
I had a couple new things I could write about but nothing struck me as much or as hard as the old stuff from Mike Nicolai . I've written about Mike once or twice in the past but as one of the great undiscovered songwriters in the country it won't hurt to revisit his catalog. Speaking of which Nicolai's catalog is hard to get a finger on - it shifts wildly from twisted folk to power pop to the occasional hard rocker (in fact the band Grand Champeen often backed up Mike Nicolai). Mike Nicolai's [...]

Hole In The Wall Pre-SXSW Fiesta Tuesday, March 15, 2011 2538 Guadalupe St. Austin, TX, 78705 If you're in Austin this week you're gonna smell a lot of smoke. Some from cigarettes and pot, plenty from BBQ, and a shit-ton from hipster d-nozzles blowin' smoke up your ass about their favorite crappy buzz band. Granted, there'll be hidden gems galore. That's how SXSW works. However, with champeenship rock 'n' roll out of vogue these days, a handful of those gems will be hidden in plain sight on Tuesday at the Hole In [...]

Christmas gives me the crazyhead. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the baby Jesus, it's just all of the expectation, commercialization, greed, neurosis, travel nightmares, and terrible, god-awful music that gets me down. What happened to peace on earth and good will towards men and all of that crap? Bah humbug. Here are some good blues, punk, country, and rock songs about having the Christmas doldrums. Zippity-do-dah . 1. The Legendary Tiger Man - Fuck Christmas, I Got the Blues.mp3 From : Fuck Christmas, [...]

Well I did it. I waited `til after Thanksgiving to post my Christmas mix. So far a lot of these songs are from last year (or years past), hell I even recycled the photo from last year's post. I'll do my best to update this mix as new songs appear. I love these songs. They are some of the best Christmas songs you're likely to hear and for a large part they are ones I've dug up first. So Enjoy and Merry Christmas (three weeks early). P.S. I'm so low tech it's not even funny [...]

(from left: Michael Crow, Channing Lewis, and Alex Livingstone from Grand Champeen) Six Degrees ... as in Separation, Kevin Bacon , etc. ... was another idea that came to me during last weekend's brainstorm. OK, storm may be pushing it. But it was at least a fusillade and rain was definitely involved. Anyway, as a former college radio DJ and one of the premier mixtape artists of our time, there is a perverse pleasure in being musical captain of the S.S. Geek-Out. It's the High Fidelity [...]
John Vanderslice is currently touring the US, with support from St. Vincent , here are the dates for the tour (sponsored by Brooklynvegan ): April 9 | SALT LAKE CITY, UT April 10 | DENVER, CO April 12 | AMES, IA April 13 | CHICAGO, IL April 14 | GRAND RAPIDS, MI April 15 | ATHENS, OH April 17 | PHILADELPHIA, PA April 18 | HOBOKEN, NJ April 19 | NEW YORK, NY April 20 | CAMBRIDGE, MA April 21 | HAMDEN, CT [...]

(Editors note: Originally posted Jan, 2006. Do a seach of the site to find more from Mike Nicolai.) Mike Nicolai in one song sums up my entire belief system and disgust with the Catholic church and just about any religious institution. Wow! His new self-released record is called God Fatigue in the Modern Age . And while I've only heard this one song I'll trust the folks over at Miles Of Music who claim "It's A Cracker!" (which is their way of guaranteeing [...]

If any of you have been reading any blogs beyond the endless drivelly "Best Of Lists" appearing on blogs, and the furthermore blogs by bloggers blogging about another bloggers blog blogging about "Best of lists" you may have noticed bow many bands have done "fun"/"wacky"/"twee"/"indie"an d uniformly crap Christmas songs. I wont even give them the pleasure of listing them off. Its not a necessary evil, by any means. But your average sycophantic scenester who knows 3 chords rockstar, is rather wound up in that grossly perverted commercial Christmas (Like that fucking kid in Hamley's [...]

It's Dec. 1st, Chicago's snowed in and just in time the yearly onslaught of Christmas music has begun. Whether I mean to or not Songs:Illinois is at times bitter and the music has it's fair share of anger/depravity. Normally you'd think that would be a problem when it comes to Christmas music but it turns out that's completley the opposite. There is a fair share of cashing in on the holidays (I just received Hall & Oates new xmas record) but still there are plenty of singers making original and compelling christmas music that deals with the [...]
Hey there. Effective immediately, we're making a change in the so-called "Blurbin' Fridays" feature. It's going to be renamed to "Palebear Blurbs". The reason? Sometimes we feel like blurbin' and sometimes we don't. So it sucks to be tied to a Friday schedule. So now, you might get a bunch [...]