March 2008
10 posts
I'm talking to you, Mr. Pibb.
Dr. Pepper has announced that it will give away one free can of….itself…to everyone in America if Axl Rose releases Chinese Democracy (15 years in the making) during calendar year 2008. I’m calling on some brave soft drink company, snack provider, or other multinational corporation to call on me to release my new album (less than 1 year in the making) and to provide me and my...
plays well on a Kodak 4600
This has been a weird week for record releases. First, The Raconteurs announce that they will be releasing Consolers of the Lonely next week. Then, Gnarls Barkley announce on Tuesday that they’ve moved the release of their latest, The Odd Couple, from April 8 to that day. Now today comes word that Elvis Costello will be releasing Momofuku on April 22. Instead of the release date, though,...
Secret Show: Revealed
As some of you (probably all of you who read this) know, last night was the much vaunted “Secret Show.” For those who don’t know, it was held at Cafe Zing inside Porter Square Books in Cambridge. Thanks to Mark Ostow for setting the whole thing up. Also, great thanks to those who came out to my very first (intentionally) secret show. My set list decisions were based, out of...
a.k.a The Saboteurs
In case you haven’t heard, The Raconteurs announced yesterday that they’re releasing a new record…next week. I’m 100% for this plan: too much importance and power is granted to the music media prior to a record’s release. Though they are somewhat subject to the guiding hand of the label’s latest press materials (how many stories mentioned Ryan Adams’...
stray thoughts
Somewhere, ol’ Willie Weir is celebrating. Meanwhile, Ryan Adams has entered the blogging fray. In the last day alone, he’s written about string theory, Anne Frank, and the story behind “Two Hearts.” Get there quick, though: several posts have already mysteriously disappeared…. And finally, in prostitution news, New York Magazine reports that Kristen, a.k.a. Ashley...
I'll take Common Bonds for $400.
Do I regularly read the blog of record-winning Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings on a daily or near-daily basis? I’m not saying. What I will say, though, is that I found it both interesting and germane to this blog (if limits of germaneness exist here) when Ken posted that he went to high school with Kathleen Edwards. How did a Washingtonian and an Ontarian attend high school together? ...
Back In Time
A note about the end of yesterday’s post: I stumbled across this article today in which British music critic John Harris asks where Gillian Welch has disappeared to. He laments the nearly unbearable amount of time that has passed since a new Gillian Welch album last hit stores. And this article was written almost a year ago. For the record, Gillian’s last album, Soul Journey, was...
’Cause punk rock was too hard to sing
This post over at the Aquarium Drunkard blog about the rise and fall of alt-country is interesting. It’s a topic that probably deserves further analysis: maybe No Depression will devote some its final issue to the details. I’ve never considered Strangers Almanac such a signpost album before, but it fits the narrative constructed here. The contention that Ryan Adams inhabited the...
in brief
Thought: The Swell Season (a.k.a. the Once soundtrack) is the album people wanted Damien Rice to make after O. Ryan Adams’ “Elizabeth, You Were Born To Play That Part” also takes its cues from Damien Rice, at least as far as the coda is concerned.
The Whiter Album
I started thinking about this Sunday night when, while listening to an iPod in shuffle mode, “Revolution 1” came on (an after having heard “Piggies” under the same circumstances on Friday). Many people, including producer George Martin, have expressed the sentiment that The Beatles, a.k.a. The White Album, would have been stronger as a single album instead of a double. ...
