- In my most recent (and first) tour roundup post, I mentioned how Deerhunter canceled their European tour. Remember? Well, turns out they've already rescheduled part of the tour (which now starts in May with their ATP appearance) and they expect to confirm even more dates next week! Check out the rescheduled dates here, and then stick 'em up, motherfucker!
- Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings are at it again, starting a short U.S. tour today that will continue throughout January (opening act: Bulgarian/Balkan folk group Ivan Milev Band), with scattered dates afterward, including two Valentine's Day performances in New York at the Nokia Live Theatre in February and at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in April. That was just one sentence, FYI.
- Fruit Bats and Sera Cahoone are starting a tour together on January 27 in Eugene, OR. In order to fuck up the whole synchronization of it all, Cahoone will play a show at the Red Room one day earlier. Not sure what Fruit Bats' thoughts are on this, but I'd personally call off the tour. Dates can be found here.
- Passion Pit start their tour next Monday, January 26, at Pontiac, MI's Crofoot and end in Northampton, MA's Iron Horse Music Hall. They'll be playing with Cale Parks and Paper Route for most, if not all, the North American dates (I'm too lazy to check it up myself). Afterward, the band will head to Europe, with a break in March before playing more shows in April. Meanwhile, the band is preparing a 2009 full-length, and if you're reading this, I bet you're really excited!
David "Fathead" Newman, a jazz musician who played with the Ray Charles Band and won fame as a tenor sax soloist, has died at age 75.
Newman played and recorded with a wide range of jazz and soul luminaries, such as Herbie Mann, Aretha Franklin and Aaron Neville. He also led a successful solo career.
He was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1990 for his work with Art Blakey and Dr. John.
Manager Karen Nemman says the jazz musician died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer in a Kingston, N.Y., hospital.
According to his Web site, Newman spent 12 years with the Ray Charles Band beginning in 1954. He began as the baritone sax player and became the star tenor sax soloist.
Sometimes you just get the feeling that the guys from Radiohead are just, I don’t know, advanced aliens that decided to camp out on earth for a while to do a bit of recon work on the behaviors of primitive life forms for their own home planet’s anthropology records. Being the advanced beings that they are, Radiohead are, at times, unable to resist bestowing small tokens of their advanced culture upon us lowly human beings from time to time. However, also being the advanced beings that they are, the aliens sometimes get bored with just being all “wise” and “stately” all the time, and they have to do something to “amuse their curiosities,” as it were.
Case in point? Jonny Greenwood apparently recently decided that he’d written enough incendiary movie scores and innovative orchestral works, and thus, took a bit of a slacker break to work with Israeli pop singer Dudu Tasa on his newest single. What’s that? Never heard of him? Well, by all means, let me introduce you to what you’ve been missing:
Yes, a recent interview on Israeli news site and TMT sister-publication Ynet confirms (er, trust me, it really does) that Greenwood and Tasa worked together on Tasa's new single, which is titled "What a Day." “It gave the song some depth that was not there before,” Tasa said to Ynet of the collaboration. “Jonny loves what I do and thats very flattering.”
I know, I know, let's get down to business here: what does this whole ethno-world-pop-art-explosion sound like? Well, you may be in luck, as you can stream the song here with Internet Explorer. And since most of you are probably working your shitty day job where you’re using PCs from the mid-to-late-’90s right now, I’m guessing that most of you will be able to check it out!
By the way, the track is sung in Hebrew and, according to Pitchfork’s own diabolical sleuthing techniques, contains lyrics to the effect of "I was already drunk/ Now I'm clever/ And again like an idiot/ I tend to argue.” What a day, indeed. Now... get back to work, Jonny!!!
Junior Boys, the Hamilton, Ontario electropop duo responsible for one of TMT's favorite ’06 albums (TMT Feature), So This is Goodbye, as well as acclaimed singles like "Birthday" and "In the Morning," are set to release a new LP this spring on Domino Records. Begone Dull Care is the group's third album, following Goodbye and their 2003 debut Last Exit, both on Domino. The title is an homage to Scottish-Canadian animator and filmmaker Norman McLaren, whose innovative film manipulation and animation techniques also lent inspiration to the album's sonic attention to detail. "[T]he meticulousness of film animation is much like the process of sequencing and programming electronic music," according to the Boys' official press release for the album.
On the heels of a busy year of recording, the JBs — not to be confused with the late James Brown's awesome backing band — are readying Begone Dull Care for a March 24 release in their native Canada and April 7 in the United States, with single "Hazel" due out beforehand. The group is also readying a six-week North American tour, with dates to be announced soon.
Begone Dull Care tracklist:
1. Parallel Lines 2. Work 3. Bits And Pieces 4. Dull To Pause 5. Hazel 6. Sneak A Picture 7. The Animator 8. What It's For
Juana Molina used to be a comedian in her native Argentina. Then she dropped the comedian shtick, and between 1996 and today, she put out a couple of homemade solo albums that were delicate, whispery, and bubbling with electronics. They were very well received and, no, they are not comedy albums. What? Is that a problem for you? Are you disappointed? Did you expect something else?
Juana’s gonna be bringing her decidedly un-funny music to the unwashed American masses this February with her first-ever full-band U.S. tour. She’ll likely be playing a bunch of songs from her 2008 Domino Records release Un Día (which made #16 on our year-end favorites list), and maybe if we’re really, really lucky, she’ll play “The Chanukah Song.”
Tour Dates For Juana Molina: 02.09.09 - Bellingham, WA - Nightlight Lounge 02.10.09 - Seattle, WA - Triple Door 02.11.09 - Portland, OR - Lol's Room 02.13.09 - San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall 02.14.09 - Santa Cruz, CA - Rio Theatre 02.15.09 - Santa Barbara, CA - SOHO Restaurant And Music Club 02.17.09 - Los Angeles, CA - Troubadour 02.20.09 - Minneapolis, MN - Whole Music Club 02.21.09 - Madison, WI - Der Rathskellar 02.22.09 - Chicago, IL - Morse Theatre 02.23.09 - Newport, KY - Southgate House 02.24.09 - Cleveland Heights, OH - Grog Shop 02.26.09 - Cambridge, MA - Brattle Theatre 02.27.09 - New York, NY - Le Poisson Rouge 02.28.09 - Arlington, VA - Iota Club And Cafe 03.01.09 - Philadelphia, PA - World Cafe
Okey dokey, here’s what the fuck’s up, internet. All ya’ll YouTube frequentin’, inane iMovie video montage makin’, Twilight obsessin’, Kristen Bell mentally undressin’ motherfunkers better get ready for the big pain, ‘cuz not only does every single person with a functioning parietal lobe think your fan videos are stupid, so does YouTube itself.
Actually, that was out of line. YouTube doesn’t hate your movies that much. I even assume Steve Chen and Chad Hurley stipulated in their initial business plan that moronic fan tributes to Final Fantasy would likely account for half their server space. The real villain here, as always, are the big, fat, Goo Goo Dolls-hating record companies. For awhile, YouTube’s policy ran parallel with the record companies’ party line -- if the corporations discovered a video illegally utilizing one of their rightfully-owned songs, YouTube would automatically remove the video and pretend like there had never been an honest and heartfelt tribute to Sammy Hagar’s Cabo Wabo Cantina set to “Iris” (I’ll never forgive you for that, YouTube).
But now YouTube has changed its tune. Instead of removing the video altogether, the site will first warn you about your dastardly copyright infringement, then suggest you either remove the music from your video and keep it online or change the audio entirely with a song from YouTube’s “library of pre-cleared music.” Oh, the glorious options! This policy most likely acts as a harbinger for a broad (and profitable) elimination of all possible infringing content.
