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)
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.
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.
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
Here is a taster of how we are going to celebrate when the Earles and Jensen Soundscans accelerate, this is just the tip of the iceberg wait till they totally take off then our pecks will really be glistening
The scary thing is, we were already working on a game based on the Beggars licensing department trying to place music in “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band 2″. It’s not gonna be very much fun to play, but we can promise the realism will compare favorably to the title above.
(Cody and Johnny, pic taken from Jason Escapist‘s Flickr page)
In addition to upcoming European dates and a NYC debut at the Siren Fest, Jaguar Love will be touring North America this summer supporting The Faint. More dates will be confirmed soon.
Jul 29 2008 - Ogden Theatre, Denver CO
July 30 2008 – In The Venue, Salt Lake City, UT
Aug 1 2008 – The Commodore, Vancouver BC
Aug 2 2008 – Crystal Ballroom, Portland OR
Aug 7 2008 – Henry Fonda Theatre, Los Angeles, CA
Aug 9 2008 – Soma, San Diego, CA
Aug 11 2008 – La Zona Rosa, Austin TX
Aug 12 2008 – The Palladium, Dallas TX
Aug 14 2008 – Variety Playhouse, Atlanta GA
Aug 15 2008 – Cats Cradle, Carrboro, NC
Aug 16 2008 – 930 Club, Washington DC
Aug 17 2008 – Trocodero, Philadelphia PA
Aug 20 2008 – Palladium, Worcester, MA
Aug 21 2008 – Opera House, Toronto, Ontario
Aug 22 2008 – Vic Theatre, Chicago IL
Aug 23 2008 – Sokol Auditorium, Omaha, NE
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?
As we feverishly prepare for the 8/19 release of Jennifer O’Connor’s ‘Here With Me’ LP/CD, we’re pleased to announce that along with upcoming dates supporting Jamie Lidell and Son Ambulance, Jennifer is playing with Wilco on the following evenings :
Sun 8/10 Wilmington, DE 7pm The Grand Opera House
Wed 8/13 Brooklyn, NY Doors 5pm McCarren Park Pool
In addition, “Hopeful” from Jennifer’s fantastic 2nd album, ‘The Color & The Light”, is featured in the upcoming motion picture, “The Strangers”, starring Liv Tyler and loads of freakish people wearing masks and wielding knives. The movie opens May 30, “only in theatres” as they like to say in the TV commericals.
