The Current Music Blog: November 20, 2006 Archive

The Buffering Stream 11/20: Straight, No Chaser Edition

Posted at 7:00 AM on November 20, 2006 by Hans Eisenbeis

Dan the Automator is hitting the road, with help from Jurassic 5 and others.

Björk reunites with the Sugarcubes in Iceland. Many photographs result.

Chris wonders: Whatever happened to the live concert album?

TV on the Radio play unplugged at AOL.

When hipster cred is not enough: Arcade Fire have been shopping for a publicist.

The Peanuts Vs. Rock 'N' Roll

Posted at 12:00 PM on November 20, 2006 by Hans Eisenbeis

You remember the story: Charles Schultz was famously dissed by his hometown newspaper, so he packed up his easel and took his little comic strip elsewhere. After the rest of the world fell in love with The Peanuts and Schultz became a multi-gazillionaire, it became safe for the Twin Cities to embrace their newly deputized favorite son.

We mention this not to open old wounds, but to revisit one of the more discouraging examples of government art subsidization in the public space: the Peanuts On Parade program that is responsible for putting sculptures of Schultz characters all over our fair city. (Even its precursor, the Cows on Parade project in Chicago, was somehow less, um, cheesy.)

Still, we thought we'd finally come to some sort of acceptance. And then our favorite British music tabloid landed on our steps and the tears of rage welled up again: We get these hydrocephalic fiberglass cartoon characters led by Charlie Brown, and London gets thirty massive electric guitars led by Paul Weller. So wrong. And yet, so right.

Photo (CC) A.M. Kuchling

I'm Dreaming of a Black Thanksgiving

Posted at 2:00 PM on November 20, 2006 by Hans Eisenbeis (9 Comments)

Everyone knows the true secret of Thanksgiving: T-Giving Eve is one of the best nights of the year to meet your buddies home for the holidays and catch any number of tight local bands at your nearest watering hole. If you're lucky, you might catch someone on national tour who through the vagaries of tour management happens to be stuck eating turkey at the Uptown Embers. Someone like, say, Ike Reilly.

He's our top pick for T-Giving Eve. But truth be told, we're actually saving up our drink tickets and our spousal points for next week's show by the Black Keys.

Which reminds us of something we've been meaning to mention for a while: It vaguely seems possible that there has never been a "black" band that sucked. To wit:

The Black Halos

The Black Angels

Big Black

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Black Flag

Blackalicious

Frank Black

The Black Crowes

Black Uhuru

Can you think of any more? More important, can you think of any that suck? Let us know, in the comments.

Black Halos photo (CC) by Dan A. Nachtnebel

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