Lineup announcements
January 19, 2010
Today is a day of announcements.
If you’re a Nashvillian surely you know that Mercy Lounge is hosting a series of free shows this week featuring the best of Nashville’s local rock. It’s their 7-year anniversary bash. You may have seen that they had two “special secret guests” in addition to Friday’s already awesome lineup of the Non-Commissioned Officers, How I Became the Bomb, De Novo Dahl, and the Ettes. Today they announced the 1st of those two special guests: The Features. Apparently you’ll have to wait until friday to see the other one. I smell another Kings of Leon rumor mill/controversy on the horizon… keep checking their calendar for updates, or follow them on Twitter.
Rumors abound about possible Bonnaroo lineups/headliners. Here’s one blog that attempts to predict some of the artists. (Via Nashville Cream)
And of course, today was the official announcement of the 2010 Coachella lineup. This should allow you to hone your Bonnaroo predictions a bit, if you’re into that sort of thing. Here’s the lineup:
Wes Anderson/weekend stuff
January 15, 2010
First, you must watch this delightful stop-motion award acceptance speech from Wes Anderson. It will improve your day drastically:
(Via Clusterflock)
Now, for what’s going down this weekend….
TONIGHT: I will be at the End taking pics of Jemina Pearl/The Ettes/Daniel Pujol. Also of interest- FREE Glam Rock cover night at Mercy Lounge, featuring members of Superdrag, the Shazam, Matt Friction, Dave Paulson, and more. Also- Natural Child cassette release show @ Springwater, with Diarrhea Planet, Daniel Pujol (guess he’s playing 2 shows tonight?), State Champion, and Giving Up.
SATURDAY: My So-Called Band, Guilty Pleasures, Long Players, Weekend Jimmy & the Easy Party @ Mercy Lounge, FREE. It’s the kickoff to Mercy’s 7-year anniversary bash, featuring 7 FREE shows. (But since the Glam rock night is free too… I guess they’re technically having 8 free shows in a row.) More on that in future posts.
Last but not least, two awesome local independent businesses, Halcyon Bike Shop and Grimey’s New & Preloved Music, have been nominated for the “To Love a Local Business” competition at Intuit, the company that markets QuickBooks. It’s a competition for a series of $5,000 grants and one $35,000 grant. I’d be more than happy to see either of these businesses get the grant(s). Vote for Halcyon or vote for Grimey’s. I don’t care which you vote for, just VOTE.
Tristen in Paste Magazine/New Polaroid Camera
January 14, 2010
Photo by Steve Cross, with editing by Jeremy Ferguson and Tristen
Nashville own indie singer/songwriter darling Tristen is featured today on Paste’s “Best of What’s Next.” Check it out here. Tristen has been doing quite a bit of touring recently as a solo act accompanied by cellist/vocalist Larissa Maestro. Her debut album will be out soon. She’s releasing it herself last I heard. Way to go Tristen!
The Polaroid film format & camera aren’t quite dead yet. As we all know, the film production was abandoned, but was recently revived again. Now a new line of re-designed cameras will be hitting the market later this year. Thank GOD. This will still be a niche market, but nostalgia is becoming more and more of a hot commodity, so I see no reason why this Polaroid resurgence won’t continue. (Via Gorilla vs Bear)
Also of photographic interest- American Pixels is a project wherein Joerg Colberg processes his photographs with a weird compression algorithm called ajpeg that doesn’t focus on preserving image quality, but on creating these rather surreal images. (Via Kottke.org)
In the past 10 years or so, I’ve become more and more of a skeptic. Especially in the last 5 or so years, the American public has become increasingly susceptible to scaremongering and inflated fears about health issues, doomsday nonsense, and other junk science that has no basis in reality. The myth about cell phone radiation causing brain cancer is one example of this. The flat truth is that there had been no proven link between cell phone use and brain cancer. In fact, according to Christopher Wanjek’s column on LiveScience there has been no significant increase in brain cancer that correlates in any way with the increase of cell phone usage. We all know how much cell phone usage has risen in the last 2 decades… if they cause brain cancer, why the hell hasn’t there been a corresponding increase in the disease? Because there’s no connection. That being said, this article on NewScientist is one of many covering research into the effects of cell phone radiation on the brain, and in fact it does affect brain tissue, and there have been some hints that extremely prolonged exposure could cause some degree of tissue damage, but tissue damage is not the same thing as brain cancer. Furthermore, another recent study actually showed that cell phone radiation reversed the effects of Alzheimer’s disease in mice! (And if you look at the bottom of that article, you’ll see that the study wasn’t funded by any cell phone companies…) We might even soon be seeing cell phone radiation used as a treatment for the disease. So, the jury may still be out on whether it causes tissue damage or has therapeutic effects on memory, but with as many studies as have been done on the link between the radiation and brain cancer, it’s pretty obvious that cell phones don’t cause brain cancer. Unfortunately some companies have tried to capitalize on the scaremongering by marketing products that are supposed to “protect” you brain from the radiation. These don’t work, and several have been shut down by the FTC.
Now that I’m off my skeptic soapbox, something actually interesting:
Biologists have discovered a species of sea slug that is the first know organism to be able to produce chlorophyll. This creature actually has aspects of both plants and animals, and thus sounds like something straight out of a sci-fi movie. But it’s real. Scientists have determined that it somehow “borrowed” the plant genes that allow chlorophyll production from the algae that it consumes. Exactly how it did that in it’s evolutionary path is still a mystery. It still can’t produce the actual chloroplasts (the cells that are responsible for the conversion of sunlight into energy) without consuming algae, but it apparently can produce chlorophyll entirely on its own.
And just for kicks: How the main LOST characters would each make a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. (Via Yewknee’d)
Also of note, according Nashville Cream’s post on this same topic, HP Witchcraft is former Wooden Wand frontman James Jackson Toth’s new project with Bingham Barnes of Glossary and Tyler Coppage of We Were The States.
Check out this unreleased demo track from The Whole Fantastic World:
The Whole Fantastic World-Colussus
According to Stereogum, Pavement will be headlining the Pitchfork music festival this coming July. I can’t imagine that they’d be willing to do that and then pass up on opportunities such as Coachella and Bonnaroo. Of course I sincerely hope the latter becomes reality. Unless something drastic changes between now and then, I’ll probably be there again this year covering for the Scene, and since I’ve never seen the band live, I really hope they end up at Bonnaroo. An actual Nashville appearance wouldn’t hurt, either.
Kings of Leon NOT opening for The Features/New Morning Benders
January 11, 2010
I don’t know where these rumors get started, but don’t get your hopes about Kings of Leon opening for The Features at Exit/In Feb. 5th. My inside sources say the rumor isn’t true, and that the probable openers will be Majestico and Cortney Tidwell. So chill out, people! It would be rather hilarious if it were true, as most Nashville rock scene purists have said for years that the roles of The Features and Kings of Leon should be swapped. Also if it were true, Elliston Place would be a total clusterfuck that night. Who knows, though, maybe a Followill or two will be hanging out backstage? Oddly enough, Hipster Runoff mentioned KOL in a weekend post about the future of Bro music and Bro fashion. He has a point.
Update: apparently the Nashville Cream did some digging at the exact same time I did, because just as I was about to hit “publish” they posted an update saying the same thing.
One of my favorite recent/new-ish bands for the past year or so has been The Morning Benders. I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend their full-length Talking Through Tin Cans from last year, and am happy to see them prepping a new LP for release this spring. It will be called Big Echo and will hit the market on March 9th. They were kind enough to release a new track from it called Promises and you can grab it for the price of your email address at their website, or just go grab it at You Ain’t No Picasso.
SNOW FAIL
January 7, 2010
This has happened so many times before, you’d think forecasters would get a clue. As a weather nerd I’ve followed the same models the forecasters use, they are easily found on the NOAA/NWS website. For some reason, the models often fail to take into account just how ridiculously DRY the air is with these Canadian arctic highs, and how stubborn it can be. We’ve had a very cold and VERY DRY last few days because we’ve been under the influence of a high pressure center that slid down the midwest into the southeast from Canada. The low pressure system and associated front that is currently passing through middle TN is ahead of yet ANOTHER Canadian DRY airmass. Even though there is some moisture associated with this front, there isn’t enough to overcome the insanely dry air at the surface. There’s plenty of snow flying around waaaay up there, but it’s evaporating as it falls through the lower layers of the atmosphere via a process called sublimation. As of about 10am, we are finally starting to see a few tiny grains of snow making it to ground in downtown Nashville. Other areas to the north and west have already seen about 1/2 inch, but I doubt Nashville will even get that much. It won’t be over till the front pushes on through later this afternoon, though. The only thing we can be 100% sure of with this system is that it will be FYAO cold this weekend.
UPDATE 3pm: Snowflakes finally started fleshing out around noon in downtown Nashville as moisture finally reached the lower levels, but it still has only amounted to a dusting.
This has happened before, and I just don’t see why conventional wisdom never makes its way into these forecasts sometimes. They rely too strictly on the computer models. To the meteorologists defense, however, winter weather has always been, and always will be VERY fickle and hard to forecast in the southeastern US. Also, the science of meteorology is always a work in progress, and any forecast past 1 day or so is at best an educated guess. No matter how sophisticated our computer models get, they will never be near as complex as the forces at work in our atmosphere, and until we devise some method of actually controlling the weather, a 100% accurate forecast past 12-24 hours is simply impossible. For more info on why snow is pretty hard to come by in TN, see my post on the subject from last year.
That being said, here’s my conspiracy theory: Kroger is in cahoots with the NWS and all other forecasters in the southeast. They promise them a cut of the massive profits from all the bread, milk, and eggs sales in exchange for inflating the snow amounts.
KIDDING!!!
Static electricity/astronomy updates
January 6, 2010
January is often a time for lots of updates from the world of astronomy, because it’s when the American Astronomical Society has their yearly conference/meeting. This year’s is a big one, with lots of news regarding exoplanets. Unofortunately, no Earth-twins have been found yet but there are some other interesting stories from Kepler and many other sources. Some highlights so far:
The Kepler mission has found its first batch of exoplanets, all of which are gas giants similar to Jupiter (though one is reportedly more like Neptune) orbiting very close to/quickly around their parent stars. It’ll be a few years before it finds anything else, because anything else takes a lot longer to orbit. Since Kepler is specifically looking for transiting planets (the planet passing directly between its parent star and us) it has to have 3-4 transits to be absolutely sure of its findings. Since planets like ours take a year or more to orbit… well, you do the math. It even found one gas giant that has the same approximate density as sytrofoam. (Via NASA and NewScientist)
Another interesting tidbit to come out this year is a much clearer picture of just how common solar systems like our own are in the universe/galaxy. According to astronomers from Ohio State University, who were heading up a larger collaborative effort called MicroFUN (micro-lensing follow-up network), about 10–15 percent of all stars have planet systems like ours (meaning a few gas giants orbiting far out, with probably a few small, rocky planets in closer). 10-15 percent may seem like a small number, but when you consider the overall vast number of stars just in our own galaxy alone, you’ll realize that even 10 percent equals hundreds of millions of solar systems. It should be quite obvious now that there are other worlds out there very similar to our own, we just haven’t found solid evidence of them yet, so we can’t be 100% sure. But I am confident the Kepler, the CoRoT mission, or maybe even a ground-based telescope, will find one within the next decade. (Via EurekAlert! and Space.com)
Here’s a little bit of everyday science for you:
We’ve all been annoyed when we get out of our cars or walk across a carpeted room in the winter time and shock the #&*$@! out of ourselves on the door/other metallic object. So why the hell does it always happen so much more in the winter? It has to do with the humidity. Especially in the eastern US, the winter months are much MUCH drier than the summer ones. (Remember that Relative Humidity is NOT a direct measurement of how much moisture is actually in the atmosphere, go by the dewpoint- the lower the dewpoint, the less moisture is in the air.) Colder air has less moisture capacity than does warmer air, thus the winter months are very dry. Well all know that static electricity is the buildup of an electric charge in our bodies and/or clothes due to simple friction. During the summer months when the air is more humid, the moisture in the air allows those charges to constantly dissipate because we all know water is a good conductor of electricity. The static electric charge never has a chance to build up because it’s constantly “seeping” away into the moist air. In the winter, the dry air does not conduct and “seep” away the static electric charge, allowing it to build up until we reach for something metallic such as a doorknob and POW! the electricity instantly discharges in one big spark and we get shocked.
Meemaw reunion/Fitout/Soundgarden
January 5, 2010
You’ve probably already seen at least one of these music news items by now, but hopefully not all of them, if so, just ignore this post.
Local DJ hero Justin Kase has officially released a few of his remixes in full-form to the blogosphere via Nashville Nights. Go grab his remixes of Ke$ha’s Tik Tok, Little Boots’ Earthquake, Matt & Kim’s Good Ol’ Fashioned Nightmare, and his own original track Gil as reworked by another local electronic music icon (IMO) Makeup & Vanity Set.
Local scrap-punk purveyors MEEMAW are re-uniting for at least one show after a year of hiatus. More at Nashville Cream and Nashville’s Dead. I was starting to get tired of them toward the end, but now I’m ready for more MEEMAW. Gimme gimme gimme. This flyer is absolutely priceless:
Meanwhile, Brooklyn Vegan continues to blow their load over JEFF the Brotherhood. And the Soundgarden reunion. No, I’m not joking, Soundgarden is reuniting. I have to admit I was totally into them through most of high school, and because they were one of many bands that were an integral part of my formative years, I’d like to keep them a distinctively retrospective affair. They were just soooooo 90’s… how could they ever do anything good by reuniting now? I think they’re a band that should stay in the past.
May ’08 ‘stache
January 5, 2010
So it looks like the ladies of Nashvillest decided to make my May 2008 ‘stache famous by putting my ugly mug on their blog this morning (probably yesterday morning by the time you read this). Due to the fact that I’m in the midst of moving into a new house with Megan, I haven’t kept up with the blogosphere for the past few days. I actually find it quite hilarious. There are much worse photos of me out there, so I can’t really complain. I could try to find a funny picture of Morgan or Christy (though I’ve only actually met Christy in person, ha…) but no one would really care because let’s face it, they have at least 10x as many readers because they’re a “real” blog. If you don’t read Nashvillest, you’re either a) several years behind the curve in local interwebz happenings, or b) not from Nashville. But even if you aren’t from here, there’s plenty of interesting stuff on there for non-locals, so get over there!
I hope everyone is prepared for the Great Nashville Blizzard of 2010. (A.K.A. a couple inches of snow) I really can’t wait to see Nashville drivers on Thursday. I’m probably going to take a video camera around with me everywhere I go…
steve cross loves music and science 