Category Archives: general

arizona, general

Calexico: Crystal Frontier (free download on Earth)

1 Comment

How can you not love Calexico and the Quarterstick/Touch & Go family? After news that the group’s song Crystal Frontier was being played on the Space Shuttle Discovery, the label has decided to make it available as a free download for Earthlings.

From a MySpace bulletin:

Maybe you remember our super awesome news last week about Calexico getting played IN SPACE.

Well, we thought about it some more, and we’re still pretty stoked, and really, if Martians and astronauts are going to get to hear “Crystal Frontier” for free, why not you, right? So, we’re pleased to offer up a free MP3 download of “Crystal Frontier” (from Even My Sure Things Fall Through) for the rest of the space mission, through landing day June 14.

You’ll be able to actually hear the astronauts waking up to Calexico on Flight Day 14, June 13, by checking out NASA TV live at around 3am EST (check your local provider). If you miss it, starting at 8pm every hour on the hour they run the highlights starting with the wake up song.

Also, the whole thing is live on www.nasa.gov – just click on watch NASA TV live.

Special Thanks to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a big Calexico fan, and her husband, Shuttle Commander Mark Kelly for making this happen.

There’s also that news of a new Calexico full-length in the offing. Doesn’t look like Absent Afternoon made the final cut (unless the title changed).

general, remix, TV, Uncategorized

Elbow covers Amy Winehouse: Back to Black

2 Comments

Elbow’s been all over since releasing its latest (and fantastic) album The Seldom Seen Kid.

The band’s latest promo stop was on BBC’s Radio 1 Live Lounge, where they performed (with a string trio) two songs, including a cover of Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black. It’s a very sympathetic and endearing cover.

Clearly, Winehouse has the band’s respect if singer Guy Garvey’s introduction to the cover is any indication: “This song probably defines last couple years in British music. Also, it’s an opportunity to say the artist is someone who’s in the press an awful lot. And I think you should only go on your experience of people. Having met her a few times, I just know her to be a a very sweet girl who works very, very hard.”

  • Elbow | Back to Black (Amy Winehouse cover on Radio 1 Live Lounge)
  • Elbow | One Day Like This (on Radio 1 Live Lounge)

Related:
More Elbow posts on this site (there are too many to list individually).

general, sports

The Baseball Project: Past Time

5 Comments

The news of the Baseball Project – a group led by Scott McCaughey and Steve Wynn – and its forthcoming album couldn’t have landed in my inbox at a more shockingly coincidental time.

I left The Arizona Republic after five-plus years to take a job with MLB.com as an editorial producer, which I started last week (in New York). So for the past week I’ve been buried in baseball (not a bad thing) as I acclimate to the new gig.

And here comes McCaughey with another quirky side project (see also The Minus 5), mining the national pastime’s history for an entire album’s worth of material. The references throughout are so rich – Oscar Gamble’s afro, Pete Rose barreling into Ray Fosse, etc. – they could only come from seamheads.

It’s such a great idea I can’t understand why it hasn’t been done before. But here’s the catch (ha! get it?): The album clearly holds the game in high regard but in a sarcastic, grounded way – it’s the view from the hardened fan too far gone to give up on it. Yeah, we hate millionaire athletes and steroids and scandal. But you can’t quit the game. Not at this point.

Instead, McCaughey and Wynn show their love and appreciation for the characters and legends of baseball. They write a song devoted to Curt Flood, the pioneer of free agency, on Gratitude (For Curt Flood). Pay attention, young wealthy stars, and respect your elders: “I’m the one who paved the way / I laid my body in the road so you can walk on it today.”

Even on the lead single, Past Time, there seems to be a cynic’s touch at work: “So long ago / so long, pastime / are you past your prime?”

Jackie’s Lament is more social commentary than baseball fandom. (And if I have to tell you who Jackie is, well, you probably need to buy this album more than you think.)

And what would be the name of the last song on the album? The Closer, of course – a raw, fuzzy ode to the (underappreciated?) one-inning specialists of our day: “MVP / Strike 3 / my work is done again.”

Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails is due out July 8 on Yep Roc. If you pre-order from Yep Roc, you get a download of Blood Diamond, “a song about a Dodgers fan shooting a Giants fan.”

Stream the entire album.

general, video

Frightened Rabbit sort of covers Fake Empire

1 Comment

For whatever reason, the album I listened to most while in New York last week was Frightened Rabbit’s The Midnight Organ Fight (I swear, if one more person calls it The Midnight Organ FLIGHT … ).

Anyway, there’s nothing at all New York about the record, so I can’t really say why I listened to it on repeat. I do find Scottish accents sort of endearing, but it’s obviously more than that – the emotion, the depression, the anger (“I’m armed with the past, and the will, and a brick / I might not want you back, but I want to kill him.”). Powerful stuff.

So, of course, I did a YouTube search for some more Frightened Rabbit material. Here’s a live clip of the group performing Backwards Walk (one of my favorite tracks – “You’re the shit and I’m knee-deep in it”) with a dash of the National’s Fake Empire serving as an introduction. (Makes sense, considering Peter Katis worked on Midnight Organ and previous National records.)

Remember: Frightened Rabbit and Oxford Collapse at the Rhythm Room in Phoenix on June 24.

general

Rob Dickinson audio ecard

Leave a comment

Being that I’m in New York, thousands of miles away from the comfort of my home (and external hard drive), I’m a little out of sorts this week.

But I do have an audio ecard from Rob Dickinson, former singer of Catherine Wheel who is rereleasing his solo debut Fresh Wine for the Horses. The reissue includes a new track, The End of the World (see below), and a second disc of newly recorded Catherine Wheel tracks done acoustically.

I could go on here and question why this album is being rereleased (we already bought it once, thanks), why Dickinson seems to be holding on a little too hard to the CW salad days (see CW logo plastered on ecard) and why he doesn’t just give us some new material. But I’m really tired. It’s 4 in the morning. I’m not even putting a picture in this post, for crying out loud.

And, besides, Black Metallic is probably my favorite CW song and the ecard includes that audio stream. And you should listen to it.

Click this thingy:

Really, just get Catherine Wheel back together already, mmmmkay?

general

Spoon: Don’t Let it Get You Down (demo)

1 Comment

I’m not sure how long Spoon will keep offering a bonus download every month, but I’ll keep going back until the band stops.

May’s bonus baby is a demo version of Don’t Let it Get You Down, the original of which appears on 2002’s Kill the Moonlight.

Previous bonus downloads included I Turn My Camera On (first version) and Cherry Bomb (demo).

Even better news for Spoon fans: June is just around the corner.

  • Spoon | Don’t Let it Get You Down (demo)
  • Spoon | Don’t Let it Get You Down (album version)
general

New Travis!: J. Smith

6 Comments

It’d been awhile since I hit the Travis Web site, so I was a bit surprised to see the band is putting the wraps on a new album, this after releasing its first album in almost four years in 2007 (The Boy With No Name).

This new track, J. Smith (the album is called Ode to J. Smith), has Travis fans in a tizzy, describing it as everything from “Queen-ish” to “so rockier!”.

Singer Fran Healy and bassist Dougie Payne have been blogging about the recording/mixing. Emery Dobyns (Mobius Band, Battles) is the producer.

Healy requested the song, which debuted on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic on May 1, not be upped to YouTube so as to avoid mass compression. I assume the copy I found from the Travis message boards is a rip from the KCRW broadcast.

  • Travis | J. Smith

Elsewhere in the land of Travis, Healy discusses Sing and Driftwood on the Sky Arts series Songbook.

Lastly, the band is offering on its MySpace a muzak version of Closer, which was featured in the video. “Would make quite a cheesy ringtone.”

RELATED:
Travis: New Amsterdam (video).
Favorite albums of 2007 (The Boy With No Name was No. 10).
Travis, Marquee Theatre, 11/25/07.
Travis: Selfish Jean (video).
Travis: My Eyes (video).
Travis: Closer (video).

(I like Travis; so sue me.)