In honor of Lenny Kaye’s epic retrospective on the MC5’s Kick Out the Jams and courtesy of the dearly departed former eMusic employee Patrick Lelli, here is an amazing clip of Rob Tyner, former lead singer of the MC5, performing his solo song “Grande Days” on an autoharp with a pair of Larry “Bud” Melman glasses and fingerless leather gloves on public access television. Patrick sent me the link the other day, and I’ve watched it three or four times since; it’s one of those amazing moments where the mundane slams unexpectedly into something transcendent. It’s basically why public access TV was invented. The original studio recording is a bit of a scowly cock-rocker; here, armed with nothing more than an autoharp and his quavering, 60s-rock throwback tenor, Tyner turns “Grande Days” into a trembling broadside ballad.

Sometimes I have to stop what I’m doing and contemplate what a crazy, excellent, post-’Marquee Name’ world we’re living in right now. You see that up there? That’s fucking Jawbox. On Jimmy Fallon. Playing “Savory.” I mean, I know that back in the day you’d see Belly on Letterman and all that, and that “Savory” had its little moment in the Buzz Bin sun, but I feel like the incidences of televised indie is on the rapid ascent. And I, for one, am in favor of that.

So, Jawbox on Jimmy Fallon — two more videos after the jump, and the For Your Own Special Sweetheart reissue showing up on eMusic before the week is out.

Man, myth, badass — Fela Kuti was all of them and more. Even people who love him can’t deny some of his views were a bit, er, unconventional, but the power of the man’s music and the force and passion with which he stood up to a corrupt government — in the face of repeated beatings and imprisonment — are hard to deny. Fela was incredibly prolific, and he leaves behind a legacy that, simply put, redefined music. How many people in history invented an entire genre?

Fela’s catalog hit eMusic this week, and we put together this hub to help you get started. My favorite periods fall within the “Black President” and “Band on the Run” era. Both Richard Gehr and Jess Harvell did an excellent job contextualizing these records, and I highly recommend reading all of their writeups to get a sense for the situations that prompted these songs.

What surprised me the most the first time I heard Fela’s records was just how uncompromising they were. Fela was not fucking around — he names names and describes in detail the injustices against both him personally and all of Nigeria. The lyrics to “Zombie” are cutting, straight-up mocking the Nigerian army in one epic 12-minute taunt. And “Expensive Shit,” which recounts the notorious incident that had the Nigerian gov’t literally standing around waiting for Fela to go to the bathroom, cuts even deeper, reveling in the way Fela was able to pull one over on officials.

That Fela kept doing this, over and over, with such incredible focus and precision despite the actions the government took against him — actions that ultimately resulted in the brutal and heartbreaking death of Fela’s mother, activist Fumilyao Ransome-Kuti, is inspiring. This is a man who stood up to injustice, and fuck the personal cost.

He’s also incredibly contradictory — despite the fact that his own mother was a firebrand revolutionary, Fela’s views on women are, to put it mildly, considerably less than stellar. In fact, many of his cultural views in general were far from progressive. But for sheer audacity, nerve and unflagging adherence to social justice, you could hardly ask for a more inspiring figure.

We are able to offer the Fela titles below what would be considered “full album cost,” so take advantage and dive in today!

The talk box sound will always be associated with ’80s over-the-topness: the lazer funk of Zapp & Roger, the gaudy riffery of Peter Frampton. Even more recent retro-futurists that use the box (or similar, vocoder-y sounds) — Chromeo, Dâm Funk, Daft Punk — stick firmly to the ’80s m.o. of near-goofy neon squelch.

Recently, though, I was hipped to Pete Drake, a ’50s and ’60s pedal steel session guitarist who was one of the earliest (if not the earliest) proponent of what he called “the talking guitar.” I was blown away when I saw the video above; it’s a truly unique and magical use of the box — like a bizarro version of Santo & Johnny’s dreamy “Sleepwalking.” Ultimately, it may be the context (“Forever”’s lilting doo-wop amble) that gives the TB effect its “wow” factor more than than proficiency or particular inventiveness, but that doesn’t dull the sheen of hearing the song unfold.

Big hat tip to Cassie for passing this along.

Last month, we shouted out a record called Hymns from Rhodeisa from a band called Listenlisten, which will be arriving on eMusic on 9/22. I love this record, and I think you might, too. Haunting, apocalyptic Appalachian folk music. If you haven’t already, check out their song “Safe Home, Safe in Port” for an idea of what the full-length holds.

Just yesterday, Listenlisten unveiled the video for “On the Water,” and we wanted to share it with you. It’s harrowing, haunting, dark and gripping — all the things we love. Take a look and see what you think!

So this year, Jayson & I snapped some quick videos of the Pitchfork Festival — we talked to a few bands and shot some performance footage (we also interviewed Flamgirlant and Ptolemyclark, which you can watch above). We thought we’d close out our Pitchfork Fest coverage by sharing some of those videos with you. The clips are short, somewhat intentionally.

One caveat: the sound on these, admittedly, is rough — this was our first video experiment, and clearly we have some fine-tuning to do!

Watch after the jump!

The Flaming Lips perform “Fight Test.” Slowly.

I interview Scott from Frightened Rabbit

Frightened Rabbit performs “Good Arms Vs. Bad” (fragment)

Jayson interviews Women. I should have instead written “Jayson hits on Women.” Sigh. Puns.

Damian from Fucked Up staggers around with a beach ball on his head (fragment. amazing.)

I interview Bowerbirds

The Mae Shi cover the audience with a parachute

Japandroids perform (fragment)

I don’t know how it took me almost two weeks to stumble across this but, man, am I glad I did. In this awesomely artless video, Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchison takes a breathless spin through Neutral Milk Hotel’s awesome and underrated “Song Against Sex.” FRabbit have their own “song against sex,” of course, and its name is “Keep Yourself Warm.” The way Hutchison handles this one, though, makes me think they should consider adding it to their live repertoire.

That DOOM. So unpredictable. You never know where he’s going to turn up. You can, however, make a pretty accurate guess as to where he’s not going to turn up: DOOM concerts, DOOM videos, DOOM in-stores, and so on. Here’s a joke: What’s the quickest way to get DOOM out of your living room? Answer: hold a DOOM concert there. So is anyone surprised that DOOM is not in the new DOOM video? There is, however, this badass DOOM action figure, hanging out in the middle of traffic and scoping the soon-to-be-shuttered Union Square Virgin Megastore. Check it out.

To close out our little site-wide celebration of the great new DOOM record Born Like This, video of Doom’s appearance with De La Soul on Last Call With Carson Daly from several years back. They perform the fantastic “Rock Co Kane Flow” from De La’s way-underrated The Grind Date. I have watched this 7 times in the last two days. Also, I want to present the (possibly idiotic) opinion that most of what came after Three Feet High and Rising is better/more rewarding than Three Feet High and Rising itself. Discuss.

Thanks to James in our London office for reminding us how awesome Tame Impala are. Get the music here.