This weekend Portlandians previewed a few tracks from Yo La Tengo’s new album Fade via some wild geo-targeting magic at the giant tree in Overlook Park that doubles as Fade‘s cover-star.
Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo had this to say: “I am reminded of the oddball great Beach Boys song “A Day in the Life of a Tree,” from Surf’s Up and sung on that record by their manager at the time Jack Rieley (adequate vocalists obviously being hard to come by in the Beach Boys proper), covered once and only once by YLT–Sept. 17, 1998, at Maxwell’s.”
Here’s what happened, set to the song “Ohm”, from Fade:
(EDITOR’S NOTE : The damage done to Norton Records‘ Brooklyn warehouse by Hurricane Sandy has been covered elsewhere ; if you’ve already purchased the mix CD’s mentioned below at the Maxwell’s shows, you can still help Norton out with a donation here For everyone else, the following message was sent to the Yo La Tengo mailing list earlier today).
Hi everybody, Thanks to all of you who were able to attend this year’s Hanukkah shows at Maxwell’s, and I hope those of you who could not followed the bouncing ball here. As we’ve done the last two years, we’re going to make the mixes that Georgia, James and I compiled available to you the downloading public for 24 hours: noon Friday December 21 until noon Saturday December 22, and that’s eastern standard time. These are drawn from our record collections–the music is not BY us, just SELECTED by us. Each download will cost $10 and every penny will be donated to our pals at Norton Records, who were very nearly wiped out by Sandy. (Read all the grisly details here.
But wait! there’s more . . . you will also have the opportunity to pick up two custom mixes from the incredible Norton catalog, one compiled by Miriam Linna and one compiled by Billy Miller. And we’re still not done!! The good people at Three Lobed Recordings have graciously allowed us to offer downloads of the mix we sold during night six. All you’ve got to do is go to http://www.yolatengo.com/forsale/ on Friday at noon.
Esben and the Witch unveil another cinematic music video for Deathwaltz from their new album Wash The Sins Not Only The Face (pre-order here) – the same track you might have heard re-worked by Mr Dave Sitek just the other week.
Shot in their Brighton, UK hometown the Deathwaltz video was partly shot on a high-speed Phantom HD Gold camera, shooting at 1000 frames per second, allowing super slow-motion shots, as you might have seen in such modern classics as Inception and Jackass 3.5, it makes everything look mind-bendingly time warped.
On the road next year, Esben and the Witch play the below tour dates, with tickets the Brighton show available to those pre-ordering the album at Brighton record store Resident. The vinyl version of the album comes with a bonus 7″, featuring the Dave Sitek re-working and exclusive track ‘Trail’, only available at shows and from independent record stores.
Somebody walked off with Thurston Moore’s circa ’66 Jazzmaster (above) last night around midnight at the Best Western Inn (501 N 22nd St). If you have any info about this guitar, please let us know.
We’ve selected the winning entrant in the recent Interpol Turn On The Bright Lights: The Tenth Anniversary Edition Facebook/Spotify “Where Were You In 2002″ playlist competition. Matthew Phillip Ordes took the prize for, among other things, his essential inclusion of Hot Snakes’ “Suicide Invoice” and his brazen selection of Spoon’s “Metal Detektor” from A Series Of Sneaks (an album that which came out in 1998 but, in fairness to Matthew, was reissued by Merge in ’02 – great fucking song in any year).
Matthew, look out for your sure-to-be-weird-in-all-the-right-ways video montage of Interpol drummer Sam Fogarino rocking your playlist, as well as an autographed copy of the new reissue. Everyone, here’s your winner:
(above : angry mob reacts to the news that at least two or 3 people didn’t even mention the Total Control 7″)
Around this time every year, your overpaid overworked editor attempts to coax a list of favorite recordings, books, television programs, life events, etc. out of the label’s artist roster and our rock biz colleagues. In the past, the exercise has been an arduous process, fraught with nagging, teeth-gnashing and no shortage of reluctant participants. In more recent times, however, the serial oversharing epidemic that’s run rampant throughout all online activity has infected our bands and staff alike. The rhetorical question, “who fucking asked you?” cannot be applied in this instance, because they were all asked. For some historical perspective, here’s last year’s pile. Questions or comments about our lousy tastes and/or blatant omissions are welcome (but not necessarily appreciated). And away we go!
