You know, not everyone in the music industry descends upon Austin for the SXSW Music Conference. Somebody’s got to hold the fort down. After all, these records ain’t gonna sell themselves. This is my minute-by-minute account of March 18, 2010.
9:30 am: I’m here 30 minutes early because I had to be up and at the DMV by 8 am. Wondering who in Austin is still up drinking from last night. Office is eerily quiet.
10:30 am: Still the only one here… I think.
11:18 am: Chase a dog around the office in an attempt to remove a mail order package from his mouth. Sorry J. Roger from Phoenix… let me know if your corners are bent.
11:43 am: IMing with my cousin about who it would be creepier to get hit on by (if we were girls): The Fonz or Alex P. Keaton.
12:12 pm: Make a list of fake band names. Entries include: The Shittybutts, Sweet Love, Mike Watt’s Sweaty Socks, The Super Falcons, The Burnin’ Blazin’ Mississippi Madmen (feat. Dennis DeYoung), Tugboat Crash, Doucheslayer, Cocks-A-Fire, Wicked Neptune.
12:32 pm: Get a call from Kris Chen who is either drunk or psyched. Or both.
12:35 pm: Mentally count all the people I know who are at SXSW.
12:42 pm: Get a phone call from mom to tell me that Red River is “off the fuckin’ hook.”
12:45-1:40 pm: Stared at a paperclip.
1:45 pm: Ride the elevator a couple of times.
2:00 pm: Download a program that makes my digital photos look like Polaroids. Psyched.
2:03 pm: Realize that 99% of the fun of Polaroids is waiting for the pictures to develop. Bummed.
2:12 pm: Debate telling coworkers about my plans to time-travel.
2:45 pm: Watch #2 seed Villanova squeak out an embarrassing overtime win over #15 seed Robert Morris. Almost call the university to demand a refund of my tuition.
2:50pm: Sit in Patrick’s chair. Try to sign a bunch of cover bands. No one buys it.
3:01pm: Check the Bro’d Trip twitter account to see if Adam is going on without me.
3:05: Decide to take my own Bro’d Trip… to the deli.
3:25-3:55 pm: I think I just took a nap.
4:05 pm: Think about taking up cigarettes again.
4:06 pm: Think about taking up grass again.
5:00 pm: Look up Facebook profiles of girls who dumped me in high school.
5:10 pm: Look up Facebook profiles of kids I beat up in high school.
5:30 pm: Use a Google application to determine the distance of my nightly jogging route. Feel great that it’s 1.2 miles. Immediately feel awful that I felt great over 1.2 miles.
6:15 pm: Count the emails I’ve received today: 16. New all-time low.
6:25 pm: Laugh out loud at email #17 from one of our SXSWers that simply reads “Fuck you.”
The pent-up frustration of mastering and recording engineers who have had to deal with members of an ignorant public for years has finally found in an outlet in a series of viral YouTube videos featuring computer animated characters speaking in computer-generated English accents.
The videos are brilliant, and point to the REAL revolution in the music industry over the past two decades, which is the proliferation of affordable (if often crappy) home-recording solutions. Someone needs to tell all those newspaper reporters that ProTools and GarageBand have had at least as much effect on the industry as P2P and torrents. It’s hard to believe now, but in 1980 it cost a lot of money even to cut a 2-song hardcore single. Analog recording is slow, expensive and requires a ton of skill. Actually, the same goes for decent digital recording, but it’s a hell of a lot cheaper and faster than it used to be. There are now approximately 200 times as many releases coming out annually as there were in 1980, and that doesn’t even account for the huge quantity of music that doesn’t see a commercial release and just lives on MySpace pages, YouTube videos and CDRs.
The above video would be enlightening and hilarious all on its own, but there are tons more. The videos have apparently struck a chord: “OMFG classic bigtime relate to this!” and “BAHAHAAAAA. I am approached by so many douche-bags like that guy all the time. Stupid FruityLooping, clip-activating, preset-selecting chumps!!!”
Enjoy:
Jon. Wow. I have to say you really made those beats bang. Bro. Bro. Get me?
This special version features exclusive artwork by Fernow is hand-assembled, stamped and editioned. Limited to one-hundred (100) copies, these records will make it into select stores and we’ll have it available for purchase at the Matador Store on Tuesday October 20 at 3:00 PM EST - They’re bound to go fast so mark your calendars and set your alarms.
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If you’re in New York City next week for the CMJ festivities, you can catch Cold Cave at the following venues:
This is a hearty, homey chicken stew. Like many Keralan dishes, it uses spices like black peppercorns, cloves and nutmeg and thus feels strangely Western… because we imported those spices from Kerala, from the sixteenth century onward. The main non-Western ingredient is coconut milk – I used canned, because I wasn’t up to hammering open the 16-20 dessicated supermarket coconuts it would have taken to yield that much milk. Doesn’t it look delicious? But that isn’t actually it – all the pictures of the stew turned out murky, so I put in the Keralan okra salad that I served with it – the creaminess there comes from yogurt.
I really enjoyed this dish – another winner from Madhur Jaffrey’s sadly out of print A Taste Of India. But it didn’t come close to her recipe for lamb in pickling spices, which I made the following day. It turned out much better than it did last year – I’m much more comfortable with the whole process of cooking Indian than I was then.
One thing I’ve noticed in Indian food, and especially Keralan dishes is that you often start by cooking something with a main ingredient, setting aside that first part, and then re-adding a different version of the main ingredient again at the end. In the okra recipe, you fry the okra in seasoned oil, remove it with a slotted spoon (reserving the oil), and mix it with yogurt that has ground black mustard seeds in it. Then you take the reserved oil and fry whole black mustard seeds in it (with asafetida and dried red chilis) and add this to the yogurt-okra mixture. The black mustard returns, in a different form, with the okra-infused oil, at the end of the preparation.
Similarly, in the chicken stew, after preparing a soffrito of onions and whole spices, you essentially braise the chicken pieces in thin coconut milk and add lime juice. Then, in part two, you make a second soffrito of shallots in coconut oil, add curry leaves, and then thick coconut milk – which joins the thin coconut milk in the main stew for a second simmering.
I don’t know why cookbooks don’t tell you the reasons why you do things. You usually pick up on this stuff after preparing a number of dishes a number of times. This particular theme – adding a variant of an ingredient toward the end of a dish, in a different form – seems to me quite common in Indian cuisine.
Fucked Up dropped by Matador UK today, to catch up on some paperwork.
We also managed to get some new press shots done, exclusively for the Matablog.
“THE BEATING HEART OF THE UNDERGROUND.”
Fucked Up’s Halloween weekender continues tonight and the UK tour kicks off next week :
07 Nov : 93 Feet East, London
08 Nov : Freebutt, Brighton
09 Nov : Barfly, Birmingham
10 Nov : The Zodiac, Oxford
11 Nov : Cavern, Exeter
12 Nov : Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff
13 Nov : Sugarmill, Stoke
14 Nov : Bodega, Nottingham
15 Nov : Kasbah, Coventry
16 Nov : King Tuts, Glasgow
17 Nov : Corporation, Sheffield
18 Nov : Cockpit, Leeds
19 Nov : Roadhouse, Manchester
20 Nov : The GYC, Guildford
As you can see, Times New Viking have been having the time of their lives on the current Drowned in Sound endorsed Shred Yr Face tour with the lovely No Age and Los Campesinos! kids.
There’s still a fair few dates to go (see below) but if you happen to be London bound this weekend, be sure to get yourselves down to the Super Shred Sunday instore frenzy. Details had been kept secret until now, but i’m pleased to announce which band will be playing which store at what time and how you get in and what it’s all about etc etc:
As with all things in life, there’s a catch – to get into the instores, you’ll need to obtain yourself a wristband.
There’s just 300 wristbands for the Super Shred Sunday instores. The first 100 wristbands will be available direct from Pure Groove Records when you pre order the exclusive Shredyrface 7″ (featuring all three bands), these wristbands will get you free entry into all 3 shows on the Sunday. For wristbands call Pure Groove on UK number 0207 778 9278 or visit www.puregroove.co.uk.
The remaining 200 wristbands will be available via Rough Trade East when you preorder the exclusive Shredyrface 7″ and will gain you free entry to the Beyond Retro and RT East instores.
For wristbands call Rough Trade East on 0207-392 7788 or visit www.roughtrade.com.
Remaining Shredyrface dates:
17 Oct Whelan’s, Dublin
18 Oct School Of Arts (14+), Glasgow
20 Oct Electric Ballroom (14+), London
21 Oct Fleece, Bristol (18+)
22 Oct Academy 3, Manchester (14+)
(photo above of the Rough Trade East performance where they played Rook from start to finish and I nearly cried like a baby several times)
Having spent 48 hours in the company of the wonderful Shearwater I have learned the following:
1) They are an incredibly nice group of individuals,
2) Jonathan possesses a voice that defies human ability and laws of nature,
3) Tissues are absolutely necessary as losing one’s dignity at a show tends to undermine you in front of friends, esteemed colleagues and complete strangers.
Photos below of the Bush Hall show where the band (and audience) finished up proceedings around the grand piano for a stunning unplugged version of ‘Rook’ swansong The Hunter’s Star:
All photos taken by me. Big thanks to “The Power of Monk” at The Local and Phil Adams at Rough Trade East.
Shearwater return in November for an extensive European tour. Bring a hanky.
November:
7th – Botanique, Brussels (B)
8th – De Nachten, Antwerpen (B)
9th – Tivoli, Utrecht (NL) – w/ Destroyer
10th – Club 106, Paris (F) – w/ Silver Mt Zion
11th – Le Bataclan, Paris (F) – w/ Silver Mt Zion
12th – L’Epicerie Moderne, Feyzin (F)
13th – Palace, St-Gallen (CH)
14th – Le Romandie, Lausanne (CH)
16th – Manufaktur, Schorndorf (D)
17th – Postbahnhof, Berlin (D) – w/ Okkervil River
18th – Beatpol, Dresden (D)
19th – Nachtasyl, Hamburg (D)
20th – Voorhuit, Ghent (B)
21th – Crossing Border, Den Haag (NL)
22th – St Giles in the Fields Church, London (UK)
23rd – Taylor John’s House, Coventry (UK)
24th – Komedia, Brighton (UK)
We occassionally have trouble generating sufficient publicity for some of our acts, so I can only sympathize with the plight of a P.R. maven enlisted to try and convince the Hartford Courant to interview her scalper client. If such businesses can achieve legitimacy through media management, that’s awesome news for loan sharks, cockfight organizers and meth dealers.
Given the somewhat obstructed view nature of the seats in question, wouldn’t “last chance to hear The Police” be a fairer way of flogging these tickets?
Today is the first day of my 10 date midwest run with Son Ambulance. Right now I’m sitting at The Old Mattress Factory or The Matt Bar and Grill as it says on my pint glass – eating some fish tacos and looking at 13 different large screen TVs showing baseball and golf.
This afternoon I visited Antiquarium Records. I got a used copy of Grizzly Bear’s Yellow House on CD for $4 and I spoke with Chelsea.
JO’C: Yes, I’ve heard of them somewhere. No, I’m kidding – I love their record too. To continue the Matador theme we have going here, what is your favorite Matador band of all time?
Anything else you’d like to add for the Matablog readers?
Chelsea: Keep buying records and going to record stores!
JO’C: Wise words.
I would like to note that this was a charming store with very nice people and lots of vinyl! When I told Chelsea I was on Matador and what I was there to do, she remarked that she wasn’t cool enough for Matador – that I should wait for the owner to come back because he was cooler. I just want Chelsea and everyone else to know…that they ARE cool enough for Matador. Matador loves you. And so do I.
If I had found it at the beginning of the set, I’m not sure I would have carried on. It was a banana skin, thrown at my feet as I played last weekend’s Download festival. On the outside, someone had written “Bizzle you black cunt”. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Being who I am, I’d probably do it again. I’m pretty sure my DJ wouldn’t though. We’re used to getting looks and things like that when we tour middle England, six black guys getting out of a van, you can see they’re looking at you and getting defensive. That can get frustrating, but you deal with it. This was different. Why did they have to bring my race into it?Lethal Bizzle, Guardian Music Blog, 6/20/08
Matador and What’s Your Rupture? are pleased to announce a joint release: the Year Of The Pig EP from Toronto’s Fucked Up.
Out worldwide on July 22, the EP is an expanded version of the 12″ single released by WYR? in mid-2007 (and by Vice in the UK in early 2008). In addition to the original 18-minute title track and the flipside, “The Black Hats,” there are three edits of the title track and three unreleased tracks. Each edit and each unreleased track will be featured on one of three 7″ singles, each with a different sleeve, to be released in the US, the UK, and Japan respectively.
“Year Of The Pig” is the second in a series of songs based on the Chinese zodiac. It is about the plight of sex workers in Canada. The initial release, and a companion concert, generated $4,000 for a prostitution rights charity in Toronto. Read more about the issues, and the notorious Robert Pickton case, at this blog post by the band. Featuring keyboards, an ethereal female guest vocal and multiple, interlocking musical sections, it is Fucked Up’s most ambitious work to date.
12″: Year Of The Pig / The Black Hats
7″ (US): Year Of The Pig (US Edit) / Mustaa Lunta (new track)
7″ (UK): Year Of The Pig (US Edit) / Anorak City (new track — Another Sunny Day cover)
7″ (Japan): Year Of The Pig (Japanese Edit) / For My Friends (new track)
CDEP: All of the above
Fucked Up will be playing three shows in Calgary later this month, and will tour Europe throughout July and August.
This is another recipe from Ruth Rogers’s River Cafe Pastas book. It’s simple: you remove the seeds and juice from cherry tomatoes, then mash them into a sauce composed of one part traditional balsamic vinegar and two parts wine vinegar, with salt and pepper – it marinates for at least an hour. Cook the spaghetti, drain it, return it to the pasta pot, and add the tomato-vinegar mix and fresh basil and stir over high heat for a minute or so.
It was as yummy as it looks, though somewhat sweet. This might be a function of these particular tomatoes. It could also be my balsamic. Next time I’ll increase the proportion of wine vinegar (which I prefer to balsamic anyway).
Everyone at Victory is ecstatic about the forthcoming album from Hawthorne Heights. It is by far their best material to date. When Victory and Hawthorne started our relationship in 2003 it was always about beating the odds. Our country has just seen and experienced historic change with the Democratic nomination of Barack Obama. Everything happens for a reason and there is tremendous positivity in the air.
We have lived in a reality of petty disputes, unresolved misunderstandings, unhealthy friction and negative sensationalism for too long. Forgiveness and the ability to reunite are powerful gifts. They create a spirit. Couple that spirit with great music and you have something that is extraordinary and transcendental. You cannot change the past but you can affect the future. There is a bigger lesson and story here than just releasing a new album. Victory, and I know Hawthorne Heights, are thankful to be a part of that.
While some segment of the rock biz is all agog today over the new Weezer clip —- featuring a myriad of YouTubey sensations (Chris Crocker, Tay Zonday, etc.), I would like to humbly remind each and everyone of you that a musically superior outfit from Sweden has already been there and done that.
Rivers Cuomo might have a Harvard education and share the same surname as a former NY Governor, but he’s never managed to wrangle Jim Varney’s participation in a music video. Granted, he’s still young, but the rest of pop culture is playing catch-up with The Brainbombs. Why should Weezer be any different?
I’d mentioned earlier that we were hoping to get some reports from Patrick and Natalie about how things are progressing for Jay Reatard and Times New Viking on their first dates in the UK. Of course, I made this comment without remembering just how difficult it was to obtain an internet connection at Pontin’s Holiday Camp, site of this weekend’s All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival.
That said, while we might have to wait another day or two for their field reports, I’m pleased to announce a mole deep within Barry Hogan’s organization has leaked the following video from Day One.
For the record, I personally believe No Age have other songs besides a cover of “I Shot The Sheriff”, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
6 bristol venn festival
8 london beaconfield gallery
9 london beaconfield gallery with carter/tutti
12 dublin future days festival
15 amsterdam holland festival special program stockhausen mikrophonie
17 berlin festhall kreuzberg with carter / tutti
18 praha archa teatro
19 wienna szene wien
20 lubljana teatro
21 barcelona sonar festival
“Don’t get me wrong, slugger,” scolds The Morning News‘ resident efficiency fetishist Josh Allen. “I love ‘More Than a Feeling.’ But it’s four minutes and 47 fucking seconds long. I don’t have time for that kind of nonsense.”
My scientists told me that the perfect song length had to be closer to three minutes than two, but definitely shorter than three minutes. Three minutes is where bloat starts to set in. Where the band thinks: Hey, let’s do the chorus seven times. Hey, let’s give the saxophone guy a real moment to shine on this one. Hey, let’s add another bridge.
Just look at what clocks in between two and a half and three minutes: “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “We Got the Beat,” “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” “Good Times Bad Times,” “I Would Die 4 U,” “Paranoid,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Debaser,” “God Only Knows,” and “Fall on Me.” These are not only stone-cold classics but they also encapsulate all that is great about the band without wasting your goddamn time.
The scientists then dug up this song by a group that pretty much defines one-hit wonder: the La’s. The song is “There She Goes,” and is so flawless that it instantly made everything else the band did pointless. This ditty is two minutes and 42 seconds, and is all about songwriting economy.
I listened to it and said, in my rich and sonorous timbre, in my typically concise and absolutely-nailing-it fashion: “Here is a song that has everything I need and nothing I don’t.”
The main riff acts as the intro. The verses are the chorus. The solo is 100 percent fat-free and leads right into a tidy bridge. And then we’re back where we started. It’s like some ingenious IKEA futon or Japanese love hotel where every component is doing double-duty. When “There She Goes” is over, I guarantee absolutely no one in the room goes: “Jesus, finally.”
I’d hit upon the perfect song length. I fist-bumped somebody.
Set up by a clearly over-worked and under-appreciated Brit hack, it’s nice to know us PRs can expect helpful and constructive feedback from journalists:
I’ve had beef daube (Provençal farmhouse stew) in restaurants, but never goose. I recently read Richard Olney’s memoirs about cooking and living and France (Reflexions, and the repeated references to daube made me want to try some. Then I remembered that I own the Poultry volume of Time Life’s The Good Cook series, which Olney co-authored, and sure enough, on pages 60-61, there’s a mouth-watering depiction of a goose daube.
(above: the goose pieces ready to be broiled, next to a comforting bottle of Chateau Figeac which we drank during the prepartion)
The ingredients are somewhat daunting. In addition to a fresh goose that has been butchered (the breast cut into 6 pieces), you need several sheets of pork rind and two calves feet, cut in half and then split lengthwise so that they will release their gelatin more easily. The goose pieces are then placed on a rack under the broiler for 20 minutes to reduce the fat – a good 4 cups came off. The pork rinds, calves feet, and goose pieces are then layered with chopped carrots, shallots, onion and a bouquet garni including a piece of scraped, dried bitter orange rind, in a daubière. I didn’t have a daubière (they’re hard to find and quite expensive) so I used a heavy enameled casserole. You fill the pot up with white wine (I used a Faiveley white burgundy), bring to a boil, and then cook over low heat “at the slightest suggestion of a simmer” for 5 hours. This took me to 3 AM, at which point I left it to cool and put it in the fridge.
(above: some of the pork rind)
(above: the layering process)
(above: adding the wine)
The next day I removed it from the fridge, skimmed off another tremendous quantity of fat, and slowly re-heated it – Olney recommends an hour and a half, so that the goose pieces don’t disintegrate. Some of the fat-juice is ladled off for the “inevitable accompaniment to daube” which is macaronade, essentially macaroni with parmesan cheese and a ladelful of daube juices. We also served some freshly shelled English peas.
French food is really made to accompany wine: the actual meal is the combination of the two, not one or the other. Olney’s menus are included in his book, and get more insane as he got older. A typical one from a meal he served Aubert de Villaine (of Romanée-Conti) in 1981 – and I swear I really did open the book at random, included Champagne Krug 1973, Chevalier-Montrachet (Niéllon) 1978, a magnum of Domaine Tempier rouge 1964, the great Rauzan Ségla 1900 (!), and Monbazillac 1874 for dessert.
We settled for a nice Coron 2003 Gevrey-Chambertin followed by a couple bottles of affordable Bordeaux, then a $9 Salice-Salenterno, and a bunch of digestifs. Hmm, going the opposite direction pricewise from Olney. Not to go all tangential, but this is a perennial problem in serving wine: start with the best or the worst? Comments, please.
And the daube: well, the goose meat was falling off the bone, more mildly flavored than I expected. The broth was really brothy and not stewy, and I’m not sure if that was right. Perhaps I needed more vegetables, or maybe I didn’t get the slightest suggestion of a simmer correct. I do have 2 pounds of calves feet in my freezer, and 2 massive pots of goose stock made from all the parts that I didn’t use in the daube, so I suspect I’ll revisit this topic.
I don’t know exactly which gang signs are being flashed here, but imagine what Randy Foye could do on a regular basis with this kind of support?
Also, there’s no truth to the rumor after the game, Kevin McHale tried to swap the Jicks’ rooting interest to Danny Ainge in exchange for a copy of ‘Bark Along With The Young Snakes’.
