Blog: War on Radio

Too bad I don't live in Chapel Hill! Ben Folds Five is reuniting for a charity show. I have a couple friends who live in the area to check it out. I definitely prefer BFF (hehehe) to Ben Folds' solo career. Rockin' the Suburbs is pretty strong as far as his stuff goes, but after that, I dunno, I feel like the humor and fun that was in Ben Folds Five sort of left. I dunno, just me, I guess.

Sort of like Michael Stipe (or David Hyde Pierce) coming out, everyone probably thinks it's already happened before it really did. But there you have it, she's done . This is all fine and good with me, given that she is about one of the most annoying hipster acts around today, right up there with Vampire Weekend. I don't know why Paste is calling her a "music-making innovator" when she's... not? But so it goes! So long, M.I.A.

Jeez, way to go , Henry. On the other hand, what would you do, reader, if you found a letter from Charles Manson in your mailbox?

I was just thinking a couple days ago about all the Youtube videos that feature clips of bands from a place in San Diego called the Che Café. It hit me that there are so many videos of bands playing at this place - it must have some history, right? Well, this evening, up popped a piece in my RSS reader called The Anti-Britney: San Diego Punk Rockers from the '80s . It's a short piece about the '80s hardcore scene, but the real gem is the link here to the blog Che Underground [...]

Mashable has a piece here on how the album is dead. Or has been killed. Or whatever. What does everyone think about this? My biggest problem with Limewire and Kazaa, et al is that the sharing of single files has helped destroy the album. Whenever I buy a new CD, I try my hardest to listen to the thing the whole way through. I realize it's pointless to buy something with a ton of trashy songs on it when you only want one or two, but it still bothers me that people have such [...]

This Trailer for the new Okkervil River album is pretty cool. You'll notice in the related features that they're also doing a thing where various artists are doing solo covers of the new album's songs-they've got Will Sheff dueting wth AC Newman on "Lost Coastlines" and Bon Iver on "Blue Tulip," which are my favorites so far. There's also this not-that-great-sound-but-passa ble audio track of the studio version of Lost Coastlines , which is a great song.

Okay, I'm a day late. But in my defense, I'm sick in bed AND gearing up for the third last-minute cross-country move of my lifetime, so it's been sort of a weird period. And in reflection of that weirdness, some weird (and not so weird, I guess) tracks: Watch Me Disappear by Augie March, from Watch Me Disappear [BMG, 2008] // Download for Free Here It's interesting that Glen compares this track to "There is No Such Place." Hearing them back to back, [...]

Yeah, this piece is pretty rad. I'm unsure as to why people take the time to get so worked up over the Jonas Brothers. It's vaguely reminiscent of the whole Jonas Brothers/Tokio Hotel fan war sweeping the internet a few weeks ago. But I love people who write angry letters. I don't know the reason behind why I like this, but it's always made me laugh. WTF! you only gave the jonas brothers 1.5 stars?! You little!!!!!!! I hate Chicago Times! That's why no one will ever read this crap because [...]

Yeah, looks like it . No one's quite sure of the label yet, but they are leaving Geffen. Sonic Youth's always amused me this way, because they've been signed to Geffen for, like Pitchfork said, around 20 years! I could see a fit for them on Matador, but I'm actually unfamiliar with Domino.

I stumbled across this video performance of My Bloody Valentine's To Here Knows When while I was reading through Pitchfork this afternoon. The original piece is here and the speculation is that it came off the soundboard and stuff. Sounds pretty neat!

And tepid Nederland, Colorado, home of today's 10th annual Nedfest , was. I've always disliked hippies, but I came away from today deciding that I really don't like hippies. I've not once been to a jam band show or, gasp, to a dreaded hippie music festival that did not end poorly. Never. They are rude, loud, and Jesus Christ do they smell awful. Having already seen Little Feat in a cold, raining gambling mountain town (which was a lot colder and rainier than today), I could have gone into this telling you that weather really [...]

Well, here's hoping I don't get murdered by hippies tomorrow. It's a... hippie music festival . They do allow photography, so I will be taking a nice camera to catch all the various illegal substances being poured down cats' throats and men just swayin' to the tunes, man, with underwear on their heads.

Hey, look, it's Pitchfork and John Mellencamp . Bonus: the word gay .

Nah, this isn't about T.I. or Busta or Fitty. This is about a chappie who decided to gun down a neighbor who just wanted to play his music, man! Why ya gotta be so cold, man? Can't a bro just enjoy his tunes without gettin' shot, man? This isn't news (well, it is, but not music news), but I'm doing an experiment for Sarah and setting up all the links in this entry to open in new windows and you guys can let me know whether or not you like it. If you make sure your [...]

I don't really listen to Dave Matthews Band. But the news of LeRoi Moore's (the saxophone player for the band) death really gets to me. It's always very depressing when someone dies, and even more so when they're as talented as Moore. I don't really have much more to say about it. Sorry to deliver sad news =(.

There are two things that are required to preface my thoughts here: 1. Without getting into any detail, there's been some rather serious emotional upheaval in my world lately, this past week or so, especially. 2. I walk to work, which takes about 45 minutes to an hour, so that's when I listen to a lot of albums. Today I made the dangerous move of putting on an album that I knew would affect me-2002's Tallahassee by one of my favorite bands, The Mountain Goats. Although I think it's fairly common [...]

Muxtape is gone . Okay, I'll be honest, there are a lot of people out there who make really shitty mixtapes and I get that. But I've seen some people put together some stuff that, just in looking at the artist and song names on the tape, blows my mind. Muxtape was a fun little thing that wasn't like Oink (I say this all the time, I'm not for file sharing, but Oink was still epic when you wanted to find something incredibly rare at high bit rates) in that it wasn't about downloading music. It was just [...]

Basically, in the interest of self-discipline, I have decided to do a weekly feature for this blog where I highlight a few tracks that are rocking my world a little bit ATM. Right now, there's no specified number or format or anything, but if I haven't done another entry of this by next Tuesday morning, I urge Marshall to yell at me, okay dude? In any case, on to the actual inaugural songs. The Ballad of Love and Hate by The Avett Brothers, from Emotionalism [2007, Ramseur] // [...]

The High Back Chairs . [ emusic ] Wow. This was an unexpected find. Weighing in at the hipster acceptable level of 751 listens on last.fm, High Back Chairs is, in the words of emusic's critic, "Dischord's one and only power-pop band." The (high) back (chairs) story on this is that I was looking to get some new tunes on emusic last night. As I was browsing the site by label, I came across a band from Dischord called The High Back Chairs. I read the description and was pretty amused. "Power-pop from Dischord?" But it is so. [...]

It turns out that Bono has a house in south France. I didn't know this. Now he's a cheese eating surrender monkey? Jesus! Anyway, it also turns out that a U2 fan just so happened to have a tape recorder with him when he heard Bono blasting some of U2's new music from said house . For those of you who are David Byrne and Brian Eno fans, the duo have released Everything That Happens Will Happen Today , their first CD in almost 30 years. It's streaming for free on the [...]