(Nicole:) One of the best responses we've ever had for our LNMC was one that our very own NonnyMouse suggested. It's been a while since she's contributed anything, so I asked her if she'd like to do another one. Here it is:

I still have records. (For those of you who are too young to remember Viet Nam, never mind Watergate, records are those big, black Frisbee-like things in flimsy cardboard album covers.) At only 150 albums or so, I wouldn't actually call it a ‘collection'; it's just a motley hodgepodge of what I bought the last time I was a student in college. Thirty years ago. They all got put into storage in the States when I moved to Europe. More than twenty years ago. I shipped them over about five years ago. None of them have been played in a quarter of a century. But now... I have a record player. So I'm going through them all, deciding on which I treasure enough to ship once more.

I bought William Ackerman's ‘It Takes A Year' brand-new in 1977. Thirty years later, I carefully extracted the record, holding it by the edges (never touch the grooves with your bare fingers!) and laid it carefully onto the turntable, made sure there was no lint or dust on the vinyl, positioned the tone arm exactly right before lowering the brand-new stylus ever so gently onto the lead-in edge and listened to music I last heard before Britney Spears was even a zygote. Maybe it was because memories are so powerful, the music you hear in your 20's does something to your heart - I don't know. What I do know is I stood in front of an old record player, listening to the hauntingly beautiful ‘The Impending Death of the Virgin Spirit', crackles and hiss and all, and wept.

The closest I can give you to the real thing is this YouTube clip of a cover done by Adam Werner and Michael Manring.

William Ackerman founded Windham Hill Records, now sadly defunct, won some Grammies, gave up the craziness of the music business and moved away from California to the Vermont countryside where he does a few concerts, plays anywhere, even private living rooms, and is still quietly recording some of the best acoustical music known to the human soul. His newest CD, ‘Returning', features ‘Virgin Spirit', both because Ackerman wanted to refine the emotional connection of the work, and because in the past 30 years technology has vastly improved sound quality. Yet while the sound may be richer, the nuances more distinct, the music more matured, there will still be - at least for me - something very moving and unique about that older version, made long ago when we were both young and rough around the edges, that defined my life then, and still defines it now.Tonight's LNMC challenge is to share something powerful enough, without lyrics, to have moved you to tears.

(guest blogged by Howie Klein)

A friend turned me on to an indie band from Florida a few years ago--friends of his--he said he was 100% positive I would love. He was right. They're Against Me! They're not exactly a new band, more like an underground band that is just starting to surface. Tom Gabel, the singer and guitar player started playing as Against Me! a decade and a half ago. He was just an impassioned singer-songwriter back then. Now he's an impassioned singer-songwriter with a kick ass punk band behind him. Do you ever hear older folks who were against the War in Vietnam complaining that there are no young musicians making socially relevant music anymore? They're wrong; they're just not going to the right places to listen.

You won't find Against Me on too many corporately owned radio stations or see them on former music TV channels like MTV. A better place to hear and see their music is at MySpace or YouTube. Tonight the band's first video, "White People For Peace," from their Sire Records debut NEW WAVE (which comes out next month) is our LNMC song.

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There were over 200 submissions in our frisson contest the other day. The Byrds set goes to Jill G in Florida for her incredible essay about "Luka" by Suzanne Vega. Ten honorable mentions for exceptional paragraphs-- each of which could easily have won-- by Ivan (Brel's "Le Port d'Amsterdam"), Jeff B ("All Along the Watchtowner" by Hendrix), eel ("How Soon Is Now" by The Smiths), Shawn T ("It's All Over Now Baby Blue" by Them), Michael D (Bob Marley's "Redemption Song"), David C ("How Soon Is Now?" by The Smiths), Damien G (Smiths' "How Soon Is Now" again), Bob W ("East/West" by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band), Tom ( Radiohead's "Paranoid Android") and Steve W who went with a live Dylan version of "Like A Rolling Stone" from a 1966 concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Thanks everybody who spent the time and effort on those amazing entries. I loved reading them!

Jill gets her boxset and tonight's LNMC pick:

The hottest rumor I've heard in awhile is that Pinhead Gunpowder is doing a mini-tour of California next month. I can't get a confirmation anywhere but I'm hearing Berkeley, L.A., Orange County and maybe San Diego. They play so infrequently that when they do play, people fly in from all over the world. We first covered them here at the LNMC in May of 2006 and again last July-- a cover of Joni Mitchell's classic "Big Yellow Taxi." What a version!!

They have a hot new song, "Life During Wartime," their own composition, not the Talking Heads one. The acoustic version kicks ass but here's the rocked out one that sounds a lot like... you know who. You do, right?

When I was in high school the beatnik age was ending and the hippie age was beginning and there was a short time when the music reflected the transition. The Fugs and Pearls Before Swine were kind of folk and kind of rock and not many people knew what to make of either. Many decades before I came to run Reprise Records, the company signed-- and dropped-- Pearls Before Swine, a band I used to smoke out to once I got to college. The band's pre-Reprise album, One Nation Underground was their masterpiece. I have a suspicion there aren't many LNMC denizens who have heard them, so I asked my pal Lucas to make a YouTube-- he had never heard them either-- and here it is: "Another Time," the first song on the first side of the first album. Think of it as history:

(guest blogged by Howie Klein)

I don't know, for the life of me, what made me think of this song on this Independence Day.

Maybe you do; and if you do (if you're the kind of mind-reader I know lots of LNMC participants are), you can win a 2-CD set, The Essential George Jones, a career spanning retospective, 1956-1999, all the big hits frpm this all-American singer-songwriter.

Now this song by The Specials (Special AKA) was a big hit too, but only outside of the U.S. The 2 Tone thing never really took off on this side of the pond. This Coventry-based septet got going in 1977 and I saw them when I went on a U.K. tour with The Clash for whom they opened. I thought they were powerful and infectious and couldn't get enough of them. Although they had had at least one #1 in the U.K. before "Free Nelson Mandela," this was the one that brought them the most international acclaim. But what does it have to do with July, 2007? And don't forget to throw in something about Martin Luther King's "Free at last!"

Send your entry to downwithtyranny@aol.com

And Congratulations to C&Ler Marc of LA for his winning entry for the last contest!

(guest blogged by Howie Klein)

Chances are if you've seen a recent picture of me, you've seen a Building A Better Spaceship hoodie. I have several. I don't wear them when the temperature gets above 90-- unless I'm worried about being forced into an air-conditioned enclosure. Aside from really nice hoodies, this South Bay-based L.A. band also makes some really good music. I've been listening to their demos and seeing them play live shows for a couple years.

And today I realized that they'd probably have something shareable via YouTube. They do-- "This Time:"

And tonight's contest will take some sleuthing, and looking in the right place. I have to admit, it's a hard one. But I've come up with a great prize: a boxset called LEGENDS OF COUNTRY-- CLASSIC HITS OF THE '50's, '60's & '70's. (There are songs by Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Buck Owens, Waylon Jennings, and lots more... 57 songs including 49 #1 hits.)

So just tell me the relationship between Building A Better Space Ship and the Bush compound in Crawford. In the explanation I'm looking for two words-- a 3 letter word and a four letter word. Good luck-- and send your entry to downwithtyranny@aol.com

A few nights ago, we gave away a Sire boxset and all you had to do was name your 3 favorite Rough Trade songs. I thought LNMC members might be interested in knowing which artists came up the most frequently in the approximately 250 entries: Arcade Fire, The Smiths, Libertines, The Strokes, Cocteau Twins, Soft Cell, Delta 5, The Decemberists, Belle & Sebastian, Stiff Little Fingers, Sufjan Stevens, Gang of 4, Kleenex, James Blood Ulmer, Pere Ubu, Cabaret Voltaire, Young Marble Giants, The Fall, Scritti Politti, Antony & the Johnsons, Swell Maps, Sebadoh, and Ian Dury. All good stuff.

The winner was Eric with Galaxie 500, Delta 5 and Jarvis. Congratulations, Eric.

(Guest blogged by Howie Klein)

Kurt is an LNMC contest winner from Vancouver (WA) who just turned me on to a great new band from the U.K., The Brakes. And although they caused some stir with a song bashing a discredited American political figure and for their anti-war "Porcupine or Pineapple," it's really their music that is making them the hottest commodity in the U.K. music scene.

Here's the Rough Trade video for the U.K. hit "All Night Disco Party."

CONTEST: This isn't the first time Rough Trade has found an underground band and helped make them international stars. Send us a list of your 3 favorite Rough Trade-released hit songs (by 3 different artists). The coolest list gets its creator a cool Sire Records box set (3 CDs plus a DVD), JUST SAY SIRE: THE SIRE RECORDS STORY. Send your list to downwithtyranny@aol.com.

Shake Ya Boogie from Cinco de Mowo!

It ain't just the title of the song, it's a command, bub! Cooling down after a long day of work? Shake Ya Boogie! Bored to tears in the cubicle at work? Shake Ya Boogie! At home with the toddler? No better time to teach them to Shake Ya Boogie!

So put down the cup of joe, turn up the volume, get up from your chair and Shake Ya Boogie.

Ya know ya want to.

The Monkees?!?

Yeah. It turns out one day The Monkees got tired of being nothing but props for a teevee show.

The clip is from The Monkees' movie "HEAD" which begins with them jumping off a bridge. Some critics believe it was a sly homage to Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West", which was also released in 1968 and began with Western cinema icons being snuffed as the director's signal that he believed the genre itself was coming to an end. (Those critics are, of course, insane and desperately need to take a year off from film school and get a job hanging drywall.)

The Monkees - Porpoise Song