Filed under: Etc.
Wait — when was the Grammy Awards process “representative of the current musical landscape”?
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke about her meeting with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan on Wednesday.
About a month ago, I toiled for days over a piece I was going to post here about all the reasons why artists should move to Detroit. I decided to sit on it for awhile, mainly because I thought it might be better received if it were written by an artist … who lived in Detroit. Well. That happened. (As a side note, I’m starting a movement to ban the phrase “Recently, at a dinner party” from the NYT’s op-ed section.)
Maybe I’ll revisit that story tonight, since I don’t have any dinner party plans. … And maybe I should rename this blog “Empty Promises.”
Filed under: Etc. | Tags: Medicine for Melancholy, Saturday Looks Good to Me
I thought it sounded good when I was copy editing this review last weekend. But check out the trailer! And by that I mean check out the music in the trailer!
Lots more to come — soonish, promise — including my top 10 of 2008 and video clips of old episodes of The New Dance Show.
But for right now, I just have some sad news to share.
I love this new distribution strategy that pairs music in the vinyl format with a digital download coupon. Bon Iver is doing it for his new EP, Blood Bank, which is scheduled for a January 20 release.
Compact discs are clunky and ugly, and offer a subpar listening experience compared to records. And now I can buy my records and listen to my music on the subway, too. Yay! Everyone wins! Except for CD manufacturers and Chuck “I do not own a record player” Klosterman.
So the music industry is adapting. And journalism is redefining itself as a purveyor of information, rather than a newspaper hawker. When are the car companies going to adapt and start investing in public transit and energy-efficient travel? And are there ways in which we can enjoy our daily “coffee and a newspaper” and long, winding, solo road trips in a manner that’s efficient and less wasteful?
When I first heard Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago … one of my immediate thoughts was that I wished I still had a car. The record is akin to scraping your windshield and gunning it out of a snow bank. It’s like wiping those little visibility circles on your steamed-up windows so you can just get going on your way, blind spot be damned. I hear the new EP is still wintry, but it’s more of a celebration of those rare glimpses of sunshine that you sometimes get toward the end of January.
Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) played two of the new songs — “Blood Bank” and “Babys” — at Bowery Ballroom this past summer. And if they’re any indication of what the album will be like, it sounds like Blood Bank might be a lot more keyboardy and a little more rocking, possibly like Damien Jurado’s raucous I Break Chairs follow-up to the hushed contemplation of his Ghost of David.
By the way, Village Voice’s Sound of the City blog did a good job documenting what the Bowery show was like.
Here’s the upcoming EP’s track listing:
1. Blood Bank
2. Beach Baby
3. Babys
4. Woods
And here’s what it’s going to look like:
A couple people caught the new songs on video.
Here’s “Blood Bank”:
And here’s “Babys”:
Bon Iver is playing three sold-out (nuts!) shows in New York next month: December 10 and 11 at Town Hall and December 12 at Music Hall of Williamsburg.
Filed under: Etc. | Tags: Election, Karen Dalton, Nathaniel Mayer, The Gories
At the risk of throwing away tens of thousands of dollars spent on my journalism education, which taught me how to be an objective observer of my surroundings, I have to say: I AM SO ABSURDLY EXCITED ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED LAST TUESDAY!!!!!
I smiled so hard that night I think I might have permanently contorted my face.
But as always, good news comes tempered with bad, and as the glow subsides, we’re reminded that things are still really, really messed up. Maybe I truly am fair and balanced. And maybe my expensive journalism degree was kind of hanging in the balance anyway.
Or maybe it’s just that some friends of friends have died recently, and times are hard, and all I feel like doing anymore is giving everyone I love — and everyone I don’t love and everyone walking by on the street — a sloppy-laughing-crying-contorted-face hug that expresses all the joy and sorrow and anxiety that consumes us at this hyper-atypical moment in time. This is the closest thing I can find digitally. Karen Dalton singing “It Hurts Me Too” to a car graveyard:
Nathaniel Mayer, RIP
And this is old news at this point, but I’m psyched that the Gories are reuniting for a couple shows next summer. Apologies for this roller-coaster of a post. But holy crap. The Gories!!!
The Muslims are exceeding my expectations at the moment.
They’re playing tonight at 8 p.m. at Bowery Ballroom. Thanks Matt B. for the hot tips. That’s two for two!
I might hit this up before Glasslands tonight:
I’ve been enjoying this guy’s mixes of African pop music from the ’70s for weeks.
Plus, before that (also at Santos Party House), there’s a dub showcase with Ari-Up & the True Warriors, Meta & the Cornerstones, The Cool & Deadly, 77Klash, and The Fear Nuttin Band. I saw Ari-Up (of the Slits) do a dub set a few years ago that was kind of weird in a not-good way, but if I remember correctly, that was just her and her son and like a boombox or something. This time she has a band.
