There Goes My Bandwidth. Here's a Recipe.

Yes, my bandwidth limit has been exceeded, and I can't do anything about it until I get back home.

So today, instead of serving up an mp3, I've got a recipe for you, from Venus Magazine. It's Country Cornbread, from Viva Voce singer Anita Robinson's kitchen.

Country Cornbread

1 Cup Martha White self-rising cornmeal mix
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
1 cup light sour cream
1 cup creamed style corn

Directions:
Mix all ingredients together well and pour into a hot, greased iron skillet.
Bake at 325 F for 30 minutes.

Let me know how it is. I won't be able to cook it for a while.

Thirteen is your lucky number.

...When it's an Elliott Smith cover of Big Star. There's supposed to be a version of this on the Thumbsucker soundtrack, but I don't know if it's this one. No matter. Here's a version.

Elliott Smith - Thirteen (Demo, Big Star cover)

Don't bother Daddy during the Superbowl, I will take you to the emergency room on Monday

from Scientific American, Watching World Series Causes Drop In Hospital Visits

When is an emergency not quite an emergency? According to a new study, the answer depends on how well your favorite baseball team is doing. A report published in the October issue of the Annals of Emergency Medicine reveals that the number of visits to emergency rooms in Boston-area hospitals was inversely related to how well the Red Sox performed in the 2004 World Series.

Friday Live - Sonic Youth - Sunday (Live on Letterman)

Here's the early Friday Live post. It's old, but it's damn good.

See you all again with more old stuff on Monday. I can't wait to get back to civilization. I'm saving money on CDs, anyway.

Sonic Youth - Sunday (Live on Letterman) (34.5 MB video (mpg))

a portal into the People's Republic of China staffed by Mexicans

Best description of Walmart ever. See #7.

From F**ked company to F**ked Industry. 7 entire sectors that the Internet will nuke

The Piano

I was able to drag Julie to the Freer Gallery to look at this and other great paintings at Pretty Women: Freer and the Ideal of Feminine Beauty, which closed at the Freer Gallery this weekend.

Gonzales - Gogol (mp3)
Gonzales - Manifesto (mp3)

Both tracks from Solo Piano.

Brian Wilson - Love and Mercy (Live), Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine (Live)

I'm not home, and I can only access the internet at the local library for the next six weeks. That means two things: 1) No guarantees, and 2) Shorter posts. Not that I ever guaranteed anything or wrote long posts in the past, anyway.

So here are a couple of mp3s from the ReAct Now! broadcast for Hurrican Katrina victims. These tracks were not made available on through Sony Connect, where you can purchase other downloads while contributing to the Red Cross or Salvation Army.

You can still watch the streaming video of the performance at mtv or vh1.com.

Brian Wilson - Love and Mercy (Live)(mp3)

Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine (Live)(mp3)

Friday Live - Beck

Beck, Live in Japan, 7-30-2005, Fuji Rock Festival.


Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime > Golden Age > Clap Hands (mp3)

Girl (mp3)

Beercan (mp3)


From this torrent. Flac files converted to mp3.

Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies) Live on Letterman (mp3 and avi)

Last night, the Arcade Fire summoned Thor and brought great thunder upon Letterman's studio audience with a rousing version of Rebellion (Lies). Here is a large video (avi) file and the mp3 to stir your blood.

Yes, I still heart the Arcade Fire. Even more than David Bowie does.

Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies), Live on Letterman 9-15-05: audio (mp3), video (avi)

The Like - Live on KCRW

When I got home from my weekend trip yesterday, my copy of The Like's Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking was waiting for me on my doorstep.

Just a few minutes later, I visited the KCRW site and was surprised to see that The Like was playing in the KCRW studio on MBE with Nic Harcourt.

Here are the songs (mp3s) from their giggly, energetic performance.

June Gloom
Mrs. Actually
What I Say And What I Mean
The One
(So I'll Sit Here) Waiting
Too Late
Waves That Never Break

Watch the entire show here. It's worth a look. The Like are frighteningly hot.

See their video for "What I Say and What I Mean" here.

Buy their CD.

Beck Live Acoustic Performance of Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime

Watch this brilliant solo acoustic guitar and harmonica version of Beck's cover of the Korgis' Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime and other live performances from the ReAct Now Concert for Katrina victims here. Beck makes this version raw and spare, but no less soulful than his cover on the Eternal Sunshine soundtrack.

Download the song, and all of the other live performances from the benefit, here. Your 99 cents gets you mp3s of rare live performances and help victims of Katrina. All proceeds are donated to The American Red Cross, The Salvation Army and America's Second Harvest.

The Ramones - I Don't Want To Grow Up (Video - Live on Letterman, 1995)

I'll be on the road Monday, and possibly Tuesday as well. So here's something to make up for my absence.

It just might bring a tear to your eye.

Ramones - I Don't Want To Grow Up (Live on Letterman, 1995) (32.3MB mpg video)

The only thing missing is Dee Dee.

This one is especially for Arethusa, to whom I promised a Ramones post a long time ago.

Wang Dang Doodles

For today's Friday Live, here are a few versions of the blues classic, Wang Dang Doodle.

PJ Harvey - Wang Dang Doodle (Man Size CD Single)

Ratdog - Wang Dang Doodle (1997-07-12 - Polaris Amphitheatre)

Grateful Dead - Wang Dang Doodle (1990-10-22, Festhalle)

Howlin' Wolf - Wang Dang Doodle (From Best Of)

Radiators - Wang Dang Doodle (8-19-2004, State Bridge Lodge, Bond, CO)

Trumpets Underwater

New Orleans is a jazz town, but also a funk town, a brass-band town, a hip-hop town and a jam-band town. It has international jazz musicians and hip-hop superstars, but also a true, subsistence-level street culture. Much of its music is tied to geography and neighborhoods, and crowds.

All that was incontrovertibly true until a week ago Monday. Now the future for brass bands and Mardi Gras Indians, to cite two examples, looks particularly bleak if their neighborhoods are destroyed by flooding, and bleaker still with the prospect of no new tourists coming to town soon to infuse their traditions with new money...

"A lot of the great musicians came right out of the Treme neighborhood and the Lower Ninth Ward," said the trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, temporarily speaking in the past tense...Mr. Ruffins, one of the most popular jazz musicians in New Orleans, made his name there partly through his regular Thursday-night gig over the last 12 years at Vaughan's, a bar in the Bywater neighborhood, where red beans and rice were served at midnight. Now Vaughn's may be destroyed, and so may his new house, which is not too far from the bar.

On Saturday evening Mr. Ruffins flew back to New Orleans from a gig in San Diego, having heard the first of the dire storm warnings. He stopped at a lumberyard to buy wood planks, boarded up 25 windows on his house, then went bar-hopping and joked with his friends that where they were standing might be under water the next day.

- From Jazz Musicians Ask if Their Scene Will Survive, in today's NY Times.

Kermit Ruffins - When I Die (You Better Second Line) (mp3, 2004 sxsw)

White Stripes, Live on KCRW

Yesterday morning, KCRW played an energetic White Stripes MBE performance. The songs are below, and the entire broadcast, including the illuminating interview, is here.

The White Stripes - Live At The Village (mp3s)

The Denial Twist
Red Rain
My Doorbell
As Ugly As I Seem
Folk Singer (Brendan Benson Cover)
Instinct Blues
Sugar Never Tasted So Good

Did you know my name?

This sounds like They Might Be Giants without the quirkiness, singing for - I don't know, the Wallflowers?? Gasp... But behold, it is actually pleasing to the ear.

Randy Weeks - Transistor Radios (Demo) (mp3) (radio rip)

If Nellie McKay Needed Someone To Love

If only, right?


Who would I call?

Nellie McKay - If I Needed Someone (Beatles cover) (mp3)

From This Bird Has Flown - 40th Anniversary Tribute to Rubber Soul

Bloc Party - Two More Years (Video)

Stream the video for the new single here.

Three REM Non-Album Tracks

Why Not Smile is one of my favorite Post-IRS REM songs. The version on Up starts slowly with harpsichord and fingerpicked acoustic guitar, an intimate setting that helps Stipe relate to a sad listener. The song builds in complexity and tempo as he brings the listener to jubilance.

This version, taken from the Daysleeper EP, remains spare and quiet, and you almost feel as though the singer is asking himself the question. He wants you to be happy, but how can you when you hear the pain in his voice. The harpischord is gone, and the more sustained fingerpicked guitar notes linger. And the organ with the electric guitar...

REM - Why Not Smile (Oxford American Version) (mp3)


Tongue is more playful. This is a pretty straightforward version from the Vancouver Rehearsal Tapes. The electric guitar is huge when it comes in at just over the 2:00 mark.

Tongue (Vancouver Rehearsal Tapes) (mp3)


The Nightswimming EP version of Belong is less jangly and more of a folk song. The always contemplative Stipe has a way of transporting you into a different setting as you listen to REM songs, and you are in the room with a young mother and her child, watching her hopeful, worried eyes as she speaks to the child by the thin pane of glass that both separates them from and connects them to the world.

Belong (Live, Charleston, WV 4-28-91) (mp3)

Even if you have all of REM's albums, don't overlook the EPs and singles. You'll find little treasures on each.

Friday Live

Neil Young - Winterlong (Live from ??)

Mazzy Star - Into Dust (Live - Fade Into You B-Side)

Lou Reed - Halloween Parade (Live in Cincinnati, 1989)

Bob Dylan - Blind Willie McTell (Bootleg Series Vol 3)

Jill Scott - Natural Woman (Live from VH1 Divas 2001 Tribute to Aretha Franklin)

Lizz Wright -Trouble (Live Video)

Watch Lizz Wright perform Trouble here, from the Borders Listening Station.

A Hard Rain Falls

Though the New Orleans skies are cloudless, the hardest rain continues to fall.

"Victims of Hurricane Katrina are attempting to recover from the massive storm that is still making its way across the Mid-Atlantic States. American Red Cross volunteers have been deployed to the hardest hit areas of Katrina’s destruction, supplying hundreds of thousands victims left homeless with critical necessities. By making a financial gift to Hurricane 2005 Relief, the Red Cross can provide shelter, food, counseling and other assistance to those in need."

Donate.

Bob Dylan - A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Live Version)(mp3) from No Direction Home.