WaterCoolerGossip

Feel like you have not read any good books lately (or magazines for that matter–not pointing any fingers)? Been going to too many shows?

Come to Rothko tomorrow at 7:00 and let Chuck Klosterman, Marc Spitz, Sarah "Ultragrrrl" Lewitinn, Andy Greenwald, and Caryn Ganz read to you. These former SPIN writers will be reading passages from their novels, how-tos, and rants on music.

Yes you have time to do this before you go to John Vanderslice.

Product Shop NYC Reading Fest at Rothko
116 Suffolk Street (corner of Rivington)
Thursday, April 27th
7—9PM
$5 Cover

UPDATE:
This was cancelled due to venue problems.

Posted by 3xWes at 10:06 AM | Permalink

So the Scissor Sisters performed at Bowery this past weekend. I was there; Karl Lagerfeld was there. I did not know what he looked like until a crowd of men standing next to me became giddy as schoolgirls when they spotted him and a shorthaired Kylie Minogue together on the balcony. But you probably could have guessed he was a fashonista from the giant Count Dracula collar of his shirt, which actually looked like a pair of fangs with a tiny black bowtie floating in the middle. Not to mention his permanent shades and white hair slicked back into a ponytail. He stood with a stoic posture the entire show. At one point, my friend turned to me and said in a Karl Lagerfeld voice (whatever that may be), "This planet is interesting, I am glad I landed my spaceship here."

Obviously the Sissor Sisters put on a fabulous show. Sunday was probably the most in-your-face display of flamboyance I have ever seen in person. Everybody in the crowd sang along and danced like crazy. On stage there was high-stepping, skipping, twirling, and lots sexual maneuvers with the mic stand. And yes, Jake’s shirt had to come off at the end.

Oh and if you want to see some fantastic pictures from Saturday when fancy cameras were allowed, check out This Is Not A Photograph (link via Jason Product Shop).

Posted by 3xWes at 01:42 AM | Permalink

That Islands show at Avalon was really good but I don't really like Avalon as a venue. I did not stick around for the jam out in the streets afterwards because it was raining. Review over at Product Shop.

Posted by 3xWes at 09:59 AM | Permalink

Cloud Cult effectively took over New York last week with their three shows. I was at two of them. I reviewed the Knitting Factory show last Monday for Product Shop.

I am glad that they changed the set list for those two nights because the two shows were really different atmospheres. At the Gothamist show at the Knitting Factory there was more energy in the room with lots of cameras flashing, arms waving, and people yelling. However there was a lull in the middle of the show and I think you could feel it in the crowd too. During Friday's show at Arlene's Grocery the energy level was more consistent, not quiet the fervor of Monday but a more relaxed "we're here to listen” mindset. Friday they played more songs that involved electronic beats and samples, but people did not wig out along with the music. I liked Friday's performance slightly more but had more fun on Monday.

Above pics are from Friday

Posted by 3xWes at 01:22 AM | Permalink

Forgot about this one. Heartless Bastards review from last Saturday over at Product Shop.

Posted by 3xWes at 01:32 AM | Permalink

Mates of State had a fantastic show at Bowery Ballroom last Wednesday. Review over at Product Shop.

Posted by 3xWes at 07:32 PM | Permalink

The morose but lovable Quasi was at North Six last Tuesday. As usual, my views and opinions can be heard over at Product Shop. The show was good but their set list was no fun. They did not play my all time favorite Quasi song "The Happy Prole" (MP3). They can really write catchy songs without choruses. Before you know it, you will have the whole thing memorized.

Posted by 3xWes at 07:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Amy Correia will play Mo Pitkin's this Friday. Her second album Lakeville from 2004 came out of material she was using in her live set. Amy is trying to start over after being tossed to the wayside by Capital when her first album did not have the commercial success they had hoped. “The first one, I had what seemed like limitless resources — major labels, seven different producers, money. This record I had no money, no label, no resources,” she said. Amy's voice is from another era and glows with an unpolished beauty. After seeing that she is playing Mo Pitkin's, I rediscovered the song "Coney Island, USA" which is about falling asleep on the F train after a late night drinking and waking up in Coney Island. I liked that song the first time I heard it and that was before I woke up one cold winter morning down on Neptune Avenue. That sucked but now I can really relate.

Coney Island, USA (MP3)

Posted by 3xWes at 06:59 PM | Permalink

Voxtrot finally came back to New York and played the Mercury Lounge Sunday and Monday. My friend Oka and I, among others, went to the shows. She is a big fan and has decided to write a review in case you missed out or have never heard of this most awesome band. There is also a much lamer review over at Product Shop comparing both nights.

i heart voxtrot and this is why:
its been ages since i have been to a show that has truly gotten me excited to be there. i have noticed that people don't sing anymore, it's mostly just screaming into a mic or some weird form of lyrical speaking. i appreciate that ramesh can actually sing well. witty stage banter is also notably appreciated. if i wanted you to stand on stage, play your music and leave, i would listen to a cd. let's face it, there isn't much of a difference unless the band is actually "putting on a show". so kudos, yes kudos, to you voxtrot for entertaining me. voxtrot also has awesome energy (ok, with the exception of stoic guitar dude). the whole crowd was so psyched to be there, as was i.

another bonus to a good show is a good opener. i will confess that i missed the first two (there were, after all three!!), but irving definitely made getting there early worthwhile. someone said they were like a "voxtrot jr." which seems fitting. they are peppy, with good stage banter and great lyrics. irving also has this subtle monkees-esque quality to them, which i find to be fabulous and reminiscent of my first musician crush - davey jones. and all of those boys can sing, which is a rarity among the indie-rock genre. actual, melodious singing!!

beyond just the spectacle of a good show, voxtrot has some of the best lyrics i have heard recently. "i'm a love letter away" has become one of my all time favorite lyrics. in fact, "the start of something" has become an all time favorite song (anyone who has heard my phone ring knows that). it just seems very genuine to me and no matter what they are saying, you feel like bopping along.

so my advice is that if you haven't heard voxtrot, you need to because you will feel better about yourself and we could all use a little of that.

Posted by 3xWes at 09:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Review of Rahim over at Product Shop.

Posted by 3xWes at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The Heartless Bastards are coming to Mercury Lounge Friday and Saturday. When I first heard Stairs and Elevators, I was not entirely sure if the singer was a girl or guy. That's because Erika Wennerstrom's voice is all down and out blues; but the band plays rock. It's a cool combination of strife and anger. Come to the show and you'll see.

Check out New Resolution (MP3).

Posted by 3xWes at 11:10 PM | Permalink

The single "Crazy" from the upcoming Gnarls Barkley St. Elsewhere debuted at #1 today on the UK charts. Except the song doesn't actually hit the streets until Tuesday, this is entirely from online single sales. If that many people bought it online, think how many downloaded it from a blog.

The album comes out on May 9th in the US on Downtown Records/Atlantic. Pitchfork has more.

OLD GOSSIP
Gnarls Barkley; That Dude

Posted by 3xWes at 10:41 PM | Permalink

Editors acoustic? Yeah right, until I heard this . . .

Someone Says - Acoustic (MP3)

Feel Good Inc - Acoustic Cover (MP3)

Look out! I have posted a review of Art Brut aka Wild Seafood over at Product Shop.

Posted by 3xWes at 10:05 PM | Permalink

The Flaming Lips like to set up their own gear. Each member lugged out their own instruments for sound check before their show Friday at Webster Hall. A lot of their equipment is a matching work-zone orange and has been souped-up for their purposes. There was a double-neck guitar with an iPod mounted on its base that had cords coming and going but did not seem to serve any critical purpose to the music. There was a keyboard on a hydraulic stand that was constantly being repositioned. Wayne had an acoustic guitar that was hollow in the back, exposing a white insulation lining its insides. Whether The Flaming Lips like to pitch in with their roadie work because they are extremely nice guys or they are extremely particular, I could not tell you. But after everything was in place, they left the stage for 15 minutes to ensure a grand entrance.

A Flaming Lips concert is just as much a visual experience as it is aural. The show started with a monologue projected in giant pink and yellow letters proclaiming how much fun we were about to have. "Race for the Prize" begins, then giant balloons downpour from the ceiling and are kept aloft by volleys from the crowd. These were the kind of balloons that when filled with helium, tied to a string, and given to a small child with a good grip, the kid would float off into oblivion. These orbs were everywhere and so was the confetti, some of which ended up in my mouth. Slowly the population of balloons dwindled as the band popped them on a spike attached to the neck of Wayne's guitar. Still, this did not mean that the crowd could slack off, when Wayne felt like the energy had slipped a notch he would say "Come on. Come on guys. This is your chance." In between one song he touched on his abhorrence for Bush, the injustice of trying to control abortion, and his approval of pot smoking at the show. Put simply, people have become "too tolerant," which has come full circle to a type of oppression. It all made perfect sense at the time. Now, I have not even mentioned the pack of costumed dancers flanking the band. These dancers were not as otherworldly as the furry creatures from last time but more like bad Halloween costumes of bearded toga-wearers, aliens, and santas. The giant projection screen that spliced music videos, lyrics, and weird footage compounded the over stimulation. In the encore they covered "War Pigs" juxtaposed with images of death, the war in Iraq, and a giant oculus while flashing portraits of Bush, Cheney, and Powell. The band played a few songs from the new album, which translated well live, and lots of people already knew the lyrics.

This was my first Flaming Lips concert and it was very surreal. The only real complaint I heard from friends was that they are still using the same antics—the balloons, the confetti, the nun puppet—that they have for years. I will agree that when you go to see The Flaming Lips you sort of know what to expect, but at the show you realize you could never again replicate that crazy moment. Maybe next time won’t be as grand but “All we have is….” You know the tune.

Set list:
Race For The Prize / Bohemian Rhapsody / Free Radicals / Yoshimi Battle The Pink Robots, Pt. 1 / Cow Jam / Yoshimi Battle The Pink Robots, Pt. 2 / The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song / The Gash / The W.A.N.D. / She Don't Use Jelly / Do You Realize?? // Love Yer Brain / War Pigs

Jason PSNYC, Stereogum, and BrooklynVegan were also there.

More pics after the jump.

Posted by 3xWes at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Glenn Kotche (best known as the drummer for Wilco) opened for Teddy Thompson at Avalon on Friday.

You have to feel for Glenn Kotche. Watching him unleash polyrhythms on a bizarre drum kit on Friday night, it was easy to tell that the man feels limited playing nuanced but simple backbeats for Wilco. Clearly dude has an inner Terry Bozzio fighting to get out, a badass rock monster dying to experiment with strange sound effects and odd time signatures. And I think most Wilco fans will agree a turn towards prog-rock would be a bad look for them. Everybody wins with Glenn Kotche's solo career. Except the crowds watching him for more than 20 minutes.

See, drum solos would be boring as hell without the visual and physical aspects. Guitarists, pianists and everyone else get to essentially create new songs in their solos. Watching somebody shred is fucking cool, but the technical prowess is just as impressive as the new licks and melodies created in the process. Drum solos are ok to listen to, but watching a drummer light up his or her kit is an entirely different kind of experiment. Drum solos don't need melody, and drummers that want to write songs are much better off expanding to other instruments than sticking to drums if they want to appeal to non-drumming crowds.

And therein lies the problem with Glenn Kotche solo set. The man has chops, and that was evident as he opened up the show with a four-limb assault on his weird set-up. And as he moved on in his set, his coordination (along with some pre-looped tracks) allowed him to perform songs by Steve Reich and Joao Gilberto, as well as original compositions. They were definitely songs with recognizable themes and melodies, and the inclusion of cowbells and crotales on his kit allowed for some limited melody. But when he brought in field recordings from his time Brazil at the end of a song, Kotche was reaching for a level of meaning one can't really get from a drum solo. The innovative "Monkey Chant," Kotche's piece de résistance, was truly innovative sonically. In between fast and intricate sticking, he created unexpected sounds by hitting a fruit basket and by stretching springs attached to his snare drum. He used different types of sticks to coax new sounds from his drums. It was entertaining and interesting, but "Monkey Chant" didn't gain anything when he explained that the song was a telling of a monkey battle from a Hindu epic, and that every theme and sound corresponded to a different character in the story. I felt like I was in a strategy session for an exclusive Starbucks CD. You just wowed everyone with kick-ass drum solo, Glenn. Like Tommy Lee, Buddy Rich and pretty much every other drummer ever, you don't need to prove anything else.

The show wasn't boring by any means, but I liked it for no other reason than drum solos rock.

Posted by Young Cleaners at 04:42 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Michael Bierut of Design Observer has collected all of the High Priority illustrations for New York magazine that describe what is going on that week. He describes it as:

Every week, the editors of New York magazine identify five upcoming "can't miss" activities in the magazine's back-of-the-book listings section. And every week, New York's design director, Luke Hayman, and art director, Chris Dixon, select a designer to create "High Priority," a typographic illustration using these five selections.
The rules are simple. The illustration is 4.4 inches high by 6.875 inches wide; it has to include the five events, the dates of the week, and the words "High Priority;" and it can only use two colors, red and black.

Above image by Todd St. John of HunterGatherer.

Christoph Niemann


Paul Sahre


Tom Brown


Barbara de Wilde


Jeanne Verdoux


Athletics


Atelier444 and John Sheppard

Posted by 3xWes at 03:26 PM | Permalink

Brian Eno and David Byrne are rereleasing a remastered version of My Life in the Bush of Ghost, a heavily influential album from 1981 that used a lot of atmospheric and found sounds. Here is an excerpt from an essay David Byrne wrote about the album:

At that time there were no samplers, so the found vocals were often flown in (this consisted of two tape machines playing simultaneously, one containing the track and the other the vocal) and, if the Gods willed, there would be a serendipity and the vocal and the track would at least seem to feel like they belonged together and it would be a “take”. . . . Sometimes we’d record radio sermons after-hours on our cassette players that were built in to our late 70’s boom boxes. The quality was sometimes dubious (on “Come With Us” we had to make the hiss part of the dark ambience)…but overall we came to realize that hi fidelity was vastly overrated- and sometimes the harsh megaphone like quality of these vocals was actually more immediate sounding. Like transmissions from a desperate planet. Other times the vocals often came from those records we’d been listing to over the previous year.

I think some people found all this disturbing. In the West anyway the causal link between the author and performer is strong. For instance, it is assumed that I write lyrics (and the accompanying music) for songs because I have something I need to “express”. And that as a performer it is assumed that everything one utters is naturally autobiographical. I find that more often, on the contrary, it is the music and the lyric that triggers the emotion within me rather than the other way around. By making music we are pushing our own buttons, in effect, and the surprising thing is that vocals that we didn’t write or even sing can make us feel a gamut of emotions just as much as ones that we wrote. In a way making music is constructing machines that, when successful, dredge up emotions- in us and in the listener. For some, this fact is, it seems, repulsive, a trick, a betrayal and deception. Many prefer to see music as an “expression” of emotion rather than a generator of it.

Also, I have been obsessed with the new Hot Chip album for the past couple days. "Colours" has been on repeat; it's TweeTronic. The album has bit more range than that descriptor but it's all laid back. I did not really like their first album but there are lots of good tracks on The Warning. Look for this scorcher soon.

Colours (MP3)
Over and Over Video : Real Player High / Real Player Low // WMP High / WMP Low

Posted by 3xWes at 07:24 PM | Permalink