Beck's record club - 'Waiting for My Man'

new vid from Beck's record club project up on his page-

Wilco electrifies The Wiltern in LA

photo courtesy of Mick O kcim, Flickr

The boys of Wilco are currently in the middle of a three night, sold-out run at Los Angeles' historic Wiltern Theatre. I was luckily in attendance for their second show on Tuesday.

Opening with 'Via Chicago' off of 'Summerteeth', the groups extensive set list (see below) spanned their entire catalog. Their third song in saw them break out material from their newest release 'Wilco (The Album)' with 'Wilco (The Song)' (of course, right?).

My personal highlights of the night came with the material from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot which has grown into even more sonic-maturity and Nels' scorching solos throughout Sky Blue Sky's tracks – killer boots and axe-candy as always :)

Jeff Tweedy was pretty talkative throughout the latter part of the set and post a Mr. Cline sonic assault, Tweedy said, 'That was pretty good Nels but, can you play two instruments?'. He gladly obliged with what appeared to be an electric mandolin around his neck and a slide guitar resting comfortably over his lap for 'Deeper Down'.

After two encores, the band closed with a particularly rocking version of 'I'm a Wheel'.

Setlist: Wilco @ The Wiltern, 6/23/09

Via Chicago
Company In My Back
Wilco (The Song)
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
One Wing
A Shot in the Arm
Side With The Seeds
Bull Black Nova
Jesus, Etc.
Impossible Germany
Forget The Flowers
Deeper Down
California Stars (ft. Jonathan Wilson on guitar)
Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway (again)
Heavy Metal Drummer
A Magazine Called Sunset
You Never Know

First Encore:

Poor Places
Reservations
Spiders (Kidsmoke)

Second encore:

The Late Greats
Hate It Here
Walken
I'm The Man Who Loves You
I'm A Wheel

no 'beating around the bush' with these guys...

The Dead Weather on 'Conan'

Great network television debut - everyone was on their game (despite what Entertainment Weekly thinks). Jack White has a nice touch as a drummer. It's interesting that his setup is similar to Meg White with the flat and somewhat behind him positioning of the skins.

Alison Mosshart sold herself, for sure - in the best way possible. She was very sexy and tough garage-rock chick at the same time (word to Brody Dalle).

The debut LP 'Horehound' is due out 7/14 from Jack White's Third Man label.

Here is the vid-

The Dead Weather - 'Hang You From the Heavens' (live on Conan)

"Where Is My Vote?' - $5 tees!!

Show your support for the citizens of Iran who are trying to be silenced-
'Where Is My Vote?' tee


VIDEO: Eddie Vedder - 'The Times They Are A-Changin'
(Bob Dylan cover)

Beck's 'record club' - first song today!!

Dropped by Beck's site today and was excited to see the first song to come out of his record club was posted. The idea was reported by a few sites but the best article is from the team at Pitchfork.

The idea has him and several friends including the likes of Nigel Goodrich and MGMT, covering full, legendary albums.

First bullet out of the gun - Velvet Underground and Nico.

Way to take it slow :)

'Sunday Morning'

clip courtesy of becksounds

new vinyl pickups - Comets on Fire, Panda Bear

After a trip from LA up to Paso Robles, I hit Salzer's Records in Ventura and Just Play in SB - Salzer's was the winner.

I picked up Comets on Fire's 'Blue Cathedral' and Panda Bear's 'Person Pitch' for good prices.



Thanks to all the great staff at Salzer's. If you haven't been there, it's right off the 101N at Victoria. Upstairs they have a head shop and adult oriented goods along with a nice sticker selection, books, incense and various cool things for your place. Downstairs is all the music (vinyl, cd's) and posters, mags, etc. Going up the staircase, you can view all the tees they have for sale.

http://www.salzers.com/
www.myspace.com/salzersrecords

All Tomorrow's Parties - The Film!!

Another nice surprise when I signed in to MySpace today, a bulletin announcement from ATP that the 'first proper trailer' for All Tomorrow's Parties - The Film was up on Our True Intent's site. I'm stoked, here it is:



nice :)

Overlooked: Tokyo Police Club - Elephant Shell

While having to compete with stellar 2008 releases from the likes of My Morning Jacket, Deerhunter and No Age (to name a few), it's easy to see why Tokyo Police Club's first LP 'Elephant Shell' (via the Saddle Creek label) was left out of many end of year lists - even if just an honorable mention.

Sure, these guys are still young and 'exploring the space' but, they have always been a band that you were hearing or reading about, late-buzz or not. The ability to hang around and stay relevant in the indie-rock world (and the minds of it's inhabitants) is essential if only to develop a super-core fan base that sticks for the long haul (Vaselines anyone?).

The first half of the album is melodic and sparkling. Burst-fire drum riffs offer the resemblance of Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti setting the base for lush, pop-laden deliveries, short and collected.

The second half of the album wains and strays from the first-half formula in which the young band flourishes. Soft ballads and faux-stadium anthems dull the party and ultimately set up a few early album re-hashes - too little, too late.

However, with 11 tracks and a total time of under 30 minutes, the ratio is in their favor. 'Graves' is easily the album's best track which received some early exposure on Mtv2's Subterranean as a multiple show resident. Other bright points on the rookie LP are the peppy opener 'Centennial' and the the mid-album dance track 'Tessellate' which also made a Subterranean appearance.

This is an album of two halves - unfortunately, the latter completely forgettable. But, the illuminated areas early in the album do glow bright. Expect great things.



Final rating: 6.7/10 (if the first half of the album was an EP, it would be an 8.)
Key tracks: 'Graves', 'Centennial', 'Tessellate'


VIDEO: Tokyo Police Club - 'Graves'

LCD Soundsystem - new album news, kind of?

thanks to punkguy.com for the image

I always look forward to James Murphy's bloglings but, the ones about new albums are my favorite MySpace surprise :)

Also, some comments about his visit to the Mtv Movie Awards with pal Aziz Ansari from Human Giant:

'making a record'

"making a record is strange. last time i made a record i had a pretty brutal and miserable experience. then i made something that wasn't the record, went back to said record, and had a great experience. it all worked out. this time i'm having a pretty great experience. i like the record more, but have no idea if that means it's better or anything. it's just more fun. the shitty full-days of lying on the floor stuck in my own head about things has been pushed back into hours, or only one hour, here and there. i also get to swim in the morning, and do things like that. which is good. which makes the record better, i think. because now when i'm not actually working on the record, i'm doing something i like and that occupies my mind, rather than sitting in a room with my head in my hands wondering if i still know how to make music.

i was very hungover today, mainly because i drank a lot of drinks with alcohol in them yesterday. i accompanied my tv star friend to the mtv movie awards because it seemed like the most hilariously hollywood thing i could possibly do right then, and wound up at times pretending to be either his publicist or body guard, which was very funny. i also ate a lot of these skewers with a shrimp and a green olive on them. they were good, but not substantial enough really to soak up the shitty free beer that they have at these things.

while at the awards, i learned a few things:

1. will ferrell is very nice in person, and must be exhausted with how much effort he puts in to seeming like a decent, regular guy. i met him very quickly and he was so absurdly nice that i felt like a dick for all the times i was wooden and awkward with strangers at a festival or something.
2. danny mcbride is fucking hilarious. and pretty much like you expect.
3. eminem is a better actor than you think.
4. pr people and "young hollywood" seem like, literally, different species of animal.
5. young, self-satisfied, confident celebrities are weird to be near.
6. the more excited young people are about an actor/actress, the less likely i am to recognize them. there is an inverse relationship formula for volume-of-screaming to person-i-recognize that i'm working on.
7. jason 'mayhem' miller has a very large head. and that's coming from ME.
8. talking for 2 minutes with ben stiller about something totally unrelated to the mtv movie awards while at the mtv movie awards makes people audibly say "who is that talking to stiller??" in total, unselfconscious earshot of the subject (me) while said subject (still me) walks back to the bar area. they'll actually point.
8b. being at an event thrown by a company called "music television" pretty much ensures that you will not be recognized by anyone at all except for the people you show up with, previously know, and danny mcbride.
9. comedians are funny in person, but not the way you think.
10. hollywood likes to stratify, and being the +1 of a tv personality makes you pretty low on the list, but if you've just said hi to will ferrell, and he looked at you in some way that could be interpreted as "familiar"--largely because he's kind, and you blurted something about him using "north american scum" in "stepbrothers"--you can basically walk into any room you want and take beer for the next 5 minutes. it's like getting an invincibility pill in pac-man. you can feel the power start to blink after you cruise out with 4 beers from the 3rd dressing room, so you should probably head back to your friends and share the beers.
11. chris isaacs likes his dog.
12. forest whittaker is disarmingly friendly.
13. i, as a person, am oddly frightened (i'm saying frightened here--not intimidated) by jim carey.

i think like being a largely anonymous dude in a weird band that most people don't know about. it's nice. i wouldn't want to be a movie star. i mean, i feel like i knew that, but it's good to have your feelings validated like that once in a while. because it's easy to sit back and say "i wouldn't want to be a movie star" when it's totally not a salient point... but being there, with everything seeming so easy for them, still didn't make me want any of it. except the free stuff.

today i woke up late, sat around in a horrible state, until i went in the pool and played "goodminton" (which is badminton where the object is to keep the birdie in play as long as possible), ate in n' out burger, and watched several episodes of the BBC show "ashes to ashes", which has amazing music.

tomorrow i'll wake up early, do a little jiu jitsu stuff, swim, shower, get into my making-a-record outfit, eat an avocado and a hard boiled egg, make an amazing coffee, and get to work on a new song. gavin russom (gavin and delia, black leotard front, black meteoric star) is here for a few days, so maybe i can get him to wrangle some synths with me. i have a good feeling about tomorrow, frankly. and i'm also terrified that i'll never make anything good again.

that works.

oh: my tv friend is aziz ansari. thanks, aziz."


For the record, Murphy's blog was in neon green font - sorry if I didn't do the entry justice.


VIDEO: LCD Soundsystem - 'Losing My Edge'