music blog 116 items | updated Apr 5 2010

Getting a call from Mos Def's manager asking if we could send a couple of guys to Japan for a week was maybe the moment we knew that the idea behind Embedded—exclusive, intimate access with artists—was actually going to work. So our executive producer, Mark Rinehart, and senior producer Alex Simmons got on a plane. That was our entire crew for the shoot, two guys doing everything they could to blend into the scenery. (Watch Mos performing excerpts from his album "The ECSTATIC" on the streets of Japan here.)

Embedded with Mos Def—a one-hour premiere for our six-part special—will air October 14, 11pm/10c. You'll also be able to watch at current.com/embedded, and then the following day at iTunes and other digital partners.

The best part about my job as online producer for Current Music is that I sit right here in the heart of the department, and since January I've had a front-row seat to watch the development of a new show unlike anything you've ever seen. Embedded, premiering on Wednesday, October 14, is the kind of TV any music fan dreams of—and though you have no real reason to believe me, I swear I'm saying that first and foremost as that lucky music fan, not because I work here. (Rolling Stone also picked us as one of their 50 reasons to watch TV. In one of the weirdest but most awesome and accurate reviews I've ever read about anything, they said, “If Animal Planet had a show that captured musicians in their natural habitats, it would look like this refreshingly raw documentary series.”)

I think Embedded could hold its own even if there were a dozen shows like it on the air, but there just aren't, not on Animal Planet or even MTV for that matter. Anyone who's gotten a glimpse at the inner workings of an entertainment publication or TV show has a laundry list of sad stories about how hard it is to actually document the life of a musician, to get enough time with an artist or a new album that you can actually feel justified in making a bold pronouncement, anointing a new heir or crowning a new queen. 

Embedded is a descendant of the best of Current Music's short- and long-form content, all organized around a simple, essential set of principles: Intimate. Exclusive. Access. We aren't going into each part of the special with a set idea of what the story is. Instead we start with the artists we most respect and collaborate to create opportunities where we can film them on stage and off, in the moments when most other crews are kicked to the curb or put down their cameras. We spent a week on the ground in Japan with Mos Def, perched on Silversun Pickups' shoulder as they played "Swoon" for the first time in front of a live audience, and criss-crossed the country with Common as he worked harder than a campaigning politician to prove to new and old fans just how powerful he thinks music can be.

And true to Current's own hybrid heritage, we've been (if quietly) taking the temperature of online communities as we select which artists to work with, what to ask them that won't be the same 10 questions they've heard at any album release press junket, and how to use the best and smartest information on the web to make TV like you've never seen before. Instead of waiting for a polished produced piece, we posted clips from a secret tweet-up show with Amanda Palmer within the week and dropped three a capellas with Mos performing songs from "The Ecstatic" the week before that album dropped. I'm working to stack current.com/embedded with all the extras, inside information and interaction I've always wanted as a music fan. Plus there will be some incredible interactive features you won't see anywhere else—because the brainiacs behind Current.com had to invent them.

The worst part about my job is not yet being able to tell you every single thing about what you'll see on the six parts of Embedded. But here's a little tease, and leading up to October 14, we'll have a little more, and then (the part we're really looking forward to) we'll get to hear what you think of it all.

Be sure to join the Embedded Group at current.com so you don't miss any exclusive sneak peeks.

There was a funny back and forth on @thedailyswarm's Twitter this morning, trying to figure out whether the new Thom Yorke video was real, a fanvid, or something else altogether.

But do you like it? (I have not yet had enough coffee to answer this competently.)

Get more Radiohead news at Current.com here.

A short list of things I loved about seeing Ida Maria perform live twice earlier this year:

She fucking rocks. Is that enough for a list? I don't know, but when I go to see a rock show, I like to see a singer who blows me away, who screams and shrieks and sings and plays her heart out. It's an extra awesome bonus when she's a woman, and not a stick-thin indie ingenue, and is a little messy and very sexy and shamelessly more than a little drunk.

Which is why all these reports of her basically losing her shit at one gig after another on this Perez Hilton tour are a) not surprising, and b) a little heartbreaking, and c) sort of very rock and roll.

Oh and, d) not exactly something for us to all write a hundred blog posts about.

I can't even count on one hand the number of times, for example, that I went to see Ryan Adams play a show where he was too wasted to hold his guitar, and just about as likely to jump in the crowd and scream in someone's face as he was sing a song. I didn't particularly enjoy paying for that experience, but it didn't ever seem to knock him off his then-indie king perch. (When I first saw Ida Maria, I said she was like Adams' band Whiskeytown by way of Bjork.)

Here she is, by the way, a week ago on this same tour, possibly under the influence and definitely kicking ass.



It's never all that cool for a musician to bail on a set, not because they're too coked out to sing or just bored and belligerent. But rockers are fuck-ups, almost by definition, and generally a crowd of dudes will cheer on another dude who's pounding beers on stage or taking shots offered by the audience between songs. If Ida's really at that needing-help phase, I hope she gets it. And if she's far from home and on a tough tour and taking it out on her liver—well. It doesn't make her any less of a rock star to me.

Here's where it started.



Our awesome music licensing coordinator, Jen Pray (yes, she of the John Hughes greatest hits of a generation dressing down of our then-intern) let loose with a little rant on Twitter:

@prennyjay: Dear Trailer Houses, Promo Depts, Music Supers, Directors, & Producers: STOP USING BEP "I GOTTA FEELING."

(Watch one example above from the Oprah Winfrey Show. Ironically, this is an embeddable clip, but none the BEP's actual video of this song is not.)

I retweeted at @current_music, asking for what else you'd plead to never again be licensed to anything because if you once loved it you've now lost all respect. Your responses were too good to truncate in mere 140-character bites, so here they are in their entirety:

@terabyte240 @current_music YES - I realize MJ was probably up to his ears in debt, but knock it off with the Beatles' "Come Together". Gonna scream.

@hennepinhaiku @current_music: No MGMT/no Juno Soundtrack pieces/Kid Cudi's tired.

@meganwest @current_music half of Kasabian's first album.

@pseudopseudo @current_music Iggy Pop - "Lust For Life". Not really on *everything*, but on enough stuff that I die a little inside when I hear it.

@NTChaddius @current_music Some have been trying to bring back the "Requiem for a Tower" mix with a slightly different beat... we're not fooled

@WhiteGoodman @current_music New Radicals "You Get What you Give." Anything by Smash Mouth.

@Ellovater @current_music the fray's "you found me" Makes me want to write "you lost me"

@sarahindie @current_music The Turtles' "Happy Together." I used to love that song. Now it brings up memories of dancing bagels and cream cheese, etc.

@kid_amy @current_music ugh, I just heard Digable Planets "Rebirth of Slick" for a Tide commercial yesterday! and also New Order's "Ceremony" I like those songs, just found it appalling they were being used in commercials :(

@lexicaljewel @current_music Blur - Song 2. Good god.

@stephenbarros verve- bittersweet symphony ..ugh!

One more historical punk rock doc I missed in our roundup earlier this week. It comes via @Allan_Ionic, who said simply, "The Year of Punk was a good one." It was made for British TV in 1977.

Over at the Current.com blog, Mario is still documenting each Current TV host's favorite content from the channel (we recapped Sergio's white hot top 4 music clips here).

Douglas Caballero, who you may know from Current Fix specials and the now-retired Daily Fix—and more recently seen doing an interview with singer-songwriter Mat Kearney—not so surprisingly had a bunch of music-related must-haves from the vaults, including:

• Flaming Lips Santa Claus


• Santogold Backstage


• Moby Goes Dog Walking


• The Blow


• Lil’ Wayne Misunderstood


• The Kills’ Midnight Boom


• Behind The Shins

You can follow Douglas and Current Exposed on Twitter tune into Current Exposed weeknights at 8 / 7 C.

Mary Travers, Grammy award-winning American singer-songwriter and member of the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, has died. She was 72.

Need a little levity after that? Try "Puff the Magic Dragon":

After 15 years of hauling ass from town to town, the Vans Warped Tour has finally figured out how to air condition their event: film a special doc highlighting the history of the punk rock tour, add in performances from an all-star show, and screen it at more than 400 movie theaters across the country. It's a one-night-only deal, Thursday, September 17. Get tickets and the full list of locations here.

Here's a sneak peek from the film. Ice-T definitely wins the prize for most direct pitch: "Bring your punk ass to the theater and see the ****ing movie!"



More from the official Warped Tour YouTube here.

BYO Records has got 10 years on Warped, and included in their 25th anniversary CD/DVD pack is a 90-minute feature documentary called Let Them Know, about the early LA punk scene. It's out September 22, and we are very sorry to have missed the LA screening with performances by a bunch of the bands featured.



But what the fuck do we know? Probably not much, and probably you'd tell us that if we bothered to ask. So we went to our friends on Twitter for their recommendations for the best punk rock docs of all time.



American Hardcore (Sony Pictures Classics) is probably the most well-known—it has a sort of PBS vibe, with infographics and shit. (I swear I saw it at 3 a.m. on the in-house channel at the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas, of all places.) Here's a tease, but you can watch the entire 100-minute film at Google Video. Thanks to @philouza, who also said: Hated (GG doc), Rock and Roll Won't Wait is remarkably boring, MC5 a True Test. (proto, sure).



Sick of being the only black kid at punk shows? You are so very much not alone. Check out Afro-Punk: The Documentary and then head over to Afropunk.com for less of a history lesson and more of what's happening right now. (Thanks @hennepinhaiku, who called the film "ripe/for much punk rock discussion.")



Here's a performance clip from Fugazi's documentary Instrument (thanks @vsamra3):



There's the Minutemen's We Jam Econo, a favorite of our VP of Music, Davis Powers:



@alec_cohen wants you to watch Beijing Bubbles, about punk rock in China:



And there's always the Sex Pistols' The Filth and the Fury (thanks @fake_empire, who also recs Punk Attitude and Westway to the World):



By the way, our resident punk band—the singer and bassist from Roll the Tanks both have day jobs at Current—would like to see some new faces among the same old talking heads. Preferably Jesse Michaels from Operation Ivy. Anyone want to track him down and get him on camera?

Here's what I loved about MTV's VMAs last night: Amid all the drama—see Current.com's blog about whether Kanye West and Twitter and Taylor Swift can make a perfect ratings storm—and the spectacle—that Michael Jackson tribute was pretty intensely amazing—and the acrobatics—holy fuck, Pink!—was an impressively counter-culture moment of sheer oddity.

Lady Gaga, a classically trained performance artist, proved you can be queen of the night (or at least a lady in waiting behind Beyonce) and do it as weirdly as humanly possible:



I thought she sounded damned good. But it was her so-insane-it's-uncomfortable stance, from arrival to performance to award acceptance (the look on Eminem's face as she asked him to hold her Moonman was one to savor for a while) that really made me think. This is someone who's taken her underground performance art and made it pop, but who proved last night that if anything it will be less toned down the more popular she gets.

When a singer so strange can top the pop charts—or when an American Idol finalist like Adam Lambert can credit a 'shrooms-fueled epiphany on the playa and his community of Burners with making him the sudden star he is today—it makes me wonder whether we're seeing some resurgence of the fringe club culture that has spawned and nurtured gender-bending illusionist artists from Grace Jones to the Scissor Sisters.

What do you think? Got some other musical artists pushing the boundaries who you think are ripe to break through to mainstream media?

A parade of guest stars Current TV hosts have been asked to count down their favorite content from the network, and Sergio Cilli (of the White Hot Top 5) named several of Current Music's finest, including:

• The Dodos Blogotheque (Extended Version)


• Behind The Shins


• Flaming Lips Santa Claus


• Fleet Foxes - Sun Giant + White Winter Hymnal - La Blogotheque Take Away Show

Personally I'm fond of Sergio's list of Crappy Alternative videos, because no matter how many of these bands may be my not-so-guilty pleasures (except Boys Like Girls, they just suck), his punchlines are right on.

Thanks Serg!

See his full list here at the Current.com blog.

We've spent a lot of time with Common over the last year, as well as the great team that manages him. Somewhere along the way, we started talking about what else we could do together—something a little different and a lot more interactive. In my experience there are two kinds of artists in any media, those who are very proprietary and controlling of what they make, and those who work their asses off to make something great, then enjoy sitting back and seeing what other people do with it. Common's already been throwing his music out there for people to remix at DJ conferences, and his team basically said: what kind of video would your community want to make with us?

We decided to shoot a green-screen performance take, just like Common's done for most of his music videos shot by high-priced pros, then cull through candid footage we have and offer a big old download to anyone who wanted to make it into something more. That's how we ended up with Make Common's Day—your chance to direct the video for his song "Make My Day." Common will hand-pick his favorite, which will be promoted on our site and his site. And, if Current puts yours on TV, you'll get $2,500. Not to mention an impressive notch for your filmmaking resume.

And sorry to be a bit of a tease—we wanted to give you a heads up, but you'll have to come back next Monday, September 14th, to get the song and video assets. Then you can shoot your own footage to go with it, just be sure to upload your final work by September 28th at midnight, and be sure you’re using footage that you own—or that we provided. (We'll offer some tutorials on working with green-screen elements, too.)

When Imogen Heap was in California last month, giving her fans a sneak first listen of her album, Current Music was there with her. In celebration of the release of "Ellipse" (out today from RCA), here's a little sneak peek of our own.

At Royal Percussion Services in Sun Valley, Imogen gets her hands on the instruments that might help recreate the carefully orchestrated sonic art of "Ellipse" when she goes out on tour.

Today on Current Music:

+ Dead Man's Bones—aka Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields—announced their upcoming tour dates with a suitably creepy ad. The album was recorded with the help of a children's choir, and on tour there will be local groups adding the choral parts into the stage show. There's also going to be a talent show instead of opening bands. Why would I make something like this up?

+ The Dead Weather—aka Jack White's latest project—will play a free gig on Wednesday at an LA record store owned by White.

+ Dead by Sunrise—aka Linkin Park's Chester Bennington and friends—offer a peek behind the scenes of their album, out October 13.

+ Song I am most looking forward to on Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3: "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)." The album also features collaborations with Rihanna, Kanye West, Timbaland, Drake and more. Can we get a sticker like the kind they put on organic fruit for organic sounds? FRESH! No Auto-Tune was harmed in the making of this record!

Got more great music stories for Current? Submit them here and be sure to tag with the artist name for consideration to be featured!

In honor of John Hughes, we asked our intern Jimmy Risolo (age 21) and our music licensing coordinator Jen Pray (lived through the '80s and remembers it) to revisit—or, in Jimmy's case, learn about for the first time—the greatest hits of Hughes' iconic song selections.

Jen Pray, Current Music licensing coordinator: I’m not one to get terribly wound up about celebrity passings, but this one hits me where it hurts. Like many of my Gen X brethren, John Hughes shepherded me through my childhood and adolescence. He’s responsible for a good number of my coping mechanisms, my fondness for tall, dark-haired, pretty boys in sweater vests (Call me, Michael Schoeffling!), and the nickname my college roommate and I used for douchey guys: “Farmer Ted.” I had always hoped that at some point he would abandon his seclusion and write a new film that would impart some sort of wisdom about life as only he could, but alas, it was not to be. Now when I conduct my annual birthday viewing of Sixteen Candles, I’m not only going to be upset about said birthday, but also the reminder that he’s no longer with us. I’m going to need a really touching heart to heart talk with Paul Dooley on my couch. PLEASE DON’T LET HIM BE NEXT.

Jimmy Risolo, Current music intern: My bosses here at Current had the idea to post videos of some of the best songs from John Hughes movies. I swear, they named about thirty in three minutes. As a young, college-aged intern, I have seen all these movies but have very little personal connection.  So strap in for some whiny vocals and reverb-y drums.  Here's my (very uninformed) take.

Oingo Boingo, "Weird Science" (Weird Science)



Jimmy: I just know Oingo Boingo as the launching point for soundtrack extraordinaire Danny Elfman.

Jen: OH, JAMES. I’m assuming you also refer to “Dead Man’s Party” as that song they always play on the radio on Halloween. FOR SHAME. This is actually Oingo Boingo’s 2nd appearance in a John Hughes work, with the first being “Wild Sex in the Working Class” in Sixteen Candles. While “Wild Sex” was only used as party fodder, “Weird Science” succeeded in making it impossible to build your own British model without listening to this song. And sing “From my heart and from my hand, why don’t people understand my intentions” in a very loud falsetto and then deep baritone while driving in the car.

Kate Bush, "This Woman's Work" (She's Having a Baby)



Jimmy: Alright, I haven't seen this one, but it looks like a downer.  How many degrees of separation between Kate Bush and Kevin Bacon?  One, I guess.

Jen: You are clearly too young to adequately ruminate on (and end up incredibly depressed about) how life didn’t work out the way you thought it would, because you’re in college and still believe your whole life is ahead of you. Which, it is. Good for you. I suppose. If you pose the question, “What is the greatest use of music in a movie?” to anyone who works in music, you will invariably spark a very impassioned debate with wildly different responses. However, with respect to everyone else’s opinions, “This Woman’s Work” is both the greatest song ever used in a movie and the greatest song ever composed specifically for a movie. Game over. End of story. It perfectly encapsulates not just the devastation that Kevin Bacon’s character is feeling in that moment over his wife and unborn child's lives being in jeopardy, but also the the dawning realization of the incredible joy he was too busy being resentful to notice throughout his reluctant life with Kristy. As literal as the lyrics can sometimes be with the visual onscreen, the song still doesn’t beat you over the head with how you should feel. Instead, you can’t help but live every single emotion right along with him as he experiences them. This is what music in a film is supposed to do, Zach Braff.

Stephen Duffy, "She Loves Me" (Some Kind of Wonderful)*



Jimmy: This is what people looked like in the background of my baby pictures.

Jen: I'm really glad that you had someone as fierce as Watts in your life. She was a victory for tomboys everywhere and the primary reason why I'm still fond of fingerless gloves. Seriously, if anyone ever asks you, "What do you do with your hands?", the answer is, "Put them on your ass and make out with you to 80s New Wave."

*(Jimmy said it’s Grand Funk Railroad, but it’s not. —Jen)

OMD, "If You Leave" (Pretty In Pink)



Jimmy: Who are these boys, and why are they so sad?

Jen: The boys are so sad because Blane - that's a major appliance, that's not a name! - almost let James Spader's blue-blooded derision make him lose Andie forever! He trusted a guy in a white blazer and loafers NAMED STEFF. He needed a grand gesture of a song to melt the ice covering Andie's heart so she would make out with him in the dark parking lot. Prom is not successful unless you've made out with someone in a dark parking lot/dance floor/closet/backseat of a car.

Divinyls, "Ring Me Up" (Sixteen Candles)



Jimmy: I just know this group as the "I Touch Myself" people.

Jen: Released eight years before "I Touch Myself," it's easy for anyone outside of Australia to assume that the Divinyls had never put out an album before their eponymous release, so I will not judge you. For this. My 2nd favorite Sixteen Candles song behind “Kazooed on Klassics,” "Ring Me Up" is the soundtrack for Sam's attempt to approach Jake in the coat room at the end of the school dance. Unfortunately, she loses her nerve and looks at him like a leper. Wah wahhhhhh.

Lindsay Buckingham, "Holiday Road" (Vacation)




Jimmy: Lindsay Buckingham is a cool dude.  When doing some research, I saw that "Vacation" was "based on a short story, 'Vacation '58'".  Clark Griswold in the 50's?

Jen: There are two songs essential to any road trip soundtrack. Only one of those you listen to un-ironically. The other is "Life is a Highway" by Tom Cochrane.

Otis Redding, "Try a Little Tenderness" (Pretty In Pink)




Jimmy: Everyone here has commented that if you were to go to the hippest parts of town, you'll see people dressed like this again.  Gross.

Jen: A lot of those people are YOUR AGE, WHIPPERSNAPPER. I adore this scene so much and I think it plays a large part in why so many people wanted Andie to end up with Duckie at the end of the movie instead of Blane. The use of Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness," along with "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" in Top Gun, "Love and Happiness" by the Reverend Al Green in 9 1/2 Weeks,  and "Cry to Me" by Solomon Burke in Dirty Dancing (which also featured Otis' “Love Man” and "These Arms of Mine"), was part of a great 2-year cinematic introduction to the Holy Trinity of Soul for a new generation, and I thank Mr. Hughes for kicking it off. I will neither confirm nor deny that I dance like this in the bathroom in the morning while getting ready.

Thompson Twins, "If You Were Here" (Sixteen Candles)



Jimmy: Not long until this makes its way to oldies stations.  How does that make you feel, Gen-X'ers?

Jen: HEY YOU, KID! GET OFF MY LAWN.

Wayne Newton, "Danke Schöen" (Ferris Bueller's Day Off)



Jimmy: This song made everyone think that this phrase is pronounced as danke "shane", but it's more like "shuhn".  But "shuhn" doesn't rhyme with "pain" and "again."

Jen: Clearly you, my friend, have not seen anything good today, or else you'd get off Mr. Las Vegas' back and let his dulcet tones take you away while you daydream about being a righteous enough dude to crash a city parade and take over a float with hot German barmaids.

Ed. note: A shiny new Current t-shirt to someone who can find the actual clip of Ferris singing this online. For real. E-mail me.

The Beatles, "Twist and Shout" (Ferris Bueller's Day Off)



Jimmy: Ever have one of those days where you walk outside and everyone's singing and dancing?  On another note, even after being a "Lion King" voice, reviving Broadway, and marrying Sarah Jessica Parker, I think Matthew Broderick peaked in 1986 while wearing the t-shirt/barf-colored vest combo.

Jen:

1. Sadly, no.
2. Sadly, yes.
3. IT'S LEOPARD PRINT. HOW DARE YOU.

"Phoenix," Lisztomania (Brat Pack mashup by avoidantconsumer)

Jen : Lest any of you think I've egregiously forgotten The Breakfast Club, I have not. Rather, I’ve saved it for very last to prove to young James that despite his perception of irrelevance, John Hughes' movies are timeless. There is no better argument for that than the one made by YouTube user avoidantconsumer, with her Brat Pack mashup set to Phoenix's "Lisztomania." Enjoy it for the first time, or enjoy it all over again.



To Mr. Hughes I say, thank you, sir. Wherever you are, may you always be dancing.

Please welcome Current Comedy's Josh Heller, moonlighting here with a mini-lesson about an unexpected musical discovery...

Amoeba Records has a cool video series called What's In My Bag. I stumbled upon it when I was looking for one of my favorite artists, Mexican Institute of Sound. MIS (or IMS en Español) is a sampled based artist akin to DJ Shadow or The Avalanches. Camilo Lara (the man behind MIS) splits his time between performances and heading up the record label EMI Mexico.

In this rendition of What's in My Bag, Lara picked up some rebajadas, a form of music I had not been familiar with. Rebajadas are cumbia tracks slowed to a molasses pace. Cumbias are known for their upbeat danceability, rebajadas are the same singles, but played way slower. Imagine taking a 45 single, and then playing it at 33 1/3 RPM. Not only does the speed decrease, but the pitch lowers. It's low-end music. A Latin dub.



Rebajadas became popular in Monterrey, Mexico, which has an internationally recognized music scene. Since the '60s the city has been known for Norteño and other regional Mexican music. In the '90s the city gained famed for its alternative rock scene.

Now I'm going to go out on a limb. Bear with me because I think it might work. Monterrey is 400 miles from Houston. Musically Houston is not known for much except their rap scene (and I guess ZZ Top.) An important feature of Houston rap is the chopped and screwed style of playing records at half their speed. This is a good primer on the history of the Houston rap scene:



DJ Screw pioneered the style of playing records slowly. He enjoyed the sound because it emulated the way he felt when he was hitting the sizzurp. (Sizzurp or Purple Drank is a beverage consisting of Sprite and prescription-grade cough syrup. The concoction of codeine, promethazine, and high fructose corn syrup—can you guess the active ingredient?—proverbially fucks your shit up.)

The slow, low drawl of these records marked the Houston rap scene. The mass appeal of this sound probably suggests that there are more factors at play than just presuming everyone is drinking cough syrup. Perhaps its popularity has to do with the weather. Rapper Bun-B suggests that the music reflects the "slowed down laid back chill southern vibe." Houston writer Lance Scott Walker proposes that music (along with the drugs) reflect "Houston is a big sprawling slow hot city" with "9 months of summer."

This seems like a very similar environment to where rebajadas came from.

And the rebajada seems to be growing in popularity outside of Monterrey. South American artist Sonido Martines and Boston-based DJ /rupture have incorporated the sound into mixes. Dr Auratheft even has an excellent rebajada mix on his blog and gives a more obvious explanation: "Early low-key/ghetto cumbia gigs in Mexico would use really shitty/dysfunctional turntables, not only slowing down but also fluctuating."

So perhaps my theory about creating music to emulate the slow-placed borderland lifestyle is trumped by malfunctioning technology. Either way, rebajadas are a sound that at first seemed silly, but now have a hypnotizing bassline that keeps drawing me back.

I get asked just about every day in this job what kind of music I like, and though the honest-to-God answer is "most," the reality is there's just too much to listen to if I can't narrow it down a little. Lately my short-hand response instead leans towards "loud" with a strong side of "glam."

Here are two groups I love who melt the metal off the walls live and look pretty freaking amazing doing it.

Girl in a Coma

The San Antonio-based band is named for a Smiths song but hits harder, not unlike their Blackheart Record label founder/matriarch, Joan Jett.

Here's "Static Mind" off their new album, "Trio B.C.":




But you know how the sound of some bands—especially more punk-edged ones—degrade a bit in quality when you see them live? Check out this clip and others of the band doing live gigs—Nina's voice is exactly as smoky and focused on stage, and if anything the songs sound better when they get a little room to breathe. Go to MySpace for dates to see them across the Southwest. (To be fair, they're not so much glam as they are simply kick-ass, super-hot girls.)

Semi Precious Weapons

This New York City-based band plays some of the most back-to-basics, balls to the wall rock I've heard in a long time—but its members are all classically trained musicians from the Berklee College of Music, so it's actually not a hot mess. Instead it ends up somewhere between Guns N' Roses and David Bowie at his most gussied up, rocked out finest.

The band's doing a three-show run at LA's Viper Room starting tonight. Here's the video for "Magnetic Baby," one of the tracks off their debut album "We Love You."



If you've got a cold, black heart and a very strong stomach, watch their super-twisted, American Psycho-style video for "Rock N Roll Never Looked So Beautiful." I'm not kidding: there's a lot of sex, a lot of violence, and even an amputation or two. Enter at your own risk.

Today on Current Music:

+I may now die in peace because this is what I have been waiting for all summer! Monsters of Folk (Jim James, M.Ward, Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis= SUPERGROUP) reveal one track for us folk-indie-obsessed minds to drool over. All you have to do is say please (literally)!

+Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys (Akron, OH) plans North American solo tour.  Some possible irony because he was practically solo before but nonetheless sure to continue melting music brains.

+And Q-Tip is coming out with a book? Maybe he will answer the question I spent many restless nights trying to answer: who IS Bonita Applebum?

Got more great music stories for Current? Submit them here and be sure to tag Music for consideration to be featured!

—Amy Williams

Today on Current Music:

+ I always thought something was missing when I was conquering Space Invaders down at my local arcade. If only I had my very own symphony orchestra to lay down an inspiring soundtrack. Now, I might not get these guys over to the Chuck E. Cheese, but they may be coming to a city near you as part of their 60-show tour.

+ Sick of the Jonas Brothers and bad hip hop? So are Kings of Leon: Drummer Nathan Followill calls out the U. S. of A. and its passion for awful music.

+ MGMT + Lady Gaga + Weezer = Crazy delicious.

Got more great music stories for Current? Submit them here and be sure to tag Music for consideration to be featured!

—Josh Middleton