December 2009
57 posts
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-12-27) →
Memory Cassette (10)
John Cage (8)
Alexis Taylor (5)
Let’s Wrestle (3)
Girls (3)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
President Obama, It's Time to Fire the TSA →
1 tag
2009 Favorite Albums
Let’s Wrestle, In the Court of the Wrestling Let’s
I know every word to every song by only two bands: the Beatles and Let’s Wrestle. For the past two years Let’s Wrestle have been my favorite band. They’re three 18-year-olds from London who really like ’90s indie rock but are still, well, British. It’s wry and biting and poppy and it ends up sounding...
1 tag
2009 Favorite Songs
In absolutely no order.
To download a ZIP of all of these: http://www.sendspace.com/file/pep4o1
Cotton Jones, “Up a Tree (Went This Heart I Have)” — An awesome cowboy song that sounds like Lee Hazelwood. The vocals are forceful and confident, and the song has a catchy shuffle. It builds and expands into this impressive thing. Everyone will like this song.
Nite Jewel,...
2009 Favorite Things (Runners Up)
Albums
Rural Alberta Advantage, Hometowns — I originally put out this record through my job at eMusic in October of 2008. We sold 6,000 copies in two months. They sold out their first US show three months later in NYC, getting asked for autographs from fans who knew every word. The band was shocked and awed.
In March I booked a SXSW showcase with Grizzly Bear as the headliner, and Rural...
“Quazar Blues” was one of the first...
Year End Lists
Though I haven’t been a real rock critic for years (if I ever was), this was the year that I finally shed the last vestiges of it. From 1998 to 2009 that was how I made my living. I never liked it. It’s not a world where thoughtfulness is particularly prized; instead the game is reacting stronger and faster (better is irrelevant) than everyone else. It’s a game that serves the...
“There is the possibility that a true musical underground, in the archaic sense,...”
– Simon Reynolds (via newspeedwayboogie)
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-12-20) →
Chicago Public Radio (48)
NPR (11)
Real Estate (8)
Neil Young (7)
Cotton Jones (6)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
“The worst thing you can do to anybody trying to be creative is to demand...”
– Chuck Klosterman (via marco)
“We are allowing ourselves to become more corrupt by the minute. We stare into...”
– Greg Simmons & Brett Buchanan saying everything that needs saying at Zero Hedge
“We, on our side, are praying to Him to give us victory, because we believe we...”
– Abraham Lincoln (via Futility Closet)
“Chris Henry was always one of my favorites. He also, like [Eddie] Griffin,...”
– Bethlehem Shoals, Free Darko
the houston broadcast of tonight’s rockets-pistons game prematurely came back from commercial to overhear commentator clyde drexler say, “just a lot of bad people making bad decisions.”
So yesterday I backed a new project on Kickstarter by Crispy on the Mic, a dude who raps only about potatoes. After pledging the $5, I got a thank you from Crispy. Then this exchange happened:
Interview with danah boyd →
tomewing:
she being the smartest “social media” thinker I’m aware of, basically.
The concept of control – and who has it – is central to Boyd’s work, and it applies not only to debunking myths about teenage behaviour, but also similar ideas that have emerged about the rest of the web. Unlike some prognosticators who preach unstoppable revolution – including the likes of Chris Anderson, the...
Kickstarter is featured in the New York Times... →
Is Sarah Palin our first troll-itician?
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-12-6) →
Pavement (46)
Beach House (43)
Best Coast (17)
Stephen Malkmus (17)
Reg King (10)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
The Mysterious Letters Aftermath
One of my favorite Kickstarter stories so far. Please read!
kickstarter:
And then there’s Mysterious Letters, a Kickstarter project from two artists — Michael and Lenka — to mail everyone in the world a personal letter. It began in April with a small village named Cushendall in Northern Ireland, where the letters caused quite a stir (their project video is the BBC news broadcast about it)....
Josh from Animal Collective has a Kickstarter... →
The French Secretary of State tweeted about... →
The Inevitable Minefield of Music Subscription
fascinated:
Playing around with the new mog.com subscription offering (via a free 1 month trial, kindly given by David Hyman) reminded me of the problem that time and again turns me (and I’d bet a ton of other people) off from music subscription services.
Working with music on the web I absolutely love them and want them to be the future. Even services like the now-defunct MTV Urge, which had...
“Morgan Freeman was born to play Nelson Mandela”
– Quoting the Invictus trailer. What a weird thing to say.
Spent the past six hours reviewing Pavement’s Brighten the Corners and Terror Twilight, Malkmus’ Malkmus and Pig Lib, and Preston School of Industry’s All This Sounds Gas. May I never ever listen to late-period Pavement again please.
I love studio songs with ambient noise. In the...
“The 49-year-old once thought to be a serious contender for governor went right...”
– Stay classy, AP!
“I remember once in Australia [Morrissey] was ill. This is the illest man ever!...”
– Jo Slee, former personal assistant to Morrissey (via sixstepsback) (via desnoise) (via bespectacled)
flamgirlant:
Rattail - “Go Green”
Sometimes the...
Five records I put out in the past year, and their Pitchfork reviews. I’m thrilled by Julianna’s 8.2 today — she’s amazing!
Julianna Barwick, Florine — 8.2
Rural Alberta Advantage, Hometowns — 8.0
Various Artists, Selected + Collected — 7.8
High Places, 03/07 - 09/07 — 8.3
Crystal Stilts, Crystal Stilts — 8.3
