Just soothsayin'

|current sounds| Light Shall Prevail- Defeat the Reign of the Horned One Through the Light of Christ

Those Finnish Kick Some Major Arse

Best new album of early 2007. Hands down. More later when I'm not stressing out and staying late at work. *

* I'm basically manning the entire SXSW coverage by NPR (with some help, of course). All of the technical stuff is boring, but y'all might like to know that I wrote just about every bio for all of the bands from whom we're featuring live concerts.

Support WFMU!

|current sounds| Selwyn Lissack- Friendship Next of Kin (really out-there South African avant-jazz recently uncovered - great record!)

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I listen to WFMU online quite frequently and read their multimedia, multi-genre, multi-topic, multi-weirdness blog religiously. In my mind, WFMU is the best free-form radio station in America. No one equals them in specialty programming, their original talk shows are all hilarious and/or informative (not in a morning shock-jock way) and, most importantly, they have the most knowledgeable DJs around. To show my appreciation, I just made a $75 pledge. Because WFMU is cool, I'm getting some sweet swag in return: a WFMU Sasquatch Drummer t-shirt and one of the DJ-curated compilations (Tony Rettman's Man, I'm Glad to Know You, a collection of unreleased jams by bands like Mouthus and Blues Control - rad).

So I'm hoping that if anyone out there listens to WFMU, that you'll pledge and keep them on for another year of sonic savagery!

Tangziners Unite!

|current sounds| Rosie Thomas- These Friends of Mine


A momentous meeting occured over the weekend. I have known Matt Ralph for approximately 7 or 8 years, probably 10 years by name, and we met for the first time in person late Friday night. I joined Tangzine sometime in late high school as a contributing music reviewer and he was its editor-in-chief. A year or so later, I was made music editor and for a large part of my time at Tangzine, we were the only two running the show: writing reviews, collecting folks for features, editing each other's material and hand-encoding HTML (which took hours). I took a sabbatical away from criticism to focus on school and WUOG in 2003 (2004?) while Matt still posted an article or CD review once in a blue moon. We still kept in touch over e-mail and instant messenger and had many failed attempts to hang out. So thank his brother and 8th graders for their D.C. field trip for Matt to come visit from New Jersey.

And I don't have a lovely picture to accompany it, but my old roommate Christa was in town two weekends ago for an Amnesty International shindig. We dined at Etete, an unbelievably good Ethiopian restaurant off U Street. She told me recently unearthed family secrets. Juicy stuff! The kind of material worthy of a short story or, hell, a trashy romance novel. I expect to see My Great-Aunt, the Homewrecker at Wal-Mart soon.

(I just realized how disgustingly appropo my "current sounds" are right now. *Sigh*)

Besides standing behind Robert Siegel in the lunch line...

|current sounds| better people- white lighter

If you ever wondered exactly what it is I do at NPR, here is a small list of stories and features I've made web pages for and other things I've contributed:

Wrote the introduction ("copy" in journalism terminology) to Abandoned Language by Dälek for All Songs Considered.

Made a fancy web page for an All Things Considered story on Lorraine Gordon, the owner of the Village Vanguard.

Wrote the introduction to The Slow Bang by Madeline for All Songs (and she wonders why Bob mentions The Sugar Shakers! :).

Built the listener-driven Valentine's Day songs page.

Helped coordinate the Best CDs of 2006 extravaganza.

Update the Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz website every week.

Scalpers Are Invited

Why did the one-time Dismemberment Plan show sell out in less than a minute?
I believe there's a special circle in hell for scalpers, especially when said show is a benefit for Cal Robbins, the son of J. Robbins (DC musician/producer) who's diagnosed with SMA.

Seriously. That's not right in so many ways.