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Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires: Everything You Took

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Lee Bains (of the Dexateens) and his new band the Glory Fires rolled out their debut, There is a Bomb [sic] in Gilead, this week. I dig this country-tinged southern soul track “Everything You Took”.

 

 

You can download a full live show, from a March 23 performance at the Bama Theatre in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, just by clicking this link.

You can also catch them on the road right now, including a stop at the much-loved Deep Blues Fest in Minnesota (the return of the original!) in late June.

May 17 – Oxford, MS – Proud Larry’s
May 18 – Little Rock, AR – White Water Tavern
May 19 – Batesville, AR – Lucero Family Picnic w/ Lucero, Shooter Jennings
May 24 – Mobile, AL – Alabama Music Box w/ Nightmare Boyzzz
May 25 – Tuscaloosa, AL – Green Bar
May 26 – Athens, GA – Caledonia Lounge
May 27 – Atlanta, GA – The Earl w/ Glen Iris / Dirty Souls
June 21 – Louisville, KY – Zanzabar
June 24 – Rock Island, IL – Daytrotter Session
June 26 – Madison, WI – Mickey’s Tavern
June 27 – Milwaukee, WI – Quarter’s Rock’n’Roll Palace
June 28 – Minneapolis, MN – Palmer’s Bar
June 29 – Bayport, MN – Deep Blues Fest

 

Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires Official Website

Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires @ Alive Records

Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires @ Facebook

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Deafheaven: Roads to Judah

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Deafheaven was initially George Clark (vocals) and Kerry McCoy (guitar), and now includes Joey Bautista (guitar), Derek Prine (bass), and Korey Severson (drums). They are from San Francisco, and Roads to Judah is their debut album.

And oh, what an album it is, too. I guess technically their genre is metal, or hardcore, or something like that – I think I saw one description that referred to it as “metal sludge” – but all of those terms are either wholly inadequate or just wrong.

Roads to Judah is a lot of things, but mostly it is awesome, in the original sense of the word: both beautiful, and a little scary. It’s majestic. It’s orchestral, if the orchestra in question had listened to Metal Machine Music several times, meditated on it for a week, and then sat down to jam about their feelings.

Here is an example of what I mean. This is Violet, the first song on the record:
 

 

And in contrast, here is Tunnel of Trees, the last song:
 

 

And here is an excerpt from their SXSW 2012 set:
 

Deafheaven - "Language Games" @ The Bat Bar SXSW '12

 
For more information visit the Deafheaven official website.

Band photo by June Zandona.

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A Good Read, a Good Listen, and a Good Drink: Daniel Knox

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It’s a simple yet sublime pleasure, and just thinking about it can make you feel a little calmer, a little more content. Imagine: You bring out one of the good rocks glasses (or your favorite mug or a special occasion tea cup) and pour a couple fingers of amber liquid (or something dark and strong or just some whole milk). You drop the needle on the jazz platter (or pull up a blues album on your mp3 player or dig out that mixtape from college). Ensconcing yourself in the coziest seat in the house, you crack the spine on a classic (or find your place in that sci-fi paperback or pull up a biography on your e-book reader). And then, you go away for a while. Ah, bliss.

In this series, some of NTSIB’s friends share beloved albums, books and drinks to recommend or inspire.

 

I am pleased to have the king of sardonic heart taking part in this series. Sardonic heart? you ask. Yes, because while Daniel Knox will make you laugh – if your humor is of a certain darker inclination – if you dig further down, you will find deep and jagged truths that might catch you on their barbs as they cling to your clothes with their familiarity. Yes, the world is broken, and we’re broken in it, but sit here a while, and we’ll share a grim laugh together.

 

 

Good Read:
Ask The Dust by John Fante
The most prominent in a series of novels about Fante’s alter-ego Arturo Bandini. I love all of Fante’s work but I’ve read this book more times than I can remember. Bandini is pure ego and contradiction, cursing someone and admiring them in the same breath. His writing style is full of a rambling honesty that doesn’t hold back. Anyone who has ever tried to write or create something will recognize Bandini’s courage and doubt as their own.

“The Road To Los Angeles” makes a good companion to this, as does “Dreams From Bunker Hill” which Fante wrote blind and limbless from his deathbed.

There was a piece of shit movie made of “Ask The Dust” in 2006. Don’t even bother watching the trailer. It’s the worst.

Good Listen:
“Gondola No Uta” (from Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru) by Traditional.
I’ve always favored voices with character over ones with skill. I work as a projectionist and this song from the end of the film “Ikiru” always made me run out to the balcony to take it in whenever it showed. His voice is so small and on the verge of cracking, but I can’t imagine it sung better.

 

 

Good Drink:
I quit drinking a few years ago but not out of any great dramatic epiphany. I knew I was either bad at it or too good to keep going. But the best times I had were drinking alone and getting lost.

I used to drink the hell out of scotch but if I had to recommend a drink recipe to anyone it would be this:

wake up disoriented on a winter morning when you have nothing to do
take a box of DayQuill® gelcaps
follow this with a bottle of vodka
close your eyes
open them and you will be outside
now you are on a bus
sit on the back middle seat where it is warm and slightly elevated
feel the arms of the bus wrap around you as the city you live in passes both very fast and very slow all at once
show up someplace you haven’t been before.

 

Daniel Knox Official Website

Daniel Knox @ Tumblr

Daniel Knox @ Twitter

Daniel Knox @ Facebook

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Giveaway: For the Love of the Music: The Club 47 Folk Revival

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Much is said about the ’60s folk revival in terms of New York City and San Francisco, but the Boston-area scene, centering in Cambridge, is generally passed over. Enter this documentary, For the Love of the Music: The Club 47 Folk Revival. With current interviews and archival sights and sounds, the documentary traces the life of Club 47, which later became Club Passim, beginning with the fateful day that an unknown named Joan Baez auditioned for the once-jazz club, resetting the whole direction of the venue.

The documentary, which includes not only interviews with such performers as Baez, Judy Collins, Maria Muldaur, Taj Mahal, and more, but also two previously-unreleased Bob Dylan performances at the club, will screen at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland on May 20 as part of the Ohio Independent Film Festival. Director Rob Stegman and executive producer/co-director Todd Kwait (who is a Cleveland-based lawyer and owner of Ezzie Films and Kingswood Records) will be on hand to introduce the film and take part in a Q & A session afterward.

Want to go? We can help you with that. We have two pairs of passes to give away to the first two people (2 passes for each person) who comment on this post. Easy as that.

The 19th annual Ohio Independent Film Festival runs May 17 through May 20 and will be presented at the Arts Collinwood galleries, with the headlining film “For the Love of the Music: The Club 47 Folk Revival” presented at the Beachland Ballroom (15711 Waterloo Road) on Sunday May 20 @ 7:30 PM.

Program Admission is $10. Tickets are available for pre-sale here

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Happy Birthday, Greg Dulli!

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Joe Strummer is the patron saint of Now This Sound Is Brave, but Greg fucking Dulli is the love of my musical life. To celebrate his birthday, here is one of my favorite Dulli performances: The Afghan Whigs covering Barry White’s “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe” at the MTV party for the late Ted Demme’s Beautiful Girls.

It’s going to be a great year.

 

http://youtu.be/U5cY7YduMlU

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Hella Better Dancer: Living Room

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Hella Better Dancer is Tilly Scantlebury (Vocals/Guitar), Josh Cohen (Bass), Soph Nathan (Lead Guitar/BVs), and Chris O’Driscoll (Drums). They are from London, and Living Room is the dreamy, melancholy, low-fi masterpiece they recorded using just the internal mic on a laptop.

It is only about ten minutes long, but it is a very beautiful ten minutes.

This is the video for the first track, Brother:
 

Brother - Hella Better Dancer

 
This is After School, the second track on Living Room, which, you guys, this is a gem of a song. A dark, delicate gem, glimmering amid a pile of fallen leaves in a bruised post-rainstorm landscape:
 

 
And finally, here they are live and using regular mics, at Stop Look Listen at Native Tongue with Hands, which was one of their demos:
 
http://youtu.be/nSJ3ldZAmLo
 

They also have two other EPs out, Swimming and Please Stay Here; you can hear selections from those records at Soundcloud and the band website.

Upcoming shows:
May 11, Amersham Arms, London, UK
May 19, Power’s Bar, London, UK
May 21, Birthdays, London, UK
May 24, The Lock Tavern, London, UK
May 26, Spice Of Life, London, UK
Jun 10, Sebright Arms, London, UK
Jun 16, 93 Feet East, London, UK
Jun 29, Leefest 2012, Highhams Hill Farm, Warlingham, UK

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Residency with a Twist: Rock for a Difference Los Angeles with Decoded

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Decoded will be in residence at Amplyfi on Thursdays for the month of May, and they’re doing something special with it: every show will conclude with a raffle, and the proceeds from the raffle will go to a local charity. This weeks recipient is CreateNow, and you can see the full list of bands and charities on the flyer below.

And here are some of Decoded’s tunes!

Decoded – Lost No More by Decodedmusic
 
Decoded – Open Season by Decodedmusic

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Deathline: Ten of Clubs

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This is 10 of Clubs, a song by Deathline, who are Jennie Werlemar (Vocals/Bass) and Kaoru Sato (Guitar/Programming). They are from London, and they can shred.

They also warm the cockles of the cold heart of your aging gothy correspondent. Major grinning at the computer screen and chair dancing happening here. I’m ready to dig my stompy boots and jingle-bell faerie skirt out of the back of the closet and go out on the town.

Make sure the volume on your computer is all the way up before you press play:

Deathline – Ten of Clubs by Bright Lights Management

They are also running a remix competition for this song on their Facebook, which will conclude on May 20th.

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Video Grab Bag: The Beastie Boys

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I’m pretty sure this was the first video I ever watched on MTV, somewhere around 1986-1987:
 

The Beastie Boys - (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)

 
I have to confess, you guys, I was 11 or 12 and had very Victorian sensibilities and had just no idea what to do with what had just happened on my television screen. Actually, my grandmother’s television screen, since I’m also pretty sure I was watching MTV with my somewhat older cousins at the time.

It’s kind of difficult to explain now, when the Beastie Boys are Grammy-winning elder statesmen (!), but then they were like a cold bucket of water in the face.

And every time I hear the opening chords of that song I feel an echo of that heady mixture of bafflement and excitement and quasi-intrigued, quasi-horrified what the hell?? as I did then. This music was a jolt. A wake-up call. I wasn’t totally on-board at the time (see above re: delicate Victorian sensibilities) but, you know, I eventually came around.

And here, if you haven’t seen it yet, is Fight For Your Right (Revisited), a short film directed by MCA, which came out last year. I suggest you read this fantastic New York Magazine article, which is an oral history of the first 25 years of the Beastie Boys, before you watch it.
 

Beastie Boys - Fight For Your Right (Revisited) Full Length

 
And then, in closing, Intergalactic, from Hello, Nasty, because I love it, and there are giant dancing robots:
 
Beastie Boys - Intergalactic

 
Rest in Peace, Mr. Yauch. We shall miss you very much.

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Saturday Matinee: The Beastie Boys

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In continued tribute to Adam “MCA” Yauch, who died yesterday after a three-year battle with cancer, I’ve dug up a couple of interviews with the Beastie Boys, one a 1987 appearance with Run-D.M.C., and the other a 2009 interview (separated into two parts), promoting Hot Sauce Committee Part One and a batch of album reissues, including the 20-year reissue of Paul’s Boutique.

If you want more Beastie Boys’ video action, check out the Canal de nutri871’s YouTube channel. It’s a treasure trove of live clips, interview clips, etc., separated into eras, including the Beasties on Yo! MTV Raps in 1989.