41 posts tagged “news”
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Thanks to Bookishly Fabulous for pointing out that Ben Sollee was recently on NPR's "All Things Considered" (July 5, 2008).
It would be seem that Sollee is looking for a fight with Kanye West, who recently disappointed fans at Bonnaroo for being two hours late (performed at 4:30 am). He made national/internet news by blogging about the venue's inability to setup the lighting and Pearl Jam was already an hour late.
This "open letter" song to Kanye West basically tells off West that "you don't need a light show, just good flow".
You can read more about Ben Sollee on our previous W♥M articles.
Other interesting music news: Facebook's a hotbed of celebrity gossips. Lilly Allen and The Chemical Brothers' Ed Simon are back together. Apparently they both changed their facebook status to "in a relationship" and immediately thousand of fans wrote to congratulate them.
Björk seems to be canceling a few concerts, citing throat ailment. I'm not sure why that's so closely followed by the media, but Ex-Whitesnake guitarist is dead. Does anyone even know his name?
The outrageous headline of "Kylie Minogue Saves Fan from Suicide" makes it sound as if Minogue was there on the rooftop talking that person down. The truth is, the fan was listening to his iPod and her song came on and he suddenly didn't want to stab himself. (Lame, right?)
Also, some idiot stole the headstone to Joy Division's Ian Curtis' grave. I hope his ghost haunts him.
The sad news of the collector's mentality of the CD box sets are on its death bed (hint: maybe it's because it's too expensive). The Yahoo story (written by Ed Christman) paints a picture that "Boxed-set sales have fallen off the cliff; they went from something to nothing".
Even at price slashed to about $29.99 (from the regular $49.98), sales continues to decline. At the end of the article, they mentioned that the limited-edition box for Nine Inch Nails' "Ghosts I-IV," ($300) sold really well.
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Links:
weheartmusic.com
Labrador Records (labrador.se) once again turned to Pirate Bay to help distribute their Labrador Summer Sampler 2008. If you remember, they did the same thing last year after their servers crashed due to a high volume of demand.
If you already use BitTorrent, then downloading it from Pirate Bay is easy enough, but unlike most people, I don't use the torrents. Instead, I had to get the files from a friend. If you're in the same boat, regarding not using bittorrent, I have made the free sampler available for download: sendspace.com/file/2yaj76 (154 mb).
Please note: I am acting under the assumption that Labrador wants as many people to download their sampler as possible. So please share this with your friends.
Although compared to last year's massive 68-track-sampler, this year's new 30 tracks is smaller... but it is still a lot of music to listen to. Since we've covered many of these bands (see corresponding links to previous W♥M articles), I was more interested in the bands I hadn't heard of: Leslies, Caroline Soul, and Johan Hedberg. Although Leslies previously appeared on their 2007 Sampler ("Dear Friend"), this is the first time I paid attention to them due to their poppy "Take a Look" song.
01 [Ingenting] - Här Kommer Solen |
11 Chasing Dorotea - Dark Angel |
21 The Radio Dept. - Pet Grief |
In other news for this past week, we find Devo asking "Are We Not Toys?" after suing McDonald's for using their likeness in one of their McToys. CNN reports that "Kid Rock Was Only Kidding" when he told people to "steal everything". This tells me a lot about Kid Rock fans if he had to EXPLAIN that it was only a joke. Duh?
DMX is arrested (again), "Fly - The Musical", Adele won some awards and people seem to be happy she doesn't want to kill herself like Amy Winehouse, and you also found out that Kanye West LIKES TO TYPE IN ALL CAPS, DUDE! His defense blog on the whole Bonnaroo fiasco comes down to the venue's ability to setup the stage and that Pearl Jam was an hour late. That's right, Vedder is a slowpoke.
See links below for news source:
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I may be doing more of these "quick" snippets, usually in three's. Nothing fancy, just news and notes:
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Tour Dates
06/13/08 Varsity Theater Minneapolis
06/14/08 Empty Bottle Chicago, IL 06/16/08 Drake Hotel Toronto, Ontario 06/18/08 Sound Fix In-Store Performance Brooklyn, NY 06/18/08 Union Pool Brooklyn, NY 06/19/08 IOTA Club & Cafe Arlington, VA 06/20/08 Millcreek Tavern Philadelphia, PA 06/21/08 Arts Center Carrboro, NC |
Item #1: Hey, I'll be attending Annuals' live show tomorrow (June 13th) at the Varsity Theater. I think it's all ages, which means the show will start pretty early (5-6pm). Look for me if you're going to this show also.
Check out their other dates, you can sign up at Canvasback Music for a chance to attend the concert of your choice, runner up receive a free Wet Zoo EP. In addition, if you're in the Minneapolis area, the grand winner will also receive a pair of tickets to the Underwater Adventures Aquarium (I think it's in the Mall of America).
It doesn't cost anything to enter in the contest, so you might as well enter. The worst you can do is not win.
I will write a little more about the Annuals on my concert review, so that's scheduled for Saturday morning.
PS, I just entered into their contest.
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Item #2: Remember Prototypes? You guys love them. It looks like their song "L'Amour, L'Amour, L'Amour", from their third album, Synthetique (out on Minty Fresh), have been recently used in various commercials (iPod and Mitsubishi) and television shows (The L Word).
I got the chance to listen to the said song and it's very cute. Obviously, I still cannot speak French, but it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of complicated lyrics here... but still, there is something about the French accent that gets me everytime.
My question is, why weren't they on Eurovision 2008?
Item #3: I got this press release about Prince Fatty. I am only mentioning this because I laughed at just his name, as well as his album Survival Of The Fattest.
I listened to the MP3 that sometime comes with these things and it wasn't what I was expecting: it's reggae! Very interesting, I've decided to include the song here as well as mention his two dates he'll be playing:
July 16 Los Angeles The Dub Club
July 18 New York Hudson Terrace
After doing more reading, it becomes clear to me that 'fat' might be in reference to pot (smoke a fatty) because the fatty himself, Mike Pelanconi, is a skinny white dude.
Mike and Fatboy Slim should have a duel. That's right, Survival Of The Fattest.
Links:
www.annualsmusic.com
www.prototypes.org
myspace.com/princefatty
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I thought I would do something different for gathering news, since you may have noticed an absent of the weekly news. News will now be delivered though Links, from a variety of music news sources. I think the "links" links actully have a feed, so you can subscribe to this using your favorite rss newsreader. I personally use google reader myself, with about 500+ items every hour!
BO DIDDLEY
Topping the music news is the death of Bo Diddley from heart failure on June 2nd.
This R&B/Blues artist got his start in 1951 playing at the 708 Club
in Chicago, Illinois. By 1955, Bo recorded some demos, "I'm a Man" and
"Bo Diddley", the later went on to become a #1 R&B hit.
His early songs made him so famous, that he was asked to be on the Ed Sullivan show, but was eventually banned from subsequent appearance when he played "Bo Diddley" instead of a cover song of "Sixteen Tons".
That didn't end his career, instead Bo went onto record more hits.... and the rest is history.
Random vu-thoughts: it would seem to me that Bo Diddley had a passion for pop culture and genre, take for instance his "western" themed album titles: Have Guitar Will Travel (based on the western tv show "Have Gun - Will Travel") and Bo Diddley is a Gunslinger (with the title track having references to the famous shoot-out at the OK Corral). Later on, he would also have his "beach/surf" theme: Surfin' with Bo Diddley and Bo Diddley's Beach Party, all probably inspired by the teen-movie Beach Party.
UNDER SURVEILLANCE
I also wanted to talk about the innovative video by The Get Out Clause.
My my understanding, the band wanted to shoot a music video, but didn't
have the finance - so they thought up the idea to have surveillance
cameras film them in performance. Under the Freedom of Information Act,
they requested the footage of their appearances and pieced together
their video for "Paper".
The video
became viral and have spread all over the UK press and picked up by
NPR, making the band an instance success overnight! (That was in May).
With all the interests, you can pick up their EP, to be released July 7th and "hand made by the band". Judging from the picture of the pre-order, it looks very cool.
Anyway, I think their video is such a cool idea, but I can't help but feel uneasy how "big brother" England's become, no?
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I don't normally do an all-out video posts, but after watching the hilarious Bill O'Reilly blowing his top off and having it "remixed" in a techno dance song, I was inspired to write about it.
So, if you didn't know, O'Reilly lost his temper after having some issues with the teleprompter and somehow the video got leaked on youtube. Like all things online, it's the subject of various parodies and the best one is this dance remix.
This video reminds me of some internet guy taking apart a George Bush speech and making it sound like Bush is singing U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday".
The source of this video is originally taken from the 2003 State of the Union Address, however the crowd shots were not from the same union address. There's no additional information, but you can try and contact the original creator: thepartyparty.com.
And speaking of politics, remember that Barack Obama music video from will.i.am, from The Black Eye Peas? All the lyrics from this song was based on excerpts from Obama's speech from January 2008 at the New Hampshire presidential primary election. You can find all the details at yeswecansong.com.
What I love is that G4TV parodied this video for Cobra Commander (from G.I.Joe). The song made reference to outrageous Cobra plans for world domination and is written by Jonathan Mann, aka GameJew. He's also the person responsible for writing the music to the the hilarious X-Men: The Musical.
COBRALALALA!
Links:
weheartmusic.com