I often go back and forth between why I should or shouldn’t be blogging, and what’s the purpose, or you know who really cares in the long run. I guess I should think of the purpose as follows, if I hear or see or read something that catches my eye I should write about. Today about 10 minutes ago, I was visiting Jens Lekman’s website, and he occasionally (about as often as I) writes something just to let us all know how he’s doing and what’s going on in general, which would probably be another great reason to write a blog, but that only works for people that are famous to quasifamous people.

Anyway in Mr. Lekman’s recent post he goes on to explain that he gets many offers from advertisers to have his songs played in commercials, for various things from “big german car manufactures” to “goth-porn websites”, he also says he has always turned down such offers, not to keep “indie” cred but merely because he couldn’t see attaching any of his songs to a washing machine or anything of the like. A little while back he was approached by one company, and decided to counter offer, by creating a piece of music “with the same feel” to it as the song they wanted to use in the commercial. He called a trumpeter and a trombone player, sent out the bouncy piece never to hear anything about it again. That is until recently, when he received an a myspace message stating someone thought they heard one of his songs in a commercial, which was news to young Jens’s (Jenseses.. Jenses) ears. Did anyone see the commercial? Anyway here is the song/jingle he recorded for the commercial.

Jens Lekman - Washing Machine Commercial

Unfortunately Radiohead had to cancel their second show at the Heineken Concert Hall, due to family bereavement. It seems Phil’s mother passed suddenly, and made the correct decision to go home and be with his family. Thoughts and thoughts go out to Phil and his family.

UPDATE: Other completely unrelated Radiohead news, Thom Yorke has a solo side project coming out, called The Eraser, this news was oddly linked following Phil’s sad news on The Radiohead blogged, linked above, and to the left, and also confirmed on wonderful Tiny Mix Tapes, by Thom (poor punctuation tsk tsk) himself.

It’s that time of the year again, the trees are bursting with polleny goodness, eyes are itchy with the anticipation of new spring time love, and the 22-24 year olds freak the fuck out with “what am I going to do now?” syndrome. Assuming you are like me this will be the first time since you were six years old you won’t really have a summer vacation ever again (unless you went to be a teacher, but you didn’t, oh no, because you thought you could make some real money majoring in business, yay profits!) Days will now blend into weeks, weeks blend into months, months blend into years. Well let me be the first to congratulate you on your way to a wonderful career, or changing careers several times, anyway just think only 65 years until retirement…. then again there is always grad school.

Here’s a list of some of my favorite (anti)work songs, love them, for they will become the anthem of your days.

Elvis Costello - Welcome to the Working Week

Ramones - It’s Not My Place (In The 9 to 5 World)

George Thorogood - Get a Haircut and Get a Real Job

Dismemberment Plan - Spider in the Snow

Talking Heads - Once In a Lifetime

Futureheads - First Day

Devo - Working in a Coalmine

Johnny Paycheck - Take This Job and Shove It

So we all know Touch That Dial hearts harvest man, Neil Young, but my friend just linked me with an article that he just recorded a scorching new album entitled Living With War, that is basically a frying of the Bush administration. The project includes a 100(!) voice choir, and a “rap” of vocal clips from Mr. Bush himself, on the center piece track “Impeach the President”, back peddling, or basically looking like a bafoon/himself. Should be out in “six to eight weeks” so look for this around Christmas.

UPDATE: For maximum info on this head over to Thrashers Wheat Blog, with tons of info on the album.

One of these bands I enjoy writing about is Leisure, a band Pitchfork dubbed one of five bands to watch back in 2004, but has since been unable to really pull things together. (That Jeff Tweedy might have been on to something with that Late Greats song). Anyway it appears Jed, from Leisure, has reappeard in a “side project” entitled Scary Monsters. You can check out some of the songs over at their (shock!) MySpace account. The songs are all in all pretty good, have a nice Strokes meet Liars meet The Walkmen type sound to them, you know but better.

The jury is still out, but after watching the first two episodes I would say that ABC’s Sons and Daughters is a super duper show, they get bonus points for no laugh tracks, and they have a pretty cool theme song there, with Cheap Trick’s Surrender. Beats the heck out of that other show I mentioned recently.

Cheap Trick - Surrender

I remember reading a few weeks back a major puff piece in the New York Times (I would link the article here but NY Times decided to make us pay for their special brand of urban open minded closed mindedness) about the Arctic Monkeys, something that they will eventually matter more than Picasso or something equally ridiculous, and thinking to myself, “What’s all the hub bub about bub?” I’m often quick to defend certain phenomenon from the backlash that almost always ensues, but I just don’t really get it, with the onslaught of Gang of Four/Talking Heads revivalists, such as the Bloc Party, Interpol, Get Him Eat Him, and well Gang of Four, they sound like another hummmmmm in the sea of white noise. The article continued to go on begging us to look deeper into early 20 something’s lyrics something about how he hates going to clubs and everyone that goes there is wasting there time, basically it brought me to realize that they aren’t the masters of college angst but more like the Jerry Seinfeld of rock n’ roll, remember Seinfeld himself stated “there’s more to life than making shallow, fairly obvious observations.” Not that I have anything against 20 somethings writings, Dylan wrote his best stuff in his 20’s, and if anyone has seen Proof with Gwenyth “I named my kid Apple” Paltrow, you’re most creative years come before you are 23, which I half-heartedly agree with just look at Rivers Cuomo. Anyway I’m getting off track, the Arctic Monkey’s, let’s just call them the Franz Ferdinand of 2006, not the second coming of The Beatles.

Seriously everyone is laughing at us.

Not really much can be said beyond, what the eff is this? Note to parents: Do not let your child rock anywhere near this woman!

Slarafflenland are part Swedish and part Danish, so that initially was enough for me to like them, and then I heard “Cockaigne”. The appreciation took a step forward. The only way I can describe Slaraffenland using my handy “Music Critic Adjective Lexicon”, which is approximately 8 pages, would be Radiohead’s The National Anthem, meets The Go! Team’s exuberance, minus all the annoying beat boy stylings, and that certainly makes no sense, so here is the aural evidence. Both are off their second album Jinkatawa.

Slarafflenland - Cockaigne

Slarafflenland - Shuto-uchi