Ladies, take a quick moment and reflect on your online dating experiences. Remember the guy who forgot his wallet? Or the one with the temper? How about the one with no job, no car and a 5 year old daughter?

Meet Frank, the funkasaurus rex. Somehow he doesn’t seem half bad in comparison.

The Black Keys’ new album, Brothers is coming out on Tuesday, May 18. Until then, you can stream the album on NPR.

Attached is the b-side from the lead single “Written In Reverse”. The song is kind of tough for me to get into because it sounds like I’m trying to find a radio station that keeps cutting out.

Spoon – “Mean Red Spider”

Here.

Sorry for the Hit and Run, but not so sorry to say much other than, “gotta run.”

Public service announcement: if you get a chance to see Sea Wolf live, act on it.

Lists of this nature are difficult to say the least. Not due the millions of songs that have been released in every way, shape and form because 90% of those can be knocked from the running right from the get go, but because of the under appreciation from critics and readers that don’t really understand how much time and effort goes into compiling such a list. This is why I don’t even attempt this feat.

NPR is a different story though. Not only are they planning on making a list of the 50 greatest singers of all time, they are devoting all of 2010 to it and they’re taking your nominations for the list through to October 16th. After your nominations are compiled along with lists from their panel of experts, academics and public-radio critics the nominees will be presented before the audience for a vote to whittle the list down to the 50. Those 50 will be profiled all during 2010.

I have one big problem with NPR trying to make everyone feel included and warm and fuzzy about being a part of this task. There is far too much opportunity for a group of over zealous fans to steal the gold medal for their favorite vocalist. Maybe not so much in the suggested nominees but in the voting when the list is presented there is definitely a potential for stuffing the ballot. Yes, ultimately NPR reserves the right to toss out any vocalist that seems to have something fishy going on and if NPR has this “panel of experts, academics and public-radio critics” what do they need us for? Certainly it’s not really for this reason?

We’re relying on you to remind us of those voices we may have forgotten or never got the chance to hear; those voices that may sound strange to Western ears; vocalists silenced by politics or history; the singers who are only really embraced by critics and those who are heroes of the everyday listener.

At the time being all you have to do to submit your vocalist of choice is to leave a comment below the article or send an email to GreatVoices@npr.org

This will be impressive to see when it’s done. Just glad it’s not me having to do the work.

Who are your nominees?

You can listen to it here.

Far is out June 23rd on Sire Records.

Look here for previous post about this release.

I’m not going to go into a debate about quantum physics with Stephen Hawking for obvious reasons and Dave Thompson should not debate music with anyone. He may have written a book that caught the eye of a leather chair jockey at NPR but this has not made him an expert or any kind of authority on modern or classic rock. He knows his music history, I’ll give him that, but his argument as to when music died and his infatuation with shoes is no basis to build a discussion let alone a debate.

Dave Thompson is the old man at a concert that sits in the corner and mumbles the night away about how young whipper snappers are ruining his Aerosmith concert, so in retaliation decides to write a book about how all these younguns music isn’t worth a hill of beans. He throws in phrases such as “That’s the beauty of it”, in reference to the flaws in his book, in order to prove/confuse the listener into believing that he has a point and is quite possibly smarter than them, when in reality he only makes himself look foolish.

In every way imaginable, this is not the 70′s. The media by which we receive music has changed many times since then and most of us have been able to grow with this new technology. Thompson is stuck. I can’t blame him for that, just look at any record labels stock lately and you’ll see that he is not the only one having problems learning how to deal with the changes that have come.

I won’t pretend to be an expert of the music scene in the 70′s, I wasn’t even born until ’79, but the way that new music was discovered in the 70′s is far different than today. FM radio and live shows were the main stay of artist discovery. DJ’s were able to play what they wanted to, when they wanted to and I believe that is the reason why the 70′s where such a great time for music, fat cats weren’t running the show yet. I can’t remember the last time that I have heard a band on terrestrial radio that I have actually purchased an album of.

By the end of the debate even the narrator is getting tired of the dog and pony show and says things like “I don’t even think Dave Thompson takes his book seriously” and “…do you have some completely obscure reason why you picked that track for us to listen to?”. The debate is interesting to listen to times and painful at others. Thompson is continually grasping for straws and in the end never gains any ground and I’m sure has not gained any converts to style of thinking.

The entire debate is a farce and NPR should be embarrassed for broadcasting it.

Last week NPR hosted a debate entitled Which Reigns Supreme: New or Old Rock? between Pitchfork founder Ryan Schreiber and Dave Thompson, author of the book I Hate New Music: The Classic Rock Manifesto. The purpose of the meeting was to determine if music being recorded and released today is worth your time and money.

This was a 30 minute debate so I am splitting my comments up into a few installments to avoid one huge thread that no one will read.

Thompson begins his argument with the assertion that apparel is the initial judge of a musicians commitment to their music and dedication to fans. Specifically he drones on about the importance of shoes and claims that:

…if Elton John had been wearing hush puppies during the recording of  “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting”, that track would not have worked.

I can’t claim to know what shoes Elton John was wearing during the recording of that track, neither can I discern the distinct sound of a foot tap within the track to be able to analyze what sound the sole of a hush puppy shoe makes on a studio room floor. For all I know Elton John was wearing Keds during that session.

Schreiber disagrees wholeheartedly with Thompson’s claim and admits that shoes are the very last thing that he cares about. Schreiber takes the stance that most of us would take; being that he looks at the music itself before the appearance or the apparel of the band.

After a short musical intermission of Led Zepplin’s “Trampled Under Foot” and Animal Collective’s “My Girls” the debate shifts it’s focus to address what this debate is centered around. Is all the good music already recorded? In his book, Thompson puts a time of death for classic rock at 1976, which is the time when he claims that he “…had heard enough”.  In response to Thompson, Schreiber replies (this is where the money quote of the debate is):

The worst thing that I can imagine is waking up one day and realizing that all the music that I’m ever going to like has already been created. That would be devastating to me.

This is a great line of thought but unfortunately the narrator interrupts the debate to prompt the pair to discuss the musical significance of the years ’76-’78. Their responses will be the focus of my next installment entitled “The Flowering of Punk”.

We are less than a third of the way through this debate and I can already announce a winner. Thompson’s ideas of music history and his  inability to open up to new and advancing music leaves him with a limited argument. With 20 minutes left in the debate I can’t imagine that he will be able to pull out a Hail Mary to make up for ground he has already lost. While Schreiber isn’t the best debater I’ve ever heard, he stumbles through many ideas and throws out quite a few “ums”, his well rounded knowledge of genres and musical eras easily leave him up to the task.