by Klaus Kinski (and Fred Armisen)

Fred meditates on his top ten...

In my tenure as BV's tallest and prettiest contributor, I've noticed that one of the most polarizing figures we mention on here is the great Fred Armisen. It's like, any time we mention this dude all the negative-Nancys crawl out of the wood work. Oh well... You know what they say ('they' being people who use terrible quips to express themselves); "Haters gonna hate." The reality is, Fred Armisen rules. He's one of my most favorite, funny, uber-talented oddballs in the biz. He's consistently funny on SNL, no matter how abysmal the sketch may be. His show Portlandia (which returns January 4th 2013 on IFC) is one of the funniest shows to hit the gogglebox in recent memory. And he keeps it real with small-venue residencies and club shows. Fred recently hipped us to the top 10 records of 2012 that floated his boat.

In addition to Portlandia's imminent return (many guest stars included), and the Portlandia book which is currently available, don't forget the Fred is hosting the Snow Ball Ball at the Bell (Ball) House on Sunday December 16. The show also features guest DJs Tunde Adebimpe (from TV On the Radio), Peter Hale (from Here We Go Magic) and more!

Check out Fred's 'Best of' list, below...

Continue reading "Fred Armisen names his Top 10 LPs of 2012; 'Portlandia' Season 3 coming soon"

After teasing folks with a few names here and there -- like Run DMC most recently -- Austin's annual Fun Fun Fun Fest (Nov 2 - 4) has revealed it's full line-up, including Public Image Ltd, De La Soul, Superchunk, Santigold, Refused, X peforming Los Angeles, and lots, lots more. 3-day passes go on sale at 10AM CST.

Full FFF Fest lineup is below.

Continue reading "Fun Fun Fun Fest full lineup (De La Soul, Refused, Fucked Up, Public Image Ltd, Santigold, Sharon Van Etten, Rakim, X, Converge, Japandroids & more)"

photos by Chris Graham and Rae Graham

Metric/St. Vincent

7:32pm Metric wrapped up a touch early; partly because one new song ("Lost Kitten") was stopped 10 seconds into it and Emily decided to strike it from the set. Aside from that odd error, Metric played a fair set. They cited the show as their "public debut" of Synthetica and they did play mostly new material (7 out of 11 songs), most of which sounds promising. It's always hard to judge new material accurately as the audience doesn't know it so it always comes across slightly weak or stiff. Metric opened their set with newbie "Artificial Nocturne" (also the album's opener). It was one of the stronger new tracks. The other stand outs were "Youth Without Youth" (when played live it seemed to lose it's sluggishness of it's studio version) and "Nothing But Time", a synth/piano number that builds each verse until drums kick in and the song finishes with a flourish of Emily Haines' Pro-One synth. The band closed with an acoustic version "Gimme Sympathy" that had pretty much the entire amphitheater singing along. [The Province]

Here's more pictures from the super-stacked Saturday (5/26) line-up of the Sasquatch Music Festival which happened Memorial Day Weekend in Gorge, Washington -- including Metric, St. Vincent, The Shins, Dum Dum Girls, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Couer de Pirate, Sol, Com Truise and more. The first set from Saturday (5/26) are HERE and Friday (5/25) are HERE. More from Day 2 below and still more Sasquatch pics to come.

Continue reading "Sasquatch 2012 in pics - the rest of Day 2 (Metric, St. Vincent, Shins, Dum Dum Girls, Araabmuzik, and more)"