Once again: New Year's Eve with Black Lips. New Orleans - One Eyed Jacks. The Orwells and King Louie's Monuments join the festivities. We're giving away three pairs of tickets to AD readers. To land a pair, leave your name and email address below. Tickets waiting at will-call night of show; winners notified via email.
Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard twice every Friday – Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST. Tis the season. Download the vintage Holiday mixtape, HERE. . . SIRIUS 274: Jean Michel Bernard – Generique Stephane ++ Billy Childish - Christmas Hell ++ The Wailers - Christmas [...]
Lucy Van Pelt loves the beautiful sound of clinking nickels. She wants real estate for Christmas. Snoopy challenges passersby to find the true meaning of Christmas by winning “money, money, money” in his “spectacular super colossal neighborhood Christmas lights and display contest.” For her part, Sally Brown forgoes her lengthy list of gifts, asking Santa [...]
In December of 1978, Tom Waits recorded an episode of Austin City Limits. The now-mainstay music program was in its relative infancy - only its fourth season - and had built a solid fanbase of Americana music fans. As the ACL website notes: "...the show came in through the back door, so to speak. Terry [...]
Christmas music: It ain't for everyone. But then, it is for some. In later years, I’ve gravitated more towards the solemn, poetic hymns that predate by a matter of centuries the sentimental oom-pa-pa of most Christmas music. (Though, that being said, I’m a total sucker for “Jingle Bell Rock”; forgive me.), and Christmas With the [...]
Hard Luck Soul, originally pressed in 1971, is the result of a single recording session by the Ohio Penitentiary 511 Jazz Ensemble, a group led by Ohio State Penitentiary inmates Reynard Birtha and Logan Rollins, nephew of Sonny. The story goes that the two men – on trumpet and alto sax, respectively – were the [...]
Our obligatory year-end review. Aside from our album of the year, Father John Misty's Fear Fun, the following is an unranked list of albums that caught, and kept, our attention in 2012. Go nuts. Cheers – AD ______________________________ ______________________________ _________________________ Josh Tillman did more than relocate from Seattle to Los Angeles. He was reborn. Christening himself Father [...]
If there's a power pop heaven, you know they've got a hell of a band. Us sinners can get a sneak preview of it on this recording, which captures Big Star in the spring of 1974 — opening for, wait for it, Badfinger. This gig took place around the same time as the officially released [...]
Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard twice every Friday – Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST. Download the Lagniappe Sessions' archives, HERE. . . SIRIUS 273: Jean Michel Bernard – Generique Stephane ++ Damien Jurado - Nothing Is The News ++ Matthew E. White - Games People [...]
If you have a window near, go ahead and look outside. Chances are, there are some Christmas lights up somewhere within view. In the coming weeks, you’ll probably frantically brave mall crowds and horrific parking lot jams for last-minute gifts, wondering why it is that you avoid the mall for an entire year only to [...]
Each December, Brian Reese at Big Rock Candy Mountain deals out a month's worth of holiday esoterica from the far corners of vintage twang, fuzz, scuzz, r&b, blues, country, garage, lounge and beyond. Keeping it loose, he trims his tree with Red Simpson and Mae West, then tops it off with The Sonics, Hank Snow [...]
Heads were undoubtedly scratched in confusion when Epic Soundtracks' debut album, Rise Above, hit shelves in 1992. After all, Epic Soundtracks (born Kevin Paul Godfrey) was then best-known for being one of the madmen behind Swell Maps, the band that released some of the most thrillingly experimental post-punk music of the late '70s and early [...]
(Next year Jim Jarmusch will once again take direct part in a soundtrack to one of his films, working with lutist Jozef van Wissem for the vampire romance Only Lovers Left Alive. The following piece looks back at how music has shaped the auteurs world and work to date.) “One thing about commercial films is…doesn’t [...]
In 2013 Light In The Attic Records is set to reissue four of Marcos Valle‘s 70s studio albums; now available for the first time in North America. Complimented by legendary Brazilian backing band Som Imaginário, the records span the realms of samba, bossa nova, and baião (rhythmic beat from the rural northeast of Brazil), to American [...]
(Videodrome is a recurring feature in which we highlight exceptional videos and/or performances.) Stop Making Sense may have the Big Suit, but if you're looking for the pinnacle of live Talking Heads footage, I'd point you in the direction of this unbelievable show from Rome, 1980. Completing the Heads' journey from minimalist to maximalist, it [...]
I linked to this via AD's twitter and Facebook accounts over the weekend, but for those of you who missed it the 2002 documentary You See Me Laughin' is presently streaming (in its entirety, in four parts) via Youtube. The film documents the fading hill country blues community with emphasis on North Mississippi bluesmen Junior [...]
Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard twice every Friday – Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST. SIRIUS 272: Jean Michel Bernard – Generique Stephane ++ Talking Heads - Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) ++ Roxy Music - All I Want Is You ++ Brian [...]
By the close of the 1970s, Talking Heads had come a long way in a shockingly short period of time. After emerging as a minimalist three-piece at CBGBs in '75 centered around the nervous presence of David Byrne, the band expanded their sonic palette in ways that had to have seemed unimaginable to anyone who [...]
(Sevens, a recurring feature on Aquarium Drunkard, pays tribute to the art of the individual song.) There is no taxiing towards the sky here. It begins with the click of landing gear retracting, then accelerates immediately into a litany of wildflowers and trees: “The wintergreen, the juniper/The cornflower and the chicory.” They teach you in [...]
Singer-songwriter Bill Fay has enjoyed a long and legendary career in obscurity. The British musician first raised eyebrows among listeners back in 1970 with his startlingly unique, baroque debut record Bill Fay, which despite a poor commercial impact quickly became a cult classic and garnered comparisons to other unusual and uncelebrated songwriters, such as Nick [...]
An Aquarium Drunkard
Holy Ghost! "Dumb Disco Ideas"
The Weeknd - Kiss Land
Daft Punk - Random Access Memories Unboxed
Kendrick Lamar - Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe (Explicit)
MØ - Waste Of Time (Audio)
Noteworthy (Stream): Kanye West – Black Skinhead (SNL Performance)
Kanye West Performs “Black Skinhead” & “New Slaves” On ‘SNL’ Season Finale: Watch
Watch Fred Armisen’s SNL farewell with Carrie Brownstein, Kim Gordon, J Mascis, Aimee Mann
