Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance

In his grumpy but informative memoir, Wareham, the lead guitarist and vocalist for seminal independent rock bands Galaxie 500 and Luna, recounts the highs and lows of his life as a musician. While Wareham's narrative voice is not particularly warm, he is refreshingly frank (though quite defensive) about the personal conflicts that broke up Galaxie 500, as well as about his later, somewhat more conventional rock and roll antics, which included drug use and infidelity. For most readers, the heart of the book will come in the first hundred odd pages, which focus on the financially difficult but artistically fruitful run of Galaxie 500, featuring Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang, in the late 1980s and early '90s. The stories of nights spent on the floors of college radio station managers and recording classic albums in three days are the stuff of do-it-yourself legend, and at its best, the book serves as a clear narrative of the travails of independent musicians in the days before mp3s and Pitchfork Media (which gets a snarky shout-out). Wareham gets a lot of mileage out of frustration with booking agents, band mates and radio stations, and over the course of the book, one gets a prevailing sense of how truly difficult it can be for some great musicians to break through the mass media wall. [Publisher's Weekly - Amazon.com]

Continue reading "Dean Warehem's (Luna) new book & related tour dates"

DOWNLOAD: Times New Viking - Drop-Out (MP3)

In addition to opening tonight (Feb 24) and tomorrow's Super Furry Animals shows at Bowery Ballroom, Times New Viking are playing a book release show in Brooklyn on March 1st. Check out the flyer above. Check out more tour dates, and more book parties, below....

Continue reading "Times New Viking - 2008 Tour Dates, 'Perfect From Now On'"

"We make to-do lists, shopping lists, wish lists...but somehow our lists just don't ROCK. The ones in this new book do....The Official Punk Rock Book of Lists is the handiwork of Handsome Dick Manitoba of the Dictators and Amy Wallace of the original Book of Lists. They're billing this book as "Essential bathroom reading!!!! " but we like it at the breakfast table, actually. We loved learning how about The Pogues got their name and what Mario Batali's favorite pizzas in the world are. (What does that have to do with punk rock? According to this tome, pizza is the MOST punk rock food of all.)" [beatrice]

I have two copies of "The Official Punk Rock Book of Lists" to give away. E-mail BVCONTESTS@HOTMAIL.COM (subject: punk) if you want to win one. Two winners will be picked and contacted. What else?

DOWNLOAD: Jim Walsh talked about it on WNYC (MP3)

Their legend is entrenched in rock history: Three neighborhood friends form a band in a Minneapolis basement, recruit a 12-year-old brother to play bass, and become one of the most critically acclaimed rock acts of the 1980s. Along the way there's comedy, tragedy -- and a lot of beery folklore. Longtime Twin Cities music critic Jim Walsh joins us to share his oral history, "The Replacements: All Over But The Shouting." [WNYC]

Continue reading "if I read more, I'd probably read..... The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting: An Oral History"

Jimmy Webb, VIP, Jackson & Leigh Lezark @ Misshapes - July 28, 2007 (CRED)

Misshapes (the weekly Saturday night party at Don Hill's in NYC) ended for good this past Saturday night (Sept 8, 2007). David Byrne and the NY Times were among those in attendance.

Where will young, hip tourists looking for a good time on a Saturday night go now? Will they make the trip over to Brooklyn to experience the equally hip dance craze that's been going on over at Studo B? Or are they too glamorous to cross the river to mingle with the less fashion-conscious breed of hipster that I just learned about in an article (by someone I know) in the NY Post?...

"Manhattan has larger venues, but Brooklyn people who are dialed in probably don't give a crap about those places," says Todd Patrick, a Brooklyn concert promoter known as Todd P. "More tours are stopping in Brooklyn, and the scene is a billion times better than when everything revolved around Manhattan."......"The early-20s hipsters left in Manhattan are a more dance-club oriented crowd," says Patrick. "People who are paying Manhattan rents are interested in glamour, not rock 'n' roll."........"Manhattan hipsters are definitely more into fashion, or at least labels," says DJ Mike Nouveau, part of Manhattan party promoters the Ruff Kids, who are often seen in clothes by the trendy brand Surface to Air. "Where someone I know might go to Barneys to buy an outfit, someone in Brooklyn will go to [used clothing store] Beacon's Closet."....[NY Post]

EW: What did you do when you finished reading Deathly Hallows?

Daniel Radcliffe: I was in a car at the time. I had my iPod in, and I was listening to Sigur Rós. I don't know if you know them. They're a band who do sort of instrumental music, but it's just amazing. I think they're from Scandinavia somewhere. They've got an album called Takk...I was listening to, and it's very, very appropriate [for the end of Deathly Hallows]. I was listening to it and I remember I was sort of turned away from everybody else in the car, just so I could be in my own little world when I read it. What did I do when I finished? I think I just put the book down and carried on listening to the music. Just looked out of the car window, 'cause I couldn't think of what else to do. I'm still struggling to really take it in. It doesn't leave you in a hurry [EW.com] (thx Jeff)

Harry Potter also likes The Hold Steady, and Art Brut:

"Very very cool...the most entertaining [band]...they're great" - Daniel Radcliffe on Art Brut, to Conan O'Brien

Whether Feist will be reading Harry Potter at the 826NYC benefit is still unknown, though some of you were definitely spotted reading it at the 2007 Village Voice Siren Festival. Photos of Art Brut playing the 2006 Siren Festival, HERE. Some recent Sigur Ros & Iceland news, HERE.

Hold Steady @ Shake It, Dec 9, 2006 (CRED)

'Harry Potter' favorite The Hold Steady have a big, free, headlining show coming up in Brooklyn's Prospect Park on August 9th. They also have Craig Finn also has a much smaller, free, NYC show coming up - inside a Harry Potter-selling Barnes & Noble on September 13th.

Want your (photobooth) picture to appear in the artwork for the next Hold Steady single? Details on how you can make that happen, HERE. All tour dates below....

Continue reading "The Hold Steady playing B&N & other 2007 Tour Dates"

DOWNLOAD: Harry & The Potters - Save Ginny Weasley (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Harry & The Potters - Wizard Chess (MP3)

and again....

Continue reading "Harry Potter spotted @ the 2007 Siren Festival"

a Harry Potter tree on Mercer St., NYC - July 20, 2007 (CRED)


Saturday is of course the Siren Festival in Coney Island. Are you going?

Also in NYC - during or after
* Sudanese music @ Summerstage
* Hal Wilner does Doc Pomus @ Prospect Park
* Cadence Weapon & Muggabears play Galapagos
* F'd Up & Pissed Jeans are at Southpaw
* Gogol Bordello plays Irving Plaza again
* Matmos & So Percussion @ Lincoln Center again
* Scissors for Lefty are at Union Hall
* Aimee Mann plays Warsaw
* Stay home and read Harry Potter

What else?

From Matmos

We just got back from a bucolic recording session in Montana where we worked on a new collaborative sextet project with So Percussion, ate BBQ, and played a wild and beer-soaked show for the townsfolk of Whitefish. Having blown one deadline already, Drew is desperately pulling the manuscript of his book about Throbbing Gristle's "Twenty Jazz Funk Greats" for Continuum's 33 1/3 series into quasi-acceptability. Martin is squiggling away with his all synthesizer, all improv trio project Phase Chancellor (with Nate Boyce and a now-out-of-the-wheelchair Jay Lesser). Both Martin and Drew are gearing up for some apartment hunting adventures in Baltimore, Maryland, because Matmos is moving there as of August. But before that, we're bracing ourselves for a month of European touring this summer, including a set at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. Citizens of New York City, please note that Matmos & So Percussion will be playing two shows at Lincoln Center this summer in honor of National Contact-Mic Awareness Month. The concerts will take place July 20th and July 21st, and each night will feature different special top secret guest stars, so you should go to both. Please come and show your support."