by David Burn | Nov 8, 2007 | Music
Levon Helm is back with a vengeance. His new record, Dirt Farmer, (his first in 25 years) hit stores on Oct. 30th and is now playing on desktops, iPods and car stereos everywhere.
Levon sings and plays drums, guitar and mandolin on the CD, accompanied by Larry Campbell on guitars and fiddle, and the voices of Amy Helm and Teresa Williams.
Helm said, “Amy encouraged me to go all the way back and try to record some of the family songs from home that we always loved best.”
Rolling Stone critic David Fricke says, “The sole American in the Band, singer-drummer Levon Helm — the son of an Arkansas cotton farmer — knew firsthand the hard labor, family ties and Dixie fireside tales that were the roots and soil of guitarist Robbie Robertson’s songs.”
The recording is something of a miracle, in that Helm recently fought through throat cancer and the consequent radiation treatments that threatened to take his voice and his life.
by David Burn | Nov 1, 2007 | Digital culture, Literature, Music
Richard Ziade at Basement.org points to a message board post about file-sharing from Will Sheff, the front man for the rock band Okkervil River.
My real concerns with file-sharing are primarily aesthetic.
There’s a story by Jorge LuÃs Borges called “The Library of Babel.†It describes a fantastical library composed of an apparently infinite number of identical rooms. Each room contains 1,050 books. Printed on the pages are words whose lettering and order are apparently random. Because the library is complete, among the gibberish it also contains every book that is possible, every book that could ever be written. It also contains every imaginable variation of every book possible, whether that variation is off by thousands of letters or by a single comma. Borges adds that it must contain, somewhere, a book that explains the meaning and origin of the library itself – just as it contains thousands of variations of that book, true and false. He writes, “When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure…As was natural, this inordinate hope was followed by an excessive depression.â€
The Internet – with its glut not only of information but of misinformation, and of information that is only slightly correct, or only slightly incorrect – fills me with this same weird mixture of happiness and depression. I sometimes feel drowned in information, deadened by it. How many hundreds of bored hours have you spent mechanically poring through web pages not knowing what you’re looking for, or knowing what you’re looking for but not feeling satisfied when you find it? You hunger but you’re not filled. Everything is freely available on the Internet, and is accordingly made inestimably valuable and utterly value-less.
Damn, a rock star made from brains. Who knew?
According to Wikipedia, Sheff was an English major at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota (which explains a lot).
To read more of his writings, visit this Jound.com page.
by David Burn | Oct 30, 2007 | Music
Radiohead isn’t the only music brand looking to experiment with business models. Paste magazine has adopted the pay-what-you-want model for its yearly subscriptions for the next two weeks, with minimum payments starting at $1.
Paste’s president and publisher, Tim Regan-Porter, said he and his Atlanta-based staff had been tossing the concept around during their discussions of the book Good to Great by Jim Collins. On the day of Radiohead’s announcement to offer their new album “In Rainbows” exclusively online for an optional fee, the staff happened to be reading the book’s example of a company who let customers strike a line through their bills. “We saw it as a feedback mechanism, and sort of put that together with Radiohead and said, ‘That’s a great way for us to know how much our product means to people.'”
“If someone had a $50 budget and wants to pay us that much for a subscription, great. But I would rather get 50 $1 subscriptions than one $50 subscription,” Regan-Porter said.
[via Ad Age]
by David Burn | Oct 21, 2007 | Music
Femi Kuti was on Austin City Limits last night. During the interview segment ACL Producer Terry Lickona asked, “What’s going on back in Nigeria today?”
Here’s the beginning of Femi’s answer:
The situation is horrible, because there are too many poor people. The government tells a lie, a lot of lies in the press pretending that things are all right. But people can’t afford a good eduaction. People can’t afford to eat. We still have no lights. My father complained about this since the 70s. Way back in ’74. We still have no lights. Many places don’t have water. People are just completely down. If you go to any of the embassies, the French, English, American, everybody is trying to get out of the country, everybody is looking for a better life outside Nigeria. All the doctors are leaving, the lawyers, everybody is leaving Nigeria. The govermnment is so corrupt, the country is so corrupt, to find an honest Nigerian is so difficult. Not because the people want to be corrupt these days, but becasue it’s so difficult to survive, you have to be corrupt.
I encourage you to visit the PBS website and listen to the remainder of his words. He says he doesn’t believe he will live to see the day that Africa pulls out of the mess it’s in, but he keeps fighting for justice with the hope that his son will.
by David Burn | Oct 20, 2007 | Music
image courtesy of Flick user, Funky Tree Town
Cat Power and Dirty Delta Blues played in Savannah last night for the first time. It was an interesting show, something totally out of the ordinary. Having never seen Cat Power but knowing her something of her story and her music, I came expecting a character, but not the one I saw. Ms. Power, also known as Chan Marshall, was all over the stage. Her white flats were magic slippers allowing her to float. She bent down on one knee, flirted with her keyboard player, coaxed several adjustments from her mixing board man, drank from a Starbucks cup, coughed a lot and sang songs loaded with emotion.
When her keyboard player announced her mid-set, he said, “The woman you all came to see–Chan Marshall–the world’s greatest soul singer.” That description seems not quite right. Yet, Marshall does have a lot to offer. She puts herself out there, unfiltered, and that’s not easy to do. You need guts to do that.
The show was opened by Dex Romweber Duo. According to Jim Reed at Connect Savannah, Romweber is “an intense—and at times unhinged—guitarist and singer whose pioneering psychobilly/surf/garage combo The Flat Duo Jets came to prominence in the mid-’80s thanks to a mind-blowing live performance in the cult documentary Athens, GA Inside Out.” Romweber is also an inspiration to Jack White of White Stripes.
See more photos of Cat Power at Underground Bee.
by David Burn | Oct 18, 2007 | Music
I’m late to the party, but I just learned that the David Gans’ Grateful Dead Hour is now being archived and made available from the band’s site. Dead.net ads a new show every Wednesday. So far, there are 15 to choose from. The files stream in Quicktime or Windows Media.
by David Burn | Oct 17, 2007 | Music
Austin City Limits is the best show on TV. It has been for decades. So it should come as no surprise that this year’s lineup of shows is truly outstanding.
Pitchfork has typed up the schedule:
10-06 Norah Jones
10-13 The Decemberists/Explosions in the Sky
10-20 Femi Kuti
10-27 Jimmy Reed Highway: Jimmie Vaughan and Friends
11-03 Wilco
11-10 Arcade Fire
11-17 Brad Paisley/Dierks Bentley
11-24 Van Morrison (Encore)
12-01 Gretchen Wilson/Miranda Lambert (Encore)
12-08 Ladysmith Black Mambazo (Encore)
12-15 John Mayer
12-22 Lucinda Williams/Old Crow Medicine Show
12-29 Bloc Party/Ghostland Observatory
01-05 Crowded House/Grupo Fantasma
01-12 Regina Spektor /Paolo Nutini
01-19 Roky Erickson/Kings of Leon
01-26 ACL PRESENTS: The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival
I was watching last Saturday night when The Decemberists appeared on screen, delivering 30 minutes of their sublime maritime rock.
You can watch the interview with the band and/or a clip from “Perfect Crime #2” on PBS.org.
by David Burn | Oct 16, 2007 | Music
[via Hype Machine]
by David Burn | Oct 11, 2007 | Music
Music bloggers are really stepping up in the world. Aside from being daily tastemakers, they put on showcase concerts during South By Southwest and Austin City Limits Festival, conduct a major music festival in Chicago, host a radio show on Sirius and release tribute albums. It’s this last feat, I’d like to point to in this post.
Stereogum has made its second tribute album available for free. It’s a tribute to Automatic for the People by REM on the 15th anniversary the record’s release.
Some of the artists that appear include: Meat Puppets (the only band of REM’s generation), The Veils, Rogue Wave, Catfish Haven, Shout Out Louds, The Wrens and Dr. Dog, among others.
by David Burn | Oct 9, 2007 | Music
Scotty Greene writing for Kynd Music reviews the “final show” from String Cheese Incident on 8/12/07 at Red Rocks. I place quotes around “final” because bands often find ways to play together again.
Sunday night was surreal from start to finish, 3 sets plus 4 encores. Opening the show with a mini-acoustic set sent a message to all of us: They hadn’t forgotten where they came from. Very cool, and very enjoyable. But we were all ready for the throwdown, so let’s not kid ourselves. On a perfect Summer night in Colorado, many thousand strong, Red Rocks Ampitheatre was the scene of the crime -and we were all guilty as hell.
The setlists speaks for themselves, but a surprise visit from Keller Williams to jam his anthem Best Feeling was more than decent, as he proves time and again his talents are unlimited. Other highlights from the last two sets: Way Back Home, Restless Wind, Rain, Rhythm of the Road, Shine, Whiskey Before Breakfast, Good Times Around the Bend, and finally, Texas – all classics, played as hard as humanly possible, all hitting home time and time again.
The memories were so rich, so thick, I could almost taste them. One listen to that Restless Wind or Texas and you’ll know what I’m talking about. A couple of curtain calls and “thank you’s”, and still, we wanted more, but the band had bowed its final bow, waved its final wave, and spoken its final word. Some pretty intense shit.
I concur with Greene on the nostalgia factor. Thanks to the download from LiveCheese, I’m presently reliving my own good times with this seminal Colorado band.
