This is a very well produced film, featuring interviews with Klaus Voorman, Anthony De Curtis, Maureen Cleaves and Barry Miles, among others, and chock full of clips (with sound!) from The Beatles’ Ed Sullivan performances, the first US tour, the Royal Variety performance and the MTV-style videos that were produced for shows like Ready, Steady, Go!, Shindig, etc. We get the rehashed stories of the verbal agreement that Lennon and McCartney made to share credit for any song that the...
After six long years since the release of the The Notwist’s minimal-pop album Neon Golden, the band announced another full-length to hit the streets called The Devil, You + Me. The German-based band been busy working on side project after side project—13 & God, Themselves, Console—and are probably itching to get this one finished. The Notwist recorded portions of the album with the Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra, a 20+ headed classical orchestra that specializes in exciting, and sometimes bizarre, avant...
Let me start this review by saying I went to this show strictly to see Saviours. I have been listening to their new album, Into Abaddon, pretty much non stop since it was released earlier this year, and after missing them live more than a few times lately, there was no way I was going to miss them tonight. First up was Orchid, a local band whom I surprisingly had never heard of. With a perfect combination of groove and...
Colin Meloy has taken any number of jaunts sans his fellow Decemberists, and for those unwilling to believe, Colin Meloy Sings Live! will provide audio documentation of how wrong they can be. The album, out April 8th, captures the wayward Decemberists frontman on the road in 2006, as he toured the country all by his lonesome shilling Colin Meloy Sings Shirley Collins, a tour-only EP along the lines of his first solo release, Colin Meloy Sings Morrissey. In support of...
It seems as if Dan Bejar has put some of his many other projects (The New Pornographers, Swan Lake and Hello, Blue Roses) on the temporary back burner in order to take his flagship, the HMCS Destroyer (not actually a ship in the Canadian Navy's fleet, just go with me on the wordplay) out on tour. The two month jaunt—which is preceeded by an appearance at the Merge Records showcase at SXSW—is in support of the new Destroyer album Trouble...
The middle of this decade marked yet another significant shift in heavy music. Bands such as Saviours, Torche and Early Man were dropping debut albums; at the same time, more established indie-metal bands like Mastodon, Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall were signing major label deals. Headbanger’s Ball was back on the air and tons metal festivals were crisscrossing the globe with fans of all ages supporting metal acts that spanned close to 40 years. And for probably the first time...
When Beck first released Odelay in 1996, it was to both a very eager and excited audience and to critics just waiting to sharpen their claws. The success of “Loser” earned the singer an advance critical chorus of “probable one-hit wonder” or, given the deluge of small-potatoes material in between Mellow Gold and Odelay, at most critics like Eric Weisbard of Spin were charitable enough to call him a “one-album wonder.” Beck was staring down the barrel of a monstrous...
The first sign of dedication to the music of Adrian Belew I witnessed was seeing about 30 people standing in the rain outside of Slim's waiting for the box office to open. The next was to hear how far some people travelled to see this show—one man I stood next to in line flew in from Kansas City, I overheard another say he came from Houston, and yet another said that she had driven from Tahoe, where she saw the...
Ground Control's continuing live coverage of Noise Pop makes a stop at Mezzanine to catch The Rosebuds and SF locals Foxtail Somersault, who won the chance to play at Noise Pop along with eleven other bands by being voted on by visitors to www.ourstage.com . Be sure to check out all the photos, and stay tuned for more Noise Pop coverage. And be sure to check out the rest of the schedule. For more info, visit www.noisepop.com/2008 More on The...
Standing on the floor inside of The Fillmore waiting for the show to start, I was feeling like a bit of a badass. Here I was with my shaved head, goatee and Motörhead shirt, standing in a sea of mullets, receding hairlines, 40-something-year-old women in spandex, and some dude wearing a Tesla t-shirt tucked into a pair of Dockers. I felt like I was sticking out like a sore thumb, and I was loving every minute of it. As I...