Archive for category Music
A Rockin’ Spring Has Sprung
Posted by Rudy Grahn in Music, Opinion on March 12, 2010
Tis’ a busy time for the indie music fan, with the SXSW pilgrimage underway, the Record Store Day exclusives shopping list shaping up, Coachella warm-up shows are popping up across the west, and a release calendar which answers the question of whether or not some of the big debuts of recent years were mere flukes, or if the blogosphere coronations gone-by were indeed warranted. On top of all that, the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame induction shows are just ahead, as are some big reissues for Stones and Who fans.
Yearly Austin Music Fest Underway
If you are looking for a broad overview of bands and sounds from South-By-Southwest, many participating labels have begun posting MP3 samplers or streams from their attending artists. For those less concerned with acquiring free and legal MP3s, grey-market compilations are also sprouting up like weeds. Best stick with the official stuff. If you are looking for collectibles, rarities, and vinyl exclusives, the list of items to be made available at this year’s Record Store Day seems to be growing every day, and includes its fair share of awesome: exclusives and/or first looks from Elvis Costello, Ani DiFranco, Peter Gabriel, Bright Eyes, Modest Mouse, Pavement, REM, Velvet Underground, John Lennon, Flaming Lips, and even Negativeland’s favorite band Neu! Read the rest of this entry »
RIP – T-BONE WOLK
Posted by Mitch Mitchell in Music, News and Analysis on March 3, 2010
FROM URDEAD2ME
EXPIRED: 02/27/10 – Tom “T-Bone” Wolk, 60, didn’t choose to be a musician. It chose him. Wolk was the guy with “the hat” playing bass guitar with Hall & Oates in all those videos on MTV in the early 80’s. Admit it. You remember.
RIP T-Bone
Like many guys Wolk’s age, he got the urge to play rock and roll watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show in his parent’s home in Yonkers, NY. He picked up an electric guitar and never looked back.
After being asked to fill in for Will Lee on Late Night with David Letterman, he played bass on the first gold rap record, “These Are The Breaks”, by Kurtis Blow in early 1981.
This caught the ears of Hall and Oates. He auditioned. Got the gig and over two decades later never looked back. Read the rest of this entry »
Everything Old Is Old Again, But Updated
Posted by Rudy Grahn in Music, Reviews on January 28, 2010
It seems that rock music has a 20-25 year latency period after initial popularity before it is revived by the next generation and resold as homage-to or under-influence-of the originals. Sadly for me, when I was in my late teens, crap from the late 60s was being regurgitated, so I had to endure bad psychedelia and classic rock rip-offs in massive quantities. Ugh. I have my biases, but it is a bit of a treat to hear so much of non-retro the music of my youth I DID like now being redone and synthesized into other forms in a way that does right by the originals. The New Wave stuff of recent vintage is often either spot-on in homage (check the backstory of Holy Ghost’s I Will Come Back single and video, for example), or even better than the original stuff was.
PIL's Metal Box
Naturally, alongside all the plundering of the past are the revivals of many long-defunct bands who just now are putting their reunion projects together, or are establishing new eras in their band’s history. This week we will cover a good number of reunions from classic New Wave/No Wave 80’s/90’s alt rock outfits, plus some of the other big releases either now in stores or on the way.
Public Image Limited – Of all the defunct New Wave/120 Minutes-era bands to influence modern music, few could be said to have had a bigger impact than John Lydon and his post Sex Pistols project, PiL. While the Pistols reunion shows sporadically surface, the first PiL shows in nearly 20 years finally took place in the UK this past December. No wider release from the reunion is in retail stores per se, but official, multi-disc concert recordings from most of the shows were put online almost immediately. While I personally would have loved to see an early lineup reunion, the current PiL leans toward the Happy?/9 lineup. From the look of the setlists and sound of the arrangements from the shows, this revival’s aesthetic will skew that way as well. While we wait to see what fruit will be born of the reunion, there is very noteworthy re-issue of PiL’s classic Metal Box album on CD. This album has been reissued in several formats as both Metal Box and Second Edition through the years, but this issue is the first attempt to faithfully recreate on CD the original packaging and format of the original albums-in-a-can vinyl. Read the rest of this entry »
Rock Band Video Game Opens Up Music Submissions
Posted by Laura Glendinning in Music, Technology on January 24, 2010
LOS ANGELES (YBH.ME) – Platforming off XBox 360, Playstations and even Wii, Rock Band, the mega-successful video game, has sold 4 million units and generated more than $600 million in revenue. When released in 2007, Harmonix CEO and Rock Band co-creator Alex Rigopulos said the game “takes the core premise of Guitar Hero and expands it tenfold. It lets you create a complete collaborative band.”
Rock Band: Soon Featuring Undiscovered Music like The Sugarmen
Harmonix, owned by MTV, was able to use long-standing label relationships to make classic rock songs of every era available to players. Now the game-makers are adding a whole new type of music for download: yours. Read the rest of this entry »
Life Is Like Art Sometimes – The 2010 Music Calendar
Posted by Rudy Grahn in Music, Opinion, Reviews on January 22, 2010
NEW YORK (YBH.ME) – This being a great week for Massachusetts reactionaries, it really should be no shock to find that objects of indie love/hate, Vampire Weekend, have the #1 album in the country with Contra. Even so, I am a bit surprised they made it that big so early in their career. That said, the synchronicity demands some attention…
Vampire Weekend set for a big 2010. Photo courtesy SHANE MCCAULEY
In the same way that MA’s newest Senator prompted Glen Beck to wonder if a dead intern might not be in future for the Senate’s newest alpha, one has to wonder if Vampire Weekend intentionally bared the uncomfortable reality of their collective id in their choice of cover photo. I believe it was Sting who said “Many miles away, there’s a shadow on the door of a cottage on the shore of a dark Scottish lake.”
So, 2010 has already sent an indie hero up the pop chart, causing one to wonder if the heydays of under-the-radar indie rock/rap greatness are over, and if the Heartland Values-types are finally gonna get in on the action. The year’s crop of new releases has some big names front-loading the calendar, so anything is possible. Are these releases big enough to prompt WalMart to make room on their precious shelves? Only time will tell. Either way, here are a few highlights from the recent release calendar to keep on your radar:
Gorillaz – Plastic Beach: Back from the dead is Damon Albarn’s project Gorillaz with a full album of original material. While he had said he was done with the Gorillaz project, and had moved on to both a short Blur reunion, and a nice alt.supergroup outing with The Good, The Bad and The Queen, the new Gorillaz sees new collaborations with old partners (De La Soul and Paul Simonon both appear on this new one), as well as new collaborations with the likes of Lou Reed and Bobby Womack. The first single is out this month, the whole album comes in March. Read the rest of this entry »