So I’m writing my posts today from Chicago, where I’ll be attending this weekend’s Pitchfork Music Festival, which collects a ton of the more popular artists operating under the shifting rubric of “indie” and deposits them in the city’s Union Park. This is my third time attending the fest, and it’s definitely one of my favorite better multi-day, multi-band extravaganzas thanks to the beautiful space, the wide variety of reasonably priced foodstuffs, and fond memories of Jarvis Cocker’s spellbinding set last year. This year’s most anticipated bands for me are the epic Northwest outfit Built To Spill (playing an all-request set), the New Wave revivalists M83, and the Danish dream-rockers Mew (who I’m hoping will sprinkle their set with material from their forthcoming album No More Stories / Are Told Today / I’m Sorry / They Washed Away // No More Stories / The World Is Grey / I’m Tired / Let’s Wash Away. But perhaps you think there’s a band on the bill that I shouldn’t miss? The full lineup after the jump. MORE »
POSTS FROM "tell me something good" CATEGORY
tell me something good
Who Should I See At The Pitchfork Music Festival?
tell me something good
How Did You Hear About Your Favorite Song Of Right Now?
My pal Tom Ewing yesterday put a call out on Twitter asking people what their favorite songs were, and how they’d first been exposed to said songs. People answered with songs ranging from “Tequila” to “Zero,” and from sources ranging from boyfriends to MBV. From that data–compiled over the course of a few hours–he extracted a few thoughts on what he called “Digitally Engaged Music Seekers,” and how they come to the music that they love: MORE »
tell me something good
Which Singers Should Be Turned Into Claymation Cupids?
Around twenty-five years ago, the New York radio station WPIX tried to win the hearts of listeners by switching to an all-love-song format. It was aggressive about letting people know about this rebranding, blanketing the New York City area’s TV channels with ads like the one above. Remember that this was the pre-California Raisins era, so the whole concept of “claymation” was restricted to the odd Sesame Street skit—and that only made the ad below the cut, in which Dionne Warwick and Joe Cocker were transformed into butt-naked clay cupids warbling their sappiest hits, weirder. (Really, it haunts my dreams even today.) MORE »
year-end analysis
What Use Are “Best Of” Lists, Anyhow?
As has been mentioned in several recent year-end wrapup posts, the merits of putting together arbitrary listings of the year’s “best” musical phenomena are somewhat negligible beyond their ability to create some controversy among music nerd types. For me, the ideal when I’m filling out one of the ballots proffered to me is that someone out there might check out one of the albums listed that the world at large hasn’t shared my particular enthusiasm for up to that point (The Myriad’s You Can’t Trust A Ladder, now in stores!). What I’m wondering is this: Has reading any of these lists actually inspired you to make a music purchase this year? MORE »
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“Walking On A Dream,” But Not Much Else
Although Jess stole my “tell me what I should be… MORE »
tell me something good
I Need Halloween Help
I ain’t gonna front: I am one of those too-old-for-this idiots who takes Halloween very seriously. To be fair, Athens is Halloween Bonkers: Every single person in town gets dressed up, from the frat boys to the homeless to the bitter, bitter townies. Like everything in my life, I treat it as a competition, and I usually do aight in terms of costumes. I’ve been a smashing Elton John a couple of times (unfortunately, there is a resemblance). I’ve been the Brawny Paper Towel Man and Robert Smith, and once, I was Pikachu in a costume made for eight-year-olds. Pikachu hid nothing that night. MORE »
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In Which I Give You The Power To Plan My Evening
It would appear that everyone in the music business has decided to defer to Axl Rose and not make any news today, so I’ve spent the last hour or so trying to figure out who I’m going to see during my own personal CMJ Day One. (See, last night I saw this awesome act called The Insides Of My Eyelids–they performed for 11 1/2 hours straight, and had all these whacked-out conceptual pieces about the protagonist, who looked a lot like me, wearing wide-brimmed ceramic hats while trying not to embarrass herself in front of people she wanted to impress. Fun times!) I’m working off the official schedule, although I’ll probably peruse some no-badge-required listings on the subway downtown. Here are five acts I’m interested in tonight–feel free to add your own recommendations! MORE »
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Songs: You Downloaded ‘Em, Now Tell Us About ‘Em
Hi! So. Having spent half the year in a “no blog”… MORE »
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Your Chance To Provide The Content Around Here
I don’t mean to be totally evil, but I am hoping that the horror of the above Joss Stone/John Legend rendition of the Chaka Khan and Rufus classic that categorizes this post will motivate you to share what you’ve been listening to these days. MORE »
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Choice Cuts 2008: What Have You Cherry-Picked This Year?
Every month Robert Christgau publishes the Consumer Guide for MSN Music, and every month he chooses a handful of songs off albums he otherwise isn’t interested in, labeling them “Choice Cuts.” (This month those honors go to a couple of Rough Guide collections, two Jason Mraz discs, and George Stanford.) That type of sorting through the stacks is something all critics do a little of, at least: certainly the MP3 makes it easier to do so than ever. So tell us–which albums so far this year have you found only a couple of remarkable songs on, and which ones are they? My own short list is after the jump. MORE »
