by David Burn | Mar 24, 2007 | Music
photo courtesy of Flickr user, Lorne Thomson
Amy Winehouse is blowing up. She made her “American television debut” on Letterman recently, then played several shows in Austin at SXSW. I caught her for a few songs at Eternal.
According to The BBC, Winehouse’s new album, Back To Black sold more than 50,000 copies in its first week of release earlier this month. The album landed at a lofty #7 on The Billboard Hot 200 chart, making her the highest debuting British female artist in the history of the coveted U.S. albums chart.
The 23-year-old London-born musician topped the UK charts with the album in December 2006.
> Buy Back To Black at Amazon.
by David Burn | Mar 24, 2007 | Music
Dallas Observer music critic, Darryl Smyers dropped a shit bomb on Widespread Panic and its rabid pack of fans this week.
As might be expected, they’re not taking it well. Smyers’ piece has over 600 comments about what a Death Cab for Cutie-loving fag he is. His home number was also posted and he received rude and threatening calls there.
Let’s look at some of the words that caused this melee:
Along with the equally interminable Phish, Widespread Panic represents the worst inclinations of consumer capitalism and the senseless worship of instrumental prowess. Taking their cues from the latter-day excesses of Southern rock icons the Allman Brothers, Widespread Panic has rarely found a groove they could not pummel into oblivion, quite content to exploit the mindless, phallic-centered idolatry of all things elongated.
What’s odd about the fanaticism surrounding Widespread is the refusal of their rabid followers to accept any criticism whatsoever, a trait annoyingly shared by their aging deadhead brethren. Acting as if anyone wanting an actual song amidst the soloing was some kind of right-wing, Nazi conspirator, the cult of eternal Southern boogie is content to live out psychedelic fantasies of the ’60s with more interest in the potency of the weed on hand than on the music.
Ouch!
But what of it? Does Smyers have a point. Sadly, I think he does.
I love early Panic. Anything from the band’s first three discs is precious material to me. But the quality of song craft falls off steeply from there. As for the stubborn (at times obnoxious and stupid) Panic fans, they have long reminded me of myself when I was deep into the Dead. And it’s never a pleasant reminder. Close mindedness is not a pretty feature.
by David Burn | Mar 23, 2007 | Music
iFilm is sitting on a treasure trove of SXSW video. Mostly band interviews. Like the one above with Clark and Joel from The Faint.
by David Burn | Mar 23, 2007 | Music
Drew Emmitt sent me a notice about his upcoming three-day run in Costa Rica with the Nershis. On his MySpace page, Drew says this is a cheap time to fly to San Jose. Round trip from Atlanta to SJO is $406, for instance.
by David Burn | Mar 22, 2007 | Music
Internet radio stations run by nonprofits or by one person may soon be a thing of the past, if the Copyright Royalty Board has its way. Live365 is reporting that a $500 minimum fee per channel per year will be required under new CRB regualtions. With 10,000 stations playing over 250,000 artists each month, that would mean an additional $5 million per year for Live365.
The proposal “threatens Live365’s ability to help make the small webcasters’ voice heard on the Internet, by effectively forcing Live365 to raise the minimum broadcasting fees to a level that would cause most small webcasters to discontinue their service thus silencing their stations.”
by David Burn | Mar 22, 2007 | Music
Angela Poe at Eenie Meenie Records in L.A. sent me this new track by Scissors For Lefty. The San Francisco band is coming off several rolicking performances at SXSW, and is currently on East Coast spring tour. They play the Greenville, SC area tomorrow night, Durham, NC the next night and points north thereafter.
Spin Magazine has called the band’s music, “sublime electro-synth.” Billboard says the band plays “exuberant, fast-moving danceable rock/pop full of darting keyboards, Strokes-like guitar riffs, and disco rhythms.” SFL has garned loads of positive press since bursting onto the scene in 2000. They’ve also shared the stage with Arctic Monkeys, Paul Weller, the Fratelli’s, the Fiery Furnaces, Panic! at the Disco, and Dirty Pretty Things, among others.
The band’s new album, “Underhanded Romance,” will be released in the U.S. on June 12th.
by David Burn | Mar 21, 2007 | Music
Last Thursday night during The Viper Room showcase at The Apple Bar, I kept looking over at this guy who was standing near me. I thought maybe I knew him from some place. I was thinking a Dead show. Turns out he’s Rolling Stone senior editor, David Fricke. Not that I didn’t see him at a Dead show.
The next afternoon, Fricke interviewed Iggy Pop as part of the SXSW Music Conference.
by David Burn | Mar 20, 2007 | Place, Politics
We just spent 10 action-packed days in Austin for SXSW. Austin is a great American city (GAC)—one we hadn’t visited in four years. During South By there are a million places to be and even more things to do. It’s a challenge to shrink it all down to manageable portions. But one way to do this is to focus on a neighborhood. To go hyper local, as it were. And there’s no better place in Austin to do this than on South Congress Avenue.
Less than a mile from downtown, South Congress or SoCo, offers a multiple block strectch of retail establishments, hotels, restaurants and music venues—all of which rank as some of the best in Austin. The Continental Club is arguably the anchoring establishment, with competition for that title coming from Guero’s Taco Bar, Hotel San Jose and Jo’s Coffee. Other noteworthy spots on SoCo include Allen Boot Company, Austin Motel, South Congress Café and Home Slice Pizza. Further south, we found Magnolia Café—an all night munchie palace with tons of local flavor.
The hilly neighborhoods that flank the east and west sides of South Congress are populated with street after street of classic bungalows built in the 1920s and 1930s. Many have been remodeled. Others wait for the tender loving care of new well-heeled owners.
Given that we live in a gated community with strict regulations requiring conformity, it was a pleasure to see Austinites freely flying their freak flags. We rented a lovely cottage in Travis Heights for our stay, and while there the neighbor across the street placed a sign in her yard that read, “No War. No Empire. No Occupation.†I want one of those! We can’t place it in our front yard for all Rose Hill to see, but we can place it in our front window to remind ourselves that we’re not alone in the fight to save America, and maybe our sanity in the process.
by David Burn | Mar 18, 2007 | Music
I saw 31 bands this week at SXSW. Sets are brief. 45 minutes, tops. So, I ended up sampling lots of different sounds, mostly from bands I’ve never even heard of before. It’s an act of discovery, and there is joy in that. There is also sorrow, as some acts simply don’t make the grade.
One particular showcase stood out for me. It went down on Thursday night at The Apple Bar on West Fifth Street. Los Angeles’ famed Viper Room transformed the place into “The Viper Room in Austin” for four nights. On Thursday, I saw three bands in a row that I can now count as bands I want to see again and put into my listening rotation. They are Hello Stranger, BIGBANG and The Ringers.
Juliette Commagere, lead singer of Hello Stranger, told me the band took their name from a Truman Capote short story of the same name. She also said Ry Cooder is good friend and mentor to the band. His son Joachim Cooder plays drums.
Norway’s BIGBANG and The Ringers from L.A. play the kind of straight ahead rock that may be out of style with the skinny pants crowd, but it works for me.
Some other shows I thoroughly enjoyed at South By were David Garza on Monday night at The Continental Club’s upstairs “Gallery,” Rev. Peyton and His Damn Big Band at Molotov on Friday night, Papa Mali with Henry Butler at Eternal on Saturday night and Peter Case at the Hilton Garden Inn’s 18th floor bar at 1:00 a.m. Saturday night.
by David Burn | Mar 11, 2007 | Music
We saw a wonderful documentary today at the SXSW film conference–the world premier of “Silver Jew,” an intimate portrait of reclusive poet/musician David Berman. Berman is the driving force behind Nashville-based indie band Silver Jews. Strangely, Silver Jews has never toured. So when they decided to embark on a world tour last summer, director Michael Tully and producer Matthew Robison tagged along for a week during the shows in Israel. The result is the film, “Silver Jew.”
You can see the trailer on SilverJewMovie.com. The film also has a MySpace page.
Tully was interviewed last month by eFilmCritic about the movie. Addressing the origin of the idea, Tully says:
Matthew lives in Nashville and is friendly with David. Before embarking on his band’s first ever world tour, David mentioned to Matthew that he wanted the Israeli portion of the trip documented, as he had recently embraced Judaism and felt it would be a special occasion. Matthew saw the opportunity and called me up to see if I wanted to fly over there with him and shoot the film. At the time, I was living with my parents in Maryland and still trying to pay off “Cocaine Angel,” so I turned him down. But a few close friends offered to fund the trip because they sensed it would be a good move for me to make. While I didn’t take them up on their monetary offer, I did change my mind and said yes. The trip itself was magical.
Berman is a funny, thoughtful man. Some of the best footage in the film is his interaction with fans. He realizes, seemingly for the first time, that he has the power to make people happy via his music, which in turn makes him happy.
