Monthly Archives: November 2013

Watch: Haim Conquer SNL with “The Wire”

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haim

I saw Haim for the first time when they played the Treasure Island Music Festival last month.

I hadn’t heard the slick soul-pop of their recordings which was good because they don’t match this rock quartet live. Yeah, I did say rock quartet ’cause Haim has gone rock in a serious way.

This “Saturday Night Live” performance gives you sense of what they deliver live.

Danielle Haim — she’s in the middle with the cool red SG guitar — has a distinctive, compelling way of singing, you can really hear during this performance of “The Wire.”

Here they are on SNL performing “Don’t Save Me.”

Watch: Old Style Folk From Mandolin Orange

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Emily Frantz and Andrew Marlin are Mandolin Orange. They’re from North Carolina. They make new music that sounds old.

This is a great song for a sunny Sunday, which is how the world is where I live in Northern California today.

Rediscovering the Great ’70s Folk-Rocker John Martyn

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John Martyn’s Solid Air, released in 1973, is one of those timeless albums, an album that stands outside of time but also brings me back to those free-spirited years when I was a college student living at UC Santa Cruz.

I saw Martyn once, opening for Traffic, but that tour didn’t launch a career for him in the U.S.

Now a mammoth multi-CD box, The Island Years, has been released and Rob Young has written an informative review that provides a great overview of the late folk-rocker’s music.

Check it out at Uncut.

Here’s what might be his best song, “May You Never.” A live version from 1973:

Here’s the album version:

Books: New Collection of Short Stories From Lost Russian Writer Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

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“Autobiography of a Corpse” is the third collection of short stories by the late Russian writer Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky to be published in the U.S.

Krzhizhanovsky’s stories are surreal and often existential. A favorite of mine from an earlier collection, the wonderfully titled “Memories of the Future,” is about a man who is given a potion that, when it’s spread around his tiny studio apartment, makes the room grow. He becomes lost in the immense darkness.

Only nine of his stories were published in Russia during Krzhizhanovsky’s lifetime. His stories did not overtly challenge communism, but were subtle and subversive.

There’s a review of the new collection in today’s New York Times.

Mike Watt To Record 2nd Il Sogno Del Marinaio LP

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Il Sogno Del Marinaio: Andrea Belfi (left), Mike Watt and Stefano Pilia.

Mike Watt is a busy man. When he’s not playing bass for Iggy Pop in The Stooges he plays in a variety of combos including Hellride, Mike Watt and his Secondmen, dos and others. On December 31 he’ll perform with Thurston Moore and the artist Raymond Pettibon at The Stone in New York.

Before that Watt heads to England to play at All Tomorrow’s Parties on December 1 with his trio, Il Sogno Del Marinaio, and then the group heads to Bologna, Italy to record their second album, the followup to La Busta Gialla, which was released at the beginning of 2013.

In addition to Watt on bass, the group includes drummer Andrea Belfi and guitarist Stefano Pilia.

Il Sogno Del Marinaio first toured Italy in 2009, and recorded La Busta Gialla during that tour.

Watt wrote about it on his Hoot page:

this album was part of the whole experience that brought all three of us (stefano, andrea and myself) together. I was invited to join them in playing six gigs in italy during the late fall of 2009. it was an invite out of the blue and truly exciting. of course we needed material to do for these shows and I thought if we were going to come together to do that then why not also record the stuff for an album? made sense to me and I’m so glad stefano and andrea were also into it. each of us brought tunes and we worked them out first w/prac in a real old pad in a little town near bologna called palesio and then at the gigs themselves before going into a studio called la sauna in the northern italian town of varano borghi where the cats there were absolutely righteous. it was one of my favorite times recording ever, such a good time.

the album for me represents us coming from different places and joining together to make a sound singular to the dynamic between us. we had no prior experience playing w/each other at all before the prac and the gigs so it’s an accurate document of us three interacting for the first time through music and I think we did it in such a way that all three of our individual personas come through and at the same time make for ourselves an identity of a band. this was our goal we agreed at the end even though we never discussed it beforehand in words cuz I think we wanted the process to develop naturally and not foul it w/too much premeditation and expectations on where it “should” go… we in a sense “played the hand that was dealt” and gave it our best shot. the process was most interesting, the musical minds of stefano and andrea as well as their spirits as brothers very much inspired me! I am most big time grateful to them.

Here’s a taste of the trio off La Busta Gialla:

New Robyn Hitchcock Album Due in 2014

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Robyn Hitchcock has recorded an album which may be called The Man Upstairs, with the great record producer Joe Boyd (Fairport Convention, Richard and Linda Thompson, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Pink Floyd, and many more), to be released in 2014 on YepRoc Records. Charlie Francis (better known as a producer and engineer) plays piano on four tracks.

In his newsletter Boyd writes: “I am occasionally approached by managers or artists wondering if I’m still up for producing records. I say yes, in theory. Then I set forth the way I’d like to do it: live in the studio (mostly, anyway, a few overdubs allowed…), no more than 6 days recording, maximum 6 days for mixing. For singer-songwriters, I say we’d have to include other people’s songs mixed in with theirs. Not covers of well-known songs, just good songs that fit in. Most respond with, ‘we’ll think about that and get back to you’ and I never hear from them again.”

Ah, but when Boyd told Hitchcock the lay of the land…

“my pal and touring partner Robyn Hitchcock has agreed to all my conditions,” Boyd writes. “We recorded and mixed a cd in 7 days (with the invaluable assistance of the great engineer Jerry Boys) and we’re both delighted with it. It will emerge on YepRoc sometime in 2014 (provisional title “The Man Upstairs”) and you can judge for yourselves if the Boyd approach works or not.”

PETA Offers Postage Stamps Featuring Joan Jett, Paul McCartney, Morrissey & More

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This is cool. In time for all your holiday mail, PETA has released postage stamps featuring famous vegetarians.

Featured on the stamps: Sarah Silverman, Bob Barker, Paul McCartney, Ricky Martin, Russell Simmons, Mayim Bialik, Edie Falco, Casey Affleck, Belinda Carlisle, Pamela Anderson, Alan Cumming, John Salley, Vivienne Westwood, Sara Gilbert, Morrissey, Joaquin Phoenix, Marco Antonio Regil, Sam Simon, Stella McCartney, and Joan Jett.

Over at Brooklyn Vegan they found some choice quotes from vegetarian celebrities:

Morrissey says,

I think animals look to humans for protection, and of course humans lead them into slaughterhouses, which to me is just like an image of leading children into a slaughterhouse. There’s no difference.

And some words of wisdom from Sir Paul McCartney:

If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do. It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty.

Buy the stamps here.

The Hold Steady Will Play Your Party For $15,000 — Cool, Right?

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The Hold Steady are putting out a fans-only covers EP, and they’re raising money for the family of the late Mike Van Jura, aka “Jersey Mike,” who died unexpectedly late last year. “Jersey Mike” was the organizer of the group’s fan club, The Unified Scene.

The Hold Steady have set up a Pledge Music page and they are offering a range of packages depending on the amount of your pledge.

$15 gets you membership in the fan club (you get access to cool stuff) and a download of the EP.

$15,000 brings the band to your house to play a party for you and your 100 closest friends. You can get a tour of Minneapolis locations mentioned in The Hold Steady’s songs, a haircut from Kubler, a private two-song acoustic performance and much more.

Check the scene out, including a video featuring Finn and guitarist Tad Kubler here.

Sex Ed Dept.: Today Flavorwire Offers Up “25 Great Works of Erotic Literature”

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Flavorwire loves to make lists. Today we get their pick of “25 Great Works of Erotic Literature to Keep You Warm on Cold Winter Nights,” I guess because winter is here. Or maybe they just needed an excuse.

Check out the list below, but for plot summaries (what plot?) and excerpts, head to Flavorwire.

Here’s their excerpt from “Delta of Venus”:

“I would tell him how he almost made us lose interest in passion by his obsession with the gestures empty of their emotions, and how we reviled him, because he almost caused us to take vows of chastity, because what he wanted us to exclude was our own aphrodisiac — poetry.”

The list:

1 Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin
2 Fanny Hill by John Cleland
3 The Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst
4 Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov
5 Story of the Eye, by Georges Bataille
6 The Story of O, by “Pauline Réage”
7 “Beatrice Palmato” by Edith Wharton
8 Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
9 The Sexual Life of Catherine M. by Catherine Millet
10 Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
11 Heptameron by Marguerite de Navarre
12 Maidenhead by Tamara Faith Berger
13 Belle de Jour by Joseph Kessel
14 Venus in Furs by Leopold van Sacher-Masoch
15 The Fermata by Nicholson Baker
16 The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
17 The Lover by Marguerite Duras
18 Nine and a Half Weeks by Ingeborg Day
19 The Black Book by Lawrence Durrell
20 Ulysses by James Joyce
21 The School of Venus by Anonymous
22 Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue by the Marquis de Sade
23 The Autobiography of a Flea by “Anonymous”
24 My Secret Life by “Walter”
25 Memoirs of a Young Rakehell by Gullaume Apollinaire