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June 7, 2006
Shorties
The video for Centro-matic's "Triggers and Trash Heaps" is available on YouTube.
Issue #8 (the freedom issue) of MungBeing is now available online.
The Hartford Courant lists a "potpourri" of books for summer.
Author Daniel Handler talks to the Guardian about his latest novel, Adverbs.
Handler calls it a novel, but it feels like an album. In fact, it feels like one particular album: 69 Love Songs, the droll, arch triple CD by the Magnetic Fields. Which is not entirely a coincidence, because Handler is friends with Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields and played the accordion on 69 Love Songs.
"It must have been an influence," Handler says, "but I didn't think it was until I saw Mr Merritt one time and he said: 'What are you working on, on the adult side?' I said: 'Oh, it's this thing that sort of experiments with all these different kinds of love,' and there was this awkward pause, and I thought, oooh ..." He lets his giggle finish the point.
Harpcompares REM's Michael Stipe and Conor Oberst.
Stipe recalls one particularly memorable evening in Vancouver watching Bright Eyes with Peter Buck. “This incredibly passionate audience, thrilled to be in the room, was singing along with every song—Peter and I being the old guys singing at the back,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “I turned to Peter at one point and said, ‘This, Peter, is for them what Patti was to us.’ I felt like the place he’s coming from as an artist and a lyricist and a performer is this same deeply passionate thing I saw going on in Patti Smith.”
MyCityMate offers a twelve-city guide to the World Cup for your iPod.
Singer-songwriter Marykate O'Neil lists things that enrich her life for Popmatters.
Built to Spill's Doug Martsch talks to Paste.
“To me music can be about anything. The lyrics might mean something very specific to me, but I wouldn’t expect anyone else to get it. That’s not the point. Music itself gives the words meaning. I listened to David Bowie a ton when I was growing up, and he’s mostly just singing nonsense, but it made sense to me. I found some meaning in it.”
Metromix interviews Ben Bridewell of Band of Horses.
On your MySpace page, someone wrote, "Your music brings me satisfaction and pleasure like drinking cool lemonade on a hot summer day." Is that what you were going for?
That's nice, [but] not at all. If I had to have some mission statement of how I wanted the album to sound, there were definitely points on it where I wanted it to feel like I felt when I was a teenager listening to that kind of music. A bit of a smokin'-weed-in-your-car-with-the-music-really-loud kind of feeling. As far as drinking lemonade on a cool day, everyone's got their bag, you know?
Newsday celebrates the Replacements, with the band's best-of collection, Don't You Know Who I Think I Was?, out next week.
Philadelphia Weekly writers offer varied opinions of Sonic Youth's musical legacy.
LAist lists their five favorite CD releases this week.
Zadie Smith won the Orange Prize for Fiction with her novel, On Beauty.
Ms Smith, who broke down in tears as she thanked family, her husband and publishers, said she hoped the Orange Prize organisers would not mind when she said her profound pleasure was not winning but reading all the short-listed books.
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The Minneapolis City Pages interviews the founders of Schedule Two, a record label and online repository of indie live show videos.
CP:What are your long-term goals for the site?
Candy: We love Twin Cities music more than anything and are trying to keep as close to 50 percent of our site devoted to their music as possible. We currently have downloads available from local artists like Signal to Trust, the Cardinal Sin, Tapes 'n Tapes, Die Electric!, Haley Bonar, P.O.S., and we have more on the way. We intend on doing more physical releases in the future as well.
Apple has released a new U2 Special Edition iPod.
Golden Smog has scheduled two album release shows (Minneapolis and New York, July 23rd and 26th, respectively) for the July 18th release of Another Fine Day.
Bostonist reviews Monday's Tapes 'n Tapes show.
While strengths can be found in The Loon and nearly any band willing to break a serious sweat onstage, tapes 'n tapes seem like they haven't yet adjusted to the light they've been pushed out into from the cellar that cooked up their mix of Pavement, punk, and premature popularity. Bostonist is interested to see what they come up with when they retreat home with all of this support and experience. But the Middle East Downstairs isn’t just another basement. It's a landmark music venue and everyone feeding on these blogs need to get out more!
Coudal Partners has posted the first dozen reviews for their Field-Tested Books series.
Drowned in Sound opens up a debate: Are Muse the most important band of our generation?
