Poor Thumb. He’s just another finger, but…well, you’ll see. Take a look at the latest video from Dog on Fleas’ latest masterpiece, Invisible Friends — and watch for our review here soon.
If you had to go away for awhile and you could only take five of your favorite albums with you, which ones would you choose? Yes, we know it isn’t a fair question, but that hasn’t stopped us from asking music fans who happen to be recording artists in their own right. This edition of Desert Island Discs comes courtesy of Lucky Diaz, whose latest LP with the Family Jam Band, A Potluck, arrives May 8. You can preview the entire album right here at this link — after reading Lucky’s Desert Island picks, of course!
While this question is totally unfair…here is my feeble attempt at my desert island top five records:
Let’s be honest, there’s no way to encapsulate the entire complexity of the Beatles in one album. But if one had to, I believe it would be this one. My daughter sings to “Yellow Submarine” the way I sang to “Good Day Sunshine” in the back seat of our family car. It’s been said “Here, There, Everywhere” is Paul’s favorite song he ever wrote. It’s certainly mine.
Before I ever visited New York City, it came to me via this album. I was a sophomore in high school when my band teacher (a trumpet player) lent me this album to take home. I never returned it. I finally understood the concept of an instrumentalist “singing” through their instrument. I felt New York. I felt Miles. Kind of Blue makes sadness beautiful.
Admittedly, I came to the B-52’s via my brother, who blasted “Rock Lobster” from his bedroom. He was obsessed with Fred Schneider and Kate Pierson. I believe we were 12 or so when Cosmic Thing was released. I had never heard a party before. Not only that, they looked like they came from mid-century outer space! “Love Shack” is still one of my all time favorite songs. I mean, you CAN’T help but move when you listen to it. Tin Roof Rusted!!!
I suppose it’s my age, but Nirvana was my coming of age band. They heralded the Seattle sound that shaped my first bands, my first written songs, and my voice. We all wanted to be Kurt Cobain or Eddie Vedder. Here was a guy that couldn’t really sing or play a guitar that well — and he sounded amazing. I didn’t really know Bob Dylan yet, so Kurt was my first experience with a message and emotion really delivering a song. But not until this album did I really see how beautiful Kurt’s songs are. I believe this is the best Nirvana record ever recorded. “Dumb” WITH a string section! Brilliant.
People are often surprised to discover I’m a pretty serious guitar player. I spent a great deal of my youth cutting heads in blues jams where I grew up. Our records don’t have a lot of guitars on them. I always think the song comes first and rarely, if ever, do my songs ask for some epic guitar solo. I can honestly say when I first heard this album I couldn’t believe it was real. To this day, I’m mesmerized by Jimi. He’s what Miles is to the trumpet. I hear his voice in his playing. I want to play like Jimi. I want to perform like Jimi. Beautiful madness captured on tape played backwards.
Not a bad list of influences, right? See how they all came together to form A Potluck — coming May 8 to a store near you — in the album teaser clip below. And don’t forget to preview the whole record at this link. Enjoy!
Kindie culture is a burgeoning movement, but one of the most refreshing things about the scene — the lack of corporate machinery whirring around it — also works against efforts to raise awareness of the work. Unless you’re a devotee, it’s easy to remain unaware of some really terrific stuff. Hell, I spend a fair amount of time covering it, and I’m constantly finding out about artists I’ve never heard of. The commercially diffuse structure of the genre keeps the suits from taking over and ruining everything, but it’s also sort of a problem.
One of the things that’s missing is the sort of third-party curation that usually comes with the maturation of a medium, which is one of the reasons why it’s interesting to note the arrival of Jitterbug.tv, a Web service and iPad app that aims to guide parents into a sort of walled garden of family-friendly nirvana. (Not Nirvana. Those guys aren’t allowed.)
What Jitterbug does, in surface terms, is collect music and music videos for kids, and plug them into a bright, easily navigable central space where they can be seen and enjoyed. It’s basically YouTube/Spotify for the younger set. The concept isn’t exactly new, but Jitterbug adds a couple of twists: One, they focus on independent artists who aren’t getting a lot of push from other family content portals, and two, they’re charging a monthly fee in order to pay the artists royalties.
Those are crucial points. If Jitterbug is successful — and that’s a big if — it could go a fair way toward helping kindie artists monetize their art. I don’t envy the company in its quest to find a suitable price point for the service, but if they can figure out a way to really show people what they’re trying to do, I think there’s a real market for Jitterbug.
The hangup is actually getting people to pay for it. Jitterbug follows a similar service, MyKazooTV, with a free model and a more heavily guided structure. At MyKazooTV, videos start playing as soon as you navigate to the site, rather than waiting for you to choose — a different and obviously in no way better or worse approach, but as most parents will probably say, “Hey, it’s free.
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I don’t mean to insult free — I like free — but as a model for driving creation, it kind of sucks. Which is why, despite experiencing some bumps in the road with somewhat buggy early versions of the Jitterbug app, I hope it catches on. I can vouch for at least one six-year-old girl who adores the app, much to her Coco Loco-loving younger brother’s chagrin; for her, it’s endlessly fun and fascinating to watch her favorite artists act out their musical adventures in clips for songs she knows by heart. I already curate my kids’ cultural experience pretty heavily, but if I were feeling a little lost in my search for family-friendly music, I’d definitely consider ponying up for a monthly Jitterbug account.
How much is it worth? Again, that’s hard to say. Jitterbug faces an uphill fight — as consumers, we’re already saturated with subscription-model entertainment, from the stupid cable bill to more affordable services like Netflix and Spotify. I think what the company might need to do is develop a freemium model a la Daytrotter, where ordinary users have access to a certain amount of content, but the really good stuff is locked away — and the key is stupidly affordable. Unfortunately, a lot of parents don’t think kids’ entertainment is worth paying for and/or aren’t particularly worried about the quality, which can’t help but marginalize the commercial prospects of independent artists who are actively trying to elevate the medium.
It’s a catch-22, and so far, no one’s really been able to solve it. Services like this one could be part of the answer.