48 hr film project/Monsters of Folk
July 20, 2009
This XKCD comic was just too good not to post:
The aptly-named Monsters of Folk is a new project comprised of Conor Oberst, M. Ward, Jim James, and Mike Mogis. They’ve released the first single “Say Please” for free download, and Brooklyn Vegan has it. My opinion is: not bad… maybe a 6 out of 10?
Apparently Wes Anderson is directing a movie adaptation of the Roald Dahl story The Fantastic Mr. Fox. This sounds like an unbeatable combination to me, and I definitely look forward to seeing it. Trailer will be out at the end of the month. (Via Kottke)
Tonight is the 3rd in the 4-part decades cover nights sponsored by Nashville Cream at Mercy Lounge. Tonight’s decade is the 80’s, so expect some Phil Collins, Pat Benatar, Pixies, Erasure, Motley Crue, and lots of ridiculous outfits. Check Nashville Cream for the lineup. Next week my band will play 90’s night under the one-time name “Shit Sandwich.” It’s gonna be awesome. Just sayin’. Oh yeah, and the week after that I’m hosting another 8 off 8th. So basically Mercy Lounge should be your home for the next few monday nights.
My friend and bandmate Seth entered into the 48 hour film project again this year, and my apartment was the setting for the 5 minute movie he created for it. Check out Joe, Dean, and Charlene by Seth Graves:
Weekend shows/SyFy/Colbert covers guns in bars law
July 17, 2009
First of all, here’s what’s going down this weekend:
Photo by Lance Conzett
Tonight is the EP release show for The Comfies/Benjamin A. Harper. The actual EP is called The Comfies Present: Benjamin A. Harper in This Ship Is Going Down. You can grab the EP for however much you want to pay at their bandcamp page. Tonight’s show is at the End and also on the bill are The Nobility and Joel J. Dahl (from De Novo Dahl). In addition to the new Comfies material being awesome, The Nobility and Joel are both a perfect fit for the bill. I’ve been looking forward to this show ever since I heard about it and I highly suggest attending. I also hear that The Nobility have long overdue new material coming out soon in the form of a 7″ vinyl release.
Also of interest tonight:
Kindercastle, Pico vs. Island Trees, and the Winter Sounds at Mercy Lounge.
Overzealous, Millionaire Magicians, The Young, & The Icons at the 5 Spot.
Tomorrow night we will be partying in Murfreesboro with a friend who’s moving away soon, so we won’t really be out & about. But some good stuff to do would include:
Apparently there’s a bikini carwash at Halcyon Bike Shop featuring Heavy Cream, Caitlin Rose, and Natural Child. Whaaaa??? Kinda sad I’ll be missing this…
Also, Umbrella Tree will be doing an instore show at Grimey’s.
I’ve mentioned before that I don’t really like the Sci Fi channel’s re-branding as “SyFy,” but designer, photographer, and typographer Alfonso Gómez Arzola has posted a blog in defense of the new logo/name. Check it out here. He makes a decent case, but I still disagree with the overall decision. (Via i09)
Stephen Colbert unsurprisingly made fun of Tennessee, Nashville, and the dirty south in general because of the new “guns-in-bars” law that went into effect recently. You wanna know why people from other parts of the nation/world hate us and stereotype us as dumb, redneck, white-trash buffoons? This is why. See the video clip on Nashville Is Talking.
Splittin’ posts- music: Matt Mahaffey tonight!
July 16, 2009
I’m trying out a slightly different format today- I’m going to split up the posts roughly into two categories: the science-y/tech-y/nerd-y stuff, and the music/pop culture stuff. So essentially you’ll see two posts per day for the most part. LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK IN THE COMMENTS.
The most important thing I’m posting about today is tonight’s benefit for Planned Parenthood’s VOX programs. I’m incredibly honored to be DJing along with one of my all-time musical heroes, Matt Mahaffey. Also on the bill is DJ Busta Window (better known to many locals as Kelly Kerr). The event is at Mai, which is right across the street from 12th & Porter. This event has FREE admission, but 5% of the bar sales go toward VOX, so either drink a lot, or just buy a few expensive drinks knowing that your intoxication is benefiting a good cause. Just don’t drive thereafter. The real DJ action won’t kick off till 10:30 or so, and I’m 2nd in the lineup so please get there by 10:30 at the latest. Resident DJ Coach will takeover after Matt’s set and keep the party hoppin’ till last call. Go ahead and plan to call in sick tomorrow, cuz this shit is worth stayin’ out late on a Thursday! Thanks to Nashville Cream for the plug yesterday. If you have any curiosities as to what my DJing is like, checkout the DJ Burgers SUMMERMIXXXX09 here.
In other music news:
Brooklyn Vegan continues to blow their load over JEFF the Brotherhood. Awesome!
Also Brooklyn-related: the Wall Street Journal is about 4-5 years behind the curve on reporting the skinny jean trend as “new,” which makes this all the more entertaining to watch. (Via dontstaylong)
Like I said, let me know if you like the idea of splitting up the posts.
Attention bands everywhere: the Next Big Nashville deadline for entry was extended until this coming Friday. It was originally today, but last Friday they announced the extension. So get over to American Songspace and apply if you haven’t. It’s only ten bucks!
Those Darlins just keep making bigger and bigger news stories. This time they got a mention on CNN and the New York Times! Check out CNN.com and watch the video clip. They talk about Hannah Montana first, then mention the Darlins at about 2:50 into the clip. Then check out the NYT review here. They also got written up on Brooklyn Vegan for the 368th time….
Tonight is Nashville Cream’s 70’s cover night at Mercy Lounge. It’s like an 8 off 8th in that there’s 8 bands and they play about 3 songs each, but all bands are doing covers of songs from the 70’s. It’s totally free and 21+. It’ll be a blast so come on down.
Oddee posted a blog about 10 very strange bars. My favorite is the bar made of ice. Pretty awesome.
From the science world…
The launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour was scrubbed AGAIN yesterday due to storms in the vicinity of the launch area. They’re going to retry the launch at 6:51pm EDT tonight, but the forecast is still pretty iffy. Basically any afternoon/early evening launch time during the summer months is a shot in the dark because storms pop every afternoon in Florida due to the interaction between the hot/humid air over the land and the cooler seabreeze coming in off the ocean. Basically they’ll just have to get lucky.
In other NASA news, a really cool interactive flash application is up on their website. It’s a panoramic view made of images taken during the Apollo 11 moon landing (except for the image of the Eagle lander, which is obviously CG). You can scroll around from several different viewpoints. In case you didn’t know, this year is the 40th Anniversary of the moon landing.
New Brendan Benson/Jenny Lewis video/earthquakes
July 10, 2009
Brendan Benson wasn’t nearly as well-known prior to joining up with Jack White in The Raconteurs. He had out some solo albums that were great, but his new album is looking to be far beyond “great.” If the rest of the record is as good as this first track “Don’t Want To Talk,” then it could easily make its way into my top 5, maybe even 3 albums of 09. This song is just packed full of awesome. RCRD LBL posted it for download today, and you’d better go grab it. NOW.
Jenny Lewis has a new video out for the song “See Fernando” from her latest album Acid Tongue. Stereogum posted it yesterday. It’s very visually pleasing and let’s face it… Jenny Lewis is just pretty, though she doesn’t actually have as much screen time as one would hope… I got to see her at Bonnaroo and thoroughly enjoyed her set, especially when Elvis Costello joined her for “Carpetbaggers.”
As for this weekend… we’ll probably stay in tonight and catch the new episode of Eureka on SyFy. Saturday I’ll be doing a photobooth for the Miller Made Music/Lightning 100 free show at Exit/In with the Non-Commissioned Officers, Mean Tambourines, Perrin Lamb, and Mikky Echo. It’s a free show so you have no excuse not to come. Then on Monday be sure to check out the 2nd installment of the Nashville Cream decades 8 off 8th series. This one will cover the 70’s and I heard Caitlin Rose and Tristen’s covers are gonna be especially awesome.
I’ll the science to a minimum today. All I have to say is this:
The unusually nice weather we’ve been having lately is about to come to an end. These past few weeks have been a few degrees cooler than usual, and temps even stayed shy of 90 for a string of 8 days. But the biggest story was the humidity, or absence thereof. It’s been agreeably dry lately, which makes the heat MUCH more tolerable. The reason for this was that the Bermuda High Pressure System which normally dominates the summer weather in the southeast was relatively weak and further east than normal for this time of year. The clockwise circulation around the Bermuda High channels hot and humid air from the Gulf of Mexico right into the American southeast almost all summer long. This is what causes our typical “dog days of summer” weather, and sadly it’s about to return westward and re-establish itself over Bermuda. Also, El Nino is officially here, so get ready for a wet winter.
Have a great weekend!
Cream’s 60’s cover night/new Spoon/snow on Mars
July 6, 2009
The Nashville Scene/Cream is sponsoring all the 8 off 8th Mondays during July, and each week the 8 bands will all perform covers from a specific decade- the 60’s through the 90’s. Tonight is 60’s night and the bands are:
Matt Friction and the Cheap Shots
Roman Candle
Eureka Gold
The Clutters
Kindergarten Circus
Ole Mossy Face
Jacob Jones
Millionaire Magicians
Tigers Con Queso will be on the lineup for 90’s night on July 27th. More info at Nashville Cream. I’ll be there tonight taking pics, so come on out. It’ll be fun.
Hipster Runoff posted the new single Got Nuffin from Spoon today. It’s a good song, so go grab it.
I’ve got a lot of science to dump on you today, so here we go…
Astronomers have been a little puzzled by our Sun recently because it’s been unusually quiet. We reached solar minimum, the lowest part of the 11-year cycle of sunspot activity, in 2008. Normally we’d be seeing some sunspots appearing, marking the beginning of the next cycle, but for some reason the Sun has been strangely quiet this year, and no one really understands why. This weekend marked the first real appearance of sunspots for the new cycle, breaking the stretch of puzzling silence. Space.com has more.
I’ve always loved the large-scale, long-term predictions and statements that Dr. Stephen Hawking is known for. One of his latest predictions/statements is truly fascinating. He proposes that we take a much broader view of the term “evolution” and include not only genetic information (internal), but also external information. Because we now have the ability to communicate external information we are now in a different stage of evolution. Just like so many of his broad ideas, this one really makes you think almost on a totally different level. Read more at the Daily Galaxy article.
Even though communication with NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander ceased last fall, scientists are still evaluating the data collected while it was in operation. The scientists used a specialized instrument on the lander to detect water ice clouds and even snow falling to the martian ground. Yes, I said snow. On Mars. How effin’ cool is that? Learn more about this phenomenon by reading the Universe Today article.
Also from Universe Today- a more substantiated version of the blurb I posted a couple weeks ago regarding the possible back-up to NASA’s new Constellation program. A video clip from the presentation made to an external review committee by shuttle program manager John Shannon has been posted on YouTube. Apparently NASA is taking this proposal pretty seriously and everyone there is waiting on the final word by an executive session as to whether they’ll keep charging ahead with the current plans for the Ares rockets or try this new plan to retrofit the existing external fuel tank/solid rocket booster system to work with the new Orion Crew Vehicle. Watch the video below. As Universe Today points out, this system would be MUCH cheaper and faster to implement. Honestly, I think there’s a decent possibility that they’ll end up going for this and scrapping the Ares rockets. Only time will tell. Full article here.
I’ve been loving the Morning Benders for at least a year now, and it’s good to know that they’re working on new material. Their debut record Talking Through Tin Cans is absolutely excellent and this demo for Hand Me Downs on their myspace page shows promise for the follow-up. Let’s hope they don’t have a sophomore slump. I enjoyed their live set quite a bit at SXSW, though I’d like to see them do a full-length set eventually. (Via You Ain’t No Picasso)
Brooklyn Vegan posted several photographs of Michael Jackson taken by Kevin Mazur during one of his last rehearsals prior to his death last Thursday. Kind of creepy… I can’t imagine being that photographer. Obviously he will profit greatly from the licensing of those images. It’s certainly an ethical dilemma that I would struggle with, were I in his shoes. The value of those images went way up due to his death, but if I were the photographer, I would want to sell those licenses at a “normal” going rate, even though publications would obviously be willing to pay an inflated amount for them because they’re essentially the last images of him alive. I would definitely feel guilty for “cashing-in” on someone’s death.
From Yale University comes some good news in the world of computing. They’re testing the first version of a quantum processor that could potentially offer a way around Moore’s Law. At least for a while. This team of scientists has their quantum processors already doing basic algorithms, so hopefully it won’t be long before these amazing pieces of technology start showing up in personal computing devices. With this type of processor, I’d surmise that a device the size of an iPhone could potentially have the processing power of today’s supercomputers. I won’t get into exactly how quantum processors work (mainly because I have a hard time grasping it myself) but if you’re really into it, check out the original article on Science Daily. (Via io9)
It’s been a while since we really learned anything cool/crazy about the moon, but now that interest in our only natural satellite has been renewed due to NASA’s plan to put a base there, we’re starting again to uncover interesting things. One such discovery is that there is Uranium there. And it’s even on the surface. Scientists made the discovery after seeing the tell-tale signature of gamma radiation in the data from the recently-crashed Japanese Kaguya Probe. (Via Bad Astronomy)
Also from Bad Astronomy comes this insanely cool optical illusion video that utilizes your eye’s natural blind spot (where the optic nerve connects to your retina). It works best if you view it full screen.
Those Darlins in Reuters/2012 bullshit
June 22, 2009
Reuters news agency recently did a short interview with Those Darlins, Murfreesboro’s own “rough-and-tumble” all-girl alt-country trio. Their debut album is out now on vinyl in your local indie record store, and hit shelves in all other formats on July 7th. I’m proud to see these awesome ladies gaining such national attention. I’m even more proud that they are paving their own path by not signing to a major label. JT Turner and the Thirty Tigers staff have done an amazing job of managing them and timing their album release. They will be celebrating their album release this Saturday at Mercy Lounge with none other than the Black Lips. Via Nashville Cream.
My official DJ Burgers SUMMERMIXXXX 2009 is up for grabs. Download here. Tracklist:
Shoot The Mountain-Islands (Dpaul remix)
Thieves Like Us- Drugs in my Body
Evan Voytas- Getting Higher
Passion Pit- Little Secrets
Kennedy- John and Yoko
VEGA- No Reasons
Spinnerette- Sex Bomb (Adam Freeland remix)
Das Racist- Combination pizza hut/taco bell (Wallpaper remix)
Black Eyed Peas- Boom boom (Chew Fu remix)
Yuksek- Extraball (Breakbot remix)
AutoKratz- Always More (Yuksek remix)
Make girl dance- Baby baby baby
Peaches- Serpentine
Want to be totally creeped out? Go look at these images of children that have been digitally altered to make them look like talking puppets. Yea. CREEPY. Via Kottke.
This HD trailer for the upcoming Ronald Emmerich film 2012 is total eye-candy (please do watch in full screen), but the marketing for this movie really rubs me the wrong way. There is simply too much misinformation and scaremongering out there regarding the Dec. 21st, 2012 myth. I’ve always considered ridiculous disaster movies a sort of “guilty pleasure,” but this one is going a bit too far with their website/viral marketing campaign. Granted, the first thing that shows up when you Google “2012” is the actual Sony Pictures website, but this Institute for Human Continuity website that comes up when you click the middle link is just ridiculous. It’s obvious this website is meant to look as realistic as possible, with the only hint of its relation to the movie being the copyright info at the bottom of the page. And if you happen to recognize Oliver Platt in that “news feed” section. But trust me, there are plenty of extremely gullible people out there who might think this website is for real. Making an entertaining disaster movie is one thing, but intentionally misleading people is another. It’s just sad that a staggering number of Americans actually believe this hype. I’m not a scientist and I don’t have the time to do a full debunking of this hoax on this blog, so here are some good links regarding the 2012 myth:
2012 Hoax- a website dedicated to debunking the 2012 myth.
A very long, scientific explanation of why the world won’t end in 2012.
Face it, the world will not end in 2012. It’s huge scam intended to make money off people’s ignorance and gullibility.
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!
steve cross loves music and science 