• Microsoft has unveiled its Joy Division Zune player. It’s, uh… hmm. Err… wow.

• The KEXP 2008 Summer Pledge Drive is on! Stealth readers in cubicles, show your cubicular love! Get on the horn at (206) 903-5397, keep your voice down when the boss strolls by, and make your pledge. You’ll be surprised at how good it feels to be involved. Plus, according to my own quasi-scientific survey (I even used a clipboard) this week out by our parking lot, there are strong indications that KEXP members get more dates. Some sort of “Member Pheromone” thing. Pretty cool, huh?

• Who doesn’t love Eels? Thanks to You Ain’t No Picasso for this nifty mp3, as Eels cover Missy Elliot’s “Get Ur Freak On.” Try singing along to it as “get ur pledge on — works great! You should hear DJ Rachel do it!

• Okkervil River just added a whole bunch of dates to their fall tour; they’ll hit Seattle on September 17th at the Showbox (tix on sale today). Pretty big venue… hmm. Wonder how so many listeners in these parts heard and then grew to adore the band? Must be all that play they get on commercial radio. Not! It’s KEXP, silly — Okkervil River is yet another band championed by the station where the music matters. Pledge now!

• With his new album Beautiful Lie now out, Ed Harcourt is hitting the road opening for… the Gutter Twins? Ed’s even joining them on guitar for their Lollapalooza set in August. Tripwire has all the dates. Hopefully they won’t stomp on his gorgeous troubadorial sensibilities. What’s next, David Garza joining Queens of the Stone Age? (Actually I’d love to hear the stoner bulldozer that is Queens take on “Disco Ball”… here’s to unlikely pairings and uncharted territories!)

• Big week for birthdays. Some highlights: Kim Deal of the Breeders/Pixies turns 47, Ed Simons of the Chemical Brothers clocks in at 38, Bun E. Carlos of Cheap Trick makes it safely (dude smokes like a chimney!) to 57, and Nancy Sinatra glides in to a classy 68. Our KEXP personal shoppers suggest you make a pledge and then forward your supercool KEXP “Atomic Tee” thank you gift to any of the above lucky recipients. Can you image the karma you would reap with such a deed? (And don’t forget those membership pheromones — those are for you, KEXP Member-To-Be, and non-transferable.

• Rascal Flatts to appear in the new Hannah Montana movie. KEXP plays neither of those artists. Another great reason to pledge!

• Aren’t you glad you don’t live in Beaumont, Texas? That was written assuming, of course, that no current KEXP listeners do live in Beaumont, Texas. If you do, prove it — pledge! Get a crow-eating apology right here in this space during next Thursday’s “Stealth Links” segment. Plus… pheromones. Come on, you’ll own Beaumont!

• Anti-Emo Riots in Mexico? Morrissey… intervene!

• Bo Diddley (1928-2008). He will be missed.

]]> http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2008/06/05/news-round-up-stealth-links-for-cubicles-3/feed/ 0 http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2008/06/03/become-a-kexp-member-show-your-midday-show-love/ http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2008/06/03/become-a-kexp-member-show-your-midday-show-love/#comments Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:17:32 +0000 Spike, KEXP http://blog.kexp.org/blog/?p=6077

^{The Shackeltons return to Seattle for Bumbershoot
photo by Hilary Harris}

• More acts have just been announced for the 38th annual Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival. Added to the three-day Seattle event on Labor Day Weekend are some very recognizable names to KEXP listeners: Minus the Bear, Battles, Sondre Lerche, The Whigs, Thao with The Get Down Stay Down, Langhorne Slim, These Arms Are Snakes, The Blakes, Mark Pickerel & His Praying Hands, Throw Me The Statue, Howlin Rain, The Shackeltons, Star Anna, West Indian Girl, Ravens & Chimes, The Hands, Joshua Morrison, and a whole bunch more, including Monotonix — oh, Bumbershoot, I hope your liability insurance is up to date!
  
  If you purchase tickets now, you can take advantage of the Bumbershoot Insider Deal, which for a limited time, you pay only $25 for day specific tickets — that’s 38% off of the full price! The deal starts today and ends when tickets run out. Purchase tickets here and use promo code 08-KEXP.

  Complete festival details can be found at bumbershoot.org.

• Next Tuesday, Radiohead: The Best Of comes out in the U.S. on the band’s former label, Capitol/EMI. Yes, this would be the collection the band wasn’t involved in assembling; in fact, Yorke and Co. are taking great pains to disavow the release and to discourage loyal fans from even buying it. Not to cross ‘em or anything… but for the curious, here’s the tracklisting. (Quadruple vinyl? Yow.)

• Sigur Ros‘ newest, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, comes out stateside on June 24th. Next Monday, since you’ll have some free cash by observing the Thom Edict and not buying the Radiohead best-of, pop on over to the Sigur Ros website to preorder an uber-lavish limited edition of this CD. It’ll get you a “making-of” book as well as a bonus DVD. All pre-orders get linked to a digital version of the album prior to the street date as well … so no excuses for downloading, kids! The band is offering new track “Gobbledigook” as a free download in advance of the release.

• Slick Rick fans of the world, unite and take over! He got a pardon from the Governer of New York. So he shot some people… we all lose our temper at times, right?

• Dan Deacon, championed endlessly here in the KEXP Blogroom by our boss Jim, is the subject of a nice long interview about his upcoming Carpark release over at Pitchfork. Probing questions include the potentially inflammatory “What is your relationship with the word ‘wacky’?”. Aaah, Pitchfork: the 60 Minutes of Indie Rock!

• You can love KISS guitarist Ace Frehley ironically, or you can love him sincerely and without regard for social stigma. Either way, many people love Ace Frehley, and that’s why this is pretty cool. Would Bright Eyes do this? I think not.

• Smashing Pumpkins will be touring to celebrate their 20 year anniversary, according to the band’s website. The band has let it be known that there will be “special guests” appearing at many of the shows. Possibly some of the original band members, given the occasion? Nah, probably just Courtney Love.

• Nick Cave would like to have a semi-naked statue of himself, on horseback, erected in his hometown. Wouldn’t we all?

• Hits Are For Squares, the new Sonic Youth best-of compilation, will be out June 9th. You’ll have to stop by Starbucks to get it though, because that’s where the band is making it exclusively available. NME has the full tracklist, along with a list of who picked each song. Want to find out what Beck’s favorite Sonic Youth song is? How about Allison Anders, Portia de Rossi, Diablo Cody or David Cross? Now you can!

• M83 will be in Seattle to play at Neumo’s this weekend; to whet your appetites for the show, here’s a Maps remix of “We Own The Sky” available for free download. Thanks to Tripwire for the tip.

• After a bit of imbibing, David Byrne took a spill while biking home in New York City. Gothamist reports the story, which is also revealed on the Talking Head’s own blog. Fortunately, with “no help from the NYPD” Byrne was able to dust himself off, lift his bike, get his cracked ribs checked out, and presumably lay off the big suits.

• Co-founded by The Edge, Music Rising, a campaign to replace musician’s instruments lost or destroyed in the Gulf Region hurricanes, is presenting the “Icons of Music” sale on Saturday, May 31, taking place at The Hard Rock Cafe Times Square. Get your eBid paddles ready! This comes from the organization’s press release:
  

  This auction features an array of rare items featuring property from U2’s The Edge and other band members from this historic group. Property includes Slash concert used Gibson guitar for his first public appearance with “Velvet Revolver” at The Roxy, Jim Morrison handwritten poem, Bob Dylan concert used guitar, Ronnie Wood Handwritten Lyrics, Kurt Cobain Early Guitar with Photographs, Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit” MTV Music Award, Cliff Burton Concert Used bass Guitar from “Metallica”, Set of four early collarless suits from The Beatles, Frank Zappa original hand drawn painting, Bob Dylan handwritten lyrics, Green Day custom made prototype Gibson used by Billie Joe, Miles Davis owned and used trumpet, Nine Inch Nails Trent Reznor custom played Gibson, Patti Smith original hand drawn self portrait, Paul McCartney early signed vintage Hofner Bass, Slash’s trademark Tophat signed with photo of him wearing the hat in concert, early Pete Townshend The Who concert played guitar, and many more legendary artifacts…

• Does It Offend You, Yeah? are Devo fans. Props! Here’s their cover of “Whip It”, recorded live.

• Rivers Cuomo of Weezer is writing a song on YouTube, and he wants to collaborate with you.

• “Romance is the douche of the bourgeoisie.” Can David Berman of Silver Jews write moving verse or what? Thanks to Stereogum for that plaque-worthy quote, and for “Strange Victory, Strange Defeat”, an MP3 from the band’s upcoming CD Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea. Here it is:
  

• “The Chinese Democracy of Indie Rock”? Does this mean Mr. Gibbard wil be getting corn-rows?

• If you enjoyed Okkervil River’s The Stage Names, here’s some good news for you. According to bandleader Will Sheff, part two - The Stand Ins - now has a release date of September 9th!

• Sasquatch Time! Off to load the cooler. Play safe this weekend, everyone.

]]> http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2008/05/22/music-news-stealth-links-for-cubicles/feed/ 1 http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2008/05/20/the-33-13-odyssey-its-only-rock-n-rimbaud-but-i-like-it/ http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2008/05/20/the-33-13-odyssey-its-only-rock-n-rimbaud-but-i-like-it/#comments Tue, 20 May 2008 15:56:07 +0000 Spike, KEXP http://blog.kexp.org/blog/?p=5893

33 1/3 is a series of pocket-sized books, each volume focusing on a single album. This is the twelfth installment of one person’s quest to read all 57 (and counting) of these things, and to scribble some impressions of each. As always, please keep in mind that it’s just one opinion, often skewed, and somewhat ill-informed. Accuracy is ensured as time permits. For the full introduction, check out the first installment and read the others here. On to the demi-tomes!

Part 15 of 57: Horses by Philip Shaw (#55 in the series)

Horses, released in 1975, is Patti Smith’s debut album. U.K. musician and University professor Philip Shaw traces not only the history and making of the songs on the album, but gives a sketch of Smith’s personal history as well; pretty crucial, as this is one of those records that isn’t simply a collection of great rock songs, but also very much about context. Horses brought elements of literature into rock in a way that few albums (and even fewer artists) had done before. After all, how many artists are as equally turned on by the poetry of William Blake and Arthur Rimbaud as they are by the greasy, gutbucket riffing of Keith Richards? Not many. At least, not many who manage to blend those influences into something altogether new and inspiring, as Patti Smith did with her debut.

Although Shaw is a songwriter and musician himself (here’s his band), this entry in the 33 1/3 series is very much the work of an academic, and his enthusiasm and admiration for Patti Smith is presented in the formal, critical style of such. Not mentioning that as a plus or a minus — just lettin’ you know. If you’ve read any of the many books out there on Patti Smith, you won’t find any newly unearthed details here, but Shaw’s insights are his own and well worth the read. If you haven’t read any of the Patti Smith bios (and that’s gonna be most folks) this would be a great place to start — after all, this is the album that introduced her to the world, and there’s plenty of background on Smith’s influences and her evolution as a poet and singer.

Note: in the section of the book that covers each track, Shaw ends his description of album closer “Elegie” by saying “Horses could not have a finer conclusion.” Spot on, so here’s a suggestion to those of you who pick this up on CD — when sitting down to listen to the album, skip “My Generation,” the bonus track now tacked on to the end. It’s nice that they added something extra when they remastered the thing in ‘96, but experiencing the album the way Patti Smith intended it to be experienced can’t be beat.

KEXP: “Horses, released by Arista records in November 1975, is the greatest rock album of all time: end of story.” Wow — this is the first 33 1/3 I’ve read about a rock album that went so far as to make that statement.

Philip Shaw: Well, I thought this claim would put the cat among the pigeons! Although I realised at the time of writing that it would provoke some strong reactions I decided not to edit it out. Why? I’m still not sure, but I think I was motivated, at least in part, out of a desire to stir things up a little. Academics like me inhabit a culture where value judgements are frowned on and critical timidity is the norm, yet I think that many people still get a kick out of debating this sort of question. The fact that in everyday life people enjoy evaluating art and that lists of the “greatest books/films/albums of all time” appear with increasing regularity, is of great interest to me. I suppose a cynic would say that this sort of activity helps to keep the culture industry in profit, but I should like to believe that consumers of culture have a genuine stake in their passions. When the opportunity to write for 33 1/3 was presented to me, I began by posing the question “so what, if push comes to shove, is my favourite album?” It didn’t take me long to come up with the answer and from thereon I set about trying to justify my choice. I wanted, in short, to try to understand why I felt so strongly about Horses. Do I believe that my claim is objectively true? No, of course not, no more than I believe that Mont Blanc is objectively the most sublime mountain in the world. Like all value judgements, my belief is simply an invitation to you, the reader, to engage in critical debate.

You talk about experiencing the album viscerally at first, before you became more familiar with Patti Smith’s literary influences and contemporaries. Do you ever now find it difficult to enjoy the album in that same way, after having become so immersed in it’s poetic context?

I wondered about this question when I began to research for the book: would my experience of pure, unalloyed pleasure be ruined if I subjected it to critical analysis? I can happily report that learning more about the record has only increased my appreciation. I happened on a recent performance of “Gloria” on a British music show the other night and, much to my relief, I could still felt the hairs rising on the back of neck when Smith sang the opening lines. This, for me, is proof enough that thinking and feeling need not be defined in opposition to each other. I also believe that a test of good art is its ability to withstand close critical scrutiny. Consider, for example, the seemingly endless flow of books and essays devoted to readings of Hamlet, the songs and lyrics of Bob Dylan, or the films of Alfred Hitchcock. A great record, like a great play, poem, or film, will always keep something of itself in reserve, enough to entice future commentators to produce further readings. And this claim takes me back, in a roundabout way, to the response I gave to your first question: if Horses is a great album (if not the greatest!) then a measure of its greatness will be the amount of commentary it generates over a certain period of time. To put it crudely, if people are still thinking about the record in fifty years time then it is probably is a wonderful thing. Let’s see.

This 33 1/3 is pretty unique in that it focuses, for obvious reasons, so much on Patti Smith as a lyricist and poet. Was there a worry that citing folks such as Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek would be straying too far, with regard to the rock fans who pick up the book?

I set out to write a book that would challenge two types of reader. On the one hand, I wanted to convince fellow academics that rock music was worth taking seriously. Patti Smith, like Dylan, is a good test case for this sort of endeavour – good insofar as her credentials as a lyricist and poet single her out as a ‘serious’ artist, the sort of figure that can be placed under the lens of literary, psychoanalytical or cultural critique. But what happens when we attempt to extend this critique to her identity as a rock performer? In posing this question I wanted to prompt both academics and rock fans (though they can be one and the same person!) to revaluate their assumptions about what counts as ‘high’ or ‘low’ culture. Can a rock song count as ‘high’ art in the same way that a poem does? And why should this distinction matter? Although I understand that Lacan and Žižek are not to everyone’s taste, I hope that my attempts to apply their ideas to Horses have encouraged both sets of readers to reconsider their assumptions about the nature and status of rock music.

We know KEXP fans love the Arcade Fire. And it’s a fair bet that those of you who are cinema buffs dug Donnie Darko. So it’s pretty snazzy news that Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly’s new film, The Box, will be scored by Win Butler and Co. Since a Donnie Darko sequel is being made as we speak without Kelly’s participation (”thanks for the idea, dude — nice knowing you!”), this probably cheers him up quite a bit.

The skinny on the film, which stars Cameron Diaz and James Marsden as a suburban couple who get a wooden box as a gift: said box will cough up a million dollars if the button on it is pressed. The catch is, if you press the button, someone will die. No one you know, just a stranger. What do you do? You’ve got 24 hours to decide. And while you’re deciding, your home will presumably now be filled with the music of the Arcade Fire.

^{Sons & Daughters are among the bands to play Bumbershoot
photo by Jim Bennet}

• The lineup for the 38th Annual Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival has just grown a bit (and shrunk a little). Band of Horses, Sons & Daughters, and The Black Keys are among the bands newly announced. Ludacris, though, had to bow out. Keep your eyes open for the full lineup, which will be released in July. But don’t wait until then — you can buy 3-day passes for $80 (a savings of 20%) right now. Got to bumbershoot.org for more details.

• Mia Zapata of Seattle band The Gits was brutally raped and murdered on July 7, 1993. On July 4th of this year, fifteen years later almost to the day, a feature-length documentary titled The Gits opens at the Northwest Film Forum; the documentary chronicles the tragedy and its aftermath. View the trailer.

• Vampire Weekend, you have arrived; you’ve been name-checked in the comic strip Sally Forth. Pitchfork has the comic as well as slew of newly announced Vampire Weekend tourdates. How come nobody cares that the characters in this comic are pirating copyrighted material — and flaunting it? Maybe the laws don’t extend to people that… you know… don’t really exist.

• Countdown to Sasquatch! Here’s “Ladies of the World”, a new Flight of the Conchords video.

• Thomas Dolby has a new live CD/DVD coming out, and from the looks of it, his stage attire is now a pair of swimming googles and a flashlight taped to his ear. Ah, those budgets were bigger in the 80’s…

• The annual Noise For The Needy festival is almost upon us, Seattle! It takes place June 11-15, and loads of performers are donating their time to help raise money for this year’s beneficiary, Urban Rest Stop. Urban Rest Stop is a non-profit that provides clean, safe and welcoming facilities where individuals and families can use restrooms, showers and laundry facilities. Among the many highlights of the festival schedule are The Black Angels with the Warlocks (Nuemo’s), Two Gallants (The Tractor), and Talib Kweli & Common Market (the Showbox). Check the NFTN website for the full schedule, listing all participating bands and venues.

• Simian Mobile Disco Remix The Go! Team, courtesy of You Ain’t No Picasso.

• The Moldy Peaches have rewritten one of their songs for a high-end resort in the Bahamas. The new version of “Anyone Else But You” touts the virtues of a good game of tennis and a lovely round of golf. Juno - it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Here’s the ad clip, via Rolling Stone. Hmm.

• Scarlett Johansson’s new CD of Tom Waits covers, Anywhere I Lay My Head, comes out next week. It’s hard to recall an “actress turns singer” event that generated this much hoopla, and it seems largely to be as a result of her chutzpah at taking on music by the iconic Waits. Over at Imeem, you can now preview all the songs. Chances are you have an opinion about it already (heck, we all do); now we can actually hear it, and see if we were right or wrong!
  

]]> http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2008/05/15/news-round-up-stealth-links-for-cubicles/feed/ 1 http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2008/05/15/attention-tom-waits-fans-with-frequent-flyer-miles/ http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2008/05/15/attention-tom-waits-fans-with-frequent-flyer-miles/#comments Thu, 15 May 2008 15:28:14 +0000 Spike, KEXP http://blog.kexp.org/blog/?p=5869

Tom Waits tickets for the announced U.S. dates go on sale tomorrow. It’ll be “paperless,” as they say in the ticket biz — your tickets will be available for pickup at the venue night of show; you’ll need both the credit card you used to buy them and a photo ID to get in. Whoah, another sucker punch to the scalpers! Of course, if you live in one of the following handful of cities (shoutout to El Paso KEXP fans!), you don’t even need to use those FF miles.

The dates, reposted for your convenience and travel planning: