Music For 2/1/09

Today's music has a bit of an intro. About a year or two ago my dad was telling me about a band called Nothing Painted Blue and said that if I liked the Mountain Goats then I should give 'em a listen. Well, I looked them up, but couldn't really find anything about them and not remembering their name when I made it back down to San Diego, they were forgotten for the time being. So last night at work while I was reading John Darnielle's website, digging through the archives and all that jazz, I came across the name Nothing Painted Blue. Of course, bells went off in my head and I remembered that this was the band my dad had mentioned to me. I immediately went to youtube and looked them up, finding only Mountain Goats covers of NPB's song "Houseguest." I, of course, gave them a listen. The first I gave a listen to mentioned that Franklin Bruno, frontman/singer/songwriter of NPB was playing guitar with John during a Halloween show (John Darnielle in a far too snug Batman costume = golden). What was this connection? Writings of NPB, Bruno playing with Darnielle? I followed a link to a Franklin Bruno solo song because there are absolutely no videos of Nothing Painted Blue. Reading the description (and a trip to allmusic.com) I found that Bruno was also in a band called the Extra Glenns. As it turns out, Bruno and Darnielle started their musical careers at around the same time and somehow (I haven't quite figured it out yet, though Darnielle's near-nomadic living probably means that he met him in one of his various places he called home or visited) became friends. For a period the two collaborated on a project called the Extra Glenns while they were working on their own individual music. They had only released EPs and weren't very well known, but as most things not very well known, they developed a cult following. Together they released one album, which was a compilation of their various EPs, where the collaboration was to stop. That album was released back in '02. From what I found online, the music is great! Figuring that a band as unknown as Nothing Painted Blue wouldn't be found in stores, I went to my old stomping grounds for music collection. Ebay. On their way should be three different NPB albums and I'll soon try to find the Extra Glenns on there as well. So today's selection is the one Franklin Bruno song that I found, the one Extra Glenns song that I found, and a Mountain Goats cover of "Houseguest".

Franklin Bruno

Two Knives

Extra Glenns

Baltimore

The Mountain Goats

Houseguest (the link is to the Halloween show. It didn't make the video today despite the fact that Mr. Bruno is in it because the synching is completely off, but I couldn't let you not look at John Darnielle in that Batman costume. Also, I didn't know that John smoked. Go figure.)