(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.

Sound of Silver
	Artist: Lcd Soundsystem

This booty-shaker is off of LCD Soundsystem's 2007 gem Sounds Of Silver, and pokes fun at American stereotypes. What's your favorite song about Americans/America?

Out In the Streets from Triologie: The Best of Trio

This German minimalist combo wasn't well known in the US during the period when they recorded (1980-85), but their song Da Da Da caught American ears when used in a 1997 commercial for Volkswagen.

Usually reliant only on a single guitar, tiny drum kit and a Casio VL-1- and three chords- to create their sound, Out In the Streets stretches a bit, including a bass, organ and accordion. It's a simple song, but one that's stuck in my head since I first heard it back in the early '80's. I'd be remiss if I failed to warn you: as the third verse comes up, watch out for the American subtitles.

"Stickshifts and Safetybelts" and "Love You Madly" at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.

Heaven Just Got Funkier

Earl Palmer, perhaps the most recorded drummer in the history of popular American music, died last Friday at the age of 84. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, the New Orleans native set the beat for an amazing variety of artists, including, Fats Domino, Sam Cooke, Little Richard, Frank Sinatra, Lou Rawls, Bonnie Raitt, and Sarah Vaughan. In the 70's, I had the privilege of working with Earl for a few years in Maria Muldaur's band. He was a brilliantly inventive, caring, man. In recent years, in addition to continuing to play, he served as an executive officer of the LA Musician's Union, working to ensure that older musicians received credit and royalties they were due. We lost an immortal, one of the founding fathers of Rock & Roll.

I will always be a sucker for any song that includes the lyric, "John Glenn drinks cocktails with God / in a cafe in downtown Saigon."

The Mekons -- Ghosts of American Astronauts

(song starts at 5:20)

Rush hasn't performed live on American television in over 30 years. Well, that changed when the legendary band appeared on "The Colbert Report" for an interview and an amazing performance of their 1981 hit "Tom Sawyer."

Filmsite.org:

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) is one of Hollywood's greatest, grandest and slickest musicals. The nostalgic, shamelessly-patriotic, entertaining film also supported the war effort as it paid tribute in its mostly fictional story to [George M. Cohan,] a popular Irish/American entertainer and the grand American gentleman of the theatre in the early 20th century.

The timeliness of its release, just after the attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941, helped the 'propaganda machine' of going to European battlegrounds overseas with a song that was a rousing theme song written years earlier for WW I - Over There. And a second song, You're a Grand Old Flag, contributed to morale-boosting, flag-waving patriotism and love of one's country. And it was the first time that a living US President (FDR in this case, played by Jack Young) was portrayed in a motion picture.

Unless you're from their native Dublin, the Devlins are probably best known for the music on Six Feet Under and other American TV shows. But they were a great alt-pop band way before TV music supervisors discovered them. Their debut album, Drift (1993) included, "Someone To Talk To," a relatively little-known gem:

About 15 years before he passed away in 1982, I got to spend some time with Texas blues original Lightnin' Hopkins. He was playing dates in the Village and I was seeing him a lot and I asked him if he would come out and play my school, Stony Brook, which he did. He had had a tremendous influence on the most important American artists of the time, from Jimi Hendrix to the Dead. (He was a little too rootsy for the British blues afficianados but was a fave of Roky Erickson's band, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators.) I can't remember which album "What's the Matter Now? originally came from; I got it off Anthology: Mojo Hand Rhino released in 1993.