Thursday, March 27, 2008

New Stone 20

Sean sent me a radio edit of New Stone 40, which he had to do for someone making a video for the single. The guy asked him to cut it down to less than 3 minutes... The edit sounds good despite having to cut the song down from almost 6 minutes!

Also, I asked Faris McReynolds to host episode 12 of Deconstruction and luckily for me did the whole thing in ProLogic! I listened to the first 5 minutes and he has a superb Morricone track at the start which sounds like a cross between Midnight Cowboy and the main theme from Citta Violenta... It's a pity I'll be away so it won't get out until late next week..

Need to get up at 3:30am to get to the airport. Flying to Montreal via New York. Must charge the iPod!!

Televisionary

I have been updating The Protagonist! website recently and have added the two live clips from Goldsmith's college...

Also this week I have finished the preliminary mixes from the Promis III cd. So far everything sounds cool except I need to buy a sub-woofer to go with the KRK RP-5 studio monitors I bought recently. As a result everything sounds really bassy as I was over compensating... Good for the two drum and bass numbers but not so much for everything else...

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

SLR at eVocal & Everest at Detroit Bar

Usually when two bands you want to see are playing the same night it's a bad thing right? But when they are playing the same city and the venues are 100 yards apart (albeit a treacherous jaywalk across W19th Street!) then it's possible to kill two birds with one stone... and of course make the 50 mile drive down from LA to the nascent indie scene that is Costa Mesa worthwhile...

I found out SLR were playing last at eVocal so a quick real life version of Frogger got me over to the Detroit Bar to catch Everest. They were great again with 'Into your soft heart' becoming a firm favorite...

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Back at eVocal STANLEYLUCASREVOLUTION played an experimental set with a couple of interesting new songs and finished with storming versions of 'Sacred Sons' and forthcoming single 'New Stone 40'...

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Friday, March 21, 2008

Vampire Weekend/Yacht at the El Rey

Yacht were entertaining... A low-fi boy/girl combo singing to fractured nu-rave backing tapes... The guy's singing and dancing reminded me of a young David Byrne and the staccato rhythms gave an indication of what Talking Heads would have sounded like in a different era.

Vampire Weekend look like Haircut 100, youthful college kids wearing button down shirts and v-neck sweaters with the sleeves rolled up! The singer even had the trademark high-slung tan jazz guitar for god sake... Anyways, looks apart they sound like The Magic Numbers but with a taste of Paul Simon Africana. The keyboard player has a nice Mellotron sound that added a touch of 'Strawberry Fields' but used it in too many songs...

Unfortunately, I couldn't get Nick Heywood off my mind and I swear the last number sounded like 'Favourite Shirt'...

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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Georgia on my mind...

The gym at work has taken to blasting out country music. I'm not sure how this is going to help you lose weight (except by vomiting) and I always like a bit of house or techo when I'm working out. I wonder if the bpm has something to do with it, the bpm for a regular house track is around 130 which is probably what your heart should be beating at - although after running for a few minutes mine is racing at jungle bpm! Anyways, as I was getting dressed they were playing 'The Devil went down to Georgia' and it occurred to me the story was blatantly lifted from somewhere else:

If you win you get this shiny fiddle made of gold.
But if you lose, the devil gets your soul...

Ring any bells? Ingmar Bergman, a game of chess, the Seventh Seal, Scott Walker?

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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Gravely read the stones...

A great site I revisit from time to time is Il Cimitero di Staglieno which is a remarkable cemetary in Genoa, Italy. The site has some amazing photographs! If some of the momuments and statues look familiar you may have seen the photographs of Bernard Pierre Wolff which were used on the covers of the Joy Division LP Closer, and the 12" single release of Love will tear us apart...

Closer

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and the Famiglia Appiani tomb from a different angle:

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LWTUA

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and the sculpture from the Porticato Levante

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Monday, March 17, 2008

Equine, women and song...

Some great TV themes from 70's school holidays TV. What's Double Decker's got to do with horses? Peter Firth was in the movie Equus...

White Horses

The Flashing Blade



Double Deckers

Are friends eclectic?

For some reason I was thinking about the debut Tubeway Army LP this morning... I had the original version with the blue cover (which at the time I hated but now I think it is a masterpiece!) After 'Are Friends Electric' and 'Relicas' became a huge success they reissued the debut LP with the seminal black and white cover. The LP was a disappointment after the punky rock of early singles of 'That's too bad' and 'Bombers' (later reissued as a double 7inch in gatefold sleeve) but that's maybe because Mr Numan was starting to investigate the electronic sounds that would pay dividend on the genius 'Replicas'...

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Sunday, March 16, 2008

The Art of parties!

Once I was young
Once I was smart
Now I'm living on the edge of my nerves
The things we said weren't quite so tough
When we were young...

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Last night we went to a silent auction/show/fiesta at Artshare LA in aid of Silverlake's Hilltop Nursery school... I'm not usually one for hanging out with the art crowd (except Faris!) but Laura's friend Nicole works at the school and we hooked her up with Jose Promis who provided the live music...

There were some interesting items up for auction including a Takashi Murakami hardback book, a cool looking set of bongos and a couple of Eames chairs made by Herman Miller. However, I resisted the temptation to bid on these and the guitar signed by Creed (I'm kidding about that one...)

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Ed Harcourt/Everest at the Echoplex

We arrived towards the end of Everest's set - which was a shame because they were excellent. They looked like The Band (doesn't everyone these days?) and sounded a little like them too which is no bad thing. The singer had a Dankoesque cool angularity and has a great voice, tone not unlike Jeff Buckley but without the falsetto histrionics...

Also drinking heavily from the Buckley cup is Ed Harcourt. Looking increasingly like Elton John these days, the portly Ed sweated his way through his increasingly depressing repertoir. He could have at least played 'Apple of my eye' (maybe he did after we left...) or something remotely happy sounding. He at least brought a band on tour this time but even a couple of attractive girls on bass and violin wasn't enough to keep me heading to the couches at the back after 3 songs!

Here is Elton Harcourt in action last night:

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Monday, March 10, 2008

Do you remember Water?

Yes, walter was my mate,
But walter, my old friend, where are you now?

The plumbers were supposed to come back yeterday to finish off as they left us without water in the kitchen. Well, that's not strictly true, the taps still work but if you turn them on water comes out of the tap, the wall and the ceiling simultaneously. Unfortunately, we both forgot once and there is that few seconds before your brain registers the unusual sound is water pissing out onto the floor...

Kitchen nightmares? You bet...

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Sunday, March 9, 2008

Whipped cream and other delights...

Saturday we took our niece and nephews (5 of them) bowling. As I was watching them break the record for whose ball would take the longest to reach the pins (damn bumpers!) I was glancing at some screens playing current music videos... An expensive looking video came on - a cute girl (think of an anorexic Bjork) and her backing band looking cool wearing all white. The song was awful, some instantly forgettable emo dross but the video looked cool and definately cost a lot. At the end of the song (which seemed to go on for about 20 minutes) the title came up - the band was Leaf-something but I was shocked that the label was A&M...

A&M shouldn't be releasing Emo dross - they should be releasing easy-listening LP's in gatefold sleeves by exotic artists such as Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass or Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66:

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I spent years in charity shops looking for these fantastic LP's and they were treasured not only for their music but also their fantastic artwork. Labels such as Studio 2 Stereo, Elecktra and A&M were legendary and exciting. So when did labels like A&M stop being pervayors of taste and style and become a business? The answer is of course when they had to... So next time you coldly download an mp3 straight onto your iPod, think of a beautiful gatefold LP and I guarantee (if your old enough) you'll be smiling...

Friday, March 7, 2008

Fake tales from San Fernando...

Another year another 'fiction' book is exposed as a fake... A valley girl pretending to be a single mum from South Central who was a drug-dealer to get by...

Author admits gang-life 'memoir' was all fiction

Don't these authors realise that someone, somewhere is going to catch them out? Especially (in this case) if you have your picture in the local newspaper. Being shopped by your own sister too, bet thanksgiving will be fun this year. Personally, if somethings a good read I don't care if it's fiction or not, so why pretend it's true? I guess if people think a story is true they get into it more, but half the 'true' stories are anecdotal and the truth is embellished anyway - don't let the truth stand in the way of a good story and all that. Anyways, I'm off to Starbucks on Crenshaw to start writing my life story...

Thursday, March 6, 2008

I shall be released

I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released.

Last night I signed the release for the music and voice overs I did for the Cassi Glisper documentary 'Next tooth one mile'... I was happy with the stuff I did for her - a couple of tracks with some African type music (I am obviously the ideal creator of such music) and an adaptation of a song Brendan Parker wrote for the project. He had done a little acoustic guitar thing and I changed it to a waltz (3/4 time) and played it on piano. Still waiting to hear when the 'premier' will be although Cassi has been advised to shop it around first to the film festivals...

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

In the living room with a golf club...

Not a guess from Cluedo, but how the murder on Easy Street was committed. They arrested the son... At least we know there's not a serial killer on the loose in Garvanza! Unbelievable that someone would do that to their own mother - you know there must be 101 ways to kill her without using a golf club...

Airborne Toxic Event

Laura got us tickets for a band who get played a lot on Indie 103.1 - they are (as yet) unsigned and building up a lot of hype. Certainly the Troubadour was packed out.

ATE were pretty cool - better than a lot of bands at the moment. Not terribly original though - bands nowadays seem to cherry-pick their components from other bands. For example, the guitarist sounded like he wanted to be in the Strokes, the girl who played keys and violin - Arcade Fire, the bass player - The Killers, the singer - Michael Stipe, the drummer - who cares right? Actually the drummer was very good...

SLR at the Knitting Factory...

Went to see STANLEYLUCASREVOLUTION at the Knitting Factory on Friday... Good show and got to meet Sean's daughter Syd who he brought along as it was an all ages show... She seems like a nice kid and mature beyong her years. Dana was going to video the show but someone came up and told us that would be $50... SLR were cool though and done a great version of Insatiable including a new sample!