Blitzen Trapper for the holidays

These guys are so sweet. They opened for Malkmus on his December warm-up gigs. Hopefully he'll pick them up for the tour.

People say it's the Grateful Dead meets Pavement. Sounds great to meeeeeeeeeeeee!

Also, RIFFSMANSHIP!

mad precious

what a qt

">cute

Happy Birfday Celeste!

more armisen! more malkmus!

">ha


AND NEW MALKMUS IS FUCKING SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET
http://www.matadorrecords.com/matablog/?p=1071
peace
love
understanding
holidays

selling out/buying in

kevin barnes has responded to heat about licensing his tunes for commercials

some of this is kind of contrived and annoying but i think his points are valid and bottom line, i love his songs and by proxy feel i can love him
this comes across in his proving he didn't seel out screed...

and what of darling wes? i think his AT&T spots are kind of cute
but does he need it? integrity? can we be anarchists and still hold down a J-O-B? idle thoughts from an idle capitalist

">wes

">wes



AND
i got the new wu-tang and i think its the SHIT

Its my party and I'll post philosophy jokes if I wanna

françoise hardy

i'm crushin' big time.

old gregg

this is funny to me but the youtube versions are all chopped up

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3745913087736104946&q=old+greg&total=1842&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=9

You Were High

Mad blunted

WHOA!

i went to see Music for 18 musicians performed at the NewEnglandConservatory last night (Steve Reich is in res, he showed up at the end)
its kind of mind blowing up close and in person. they also did 6 pianos.
AND john and i met and shook hands with roger miller of mission of burma. wow.

here's the students practicing 18 musicians
">18
(interestingly there were 20 musicians onstage...maybe cause they're students)

also, peeped Margot at the Wedding, the new Noah Baumbach piece. I was very pleased with this and I don't think he's fallen off post Squid&Whale which seems to be the consensus of most of the reviews I've read. Kinda Interiors-esque, but moves quicker with more Jack Black. Noah said he was Eric Rohmer inspired and so I'ma check that bub out. Anyone seen any Rohmer? Anyone seen Margot? ANYone else out there an Interiors apologist...?

Lists

I think we should start doing lists. 

Here's one:

Please write below websites you check (or would like to check) on a frequent basis. I'm leaving out facebook because it's too much of a given (maybe this is just me). 

Celeste

- theavclub.com and of course theonion.com

- slate.com

- mcsweeneys.net

- theapiary.com

- thesuperficial.com

- mindyephron.blogspot.com

- ucbtheatre.com/ny

Tales of mere existence

Fred Armisen, my heart is yours

I'm Not There?

Has anyone else caught this new Todd Haynes experimental Dylan-biopic?

I saw it last night. It was too long, but I enjoyed the constant Dylan-referencing-madness and there were a few brilliant moments. Malkmus singing "Ballad of a Thin Man" was a highlight. Cate Blanchett is a genius.

Next up is the new Coen brosephs' film. Anyone seen this yet?

Comedy Vids

Check out New York Magazine's list of the 20 intentionally funniest videos.

More Wain

Americans and Gangsters

Americans love gangsters, and so do I. Why? (1) They're the ethnic underdogs--Italians, Irish, Jews, Blacks. (2) They know how to have a good time, and even if they kill people they look good/bad-ass doing it. (3) They make a living exploiting the system, which is always portrayed as corrupt anyway (this ties into the ethnic stuff in complicated ways).

When I saw "American Gangster" I was pissed that the soundtrack did not include any Jay-Z. Jay-Z's new album was only "inspired" by the movie. Obviously I need to read more Entertainment Weekly.

Anyway, the movie was an excellent genre exercise, as is Jay-Z's new album.

If any of you guys see the movie I'd love to discuss the gender-and-or-race politics with you. They were far from subtle.

Also, as an ethicist I should say I am opposed to gangsterism in all its forms. But what is unacceptable in life is often more than agreeable in art.

the swedes are alright

the HIVES have a new album
the black & white album
i've alwyas had a soft spot for the Hives and this does not disappoint
its fun, its rock

">ticktickboom
is the single

you got it all ">wrong

is a good one as well


i saw yo la tengo do the freewheeling ylt the other night
(mostly acoustic set with lots of Q&A and all manner of requests fielded)
it was an excellent evening of sit down rock and roll
they opened with tom courtenay which is a favorite of mine
georgia sang

beautifully

ask the optimist

">optimist
the sound of young america turned this little george saunders piece into something of a extra smug crank yankers
but i laughed
and crank yankers was funny sometimes anyway

Weezy F Baby

KARA WALKER at the whitney

http://nymag.com/arts/art/reviews/40277/

The following is printed on a large wall in the second room of Kara Walker's exhibit at The Whitney Museum of American Art.

The last eight words are the title of the exhibit, which is just incredible, shocking, outrageous, horrific, awesome and terrifying.

“Dear you hypocritical fucking Twerp. Id like to thank you for giving me clothes when I needed them and food when I needed it and for fucking my brains out when my brains needed fucking. I hope that the time we spent in the quarters with my family sleeping nearby quietly ignoring what you proceeded to do to me—what, rather I proceeded to do to you—was worthwhile for you, that you got the stimulation you so needed, Because now That Im Free of that poison you call Life, that stringy, sour, white strand you called Sacred and me savior, that peculiar institution we engaged in because there was no other foreseeable alternative, I am LOST. I am left here alone to recreate My WHOLE HISTORY without the benefit of you, my complement, my enemy, my oppressor, my Love.”

I urge you to check out her work.

What about the voice of Geddy Lee?

Tom Sawyer:



Also, Van Halen:

this is some dopeness

Chomsky vs. Foucault

Revisiting this great set of videos on youtube. Here's the first one. What an amazing confrontation of minds and personalities. Can Chomsky's humanist anarchism withstand Foucault's Nietzschean critique? Get excited.

timbaland is the man

I'm obsessed with this song, especiallly Timbaland's part.

There's no video, but here's the track playing over a picture of M.I.A. and Tim on youtube.

White Denim

Austin band I'm seeing at Fun Fun Fun fest today. Also seeing Of Montreal today and Battles tomorrow. Will report.

happy halloween

">diary of a madman

copped this from the allhiphop halloween vids but...spooky good times, you know.
whatever happened to horrorcore?

and ">this really is the best video

Neil and the death of Oink

So apparently there was this site called oink.cd and it was supposed to be greater than Napster in the early days, but I never heard about it until it was shut down. Did you guys? Was it so awesome? Since the authorities stepped in, their site now has a pretty hilarious way of telling you how to get other music for free from the web, like this little tune here, which I found using Google.

If you don't have a copy of this yet, enjoy the riffsmanship.

So that's where Uma Thurmon's jumpsuit came from

Bruce Lee's final battle. He died while making this movie. Intense! Feel free to skip ahead to when the sweet theme music kicks in and Kareem starts bringing the pain.

J. Erwin's Blog

The keyboardist in my band has a great blog here, where he posts full albums and reviews them. Click on the album name to download the tracks.

byrne-in for you

david byrne's journal on the web
pretty much what you'd expect
so awesome

Before you thought about beginning, you didn't

In preparation for their Nov. 6 show at Toad's, I picked up the new Band of Horses album, Cease to Begin, the other day and was pleasantly surprised by both the songs and the packaging. I guess it's been a while since I bought a CD, so it struck me that this one had a series of CD-sized pictures instead of liner notes, all taken by the band's photographer. If one were so inclined, the set might make a tasteful addition to a wall near you. Hadn't seen anything like it, but it's got to be a necessary step in the post-"In Rainbows" era. Add something to the aesthetic experience or just give me the tunes.

As for the music, "The General Specific" and "Detlef Schrempf" are personal favorites in the South-Carolina-by-way-of-Seattle rock genre. Nice, melodic stuff, some of which is named for this former Sonics stud. If this were NBA Jam, he'd be on fire, with Shawn Kemp hooking up a sweet alley-oop.

Still funny

You don't know where you're going you cross the street you don't know why you did you walk back across the street

Why can't a heterosexual guy tell a heterosexual guy that he thinks his booty is fly?

Foux Da Fa Fa

Kohei Yoshiyuki

I stumbled upon one of Yoshiyuki's photos while I was looking into buying a lomography camera. He takes pictures of couples he finds making out in parks. I'm so glad I discovered them because I find them ethereal and touching. An interesting meta-voyeurism is happening in some of them. You can look at more of his photos here.


A recent NY Times article on Yoshiyuki.

In related news, Lomography is currently working with The White Stripes to make Meg and Jack specific versions of the Diana and Holga cameras. I just bought a Holga and I'm really pumped to see what the photos look like.

and also

bat for lashes - whats a girl to do

iron my fitted shirt, dust off my japanese cigarette case

cause tonight outside is all lit up.
in honor of the blog
in honor of rock 'n' roll
in honor of some good times
I'm seein Spoon tonight!
awesome

the band in question on SNL



You got Yr. Cherry Bomb

Smog / Monk

Rock Bottom Riser. Live w/Joanna Newsom.

and

Lulu's Back in Town.

Vintage Britney Spears

Britney used to be a force of nature.

Check out her bod and her moves in this video.

She was SO HOT!

I can't believe what's happened to her. Gimme More is maybe the laziest pop song ever written - thoughts? Can anyone think of a lazier one? Let's limit this to artists who make appearances at the top of the pop charts... meaning citing the band Justin Case, or the elder Duff sister does not count.

Current Britney makes me really upset, and almost want to take back the days when I was a superfan.

And for a hot minute I thought she really was going to have a solid comeback. I was SO WRONG!

Stephen Colbert is a God Among Men

He wrote Maureen Dowd's column today.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/opinion/14dowd.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

In (Fucking) Rainbows

Thoughts? Feelings? Discuss?

Did anyone pay > 0 for it?

Iron & Wine

Iron & Wine's new album The Shephard's Dog is really great.

I associate Iron & Wine with putting me to sleep, but this album has me awake and listening.

I feel just like a child

Last night I saw hippie love god Devendra Banhart at La Zona Rosa in Austin. (No, I didn't wear a dress. Or did I?)

He's been calling his band "Spiritual bonerz" (The z is silent--as he put it: "Its an endless z, therefore silent") but last night they were called both "Sorry we're pancakes" and "The fat boys."

The show was generally great and occasionally transcendent. He started the show soft and very gradually began to melt face. Everyone sang, and he gave a lot of room for folks in his band to play their own songs, some of which were excellent, others not so much. They hit a lot of Santana and Doors-type grooves, and there were a couple harder rocking tunes that blew me away. If anyone in the band was tripping balls (likely), they didn't let it affect their performance.

He did let someone in the audience come up and play a song--"Has anyone here written a song recently they want to share?" It was a cute gesture. Of course the song sucked, but whatevs.

Anyway, if any of y'all haven't checked out Devendra, I recommend giving him a fair shake. His albums are sprawling, and there's always a lot of throw-aways, but his songwriting is more clever than peeps generally give him credit for.

Look at this

and

this.

without much convincing...i was suede

this is old news but i'm listening to a lot of suede lately 
(or the london suede which sounds a bit more sheik if that's possible)
a friend of mine recently made fun of me for how much of a sucker i am for power pop
but if you are similar harken back to the early 90s with me
this and this are fun

i'd say they are SO 90s but rock videos really haven't changed at all since the promos of the 60s
for every 'fell in love with a girl' there are about a thousand bands fakin' the funk in a white room
(ie last strokes video...all strokes videos...the strokes...haha just playin strokes, you know i love you)

what's really unique is the band's dalliance with androgeny!
of course oasis blew up, they did this just less...faggy


i am psyched for darjeeling but also i fear this may be the breaking point at which i finally tire of the quirky-as-fuck world of wes anderson
i was almost groaing watching the trailer
even if i'm disappointed it will likely be in the manner that i think 'walking in your footsteps' is tiresome.  that is to say, still totally enjoyable and awesome by any other standard.

(on a mostly unrelated tip i believed i could not hate the outkast movie idlewild but thought that truly sucked...thoughts? or did it just suck?)

Wain etc.

Today Youtube featured the newest episode of David Wain's internet TV show, Wainy Days. Its funny, but some of the earlier episodes were better. This one features Rob Corddry doing his best David Wain impression.

Related recommendations: The Ten (obvs), Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story (especially the DVD extras).

Unrelated recommendations: The Mike Leigh movie "Naked" (especially the Criterion DVD extras), the most recent Pharoahe Monch record, "Desire" (taste).

Anyone seen the new Wes Anderson movie yet? Anyone excited?

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Daft Punk related recs:

1. my desktop background



2. the band Justice (I'll link it later)

3. Justice's music video for D.A.N.C.E.

Cold blooded clarity

For the past week I've been obsessed with this Smog (Bill Callahan) song called "Cold Blooded Old Times."

Here's a video clip of Callahan and Smog playing it at Emo's in Austin. The quality of the audio is excellent.

My current band is covering this song. For a long time I didn't know where it came from, and referred to it as, "that song with the Sister Ray jam at the end." (We generally jam the shit out of the G/G7 chord for a good 8 minutes at the end, and I usually play the song with mallets.)

Along with the clips of Smog on Youtube, I recommend checking out Bill Callahan's new(est) record, called "Woke on a Whaleheart."

Also, Callahan is dating Joanna Newsom. Add that to your list of power-couples-of-coolness.

These little guys can mellow-rock with the big boys

To assuage your burning anticipation of the new Radiohead album, I recommend you check out this little band from Marblehead called Gears. The lead singer/songwriter/drum programmer used to play in a band called Purpl Kool-Aidwith my cousin when they were in middle and high school. He's gotten much more mature since then.

These tunes--especially "Ask Me Questions"--sound like they were written by a younger version of the older Jeff Tweedy. I mean old as in age, not school. These guys approach songwriting so differently than I would have as a high schooler. My approach was much more about having a chord progression I could jam on long enough to bend my E-string into the stratosphere. These kids use glockenspiel!

P.S. Posting from work=bonus points!

INSERT PROLONGED SCREAM HERE

.THERE IS A NEW RADIOHEAD ALBUM COMING OUT IN TEN DAYS.

.THERE IS NO FEELING LIKE THE ANTICIPATION OF A NEW RADIOHEAD ALBUM - THIS IS MY RECOMMENDATION FOR THIS POST.

.GET REALLY FUCKING EXCITED ABOUT IN RAINBOWS.

.THIS IS LOVE.

Also check out what you can get for 80 big ones:



I know what I want for my birthday.

Shooter

(Combining junk-cultural phenomena with the same name, part 1)

Unfortunately, you might know that "Shooter" was that shitacular political-action-thriller starring everyone's favorite Wahlberg, Danny Glover, and Elias Koteas (aka Casey Jones). (Aside: what happened to Danny Glover? Did he have a stroke or something? His lisp in this movie is unbearable.) Perhaps more fortunately, you might have also heard the Lil Wayne song of the same name, from his album The Carter II, featuring the shitacular spawn of Alan Thicke singing his little soulful blue eyes out.

So, in this world, there are two Shooters. But--now dig this big crux--there are possible worlds where there's only ONE Shooter. That's right, one single shitacular Shooter, the fusion of these two phenomena into one. What's it like? Here's one possibility, called Shooter*:

Shooter* is a feature-length hip-hop musical. A fusion of Lil Wayne and Mark Wahlberg--let's call him Mark Wayne, the most talented actor/rapper imaginable--is set up to be a fall-guy by a fusion of Robin Thicke and Danny Glover--let's call him Danny Thicke. Mark Wayne raps all his lines, and Danny Thicke sings with a terrible lisp: "His hands up / his hands up / we want him with his hands up / this shooter". Elias Koteas is still there, but this time he's fused with some of the hot bitches from the Shooter video in our world, so he looks pretty crazy. The plot twists and turns, and there's lots of action sequences and freestyles....

Etc. etc.

Please suggest other possibilities for fusion.

Representing the hustle,
Dave

Obsessfest 2007

V-lad brings up a good point about the way that traditional print pubs process new media trends. It's all about nailing it down to key terms, no matter how absurd. Blogosphere anyone? Let's phenomenize this shit to pieces! I spent a good deal of time mumbling on paper about what new media can "do" or "say" or any other simplistic action verbs from your favorite first-year foreign language textbook (for me, "Ven Conmigo!"). I came up a little wanting for inspiration but with plenty of questions.

For example, I've been thinking about obsessions. Can obsessions happen in the same way today, when you can't even put a poster on your wall and sing to it like Rivers in the garage without someone flaming you on your myspace profile for your "gay" taste in music? Maybe you can more than ever, like print out your own shitty looking Peter Criss pinup and put your finesse moves on that sonofabitch as you rock out to the great tunes you taped off the radio (ahem--I mean downloaded on iTunes [you would have gotten them illegally but mom and dad didn't want to risk the lawsuit. "Sunk cost," they said and handed over the Visa]). But at least you made the poster, right? You were responsible for its creation, in spite of it being mediated through whatever Google Images came up with and Photoshop's online help documentation.

But anyway, the obsessions. Even after the teen years, you get distracted looking for the next great thing. To quote Fall Out Boy, "This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race". All in all maybe I'm just dizzy. But I have found it rewarding to get deeply, deeply into stuff in my life, now and back then, and I'm going to keep trying it out.

Next time I'll suggest something.

so mumblecore

  Recently I read a couple pieces in the NYTimes (on I think consecutive weekends) about young independent filmmakers.  I was intrigued because I like films and I like to be aware of what is happening in the young/indie scenes and I had never heard of any of these fools.  Also the articles used funny terms like "mumblecore" and "slackavetes" to describe commonalities amongst the loose grouping.  All the filmmakers were loathe to be so categorized even though they sort of started it.  My feelings of being left out grew and I was anxious to see some of the source material so I could say "meh, good not great".  
  Cut-to: walking through Harvard sq. to buy coffee and the Brattle theatre has a big Hannah Takes the Stairs poster with all kinds of exclusive engagement nonsense plastered all over it.  Being as my interest was already picqued I totally fell for it and after a week of working and one thwarted attempt (thanks Benno) I peeped it out.  
  As I say I did not want to like a film that fell into the "mumblecore" movement.  I guess they use this term because the characters talk a lot but not in a Woody Allen-stylee, it has more of a "holy shit that's retarded but I have been in some situations that turn out about that astute" feel.  And so I pretty much summed-up why I ended up liking Hannah.  Every painful exchange of late-twenties ennui extends beyond the joke, through the self-importance and into a weirdly sympathetic moment.  I am reminded (slightly) of Todd Solondz in the quickly shifting sympathies.  (IE he's making fun of them oh no wait he's one of them)  Or, and I really didn't want to give them this, a little bit of Cassavetes at least where the length of conversations is concerned.  Cassavetes hits hard because so many scenes play out beyond the lines that would easily define his characters and they get downright awkward.  There's a lot of this in Hannah.  Maybe this plays especially well to me because I am inclined to be above the dilemmas (my job sucks, i wanna be an artist, i'm romantically indecisive) but in the beats after these dilemmas are expressed I realize that I'm not and then what sounds terse 
and stupid becomes pathetic but real.  It's real, it's some real shit.  Wow, so I kind of hate this review/
myself for thinking this way about a movie but I must cop to thiking it was pretty well-done.  
AND I know also that I'm a total sucker for a film that was made cheap/looks cheap/and everybody that's in it gets co-writing credit.  
  On that tip!  I was riding the T home from seeing Yo la Tengo do the Sounds of Science last night 
(maybe i'll write some more about that sometime soon, it was AWESOME) and this scruffy looking youth that I was sitting next to leaned over and said "I know this 
might sound weird but were you in the Nincompoops?"  HAHA  FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME
(he was a friend of Derek Wilson, the brother of one of my co-filmmakers, Andrew/"Norm")

Stalking Writers

One of my favorite things of all time is to read Wikipedia and IMDB.com entries about TV Show writers I admire. I call it "research." A few months ago, I was reading about Mindy Kaling, who plays Kelly Kapoor on the American version of The Office, when I discovered she writes AND acts on probably the funniest show on television. She also keeps a tremendous blog: mindyephron.blogspot.com. Her tone is really girly, and it's hard to imagine her writing lines for anyone but Kelly, yet she managed to write the very funny The Dundies episode from Season 1.* My general dislike of female comediens does not extend to smart, hilarious ladies like Mindy. She went to Dartmouth and wrote a two women play after graduating called Matt and Ben (Damon and Affleck respectively). From there, she was recruited to write for The Office. She's livin' the dream - specifically, my dream. I also like the premise of her blog. The entries are simple, short, and really fun to read. The title is Things I've Bought That I Love, and her entries detail exactly that. Sure, the conceit is pretty superficial and materialistic, but then again, I'm from LA, so who am I to judge?

- Celeste

*EDIT: Apparently The Dundies were from Season 2. I watched both seasons in the span of oh, 4 days, so I have no concept of Seasonage.

What hoods?

(New Haven, Boston, Austin.)

The blog is up and running! And since Austin is titularly represented (Spoon), I'm going to devote my first post to sharing this link from the Austinist.

Just a taste (pun intended) of Austin culture.