January 6th, 2009
Tonight: The Calm Blue Sea
Just a reminder that the Austin, Texas quintet The Calm Blue Sea — one of my new favorite bands, and one that will definitely appeal to fans of Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai, Mono, and other epic soft-LOUD-soft-LOUUUUUDDDD instrumental post-rock/space-rock bands — are at the M Room tonight. Definitely worth heading out in the crummy, sleety weather for. Here’s a taste of what you can expect:
January 6th, 2009
Ron Asheton YouTube Tribute
January 6th, 2009
Lindsay Lohan And Samantha Ronson: Still Together
Traumatized as we were by yesterday’s news of the Katy Perry-Travis McCoy split, we were immensely relieved to learn that despite multiple media reports to the contrary (by such widely respected outlets as Access Hollywood and the New York Post), media whores celebrities and occasional musicians Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson have not ended their long and much-tabloided-about romance.
As Lohan wrote on her MySpace blog:
little piece of TRUE information:
we did NOT break up!
access hollywood, extra, et, every tabloid, page six… AND every GOSSIP website. Get your stories straight please. It’s really annoying to have all of your friends emailing you saying, i saw, i read, etc… NOT TRUE
xoxox Lindsay
OK. You can go on with your lives now.
January 6th, 2009
R.I.P. Ron Asheton Of The Stooges
Ron Asheton, guitarist for legendary proto-punk band the Stooges, was found dead in his home this morning in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was 60. According to the Ann Arbor News, Asheton’s personal assistant hadn’t been able to reach him for a few days and called police, who found Asheton’s body around midnight on a living-room couch. He’d apparently been dead for a few days.
I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing the exceptionally friendly and gracious Asheton from his Ann Arbor home not quite two years ago from for a Philadelphia Weekly piece about the Stooges’ full-scale reunion and most recent album, The Weirdness. “It was cool when we did this whole thing back in the day,” Asheton told me then, “but it was also weirder in the sense that in the late ’60s or early ’70s there was still that ‘them against us, society vs. the freaks’ thing. And now, with the acceptance we’re getting, I gotta say it’s more fun. After people not caring about us for so long, to be cared for now is a great feeling.”
R.I.P., Ron…
January 5th, 2009
Show Alert: The Calm Blue Sea
If you’re a fan of the epic peaks-and-valleys of Explosions in the Sky, especially, as well as Mogwai or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, you’ll definitely want to be at the M-Room on Tuesday night for Austin quintet The Calm Blue Sea, who make a really lovely and absorbing instrumental post-rock racket very much in the vein of those aforementioned acts. Oh, and here’s the most recent comment-slash-hearty endorsement on their MySpace page, from a fellow named “yellow.”:
sadly i don’t live where i think you guys would come to.
but aside from that, i love listening to your album.
it puts me to sleep, it helps me to survive those long city bus rides, and it gives me great ideas for writing..
anyways, you guys are one of the best ambient/instrumental bands i’ve ever laid my ears upon.
please keep writing songs.
i just might eat 12 tacos.
January 5th, 2009
And The Next Nirvana Is…
In addition to the whole “good music for bad times” meme that Brian talked about in that last post, I reckon we’re gonna start hearing a lot of chatter about how this band or that band is the “new Nirvana” or the “new Sex Pistols” in the sense that those acts emerged during a particularly painful global recession, single-handedly slayed whole genres of music (hair-metal, prog-rock), and changed the whole landscape of music and culture forever. Thing is, nobody saw those two bands coming, and even when they became huge, their impact couldn’t really be measured or understood with any great clarity until at least a year or two later, if not longer. Of course, all of that happened pre-Internet, but now that time and the spread of information has sped up so quickly, whereby (quite literally) yesterday’s hype is today’s backlash, and we (and VH-1) wax nostalgic for the sounds and sights from the third week of December ‘08, I’m certain that folks will begin anointing some burgeoning artist from some sorta bubbling-up national/international scene, whatever that may be, as the next huge “agent of change” during this economic downturn — our most painful since the early ’90s (the early ’00s dot-com bubble-burst was bad but not nearly this bad) — before they ever have a chance to do anything at all. Will another Nirvana or Sex Pistols come along and change the world? I imagine so, but it’s folly to force it or predict it. We’ll keep you posted with the inevitable efforts, though…
January 5th, 2009
Greg Weeks: “Leonard Cohen For A New Generation,” Says London Times
Some time ago we told you about an article by Alexis Petridis in the Guardian UK that theorized AC/DC and their big, fat, dumb riffs have huge, windfall years during times of tumult, economic crisis and general, all-around shittyness. You could see how this could be true. It’s an escape, you see.
And, if you think about it, the case could be made for any genre of music. Watch this: 1) People are consuming Miley Cyrus and her Disney ilk with more aggressive ferocity than they have in the past. Why? The glittery fun-time pop music they perform makes us secure in these insecure times. 2) Country music—filled with references of lost love, whiskey-soaked nights, easy living and simpler times—is just the genre these dour, down-turned times call for. 3) An explanation for the uptick in dance acts—Crystal Castles, Justice, Hercules and Love Affair, et al—hitting the market like an aural tsunami? In these harsh economic times, so dour and filled with uncertain uncertainty, we just. Want. To dance.
Hip-hop/blues/R&B/rock ‘n’ roll/any genre you can think of is a form of escape that makes us feel secure in a world that is anything but. Safe in world that is not.
Fuck yes. New career!
Well now another UK pub, the London Times, has caught on, and yesterday writer Kristy Allen gives the whole “This genre is perfect for such terribly uncertain times” meme a go, choosing goth-folk as the vehicle to take her to the Da Capo Best Music Writing ‘09 edition in an article subtitled
“Goth-folk provides an ideal accompaniment to the gloomy new year.” So, though exhausted this whole take may be, Allen has the good sense to mention Philly’s own Greg Weeks, he of label Language of Stone and band Espers, giving him some high praise in the article. In addition to calling him “Leonard Cohen for a new generation,” Allen says he’s “new depression’s pin up.” Nicccccce.
Good job, Greg. Happy New Year.
Our genre could be your life! [London Times]
