Pages tagged “music”

Dave Stewart, founding member of The Tourists and one half of Eurythmics, will engage with nearly every artistic medium imaginable this week with a live performance at The Highline Ballroom on Wednesday, Sept. 17th, a book signing and photography exhibition at the Morrison Hotel Gallery on Thursday, Sept. 18th, and a Good Morning America appearance thrown in Wednesday a.m. for good fun.

Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet debuted earlier this year with a self-titled album that gorgeously fuses Chinese folk, American old-time music, jazz, bluegrass and more. Given the quartet’s involvement with music in China, and its coming gigs at the new U.S. embassy in Beijing during this summer’s Olympics, the all-star group—featuring Washburn plus Béla Fleck, Casey Dreissen and Ben Sollee—appears in Paste’s International Issue.

In this extended conversation with Paste, the band discusses its unique sound, new album, and the beauty of cultural exchange through music—plus the difference between claw-hammer and three-finger banjo style—while Béla Fleck does his best to crack everybody up.

Apologies: I was unable to blog about Saturday at Bonnaroo because of Saturday at Bonnaroo. It's Sunday afternoon now, and with the festival still buzzing and thumping all around us (am currently at our tent in the Sonic Village, with a band called Harrybu McCage doing their thing on the stage next door) I'm just now getting around to processing everything from the past thirty-something hours.

Hello again from Manchester’s Country Inn & Suites, where a bunch of us have temporarily retired from Bonnaroo to escape the drizzle—and Metallica.

What’s struck me so far about Bonnaroo is how friendly everybody is. I suppose some would chalk it up to the festival being in Tennessee, but I'm not so sure-- I'm from Chattanooga, and I've experienced no shortage of surly Tennesseans in my life, most of them in large groups. Plus, almost everyone we talked to yesterday was from out of state-- way out of state. And I can see the draw. This place is just unlike anywhere I've ever been. It's like a little city, but also a county fair, but also a giant backyard party, but also a sprawling, dirty outside mall—an extraterrestrial shanty town plopped down on earth from the planet Tie Dye.

Bonnaroo starts tonight! And I'm going! And I've never gone! And I'm pretty excited but also scared that I might pass out in the heat! Or get struck by lightning! Or just get really overwhelmed and curl up in a sweaty ball at the back of the Paste tent! I hope there's a falafel vendor! I love falafel! Oh my god! Bonnaroo! So excited!

Welcome to High Gravity, my new blog for daily nuggets of music, film and culture. I plan on using this space for quick, throughout-the-day updates on whatever comes across my desk or crosses my mind, from news about Thom Yorke making sure Prince's Coachella cover of "Creep" gets unblocked by YouTube or Liz Phair performing Exile in Guyville in its entirity (June 23rd at the Fillmore in San Francisco, 24th at The Vic Theatre in Chicago and 25th & 26th at the Hiro Ballroom in New York) to my own Top 10 lists, favorite new discoveries and, yes, beer recommendations.

My New Discovery of the Week
Johnny Flynn: Listening to 60-something entries for our Best of What's Next issue in September last week, the one that I keep going back to is Johnny Flynn. A bit Robyn Hitchcock, a bit Sixteen Horsepower, but with the exuberance of The Waterboys, this Londoner has won me as a fan. Only after visiting his MySpace page did I realize that I'd had his upcoming album sitting unlistened on my desk, courtesy of Lost Highway.

Best Sitcoms Since 1980
I don't have much of an opinion on sitcoms that predated me, so we'll go back to when I was nine. I'm curious to hear which ones you think I've overlooked, so let me know what rip-roaring laughs or laugh-tracks I've been missing. And before you say Taxi, just know that it debuted in 1978 (which is why I had to delete M*A*S*H, long may it rerun).

Time's a-wastin'! Here are five short songs that I like. And you?

Here's the worst pitfall of hip-hop producing—creatively re-purposing intellectual property always carries the risk of a fat ol' lawsuit from a sampled musician. In the latest case of rap sample litigation, it's the estate of a dead musician claiming punitive damages for sampling without permission.

As you might have read already, there's a new Hold Steady song out on the internet today. It's from their new album, Stay Positive, which won't be released until July 15th. Totally exciting, right? Sure, but only if you're not me and you lack the totally unreasonable expectations I have for, like, everything.

Baseball has fueled great works of theater, literature and even dance. But the moment of the perfect baseball-related collaboration is almost upon us, as North Carolina’s own Yep Roc Records prepares the release of an album by The Baseball Project entitled Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails.

In Coraline, the 2002 young adult novella by acclaimed fantasy author Neil Gaiman, the young title character discovers an alternate universe populated by the mysterious doppelgangers of her loving but distant parents, and must scrape by on her own wits to escape. Often compared to Alice In Wonderland, it’s a compelling story—and sturdy enough, one hopes, to be retold in three different way throughout the next year.  

Ahhh, radio. There once was a time when you informed us, made us smarter and introduced us to new music. However, times change, leaves fall and once-great mediums devolve into vapid versions of their former selves, dominated by crappy '90s alternative rock stations and yelly AM blowhards like Neil Boortz and Michael Savage.

Start spreadin' the news. The famed but only recently Oscar-fied director Martin Scorsese is tentatively slated to direct an upcoming biopic on none other than Ol' Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra. In an interview with Canada's Sun Media, Sinatra's youngest daughter and film producer Tina Sinatra spilled the beans on the project, stating that Scorsese is slated to helm the upcoming Universal Pictures film on the life and the times of America's greatest heartthrob. (Sorry, Elvis. You too, JT.) Tina also acknowledged that it is still is a little too early to officially announce the famed director's involvement in the project but went on to say, "Oh, go ahead and print it, I don't care!" No problem, Tina. No problem.

Michael Jackson’s iconic album Thriller was one of 25 recorded works added to the National Recording Registry on Wednesday.

 

The National Recording Preservation Act was passed in 2000 to ensure that “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant” works were preserved for future generations. Each year, the Library of Congress chooses 25 works to add to the collection based on nominations by the public and consultations with the National Recordings Preservation Board.

Josh Rouse is riding the wave of the future. The singer-songwriter recently announced that he'll be offering online downloads of both new and unreleased music via his website.

Not only are two former Paste Bands of the Week, Bishop Allen and Evangelicals, about to embark on pretty intense, month-long, multi-continent tours, but they’re actually going to meet up at one point and play two shows together. Just another match made in Heaven by your friends at PasteMagazine.com. If we had any more foresight, we’d have sponsored the tours ourselves.

As summer nears, so do the releases of animated films featuring pretty darn cute creatures, like the wide-eyed WALL•E and chubby Kung Fu Panda. But Jack Black and Cee-Lo Green are one-uppping the robot film in the name of martial arts bears everywhere. How are they doing it? With a cover of Carl Douglas' 1974 karaoke staple "Kung Fu Fighting," of course.

It's been a long, winding road for Jimmy Eat World. The emo dudes have turned into monsters of mainstream rock with an unlikely career that's seen them go from scrappy, upstart high-schoolers to the biggest thing since The Continental Baking Co. started making a pastry called the Twinkie. The band also just finished its co-headlining tour with a little group called Paramore. JEW keeps on truckin' and the band has a number of dates lined up for those hot summer days that are oh-so-close.

After much pain and strife, The Lovely Sparrows will release their new album, Bury the Cynics, July 8 via Abandoned Love and Rebel Group.

Has it really been almost five years since the last Spiritualized record? Sure, Jason Pierce (aka J Spaceman) has kept busy recording soundtracks to beautiful-looking, idiosyncratic indie films and touring the world a bit, but five years without a mind-expanding, heroin-use-referencing, orchestra-arranging Spiritualized record is at least three years too long.

Omaha quintet The Faint is releasing its fifth album, Fasciinatiion, on August 5. It will be the band's first album in four years, and the first album the group has written, recorded, produced, art directed and released completely by itself.