Copyright Vanderbilt University
The initial shortlist of artists playing at this year’s Rites of Spring festival at Vanderbilt has been released. The Flaming Lips will likely be headlining friday night, with another yet-to-be-announced headliner that will likely play saturday night. The friday/saturday thing is purely an educated guess on my part. Also announced: Okkervil River, N.E.R.D., Santigold (formerly Santogold), Q-tip, Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, and Grand Ole Party. Personally, aside from Flaming Lips, I’m looking forward most to Santigold and Okkervil River. Source: the Vanderbilt Hustler.
MGMT is apparently suing French President Nicolas Sarkozy because his campaign did not compensate them properly for usage of their song “Kids” as the Sarkozy campaign soundtrack.
Remember those literal music videos of “Head Over Heels” and “Take On Me?” Well they’re at it again, this time with Billy Idol’s “White Wedding.” I must say, it’s really hard to top “Take On Me.” I don’t think it’ll ever be done. It’s one of those things where the humor just is never the same after the first time.
The Explorer’s Club did a session on Daytrotter. These live takes are pretty good, but I must say that these songs need the polished production that’s present on their full-length album. It’s evident that some of the vocal harmony arrangements are VERY difficult and they guys hit some odd notes on these live recordings. But the fact that they’re even able to pull off any of those harmonies is utterly amazing, and these guys deserve major kudos for even being in the ballpark. I highly reccomend seeing this band live because they are a lot of fun, and you will thoroughly enjoy it.
In the science world, some good news for NASA comes from Obama’s first budget propsal which was released yesterday. Overall, NASA will (hopefully) see a $2 billion increase in funding in 2010. I’m quite pleased to see this, even in these tough times. Cutting-edge science and research is one area that should be way down on the list of things to get cut when facing tough economic times. Don’t get too excited though; this is not the final version. It was also evident that Obama plans to go ahead with the retirement of the Space Shuttle next year, and continue with Bush’s vision of returning to the Moon by 2020. (The only thing on which I actually agreed with Bush.) Source: Universe Today.
Texas meteorites found/Scene gets more Pavement links
February 24, 2009
Quick update on the near-Pavement-reunion last weekend: The Scene’s blog got even more national press- including Rolling Stone’s blog and Stereogum. Wooo!
Apparently Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice, which is owned by PepsiCo, is reverting to its old carton design. The new design unveiled in January resulted in a lot of emails and letters from consumers who didn’t like the new look. Thus, they decided to appease the disgruntled customers and go back to the classic design. I personally liked the new typeface, but I agree that the straw-in-orange image was classic, and central to their message of pure, unaltered juice, straight from the fruit. I say return the straw-orange image, but keep the new typeface… but that’s just me. Via NY Times.
Credit: Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald
The first fragments of the Texas fireball from last sunday have been found, proving to the doubters that it indeed was NOT fragments from the satellite collision. They’re hoping to find much larger fragments in the near future. The Arizona group of meteorite hunters estimate that the original meteor was about the size of a refrigerator or even a little bigger. It would have to be that big to be seen in the daytime and cause a sonic boom. Very cool!
The whole field of environmental science and protection took a major blow early this morning when NASA’s new Orbiting Carbon Observatory crashed into the ocean near Antarctica. A shield intended to protect the 972-pound spacecraft failed to disengage about 3 minutes after lauch, and caused the overall assembly to fall short of orbit and crash back to earth. This satellite was intended to study CO2 levels in the atmosphere and better understand its natrual cycles. Sad, indeed.
Matt Rowland makes Oscar appearance/Pavement almost reunites
February 23, 2009
OK Matt Rowland, first you made an appearance on SNL last week posing as Joaquin Phoenix, now you’ve made it all the way to the Oscars? Does Richie know about this? How is your new found fame going to affect Ghostfinger? Please don’t forget about your friends back here in little ol’ Nashville…
Seriously though, I was pretty happy to see Sean Penn win best actor for his role in Milk. I still haven’t seen The Wrestler yet, though, so I can’t say for sure that I thought he deserved it over Micky Rourke, but ever since I saw Milk, I’ve been hoping Penn would win it. I guess I’ll form my opinion when I finally see Rourke’s job in The Wrestler. On that note, I need to add Slumdog Millionaire to my “must-see” list as well.
So by saturday afternoon half of Nashville had found out about the alleged “Pavement reunion” that was taking place at the 5 Spot that night. Well, you probably know this by now, dear reader, but it didn’t happen. 4 of the 5 members of the band were onstage at the same time, however, and Malkmus sang 2 covers, so that made me happy. Read the full account, and see my photos from the event over on the Nashville Cream post. Oh, and Pitchfork picked up the story and linked to us, as well. Go us!
More local music happenings: I was pleased to find news in my inbox this morning of the Carter Administration’s upcoming releases. The 10-year Nashville rock veterans are releasing a retrospective collection of older songs that they weren’t quite happy with the first time around called Bomb-Ass Singles, 1998-2008. AND they’re taking a cue from How I Became the Bomb and releasing an album of new material 2 songs at a time, for free, via download. The first installment is called Victory Girls b/w Bitchery and Abomination, and is available starting today at their amiestreet.com page. Go get the songs! I’m listening right now and it’s good stuff. These dudes just seem to get better with time.
The Boston Globe’s Big Picture series has unleashed another great collection of photographs. This one is called “At Work,” and features some great imagery of everyday people doing a variety of interesting jobs. The Big Picture never disappoints.
You Ain’t No Picasso posted this video footage of the White Stripes on the last episode of Late Night with Conan O’Brien. I agree it’s a somewhat awkward rendition of the song… and the rhythm and speed is changed up a bit, but Jack & Meg can practically do no wrong in my eyes.
Weekend shows/models take a tumble
February 20, 2009
This image links to a Huffington Post article about not one, but two model mishaps during Herve Ledger by Max Azria’s Fall 2009 fashion show in NYC’s Bryant Park on Sunday. It has a slideshow with several images from Getty capturing each moment of the falls. Some images slightly NSFW.
What to do this weekend?
Tonight- Cage the Elephant/Autovaughn @ Mercy Lounge… meh.
Saturday- THE ONLY THING HAPPENING IS MY BAND TIGERS CON QUESO WITH WE WERE THE STATES, BETTY RATS, AND COUNTRY DEATH @ SPRINGWATER. COME.
Sunday- Those Darlins @ the Basement
Sci-Fi geek-out alert: Stargate Universe is officially in the pre-production stage. Most of the cast is nailed down, the biggest name arguably being Robert Carlyle. More at my new favorite geek blog, iO9.
Why is science important? There’s a website dedicated to having people explain it in their own way. I like to put it simply, science IS EVERYTHING.
Last night at band practice our bass player/beard contributor Josh told me about this ridiculous ska song called “Jesus is my friend.” Today he sent me the video. I had to post it. WTF?
F*** My Life/1st extinct animal cloned
February 11, 2009
My coworker Jordan sent me a link to this amazing website today-
http://www.fmylife.com/
Just go. My favorite so far- “Today, I had just gotten over the flu and thought I was better. So me and my boyfriend decided to have sex. As I was about to orgasm, I puked all over his face. He was so disgusted that he ended up throwing up on me as well.”
You may have heard about the issues that some Nashville venues/nightclubs are facing with the new city sprinkler ordinance that went into effect about a year and a half ago. Well, luckily the ones still unable to comply have been granted an 18 month extension. Furthermore the whole thing might change altogether because the council’s codes committee is voting on a bill that looks to shift Nashville buildings to an International Fire Code, which would dissolve the retroactive fire sprinkler requirement. Read more in the NewsChannel5 article.
In other local biz news, we might be getting wine in our grocery stores soon! This is something for which I’ve been hoping for a long time. I remember as a teenager growing up only minutes from the VA state line, my mom would take me with her on wine trips to grocery stores in VA because it was much cheaper than liqour stores in TN. Part of that was that VA has a lower alcohol tax than TN (because TN has no income tax) but still, grocery stores will likely have lower prices than wine stores. There’s a flip side to this, however…. Small local wine shops may suffer due to the price war induced by bigger chains such as Kroger, which will inevitably have much lower prices due to their size. My friend Courtney Wilder works at an awesome small wine shop in east Nashville called Woodland Wine Merchant. I’ll be interested to hear her opinion on this. I know that I will not stop shopping at wine stores such as hers for quality wine because I would rather buy from a small local store where the people who work there are actual wine experts. But your average Joe probably doesn’t share that sentiment.
Enrique Aguirre/Getty Images
Scientists in Spain have successfully cloned a species of ibex that went extinct in 2000. The Pyrenean ibex died out due mainly to overhunting. However, the calf died only minutes after birth. The team plans to try again in a year or so. This is amazing and scary all at the same time. We are NOT close to creating a real-life Jurassic Park, however. In order to clone something that’s extinct, you have to grow the embryo in some sort of currently living creature. We don’t have anything living right now that is a close enough analog to a dinsaur for that to work. Maybe we’ll find a way around that problem one day, but not anytime soon.
And the Bonnaroo 2009 lineup is….
February 2, 2009
Nashville cream was waiting on the Bonnaroo website to announce it right about now… but Nashvillest did some digging and found that TV on the Radio leaked it on their myspace blog. Here it is. Yep, we have to endure not one, but TWO Phish sets.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Phish (2 Shows)
Beastie Boys
Nine Inch Nails
David Byrne
Wilco
Al Green
Snoop Dogg
Elvis Costello (Solo)
Erykah Badu
Paul Oakenfold
Ben Harper and Relentless7
The Mars Volta
TV on the Radio
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Gov’t Mule
Andrew Bird
Merle Haggard
MGMT
moe.
The Decemberists
Girl Talk
Bon Iver
Béla Fleck & Toumani Diabate
Rodrigo y Gabriela
Galactic
Band of Horses
The Del McCoury Band
of Montreal
Allen Toussaint
Coheed and Cambria
Booker T & the DBTs
David Grisman Quintet
Lucinda Williams
Animal Collective
Gomez
Neko Case
Down
Jenny Lewis
Santogold
Robert Earl Keen
Citizen Cope
Femi Kuti and the Positive Force
The Ting Tings
Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
Kaki King
Grizzly Bear
King Sunny Adé
Okkervil River
St. Vincent
Zac Brown Band
Raphael Saadiq
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Crystal Castles
Tift Merritt
Brett Dennen
Mike Farris and the Roseland Rhythm Revue
Toubab Krewe
People Under the Stairs
Alejandro Escovedo
Vieux Farka Touré
Elvis Perkins In Dearland
Cherryholmes
Yeasayer
Todd Snider
Chairlift
Portugal. The Man.
The SteelDrivers
Midnite
The Knux
The Low Anthem
Delta Spirit
A.A. Bondy
The Lovell Sisters
Alberta Cross
Bruce’s epic crotch collision
February 2, 2009
So there it is. Enjoy it. The look on his face right after it is priceless. Overall, though, he rocked the house like only he could. In my opinion, one of the better superbowl halftime shows in recent history. GIF image via You Ain’t No Picasso.
The RIAA and Universal Music Group are at it again, claiming that if you’re a music reviewer and you haven’t kept track of every single promo CD you’ve ever recieved, then you’re a pirate. They won’t win the court battle, because if they do then, technically any book publisher could stick a label on their books saying “not for library lending.” When are these assholes gonna learn?
In case you haven’t heard, Flight of the Conchords are playing at the Ryman April 10th.
A new Spoon track has surfaced on Stereogum… and I have to admit it’s kinda strange. Now, I’m far from being a Spoon fanatic, so someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is the first Spoon track to involve an electronic beat. Their new album hits shelves Feb. 17th.
Old 1940’s photographs superimposed on new ones taken in exactly the same location in Russia. The text is all in Russian, but you needn’t read it. The images say it all.
Speaking of Russia, apparently they want to build their own space station. I also had no idea that the current Internation Space Station was scheduled to retire in 2015. It just seems to me that too much money has been spent on the ISS to retire it only 5-6 years after its completion.
Finally, I want to say a few things about science and religion. While I consider myself a person of faith, I don’t follow any one organized religion specifically, and I don’t beleive that we should ever look to religious texts to explain our environment and how it works. The only reliable method of explaining our environment (and by environment I mean everything from our planet to the entire universe) is SCIENCE. My favorite writer from the Daily Galaxy, Luke McKinney, posted a very well worded blurb about evolutionary theory and its unknowns. Let me say this- science and religion are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they are completely different methods of thought. Science has even supported some of the stories in the Bible, but as Mr. McKinney so eloquently says, “Religious texts can be incredibly positive works, prescribing social support and good rules for a good life if used properly, but declaring one to be a definite depiction of reality is like calling Chicken Soup for the Soul a quantum mechanics textbook.”
My 8 off 8th tonight/Deli Party pics
January 26, 2009
Number one priority for your Monday: coming to my 8 off 8th tonight at Mercy Lounge. It’s free, and it’s a great lineup, so you have no excuse. I’m not telling you the order so that you’ll come early because you don’t know if your favorite band (out of the lineup) will be first or last or somewhere in between. The Nashville Cream was kind enough to post a blog entry about it. Also, Courtney from Left Can Dance will be DJing between bands. Click the image to make it bigger.
The Deli Party was a huge success. Home Keys got things off to a great start, I DJed for a while, then Makeup & Vanity Set and Jensen Sportag did a tag-team setlist, trading off songs, which resulted in total awesomeness. The only minor buzz-kill was that it was so hot and steamy in the basement that the speakers kept overheating (and thus cutting themselves off). Thankfully that didn’t happen during my 2 hour DJ set after MAVS & JS finished. I had a total blast, and so did the crowd. Everyone was dancing, and it got pretty full for a while, then it thinned out a little around 2:15am, and I thought it was gonna wind down from there, but then suddenly everyone came back, and it got hot & heavy again at around 2:45! People were still going strong right up to the end when I had to call it quits around 3:20. My last two songs were for fellow photographer Johnny Kingsbury, who was celebrating his birthday that night. His sister let me in on the secret that one of his favorite party songs was You Get What You Give by the 90’s one-hit-wonder New Radicals. They all went crazy. I’m DJ Burgers, and this party should be very good reason for you book me at your next throwdown. For some great photos from the party, checkout Courtney Wilder’s photoset.
Speaking of photography, photographer David Bergman made 1,474 megapixel panoramic image of Obama’s Inauguration. Seriously, click that link! It’s amazing how much you can zoom in on that image and see the details. It was done using a Gigapan imager.
Some science links for the nerds:
We’re one step closer to teleportation. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to actually teleport a human being from one place to another, but instantaneous transfer of information could eventually be possible if we’re able to build upon this discovery/breakthrough. That could be very useful when we eventually send humans to Mars, and even farther. Not having to wait for a radio signal to travel all the way back to earth would be very handy when Val Kilmer lands on Mars and says, “Holy shit! There’s all kinds of glowing algae stuff everywhere, and it suddenly made the atmosphere breathable!”
Earth is being stalked by and asteroid. It’s ok though, it won’t actually hit us. It just follows us around everywhere we go, and calls us to leave cryptic messages, and….
Vote NO on #1 and #2
January 13, 2009
This only pertains to people living in Nashville, but for heaven’s sake get out and vote NO on #1 and #2. This is the hotly debated “English Only” law that would require all Nashville goverment forms, business, etc… to be carried out in English only. I don’t have the time nor energy to go into why this is a terrible idea, so go to NashvilleForAllofUs.org and read why you should definitely vote against this law. Early voting is underway NOW and goes until this saturday the 17th. You must go to the downtown election commission office to do so. Go here to see the early voting schedule. The official election is Jan. 22nd.
Related to yesterday’s post about Microsoft Songsmith (and you’ve probably already seen/heard this, but if you haven’t, do yourself a favor)- listen to the songsmith version of “Runnin’ with the Devil” by Van Halen. They took the bare vocal track of David Lee Roth singing and ran it through songsmith. Simply amazing if you ask me. No really. Via Nashville Cream.
Pete Souza was named the official White House photographer for soon-to-be President Obama. His coverage of Obama’s senate years is apparently what landed him the job. I cannot imagine how it must feel to be tasked with documenting the most historic presidential administration in the last 100 years, if not EVER.
Thank God the Heritage Foundation reached their fundraising goal to restore the historic Franklin Theater. The downtown area of Franklin is the only thing left there that hasn’t been completely overrun by ugly, mindless, white-upper-class uniformity and gentrification. Via Nashvillest.
This week the Mercy Lounge is celebrating their 6th anniversary by have 6 nights of free live music, with 6 or more bands each night. My band Tigers Con Queso is playing tonight, along with The Privates, The Effects, The Clutters, Rae Herring, and Vermicious K’nids. Did I mention it’s FREE?
3 2 1 Contact!
January 8, 2009
I don’t think I really need to say anything about this video…. other than the fact that you have to be at least 23 or so years old to appreciate it.
Hippies, get ready to do your happy little hippie dance- Phish has officially revealed their full reunion tour. And yes, you read that right, they’re strongly rumored to be headlining Bonnaroo… *groan*
In case you didn’t know, I’ve started doing some DJ gigs as DJ Burgers. I started a myspace profile for it. Get on it and add me if you haven’t already. Pardon the ridiculous flashing logos, but it’s all part of the gimmick, ya know? My next gig for it will be a party on Jan. 24th at 3609 Pilcher Ave. in west Nashville, featuring Jensen Sportag, Makeup & Vanity Set, and my bandmate Seth’s new solo project, Home Keys[asdfjkl;]. I’ll be DJing between bands and after. Come and dance. Or maybe vice-versa?
Now for some nerdy space stuff-
Since the first discovery of a planet orbiting a star outside our own solar system, the holy grail of astronomy has been discovering an earth-like planet outside our solar system. As in, roughly the same size, mass, and density of earth, and also with a stable atmosphere, and orbiting within that star’s “habitable zone.” A star’s habitable zone is a region of distance from the star in which water can easily exist in a liquid state on the surface of a planet- not too hot and not too cold. Now that astronomers have found literally 100’s of huge, Jupiter-like, gaseous exoplanets, they’ve started finding what are called “super-earths,” or solid, rocky planets roughly 5-10 times the size of earth. The few of these we’ve seen were discovered through the transit method- they passed across in front of their parent star, and we detected the slight dimming of the star due to that transit. This Universe Today article talks about how astronomers are taking it one step further, by attempting to determine the composition of those super-earth’s atmospheres. They do this by subtracting the chemical signature when the planet passes behind the partent star. We’re so close, EVER so close to detecting an earth-like planet. It will only be a few more years, once the Kepler mission and the James Webb Space Telescope get into orbit and operation, until we find one. This is one of my greatest hopes in life. I look forward to the discovery of an earth twin orbiting a distant star like an Emperor penguin looks forward to spring in Antarctica. Crazy analogy, I know… just go with it.
In other NASA news, it looks like NASA chief Michael Griffin will step down, along with the rest of the presidentially-appointed staff under him. This Space.com article also lists some likely candidates on Obama’s shortlist to replace him. I don’t know how I feel about this. I kind of feel like that right now what NASA needs is continuity rather than change. But who knows?
steve cross loves music and science 