilation the first time you hear it. then one day itunes benevolently shuffles it back to the front burner and it knocks your socks off. and what a great title.

song: Look For Me Baby
      artist: fiction family
      album: fiction family

an imperfect album from two imperfect musicians that somehow keeps getting better and better every time i listen to it. it's sean watkins from nickel creek (don't like his voice) and that one guy from switchfoot (hate their music) attempting a very fine balancing act between folk and pop. sometimes they tumble the wrong way, but when they're on they're on in a real nice way.

song: Knocking On Your Door (12" remix)
      artist: erasure
      album: crackers international

when my sister was in 8th grade and i was in 6th, i mercilessly mocked her (and her friend christina renaldo) for listening to this stuff, even dipping so deep into my bag of brilliant elementary school puns as to call her precious band 'eraser'. (take that!) but let's be honest. you can't grow and mature and come to your relative senses without recognizing that erasure rules. ching, consider this my apology.

song: Only Pieces
      artist: here we go magic
      album: here we go magic

isn't that sweet? it's like paul simon meets the books. what could be better than that? and the whole album is like that. and normally i get bored w/ verseless, bridgeless repetitive music. but these guys totally make it work. i don't really know why, other than the fact that they appear to just be superior musicians to the toolish djs who normally try and pass that garbage off as music.

song: Nothing To Worry About
      artist: peter bjorn & john
      album: living things

so what do you do when your last hit was [imho] the single most overplayed song in the history of indie music? (it was called 'young folks' and i guarantee you'd know it if you heard it.) well, you just do what works. build a great chorus, grab a bunch of kids to sing it and drop a sweet beat. done.

song: Rear Moth
      artist: psapp
      album: tiger, my friend

my friend once told that her system for giving thumbs up to songs in pandora was to run it in the background while you work, and if it makes you stop what you're doing, thumbs up. i remember the day psapp broke my already precarious concentration with a song that sounded like it had been made by a diaper-clad dj in a pack-n-play, rubber ducky squeaks and all.

song: Shangri-La
      artist: m. ward
      album: hold time

i didn't like 'hold time' nearly as much as 'post-war'. but i think that probably falls under the same rule as the fact that i will never like any christopher guest movie as much as 'waiting for guffman', b/c it was my entry point. either way, my feelings toward this song hinge on a single harmony - that perfect 5th that hits on the word shangri-la. no idea why i love it. i just do.

music is great, isn't it? -d

i have a feeling the second half of this season of '30 rock' will probably end up being the stuff of legend.  i've said it before and i'll say it again:  the salma hayek 'generalissimo' episode was the closest any tv show has come to arrested development levels of writing, and there were at least 3 other episodes that were almost there (all of which, opposite-of-coincidentally, featured salma hayek. geeky writers always save their best stuff for the busty guest stars).  last night's season finale was pretty good, but as always, the best stuff came when they went all meta on us.  it started with celebrities rallying behind a cause (aka a bunch of famous people who doing a favor for somebody powerful who, i dunno, got them out of a 20 year exclusive performance contract at Sea World, for example).  then came the obligatory 'we are the world' song - complete w/ spoken word portion (elvis costello: "when someone starts talking in the middle of a song, you know it's serious!").  everybody likes seeing famous people mock their own way of life.  and most shows would have stopped there.  but not 30 rock.  no, instead they took their little meta exercise one step further, and decided to take their own gag seriously.  this morning, they released their little joke kidney song in the real world as a 99¢ music video download on itunes, and NBC & apple are giving 100% of the profits to some united states national american kidney organization place, i dunno.  all i know is that i love 30 rock, and until i get a nielsen box, i will support the show any way i can, even if that means i have to help somebody else in the process.

here's the link to buy the video on itunes:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewTVSeason?id=315339996&s=143441

and for you cheapskates who hate both good TV and people with kidney problems, here's the free youtube version:

the world economy is crumbling.  our nation is being torn apart by brutal (if occasionally amusing) bipartisan politics.  where there's not war, there's a drought.  where there's not terrorism, there's civil unrest.  religion and culture are firmly at each others throats, the whole materialistic world is going to hell in a prada bag, and yet...so long as stuff like this is happening somewhere in the world, even if it is totally unspontaneous and underwritten by some huge dutch corporation, somehow it makes me feel like things are gonna be okay.  happy friday everyone.  -d  (thanks allie)

and if anybody knows where i can get that super hot remix, please let me know.