If you’ve already given up on the week at this early juncture as I have, and you’re weighing your options for this Friday night, heading out to Spaceland for The Parson Red Heads’ EP Release show should be at the top of the list. Not only are you in store for an assuredly impressive performance by the local carrot-topped clerics, but also playing are Austinites by-way-of San Francisco, Monahans. Mixing everything you (should) like about Springsteen, Stone Roses, and Jesus & Mary Chain, Monahans are able to remind us that qualitative adjectives like ‘ambient’ and ‘tranquil’ are not antithetical to rock & roll. To learn that their 2007 release, Low Pining, was almost an entirely instrumental endeavor is not surprising, as most songs have a very bottom-up structural feel to them, and while I’m glad that lyrics were ultimately included, the process clearly served them well. Make sure to catch their set this Friday.
You can hear the whole album HERE and buy it too!
Scott’s got a great review of The Heavy’s new album, Great Vengeance Furious Fire, here and I just wanted to drop a little reminder that they are in town tonight and tomorrow. Scott and I plan on venturing out to Cinespace (a chill just went up my spine as I typed that, god I hate that place) tonight to check out their Curtis Mayfield come Spencer Davis Group funk. If you’re busy tonight there is always Wednesday at Bordello, though it is some Playboy thing that you got to rsvp to.
Judging from the photos, it looks as though The Heavy put on a great show, though the lack of a live horn section is a bit suspect. We shall see.
MP3: The Heavy - Colleen
If you’ve a got a little time, watch/listen to these three panels from the recent EcomSM Conference, especially the dull Music panel followed by the highly engaging Newspaper panel. Both industries are struggling to find their place in the digital world where they are surrounded by smarter faster start ups that are redistributing and monetizing their original content, all the while these start ups are not spending any money themselves to produce any content of their own. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that the cost of producing music or news with the advent of new technology is close to null. Time and expertise (both of which more times than not equate quality) will always cost something. The question is how do you monetize that content while distributing it digitally for free.
For those of you who used your old porn Yahoo email address (I know you still got one) to get your NIN The Slip downoad link, you might experience a real lag in getting your email with the download link (I signed up at theslip.nin.com around 10am this morning and at the time of writing this, 6:30pm I have yet to receive my email). It’s not Trent’s fault, it’s Yahoo’s. Yahoo’s mail servers regularly deny incoming mail requests multiple times “in an effort to fight spam” before eventually accepting an incoming mail request, sometimes hours or days later. Yahoo also states that their mail servers may deferral mail if they are “seeing unusual traffic” from a server…hmm, like when a huge band gives away it’s new album for free in an email with a download link.
So the moral here is use a non-Yahoo email account to get your Slip on.
I had the intention of getting something up on Olympia, WA’s The Old Haunts before their show last night in San Pedro at The Attic (upstairs of La Conga), but spent way more time at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books than I expected. No matter, as there are still two opportunities to see The Old Haunts in Los Angeles this week - tonight at The Echo with The Teenagers and on Monday at The Smell.
The Old Haunts are Craig Extine (vocals and guitar), Scott Seckington (bass) and Tobi Vail (drums) who formerly drummed for Bikini Kill and is the latest edition to the band. Having just released their 3rd full length, Poisonous Times, on the Kill Rock Stars label, The Old Haunts are currently in the first week of their month long US tour in support of their new release. In the tradition of other former Pacific Northwest stalwarts - Dead Moon, The Sonics and The Wipers - The Old Haunts with the release of Poisonous Times, maintain their under-produced quirky-spirited janglely garage rock of their prior releases.
Check out the first track off Poisonous Times, called “Volatile” (mp3).
Poisonous Times is out now, get it from: Insound CD (MP3) | Amazon CD
Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul is arguably one of Redding’s best albums, if not one of soul music’s best. It presents a cohesion beyond the usual collection of singles and b-sides common of the time, and it also set the stage for what would become his most recognizable and influential yet ultimately tragic song, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay”. In many ways Otis Blue is the last Otis Redding album, not technically as there’s his duet album with Carla Thomas and the posthumous Dock of The Bay, but in terms of an album that’s Otis through and through, not to mention proof of what could have been to come from the young Georgian, this is the one.
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heav·y; Of great intensity, Having great power or force, Indulging to a great degree, Of great significance or profundity…
Not since the The Clash has a band’s name been as succinct and appropriate as The Heavy. These four guys and one gal hailing from the town of Bath (UK) have an arsenal of sweet baadasssss songs that transport you back to a time when blow was big, hair was bigger and Dracula was black. However you slice, dice, cut or sort it, their album Great Vengeance and Furious Fire, released in the UK last year and here in the states just a few weeks ago, is one goddamn heavy piece of work.
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