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October 7, 2008
Shorties (Chrissie Hynde, Liz Phair, and more)
Rolling Stone interviews Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders.
NPR is streaming Liz Phair's West Hollywood performance of Exile in Guyville.
Pitchfork interviews Lambchop's Kurt Wagner.
Pitchfork: How does your background in visual art inform your music?
KW: With abstract work, I never was quite sure what it was that felt right about the painting, but I did know that I responded to it and I liked whatever it was offering me. That's something that seems to happen as well when I'm writing, where maybe things that don't necessarily make a lot of logical sense are put together, and yet we struggle to make sense of these things somehow. I'm not quite sure why that is; it's something about human nature, I guess. But I'm interested in that way we perceive things, and that was part of what I was getting into in painting-- the idea of perception and how information goes through our heads and it comes out another way.
The Minneapolis City Pages interviews Silver Jews frontman Dave Berman.
CP: The popularity of the Silver Jews has grown steadily over the years without having so much as even a modest radio hit. In the sink-or-swim world of the music industry, your band is one of few that have managed to succeed in this fashion. To what do you attribute your success?
DB: I think there needs to be a wall between art and commerce as thick as the one between church and state. Singles are promotional items. Bait for the discography. Afterwards, the singles are judged as either successful or failed components of a career. It creates a statistic for failure that will eventually mar people's impressions of the act.
The Chicago Tribune examines what it's like to live above a noisy bar.
"Some nights are awful, if it's a super-loud noise band," said Richardson. But "some nights, if I like the band and the bar is crowded, I will sit in my kitchen with friends and listen to the music," she said. "I did that last night even though I didn't have friends over."
The Featured Artists' Coalition campaigns for the protection of performers' and musicians' rights.
PopMatters interviews Glenn Mercer of the Feelies.
When you signed to A&M, and they were fans, did they see a commercial crossover? What was the mentality of the band at the time, were you expecting to just keep doing what you were doing or sort of expand on a greater commercial level? What were your expectations?
Well, I think at the time in the ‘80s, alternative really kind of took off. All the bands who were on indie labels signed to major labels. So it was sort of a matter of seeing the potential there, both the band seeing it and the record company seeing it. And we know what happened to all the bands that signed to major labels, they pretty much all broke up after that. Kind of gives you an idea of how things worked back then.
Long Blondes bassist breaks down the band's forthcoming 7" compilation Singles track-by-track at Drowned in Sound.
In the Guardian, Philip Hoare lists his top 10 whaling books.
Cartoonist Berkeley Breathed talks to NPR's All Things Considered about ditching his Opus comic strip in favor of writing children's books.
io9 asks political pundits to recommend science fiction novels everyone should read before voting.
NPR lists 3 books to "feed your election fix."
Prolific lists the 8 best "get-over-a-breakup" albums.
Minnesota Public Radio's The Current features Ani DiFranco with an in-studio performance and interview.
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
