Monthly Archives: December 2010

All Top 10 Lists are bullshit.

There – I said it. Yours, your favorite blog’s, Pitchfork’s, Stereogum’s, Rolling Stone’s, your local City Paper – whatever. Who cares how you’ve numbered and ordered things according to your collective taste from the past year? (Especially if you’ve given Kanye’s latest a 10.0 or 5 stars—your taste is bullshit.)

Man, that feels good to say, hm?

If you’re to navel gaze then, why not spotlight the folks who actually affected you over the previous year, who dropped a little ear candy and some good wishes along the way. A dose of insight perhaps? We’re going to have a bit of a go at that this week as the year winds down.

Looking back, TVD had quite a number of ‘Takeover Weeks” by some lovely ladies this year. So, we thought we’d kick off our lil’ 2010 retrospective this morning with the women who made us look forward to turning on the lights each morning at TVD HQ and come to work:

The Submarines | The week of January 11, 2010

“…I just came inside from making this little mp3 with John from an old 78 of Billie Holiday’s, “The Very Thought of You.” John gave me a beautiful old phonograph, a Columbia Graphophone, for my birthday a couple of years ago. This is one of the nicest 78s we’ve collected.

Most of the others are cheapies from the flea markets—Tahitian recordings, Hawaiian guitar music, strange old jazz tunes with naughty lyrics. It’s a little rough actually listening to them because they’re quite harsh. The phrase ‘put a sock in it,’ comes from muffling the cone of the phonograph, which we usually do. But, it’s fascinating to think you’re hearing these recordings just as people did back when the records were pressed—there’s a real connection to that time period, in the decades before the technology evolved to give the players a richer sound…”

The Submarines – Tugboat (Mp3)

Exit Clov | The week of January 25, 2010

“…This unilateral intervention is warranted by a momentous occasion for the band—namely the release of our brand new record, Memento Mori. Latin for “remember your mortality,” Memento Mori is a departure from our previous material. It’s a little on the heavy and melancholy side, but it’s not without its moments of hope, brilliance and happiness…”.

Exit Clov – District Menagerie (Mp3)

The Watson Twins | The week of February 8, 2010

“…We spent our childhood listening to records, staring at the sleeve for hours while listening to each track intently… there is a ritual that comes with flipping each side and so seeing this resurgence brings what I call the nostalgic tidal wave. A large beautiful sonic wave that we hope people will explore…”

The Watson Twins – U-N-Me (Mp3)

Jesca Hoop | The week of August 2, 2010

“…I’ll never forget listening to Joni Mitchell’s ‘Song for a Seagull’ on vinyl one a misty morning while sitting on the covered porch in a rocking chair amidst the redwood trees.

The songs, the mist, the tea, the trees all became the same thing a total environment. We listened to the record like it was a movie. And again and again. That record (and on vinyl) signifies those days of a gorgeous simplicity… of unfettered youth… of freedom…”

Jesca Hoop – Feast Of The Heart (Mp3)

The Mynabirds | The week of September 20, 2010

“…The long drive between Toronto and Montreal included a long conversation about great lyricists. I realized three of my all-time favorites are Canadian: Joni Mitchell, for knowing how to set a scene; Leonard Cohen, for his Zen way saying the most with the least; and Neil Young, for his jazz standard strength in simplicity. Then we all wondered aloud about the great lyricists of today. Who’s our Dylan? Who can turn a phrase and get the zeitgeist of our whole generation? Do we have a zeitgeist? Or are we just the dregs of a non-movement, content with our bougie coffees and fancy phones while the world turns to shit?

I’d like to think not, to hope that the good voices will rise above the top 40 radio crap and redeem us. Sorry for the rant. Probably just preaching to the choir anyway. (Good that we’ve got a choir on the good side.) But seriously, who moves you these days, lyrically? How do you feel about politically – and socially-minded music? I, for one, eat it up. Reminds me of being a kid with pink hair and combat boots, my friends in bands with high ideals and punk patches, all of us excited about the world we were about to make our own. I say let’s do it. There’s still time. We’ll tear it down and build it back up one lyric at a time…”

The Mynabirds – Numbers Don’t Lie (Mp3)

Kitten | The week of October 18, 2010

“…Sometimes you’re on and sometimes you’re off. We were off. The nicest way to say it is that I just never hit my groove but to be honest it just felt like it was our first time playing these songs. We didn’t do what we do. Usually if the world’s shit, I can get on stage, rock it out and forget about it but we must have brought the B.S. with us ’cause it wasn’t happening up there…”

Kitten – Kill The Light (Mp3)

…it’s back for a second year!

Did you know you can walk to four of Washington, DC’s finest record stores in a span of maybe 15-20 minutes? It’s no joke. I do it often.

The folks who wake up each morning, head downtown, and turn on the lights at Crooked Beat Records, Red Onion Records, Smash! Records, and Som Records would like to remind you this holiday season that vinyl makes THE perfect gift for yourself or some other crate digger on your shopping list.

As a reminder, all four shops are dangling a carrot in the form of $25.00 in store credit for ONE winner to extend the season of giving—right to your turntable. That’s $100.00 to wander from store to store in TVD’s DC Record Store Holiday Shopping Spree.

Here’s how it’ll work: we invite you to sing the praises of your local scene in the comments to this post with contact info (very important!) and the one that warms our collective spirits will be awarded the shopping spree. You don’t have to be a DC resident to enter and win, but you have to redeem your store credit in person at each of the four shops.

We’re choosing the winner for TVD’s DC Record Store Holiday Shopping Spree on Monday, 12/20 to give you the last few days before the Christmas holiday to make the 20 minute trek from store to store.

(…best after a Bloody Mary or 5. Trust me on this.)

“Flow,” the haunting final track on Laurie Anderson’s June release, Homeland, has been nominated for a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.

And you can download it below…

In line with True Womanhood’s very last Takeover Week here at TVD comes over very last ‘First Date.’ And it’s a sad, sad tale, indeed.

“Around a year and a half ago came a very very sad moment…. It was my housemate’s birthday. We were all out and I decided to stay out longer with some other friends. The others went back to our house… I went home and found my kitchen in a trashed state and red wine poured all over my bed. Seriously pissed off, I went to sleep to deal with it the next morning. I had to go to work early so thought I’d sort it when I got home.

I had to work till really late again so then it was only 2 days later that I saw a Bad Boys Inc vinyl cover (a joke present given to me by my old uni housemate Lucinda) out of the bathroom window lying in the rain, in our back garden. Assuming it had blown out the window, I went into the garden to investigate to find my entire 45 collection smashed against the back garden wall, sodden sleeves strewn around the garden, covered in mud. I climbed into the tree to retrieve a Morrissey single, only to see a load more of my vinyl in pieces in the next door neighbor’s garden.

I was angry. Real angry. My housemate had gone to Paris for a week, so I couldn’t get hold of her. The bouncers at work ran a screwdrivers through kneecap service and offered it to me for free but as a pacifist, it took all my might to decline because I knew it was my housemate’s friends who were responsible. I had friends queuing up to punch the living daylight outta these guys. They were students and co-hosts on my housemates radio show. They admitted to trashing our kitchen but did not mention my records.

I quiz my housemate on her return. She says they don’t remember doing it but i know it would have been them. No one else had been in our house.

It dragged on and on and then two months later I had to move to Bristol because I had quit my job. The bastards got away with it. But in the words of Uma Thurman in Kill Bill – revenge is best served cold…. and I certainly haven’t forgotten….

It took me until recently to start buying vinyl again. It had hurt me so much. All those memories. All those records given to me by the artists. It was really shit.”
—Anika

Find Anika at her Home | Blog | Myspace | Twitter

If you’ve ever wondered what Nicole’s (and my) Neptune, NJ really looks like—specifically where she and I grew up in the very tiny Shark River Hills, NJ…

“Vultures” is the first single from Nicole Atkins’ forthcoming album Mondo Amore, available January 25th from Razor & Tie.

In what’s certain to be the proverbial “end of an era,” one of our DC favorites, True Womanhood, ushers in our very last TVD Takeover Week. …Ever.

(Well, here at this address.)

TW supplies the intro:

Welcome to TW Takeover Week on The Vinyl District. True Womanhood is proud to host the Vinyl District this week. You can expect features hand picked by TW and focusing on the bands, producers, and other music people that we most admire. You’ll find interviews, new song premieres, and if you’re lucky, maybe one or two of our favourite chipmunked rap videos.

We are hard at work recording some new music on our awesome vintage reel to reel for you to hear, but to tide you over till then down below is the latest, a couple songs we recorded in a mile long sewer pipe and put through a malfunctioning tape delay.
xx
TW

Clinic was one of the first bands that we got into, long, long before any of us could play our instruments or dreamed of playing in a band like TW, before we even discovered the Smiths or New Order, we knew Clinic. Since then we’ve kept ourselves “Aware” and in the loop with the Liverpool band’s output—6 high class albums on Domino Records. Their latest, Bubblegum, was recently released (you can buy it HERE) and they were gracious enough to answer our questions.

We’ve been listening to you guys since we were thirteen years old. What records were you guys listening to when you were thirteen?
When we were 13 (early 80’s) there was a completely different musical landscape. Punk had inspired the first independent labels during the late 70’s but the fruits of these ventures were not readily available to our age at the time, you would have to hunt them out and have some cash! We were definitely drawn to albums like “Never Mind The Bollocks” for the comedy value but had to rely on our parents record collections—heavily 60’s/70’s influenced, easy listening (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Demis Roussos, Abba, The Sandpipers etc. etc.)

Older kids at school would reveal greater rewards later on with bands like The Smiths, Echo and The Bunnymen leading to discovering the Velvet Underground’s first album, early Pink Floyd and The 13th Floor Elevators. A true revelation was first visiting the legendary Liverpool record shop “Probe” which would stock early Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, and other obscure US releases at the time.

Since this is, after all, a vinyl lovers blog, it’s important to mention your new album Bubblegum, available in bright pink vinyl! What are you most excited about with this album?
The most exciting thing about this record for me is the fact it really breaks the mould of past releases. There was a long list of things we wanted to include/not include in an attempt to create something different. Also John Congleton did a really good job of recording and mixing the record. It was the first time since Winchester Cathedral that we worked with a producer. He encouraged us to include things we wouldn’t normally have thought of (eg. lush string arrangements) and as a result I think we made our most accessible album to date.

Starting with Internal Wrangler’s reworking of Ornette Coleman, you guys have had a string of amazing album artwork. What do you guys think about when designing your record covers? Does someone in the band do the artwork? What are some of your favorite record designs made by other bands?
Hartley designs all the album covers and as you can probably tell he’s a big fan of Modernism, Punk and old Jazz records. I think the main thing about putting the sleeves together is making sure they’ll stand up in years to come, we’ve all had many conversations about trying to make things look timeless and that tends to mean not relying on digital techniques. All the album covers are made by hand before being digitally scanned so you can still see the flaws.

As far as other album covers I’m personally a big fan of artists like Raymond Pettibon (Black Flag, Sonic Youth) and Pete Fowler (Super Furry Animals), both highly individual and striking.

We were impressed that the Clinic website is full of iphone and ipad applications based on your new album, giving fans a new way to relate to and experience your music. Can you give us a bit of insight on the band’s relationship with its audience, and whether you see it changing with this new technology?
It’s a way of trying to reclaim value in music, to create something physical. The ease in which people can download music has almost made a song worthless, there are thousands of bands all releasing albums at the same time, things come and go very quickly. By embracing technology and creating new things like the iPhone/iPad apps it puts the music in a new context. We’ve always tried to do things differently, making it about the music rather than personality so technology allows us to expand on that idea and make the music more interactive. I think that’s also why vinyl sales are on the up, I think it’s a reaction to the digital format. A lot of labels are adding download codes so you get the best of both worlds, but you can’t beat the act of putting on a record and listening to a great album.

Liverpool’s musical history, at least from an American perspective, is dominated by one band and one band alone. Do you guys still live and rehearse there? What’s it like being a band in Liverpool?
Their shadow still looms large from a tourist’s perspective (a new 5 star hotel called “A Hard Days Night,” Liverpool airport’s motto “Above us only sky!”) but there is an extremely diverse range of bands writing and recording in Liverpool. We organised a festival in 2009 that featured bands like Hot Club De Paris, SSS, Mugstar and Cold Ones, all very different bands but when you add in a bit of Medieval battle re-enactment in the intervals it really worked.

Clinic is still based in Liverpool, we have a studio set up in a large converted warehouse that houses a lot of other bands, artists and creative ventures which we have access to 24 hours a day. All our albums since Winchester Cathedral have been recorded there in some shape or form.

Finally, what has been your best experience in Washington D.C. as a band?
We’ve always had a great time in Washington D.C., a real music loving city – I can’t choose one particular moment but would like to say a big hello and thank you to The Black Cat who have been very good to us over the years and The Rock and Roll Hotel where we played on our last US tour.

Many thanks to Clinic for being so generous with their time! For more Clinic, you can check them out online, follow them on Facebook and Twitter, and buy their music. Also make sure to check the excellent new live video recorded on their last U.S. tour. —TW

I first heard this Rival Skies track on Monday. Since then, its welcome, semi-Souixsie slither has made quite the reappearance all week.

Eighteen times, iTunes tells me.

Rival Skies play the Velvet Lounge tomorrow night, 12/11 with Andrew Moreton and our friends, Dangerosa. Doors at 9PM, show at 10PM, 21+/$8.