All posts by Kevin

arizona, general

New Calexico: Two Silver Trees

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This one is making its way quickly around the Internets, but with Calexico being from Arizona and all, it’s my duty to spread the wealth.

The band recently teased us with a video trailer for the new album, Carried to Dust (due out Sept. 9 … two days after my birthday … just sayin’.).

I’ve always loved Calexico for staying true to its Tucson/Arizona roots. I’ve said it before, but I think Calexico is the rare band that actually offers a sonic representation of its hometown. Calexico just sounds like the Southwest.

Here’s the tracklisting for Carried to Dust:

1. Victor Jara’s Hands
2. Two Silver Trees
3. The News About William
4. Sarabande In Pencil Form
5. Writer’s Minor Holiday
6. Man Made Lake
7. Inspiración
8. House of Valparaiso
9. Slowness
10. Bend To The Road
11. El Gatillo (Trigger Revisited)
12. Fractured Air (Tornado Watch)
13. Falling From Sleeves
14. Red Blooms
15. Contention City

As always, for more on what’s happening in Tucson, visit the outstanding Catfish Vegas.

controversy, general

My First Official Cease and Desist

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Well, it’s been approximately three years of writing this blog. In that time, I’ve gotten one friendly request from a label to take down an mp3 — and that’s been my closest run-in with the law.

That is, until a couple weeks ago. I got a beautifully impersonal letter from the IFPI in regards to a new Travis song I posted here.

A couple things to note: The letter says they sent me a previous notice on June 24. I never got it; you’d think I’d probably remember that. Also, the letter references the mp3 in question as a song by Hercules and Love Affair, a band about which I never ever have posted here. It was clearly a shoddy cut-and-paste job on the part of the IFPI.

I actually wrote Travis about this and singer Fran Healy responded. First, the letter in full:

01 July 2008

Somuchsilence.com
Email: somuchsilence@gmail.com
Ref: R25147
Re: http://www.somuchsilence.com/mp3/travis_jsmith.mp3

Dear Sir/Madam,

We are contacting you concerning the above-referenced site that we originally brought to your attention in our letter of 24 June 2008(please see attached e-mail). As you have been made aware, the IFPI is a trade association whose member companies are some 1,450 major and independent record companies in the US and internationally who create, manufacture and distribute sound recordings. Under penalty of perjury, we submit that the IFPI is authorized to act on behalf of its member companies in matters involving the infringement of their sound recordings, including enforcing their copyrights and common law rights on the Internet.

We have learned that your service is hosting the above files on its network. These files contain sound recordings by the artist known as Hercules and Love Affair. These sound recordings are owned by one of our member companies and have not been authorized for this kind of use. We have a good faith belief that the above-described activity is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. We assert that the information in this notification is accurate, based upon the data available to us.

We are asking for your immediate assistance in stopping this unauthorized activity. Specifically, we request that you remove the infringing files from your system or that you disable access to the infringing files. In addition, please inform the site operator of the illegality of his or her conduct.

You should understand that this letter constitutes notice to you that this site operator may be liable for the infringing activity occurring on your service. In addition, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, if you ignore this notice, you and/or your company may also be liable for any resulting infringement. This letter does not constitute a waiver of any right to recover damages incurred by virtue of any such unauthorized activities, and such rights as well as claims for other relief are expressly retained.

You may contact me at IFPI Secretariat, 10 Piccadilly, London W1J 0DD, United Kingdom or email Notices@ifpi.org, to discuss this notice. We await your response.

Faithfully,

(NAME REDACTED) [I just always wanted to do that.]
Head of Internet Anti-Piracy
IFPI
10 Piccadilly
London
W1J 0DD
United Kingdom
Email: Notices@ifpi.org

I was slightly perturbed because Travis singer Fran Healy had encouraged sharing of the song on the band’s forum at its Web site.

So I sent a MySpace message to the band. Healy responded within a half-hour:

“I guess until they get the correct song you can keep on posting it. You definitely have my blessing as one of the 4 holders of the copyrights to that specific recording. I actually think this is bogus.
Anyways thanks for posting that on your site. It was lovely to see it out there doing the rounds. We didnt take it to radio so your helping with the pollenation of the nation.”

There you have it. Despite Healy’s blessing, I’m trigger-shy in reposting the song because I fear the next step will be the IFPI going after my site’s server host, thus shutting down this party.

I’m more baffled than angry, really. And I feel validated in posting the song in the first place after reading Healy’s response.

Anyway, I wanted to share. More music to come.

hip-hop, Sundays with Tribe

Sundays with A Tribe Called Quest: Vol. 4

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A lot of folks were buzzing about the news that Lil Wayne copped a sample by A Tribe Called Quest from a fairly unknown remix album for new song A Milli.

This YouTube video attempts to explain it all:

The Tribe track comes off a remix album called Revised Quest for the Seasoned Traveller. It’s not as rare as the YouTuber makes it out to be (I have it on CD and vinyl). It was released on Jive in 1992 so the tracklisting contains early Tribe material, including a remix of If the Papes Come (never released on a proper Tribe album). The album is worth tracking down if only for the “Hootie Mix” of Bonita Applebum.

Anyway, the song in question is I Left My Wallet in El Segundo (Vampire Mix), which contains one of the more intriguing credits on the album: “Remixed by Norman Cook.” Yeah, that Norman Cook.

My guess is that if Lil Wayne robbed the sample without clearance, he probably has the cash to cover the costs.

(Thanks to Eric for the heads up.)

general, vinyl

Sweetie: Saturdays (Gold Robot Records)

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Without a doubt, when I get a record from Gold Robot Records in the mail, my mood enhances significantly. Vinyl + mp3 + good music. What’s not to love?

The latest Gold Robot 7-inch release, the fifth with more fast on the way, comes from Sweetie, a gem of a pop-rock band from San Francisco that I knew literally nothing about until this red-colored piece of wax showed up on my doorstep.

The four-song EP was recorded at John Vanderslice’s Tiny Telephone studio by Aaron Prellwitz.

That’s right: Four songs on a 7-inch. How is it done, you ask? Well, Sweetie’s longest song of the set (Saturdays) is 3:03. These are charming two-and-a-half-minute bursts of pop that have left my smudgy fingerprints all over the record as I constantly keep flipping it over to go from one song to the next.

Order the vinyl at Gold Robot Records, which includes a coupon for digital downloads of the record. Or, if you don’t have a turntable, you can get the four tracks at eMusic as well.

ALSO: Please join me in wishing good luck to Hunter, purveyor of Gold Robot and Macktronic, as he raises money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) in the Marin Metric Century bicycle race on Aug. 2.

Hunter’s brother recently passed away while undergoing treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Here’s part of an e-mail Hunter sent out:

“I’m hoping that the money I raise for the LLS will help find a cure for these diseases that affect so many families.

“Each donation helps accelerate finding a cure for leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. More than 823,000 Americans are battling these blood cancers. I am hoping that my participation in Team In Training will help bring them hope and support. On behalf of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, thank you very much for your support. I greatly appreciate your generosity.”

Donate to the cause here.

hip-hop, video

The Pharcyde: Runnin’ (Philippians remix)

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One of the Pharcyde’s best songs gets the remix treatment as part of Delicious Vinyl’s RMXXOLOGY series (eMusic), which also includes mixes of Bust a Move, Wild Thing and Slaughtahouse, among others.

I honestly don’t know much about the Philippians, but I feel like they treated this coming-of-age track with the proper respect it deserves by not butchering the original flow of the verses, which, frankly, are some of the most fluid the Pharcyde have done. Fatlip’s opening verse is top notch.

hip-hop

Yameen: Never Knows Best (sampler mixtape)

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Back in, oooh, 1995 or so, I spent a lot of my free time (and not-so-free time) on what would soon become known as “the Internet.” Specifically, I went to my college’s computer lab and logged on to hieroglyphics.com obsessively. More specifically, the Hiero Hoopla message board. I traded so many tapes it’s insane. I have some great mixes and freestyles and unreleased sh*t from those days, I really should be digitizing all that.

The site’s Webmaster was known simply as Stinke. I never thought I’d think of his name again until we exchanged emails in the past year about SupremeEx, his collaboration with Tajai of Souls of Mischief. (He also reminded me of some horribly written Hiero concert “reviews” I once posted to the message board. Yeah, thanks for that.)

Now, he’s got his own project under the name Yameen. The record is called Never Knows Best (Ropeadope), and it’s got a stellar cast of guest spots: Casual, Georgia Anne Muldrow and Shock G (SHOCK G! … if you don’t know), among others.

I haven’t listened to it in full, but it’s available everywhere, including eMusic.

In the meantime, you can download for free an album sampler mixtape by DJ Statik.

general

Spoon: Merchants of Soul (demo)

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Spoon’s bonus download for July is a demo (aren’t they all?) of Merchants of Soul, off 2005’s Gimme Fiction.

The demo strips away pretty much all of the drums, save for some minimal time-keeping that sounds like hand claps or leg slaps or something. I like to hear demos because you can hear how the layers came together in the finished product and this demo most definitely makes me miss Jim Eno’s catchy rhythms of the album version.

  • Spoon | Merchants of Soul (demo)

IN SPORTS: How about that All-Star Game? As much as I hate that the All-Star outcome decides home-field advantage for the World Series, there is no better all-star competition in professional sports than that of baseball. (And I’m not just saying that because I happen to be employed by MLB.com.) At least read this and you may feel the same.

hip-hop, remix

edIT: The Game is Not Over (feat. J Dilla, Phat Kat and Dabrye)

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Head over to Rcrd Lbl to download the latest from Los Angeles-based DJ/producer edIT, who was previously featured for a Grouch remix on this site here.

On that note, edIt and his Glitch Mob crew are comin’ to town: Aug. 28 at Club Red for a set at the long-running weekly spot the Blunt Club.

hip-hop

The Q-Tip news does not stop

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Between my Sundays with Tribe posts and this new Q-Tip song, I’m getting pretty amped for this new record The Renaissance.

If there was any question that this album would ever surface, we have some more tangible proof that it will in the form of this Los Angeles Times interview with Q-Tip.

Chills: “The verdict: ‘The Renaissance’ marks a return to form that rivals Q-Tip’s best work on Tribe’s beloved 1993 album, ‘Midnight Marauders.’

Read the story here. Then check out a Times blog post about Tip working with … Nigel Godrich?

(Thanks to Weiss for letting us know that Mark Ronson did this beat and for that photo.)

hip-hop, Sundays with Tribe

Sundays with A Tribe Called Quest: Vol. 3

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Thanks to The Meaning of Dope for this one.

Youthful Expression comes off Tribe’s debut, People’s Instinctive Travels and Paths of Rhythm (1990). And judging by the garb and props – is Phife twirling a didgeridoo? – this definitely shows Tribe’s early Afrocentric leanings.

And I can’t be sure of this, but Youthful Expression has to be one of the few tracks in which one of the group’s MCs doesn’t have a verse. (Sorry, Phife.)