Passion Pit Show

Last night I saw Passion Pit perform at Prospect Park Bandshell. I got there around 7:15 as the first opener, Suckers, were finishing their set. Shortly after, Tokyo Police Club performed their generic brand of indie rock as I waited patiently for the headliners. Finally as night fell, the band took the stage. A heathy set, the band played the majority of both Manners, and its preceding EP, Chunk Of Change. The show was apparently the largest the band has yet to play (headlining that is) and you could feel the energy and excitement from the band as people tore it up to pop bangers "Little Secrets", "The Reeling", and Folds In Your Hands". At one point, frontman and founder Michael Angelakos told the audience how astounded he was at the band's lightning fast popularity. It's easy to think that the makers of such a seemingly calculated pop record could be smarmy, jaded assholes, but given Passion Pit's enthusiasm and manner, it is clearly not the case. Here is a high def recording of closer, and arguably the best song performed that night, "Sleepyhead".

Frank Black - "Kicked In The Taco"

Most of Frank Black's post Teenage Of The Year material is largely ignored. One of the most dismissed albums from this period is that album's follow-up, 1996's The Cult Of Ray. While not as explosive with bombastic creativity as it's two predecessors, The Cult Of Ray is a very good record and still holds up well as an example of high quality garage-based alternative rock. Here is one of the highlights of that album performed live.

RIP Michael Jackson 1958-2009: One Year Later

It's hard to believe a year has already gone by without the King Of Pop.Where were you when it happened?

I was at work at the record store. In the mid afternoon around 4 (NY time), my co-worker, Joe, was reading the online news mags and was hit with the painfully brief report that Michael Jackson had been hospitalized. The key phrase that shook us to the bone was that paramedics had arrived and he was "not breathing". "Oh my god", was all Joe could say. I quickly rushed to the computer to check other websites for any other info. For the next hour and a half, people would walk into the store giving us what they heard. Reports kept conflicting. First a report said he was dead, while another quickly defused that saying he was still critical. People began calling the record store for information on it as if we were the best news source because we sold his albums. Finally at a few minutes before 5:30, Joe got the call and gave me a thumbs down. At this point, we had already put on Thriller as maybe a way of giving his spirit strength to pull through, but it was no use.

After it was announced, we made a makeshift RIP sign using a copy of Bad (which we played next). People began coming into the store and buying his albums. Since our main source of income is used stock, we had lots of copies of just about every Michael Jackson release known to man. That night was karaoke night at a local bar in my town. I got my friends together and we gave a rather loving tribute to MJ, covering around 15 or so of his tunes. Other people in the bar began joining in to which we all finished with a rousing rendition of "We Are The World". I didn't have work for another two days, so when I returned on Sunday I couldn't believe what I was seeing, or should I say not seeing. Our store which had been overstocked with Michael Jackson records, CDs, tapes, etc. for years, was now bone dry. We had sold everything save for one used vinyl copy of Thriller which was now marked up to $30 (before his death we were selling it for $5 - we just had way too many copies to charge any more).

Some would complain that people thrive on tragedy and it takes someone's death for people to regain their interests in an artist's work. I don't look at it that way. I think we all loved Michael Jackson's music, but we had been doing just that for so long that it became such a normalzed part of our lives. It was in knowing now that he was no longer with us that we were again reminded about how much we loved him. I always feel that sharing memories bring people together, and Michael Jackson has been a part of just about everyone's memory. I am still very sad to see his life in the past tense, but I'm also glad that his music has experienced this rebirth, and that people now remember why he was so great. It was the way he made us feel.

Song Of The Day

Sitting in a sticky apartment all day, this is the only tune that's been on my mind.

Passion Pit Covers "Tonight, Tonight"

Levi's has a new online series where popular artists cover classic songs. Passion Pit have chosen The Smashing Pumpkins seminal 1996 single, "Tonight, Tonight". Let's listen shall we?

"Heartbeats"

"Heartbeats" by Swedish synth pop group, The Knife, is one of my favorite songs of all time. I understand that a big reason as to why the song became popular in America is due to Jose Gonzáles's acoustic cover of the song, but I just don't like it. I'm not even one of these people that hates covers, much less stripped down covers. There are these trolls that hover over youtube day and night, slamming every cover version under the sun, creating inane arguments for us to all read and cringe over. I certainly dislike them more than I do his version of the song. I am totally cool with the idea of reimaging songs in this fashion. That being said, I'm sorry but his cover is lifeless and boring and actually puts my love of the original in danger because it makes me think of how the song essentially could have been a boring folk song first, that was just simply reworked with synthesizers. I of course know better than to give into this idea, but his version does stir this which is unfortunate. Here are both versions of the song in question.

Kele Interview

Yesterday, I interviewed Kele Okereke for a piece being featured in Big Shot Magazine. The interview took place at Mon Petite Cafe in NYC. I got there super early (my interview was at noon, I got there at 11) and ran into former MTV newscastor John Norris who was interviewing Kele on camera for a feature in Norris's new website project, NoiseVox. Kele arrived around 11:30. After Norris finished up with him, I had a whole hour to talk with him about his new record, The Boxer, out June 22nd. Prone to stuttering, and a very low talker, I was concerned if the tape recorder was getting everything he was saying, especially in a noisy restaurant. I haven't yet taken on the task of transcribing the type into text but I imagine it will be a bit of a challenge. Both he and his publicist were very nice and they invited me to a listening party that took place that evening. After playing the album twice, Kele came out and DJed for an hour or so. Look for the full story in the next issue of Big Shot.

Amanda Palmer to release Radiohead covers EP

It was announced on Friday that Dresden Dolls' frontwoman Amanda Palmer will be releasing Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on Her Magical Ukulele on July 20 this year. While piano is Palmer's primary instrument, she has progressively incorporated the ukulele into her work over the past few years, mainly in live performance, but also in her project with Jason Wembley, Evelyn Evelyn. To give you an idea of how this EP will sound, here is a performance of "Creep" she did back in circa 2007. Check out the dude that gets totally dissed at the end. (Sorry for more than one "Creep" cover in two weeks)

Pinkerton Imitators Constantly Missing The Point

Pinkerton is one of those albums that despite its brilliance, it only influenced bad music. Groups like Yellowcard, Taking Back Sunday, and Dashboard Confessional have all cited the album as a major influence on their work. It makes sense - the unbridled emotion of the album is all of these bands' calling cards. Still, there is something in Weezer's mistreated masterpiece that these groups always fail to grasp. First off, the musicianship and production is top notch. Rivers Cuomo and Brian Belle's guitars cut through the sound like a buzzsaw, while being able to quickly jump into melodic noodling without missing a beat. Matt Sharp's finesse is all over the album - his basswork welds tightly to Patrick Wilson's heavy drums that Dave Friddman's engineering magnifies to an earbruising level.

None of these fan bands capture this dynamic, let alone the brilliant songs. Rife with clever lyrics and earworm melodies, Pinkerton pounds along like a band that knows how good they are. The songs sound broken in, but not overplayed. Despite the pain of the content, the group also sounds like they're having fun, never taking themselves too seriously. It's a type of record that despite the legions that now love it, will never see a counterpart, which is good in a way - this way, nothing will ever take anything away from it.

The Vaselines - "I Hate The 80's"

18 years after Kurt Cobain breathed new life into them, The Vaselines are putting out a new album (!). It's funny how no one expected them to make one, while the Pixies and My Bloody Valentine have repeatedly mentioned new releases, all to no avail. Out in September, Sex With An X features the song "I Hate The 80's", released as a free download on the band's website yesterday. The song isn't quite as rough and tumble as the tracks off of Dum Dum, but Eugene Kelly's bent indie blues guitar hasn't aged a day. Neither has their sugary sweet harmony vocals, which coast through this duet so effortlessly perfect, that it sounds as if this song were from some locked up followup the band made in the 90's that no one knew about. More so than anything, the song sounds like great jangly indie rock akin to Guided By Voices and Polaris. Sex With An X will now at least give us one reason to look forward to the end of summer (aside from those NY Pavement shows that is).

Northern State

Back in 2003, an all female, white, hip-hop trio from Long Island called Northern State released their mini-LP, Dying In Stereo. Aside from an EP called Hip Hop You Haven't Heard, this was their big debut into the world. While many didn't even notice, the reactions to those that did were polarizing. Rolling Stone and Allmusic gave the group four stars while Pitchfork panned them with a 0.8. I saw the video for "At The Party" on Subterranean, an MTV show that specialized in alternative music. I immediately saw the 'joke meets serendidpity' quality of the group and went out and bought the EP with my first paycheck from my new job.

The problem was, I couldn't listen to the record with anyone present. All my friends hated it. It made sense - Hesta Prynn's voice in particular was very grating. I loved it though. It worked in a sense that they were a group that started doing rap as a joke, that accidentally churned out some great tracks. The rhymes were cute and goofy, with an occasional political standpoint - on opener "A Thousand Words", Prynn raps, "Keep choice legal/ya wardrobe Regal/Chekhov wrote the Seagull/and Snoopy is a beagle". It was only when those politics took center stage that they lost their footing, like on the third rate feminist 'ballad' "Vicious Cycle" where Sprout says "You say I'm beautiful underneath your breath/but you're not looking in my eyes, you're staring at my chest/ I can see history like a pal obsessed/ I'm sure the ladies can figure out the rest."

As a whole, Dying In Stereo was a good one off project. Clever and fun, through and through. The problem was, from the touring build up, and the selected praise they were getting for that record, they now had to take themselves as a serious hip-hop group. This is why their first full length, All City, is rife with problems, even though the formula is essentially the same. Now they had semi-high profile collaborators working on their material like Pete Rock, Har Mar Superstar and Martin Luther. The album had a few good tracks but it's a hard listen top to bottom. The concept had simply gotten stale. I remember being excited about their third record, Can I Borrow This Pen?, which I had heard was incorporating new rock-based elements into the group (something that seemed inevitable considering the girls rap as if the only hip-hop they've ever listened to are the Beastie Boys), but when it finally came out in 07, I forgot and never got around to checking it out. I'm not sure if the group is still together but I know Hesta Prynn has a new dance/rock project in the works. Here's the song that hooked me all those years ago. If you haven't heard it, maybe you'll embark on the same journey I did...or piss on it like everyone else did.

Pavement show

So my Pavement tickets have been printed for their Williamsburg Waterfront show in September. It's still shocking that all of their Central Park shows sold out a year before the actual event. The fact that I held out and waited for a new show to open up rather than paying exuberant eBay prices is very gratifying. Here'a clip of them playing "Gold Soundz" in Australia last March. So excited!

Surgeon interview

Sorry for the infrequency of the posts but I've been working on some stuff for Big Shot Magazine. One of the pieces I've been doing is a feature on English DJ Surgeon, who I interviewed two days ago. A very nice guy, we talked about his history in the scene, as well as his new mix CD, Fabric 53, the latest release in a series of mix albums released by the famous UK nightclub, Fabric. Here's a clip of Surgeon (Anthony Child) mixing it up intercut between an interview he gave for some Spanish broadcast (I'd tell you what the show was but I don't speak the language)

"Blue Monday" Sunkist commercial

I was shocked to discover this commercial in NewOrderStory, an overly long, music video heavy, documentary about my favorite synth poppers (although the clip does now seem vagueley familiar). The film wasn't exactly clear about how this advert came about, but listening to the recording, it sounds like it actually is New Order performing the parody themselves. I'm sort of over being angry with bands who lisence their songs to commercials. The only time it's bothersome is when the original song has a message that gets lost in the advertisement (like the infamous "Revolution" Nike ad), something that "Blue Monday" doesn't really have to worry about giving Bernard Sumner's oblique lyrics.  Check it.