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.
Before you do anything else, watch this amazing time lapse video from a star party in Texas. It was taken over a whole night and shows the Milky Way rising. Nerd-gasm! Sorry, I still haven’t found a way to embed Vimeo videos on WordPress.
Now that you’ve gotten your fill of star-porn, some great news from the U.K…. Blur may be hitting the U.S. on some dates in and around their string of U.K. festivals. Yes, please. Though the chances of them actually coming to Nashville are pretty small, I’d go to Atlanta to see them easily.
Credit: NASA
The Atlantis astronauts took an IMAX 3D camera with them on their mission to service Hubble, and the footage will be turned into an IMAX movie set for release next spring. I can’t effin’ wait to see it. Wow, this is turning into a really geeky post… sorry.
I tweeted earlier today about the iPhone coming to Verizon, which would make me jump for joy. Unfortunately further research has revealed it’s still just in the negotiation phase, and nothing’s confirmed. But from what I can tell from this article on USA Today, the prospect is looking fairly good. I refuse to switch to AT&T because their service coverage SUCKS. I’ve been in many buildings (including my own) where AT&T users can’t even get a signal, and I cannot recall ONE SINGLE TIME that I’ve experience coverage issues with Verizon. About a year or two ago there was some bizarre hiccup with their Nashville service, but that lasted only a few hours and wasn’t a coverage issue. If Verizon gets most of their network upgraded to the 4th generation (4G) LTE system by next year, I don’t see why Apple wouldn’t go for the deal since their 5-year contract with AT&T will be up. I’ve already been pissed at AT&T for even having exclusivity with the iPhone in the first place, and if they manage to sucker Apple into extending it, they can kiss my sweet ass.
Some bizarre links for your enjoyment today:
Oddee spotlights 8 strange subcultures.
io9 has a clip from 2000’s What Planet Are You From? in which Ben Kingsley’s character teaches his race of alien men how to achieve penis insertion with human females. It’s not as NSFW as it sounds, trust me.
Tonight I can be found at Foobar checking out Totally DJs, a new Wednesday night DJ gig started by my friend Spice-J. He’s already had some pretty awesome guests, including Pimpdaddy Supreme and Makeup & Vanity Set. I should be making an appearance there in the next few weeks as DJ Burgers. I’ll keep you posted.
Blur definitely reuniting!
December 9, 2008
Blur
This time it’s REALLY official: Blur is reuniting and Graham Coxon is onboard. They will be playing at London’s Hyde Park next summer on July 3rd. The gods of britpop have smiled upon the world once again! Via Billboard.com.
A fascinating wikipedia entry explaining the etymology of 100’s of company names. Some of them have interesting stories behind them.
2008 will have a “leap second.” Every 4 years we add one day to February, but that’s not quite enough to keep the world’s atomic clocks perfectly in sync with the rotation of the Earth. There are slight irregularites, less than a second, that must be accounted for.
I just remembered that my friends Matt & Paul took a random trip to South America recently. Then I remembered that Matt has a blog, and that he would probably have a lot of good stories on there from their adventures south of the equator. Go check out his blog Robo Tripping. I didn’t even have time to read all of his posts about the trip, but from what I did read, they had quite an interesting time.
I discovered this William Eggleston exhibit that’s currently showing at the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC on my friend Rachel’s blog, Mousevox Vintage. I did a photo shoot with her recently and she rocks both as a model and a stylist. My girlfriend and I are heading to NYC for a few days right before Christmas so we’ll have to check it out. I’d forgotten how much I like Eggleston’s work. One of my photography professors- Jim Norton- used to call him “wild Bill Eggleston.”
Guess what? The weather sucks today.
Some links… happy Turkey Day
November 26, 2008
Disclaimer: Posting may be pretty sporadic over the next few days as Megan and I head to east TN to visit my family for thanksgiving.
Today I just have some links for you. No rants. Just some links… mainly because Kottke.org had my RSS feed full of goodness this morning. The following three are from Kottke.
Photography is for Jerkoffs.
A very clever way to put the impressiveness of a magnetic hard drive into perspective.
Chinese use rockets to get the cables for a bridge higher than the Empire State Building across the gorge over which it is being built.
Via NME: It’s finally official. They’ve teased us for over a year now, but Blur is reuniting for another album. Let’s hope they tour too. I’m skeptically excited.
The Boston Globe’s website continues to post amazing hi-res photographs of even more amazing things, such as this series of International Space Station.
And now, for your daily dose of WTF?!?!? Blowjobs as performance art:
Enjoy your thanksgiving!
steve cross loves music and science 