Yeah Right

Download These Songs Now (And Thank Me Later)

Titus Andronicus - "A More Perfect Union"

Mumford and Sons - "The Cave"

Mose Allison - "My Brain"

Neon Indian - "Sleep Paralysist"

Groove Armada - "Paper Romance"

File Under: Awesome

Christopher Walken answers a census.

Hat tip: Tyler Cowen

OMG...WTF...LOST Did What?

Season six, episode nine...discuss.

Idol's House of Usher

For the first time this season, American Idol was in the zone baby...that was hot!  I give the credit to celebrity 'mentor' Usher, who showed what real star quality is about and, more importantly, gave excellent advice to the contestants.  He even made Katie sound good.

I think this season's Idol is starting to shape up and, although things are much more fluid than last year, I'm going to go out on a limb and make a few predictions.  If you're interested, fearless forecasts below the break. 

The Best Concert You'll Ever See at Potbelly

That's right, Potbelly.

The Soft Pack were in town this weekend to play The Black Cat. Trouble is, I already had tickets to see Chelsea Handler do stand up at the same time. So I was pretty bummed. Then, on Thursday, Brightest Young Things announced that the band was doing an in-store concert at the Potbelly next to the Van Ness metro stop while they were in town. Clearly, I had to go. I recruited my friends Denise and Bev to join me on this sandwich meets rock and roll show adventure.

We arrived ten minutes before the show was supposed to start and there wasn't much of a crowd to speak of. I got a sandwich, as that is what one does at Potbelly. The cashier asked me if the band was any good. "More like great." We sat down and waited for the show to start (they were running late) so we struck up a convo with the folks sitting next to us, who just so happened to be the parents of one of the band members. The dad must have told me five times "make sure to tell your friends about his band -- you need to pimp them out so I don't have to." You're lucky I have a blog, mister. Consider The Soft Pack properly pimped out.

Fifteen or twenty people trickled in over the next twenty minutes and the show finally started. I'd say the crowd was 1/3 Soft Pack fans, 2/3 people who just happened to be at Potbellies. But by the last song, even the Potbelly cashiers were rocking out. The band played "More or Less" "Mexico" and "Answer to Yourself" before signing autographs. I got to meet them (photographic evidence below) and they were super nice. I was a little bummed that the set was so short, but the sound was really good for being such a random environment and I'm lucky I got to see them at all since I missed their Black Cat show.

 

 

Photo credit: Denise

Pop Culture Peeps

This year's crop of winners is out.  My favorites are the balloon boy, "Teddy wins" at Nats Park, and "don't bring a gun to a snowball fight."  The last two will only appeal to D.C. folks, but most entries are more broad in their appeal.

Krugman vs. Bastiat

My Atlas friends are trying to squash economic ignorance with some new videos.  Can they succeed in turning Frederic Bastiat into rock star?  Time will tell.  In this one, at least, they make Paul Krugman look like a moron.

 

Maybe Russ Roberts can follow up his Keynes/Hayek rap with a Krugman/Bastiat cage match?

Tuesday Dance Competition

OK who can find a YouTube of cooler moves from even further back in history?

The Inspiration Behind Michael Jackson's Plastic Surgery

Here it is. The photo Michael clutched in his one gloved hand, as he said "I wanna look like THIS."

Concert Review: Ben Folds and a Piano

On Friday night, Whitney and I hit up the 9:30 Club with Yeah Right reader (and unofficial YR photographer) Denise to see the "Ben Folds and a piano" tour. Twas a good time.

The opener was Zach Williams who I can only assume is desperate to be the next Conor Oberst. Trouble is, Zach Williams is nowhere near as good a songwriter as Conor Oberst. His strategy for overcoming this shortfall was to sing extra loud. It was a slightly more talented version of a drunk person singing "Don't Stop Believing" extra loud at karaoke to compensate for the fact that they can't hit the high notes. He was trying so hard but it just wasn't good. It was kind of sad really. His last song (something about dragons) was particularly painful. But his set was short enough that I won't hold a grudge.

Before I get to the glory that was Ben Folds, let's digress and discuss the crowd. First off, this was the tallest group of people I've ever seen at a concert. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that the fan base of a tall, dorky white guy has a large percentage of tall, dorky white guys. As you can imagine, this did not make it any easier to see Ben, since it was hard enough to see a dude sitting down at a piano without all the tall folk around.

There was also greater mix of ages than I expected. Ben Folds Five popularity peaked in 1998 so assumed that the crowd would be mostly in the 25-35 range. There were lots of those folks, but apparently the youngsters nowadays still enjoy the Ben Folds.  There were plenty of high school kids in the crowd. We had a particularly entertaining gang of high schoolers standing in front of us. Where to begin with this group. Half of them were wearing a Ben Folds t-shirt. One of them had a longer emo style hair cut that kept getting in his eyes so he would shake his hair from side to side (much like a wet dog drying off) once every few minutes or so. This same young gentlemen was also a fan of putting his arms around the guys standing next to him and swaying during the slow songs. I love people watching.

But back to the music. Ben Folds played for over two hours. Just him and a piano. That meant that the audience was charged with harmonies and backing vocals, like Regina Spektor's part in "You Don't Know Me." For the more complicated bits he would split the audience into sections and conduct us like a choir director.

I was obsessed with Whatever and Ever Amen back in the day and I'd never seen Ben live before, either in solo or Ben Folds Five form. I was curious to see how many BFF songs he would play vs. his solo material. I was clearly pleased when he busted out "Kate" but he never played "Brick" or "Song for the Dumped" and that makes me a sad panda. But I'm seeing him again next month when he opens up for Weezer, so let's hope I'll get some more Whatever and Ever Amen action in that set.

Those concerns aside, he did play a good range of songs including old tracks, new tracks, and even unreleased tracks. "Jesusland," "Army," "Landed," "You Don't Know Me," "Effington," and "Still Fighting It" were all big crowd pleasers. You could tell that he didn't really have a set list as he would play pretty much anything that people shouted out. That probably accounts for some of the more obscure unreleased stuff that he played -- "Oh, you want to hear that? Really? Okay." He ended his encore by letting the the audience vote for "Rockin' the Suburbs" or "Bitches Ain't Shit" as the last song. The vote was a landslide for the Dr. Dre track.

 

Photo Credit: Denise