was i upside down?

why am i covered in cereal?

oh shit....that coffee pot is coming for my face!!!

in reality the crash was all of about 7 seconds....but to do a 360 on the highway and end up ramped up (the van that crashed into ours was UNDER our double decker bus) in the air....is....well...

a frigging miracle.

You can check out his full email here to read more about the harrowing aftermath of the accident. It's good to hear that nobody came out seriously hurt, because that picture looks pretty rough. Here's ?uestlove again:

when i got outside.....and looked at what i crawled out of?

man.

i just couldn't believe it.

i mean....how in the hell did we experience this?

how did we manage to....man.....

dog we are soooo alive right now.

Phew!

Roots Crash Bus In Europe: Everyone OK [Okayplayer]

There's always the "they drove a dump truck full of money up to ?uestlove's house" possibility, though it's likely the band made a more than comfortable living already. The more likely explanation is suggested by the Roots' simultaneous retirement from touring. As any entertainer who's gone to Vegas can tell you, playing shows is great, but being on the road sucks. The band isn't going to stop making albums, presumably, but the actual process of traveling from place to place is unpleasant. If there's any way to avoid that while still making money, it's understandable that any working musician would jump at that chance—especially when a slot on a late-night show seems to set you up for life.

The Roots To Be Jimmy Fallon's Band; We Are Old And Sad [Gawker]

OCTOBER
3 Baltimore, MD Rams Head Live!
4 Norfolk, VA The Norva
5 N. Myrtle Beach, SC House of Blues
6 Atlanta, GA The Tabernacle
7 Lake Buena Vista, FL House of Blues
8 Miami, FL The Fillmore at Jackie Gleason
10 Houston, TX Meridian* (w/ Estelle only)
11 Dallas, TX The Palladium Ballroom
12 Austin, TX The Backyard
14 Phoenix, AZ The Marquee
19 Las Vegas, NV House of Blues
21 Denver, CO The Fillmore Auditorium
23 Milwaukee, WI Eagles Ballroom
24 Chicago, IL Congress Theatre
25 Detroit, MI The Fillmore Detroit
26 Toronto, ONT Sound Academy
28 New York, NY Roseland Ballroom
30 Worcester, MA The Palladium Downstairs
31 Asbury Park, NJ Asbury Park Convention Hall

NOVEMBER
1 Albany, NY Washington Avenue Armory

Biggest Debuts: As we mentioned, last week was a pretty great one for new releases, with lots of excellent albums dropping in the pre-paycheck, post-tax-return rush. So how'd they all do? Let's run down the list:
The Roots, Rising Down: No. 6, 54,000 sold (No. 2 digital, 15,000 sold)
Portishead, Third: No. 7, 53,000 sold (No. 3 digital, 15,000 sold)
Lil Mama, VYP: Voice Of The Young People: No. 25, 19,000 sold (not on digital albums chart)
Estelle, Shine: No. 38, 15,000 sold (No. 16 digital, 3,700 sold)
SantogoldNo. 74, 9,500 sold (No. 13 digital, 4,000 sold)
Robyn: No. 100, 7,100 sold (No. 25 digital, 2,800 sold)

All of them were out-debuted by Madge, Lyfe Jennings' Lyfe Change (No. 4, 80,000 sold), and Def Leppard's Live From The Sparkle Lounge (No. 5, 55,000 sold). So what have we learned? You can't stop Def Leppard. The Lil Mama record maybe should have come out when "Lip Gloss" was hot, if only to be the beneficiary of not-as-bad-as-they-are-now record sales. All the Fader covers and Bud Light Lime ads in the world can't help shift copies of an album, even when they do wonders for RCRD LBL's Google Blog Search hits. And holding a record back from U.S. release for an extended period of time, then hoping that Perez Hilton's breathless, syntax-challenged endorsement can be the foundation for a marketing campaign, is a lousy strategy—no matter how good the album is.

Notable Jumps: Natasha Bedingfield's appearance on American Idol last week goosed sales of The Album That's Really Called NB No Matter How Dumb Record Executives Think Americans Are—its sales totals jumped 199% week-over-week, and it shot from No. 97 to No. 24 (19,000 copies sold) on the chart.

Dropping Off: Ashlee Simpson's Bittersweet World was off 64% week to week, falling from No. 4 to No. 31 (17,000 sold); Atmosphere's When Life Gives You Lemons You Paint That Shit Gold had a 61% drop, tumbling from No. 5 to No. 41 (14,000 sold); and Flight Of The Conchords was down 57%, although its chart drop was a mere 14 places (No. 3 to No. 17, 22,000 sold).

Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: An executive decision: This category is going to be held down by Alvin & the Chipmunks until they scurry out of the top 20. (They're at No. 14 this week with 23,000 copies sold.)

The top 20, with last week's sales in parentheses:
1. Madonna, Hard Candy (280,000)
2. Mariah Carey, E=MC² (95,000)
3. Leona Lewis, Spirit (84,000)
4. Lyfe Jennings, Lyfe Change (80,000)
5. Def Leppard, Songs From The Sparkle Lounge (55,000)
6. The Roots, Rising Down (54,000)
7. Portishead, Third (53,000)
8. Mudcrutch (38,000)
9. Now 27 (31,000)
10. Tim McGraw, Greatest Hits 1 & 2 (29,000)
11. Taylor Swift (29,000)
12. Steve Winwood, Nine Lives (26,000)
13. Juno soundtrack (26,000)
14. Alvin & The Chipmunks soundtrack (23,000)
15. Carly Simon, This Kind Of Love (23,000)
16. Jack Johnson, Sleep Through The Static (23,000)
17. Flight Of The Conchords (22,000)
18. George Strait, Troubadour (22,000)
19. Colbie Caillat, Coco (19,000)
20. Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus, Best Of Both Worlds Concert Tour (22,000)

This week's top 10 digital albums, with sales totals in parentheses:
1. Madonna, Hard Candy (73,000)
2. The Roots, Rising Down (15,000)
3. Portishead, Third (15,000)
4. Augustana, Can't Love Can't Hurt (11,000)
5. Leona Lewis, Spirit (9,400)
6. Flight Of The Conchords (7,500)
7. Juno soundtrack (6,700)
8. Mudcrutch (6,700)
9. Mariah Carey, E=MC² (6,500)
10. Def Leppard, Songs From The Sparkle Lounge (4,900)

The Roots - Rising Down:
• "Concerns that the Roots would compromise its eclectic style when it moved to Def Jam were laid to rest by Game Theory. Rising Down makes clear that compromise was never even an option." [Boston Globe]
• "Without even listening to the lyrics, the majority of the tracks on Rising Down—their 10th album—have an urgent, twitchy feel to them. Their sound is still brilliantly organic—no drum machines or computers here. But it is several shades darker than their last album, Game Theory, making it less fun to listen to, unfortunately....Rising Down is not the Roots at their beat-driven, rhyming best, but it's still solid." [Vancouver Sun]

Portishead - Third
• "Though several doses of this languid, tension-filled music get a tad draining, taken altogether it is a suitable sound for our troubling times, and there's an invigorating mysteriousness. Its blaring electronic peals are a wake-up call." [LA Times]
• "There are very few moments that cry out for the single treatment —as is probably obvious from the decision to offer the metronomic harshness of 'Machine Gun' as first introductory piece after their lengthy hiatus—as the trio fight back against the cut-and-paste-playlist iPod age. Composing a singular piece of work, 50-minute experience free of era and commercial restraints that'll shed the fare-weather fans from the devout followers, as a creative stretch Third isn't likely to be surpassed anytime soon." [Manchester Evening News]

Santogold - Santogold
• "Still, Santogold's strength lies more in her musical inclusiveness than her cynicism. She flits from dubby bliss of 'Shove It' and the stop-start, bleep-synths of 'Starstruck' to the space-agey sound effects and echo chambers of 'My Superman' and the bubbly pop-rock of 'Lights Out' and 'I'm A Lady.' The genre jumping is not for the close-minded, but it's obvious Santogold's not here to adhere to any one pop sensibility. On the glitchy-twitchy disc standout, 'Creator,' she's not afraid to express her sense of self-worth. Over the gargantuan bass drops, she chants: 'Me, I'm a Creator/ Thrill is to make it up/ The rules I break got me a place/ Up on the radar.' She's definitely got our attention." [San Francisco Chronicle]
• "'You'll Find a Way' and 'Creator' are near-instant dance-floor gems, while the haunting downtown lullaby 'L.E.S. Artistes' is perhaps the best indie anthem since the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' 'Maps.' The album is hardly flawless, but in an era that retro-fetishizes rock and whitewashed pop, Santogold feels both raw and real." [Entertainment Weekly]

The video stars existentialist porn star Sasha Grey as the titular birthday girl, who's having a midday party in her formal dining room with two of her closest friends. Just as the things start to look boring, Cordero cuts to the doorway of the adjoining room, which is crowded with Los Angeles' finest creepsters shooting their most discomforting furtive glances toward Sasha. And they've come bearing gifts. Very phallic gifts!

At first it seems as if Cordero might be taking the video in the pleasant hug-a-loser direction, but that sweetness is but an introduction to the birthday girl sitting on the floor and opening each dude's gift as he stands above her, holding it at his crotch. One guy brought her a sausage! How sweet!

Cordero shoots the sequence in a more or less shot/reverse-shot pattern, but despite this lukewarm attempt at representing the female perspective, the sequence still comes off as uncomfortably misogynistic. That tight shot of the sausage hovering near her mouth lingers just a bit too long, and, furthermore, in all of the high-angle shots looking down at Grey opening the gifts she's got her best come-hither face on, thus negating any potential emotional depth. Which would be an entirely acceptable stylistic choice if it didn't seem as though Cordero were trying to make some sort of "statement."

Of course the song is also about a relationship between a guy and a sexually precocious 17-year-old pretending to be 22, which, to be fair to Cordero, is duly represented, if a bit indirectly. Still, there's a certain sadness—a tone of vague regret, even—in the song that seems jarringly absent from the video. "Birthday Girl" the song is about about the dubious advantages of growing up, and the room full of eager horny guys would seemingly indicate that Sasha's character is about to be thrust into a world of sexual expectations that are perhaps beyond her years. But by sticking almost exclusively to the male gaze and presumably directing his actress to be seductive, Cordero fails to accurately convey the complex emotions of the situation. I suppose Sasha Grey's up-for-it attitude could be interpreted as female empowerment, but I don't think miming BJs on older men at a high school birthday party ever has made, or ever will make, any girl feel liberated. Perhaps I'm just closed-minded?

As for the last minute of the video, which is is mostly black-and-white security-camera footage of a film crew coming into the room and directing the characters around, I have no explanation. Perhaps Cordero is trying to tell us something postmodern about music videos, though I doubt it's anything that complicated. It's visually boring and has nothing to do with anything else. Couldn't he have just shot a performance video set at a backyard BBQ and saved us all this trouble?

ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: Purportedly the first single of their upcoming Rising Down, the Roots team with Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump... and it kind of sucks. Which is too bad, since everything else that's leaked from their 3,579th album has been pretty excellent! Remember the all-the-way-live, ridonkulous, distorted "75 Bars (Black's Reconstruction)" that got us through the cold throes of late February? And the deliciously moody, horrorcore-era Dre squeak of "Get Busy," which lit up our early March? (It's been 22 years, and we never get tired of hearing Joeski Love getting scratched.) And now we get this Cody ChesnuTT-meets-Gym-Class-Heroes emo-love jam?

Lame, sure, but fuck it. We'll gladly swallow a sell-some-records tactic if it means another album as solid as Game Theory (and, hey, we already established today that critics and the public have different tastes). So once I buy the album (or some kindly saint at Def Jam sends me a promo), I'll just quietly skip this like I did "Back Like That" on Fishscale or "I Know" on American Gangster. And by "quietly," I mean "make this blog post and be a huge dick about it."

Plus Kip Winger already proved that writing a song about wanting to bang a 17-year-old is kinda gross. Thankfully, we didn't have to see Black Thought's chest hair this time around.

WHERE TO FIND IT:Nah Right.

The Roots Feat. Dice Raw, DJ Jazzy Jeff, And Peedi Crakk - "Get Busy" (Def Jam)
Judging by the pre-release leakage from Rising Down, the Roots' rhythm tracks are now pushing for all their life against a suffocating layer of static and an smothering low-end closing in from the bottom. (Without booklet credits, I don't want to call that noise a "bassline" only to once again find out it's Mr. Tuba Gooding, Jr.) Philly breakout-who's-yet-to-break Peedi Crakk leapfrogged across a string of Roc-A-Fella tracks earlier in the decade that treated his sing-song flow like a sound effects record, groomed like so many Dash/Carter pet projects to wind up routed to the mixtape circuit and growing a chip on both shoulders. (Perhaps he missed the 2007 memo that all Philly rappers needed a Swizz beat to see any sort of chart love.) Surveying his rough decade alongside some hometown all-stars, he's less manic on the mic, but perhaps that's fitting given the track in question. The big beats on Peedi's old collabos hopped, skipped, and jumped; "Get Busy" trudges two slushy miles up Broad Street in big black boots because SEPTA stopped running at the first sign of crappy weather. Cold fronting against the windswept scratching from a guy who used to run afoul of Philip Banks and the band's immobilizing groove, Peedi flips up his hood, his middle finger, and offers lawyers and label heads the following unsolicited advice: "Fuck the Internet / Buy a baseball bat / Break a bootlegger leg."

Trance Rap Antidote [Cocaine Blunts]

D1 - "I'm Loving" (Tempa)
Like an Anglo-Caribbean cousin to the snarling Eastern Seaboard ish of "Get Busy," British producer D1 usually comes moanin' at midnight with the darker-than-the-rest sub-bass and thudding beats of dubstep; Tempa is one of the South London labels that initially mapped the increasingly confining parameters for the latest post-rave sub-genre barely distinguishable to American ears. But D1's always been a little softer than his pitch-black brethren, clinging to memories of clubbing fun during dubstep's long ban on anything that smacks of Chic-approved good times; whether "I'm Loving," much more suited to the daylight hours than anything I've recently heard from a dubstep producer, is merely the man following his particular muse or a concerted effort to rethink the genre's gloomy boom, it's quite welcome. D1's intercontinental syncopation is cooked from the kind of skipping Detroit techno hi-hats beloved by U.K. broken beat producers and the palsied carnival bounce of Trinidadian soca; add a fresh coat of bright synths and a sweet soul vocal hook and you've got something more suited to chilling at a beach house than skulking through the drizzle-soaked concrete-and-steel landscape suggested by crit-darling Burial and a grown and sexy twist on adolescent bassline heads reattaching house to the garage.

D1 [MySpace]
D1 - "I'm Loving [Boomkat sound samples]

Guillaume And The Coutu Dumonts - "Les Gans (Philip Sherburne Remix)" (Musique Risquée)
Music critic pal conflicts of interest abound, but I'd be fibbing if I didn't say this remix was my fave rave from this round of Single Spinning. Simple in the heart-tugging way good melodic, minimal techno should be, something often easy forget about given the genre's current glut: a fragile Brian Wilson chime and a Perlon-esque shaker-and-pop pattern opens to let in bass and synth before the track drifts from good to great on gliding, sad-eyed horn charts more Cinematic Orchestra than Ricardo Villalobos. Comparisons to anything remotely trip-hop are tricky given the tendency for potential listeners burnt on blunted beat comps to instantly recoil, and Sherburne's remix has too much snap to sink into the background. But more build-up or come-down than set climax, this would indeed fit on one of the early, excellent (no, really) Future Sounds Of Jazz comps quite nicely. (Don't snort, minimal snobs; the maestro Villalobos himself appeared on one of the series' later installments.)

Philip Sherburne Productions [MySpace]

Andrew WK - "McLaughlin Groove" (Fair Game)
When I was a small boy, my grandfather (may he R.I.P.) subjected his Catholic grandchildren to endless Sunday mornings spent not in church but around the TV for secular worship of various network news idols sermonizing from the magazine or roundtable mount. The only one of these windbags who could have possibly entertained a pair of grade schoolers cranky because they couldn't even enjoy whatever off-brand cartoons were being aired on UHF was John McLaughlin, whose bellowing, bellicose interruptions and radiant smugness were like watching one of your jerky prepubescent peers be plucked from the recess yard and plopped in a leather chair between Washingtonian insiders, instilling in us both a love for news and a love for shouting. Under the aegis of public radio arts'n'news show Fair Game, our beloved Andrew WK has recorded this cranked-up, karaoke-ready throwback to his I Get Wet-era sound in awed appreciation of that special "McLaughlin Groove," and while there's no reasonable explanation for two of my favorite loudmouths to have come together, I can only hope this hints at a possible duets record between strapping young Andrew and the aging Mr. McLaughlin right quick, before AWK has to posthumously put it together in an icky Alicia/Frankie style.

Andrew WK - McLaughlin Groove [MP3]
Fair Game [Official Site]