‘I was a very, very weird child. I had a port-wine stain birthmark on my face that I got lasered off when I was very young; one day, they forgot to put the anesthetic on, and ever since then, I had a stutter. I also had very big, blue NHS glasses — NHS is the National Health Service, one day I hope you’ll have the same! And I lacked an eardrum on one side of my ear, so stuttering was actually the least of my problems!’
We wanted to move to LA for inspiration and influence more than anything. It helped us to experiment and find our own sound. If you look at a lot of the alternative electronica and dance music coming out of LA, it definitely has a feel – we love the weirdness and sunshine. It has been a strong influence on many of our favorite records from the ’60s-’80s’
‘In launching these cards, we wanted to celebrate Virgin’s heritage and difference. The Sex Pistols challenged convention and the established ways of thinking – just as we are doing today in our quest to shake up UK banking.’… it was ‘time for consumers to put a little bit of rebellion in their pocket,’
I had told him this before and I basically reiterated, “I think that what you should do is give her everything, and run as if your very life depends on it. Sign everything over to her from this moment and just be gone. And if you need money, just go out and do a fucking solo tour, play acoustic guitar, you’ll be fine.” He felt like he was trapped. He was embarrassed by her. He wanted to divorce her. He wanted to get out of it. But he was too much of a mess to get out of it.’
He is certainly pre Beatles, and pre everything that would fit his age – he is not even 30 – but he makes you swing in his well-oiled time travelling machine as if it was 1964.
Yeah, they were really hard to pigeonhole, and they get all sort of comparisons, but they probably don’t want to be pigeonhole as Summers is famous for saying he draws his influences from all over the place, and quite unintentionally, since he was raised in a strict Christian household and was forbidden to listen to any secular music until his late teens!
Krell’s vocals are so eerie, so high falsetto and so emotional and violent at the same time, that he seems to bring all his guts in action.
Their performance was very dreamy, very slow at first, installing a very ethereal and aching ambiance, sometimes going to more beats, but staying on the dark side of an electronic dance.
Their joyous pop was a bit hirsute and I am not especially talking about the ZZ Top look of the banjo player, but it was a total success among the crowd. There were vocal harmonies, a lot of this classical violin, operatic croon and a desire to go bombastic at each second.
Their awesome vintage sound had enough of this 60’s surf-y-bluesy guitars, and frontman Vincent Davies was doing enough of that Chuck Berry walk, to make them instantaneously loveable.
The action seemed to be more in the guitars themselves than directly on stage, but they had charisma and gorgeous harmonies, plus this bipolar-bimodal style could make them totally unique, because who wants to listen to another straightforward blues band?
‘It immediately rang true for me as that location has a beautiful 360 panoramic view which matches the cyclical fugue like movement in the song. If the song has a shape it is sort of like a circle that just goes on forever.’
At this moment, I am sure everybody was thinking at unison, ‘I wish he was still with Girls’? This will probably be always in the back of our minds, but with his blonde hair hiding his face, fragile vocals and his vulnerable appearance, Chris Owens looks so frail at time, you just wonder if he can put on a show, but after a few minutes, you are convinced he certainly can!
‘This is not at all a stepping back — this is a reevaluation of the model of going from one location to two to three,’ told Budweiser VP of marketing Brian Perkins to Billboard. ‘We’re a very ambitious brand, and we have a very ambitious partner in Jay Z, who also dreams big. And we always want to do big, bold things with music under the moniker of Budweiser Made In America.’
‘I do feel that where we are now, certainly with rock & roll music, is that so much of it is variations on themes. But I think that it’s one’s particular creativity and individuality that comes out within that variation on a particular theme that makes a song great.’
The band appears briefly at the beginning and at the end, dressed up as the avatars of their fake video game, Damon Albarn as the ice cream cone, Mr. Cream, Grahan Coxon as the cockroach, Mr. Brown, Alex James as the blob, Mr. Red, and Dave Rowntree as the fly, Mr. Black… and it didn’t even make me smile a second… do they really find that remotely funny?
When you arrive on the website, you have to ‘use your keyboard to escape the loops’ as they say, meaning clicking randomly on the page? At least this is what I did first. I could not find many of these looping clips, then they suddenly appeared, one by one, and I played a loop till I couldn’t stand it anymore… so I wanted to see another one but didn’t know how to get back!
There’s something so artisanal and DIY in their attitude, they arrived with a school notebook in which they write their setlists as if they were entries for their common girl dairies. During the whole set, the two girls seemed so in phase with each other, having some funny and almost intimate chatting between the singing parts, and totally connecting during the songs, looking like two perfect accomplices
In the late 90s and early 2000s, music videos were such a huge deal. We decided that instead of making one overly slick music video, we would nod to 15 of our favorite music videos that we grew up with. Everyone in the band threw in their ideas.’
I only have one experience with Beirut, their set at the 2012 FYF fest, and I thought they were the apogee of an indie band, mixing Mexico-via-the-Balkans world music, using lots of instruments including accordion, old-fashioned upright bass, ukulele, and abundantly injecting horns and trumpets into a reinvented folklore
JD McPherson gave a really great show to the Amoeba crowd, playing a set full of a vibrant energy deeply rooted in American music history. Despite his young age, McPherson transports his audience in an early-Elvis era, as his 50’s-inspired music sounds like a Sun Records throwback
This the strangest news of the week or at least of the day: the band DIIV has announced that they will reenact your dreams for $10,000? What? This is actually part of a project organized by Houseworld which has a Kickstarter page for this
And after much more stage action and ‘Lance Jr’ (a song which certainly has a strong Nirvana vibe), I got this revelation, Courtney Barnett was totally channeling Kurt Cobain! She commanded the scene like a guy, sweeping the room with an impressive force, while being all over the place, unpredictable, creative and destructive
I have no idea how they came up with this idea since Cronin’s music has nothing to do with the South-African-inspired hit, the only thing the two songs may have in common are the horns, otherwise, it’s a cool and fluid indie song, with loud surf-y guitars, a fast drive and a very catchy-hooky bridge.
Bangles have always stayed on the cute side of power-pop and never really ventured to punk energy. But they got into more action with bluesier guitars later on, especially when Kathy Valentine from the GoGo’s joined them on stage for their famous hit ‘Manic Monday’ and a few other gems
I suppose they wanted to be considered, well, real musicians, but these times are over and Jenny has decided to have a little fun with her past of child-actor. She directed herself this cute parody and has invited Fred Armisen (Portlandia), Zosia Mamet (Girls), Leo Fitzpatrick (another child-actor), Feist, and Vanessa Bayer (SNL) to play along.
‘Then dig your shorty out cuz I geeked her up on molly/Have her eating dick, no need for seasoning/If seven dudes are in the room then she’s pleasing them/Like a trooper. Hit her in the pooper. Throw her in the shower/Then I take her out to Lupa I’m kinky, I’ll hit it even if it’s stinky/Put em in the shower, make the pussy brand new Ran through/Give ’em money what I can’t do Stuff her lunchbox & burn her with the candle.’
I saw Will at the Troubadour last night, and it was a very pleasant show, laid back and filled with humor and energy, a very intimate one too, as I was standing as close as you can get, still mad at the strict policy of the Troubadour not allowing decent cameras inside (I never have this problem when I go to a show on the eastside) and imagining all the good shots I could have made of Will’s funny poses and comic moves.
It’s my first listening, it’s pretty music, often upbeat and decorated, but I keep hearing Johann Pachelbel’s ‘Canon in D Major’, through these songs! However, Chris Owens compares himself to a painter: ‘For me it felt like being a painter. You do a little work and then you have a glass of wine and listen to some Brahms or something on the stereo
‘Your post was reported for violating Facebook’s Community Standards on nudity’? Of course it is totally false, Tom Grant has never posted any nude pictures, and he is a very ethical guy who has even deleted comments, if they were too accusatory against Courtney Love or anybody else.
I saw Refused at the FYF fest three years ago, and they were absolutely terrifying, I mean their fans were and the result was not only a very chaotic scene but also an apocalyptic vision at the end of their set. I had never stepped on so many lost wallets, broken glasses, and trashed shoes in my life
I don’t think there are a lot of people like Aaron Embry left in this world, people who put such a real emotion in a performance, people who dare to start a set with two a cappella covers in order to celebrate Memorial Day
‘Disappointed with the Satellite’s pittance is privilege policy’, he wrote. ‘Why do musicians go for this crap? I’m just now reading this show advance for tonight and will never play there again. No pay, no parking, no area-plays 2wks prior, no soundcheck, and ‘just checking in to see how promotion is going?’
I only go to New York if I have to, nothing feels special there when you’re creative, everyone feels like they’ve seen and done it all, hard for me to be inspired.’
The woulda’s and coulda’s all day are going bye bye,’… she deleted the tweet afterward of course. The blocked fans couldn’t believe it and tweeted ‘i can’t believe the person i idolize has blocked me. after me paying vip for the pinkprint tour and everything. Nicki Minaj blocked me… because i told her i can’t afford tidal and i asked her to put the videos on Vevo.’
‘George came up to me at a party once and said ‘my Paul is to me what your Paul is to you.’ He meant that psychologically they had the same effect on us. The Pauls sidelined us. I think George felt suppressed by Paul and I think that’s what he saw with me and my Paul. Here’s the truth: McCartney was a helluva music man who gave the band its energy, but he also ran away with a lot of the glory.’
We’re on the verge of irrelevance. You have to make stuff relevant to you and where you’re at, make an honest account of what you’re going through. If that’s relevant to other people, great. But we don’t know.’ So why do U2 now think they could be relevant with this new music? Looking at their recent setlists they play a lot of these innocent songs, while the Stones play ‘Sticky Fingers’!
Despite what his label pretends, Jack White has declared music sacred because he is a pompous royalty pissed off that the system allows kids to get his music for free. He is angry that Tidal is going to sink, because why would anyone pick Tidal over Spotify or YouTube when you can use these two for free?
‘If you don’t like to rock Starbucks, a coffee shop/Well, you better change your station ’cause that ain’t all that we got/Yeah, I want a cup of coffee, but I don’t want a GMO/I like to start my day off without helping Monsanto/Monsanto/Let our farmers grow/What they want to grow’
Her songs often had an unconventional and unexpected structure, but at the first listening, I could tell that the tone was personal and intimate, giving the type of performance you can only call authentic in default of another word. ‘This is the most honest thing I’ve ever made.”
Taylor Swift borrowed all the latex outfits, she and her friends are wearing in the clip, from a Los Angeles erotic boutique. Shawn Gentry, director of operations for The Stockroom, said that the shop will make a ‘full run’ of the outfits worn by Swift and her friends.
Denise and Chloe are two ferocious young women, they both have an extraordinary presence on stage, bold and fearless, but do they really need to admire someone like Love to show they are badass? Is it now cool to have love for Love? Love is a lot of thing but a role model she isn’t!
It reminds me the days I was watching music videos on TV, really, this seems such a long time ago! Whether you like or not these disco balls, these people without a head tripping into glam, it’s true that it fits much more the psychedelic ambiance of the music than with the lyrics,
‘YES, BUT THERE WAS ONE REASON FOR THIS THAT I CAN’T TALK ABOUT. I AM VERY PISSED BY THIS, SINCE HE ADAPTED MY WORK ONLY UNDER ONE CONDITION: THAT HE WOULD HELP MY INSTITUTE. WHICH HE DIDN’T.
The tiresome theory in this piece is that, blaming Courtney Love for the death of Kurt Cobain and Jennifer Chiba for the death of Elliott Smith is pure misogyny. I know his language,… people who express their skepticism are just ‘murder conspiracy theorists’ or ‘murder monomaniacs’ and he goes on and on, throwing in the text a few references to Greek mythology to make it sound more intellectual
I can’t hide that these songs could have afford a bit more enthusiasm, should I say that a lot of people were enjoying the beats and the mellow ambiance, even dancing between the CDs rows? The last song, ‘Real Life’ off their 2012 album ‘Mixed Emotion’ had more Brazilian, or at least exotic, beats and brought more fun, although it reminded me about something Moby could have done may be?
All the models figured on the blog look like French bulldogs or Chihuahuas but they sure make the same vests and tees for larger dogs. However, I click on one of their items in the store, the not-so-cheap 60 bucks heavy metal dog vest, and wow, it’s already sold out! How didn’t I think about it?
Julian Casablancas + The Voidz have released a 38 second-clip of their upcoming video for ‘Human Sadness’ (off their last year’s album ‘Tyranny’) and they will be screening the 11-minute long video in a series of theaters across the US. There are also screenings in New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, Denver, Washington DC, Boston, Miami, Nashville, Montreal, from Wednesday 20th to Tuesday 26th, and may be not all of them are sold-out?
There is currently a rumor, the Rolling Stones may be playing a surprise and intimate show on Wednesday in Los Angeles… What? After all, they did it before, a few years ago they announced a surprise show at the Echoplex, I got on line very early in the day, but never got a ticket because it was a stupid lottery! However, the other day, I met someone who was lucky enough to get in, ‘I could have resold my ticket for thousands of dollars’ she told me… yeah, but she didn’t!
‘If Kurt were still alive, he would be so over Courtney’, she says at one point. There has been a lot of speculation about an eventual divorce, and Alice says she doesn’t know exactly but ‘they had broken up, sort of, he was angry at her, at the way she was behaving’.
