But the thing that had the most powerful effect on me and may be fundamental to the future of media is the reblog button on Tumblr.

It’s a simple idea really. And it’s been done before. But I don’t think its been done as well and as powerfully as it has been done in Tumblr.

You have to have a tumblog on Tumblr to be able to use the reblog button. Which limits its ubiquity and I think that should change. I hope it will.

But each and every form of media that is posted on tumblr - a quote from a book or an article, a song, a photo, a video – has a reblog button next to it (as long as you are logged in to tumblr). If you like something that you read, see, or hear, you simply click on the reblog button and you’ve added that to your tumblog.

I came across this photo the other day on didyouevernotice and was struck by the wonder in her face. I hit the reblog button immediately.

I’ve been blogging for almost five years now. And the vast majority of what is on my blog are things I’ve created or posted to the web. But that has changed with my tumblog. I find myself reblogging things all the time. I didn’t create them, I didn’t even post them to the web. In some traditional or conventional sense, they aren’t mine.

But when I reblog them, they become mine, or at least I am putting my stamp of approval on them. I like them enough to share them.

Reblogging harnesses the viral web to surface the most interesting media and make it discoverable for others. I would like to see the front page on tumblr feature the most reblogged items the way that digg and delicious/popular do. But instead of links to blog posts or news articles on the web, the most reblogged page would feature a smorgasbord of media in all of its glory.

We are in the midst of a cultural revolution in which the distribution system is moving from being controlled by the creators/funders of content to the consumers of content (the newcritics). When we are done, we will have a more efficient and higher quality media experience for everyone.

They reblog button is an important step in getting there and that is why it was the most powerful piece of media I came across in the past year.

Ben’s last two efforts, 2005’s Awake Is The New Sleep, and this year’s Ripe, are both wonderful records.

Our whole family showed up at the Blender Theater on 23rd St and Lex at 10pm last night to catch Ben live. We bumped into my friend Eliot who was there with his son and a friend. When the girls and Eliot’s crew were downstairs checking out the merch, Josh and The Gotham Gal and Eliot went backstage and Josh got to meet Ben. The Gotham Gal will surely have a photo of that up on her blog today.

It was the kind of small initimate show that I like best. It was Ben and one other musician, a guy who played electric guitar and piano. It was light, informal, and a lot of fun. Ben’s got a great sense of humor and was improvising all night.

A particularly funny episode happened when someone in the audience asked Ben where his friend Lars was. He said she was home in Brooklyn sick in bed. Then he whipped out his Blackberry (old style, 8300) and called Lars and talked to her and then put the phone on speakerphone and played a song for her. Great stuff. When the phone came out of his back pocket, Jessica said, “I am going to BBM him”. Too bad she doesn’t have his pin.

Anyway, my favorite tracks of the night, both off his new record, were “What would Jay-Z Do” and “Hungry”. So here are the studio versions in case you haven’t heard Ben before.

What Would Jay-Z Do? - Ben Lee - Ripe

Hungry - Ben Lee - Ripe

That dream ended in the Boston Garden in 1979 on the Live Rust tour. It was the greatest Neil Young show that I’ve ever experienced.

And so this morning, I woke up and put on Live Rust (via Rhapsody).

I love this record. It starts out with the folky stuff like Sugar Mountain, Comes A Time, and After The Goldrush. But it ends in killer fashion; Cortez, Cinnamon Girl, Hurricane, Hey Hey, and Tonight’s The Night.

I blogged about Cortez before and featured this awesome YouTube video. Neil was so good on that tour. That young skinny Neil in the punk hairdo playing killer solos on his Gibson Les Paul may be my favorite Neil and there are so many to choose from.

I suppose the dream came from my excitement over seeing Neil next month in upper manhattan at the United Palace Theater with Rod and Jay and possibly Jackson and friends. I hope he does that acoustic version of Powderfinger so my dream can come true.

Hey Hey My My - Neil Young - Live Rust

Powderfinger (acoustic) - Neil Young - Chrome Dreams

His new record, due out in early October, is called Magic. And he still has the magic. It’s a terrific record. Tom Watson emailed me this morning and said:

the thing feels like a sequel to his early stuff, written specifically for anybody who’s been along for the whole ride. And the band’s in great form.

Tom’s right. Magic takes from each of Bruce’s various periods.

Gypsy Biker reminds me of his real early stuff
The opening piano of Terry’s Song takes you back to Born To Run
I’ll Work For Your Love (the best song on the record) could have been on Darkness
Long Walk Home has the sound of The River
Magic would fit right in on Nebraska
Radio Nowhere has the guitar rock sound of Born In The USA
Livin’ In The Future makes me want to listen to The Rising
Click to listen to I’ll Work For Your Love

And then there is the song Jason posted about last night, Girls In Their Summer Clothes, which sounds like it could have been on The Rising, but also has something new that I haven’t heard in a Bruce song before.

It’s quite a piece of work for a man who will be 60 in a couple years. Now it could be, like The Stones’ Tattoo You, that Magic is a collection of outtakes that Bruce culled together in order to have a record to tour on this year. Somehow I doubt it.

There are a few weak songs on the record, but that’s par for the course in the day and age when artists feel compelled to put fourteen songs on a record. Born To Run had eight songs, Darkness and Nebraska had ten. I have a hard time thinking of a brilliant record, other than Exile, that has more than ten songs on it.

I am certain that any fan of Bruce is going to enjoy this record and many will put it up there along with his best. It’s a great listen. And it ends so well. The song is called Terry’s Song. He could have written about himself.

Just like when they built you brother, they broke the mold

Mick Taylor was a force in the studio, along with producer Jimmy Miller (another reason the Stones have only made one great record since the early 70s). But you have to listen to live recordings of The Stones in the Mick Taylor era to really hear what Mick Tyalor brought and what he took when he left.

My favorite bootleg from this period is a recording called The Brussels Affair recorded at a show in Brussels on October 17, 1973. My friend Andy Monfried (who I met blogging) sent it to me a year or two ago. I have listened to it regularly ever since, more often than any single Stones studio record.

This recording showcases Mick Taylor but it also captures Mick Jagger in classic form: “We’re going to get ‘eith up now and ‘e’s going to play a song called ‘appy.” The vocal work between Mick and Keith on Happy is terrific and the bluesy licks from Mick Taylor take the song up a gear.

But it is the version of Tumbling Dice that I just cannot get enough of. Everyone who knows me well knows that Exile On Main Street is my favorite record ever made. And you’d think that Tumbling Dice, being the single on that record, would be my favorite Stones song. Far from it. It’s not even in my top ten songs on Exile.

But the version of Tumbling Dice on Brussels Affair is one that I do love, and one that could not be on a studio record. There’s just too much soloing on it. The song starts off pretty much as it always does, but about two minutes into it Mick Jagger turns it over to Mick Taylor with the words “sugar pie”, and Taylor just takes over the song. Then Mick Jagger starts to get the crowd going with pleas that everyone needs a little help sometimes, and then Bobby Keys and Trevor Lawrence get their saxophones into it and the result is pure bliss (click on that link to hear the song).

From Tumbling Dice the Stones go into Heartbreaker, from the much maligned Goats Head Soup (this bootleg is from the Goat’s Head Soup tour). In my mind, Goats Head Soup was Jagger and Taylor’s record and Heartbreaker, maybe more than any other Stones song, is a Mick Taylor song. If you are a Goat’s Head Soup fan like me, you’ll also appreciate the super cool version of Dancing With Mr D on this bootleg.

The other song on this record that’s worth talking a bit about is You Can’t Always Get What You Want. By 1973, the Stones were doing a very different version of this song from the original recorded in 1969 and released on Let It Bleed–more horns, more bluesy riffs, more rock and roll. Mick Jagger actually wanted to release a record featuring live versions of earlier songs that had morphed as they played them live over and over. But contractual issues with Decca, the Stones previous record label, got in the way. In fact, Wikipedia suggests that the Stones actually recorded Brussels Affair with the intention to release it as a live record. There’s a lot of rumor and misinformation on this record on the Internet, but I don’t really care. I love listening to it.

So where can you get this record? Amazon has a listing for it, but I don’t see any sellers at the moment. You can listen to and buy most of the record on last.fm. I suspect that if you are into Bittorrent, you’ll find a torrent of this record on the Internet. And of course, I can send it to you just like Andy sent it to me.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a recurring feature we’re calling Deep Catalog, devoted to recorded music that is out of print or otherwise commercially unavailable. Readers interested in the high classical period of rock bootlegs should seek out Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry, Clinton Heylin’s loving portrait of the pre-MP3 era illicit rock trade. Heylin lists The Brussels Affair, together with the famous LiveR Than You’ll Ever Be (Oakland 1969) as being among the 100 greatest rock boots

I’ve listened every July 4th for the past three years and I hope to do it every July 4th from now on.

Let’s see, you get Curtis Mayfield, Walt Whitman (the man himself), Marvin Gaye, and John Kennedy. And a bunch more.

There’s really not much more to say.

Give it a listen.

I’ve been thinking of The Glimmer Twins and their whiskey rock period which in my mind spans three records; Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile On Main Street. Whiskey Rock is based in the roots music of the southern US and is raw, raunchy, and sometimes plain mean. Like a man drunk on whiskey and high on whatever. You don’t hear much whiskey rock these days. Maybe from My Morning Jacket now and then.

But there’s a new Whiskey Rock sound emanating from Nashville, TN in the form of the Followill clan; Caleb, Jared, Matthew, and Nathan. They are the Kings of Leon and they are also the kings of whiskey rock. They’ve made four records to date, the EP Holy Roller Novacaine, the debut LP Youth and Young Manhood, the new release Because of the Times, and the epic Aha Shake Heartbreak.

Aha Shake Heartbreak reminds me of Exile and that is high praise because Exile is to my mind the greatest rock and roll record every made. I can’t yet put Aha Shake in that camp because Exile has stood the test of time (35 years to be exact) and I’ve only beein listening to Aha Shake for the past six weeks. But in that six weeks, I have become obsessed by this record, this band, and this sound. It’s not new by any means, this boozy bluesy music been around for longer than I know.

But these boys (the oldest is 28 and the lead singer Caleb is only 25) have made it sound new, modern, current. My brother and his friend Tony Alva have been singing the “rock is dead” chorus and it’s starting to get inside my head. But music like the whiskey rock that Kings of Leon make pushes that chorus right back out. And I am going to find some of the clear vinyl LPs of Aha Shake Heartbreak and give it to them to push it out of their heads too!

I don’t know if Newcritics allows mp3 blogging so I’ll refrain. If you want to hear some of this music, take a visit to a blog post on my personal weblog that inspired this one and you’ll get two choice tracks from Aha Shake Heartbreak.

The plot of the movie is pretty basic. Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle’s characters (Charlie and Alan, respectively) were roommates and friends in dental school. After graduating, they lost touch with each other as they built practices and families. Charlie lost his entire family in Sept 11th. Alan sees him cruising down the street on his scooter several years later, rekindles their friendship, which leads to the crux of the story.

I suspect you all get where this story leads. It’s a good story and a good movie.

But what makes this movie even more moving (and it’s pretty moving, the Gotham Gal came close to flooding the theater) is the way two songs steal the show.

Charlie is a music fanatic. He plays drums in a punk band and collects vinyl. He walks around with Bose headphones on his head, pushing out reality in favor of the world he’s comfortable with.

And the two songs that he uses to push away reality at critical moments in the movie are:

Drive All Night by Bruce Springsteen

and

Love, Reign O’er Me by The Who

The version in the movie is the Pearl Jam version, but I prefer the original Who version, so that’s why I linked to it.

These two songs about the power of love and its protective and healing powers are central to the story and provide the musical backdrop to the climactic moments in the movie. They are powerful songs and I’ve been listening to both of them a lot since I saw the movie.

I don’t think I’ll ever hear Drive All Night again without thinking of Charlie and his Bose headphones. And that’s OK with me.

The Lefsetz post really isn’t about radio, it’s about how to market music in the world we live in today. And Bob argues that breaking a band on radio is the worst thing you can do if you want a long career. I totally agree with Bob. Radio isn’t where discovery happens in today’s world. It happens largely on the Net. But I also agree with Bob that radio is still the place to go if you want to hear popular music. As Bob says:

In other words, radio comes last. It’s the icing on the cake. It’s the victory lap. It’s the seal on stardom. IT’S NO LONGER THE BEGINNING!

I turned on WEHM yesterday morning when I could have played any one of thousands of records we have in our digital music system, or when I could have played any of one the millions of songs available on Rhapsody, or when I could have played neighbor radio from last.fm or popular tracks from the hypemachine. I did it because I felt like listening to WEHM.

WEHM has a vibe. It’s laid back, it’s mostly well worn music you love. It’s got a beachy thing because its east hampton long island. And there are artists that get played on WEHM that don’t get much play elsewhere. In a nutshell, when you tune into WEHM, you know what you are going to get. And it delivered for me yesterday morning.

Later on in our car headed uptown, we could have listened to our iPod. In fact, Josh and I were doing that earlier in the morning going to and from basketball practice (Tapes N Tapes - The Loon - great record). But heading uptown, The Gotham Gal and I had on WFUV and heard a great run of songs we know and love.

I agree with Bob. Radio isn’t breaking any new ground these days. I’ll go to the hypemachine and last.fm to discover new music. But when you want to sit back and listen to music you know and love, you still can’t beat radio.

Why Don’t You All FFFFade Away
And Don’t Try To Dig What We All SSSay

I laughed. That song wasn’t even the rallying cry of my generation. But I sang it that way too. So we decided to listen to The Who compilation, The Ultimate Collection, and ended an excellent hour of listening pleasure singing at the top of our lungs: “Teenage Wasteland, They’re All Wasted!”

I am never sure if I am corrupting my kids or giving them a gift. Maybe it’s a little of both. But as far as I can tell, the kids are alright.

The fact is rock and roll, the rebellious protest music of the generation that was born at the start of the post world war II baby boom, has morphed into exactly the opposite. It’s a shared cultural experience for parents and kids.

We go to concerts together, we send each other links to new music, we debate the merits of the new Shins record, and we host our own School Of Rock (we call it band practice) in our home every Friday afternoon for Josh and his Four Fellas.

And it’s been working. The gulf between parents and teenage kids surely exists in our home. But that gulf is a lot smaller than it could be. When the kids don’t want to talk about what happened at school, or their love lives (or lack thereof), or what they plan to do on the weekend, we can always talk about the music that’s constantly playing in our kitchen. We can debate what comes on next. We can ask them to play us something new. And they never fail to put on something good. We’ve taught them well.

It may well be that rock music isn’t as interesting or good as it used to be. That’s the view of my brother Jackson, his buddy Tony Alva (both are pen names) and the irascible Bob Lefsetz. They say that it’s all derivative. Nothing good has been done since that early 90s. It’s not rebel music anymore. That it’s not a life changing experience. So be it.

I like it this way when I can dig what the kids all say.