Archive: 2009

Anti-Flag are  known for their outspoken views on American government, but most recently they have been on the Warped Tour, spreading the punk ethos.

Gov’t Mule tends to pull out all the stops when they play in Boston and their latest appearance, at Bank of America Pavilion July 31st, contained a clutch of memorable moments on a number of fronts, including some truly spectacular.

The Royal Potato Family artist Nathan Moore, who’s probably familiar to most of our audience as the frontman of Surprise Me Mr. Davis, has put together a batch of beautifully crafted, honest tunes for a new EP titled Folk Singer which hits stores and online outlets on August 18. Checkout the timely Hard Times for […]

The attendance figures from last weekend’s All Points West Festival have been released and they ain’t pretty. Paul Tollett, president of Goldenvoice, the promoter, told the New York Times that paid attendance was 71,500 for all three days. Tollett also mentioned to the grey lady that attendance was down about 4,000 from last year due in large part to the horrible weather that enveloped the NYC area over the course of the weekend.

The promoter hopes that All Points West will return to Liberty State Park next summer saying “This show needs time to develop and find its home,” but no contract has been signed with the venue – an ominous sign for the festival’s survival. In my opinion, even if the Beasties were able to play and the weather was gorgeous the numbers still would’ve been bad. The lineup was all over the place and there weren’t any headliners able to draw in the masses like Radiohead did for the first two nights of last year’s APW.

Goldenvoice’s next festival will feature Phish at Festival 8 in Indio, CA on October 30 – November 1. Does anyone doubt that the jam titans will outdraw all of APW ’09?

READ ON to view some videos from APW ’09 including Coldplay covering You’ve Gotta Fight For Your Right…, Jay-Z tackling No Sleep ‘Till Brooklyn, MGMT’s new song, Yeah Yeah Yeah’s doin’ Maps and much more…

One of our newest contributors, Bryan Rodgers, hit a recent Gov’t Mule show and filed this report from the streets of Raleigh…

Fifteen years into its existence, Gov’t Mule is firmly established as a juggernaut of the music world, and their 2009 tour has set a new high-water mark for the band and their performances. The unstoppable force of Warren Haynes and company landed in Raleigh, NC on a Sunday night and proceeded to fill the city streets with perfectly executed, hard-hitting Mule music.

The Gov’t Mule tour is a perfect example of one that might otherwise have to skip Raleigh altogether if it wasn’t for the accommodating Lincoln Theatre street stage. The proprietors of downtown’s Lincoln Theatre have created a series of outdoor concerts that are exactly what the region needs. Since eastern North Carolina is sorely lacking in medium-sized venues, they’ve taken the party into the street and helped assure that Raleigh won’t get left out when it comes to shows that draw crowds in the range of 1000 – 2000 people.

A sultry southern evening welcomed the opening act, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. This show was the last stop of their brief tour with Gov’t Mule, and the Muscle Shoals-based outfit offered an appropriately rip-roaring set that featured diverse covers (Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer and Tom Petty’s I Don’t Want to Fight) nestled among a cavalcade of Isbell originals. The band had the crowd in the palm of their hand from the start – sometimes all it takes is the mention of Muscle Shoals to win favor with certain types of audiences. READ ON for more from the Mule show in Raleigh…

Jellyfish – Hollywood CA – 10/??/1990 [zip file] Jellyfish is one of my all time favorite bands and they are responsible for putting out two of what I consider to be the greatest albums ever recorded, Bellybutton and Spilt Milk. Jellyfish was a band that was way ahead yet at the same time behind their […]

Traffic – Light Up Or Leave Me Alone

We here at Wyllys & The World Party thank you for your patience. As most of you know I’m a transient DJ and Lighting Designer currently roaming the world in the name of Prog Rock and Beats – a nice segue into this episode.

I was scanning DJ-Mixes.com and realized we needed a Hip Hop installment with a quickness. I stumbled upon a domestic purveyor of urban sounds. DJ Digital Green started as a lighting tech at a club and decided that turntables were more of a creative outlet and started playing old school Hip-Hop, Techno, Trance and a little House. His lighting background earned him the nod this week, despite some shortcomings.

He is still a little….green around the edges but the intent is all there. This two part mix is a tight jaunt through mid to late ’90s Hip Hop interwoven with today’s Top 40 Rap fare. The tempo holds steady and the track selection is PERF for the Summer, which is why I chose the mixes. HOWEVER…our boy asks for some advice in his bio (shown below) so we here at HT are going to give it to him straight: Without tempo variation it sounds like one big Jock Jams jerk off session. Vary the tempo a bit and you are on your way to more natural sounding Hip Hop. Till then, check out these two entertaining and head-bob inducing mixes. Guaranteed to have the ladies shaking the goods.

Featured Artists: Arrested Development, 50 Cent, Tribe Called Quest, Nate Dogg, Kanye West, 2 Pac, and many other legends

• Dj Digital Green Top 40 & Hip-hop Mixes: Vol 1, Vol 2

READ ON for Dj Digital Green’s biography…

Port O’Brien is pleased to announce the release of their third album, threadbare, this October 6th on TBD Records (Radiohead, White Rabbits).  The coastal California band, which started as a bedroom project of Van Pierszalowski and Cambria Goodwin, has been hard at work since the release of their acclaimed 2008 album, All We Could Do […]

Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band has been building an army of fans through relentless touring and from the buzz of their legendary live shows.  Practically a musical institution in the Southeast US, the Asheville based six-piece dance band exerts an energy that can only be described as infectious and contagious.  Using funk as a foundation, […]

Indie singer/songwriter Ingrid Michaelson will release her highly anticipated new album, Everybody on August 25th on her own Cabin 24 Records. The first single "Maybe" was released on July 14th. Everybody is the eagerly awaited follow-up to her 2007 release, Girls and Boys which spawned the hit single "The Way I Am" and launched Ingrid […]

Radiohead fans got their first taste of new studio material today (August 5), when the group made available "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)" for download via its online store, Waste Merchandising. Unlike ‘In Rainbows,’ fans will have to pay for this track and won’t be allowed to set a price: the five and a half […]

Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and John Paul Jones have named their collaborative project – and are set to make their live debut. The Foo Fighters, Queens Of The Stone Age and Led Zeppelin men, who have been recording together in Los Angeles, have announced they will be called Them Crooked Vultures. The trio have launched […]

From its humble beginnings as a monthly online newsletter in 1995 through its current reign as internet hub for indie culture, Pitchfork Media has always championed the under-heard, eclectic and sometimes downright weird. Whether you agree with their (most-likely unfavorable) review of your favorite record or not, it’s hard to deny their reach and influence on independent music and how it intertwines with the modern social web.

As their presence continued to grow it came as no surprise when Pitchfork decided to bring their niche to life, curating the 2005 Intonation Music Festival. It was even less surprising when the fest re-branded itself under the Pitchfork name the following year.

For one reason or another, I had never been able to attend any of Pitchfork’s festivals. The bills always had bands that didn’t come through Chicago often that I wanted to see, but the timing didn’t work out for me until this year. This year, I found myself with a rare weekend both at home and sans work for most of the July 17 – 19 weekend and could finally attend the Pitchfork Music Festival (well…2/3 of it at least).

READ ON for more from Joel on the Pitchfork Music Festival…

It’s another good musical week for the Biography Channel which will air several musical profiles this week including an extended two-hour program dedicated to Frank Sinatra airing Thursday, August 6 at 9 am. Tuesday, August 4 [all times Eastern] Bon Jovi: Unplugged [Palladia 11AM] Robert Plant/Alison Krauss: Crossroads [Palladia 2PM] David Gilmour: Live in Gdansk […]

This week we’ve got arguably the first love song that The Talking Heads ever recorded. This track was originally released on the 1983 album Speaking In Tongues. Click here to view the video of this song from Stop Making Sense.

Did you know that the studio recording of this tune had members of the band not playing their primary instruments? It was: Jerry Harrison (bass), Tina Weymouth (guitar), and David Byrne (keyboards).

The Contestants:

The Arcade Fire: Arcade Fire have the advantage of being the only band this week that has performed this song with David Byrne. That performance from New York City, was released on vinyl as the B-Side to the Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) single promoting the band’s 2004 album Funeral. Source: Neighborhood #3 Vinyl Single

And some video of the band performing the song by themselves:

READ ON for the rest of this week’s Cover Wars contestants…

Alejandro Jodorowsky is many strange things to many outraged people, so it makes sense that clarity of purpose doesn’t appear to rank high on his artistic agenda. And that’s the hook right there. With the advent of this third season, 3.0 if you like, we drift away from the essence of what is known, and move further towards a more obscure angle—if that is actually possible when one is trying to focus on a rational discussion of film.

Well, that was all hoity toity and the usual heaping of pretension mixed in with foggy dissonance, but what does it mean? Indeed. What does anything mean? As we head out on a third voyage into the Great Cinematic Unknown with more than a little bit of tongue in cheek, and a heady nod towards experimental versus populist films, the nail on the head in this discussion becomes obvious, especially in light of this week’s Hidden Flick.

Before tripping on to the path of Jodorowsky’s scandalous The Holy Mountain, let’s continue our brief look at the definition of our little idea of a Hidden Flick column. These remnants of celluloid which we study and admire aren’t so much “hidden flicks” as they are films about “hidden knowledge” masked in eternally weird riddles: what is the protagonist after? What is the director trying to say? Is this a truly unique film, and does it challenge the viewer, thereby forcing the issue that to be questioning obscure ideas means that one’s audience is far smaller, but more in tune with the creative process? Ahhh…we have the answer: the Spinal Tap factor. Our audience is more “selective,” which is always the initial step towards delusion and self-indulgence, but it’s also far more honest. Let us build our 3 foot high monuments to Stonehenge, shall we?

READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick…

Phish – The Wedge

In an effort to keep his vocal pipes in top working condition between tours with The Who, the band’s charismatic front man, Roger Daltrey, will head out for 29 city solo tour to kick off in mid-October. Dubbed the The Use It Or Lose It tour, Daltrey will hit intimate venues across the country where […]

Phish performing the second show of a four night run at Red Rocks in Morrison, CO on July 31, 2009.