Alex Chilton died of a heart attack today, at a too-young 59 years of age. While it’s sad, it’s not too surprising. I’d already written an obit about him five years ago, when he went missing in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

I still never travel far without a little Big Star.

It turns out maintaining a blog while taking on increasing responsibilities at work and trying to finish my Masters degree and trying to maintain some semblance of a personal life is a bit tricky. Plus, I think Facebook statuses suck up an alarming amount of my wit (or potential wit). But before I throw in the towel and start a Twitter, I’m going to try my hand at one of those lazy Larry King round-ups of commentary, reviews and “observations.” (Actually, I’ve never really seen a full installment of Mr. Suspenders’ program, so I’m really just aping those even lazier parodic send-ups of Larry King.) Either these are placeholders for bigger, better posts or else they are the aborted remains of very promising ideas.

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There’s a certain poignancy in that moment of steeling oneself at the front door for a charging dog who will never again slam his 90 pound body into your knees. Or how a leash, brush and bowl in a plastic supermarket bag can require the same negotiation as a chest full of heirloom jewels at the reading of a will. And when does dropping little bits of food on the ground cease being nice, and start being rude?

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Upon third listening, the new Spoon record (a sleeper, like all others before it) sounds like a new, incredible advance. Like many of “Transference’s” reviewers, I’m attracted by the idea of Britt Daniel & Co. fully embracing the bombast that they have spent four successive records stripping to the bone. But the more that the band breaks down their songs to the most spare and elemental, the more I enjoy following them on their journey. I’m ready for their next record, comprising the sounds of Daniels’ pencil scratching paper while Jim Eno tunes his snare.

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How hard is it to find a good coffee table?! I realize that furniture is particularly subjective to taste (and there are few people more particular than me), but sheesh. If it’s not one thing, it’s the color. Black, for the record, is not tobacco, not coffee and certainly not mahogany. It seems like everything out there alternates between the extremely baroque or the post-post-modern. Gahd forbid you want to protect the wood finish with a little bit of glass. Oh, no. If you want a glass-top coffee table, the glass will be held aloft by skinny angular metal, positive vibes and pixie dust.

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Having as many obituaries on my site as I do, I’ve grown accustomed to estranged friends of the deceased learning the bad news by stumbling upon my blarg via Gooooooogle searches. It is somewhat dispiriting to see how long it can take before a good college buddy, former comrade or ex-girlfriend decides to investigate a bounced email or missing Christmas card. The responses to one particular comrade’s death (no names, comrades) are notable for their extreme sadness and their extreme tardiness. Did he make deep, profound connections with his friends and then retreat into his own private world? Am I doomed to do the same?

I’m reminded of the outlaw country singer / mystery writer Kinky Friedman, who writes of his shared fear of dying in his apartment and being devoured by his hungry cat before anyone notices. In his novels, Kinky writes of the “M.I.T. System.” The idea is quite simple. “M.I.T.” stands for Man In Trouble, and the point is to establish a reciprocal understanding with a friend that every few days each will call the other and say nothing more than, “M.I.T., M.I.T., M.I.T.” (Because, really, who wants to force small talk every two or three days?) If you don’t receive an “M.I.T.” call from your friend after three days, convince his Super to let you into the apartment to search for his half-eaten corpse and lay some kibble out for the ravenous cat.

I’ve made “M.I.T.” arrangements with a handful of friends over the years and, come to think of it, I have not received a “M.I.T.” call from any of them, nor they from I, in a long while. Better start Goooooogling.

Can rock music ever go back to the days of “headphone records,” gatefold albums, mysterious liner notes and fans creating their own image of the band in their minds? Music video did much to kill the radio star, by presenting a carefully screened image for mass consumption…but Ed Sullivan started it all rolling downhill and Marty Scorsese might have reached the nadir with what might otherwise be considered the absolute zenith of rock-n-roll cinema, “The Last Waltz.” His sumptuous concert doc made high art out of simple musical performance, and enshrined the legacy (well, a particular version of it, anyway) of an erstwhile relatively-anonymous, workman-like group of musical superstars, the Band.

That simple, partly-modest, partly-conceited monicker underscores the extent that, without a pre-chosen image foisted upon the listener, this band could be whatever you choose. They first rocketed by prominence in 1968, playing on a plain white slab of modified petroleum product – a bootleg called “The Great White Wonder” – that purported to document some of what the mysterious Bob Dylan had been up to in Woodstock since his motorcycle accident. Before that they had been an anonymous touring band on the Canadian rockabilly circuit, before before being booed around the world supporting Dylan’s wee electric experiment. After that, they were on the cover of “Time” magazine (albeit, in a sketchy line drawing that still left much to the imagination) and on the top of the pops (and Ed Sullivan, too!).

The Band were a true ensemble. Three singers, four multi-instrumentalists, one wicked guitar player. Five members total. Two of the singers played the drums (one alternated between the skins and his piano, the other, a mandolin). Listening to the records, without visual aid, it’s easy to imagine all the permutations and guess who’s singing and who’s playing what. Scorsese’s version of the Band presents guitarist Robbie Robertson as the clear leader of the band, an articulate intellectual and philosopher of rock music and the star of many a close-up. Camera pans make out raspy-throated drummer/singer/mandolin-player Levon Helm to be the main singer, while boyish bassist Rick Danko takes a few cameo turns on vocals. Weird, mysterious Garth Hudson gets a bit wonky on his synthesizers, while additional drummer/pianist Richard Manuel seems like a sideman. The camera loves Robbie, and he tells all the best stories (even if they’re not his), while Levon Helm seems the most “homespun” (the Arkansawyer is the only actual American in the “Americana” band).

Helm’s autobiography, “This Wheel’s On Fire” (co-written with Stephen Davis), is a welcome corrective to Scorsese’s “print the legend” version of the Band. First, of course, is the fact that Helm had been the technical leader of the band (at least, as far as the musician’s union was concerned) during their Canadian rockabilly days, and the one who brought them their independence from founder Ronnie Hawkins. Not to mention that he was the one, after Dylan had recruited him and Robertson to fill out his first post-Newport electric rock band (in Forest Hills, hell yeah!), convinced Dylan to hire the entire Band (then known as Levon and the Hawks).

More important corrections to the legend apply to bandmates. Garth Hudson, as hinted at in “The Last Waltz” by the anecdote that the other members had to pay him additional money as a musical tutor (in their pre-salad days), was the true musical director of the band (especially the expanded “Last Waltz” band with its strings and horns). And poor Richard Manuel, who goes mostly overlooked by Scorsese’s cameras, is the Band’s main voice and true heart and soul. The troubled Manuel, who suffered from substance abuse and ultimately took his own life while on the road with the Band, actually sang lead on the lion’s share of the Band’s songs. The way that Scorsese placed the cameras – and given the listener’s ability to create one’s one mental image when listening to the other records – one (and I mean me) could be forgiven for thinking that most of those songs were being sung by Helm or Danko in a higher register than usual.

Although Helm is clearly very critical of Robertson’s role in the demise and subsequent legend of “The Last Waltz,” the author attempts to remain somewhat magnanimous and notes Robertson’s many contributions, both musical and of leadership. However, any criticism must be tempered slightly by the potential of “sour grapes” and the fact that Helm had ceded his own leadership of the Band by abandoning them while on Dylan’s legendary/disastrous 1966 tour of England when the booing of the folk purists became too much for him. By the time he returned to Woodstock, midway through the Basement Tapes period, band dynamics had obviously changed.

Still, Helm avoids actual bitterness until the afterword written for “Wheel’s” 2000 reprint edition, when mourning the death of Rick Danko years of age. Helm attributes Danko’s death at the relatively young age of 56 to a life of “hard work” and bitterly notes that Danko died with his money (royalties from “The Last Waltz” and other recordings) in Robbie Robertson’s pocket.

Michael Azerrad’s excellent collection of 13 micro-biogrophies of beloved 80′s indie bands is a love letter to the era when pop culture began to fragment into mini-mass media of fanzines, underground rock clubs and vanity record labels. Cribbed from a Minutemen lyrics, Azerrad’s book, “Our Band Could Be Your Life” fleshes out the notion of gaining inspiration, principles and encouragement by the songs from some obscure band that your parents and most of your classmates never heard of.

Teh internets have exacerbated this tendency towards fragmentation. It is regrettable, to some extent, that there can never be another Beatles to saunter across (the equivalent of) Ed Sullivan’s stage and capture the hearts and imaginations of an entire nation in two and a half minutes. But it is perhaps better to have the Replacements, whose music feels more personal due to their underdog cult status, and whose “Let it Be” far outshines the sorry first record to share that name (made famous by its teevee and film pedigree).

Focused on the SST record label, Azerrad’s book has a clear narrative guiding it, despite its scattered vignette structure. It starts with Southern California’s Black Flag, who spearheaded not just America’s hardcore punk scene, but a network of record labels and concert venues (VFW halls, people’s basements and the occasional Actual Night Club), and follows the story as labelmates The Minutemen and Husker Du push against hardcore’s rigid boundaries, while east coast contemporaries Minor Threat aided in rigidly defining hardcore’s boundaries before leaving the scene behind.

Ian McKaye’s musical progress away from hardcore’s stifling “loud fast rules” while strictly adhering to a non-conformist independence from Corporate America, mass media and liquor provides “Your Band” with its most compelling narrative, as well as its most trenchant observation, courtesy of McKaye’s Fugazi bandmate Guy Picciotto:

“PEOPLE ARE LIVING IN THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED, YOUR PARENTS HAVE TAKEN ALL THE DRUGS THEY CAN TAKE, YOU’VE HAD THE 70′S, YOU HAD HEAVY METAL – GET WITH IT, IT’S OVER WITH, WAKE UP. KIDS ARE LIVING RE-RUNS, THE SAME CRAP OVER AND OVER AND THEIR MINDS GET CLOSED TIGHTER AND TIGHTER, IT’S SUCH A WASTE.”

I missed hardcore, so 80′s indie was all about the Replacements for me (and REM, but they’re not indie enough for Azerrad). Other acts feted by Azerrad (such as Big Black and the Butthole Surfers) were familiar to me by reputation, but no one had made such a compelling case to purchase “Hairway to Steven” or “Songs About Fucking” until this book. Perhaps these bands, too, could be my life.

Finally watching Julian Temple’s revisionist Sex Pistols documentary, “The Filth and the Fury,” I get the feeling that perhaps I wasn’t cheated after all. Like many 15-year-olds, the Sex Pistols for me were a gateway to new rebellion and new friends. I bought every officially released note of music and a goodly amount of bootlegs, eagerly read every book or article I could about them and sought out every interview I could with John Lydon, as he was legally obligated to call himself back then. (In fact, I was tuning in to W-DRE for an interview with Lydon on the occasion of the publication of his new memoir when I learned of Kurt Cobain’s suicide.)

The Pistols had the kind of attitude that only a 15-year-old could love. Spitting, sneering swagger. Vague contempt for authority (who? why?). Non-conformist and no respect for rock-n-roll as an “Institution.”

And then you grow up, and you start to think that instead of being some kind of truth-telling iconoclastic leader, that maybe John Lydon (nee Rotten) is a wee bit autistic and just generally a prick. And perhaps a bunch of nabobs wearing identical black leather jackets and purple mohawks are victims of the worst kind of conformity. And perhaps rebellion requires a specific target and grievance. And, worst of all, perhaps punk rock, as ritualistic rebellion against record labels and Elvis Presley has become a kind of institution itself. And then the Sex Pistols regroup for a couple of cash-in nostalgia tours, and you put away your Pistols records for fifteen years or so.

Well, the music still packs a punch. And Lydon can still focus his withering rage with a laser-like focus (if only Temple could more specifically place the Pistols and the punk rock movement in their particular geopolitical moment). But, mostly, “The Filth and the Fury” finds surprising pathos in the pathetic story of John Simon Ritchie (nee Sid Vicious). Throughout the film, Temple weaves in an interview with Vicious recorded after the Pistols breakup but before his New York adventures. With a stupid bloody scab on his face, Vicious comes across as both a pathetic junky and the scared little kid (he couldn’t have been more than 19-years-old). He just seems so tragically overwhelmed by circumstances. The poor kid can’t even manage a poker face, a facade or even a no comment. Instead, he plainly and meekly complains that he doesn’t want to be a junky all his life, and describes in excruciating detail the pain of junk withdrawal. Elsewhere, some prescient videographer documents, the uneasy co-dependent co-existence he shared with groupie/murder victim Nancy Spungeon. If the tears that John Lydon chokes back in remembrance (far more effectively recorded in the shadows than if Temple had focused a spotlight) don’t get you choked up, then maybe you’re as black-hearted as the film’s villain, Malcolm McClaren, who profited from Sid’s pathetic end.

The film was good enough that it inspired me to rip my old Pistols CDs onto my digital audio player (no brand names, comrades). Would that someone would do for Nirvana for today’s 15-year-olds, fifteen years hence.

Eels frontman, E., has long mined personal tragedy to make uplifting art. Starting with 1997′s beautiful “Electro-Shock Blues,” a visceral elegy to the twin tragedies of his sister’s suicide and his mother’s death from cancer (events that occurred within months of his scoring his first big hit with “Novocain for the Soul”), and culminating with 2006′s sprawling “Blinking Lights (And Other Revelations),” E has incorporated his family biography into his music. But in the last two years, the erstwhile Mark Oliver Everett has gotten explicitly autobiographical. First, he hosted a documentary, which aired in the U.S. on PBS’ “Nova,” about his troubled genius of a father, Hugh Everett III, who directly challenged Niels Bohr with his “many worlds” theory and was crushed, professionally and spiritually, as a result. Finally, E published a sprightly memoir, “Things The Grandchildren Should Know,” late last year.

The book reveals Everett as a memoirist on par with Sedaris and as a smart ass philisopher who could hold his own with Vonnegut. The Vonnegut comparison is particularly apt. All that’s missing is the “So it goes” refrain as death compounds death. The tragic slow decline of his older sister is well-worn territory, but brings extra poignancy to both the book and the earlier eels LPs, while his bizarro accounts of a mad scientist father who spoke not more than a dozen sentences to his son during his life would be too fantastical, if it were not corroborated by the “Parallel Lives” documentary. Meanwhile, a beloved dg is put to sleep (so it goes), a ghost-watching neighbor unexpectedly passes (so it goes), a beloved roadie OD’s on heroin after a joke made in bad taste (so it goes) and a cousin is a flight attendant on the airplane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11 — probably into the side of the building where Everett’s dad once worked (so it goes and goes and goes).

There is a certain lump-in-the-throat quality to E’s memoir that is nicely cut with sweet reminiscences, plain-spoken confessions and good old fashioned piss and vinegar. There are few rock-n-rollers today who are as vital or as relevant as Everett. Would he to publish the Vol. 2 of his “Chronicles.” In the meantime, we can rejoice in the impending release of his first album of new material in four years, “Hombre Loco” (due out June 2nd).

With the departure of Isobel Campbell and a turn towards straight-forward power pop, Belle and Sebstian morphed into a new band earlier in the decade. This was not a totally unwelcome development, as the genre is desperately in need of a savior and the band’s “Dear Catastrophe Waitress” and “The Life Pursuit” were two of the best releases in recent years. And, yet, we lost a delightfully idiosyncratic voice in the old B&S. Matador Records reminds of of what was lost in their recent releases of Belle’s sloppy seconds (to paint a vulgar picture).

2006′s sprawling collection of odds and sods, “Push Barman To Open Old Wounds,” consisted of more highlights than some of the band’s official LPs and paved the way for their new collection of BBC sessions. Most bands take advantage of the Beeb’s generous compensation package to pad their numbers and add back-up session players. Belle and Sebastian, already known for the expansive sound of their rock-n-roll chamber music choose an oddly pared down sound on these tracks, as if to prove they could take their music out of the studio and on the road. The collection includes four songs from 2001 that mark the transition from their earlier twee period to the later power pop years. Alas, they are no great revelation.

“The BBC Sessions” comes packaged as a two-disc set, although a sticker on the cover warns that the second disc, a live Belfast concert recording from 2001, is a “limited edition.” In front of a live audience, the band seems to come alive in ways John Peel could only dream of. You’d feel pretty good too if you could get a stadium of fans to sing along about “a girl next door who’s famous for showing her chest.” Covers include the Beatles, Velvet Underground and local heroes Thin Lizzy, whose “The Boys Are Back In Town” is a clear highlight, but in Belfast that’s a bit like singing the “Star Spangled Banner” and being surprised that people stand and remove their caps.

Finally getting their due after a generation and a half of younger bands cashed in on their legacy, the Replacements are in the midst of the rock-n-roll equivalent of a Presidential exploratory committee for a reunion tour. First came Jim Walsh’s adoring biography, and now the Mats’ early funny records get the deluxe treatment from Rhino records, re-mastered and fleshed out with bonus tracks.

The Replacements’ later years on a major label were marked by disappointment, as each effort to turn their next record into a “Great Rock Statement” missed the mark, making the out-takes and B-sides an essential part of the band’s narrative. Their indie years, on the other hand, were marked by a constant maturation and growth that culminated in as perfect a record as any band has ever committed to modified petroleum product, 1984′s “Let It Be.” Consequently, the bonus tracks are the usual mix of covers (“20th Century Boy”), demos (a more vulnerable sounding “Sixteen Blue” and a Westerberg solo “Answering Machine”) and excised tracks (“Temptation Eyes” and “Perfectly Lethal”) that add little to the record but a historical footnote and the slight satisfaction that there are better sounding versions of these songs than our muddy, 16th generation traded bootlegs.

It was on “Let It Be” that the band finally acquiesced and let lead singer Paul Westerberg load up the disc with four of the most beautiful fucked up ballads. On earlier records, these songs wound up as B-sides or home demos that were never fully realized. Now they are rightfully reclaim the spotlight, starting with “If Only You Were Lonely,” the cutesy, clumsy love-song left off of the band’s trash debut, “Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash,” but featured on 76.5% of all mixtapes made ever since. “If Only You Were Lonely” hinted at a wit and maturity that songs like “I Hate Music” and “Shutup” belied, but guitarist Bob Stinson hated it, and it was relegated to B-side status. The remainder of the bonus tracks on “Sorry Ma” indicate that “I Hate Music” was as witty as all four band members were willing to get on their first record.

“If You Get Married” was probably the next great ballad that the Replacements might have recorded, an elegiac ode to swinging bachelorhood and the dread of growing up, except that Westerberg never had the nerve to propose its inclusion on a record. Heretofore, its only known existence was a low-quality recording of a slightly inebriated live performance. On the newly-remastered “Stink,” “Married” turns up as a fully realized home demo — a lost classic. The rest of the short record is fleshed out with Hank Williams and Bill Haley covers, which, as far as I can tell have never gotten out of the vaults until now. It’s enough to make a fan misty to hear the Replacements wail on some classic in the studio at the height of their prowess, and for that reason and “If You Get Married,” “Stink” is the best value of the Replacements’ re-mastered discs.

“Hootenany” is a hoot. At the time of its release, it was the most stylistically diverse of the Replacements’ records. The bonus tracks continue in that freewheeling style. Two of those extra tracks are alternate versions of “Lovelines,” a first reading of the back pages of the Twin Cities’ favorite weekly alternative newspaper and a rambling rocker that steals the melody for the band’s smart ass entry into a Miller college band contest (“Keep your riches, give me a Budweiser,” our favorite weisenheimers shout). The highlight here, as on other records, is a Westerberg solo home demo, “Bad Worker,” in which our hero takes himself to task for being an otherly-motivated employee and a disappointment to his father.

A band as bootlegged as this is likely to leave a few key tracks off, but that seems an intentional tease for the boxed set that could follow (and the reunion tour to support it).

Ever since “Satellite Rides” failed to make them stars and lead singer Rhett Miller cut loose for a middling solo career, the Old 97s have reunited every four years to record a mellow studio album. Their latest, “Blame It On Gravity,” seems slight and easily dismissible, but so did their last long-player, “Drag It Up,” which turned out to be a real sleeper and is probably the Old 97s record that I listen to the most.

As can be expected from a band with multiple songwriters and a moonlighting lead singer, the sidemen deliver some of the best material here. In particular, bassist Murray Hammond, always one to take a star turn here and there, turns in a pair of crooning country ballads (Pick Hit: “The Color of a Lonely Heart Is Blue”) that serve to remind that the 97′s started out as the band that just might save country music. Otherwise, Miller steers the band towards power pop and VH1-style rock.

Rhett Miller remains a clever songwriter with a gift for wordplay and indelible characters, like the kid who “came from Pheonix in a borrowed VW Bug just to prove that he was on her like she was a drug” (“The Fool”) or the lothario who preys on “girls like you with your flip flop smiles and your big blue eyes on vacation” (“Dance With Me”). Most of these songs, particularly the slow burn of “The Easy Way” and the driving “Ride,” merely hint at the incredible power of this band live. Whatever else are “Blame it On Gravity’s” merits, at least it will put the Old 97s back on tour.

In the rock-n-roll hype that followed “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the UK had a brief “scene” that failed to take off. Dubbed the “new wave of the new wave,” it was compared to the summer of 1977 (although, doesn’t the N.M.E. compare everything to the Sex Pistols?) and lasted even shorter. The most prominent of the groups, S*M*A*S*H*, failed to make an impact when their only long player, “Self Abused,” landed on these shores. It can’t quite be called a cut out classic, because there probably weren’t copies pressed to put ‘em in the clearance bins. This was a pretty hard record to find in 1994, and I’m lucky to still have my copy.

S*M*A*S*H* was a tight power trio, with a hard rock sound, a heavy bottom and lots of great hooks, and oddly fascinating lyrics that leave you genuinely unsure if front-man E. Borrie was a dope of a genius.

The record certainly starts off compellingly, on “Revisited No. 5,” a bombastic heavy metal lament:

Back to where my friend died
Not to the scene of his ugly suicide
but to where he used to live
Just to have him back, anything I would give

This theme of personal tragedy is hinted at on several of the album’s tracks, including the poppy single, “Real Surreal,” whose chorus includes the line “I’m not sad and you’re not dead.” The mixing of anger, sadness and euphoria suggest a real writing talent, but other songs give pause. “Oh Ovary” and “Time” come across like clunky attempts at, like, way deep political philosophizing. Or they could be satirizing the glib liberalism of many rock stars. That Borrie has a sense of humor is confirmed by the oh-so-serious spoken-word bridge on the title track:

I open my mouth and like Chinese whispers
Michael Jackson’s going out with my kid sister
but I’m an only child
You believe what I’ve said?
You’ve been mislead!

Combine the profane with the profound and the pretend, add in references to David Attenborough, the Brontes and Barabas and you have an almost Dylanesque mix. Perhaps Borrie’s most telling line is “Bob Dylan sucks my dick or am I sick?” Partly, it’s a punk rock “kill your idols” statement (and fairly traditional, at that, for its selection of a 1960′s icon). But more than that, it’s a bid to be taken seriously even when acting the fool. It’s a wink to the audience, I like to think, to let you know that this band is as smart as you want them to be. It’s a pity that they so completely dropped off the face of the planet.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Megan Hustad laments the cultural decline of “the office phone call.” People prefer to use e-mail for petty confrontations and negotiations, and valuable diplomatic skills are lost and new employees lose the informal training that comes with eavesdropping on the boss. In my new fancy-pants position with my union, I’ve noticed that my phone calls to people at headquarters frequently go to voicemail, and that the responses come back via Blackberry.

This seems to be a weekend for hand-wringing and tut-tutting over the technological devolution of our social interactions. Elsewhere in the Times, Laura Holson notices that these kids today sure do like to send text messages, creating some kind of generation gap. Apparently. Meanwhile on livejournal (itself, a weird barrier to normal social interaction) a friend of mine protests the suddenly rigid tradition of getting into and out of relationships on Myspace, complete with the formal change of relationship status from “Single” to “In a Relationship” (or vice versa), a reshuffle of one’s “top friends” and gooey comments added or deleted from each other’s profiles. Funnily enough, another friend popped back up on Myspace this weekend after deleting her account some weeks ago. Her relationship status, I took note because this is the reason that we are on the Myspace to begin with, had changed to “Single.” Is this now a way of responding to a break-up? New hairdo, new city, new Myspace profile?

I’ve been listening to old Replacements records this weekend, after reading Jim Walsh’s spotty but genuinely exuberant book about the 80′s indie icons. Paul Westerberg has always been a preternaturally grumpy old man (one of the reasons I’ve always liked him) and he’s been complaining about the distance that technology puts between us since tape-recorded answering machine messages. On a beautiful, daring and angry love song that closes out a record full of them (1984′s “Let it Be”), Westerberg, accompanied only by his electric guitar, complains “How do you say I’m lonely to an answering machine?” The song ends with the flat declaration, “I HATE your answering machine,” and a fade-out refrain of “313, 212.” Those two numbers used to signify Detroit and New York City, but soon they won’t mean much of anything as “area” codes are allowed to roam the country along with the person who totes them around in a cellphone – another kind of virtual identity.

It’s a safe bet that Westerberg, if he’s paying attention, finds flirting on a Facebook wall or announcing a divorce via text message to be even more ridiculous than “I’m not here right now…” Still, it’s hard to imagine any songwriter finding pathos in being dropped from someone’s “top friends,” or sending a come-on that can’t help but read like a booty call via text message. I h8 ur txt msg? No thanks.

All in all, absinthe’s a bit of a disappointment. In case it escaped your attention, the green fairy, which has been illegal in the United States for most of the 20th century for its supposed hallucinogenic and psychopathic effects, is now legal. It turns out, in fact, that it’s been legal since Prohibition’s repeal but nobody noticed. Since that time, absinthe has been banned from the U.S. for containing a chemical compound that determined European importers have recently proven never existed in the wormwood-derived liqueur. So what of absinthe’s reputation for murder, mayhem and gothic artistic inspiration? Guilt by association, it turns out. It’s kinda like blaming bourbon for country music or Colt 45 for drive-by shootings.

That sober analysis takes much of the fun out of drinking absinthe, which can now be found in select liquor stores and bars in one of three brands, with more (supposedly) on the way. I’ve been sampling a bottle of the French Lucid today, which tastes like a mix of sambuca and liquid Tylenol. Forget Victorian romance, or Vincent Van Gogh’s missing ear, my favorite absinthe story can be found in Dave Van Ronk’s posthumous memoir, “The Mayor of MacDougal Street.” In the collection of anecdotes from NYC’s late-fifties folk scene, Van Ronk tells of some sailor friends who smuggled several dozen cases of absinthe out of Japan on the even of its prohibition there, hoping to make an underground score back home. When the mob wouldn’t touch it, the sailors were reduced to bartering their illicit booze for places to sleep. I’ll let comrade Van Ronk pick up the story:

As a general rule, I tried to avoid getting mixed up in this kind of convoluted skullduggery, but ever since I was a teenager, I had been reading about Lautrec and absinthe, Modigliani and absinthe, Swinburne and absinthe – naturally I was dying to find out about Van Ronk and absinthe. Also, there was the sheer joy of conspiracy for its own sake. What can I say? I have always been a hopeless romantic…

The next day my two smugglers dropped by Judy’s place, and over glasses of guess what, I got the discouraging word: my guy had bought a few cases for himself and his friends, but basically his position was, “Look – you know what it is and I know what it is, but nobody else ever heard of the stuff. Who are we going to sell it to?”

“Gee,” I said, “the Mafia sure is hard on honest crooks.”

By way of consolation, I took five more bottles off their hands. Hell, they were selling it cheaper than Irish Whiskey. For the next few weeks, the nabe was awash in absinthe. Everybody I knew must have picked up a few jugs. Then it was gone…

It must have been about ten years down the line that I happened to be doing a gig in Provincetown, and a publican in Wellfleet invited Paul Geremia (the world’s best blues guitarist and singer) and me to a high-class bash at his Victorian Gothic “cottage.” Paul and I were sitting there jamming, when our host approached us with two glasses of a familiar-looking opalescent fluid…

“I’ll bet you guys’ll never guess what this is,” our host said, as he handed me a glass.

I took a sip, ostentatiously rolled it around my tongue and replied, “It tastes very much like Japanese absinthe.”

“Jesus, how could you tell?”

I arched my eyebrows in my very best William F. Buckley imitation. “To the truly sophisticated palate,” I intoned, “there are no mysteries.”

Now, that is exactly the kind of absinthe experience I was hoping for! Not necessarily a hallucination, but at least some good old-fashioned conspiracy. But now that everything is twice as legal and half as fun, I can only hope that the humorless American commissars, who are supposedly seething at this subversion of their authority, will find a way to make absinthe illegal once again. Then my bottle of French absinthe would take on some illicit quality, and comrades could gather around my liquor cabinet for some rarified naughtiness. In the meantime, if you’re curious what all the fuss is about, but don’t want to shell out the big bucks for your own bottle, you’re welcome over to the Kew, comrade, to sample some of mine.

Todd Haynes’ new anti-biopic, “I’m Not There,” lives up to its hype as the perfect film distillation of the life and legend of Bob Dylan. The stories of six Dylan-like characters (played, among others, by a 13-year-old black boy, a British actress, Richard Gere and Batman) intertwine, and, naturally, nothing is revealed.

The soundtrack is fantastic, including covers by a who’s who of middle-aged alt-rock and a terrific selection of Dylan classics and overlooked gems like “Blind Willie McTell” and the early version of “Idiot Wind” that wound up on the cutting room floor for “Blood On The Tracks.” The title is taken from a heretofore unreleased “basement tapes” recording, one of those haunting songs that Dylan recorded in one take and perversely never touched again, much to the chagrin of us cultists. It turns up here in a re-mastered mix and Sonic Youth cover.

Cultists, the only folks who could properly enjoy two and a half hours of abstract Dylanology, will have a field day with character names, set decoration and other sly references to songs both popular and rare. The rest of the squares, like the couple sitting behind me who would not shut up, will content themselves by pointing out that Cate Blanchett’s insufferable-prick-era “Dylan,” Jude Quinn, “probably means the Rolling Stones,” when introducing Brian Jones as a member of “that cute little cover band.”

For many, the scenes that stretch hardest for credibility are Richard Gere as Billy the Kid-in-hiding, after escaping Pat Garrett’s bullet. For me, this is the most enjoyable part of the film. It’s a tribute and celebration of Dylan’s weird and wonderful “basement tapes” period; a tangled up mix of Americana from the Civil Way to the Dust Bowl, with circus freaks and outlaws and ostriches, that somehow makes sense of non-sensical lyrics like “pack up the meat, sweet” and “open the door, Homer.” It’s a visual delight for any true Dylan freak.

Radiohead have fired a shot across the bow of the record industry by making their upcoming record, “In Rainbows” available for download for any price that the consumer chooses. “No really, it’s up to you,” the band’s website reassures the fan who is unsure how much to pay for the download. The band’s use of the honor system has produced a cottage industry of articles predicting the End Of The Record Industry As We Know It (EOTRIAWKI) or confessing how much one paid for the download.

Apparently, one third of listeners paid nothing for the download. If the RIAA had their way, these people would be sued for $220,000. But, on average, fans have paid about $8 for a download that – like all records – could be had for free. Me, I paid one pound, 45 pence – about three American dollars. It’s more than I’ve ever paid for Radiohead’s music (a telltale sign of EOTRIAWKI). Perhaps I’ve been too turned off by their hype as the band that will kill guitars and rock-n-roll, but my entire Radiohead collection consisted of an illegal download of the song, “Karma Police” until now.

Lost in the hubbub is the fact that “In Rainbows” is a terrific record. The usually ponderous ballads featuring Thom Yorke’s wailing sound haunting and mesmerizing spaced out in between propulsive rockers like “Bodysnatchers” and “Jigsaw Falling Into Place.” Knowing this in advance, I’d have gladly paid eight dollars for the joy of owning the record.

Like some strange comet that irregularly circles our solar system, two great bands graced our record stores with the rare appearance of new records. The Mekons are perhaps my favorite band. I’ve written about them extensively here and in other places. An original summer of ’77 punk band – contemporaries of the Gang of Four – our comrades from Leeds released a string of good-on-paper singles and LPs, broke up, reunited to play benefit concerts for the striking miners, kick-started the alternative country scene with a trio of indie-released records, recorded some pretty terrific rock-n-roll anthems, got signed and dropped from more records labels than the Sex Pistols, been the shoulda-been, coulda-been, woulda-been saviors of rock music and then scattered across the globe to get on with their personal lives.

With the band spread across both hemispheres, from Hong Kong to London, New York to Chicago and San Francisco, and most members keeping busy with their own solo projects, “Natural,” their first record of new music in five years, sounds less like a rock album than an art project. Propelled by incessant chanting, the mesmerizing “Zeroes and Ones” is the hit of the record, a wonderful juxtaposition of English folk music and the digital world. The infectious refrains of “Dickie, Chalkie and Nobby” and “Give Me Wine or Money” stand out and would be welcome additions to the usual Mekons live set list. Thematically organized around the natural world (or, at least, a 19th century understanding of it), this mostly-acoustic record is not without its moments of catchy song-craft, but overall is a subdued and mostly forgettable affair.

Also returning after a five year hiatus (and rumored break-up) is Imperial Teen. Their new disc, “The Hair The TV The Baby & The Band,” is full of the breezy pop hooks and male-female harmonies that make their long silence between albums so regrettable. “Finger-lickin’ gum-smackin’ sass-talkin you know what” is how Will Schwartz describes the object of his admiration on the sexy “Sweet Potato,” but he could just as easily be describing his band (and may well be). The record’s a perfect summer treat.