Good News (if its true)

A New album will feature the music of Ben Folds and the lyrics of Nick Hornby 

This could be fun. 

Nada Surf - Let Go

Until recently, if someone asked me about Nada Surf, I would've replied, "you mean that one-hit-wonder? Didn't they do that song Popular? Yeah, I remember when that song was big, I was in high school. Wait...they're still making music?"
Why yes, yes they are. And it's good music too...imagine that! This album from 2003 is a wonderful little slice of indie-pop pie. Take a sec to read the Rolling Stone review, which encapsulates it nicely:

Nada Surf enjoyed a buzz-bin moment in 1996 with the high school satire "Popular," and while the extremely groovy guitar ripples stuck in your head long after the joke was over, it wasn't the kind of hit that suggests a long-term career, as Harvey Danger or the Primitive Radio Gods would be happy to explain to you. So the New York guitar-rock trio hit the indie trail to earn its cred the hard way, and after the Weezer-like introspection of 2000's startlingly great The Proximity Effect, Nada Surf get it all together on Let Go, the band's best by a mile. Let Go is an excellent rainy-afternoon album, full of gentle and melancholic beauty, with echoes of Love and the Beach Boys. In "Blizzard of '77," "Blonde on Blonde" and "The Way You Wear Your Head," Nada Surf show enough smarts and panache to leave most of their Nineties-rock peers eating hot dust.

Faith No More - King For A Day (1995)

posting because Kevin told me to. 

RIP - Jerry "The Guitar Man" Reed

so Jerry "The Guitar Man" Reed recently kicked it.   

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/arts/music/03reed.html

i had a short term fascination with Jerry a few years back... so this news got to me a bit.  and since my record player is temporarily out of service, i found myself trying to dig up digital versions of the songs i've only ever heard on scratched and poppy vinyl.  although i'll admit that  stylistically JR laid down more than his fair share of questionable material, as a guitar man his chops are bordering on unbelievable.  and when you combine his fretwork with his down-home Southern boy persona and that voice, he is in rare company.   but still few seem to know of him beyond a few hit songs from the early 70s or his cameo roles in the Smoky and the Bandit movies.  so i thought i'd take this opportunity to honor the memory of JR by sharing five tracks that I feel well represent him and his guitar.