Something Shiny

I’m not sure what bugs me so much about Har Mar Superstar. Is it the fact he  kinda reminds me of Ron Jeremy with more delicate eyebrows? Is it his, “I’m acting all sexy when clearly I am not sexy? schtick? Is it the fact that his popularity makes me think I’m missing something? Hard to say. I do admit that I want to hate Tall Boywith every fiber if my being, but it’s actually pretty catchy. Damn you Ron Jeremy, uh, I mean Har Mar Superstar…

Oh, and about that title, he’s playing the Weisman Museum this Saturday, but it’s sold out.

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Wish I’d known about this earlier, as in, before it sold out, But apparently Mates of State is (are?) playing this Saturday at the Weisman museum on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. To console myself, I’ve posted Ha Ha off of their Team Boo album here for your listening pleasure, I hope you enjoy it. And, if you happen to catch the show, let me know how it worked out at the Weisman.

It’s time yet again for Electric Six’s fall show here in Minneapolis. Although the last few albums haven’t been able to live up to the awesomeness exhibited in the first album, the albums are still decent and the shows are still amazing.

If you haven’t had a chance to check them out live, I encourage you to do so. If you’ve already seen them live then you probably already have your ticket.

Originally, I’d scheduled this post to… uh… post on 11/29, the day of the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros show at the Varsity. However, the show sold out, so I’ll just bump this up to now. How soon is now? Well, it’s RIGHT NOW.

They’re not that XX, they’re The xx. The xx is a band out of London and their song Crystalised just caught my ear. I guess they’ve been around for a while, but I’ve just become aware of them recently.

While not exactly just released, I decided after a couple dusty tunes earlier in the week, I’d try to dig up something a little more current.

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I’d forgotten how very great this cover by Tori Amos of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirt was/is.

Granted, it came for me at that time in my life when I was affected deeply by nearly everything I heard, and most everything from this genre/era “brings me back.” But dang, it really is good.

For that matter, the whole Crucify single/EP was excellent. If you like the song embedded above, I highly recommend checking out the rest of the single/EP.

A few years before a few years ago, I lucked into a free ticket to see Holly Cole perform a holiday show at the old Guthrie Theater. I was already familiar with Ms. Cole, but I was still pleasantly surprised by the show. It was a nice mix of jazzy Christmas standards as well as some original works that were related to varying degrees to the holidays.

The last few years I’ve found myself looking for her to return for another holiday show and was disappointed to find she was only doing a few shows, and only in her homeland of Canada. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to find this morning’s paper had an ad for The Dakota listing 4 Holly Cole holiday show performances, a 7pm and a 9pm on both December 7th and 8th.

One of the reasons I like the old Guthrie, was it was a very intimate space and there wasn’t a bad seat in the house. Well, The Dakota is even more intimate-er.

So, I apologize for a “holiday” post on November 1st, but it’s for a good cause. Uh, well, not a “cause” per se… just listen to the song embedded above and then go get your tickets.

The Dakota

Holly Cole’s Baby It’s Cold Outside

What? It’s the end of October already? Crap. Ok, well, I went overboard last year with the Halloween posts and underboard this year. Check out some of last year’s posts here which include some good themed songs.

Happy Halloween everybody!

This just popped up on random and it reminded me of the first time I heard the album (Murder Ballads). I had picked up the album on a whim used at Cheapo. After listening to a few songs I ran into the living room where my roommate was at the time (who was more “music cool” than I was) and excitedly asked if all of Nick Cave‘s songs were about killing and other assorted, related unpleasant things.

He said, “yeah, pretty much.”

Obviously with a album title like Murder Ballads, well, murder is going to be a common topic, but the rule seems to hold true for a surprisingly high percentage of his body of work from The Birthday Present to Grinderman.

So, let’s all take a minute to remember how awesome Nick Cave is.

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Guess I missed this too… Anyone have a recommendation for a decent album release calendar?

Anyway… Electric Six’s latest, Kill is out now. It doesn’t break any new ground, but it’s still fun. And don’t forget, they’ve got that show coming up in November at First Ave.

	Flight of the Conchords – You Don’t Have To Be A Prostitute
	Found at skreemr.com

Yet another something I would have expected I would have had on my radar, but managed to miss… the new Flight of the Conchords’ album, I Told You I Was Freaky just came out.

This isn’t the best track off the album, but I can’t seem to track down Rambling Through the Avenues of Time to embed anywhere, so you’ll have to settle for this Police rip-off.

Oooh!! Hey, YouTube came through! The album version maintains most of the banter too.

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Ok, it won’t be a recurring feature or anything… but I figured given the season (almost Halloween), I’d send a little Cthulhu out to all y’all.

For the full image, click the pic (via BoingBoing).

For more from Beatallica, hit up their site.

How did I miss this, or, nearly miss this? Jonathan Coulton will be performing at the Guthrie Theater on Monday, 10/26 (next Monday). Check out some of my other posts for more tracks from JoCo, or just head over to the Guthrie site to order your tickets.

GO GO GO!

Order tickets at the Guthrie site

Previous Jonathan Coulton posts

But don’t take my word for it, listen to it for yourself.

**UPDATE** I embedded Holiday Road below for easier comparison.

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