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July 3, 2008
Shorties
The 2008 Bonnaroo music download page has been updated with a direct mp3 download of the Bonnaroo Superjam as well as a bittorrent lossless download of that same performance.
The New York Times reviews the first Feelies show in 17 years.
Circling through four chords with a jabbing lead-guitar lick, “Time Is Right” was a new song that sounded as if the Feelies had never disappeared. They were still what might be a garage band reimagined by mathematicians, a psychedelic band with no illusions, a folk-rock band hypnotized by repetition, a punk band for introverts. From 1977 to 1991, their initial run, the Feelies traveled a clear path between the Velvet Underground and current indie rock. Their songs, by the guitarists and singers Bill Million and Mr. Mercer, use rock rudiments to build incrementally from meditation to frenzy.
Time Out New York interviews Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth.
TONY: Fair enough. So, in an all-female alt-rock bass-off, who would win: you, Kim Deal or D’arcy?
Kim Gordon: D’arcy? D’arcy who? [Laughs] I don’t know. Probably Kim [Deal]. But I don’t think of myself as a musician. I’m more of a visual artist who happens to play the bass. I picked up the bass kind of postpunk-style. There’s a real art to not learning how to play an instrument and being able to still play it.
Bettye Lavette talks to the Montreal Gazette about her music career.
"Three weeks before my first record came out, I was in the 10th grade," LaVette said. "Over the years, in retrospect, the fact that my career did not work, commercially, forced me to have the opportunity to learn (to interpret songs). If I had become a big star, I would have been busy being a big star," she added, laughing the infectious laugh that seems to punctuate her every comment.
The Baltimore Sun interviews the Watson Twins about their new album, Fire Songs.
Why'd you decide to cover the Cure song "Just Like Heaven"?
We were back home in Louisville, [Ky.], for Christmas, and they were doing the Top 100 of all time. It was so nostalgic for me. I love the Cure. I was like, 'What if we totally did this exactly opposite of the way Robert [Smith] does it?' We just started playing along, and it totally just came together. There wasn't much thought about 'Oh, let's put a harmonica on here.' It just kind of all came together. ... It's such a great song, and I love the lyrics of it, and it's nice to be able to hear it sung so slowly.
Indie Shows 1980-1999 is a Flickr group of concert photography.
nyctaper is offering mp3s of DEVO's recent Brooklyn performance at McCarren Pool.
Black Angels guitarist Christian Bland talks to the Nashville Scene about his band being labeled "psychedelic rock."
“I think of it more as preservation with progression,” Bland explains. “We use effects that people in the ’60s could never have even dreamed of. By using ’60s gear (which is the best sounding since it’s the highest quality) in combination with our ‘new’ pedals, we can create a different level of psychedelia channeled from 2525. You’ve gotta find the right gear to make the right sounds. The right sounds are the ones you hear in your head first.”
Tampa Calling lists rock's biggest talent-squanderers.
The Los Angeles Times examines the deal that will make Sloane Crosley's essay collection, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, an HBO miniseries.
For Crosley, a publicist at Vintage Books, the rush of favorable reviews and HBO's interest has been dizzying. But she's never at a loss for zingers when it comes to the adaptation of her book: "The world I describe is about how people live now," she said. "It's not about zany people with unlimited, inexplicable funds in an apartment somewhere." And she swears she wasn't thinking about a potential film or TV deal as she wrote the book. "I don't walk around thinking, 'Yes, this should be a young female Larry David,' " Crosley, 29, said. "But sometimes you just can't help but wonder, is this an essay I just wrote, or is it secretly Episode 1?"
see also: Crosley's Largehearted Boy Book Notes essay for the book
Creative Loafing Atlanta profiles author Salman Rushdie, "the enchanter of Emory."
The contemporary zeitgeist shaped Rushdie's recent books, such as the name-dropping New York novel Fury, and Shalimar the Clown, which recounted Kashmir's tragic history through a doomed Romeo and Juliet love affair between a Muslim boy and Hindu girl. His latest book, The Enchantress of Florence, offers a change of pace and takes place entirely in 16th-century Italy and India, as if Rushdie wanted to cleanse his palate of modern-day political conflicts.
How To Split an Atom lists 32 sci-fi novels you should read.
WFMU's Beware of the Blog offers a sampler CD of tracks that will be available at the Free Music Archive they are helping curate.
WHYY's Fresh Air recommends my favorite novel of 2008 so far, Joseph O'Neill's Netherland, focusing on The Great Gatsby references.
If you're going to invoke Gatsby as often as O'Neill does in Netherland (and, by the way, catching all those references to ferry boats, Jewish frontmen and death by drowning is, undeniably, part of the insider fun of reading this novel), you'd better be able to acquit yourself honorably against the sheer gorgeousness of Fitzgerald's prose. O'Neill does — and, believe me, I can't think of many novelists I would put within spitting distance of Fitzgerald. O'Neill is a wide-ranging stylist capable of whipping out unexpected but precisely right words like "peregrinating." He's also adroit at muted comedy, as when Hans looks at Ramkissoon's hairy chest and spots "a necklace's gold drool."
Drowned in Sound lists the best of 2008's forthcoming albums.
NPR's Morning Edition profiles British songstress Duffy.
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
