High Places and Pontiak to Monkey Around with Thrill Jockey

By C. Schell on 05-16-2008

Hurry up! Don't miss the next voyage of this vessel called Firewater. The New York group, led by Tod A. (who was also in the excellent Cop Shoot Cop), has been taking multicultural elements and making (non-traditionally) beautiful, humorous, pissed off, and thoroughly great tunes for about 13 years. Go look through your older brother's Magnet or CMJ magazines if you want to know the score.

The band released possibly their best LP just a couple weeks ago, The Golden Hour (Bloodshot). The record was greatly influenced by Tod's three-year trek through India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Turkey, which was apparently brought on by his divorce and the reelection of W. Well, one good trek deserves another, so in that spirit, the band is set to depart on a three-week tour all over this failure pile in a sadness bowl know as the USA. Check them out, beginning May 23 in Boston, before they (rightfully?) give up on the U.S. for good.

Tourdates:

By Scout Leader Kyle on 05-16-2008

Why is the headline above so simplified? Because no amount of sass on my part could've made it any weirder. No, "Condoleezza Rice" isn't the name of some smart-ass indie band; it's the name of that super sexy smart U.S. Secretary of State that we've all come to know and love. Indeed, the Secretary of State will be attending and playing at the Aspen Music Festival. She'll be giving a talk and playing some tunes at 3 PM August 2 in the Benedict Music Tent.

Condie is a former student at the Aspen Music School and supposedly she's a mean pianist. At age 15, Condie played some Mozart with the Denver Symphony and she's been playin' music ever since. She currently plays with a chamber group in Washington, DC. Seems like something you readers would be interested in knowing about.

Here's her musical background, in full detail:

In the early ’70s, our hott little teenage Rice cake was a student at the school for one summer, while her family was parked in Denver. She fell in love there with another young politician and musician by the name of Sonny Bono. Sonny and Condie fell deeply in love but had to keep it a secret from Sonny's second wife, the famous Cher, who eventually divorced Bono because of Sonny/Condie sex tapes that she found in 1975. After Condie and Sonny's summer of love, the two ended up never seeing each other again, per Sonny's request, and Condie never returned to the music school. The following summer, Condie decided that she didn't want to go to music school, because she wanted to study witchcraft instead. It's said that, while listening to "I Got You Babe," she conjured a spell that would cause Sonny Bono to die on January 5, 1998. Surely such prophetic madness couldn't come true, but it did. Sonny Bono died in a tragic skiing accident on the very day.