108 shopping days until Swans perform at Atlanta's Terminal West. Better start shopping for earplugs now.
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Monday, December 8, 2014
RIP John Lennon (1940-1980)
Thirty-four years ago today, also a Monday night. . . I was teaching high school (Earth and Physical Science) in Salem, Massachusetts, site of the famous witch trials of 1692 and 1693. Relaxing that night, watching Monday Night Football - the Patriots (naturally) versus Miami - when sportscaster Howard Cosell delivered the one bit of news that I would have preferred to have heard anybody but Cosell deliver.
The next day, I had to try and explain the impact of the event to a bunch of 9th and 10th graders. Words failed.
Sunday, December 7, 2014
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Quartet for Heart & Breath
Arcade Fire's Richard Reed Parry's solo project Quartet For Heart & Breath at Basilica Soundscape 2014.
Friday, December 5, 2014
New Hilang Child Video
We stole all the praise
We laughed at the old ways
And tomorrow we ride
Tomorrow we all hold on to life
Waste it all
We hid from the jeers
We gained all the long years
And were told it's the life
Told we would all grow up to die
Waste it all
The rest stayed the same
And crawled into old age
And they almost survived
Almost got all of us to lie
Waste it all
Tomorrow we ride
Tomorrow we all grow up to die
Waste it all
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Sonny & The Sunsets
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo at Buckhead Theater, 2013 |
Yo La Tengo have this year reissued their sixth studio album, 1993's Painful, as More Painful. The album marked a turning point for the band, and guitarist Ira Kaplan has said, “Anyone who ever said they liked our older records more than Painful, I just told them they’re wrong.”
Writing in The New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones notes. "Yo La Tengo has been around for thirty stubborn years , , , The obvious antecedent of the group, founded in Hoboken, is the Velvet Underground. (Its members—Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew—even played the Underground in the 1996 film I Shot Andy Warhol.) Yo La Tengo is specifically rooted in the Velvet Underground’s third, eponymous album, in which the delicate and the noisy collapse into each other, and even violent feedback feels soft. Dozens of bands have sprung from this source, including My Bloody Valentine and the Feelies, but Yo La Tengo has never been big on the obscure or the hip side of the Velvets; it votes, repeatedly, for beauty. . . "
"Yo La Tengo has an approachable quality," Frere-Jones continues. "Each year, the band plays a Hanukkah show at Maxwell’s, the Hoboken rock club that was sold in January; there’s none of the haughtiness that surrounds so many of the Underground’s descendants. Kaplan, Hubley, and McNew apply themselves to one of the most common templates in indie rock and consistently get it right: melodies you can remember easily and eruptions of noise that you can’t be sure even happened, with sharp and unadorned language. They’re the cool kids who refuse to act cooler than you."
My favorite Yo La Tango album is probably 2000's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, the first truly great album of this millennium. The closing number, Night Falls On Hoboken, is quiet and gentle, but is nonetheless one of those songs that, if listened to carefully, has the power to change your life.
My favorite Yo La Tango album is probably 2000's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, the first truly great album of this millennium. The closing number, Night Falls On Hoboken, is quiet and gentle, but is nonetheless one of those songs that, if listened to carefully, has the power to change your life.
Also, Cherry Chapstick, because why not?
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