Sunday Morning Roundup

Largehearted Boy lists the best albums of 2006 (so far) - my list will be posted tomorrow morning.

An Aquarium Drunkard posted some nice outtakes from David Crosby's album, If I Only Cound Remember My Name.

One of my favorite LP's from the early '70s is David Crosby's underrated masterpiece "If I Could Only Remember My Name?" A fully realized embodiment of the "sound" of California's folk/rock/country/psychedelia movement of the time, the album features such players as Neil Young, Jerry Garcia, Joni Mitchell, Phil Lesh, etc., etc. Almost as good as the album (and just, if not more interesting) are these outtakes from the 1970 sessions. These tracks are further proof that Crosby was an artistic force to be reckoned with at his creative peak.

rbally posted a bunch of acoustic tracks, including songs from Wilco, The White Stripes and My Morning Jacket.

Said the Gramaphone published a long piece about We Have the Technology by Peter Ubu.

So here we are. You and I. The moment is delicate. Don’t press play yet. Already I have built the song into myth, the myth of a favourite song, and if you hear it and shrug, ”huh, whatever”, this conspiracy between us, this chance for contact and sympathy, may vanish. Words cannot prevent it.

Mammoth Press interviews John Roderick of The Long Winters.

I write all kinds of stuff: reviews, rants, blather, and their fancier cousin “the essay”. It’s like writing songs, except I don’t have to drive around the country in a van after I write an essay. I guess people are getting hip to me as a writer more and more, and CMJ thought it would be fun. I’ve been trying to write a book for the last five years, but I don’t want to jinx it by talking too much about it.

The Believer interviews Jamie Lidell.

I spent a year out of music, learning programming. My friends were worried because I wasn’t making any music. I was like, “Come over and check out this machine I’ve made!” I got into Raymond Scott and automatic music makers, and I kind of got lost in there for a while. I’m probably going to go back there because it had a lot of potential, but somehow at the time I didn’t have the harmonic theory to back up the ideas. But now I’ve gotten a bit more, so maybe it’s time to revisit that.

The Toronto Sun talks to Jeff Tweedy.

"I've always admired people who make music that is very focused and very coherent," he said. "But I think over the years I have gravitated towards people like Neil Young or Bob Dylan, who seem to wrap themselves up in a much broader emotional range."

Since I posted about R.E.M. on Friday, I thought I'd follow up today with a live Letterman performance from 1983. During the interview section, a shy Michael Stipe quietly hides behing Peter Buck.

More Streaming Videos:
Ani Difranco | Half-Assed [Streaming Video]
Ani Difranco | 32 Flavors [YouTube]
Guster | Morning Becomes Eclectic [Real Video]
R.E.M | Radio Free Europe [YouTube]