Saturday in the Swamp: From Canines to Specters
Dr. Dog’s Afternoon Delight By Sara Miller Around 5:30 on Saturday afternoon, the sun began to set at our backs, bathing the five members of Dr. Dog in an orange-rosy glow that perfectly complemented the Philadelphia group’s jangly, happy, ‘60s-inspired pop rock. Even in the setting sunshine, there was a chill in the breezy air early Saturday evening—not that singer/guitarist Scott McMicken minded, as he unironically sported an ear-flapped lumberjack hat and was clearly having a blast, coaxing gorgeous tones out of his hollow-body guitar while skittering around the stage like a jumping bean. The band’s Beach Boys-worthy four-part harmonies... read more
Langerado: Rap’s Rock ’n’ Role Models
By Julia Reidy and Steve LaBate The Paste booth at Langerado looks out on an expansive field crisscrossed by strolling festival-goers and flanked by a Jerry Garcia art museum, hemp-clothing vendors and South Florida alt-weekly New Times. The latter is inexplicably employing an overworked smoke machine and blasting bad techno at the expense of the much more appealing audio coming from The Roots, who are onstage performing their collective asses off some 400 yards in front of us on a balmy Friday evening. Night has fallen and our lights are out. The power cord supplying us with the juice to... read more
We Can Dance (Or Not Dance) If We Want To
!!! Punctuates the Everglades By Julia Reidy At Langerado, flowing skirts and baggy shorts are the rule. Powerhouse dance band !!! (pronounced Chk Chk Chk) sees rules, nods politely, then turns around and breaks them. During the band’s dinnertime set, Nic Offer gyrated, grabbed both his privates and his mic, strutted and generally busted a move, swaggeringly sporting the skinniest jeans and whitest shoes yet spotted this weekend, by far. Bassist Justin Van Der Volgen wore a neon M.I.A. T-shirt. This stuff’s not your usual Florida-festival fare. Electro-pop is not an easy pill for a jam-heavy festival to swallow, but... read more
The Big Cyprowski: Paste’s nearly up-to-the-minute Langerado Blog
Getting There by Steve LaBate For anyone who lives in a city, suburb, even a small town… the Seminole reservation at Big Cypress—site of this year’s Langerado Music & Arts Festival—is truly in the middle of nowhere. Like most of the other festival-goers, we cruised the 40 scarcely populated but gorgeous miles east from Fort Lauderdale down Florida’s Alligator Alley, under endless blue skies and towering pillows of clouds, straight into the heart of the Everglades. Before the Paste Langerado crew left this morning, we had a quarter tank of gas, so we thought we’d be fine without a fill-up.... read more
2008 Plug Awards Live Blog
The Plug Awards celebrate some of the most left field media presences and entertainers that the indie-cool subconscious (or online voters) has picked for recognition. There’s no doubt that independent media gained a true home on the binary frontier, and The Plug Awards might as well be called The Online Hipster Procrastination Awards, because most of the nominees make a living doing just that. And quite frankly, it’s a beautiful thing. Having radio and the recording industry make the big online transition with the bandwidth to back it has given all media, from Clear Water to Caribou, an equal playing... read more
Oscars 2008 Live Blog
Hey all you Paste readers out there. Before things start, and to help me get a hang of how the blogging system we use actually works, I thought I’d give a few general thoughts on the event in anticipation. -Awards: I expect No Country for Old Men to win the big prize, Day-Lewis to win best actor, and the Coens to nab the directing prize. It seems I’m not the only one who feels this way and these aren’t particularly revolutionary ideas. Because of this, it’s going to be the smaller stuff that’s actually interesting this year. Assuming that there’s... read more
By:Larm 2008 - Day 2 (Not as Lost in Translation)
The great thing about traveling to Europe for a three-day music conference is that you never have to get off of Eastern time. The last two nights I went to bed around 11pm EST (5am local) and got up when most Norwegians were eating lunch. As far as my body is concerned, the shows start late in the afternoon and end in time for me to watch the Democratic presidential debate. So I got up yesterday and decided to explore the city in the daylight before hittin’ da clubs. Here’s what I can tell you about Norway: 1. It’s an... read more
By:Larm 2008 - Hunting for Good Tunes in Oslo
[Above: Benni Hemm Hemm] [Editor’s note: after posting the entry below, I realized that I mis-identified two of the key bands I talked about. Rather than fire myself as foreign correspondent (which I really don’t want to do—Oslo is too cool), I will now try to shift the blame away from my own idiocy and lack of any sort of fact-checking and onto technology, cultural barriers and bizarre coincidence. My edits are in brackets.] When we started Paste nearly six years ago, I spent a good portion of my time listening to new music and deciding what got covered. I... read more
Paste readers get feisty about our MJ cover
By now the Michael Jackson cover has been out long enough for us to receive some reader mail in response. Let’s take a look! Natalie Trott of Shrewsbury, Mass. writes in with the following rhetorical zinger: “Might I look forward to future issues featuring Britney Spears’ schoolgirl skirt, Buddy Holly’s glasses, Madonna’s cone bra and Elvis’ cape?” Neil Carver of Miami is thinking along similar lines: “MICHAEL JACKSON’S GLOVE? Puh-leeze! What’s next? Madonna?...The first shock was Kanye West on the September cover, now this.” And one Don H. of Milwaukee wondered whether our cover was a joke: “I subscribed to... read more
Mayercraft Carrier: Belated, thong-free videos
I have to admit that all those John-Mayer-in-Borat-thong photos took the wind right outta my sails in terms of posting about my Mayercraft Experience. It took me several long minutes to even regain the ability to speak after first seeing them, but really, nothing I'm capable of writing could ever compare to... ahem... that. These as-promised videos also feel quite dull by comparison, but perhaps you can forgive them. embedVideo("http://www.pastemagazine.com/video/2008/02/mayercraft_2.flv"); JavaScript must be enabled to see this content. The Paste crew attended the first of John's two nighttime headlining shows in the Carribean Lounge. The Lounge features octopus-patterned carpeting, a... read more
Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’: The reaction to our Michael Jackson cover
Yesterday, I talked to nine different radio stations about Michael Jackson. Hello, Illinois! California! New York City! The timing made sense — yesterday, after all, was the day that Sony finally got around to reissuing Thriller in a 25th-anniversary edition, even though the actual anniversary date was late last year. I was a little surprised by how many DJs asked some version of, “So, just what DO you miss about Michael Jackson?” (Um, dudes, that’s kind of what the whole story is about.) But on the whole, the radio folks seemed to share my enthusiasm for Michael. This was encouraging.... read more
SXSW Campaign Coverage: Emerging Trends
Every winter my email inbox is flooded with emails from publicists and record labels, all inquiring about this publication’s plans for South By Southwest (SXSW) coverage and event participation. The campaigning is starting earlier and earlier, even as far out as September! After all of the campaigning is over, we have a big convention in Austin, Texas, called SXSW 2008. SXSW has become the election season of the music industry, with bands vying for the attention of fans, critics, record executives and the media. The playing field is deep and diverse. There are buzzed-about newcomers like Vampire Weekend (NY) and... read more
Mayercraft Carrier: Decompression chamber
I've been back from my Mayercraft Carrier voyage for a few days now but I am still trying to figure out what to say when people ask me, as they inevitably do, “How was it?” Though each time I have strained anew to express exactly how it was, I always return to the simplest, and perhaps truest, reply: “It was weird.” Because I'd never really had the desire to go on a cruise at any point in my life, and because I'm not the biggest John Mayer fan, I approached the trip with bemused, detached excitement, unburdened by the idealized... read more
Mayercraft Carrier, ahoy!
Greetings from the severely overpriced internet cafe in the Greek vase-bedecked Ionian Room of the good ship Carnival Victory aka the Mayercraft Carrier! Among all the various things that the fine Carnival people don’t want you to do-- throw your cigarette butts overboard (there are signs everywhere), go hungry (there is food everywhere, at all times of day, and it’s free), save lounge chairs for friends (people do it anyway)-- using the internet is apparently right up there. This place is like the Bermuda Triangle. I’ve been on the boat since Friday afternoon; it’s Sunday now, and I just now... read more
Better Late Than Never, Associate Editor Steve’s LaBate’s Best of 2007 Mixes
If any of you want to burn yourselves the hands-down-greatest five-CD mix of killer tracks from 2007, here’s your guide. I spent hours painstakingly sequencing this, and it is truly breathtaking, if i do say so myself. My colleagues may disagree on some of the finer points, but, hey, this is my list, ese… get your own! Besides this thing gets personal, as I’ve included some obscure Atlanta/Athens bands (two of which are my own projects, but I figure out of 80-plus tracks, that’s a-OK). Without further ado.... STEVE LABATE’S SUPER RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME BEST SONGS OF 2007 MEGAMIX: DISC ONE:... read more
Why I’m an editorial assistant and not a plastic surgeon. Or a graphic designer.
I have to say, I was more than a little pleased with my seamless* Photoshopping of Drew Barrymore’s head onto Michael Cera’s body** for this news item last week. I mean, it was kind of hard. First of all, I don’t have a mouse, so I had to borrow one from my desk buddy Austin so as to ensure maximum precision in slowly carving out Drew’s face from the original press photo. Then Austin’s mouse had this weird little red laser light that kept shooting into my eye. Really disconcerting. Then I had to somehow figure out how to get... 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
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
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
The 20 Best Gadgets of the Decade…
The 20 Best Live Acts of the…
The 17 Best Romantic Comedies This Decade
The 25 Best Movie Performances of the…
Blind Pilot - The Story I Heard
B.O.B. - Put Me On
Kim Taylor - Days Like this
Punch Brothers - Punch Brothers at CMJ
David Bazan - Hard To Be
Anya Marina - Whatever You Like
