Dear Groundlings, welcome to yet another edition of the spiffy music column we all know and adore. As always, I'd like to thank you for all the notes you've sent me, please keep them coming.

Now, let's get to it!

REVERB

International

Last month I told you guys about the lawsuit legendary Guitar-onanist Joe Satriani placed against future Brit-Rock icons Coldplay for supposedly incorporating some of Satriani's riffs into their powerhouse piece "Viva La Vida". The lawsuit is still going on, and it appears to be getting more contentious by the day. Here is a totally levelheaded and downright pragmatic quote from Chris Martin on the subject, taken from the www.coldplay.com : "Some people are suing us at the moment, and although it was initially a bit depressing, now it's become really inspiring. You think, *Right, if everyone's trying to take away our best song, then we'd better write 25 better ones.' And so just at the point where I was thinking about getting fat and becoming complacent, I've been finding more inspiration. Now we've got more to prove than ever before." Right, so in order to spur their creativity even more, I suggest we all sue Coldplay. I'm claiming emotional distress for having the opening riff of "Life in Technicolor" stuck in my head for 2 months straight. Too damn catchy. Call your lawyers now.

Up to the present point of musical history, Yoko Ono has proven to all of us that she can get away with pretty much whatever she wants. Even when her recent performances often consist of loud screeching and wailing over heavily distorted and even atonal instruments, people still love her. Not too many people can pull that kind of thing off, but Yoko can. Aside from being the widow of one the greats in music, she can get away with it by simply not calling herself a musician, but a "performance artist", which in my experience "performance art" can mean everything from watching a naked guy paint himself purple to having a semi nude girl in an oversized men's shirt serve you hot chocolate in a gallery while a video of socks is playing on a loop in the background (not making this up, I actually was present at such "performances"). It's a pretty big umbrella. Anyway, Yoko is planning on doing another one. On June 14, Yoko Ono and her Plastic Ono Band will make their first appearance ever in the UK, playing at London's Royal Festival Hall. The show will be part of the annual Meltdown Festival, which this year is curated by the free-jazz legend Ornette Coleman. This time the Plastic Ono Band will include an incredibly random but ultra cool line-up of contributors: vocal genius Antony Hegarty, uber-producer Mark Ronson, Yoko's son and quirkily cool singer/songwriter Sean Lennon, Japanese pop-art lord Cornelius (along with a couple of members of his band), and ex-Cibo Matto vocalist Yuka Honda. Yoko will be previewing music from her forthcoming album, Between My Head and the Sky, out this fall.

When Brit-rock minor-deity and geek-chic icon Jarvis Cocker isn't out pimping his new solo album Further Complications, he's also got his foot in movies. Cocker will be contributing music to the upcoming stop-motion animation adaptation of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox, directed by the equally geeky and chic Wes Anderson of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums fame. According to the www.timesonline.co.uk, Cocker actually wrote a song with Wes Anderson. It's "a little hoedown number," he told the Times. The paper also reports that Cocker has a role in the animated movie, and it sounds promising. He'll voice Petey, a "mandolin-strumming puppet who looks and sounds like his real-life counterpart." I say that the suck probability here is very very low, and the kickass potential very high. The Times story also tells us Jarvis was originally pegged to do some narration for Fox-- which also features voice work from George Clooney, Meryl Streep, and Bill Murray-- but US test audiences were "bamboozled" by his Sheffield accent. Fantastic Mr. Fox is out Nov. 13, according to www.imdb.com

National

There's some new music from Underground Hum alum being released out over the web. Shorthand Phonetics, probably the most prolific purveyor of geek-pop/rock I've ever encountered in my life, has let loose yet another offering into the World Wide Web.

"Errors in Calculating Odds, Errors in Calculating Value" is the title of this one man act's fourth full length release. And he's not kidding when he says "full length"; this baby is an 80-minute long lo-fi concept LP.

I've only heard smatterings from the album, and I must say that he's consistently catchy. The lyrics have matured a tad bit from his previous work, but that's all I can say for now since I haven't heard the entire album properly. To download this web-only LP, go to http://www.archive.org/compress/ShorthandPhoneticts_Errors.

There's a sure to be nice gig happening today, so if you ain't got anything planned on this lurvely Sunday, I suggest you check out the following:

ENDAH N RHESA PRESENTS

"THE LIVING BRIDGE"

A storytelling session with music

Date: Sunday, 24 May, 2009

Time: 4pm-6pm

Venue: Aksara Bookstore,

Jl. Kemang Raya no. 8b Jakarta, Indonesia

Opening act: Adhitia Sofyan

FREE OF CHARGE

If you read UH a couple of months back, you'll surely remember the feature I did on super-sweet folk-pop act Endah N Rhesa. Now you get a chance to see them live. It's always an awesome and uplifting experience. These folks are just very good at turning frowns upside down. Their opening act will be Adhitia Sofyan, a gentle-voiced and equally smooth singer/songwriter that isn't to be missed.

That about wraps it up for this week's Reverb. Stay tuned next week!

Meanwhile, do drop me a line at undergrounddhum@yahoo.com and if you've got a band or know of any cool bands with gigs coming up, email me the full details and I'll be sure to include it in the next Reverb.See y'all next week!

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