Wednesday, January 30, 2013

The Strokes Announce New Album Comedown Machine

The Strokes have announced their new album due March 26, and it's called Comedown Machine. I dig the mechanical cover art - I haven't seen a label name displayed so prominently on the cover since New Order's similarly monochrome and industrially sparse Movement issued through the appropriately named Factory Records. I don't, however, dig the bubbly but sloppy "One Way Trigger," the second song from Comedown Machine. I can't imagine coming down to that. In fact, I'd probably be more desperate to get high in order to try to enjoy it. I still haven't heard "All the Time," the first official single from Comedown Machine which the Seattle radio station 107.7 The End debuted last week but I can't find on the Net. The song's been described as "packing a classic Strokes sound," but I'll have to hear for myself.

Listen to "One Way Trigger" below:



Random aside: While filling out the tags, I realized this is my first Strokes post. How is that possible? They've been one of my favourite bands since they came onto the scene.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Diane Birch - "Nothing But a Miracle" Live on the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

After two years of searching, I've finally found the performance that got me into Diane Birch:

With Diane Birch on the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien from Jay Frederick on Vimeo.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Judge Judy Almighty

I can't believe John Lydon (best known as Johnny Rotten, former frontman of the Sex Pistols) was on Judge freaking Judy. It's so weird seeing the mighty punk icon submit to her authority. It's even weirder that he chose to have his petty small claims court issue televised. Not very punk rock, John- I mean, Mr. Lydon.


There Is No Bad Version of the Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner"



Hell, I even like the Sex Pistols' version:



The original by the 1970s Boston group for reference:


Monday, January 21, 2013

FULL STREAM: Blackfoot Gypsies - On the Loose

Latest great blind acquisition, Nashville duo the Blackfoot Gypsies. I wonder if they've worked with or run into Jack White yet. Listen to their album On the Loose in full below:


Shugo Tokumaru - "Katachi"

Coolest music video I've seen in years (note: I don't watch many music videos anymore because they're mostly fucking shit). Shugo Tokumaru plays the Biltmore here in Vancouver with Kishi Bashi on Feb. 23, and that's another one off of my bucket list:

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

March 9: Bucket List Time



One of the best voices today, and I will finally get to hear it live at the Rio Theatre on March 9. Sorry, Electric Six and Fugitives, but Martha's got my money that night.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Sometimes, I Wonder About Other Jack White Fans

I came across this on Deviant Art:


Where have I seen this before ... ? Ah, yes: "Homer! You've got it set on 'whore'!":

"Serious Jibber-Jabber" with Conan O'Brien Featuring Jack White

Watch Conan O'Brien's 75-minute interview with Jack White in which they discuss gender dynamics in artistic collaboration, the romance of the Titanic, Jack's relationship with Bob Dylan, Catholicism, U.S. history, comedy, upholstery, work ethic, inspiration, the perils of technology on creativity and consumption of art and more:

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

FULL STREAM: Jack White on Austin City Limits

Watch Jack White's Austin City Limits performance in full which includes one of the best versions of "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" I've ever heard. Just can't beat that segue from "Dead Leaves" into "Missing Pieces" and briefly back into "Dead Leaves." Also, there is no bad or even mediocre version of "We Are Going To Be Friends."

Watch Jack White on PBS. See more from Austin City Limits.
 

Sunday, January 6, 2013

"There Is an Even More Insidious Problem with Digital Systems.

As much as binary code might be a universal language, the methods of processing it are always evolving. 'There really isn't an archival medium for digital data,' [Steve] Albini explains. 'Computer technology has changed so rapidly that drive specifications and media specifications change constantly. That's one of the benefits of the computer paradigm - it changes quickly to adapt to its market. But it also makes formats into orphans. Lets say you discovered a nine-track tape of a digital audio recording. What would you do with it? You wouldn't be able to play it. You wouldn't be able to decipher the audio that's on it. Even if you could find something to play it back to, you'd need to find some way of looking at the file, some way of determining what that data meant. It's a virtually irretrievable recording once the specific system it was recorded on is no longer in use.' The mighty compact disc may not be immune to this vicious evolution. 'The vinyl record will certainly outlast CDs. I don't think we will see the end of vinyl LP manufacture in my lifetime.'

It’s too early to know if this dystopia is what's in store for our digital audio world. But if it ever comes, a lot of music will no longer make a sound. Neil Young said we'd wake up one day and wonder what the digital age really sounded like. What an awful question to ask and literally not be able to answer."

- Greg Milner, "Perfecting Sound Forever": An Aural History of Recorded Music (Faber and Faber, Inc., 2009) 

"It's Only Just Beginning To Occur To Me That It's Important To Have Something Going on Somewhere,

at work or at home, otherwise you're just clinging on. ... You need as much ballast as possible to stop you from floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one bloke on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then?"

- Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (Victoria Gollancz Ltd., 1995)

First Name "Chilly," Last Name "Gonzo"

"I believe in rapping as a way to transmit ideas because I think rap is more like a conversation; hence it has all the projection and bullshit of when we talk to each other."

 - Chilly Gonzales

MAN, I Wish the Organ Were Still a Together

They were so good:


Things I've Recently Learned About Carly Rae Jepsen



1. Her name is "Carly Rae Jepsen," not "Carly Rae Jasper." Or "Jaspers." "Or "Jespers."
2. She's from BC.
3. She's 27, not a teenager.
4. She apparently likes the Organ!!! They were awesome. Although, the Organ never came up in the video of her interview with Nardwuar, despite this pic:

It's possible that she doesn't actually know or like them, but rather Nardwuar found some obscure connection between her and the band and thus bestowed their album as a gift upon her. Whatever the case, Carly Rae Jespen probably likes the Organ now.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

"Jack White's 'Blunderbuss' Is SoundScan's Best-Selling Vinyl Album of 2012"

Title taken from NME's (*shudder*) article of the same name.

"The figure was enough for 'Blunderbuss' to knock The Beatles's 'Abbey Road' from the top spot, which had been the biggest-selling vinyl record for the past three years running."

"The sales of 'Blunderbuss' are the highest of a new album (not re-release) since Soundscan began collecting vinyl sales data in 2008."

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Don DeLillo Quote

The Greatest Show on Earth

September 6, 2012
Commodore Ballroom
Vancouver, British Columbia


No, I'm not talking about the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. I'm talking about Swedish New Millennium garage rock revivalists the Hives.

Fully-suited ninjas complete with hoof-toed boots as stagehands, giant puppet-strings shooting forth from the figure in the backdrop, diabolic intro piano music as the ninjas flanked the sides of the stage in guard-positions - I'd always read that the Hives were "the greatest live band in the world," most vociferously touted as such by Spin Magazine (at least by my reading), and before the Hives even took the stage, they already began living up to the acclaim. And after having finally seen them live at the Commodore Ballroom after a ten-year wait, I have to say, until the rush of the show finally wore off a couple of days later, they made a true believer out of me.

The Hives emerged fully-suited, dapper as always with long-tailed coats and, on this tour, top hats, giving the band the even more theatrical appearance of magicians. But the Hives didn't need any magic or parlour tricks to cast the crowd into a frenzy, just their music and frontperson Howlin' Pelle Almqvist's Mick Jagger-swagger - his marching and stamping around and mic/mic-stand acrobatics; watching Pelle toss his mic-and-stand like a ballerina partner and catching them every time was a show in itself. Simply put, Howlin' Pelle may be the greatest frontperson I've ever seen.

Like Interpol, the Hives were so good live that they even managed to electrify me with their songs I didn't like, i.e. everything they played from their two most recent albums, this year's Lex Hives and 2007's The Black and White Album. I don't even own those albums anymore. It definitely helped that moustachioed guitarist Nicholaus Arson was equally as animated as his brother Howlin' Pelle, miming prodding the audience with the neck of his guitar, whipping pick after pick into the crowd (along with Chris Dangerous' seemingly endless stream of drumsticks) and generally just getting in the audience's faces.

I'm confident that the Hives will never deliver a truly "unique" show; they're far too rock 'n' roll incarnate to do that. They are all of the clichés of rock 'n' roll as performance. But the avant-garde be damned, clichés exist for a reason, and in terms of rock concerts, those clichés persist for a simple reason: they're fucking FUN. Of course the Hives are going to play an encore. Of course they're going to play as many of their major hits as they can. And of course they're going to pander to the crowd endlessly, using every line in the book to beckon insatiably for louder and LOUDER applause, telling the audience they can do better. If you expect any more from the Hives (or any less, for that matter), you probably don't know the Hives.

For a hell of a lot more photos of the Hives at the Commodore Ballroom, click here, here, here aaannnd here.

Patti Page - "You Belong To Me"



I happened to look up this song seconds before I found out she died.

In other weird little coincidences, I watched Mona Lisa Smile for the first time a day or two after Christmas, and I watched Boogie Nights for the first time on New Year's Day. Yep. Little coincidences.

Jack White and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky on Work Ethic and Inspiration

I actually wasn't looking up Jack White when I came across this article (via Brain Pickings).