New sElf song!
May 19, 2010
It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of the band sElf, and the mastermind behind the project, Matt Mahaffey. That’s why I’m jumping up and down with joy that he’s finally released a new track, “Could You Love Me Now?”. Matt announced the update through the sElf myspace, facebook, and twitter today. This song is a light, fun, minimal production and bring to mind warm summer mornings. In other words, perfect for right now, so go buy it on Amazon NOW. (Screw iTunes and their DRM files!) Seriously, this is the most exciting day in many, many years for sElf fans. Somewhere down the road, hopefully sooner than later, there will be a new album as well. Matt also did a video for this new song, which will premier on MTVU on June 10th.
Another thing that made me very happy today was hearing that one of our favorite New Zealand pop culture imports, Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords, is working on not one, but TWO new movies. The first is a comedy in which he co-stars with Steve Carell called Dinner for Schmucks. The other is… drum roll…. Men In Black III. Yes, Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, and Jemaine Clement all together on the screen, and Clement plays the villian, nonetheless! Sign me up! (Via Kottke.org)
First of all, I was very happy to hear that Nashville’s own Arnold Myint, head chef and owner of P.M., Cha Cha, and Suzy Wong’s House of Yum, has made it to the next season of Top Chef, which will begin airing on Bravo on June 16th. More info on that at the Tennessean. (Via Nashvillest twitter)
Now for what to do this weekend:
Friday there’s a helluva one-two punch at the Cannery/Mercy Lounge. Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings will be soulin’ it up downstairs while My So-Called Band will be igniting your 90’s nostalgia upstairs. I’ll be shooting the Sharon Jones show, then DJing some 90’s jock jams after MSCB. So please do head over to Mercy and keep on dancin’ after the show.
Saturday is all about the rockabilly as Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers, Pine Hill Haints, and The Clutters invade Mercy Lounge.
This Nashvillest post also has several flood benefits going on this weekend. Be sure to check one of those out.
I’ll go ahead and mention that this coming Monday is the final installment of the Road to Bonnaroo series, featuring Space Capone, My Tyger, Heartbeater, Deep Fried Five, And The Relatives, Delta Saints, Pico Vs. Island Trees, and Cheer Up Charlie Daniels. This one should be interesting.
Also worthy of mention, the Nashville’s Dead kids did a pretty cool video interview segment with Pujol and friends, complete with guitar amps in the middle of the road… and lots of luv. Check it below:
sElf on iTunes/some funny shit
April 28, 2010
I’m allowed to be a lazy blogger every once-in-a-while, right? Yea, sorry for the lack of posts this week.
The music news item of the day is actually nothing new at all… but still very important to me. For some bizarre reason I have missed out on the fact that sElf’s masterpiece Gizmodgery is on iTunes! Furthermore, their somewhat-rare Half-Baked Serenade is on there as well! I already have both of these albums, but for quite some time they were difficult to come by. sElf/Matt Mahaffey are/is among my top favorite bands/artists of all time. Quite simply, if you aren’t familiar with the band or the man, then you have a massive hole in your music collection/knowledge and you must remedy that problem immediately by going to self-centered.org. There’s actually a ton of his music for free download there, and just about everything you need to fill that hole. I feel compelled to also point out that Gizmodgery was recorded using ALL toy instruments. Keep that in mind when listening to it and allow that fact to further the extent to which your mind gets blown. Ok, stepping down off my sElf soapbox.
My only other offerings to you right now are these two amusing images:
Via Davis
Via Kelly via The Oatmeal
Credit: NASA
Universe Today is currently running a pretty cool blog series called “13 Things That Saved Apollo 13.” They talked to NASA engineer Jerry Woodfill who came up with 13 key things that led to their survival. Yesterday’s post was part 2 of the series, focusing on the hatch between the Command Module and lander that wouldn’t shut initially. This malfunction actually turned out to be a blessing, because if they’d been able to shut it, it would’ve slowed down the later efforts that were vital to their survival. I look forward to the rest of this series.
One day over the weekend my girlfriend pointed me to an article about an east TN father who asked the Knox County schoolboard to remove a biology textbook that uses the phrase “the biblical myth that the universe was created by the Judeo-Christian God in 7 days” (regarding creationism) from its curriculum. That sounded like just the type of thing Dr. Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy would pick up, and sure enough he did. Thankfully the board and review committee is standing behind the book and it will remain in the curriculum. Let me re-iterate how important it is that creationism stay out of public school curricula- IT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL. These are public schools! The separation of church and state is crucial to our democracy and teaching anything from the Bible as a viable scientific theory in public schools is a clear violation of that. This book states that the story of creation in the Bible is a myth, and by strict definition that is completely true. I would even say that the statement doesn’t go far enough. It should go on to say that creationism is simply not true. Decades of research and cold, hard scientific evidence have proven beyond any and doubt that our planet and solar system is roughly 4 billion years old. The stories in the Bible are parables that have absolutely no scientific basis. Let’s keep them out of scientific discourse in the classroom, because they are NOT SCIENCE.
Blended iPad/Iceland Volcano
April 8, 2010
I’d forgotten that the Blendtec blender existed. Of course they had to do a demo with an iPad. Sure enough, it blends….
Be sure to check all the other blendable things on their channel.
In case you’ve been under a rock, the Eyjafjajokull (don’t even begin to try to pronounce that…) volcano has been erupting in Iceland for well over a week now. Coincidentally, the sun decided to send a rather strong geomagnetic storm our way last weekend. We all know what happens during geomagnetic storms- aurora borealis. Since Iceland is at such a high latitude, it almost always gets to see these aurorae, and when you combine that with a rather docile volcanic eruption, you get photographers hanging out there and taking eye-gasm photographs like this: (Via Live Science)
Photo by Albert Jakobsson
I haven’t posted any real mind-benders on here in quite a while, so here goes:
An Indiana University theoretical physicists is proposing that our universe might actually exist inside a wormhole, inside a black hole that exists in a much bigger universe. If that isn’t a total mind-fuck, I don’t know what is. But it’s really cool to think about if you can wrap your brain around it. The only way I can do that is to reduce our space-time to 2 dimensions and visualize like they do in all those discovery channel shows that talk about black holes and wormholes. You know- the old bowling ball on a sheet analogy. If you dare, read the full article at Universe Today. And see the 2D visualization.
Dozen Dimes album/Jane Dupree
April 6, 2010
Wow, that was fast. Seems like just a few months ago former Pink Spiders frontman Matt Friction was putting his solo project with the Cheap Shots on hiatus to make room for his new doo-wop project the Dozen Dimes. Last night at midnight marked the official release of their debut album, Get Real Gone with the Dozen Dimes. You can download it now on Bandcamp for $10. I remember asking Matt about the new project when I first heard about it and he said something like, “those are the kind of songs I’m good at, so that’s what I’m doing.” (FYI- that was very paraphrased.) I have to agree- I’m enjoying this material more than the few Cheap Shots songs I heard. They do put on an entertaining live show as well, complete with a blinding “DD” light sign and flashy 50’s style suits. I suggest both the album and live show. And for the record, Bandcamp is basically the greatest thing to happen to music in a long time.
A Nashville DJ that deserves some respect is DJ Jane Dupree. She has a pretty rad blog called Disco Terror Squad, full of mixtapes and individual tracks as well, mostly focusing on twitchy/housey material. She also gave my last mix a blog plug. Be sure to check out any of her “Smoke Break” mixes.
Now enjoy this smooth jazz version of “Enter Sandman” by Metallica:
(Via Kottke)
POWERBRRRD signs to Merge/tours with Superchunk
April 1, 2010
I’m happy to announce that my band POWERBRRRD has signed a deal with Merge Records. We will be releasing our debut album sometime this fall, followed by a tour of the US opening for Superchunk.
In other news:
1. Pithchfork gave MGMT’s new album Congratulations a perfect 10.0, as reported by Hipster Runoff.
2. The Rolling Stones played a secret show last night at the End, as reported by Nashville Cream.
Bekah Cope: photographer/iPhone rumors
March 31, 2010
The blog Nashville’s Dead has been kicking ass overall lately, as chronicled by the Scene in their People Issue from a few weeks back. I want to take a moment, however, to specifically point out the photography work of their main shuttergirl Bekah Cope. The photo to the left is of Turbo Fruits on Saturday night of SXSW at the Mohawk Patio. Not only was it an insane performance, as evidenced by the fact that Jonas is hanging upside-down from the rafters, but it’s the perfect shot to capture the essence of that particular show. Bekah shoots all shows with film and a simple on-camera flash in a way that most professionals try to avoid at all costs. But she fearlessly challenges the norm and as a result, her work has an entirely different aesthetic than what the more seasoned professionals go for. It’s good in a completely different way. Her perspective and style is refreshing and fits perfectly with DIY feel of Nashville’s Dead and the music they cover (a good majority of it is house shows). At times some of her photos almost hit the same spot on my visual palate as William Eggleston’s work does. Check out her SXSW photos at Nashville’s Dead and more of her stuff on her flickr.
I’ll take just a moment to express my opinions about the recent rumors of a Verizon/Sprint/T-Mobile iPhone coming soon. A Wall Street Journal article earlier this week mentioned that the iPhone will likely be opened up to other carriers as early as this summer. While has long been a matter of “when,” not “if,” I’m certainly excited that this is finally happening. I’m very skeptical, however, that a Verizon version of the phone will be on the market before 2011 or even later. Currently there are two main protocols for 3G (3rd generation) wireless networks: GSM and CDMA. I won’t get into the technical details, but basically T-Mobile and AT&T both use the GSM standard, while Sprint and Verizon use the CDMA standard. Obviously the iPhone is a GSM device since it’s currently only on AT&T, thus it would be relatively easy to make one for T-Mobile since they’re GSM as well. Building an iPhone for Verizon and Sprint, however, is a different ballgame because many of the components have to be different. This is why I think it may be a little longer before we see a CDMA iPhone. Though the report did mention that some companies are already building the components for CDMA iPhone, there’s a lot more to it than just building the device. Verizon is known to be cranky about the content delivered through their network, and while I have no idea what they have up their sleeve in regards to iPhone content, I have to say it’ll probably be different than it is on the AT&T network. I hope I’m wrong about that though. Furthermore, Verizon is supposedly going to unveil their new 4G network sometime next year, which will use the new LTE standard, which will supposedly become the universal standard for all wireless networks. So why are they building a CDMA phone in the first place when it’ll just be replaced in a couple of years? The reason this matters to me is that I’m one of the people who would love to have an iPhone, but refuse to switch to AT&T. This is because I constantly see people on AT&T having signal coverage issues. Case in point: the entire floor on which I work which is just slightly below street level is a total dead zone for ALL other carriers except Verizon. If I didn’t have Verizon, I would have no phone service ALL DAY LONG. I’ve seen the same thing happen in other buildings as well. Not to mention Verizon is way ahead of the rest of the pack in customer service ratings. Sorry for the rant.
Miike Snow/SXSW
March 24, 2010
After a few days of recovery from SXSW, I finally have a) the mental energy and b) a spare minute to blog again. In a nutshell it was pretty much just as awesome as last year. For two years in a row, however, the saturday of SXSW has been somewhat jinxed for me- last year it was me coming down with some sort of horrid cold/flu, this year it was the frigid arctic front that moved through sat. morning resulting a bone-chilling Saturday/night. Whatevs. I had a fucking blast AND I had a badge this year, so maybe this year was a little better overall.
I didn’t expect to come back having “discovered” a new band, but indeed that’s what happened. Miike Snow has been on the scene for quite some time, and I’m sure I’m VERY late in becoming a fan, but it still makes me happy that SXSW did exactly what it was supposed to in at least 1 respect: showcasing a new artist and generating new fans for them. I saw them Friday night at the Mohawk Patio and loved every minute of their performance. I’d heard the many remixes of “Animal” (and the original, of course), as well as “Burial,” but I was still a bit on the fence as to whether I’d fully be a “fan.” After seeing them live in Austin I got their full album last night and I’m officially sold. While “Animal,” “Black & Blue,” and “Burial” may be considered the main singles of the record, the track that stands out to me the most is “Sans Soleil.” It’s a very melancholy, slow song that revolves around 3 astonishingly simple piano chords, and it’s absolutely beautiful. Just get the album. It’s well worth your money or google/mediafire search efforts. Look for my pics of them and many others in this week’s Scene.
In other news, NPR is streaming the new MGMT album. I haven’t listened to it all yet, but a few tracks seem promising. Meh.
If Bill Murray were to go chillwave/glo-fi:
Via Hipster Runoff
New Lake Fever session/Predators update
March 15, 2010
Official performers of the Makeout With Violence Soundtrack and first 2010 Road to Bonnaroo winners The Non-Commissioned Officers did 3 songs for the awesome Lake Fever Sessions. They’re up now, so go have a watch. It’s reaaaal good.
I’m officially even more excited about the upcoming movie Predators, produced by Robert Rodriguez/directed by Nimrod Antal, now that I’ve seen the 2-minute clip on the official website. It’s not a trailer (apparently that’s hitting the web this Thur.), but it does have some footage and commentary from Mr. Rodriguez himself. The fact that they’re well aware they’d never top the tough-guy role of Arnold in the first one is heartening, and is the main reason I’m actually looking forward to it. Apparently SXSW Film had a special feature/sneak-peek party for the film last night:
I’m officially older than the internet, because the first .com celebrated its 25th birthday today. In 1985 Symbolics Computer Company registered the first official .com domain. (Via Live Science)
According to my bandmate Seth my hypothetical bloghouse/power pop side project should be called + (pronounced Cross). In a blog post on Nashville Cream about side projects he mentions several hilarious hypothetical Nashville side projects…
With that I submit that this may be my last blog post until after SXSW. We’re heading down tomorrow night, and unless I discover something that absolutely must be blogged, you probably won’t hear from me until at least the 22nd, probably more like the 23rd or 24th. Who knows, maybe I’ll find a spare minute to post a few random pics while I’m down there, but it’s not likely. Be sure to keep up with the Cream for my pics and updates from Adam Gold, Seth Graves, and Patrick Rodgers.
And, never forget:
steve cross loves music and science 