Rock Band Seeks to Move Mountains (Heard)

Garage rock band? Country rock? If they ever were, they're not anymore. The Heartless Bastards, led by guitarist/singer Erika Wennerstrom, recently underwent a huge lineup change and relocated from Ohio to Texas. The result is a heavy record.

Did I say it was heavy yet?

The Mountain has a couple bright moments, mostly due to Wennerstrom's voice and her big chunks of guitar. The little touches, like slide guitar on the title track and fiddle on Had to Go, help. But mostly the album sludges along. All in all, it's not a very consistent album. But if you love Led Zeppelin or the big stoner rock of Black Mountain, you'll like this Mountain, too.

Vinyl Records!

Saturday is Independent Record Store Day, and I'm psyched. To get you in the mood, here's Todd Snider singing Vinyl Records.

Happy Birthday!

From the Forest to the Sea (Heard)

It's great to see the Ohio band Southeast Engine getting some critical attention. I stumbled upon (and blogged about) their 2007 album Wheel Within a Wheel last year. Their latest From the Forest to the Sea is a logical successor. Like Wheel, it runs through all styles of rock-- country, garage and Southern -- with lyrics full of Biblical references. From the Forest is a concept album about a man who said he "wouldn't do no evil, but evil is exactly what he's done."

Popmatters has called it the first "truly outstanding record of 2009."

Good stuff, particularly for those who like Okkervil River. Give a listen to Black Gold from Forest and Quit While You're Ahead from Wheel over on the Currently Spinning playlist.

We'll Miss You Harry

It wasn't until I heard about Harry Kalas' passing this afternoon that I fully realized how much he was a part of my life. I didn't know him personally and I certainly wasn't part of a fan club. If anything, I think I took Harry the K and his silky baritone for granted.

When I lived in Philadelphia, he was always there. One of my fondest memories with my dad is when we used to listen to Phillies' games at night in the kitchen. As a kid, I'd memorized all the batting stances of the Fightins' lineup, but, in my head, I'd hear their introductions in Kalas' voice. ("And now up, Michael Jack Schmidt). As a teenager, I'd drive around the streets of Northeast Philly in my yellow Mustang with the window down and the baseball game on the radio.

Harry was the soundtrack to summer.

Well Miss You Harry

Giving up on The Women (Read)

I'm a huge fan of TC Boyle. Two of his books -- The Inner Circle and Tortilla Curtain -- are among my five favorites. And I've liked just about everything he's written. Until his latest, The Women. I don't think it's a bad book. Boyle's writing is solid, as usual and it certainly has some of Boyle's screwball moments. The Women is a fictional re-telling of Frank Lloyd Wright's love life through the eyes of the four women he loved, lost, left, etc. The book's narrator is a fictional Japanese architect student who serves as Wright's apprentice for several years, and the book is littered with footnotes, giving it a "historical feel." Wright, in real life, was certainly a character, one worthy of the Boyle treatment. But I found little compelling about the female characters and eventually the put the book down halfway through.

That all said, TC Boyle is a wonderful talent. Barbara Kingsolver once wrote that what "Boyle does, and does well, is lay on the line our national cult of hypocrisy." My nonexpert opinion is that he's one of the most gifted writers of the last few decades. So if you heed my blog post and avoid The Women, please take the time to pick up one of his numerous other books -- all of which I highly recommend.

Science in the Time of Cholera (Read)

A couple weeks ago, my favorite radio show This American Life had as its theme -- The Wrong Side of History.

And that's where Edwin Chadwick finds himself in Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map, a fascinating nonfiction account of London's 1854 cholera outbreak. Chadwick was a miasmist. He believed that cholera and other diseases were transmitted through the air. The public health official saw the cesspools, street refuse and waste in Londoner's basements as a health hazard. So he developed -- and delivered on -- an impressive plan to take all that, quite literally, shit and deposit it in the Thames.

Johnson writes:

"Chadwick was building an elaborate scheme that would deliver the cholera bacteria directly to the mouths of Londoners ... By the end of the outbreak, nearly 15,000 Londoners would be dead. The first defining act of a modern centralized public-health authority was to poison an entire urban population."

Oops.

Johnson goes on to compare "Chadwick's folly" to the decision during the 1665-66 plague to mass exterminate all the dogs and cats who some felt were spreading the disease. But the real source of the problem was rats. And they "grew exponentially after the sudden, state-sponsored demise of their only predators."

It's those kinds of details that make Johnson's books so enjoyable. He tackles scientific history and presents it as an engaging , original way. He's kind of a combination of Erik Larson (Devil in White City) and Mary Roach (Bonk).

The hero of The Ghost Map is John Snow, known for his groundbreaking work in anesthesia. Like Joseph Priestly, the hero of Johnson's new book The Invention of Air, Snow is an amateur scientist (at least when it comes to diseases like cholera), but through determination and intelligence, he figures out the source of the problem.

You can read more about this book at its Web site. And see my review of The Invention of Air.

Listen to this Wilco Offshoot -- Pronto! (Heard)

Listening to a Wilco side projectsusually requires a bit of patience. Whether its Nels Cline shredding, or Glenn Kotche going off on the skins, or even the progressive rock of Loose Fur, the players are expanding their field and experimenting. And it's good music. I love both Loose Fur albums. But it takes some patience.

So what a treat to hear the fresh blast of 70s pop-rock on Pronto's debut All Is Golden. Pronto includes Wilco keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen and his former Lizard Music bandmate Eric Paparazzi.

Between the lead-off track Listen Lover and the closer I Think So there is little filler. This is one consistent, and accessible album, from the tender folk of Had & Have to the fuzzed-out Monster.

Pronto is at its best channeling The Band in I Don't Know Where All My Good Friends Have Gone and What Do You Know About You? When I'm on the Rocks sounds suspiciously like I Must Be High from Wilco's first album (a song penned long before Jorgensen joined the band).

You can hear the title track and I Don't Know Where All My Good Friends Have Gone on the right-hand side in Currently Playing.

Man Without an Ending (Read)

Late last week, I finished reading the Hugo Award-winning Man in the High Castle. It was my introduction to sci-fi legend Philip Dick, and I was immediately pulled into his terrifying alternative history. Following FDR's assassination, the U.S. was weakened and eventually lost World War II. Now the West Coast is Japanese territory and the East Coast belongs to the Germans. Dick makes this scenario feel realistic. It's quite chilling and draws you into the book. But, unfortunately, once the premise is set, the book goes nowhere and the ending is very unsatisfying.

Flaming Lips Cover Madonna (Seen)

Distractions' favorites Flaming Lips join Stardeath and Dwarfs for a spacy yet rocking version of Madonna's Borderline. Click here.

Dumb Poll Results In -- It's a Presley Landslide

During this election season, Distractions will be holding regular polls. Our first Dumb Poll -- Select an Elvis -- has finished and Distractions is projecting Presley as the winner. Presley gathered 57 percent of the vote. Costello had 35 percent of the vote. And Grbac, the former NFL quarterback, finished a very distant third with just 7 percent.

This raises a couple questions. Would the results be different if it was only the bloated, Vegas Elvis Presley. And who the hell voted for Elvis Grbac?

We hope you'll vote in our second dumb poll -- to the right of the page.

Playlist 34 Gets Eggcorn on its Face

As a writer, it's embarrassing when you make a mistake that gets into print. Almost as bad is when your mistake doesn't get into print, but earns you the laughs of your editor.
I was only a few weeks into my first post-college professional job when this happened to me. I had just sent my story, coverage of an afternoon high school baseball game, to my editor and breathed a sigh of relief.
He opened the story right away, read for a couple minutes, then laughed.
Out loud.
In the newsroom.
What was the cause of this? I used the phrase "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes."I always heard it as "intensive" so that's what I wrote.
Yes, I know. That's really not that funny. Why it could make my editor even chuckle is beyond me. But for a young reporter, still lacking in self-confidence, the incident was upsetting.
Here, though, is the funny thing. About 18 years later, I can now confidently tell my sports editor that I did not make a mistake that day.
I made an eggcorn.
What's an eggcorn? Read down a little and you'll find out. In the meantime, let's start off this week's Playlist with a book about another man who had a way with words.

The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus. Joshua Kendall.
Peter Mark Roget had a long and, somewhat, distinguished career in science and academics. In fact, one day while looking out his window, he saw a carriage move down the street and noticed the illusion created by the moving wheels. This observation indirectly led to the creation of film. Think of that when you go see Batman this weekend.

Most will remember Mr. Roget for one thing -- his thesaurus. We've all used it. On rare occasions, it's a guide when we're searching for the right word. But mostly it's a crutch or worse, a tool to make us look smart. (Pick the wrong word, though, and it makes you sound pretentious).

Roget's thesaurus sprang not from his love of literature, but more from his anxiety. Roget's father died when he was young and his mother took it hard. She was never the same. From early in life, Roget found comfort in making lists. His mother wasn't the only one in his family touched with madness and Roget, whose first wife died very young, fought back depression most of his life.

I wish Kendell would've spent more time on the actual thesaurus. Still, he weaves a somewhat captivating story of Roget's life, aided by some interesting characters along the way -- including the doctor who coined the term "bibliophile" and Benjamin Franklin's illegitimate son William, who is featured in this week's Wikipedia link.

Eggcorn Database.
Eggcorns got their start a while back on a group blog written by linguists, when someone reported the usage of "egg corn" instead of "acorn." From the database:

It turned out that there was no established label for this type of non-standard reshaping. Erroneous as it may be, the substitution involved more than just ignorance: an acorn is more or less shaped like an egg; and it is a seed, just like grains of corn. So if you don’t know how acorn is spelled, egg corn actually makes sense.

Eggcorns are sort of like malopropisms. But there is a huge difference -- they may actually make more sense than the correct word. The Eggcorn Database collects these words, such as: a pigment of someone's imagination, baited breath, cut to the cheese, and many more.

Stay Positive. The Hold Steady.
What's this? A theramin. A banjo? And the banjo played by the guitarist from Dinosaur Jr.? Yes, that's the new Hold Steady. But in reality, the new Hold Steady is the same as the old Hold Steady, except with a few new instruments and a couple guest appearances. It's still all about the guitar riffs and Craig Finn's talk-singing -- a Bruce Springsteen and Thin Lizzy meet somewhere in punk combination. And despite a couple thunkers, it's an album worth owning.

See my full review on Princeton Record Exchange Blog.

GOOD Magazine.
I finally got around to reading this magazine, which I picked up a few weeks back. It gives a very insightful and interesting look at Olympic host China. The magazine explains why we should care about the country and why, despite its human rights abuses and pollution, China is not so different from us.

Good is well-designed, written and packaged. And here's the best part. If you subscribe online, the money goes to one of a selection of charities -- and you make the choice who it goes to.

Exile in Guyville. Liz Phair.
It's a testament of how good Exile is that Phair still has a career. She still regularly pops up in indie rock music mags even though she's created very little worthwhile music since her classic debut. I'm sure her looks have something to do with that. Exile got a 15th anniversary re-release this month and it's been a joy revisiting Phair's biting lyrics and lo-fi approach.