As if I needed more reasons to feel like a jerk for being on an airplane (albeit with Method Man) instead of staying a few more hours and going to this party and shotgunning Tecate with Bill Murray: live footage of Sir Bill helping out The Like! A big hitter, the Lama.
SXSW 2010: Complete Coverage
All photos/videos by David Greenwald
More photos/videos of Coachella 2010′s non-musical side after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Photo by angrycitizen.org
(Editor’s note, April 2010: This post is from September 24, 2007 but the MP3 link was broken. Now it is not.)
The last album I listened to before leaving New York yesterday morning was the Strokes’ Is This It, which remains one of this decade’s crowning achievements as well as a consummately New York album. It was a fitting end to a fantastic summer; now, I’d like to kick off my return to the West Coast with Ryan Adams covering the band’s “Last Nite.” And, uh, Madonna. I’m slowly amassing live Ryan covers for a series of posts like the ones I did for Elliott Smith, so if you have any good ones, send them my way.
Ryan Adams – “Like a Virgin” (Madonna)/”Last Nite” (The Strokes) (live): mp3
More: Bootlegs | Ryan Adams
“A productive 9-hour day yesterday,” The Wrens, indie rock’s most talented-while-infuriatingly unproductive band, wrote on Facebook this morning. “Got most of the last studio/tech knots untangled… Got easily the best drum sounds we’ve ever done, which, as you engineery types know, is key for starting recording, if only for the morale-boost and ‘cause they’re such a pain to overdub. Got two songs tracked, one of which is definitely not being thrown back in the water… After a couple false starts over the last year or two, super happy to be able to say that new recording is really under way.”
We’re happy too, guys. Luckily 2003′s The Meadowlands, Rawkblog’s 19th best album of the 2000s, is still so good, it should hold us all over a little while longer.
In March, Hipster Runoff, The Colbert Report of indie rock, preemptively ruined the conversation about Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti’s much-anticipated new album by, well, saying it was much-anticipated.
“In the post-chill wave / ternative era, we are in a position to finally ‘embrace’ Ariel Pink. Maybe we have grown up, and learned more about what we want ‘good music’ to be,” Carles wrote. “Rallying around Ariel Pink might be our last chance to turn our backs on the mainstreamication of indie. The Great Lo-Fi Hope will save us from what we have become.”
For those (select few?) who listen to this kind of music based on actually liking it rather than its hipness quotient/Pitchfork rating, this may sound a little Theater of the Absurd, but all the same, writing about this record after Carles’ skewering feels a bit like walking into a trap, as does the almost unavoidable urge to use the phrase “godfather of chillwave” (or “nostalgia” or “melted tapes from my mom’s basement that I lived in until I was like 30″ or… you get the idea). Nevertheless, Before Today happens to be a really good album that deserves some words. Here they are. Read the rest of this entry »
Pavement / all photos by David Greenwald
Like a busted bar forced to start carding, the media (and Rawkblog) outcry over Coachella’s delinquent ticket-taking seemed to have made an impact on Sunday. My ticket was scanned, finally, my bag was checked, and I hear would-be attendees with fake wristbands had them sliced off at the gate and were sent packing. To which I say: great! After two days of claustrophobic crowds, the polo fields finally felt expansive, the tents more welcoming. Also great: the lack of crackdown on public drug use, which left the entire five-stage venue smelling like Lil Wayne on a rough night. I’m glad Goldenvoice set its priorities straight, if a little late. My priority, of course, was seeing Pavement’s reunion — and did they ever deliver. My notes and photos after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Dirty Projectors / all photos by David Greenwald
Despite a full night’s sleep (in a bed!), the sustenance of a frappuccino and In and Out for lunch, and a willing heart, we still managed to stupidly get stuck in traffic and arrive too late for Camera Obscura. Luckily that, and being briefly locked out of our house about 10 hours later through no fault of our own (natch), were the only flubs in an otherwise beautiful day at Coachella. My notes after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Photo by David Greenwald
Good lord, Coachella. I haven’t been here since 2006; after SXSW, a festival that spreads its 10,000+ badge and wristband holders across dozens of downtown Austin venues, I forgot how overwhelming the sight of 75,000 people roaming across the Empire Polo Club looks. (And smells. It smells like pot.) I didn’t get a photo pass this year and idiotically forgot my point-and-shoot’s new batteries yesterday, so instead, some brief notes: Read the rest of this entry »
