It’s All An Elaborate Hoax

Clem Snide is a character in several novels by William S. Burroughs, including Naked Lunch, The Ticket That Exploded, and Exterminator. The band Clem Snide was started in Boston by singer-songwriter Eef Barzelay.  There's no one actually named Clem in the band (wait until Jethro Tull, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Milo Greene find out about that!).  

Barzelay isn't afraid of getting topical in his song lyrics.  In addition to writing a song about the dying words of film critic Roger Ebert for the forthcoming album, Forever Just Beyond, he previously once wrote Song for Bob Crane about the sex-addicted star of television's Hogan's Heroes, and The Ballad Of David Icke about the conspiracy theorist.  In addition to Roger Ebert,  Forever Just Beyond also contains The Ballad Of Eef Barzelay, I suppose just to be fair. 

The lesson of the past two days is that the band Deeper write songs titled after other bands and the band Clem Snide write songs titled after celebrities.

Clem Snide will be performing in Decatur's Eddie's Attic on March 26.

Great Grandpa

Brace yourself for some adorableness as Seattle singer Alex Menne of the Seattle band Great Grandfather covers Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi in a studio performance at Seattle's KEXP while she and the rest of the band wear the most Seattle clothing possible.  

Great Grandpa formed in 2014 but I didn't become aware of them until last November when I heard the song Bloom from last year's Four of Arrows album. The song made my Best of 2019 playlist both for Menne's sparkling chorus in the first half but mainly to the way Great Grandpa breaks the song down in the middle of the piece and then reconstructs it in the second as a lovely wordless composition.