Don’t you hate when you get small portions of pink? Luckily, Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell know how to bring it with their actThe Big Pink.
The alt-pop band with plenty of charm is coming to the Rock and Roll Hotel on Monday, July 30th, and we’ve got a pair of tickets! So what are you waiting for? Come and get ’em.
Referencing all sorts of sound from a myriad of sources, The Big Pink’s music is a super slick wall of pop with artsy undertones carried by strange electronics, inventive song writing, and clever lyricism. The result has landed them with numerous awards, including the Philip Hall Radar Award for best new act at the NME Shockwave in 2009 and Best New Track with “Dominos” at the NME awards in 2010.
Whoa, Cleveland! I hope you’re ready for an action-packed weekend in the music world. If not, grab that double shot and get ready because we’re not slowing down. This weekend goes out to the locals.
This weekend we welcome the addition of Cellar Door to the list of local venues that will be supporting live music and boasting a record shop, too! Cellar Door Records began as a label and booking company, but now they’re expanding. Some great Cleveland bands are playing—The Modern Electric, The Lighthouse and The Whaler, Humble Home & Brian Straw. So come out and celebrate this new and exciting venue!
If you’d rather hit the rock scene than indie folk/rock, you should head on over to Happy Dog to catch the Shitbox Jimmy LP release. These cats funded the pressing themselves and are releasing 500 copies of their new album, which was made here in Cleveland at Gotta Groove Records!
What up party-goers? This weekend has Memphis featuring a super cool record release, an electronic show of strange sounds, and something about a colorful jumpsuit.
Hmmn? I guess that means its time to suit up and ready yourself for some weekend shots.
Friday (7/27) starts off with a big hullabaloo, with a rocking show at Minglewood Hall. The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus (which, from what I can tell, is incredibly safe edgy music) will be blowing speakers out with their take on post-screamo/core/hair music. Set it Off and Patent Pending will also be bringing their attitude-soaked sets to the big comfy venue, so why not come and check out what the kids are into these days?
Past the angsty rock of a jumpsuit apparatuses (apparatusi?), there’s also a cool low-key electronic show at the Buccaneer Lounge. The longest-performing electronic group in Memphis, Grunt’s Gelatinous Cube, are top-billed for a night of weird noises you’ll want to hear. Human Being and their electronic post rock, as well as Oxford Icebergs‘ hand-crafted analog beat love-making, and DJ’ing from The Cubists are also billed.
Rockin’ out with the guys from Everest all week has been, well, rockin’. Their brand-new album, Ownerless, has been getting heavy rotation ’round these parts so, naturally, we thought we’d cap off our week of awesomeguestpieces with a vinyl giveaway—with a few generous extras we’re tossing in as well!
As Everest frontman Russ Pollard told us on Monday, “It makes me happy to make art and to make music and to put it out, regardless of how that gets to people. I hope that it does and I hope people are into it and hope it makes a difference. That’s really all I can strive for – complete honesty. I’m doing what I do and I’m putting it out to them with this band I really love, and I’m encouraged by it and it keeps me going.
Shopping in record stores and reading good books and seeing good art – all that keeps me going in a world that I think is really geared towards product and consumerism and all that stuff. I just really don’t feel connected to that; I feel very outside of that.”
I woke up to “I love Jennifer” on every day of my weekly planner for three weeks, but that is of no concern to you. If you’re in search of what to do, see, and hear this weekend in New Orleans, I spent time to find the best of the rest – exclusively for TVD.
Friday Night. Conveyor. The Saint. As soon as I connected Popgun Booking and Paper Garden Records, I was sold. All three companies have clout when it comes to recognizing impossible go-get-it-ness. They create the happiness that is eletronic and acoustic jams, so be sure and swing by The Saint at 961Saint Mary for the best time.
Motown, Soul, and R&B cover band (my seemingly only genre exception for cover bands) The Essentials (above) are performing at The Maison Friday night. A 10-piece ensemble reconstructing melodies from my favorite three decades – I missed their most recent show at Circle Bar, but there’s another chance to witness perfect pitch harmonies on Frenchmen tonight.
Looking for some live music in Chicago this weekend? We’ve got you covered. Check out this weekend’s featured show along with a more extensive weekend list below!
WICKER PARK FEST on Milwaukee Avenue from North to Paulina, 7/28 & 7/29
Started as a small neighborhood gathering nine years ago, Chicago’s Wicker Park Fest has expanded into an impressive showcase of local and national talent. Local favorites like Archie Powell & The Exports, Soft Speaker, and The Shams Band will be setting the stages for national talent including Cursive, Kill Hannah, and Lucero. Wicker Park Fest runs from noon to 10:00 PM on both Saturday and Sunday, and costs just $5 to get in.
There really isn’t anyone performing at Wicker Park Fest that I wouldn’t recommend checking out, but one band in particular that you should be familiar with is YAWN. The DIY Chicago quartet plays atmospheric, digital, pop rock, and recently ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to press their latest record, Open Season, on vinyl. Check out the video for the track “YumYum” above, and the full Wicker Park Fest lineup, below.
So, how hot is it where you’re reading this? Over here at TVD HQ it’s 91 degrees, and when you factor in the stifling DC humidity, we’re well over a 100—107 to be exact. (Yep, my black wardrobe is being tested today.)
And yes, I know you don’t hit up TVD for a local weather report, but coincidently we have one super hot 7″ to put into your hands (keep it clean) before we head out for a cold beverage or 7 today.
Brooklyn’s Leland Sundries, led by troubadour Nick Loss-Eaton, this month released the Americana-flavored “Roller Derby Queen” b/w “Givin’ Up Redheads” 7-inch, about which the esteemed New York Times noted, “…will get you longing for empty two-lane highways and kudzu-encased back porches.”
Toss in a lime rickey and I’m inclined to agree.
Enter to win the Leland Sundries 7″ by giving us your hottest and current favorite track in the comments below. One winner with the coolest taste (and a North American mailing address) will be chosen a week from today, 8/2!
As The Features drummer (and Grimey’s employee) Rollum Haas told us this past June, “My high school years fell during the reign of the CD, but I still found myself picking up random things here and there on LP, despite not having a record player at the time.”
“I had a moderately healthy collection but it really picked up when I started working at Grimey’s. I didn’t realize it until my wife (who balances the check book) pointed out that every time I worked a shift, I came home with records.”
“There was a point where it was a legitimate addiction and I was buying and hanging onto records that were more “vanity” pieces because of their rarity, value, (Silver Apples’ first LP on Kapp, original UK mono Beatles pressings, etc).”
“Every so often, my dad would take me up to the attic of our house and play his old records for me.His and my mother’s collection, which eventually became mine, became my greatest musical inspiration growing up.”
“The first record I ever heard was Who’s Next by The Who. I can still remember holding this album cover in my hands as a child. I always wondered why they were using this mysterious concrete slab as a toilet in the middle of nowhere. Today, these songs still sound fresh; timeless. It’s a true rock and roll record. A beautiful collection of songs. The opening track, “Baba O’Riley,” became the theme song to my childhood. When I hear this album now, I think of the attic that overlooked the street I grew up on, where I first heard this record, and first I started my first band.
The album that always followed was Jerry Jeff Walker’s Ridin’ High. I think there was a connection between the cover of Who’s Next and the song “Pissin’ in the Wind,” one of many great songs off Ridin’ High when it came time to put on another record. Jerry may be a drunk and a loon, but he’s a damn good writer, and I have learned to appreciate this record even more as an adult.
The guys in Everest love independent record shops and the sound of 180-gram vinyl as much as we do. We’re excited to have the band guest blogging all week about their lifelong love affair with the LP, the culture of vinyl, and why independent record stores mean so much to them.
Guitarist Jason Soda gets a turn on Day 4 of our week with the band. He waxes nostalgic about his early fascination with cover art and starting his own record collection like so many of us did (by stealing our parents’ records). He also explains why he continues to collect vinyl and support the “mom and pop” record stores even when he’s out on tour.
The Day 1 Q&A with Russ Pollard and his Day 2 guest spot, along with Day 3‘s piece by Joel Graves, will get you all caught up on the week with Everest. We’ll cap it off tomorrow with a giveaway for a signed copy of the band’s new LP, Ownerless, and some other pretty awesome swag.
“When I think about records, I’m always reminded of my early childhood years, opening my parent’s record cabinet in the brown walnut colored wall unit, sifting past the Anne Murray and John Denver records until I’m uncontrolably stopped by some interesting cover or impressive packaging design. Sometimes it was the how thick the paper was, like on the Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark record. Or the weird scary deserted castle, guarded by a group of minstrel clad Stones on the cover of their “greatest hits.”
At some point I realized that these records weren’t as precious to my parents as they might once have been. As I fell in love with the covers, I decided to adopt them.
If the 1983 self-titled debut by Violent Femmes is one of the hot half-dozen expressions of Teen Angst American Style ever waxed, then Hallowed Ground, the group’s still divisive second effort from the following year is one of rock music’s core texts in how to successfully flout expectations. It still succeeds greatly as a document of nervy conceptual growth and as a major breakthrough in terms of individual musicianship.
A lingering wisdom about Violent Femmes’ first album is that it inevitably landed squarely in the lap of any ‘80s teen that had grasped just how inescapably miserable was the struggle of growing up; the isolation, the hopelessness, the short highs followed by extended lows, the sexual overload, the distasteful omnipresence of authority. Instead of just internalizing this knowledge many naturally flaunted their alienation over this unrelentingly oppressive environment via haircuts, clothing choices, and most importantly artistic taste.
The strategic reading of Catcher in the Rye on park benches aside, music has proven a startlingly effective way of expressing that unsubtle concept of Not Fitting In. Indeed, music has long been synonymous with youth in revolt, and if circa 1985 one spied a surly, disheveled teen sauntering along the sidewalks of some suburban landscape with a sticker covered backpack and a Walkman, it was a safe bet that they were carrying a cassette copy of Violent Femmes in the pocket of their tattered thrift-store trench coat.
A true rite of passage, it was also an LP so ubiquitous that I have no recollection of hearing it for the first time; once someone was identified as belonging to the great brigade of young non-conformists it was inevitable that a more experienced member of this community would lend a helping hand and expose the newcomer to the alluring strains of Midwestern anxiety.
Following the recent success of Ed Sheeran’s “The A Team” and last night’s flawless performance at New York City’s Irving Plaza, we’ve decided to give away one copy of Ed Sheeran’s + (Plus)!
Last night’s show was a two-hour example of how a young 21-year-old with solely a guitar can pull together a group of over 1,000 people through a simple strum. With about 50 more shows to end the year at some of the country’s biggest venues, Sheeran is bound to attract fans from all walks of the earth. + (Plus) has a song for every type of person and music-lover—including folk, R&B, indie, and even rap.
It only seems fair to give this record away now, after a massive sold-out crowd in the heart of New York City. The album features 12 tracks that are guaranteed to win you over . With all of Ed’s buzz, we can’t think of a reason not to enter! Contest details can be found below.
’70s rockers Santana and The Allman Brothers Band are in the midst of a six-date co-headlining tour across the Northeast. The tour, which kicked off on Sunday in New York, will come to an end on Monday, July 30th at Merriweather Post Pavilion.
While both bands are no strangers to the world of touring, these concerts mark the first time Santana and The Allman Brothers are sharing the stage. Previously, the jam bands had only performed on the same stage during music festivals. The two groups will swap closing spots throughout the duration of the tour.
This tour outing can be added to the list of 2012 highlights for each band: The Allman Brothers Band received a Lifetime Achievement Award during the Grammys in February, while Santana’s new album Shape Shifter debuted at #16 on the Billboard Charts upon its release in May.
The guys in Everest love independent record shops and the sound of 180-gram vinyl as much as we do. We’re excited to have the band guest blogging all week about their lifelong love affair with the LP, the culture of vinyl, and why independent record stores mean so much to them.
Day 3 of the band’s week-long guest blogging features guitarist Joel Graves giving props to his favorite shops, both past and present, and the mutual respect and support of their local record stores. You can check out Day 1 Q&A and Day 2 guest post by frontman Russ Pollard to get caught up on our week with Everest.
“At the beginning of June, Everest bass guitar player Elijah Thomson and I volunteered to drive our gear from Los Angeles, CA to Annapolis, MD to start a two month tour. With our new record Ownerless due in stores at the end of the month, I made a special limited poster to announce the birth.
The plan was to deliver these posters to some of our favorite shops as we traversed the country. Just a way of saying “thanks” and also showing that we support these neighborhood institutions that have done so much to support us.
Before we left, posters went to some of our local favorites including Fingerprints in Long Beach, Origami Vinyl in Echo Park, and Amoeba Music in Hollywood. All of these stores are places that we actually shop, and we have personal relationships through the years with the owners and employees.
