‘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.’
I remember when I hated Governors Ball the way I hated all music festivals, good if you’re a boy scout who didn’t mind camping out all night and good if you enjoyed seeing concerts from a stage further away than the last row at Metlife. BUT VIP tickets get you close and Governors Ball is an urban gig, reachable via subway. So here we go… today: Rudimental, Florence + The Machine and Drake are the highlights.
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!
The True Groove All Stars begin their residency at The Classon Social Club in Brooklyn, the Max’s Kansas City Annual reunion day one at Bowery Electric, shoegaze ancestors Ride at T5, Chromeo at Apollo, Refused at MHOW, Wire At Bowery Ballroom.
If one more person comes up to me today and says “get a life Lababedi”, I’m gonna play the new Dawes album on their ass till they beg for forgiveness. I wanted a life and I got a life and heavy knows I was miserable, so instead of spending my life getting it, I shall spend my life doing completely ridiculous wastes of time like this: imagining what the days of the week would be if they were rock stars
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.’
Sepp Blatter stepped down as President of the Football Association FIFA amid allegations of huge corruption, kickbacks, bribery, you know, like Albany only for sports. Incidentally, if FIFA had given the US the next world cup instead of Qatar, I wouldn’t if the US would’ve pursued the corruption charges quite as vigorously?
it has been to rain a lot at Glastonbury and unlike our own Governors Ball, people camp out (yuck, right). Here are the performers and get ready to have you mind boggled. It is like Governors ball on steroids plus the Who!!!! And Suede and Kanye and FKA Twigs, Gregory Porter… It really is unreal, it dwarfs Coachella
“a bill in the State Legislature to name a part of state Route 107 in the Long Island town Oyster Bay after Billy Joel passed in the Senate last week. The bill, which was sponsored by state Senator Jack Martins and Assemblyman Michael Montesano, proposes that the “stretch of South Broadway from East John Street to West Old Country Road” will be called ‘Billy Joel Boulevard’.”
I drew this out in pencil before I attacked it on canvas. Weirdly enough, I got the hair, I got the eyes…but then a very strange thing happened when I got to the nose….from the nose down she turned into Tina Turner! I did not try to do this. I tell ya, I don’t have that much control of my painting!
While Richard Branson saw the space age as a cheap holiday for billionaires, Elon Musk, the inventor of Pay Pal, saw it as a way to cut itself right into the industrial complex with its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft lifted off from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Excited: How about the Air Force allowing Space X to bid on Air Force launch business. The price of a launce has been $160M, Elon says he can do it for $100M. Wow.
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
The Grateful dead started it but as it gets harder and harder to make money off studio recordings, everybody from the Allman Brothers (RIP) to Phish to Bruce Springsteen have started hawking their concerts to the faithful.
Senator Rand Paul filibustered a delay on the revised Patriots act vote, thereby delaying it till Tuesday or Wednesday. I may not agree with much that either the Tea Party or the Kentuckian does, but institutionalized spying should be illegal without a warrant. Paul is running for President.
Live: A heavy concert week, with Joan Jett and the Who, Ed Sheeran, and Christines, Sayak and the awesome The Gotobeds leading a jam packed week of gigs. No major disappointments and the Gotobeds was exactly what you hoped they were.
Who Needs The Peace Corps? – The Mothers – Off melody, jazz inflected sneer at the state of the country especially the hippies who at the time seemed liked the height of hypocrisy, worth the same disparagement as just about everybody else, but today seems like a glorious up in flames failure. Zappa seems between bewilderment and an austere despising…. in 1968 – B
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.
Sajak’s penultimate song last night was a cover of The Stranglers epic self portrait “(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)”, one of the tastiest licks you’ll hear. Meanwhile, Dawes fans are upset I gave their new album a “B”…. they don’t seem to understand how I can like the playing and the lyric but think the songs didn’t make it.
As I grew older, the Who’s music seemed to grow with me. The sexual frustration, the politics, identity. These things coursed through my veins with every concurring Who album. I always found myself there somewhere in their music. “The Seeker”; the seeker is the guy in “Born to Run.”
Talk about changing your mind!! Or maybe that’s the wrong way of putting it. What I wrote about Conor and Dylan was true then but six years later can’t withstand a reread but it is getting one any way. Both albums were disappointments by the way, big disappointments. But that was then…
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.’
With Governors Ball happening over the bridge in the Bronx, you’d think the Talk hows would be overloaded with top rock, pop and rap band so scanning this lot and it is a little sorry, right? Ed Sheeran ends his nyc run run on Fallon, My Morning Jacket in LA before they head for NYC, James Corden has half of Oasis but that’s LA a well. Anyway, I’m going with Seth Myers and clean bandit. Why? Because this is the summer of featured singer Jess Glynne -that’s why.
‘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.
The Rolling Stones have been teasing out alternate takes from the new Sticky Fingers deluxe upcoming release for weeks now. Translation? No unreleased new songs old material on the album. Jagger has noted he wished he hadn’t given it all to Exile On Main Street. Too late now.
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
Back in the late 80’s, Don (Mr. Hollywood) Butler and I discovered the sounds of this wildman. I cannot remember who heard him first…me, him or Little Richard, but I do remember we were instantly hooked by the wild piano playing and insane vocal stylings and his crazy hair-do
What does it mean when you don’t hear great music because it was never written? It is like me, childless, all the wonderful kids I never had and all the wonderful songs I never heard because they weren’t written or because I couldn’t find them and that is the great sorrow of this maybe great moment in pop music. We can’t hear it.
‘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.’
None of it makes the slightest bit of sense, all of it is Disney pretty nonsense, the acting is bad, really really bad, three people wrote the script and if any of them can make sense of the story they chose not to share it. Why is the world gonna blow up in 58 days? Something to do with people not caring but why would that mean the… ah screw it, it isn’t worth the effort.
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.’
There is a Las Vegas bidding war between the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino, The Venetian and Caesars Palace, and is in line to ink a $40 million deal.Look, if Adele was willing to do an Arena tour the chances are excellent you could gross in the $150M level. But if she isn’t willing to play Arenas, where is the money?
All endings is my ending, time is so inexorable, so relentless, so infinite but not for me, every change, every wedding, every death, every hope… I haven’t much watched David Letterman in many many years but if ever anyone seemed to be sick of having a Late Night TV show by the end of it, Letterman seemed sick of it. He was ready to leave. But his left is our left and the least sentimental television personality brings out the sentimental in me!
There is so much music out there that I feel if you could find all the good stuff the 2010s would be the equal of the 00s… but how do you find it? Overhere at rock nyc we try and save you time by telling you what to listen to (that’s also why we use grades so liberally, so you don’t even have to bother reading it). The next decade should be interesting at the very least…
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?
The pitch is never really great and its total lack of believability means that the pleasures of the first movie, of real life, it felt real and possible, are blown to smithereens. I’d have had everybody grow up a year and let new recruits in and see what helps in the second year.
“Maybe we’ll never do another one. Futurology was such a brilliant summation of who we are, who knows? Everything Must Go is 20 years old next year as well, so we might even just do a couple of gigs doing that. I think we need to replenish our inspiration, you know?”
‘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’
Here is an idea I’ve been dwelling on, rating the rock deaths (or pop -I am an equal opportunity low life) because I want you to know at a glance what we think of those who died, their age, their abilities, the way they died – all of it in one big gulp of information. I feel bad about this, not unlike the way I used to feel after reading “Celebrity Skin”.
. Meanwhile, for want of anything else, American Idol fell apart the second they lost Paula Abdul, the initial judges were clearly the best, dawg. So take the chance to watch her on Kelly And Michael.
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!
How can you go into another business when the business you have is not under control. Where is the full tilt power rush to get new customers? Why are the messing around with new ideas when the old ones aren’t firmed up?
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.
“Music writing isn’t sports writing, you don’t need to report on the ramifications of a manager being dropped or speculate on the next album. You can’t critique art that hasn’t happened.”
