The Vaselines are probably one of the best Indie bands ever (according to me). So when Sub Pop (one of the best labels ever) decided to release a triple vinyl set of everything they did, EPs live albums and the LP, I was, you could say, pretty happy.
The Vaselines - You Think You're A Man
Kim Leigh Pontin, member of the band The Mentalists and sometime designer at Fjord got some attention the other day when her band performed a cover of Kids by MGMT on various iPhone music applications.
Don't need the tour bus no more. Pretty cute.
I don't DJ so much anymore, I am however playing some tunes at this shindig at the ICA on Thursday. Two super good illustrators Andrew Rae and Mr Luke Best are having a drawing contest and I'm playing some audio inspiration.
I will (hopefully) get to play all those records that I never ever got to play out before. Should be fun.
For all those languishing at home today due to the snow flurry... Over on my other blog: Jukebox Joints in the last few weeks, there's been some additions of music by Percy Mayfield, Bruce Springsteen, Bobby Bland, Johnny Cash, Clifford Curry and Shuggie Otis. For your audio pleasure.
Over on my other blog: Jukebox Joints in the last few months there's been some additions of music by Lee Dorsey, The Rivieras, Dinah Washington, The Ready Men, Barbara Acklin and Labi Siffre. Just so you know...
Tipped is an awesome recommendations website (for shops and entertainment venues in the real world) that everyone should use (run by some friends of mine). They had the spectacular idea of having a chilli cooking / tasting contest. Good huh! Anyway it's this Saturday in Islington. Here's the facebook event page.
Oh and I'm Djing some good ol' Southern tunes. So if you like your southern soul, country-soul, blue-eyed soul, country, country-rock and folk-blues you might wanna pass by.
UPDATE: I'm pretty sick at the minute so it's really pretty unlikely I'll be DJing at this, although I'm sure the chilli is a better draw than me...
Lee Dorsey has a stable of hits unlike most other New Orleans artist. He's solid gold.
From a partnership with Allen Toussaint, who seems to be an architect of half of the music that came out of city in 1960s, Dorsey enjoyed many many hits, often with the Meters as his backing band.
Before his career took off as a singer he was a light heavyweight boxer in Portland (after the war) and he also ran a car body repair shop in New Orleans. Hmmm useful information overload.
Lee Dorsey - My Old Car
Brought to you by Jukebox Joints
You may have read about this guy's record collection. It's pretty serious. They should organise day trips. I think I could die in there.
This is taken from my Jukebox Joints site. Maintaining two blogs is way too much work, so while I'm gonna keep putting sevens onto Jukebox Joints they will also feature on here as well. One stone killing, or rather updating two birds if you like.
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The original of this record is rare as hen's teeth. This is from a limited repress of 500.
This for me, defines what Garage music is all about. Dark, gritty, wailing guitars and a short playing time. If you're wondering why you can barely hear the vocal it's because they use a tape-delay echo device called "the Cooper Time Cube" but didn't set it up properly.
Heard were part of a huge boom in garage bands in the mid sixties coming out of Tyler, Texas. Most of them were short lived due to military service or college duties but many of them, like The Heard, delivered some dynamite little records before they disbanded.
The Heard - Exit 9
This is maybe more for all you feedreader subscribers. Eight or nine months ago I created an audio only Tumblr. I did this so I could keep track of the tracks I'd stumbled across in other places and collect them together. I might have mentioned this before. I used to have it in the sidebar of this blog and then took it away as each song was simply a link and not a very practical way to consume a group of songs.
But since then I have obtained the Yahoo music player, through Foxy Tunes, (which is pretty damn handy) and now I can listen through all the songs in a row on my blog. The Yahoo player bypasses having to open a new tab (or window) to play a Quicktime file. So, with this handy new tool I thought I'd put the music stream back on the blog. There's an RSS feed of it too (naturally). It looks like a mini Muxtape.
I then started thinking wouldn't it be great if you could embed a mini Muxtape on your blog. And then this morning I realised with this audio Tumblr I had invented (my own version of) Muxtape, that's more tailorable and with an RSS feed. I just hadn't realised it...until now. It even looks a bit like a Muxtape.
I think the reason I never really thought of my Tumblr as a game changing music mixtape experience was because it never ended. Just like this blog! It goes on and on relentlessly. When an experience ends it changes state and how it's perceived. When you complete a Muxtape you release it to the world or send it to someone. This then completes the creation process and turns it into a consumption process. This devision of state makes it very clear how you comsume it. This restriction is what gives Muxtape it's value. Restriction breeds creativity really quite efficiently. That's an important lesson.
It's nice to see so many people are still getting plenty of mileage out of Muxtape. I tried to do one sometime ago and all my ripped MP3s kept getting rejected and after a while I just gave up. No jokes about quality control please! I'm writing this as I just discovered the wonders of the muxtape belonging to a Mr Lloyd Davis.
This one is my favourite so far.
Grovesnor is a singer songwriter who makes wonderful little disco / yacht rock / electro tracks. Sort of electro-pop soul. I've been yapping about him on Twitter so I thought I should post something...
He's signed to Hot Chip's label, Greco Roman and his last single Nitemoves was one of my favourite records of last year. This new single is pretty good, but the B side is simply magic. The rebel quarter version of Drive My Car is dynamite, it just makes me want to dance like a Spaniard.
On his MySpace page there is also a great cover of 50 ways to leave your lover.
Grovesnor - Drive Your Car (Rebel Quarter Version)
I've been posting one track a week (from a 45) on my music blog and it seems to be coming together quite well. I have a whole bunch more stuff to put up there but one a week keeps me out of mischief. So far people as diverse as Talking Heads, Bettye Swann, Georgie Fame and Jeffrey Lewis have made it into the Jukebox.
Today sees the inclusion of BMX Bandits.
I bought this second hand record the other day (not for the sleeve!). It's a soundtrack inspired by the cult 1971 film, Two Lane Blacktop. The guy who put this together saw the film, loved it and went to buy the soundtrack only to find there wasn't one.
So he decided to do his own one. He licensed some tracks from a few classic American labels such as Folkways and Matador. He then got exclusive tracks from a crazy good set of musicians; Sonic Youth, Will Oldham, Giant Sand, Wilco and Calexico to name a few. The album is obviously great but what got me was his go-getter spirit. There wasn't one so he made one. Brilliant.
So I got a good album and was inspired to push a bit harder with my own ideas and projects. Double win. And yes of course I now want to make a soundtrack to a film that doesn't have one.
Here's the Will Oldham track which was written especially for the record and contains some dialogs by James Taylor (who starred).
A nice new video from Justice...
Logo tastic.
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