I’ve never been a huge Weezer fan, it’s not that I don’t think they are good at what they do…they obviously are, it’s just not what i am interested in. That said however, they are doing something really awesomely cool right now. Traveling around and getting together with groups of local musicians to play their songs and others. They put out a call for 200 musicians in Portland…where pretty much everyone is a musician, and it seems it went swimmingly. Apparently the idea came from Rivers Cuomo’s mom…in case you were wondering, i might argue he stole it from the Boredoms…but I won’t. Here are a few videos that have surfaced recently.
Weezer and the Portland posse plays Radiohead’s Creep-
Sure it looks cool, and it costs like $1200…but what can YOU do with it! It appears the wise Yamaha people marketing the Tenori-on instrument have dropped a few of them on some of the music communities experimental pioneers, and videotaped the results. Here are a few videos featuring some of the results. It will be interesting to see what happens as people start hooking this up to external sound sources and such as demonstrated in the video over at CDM.
Jim O’Rourke-
Fourtet-
John Herndon (Tortoise)-
More videos and info about the Tenori-on- Official Site
Well I am proud to say that for a short while I played in a band with the great Eric Royer. He is one of the most talented fellas I know, and here is a pretty nice little documentary about him. Eric plays as a one man band, incorporating numerous guitar machines he has constructed himself. He was just starting this when we both lived in Tucson, and it has come a long ways, as you’ll see in the video.
My friends Jesus and Susan live in the small beautiful town of Sebastapol California. Sebastapol has a few celebrities, but the most important to us is the enigma that is Tom Waits. Whenever I visit we are of course inclined to play the part of unobtrusive hopeful stalkers. One time in the natural foods store we spotted him, trying to mind his own business and do a little shopping…I won’t continue this story, because it ends in an embarrassing moment for our dear friend. We’re not sure if Mr. Waits even noticed us, but it’s hard to imagine he didn’t as we’re definitely not a subtle bunch. Then there was the time Jesus almost ran him down as he was jaywalking…Well anyway he’s a marked man who is embarking on a new tour. For this monumental event he has created a fun video to promote this event (he’s also a damn fine actor). Tom is a musical icon who has mastered his craft and managed to evolve his twisted style over the years to remain both interesting and relevant in the music world. Bone Machine remains one of my all time favorite albums, I felt he really struck gold there, stripping down his sound to the barest of elements and creating a real raw beast of a record. The recent stuff hasn’t lived up to that one as a whole for me, but I’m sure Tom still has a few tricks up his sleeve for us.
It’s really unfortunate that Metallica’s bass player died in that bus crash…as opposed to the rest of the band. It seems like they have just been de-evolving into primordial sludge ever since. During their heyday I’ll admit I was more interested in punk rock, but I still liked what they were doing along with their somewhat more pathetic, yet equally enjoyable to me, little brother Megadeth. In what appears to be their latest media gaffe, they invited a bunch of journalists to a special listening session of songs from their yet to be released album. After these journalists wrote some reviews on their blogs, they were contacted and told to remove the reviews…no non disclosure contracts were signed, and apparently no one was told not to write about it? So without hearing the album I’m going to write a review about it right here, and see if they contact me to take it down…The new Metallica album sucks as much as the one before it, and if they had any dignity left they’d kill each other. This spoiled bunch of sadly self absorbed has beens have milked the life out of whatever formula they undeniably pioneered and perfected 20 years ago. If you need any proof on what a bunch of useless skinbags these guys have become, view the documentary “Some Kind of Monster” in which they douche it out with each other so much their label has to call in a “band coach” to help them finish their record. It’s clearly one of the most comedic films I’ve seen in years. The ability to play music is a gift…somewhere along the line Lars and James may have forgotten that.
You have to love a band that dresses up in what looks like home made insect superhero costumes (or supervillians it’s hard to tell). San Diego’s synth noise band The Locust also have a pretty fun video filled with creepy bugs and lots of what seems like apocalyptic bug war visions. The music is a mix of metal, punk and aggressive synthesizer mayhem that should appeal to those fans of Ipecac and other metal experimental type stuff.
What do you expect…he’s been unable to shake his 80’s persona forever (despite the numerous attempts) which is not necessarily a bad thing, he was somewhat amusing in his high heels and puffy shirts. This is an interesting development in the arena of online copyright battle, Prince had performed a cover of Radiohead’s song Creep live (if you want to hear a much better Radiohead song watch this). His excited fans had uploaded their videos of said performance to Youtube. Price, being a half-pint Luddite (or at least his representatives) have told Youtube to remove the videos. Tom Yorke has responded basically issuing the statement “Unblock them, it’s our song”. Be curious to see if this develops further.
Here is a Nico song taken from her 1985 album Camera Obscura, which was produced by one of my all time musical heroes John Cale. The song is cut together with scenes from the great Jodorowsky film Santa Sangre. The union seems to work perfectly, capturing the haunting sadness that made both the song and the film great. If you have not read the book Nico: The End I’d strongly recommend it. It is written from the perspective of one of her band mates on what would be her final tour.
Times are changing. Definitely. Celemony is a company started in 1997 by Peter Neubäcker together with his wife, Prof. Dr. Hildegard Sourgens, and software developer and Technical Director, Carsten Gehle, which is based in Munich. They created a program that can analyze audio and edit the individual notes, and also transcribe the notes into music notation and MIDI. While this is not new since several notation programs can this, they have recently found a way to analyze an audio chord and transcribe the individual notes within the chord. Those same notes can be edited within the chord to change the harmony of it.
Another post rock outfit with a long strung out name! Much of the soundscape is familiar to post rock fans, guitars, Rhodes keyboard, drums, and not much vocalizing (none). The latest album from these guys simply titled “birds” contains four different “flocks”. The the instrumentation bounces around seeming to morph sounds into some sort of structure, and while it occasionally slips toward the oh so tiresome slow build formula, the organic sounding samples, combined with enough compositional motion seem to help it from becoming too stale or predictable.
I’d strongly recommend it. It is written from the perspective of one of her band mates on what would be her final tour.