What do you get when you take one of the worst songs ever and cross it with one of the most odious musical genres ever? Why, it's the Wynonna Judd House Remix of "I Want to Know What Love Is"!

The fuckers at the Virgin Megastore were, in their typical, customer-hostile way, BLASTING this crap. In fact, it would probably have been better if they had been literally blasting crap, both sonically and in terms of creating a hospitable customer environment.

This is, of course, what I deserve for visiting those douchebags in the first place.

No real point here. I just had to share.

Martha Wainwright: "When the Day Is Short" (iTunes link)
Various Artists: Hard Headed Woman: A Celebration of Wanda Jackson (cd here; iTunes here)
Esp. Laura Cantrell doing "Wasted."

Full disclosure: I get a few cents if people buy songs after following my iTunes links.

If you have iTunes, for the love of god fire it up and watch the HYSTERICAL video by Simon Cowell brainchild Il Divo that's linked off the main page. It is a Toni Braxton cover, worried and reworked until the original, smarmy, soulless source material was elevated to a spectacular Baroque hideousness that almost, through inversion and sensory assault, finds its way to beauty. It is canned studio crap with a heaping dose of cheap Spanish guitar. It is a video that starts with a train and a rehearsal, ends with a concert, and somehow has a welding scene in the middle. It is crooning then booming Spanish vocals. It is the sort of marvel not seen since the Mase, Puff Daddy, and 112 collaboration "Jealous Guys". IT IS ALL THINGS.

* A quote from the estimable Endi about another topic.

I'm in the middle of a work crunch, and am consequently listening to a lot of AC/DC, Van Halen, and Joan Jett--I find that straightforward rock without a whiff of art gets me through projects with lightning speed.

As a result of this immersion, I have decided something:

The softening of Van Halen's RAWK is not the fault of Sammy Hagar.

While it is indisputable that the average rock quotient of the Roth years exceeds that of the Hagar years, this is a case of correlation without causality. "Jump", with its synth solo, already brought far less rock than "Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love", and that has one source: Eddie van Halen's increasing synth focus. I'm not saying that "When It's Love" would've happened on Roth's watch. But "Dreams" (with different words) would have. (Provided the other band members didn't eventually choke him to death on the tour bus.)

To blaspheme and give full disclosure: readers should bear in mind that in CCD, I would get angry when they said that God was Jesus' father; Joseph, after all, stuck around and raised him. So, I seem to be predisposed not to give much reverence to the ones who leave. I value fidelity over might.

It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if Mariah Carey started wearing a bra again.

Courtesy of Maura, a genius who knows everything and finds the best links the moment they hit the Internet:

Tim McCarver Must Die

(Click here to see in context.)

One of the best things about publishing is that almost everybody goes into it for the right reasons. No one expects to make heaps of money; everyone just wants to do his or her part to further a worthwhile endeavor.

That is rather idealistic, of course, and that leads to one of the other best things about publishing: the manifold ways that disappointed idealism manifests itself.

A case in point: the recently profiled rapping ascendance of a former colleague. Awesome. Listen here.

This totally inspires me to get over the fact that I am the worst guitar player in the history of humankind--seriously, my midget sausage fingers can't stretch far enough to make any of the damn chords, and I am demonstrating about zero natural ability in all areas of songwriting and performance--and get going on my first Adairdevils album. (Tentative title: Sympathy for the Greeting Card Industry.) I half want to just buy a microphone and see how horrible I can be in GarageBand. Oh, Apple, you foster creativity in the most dangerous areas.

Low, The Great Destroyer, particularly "Just Stand Back". I saw them live the week before last and now can't stop listening to this album over and over. And walking around singing, "I could turn on you so fast", which just can't be endearing me to my neighbors.

Tres Chicas, Red, Bloom, & the Ordinary Girl.

My narrow favorites are the Caitlin Cary-led songs ("Stone Love Song", "Red") and the preternaturally simple and cheerful closer "If You Think That It's All Right", but really, the whole album is solid.

I'm almost afraid to commit this to print and jinx it, but:

I WON A CONTEST AND LAURA CANTRELL IS GOING TO PLAY A CONCERT FOR ME AND 50 OF MY FRIENDS IN SEPTEMBER!!!!

Details TBD, but . . . holy shit!

I haven't won a random-drawing contest since the ill-fated Ronald McDonald adventure, and that was more a year of torment than a prize. I can't believe that I won something this cool!

This has done tremendous things for my mood. There is nothing like following up two days of weeping with the news that one of your very favorite musicians is going to perform a concert for YOU.

So excited! So geeked up!!! Yeee!

Go buy her albums if you haven't already. She is quietly astonishing.

than a concert by an immensely talented musician for YOU and YOUR friends, complete with open bar?

Ah, Laura Cantrell and JANE Magazine, I can't thank you enough.

(Longer, more discursive entry inevitably to follow.)

Today's stress song: "Still in Hollywood", Concrete Blonde.

Oh my my, I'm running on a wheel and I don't know, don't know, don't know whyyyy.

Today's de-stressing song: "John I Love You", Sinéad O'Connor

. . . but as you value your sanity, stay far, far away from The Times They Are A-Changin', the Twyla Tharp/Bob Dylan abortion. I made the mistake of telling my roommate that though it looked dreadful, if she couldn't find anybody else to go with her, I would take her second free ticket.

Well, FREE IS NOT CHEAP ENOUGH. Free, a bottle of hooch, and a sharp object with which to pick the memories out of your brain: that is the price you should hold out for.

There are three elements to the show: a band, tucked above and away; singers; and dancers.

The band is fine.

The singers are all doing that dreadfully overenunciated, rock/pop-killing chest-voice singing you know from your worst memories of college a cappella groups. (Doot! Doot!) Imagine the a cappella group. Over and over, mangling one song after another. Now recall, if you will, how the most embarrassing moments for everybody in earshot during an a cappella show were those moments when the song calls for some slight trace of anything angry, righteous, or passionate in any way. Think about how you just kinda looked away when some grinning schmuck in a white button-down and black slacks trilled about being on the highway to hell. That's what we're working with here. Oh, how risqué you sound as you crisply blare your way through "Like a Rolling Stone" (a special side-barf to the aged boomers in the audience who clapped along with that horrifically neutered spectacle; hey, people, that's your past being ransacked, stripped, and regurgitated; don't you care?) and "Rainy Day Women." UGH.

The dancers are dressed as circus folk. Because the plot--such as it is; there is no dialogue at all--is about a mean circusmaster, Captain Ahrab, his son Coyote, and the woman who goes from one to the other (eeeeeew), Cleo. One of the dancers was dressed like a dog, but it was hard to tell if he was a clown pretending to be a dog or a real dog, since later on the actors also dressed up like animals. I'm not kidding. Also, the sheep costume? Looked like a giant albino koala. Shoddy. Anyway, the dancers were all quite bendy and I'm very happy for them, but other than that, there's not much to say; even my devil's advocate roommate called the numbers unfocused.

Worst offender is a toss-up:
--The aforementioned "Like a Rolling Stone": a contender because of the total deracination of the song from any emotion
--"Knockin' on Heaven's Door": horribly oversung by the newly cast-out circusmaster. In the dark. As dancers circle him with high-powered flashlights. Like high school.
--"Don't Think Twice, It's All Right": slowed down, over-emoted, and what the hell is with the clown/dog/thing shaking its butt and running up to the woman for a laugh-line at the end? What was the thought process here?
--"Mr. Tambourine Man": in which Coyote descends to the stage on a fracking moon. As nothing happens at all plotwise. This is a low contender only because the original version is not at all dear to me.
--"Lay Lady Lay": hey! let's butcher half of this, then make it into a medley with "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight"! Bring that bottle over here, indeed.

Run away!

Tired: "Throw It in the Fire", The Mendoza Line.
Trying to stay focused: "How You Play the Game", Michelle Shocked
Feeling overall alright with my lot and how I'm managing it: "Gentle on My Mind", Lou Rawls. (No link, but man, you should hunt it down for yourself. This version rules.)

And no, not for its subject matter. Just 'cause it's good and I haven't been keeping up my posting appropriately.

Ballboy, "You Can't Spend Your Whole Life Hanging around with Arseholes".

1. Saw Nick Lowe live at 7 WTC last night. I found myself in the front for Lowe's set (sweet!) but next to one businessman with a horizontal stripe of facial hair across the middle of his face (excepting just the nose itself) and another man with a brand-new, terrifying nose job that I ardently hope was prompted by something more virulent than self-loathing, 'cause man would that nose not solve that particular problem. Despite these peculiar neighbors, I had a lovely time. Nick Lowe rules. He played solo acoustic, which is always effective for somber songs but can be tricky on more upbeat numbers. I had my concerns. They were misplaced; Nick Lowe knows what he's about. I may love him just a little.

And really, my own rather ordinary nose has never appeared to better advantage.

2. Going by the iTunes libraries visible to me on my school network, I may be the only person who cannot abide capitalization errors in my song files. I mostly knew this. But it's always dispiriting to be confronted with veritable walls of uppercase articles, conjunctions, and prepositions. It hurts my heart.

These are the songs it spat out, in order, on my way home:

Mendoza Line, "We're All in This Alone"
Low, "Just Stand Back"
Versus, "Double Suicide"

Definite theme there. Of course, the next song was "Push the Button" by Sugababes, meaning it was a happy joy dance party all the way back from the subway. So maybe my iPod just doesn't trust the subway itself.