Extreme Cougars (TLC)

http://youtu.be/LG3OK0W0PlQ
At this point, TLC is just basally fetish pornography without the sex...yet.

-Marc Jacobs might not be able to move back into his super swanky apartment in a condo on West 12th St. because of flooding. Will someone please think of the misplaced designers and open your wallets so he can buy a new place on a co-op board?

- Yes. Terry Richardson, Lindsay Lohan, and James Franco made an R.E.M. music video. What, did you think that his casting notice for a "Lindsay Lohan" and "James Franco" "type" was just for funsies? These two definitely have bigger, more awful plans up their sleeves.
http://youtu.be/GvI_U8PJ-4Q

- In honor of the possibly box office-breaking trajectory of Twilight: Breaking Dawn -- Part II, here is the history of all things Twihard.

- In sad news, Lucille Bliss, the voice of Smurfette from the original series has died at age 96.

8 p.m. "The Music of R.E.M. Music Education Programs for Underprivileged Youth Benefit Concert" will feature the stylings of Patti Smith, Kimya Dawson, Tommy James and the Shondells, Rachel Yamagata and many, many more.  At Carnegie Hall, 154 West 57th Streets. Tickets range from $38-$125.

8 p.m. Spike Hill Tavern hosts an Open Mic night at 184 Bedford Avenue at North Seventh Street. Registration starts at 7 pm, admission is free.

8 p.m. Britney Spears performs songs from her new album Circus with special guests: The Pussycat Dolls, at Nassau Coliseum, 1255 Hempstead Turnpike, Uniondale. Ticket prices are: $36,$66 and $150.

8 p.m. "Comedy 2.0: Video Series on the Web" is a discussion and clip show featuring Web-series creators from Burg, Barely Political, College Humor, BestWeekEver.Tv and Cat News. At 92YTribeca, 200 Hudson Street, between Watts and Desbrosses Streets. Admission is $10.

"Due to the nation's need for energy and dependable shipping lanes, we are losing a football field's worth of wetlands every 45 minutes to erosion. This unrivaled land-loss threatens the nation's fishing, our energy, our ports, and most importantly, leaves New Orleans increasingly vulnerable to storms such as Katrina,” the letter, which was spearheaded by the Gulf Restoration Network, reads. "We are asking that the future President of the United States direct the resources and attention necessary to restore coastal Louisiana and secure the future of Louisiana's communities.”

No word yet on whether either candidate will attend, but additional signatories include My Morning Jacket, Jackson Browne and Aaron Neville. For the full list and letter, click here.

As if it wasn't exciting enough that power-duo Gnarls Barkley has released its much-anticipated followup to 2006's St. Elsewhere (just in time to get the hype rolling for some summer jams), now we get news that Messrs. Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse are playing the Highline Ballroom on April 10. Yes, that's one week from today! [On Sale: Friday, April 4 at noon]

So R.E.M. is making a comeback, huh. They've got a new album, a new look and a new tour with Modest Mouse and Brooklyn it-band The National, which comes to MSG on June 19. [On Sale: Saturday, April 5 at noon]

The notoriously dysfunctional neo-psyche troup The Brian Jonestown Massacre plays Terminal 5 on July 25. Love 'em or hate 'em, if you haven't seen the band's 2004 documentary, Dig, we suggest you add it to your Netflix queue with a quickness. [On Sale: Friday, April 4 at noon]

Lastly, another season of hipster-infested social outings at Williamsburg's McCarren Park Pool is fast-approaching, with a concert for the emo set on June 10: Death Cab For Cutie. (Sorry kids, it's not one of the free ones.) [On Sale: Friday, April 4 at noon]

THEATER

Remember John Waters' 1990 teen-angst comedy/musical, Cry-Baby, starring Johnny Depp? Now it's on Broadway, with a new score by one of the guys from Fountains of Wayne and the executive producer of The Daily Show. Previews go through April 23, with opening night set for April 25. [On Sale Now]

A sad but true fact is that no musician or artist in recent memory has mirrored, at least on the surface, the city's fortunes and rhythms over the last 20 years quite like Moby. Just think of it: radical, controversial, and into techno in the early '90's, commercial and popular toward the end of the decade and into the next, and now all he does is hang out and gab with rich people. So what does it mean for Moby that Madonna recently observed that the city had lost its edge? Check out Gabe Boylan's review of Moby's latest album, Last Night.

When you hear that Van Morrison has a new album, it's easy to dismiss. What's this, like no. 38? No matter how many albums the Irishman makes, he'll always be best known for his third, Moondance. But at 62, he's still has something to say with Keep It Simple and he still has an audience. In an interview, Morrison confesses that the title track is a prayer, a hope that "we can get back to something simple, otherwise, we’re screwed." Listen here and you'll find that Morrison has clearly followed his own advice.

The last we heard from "slick-pop aficionados" the Apples in Stereo—or at least an apple in stereo?—Robert Schneider was performing "Stephen Stephen," a tribute to Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report (below). If you liked what you heard, you're in luck. Today marks the arrival of Electronic Projects for Musicians, a collection of b-sides and rarities from the band's 15-plus years together and "Stephen Stephen," plus a bunch of other great stuff from the Elephant 6 veteran, made the cut.

The Black Keys, comprised of two dudes from Akron, Ohio, are just like the White Stripes, but without the gimmickry or the intrigue or the major record deal or, presumably, the sexual tension. They play "raw blues-rock" with no frills. It's surprisingly refreshing. One can only hope for more of the same on Attack & Release, their fifth album.

Mr. Cave is not the only former singer of an iconic ’80s band to enter the spotlight this spring. Morrissey has a new greatest-hits collection due out in the U.S. on March 25, and while it may seem like the British crooner’s best-of compilations have gotten a bit redundant, this one comes with a special, shall we say, bonus feature: a photograph of the Mozzer’s naked behind (no joke!) bearing the phrase “Your Arse An’ All.” Racy! Fellow Englishman Billy Bragg (who’s been known to cover a Smiths song or two) will see the U.S. release of his latest album, Mr. Love and Justice, the same day as Mr. Cave’s.

But enough about the British. America’s had its fair share of classic indie bands, too, and one of them, R.E.M., was on the Lower East Side recently shooting a video for the first single from Accelerate (April 1). Comeback much? Speaking of the LES, Moby will release Last Night, his sixth studio album, also on April Fools Day. And as if the air of mid-’90s throwbacks couldn’t get any thicker, here come the Breeders with Mountain Battles (April 8—we’re sensing a theme here), their first album since 2002. Yes, that is the Alternative Nation theme song you hear in the background.

This just in from the kids’ table: Noisy Nashville punkers Be Your Own Pet, who have garnered a lot of cred considering they’re still under the legal drinking age (not every adolescent garage band gets to tour with Sonic Youth!), will release their second full-length, Get Awkward, on March 18. On the emo side, Fall Out Boy protégés Panic! at the Disco will release Pretty. Odd. on March 25, one week after their less famous label mates the Hush Sound release Goodbye Blues. Considerably older, but no less sappy, the good guys of Death Cab for Cutie release Narrow Stairs on May 13 … just in time for the prom!

In hip-hop news, Fat Joe’s new album, The Elephant in the Room, hits stores on March 11. Maths + English, by U.K. grime rapper Dizzee Rascal, drops stateside on April 29, the same day as the Roots’ 10th album, Rising Down. And a new album from the foul-mouthed Missy Elliot is slated for late spring. Even more massive will be Gnarls Barkley’s second soul-drenched full-length, The Odd Couple, out on April 8. Two words: summer jam!

That brings us to the contemporary indie rock portion of our tour. On March 18, New Pornographers member Dan Bejar releases Trouble in Dreams, his ninth album under the moniker Destroyer. Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy finally gets a proper solo album, Colin Meloy Sings Live! (April 8), which documents the bookish singer’s 2006 tour. Dancey London duo the Kills (whose singer, Allison Mosshart, you probably don’t remember from her past life as the crusty frontwoman of the late-90’s Florida pop-punk band Discount) will release Midnight Boom on March 18. And just in case any car companies are looking for a catchy song to put in one of their commercials this spring, Spoon’s new EP, Don’t You Evah, comes out on April 8.

Madonna just directed a movie starring Eugene Hutz, the singer from Gogol Bordello. (Is that weirder than Johnny Marr being in Modest Mouse?) But when she’s not busy trying to be an indie filmstress, Madge can be found working with producers Timbaland, Nate “Danja” Hills and Pharrell Williams on her 11th studio album (April 29), which is yet to be named, but does feature the requisite Justin Timberlake collaboration.

And now, it’s time for the spring release we’ve all been waiting for, the one that we’d be damned if we didn’t see at the top of Pitchfork’s 2008 year-end list. Yes … the debut Scarlett Johansson album! Capping off the season with a May 20 street date, ScarJo’s Anywhere I Lay My Head has it all: Tom Waits covers, Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) guitar work, guest vocals from David Bowie. Might we be pleasantly surprised with this one? It kills us to say it, but anything’s possible when Bowie’s involved.

Above ground, the I.M. Pei–designed tower stands as a citadel devoted to inconspicuous/conspicuous consumption. The hotel is famous for its capacious rooms, 60-second steeping baths, $2,900-a-day suites and complimentary shoeshines.

Before the spa closed temporarily last April, I rode the elevator down to what seemed like the center of the earth. I felt a sense of decompression, a pressure at my ears. I have hallucinatory memories of a chic Hieronymous Bosch-a supermodel's clenched buttocks, her buns of steel. There was a tunic-clad man with mortuary good manners, a Romanian woman attendant who rubbed me with Dead Sea salts. As a finisher, I had been wrapped in a Mylar shroud, my "Astrofoil." The massage room was devoid of features, save a round wall clock that seemed to chart my decline. I imagined myself in an episode of CSI . I recall the electrocution-chamber appearance of the foot-pool chair and the upside-down wash, gel and soap dispensers. Sybaritic yet sterile, the old spa seemed a sensuous version of same-day surgery. Would the new installation, I wondered, soften or extend this original forensic-chic concept?

Now, in summer, the Four Seasons seems even more Deco-dent, the indolent air of the lobby reminiscent of my favorite old film, Land of the Pharaohs . The limestone columns provide a vanishing-point perspective …. While I feel dwarfed upon entering, dwarfing is not an inauspicious start. I've been sitting at a computer, writing non-stop for four years; I carry my book fat as love handles. I recall Colette, in Cheri , and her description of a truly "crushing ass."

I re-enter the Four Seasons in a voluminous summer dress with primary-colored tulips, a shriek in this neutral setting.

"We have no colors," the hotel spokeswoman, Leslie Lefkowitz, says. "We are monochromatic." I note that even the floral decorations are "discreet"-gray, curly willow arches bearing infinitesimal neutral buds. The willow is lit so that the twigs' shadows reprise the veins in the marble below.

Leslie, a pretty, black-ringlet-haired woman (cast as an Egyptian/Jewish princess in Land of the Pharaohs ?), points to a faint moss-tinted settee. "That is as close to color as we dare. I.M. Pei had this concept to emphasize the Deco design above the inhabitants." And so, like extras in a pyramid scene, we cross the soaring lobby.

I will be the first, I'm told, to meet the Inova team in charge of the renovation and learn their hitherto-secret plan. I am mellow from a hot-stone massage in the temporary spa quarters. Until the netherworld is complete, hotel guests are being offered bargain $135 to $255 "in-room massages and wraps," and I took advantage. A fifth-floor hotel suite has been temporarily adapted to serve "outsiders." There, Suk Mancinelli, the Korean-born spa manager, personally administered to my wounded body, working with lava stones heated in her Cooks Essentials roaster, which she had lugged up from the sub-basement. Suk, who's been overseeing the subterranean spa for 10 years, seemed refreshed by the chunks of daylight upstairs. "I have a window now," she said. "I always went out once a day to see the sun." Suk is a compact woman, with neat short hair, glasses and a gentle, firm manner that matches her touch. She imparts an unusual degree of empathy throughout the treatment. We had murmured, to the chiming of "Bliss Aeoliah from Spa Sound Scapes," of our respective lives. Suk had remarried, an Italian widower; I had adopted two baby girls.

The soft touch and tender confidences exchanged upstairs contrast with the spa executives, bristling with enterprise, whom I meet in the lobby. Joseph Conant and Diane Hess are fresh from their triumphant creation of the Four Seasons Spa in Chicago. Now they've been summoned to New York to surpass themselves. "Here at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York, we must be"-Joseph introduces the concept-"the first, the only, the best!"

"The first, the only, the best!" echoes Diane as she glides into the seat beside me.

"Yes, we'll be using brain waves to really hit that R.E.M. stage," explains Joe, as he likes to be called. He's a tidy man, perhaps in his early 40's, balding, who wears glasses and is distinctive for a dewiness of complexion and a zealousness of tone. Diane is a monochromatic blonde in the prescribed taupe and gray, attractive, with a coordinated buff tan that gilds her serious manner. She blends beautifully into the backdrop. Long habituated to one another, Joe and Diane execute a business version of yin and yang. Joe tends to lofty ideas ("The brain-wave technology will relax!"), while Diane slams hard on past errors ("I have no use for incense"). As I sit flanked by the pair, information whizzes past my head in a series of sci-fi volleys, with occasional shots down the alley of a more ancient past. "We weren't interested in the old Geisha facial paste made of nightingale droppings," Joe says, and Diane slashes forth with a derisive, "Bird poop!"

I review the top-secret plans (so secret they are whisked out of my hands, but not before I see the words "mechanical kneading thumbs").

" Give that back ," Diane says, her slim tan hand snatching the plans. "You should not be looking at that!"

Back on message, Diane says, "The brain-wave room will be the first, the only …. "

" … the best," I say.

"You'll be connected to a box," Joe tells me. "The electrodes will send brain waves to hit your R.E.M."

Me: "Will I be wearing a helmet?"

Diane: "No helmet!"

Joe: "Goggles and a head set. Sonic therapy … sound waves …. "

"Color goggles … pulsing lights!" murmurs Diane.

"We will have soft massage tables … preheated, " Joe says.

" … a new kind of table-beyond a water-bed feel," Diane says.

"A cocoon of hot gel!" cries Joe.

"Your body will sink down and disappear," adds Diane.

"Will any part of me be showing?" I ask.

"Your head."

With the goggles and the head set, I will enjoy the subtle pulses of sound and lights-waves that match the mental state I want to achieve ….

"Forget incense, Muzak, crystals." Diane spits the words as if into a cuspidor.

"We are moving away from 'beauty' as a concept," Joe and Diane agree. "The beauty spa is old," Joe says.

"And with the sonic waves, what music?"

Joe: "Synthesizers, shakuhachi flutes, Tibetan bells …. "

There will be electronic shiatsu massagers. Those mechanical kneading thumbs, it turns out, "will pulsate in your electronic shiatsu pillow," Joe confides.

"On the bottom neck roll," Diane adds, "the pillow itself kneads."

And the pulsing eye goggles? "What color will I see?"

"The spectrum," Joe assures me.

"Pulsing lights induce more flow," Diane says. "The eyelids connect to your brain."

"Oh," sighs Joe. "The electrodes we couldn't talk about, name the vendors …. Some of this is so new, the patents were not yet applied for. We couldn't say a word till now. There will be three paths: to revitalize, rejuvenate, achieve longevity."

I can't wrap my as-yet-unelectroded brain around the difference between rejuvenation and longevity.

"It's about looking younger, unwrinkling. We're getting the best cosmoceuticals," Joe explains.

Cosmoceuticals?

"Yes! Cosmetics merge into pharmaceuticals."

Joe gives a sneak preview of the décor: "Very Zen-like." A sculptured glass wall-"I won't call it a waterfall … it will suggest water."

I stumble onto 57th Street. The city steams, a mirage wavering above the softening asphalt. I can still feel the impression of Suk's fingers massaging Jojoba oil into my skin. I hear, as if on cross-circuits, her whisper about her second husband-"He adores me"-cut with the news of a newly discovered gaseous planet, a hitherto-unknown galaxy of "burnt-out stars." And I think of this portion of the globe, 57th Street, where we will soon see through pulsing goggles, surf brain waves and "hit the R.E.M."

Where I can have these treatments now ? I want to know.

"In a lab," Joe and Diane respond.

Laura Shaine Cunningham is the author of two memoirs, Sleeping Arrangements and A Place in the Country , and the recently published novels Beautiful Bodies and Dreams of Rescue .

But recently, this conversation between technology and music has become more like a shouting match-less polite and more aggressive.

Over the last 60 years, the majority of music we have heard has been delivered to us not live, but in prerecorded form. And the evolution of those prerecorded formats, as much as any musical genius, has determined what music actually sounds like.

The standard pop-song length of three minutes was famously molded and bound by the 78, a distribution format which allowed for three-minute songs and not much more. With the advent of 331¼3 r.p.m. records in the late 40's, we got longer songs.

But as the means of distributing and using music have multiplied, our attention to music-and our appreciation of it-have shrunk.

Nothing puts the stamp on our shrinking musical attention span as much as Apple's new online song catalog, iTunes Music Store. The store is essentially Napster, with the minor caveat that you have to pay 99 cents for each song you download. But my sources in the preteen world have uncovered an interesting development: The kids aren't actually paying for the songs. After all, how many kids have a credit card? And even if they did, a buck a song is steep, especially when you can get them for free on LimeWire and Kazaa.

No, instead of buying, they're listening to the free 30-second previews that are available on the Web site. And they're listening to them over and over again.

These previews get right to the essence of the songs. They're usually cut from somewhere in the middle and contain a bit of the verse and a bit of the chorus, or the hook, which is the part that everyone recognizes.

You might ask how anyone could possibly find enjoyment in just 30 seconds of a song? But there's a lot to suggest that 30 seconds of a song is just about all we need these days. In fact, everything from TV commercials to children's toys, from radio jingles to cell-phone ringers, from song-form changes to the rise of sampling, has been subtly training us to read and receive our music in increasingly smaller chunks.

For instance, have you noticed how few new pop songs contain bridges? Historically, the bridge is the section where a song goes somewhere new-sometimes to a different key and maybe to a new theme lyrically-and it has pretty much disappeared from the Top 40 (though not the country charts), which makes your 30 seconds even more representative.

Dance music, more than any other genre, has also changed the nature of pop music. Dance tracks tend to be longer and more repetitive than conventional songs. The dance-track composer relies on texture and production-adding found sounds, sampling, dropping instruments in and out of the mix and, of course, that old standby, turning up the volume-to move things along.

The rise of sampling, first in rap music, then in R&B and now virtually everywhere, has placed further emphasis on the hook-which is like heading straight to the climax without foreplay.

Musical A.D.D.

Modern composition, as composition professors often lament, has become a vertical exercise rather than a horizontal one. A lot of this can be traced to the way music, particularly modern pop music, is composed today, which is increasingly on a computer using music software. Composing on a computer does have some advantages. It allows writers access to an infinite number of sounds and tracks playing at the same time. A composer can pile sound upon sound with almost unlimited potential to create texture (or fix a flat voice). Listen to any current hit on the Top 40 and you'll find probably 50 or more different tracks playing at the same time. The typical pop song from the 50's probably had less than 2 tracks.

But this technological advancement has changed the priorities of composition. The emphasis, which was once on development and theme, on modulations that took place over the course of a song or a musical piece, has shifted to sound design and texture-variables that can be piled up and reduced in a manner of seconds. It's the difference between developing a musical idea (recasting it, changing keys and repeating it) and putting a sound through different filters, or playing a beat four bars with a bassline, four bars without.

If our musical attention span could be diagnosed, we would all get treated for musical Attention Deficit Disorder. Think of all the places you hear music-in stores, on TV, on the radio, in elevators, on cell phones, at the gym-and think about how you hear this music. Is it a complete experience, or is just background noise?

Not only are we becoming desensitized to music by our environment, we are also making choices-actually training ourselves to hear music differently. The thousands of small radio audience-research firms across the country go to two major production houses, Hooks Unlimited in Atlanta and Autohook in Woodbury, Conn., to get CD's containing 10-second snippets of hundreds of songs. Radio stations evaluate a song's life span by playing these excerpts from songs-the 10-seconds are always the hook or the most recognizable part-to test audiences. Just 10 seconds!

And don't think the labels-and, to a lesser extent, the artists-are unaware of this.

Hit Clip's a Hit

If you want to see what the future sounds like, listen to a Hit Clip. For anyone who doesn't have an 11-year-old daughter, the Hit Clip is a small MP3 player made by Hasbro for kids and young teenagers. Hasbro has sold over 25 million of them, and McDonald's and Oscar Mayer have given them away for promotions.

The attraction of the Hit Clip was that it played 50-second samples from hit songs. Songs-'N Sync, Britney Spears, etc.-that are already simplified in the way described above.

Commercials are another story. Have you noticed how many old hits are cut up and edited for commercial use? Have you noticed how "Getting Better," the Beatles song used in the Philips electronics commercial, goes suddenly from verse to chorus without the break that you hear in the original recording? The same surgery was performed on Sly and the Family Stone's "Everyday People" for a Toyota commercial. That's editing, baby.

This kind of editing is more than just obnoxious. Whether we recognize it or not, we're being robbed of the song's original design. As a result, our expectations of what music can do are degraded.

All of which makes those 30-second previews on the iTunes store the perfect (if slightly twisted) way to listen to modern music.

The iTune preview doesn't need to be downloaded. You can play it right on the site, which makes it particularly speedy and convenient. Say, for instance, there's some song that's been bugging you and you need to hear it. You can quickly find it, play it and scratch that itch.

'Give It To Me … ' Free!

This happened to me the other day, in fact, with Rick James' "Give It to Me Baby," which I had heard at the gym and really needed to hear again. I clicked on a button at the iTunes site, and there it was: "You say I'm so crazy / Coming home intoxicated…. " Great bassline, tight drum groove-the whole deal.

But after 30 seconds, I really didn't need much more. I played the clip a few times and got the groove in my head. The song doesn't actually go anywhere. The same two chords show up in both the verse and the chorus, and the drums and bass don't change at all. The elemental thing about the song is the feel, which you get in those 30 seconds.

On the other hand, some songs and genres aren't nearly as fulfilling in this truncated format. High-concept rock bands fare particularly poorly: Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb," for example, barely gets going before petering out.

Yet strangely, such ostensibly complex bands as the Smiths (sadly, only two songs available right now) and R.E.M. sound great in 30 seconds. Then again, when you think of their compositional style-which, in both cases, is based on a distinctive guitar player's grooves-it makes sense. R.E.M.'s "Catapult," off of Murmur , was just right.

With Jackson 5 songs, 30 seconds is more than enough, but with Michael Jackson's solo work, the tunes sound horribly incomplete. That must be the Quincy Jones difference right there, making each section of those songs on Off the Wall and Thriller distinct and necessary. Simon & Garfunkel, with their short, catchy and sometimes annoying folk ditties, sound all right, but Paul Simon's solo stuff is too episodic to be excerpted.

Likewise, New Edition's "Popcorn Love" and "Mr. Telephone Man" are well served in 30 seconds, but Bobby Brown's glorious "Roni" is just too much song: The pre-chorus alone is that long.

Surprisingly, most of Nirvana in 30 seconds is an exercise in frustration. The music is so frenetic you'd think that small bites would be sufficient, but it turns out that there are just too many sections to the songs. Furthermore, Kurt Cobain's lyrics frequently follow a narrative that you want to follow, too. So when the songs are cut off, you're left wanting more.

Annoyingly, Journey's "Any Way You Want It" doesn't even make it to the chorus before fading out, giving you a severe case of musical blue balls.

But then it's Liz Phair to the rescue. A few seconds of her cooing "I want a boyfriend" on "Fuck and Run," and you're rocking out again.

Speaking of frustration, the only good part to the Doobie Brothers' "Minute By Minute" is that tasty gospel-keyboard introduction, but the hook-centric iTunes preview serves up the lame chorus. Yet, when I needed-for some inexplicable reason-to hear the Dixie Chicks' "Wide Open Spaces," I got enough without getting annoyed.

Unfortunately, the iTunes library is far from complete, even when it comes to the basics. There's some Elvis Costello, for instance, but only late, "arty" Elvis. There's no Beatles except an album of outtakes. No Led Zeppelin, either, except for a piss-poor cover band that may or may not be a goof.

Worse still, no The Stylistics. For shame, iTunes, for shame. Then again, how could anyone set the mood with the Isleys in just 30 seconds? But along those lines, thankfully, there's 93 selections of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes.

Anyone who's spent time with Mr. Escovedo's muscular music, which ranges from balls-out rockers to strings-heavy, Tex-Mex-flavored ballads, will understand why those closest to the San Antonio-born musician would want access to that room. Mr. Escovedo, who didn't start writing his own songs until he was 30, has some dead-on instincts for communicating the highs and lows of human experience through rhythm and lyrics. Heartbreak is Mr. Escovedo's specialty, but his integral, head-heart-and-guts approach ensures that even when he's performing other artists' songs--such as Ian Hunter's "Irene Wilde" (which appeared on last year's lively Bourbonitis Blues ) or Iggy and the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog," a staple of his concerts--Mr. Escovedo is bringing something new and honest to the stage.

Those who haven't heard Mr. Escovedo will have the opportunity on May 11 and 12, when he appears at the Mercury Lounge on Houston Street to perform songs from his excellent new album, A Man Under the Influence (Bloodshot). On May 12, he will also provide musical accompaniment for his friend, the novelist Larry Brown, as he reads from his new book, Billy Ray's Farm , at Housing Works Used Book Cafe at 126 Crosby Street.

Mr. Escovedo's musical evolution began more than three decades ago. While directing a student film about "the worst band in the world," he and a classmate decided to play the roles themselves. They eventually became a real band, the Nuns, the punk outfit that earned a footnote in rock history for opening for the Sex Pistols' last concert at San Francisco's Winterland in 1978. Later he became a member of the country-punk unit Rank and File and, after that, a member of the True Believers with his younger brother Javier. (His other brothers, Pete and the late Coke Escovedo, played percussion for Santana, and his niece is the former Prince protégée Sheila E.) He also spent a period here in New York, the land of his heroes Iggy Pop, the Velvet Underground and the New York Dolls.

As the 90's began, Mr. Escovedo returned to Austin, Texas, to concentrate on a solo career and raise a family. His resistance to forming the emotional calluses that often plague artists no doubt has much to do with the life-altering events he has weathered there in the ensuing years. Not long after his return, his wife Bobbi committed suicide, leaving him to raise their two daughters, then 9 years old and 6 months old, respectively.

Ten years down the road, Mr. Escovedo is now the proud father of six children, who range in age from 2 to 31 years old. He hasn't been so lucky in love, though. He's currently separated from his third wife, the mother of that 2-year-old.

Those years of exploration and introspection--both personal and artistic--come to fruition on A Man Under the Influence , which was produced by Chris Stamey of the dBs. Mr. Escovedo spent a good portion of the last decade trying to understand the life of his Mexican immigrant father, who worked as a mariachi player, prizefighter and plumber, according to Mr. Escovedo. This moved Mr. Escovedo to co-write a music-based theatrical production, By the Hand of the Father , based on the experiences of his and a number of other Mexican fathers "who were all born at the turn of the century and made that journey from Mexico to the Southwest," he said. "It kind of questions the enigma of the Mexican male--how he's a very silent figure, you know, and kind of odd. He's very masculine, he's very macho, but he's also almost effeminate in his emotional makeup.

"I always looked at my father as being such a strong man," Mr. Escovedo continued. "He had done all these things, lived such an amazing life, and yet he never had that strength to be able to tell me these real sensitive things."

Two of the songs from the play, "Wave" and "Rosalie," appear on A Man Under the Influence . But if there is a theme to the album, it seems best expressed by the haunting last song, "About This Love," on which he sings: "It's all about this love / It's all about this pain / It's all about the loss / We take to live again." Near the end of the song, Mr. Escovedo changes the last line of that refrain to "We make to live again."

And though Mr. Escovedo explored both his relationship with his wife Bobbi and its aftermath on 1992's Gravity and 1993's Thirteen Years , the track "Across the River" leaves the distinct impression that he's still haunted by her death. "What kind of love destroys a mother and sends her crashing through the tangled trees?" the lyrics ask.

On the phone, Mr. Escovedo said the song was inspired by an old Mexican folk tale that his father told him about La Llorona, a young peasant woman who falls in love with a wealthy landowner. The couple have children out of wedlock, but the man's parents pressure him into marrying a woman from his own class. On the day of the wedding, the woman leaves her children to attend the ceremony, but when she returns, they have disappeared. In despair, she throws herself into the Rio Grande. "When she gets to heaven, she's asked where her children are," Mr. Escovedo said. "She says she doesn't know. So she's made to wander the Southwest looking for her children, crying the whole time."

The parallels between the father's folk tale and the son's life didn't occur to me until a few days after the interview. I called Mr. Escovedo's publicist and asked if he was willing to discuss it further. Although Mr. Escovedo acknowledged the connection, he declined to talk about it.

The secret room was closed. But listen closely at the Mercury Lounge and you'll get a glimpse of what it's like inside.

–Frank DiGiacomo

R.E.M: Losing Their Religion

A few weeks ago, I was wandering the aisles of my local D'Agostino's when I heard strangely familiar music piping from the in-store P.A. system. The tinkly four-to-the-bar piano, gruff bass harmonica and high vocal harmonies sounded straight out of Hawthorne, Calif., but eventually I realized it wasn't the Beach Boys at all. It was R.E.M. performing "At My Most Beautiful," the clever Brian Wilson pastiche from their last album, 1998's Up . Michael Stipe's quavery voice intoning the line "I read bad poetry into your machine" made a curious but pleasant soundtrack as I scanned the shelves for napkins and paper towels.

Now, you could argue that R.E.M.'s inclusion in supermarket background music is somehow hip. Or deliciously subversive. Or confirmation that, sooner or later, all that is alternative melts into the mainstream. What it suggests to me, however, is that one of the leading American rock bands of the post-punk era has finally completed its long transition into utter irrelevance.

My suspicions were confirmed after listening a few times to Reveal (Warner Bros.), R.E.M.'s 12th album and its second without original drummer Bill Berry. Reveal isn't a terrible album; it's thoughtful and well-crafted and would, I'm sure, provide excellent sonic backup for a journey through the produce section. But it is painfully dull. Its title is amusing, too, because Reveal essentially reveals that, despite R.E.M.'s pretense to depth, there is ultimately nothing of interest beneath the facile surface of its music.

For most of the album, that surface is pretty uninteresting, too. Apparently the three remaining founding members of R.E.M.--Mr. Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills--have decided that they will no longer be rocking out. Given that their last attempt to crank up the volume was 1994's sluggish Monster , this is not necessarily a bad idea.

But what R.E.M. have put in place of full-tilt rock 'n' roll is a kind of knowing postmodern commentary on middle-of-the-road pop. It's a tactic so many other artists have already tried that the only way it works anymore is if you back it up with ear-catching tunes. And there are very few here.

Occasionally, a novel moment rises above the general miasma. "All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star)" is buoyed by a galumphing six-string bass, twangy electric sitar and what sounds like the clicking of castanets; "Saturn Return" is a sensitive piano ballad laid on top of a cacophony of synthesized percussion; and "Beachball" combines a pseudo-bossa-nova beat with a beefy horn line. But these bits of whimsical arrangement camouflage a series of predictable, uninspired melodies that only become memorable when they are repeated to the point of idiocy.

Yes, Mr. Stipe's lyrics are oblique-but-witty commentaries on himself, pop culture and the travails of modern life. Unfortunately, his delivery of those lyrics is so caked with feigned sincerity that it can be downright sickening. And honestly, who cares about the words when the music is almost a total bore?

For those true believers who may take offense at this assessment, here's a personal confession: My interest in R.E.M. peaked in 1987. I greatly enjoyed most of the music they made in their first decade of existence, and to this day I still love songs like "So. Central Rain" and "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville." But when Mr. Stipe stopped mumbling like a shaman and started enunciating his lyrics, his schtick began to grate on me. "Losing My Religion," a song that an entire generation seems to have taken to heart, has always annoyed me, and I regard most of what the band has done since then as an exercise in pointlessness. I do admire what the latter-day R.E.M. has achieved--the way they've valiantly maintained their integrity in the face of mega-stardom, the way they've inspired so many struggling artists--and I want to like them, but I just can't do it.

One of the most engaging tracks on Reveal , "Imitation Of Life," actually harks back to the classic R.E.M. sound of my youth. Mr. Buck dusts off his old Rickenbacker 12-string, and Mr. Stipe nails a keening chorus. Compared with the rest of this album, it's an exciting moment. But placed next to anything off of Murmur or Reckoning , it comes up lame. The song's title, like the album's, is cruelly apt. For this is nothing more than a pale copy of music that once pulsed with a vital force. Unless you're an unquestioning fan of R.E.M. (in which case, God help you), Reveal is not worth your time .

–Mac Randall

Cowboy Junky

Thirteen years ago, Cowboy Junkies released The Trinity Session , a severe whisper of an album that was recorded live, using a single microphone, at Toronto's Church of the Holy Trinity. Rarely has a band so smartly reinterpreted such a range of iconic songs. The standards of Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, the Velvet Underground and Patsy Cline were deliciously reborn through the sultry wonders of Margo Timmins' voice and her brother Michael Timmins' guitar. The pair shared writing credits on a handful of other songs, including the lovelorn "Misguided Angel" and the fatalistic "To Love Is to Bury." (Another brother, Peter Timmins, played drums on the album.)

At first blush, it looked as if the music world had the sib equivalent of Richard and Linda Thompson on its hands: a tempestuous couple whose passion was matched by their communicative power.

But the Junkies never lived up to the brilliant promise of The Trinity Sessions ; 1990's The Caution Horses and 1993's Pale Sun, Crescent Moon both had moments of stark beauty, but nothing captured the heavy-lidded wallop of their debut. And over the last several years, the band has slipped so far off the radar screen of hipster respectability that many onetime fans assume the Junkies stopped playing together long ago.

In fact, the Cowboy Junkie's latest release, Open (Latent/Zoe), is the band's fifth album in five years (counting one rarities collection and one greatest-hits disc). Unfortunately, it does little to dispel the notion that the band was a casualty of the 90's. The Junkies' most recent album of new material, 1998's Miles From Our Home , was a sad, slick effort to hit pop pay dirt. Open is an unfortunate continuation of this trend.

Without a major-label contract ( Open , like The Trinity Sessions , is being released by the band's own Latent label; Zoe is handling stateside distribution), the Junkies seem to be at a tipping point. The band could either have harked back to its roots of beautiful despair or tried, once again, to reach a wider audience. The Timmins seem to have opted for the latter approach, creating a confusing album of adult-contemporary mishmash.

Where Mr. Timmins' most moving guitar work often consisted of little more than deliberately strummed rhythm lines, here he seems to be trying to don the guitar-god mantle, introducing open-ended jams such as "Dragging Hooks" and "Dark Hole Again" with spacey electric solos that wouldn't feel out of place in the middle of a Grateful Dead concert. On "Bread and Wine," the standard-issue wah-wah guitar is backed by organ washes that might as well have been lifted straight from a classic-rock playbook.

As Ms. Timmins tries to inject some needed emotion into clichés like "Your heart ain't nearly as guilty as mine," it's impossible not to remember how effortlessly she sang of searching out "something small and frail and plastic, baby / 'Cause cheap is how I feel."

Even the album's more deliberate numbers sound as if they were called in. "Thousand Year Prayer," with its tinkling piano lines and second-hand wood block, sounds cheesy and remote instead of dangerously sparse.

I've never been one to begrudge musicians the right to explore new avenues. On Open , however, one doesn't get the sense that the Cowboy Junkies are exploring new creative paths. Instead, the album feels like a sad, uninspired effort, driven by a desire to rediscover a commercial rather than artistic success. The band seems to have forgotten that wasn't the formula that worked for them in the first place.

–Seth Mnookin