90’s night/Jemina Pearl collabs w/ Iggy Pop
July 27, 2009
The biggest news this fine Monday is that tonight is the final night of decades cover nights sponsored by Nashville Cream at Mercy Lounge. Tonight’s theme is 90’s songs, and I’m playing drums in a hodge-podge band put together just for this show called Shit Sandwich. Don’t let the ridiculous name fool you, though. It’s gonna be awesome. As always, it’s FREE, starts at 9pm, and is 21+. You would be doing yourself a serious injustice if you didn’t come. More deets at the Cream.
While we’re on the topic of 8 off 8th, I must mention that exactly one week from today is my 3rd 8 off 8th. I’ve lined up The Comfies, Tristen, Dixie Whiskey, Pineapple Explode, Joel J. Dahl, Jug Huggers, Overzealous, and Cody Blaine & the Whole Fam Damnly for your listening pleasure. This awesome flyer was designed by my friend Cara Charlton.
Apparently Jemina Pearl has collaborated with Iggy Pop on a song for her upcoming solo album. Seriously WTF?!? I mean, she’s already collaborated with Thurston Moore on a Ramones cover, so I guess it’s not that big of leap….Free mp3 available for download at Stereogum. I’ve only listened to it once, but thus far it’s kinda meh…. He doesn’t sing any verses, just joins her on the chorus of “Oh I… I hate people…”
The first glimpses of Tron: Legacy can be seen here. The animation looks absolutely awesome, and I’m starting to think this will be a great film.
Sadly, Megan and I STILL didn’t get to see any of the movies on our current must-see list- Harry Potter, Moon, or 500 Days of Summer. (Though the last one technically doesn’t hit Nashville till this coming weekend…) ARGH.
Weekend activities/Darlings/New POBPAH on the horizon
July 24, 2009
Image via Pitchfork
It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Their debut album earlier this year is sure to be on my top 10 list, if not top 5, of 2009. I was quite happy and somewhat surprised to see that they’re following it up rather quickly with another EP and single. The EP will be called Higher Than The Stars, and will be available on Sept. 22nd. This band is the real deal, and I have no doubt they’ve got at least a few more good albums in them. (Via Pitchfork)
While we’re talking about indie pop, I must mention a band that’s just popped up on my radar called Darlings. I received a promo copy of their album Yeah I Know the other day and I’ve had it on repeat almost nonstop ever since. Murfreesboro/Nashville peeps will no doubt compare them to local indie poppers Velcro Stars. It’s a bouncy, playful, honest sound that’s adorned with great melodies. It’s still very simple, however, and not overproduced. This track “Eviction Party” is easily a standout in my opinion.
Another new-ish band that I’ve enjoyed is The Blacks. If you can get past the name (we’re all pretty sick of bands that have “black” in their name by now, right?), I think this band has potential. I like the reverb-y drums and overall dark sound. One might initially group this band in with other girl-fronted groups such as Hole or the Donnas, but it’s not nearly as glammy/gimmicky. I need to hear more before I’m fully sold.
Ok enough mp3s. Here’s what’s going down in Nashville this weekend:
Tonight I have a photo gig right after Vandy work and then will be hi-tailing it to M’boro for the DCI show at MTSU. Yes, I still have a marching band geek inside of me. It comes out every summer when this show comes around.
Other stuff of interest tonight- The Whigs, Glossary, and Ascent of Everest at 527 Main St. Or whatever the hell that place is called now. Also, Heypenny, Caitlin Rose, and The Saps are at the Basement.
For Saturday, I’ll be photographing Neko Case at the Ryman. Also of interest- Chris Freeman makes a triumphant return to TN with a show at the Boro. He’ll be backed by Kelly Kerr’s Distractions. The Kindergarten Circus is releasing their debut self-titled album at the End. Joining them will be The Clutters, Denny & the Jets, and Daniel Pujol & Some Beaus. I may try to make it out to this after Neko Case, since End shows tend to go pretty late.
Then Sunday will be band rehearsal for the Cream 90’s cover night on Monday. Are you excited? Because you should be.
Have a great weekend!
New Mercy Lounge website/newsy stuff
July 23, 2009
Not much time today so here are newsy bits, as they’re called over at the Cream.
Pitchfork reports that Conor Oberst is probably “closing the book” on Bright Eyes after one more album. Emo girls: you’ll just have to settle for his solo project from now on. Sorry.
James Jackson Toth moved to Murfreesboro around a year or two ago around the same time his band Wooden Wand was calling it quits. I honestly wasn’t familiar with Wooden Wand until about this time, but I did receive a promo copy of his new album Hard Knox under the name “Wand.” He’s been getting some serious love in the blogosphere as of lately, and is about to embark on a tour with the likes of Destroyer and Akron/Family, among others. Today he was mentioned on both RCRD LBL and Stereogum, both of which have free mp3s.
Local web design champion and music enthusiast Michael Eades did a stupendous (and much needed) redesign of the Mercy Lounge’s website. It’s a vast improvement and the calendar is much more readable and easy to use. They also have a blog in the works that hopefully will startup any day now. Do yourself a favor and check it out.
In some local news- it was cool to learn this morning that an emeritus professor at Vanderbilt was the mathematician responsible for solving the three-body problems required to send the Apollo missions to the moon.
48 hr film project/Monsters of Folk
July 20, 2009
This XKCD comic was just too good not to post:
The aptly-named Monsters of Folk is a new project comprised of Conor Oberst, M. Ward, Jim James, and Mike Mogis. They’ve released the first single “Say Please” for free download, and Brooklyn Vegan has it. My opinion is: not bad… maybe a 6 out of 10?
Apparently Wes Anderson is directing a movie adaptation of the Roald Dahl story The Fantastic Mr. Fox. This sounds like an unbeatable combination to me, and I definitely look forward to seeing it. Trailer will be out at the end of the month. (Via Kottke)
Tonight is the 3rd in the 4-part decades cover nights sponsored by Nashville Cream at Mercy Lounge. Tonight’s decade is the 80’s, so expect some Phil Collins, Pat Benatar, Pixies, Erasure, Motley Crue, and lots of ridiculous outfits. Check Nashville Cream for the lineup. Next week my band will play 90’s night under the one-time name “Shit Sandwich.” It’s gonna be awesome. Just sayin’. Oh yeah, and the week after that I’m hosting another 8 off 8th. So basically Mercy Lounge should be your home for the next few monday nights.
My friend and bandmate Seth entered into the 48 hour film project again this year, and my apartment was the setting for the 5 minute movie he created for it. Check out Joe, Dean, and Charlene by Seth Graves:
Splittin’ posts- music: Matt Mahaffey tonight!
July 16, 2009
I’m trying out a slightly different format today- I’m going to split up the posts roughly into two categories: the science-y/tech-y/nerd-y stuff, and the music/pop culture stuff. So essentially you’ll see two posts per day for the most part. LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK IN THE COMMENTS.
The most important thing I’m posting about today is tonight’s benefit for Planned Parenthood’s VOX programs. I’m incredibly honored to be DJing along with one of my all-time musical heroes, Matt Mahaffey. Also on the bill is DJ Busta Window (better known to many locals as Kelly Kerr). The event is at Mai, which is right across the street from 12th & Porter. This event has FREE admission, but 5% of the bar sales go toward VOX, so either drink a lot, or just buy a few expensive drinks knowing that your intoxication is benefiting a good cause. Just don’t drive thereafter. The real DJ action won’t kick off till 10:30 or so, and I’m 2nd in the lineup so please get there by 10:30 at the latest. Resident DJ Coach will takeover after Matt’s set and keep the party hoppin’ till last call. Go ahead and plan to call in sick tomorrow, cuz this shit is worth stayin’ out late on a Thursday! Thanks to Nashville Cream for the plug yesterday. If you have any curiosities as to what my DJing is like, checkout the DJ Burgers SUMMERMIXXXX09 here.
In other music news:
Brooklyn Vegan continues to blow their load over JEFF the Brotherhood. Awesome!
Also Brooklyn-related: the Wall Street Journal is about 4-5 years behind the curve on reporting the skinny jean trend as “new,” which makes this all the more entertaining to watch. (Via dontstaylong)
Like I said, let me know if you like the idea of splitting up the posts.
Attention bands everywhere: the Next Big Nashville deadline for entry was extended until this coming Friday. It was originally today, but last Friday they announced the extension. So get over to American Songspace and apply if you haven’t. It’s only ten bucks!
Those Darlins just keep making bigger and bigger news stories. This time they got a mention on CNN and the New York Times! Check out CNN.com and watch the video clip. They talk about Hannah Montana first, then mention the Darlins at about 2:50 into the clip. Then check out the NYT review here. They also got written up on Brooklyn Vegan for the 368th time….
Tonight is Nashville Cream’s 70’s cover night at Mercy Lounge. It’s like an 8 off 8th in that there’s 8 bands and they play about 3 songs each, but all bands are doing covers of songs from the 70’s. It’s totally free and 21+. It’ll be a blast so come on down.
Oddee posted a blog about 10 very strange bars. My favorite is the bar made of ice. Pretty awesome.
From the science world…
The launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour was scrubbed AGAIN yesterday due to storms in the vicinity of the launch area. They’re going to retry the launch at 6:51pm EDT tonight, but the forecast is still pretty iffy. Basically any afternoon/early evening launch time during the summer months is a shot in the dark because storms pop every afternoon in Florida due to the interaction between the hot/humid air over the land and the cooler seabreeze coming in off the ocean. Basically they’ll just have to get lucky.
In other NASA news, a really cool interactive flash application is up on their website. It’s a panoramic view made of images taken during the Apollo 11 moon landing (except for the image of the Eagle lander, which is obviously CG). You can scroll around from several different viewpoints. In case you didn’t know, this year is the 40th Anniversary of the moon landing.
New Brendan Benson/Jenny Lewis video/earthquakes
July 10, 2009
Brendan Benson wasn’t nearly as well-known prior to joining up with Jack White in The Raconteurs. He had out some solo albums that were great, but his new album is looking to be far beyond “great.” If the rest of the record is as good as this first track “Don’t Want To Talk,” then it could easily make its way into my top 5, maybe even 3 albums of 09. This song is just packed full of awesome. RCRD LBL posted it for download today, and you’d better go grab it. NOW.
Jenny Lewis has a new video out for the song “See Fernando” from her latest album Acid Tongue. Stereogum posted it yesterday. It’s very visually pleasing and let’s face it… Jenny Lewis is just pretty, though she doesn’t actually have as much screen time as one would hope… I got to see her at Bonnaroo and thoroughly enjoyed her set, especially when Elvis Costello joined her for “Carpetbaggers.”
As for this weekend… we’ll probably stay in tonight and catch the new episode of Eureka on SyFy. Saturday I’ll be doing a photobooth for the Miller Made Music/Lightning 100 free show at Exit/In with the Non-Commissioned Officers, Mean Tambourines, Perrin Lamb, and Mikky Echo. It’s a free show so you have no excuse not to come. Then on Monday be sure to check out the 2nd installment of the Nashville Cream decades 8 off 8th series. This one will cover the 70’s and I heard Caitlin Rose and Tristen’s covers are gonna be especially awesome.
I’ll the science to a minimum today. All I have to say is this:
The unusually nice weather we’ve been having lately is about to come to an end. These past few weeks have been a few degrees cooler than usual, and temps even stayed shy of 90 for a string of 8 days. But the biggest story was the humidity, or absence thereof. It’s been agreeably dry lately, which makes the heat MUCH more tolerable. The reason for this was that the Bermuda High Pressure System which normally dominates the summer weather in the southeast was relatively weak and further east than normal for this time of year. The clockwise circulation around the Bermuda High channels hot and humid air from the Gulf of Mexico right into the American southeast almost all summer long. This is what causes our typical “dog days of summer” weather, and sadly it’s about to return westward and re-establish itself over Bermuda. Also, El Nino is officially here, so get ready for a wet winter.
Have a great weekend!
Nashville’s own independent radio station WRLT (Lightning 100) has announced a new Thursday night concert series called “Live on the Green” that will include Ricky Young, Space Capone, Here Come the Mummies, among others. The events will be co-sponsored by the Mayor’s office and Team Green. It’s good to see outdoor live music events returning to downtown Nashville. Dancin’ in the District, River Stages, and Uptown Mix have been sorely missed these past few years. Kudos to the sponsors for making this happen. The first event will be Sept. 3rd. You can follow them on Twitter for more info.
Photo by James Gooding/Via Pitchfork
I really don’t know how this video clip is meant to be taken. It’s Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt redoing the famous apex scene from Sid & Nancy for a new web series called Cinemash. The sheer fact that the sexes are reversed and they didn’t even attempt to shave JGL’s scruffy chin makes me think it’s meant to be humorous, but it’s still odd. See the clip here. Via Nashville Cream/Pitchfork.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention former Titans quarterback Steve McNair’s death on here. I do follow the Titans (football is my biggest all-American guilty pleasure), and I was a huge fan of McNair. It’s hard to see through the PR spin surrounding professional athletes, but they guy seemed to be a genuinely good person, and he was one hell of a player. The Tennessean has posted a video clip of coach Jeff Fisher’s heartfelt remarks in a press conference yesterday. It deserves a look.
In what appears to be a move taken straight from the plot of I Am Legend, doctors have used the HIV virus to kill lung cancer in mice. This news is simultaneously exciting and terrifying to me. Yes, anything regarding a cure for cancer is awesome, but engineering a retrovirus to do exactly what you want is potentially one of the most dangerous pieces of technology ever created. It’s right up there with the H-bomb. It still has a long way to go before becoming a viable human treatment, though. Via io9.
Cream’s 60’s cover night/new Spoon/snow on Mars
July 6, 2009
The Nashville Scene/Cream is sponsoring all the 8 off 8th Mondays during July, and each week the 8 bands will all perform covers from a specific decade- the 60’s through the 90’s. Tonight is 60’s night and the bands are:
Matt Friction and the Cheap Shots
Roman Candle
Eureka Gold
The Clutters
Kindergarten Circus
Ole Mossy Face
Jacob Jones
Millionaire Magicians
Tigers Con Queso will be on the lineup for 90’s night on July 27th. More info at Nashville Cream. I’ll be there tonight taking pics, so come on out. It’ll be fun.
Hipster Runoff posted the new single Got Nuffin from Spoon today. It’s a good song, so go grab it.
I’ve got a lot of science to dump on you today, so here we go…
Astronomers have been a little puzzled by our Sun recently because it’s been unusually quiet. We reached solar minimum, the lowest part of the 11-year cycle of sunspot activity, in 2008. Normally we’d be seeing some sunspots appearing, marking the beginning of the next cycle, but for some reason the Sun has been strangely quiet this year, and no one really understands why. This weekend marked the first real appearance of sunspots for the new cycle, breaking the stretch of puzzling silence. Space.com has more.
I’ve always loved the large-scale, long-term predictions and statements that Dr. Stephen Hawking is known for. One of his latest predictions/statements is truly fascinating. He proposes that we take a much broader view of the term “evolution” and include not only genetic information (internal), but also external information. Because we now have the ability to communicate external information we are now in a different stage of evolution. Just like so many of his broad ideas, this one really makes you think almost on a totally different level. Read more at the Daily Galaxy article.
Even though communication with NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander ceased last fall, scientists are still evaluating the data collected while it was in operation. The scientists used a specialized instrument on the lander to detect water ice clouds and even snow falling to the martian ground. Yes, I said snow. On Mars. How effin’ cool is that? Learn more about this phenomenon by reading the Universe Today article.
Also from Universe Today- a more substantiated version of the blurb I posted a couple weeks ago regarding the possible back-up to NASA’s new Constellation program. A video clip from the presentation made to an external review committee by shuttle program manager John Shannon has been posted on YouTube. Apparently NASA is taking this proposal pretty seriously and everyone there is waiting on the final word by an executive session as to whether they’ll keep charging ahead with the current plans for the Ares rockets or try this new plan to retrofit the existing external fuel tank/solid rocket booster system to work with the new Orion Crew Vehicle. Watch the video below. As Universe Today points out, this system would be MUCH cheaper and faster to implement. Honestly, I think there’s a decent possibility that they’ll end up going for this and scrapping the Ares rockets. Only time will tell. Full article here.
I’ve been loving the Morning Benders for at least a year now, and it’s good to know that they’re working on new material. Their debut record Talking Through Tin Cans is absolutely excellent and this demo for Hand Me Downs on their myspace page shows promise for the follow-up. Let’s hope they don’t have a sophomore slump. I enjoyed their live set quite a bit at SXSW, though I’d like to see them do a full-length set eventually. (Via You Ain’t No Picasso)
Brooklyn Vegan posted several photographs of Michael Jackson taken by Kevin Mazur during one of his last rehearsals prior to his death last Thursday. Kind of creepy… I can’t imagine being that photographer. Obviously he will profit greatly from the licensing of those images. It’s certainly an ethical dilemma that I would struggle with, were I in his shoes. The value of those images went way up due to his death, but if I were the photographer, I would want to sell those licenses at a “normal” going rate, even though publications would obviously be willing to pay an inflated amount for them because they’re essentially the last images of him alive. I would definitely feel guilty for “cashing-in” on someone’s death.
From Yale University comes some good news in the world of computing. They’re testing the first version of a quantum processor that could potentially offer a way around Moore’s Law. At least for a while. This team of scientists has their quantum processors already doing basic algorithms, so hopefully it won’t be long before these amazing pieces of technology start showing up in personal computing devices. With this type of processor, I’d surmise that a device the size of an iPhone could potentially have the processing power of today’s supercomputers. I won’t get into exactly how quantum processors work (mainly because I have a hard time grasping it myself) but if you’re really into it, check out the original article on Science Daily. (Via io9)
It’s been a while since we really learned anything cool/crazy about the moon, but now that interest in our only natural satellite has been renewed due to NASA’s plan to put a base there, we’re starting again to uncover interesting things. One such discovery is that there is Uranium there. And it’s even on the surface. Scientists made the discovery after seeing the tell-tale signature of gamma radiation in the data from the recently-crashed Japanese Kaguya Probe. (Via Bad Astronomy)
Also from Bad Astronomy comes this insanely cool optical illusion video that utilizes your eye’s natural blind spot (where the optic nerve connects to your retina). It works best if you view it full screen.
steve cross loves music and science 