All posts by Kevin

hip-hop

Giant Panda “Fly School Reunion”

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Always on the hunt for hip-hop on the positive tip, I recently picked up Giant Panda’s Fly School Reunion. I had good feeling before listening just because the LA-based trio is on Tres Records, along with one of my favorites, People Under the Stairs.

Fly School, the group’s first full-length album, proved my instincts correct. Without being overzealous in my defense of “backpack” rap, the album nails everything I love about a good hip-hop album: the lyrical interplay is seamless, production is consistent and the beats maintain a good-time vibe from start to finish.

Not to mention, Giant Panda is a walking example of social harmony, even if it wasn’t their intention. The trio is diverse (black, white and Japanese), which makes a track like Racist – a sarcastic yet sadly necessary statement on racial stereotypes – all the more sincere.

Giant Panda | Diggin’ in the Tapes
Giant Panda | Racist

Also …

  • Question: Did everyone download Colin Meloy’s concert from NPR? I will consider splitting it up into separate mp3s if there’s a big enough demand (leave it in the comments).
  • The Big Takeover makes note of a promising trend: purchase albums on vinyl and receive a coupon to download it digitally for free. The fantastic Merge Records has made this deal available on the Clientele’s Strange Geometry and Robert Pollard’s From a Compound Eye.
  • Be sure to check out two new additions to the blog roll: Black Balloon and the newly launched Cable and Tweed.
  • You’ve gotta be kidding: An iPod owner in Louisiana is suing Apple, alleging the mp3 player has the potential to cause hearing loss. Story here.
arizona

Feb. 23: Secret Life of Painters and iSpin

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I’ve got some excellent news, especially for anyone reading this from Arizona. Our local pals, Secret Life of Painters, have invited Royce and I to debut a night that I had only just started concocting in my head last week: iSpin.

In essence, it’s an iPod DJ night. People are invited to bring their iPods (or other mp3 players) to rock a 12- or 15-minute set of songs of their choosing. (Anyone without an mp3 player is welcome to use the one I will be providing for the evening.) If you got skills, there will be a mixer to fade in and out of songs.

It’s democracy for the digital age. We’re inviting anyone to show off their musical elitism in front of all to hear. Our hope is to build this into a bi-weekly or monthly gig with prizes (iTunes or eMusic gifts perhaps?) for the best sets.

We’re scratching out a design for a logo and a Web site, where we’ll post the playlists and even make some mp3s available played from those sets. For now, here are the preliminary details:

Feb. 23, 8 pm-ish at The Paper Heart. Secret Life of Painters are headlining the night then will hand it over to the MP3Js. More to come as details flow in. So if you live in Arizona, spread the word!

Major thanks to SLP. Get a taste below:

Secret Life of Painters | Fast Black Rats
Secret Life of Painters | Magnets and Energy

radio rips

More Tom Vek: on KEXP

2 Comments


So, this is sort of a fallback post; I’m nursing a pretty killer cold and I think this is the first day, um, ever, I’ve not picked up my iPod.

That said, these Tom Vek tracks were going to get posted sooner or later. So how about sooner? This set is a lot shorter than his KCRW appearance. But the audio quality (it’s all about bit rates, baby) is much better. Plus, he plays Nothing But Green Lights, which is probably my favorite track off We Have Sound. (Buy it at eMusic.)

Tom Vek on KEXP, 11/18/05:
1. The Lower the Sun
2. Nothing But Green Lights
3. If I Had Changed My Mind
[update!: Peter over at tmwsiy* has kindly offered us the Kaos Remix by James Fucking Friedman (that’s his name) of Nothing But Green Lights. Go and thank him; while you’re at it, you can enter to win the new Prodigy box set.]

Tom Vek | Nothing But Green Lights (Kaos Mix)

general

The Halo Benders

6 Comments


The anticipation for the release of the new Built to Spill album, You In Reverse, has me dusting off all things Doug Martsch lately. That means a few spins for the Halo Benders’ The Rebels Not In.

The Halo Benders was a side project – though three albums seems like more of a commitment than a side project – for Martsch and K Records owner/artist Calvin Johnson. I can almost guarantee, with 99.98887 percent certainty, that you will never hear more disparate vocal pitches than the pairing of these two, and, yet, it works.

Martsch’s high whine is matched in its extremity on the opposite spectrum by Johnson’s beyond-baritone talky style. It’s not quite anything like Built to Spill, which forced me to concentrate a little bit more when listening.

Speaking of Built to Spill, You In Reverse will be released April 11, but my inside sources (OK, I’m on the BtS mailing list) tell me it will be available digitally Feb. 7. That’s, like, next week. Meanwhile, we continue to wait for an update – for about five years now – to BuilttoSpill.com.

The Halo Benders | Lonesome Sundown
The Halo Benders | Love Travels Faster

hip-hop

Blueprint “1988”

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Local concert promoter Charlie Levy of Stateside Presents has just booked a slew of great upcoming shows for the Phoenix area, including Reubens Accomplice, The Elected, Band of Horses, The Life and Times, TV on the Radio and Devendra Banhart. Also in the mix is a hip-hop gem: Soul Position, featuring RJD2 and Blueprint.

I’ve yet to see RJD2, who is a busy boy of late, and Blueprint has dominated my iPod with his 2005 release 1988. If it wasn’t obvious by his style, Blueprint says in his liner notes: “The year 1988 gave birth to a lot of classic hip-hop records, so I named this album 1988 to pay tribute to those artists and records.”

He’s right, too: N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton; Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions… ; Eric B. and Rakim, Follow the Leader; Run-DMC, Tougher Than Leather … to name just a few.

Blueprint reminds me of a young LL Cool J: a little rough around the edges, but with a fearless flow that’s hard to ignore. And he avoids what, in my opinion, is a major plague in hip-hop: guest artists. Albums have become so watered down by this guest and that guest, it’s hard to tell whose LP it is. Blueprint limits it to two (including a great spot from Aesop Rock).

Blueprint | 1988
Blueprint | Fresh

live recording

Rob Dickinson, live in Scottsdale, Part II

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Of the 12 songs Rob Dickinson ended up playing, exactly half were Catherine Wheel tracks, including the great songs on this post: Crank, Black Metallic and Future Boy. The oft-repeated requests for Paranoia, a B-side to a Ma Solituda CD single, were left unfulfilled.

I did leave in some of the banter before Future Boy, when Dickinson is talking about sticking around for the meet and greet and wondering if anyone wants to get “some breasts signed or something like that. … Not that I do shit like that.” Good interplay with the audience.

If you missed it yesterday, Chromewaves has more Dickinson goodness. And thanks to Frank for the link.

Rob Dickinson, live at Anderson’s 5th Estate, 1/26/06:

8. Intelligent People
9. Crank*
10. Towering and Flowering
11. Black Metallic*
12. Future Boy* (encore, even if he never left the stage)

* – Catherine Wheel songs.

live recording

Rob Dickinson, live in Scottsdale, Part I

8 Comments


Thursday’s Rob Dickinson show at Anderson’s Fifth Estate in Scottsdale, Ariz., felt strangely like a time warp. People in line outside the club were talking about Catherine Wheel’s Tempe, Ariz., concert in 1995 (my God, has it been 11 years?), and the once-hip kids are now parents who made baby-sitting arrangements before the show. Man, back in the day we’d be pre-show drinking.

That has to make a curious crossroads for Dickinson, whose trying to attract new fans to his solo work while appeasing the Catherine Wheel old-timers. Dickinson, who played solo and acoustic, seemed acutely aware of his CW faithful by playing a pretty balanced set, explaining that a couple of songs from his solo debut Fresh Wine for the Horses had “the ghost of the Wheel” in them.

I admire that Dickinson appears to accept his past instead of stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that the 100-plus fans at the show were there, at least in part, to hear some Catherine Wheel. (I, for one, was thrilled he played Black Metallic.) At the same time, Fresh Wine is growing on me and deserves to stand on its own merit.

Dickinson was kind enough to chat, sign autographs and take pictures with fans after the show. It seemed odd that the man behind Catherine Wheel would be standing in a meet-and-greet line. Regardless, I used the opportunity to ask his permission to post mp3s of the taped show; he kindly obliged.

For more on Rob Dickinson, check out Chromewaves today.

(Fair warning: One guy, bless his heart, kept yelling “We love you, Rob!” To his credit, Dickinson seemed somewhat amused.)

Rob Dickinson, live at Anderson’s 5th Estate, 1/26/06:
1. Heal*
2. The Storm
3. Oceans
4. My Name is Love
5. Ma Solituda*
6. Handsome
7. Eat My Dust You Insensitive Fuck*

* – Catherine Wheel songs.

(Note: Recording was made with my Sony MZ-M10 minidisc; imported as WAV with Hi-MD WAV importer for Mac; enhanced, converted to mp3 using Audio Hijack Pro. Do you see how much I care for you? … Where appropriate, I left banter/discussion from Dickinson, who has a very down-to-earth demeanor on stage.)

general, samples

Post #200!: Tim Fite resuscitates Trunk Federation

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One of the painfully obvious disadvantages of buying music digitally is the lack of liner notes. So it was only recently that I learned that Tim Fite sampled two Trunk Federation songs for his fantastic 2005 release Gone Ain’t Gone. In fact, Fite used samples only from albums he salvaged from the dollar bins.

As fate (Fite?) would have it, Trunk Federation got its start in the 1990s in Tempe, Ariz., which always seemed on the cusp of breaking out in the 90s as The Next Big City. Never quite worked out that way, but Trunk Federation gained a bit of cult following with three full-lengths: The Infamous Hamburger Tranfer (1997); The Curse of Miss Kitty (1998); and Lay the Hip (2000).
The band faded into oblivion (and, apparently, the dollar bin) after problems with their record label Alias, internal issues and substance abuse. (Phoenix New Times article here.)

Trunk Federation never quite fit the conservative pop sounds coming out of Arizona at the time (think Gin Blossoms, Refreshments); its style was a little quirkier, which seems to lend itself to Fite’s cut-and-paste experimenting. I just wonder if he heard of Trunk Federation prior to finding The Curse of Miss Kitty in the dollar bin.

Regardless, below are the two songs Fite used (quite liberally in the case of Levitations and Disappearances) and his interpretations of them for Gone Ain’t Gone. (For those in Arizona, Fite will be in Tucson on Feb. 26 at Plush.)

Trunk Federation | Apples
Tim Fite | A Little Bit

Trunk Federation | Levitations and Disappearances
Tim Fite | Forty-Five Remedies

Also …

This was Post No. 200 since starting last July. We’ve come a long way, and I truly appreciate the readers and other bloggers who have encouraged and linked me. Leave your questions, concerns, congratulations or criticisms in the comments below.

On a personal note … when I started, I couldn’t have made it without the generous linking of others, and I’m trying to return the favor and give back what I can. A few of the big guns out there (Gorilla vs. Bear and My Old Kentucky Blog, specifically) couldn’t have been nicer and more supportive. On the flip side, some of the arrogant and holier-than-thou attitudes of a few sites (which shall remain nameless) really grate my nerves. Nobody is cooler or better than the next. I’ll leave it at that, without getting into specifics.

I encourage you to visit any and all sites on my roll, and here are a few new (or new to me) blogs that have been added to the roll or will be in the near future:

One more note: Thanks to my wife for allowing me to obsess over this blog, come to bed late and for giving me the knowledge to know that I’ll always have at least one reader.

hip-hop

The Procussions

4 Comments


On Wednesday, the reunited Digable Planets return to Arizona for a show in Flagstaff. We’re debating about whether we’ll take the two-hour drive north for the show, which also costs a steep $25. Having already seen the DPs last summer, I’m not so hot on spending 25 bones. BUT … it is the Digable Planets.

Last summer’s excellent show was where I first heard about the Procussions, who opened that tour and apparently made such a good impression that they’re on the road with the DPs again. (Arizona’s own Drunken Immortals also are on the bill.)

I can vouch for the Procussions’ energetic live set, and the Colorado trio’s full-length As Iron Sharpens Iron is a lively throwback of emcee interplay and bouncing beats.

The Procussions are touring behind the news of a recent deal with Rawkus and expect to drop their next LP – 5 Sparrows for 2 Cents – early this year. All I can say is hallelujah for groups like the Procussions for revisiting hip-hop’s glory days without sounding stale or like copycats.



The Procussions | Wegotta
The Procussions | Make it Happen

radio rips

The Magic Numbers on KEXP

4 Comments


Thanks to Jax, the self-titled full-length debut by The Magic Numbers has been my most recent obsession. I first heard a couple of songs on Sirius’ Left of Center, and then I turned into this raving lunatic, foaming at the mouth, fiending for more. Such is the irresistible pull of the catchy pop they create.

While I guess the comparisons to the sunshiney pop of the Mamas and Papas are inevitable, I was pleasantly surprised by some of the lyrical depth of The Magic Numbers.

“That I’m a no-good, used-up, bruised and fucked-up boy /
Who gets beat up just by looking at you /
I’m a lonely soul, lost every single thing I ever did own /
But I never owned you”

This five-song set also includes Gone Are the Days from Help: A Day in the Life, a War Child benefit, which is available at eMusic.

The Magic Numbers, live on KEXP, 11/7/05:

1. Forever Lost
2. Don’t Give Up the Fight
3. Love’s A Game
4. Love Me Like You
5. Gone Are the Days