Not newness persay, but a cool, fun, flattering internet find: apparently, folks have been uploading mashups of mine to YouTube, creating neat album graphics for tracks. Speaking with Benjamin this morning about an upcoming series of his and digital content distribution in general, he pithily said "God, the internet is great. 15 years ago, none of this was doable." And you know what? He's 100% right.

Later, I'm gonna call my folks to tell them how much I love phones. Thanks to Diago Francis for the Ke$ha/Lauryn Hill video, and DonFu for the below.



RE-UP:

Stevie Wonder vs. Jay Sean Feat. Lil' Wayne "Downtight" (Chambaland Mashup)

For all us New York media pricks who can't wait for the Olympics to end so we can get back to NBC's Thursday shows, a reason to keep your eyes on Canada this morning- Nova Scotia's Rich Aucoin gives a song about humans performed by two robots a complete overhaul, building a flesh-and-blood Prometheus around Daft Punk's synthetic skeleton.

Somewhere between Brian Wilson and Empire of the Sun, Aucoin's cover is at once wounded and forward looking, reminding through repetition that bruises are the first signs of healing.

Highly, highly recommended. Aucoin tours Nova Scotia and Ontario through the Spring, before hitting the UK in May.

Rich Aucoin "Human After All" (Daft Punk Cover)

Scribbling their party-positive brand of Windy City flamboastin' all over The Go! Team's rah-rah anthem playbook, BBU- that's Bin Laden Blowin’ Up or Black, Brown and Ugly- are primed to be playlist dark horses of 2010. Humboldt Park MCs Epic, Illekt and Jasson Perez constitute the crew (whose debut mixtape FEAR OF A CLEAR CHANNEL PLANET drops March 1 @ FOCCP.com), crafting real deal floor fillers with a brain stem- rhymes like "MTV gave me ADD, BET taught me to hate me" are just as apt to send a shiver up your spine as that thunderclap beat is to possess you into dancing the Penatrada. (It makes sex look like a church!)

Chicago am.fm.pm readers are encouraged to hit up the FOCCP release party on February 27th @ Subterranean- just tell your folks you're going to juke! They'll think you're up on some Happy Days shit, and you can move ass like y'sposedtuh.

Good luck getting this out of your head in the next month.

BBU "Chi Don't Dance"

Newness from Mr. Tim over @ Monsterbunny!

Man-oh-Manischewitz. I cranked this track out in a few hours almost a month ago, and entirely forgot about it until it just came up on my own iTunes shuffle. Derp. Forgive that hiss; would that there were a clean DeRulo a capella out there...

Jason DeRulo Feat. Imogen Heap vs. Phoenix “Nineteen Oh What” (Chambaland Mash)

Gross-out sketch goodness from the brand new Space Time TV this week; conceived and directed by the incomparable Veronica Osorio. Starring Benjamin Apple, Dan Chamberlain, Frank Hejl, & Rob Stern.

This past week, I watched the first episode of Full House I've seen since the mid 90's- the one where Danny invites that Rusty kid to a Tanner family barbecue, and he writes a fake love letter to DJ supposedly from the paper boy she has a crush on. The love letter passes from set of wrong hands to set of wrong hands, and soon everybody in the Tanner household in convinced that another member of the house has a crush on them. Individual characters' suspicions are revealed through an inner monologue device, underscoring the episode's psycho-sexual nightmare with a touch of Godard's hyper-realism: this was truly one of the most dreadful 30 minutes of television I'd ever experienced, a comfy second place to that half-episode of The Surreal Life I saw once while descending into an LSD trip.

Upon tweeting my realization that Full House is- shockingly- terrible, I was inundated with IMs from friends asking me how I could so casually malign a series so close to their hearts. The phrase "my fantasy!" was thrown around a lot, and I found it hugely interesting that Full House still served as a famial ideal to so many friends.

In Linda Hutchinson's essay Irony, Nostalgia, and the Postmodern, the notion is put forth that ironic appreciation is often a component of nostalgia, in that "nostalgic distancing sanitizes as it selects, making the past feel complete, stable, coherent, safe"- and that ironic distance communicates the same "dissatisfaction with modernity." Full House is one of those shows which I feel most fans enjoy ironically, but that doesn't negate the very real place it holds some folks' hearts.

Which brings me to Friends. Prior to this evening, I had never seen a complete episode of Friends. Not out of any snootiness, I just wasn't savvy enough to keep abreast of NBC's Thursday night comedies in 4th grade, my age when the show premiered. By the time I'd reached the age where I was tuned in to that sort of thing, I was intimidated by the show's then lengthy history. Season-long story lines are incredibly hard to keep track of in syndication, so for one reason or another, it just never happened. Being the cultural touchstone that it is, I certainly have a cursory understanding of the show and it's tropes- I know the characters, I know "How you doin'?", I know Pheobe's cat song, I know Ross and Rachael. I've just never seen it.

The difficulty I'm having digesting what I saw this evening (three episodes described as the best of the series- the one where Ross and Rachael finally kiss after watching the prom video, the one where the friendship knowledge game is played for possession of the big apartment, and the series pilot) is that I'm SO familiar with the series' trappings and the influence it had on TV sitcoms both immediately and after the fact, that I have trouble seeing the show as anything more than the sum of it's parts. I understand how and why it's seen as more than a proficient three camera sitcom- Friends defined much of the genre's stylistic language. But I'm just as sure that if I saw, say, Pulp Fiction for the first time this evening, I'd be saying the same thing: I don't get it.

Is the show's prominence in the annals of comedy television a byproduct of nostalgia or ironic appreciation? Both it and Full House certainly share a maudlin streak punctuated by blithe sassyness, all set in a non-traditional (yet oddly perfect) family unit built on perpetual forgiveness and zero consequence for anti-social behavior. Or is this really and truly a great television show that I just missed the boat on? And if that IS the case, doesn't acknowledging that I "had to have watched it from the beginning" also acknowledge that there is a certain level of nostalgia and (in turn) merely ironic appreciation of the series?

TL;DR: I don't think I like Friends. But I'll give it further study if recommended.

*That bit about the family unit and anti-social behavior may well be true of all sitcoms.

This one time, I was walking down 9th Ave. singing along to "Under Pressure" on my iPod a little more audibly than I should have been doing in public. Making eye contact with a homeless man, he glared at me, severely.

"Poor homeless guy", I thought. "My chirping this Bowie/Queen track must've been a crummy thing to see, him being homeless and all."

It wasn't until a block or so later that I realized how deserved that glare was- I'd made eye contact with him just as I sang "PEOPLEONNASTREET. BA BA DEE DAH DAY. PEOPLEONNASTREET. BA BA DEE DAH DEE DAH DEE DAH."

WE'RE LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME!

2009 indie juggernauts MGMT announced the track listing for April's Celebration LP this week, a lean nine tracks trumpeting titles which indicate a shift away from the nostalgia we've come to know and love Ben & Andrew for. (Rewind here for a super rare Talking Heads cover from the duo.) A song called "Brian Eno"? "Lady Dada's Nightmare"? As always, I'll reserve judgement for a proper listen, but one of the things that made Oracular Spectacular such a standout last year was that it was so perfectly un-clever, just an earnest ode to the stars, summer, and the harshness that is coming of age. It's a sound we revisit this morning courtesy of Mighty Mike, who brings deft mixing to the terror of knowing what this world is about. Ups.

Mighty Mike "Pressure Time" (MGMT vs. David Bowie & Queen)

In 2008, Warner Music Group collected roughly $2 Million dollars in royalties for "Happy Birthday to You", a song of dubious origin first made record of over a century ago.

The song will not enter the public domain until 2030.

In light of Warner Music Group’s recent decision to no longer offer free streams of their music catalog online (this means Spotify, LastFM, Pandora), am.fm.pm has become a proud partner of Happy Birthday Warner, a site that'll be featuring user-submitted covers of “Happy Birthday to You”.

HBW intends to serve as good-natured rebellion against an outmoded licensing policy which stands to punish both artist and listener alike; sacrificing sustainability in favor of immediate profit growth.

And honestly, “Happy Birthday to You”? You’ve got to be kidding.

Submit your own cover (in video format) by clicking here, or as an MP3 by sending it along the e-mail address specified @ the site. Thanks!

I doubt many were expecting a contender for album of the year to drop eleven days into it's passage, but Owen Pallett's Heartland (available for streaming via Domino Records @ Soundcloud) is just that, and more- a lush, triumphant emergence from the chrysalis courtesy of the baroque pop movement's most prescient instrumentalist. (The above free listen comes highly encouraged; "Lewis Takes Action" and "Tryst With Mephistopheles" are album standouts.)

While I take delight in Pallett's decision to perform under his own name, abandoning his copyright-infringing Final Fantasy moniker to stronger stand as truthful and stark an artist as he's always been, it's been kind of a motherfucker coordinating my iTunes folder of late- see, the obsessive compulsive ID tagger in me wants to lump his catalog all together for simple access, while the neurotic album completist in me knows I just can't go changing history like that.

Ownal Fiwen Pallantasy Fantlett it is, then.

Pallantasy Fantlett hits the northeast in Spring, Apr 20th in Boston (@ the Institute of Contemporary Art), Apr 22nd in New York (@ Webster Hall), and Apr 25th in Philadelphia (@ First Unitarian Church).

Below, two danceable treatments of our man from Ontario: under-the-radar mash hero Tor (the fella responsible for last year's Sufjan Stevens Illinoize mashup project) spins '08s "The CN Tower Belongs To The Dead" alongside a classic Q-Tip plea for industry sanity, and Leicestershire's Simon Bookish explores the balance between drive and flourish in his arrangement of Heartland's "Keep the Dog Quiet".

Tor "The CN Tower Can Work It Out" (Final Fantasy Feat. Q-Tip)

Owen Pallett "Keep The Dog Quiet" (Simon Bookish Remix)

Great googamooga! Have 'yall seen the trailer for Freaknik: The Musical? The closest thing that us advocates of That Crook'd Sipp will ever get to a second chance at that series, Freaknik is an hour-long special paying tribute to the late, great Atlanta music festival with a syrup as fuck voice cast including T-Pain, Lil Wayne, Big Boi, Snoop, Cee-Lo, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Lil Jon, DJ Drama, Rick Ross- and Andy Samberg and Bill Hader for good measure.

“Back in the ’90s, Freaknik was Atlanta’s version of the ultimate block party,” says T-Pain. “It was Mardi Gras meets spring break at your crazy cousin’s bachelor party and anything could happen. A decade later, I’m bringing it back for people like me, who didn’t get to experience it the first time around. We’ve recreated Freaknik’s vibe and energy with amazing animation, new music and an all-star cast of characters.”

Color me hugely excited for this. Freaknik: The Musical will be airing March 7th on Adult Swim.

We hear shades of The Flaming Lips' deep-space ennui present in "Whiskey", the latest from Brooklyn quintet Lowry, who begin their eight week residency at Williamsburg's Spike Hill this evening.

At a time when the label "indie" has blurred to include major label heavy hitters like Coldplay (much like the 90s "alternative" came to include Sheryl Crow), it's incredibly refreshing to hear a group hewing so perilously close to the genre's trappings while remaining so vitally un-commercial sounding- the sentiment "you've got to grow up sometime" isn't a particularly marketable one, especially off Bedford Ave.

Chilly in ways that only the most human amongst us can pull off, "Whiskey" is a fine score to these lip chapped days.

Lowry "Whiskey"

2010 Oscar Intro Montage Predictions

George Clooney looks out the window of an airplane and sees the house from Up.

Paraplegic Sam Worthington wakes up in the body of a District 9 arthropod.

Carey Mulligan is whisked away from her stifled 1960s home life and into the sexy, exciting world of Minnesotan Jews.

Some Hurt Locker/Inglorious Basterds thing. You know, war and all.

Sandra Bullock teaches Precious to be really good at football.

With nu-skool nostalgia hat tippers The Knocks and Samuel in tow, Chinatown's own Heavy Roc Music cooly planted their flag on the New York music scene in 2009 as a label with one ear toward mom and dad's dance records; the other on the L train. Even their press photos have headbands!

Stepping out confidently this year under the HRM label is Detroit's Alex Winston, whose extraordinarily playful LP debut this February belies her previous Grammy-nominated songwriting career (for Black Eyed Peas of all people, LOL).

The below "Animal Baby" skips giddily between back-clawing innuendo and squeakier brands of sassy she-pop; Winston's innate musical skills less challenged here than they are just playing around. The track's levity suits Alex well- she might not be the marrying kind, but at least she's not brushing her teeth with a bottle of Jack. I'm really, really liking this track.

Ups.

Alex Winston "Animal Baby"

As the am.fm.pm betting pool for whose album will rule summer 2010 nears it's final tallies, it's increasingly difficult to reach a consensus. Who will it be? With new releases from The National, Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, The New Pornographers-

EDIT: Realizing that we have not, in fact, heard any of the much speculated albums in question, this year's pool is canceled. All collected monies will instead go towards next month's Bagel Friday, or Haiti. All the best, -ED

-Gorillaz, and a possible THREE Outkast projects due before the end of Q2, the much speculated summerjam playlists of 2010 are still anybody's game.

I'd be remiss if I failed to convey my sincere anticipation for Christina Aguilera's Bionic (due in April), whose production credits alone herald her as a pop Alice, primed to bludgeon the ever tiresome Lady Gaga's Queen of Hearts out on the dancefloor with her own disco stick. (You know back in my day, we just called it a penis.)

Bionic's roll call thus far? Tricky Stewart. Linda Perry. The Neptunes. Ladytron. Sia. Le Tigre. Goldfrapp. MIA. Santigold. And Flo Rida.

YEAH, WELL NINE OUT OF TEN AIN'T BAD.

In anticipation of a time far from this lip-chapping cold that New York's in the throes of, a little retro/premature summer fun by way of France's Gaston. Summer '09 staples Santi and MGMT come together with a little Joshua Tree- U2 for jam that's 100% aspiration- because cold weather builds character, kids.

Gaston "With L.E.S. Kids" (Santigold vs. MGMT & U2)

The thing about that Owl City motherfucker is that he's just like Paranormal Activity.

Whereas most naysayers bemoan some flawed authenticity, I'm 100% on board: I completely buy that Adam Young twinkles away on his SPD in a Minnesotan bedroom, yearning for a thousand hugs from a thousand lightning bugs between juice time and extended 4Him listening breaks, the same way I completely buy that some nothin' muffin student and her day trader boyfriend living in a nouveau riche San Diegan tract house decorated with guitars they probably don't even know how to play would be made all pitiful and bitchy by the presence of a ghost.

My distaste isn't rooted in image. The problem is that none of these people are the type I would want to spend any prolonged period of time with. In Micah and Katie's case, that's about an hour and a half. In Owl City's case, that's about three minutes.

And your haircut game is fucked up.

What's it called when someone's from one coast, but the other guy's from the middle of the country? Not bi-coastal... whatever. am.fm.pm's dear friends the White Panda rep LA and Chicago. They also rep a little track this morning bound to make even the most twee amongst us quit chasing fireflies in favor of Chevys with butterfly doors.

Ugh, writing that made me remember he pronounces it "Mee-kah". (WE BACK.)

The White Panda "Fireflies Goin' Down" (Yung Joc vs. Owl City)