Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
You pick: call-in request shows, or Malkmus?
A friend and I were having a discussion the Other Day™ about the relevance of radio request shows in the twenty-first century.
I argued that having a call-in request show is deeply retarded antiquated due to the ease of obtaining the music you want the instant you want it. If you want to listen to a song, you can stream it from a deluge of music sites on the Internet, you can buy it from a gaggle of online music stores, or you can fire up Limewire, Kazaa or BitTorrent and download it surreptitiously. The point is that there’s no reason to depend on radio, as it were once the case, to have your musical listening gratification.
My friend’s counterchallenge went along the lines of tradition. Is there anything cooler than listening to your name echoed out on the radio, spoken alongside the one of that pretty girl from math class with that song which expresses exactly how you feel about her? “It’s lightning in a bottle,” he said. “Request shows are a mainstay.”
Yeah, mainstays. Like Stephen Malkmus. Though I’d be hard pressed to question his pertinence as I do with request shows; backed up by his Jicks, Malkmus rolls around with a new album, paving (HAR!) the way for another series of inspired, off-the-cuff tunes which continuously solidify his position and importance in American rock, indie or otherwise. And here, the Jicks and he, strewn tightly, compose more of that quirky, swaggering rock which we’ve grown attached to, while allowing the tunes to devolve into jam sessions of almost improvisational qualities. An incredible group of musicians making incredible music is well worth attaching oneself to.
Maybe I’ll call in a request and dedicate Cold Son to my friend.
Oh, wait, I don’t listen to the radio.
MP3: Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks - Cold Son
www.stephenmalkmus.com
myspace.com/stephenmalkmus
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