Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple

Even though I absolutely loved the first Gnarls Barkley record and thought their live show was something everyone should experience, I was slow to want to hear their second record. After prompting from my buddy Jim, I picked up a copy. No, it doesn’t have a phenomenon like Crazy on it but it is a really solid record, that proves once again, Gnarls Barkley do whatever the hell they want. My favorite song is probably Going On. It has been the soundtrack to my bus journey for a few weeks now. --J

My Bloody Valentine

My Bloody Valentine is reuniting. I picked up Loveless for the first time about six months ago since so many bands name them as an influence. I believe I like the bands they influenced more than My Bloody Valentine, I just don’t get it. Any readers out there who are MBV fans, I would love to hear what you think. I’ve heard the critical praise, now I’d like to hear why it speaks to you. --J

Reading - Rock Day

Metallica headlined the last day of Reading. I have a certain amount of respect for them although I don’t own any of their music and was flabbergasted that they were the band to do two hours of therapy on camera (see Some Kind of Monster). They put on an impressive live show and what blew me away is the kids in Metallica t-shirts at Reading looked just like the guys in my high school all those years ago who sported Metallica t-shirts. There is something timeless in their music that speaks to them for sure. --J

Reading and Leads - Day Two

The festival just got better on Saturday. Coverage included:

The Raconteurs
The Editors
Mystery Jets
Santogold
Cage the Elephant
Bloc Party
The Killers
The Black Kids
The Kills
The Ting Tings
Bullet for My Valentine
Manic Street Preachers
The Subways

The Killers were over the top great. How cool to see Cage the Elephant from Bowling Green, Kentucky on the big screen. Their song Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked sounds like a funkier version of The Band. --J

Reading and Leads - Day One

Watching the coverage of Reading and Leeds this year is bittersweet since I had the opportunity to cover Reading and had to turn it down. But I have to say, with a nasty summer cold, I’m glad to be enjoying the coverage wrapped in a blanket on the sofa instead of queuing at a port-a-potty with thousands of people.

Day One Coverage Included:

The Enemy
Jack Penate
The Fratellis
Biffy Clyro
Dizzee Rascal
Ida Maria
MGMT
Friendly Fires
Vampire Weekend
Queens of the Stone Age
Tom Morello and Serj Tankian (acoustic)
One Night Only
The Wombats
Babyshambles
Glasvegas

I hope this link to the Friendly Fires’ BBC3 performance can be seen in the States. The dance moves and the shoes with no socks make the performance.

What band was not televised? Rage Against the Machine. They have been making the festival rounds but nowhere have they allowed camera crews to officially cover them from what I have heard. This is unfortunate. I’m still not sure what to make of MGMT. The presentation is a bit on the hippie side but the music doesn’t match that look. Maybe I need to hear the whole record to understand it. The Enemy sounded great and so did Queens of the Stone Age. When being interviewed by Zane after the set, Josh Homme told him he was feeling sexy and then took the joke further offering to have sex with Zane. An awkward giggle from Zane wrapped up the interview. --J

Madonna Turns 50

I used to love her back in the day. Now, although occasionally I still like one of her tunes, her public image annoys me. They ran this clip on one of the UK music video show countdowns as an example of a "stunning debut". It made me laugh out loud, not because of Madonna but because this had to be the beginning of the end for Solid Gold. The dancer's disco costumes just look so out of date compared to Madonna's. You think it can't get any cheesier until host Marilyn McCoo comes on.

Here's where mainstream exposure began for Madonna in America. Enjoy! --J

Seasonal Music

Now that there is an ocean between K and I, we just don’t have those five hour road trips to discuss music like we used to. Now it’s usually a quick chat here or there over IM. I mentioned to her that one of the highlights from V Festival coverage was Travis. I am not that familiar with their stuff but now I’ll check it out. K mentioned that Travis is a fall/winter band for her. That got me thinking, (cue the Sex and the City clip as Carrie types on her laptop), “are some bands seasonal?”

Well, I would say that missing a real summer this year is making me gravitate towards breezy pop music. Check out Alphabeat’s latest single. This is sooo summer and so 80s to me. --J

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time...

How often do you see a slam dancer in a pink tutu? You would have seen it at V this weekend, hahahaha. --J

Hit the FF Button

I whizzed through about ten hours of V Festival coverage last night that included sets by

Air Traffic
The Stereophonics
The Futureheads
The Pigeon Detectives
The Kooks
The Hoosiers
The Prodigy
Ian Brown
Muse
Estelle
The Script
The Pogues
Maximo Park
Duffy
Sugababes

Wow, there’s a lot of really boring guitar rock on the main stage. The Prodigy and Muse were by far the best acts. It made me once again appreciate the Muse show at The Pageant in St. Louis that Judakris attended awhile back. When they launched into Hysteria, the massive crowd went wild. --J

Un-Summer Playlist

The only truly hot summer days I’ve experienced were outside of my new home country. Therefore, I consider this the un-summer of 2008. Here are the songs that have amused me, captivated me, and annoyed me in the last few months. M, this one’s for you since in Houston, it’s summer all year round! --J

Many Shades of Black – The Raconteurs
Let’s Dance to Joy Division – The Wombats
Sex on Fire – Kings of Leon
Strange Times – The Black Keys
Going On – Gnarls Barkley
Closer – Ne-Yo
Like This - GirlTalk

(In the annoyed me category…)
I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You – The Black Kids
I Kissed a Girl – Katy Perry
No Air – Jordin Sparks/Chris Brown

Red-State, Jock Rock Hell

For the first time in my life I left a show before seeing the headliner. It happened here in Huntsville when I got hold of a free ticket to see Alter Bridge. If you don’t know them, they are Creed without Scott Stapp. I assure you I would not have paid to see these guys.

The doors to the venue were to open at 7:00 PM, but standing in line to enter Sammy T’s it was about 7:30 before we actually started moving. I think I made it inside the venue around 8. That seemed ridiculous.

There were a few funny moments, but the best happened while I was in line. There was a “healthy” couple behind me who were pretty clearly wasted- or at least on their way. One of them noticed musicians driving by. The man said “next time they drive by show ‘em your tits”. She said “Hell no, I’m too old. You show ‘em yours.”

By the time Baton Rouge natives and opener Meriwhether took to the stage and delivered a mediocre set I had heard Hinder’s Lips of an Angel three times overhead. When they left the stage that song plus a short playlist of other hardly discernible songs played over and over. It was 10:00 P.M. and the headliners had not come on. It was a Tuesday night and I had an 8:30 AM meeting the following morning. I put my beer down and with a sigh of relief exited the venue.

The audience was in good spirits, but mostly wasted by the time I left Sammy T’s. I’m not impressed with this venue. It’s much too loud and gets too hot too quickly with only a few good vantage points if you’re below average height (coughs). You’d be surprised how often my height has not been an issue! For being so convenient, I wish the venue would have better air ventilation and offer a wider variety of bands.

Because I work across the street, I walk past the venue whenever I walk up to the local cafe and grab my morning latte. Whenever bands are playing that evening you’ll see the buses and equipment trucks parked in the street and the flurry of activity is kind of fun to walk past. That morning I noticed a few people who were camped out determined to be first in line. It was a brutally hot day and I don’t know how they did it. Good on them. I do hope that they weren’t disappointed at the end of the night after their efforts, but something tells me their expectations were FAR different from mine. -K

Glasvegas Open for Kings of Leon

How would one describe their music? Maybe morose 50’s doo-wop (without any harmonies). They sounded good, and looked good on stage. I love the chick drummer who plays standing up. But to me, going to a concert should be an adrenaline-inducing experience so I would probably not intentionally buy a ticket to see a band with somber music. They were good at what they do but it wasn’t my cup of tea. I might check out the record, but I don’t need the live performance. --J

The Best Seat in the House and The Worst Seat in the House

I had the great fortune of covering the sold out Kings of Leon gig at Brixton’s Carling Academy last night for a web publication. On paper it sounds like the perfect night. I get to be in the photographer’s pit, the front of the front row, for one of my favorite bands for the first three songs of their set. But being a fan can have its problems in such a situation. You could tell that for the other photographers, this was just a job. While they were snapping away, trying to get the best shot to sell to the highest bidder, I would have moments of distraction wanting to sing along with the music and wanting to step away from behind the camera to take the moment in.

K and I have talked many times about the thrill of that moment when the lights get turned off and the crowd goes wild as you see the shadowy figures of a favorite band take the stage. It is such a rush. Standing up against the stage and hearing the roar of the crowd behind me, it did let me feel for a fraction of a moment what the guys on stage might be experiencing. It is amazing. But alas, I had a job to do and I think I scored some good pictures.

After being in the pit, I had to find a place to stand to enjoy the rest of the show. I found myself at the far back corner of the bottom floor of the theatre, where I could see nothing and the sound was not very good. Caleb was more talkative than usual, but I couldn’t make out what was being said.

The Followills really seemed to be enjoying themselves and they sounded great. They opened with Crawl, which has kind of a slow and sexy beginning that totally set the tone for the rest of the set. The setlist combined all of best of their records, and the new single, Sex on Fire, had everyone screaming along. I have a ticket for their sold out arena show at the O2 in London in December and I can’t wait to see how the set changes in that huge arena with the new record then released. I will be all fan that night, not worrying about anything but enjoying the music.

Sex on Fire is available on iTunes. Go get it now! --J

Jackson Browne Sues John McCain, Entire Rep Nat'l Committee

Liberal political activist Jackson Browne has filed a lawsuit against Senator John McCain and the whole Republican National Committee alleging that McCain's group used Browne's hit "Running On Empty" in a political ad without his permission.
The suit alleges that a license was never obtained and that it infringes upon the artist's right to publicity in the state of California. He's seeking permanent injunction of any Jackson Browne song AND damages (of course). I wonder how we're quantifying damages in dollar signs in this case.

Remember when Born In The USA was used by Reagan's camp? I ran across this on wikipedia and thought it was interesting and kind of funny...

Born in the U.S.A. album was selling very well, its songs were all over the radio, and the associated tour was drawing considerable press. Springsteen shows at the Capital Centre outside of Washington, D.C. thus attracted even more media attention, in particular from CBS Evening News correspondent Bernard Goldberg, who saw Springsteen as a modern-day Horatio Alger story. Yet more notably, the widely-read conservative columnist George Will, after attending a show, published on September 13, 1984 a piece entitled "A Yankee Doodle Springsteen" in which he praised Springsteen as an exemplar of classic American values. He wrote: "I have not got a clue about Springsteen's politics, if any, but flags get waved at his concerts while he sings songs about hard times. He is no whiner, and the recitation of closed factories and other problems always seems punctuated by a grand, cheerful affirmation: 'Born in the U.S.A.!'"[3] The 1984 presidential campaign was in full stride at the time, and Will had connections to President Ronald Reagan's re-election organization. Will thought that Springsteen might endorse Reagan, and got the notion pushed up to high-level Reagan advisor Michael Deaver's office. Those staffers made inquiries to Springsteen's management which were politely rebuffed.

Nevertheless, on September 19, 1984, at a campaign stop in Hammonton, New Jersey, Reagan added the following to his usual stump speech:

"America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts; it rests in the message of hope in songs so many young Americans admire: New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen. And helping you make those dreams come true is what this job of mine is all about."

The campaign press immediately expressed skepticism that Reagan knew anything about Springsteen, and asked what his favorite Springsteen song was; "Born to Run" was the tardy response from staffers. Johnny Carson then joked on The Tonight Show, "If you believe that, I've got a couple of tickets to the Mondale-Ferraro inaugural ball I'd like to sell you."

During a September 22 concert in Pittsburgh, Springsteen responded negatively by introducing his song "Johnny 99", a song about an unemployed auto worker who turns to murder, "The President was mentioning my name the other day, and I kinda got to wondering what his favorite album musta been. I don't think it was the Nebraska album. I don't think he's been listening to this one."

A few days after that, presidential challenger Walter Mondale said, "Bruce Springsteen may have been born to run but he wasn't born yesterday," and then claimed to have been endorsed by Springsteen. Springsteen manager Jon Landau denied any such endorsement, and the Mondale campaign issued a correction.

-K