Nabbed from Pitchfork’s news this morning:
The duo [The Blood Brothers] has, however, been tapped to appear at the Krazy Fest some time between August 1st and 3rd in Louisville, KY. Now, see if you can find it in yourself to forgive promoters for bestowing upon this festival the worst name in the history of all nomenclature, and then consider making the horribly long drive out, up or down to Kentucky– the land of fields, more fields, and a poorly named hardcore shindig. If you’re still the least bit interested, Louisville’s Waterfront Park will host the sixth annual rendition of this kraziness– a rough and tumble collection of raucous rawkers and hardcore pretty boys.
BTW, congratulations to those of you who managed to successfully navigate The Blood Brothers site. The navigation is absolutely atrocious. It is, however, a unique blend of non-intuitiveness blended with silly Flash toys and annoying sound. Thankfully, the music is better.
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Score One for the Fat Kid is a band. They are from Cambridge, MA and just released their album “Plan B is for Suckers” back in March. They seem to be in a genre known as “math-rock”, and I don’t know if i’d say that. They remind me of something between Hum and maybe a little Uncle Tupelo thrown in there (at least the beginning of “Can You Name These Brain Structures”). Anyway, good pop-indie sensibilities with quirky lyrics and tight musicianship.
What really endeared me was this: an explanation of “the Creepy Claw” song that mentions Louisville and they name dropped the White Stripes, and they have a general disregard for music snobbery.
Oh, hey, I’ve got an idea — listen to a couple of tracks.
Woo! Hoo!
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I’m sitting here listening to Led Zeppelin‘s “How the West Was Won” — a three disc set of live Zeppelin from the early seventies. Most of this stuff hasn’t been heard since it was played, and having not lived during a time at which I could have seen Zeppelin in their hedonistic heyday, I certainly haven’t heard anything like this. Yeah, I’ve heard a fair bit of Zeppelin live stuff — like their BBC sets, etc, but even then they were constrained by airtime, etc. This set really showcases how tight and strong — a true force of rock — Led Zeppelin was in concert. More later…
Slight update: Last night, I told Hunter that the first track (“Immigrant Song”) is like a punch in the gut, it’s so hard and urgent. I think it’s more like a knee-drop in the chest, upon further listening.
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When someone tells you “Hey man, Louisville is boring and sucks,” you can promptly direct that guy to the URL for the 2nd Annual Lebowski What-Have-You festival right here in Louisville. I don’t know if it’s the only Lebowski What-Have-You Festival in the nation, but I do know this — the man who was the inspiration for “The Dude” will be there, drinking white russians and bowling. Yeah.
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Ye olde Federal Communications Commission is set to vote on easing media ownership rules today. They are considering removing the 28-year-old ban on a single company owning both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city (small cities are exempted). Other changes include increasing the percentage of the national audience a single company may reach from 35% to 45%, and allowing a single company to own up to 3 channels in a regional market.
The folks that come out to protest this thing are as varied as I’ve ever seen — the NRA standing next to womens groups, etc. They come out in bulk, too — apparently both the email and voice mail systems were crashed at the FCC due to extremely high volume. Something on the order of 500,000 piece of voice and email.
Is it just me, or most of these rules in place because of the ignorance of most Americans? I’m not quite sure on that position, though. Time and time again, it has been shown that if you throw enough information at a person (or a society) that they will be blindsided. When the market feeds on the consumer (as it does in most broadcasting), the free market system becomes a bit like a meat market. The average citizen doesn’t have the time or energy to keep up with the varied, shifting winds of media companies. I’m not crazy about constricting business to safeguard our freedom of speech, but in this case, I think it is much needed. A monopoly of steel, oil, or technology is one thing — but a monopoly of information is the most dangerous of all.
a simple chart of proposed rule changes (by the way, that existing 35% cap — yeah, Viacom and News Corp (FOX, et al) are already over the limit with 39% and 38%, respectively.
Oh, and Clear Channel owns 1200 radio stations nation-wide after radio deregulation, and you wonder why radio sucks? Why don’t you just go and ask Rocky and Troy.
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Back during the Great Vacation of 2001 I picked up a ridiculously cheap sampler from Fat Possum Records — Not The Same Old Blues Crap II. This is, hands down — one of the best various-artists albums I own, and all for $5. The blues I heard on there were so far removed from the Stevie Ray Vaughns , B. B. Kings and Claptons of the world. They were raw and rough and full of soul — with a good beat behind them. Well, since my new-years resolution of listening to more good music has come in-line, I’ve stumbled upon The Black Keys (Jackson mentioned them, methinks) — who are also on Fat Possum, and do not let down the rest of the FP roster! For being my age, these guys (there are just two) sound like they’ve been busting rocks for years, and when they do get out of the pokey all they’ve got to look forward to is sharecropping in the Mississippi Delta. Well, maybe that is a little overboard — but the soul and swagger these two put into their music is rarely heard among blues musicians today.
They’ve got a new album (“Thickfreakness”) due out the 8th of April, and they are touring with Sleater Kinney in the coming months. What, you want MP3s? Oh, I guess.
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So, somehow I had never heard of WOXY 97X FM in Cincinatti. WOXY bills itself as “Modern Rock”, but what they really play is a good slate of indie stuff — most of which I haven’t heard. Right now, I’m listening to a little Zwan, and earlier there was a little Cat Power (which I’d heard of, but never heard), and up soon — Rainer Maria! Yaay!
Oh yeah, they are family-owned, none of this WQMF-style sellout to ClearChannel here! Also, they have a great sounding MP3 stream (48kbps), as well as a couple other streaming formats.
m@: an actually good rock radio station?
BenCorvus: shocking, i know!
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The more I read TV Go Home, the more I find it uproariously funny. Published bi-weekly, or is it bi-monthly? Whatever, every two weeks, it is. In any case, it’s set up like a page from TVGuide, except if TVGuide had the bollocks (it’s English, you see) to tell it how it really is. Every word, every disturbing little thought on this page skewers oh-so-perfectly the tv/radio/internet/infotainment cliche ever imagined.
There are recurring themes involved here, from weekly descriptions of “The Ten Tasks of One-Armed, One-Legged Hercules” to the occasional “Holiday Special. I don’t know how they manage to come up with such incredibly spot-on bits of humor, all the more incisive and uproariously funny as TheOnion.
Well, get on with it! Go read it. You’ll enjoy.
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I guess that Sidney Woloshin was the closest thing any ad-writer could be to a superstar. Oh, but many have tried, few have even gotten close.
It is with much sadness and regret that I inform you that Sidney Woloshin has died. Yes, the creator of the “You Deserve a Break Today” jingle for McDonalds in the early 70′s has died.
Well, I’m just saddened. Oh, wait, no I’m not. I always hated jingle writers. Jingle writers and mimes. Both tried to foist something on you, that while you might have enjoyed it, it was only for you to give up some hard earned dough. And for what? An invisible box? An intangible feeling of “Oh! I DESERVE A BREAK!”? Right. Well… if you need a jingle writer in Mumbai, India, go here.
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