Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | rock
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November 26, 2006

It took the urging of Cirque du Soleil, the acrobatic dance performance group, to bring the music of the Beatles – the most iconic of 1960s baby boomer musical catalogs -- into the 21st century. The bulk of the project is a mashup, the digital-era, technology-enabled ability of taking two different kinds of data and “mashing” them together to make something new. Mashups can be a newsworthy online database of crime statistics overlaid onto a Google map, for instance, or it can be cool cultural commentary, like overdubbing Nirvana's “Smells Like Teen Spirit” onto the Destiny's Child hit, “Bootylicious” (they fit so perfectly, it's spooky). Or, mashups can be the melding of two generations of music, like producer Danger Mouse's weaving of Jay-Z's “The Black Album” with the Beatles' own “White Album.” This time, though, the work of reconstructing and reassembling the Beatles' recordings was a sanctioned deal.
September 26, 2006

Pitchfork has published a rambling list of the "200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s," beginning with the Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon" at 200 and ands with the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" at #1 (presumably -- the final 20 aren't numbered). It's an interesting list because it's in a British publication, and these songs were chosen (and reviewed very earnestly) by young rock critics, most if not all I bet who weren't even born when the '60s closed out with Altamont and a few months later, Kent State.
July 13, 2006

The Pipettes. It had to happen - the cyclical nature of pop music demanded that eventually, the girl group sound of the early '60s would become hip again. That's exactly what might happen with the release next week of the Pipettes' first full album in the UK. The British group, fronted by a trio of women wearing polka-dots and singing shrill harmonies to bouncy punk-pop that's rooted in the simple romance but shot through with new millennium irony and cheek, has released a handful of singles to date (well, three, at least).