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Song: "Born on a Train"
Artist: Arcade Fire
Year: 2005
Album: Unreleased live track
If you take a listen to the first few seconds of this cover track by Arcade Fire, you'll hear Win explain why he ended up on Merge Records (because of this song, originally by the Magnetic Fields, who were on Merge when they released it). Just to clarify my response to a comment on my post about Superchunk from last week. And because this is an awesome song. In both versions.
There's a million excellent shows in the area in the coming months and here's just a sampling of what I have tickets for so far. Due to work travel I may not be able to see all of them (dammit) and there's plenty more I would love to see but are either sold out or not in my schedule (Beirut, Explosions in the Sky) but yeah, it's going to be busy. Starting tonight.
and our schools look like prisons
and our prisons look like malls
and downtown's just a sick parade
where no one cares at all
and our heroes all died crazy
broken poor or shot
let's celebrate their tragedy
and sanctify the loss
and manifest the daydream
like those who fell before
and glorify our small attempts
and hate ourselves no more
Download Jeff Mangum - "King of Carrot Flowers Part 3 (live)".mp3
Download Jeff Mangum - "My Dreamgirl Don't Exist (live)".mp3
Sweet communist
The communist daughter
Standing on the sea-weed water
Semen stains the mountain tops
With cocoa leaves along the border
Sweetness sings from every corner
Cars careening from the clouds
The bridges burst and twist around
And wanting something warm and moving
Bends towards herself the soothing
Proves that she must still exist
She moves herself about her fist
Sweet communist
The communist daughter
Standing on the sea-weed water
Semen stains the mountain tops
Semen stains the mountain tops.
Sigur Ros's new movie Inni is coming out in November but you can pre-order any combination of the DVD, Blu-Ray, and accompanying CD (and T-shirt) at their website here. This amazing live version of "Festival" (I just put the CD version on here last week as the accompaniment to 127 Hours) is the first advance single
Toronto's Ohbijou has a new album called Metal Meets that is out today via Last Gang Records. As a press release explains, the album "is inspired by ventures to cabins in the woods, travels across Asia, Europe and North America (headlining international tours), and lyrical reflections on familial bloodlines that move across borders."
Future Islands latest On the Water is out October 11. I really liked their last album and although my experience seeing them opening for Okkervil River this summer wasn't that great (I was only a week or two into my incredible toe pain and not drinking as a result), I am looking forward to this record.
The War on Drugs Slave Ambient has been out for over a month and I haven't posted any songs, largely because I hadn't heard the full album until recently. I need to correct that oversight right about now. It's pretty damned incredible. I saw them open for Destroyer (I think, or someone) this spring and was impessed as it is but this is definitely a band to watch, even if much of the indie rock world is already aware.
And lastly, here's a new track from The Twilight Sad, who are oddly holding off on releasing their 3rd full-length until February which is a long ways off so this is just a highlight preview. And it's really cool.
This year's very deserving Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film is a Danish movie by director Susanne Bier who has crafted a complicated and unrelenting film that raises uneasy questions about the nature of violence in our society and the ways humans can and cannot cope with tragedy. It is easily one of the best movies I've seen this year and it's available on DVD and Blu-Ray now. Simply put, it's a better film than pretty much anything getting made in the United States these days and I highly recommend.
Song: "The Indie Queens are Waiting"
Artist: Dan Mangan
Year: 2009
Album: The Roboteering EP
Down the road and on the right-hand side
There's a place I sometimes like to dine
Coffee refills far as I can see
I'll be waking
Are you watching me?
Are you watching, are you?
Are you watching?
Or just waiting to see
That your days are numbered?
'Cause my days are numbered too
Are we cool now?
Are we cool now?
Are we cool now?
Are we cool?
Bus down to the local record store
Buy something to make you like me more
Indie queens and tatteed east-side punks
They are listening
Always waiting
Are you watching, are you?
Are you watching
Or just waiting to see
That your days are numbered?
'Cause my days are numbered too
Are we cool now?
Are we cool now?
Are we cool now?
Are we cool?
I'm sorry that I brought it up
It's not nice to piss you off
And I know, I know, I know
That I was poking
And sort of prodding
And kind of hoping
And always watching
For a reaction
A reaction
A reaction
A reaction
Are you watching?
Watching, are you watching?
Or just waiting to see?
It's cold. I don't know when it got cold, last night or the night before, I've been sick all week with a cold, ironically, that finally seems to be breaking now that it's cold, now that I'm going away for the week and possibly for the next few weeks for work, now that I'm healthy again. As anyone who follows this blog at all knows, it's been a rough summer for me for a lot of reasons, but most of them have to do with a never-ending toe injury that emerged before Memorial Day weekend and is still with me, somewhat, well after Labor Day weekend. I finally got a diagnosis, finally the chance at a cure, but be careful what you wish for, the cure may be worse than the injury itself. It seems as if -- and I've had two doctors mention this before, but it was a new doctor, the 5th I've seen during my never-ending search for a prognosis on the never-ending pain in my toe, who gave me the skinny on my injury and the cure -- it seems pretty clear to him that all the pain in my second toe is being caused by serious issues with my big toe, issues that I've had for years that have only gotten worse, almost definitely because of all my running, and now I have these bone spurs sticking out in all the x-rays from the big joint below my big toe, which is red and inflamed at all times now, and the only hope is surgery, to fuse two bones together within the big toe, which will eliminate any ability for me to bend the big toe or any flexibility at all but in all honesty, I haven't had flexibility in that toe for years. I remember when I was a kid I dropped a weight on my big toe while lifting weights in my basement and it hurt like shit and my father took me to the hospital and I don't remember much else about the experience except that it took me several tries to explain to the doctor what had happened, how I was so dumb I guess to drop a weight on my toe but the point being I believe that caused the damage back then that I'm dealing with now, some number of decades later, except oddly, the pain is in my second toe, not the first. I had an ankle injury while running about four years ago now that took forever to heal, probably a year and a half before I found a solution (an orthotic device in my shoe) that helped solve it but when I was in physical therapy for my right ankle (on alternate days from my post-knee operation therapy on my left knee), the therapist pointed to my big toe as a big source of the reason why my ankle wasn't healing -- I had arthritis in the toe, as she termed it (and every doctor this summer has seconded that opinion), which reduced or eliminated any flexibility, so when I ran, I put more pressure on the ankle, which was therefore not able to heal. She recommended a podiatrist, who fitted me for an orthotic device that solved my problem, at least temporarily. This spring, I stopped using the orthotic device since my ankle was finally fully healed and my times in my runs were dropping dramatically, I was breaking records in practice sessions and feeling great and then, after running the morning of my friend's wedding and then spending all day and night in rented tuxedo shoes, dancing like a drunken idiot, I went to bed with my right foot hurting like hell and woke up the next morning in pretty bad pain, which I pinpointed to the 2nd toe in the foot. It was red and a little swollen and hurt like shit but I managed to get through the day and even though the next day was worse, much worse -- I was pretty sure I had a broken toe -- by the following day, the pain had reduced to the point that I actually went for a run (god forbid I lose any time in my training!). That was the last run I'd go on this summer. Maybe the last run of my life.
Back in 1994, Superchunk released its fourth full-length Foolish on its own label Merge Records, the first album of theirs to appear on their own label after a 3-album deal with Matador Records had ended. A year or so earlier, the band had been recruited to join Atlantic Records in the wake of the stunning success of Nirvana's Nevermind, a time when every alternative-sounding band big and small was getting signed to big record deals, regardless of talent, a move that actually signalled the beginning of the end of the music industry as we knew it -- so desperate for the next big thing that the labels went from grunge to hip hop to boy bands to obsolesence over the rest of the decade before all the major labels consolidated and lost all their money when kids figured out a way to get their over-priced crap for free. But Superchunk and notably, Pavement, who were also on the Matador label -- and got wooed by corporate suiters a lot harder -- resisted the urge for instant fame and fortune and instead stayed independent, releasing their new record on the label that Mac and Laura founded in 1989, originally as a cassette and 7" singles label for they and their friends to put out one-offs but that had grown by 1994 into a sort-of legitimate independent label in its own right, one that should be putting out the records of the band that Mac and Laura were in. And Foolish went on to be the biggest selling record in Merge history -- selling upwards of 40,000 copies, which doesn't sound like much, but was pretty big for a small Chapel Hill punk band that was critically lauded but never found radio airplay outside of college stations. Foolish would be the top-selling Merge album for the rest of the decade until Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane over the Sea eventually overtook them and then of course, a little Canadian band named Arcade Fire signed with the label in 2004 (because Win Butler loved Mac's music and more importantly, that the Magnetic Fields were signed to Merge) and all previous records were shattered with the release of Funeral. Supercunk by then were on an extended hiatus as the band's members tended to new families and new lives away from music (in Laura and Jim's case, at least) and even though the band reformed to release an incredible new album and tour in 2010, they never quite found much commercial success by staying indie -- not even the level of Pavement -- but I think looking back, they couldn't be any more pleased with the way they stayed true to themselves, true to their music and their identities, spending their lives making the music they wanted and being considered by many to be one of the true founders of indie rock. And it all kind of got cemented with Foolish.
It's official. To paraphrase Anchorman, that escalated fast.
ACC Extends Formal Invitations for Membership to Pittsburgh and Syracuse
The Atlantic Coast Conference will become a 14-member conference.
Sept. 18, 2011
GREENSBORO, N.C. (theACC.com) – The Atlantic Coast Conference Council of Presidents has unanimously voted to accept the University of Pittsburgh and Syracuse University as new members. The invitation followed the submission of letters of application from both universities.
“The ACC is a strong united conference that is only going to get better with the addition of the University of Pittsburgh and Syracuse University,” said Duke University President Richard Broadhead, chair of the ACC Council of Presidents. “Both schools are committed to competing at the highest level of academics and athletics. We welcome them as full partners in the ACC.”
"We are very excited to be joining the ACC. This is a tremendous opportunity for Syracuse, and with its outstanding academic quality and athletic excellence, the ACC is a perfect fit for us," said Nancy Cantor, Chancellor and President of Syracuse University. "The ACC is home to excellent national research universities with very strong academic quality, and is a group that Syracuse will contribute to significantly and benefit from considerably. As a comprehensive, all-sports conference, the ACC provides Syracuse tremendous opportunities for quality competition and growth in all sports, while also renewing some of our historic rivalries. This move will also bolster our continued efforts to look outward, engage, and extend Syracuse’s reach to key areas of the country, including the southeast, as we grow and expand our national connections to alumni, partners and the students of the future. We are pleased that Syracuse adds a New York City dimension to the ACC, a region in which we have built strong identity and affinity, and we look forward to bringing ACC games to the Big Apple. Overall, for Syracuse, this opportunity provides long-term conference stability in what is an uncertain, evolving, and rapidly shifting national landscape."
Daryl Gross, Syracuse University Director of Athletics said, "Today is a day that we will remember for years to come. We are truly excited that academically and athletically we will be a member of the ACC, one of the nation's premier collegiate athletic conferences. As New York's College Team, we plan to compete at the highest level across all of our sports and help to enhance this great conference."
In a wide ranging interview on Pitchfork yesterday, Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene announced what appears to be the end of his band, finishing with an October 1st concert in San Francisco as their last North American date. He talks about completing a film he's been working on and other non-music related stuff (like his family) but says you can expect more from him and Brendan and the other members of the venerable band musically, just probably not together. So it does sound like the end. I was never as huge a fan of BSS as most in the indie rock scene maybe were but I liked them a lot and I always considered them as part of the "Big 3" of Canadian indie bands that all started in the early to mid part of the 2000s, them and Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade in my mind. Wolf Parade's last concert happened earlier this summer. And now Broken Social Scene are gone. Whatever the reasons (and they seem mostly to be that the bands' members in each case wanted to do their own things), it's been a pretty sad summer for the music world. This song below is my favorite BSS song, the only one of theirs to actually make my Top 200 songs of all-time, and it was well-deserved, a nearly 10 minute extravaganza of amazing lyrics about personal torment, soaring melodies and trumpeting -- well, trumpets -- ebbs and flows and wonderful singing in tune to the perfect music. The fact that it has the most well-placed and different meanings for the word "Fuck" in any song I know is just a bonus. And I'm pretty sure it was during the drum-heavy conclusion of the track that I slammed along so hard on the center console of my last car that I broke the latch and had to use duct tape to keep it down from then on. It's all gonna break in the end I guess.
Song: "It's All Gonna Break"
Artist: Broken Social Scene
Year: 2005
Album: Broken Social Scene
it's all gonna break.
when i was a kid, you fucked me in the ass
but i took my pen to paper and i passed you
you know i love the shit cause the shit it tastes so good,
i got pastures waiting in the woods.........
it's all gonna break
treat me like a sign, sounds like so/oh well
i know times like these are the hell
and when you do the tricks, the tricks look so good
i got buried rumors waiting in the woods,
and they try to climb awake
and call me over,
skies they rape and skies are sober.
minds they fake and minds rolled over
it's good, it's good, it's good.
i know that you're dying
i know it's true
i know there's seven thousand things you'd rather be and rather do,
and i know........that you fuck what you love
and you love what you fuck.
i'll keep them out girl, i'll keep it true
i'll do everything inside the skin of you
cause i know that the sounds of your heart
is a god i can trust,
like a man,
not a boy,
i don't love i just fight with the violence in ourselves
it's all gonna break!!
and you all want the lovely music to save your lives
and you all want the lovely music to save your lives
keep it coming
there is no lie to save your life
keep it coming
this is the lie to save your life
why are you always fucking ghosts
why are you always fucking ghosts
why.........
it's been such a long
life that we trust
your heart is a whore
and love is just lust.
you want what you can't
and you can't cause of fear
we've got to get
out of here
why are you always.........
it's been and it settles down and fights to love.
it's all gonna break.
This is an amazing post from a fellow blogger, I implore all of my readers to read this, but particularly those in the American audience. It's the tale of a young mother born in America but with dark skin (her father Saudi Arabian, her mother Jewish) who was detained on 9/11/11 (this Sunday) after flying between Denver and Detroit because, apparently, she was seated in a row with two Indian men she'd never met before, and the presence of three dark-skinned people in a single row on an airplane on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 was enough to panic crew members of Frontier Airlines into alerting the airport police, who -- along with the FBI and Homeland Security -- raided the plane after it landed and put the three innocent fliers into cells for hours, strip searched them, and never really told them what was going on until they were released. The procedures apparently are standard for any alert of suspicious activity, no matter how credible or not, and after several hours of fear, all three were let go (or "set free", but in America, shouldn't we always be free?) but the story itself reminded me so very much of so many stories I've read over the past few years of journalists in Iran, particularly, but other less free nations, being taken away by the police for no apparent reason and held for days without explanation, questioned repeatedly and then (in the best cases) set free. I understand we need precautions, maybe even extreme precautions, to prevent terrorist attacks, but when our country's authorities are performing acts to protect us that are so similar to the "protections" being enforced in Iran, what exactly are the authorities protecting us from? At what cost to our freedoms? I'm alarmed at the racial profiling that happened -- presumably from the crew member(s) -- but I'm more alarmed at the fear that we continue to live with as a result of our increased security state after 9/11. Has it been worth it? We haven't been attacked again, yes. But when I read a story like this, I fear that we've already lost what we were trying to preserve from attack in the first place.
Please read this. It's long but it's worth it.
(found this out after I posted this)...
Not only did the police board the plane with dogs and lead three passengers away in handcuffs, the North American Aerospace Defense Command scrambled two F-16 fighters to shadow the plane from Denver to Detroit. Because someone in the crew noticed the two brown men, who never spoke to each other during the flight and didn't know one another, go into the bathroom one after the other. I think our intrepid blogger was brought in strictly because she was also brown, because she didn't use the bathroom.
This is not precaution, it's paranoia. It's not safety, it's cowardice. It shouldn't be America 10 years after 9/11, but it is.
