XX Merge Festival/tshirts for hairy people
April 8, 2009
One of the best known indepedent record labels is Merge Records, based in Chapel Hill, NC. This summer they’ll be celebrating 20 years of existence with XX Merge Festival, which will be held July 22-26 in Chapel Hill. The lineup includes quite a few heavy-hitters from their past and present, including Superchunk, Spoon, Conor Oberst, M. Ward, Destroyer, and Polvo, just to name a few. I’ve toyed with the idea of trying to go, as I’ve never been to Mergefest or Chapel Hill, but it’s right before the Southern Girls Rock n Roll Camp, for which I’ll likely be volunteering this year. Via Paste Magazine.
The A.V. Club has a great list of 25 albums that are best when listened to from start to finish. There are some very obvious choices in there- Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka, The Who’s Quadrophenia, but there are a few surprises as well. An interesting post, thought I’d personally put The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s on my list.
In some slightly entertaining but really gross Nashville-related news: Apparently someone emptied the septic tank of one of Keith Urban’s tour buses outside the main entrance of NYC’s Webster Hall last week. Urban’s publicist claims it wasn’t an “official” Urban bus. Yea right. That’s one stinky April Fool’s joke, and not funny at all.
Finally, a tshirt designed for dudes with hairy chests! Thank you, Ironic Sans!
Image via Ironic Sans
Jack White’s latest side project, The Dead Weather, will be playing their first public show in NYC @ Bowery Ballroom on April 14th. They played a private show right here in Nashville for the opening of White’s new label offices/record store/recording studio/photo studio complex back in early March. In other news via Brooklyn Vegan, AC/DC will be heading back to the US for some extended tour dates. I was under the impression that the Nashville show at Sommet Center was to be their last performance in the US… apparently I was gravely mistaken.
In case you’ve been under a rock for the past few days, Lake Fever has posted a special 5-song issue of their “Lake Fever Sessions” video series starring Superdrag. They play several tracks from their new record Industry Giants, which was recorded at Lake Fever. Pretty effin’ awesome if you ask me. I suggest reading Joe Baine Colvert’s blurb to the right of the videos about his teenage years and first discovering Superdrag. The photo to the left was taken by me when I ran into them at SXSW. Speaking of that… I FINALLY got all my pics from Austin on my Flickr, so go have a look. There are a lot of random candid shots on there that weren’t in the Scene slideshows.
For your daily dose of “awww how cute,” check out this article about a new dog that will be a strong contender for the world’s smallest dog. His owners oh-so-cleverly named him Tom Thumb. Via sister sisyphus.
While we’re on the subject of really tiny animals… might as well mention this new species of tree frog discovered in the Andes Mountains. It’s called Noble’s Pygmy Frog. How cute.
The Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog has a set of amazing photos of Mt. Redoubt, the Alaskan volcano that recently erupted. I knew it was only a matter of time before they had a post full of nice Redoubt imagery. I have a hard to choosing between the aerial shots and the nighttime lightning shots as my fav.
Credit: Josh Wurman, CSWR
This May 10 through June 13, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are co-funding the greatest tornado chasing effort in history. It’s called VORTEX-2, and in classic scientific tradition, they came up with a really cool acronym, and then figured out words that would work with the acronym and also describe their project. The result- Verification Of Rotation in Tornadoes EXperiment 2 (VORTEX 2). As if we need verification that tornadoes rotate…. No matter how silly the name, I’d still LOVE to be right there with them!
io9’s quote of the day today: “The Best Green Technology is Population Control.” Just read this whole excerpt by author Paolo Bacigalupi. My favorite quote from the interview:
Advertising agencies and PR firms are delighted to sell us any number of “green” gizmos and they’re throwing in some nice self-esteem blowjobs for all of us, using their persuasive talents to assure us that we’re enlightened and forward thinking because we just stuffed a green X into our Prius.
Today Google has announced the world’s first real artificial intelligence called CADIE, or “Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity.” This is a milestone in technological achievement, people. Just look at CADIE’s homepage.
In music news, Bjork has agreed to join Led Zeppelin as their new lead singer for their upcoming reunion tour. Via You Ain’t No Picasso.
Expedia.com has just announced that they’re offering super package deals for trips to Mars. Of particular interest is the Utopia Spa & Resort, which was obviously modeled after a very familiar comic-inspired structure right here in Nashville. While there, you can take part in some amazing activities such as Dust Surfing, Super Low-G Martial Arts, Mars Rover Rides, and best of all, the Pareidolia Tour, “including the Smiley Face Crater, the Chryse Alien Head, and even the mysterious Face on Mars.” Via Nashvillest.
Finally, today we bring you the deleted sex scene from Twilight.
Off to Austin/global warming
March 17, 2009
So tonight I’m heading off to SXSW with my bandmate Seth Graves, Ryan Bruce from the Deli Nashville, and possibly Seth’s friend Carmen. There have been a lot of last-minute plan changes, which is par for the course in all things SXSW-related. But if travel goes as planned, we’ll be driving all night and arriving Wed. morning. We’ll drop some shit off at the house we’re sub-letting for the weekend and then the festivities shall begin. I have no idea how much or often I’ll be able to blog, so don’t expect too much. I will be updating my facebook and twitter stati, so if you’re my friend on facebook or follow me on twitter, those are the way to go. I will be, as usual, photographing for the Scene, and slideshows should be appearing on Nashville Cream daily, so be sure to check there first for pics.
Now for a few quick links:
You can buy a LOST Dharma Initiative jumpsuit on Ebay. For the obsessed LOST fans only. I sure as hell don’t have 85 bucks to shell out for something like that.
The Pixies are back. Though, I must say I really don’t understand this band photo. They look awkwardly posed, and… is Frank Black about to go to the gym for a workout? Head to the park for a jog? WTF?
In all the doom and gloom predictions of global warming, there is one discovery that’s slightly comforting- the Greenland ice sheet may not pass the proverbial “tipping point” quite as soon as they originally thought. The tipping point is the point at which the sheet is 100% guaranteed to melt completely. The research shows that the ice sheet should be able to withstand a global temperature increase of more than 3 degrees Celsius. Of course, some of the ice will still melt and contribute to overall sea level rise. Via the Daily Galaxy.
Hallucinations without drugs/M.I.A.’s baby
March 10, 2009
Image via boston.com
Boston.com, website of the Boston Globe, has an interesting article on how to create hallucinogenic effects without taking drugs such as LSD. These are pretty interesting, and I want to try them. I’ll let you know how it goes…
I wonder why M.I.A. hasn’t told anyone what she named her baby… It’s probably hard to pronounce, but seriously, does it really need to be a secret? Hipster Runoff muses about what it might be.
Earth, Wind & Fire are teaming up with Chicago for a huge US summer tour. It’s RETRO, people!
Scientists have finally confirmed that reality, is in fact, real. Like, the world actually exists when someone is not observing it. Phew… I’ve always been worried that reality doesn’t really exist… Seriously though, even the scientist who headed this experiment called the results “preposterous.” Something about this whole thing is perplexing to me though… basically what they’re claiming is a paradox; that they observed something without actually observing it. We are, though, talking about quantum mechanics here. The quantum world is probably the hardest thing in science for our brains to comprehend. Trying to visualize or understand the quantum world from our large, worldly perspective is simply impossible, so me trying to wrap my feeble mind around this experiment is futile in the first place. No matter how hard to understand, this could be a major scientific breakthrough… as long as the results can be duplicated and further analyzed.Via Kottke.org.
Now for a bit of debunking. Everyone has heard the claim that water going down a drain spins opposite directions in opposite hemispheres, the same way that large cyclones and storm systems rotate clockwise in the southern hemisphere instead of counter-clockwise as in the nothern. It’s not true. The Coriolis Effect is responsible for the rotation of large-scale storm systems such as hurricanes, but it simply does not affect something so small as water going down a drain. It only applies to large masses over long distances. The only thing that determines how water spins down a drain is the surface of the basin and/or the direction the water was poured. Unfortunately everywhere along the equator one can find rigged demonstrations that do nothing more than suck money from gullible tourists and contribute to the spread of ignorance.
Beatles mystery chord/No Doubt reunites for tour/Name that node
February 26, 2009
Well, they never really broke up officially, but No Doubt will be “reuniting” for a tour this summer. It’s a big one, too, with none other than TN’s own Paramore, kicking off at NJ’s Bamboozle Festival. Via Stereogum.
Jensen Sportag got mentioned on Pitchfork yesterday via a Max Tundra remix of the track “Cocktease” that they posted. Go get it now. Pretty awesome that Nashville’s electronic scene is getting such national attention. And here’s another treat for your hard drive via Nashville Cream:
Jensen Sportag-Jackie
The Fucking Weather. Simplicity is amazing. Via Yewknee.
Have you noticed that new skyscraper going up in downtown Nashville and wondered what it’s for, who’s occupying it, etc?? I thought so. Here’s an article from NewsChannel 5 that will answer all your questions about it.
The opening chord to the Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night has been somewhat of a mystery to musicians for 40 years. No one could quite figure out just what was being played…. until last October, when mathematician Jason Brown gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “math rock” by using a calculation called the Fourier transform to breakdown and analyze each tone present in the recording. Through this process Mr. Brown deduces that there’s a piano chord present, along with Harrison’s 12-string guitar, Lennon’s 6-string, and McCartney’s bass. This part was probably played by producer George Martin. Via Daily Galaxy.
After several delays, NASA has finally targeted March 12th as the launch date for the Space Shuttle Discovery on a mission to continue construction on the International Space Station. Let’s hope they keep this one.
NASA is also holding an online poll to determine what the official name of the next US-built space station node should be. Right now “Serenity” is winning by a landslide. I’m inclined to agree with the majority vote.
steve cross loves music and science 