… there was no choice. I was totally broke. So I didn’t have time to sit around pondering or thinking all this through. It was just done on a basic pure survival level. I did what I had to do.
Van Morrison on ‘Astral Weeks’ — you’ve got to hear it from him.
Cool map that shows you what’s playing on radio stations around the country. Via WFMU’s blog. If someone could just do this with thoughts, we’d be living in Wim Wenders Wings of Desire.
Pat's District provides automatically compiling listings for clubs in Arlington, Va.; Alexandria, Va.; and Washington, D.C., among others. Wonderful. RSS?
Check out Radio Scratch, a podcast of Lee "Scratch" Perry's tunes. Great stuff. (Again cribbed from Some Velvet Blog.)
Studio Tricks. This one's fun. Okay, let's start with the guitar solo from "I'm Only Sleeping." It's obviously been reversed, but that's not the whole story. George actually played the actual solo backwards, and then they flipped the tape for the master, making it a forward sounding lead break, but with just enough backwards sound to fit perfectly in one of John's droniest songs.
Wonderful post listing great Beatles moments. The best part is that I can think of so many more. What a band.
The lyrics to the classic "Ca Plane Pour Moi," translated into English.
Sitting at home with the window open, listening to the tree branches brush against each other outside and the occasional horn-honks of Flatbush Ave, bark of dog and squeal of child... this uncomposed ambience is my creativity engine lately.
From a comment on Click opera - Ubiquity is the abyss.
Bill Anderson created a bowling alley in the basement when their daughter was growing up. Eventually, his daughter developed enough skill to amass several trophies in the sport which will be on display.
Rick [Smith] came up with a rhythm and I started singing over it. The vocals were done in one take. When I lost my place, I'd repeat the same line; that's why it goes, "lager, lager, lager, lager".
Guardian Unlimited: We asked 12 artists how they created one of their classic tracks.
The Huffington Post's Contagious Media Festival launched today, and my early favorite is Awwwwstrich. It's only thirty seconds and well worth your time. In fact, I would wager that if you watch it twenty times it's a good use of ten minutes.
A film review in Weekend on Friday about "Le Pont des Arts" misspelled a word in the title of a Monteverdi madrigal that a character sings on a recording. It is "Lamento della ninfa," not "ninja."
UbuWeb Ethnopoetics: Ketjak -- The Ramayana Monkey Dance
Performed by more than 200 men seated in tight concentric circles around a small central space reserved for the chief protagonists, the ketjak (loosely called "Monkey Chant") was first recorded in Bali by David Lewiston and released by Nonesuch Records in 1969. As a spectacular and alternative performance mode, it has had a germinal influence on western performance and poetics since then.
"It was important for me to be an 'at-home' mom," she explains. "I kept the kids close by; they came with me to record and I home-schooled them up until recently. I was very close to my parents; I always wanted to have my children close to me. It's difficult now that they're going to be with a nanny on this tour."
When we saw the blossoming of the Internet, we thought, what if we could use this as a device for opening up the archives? People who don't usually have a voice can have a voice in a democratic, central way.
In June the Smithsonian Folkways label will launch Smithsonian Global Sound, reports The Washington Post, where it will sell songs from its huge collection of folk and international music for a dollar a pop. (Seems to be operational already.)
"Lest We Forget" was originally compiled and released by Aaron Elliot of the acclaimed fanzine Cometbus (and drummer for Crimpshrine and Pinhead Gunpowder) in 1991 to document the Berkeley punk scene of the 80's. I don't want to be accused of wild exaggeration by saying the music here is exactly essential (although there's some great stuff here) but it is absolutely essential to appreciate the why, who, and how of what was being created at the time. Their output has had a significant impact on today's music. You can connect the influential dots from this tape to Maximum Rock'n'Roll to Operation Ivy to Green Day to whatever indie/punk act you're listening to right now.
. . . [T]hough Thompson has been cagey about a new Pixies CD the past few months, on the phone from Chicago he is unequivocal: "We are talking three college funds! There is going to be another Pixies album. I'm going to have to find the songs somewhere. I guess I'll have to write them."
This article nearly made me feel guilty about seeing this moneygrubber and his associates. But I'll sure as hell be there Tuesday.
At a truck stop outside of Boise, Lenny (our soundman) incorrectly identified a poisonous mushroom as the mildly psychedelic Liberty Cap. The entire road crew and half of The Whitespots (our opening band) are in the hospital tonight having their stomachs pumped. The only person left to run our sound was Les, and he kept turning us down (or even off) so he could talk to the waitresses.
63 Days on the Road: A Band's Own Story by Camper Van Beethoven's David Lowery.
Segal is a fine writer with a distinct voice, but his coverage of the music beat was prickly at best, snarky at worst. Rather than inviting readers into the music world, he kept his distance and covered it from afar.
Asked to suggest a good example of his work, Segal sent a first-person story about his live appearance on stage playing guitar with his favorite group, Guided by Voices, in Philadelphia. It was about Segal, not the music.
The Washingtonian's Harry Jaffe on the Washington Post's Big Apple envy and its crummy-ass music coverage. Pop music critic David Segal leaves the beat soon for New York and I can only hope the Post hires someone who takes music more seriously, a la the excellent writers and critics at the New York Times. Segal covers pop music as if it were little more than a fashionable freak show -- which it may be at times, but it deserves far better than his snide, above-it-all jibing. Good riddance, moron.
The iPod "knows somehow when I am reaching the end of my reserves, when my motivation is flagging," Mr. Greist insisted. "It hits me up with 'In Da Club,' and then all of a sudden I am in da club."
You're not alone if you believe your iPod has its own musical taste and inflicts it upon you, as if by an occult hand, through the Shuffle function. I'm convinced mine is fond of Modest Mouse, the Magnetic Fields, the Rolling Stones and Prefuse 73.
UPDATE: I just noticed this quote:
This logical explanation doesn't always jibe with users' experiences. Dan Cedarholm, a Web designer in Salem, Mass., insists that his iPod has a predilection for the indie punk band Fugazi. Even though he only has two of the band's albums stored on his "vintage" 5-gigabyte device, the band seems to dominate his iPod to a degree wildly disproportionate to the amount of space it occupies on his player's memory, he said.
Compare with this.
Steve Lacy, who hipped John Coltrane to the soprano sax and fused the music of Thelonious Monk with Dixieland, passed away Friday. He recently cut an album with trumpeter Dave Douglas that I'd like to pick up. I just learned about him a few weeks ago and I'm shocked to learn that he's already gone.
None of the images that the critics invoked to describe his playing -- volcano, thunderstorm, perpetual-motion machine -- quite did justice to the strength of his attack, the complexity of his ideas or the originality of his approach.
R.I.P. Elvin Jones, the great drummer known for his kinetic work with John Coltrane. He died yesterday, 76 years old.
Fans of Ween's "Where'd the Cheese Go?" should know that the band has released Live By Request, an album that includes a six-minute version of "WTCG?"
Singer-songerwriter Nellie McKay, who is 19, was on NPR's Morning Edition today. Original.
I've learned recently that some folks in the hip-hop community respect what I'm doing, and it's such a thrill. [One hip-hop guy's compliment] is like five pop guys telling you that your music's doing it for them. I like being myself and kinda sticking to that. Maybe that's kind of the part to be respected. I think also I'm a 'beat' guy. I'm a rhythm guy.
John Mayer plays electric guitar.
originally posted by xowie
Musicians from a few different punk-related genres are exploring therapy rock: the up-and-coming "emo" genre, which features hyperdramatic, almost mawkish rock delving deeply into personal upheaval; rap-metal, an aggressive hybrid that has lately turned more introspective; and pop-punk, a slick version of punk that's deceptively up-tempo and not generally noted for its profundity. But it is bands in the last category — like the hugely popular Good Charlotte, Sum 41 and Blink-182 — whose songs most often amount to vivid case studies in adolescent mental health issues. The group A Simple Plan, who are also receiving heavy play on MTV, might have expressed pop-punk's attitude most directly: "I'm just a kid/ And life is a nightmare."
originally posted by xowie
No. I was still freelancing for Rolling Stone, but I started getting things rejected in like the summer of 1970 when Wenner was going through one of his freakouts. Before that I was so stupid that I thought you should be loyal to Rolling Stone, and only freelance for them. And they were paying like $12 a review! So then I started getting reviews rejected, and I started sending each one to a different magazine. I sent them to Fusion or Creem or whatever, and things with Creem started going really good. I got this letter from Dave Marsh at Creem that said, "Yeah, kid, I've been looking at your stuff for a while. It looks really good" and something to the effect that "you take way too much acid and don't drink half enough whiskey." And I was like, "Alright, man!" And so then the assigned me to review Funhouse by the Stooges and I wrote this endless article that ran in two parts as a record review, and they printed it. And I said, "Alright, I guess this is where I'd better go. This is where I belong."
Here are some free and legal mp3 downloads of songs that John Peel has featured on his Radio 1 show recently. All these tracks have been made made available by the bands or record labels themselves, they don't involve Kazaa or anonymous postings toalt.binaries.sounds or anything like that. The idea is that if you like the track, you'll buy some of their records, which seems pretty sound to me.(Via Alaina)
Mr. Naing said that like jazz musicians, Burmese players "look at one another and listen to the tune and play accordingly."
"And even though they might play the same piece of music, the next time they play it differently," he said.
But does it sound anything like jazz?
"No," Mr. Naing said with a laugh, "it's totally different."
A Burmese orchestra will play in New York tomorrow and Saturday for the first time in almost 30 years. (login: rwalks, pwd: walks) I first heard some of this incredible music in a Burmese restaurant in Northern Virginia and bought this fine disc not long after. It's a good place to start.
What I'm trying to do and I think the people that I work with are trying to do is do the same exact thing that Ellington did in a way, but with our own set of systems of information. We're living in a different time. I think that if Duke Ellington was born now, where he was, let's say, from my generation, the music that he would be writing would be radically different. Charlie Parker would not be playing bebop now. He'd be doing a different kind of music because he would have come out of a different time period and a different social situation and all those other things that effect what you play. In a longwinded way, Fred, it's pretty difficult to describe exactly what I'm trying to do because I'm not sure. I don't think that it's just one thing. I think that it's a diversity of things.
Reedman Ken Vandermark's Free Music Ensemble played last night at the Black Cat in Washington, D.C., with the stamina of marathon runners and enough ferocity for five punk shows. His website features a few cuts.
[...] Chalk it up to early mid-life crisis if you like, but whenever I played piano as a kid I imagined myself actually *in* one of the bands I was pretending to play along with. Although playing alone gave me pleasure, it was at least in part the pleasure of anticipating the day when I'd do this for other people. Chalk it up to the principle of social currency, but it's the connections that matter. Playing a particularly intense organ section last night, I felt the reality of what I've been talking about all these years: the music itself is just a medium for interaction. It's an excuse for a kind of intimacy between the members of the band, and between the band and the audience.
In a sense, it doesn't matter what the music sounds like or what the lyrics say. These are just the agreements we make in order to enter the state of consciousness and connection, together. (That's why we want our rock or hiphop stars to have some sort of integrity or hipness - so we feel safe letting go. We don't want to find out they're sold out or molesting babies.) For some, I'm sure the music we were playing was, no doubt, too dark or loud or perhaps even too gentle for them to take the leap into sharing that space with us. Not every invitation is right for everyone. [...]
David Byrne, interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition.
From vonnegut.com:
Mr. Vonnegut has participated in a project in which one hundred established graphic and fine artists were approached to create the definitive album cover of their favorite recording artist. Mr. Vonnegut chose to create an album cover for Phish, entitled "Hook, Line and Sinker." . . . For a limited time, Mr. Vonnegut is offering a small number of prints of the art he created for this project.
Somehow, that's a match I didn't picture.
"Welcome to GONGCAST, an ongoing broadcast of all forms of gamelan, Indonesian music, and related sounds from around the world."More about gamelan: "Gamelan music, or gamelan, is part of a culture where there is no such thing as art for art, activity set apart from the others. Here, sculpture, music, painting are like a kind of talent of everyone and an embellishment that impregnates with each activity. Music is inseparable from the social organization, from the religion and from the other arts. It is especially close to dance and other performing arts. There is no separation between amateur and professional, classical and new, ritual and entertaining."
We'll be driving along, and all of a sudden, I'll say: ''Did you hear that? That was a funny lyric.'' And he'll say: ''No, I didn't hear that. I was listening to the groove.''
The New York Times Magazine: Doing It Her Way, questions for Edie Brickell.
Zebrahead—all original members intact—are about to release their third album, MFZB (it stands for Motherfucking Zebrahead, they tell us), and it’s their best one yet, which is just unfucking believable, but no less unfucking believable than the fact they’re still on a major label. This band is invincible! I think they’re stalking you!Piss and Vinegar by Alison M. Rosen.
originally posted by xowie
I actually had people developing hardware to work with the Lisa. We knew that the Z8000 chip was coming out which was a 16-bit chip from Zylog. We wanted to be ahead of everybody. I had this guy who made a 16-bit compiler inside of the Apple II which is 8-bit. We got the configuration from Zylog ahead of time. So then it got released, but it got released to the Navy and they didn't have any chips to spare us. We were actually able to complete the job by getting some chips that were rejects. They worked enough for us to finish for development.
Dada represented everything horrible about mainstream music, predicting the laughable self-importance of helium-light R.E.M. ripoffs like Counting Crows, but it turns out there's a song on this record worth about as much as a fish taco: "Dim".
It's stupid, predictable college rock, the sort of easily hummed, whiny four-chord crap you can wake up hung-over and still have stuck in your head, but like those Dave Matthews hits you download because they remind you of high school, you just don't talk about it. If you don't know anyone at the store personally, wedge a dollar copy of Puzzle between the Matador promos your local music director sold back and enjoy this laughably catchy, Friends-esque pop song.
Whoever wrote Pitchfork's Castoffs and Cutouts: the top 50 most common used CDs (an unscientific study) has excellent taste in questionable music.
I hardly ever get asked about music. I do, however, get asked about the 'Addicted to Love' video and my suits on a daily basis.
Having a family is so much work. It would be a shame if it weren't important. I've been a father for 12 years now. This isn't some kind of new thing. It's important [...] Also, if I don't speak about my family and I don't speak about the office, then what the fuck do I speak about? That's all there is. A vast amount of my time is spent in those two worlds. I don't have a separate creative life from my family life. This is just my life. It's all part of the same thing. And somehow all of this seems to work for me.
from an interview in Punk Planet #57
Labor Day 2003 finds unemployment hovering near a nine-year high and people thankful to have work nevertheless feeling anxious because of the jobless recovery.
I was going to start here in making a long post-Labor Day post with stats and links illustrating how we're getting the shaft. But I soon discovered that drublood beat me to it. Instead I've rounded up links for Joe Hill and Phil Ochs.
originally posted by zagg
A synopsis of Space Is the Place, a feature-length Sun Ra film from 1974 scheduled for re-release in October:
After having traveled through space in a yellow spaceship propelled by music, Sun Ra finds a planet he believes could serve as a new home for the black race. Returning to earth he lands in Oakland, California, circa 1972 and has to fight The Overseer, played by Ray Johnson (from 1971's Dirty Harry), a supernatural villain who pimps out the black race. Sun Ra offers those who would follow him into space an "alter-destiny," but the Overseer, the FBI, and NASA--who are after Ra's Black Space Program--ultimately force him to return to space before the destruction of Earth.
An orchestra made up of young Israeli and Arab musicians has played its first concert in an Arab country. The West-Eastern-Divan Orchestra played a programme of Mozart and Beethoven pieces in the Moroccan capital, Rabat. The concert was conducted by the orchestra's co-founder, the Israeli conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim.The 'peace orchestra', under the leadership of Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said, has played its first concert in Morocco. You should be able to listen to their performance at the London proms at the BBC Radio 3 website here until 29 August.
In a world of constant upheaval and continuous transformation, sometimes we look to music as a way of escaping the problems of the world. Fela did the opposite: his music was about immersion in the ebb and flow of the conflicts that described and circumscribed the nation state he inhabited. His home was Nigeria, a place of so many contradictions and fictions that it might as well exist as a story, a fable spun from the fevered imagination of a very strange storyteller. The name "Nigeria" itself is an inheritance from a colonial past bequeathed to the confused and angry people who found themselves confined and defined within its borders after the colonial powers decided what would be the best route to economic balance between Europe and Africa. As a country, Nigeria and most of the Sub-Saharan continent were created on maps drawn on a palindrome of political and economic expedience - all of which did not involve those who were most relevant to the process: the people who actually lived there.Manifesto for "A Different Utopia: Project for a New Kalakuta Republic 2003".
originally posted by xowie
originally posted by xowie
originally posted by xowie
I got an invitation to go to Apple's office for a presentation/meeting today (June 5, 2003) about how to get independent artists into the iTunes Music Store. There were about 150 people there, representatives from the best independent record labels and music services, in this invitation-only conference room. Steve Jobs came out and started a two and a half hour presentation/seminar/Q&A about iTunes and the benefits of independent labels making their music available there. I type fast and had my laptop, so I wrote down all the major points of their presentation as they went.Just in case you, like me, are rabidly curious.
"The US is like a baby with a bomb," he barks, his eyes blazing with the famous stare. "The reaction to France that the administration allowed to happen is so immature. These people have their own opinion - they're French! They're not fuckin' Americans, they're French! Vive la difference, hello? And this big deal about Bush landing on an aircraft carrier? Talk about a six-year-old kid with a Tonka toy - we got it here."Neil Young talks to the Guardian.
Steve, don't take it entirely personally. Your arse, up which I gleefully would shove every bit of your music service, was a trope.Steve, your arse was a synecdoche.
originally posted by xowie
in a vain attempt to stop P2P users swapping songs from Madonna's 'American Life' album, the lady herself released a series of 'dummy' files onto KaZaA. these are full length files but only the first few seconds contain sound, a recording of Madonna saying 'What the fuck do you think you're doing?'. presumably this was supposed to inspire guilt and repentant hearts in the sinful 'thieves'... but instead it seems to have been counterproductive... such a perfect sample is just crying out to be remixed!the madonna remix project.
originally posted by xowie
originally posted by xowie
originally posted by xowie
With a heavy heart I must let you know that Babatunde Olatunji passed away Sunday in his room at Esalen with his family by his side. Let us sing and drum for him in his journey to the next world. With our thoughts and prayers he will find a safe passage, and he will come to a place of peace and joy...We love you, Baba! Thank you for the joy and happiness that you have brought to the world through your music, your words and your actions. And so be it.Bay View, NYT.
originally posted by xowie
4) "You can just call them 'Trail of Dead,'" says our friend, disdainfully, when we, (apparently lamely), say "?And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead," one too many times. Is it our fault they gave themselves such an unwieldy name?Greetings from SXSW by Alison M. Rosen. (more)
originally posted by xowie
I live in the center of town. It's like urban-suburban, because it's right there but it's houses and lawns and parks and you can ride your bike and there's a dog, and maybe there's a homeless person walking down the street, too, but it's a nice town. People like to live there, people seem to be happy. It's liberal, and there's recycling and yoga and things like that.Stephen Malkmus talks with Pitchforkmedia.com. Maybe that line from "Shady Lane," "Stress surrounds/in the muddy peaceful center of this town," was inspired by his digs? Or maybe you don't care.
Lies, sanctions, and cruise missiles have never created a free and just society. Only everyday people can do that. Which is why I'm joining the millions world wide who stood up to oppose the Bush administration's attempt to expand the U.S. empire at the expense of human rights at home and abroad. In this spirit I'm releasing this song for anyone who is willing to listen. I hope it not only makes us think, but also inspires us to act and raise our voices.Zack de la Rocha and DJ Shadow, "March of Death"
originally posted by xowie
Squarepusher's "Port Rhombus," originally a jazzy cut-up drumbeat answered by edgeless chords and crackles of static, traded electronics for eerie wind and string combinations. David Horne's transcription of Aphex Twin's "afx237 v.7," originally a sputtering, splintered dance track, played down the beat to transform it into something like manic, skewed Stravinsky.New York Times: Where Avant-Garde Masters Meet the Stars of Electronica.
"I understand that there are many in the US who do not support the idea of their government initiating war in Iraq at this time, and I offer my greatest respect to them."
Rolling Stone: Phish Resurface
We had these jam sessions,Anastasio says one night after practice,where we drank hot chocolate with mushrooms and just played, trying to get in tune with each other, for eight hours.One of those jams, he points out, is on a record: "Union Federal," a bonus track on the CD reissue of Phish's 1989 independent cassette release, Junta.We used to rehearse like demons,Anastasio, 38, says excitedly, a big smile busting through his ginger forest of beard.A lot of it was mind games, challenging each other. We'd change roles:I'm always the natural leader. Page, you be that person now.We'd make Fish set up his drums left-handed instead of right:Use your mind to play, not your hands.Or we'd just play one note for an hour -- weird stuff.
The weirdness bloomed in concert: in clubs such as Nectar's on Main Street in Burlington, where Phish first played in December 1984 and honed their writing and jamming chops through 1989; then in theaters and, finally, arenas. Fishman, who turns thirty-eight on February 19th, played most gigs during Phish's first two years flying on LSD.I still play with the feeling I got from those experiences, trying to generate wind and water,he claims quite earnestly.
The problems reached a crescendo on August 9, 1995: the day Jerry Garcia died. "Everybody turned to 'NEW," St. John recalls. "They came to share the pain of losing Jerry, as they did when John Lennon died." But instead of a Garcia tribute, WNEW stayed in its format-of-the-moment: a mix of classic and alternative rock. Instead of "Casey Jones" or "Touch of Grey," listeners heard the Smashing Pumpkins.CNN: How to kill a radio station and more on the death of WNEW-FM.
originally posted by xowie
He says he couldn't do anything with the Israelis and the Palestinians "because I'm against everybody and I can't take a side". Nor can the man who found so many snappy couplets and delightful tunes in impending nuclear doom see any toe-tapping inspiration in September 11, the invasion of Iraq, or the thing he seems most keen to talk about the Columbia space shuttle explosion. "They are calling it a disaster instead of a screw-up, which is all it was. They're calling these people heroes. The Columbia isn't a disaster. The disaster is that they're continuing this stupid program."SMH: Stop clapping, this is serious. [mefi]
originally posted by daiichi
McLean, famous for his hits American Pie and Vincent (Starry, Starry Night), said he was "proud of George Michael for standing up for life and sanity". "I am delighted that he chose a song of mine to express these feelings," he said in a statement. "We must remember that the Wizard is really a cowardly old man hiding behind a curtain with a loud microphone."BBC: Michael praised for protest cover.
originally posted by daiichi
I know Kris and Rita and Marty MullLA Times on the rejuvenation of the Roxy, Troubadour and Whisky. Also, NYT on the Malibu scene. Howzat blizzard, boys?
Are meeting at the Troubadour
We'll get it on with the "Joy Of Cooking"
While the crowd calls out for more- Peter Rowan, 1973
originally posted by xowie
Frank Black (who will always be Black Francis in my heart) runs through ten favorite songs.Paul was really good at these super-minimalist lyrics. 'Why don't we do it in the road?' 'You say it's your birthday. It's my birthday, too.' I like that, and I did it a bit with the Pixies. We did a song called 'There Goes My Gun,' which was just 'There goes my gun, there goes my gun.' Like Woody Guthrie, 'Why oh why oh why.' It's good. It's tough.
"I would say I'm probably relatively insane, to an extent," he was quoted as saying. "I take medication for schizophrenia, but I wouldn't say I'm schizophrenic. But I have a bipolar personality, which is strange. I'm my own worst enemy. I have devils inside that fight me."
"Don't move the mikes," Phil would warn if we got up to take our 5-minute break which we were lucky to get. He didn't want anything to touch the "sound-waves" of that room once he had gotten balance. "DON'T MOVE THE MIKES," so we were very careful. The whole band was in the room. Some were playing chess, or throwing darts to naked ladies drawn on the walls. Phil would sometimes dress in outlandish costumes and then use his psychological tricks on us. We were ready for him.Wrecking Crew doll Carol Kaye is the most recorded bass player in history, Hal Blaine (1, 2) the most recorded drummer.
originally posted by daiichi
The RIAA has staked out an untenable position that is as unrealistic as it is anti-consumer and anti-artist... Their solutions are not good solutions. They cling unsuccessfully to the past rather than embrace the stunning opportunities offered by the future. They will be unsuccessful in their attempts to criminalize the society, and in their attempts to stretch the drum head of old laws onto the drum of new technology. It is one thing to be unsuccessful, it's one thing to argue a bad position, but it's quite another to be silly and laughed at, and that's where the RIAA has ended up. They appear to be totally irrelevant except as bagmen.Music exec John Snyder, Embrace file-sharing, or die.
originally posted by daiichi
"They have a communication system that rivals the CIA," Borg said.Don't mess with Bjork fans.
originally posted by daiichi
There’s something that punk porn sites are pushing besides pictures, and it’s what really makes the kids sign on: like any other porn, they’re selling fantasy. And in this case, it’s the fantasy of reality.OC Weekly on porn punks. Also, Shoe talk with Drunk Horse, by Alison M. Rosen.
originally posted by daiichi
Kokua Line: What does ‘Pu in Sai’ really mean?
originally posted by daiichi
"Live Phish Downloads offers high quality, unedited soundboard recordings of select shows in the form of MP3 and Shorten digital music files."
Anti-war mp3: Jacob's Ladder(Not In My Name).
originally posted by daiichi
I.M. Me, the song by teen songstress Brittney Cleary (who recently changed her name to Nikki) is rife with the evolving lexicon of wired teens. E.G., "Send your jpeg / I wanna see your face / Girlfriend, send an I.M. /TTYL /No time to spell /Oops, there goes that little bell Bye, bye for now / BBFN . . . Hey, LOL, G2G / I gotta go, but baby / Watch for me 'cause / I'll be right back, BRB /So sign on, and I.M. me"Feeling aurally masochistic? Scroll down to find link for dl.
originally posted by Jane Die
Alison M. Rosen on free tatt night at Luxx.
originally posted by daiichi
roger tells us: Mary Hansen is dead.
Camper Van Beethoven is getting back together and touring (third item)--but minus guitarist Chris Molla and drummer Chris Pederson (or Crispy Derson, for Camper Van Beethoven fans). But Jonathan Segel, the violinist who left after Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart, is even going to be in the band--along with Greg Lisher, Victor Krummenacher and of course David Lowery. Join me at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., Jan. 25, won't you?
John Peel picks tracks for his new compilation album, and an old interview with Radio B92 where he talks about working for Texan radio:
And you worked for WRR in Dallas…
PEEL: WRR had a late night program that all the kids used to listen to called "Kat's Karavan" which was a rhythm'n'blues program and played almost entirely black music. But the audience was almost entirely white in one of those kinda strange things that goes on in American culture, and the kids who listened loved the music but if any of the musicians had turned up on their front door they would have called the police, because it was quite a racist society at the time. But I had some records which were only available in Europe - some in this country, some in the Netherlands - and I took them to the radio station and they asked me to go on the program and talk about these records, which I thought they'd done because of my extraordinary knowledge of the music, but I think they probably did because they thought I had such an amusing accent — which by Texas standards I certainly did.
Deadheads, a notoriously finicky bunch, are enamored of Herring. Having played with the Allman Brothers, his technique is sometimes described as a cross between Duane Allman's and Garcia's. On Thursday, he hinted at Garcia's quicksilver style but also carved out his own distinct airspace. More often than not, his tone was something very different: echoing, yowling, distant yet a key piece of the puzzle.The Other Ones at Kaiser Aud.
originally posted by xowie
Mtv News: Roots' ?uestlove, Black Thought Delve Into Phrenology
"For the most part, none of us were in the studio at the same time for most of the recording," he said. "It just came to be in the process of layering. Everybody came in and did their thing, and we just layered it up. Ahmir will come in the studio and lay three or five joints in a one- or two-session period, then the next time I'll come through the studio it will be like, 'Yo, put the joints on Ahmir was working on a couple of days ago.' It might be two to three that I'm feeling that I wanna build upon. I might wanna drop that or ask him to come and add more to the foundation."There are a couple of neat Behind the Scenes videos worth watching. Has anybody seen an insightful review? Where is intelligent hip hop criticism these days? (Besides Boondocks of course.)During a soundcheck a few months ago, the Roots came up with Phrenology's first single, "Break You Off."
"We were doing a pilot for some TV show and we were jamming with Musiq," Black Thought remembered. "We just came up with it and it felt real smooth. ... It was sexy from the start. We couldn't really take it nowhere else but keep it for the ladies. In a nutshell, the tune is about me meeting a young lady who's already involved and she's in a relationship. I'm coming to break her off, basically giving her what's missing."
" 'Me and Mrs. Jones' for the new millennium," ?uest interjected. "The basic direction the album was going was so far to the left — it wasn't like anything out there — we kind of needed a balance. We are smart businessmen and we know medicine tastes better with a little sugar in it. This seemed like a logical choice because it was something easy to get into."
Take Robert Christgau's consumer guide for a spin -- 12 random A--ranked or better albums each time you click.
Users are not actually moving the CD against the laser; rather, using a touch-sensitive "jog dial" that imitates the spinning platter of a turntable, they are "scratching" a copy of the song stored in the machine's memory.The New York Times: Scratching Without Vinyl: A Hip-Hop Revolution.
D.J.'s can come to a club armed with beats and songs they put together hours or even minutes before. "I used to have to get samples and new beats cut onto a temporary acetate, which costs $50, doesn't sound very good or last very long," said DJ Swamp. "Now I just burn the music onto a CD. My laptop burns CD's internally, so I can be backstage putting stuff together right before I go onstage."
Cut Chemist of Jurassic 5 takes the process even further; at recent shows he has ventured into the crowd to record audience members talking, quickly burned a CD onstage and then immediately scratched up the vocals using the CDJ-1000. "It's something that you could never do with vinyl or a traditional turntable," Cut Chemist said. "And the audience just freaks out when they hear it."
"Use your mouse to catch as many babies as you can in the basket. Michael will try to distract you by dropping his latest, horrible records."
The Billie Jean MIDI is funny @ the Michael Jackson Baby Drop
originally posted by Jane Die
Pretty Seattle Times feature on the Tacoma Guitar company. I'm finally unloading my Martin (the one judlew's friend's dog ate); but for the offensive Indian branding, I would replace it with one of these Tacomas.
originally posted by daiichi
Writer Alison M. Rosen has contacted us to complain that we are not linking to enough articles by Alison M. Rosen. Such as Sucking Strap-ons by Alison M. Rosen. Or Textbook Love Affair by Alison M. Rosen. Or Dude, Where's My Double-Necked Guitar? by Alison M. Rosen.
originally posted by daiichi
TOKYO — Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc said Wednesday it will release next January music compact disks (CDs) equipped with a new technology to prevent illegal copying and protect copyrights.
From Japantoday in ENGLISH.
In a related story, Music Industry Unveils New Piracy-Proof Format: A Black, Plastic Disc With Grooves On It.
originally posted by Jane Die
The song, says Lewis, is about those periods of being in a "love drought where you feel incapable of love and you can’t get yourself to snap out of your own self-centered world."Rilo Kiley singer Jenny Lewis, by Alison M. Rosen.
"It’s just another hopeful song," she says, "Because, God, it feels good when your heart is no longer slumbering, and it wakes up, and there’s a person or song or friend that snaps you out of your own craziness."
originally posted by daiichi
When the lyrics touched sore spots in those times, there was little concern among listeners that their favorite rappers could lose their lives. The landscape has since changed as more rappers begin to take sides in what is shaping up to be a hip-hop world war.VV: World war of words.
originally posted by daiichi
Michael Jackson dangles child from hotel window in Berlin.
originally posted by xowie
As long as you're not thinking of Tears for Fears' "Sowing the Seeds of Love" -- and now that you've just read it, I know for certain that you are not -- Tom Coates (via wood s lot) will.
I am not rich, famous or heroic. No one pounds at my door—thank God—asking for either my sperm or my autograph.OC Weekly: The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Against Mike Davis. Also: Brandi Lyon, by Alison M. Rosen.
originally posted by daiichi
After a judge granted him permission to postpone his scheduled testimony until the afternoon, the reclusive pop star arrived at the courthouse without the surgical mask he had worn a day earlier, but carrying a black umbrella.Michael Jackson shows up late.
originally posted by daiichi
WDVX in Clinton, Tenn., broadcasts Americana and roots music from a 14-foot camper at the Fox Inn Campground. Yeehaw!
Listen, people, I don't how you expect to ever stop the war if you can't sing any better than that. There's about 300,000 of you fuckers out there and I want you to start singing! Come on!Singing back memories at the Wall.
originally posted by xowie
Until a moment ago, The Roots and Michael Chabon had but a tenuous connection in the map of my head.
"I’m a paper monkey. I basically do all the boring paper Asian girl things," she says. (And before you yank your underwear up your ass and get on your soap box, pal, please note that she herself said it, not us.)Michelle Kim, by Alison M. Rosen.
originally posted by daiichi
She is showing even more of her ass. She is shrugging about her multiple body piercings. She says she likes to drink tequila. She has revealed the requisite amount of family problems. She claims she has actually had sex, and even liked it, sort of. Take that, Brit.Mark Morford, A cautionary tale.
originally posted by daiichi
At City Hall, a Jazzy Earful for Callers Put on Hold (By JENNIFER STEINHAUER)
a tribute from the kittens and PE.
Dr. Eugene Chadbourne finally has his own web page, and no one told me!
When a drumbeat on a vinyl record is scratched back and forth under a needle, it makes a sort of percussive swishing sound. The first scratches the average pop music fan ever heard were Mr. Mizell's.The New York Times: D.J. for Rap's Run-DMC Is Shot to Death in Queens.
Someday music will be only air. There will be no objects to hold or fetishize and people will simply collect lists. No disc, nothing spooled or grooved, nothing to scratch or break, no heads to clean, no dust to wipe, no compulsive alphabetizing. Nothing to put away in shoe boxes in spare closets and be embarrassed about.The Washington Post: Unspooled. "It was a nation of tapeheads, living on some social margin, out past the faint hiss, waiting for nuclear war." I'm a sucker for these Style articles, but this one is different. It's an elegy, a last rewind; that excruciating moment when the tape runs out and the song cuts off and an apology is all that's left. Like a haircut so drastic you no longer recognize yourself in the mirror, it's time to throw those cassettes away.
On his current tour, Ben Folds has been encouraging his audience to sing the instrumental parts to his songs. The results are impressive. (RealAudio.)
I am not a junkie...Ive had a rather unconclusive and uncomfortable stomach condition for the past three years...I decided to relieve my pain with small doses of heroine for a walloping 3 whole weeks.From Kurt Cobain's journals, excerpted in this week's Newsweek and to be released as a book.
It's exciting to be recognized as a band, because we're really ambitious about what we do. Because we incorporate humor in what we're doing, it always makes people a little nervous that they're somehow going to be manipulated. It's a very fragile equation, mixing rock and humor, and sometimes, people may think we're a little pretentious about what we do. But this project means everything to us, it's our entire lives. We've always been in an odd place and we're extraordinarily comfortable in our odd place.John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants. Note that Dial-A-Song is now online.
"It could almost work here like hip-hop works for Brits — as a fantasy," he said. "For Americans it could be like: 'Who's he? He says geezer all the time! He's got this weird lifestyle.' And that's what could make British rap more powerful ultimately, because American rap today is a TV show — really conservative."To read now: "The British Can't Rap, Haven't You Heard?"
iBiblio is hosting an impressive free collection of Classical Asian music.
My personal top 40 tunes this week:
The super-duper Nonesuch label is reviving its extensive Explorer series of world music recordings. None of that fancy production work on these babies. Producer Stephen Jay was on NPR, talking about his recordings of traditional African music made in the '70s. Then David Byrne talked about discovering the recordings as a youngster in Baltimore, when he checked them out of the library. (Does anyone check music out of the library? I love it.)
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Dischord Records just released an incredible box set, Twenty Years Of Dischord, documenting two decades of Washington, D.C. punk rock and harDCore. It includes three CDs featuring all fifty Dischord bands (73 songs in all), unreleased stuff (two "new" Minor Threat songs!), video footage, and a 134 page book. You can order it, postage paid, for a ridiculous $25 - or find it for less elsewhere online as I have. That's right - twenty five dollars. |
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Before listing my top selections, I should explain the criteria on which I based my choices. First, I based them solely on the conservatism of the lyrics. A song had to have an explicitly conservative theme, although just a single line may represent it. I looked particularly for those embodying religious or patriotic themes, as these are unambiguously conservative values.Mm, nothing like counting down those conservative Top-40 songs (as seen on daypop).
Second, I paid no attention to the politics of the performer. There are a number of good conservatives, such as Ted Nugent and even Walter Brennan, who have had hit songs over the years. But unless their songs had an explicitly conservative theme, I did not include them. Conversely, if some outspoken liberal recorded a song with explicitly conservative lyrics, I still included it.
Third, I limited myself to songs that made Billboard’s Top 40 chart after 1955. I relied heavily on the latest edition of Joel Whitburn’s book, Top 40 Hits. I did this in order to limit the universe of potential songs to a manageable number. Also, I think it is more telling if a conservative song had broad popularity, as indicated by sales, than if it is buried on some obscure album. Unfortunately, this rule forced me to leave out my personal favorite conservative rock song, ‘Taxman’ by The Beatles (well covered by Stevie Ray Vaughn). I also had to exclude Ray Charles’ wonderful version of ‘America the Beautiful.’
And we're listening to this. "My heart is like an ancient holy song." Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. Can't get enough of it.
originally posted by judlew
For Curry, "Virginia Roots" is but the first of many planned sallies against the record industry. "I want to undermine the corporate giants of entertainment and all the garbage they put out," he says. "This is as anti-Trashville" -- as in Nashville -- "as you can get. Trashville is threatened by the old stuff that has so much life to it, as opposed to the crap they're churning out now."An original member of GWAR has just compiled a two-disc set of super-rare Virginia folk music recorded in 1929 in Richmond, by OKeh.
The fervidly romantic ambivalence of a downtown New York guy (or girl, for that matter) -- that's what Julian Casablancas, who writes and sings all the Strokes' songs, writes and sings about. Jobs, bars, beds: stay or go? And when he sings, earnestly crooning like Mel Torme when he begins a verse, then caustically (and a little comically) muttering like Lou Reed to end it, he does so through a filter that distorts his voice electronically, allusively -- it's the voice pleading through the intercom from the apartment vestibule, the voice leaving a message on the cell at 4 a.m. It's the voice of New York, or anyway youngish New York, at its most intimate.With love, the NYT [rwalks/walks] smothers the Strokes--as if the backlash hasn't already...
Am I alone in my obsession with Frou-Frou?
originally posted by judlew
On the Clear Channel Band Availability List the Upright Citizens Brigade costs twice as much as Vanilla Ice!
And so this new groove needs to come hard, come angry, and come sexy as hell. It needs to remind us that soul music is always grounded in a community, in a life, and in the spaces and places that that life takes place in, and that times are fucking insane right now. We need Wilson Pickett wailing, Millie Jackson growling, Dave Hollister snarling, Mary J. groaning, Jodeci moaning, Donnie Hathaway breaking our hearts, Aretha and Chaka lifting them up, and Prince getting nastier than he's ever been before. And it better be over a groove that shifts and changes, morphs and grows, never gets stuck in any one spot. Because we need to quit chilling and really start feeling the vibe — remember that music can move minds, move bodies, move hearts, move souls, and if soul music doesn't start moving real damn soon, we're all just gonna be sitting here, stoned and kicking it, while the world rushes by.Sylvia W. Chan's tired-tired-TIRED! of neo-soul.
At home my housemates were saving newspaper pages for me, important stories about the downfall of the Backstreet Boys, reviews of Neil LaBute's dreaded Possession, and a piece in the New York Times Magazine by David Hajdu on the state of folk music, which apparently has been taken over, B-movie style, by lesbians. Even coming back from a zone somewhat dominated by the sound of folk music made by lesbians, I have trouble understanding. "Folk music has become the sound of lesbian culture," he says. The idea feels as far away as the Manistee National Forest, where the tents have now come down and the power lines will soon be buried under the earth for the winter. Here in San Francisco the lesbians I know are more likely to spend their time at drag king competitions and dance clubs where you get in free if you're wearing hot pants.Lynn Rapaport's back from "No man's land."There's a visible women's folk scene. Spaces like Dolores Park Cafe offer song-cycle nights and other performances by local folksingers, mostly women, many queer. But a male singer-songwriter interviewed by Hajdu claims he's "working in a lesbian art form," as if O Brother, Where Art Thou? never came out to make the world of folk and bluegrass safe for lovers of Blood Simple. I also know boys who won't go to certain rock shows where the quotient of dykes is too high. So I'm wondering if a visible presence is being trend-spotted as world domination.
Beck on Morning Becomes Eclectic today.
Pitchfork: Speaking of Poison, you head one of the few acts in which one hears as much metal as soul. What's the soundtrack in the tour van?This is actually not all that good an interview, but that's okay, because I'll read anything I can right now pertaining to My Morning Jacket. Buy At Dawn, see them live, listen to this appearance on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic. The singer's voice is like the fifth and heretofore unknown element.James: Oh man, everything. Danzig 2: Lucifuge has been in heavy rotation, as has Europe's The Final Countdown. Roy Orbison's Best Of. Strange mix CDs. And Erykah Badu live. Also we've been jamming to the new Swearing at Motorists, Bobby Bare Jr., and Ben Kweller. As well as the Scorpions' Love at First Sting and The Muppet Movie soundtrack.
Pitchfork: Did you get your ears on Willie Nelson's killer version of The Muppet Movie's "Rainbow Connection"? Whoooo.
James: I saw Willie do it in concert and nearly cried. The crickets were out and it was at the state fair. It was a beautiful night for a beautiful song. My mom was there too and that meant a lot, because that was a big song for us growing up. It was a magical moment.
I feel I do have a responsibility and I am not going to get up on stage and make songs I wouldn't appreciate my little sister listening to. I tell young girls to work hard and get an education, even though I thought school was a load of shit; and I hope they see me as an intelligent woman who doesn't have to get her tits out to be noticed.Miss Dynamite, British rap artist and Mercury Prize winner.
Reznor's tempestuous relationship with machines began in, of all places, a Howard Johnson's restaurant. This was the early 1980s and Reznor was a forlorn teenager washing dishes at a HoJo in Mercer, Pa.; his only reprieve was an Asteroids machine in the lobby.Pretty Hate Machine was the perfect album at the perfect time for High Schooler 'dj'. From salon: "Trent Reznor's pretty hate machines."
One night as he was leaving the kitchen, he noticed the back panel of the Asteroids machine slightly ajar. Reznor instinctively pried it open. "I remember looking inside at all the points and settings," he recalls, "and thinking, whoa, I'm not allowed to see this thing!" It was the first glimpse of what would become the predominant theme of his music: the dark worlds that thrive behind life's curtains.
'But they all ask me how much I'm prepared to compromise, and I say "Nothing." One company said, "Yes, we'll sign you, but we'd like you to make an album with Radiohead" - which doesn't mean anything to me. And several labels have said, "Yes, we'd like to sign you but we don't want to sign your musicians." There's always some absurd condition which makes absolutely no sense. And all the labels in America have said: "Will your music fit in with what is successful in the American charts?" To which I reply: "Bejaysus, I hope it doesn't!" And then I'm out on the street immediately. If you saw me at those meetings, you'd feel really pitifully sorry for me.'"The man with the thorn in his side"
In sound reproduction, as in everything else, it seems you can't go home again. But I'm not giving up. This is not about nostalgia. The sound -- which, after all, is an agent of ecstasy -- exists.Chicago Tribune: Hours of frustration -- all for the love of sound
Lately, my roommate has been listening incessantly to Serge Gainsbourg and Bridgette Bardot's "Bonnie and Clyde." It's reached the iTunes Top 25 and, in general, spurred our interest in Gainsbourg. Neither one of us knows enough French to really understand what we're listening to, but it doesn't matter. We know the story of Bonnie and Clyde.
Nevertheless, a search for Gainsbourg's lyrics brought me to the English-version of the song. But something didn't seem right: it just didn't feel like a translation.
Those who saw the movie may remember:
Bonnie Parker was also a poet!
Here it is: the original "Bonnie and Clyde," penned by B.P. herself. It's the French that's the "version."
You wanted to hear Aloha? You're in luck: http://www.insomniaville.com/aloha/sounds/.
... When children were asked to cite a classical performer strained concentration produced answers ranging from the French impressionist artist Claude Monet to the American pop star Britney Spears, the jazz musician Louis Armstrong, and Pop Idol's Will Young.*w00t!* 9 for 11 on the Guardian UK's "Do You Know Your Classical Composers?" (Lucky I didn't name Shakespeare or Da Vinci as composers!) How'd you score?
The tenor Luciano Pavarotti was the best-known classical performer. Next came Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the violinists Vanessa Mae and Nigel Kennedy, and the Salford-born singer Russell "The Voice" Watson.
Charlotte Church, the 16-year-old Welsh soprano who regularly appears at royal variety performances and on teen magazine style pages, failed to get a mention.
Faced with a set of common musical instruments, only 30% could recognise a cello and 23% a French horn. More than 60% went blank at the sight of a clarinet, 47% failed to recognise a cymbal and 7% called a violin a guitar. ...
From "Critical Analysis of 'Bling Bling'":
Although discussion of acts of violence is kept to a minimum in this particular song, several of the rappers make a point to indicate that resorting to physical brawls is not necessary for them to cause harm to others; their "bling" is mighty enough to cause blindness without the bearer of the "bling" so much as lifting a finger.
originally posted by Chris
"I've learned enough out of these 30 years to know that you have to take risks ... I can't worry about the jazz police. I only worry about my public. My role is to make the people happy, to give them as excellent a package as I can in a recorded sense, to give them as excellent a package as I can in a live performance, and the heck with the rest. I figure if I'm true to myself and I'm honest about what I'm doing and the public is enjoying it, then it is going to speak for itself. I cannot do something that somebody has dictated me to do. I've got to love what I'm doing."Mathew Bahl's "Starting Over with Dee Dee Bridgewater"
It's expected for black men to be homophobic. It's a part of the way we construct black male identity. Black male equals homophobic. And when journalists give excuses to "conscious" rappers like Common, it's like, "Oh well, Common is just a black male who grew up in a black environment where being homophobic is accepted." No it's not. My mother didn't allow my brothers to use the word "faggot" in my house. People make assumptions about the black community that are unfair. I mean, these kids all come from black families, and when they leave SMAAC, they go home to their black mommies, their black daddies, and most of those family members know that they're gay and lesbian. And we're not getting that side of the story.Tim'm West of Deep Dickollective in Amanda Nowinski's "Stick this into your mind"
"A group of us said, 'We want to do it.' We became the core. We would be the ones to teach the workshops and we would get each other's backs. We would be at every show.Jana Rowland of Sisterz of the Underground in Bernice Yeung's "Breaking Out"
"In the beginning, there was no one teaching us. When I used to practice, I would do whatever. The b-boys, they let me come to practice and they said, 'Yeah, we'll help you.' But it never happened. I really wanted a boy to show me and give me weapons, but I'm glad I didn't because I can take credit for this now."
The Flaming Lips are backing Beck on tour in a few months.
In "California Loved," P-Frank Williams remembers Roger Troutman.
Is that one of those guitars that's, like, a heart-shaped triple guitar?
... I'm happy that you're not saying "it's all about freedom" (like Paul McCartney), or singing "let's roll" (like Neil Young). I'm hoping you won't follow the path of John Steinbeck, who wrote The Grapes of Wrath (a book which we both love) and then in his later years supported the Vietnam War. I'm hoping you won't let "Rise Up" mean "America United Against the World." You were born in the USA, but also born in the world, and the world does not want to see the Boss wave an imperialist flag while a government of corporate crooks, psychos and religious fanatics prepares, for no good reason, to send young American men and women to invade Iraq. ...Gary Leupp, "An Open Letter To Bruce Springsteen About The War On Terror"
Nerd Magazine's Trunkload of Trouble, an incomplete indie-pop encyclopedia by Van & Nommi (thanks monosyllabic!)
I'm black and I'm going to do anything I want to do. Then it'll be black because I did it.New York Times: The Hip-Hop Generation Grabs a Guitar.
The Time-Life collection is a strong (and curious) indicator for a few reasons. Of course, each preceding decade of the Rock/Pop era had its Time-Life retrospective treatment-the '50's, '60's, and '70's. But what is more interesting is the packaging itself; music and cultural innovations do not necessarily occur in neat, decade-long epochs. The popular music of 1962 has a lot more to do with the music of 1955 than say, that of 1967 or '69. The R&B of the early '90's is much closer in style to that of the late 80s than it is the late '90's. Innovation in music occurs at much less regular intervals than marketing and promotion people would have us believe, usually across artificially imposed chronological boundaries like "decade packaging." What decade packaging of pop music does do, however, is make it easier for our aging minds and memories to grasp some element of time-based recognition, for nostalgia to have its simple way-"Ah, I remember how great the '80's were..."Perfect Sound Forever's The 20 Year Rule
If I'd have known as a little girl living with him that I would grow up and come to a foreign city and see posters of my brother sitting on a toilet, I wouldn't have believed it.For Zappa, a Smother of Attention: German Town Steps Up Its Fete of Cult Musician.
Our listeners buy CDs. They complain to me that by listening to KPIG, they've spent more money on CDs than ever.Online listeners of California's KPIG feel the pain of CARP.
"For us Brazilians, the song is a source of pride throughout the world ... It's not only the World Cup that makes us feel unique -- it's also the success and history of our music.""Brazil celebrates 40th birthday of "The Girl From Ipanema"
In my list of female MVPs, I'd name (again off the top of my head, so forgive me for forgetting someone obvious): Joni Mitchell (at the top of the class), followed by Janis Joplin, Chrissie Hynde, Patti Smith, Sinead O'Connor. That is my top group. Then I'd think about these, in no particular order: Kate Bush, P.J. Harvey, Madonna, Tina Turner, the Runaways, the Go-Gos, Carole King (as a writer, not as a performer), Emmylou Harris, Joan Baez, Aretha Franklin, the Supremes, Linda Ronstadt, Grace Slick, Ruth Brown, LaVern Baker, Brenda Lee, Etta James, Alanis Morissette, Bonnie Raitt, Big Mama Thornton. That's my quick list of candidates. The ones I'd nominate for the hall of fame on the first ballot: Mitchell, Joplin, Hynde, Smith, O'Connor, Madonna, Emmylou Harris, Franklin, James. Some of the others, too, are deserving, but that's my very top list.Prompted by a letter writer, the L.A. Times' Robert Hilburn takes a tally.
''There's this general perception that jazz is dead music -- dead guys, old guys, old audiences ... It doesn't have to be that way. Chevrolet commercials show a car zipping down the highway with Herbie Hancock's 'Cantaloupe Island' on the soundtrack. A lot of people think the music is cool, but they don't even know it's jazz ... Why can't Chevy show a picture of Herbie? Just to show, 'Hey, this guy did this music -- he's still alive.'"Chuck Iwanusa, president of the Jazz Alliance International, in "Off the Record."
L.A. Times' Jeff Leeds, with "Elvis Poised for Latest Comeback" and the N.Y. Times' Lynn Hirschberg, with "Who's That Girl?"
Def Jam Launches 'Free Slick Rick' Petition -- yes, that's right, a petition.
Two from the New York Times: first, Dylan returns to the Newport festival:
On that Sunday evening in July, with society's walls rattling, Pete Seeger introduced the final slate of performers by suggesting that they sing as if serenading a newborn baby, to tell it what kind of world they wanted it to inherit. In short order, Dylan mounted the stage wearing a black leather jacket, backed by members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and, with the sound system cranked up to ear-splitting level, he opened with "Maggie's Farm" ("I try my best to be just like I am/ But everybody wants you to be just like them"), from "Bringing It All Back Home."
It was probably not the message Seeger had in mind for the baby; according to some accounts, he first threatened to cut the sound cables, then walked out. Alan Lomax, the folklorist who had recorded Woody Guthrie and Jelly Roll Morton for the Library of Congress, fumed and hollered, insisting that the volume be turned down, to no avail.
Lomax started his work in the 1930's at a juncture when technology was perfectly double-edged, promising both salvation and destruction for local traditions. Salvation because the music could be recorded and then, conceivably, broadcast. And destruction because radio was breaking down the isolation of local styles on the way to promoting music that reached for a pop common denominator. Then World War II exposed people thrown together by military service to formerly isolated regional music; it also made America re-examine its identity and its folk heritage.
Recording and broadcasting were already changing the role of music from a live local event, demanding participation, to a commodity created by distant professionals, made for passive consumption. Lomax envisioned the relentless spread of a centralized pop that would erase eons of tradition. "We of the jets, the wireless and the atom blast," he wrote, "are on the verge of sweeping completely off the globe what unspoiled folklore is left."
THE BIG LINK THAT JOINS THEM ALL: How do we deal with the end of the road? I think the word "post-modern" should be uttered here because although it's been uncool for a long time, it actually describes the situation perfectly: stuff ain't modern no more. Rock music ran out of fresh ideas a long time ago, and (very) arguably, dance music has swiftly come to the same situation.Keith McD's "I Love Music" Greenspun thread contribution (via New York London Paris Munich) just feels right. Ten years ago, it was Nirvana over Michael Jackson; now we see all these movements and we (dot-dot-dot) only connect.
'90s indie solution: There's really no way we can sincerely get excited about rock & roll any more, so let's do it ironically, but with a genuine sadness for what we've lost. eg. Pavement's 'Filmore Jive', Beck's Odelay, an album all about the crumbling of rock.
Strokes solution: Let's rehash the past and add nothing new, act kind of like it never happened before, Orwell-1984-style. It doesn't really matter - let's just rock & roll the night away one more time.
Daft Punk solution: Let's rehash dance and rock past, but mix them in a fresh way. Let's be ironic and sad, but still fun and loving and exciting and believe in what we're doing. It doesn't really matter - this is just digital dance music after all. We're gonna celebrate One More Time.
Electroclash & LCD Soundsystem solution: Hey, we're arty intellectuals and we know about the history of music, we know that this has happened before, so we know how to deal with it. Let's rehash the past, but intelligently. Let's mix rock and dance in fresh ways and make serious statements that are also jokes. Sincerity is important to exciting art, but it doesn't have to be genuine. It does really matter.
Half of the Pixies' Fort Apache demo tape was released as "Come On Pilgrim". The other half is just out with the title "Pixies".
Renowned thereminist Pamelia Kurstin can play a bass line to a Sly and the Family Stone song on her instrument—how cool is that?
"We now have cultural machines so powerful that one singer can reach everybody in the world, and make all the other singers feel inferior because they're not like him ... Once that gets started, he gets backed by so much cash and so much power that he becomes a monstrous invader from outer space, crushing the life out of all the other human possibilities. My life has been devoted to opposing that tendency."The New York Times' Jon Pareles remembers Alan Lomax.
Even yet more streaming fun: new Beck cuts.
The Flaming Lips' new album, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, comes out Tuesday, but you can hear it on their website now! now! NOW!
We went to Mammoth to do some songwriting, but it started snowing really hard. And we made a toboggan out of a plastic trash can. We’d get three of us in it. We kind of went through an embankment and straight down into this culvert. We all landed on Chris [Derson, drummer] and broke his arm. We had to walk to the clinic in the snow... Victor’s [Krummenacher, bassist] dad was a pharmacist, so he kind of needled the doctor into giving Chris more and stronger drugs than he really needed. So we bought some beer, walked home in the snow and popped some pills. That is when we decided to record Tusk.Camper Van Beethoven reunite at the Knitting Factory later this month. Their 1986 song-for-song cover of Fleetwood Mac's double album Tusk comes out on August 13 and is available at www.pitch-a-tent.com. Unless this is some kind of April Fool's in July. Take the skinheads bowling; take them bowling!
As seen on slashdot, the future of Internet radio just might be decentralized "swarming" networks of p2p hosts which broadcast copies of the stream they're enjoying. streamer: pirate radio for the digital age; OPENdj: GPLed swarming streamer for Linux. Thanks to Cory for both of these.
I've never heard of Aloha, but on the strength of this review I sure will try: Sugar high (Metro Times Detroit).
Good bands make good live albums. Bands that are not so good can make albums that initially sound okay, but which become increasingly sterile the more you listen to them. Here are some of the great live rock and/or roll albums.Ethel the Blog tells it like it is.
"Some people think I'm an aging black jazz singer ... I get that all the time. There's a lot of racial ambiguity in me, and we are so ridiculously hyper-conscious racially in this society. When I was growing up, I was the target of racial epithets like the N-word. But Spanish people start babbling in Spanish to me. And I also seem to have an affinity with Sicilians. And I recall one guy from Ethiopia who swore I was Ethiopian. ... As far as I know, I'm Caucasian -- from a non-observant Jewish family in Teaneck, New Jersey."Snow? White. Voice of an angel, coming soon to a record store near you.
"I get into a zone," says Mr. Ince. "I can see them bopping their heads as they walk past. They don't see me, but I can see them hearing it. It's beautiful."On a musical tour of the New York subway for The New York Times, Jesse McKinley meets Ayo Ince playing DJ at Grand Central with equipment powered by a car battery. The wonderful thing about street musicians is even when they're bad, they're good.
monsteratomic alerts me to several summer NYC concerts:
Golden Boy with Miss Kitten
June 18th Tribeca Grand
Cassius
June 22nd Centro-Fly
No-No's
July 6th
IndiePopRadio Party (FREE)
Sunday June 23, 2002, 9PM-2AM
at Bar 13, 3rd Floor, 121 University Place (Near Union Square)
with DJ sets from:
"You have literally the smoking gun ... the weapon that killed the symbol of Tejano pride ... How often do historians wish they had evidence of things that happened 100 years ago?"Pistol used to kill Selena destroyed
Smashingly amazingly jawdroppingly GREAT!, May 23, 2002Did you know that there are more than 500 words to describe how fantastic David Hasselhoff is? And it just gets better here.
Reviewer: A music fan from Count Dooku, Geonosis
Eskimos have over 500 words for snow, and I have over 500 words for Hasselhoff being FANTASTIC. I think his vocals are so smooth and amazing, especially after finding out that he used to be the voice of the old Fat Albert cartoons back in the 70's. The musical compositions that he weaves from his abdomen like a spider are silken and complicated, yet oddly touching, so poignant when he sings about unrequited love. It breaks my heart to hear the song "Flying on the Wings of Tenderness" to this day, and not just because my husband and I used this as our first dance at our wedding. God bless Hasselhoff for his gifts, and I hope he has another greatest hits compilation in the making. The song "Hot Shot City" is particularly good.
"At its best ... hip-hop represents truth, real reality, not made-up reality. In the heyday of hip-hop, it was about being the best, making the best possible hip-hop. I believe that in a few years a lot of today's artists will be embarrassed by what they're doing now. My engineer once explained it like this: 'I can make a chair that's a work of art, or I can make a chair you can sit your ass on.' That's the difference between an artist and a craftsman."I love Paris in the springtime. (*bumps "What Would You Do?" loudly*)
"I don't even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don't think it's going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way ... The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing.David Bowie, 21st-century entrepreneur.
"Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity ... So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left. It's terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn't matter if you think it's exciting or not; it's what's going to happen."
I humbly suggest the most cost-effective and reliable solution to the copyright industries' troubles will be DRM helmets, bolted onto each dutiful consumer at the neck. When these helmets sense watermarked audio or video within earshot/eyeshot, they check their local license manager and instantly "fog up" if payment has not been delivered.
Gordon Mohr's got a plan.
originally posted by judlew
Today's Public Interest featured a thoughtful discussion about the ties between hip-hop and activism. (The entry for the show, with a link to the audio, is at the very bottom of the page.)
In the course of her set, she led the band in funk with the snapping beat of Washington's go-go music and funk that oozed like a bubbling tar pit. She led funk that twinkled with jazz chords on electric piano and funk that bristled with fuzz-tone guitar. She led funk that throbbed deep and low, funk that rolled in as smoothly as a fog bank and funk that slithered with rattlesnake cymbal accents.
Meshell Ndegeocello can groove on my cd player anytime. "Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape" has so much going on that I've been listening to it for the past couple of days and I feel like I've only heard a fraction of what is there.
"I remember on the tour with Jeru The Damaja [in 1996], the last show was in Syracuse, and the headliner was Nas. Jeru was smart and played first. You had like 2,000 people waiting for Nas to come on. I don't think they were really feeling what I was trying to do. In the middle of this long ambient part during 'Long Stem' I felt all this change go WHOOM! against my shirt and my head, like someone just threw a pocketful of change at me from the front row. The whole crowd saw it and you could hear this, 'Ooooh.' Then there was this moment where I felt my blood rising and I thought I was going to say fuck it and throw the table over and be like, 'Fine, I'm out. Here comes Nas.' But when the blood got to my nose level I just imagined my hands shoving it back down. And I think people saw that and then at the end I had won their respect. They gave it up. You can't be defensive, you can't be telling people what you are or what you are not."DJ Shadow puts a smile on my face like Ultra-Brite. (I'm not 'fessin, man.)
"If you're a Roots fan already, you're at the point where you can rest assured with regards to the quality of the music. [But] that's what we were racking our brains for, and that's what took this album so long--trying to make this release a step up from the last thing we put out ... But it's hard. In '92, '93, I was in a completely different place. I had mad ammo, mad material, I had my whole life's worth of ideas and shit. I would be constantly writing rhymes, and I would always have a book with me, freestyling some shit. Now, if I'm writing a song, it's because I'm in the studio and I'm about to record it."Think the Roots' Black Thought went home and forgot?
Recent compositions include a bubbling symphony of boiling tea kettles, the gentle hiss of blank tapes being played through a stereo and the soft bumps of helium balloons hitting the ceiling.This lowercase sound nonsense sounds like a prank to me. I mean, who wants to listen to e.e. cummings snore softly? The Wired article links to a handful of mp3s -- I'll play some for Sol and see what he thinks. Myself, I'm almost inspired to compose an aria to the sounds of the "next", "pause", and "stop" buttons being pressed on hundreds of mp3 players.
One recent album was so quiet, listeners wondered whether it actually contained any sound at all.
The MC-5 is a whole thing. There is no way to get at the music without taking in the whole context of the music too- there is no separation. We say the MC-5 is the solution to the problem of separation, because they are so together. The MC-5 is totally committed to the revolution, as the revolution is totally committed to driving people out of their separate shells and into each other's arms.MC5 Original Liner Notes & White Panther Party Statement
I'm talking about unity, brothers and sisters, because we have to get it together. We are the solution to the problem, if we will just be that. If we can feel it, LeRoi Jones said, "feeling predicts intelligence." The MC-5 will make you feel it, or leave the room. The MC-5 will drive you crazy out of your head into your body. The MC-5 is rock and roll. Rock and roll is the music of our bodies, of our whole lives- the resensifier (sic), Rob Tyner calls it. We have to come together, people, "build to a gathering," or else. Or else you are dead, and gone.
The MC-5 bring you back to your senses from wherever you have been taken to hide. They are bad. Their whole lives are totally given to this music. They are a whole thing. they are a working model of the new paleo-cybernetic culture in action. There is no separation. They live together to work together, they eat together, fuck together, get high together, walk down the street and through the world together. There is no separation. Just as the music will bring you together like that, if you hear it. If you will live it. And we will make sure you hear it, because we know you need it as bad as we do. We have to have it.
The music is the source and the effect of our spirit flesh. The MC-5 is the source and effect of the music, just as you are. Just as I am. Just to hear the music and have it be ourselves, is what we want. What we need. We are a lonely desperate people, pulled apart by the killer forces of capitalism and competition, and we need the music to hold us together. Separation is doom. We are free men, and we demand a free music, a free high energy source that will drive us wild into the streets of America yelling and screaming and tearing down everything that would keep people slaves.
The MC-5 is that source. The MC-5 is the revolution, in all its applications. There is no separation. Everything is everything. There is no thing to fear. The music will make you strong, as it is strong, and there is now way it can be stopped now. All power to the people! The MC-5 is here now for you to hear and see and feel now! Give it up- come together- get down, brothers and sisters, it's time to testify, and what you have in your hands is a living testimonial to the absolute power and strength of these men. Go wild! The world is yours! Take it now and be one with it! Kick out the jams, motherfucker! And stay alive with the MC-5!
"In Jay-Z, the kids just see somebody that doesn't have to worry about paying their electricity bill, that doesn't have to worry about paying the rent, and to them that's empowering because nobody has told them there's another way. Jay-Z thinks he should get paid. I agree ... But I think everybody should get paid."Boots Riley's manifesto.
"Vibe is like what Rolling Stone was to rock 'n' roll in the 70's ... (i)n Vibe, most of our coverage is urban or black, but we also look at the world broadly from a global perspective. We really consider the magazine multicultural."Emil Wilbekin gathers no moss.
"I was the guy that was sitting around watching the TV and fell in love with it like the rest of the generation, but the difference was I come from the street. ... The music that I loved wasn't represented on early MTV and VH1. It wasn't well respected ... I loved it so much I wanted to see the artists and music that I loved have imagery as impactful as David Bowie or Madonna or Billy Idol."Hype Williams, who isn't feeling music videos anymore.
A good party anthem is about those nights you had to illegally obtain beer, and find that empty parking lot in which to drink it. Party anthems have a way of being the next to last song that gets played before the cops drive up. Party anthems foretell a butt-kicking, or an arrest, or both.I missed Hank Stuever's consideration of Andrew W.K.'s "Party Hard" and Pink's "Get The Party Started" last month.
It's a curious phenomenon -- all over the sunny Southwest, Latino teens enthralled with the mope-rock saint of Manchester -- but it's no weirder than middle-class white boys thumping along to "Fuck Tha Police." Alienation knows no borders. And it's thrilling to see it, a subculture free of all the strained nostalgia and wink-wink irony that accompany most retro trends. These kids aren't in it for the camp. They love the Smiths.Let's go where we're happy, and I'll meet you at the 2002 Smiths/Morrissey Convention.
Nirvana meets Destiny's Child, Christina Aguilera crossed with the Strokes, the Breeders mixed with "Eye of the Tiger"--those wacky mash-ups are big. Also in the NYT, a fine profile of Tom Waits. Waits on record conglomerates: "They are like jellyfish. They have no anatomy. But they sting."
I think it was important because it was a hybrid between the popular sentimental song tradition and the rock tradition, which had appointed itself as an alternative to that. It's kind of interesting that they came together. I suppose more significantly for me, it came to define for generations the particular way that the articulation of certain emotions works, which is not irrelevant to the genres which it came from. It's kind of interesting it seems to me that the kind of convention of emoting became established in that period by taking what were seen as quite different traditions and fusing them.Perfect Sound Forever gets Simon Frith to explain the rock power ballad as an important development in music.
We have to get back to talent. I love Ms Dynamite, the UK Lauryn Hill. She tackles very touchy subjects. In one song she asks: "How many Africans died to pay for your Rolex?" That's about fatalities in African gold mines.The next big thing in British music is Miss Dynamite, sez Keisha of the Sugababes. Elsewhere in the Guardian UK: Lucian Grainge, sounds from elsewhere, the way we listen now, sound stats and Jon Pareles' call to stop your whining.
She's only 17, but to me that's really powerful - and I want more.
There is a lady in my life that I love. She was with me before, during and after my trial and conviction. A great deal of the album is an ode to her very existence. I've made plenty of mistakes in the past. Writing songs to her and about her was progress in healing those wounds. You ask me later on in the interview if I have any regrets, one — I wish I would have kissed her more.From Prison, Music of Hope (NYTimes.com). John Forté's second album, "I, John" is "a beautiful, reflective set of songs influenced by Bob Marley and Finley Quaye".
Thanks to Ishkur's Guide, I finally understand electronic music -- every artist is a genre!
"Eminem's defense of the homophobic lyrics on his albums has always been that he's not speaking as himself, he's speaking as a character, and he's representing homophobia in America ... I thought it would be quite interesting to take that method and just to imagine a scene where a boy meets a famous rap star backstage at his concert and is surprised to discover he's gay and ends up sleeping with him. Just to present rap in this homosexual context. I mean, there obviously are gay rap stars."MTV.com: Pet Shop Boys 'In Love' With Gay Eminem Character
The first track, "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," begins with an extended instrumental section that could have opened Kid A (another recent unconventional success from Radiohead). You can almost picture Reprise executives trading distressed looks as the song buzzes, pulsates, whirrs, tinkles, and chimes through its entire first minute. When Tweedy's gravelly voice finally makes an appearance, it is to deliver the line, "I am an American aquarium drinker." You know at once that this is going to be a different sort of Wilco album.Any of y'all heard "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" yet?
Short-wave radio is the overriding metaphor of YHF, which is named after a station operated by the Mossad. The record has a haunting, retro-futuristic sound as it experiments with the themes of static, noise, and imperfect communication. The lugubrious third track, "Radio Cure," is a moonlit drive between distant Midwestern towns, with sounds approaching and receding in the rear-view mirror. On "Ashes of American Flags," white noise interrupts the song. When Tweedy sings, "I would like to salute/the ashes of American flags," it is an elegy for Americana. Wilco is demonstrating the musical possibilities outside its borders.
The Village Voice reviews Cornershop's new Handcream for a Generation.
Pitchfork's We Are The World nails my fave hip-hop albums from 1990 to 1992. Did it get yours?
I recognized the voice at once. I'd have known it anywhere. It was my old friend, Wynette Byrd, born Virginia Wynette Pugh, with whom I had worked and played and recorded in Birmingham for the past few years. She had not long ago kissed me goodbye outside the Pussycat-a-Go-Go club down under the viaduct, where we had gone to hear some blues. I turned the radio up in my Monza as loud as it could go. Damn, she sounded good! And the material was right for her.Counterpunch's David Vest goes from Birmingham to Nashville on T.W., eh?
When the song ended, I was surprised to hear the singer identified not as Wynette Byrd but as a "new" artist named Tammy Wynette. I can still remember how strange that felt.
You mentioned the John Peel Sessions. Which is your favourite?Belgrade radio station B92 interviews John Peel.
PEEL: Well, over the years we've had almost everybody, except the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, of the kind of big bands of the past. More recently Oasis, I never really thought Oasis were much good to be honest, so they didn't do one. Whereas Blur did a couple of times. My favourites would be fairly obscure things - the two sessions the Slits did during the punk era which were just magical, I thought, were just terrific. Oh, there have been so many. There have been so few that have been bad, it’s amazing, really, when you consider how many have been done. Many thousands now. Very few of them have been disappointing. The Clash did half one, and then amazingly said that the equipment in the studio wasn't up to the standards that they'd expected so they couldn't complete the session. Which seemed to me to be unbearably pretentious of them [laughs]. It'd be very difficult to pick out an absolute favourite from them. There was one by the reggae band Culture that out of all of the sessions that were released on record is the one that I listen to the most, I think.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The voice from the audience echoed in the hall like a shout across time. "Kumbaya!" it called out from the dark.Someone's singing, lord.
At center stage, looking fit and petite, her salt-and-pepper hair clipped short, Joan Baez let out a giggle of surprise. She gazed at the sea of heads, many of them silver-haired, filling Town Hall in Manhattan, a stop on her recent tour of the Eastern Seaboard. "The only places I'll sing that," she said drily, "are places that are currently under siege." ...
"If Mickiewicz was alive today, he'd be a good rhymer."Polish Hip-Hop Rocks the Homies on the Blok (NYT)
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Ozzy Osbourne lost another Randy last week when Randy Castillo, who played drums for Ozzy, Motley Crue, and Lita Ford, died of cancer. My brother and I saw him in concert a little over ten years ago, and he rocked. |
This is The Mechanics Of Destruction - an anti-globalisation performance piece by the prolific, avant-garde DJ and producer that has already caused a sensation in Europe and Japan. The show sees Herbert creating live techno music out of the on-stage trashing of corporate products - a kind of live No Logo rave. It is, says its creator, about creating something good out of shit.Guardian article on DJ Matthew Herbert, whose project seeks a place for electronic music in the post-September 11 world, and to smash up some TVs and Big Macs along the way. Also interviewed by dj courtney here: Herbert has the "balls to stand up in front of 1000 strangers and try to entertain them with a bag of crisps". Sounds like fun.
I like records. I want to have a record. I want to look at it. I want to have the tactile experience of having it in my hands. A burned CD has my handwriting on it, and I can't stand my handwriting!Interview with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco at The Nation.
''The pay was so horrifically bad that I just couldn't,'' he remembers. ''I was like, If I can write a rhyme, and somebody will put me on their record, that's $200 or $300. How long does it take me -- an hour or two?''The mighty Mos Def, on taking it to the stage vs. rhyme-writin' on a page.
Groupie Central is your one-stop destination for such goodies as biographies of notable groupies (as well as wives and lovers of rock stars) - like the legendary "Sweet Connie" and Bebe Buell - and info on album covers and music videos that have featured some of these folks, but the juiciest stuff is the gossip section - Dave Mustaine of Megadeth is likely to talk about his wife to groupies, Trent Reznor has "mommy issues," and Huey Lewis is reputed to be the most, ah, blessed guy in the biz.
originally posted by Chris
How to run a rock band, wherein Doc McGhee, the force behind Mötley Crüe and Kiss, offers his 10 golden rules.
The idea of wearing just these colors, having just the two of us on stage -- these are just boxes that we've cooked up to put ourselves in so that we can create better. If we had five people on the stage, all the opportunity of a 300-track studio, or a brand-new Les Paul, the creativity would be dead. Too much opportunity would make it too easy. We just don't want to be complicated, it seems unnecessary.I'm also in love, but it's with the White Stripes.
I'm in love.
When I busted out this record, I got thrown back in my seat by a sound effects-laden almost tribal-like drum intro to "Arcarsenal" and had to search for my glasses on the floor after the deep yelps from the vocals knocked them right off.and
This is the best album of music history! I had never heard something like this before. At The Drive-In's sound is unique. Relationship of Command reached the perfection! Buy it and you'll listen to it forever! Once you hear it, At The Drive-In's Relationship of Command is going to be your bible! Believe me.
ATDI is more comfortable using its music to drop-kick listeners in the chest. A locomotive of adrenaline-charged punk, Command is the coming-out party for a band that has toiled in small-club obscurity for nearly six years.
If there was, like, a map of the Musical World, At The Drive-In would live at the intersection of Fugazi, Refused, and Rage Against The Machine.
The combination of electric piano, coupled with techno drum beats beneath wonderfully sonic and sometimes beautiful guitar lines makes this record a giant pedestal against all else that it will be compared to.
New Guided by Voices June 18.
Ned Wharton, music director of NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, appears on the show every now and then to talk about music he's digging. Sunday's show featured Neil Finn, Monty Alexander, and John McLaughlin.
"The recording academy recognizes the work of its artists and their music, from the standpoint of art, which is considerably different from what country radio is about," said Mr. Allen of the Country Radio Broadcasters Association. "Country radio is purely about mass appeal music, and it has some very defined limits because there are some very defined demographics that the owners are tying to find through that music. Where the Grammys are about art, country radio is about the Benjamins."The lowdown on the hoedown-showdown between country music and country radio.
"The whole L.A. corrido scene to a large extent has been a Mexican analog to the gangster rap world," says writer and musician Elijah Wald, author of a recent book about the narco-corrido. "Now you have groups cursing each other and their fans getting into fights, which is exactly where the gangster rap world went."Some corrido bands are fresh-dressed and crossover-clean; others have discovered the art of the dis.
With mp3s and CD burners commonplace, the art of the mix is being revived. Burn, Baby Burn! (closed), a "blogger CD swap", met with unanticipated interest upon being linked from MetaFilter and has closed registration early. The responsible MeFi thread spawned (predictably) an already popular MeFiSwap
and also points to a handful of similar projects around the net. I've got a couple hundred blank CDs looking for a purpose so I plan to get my hands into as many of these as I can:
Furthurnet "is the first and only 100% non-commercial peer-to-peer network of legal live music created by fans for fans!" They've got java-based clients for Windows and for Linux and OS X.
I heard them tell me that this land of dreams was now.
I told them I had ridden shooting stars
And said I'd show them how.
Josh reviews the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs song by song, in alphabetical order, starting with "Abigail, Belle of Kilronan". This is the second time he's performed the feat, although previously he did it by track listing.
originally posted by LionIndex
From an old (12/01) Swizzle-Stick item that just came to my attention:
In related news (in a loose sense of the word) flaminglips.com is reporting that [Flaming] Lips members Steven Drozd and Michael Ivins are currently working on an album with Steve Burns, host of Nickelodeon's "Blues Clues." To any of you with children, or who have seen this show, you know just how incredibly bizarre this proposition is.
Actually, I'm a big fan of what I guess they call electronica. My favorite albums these days are Basement Jaxx and Underworld and Groove Armada.Who writes the songs that make Barry Manilow cry?
I hate these Hutus, these de-Hutuized Hutus, who have renounced their identity, dear comrades. I hate these Hutus, these Hutus who march blindly, like imbeciles. This species of naive Hutus who join a war without knowing its cause. I hate these Hutus who can be brought to kill and who, I swear to you, kill Hutus, dear comrades. And if I hate them, so much the better.Simon Bikindi is accused of killing Rwandans softly with his songs.
''For a Rwandan, it's easy to see the virulence in the text,'' says Ephrem Rugiririza, a Hutu journalist. ''Renouncing identity'' implies marrying a Tutsi, Rugiririza explains, and ''naive Hutus'' is a reference to an army colonel who defected to the invasion force with his men.
Alison DesForges, the lead specialist on Rwanda for Human Rights Watch, says that Bikindi's songs are subtle, using poetic language and oblique references. ''There's a Rwandan proverb,'' she says. ''A message is given to many, but those who are meant to understand, understand.' There's always a subtext in Rwanda. You don't have to resort to brutal language. People understand.''
''If you look at his CD collection, he only likes hits,'' she said. He had been an underground musician for 10 years before ''Play'' made him a pop sensation, she noted, and maybe the music was underground because he created it to be, or maybe because that's where the music found an audience, but either way, all that was over. ''Every new CD he has, he bought because it has one hit on it,'' she went on to say. ''He doesn't want to hear the other songs. He plays that hit over and over. He's intrigued by hits, what those songs have. He doesn't say, 'That's a good song.' He says, 'That's such a hit.'''Like James Brown in "The Big Payback," Moby needs those hits.
boom selection/bsXtra
"The bootleg scene is ... one of the most interesting things happening in music right now," he said after listening to exactly part of exactly 2 different tracks. He didn't, you'll notice, indicate whether he particularly cared for the music itself.
Spin treats us to its roster of the top 40 "most important" artists in music today. (Well, top 20, at least. Where are 21-40?) I guess Nelly Furtado, #20, must be important if "she looks sexy even covered in mud." I'm glad the editors had such stringent requirements to make it into this prestigious line-up.
"When I was still with the Fugees I would pick up the guitar and I used to always say, 'Wyclef, just get out there and do that thing with the guitar,' " she explained shortly after the show. "He chose what path he chose, but interestingly enough, when God shows you a thing, we always encourage others to do what we were meant to do. But over a period of time [God] caused me to take it more seriously. He said, 'This is your accompaniment. Don't think it's going to be what you thought it was.' It's just by way of passion. How do we learn anything?Anybody get to watch Lauryn Hill unplugged?
"I don't know if I taught myself," she continued. "I just evolved by way of necessity, by way of grace. [My skills] just grew, and grew and grew."
One good thing about music, when it hits you Feel no pain (repeat) So hit me with music, hit me with music Hit me with music, hit me with music now I got to say trench town rock I say don't watch that Trench town rock, big fish or sprat Trench town rock, you reap what you sow Trench town rock, and everyone know now Trench town rock, don't turn your back Trench town rock, give the slum a try Trench town rock, never let the children cry Trench town rock, 'cause you got to tell JAH, JAHYou grooving Kingston 12, grooving, Kingston 12
Grooving woe, woe, it's Kingston 12
Grooving it's Kingston 12
No want you fe galang so
No want you fe galang so
You want come cold I up
But you can't come cold I up
'Cause I'm grooving, yes I'm groovingI say one good thing, one good thing
When it hits you feel no pain
One good thing about music
When it hits you feel no pain
So hit me with music
Hit me with music now
Hit me with music, hit me with music
Look at that
Trench town rock, I say don't watch that
Trench town rock, if you big fish or sprat
Trench town rock, you reap what you sow
Trench town rock, and everyone know now
Trench town rock, don't turn your back
Trench town rock, give the slum a try
Trench town rock, never let the children cry
Trench town rock, 'cause you got to tell JAH, JAH why
Grooving, grooving, grooving, grooving
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when people are catching |
People have this stereotype that he was this bop guy, but he was really this self-conscious artist. Here you can see him working and revising constantly. He was much more organized than people would have thought.NYT: New York Public Library Buys Kerouac Archive. Also in the Arts section: Featured Artist: Laurie Anderson. Captain says: put your hands on your head. Put your hands on your hips.
It is as if a sandlot baseball player not only got a chance to play in the majors but got to be Cal Ripken Jr. A young man whose life for a decade had revolved around a particular persona had been given license to assume that identity.
I know nobody cares about Judas Priest, but I can't stop re-reading Metal-head Becomes Metal-god from the New York Times (August 15, 1997). Predictably, there's now a movie called "Rock Star" based on the story.
I love this Ian MacKaye interview. At the end, there's a link to an older, but equally interesting Courtney Love rant on the recording industry.
I was getting pretty bored at work until I accidentally found the Misheard Lyrics page. I'm not the only one who was confused by the lyrics to this Manfred Mann song.
Moreover, after studying the Amendment's language and historical context, they realized that the principal intent of this "missing" Thirteenth Amendment was to prohibit Attorneys of the Bar Associations from serving in government as an "elite" class, i.e., lawyers holding membership in a society with a charter that creates special privileges for the them.
I don't know if this is true, but it's fun to think that it might be.
In other news, 'In God We Trust'.
Also, recently I watched Don't Look Back for the first time and I'm back on a Dylan kick. So read this please.
originally posted by zagg
The town where I live has a new "super" theme song. Listen to
Super Brooklyn.
Kestrel's Nest solved a mystery I've been wondering about for a few weeks—the Shonen Knife website had been appearing in his referrer logs too, and Anita informs us that it's a fake entry left by the Proxomitron, a "universal Web filter" (Windows only) written by a Shonen Knife fan.
