Author: April

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Slackday: NTSIB feels unclean.

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I don’t even know why some things exist in the world…

So, Leadbelly, he was great. A discovery of most honorable song-collectors John and Alan Lomax, he was a convicted murderer who, the popular rumor had it, was pardoned from prison because he played such great songs. It turned out not to be true (the murder part was true, but he was eligible for early release for good behavior), but he was still great. He knew a lot of folk songs and field songs and all kinds of songs. One of the songs he’s better known for (after “Goodnight, Irene” and “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”) is “Pick a Bale of Cotton”, heard here:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiXLl7clwJE]

(This, by the way, is apparently one of only three pieces of film of Leadbelly known to exist.)

Great song, right? Right. So who can blame a band for wanting to cover it?

I can. When the band is ABBA.

Seriously.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOYqGNzNs3c]

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go staunch the flow of blood from my ears.

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Royal Bangs: We don’t know shit about cars.

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I bumped into Patrick Carney the other day, and we got to chatting about music, as we are wont to do.

Pat said, “April, you have wicked taste in music: you should be listening to this band on my label. They’re called Royal Bangs, and they’re amazing.”

“Well, Pat,” said I, “you have good taste, too, so I will give them a spin.”

Then we hugged, and I returned home to download some Royal Bangs.

This is all true except the part where Patrick Carney and I know each other and have ever carried on a conversation.

(I know I’ve been giving a lot of space to Dan lately, but I think you are way rad, too, Pat. And I usually think drummers are nutbags.)

Both Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach, the Black Keys, have great taste in music, and they use their knowledge and connections to get good music into your hands – Dan with his invitation-only studio Akron Analog and label Polymer Sounds, Pat with his label Audio Eagle.

When you listen to the player on the Audio Eagle MySpace page, Royal Bangs stands out. Not only is their music layered and their playing confident, but there is an urgency that comes up out of their music and drills right under your skin. It infects you, and you feel like you need to burst out of your skin, flying and howling. It is simultaneously delicate and desperate. I won’t say you can’t ignore it, because you might be made of stronger stuff than I am, but you won’t want to ignore it.

http://www.lala.com/external/flash/SingleSongWidget.swf

http://www.lala.com/external/flash/SingleSongWidget.swf

Royal Bangs are currently touring Europe, coming back to the States and Canada at the end of April, including a spot at Lollapalooza.

Royal Bangs Official Site
Royal Bangs MySpace
Royal Bangs Daytrotter session
Audio Eagle Records MySpace

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Bits: Rekkid Store Day, Hell & Half of Georgia show, Hank’s Pulitzer, Rush for real, Prine tribute

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  • Record Store Day is coming April 17! As the NTSIB hermitage is newly-equipped with a rekkid playa after years of watching the old vinyl collection sit quiet and sad, we are super jazzed for this Christmas of the music world this year. I’ll be celebrating the day at Music Saves, so if you’re there that day and happen to grab the last Black Keys 12″ before I’ve gotten my hands on a copy and you feel a sharp blow to the back of your head and then wake up in a pool of your own vomit to find that TBK 12″ gone, well…
  • Hell and Half of Georgia have a free show coming up on April 24 at Canter’s Kibitz Room in Hollywood. They also have new swag in the form of a pretty rockin’ Tee-shirt.
  • Did you know there’s a Pulitzer Prize for music? Yep, and Hank Williams was awarded one this year. I spotted a blog earlier answering the question of why Hank was awarded the Pulitzer for music, but was that really a question? Is “because he was fucking awesome” not answer enough?
  • Rush is touring. That’s right. Rush.
  • A John Prine tribute album will be hitting stores on June 22 featuring contributions from the likes of Old Crow Medicine Show, Justin Townes Earle, the Avett Brothers, Conor Oberst, Deer Tick and more.

We’ve been a little undecided on our feelings about Megafaun, but this performance they staged for La Blogotheque has certainly gone a long way in endearing them to us.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=10851413&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

Megafaun – His Robe / A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

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Notable shows in the greater Cleveland area & BiiiiiiiirdMAN!

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Shows worth checking out this week in and around Cleveland:

The Beachland Ballroom & Tavern

  • Sun, Apr 11| 8 PM (7 PM door)
    Drive-By Truckers
    Langhorne Slim
    SOLD OUT!
    Ballroom | All Ages

  • Mon, Apr 12| 7 PM (6 PM door)
    The Legendary Rhythm
    & Blues Revue
    featuring The Tommy Castro Band / Joe Louis Walker & Debbie Davies / Brickhouse Blues Band
    $20.00 adv / $22.00 dos
    Ballroom | All Ages

  • Tue, Apr 13| 9 PM (8 PM door)
    The Hold Steady
    The Oranges Band
    $18.00 adv / $20.00 dos
    Ballroom | All Ages

  • Thu, Apr 15| 7:30 PM (7:30 PM door)
    Meet & Greet with Baby Dee
    LGBT Fundraiser
    Price of Tix includes concert
    $25.00
    Tavern | All Ages

  • Thu, Apr 15| 8:30 PM (8 PM door)
    Baby Dee
    Lighthouse & The Whaler
    Adam Apple will perform a silent word piece
    $10.00
    Tavern | All Ages

  • Fri, Apr 16| 8 PM (7:30 PM door)
    Blue Grass Barn Dance
    Hosted by Miss Firecracker
    feat. Hoots & Hellmouth
    Heelsplitter (11:40 PM)
    Hiram Rapids Stumblers (10 PM)
    One Dollar Hat (9:20 PM)
    Timberwolves (8:40 PM)
    Two Far Gone (8 PM)
    $5.00 adv / $7.00 dos
    Ballroom | All Ages

Grog Shop

  • Sat, Apr 10| 10 PM
    Queens of the Iron Mic
    Hosted by Erica Kayne
    Indica
    Chimera
    Mz Crazy Tee
    Summer Azul
    True Poetry
    Chevy Blue
    Mami
    Erica Nicole
    FREE

  • Thurs, Apr 15| 9 PM
    Pissed Jeans
    This Moment In Black History
    Homostupids
    $7

  • Fri, Apr 16| 6 PM
    Adam Green
    The Dead Trees
    $12

Musica

  • Fri, Apr 16| 9 PM
    Over the Rhine
    Ellery
    $20

Annabell’s Bar & Lounge

  • Sat, Apr 10| 10 PM
    This Moment in Black History
    If These Trees Could Talk
    As If

House of Blues

  • Sun, Apr 11| 8:30 PM (7:30 PM door)
    Galactic
    Cyril Neville
    Corey Henry
    T Bird and the Breaks
    $20 adv
    $23 dos

No, not Harvey, but a birdman one-man-band. This fascinating street performer is Claudio Montuori, and you can find a few videos of him on YouTube. Including an interview, but it’s in Italian (if anyone can translate it, I’d be happy to post it).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzod3CotfAg]

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Slackday: And Ohio boys ain’t too bad, either

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As it’s Slackday, I’ll just drop the (very thin) veneer of objective professionalism and admit it: I am currently obsessed with all things Dan Auerbach. I’ve always dug the Black Keys, but the release of the new songs from their forthcoming album have compelled me to spend quality time with their catalogue and to get into Dan Auerbach’s solo work.

I learned that my favorite song on Dan Auerbach’s album, Keep It Hid, is a cover of a song that was written by Wayne Carson Thompson – who was also the writer of the fantastic song “The Letter” that was popularized by the Box Tops, sung by a very young Alex Chilton – and popularized by a duo called Jon & Robin. I had never heard the song, so I went looking for it. I was a little apprehensive that I might be faced with the fact that Dan didn’t conjure magic and awesome from thin air. But I needn’t have worried. As with A.A. Bondy, I’m finding I can always trust Dan.

You see, here’s the Jon & Robin version:

It’s cute, but after the promise of the intro, it feels limp and uninspiring.

Now, here’s what Dan did with it:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLsANH1tFoY]

Fucking. A.

He took the promising intro of the Jon & Robin version, stretched it throughout the song and even ratcheted it up a few notches. I absolutely love that big-stomping carnival rhythm. I love the drop-out echo effect when he sings “more”. And, as always, I love the soulfulness of his vocal delivery. This is what covering a song should be all about, taking it and making it your own – keeping the bones, but practically rebuilding the rest from the ground up. Dan took something that was cute and twee and made it fun, sexy and absolutely rockin’.

Dan Auerbach MySpace

Dan Auerbach page at Nonesuch

Dan Auerbach KCRW In-studio Session at Rollo & Grady

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Game Changer: Shudder to Think

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It seems every music fanatic has at least one: a game changer. A band or album that slapped them upside the head, jarred them from complacency, shocked them into a different way of hearing or a different way of thinking. We’ve read the stories, about how, either through words that spoke to them in a way no one had spoken to them before or through an arrangement of sounds that were nothing like they had ever heard before, their internal worlds were forever changed.

My biggest game changer to date has been Shudder to Think. In 1994, I was heavily into Jeff Buckley and made a point of listening to the artists he covered and the artists he noted as favorites. Jeff had good, eclectic taste, and one of his well-documented favorites was Shudder to Think. S2T’s fifth studio album, Pony Express Record, was newly-released, and their video for “X-French Tee Shirt” was getting some play on MTV. It sounded weird to me. It was jagged and aggressive with frequent time changes and unconventional melodies. I had no idea what to make of it. I couldn’t even determine if I liked it or hated it. I wanted to hear it again.

Eventually, I bought Pony Express Record, and the whole album was a revelation. Everything that was contained in “X-French Tee Shirt” was on show, spread around and turned up. The album was pointy and electric and psychotic. It was, at turns, creepy, frightening, obscene, sexy, clever, ugly, beautiful. It was invigorating, and my mind opened up to what music could be in a way it hadn’t been since I first heard Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Pony Express Record cemented for me the idea that, while music could also go on just being fun and simple, it was important for music to move forward, open out, shake up, swallow whole and regurgitate as a new entity.

I went on to become a big fan of S2T in the short time they had left as a band at that point. I had the pleasure of seeing them live at Bimbo’s in San Francisco thirteen years ago this month. It was the day before or day after my birthday (my memory is fuzzy at best), and I got birthday hugs from Craig Wedren and Nathan Larson, who are two of the sweetest guys I’ve ever met. While the band has since dispersed to their own projects – with a reunion in 2008 – with varying degrees of success, S2T is still one of my favorite bands and Pony Express Record still serves as a mental measuring stick for me for all other music.

Shudder to Think MySpace
Craig Wedren Official Site
A Camp Official Site

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Bits: Lolla’10, Yuri’s Night, Lou Barlow tour, TBK in NYC2, new Big Boi jam

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  • While we don’t post too many festival line-ups unless A.A. Bondy or the Felice Brothers are involved (we play favorites, we admit it), the Lollapalooza 2010 line-up is pretty great. Standouts for us: Jimmy Cliff, the Black Keys, Cypress Hill (we saw them on a previous Lolla go-’round, and they had one of the best sets of the day), Mavis Staples, Mumford & Sons, Dawes and Royal Bangs. It’ll be a something-for-everyone weekend.

  • If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, you should be getting tickets for Yuri’s Night at the NASA Ames Research Center this Saturday because the entertainment lineup is straight-up awesome. Les Claypool, The Black Keys, Common, N.E.R.D. and more. We ain’t got nothing like that going for the CLE celebration.

  • Lou Barlow will be touring with Mike Watt’s missingmen, though sans Watt, in June.

  • After the quick sell-out of the Black Keys’ upcoming Summerstage show, a second date has been added. Go get you some, NYC.

  • Pitchfork has a new Big Boi track, “Shutterbugg”, for you to listen to. BB has signed with Def Jam, so his solo album should finally see the light of day.

If it was possible to have carnal relations with music, while we would have a steady conjugal visiting schedule with the entire Black Keys catalogue, we would also have a tawdry affair with Lou Barlow’s “Gravitate”.

http://www.lala.com/external/flash/SingleSongWidget.swf

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Conrad Plymouth: I could have been a preacher if I suffered fools

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We’ve talked Conrad Plymouth up before, and we’ll continue to do so if they keep it up. If you don’t like music that moves you, that can fill you with yearning, a little melancholy and a strong sense of place – even if it’s a place you’ve never been – then stay away from these guys. If, however, you are a fan of beautiful music, heartfelt vocals and exceptional songwriting, go download Conrad Plymouth’s new EP and throw some bucks at them.

If you already took a listen to “Fergus Falls” when the band posted it previously, you already know you need this EP. If not, here’s your chance.

Conrad Plymouth – Fergus Falls