On the travel and music front, 2007 kicked off with a terrific trip to Aspen.

Amy and I had hopped the incredibly convenient LAX-ASE route, which at a mind-bending 1 hour and 37 minutes makes Aspen closer than most of the driveable weekend destinations around LA — and at $225 round-trip is almost compulsory. We had blue-ribbon days on the mountain, with great snow, sunshine, some terrific meals, and no serious injuries despite our decision to play with snowboards.

I even got to see Austin stalwart Junior Brown, whom I’d never heard, but who is terrific and apparently well known not only to Austinites, but also to fans of Spongebob Squarepants and the movie version of the Dukes of Hazzard (in which he stands in the mighty big shoes of Waylon Jennings as narrator).

His musical style and stage presence are hard to describe and need to be experienced properly to be fully understood, but here’s his myspace (!!!), on which you can listen to a few choice samples featuring lines like “Cause you’re wanted by the police, and my wife thinks you’re dead”, along with a flickr photo set that captures some of the visual flavor.

There’s still plenty of time to see him on his 2007 tour, so do it!

I’ve stayed away from politics on this blog deliberately. But I got this in an email today from an emerging LA alt-country musician named Kristy Kruger, whose set I caught a number of months ago at the Mint and enjoyed enough to join her mailing list, and whose email announcements have (until now) always been strikingly upbeat and personal:

. . . my show, Friday, Dec. 8th at the Hotel Cafe, 11pm, in honor of my brother Lt. Col. Eric John Kruger, who I sadly, am reporting was killed in Iraq Nov. 2nd. My brother loved music and the only thing I know to do from here is to share music in his spirit. Please join us if you are free, to see the loving faces of my friends is all I can think that would help me bring a little joy back in my life during this tragic and sad time.

I just can’t imagine. Or understand why this is good for the country, democracy, or the world.

Once in a while, the Upcoming robot drops a reminder on you that lights the night up like a light bulb. So it was with Billy Bragg’s show at the Fonda last night - I was on my way somewhere else but decided to drop by and was “miracled” by the bouncer when I asked if the show was sold out. I wandered in just in time to get a beer, work my way up to the footlights, and watch the curtain rise on a shuffling working-class griot who would get my vote for a Macarthur “genius” grant if they gave them to foreigners (and if I had a vote).

Billy Bragg has been an integral part of my soundtrack for years, especially since living in England. “There is no real substitue for a bull struck squarely and firmly”, indeed. I just fell years ago for his ability to connect the emotional and the political, and I’ve been a believer ever since. He’s passionate about his beliefs, and those beliefs — in the common denomitators that connect humans to one another, and that our political systems and the people atop them too often lose sight of that - radiate from his jangly, soulful pop songs. There’s also something about his permanently unrequited adolescence & imperfection that appeals to me.

Last night he played unacommpanied electric guitar for the whole set (until the encore, when he switched to acoustic), doing bang-up takes on a number of my favorites like “Greetings to the New Brunette”, “A Lover Sings”, “World Turned Upside Down”, etc., as well as a couple of his terrific Woody Guthrie covers and a Leadbelly song. He sounded fantastic.

Equally enjoyable were his rants about everything from starbucks to a hamster eating a biscuit on youtube - and he was by turns serious as well, telling us about his book and sharing a powerful view on the importance of singer-songwriters in bringing together like-spirited people (I’ve written about this before) to recharge our collective batteries. I guess it’s social networking the old-fashioned way - though he did invite us all to join his Myspace, and changed a favorite lyric of mine to “If you’ve got a website / I wanna be on it”.

If you don’t know Billy, go buy some.

The Beck concert last night rocked. I had one of the most meta-digital-mobile moments ever recorded in the history of the web: I was standing behind Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield as he watched, on his phone, a Flickr stream of photos being uploaded in real time by the fans all around, who were us sending up phonecam pix of the live video feed of the puppet dopplegangers of the live Beck concert. And I was liveblogging this to a friend via SMS.

For taste of the puppetastic Beckage, come correct and check this video. There are zillions of pix around too. The concert itself was fantastic - rocking versions of some of his classics, a powerful performance of “The Golden Age”, acoustic covers of the Flaming Lips and Outkast, medleys of Bowie, Michael Jackson, and others.

The guero silverlake scientologist rides again -go see him if you get the chance.

I know I wrote about this in a previous post, but it just keeps getting better: the new video, “Here it Goes Again“, is as good as the first one.

Plus, “A Million Ways” in lego, and the new one via a stuporous reaction shot.