While on their recent US tour, Mogwai’s Barry Burns had a chance to pop into a few places to flex his DJing muscles. He made it over to Viva-Radio’s Brooklyn studio on the day of the one of the band’s Music Hall show to record a DJ set and have a chat with Ted Shumaker. The results can be heard in all their glory next week.

Viva-Radio

Naked Fridays Pt. 27

Friday June 5th 4-5PM (Eastern Standard Time)

Photograph courtesy Bob Weston.  Left-to-right, Peter Prescott, Roger Miller, Clint Conley.  Not shown : technical advisor Dick Urine II.

Oh how we love thee, dearest Record Store Day. 

As if a Live Pavement LP, a Sonic Youth/Jay Reatard 7″ AND a Sonic Youth/Beck 7″ weren’t enough, we’re spreading the love with some live instore performances.  If you live in or around Memphis or Columbus, be sure to check out Jay Reatard or Times New Viking kicking it RSD style. 

(Picture taken from http://jp917.blogspot.com/)

Jay Reatard Live Instore

Saturday April 18 (known aliases: Record Store Day)

Goner Records 5:30pm

2152 Young Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee 

(Picture taken from http://wexarts.org/wexblog/?m=200702)

Times New Viking Live Instore

Saturday April 18 (known to his friends and loved ones as Record Store Day)

3pm @ Used Kids Records

1980 N. High Street in Columbus Ohio

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!

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!

Remember the glory days of summer? Sitting in front of your computer, patiently refreshing your browser, praying aloud for privilege of shelling out your lawn mowing money for every 7″ in the Jay Reatard singles series. You dreamt of righteous music (or ebay gold).

We know a lot of you weren’t able to successfully assemble the full set, but now you have one more chance. Enter our Jay Reatard 7″ contest to get the whole series AND a signed copy of the Jay Reatard/Beck split 7″. This time, no infuriating checkout debacles or delayed shipping. Just click on the banner below and enter your email. We will randomly select one winner on Monday, January 5th.

Good luck.

We’re really excited to announce that pre-order for A.C. Newman’s 2nd solo album, Get Guilty, is now available. You can get $3 off of the CD version and download an exclusive, pre-order only B-side immediately. The B-side is A.C’s take on the Go-Betweens’ “Love Goes On”. It rips. The song will show up in the “My Downloads” section of your account right when you complete your order. It’s available in both mp3 and FLAC format for audophiles out there!

Pre-order Get Guilty HERE
Listen to “There are maybe ten or twelve” on the Matador Sampler HERE

To celebrate new releases of some of our most beloved artists of all time, we’ve set up a couple of CRAZY bundles in the store.

Pavement- Deluxe Editions Bundle

An add-on to our current Buy Early Get Now promotion, you can now purchase all 3 available Pavement deluxe editions AND the to-be-release Deluxe edition of Brighten The Corners. Only $50 and you still get all of the Buy Early Get Now goodies!
Buy HERE

Belle and Sebastian Bundle

If you somehow missed the boat on one of the best bands of all time and have been drawn in by all of the positive vibes around the BBC Sessions you can pick up the first 4 of B&S’s classic albums PLUS the newly released BBC Sessions for only $45.
Buy HERE

Tune into Viva Radio today to listen to Ted Shumaker interview Jay Reatard. ENJOY!

Monday November 10th
Me Plus You Pt. 31
w/Special Guest
Jay Reatard
hosted by Ted Shumaker
www.viva-radio.com/meplusyou

Fucked Up are currently shacked up in North West London, in the legendary Maida Vale studios – recording a session to go out on BBC Radio 1’s Rock Show in the near future. Then they’re flying over to east London to play 93ft East TONIGHT for the Hokaben Festival.

But wait, there’s more! Secret show alert…. Tomorrow night, after the Brighton show, the band are coming back to London to play PUSH club at about 2am. So keep the caffeine rolling.

The second unreleased mp3 in our Brighten The Corners: The Nicene Creendence Buy Early Get Now went up yesterday! For those of you who for some inexplicable reason haven’t signed up yet the song is a live version of “Transport Is Arranged”.

We promised a some surprise goodies for Buy Early Get Now so without committing too much, there might…possibly….probably….be a few more incredible unreleased tracks coming along to supplement the two we promised and delivered

You can get into Buy Early Get Now on the Matador Store HERE or sign up at one of the fine retailers below….

1-2-3-4 Go! Records – Oakland, CA
Aboveground Records – Edgarton, MA
AKA Records- Philadelphia, PA
Atomic Records- Milwaukee, WI
Aural Exploits – Santa Monica, CA
Bull City Records – Durham, NC
Criminal Records – Atlanta, GA
Disconnected Records – San Diego, CA
Ear Candy Music – Missoula, MT
East Coast Music & Video – Greenville, NC
End Of An Ear - Austin, TX
Exiled Records – Portland, OR
Good Records – Dallas, TX
Graywhale – Salt Lake City, UT
Grimey’s New & Preloved Music – Nashville, TN
Guestroom Records – Norman, OK
Hard Boiled – Chicago, IL
Insound – New York, NY – Online Only
Jackpot Records – Portland, OR
Landlocked – Bloomington, IN
Laurie’s Planet of Sound – Chicago, IL
Lou’s Records – Encinitas, CA
Love Garden Sounds – Lawrence, KS
LUNA Music – Indianapolis, IN
Lunchbox Records – Charlotte, NC
Madcity Music – Madison, WI
Matador Records – New York, NY – Online Only
Mod Lang- El Cerrito, CA
Mojo- Tampa, FL
M-Theory – San Diego, CA
Music Saves – Cleveland, OH
Other Music – New York, NY
Parasol – Urbana, IL
Park Ave. – Orlando, FL
Paul’s Compact Discs – Pittsburg, PA
Permanent Records – Chicago, IL
Reckless Records – Chicago, IL
Repo Records – Philadelphia, PA
Siren Records – Doylestown, PA
Slowtrain – Salt Lake City, UT
Sound Fix – Brooklyn, NY
Square Records – Akron, OH
Stinkweeds- Phoenix, AZ
Tonevendor – Gainesville, FL – Online Only
Treehouse Records – Minneapolis, MN
Twist & Shout – Denver, CO
Underground Sounds – Ann Arbor, MI
Vintage Vinyl – St. Louis, MO
Von’s Records – West Lafayette, IN
Waiting Room Records – Normal, IL
Waterloo Records – Austin, TX
Wazoo Records – Ann Arbor, MI
Wuxtry Records- Atlanta, GA
Young Ones – Kutztown, PA
Zzz Records – Des Moines, IA

And, here are participating Canadian stores!
Blackbyrd Myoozik – Edmonton
Criminal Records - Toronto
Ditch Records – Victoria
Encore Records – Kitchener
Grooves Record Store – London
Listen Records – Edmonton
Music Trader – Winnepeg
Phonopolis – Montreal
Red Cat Records – Vancouver
Rotate This – Toronto
Scratch Records – Vancouver
Sonic Boom – Toronto
Soundscapes – Toronto
Zulu Records – Vancouver

Australian stores:
Big Star – Adelaide
Planet – Perth
Polyester – Melbourne
Red Eye - Sydney
Rockinghorse – Brisbane

Quote : ADAM ELLIOTT 2008.

So the Drowned in Sound sponsored ShredYrFace tour starts tomorrow in the UK. Just a quick reminder of those dates :

October
14 Brighton, England – Komedia
15 Liverpool, England – Academy 2
16 Leeds, England – Irish Centre
16 Leeds, England – Crash (TNV in-store)
17 Dublin, Ireland – Whelans
18 Glasgow, Scotland – School of Arts
19 London, England – Pure Groove (in-store) (3 p.m.)*
19 London, England – Beyond Retro (in-store) (5 p.m.)*
19 London, England – Rough Trade East (in-store) (7 p.m.)*
20 London, England – Electric Ballroom
21 Bristol, England – Fleece

No Age and Los Campesinos! will be part of the touring party in what will be an incredibly cramped tour bus, so have some sympathy for our TNV kids when you see them.

*One band will play one store – find out on the day who’s playing where.

We’ve been chit-chatting for a while now about adding a feature to the Matablog specifically devoted to a former Matador band and/or old moment from the label’s history, and such a move is long overdue. It just so happens this notion came up again a day or two after some rocket scientist posted on the Sonic Youth.com message board that Matador was a big heap o’ crud because we “dropped Bardo Pond.” Listen pal, unless your name is Darren Mock or Barry Hogan, you can fuck off. We put out 4 Bardo Pond albums and did the very best we could.  Seriously, the web is Blame The Label Central. How about blaming some of the fans who aren’t interesting, attractive, charismatic or funny enough to get anyone to check out their favorite bands?*

But I digress. There’s a video reel marked “U-M1V70″ featuring a succession of mid ’90’s promotional clips by Matador bands. Some shadowy figure has uploaded it’s contents to YouTube (thank you very much). From time to time, we’re gonna link to a few of them and give you, the adoring public, yet another opportunity to lambaste The Record Company Assholes for their failure to make fill-in-the-blank (in this case, NYC’s fantastic Railroad Jerk) as big as Interpol. Or conversely, lord it over everyone under the age of 35 just how fucking awesome you were to have known about this stuff the first time around. If you wanna talk about music, by all means, feel free, just keep in mind space is limited (we’ve got a strict 75% recriminations / 25% rock division we’re sticking to, mostly out of habit.

Railroad Jerk – “These Streets”.  Directed by Jim Spring & Jens Jurgensen, from the album ‘Raise The Plow’

(* – we do genuinely believe the majority of Matador record buyers are extremely interesting, attractive, charismatic and funny.  Especially when they are giving us money. Even when they’re griping on message boards)

(pic taken from In Plato)

Cat Power & DIrty Delta Blues (sans Judah this time) will be NBC’s “Last Call With Carson Daly” tomorrow (Tuesday).  Eddie Izzard will also be appearing. Not with the DDB. We think.

Two more important media events happening next week to make you aware of.

First, next Monday online radio session:

Viva Radio Presents
Me Plus You hosted by Ted Shumaker
with special guest Jennifer O’Connor
An in-depth interview and exclusive live songs at the Viva Studios.
Air Date 9/1/08, 12:30PM EST and available in the Archive Vol. 24
Check out VIVA-RADIO

Then on Friday, September 26th, Jennifer O’Connor will light up the radio airwaves when she is a guest on WNYC’s Soundcheck with John Schaefer.

Tune in at 2:30PM on 93.9FM in the New York area or WNYC online to hear Jennifer’s live interview and two-song performance.

Hey Brooklyn!

Jennifer O’Connor will play a Free In-store at the lovely Permanent Records in Greenpoint this weekend, Saturday, August 23rd at 3 PM! What a wonderful way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and you can pick up a copy of her newly released album, Here With Me.

Jennifer O’Connor
Free In-Store Performance
Saturday, August 23rd
3:00pm
Permanent Records
181 Franklin St.
Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY

Mission Of Burma’s start-to-finish performance of ‘Vs.’, live from Chicago’s Pitchfork Music Festival, will be webcast today at 7pm EST. Who knows what you’ll see this time? Springa at the side of the stage? Closeups of Bob Weston’s hands? I’m gonna have my view blocked by a combination of trees, tall people and road cases, but you can tell me what it looked like on the computer the next time I see you.

Once upon a time before Matador had all sorts of trained specialists doing every little thing, we’d team up on a variety of tasks. After a couple of years in the wilds of the record biz, we finallly broke down and hired a full-time publicity-human.

The hire in question was Spencer Gates, an old pal of ours from the 1980’s boston rock’n'roll scene wars. Though mentally manipulating Spin editors and pursuing TV bookings wasn’t previously Spencer’s forte —- we’d first encountered her via her awesome job co-hosting the Mystery Girls show on Cambridge’s WMBR many years earlier — to say she took to the gig like she’d been doing it all her life was an understatement. The insight, humor and attitude she brought to the office every day not only made her the perfect person for the job, it sometimes felt like we’d all been doing it together forever. And I mean that in a good way.

Spencer played an absolutely pivotal role in the success of Pavement, Liz Phair, JSBX,Bettie Serveert, Pizzicato Five, Guided By Voices, Railroad Jerk and many others you know and love. She was a tremendous friend to the label’s artists and it would not be an exaggeration to say there’s a period in the label’s history that might’ve turned out very differently were it not for her.

Spencer passed away on Sunday, July 6. Our thoughts are with her friends and family.

(from Brian Turner’s Flickr page)

There were really too many highlights to list. But I’ll try, anyway.

* – The Feelies covering “Outdoor Miner”…and absolutely slaying with material from throughout their illustrious career.
* – watching WFMU’s Brian Turner forced to give props to American Express.  File under “Things You Will Probably Never See Again”
* – Sonic Youth -  turning old chestnuts “The World Looks Red” and “Making The Nature Scene” inside out. 90+ minutes of selections from across a 27 year span. If you’re one of the folks that paid scalper dough for a ticket, you actually got your money’s worth.
* – some guy wearing a Drazen Petrovic throwback.  Had I worn mine, the hair-pulling would’ve been outta control.
* – fantastic blast from the past sightings :  See/Hear’s Ted Gottfried, Richard Kern, Ken Katkin, acting/journalism double threat Brad Holbrook.
* – The Staten Island Ferry. Every day, it brings people to at least one location that doesn’t suck.

(OK, Brad Holbrook wasn’t there. But I was just wondering how he chose to celebrate our Nation’s birthday, and if he picked an event other than Sonic Youth and the Feelies, he’s a BAD AMERICAN)

(Mogwai in Mexico City last month, photo taken from remusmx’s Flickr stream)

We’re pleased to unveil the first MP3 from the upcoming Mogwai LP/CD, ‘The Hawk Is Howling’ (out September 23) – “The Sun Smells Too Loud” is a fairly substantial hint that said album is gonna be a scalp-scorcher.

As mentioned previously, the following North American dates are very much confirmed and tickets are on sale :

September 2008

3-Portland, OR @ Music Fest NW (Mogwai headlining ; also appearing Del The Funkee Homosapien, Steel Pole Bathtub, Polvo, Jaguar Love and many more)
4-Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo
5-Victoria, BC @ Element
6-Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom
8-San Francisco, CA @ The Grand Ballroom
9-Los Angeles, CA @ Wiltern Theatre
10-Tucson, AZ @ The Rialto
12-Austin, TX @ Stubb’s
13-Dallas, TX @ Granada Theater
15-Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse
16-Richmond, VA @ The National
17-Washington DC @ 9:30 Club
18-New York, NY @ Terminal 5
19-Philadelphia, PA @ Starlight Ballroom
21-Monticello, NY @ ATP Festival
22-Boston, MA @ Wilbur Theatre
23-Montreal, QC @ Metropolis
24-Toronto, ON @ Kool Haus
25-Pontiac, MI @ The Crofoot
26-Chicago, IL @ Congress Theater
27-Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue

Fuck Buttons provide support on all of the above shows.

It’s the start of the Summer on Alma Road. All the signs are here. Not just because the sun is shining, a sudden addiction to ice cream or my skin looking even more horribly pale than usual, but because there’s a constant stream of Matadorian bands making their way across the country.

The Cave Singers are currently living the high life in Amsterdam. Come tomorrow they’ll be back hitting London’s Bush Hall in West London, then boomeranging up the country and back to the capital next week for the Wireless festival.

Jaguar Love finally hit the UK! They’re picking up the Wireless baton from The Cave Singers and playing the Friday of the festival then onward and upward onto Scotland and Ireland.

Friday 4 London, Wireless Festival
Saturday 5 Brighton, Audio
Monday 7 Bristol, Academy 2
Tuesday 8 London, 100 Club
Wednesday 9 Leeds, Cockpit
Thursday 10 Manchester, Roadhouse
Friday 12 Balado, Scotland T In The Park
Saturday 13 Punchestown, Ireland Oxygen Festival