Arms//Shitty Little Disco

I’m back from Michigan. It was awesome. We camped. Friends got hitched. I may have lost my digital camera forever. Ok, aside from that sadness, it was awesome.

We also drove around. A lot. Ryan and I made 5 mix CDs as soundtracks to our roadtrip. They were all really enjoyable and included many tracks from a recent obsession and Ryan tip-off, a band called Arms.

All their songs are really catchy and awesome. Here’s just one of their goodies:



Shitty Little Disco.mp3

You can get the whole album here.

Jib Kidder//Window Dipper

[Local! Music! Friday!]
Tell me...what is this Local Music Fridays?

Sean SC, the awesome force behind the whirlwind of art and music that is Super Jib Kidder, once said his biggest fans were Sorority girls and homeless people.

Jib Kidder used to do these amazing, extremely colorful chalk drawings all around Ann Arbor (hence the fan base). One early morning, I got a call from him: “guess what I did all night?”
“What?” I asked.
“Chalk drawing under the arch! I’m going home to sleep now!”
He really made the walk through campus a lot more vibrant and engaging. And, because he made the genius decision to do all his public art in chalk, he could never be fined for graffiti or destruction of private property.

Luckily for us, the chalk drawings are just the tip of the now San Francisco-based Super Jib creative iceberg. Jib Kidder is also a prolific musician who’s recorded dozens of albums and for a short time ran an independent subscription based singles club.

Here’s a picture of one of Jib’s awesome chalk murals on the UofM campus and also one of my favorite Jib tracks, which is sure to charm hoards of office 9-to-5ers [insert Microsoft jokes here], as well as all the booty dancers in the crowd (now, I’m not saying there isn’t a possibility for overlap).



Window Dipper.mp3

Bonus: anyone who can name all the reasons this song title is funny wins my respect.
Actual Bonus: Jib Kidder’s got lots of tracks up for free here.

Crtl+Alt+Delete your week!

Lispector//Girls & Boys Make Songs

[Local! Music! Friday!]
Tell me...what is this Local Music Fridays?

I remember this burned disc getting passed all around Ann Arbor this one summer (was it 2005?). I have a feeling that Jason Voss/We’re Twins/WCBN had something to do with this phenomenon. Someone would say, “have you heard of this band Lispector? No? Let me make you a copy.” My boyfriend got a copy from someone he worked with at PFC. The album, Human Problems and How to Solve Them, was really good. It's all quirky, textured sequencer stuff with beautiful vocals and fun lyrics (there is an awesome song about the ice cream man, which I would highly endorse). Needless to say, I immediately made a tape of it so I could listen to it in my car.

Fast forward to myspace’splosion and I started corresponding with Lispector (Julie) regarding music stuff. Julie lives in France, but we got the opportunity to hang out a bit in person and play a very enjoyable show together in NYC last summer.

Thus, I send you off into your weekend with this charming track from HPAHTSOT:



Girls & Boys Make Songs.mp3

Lispector just released a new album called Guide to Personal Happiness. You can hear more Lispector here.

Matt Jones//Hand Out the Drugs

[Local! Music! Friday!]

On Fridays, I will be featuring local music, but it will be my own brand of local music. Living in NYC pretty much eliminates “local music” because this place is just too dang big to have a scene. As a result, the local music I feature here will be local to my life, which is to say, I’ll be posting music of people I know personally, through national and global music scenes, through life, through love, through travel (CHEESY!). That said, please do not confuse the word “local” with the word “bad” or the words “second tier.” The music that goes up on Friday is the best music you’ve never heard. This is top notch song-writing, performance and production from some seriously talented musicians and bands.

My first Local Music Friday pick is Matt Jones. I’ve known Matt for a long time now, probably about 6 or 7 years. I can’t remember when I first met him. Probably at some crazy Ann Arbor Co.op party or at a little show at Crazy Wisdom. Matt’s been involved in some amazing music over the years, including Descent of the Holy Ghost Church and Misty Lyn and the Big Beautiful. He helped us out a lot when we were doing the second Dumb and Ugly Club album. Somehow between all his projects, he’s made time to write and record a number of amazing songs under his own name. Matt’s a fantastic guitarist, singer (he’s oft been likened to Jeff Buckley), drummer (he once told me, “Gina, I am a very good drummer” and it was not just the typical musician boast—he’s got the fills to back up his statement) and songwriter (warning: some of these songs will make you weep). He’s also just an awesome guy.

Hand Out the Drugs is one of my all time favorite songs (and is also a good way to wrap up my week, and probably yours too).



Hand Out the Drugs.mp3

Matt Jones is playing two shows this weekend in NYC. One is tonight at SoundFix, the other is tomorrow night at Dominies Hoek in LIC.

I challenge you not to fall in love.