First it was The Dead Weather and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, then Sufjan Stevens, now add Noah and The Whale to the list of indie bands making films. With this endeavor, Noah and The Whale’s chief singer/songwriter, Charlie Fink, has crafted and directed a film to coincide with the release of their new album, The First Days of Spring, which is set for October.The First Days of Springwill be released on Cherrytree/Interscope alongside a film of the same name which marks the directorial debut of Charlie Fink and runs the same length as the record. The release is the highly-anticipated follow-up to their gold- selling 2008 debut album Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down.
It seems The Dead Weather has launched a trend with the premiere of their ‘short film’ by Jonathon Glazer for “Treat Me Like Your Mother” on Showtime last week.
Then I found this crazy short film for The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Snakesweat”. Glamorous and weird only in the way Karen O can pull off. Who’s next? I’ll be watching to find out.
I have a serious girl crush on Karen O. and am in love with the costume designer, Christian Joy, that dresses her. So much so that I fashioned my own Karen O. knock off for Halloween this year (even though most people had no idea who the hell I was). I hate to repeat anything, but after seeing her latest creation in this video, I’m tempted for round two.
My NPR Music Notes newsletter today contained an interesting article on music and kids that completely resonated with me. Entitled Bringing Up Baby, As Music Lovers Might,it speaks to the careful diligence new parents, who are passionate about music, take when selecting the music their child will listen to.
Being a music snob, I always found children’s music to be trite and belittling. Why do we have to dumb down music for children? Just because they’re tiny and unable to speak, doesn’t mean they can’t comprehend what’s going on around them. Turns out I was right about that. Babies can recognize surprisingly complex rhythms and are sensitive to the differences between consonant and dissonant music.
Hell bent on eliminating Barney and anything remotely like it in our household, I created my own child-friendly music program for my little guy, Judah – which has turned into a bit of a rock history overview in the process. James Brown, The Flaming Lips and Cut Copy were early favorites. Now he asks for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Duke Spirit and The Raconteurs by name. And I swell with pride every time he does so.
I know I’m going to catch flack from all you kid haters for this, but here’s the video that solidified my theory on kids and music – that they don’t need to be fed music through a purple dinosaur in order to connect with it. Here’s Judah, not even 2 years old, channeling the Grandfather of Soul himself. (He still uses our T.P. holder as a microphone to this day.)
Get your leather on! After being leaked on the Internet, Interscope moved up the digital release of It’s Blitz to 3/10. The CD release is 3/31. I think we all need a ‘KO’ studded leather jacket.
In case you were wondering why San Francisco isn’t a beach town, you can add this to your list. A ruptured sewage pipe in Marin County has leaked more than 500,000 gallons of stinky, bacteria-laden raw sewage into the San Francisco Bay this week. Thanks to this brave soul, the leak has been fixed – temporarily. (Oh joy.) Apparently this isn’t the first time this has happened to Marin sewage plants either. While the news of this event is horrific and disturbing, I can’t help but muse over the fact that our Bay is being consistently contaminated with the shit of thousands of environmentally enlightened Marin County residents. Irony is not dead people.
I knew our household had been over saturated with political propaganda when our three year old started to refer to his willie as his ‘John McCain’. No kidding. When asked what he was doing with his hands down his pants recently he replied matter-of-factly, ‘I’m playing guitar with my John McCain.’
Yeah that’s right. My kid plays air guitar with his penis. But lest you think my child is a complete Neanderthal, he also said after seeing Obama on the news, ‘That’s Barack Obama. He’s my president.’
So please, don’t let my kid down. Get out there today and vote for Obama. Otherwise I’m going to have to explain to my kid that John McCain is his president, not a dick. And I’d really rather not have that conversation. Besides, how can you resist a kid that rocks out to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in footie PJs?
My 3-year old’s latest musical obsession is Karen O. from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. And frankly, I can’t blame him.
It all started with Rock Band. I play a lot of it and one of my favorite songs is Maps. I drum, he sings (with his console unplugged, of course, so we don’t get booed off). One day I decided to show him the video to Maps so he can work on his Karen O. moves. To say he’s smitten is an understatement. He watches her completely transfixed, with mouth agape. After seeing the video for Gold Lion for the first time, he turned to me, all serious, and said: “Momma, she’s magic. That’s why she has a microphone.”
the OCMD 