Win New Pornographers Tickets

In October of 2005, The New Pornographers played at the Mercy Lounge here in Nashville. If I had been doing this blog then, it undoubtably would have been my pick for concert of the year. Dan Bejar was touring with them (Destroyer opened the show), and their set was two hours of absolute pop bliss. Seeing them play "The Bleeding Heart Show" with Neko Case singing the harmonies at the end was one of those magical hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck concert experiences that just don't happen very often (you can relive the magic visually here).

On Friday, April 18, the Pornographers return to Nashville (minus Dan, though Destroyer will be at the Mercy Lounge on April 29), playing in the exact same building, this time downstairs in the Cannery Ballroom. Okkervil River will open the show, and you can go for free. Here's how...

Like every other member of the band, the New Pornographers isn't keyboardist/vocalist Kathryn Calder's only gig. Shoot us an email with the subject the subject line "FREE PORN", and give us your name and the name of Kathryn's other band. Do it by midnight on Thursday, April 3, and we'll draw a winner next Friday. That lucky person and a friend of their choosing will be going to the show for free, courtesy of Matador Records. If you don't win tickets, or you're morally opposed to games of chance, you can buy your tix here.

New Pornographers - "My Rights Versus Yours" (mp3) from Challengers
New Pornographers - "Graceland" (mp3) from Matador at Fifteen
Okkervil River - "Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe" (mp3) from The Stage Names

Finally, if you like free swag (CDs and concert tix and autographed stuff, oh my!) and would like to help promote Beggars/Matador artists around town (the likes of Blonde Redhead, Vampire Weekend, The National, Tapes 'n Tapes, Stephen Malkmus, Cat Power and such), contact clairetaylor@beggars.com to find out how you can help with the Beggars/Matador street team.

Outtakes From The Night Before

So after lamenting that it'd had been a while since I'd seen a show, I made up for it by going on something of a live music bender. I ended up catching five shows and fourteen bands over the past eight days. I won't write about all of them, mostly because several of them have released CDs that I'll be writing about over the next week or two, and I don't want to use up all my clever adjectives in one post. But I will mention a couple of things.

The highlight of the past week? Definitely Monday night at Springwater. It started with Paper Hats. William Tyler plays with about 80 different bands (Lambchop, Silver Jews, Cortney Tidwell, among others) and I'd seen him play with several of them, so I knew he was good, but I didn't know he was THAT good. He's one of those musicians that kind of disgust me, because they hog up all the talent in the universe and leave poor schmucks like me with table scraps. Next was Festival, a sibling act who's ethereal folk pop filled with gorgeous harmonies reminded me of early Miranda Sex Garden (before they became a rock band). Closing the evening was Cortney Tidwell and her boys, who played a set of entirely new material, including one song that was a dead ringer for Black Sabbath. Based on last nite, if she gets her new album finished and out before December, she might top my year end list for the second year in a row.

Cortney Tidwell - "Missing Link" (mp3) from Don't Let The Stars Keep Us Tangled Up

The low point would probably be the two evenings prior to Monday... not because of the bands I saw, some of which were excellent, but because of the events surrounding them. I've decided to dub it "The Weekend of Bands That Took Entirely Too Long to Set Up." I'm self aware enough to admit most of my faults, and patience is definitely not one of my many virtues (being nice is however, so the guilty parties shall remain nameless). I wasn't too pleased standing around Saturday night watching a band that had the standard four piece instrumentation take half a fucking hour to set up. Unless you are playing at Madison Square Garden, it shouldn't take you thirty minutes to plug in a couple of effects pedals. Whats worse is that they took almost as long to breakdown after their set. Grab your shit and get off the damn stage so that the next band (the one I came to see) can play.

Sunday night ended up being even worse. I'm not so naive that I believe in advertised start times, but when I go to a show with a listed start of 9 pm, I don't expect that rock o'clock actually means 11, especially on a Sunday. But if I thought that would be the sole test of my tolerance, I was sadly mistaken. Later in the evening I watched a solo act take twenty minutes to set up a keyboard and an acoustic guitar. No effects, no complicated MIDI connections, just a cheap ass Casio with built in speakers. And it took twenty minutes to put a mic in front of it. Grrrr.

The Church - "Two Places At Once (Single Version)" (mp3) from Sometime Anywhere

Excuses, Excuses

Things I have been doing for the past week...

1. Playing shows (well, one anyway).
2. Going to shows.
3. Watching movies good and not so good.
4. Working overtime.
5. Listening to the new Hotpipes album incessantly.
6. Moving furniture.
7. Making videos.
8. Bartending for my folks' annual Easter luncheon.
9. Napping.

Things I have not been doing...

1. Laundry.
2. Posting things here.

Consequently I have a backlog of both. We'll see if we can't get that corrected this week. In the meantime, here is pretty much my favorite song in the world right now, from the aforementioned Hotpipes CD.

Hotpipes - "The Future Is Where We Belong" (mp3) from Future Bolt

Sláinte

Posting The Pogues on St. Patrick's Day might be the most cliched thing a music blogger can do. But I'm going to do it anyway, with a catch... neither of these songs feature Shane MacGowan.

First up, another shining example of why youtube is so entirely awesome; a video of the Pogues covering The Clash, with a friend.



And for your listening pleasure, my absolute favorite Pogues song, written and sung by guitarist Phillip Chevron, along with Kirsty MacColl.

The Pogues - "Lorelei" (mp3) from Peace And Love

Coming Attractions

One of my goals for 2008 is to try to go a show every week. Honestly it's not a goal I expect to acheive, but I figure by shooting for four or five shows a month, I'll make it out to at least two or three. The last couple of weeks I've been to... uh... zero shows, due to weather and working late and being out of town. This week I'll be making up for it.

I've been looking forward to Monday night since I first checked out Hallelujah The Hills several weeks ago. I'm usually not a fan of band names and song titles being one in the same, but this song is a thousand different kinds of awesome... like The Rentals doing a pub sing along.

Hallelujah The Hills - "Hallelujah The Hills" (mp3) from Collective Psychosis Begone

The rest of their stuff is equally great. They're playing in Nashville twice tomorrow (St. Patrick's Day if you weren't paying attention). They'll be at Grimey's for a free instore performance at 6 pm, and then head to Springwater for a 9 pm show that also features Bad Friend and (self promotion alert) Paris Street.

Tuesday night is about making up for lost opportunities. Hotpipes released their new CD a couple of weeks ago, and I had planned on going to their record release show. Unfortunately my planned catnap turned into a prolonged slumber and I slept through it. Last week they did an instore at Grimey's, but I ended up having to work late. So I'm bound and determined to catch their show at The Groove, the new(ish) record store in East Nashville. The fact that it's only a couple of blocks from my apartment makes it a pretty safe bet that I wont miss them this time. Turncoats and The Teenage Prayers will also be playing, the show starts at 7 pm, and it's free.

Finally on Saturday, March 22, my favorite local band All We Seabees return to the stage after their winter hibernation. I was out of town for their record release house party in Murfreesboro last month, but it turns out I didn't miss much since the local constables shut it down. They'll be playing at The Basement along with Anna Kramer and Pale Blue Dot.

SXSW In Exactly Six Words

I wasn't going to post anything SXSW related because, you know... I'm not there. But a friend sent me this link, and it's too good not to share. A writer for The Morning News listened to all of the official MP3s submitted by showcasing bands (763 of them) and wrote a six word review for every single one of them. The results are often hilarious. Some of my favorites (the links are for the band's SXSW profile, which has the song being reviewed)...

Air Traffic - "Turn away, Coldplay’s raping Maroon 5."
Castanets - "That guy singing backup? Kill him."
White Mice - "The sound of a rectum exploding."
Abra Moore - "Soft pink vagina frosted jazz cupcakes."
Swampmeat - "Perfect music for humping an alligator."
AM - "Someone’s been eating Hall and Oatesmeal."
Three Armada - "I’M PLAYING GUITAR WITH MY COCK!"
Capital K - "Acceptable—if they dress as wizards."
The Jonbenet - "One admires such remarkably vigorous stupidity."
Kevin Shields (not the MBV guy) - "Like a dog fucking a blender."

And a few of our local Nashville acts weren't spared...

We Were The States - "So derivative my intestines just prolapsed."
Alex Khoury - "This guitarist has too many feelings."
Be Your Own Pet - "Punky ladies sing goofy bicycle ditty."
The Clutters - (review of "9999 Ways To Hate Us") "I just found one more way."
Magic Wands - "I don’t feel like clapping along."

Not all of the reviews are negative, some of the tracks he really liked (the four and five star ratings are highlighted in bold). But it's understandable that after listening to that many songs in a short amount of time, you'd probably get quite pithy too.

Magnapop - "Texas" (mp3) from Hot Boxing

Blue Is The Color Of Hope

Several of my friends have those playlist.com players on their myspace profiles. Most of the time, they (the players, not the friends) bug the shit out of me, because I'm usually listening to music of my own choosing when I check out their page, and I have to immediately track down the player and stop it so I'm not hearing two songs at once. I honestly believe that webpages that automatically play music when you visit them ought to be illegal.

Tonite however was one of the very rare occasions when I enjoyed a myspace playlist. My friend Shannon has one on his profile dedicated to songs with "Blue Sky" in the title. I get the feeling that the song selection was kind of random, but it really makes for a great half hour of listening. You can hear it for yourself here. Then when you're done with that, you can listen to my favorite song that fits Shannon's theme...

Patty Griffin - "Blue Sky" (mp3) from Flaming Red

Oddly enough, I almost posted this song a couple of days ago, but I got distracted and didn't. But I will add the one thought I'd definitely have put in that post... the line "Be my singing lesson, be my song" is one of my favorite lyrics ever.

And if you really want to appreciate a truly gorgeous blue sky, you need to go to Montana. The most beautiful sky you've ever seen doesn't compare to the Big Sky state on a sunny day. Seriously.

photo by caselee

Listen, The Snow Is Falling

It's snowing in Nashville tonite. They've actually issued a severe winter weather advisory for us. Usually that means we get a slight dusting and it's gone by 10 a.m. the next morning. But today the weathermen were all like "No, we really mean it this time. Two to four inches. We're serious. Why is everyone laughing?" Meteorologists in Tennessee are kind of like Ben on Lost... they lie to your face all the time, and yet you still believe them next time they make a promise. And Nashville is full of Juliettes.

I've got to give them credit this evening though; the snow is really coming down. And since the roads are quickly turning to shit, my plans for tonite are to bundle up in a jacket and scarf, sit on my porch for a while with a beer and a cigar, and watch the world turn white while listening to wintery songs. I'll probably end up with Dean Martin's A Winter Romance at some point, but I'm starting with these two...

Galaxie 500 - "Listen, The Snow Is Falling" (mp3) from This Is Our Music
The Church - "Snowfallwer" (mp3) from Back With Two Beasts