When a single guy gets sick, what’s the best remedy?  I’m not a fan of the doctor’s office, so this is generally out of the question.  If there’s an OTC medication for whatever’s ailing me, I snatch it up at the local CVS and create a sort of DIY hospital in my bedroom.  I pop pills like a high school teenager whenever I catch a bug, and while I know this isn’t the best line of action, I still keep doing it.  Truth be told, I miss my mother.  She’s a long, four hour drive away and times like this week remind me that I don’t call her enough, and could probably use her nurse-like goodness several times a year.  This last bout was relatively unexpected.  Earlier in the week, I posted about how stoked I was to check out The Wooden Birds at Music Saves and Beachland Tavern.  I also raved about the upcoming Cotton Jones show and how I’d no doubt be slamming beers all Wednesday.  I also had this wicked conference to attend for 9 hours a day and my immune system decided to take a nap in the middle of all the chaos.  I missed all shows, nearly missed any blog posts, and generally holed myself up in my makeshift hospital crying for mommy.  It figures, too, because so much went down this week worth noting and discussing.  Such is life, I guess, but I’m back and healthy.  This is the good thing.  Today’s Radio Dick post includes quite a few tracks from upcoming albums, and some that have hit relatively recently.  I didn’t go to a doctor.  Who needs those hassles? I decided to spend my time reflecting on music and pills.  This seemed to draw me out of the muck.

James discussed his own Michael Jackson musings yesterday in his hodge-podge, and we’ve all been inundated with bizarre, heartbreaking, and unclear news blips at an alarming pace this week.  I wanted to share my own personal response to MJ and my opinions on the matter, as well.  To me, nobody’s going to question the outright brilliance of MJ, nor his influence on pop standards and culture.  It’s completely surreal to think of an American culture without even the wacky day-to-day news fodder MJ has enjoyed for the last ten years or so.  For people my age, this is probably the first major musical icon to die in our time.  Kurt Cobain, while tragic, isn’t in the same league as this one in my opinion.  When I think about the impact of this death, it’s horrifyingly similar to Elvis Presley’s death.  People are fingerpointing, autopsies are being redone, and at first, people speculated about whether or not it was real.  I’m awaiting all of the conspiracy theories this void will create, no doubt.  But, ultimately, I choose to mourn his passing for more personal reasons than anything else.  I remember my family sitting down at our radio when my dad first brought home the Thriller cassette.  We all sat around my family room listening to it over and over again.  The Florida vacation that year was straight MJ from Ohio to the Sunshine State and those songs are so firmly entrenched in my memory banks that no amount of time will dislodge them.  This, to me, is very important.  When one artist can so drastically paint a time period for our lives, all the weird baggage and oddball antics mean very little.  We don’t remember Michael because of Michael.  We remember him and mourn him because we mourn the loss of those times.  We connect all of those poppy jams with the rudimentary tasks of growing up in small towns, fumbling over our sexuality, swinging our first baseball bats, and a whole myriad of important youthful instances.  I never watched any of his interviews, or even gawked at the fall of the musical hero because of accusations or whimsical peculiarity.  Him dangling that baby over the railing had nothing to do with my memory of my father staying up late to watch the debut of the Thriller video, or how I took the Bad cassette into school to show everyone at my lunch table how cool I was.  Even in the later years, when tracks like “Remember the Time” were way too pop for my liking, I still heard the same MJ I knew from the early 80′s.  In his voice, I saw the red leather jacket and one glove.  I saw my family, and I saw my youth.  I think there’s a big gaping hole without MJ on the planet, to be quite honest.  At the same time, however, I found myself listening to tons of FM radio this weekend, and the outpouring and tribute onslaughts made me draw one key conclusion:  As a person, MJ doesn’t matter to me specifically.  As an artist, however, he was pivotal in who I am, and even with him gone, this enormously unique and iconic body of work is left here for us.  In the Radio Dick section, I posted a new Don Diablo track I got in my email yesterday, and it’s a nice tribute.

As for the remaining tracks, this one goes a bit more to my roots than the last few weeks.  Megafaun just allowed posting of “Kaufman’s Ballad,” one of my favorite tracks from their upcoming release, Gather, Form and Fly.  Fleet Foxes recorded a live BBC session earlier this week and a new track surfaced.  We have that, too.  The Avett Brothers twangy goodness is represented below in their latest preview track and Noah And The Whale’s newest track is blowing me away.  We’re going to be sponsoring Those Darlins in mid-July at Beachland, and we’re finally getting around to posting their new track, as the album just dropped this past Tuesday.  All in all, I went a little more countrified, but there are a few tracks here that hit the rap/bouncy/happy stuff, too.  I figured after all the craziness of this week, my Radio Dick post should be a bit sporadic.  Cheers everyone, and good luck with the daily grind this week….

Don Diablo – Song for MJ (Remember the Time)

Megafaun – Kaufman’s Ballad

Polvo – Beggar’s Bowl

The Avett Brothers – I and Love and You

Marina and the Diamonds – I am Not a Robot (Starsmith’s Remix)

Fool’s Gold – Surprise Hotel

Major Lazer – Baby (FIGURE Remix)

Those Darlins – Red Light Love

Florence and the Machine – Blinding

The Delfields – Ogres

Fleet Foxes – Blue Spotted Tail (Live from BBC)

Portugal. The Man – People Say

The Antlers – Two

Noah And The Whale – The First Days of Spring