For all you U2 junkies and for those that just came out of 30-year comas and haven’t heard of or seen the band, you can watch U2’s headlining set from last night at Glastonbury, starting with Part 1 below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMlqD4xvlfE&feature=related

This is a day-changer.  For the better.  Two of our favorite “Real Country” artists, John Prine and Iris Dement, collaborate and cavort in the performance below of Prine’s hilarious ode to monogamy, In Spite of Our Selves. Check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5axlwCBXC8&feature=player_embedded

And the collaboration thankfully continues below.

We have been mired in Warren-World for over a month and unable to scrape Warren Zevon‘s stunning 1976 major label debut album off of our turntable.  A large reason for our repeat listening is needing to hear The French Inhaler over and over and over (a particular shortcoming of vinyl and turntables if you don’t have the 45 rpm single stylee). We humbly opine that The French Inhaler is one of the finest songs ever recorded.

Lyrically the song is primarily a kiss-off to “Tule” Livingston (Zevon’s ex-wife and mother of his son Jordan), but also about life and lust in the LA music scene.  Evidently, after the breakup of Zevon and Tule, Warren found out that she was sleeping with another musician, and in the liner notes of the reissued album Jordan says that his mother confessed to him before she passed that the song was a “f*** you” to her for sleeping with this other musician.” At the conclusion of the song, Zevon also makes reference to the furor surrounding Norman Mailer’s exploitative Marilyn Monroe biography published in 1973.

Musically, the song is a marvel featuring piano, complex chord changes, strings, and the perfect harmonies of Don Henley and Glenn Frey (a zenith moment they never again approached).  We first hear those harmonies at the 1:00 mark, but thankfully they recur throughout the song.  The album was produced by Zevon’s pal, Jackson Browne, with support from the best of L.A.’s session players at the time.

One of our lasting musical memories is of catching Zevon at the Roxy in 1978 in support of his masterpiece, “Excitable Boy.” Zevon put on a manic show that night, but we all cringed when he repeatedly jumped up and collapsed to his knees (doing nothing in the process to undermine his mantra:  I’ll sleep when I’m dead).  It’s a wonder he survived another 25 years.

Warren Zevon went to sleep permanently on September 7, 2003, aged 56, leaving behind one of the great discographies of all-time and capped off by this great song.  Put it on repeat and marvel.

“How’re you going to make your way in the world
When you weren’t cut out for working
When your fingers are slender and frail
How’re you going to get around
In this sleazy bedroom town
If you don’t put yourself up for sale

Where will you go with your scarves and your miracles
Who’s gonna know who you are
Drugs and wine and flattering light
You must try it again till you get it right
Maybe you’ll end up with someone different every night

All these people with no home to go home to
They’d all like to spend the night with you
Maybe I would, too

But tell me
How’re you going to make your way in the world, woman
When you weren’t cut out for working
And you just can’t concentrate
And you always show up late

You said you were an actress
Yes, I believe you are
I thought you’d be a star
So I drank up all the money,
Yes, I drank up all the money,
With these phonies in this Hollywood bar,
These friends of mine in this Hollywood bar

Loneliness and frustration
We both came down with an acute case
And when the lights came up at two
I caught a glimpse of you
And your face looked like something
Death brought with him in his suitcase

Your pretty face
It looked so wasted
Another pretty face
Devastated
The French Inhaler
He stamped and mailed her
“So long, Norman”
She said, “So long, Norman””

Written by Warren Zevon 1973 Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp./Darkroom Music BMI

Check it out below.

Bon Iver played on the Jimmy Fallon Show again last night and delivered the new Holocene. Check it below and buy the new eponymously-titled album following its official release earlier this week.

In advance of their fine new album, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon appeared on The Colbert Show the other night. Check out the usual hilarious Colbert interview and Vernon’s performance of the great new song Calgary. Then below that is the extra performance of the massive Skinny Love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUDMZfJpjFc&feature=related

Wisconsin troubadour Anna Vogelzang has been garnering some serious buzz in the singer-songwriter realm with her lyrical poetry and musical conviction.  To (lovingly) kill two birds with one post, check out her performance below for the scintillating Sleepover Shows, and then go on over and check out some of the other great sleepovers put to bed by those Sleepover folks HERE.

This is how the Sleepover Shows folks describe themselves:

“Sleepover Shows are three song sets of acoustic or stripped down versions performed by bands that we love as they make their way through Boston. Though it started as something we did when bands needed a place to crash on the night of their shows, we now mostly film the sessions before or after a show and let the bands find their own ways home (though the offer still stands).

Basically, we try to use our spaces as creatively as we can.  We’ve filmed in the back seats of cars, on top of playground equipment, in doorways and alleys, in bathtubs and stairwells.  We try our best to get the bands to take their music outside of the confines of the studio and have some fun.

And that’s the point: to capture some great music that maybe isn’t always as polished, but shows these artists having a good time doing what they love. We’re doing what we love too, and hope you enjoy the videos!”

To sum up: the Black Cab packs up the Tiny Desk and comes to Boston.

There are gobs of great artists and performances to check out on Sleepover Shows, other examples are below with OK Go covering the Pixies’ Wave of Mutilation (though, as nice as it sounds, we’re not sure that the accompanying kiddie xylophone conveys “mutilation” exactly) and Wye Oak performing their song Civilian.

If you haven’t seen it, check out the first U2 performance on American television in 1981 on Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow Show.  We watched it that night and were forever sold.  Even then Bono was evincing his shamanistic tendencies, demanding and getting the audience to get up out of their seats for a band that the audience most likely had not heard before that night.  And oh the hair!!

From Radiohead comes a new track called Staircase from the “King of Limbs” sessions, taken from their our upcoming ‘From The Basement’ live video session.  “And no, you’re not seeing double. The doppelganger drummers are myself [Philip] and Clive Deamer. Clive has long been one of my favourite drummers and so I was really excited when he agreed to perform with us.”

On July 1, BBC Worldwide Music Television will broadcast a 55-minute performance, during which Radiohead will play King of Limbs in its entirety for an episode of Nigel Godrich’s “Live From the Basement.

If you haven’t checked out “Live from the Basement,” you should do so HERE.

If you were wondering (like we were for a while) what all the hubbub is about new phenomenon, tUnE-yArDs (our kEyBoArD does not like to do tHaT), check out below the KEXP video of the multi-layered complexity and frenzy known as Gangsta and then the sonic send-up of My Country (Tis of Thee).

Bill Callahan (of Smog-fame) came to Santa Barbara for the first time last Friday (courtesy of Club Mercy) and filled Soho with his deceptively faineant songs and delivery.  Callahan took the stage in sartorial splendor (seersucker suit, dress shoes), addressed his audience with steely-/sleepy-eyed gaze, and proceeded to present a no-nonsense set of his finely crafted and delivered songs.  It can take an audience a moment or two to smooth its nerves to Callahan’s minimalist mien and properly down-shift to be drawn in, but it didn’t take long for the crowd to wind down to Callahan-speed and get lost in his songs.  With only Callahan’s nylon-stringed guitar, deft and subtle percussion (Neal Morgan) and accentuating electric guitar (Matt Kinsey) in support, Callahan’s baritone and songs were given the spotlight.  And they did shine and soar (in gliding fashion, rather than the usual jetting).

Callahan grabbed us immediately with his (seemingly) mission-statement song, Riding for The Feeling.  We’re glad you still are Bill; we’re so glad you are.  Thereafter Callahan played a filling set of mesmerizing songs, taken primarily from his most recent albums, “Apocalypse,” and “Rough Travel for a Rare Thing,” but also including songs from older solo albums (such as “Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle“) and from his Smog discography (such as Say Valley Maker).  His songs are marvels of restraint and artistry, and only a few performers are still settling into such subtlety and eschewing the more modern cacophonous bombast.  He’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but is one of our favorite brews.

We were chagrined to have to leave before set’s end (car-breakdown, save-the-women-and-children-first motif), but trust that Callahan will return after having found a rapt and appreciative audience in Santa Barbara (bravo to the rare attention-span of this Soho audience).

For a good feel for Callahan, check out his performance of River Guard from the Black Cab Session below, and then the more-embellished Tiny Desk Concert after.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTmzYfzuidw&feature=player_embedded#at=35