Everybody's got to take a break every now and then, even those of us with godlike knowledge of and impeccable taste about music. (And becoming modesty of course, that too.)

Catch you all August 6.

The bios of Alejandro Escovedo tend to touch on the fact that he's been living a classic and high-quality musician's life: always out there knocking the socks off those who've been turned on to him, recording and playing relentlessly.

Unfortunately, his story encompasses one other common element of the musician's life: little or no health insurance. When he came collapsed with a Hepatitis C infection recently, the Alejandro Fund was formed.

Celia Cruz also moved on the great dancehall in the sky this month. She was sent off with not one, but two parties befitting her stature.

It just feels wrong that we should lose one of our most distinct American voices on July 4. Thanks for the memories, Barry White.

Continuing the thought from the day before yesterday, important exceptions to the good band names / bad album titles axiom:

Fountains of Wayne: Pretty good band name, better once you learn it's inspired by a gift shop in Wayne, New Jersey.
Welcome Interstate Managers: Actually, not a bad album title. Can't say why exactly.

In honor of the band who FOW covers in one of the videos on the page listed yesterday:
The Kinks: Great, great, great band name. A classic.
The Village Green Preservation Society: Also pretty good. has the same sort of understated appeal as Welcome Interstate Managers.

Nick Lowe: Hey, the guy was born with it. Still, better than if he'd been named Yngwie Malmsteen.
Pure Pop for Now People: Is this the best album title ever? Name me a better one, I defy you.

Sometimes you just need a little pure pop for now people. For that, there is Fountains of Wayne.

Why is it that album titles just never seem as inspiring as band names? Even really good albums rarely have titles as interesting as even really lousy bands. Naturally, there are exceptions.

Lou Reed performs Walk on the Wild Side with a band consisting of Conan O'Brien, Adam Sandler, Dana Carvey, Jimmy Fallon, and Jack Black. Not kidding. (Link courtesy of Lou himself.)

Lou Reed is the coolest person in the world. If I was a famous rock and roll star, I hope that I too would have the class and connections to parlay my fame into appearances on Comedy Central and in a kung-fu magazine.

Slagging the national anthem is a favorite pastime of many of us who've tried to mangle our vocal cords around it. A tad late for independence day, we have Pitchfork's take on alternative choices to the Star-Spangled Banner.

The Boss is in the meadowlands, where he belongs.

There's nothing like a festival with live music. Especially when it's being thrown to commerate shrimpin' and drillin' (Warning: site contains annoying MIDI zydeco music that you can't turn off. It stops after about 30 seconds.).

Jonathan Richman, once a Modern Lover, is an original. To see just how original, you can watch There's Something About Mary, read this article from SF Weekly (which stole the working title for this post), or check a fan site. Naturally watching a clip of a video or listening to some of his tunes would help too. He apparently throws a fun show too.

Neil Young remains about the most original musician to have escaped (mostly) whole from the 60's. His latest project, which will apparently be released as a DVD, is Greendale. (Note that the link is to a flash site which is uncharacteristically easy-to-navigate for an official Neil Young website.) People (and Goddesses) who got tickets for his latest tour didn't know he was going to lay a concept performance with long stretches of spoken word on them, and some of the reviews have been accordingly harsh. Bottom line though, all those fans and unhappy reviewers got to see something they haven't run into before. In a way, it's more a true Neil Young experience to go away confused.

Some observant folks have discovered some parallels between lyrics on Bob Dylan's Love and Theft, and passages in the English translation of the novel Confessions of a Yakuza by Junichi Saga. The Wall Street Journal published an article on it July 8, but naturally folks on the Internet have been noticing and discussing it for a while now.

Although a lot of this ends up looking like an archive of press releases and obituaries, the this day in music page at http://www.myway.com occasionally mentions something genuinely groundbreaking: happy 34th birthday, Ziggy!

You will be pleased or horrified to know that being a hipster has now officially been co-opted. The handbook has been published complete with a promotional website including a hipster quiz. Even NPR is on the train. It was deck while it lasted.

Phish has raised the profile of the nascent FLAC file type by making it the standard lossless file format on their LivePhish site. Although your average slob (including this humble listener) rarely listens to music with equipment or cultivation that requires more quality than the conveniently small mp3, lossless file formats like FLAC focus on preserving every last bit of tasty musical goodness.

Interesting note: you wouldn't know it, but mp3 ain't free. (The patent holders seem to be wisely leaving well enough alone now though.) FLAC, as the name suggests, is free as air.

OK. I really dig VH1's online radio stations. There. Said it. The fact is though, despite being sponsored by a large corporate entity and being the voice of the mainstream, they're really not half bad. They doesn't have commercials or chatter, and they have a pretty large selection of stations to choose from, including a channel with a good dose of old school rap, a funk station, and an entirely respectable garage rock channel.

In fact, it's surprising how much better their offerings are than those of their corporate little sibling. Perhaps that's in recognition of the fact that those of us of -- ahem -- VH1 age tend to spend a lot of time in the office with a high speed connection to abuse.

Sort of an Am-I-Hot-or-Not for songwriters. They post a title on the website, and people crawl out of the woodwork to submit songs. Then (generally only about 1 or 2 dozen) arbiters of taste from the Internet wilderness pass judgement. In the process, some songs are created which aren't half bad. Worth noting, though, that many more are created that are waaaaay more than half bad. (Props to the 365 days blog, as mentioned in Friday's post, for the link.)

Tip of the pin to Kelly Jo for this one -- for your pleasure, one mp3 per day for all of 2003. How do they do it, you ask? How do they avoid the wrath of the RIAA while bestowing such profligate riches?

Let's just say there probably aren't too many folks counting on the profitability of these little gems for their daily bread. (Do make sure to scroll down for the album cover scans. They're half the fun at least.)

As if one well-written and researched (if consistently odd) post per day wasn't enough, they have a nifty blog as well. We're already halfway done with the year, so you'll want to catch up on the archives.

This site contains a wealth of information about American and Jamaican soul singles, in many cases songs that you've never heard of. But the real attraction here is what he's done with the sleeves for his 45's. Each one bears an original illustration, sometimes related to the song, but usally not.

The site also used to contain mp3 clips of the songs, but once it was mentioned on Metafilter last month, his bandwith limit was blown almost immediately. Perhaps someday they'll come back, but in the meantime the sleeves alone are fascinating.

Came across this post while trying to find out the answer to the musical question: Whence the Beastie Boys sample that states "Shut the f*** up Chico, man"? It's a little diary entry of sorts, describing what happens in the recording studio. Along with a link to the results.

And BTW, read the full thread for the answer to the question that started it all.

Their record's coming soon, but Texas has already declared the release date of their first single as Los Lonely Boys day. (Some manager or PR flack gets an extra Scooby Snack.) Hype aside, these kids churn up a nice dose of roots rock. Looks like a promising record.