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January 31, 2006

Disposable Music

Robert Christgau in the Pazz and Jop:

The blogosphere eats up music so fast that whole backlash cycles are over in weeks. On Metacritic, the enthusiasm of the Pitchfork rave that got the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah thing rolling is now exceeded by, I kid you not, that of Billboard—and also, just barely, that of me, which took months to formulate, after I dismissed a borrowed EP and then decided to buy the album and ran it through my head on cassette (right, cassette, stole that music myself) and finally woke up from a nap one day saying, "Gee, whatever this is it moves." By this time, CYHSY were a cliché. They're a nice little band who will enjoy a profitable alt-circuit run. But with bloggers and listserv geeks joking about their name, their hot moment is permanently over. Never before has rock criticism been so into three of its ancient sins: cooler than thou, instant gratification, and what have you done for me lately.

Posted by timothompson at 07:17 PM

January 29, 2006

Current Top 5

  1. Luminous Orange: Sounds like: My Bloody Valentine, Lush
  2. The Grates: Sounds like: KaitO
  3. The Black Angels: Sounds like: the Velvet Underground and Brian Jonestown Massacre.
  4. Jennifer Gentle: Sounds like: ?
  5. The High Water Marks: Sounds like: Apples in Stereo and Dressy Bessy.

Posted by timothompson at 12:26 PM

January 28, 2006

Puhlahmahlu

Just in case you had trouble pronouncing Pittsburgh Steelers' safety Troy Polamalu's name, a Pittsburgh band called Mr. Devious has recorded a song about it (based on quite a familiar song).

Update: Here's the video.

Posted by timothompson at 04:03 PM

January 26, 2006

Selling Indie Music For Cheap

Maria pointed to a screed by Patrick Monaghan at the saki store blog, who's annoyed that indie labels like Merge and Matador are now selling their wares at Best Buy at discount prices. I guess the post has been making the indie label rounds since Merge and Secretly Canadian commented about it in these threads.

Indie is hot and trendy right now--is it going to get like the alternative boom of the 90s with everybody trying to boast about their indie cred to be stylish? As I was reading Britt Daniel of Spoon (who has seen a few trends come and go) say the other day in the New York Times,

"There are great bands on major labels and bad bands on independent labels, but it seems like the records made on independent labels are more about real creativity and more heartfelt stuff," Daniel said. "It may just be a three-, four-, five-year cycle where indie music is cool. Sometimes I get cynical, but people tell me, 'No, this is the way things are going to be from now on."'

As Iggy once sang, "Here come the assholes they can smell the money."

Posted by timothompson at 04:21 PM

January 24, 2006

Brothers and Sisters

My new favorite Austin band is Brothers and Sisters. Here's what I posted about them last week on Austin Metroblogging:

I was watching my TiVo of Red River Rocks on ME Television this morning and caught a music video for a local band called Brothers and Sisters. Not only was I captivated by their chimey guitars and boy/girl Jayhawks-like singsong sound--I enjoyed watching their cutie cute video (directed by Michael Cash) featuring Trail of Dead singer Conrad Keeley and a mophead blondie getting all lovey dovey in the skating rink (Skateland?) under disco lights. Oooh, look at Conrad making puppy dog eyes. Look at the two running into each other as they leave the restrooms. Now they're smooching as the music fades and the guitars are a windin'. I'm probably going to watch this thing 10 more times today just to pick me up when I'm depressed.

Turns out the Bros and Sisses are playing Stubb's Thursday night with Knife in the Water. Maybe some girl will look me in the eye there, and we'll start smooching (yeah, right). But a boy can dream, can't he?

Lately the band's been downplaying that catchy song ("One Night") from the video (they call it their MySpace hit), but you can download it and another one called "Sunday Living" from last Sunday's Local Live performance on KVRX here.

Posted by timothompson at 02:02 PM

January 21, 2006

Things I've Learned About The Office While Searching the Web Hungover in My Pajamas

  1. They're all on MySpace (probably old news to many): Dwight Schrute, Pam (Jenna Fischer), B.J. Novak (Ryan the Temp), Angela, Kevin, Toby, Meredith [via]
  2. Rainn Wilson (who plays Dwight) writes the SchruteSpace blog.
  3. Jenna Fischer has a "blog" on TV Guide's site.
  4. B.J. Novak also writes for the show and wrote the "blog" on TV Guide before Pam took it over.
  5. I learned lots of good tidbits from Novak's blog, including that the guy who started the Saab Bumper Katrina Fund blog that raised about $30,000 was Michael Schur, another writer for The Office.
  6. Chili's was happy to allow The Office producers to use its name and build a replica of its restaurant for the Dundee's episode until they found out a woman would be puking in the episode [via].
  7. Novak upped his geek cred when he felt guilty about knowing that his "blog" wasn't a real blog ("I'll reintroduce this then. This is a weekly article about what it's like to work at The Office. I can't tell if people have been bothered by this — after all, there's not a space for comments, since it's not a real blog — but I've been self-conscious about it.").
  8. In the same "blog," (see above) he tells that a lot of the actors are also writers ("One unique thing about our show is that we have a lot of writer-actors, including me, Paul Lieberstein (Toby) and Mindy Kaling (Kelly). And a lot of our main cast members are writers in "real life," including Steve, who cowrote his movie, The 40 Year Old Virgin; and John, who just adapted a novel. Jenna [Fischer, Pam] and Rainn are both married to successful writers. Rainn also writes poetry, but I read it and it sucked.").
  9. Paul Feig of Freaks and Geeks directed the Halloween episode.
  10. John Krasinski (Jim) is writing the screenplay for a David Foster Wallace's "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men."
  11. There are no Hooters Restaurants in Scranton, Pa.

Posted by timothompson at 02:51 PM

January 16, 2006

RS: Indie Labels On the Rise

After a Rolling Stone article finishes crying in its beer about major labels losing sales in 2005 [via], they mention the rise of indie music labels:

As the majors stumbled, independent labels gained market share, accounting for eighteen percent of CD sales in '05. Indie labels proved especially adept at Internet marketing via outlets like MySpace; the emo label Victory Records sold 558,000 copies of Hawthorne Heights' album The Silence in Black and White without radio play. And several hip indie acts -- the Arcade Fire, Interpol and Bright Eyes -- sold more than 250,000 copies each. The indie model of earning profits on a broad range of small-scale releases, rather than focusing on blockbusters, may offer a new direction for the majors. "The major labels want to say the glass is half full," says Gwen Stefani's manager Jim Guerinot. "I think everybody's getting the message: You better get a fucking smaller glass. The music business is a different game."

Posted by timothompson at 01:20 PM

January 14, 2006

Common Words in SXSW Band Names

American

Black

Boy

Dirty

Golden

Heart

Living

Magnolia

New

Pilot

Pink

Young

Posted by timothompson at 08:08 AM

January 12, 2006

New Cat Power Video Shot By Harmony Korine

Two weeks vacation in wintry Pennsylvania and an ensuing onslaught of work-related business (all good) have prevented me from getting my blog flow on. Apologies.

But I was reading the local daily this morning and saw that former buzz auteur director Harmony Korine shot the next video, "Living Proof," for Chan Marshall/Cat Power in Nashville and had to share (Not sure if that's hit the blog wires or not). And guess what--it's a bit racy. Can't wait to see it.

P.S. I like Santino (even with his raging ego). He posted the "Fashion" song. Woo!

Update: Patrick at Matador says the video is "not racy but amazing and will debut on Sunday." Cat Power (Chan Marshall) will be hosting MTV2's Subterranean for the debut.

Update: Video here. One Matador board commenter calls it "heavy handed" and "pretentious." I wouldn't call it racy or amazing. Boring, maybe? Love the song though.

Posted by timothompson at 01:10 PM