The Last Ambassadors at the 111 Minna Club in San Francisco

The Last Ambassadors would have never been if it weren’t for dueling guitar players Jake Brill and Steven Flusberg friending each other as 14 year olds in suburban Boston.

And when I say friending each other, I mean it like actually meeting each other in a class or something, and not digitally friending on Facebook, which is more meaningful I think.

In 2006, they started putting together some songs on acoustic and electric guitars, slowly incorporating additional acoustic effects as that year passed.

In concert, listen for Flusberg’s space-defying guitar licks, and Brill’s Roots-inspired word play, often followed by the other band members suggesting ‘Jakie Don’t Stop.’

Jakie doesn’t stop, he keeps the jams coming.

The Last Ambassadors are on a West Coast tour right now.

Photos Courtesy of WWW

Love this jam. Love this band. As I start listening to more and more remixes of post-punk jams, rather than the songs themselves, its good to find original tracks that I can listen to over and over again.

Based in New York, founding members of We Are Scientists met while attending Harvey Mudd College and Pamona College. They have toured with Arctic Monkeys and Maximo Park, two UK-based rock band heavyweights.

Before doing a quick wikipedia lookup of these guys, I thought they were from the UK also. Nope, just got that sound…

I can’t help myself as I listen to The Rosebuds. With a drum line that reminds me of Autolux, I simply have to rock the head nod. Yes, of course, it’s feel good. Can you blame me? Take the chorus of “Shake our tree” — ‘Are you ever gonna treat me right?…’ This is the kind of jam you’ll rock on the bus while tuning out the entire damned thing. Actually, take this to work with ya…

Originally from Raleigh, the couple has been producing since May 2001.

They’ll even do a remix or two. More of that coming.

Here comes the self-proclaimed best fan video ever. Not sure if this is the official video for the Girl Talk song Bounce That, but not much about the ‘band’ Girl Talk is very official. He’ll drop about 10 different songs in a single track, none of them his to begin with. Its DJs like this that make the music industry cringe, then start suing developers…

Girl Talk is one man – Gregg Gillis. He started recording these mashups while studying biomedical engineering, with a focus on tissue engineering. He’s now selling out shows at some of the top venues in the country.

Girl Talk has also been front and center in the new movement of giving away music. Considering that he didn’t create any of it from scratch, he probably isn’t as attached to it as, say, Metallica.

Young Love, a New York City alt dance band, will get you up and at ‘em in no time.

Dan Keyes is the main man behind the project, singing lead vocals, and handling most of the music production. He formerly fronted a post-hardcore band based out of Austin called Recover.

Young Love is a quite a departure…

This song was also featured in the 2007 Fifa Soccer soundtrack.

School of Seven Balls, er Bells, is an experimental indie pop band, comprised of twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza. They drop all kind of vocal harmonies, while instrumentalist Benjamin Curtis creates some truly unique noise pop backgrounds.

They’re named after the possibly-mythical South American pickpocket training academy. Not sure what each bell refers to. If anyone knows, feel free to enlighten us in the comments below.

Random thought – I bet if we turned off the lights, we’d be like ‘where’d they go?!?’

The Black Kids are an indie pop band from Jacksonville, Florida. Like MGMT and The Scissor Sisters, they have considerably more of a following in the UK than in the US.

They are powered by the brother-sister combination, Reggie and Ali Youngblood.

Though initially performing mostly in and around Jacksonville (is there a music scene there ?! ) , they then started getting serious global attention after their performances at the Athens Popfest Festival in the summer of 2007.

They’re currently touring the world, but will be in San Francisco on 4/20 and 4/21, playing at the Independent.

A classic trip hop track from the one man DJ team that goes by RJD2.  This track comes from RJD2′s first album, Deadringer, which is my favorite by far.  He released while with Def Jux records.

RJD2 began partially grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and began his DJing career there as well.  He now lives in Philly, so you can probably catch his live shows pretty easily if you live on the East Coast.  He doesn’t come out west nearly enough.

This song brought The Toadies some tidbits of stardom back in 1994, previously limited to playing small clubs in and around their home town of Fort Worth, Texas

The Toadies recently regrouped and released their latest album in August, 2008. They are now touring.

Chances are, if you go to their show, they’ll play this jam. If they don’t, there’ll be some unhappy people in the audience.

One of the most influential Hip Hop groups of all time, A Tribe Called Quest was one of the first Hip Hop groups to start experimenting with fusing Jazz and Hip Hop in the late 80s and early 90s. In regards to this style, they’re often in the same sentence as De La Soul and the Digable Planets.

Formed in 1988, Tribe consists of three core members, plus a fourth who left the band after their first album, but has since rejoined the group in 2006.

Give it up for Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, and Ali Shaheed who have been the three guys behind Tribe since their first tracks. Jarobi White has been the fourth member of the group.

This track was also featured on the Boiler Room soundtrack (one of my favorite movie soundtracks of all time)