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The Current Music Blog: December 4, 2006 Archive

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I made a pig of myself at The Buffering Stream, 12/4

Posted at 7:00 AM on December 4, 2006 by Hans Eisenbeis (2 Comments)

  • Diary of a sensitive boy, or Morrissey's current set list? Or both?

  • Grizzly Bear's Top 10 of 2006: Hot Chip tops Ed's list, neat!

  • His patience frayed, Ross makes it through the GNR marathon.

  • GNR manager denies the whole Axl-Tommy onstage kerfuffle.

  • Another cool book to add to your holiday list: The dandy new Warhhol encyclopedia.

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    • The Pitchfork-Hold Steady Love Affair Heats Up Again

    Posted at 1:00 PM on December 4, 2006 by Hans Eisenbeis (2 Comments)

    The Hold Steady, MPR Photo
    We thought maybe Pitchfork had run out of gas in its 12-month campaign to make The Hold Steady a household word. But today, we are pleased to announce the arrival of this year's 22nd story about the band. As you might gather from the URL ("/Interview_Interview_The_Hold_Steady"), it's another interview with Craig Finn, a guy who sees the value of repetition.
    "If you want to be heard, you want to make time to write the lyrics, and you want them to be enjoyable, too. There are things like repetitive choruses, which we really didn't do much before this record. But if you yell at people for three straight minutes, they might not remember anything. But if you say one thing a couple of times, that'll be what they remember."
    Don't get us wrong, we love Craig as much as the next guy. But the only new revelations to be gleened from this longish walk-up is how much Pitchfork still loves "Boys And Girls in America," and Craig's personal strategy for surviving a night of rock 'n' roll.
    "My big thing is to get onstage sober. Whatever happens from there happens. But you get onstage drunk and it's not going to be good. It takes a while. I have to sing a lot, so I can only drink so much. So most nights it's fine; even if I drink as much as I possibly can, I can't get that drunk."
    We think that's good advice, especially as we head into the season of office parties, holiday festivals, and family socials: Try to get onstage sober, and from there let the cards fall where they may.

    Photo: MPR

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    Book 'Em, Danno

    Posted at 3:00 PM on December 4, 2006 by Hans Eisenbeis (5 Comments)

    Do you still listen to cassettes? According to this article in the New York Times, the ancient format just won't die. The main reason? Audio books.


    For listening to a book, cassettes are an oddly elegant medium, analog like a book itself. If you need to hear a paragraph again, rewind for a few seconds rather than jumping back several minutes to where a CD’s track began. Older CD players don’t resume where you left off, meaning you have to hunt around to find your place.

    That and the fact that most book publishers don't seem to care at all about joining the rest of us here in the 21st century. (Hello?! Disk players DO have FF and RW functions. And once you've swapped tape 6 side B for tape 9 side A in "The Great Gatsby," you honestly don't care that somewhere in your car, the correct tape is right where you left off.)

    But that reminds us of a truly dead art form: The cassette-only punk-rock release. There are some ephemeral classics—like The Replacements' "When the S— Hits the Fans," and Black Flag's "Everything Went Black." We have especially fond memories of the latter, because we once had Henry Rollins sign our copy, whereupon we were informed that the cassette predated Henry Rollins. D'oh! (He signed it anyway, with a gold-ink pen. Sweet!)

    Tell us about the cassettes that survive in your collection... in the comments.

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