I too have seen the Future of Rock & Roll...and she's 80 years old!

To quote David Letterman, "It's fun when you leave the theater humming the music from the show." 

That's what you get when Yoko Ono reforms the Plastic Ono Band featuring her son Sean along with the Flaming Lips for a new album, Take Me to the Land of Hell. 

Here's the thing: I don't know if I love it or hate it! The groove is infectious.  it has a great bass line.  Yoko, which I must remind you, is 80 and rocking on stage like a grandma who still thinks she is hip, gives her trademark howls and screeches. That confuses me if she thinks she's an artist who is making a statement, or just realizes it's all a big joke.  I found this and watched it as for the expected craziness I expect out of her, and have now viewed it twice. Enjoy.

New Tune on Monday

I was thinking of a new way to trade music that you might not know so well -- because I've been on a listening binge lately -- and I came up with this handy paraphrase of Duran Duran.

Today, in the inaugural New Tune on Monday post, I give you Brooklyn's Parquet Courts, and their not-a-wasted-note triumph "Stoned and Starving". This is a perfect piece of late 70s inspired post punk -- catchy and minimal in the best spirit of the Buzzcocks or Wire. Plus it name checks a very unlikely NYC neighborhood, Ridgewood, Queens: "I was walking through Ridgewood, Queens/I was flipping through magazine/I was so/stoned and starving"

I've Seen Rock and Roll's Future...

...and its name is Frank Turner.

Did I get your attention? The Springsteen reference is apt, if perhaps a bit premature. Englishman Turner has the pedigree, and he has the chops. After playing in a hardcore band in the early 2000s, he was inspired to make his brand of folk-punk after listening to Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. That should pique the interest of one of the Discordants. (Another one would be happy to know that he opened for the Gaslight Anthem on the European tour.)

So now, some music.

Here's "Recovery", the radio-friendly first single off his current 2013 album Tape Deck Heart:

The second single is called "The Way I Tend To Be". It's more of a love song, but I could see it getting airplay on American country radio despite being far more literate than the usual Nashville tripe.But I am loving the mandolin.

Here's 2011's "Peggy Sang the Blues", which he wrote for his grandmother. Lots of message, here, and some themes about living life that he tends to revisit in his work.

And from 2008, something a little more political, with a little more bite.

What the Kids Were Listening To

Last weekend, I went to my first college football tailgate in years. OK, truth be told, I simply walked through the parking lot while others were tailgating. There was a large group of fraternity and sorority types, all in crazy costumes, and as we walked by they were all dancing to a song I didn't recognize. It had folksy-sounding verses offset by a stadium-dance chorus. It sounded popular enough, so I went to billboard.com and it took me all of two minutes to discover what it was: "Wake Me Up" by Swedish EDM DJ Avicii. And that shows you just how out of touch I've become with mainstream pop music. I mean, this song was huge around the world all summer, and somehow it eluded me.

Song In My Head

Stuck in my head for virtually the last five days has been the clever tune "Sale of the Century" by the long forgotten -- or should I say never-really-caught-on-in-this-country-to-be-forgotten -- Britpop band Sleeper.

Like Elastica, the London band was fronted by a woman -- Louise Wener -- though they skewed more pop than their harder-sounding compadres. Wener and Elastica's Justine Frischmann really were considered the two biggest female stars in Britpop. And the band also spawned a English slang term -- Sleeperblokes -- anonymous dudes who hang out with more glamorous women.

Song in My Head

There are only a few more days left in September, and the song in in my head (for a few days now) is "September Gurls" by the great Alex Chilton and Big Star.

The Big Turnoff

I listen to a lot of Sirius Satellite Radio in my car. Mostly, it's First Wave. And while I often enjoy the random Howard Jones or Dave Edmunds cut, there's one band that I will almost always turn off when they're played (and they're played a lot). That band is The Pretenders.

I'm not sure why The Pretenders are such a big turnoff for me. They were never very offensive, but nor were they very interesting. There's nothing about them that translates to current music. My wife can't stand them. And their best song -- "My City Was Gone" -- was co-opted by Rush Limbaugh, and even though Chrissie Hynde got him to pay for it (the money went to charity), the song is forever tainted by association. In fact, the only thing I like about The Pretenders is that Hynde was married to Jim Kerr of Simple Minds.

Which band or artist is your biggest turnoff?