Delicate Steve "Butterfly"

My friend Scott pointed me to a 2011 NPR story about Delicate Steve and the press release that came with his record.

Read it here.

For those who don't like to click through, I'll summarize.  The reporter received a press release with a new album from Delicate Steve, and the press release was soooo over the top and intriguing, she had to find out more.  It turns out that the release was actually written by none other than the great rock writer Chuck Klosterman, who was offered the gig and told that he could write whatever he wanted and didn't even have to listen to the record.  The NPR story goes on to point out that many venues that booked Delicate Steve would post the ridiculously hyperbolic release on their websites, and many writers would lift lines directly from the writing, without knowing that much of it was complete fiction.

My first thought was:  Yeah, I'm glad I don't waste my time on that stuff.

We get a ton of new releases into the station.  And with most every CD that comes in, there is a "one sheet" accompanying it.

If I'm the one opening the mail, I throw the paper out without looking at it.

I feel terribly guilty about this.

For one, it's such an F-N waste of paper, mailed half-way across the country, to go directly in the trash, unread.

Secondly, these releases are often written by people I know, and interact with professionally.  I know they spent hours writing and preparing these releases, thinking through the angle they were going to write about, often fighting with the band over even a sentence or a word about how they were going to be "portrayed."  All that, and it goes directly in the trash, unread.

So I feel terribly guilty, but I also feel like they are a big waste of time.

With hundreds of releases coming into the station, can one release really say anything that makes a CD rise to the top of the stack?

Clearly, the NPR story suggests that only a one-sheet piled sky-high with bullshit is capable of standing out.

So why let the information, or the grasping attempt to describe sound with words (sometimes successful, often not), sway my opinion of a band when I can simply put the disc that's in the same envelope, right into the CD player?


Hear the song on Youtube.

Sam Roberts Band "Last Crusade"

I was listening closely to a segment on NPR week or so ago and I wondered if the folks behind the scenes did this intentionally, or if it's just a coincidence that only a record nerd would catch.

NPR was talking to an expert on Syria, Russia and Vladimir Putin, about the recently published editorial by Putin in the New York Times.  The expert was explaining Russia's relationship with Syria, and Putin's possible motivations for his actions, alliances and the editorial.

After talking about the economic interests Russia has in Syria, and about the, ahem, ego involved in positioning Russia as a world power, the conversation wound around to something I hadn't really thought about.

The expert pointed out that the Syrian rebellion is populated by many hard-line Islamists.  Given Russia's history with Afghanistan and Chechnya, Putin is likely to be extremely reticent to find himself embroiled in another fight with Islamic rebel force.

The conversation concluded, and, as is the norm for NPR, a piece of bumper music started to play, as a transition to the next segment.

I recognized the groove, as it's was a) a little heavier than the pieces NPR usually uses, and b) sounded like something MVY would play.

Hey, it IS something MVY would play.  Does play.  What is it?  I got it: Sam Roberts!

And then I put the figurative breaks on.  Are they fucking with me?  Or is this a coincidence?

Do they know that they have just ended a segment discussing a political leaders reluctance to go to war against Muslims with a song called "The Last Crusade"? 

It's a pretty loaded reference---Muslims and The Crusades.

They only played the music bed.  So there was no lyrical reference that a person who didn't know the song could latch onto.  If it were intentional, it was for insiders only.

Or it was just a weird coincidence and they just have a barrel full of cool-music bumpers, and it's me who's making the connection.


Sidenote:  I was searching NPR.org to see if I could find the original audio referenced above and got really cracked up.  I took a screen shot, so you'd see I'm not kidding.  Note that I searched for "Putin Editorial" and the first return makes perfect sense.  But the second choice cracked me up.  Again, I'm not sure if the internal-mechanics geeks at NPR are fucking with me, or if it's just funny luck.

See the article and the Blobfish.



Hear the song on Youtube.

Superchunk "Hyper Enough"

I had the rare (since the arrival of small kids in my life) chance to listen to "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" this weekend, and who should be the guest but Mac McCaughan of Superchunk.

When I heard him introduced, I thought to myself, "Huh, I haven't thought much about them in the last decade."

Turns out, they haven't put a record in nearly a decade. Guess who had kids, too?

It made me remember how much fun young, single me had, jumping around to tunes like "Hyper Enough."