Bob Barker Says Spay or Neuter Your Pet or Risk Having New Tour and LP from Deer Tick on Your Hands

by Nobodaddy on 04-23-2009

There’s never been any question: New York-based composer and minimalist pioneer Steve Reich is cooler than all of us. Always has been, always will be. I mean, think about it: who among us could get away with wearing that beat-up baseball cap around throughout the entirety of our professional lives and have it be attributed not to our unwillingness to cooperate with workplace standards, but rather to some eccentric outward symbol of our staggering/precocious/whimsical (at times) inward genius? Yeah, exactly. No one. (Face it, not even Ashton Kutcher is doing a good job wearing hats for a living anymore!)

But now, just in case there was any lingering doubt whatsoever, he’s gone and won the Pulitzer Prize for music this week, for his 2008 piece Double Sextet. A good deal (though not necessarily entirely) less sexual than it sounds, the work calls for two identical sextets of instruments -- each made up of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone, and piano -- and can be performed in one of two ways: with 12 musicians, or, as in the case of its world premiere last May with the Eighth Blackbird ensemble, with six musicians playing against a recording of themselves. Mixing live music with recordings (or, heck, “sampling” in general) is nothing new to Reich though, who has spent his life plumbing the depths of the beauty that can be created with tape machines, loops, phasing, texture, and polyrhythms (sound familiar, Animal Collective fans?)

"It's the idea of writing basically unison canons," a much-smarter-than-you-and-me Reich says of Double Sextet. "The same timbre playing against itself, so that when they intertwine, you don't hear the individual voice; you hear the composite. Now, if you have several composites going on at the same time, you really get to an interesting situation, and that's what's going on in Double Sextet... I'm very glad that this particular piece got it, because I do think it's one of the better pieces I've done in the past few years." Notice the “in the past few years” part. Yeah, ol' boy could have won a dozen or so Pulitzers for a myriad of earlier badass and highly influential works, such as Music for 18 Musicians, Electric Counterpoint, Different Trains, Violin Phase, Clapping Music, and of course the loop-phase-masterworks It’s Gonna Rain and Come Out. Not familiar with these pieces yet? Well you’d best check them out before you go around issuing any declarations about how “groundbreaking” Merriweather Post Pavillion is.

by Elzee on 04-21-2009

If you live within driving distance of San Francisco, you'll want to pack up your car with plenty of rainbows and glitter, because indie pop is invading your city very soon. From May 21-24, an army of unabashedly gleeful and wonderfully talented musicians will converge on several local venues for the San Francisco Pop Festival. Highlights include Oh No Oh My, Suburban Kids with Biblical Names, The Hidden Cameras, Northern Portrait, Pelle Carlberg and, in their last appearance before going on indefinite hiatus, Seattle twee heroes Tullycraft.

For the full lineup, venue listings, and tickets, visit the PopFest website. In addition to shows, there will be a picnic on Sunday afternoon in Golden Gate park featuring acoustic sets from some of the festival’s performers. It doesn’t get much cuter or awesome than that.

Oh, also - DID YOU UNDERSTAND THE FIRST TIME I MENTIONED IT THAT THIS IS PRESUMABLY TULLYCRAFT’S LAST SHOW EVER? If you don’t come, you might actually be stuck listening exclusively to punk rock, ska, rap beats, and house, since you’ll no longer be able to fuck Sean Tollefson (with your eyes) because he’s twee. You don’t want that. All the kittens will die and you can’t bring them back to life no matter how many of them you draw on your homemade t-shirt. You’ve been warned.

Lineup: Suburban Kids With Biblical Names / Oh No! Oh My! / The Hidden Cameras / Tullycraft / Pelle Carlberg / Bailboy / Dear Nora / The Hot Toddies / The Smittens / Eux Autres / My Teenage Stride / Bunnygrunt / Northern Portrait / Magic Bullets / The Tartans / Antarctica Takes It! / The Orange Peels / Apple Orchard / Springfactory / Still Flyin' / Let's Whisper / Champagne Riot / Land of Ill Earthquakes / Gregory Webster / Brilliant Colors / ChEAP RED / Sourpatch / Birds of California / Pocketbooks

by Kat Gardiner on 04-20-2009

Remember when Pepsi promised to give a Harrier Jet to anyone who paid seven-million Pepsi Points back in the ’90s? And then someone did and they didn't and he sued? And got the freaking jet. (Or maybe he just got reimbursed for his pain and suffering with a lifetime supply of Obama's favorite carbonated beverage. I don't remember). Turns out Josh Freeze, studio drummer turned media savant, isn't a liar like those Pepsi bastards. He said it and he meant it.

Last month, he released a bizarre series of limited-edition VIP packages in support of his new album Since 1972, which was released this March through his website (Nobodaddy can fill you in on the wacky specifics of the offers). Well, someone took the $20,000 bid. A 19-year-old Floridian named Thomas Mrzyglocki. Sounds like they had a rollicking good time. Here's what Josh had to say about the whole thing in an email that was later posted on a NIN forum:

The guy from Florida that bought the $20,000 package and I have been joined at the hip since Sunday and I won't even go into all the stuff that we've done in the past 4 days but I've already gone above and beyond for him and we're continuing to have a blast. I'll start posting stuff soon on my website and on youtube but just to give you a quick idea... mini-golf with Maynard James Keenan, pizza at Mark Mothersbaugh's house, sensory deprivation tank sessions, a signed snare drum I used on a Nine Inch Nails tour, slumber party at the Queen Mary, going to gigs of mine with me, pulling items out of my closet, etc., etc.... He's a great kid and a friend for life. We're having him check out of his hotel and stay at our house tomorrow night. It's a LONG, LONG story that I'll write about later. You can laugh when I say this but it's true when I tell you that he came into my life for a reason other than just the $$. I actually feel bad about taking the $$ because at this point I'm not hanging out with him or pretending to be his friend for the cash. He got all of his stuff (and a bunch more that wasn't on the original menu) a while ago. He's a sweet 19-year-old kid who's had a really rough last couple years (like REALLY fucking rough.) Like... this money he spent to come out here is part of a inheritance he received (you can fill in the blanks there). I feel like his big brother and I'm trying to make this one of the best weeks of his life.

Although my heart-strings are breaking all over the place after reading that, a few things keeps nagging at me: I do not care about Tool, I'm not a fan of NIN, and just plain don't like Perfect Circle. Devo's pretty freaking cool, but I never cared about Josh Freeze until I read about this amazing offer he's got going. I know this is completely subjective, but still, gentle readers, let me be selfish. I want something for me. Something for us. These big budget "rock-gods"? Yawn. This is what I want to see:

- For $50: You get one Julian Koster tape loop.
- For $100: Go thrift-store shopping with the K Records artist of your choice, and they'll promise to knit you something.
- For $1,000: Choose Madlib's new pseudonym.
- For $5,000: Be Your Own Pet will reform and invite you to a private house party.
- For $10,000: Devendra Banhart, Akron/Family, and The Angels of Light will induct you into their commune and/or cult.
- For $15,000: Indulge in some psychedelics while Deerhunter provides you and your five closest friends with a personal concert and cooks you a southern-style breakfast with grits and sweet tea the next morning.
- For $20,000: Bill Callahan will write you a song, after which you'll head over to Will Oldham's house to drink PBR and play with a b.b. gun before being joined by the entire Drag City Catalog for a backyard BBQ and a series of songs around the campfire.

And this is just the start. Possibilities seem endless to me.