Let’s forget the gooey title of the piece, “Little Fountain Cafe: Sweet Love.” And let’s forget that the title doesn’t even make sense. The little restaurant specializes as the Place for a Dull First Date or the Place You Take Your Parents. As far as we know, it does not specialize in sweets or sweet love.

Let’s forget the odd use of italics, the problems with grammar, and this sentence: “Walking downstairs into the Café you pass by the little fountain, the centerpiece of the restaurant’s most private table, outside, below the chaos of 18th St., Jumbo Slice, and the maddening vehicular escapades of taxis hitting passersby, underage drunkards lining the street for a table at Tryst or gathering together for one last charge to Ben’s Chili Bowl where, inevitably, they will vomit while in line.”

Let’s forget the writer’s description of the place: “the Little Fountain Café resembles that of a sophisticated, older, wiser lover. We’re talking ‘Tell Me You Love Me’ passion here. There’s artwork you want to make love to; there’s food you can savor. It’s a night out that offers glimpses into why you choose to stay monogamous.” So, how does one fuck artwork?

And let’s forget the boilerplate run-down of the chow.

No, let’s linger on this one line–from the first graph no less–that just boggles: “Bono, Coldplay, Billy Joel, and smooth jazz covers by Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald enhance an already private affair.”

There’s a number of things wrong with this sentence. Can you help point out all the wrong?

I can start things off with the obvious: The writer’s belief that Billy Joel enhances anything.

Dear Sting,

I am in receipt today of a copy of your book, Lyrics by Sting, which was sent to me via your public-relations proxies at the Bantam Dell Publishing Group. I’m was quite struck by your efforts to not only create an index of first lines to all of your songs (”Free, free, set them free”; “Oh! Demolition, demolition”), but to write explanatory notes for many of them. I’m relieved to know that “So Lonely” is indeed about feeling lonely, that “Brand New Day” is about optimism, that the lyrics to “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” “weren’t trying to be coherent,” and that “Fields of Gold” is about the “inherently sexy” barley fields that surround the giant castle in which you live.

You tell so much of yourself! “Seeing a wild creature as beautiful as a fox always takes my breath away,” you write of one song. You explain that you were laying in a garden with your beloved and watching the skies when you thought of the key lines to “King of Pain”:

I turned to Trudie. “There’s a little black spot on the sun today.”

She waited expectantly, not really indulging the mood but tolerant.

“That’s my soul up there,” I added gratuitously.

Is there lead in the paint over at Castle Sumner, Sting? Just asking.

I guess I’m not entirely surprised that your book reveals you as a pretentious ass, but I confess I’m disappointed at how much your commentaries ruin your few good songs. “Message in a Bottle,” I learn, was helped to fruition by your dog. “He [the dog] would stare at me with that look of hopeless resignation dogs can have when they’re waiting for their walk in the park. Was it that hopeless look that provoked the idea of the island castaway and his bottle? I don’t know, but the song sounded like a hit the first time we played it.”

If you must continue writing songs, could please at least stop writing about how you wrote them? Thanks.

I was going to write a little rant about how I’ve been ignoring everybody’s favorite Coke-and-Gap pitchman, Common, for roughly a decade or so, but now might be the time to scrounge up a copy of Finding Forever, because he seems to be more of a darling than ever. (And those are just the Philly blogs.) Anyway, in the process of looking up the date for his show with Q-Tip at Love, I came across this image and text:

That text isn’t just accidentally wrong, it’s totally perplexing, until you realize it’s a headline for the text below: Q-Tip is on the soundtrack for NBA 2K8. As far as we know, though, he most certainly isn’t a “raper.”

As a fan of edited writing, I’m less enamored with blogging than most. Folks get upset when you talk in undemocratic terms, but I’m just not sure that good bloggers wouldn’t have become good print writers.

Which makes the self-mythologizing that much harder to stomach. For example, imagine an MSM type (or, since this is a music blog, a music critic) saying the following about himself:

“People need something to believe in. And if they can believe in you [blogger Gina Cooper], then they can believe in themselves.”

This quote comes from a less-than-cynical Washington Post review of Matt Bai’s new book about the netroots movement, The Argument.

Some have equated bloggers with the old pamphleteers, but, to me, this just seems like another incremental step in the constant churn of new technology. Nineteenth-century critics complained about the proliferation of newspapers in similar terms, as if too much opportunity meant that everyone would suddenly take up the pen.

Seems like you could say the same thing about a sporting goods store. Is the mass availability of golf clubs going to take anything away from someone who’s good enough to go pro?

Apparently few very people were scared away by the cost to see the Boss at the Verizon Center on Nov. 11. From Craigslist:

Date: 2007-09-21, 10:15AM EDT

A note to all brokers, scalpers, and other A-holes who sold out the Nov 11 show at the Verizon Center in less then 4 minutes on TicketMaster today:

F You!

For those of us who are actually fans of the music and wanted to see the show and now need to pay you huge fees for the tickets you bought with the sole intention of reselling:

I hope you all contact a slow, debilitating disease. Thanks a lot!

This morning, while pulling out a disc called Forest by Finnish quartet Circle, a post-everything rock band that is playing the Rock and Roll Hotel DC9 tomorrow night, I got to thinking: Why is it that bands keep printing “PLAY LOUD” (or some derivation) on their album sleeves? Perhaps it’s just the music I listen to, but I feel like I see this quite a bit.

Now, let’s assume that a band isn’t just following the herd and they think that their record sounds better loud than quiet or medium. Shouldn’t they just remix the thing? Having spent all that time and money making the record, wouldn’t they want it to sound good at any volume?

And, if they are just following the herd, why do bands still think that this is cool?

It seems to me that if you really wanted to distinguish yourself in this crowded, globalized music economy, you might boast something like “This music sounds AMAZING at any volume.”

BTW: Circle has a new album out now on Philadelphia’s No Quarter Records and it is called Katapult.

Yer MTV was actually pretty entertaining last night:

1. That indeed was Clipse standing behind Pharrell during the pregame show. Pusha T and Malice were nowhere to be found later, though. Sigh.
2. Mark Ronson should call his band the Neverending Formula.
3. Dave Grohl should curate a hardcore-and-metal version of All Tomorrow’s Parties.
4. Dr. Dre now has the physique of a superhero, skinny legs and all. Timbaland, on the other hand, is obviously taking workout tips from Aaron Neville.
5. Kanye West is probably still performing this morning, at top volume, in that room at the Palms, with a bunch of passed-out people littering the floor around him, still in their white slatted sunglasses.
6. I had no idea until last night that Pete Wentz is not the lead singer of Fall Out Boy. I am proud of this.
7. You could tell that Diddy was trying not to stare at Alicia Keys‘ butt. Her “Freedom” breakdown was nice, if a bit abrupt.
8. The rapper from Gym Class Heroes chugged a drink instead of giving an acceptance speech. Enjoy it, bro, because in a few years you’ll probably be working at Kinkos. Or hosting an MTV reality show. Same difference.
9. You know you are old when Justin Timberlake starts talking about getting old.
10. Is there a more boring R&B superstar than Rihanna? At least Chris Brown can do mad-crazy headstands. Wait, maybe Akon is more boring than Rihanna. Then again, maybe Amy Winehouse is more boring than all of them. And she didn’t even show up to prove it.

Bonus: It was genius to have Miss Teen South Carolina say the words “Wu Tang Clan.”

Cherkis‘ shout-out to Melody Records yesterday got me thinking about the venerable Dupont Circle shop. If you’ve been inside, or even passed by it, you know that it’s celebrating 30 years in business this summer.

In this era of iTunes, Limewire, and overall diminishing CD sales, that’s no small feat…especially for an independent record store. When I moved to Washington in 2001, in the District alone there were at least six locally owned stores–DCCD, Yoshitoshi, and two locations each of Olsson’s and Kemp Mill–that have closed in the years since. The entire life span of Revolution Records took place within that time. Even the Tower juggernaut has bitten the dust, and with the fire last week at the DJ Hut, its future is uncertain to say the least.

In contrast, Melody lives on and, indeed, thrives. It’s the only independent record store in this town where I’ve never been the only customer in the store. And its selection gets better all the time: Melody has always been known for its impressive world music sections, but it’s also constantly diversifying its rock, jazz, hip-hop, electronica, and even its folk sections.

Not that there aren’t great and long-lived stores in the area–Joe’s Record Paradise in Rockville and Orpheus Records in Clarendon immediately come to mind, among others–but within the city itself, where both the highest concentration of mom-and-pop shops and the highest turnover of those shops continues to be centered, it’s pretty impressive to see Melody weathering 30 years of ups and downs in the economy, the neighborhood, and the record business as a whole.

How do they do it?

Like most tech-savvy music fans in this age of aesthetically-pleasing-yet-flimsily-constructed electronic gadgets, I own an Apple iPod. And, as happens to many iPod owners, mine eventually broke.

I continue to hold no suspicion that the inevitable demise of my fourth-generation “click wheel” iPod had anything to do with the near-simultaneous release of Apple’s fifth-generation, full-color, video-capable iPod. I’m sure it was just a curious coincidence, and not some nefarious scheme on the part of Apple executives and manufacturers to give consumers that last push needed to keep them constantly upgrading their music technology. Yet I can’t quite bring myself to purchase the latest edition of Apple’s digital media player. Maybe it’s because my current iPod still works, kind of–as much as 25 percent of the time on a good day. Or perhaps it’s because I’m still paying my current one off. More likely it’s because I know that, by the time my brand-spanking-new fifth generation iPod (which was originally released in October of 2005) arrives at my doorstep, Apple will announce the upcoming release of its sixth-generation iPod. I imagine that one will have full pay-per-view-porn capabilities, and Lord knows I’m willing to wait it out for that much.

As a music fan on the go, however, this situation leaves me more than a little screwed. Without my iPod, how exactly am I going to be able to listen to Fugazi while taking the Metro? Like an Internet junkie contemplating what life used to be like before the World Wide Web was created, I scoured my brain trying to remember how I used to accomplish this ever-so-important task. Then it dawned on me–the Walkman. Perhaps you remember the Walkman? Many moons ago, that stack of unattended CDs collecting dust on your bookshelf used to serve a purpose. It’s hard to fathom but, once, society actually used the CDs themselves to listen to, as opposed to simply uploading the music onto iTunes before casting the CD into the ethereal void. (Trust me on this one. I looked it up on Wikipedia.) The Walkman allowed you to listen to your CDs outside of your own home–as you walked.

Let me tell you about my Sony S2 Sports Walkman, which I found in a long-forgotten cardboard box (along with a broken drum machine and a four-track tape recorder) in the back of my closet. In a pre-iPod society, the Sony S2 Sports Walkman was king. This sweet beauty had an ergonomic joystick that allowed you to play, pause, stop, and skip tracks—as well as control the volume—with only the thumb of the hand it was strapped to. It had a built-in FM/AM/TV/weather-band digital tuner with 51-station preset memory. It had a durable, water-resistant casing designed for active use. It was compatible with such digital musical formats as CD’s, CD-R’s , and CD-RW’s. It got close to 50 hours’ worth of playing time on only 2 AA batteries. And let’s not forget the “Skip-Free G-Protection” technology, which guarded you against music interruption while you jogged. (I’m not sure what the “G” in G-Protection was for, but I always assumed it was for “fucking amazinG.”)

I didn’t take me very long to fall back in love with my Sony S2 Sports Walkman. In fact, I’m starting to wonder why we ever parted in the first place. In many ways, the thing actually seems more convenient than an iPod–and it’s certainly more reliable. But it has become very apparent to me that the rest of you do not feel the same. I can feel your disapproval, your mockery, your hatred with every passing glance you cast at me and my Walkman. “Get with the times, loser,” one set of eyes says to me. “Where’d you get that thing, your mom’s attic?,” another set asks.

On the Metro, while rummaging through a stack of CDs in my messenger bag, I catch such a glance. Flustered, I drop a few CD cases to the ground; one CD pops out of the case and rolls a few feet down the isle. Someone snickers. My face red with embarrassment, I suddenly feel like the guy in the Pringles commercials. You know: the tubby schlub, sitting on a park bench with a bag of generic potato chips, who is covered in broken chip pieces and wearing a shirt with multiple grease stains while the rest of the chip-eating world dances by with cans of Pringles in in their hands and shit-eating grins on their faces?

Damn you and your superior chips. Damn you and your superior digital music players. My Sony S2 Sports Walkman and I are happy with each other. Can’t you all just leave us alone?

While doing research for a review of M.I.A.’s Kala, I was struck by all of the references to “Baltimore hip hop” and “Baltimore club beats” as influences on the new record. (Don’t believe me? Just Google “Kala” and “Baltimore.”)

Well, as it turns out, the only connection I could find is Baltimore’s Blaqstarr, who produces “The Turn” and whose “Hands Up, Thumbs Down” was reappropriated for “World Town”.

I’m going to chalk this up to the popularity of The Wire, and provide all of those who aren’t experts in Baltimore hip-hop with a link to a user-friendly Baltimore City Paper blog post on Baltimore hip-hop. Download this stuff and you’ll probably know more about the characteristics of Charm city’s native funk than most of the critics namechecking the stuff.