Buzz Rant & Rave

In the New Yorker, Tad Friend meditates on the differences between the British and American versions of The Office: The Paper Chase: Office life in two worlds: "The challenge that faced the American “Office” was to honor the spirit of the original while tweaking the workplace dynamics so that audiences would want to watch more than twelve episodes. The British scabrousness and barely suppressed violence is gone, and the Scranton office—brighter and noisier, with more posters, parties, and pep—is Slough on Zoloft."

The difference in tone between the two was very obvious in "The Convict," the first US episode penned by Ricky Gervais and Steven Marchant. The tone of the episode was more cringeworthy than usual for Scranton. While Steve Carrell and Ricky Gervais are the focal points of their respective shows, Mchael Scott is not David Brent and the jokes that work with one don't necessarily work with the other. Friend explores the distinction in the New Yorker with both depth and elegance.

Time Out NY rates this town's music critics. They give the top nod to The New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones, followed closely by the Times' Kelefa Sanneh.

A Lego remix of OK Go's "Here We Go Again" (the treadmill video):

Agents of Good Roots, my favorite underappreciated band of the late 90's, is playing a couple of their occassional reunion shows this week in DC and Richmond:

Thursday, 12/21/06
Iota Club
2832 Wilson Blvd
Arlington, VA 22201

Friday, 12/22/06
Alley Katz
10 Walnut Alley
Richmond, VA 23223

The battle of words between The Decemberists and Stephen Colbert boiled over into the rock battle of the century was fought on The Colbert Report, with Stephen Colbert and The Decemberists' Chris Funk battling in a guitar competition: Rock and Awe: Countdown to Guitarmageddon.

Eliot Spitzer, Henry Kissinger, Anthony DeCurtis, Jim Anderson (NYU), Peter Frampton, Morley Safer, Robert Schneider (Apples in Stereo) and Rick Nielsen (Cheap Trick) were on hand to make this the best final episode of the Report this year, and one of the best episodes of the series to date.

Henry Kissinger, are you ready to rock?

The Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan recaps: 'The Colbert Report's' guitar shredathon brings in the big guns

I've been alerted that if I don't post one of these before the end of the year, the music blogger community will shun me. Even more.

Eh, what the heck. Here are 7:

• Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
  They're not as good as the hype would make them out to be, but this album is still excellent. And it's their debut album?


• The Bamboo Kids - Feel Like Hell
  Is this a cheat? Most of these songs were released on "This Ain't No Revolution" in Europe last year. Whatever. It's still a lot of fun.


• The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
  Prog-rock sea shanties. Put that way, it sounds really unappealing, but it's actually all kinds of awesome


• Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
  "Crazy" is this year's "Hey Ya!" How can you not like it?


• Earl Greyhound - Soft Targets
  Have I mentioned how Earl Greyhound is all kinds of awesome?


• The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
  They don't sound alike, but thematically, this is the cool uncle to the Arctic Monkeys album


• The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers
  Straight-up straight-forward fun

And the "It was released last year, but I didn't get it and listen obsessively until this year" album of the year is Devin Davis - Lonely People of the World, Unite!

Elsewhere; 2006 Music Bloggregate