The Wall Street Journal last week had the latest in what have been a string of stories this season about slumping CD sales. In this piece, "Still Recording After All These Years," writer Ethan Smith took the tack of looking at the disappointing sales of one-time superstars. He writes that fans of these artists -- Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Neil Diamond and the Rolling Stones among them -- want to hear the classics, the hits. No matter how good their latest releases are -- and all four have well-reviewed new discs in stores -- they just aren't selling. "Such middling results are unwelcome news for the beleaguered global music business, where banks on the fourth quarter for as much as 40 percent of its revenue," he writes.

Though the piece did offer some interesting sales figures, which I'll get to in a moment, what it really could have used is some analysis. It's not news to report that music isn't selling. What is needed is for someone to say why it's not selling. Let me offer a theory. First, most of what is released today is simply dreadful. Again, that's not news, but it gets to the heart of why music fans have little loyalty. Second, the work these career artists released in between their last significant hits and their current hoped for renaissance was really dreadful. Third, the people who are fans of these artists long ago stopped looking for new music from them. They want the hits they grew up with and that's pretty much it.

Add it all up, and it doesn't matter how perfectly the geriatric artists mentioned above have recaptured their past glory (and let's be honest, they're close but nowhere near back in hit-making form), there is nobody there to buy it. Most people form their music listening habits in high school and college. If they buy music as adults, it is music that approximates that sound, or better yet, repackages that same music. It's why the new Greatest Hits package from John Fogerty (which for the first time includes most of his biggest Creedence Clearwater Revival hits) has sold half the number of discs as Paul McCartney's new disc in a third of the time (159,000 since November compared to 337,000 since September): People want familiarity, and the real thing sells better than a close approximation every time.

So, you have artists who once could be assured of selling millions now hoping a little sales bump at Christmas will give them a gold record. The antidote, of course, is beyond their grasp. They needed to have made consistently good music over the course of their careers so that they could keep old fans and continue to make new ones. U2 is a good example of this, a band with only one real stinker in its back catalog (Pop). R.E.M., given its spotty recent work, seems to be on track to be one of those bands that makes a stirring return to form every few years or so with decreasing impact on the charts.

In the Journal article, XM DJ George Taylor Morrison talks about the latest from Big Star, included in the article for no good reason (the band was never popular and no one save for a few of us uber-power pop geeks was pining for new product): "I still think they could have spent a little more time on this one," he says about the profoundly disappointing disc In Space (of which he is apologetically supportive). That's good advice for all artists in today' rapidly shifting marketplace, fair or not: Don't stumble too often, because your fans might not stick around to help you up.

Anyone needing a further fix of "best of" lists need look no further than to PopMatters, which has an exhaustive package that features the 50 best albums of the year and best-of lists of 10 for electronic, country, jazz and metal music. A list of the 20 best reissues, including my take on the Gang of Four's Entertainment, also is part of the package. Many of my picks made the upper reaches of the top 50, including surprise list-topper the New Pornographers.

In other news, the Rolling Stones are using their clout to give a boost to some notable acts. The Stones have announced opening acts for their 2006 North American tour, and the slate offers a few pleasant surprises. I'm not sure who Anik Jean is, but after that things get interesting. Sloan joins the band for a few dates, as do Metric, Soulive, Brooks & Dunn, Queens of the Stone Age, Merle Haggard and the Meters. That sounds like a pretty great festival, actually, and it's a credit to the Stones that they're willing to give their audience something different.

I finished reading Guided by Voices: A Brief History this weekend, and came away from it with a bit more knowledge about the band's extra-musical history, a greater appreciation for the songwriting mastery of leader Robert Pollard and confirmation of my opinion that Jim Greer isn't much of a writer. Anyone with even the faintest interest in the book isn't going to steer clear of it because of any problems with Greer's work, nor should they, but his purple prose, annoying tics and general lack of storytelling skill make this a challenge to navigate.

Greer, as GBV fans will know, was perhaps the most absurd in a long line of odd members of GBV. He was a writer for Spin when he was tapped to fill the umpteenth bass player vacancy in the group. He lasted for one disc, Alien Lanes, and then seemed to fade into obscurity. It was strange yet unsurprising to hear that Greer had landed a contract to write a biography of the band. In the least it seemed that he would be able to offer insights thanks to his connections. He does, it seems, if the many references to himself with the royal "we" are any indication. In the book, "we" did this, and "we" did that, and it quickly becomes clear that "we" is Greer. Why he didn't simply say "I" is beyond me, though it fits with the other stylistic choices that Greer makes that draw way too much attention to the man at the keyboard. It's as if Greer doesn't feel his subject is compelling enough (it is) or that his writing is strong enough to adequately convey the tale told straight (it isn't).

Along the way he makes some asinine statements that add nothing but his own smarmy take on things. That's his right, of course, but he comes off sounding stupid. Rob Schnapf, who produced GBV's Isolation Drills had "worked with Beck and the Foo Fighters and Elliott Smith and a bunch of other mediocre artists," for example. Pollard's side project, Circus Devils, mines the same postrock vein as "those guys The Turtle, from Chicago..." (that would be Tortoise, for those who can't see through Greer's oh-so-clever wit). A dust-up with opener Ted Leo and the Pharmacists late in GBV's run begins, "There is apparently a band called Ted Leo and the Pharmacists..." as if Leo isn't more popular at this point than Pollard (anyone with Soundscan access, prove me wrong with sales figures from Shake the Sheets and Half Smiles of the Decomposed). Pollard is a music fan, and he seems better than such misguided slags in his name would indicate; perhaps he should choose his Boswell a bit more carefully.

As I said earlier, no one will avoid this because of such criticism, and anyone who is a big enough fan of Pollard and GBV to want to read a book about them would be wise to do so. Greer unearths enough interesting fodder and fills in enough historical gaps that it is well worth reading. It does leave plenty of holes, however. Pollard's decision to leave teaching is glossed over, and the creative burst that led to the band's best disc, Bee Thousand and seemingly dozens of great singles and EPs is given cursory explanation but little analysis. Greer taps more talented writers and artists like Richard Meltzer, Michael Azzerad and Steven Soderbergh for help, and they leaven the otherwise oppressive stylistic straightjacket that bogs down the rest of the book. Even Pollard's son Bryan, in three witty vignettes, offers more compelling writing than Greer.

For those who do steer clear, one way to get one-third of the book for free is to visit the Guided by Voices Database. The discography, tour itineraries, set lists and band member details found there make up the last 100 pages of Greer's book.

The other GBV artifact that is likely on the Christmas lists of a lot of stunted adolescent males this season is the DVD of the band's last show, recorded Dec. 31, 2004 at the Metro in Chicago. The Electrifying Conclusion (just to show, by the way, that Greer left much untapped in his book, the title of that last tour and the subsequent DVD comes from the lyrics to the song "Murder Charge" from the album Same Place the Fly Got Smashed from 1990. Pollard rarely throws anything away; he is constantly recycling and repurposing his work. That would be the subject of an entire chapter in a better book) is a fantastic document of a band going out on top. It's four hours of solid should've-been hits, filmed and recorded impeccably. Other GBV videos like Some Drinking Implied and The Who Went Home and Cried are horrible; finally, a video document does the band justice.

Nothing Bob Dylan does should be a surprise anymore, but he still finds ways to amaze. Once you've appeared in a Victoria's Secret ad, all bets are off, huh? Now Dylan is set to debut as a DJ, hosting an hour-long show each week on XM Satellite Radio.

According to XM, the show "will feature an eclectic mix of music hand-selected by Dylan. In addition, Dylan will offer regular commentary on music and other topics, host and interview special guests including other artists and will take emails from XM subscribers."

"Songs and music have always inspired me. A lot of my own songs have been played on the radio, but this is the first time I've ever been on the other side of the mic," said Dylan in an XM press release. "It'll be as exciting for me as it is for XM."

Dylan joins fellow Traveling Wilbury Tom Petty on the digital airwaves. Petty just signed on for a second season of his own show on XM's "Deep Tracks" station, "Tom Petty's Buried Treasure,"a show that promises to "blend landmark songs, offbeat cuts and live-in-concert classics recorded by legendary artists with Petty providing informed and passionate commentary on what is his first love, the music."

Petty offers a reason similar to that expressed by Dylan for the endeavor: "I love doing the show because I can turn people, especially younger people, onto really great, timeless music."

The two classic rockers join the likes of Snoop Dogg (who hosts "Da Chuuch") and Trick Daddy (who hosts "Dunk Rider Radio") on XM's schedule, likely the only time those four artists will be mentioned in the same post.

I can take or leave Howard Stern, but if satellite radio is going to continue to offer programming like this, it may be worth the investment.

The spat between Garrison Keillor and poet August Kleinzhaler over the notion of "good poems" resumed last month, and I'm finally getting around to writing about it. The spat really isn't between Keillor and Kleinzhaler; the latter ripped to shreds the compilation of the former, and with the release recently of a follow-up (that would be Good Poems for Hard Times, a sequel to Keillor's previous Good Poems), the New York Times' David Carr has weighed in on the issue.

Quickly, Kleinzhaler and Dana Gioia (National Endowment for the Arts Chairman and a poet himself) wrote pro and con reviews of Good Poems in the April 2004 issue of Poetry magazine. It's part of a larger debate going on, it seems to me, about the merits of experimental fiction vs. realist fiction (for lack of better terms), where each side seems to see no middle ground (more on this in a moment).

Reading the Times article, as well as the many other pieces out there about the dust up, I'm struck by one new thing (I say new, because I wrote about this several months ago myself in a post about my own jagged path into the world of poetry): Why doesn't Kleinzhaler put his money where is mouth is and assemble his own anthology? He is quick to criticize Keillor for making "no demands on his audiences, none whatsoever," and says "I, for one, have never in my lifetime seen the situation of poetry in this country more dire and desperate... what little of real originality is drowning in the waste products spewing from graduate writing programs..." He obviously has strong opinions about what constitutes bad poetry; one hopes he also knows what makes good poetry and can gather several examples. He clearly has a soapbox, and he is a respected poet with a major publishing house behind him. What better person to edit an anthology of truly "good poems?"

It's easy to criticize Keillor's efforts; it's harder to do something constructive about it. I for one would love to read an anthology of poetry that picks the best of the challenging yet accessible work that is out there. Kleinzhaler's own best poems are strong candidates for such a work. Given the choice between the haughty, impenetrable vastness of the poetry world or Keillor's warm, fuzzy roadmap through some light, easy verse, which way does Kleinzhaler think people are going to jump? Telling them they're stupid for reading such trifle isn't exactly your best pitch.

Which brings me back to the experimental vs. realistic debate. Why can't people find a middle ground? I've argued before that anything that gets people to read is a good thing. If a light Billy Collins poem gets people to check out his Poetry 180 collection, for example, where they get a mix of Joe Wenderoth's absurdity and Donald Justice's quiet elegance, maybe they'll branch out and continue to explore and discover the work of others. If they read a mystery novel by Dennis Lehane and find in an interview that he mentions Martin Amis and Don DeLillo as among his favorite authors, might they not check them out and discover something beyond mass market paperbacks?

They just might, and the effort would be helped if all of those who waste so much energy decrying the low-brow would instead focus on ways to ease people into the middle brow and beyond. So here's a challenge for Kleinzhaler: put up or shut up.

'Tis the season for lists, so here are a few other sites with good top CD lists to help you populate that last-minute Christmas wish list.

Caffeine Headache's long list of the best albums of 2005 seems to include every album actually released in 2005. He includes the obvious and not so obvious, with plenty of links to online samples.

Frank at Chromewaves has perhaps the most elaborate top 10, complete with original artwork.

Said the Gramophone has a lengthy list of top tracks and albums for the year.

The fellas at Sound Opinions weigh in with lists that are surprisingly mainstream.

Glide has a good list that reminded me of that Hold Steady disc (why is that not on more lists? For me, it was a matter of not withstanding repeat listens. One you get the lyrical/vocal shtick, the rather pedestrian bar band stomp doesn't hold interest.) and has a surprising amount of crossover with my own list.

David at Largehearted Boy weighed in a couple of weeks back with another list that has a lot of overlap with mine, though I just can't see the appeal of CocoRosie (who make Devendra Banhart sound like Sinatra), and I admire Antony much more than I actually want to listen to him.

There are plenty more out there; visit Largehearted Boy and Chromewaves for more complete round-ups.

For several years when writing about arts & entertainment for the local paper I would offer my annual feature on the best CDs of the year. It was a chance to pontificate on my favorites, the one day I wasn't hemmed in by the need to write about the usual spate of jam bands, hair metal and mainstream country that seemed to come to town with frightening frequency.

Well, it's that time of year again, and even though I'm no longer paid to do so, it just felt right to compile my usual list. So, here are my top 20 discs, in order, plus a few more that narrowly missed the cut and a couple of others not to miss.

The Top 10

1. My Morning Jacket – Z

Wow. What a progression, from folky country to full-on boogie jam to... whatever one would call this. Few bands have been able to grow this much this fast while maintaining a semblance of what first made them so appealing. Out of the silo and into the stratosphere.

2. Wolf Parade – Apologies to the Queen Mary

Yes, this bears the handprints of producer Isaac Brock. No, that's not a bad thing. Taking Brock's yelp and twisted lyrics as just one ingredient, Wolf Parade has crafted an album of depth, power and beauty.

3. The National – Alligator

This moody disc seemed to earn a few rave reviews upon release and then faded as more-hyped bands took the limelight. That just makes this that much more precious a find. Great arrangements and atmosphere make this a great front-to-back listen.

4. The Clientele – Strange Geometry

This sounds like some long lost gem from the 1960s on first listen, but the clean, crisp production has a decidedly modern feel. Some of the best melodies of the year on a disc that fulfills a lot of this band's early promise. (see my PopMatters review)

5. New Pornographers – Twin Cinema

Those other great melodies? You can find them here. Carl Newman subverts the formula a bit, giving Neko Case the slow burners so he can have the bombastic pop gems for himself. That just meant it took a couple more spins for this to lodge itself in the ear.

6. Pinetop Seven – The Night’s Bloom

Perhaps the biggest leap forward by a band in 2005. Previous P7 releases were good; this is fantastic. Darren Richard uses everything but the kitchen sink here, but manages to make the whole things sound like an organic front porch chamber pop jam. (see my PopMatters review)

7. Jose Gonzalez – Veneer

Sure, you'll hear Nick Drake and Elliott Smith in here somewhere, and while this isn't the most original work, it is such a hauntingly beautiful mix of fingerpicked guitar and hushed vocals that you'll forgive the derivative nature and just enjoy the music.

8. Pernice Brothers – Discover a Lovlier You

A new disc from Joe Pernice, a guaranteed spot in the Top 10. Not so fast, it seemed early on. Joe perhaps stripped things down too much in his quest to see what life was like on the unorchestrated side of the fence. His sturdy melodies stood up with out the accoutrements, however, and this is yet another stellar offering.

9. Ron Sexsmith & Don Kerr – Destination Unknown

This slipped out in Canada with little notice south of the border, but it's a delightful record full of Everlys-inspired harmony singing from one of the best songwriters in the business.

10. John Vanderslice – Pixel Revolt

Vanderslice has come a long way from his jokey past, following 2003's great Cellar Door with the even better Pixel Revolt. This studio wizard builds complex songs whose melodies never falter under the weight. The stories he tells are, to use a tired descriptor, short-story worthy.

The next 10

11. Spoon – Gimme Fiction
12. Okkervil River – Black Sheep Boy
13. Go-Betweens – Oceans Apart
14. Sleater-Kinney – The Woods
15. Nada Surf – This Weight is a Gift
16. Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
17. DangerDoom – The Mouse and the Mask
18. Rogue Wave – Descended Like Vultures
19. Black Mountain – s/t
20. Son Volt - Okemah and the Melody of Riot

Five more in no certain order:

Six Organs of Admittance - School of the Flower
Explosions in the Sky – Temporary Residence EP
Iron and Wine/Calexico – In the Reins
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – s/t
The Ponys – Celebration Castle

Three great live jazz discs rescued from the vaults:

John Coltrane - One Down, One Up
Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker - Town Hall New York City, June 22, 1945
Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane Coltrane - At Carnegie Hall

And...

one great single from an otherwise lukewarm record:
Teenage Fanclub's "It's All in My Mind" from Man-Made.

My review of Pinetop Seven's new disc, The Night's Bloom is up today at PopMatters. It usually takes me a while to get reviews filed because I procrastinate, but in this case, I simply wanted to keep listening to the record before putting my thoughts down. It's awfully good, fulfilling the promise of the band's past work in wonderful ways. It's a shoo-in for my top 10, which I'll post here over the weekend.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal today has an interesting piece on the recent spate of trivia books. In it, Robert Hughes writes about what are coming to be known as "significa" and "information art" books. He rightly points out that this is nothing new -- small gift books with otherwise meaningless facts and figures are a staple of Christmas stocking stuffers, and things like The Book of Lists have been around since the 1970s.

Though Ben Schott is mentioned, the British writer whose Schott's Miscellany seemed to kick off the current market saturation (with a not-so-subtle nod to the design aesthetic of Dave Eggers and his McSweeney's empire) does not really get his due. In fact, Hughes spends as much time allowing other "authors" of trivia to take pot shots at Schott. "Let's just say there was much about what was in (Schott's Miscellany) that I didn't find interesting, and rather common," said the author of the book Assorted Trifles. (sample "trifles": Shakespeare opening lines, prohibited items on eBay and celebrity epitaphs) Make your own joke here.

If nothing else, the story is a nice Christmas present for all of those bloggers who lament the fact that people just aren't reading serious literature any more. If only the story were available online for linking...

The Arcade Fire inject some badly needed indie cred into this year's Grammy Awards, nabbing two nominations, including one for Best Alternative Rock Album. They don't stand much chance of winning unless the voters grew amazingly hip over the past year, but it still must be nice to be honored. They face Beck, Death Cab for Cutie, Franz Ferdinand and the White Stripes in the contest. Among other worthy nominations is for LCD Soundsystem's nod for Best Dance Recording for insanely catchy "Daft Punk is Playing at My House."

Meanwhile, continuing to blur genre lines and thus make them meaningless, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young each get Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for their most folk outings in years, "Devils and Dust" and "The Painter," respectively. Springsteen's disc, Devils and Dust, however, earned a nomination as Best Contemporary Folk Album. Huh?

The jazz nominations seem particularly hip this year, recognizing Dave Holland, Dave Douglas, Wayne Shorter and Ravi Coltrane (don't worry, both Branford and Wynton Marsalis were nominated).

In unrelated news about a band that will probably never be nominated for a Grammy, Joe Pernice reports that the Pernice Brothers will enter a Connecticut studio in January to record the follow up to this year's Discover a Lovlier You. Where that previous disc continued the band's move toward more stripped-down arrangements, the forthcoming work would seem to lean more toward the orchestrated work of old: "We will be making our return to the warmer climate of Connecticut to record our next album with Michael Deming at the legendary Studio 45. Scud Mountain Boys' Massachusetts was done there with Mike, as was Pernice Brothers' first album Overcome by Happiness. Mike has kindly agreed to produce the record with me, and he'll engineer the sounds to two inches of gloriously fat analog tape. He'll also (as he did on Overcome) write the charts and conduct the orchestra."

That's great news for those of us who miss the more lush productions of Joe's earlier work. Looks like the "best of 2006" list has at least one entry already. That said, I'll post my "best of 2005" soon.

Yesterday's mail brought the latest R.E.M. Fan Club Christmas package, complete with the "Christmas single." The single this year was actually a DVD, with a performance from Belgium in July of this year featuring "Turn You Inside Out" and "The Great Beyond." I first joined the fan club about five years ago, well after the band's commercial heyday and creative peak. I had tired of hearing from friends about the cool vinyl singles they'd get in the mail each December, however, so I signed on.

The band began sending out Christmas packages in 1988, debuting with a single that contained "March of the Wooden Soldiers" and the live staple "See No Evil" by Television. As this fan site shows, the band continued to issue a special single each year through 1997, featuring covers, live tracks and assorted oddities. In 1998 they issued a video cassette with Stipe singing Radiohead's "Lucky" with that band and a take of "E-Bow the Letter," both taken from performances at that year's Tibetan Freedom Concert. They returned to the vinyl single format for two more years before going digital in 2001 with a CD single. The 2002 edition was the most adventurous, featuring Mike Mills' version of Badfinger's "No Matter What" and the band's take on Big Star's "Jesus Christ." The others all featured a couple of live tracks recorded that year.

This year's DVD marks yet another shift. It's not necessarily a welcome one, either. The singles early on were a real treat for fans, offering songs no one else could hear. As they fell back on live cuts, the singles (and CDs) began to feel like extras culled from album singles. With this year's offering, it seems as if the band is advertising its concert DVDs. I'm not trying to look a gifthorse in the mouth -- even one that charges me $10 a year for the pleasure -- but R.E.M. built its core fanbase on its quirks, creativity and one-to-one connection with those fans. As it has mutated into R.E.M. Inc., it has lost much of that early charm. It would be one thing if the band's musical output of late had been better, but even its last couple of discs have seemed uninspired. I had hoped this year's package would indicate a renewed creative spark. Looks like I'll need to keep waiting.

Music fans who don't live in Chicago may soon be able to hear the Sound Opinions show without the need to sit in front of their computers. The weekly show, which features Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis and Tribune music critic Greg Kot discussing music and music-related issues, has aired since 1998 on WXRT in Chicago. The pair recently moved the show to Chicago public radio station WBEZ, and aired their first show there on Saturday.

According to a press release from the station, the new home also means new features. The show will be podcast, and also will feature "broader access to live performances and interviews with fascinating artists from the top of the charts and the cutting edge of the underground." There also are plans to distribute the show nationally to public radio stations starting early next year. That's good news for those of us not in Chicago who have missed out on this show to date.

The first WBEZ episode, which should be available by podcast either here or at iTunes later today, features DeRogatis and Kot talking with John Cale from the Velvet Underground, and reviewing records from Madonna and a System of a Down.

In other news, I mentioned here a while back that I had pitched a book for the 33 1/3 series from Continuum. I proposed a book on the Jayhawks' Hollywood Town Hall. More info about the pitches is available on the blog series editor David Barker keeps. The final list of proposals is daunting/intimidating/energizing. I figure I'm in the middle somewhere in terms of potential. David says they'll likely pick between 15 and 20 books, and there are 163 if I count correctly. Some, like the Arcade Fire, seem too current, others, like Avalanches, a bit too obscure, and still others like Brian Wilson and Bob Dylan a bit over covered. That still leaves a couple dozen books that I'd like to read, so I know the competition will be fierce. They'll keep several factors in mind in terms of determining what books to greenlight, including sales of the album, continued interest in the band and the appeal of the proposal itself. I pitched a fairly straightforward book that would look at the album in the context of the alt-country movement that rose and crashed in the early- to mid-90s. Past books in the series have varied from Joe Pernice's novella about The Smiths' Meat is Murder, Colin Meloy's treatise on how the Replacements' Let it Be changed his life, and other, more traditional looks at albums like the Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society and Neil Young's Harvest. I'll update as events warrant.

This is a winter of literature firsts. Last month came my first reading of Stephen King (the disappointing The Colorado Kid); now comes my first crack at Dennis Cooper, with God Jr. I was intrigued enough by a recent interview with Cooper in The Believer to decide to give the book a try when I came across it at the library today. It's a quick read, 160 small pages, and compelling enough to keep me plugging away throughout the afternoon.

It's a strange little book, though from what I understand it's also his most straightforward. It deals with Jim Baxter, whose son, Tommy, dies in a car accident that is Jim's fault. In his grief/guilt, Jim decides to construct a building that Tommy drew in notebooks as a monument of sorts. The building, however, seems to be little more than a challenge the stoned Tommy had trouble navigating in a video game. The book raises some interesting questions about grief, relationships and religion, though, as I've found myself wishing several times of late, the book I expected based on the jacket copy would have been more interesting than the one Cooper actually wrote. (See also: Killing Yourself to Live, Homeland)

I wasn't terribly moved by God Jr., and given Cooper's usual topics -- according to the New York Times review Cooper breaks down like so: "Obsessions: Sexual abuse, youth culture, drugs, death, the paradoxes of authorship. Worldview: a Nietzschean realm without meaning, gilded by porn, pop culture, cyberspace, zines and video games. Characters: gay or bisexual teenage boys, often unambitious artists desperate to feel love, if only they weren't so numb" -- it's not likely I'll delve much further into his back catalog. Still, I'm glad to have at least sampled his work, and I'm genuinely interested to see where he goes next.

The NYTBR this week also has a nice round-up of books about music, including a rather thorough trashing of Jim Greer's book about Guided by Voices, A Brief History: Twenty-One Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock and Roll. I had feared that a fawning Greer, whose writing occasionally lapses into "look at how clever I can be" thesaurus abuse, might not be the best person to recount the history is this band, and Dave Itskoff would seem to confirm that. Greer makes GBV leader Robert Pollard sound like "a jerk" Itskoff writes, and does so with some decidedly purple prose by proving to be "too perfect a Boswell, endlessly forgiving Pollard's personality flaws, obsessing over the band's drinking habits and excretory functions, and making generally outrageous claims in overwrought language ('you could make the case that his body of work in general is one long screed against the dying of the light')." None of that will keep me from reading it, of course.

Neutral Milk Hotel fans can get a bit rabid, so when news of unreleased demos from Jeff Magnum surfaced, word spread like wildfire across the blogosphere. I'm happy to do my part -- and to download the tracks -- because I'm quite a fan myself. Magnum helped to create this cult by releasing two discs -- one, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, a clear masterpiece -- and then essentially disappearing. When he himself resurfaced earlier this year to sing at a couple of shows by fellow Elephant 6 band Olivia Tremor Control, you'd have thought Tupac had returned for a sold-out show at Madison Garden (work with me here; I know nobody reading this would really care if Tupac came back).

So, these unreleased recordings are big news. The story begins at Shannon Palmer's blog. She's an artist who moved into a Monroe, Ga., house as Magnum was moving out. She acquired some tapes... and then sat on them for 11 years. She finally realized what she had, worked with some NMH fans to figure out specifically what was on the tapes, and has begun releasing the songs into the wild. She has three tracks on her site, while My Old Kentucky Blog, You Ain't No Picasso and fan site Neutral Milk Hotel.org have one each. As the titles of more of the songs are identified, more will be posted.

How do they sound? Pretty great fidelity-wise for something that sat on a cassette for 11 years. As for the songs, no one is going to toss out the official NMH releases in favor of this, but they do posses some of the same charm that made those discs so captivating. They're mostly composed of a hard-strummed guitar and Magnum's singing, though a couple feature percussion (which may well be Magnum smacking a cardboard box in time). Neutral Milk Hotel.org has a list of all known NMH songs that seems fairly complete, but which doesn't list four of the six tracks posted so far. One, "Gardenhead," turned up on the band's debut, On Avery Island. Details about the entire collection, dubbed "Shannon's Monroe House Demos," are sketchy, but the songs posted so far have track numbers associated with them, the highest being 27. Assuming that's a sign of how much there might be to release, the project will add substantially to the rather limited catalog of this late, great band.

The talent of Dennis Lehane would seem to know no bounds. The author of seven fantastic crime novels (including the movie-spawning Mystic River), has written a play, Coronado. Sarah Weinman at Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind saw it and says it's "really, really good" and "not to be missed."

The play is based on Lehane's widely anthologized 2004 short story, "Until Gwen," a story that began, "Your father picks you up from prison in a stolen Dodge Neon with an 8-ball of coke in the glove compartment and a hooker named Mandy in the back seat." The play, Sarah writes, expands on that original story, and deals with various people confronting situations in a small bar in rural America. It debuted this week at the Invisible City Theatre Company in New York. Here's hoping it goes wide, travels or is adapted for film... or all three.