Mylene: Queen of Pop

This week in the fishwrap, Charles Taylor makes the case for French pop, through the lens of the latest Mrs. Johnny Depp album. Below, longtime Phoenix critic Michael Freedberg, whom we consider our resident expert on the topic, provides his own master-class in variete francaise -- one that is necessarily weighted towards Mylene Farmer, who is the Reed to his Bangs, the Kixx to his Eddy. In his commentary on these 17 "best-of-the-best" tracks, Freedberg elaborates on the spirit of liberte that infuses the best of Mylene; teases out the existential bark in Pascal Obispo's bite; and introduces us to a breadth of French pop that swings from the volcanic rock-n-roll swagger of Noir Desir to the tipsy modernist electro of Melissa Mars. It's the depth of feeling that Freedberg responds to in these tracks; at times, when we were recording this session about a week ago, the critic sobbed openly in the studio while the tracks played back.

DOWNLOAD: The Sphere Vol 12: Variete Francaise Part 1 [mp3]
DOWNLOAD: The Sphere Vol 13: Variete Francaise Part 2 [mp3]

Vol 12 Tracklist:

1. Madmoiselle Chang: France Gall
2. Fuck Them All: Mylene
3. Alice et June: Indochine
4. C'est une belle journee: Mylene Farmer
5. Lone Machine: Melissa Mars
6. L'au-de la: Jean Louis Murat
7. Mylene Is Coming: Mylene Farmer
8. Point de mire: Ariane Moffet

Voll 13 Tracklist:

1. Le Pretension de rien: Pascal Obispo
2. Chanson pour hier et demain: Marie Mai
3. L'enfant roi: Noir Desir
4. Raton Laveur: Jean Leloup
5. We'll Never Die: Mylene Farmer
6. Tu me corresponds: Francois Cabrel
7. Lonely: Mitsou
8. le grand incende: Noir Desir
9. Mylenium: Mylene Farmer

Township, "The Winter Song" (Flophouse Sessions, Feb 2008)

Township, "Sandy" (Flophouse Sessions, Feb 2008)

Jen and Andy, the betrothed Somerville duo behind the fantastic Band in Boston Podcast, have recorded many of our favorite local indie bands for their "Flophouse Sessions" -- a series taped live in the pair's living room, on stripped-down gear, and given away free on teh internets. We loved their podcast so much we decided to be friends. And now, in the first of what we hope are many collaborations to come, we've teamed up with BIB to present the latest Flophouse Session: a live set by hirsute local heroes Township, who play a CD-release gig tonight at T.T. the Bear's Place. Check 'em out, and grab the full Flophouse Session in the ever-poular mp3 format at www.bandinbostonpodcast.com.

DOWNLOAD: Mobius Band, Friends Like These [mp3]

Lots of wistful indie bands underwent hipster-mandated retraining in the early naughts and emerged, after a quick stop in laptop voc tech, as certified dealers of . . . wistful, indie-ish compu-pop. Boston (and now Brooklyn’s) Mobius Band were among the least likely applicants for the job, and yet we can’t think of anyone, save perhaps the Postal Service, who do it better. In the (above) video for Friends like These," the first single from their new Heaven, the trio geekily overplan a dance party in their apartment and almost pull it off, except for the part at the end where they bore everyone to tears with a tour-photo slideshow. If you're not afraid of the snow, stop by their CD-release gig is tonight at the Middle East.

1. Sure, there's lots of people playing Brazilian shit nowadays. You can get it from people like this, or you can get is straight from the tap. Lemon-Red's new mix is by none other than Bonde Do Role's DJ Gorky. This is the guy who thinks up shit like Alice in Chains as a baile funk song. He does stuff like that for breakfast. So you can imagine what the guy does when given, like, 45 minutes to fuck with. Smashing Pumpkins/M.I.A. perhaps? Lots of carioca shit you haven't heard, too.

2. Grindie. Inevitable? Genius? Download and decide for yourself.

3. Thanks to everyone who sent us the email version of this last week -- whadda we look like, Godsmack fans or something? -- and even more thanks to the folks who ripped it to mp3 form. Because the streets wanted it:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Magazine pwns Godsmack's Sully Erna, live on the telephone (mp3, via Crooks and Liars)

4. We've given up and given ourselves over to that Yung Joc song, which has us doing silly dances all over the place. Tom Cruise, too. Officially blown up.

DOWNLOAD: Yung Joc, "Goin Down" (mp3)

5: Wayne & Wax breaks out the bubblesalsa chipmunk-soul remix of "Runaway" from the Riddim Method's Lemon-Red mix as standalone track; with Lil Jon shouts, Boston Bounce, and other goodness.  

6. Word has it that Kool Keith does not actually own the name Dr. Octagon, or at least believes that he doesn't, and so his latest disc is credited to The Return of Dr. Octagon. As in, that's not the name of the record, that's Kool Keith's name for the duration of the album. Album sampler/megamix/trailer here now:

DOWNLOAD: Kool Keith, The Remix of Dr. Octagon (mp3 via DJ Benzi)

7. Sorry, we waited too long and now you can't download this for free anymore. You'll have to settle for the video.

STREAM: Aksent feat. Beanie Man, "Zingy (Remix)"

8. Baltimore madness:

DOWNLOAD: Rick Ross, "Hustler's Anthem (Sinden B-More Remix)" (mp3, via braap)
DOWNLOAD: Baltimore Bass Connection, Blentwell Mix #2 (mp3)

9. The only good thing to come out of the New Cars: they're taking Blondie out on the road with them. But will they play Debbie's new rap song in praise of Lil' Kim?

DOWNLOAD: Debbie Harry, "Dirty and Deep" (via This Big Stereo)

10. THE REAL BEHINDTHEMUSIC: Erica says her career is "like a big pot of rice and beans: You add the sofrito, add the sazon,
add the adobo and the final product gets demolished."

(Aksent gets you ready for summer.)

So, how've you been?

We've been trying to work our way out from under the avalanche of site-clogging traffic generated by our blogging bretheren over at Slop Culture, who just had the internet version of a runaway, chart-topping, Beatle-mania-type hit single. A ridiculous little idea they had called "The 100 Unsexiest Men in America" -- a parody of lad-mag "100 sexiest women" features -- became a bona-fide internet meme. A couple weeks ago it got Farked. On Friday, our pops called us up to say that Dan Patrick was big-upping us on ESPN radio. Twenty minutes later Keith Olberman called up and wanted someone to come on his show. On Monday, Regis and Imus picked it up, as did the AP wire, which also made its own video to accompany it. Then MSN wrote a story about our story, and Yahoo put it on the homepage, and at some point yesterday "The 100 Unsexiest Men" was the #1 story on CNN.com -- meaning it was more popular, for a few hours at least, than Tom Cruise's baby. Apparently we also made The View and Fox News, and some blogs, too. The Unsexiest Man in the World was hounded until he responded.

(Also -- small potatoes -- Google Images seems to think that OTD is hosting this ridiculously popular photo of Bow Wow at the American Music Awards, even though we aren't. So fuck it. Now we are.)

We had to ask our techies what "bandwidth" means -- we always figured it was some formula based on the girth of Tad's ass -- but apparently it is currently in short supply, which is why it has been taking us three hours to check email.

In any case, we had some long-winded rants to throw your way, but now we're gonna keep it short. Speaking of novelty memes, Peaches finally got round to giving it up the butt to "My Humps."  And some Financial District jokers ganged up to rap out against K-Fed, landing them in the Track. In related news, we just got the new Disco D baile-funk mixtape, "Gringo Louco," which is also the title of his new baile/riddim, which you can download from MySpace, albeit without the Spank Rock and Elephant Man cameos. Yes, Virginia, we too hear that Diplo is about fed up with this dude ripping him off. But anyone who has been listening to Mr. Pentz's unfuckwithable Mad Decent Podcast fire knows these guys aren't even in the same league. Latest NPR for the streets is up right right now: e-40/mia blend, gnarls barkley, future Bonde/Diplo tourmates Cansei Der Sexy's pre-subpop track "Wanna be Yr J-Lo," catchdubs-cosigned SNEEZ RIDDIM. (Aside: Cami was in charge of posting OTD birthday photos, but somehow she ended up dancing on top of bars halfway across town at night's end, and to top it off we had some email screwup, so for now you should treat Catch's photos as the official record.) Also, we finally got the Gnarls Barkley advance in today, so the OTD crew wasted a good two hours mulling that shit over. The concenus: DAAAAAAMN. (Record companies: don't blame us for the leak, that thing was torrented like way before last week, which we would've grabbed it back then except our Oink ratio is hella low right now, but we're gonna have to murk this shit eventually because this CD is totally unplayable on anything except a three-year-old discman we bought at CVS.) The rest of you who don't have Oink or unrippable Gnarls Barkley advances will have to make do with the videos for "Crazy": rorscarch test version and live on Top of the Pops insanity.

Here are some songs that are good for dancing with a girl or a boy in the hopes of fucking them:

DOWNLOAD: Nelly Furtado, "No Hay Igual" (mp3)
DOWNLOAD: Ali & Gipp, "Go Head" (mp3)
DOWNLOAD: Crime Mobb, "Rock Yo Hips" (mp3)
DOWNLOAD: Clipse, "Me Too" (mp3, via Faderblog like forever ago)
DOWNLOAD: New York Dolls, "Dance Like a Monkey" (mp3)

Yes, that last song is off the new New York Dolls album. It's really only sort of OK, which is so much better than we expected that we are practically jumping up and down.

Also, while we were pinned behind the firewall, our inner pimplefaced 16 year old starting wilding out so we went looking for the new Tool, AFI, and Thursday jawns. We love Maynard. He's like almost the Cam'ron and the Ghostface of alt-metal. Killing it for seven minutes, which if they want to go cock to cock with newkids like Mars Volta had better be the goddam shortest song on the album. 

OTD is heading south for the week -- and no, we're not going where everyone else is going. We're off for some R&R and even a little M&M, because as we've said before, OTD is for the children. Don't sleep, though, because Cami and a cadre of Phoenix guest bloggers are gonna keep you up to your eyeballs in exclusives until we return. Before we step off, though, here's what we'll be listening to on de plane.

A couple years ago, we heard some dude talking about freestyle, and from the way he was describing it our brain got all scrambled, because he definitely wasn't talking about improvised rap battles, but he was talking about shit we knew. And so it was that we discovered we were experts in a genre we didn't know even existed: capital-F Freestyle, which, to paraphrase DJ Ayres in this month's Fader, is all about chanelling your inner 15-year-old Puerto Rican girl. Unless you actually dated 15 year old Puerto Rican girls in 1987, you probably don't have intractable yanking-on-heartstrings connections to the eight songs Ayres pegs as pillars of Freestyle -- Noel's "Silent Morning," Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam with Full Force's "I Wonder If ITake You Home," Stacey Q's "Two of Hearts," Taylor Dayne's "Tell It To My Heart" among them. But holy shit, we do. Not only do we own all these 12-inches, we still sweat them. We'd always wondered what to call the stuff we danced to at middle school jams, and usually threw up our hands and described it to our metal pals as bubblegum R&B, or black electropop, or something despicable like that.

There's been a resurgence of interest in this stuff over the past couple years -- Ayres mentions Ciara's "1, 2 Step" as a distant relative of Freestyle, though we also detect its synth-brass heartbeat in Chromeo; and our fave Freestyle act of all time, the Jets, of "Crush on You" fame, have become a mainstay of 2ManyDjs-type mixes. We know the Compound440r dudes represent for this shit as well. Witness C440r's Philly brothers-in-arms Crimp Yr Hair, whose freestyle party Jam It On the One is apparently causing a stir at a rock bar we used to get kicked out of called the Khyber. The Crimp dudes' "What Would Theo Do?" mix (that's Theo as in Huxtable, not Epstein, as the Cosby Show samples will make clear) also goes heavy on first-wave Freestyle, including Ready for the World's "Oh Sheila" and Shannon's "Let the Music Play" and the aforementioned "Crush On You" (best song ever, or so we've thought for whole weeks of our lives), which is what you'd expect from a couple of dudes who pledge undying allegiance to Jellybean Benitez and the Jimmy Jam/Terry Lewis empire.

DOWNLOAD: DJ Ayres, "Fader Freestyle Mix"
DOWNLOAD: Crimp Yr Hair, "What Would Theo Do?"

Oh, and weve mentioned these before, but dude: the Diplo podcast on Baltimore club music is absolutely killer (who's got the unmixed bmore remix of the Beatles "twist & shout"?!), and the new Caps + Jones mix destroys. When people give shit like this away for free, you start to wonder why anyone buys records, ever.

Since paper doesn't grow on trees and all, every little thing that we ever write in the fishwrap ends up being shorter than we want it to be. Take, for instance, Will Spitz's interview with Animal Collective's Avey Tare. There just wasn't space to include dude's musings about lazy-assed critics who lump AC in with freak-folk, or for a graf on how he spent his childhood listening to Cats and Wings. Which is why through the miracle of digital voice recorders, RCA phone jacks, ProTools, and iTunes, we're able to offer you . . . one 26 minute mpeg-layer-three audio recording of Spitz jawing with Animal Collective. (Which, of course, was too big to load up onto our servers as a single file. So, for the first time in months, we're going USendIt.) Think of this as a refresher course so you'll have shit to talk about when you're hanging out backstage tonight at Avalon.

DOWNLOAD: Will Spitz interviews Animal Collective's Avey Tare (mp3, 18 mb)

or, if you like smaller file sizes (and for anyone who Googles their way in a week from now):

DOWNLOAD: Will Spitz interviews Animal Collective's Avey Tare, Part 1 (mp3)
DOWNLOAD: Will Spitz interviews Animal Collective's Avey Tare, Part 2 (mp3)
DOWNLOAD: Will Spitz interviews Animal Collective's Avey Tare, Part 3 (mp3)
DOWNLOAD: Will Spitz interviews Animal Collective's Avey Tare, Part 4 (mp3)
DOWNLOAD: Will Spitz interviews Animal Collective's Avey Tare, Part 5 (mp3)