The Current Music Blog: January 4, 2008 Archive

The Stream 01/04/08

Posted at 8:50 AM on January 4, 2008 by Barb Abney

Hot Chip announce tour dates and information about their forthcoming release Made In The Dark.
They're playing First Avenue on April 18th.

Get an inside look at Ween's studio.

Primal Scream and CSS vocalist have recorded a duet.

Today In Music History:
1936 - Billboard Magazine introduced the first pop music chart.
1956 - Bernard Sumner (Warsaw, Joy Division, New Order, Electronic) was born.
1960 - Michael Stipe (R.E.M.) was born.
1962 - Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins) was born.
1965 - Beth Gibbons (Portishead) was born.
1970 - Neil Boland (a chauffeur) was accidentally killed when Keith Moon (The Who) ran over him.
1977 - Timothy Wheeler (Ash) was born.
1986 - Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy) died.
2006 - Barry Gibb bought the house where Johnny Cash lived for 35 years, he said he planned to preserve the house to honor Johnny's memory.

Live Blogging 01/04/08

Posted at 9:52 AM on January 4, 2008 by Barb Abney

11:15 a.m. Local Music - Dallas Orbiter
Their new CD is Motorcycle Diagrams.
The release show is tonight at The Varsity Theater along with Oija Radio, The Chambermaids and Daughters Of The Sun.
More...

10:55 a.m. Rogue Wave
Evan Farrell who has worked with the band and was also a member of Magnolia Electric Compay passed away late last month.

10:45 a.m. Louis XIV
They're playing at Fine Line Music Cafe with The Editors and Hot Hot Heat on January 30th.

Song Of The Day - Local Music - The Poison Control Center
Today on our Song Of The Day Podcast we're featuring The Poison Control Center with the tune "Glory Us" from their album A Collage Of Impressions.
They're out on the road touring right now.
More.. here and/or here.

9:50 a.m. Nada Surf
Their new album, Lucky is their 5th studio album. They have a lengthy tour on the horizon.
More...

9:35 a.m. The Weakerthans
They'll be playing a couple of festivals in Ontario next month.

9:10 a.m. Belle & Sebastian
Stevie Jackson will be supporting The 1900s in the US next week.

Do the Shuffle

Posted at 12:08 PM on January 4, 2008 by Tony Lopez (1 Comments)

O, Shuffler, why have you forsaken me?

“Start of Something New,” Original Cast – High School Musical
I told you I live with a seven-year old girl, right? I apologize, in advance, to anybody who gets this song stuck in their heads over the weekend. I hope this makes it all better.

“Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum,” Bob Dylan
This is from Love and Theft, part of Dylan’s 21st Century trilogy. Or, rather, is it from Junichi Saga’s 1989 book Confessions of a Yakuza? Remember that whole kerfuffle? Whatever became of that? A tempest in a teapot, perhaps.

“Boys Don’t Cry," The Cure
Here’s Robert Smith doing his goofy, little Robert Smith dance.

“For Today I Am a Boy,” Antony & the Johnsons
Antony Hegarty’s voice is simply not from this planet. In this interview, from the March 17, 2005 Daily Telegraph, Antony discusses his background in experimental theater and his musical inspirations. While Boy George certainly was an influence, Marc Almond may have been an even stronger touchstone.

“A House Is Not a Motel,” Love
What do The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s, Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and Love’s Forever Changes have in common? They were all released in 1967. Sean Murphy, in an article published in PopMatters shortly after Arthur Lee’s death in August 2006, makes a persuasive case for “Forever Changes” as the album that truly stands the test of time. Here’s Arthur Lee with a 2003 incarnation of Love playing at the Glastonbury Festival.

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"My 3 Songs" for Friday

Posted at 12:12 PM on January 4, 2008 by Steve Seel

Megan Hemmila from Mpls has the floor today. She says, "My friend has always loved Andrew Bird, and for some reason I never listened. Finally, a few days ago I heard him on The Current and was amazed -- I wish I had taken my friend's advice long ago! Now I can't get enough of Bird and a couple other artists I seem to have missed out on for a while."

1) Andrew Bird, "Heretics"
2) Gogol Bordello, "Wonderlust King"
3) The Polyphonic Spree, "The Fragile Army"

Three cheers for discovery! You don't have to feel the need to explain not listening to something, Megan; we all have lives and that's just the way it goes, with all of us. But how great when we finally have that moment when we go, "Where has this been all my life?" That's awesome. I'll consider that another successful day here in Current-land.

DeVille and Seel Tackle The Sprawling Topics

Posted at 12:22 PM on January 4, 2008 by Steve Seel (3 Comments)

So Bill and I were on Midmorning w/ Kerri Miller this morning, talking about all manner of musical things that we probably didn't have nearly enough time to correctly address -- such as the questions of whether or not indie rock is "too white," whether it's a good thing or a bad thing that there's no more top-40 radio or Ed Sullivan show to create mega-bands and "mass shared experiences" like The Beatles and The Stones anymore, where protest music went between the sixties and today, and yes, even the perpetually unanswered "is the allbum dead" topic. All of this was spurred by an op-ed piece (behind subscription wall) in the New York Times by David Brooks that followed up on two earlier articles lamenting the supposed increased "stylistic segregation" of pop music over the past decade, written by Sasha Frere-Jones in The New Yorker and Carl Wilson in Slate. My personal reactions to these pieces were that they each contained some kernels of truth (in order or total kernels: Wilson, Frere-Jones, and Brooks in distant last), but that at any stage of the game they could be debunked as well.

There really were too many topics covered on Midmorning to cover again here, but I wanted to jump in on one that was off-topic enough (certainly from the above articles) that it got the least amount of time, but I think deserves its own thread: as I said, we touched on "protest music" and wondered (very briefly) where it went between the end of the 60s and today. My take (get ready) is that it is directly tied to the political and economic context of the time, both (but differently) in America and England (which, for the sake of some economy, are the only two countries we've been talking about for this entire discussion anyway). Disillusion in the early 70s snuffed out most of it on the largest scale: first RFK and MLK are killed, Nixon and Vietnam squash all remaining hope, disco/cocaine-oriented hedonism take center stage, and then, finally, punk brings it back -- except now it's a niche experience, rather than a mass one (despite their influence, The Clash and their brethren never create an audience that rises to the critical mass of the Woodstock-era consciousnes-raising experience); and it never really happens again. Despite exceptions (and there are always exceptions), the 90s continue to be about music that is personal rather than political. So when 9/11 and the Bush Administration happen in the early '00s -- two things that might have in a different environment yielded and immediate political result musically -- music is still inhabiting a different place, and furthermore, we all remember the tremendously chilled environment we existed in for several years after 9/11 to "watch what we say," as Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer ominously warned the American people. After all, who wanted to be Dixie Chick-ed or Bill Maher-ed? (certainly, an artist such as Ani DiFranco never ceased speaking precisely what was on her mind, but I'm talking about the stage of mass American consciousness -- which, sadly, Ani is still not on). Finally, protest-politics returned to the repertoire of mass-appeal artists, and today Bruce Springsteen strides around the stage of the Xcel Energy Center decrying the erosion of civil liberties and enshrinement of torture as an American value without worrying that he's going to be booed out of the house (I'm not saying he was afraid to before -- I'm just saying that there was a period of time where all of us, and I imagine possibly Springsteen too, wondered for a few bizarre years whether or not reality had turned upside down and we were suddenly all living in Oceana with Winston Smith).

Anyway, that's my facile and surely grossly oversimplified take on it. I would love for all of the gaps in my narrative to be filled in by you. But as I said at the top, we also covered about twenty other topics on our jam-packed hour too, so if you want to get to any of those, we could do that as well (and Bill is also lurking around here somewhere, so feel free to direct question to him too).

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Sons and Daughters

Posted at 2:13 PM on January 4, 2008 by Christina Schmitt (3 Comments)

My computer monitor is littered with post-it notes to myself. One is a running list of bands I've heard on the Current and need to know more about. The band I keep coming back to lately is Sons and Daughters.

A Scottish gothabilly band with two girls/two guys, Sons and Daughters has been through town already, playing at the 7th Street Entry. My smug music friends say that "they are an awesome live band." Ooooh, I hate missing awesome live bands.

They haven't announced a repeat U.S. tour (looks like they'd rather tour Italy), but they do have one scheduled show at SXSW this year. If all my stars align, I will not miss this one.

Have you seen Sons and Daughters perform live? What cool live shows have your friends seen but you have missed?

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Drummer Hunter

Posted at 2:51 PM on January 4, 2008 by Lindsay Kimball

It's like match.com for drummers and bands except instead of posting likes and dislikes, you post drumfills and solos. Less than a week old, Drummer Hunter allows drummers and bands to find each other and live happily ever after...or play some sweet music. Drummers and bands create a profile for free, upload audio and video, post links, describe what kind of dummer/band he or she is looking for, and maybe find dummer love.

Do they take air drummers?

Guest DJ Set; 1-4-08

Posted at 10:14 PM on January 4, 2008 by Mark Wheat

Resident DJ ESP aka Woody McBride can heave it hard with intense techno AND chill it out with ambient, thoughful atmospheric sets. This was an excerpt from a compilation of local musicians that he put together for us last year called "the timeless institute" (you can stop time with your mind);
11 dj esp "i love you"
12. paul metger "raga three"
13 mike hawk "ambient dreams"
14 thea ennen "in my garden"
15 e tones "potion"
16 dk shok "human being"
17 dave wesley "warehouse rain"

Hope it helped to relax you after all the festive excitement of the last two weeks!