Editors' Note: June 3, 2010

The cover article in The Times Magazine on Sunday profiled the singer and political activist M.I.A. While discussing her efforts to draw attention to the civil war in her home country, Sri Lanka, she was quoted as saying: "I wasn't trying to be like Bono. He's not from Africa -- I'm from there. I'm tired of pop stars who say, 'Give peace a chance.' I'd rather say, 'Give war a chance.' The whole point of going to the Grammys was to say, 'Hey, 50,000 people are gonna die next month, and here's your opportunity to help.' And no one did."

While M.I.A. did make those remarks, she did not make the entire statement at the same point in the interview, or in the order in which it was presented.

The part that begins, "The whole point of going to the Grammys," up to the end of the quotation, actually came first. The part that begins, "I wasn't trying to be like Bono," and ends, "Give war a chance," came later in the same interview. The article should have made clear that the two quotations came from different parts of the interview. [NY Times] (via)

DOWNLOAD: M.I.A. - Haters (MP3)

'Maya' cover art

The most combustive song on M.I.A.'s third album isn't loud or chaotic. Built on a mildly ominous, off-kilter beat -- plus an incessant shoosh like a bag of coins being shaken -- it bloops along with the grace of a janky PopCap game. But the sneakily titled "Lovealot" is perhaps the riskiest gambit yet from the 32-year-old artist born Maya Arulpragasam.

"Lovealot" alludes in part to the iconic, viral photo of a pistol-wielding Russian/Islamic couple -- the husband, a terrorist leader killed last year by police, and the wife, a teenager who tried to avenge his death by suicide-bombing the Moscow subway (at one point the song was titled "A/bdurakh/man/ova," after the girl's surname). Merely 20 seconds in, M.I.A. spits, suddenly, "Like a Taliban trucker eatin' boiled-up yucca / Get my eyes done like I'm in the burka," and then, "Like a hand-me-down sucker throwin' bombs out at Mecca," and on and on. What's more, when she purrs the line, "I really love a lot," she stretches the last two words so they sound like "I really love Allah." [Spin's review of 'Maya']

For the past week or so, as you probably heard, M.I.A., like Courtney Love before her, has been "feuding" with NYTimes' writer Lynn Hirschberg (a "ginger") over a not-so-favorable but not-SO-bad-either profile (cover story) on the singer in the NYT Sunday Magazine (a key part of which aims, successfully or not, at M.I.A.'s "terrorist" cred/claims). It all started when M.I.A. tweeted Lynn's phone number after the article was posted on NYTimes.com. The most recent development is a song (above) posted on the NEET Records blog, accompanied by unedited parts of the interview (part of which concerns truffle fries) (how M.I.A. got audio of her own interview is unclear).

M.I.A.'s shows this summer include the headlining slot at NYC's HARD Fest at Governors Island on July 24th. Her album's tracklist is below...

Continue reading "the whole annoying M.I.A./NY Times thing + new cover art"

"Over the years, [The National's] Matt [Berninger] has accumulated a flock of snide nicknames from his band mates, including the Dark Lord, the Naysayer, Mumbleberry Pie, Mr. Knee Jerk, Mr. Sony Headphones and the Echo Chamber -- the last for the coterie of musically astute persons whom Matt frequently invokes supporting his opinion of whatever song they are arguing about. Since the only one of these gifted listeners Matt has ever introduced to the others is his wife, Carin Besser, who until recently edited short stories at The New Yorker, it is Aaron and Bryce [Dessner]'s belief that Matt is not the only fiction expert in the marriage. Matt's assessment of the situation is: "Everybody thinks everybody else has secret ulterior motives because we all do. We purposefully set up decoys and red herrings to attack a song. That we're all playing mind games is sort of funny, but it's also frustrating."" [NY Times]

The National's temporary NYC venue, the 'High Violet Annex', opens May 11th.

"Join New York Times journalists and some of today's most celebrated talents and thinkers from film, television, music, theater, dance and books, including Cirque du Soleil, Jimmy Fallon, Natalie Portman, Jeff Bridges, Carrie Fisher, Pulitzer playwrights and much more." [Tickets are on sale]

Iggy Pop @ 2008 Baltimore Virgin Fest (more by Bao Nguyen)

The NY Times is having "A Conversation with Iggy Pop" on June 24th.

The godfather of punk takes on the language of romance and gets "dangerously near jazz" on his new album, Préliminaires, inspired by French author Michel Houellebecq's 2005 novel "The Possibility of an Island." Hear the musician discuss his influences and his work. Interviewed by Ben Ratliff, New York Times jazz and pop music critic and author of "The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music."

Iggy's last NYC appearance was at this year's Road Recovery Benefit.

by Andrew Frisicano

(Tinmariwen photo by Thomas Dorn)

The six members of Tinariwen...are Tuaregs, a nomadic people spread across the Sahara who staged fierce, unsuccessful rebellions during the 1990's in Mali and Niger.

Tinariwen was formed by exiled Tuaregs in a refugee camp in Libya. A Tuareg rebel leader from Mali bought the band its first electric guitars and amplifiers and used its songs for propaganda during the rebellion. A decade of uneasy peace later, Tinariwen sings stark, hypnotic songs about the harshness of desert life and a still-smoldering rage.

With electric guitars replacing more traditional lutes, the songs can suggest the kind of bleak one-chord blues that John Lee Hooker played - music with African origins that has been reworked again in Africa. Every so often, Tinariwen's choppy guitar chords create a kind of North African funk....Yet the power of Tinariwen's music comes not from its modern elements but from its ageless ones: from the Arabic and North African turns of the melodies, from the way terse lines add up to propulsion and profundity, from the austere power of the drone. Although the lyrics are often melancholy, there's no self-pity, just a spartan determination. Most of the singing was done by the group's five men, but in "Aymana," men intoned an overlapping drone note while the voice of a female singer, Mina Walet Oumar, rose above them, sharp and incantatory.

Tinariwen's music seems inseparable from its origins. With the drones and circular patterns, songs can extend like sweeping desert landscapes. And like a nomad traversing those sands, Tinariwen's music carries only essentials and needs nothing more.-[NYTimes, on Tinariwen's 2004 Joe's Pub show]

The band just released a live DVD, Live In London, on World Village, and was recently featured in Al Jazeera's six-part documentary The Music of Resistance - see the clip below.

Last year, Tinariwen re-released its 2007 album Aman Iman (translated: Water Is Life) on vinyl on the UK's Independiente label (streaming here). In 2008, Craig Finn and Tab Kubler of The Hold Steady referenced Tinariwen in a Times' "Playlist" article. Kubler said, "Their approach to the electric guitar is radically different from anything else I've ever thought of before. It sometimes makes me feel like I'm not exposing myself to things that might make me become a better player or enjoy music on a different level." (The Hold Steady have some dates of their own coming up too.)

Tinariwen was last in NYC for a 2007 Highline Ballroom gig and an Other Music in-store. All future US dates and video clips below...

Continue reading "Tinariwen videos & 2009 Tour Dates (NYC, Coachella, etc..) "

David Byrne & dancers @ Radio City Music Hall in NYC (photo by Jane Kratochvil)

"C warned me that there was a not so complimentary review in the NY Times this morning, and advised me against reading it. I don't read all the press and reviews we get, but as I do read that paper regularly, I would have inevitably stumbled upon it. Apparently the reviewer, Jon Pareles, loves the Bush Of Ghosts album and has some kind of nostalgia for those days. We all know music snobs who like to remind everyone that they heard so and so back when they were really good. This, however, is the same reviewer who leveled charges of "cultural imperialism" against Bush Of Ghosts in his Rolling Stone review back in the early 80's. For years afterwards, almost every interviewer asked me to respond to his charge, and many press articles quoted it. It was like the joke about "When did you stop beating your wife?" -- the charge was silly and ill-informed, but one was constantly put on the defensive, and even assumed to be guilty, simply by the question being raised. It was annoying, it lasted for years, and it hurt.

Given that track record, I guess 30 years from now he'll figure out what this show was about.

I still haven't read the review, and don't intend to. While taking criticism on board can be constructive, it can also be detrimental to the creative process if it's considered while that process is still under way. It undermines one's enthusiasm and will -- which is OK, beneficial even, but only after a tour (for example) is over. This review, by all reports, wasn't helpful criticism anyway -- it seemed to be one of those reviews that comes from some psychological issues the writer has -- and therefore even a belated reading is not going to help us refine what we do." [DAVID BYRNE]

Missed both Radio City shows? Good news! David Byrne has added a June 3rd show at the Wellmont Theater in Montclair, NJ. It happens after (over a month after) he gets back from the European leg of the "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today" tour. $65.00 & $45.00 tickets go on sale Saturday at 10 AM.

All tour dates, and TUTU VIDEO FOOTAGE, below...

Continue reading "David Byrne adds a post-European-tour NJ SHOW, takes on NY Times Radio City reviewer +++ Radio City TUTU video"

If the prospect of a single company mounting a Guns n' Madonna tour worries you, it also concerns some in the business. Via e-mail, Tom Morello, the guitarist in Rage Against the Machine, told me that a Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger could have huge consequences.

"Fewer and fewer gatekeepers mean fewer choices and higher prices for fans," he wrote. "One huge monolith means no choice at all. Fans and artists must develop some organized counterweight quickly or resign themselves to their fate." [David Carr, NY Times]

"Fans who thought they were going to 'The Promised Land' of Springsteen found themselves in the 'Badlands' of ticket scalpers," Schumer said. The senator added that he wants to put the brakes on Ticketmaster's proposed merger with Live Nation, the nation's largest concert promoter. [Newsday]

At 35, Bird has spent almost 15 years working relentlessly for the sort of exposure he now seems poised to enjoy. "Six years ago, when I was still struggling, I just wanted to go anywhere in the world and play for 300 people," he says.

And yet when I first met Bird a couple of weeks before the Hideout show, he didn't have the air of an underappreciated artist finally about to be given his due. On the contrary, he seemed worried about losing control over a career that he is accustomed to micromanaging. He wondered, for instance, if "Noble Beast" was perhaps being promoted too aggressively. Bird's publicist had wanted him to play one of the first shows on his coming tour at Radio City Music Hall (capacity: 6,000). Bird was concerned that it was too big a venue, that he might fail to make a connection with the audience and that things could easily spiral downward from there. They compromised on Carnegie Hall, which seats about 3,000.

"A lot of bands get hyped and go from playing for no one to playing for thousands of people, most of whom are standing there with their arms folded saying, 'O.K., are you really as good as everyone says you are?' " Bird told me. "I've never had to deal with that. I've gotten here by winning one person at a time."
[Sunday's NY Times Magazine]

"Oh Me by the Meat Puppets - In late 1993, when Nirvana played their famous "MTV Unplugged" show, they were on tour with Curt and Chris Kirkwood, the brothers who made up the heart of the Meat Puppets. At this point, Cobain was using pretty heavily, and barely made it through soundcheck. During the taping, the Meat Puppets joined Nirvana for three songs, all Meat Puppets originals.

Each band gave a gift to the other that night: Nirvana, by bringing an influential but essentially underground band up to play with them; the Meat Puppets by basically surrendering those wonderful songs to Nirvana, specifically to Cobain. Obviously, having those songs on Nirvana's "MTV Unplugged" album provided the Meat Puppets with some pretty fair publishing royalties (Allah be praised!). At the same time, thanks to that legendary concert, those songs become Nirvana's -- specifically they are associated with Kurt Cobain and that performance. That's got to be an honor for the Meat Puppets. But who knows, maybe it also stings.

I say this only because the originals are so good; indeed, my own preference is for them, especially the fully electric version of "Oh Me," with its fuzz and building distortion and feedback. Curt Kirkwood's soloing is so haunting and sad on this, growing until the sound is profoundly huge. It's a song that deserves to be heard, especially during a season that is supposed to be about giving."
[Charles Bock's holiday playlist of non-holiday treats]

Continue reading "Charles Bock lists songs, updated Meat Puppets tour dates"

The 2009 NY Times Arts & Leisure Weekend takes place at the Timescenter in NYC from January 8-11. Tickets are on sale for events that include talks with Vampire Weekend, Patti Smith, Salman Rushdie, and Tom Cruise (thx Jeff).

Vampire Weekend are also playing 4 NYC-area shows in December. Patti Smith is playing two.

With music now available with a single, offhand click, it's easy to forget that songs are not born whole, polished and ready to play. They are created by artists who draw on some combination of craft, skill and inspiration. In the coming weeks, the contributors to this blog -- all accomplished songwriters -- will pull back the curtain on the creative process as they write about their work on a songs in the making.

Continue reading "measureformeasure.blogs.nytimes & Andrew Bird tour dates"

Both Misshapes, held every Saturday for five years, and the other party, held on the eve of major holidays for nearly eight years, were regular destinations for young downtown clubgoers. Their unexpected back-to-back demise left the skinny-jeans-and-Converse set — along with the promoters who cater to them — asking the same question: What’s next?

.....“It’s just getting harder and harder to do weekly parties, unfortunately, at least for me,” Michael T. said, adding that the right site is difficult to find. “In a city just inundated with bottle service and things of that nature, that’s not me, and also ultra-hip Brooklyn ‘I don’t bathe and I have a beard’ is not me.” [NY Times]

Establishments that don’t charge at the door are dotted throughout the city, but the Lower East Side is the capital. Within two blocks of Pianos — which usually has paid shows in its main space but free events upstairs — there are 10 or so such bars. Expand the radius a bit and you have dozens of choices. The Living Room is the Bottom Line of this sphere, packing in four or five singer-songwriters a night. With a similar average of sweaty rock bands, Arlene’s Grocery is the no-cover CBGB. [NY Times]

"There’s a world of cross-references in Dirty Projectors’ music: stuttering modal riffs from Mali, the meandering melodies of opera or modern music theater, pygmy antiphonal vocals, Captain Beefheart, Zimbabwean and Congolese rock, King Crimson, Talking Heads, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks. Usually Mr. Longstreth sustained a sweetly androgynous croon as the music jittered all around him, but in “Police Story” — set to slow tom-tom thumps, steady guitar chords and a descant from the women’s voices — he followed his winding, leaping melody up to a yelping crescendo of desperation." [NY Times]

More on the Bowery show HERE.

Shuler Hensley as the Monster & Roger Bart as Frederick Frankenstein

The November 16th Stephen Colbert interview is long sold out, but you still have plenty of time to get tickets to the NY Times events happening in early January. They include interviews with Julian Schnabel, Wynton Marsalis, the cast of the new Broadway musical Young Frankenstein, and even Martha Stewart. I would love to see Young Frankenstein, but there's no way I'm paying those ticket prices. Then again, the reviews aren't even that great.

Shaky Hands @ BV show @ Bowery Ballroom - Oct 16, 2007 (CRED)

-----VS-----

Cut Off Your Hands @ BV show @ Pianos - Oct 17, 2007 (CRED)

More photos & comments on the Shaky Hands show, HERE. The Shaky Hands also played a show at Mercury Lounge.

The DeathSet also played the show that Cut Off Your Hands played - as did the Meat Puppets - and Celebration. The NY Times stopped by too. How many shows did you see? How many times did you see Cut Off Your Hands?