Today’s cover project choice is more “ripped from the headlines” than normal. In recognition of today’s historic inauguration, we’re profiling Sam Cooke’s classic “A Change is Gonna Come.”

A civil rights anthem for decades, the song took on new importance recently when it became the de facto theme for Obama’s election. Everyone and their brother chose the song for their election coverage — we certainly featured it in our election mix back in November — and although it didn’t make the official Obama soundtrack, the President-elect did invoke both the spirit and lyric of the song in his acceptance speech in November:

“It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.”
— Barack Obama, 11/4/08

Cooke was inspired to write the song after hearing Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Dylan’s lyrics struck such a chord with Cooke that he reportedly remarked, “Geez, a white boy writing a song like that?” “Change” is in part Cooke’s response to the hypothetical questions in Dylan’s lyrics.

Click Here to Read More and for MP3s

Apple today announced that it will start selling music from all four major music companies (Sony BMG, Universal Music, Warner Music and EMI) without digital rights management (DRM) anticopying measures. It also announced that it will start experimenting with different pricing — moving away from its insistence on pricing all songs at 99 cents.

The changes were announced by Philip W. Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco today.

As a concession to the labels, Apple will cut the price of many older and less popular songs to 69 cents beginning in April, while marking up the biggest new hits to $1.29. The base price for moderately popular tracks will remain at 99 cents. Changing the pricing structure was seen as a victory for labels, which have struggled over the past decade with major losses in sales of physical CDs.

Click here to read more

I have a love/hate relationship with Christmas music. I genuinely love it, but there are rules. First, I’m a big Grinch about playing Christmas music early. I’m stricter than most people on this issue, but can’t we all agree that Thanksgiving is the absolute earliest date to break out the sleigh bells?

Also, I understand that the holidays are all about tradition, but there is too much really excellent Christmas music out there to accept listening to the same bad ’50s schmaltz every year.

With those sentiments (and a little Christmas cheer) I offer up the following mix, which will hopefully provide an improved soundtrack to your holiday season. It’s got songs spanning six decades and many genres, with songs you hear every year, and some others that don’t get enough love. Enjoy.

[Special thanks to Scooter for contributing songs from his extensive collection of Christmas tunes as well as his help with making this mix.]

December Mixtape: Merry Christmas Baby

1. The Drifters – “White Christmas”
2. Darlene Love – “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”
3. Otis Redding – “Merry Christmas Baby”
4. Charles Brown – “Please Come Home for Christmas”
5. The O’Jays – “Christmas Ain’t Christmas (Without the One You Love)”
6. Ray Charles & Betty Carter – “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”
7. The Beach Boys – “Little St. Nick”
8. Elvis Presley – “Blue Christmas”
9. Brenda Lee – “Christmas Will Be Another Lonely Day”
10. Aretha Franklin – “Kissin’ by the Mistletoe”
11. Fiona Apple – “Frosty the Snowman” [f. Jon Brion]
12. John Denver – “Please Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk this Christmas)”
13. The Band – “Christmas Must be Tonight”
14. Blitzen Trapper – “Christmas is Coming Soon”
15. The Eels – “Everything’s Gonna Be Cool this Christmas”
16. My Morning Jacket – “Christmas Time is Here Again (Bring out the Joy!)” [Live]
17. Feist – “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming”
18. Sufjan Stevens – “Sister Winter”
19. The Raveonettes – “The Christmas Song”
20. Billy Squier – “Christmas is the Time to Say I Love You”
21. The Kinks – “Father Christmas”
22. NRBQ – “Christmas Wish”
23. Stevie Wonder – “What Christmas Means to Me”
24. James Brown – “Soulful Christmas”
25. Clarence Carter – “Back Door Santa”
26. Albert King – “Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin’ ”

You can also download the whole mix as zip file: December Mixtape – Merry Christmas Baby. To import the songs as an ordered playlist, go to iTunes, click on File > Library > Import Playlist… and select the .txt file in the mix folder.

——–

More: Check out our previous mixes

I’d thought I’d take a little time for this edition of Panther Picks to get up to speed on all these Wilco rumors concerning new material for their seventh studio album. I did some digging and found five new songs – two untitled tracks played at the Bridge School Benefit, “One Wing,” “Sunny Feeling” and a video of another untitled song. If you have any others please throw them my way…

MP3s:

The summer music season was already looking good with the first-annual Outlands Festival, but things just got a whole lot better with the announcement of a rare Tom Waits tour this summer. Unfortunately, the Rain Dog won’t be coming anywhere near the Bay Area.

The 16th-annual NoisePop concert series is set to spread its indie goodness across San Francisco in just a few weeks.

The full schedule is up, and it’s another eclectic mix this year, with highlights including the Magnetic Fields, Mountain Goats, Walkmen, and She & Him (indie-folk genius M Ward and the impossibly cute Zooey Deschanel).

More San Francisco concerts here.

Short post this week as I’m packing up to leave after a weekend of snowboarding at Mammoth Mountain.

MGMT – Oracular Spectacular

These guys are up and comers from NYC. Not that I put a lot of weight into what Rolling Stone says, but they’ve pegged MGMT as one of the top ten artists to watch in 2008. Plus, as previously mentioned, their drummer went to high school with our own Vague Panther.

Ike Reilly Assassination – We Belong to the Staggering Evening

You can never have enough great songs about drugs.

Flight of the Conchords – Distant Future [EP]

Here’s a track from everyone’s favorite New Zealanders (so what if they’re the only New Zealanders anyone knows). This song is from their Distant Future EP from last year.

This poor sucker is a reporter for Detroit’s local ABC affiliate. He was doing a story on a local infestation of Canadian brown finches when one of the birds in question unloads directly into his mouth.

Birds crapping on people is always funny, but this guy’s reaction makes it all the better. It’s funny on YouTube, but I can only imagine watching it live. File under: Schadenfreude.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzjLlqIuVhI[/youtube]

Beyond the obvious laughing-at-others humor, this is brilliant due to this guy’s total lack of foresight. After realizing that a bird crapped on his shoulder, he does not walk out from under them, but instead looks directly up to where the crap fell, with his mouth wide open. If they gave out Pulitzers for bloopers, this guy would be a shoe-in.

The Vague Panther attended the MGMT show at Bottom of the Hill for three reasons:

1. Sex
2. Drugs
3. Rock n Roll

Yeah, it was a night of great expectations. Not to mention the fact that the Vague Pather’s old friend, the musical genius that is James Richardson, plays drums for MGMT. Ok maybe the term “friend” is a little misleading, but we used to jam all the time in high school jazz band. And, after a couple hours of stalking on facebook it was official – we were friends (qualifier: played in jazz band together) again.

Sure, it’s a little shameless. But never have I felt more in the know then when I stepped squarely up to the front of the line at Bottom of the Hill, passed the obligatory hipsters with tight black jeans, and confidently stated “I’m on the list.” Plus, I was pretty sure that in less than an hour I would be called up on stage to play rhythm guitar during the Electric Feel and subsequently asked about my availability for the rest of the tour.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve included tracks from two of my most anticipated albums of 2008, Cat Power’s Jukebox and Beach House’s Devotion. While Jukebox is already out, Devotion isn’t scheduled for a proper release for another month although most songs leaked onto the Internets in December.

Cat Power – Jukebox

The eight years following Chan Marshall’s last covers project has treated her well. While she has traded in angsty minimalist folk for a sultry southern croon, she hasn’t lost her touch at re-interpreting covers – even classics – into something very much her own.

Marshall ambitiously covers a wide range of musicians (from Joni Mitchell to Sinatra to Janis), but she stands out on her takes on Joni Mitchell’s classic “Blue” and a bare-bones reading of the Highwaymen’s “Silver Stallion”.

Tenniscoats – Tan-Tan Therapy

Another blogger referred to the Tenniscoats’ Tan-Tan Therapy as “wide-eyed children at play in a room full of instruments” – not a bad description. There’s a refreshing innocence to these beautifully uneven folk-pop tunes. “Baibaba Bimba” was one of my favorite tracks of 2007.

Beach House – Devotion

The eponymous debut from Baltimore’s Beach House was one of my favorite records of 2006. “Gila” shows that they haven’t strayed too far from a winning formula for their sophomore effort.