Or I could just bail him out once and have enough left over to buy a veritable mountain of blow!
Oh, how the mighty fall! It seems Steven Page, squeaky clean front man for the squeaky clean Scarborough band Barenaked Ladies, ran afoul of the authorities in upstate New York and has been charged with possession of cocaine.
Today marks the release of Thigmotactic, Negativland’s 19th full-length release in their 28-year career. If anyone were to assume that this new record would be just more of the same, they’d be foolishly wrong.
For a band that’s built a career on “culture jamming,” this record is decidedly devoid of samples and the like. The sound collages have instead been replaced by bona fide songs with rather unexpected instrumentation - you know, guitars and such.
Except maybe The Count, that is. But he’s not in this clip. Instead, you’ll have to content yourself with Canada’s favourite export:
Other than Feist, Sesame Street has some pretty big names lined up for guest spots for its 39th season (Will Arnett, Jessica Alba, David Beckham and Jack “Good Luck Making Him Kid-Friendly” Black to name just a few), but this clip set to air on August 11 leaked the other day and I’ll be darned if it isn’t the cutest thing ever.
With kids aged 8 and 3, I’ve seen more than my fair share of Sesame Street in the last few years, and in my humble opinion, this is one of the better artist-involved song revisions they’ve done in a while. It’s right up there with Norah Jones’ “Don’t Know Why Y Didn’t Come” or James Blunt’s very clever triangle ditty based on “You’re Beautiful.”
When I stumbled across London’s Mad Staring Eyes mid-way through their set last month at North by Northeast, I thought to myself that I’d discovered the new kings of pub rock. When bass player Dan Lee handed me a copy of Bored of Looking Cool, and I saw they have a track called “King of Pub Rock,” I figured I wasn’t alone in my opinion. They’re also one of the few bands I’ve ever seen to list Ian Dury as an influence, so there you go.
Like their predecessors in the genre, MSE play straight-up rock with a raucous attitude. They’ve got a great bunch of tunes on this disc, however this recording comes a little short of capturing the band’s frenetic live energy. It does, however, do a rather nostalgic tip of the hat to the heyday of pub rock simply due to the fact that it sounds like it could’ve been recorded in the early ’80s (the dated keyboard textures on tunes like “Out of my Head” definitely drive that point home).
White rappers tend to fall into three camps these days: Eminem-ish, Beastie Boys-esque, or just plain embarrassing. While not remotely Beastly, Chicago’s Alltruisms makes it clear he’s more Eminem than embarrassment even before he ponders whether martial law is as effective as Marshall Mathers in “Nine-Digit Number.”
An altruistic dude who speaks in truisms galore, Alltru has jam packed Clusterbombs with booksmart, politically-aware rhymes and some fairly dope beats. Sometimes the subject matter leads to too much sharing (I now know way more than I’ll ever need to about his appreciation of Asian women), but for the most part the rhymes are right on target, like when he ponders if he picked up the mark of the beast when Ronald Reagan kissed him as a baby in 1980.
In this column we talk to musicians; sometimes about the music they make, sometimes about whatever tangent they happen to go off on. And once in a while we may talk to non-musicians as well, just to keep you on your toes.
In this installment, we talk to local (Toronto) DJ/producer Eric Downer about life, beats, camping and soul destruction (among other things).
The other day, the short list for the Polaris Music Prize was announced, and even though there’s been some heated controversy over who got snubbed when the long list was announced (Sunset Rubdown, for instance), it’s nice to see that one Toronto band made the cut. Holy Fuck go on to the next round of judging, where the 178 member jury will pick one deserving artist to win the grand prize: $20,000 to put towards recording another album.
When I checked my Gmail this morning if found an interesting link from Adam Gorman of Manchester’s The Travelling Band:
This is a documentary produced by Dig for Fire looking at the scene in Manchester’s Chorlton-cum-Hardy neighbourhood and it’s recent development as far as new folk music is concerned.
In this column we talk to musicians; sometimes about the music they make, sometimes about whatever tangent they happen to go off on. And once in a while we may talk to non-musicians as well, just to keep you on your toes.
In this installment, we talk to manic frontman for Toronto’s Run with the Kittens, Nate Mills (aka Nate Milk) about bikes, petty theft, cocaine, devotion, and comedy.
After retiring from professional punk rock in 1998 to fulfill his life-long dream of joining Boston’s fire department, ex-Dropkick Murphys frontman Michael McColgan put together Street Dogs in 2002 to help him vent his creative urges. Now with the band is set to release their fourth album, State of Grace, McColgan has had to take a leave of absence from the BFD in order to keep up with the demand for Street Dogs live dates (they’re playing all summer on the Warped Tour).
Release Date:
November 18, 2008 Total Songs:
3 Genre:Alternative Price:
$2.97 Copyright
2008 Sire Records for the U.S. and WEA International Inc. for the world outside the U.S. Marketed by Reprise Records, A Warner Music Group Company.
