Hearing Memphis, the debut album from Magic Kids made me nostalgic… not for the mid-60s sunshine heyday of bands like the Beach Boys, which is what I’m sure was their aspiration. No, it was for the mid-90s, when the first wave of kids formed bands after rooting through dad’s musty records and discovering… the Beach Boys et al.

That was a great time. There were those who took the elements that made the Beach Boys and orchestral rockers like the Left Banke and Millennium so special — soaring vocal harmonies, string-laden arrangements and chiming guitars — and built something on them. From Cardinal to Erik Voeks to early Pernice Brothers to the High Llamas, some great music was made.

But there was a lot of sub-par music made during that time as well by acts that knew these elements were hip, but couldn’t use them effectively or write songs sturdy enough to support them. The band that comes to mind first is Yum Yum. The band, essentially multi-instrumentalist Chris Holmes and pals, made the truly awful Dan Loves Patti in 1996. It was heavily hyped — one of the first of that genre’s albums to come out on a major label — and seemingly had all of the required elements.

But the songs were thin, the lyrics cloying and the arrangements overbearing. It was so bad that Holmes tried to pass it off a couple of years later as a tongue-in-cheek jab at something or other, to no avail.

Is it fair to equate Magic Kids with  Yum Yum? No, because this doesn’t feel like the final straw in a piling on that broke the bandwagon. These kids seem earnest and reverent. But like some of the lesser lights of that earlier (15 years ago!) movement, Magic Kids’ reach exceeds its grasp. The elements are here, but the songs are not. The true test of a good song in my mind is whether it can be carried off by a singer with an acoustic guitar. By that measure, few of these songs are good.

Unlike a lot of the worst of those earlier bands, however, made by people who seemed more interested in technical matters than in the feel and spirit of the songs that carried these constructions, bands like Magic Kids seem genuinely desirous of making great songs and great records. Given time to create something unique (or at least as unique as one can hope 45 years after the blueprint dried), they have proven to have the necessary tools to make it happen.

CONTEST: Leave a comment with your favorite Devo song and a bit about why, and on Friday, July 30,  I’ll randomly select one person who will win a brand-new copy of Devo’s new CD, Something for Everyone.

So, I’m going to see Devo for the first time on Saturday. For most people, that qualifier — “first time” — wouldn’t be necessary. Not because they had seen the band before, but because it would be obvious that they hadn’t. It’s not like saying, “I’m going to see ‘Star Wars’ for the first time.” It’s akin to saying, “I’m going to check out some avant garde absurdist theater for the first time.” That’s something not everyone can say.

At one time, seeing Devo was probably exactly like seeing avant garde absurdist theater. In the band’s earliest days, it was as much a performance art act as it was a rock band. Its theories about “de-evolution,” its emphasis on the visual as much as the aural and the entire presentation, made the enterprise an extra-musical experience.

Back when that was the case, two of my close friends were obsessed with Devo. They had every limited-edition 7″ single, had read every magazine article and, of course, had their own energy domes (those are the flower-pot hats for the uninitiated). I listened as they espoused the tenets behind the band and played its music. Some of it was catchy, but I was (and remain) more a fan of guitars than synthesizers, so it largely passed me by.

By the time Devo had its hit with 1980′s “Whip It,” the wheels were starting to come off creatively. One could say that Devo itself was de-evolving, its music regressing toward the same sort of bland pap against which it stood in sharp relief a just a year or two before. By the time of the band’s last two albums before what was effectively a two-decade split, all traces of that which had made the band interesting — its ideology and orthodoxy — had been shed in the pursuit of music pedestrian enough to appeal to the masses. This, of course, failed. To succeed, Devo needed to be strange enough to catch the public’s attention and overwhelm its aversion to anything outside the norm. Watered down Devo was simply oddball, and thus, unappealing.

Fast forward 20 years, and Devo is back. I was vaguely aware of the band’s return, having seen information about the focus groups it was conducting to select the songs for its new album, the appropriately named Something for Everybody. But it wasn’t until the band scheduled the tour in support of the record — including a stop in Des Moines, my hometown — that the band and the new album really popped onto my radar. After some not-so-gentle nudging from those longtime fanboy friends, I decided I should go with them to see the band at least once in my life. I probably know more about Devo and its music than any other non-fan in the world, and figured I should go all the way and experience it live.

A funny thing happened on the way to buying that ticket. I listened to the new album a handful of times, then went back and listened to the rest of the band’s back catalog. What did I find? First, the indoctrination from my friends in my youth took hold more deeply than I realized. I knew most of these songs, even the deep album cuts, even though I only ever owned one Devo album in my life (1984′s subpar Shout). Even more to the point, I liked some of them… quite a few of them, actually. Listening led to reading, and with the context and completeness afforded by 20-30 years of hindsight, I was hovering somewhere between interested and fascinated.

It wasn’t until listening to some mid-period R.E.M. today that I fully understood why. I got into R.E.M. as soon as I heard the band, entranced by the mystery, edginess and catchiness of the music. I remain a rabid fan and apologist (for everything but Around the Sun), but am certainly more fervent about the early work than what came later. Beyond the relative quality of the music from those two eras, I can chalk it up to two things: The sense of mystery in the early work, but also the sense of urgency. Yes, it was fun to listen to Michael Stipe through headphones again and again and try to discern what he was singing. But it was also bracing to put on this music and feel — even if I couldn’t have articulated it at the time — that these four guys had to get these songs out. They didn’t necessarily have a message to get out (that came later, with sometimes deleterious affect), but they simply needed to play, like a jogger chomping at the bit to hit the road the first sunny day after a blizzard.

For Devo, regardless of whether you bought the whole “de-evolution” argument (or if the members of the band truly did, for that matter), they made you believe that they did and that they were compelled to spread the word. All of the trappings threatened to overshadow the music, but taken as a package, it was entertaining and enlightening, and a hell of a lot more interesting that nearly everything else happening in 1978-82. When they lost that sense of urgency (or, in the parlance of the band itself, the “uncontrollable urge”) to communicate, and allowed it to be replaced with the desire to create product, things went south quickly.

With Something for Everybody, they are still in product-creation mode rather than compelled-to communicate mode (the title being the first giveaway), but there is enough of the latter in the mix to leaven the former. What they predicted two or three decades ago has come true, as any look at celebrity culture will prove, and now they’re here not to say “I told you so,” but, “OK, what do we do now and how can we capitalize?”

The result is the band’s best record since 1982′s Oh No, It’s Devo! We didn’t know how much we missed Devo, or more to the point, how much we needed them. Now that they’re back, I for one am finally ready to pay attention.

So, what seemed like an impossible one-off has now turned into a full U.S. tour as Guided by Voices’ “classic lineup” prepares for a 17-date coast-to-coast tour.

This all began when it was announced that the lineup — Robert Pollard, Mitch Mitchell, Tobin Sprout, Greg Demos and Kevin Fennell — would play the Matador Records 21st anniversary festival in Las Vegas the first weekend of October. Fans hoped that there would be more dates to follow. Pollard confirmed as much to the Dayton Daily News last week

Now, we have dates. Dubbed “The Hallway of Shatter-Proof Glass” tour (that’s a line from “Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory” from Bee Thousand, of course), it will find the band will perform songs from 1992-1996, focusing on the albums Propeller,  Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes and Under the Bushes, Under the Stars (not that I’m complaining, but no Vampire on Titus?)

On to the dates:

9/30 – East Side Drive, Austin, TX
with Times New Viking

10/3 – Pearl Theatre @ Palms Hotel, Las Vegas NV
Matador at Twenty-One Las Vegas

10/4 – Wiltern, Los Angeles CA
with Times New Viking

10/5 – Warfield, San Francisco CA
with Times New Viking

10/7 – Crystal Ballroom, Portland OR
with Times New Viking

10/9 – Showbox So Do, Seattle WA
with Times New Viking

10/12 – First Avenue, Minneapolis MN
with Times New Viking

10/13 – The Vic, Chicago IL
with Times New Viking

10/15 – Southgate House, Newport KY (Cincinnati)

10/16 – Outlands Live, Columbus OH

10/21 – 9:30 Club, Washington D.C.

10/22 – Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro NC

10/23 – Buckhead Theater, Atlanta GA

11/4 – Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
On NBC at 12:35/11:45C

11/5 – Paradise, Boston MA
with Blitzen Trapper

11/6 – Trocadero, Philadelphia PA
with Blitzen Trapper

11/7 – Terminal 5, NYC
with Blitzen Trapper

David Shields lost me with little more than this: “(!?)”

In his new book (and I use the term “his” loosely, as will become clear in a moment), he makes the case that fiction is dead, and that nonfiction, specifically something he calls the “lyric essay” is the new best way to communicate. In making his case, he decided to construct the book largely through the work of other people. More than half of the 618 numbered paragraphs in the book are drawn wholesale from other sources, and are thus the words of other people.

“A major focus of Reality Hunger is appropriation and plagiarism and what these terms mean,” he writes. “I can hardly treat the topic deeply without engaging in it.” What he wanted to do was to simply have these lifted bits intermingle with his own, without attribution. His publisher thought otherwise, and forced him to include a list of credits. He asks the reader to ignore this, even to cut these pages from the book. “Who owns the words? Who owns the music and the rest of culture? We do – all of us – thought not all of us know it yet,” he writes.

So, how did that blip of punctuation above derail his argument? In a chapter headed “reality,” he includes a bit about the Stevie Wonder Song “Fingertips – part 2,” and how it is so real because someone in the band yells out a question about what key the song is in. Thing is, this isn’t Shields’ sentiment, but that of John Mellencamp. The snippet felt out of place and not in Shields’ voice, so I looked it up and found the following credit: “John Mellencamp (!?)” I can only interpret the part after Mellencamp’s name as snark, as in, “can you believe this guy thought that deeply about something?” If the source of a comment truly didn’t matter, if Shields’ reappropriation the context in which it appeared was the only thing I needed, then why did Shields’ feel the need to add that little hipster wink to the credit? It’s because he wanted to communicate that he was cool enough to join you in your surprise that Mellencamp would utter something so, well, real. As such, the source does matter. It matters a great deal.

That is far from the only flaw here. Shields has crafted an extremely thought-provoking argument here that explores the notions of fiction, non-fiction and reality that had me rethinking many long-held beliefs. The problem is that he writes in the same sort of absolutes that I’m sure bug him about people against whom his views differ. In a section about appropriating parts of the culture to reassemble them and say something new, he writes, “Anything that exists in the culture is fair game to assimilate in to a new work, and having preexisting media of some kind in the new piece is thrilling in a way that ‘fiction’ can’t be.” He’s certainly entitled to such a view, but to state it so definitively, to say, in essence, that fiction can’t be thrilling, is just dead wrong.

And that is just one of many instances where Shields circles back around to make that same point. He can’t imagine writing fiction any more, and can’t bring himself to read it, either. Fine, but in doing so, he is cutting himself off from a lot of great new work. God forbid we allow fiction and non-fiction and whatever new style Shields deems worthy to coexist, to march in zigzagging parallels toward the future, each adding something to the culture and to people’s enjoyment of it. In stating things so emphatically, Shields has joined the disturbingly growing group of people who have found that stating anything with enough volume, bluster and lack of room for argument makes people listen to you. In this, he is no different from Bill O’Reilly or Jeff Jarvis or anyone else bold enough to declare “that” is dead and “this” is the only sensible way forward. Call it the dick move; if you’re a big enough dick about things, you’ll energize your base and those against you in enough volume to create the kind of tension between the two camps that ultimately solves nothing.

It’s too bad, because Shields is clearly on to something. His notions of appropriation and repurposing leave a lot of room for exploring new ways to make literature and other communicative media take a leap into uncharted, exciting new territory. Seeking a way to do with writing what hip hop has done with music is certainly a worthwhile pursuit. But while no one would deny that as exciting as new music forms can be, sometimes a guitar-bass-drums combo can scratch an itch in a way that nothing else can, Shields seems to suggest that his new way is the only way. That’s a ludicrous argument. It’s no surprise. A look at Shields bibliography shows some of his motivation. After three well-reviewed but commercially dead works of fiction, he found his niche writing non-fiction that was as much about himself as his putative subject. If his forays into fiction failed, why not declare the entire form dead?

Anyone falling for that argument would, of course, but cutting off their nose to spite their face, ignoring the work of innovative fiction writers like Jonathan Lethem, J. Robert Lennon and David Mitchell, who continue to, yes, thrill as they seek new forms. I’m glad Shields is out there doing what he does, much as I’m glad the above writers and thousands more continue doing what they do. Contrary to Shields argument, all are contributing mightily to our culture.

The headline up there comes with a caveat: I haven’t seen the physical product that resulted from the flurry of activity that resulted in 48 Hours magazine, but having monitored its progress over the two-day period this weekend and seeing thumbnails of the 60-page first issue (actually referred to as issue zero because of its beta-like status), I’m impressed. Impressed enough to shell out $10 for the pleasure of holding it in my hands.

Here’s how it worked: those behind 48 Hours announced a theme for the first issue on May 7. That theme was the rather appropriate “hustle.” writers, photographers and artists then had 28 hours to submit work, after which the editors and designers involved would use the remaining 20 hours to assemble selected pieces into a magazine.

Amazingly, given that things wrapped up on Sunday according to that schedule, the magazine went on sale today on Magcloud.com. According to the editors, they received 1,502 submissions, selecting work from 74 contributors to fill the 60 pages. The result looks well thought out, all the more so given the constraints under which they worked.

As interesting as this is as a singular experiment with technology-aided  flash publishing, the truly remarkable thing will be to see the projects that follow this example, inspired by what is possible when most of the barriers to entry are removed from the publishing world.

I had the pleasure last night of moderating a discussion between crime fiction writers Ed Gorman and Max Allan Collins. It was a fundraiser for the Iowa City Public Library, and each generously gave of his time to mingle with a few guests and then engage in a 90-minute conversation that touched on their writing, the publishing industry, favorite books, history and much, much more.

My goal for the evening was for these two long-time friends to forget that we were there and just talk. I got my wish, able to ask only a handful of questions before they took over and steered the conversation in myriad interesting directions. The audience also got into the act, asking questions that poked and prodded, allowing the two writers to elaborate and expand upon their thoughts and ideas.

I knew my job as moderator would be a challenge right from the outset. I had written an introduction that seemed too formal once we started, but I soldiered on. In an indication of the freewheeling tone to follow, I didn’t make it far before an interjection. I started, “When faced with the daunting task of introducing two writers with the vast back catalogs and accomplishments of these two, I started by making lists of everything they have done. I quickly realized that this would leave no time for them to actually have a chance to speak, so I changed course, deciding instead to list what they haven’t done.”

My punchline was to say that neither had written a romance novel. Collins’ wife, writer Barbara, showed why she’s a published novelist and I’m a blogger. Without missing a beat, she followed my “what they haven’t done” with “the dishes.” That elicited a laugh, and we were off.

I recorded the conversation, but it will take me quite a while to transcribe it. I hope to pitch that as an article somewhere, as it certainly included a lot of great information about these two to which I wasn’t privy.

I hope to at least share some tidbits here next week. In the meantime, he is the bulk of the rest of my introduction. If you’re a fan, stay tuned for more. If you’re not, seek out their work. You won’t be disappointed.

Gorman has written mystery and crime fiction, science fiction, horror and suspense, westerns, and historical fiction, while Collins has done most of that in addition to writing for comics and graphic novels, writing, directing and producing films, writing television and film tie-in books and collaborating on novels with his wife, Barbara under the name Barbara Allan.

Each has introduced us to characters that have become friends – or in the case of some of these surly fellows, at least entertaining companions. Names like Jack Dwyer, Robert Payne and Sam McCain from Gorman, and Nate Heller, Quarry and Nolan from Collins.

Each has a hand in keeping the history of mystery and crime fiction alive. Gorman has edited many anthologies, co-founded and edited Mystery Scene magazine and written extensively about under-appreciated giants of the form like Vin Packer, Day Keene and Harry Whittington. Collins clearly has a stake in history as well, doing as much as anyone to educate and entertain people with stories of Eliot Ness, and working with unfinished manuscripts from the late Mickey Spillane to ensure every publishable word from that legend makes its way into the hands of fans.

And there is a point of pride in having these two here tonight, for each can be said to be just up the road, if you consider Interstate 380 and Highway 6 to be just roads. While the Iowa City area, recently designated as a UNESCO City of Literature, is certainly more than a dot on the map when it comes to writing, it’s still nice to have writers like these two cranking out great books from the Heartland to remind our brethren on the coasts that they’re missing out on plenty when they consider this flyover country.

In a way, Alex Chilton’s death today at age 59 seems fitting. I’m sad that he’s gone, of course. But the way Chilton’s career went, it makes sense that just months after a deluge of Big Star-related content and publicity gave him another little bump of notoriety, he won’t be around to take advantage.

Then again, if Chilton taught us anything, it’s that he didn’t really care about all of that. He wanted to play music, and to play it his way. He made overtures toward playing what the masses (relatively speaking) wanted, reforming Big Star to perform and record new material, but he seemed to do so grudgingly, and stuck his thumb in the eye of expectations, with the first Big Star album in more than two decades sounding more like another of his eclectic, confounding solo albums of the 1990s than the chiming successor to Radio City for which fans pined.

Thing is, I have been listening to a lot of solo Chilton of late. Credit Bruce Eaton‘s excellent book about Radio City for the 33 1/3 series. As I told Eaton when I interviewed him here last year, close listening reveals a pretty clear throughline from the first Big Star album through Chilton’s early solo work. Radio City is a vital transitional record, Chilton blending the Anglophile pop of No. 1 Record with the more raw, live-in-the-studio sound he would later favor. As he shifted from the former to the latter, he shed almost all traces of power pop, hewing instead to a sound that blended garage rock, pre-Beatles popular music and the blues. It wasn’t for everyone, but Chilton clearly enjoyed it and excelled in its performance.

I’m sure that “The Letter” and the Replacements’ “Alex Chilton” and a handful of Big Star’s best moments will be spun tonight and this week, as well they should. But to truly honor Chilton’s memory, we ought to pull out something like Set, a wonderful, latter-day clutch of stripped down covers that finds Chilton offering a crash course in about 30 years of popular music history, doing so with a rare grin peeking through the knowing smirk.

I haven’t sprung for a Kindle, and don’t foresee doing so anytime soon, but if I do, it will be because it will soon be cheaper to do so than to track down insanely expensive out-of-print Lawrence Block books.

Block reports in his latest newsletter that he is continuing to add to his bursting virtual bookshelf at the Kindle store with some hard-to-find titles.

“(I) could never tell whether it would ever amount to much,” he writes of e-books. “Well, it’s amounting to more every day, and it’s starting to look like the future of publishing. (If publishing has a future . . .)”

All of his HarperCollins titles are available in all e-book formats, as well as his Hard Case Crime books and out-of-print curiosities like Cinderella Sims, The Specialists, No Score, Random Walk, Ronald Rabbit is a Dirty Old Man, a couple of his “Speaking of…” novellas and even a new Keller story, “Keller in Dallas.”

One interesting Kindle-only release collects the introductions and afterwords he has written for his own books and those of others, creatively titled Introducing Myself and Others. It includes introductions he wrote for his own work, for anthologies he edited and for the work of others.

Most tantalizing is his next promise: “There’s a lot more coming as soon as I get the books scanned, including the rest of the Chip Harrison titles, all the Jill Emerson and Paul Kavanagh titles, and, oh, lots of stuff.”

Some of this stuff is rare and pricey, so perhaps a Kindle isn’t such a bad idea. In the meantime, you can download a Kindle desktop program for your iPhone, Mac or PC. It looks to duplicate the Kindle experience, though it lacks the device’s portability. For new and rare Block, I’m willing to stare at my computer screen for a couple more hours after work.

Block also announced that three good old fashioned books are soon due under his name. There is Campus Tramp, a book he wrote as Andrew Shaw while still in college. It will be issued in trade paperback by Creeping Hemlock Press. Another is Hellcats & Honey Girls, a triple volume of early erotic novels written with Donald E. Westlake due from Subterranean Press.

Most importantly, is a new book, Between Drinks. Block shares few details; well, one really — “it takes place in 1982-3, and for the moment that’s all I’m able to tell you.”