For Those About To Rock

This Week, Nick Would Buy ... #25

Al Green, Lay it Down (Blue Note)

James Poyser and fellow Soulqarian Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson head into the lab with Al Green to help pump some life into the soul legend's third album for Blue Note.

The consensus on Green's first two offerings for Blue Note, a label which relies mostly on jazz, is best summed up by the latter's title: "Everything's OK." Not awful, not great, sorta like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

We know ?uest is going to bring a percussive quality to things because that's what he does as a producer and a member of his full-time group, The Roots. Anthony Hamilton, John Legend, and Corinne Bailey Rae also drop by for guest performances. No matter how much he mines modern R&B and hip hop for help, Green and his gritty larynx have to do the heavy lifting.

If I Were Really Rich ...
— Heaven And, Sweeter as the Years Roll By (Indigo) — German quartet delivers its post-rock debut.

Others
— Ellen Allien, Sool (Bpitch Control)
— Horace Andy, On Tour (Trojan)
— David Benoit, Heroes (Peak)
— The Browns, The Complete Hits (Collectors' Choice Music)
— Communic, Payment of Existence [Import] (Nuclear Blast)
— Bill Cosby, Bill Cosby Presents Badfoot Brown and the Bunions Bradford Funeral & Marching Band (Universal)
— Sean Garrett, Turbo 919 (Interscope)
— Eliza Gilkyson, Beautiful World (Red House)
— Andy Griggs, The Good Life (Montage)
— Buddy Guy, Breaking Out (JSP)
— John Hiatt, Same Old Man (New West)
— H20, Nothing to Prove (Bridge 9)
— Cyndi Lauper, Bring Ya to the Brink (Epic)
— Steve Miller Band, Live From Chicago [DVD set] (Koch)
— moe., Warts and All, Vol. 6 [Box set] (Fat Boy)
— Sam Phillips, Don't Do Anything (Nonesuch)
— Return to Forever, The Anthology (Concord)
— The Smithereens, Live in Concert — Greatest Hits and More (Koch)
— Twista and the Speedknot Mobstaz, Mobstability II: Nation Business (Koch)
— Usher, Here I Stand (LaFace)
— Various Artists, Sex and the City soundtrack (New Line)

Unconfirmed
— Various Artists, Big Blue Ball (Geffen) — Long-awaited, multi-artist Peter Gabriel project was announced with May 27 release date, but all indications are that it's due later in June.

On the Mike: An Interview With R.E.M.'s Mike Mills

R.E.M.

Those three little letters and equivalent portions of punctuation pack so much in their simplicity.

Whether its bassist Mike Mills setting that slow, crawling groove at the outset of "Man on the Moon," Peter Buck smoking through a riff with a Rickenbacker slung across his back, or Michael Stipe flailing frantically in the "Losing My Religion" video, there are plenty of images that rush to mind.

But as the band winds toward the end of its third decade, there's more than just warm rock fuzzies to pass around. R.E.M. wrote the playbook for maintaining indie cred without selling out. The group is admirable for its willingness to do what it wants, on its terms. The trio has experimented more than a college freshman at a frat party, all the while maintaining a signature thread throughout all of that material.

The latest evolution is its 14th studio album, Accelerate, which hit shelves in April. Critics hail it as a "comeback," but the band never went anywhere. Regardless, R.E.M. hasn't rocked this hard since Bill Clinton was president — the first time.

Earlier this month, yours truly at For Those About to Rock had a chance to talk to bassist Mike Mills about Accelerate, the records since drummer Bill Berry left the group in 1997, what R.E.M. has left to prove and more. The band's tour for said album kicks off today in British Columbia, Canada, but the buses stop for a pair of shows May 31 and June 1 at the Greek Theater in Berkeley. Modest Mouse and The National will open.

Excerpts of this interview appeared in the May 23 edition of the Daily Republic.

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Nick DeCicco: I'm curious about the process leading into Accelerate (cover at left). You were the one who suggested you guys work out the songs live, right?

Mike Mills: Yeah, I wanted to get that feeling you get from the live crowd. It helps you edit and arrange.

ND: Was that the first time you guys had done that since Bill Berry left?

MM: Well, we've never really done a working rehearsal before. Back in the '80s, we were touring so much … that you would work out the new songs on the road before you recorded them. And then in the '90s and the '00s, that turned around a little bit to where you record the songs before you play them live. I would realize as I was playing the songs live, "Man, I wish I'd recorded the way I'm playing it now." So I thought we could probably achieve that by playing the songs live before we finally finished recording them.

ND: A lot of the songs for New Adventures in Hi-Fi were written, performed and recorded while you were on tour for Monster, right?

MM: Well, ever since we started working on New Adventures, which was during the Monster tour, we've always been working on new songs in soundcheck. But that's not quite the same because usually Michael [Stipe] doesn't have the lyrics at that point, so I can't work on background vocals and there's no real crowd in there at soundcheck, so it's not quite the same as what the working rehearsal provided for us.

ND: How big a factor is crowd reaction? You guys played these Accelerate tunes for the crowd in Dublin last year. How does that shape the way you guys look at a song?

MM: It's hard to say. It's not just simply the crowd reaction. It's how the song feels while you're playing it and that feeling changes when you've got 800 people in front of you. It's kind of hard to pin down, but it's more than how they respond to it.

ND: And it's new to them, too, so it's not like they're going to be jumping up and down and singing along with it.

MM: Right, but at the same time, they do know why they're there. They know they're not going to get the hits. They're there to hear the new stuff and it's just a great collaborative process at that point.

ND: A song like "Supernatural Superserious" changed a lot from the time you guys played it in Dublin to the time it made it to Accelerate. (See YouTube performance of the early "Supernatural Superserious," then known as "Disguised," from Dublin 2007 show.)

MM: Well, yeah, I re-wrote the chorus. It didn't technically have — well, we found out that it needed another chorus is one thing we learned at the live rehearsal.

ND: Could you tell me a little bit about how the reaction to 2004's Around the Sun (cover at right) shaped the way you guys entered this process?

MM: It wasn't so much the reaction to it as much as what we knew we needed to do. The problem with Around the Sun was we tried to do too much. We tried to make a greatest hits record and then do a tour and then come back and finish Around the Sun and that was really unfair to the record. The songs on that record are really good, but the recording process became unfocused and therefore they weren't as fully realized as they could've been.

ND: OK.

MM: And we just wanted to make sure that this record was nothing but focus. And that's what we've done is really just zero in on the entire process.

ND: I've read some interviews too, where, Michael Stipe in particular, talks about how the band is communicating a lot more.

MM: Well, that's essential. That also suffered toward the end of Around the Sun, which contributed to the unfocused quality of it. We realized, as with any long-term relationship, you need to maintain communication. That's important in any aspect of life, really.

ND: Does Bill Berry's departure still affect the band? Did it take you this long to figure out how to make a rock record like this since his departure?

MM: Well, we weren't really worried about making a rock record. When Bill left the band, we chose to see it as an opportunity to throw all the rules out of the window and record a record in a new way. And so, in that sense, Up was very experimental because we felt we could try anything and since we didn't really have a drummer per say, we used a lot of machines and just decided to have fun with this new opportunity.

ND: That's a real liberating sort of atmosphere.

MM: That's how we chose to see it. It could've gone either way, but we chose to see it that way. Reveal, I think, is our most underrated record. I think it's absolutely beautiful. I think that was us feeling pretty good about ourselves and trying to make a positive summery kind of record. And then we got to Around the Sun, which, as I say, has great songs, but we took too long to make it.

ND: I think some people didn't really take the time to look at Around the Sun closer and see the good things that are going on there.

MM: Well, It's not an immediately accessible record, Around the Sun. It does require a bit of patience. But if you listen to the R.E.M. Live CD [cover at left] from Dublin, you see that those songs are really good and powerful. They just weren't quite as fully realized on Around the Sun as they could've been.

ND: For a group that has been around for as long as R.E.M. has, you guys are really tech savvy. You guys have the Ninety Nights site, you let fans edit the "Supernatural Superserious" video, you released the album on iLike. Are those steps necessary for you guys as a major-label artist?

MM: Oh, I think they're even more necessary as a major-label artist. Technology can be a really cool thing for breaking down barriers between the band and the audience. And that's what we tried to use it for. It's good to feel that you have a hand in the fate of the band. It's fun to be collaborative. Anytime we can use this technology to get our music across, that's how it's best used.

ND: Kind of brings it back to that do-it-yourself ethic kind of around where you guys started almost.

MM: You know, in a way, it is. We provide some raw footage, you can make your own video with it. That's very D.I.Y. This is where music should go. I like the idea that technology, while being more advanced, can actually make things simpler.

ND: There's certainly much more of an immediacy between you and the audience like you were talking about.

MM: You need that because there's so much more stuff out there. There's so much more competition for people's attention that it's much better to have new outlets to bring your music to the front.

ND: Do you think that that's part of what's affecting the music industry? The fact that there are so many things competing for people's attention?

MM: I think that's part of it, certainly. I love the fact that people used to have to wait with anticipation for their favorite LP to come out. Now that doesn't really exist anymore, which I think is sad. You can't miss what you never had, so it's not like kids are lamenting that loss. There is so much more competition for your attention. The computer brings the world into your living room, literally. At least, literally information-wise. And so therefore, yeah, you've got to be able to be a part of that world to catch anyone's attention.

ND: Certainly. And the computer is how I saw you guys on Stephen Colbert's show. (See that here.)

MM: Exactly. That's what I kept telling Warner Brothers. They were like, "Well, it only gets about 500,000 viewers a night." I said, "yes, but millions of people watch it the next day on YouTube. It's viral. It's a very viral show and believe me, it's going to make a big deal if we get on that show," and so we did that. We did "The Today Show," which is the traditional way of reaching millions of people, and then Colbert, which is the new way of reaching millions of people.

ND: It felt like watching your career between Up (cover at right) and Reveal — all the records since Bill Berry has left — that there's a lot more media focus on you guys this time around. Is that because of the nature of Accelerate or is it just an excitement to see, "OK, what are these guys gonna do next?"

MM: It's an interesting combination, I think, of the buzz about Accelerate, the fact that … I don't know. It's kind of hip to like R.E.M. again. [laughs] Who knows what the gestalt of it is? But people were ready for us to rock again and we were ready to do the same.

ND: When you guys were on "The Colbert Report," Michael Stipe was the one to answer this question, but I'm curious to hear your reaction. When people call this your comeback album, what do you feel about that?

MM: Oh, I think that's horses***. Pardon my phrase.

ND: Oh, I've used that word myself.

MM: [laughs] We've never gone anywhere, so we can't really come back. People say this is a return to form. It's not a return to anything. This is R.E.M. in 2008. This is who we are and this is what we sound like. I wouldn't know how to go back to the eighties and I wouldn't want to even if I could.

ND: Some of the fashion was a little …

MM: Let's leave that completely out of it! [laughs]

ND: It was interesting to me that The Edge was one of the proponents of you guys working with Jacknife Lee and kind of heading in this harder rock direction and I thought there was a real parallel because U2 is a band that experimented and tried some different things and then, with All That You Can't Leave Behind, the reaction was that they had gone back to where they had gone before.

MM: Well, I can't speak for U2, I don't know what was in their heads when they were making that record.

ND: Right.

MM: But I know that their goal, their drive is to be the biggest band in the world. And that's not the same drive we have.

ND: Would you guys would rather make a great record and have people not notice it as much?

MM: You know, you would love to sell 10 million copies of every record you make. But that is, hopefully, the result of making a great record, so for us, yeah, the being big might be a nice bi-product of doing great work but it might not.

ND: Did you notice that affection disappearing in the States, especially with the way Around the Sun sold compared to 10 years before that, when you guys were everywhere — you talked about being hip, if you didn't like R.E.M. then, you were a square.

MM: Right. Those are forces that we can't control, so we don't really worry about that. It's nice to be popular, of course, but all you can do it do good work and your place in the world is up to the world to ascertain.

ND: With as long as you guys have been around, what do you have left to prove?

MM: You know, it's never really been about proving anything. It's just making great music. We want to prove to ourselves that we can make every record better than the last one. I mean, that's our goal. But it's a very abstract concept and all you can do it the best work possible at any given time.

ND: That's really difficult to measure because you're always your own worst critic, right?

MM: Exactly. If we please ourselves then I think that's good enough for us.

All images courtesy of Warner Bros.

In Memory of My Grandfather ...

"Don't get old, kid."

I chuckle just thinking about that.

My grandfather said a lot of things, some of them alarmingly yet charmingly politically incorrect. But this wasn't one of them.

For as long as I can remember, telling me to defy aging was a favorite of his, usually while lifting himself off of the couch with his aching knees.

My grandpa — Pop, we usually called him, short for Poppie — died Wednesday morning.

I spent a lot of Wednesday thinking about him, and about my father, who flew from Denver to New York late on Tuesday night to be with him at the end.

As For Those About to Rock is my musical vein to the world and I think so often in musical terms, I wanted to find a song to play for myself in memory of Pop.

And after a lot of searching through my record collection, I couldn't pick just one. So I'll share both.

The last time I saw my grandfather was when he came to Colorado to see me graduate from college almost exactly four years ago. Four years before that, he came to see me graduate from high school.

As my class exited the floor of Denver University's arena, my school chose to play Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)."

With a knowing nod to the title's inappropriateness, it was the opening lines of the second verse that caught my ear:

So take the photographs and still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time ...

It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right
I hope you had the time of your life

The song is about Green Day leaving behind punk rock and embracing its mainstream audience, but somehow, it worked on graduation day and it works here, too.

My grandfather could be a stubborn cuss who didn't like to go places, but he made a point to come to Colorado to see me graduate twice. And that meant a lot.

The second song could fit my father and I as easily as it does he and Pop. U2's "Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own" is a song Bono sang at his father's funeral that went on to garner Grammy gold. For all the highs and lows a father-son relationship can have, in the end, no matter how much you argue, fuss and fight, you're bound by something stronger than I could ever post on some blog on the Internet:

We fight all the time
You and I, that's alright
We're the same soul
I don't need, I don't need to hear you say
That if we weren't so alike
You'd like me a whole lot more

Listen to me now
I need to let you know
You don't have to go it alone …

And it's you when I look in the mirror
And it's you that makes it hard to let go
Sometimes, you can't make it on your own

Sure, there are plenty of songs and sentiments and a lot of them good. "Death is Not the End" or "All Things Must Pass" both had their charms. Someone's passing almost always makes me think of John Lennon's "Instant Karma!" — "We all shine on / Like the moon and the stars and the sun."

My grandfather will always shine on. Goodbye, Pop — I promise not to get old.

Like a Rolling Stone: The Quest to Own Every Dylan Album

Collecting an artist's entire catalog of original studio albums says something about you.

I've long believed you can surmise a lot about a person by looking at his or her record collection. If you own both of Justin Timberlake's albums, I'll go all in and bet you won't be spotted at the next Cradle of Filth show.

The number sounds arbirtrary, but if the artist has more than five albums and you own them all, you're devoted. If we apply the modern release cycle, which is around one record every two years, five albums is a decade of work. You've either been a dedicated fan for a while or you've stepped into the back catalog.

Either way, you've made a commitment to that artist at the five-album mark. It's not like owning every original Sex Pistols studio album, which anyone with $10 can do.

It's this sense of completion that inspired the outlandish but not inconceivable goal of obtaining every original Bob Dylan studio album, which I recently did.

Dylan has released 32 original studio albums, so we're not talking Willie Nelson-level completist crazy. But 32 is a figure which rejects compilations, live tapes, box sets and bootleg recordings. So, if you're keeping score, The Basement Tapes is in, but Biograph is out.

Making the 32-album commitment shows a serious dedication. We're past "just being there for the music" at that point because, let's face it: For every Highway 61 Revisited or Time Out of Mind, there are misfires such as Shot of Love or Down in the Groove.

But with Dylan, the quest to collect them all exists because there are additional cards at play. A mythology swirls around him, one to which he's contributed to by refusing to be pigeonholed, choosing relentless evasion. That adds to the fun of studying his recordings and trying to reinterpret them as you learn. How delicious is the esoteric, nonsequitir-laden "Tombstone Blues?"

Another point is tediously cliché but true nonetheless: Dylan's records are a viewfinder of a half century of American history. His songs and albums are part of our lexicon, musically, spiritually and even conversationally.

The album's covers reflect that growth and change. A then-recent photo of Dylan adorns many of them, his strong jaw line and pointed chin the only constants as his wardrobe mutates from Carnaby Street ruffian to a blues rocker with light-socket-shocked hair and so many more.

As Todd Haynes' imaginative I'm Not There movie did an exemplary job demonstrating, Dylan's story is fascinating because the well of incarnations runs so deep. Many can draw something from at least one of his shapeshifting portraits — the heartbroken Dylan, the cheesy '80s Dylan, the born-again Christian Dylan, the outlaw Dylan, the poet Dylan, the rock star Dylan, etc. He's had more faces than Joan Rivers.

These are characters that personify and reflect a part of us. There's richness in these covers. He's a naive, baby-faced dreamer on his self-titled 1962 debut. He and Suze Rotolo battle the cold of New York City and the future on The Freewheelin'  Bob Dylan. The original cover for Saved (seen at left), which evokes Michelangelo's work in the Sistine Chapel, screams that it's from his born-again phase. Down in the Groove says everything about where Dylan was in the '80s: A lone spotlight shines on him as he's strums, smushed to the edge of the frame against a black background, as though he hopes to disappear into it. Then there's that unenthused glower at the camera on "Love and Theft."

If 2006's Modern Times stands as his final studio offering — as he's hinted it might, but with Dylan, nothing is certain — even though he's not on the cover, it still speaks about its time. His name and the title are slanted over the top of a nighttime cityscape as a blurry car passes in the foreground, making Modern Times both a pun on the aged sound of its music as well as a critique of the fast pace of the information age in the early 21st centurty.

And he's still going. He turns 67 Saturday and 2009 would mark 50 years since his career began in earnest.

Gathering all 32 of his original studio offerings opens the door to this green pop culture valley. The joy is in studying its highs and lows, asking why and knowing you may never know the answer. It's a glimpse at one of the great recording artists of our time as well as American history. It's a feast for the mind, an intellectual crusade.

Now, with those thoughts in mind, it's time to go. If you need me, I'll be in the kitchen with the tombstone blues.

This Week, Nick Would Buy ... #24

Mason Jennings, In the Ever (Brushfire)

Mason Jennings' move to Jack Johnson's Brushfire Records was sort of an obvious one, seeing as how they're both laidback singer/songwriters from Hawaii.

Moving to Brushfire will give him exposure, much the same way being on the soundtrack to Bob Dylan biopic stew I'm Not There did last fall. Those little tastes of Jennings — who now resides in Minnesota, Dylan's home state — were lip-synched in the film by Christian Bale's Dylanesque character.

For a man who claims his favorite band is Led Zeppelin, he sounds nothing like it there. The I'm Not There tracks put him in a Johnson-like light, but a voice that doesn't have the relaxed vibe of a day at the beach.

Johnson drops by to help out on "I Love You and Buddha, Too," a song said to represent Jennings' thoughts on religion.

Time will tell if he's more than a Johnson soundalike protege, but I'm curious to see if he has more in him than a pair of empassioned Dylan covers.

If I Were Really Rich ...
— Foxboro Hot Tubs, Stop, Drop and Roll!!! (Reprise) — Green Day side project arrives in compact disc format.
— Scarlett Johansson, Anywhere I Lay My Head (Rhino) — Recently engaged movie star packages collection of Tom Waits covers with lone original. One guarantee without having heard a note — her voice will be smoother than Waits'.
— Mudhoney, The Lucky Ones (Sub Pop) — Perpetually overshadowed Seattle grunge/alternative band delivers its ninth album and third since returning to Sub Pop.
— Orchestra Baobab, Made in Dakar (Nonesuch) — One of Senegal's finest music exports, the band's album delivered last fall in merry old England arrives across the pond.

Others
— Another Black Day, Another Black Day (Beiler Bros.)
— Billy Boy Arnold, Billy Boy Arnold Sings Sonny Boy (Electro-Fi)
— The Black Lungs, Send Flowers (Dine Alone)
— Bun B, II Trill (Rap-a-Lot)
— James Carter, Present Tense (Emarcy)
— The Dresden Dolls, No, Virginia ... [B-sides compilation] (Roadrunner)
— The Explorers Club, Freedom Wind (Dead Oceans)
— Felix da Housecat, Global Underground: Milan (Global Underground)
— Flobots, Fight With Tools (Republic)
— Judy Garland, Judy Takes Broadway! With Friends [Re-issue, bonus tracks] (Savoy Jazz)
— Julianne Hough, Julianne Hough (Mercury Nashville)
— Joan of Arc, Boo! Human (Polyvinyl)
— George Jones, George Jones: The Hits — Then Till Now (Time Life)
— William Joseph, Beyond (Warner Bros.)
— Kings X, XV (Inside/Out)
— Sonny Landreth, From the Reach (Landfall)
— Jesse McCartney, Departure (Hollywood)
— John McLaughlin, Floating Point (Abstract Logix)
— Pat Metheny, Tokyo Day Trip [Live EP] (Nonesuch)
— Mudhoney, Superfuzz Bigmuff [Deluxe edition] (Sub Pop)
— The National, Skin a Night & The Virginia EP [DVD w/CD] (Beggar's Banquet)
— Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Greatest Hits [Bonus track] (Geffen)
— Donna Summer, Crayons (Burgundy)
— 3 Doors Down, 3 Doors Down (Republic)
— The Wedding Present, El Rey (Manifesto)
— John Williams, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull [Soundtrack score] (Concord)

This Week, Nick Would Buy ... #23

Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs (Atlantic)

Already part of an April Fool's prank and released inadvertently one week earlier on iTunes, Narrow Stairs promises to be a whole new Death Cab.

If lead single "I Will Possess Your Heart" is any indication, the pre-release media buzz is on track. A dissonant, swelling first few minutes final climax into a full-fledged track, finally winding down after 8 and a half minutes. It's the anti-"I Will Follow You Into the Dark," a whimsy folk reminiscese on Catholic school and death from 2005's Plans that scored a radio hit.

Though only two of the additional 10 tracks cross the 4-minute barrier, I'm curious to see to which boundaries Death Cab pushes its sound.

If I Were Really Rich ...
— Filter, Anthems for the Damned (Pulse) — Reunited industrial group is expected to eschew "Take a Picture"-like tunes in order to welcome harder rockers back to the fold.
— Old 97s, Blame it on Gravity (New West) — Dallas alt-country group issues seventh LP, first since appearing in "The Break Up" (Jennifer Aniston, Vince Vaughn).
— T-Bone Burnett, Tooth of Crime (Nonesuch) — Brains behind O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack issues soundtrack to a play.

Others
Joseph Arthur, Vagabond Skies [EP] (Lonely Astronaut)
Regina Belle, Love Forever Shines (Pendulum)
The Black Angels, Directions to See a Ghost (Light in the Attic)
Kerry Butler, Faith, Trust and Pixie Dust (P.S. Classics)
Ryan Cabrera, The Moon Under Water (Papa Joe)
Cherish, The Truth (Sho'nuff/Capitol)
Joe Cocker, Hymn for My Soul (Fantasy)
Deicide, Till Death Do Us Part (Earache)
Duffy, Rockferry (Mercury)
Bill Frisell, History, Mystery (Nonesuch)
David Gates, Falling in Love Again [Re-issue] (Wounded Bird)
Iron Maiden, Somewhere Back in Time: The Best of 1980-1989 (EMI)
Krimson Creek, Boondox (Psychopathic)
Local H, 12 Angry Months (Shout! Factory)
Jason Mraz, We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things (Atlantic)
Mark Selby, Nine Pound Hammer (BHM Productions)
Subtle, ExitingARM (Lex)
Keith Sweat, Just Me (Rhino)
10 Years, Division (Universal)

Another Free NIN Recording

You can download the new Nine Inch Nails album, The Slip, totally free. You have to enter a valid e-mail address, and getting the record does require a bit torrent client.

This comes just two months after NIN gave away the first EP of the all-instrumental Ghosts IV package for free.

This only furthers my belief that Trent Reznor is the man. See an earlier post on this thought.

These Little Piggies Didn’t Stay Home

Carl Sandburg was wrong.

They tell me Roger Waters is wicked and I believe them.

The rock musician has made a career out of being cruel to large, inflatable pigs.

Well, OK. I guess if you want to split hairs, he’s actually made a career out of being a former member of this psychedlic English rock band named Pink Floyd.

You know the cats — “Comfortably Numb,” “Wish You Were Here,” “Another Brick in the Wall” and that one album that syncs with “The Wizard of Oz.” You don’t need no education on that.

But it’s Waters, not Sandburg’s beloved Chicago, that proves to be the hog butcher for the world when puffed-up, plastic porcine is concerned.

This man has been an oversized pork menace dating all the way back to the ’70s. Where you’ve found Waters’ tour bus, you’ve found him setting helium-swelled swine loose into the heavens for their own rendition of “The Great Gig in the Sky.”

That’s why it was no surprise when one of his herd of flying oinkers was cut from its tether and sent skyward in Southern California during Waters’ recent set at Coachella Music Festival in Indio.

I didn’t understand the fuss at first. I suspected some in the Coachella audience were seeing pink animals dancing across the blue above for many hours before Waters took the stage. But then I reconsidered — though neither was truly in the flesh, elephants aren’t easily confused with pigs.

Furthermore, given Waters’ rap sheet for sailing swine is longer than all nine parts of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” he has a long-standing record of crafting oinkers for an airborn purpose.

But the newsmaking Coachella porker, unlike some of its predecessors, wasn’t supposed to leave its pen. In order to retrieve it, Waters and festival organizers offered $10,000 and four lifetime passes to the show for its return.

Three days after the festival closed, the bad news arrived: This little piggy bought the farm.

A pair of SoCal couples were the ones to carve up $10K. The large inflatable swine’s final resting place was torn in pieces at a nearby country club.

But if you’ve studied your Floyd properly, you’d know that pigs could fly. This was no oddity. Many oversized, plastic animals were hurt during the making of Waters’ concerts.

Maybe the first time he uncorked a porker into the heavens dates back to his days in Pig Floyd. Uh, I mean Pink Floyd.

During the shoot for the cover of 1977 album Animals — which depicts a pig flying between towers at the Battersea Power Station near London — the band hired a marksman to aim at Algie, the original piggy, if it escaped. But the oinker took too long to inflate on the first day of the shoot, so everyone came back the next day.

Everyone, that is, except for the marksman, who was only paid for one day of work.

So, the next day, sans sharpshooter, the band put the tethered piggy into the sky. Algie freed the moorings, took flight and baffled aircraft attempting to land at Heathrow Airport. After many hours in flight, the hog landed in Kent, around 60 miles away.

Fttingly, it fell on a farmer’s property.

There are many other reported instances of Waters’ pigs breaking free. After one left the Hollywood Bowl and drifted toward downtown Los Angeles in 2006, Waters was threatened with arrest.

Even after the Coachella incident, the former Pink Floyd member continues to deliberately dedicate pigs to an atmospheric demise. He loosed fresh hogs on the Houston and Dallas skylines last weekend.

Crafting oversized plastic swine to let loose into the air at a concert is so deliciously rebellious and intelligent. The symbolic imagery isn’t very subtle, but the result reminds me of the Project Mayhem concept from “Fight Club,” where the violent revolutionaries create chaos to screw with the system.

That’s what these pigs do. Disrupting air traffic at Heathrow? Infuriating LAPD cops? I’m being nonchalant about this, but, you know, sometimes futzing with “the order of things” is good. And if we can’t rely on rock ’n’ rollers to go out of their way and make a serious commitment to pork-related mayhem, who can we trust?

So I raise my goblet of rock to Mr. Waters and I say job well done, sir. Cheers, mate. Have a cigar.

Way to show up Carl Sandburg, you magnificient helium-swelled hog butcher for the world.

This Week, Nick Would Buy ... #22

Neil Diamond, Home Before Dark (Sony)

Would Nick actually buy this? I don't know.

It seems disingenuous to call this feature "Nick Would Buy" when I'm not sure I enjoy Neil Diamond enough to buy one of his records. (I can, however, croon along like so many Boston Red Sox fans to "Sweet Caroline.")

But let's ignore my moral quandary and cut to the meat — Diamond works again with jack-of-all-trades producer Rick Rubin. Their pairing catapulted Diamond's well-received 2005 record, 12 Days, to the No. 4 spot upon its release.

Diamond has been hitting the hot spots on the small screen lately, working with the "American Idol" hopefuls and performing "Sweet Caroline" on Jimmy Kimmel's show. But those things speak to his sales potential, not the record itself, which includes single "Pretty Amazing Grace" as well as "Another Day (That Time Forgot)," recorded with the Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines.

When he's on the highest-rated show in the country and a hip late-night program, well, it doesn't sound like Diamond needs my endorsement to help sell records anyway.

Others
— Mindi Abair, Stars (Peak)
— Clay Aiken, On My Way Here (RCA)
— Barenaked Ladies, Snack Time (Desperation)
— The Bellamy Brothers, Number One Hits (Curb)
— Dierks Bentley, Greatest Hits: Every Mile a Memory 2003-2008 (Capitol Nashville)
— Conejo, Dead End Gangster (Urban Kings)
— Elvis Costello & The Imposters, Momofuku [CD release] (Lost Highway)
— Gavin DeGraw, Gavin DeGraw (J)
— Michael Franti and Spearhead, Power to the Peaceful 2005 [CD/DVD] (Friday)
— From First to Last, From First to Last (Suretone)
— Josh Groban, Awake Live (WEA/Reprise/143)
— Toby Keith, 35 Biggest Hits (Show Dog/Mercury)
— King Crimson, The Collectable King Crimson, Vol. 3: Live (Inner Knot)
— The Last Shadow Puppets, Age of the Understatement (Domino)
— Johnny Mathis, A Night to Remember (Sony)
— Midnight Oil, Diesel and Dust [CD/DVD reissue] (Columbia)
— Luis Miguel, Complices (WEA)
— Millencolin, Machine 15 (Epitaph)
— Kelli O'Hara, Wonder in the World (Ghostlight)
— Tokio Hotel, Scream (Universal)

King and I

After eye-spying Stephen King's "My Real Top 20" list at the back of my newly arrived Entertainment Weekly, I was inspired to make a list of the same. So, here are the most-played songs on my iPod according to the play count feature. The numbers in paranthesis are the number of times the top 20 songs were played since the unfortunate TMI incident in November ...

20. Dave Matthews Band, "Shotgun" (22). Issued on a pre-order bonus disc for the Live at Piedmont Park album and film, this live cut of an as-yet-unreleased-in-studio-form track peddles through a quiet introduction and contemplative verse riff played on a veilette soprano guitar before building to showstopping wails. "Shotgun is for putting in your mouth, babe," chimes Matthews. Ain't nothin' "Mellow Show" about it, son.

19. Flogging Molly, "If I Ever Leave This World Alive" (22). Spooked out, laid back experiment shows tender side of SoCal Celtic punkers.

18. Radiohead, "House of Cards" (23). Haters be damned — this song is so irresistible, they played it on Conan. That little wheezing sound when Thom Yorke sings "And faaaall off the taaaable" slays me every time.

17. Pearl Jam, "Man of the Hour" (23). Reflective Big Fish soundtrack number shows the more we try to run away from being like our parents, the more we become them.

16. The Moldy Peaches, "Anyone Else but You" (23). There's just such a little-kid charm in Kimya Dawson's voice that conjures up the image of Ellen Page's naive strength in Juno.

15. The Mars Volta, "Asilos Magdalena" (23). One of two songs from the maligned Amputechture in the top 20, this one survives its psychedlic beginning before settling into a quiet, acoustic-guitar driven middle section. All sung in Spanish, the tune eventually breaks down into typical Volta-like weirdness.

14. Jim James and Calexico, "Goin' to Acapulco" (25). So good, it puts Dylan's Basement Tapes original to shame. And it's not even the best cover on this list.

13. Green Day, "Working Class Hero" (25). I've listened to this 25 times? It rechannels all of Lennon's verbal venom into the guitars without losing any credibility. And it's so befitting of Green Day's political pop/punk 21st century makeover.

12. The Fray, "How to Save a Life" (25). A little poppy for my usual fare, but it has a sweet spot. The biggest band to ever come out of my home state, Colorado, that sappy piano lick recalls my vacation in England last spring, when I heard the song on BBC1 and smiled at the symmetry — more Centennial Staters who made it to England at the same time.

11. Radiohead, "15 Step" (27). I've pissed people off by humming its catchy faux-disco beat.

10. My Morning Jacket, "The Way That He Sings" (29). Fried country rock flies to the Andromeda galaxy and back before getting to the speakers, a chamber of echo and reverb gliding on a graceful rural plane. "Why does my mind blow to bits every time they play that song?" Well said.

09. Kanye West, "Stronger" (30). 'Ye at his Spaceman Spiff-tacular best, even if I cringe every time I hear the un-P.C. "Well, I'd do anything for a blonde dyke." He redeems himself with the Nietzschian chorus and bumpin' beats courtesy of Daft Punk. If this don't get your booty movin', your booty must be dead.

08. Ziggy Marley, "True to Myself" (32). So much of music is so latently codependent that anything trumpeting the values of self-worth and self-reliance can become tantamount to a personal anthem.

07. My Morning Jacket, "Anytime" (33). The same group that traveled to Andromeda and brought back its take on country in No. 10 busts out its rock chops for this ode to failed communication. "Anytime is a good time to move on," emotes a nearly indecipherable Jim James. He also gives the material girl some praise before they chug into the four-alarm bridge: "What Madonna said really helped / She said boy you better learn to express yourself." Amateurs beware: This is cheesy in anyone else's hands.

06. The Mars Volta, "Viscera Eyes" (34). Half Spanish, half English, all balls-out rock. I've listened to it at least 100 times if we go back to the old iPod stats, and I'm still not sure I know for sure what it's about. "There is a venom in numerical lies / Your convalescent thorns / Are but a crown of magnets / They fold the shakes inside that third glass eye." Oh, neo-prog thesaurus rock, how I love you.

05. The Shins, "New Slang" (38). This is all Zack Braff's fault.

04. R.E.M., "Let Me In" (38). Entombed an impenetrable fortress of fuzzed out distortion is a call to the then-recently deceased Kurt Cobain, played on a custom-made guitar his widow gave the group. The eerie keyboard section enters with "I had a mind to try to stop you / Let me in. Let me in." Simply haunting.

03. Josh Ritter, "Thin Blue Flame" (38). It's so incredibly easy to invoke the name of a still-living Minnesotan singer/songwriter who's made a nearly 50-year career out of being a lyrical bad a**, but Ritter shows a gift for gab and imagery on this nearly 10-minute opus. Pianos crash and basses swell and "the whole world was looking to get drowned." You've gotta hear it to believe it.

02. Josh Ritter, "To the Dogs or Whoever" (42). Same artist, different flavor. This time, Ritter rattles off lyrics like a semi-automatic weapon, wrapping tropes about Joan or Arc and Casey Jones around a thunderous countrified stomp.

01. Iron & Wine, "Such Great Heights" (101). Though I do really love this version of The Postal Service's song, the number is quite skewed — I'd used Podworks to blast it off of the iPod before the big crash in November.

The best covers make you reinterpret the original. I&W's "Heights" takes all of the Postal Service's pulsing optimism and flops it on its head, making for a melancholic, meditative punch in the gut. You're almost reading the relationship from the original singer's doubtful significant other — "When you are out there on the road for several weeks of shows and when you scan the radio, I hope this song will guide you home" is a desperate plea to return instead of a reminder of love in Iron & Wine's hands. Reinterpretations rarely get better.