Here’s an interesting entry on Rolling Stone’s blog about some vinyl reissues, from Radiohead’s early albums to Pet Sounds. Seems the only rising trend in the industry is vinyl. But unfortunately it looks like the industry is jacking the cost of the records to help heal its wounds, rather than make the records affordable to everyone and selling in quantity! Come on! Learn lessons. What do you think about the $20-$30 price tag?
Anyway, it’s nice to see the vinyl thing making its way back! What’s your favorite record?
…as The Eagles, Journey, and Garth Brooks, and is releasing their next album, due out in the fall, exclusively through evil empire and one of the biggest factors in our nation’s decline…WAL-MART! Doesn’t it just make you feel dirty? As much as I love AC/DC, I say boycott the album…or steal it!
Awful choice by AC/DC’s management. Wal-Mart is the antithesis of rock and roll, if you ask me. Talk about dirty deeds done dirt cheap! Thoughts? Anyone got devil’s advocate here?
Wow! Dylan isn’t one to talk much about anything, much less politics…at least since the early-60s when he unwillingly became the ‘voice of his generation’…and completely sabotaged it by the mid-60s. Well, Dylan had a lot of good things to say about Democratic Presidential nominee, Barack Obama, when he spoke to the London Times recently. Here’s how it went:
“Poverty is demoralising. You can’t expect people to have the virtue of purity when they are poor. But we’ve got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up…Barack Obama. He’s redefining what a politician is, so we’ll have to see how things play out. Am I hopeful? Yes, I’m hopeful that things might change. Some things are going to have to.”
My thoughts exactly, Bob!
Well, I’ve got some good news and bad news but still very news-worthy items that came to light today…
Let’s start with the bad. YES has cancelled their 40th Anniversary tour slated for this summer due to Jon Anderson’s respiratory issues which he was hospitalized for last month. Read the press release here. It’s good to hear that it’s preventative more than anything. Have a respiratory-realxing summer, Jon. We love ya! Dig this for now…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jn_aus63GE&hl=en]
And for the good news, Phish songwriter Tom Marshall was adding a lot more speculation to the recent Phish reunion possiblity rumours. Read Tom’s interview here. So till then, dig this…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIHNR7qGiHw&hl=en]
OK, maybe not. But I had to post this link to Rolling Stone because a lot of us really like Phish, despite the rest of the music world’s opinions. Sod off, snooty buggers! I’d be happy to see them rock it again very soon!
Lookin’ good, Trey!
I’ve already told you about how great this band is and how excellent the album is… now Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears’ Flight of the Knife album is the editor’s choice at iTunes and it’s going for a mere $5.99 this week only, so get it now, and support killer new music! Do yourself a favor…
Think Queen meets Sparks meets Alice Cooper meets ELO meets Ben Folds meets your mom! Dig.
Stephen Malkmus is the big daddy here, and a lot of bands I haven’t heard yet. It’s always worth the bike ride down with Paul, regardless of the over-crowdedness!
Just wanted to give you some info about one of my favorite newer bands who knows how to bring it live, Howlin’ Rain. The Crowes and Howlin’ Rain sounds like an amazing ticket to me! Check ‘em out if you get a chance. Here’s the press release:
Greetings all,
Just a heads up that SF psych rockers Howlin Rain will be joining the Black Crowes for two legs of their fall 2008 tour this September and October (scroll down for complete dates) and have confirmed an appearance at Bonnaroo for Friday, June 13 @ 1:30AM (technically SAT, June 14). Featuring Comets on Fire co-founder and lead singer Ethan Miller and Drunk Horse’s Joel Robinow, the band has been touring for their acclaimed Birdman/American release, Magnificent Fiend, and will be hitting the UK and Europe in May for a series of dates and festivals, including All Tomorrows Parties. Check out Howlin Rain live here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikr8OovhsNs&feature=related or listen at www.myspace.com/howlinrain
RECENT UK PRESS FOR THE BAND:
“�an impeccably pitched, retro-rock joy.” - The Guardian 4 stars (out of 5)
“Freed from the side project straitjacket Miller has pushed Howlin Rain to the forefront of the West Coast cosmic rock pulpit, right alongside his former outfit.”
- Uncut 4 stars (out of 5)
Their sun-baked, lyrically feverish chooglin’ is more textured and melodic on these addictive new jams�”- Mojo 4 stars (out of 5)
Click on through for tour dates with and without the Crowes…
So I’ve had one of my Best Band features published elsewhere on this here web which extends the whole world wide. The site is called Blog Critics and I’ll be regularly writing pieces for them, but for now I just have one lonely little unpopular piece about a band that the general public doesn’t know sitting over there wishing it would get some clicks. So do it (and me) a favor and click on over there and give ‘er a read and better still, leave some glowing comments!
So Saturday is Record Store Day and I guess the reason we’re starting to celebrate it is because of the death of the music industry as we know it. I gotta say I look back on the record store days as pretty sweet. Me and my sister used to go to the local record store (at the Shoppes) and see all these cool records which we weren’t yet familiar, when I was around 9-10 years old. I always remember a Dirty Deeds poster and wondering why all the peoples’ eyes were blacked-out, and a life-size Ringo Starr cardboard cutout in a police uniform. But at that age we were mainly going there to get to the arcade in the back of the store, where I honed my Donkey Kong skills as often as I could.
Fast forward a year or two after Back In Black opened my eyes to rock ‘n roll, and I’m going to the Record Bar at the mall almost religiously and ordering records from the record club…getting 10-12 records at a time in a cardboard box in the mail is about as cool as life gets.
Then a few years later in high school, how many trips did I make to Clifton from the burbs of Cincinnati to visit Wizzards Records to load up on cheap used albums? Then there’s all the stores I’ve loved before… Everybody’s Records, Mole’s, Used Kids, Recycle, and a couple I’ve visited where I live now… Academy Annex in Williamsburg and that joint on Bleecker Street. I’ve gotten the best deals most recently though at NYC street fairs and the last WFMU Record Fair.
So get out there Saturday and find your local record store and grab yourself some tasty vinyl. Or if you don’t have a turntable, seek a cheap one out. Shit, you could even get one of those USB Ion tables, if you don’t have a proper receiver. Anyway, here’s a couple other things…
- Listen to a killer vinyl rip (via Muxtape) , of Neil Young’s Time Fades Away, and then find yourself a vinyl copy of it at your local shop
- Get your free download of the new Gnarls Barkley! The catch…it’s backwards.
- More talk about classic rock live albums at Hidden Track
- Can you think of any other bands that peaked too soon? I’m thinking The Specials.
- You absolutely have to see and hear David Byrne doing his rendition of Paul Simon’s I Know What I Know, which he just performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (where I was married) for the recent Paul Simon Graceland tribute, Under African Skies.
- Central Park Summerstage‘s calendar is up.
Since I started posting Rock Trivia questions from the original 1984 Pressman Toy Corporations’s excellent rock & roll board-game, aptly-titled Rock Trivia, I have been in contact with the games creator Ian Liberman, who is a gentleman and a rocker. Well, Ian has an interest, and so do I, of updating the classic game that my sister and I have wasted hundreds of hours playing since 1984…and correcting spelling errors, I might add (sorry Ian, you know it’s true though!). But spelling errors couldn’t take away from the unadulterated and unabashed fun of Rock Trivia. I think a big part of its appeal was in the content of the questions. You could be trying to answer a question about Bill Haley and His Comets one minute and then be asking a question about Roxy Music shortly after getting the Bill Haley question wrong.
That said, in order for Ian to update Rock Trivia for a new era that is breathing life back into rock & roll and into trivial things, he needs some serious investors to help him out. So if you dig rock like we do and have lots of money, you can contact Ian at the email address, ianlib at rogers dot com. You can also reply in comments and I can get ya’ll in touch. Sound good? Thanks for hearing our plea.
