Dear Pete Doherty,

Today I was flipping channels and stopped when I saw your name pop up on the ticker at the bottom of one of the news stations. I thought it was that incident on the 20th, you know, when you got arrested for possession right after you left the courthouse where you got off without a jail sentence for a previous offense, but no, it was actually yet another arrest for drug-related activities. I just want to ask what are you thinking? At this point, shouldn't you be making a conscious effort avoid holding any illegal substances or, at the very least, to not shoot up when there could be a camera present?
But that, I suppose, is only one point. The other is that you are a rock star. Even in the United States, you are a rock star and your music is rarely, if ever, played on the radio or video channel. It's no wonder that our press has picked up on you, though, because our rock stars are really boring. I mean, there's Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, but Whitney Houston ruined a perfectly good Dolly Parton song and Bobby is just sort of there. There's also Courtney Love, but I'm pretty sure that an entire decade has passed since her last decent album. Lately, though, our rock stars have turned into family guys who marry high school sweethearts, go to church and don't engage in public drunkenness. I even think some of them are Mormon, which means they probably don't even drink coffee or watch Sid & Nancy. That's cool, y'know, live and let live, but when the biggest rock star scandal of late is Pete Wentz's wang ending up online via camera-phone, the whole state of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll is pretty sad.
So, what I'm saying is that, now that even my grandmother has heard of you (well, I can't confirm that, but my mom definitely knows your name), you have a shot of actually having some semblance of a career in the U.S. Look at your ex-girlfriend, Kate. She's racked up a few magazine covers since the coke-photo incident (Vanity Fair, two W covers and I think a few more). Now, Kate kind of has an advantage because she's been cool for years. She's like Anita Pallenberg. She doesn't have to do much of anything except just stand around and look a hell of a lot cooler than the rest of us. She has played her cards right, though. She might guest on a song here and there, but she doesn't release laughable albums like Naomi Campbell. She keeps her mouth shut and, when she does get into trouble, she seems to try to avoid getting into more trouble for a few months. Now, you're music might be too quitessentially British to get popular in the US otherwise, but you have the reputation, so try to clean up the act a bit, get a tour going and maybe you can be the next-big-thing for real out here.

Okay, another month has ended and it's time for a recap of what I have been listening to and playing this month.

Music for Listening (i.e. full-lengths):
Gram Rabbit-- Cultivation
Dahlia-- Plastique
Hard-Fi-- Stars of CCTV
Riverboat Gamblers-- To the Confusion of our Enemies
Stavesacre-- How to Live with a Curse
Pop Noir-- Demonstration
Millionaire-- Paradisiac
Matthew Dear as Audion-- Fabric 27

Music for Dancing (i.e. singles and remixes):
Panic! At the Disco-- The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage
(Tommie Sunshine Mix)
Flat Pack-- Sweet Child O' Mine (Mylo Mix)
The Glass-- Hear the Music (Mylo Mix)
Mylo v. Scissor Sisters-- Drop the Numb
Madonna-- Let it Will Be (Paper Faces Mix)
Sugababes-- I Bet That You Look Good on the Dancefloor
Delays-- Valentine
Test-Icicles-- What's Your Damage (Alan Braxe and Fred Falke Mix)
The Knife-- Heartbeat (Rex the Dog Mix)
Hard-Fi-- Hard to Beat
Depeche Mode-- Sufferwell (Tiga Mix)
Lee Coombs & David Phillips v. Bauhaus-- Kick in the Eye

It's Saturday night and you're flipping through a case of CDs looking for something to play in the car. It has to be an album where every track is a killer as that is the only way you will be able to get through the crunch at the 101/134 interchange that you are required to take in order to get to Melissa's house. You pick up the CD where the guys are dressed in Monty Python-style drag-- drab potato sacks occasionally spiced up with a Queen Mum floral prints. I haven't listened to this one from start to finish in years, you think. In the car, you quickly realize that, despite the amount of time that has passed since I used to listen to this album on a daily basis, you still have every word of every song committed to memory.
In late-1993, a Manchester band whose name, James, was barely recognizable in the United States released Laid. If you kept close tabs on the music press, you would have understood that this band had been hyped upon the release of two of its prior albums. They were already massive in the UK, frequently compared to Simple Minds in magazines like Select, which seemed odd to an American teenager like yourself on account of the fact that Simple Minds had faded from collective US memory years earlier. If you were a diehard Anglophile, you probably had bought James' self-titled release with the daisy on the cover three years prior and you probably fell for "Sit Down" and you probably hoped that you could get into a stadium with 20,000 other people and sing along with this number like you read the Brits were doing. You probably told all your friends about it, but you knew that the popularity of UK bands was beginning to wane and, besides, all of your friends were busy anticipating the new Guns'n'Roses album. Two years later, you bought Seven and stayed up until 3:00 a.m. so that you could catch the video for "Born of Frustration" on 120 Minutes and you would race home after school so that you could wait through the last minutes of Wally George's rant-fest on KDOC because you knew that, once his toupee was knocked off his head by a skinhead, George would sign off and Gia DeSantis would introduce a new James video on Request Video. Again, you hoped that James really would become the next big thing, but it just didn't work out that way. The band built up enough of a following to play LA a few times. One of those gigs was at a Hollywood club and you and your friend were pretty sure that there was no age limit, so you decided you were going to go, but are thwarted by parents who refused to give you rides out to the Sunset Strip on school nights and were still really pissed at you for some teenage antics that occurred a few weeks prior (plus, they moved the doghouse outside of your bedroom window, so sneaking out wasn't an option). Instead, you took to requesting "Hymn from a Village," released as a 7" off Factory Records a decade prior, on Rodney on the Roq, so that you could tape it and listen to that grainy radio copy every day and sit around with your one really cool friend and wonder if you actually were going to have to move to a rainy island to find people who like the same music you do.
When Laid hit the streets, you had pretty much given up any notion of James becoming popular, particularly since everyone and their grandma was obsessed with that band from Seattle. But something happened and the album's title track burned up the playlists on KROQ and MTV. The album had gold-level sales in the US, no easy feat for a British band at the time, and became a staple of late-night cruising sessions across an earthquake-stricken San Fernando Valley by the end of your junior year of high school. You and the friends you made at your new high school would roll past collapsed buildings in second-hand cars, ashing cigarettes and clutching onto your newly acquired licenses while screaming "The neighbors complain about the noises above" at the top of your lungs. You knew that Morrissey hated it when his friends became successful, but you didn't because a moment like this was basically validation that James fans were onto something.
But James-mania didn't last. Wah-Wah and Whiplash didn't sell like Laid and, after the release of the band's singles compilation at the end of the decade, James lost its US deal, left to be remembered as a One Hit Wonder, when really it was so much more. The band's last two albums were only available as hard-to-obtain imports and when singer Tim Booth ventured solo, little was mentioned outside of official website posts that the remaining members were searching for a new singer. That site hasn't been updated in four years.

• Lemonheads have joined the now massive list of band's reuniting, ultimately preceding the inevitable grunge revival that should hit big in approximately six months time.
• Vagrant, who is handling the Lemonheads' reunion, is also releasing the next album from The Futureheads, due in June.
• Depeche Mode is set to record a whopping 50 live performances to be released through Live Here Now. Funny, I had another Depeche Mode dream last night. Maybe it was a premonition. Maybe I really do have a Cassandra Complex.
• Ned's Atomic Dustbin is set to release a new single, the band's first in a decade, in the UK on June 5. The band has been gigging across the UK as of late and, if you have seen Ned's play recently, you probably already know "Hibernation," the afore-mentioned first single. Now, I live in LA and am pretty sure that Ned's hasn't played here since before I was old enough to drive to a show (or get into the shows, depending). That said, I have absolutely no idea what "Hibernation" sounds like. However, the live tracks posted on My Space are pretty tasty. So, what exactly do we have to do to get Ned's out to the West Coast (and by West Coast, I mean LA, I don't really care about SF or Portland or Seattle)?
• Kyoka is playing tonight at What the DJ Wants. This is her only LA gig before returning to Japan and it should be fun.
  

Capture/Release is now stateside courtesy of Dim Mak.

Our version comes with an extra track and an enhanced CD containing 4 music videos and a mini-video game.

The album is a sandwich of post-punk dance tracks on both ends with some slower tunes in the middle.

I own about half of the album tracks already (some from the Retreat EP and the others from 7" singles) so that downplayed my overall excitement/enjoyment.

Still, the album is great overall and I'm very happy with the U.S. inclusion of All Too Human, a single the band recently released (C/R appeared in UK music stores late last year).

The tunes are a bit over-produced on record as opposed to their live counterparts but not to the point of hipster aggravation.

A solid buy if you have the cash.

I have a tendency to get stuck on certain local bands. Generally, these aren't the big local bands, the ones that get a lot of recognition outside of Los Angeles, just the ones who, for some reason or other, strike me as having unexplainable something that points to a promising career. When this happens, I will go and see the bands over and over again until they either break up or go on such a long hiatus that I manage to lose track of the band and miss their return. In college, the highest honor belonged to the Autumns, who I saw at least once a month between 1997 and 1999. Then there was Paige, who I played as often as I could without breaking playlist rules on KXLU and saw almost as often as the Autumns until the band broke up and disappeared. Now, I think I might be getting stuck on Pop Noir.
Last night was my second Pop Noir experience, and also the second time I was the DJ on the same bill. In the two months that have passed since I last saw the twins, they have grown and improved vastly as musicians, songwriters and performers. Considering that the band was impressive back in February, I take this to mean that Pop Noir really has something. The songs from Demonstration, which you can hear on the band's My Space page, sound richer onstage, far surpassing the quality of these recordings.
The highlight of Pop Noir's set was a presumably new song "Don't Fool Yourself," which does not appear on Demonstration, nor is it featured on My Space or the band's website. "Don't Fool Yourself," relies a bit more on Joe's guitar than the other tracks and Luke sings in a huskier tone, with more maturity injected into the snarling vocals. Carlos and I both declared that this is the band's hit.
I'm always looking for the hit, which is probably the result of spending the bulk of my adult life DJing in rock-oriented dance clubs. DJs are always looking for the hit, but with rock clubs, it's a bit different because, although we are looking for strong dance numbers as techno and house DJs do, we also need music that is structured as a proper song. We're basically using the club setting to fill the gap left by radio's shrinking playlists but we also have to keep the floor moving, so the song has to be immediate, something you can sing alongside after the first time you hear it. "Don't Fool Yourself" is one of these songs. If I had a copy of it (hint, hint), I would play it in my sets. Hopefully, the boys will release "Don't Fool Yourself" soon. In the meantime, though, you can join the fanclub. I was going to post the video for "DIY" below, but am getting error messages.
Romak & the Space Pirates opened up the night with one of those sets that people could either love or hate. They are very noisy with lots keyboards that alternately crash and screech. In this sense, the music is vastly different in a live setting than in its recorded form. I really enjoyed the set, which seemed to fall somewhere between punk rock and performance art. "The Data Wasn't There," which I believe was released on one of the bands cds, is the band's strongest number, but "Retirement Song" was the most fun live, particularly with its inclusion of a girl in a plastic face mask and a wig made from ass-length yarn pounding on a computer keyboard. Meanwhile, Cute Phase looked utterly frustrated onstage, but they played well. The drum machine was mixed far too low and was barely audible from the bar area, but the Robert Smith-style guitars translated nicely to the live stage.
Below is my DJ setlist. People were asking about both Michael Mayer remixes, so take my advice and don't miss his set at Coachella this weekend.
The Visions-- Into the Nightlife
Delays-- Valentine
Erlend Oye-- Sheltered Life (The Youngsters Mix)
The Glass-- Hear the Music (Mylo Mix)
Golden Boy and Miss Kittin-- Rippin' Kittin (Ellen Allien Mix)
Metric-- Dead Disco (Kylie Kills Mix)
Goldfrapp-- Ooh La La (Benny Benassi Mix)
Sugababes-- I Bet That You Look Good on the Dancefloor
Smash TV-- Queen of Men
Baxendale -- I Built This City (Michael Mayer Mix)
Miss Kittin-- Happy Violentine (Michael Mayer Mix)
***
The Knife-- Heartbeat (Rex the Dog Mix)
New Order-- Subculture
White Rose Movement-- Girls in the Back
Flat Pack-- Sweet Child O' Mine
Cut Copy-- Future (Zongamin Mix)
The Gossip-- Standing in the Way of Control (Le Tigre Mix)
Hard-Fi-- Hard to Beat
Daft Punk-- One More Time
Test Icicles-- What's Your Damage? (Alan Braxe and Fred Falke Mix)
Madonna-- Let it Will Be (Paper Faces Mix)
***
Editors-- Munich (Cicada Mix)
Royksopp-- What Else Is There? (Thin White Duke Mix)
Depeche Mode-- Suffer Well (Tiga Mix)
Digitalism-- Digitalism in Cairo
Starsailor-- Four to the Floor (Thin White Duke Mix)
Rock Kills Kid-- I Need You
Art Brut-- Formed a Band
***
Soft Cell-- It's a Mug's Game

Yes, you really should try to make it out to the Knitting Factory tonight. I will be playing tunes in between bands. You might hear stuff like White Rose Movement, Melody Club, the Knife and Delays. You will definitely hear excellent live sets from the likes of Pop Noir, Cute Phase and Romak & the Space Pirates. Not only does this promise to be a good time, but it starts at 7:30 p.m., so you don't have to use that old excuse that you can't stay out late because of work. Also, it's FREE for anyone over 21 and $3 for the kids.

I know that there was supposed to be a slight chance for rain yesterday, but slight chance and torrential downpour moving across Los Angeles and Riverside County at roughly the same speed as a car moving down the 60. Um, I think we might be responsible.
By "we," I mean B.Monsoon, Melissa and myself. We were sitting in a backyard with a few other people and a handful of records and B.Monsoon wanted to hear Wham's "All That She Wants." Then I decided that we all needed to hear "Holding Back the Years" by Simply Red. You know that part of the song where Mick Hucknall starts crying "holding, holding, holding/ohhhh?" We butchered it. It was fun. So we decided to pull together a makeshift karaoke stand. B. Monsoon wanted to do "True." I said that, if he did, I would join him for a duet. Now, as you had probably read here before, I'm a shitty, shitty singer and try to avoid public humiliation at all costs. Therefore, my karaoke experience is almost non-existent. Last night was the second time I tried it and, like the first time, that was pretty much only because I wouldn't be doing it alone.
Anyhow, B. Monsoon and I ripped "True" apart without any sort of gameplan. We would start singing, then one of us would forget a line and the other would pick up on it. At times, it sounded like maybe we should harmonize, but that would require actual, real skill, so we just started belting in unison "Listening to Marvin, all night loooong/This is the sound/ Of my soul."
After we finished, Melissa did "Into the Groove." I think she might still remember all of the dance moves from the club scenes in Desperately Seeking Susan. Then we started to look for other songs. "Last Christmas?" "A Question of Lust?" It didn't matter because we were outside and it started to drizzle.
After covering up the equipment, the drizzle ceased, so we went back to the debate over which song we should desecrate next. That's when the sky open up, as if pleading for us to stop ruining perfect songs.
As our friend Will saysl, "Some people dance for rain. Others sing."