Hey y’all,

Matthew Ryan’s one of my all time favorite singer/songwriters and he’s got a great album coming out on April 1st called Matthew Ryan vs. The Silver State that any Springsteen and Steve Earle fans would do well to check out (or really just anybody who likes heart felt class conscious singer/songwriters). Anyway Matthew recently digitally “re-released” two albums of demo recordings he had formerly been selling on his website a few years ago. Translation: he allowed downloads to be re-posted on a blog and directed his fans to it via his MySpace page so the man must be cool with it. Both the albums are available for free download and well worth checking out, they’re def. rougher than his proper albums but the spark of creative genius is still plenty evident. You can grab them here

http://earcandies.blogspot.com/2007/09/matthew-ryan-dissent-and-hopeless.html

Expect a proper MR feature down the road once the album hits stores and his band hits the road. In the meantime also check out the stunning songs streaming on his MySpace page

So at my brother’s trivia jam at the 3-3-1 last night, DJ Knol Tate played “The One I Love,” an indisputably great song, by R.E.M., an indisputably significant band. I’m not going to say they’re indisputably great, but clearly they’re very good, and a band worth knowing about if you have any interest in popular music of today and the recent past.

This brought us, perhaps inevitably, to “Shiny Happy People,” a godawful song that’s been disowned by the band itself (”R.E.M. disowned the hit, and left it off their Best Of. (”It’s not a terrible song; it’s just irritating to some degree,” Michael Stipe admitted to Blender last year.),” writes Stereogum). What’s really bizarre about the song is how it comes at a point when the band was clearly making great music. As we discussed this last night, Martin Devaney posited “Kokomo” by The Beach Boys as one of the worst songs by a good band ever, and while it’s a bad song, The Beach Boys that released it were not The Beach Boys who made Pet Sounds.

“Shiny Happy People” just doesn’t seem to have anything to do with R.E.M. in a way. And obviously, we can quibble over what constitutes a good band, but I would also say “Spoonman” by Soundgarden has got to be up there. Maybe you don’t personally like Soundgarden, but they were certainly popular and critically well-received in their time. Superunknown is certainly their most ambitious and sonically diverse album. So how did a song about a guy playing the spoons on his leg get all the way onto the record and then released as the first single? “Feel the rhythm with your hands”? Come on, Chris, you can do better than that.

Eric Clapton—he’s just had way too many stinkers to single one out. That entire Pilgrim album is a crime against humanity. To the point where you have to wonder if his negatives outweigh whatever positives he’s accrued as a legacy.

Other possible nominees mentioned last night: “I Just Called To Say I Love You” by Stevie Wonder, “Living in America” by James Brown, and … I’m forgetting some. Anyways, I’m really curious what you out there think are some of the worst songs by good artists.

Spaghetti Western String Co. by Alexa Jones

As part of a feature I am finishing up on eclectic quartet Spaghetti Western String Co., I attended their CD release show at the Cedar Cultural Center Saturday night. It was a phenomenal show, chock full of surprises. I wanted to share the set lists for both the String Co. and their backing choir, Deviated Septet (a very cleverly named a capella octet), who sang a few numbers before Spaghetti Western took the stage.

In addition to playing most of the songs off of Spaghetti Western’s new album, Lull and Clatter, the set featured some amazing covers. My personal favorites were Radiohead’s “Exit Film for a Movie” sung in Italian, and the choral group’s stunning version of Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek.” And yes, we heard “Eye of the Tiger” in the encore, complete with solos by members of the opening act Fat Kid Wednesdays.

Deviated Septet set list

Hide & Seek (Imogen Heap)
Leave Me There (Hem)
I Am The Walrus (The Beatles)

Spaghetti Western String Co. set list

Beacon Waltz
Osa’s
Claude
The Percussionist
The Once-ler
Fresnel’s Flea Circus
Die Winterreise (Franz Schubert)
Merton’s Woods
Ellesmere Island
Hoof on the Rail
Exit Music for a Film (Radiohead)

Encore:

Uncle Roland the Inquisitive
Eye of the Tiger (Survivor)

Thanks to Carl Swanson from HowWasTheShow.com for his help obtaining the set lists.