Saturday is Record Store Day, the one day of the year that all of the independently owned record stores around the world come together with artists to celebrate music (and help keep the independent record store alive). A ‘holiday’ born in San Francisco, the first official Record Store Day was held at Rasputin Music with Metallica on April 19, 2008 and is now celebrated the third Saturday every April.
There are lots of good live music and fun events happening around the Bay in support of the cause. Be sure to check the Record Store Day website for participating locations. Amoeba in San Francisco will be featuring giveaways every hour, a contest to win a turntable package and special appearances by John Vanderslice, Loquat, Kelly Stoltz and Aesop Rock. And, get this, The Silversun Pickups are performing live at Rasputin in Berkeley at 4PM. Yowza!
Via @shakazolo andTechCrunch, I discovered a very interesting website – We Are Hunted, an Online Music Chart that charts what people are listening to on the web. We Are Hunted aggregates social networks, forums, music blogs, Torrents, P2P Networks and Twitter to develop a daily chart of the 99 most popular songs online. Yet another great music discovery tool I plan to add to my repertoire!
EELS will release their first new album in four years –HOMBRE LOBO, set for June 2nd, 2009 on Vagrant Records. Take a listen to “Fresh Blood”, then check out the trailer for the track “Tremendous Dynamite”.
Benjy Ferree was one of my most anticipated shows of SXSW and my most disappointing. Imagine stumbling upon this track in the myriad of bands you’ve researched for SXSW, then arrive at an acoustic show. I was a disappointed, but not deterred.
After Austin, I dug into Ferree’s sophmore release Come Back to The Five & Dime, Bobby Dee Bobby Dee. The track, “Pisstopher Crisstopher”, that led me to him has been on repeat since Austin and will definitely make my ‘Best Songs of 2009’ list. (Can you hear Jack White in there?) Expecting to hear more of this hard-driving rock, I was a bit thrown by the hodge podge of genres on the album – a little rockabilly one minute then some Americana, du wop and rock the next. Not that it was bad, it was just a little confusing.
Then I learned the story behind the album, Come Back to The Five & Dime, Bobby Dee Bobby Dee, and it started to make a bit more sense. It’s a concept album inspired by the childhood actor, Bobby Driscoll, who from the age of 6 to 16 was the most acclaimed childhood actor of his time (’50s). Then he grew up, stopped being cute, and ultimately died alone at the age of 31 in his Manhattan apartment. His body went unidentified and was buried in an unmarked grave – so the story goes.
Ferree, himself a failed actor, used this story as inspiration for the album. Going so far as trying to recreate the appearance of Driscoll on the cover of his album. An interesting story, to say the least. Knowing this definitely gave more clarity to what I was listening to, especially the 50s du wop and rockabilly influence. I’m just not convinced he nailed the execution. There are, however, some real gems on the album that make we wonder what he can do when he’s not caught up in playing to a concept. I will be watching him, and waiting to find out.
Blitzen Trapper joins Fleet Foxes on stage for the final encore.
It was a lovely evening of music this Tuesday at The Fillmore with Blitzen Trapper and Fleet Foxes. Truth be told, Robin Pecknold’s new haircut threw me a bit and I spent much of the night coming to terms with it. (Grow it back, I say!) The band pulled out some new songs throughout the night, showcasing Robin’s amazing pipes. Musically, it was a bit ‘more of the same’ though. And I couldn’t help question, with so much talent in that band, why some of the other members aren’t showcased? Drummer J. Tillman is an amazing artist and a force in his own right. I know the Fleet Foxes have ‘a sound’, which is incredible, but it is a lot of the same tempos and rhythms. So I couldn’t help wondering, are they missing an opportunity by not letting other band members come to the forefont? It would certainly mix things up a bit and make for a more dynamic band – perhaps helping their longevity and fan engagement in the long run. What do you think?
Elbow has been on an extended worldwide tour, riding the wave of their Mercury Prize winning album, Seldom Seen Kid. But they haven’t lost sight of their next album, their fifth, which is expected to be released in September 2010.
The group is certainly feeling the pressure for their follow up to the acclaimed Seldom Seen Kid. Bassist Pete Turner admitted to the BBC, “There is [pressure]. I think we’re up there for a little bit of a taking down almost – for us it means we’ll work a little bit harder.”
Part of working harder means the band will be more organized upon entering the studio, with songs in hand. Something they haven’t done in previous sessions. To that end the group has been diligently writing on the road, setting up writing rooms at every stop.
Elbow will be performing a smattering of US dates throughout the East coast this summer, including the recently announced All Points West Festival. The only West Coast stop they have scheduled is The Wiltern in LA on July 22.
I read recently in both Gizmodo and TechCrunch now of the upcoming launch of Vevo, a site billed as the ‘premium online music hub built for consumers, advertisers, and content owners..’. The site is a collaboration between Universal Music Group and YouTube and is expected to launch later this year. The launch of the site will feature UMG’s catalog of music videos powered by YouTube’s technology. The two companies will share advertising revenue generated by the site. Reportedly, deals with other labels are in the works.
Why launch a portal for music videos when you can essentially get them for free now on YouTube? It’s a question many are asking, but I suspect Google plans to change the game a bit on music content. I highly doubt the site will just stream videos. I’m sure it will be community driven and designed to separate the YouTube hack from the professional, high-quality VEVO content. So no more scrolling through bogus, homemade videos to find the content you’re looking for. Yeah! Considering ad revenues on music video content is an area that UMG actually made money, the venture makes sense. Labels need to figure out somewhat to make money these days, don’t they?
The New York Times reported today that creepy music producer, Phil Spector, was found guilty of murder. A unanimous decision. Why it took them 30 hours to reach that conclusion is beyond me. I mean the guy is on record confessing “I think I killed somebody” with the gun in his hand. He faces a minimum of 18 years in prison for shooting a woman point blank in the face for spurning his sexual advances.
Moonalice. Heard of them? Yeah, you and no one else outside of Silicon Valley either. Luckily lead guitarist Roger McNamee knows a thing or two about technology, being one of the Valley’s most well-known venture capitalists. TechCrunch reported that the band staged it’s first Twitter-integrated concert at a venue in San Francisco recently and logged 3000 downloads of their music using the platform. Pretty impressive for a band no one’s ever heard of and an eye opening tactic for bands to successfully leverage Twitter as a viral marketing tool.
These so-called Twitter Concerts work something like this: immediately following each live song performed, it’s digitized, uploaded then tweeted about it’s availability with a TinyURL where users can listen and download the song. It’s like a virtual live concert feed. And if a small local band can see that much success, imagine the impact if well known artists jump on the Twitter Concert bandwagon. By golly, I think we’ve just spotted a trend in the making – Twitter Concerts!
According to The Underwire, hip hop artist K’naan is leveraging the Twitter platform in equally innovative ways to promote his music as well. Here’s to Web 2.0!
the OCMD 