Crickets
Friday, November 20, 2009
Crickets, Music Bummer Alert
Posted by Miles Raymer on Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 4:01 PM
After tonight's show at Ronny's the Fake Fictions will cease their scrappy and utterly charming noisemaking, which means there will be one less band out there making music for what I believe to be all the right reasons. In an e-mail blast announcing the breakup, guitarist and singer Nick Ammerman explains, "The Fake Fictions are stopping playing music so that they can go to the moon." I guess that's an acceptable reason.
The show starts at 9 PM and the Laureates, Very Truly Yours, and Beauty and the Feast open. The Fake Fictions' entire recorded output is still available to download for free here.
Crickets, Music Permanent Records Celebrates Its Third Birthday
Posted by Kevin Warwick on Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 10:00 AM
- Cave
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Crickets, Music Kidz in the Hall Get Grizzled, Matt & Kim Get Ninja-fied
Posted by Miles Raymer on Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 4:10 PM
Ever since I wrote a column on so-called "hipster rap" I've betting the occasional e-mail from journalism students looking for quotes or background for their own pieces on the phenomenon. I got one the other day that actually started me thinking. Given that Jay-Z's rapping over samples of Justice and M.I.A. and Wale's putting out a record with a Lady Gaga cameo rubbing up against collabos with Dave Sitek from TV on the Radio, what qualifies as hipster rap anymore? Because simply digging some of the same music as skinny-pantsed white kids obviously doesn't quite separate a rapper from the rest of the pack these days.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Crickets, Music Bob Dylan Meets Pyrex
Posted by Miles Raymer on Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 5:34 PM
The Dipset of today is a much different creature than the Dipset of five years ago, its core of ganglike us-against-the-world camaraderie torn apart by, among other things, Jim Jones's ego in the wake of "We Stay Fly" and his obsessive quest to find the worst pair of jeans in the world. But one thing the Diplomats still have in common is a shared love for looking at pretty much anything in the world and extracting from it a faintly amusing metaphor for the process of cooking and selling crack. Like, say, a Bob Dylan song.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Crickets, Music, Politics Musicians Need a Different Kind of Benefit
Posted by Miles Raymer on Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 2:57 PM
An op-ed by Bloodshot Records cofounder Nan Warsaw and Future of Music Coalition project coordinator Alex Maiolo in yesterday's Chicago Tribune entitled "End the Need for Benefit Concerts" raises yet again the issue of American musicians without health insurance. The fact that few musicians, from weekend giggers to major-label performers, have adequate coverage is nothing new, but between the ongoing debate over health-care reform and Scotland Yard Gospel Choir's recent van crash it's a good time to bring it up once again.
Crickets, Music You Shoot: Shrinebuilder at the Empty Bottle
Posted by Miles Raymer on Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 1:14 PM
Wino from Shrinebuilder, shown mid-shred in a pic by Flickr user Silverfuture.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Crickets, Music, Free Shit MV + EE Light Up the Barn
Posted by Bill Meyer on Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 7:10 PM
- MV + EE
When Matt Valentine (vocals, guitar, harmonica) and Erika Elder (vocals, mandolin, lap steel), aka MV + EE, tour with a band, they call it the Golden Road. But if you drove a car the way their recent releases veer between styles and sounds, you'd get pulled over. There are no songs on last year's LP Ragas of the Culvert (Three Lobed), just woozy instrumentals that sound like a class of sitar students detuning their instruments. But they've followed it up with Drone Trailer (DiCristina) and Barn Nova (Ecstatic Peace!), two albums that situate their spacey explorations within songs that sound like good old-fashioned classic rock. That is, if your idea of classic rock begins with Neil Young's Zuma and ends with the side of Young's American Stars 'n Bars that has "Will to Love" on it, with a detour down John Bonham's Boulevard of Heavy Beats. This Monday at the Empty Bottle they'll play as a duo, so I'm betting things will be pretty loose. Locals A Tundra open and the show is free.
Crickets, Music King Khan and BBQ Vs. Smokey
Posted by Miles Raymer on Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 3:15 PM
Garage rockers and sartorial eccentrics King Khan and BBQ have been arrested in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, causing them to miss a show last night in Saint Louis and cancel tonight's gig in Lawrence, Kansas. Their publicists aren't saying what got the band thrown in jail (everyone's out on bail now, except for the tour manager), but given King Khan and BBQ's tendency to leave a trail of chaos wherever they go, the mind pretty much reels at the possibilities.
(Via the Daily Swarm)
Update: The story continues to unfold, and become more confusing, at Brooklyn Vegan and the Riverfront Times.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Crickets, Music What Wale Means
Posted by Miles Raymer on Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 3:18 PM
Jeff Weiss has an essay on his blog, the Passion of the Weiss, about rapper Wale and what his career says about the current state of hip-hop. Wale first started attracting attention from outside his hometown of Washington, D.C., a couple of years ago with a string of solid, smart mix tapes on which he combined anthemic, classic-sounding hip-hop tracks like "Nike Boots" with raps set to songs by Justice and Amy Winehouse, which earned him a fan base that included both hipsters and people who spend too way much time reading hip-hop blogs (though I suppose there's some overlap between the two). He's since graduated—if that's the right word—to Interscope, which yesterday released his first proper album, Attention Deficit.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Crickets, Music Looks Like Sonotheque's in for a Makeover
Posted by Miles Raymer on Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 5:12 PM
Rumors have been afoot for a while now that Sonotheque is about to close, and John Dugan at Time Out Chicago just confirmed them. But there's a wrinkle: Dugan quotes from an e-mail from Empty Bottle talent buyer Pete Toalson, who writes, "We can confirm that the current ownership group—one that includes Terry Alexander, Joe Bryl, Bruce Finkelman, Donnie Madia and Peter Toalson—have sold Sonotheque and it will close the week ending November 15th. The new ownership group continues to include both Finkelman and Toalson, and now adds Paul Devitt."
Devitt is the owner of the Beauty Bar chain of nightclubs, which began as a single bar in New York City in 1995 and has since expanded to include outposts in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Brooklyn, Las Vegas, and Austin. Dugan doesn't go so far as to say that Sonotheque's going to become a Beauty Bar itself, but a source at the Empty Bottle tells me that it will. If that's true, the club will most likely have its retro-futuristic interior design replaced by the kitschy retro-beauty-parlor aesthetic that the other Beauty Bars share.
