His latest is a clip for Real Estate’s song “Easy,” which illustrates the take-no-prisoners approach of a hyper-aggressive street team ready to make sure you listen to the New Jersey band, OR ELSE.

The song is from Real Estate’s latest, “Days,” released in October on Domino. The band this week starts an extensive tour of North America, Europe and Australia/New Zealand, ending up at Coachella in April.

Big Star – September Gurls from gata blanca on Vimeo.

Lady Sweet – Big Star from gata blanca on Vimeo.

Speaking of Big Star — and we were — Tara Angell, who opened the band’s show in 2009 in Brooklyn, sent along these videos she took that night of “September Gurls” and “Lady Sweet.” Amazing.

When we get a request from Jody Stephens of Big Star, we do what he asks, because he’s Jody Stephens from Big Star. ‘Nuf said.

He sent along this video clip from his last performance with Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow as Big Star, in May 2010 in Memphis. The show was a tribute to guitarist Alex Chilton with special guests including John Davis from Superdrag, who helped out on this version of “Don’t Lie to Me.” It’s one of three songs featuring Davis (“When My Baby’s Beside Me” and “In the Street” are the others), and all three are part of a 7-inch vinyl EP due June 21 on Ardent.

Man, we miss Big Star. Reminisce with us via this review of Chilton’s last-ever performance in November 2009 in Brooklyn.

We’re not really sure how the video relates to the song, but it’s a dreamy, hypnotic tune and the video is a compilation of movie images that were once banned — so racy, those vintage clothed women!

The song comes from “All Harm Ends Here,” the latest release by Italian band OfeliaDorme. In an e-mail with a link to the video, the band appended “DIY!,” so we’re guessing they put it together themselves. Well done, gang.

Everyone knows about the original ’60s psychedelia, largely popularized by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and further explored by legions of garage rockers like Strawberry Alarm Clock and the Electric Prunes. Then there were the groups that revived the sound in the ’90s, including the Flaming Lips and Olivia Tremor Control.

Though they were lesser known, Mercury Rev may have created the first bonafide psych-rock masterpiece of the ’90s with the 1991 release “Yerself Is Steam.” Plumbing the same depths as their contemporaries and collaborators the Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev delved a bit deeper and came up with a more expansive sound than Wayne Coyne and company.

The album starts innocently enough with the swirly semi-acoustic “Chasing a Bee,” but once the charmingly named “Sweet Oddysee of a Cancer Cell t’ th’ Center of Yer Heart” gets going the tone has become darker and more furious. By “Very Sleepy River” it’s clear that whatever trip these guys were on has ended up on a boat looking for Colonel Walter E. Kurtz. Thankfully, the album ends on a lighter note with “Car Wash Hair (The Bee’s Chasing Me)” bringing us right back to where we started.

Then again, psychedelia was never all about sunshine and rainbows. “Yerself Is Steam” speaks to the truth that sometimes an acid trip can take you on a journey into a heart of darkness.

— Nicholas Coleman

A cursory listen to tracks like “Five Man Army” makes it clear that hip-hop is part of the formula, but it’s not the only ingredient. Elements of reggae, soul, dub and techno are just as present in the mix as well. The hip-hop that is there isn’t particularly trippy either, at least not in the psychedelic sense. It is laid-back, groovy and distinctively British, but it doesn’t recall the ’60s so much as the mellow ’70s. It’s music for the bachelor pad, not for the commune.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the trip-hop label is its evocation of the past, when the music itself felt more like the future. It had something in common with other classics of 1991 — Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and My Bloody Valentine’s “Loveless” come to mind — in that it sounded like nothing that came before and everything that came after.

— Nicholas Coleman

Formed in the wake of the breakup of the hardcore juggernaut known as Squirrel Bait, the members of Slint consciously took a different approach to music than their punk predecessors. It wasn’t more slick and accessible like Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, nor was it more raw and unpolished like Pavement and Sebadoh.

Instead it fused the noisier and rougher elements of hardcore with the cinematic scope and skillful musicianship of stoner-metal to produce a slow yet heavy sound that would be frequently imitated in the two decades since the release of their first album.

It was their second release, “Spiderland,” that ultimately had the greatest influence. Comprising just six tracks, each was carefully conceived and delicately performed. The dueling guitars of David Pajo and Brian McMahan wind around each other while Britt Walford’s percussion ranges from atmospheric cymbal taps to heavy bass drum thuds and Todd Brashear’s roaming bass weaves it all together. It wasn’t really punk or metal or prog-rock, it was just Slint.

The reverberations of that six-song album can be heard in the bands members of Slint went on to form: King Kong, Tortoise and the For Carnation as well as fellow travelers Palace (Will Oldham took the iconic cover photo) and Gastr Del Sol. Most of the so-called “post-rock” music of the late ’90s and early aughts could claim “Spiderland” as a touchstone. It’s hard to imagine Shiner, Mogwai or … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead existing in a world without Slint.

The last song on the album, “Good Morning, Captain,” closes with McMahan desperately screaming out “I MISS YOU!” over and over. It’s a truly haunting moment.

Thirteen years later, the band Pinback released a Slint-esqe album called “Summer in Abaddon” whose final song “AFK” ends with the line “I miss you / not in a Slint way / but I miss you.” Though their lifespan was short, Slint is definitely missed. Maybe not in a Slint way, but missed just the same.

— Nicholas Coleman

After three albums of blistering rock laced with elements of folk, punk, noise and metal, Dinosaur Jr. was at that crossroads. Guitarist J Mascis more or less picked the first path, while bass player Lou Barlow took the second, leaving the band (though not of his own volition — Mascis told Barlow Dinosaur Jr. was breaking up, then re-formed it without him) to pursue his Sebadoh side project full time.

The band’s first album without Barlow, “Green Mind”, was also their first major label release. The production is certainly cleaner, but it would be hard to describe the sound as mainstream rock. Tracks like “The Wagon” and “How’d You Pin That One on Me” are as rough and ragged as any of their earlier work, though Mascis is not afraid to pull out the acoustic guitars for some of the mellower songs.

There’s no anthem to equal “Freak Scene” (the title track comes close) but Mascis successfully navigates the space between the symphonic noise of Sonic Youth and the melancholy folk-rock of early R.E.M. with side trips to Hüsker Dü and the Minutemen along the way.  It may not have sounded like ’70s classic rock, but it had the scope and ambition of that era.

So did Dinosaur Jr. sell out? Hardly. Instead they managed to open up their sound to fit a larger arena. Maybe not a stadium -ized arena, but certainly big enough for the main stage of Lollapalooza in 1993. Appropriately enough, Sebadoh played the second stage that year.

Text by Nicholas Coleman

This perception changed when Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer released the landmark electro-disco single “I Feel Love.” This wasn’t music for the head, but for the body. As the ’70s became the ’80s and disco lost its luster, newer genres like electro, synth-pop, house and techno followed Moroder’s lead and used synthesizers, sequencers, samplers and drum machines as their primary instruments to create dance club anthems.

Even Kraftwerk was not immune to this trend, describing their 1978 album “The Man-Machine” as “electronic body music.” Other artists like D.A.F. and Cabaret Voltaire continued in this vein, but no group embodied electronic body music (EBM) as thoroughly or successfully as the Belgian knob-twiddlers known as Front 242.

Front 242 released a series of dark electronic albums and singles in the ’80s that were as danceable as they were listenable, from their debut single “Principles” in 1981 through their biggest hit, “Headhunter,” in 1988. Their success landed them a major label contract with Epic, and in 1991 they release their major label debut, “Tyranny (For You).”

In many ways, this album was a turning point for Front 242 and for the EBM genre. In particular, the standout track “Gripped by Fear” had an emotional resonance that was atypical for the genre and would inform later EBM artists like VNV Nation, Apoptygma Berserk and Covenant in the late ’90s and early Aughts. “Tyranny (For You)” was also the most cohesive and sonically adventurous album Front 242 had released to date, though it would not prove to be as popular with fans who were expecting the next “Headhunter.” Still, like Kraftwerk before them, Front 242 opened a door that led to future delights for the head as well as the body.

— Nicholas Coleman

Low buzz in the courtroom as judge bangs gavel

JUDGE: Order in the court! Prosecution may proceed.

PROSECUTOR: Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it is my intent to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the defendant, known to the public as Killing Joke is guilty of dangerously influencing the course of popular music.

DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Objection, your honor. Most people have probably never heard of my clients. Indeed, they have never released an album or single on a major label. How can they possibly be as influential as the prosecution claims?

JUDGE: Objection overruled. Defense is out of order. Let the prosecutor state her case.

PROSECUTOR: Thank you your honor.  If it pleases the court I wish to call Krist Novoselic of Nirvana as a witness.

(Novoselic swears in)

PROSECUTOR: Mr. Novoselic, is it not true that the bass line for Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” was essentially cribbed from the Killing Joke song “Eighties,” released some seven years before “Nevermind”?

NOVOSELIC: Well, it’s a slower song and it’s not exactly the same riff …

PROSECUTOR: Please just answer the question, Mr. Novoselic.

NOVOSELIC: Um … yeah … I guess you could say that.  But I think Dave Grohl made up for that by playing drums for them on their self-titled album in 2003 …

PROSECUTOR: Next witness! I call James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem to the stand.

(Murphy swears in)

PROSECUTOR: Is it not true that the riff behind LCD Soundsystem’s breakthrough club anthem “Losing My Edge” was essentially the same as the riff from the Killing Joke song “Change” released 22 years prior?

MURPHY: You can’t copyright a riff, can you?  I’d call it more of an homage than outright theft …

PROSECUTOR: I think we’ve heard enough from the witnesses. Not only was Killing Joke an essential part of the post-punk movement of the late ’70s and early ’80s, they clearly had a strong influence on the alternative rock of the late ’80s and early ’90s as well as the dance-punk scene in the early 2000s.  And the list goes on: Metallica, Big Black, Ministry, The Sugarcubes, Course of Empire, P.O.D., The Kills …

JUDGE: How does the defense respond to these charges?

DEFENSE ATTORNEY: The prosecution has made some fair arguments, but I maintain that the influence of my clients has never been widely acknowledged by the general public, the music press or the critics. Take their 1990 album, “Extremities, Dirt, and Various Repressed Emotions.” It’s a hot slab of fierce uncompromising post-punk blending Geordie Walker’s incisive guitar, Paul Raven’s booming bass, Martin Atkins’ explosive percussion and Jaz Coleman’s unsettling yet mesmerizing vocals. Yet I would be willing to postulate that no one in this court room has even heard it!

JUDGE: The court will adjourn for 64 minutes and 31 seconds so we can listen to the defendants perform this album in its entirety.

JAZ COLEMAN: AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH! MONEY! MONEY IS NOT OUR GOD!

(fade out)

— Nicholas Coleman