RIP: Shelby Singleton, record producer, Sun Records

By Shane Mack on

From The Tennessean (via The Daily Swarm):

Shelby Singleton died just before 1 p.m. Wednesday in Alive Hospice Care at St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville, at age 77.

Mr. Singleton was a renegade producer, record executive, song-hunter and promoter who helped fuse country and R&B music in the 1960s and who perpetuated the Sun Records label since 1969. He had been battling brain cancer.

“A lot of people in this town owe a lot to Shelby,” said friend and protégé Jerry Kennedy, himself a famed producer. “He created a place here for a lot of us. Shelby did things in a different way. He was a maverick.”

- Shelby Singleton

Always Swing with a Buddy: Nouvelle Vague Return with 3rd Album and Dive into the Deep End of Duetting

By David Nadelle on 10-08-2009

Why reinvent the wheel when you can just trick it out a bit? It would be like altering something beloved like Coca-Cola from its present 100% pure cocaine-and-boot-polish mixture to some opaque fizzy liquid beverage using natural flavors, colors, and preservatives. Can you imagine the catastrophic social and commercial implications!? No, gifted producers Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux knew not to completely overhaul things when it came time to plan the latest Nouvelle Vague album. But they did tweak the sound (more C&W, roots, and bluegrass influence this time out) and tinker the approach a little (there are a few duets instead of starlets singing solo). The resulting recording is the imaginatively titled 3 and it will come out October 20 on Peacefrog.

The four duets on 3 are interesting, coupling one of Nouvelle Vague's songbirds with the chosen song's original performer/writer. Melanie appears with Depeche Mode's Martin Gore on his "Master and Servant" and with Echo and the Bunnymen's Ian McCullough on his "All My Colours," Marina Celeste sings with Terry Hall (Specials/Fun Boy Three, etc.) on a version of his "Our Lips Are Sealed" (made famous by The Go-Go's in the early 1980s and famous for another generation by Hilary and Haylie Duff in 2004), and Nadeah Miranda croons with Barry Adamson (Magazine) on his "Parade." Unlike Nouvelle Vague's music, here is a tracklisting that is complicated and troublesome...

Legend: "Song" (Nouvelle Vague singer and, where applicable, featured guest singer), [original artist]

1. "Master and Servant" (Melanie Pain feat. Martin Gore) [Depeche Mode]
2. "Blister in the Sun" (Eloisia) [Violent Femmes]
3. "Road to Nowhere" (Nedeah Miranda) [Talking Heads]
4. "All My Colours" (Melanie feat. Ian McCullough) [Echo and the Bunnymen]
5. "The American" (Silja) [Simple Minds]
6. "Heaven" (Karina Zeviani) [Psychedelic Furs]
7. "Parade" (Nadeah Miranda feat. Barry Adamson) [Magazine]
8. "Metal" (Eloisia) [Gary Numan]
9. "Ca Plane Pour Moi" (LeeLou) [Plastic Bertrand]
10. "Our Lips Our Sealed" (Marina Celeste feat. Terry Hall) [The Go-Go's]
11. "God Save the Queen" (Melanie Pain) [Sex Pistols]
12. "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye" (Sophie Delila) [Soft Cell]
13. "So Lonely" (Nadeah Miranda) [The Police]

Get yer ooh la las out:
10.08.09 - Helsinki, Finland - Korjaamo Culture Factory
10.09.09 - Stockholm, Sweden - Berns
10.10.09 - Oslo, Norway - Sentrum Scene
10.11.09 - Copenhagen, Denmark - DR Koncerthuset
10.12.09 - Vilnius, Lithuania - Club New York
10.16.09 - London, England - Roundhouse
10.17.09 - Eindhoven, Netherlands - Effenaar
10.18.09 - Utrecht, Netherlands - Tivoli
10.20.09 - Ghent, Belgium - Minnemeers
10.21.09 - Leuven, Belgium - Depot
10.23.09 - Marcheprime, France - La Caravelle
10.24.09 - Angoulême, France - La Nef
10.27.09 - Paris, France - Olympia
10.28.09 - Berne, Switzerland - Venue Bierhubeli
10.29.09 - Lausanne, Switzerland - Les Docks
10.30.09 - Zurich, Switzerland - Jazznojazz Festival
10.31.09 - Le Mans, France - Festival Be Bop n Roll
11.04.09 - Caen, France - Big Band Café
11.05.09 - St. Die, France - Centre Culturel
11.07.09 - Strasbourg, France - Laiterie
11.10.09 - Lyon, France - Transbordeur
12.01.09 - Brussels, Belgium - Le Botanique
12.04.09 - Lisbon, Portugal - Aula Magna
12.05.09 - Porto, Portugal - Sa de Bandeira

Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore to Launch Art Book Publishing Company, All of Us to Launch Art Books

By Nobodaddy on 10-08-2009

You’re creative, right? I mean, you use fisheye lenses, don’t you? And didn’t you write out your last birthday party invitations (to a vegan cookie tasting at a lofted art gallery) in haiku trains? And when you found that roadkill outside on your street, you grabbed your camera and filmed it, right?

Well, then get your game face on, David Lynch, because this past weekend, the Los Angeles Times reported that none other than Thurston Moore might be interested in being your very own personal arts patron! The SY mainstay has, of course, put in some good hours in the past co-writing art and photo books like Abby Banks' Punk House: Interiors in Anarchy and Michael Lavine's forthcoming Grunge. Now, he’s branching out even further into the realm of liberal arts guru with the launch of Ecstatic Peace Library, his very own boutique publishing house that savvily builds off of his already swingin’ Ecstatic Peace! record label. Creative synergy at work.

Anyway, catalogs of Ecstatic Peace Library's first releases were distributed at the New York Art Book Fair this past weekend to kind of prime the pump. They'll also be available via the Ecstatic Peace Library’s website on January 1. As of now, Moore is planning to release books from wife and bandmate Kim Gordon (insert emasculating “whip” noises here), Goo cover artist Raymond Pettibon, and 1991: The Year Punk Broke director Dave Markey. According to the L.A. Times, the books will be accompanied by recordings made by the authors. Sweet. Oh, and the books will all be distributed through the, uh, much more established and legit D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I've got a photo book of dirty diapers, odd coffee stains on paper placemats, and ironic-out-of-context vanity license plates to make. I smell a best-seller, Thurston!

“WE WILL BE MAKING AN ALBUM!” says Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien

By Mr P on 10-07-2009

Radiohead have threatend to stop releasing full-length albums several times since Kid A, only to later retract the statement or cite misquotation. It happened before both Hail to the Thief and In Rainbows (TMT Review), and it's now happening again. After an apparent misquote, in which The Believer quotes Thom Yorke saying "None of us want to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again. …] But we’ve all said that we can’t possibly dive into that again. It’ll kill us," Ed O'Brien set the record straight recently with the NME (via [AtEase), saying that Radiohead are indeed planning to record another full-length album.

"We were misquoted," said O'Brien. "WE WILL BE MAKING AN ALBUM!" At the moment, Radiohead are unsure of how they'll approach a downloadable version, but O'Brien says they will "definitely" be releasing the new album on CD and vinyl sometime next year. "We love the artwork; that’s really important, the physicality. And we all like vinyl. That’s not going to go away. I still like CDs as well. I got the Speech Debelle CD the other day – I nearly downloaded it from iTunes but I thought, ‘No. I want the physical thing.’"

So what do the new tunes sound like so far? O'Brien's keeping quiet, but he did tell the NME that "These Are My Twisted Words," a track released earlier this summer, was "a kind of one-off" and isn't a good indication of the new album.

The band heads back to the studio this winter, assuming O'Brien's not also being misquoted.

Jawbox Reuniting on Jimmy Fallon

By Mr P on 10-07-2009

According to Billboard, seminal DC act Jawbox will be reuniting for the first time in roughly 12 years on NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, December 8. The news comes hot on the heels of the reissue announcement of 1994's For Your Own Special Sweetheart, which is due November 3 via Dischord/DeSoto (TMT News). No other reunion plans are currently slated, but wouldn't it be weird if they only reunited for one song on Jimmy Fallon?

In any case, let's just hope the Jawbox reunion doesn't turn out as bad as Creed's.

Animal Collective to Re-Release Campfire Songs on Paw Tracks, New EP Fall Be Kind in December?

By Rachel B on 10-07-2009

Animal Collective's all-too-infectious single "My Girls" may be getting spun in the clurrrb by the DJ who insisted on playing "Music is My Hot Hot Sex" over and over seven whole months after it accompanied the iPhone commercials, but let us not forget that Avey Tare & Co. used to mess around in their basements (and probably still do to a large extent) creating weirdo-beardo bleeps, blops, and ambient nature recordings.

That said, Animal Collective's label Paw Tracks plans to re-release 2003's über-minimalist Campfire Songs (TMT Review) on January 26. I applaud this development, because without it, Campfire Songs would have gone out of print entirely on its former record label Catsup Plate, slipping further and further into relative obscurity.

Campfire Songs, as some of you might know, is a hodgepodge of five songs recorded entirely without electronics, instead choosing to focus on minimalist acoustic strumming, the back-to-nature (and very real) sound of birds chirping in the distance, and AC's trademark experimentalist harmonies. The album, which was literally made behind a screen door in Maryland, is recorded so that the listener can hear small gusts of wind and nature sounds in the background, providing a tangible "feeling and atmosphere of the outdoors and the warmth of a fire." The tracklist is below:

1. Queen in My Pictures
2. Doggy
3. Two Corvettes
4. Moo Rah Rah Rain
5. De Soto De Son

Meanwhile, the Collected Animals message board is abuzz about a rumored new EP, titled Fall Be Kind, supposedly set for release December 8 via Domino. The source? This Amazon order page. Since it's priced at $11.38, perhaps this could be a full-length? No confirmation from any camp just yet, but we'll keep you updated.

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