There’s no place like 127.0.0.1
We went to Chapel Hill on Friday night to see Portastatic and Robert Pollard play. It was a good show. Pollard’s new band is pretty damn tight. They played a bunch of stuff from their new release on Merge titled “From A Compound Eye” for the first set. The second set is when things got crazy. It was a GBV closer with a handful of classics over the years.
Portastatic pictured above.
Pollard in mid-air.
Well, technically it’s Carrboro, NC. I’m taking my original copy of Propeller to have Bob autograph it. I’m a dweeb and proud of it. I’m looking forward to taking a lot of pictures as well.
Apparently, the Art Brut live show is a performance not to be missed. Eddie Argos, lead brut, supposedly has a wicked stage presence.
My very first live encounter with Guided By Voices was six years ago on this very day at the Elbow Room in Columbia, SC.
I was blown away, stunned, and hooked by their engaging live performance. I have never seen a band get quite as drunk on stage and manage to somehow play as tight as one might hope.
Do The Collapse had just been released and the critics were ready to pounce considering the immediately recognizable departure from the previous material.
The critics failed to judge the release by itself. They seemed to be put off by the polished nature of the recording rather than appreciate the span that Pollard was demonstrating. Sure, one of the singles from the release, “Hold On Hope,” wasn’t exactly high art compared to songs on Bee Thousand, but when you have literally written 10,000 songs some are bound to be less art-y than others.
Do The Collapse, their first release on TVT, remains one of my favorite Pollard releases next to Isolation Drills. A recent exchange with Fred Wilson has insprired an upcoming “intro to GBV” podcast that I am currently working on.
Stay tuned for that podcast during the week of February 6th.
To subscribe with iTunes:
1. Download iTunes version 6 and install it
2. Select Advanced, Subscribe to Podcast, and enter this into the dialog:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/internmentcamp/loudspeakers
Amazon delivered the “God Bless Bloc Party” DVD today and it wasn’t in my hands for more than 10 minutes before I was watching it. I’m sad to say that it just wasn’t that great.
They obviously put a great deal of effort into the production part of it, but it just seemed to lack any substance beyond the high-glow effects and production wizardry.
I was excited when I originally saw that it was coming out, but alas I realize that I should have rented it from Netflix instead of actually buying it.
The last really, really good music DVD that I bought was the Pavement’s Slow Century. It’s a hard music documentary to top.
Yeah, no kidding. They were the surprise entertainment for a private company event. I’m not a huge fan, but it was absolute mayhem. They cranked out most of their hits in just over ninety minutes. My only dissapointment: No Liv.
Robert Pollard is a pimp. Or is he a pusher? In either case, he’s managed to sell anything from lo-fi boom box recordings to hi-fi production studio material to the swarm of rabid fans that seem to have an endless appetite for all things Bob and his most well known band, Guided by Voices.
Such is the case with the most recent Pollard release. The 19 track vinyl-only release under the monicker Acid Ranch is called As Forever. They pressed 525 copies of this gem and it sold out in under 2 days.
The covers were hand printed over old records. I managed to get two copies of As Forever. One copy uses Juice Newton’s Greatest Hits and the other is a Dire Straits record, but I still can’t figure out which one.
As Forever is already being called the next Propeller in reference to the 1992 release on Scat records where the vinyl copies were handmade originals. Copies of the original Propeller have sold in the thousands of dollars on ebay recently. Here’s a copy that will probably sell for around $1200-1500.
Copies of Propeller autographed by Pollard fetch an additional hefty sum. I managed to pick up a copy several month ago autographed by Tobin Sprout for around $1300. I look forward to getting Pollard’s signature at his show in a couple of weeks in Chapel Hill, NC.
The recent leak of the forthcoming Built To Spill record shows that the band has a sense of humor yet are determined to get paid for their work. The only leak available of “You In Reverse” samples from Mike Jones, the Houston rapper who sings his mobile number all over his own records and routinely asks the rhetorical question, “Who is Mike Jones?”
That rhetorical question was sampled and is used all over the BTS record and would surely get irritating after some point with continuous listen. I suppose they understand that leaks are just the norm these days and they can’t fully combat the inevitable, but they can make it annoying for repeated listening.
The retail version will leak at some point and this one will eventually fade, but there’s not much that a band or a label can do about the problem. Records need to get to the reviewers months in advance to make it into the cycles.
The only question I have relates to the band sampling the work of Mike Jones, presumably without permission. I doubt that they asked permission if in fact it was the band that intentionally released the rough cut version of the record with the audio watermark.
Mike Jones probably doesn’t know who Built To Spill is, but he probably does care that his music is being sampled without permission. Though not a proper release, the rough cut signifies an intention to release and that may be the only thing that matters.
But such is the case today where permission to publish is no longer required even in the face of the law.
Podcasting, mashups, mixtapes, and apparently audio watermarking using copywritten samples are just the new reality.
I was a little infuriated today after hearing this piece on Podtech.net. I usually find John’s shows entertaining and informative, but his most recent podcast should have been researched more. Listen to the episode and if you feel the same way, I urge you to comment on his blog. A correction is in order.
Here are some of my comments on his blog:
Your characterization of independent music as being comprised of “a few good artists mixed with a sea of mediocre local bar bands” before the internet is complete conjecture on your part.
“But the web has helped to promote some quality.” Wrong. It’s just made the music more accessible to people who want to hear it created and distributed without the ill intent of the major labels.
If “Everything All The Time” was released in 2005, it could have easily been very close to the top of my favorite records for the year. It’s that good.
I specifically say, “that didn’t do it for me,” because surely someone enjoyed the hell out of Illinois, the most recent Sufjan Stevens record, but I can’t listen to it without a gagging sensation coming over me. Anyway, these are the records that people seemed to go on and on about that just didn’t do it for me.
1. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois (Asthmatic Kitty)
2. Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary (Sub Pop)
3. Sleater-Kinney - The Woods (Sub Pop)
4. Serena Maneesh - Serena Maneesh (Honeymilk)
5. Sunn O))) - Black One (Southern Lord)
6. Ladytron - The Witching Hour (Rykodisc)
7. Xiu Xiu - La Foret (5 Rue Christine)
8. Deerhoof - The Runners Four (Kill Rock Stars)
9. Animal Collective – Feels (Fat Cat)
10. Jamie Lidell – Multiply (Warp)
My list has changed somewhat since originally posting it in early August. It was really because of some late year show stoppers like Jens Lekman and Great Lake Swimmers.
1. M.Ward - Transistor Radio (Merge)
2. Rogue Wave - Descended Like Vultures (Sub Pop)
3. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm (Vice)
4. Great Lake Swimmers - Bodies And Minds (Misra)
5. Jens Lekman - Oh, You’re So Silent Jens (Secretly Canadian)
6. Spoon - Gimme Fiction (Merge)
7. Deadly Snakes - Porcella (Paper Bag)
8. M.I.A - Arular (XL Recordings)
9. Art Brut - Bang, Bang, Rock n’ Roll (Fierce Panda)
10. The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema (Matador)
Is it just me or does it seem like this is the year of lists? I typically shy away from reviews that assign points to music on some sort of scale. A 10.0 review indicates a perfect record, but the system is baseless when it’s not open and up for debate nor does it have much merit when I can predict the outcome(re-releases on the Pitchfork scale always get their due). Even the ranking systems that assign 3.5 stars seems like such bullshit. I mean 7.2 on a 10 point scale and 3.5 stars out of 5 seems so fucking precise for something that has such imprecision.
I even get a little grumpy at the big name awards shows that offer up such spectaculars as “Artist Of The Year” or “Best New Rock Band.” Last time I checked, there was no such competition that pits artists against each other in a cage match stylee blowout. This isn’t the WWF. Sam Beam’s not duking it out in the streets with Sufjan Stevens for any such award.
After that tirade, I can fully justify posting a list of records that I enjoyed the most. That’s fair and doesn’t pit artists up against each other.
Mates Of State - Bring It Back
:: This is the kind of record that makes me do Rodin’s Thinker while staring out the window one minute and then spontaneously switch to head nod and protruded lips a la Jagger the next.
The M’s - Future Women
:: Though this record may sound all over the place initially, it’s beauty comes from being brilliantly stitched together.
The Minus 5 - The Gun Album
:: Good gravy maing — this is undeniable pop glory!
The Weird Weeds - This Is Not What You Want
:: I can enjoy this for the moments when it’s on, but I’m in the process of looking for music for New Year’s Eve, not for a wake.
Espers - The Weed Tree
:: Too down tempo for year-end party playlist making, but a keeper for the somber winter months ahead.
V/A - To: Elliott, From: Portland
:: I can’t help but wonder how this Elliott Smith tribute record would sound if made before his death considering some of the identifiably down tempo covers.
Paper Airplane - Boyhood
:: I can sense that there’s something here and I just need to spend more time with it, but title track, Boyhood, is a standout so far.
Love Is All - 9 Times That Same Song
:: I’m off the fence on this one and it appears I have fallen on the side of like-it-but-don’t-love-it since there are a couple of standout tracks that get my attention while the rest of the record seems to fade out of memory rather quickly.
Pearls & Brass - The Indian Tower
:: There’s some sort of metal resurgence occuring it would seem though this record doesn’t fall squarely into that category, but in either case I don’t care for their brand of it.
Boy Least Likely To - The Best Party Ever
:: I liked the record when I first heard it many months ago and it appears to have made more than one prominent list, but now that everyone else likes it I must withdraw my support for it and continue to be indier than thou.