Live music, when done right, is life itself. Messy, with warts. You try to get it right, but no one’s life is perfection. You battle the mistakes.

There’s no ideal beauty. Even though actresses all plump their lips in pursuit of an elusive ideal. Hell, remake yourself until you lose your identity, like Jennifer Grey or Leeza Gibbons. What turns us on are your imperfections!

But I didn’t hear one imperfection tonight.

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I saw better playing in Nashville in a bar than you see at most major shows. I felt it. Music isn’t dead, but the business is trying to kill it. You might think Ashlee Simpson doing a hoedown when the tape breaks on SNL is long in the past, but that mainstream game is not completely dead, unlike Ms. Simpson’s career.

(via Lefsetz Letter – Mika At The Palladium)

Lefsetz strikes again!

A live show is a unique thing. The music industry would die without them. It’s why a lot of die-hard fans collect bootlegs of shows. (I’ve got handfuls of bootlegs from bands I love; every one is amazing and unique and re-listenable.) If you turn the music into a repeat of yesterday’s show, the business of your band is going to be limited and, unless you’re spending a LOT of time in the studio making new stuff, it’s going to wither out and die. Maybe not now, but it’ll happen. It’s like living on a diet of corn syrup and MSG; it’ll kill you eventually.

I’d rather see a band screwing up, engaging with their audience and fighting with their own humanity in order to bring you the best show they can. It shows a dedication and love for the fans, the music and the passion that pushing a button on a computer will never be able to mimick.

June is here. It’s the busy time of year. Graduations, going-away parties, weddings, vacations. No time for posting on blogs that nobody reads anyway.

May went by in a blur, leaving me just enough time to reminisce about music I used to love (Killswitch Engage, The Used, Eels, Death Cab For Cutie) and wish for half a minute that I had good music taste during the 90s (Pavement, Oasis, The Magnetic Fields). Then I went with Matt down to Irvine last weekend to experience the face melting metal of Iron Maiden and Anthrax live. It’s impressive that old guys are still capable of tearing it up like that.

1. Jimmy Eat World – “Here It Goes” (Chase This Light)
2. Hammock – “City in the Dust on My Window” (Maybe They Will Sing For Us Tomorrow)
3. 16 Horsepower – “Splinters” (Live: March 2001)
4. Eels – “Railroad Man” (Blinking Lights and Other Revelations)
5. Eels – “The Other Shoe” (Blinking Lights and Other Revelations)
6. Killswitch Engage – “Take This Oath” (The End of Heartache)
7. The Used – “Let It Bleed” (In Love and Death)
8. Death Cab For Cutie – “Transatlanticism” (Transatlanticism)
9. Duffy – “Mercy” (Rockferry)
10. Moving Mountains – “Grow On, Grow Up, Grow Out” (Pneuma)
11. The Appleseed Cast – “The Clock and the Storm” (Peregrine)
12. Pavement – “Unfair” (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
13. Oasis – “Champagne Supernova” (What’s The Story, Morning Glory?)
14. The Magnetic Fields – “Busby Berkeley Dreams” (69 Love Songs)
15. Bon Iver – “Skinny Love” (For Emma, Forever Ago)
16. Iron Maiden – “Run to the Hills” (Number of the Beast)
17. Anthrax – “Madhouse” (Spreading the Disease)

I’ve become a bootleg fiend as of late. I got a whole bunch of Coachella recordings, other random shows I was at and a few I wish I was at. Maybe I should start posting a few samples for your enjoyment. I’m at the brink of filling up my laptop’s hard drive. It’s about time for a new computer anyway.

You probably won’t hear much more from me this month (as if that were unusual). I’m road-tripping to Colorado to see the fam for a week, and then I’ll be start cleaning and packing to prepare to move into a new place that I just confirmed late last night. Exciting times. Peace.

This one is late for good reason. I’ve been sick all week and am just now beginning to see the end. Not only have I been busy resting, watching the entire Freaks & Geeks series, as well as several episodes of Six Feet Under, but the doc I went to looked at my ear, which is highly prone to infection after colds, and said I had a major tear halfway across my ear drum. Closer inspection indicated that wasn’t the case (whew) but neither of the doctors could figure out what was going on. “Cool ear,” one of them told me on his way out. Uhh… thanks?

Anyway, on to the music (which will be slightly garbled to me until I finish this course of double-strength antibiotics). Last month I finally started catching on to This Will Destroy You’s new one, I continued to fall in love with The Snake The Cross The Crown, I saw Ryan Adams live for the first time (yay, bootlegs!) and discovered Modeselektor thanks to Radiohead guest-DJing some BBC radio show I’d never heard of. Enjoy some tunes.

1. This Will Destroy You – “They Move On Tracks of Never-Ending Light” (This Will Destroy You)
2. The Snake The Cross The Crown – “Gypsy Melodies” (Cotton Teeth)
3. M.I.A. – “Hussel” (Kala)
4. The Snake The Cross The Crown – “Maps” (Cotton Teeth)
5. Michael Cera & Ellen Page – “Anyone Else But You” (Juno soundtrack)
6. Sigur Rós – “Hafsól” (Hvarf/Heim)
7. The Magnetic Fields – “California Girls” (Distortion)
8. M.I.A. – “20 Dollar” (Kala)
9. Circa Survive – “In The Morning And Amazing…” (On Letting Go)
10. Ryan Adams – “Shakedown On 9th Street” (Heartbreaker)
11. Collections Of Colonies Of Bees – “Flocks III” (Collections Of Colonies Of Bees)
12. Modeselektor – “The Dark Side Of The Sun (feat. Puppetmastaz)” (Happy Birthday!)
13. Modeselektor – “The White Flash (feat. Thom Yorke)” (Happy Birthday!)
14. Burial – “Prayer” (Burial)
15. Vampire Weekend – “Walcott” (Vampire Weekend)
16. Vampire Weekend – “Oxford Comma” (Vampire Weekend)

I saw Ryan Adams at the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara the other night. It was absolutely phenomenal. Great artist, great venue. Adams had a cold, but the band played a 2+ hour set. Makes me wonder if he could possibly be any better when healthy. I’m anxiously browsing the web in search of a bootleg.

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The Coachella lineup is pretty mediocre this year. Jack Johnson is headlining the first day? Enough said. After last year’s lineup that pretty much kept me going all day for all three days, I’d say this lineup has about half as much draw for me. Plenty of criticism from the music nerd world already, but the powers that be had to have seen that coming.

Needless to say, I won’t be going. Instead I’ll be doing whatever it takes to get Radiohead tickets for their Santa Barbara date. If it costs me less than the $300+ per ticket that Coachella does, I’ll have come out ahead.

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A few years ago, when Rhapsody was taking off, I predicted that it wouldn’t be too long before we would be able to stream an unlimited amount of music to a portable player on the go. Check out the Ibiza Rhapsody player. A huge step in the right direction. Now we just need better widespread Wi-fi and the possibilities will be endless.

My dream portable player has Wi-fi web access, stereo Bluetooth for wireless headphones, BitTorrent accessibility, FLAC compatibility, a 500+ GB solid state drive (to store all those FLACs, solid state for better battery life), gapless playback, ReplayGain capability and full, ID3 support with lots of options (for flexible library organization). It’s going to be a while before that happens, but hey, I can dream can’t I?