Filed under: Concerts and Tours, News, New Releases
Like their infamous jams themselves, Phish have been nothing but a constant flurry of activity since reforming last year. With tickets for Phish’s fall tour set to go on-sale this weekend, the band has announced a number of other projects for fans to look forward to and, you know, discuss in online message groups for the next few weeks.
First up, in October, Phish will release ‘Coral Sky,’ a DVD of their legendary performance at the Coral Sky Amphitheater in West Palm Beach, Fla. from Nov. 2, 1996. A longtime fan favorite, this show is notable for several reasons. The band unofficially expanded to a five-piece as Santana’s Karl Perazzo joined in on percussion for the evening. Additionally, Butch Trucks (Allman Brothers Band) sat in on drums for the encore. With these special guests as a catalyst, Phish focused their improvisational experiments that evening on discovering new polyrhythmic spaces within their music. A few nights earlier they covered an entire Talking Heads album, ‘Remain in Light,’ as part of their annual Halloween tradition, and after having faithfully performed ‘Crosseyed and Painless’ as part of that spectacle, they used this show to take the song to more exploratory territory.
entertainment
Filed under: Video of the Day
Artist: KT Tunstall
Video: ‘Fade Like a Shadow’
Highlight: “‘Fade Like a Shadow’ is a song about being haunted by someone who is still alive — like a dark presence on your shoulder,” KT Tunstall tells Spinner. She compliments the hidden video cast orchestrating the flashlights and the fluorescent strobes for the video: “I loved making this vid with the rad, roller-skating ninjas, although I had serious whiplash the next day after all the headbanging.” See the head-banging, toe-tapping video below.
Download KT Tunstall Songs | Buy KT Tunstall Albums
entertainment
Filed under: The Chum Bucket
Apples in Stereo’s Robert Schneider plays a moog — with his mind! [Boing Boing]
E-40 gets hyphy with Bjork. [PreFixMag]
Let Elvis Costello, Rilo Kiley and others bring the happy out in your heartbreak. [AV Club]
Brad Pitt is Jerry Lee Lewis, maybe. [Rolling Stone]
Jack White re-vamps Elvira. [Nashville Scene]
Lady Gaga strings on some steaks, is officially running out of crazy things to wear. [Idolator]
Taylor Momsem needs to join a death metal band already. [Dlisted]
entertainment
Filed under: News, New Music, Exclusive
When Spinner recently spoke with Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard about his longtime side project Brad, we couldn’t resist asking about the differences between the ways Eddie Vedder and Brad vocalist Shawn Smith approach music. Both bands come from that Northwest grunge tradition, but as we found out, Gossard sees them as quite different.
“How Shawn works, he’s very spontaneous,” Gossard tells Spinner. “Fifty percent of the time, the first vocal you here is the first vocal he went out and sang. Ed is so into poetry, so into words. He’s done things that are very spontaneous, but almost more as an experiment to show that he can do it. It reminds me of him knowing a river really well. He’s figured out a path in terms of how his vocal should go. Shawn is the most absolute — the best of Brad is him experiencing something for the first time and living with the fact that to revisit it and improve on it. Once he falls in love with it, it’s done.”
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Filed under: Exclusive, New Music, Q + A
It’s been 13 years since Interpol formed in New York City and eight since the band’s debut, ‘Turn on the Bright Lights,’ dragged post-punk from the shadows back into the (in their case, red) spotlight. So what if they haven’t turned out to be the second coming of Joy Division or the next U2 (although they are opening for them) — there’s nothing wrong with being this generation’s Depeche Mode, outlasting the trendy scene they helped spawn, and looking damn good doing it.
Singer Paul Banks, guitarist Daniel Kessler and drummer Sam Fogarino may be down one man since bassist Carlos D. split camp, but with the release of their self-titled fourth album, they’re far from down for the count. Drummer Sam Fogarino spoke to Spinner from a Toronto tour stop to ponder the pleasures and perils of being Interpol.
Since Interpol started, what’s been the biggest change in the band?
Innocence. It’s gone.
All of it? That sounds sad.
Well, with the loss of innocence comes experience and confidence. So, we’re a bunch of well-read whores now. [Laughs] The other big thing is that you lose the chips on your shoulder. You realize that a lot of people that were citing Manchester as this Interpol influence, a lot of that was in a good light — it turned people on to us.
entertainment
Filed under: News, New Music
In advance of the Sept. 14 release of ‘Hurley,’ Weezer are letting fans try before they buy, as the album is currently streaming in its entirety on MySpace. Newly free from a 16-year recording contract with Geffen, ‘Hurley’ is Weezer’s first album in a new deal with punk mainstay Epitaph and comes with expectations that the band has returned to its mid-’90s sound.
So, how does the new material actually fare? ‘Hurley’ is definitely rawer than the sleek mainstream sound of ‘Raditude,’ but there’s still plenty of chic power pop to go around. Opener and lead single ‘Memories’ is the record at its best. The track opens with orchestral tuning before blasting into a bouncy, hyper-melodic pop punk number that would be home on the Warped Tour.
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Filed under: Concerts and Tours, News
Rolling Stones devotees can expect the revered band to tour again, according to drummer Charlie Watts. The 69-year-old kit man confirmed that the group will likely start things up again in 2011.
“We’re discussing it at the moment,” Watts told Le Parisien (according to Gibson). “We said that if we do something, it will be next year or the year after.”
entertainment
Filed under: Around the World
A little irony music, please.
Drew Heller, guitarist for the North Carolina-based Afro-jam band Toubab Krewe, is standing in a Nashville parking lot talking on his cell phone about the band’s musical journey. It’s a trip that’s gone from childhood friendship to West Africa adventures, the latter providing the signature sounds that have made the group’s undulating mix of kora, electric guitar, bass and percussion a favorite of the Bonnaroo crowd. This is a trek these five friends have taken together starting when Heller and kora player Justin Perkins started playing music together in school as 10-year-olds in the fifth grade.
And then the band’s tour bus starts to roll without him.
Well, that little if perfectly timed misstep aside, the journey – which has taken them to Africa four times — can be traced in an arc that plays out on the instrumental band’s new album, “TK2,” its first studio set in five years. (Hear the entire album here at Spinner’s Listening Party this week.) As they prepare to head to Africa for a fifth time in early 2011 to reconnect with mentor Lamine Soumano and help build his music school, as well as soak in the sounds via jams with various locals, they’ve taken the opportunity on the new album to recapitulate the music that’s brought them to this point.
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Filed under: Concerts and Tours, News, New Music
Despite calling New York City home, Interpol spent Monday — the night before the release of their self-titled fourth album — having a very L.A. experience. To celebrate, the band performed an eight-song set for 150 people at legendary producer Bob Clearmountain’s studio, which is located a few blocks from the beach.
The hour-long performance and interview, recorded for L.A.’s KCRW and airing Thursday, Sept. 9, found original remaining members Paul Banks, Sam Fogarino and Daniel Kessler — as well as current bassist David Pajo and keboardist/backing vocalist Brandon Curtis — mixing older material like ‘NYC’ and ‘Evil’ with new tracks ‘Lights,’ ‘Summer Well’ and ‘Success,’ the first song from both their album and the evening’s set.
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Earlier today we got to see a couple of promo photos from Betty White‘s upcoming guest appearance on the NBC series Community and I mentioned in that post about how I can not get enough of Betty … that I want more, more, more. Well more, more, more is exactly what we get … here is our first look at the soon-to-be-released Betty White comic book from Bluewater Productions:
Actress Betty White first gained fame as a regular on the Mary Tyler More Show and The Golden Girls. But the actress, now 88, is enjoying one of the strangest career rejuvenations ever. She brought down the house while guest hosting Saturday Night Live and has become a popular pitchwoman on countless TV commercials. She’s even landed a new role in the TV series Hot in Cleveland. Now White will receive a new honor: She’s slated to become the star of her own comic book biography from Bluewater Productions. Female Force: Betty White will hit comic book stores and online retailers such as Amazon.com in November. The 32-page book will retail for $3.99. Writer Patrick McCray, a veteran of the comics industry, traces White’s amazing showbiz career from her days providing voice talent for the radio show Blondie to her return to sitcoms in Hot in Cleveland. “Working on the Betty book was an honor and a blast,” McCray said. “While covering a new entertainer is always fun, there is something special about profiling an icon. Not only did it allow me to savor nostalgia, it also let me catch up on areas of pop culture that had passed me by.” Todd Tennant is the artist on Female Force: Betty White. He, too, is a veteran of the art world. Tennant is a professional illustrator with 31 years of experience. He dove into the world of comics about 10 years ago. He runs his own online King Kong vs. Godzilla comic series, and is the co-creator of the graphic works King Komodo and Gigante. Tennant, too, said that it was a thrill to work on bringing Betty White’s story to life. “I remember seeing Betty White and her hubby Allen Ludden on reruns of the original Password program after school as a kid, and grew very fond of them even then,” Tennant said. “Betty White as Sue Ann Nivens on the Mary Tyler Moore show will always stand out as my strongest and fondest memory of her. Needless to say, I was happy to be given the opportunity to attempt illustrating Betty’s fascinating personal life and her prolific career.” Bluewater president and founder Darren G. Davis says the biography comics are a way to bring new readers to comics. He added that fans of White’s might learn a bit more about the veteran actress by reading Female Force: Betty White. “Betty White has had such an amazing entertainment career,” Davis said. “It’s one that has now spanned more than 70 years. The biggest challenge that the creative team behind this book faced was figuring out how to include as much of this career as possible in one comic.”
I mean … what could be more perfect than a Betty White comic book? We’ve already got the Betty White clothing line and books to look forward to, now we have a comic book on the way as well? LOVE it. I’m not sure what other goodies we can expect from the Betty White merchandise machine but I can’t wait to find out. What do y’all think … are you looking forward to adding this Betty White comic to your comic book collections?
[Source]
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