As Mr. T reminds us in today’s music video, “Don’t be puttin’ down nobody’s mother.” Good advice on Mother’s Day and any day.

When television and rock ‘n’ roll and the legal system were invented, did anyone foresee that one day the lead singer of the Sex Pistols would appear on “Judge Judy” to defend himself from charges made by his tour drummer? Surely, this must rank with the meeting between Nixon and Elvis.

The choicest moment for me: When Judge Judy, philosophizing about the relative merits of artistic works and therefore stretching back to theories originating with Aristotle, notes to the once and former Johnny Rotten “Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey — now that was music!” A close second: when she scolds the unhappy that clearly he is in the wrong line of work. (Most of us would know what we’re getting into when we go to work for someone with the last name of “Rotten.”)

I like the new album by Broken Bells (Danger Mouse, plus the guy from the Shins) a lot. But I love this song.

The High Road

Broken Bells | MySpace Music Videos

It’s Stephanie Germanotta — before she became Lady Gaga.

What I like about this:

It shows that this very talented young woman can sing and play piano and write songs. Yes, she has come up with an act, one that has propelled her to celebrity and fortune. But it’s not just an act. It’s an act centered around talent.

In which David Byrne talks about his love for music, and his opinion that lyrics are overrated.

As someone who has been listening to Byrne’s lyrics for more than 30 years, I agree with him that it’s often the sound of lyrics (his lyrics, anyway), that’s more important than the meaning. That’s because the songs he’s done both with and without Talking Heads have been largely connotational rather than denotional — they connote a certain mood or situation, most often: a rootless anxiety. (Or, sometimes, a quirky sort of hope.) This displacement from his surroundings puts him squarely in the tradition of postmodern artists where, of course, meaning is less important than immediate impact. Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf and William Burroughs and Donald Barthelme were usually more interested in transmitting a feeling than telling a story. And that sounds like a close approximation of what David Byrne does in his songs.

Thanks to Paul Crist for alerting me to this video.

The band OK Go is getting quite a reputation as video artists. (And when was the last time you could say that about anyone? Back in the Peter Gabriel “Sledgehammer” days?)

Here’s their latest — a clever update of Rube Goldberg. The song isn’t much, but the video is astonishing. Note this: It’s all one long shot. Clever — and impressive!

Generally, my Christmas wish list consists of two things:  books and music. This year was no different, and left me with an unforeseen bonanza.

When the presents were unwrapped yesterday, I was left holding three books from my list — The Humbling by Philip Roth, Under the Dome by Stephen King, and Invisible by Paul Auster — as well as a biography of Teddy Roosevelt as our naturalist president (courtesy of my daughter), and the sensational book of this fun little London art project (courtesy of a friend who eerily completely understands my tastes). (The new biography of Churchill was also on my list but didn’t arrive under the tree.)

I also put one music CD on my list, Some Girls by the Rolling Stones.  I’m not a fan of those rolling fellows, but I did remember liking that album, which I had in its original lawsuit version 30 years ago. Because my new car links with my iPhone, allowing the stereo to play whatever music I’ve imported, I’ve been thinking about music I’d like to hear in the car, and recently I thought of this album, which I never bought on CD. So I put it on my list.

The surprise, though, was this:  My friend Trey, who joined us for Christmas, remembered that he had something in the trunk of his car that he wanted to show me. No, it wasn’t Jimmy Hoffa — it was about 300 CDs from his sister, who had successfully  completed importing all her CDs onto iPods or somesuch and was no itching to unload the clutter of cases. She’d given them all to Trey, and he was offering to share them with me:  Have some, burn some into my computers, whatever. So Trey and my son Lex and I spent an hour or two going through CD cases while I cooked Christmas dinner. (Turkey and all the trimmings, so there was plenty of time.)

In the boxes, I found:

• numerous Chemical Brothers CDs
• three Nine Inch Nails CDs
• the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• lots of house and trance music
• Stereolab
• some Brian Eno-produced CDs
• Tool
• Coverdale Page
• Moby
• Radiohead

and lots of other things that interest me. Soon I had towering stacks of CDs that I wanted to put on my laptop for possible transfer to my iPhone. But of course, here’s what happened: Where just an hour before I’d had one new CD, Some Girls, to import and enjoy, now I had, potentially hundreds. One new CD was special, a few would have been novel, but 300 were overwhelming. Worse, they robbed each other of their distinctiveness. By the time I had imported just a few of the CDs, I was looking through to see what to cut:  Suddenly, these R.E.M.disks didn’t look like their finest worksongs, the idea of importing three Nine Inch Nails CDs really made me hurt, and I almost said nevermind to a Nirvana disk I somehow didn’t have. After importing 15 or 20 disks, I looked at what was left and decided I’d pick five — and no more — put them on my laptop, and from there, put what of those I wanted onto my iPhone, and then return to the real world. Because if I didn’t winnow all these down to something manageable, this would wind up becoming another project, and that’s something I don’t need any more of.

So, a couple of hours later, I packed all the CDs back away and was finished with the ordeal of too much new music and was just about to shut down my laptop when I saw one last CD — the one I’d asked for for Christmas. Brand new and almost forgotten. So I imported one more CD, and thought it sounded pretty good.

By the way, Bob Dylan’s Christmas album is not the first from a Jewish musician. (It’s merely the worst.)

Every once in a while, I check in to see what the free download is that week from iTunes. This week, I saw that it’s a new song by Bob Dylan. “Oh, cool! A free new song from Bob Dylan,” I thought.

Then I listened to it.

Yikes!

Paging Dr. Daniel Lanois. Paging Dr. Daniel Lanois. The last time Dylan sounded this bad he was in the middle of a motorcycle accident.

If you’re curious, go head on over to the iTunes store and check it out.  But first, let me share just a couple of the reviews from listeners:

“Sad. Terribly sad. When the once great artist no longer distinguishes between Christmas and trash.”

“WHAT THE HECK IS THIS?”

“Terrible!”

And, my favorite:

“Eww.”

A further bit of context:  I’m a Dylan fan, this is a free download, and I don’t want it. I’m afraid if I put it on my iPhone it’ll come up one day on random play and I’ll accidentally hear it again.