Cinco de Drunko/DJ party friday/Apple tablet
May 5, 2009
Cinco De Drunko is today. Ryan Bruce has put together a fun show at La Paz Mexican restaurant in Green Hills for tonight’s festivities, including performances by How I Became the Bomb, Jensen Sportag, Coral Castles (from Chattanooga), Mean Tambourines, Heypenny, and many more. Word on the street is that bands start at 4pm, have 35 minute sets, and 20 min. breaks between. Janet from Out the Other has a good preview of the show, and will have HIBTB on her show tonight.
Speaking of La Paz, they’re also having a late-night dance party this Friday night, for which I’m DJing as DJ Burgers. From what I’ve been told, it’s me and DJ Hippopotamus (who doesn’t seem to have a myspace…). But there could be others. I’d post a flier but I don’t have one yet, and that’s probably because Mr. Bruce is understandably consumed with tonight’s festivities. I’ll post more info as soon as I have it. But please do come out Friday night. It’s a later gig, supposedly not starting till 11 and going till at least 2am.
Speaking of DJ’s, Ultimo & Disco is bringing the legendary Steve Aoki of Dim Mak to Play Dance Bar on June 10th. Check out Blogging Is Serious Business for more info/flier. It’s amazing that they’re getting Aoki here. Who would’ve ever thought a big-name L.A. DJ would play in Nashville? Kudos to U&D for putting this together.
Don’t forget- my 2nd 8 off 8th is happening next Monday May 11th, and it will feature The Nobility, Mean Tambourines, Codaphonic, Kelly Kerr & the Distractions, Carter Administration, Paper Navy, Cuttlefish, and the Only Sons. I will be posting mp3s from each band over the next few posts.
Remember back when Wayne Coyne dissed the Arcade Fire? Well now he’s apologizing… kinda.
You’ve probably already seen this website by now, but if you haven’t, go see it now. Texts From Last Night. Endlessly entertaining.
There have been increasing rumors floating around about a possible new product line to be unveiled by Apple this fall. Supposedly they will be releasing a new tablet computer that runs full OS X but the input is entirely touchscreen-based. Basically it’s going to be a huge iPhone that runs OS X…. but isn’t a phone. Read more about it at this ZDnet article. I have a feeling it will be pretty pricey, though, as is most Apple stuff. I really look forward to playing with one at the Apple Store, though….
While reading this article on Universe Today, I realized that I don’t post enough space/science-related stuff on here about he European Space Agency and what they’re up to. So for more info on that just check out ESA’s website. Probably the biggest thing on their horizon is the ExoMars rover, which is tentatively scheduled for launch in 2016. Let’s hope this lander doesn’t suffer the same fate as the Beagle lander, ESA’s last attempt at a Martian landing.
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart totally rocked me Saturday night. Click the image to go the Scene slideshow with my pics. The opening band Zaza were a little too spacey/snoozy for me… I just kinda found myself bored with them after a while. It was basically one big long song for the whole set. But POBPAH totally killed and I loved every minute of it. The singer was super cool when I chatted with him for a minute at the merch booth. I should’ve bought something. Maybe they are a tiny bit over-hyped, but I stick with my previous assertion that they will have at least some staying power beyond their blog hype-wave. OK… I’ll shut up about them now.
I’ll be at the Death Cab for Cutie show tonight taking photos. They’ll also be up on the Scene website tomorrow.
Some links for today-
Oddee lists the 10 scariest/most dangerous roads in the world. I’d kinda like to drive on one of those mountain roads just once. Just for the thrill…. Yes I’m crazy.
John Harrington at Photo Business News & Forum explains the device that Google is using to digitize all of the books in the world. It uses 2 cameras and has an automatic page changer. According to this article, we’re about halfway finished with digitizing all the world’s books! I had no idea… but it’s pretty damn cool.
Some very rare video footage of Virgin Galactic’s White Knight 2 aircraft has been posted at Wired.com. This odd looking plane is the “mothership” for their SpaceShip 2 aircraft, which will soon be taking tourists to the edge of space. The empty space in between the two fuselages is where SpaceShip 2 will hang. Ground-breaking is scheduled to begin on the Spaceport America facility very soon. It won’t be long before Virgin will be launching wealthy citizens into space for fun. Via Daily Galaxy.
A recent survey on the opinions of Americans on the use of torture to get information from suspected terrorists reveals the true nature of many Christians. These results are terrifying, though not at all surprising in my opinion. Most Christians are absurdly hypocritical and choose to ignore certain teachings of the Bible when it doesn’t suit their political agenda. Torture is utterly inhumane/barbaric and there is NEVER an excuse to use it on someone who is only suspected of terrorism. If a person has been put before a court of law and properly convicted of terrorism that involves the murder of 100’s or 1,000’s of people, then maybe it could be justified only if it is necessary to gain information which will save 100’s or 1,000’s of lives. Via Clusterflock.
Via dontstaylong
It’s that glorious time of year again. Moustache May is in full swing! If you have a stache, sign up! If you want to grow a stache and document the progess, sign up! *Update: as of ~12:45pm registration is already closed… ya snooze ya looze!* Or just bookmark it and check often for the always clever theme-days. I did it last year and it was fun, but I think I’m gonna lay low on the stache this year… It took at least 2 weeks for mine to grow enough so that I no longer looked like a creepy child molester.
Tonight I’ll be at a party, but a lot of you will probably be seeing Junior Boys & Max Tundra @ Mercy Lounge.
Also, The Rabbit Release party is going down at the Dirty Eye Warehouse (100 Talyor St.) Featuring Caitlin Rose, Heypenny, and others.
Tomorrow is also looking to be a good night for show-going:
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart @ the End w/ Zaza, Mother Father, and Bows & Arrows. Mother Father are locals… I have no clue about the other 2. I’ve blogged about POBPAH on here before. Obviously this is where I’ll be.
Also Saturday- Pico vs. Island Trees/Butterfly Boucher/The Bridges @ the Basement.
Do I really need to mention the Death Cab shows Sunday and Monday at the Ryman? We’ll be there Monday- I got Megan tickets for her birthday.
The world’s fastest camera can take 6.1 million photos per second. Needless to say, this device is only for scientific purposes. I mean, who else would ever want to take that many photos in a second? It also doesn’t use the conventional CCD or CMOS sensors that regular digital cameras use. Those sensors aren’t capable of anything even close to 6 million frames per second. The technology is explained fairly well in the article, so just go read it if you’re interested.
Universe Today has a story that sheds some much needed light on the confusion over the recent buzz about NASA’s plans for the shuttle fleet, the Constellation program, what we’ll be doing on the moon, etc… In a nutshell, congress is prepared to shell over the dough needed to extend the space shuttle program past 2010 (if needed), NASA still doesn’t have an administrator, and nobody’s really sure just what we’ll be doing on the moon in 2020.
Lastly, I give you the iSnort app:
Have a great weekend!
E.T. detected by 2019/my 8 off 8th
April 28, 2009
One prominent NASA scientist believes that we will find life on Mars by 2019. Peter Smith, who led NASA’s Phoenix Lander Mission, made that prediction at a recent presentation at the University of Delaware. I used to think that Mars was probably dead, but used to harbor life millions of years ago. But due to recent findings of the Phoenix mission and the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity, I do think there’s a chance that we’ll soon find microbial life beneath the soil surface. I certainly hope he’s right… more at Fanboy.com.
President Obama recently further confirmed his promises on boosting science funding and “restoring science to its rightful place.” But unfortunately NASA has not been mentioned nearly as much as other government science organizations. Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy expresses his worries about this and the fact that Obama still hasn’t appointed a new NASA Chief Administrator. I’m inclined to agree… though I should make a point that overall this is a huge win for science and reality in general, and we’re already making vast improvements over the last 8 years of putting politics and ideology before scientific truth.
Oddee has a great post today about 10 amazing and fascinating natural phenomena. I’ve seen a few of these myself, including mammatus clouds, but none quite so dramatic as those pictured.
If you’re Nashvillian reading this, you’ve surely heard about the recent carjackings and robberies in East Nashville. Unfortunately 3 close friends of mine were victims of one of the carjackings, 2 of which received gunshot wounds. They are all fine and recovering, but these people were all heavily involved in our great local music scene and instantly the scene has rallied around them to help with their medical expenses. Jeremy Ferguson of Battletapes has volunteered to put together at least one, if not several benefit shows for these guys. I’ll post more info as soon as dates and lineups are confirmed. It’s possible that there may be a silent auction at these shows, and if there is I will probably put some framed prints in it. Thankfully, it seems that all 3 suspects have been caught.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m curating an 8 off 8th at Mercy Lounge on May 11th. It’s gonna be a great one, and I urge you to mark your calendars and plan to attend. As always, it’s free and 21+. Here’s the awesome flier, created by Alicia and Drew at Monkey Ink Design. Spread the word!
Monkey Ink Design!
Autotuned babies/Flaming Lips’ “Do you Realize?” to be OK rock song/Girl Talk makes real songs
April 24, 2009
So I read on Billboard that Girl Talk is exprimenting with actual songs of his own. Wow. That’s a big move for him, really… I’m intrigued as to what it will sound like. It’s hard to gauge what the perception of this will be. Something makes me think that even if it’s good, it may be perceived as a flop because he’s so established in what he does now. A band is always “known for something” and Girl Talk is known for mashups. He’s a remixer/mashup artist… and arguably the most successful of his genre/niche. That’s different that being a musician who creates/writes their own music. We’ll see what happens. Can’t wait to see him at Bonnaroo this year. I feel like in a festival setting, it’ll be even more off-the-chain than at the Cannery.
The Oklahoma Governor signed an executive order declaring the Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize?” the official state rock song. The public overwhelmingly voted in favor of the song, but it fell just short of passing in the state congress. The executive order overruled, however, and the song is now official. Awesome! Pitchfork has the full story.
Apparently Yahoo’s GeoCities is closing down this year… GeoCities still exists? Does Angelfire still exist? Does AOL still exist?
Ok I have to put these videos relatively high in the post. I found these via this post on Kottke.org this morning. It’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. I almost fell out of my chair. AUTOTUNED BABIES!!!!!
Ok now that’s over with… KITTEHZ IN BOXEZ!!!!
Cuteness over…. now for what’s going down this weekend. I’ll probably be attending the final Friday version of Coach Vs. Kase at 12th & Porter. I’ve yet to experience one of these events, and for the first time in months I don’t have something else to shoot/attend.
Also on Friday- Shoot the Mountain w/ Umbrella Tree and Brenn @ Mercy Lounge.
For Saturday- Megan will be joining me and we may end up at the free outdoor show @ Bobbie’s Dairy Dip featuring Vermicious K’nids and Danger & the Steelcut Oats. Never heard of the latter, like the former.
On Sunday I’ll be attending/shooting the Cursive/Man Man show @ Mercy Lounge. Megan is a big Cursive fan and I’ve heard Man Man is quite an experience live, so I look forward to photographing them.
Just one interesting tidbit from the technology world… apparently a guy has figured out a way to send his thoughts directly to Twitter. I don’t know if this is utterly amazing or utterly terrifying. It could be a life-saver for people with severe neural injuries who are unable to communicate, that’s for certain….
Have a great weekend!
Thomas Bangalter
For all those who seriously hoped Daft Punk were real robots, I guess you’ll just have to cry now. Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter was spotted doing a quick DJ set at L.A. club Cinespace for the birthday party of Ed Banger owner Busy P…. sans the robot costume. That’s him behind the shades. Pitchfork has the full story. Twitter obviously went bonkers. Oddly, though, there’s no mention of the apparent brawl that went down afterwards… Hipster Runoff posted several photos of an apparent clash between the bouncers and the Ed Banger crew. The Pitchfork article posted some video clips but those have since been made private and un-embeddable. Robot Drama!
In other music-related news, Record Store Day was a big success. Billboard reports on the various statistics. Check it out if you’re really interested in all the numbers, but in summary there was a small but substantial increase in indie records store sales compared to last year’s RSD. Vinyl sales are way up compared to last year. A big part of it is the fact that so many artists/bands did special limited-edition releases specifically for that day. If this kind of thing keeps happening, I’d say record stores aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Kudos Record Store Day!
The Scene has a great story on the “band that almost was,” The Remains. They came out of Boston, appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, and opened for the Beatles on all 19 shows of their 1966 tour. Then they broke up. They’re playing tonight at the Cannery. I may be there, hopefully taking photos…
Short post today.
New Camera Obscura/the Sun/Matt & Kim get naked
April 22, 2009
So the new Camera Obscura album came out yesterday. You can stream My Maudlin Career in its entirety here. I arrived at Grimey’s eager to purchase it on vinyl last night, but alas, the vinyl isn’t out yet. C.O. is definitely one of those bands that needs to be listened to on vinyl. I refuse to own it on CD. They’d better include a digital download with the vinyl. That’s really the ONLY way to do vinyl these days. It’s absolutely absurd not to include a free download with a vinyl purchase. Yes the sound of vinyl is superior to an mp3, but still, people want to be able to listen to music in their cars, etc… and have it be portable on whatever digital media player they happen to own. It’s ESSENTIAL that labels realize this and I will be extremely pissed if 4AD doesn’t include a digital download with their vinyl offerings. It remains to be seen… I’m told the vinyl should arrive next week. I’m resisting the urge to just order it online because I feel guilty for not buying anything from Grimey’s in a while. Support your local record stores people!
Ok, off the soapbox….
Not exactly sure how this video was done… but Matt & Kim went streaking through Times Square in their latest video. I guess it’s no big deal to block off Times Square for a video shoot so it’s technically not a crime for them to be running around naked. Or maybe they were wearing skin-colored skivvies underneath the black skivvies they removed… you can’t really tell since it’s pixel-blurred.
Last night was the first ever Rock Circus at Mercy Lounge. I was invited to attend but could not. My body did not want me to do anything last night. I should have posted about it yesterday but it honestly slipped my mind. Team Illuminati, Vermicious K’nids and Rae Herring played, and there were also magicians, jugglers, and virtuoso pianists. It’s a whole new concept that’s the brainchild of Team Illuminati, and this one was promoted by Scenario Entertainment. They plan to do more of these shows in the future, including one on April 29th (a week from today) (update: the show on the 29th is a normal rock show being promoted by Scenario Entertainment, not a circus show) with the Telecommunicators– the side project of Matt Hungate from De Novo Dahl. (Though Telecommunicators started before he joined DND…) I hope to take some pics at one of these in the near future as it sounds like a lot of fun.
When we think of natural distasters we usually think of things here on earth, but there’s something else out there that poses an unlikely but high-consequence danger…Â the sun. This huge star that is responsible for our existence also has the ability to wipe us off the face of the planet. That’s VERY unlikely in the next billion years or so, but if it decides to get angry and have an especially violent Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), it could knock out power grids and wreak havoc on satellite communications, which are VERY sensitive to these types of things. ABC.com has a great story with more info if you’re interested.
Former astronaut Edgar Mitchell is a proponent of the government UFO cover-up conspiracy theory. It’s kind of sad that an astronaut is spouting about this, but it’s true. This CNN.com article reports on his recent appearance and UFO enthusiast convention. I happen to agree with his claim that there is life out there, somewhere. I fully believe that we will eventually find evidence of life on other planets, probably within my lifetime. But the probabilities of that life being SO advanced as to be able to travel much faster than light to get here and then crash into our deserts… I just have a hard time with that. And there’s still no hard evidence to prove otherwise. All we have are witness accounts and blurry, unreliable photos and video. Some of these sightings honestly don’t have a good explanation, but it’s too much of a stretch to say that just because we can’t explain them, they must aliens buzzing around in highly advanced spacecraft. Sure there are lots of things that the government keeps secret from the public, and I’m sure that they’re covering up something about what happened in Roswell in 1947, and in Kecksburg in 1965, and in all the other less publicized cases. I’d say it’s much more likely that it was some sort of top secret plane or technology that they didn’t want anyone to know about.
Today I leave you with this… yummmmm…..
Via Clusterflock
Ice Cream/Ray Kurzweil/NASA embarks on biggest delay ever
April 21, 2009
Today is the annual free cone day at Ben & Jerry’s. From what I’ve heard, they’ve gotten the issue of long-line-management down to a science, and it shouldn’t take as long as you think it will to get through. Good luck! I honestly don’t know if I’ll do it or not…
The Protomen won last night’s Road to Bonnaroo 8 off 8th. They join The Features, who won the first installment of this 3-part series. The final one happens Mon. May 18th.
The 2009 Lollapalooza official lineup has been announced. Headliners are: Depeche Mode, Tool, the Killers, Jane’s Addition, Beastie Boys, and Kings of Leon. It takes place August 7-9 in Grant Park, as always.
Diplo and Switch have a new Jamiacan dancehall-inspired project called Major Lazer. It’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect when you mention those two and dancehall in the same sentence. Stereogum has 2 free mp3’s.
The new Zooey Deschanel film 5oo Days of Summer screened at the Nashville Film Festival this past weekend. Not exactly sure of the Nashville connection to this film, but Nashvillest has a nice guest blog review by Winston Hearn.
A documentary film on renowned inventor and thinker Ray Kurzweil has been made. It’s called Transcendent Man. According to my NetFlix, a release date has not been announced, but it’s in the Tribeca Film Festival. Kurzweil theorizes that humanity will reach a technological singularity in the next 30 years, and that the only way for us to survive is to learn how to become literal cyborgs- meld our minds with computers. Here’s the trailer.
Space.com reports that the lightest exoplanet thus far has been discovered in the famous Gliese 581 system. This latest planet is called Gliese 581 E and is the 5th planet found in this system. It’s only 1.9 times the mass of earth, but unfortunately it’s VERY close to its host star, orbiting it in a mere 3.15 days. That means it’s way too hot to support life. The only planet (that we’ve discovered) in this particular star’s habitable zone is Gliese 581 D, but it’s 7 times the mass of Earth, and though it’s thought to have a rocky core, it’s probably completely covered by a vast deep ocean. In other words, it’s a waterworld. So that would preclude any land-based life forms, but there certainly could be life in those oceans!
Finally, the Onion reports that NASA has officially embarked on the biggest, most epic delay in history. Indeed.
Magic Wands & JEFF get blog love/unexplained stuff
April 20, 2009
Via Bre Pettis
Today’s post will have a lot of quick links. Let’s get right to it:
First of all, Kottke.org had some great stuff this morning. The image to the left is from a hilarious set of vintage 1930’s German illustrations about various ways to get electrocuted. Please do visit the flickr set and read the rollover comments. SERIOUSLY… read them all, you will laugh quite loudly at the very least, if not fall out of your chair. He also linked to this pretty interesting article on 13 things that science has yet to explain. I say “yet” because I’m confident that eventually we will be able to explain everything through science. That is, if we last long enough as a species. Some of these have been pretty well explained, however… especially the alleged “WOW signal” from a radio telescope in 1977. SETI scientists see signals very similar to this all the time, and all of them have been declared to have terrestrial origins.
Universe Today has an interesting article explaining the procedure of a rescue mission in the event that Atlantis is badly damaged on its mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.
Locals JEFF the Brotherhood and Magic Wands got some blog love today. JEFF was mentioned in this Brooklyn Vegan post about their upcoming dates in NYC with Screaming Females and Sisters. Then I found a post on RCRD LBL featuring a download of the Magic Wands’ Black Magic. Good to see these Nashville bands getting major blog love… though I’m pretty sure Chris and Dexie (Magic Wands) moved to L.A. a year or so ago. I would still argue that they have Nashville “roots” since Chris spent so much of his musical career here. Apparently they’ve got an EP coming out soon.
Tonight is the 2nd installment of the 3-part series, “Road to Bonnaroo” at Mercy Lounge. It’s a special version of the famous 8 off 8th series where audience votes, combined with a panel of judges, will determine which of the 8 bands will get to play at Bonnaroo. Tonight’s lineup and more info can be found on the Mercy Lounge website. I suggest you come on out and help decide the winner!
Finally, major kudos to Grimey’s for making the top 10 of SPIN’s 15 best indie record stores. They came in 8th out of 15. Awesome!
Kepler’s first images/Green rooftops/hipster grifter
April 17, 2009
Image via Space.com
The Kepler spacecraft took its first few images earlier this week, and NASA has released them. The one shown here is zoomed in on a small cluster of stars about 13,000 light years from Earth. Kepler has a 95 megapixel camera to take these images. 95 megapixels. Fuck.
An awesome new concept is emerging in some of the world’s largest cities- green rooftops. It’s a concept that I sincerely hope catches on quickly. Typical building rooftops are dark and dry; they absorb and then release much more heat than a natural plant-covered surface would, and the result is what’s called the “heat-island effect.” This phenomenon is what causes some large cities to be a few degrees hotter than the surrounding areas, and it’s a growing problem. But if we cover most of the city rooftops with gardens and grass, this problem would be virtually eliminated. Please check out this National Geographic article on the subject… not only for the story but for the awesome photography.
Will humans ever be able to travel beyond our solar system? Or will we just resort to armchair astronomy and send an army of intelligent robots to other worlds to explore them for us? The question is tackled in this great article by Luke McKinney from the Daily Galaxy. It’s a short and entertaining read, as all of McKinney’s witty posts tend to be.
The new Harry Potter movie comes out July 15th, and the trailer has just hit the interwebs. I first saw it on this io9 post.
Carles of Hipster Runoff had an encounter with the now somewhat-famous hipster grifter, who brought her cancer/pregnant/sex fraud scheme from Salt Lake City to Brooklyn scammed quite a few hipsters out of a lot of money.
As I said yesterday, I’ll be photographing Rites of Spring this weekend, but there’s also a TON of other great stuff going down, most notably National Record Store Day on Saturday, for which Grimey’s is hosting their Big Ass Outdoor Sale. Be sure to stop by between 10am-8pm and check out the great record deals and live music out in the parking lot. A list of some other stuff happening can be found at Nashvillest. Have a great weekend!
steve cross loves music and science 