Today we get to hear and download the full track “Two Silver Trees” from the upcoming Calexico release Carried to Dust which will be released September 9th. You might recognize this track from the first trailer that I reported about on July 11th. In addition to the free download, there is another one of these great trailers. This one is an instrumental, so I can’t begin to guess what it’s called.
Click Here to download “Two Silver Trees”
When I stumbled into this during my daily diet of music blog cruising I went out and immediately purchased Paul Westerberg’s new recording 49:00
As one track clocking in at a confusing 44 minutes, it is apparently the “tip of a really large creative iceberg.” The songs were recorded The recording is a cut-and-pastishe of new songs, older songs and samples of classic rock songs. It’s lo-fi sensibility and Westerberg’s signature vocals gives it a feel that reminds me of the early Replacements. The jarring editing of the recording has songs sliding in and out sometimes edging the previous song out of the speakers from the left or right which might be why they are suggesting that you don’t listen to this while driving (LOL). The snippets of songs reminds me of Lolita Nation’s little soundscape. The Classic Rock mix at 40:00 or so is pretty great– especially since he would likely have recorded full versions of these songs to create this.
I stopped following Westerberg– who at one point was kind of a personal hero of mine– some time after his second album Eventually in 1996 completely missing his Grandpaboy catalog (BTW: Eventually
Anyway, Paul is a genius and this is an amazing gift to his fans and would-be fans. For $0.49 what are you waiting for?
Download the whole damn thing from Amazon
Update: Likely due to the cover songs included, this has been unceremoniously yanked! He has provided an addendum track called “5:05” at TuneCore that gives us the missing minutes and kind of an explanation.
As word of the Starbucks in Lindale Mall closing as part of a larger store closing move by Starbucks to close 600 stores nationwide including six in Iowa to “weed out unprofitable locations” rumors at Lindale on Saturday were spreading that the location was giving away drinks. Sherry and I were going to visit our daughter RaeEllen at her last day at Kitchens and Koffee so we stopped at Starbucks to see what was going on. While they were giving away drinks– they were samples of chocolate banana smoothies with shots of espresso in them (yum!).
While we were there, I was surprised to see that Starbucks was having a “Summer DVD and CD Sale” where ALL CD’s and DVD’s were $7.95 — inluding the new Coldplay! The Starbucks retail price for CD’s is typically an inflated $12.95 or better. I guess this shouldn’t be much of a surprise after the announcement that Starbucks was going to dump or dramatically reduce the number of CD’s they are going to sell. So, I expect there is going to be a purging of inventory across the chain.
One of the downsides to Starbucks getting out of the music biz is the Starbucks Entertainment business that partnered with the Concord Music Group to create some not-shabby compilations of artists and notable record labels. I wrote about the great Prestige Jazz compilation last year. In the CD racks at the doomed Starbucks was a couple of other compilations including a Buddy Holly one and a John Coltrane one in addition to the Stax one I picked up. They had some new titles- including John Mellencamp’s recent one, too.
Coldplay – Viva La Vida (CD, Capitol 509992 16886 0 7, 2008) ($7.95) I thought that this was about the price I’d want to pay for this — new at used price. I like a couple of the songs I’d heard on this album including “Viva La Vida” which was used in the iPod commercial as well as the new single “Violet Hill” which Sherry likes as well. Tired of the comparisons to Radiohead, Coldplay switched its sights to U2 with the “sonic landscapes” from erstwhile-and-again U2 producer/collaborator Brian Eno. I really liked the overplayed Rush of Blood to the Head and was as confused as everyone else about the X&Y followup. This is a very strong release from the band and solidly positions them as alterna-rock for the softening Gen X crowd.
various artists – “Soulsville, U.S.A.” – Stax Classics 1965-1973 (CD, Starbucks Entertainment CDS-131, 2008) ($7.95) This was the one I was pretty excited about. I’m becoming more of a fan of the legendary Stax Records catalog as time goes. The scrappy label from Memphis that represented was the “dirty South” answer to the more “clean” Motown and Philly labels of the time. I started as a fan of label houseband Booker T. & the MG’s and slowly expanded to include artists that they recorded behind. Working with Concord gave Starbucks the licensing power as well as the extensive catalog knowledge required to put these excellent comps together. This release stayed away from the big hits from Stax that have been represented in about a million other comps. Instead of including “Soul Man” we get “Hold On I’m Comin'” from Sam & Dave. Instead of “Green Onions” from Booker T. & the MG’s we get “Soul Limbo” and their instrumental cover of “Groovin’.” Incidentally, “Soul Limbo” has the distinction of being the first release on the freed-from-Atlantic Stax. Sadly, this was the beginning of the end for the label. Instead of “I’ll Take You There” from the Staple Singers we get the sound-alike “If You’re Ready.” Every track on this comp is a winner and a good mix for about any occasion with Otis Redding, Albert King, Eddie Floyd and Mr. Hot Buttered Soul himself Isaac Hayes. Hayes weighs in with “Walk On By” which I only recently realized was sampled by Portishead for its biggest hit “Sour Times” from 1994’s Dummy with its repeated “Nobody loves me– it’s true.”
So, if I run into any other interesting comps while traveling I may pick them up at this price. I’m hoping some company like Half Price Books will pick them up for sale in their stores as cut-outs.
Wanting to take advantage of one of the coupons I got in the mail for 40% off one item, I stopped off at Half-Price Books in Cedar Rapids last night. Half-Price Books has a deal a couple of times a year where they send out one week of coupons where you start out with 40% off and it decreases 10% every two days through the course of the week, but then ends up with a 50% coupon on Sunday. There wasn’t much in the CD bins this trip, but there was a lot in the vinyl area and I had to make some judicious selections. I’ll be back on Sunday with some stuff to sell to take advantage of the 50%.
Johnny Cash – At Folsom Prison (LP, Columbia CS 9639, 1968) ($2.99) This was the one I got the 40% off on since it was a $4.98 one. Is anyone else noticing that the prices are going up at Half-Price? The record is in very good condition with only a slight bit of surface scratches. The sleeve has some edge wear and some face wear, but no ring wear which is incredible considering this record turned 40 this year! This record was a popular one around the house growing up. Dad was a big Johnny Cash fan in the 50’s and 60’s. I love this cover with Johnny big as life on the cover looking askance and sweat running down his face. On the back are hand-written liner notes describing the day-to-day of a prison inmate in the 60’s as well as explaining how he had to convince Columbia to release a live recording made in a prison. In retrospect it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but I guess it must have been kind of shocking at the time. The movie “Ring of Fire” uses this show as its point of departure for the flashback that makes up the movie of Johnny’s life. This record is pretty interesting from the standpoint that it doesn’t have all of the “big” hits on it. In includes classics like “Folsom Prison,” “Jackson,” and “Orange Blossom Special” but doesn’t include “Walk the Line” or “Ring of Fire.” When this was remastered and re-released on CD in 1999 they added the missing songs “Busted,” “Joe Bean,” and “The Legend of John Henry’s Hammer.” A brilliant, landmark record that really transcends time and the genre of Country music.
Neil Young – Harvest (LP, Reprise MSK 2277, 1972) ($3.98) Wow! This was a big find. This copy is pristine! In a dust jacket, NO sleeve damage, includes the lyric sheet. The paper sleeve is torn, but there isn’t any printing on the sleeve so no art loss. What is there really to say about this record that hasn’t been said before? Brilliant record, regarded by most to be the pinnacle of Neil’s career and certainly his commerical high-point with the #1 single “Heart of Gold.” The story goes that Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor were appearing on the Johnny Cash TV show in 1971 and Neil coaxed them to come over and put vocals on “Heart of Gold” and “Old Man.” The country/folk-ish formula that created Harvest was so successful that Neil was able to base his 1992 album Harvest Moon from it and in my opinion repeated the commercial and critical success.
The “more rock” follow-up to Lindsey Buckingham’s 2006 Under the Skin was announced today. Given the title of the aborted solo album Gift of Screws which was supposed to be released before the last Fleetwood Mac album Say You Will to which it donated five tracks. The original Gift of Screws donated three tracks to Under the Skin. The new Gift of Screws only shares its title track with the original version, but two songs were reworked. “Shuffle Riff” became “Wait For You” and “Twist of Fate” became “The Right Place to Fade.”
So, what we have now according to a news item from Billboard today is a mostly new Gift of Screws to be released September 16th on Reprise that also has the rhythm section of McVie and Fleetwood from Fleetwood Mac on a number of songs.
The new track listing for Gift of Screws:
“Great Day”
“Time Precious Time”
“Did You Miss Me”
“Wait For You”
“Love Runs Deeper”
“Bel Air Rain”
“The Right Place to Fade”
“Gift of Screws”
“Underground”
“Treason”
Click here for my 2006 article comparing the aborted version of Gift of Screws to Under the Skin.
The plan is for Buckingham to tour in support of Screws this Fall and for a possibly-augmented Fleetwood Mac to tour in early-’09.
Visit lindseybuckingham.com to see the list of tour dates.
The State Historical Society of Iowa and the Central Iowa Blues Society will be wrapping up their 7th season of Blues Before Sunset on Friday, August 1 with a rare appearance of Bo Ramsey performing as a frontman.
Blues Before Sunset shows are put on in front of the State of Iowa Historical Building at 600 E. Locust in the middle of East Village in Des Moines. The show will start at 5:30PM and end at 7:30PM and is free. Food and beverage vendors will be available on site. They recommend you bring your own seating.
It’s pretty clear that Rhapsody/Real is taking this targeting of iTunes seriously. Even in the midst of bugs in their download mechanism they are drawing new members by offering insane discounts! Just in the last week they’ve announced two serious $9.99 downloads– both anthologies in the form of box sets. The first one on July 4th was the Doors Perception boxset which included all 6 Albums– 90 tracks (this deal ended some time today). The next one announced this morning was The Complete Led Zeppelin Collection which included all ten albums, plus the live BBC sessions AND the 2007 Mothership remasters! That was 165 songs for $9.99! This offer is now done as well. I’ll try to keep posting these deals here as I find out about them.
The comments on the slickdeals.net posting where I found this has a bunch of people bitching about the sound quality of these mp3’s. They are supposed to be 256Kbps, but some folks think they can hear the difference between these and 192K rips they did of their own CD’s. I didn’t notice anything in my car when I listened to them, but I haven’t tried these with headphones. Admittedly, I was wondering how they spun all of this content up so quickly unless they could on-the-fly convert their DRM content. At any rate, the Led Zeppelin deal is still a HELL of a good one!
I found out about Rhapsody’s mp3 store quite accidentally. I was doing some reading about Umphrey’s McGee’s “Jimmy Stewart” performances when I found a link to a Jimmy Stewart collection at Rhapsody which was all mp3. This was news to me. I was familiar with Rhapsody because Coke Rewards was affiliated with them since Sony killed off Connect. Both Connect and Rhapsody were lame as they needed special software and players to support their proprietary DRM media.
I had a collection of points going due to my Coca-Cola habit, and aside from burning points bidding hopelessly on a Canon EOS 5D camera I hadn’t found anything I wanted to buy or didn’t have enough points to buy and they got rid of the ability to convert the points into a BestBuy Gift Card. I was pretty disappointed in the Coke Rewards deal especially since Pepsi’s rewards could get you mp3’s from Amazon. I said as much in an online survery that mycokerewards presented to me recently.
So, as of June 30th, Rhapsody has mp3’s in addition to their DRM content! This is in a BETA mode so caveat emptor. I ran into my first issue with my first attempt to cash in some points. I found that they had Pieta Brown’s pre-One Little Indian catalog and I wanted to get that so I started with In The Cool. I happened to be sitting in an airport waiting to board a plane which was my first mistake. I cashed 225 points to get one album download and proceeded to check out. There are two ways to download the mp3’s: have the album bundled into a .zip file or use their downloader utility. I chose .zip. Well, needless to say they started boarding the airplane and I couldn’t finish it. So, I closed the lid of my laptop thinking that I’d be able to resume it.
Nope. As far as Rhapsody was concerned I downloaded the whole album except two tracks. I did a bit of searching on the ‘Net and found this BetaNews article which effectively describes the same problem. Rhapsody doesn’t allow you to re-download the album once they think you’ve got it.
So, I signed on with their support chat utility which effectively needed to hand me off to second-level support who issued me credits for the 10 tracks I didn’t get. This is a much better situation than described in the BetaNews article where they were out $22! This is the right thing for Rhapsody to do, I think, until they can get their software able to tell whether a download completed successfully.
While its software needs some fixes, it is great to have another source for mp3’s in addition to Amazon and eMusic. I plan to stick around as long as I’m collecting Coke points. One cool thing about Rhapsody is you can purchase albums without signing up for their subscription– unlike eMusic. For the next download I’m going to try to use their utility or at least wait until I have a dedicated connection and enough time to sit through the download.
The Sea and Cake, while considered one of the key bands on Thrill Jockey, is also a side project for most of its members, which is why last week’s announcement of a NEW album on the heels of last year’s brilliant Everybody is such a surprise. The gap between 2003’s One Bedroom and the Glass EP and Everybody was four years. In between we got a new Tortoise, new solo Sam Prekop, and new solo Archer Prewitt.
This time for their seventh full-length album Car Alarm, the band wanted to continue the momentum and, I assume tightness gained while the band did its extensive touring following Everybody. In fact, it was likely this condition of the band that allowed them to write and record this album in a record-setting (for the band) three months.
I still find myself listening to Everybody regularly, and my wife likes it as well, so I’m pretty excited to hear what the band delivers for this release given the unique approach. After seeing the band for the first time during the Thrill Jockey 15th Anniversary shows, I’ve committed to seeing the band on tour again, so I hope we get another extensive tour.
Tracklist:
01. Aerial
02. a Fuller Moon
03. on a Letter
04. CMS Sequence
05. Car Alarm
06. Weekend
07. New Schools
08. Window Sills
09. Down in the City
10. Pages
11. the Staircase
12. Mirrors
Finally a domestic record label has the sense to release the great new release from The Diplomats of Solid Sound Featuring the Diplomettes! Longtime Chicago Indie label Pravda Records. Although the instrumental releases were primarily on Estrus Records, this release coming out on Pravda makes sense as the Andre Williams album Aphrodisiac which utilized The Diplomats as his band as well as future Diplomette Sarah Cram on backing vocals.
The album is set to drop on July 8th and should be available via your favorite independent record store as well as Amazon and other online spots. This is good news for US fans of the band– the Italian Record Kicks releases are imports and really pricey! At the moment Amazon has one for $23! Dustygroove.com seems to be out of the CD at the moment with more coming at “the end of June,” but has the tasty vinyl version in at $18. According to the press release from Pravda these should be $14.98 MSRP, and indeed this is what Amazon lists the price to be.
This release has new cover art and packaging (you can see the Record Kicks cover art here). Otherwise, this is an identical release to the import version down to the “Hurt Me So (Lack of Afro Remix)” bonus track. The album was recorded live in the studio by Justin Kennedy at Minstrel Studios in Iowa city and subsequently shipped to Lack of Afro for final mixing and production. I think it is the live recording that gives the record its energy and ultimately why it stands up to repeated listening so well. Ultimately, the album was recorded in 2007 but it took a while to sort out what label was going to release it. In the meantime the band had very smartly put early mixes out on their MySpace pages. By The time the record was released most of their fans were already very familiar with the funk and soul of tracks like “Lights Out,” “Hurt Me So,” and “Come In My Kitchen.” Around my house, these songs are as familiar as any major label release would be and very much a soundtrack to our lives.
Even with the seemingly long career arc this band has had– I remember talking to Doug at a Bo Ramsey show in 1997 or 1998 at the Green Room in Iowa City about his “New Project” and the five albums since 2001– it seems like with the constant touring with the Diplomettes in tow has started to build a well-deserved buzz.
The Diplomats have at the moment about 11 shows coming up including three live shows in between Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and Coralville and a handful of festivals. Make sure you get out to see them and pick up this album while you’re at it.
The Diplomats of Solid Sound MySpace Page with samples from the new album.
The Diplomettes MySpace Page with songs from the new album
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Silver Dollar Cantina | Dubuque, Iowa | ||
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Triple Rock | Minneapolis, Minnesota | ||
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The Bottom Lounge | Chicago, Illinois | ||
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The Picador | Iowa City, Iowa | ||
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80/35 Festival | Des Moines, Iowa | ||
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Camp Euforia | Lone Tree, Iowa | ||
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Riverside Casino & Resort | Riverside, Iowa | ||
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Linneman’s Riverwest Inn | Milwaukee, Wisconsin | ||
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Music In The Park | Coralville, Iowa | ||
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KCCK Jazz Under The Stars | Cedar Rapids, Iowa | ||
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Friday Night Concert Series | Iowa City, Iowa | ||
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New Bohemian Festival | Cedar Rapids, Iowa | ||
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Rock Island Brewing Compnay | Rock Island, Illinois | ||
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Blankfest / Funny Bone Comedy Club | West Des Moines, Iowa |
