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September 16, 2007
Shorties
The Fort Worth Star Telegram reviews day two of the Austin City Limits Music festival.
Wilco guitarist Nels Cline talks to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
Cline shrugs off any worries about losing his jazz “credibility” by joining a rock band.
“If anything, it’s the opposite now,” he reports from the road near Madison, Wis. “Things have been moving along nicely for me in a parallel kind of way, with a lot of things also happening in my jazz life. A lot of those folks have no knowledge of Wilco. But I’ve traveled parallel paths most of my life.”
69 Love Songs is an online "unofficial companion piece to the triple album 69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields."
see also: LD Beghtol's Largehearted Boy Book Notes essay for his 33 1/3 book on the album
Mashable lists 20 great music applications for Facebook.
Harp profiles singer-songwriter Sarah Borges.
Harp’s own David Sprague says there’s an “impossibly infectious hook secreted in every song.” Sounds like a Keebler cookie, eh? They are, of course, uncommonly good. “[laughing] Yeah, I know. Of course it makes you laugh hysterically when you read stuff that’s been written about you. Not that you feel like it’s untrue, but other people’s assessments of what you’re saying is always a little bit suspect. But that’s a flattering thing to have said, but it does conjure up Keebler elves or puppies.”
Shearwater's Jonathan Meiburg talks to KUT about birds.
I find out from my pal Paige Maguire, who’s great at helping me with these postings, that Jonathan has actually himself received degrees in ornithology right here at the University of Texas, and that he wants to come in and talk about birds!!! Well, Austin is an important place for birds, so I invited him in. Oh yes, he’s also the wonderful keyboardist for the popular band, Okkervil River. Our conversation took place back in July of this summer. It was a fun and informative (and lengthy!) talk, so much so that I’m dividing it into two parts. Enjoy part one! I’ve attached some beautiful photos too – some of the Shearwater album covers (including the breathtaking cover of Palo Santo, and more. Do check it out!
The Times profiles former Orange Juice frontman Edwyn Collins, as he fights his way back to health from a stroke.
“I have a problem finding the words,” explains Collins, who has been undergoing intensive speech therapy to combat dysphasia, a neurological side effect that hinders his ability to communicate. “My speech is improving day by day. Maybe my thinking is ahead of my talking. But it’s getting easier to express myself with emotions and language.” Language was as important to Orange Juice as it later would be to the Smiths. They used the language of romance and courtship (song titles such as Simply Thrilled Honey; lyrics such as “Goodness gracious, you’re so audacious”) to reject the conventions of rock’n’roll. “Irony was the thing,” says Collins, who relished the insults hurled at him on stage by local bootboys. “They would come to our gigs and chant, ‘Poofs, poofs!’ I liked all that. It encouraged me to camp it up even more.” Orange Juice could do silly as well as sublime, ramshackle as well as tender. When, all around them, bands were making an angular racket, their ambition was to make fabulous funk and divine disco, only with jangly guitars. With their singles on the Postcard label, they set the template for indie pop in the 1980s and 1990s.
Singer-songwriter Leslie Feist talks to the Observer.
Feist still doesn't see herself as a solo artist: 'I feel like I'm in a band [she tours with a regular backing band] - if I didn't, it would just be a yucky commercial exercise and the gigs would be less emotional.' But ask her what she's most looking forward to right now, and after fiddling with her water bottle for a while, she decides that it's the Police's invitation to sing with them on an MTV Unplugged session and having her photo taken by Annie Leibovitz. She shakes her head at how tiring and difficult Leibovitz's job must be. I point out that Leibovitz is not touring with four guys and playing until 11pm every night. Feist sits up straight and stops fiddling. 'Actually I tour with 11 guys and work until 3am.' A rare moment of pride. She should feel it more often - she deserves to.
The Observer talks to the cast and crew of the Joy Division biopic, Control, as well as original members of the band.
Having the actors replay the urgent original group demonstrates how there were always two Joy Divisions - Joy Division's Joy Division, the one that played live with an unfettered metal fury, and Martin Hannett's Joy Division, a strategically processed studio intensification, and fragmentation, of the live entity. In the film, the bruising wildness of the live music helps make sense of the damned, psyched-out Curtis dance much more than Hannett's hallucinatory concentration, which attempted to make sense of Curtis's incredibly private thoughts.
Author Tess Gallagher talks politics with the Sunday Herald.
"I protested the Patriot Act. The artist Alfredo Arreguin, who did the cover of Dear Ghosts, did a portrait of me with the American flag behind me and the text of I Have Never Wanted To March written across my face. We blew it up and put it on the front of my house because all around my neighbourhood everyone had the American flag up. They had a different notion of what a patriot was. The way my poems were moving I felt like, according to the Patriot Act, I wasn't a patriot, because I disagreed with the war."
In Newsweek, author Dalia Sofer lists her five most important books.
Minnesota Public Radio's The Current features local rockers Fog with an interview and in-studio performance.
Comics Should Be Good reviews the graphic novel, Stagger Lee.
see also: author Derek McCulloch's Book Notes essay for the book
also at Largehearted Boy:
2007 Lollapalooza downloads
this week's CD releases
