Sundance Eve
The far wall at the end of the concourse at the Salt Lake City airport—which is packed with people surging toward the Sundance film festival in nearby Park City—features a ski map showing Park City’s peaks. The giant text arcing above the craggy summit reads, “Remember, this is 1:1,000,000 scale.” By my calculation, this puts the resort town’s highest point at more than 100,000 feet above sea level. No wonder the atmosphere is so heady! Or maybe it’s just the first taste of hyperbole, which does nothing but intensify on the ride to Park City’s Main Street, the epicenter of... read more
Kate Nash - New York City - Bowery Ballroom - 1/9/08
Photos taken at Bowery Ballroom by Sean Edgar Related links: Kate Nash reveals plans for children’s book 4 To Watch: Kate Nash Featured Video: Kate Nash - GameTap Artist to Watch ... read more
In Good Taste
My sense of taste is apparently significantly atrophied. I have friends who are connoiseurs of coffee, beer, and wine. They discuss the alluring complexities of Ethiopian dark roast and the tangy zest of Jamaica Blue Mountain. They debate the merits of Belgian Trappist beers and blonde ales. Don’t even get me started on the wine discussions. I’m a McDonald’s man, myself. They don’t serve beer and wine, of course, but they do serve coffee, which is generally labeled “Coffee (S/M/L).” It contains caffeine, which is a desired ingredient when I show up for work at 7:20 a.m. It tastes... read more
Jacob Golden—Revenge Songs
I’ve never been divorced. I don’t know what that feels like. But I’ve sat up some late nights with friends who are going through the living hell of relational breakdowns and breakups, and I think I have some idea of the messy ambivalence that accompanies those hypercharged days, the anger and self-loathing and sense of relief that seem to co-exist, impossibly, in the same human beings. Jacob Golden’s U.S. debut Revenge Songs captures that ambivalence just about perfectly, and it’s the first great album I’ve heard in this still new year. It’s easily the best breakup album I’ve heard since... read more
Taking on the tabloids, one French singer/songwriter/"man-eater” at a time
Confession: I watch NBC’s The Today Show almost every weekday morning. I know. I know it’s cheesy and annoying and does a major disservice to any newsworthy subject it dares to approach, etc etc etc. But apparently that’s just what my sleep-addled brain craves at 8 AM, Monday through Friday. Recently, I’ve really enjoyed Richard Simmons’ takeover of the NBC plaza, plus all those “5 Ways To Make Your Life Better” segments they ran right before Christmas. (Not that I’ve actually implemented any of that advice. Not that any of that advice actually included the one thing that could really... read more
Consumer Electronics Show 2008 (Day 1)
The first day of the Consumer Electronics Show was a miserable failure. Meaning: I didn’t find a single futuristic device in the Las Vegas Convention Center designed to alleviate the pain of sore, overwalked feet. Though I did discover a company called D-Box that just debuted a $15,000 hydraulic gaming chair. The contraption accurately simulates the experience of driving a formula-one racecar, which means running off the track into rough dirt turns the device into an expensive massage chair. The publicist working at the booth told me that they were “catering to high-end gamers” (maybe just filthy-rich gamers who also... read more
Rufus Wainwright - Wilmington, DE - Grand Opera House - 1/4/08
Photos taken at Grand Opera House by Doug Seymour Related links: Paste: Rufus Wainwright plans U.S. shows Paste: Rufus Wainwright: Don’t Feed the Vultures RufusWainwright.com ... read more
Mistle Toe Jam - Modest Mouse, The Shins, Silverchair - Atlanta - Gwinnett Center - 12/16/07
Above: The Shins Photos taken at Gwinnett Center by Stephen Lindley Above: Modest Mouse Above: Silverchair Related links: Modest Mouse: 20,000 Leagues Under Normalcy (issue 30 cover story) Sleepless With The Shins (issue 28 cover story) ChairPage.com (official Silverchair site) ... read more
All NYE ‘07, All The Time
THE CHALLENGE: You have 25 songs to create the soundtrack to your New Year’s Eve party, but you may only choose from songs released in 2007. With the many year-end lists fresh in mind, what you will you choose? Will you grind it out to beats courtesy of Timbaland? Will you squeeze into your skinniest jeans and rock awkward to bands with names referencing indigenous North American wildlife? Will you put Nickel Back and Daughtry on repeat and fist pump into the new year? Or, will you drink champagne in silence because everything in 2007 sucked? What will your last... read more
Favorite Albums of 2007
1. Ezra Furman and the Harpoons—Banging Down the Doors 2. Southeast Engine—A Wheel Within a Wheel 3. Devon Sproule—Keep Your Silver Shined 4. Joe Henry—Civilians 5. Bruce Springsteen—Magic 6. Frog Eyes—Tears of the Valedictorian 7. Peter Case—Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John 8. Arcade Fire—Neon Bible 9. Anders Osborne—Coming Down 10. Future Clouds and Radar—Future Clouds and Radar Honorable Mentions Ryan Adams—Easy Tiger Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra—Security Aradhna—Amrit Vani Art Brut—It’s a Bit Complicated The Bad Plus—Prog The Besnard Lakes—The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse Andrew Bird—Armchair Apocrypha Blitzen Trapper—Wild Mountain Nation Bottom of the Hudson—Fantastic Hawk The Broken West—I... read more
Favorite Songs of 2007
I used to agonize over “Best Album” and “Best Song” lists, factoring in the cultural import of the music, the lyrical astuteness, the pervasiveness of the hooks, and the proficiency of the musicianship, and then calculating the overall results based on a complex formula known only to me and a couple folks at NASA. Now I don’t. Now I just focus on the music I listen to the most. And trusty iTunes actually keeps track of these things, so now I know. 10. Country Caravan – Blitzen Trapper Blitzen Trapper’s third album Wild Mountain Nation is a tribute to ADD... read more
All Christmas, All the Time
pictured: New Frontiers I love Christmas! I’m currently reading a Christmas-themed romance novel called Christmas Wishes, and pretty much every night this month, I’ve stared at my Christmas decorations and watched a holiday movie on Falalala Lifetime. I’ve seen some great ones—including Eve’s Christmas (starring Cher’s enemy from Clueless), Recipe For a Perfect Christmas, A Christmas Wedding, The Christmas Shoes (starring the girl from Father of the Bride that’s married to Brad Paisley), Crazy For Christmas, Holiday Affair (starring Olivia Newton-John), Secret of Giving (starring Reba), Deck the Halls (starring Andrea from 90210) and Holiday in Your Heart (starring LeAnn... read more
Barry Manilow and Brian Boitano, the Review
The Aflac Presents Brian Boitano Skating Spectacular Starring Barry Manilow reviewed by Sweet Talk’s intrepid man on the scene Buckshot Johnson December 5, 2007, San Francisco. Brian Boitano, Olympic gold medalist, world champion and Emmy winner, had an ice rink built in the infield of the San Francisco Giant’s home AT&T Park. He called his world champion and gold medalist friends to perform with him. He convinced NBC Sports to film the event for national broadcast later this month. Finally he asked Barry Manilow to sing the live soundtrack to their routines. When this convergence came across my screen I... read more
Southeast Engine
I have a friend who is the director of several homeless shelters in Athens, Ohio. He’s the king of a dubious empire, and business is booming. Athens is tucked away in the southeast corner of the state, thirty miles from the West Virginia border. There may be a higher percentage of homeless people in and around Athens, Ohio than in any other town in America. There’s a 20,000-student university there, and a few thousand former coal miners who, if they work at all, now work at the Taco Bell on Court Street or the Wal-Mart out on State Street because... read more
Numb butts, spilled beer & The Everybodyfields
It’s pretty unusual to show up mere minutes before a concert begins and be forced by your own lateness to sit in the front row, but that’s what happened to me on Saturday night. I drove up to my hometown to see The Everybodyfields at Barking Legs—which usually plays hosts to dance troupes and Pilates classes and theatrical performances, thus the strange setup that greeted me and my dad and my boyfriend Joe when we slipped into the 186-person capacity room just before the opener took the state. There are four rows of folding theatre seats across the back wall,... read more
All About You, All The Time
Enjoy this list of things you didn’t know about yourself. Some (“You Look So Young”) are nicer than others (“You Don’t Have a Heart”), but they’re all great songs. Happy weekend, Knate 1. “You are the Light” The Innocence Mission 2. “You are the Dark” Joseph Arthur 3. “You’re All I Have” Snow Patrol 4. “You Love to Sing” Copeland 5. “You Will Always Be the Same” Ryan Adams 6. “You Were My Fiji” John Vanderslice 7. “You are the Rake” Sufjan Stevens 8. “You Rise and Meet the Day” Dar Williams 9. “You Will Miss Me When I Burn”... read more
Lists
Every year, my favorite/least favorite issue of Paste Magazine is the one where the year’s best albums, films, and books are ranked. Every year Paste gets it completely wrong. This is because they don’t publish my own rankings. Most people seem to operate according to these sensibilities as well, except they’re not me, and therefore I disagree with them. They all suck. Among the charges leveled at Paste’s recently published list of the Best Albums of 2007: -- What a lame-ass, mainstream list. Why can’t you be adventurous and cool, like me? -- Who the hell has even heard... read more
Hating Led Zeppelin
I hated Led Zeppelin for a long time. Part of it was the presence of those interminable songs about Gollum and Valhalla at every stonerfest, and earnest stoned mystics proclaiming the utter heaviosity of it all. Part of it was my aggrieved sense of injustice, knowing that Page and Plant had ripped off deserving blues musicians wholesale and credited their non-creations to, you guessed it, Page and Plant. And part of it was pure and simple jealousy. Okay, it irritated me that these Viking hippies could have their pick of an unending line of groupies and still have enough testosterone... read more
The National: Is the hype deserved?
Our Web Warrior, Austin, jokes that we should start a band called The Hype. When we take the stage, we can say, “Hi, we’re The Hype and you’re probably sick of us already.” In this line of work, it can be easy to subscribe to hype and forget that only 0.0002% of the American population knows who The Black Kids are, and only 0.00014% knows that Kate Nash has already covered their song, “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You.” But this year there were a lot of hyped-up artists on the indie and mainstream scenes... read more
All Color, All The Time (We’re BACK!)
Although my wardrobe pretty much consists of black, brown, grey, brownish grey and blackish brown, I love color. Enjoy this list of great songs about wonderful colors. Sorry Knate has been on hiatus. Nate’s been busy working on his cute new house, and I’ve been busy staring at my Christmas decorations. But we’re BACK, and updating regularly. Devotedly yours, Knate 1. Calexico “Bisbee Blue” 2. Miles Davis “Blue in Green” 3. Ours “Red Colored Stars” 4. Damien Rice “Gray Room” 5. Alexi Murdoch “Orange Sky” 6. The Innocence Mission “Bright as Yellow” 7. The National “Green Gloves” 8. Counting Crows... read more
