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June 15, 2006
Shorties
Former Guided By Voices frontman Robert Pollard has started a "Dazzling Year-End Soul Sale on eBay, and the first item up for grabs is Pollard's original collage that became the cover of GBV's Mag Earwhig! album. Bidding starts at $5,000.
Twilight Singer (and former Afghan Whig) Greg Dulli talks to the Independent about the new TS album, Powder Burns.
"In terms of the arc of my recording career, this album is the strangest journey I've been on," he says. "When I listen to it, it sounds like someone else's life. I seem to have always lived a complicated life and I got to underline it multiple times in this particular case."
The San Diego Union-Tribune's Sign on San Diego blog calls Kite Flying Society the city's "best answer to the killer melody-driven indie pop that Seattle's currently churning out."
Aversion interviews Neil Halstead of Mojave 3.
As your style changes, your longtime fans have to adapt. I’ve seen some message-board chatter complaining that Puzzles is too pop. How do you respond to those complaints?
Well in all honesty we don’t ever respond. What would you say? Sorry? I personally find it disappointing if people don’t like what we do, but of course you cannot ever make a record that everyone will love. We have, though, been absolutely overwhelmed by all the positive messages we have received from fans who love the record and I suppose that tends to mean much more to us.
BBC News reviews Rufus Wainwright's Carnegie Hall recreation of a Judy Garland show.
Calexico's Joey Burns talks to the San Francisco Gate.
"Here in the States we've been written off in reviews as white guys playing mariachi music, or just this band from Tucson obviously taking from the landscape and the cultures there, especially because of the trumpets -- that is the signature sound that people pick up on. People don't hear the Portuguese fado influence, or the Gypsy influence, or how the use of the accordion relates to Eastern Europe."
He also talks to the Vancouver Sun.
"We've being doing this for a while, and we've always listened to different kinds of music, not just the style that we play. Certainly, we've collaborated on projects that go outside of what we do . . . [With this album, we] went back to early Dylan, and certainly Neil Young . . . Definitely getting into that singer-songwriter mode. And, in that regard, I think a lot of the record was steered and influenced by the times and what's been going on."
The San Francisco Chronicle lists 11 father's day gifts to avoid.
9. The White Album The thought of dad sitting there listening to "Revolution No. 9," "Helter Skelter" or "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" on Father's Day is, quite simply, too strange to contemplate to contemplate to contemplate to contemplate to contemplate to contemplate to contemplate to contemplate to contemplate ... Stick with "Rubber Soul," "Revolver" or a different band entirely.
Charles Bukowski's literary archive is headed to the Huntingdon (California) Library.
The Oregonian lists notable "musical divorces."
The Chicago Tribune lists the 50 best magazines. Blender at #8?
The St. Paul Pioneer Press reviews the new Replacements greatest hits release, Don't You Know Who I Think I Was?.
While the pair of reunion tracks are aimed straight at the hardcore following, the rest of the disc is really meant for the more casual listeners, as well as newcomers, who want to easily sample this legendary band.
Ashcan Rantings interviews John Roderick of the Long Winters.
When I read that you’re a secular humanist, my ADD brain started thinking about Kurt Vonnegut. Are you a fan of his work?
How can you be an American and not love Kurt Vonnegut? Although you might get a different answer from him on the question of the RAF's "area bombing" campaign. Still, I'm reevaluating this whole secular humanist business because I wasn't aware that the dues were so high. They have meetings three times a month! Who has the time?
Wikipedia is keeping tabs on the year in British music.
New York magazine profiles New York Times crosswword writer and Sudoku book creator Will Shortz.
Across the board, Sudoku has sold so prodigiously that it has pushed nearly every crossword book off the best-seller charts of Nielsen’s BookScan. At the end of May 2005, before the Sudoku storm arrived, a crossword volume was No. 1 on the charts for adult “games” books, and six of the other 49 titles were crosswords. One year later, Sudoku had wiped the slate clean: Forty of the top 50—including the top spot—were Sudoku books, and more than a third of those were Shortz’s.
Singer-songwriter Josh Ritter tells Harp he is writing a novel.
“Around the middle of last year, I decided that there were two things that I wanted to do in my life besides music,” Josh Ritter says on the morning his new album, The Animal Years, hit stores across the U.S. “I wanted to run a marathon and write a novel. Running the marathon last year taught me to slow down and not try and do everything in one day. It taught me to take things one mile at a time. Now I’m working on the book and it’s all about taking things one step at a time and not trying to get everything done at once.”
