Blog: Don't just do something, stand there

As if you couldn't tell, this lil' blog is officially on hiatus. Head over to Donewaiting and/or The Other Paper for current stuff.

Larry Jon Wilson takes my top spot. Full list here: http://www.donewaiting.com/200 9/12/29/favorite-albums-of-200 9-by-joel-oliphint/

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Dylan is playing the LC Pavilion this Tuesday, Nov. 3, and (fortunately) he hasn't been playing stuff from his recent Christmas album. I saw Dylan the last time he came to Columbus, at the Schottenstein Center, and I still hold that the man is worth seeing, growling mumble-singing and all. So as a preview, I'm just going to post my review that ran in the Other Paper after that October 2007 concert—a defense, of sorts, for why it's still a big deal when Dylan comes to town. Other than introducing his band [...]

My Q&A with Kurt Vile: http://www.pastemagazine.com/a rticles/2009/10/best-of-whats- next-kurt-vile.html

Fun interview, good performance, great album.

Musicians who sing about their faith often are polarizing, and David Bazan is no exception. Bazan is best-known for his work with former band Pedro the Lion, which specialized in slowcore confessionals with doleful vocals. In the past, some listeners gave his lyrics a cursory glance and snidely wrote him off as just another underperforming, devout evangelical. Meanwhile, many evangelicals bristled at Bazan's constant, not-so-subtle skewering of their culture. And his drinking. Bazan's struggles with faith have been a consistent theme in his work—one minute he's singing God's praises, the next minute he's doubting God altogether. Until recently, [...]

• David Bazan - Bless This Mess

Here's what I've been up to lately over at The Other Paper: Review of Paper Airplane's new CD, White Elephants (local) Low Anthem/Langhorne Slim live review Reviews of Monolithic Cloud Parade's debut, Children with Wolf Heads , and Wing & Tusk's debut, The Secret of Toadflax Tea (both local) Live reviews of Bicentennial Bear, Miranda Sound, Jon Chinn + 1803 (locals)

I've written about Brian Harnetty before , so I won't go into a long preamble about him. But he's a talented dude from Columbus, and I was happy Paste let me write about him for its website's "Artist of the Week" feature. You can read it here . Silent City , Harnetty's new album featuring Bonnie "Prince Billy, is out tomorrow on Atavistic Records.

So tomorrow I'll be on a panel from 3:40-4:30 with Donewaiting.com's Wes Flexner and some other folks to talk about Columbus music, Columbus media and such. There's lots of other stuff going on, too, from 1-7 pm: performances, DJ Detox, booking discussions, etc. Here's the summary from the website and promo poster: "The CBUS Sound Project Symposium is a celebration of Columbus Music. In conjunction with our Idea Lab program, this day of learning and performance includes panels on booking, promoting, and community organizing. Complimentary hand-roasted coffee is generously provided by local purveyor, Cafe Brioso. Free and open [...]

I reviewed the new Larry Jon Wilson album for the August edition Spin . You can check it out on pg. 93 in print or the digital edition . Also in that issue: Spin's list of the "100 greatest bands you've (probably) never heard of," which is a good read, especially because it includes four legendary Columbus bands: Gaunt, Great Plains, Royal Crescent Mob and Scrawl.

And it's well-deserved. Maybe next time they come through town there'll be more than three people in the bar ?

The Summit is where I'll be tonight. But mainly I'm just posting this because the poster is awesome.

Really nice interview with LJW by Stephen Deusner here .

Review of the band's new Asthmatic Kitty retrospective here . Recommended.

Review of Foreign Born's Person to Person here . Wasn't blown away.

Donewaiting head honcho Robert Duffy made an announcement yesterday, but I should probably address it briefly here, since I've been maintaining this blog on a semi-regular basis. So Duffy's heading to New York to take a great job there, and while he'll be continuing Donewaiting from NYC, he asked me if I'd be the Columbus editor. I was flattered and honored that he would ask me, and I couldn't say no. I'm excited to get started. ...My wife is due with our second child in the next two weeks, so the exact start date is [...]

The stabbing puts kind of a damper on the whole peaceful community vibe of Comfest (so sad), but Saturday was a fun day nevertheless. I particularly enjoyed Bookmobile 's set (that's singer Sean Gardner above). If you're in Columbus and haven't made it down yet--shame on you!-- there's still good music and fun times to be had today. More on my Saturday Comfest experience later...

I imagine that by this point, David Longstreth, singer/guitarist and driving force behind Dirty Projectors , is tired of his band being referred to as "brainy." It's a tough tag to avoid when you're a former music-major Yale grad who intricately crafts compositions that are near-impossible to categorize using other musical precedents. The great thing about Dirty Projectors, though, is that anything that may come across as high-minded is balanced with something high-spirited, thereby dodging pretension. It takes significantly more knowledge and musical prowess than your typical rock band to sing and play the songs this band [...]

Last year I talked to Jerry DeCicca of the Black Swans about an album he produced by a guy named Larry Jon Wilson, an old Nashville singer-songwriter who hadn't recorded a new album in almost 30 years. We chatted back and forth about the story for a while, and finally Drag City is releasing the record on Tuesday. So after a year of talking and exploring Wilson's music, I was at last able to put some words on paper. You can read the story in The Other Paper this week, or online here . I had more [...]