(Image lifted from ryan muir‘s flickr)

A.C. Newman and band are set to bring rollicking live renditions of Get Guilty‘s finest as well as some trademark charm to Terre T’s Cherry Blossom Clinic this Saturday, January 31 at 3PM EST.

WFMU can be found on the radio dial at 91.1 FM (NYC/East Central NJ) and on WXHD, 90.1 fm (Hudson Valley, Lower Catskills, Western NJ) and as always, online.  If you miss it, the performance and interview will be archived over at WFMU.org.

To say that we were impressed with this contest would be an understatement.  The entries ranged from nü american gothic weird to recycled internet meme.

At the end of the day, Stuart said it came to this:

“once the group realised beans was in fact represented (as a mosquito at the back) they gave him the prize!”

So, without further adooo…  congratulations Colocho from France. (yes, he is a true artist…only one name)

Upon hearing of his good fortune (and enduring a GITMO-esque indemnification process to prove he was indeed the creator of this original piece of art), Colocho exclaimed:

Hello,

mon véritable nom est Éric Girard , 36 ans, Colocho est mon nom d’illustrateur. Je vis et travaille à Lyon, France.

Je doit dire que la musique de Belle and Sebastian accompagne souvent mes séances de travail. C’est donc un grand honneur pour moi d’avoir été choisi par le groupe, surtout que la participation fut abondante et de qualité.

J’avoue qu’à ce jour j’ai encore beaucoup de mal à y croire, mon entourage également.
C’est surréaliste !

Mon dessin était tout en simplicité, encre, pinceau, papier… Je ne pensais vraiment pas attirer l’attention du groupe…

J’ai tout de suite eu l’envie de faire un dessin noir et blanc, mes amis et ma compagne m’ont reprochés de ne pas mettre une touche de couleur…

Cependant mon parti pris a été récompensé.

Je suis comblé… Cette nouvelle arrive au bon moment dans ma carrière, un coup de projecteur pour faire connaître mon travail.

Merci infiniment au groupe.

Merci infiniment à Matador Records.

Merci infiniment à vous.

Éric

We have consulted our French to English translator site and we are pretty sure we don’t see “remuneration” anywhere in that message.

Click here for a gallery of the finalists.  You all get the Matador B&S discography on CD.

Stay tuned for information on when these limited edition CDs will be on shelves.

Anna Ives is the very young, very adorable daughter of Zac and Amy Ives. Zac is co-owner of Goner Records, the singer for Final Solutions, and a flat-out great guy. The Goner Records BBS is currently holding an auction while Zac, Amy, and Anna are in Boston, where the latter is receiving specialized radiation treatment. The auction is to help offset the Ives’ mounting hospital bills. I’m here to encourage Matablog readers to either bid on some of the great finds that have made it to the block, and to offer their own donated items for auction. All of the needed information, including Anna’s story, can be found HERE.

The auction can be found HERE.

Read the Memphis Commercial Appeal story about Anna…

Additional questions not answered by those links can be directed to Eric Friedl: efriedl@gmail.com

Thanks!

If you’re looking for the proper way to observe Chris Lombardi’s birthday (rather than say, sending Chris a very lavish gift and/or cash) you might consider former Railroad Jerk/White Hassle frontman Marcellus Hall’s new band.

They’re playing tonight at the Blender Theatre — perhaps the most prestigious auditorium named after a rock magazine since the closing of the Metal Hammer Centre For The Performing Arts. I won’t be there, so tell me how it went.

hi

hi

With apologies to Pedro Almodovar.

Here are both sides of a label catalog that was published on LP innersleeves in our early days. Click on the images to see a larger and more readable version.

Filmed and and recorded in glorious analog truth, Pitchfork TV debuts it’s latest series “A>D>D” with Fucked Up, who brought the heat just hours after playing for some 12 hours in NYC.

Here is “Son the Father” and go to Pitchfork.tv for “Black Albino Bones” and “Twice Born”

Tour dates below the vid.

(Sonic Youth’s) Thurston Moore and scandanavian saxophone demon Mats Gustafsson are playing the following shows together starting next week.  It’s a big enough deal as is, but when you add a Cambridge date featuring a reunion of The Sickness (trunk of the Groinoids/Flesh Missles/Kil Slug/Upsidedowncross/Adolf Satan family tree — eat my dust, Pete Frame!), you’ve got the makings of an historic event.

It may not be of the magnitude of a Saturday Night Live appearance but other bands from Seattle have big news of their own to announce as well. In this case it happens to be news from our favorite bearded, guitar strummers of the Northwest, the Cave Singers, so of course we want to share it with people far and wide. Or at least people on the West Coast of the United States via the Matablog.

Anyhow they’ve been enlisted to show Department of Eagles around the West Coast. We invite you stop by one of their shows starting this week. We can promise they won’t make you sit through Rosario Dawson skits, that’s a Matador guarantee!

Fri, Jan 23 / Los Angeles CA / Troubadour

Sat, Jan 24 / Merced CA / The Partisan*

Sun, Jan 25 / San Francisco CA / Cafe Du Nord

Tue, Jan 27 / Portland OR / Doug Fir

Wed, Jan 28 / Seattle WA / Neumos

*show without Dept of Eagles

Good records? Check.

Friendly neighborhood indie retail staff? Check.

Sweaty, shirtless hardcore? Check.

If you’re around the Charlotte, NC area this Saturday, 1/24, be sure to stop in the Lunchbox and check out Fucked Up live in-store at 4pm. The band is stopping through during there current U.S. tour to help celebrate Lunchbox’s three year anniversary.

The Lunchbox 1419-A Central Ave. Charlotte

(Image poached from setoutrunning‘s flickr page)

Taking a breath between gigs on her seemingly never-ending tour, Jennifer O’Connor and her band stop by Austin’s KUT to perform a special live session. Austinites can hear it on Thursday (1/22) at 2PM on 90.5 FM, while the rest can stream from kut.org.

There’s more information to be found here.

The character in the center is not a Matador recording artist, but the gent on the far right most certainly is.  That’s Pink Eyes from multi-time Juno Award winning beat combo Fucked Up, and he’ll be adding his commentary skills to MTV’s “Detox” tonight (Jan 21) at 11pm eastern.   A few hours later, the Toronto vocalist can be seen as a guest on Fox News’ “Red Eye”.

If you’d rather not watch TV, however, you can always drive to Philadelphia.  Here’s the rest of Fucked Up’s current North American tour :

Wed-Jan-21 Philadelphia, PA Kung Fu Necktie
Thu-Jan-22 Baltimore, MD Talking Head (with Vincent Black Shadow)
Fri-Jan-23 Charlottesville, VA Outback Lodge
Sat-Jan-24 Charlotte, NC Milestone
Sun-Jan-25 Atlanta, GA The Earl (with the Carbonas, Bukkake Boys)
Tue-Jan-27 Gainesvile, FL Sluggo’s (with Iron Livers)
Wed-Jan-28 Pensacola, FL Engine Room (with Iron Livers)
Thu-Jan-29 New Orleans, LA Ducbo (with Iron Age)
Fri-Jan-30 Houston, TX Walter’s on Washington (with Iron Age)
Sat-Jan-31 Austin, TX Emo’s (with Iron Age and Annihilation Time)
Mon-Feb-02 Albuquerque, NM The Launchpad
Tue-Feb-03 Phoenix, AZ Phix Gallery
Wed-Feb-04 San Diego, CA Casbah (with Mika Miko)
Fri-Feb-06 Los Angeles, CA The Echo (with Mika Miko)
Sun-Feb-08 San Francisco, CA The Independent (with Mika Miko)
Wed-Feb-11 Denver, CO Larimer Lounge
Thu-Feb-12 Omaha, NE Waiting Room
Fri-Feb-13 Grinnell, IA Grinnell College – Gardner Lounge
Sat-Feb-14 Chicago, IL High Concepts Laboratory (early ALL AGES)
Sat-Feb-14 Chicago, IL Empty Bottle (late 21+)
Sun-Feb-15 Detroit, MI Crofoot – Pike Room

(The Chemistry Of Common Life – LP/CD/digital album, available from The Matador Store)

…on tour with Amy Ray…

…followed by February and March solo dates. If we don’t see you at one or more of these, hopefully it’s just the poor lighting.

(Here WIth Me, LP/CD/digital)

Don’t forget, kids…TONIGHT at the Virgin Megastore in Union Square, Carl and Co. will be playing an in-store to support Carl’s new LP/CD Get Guilty.

(photo by Daniel Corrigan)

A.C. Newman
Performance and Signing

Tuesday, January 20th
7:00 PM
Virgin Megastore Union Square Cafe
52 East 14th Street

Until then, you can check out the video of “The Changeling (Get Guilty),” the second song from Carl’s DUMBO sessions, posted today on stereogum…..

(J, Cody and Johnny wishing a GWB a fond farewell. Sort of.)

OK, a couple of club dates in the middle of some massive festival gigs on the NiN-headlined Soundwave clusterfück. If you’re attending one of the latter, be sure to say hi…as it’s gonna be a loooong day.

Saturday, February 21 Brisbane – Soundwave, RNA Showgrounds
Sunday, February 22 Sydney, Soundwave, Eastern Creek Fairgrounds
Monday February 23 Campbelltown – City Hotel with Minus The Bear and Straylight Run
Thursday February 26 Melbourne – NEXT! with Minus The Bear and Straylight Run
Friday February 27 Melbourne – Soundwave Festival, Melbourne Park
Saturday February 28 Adelaide – Soundwave Festival, Bonython Park
Monday March 2 Perth – Soundwave Festival, Steel Blue Oval

Remember that contest we ran over the holidays? The one where you could win every 7″ in our Jay Reatard Singles Series plus an autographed copy of the Beck split? For most it was a minor waste of time- but one randomly selected person actually won this thing!

Congratulations to Matt Elliot of Newfoundland, Canada! Enjoy the records!

Camera work and interrogation courtesy Blurt’s Jenna Young.

Whether he’s giving props to former UVA standout Jeff Lamp (above) or defending his fantasy sports addiction as more socially acceptable than internet porn (mental note : be sure to use this line someday), Stephen Malkmus takes everything Rotoworld’s Steve Alexander has to dish out. I’ve been (virtually) ass-kicked by SM on countless occasions, and thus, can vouch for his fantasy sports prowess, though learning his commitment to the craft extends to scanning the waiver wire whilst going thru airport security is a little sobering. For the sake of Malk’s competitors, TSA, can’t you do something about this?

Here’s my fave snippet from the interview :

Q : What is the best live act going right now? The popular answer seems to be My Morning Jacket, and I tend to agree.

SM: No – Endless Boogie.

‘Back In Black’ aside, AC/DC’s batting average during the tenure of vocalist Brian Johnson is substantially lower than that of countless Fall lineups during the same period. That said, the band’s recordings with Johnson’s predecessor, original howler Bon Scott (above), have more than stood the test of time, with patrons as diverse as Chris Lombardi and Mark Kozelek (ok, perhaps that’s not the widest cross-section) singing their praises. However, with the news South Scotland MSP Christine Graham wants to officially recognize the band (in light of Scott hailing from the town of Kirriemuir, Angus), The Times’ Joan McAlpine protests, “honour the achievements of our sons and daughters by all means…but only when they have done something worth celebrating. Sonic assault by wild men in mullets just doesn’t count.”

Robert Burns has already been castigated as a poor role model for young Scots on account of his sexual promiscuity and love of a dram. He also left us poetry of incredible lyrical power, whether he was philosophising on the lot of the common man, satirising authority or expressing tenderness towards his many lovers.

It kind of makes you look again at the middle-aged, middle-class white men who regard this music as the ultimate in authenticity. Perhaps they love it because unlike them, the band never grew up.

I’m not sure if “authenticity” registers particularly high on the list of most AC/DC fans’ fave attributes, but presumably Ms. McApline knows an awful lot about why someone else’s tastes differ from hers. She’s perfectly entitled to take dead, defenseless Bon Scott to task for sexism, but even crude characters have stories worth hearing. I’m not sure what having a mullet has to do with whether or not Scott & colleagues are genuine artists, but such superficial hangups reveal a little bit about the author’s credibility.

(image taken from in plato)

Ahem. February 10 and 11, Avalon, Los Angeles. Ticket info can be found here.

Times New Viking, in their own minds and in their own words. Today at noon on Viva Radio.

Viva Radio Presents
Me Plus You hosted by Ted Shumaker
with special guest Times New Viking
An in-depth interview and exclusive live songs at the Viva Studios.
Air Date 1/12/08, 12:00PM EST and available in the Archive Pt. 36
www.viva-radio.com/meplusyou

A.C. Newman recorded several tracks from his upcoming album Get Guilty at a studio in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood last Monday, and we filmed it. Click the video above to see the first one, “Like A Hitman, Like A Dancer” via Pitchfork.tv.

Don’t miss A.C. Newman at the Virgin Megastore in Union Square, New York, on January 20 at 7 PM.

Preorder Get Guilty, in stores January 20.

I always want to cook from Richard Olney’s Simple French Food. But I’ve done very little. My attention was drawn to this recipe by Edward Behr in the latest Art of Eating. He writes that he used to cook it a lot, but now “the combination no longer appeals much to me:” pork chops, apples, heavy cream and mustard. This is exactly the kind of combination that appeals to me, so I decided to make it.

Olney prefaces the section on pork by saying that its “somewhat flat, slightly sweetish, fatty and insidious” taste can pall after a while, and goes on to recommend various ways to complicate and cut it – fennel, sage, apples, mustard and other sharp flavors. I wonder if our pork chops in the the US today – even the heritage Berkshire black pig breed that I buy – have as much fat as the traditional French ones that Olney would have been buying in the ’60s and ’70s. Actually, if you click on that link, you’ll see a photo from last February of well marbled chops with thick layers of fat on the outside. More recently, the black pig chops I’ve been getting, even from Ottomanelli, lack the marbling and have only the layer of outside fat.

The recipe is easy. You peel, core and thinly slice apples and bake them for 15 minutes in a glass pan in a 400 degree oven. Meanwhile, brown the chops in butter for 7 or 8 minutes per side, remove them, and place them on top of the cooked apples. Deglaze the pan with 1/4 cup dry white wine, reducing by half, and dribble on top of the chops. Mix one cup of heavy cream with 1/3 cup Dijon mustard, whisking the mustard in bit by bit to taste (I like quite a bit of mustard), and pour on top of the chops, shaking the pan so that it gets down into the apples as well. Return the pan to the oven and bake 15 minutes longer at the same temperature.

The chops were too dry the first time, so I cooked them for slightly less than 15 minutes the second time. This is better, but requires hair trigger timing, since our too-lean pork chops go from too rare to overdone in about 45 seconds. I err on the rare side, though some people might be uncomfortable with that.

The real delight is the apples, soaked in pork juices and the creamy mustard mixture.

A career-spanning live EP, recorded last October in Brooklyn, NY. Available to own or rent at Rhapsody.

Amazing performances and exquisite recordings.

Here’s the brand new Fucked Up video, the first in the band’s history. Edited by Bajir Cannon/Shot by Brendan FitzGerald of VBS.tv

Order The Chemistry of Common Life HERE

Head’s up, Fucked Up’s January 20 show has been moved to Market Hotel.  Along with the Vivian Girls, support for the night will be provided by Pissed Jeans, 80′s Hardcore and dj services courtesy Gibby Haynes.

On the release date of A.C. Newman’s LP/CD – Get Guilty, Carl and the gang will play an in-store at Virgin Megastore in Union Square!

(image taken from forklift‘s flickr)

A.C. Newman
Performance and Signing

Tuesday, January 20th
7:00 PM
Virgin Megastore Union Square Cafe
52 East 14th Street

Earlier today, MLive.com reported the passing of original Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton at the age of 60. Dead of an apparent heart attack, Asheton’s pioneering work with the Stooges, New Order, New Race (alongside Radio Birdman’s Deniz Tek and Rob Younger) and Destroy All Monsters casts a major creative shadow over much of the music we obsess over.

(photo taken from Reverend Guitars)

Asheton will be sorely missed, and our thoughts go out to his friends and family.