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June 23, 2008
Shorties
The 2008 Bonnaroo music download page has been updated with an mp3 download of Yonder Mountain String Band's set and bittorrent lossless downloads of the performance by Two Gallants, the Superjam, and Rilo Kiley.
The Globe and Mail points out Girl Talk's latest album, Feed the Animals, available as mp3s in a "pay-what-you-want" release. $5 gets additional lossless digital files and $10 gets the CD shipped to you when it is released as well.
The New Yorker features new fiction by Alice Munro, "Deep Holes."
The Guardian's music blog calls George Clinton "the best dressed man in music."
While Clinton's psychedelic funk (or P-Funk) with bands Funkadelic and Parliament has indelibly shaped my musical taste - I still listen to these 70s sounds and love P-Funk-influenced artists like Snoop Dogg, OutKast, Plant Life and MIA - Clinton's band of Day-Glo funkateers have also had their fair share of influence on my taste in fashion. I remember watching a Funkadelic Live video aged 10 and wondering why the rest of the world didn't dress in glittery hot pants, white big pimpin' floor-length fur coats, sunglasses and fur hats, let alone carry space guns and novelty-shaped guitars. Clinton's Mothership Connection spaceship beamed down to earth to wow us not just with music, but with an out-of-this-world dress sense too.
NME profiles Black Kids.
You might have heard the phrase ‘buzz band’, an utterance often accompanied by sentences like ‘toast of the blogosphere’ and ‘the highlight of CMJ/SXSW/insert name of industry showcase here’. It’s a relatively new phenomenon in these culturally accelerated climes, one largely restricted to US indie rock acts, and testament to the heat that can be generated by an ear to the ground and an account with blogger.com. For 2006, read Tapes ’N Tapes; 2007, Cold War Kids; 2008, Black Kids. The problem that’s presented itself to all of them is how to connect with people who enjoy their music away from a flickering computer screen. Yet it looks like the final band on that list might be the first to crack it.
The New York Times notes the differences between mastering CDs and LPs for the same release.
On a reasonable stereo, the difference between the regular CD and the CD packaged with the LP is noticeable: the drums hit harder, because they’re much louder than the other sounds, and the vocals jump out. “When we did the regular CD, we had to deal with the realities of the marketplace, and we came up with a good compromise,” said Mr. Ulyate, who produced the album with the guitarist Mike Campbell. “But this is a different experience.”
The San Francisco Chronicle notes the closing of Berkeley Independent bookstore Cody's.
Ross said that "when Cody's was doing quite well, independent stores had 40 to 50 percent of the market. Now they're down to about 3 percent of the market. In the late 1980s and into 1990, on a good Saturday Cody's on Telegraph Avenue would do $30,000 in business. More recently, a typical Saturday would bring $10,000 worth. The business declined by two-thirds. Costs were up, and sales were down."
Billboard examines the effect of Feist's hit album The Reminder on its Canadian label, Arts & Crafts.
"It has allowed us to build out our infrastructure," Remedios says. "We now have all the tools at our disposal that any much larger label has. We can do things that were previously outside our scope."
The New York Times profiles Shillong, India, a town fascinated with American rock and roll (and one that holds a celebration of Bob Dylan's birthday every year).
Many theories are offered for Shillong’s fascination with rock and the blues. Some argue that the area’s indigenous Khasi traditions are deeply rooted in song and rhyme. Some credit the 19th-century Christian missionaries who came from Britain and the United States, introduced the English language, hymns and gospel music and in turn made the heart ripe for rock. Some say the northeast, remote and in many pockets, gripped by anti-Indian separatist movements, has not been as saturated by Hindi film music as the rest of India.
Hypebot lists the top 10 indie music marketing tools.
Pitchfork gives Liz Phair's remastered Exile in Guyville album a 9.6.
CBS News Sunday Morning picks the best CDs of summer 2008.
The Times Online profiles Sea Wolf.
Lykke Li talks to the Independent about her songwriting,
"I want people to have a good time," says Li later. "It's boring only to hear singer/songwriters spilling their guts." Her varied stage personae are all part of the "many different sides" to her personality. "I am such a complex person. I have so many different layers of my personality to choose from," she says. "I am super-sensitive and I am super-strong."
In the Guardian, Alex Petridis reviews My Bloody Valentine's recent London performance.
Performing essentially the same set as on their final tour, the band appear to have been preserved in amber for the last 16 years. The members look exactly the same: a veritable advert for the invigorating properties of doing virtually nothing.
The Associated Press points out the effects of high gas prices on indie band tours.
MySpace founder Tom Anderson talks to the Guardian about the future of the social networking site.
"So many people are saying this is the next thing for music. Every song from every band is there. What you'd find on iTunes, you'll now find on MySpace and it's free," enthuses Anderson. "Whether it's financially successful is the big question. Can we make money from the ads? Can the record labels be satisfied with what we're bringing in? That's the challenge. That's a big leap and a big effort. Time will tell if it works out."
The Independent examines how cartoonists are depicting the Iraq war in their graphic novels.
Today's broad countercultural coalition in the US is often motivated by frustration at the news coverage of the Iraq conflict and its aftermath from traditional media outlets. In such a climate, comic books thrive by reflecting the public bad mood, and they remain streets ahead of many of their rivals in the creative industries. While authors and filmmakers have taken their time preparing fictional responses to the war, comics are a relatively immediate form. In theory, says Wood, "you can write and draw a comic and see it on the stands three months later. A movie can take years."
also at Largehearted Boy:
daily mp3 downloads
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
this week's CD releases
tags: music books popculture indie news
