The Current Music Blog: October 17, 2006 Archive

The Buffering Stream: Your Pedal Board of Daily Music "News"

Posted at 7:01 AM on October 17, 2006 by Hans Eisenbeis

What Ross does on his day off: Track listing for '06 Cities 97 Sampler. [RXRW]

What Ross doesn't do on his day off: Your super-low-value music news filler from faceless news service. [PiPress]

Band names that are most frequently misspelled. We nominate Sigur Rós. [Stereogum]

Gen-X irony is NOT dead, it merely occupied the body of Rob Sheffield: Pet Shop Boys exist solely to entertain him. [Rolling Stone]

Buena Vista Social Club Monkeys around in the Arctic.[NME]

Rock-Critic Mashups from the La-Z-Boy, No. 5: Evanescence

Posted at 8:01 AM on October 17, 2006 by Hans Eisenbeis

A couple days ago, we razzed Jon Bream for somehow finding out what Evanescence singer Amy Lee was wearing during a recent telephone interview. Today, the Strib's Deacon of Rock Criticism finally finds the words to describe Sunday's big show at First Avenue. And we think the way he describes his beloved.. well, it ranks right up there with the World's most remarkable rock-critic mashups. See for yourself:

Coming across like a love child of Meat Loaf and Tori Amos -- with Ozzy Osbourne as baby sitter -- Lee concocts a dark, heavy mash-up of metal, classical and piano balladry.

Extra points for actually using the word "mash-up"! Is the Strib's music department undergoing some sort of renaissance--or just spending too much time on MySpace.com like the rest of us?

Earlier: Lazy Rock-Critic Mashups defined.

Photo: courtesy Evanescence publicity

"This radio station was named Kowalski"

Posted at 12:01 PM on October 17, 2006 by Hans Eisenbeis

We've been enjoying Primal Scream's newish album Riot City Blues, but it sent us back to the library where we revisited all those great albums of yesteryear. And we were tickled to rediscover "Kowalski," a great tune from the album Vanishing Point (1997). Aside from the fact that Kowalski is the second most popular surname in Poland (it's the patronymic of "Smith," you know. Which means Morrissey's band is known in much of Eastern Europe as "the Kowalskis," right?), it is also Marlon Brando's character (Stan Kowalski) in "A Street Car Named Desire," not to mention an awesome grocery store with convenient locations throughout the Twin Cities.

So which of these Kowalskis was Primal Scream celebrating? Take a look at the lyrics and give us your best shot. (For the record, we're going to guess the Kowalskis at Lyndale and 54th in South Minneapolis.)

Photos: Primal Scream publicity; Streetcar publicity; courtesy Kowalski Equipment; courtesy Kowalski's Markets