« older | Main Largehearted Boy Page | newer »
July 9, 2006
Shorties
The Toledo Blade profiles Continuum's 33 1/3 series of books on seminal albums.
The charm of the books is that their lack of immediacy - it's hard to find any of them about an album that's not at least 5 years old - creates a sort of nostalgic vibe that goes beyond the music. For example, the 331/3 book about James Brown's "Live at the Apollo" album looks back on one week in America in 1962 and puts Brown's fiery performance in a social context that transcends the art.
The Boston Globe and Chicago Sun-Times review Thom Yorke's solo album, The Eraser.
Son Volt's Jay Farrar talks to the Edmonton Sun.
"In a band context there's always a wall of noise to kind of, not so much hide behind, but it's there, you know, it's kind of a barrier in a way," says Farrar, who learned to cope with some of the issues as a solo artist. "You kind of have to confront a lot of those issues head on, of being on stage and interacting with the audience. I think I got a lot out of playing solo acoustic shows."
The San Francisco Chronicle examines the new breed of electronic musician.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O talks to Australia's The Age.
Matilda, the house cat at New York's Algonquin Hotel, has a ghostwriter to answer its e-mail, according to Maureen Dowd in the New York Times.
For the most part, the people who send e-mail messages to Matilda are animal lovers looking for a lark. Some are literary types who wax poetic about the hotel's famous Round Table. Others are past guests who thank Matilda for serving as their pet away from home. A visitor from Japan deemed her a cat with "dignity, patience and discretion," before apologizing to Matilda for smelling like catnip but not bringing any.
The Times Online discovers a "global hip parade" online.
As for music, who needs MTV any more? Visit Elbows, the daily MP3 blog aggregator — which collates the wisdom of hundreds of online music nerds — and listen to the hottest new tracks, and nobody will put one over on you next time you wander into an independent record store. This is the place to discover the next Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, or Wolf Parade, two bands who emerged riding the crest of the MySpace wave this year.
On his Myspace blog, the Streets' Mike Skinner lists his "5 favourite things that you get in England and can't seem to get anywhere else."
T-shirt of the day: "The Show Off," complete with sound-sensitive equalizer front panel.
Instructables offers instructions on making a pillow speaker for your iPod.
Flagpole reviews this year's Bonnaroo festival.
