Words // Scott Pingeton Criminally overlooked in their own time, Big Star will be remembered as one of the most influential bands of the last 40 years. They may well be the center of my personal musical universe, the sun around which most of my musical tastes orbit - power-pop, garage rock, soul, folk-rock. Paul Westerberg famously dubbed Alex Chilton "a man who could sing in a visible voice" , the phrase that gave this blog its name. One of the very first posts on VV back in March 2010 was [...]
Last night at Austin's Paramount Theater, an all-star cast of indie / alt-rock luminaries - from M. Ward, to The Replacements' Tommy Stinson, to Wilco's Pat Sansone and R.E.M.'s Peter Buck - gathered to pay tribute to Big Star 's Third , arguably the best unfinished record in rock. This was the second time a Big Star tribute has taken place at South by Southwest in recent years; the legendary power-pop / art rock band was set to reunite for the 2010 festival, but band leader Alex Chilton died suddenly just days before, prompting a troupe of his [...]
Filed under: Concerts and Tours , News , Exclusive Erika Goldring, Getty Images Two years ago, the music world was stunned by the loss of Alex Chilton , the man behind both the Box Tops and Big Star . Hailed as "a Rosetta stone for a whole generation" by Peter Buck , Chilton's death came only a few days before he was supposed to perform at SXSW , and [...]
Love letter boxes - The Posies Everything just seems so right listening to the Posies. Like this is the way four guys in a guitar band should sound. This is the mark rock music should have raised itself to, and the Posies did it. Even though in many ways, down its many paths, this formula is used and achieves better, it really needn't.
Fan's dragon fly at Flaming Lips show, Sasquatch Music Festival in Memorial Day weekend. It's no secret that I take a lot of pictures. What's becoming less of a secret, though, is that I'm becoming less bad at it. Having spent so long as a photo editor, I'm naturally a bit more critical of photographs -- and especially my own. But thanks to lens upgrades (purchasing a 50mm prime, renting a 70-200mm) and software (Lightroom, Picknik), I'm getting awfully close to taking photos that I can [...]
That Game Theory's entire catalog is seemingly terminally out of print is a great travesty. Certainly they were one of the most important purveyors of '80s pop music in America. Over the course of three incredibly ambitious and almost flawless records, they had as good a track record as almost anyone besides XTC for consistency.
Any other way - The Posies This is off the Dear 23 album, also known as the one before Frosting On The Beater - just as Amazing Disgrace and onwards are known as those after Frosting On The Beater . That's dumb. I'm dumb. Anyway, i wanted to emphasise it was from an album because the majority of my Posies listening this past year has been from those seven compiled files of rare performances found on [...]
What could be cooler than having a band write a song about you in tribute? Well, as long as the song is complimentary of course. Here's some toonage that fits the subject! Toonage: "Grant Hart" - The Posies "Strummerville"- Stiff Little Fingers "The Replacements" - Tommy Womack "Johnny's Gonna Die" - The Replacements (live July 1982)
The Posies at the 2011 Capitol Hill Block Party in Seattle, WA (07/24/11) Words and Photos : Drake Lelane Hey folks, here's the third and final update from the 2011 Capitol Hill Block Party in Seattle, WA. Once again, big thanks to Sr. West Coast Block Party Reporter, Drake Lelane , for his peerless coverage of this year's festival. -ed. Capitol Hill Block Party: Day Three (July 24, 2011) Day? Well, it was more [...]
The block party on my pathetic block in Chicago is pretty much a glorified bake sale with a shitty bouncy castle which I'm not even allowed to bounce in. So the leap from my wholly depressing, completely sober, and awkward neighborhood reunion to the Capitol Hill Block Party is a paradigm shift to be sure. And to boot, it's less of a block party and more of a bona fide music festival that just happens to take place on Pike Street between 10 th and 12 th . But the focus on the Seattle/Capitol Hill district community [...]
Photos from the Capitol Hill Block Party during July 22-24 in Seattle, WA. Featuring Battles, Explosions in the Sky, Les Savy Fav, Handsome Furs and more.
Your solid Saturday touts: ► Power pop fanatics need not stay home tonight, because the Posies [pictured above] play 19932s "Frosting On The Beater" tonight at the Viper Room. ► She never really just worked 9 to 5. Country's legendary lady Dolly Parton plays a second night at Hollywood Bowl. ► Chillwavers Memory Tapes headlines the Troubadour with local psychedelic, R&B-infused, pop group Electric Guest playing as support. ► If you couldn't get into Ty Segall 's sold-out show last night, San Francisco's garage-rock [...]
Here's the second installment from the 30th Anniversary Big Takeover show documented at Bell House in Brooklyn last summer with Jon Auer from the The Posies playing solo. This one features Billy the engineer chatting it up bit. He helps produce the internet radio show Rabid in the Kennel on breakthrough radio for Jack Rabid . Jon Auer did a lot of great songs during his set and was quite the personality - i had no idea he was so dark and funny at the same time. This is the encore and [...]
Typically we have bands come out to the Electraplay studio to record sessions for Donewaiting but when The Posies rolled through Columbus this past winter, there wasn't enough time to get the veteran power-pop band out to Hilliard before their show at Outland on Liberty . So, if they couldn't make it out to us, we figured we'd come to them for an intimate, acoustic session in the front lounge at the venue. We attempted to broadcast live via UStream that evening with less-than-successful results [...]
Finally we make TGIF meaningful as we present track 5 of Umpire 's forthcoming full length Now We're Active . 'Jewellery Can Be Disturbing' was described to us by the band as their "big dumb rock song" but in actuality its their "big smart rock song"! Like The Posies playing an ode to Polvo, the track's huge rockery is smothered in layers of melodic charm. You'll be humming this sucker all through the weekend, trust us. You can follow the link below to grab the track and embed it on your Facebook page, website, wherever. Tune [...]
Dream all day - The Posies I've been listening to a whole bunch of radio, television and otherwise live recordings of the Posies (which i ecstatically found here ) recently and i must have heard this song at least thirty times since i started. Thirty times, each one a difference performance, sometimes acoustic, sometimes not. Anyway, i've come to realise something horrible and unspeakable: I might not actually like this song so much. I'm sure this recent saturation may have [...]
"2010 was a good year for The Posies , a year we managed to finally block out some real time again and actually create something new, our Ryko release BLOOD/CANDY . We'd talked about it for quite some time, even considered waiting a bit longer, but ultimately thought it best to make it happen in 2010 even if it meant investing about 8 GAJILLION more hours of time recording and mixing it than we could've ever predicted. I like to say we thought we had a molehill on our hands and then, over the course a [...]
One man's trash is another man's treasure. I find it impossible to stay away from a $1 CD bin and thankfully have discovered that there are a few prime locations to come away with huge scores if you're willing to put the time in to digging through piles and piles of junk. This feature will focus on CDs that I've plucked out of dollar bins. Judybats – Pain Makes You Beautiful (Warner Bros.) Original release date: March 9, 1993 Purchased at: [...]
51 mins : 44 secs | 35.5 mb Autolux "The Bouncing Wall" ( TBD records ) Transit Transit [ amazon ] website | myspace | facebook Blood Red Shoes "Light It Up" ( v2 ) Fire Like This [ amazon ] website | myspace | facebook White Belt, Yellow Tag "It's A Long Way, Don't You Fall Behind" Methods [...]
2010 will be remembered for me as the year 2 of my favorite bands (Autolux and The Posies) released new albums. I'm sure it's a shock to absolutely no one that Transit Transit would be #1 on my list. It took awhile to grow on me even though I knew most of the songs before the album came out but [...]
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Music Singles Chart #109
