“Honey” is probably my favorite Moby song, so I was delighted to learn that my pal, Jenny, posted a video she shot of him playing the song at an acoustic show in Iowa recently. Check it out!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccmmmhPsWdM[/youtube]
Pre-ordering music albums has reached the levels of absurdity. I was on iTunes today and found the new Madonna album and Weezer albums are available for pre-order, but you can download the singles right now. This is just plain stupid.
I am hereby officially rebelling. I have said it before: don’t release a portion of an album – release the whole fucking thing! Unless you are a local artist and can’t afford to finish the rest of the album until you sell some copies of the single… But for mega-platinum artists to act this way is ridiculous. Their albums are done. They are completed. The finishing touches put on months, maybe years ago. But still they insist on making us wait until such a time that their promotional people deem it appropriate.
So don’t buy into this shit. It is unfriendly behavior and proves that they are completely out of touch with the current generation of music listeners.
1. Paul Rogers and Sammy Hagar should start a “vocalist for hire” firm (hey, they could call it The Firm!).
2. Unfortunately, Justin Hawkins (The Darkness) will never get the chance to sing for Queen.
3. The new Pee-Wee Herman movie should be directed by John Waters and written by Amy Sedaris.
4. My friend James thinks that the new Micheal Bolton album sounds “kinda good, it’s like Joe Cocker.”
5. Larry David and Woody Allen should star in Rush Hour 4.
6. The sound of Fred Savage’s voice as the animated blue octopus named Oswald, makes my child relaxed and provides wholesome family values.
7. I can’t seem to find an episode of Designing Women that I can quote to my friends at work. They seem to be confused by the sound of Delta Burke’s southern charm.
8. Beck and Dangermouse working together is a good thing. Beck and Nigel Godrich is a good thing. Beck and The Dust Brothers is a good thing. Beck and Air is a good thing. Beck is a good thing.
9. Wes Anderson should re-make Harold and Maude. With songs by Sufjan Stevens.
10. Guns and Roses will reunite with all original members and record a new album by 2011. Also, the Libertines will reunite in late 2009, Blur in 2010, Journey with Steve Perry by 2012, Led Zeppelin in 2009, Phish by 2010, The Smiths by 2015 (I know, that’s a stretch), Pavement for a bit by 2011, The Kinks by the end of 2009. The Police will break up ASAP.
Popular West Coast electro-panty-rockers, UltraViolet Sound, are playing with my favorite artist, LETRON, on May 23 at Beauty Bar in San Diego. These two groups are on the verge of blowing up, so it might be one of your last chances to check ‘em out at the local club!
How do I know they are about to blow up, you ask? Because I am way the fuck out in Minnesota, and I have heard of them – that’s how! LETRON has been gettin’ it done with style for close to 6 years now, and UltraViolet Sound is everything you’d expect from a band with an album titled, “O.C.D.: Obsessive Compulsive Dancing”.
One of the great things about an Eels show is you never really know what it’s going to be like, you just know it’s going to be good. For essentially being a one-man music power-house, Mark Oliver Everett, often reffered to simply as E, has had quite a line-up of musicians playing with him. He’s played with balls-out rockers and string quartets and he’s pulled it off in small clubs and huge concert halls around the world.
Prior to the show, the audience was treated to a screening of the BBC documentary Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, an hour-long presentation following E’s journey to try to understand his father’s contribution to the world of physics. For those unfamiliar with this story, E’s father was physicist Hugh Everett, best known as the guy who first conceived the idea of parallel worlds. Hugh’s work was initially dismissed outright and was only recognized as genius shortly before his death in 1982. I could go on about the virtually non-existent relationship between father and son, but there’s plenty to read about it online already.
While long-time fans may still be carrying a torch for his original drummer, Butch, the latest Eels incarnation is really something. The show has now been stripped down to just E and the Chet (according to E, referred to as the Chet by contractual obligation). The two super-musicians wander the stage from instrument to instrument, playing each masterfully. You will never see two men rock so hard. The true crowd-pleasing moment came when E and the Chet took turns on the same drums during the song Flyswatter, trading places without so much as missing a beat. This is a site that can not be described. Suffice to say, if you weren’t there you missed something amazing.
The show was filled with rather original bits of monologue, including E reading fan mail and reviews on stage and the Chet reading excerpts from E’s autobiography (currently only available in the UK and at concerts. I’ll write a review of it once I’ve finished). For such a reclusive man, E is truly quite witty.
The songs were mostly taken from the rather standard set of Eels tunes to appease those who came to hear the hits, but all were played (as at all Eels shows) with new and original arrangements for the die hard fans. The general mood was pushed farther towards light rock than I’d seen before, but was done expertly and kicked out enough to keep everyone in the audience happy throughout the show.
As always, the show was followed by encores until the theater lights came up and we had to go home.
Fans of Eels who missed this show, before you pull out the hari kari mat and find a friend willing to sever your head, you may want to take a road-trip to catch ‘em in another city. Even if you don’t feel you really need to see it, you’re missing out on the concert-only live CD/DVD pack at the merch booth. I’ll give that a write up too once I’ve had a chance to listen to it. That one’s taken from the Cut the Strings tour, which I thought was even better than this one.
For more tour dates and various other Eels-related news/merch/what-have-you, go to eelstheband.com.
I see Sam Keenan’s name everywhere around the Twin Cities, it seems. And it’s been that way for years. So when I received his new cd in the mail from our friends at Drawfire Records, I was quite intrigued to learn that All The Dark Colored Markers Went Dry is his first solo cd release. And I was not at all surprised to learn that his new disc completely rocks!
Mixing nice melodies with innovative chord structures and chunky strumming patterns (that’s the best kind of strumming), Markers is a delectable treat for the spring season. But it is Keenan’s signature vocals that provide the foundation for the album, walking a tightrope between tender and powerfully-soothing. Kind of a mix of Bill Clinton’s tenderness and Barack Obama’s confidence (How’s that for topical writing? – 
).
(Above: Sam Keenan)
My favorite tracks off the album are the ones that feature Keenan’s unique guitar and singing abilities: the weirdly-optimistic “That Was Then” and the beautifully-sad, “Undone”. (Listen to That Was Then.)
Check out Sam Keenan at his cd-release show on April 18, 2008 at the Triple Rock Social Club in Minneapolis. With Glad Version and North.
Charlie Paxson’s EP raises a lot of questions. Why isn’t it in every store in the country? Why isn’t it getting air play? Where the heck did this guy come from and how did I not hear him earlier? Well, probably because this is his debut EP. In other words, pick this one up kiddies, it’s your chance to be the “I heard of them first” guy.
This is beat-driven pop rock at it’s finest. It’s an old formula, but looked at from a new angle. The mix is a little different; the drums are definitely the heart of the music, and the guitar is really just backing up the vocals. The lyrics are expressing pretty typical pop rock sentiment too, but the phrasing makes you re-examine the concepts they present. It makes you realize how often pop songs present you with things you already know. Charlie’s words are easy to identify with, but give you a new way of looking at things.
There is only one problem with this record, at least in my opinion. It starts strong, pulls you in, gets you excited right from the first 6 strums, but it ends way too fast. This one is too good to be a debut EP. Go to his MySpace, order his EP, and enjoy.
Whatever the side of the political spectrum you are on, it’s difficult to argue the fact that George W. Bush might be our worst President ever. This song by The Meat Purveyors pretty much sums it up: