RSS Daily Music

Phosphorescent � “It’s Hard To Be Humble When You’re From Alabama”

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Matthew Houck spent the three years since the quiet triumph of his Pride LP processing others’ works and often distributing the results — see his cover of Malvina Reynolds’ “Little Boxes,” his takes on the Righteous Brothers and Nick Cave, or his entire album devoted to the works of Willie Nelson (fittingly billed To Willie). [...]

Tibet House Benefit Feat Iggy Pop Patti Smith Philip Glass @ Carnegie Hall NYC 2/26/10

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

This past Friday we sent Dominick Mastrangelo to the 20th Annual Tibet House Benefit at Carnegie Hall. The lineup included longtime legends (Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, the concert’s Artistic Director Philip Glass) mixing it up with younger folks (Regina Spektor, Gogol Bordello, and the very young Tenzin Kunsel) and folks you might not have heard [...]

Titus Andronicus � “A More Perfect Union”

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I tried to like The Airing Of Grievances because New Jersey dudes with big beards/bookshelves are close to my heart (and mirror), but I couldn’t always get past the nagging Bright Eyes moments. A common enough comment, yeah, and not at all unfounded. That said, I find myself listening to Titus Andronicus’s second album, the [...]

Stream Gorillaz Plastic Beach

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

We’ve heard a little bit of Gorillaz’ Plastic Beach via “Stylo” featuring Mos Def and Bobby Womack, the De La Soul and Gruff Rhys-guesting “Superfast Jellyfish” and the Murdoc-hosted “pirate radio” stream. Now check out the whole thing streaming at NPR. On first listen it sounds expansive but a little more subdued and somber than [...]

Born Ruffians � “Sole Brother”

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

When I talked to Born Ruffians’ Luke LaLonde about writing Say It, he said the title referred to being more direct with family, friends, and band mates, saying what he meant and “being a dick.” “Sole Brother” addresses his family over a skeletal track: “Sometimes I wish … that I was … an only child.” [...]

The Delta Mirror � “Blind” TV On The Radio Cover Stereogum Premiere

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

A logical pairing here: TV On The Radio’s swirling and immersive, downcast and down-tempo mood portrait “Blind,” from their Young Liars EP, bounced off the similarly calibrated palette of Los Angeles BTW the Delta Mirror. In some ways “Blind” fixed the frame for the Delta Mirror, so their take on it plays out the extremes [...]

Two Door Cinema Club � “Undercover Martyn Passion Pit Remix”

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Passion Pit’s fingerprints are all over this — that stuttering drum machine beat and keyboard arpeggio are dead giveaways. Two Door Cinema Club themselves employed a drum machine until they added a touring drummer late last year. Two Door Cinema Club – “Undercover Martyn (Passion Pit Remix)” Two Door Cinema Club’s debut album Tourist History is out [...]

Neon Indian � “Mind Drips” Summer Dregs Remix

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Alan Palomo and the rest of his Neon Indians recently delivered a “Terminally Chill”/”Ephemeral Artery” medley and some less-than-not-geeky dance moves/live guitar licks on Jimmy Fallon. (I’m all for enthusiasm, but while you can take the psych out of the bedroom, you can’t always…) Closing the curtain again, here’s another Psychic Chasms track “Mind, Drips” [...]

Surfer Blood/the morning benders/Beach Fossils/Grooms/Turbo Fruits @ Market Hotel Brooklyn 2/27/10

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Top to bottom five-band blowout at Market Hotel Saturday night, the DIY space packed tight in time for the opening band’s 8:30 set, because 1) everybody had just spent two days locked inside at the mercy of the snowicane and 2) the opening band was the morning benders, a late add to a heavy bill [...]

Watch SNL’s Smash Mouth Sketch “We Are The World 25″ Parody

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Jennifer Lopez hosted and performed even though she doesn’t have an album or movie out anytime soon. She was the best part of a “We Are The World” parody, and a small part of the best-in-show Smash Mouth sketch. Watch at Videogum. (And compare Bill Hader’s Eddie Vedder to Adam Sandler’s circa ‘93.)

Comeback vs Blow Pony

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Remember this guy, Charlie, from Drunk of the Week? He'll be at Comeback tonight, at Chop Suey, for what I'm told will be the Portland vs Seattle "Super Bowl of Faggotry". FUN! Tonight! GO! Dance!

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Riot Grrrl Where Are You Now? Kaia Wilson Ping Pong Champ

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Yes, that's Brandi Carlile (left) and Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls (right).

Did you read Spin this month? I flipped through it in Easy Street Records while waiting for a bus yesterday. It's the "Where Are They Now" cover story that sucked me in. (Like, Tanya Donnelly's a doula! OMG!) And it left me trailing little thought clouds behind me for the rest of the day.

I don't think there's anything inherently tragic about, say, stopping a career as a touring musician and settling into a more conventional job. That's the nature of the beast. But when it's all, internet programmer blah blah... web developer blah blah... I get a little uneasy. And this is not to disparage those fields; if programming code is your passion, that's awesome. But if music is your passion and you throw it out because programming code pays, that makes Bambi cry. I guess I'm just aging, like we all are, and have that feeling of impending doom. Like when we hit a certain age, boom. We settle down, we settle for, we start doing what is expected and customary, and cease doing the weird, offbeat shit that turned us into artists in high school, or whenever it was that we started tuning in to odd hobbies and alternative forms of expression.

So, I took a circuitous route to get there, but I want to say that I'm really glad to hear Kaia Wilson is planning on becoming a ping pong champion.

She's a NW music vet— Team Dresch, The Butchies, Adickdid, etc.— perhaps at her strongest as guitar player for Team Dresch, although talented as a singer and songwriter too and a damn good time at karaoke. Her new goal is to compete in ping pong... er, table tennis... at the upcoming Gay Games in Cologne, Germany. And win. She's started a website about it, so if you want to follow her journey, you can click here. (I hope I'm not the only one excited about the "Homoscopes" link, as yet un-used but harkening back to her funny faux astrology on the Mr. Lady website of yore.)

Happy Friday, everybody.

PS- More of these kind of posts here and here. And this won't be the last.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

And Today In Shitty Teen Christian Band News

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Final Placement make a video.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

RIP Chilly B

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

As reported, Bob "Chilly B" Creston (of legendary 80's electrofunk crew Newcleus), passed away from a stroke this week, at age 47. RIP.

Growing up in LA in the 80's, I watched my brother and his homeboys pop and lock to the bboy classic "Jam On It" more than a few times. It was one of those songs so joyously ubiquitous to the scene that, like Zapp, I assumed the BKNY-born Newcleus were from there. I didn't know anything about them until I read a great piece on them in Wax Poetics #27 (Grandmaster Flash/Eddie Harris cover).

Newcleus-Jam On It

DIAZ | MySpace Video

Here's a couple 4-track Newcleus demos, that my dude Suspence (formerly of Dem Saturday Knights Boyz) put me onto. See if you can funk with that.

Newcleus - "Computer Age" (4 Track Demo)

Newcleus - "Jam-On's Revenge" (4 Track Demo)

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Add Free the Robots Ctrl Alt Delete to Your Want List

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Back when I lived in Orange County, one of that mostly musically dismal area's brightest talents was Free the Robots (aka Chris Alfaro). A buddy of Nosaj Thing and the Gaslamp Killer (both of whom he booked at his dope Santa Ana bar The Crosby before they blew up), Alfaro is a savvy cratedigger who applies his vast knowledge to creative productions that stand out from the hordes of sampladelic beat scientists.

Here's something I wrote about Free the Robots in 2007; my prediction took longer than expected, but the wait will be worth it.

Santa Ana's Chris Alfaro and [live member] Phil Nisco make instrumental hip-hop laced with unlikely jazz and psych- and prog-rock samples seem like the next big thing. Free the Robots couple inventiveness with danceability, and they can whip a crowd into a frenzy without the usual corny hip-hop concert shtick. I expect them to blow up nationwide any month now.

Now Free the Robots is about to drop a heavy, exciting album titled Cntrl Alt Delete on Alpha Pup (on March 30) that splits the difference between Nosaj and Flying Lotus. The blowing up is imminent. You can check a tune called "Orion's Belt Buckle" from Cntrl Alt Delete on XLR8R's site.

Note to Decibel: Book this cat.

Ctrl Alt Delete Tracklist

1. Sci-Fidelity
2. Turbulence
3. Jupiter
4. Orion's Belt buckle
5. Wandering Gypsy
6. Select/Start
7. Voices
8. Granite Rock
9. Mental Universe
10. Global Warning
11. The Eye (feat. Ikey Owens of the Mars Volta)
12. Turkish Voodoo
13. Inter Arma

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Which Go! Is The Best?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

It's almost laughable how often the phrase "Go!" appears in the liner notes of my record collection. Adopted by punk, hardcore and metal bands, this short and direct command isn't just lyrical filler, it's been the signal that gets heads banging and pits circling for several decades now

No matter how busy I am, when At The Gates vocalist Tomas Lindberg shouts this word at the beginning of the title track to their 1995 opus Slaughter of The Soul, it inspires me to stage dive head first onto my bed.

Are there any "Go's" that do the same for you?

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

My Goodtimes Talk

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

At this moment, Hollow Earth Radio is running a recording of a talk I gave at the Western Bridge, "Twilight of the Goodtimes."

Hollow Earth is currently playing:
Charles Mudede "Twilight of the Goodtimes" 7
Before that we played:
Captain Rock - Cosmic Blast
Jenny Talks - Charles Mudede2
Captain Rock - Cosmic Blast
Charles Mudede - Charles Mudede "Twilight of the Goodtimes" 6
Man Parrish Ft. Freeze Force (MC John Ski) - Boogie Down Bronx
Boogie Down Bronx - Boogie Down Bronx
Boogie Down Bronx - Man Parrish Ft. Freeze Force (MC John Ski)
Charles Mudede - Charles Mudede "Twilight of the Goodtimes" 5

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Tonight in Music Medeski Martin Wood Arbitron Brutal Truth Harlem and More

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Medeski Martin & Wood

(Showbox at the Market) Nineteen years into their career, John Medeski, Billy Martin, and Chris Wood still defy the sad descent into bland conservatism that afflicts many aging musicians. Instead, these sonic freaks of nature continue to boldly put their distinctive, improvisatory stamp on free funk, soul, jazz standards, and hits, rarely doing the expected, safe thing. MMW's massive, impressive 2009 box set Radiolarians: The Evolutionary Set finds the trio as galvanic as ever: funky, fiery, fiercely exploratory—and they're even better live. DAVE SEGAL

AFCGT, Kinski, Arbitron

(Comet) My first taste of Arbitron came via a spray-painted cassette, housed in a single Stayfree maxi-pad box. The packaging was their clever way of telling me something was about to bleed. That cassette was a glorious display of damaged punk, marginally improvised with just the right amount of distortion and percussive spikes. Since then, the Seattle guitar/drum duo has become more solid, while still teetering on the fringe of ugliness. Sandwiched between Arbitron and headliners AFCGT are longtime local favorites Kinski, known for a mammoth sound that crests over moments of heady beauty. AFCGT, who celebrate the release of their excellent self-titled Sub Pop debut tonight, create blitzing, blistering, cross-wired noise that erupts and flows with rock's gravitational force. Brace yourself for a night of sonic reckoning and shove some tampons in your ears. TRAVIS RITTER

Brutal Truth, Super Happy Story Time Land, Streetwalker

(Studio Seven) Watching OG New York City grindcore band Brutal Truth tear it up live is like attending a speed trial: They already hold the world record for shortest music video (just over two seconds), so it's only a matter of milliseconds before they dethrone whichever band (Agoraphobic Nosebleed? Anal Cunt?) holds the bragging rights for shortest song. After a seven-year hiatus, they re-formed in 2006, and last April released Evolution Through Revolution, a 20-song blast of uncompromising grind. It's nice to see one of the true genre-defining bands show up the new blood, not just keep up with them. KEVIN DIERS

Harlem, Idle Times, the Knast

(Funhouse) There's something ballsy (and galling, too) about a group of indie-rock white boys from Austin calling themselves Harlem. The universe needs to regain balance with a black R&B troupe that goes by Reykjavik or something. Dodgy nomenclature aside, Harlem play peppy, jangly rock that would fit comfortably on a Homestead Records comp from 1985. They're facile with the catchy melodies and sing-along choruses, and they exude a youthful shagginess to which kids who buy their clothes in secondhand shops should gravitate. Harlem appear to love Kiwi-pop geniuses the Clean and Black Lips and have a song called "Psychedelic Tits," so it's hard not to be charmed by them, even though their new album, Hippies (out April 6 on Matador), will inevitably garner them major blog buzz. DAVE SEGAL

And there's always more in our complete music calendar listings.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The Fall of Troy 20022010

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Thomas Erak, lead singer of Seattle's the Fall of Troy, posted this news to the band's MySpace this afternoon:

Dearest friends from all corners of the world,

I write to inform you that after nearly 9 years, 5 full-lengths, 2 bass players, hundreds of shows, and numerous other achievements and follies, Andrew, Frank, and I have decided to end our career as The Fall of Troy.

This band has been my life, my love, the air I breathe, the food I eat, and what helps me sleep (and sometimes keeps me up) at night. I love and cherish the music we've made, the times we've had, and all the great friends we've met along the way. Andrew, Frank, and of course Tim, will always and forever have a special place in my heart. But it has come time for us to call it a day. After everything's said and done, there is no drama, there is no blow out, it's simply the three members of this band are on three different paths in our lives.

I always hold true to the fact that it's better to go out in style, to ride off into the sunset, than go down in flames. This tour coming up with Envy On The Coast and Twin Atlantic will be our last go round, and we really hope that all of you will come out and celebrate what has been so unreal and unbelievable — let's dance one last time!

We would really like to thank everyone that's ever been involved with the band, managed the band, booked a show for us, let us eat your canned food, sleep on your floor, asked us for a picture, caught me when I've almost been dropped, put out a record for us, driven us through a late night drive thru, or anything else any of you could possibly look back on and enjoy what this band was...Fun.

So make sure you come out to "The Marked-Men of 2010 Tour" as it will be our last hurrah! We love you, and will be giving as much love as you've given to us at these shows. So that's that! We love you with all our hearts, thank you from the very bottom of them, and goodbye comrades.

R.I.P.
TFOT
2002-2010

With A Heavy Heart,
Thomas Joseph Erak

PS. I have no intention to stop making music! Quite the opposite actually - but until then see you at the shows!

The Fall of Troy play El Corazon March 31st.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Tonights Important Things of Must Be Doing!

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Oh, lady. What a weekend.

First of all: DO NOT go to Fringe Presents at The Eagle tonight! At all! Not even a little bit! Under any circumstances! Whatsoever! (Don't you fucking DARE!) And...why? WHY? Because it AIN'T HAPPENIN', pickle, THAT'S why. It's on brief hiatus 'til next week, when it shall indeed return with a BANG, so just chill out, for God's sakes, and instead do THIS...

COMEBACK (VS. Blowpony) at CHOP SUEY!

As my very dear and ever-talented Miss O noted just a bit previously, tonight is COMEBACK—but not just any old, run-of-the-milling-faggots Comeback. Tonight is a very special edition: The very first-ever (that I know of) Comeback VS. Blowpony edition of Comeback! Wow!

Okay. Next obvious question: What the hell's a BLOWPONY, anyway? (Brilliant next question.) Well, a "Blowpony" is a big queer thing that apparently happens to someplace called PORTLAND (never heard of it) once a month , and, according to its so-called "website" (what?):

BLOWPONY was created by a bipolar skitzee fag (Airick) and Trans Kansas Mess (Jese AKA Kinetic) in a desperate callout in our QUEER community for unity and a place to where all our brothers and sisters felt welcome and loved..."

...blah, blah, blah, and more Portland-esque queer hippie New Age bullshit. But what it all translates to precisely is this: freaks, freaks, and more fabulous freaks, dancing their freaky queer asses off. And Blowpony is teaming up tonight with our very own and deeply beloved COMEBACK, and there shall indeed be TWO ROOMS of dance, dance, danceness (not just one, like usual): Residents from BLOWPONY (the aforementioned Airick and Kinetic) will be spinning one room, while PONYBOY, F.I.T.S., Colby B., and other Comeback stars do their thing in the other. It's a fused-up, mashed-up, bi-city dance-your-ass-off-stravaganza!

Come around 10pm, it's $5-$7 (depending on if you show up before or after 11pm, for some wild, random, arbitrary reason), 1325 East Madison Street.

IF YOU HATE DANCING, and demand something more passively delightful yet equally perverted of your evening, well. You have options. May I please to suggest:

Open Circle Theater does Sex in the City! at, duh, Open Circle Theater!
Oh, lord, I'm just going to let them explain it...

Bad Actors produce Open Circle Theater's monthly late night show! After kicking off our 2010 season with the British cult comedy "Are You Being Served?", OCTV is back in February with the Emmy-award winning "Sex and the City"! Meet Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte for a cosmo or four at Open Circle's fabulous cash bar and get a chance to catch up with the girls. There are only two shows, and on Saturday night (as always) we'll spin the Big Dial to see what March's show will be. Don't miss out!

Don't miss out, indeed. Doors at 9.30, bar opens at also 9.30, 2222 2nd Avenue (try and forget THAT address, I dare you), a measly $5.

TONIGHT!

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

[a]pendicsshufffle Rex Sepulveda @ Electric Tea Garden Feb 27

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

A late-breaking show of serious electronic-music excellence for you to contemplate: LA-based producer [a]pendics.shufffle (aka Ken Gibson) and Detroit DJ/producer Rex Sepulveda perform Sat. Feb. 27 at Electric Tea Garden (10 pm/$15/21+). The event's called Love Unit and it's put on by the Condiment and Sweatbox crews.

[a]pendics.shuffle's tech-house is as odd and quirky as his musical moniker; it's got that crispy-synapsed psychedelic feel, yet it's also infernally focused on keeping the floor a hive of hectic activity. His sets at Decibel and other Seattle dates have never been less than stellar. I've not witnessed Sepulveda's deck action, but anyone with M-nus Records affiliations—Sepulveda was involved with the sublabel D—is worth checking. His techno productions are more straightforward than Gibson's, but they're still heady and stranger-than-friction dance-floor business. And he's remixed tracks by Fred Giannelli, which is more than most can say.

Local DJs Ctrl_Alt_Dlt, Jonny Romero, Murdoc, and Shift support.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Any Thoughts on the Name of That Other Thom Yorke Band?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Yesterday, Thom Yorke announced the name of that other band he does when not making Radiohead LPs or performing solo. You know, that supergroup with Flea in it? That one.

From deadairspace :

THU, 25 FEBRUARY
?????? New Shows
hey everyone

ok so in April the other band.. that i got together to do the eraser and other stuff u know .. Mauro, Flea, Me, Joey and Nigel is going back out to do some shows in the US.. ending with playing with Coachella. we had too much fun to just leave it there...

it has been decided that we call ourselves Atoms For Peace. hope you like the name.. it seemed bleedin' obvious.

all warmth
Thom

Atoms for Peace? I pick up on the references and all, but—no, sir, I don’t like it. Not one bit. There’s something a little too campy, forced and topical about this “bleedin’ obvious” choice that rubs me the wrong way. I mean, here we have a collection of (arguably) elite all-star musicians, and THIS is the most baddass name they could come up with? You'd expect better from such a cream-of-the-crop cluster of egos and talents. Yet, poorly chosen, cringeworthy monikers are a more than common occurrence among bands of the “super” persuasion—Audioslave, Chickenfoot, The Traveling Wilburys, Damnocracy, G3, Monsters of Folk, and Them Crooked Vultures all being prime examples. How is this even possible?

Now, we can sit here and argue all day about the subjective nature of band names, but what I really want to know is: Why do supergroups and all-star bands tend to be the guiltiest of choosing names that frequently land smack-dab in the middle of completely crap-bag and forehead-slap embarrassing?

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The Score supplemental

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

This week I wrote about the trance-sorcery of Lubomyr Melnyk, but this weekend has several other performances of note.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The Sight Below at SAM Remix Tonight

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Tonight is the latest SAM Remix event at the Seattle Art Museum (8pm, $5-$10, all-ages, highly recommended/should've been a Stranger Suggests). Headlining is Canadian artist Loscil, whom Dave Segal expounds on in this week's Data Breaker as well as here on Line Out.

An equally compelling reason to go is local ambient shoegazer the Sight Below (aka Rafael Anton Irisarri) whom Segal profiled for the Stranger back in 2008:

The Sight Below's set at this year's Decibel Festival was a highlight for many attendees. His mesmerizingly muffled 4/4 kick drums pumped like an excited hippo's heart beneath gaseous synth tones and spectral guitar spray, while his voluminous bass frequencies seemed to threaten the integrity of the Baltic Room's sound system. To those on the Sight Below's rarefied wavelength, the result was a steady-state, subdued ecstasy similar to that induced by Kompakt Records artists like Gas and the Field.

The Sight Below's debut album, Glider (out November 11 on the respected Michigan label Ghostly International), meticulously re-creates that live experience while also exploring his more ambient proclivities. The Sight Below's deft aptitude on guitar (typically stroked ever so lightly with a viola bow or plectrum) and keyboards glimmers brilliantly on the disc's nine cuts, evoking masters of subtle sonic bliss like My Bloody Valentine, Brian Eno, Harold Budd, and Fennesz.

The Sight Below's got a new album called It All Falls Apart out April 5th on Ghostly International featuring tracks co-written with Simon Scott of Slowdive on guitar and an atomized cover of Joy Division's "New Dawn Fades" featuring Tiny Vipers' Jesy Fortino on vocals. It's every bit as glacially chilling and breathtaking as the Sight Below's debut, and tonight might be your first chance to hear some of it.

Also nothing to sneeze at (and also profiled by the sleepless Segal): Gel-Sol.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Medeski Martin Wood Are One of the Greatest Live Bands Ever

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

And they're playing tomorrow night at Showbox at the Market. I highly recommend checking out Medeski Martin & Wood at least once in your life. They extemporaneously roam far and deep through jazz, funk, soul, and even experimental/musique-concrète realms with amazing facility and showmanship, without ever seeming hokey. I've seen them four times and each show's been jaw-droppingly great.

Most groups who've been together for two decades should be in decline by this point, but if anything, MMW are getting more adventurous and interesting with age.

In this week's Suggests, I wrote:

Nineteen years into their career, John Medeski, Billy Martin, and Chris Wood still defy the sad descent into bland conservatism that afflicts many aging musicians. Instead, these sonic freaks of nature continue to boldly put their distinctive, improvisatory stamp on free funk, soul, jazz standards, and hits, rarely doing the expected, safe thing. MMW's massive, impressive 2009 box set Radiolarians: The Evolutionary Set finds the trio as galvanic as ever: funky, fiery, fiercely exploratory—and they're even better live. (Showbox at the Market, 1426 First Ave, 628-3151. 7 pm, $25, 21+.)

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Win Tickets to CMYK at the Croc

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

This Thursday CMYK, Hotels, Fascination Movement, and Noddy play the Crocodile. Want to go for free?

Just send an e-mail with your first and last name to freetickets@thestranger.com—put CMYK in the subject line. We'll put one winner on the list with a +1! You can also just buy tickets for $8 here, if you're too lazy to send an e-mail.

Here's the band playing "Rollerskates" at Neumos earlier this year:

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Todays Music News

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Still bitter after all these years: Carly Simon reveals muse behind “You’re So Vain.”

RIP: Section 25’s Larry Cassidy passes at 56.

Giving the ailing music biz the finger: Robyn to release three albums in 2010.

Dad Religion: Bad Religion turns 30; plans special shows.

RIP: Hall & Oates bassist Tom “T-Bone” Wolk passes from heart attack.

Never-quite-in-the-black metal: North American black metal label Klaxon Records folds.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Smoke Fairies Living With Ghosts

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Here is a song that I didn't know existed until two minutes ago and with which I fell in immediate love. This rarely happens.

I get a serious Nick Drake/Hope Sandoval vibe from Smoke Fairies' "Living With Ghosts" (hauntology alert), which has become somewhat common since "Pink Moon"'s use in that VW commercial, but which seldom comes out this sublime. The grainy B&W texture of the video adds to the song and band's allure, which, upon reflection, also conjures thoughts of Seattle's Midday Veil.

The London duo have a 10" LP titled Ghosts (them again...) due in May. (That's right, a 10".) Here's hoping Smoke Fairies blow up Joanna Newsom-style this year.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Also Tonight Lynn Sheltons $5 Cover Seattle Premiere

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Also tonight, the Lynn Shelton-directed MTV music reality "webisode" series $5 Cover: Seattle is having a cast & crew screening at SIFF Cinema at 7pm. Afterwards, there'll be a party at Tractor Tavern at 9pm with rumored performers including the Lights, Thee Satisfaction, and Champagne Champagne. Cover for the Tractor show is, appropriately, $5.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

HealthFood Rap Strong Arm Steadys Chitlins Pepsi

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Strong Arm Steady's "Chitlins & Pepsi" (off the recent In Search of Stoney Jackson on Stones Throw) strikes me as a hiphop anomaly: a rap tune that sings the praises of a healthy vegetarian/vegan diet with, of course, its attendant benefits in the sack. Planet Asia authors the geekily detailed verses about advantageous foodstuffs with generous helpings of earnestness.

I realize a track like this is not unprecedented (for example, A Tribe Called Quest touched on the topic in "Ham 'N' Eggs"), but it is rare enough of a subject to force one to do a double take; and maybe it could even persuade some listeners to get with the junk-chow-free program. The lush, orchestral production's sweet (in a salubrious way), too.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Tonight in Music Against Me! and More

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Against Me!, Jaguar Love, Cancer Bats

(Neumos) Against Me! emerged as an acoustic, anarchistic folk-punk act back in the era of WTO protests and "Eugene anarchists" (as fondly satirized on the mock-country ballad "Baby, I'm an Anarchist"). The dull horror of the George W. Bush presidency demanded they bulk up to a full, electrified punk-rock band, and it provided no shortage of material for frontman Tom Gabel's hoarse, from-the-barricades battle cries and arch, self-aware sense of humor. Still, there was a sense of diminishing returns as they kept rolling out the albums, eventually graduating from Plan-It-X to No Idea to Fat Wreck Chords and finally to Sire/Warner Music Group. Maybe the heroic fight against impossible odds started to lose some of its Days of War, Nights of Love romance? In any case, the band, now featuring Hot Water Music's George Rebelo on drums, has been quiet since 2007's New Wave; it'll be interesting to see how Against Me! react to the nascent Obama era of (dashed?) hope and (forestalled) change. ERIC GRANDY

And there's always more in our complete music calendar listings.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

ExGang Starr MC Guru in a Coma After Heart Attack

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

One of hiphop's greatest rapper/lyricists, the monotone maestro Guru (aka Keith Elam, 43), suffered a heart attack and is currently in a coma. More info here and here.

Along with DJ Premier, Guru elevated Gang Starr to legendary status among many hiphop heads. He also has helmed a four-album series of jazz-oriented hiphop under the Jazzmatazz moniker.

Healing thoughts go out to Elam and his family and friends.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Show Review Helios Covert Snohomish House Show

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Omar Shaukat

The last time I saw Helios, he was playing an Ambient Showcase as part of 2008’s Decibel Fest. The concert was at The Triple Door. I was underdressed. I probably should’ve learned my lesson then—maybe Helios/Keith Kenniff is an artist so refined that he brings an air of expected dignity wherever he goes—because despite yesterday’s Helios concert being a “house show,” I once again felt out of place in my head-to-toe unwashed clothes.

Last night, Kenniff played to a small crowd (maybe thirty) at an exclusive invite-only gig way up north in Snohomish. If I hadn’t been there, I probably wouldn’t have believed it happened. Picture a quaint, unassuming cul-de-sac lined with one-story “rambler” homes. At the bottom of this street, Kenniff performed in an upscale living room packed with rows of folding chairs. I was grateful to have been there, and the gravitational pull of Kenniff’s resoundingly emotive songs helped offset my fears of being perceived as a smelly home invader in a silkscreened seafoam sweatshirt.

Despite my anxiety, the night’s host, Wes, was incredibly hospitable. He’d gone all out in trying to make the evening’s entertainment a genuinely one-of-a-kind affair. Not only had Wes personally programmed and designed visuals to accompany Helios’ set, he’d also rigged up a tricky old-school-Hollywood-style rear projection apparatus so the footage filled a screen mounted on a pair of windows behind the musician. Between songs the visuals would ebb into solid green, and the living room evoked another kind of movie magic, taking on the appearance of a Hollywood half-set with a green screen backdrop. Laptop jockeys in Pasedena would gladly have CGI-ed in a tableau of the Snohomish River. Unlike hypothetical indulgent pixel-scapes, Wes’ rendered projections proved exceptionally complementary to Helios’ sound. The imagery on display included ceiling fans moving in slow-motion, lone figures wandering forests of snow-capped conifers, screensaver swirls, and maps of pulsing dots (think Larry King’s Lite-Brite map-of-America). Some serious props are in order for pulling off those visuals—Helios, like his contemporary Tycho, is pretty consistent across both audio and visual dimensions (see: his ongoing collaborations with Matthew Woodson, the cover artist for nearly all Helios releases), and if Wes hadn’t taken credit for the night’s graphic stimuli, I would never have known they weren’t something Kenniff himself had provided.

More after the jump.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Todays the Last Day to Vote for AllAges Movement Project

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

A couple weeks ago, in the Underage column, I wrote about the All-Ages Movement Project and the $50,000 grant they're hoping to win in Pepsi's Refreshing Ideas contest. Well, today's the last day of the contest—at 9 pm tonight they need to be in the top 10 to win one of 10 $50,000 prizes. Right now they're in 10th (yay!), but over the last few days they've been bouncing back and forth between 10th and 11th (boo
!).

If you want to vote for the All-Ages Movement Project, go here: http://allages.net/vote.

You can read about what they'll do with the money here, and you can also read about how they respond to criticism about getting money from corporate sugar-water slingers here.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Tonight in Music Free Energy Angelo Spencer Eel Eater Fatal Lucciauno and More

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Foreign Born, Free Energy

(Chop Suey) Philadelphia-based band Free Energy are one of those signings that makes you wonder about the relationship between DFA Records and EMI (Shocking Pinks is another)—like, where do the honest enthusiasms of the tasteful, trend-setting dance-punk label end and the business plans of the corporate machine begin? I mean, sure, James Murphy's tastes are plenty eclectic (see the latter half of "Losing My Edge"), but it's hard to imagine him getting quite as excited about Free Energy's snoozy, bloozy, last-call-at-the-karaoke-pub sub-Strokes rock as he does about, say, the Sonics (the Sonics! The Sonics! The Sonics!). Still, it's perfectly pleasant, persistently hooky stuff, if ultimately kind of forgettable. Foreign Born's songs turn from jangly, twangy indie soft rock to pleading, understated anthems, a trick that satisfies on some fundamental, Pavlovian level. ERIC GRANDY

Arrington de Dionyso, Angelo Spencer et Les Hauts Sommets, L'Orchidée d'Hawaï

(20/20 Cycle) Angelo Spencer is a self-taught musician who hails from the French Alps. Last time I caught him, he was performing as a one-man band, stomping out time on hi-hat and kick drum while playing electric guitar and singing sweetly flirtatious love songs. Avec Les Hauts Sommets (the High Summits), Spencer plays instrumental guitar that takes off from Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western scores and ventures (or Ventures) into wilder, skronkier territories, accompanied on bass clarinet, keys, percussion, and Echoplex by Karl Blau, Clyde Petersen of Your Heart Breaks, and headliner Arrington de Dionyso. The project's self-titled debut album, recorded in Olympia, is energetic, moody, and thoroughly engaging. ERIC GRANDY

Eel Eater, Wild Yaks

(Comet, 4 pm) Eel Eater specialize in voluble raw expression. Sometimes their music is a head rush of trashy, thrashy, punky abandon. It's also, in turns, really "out there" in the best way possible. Without ever ditching their authentic made-in-a-basement aesthetic, the gals (and guy) in Eel Eater dally with some awesomely freaky-deaky flourishes: beautifully wrought instrumental shrieks, hiccuping delay-splattered vox, and fever-dream audioscaping (remember that bridge in "Drain You" where it's just messed-up noises and Dave Grohl's insistent drumming? Imagine that, minus the pummeled percussion and with more wind tubes, and you'll get the idea). Eel Eater are totally worth the indulgence of a daylight-hours visit to the Comet. JASON BAXTER

Fatal Lucciauno, Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground

(Havana) The organic cross-pollination between hiphop and everything else in this town is the real prize of all the hype—I haven't been watching it for as long as many, but I haven't seen it like this in the time I've lived here. The good folks at the Ghost Gallery have the plain good taste to combine Fatal Lucciauno—the Central District firebrand whose firepower is full disclosure, uncomfortable truths, and scary-good rhymes to boot—with Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground's sumptuous orchestral psych pop. It's just our town's music scene living up more fully to its always-exciting promise, recognizing one another, and I'm so not mad. Now can we get a Fa' guest verse on "Oh Motherfuckers" or something? LARRY MIZELL JR.

And there's always more in our complete music calendar listings.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

“Flirted With You All My Life” Vic Chesnutt The Song I Always Needed and a Tribute Show To It All Tonight

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I had no idea what I was getting into when I first listened to Vic Chesnutt’s “Flirted With You All My Life.” I thought I’d be listening to a tortured love song, and well, I was. A love song, not for human flesh as I expected, but of the seductress suicide. I thought I was [...]

Noah Gundersen comes to Chop Suey Win Tickets

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Tuesday March 2nd gives Seattle an opportunity to get a good gander at two members of what I’ll term the cream-of-the-crop of the newest cohort of local bands. Locally in just the last year Noah Gundersen has dominated the Q Cafe, Neumos, the Triple Door stage, and most recently headlined the Crocodile. The other rising [...]

Support All Ages Music with MAGMA Fest and Hollow Earth Radio

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

If you’re not hip to Seattle’s Hollow Earth Radio already, this is a great week to get yourself acquainted with some of the Seattle’s most-deserving unsung heroes. Hollow Earth Radio (HER) self-describes themselves as a “free-form online radio station that presents a forum for underrepresented music, sounds and perspectives.” But HER is more than that. [...]

Fanfarlo with April Smith and the Great Picture Show at the Crocodile

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Fanfarlo ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth I’m on time for work, always. So why do I have to be late for shows, even when I am actually trying to show up on time? Inevitably, the shows we end up late for have a super sweet band who we catch only a song or two of. Dropping [...]

I Was a Photograph

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Kasey Anderson ::: Photo by John Meloy As a follower of visuals and photojournalism, I’ve been a huge fan and reader of the news analysis blog BAGnewsNotes for some time now. In my early day’s of reading that blog I strongly remember a particular image, and the ensuing analysis of that image and it’s antecedents in [...]

The Daily Choice Sweet sweet laughter

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Thank you Aquarium Drunkard. My Friday is filled with laughter.

Dita Vox $5 Cover Poster Child

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

From moment one I knew Dita Vox was a rock star. The poster from $5 Cover Seattle makes me think movie star as well. For me, an image of few people could be more iconic of my experience with the Seattle music scene than that of Dita Vox. (The first album I reviewed on Sound on [...]

Jennifer Lopez Plays Rihanna as “SNL” Mocks “We Are the World”

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Saturday Night Live returned from its Winter Olympics hiatus this weekend with a killer sketch poking fun at the “We Are the World 25 For Haiti” single, where SNL cast members and guest host Jennifer Lopez assumed the guises of stars who didn’t take part in the rerecording. “Recently, the music world came together to record ‘We Are the World 2,’ a song to raise awareness of the Haiti earthquake disaster; sadly, the song itself was a disaster,” intoned Kenan Thompson, as Quincy Jones, adding that the new version recruited a “sloppy mess of half-famous Brandos” before introducing “We Are the World 3: Raising Awareness of the ‘We Are the World 2′ Disaster.” (Our readers mostly agreed with “Quincy” ’s assessment.)

Inside the “We Are the World 25″ recording sessions: photos.

Lopez’s portrayal of Rihanna scored points as the most scathing and hilarious, with J.Lo adding RiRi’s trademark “ays” and “ella-ella-ay-ay” after every line. Kristen Wiig delivered a dead-on impression of Gwen Stefani, while other SNLers took on Adam Lambert, Willie Nelson, David Crosby, Lady Gaga and frequent SNL target Shakira. “Most people wouldn’t take off their sunglasses,” Bill Hader sings as Eddie Vedder as the SNL crew pokes fun at Justin Bieber, Vince Vaughn, Fonzworth Bentley and “the weird dude in the front row” (C’mon “Gaga,” it’s the Beach Boys’ Al Jardine!).

This isn’t the first time SNL has had fun with “We Are the World”: Back in 1985,
“Prince,” or Billy Crystal in Purple Rain garb, voiced his displeasure about being left off the “We Are the World” roster by singing “I Am Also the World.” Hulk Hogan and Mr. T serve as Prince’s bodyguards, and yes, that’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus — Elaine Benes herself — portraying one-half of “Wendy and Lisa.” Check out the hilarious clip below, which no doubt inspired Huey Lewis’ recent “I Am the World” on the Jimmy Kimmel Show.

Video: mjdwfan

Sara Bareilles Turns Panic Into Rebirth on Uptempo Summer Disc

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Photo: Michael Case Gordon

When Sara Bareilles finally finished touring behind her major-label debut Little Voice and sat down to start her next album, she was overcome with one dominant emotion: panic. “There’s that cliché phrase, ‘You have your whole lifetime to do your first record and you have to do your second one overnight.’ I was really torn with the writing,” she admits. Her pal Matt Hales from Aqualung gave her some valuable advice — “You can’t polish a turd, you obviously need more time” — so she scrapped the tunes she’d written over the summer and started from scratch.

Though she dismisses her first stabs at the new album as simply “shitty,” early songwriting sessions introduced her to an eccentric slate of potential collaborators, including Mr. Slave 4 U, Pharrell: “I drove up in my bird-shat-on, banged-up Honda Accord, and I was like, ‘Is that your Ferrari outside?’ ” She jammed with the Roots in New York, and teamed with Weezer at a Los Angeles show (”It was rad, I felt like I joined the band for 4.2 seconds”). She also spent time listening to Phoenix and Kings of Leon, soaking up what she praises as the “bombastic sonic quality” of Only By the Night.

But her most fruitful team-up has been with producer Neal Avron (Fall Out Boy, Say Anything), who has helped her shape the new batch of songs into an uptempo, layered album she describes as “revitalizing,” packed with attitude and sonically darker than her previous work. Bareilles says her hit single “Love Song” was the last track she tossed together for Little Voice, and its equivalent on the upcoming disc is “King of Anything.” “It just poured out of me,” she says, explaining the track — which is brightened with horns — is kind of a pep-talk to herself before critics get their hands on the album. “I think I’m preparing myself for what’s to come.”

“Let the Rain,” one of the two tracks that feature Bareilles on guitar, is “about feeling like you need a rebirth.” She says the odd-metered song includes a chant on the chorus, and was appropriately recorded during one of L.A.’s periods of “gnarly rain.” In addition to the uptempo tracks, “There are some sappy sad songs about being depressed, I know that well,” she says. “But I think it’s a nice mixture of upbeat and the more sentimental side of me.”

Bareilles reports she’s a little past halfway done recording the still-untitled album, which is due this summer. And while she doesn’t have any special guests on the LP yet, there’s a standing invitation for Bono, Chris Martin or Beyoncé to pop into the studio. “Lady Gaga, Sir Elton John, Paul McCartney while we’re at it — we’ll bring all the Sirs,” she jokes. “Ben Kingsley — he can be on my record, too.”

Behind Animal Collective’s Film “Oddsac” Fire Cults and Glitter

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

After four years of furious editing, a polarizing screening at Sundance and loads of body glitter, Animal Collective’s long-awaited “visual album” Oddsac is set to have its New York premiere at a handful of sold-out screenings starting tomorrow. The film, a collaboration between the celebrated avant-indie band and Philadelphia film director Danny Perez, has been shrouded in mystery since its announcement last year. Little footage has leaked, save a 30-second teaser, and initial reviews at Sundance were full of wonder and befuddlement, comparing the 53-minute piece to Stan Brakhage’s epileptic edit work and Matthew Barney’s haunting imagery, marveling over its haunting jumble of sad vampires, whirling fireballs, flaming heads and glittered faces.

In addition to the film, Animal Collective and Perez are collaborating on a one-day installation this Thursday, where they will be transforming New York’s Guggenheim Museum’s iconic rotunda into a showcase for the director’s demented visuals and the band’s dubby sounds. After the screening, Oddsac will spend March traveling to Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland. We caught up with Perez and Animal Collective’s David “Avey Tare” Portner to talk about the making of the film, the unscrupulous nature of leak culture and why some parents are scared of them.

So, Oddsac has been in the works since 2006?
David “Avey Tare” Portner: Yeah, Danny came on tour with us at the end of 2006. We were asked to do a movie about Animal Collective, like a tour movie, by Plexi. We didn’t think a documentary would do our music justice, so we brought Danny on tour to film us playing live and then do something else with it. He did film it, but we didn’t actually record any of the sound. He started doing this abstract colorful stuff. We threw all these visual scenarios at Danny and he took a lot of notes.
Danny Perez, director: The first year was planning, getting money and shooting. And then it was three years of editing and tweaking. I just had this mess of footage and just wanted to come up with the best configuration possible. I probably could have worked on it for another two years, but I’m happy with it. We had multiple deadlines — we were supposed to submit to Sundance the two previous years.

From the trailer, it seems like you filmed in woods a lot.
Perez: There’s a lot of daytime exteriors for sure. We actually filmed at Wing’s Castles, this place in upstate New York, this castle this guy made himself out of recycled materials. This guy is this awesome, cantankerous outsider artist guy, and was a big help and big supporter. The whole time I was really nervous about rain, because we would have been really screwed. I had told Kristín [Valtýsdóttir, a.k.a. Kría Brekken] it can’t rain ever. The next morning one of the grips said he saw her out in the yard playing around with some astronomy book and trying to appease the weather and control it. Sure enough it never rained the whole time.
Portner: The other stuff we shot at [AC member] Josh [Dibb]’s. Danny had hired all these kids to be in the scene. Some parents got really upset and thought we were doing some kind of cult ritual and got really concerned for their kid. One mom just took her child away. We needed this room empty for the effect of the film so we weren’t letting parents come into the room. If they couldn’t see they started getting really nervous.

And you appear in the movie as well?
Portner: We’re up for being involved as much as we can in everything that we do. So a movie that’s a visual representation of Animal Collective, it makes sense for us to be in it. I play two roles. There’s a whole part where I’m amongst all these fire-spinners, we got a bunch of them. I did this march with these people spinning fire around me. I couldn’t see the whole time because I had his mask on. So I was just going down blind listening to the directions to stay away from the flames.
Perez: I definitely put the guys through hell as far as some of the costumes and some of the stuff they had to go through.
Portner: I put Vaseline all over my skin, so I could adhere red glitter to my body. It was one of the worst things I’ve ever done. It took me so long just scraping at my skin just to get the glitter off after the shoot. It took like three hours in the shower. What a bad idea.

Everyone has been saying the movie reminds them of being on drugs.
Portner: It makes me feel like I’m on drugs. We actually had a discussion whether we’d actually want to take drugs and watch it. You might miss out on stuff because it’s so subtle.
Perez: I think my approach is definitely based on different perspectives — something that would be in your peripheral and mutating that into something into the foreground. These are essentially a lot of principles people engage in when they’re on drugs. But it’s just another way of saying that’s an intense experience.

The film hasn’t leaked yet, which allows it to still maintain an aura of mystery.
Portner: That’s what makes me psyched about Oddsac. Everyone gets first hand access to all recorded music now. We’re taking a year off playing as Animal Collective just to write new stuff, but it’s cool to still see us in a different context.
Perez: I’m just trying to do what we can to keep it low-key for now, as far as people being able to enjoy it and see it fresh. If you listen to the music on YouTube or see a shitty video… It’s like, I killed myself for four years making this thing and tweaking every frame, adjusting gamma values for colors going across shots. I watch stuff on YouTube for sure. But if you wanna see it, see it; don’t be such a fucking whore and download it.

No one even leaked it from Sundance?
Perez:

How is the Guggenheim installation coming along?
Perez: I’m really hating the snow. I’m in the final weekend of this and the snow is fucking up all my orders. I can’t work outside and the lock of the shop is frozen. It’s one adversity after another. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done if we can pull it off. I’ve had people tell me being on my shoots is like being on drugs, so this is just wanting to bring that experience to people who don’t get to come to the shoots.
Portner: It’s not a lot of time to get something together, but if we approach it like an experiment, which is pretty much what it is, it will be fun.

John Mayer Chooses Rock Over Drama at Madison Square Garden

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Photo: Coppola/Getty

John Mayer the musician has been carefully cultivating John Mayer the brand over the last 10 years. He’s merged his acoustic singer-songwriter persona with his blues-virtuoso alter-ego, developed the logos on his tour T-shirts and spat out streams of 140-character tweets that broadcast his most off-the-cuff musings. But though he clearly knows how to get results on his own terms, sometimes the terms aren’t his to define — and as his recent Playboy misadventure demonstrated, even Mayer can hit a painfully wrong note. But at a pair of packed shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden late last week, Mayer proved sometimes he’s able to just let his music do the talking.

John Mayer Uncensored: photos of his most outrageous moments.

“You’re looking at the clean me,” Mayer announced midway through Thursday night’s set. Then he launched into a solo acoustic medley of “My Stupid Mouth,” “Daughters” and “3X5″ that was immediately followed by a groovy cover of Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” on electric guitar. It was an impressive display of his sharp guitar playing, appealing sing-alongs and personable wit, and the audience responded generously. Mayer was clearly grateful for the crowd’s warmth. “It means the world to me you’re here,” he said on Friday. “I mean it from the bottom of my dumb heart.”

Mayer was less concerned with sending messages via his song selection than picking tracks that showed off his evolution as an artist: the acoustic (”Why Georgia”), the bluesy (”Crossroads”), the groovy (”Vultures”), the heartbroken (”Slow Dancing in a Burning Room”) and the hopeful (”Perfectly Lonely”). Mayer also acknowledged his inspirations with covers of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’ ” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” which he cleverly slipped into the Mac-flavored “Half of My Heart.”

Though his winter arena tour comes with hi-tech production — a massive lighting rig, mesh curtain and a giant projection screen — Mayer switched the set up each night, keeping the focus on the music. On Thursday, he honored a fan chant with an impromptu version of his love letter to the city, Room for Squares‘ “City Love,” and pulled in lyrics from Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind” during “Gravity.” On Friday he exuded a more relaxed energy, breaking out a sultry take on “I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)” and a buoyant “Good Love Is on the Way.”

Go inside Mayer’s recent RS cover shoot.

On both nights, Mayer seemed to savor the audience’s reaction to the line “It’s a long night in New York City” from “Who Says.” And perhaps feeling safe in his adopted hometown, Mayer got vulnerable during Friday’s show-closing “Gravity,” and debuted new lyrics that seem inspired by his Playboy fallout. He explained his new theory, that “lovelessness leads to loneliness, which leads to sadness, which leads to anger, which leads to hate” and spoke of imperfect batting averages. Then he sang:

“When you got hurt/it made you beautiful/the cracks around your heart/they let the light shine through./When you got hurt/in pieces on the floor/put them back together/even better than before”

The moment over, he finished the show in expected Mayer fashion: with an explosive solo that had him jamming on his knees with his guitar on the floor, moving forward, in the best way he knows how.

Set Lists:

Thursday, February 25th:
“Heartbreak Warfare”
“Crossroads”
“Vultures”
“No Such Thing”
“Perfectly Lonely”
“Slow Dancing in a Burning Room”
“Assassin”
“My Stupid Mouth” -> “Daughters” -> “3×5″ (medley)
“Ain’t No Sunshine”
“Waiting on the World to Change”
“Bigger Than My Body”
“Why Georgia”
“City Love” (tease)
“Gravity”
Encore:
“Who Says”
“Friends, Lovers or Nothing”

Friday, February 26th:
“Heartbreak Warfare”
“Good Love is On the Way”
“Vultures”
“Perfectly Lonely”
“I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)”
“Comfortable”
“Free Fallin’”
“Waiting On The World To Change (w/ Michael Franti)”
“Assassin”
“Crossroads”
“Belief”
“Half of My Heart”
“Why Georgia”
“No Such Thing”
Encore:
“Who Says”
“Gravity”

Dave Bazan “Flirted With You All My Life” from Last Night’s Vic Chesnutt Tribute

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Dave Bazan closed last night’s emotional Vic Chesnutt Tribute night at The Tractor Tavern with “Flirted With You All My Life.” I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house. (Mine certainly weren’t.) We’ll be posting more on the tribute show, including more videos later this week, but we had to share this with [...]

The Daily Choice Pill Wonder Gone To The Market

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

“An inventory of Empress Josephine’s wardrobe in 1809 included: 666 winter dresses, 230 summer dresses, and 60 cashmere shawls.” - Survey of Historic Costume, 5th Edition Don’t know exactly how a recalculating of a long-dead dictator’s spouse’s wardrobe has anything to do with this new Pill Wonder track. Maybe I feel “invaded” by this rag-tag bit of [...]

Doe Bay Fest 2010 Featuring Fruit Bats Hey Marseilles THEESatsifaction Grand Hallway and More

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Sunset at Doe Bay Festival 2009 ::: photo by Abbey Simmons It may be five months away, but I’m already ready for Doe Bay Fest 2010. I was ready for it a day after I left Orcas last August, after being treated to one of the most enjoyable and intimate musical experiences of my life. Last [...]

Readers’ Rock List ’80s HipHop Songs

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Last week, in memory of Newcleus’ Chilly B and their hit “Jam On It,” we asked our readers to tell us their favorite 1980s hip-hop tracks. Public Enemy, Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys rightfully dominated the list, but it was Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message” that won the popular vote, beating out “It’s Tricky,” “Brass Monkey” and “The Breaks.”

Plus, check out our special feature on 1988: Hip-Hop’s Greatest Year: Fifteen Albums That Made Rap Explode

1. Grandmaster Flash- “The Message”
2. Afrika Bambaataa – “Planet Rock”
3. Public Enemy – “Fight the Power”
4. Run-DMC – “It’s Tricky”
5. Beastie Boys – “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)”
6. Public Enemy – “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”
7. Run-DMC – “Walk This Way”
8. Run-DMC – “King of Rock”
9. Kurtis Blow – “The Breaks”
10. LL Cool J – “I’m Bad”
11. Beastie Boys – “Brass Monkey”
12. Beastie Boys – “No Sleep Till Brooklyn”
13. Slick Rick- “Hey Young World”
14. De La Soul – “Me Myself and I”
15. Public Enemy – “Rebel Without A Pause”

OK Go Slap a Tetherball for “This Too Shall Pass” Behind the Clip

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

OK Go’s insanely complex video for Of the Blue Colour of the Sky single “This Too Shall Pass” will finally make its (embeddable!) premiere tonight at 7 pm EST, but before the band reveals their latest viral achievement, Rolling Stone has another behind-the-scenes clip from the video’s construction site in a Los Angeles warehouse.

As Rolling Stone previously reported, for their second “This Too Shall Pass” clip, OK Go and the geniuses over at Syyn Labs and MIT’s Media Lab created a two-story-tall Rube Goldberg-esque structure. Picture that old board game Mouse Trap and multiply it by several thousand. In our short exclusive clip, we present a blooper from the contraption’s test run, with a tetherball somehow figuring in to the grand scheme.

Given the amount of time and effort OK Go put into the video, it should come as no surprise that frontman Damian Kulash was adamant that his label EMI disregard their own “No Embedding” policy so that “This Too Shall Pass” can be distributed freely throughout the Internet, much like the band’s star-making treadmill vid for “Here It Goes Again” in 2006. Kulash successfully pleaded his case, both in the band’s blog and in the New York Times. Be sure to check back here later tonight to catch OK Go’s new viral video, and until then, enjoy the blooper above and OK Go’s making-of video here.

Slash’s 1979 Love Letter to “My Michelle” Hits the Web

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Photo: Hogan/Getty
A recently unearthed love letter written by a then-14-year-old Slash in 1979 proves that before the guitarist was providing riffs for Guns n’ Roses and Velvet Revolver, he was a kid writing cheesy compliments and doodling pot leafs on looseleaf paper to impress girls. The blog Letters of Note, via Hard Rock Memorabilia, posted Slash’s handwritten missive to Michelle Young last week, giving us a glimpse of Saul Hudson’s teenage mind — he writes about how he regrets that his love of the guitar ruined his relationship with Young, who would later be the inspiration behind the Appetite For Destruction track “My Michelle.”

In the letter, Slash ruminates on his weekend, telling Young that he went to the Los Angeles venue Starwood and “spent pretty much of my weekend on cloud 9 if you know what I mean.” (Translation: He was stoned) “To get off the subject, you look really nice today, you get prettier & prettier every day,” the young Casanova writes, adding, “The girls are pretty (I still think you cuter than any of the girls there).” Later, Slash brags about going to see an up-and-coming band called Quiet Riot the next weekend and predicts, “One of these days I’ll play [Starwood].” While he never ended up playing the Starwood — it closed up shop just two years later — he ended up more than exceeding his own 14-year-old expectations.

Iggy Pop Brings Punk Carnage to Carnegie Hall at Tibet Benefit

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Photo: Tracy Ketcher
About 30 seconds into his opener “The Passenger” at New York’s Carnegie Hall Friday night, Iggy Pop declared, “Aw, fuck this shirt,” tore off his black V-neck sweater and tossed it stage right to a waiting Patti Smith, who caught it and giddily hopped up and down while swinging like she’d just caught a wedding bouquet.

It was a rare moment even for the Tibet House Benefit Concert, an annual event that raises money to preserve the country’s threatened culture. The benefit, now in its 20th year, has hosted unlikely collaborations like Moby and David Bowie performing “Heroes” in 2003 and Ray Davies and Debbie Harry trading verses on “Lola” in 2007. This year marked the 60th anniversary of the 1950 Chinese invasion of Tibet, and the show kicked off with several Tibetan monks performing a haunting chant in front of a large painting of the region’s sprawling Potala Palace.

The setup was sparse: most performers shared the same drums and amps, and the Patti Smith Group acted as house band. Early in the night, composer Phillip Glass introduced Irish singer Pierce Turner, who sat at the grand piano and performed the soaring, Bowie-reminiscent “Yogi with a Broken Heart.” Regina Spektor later played an apocalyptic set including the bone-chilling “Laughing,” which featured gloomy strings. The 30-year-old Bronx singer joked about finally making it to the legendary hall. “I’ve always wanted to play Carnegie Hall,” she said. “And now I have lipstick on my nose.”

Gogol Bordello followed with an acoustic set of revved-up Eastern European punk. Soon, Smith was onstage, looking like a road-tested gypsy. In a baggy white shirt, black vest and work boots, she kicked off with a joyous sing-along of the O’Jays classic “Love Train,” and proclaimed, “Come on everybody! Join hands!” Between songs, someone shouted “Happy birthday.” Smith, who turned 63 more than two months ago, replied, “As the Mad Hatter would say, it’s my un-birthday.”

Smith closed with the epically building “Gloria,” busting out spastic dance moves as the crowd belted the chorus. Afterward, Smith thanked all of the veterans of the cause, then she introduced Pop as “One of our sacred veterans, soon to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”

Pop’s three-song set will likely go down in Carnegie Hall history. During “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” he completely defiled the place. He strutted across the stage in tight black jeans, ass crack fully visible, and then dove into the crowd (nobody caught him). As the song later descended into chaos, he smashed his mike stand into the iconic, wood-floored stage repeatedly, trying to make a dent. He gave up and hurled the stand at the grand piano.

Five decades of Raw Power: Iggy Pop and the Stooges in photos.

At the afterparty, Spektor admitted, “I never thought I’d really get to play. I’m used to listening to things from the nosebleed seats. Just being there on that stage is a mind trip.” Smith’s guitarist Lenny Kaye was still glowing from the special night. “I got to play ‘I Wanna be Your Dog’ with Iggy!” he said. “I’ve been waiting 40 years to play that.” Later, Bordello’s Eugene Hutz added, “It was an atom-smashing experience.”

Carly Simon Refutes Theory That “So Vain” Target Is David Geffen

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Photo: Kohen/WireImage

Last week it seemed like the nearly four-decade-old mystery surrounding Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” was finally solved after the always-reliable (cough) U.K. press speculated that record exec David Geffen was the subject of Simon’s 1972 hit. As Rolling Stone wrote last week, Simon had previously promised that in a newly recorded version of “You’re So Vain,” the name of vain man in question would be revealed when the song was played backwards. The reverse lyric sounded simply like “David,” fueling rumors that Geffen, who allegedly favored Simon’s musical rival Joni Mitchell, was the focus of her hit. However, Simon tells Showbiz 411 that Geffen is not the “David” in question.

“What a riot! Nothing to do with David Geffen! What a funny mistake! Someone got a clue mistaken for another mistake,” Simon said in an e-mail to Showbiz 411. “How can this guessing game stop without a lie?” Simon adds that she never even knew Geffen in 1971 when the song was written, which if Simon has her timeline correct, means “You’re So Vain” was penned prior to when Simon’s label Elektra Records merged with Geffen’s Asylum Records in 1972, the date Geffen assumed control of the combined companies.

The new version of “You’re So Vain” is due on Simon’s upcoming disc Never Been Gone. As Rolling Stone reported last year, Simon sued Starbucks following the tepid release of her last album, This Kind of Love, blaming the company for not providing the promised amount of album promotion due to the fact that Starbucks severed ties with Hear Music around the same time her album was released.

Five amazing things about Nina Perssons latest song

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

1) It'll make you go a bit watery in the eye "department".
2) It sounds a bit like the Human League.
3) The end leaves you wanting more, then the song actually re-appears and gives you 50 seconds more AS IF IT KNEW WHAT YOU WERE THINKING.
4) Trumpet solo.
5) It's a duet, but it's not with the Manic Street Preachers.

Called The Blues, it is a collaboration with Primary 1, aka Joe Flory, a "film graduate and computer kid who writes, performs and sings feelgood synthfunk", according to The Guardian.

You can listen to / download it below. Scrummy.

Primary 1 and Nina Persson - The Blues [Right click and select "Save link as"]

Mini review Marina and the Diaaaahtishooo!

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Dear old Marina is poorly sick. "I'm ill, everyone, i'm ill, pity me, make a fuss, pity me," she writes on Twitter just hours before she took to the stage in London's Bush Hall.

She certainly seems a little under the weather (unless sneezing into microphones and generally looking a bit peaky is all part of her act). But if there is a frog near her throat, he's been given his hopping orders.

From the opening - a larger-than-life Girls, performed in what can only be described as a Pikachu Slanket - Marina is in fine voice, belting out her kooky pop confessionals like a true Welshwoman. With her album out this week, a lot of reviewers have focused on the singer's vocal tics, falling evenly on either side of the genius / irritant divide. But the whoops, animal calls and hollers are all just window dressing. Tonight, the fragility with which she sings "you're vulnerable, so vulnerable" on I Am Not A Robot, proves what an emotive, genuine singer Marina can be.

As the concert draws on, however, the star begins to look precariously wobbly. When she is highlighted with red spotlights during Rootless, it is presumably meant to convey drama and passion, but instead resembles a particularly frightening Vicks vaporub advert.

Then, a medical miracle occurs. The shaggy backing band (dubbed the 'rough diamonds' by one especially unkind acquiantance) kicks into "the one the audience knows", ie Hollywood, and Marina is carried away on a wave of positive energy. The adrenaline boost lasts all the way to the end of the show, when a prowling, predatory Mowgli's Road bursts right through the doors and into the shadowy night.

Properly amazing. Even with the snuffles.

SETLIST
Girls
Seventeen
The Outsider
I Am Not A Robot
Oh No!
Numb
Obsessions
Rootless
Hollywood
Shampain

Encore
Mowgli's Road

Photos from Manchester Deaf Institute gig on 21st February, via Astrocreep and Ricky Orr on Flickr.

Ellie Goulding in the Live Lounge

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Ellie Goulding looks set for a top 10 SMASH with her debut-single-that's-not-her-first-single-but-is-her-debut-despite-those-two-words-being-synonyms-and-what-a-perfect-illustration-of-the-mess-the-music-industry-has-gotten-itself-into-that-is, Starry Eyed.

To ease its passage into the charts, Ellie turned up on Radio One this morning with a beautifully breathy version of the song. She also re-interpreted Temper Trap's Sweet Disposition as a drippy acoustic ballad. Best to give that one a miss, though.

Radio One have proudly uploaded some photographs of the session to their website, along with the declaration "audio coming soon". It's been four hours, though. What are they up to? Probably making one of those jingles where someone shouts "Ray-dee-oh ONE" into a dustbin, then they chop it up and play each syllable in a different speaker with a whooshy sound effect and a bit of Hadouken.

In the meantime, here's a 30-second snippet of Starry Eyed.

3 2 1 We have Blaskoff!

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Aussie warbler Sarah Blasko launched her bid for UK stardom last night, playing a short, 40-minute set in London's wintry Soho. After last week's Gagavaganza, this was a simple, stripped back affair, with seven musicians elbow-to-elbow on a tiny stage - but it was no less impressive.

Blasko is a big deal back at home. She was recently named Best Female at both the ARIAs and the Rolling Stone awards, and she's been hand-picked by Temper Trap to support their upcoming UK tour. Now, she has moved to East Dulwich as she attempts to get a foothold in Europe.

The 33-year-old singer-songwriter has an intoxicating, husky voice. Quite rightly, she doesn't embelish it with studio trickery on her album, so you're immediately struck by how pure it sounds in concert, as she flits between doe-eyed vulnerability and that trilling, outer-space operatic thing Alison Goldfrapp used to do in the early days.

For a performer with nearly 15 years' experience Blasko seems unnecessarily shy, but she remains fascinating to watch - making intense, angular movements that bring to mind a Raggedy Ann doll impersonating David Byrne (the song Over And Over even lifts a few lines from Road To Nowhere for its coda).

The set is entirely comprised of tracks from her third album, As Day Follows Night, which is released over here in April. Produced by Bjorn Yttling of "Young Folks" fame, it is a crisp collection of folk-pop, full of dainty piano riffs, brushed snares, and understated strings. The arrangements may be easy to replicate on stage, but not with this amount of soul and verve.

Arbitrary verdict: 8/10

Sarah Blasko - No Turning Back (live)

Vaguley interesting Janet thing

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Apparently this isn't a single, or a buzz track, or an official leak, or an unofficial leak, or a leak and potato soup, or a leaky tap, or a tap-dancing leek, or a leaked wiretap, or [that's quite enough of that - ed].

Janet's people say it is "just for fun". In fact, it's barely a song at all.

Janet ft Pitbull - HeartBeatLove

You can download it from producer Rodney Jerkins' website, if you're interested.

Vampire Weekend celebrity cameos = blog post

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Vampire Weekend have somehow roped in Rza, Jake Gyllenhaal, Joe Jonas and Lil Jon for their new video. It may be a cynical ploy to make the promo go "viral" in the "blogosphere" - but I love a party with a happy blogosphere*.

You can just hear the pitch: "They'll come for Jake Gyllenhaal's tight, tight shorts, but they'll stay for the music". They may or may not have finished this sentence by drawling the word "dude" and taking a long slow drag on a 'special' cigaratte.

Vampire Weekend - Giving Up The Gun

PS: I really, really like the Vampire Weekend album. Does that make me square?

Whodafunk?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

That's right, Prince, punch your tiny purple fist in the sky, because you have done the unthinkable and recorded something distinctly "not rubbish" for the general consumption of the public.

Now, as with anything post Diamonds and Pearls, this is not an entirely successful endeavour. So, to help you decide whether or not to click on the play button, here is a list of the good bits and bad bits.

Pros	Cons
Opening line: "If I had the chance to do it all again, I wouldn't change a thing except my next of kin	Fake crowd sound effects do not convey authenticity
Glorious gospel harmonies in the middle eight	It's all a bit Lenny Kravitz
Fret-busting guitar solo	'Heavy' rock breakdown has featured on every Prince record since The Rainbow Children
Second fret-busting guitar solo	The line: "I am what I am because & effect" (a) means nothing and (b) sounds like Popeye
This line: "If I could leave myself just one little note, I'd say you need to be a superstar or grow up, but not both"	It's not Little Red Corvette

The song premiered on Minnesota Public Radio over the weekend. Their embedded player thingy is below - but if that doesn't work, visit their blog instead.

Thanks to Suzy for the tip-off!

Calling all gypsies!

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Shakira is disrespecting you and your heritage. Are you going to stand for it?

Shakira - Gypsy

PS: If you think I couldn't work out what to say about this song, you are right.

PPS: OMG Rafael Nadal iz buff n they does kissin at the end LOL (etc)

This is driving me mad

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

We Have Band's new single, Divisive, is excellent - but the melody for the verse ("Is it working for you / 'cos it's working for me / let's count to three / no, it's hard to disguise") is definitely ripped off of some 1980s pop tune. At first, I thought it was the Thompson Twins; then I thought it was Nik Kershaw; then I thought it was Fun Boy Three. Now I'm just confuzled.

Can anyone out there help?

We Have Band - Divisive

A great video for fans of programming drum machines, there.

Jordie Lane � Sleeping Patterns 2009

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Jordie Lane’s music is one of the best kept secrets out there. Lane’s 2009 debut album, Sleeping Patterns, literally makes me want to go door to door and spread the goodness. His music and songwriting is beautiful and refreshing in every sense of the word. Sleeping Patterns is a must hear for any music fan (especially recommended for fans of Wilco, Bob Dylan, and Johnny Cash).

One thing I love about the album is its diversity. Lane has a gift for connecting genres in a way that expands what I imagine is most listeners’ comfort zones. His album is influenced by folk, bluegrass, country, and other genres. While his folk songs “I Could Die For You,” “The Day I Leave This Town,” and “War Rages On” are gems and most like the music I typically listen to, tracks such as “Fell Into Me” “Walking that Way,” and “John W. Thistle” are throwbacks to the 60s (“There Once Was Life to Come” is fantastic and brings Johnny Cash to mind). Lane’s music is extremely cultured and is a great homage to all the musicians who have helped us get where we are today in music.

It blows my mind that Jordie is only 25 years old, and wrote most of Sleeping Patterns when he was 21. He is based out of Melbourne, Australia, and makes up one half of the duo Fireside Bellows, alongside Canadian songwriter, Tracy McNeil. He’s shared the stage with Neko Case and Cat Power, and it’s only a matter of time before his music spreads far and wide.

Sleeping Patterns (2009):

(mp3) Jordie Lane – I Could Die Looking At You

(mp3) Jordie Lane – Walking That Way

Myspace | Buy

Click here to view the embedded video.

Help fund Kickstarter project Sound Through Sight!

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

There’s a really cool new site called Kickstarter that allows people working on independent projects to raise funding through friends, family, and awesome folks around the internet. And better yet, funders usually get some really neat swag in return (i.e. an artist trying to raise money to record an album, will often times send it to a supporter for free). You are bound to find amazing people on this site–and given they are seeking help from the community, it’s fair to say most of them are extremely modest, unlike some of their industry “(insert mean word)” counterparts.

One project that gets a big IndieMuse stamp of approval is called Sound Through Sight: A Gonzo Road Trip to Understand Music In 2010. It’s started by Tom Williams (writer), Sarah Mulligan (photographer), and Rahawa Haile (filmaker).

Here’s a small blurb from their Kickstarter page explaining the project:

Picture Chuck Klosterman and Alexis de Tocquevillie joining Hunter S. Thompson, going not on a drug-fueled rampage across Las Vegas but on a trip of discovery across America, seeking to understand where music and the music industry stands in 2010, how we got here, and where we’re going. We are three passionate young music lovers who intend to do just that. To understand these questions and to look for answers, we are going on a Gonzo road trip, searching for insights and answers on the back roads of America. We will then write a book on the trip which attempts to answers those questions we just posed. We will also create a book of photography from our travels across North America and a short documentary about the music we encounter on this trip.

The money we are seeking to raise here will go towards printing the first edition of the book, as well as the gas, food, and other minor travel expenses we’ll need to complete this trip. (more)

If you have a few extra dollars in your pocket, you should consider helping out! A $15 donation will even score you a free copy of the book once it’s published!

Song of the day: Avi Buffalo – Where’s Your Dirty Mind

The week god struck me blind

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

/p>

The initial disappointment from which Nozs career never recovered

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I was published in XXL once. Or possibly twice. Who knows. It didn't turn out well, but I wouldn't describe it as a great disappointment, since I wasn't that interested in the first place. Don't get me wrong. If I thought you could make a lot of money doing it, I would want to do it more than I want to do Katy Perry. But you can't. Still, failing in public like that was bad for my "brand." That's $300 I would gladly give back, if I could afford to.

From Noz's Formspring:

I think I mentioned this on here already or maybe somewhere else on the web but the first writing I ever received pay for was never actually published. It was a review of Jeezy's "Trap Or Die" tape for XXL Having no vision or taste, I panned it. They ended up scrapping the review, probably because Jeezy was getting hot but also possibly because it was so poorly written (iirc) and I was paid a kill fee. A kill fee is when a magazine pays you a small fraction of their usual fee for work that was assigned but left on the cutting room floor. This is not an entirely uncommon practice in the publishing world, these things happen. But as a first time writer it was immensely disappointing. I've still never been published in that magazine and doubt I ever will be. I like "Trap Or Die" now, it took me about a year to come around to Jeezy mania, but I can't listen to it without thinking of that review.

Noz @ Formspring

Noz's new Tumblr

Counter Strike The Unkut Dot Com Mixtape

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I was allowed to listen to the Unkut.com sixth anniversary mixtape a day early, as a reward for throwing upwards of 10 years of my life away on the Internets, and I'm happy to report that it's some real retrograde shit. There isn't anyone on it that I'd invite over to my house in a shanty town without first hiding my iPod Touch.

I'd expect nothing less from Robbie, who must know way more rappers from Queens than people who actually live in Queens, even if they work for social services.

Ironlak Presents: Counter Strike – The Unkut Dot Com Mixtape [Unkut]

More Latarian Milton on Comedy Central

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

The Frost/Nixon-style extended interview. (via)

FACT Women prefer men to be portly and unkempt

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

That's not how I got that way, but that's why I'm not sweating doing anything about it.

Most women claim to be attracted to tall, dark and handsome men, but a new study has revealed that facial stubble and a geeky personality are their biggest secret turn-ons.

[...]

The poll of 2,500 women also revealed that 91 per cent would actually prefer a guy who had a few flaws over someone who is perfect.

And more than half would rather a guy who was soft and cuddly instead of toned and muscly.

Almost two thirds would prefer to be with a naturally hairy man, while 56 per cent like a guy with a little bit of stubble over someone who is clean shaven or has a full beard.

The perfect man is a geek with facial stubble... women's secret turn-ons revealed [Mail Online]

Long Duk Dong was Pan Asian before it was all trendy

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

From a story in this month's Vanity Fair on John Hughes:

Sixteen Candles was not without its broad, farcical crudities and nods to Hughes’s baser Lampoon-ish instincts: a gratuitous boob scene, a bunch of characters presented as tissue-thin grotesques (Samantha’s four querulous grandparents, her sister’s mafiosi future in-laws), and the vaudevillian-throwback character Long Duk Dong, who was putatively a Chinese exchange student but was played by a Japanese-American actor (Gedde Watanabe), assigned a line of Japanese dialogue (“Banzai!”), and given a vaguely Vietnamese, vaguely phallic name that, every time it was uttered, was accompanied by the sounding of (oh, dear) a gong.

Honestly though, insisting there's such a significant difference between different kinds of Asian people seems to me like harping on the difference between black people from St. Louis and Chicago - though black people from Chicago do seem remarkably more bamma, despite the fact that it's much further North geographically. I'm not saying they're the same thing. I'm just saying.

Sweet Bard of Youth [Vanity Fair]

And after the jump is an hilarious clip from some long lost Jay Leno movie.

Dont bring home a realistic outlook

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

My main problem with these articles about how lonely black women should start marrying white men is that it's like me trying to argue that since my late '90s-era Honda Odyssey drives like the school bus they use for retarded kids, I should trade it in for a BMW. How realistic is that, really?

The latest example of such an article is from today's Washington Post. It's about a woman who wrote a book based on an article that she wrote for the Washington Post that people threw a bitchfit about two years ago. My bad, if that doesn't make any sense. It just goes to show how far black women have managed to crawl up their own collective asshole.

Selected highlights, for your reading pleasure:

Here's the part where only black men who have graduated from college are deemed worthy of marriage, of course without any mention of the many college-educated black men who shudder at the thought of marrying a black women, or black men who haven't graduated from college who might still be worth a shit.

Single black women with college degrees outnumber single black men with college degrees almost 3 to 1 in major urban areas such as Washington, according to a 2008 population survey by the U.S. Census Bureau. Given those numbers, any economist would advise them to start looking elsewhere.

It's Econ 101 for the single, educated black woman.

"Black women are in market failure," says writer Karyn Langhorne Folan. "The solution is to find a new market for your commodity. And in this case, we are the commodity and the new market is men of other races."

Here's the part where an old person discovers baiting people on the Internets, for fun and profit.

Folan says she was prompted to write the book two years ago after an opinion piece on interracial marriage she wrote for The Washington Post generated an overwhelming response. "Obviously, it touched a nerve," she says. "The writer in me said, 'There is a book in this.' "

Here's the part where it's more or less revealed that the reason she couldn't find a black man is because she was looking for a man she could treat like shit.

She asked friends if they knew someone but realized "most of my black girlfriends [and white ones] were single and looking, too." Then she tried the Internet and went on a couple of dates. The first was a black man "with the biggest ego since Napoleon." Her second date was with a man who dreamed of being "the next Sean Combs, but . . . I wasn't impressed with his chances."

And here's the part where Foghorn Leghorn, or whatever her name is, talks about how she did her husband a favor by marrying him despite his skin, even though he isn't given equal time to discuss what's wrong with her body - which I'm pretty sure is illegal, according to the Constitution.

They decided to meet. He drove across town to pick her up for an old-fashioned date. When she opened the door, she was disappointed. "Kevin was well-built but had that fair, reddening skin that just never appealed to me. I have been attracted to white men before, but they always had a little color to them: swarthy Italians and Greeks, or guys who worked outdoors and had tanned faces. By comparison, Kevin was so white."

Single black women being urged to date outside race [Washington Post]

Latarian Milton on Comedy Central

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Corporate co-opting of Internets culture FTW!

Quoted Wacka Flocka on the futility of having standards

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Maybe the guy who shot Wacka Flocka was just an angry backpacker:

"I don't got no lyrics," Flocka told Whoo Kid and the DJ's special guest co-hosts, the staff of XXL magazine.

"The n---as who they say is lyrical, they ain't got no shows ... that ain't finnin' to get you no money."

[...]

"They twist that around ... I just said personally, me, I'm not into being lyrical," Waka explained. "I read all the time. I know words. I'm just trying to get crunk. I'm not trying to be off the dome, do a million words in five minutes — I'm not into that."

[...]

"I'm not going lyrical, hard in the studio," Waka insisted, hinting he may take a slightly different approach when he releases songs that are not just for the streets. "It ain't time for me to do that. This ain't no album, this is my mixtapes. Why I gotta go spend 30 hours [writing rhymes] off of a mixtape?"

Waka Flocka Flame: 'I'm Not Into Being Lyrical' [MTV]

Response from Method Man after the jump.

World Star steps its game up big time

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Oh fuck.

Win Tickets To See We Are The Fallen

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

We Are The Fallen, the Evanescence offshoot band, will make their worldwide live debut at Kings College in London on March 23. We’ve got three pairs of tickets to give away for the show – plus a bonus prize of a meet and greet for the main winner! (more…)

Rolling Stones Go Back Into Exile

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

The Rolling Stones will reissue their celebrated Exile On Main Street album on May 17 – and it will have no less than 10 previously unreleased songs. (more…)

Punk Goes All Classic Rock

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

It seems that punk bands can’t get enough of classic rock – which is why Fearless Records are about to release an album Punk Goes… Classic Rock. (more…)

Pickle Beats Nickelback In Popularity Contest

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

It’s the battle of the titans: Nickelback versus Pickleback. And guess what? The cucumber-shaped pickle is winning! Come inside to find out what the hell we’re talking about… (more…)

RSS Daily Music

Phosphorescent � “It’s Hard To Be Humble When You’re From Alabama”

Tibet House Benefit Feat Iggy Pop Patti Smith Philip Glass @ Carnegie Hall NYC 2/26/10

Titus Andronicus � “A More Perfect Union”

Stream Gorillaz Plastic Beach

Born Ruffians � “Sole Brother”

The Delta Mirror � “Blind” TV On The Radio Cover Stereogum Premiere

Two Door Cinema Club � “Undercover Martyn Passion Pit Remix”

Neon Indian � “Mind Drips” Summer Dregs Remix

Surfer Blood/the morning benders/Beach Fossils/Grooms/Turbo Fruits @ Market Hotel Brooklyn 2/27/10

Watch SNL’s Smash Mouth Sketch “We Are The World 25″ Parody

Comeback vs Blow Pony

Riot Grrrl Where Are You Now? Kaia Wilson Ping Pong Champ

And Today In Shitty Teen Christian Band News

RIP Chilly B

Add Free the Robots Ctrl Alt Delete to Your Want List

Which Go! Is The Best?

My Goodtimes Talk

Tonight in Music Medeski Martin Wood Arbitron Brutal Truth Harlem and More

The Fall of Troy 20022010

Tonights Important Things of Must Be Doing!

[a]pendicsshufffle Rex Sepulveda @ Electric Tea Garden Feb 27

Any Thoughts on the Name of That Other Thom Yorke Band?

The Score supplemental

The Sight Below at SAM Remix Tonight

Medeski Martin Wood Are One of the Greatest Live Bands Ever

Win Tickets to CMYK at the Croc

Todays Music News

Smoke Fairies Living With Ghosts

Also Tonight Lynn Sheltons $5 Cover Seattle Premiere

HealthFood Rap Strong Arm Steadys Chitlins Pepsi

Tonight in Music Against Me! and More

ExGang Starr MC Guru in a Coma After Heart Attack

Show Review Helios Covert Snohomish House Show

Todays the Last Day to Vote for AllAges Movement Project

Tonight in Music Free Energy Angelo Spencer Eel Eater Fatal Lucciauno and More

“Flirted With You All My Life” Vic Chesnutt The Song I Always Needed and a Tribute Show To It All Tonight

Noah Gundersen comes to Chop Suey Win Tickets

Support All Ages Music with MAGMA Fest and Hollow Earth Radio

Fanfarlo with April Smith and the Great Picture Show at the Crocodile

I Was a Photograph

The Daily Choice Sweet sweet laughter

Dita Vox $5 Cover Poster Child

Jennifer Lopez Plays Rihanna as “SNL” Mocks “We Are the World”

Sara Bareilles Turns Panic Into Rebirth on Uptempo Summer Disc

Behind Animal Collective’s Film “Oddsac” Fire Cults and Glitter

John Mayer Chooses Rock Over Drama at Madison Square Garden

Dave Bazan “Flirted With You All My Life” from Last Night’s Vic Chesnutt Tribute

The Daily Choice Pill Wonder Gone To The Market

Doe Bay Fest 2010 Featuring Fruit Bats Hey Marseilles THEESatsifaction Grand Hallway and More

Top Stories March 1 2010

Readers’ Rock List ’80s HipHop Songs

OK Go Slap a Tetherball for “This Too Shall Pass” Behind the Clip

Slash’s 1979 Love Letter to “My Michelle” Hits the Web

Iggy Pop Brings Punk Carnage to Carnegie Hall at Tibet Benefit

Carly Simon Refutes Theory That “So Vain” Target Is David Geffen

Five amazing things about Nina Perssons latest song

Mini review Marina and the Diaaaahtishooo!

Ellie Goulding in the Live Lounge

3 2 1 We have Blaskoff!

Vaguley interesting Janet thing

Vampire Weekend celebrity cameos = blog post

Whodafunk?

Calling all gypsies!

This is driving me mad

Jordie Lane � Sleeping Patterns 2009

Help fund Kickstarter project Sound Through Sight!

The week god struck me blind

The initial disappointment from which Nozs career never recovered

Counter Strike The Unkut Dot Com Mixtape

More Latarian Milton on Comedy Central

FACT Women prefer men to be portly and unkempt

Long Duk Dong was Pan Asian before it was all trendy

Dont bring home a realistic outlook

Latarian Milton on Comedy Central

Quoted Wacka Flocka on the futility of having standards

World Star steps its game up big time

Win Tickets To See We Are The Fallen

Rolling Stones Go Back Into Exile

Punk Goes All Classic Rock