Are You Sleeping?Chris Estey recent-ly put out the follow-ing call for contribu-tors. I’ve includedmy responses below.Hey! You are getting thisbecause I am a fan of yourwork. I am putting to-gether a thick, communi-ty fanzine about musicand sleep and dreams forpublication in June 2010and was wondering if youcould send me back a fewwords about this subject. I will cut and paste verbatim what you give me as long as it's good. Here are the questions. Feel free to answer any you want to and ignore any that you want to.What is your favorite song, or areyour favorite songs, about sleep?Harry Nilsson's "Are You Sleeping?" from The Point, a favoriterecord as

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Movie of the Month: Part 17I recently reviewed thefollowing film for VideoLibrarian, and thought theresults were worth sharing.THE MISSING PERSON (Noah Buschel, US,2009, 95 mins.) [***1/2]Top-lined by two Oscarnominees and dipped indusky shades of gold andbrown, The MissingPerson delivers a styl-ish take on the private-eye genre. The efficient Miss Charley (Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone) sets the story in motion when she hires gin-soaked pri-vate investigator John Rosow (Michael Shannon, Revolution-ary Road) to trail Harold Fullmer (Frank Wood), a mysteryman traveling across the country with a Mexican boy.On Rosow's assignment to return Harold to his

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TartLyricsin a Sweet ToneDumDumGirls, IWillBe,SubPopBlissed out buzzsaw.-- MySpace taglineI usually try to avoid thoroughly retro releases, but a record thatsounds RIGHT NOW! with overt references to the past is morethan okay by me. In fact, I'd say it's ideal, and the Dum DumGirls navigate that tricky path with élan. L.A. singer/songwriterKristin Gundred, AKA Dee Dee, turned to producer Richard Got-tehrer (Blondie) for her first album, which lends it a girl-group-post-punk feel that never quite crosses the line into new wave.Click here for "He Gets Me High." Gundred also solicits licks from Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist NickZinner, which reinforces the

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Non-Brit BritpopSpirit Kid, self-titled, RPL AudioEmeen Zarookian's Bostoncombo serves up a particu-larly persuasive brand ofpower-pop, like Badfingeron helium, while the piano-filled "Wait a Minute" cap-tures the charm of peak-eraHarry Nilsson or Paul Mc-Cartney. His first full-lengthplays like a more well scrub-bed version of From Bubble-gum to Sky (a good thing). Click here for "My Imagination" and here for "You Lit Up for Me." Blackmarket, St. Vincent Decor,Mine and Yours Records [4/20/10]This Lake Havasu, AZ trio plies a bright brand of pop-rockthat would provide a better fit for commercial than collegeradio (so it's unfortunate that the former

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Roll Over BeethovenStereoTotal, BabyOuh!,KillRockStars [5/4/10]A new CD from Stereo Total is always cause for celebration.The hyper-sensitive and humorless need not apply, but all oth-ers are welcome. "Ladies Toilet," for instance, offers a bathroomthat speaks to its patrons, but it isn't gross, just funny. The la-bel describes their lyrics as "anarchistic, lewd, poetic in an over-wrought way, sometimes very sad and sometimes very silly."Later, they wonder what John Waters' favorite actor-actressmight have toted about in "Divine's Handbag" (perhaps "an oldsandwich from a dirty kitchen sink"). Since they sing in English,French, German, Japanese, and It

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April ReviewsThese are the reviewsand other pieces I'mworking on this month. Amazon DVDs: Life - The Complete Series [four-disc set]. Amazon Theatricals: Mother and Child (withNaomi Watts and Annet-te Bening), The Joneses(with Demi Moore andDavid Duchovny), TheEclipse (with Ciarán Hinds and Iben Hjejle), Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy"holds a mirror up to hipsters"), and Oceans (Jacques Per-rin of Winged Migration and Microcosmos co-directs).Still playing: Alice in Wonderland, Crazy Heart, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Ghost Writer, Please Give, Remember Me, and The Runaways. SIFF: Three notes for the program guide (links to come).

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