North Elementary: Ones In Love from Not For Everyone, Just For You (2006)
MySpace | Website | Buy
South Ambulance: Davy Crockett from EP#4 (2009)
MySpace | Website | Label: Rollerderby Records | Buy
East Hundred: Slow Burning Crimes from Passenger (2009)
MySpace | Website | Buy
The West: Road to Joy from Awake and Waking Up (2008)
MySpace | Website | [...]
05.30The Flying Change
It’s unfortunate that painful experiences often generate good music. Maybe because we can all identify with sorrow, it’s comforting to know someone else shares what you’re going throught, and because being able to sing about it helps somehow.
On The Flying Change’s album Pain Is a Reliable Signal, Sam Jacobs accompanies his wife on her [...]
Two weeks in China! Oh, the amazing things we have seen–and eaten! Mr. Folkie’s daughter, the Professional Foreigner (see link to her blog under Favorites), has been our indispensible companion. We traveled hundreds of miles by train because Mr. Folkie wanted to see pandas (you can have your photo taken with one on [...]
05.24Yellow Ostrich
Last November I featured a couple of tracks from the debut album of Wisconsin indie-rock band The Chairs (The Chairs-November EP). Now the Chairs’ lead singer, Alex Ostrich (AKA Alex Schaaf), has a solo project called Yellow Ostrich with an EP called Carousels.
Alex clearly has a talent for beautiful melodies, as evidenced in the [...]
Jim Fairchild of Grandaddy and Modest Mouse has released his second solo album, Oh For the Getting and Not Letting Go. After years of living in Modesto, Los Angeles, and Portland in between touring, Fairchild and his lady Natasha Wheat moved permanently to Chicago in 2007. This album grew from his reflections on this [...]
Poster in a shop window
We have spent four days in Beijing, with some not insubstantial portion devoted to turning our internal clocks upside down. I am less uncomfortable than I thought I’d be in a country where I speak fewer than 10 words of the language. Our hotel is in a typical Chinese neighborhood, [...]
Continuing a serial on parts of the body, “Skin” is the theme of Contrast Podcast #164. I picked this kind of gruesome old Blind Melon song from my favorite of their albums, but here are two other songs I strongly considered.
Blind Melon: Skinned from Soup (1995)
MySpace | Buy
Bell X1: Bad Skin Day from Flock [...]
The Dimes are from Portland, OR, but their new four-song EP, released today, is named New England and based on real stories and events born of and around Boston. The songs I have listened to so far are just gorgeous, and even better news, this EP comes in advance of a full-length that is scheduled [...]
Wilco – Gentilly Stage [5:30 pm]:
Wilco is:
• Jeff Tweedy: Vocals, guitar
• John Stirratt: bass
• Nels Cline: lead guitar, lap steel
• Pat Sansone: keyboards, guitar
• Mikeal Jorgensen: piano, keyboards
• Glenn Kotche:`drums
Set review:
Before the set began several Wilco fanatics debated whether or not they’d play any new songs off their soon-to-be-released CD. The main Wilco [...]
Joe Krown with Walter “Wolfman” Washington and Russell Batiste, Jr. – Gentilly Stage [11:20am]:
Joe Krown
Set review:
I caught most of this wonderful set by this trio of New Orleans greats. Guitarist Walter “Wolfman” Washington did the lead vocals, while Joe Krown played some nice keyboards on the Hammond B-3 and drummer Russell Batiste Jr. kept [...]