Click here for more music news, events and trends (including free downloads of a Radiohead live DVD and Sonic Youth’s complete ATP NY 2010 set – here and the Flaming Lips’ “See the Leaves music video here). Follow at http://twitter.com/FutureHeartDay for the latest…
October 20
As previously reported here, 1997’s Pinkerton is getting more attention from Weezer and their fans than their new album (Hurley)… and now it’s getting even more.
Quick recap: the upcoming Pinkerton Deluxe (as well as rarities disc Death to False Metal) is due out November 2nd and the ‘Blinkerton’ tour (where they play their début on the first night of a given venue and ‘Pinkerton’ on the second and final night, than repeat the in another city) starts on Nov. 26….
…add to all this Rivers Cuomo’s Alone series’ third volume (including solo Pinkerton demos) and a book, ‘The Pinkerton Diaries’ is coming at the end of November. Rivers Cuomo explained in an October 20 press conference (via Spinner) it’s “a collection of all my journals, emails, letters, photos, school papers — everything from those years ’94-’97, so you get an inside look as to exactly what I was thinking.”
“I was frustrated with the reception that our first album had received… people thought we were a jokey, shallow, corporate version of the Pixies. I wanted to be taken more seriously. I wrote the second album, ‘Pinkerton,’ very carefully trying to avoid anything that would’ve made it seem like a novelty act, which I assumed was happening on the first record… I was saying, ‘OK, world. Here’s the truth, here’s what I’m really like. Part of me assumed that it was going be successful and I’d become this superstar because the record was so focused on me. It came out and sold a 10th of ‘The Blue Album.’ It was an incredible drop. It wasn’t just commercial — the critics pretty much uniformly hated it. It was just the beginning of online feedback, so you could go on Amazon and see all the negative feedback from the fans from the first record. Boy, that was just crushing, all of that together. It took awhile to build up the confidence to get back into songwriting.”
John Lydon reports on his site some unfortunate news concerning Slits’ front woman Ari Up: “John and Nora have asked us to let everyone know that Nora’s daughter Arianna (aka Ari-Up) died today (Wednesday, October 20th) after a serious illness. She will be sadly missed.
Everyone at JohnLydon.com and PiLofficial.Com would like to pass on their heartfelt condolences to John , Nora and family.
Rest in Peace.”
October 19
George Harrison/ Ravi Shankar box set released. Olivia Harrison tells all here. Remastered versions of The Beatles’ Red and Blue comps were also out Tuesday (watch a trailer at http://www.thebeatles.com).
October 18
MGMT played Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC at 12:05 ET/PT & at 11:05 Central. Watch it here. Elsewhere, some school kids covered “Kids.”
Velvet Underground drumming icon “Moe” Tucker clarifies her association with the Tea Party movement to The River Front Times. Click link for more quotes like this, “I disagree with an administration that for twenty months blames Bush. If the President and his minions are so damn smart, why didn’t they know the severity of the situation? The president has actually said (and I saw it on video) that they didn’t know!”
“Anyone who thinks I’m crazy about Sarah Palin, Bush, etc. has made quite the presumption. I have voted Democrat all my life, until I started listening to what Obama was promising and started wondering how the hell will this utopian dream land be paid for? For those who actually believe that their taxes won’t go up in order to pay for all this insanity: good luck!”
This interview is in response to a news clip from last spring that was uploaded on YouTube in July relatively unnoticed (until reason.com embedded it on October 1, at which point it began to spiral the web, getting 70-odd-thousand views in the last three weeks). Watch:
My Morning Jacket begins their complete albums live at Terminal 5 run tonight: first up, 1999 début Tennessee Fire.
Download a New Freelance Whales song, “Enzymes” – free, via Crawdaddy.
Hear The Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger, the new album by Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl – via NPR.
Buddy Guy has a new album, Living Proof. Watch the video for its first single, ‘Stay Around a Little Longer’ (feat. B.B. King) here.
October 17
NPR webcast their first video simulcast tonight: Sigur Rós’ Jonsi from Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles at 9 p.m. PT (12:00 ET). On-demand replay of the six camera shoot is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 19 through Thursday only. More info/ watch it – here.
News hits the fan: lack of toilets causes cancellation of Glastonbury 2012. Daily Mail reports, “Organisers have taken the surprise decision to cancel the world-famous music event in 2012 because so many of the nation’s Portaloos will be in use at the Olympics.”…Speaking to The Mail on Sunday, festival organiser Michael Eavis confirmed… ‘We have our own stock of portable toilets but we always need more. We shop around with four companies to get the best price, but we are not bothering for 2012.’ ‘There will be a huge demand for Portaloo toilets in London, so everyone will push up their prices and I can see it getting very expensive.’
[UPDATE: denied]
October 16
Cypress Hill and promoters Guerilla Union host annual SmokeOut festival at the National Orange Show in San Bernardino, Calif. Other performers include MGMT, Deadmau5, Manu Chao, Erykah Badu, Nas and Damian Marley, Incubus, Paul Oakenfold and many more. Most notable is the legal use of medicinal marijuana onsite: never has a festival this large allowed open pot use.
Spinner reported, “Goldenvoice head Paul Tollett, a longtime friend of [Guerilla Union president Chang] Weisberg who books the Coachella festival, is amazed that it’s being allowed. “There’s never been a massive festival that has had medicinal marijuana,” Tollett says. “Chang has been talking about it for the last couple of years and when I first heard it I thought, ‘You’ll never get that, Chang.'” Now that he has, Tollett sees it as hugely important moment. “It’s the most significant feature of a music festival in a couple of decades,” he says.”
Weisberg agrees. “It’s not too far from the future right now where you could see responsible 21-and-over use of medical marijuana,” he says. “If we can harness this particular industry, be a positive advocate and help create policy, this could have a substantial change on my business. That means it will have a big impact for musicians as well.”
October 15
The BBC reports Nick Mason (Pink Floyd’s drummer) claims his legendary band may reunite for a charity/ reunion/ retirement tour: “I think it would be a very nice way for a band to gently move towards retirement, by doing shows absolutely for charity rather than for more income… In a way the best thing would be to do a number of shows and have some sort of foundation… We all individually have pet projects and what we did at Earls Court [in 1994] was we pooled the money and each of us decided which particular things they would like some of the money to go towards, which was brilliant. That’s the way to do it.”
As previously reported (see September 15 in Observer archive), Roger Waters reunited with David Gilmour onstage at a benefit in England this July, and as Water’s side of the deal, Gilmour will join The Wall tour for at least one song (“Comfortably Numb” of course!) of one unannounced date…
“T.O.R.N.A.D.O”, the first glimpse of The Go Team’s upcoming album (Rolling Blackouts – due January 31) hits the blogosphere. Download it here (from Stereogum via Pitchfork), or listen below. Pitchfork also featured an interview with “team captain” (so to speak – I know, it’s corny to put it that way), Ian Parton. Among other things, he says, “we have kind of psychedelic hip-hop. I guess I’ll describe it as technicolor, slightly woozy hip-hop, and it features Dominique Young Unique.
We’ve got lots more singing on the record, and we have guest vocals. Satomi [Matsuzaki] from Deerhoof is on one song called “Secretary Song”, which is really heavy on office sound effects– typing and telephones and things like that. It’s got this “Mad Men” feel to it– a 60s office kind of feel. Satomi’s singing about hating being a secretary. Bethany [Cosentino] from Best Coast is singing on a couple songs, as well. We actually did it ages ago. That was recorded in late ’09, so nobody had heard of her when I asked her to do it. I’m pretty pleased that she’s gone on to do well. I’m a real fan of Best Coast and that California feel. The song on which she sings has a jangly, girls-in-the-garage feel to it; it’s super-melodic.
There’s quite a few different kinds of songs on the album, and not self-consciously so. That’s the way it happened– just always getting bored and going in nine different directions at the same time. From day to day, my favorite music’s always changing, so I guess that kind of comes out… It’s been a while in the making, partly because we were touring forever, and partly because I had a kid. Also, it’s time-consuming music, really… listening to thousands and thousands of records. I hoard them, and I tape the best bits, and I whittle it down and try things out. It’s the silliest way of making music that you could ever do, really. Often, the song was written on acoustic, and then the sample was fitted to it, rather than me basing a song around someone else’s idea. There’s lots of live instruments on it. It’s not so clearly cut-and-paste, this record… I like to think I was never from the sort of Kanye West school of sampling. I always treat it as songwriting and always get a kick out of changing the sample, playing different chords over it so it becomes something different. I wouldn’t lift from someone else. So I think it’s just a continuation of what we’ve been doing, and I’m just starting to have the ability to get these things done now. I’ve never had the bollocks to ask a 20-piece band to play, but now I’m a bit braver and a bit more ambitious… We kind of got an African gospel choir on this one as well. I turned up to a church in Stratton when they were doing their gospel practice and got a recording of their song. I’m striving to be a bit more ambitious, but without being wanky. There’s no string sections or any of that kind of overblown stuff, which is often used to disguise the fact that you haven’t written a good song.
I’ve always liked epicness, in a way. When I set out, Morricone was always one of my favorites, and I was always making spaghetti western music, in a way. But this record was mastered to a C90 at the end. So I’m kind of always getting pulled in two different directions: lo-fi and panoramic scope. The lo-fi thing is still really important to me. I’m never angling to get on the charts or anything like that. It’s the last thing on my mind. It’s almost like I want to put things on C90s as a psychological thing for me. It’s a way of making myself feel better, just scorching the sound a bit. It just gels the song together a bit more. It’s not really nostalgia. Often, people talk about us being nostalgic. I’m a bit suspicious of nostalgia. The lo-fi aspect just puts a wall around it that says, “Hey, we’re not aiming to be on daytime radio.”
October 14
The New York Times Revisits Bob Dylan’s ‘Witmark Demos’ with a mini-doc. Watch it here. The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 (The Bootleg Series Vol. 9) is out October 19. The entire album streams on NPR until release day. As noted on October 5, you can download “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” – an advance promo offer – for free. Also, “Subterranean Homesick Blues: A Tribute to Bob Dylan’s ‘Bringing It All Back Home”, a tribute album to the classic 1965 LP where Bob “went electric” on the first side, only to save his most astonishing songs to date for the acoustic flip was released on October 5th. It features J. Tillman, Ane Brun, Castanets, Laura Veirs, and others.
October 13
One year since The Flaming Lips released Embryonic, their first Billboard top 10 album… oh my, what a year it has been!
Animal Collective’s Avey Tare releases his début album on Oct 20, Down There. Hear the whole thing now at NPR (at the beginning of the month Pitchfork posted “Lucky 1”, the first single – hear here).
The Pixies played their first show in Chile – coincidentally, right as the world was watching the rescue of miners trapped a half mile under the country’s ground – and found out literally minutes before going on stage that all 33 miner were rescued. In celebration and tribute they played 33 songs, one for each miners – their longest set ever. Black Francis said afterwards, “We were so moved by this story, by how many lives had been affected by this and how the Chilean people banded together to support what can only be described as a miracle. We wanted to do something to show how affected we were by this, so we played a special set at tonight’s show, 33 songs for the 33 miners, the longest set we’ve ever played as a band…This was definitely one of the most meaningful shows we’ve ever played.”
A fact missed by almost all the hundreds of music news sites and blogs that reported on the show: with the two-fer encore (“Where Is My Mind” and “Gigantic” – watch it below) they actually played 35 songs! The setlist – which opened with the one-two punch of “Cecilia Ann” and “Rock Music” ala Bossanova‘s opening – also included two of their classic covers – Neil Young’s “Winterlong” and The Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Head On” – most of Doolittle (all but “La La Love You,” “There Goes My Gun” and “Silver”) and Surfer Rosa (all but “Tony’s Theme,” “Oh My Golly,” “I’m Amazed,” and “Brick Is Red”), as well as later favs (“Is She Weird,” “U-Mass,” “Velouria,” “Dig for Fire,” “Allison”).
http://twitter.com/PIXIES/status/27344655211: “Thankyou Chile for an amazing night….off now to Mexico City !”
October 12
Deerhunter’s set at the 9:30 club webcasts live as part of All Songs Considered‘s ongoing series of full concerts streamed live from Washington, D.C. Download it and previous sets from the concert archives.
My Morning Jacket on Letterman for an entire concert for the CBS audience (its streaming here). Only one song broadcasts:
NPR launches 24/7 music channel streaming “every song ever played on the ten years of All Songs Considered“… playable from the NPR Music app.
Psychedelic Aliens: Ghana Rock History Is Unearthed After 40 Years – a great read and listen from Spinner.
Jack White’s Third Man Records gets its own line of Nixon headphones.
October 11
The Autumn Defense is a side project of Wilco consisting of two of its members: John Stirratt and Patrick Sansone. They’re giving away a free download of “Back of My Mind” at Paste. Check out more of their tunes and November tour dates at their myspace page.
October 9
Pitchfork streams Belle And Sebastian’s mini-doc “Write About Love” – One Week Only
Happy Birthday John Lennon – celebration videos and info here, including documentary screening in Central Park with guest speaker Lou Reed. More posts here.
October 8
Free concerts in New York: The Hold Steady at the SoHo Apple Store
and Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) at Tiger Beer (201 Mulberry St, 10/8-10/10)
Music by many “indie” bands’ has been mimicked recently in advertisements. On September 24th a post on sigur-ros.co discussed their situation, “Sigur rós have spent the decade since they were thrust into the spotlight saying ‘no’ to their music being used in advertising. Yes, they’ve done movies, TV and given music to charity “synchs” (as it is called when you “synchronise” music to picture), but despite rumours to the contrary they have never allowed their music to be used to sell anything. And they get asked A Lot. Sometimes they get asked, say ‘no’ and then a few months later an ad will suddenly appear that sounds strangely familiar… you can get all the musicologists’ reports you like and all they will tell you is that the chord sequence is “commonly used” or the structure is a “style-a-like” and not a “pass off”rós. Or – in this case – that despite the fact that the two pieces are “strongly similar in terms of general musical style, instrumentation and structure” and “created with a knowledge of and/or reference to the works of Sigur rós in general and ‘Hoppipolla’ in particular”, there is “insufficient evidence in the music to support a claim for infringement of the copyright”. In other words change a note here, swap things around a bit there and, hey presto, it’s an original composition. Inspiration moves in mysterious ways.
What we wanted to do here was post series of ads that have made us go ‘hmmm’ and let you decide who’s zooming who? But quite often when you go back and look for them you find the ads in question have disappeared off the radar (come in Coca Cola Mexico, New Zealand Lotto, Telmex Chile, etc). Anyway, here’s a few expensively produced, gorgeously executed examples of brands who you might feel are inserting a little too much fromage in their homage.”
(Watch the commercials that sound strangely familiar to Sigur Ros here) Similarly, last year an ad for ice cream sounded like the White Stripes’ “My Doorbell” and Pitchfork recently noted others that sound like Grizzly Bear’s “Two Weeks” (the video they linked was removed soon after the Pitchfork story ran…hmmm) and another like Fleet Foxes’ “White Winter Hymnal” (UPDATE: Pitchfork reported on the 9th that this commercial was taken off the air, then Pitchfork’s report was mysteriously taken down).
This isn’t new per se. Everyone from Blues Traveler to Tom Waits has been subject to such commercial hijacking. But these specific examples signify a lot about the marketability of the current crop of “indie” musicians and their relationship to “mainstream” culture.
Gorillaz stopped by The Late Show with David Letterman on Thursday, October 7th for a performance of “Rhinestone Eyes”. Friday night they played Madison Square Garden with an all-star ensemble: “Bobby Womack belted out a couple of tunes. Mos Def, De La Soul, and the Pharcyde’s Bootie Brown represented two generations of left-of-center rap… Miho Hatori of sadly defunct art-pop weirdos Cibo Matto squeaked through “19-2000”… even Lou Reed showed up for some words and guitar. Paul Simonon and Mick Jones look kind of silly in the Letterman clip below (as with at MSG), but don’t worry – they’re still cool (just don’t expect “Complete Control”).
October 7
Six free acoustic in-store performances by Jónsi (Sigur Rós frontman) announced: Los Angeles (October 17), followed by dates in Salt Lake City (22), Austin (26), Asheville (30), Atlanta (31) and Chicago (November 3) [UPDATE: canceled].
Phil Collins is on A Different Spin with Mark Hoppus. Wow, who knew Fuse would turn into this?
Phil explains his life, “I am doing nothing. Nobody believes me. I’ve got five kids, you know, three ex-wives and I don’t live with any of them.”
guardian.co reports: “Glee have smashed one of the Beatles’ most enduring musical records, chalking up the most top 100 US hits by a non-solo act. As of this week, the fictional high-school glee club has amassed 75 top 100 singles, trouncing the Beatles’ record of 71.
Glee came in through the bathroom window. While many bands strive for years, trying to grace the Billboard Hot 100 with another original single, the cast of the US TV show simply recorded dozens of covers. They began flooding the market in September 2009, and by the time we were counting down the seconds to 2010, Glee’s cast had already scored 25 hits in the top 100, coming second to the Beatles who had 31 hits in 1964. But the Fab Four weren’t able to hold Glee off for long. Buoyed by a blockbuster new episode starring Britney Spears, the series saw six new singles chart this week. Glee easily pipped the Beatles for the Hot 100 record. The only artists ahead of them now are solo acts – James Brown, who has 91 top 100 singles, and Elvis Presley, who has 108. Ironically, the cast of Glee owes some of their success to John, Paul, George and Ringo: among their hits are covers of Hello Goodbye and I Want to Hold Your Hand. The Glee cast has sold an impressive 2.8m albums and 11.5m downloads, according to sales source Nielsen Soundscan. Paul McCartney has even expressed interest in making a cameo.”
October 6
The Tom Tom Club go unplugged!
Karen O goes country!
A touching open letter to gay teens by Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro (written in the aftermath of the Rutgers suicide) circles the web. Apparently Dave was suicidal.
Bruce Springsteen’s advice to Kings of Leon’s Nathan Followill (published in Uncut) “For two-and-a-half hours a night I’m The Boss. The other 21 and a half, my wife is the boss. Never forget who you are’.”
Belle and Sebastian announce a contest: the prize, they’ll write a song about you. Says fan Steven Drozd, “wow! That’s super cool”
Mavis Staples performs on The Colbert Report with Jeff Tweedy. Watch here. The night before they played The Late Show with David Letterman.
October 5
Black Francis posts Paul Wegener’s 1920 German silent film Der Golem with new original music on his Vimeo page. His score will also be the basis of his new album, a “rock opera” – The Golem Rock Album – out November 16. Listen to the entire score, and watch the film here.
Arcade Fire play for 300 or so people at Big Sur’s Henry Miller Library.
The campaign to kill the dying dog that is Weezer… Now that’s activism! Fund drive to raise $10 mil to break them up!!!
Katy Goodman of The Vivian Girls released her first solo single and announced she’s also contributing to an upcoming Guided by Voices tribute (with The Flaming Lips and others).
The Who’s Live at Leeds was supposed to be Live at Hull – but the bass didn’t record properly, so the backup Leeds’ tapes were used. Now, forty years later, the band discovers that those tapes were only messed up for the first few songs, and even those could be fixed. Thus a new version of “Live at Leeds” will include the Hull gig as well. This is the fourth version of the album (the original 1970 LP, a 1995 CD reissue, and a 2001 deluxe issue precede it). Each version is longer than the previous. Can the Hull tapes really improve what for many is the “greatest live album of all-time”?
October 4
On the 40th anniversary of Janis Joplin’s death, Spinner reports “Joplin’s sister Laura and her brother Michael, who oversee the singer’s estate, are exploring several new ventures designed to raise her profile. Projects in the works include a documentary and a touring theatrical production. On top of that, the feature film, so long embroiled in legal issues, may be finally getting under way” and speaks to Sam Andrew (a key creative companion to Janis and cofounder of both Big Brother and the Holding Company and Janis’ Kozmic Blues Band), “”I’ve read so many scripts, and they always emphasize Janis as this power-hungry, drug-crazed person…There was nothing to take over. Nobody had any money, any fame, anything.”
The Future Heart 