GvB says 'haters will continue to hate', but I think that William's ability to crank out tunes post-hype may (hopefully) be a testament to Wavves' longetivity. Somewhere along the line at least some of the haters will have to admit that Wavves has made it further than they'd assumed.
With the variations in Wavves' sound in 'Cool Jumper' and 'Mickey Mouse', I'm pretty excited to see the directions further releases go in. If Nathan goes on tour with Zach, will they play old songs with this new edge?
I feel the need to repeat that i bought this, pre-'colbert report' name-drop. I love this man.
In other news...
Diplo's remix of 'Treat Me Like Your Mother' is infinitely listenable. It's basically a deconstruction of the song and a reconstruction using all of my favorite Diplo-isms.
To me, nothing is more fun than going through tons of used records/cds looking for one or two of the best finds. A countdown of my favorite places to score music at great prices:
5 garage/estate sales
Gar(b)age sales are very spotty, but once in a great while I find some old person who is selling their whole record collection for next to nothing because, presumably, no one wants it. False: I do. A great way to pick up cassettes as well.
4 goodwill
I think it's safe to say that most of the best places to get used music are not music stores. Sure, plenty music stores have areas of used tunes, but the chance that I'll find something other people missed for a price I can't pass up is much lower in places like the Exclusive Company than, Whoa, Goodwill. I think that the Fond du Lac one is a better priced store. Stores in bigger cities usually have bigger collections but tend to be more expensive. You'll find a fair split between classical records and lps like led zeppelin's 4 and cassettes like To The Extreme.
3 cd replay (appleton)
CD Replay is a chain of used media stores. The prices are good (6-7 ish for most albums). No records or cassettes here, but it's probably for the better. There's an okay one in Madison (last time I was in there I found Turn On the Bright Lights for $2), a better one in Milwaukee, but the best one is in Appleton, pretty close to the mall. This stores is HUUGE and I have spent hours and hours slowly moving down the racks looking for good finds. I've bought a lot of cds there. Some that stick out: Cross, Friends of Mine, Lateralus, Graduation, and a lot more you wouldn't be impressed by. Used CD buying is not glamorous. It's about catching up on what you didn't want to pay full price for.
2 madcity music exchange This great madison store houses mostly used vinyl. Though there's a relatively gigantic supply of old legitimate records, my favorite is the wall of unsorted $1 records. There's a lot of junk in there but the collection is so big that it's easy to find ten you want, and once you buy ten or more lps from this selection, they drop to 50 cents in price. Killer.
1 half price books (madison)
I first visited Half Price Books an afraid and vulnerable freshman wary of the bus system, waiting for a friend to come pick me up after being 'stranded' by the mall. Because of its location (not very close, but not very far) I think I visit it just enough that each time I find numerous great finds for incredible prices. Though they have a lot of fairly priced 'good' cds, they have two carts of $1-3 cds that tend to house some fine gems, and I only care about those carts. Well, the carts, and their fair selection of used vinyl. A while ago, I bought Beck's Midnite Vultures (an incredible album) for $2 here. That was probably my champion purchase from half price books until last Thursday, when I picked up a score that prompted this blog with its greatness:
godspeed you! black emporer - f#a#[infinity] $1 sigur ros - svefn-g-englar single $2 the unicorns - who will cut our hair when we're gone? $2
these were topped off by a depeche mode and an art paul schlosser 45 (50 cents). I already have (and love) f#a#[infinity] but had to buy it again. one dollar?
There's gold in them there hills, and I encourage you to dig for it.
I was not expecting to be in Chicago last week until.. well, last week. The lovely surprise that was Pitchfork 2009 was just that, a lovely (charming? deserved? no, lovely) surprise. I went with my cousin Jacob and scads of cool people I've met over the years. Since there was total overlap of lineup and such, I'll include the awesome Friday show at the terrace in this.
Friday brought Yeasayer, Ponytail, Cymbals Eat Guitars, The Dutchess and the Duke, and The Antlers to the beautiful and windy Memorial Union Terrace. Before this show I'd really only listened to each band's most recent cd once or twice (except the fantastic yeasayer, who i've been following for a while). I enjoyed all of the performances (missed out on a good chunk of D&D, but I wasn't that captivated by what I saw from them) and enjoyed the weather that'd follow through for the rest of the weekend--cloudy with moments of sun (esp sunday) and minimal amounts of drizzle (none on friday, some on saturday). Nothing like the scalding lollapalooza 08 sun.
Saturday morning, Jacob and I woke up at 6 AM, showered, and hit the road for beautiful Chicago. My Saturday epitomized the awesome festival experience-I enjoyed shows I did expect to see and some I didn't, I spent time basking in the atmosphere, I hit a pretty respectable position in relation to stage : time spent waiting ratio. I won a threadless shirt and ate chicken satay. Despite enjoying the National to a fair degree, I totally enjoyed spending my last 45 minutes sitting on dirty grass far away, talking about high school gym classes with claire, danielle, and john.
After a hearty breakfast of eggs and bacon and a train ride, the logical next step was to go to pitchfork and descend the staircase of decency to the level of 'awful mullet wearers'. I am an official world record holder for 'fastest mullet cut'. Since the last time I had my haircut was directly preceding a solitary trip to see the Thermals, I figured it was about time to pack my bags and head for the A stage. If one thing is sure, it is this: One thousand mullets could not have prepared me for the amazingness that is the Flaming Lips live. I know I'm late to the club, but I will travel to see them every chance I get. A week later, my brain is still buzzing with their songs.
Some highlights of the weekend, in chronological order:
The Antlers (Terrace)
I have never seen a performer handle on-stage equipment problems so gracefully. The front guy tried to fix his guitar tuning and it got out of wack. He proceeded to calmly and quickly retune his guitar in seconds, never stopping singing or showing his confusion. I know this is hardly the best reason to like the band, but it was very impressive.
Ponytail (Terrace/B stage)
Ponytail is up there with Flaming Lips for best show(s) of the weekend. I was not a huge fan before seeing them--interested, but not involved. After seeing them twice, I enjoy the cd much much more. As far as fun shows, this shoots to the top of my list, right next to Dan Deacon and Matt/Uncle Kimbo. Being feet away from the band(/fence, at p4k) certainly did not hurt.
Wavves (B stage)
Awesome. First I feel it's my civic duty to say, as someone in the front row, that Wavves did not go on late on their own accord--the fence was broken and the security bros did an awesomely inefficient job 'fixing it' (Congrats, guys!). Late starts aside, the show was great. Nathan seemed a ton more responsive and 'into' the crowd than at the Project Lodge this spring. They played a ton of new stuff. Very very interested to hear new recordings from them, especially after the ridiculously Panda Bear-y 'Mickey Mouse'. True, no 'Weed Demon', but enough 'wavvves' songs were played to sate my appetite.
Matt and Kim (B stage)
[0:08]
M83 (A stage)
M83 has a huge sound. Anthony Gonzalez slapped me in the face with his Fronch accent and soaring grooves. M83's drumming is sometimes comically epic, but it definitely fits with the rest of the band's feel. I still haven't purchased Saturdays = Youth but after their stellar live show I hope to acquire it soon.
The Flaming Lips (A stage)
Last week, I asked R Vergeront how he liked the Flaming Lips show. His response was along the lines of 'To say I really enjoyed it doesn't necessarily mean it was good'. I think this probably sums up a lot of people's feelings of the show. Wayne talked a LOT and due to it being a festival set, they could only play for about an hour and a half. This being said, they could have thrown dirt and rocks into the audience and only played 3 songs and it still would have been more awe-inspiring and incredible than almost any other show I've ever seen.
I've thought about it a lot, and I think several major factors played into how much I loved their show. First off, I was surrounded by people I knew. Somewhat inadvertently, I ended up being not only nearby Danielle and Claire but also Jeff, Todd, Jake, John, and so on. The feeling that all these people were experiencing the same overwhelming display that I was was pretty powerful.
Secondly, I was already riding a stressful-week-followed-by-near-perfect-weekend high that had me happily enduring the uncomfortable and cramped aspects of the show.
Thirdly, the Flaming Lips' visual display is, of course, infinitely more entertaining than most other bands'. My tendency to get sucked into overwhelming sensory stimulation was in full effect last Sunday night (no, I was not on drugs).
Fourthly, and probably most importantly, The Flaming Lips are a band that I have loved for years. So many concerts I've been to over the years have been of bands I've been listening to for a year, maybe two. Especially after moving to Madison, a large amount of the shows I've been going to have been of bands I've listened to for less than six months. On a whim, I purchased 'Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots' in the summer after my twelfth birthday. That Christmas, I received 'The Soft Bulletin'. After growing with those two albums for seven critical years of my life, it's no wonder the emotional explosion I had during that concert was as profound as it was. From the drum riff that opens 'Race for the Prize' to the final reprise of 'Do You Realize??' my mouth was open in awe. It was a pretty incredible moment.
So yes, the weekend was a huge success. Virtually perfect, you might say. I got a free haircut. I made a world record. Will won 200 shirts. I got to see people that I love. I got to see Wavves and Ponytail and M83 and the Thermals and the Flaming Lips. I took the train, ate pancakes, pondered mysterious massage techniques. Great Great Great Times.
I realized that I have never posted about new music on this blog (blocking trepidation party out of my mind). Drumroll, please.
The New Wine is from Norway. Yes, this can only mean one thing: there's at least one member of their band with an 'ΓΈ' in their name. Synthy poppy goodness for fans of Passion Pit, The Whitest Boy Alive, and Phoenix. All these guys are missing are an 80s movie montage video meme.
They released a free ep. It is delicious. Why not give them a shot? I repeat: this is not a test of your moral scruples. Free. It's free.
Share this link with the best of your friends. It will take you to a selection of free and legal professional recordings of select Primavera Sound shows (sorry, no wavves). I'm listening to the Dan Deacon one right now. Delicious.
For a more thorough briefing, check out last week's pitchfork article.
emusic has been a strange fixture in my life for the past four years. Since March of '05, I've been paying a cheap fee to download a sizable amount of music every month. I started with 40 tracks for $10. emusic was a much smaller site then than it is now. For those that don't know, the appeal of the site is that it stocks only music on independent labels, so it can afford to charge much less per track than iTunes or any other keep-what-you-buy site.
As a fifteen year-old high school freshman, finding about the fledgling website was a godsend. I could say that I didn't know how much of a godsend it was at the time, which would be true, but at the time I thought it was pretty darn cool. During middle school I downloaded a ton of (mostly awful, of course) music from peer-to-peer programs, like most people. Unlike most people, I experienced a pretty sudden extreme paradigm shift about my feelings on music piracy. I read articles and statements about the fall in cd sales and the impending doom facing the music business. Feeling like it was the right thing to do, and being adamant about my decision to do so, I deleted every song of the library of pirated music I'd amassed during my peer-to-peer career.
Left alone with my massive collection of cds bought from BMG music catalog and Sam Goody et al, I started anew in my quest to fill up my life with legal mp3s. I downloaded artists' free tracks on purevolume and I discovered that Amazon had a fair collection of free downloads of new artists (where I heard Bloc Party, The Decemberists, and Arcade Fire for the first time). When I first found out about emusic, my ears' heart fell to the floor. Here was a site that could not only give me more for less, but also could give me almost any cd too far off the beaten path to be in stock at Wal-Mart. Remember, I am a freshman in high school, so this means Brand New's 'Your Favorite Weapon' and The Vines 'Veni Vidi Vicious'. Here comes the kicker, though. I get all the things I've been unable to find in the past, I've got a monthly subscription, and I've got a duty to myself to find new music. What next? And almost immediately, my listening habits/life (where is the separation?) changed.
On a ride home from seeing Phantom Planet at Summerfest with a cousin, my uncle played 'The Electric Version' in the car. Vaguely interested in this unknown band with an obscene name, I downloaded the album from emusic and fell in love. I scoured issues of Spin (which i had recently begun reading) for suggestions and highly rated albums. I explored the pre-major label back catalogs of bands like Thursday and AFI. I blindly downloaded albums by bands like the Black Keys and The Pixies and Spoon until I was no longer blindly downloading anything. My mental lists of artists and albums to check out started growing out of control (it's never stopped, of course). Since payment on emusic has always been by track, regardless of length, I started to heavily explore genres like post-rock. Astounded that I could buy an hour and a half of godspeed you! black emperor for the same price as the first ten or fifteen minutes of most albums, I downloaded without hesitation and listened accordingly. And that pattern went on for years--download, download, listen, listen, research, wait for the next month's downloads to appear. And, even for an unemployed high school student, ten dollars is not hard to come up with every month. Not for good music, at least.
As time went on, the site grew. Though old rates were grandfathered in, new ones got more expensive. More and more labels started selling music on the site. Victory Records stopped by for a few months, Domino was added, emusic started to put those annoying card stock inserts in magazines. A year ago, my subscription was changed to 50 downloads a month for 12 dollars.
Come July, there will be a 'major addition' to artists in the emusic catalog. The major addition seems to be mostly big 70s-90s rock and pop names along with current bands including Modest Mouse, Outkast, and Kings of Leon. In exchange for bigger names, my subscription will now be a disappointing-yet-still-better-than-iTunes $12 a month for 30 downloads. Sad, but what can you do? Do a healthy amount of reminiscing in a long blog post, I guess.
I'm not sure if I ever realized how greatly emusic has impacted me until I wrote this. Very interesting. Has anyone else ever used the site? Comments especially appreciated on this post.
