The Winston-Salem Journal reported today that thieves broke into Fidelitorium Recordings (long known as the Drive-In Studio), the great NC-recording studio of producer Mitch Easter last week. Eight mostly-vintage guitars were taken...and some beer. "For what, an after-crime party?" quipped Easter, "It was all kind of mysterious." The article reported the guitars were worth $13,500. Easter said the guitars are insured but that their value goes beyond their monetary worth. One of the guitars, a 12-string Fender that Easter has had since age 12, was used by R.E.M. guitarist Peter [...]
New Jersey. Love it or hate it there is something in the water there that makes great American rock bands. Case in point: The Smithereens - the seminal college rock band who brought us the landmark albums "Green Thoughts", "Beauty & Sadness"and "Especially For You." For three decades they've provided the melancholy (yet ripping) soundtrack to our lives. In recent times the band have released a flurry of solid cover albums taking on everyone from The Beatles to The Who, leading us to think their days of recording their own new [...]
Filed under: Concerts and Tours , News Daniel Coston On Saturday, an esteemed gathering of musical stars -- among them R.E.M. 's Michael Stipe and Mike Mills , Matthew Sweet , Yo La Tengo 's Ira Kaplan and Tift Merritt -- paid tribute to influential '70s power-pop band Big Star through a performance of the group's album, 'Third/Sister Lovers,' in New York City. It was a very poignant [...]
Filed under: Concerts and Tours , News Daniel Coston Musician Chris Stamey remembers his first encounter with Big Star 's 'Third' -- aka 'Sister Lovers' -- album back in the mid-'70s when a bootleg was offered to him by an acquaintance. At the time, Big Star had previously released two power pop-influenced albums, 1972's '#1 Record' and 1974;s 'Radio City.' "'Radio City' had already been a big change from '#1 Record,'" Stamey [...]
Filed under: News , Exclusive , Q + A Getty Images A year after Big Star singer and songwriter Alex Chilton passed away in New Orleans on March 17, 2010 , and decades past their seventies heyday, the power-pop band continues to affect a generation of alternative rockers. On March 26, a group of musicians--including Chris Stamey , Teenage Fan Club 's Norman Blake, Matthew Sweet , [...]
The next performance of Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers will be on Saturday, March 26, at Mason Hall in NYC. The NC core group from the Cat's Cradle show, complete with the rhythm section of Jody Stephens, Mike Mills, Will Rigby, Charles Cleaver, and Mitch Easter and the expanded Lost in the Trees Orchestra, will be joined by Tift Merritt, Matthew Sweet, M. Ward, Norman Blake (Teenage Fan Club), Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo) and others to be announced shortly. via bigstarthird.com
by Bill Pearis DOWNLOAD : BNLX - Do Without (MP3) DOWNLOAD : BNLX - Where is the Love? (MP3) DOWNLOAD : BNLX - When Doves Cry (MP3) DOWNLOAD : Sweet Bulbs - Kissing Clouds (MP3) Mitch Easter A lot of cool shows this week/weekend, some of which might be a bit under the radar. Let's get into it. Alt rock [...]
The Athens, Georgia, legends reissue its heavily dark third album with some light, previously unreleased demos. Fables of the Reconstruction - R.E.M - Athens Georgia - Folklore - Tales
Brooklyn's Boy Genius will release their second album " Staggering" January 26th 2010 via Greenpop recordings. This band only gets better and better. I liked their debut album "Anchorage" . I liked their 2009-single "Blame Love" even more and I love almost everything on "Staggering". I will get back to the "almost" later in this post. Boy Genius' jangly sound and especially the sharp, edgy vocals of Jason K takes me right back to the 80s, and bands like Felt, The Go-Betweens (the songs of Robert Forster), [...]
I'm sure I'm not the only one wondering why legendary Mitch Easter was the opening act at Thursday's Local Band Local Beer night at Tir na Nog. And that's not a slam against Violet Vector & the Lovely Lovelies or The Catch Fire -- who had to cancel at the last minute because their guitarist is ill. It's just that given his musical output, and his key role producing some of the most influential records in American music, he shouldn't be opening for anyone. But at least that meant that the old timers like [...]
by Bill Pearis DOWNLOAD : Blind Man Color - Heavy Cloud Hustle (JVG Remix) (MP3) DOWNLOAD: Beach Fossils - Vacation (MP3) DOWNLOAD : Mitch Easter - Sudden Crown Drop (MP3) DOWNLOAD: The Asteroid #4 - Flowers of Ours (MP3) Beach Fossils Hope everyone stayed cool this weekend. Before I get into picks for the first part of this [...]
Chris Stamey and Peter Holsapple were (legendarily) the only people in North Carolina who bought Big Star albums the very first time around, and they'd team up most famously for the power-pop band the dB's. (Stamey would also release Chris Bell's 45 and Holsapple would go on to play with Hootie and the Blowfish!) They are now teamed up as a band with no official name. This interview by Dan Collins.
So yesterday I was talking about connecting the dots from band to band or from band to producer, etc. I had followed Mitch Easter from producing R.E.M. to having his own band, Let's Active. Years later (after the Internet made dot-connecting and information-gathering a ton easier), I was tracking down Let's Active mp3s and having a good old nostalgia session when I started wondering "what the h-e-double-c-k is that dude Mitch doing these days?" Turned out he was still working up a storm producing, and had produced the latest Helium album, [...]
If you were an obsessed young rock fan in the pre-Internet days, you scrounged for information on new bands any way you could. Magazines, The Trouser Press Guide To New Wave Records , opening acts at shows - all potential links to the next epiphany. Another way to look for bands was to connect the dots: so if you were an R.E.M. fan, you found out about the Replacements because Peter Buck played the solo on "I Will Dare," and found out about Pylon or the dB's because R.E.M. covered them. I got turned on [...]
New York's Boy Genius has uploaded the A-side of their next release on their Myspace player now. It's called "Blame Love" and is from a limited edition white vinyl 7" single they will release in early March. The band is soon heading for the studio to record their new album together with producer Mitch Easter , who also has produced classic albums from R.E.M., Pavement, Superchunk, Suzanne Vega and Velvet Crush . The album is planned for release this autumn.
Taken from his slick album Downtown , "Lesson Number One" is a gentle '50's style ballad with jangly guitars, soaring harmonies, and some sinewy guitar lines snaking underneath the layers of instrumentation.
[Photo of Pavement in New York City, 1997, by James Smolka] Pavement - along with the people at Matador - are once again on the reissue train. With the expanded edition of 1997's Brighten The Corners being released yesterday (the fourth Pavement record, and fourth of eventually five reissues by Matador), our friends at FADER posted this Q&A with original engineer Mitch Easter . Easter, who engineered Brighten the Corners at [...]
[R.E.M. released a deluxe, 25th anniversary edition of its debut album, Murmur, today. The two-disc set contains the original album remastered from original tapes and a live concert bootleg from Larry... Continue reading "Album Review: R.E.M.'s Murmur at 25" >
MUSIC NEWS - Recognized even by non-fans as a great album, R.E.M. 's Murmur changed the landscape of new-wave, alternative rock music. To celebrate its' quarter century historical release, R.E.M. is planning to release a remastered version of their 1983 debut full-length album on November 25 via Universal in a special edition, according to a press release. The " Murmur" 25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition contains the original album plus an additional disc with previously unreleased concert recordings from 1983 at their show at Larry's Hideaway in Toronto. The 16-song live show, was [...]
The family that plays together. . . When I have to be brief I'm never sure whether to apologize or say, "You're welcome," but it's post and run this time, or rather, crawl to sleep. We open with a nice couple (pic) and take it from there. Shalini - White Widow mp3 Mitch Easter - I Want a New Scene mp3 Marmalade Souls It Won't Be Too Long mp3 Fall Into the Sky mp3 AM Syndicate - The Neighbor
Between Love & Like
Rocker Magazine
Spinner.com
Bedazzled!
BrooklynVegan
Music @ Blogcritics.org
Eardrums Music
Mann's World
L.A. RECORD
Hello Vegetables
JamsBio Magazine
The Tripwire
A to Z
Music News Net
Powerpopulist
![Niki & The Dove - The Fox [OFFICIAL VIDEO]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/youtube/l2f6UbMnlq4_130.jpg)
Skrillex Uses Satanic and Homosexual Influence to Win Grammys
Listen: Starchild - Night Music [EP]
Gorillaz, James Murphy e Andre 3000: "Do Ya Thing" è il singolo per la Converse
Hudson Mohawke - Valentines Slowjams Chapter V [DJ Mix]
