The Current Music Blog: September 8, 2006 Archive

Pain Is Weakness Leaving Your Body

Posted at 7:01 AM on September 8, 2006 by Hans Eisenbeis (78 Comments)

While the timeless Bob Dylan enjoys new life at the top of the charts, the music of dearly departed Johnny Cash plays on, too--in a new commercial. Nike, a company that has flirted with rock 'n' roll controversy many times in the past (remember their desecration of the Beatles "Revolution"? Tut tut!), has created a new ad for its international division that features Cash's 2002 cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt," cut into footage of professional athletes in moments of, uh, intense vulnerability. Well, let's let the pros explain it to you:

Instead of focusing on their glorious peaks, the ad captures the athletes during times of trials and tribulations -- those split-second instances when they overcome significant physical and/or mental barriers.

For no apparent reason, these ads will not be airing in the US, according to Billboard magazine.

Unfortunately, there are no plans to make the spot available to American audiences any time soon.

Geeze, it's almost like they've never even heard of YouTube!

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The Decline of Print

Posted at 9:55 AM on September 8, 2006 by Hans Eisenbeis (2 Comments)

What's a mention in the New Yorker worth? In this week's issue of the world's greatest magazine for geezers, we noticed Sasha Frere Jone's emphatic endorsement of a New York band called Earl Greyhound. The New York power trio regularly draws comparisons to--get ready for this--Led Zeppelin, and we can get behind that, actually, with some allowances for the New Math and all that. So far, only about 10,000 folks have snooped around Earl Greyhound's MySpace page. Perhaps self-conscious New Yorker readers aren't ready for that frightening step into Youth Nation. But everyone could meet halfway at Sasha's blog, where our favorite rock writer goes light on the words and heavy on pictures and lists. We especially like this recent entry, which nicely sums up the current state of the art, with hardly a single adjective:

brandon flowers : can't sing
xtina : can
tenacious d : strong
this old houseberlake : stronger, very stronger
rock music : trying
jay-z & beyoncé : kramer vs. kramer
rihanna : not allowed at 825 8th for a little while
pink : all like what?
lou reed : all like rock (and post-facto, rapp)
jack white : needs to see zz top as future, fast

By the way, Sasha gets a pass on the whole capitalization deal that we're always complaining about. Dude writes for the New Yorker yo!

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Band Names: More Complete Sentences Than Ever Before!

Posted at 11:09 AM on September 8, 2006 by Hans Eisenbeis (14 Comments)

At the present rate, bands with names that are full sentences will overtake the universe with all that extra verbiage by about 2010. By then, paper won’t exist anymore, so at least the Trouser Press Guide to Alternative Music won't have to worry about all that extra typesetting. Here are three more for the record:

A Great Way To Get Through The Last 30 Minutes of Work

Posted at 4:28 PM on September 8, 2006 by Hans Eisenbeis (1 Comments)

Friday is a great day to spend the last hour of "work" looking at local bands' webpages, don't you think?