“Professionals Always Make It Look Easy”

In the second episode, Dan talks to Josh Dingman about Queens of the Stone Age, Dave Grohl, his band (Panda Soup), playing in bars, the 90’s, songwriting, and rock music video games.

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Show Notes

• The Gene Ween demos.
• Enjoy a recording of Panda Soup playing an R.E.M. song.
• The new The National record.
• A Vampire Weekend discography.
• The story of “Spotify doesn’t pay artists enough” was featured on Slate.
• Spotify’s response to the controversy was written up in Forbes.
• The Amazon vinyl-sales growth Josh refers to was featured in Engadget.
• The most recent Killers album is actually a best-of, their second compilation. As odd as that is.
• Have I already linked off to the entry for …Like Clockwork? Okay.
• My infatuation with Dave Grohl started with this post from Merlin Mann.
• Speedy Ortiz was written up in Pitchfork.
• Oh, I forgot Handsome Boy Modeling School in that batch of turn-of-the-century Automator records.
• I’m reading Melody in Songwriting.

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“You’ve Never Seen Anything Like This”

In this episode, Dan and Thad Brink discuss Neko Case, kind-of barely liking country music, Sound City, First Avenue, Chicago, Cypress Hill, iTunes Radio, albums and singles, and movies.

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Show Notes

• You should listen to (and support) the live stream of The Current. It’s not without its faults, but it will make you a better person.
• Thad’s go-to, Radio K, also affords listening online and through an app.
• The new Neko Case record.
• Sound City.
• Metric is from Canada, and they’re great. Poliça is from Minneapolis, and they’re also great.
• The person “who saw Eraserhead on cable TV” was Charles Bukowski. I knew I knew that story from somewhere.
• That was a terrible answer to Thad’s question about “essential” artists that I don’t care for. U2’s fine and all, but they aren’t widely considered a classic rock band. Better examples would be The Rolling Stones — just like Thad and Led Zeppelin, I think they have a handful of good songs, but I don’t need to get deeper into their catalogue. That’s probably another whole show. The most well-regarded “essential classic rock band” I out-and-out dislike is probably Pink Floyd.
• Thad says: “How could I forget OK Go in the discussion of Chicago bands with a niche? They have the best choreography and videos like this made a lot of noise for them, but they are also solid musically.”