Don Vappie and the Creole Jazz Serenaders Don Vappie knows about boring music.

In the late 1970s, boring music prompted him to sell most of his instruments and give up playing. And while some people consider traditional jazz dull, Vappie begs to differ.

"I got really bored when disco came out," the New Orleans native said last week, talking about his time in a Top 40 group. "I always remember when I quit the band - I was playing bass - I said, 'You could teach a chimpanzee to do this,' because it was so repetitious.

Paul Anka Luna covering Paula Abdul? Superchunk bowing down to Destiny's Child? Jim O'Rourke shaking out some Spice Girls? Yes, all that and a dozen more are due from Engine Room Recordings and their upcoming Guilt by Association project, asking stars to confess their guilty pleasures. Need more cringe-worthy conceptualizations? Get prepared to slip into Bonnie Prince Billy's Will Oldham crawling through Mariah Carey's "Can't Take That Away," or Petra Haden covering Journey's "Don't Stop Believing."

The Simpsons Movie soundtrack D'oh! Look for this coming Tuesday's release of The Simpsons Movie soundtrack in a special, Homer-approved deluxe doughnut edition. Only available at the "big box" stores, the Adrenaline Music CD comes packaged in a pink doughnut box with a yummy doughnut CD case inside. While Green Day is promised to appear in the film, sporting its own cover of The Simpsons' theme song, the film's soundtrack is all Hans Zimmer, intriguing me with titles such as "Thank You Boob Lady," "World's Fattest Fertilizer Salesman," and "Trapped Like Carrots." Only 25,000 copies of the doughnut edition have been made, and Green Day's track can be found on a CD single released the same day.

 

G. Love Some things are too embarrassing for public consumption, so the man born Garrett Dutton and known as G. Love exercised some control over the content of his new documentary and concert DVD, A Year & a Night with G. Love & Special Sauce.

When the director showed him his initial cut of the documentary portion of the DVD, coming it at roughly two hours, G. Love demanded that some material come out.

The running time was one concern, but image was another, G. Love admitted in an interview last week to promote his July 12 appearance at the Redstone Room. "You've got to take this shit out," he told the director. "I don't want to come off like this."

You're Gonna Miss Me A favorite of the indie-film-fest circuit is released this week as a must-see DVD, peeling back the myth and magic of Roky Erickson. Opening with his own mother's court deposition concerning her son's stewardship, You're Gonna Miss Me is brutally honest as the camera observes what's left from a life of "permanently tripping." Another line-jumper in the blur between genius and insanity, the 13th Floor Elevators' seer certainly had that special something - a voice that Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top calls the elusive "mystery factor." Whatever your personal positions on drug abuse, anti-psychotic medications, alternative therapy, and our prison system, you might be challenged by this one-hit-over-the-line madman, now caressing his Mr. Potato Head doll, turning on every sound-producing device in the house, trying to escape his own white noise. The Palm Pictures documentary is packed with archival footage, rare photographs, and family and devotees telling the tale, which includes a 1966 appearance on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, his last real gig in 1987 with the Butthole Surfers, and bizarre Mom-made home movies crowning a Christ-like Roky "king of kings." Bonus material on the DVD includes live and rare acoustic performances and readings.

Head Held High The MySpace page profile for the Quad Cities trio Head Held High includes upcoming shows, the band's influences, and a response to the prompt "Sounds like." The group has written "a rock band."

It's a fair description, and therein lies a problem.

The Asylum Street Spankers - Mommy Says No! Rock and roll shows off its brainpower next week in two CDs that feature frontmen who've earned the privilege of being referred to as "doctor." Bad Religion is back with its 14th album of smart punk, New Maps of Hell, helmed by UCLA professor of evolutionary paleontology Greg Graffin.

2007 IH Mississippi Valley Blues Festival - Reader issue #639 In an interview, pedal-steel guitarist Robert Randolph once suggested that somebody would come along and be the instrument's Jeff Beck or Jimi Hendrix.

When I asked him where that put him in the pedal steel's development, the singer/songwriter/guitarist appeared to backtrack a little. "Somebody has to put me there," he said of the class of guitar revolutionaries that includes Hendrix. "I wouldn't put myself there."

But based on his own criteria, that class is probably where Randolph belongs.

Watermelon SlimI'm talking to blues musician Watermelon Slim about the myriad jobs he's had in between the release of his first album, 1973's Merry Airbrakes, and his second, 2003's Big Shoes to Fill. Those three decades found Slim working as a truck driver, a forklift operator, a collection agent, a firewood salesman, a funeral officiator, and even a watermelon farmer, the job for which The Artist Formerly Known as Bill Homans got his moniker.

During our phone interview, I ask if his experience with blue-collar employment of this sort aids in his songwriting. "Oh, it does," Slim says. And he proceeds to explain how.

Kind of.

Albert Cummings As always, the performers at this year's IH Mississippi Valley Blues Festival will arrive with a host of awards to their names. But here's a guarantee: Albert Cummings will be the only one boasting a citation from the architectural digest Remodeling.

"We just won our fourth national award," says the fourth-generation builder, of his construction company based in Williamstown, Massachusetts. "I got an award from Remodeling magazine called 'The Big 50.' They select 50 builders in the United States [for recognition], and I was one of 'em this year. Went to Washington, D.C., to the Ritz-Carlton. Got treated like royalty."

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