Ministry, Meshuggah

(Showbox Sodo) Meshuggah’s recent Nuclear Blast release disc has a title (obZen) and album cover that only a mother could love (although it’s uncertain how many mothers could really love a computer-generated image of a bloody, three-armed android doing yoga). The music, on the other hand, is another installment of their patented tech-metal, which has been inspiring awe among metalheads, prog rockers, and other heavy-music geeks for the last decade. It’s an improvement over 2005’s Catch Thirty-Three, with a healthy balance of convoluted rhythms and crushing, surgically precise guitar work. WILLIAM YORK

This show is going to have some serious hair. Too bad tickets are 45 damn dollars. Are people seriously willing to pay that much for this show?

One of my all-time favorite songs to play out and listen to is The O’Jays’ 1975 classic “I Love Music”. From the original to the Dimitri from Paris extended edit, the song is a true classic. That’s why I became extremely excited when I found a Vince Montana Jr.’s 1978 LP I Love Music, which features a female vocal cover version of the Kenneth Gamble & Leon Huff written original. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Montana’s version is as moving as The O’Jays rendition, however the female vocals definitely put a little bit of a different spin on the track. Overall, Montana stay’s with the basic feel of the original while adding a little of his “Salsoul” signature production, in order to create a solid alternative.

Montana - I Love Music
The O’Jays - I Love Music (Dimitri from Paris Re-edit)

The Queen Anne Easy Street welcomes Sea Wolf tonight at 6 pm. If you’re snowed in, or something, you can watch a live stream of his performance online at Easy Street’s website.

As the New York Times reports today, the Brooklyn Academy of Music is about to start a month-long tribute to Paul Simon, who has been considered kitschy and uncool ever since I fell hard for his songs as a teenager but is now, like, totally cool again—in part because of, well, you know.

Abandon isn’t part of Mr. Simon’s palette; he’s terse, controlled, more than a little uptight. His music is for listeners who appreciate the crafty details nearly as much as he does. He has always been the smart, bourgeois, fussy wimp who makes some self-styled rockers want to kick sand in his face. But his approach keeps resurfacing, lately via this year’s New York rock success story, Vampire Weekend, whose debut album leaped from indie-rock blogs to the Top 20, drawing on Mr. Simon’s vocabulary of collegiate allusions, bouncy rhythms and African-tinged guitar licks.

Jon Pareles’s whole piece—which takes wide view of Simon’s career—is here.

(Cf. Charles Mudede’s contentious essay on Vampire Weeken; Grandy’s review of their show Wednesday night; and Sean Nelson’s column about a 1981 Simon & Garfunkel concert released on DVD in 2003.)

Around 10:30 pm last night, the cops showed up to Chop Suey and told Club Pop, a bi-weekly 18+ electronic and rock music dance night, that they were being too loud. They turned it down a bit, but it creeped back up, and at around 12:30, 15 minutes into the set of their headliner Tim Sweeney, the cops showed up again and demanded that they turn it down. When they complied, many patrons left.

“The thing about this kind of [electronic] music, is that when people go out to hear it, they are paying for a great soundsystem. Otherwise, they could just listen to it in their bedroom,” says Club Pop promoter Michael Yuasa. The end of night exodus didn’t surprise him. “If you can’t feel the bass in your chest, no one wants to dance.”

Club Pop has never had a noise complaint before, but Neumo’s says they’ve been visited many times lately by the police, the liquor board, the city attorney’s office, and the fire department. “We’ve had someone in here almost every night for the last six weeks,” says co-owner Steven Severin. Calls to the police department and the liquor board haven’t been returned yet. “They’ve told us that Neumo’s is too loud, but we are asking, what is too loud?” Neumo’s is in a relative dead zone—there are no residential units near the club. “Without an actual decibel meter reading, we’re not going to turn it down.”

Severin believes the current rule is that the noise has to read at 57 decibels from 75 feet away for a violation. Newell Aldrich, an aide to Nick Licata, says that the current rules on the books permit officers to use the public disturbance municipal code to ask clubs to turn it down—there are no current decibel standards. When the officers showed up to Chop Suey last night, they weren’t carrying a decibel meter. “Our sound person took a measurement with our decibel reader and asked to compare it to the officer’s. The officer said that she left her meter in her locker that night,” says Yuasa.

On June 1, the new nightlife ordinance will go into effect. Council executives are determining precise decibel standards right now for the new rule, which will make it “unlawful for a person to have allowed to originate noise from the property that is audible from inside the residence of a person of normal hearing.”

The round of sweet 16 had some sweet action. (See that action – here). Lemmy Kilmister pulled off a stunning upset of Kaz from PWRFL Power. Now there are 8. You decide who advances:

16. Lemmy Kilmister – Motorhead
8. Jackie Hell
5. Barfly – the Saturday Knights
4. King Buzzo – the Melvins
3. EYE - Boredoms
11. Ms. Kristen Dupré - Elliot Spitzer prostitute
10. Tim Harrington - Les Savy Fav
2. Slats – Pain Cocktail

And the tip:

L.A. blog Aquarium Drunkard has just posted a live acoustic set of M. Ward and My Morning Jacket’s Jim Jones performing at a 300 capacity church at SXSW. There are solo songs from both artists as well as collaborations. Enjoy.

(ht Stereogum)

Five Metro Station fans braving the freezing rain and snow until Neumo’s box office opens.

The fantasy:

The reality:

The dog Laika, the first living creature to orbit the Earth, did not live nearly as long as Soviet officials led the world to believe.

The animal, launched on a one-way trip on board Sputnik 2 in November 1957, was said to have died painlessly in orbit about a week after blast-off.

Now, it has been revealed she died from overheating and panic just a few hours after the mission started.

The video:

Arflovers put this video up today. I know it’s almost a year old, but I’d never seen it before and maybe you haven’t either:

Good news regarding rock reunions - John Paul Jones talks very vaguely about new album possibly happening someday. Maybe

Bad news regarding rock reunions - Original Korn line-up possibly back together

Good news from ex-locals - New Melvins record drops in July

Bad news from ex-local - New Chris Cornell record produced by Timbaland

Good news regarding Antarctica - Fall Out Boy cancel Antarctica gig; don’t set world record

Bad news regarding Antarctica - Part of Wilkins ice shelf collapses. Not really music news, I guess

Getting tired of seeing all these announcements for great festivals you can’t afford to go see? KEXP has got your back. They’re bringing their crew to Chicago this summer to broadcast live from the Pitchfork Music Festival. Here’s the lineup so far:

Friday, July 18: Pitchfork Music Festival and All Tomorrow’s Parties present “Don’t Look Back”

Public Enemy performing It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Mission of Burma performing Vs.
+ one more to be announced

Saturday, July 19:

Animal Collective
Jarvis Cocker
!!!
Vampire Weekend
Dizzee Rascal
Fleet Foxes
No Age
Jay Reatard
King Khan & His Shrines
Atlas Sound
The Ruby Suns
A Hawk and a Hacksaw
Occidental Brothers Dance Band International
+ many more!

Sunday, July 20:

Dinosaur Jr.
Spiritualized
M. Ward
Ghostface and Raekwon
The Apples in Stereo
Boris
Dirty Projectors
Cut Copy
Extra Golden
El Guincho
Fuck Buttons
+ many more!

John Richards and Cheryl Waters will be doing shows live from the festival on Saturday and Sunday.

Here’s what My Philosophy recommends for you this evening:

Then on Friday, March 28, you have three ways to go for the hiphop. First is at the Vera Project, where Macklemore heads up an (natch) all-ages lineup featuring World Rap Champeen and member of Portland’s Sandpeople, Illmaculate. His Rain Check mixtape is pretty thorough; hit up his MySpace and hear the wreck he catches beyond the battle circuit. Also on the bill are Solstice, Sportn’ Life’s own Kingzmen, and the return of the 206’s Ricky Pharoe, who’s been living in Long Beach, storied homeland of the Dove Shack. If you want a slept-on SEA jewel, go get his and Tru-ID’s ‘06 LP The Key with No Lock, not to mention Pharoe’s ‘05 solo Civilized.

Also on Friday is the return of cult-favorite weekly Foot Traffic, now at the Lo_Fi. This night serves as the CD release for B-Girl’s album Love or Fate, and features Alpha P, Mind Movers, Jewels Hunter, Randy Hansen, and art from Onesevennine and Rogue LaRoc. That B-Girl album is another good comp from that Project Mayhem collective, pairing MCs with B-Girl’s own electro-eclectic production.

Bug in the Bassbin offers up this:

If that’s not enough Chop Suey for you, return on Friday for the fourth anniversary of Comeback, which as always will be a gay old time. For their anniversary (congrats!), they’re bringing in UK remixer extraordinaire Tronik Youth, who’s added his personal nu-electro touch to the Gossip, Chromeo, and Shinichi Osawa, in addition to putting out some well-received mixtapes that have left the blogosphere buzzing. He’s currently on a tour across the U.S. in support of his debut single “We Are,” released in October.

In Underage I give a little love to Set Your Goals, who are at Neumo’s tonight:

So on Friday, March 28, should you go to the StD show at Neumo’s, the best advice I can offer you is that you arrive early enough to see Set Your Goals, a pop-punk band who plow through two- and three-minute songs built on anthemic breakdowns with melodic hardcore influences (they’re named after a CIV song, after all). Their songs are about the usual suspects (girls, the need to escape, backstabbing friends) and there’s nothing new to the sound (pop punk is a genre with little room for innovation), but just a couple years ago they were playing the Viaduct in Tacoma, when it was a windowless hole that could hold about 30. Now they’re touring venues 20 times that size with Saves the Day.

Nada Surf is back at the Showbox at the Market. Here’s what Eric Grandy has to say about openers the Builders and the Butchers:

Nada Surf, the Builders and the Butchers
(Showbox at the Market) Alaska to Portland transplants the Builders and the Butchers assemble five people and friends to play guitar, bass, drums, mandolin, banjo, accordion, violin, xylophone, bells, washboard, etc. Singer Ryan Sollee’s reedy voice and the band’s old-timey instrumentation faintly recall fellow Portlanders the Decemberists, but where the latter band’s anachronisms tend toward the twee Victorian, the Builders and the Butchers evoke something more like the grim dust bowl and boxcars of the Great Depression. Still, they’re not strict historians—among their ballads of hard rains and “Spanish Death” is the odd lyric about lake-dwelling vampires. Whatever the subject, the ensemble’s songs and playing are winningly dramatic and worn. ERIC GRANDY

And finally…

The Corner: Cancer Rising, Silent Lambs Project, Candidt, Grayskul
(Rendezvous) Where is the true hiphop? One spot that has it regularly is the Jewel Box Theater at the Rendezvous. Here, once a month, there is a gathering of local hiphop heads. This gathering is intimate. Meaning, there is a close relationship between the audience and the performers. This closeness (and smallness) is its truth—a truth because this how it all began, in small spaces, in small rooms, in the small hours of the night. What is documented in the bibles of hiphop—Beat Street and Wild Style—is being practiced at the Jewel Box Theater. Tonight’s gathering will have as its core performers Cancer Rising, Silent Lambs Project, Candidt, and Grayskul. As Pete Rock put it: “In the beginning, let it be like the record spinning.” CHARLES MUDEDE

Missoula based record label Wantage USA is calling for submissions for its annual “Total Fest.” (Previous Nat Damm poster above.)

Deadline to submit is April 4.

What is Total Fest? Total Fest is a 3-day DIY festival of rock, pop, metal, etc. set in the welcoming confines of Missoula, Montana that takes place August 14th, 15th, and 16th. Total Fest is also just a cool word. Say it, TOTAL FEST. Not to be confused with Testy Fest.

Many Seattle bands have played it in the past: Big Business, the Lights, Lozen, the Narrows, the Trucks, and Akimbo.

From their website:

Total Fest 2008: That time of year is rapidly approaching again. Total Fest will return to the amazing Badlander in downtown Missoula, Montana again this year on August 14, 15 and 16th. For all bands, all ages interested in playing, the deadline for submissions is April 4th. So get those demo’s ready and send them along to: Wantage USA P.O. Box 8681 Missoula, MT 59807.

I spoke with the Lights:

Tell me, what is Total Fest? What’s it like?
The Lights: It’s a fucking blast. Josh from Wantage is the man. He brews his own “Total Fest Beer”, hosts a BBQ in his back yard, all the bands hang out during the day, many of which camp out in people’s back yards. There’s usually a trip up the river for a swim and it’s just a weekend of no nonsense bullshit. It’s like one giant rock festival, camping trip, party.

There are day time all ages shows, a record swap, and usually some rousing games of “horseballs” (it’s like horseshoes …) and definetly some frisbee golf action.

Another, Rikki Rockett, was arrested on a rape warrant earlier this week.

Via the DailyNews.com:

The drummer for 80s glam band Poison was arrested on a rape warrant issued out of Mississippi as he arrived at LAX after getting off a flight from New Zealand, police said.
Rikki Rockett, 46, was arrested Monday at the airport and booked into the Los Angeles County Jail, according to Los Angeles police and the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department’s Inmate Information Web site. He was held on a strong-arm rape warrant stemming from Neshoba County, Missisippi, and appears to have been released from L.A. County custody, the Sheriff’s Web site shows. His status today could not be confirmed.

It’s been a hell of a week for reporter Chuck Philips and the LA Times.

First the LA Times published his story linking Diddy to Tupac’s 1994 shooting.

Then Sean “Diddy” Combs said the story is a lie, lashing out against the paper for running it.

Next the Smoking Gun discovered that the FBI reports that reporter Philips cited throughout the story were possibly fake.

After that, the LA Times claimed they would launch their own investigation.

And now… the LA Times has apologized and Chuck Philips says he now believes those documents are indeed fake.

Reporter Chuck Philips and his supervisor, Deputy Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin, issued statements of apology Wednesday afternoon. The statements came after The Times took withering criticism for the Shakur article, which appeared on latimes.com last week and two days later in the paper’s Calendar section.

The criticism came first from The Smoking Gun website, which said the newspaper had been the victim of a hoax, and then from subjects of the story, who said they had been defamed.

“In relying on documents that I now believe were fake, I failed to do my job,” Philips said in a statement Wednesday. “I’m sorry.”

In his statement, Duvoisin added: “We should not have let ourselves be fooled. That we were is as much my fault as Chuck’s. I deeply regret that we let our readers down.”

That’s a big whoops.

From Megan Seling’s Interrogation of Nada Surf’s Matthew Caws:

For Nada Surf to survive for 15 years, there’s maybe some luck working.

Our staying together is a funny thing. Usually the answer to the question is: “Oh, well because we’re such good friends, we live near each other, and the shows have always been great.” And that’s all true, but the other reason I think we’ve stayed together is if we dissolve the group, what would come next? We would have to form another band with the explicit intent to do well, since we don’t have jobs anymore. Nada Surf was formed in the luxury of hobbydom. And that’s the best way to play, when you don’t need it to work, you just need it to be enjoyable. So we could stay together or find real jobs. I think laziness is what kept the group together.

From Bug in the Bassbin by Donte Parks:

There are some within the electronic music community that write off Club Pop as just some “hipster shit,” but in all fairness, Club Pop has possibly the broadest ambition of any regular night in Seattle, booking both DJs and bands to nudge their crowd into a sweaty fervor. Yes, the 18+ age range makes it a training ground for future Cha Cha regulars, but so what? Many of Club Pop’s bands haven’t broken big enough to play elsewhere, and many of the DJs have their fingers on the pulse of where electronic music is going, making Club Pop a glimpse into the future of the form. If you’ve chosen to ignore it, you’re doing yourself a disservice. For this edition they’ve got DFA’s Tim Sweeney, who not only killed it with his last Seattle appearance, but does so with every installment of his WNYU radio show Beats in Space.

From Up & Comings:

The Greyboy Allstars, Busdriver

(Neumo’s) Out of the South Central L.A. Blowed Crew, Busdriver has carved a frenetic hiphop niche. His songs are a Masterpiece Ghettotech Theatre and he plays a speed-reading auctioneer. His Epitaph Records release of RoadKillOvercoat was produced by DJ Nobody and Boom Bip. Busdriver’s flows are precise and freely associative. Topics cut quickly from casting agents, cowgirls, oxycodone, and suicide to brunch. “In the Polaroid at a get together/Wearing a corduroy vest sweater” he “negates the myth of the great black boyfriend.” Busdriver’s spitfire delivery conjugates the grammatical latticework of a sentence like a jazz drummer dices a beat. Content is scattershot, but there’s balance. TRENT MOORMAN

Mt. St. Helens, Vietnam Band, I’m calling you out.

What is with your obsession with this curtain?

What the hell is going on in this video?

homeostasis

Where’s the music? Stop leading me on!

^{You would not believe how “sexy” the Google Image search results are for “Vampire”}

Vampire Weekend, YACHT @ Neumo’s

“It’s sold-out, but you’re here. You made it!” So said Jona Bechtolt of YACHT, between songs, towards the end their opening set, trying one more time to rouse the politely inert capacity crowd. At first, I though YACHT was a weird choice to open for Vampire Weekend (obvious boat shoes jokes aside), just as I though Bechtolt was a weird choice to open for Architcture in Helsinki on their last tour, although, they were at least bound by a remix. But it occured to me, watching Bechtolt and collaborator/girlfriend Claire Evans (who recorded vocals on I Believe in You Your Magic is Real but hasn’t been a regular part of YACHT’s live show), that a band couldn’t hope for a better warm-up act. YACHT are cheerleaders extraordinaire—energetic, kinetic, effusively positive and extroverted. If they can’t stir your crowd, god help you.

They began with a (new?) song whose chorus declared, “You can live anywhere you want” over a litany of possible places—the forest, small towns, etc—and a more organic, psychedelic thump than YACHT’s usual sharp electro. Another unfamiliar song found Bechtolt advising, “Protect your eyes! / Watch the downloading / Protect your eyes! / read the comments”—a blogger’s delight. For “The Magic Beat,” Evans and possibly Bechtolt made their way down into the crowd during the anthemically self-satisfied call-and-response of “How do you like it? / How do you like it? / I like it / it’s my shit.” Every song was punctuated with the sampled sound of shattering glass, like Clipse’s gunshot sounds. It occurs to me, too, that perhaps YACHT make sense opening for Vampire Weekend because they pull off something like what L’Homme Run never quite did. A friend and I talk about whether YACHT is sincere or ironic (admittedly, not a black or white issue), settling on the idea that their songs are sincere but their dancing and delivery are a little sarcastic. Whatever, their set was sincerely great, another fine counterpoint to this little rant.

But the crowd didn’t really light up until the young men of Vampire Weekend took the stage, eliciting massive cheers and one lone shout of “Charles in Charge!” Vampire Weekend, whatever the cultural baggage attached to them, really put on a great show. The rhythm section looks and sounds like they’re having a blast, bass lines bouncing like a car tires on a bumpy dirt road, drums switching from loose punk pogo to lopsided polyrhythms with easy velocity. Singer/guitarist Ezra Koenig can barely keep his mouth to the mic, jumping and strumming and skipping as he is, but he lands every line, smiling. Keyboardist and occasional guitarist Rostam Batmanglij tickles out little circular melodies and classical scales, his weighty contributions more obvious here than on record, lending the songs much of their liveliness (still, a friend observes that one song really would benefit from live strings). They all look like the kind of perfectly nice boys that your mom would be happy to see you bring home. They wear polos and sweaters and maybe boat shows (maybe just Keds), although the sweaters come off as the set heats up. They play a newer, unreleased song “for Seattle,” since we and KEXP (“obviously a great radio station”) have been so supportive since their last time in town at the Crocodile. Koenig talks about how “every song has a vibe, and most of them come from the West Coast,” which is kind if a little baffling. He introduces “A-Punk” as being their “kind of ‘Twist’-y” song. They play “One (Blake’s Got a New Face)” and “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” and most (all?) of their album. Everything sounds pretty much perfect.

About that aforementioned cultural baggage—it’s not just something that’s been foisted on the band. Vampire Weekend are no dummies (maybe you’ve heard, they went to college), and their songs deal internally with all the heady subjects and exciting contradictions that get the critics so worked up. Yes, their music references Graceland and the Police and “Here Comes My Baby” and afro-pop traditions already parsed by more learned critics than I—and their lyrics reference Peter Gabriel and Reggaeton and Kafiyas (quite a bit of their lyrics seem to be concerned with attire, in fact); they know exactly what they’re doing, and they’re doing it well.

Backstage with the band is a whole ‘nother thing: No groupies or smoking or drugs, just late-night, buzzing, dorm room-style debate, much of it pitting Charles Mudede against Koenig and Batmanglij, eventually devolving into 9/11 conspiracy talk and Mudede shouting, “Don’t fuck with me!” It was delightful; I just hope the Stranger didn’t make a terrible impression, because their album’s quite a hit around the office.

I hate to be the dude who loses his buzz over a band once the fratties find it, but the girl with the non-stop WHOO-ing in my ear last night didn’t harden my resolve. Fine, sure—you’re stoked about the here-and-now Bon Iver playing to a packed crowd in the relatively intimate Nectar Lounge (clearly overselling the venue’s “maximum occupancy of 123” sign above the front door). You want Justin Vernon and his band to feel your love. But do you have to holler whenever the crowd goes pins-and-needles silent, or whenever a given song speeds up or slows down? Are you making noise because you’re afraid that the room might get so quiet, you’ll be forced to either pay attention or, worse, finally hear the wheels squeaking within your pea brain?

Phosphorescent’s Matthew Houck (SXSW ‘08)

But enough of the girl who apparently attended her first concert that didn’t start before 11pm or involve lawn seating. Like I said in U&C, Bon Iver has been reaping praise as of late, though I found myself less enchanted by the trio after last night’s crowd-pleaser of a set. No, I don’t blame the influx of Chets and Ashleighs; rather, I blame opener Phosphorescent. I can’t disguise my affinity for Matthew Houck’s songwriting as of late, particularly on last year’s stunning Pride, and even though the guy’s voice was blown like a fuse at the Nectar, it’s hard not to succumb to lyrics like these: “I won’t be breathing like you breathe into the light of day / I’ll be in the yard still taking pictures in the dark / Of all our torn up praise.” If anything, his addled vocal chords, which still held up when he wasn’t going for high or hard notes, only helped his odes of vulnerability and romantic failure—not to mention stirring covers of Leonard Cohen and, holy be, The Dire Straits’ “So Far Away”? Sure enough, and just as he did at SXSW, Houck ended his set with the new album’s title track, layered with repeating vocals harmonizing against himself until the speakers couldn’t take it any longer.

Other than that, Phosphorescent’s arrangements were relatively simple; in spite of a talented band, particularly its piano player, the band’s songs are allegiant to the straight-and-powerful ways of Neil Young-era Americana. Wasn’t hard to figure out that the crowd was more interested in the vocal harmonies, minimalist structures and sing-alongs of Bon Iver—not to mention, well, the hit:

The performance made simplified, blue-eyed folk as entertaining as possible, whether in the form of overt sing-a-longs or surprising drumming arrangements, and Vernon’s voice was in fine form—ironic, I suppose, since he was the one with the blown voice back at SXSW. But the show didn’t mask the lack of substance in the songs themselves. I’m curious to see if Vernon’s writing has legs, but in the meantime, he’s soaking up the fandom—like in the video above, where a Phosphorescent member climbs atop some shoulders and bares his chest. Funny, sure, but the captive eyes of the crowd were pretty much doing the same thing.

It happened about a week ago, but should you have missed it, here’s the letter the Mountain’s former Sunday Brunch host, Drew Dundon, posted in his blog after abruptly leaving the station:

Dear Joe Q,

On Sunday, March 16th, I played a song with everybody’s favorite expletive included in the lyrics (by accident of course - and thanks Joe Jackson!), in doing so I signed my own pink slip. In corporate radio the F word ranks higher on the “Protect the People” scale than exposed nipple flesh simply because of it’s audio nature. As a result of my infraction I was asked to submit to a pre programmed show; instead I chose to leave.

I understand the station’s position as government fines for this kind of issue are just ridiculous - if the FCC put as much energy into keeping diversity alive as they do into policing for swear words we’d all be much better off.

Sunday Brunch was a true labor of love for me and a great pleasure to put together live each week. I want to thank all my listeners for tuning into the program and the Mountain for allowing me the freedom to host such a unique show over the years.

Music programming and broadcasting are in my blood and one of these days I’ll get back at it, either in radio or elsewhere, but first I’m going to sleep in late for a few Sundays and make sure to enjoy the experience!

Check back here again soon and I’ll let you know what’s next. In the mean time I’ll devote some web space to reviewing and recommending music here on this page.

Thanks again, see you soon,
Drew

Speaking of sweet videos… Michael Maniglia and Nick Dale of Subterra Films have entered the video for MOTORIN’ into something called The Very Short Movie Festival. It’s in the finals, and they need your vote.

You have to click through a quick registration process, but it’s worth it. According to sources, The Knights have signed an exclusive contract stating, that if you vote, “TSK will personally come to your house and hug your mother for longer than seems comfortable.”

Vote Now! VOTE HERE! Vote before April 14th!

Seattle three piece pop-rock sentinels Tennis Pro are releasing their third album this Saturday at King Cobra. The album is entitled Are You There God? It’s Me, Tennis Pro. Ice Age Cobra, the Whore Moans, and Bad Love Sessions are also on the bill.

The album was recorded at local studio The House of Breaking Glass and mixed by Greg Williamson (Sunny Day Real Estate, Jeremy Enigk). Tennis Pro is: Sean Lowry (drums), David Drury (guitar, vocals), and Philip Peterson (bass/vocals). Produced by Phil Peterson.

A Line Out exclusive listen to the song “Kimberly” - is here.

Phil Peterson also plays with Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground and has been sitting in with Nada Surf. He’s a busy man, who appreciates breakdancing. We spoke:

How was the recording?
Phil: Lots of Sparks filled nights for about a year.

How does this record differ from the first two?
Better songs, more fun in the production, also Greg Williamson from Sunny Day Real Estate mixed it, AND will be mixing sound at our CD release show at King Cobra.

I love the title. I wouldn’t take you all to be Judy Blume fans.
We’re huge Judy Blume fans. It all pretty much comes back to Judy. Actually, we had tons of problems getting these CD’s printed. Duplicators kept rejecting the order because of the artwork we wanted printed on the CD’s.

Nudity?
Kind of. The image in question was from a pencil drawing entitled “Nice Rack (for Two Kinds of Hunters),” which juxtaposes a deer with antlers above the image of a woman pulling up her shirt. The artist, Dawn Cerny, is currently showing at the Henry Art gallery with her collection “We’re All Going to Die (Except for You).” We really scrambled to get the CD’s printed in time.

The thing is, a CD already looks like a boob. CD duplicators print boobs every day, all day long. So the fact that those duplicators wouldn’t print a boob on another boob just makes them look like hypocrites.

Read and weep:

Are you following the presidential race?
DMX: Not at all.

You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.

His name is Barack?!

Barack Obama, yeah.

Barack?!

Barack.

What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?

Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.

Barack Obama?

Yeah.

What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta here.

You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.

I ain’t really paying much attention.

I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…

Wow, Barack! The nigga’s name is Barack. Barack? Nigga named Barack Obama. What the fuck, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his fuckin’ name. Ima tell this nigga when I see him, “Stop that bullshit. Stop that bullshit” [laughs] “That ain’t your fuckin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.

By dan10things.

Northwest Top 10
Best-Selling Northwest Artists at Local Independent Record Stores for the week of March 20

1. FLEET FOXES Sun Giant EP (Sub Pop)
2. SERA CAHOONE Only as the Day Is Long (Sub Pop)
3. THE HELIO SEQUENCE Keep Your Eyes Ahead (Sub Pop)
4. GRAND ARCHIVES Grand Archives (Sub Pop)
5. THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA These Are the Good Times People (Fugitive)
6. EDDIE VEDDER Music for the Motion Picture Into the Wild (J)
7. STEPHEN MALKMUS & THE JICKS Real Emotional Trash (Matador)
8. CHRIS WALLA Field Manual (Barsuk)
9. DESTROYER Trouble in Dreams (Merge)
10. BRANDI CARLILE Live at Easy Street Records (Columbia)

Compiled from figures at Sonic Boom (Capitol Hill and Ballard) and Easy Street (Queen Anne and West Seattle).

Tickets go on sale Saturday, April 5 at 9 am.

Tickets prices are $49.50, $79.50, $149.50 and $250.00 and go on sale Saturday, April 5 at 9:00 a.m. at all Ticketmaster outlets, Ticketmaster.com, livenation.com, or charge by phone (206) 628-0888.

And now, to get your Thursday started off right…

Yesterday, Dr. Pepper told Axl Rose, through a public statement, that if he releases Chinese Democracy in 2008, everyone in America will get a free Dr. Pepper.

Axl Rose has responded. Via BBC News:

In a statement on the group’s website, Rose said: “We are surprised and very happy to have the support of Dr Pepper with our album Chinese Democracy.”

The fizzy drinks firm has pledged to give everyone in the US a free can if the band releases the record.

The release date for the forthcoming album has continually been pushed back.

‘Instant classic’

It was most recently scheduled for release in March 2007, but vanished from the schedule without a new date being set.

Dr Pepper’s Jaxie Alt said “Axl’s quest for perfection” was understandable.

The company said in an “unprecedented show of solidarity with Axl, everyone in America, except estranged guitarists Slash and Buckethead” would receive a free can of the drink.

Rose said: “As some of Buckethead’s performances are on our album, I’ll share my Dr Pepper with him”.

It will be the first album of new material for the group since the 1991 records Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II.

Rose has reportedly spent $13 million (£6.47 million) getting Chinese Democracy ready.

So, he says he will share his soda with Buckethead. Which means he’ll be getting a soda? So he’s gonna do it?

The Physics-Ready For We from The Physics on Vimeo.

I’d like to take this time to put up this awesome video by one of Seattle’s best hiphop groups, The Physics. I’d also like to take this time to refute some words on The Physics recently laid out by my man Charles Mudede.

What makes “They Call Me” so smart is that the Physics are not simply mocking the life and mode of the ghetto prince, they are doing better than Dogg and others who, track after track, attempt to capture the spirit of hood cool and smoothness. This is another kind of mockery, another kind of laughter.

If their debut album Future Talk tells you anything, it’s that The Physics are everyday dudes. Definitely smart, that’s apparent- but everyday cats, trying to enjoy themselves. Mocking hood cool or smoothness is not where Thig and DJ/MC/producer Just D’Amato are coming from- this is in fact part of them. They are not pious upholders of ‘the underground’ nor are they ‘blinged-out’ commercial cartoons. They are regular joes and like a lot of us, embody a lot of what’s between these two extremes.

This aspect bears the indelible imprint of the Ghetto Children (B-Self and Vitamin D), to me the best Seattle hiphop group of all time. To misunderstand the aim of The Physics is- i daresay- to misunderstand a great deal about Seattle hiphop, period.

You have not lived until you’ve overheard a guy that was just on the cover of Spin railing about the 911 Truth movement and how the CIA edits the NY Times before it goes to print. Really.

Guh. Music genre themed photoshoot on ANTM tonight (at McCarren Park Pool? EDGY): The plus sized “grunge” model looked just like Tad. The “house” model held DJ headphones up to her ear, only with the headphones cupped together rather than actually open. Some judge called the “pop” model Britney when she was so clearly Kylie. But the kicker, by far, was the “emo” shoot, just some standard Urban Otufitters blacks and stripes, to which J Alexander responded with this post’s headline, “So, This is White Music?” Oh, hell yes! Pitchfork gives this episode an 8.8.

And the emos are losing.

From the Daily Swarm:

“Mexico’s Emo Witch Hunt: Mob attacks in Mexico City and Guadalajara… Televisa VJ’s rants inspire violence… Emo kids fight back across the country…”

The footage is all in Spanish, but you get the idea of the scene—the punks come in, the Hare Krishnas make an appearance… sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.

And then there’s this video in which, says the LA Weekly, “a Televisa on-air personality named Kristoff expresses a serious dose of anti-emo rhetoric and switches to English to say, on network television, “Fucking bullshit” to the emo movement.”

If anyone out there speaks Spanish and can translate it, please do. The jist of it is apparently the movement (emo) is stupid and self-absorbed. And yeah, “fucking bullshit.” But I’d love to know exactly what’s being said. Especially in the news broadcast clip.

You know how you come across a word you don’t know and then look it up and then suddenly you start to notice the word everywhere, as if the whole world is responding to the new information you’ve just acquired? Well, a couple months ago I was reading Mary McCarthy’s novel The Group (1954) and, on the first page, came across this incredibly long kick-ass sentence (which, in addition to containing the word in question [I’ve bolded it], will give you a full sense of what The Group is all about):

They were in the throes of discovering New York, imagine it, when some of them had actually lived here all their lives, in tiresome Georgian houses full of waste space in the Eighties or Park Avenue apartment buildings, and they delighted in such out-of-the-way corners as this, with its greenery and Quaker meeting-house in red brick, polished brass, and white trim next to the wine-purple Episcopal church—on Sundays, they walked with their beaux across the Brooklyn Bridge and poked into the sleepy Heights section of Brooklyn; they explored residential Murray Hill and quaint McDougal Alley and Patchin Place and Washington Mews with all the artists’ studios; they loved the Plaza Hotel and the fountain there and the green mansarding of the Savoy Plaza and the row of horsedrawn hacks and elderly coachmen, waiting, as in a French Place, to tempt them to a twilight right through Central Park.

I read that and then stood up and went to my huge, semi-trusty, illustrated American Heritage and found the entry for “mansard”:

If you can’t read that, the definition is: “A roof having two slopes on all four sides, with the lower slope almost vertical and the upper almost horizontal. Also called a ‘mansard roof.’”

Imagine my delight when putting on the Vampire Weekend record a month or two after stumbling upon the word in The Group, with its marvelous first song “Mansard Roof,” which itself begins: I see a mansard roof through the trees… The word is back! It had its day in the sunshine back when The Group was a best-seller, and it’s having another day in the sunshine now. (Tonight.)

One of my most sought after records right now has to be Danny Krivit’s 2003 un-mixed re-edit compilation “Edits By Mr. K”. And Probably by the time I’m done doing blogs, I will have posted most of the entire compilation. It’s some of Krivit’s best work in my opinion, re-editing classic disco and soul cuts by artists’ like Diana Ross, Lenny Williams, Caress, L.T.D., The Sisters Love, and many many more. Lately, however, my favorite track lately has been Krivit’s edit of Betty Wright’s 1974 uptempo soul classic “Where Is The Love”. He successfully takes this rare soul classic and turns it up a notch, creating a very funked-out and more dancefloor friendly disco gem. Nice work, once again by the man known as Mr. K. Now if I can only get my hands on a vinyl pressing of the record.

Get Danny Krivit’s edit of Betty Wright’s “Where Is The Love” and much more disco classics by clicking here.

I used to feel a little uncomfortable at Murder City Devils shows back in my awkward teens. Their audience had this whole, over-the-top skulls’n’switchblades Outsiders thing that I wasn’t that into, and I always felt a little out of place at the concerts. Part of it was wanting to fit in with them, I’m sure, but a (bigger?) part of it was just being none too impressed with the crowd’s vintage tough guy (and gal) aesthetic. It was so simple, reductive, cliché even. But I loved me some Murder City. All of which is to say this: You can love a band and not their audience.

So it was at last night’s Jens Lekman show for at least one of my companions who seemed to enjoy the music but couldn’t stand Lekman’s disciples (Lekmaniacs?)—twee, twittering, besweatered fans who really did squeal with delight at Lekman’s every precious gesture. “This is the most annoying crowd I have ever seen,” she said. “They all need to be gassed.”

Personally, I thought the crowd was fine, if obviously smitten. “You’re my fucking hero, Jens,” shouted one man. “You’re fucking hot,” shouted another, later. And to be fair, Lekman’s story (young man uses music to escape from stifling, small hometown of Kortedala) is kind of heroic—he says that Kortedala is like a labyrinth, “easy to get into, but impossible to get out of,” saying that he has to get google maps to guide cab drivers out of the place. And his music (soft rocking, sunny, ’70s-styled pop jangle with live and sequenced strings, songs that sounds like they belong in some faded, romantic movie) is gorgeous, and I suppose he’s hot in an Ikea-pitchman sort of way.

His band’s synchronized dance moves (pointing at imaginary watches, beckoning “come hither”) and his banter (“Why do you write so many songs about girls, Jens?”—he’s like a Swedish Kaz Nomura, or Kaz is like a Japanese Jens) are cute. His voice is golden and resonant like Stephin Merrit’s—”It’s like he’s flipping a switch and all of a sudden he’s Merrit,” said my skeptical friend—and his anecdotal story-song about traveling to Berlin and finding himself pretending to be his lesbian friend’s fiance to placate her traditional German father was funny and charming in a way that not enough of Stuart David’s numbers ever were.

Annoying fans or no (I vote no), Lekman’s live show wins out. I imagine I’ll be spending much of this week and weekend reexamining Night Falls Over Kortedala and maybe tracking down his older works.

Says the Smoking Gun, the FBI documents cited in the story don’t exist:

MARCH 26—Last week’s bombshell Los Angeles Times report claiming that the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur in the lobby of a Manhattan recording studio was carried out by associates of Sean “Diddy” Combs and that the rap impresario knew of the plot beforehand was based largely on fabricated FBI reports, The Smoking Gun has learned.

The Times appears to have been hoaxed by an imprisoned con man and accomplished document forger, an audacious swindler who has created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries, conducted business with Combs, Shakur, Busta Rhymes, and The Notorious B.I.G., and even served as Combs’s trusted emissary to Death Row Records boss Marion “Suge” Knight during the outset of hostilities in the bloody East Coast-West Coast rap feud.

Read about the whole fucked up situation here.

TMZ, of all places, is also doing some reporting:

We called the reporter of the piece, Chuck Phillips, for comment, and haven’t heard back. L.A. Times editor Russ Stanton, through a rep, issued the following statement: “Questions have been raised about the authenticity of documents that we relied on for a story on the assault of Tupac Shakur in New York. We are taking this very seriously and have begun our own investigation.”

Victoria Beckham squeezes into her tightest trousers ever!

The story:

Victoria Beckham braved the London chill in just a low-cut blazer, a pair of driving gloves and an incredibly tight pair of PVC trousers which looked like a second skin

It’s March Madness tournament time in NCAA Basketball Land. The joyous spirit of head to head competition abounds. It’s also tournament time on Line Out. Sixteen teams are left. You decide who moves on. Mano a mano, a Buzzo. Will it be a Kaz – Slats showdown? And James Murphy vs. Tim Harrington looks to be an interesting match up. The ‘Elite 8’ will be played Friday. Final Four next week.

Here are the teams that have made it to the round of Sweet 16:

1. Kaz – PWRFL Power
2. Slats – Pain Cocktail
3. EYE – Boredoms
4. King Buzzo – the Melvins
5. Barfly – the Saturday Knights
6. Robin Pecknold – Fleet Foxes
7. James Murphy – LCD Soundsystem
8. Jackie Hell
9. Geologic – Blue Scholars
10. Tim Harrington – Les Savy Fav
11. Ms. Kristen Dupré - Elliot Spitzer prostitute
12. Amy Winehouse
13. Phil Collins – Genesis
14. ‘bing’ – Anonymous Commenter
15. Ben Gibbard – Death Cab for Cutie
16. Lemmy Kilmister – Motorhead

Jump ball. Play ball:

A friend just put me onto Muxtape. It’s a cool, clean lil site that lets you put together playlists and share them quite easily. I like. Here you can peep the 100% hiphop-free one I made today. Get down, and maybe leave links to yours if you’re feeling frisky.

Today’s update on teenage angst - Warped Tour announces 2008 line-up

Today’s update on why I hate music - Pete Wentz to release Nordstrom-exclusive DVD

Fuck you, Eli Stone - George Michael to tour U.S. for the first time in 17 years

This week’s death toll continues to climb - Outkast’s road manager dies of drug overdose

Fuck yes! - VSS’s Nervous Circuits album to be reissued

Vampire Weekend (above) is in town with YACHT (below). In this week’s paper, Charles Mudede wrote the smartest thing ever written about the buzz band. Here’s an excerpt:

In general, Vampire Weekend are drawn to the points at which what is wealthy meets what is indigent, what is respectable meets what is fallen, what is refined meets what is crude. “I see a mansard roof through the trees/I see a salty message written in the eves/The ground beneath my feet/We are garbage and concrete/And all the tops of buildings, I can see them too.” These opening words for the opening track on Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut album form the verbal equivalent of a movie-crane shot that moves from the upper floors of wealth to the streets of poverty. We begin with the elegance of French architecture and end with “garbage and concrete.”

And so what we have is a fascination with wealth and poverty, and the entire binary chain that is activated by that class order: high culture/low culture, expensive/cheap, white/black. It’s not an accident that Vampire Weekend at once utilize the instrument that’s most identified with European classical music (the violin) and the instrument that’s most identified with African music (the conga). This is the very mechanism by which pleasure is generated in their pop. And it’s not just African music they are appropriating; it’s impoverished African music from the ’70s, ’60s, and ’50s. Since the 1980s, Afro pop has less and less sounded poor. The biggest names in the business—Papa Wemba, King Sunny Ade, Thomas Mapfumo, Stimela, Youssou N’Dour—have aspired to and maintained the production values of the rich and famous. Vampire Weekend are not faithful to this trend. They instead simulate the sounds of preindependence, pre-postmodern Africa.

Read the whole piece here.

Here’s what Christopher Frizzelle had to say about YACHT in this week’s paper:

Vampire Weekend, YACHT
(Neumo’s) It’s hard to listen to YACHT’s I Believe in You. Your Magic Is Real. at the office and not lose the thread of whatever it is you were doing—you find yourself sliding backward into Jona Bechtolt’s glitchy, burping, sibilant universe, full of happy synth lines, herky-jerky rhythms, bright guitars, techy vocals. The songs are marvels of construction; they feel sturdy, built, welded together. And yet they have the goodly magic of things that have always existed. I really like this album, okay? CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

And the rest:

Bon Iver, Phosphorescent
(Nectar) It seems hype and altitude go well together, as Bon Iver has already landed on airline radio stations. The Eau Claire, Wisconsin, native was featured on American Airlines’ “indie” station last month, sandwiched between up-and-comers Destroyer and… Ringo Starr? Way to go, American. Still, it’s worthwhile placement—particularly because lead singer Justin Vernon’s earnest delivery and palpable lyrics overcome both the usual expectations of blue-eyed soul and the noisy din of a 737. Same can be said for the band’s SXSW showcase, nearly ruined by a thousand chattering Californians. But even over loud attempts at networking, Vernon’s memorable cries—”I told you to be patient”—won out. For those who attended the show for reasons other than hype (or frequent-flier miles), patience paid off. SAM MACHKOVECH

Johanna Kunin, These United States
(Sunset) These United States’ Jesse Elliott has a voice that invites a lot of comparisons—most of them, so far, to M. Ward, although there are touches of Devendra Banhart’s frail cracking croon and Nick Diamond of Islands’ calmer, half-sung/half-spoken cadences. It’s a great voice—lovely, really, although “lovely” sounds somehow pejorative for a man. On “First Sight,” Elliott spills words out over popping-bubble keys, quiet but propulsive drumstick clicks, and muted electric and acoustic guitar strumming. Other songs are less delicate pop, more joyously drunk folk or rootsy barroom sing-along, but all feature Elliott’s able singing and songwriting. Johanna Kunin is a local singer/songwriter who has recorded with the likes of Karl Blau and Tucker Martine. The songs on her 2006 solo debut, Clouds Electric, contrast icy cold instrumentation—mostly piano, but also some guitar, strings, and woodwinds—with Kunin’s soft, thawing breaths. ERIC GRANDY

By Timwillis.

Click here to read Eric Grandy’s review of the night.

Friday, September 19th.

Full tour schedule posted after the jump.

Continue reading "Journey, Heart, Cheap Trick Coming to White River Amphitheatre" »

Dr. Pepper offers free soda to EVERYONE IN AMERICA if Axl Rose releases Chinese Democracy by 2008’s end.

Via Page Six:

March 26, 2008 — TIRED of a world in which Americans idolize wannabe singers, and where musicals about high school students pass as rock ‘n’ roll, Dr Pepper is begging Axl Rose to finally release this year his 17-years-in-the-making album, “Chinese Democracy.” The soft drink company’s incentive to Axl, the frontman of Guns N’ Roses? If he ships the album in 2008, everyone in America - except estranged guitarists Slash and Buckethead - will receive a free can of Dr Pepper. “It took a little patience for us to perfect Dr Pepper’s special mix of 23 ingredients, so we completely understand and empathize with Axl’s question for the perfect album,” said a company spokesperson. Dr Pepper is asking fans to lobby Axl to drop the album already.

(Thanks to CK for the tip.)

You wake up to news that Clear Channel’s stock dropped 22% yesterday.

Ooooo…

…what a little photoshopping can do.

I think this is what you meant, Kirbs.

Says AP:

NEW YORK - VH1 holds The Who in such high regard that the rock group is the only act being honored at its upcoming Rock Honors.

Now in its third year, the Rock Honors typically celebrate a handful of momentous rock groups and artists: previous honorees have included ZZ Top, Genesis, Kiss and Queen.

But this year, only the Who will be celebrated during the two-hour broadcast, to be taped July 12 in Los Angeles and aired on the network July 17. The group, which now consists surviving members Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, is due to perform along with other acts who will pay tribute to the legendary band.

Rock Honors, by the way, is responsible for this:

That dude from Nickelback bugs me.

Traditionally, bands come in and play songs by the artist being honored. Who do you think should cover what song? I wouldn’t mind seeing Arcade Fire take a stab at “Baba O’Riley.”

This is the cover of the new Dolly Parton record, Backwoods Barbie, which was released last month. The clothing, the pose, the setting – all very alluring, as if the purchase of the album implies you and Dolly are going to have a “roll in the hay.” An outdated model can be dressed up in any short skirt and sexy pose money can buy, but when it all boils down you’re still being tricked into screwing an old lady.

A song that randomly came up on my ipod, that I’ve been enjoying today is Marsha Hunt’s 1977 rare disco classic “The Other Side of Midnight”. This hard-to-find gem became a favorite of legendary deejay Larry Levan during his day’s at the Paradise Garage. The track has a solid, enjoyable mid-tempo funky groove that can work nicely on either the dancefloor as well as a ‘mid day pick-me-up’. Regardless, I hadn’t come across this track in a while, and it was much needed for my slow moving afternoon.

Marsha Hunt - The Other Side of Midnight

With all due respect to young Catherwood, fuck a Gravy Train!!!, the real heat at tonight’s Vera Project show is New Bloods, an all-female trio from Portland whose no wave drones and muffled basement funk featuring violin, drums, bass, and shared vocals sound a little like a sedated ESG crossed with tragically defunct Spooky Dance Band. Their debut album, The Secret Life comes out via Kill Rock Stars on April 8th. Joey Casio, too, is worth showing up for early.

Dream Session: Barfly from the Saturday Knights

Barfly, do you remember your dreams? Do you dream about edible floating cities of rap? Like gangster but with sprinkles?

Barfly: I don’t know about the sprinkles, but for over ten years I’ve suffered from a recurring dream: Being pursued by the Police. Often they capture me and incarcerate me. Sometimes not. The dream has never, ever been pleasant and it doesn’t go away but recently it took a turn for the hilarious.

Here’s the dream: I’m going about my business, whatever that may be (can’t really remember). A black and white rolls up and two cops get out of the car and approach me. They try to apprehend me but I don’t cooperate. I end up kicking their butts and running. Throughout the rest of the dream I’m evading one squad car after another and one foot chase after another until finally I run into this uniform cop who has this sort of elder statesmen, kind but authoritative air about him. He puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “Hold up player, what’s the hurry? Man, if you’ll just relax I can get you 29 days for the two counts of assault on an officer. Does that sound cool to you?”

“29 days? Seriously?” I say.

“Fo’shizzle Flizzle,” the disarmingly personable patrolman replies.

“Word. I can live with that. Let’s go,” I say. Then I turn around and see that the cop is Snoop Dogg. I woke up laughing my ass off. When Officer Calvin Broadus is on the beat, the streets of my dreams are safe. Sleep tight y’all.

Why do you think you have that recurring dream? Did cops mess with you?
I grew up down in LA like any other fuckup. I used to get in a little scrape with the law every now and then. It’s been a long long time since I misbehaved, but I still have dreams of screwing up and ruining everything I’ve worked for.

What do you think of Snoop? When you saw him in the cop suit, what did you think? And would it have been a Snoopified prison? Like a prison version of his Snoop DeVille Cadillac? Fur on the iron bars, wet bars, and jacuzzies.
Snoop had the two braids in his hair like the “Murder Was the Case” video and he was as skinny as always. He was alert (not stoned) and he had on a spotless, military creased, official LAPD uniform. It was weird. I don’t think he was taking me to a luxurious Snoopified jail but he was understanding enough to assure me that I’d do no more than twenty-nine days. If you assault a couple cops in real life, you get much more than twenty-nine days.

Let us analyze:
Barfly has police anxiety due to his past scrapes. That worry filters through into his dreams via images and scenes of running, altercation, and incarceration. Not surprisingly, Snoop, an LA rap authority, lives in Barfly’s subconscious. Snoop is an ally. Snoop knows the game. Snoop is rap law.

There’s a dream exercise you can do where you take anything in the dream, a person or a thing, and role play by becoming that thing. It breaks the dreamer out of their viewpoint by offering different perspective and slant.

I’ll be Officer Snoop in this dream: “Hey, there’s that Barfly cat. His flows have gotten so gold, they catch my attention. I gotta take him in.”

(New Saturday Knights out in June.)

^{Justice photo by Timwillis}

Justice, Diplo @ Showbox SoDo & Neumo’s VIP Room

I was all ready for Justice to have their big Fatboy Slim jock jams moment last night. Let me explain: I went to see Norman Cook in 1999 at the Paramount Theater, and, by that time, dude was well-entrenched in the mainstream consciousness, the “electronica” moment had passed having failed to save/kill rock’n’roll, and the show was, in large part, a suburban bro-down (myself included) waiting to hear “Praise You.” (Confidential to Rachel: Sorry about that.) Anyway, I was expecting last night to be something like that, for Justice (and Diplo) to have reached massive enough crossover appeal—headlining the Myspace music tour—that their show wouldn’t be a party or a rave but a bummer.

But it was actually pretty fun, once you got past the half-dozen flat screen TVs playing a loop of music videos and commercial stills (for myspace, a credit card company, and the performers’ record labels)—harder to ignore during Diplo’s set since he didn’t have any kind of lights or stage show, easy enough to forget amidst Justice’s strobes and lit-up cross and ornamental amps.

The show was sold-out and already fairly full (though it never got uncomfortable crowded) as Diplo took the stage promptly at 9pm. “I’m not Justice,” he said, sounding pretty sedate. “I’m Diplo.” Then he launched right into the Todd Rundgren break from Hot Chip’s “Shake a Fist,” bypassing the song’s build-up to cut right to the hook, setting the tone that would last his whole set. Diplo’s not gonna fuck around with warming a crowd up at a show like this, he’s not going to allow peaks and valleys and dynamics in his mix, he’s going to jump from two minutes of one song’s peak to another’s, building a plateau rather than mountain range. It works because Diplo’s mixes and selections are tight—some filter electro mix of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” into the Lyn Collins break from “It Takes Two”—but it can be a little exhausting at 9:30pm. One wasted 16 year old apparently got dragged out of the club by security screaming “I’m 16, you’re gonna make me cry!” Diplo eventually declared, “I’m just fucking around now,” and proceeded to mix in Dead Prez, Daft Punk, M.I.A.’s un-fuck-with-able “Paper Planes” remix with Bun B, and Hawtin’s “Spastik.”

After Diplo, the lights went down, the between-act background music stopped, and Justice went on, two silhouettes surrounded by smoke and the unplugged amps and flashing diodes of their stage setup, backlit by bright lights, their big, floursecent cross lit-up in front. They played a slightly more polished version of their set from Neumo’s, mixing their own tracks and remixes and re-edits together into a long-playing medley (their remix of Scenario Rock’s “Skitzo Dancer” over “Let There Be Light,” for instance), really stretching out the breaks and builds for a crowd that was hanging on their every kick and snare. Brandon Ivers saw a couple high school age boys slapping each other in the face out of excitement. Dropping the music out during the chorus of “Never Be Alone” seemed to elicit more scattered singing along than at their Neumo’s show (but at least you could move through the crowd here).

Some purists will tell you that Justice aren’t very musically substantial. Others will point out that their success seems out of proportion with their, what, four great songs. But what these people ignore is that Justice is a whole package deal—graphic design, fashion, stage show, etc, etc—and that the music is just one prong of their multi-media assault. They’re a triumph of branding as much as they are a triumph of techno, maybe more, perfect headliners for a myspace music tour.

^{Diplo & Justice photo from deathoftheparty.org}

The free after-party in the VIP Room was perfect. When we got there, it was just PRetty Titty playing the awesome new Hercules & Love Affair record to a handful of people (that record officially won me over last night), but within an hour, the basement bar was slammed, Diplo was loosening up on the turntables, Justice were hanging by the bar, and all the usual dance party kids were tearing shit up. This was going to be my big contrast—the hipster party versus the jock jam—but both parties were plenty fun, although, really, that basement was the motherfucking jam!

It’s a cool concept, a quick-moving slideshow constructed from over 2,500 photographs.

Iron Butterfly:

Grateful Dead:

James Brown:

Harry Nilsson:

More.

Ain’t singin’ for Pepsi - Smashing Pumpkins sue Virgin Records

But there aren’t strippers on Wikipedia - Online encyclopedia now more popular music search option than Myspace

Teenage angst pays off well, but so does prepubescent bubblegum - More Lollapalooza confirmations and some interesting speculations (Hannah Montana?!?)

Candlemass doomed - Guitarist sentenced to two years in prison. And not for burning down a church

Dead Kennedys scab update - Wynona Riders singer to front classic Bay Area punk band of dwindling integrity

We can all finally all get some sleep - Paramore is not breaking up

By dagmarsieglinde.

(Click here to read about Be Your Own Pet’s controversial lyrics currently causing a stir.)

Via AP:

LOS ANGELES - The Smashing Pumpkins are suing Virgin Records, saying the record label has illegally used their name and music in promotional deals that hurt the band’s credibility with fans. In a breach-of-contract lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, the rockers said they have “worked hard for over two decades to accumulate a considerable amount of goodwill in the eyes of the public,” and that Virgin’s use of the band in a “Pepsi Stuff” promotion with Amazon.com and Pepsi Co. threatens their reputation for “artistic integrity.”

Virgin released the Smashing Pumpkins’ music for more than 17 years, but the only active agreement between the two parties, the lawsuit claims, is a deal granting Virgin permission to sell digital downloads of the band’s songs. The agreement does not give Virgin the right to use the band in promotional campaigns to sell outside products, the lawsuit said.

I’d say Billy’s poetry threatened their “artistic integrity” more than Pepsi ever could…

Jens Lekman, the Honeydrips, Marla Hansen
(Neumo’s) As I listen to Jens Lekman, it’s hard to digest the fact that the man is, in fact, younger than I am. Born in 1981, Lekman has the catalog, spirit, and wit of an older man who’s been singing his stories for decades. His voice is smooth and deep like Jonathan Richman’s. “The Opposite of Hallelujah” is delivered with soaring strings, tinkering bells and piano, handclaps and tambourine, and Lekman’s soft, romantic croon. “Friday Night at the Drive-in Bingo” is even more playful. Over a bordering “smooth-jazz” saxophone, Lekman tells a story about a Friday night of “riding on his moped, looking for fun.” If that doesn’t get you to crack a smile, the fact that he rhymes “ring” with “bingo” probably will. MEGAN SELING

The Cult, the Cliks
(Showbox at the Market) Let’s not forget the Cult. You’ve heard the song “Wild Flower”; you recognize the guitar riff. Der der-der DER! In 1981, the Cult formed and became a pre to the post, as in predecessors of postrock. A psychedelic Native American goth punk was their sound. Their story is classic VH1 Behind the Music: band gets huge, sells millions of records, gets hooked on drugs, starts to hate each other, breaks up, goes into rehab, deals with lawsuits, reforms, then has their singer front the Doors. In the process, they’ve gone through 21 band members. But singer Ian Astbury and guitar player Billy Duffy have been there all along and “Wild Flower” still makes you get up and want to kick shit. The riff remains the same. TRENT MOORMAN

Gravy Train!!!!, New Bloods, Joey Casio
(Vera Project) You know when you meet that girl at a party who’s really comfortable talking about sex? She’s all over the place talking about boobs and dicks—and it’s totally cool, right? The always-controversial Gravy Train!!!! at the sterile and family friendly Vera Project is like taking that girl home to meet your parents. While Dad might love it when she shakes her ass and talks about her farts, Mom could be seriously offended when she asks her what’s up with her unbleached mustache. With the band’s notoriously sex-driven, in-your-face electro pop covering all of the hot and nasty topics previously mentioned and more, tonight at Vera could be an educational and uncomfortable time for all. CASEY CATHERWOOD

Coming home from work I stepped into the elevator, put my head against the wall, and sang, “It sums up the anxious way I am.” I sang it just like Scott Reitherman sings it, the “way,” “I,” and “am” three ascending notes in a very satisfying chord. It’s especially satisfying if you’re ascending in an elevator and it’s one of those old-fashioned ones with a window and you can see each floor. The band is Throw Me the Statue, the song is “Written in Heart Signs, Faintly,” and it’s been in my head for going on nine hours now.

It accidentally leaked a few days early last week, but for those of you who wanted to play nice and not (illegally) snag the album off the numerous peer-to-peer services it popped up on, your (week long) wait is over. The Consolers of the Lonely is now available for real.

Starting at 12 am Eastern (so, five minutes ago), the new record will be available for download at www.theraconteurs.com. Have at it.

Britney Spears will be on How I Met Your Mother tonight, playing the part of a receptionist in a dermatologist’s office. She will not be singing, she’ll be acting. And trying to be funny.

A preview:

It’s on at 8:30 pm, if you’re into watching possible train wrecks.

If you do like the Trucks, you’ll be happy to know the band is going to tour the West Coast with Northern State in May:

May 5 Chop Suey Seattle, Washington
May 6 The Plaza Club Vancouver, British Columbia
May 7 Doug Fir Portland, Oregon
May 9 Cafe du Nord San Francisco, California
May 10 Knitting Factory Los Angeles, California

^{Diplo photo by Kelly O}

Didn’t score tickets to go see Diplo tonight with Justice at the Showbox Sodo? Don’t sweat it. DJ Pretty Titty / Death of the Party / Sing Sing are hosting a little after-party at the VIP room. Diplo goes on at midnight, it’s 21+, and it’s FREE!

Also:

We are releasing some extra tickets for tonight’s Justice show!!

Tickets will be available at the door for $28. We can’t hold them for anyone
or arrange for payment, just come down & line up, first come first serve -
and good luck.

Remember last year, when Sub Pop gave $5750 to this kid, just for ruling it hard out in the Tri-Cities? Well, they’re doing it again this year, but multiplied by 3.

Sub Pop Records in Seattle, WA is offering a grand total of $13,000 worth of college scholarship money to three eligible high school seniors. There are three scholarships—one for $6,000 and two for $3,500 each. To apply for these scholarships you must be a resident of Washington or Oregon, and a graduating senior on your way to full-time enrollment at an accredited university or college. We are looking for an applicant who is involved and/or interested in music and/or the creative arts in some way.

Hear that? Free money for college! Get on it!

This has been buzzing around the blogs for a few days now, but should you have missed it… R.E.M. will be on the cover of Spin next week. In the story, written by Michael Azerrad, frontman Michael Stipe speaks publicly and on record about his sexuality for the first time, like, ever:

The only time Stipe really takes a break is when he head to Europe most summers with his boyfriend. Following a long period of speculation about his sexuality, during which he was stubbornly coy and ambiguous, Stipe has been out for years but has rarely publicly discussed the topic in any depth. “It was supercomplicated for me in the ’80s,” he says. “I was totally open with the band and my family and my friends and certainly the people I was sleeping with. I thought it was pretty obvious.”

Going public was a little easier when he realized it might inspire people to change their views about homosexuality. “I didn’t always see that,” he says. “But I see now, of course that’s the case, of course that’s needed. I’d just never felt strongly enough about a particular relationship to say, ‘Yeah, he’s my boyfriend, that is what it is.’ Now I recognize that to have public figures be very open about their sexuality helps some kid somewhere out there.”

The magazine is previewing the story here.

Seattle’s the Myriad are debuting the new video for the song “A Clean Shot Concept” on MTV2 this week. It stars a weird rhinoceros-like creature.

Click here to watch it.

The KEXP – NY simulcast partnership Radio Liberation began today.

This from John Richards’ playlist:

Today’s show on the NYC dial went off without any problems. I wish you could have seen the hard work behind the scenes, it was impressive…not to mention the nearly dozen people who were here since 12:30am for this first day of simulcasting to make things happen. Pretty crazy to come in at 4:15AM and see all these people here. Inspiring! As promised, it was The 
Morning Show you know and hopefully love.

Top 5 Things that will change about KEXP programming now that you can hear us on the dial in NYC:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

See the playlist after the jump.

Continue reading "KEXP Live in NY Today" »

(Explanation here.)

Rolling Stone.com’s blog posted a video interview with Perez Hilton, who was rumored to be in the midst of starting his own label with Warner Brothers.

Apparently, the deal isn’t done yet. He says: “Even if it doesn’t happen with Warner Brothers I’m just gonna start my own label. Screw the major label system, I’m just gonna do it myself.”

And if he had his own label, what would he do?

“I would definitely practically give away music but not really. I would slash iTunes prices. Instead of paying $10 for an album, make it five. Kids can get it for free so you have to give them more incentive to buy it. Give them the album plus, you gotta have the DVD, the extra stuff, the bonuses and remixes. Just make it a really appealing package that you can’t pass up for five dollars.”

In the interview he also talks about Britney (“she can suck my dick”), Amy Winehouse (“I’m really sad for Amy), and Paul McCartney, who’s apparently a fan.

From the New York Post:

Marlon Jackson, 51, an original Jackson Five member who stocks shelves at a Vons supermarket in San Diego, had to temporarily move into an extended-stay hotel.

Randy, 46, does odd jobs, including fixing cars in a Los Angeles garage owned by a family friend. He recently claimed Michael was going to give him $1.7 million - “a pipe dream,” said another brother last week.

Jackie, 56, the oldest and most debonair of the brothers, is struggling to manage his son Siggy’s aspiring rap career after an Internet clothing business startup and attempts to produce music failed.

Jermaine, 54, shuttles back and forth from his girlfriend’s home in Ventura County, Calif., to his parents’ mansion in Encino, where Jackie and Randy still bunk.

Tito, 55, is the only brother still making music, but it’s a meager living. The guitarist fronts a blues and jazz band that plays small venues and nets him $500 and $1,500 per occasional gig - a far cry from the days when the Jacksons could pull in 50,000 people at $30 a ticket.

Family patriarch Joseph Jackson, 79, spends most of his waking hours conjuring up schemes he hopes will replenish a bank account that once had more money than the FDIC cared to insure. Peddling musical girl groups in Las Vegas and a book about his family in Germany, Joseph, despite evidence to the contrary, is not convinced that time and the music industry have passed him by.

“We can get back out there and set the world on fire,” he told The Post last week. “If the Rolling Stones can still rake in the money, so, too, can my boys.”

Listen to this song/watch this video on a beautiful day like today and try not to feel a little spark inside.

Let’s begin with Bill Evan’s elegant hands on the piano:

So long, so light, so lovely.

Next, the hands of techno master Claude Young:

So quick, so technical, so scientific.

For last, the hands of a conga drummer:

So painful, so crude, so mean.

From these three clips: a theory of the hand. A hand is least itself when hitting a conga. A hand is shattered by this relentless instrument. A hand’s beauty is destroyed with each beat. The conga makes a dumb slave out the hand; it smacks the senses/intelligence out of it. Watching a conga drummer is like watching someone who trying to kill something (an idea, concept, begriff) that’s in his/her hand.

Duffy…a 23 year old Welsh girl singing SOUL!? This keeps me a bit hopeful, her voice is so solid! She dosen’t bother with any “urban” R&B/pop entertainer cliche’ and, from the tracks I’ve heard, she has been produced without any contemporary “electro” treatments!! It is SO much nicer when it’s clean! Anyways, here’s the video for her second single, “Mercy” where she’s surrounded by a shit ton of hot (seriously some are on FIRE!) soul boys, dig them backdrops, OUCH! I can SMELL the talcum!

Some have compared her to Lulu, based on her tone (and her rasp!)…for example…

“Syrup & Honey”

…so, with that, the Lulu comparison seems fair, tho’ not many young ‘uns in the US would remember Lulu, so it’s a bit moot. Other comparisons have, of course, been uh, Ms. Winehouse, which is odd, as if Winehouse is the lone singer of Soul (in the UK press Duffy is considered one the the new “Amys”)…uh, so not quite sure why writers don’t consider the ENTIRE context of R&B/soul of the last, I dunno, SIXTY years before they heap all contemporary female singers singing something like Soul as “post - Winehouse.” It’s embarrassing…but i’ll save that sermon for a different post!

Any one catch her at SxSW?

Not sure if you care about R.E.M. headlining the first night of Sasquatch? Me either. Asking around, it would seem I only know one person who “really likes” R.E.M., the rest of us just sort of tolerated them throughout the nineties (and were too busy being 5 to listen to them in the eighties). As a child, my opinion of Michael Stipe did rise after I saw him in the “Mr. Tastee” episode of Pete and Pete. It dropped right back down after seeing the video for “Everybody Hurts” 10,000 times. I am currently indifferent. The buzz around their new album Accelerate seems initially positive - now you can decide for yourself by streaming it here. Accelerate comes out April 1st.

Last spring at the Crocodile, a whole bunch of people came together to make the first-ever Stranger Gong Show a mind-blowing success.

This spring at Chop Suey, we’re doing it again.

The date: Saturday, April 26.
The cost: Free.
The line-up: God only knows. We’re looking for any and all human-based entertainments, including but not limited to jugglers, magicians, jug bands, tap dancers, strongmen, yodelers, stand-up comics, sword swallowers, contortionists, slam poets, marching bands, mimes, guys who shove quarters up their noses, bird callers, puppeteers, tuba players, hula hoopers, comedy skits, chanteuses, ventriloquists, clog dancers, celebrity impersonators, butoh dancers, vaudeville acts, accordianists, and air bands.

The rules: All acts must run between 45 seconds and four minutes, and require a minimum of set-up. What this means: full live bands—with amps and drum kits and what have you—won’t work for the Gong Show. We’ll provide a mic and amp and that aforementioned brief set-up time, so musical acts would do well to re-conceive themselves as “unplugged”—think campfire sing-along instead of full show. But there’s still a hell of a lot of music that can be made within the Gong Show strictures: acoustic bands, singers with backing tapes, human beatboxes, cello soloists, etc etc etc.

Acts can get on the bill just by showing up at Chop Suey the night of the show, or by signing up in advance in our forthcoming online form. (Coming soon, stay tuned.)

Also, due to “laws,” no acts can feature fire or kids (it’s a bar).

In the meantime, please enjoy this taste of the late, great, and fuh-reaky original Gong Show.

There’s video of their performance on YouTube. I love YouTube.

“Trusty Chords”:

They’ve sounded better, but perhaps they’re just a little out of practice. Still would’ve loved to have seen that.

Also… no Seattle dates have been “officially announced,” but when a threw a few a fit a couple weeks ago, little birds came out of the shadows and informed me that there’s something “in the works.”

Via punknews.org:

Be Your Own Pet have seen three tracks from their new album, Get Awkward pulled from the US version due to “violent content.” The three tracks “Blow Yr Mind”, “Black Hole”, and “Becky” were on the original promos released by the label and are widely available in the UK and Europe.

Lyrics in question include “We’ll wait with knives after class!” and “Eating pizza is really great / So is destroying everything you hate.” There are also some songs about zombies which may be offensive to bloodthirsty corpses hungering for brains.

Having heard the album (and the songs in question), they weren’t worth pulling. They were just raucous punk rock songs with fantasizing lyrics. Is a song about eating pizza and destroying things you hate really that threatening to America’s kids? Will that cause an uproar? Will Be Your Own Pet cause a spike in girls waiting with knives after class? Really? REALLY?

This is what life is like in the post-Columbine (and all those other school shootings) era… it’s a shame. That album, the full version of the album, is solid.

For one month.

Via Idolator:

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Yo! MTV Raps, MTV is bringing the show back “on the air and online” next month—but only next month—and the party will include classic clips, interviews with Fab 5 Freddy, Ed Lover, and Doctor Dre, and rare pictures.

A message from the dear folks at Hollow Earth:

Hollow Earth Radio has to move! Our landlord is selling our house, and we have to move by May 1st.

Currently, our setup is this: We live in a two story home with a basement. The radio is in the basement and feels separate from our living space. This works out well for us. We like that the radio is in the same building as our home, but If you know of a public venue that doesn’t have a living space attached, we would be open to this too.

Our budget is up to $1400 a month for home/radio. If it is a home, we are open to having a roommate(s) who don’t mind people coming in and out of the house all the time to volunteer possibly late into the night.

We are really sad we have to move, but hopefully this will place us in an even more ideal situation! Please HELP! We have to move fast on this.

If you know of any good places (they are looking for something between Ballard and Capitol Hill), you can shoot them an email at hollowearthradio@gmail.com.

Boredoms’ Eye & Senju Spend a Day in Seattle

The day after Yamataka Eye of Boredoms sacrificed Neumo’s to the eardrum God, he ate Halibut and eggs at Pike Market’s Athenian Diner. Drummer Muneomi Senju had the Salmon. With Mt. Rainier in the distance, they looked over a sun-glared Puget Sound at Safeco Field and spoke of their respect for Ichiro. Eye said, “I am not a good baseball player. I can not catch.” He can jump though, high. That’s how he hurt his foot. He’s been in a cast since LA. During their show there last week, he jumped and came down on it wrong. “I didn’t think it was broken,” he said, “But it swelled and puffed and then I knew it was broken.”

We finished eating and I said, “Now I must take you to the shoes. A collection of the World’s Largest Shoes.” Seriously, when epic future paving sonic minds are in town from another country, forget the Space Needle, forget SAM, get them to the shoes. I put 50 cents in and the maroon curtain parted behind the oval glass. Eye said, “I am glad you have taken me to see these shoes. Seattle has many giants.”

For a man who conducts such torrential hurricanes of sound, Eye is soft-spoken. Senju too. They are both thoroughly intelligent, level headed, and gentle. I thought Eye would be aloof or crass, but he’s the opposite. They did teach me how to say “Damnit” in Japanese though. And bees. “Hachi” is Japanese for bees.

Boredoms are in the middle of recording in Japan, and nearing completion of their next self produced record. Eye said they’ve been experimenting with aquatic drum sounds by putting water in drums and on drum heads. “Yoshimi got angry about some of the water,” he said. “We damaged some of her drums and the sounds we got were not that good. We will use a little of it, but it was sort of a mistake. I told her I am sorry.”

This coming August 8th, in New York, Boredoms will be heading up a sequal to the 77 Drummer Boadrum concert that was held under the Brooklyn Bridge. This year, 8/8/08, there will be eighty-eight drummers. Numerology aligns expansion. Eye and Senju also have other projects. Eye recently released a remix album called “Re: Remix?” Senju is in two other bands called PARA and Urichipangoon.

Continue reading "Eying Seattle Sh∞s" »

By soggydan.

Justice, Diplo, Fancy
(Showbox Sodo) Don’t call it a backlash, ‘cause it’s not like that. Diplo’s great—a restless remixer, a clever producer, and a mind-blowing, party-rocking DJ (when he starts scratching classic music videos on those DVD turntables, your stoned dome will explode). And Justice are just as good at what they do—plowing heavy-metal synth riffs into stomping drum-machine beats and dressing up disco/funk samples with digital distortion to make insanely catchy club pop. Fancy, a bratty French glam garage band (and not the dude from Fannypack), are a toss up. It’s just… the MySpace Music Tour? At the Showbox Sodo? No matter how much you like these guys, do you really want to go see them with 2,000 of your douchiest MySpace “friends”? No, you don’t. ERIC GRANDY

Black Horse, Supernaughty
(Comet) You remember, back in the day, when badass music didn’t necessarily mean diddling, ridiculous shit like DragonForce and Rhapsody of Fire? Black Horse have that kind of 1990s pre–power metal dirty-rock vibe. Their songs have choruses of “fuck yeah!” built into them, and it’s shouted with the energy of someone who really believes in the power of a good cathartic “fuck yeah!” Black Horse’s guitar riffs are crunchy, postglam blues-fed headbanging monsters, but this is no retro act: The interplay between April Goettle and AP Schroder’s lead vocals, combined with the drum machine that makes up the third corner of the trio, makes the band feel like a sort of rock-and-roll Le Tigre: part irony, part sincerity, all motherfucking hook. PAUL CONSTANT

Bad day for Soul - Corinne Bailey Rae’s husband found dead

Bad day for Mambo, too - Influential Cuban musician Israel Cachao Lopez passes

Jesus, shit ain’t working out for the Tejano community either - Grammy winner Emilio Navaira III in critical condition

Bad day for Australians, four-trackers, and bookish indie folks - John Darnielle of Mountain Goats cancels tour due to unspecified medical condition

At last, good news! For socialists and anglophiles, at least - New Billy Bragg record!

Collective Soul is still a band? They’re playing the Moore tonight. They put out a new album last summer and made a deal with Target that they would be the exclusive physical retailer of the album for one year. Somehow it seems fitting that you can only buy the new Collective Soul album at Target.

But really, no one cares about 2008 Collective Soul. It’s 1995 Collective Soul that will forever be burned into the recesses of our memories, that one song we heard too many times and now will never fully leave our consciousness. In college some friends and I actually made a party game out of the song “Shine,” and so far it has worked the few times we’ve actually tried it out. It goes like this: walk into a room with several groups of people having light conversation without music blaring - a kitchen seems to work nicely. Make your way to the center of the room, and in a loud but not obnoxious voice sing the memorable guitar line from “Shine:” “Duh nuh nuh Nah nuh nuh Nah nuh nuh Nah nuh NAH.” (see 3:25 in video) Most assuredly, if done loud enough, someone will instantaneously and unwittingly turn away from their conversation to add in a deep voice, “Yeah.” Turns out, Collective Soul isn’t just a band, it’s a reflex.