And In Other Bad News....

Kate McGarrigle, 1946-2010. Definitely a great one.

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Overrated

The Guardian published the NME's list of the best 50 albums of the last decade a few days ago, and I've been meaning to comment.

The Strokes are over-rated -- they were highly derivative, rather like Beck was highly derivative ten years prior. My favorite band of the last five to six years is easily The Libertines, and while I think they deserve their spot in the rankings, a mate of mine commented down the pub last night that Karl, Pete, et al. owe a lot to the Strokes, which pretty much put me in my place.

So I guess I'm left with bitching about this. Third? When the Monkeys came out a couple years back, they were heralded as the next big thing. They weren't. Highly over-rated, and just not that interesting, and more critically, they didn't advance pop music one millimeter.

Discuss.

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Speaking Can Be An Art!

Pitchfork brings the snark:

For a while now, Tom Waits has been threatening to drop a live album document of his 2008 Glitter and Doom tour on us. And today, Waits' new website announced all the details.

Glitter and Doom is due November 24 from Anti-, and it'll be two discs, on CD and vinyl. Disc one is programmed like one evening's setlist, even though it pulls together songs taped at 10 separate shows. Disc two, meanwhile, is entirely Tom Waits stage patter!

Yes, "Tom Tales" is one long track of incredibly charismatic surreal gutbucket rambling. Take that, Robert Pollard and Elvis! Time to update those Christmas lists, kids.

The comparisons with Having Fun On Stage With Elvis would be funny stuff -- if you're not actually familiar with Tom Waits albums. If you've heard Nighthawks at the Diner, on the other hand, you'll know that his spoken word stuff can be terrific -- I particularly strongly recommend the taking-yourself-on-a-date bit from the "Better Off Without A Wife" intro, but none of it was excluded from my iTunes transfer (which I wouldn't say about the songs proper.) Similarly, the spoken word tracks are among the best stuff on Orphans, "Pontiac" especially but all of it is good.

So, actually, I'm looking forward to it. Indeed, I have more concerns about the first disc, which contains no more than 2-3 tracks of a 20-track best-of I'd compile from even the Bone Machine - Orphans period. But maybe it will force me to reevaluate some of that stuff, and if Marc Ribot is in the band I'd listen to him cover pretty much anything...

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