The Features sign to Kings of Leon’s new label
June 19, 2009
I don’t usually post more than once a day, but this bit of breaking news needs posting because it’s a huge development in the Nashville rock scene. I just read on Nashville Cream that the Kings of Leon have entered into a new type of “creative deal” with Bug Music which allows them to “sign and develop” new artists. Their first signing? The Features. As I said in a comment on the Cream, if all were right in the world this arrangement would be the other way around. The press release from KOL’s website claims the Features have a decade of songs and touring under their belt. It’s actually 15 years. The band first formed in Sparta, TN when Matt Pelham joined forces with Roger Dabbs. Don’t get me wrong, this is a great thing for The Features and I’m very happy that this happened. I just hope it doesn’t end the way their last label experience did. But this definitely seems to be a whole different beast… mainly because it’s being brokered by another band, not a bunch of label suits.
Weekend shows/The Comfies
June 19, 2009
Benjamin Harper (no, not that Ben Harper) has been a friend of mine for many years now, and I’ve followed his musical involvement even longer than that- ever since I first saw Feable Weiner in Murfreesboro in my early college years. He was their bass player at the time, but left the band in 2003 (2004 maybe?) to pursue his own band, then called The Comfies. He immediately changed the name to Harper and they started playing shows, but soon thereafter he ran into copyright issues with the more famous Ben Harper, and changed the name back to The Comfies. They released an EP titled Close To Me about 2 years ago, but have been somewhat dormant since. Now that’s changing as he’s releasing the 2nd Comfies EP, which is really more of a solo effort from what I can tell. (He played most of the instruments on the recordings.) It’s called The Comfies Present: Benjamin A. Harper in This Ship Is Going Down, and you can grab it now (for however much you want to pay, no less) at their Bandcamp profile. According to his myspace it’s the 1st in a series of 3 new EPs. His songs have sunny, Kinks-y vibe infused with a good dose of pure power pop that will make this EP the perfect soundtrack for your summer. Hopefully he’ll get their older EP up on there soon, too. Be sure to check out the EP release show on July 17th at the End, and the in-store show at Grimey’s on July 16th.
I’m sufficiently recovered from Bonnaroo, so here’s what I’m doing/what’s going down this weekend: Tonight I’m photographing Fleetwood Mac at the Sommet Center, but after that I’ll be heading over to the Exit/In for a Planned Parenthood benefit featuring some good underground Hip Hop and hosted by none other than Big Fella. Yes, the Features are also playing at Mercy Lounge with Black Hollies and the Howlies, but I just saw them at Bonnaroo… and Planned Parenthood is a good cause.
Saturday night I have to shamelessly plug my own band’s show before anything else. TCQ is playing a house show at the Zombie Mansion with The Tits, And The Relatives, and Team Illuminati. There will also be a very special secret guest. Address is 7023 Charlotte Pike, and it will start around 9pm. This will be the final show at this house… at least under the current residents. The show is being put on by Scenario Entertainment. Also going down Saturday night- Shoot the Mountain and Heypenny at Mercy Lounge. These shows may or may not be connected in a very special secret way.
Have a great weekend!
White Stripes doc/Cats/Sonic Black Hole
June 18, 2009
Some cat humor to lighten up your day. Cats Are Always Doing Shit. Via Yewknee.
Remember that Canadian tour the White Stripes did a couple years back? They made it into a documentary, and it’s coming out this fall. It also finally has a title: The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights. I’m looking forward to footage from all those impromptu, intimate/acoustic shows they did. Via PFK.
Last summer a new band straight out of high school called The Turf burst onto the local music scene. These kids instantly caught the attention of several Scene critics and local music fans with their catchy brand of dance-rock. I remember seeing them at Mercy Lounge once and was impressed by how tight they sounded at such a young age. They disappeared just as quickly as they appeared, though, and several members went in various directions to pursue college. This summer they’re back, and they’ve got a brand new album called Fascination of a Sort. While the dance-rock wave may have crested a few years ago (at least from a commercial marketability perspective), that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t love them. I haven’t yet heard if they have any shows booked this summer, but keep checking their Myspace page for updates. Here are a couple of tracks they were kind enough to send my way for posting:
I came across some truly unique and gorgeous landscape photography today. Tim Simmons has a slightly different take on landscapes than most. He uses artificial light along with what appears to be HDR imaging to accentuate certain aspects of the natural beauty of his surroundings. You can’t go wrong with any of the galleries, but the snow gallery was especially intriguing to me. I’m still not exactly sure how he lit some of those scenes…. Via Joshua Blankenship blog.
Scientists in Isreal have created an artificial black hole. Not the kind that sucks in everything, just the kind that sucks in sound waves. They used Bose-Einstein condensates, which are clouds of atoms that have been cooled to almost absolute-zero. Using two of these, they created a tiny area of extreme low density which allows the atoms between the clouds to flow at nearly 4 times the speed of sound. As with most amazing scientific discoveries of this nature, the event was incredibly small and lasted only 8 milliseconds, but it’s still pretty cool because this is essentially a small-scale analog to “real” black holes in space. Via Discovery News.
Next Big Nashville 09/New Order/Blur
June 17, 2009
I guess the biggest news today is that the reunited Blur finally played some shows recently in the UK, and the announcement that 3 members of New Order have joined with Blur bassist Alex James to form a new band called Bad Lieutenant. More on that story at Brooklyn Vegan.
I’m a little late in posting about this, but if you’re a Nashville band (or actually, any band, really) you can now submit to play the 4th annual Next Big Nashville festival/conference being held this October 7-11. This year’s festival is now open to any band, from any city, though according to their blog, a Nashville connection does help:
“While NBN is obviously focused on shining a spotlight on artists from the area, our submission process is open to artists from anywhere (that means you Iceland!). A Nashville connection certainly helps, but our event is about a celebration of the creative center that is Music City, and much like the party our Austin friends throw every year in March, everyone is invited.”
I’m glad they ditched the rip-off scheme that is Sonicbids in favor of this submission form through American Songspace. I’m definitely looking forward to this year’s festival!
Right off the heels of his big success with The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky is working on a film adaptation The Black Swan. While I’m unfamiliar with this book, the story sounds intriguing and the idea of Aronofsky working with Natalie Portman makes it a must-see in my opinion. Via Kottke.
NASA had to postpone the launch of Endeavour until July 11 at the earliest. The same hydrogen leak popped up again as they were filling the external tank for launch this morning.
Bonnaroo slideshows/Monsters of folk/etc…
June 16, 2009
Photo by Steve Cross
I’m slowly getting back enough will power to blog again. I was so drained by Bonnaroo that I just didn’t feel like posting yesterday. You can see all of my photo slideshows at the Scene’s website. There are a ton of them, so plan out some time if you want to actually see them all. I guess the best parts of it for me were getting approved to photograph Springsteen (only 20 photogs out of the 100 or so got approved), and also getting to photograph the last Nine Inch Nails show in the U.S. Ever.
Honestly though, I must say the biggest surprise for me came from Raphael Saadiq. The former member of Tony! Toni! Tone! released a solo album late last year called The Way I See It and you can bet that I’ll be grabbing it a soon as possible. His music is nothing like the early 90’s jock-jams that TTT was known for. This is a throwback to the R&B sounds of the 60’s. I haven’t heard the full album yet, but as my friend and fellow Scene freelancer Sean Maloney put it during our drive back, “…it sounds like it could’ve come straight outta Detroit in 1967.” Their cover of the Stooges’ Search & Destroy officially blew my mind.
On to some non-Bonnaroo stuff:
Conor Oberst, Jim James, and M. Ward have finally released details of their collaborative album called Monsters of Folk. Yea, the named is kinda weird, but let’s hope the actual songs are better. It would be hard to go wrong with such a powerful combination of musicians, but it wouldn’t be the first time a “supergroup” failed to even equal the sum of its parts. Via A.V. Club
Apparently Steven Spielberg is taking his love of aliens to the networks. I read in this io9 article that he’s currently working on the new unnamed T.V. series and has tapped ER’s Noah Wyle for the star role. Check the article for more deets.
Ironic Sans isn’t updated very often, but when it is, it’s almost always something clever and intriguing. His latest post details an idea for solving the problem of that pesky mess of cables behind your T.V./entertainment center. Answer- make the whole wall out of outlets.
This is old news, but NASA delayed the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour on Saturday due to a Hydrogen leak. They’ve rescheduled the launch for tomorrow at 5:40am EDT. UGH. That’s 4:40am my time. If you’re crazy and want to get up early enough to watch the coverage, you can do so at NASA TV.
The fine folks over at Nashvillest have attempted to top their famous reader-submitted “CMA Bingo” game this year by having a submission contest for this year’s. By the time you read this the contest will have closed, but look on Nashvillest.com tomorrow to see the winner. I don’t know if anyone can top last year’s though:
Some quick science tidbits before I get into my “rant”….
The Japanese Kayuga probe has been orbiting/studying the moon since 2007 and will make a controlled impact on the lunar surface today. No, it’s not landing, it’s actually going to crash into the surface at full orbital velocity. In other words, it’s going to make a crater. It’s done its duty, so might as well go out with a bang eh?
Remember when I told you about project VORTEX 2? A quick refresher- it’s a huge team of scientists that are currently chasing tornadoes out in the plains to gather data and improve on warning systems/prediction. Actually I think it ended today. But they did capture one piece of truly phenomenal footage when a twister they were filming turned/roped sideways and gave their videographer a view straight down the throat of the funnel. Check it out here. Absolutely amazing! Via Live Science.
Fair warning: I’m about to rant on something. But it’s very much worth ranting on.
As you know if you’ve read this blog before, I’m a photographer for the Nashville Scene. Last year I covered Bonnaroo for them and this year I’m doing it again, only this time my photos will be used across most of the blogs and papers owned by Village Voice Media. Photo contracts are quite commonplace at concerts involving big-name artists/bands. Bonnaroo, being the biggest festival in the country, is obviously no exception. They have a blanket contract that photographers have to sign in order to cover the festival at all. Last year its was a pretty basic contract just limiting the usage of your photos to whatever specific publication or wire service the photographer was shooting for. Without any kind of contract, legally a photographer can sell his/her images of a band or artist’s performance to any agency or news publication without a model release from the people in the photos because that is considered editorial usage, which is different from commercial usage (which requires a model release from anyone in the photo). In recent years, as the music industry has crumbled due to its unwillingness to adapt to technology, labels and artist management firms have introduced what are known as “rights-grabbing” contracts that get shoved in a photographer’s face right before they go in to photograph a show. These contracts have gotten more and more outrageous in the last few years, and this year I got my first taste of a full copyright-grabbing contract. I won’t say which artist/s I’m referring to, but suffice it to say that there are a few specific artists every year at Bonnaroo that have a separate contract than the overall festival photo contract, and they also have a restricted list of photographers who will be allowed to photograph them. This year there were 4 that did this. (So far I’ve been approved for 3 of them.) This particular artist’s contract stated that I would have to turnover the full image rights to the label, and that the images could be used only once for the specific publication I was shooting for. After that, the label would then own the images and wouldn’t have to pay me a dime for them. Furthermore, this meant that the label could then use my images in merch, promotional items, or whatever they please, and I wouldn’t get a penny of royalties or any other compensation. If I don’t sign it then I won’t be allowed to photograph the artist. Let it be known that I will certainly NOT be signing such an outrageous contract and that thankfully VV is backing me up on it. They agreed that the terms of the contract were completely unreasonable and didn’t expect me to sign it, and were fine doing without photos of said artist. It’s really pathetic that these record labels are not only screwing their artists out of money, they’re now trying to screw the photographers who cover their artists’ concerts. These people literally must have no shame or dignity. What these contracts do is essentially steal and then exploit. If you’re a music photographer, please read these contracts before you sign them. If an artist insists on such a ridiculous contract, then they are NOT WORTH YOUR TIME IN THE FIRST PLACE! And if the publication for which you’re shooting does not back you up on this, then you are working for the wrong publication, and they are not worth your time either!
Thank you and good night.
P.S. Don’t expect to see many posts on there over the next few days. I have no idea if I’ll have time to blog at all, and if I do it’ll be a very quick blurb about something crazy I witnessed.
Not much in the music realm today: The biggest thing I read was that Jack White is planning a solo album…. I swear the guy must be a glutton for punishment. How can anyone be in 3 bands, run a record label, and still have time for a solo project? He’s a machine. That’s the only explanation.
Also of interest- How I Became the Bomb will be teaming up with Kindercastle for quite an undertaking: covering ELO’s Out of the Blue in it’s entirety on June 26th at Mercy Lounge. Obviously these two local bands are heavily influenced by ELO- HIBTB in the use of vocoders and Kindercastle in their use of thick orchestral string arrangements. According to the calendar both bands will be onstage along with an eight-piece string section. That means 16 people onstage y’all. That means this will be seriously EPIC y’all.
If you’re a Twitterer, you might find Tweemap interesting. It plots all of your followers on a map for you. Kind creepy but kinda cool…
EcoGeek reports on the first easily attainable wind power generator for the home. It mounts on your roof and generates 2,000 kWh per year, which is about 18% of the average household’s energy requirement. It ain’t cheap ($4500 plus up to $1500 installation) but apparently you can get some serious tax credits and discounts due to the stimulus bill and other statewide incentives. This makes me very happy. If I owned a house and could even come close to affording the unit, I’d buy it in a heartbeat.
The National Weather Service has said that conditions are favorable for an El Nino pattern to form over the equatorial pacific ocean this summer. We haven’t had a strong El Nino in a while, so I fully expected one to develop this fall. The good thing is that El Nino ultimately leads to more wind shear in the areas where hurricanes normally develop, which makes it harder for them to develop/strengthen. But it also means more rain in the US southeast, and slightly above-average temperatures during the winter. However, most areas of the southeast have been experiencing a drought for many years now, so more rain is not necessarily a bad thing. For more info on exactly how El Nino works go here.
I love dinosaurs. We all love dinosaurs. They’re pretty awesome because they ruled this planet for several million years, compared to about 200,000 for humans. When we first discovered their remains, we thought they were related to reptiles. Then after some more discoveries and research, we thought they actually had more in common with modern day birds, and even that modern birds may have descended from dinosaurs. Now that last theory has had some pretty big holes shot through it. Turns out the bone structure of birds’ femur provides a major clue that birds simply evolved parallel to the dinosaurs, not from them. Via Science Daily. Read more if you’re interested.
Back tomorrow, and then that will be it for a while as I’ll be photographing at Bonnaroo all weekend.
New HIBTB EP/Lake Fever Sessions/Wolf shirts
June 8, 2009
Some local music news for you this fine monday:
How I Became the Bomb has released the final installment of their 3-song digital EP series. Go grab it for free at their website. This one is titled Through Adversity to the Stars! It’s a fine piece of work I must say.
And The Relatives recently did a Lake Fever Session. They just posted the videos on the website. The Fleetwood Mac cover is especially awesome. My band Tigers Con Queso will be playing with them on June 20th at the Zombie Mansion along with Team Illuminati and Sunset Soundtrack from Atlanta. It’s the final show at this awesome house. I honestly wish they’d done more house shows there. It has a huge living room that, when filled with people in a party setting, makes you feel like you’re in a John Hughes movie.
Johnny Kingsbury has posted the photos I did at Happy Valley on May 29th. Check it out if you were there, or if you want to see photos of people getting drunker and drunker as the night goes on….
I thoroughly enjoyed Hipster Runoff’s take on those epic wolf t-shirts. Are you a WolfBro?
Geek alert: i09 posted a video clip featuring a few scenes and interviews with the cast of Stargate: Universe. The new spinoff show is scheduled to air this October.
I photographed Coldplay and Snow Patrol at the Sommet Center this past Saturday night. Check out the pics and the spin review at Nashville Cream.
On to some science news:
Remember Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: the Next Generation? Who doesn’t, right? Well, that ridiculous looking visor he wore to give him vision is getting much closer to becoming reality. I absolutely love it when gadgets or ideas presented in science fiction years ago starts to become reality. Watch this video on Live Science about a new technology that involves a camera installed on a set of glasses that transmits a video signal to a chip that’s surgically implanted on the retina. Of course, this woman’s vision is still limited to “that’s a light area, and that’s a dark area” but it’s a step in the right direction. In 20 or 30 years, I’d say this technology will be far enough along to be very comparable to that of La Forge’s visor.
Moons: ours and Saturn’s/Weekend stuff
June 5, 2009
Not much time today, but here’s the skinny for the weekend:
Tonight the Armed Forces play the first installment of the Poolapalooza series at the Opryland Hotel. This could be an interesting one… but I’ll be heading to Exit/In to photograph Black Moth Super Rainbow. I love the band name, but I’m honestly not that familiar with them. Also, How I Became the Bomb will be releasing the last installment of their 3-song digital EP series called Through Adversity to the Stars! at Mercy Lounge. They’ll be joined by Chattanooga’s Coral Castles and Pineapple Explode. Wait… what? Yes I agree, P.E. is by far the odd-man-out on the bill. But I’m really glad those guys/girl are getting to play for such a big crowd as opposed their usual basement shows.
Tomorrow I’m photographing Coldplay/Snow Patrol at the Sommet Center. Whatevs on the bands…. it’s always fun to shoot big stadium sized tours though. Snow Patrol is also doing a free in-store show at Grimey’s at 2pm. Sorry Grimey’s but I won’t be anywhere near your store tomorrow. I have a feeling the resulting clusterfuck on 8th Ave will rival that of Record Store Day.
Be sure to pick up a copy of the Scene before next week’s edition hits the stands and read Tracy Moore’s feature article “Almost Famous.” The article follows the story of 4 local-ish bands/artists who essentially got ground up and quickly spit back out of the major label music industry, and it’s damn good. Bands beware indeed. I honestly hadn’t a clue that Eureka Gold had come so close to a major record deal. Makes sense they kept it kinda quiet though.
I’m somewhat excited about a new sci-fi movie coming out called Moon. It’s set in the future where humans have a mining outpost on the Moon to extract Helium-3, which will solve the answer to earth’s energy crisis. The mining base is run by one solitary man, and the film follows him through his last 2 weeks of a 3-year stint working on the base. For a more detailed synopsis, check out the IMDB page. I’m not quite convinced it’ll really all that good, but it certainly shows promise. It comes out July 17th.
Speaking of moons, I came across this article on the Daily Galaxy about Saturn’s moon Titan. Astronomers are very interested in Titan because it’s one of the few places in the solar system that has the potential for life. The others being Mars, Saturn’s moon Enceladus, and Jupiter’s moon Europa. Titan is basically a much colder analog of earth. It has oceans, land, clouds, mountains, and even a nitrogen-rich atmosphere. The difference is the temperature. Obviously it’s much colder than earth because it’s so much farther away from the Sun, which means the oceans and clouds are mostly made of liquid methane, not water. But still, even with the extreme cold and all the methane/nitrogen, it still could harbor microbial life. We even have a few pictures of the surface of Titan, thanks to the Huygens probe which was part of the Cassini mission. I highly suggest reading the Daily Galaxy article. The surface of Titan:
Have a great weekend!
I think it’s safe to say Grizzly Bear has gone mainstream when their new album Veckatimest charts at #8 in the Billboard top 10. It’s crazy to see bands like them and Arcade Fire suddenly become a huge act with such mass appeal. It’s also crazy to see an “indie” band in the company of Eminem, Marilyn Manson, and Winsin & Yandel in the charts. Quite a variety in the top 10 this week, to say the least. Honestly though, I just don’t get the hype about Grizzly Bear. There are some mildly interesting tracks on this new album, and it does seem to be the most interesting thing they’ve released thus far, but for me, it’s a snoozefest. And that’s not just because they’re overall a fairly quiet, chill band. There are plenty of quiet, chill bands that are NOT a snoozefest for me. But these guys are. For the most part. I am very happy to see them doing so well, though. These guys seem to be genuinely interested in making music for the sake of music and are in it for the right reasons. It just so happens that what they’re doing has become very commercially viable, and that’s how it should work.
MGMT released a 2nd “official” video for last year’s dancefloor hit “Kids.” I honestly don’t know why they’re releasing a 2nd video for this song. But who cares? It’s actually pretty good. But pretty terrifying at the same time. Check it out at You Ain’t No Picasso. I tried to find a version that I could embed here, but no luck.
History just loves to repeat itself. Paul McCartney will christen Citi Field, the new home of the Mets, by playing the first concerts there on July 17th and 18th.
A zoo in Germany made headlines in 2005 because of 3 pairs of male “gay penguins” in one of their exhibits. Now one of the couples is successfully raising a chick from an abandoned egg that the keepers gave them, adding to list of evidence proving that homosexuality does indeed a occur in nature and it’s not a choice or a product of human societal degradation as some religious groups claim. Take that, hatemongers!
Since I rambled on a bit about Grizzly Bear, that’s it for this post. See ya tomorrow.
steve cross loves music and science 