Sheet music.

As if Deerhoof wasn't cool enough, check this out.



A rad live clip.



PEACE to you all!

Jumping ship

Well, goodbye iTunes music store - hello Amazon. I guess what really made my decision for me was the DRM (Digital Rights Management), iTunes places all sorts of restrictions on music you purchase - only 5 machines/devices can be authorized to play your music at any given time and you can only burn it to cd 7 times (not to mention it ONLY works with their hardware). There are ways around the DRM, but it's a total hassle. Amazon however is DRM free, meaning that whatever I buy is mine and I can do whatever the hell I want with it, and as a consumer that is what I want. I must admit, the iTunes interface, catalog selection, and ease of use is far superior but the DRM has became a deal breaker. Whenever I want to make a muxtape, or include songs that I have purchased into a podcast I have to burn it to CD and reimport, this is a pain in my ass and just wasteful. My music, I do what I want with it.

PEACE to you all!

Welcome back, Zach!

I have been waiting for this day for a long time, and finally it has come. Mr Zach de le Rocha is back in full force, and with good company. One Day As A Lion is the the result of the collaboration between two of my favorite musicians in the world, Zach (Rage Against the Machine, DUH!) and Jon Theodore (The Mars Volta). Zach lays it down on vocals and keyboard while Jon kills it on the kit. The drum grooves seem deceptively simple at first, kick snare hat style, but as the song (Wild International) progresses Jon flashes his brilliance with some killer fills that are lightning fast and ferociously tight, so good!

Just hearing Zach's voice again takes me back to my formative early teen years stuck in suburban hell. His ferocity, flow, and poetic brilliance opened my eyes to the struggles of the world's peoples and helped break me out my protected little world-view.

Aside from being one of my dream duo's, they also got their name from an iconic black and white photo - how cool is that? This from their website:

“The name taken from the infamous 1970 black and white, captured by legendary Chicano photographer George Rodriguez featuring a center framed tag on a white wall in an unspecified section of Boyle Heights. It reads: ‘It’s better to live one day as a lion, than a thousand years as a lamb.’ This record is a stripped down attempt to realize this sentiment in sound.”

Well said. Now - go to their myspace page and listen to Wild International!

Photo credit unknown... :(

PEACE to you all.

Nels Cline at Stubbs

If you are in Austin tomorrow night - then you have a rare opportunity to witness a true guitar legend of our time WAIL up close and personal at Stubbs inside!

Shame on you if you don't go - especially when the cover is only $13. In case you haven't heard, aside from myriad other amazing projects - Nels is currently the guitarist in a little band called Wilco.

Sunday 7/13, Stubbs Inside, 8:00PM, $13

Image by Charles Harris

PEACE to you all!

Dungen

One of my favorite bands, Dungen, is set to release a new album (aptly titled "4") in the coming months. YEAH!

They are streaming a new tune from their myspace entitled Satt Att Se, check it out HERE.

PEACE to you all!

Anne Dank

I KNEW she was a hipster, Kufia and all...

Snapped this one with my phone in the alley behind Amoeba.

PEACE, to you all!

Review: Melvins

Nude With Boots just came out yesterday and what can I say other than go out and get it now! This is the Melvins doing exactly what they do best - badass stoner rock riffage. With the boys from Big Business holding down the rhythm section, how can you go wrong? Speaking of Big Business, they have a new record in the works and have added a guitarist, but that is a story for another day.

Anyways, enough blabbing - go out and buy this record!

Highlights: Pretty much everything although Dog Island, The Smiling Cobra, and The Kicking Machine stand out.
Lowlights: Suicide In Progress, The Stupid Creep.

PEACE! to you all.

Say it ain't so...

Austinites - Waterloo video is closing!

Story here.

A sad day indeed, stay strong I Love Video and Vulcan - we need you! Fuck Netflix, patronize local business.

PEACE! to you all!

Binge and Splurge.

OK, my last post about record shops - Amoeba in particular may have come off a bit cynical, for that I apologize. I have been to Amoeba 3 times in 3 days and bought quite a bit! Here is my running list:

Melvins - Nude With Boots (Came out today, AWESOME!)
Russian Circles - Station
Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity
Black Mountain - Self Titled
The Silver Jews - Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea
King Khan and the Shrines - The Supreme Genius of
Jay Reatard - Singles 06/07, +DVD
Black Angels - Directions to See a Ghost

I think that is it, all the new freshy stuff I will review - Silver Jews, Jay Reatard, Melvins, King Khan. I am going to go broke living so damn close to that place.

PEACE to you all!

I Met the Walrus

WOW! I love this so much!!

Review: The Black Angels

Directions to See a Ghost is the latest from Austin's psych revivers, the Black Angels. Full disclosure - a friend of mine was in the band up until just before the release of the record, although it has no effect on my review.

I have been a BA fan for a long time, and Passover is a regular in my heavy rotation circle. But, I have always had the sense that the Angels don't have the kind of sound that is sustainable. Don't get me wrong, I loves me some drone and I think I may have even heard a chord change somewhere on the new record, but Directions pretty much solidified (IMHO) my theory on the Angels longevity. They just signed a deal with Suretone (Interscope), so I am sure within the next two year's they will blow up with a big release then disappear into the psychedelic nether-world from hence they emerged.

The exterior packaging is cool, sticking to their style with psychedelic graphics and the textured surface, but the interior type treatment is hideous.

Highlights: You On the Run, Science Killer, Mission District
Lowlights: Vikings (picture a five year old autistic child on the drums), 18 Years

Overall, I would recommend it - but if your new to the Angels, do yourself a favor and pick up Passover instead.

Okie Noodling 2

Hand fishing, enough said.



PEACE to you all!

Muxtape

OK - I think I found my new favorite website, muxtape.com. The interface is super clean and simple - almost transparent. You can upload up to 12 songs (24mb file size limit per), you get a custom URL to go along with your mixtape that you can then share with your friends. The songs are not downloadable, and can only be streamed, but again the interface is super clean - just click on the huge title of the song and it plays.

I messed around with a mix last night, nothing profound - just a few tunes I have been enjoying lately. Got some White Denim, No Age, Liars, The Black Angels, King Khan and the Shrines and more.

http://georgelikeshischickenspicy.muxtape.com/

Enjoy friends, and I hope you discover something new that you can connect with.

PEACE to you all!

Hell yes.

Say hello to Vincent Black Shadow (as mentioned in the Amoeba post), I would classify them as punk/psychadelia/thrash/total face melting goodness.

Download the cut, Shamanix HERE!!!


PEACE!

Best day ever?

Well, to say that apartment hunting in San Francisco can be dispariging would be an understatement. In the last few days we have looked at countless places and attended several cattle call open houses. Last night, we just kind of broke down and let the stress get to us, even though honestly everything about this trip was going fantastic - but it was looking like we just weren't going to find a place.

So, last night - as we were browsing craigs list we tried a new approach and started searching for rooms available to rent in a house. Low and behold we find a place in Haight Ashbury that sounds perfect and send them an email, they respond minutes later. We went and looked at the place this morning, it is literally on the corner of Haight and Ashbury and truly was perfect. The place was huge, has a private backyard, protected bike storage, a big kitchen and an office. Not to mention our room is bigger than most of the studios we have been looking at. We got a long great with the guys and they said it was ours!!

Now here is the kicker - the house used to be rented out by Jimi Hendrix, not for himself but for his girlfriends. This means Jimi Hendrix got laid probably hundreds of time in our future home - maybe even in our very room. Now, if that isn't Mojo (capital M!) then I don't know what is!!

PEACE to you all!

Heartbreak...

NOOOO!!!!!! The shutter on my Mamiya just froze up - it has been sticking the last few rolls, at least 2-3 frames per roll. Now it is totally stuck, and I am about to cry.

................

PEACE!

Has it been that long?

Really, has it been that long since I have stepped into a record store? I used to live in my local record shop (Zia in Phoenix) - buying at least 2-5 records a week. Nowadays, I buy all my music (120+ albums in the last few months) through digital retailers, namely iTunes. Although I am discontinuing this because I recently learned Apple is so greedy (taking 30%) that the artist can actually get less from a full priced (9.99) digital download than they can through the physical sale of their disc (on average, an artist makes about 90 cents for each physical disc sold).

So, today Magera and I were working from a cafe in the Haight-Ashbury hood that happened to be next to the world famous Amoeba records, so of course I had to pop in. Immediately I felt overwhelmed, had I totally forgotten what to do? I mean, where are my recommendations, the just for you's? When I did find something worth looking at, where was my 30 second preview clip, and people who had purchased that album - what else had they purchased? I had totally forgotten, for better or worse, what a time consuming process digging through the racks was. After rummaging around forever I could not even find the Vincent Black Shadow (not the late 90's crappy VBS) I was looking for which I could have immediately (sans download time) online. So after stumbling around I picked up the latest Black Angels album (which I will review once I have spun it a few times) and got out of there.

It definitely bothers me that I do not patronize local record shops enough, but I must say one thing that really bothers me is the price of used CD's. Browsing the racks today at Amoeba, nearly every used disc was 9.99 - keep in mind that artist's do not get one penny from the resale of one of their album's. I understand that record stores need to make money, they are a business, but that much of a mark up when the artist is not making a dime? No thanks, I'd rather go to iTunes, even if they take 30%.

PEACE!

No One Plans Eleven

Ok, the Redneck Manifesto have been rocking my world for years. I was fortunate enough to see them twice the last time they were in the states, once at the Ritz (pre-Alamo) and again at Emo's inside. Good stuff, enjoy this video friends...



PEACE!