« older | Main Largehearted Boy Page | newer »
June 20, 2007
Shorties
The 2007 Bonnaroo download page has been updated.
New files include mp3 downloads of the White Stripes, Ween, and Wolfmother performances.
Video performances of Brazilian Girls, Flaming Lips, Gillian Welch, the Hold steady, John Butler Trio, Kings of Leon, Mago, Rat Dog, the Roots, String Cheese Incident, White stripes, Widespread Panic, Wilco, Wolfmother, and Xavier Rudd.
Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons talks to the Irish Independent.
"I spent a long time absorbing everything by Nina Simone and everything by Otis Redding," he replies. "Certain black American singers had a massive impact on me. Obviously they're a massive point of reference for what I'm doing. When you think about the African-American tradition of music, it's been a beacon in Western culture."
The Chicago Tribune examines alternative marketing methods of record companies.
On July 10, Merge will release Spoon's "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga." The first pressing of the CD will come packaged with a bonus disc, available at big-box retailers and independents such as Permanent Records, and the smaller stores also will get a 7-inch vinyl single.
The vinyl version of the record, as with all vinyl copies from Merge and several other labels, includes a coupon to download a free MP3 version of the album.
Sound the Sirens reviews John Sellers' memoir, Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life.
Sellers' paean to fandom rings true in the sense that everything he did in the line of pledging allegiance was genuine, however misguided much of it may have been. He less romanticizes his heroes than allows his detail-mongering inner obsessive free reign, so it's not hard to see why he found an outlet in a group as colorful and dynamic as Guided By Voices. The copious appendixes (including a complex formula that promises to quantify your musical preferences, which contains a bizarre caveat targeted directly at harpist Joanna Newsom, who does make the word “twee” look positively insufficient) that follow the text, as with the footnotes, not only confirm Sellers' abject nerdery, but also the communal benefits of being a dedicated music fan and soaking in every detail along the way.
see also: Sellers' Largehearted Boy Book Notes essay for the book
Boston's Phoenix profiles singer-songwriter M. Ward.
SF Weekly profiles several "small outposts that rule online mp3 sales."
In the Minneapolis City Pages Moon Maan's Rick McCollum (formerly of the Afghan Whigs) extols the virtues of the theremin.
"You can get so low on the thing; even lower than a bassoon or the lowest bass instrument," McCollum explains. "And you can get some nasty hard horn sounds, too. Especially if you just keep layering the thing and you get this wall of sound behind you. It's definitely an exacting instrument where you really have to concentrate when you do it."
The Telegraph reports that one-fourth of independent boksellers in Britain will not stock Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, due to discounted prices at online outlets, big chains and supermarkets.
A quarter of independent booksellers say that they will not stock the final Harry Potter book when it is published because they claim they cannot make a profit on it.
Prefix picks the best lines from John Roderick's Bonnaroo blog.
On Tweedy: “Jeff Tweedy made a feature-length film about how much he hated to be on camera (and so did Radiohead, come to think of it), and people lapped it up like clotted cream. Barf.”
On Feist: “Like a PJ Harvey who’s not so mad at boys.”
On Wolfmother: “Were these guys serious? They sounded EXACTLY like a young Black Sabbath, same Ozzy vocals, same half-step modulations and even clunkier Toni Iommi solos.”
Art Brut's Eddie Argos talks to Paste about his songwriting influences.
Considering Art Brut’s charismatic lead sing-speaker, Eddie Argos, specializes in the kind of clever lyrical twists that beg for repeated quotation in the company of friends, it’s no surprise to discover he listens to bands led by similar word wizards—such as the Mountain Goats (John Darnielle) and The Hold Steady (Craig Finn). But these acts also got Argos worked up as he was developing the lyrics for Art Brut’s latest, It’s a Bit Complicated. Chalk it up to the bang bang rock ’n’ roller’s nerves.
Minnesota Public Radio's the Current features an in-studio performance by singer-songwriter Ryan Adams.
Wolf Parade's Dan Broekner talks to Drowned in Sound about his other band, the Handsome Furs.
“I do listen to quite a bit of pop music, not much contemporary stuff apart from some hip-hop and dancehall stuff. I don't really listen to great new pop songs, but I do listen to lots of ‘60s and ‘70s pop stuff, like Wings or Fleetwood Mac. It seems like everyone around me right now is heavily into Fleetwood Mac – it’s become this obsession with a lot of my friends who play music. There's this renewed interest in what they were doing. Some of it you could really take as a prototype kind of bedroom recordings – there’s this really weird production on their third record, Husk. You can pretty much hear the cocaine.”
Punk Planet user Paul M. Davis' blog is collecting eulogies for the magazine's print versions.
see also:
