|
|
| <$BlogDescription$>
Archives
Listening: Kaiser Chiefs-Employment Doves-Some Cities Reading: The Stone Roses: And the Resurrection of British Pop Watching: DVDs --> links |
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Radiohead is to play Glastonbury 2003. I would love to one of these UK summer festivals once in my lifetime, their lineups are like a dream ticket. Last time Radiohead played Glastonbury they played "Creep" for the first time in long time. Also look for their new CD June 9th! And according to the excellent radiohead news site, greenplastic, Radiohead might be playing a festival in NY this summer. The Grammys were relatively boring, thankfully unlike major music magazines in the US they paid their respects to Joe Strummer. Coldplay's performance with the NY Philharmonic was not as good as I though it was going to be, 'Politik' is not really my favorite song and you couldn't really hear the Orchestra. Hardly any real politcal statement about the war, except for Fred Durst. I was hoping for more. BTW the CBS executives said the rumor that they would pull the plug if any artists started to make overty political statement about the war was false.
Friday, February 21, 2003
This is from the Drudgereport: XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX FRI FEB 21, 2003 09:25:08 ET XXXXX CBS EXECUTIVES WANT NO 'ANTI-WAR' STATEMENTS DURING GRAMMYS **Exclusive** Top CBS executives are deeply concerned that Sunday night's GRAMMY Awards may turn from a celebration of music -- into a giant anti-war politically rally, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. The GRAMMY broadcast, which is set to air live from New York City, will feature performances by Eminem, Sheryl Crow, Springsteen, Coldplay, James Taylor and others. Word has reached network suites how one star is allegedly planning a dramatic anti-war gesture. "I would hope the artists will remember they are on stage because of their music," a top CBS source told the DRUDGE REPORT Friday morning. During this week's BRITS award show, Coldplay's Chris Martin yelled out to the audience: "We are all going to die when George Bush has his way. But at least we are going to go out with a bang." The CBS executive warned microphones may be unplugged on Sunday night if live performances turn political. "It, of course, is a final option [to cut the microphone.] But it's a very real option," said the top source, who demanded anonymity. "There is a time for political commentary, this is not one of them!" This is hilarious, but at the same time very sad. I can't believe that CBS executives are really going to censor artists, they are just representing what many people all over the US and the world think. In each European country the polls say that 80-90% of people are against a war with Iraq. This gives me a reason (other then Coldplay's performance with a philharmonic) to actually watch the Grammys. I'd love to see Chris make a anti-war statement like he did at the Brits. I luckily caught Interpol on the Tonight Show last night, Leno actually had the guys on a couch are talked to one of them shortly. It's the first time I've seen Interpol performing live. Here's a great link for people who want to record streaming media on their PC. LINK. (Please support the guys who make Total Recorder. It's a great product and the guys at High Criteria don't ask for a lot.) Once you get those .asf videos downloaded (check out coldplay.com and richardashcroft.com for a bunch of videos) take a look here for how to burn them onto a VCD. Here's a great site for looking for the cheapest price for books. Here's on for DVDs. I saw Adaptation last week. I thought it was great, amazingly smart script and great acting from Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper. New Super Furry Animals disc due out in July. Wednesday, February 19, 2003
I got Coldplay tickets for Chicago - going to be our 3rd time seeing them. Can't wait. Check out this Chris interview. I've been downloading many many cool Breezeblocks. And I finally found a site that has tracklistings for many of the breezeblock shows broadcast since 1997. Take a look here. On a Bjork one I downloaded and listened to - it has a Hindi version of "I Will Always Love You" - interesting. I love BBC radio - not only does Radio1 introduce me to so many cool bands from England and the US, but I get to hear and tape live mixes and broadcasts by the bands I love and the ones I've just discovered. They archive most of their shows for a whole week and one can access tracklistings right from their website. Now I've discovered Radio 6. I've been listening to part of the 4 part radio documentary about Manchester and it's music scene. It's really interesting. Radio 6 is like Mojo vs. Radio 1 being like Q. Great music with some classic oldies thrown in for good measure. Lamaq even hosts a show every Saturday.
Thursday, February 13, 2003
Lollapalooza is back. I got to see many excellent bands live at the first 2 lollapalooza's. Back then it felt like something really different to what was around, but now it just seems like one of the many multi-band line up shows offered through out the summer. Still I would love to see Jane's Addiction live again. Check out the excellent UNKLE site, UNKLE 77, where you can for a limited time download the QuickTime movie about the making of James Lavelle's Global Underground disc, GU#023 Barcelona. It has a couple of short quotes from my man Ian Brown. Beware it's big (~144MB). Tuesday, February 11, 2003
Oscar nominations are out today, good to see Adrien Brody nominated for his performance in "The Pianist" (I have to watch this movie soon). I really liked him in Spike Lee's "Summer of Sam." Andy Serkis got denied, but seeing him nominated for a role in which he had no screen time was a stretch. Hopefully he and the makers of Gollum (Weta Workshop) get some sort on recognition at this years award show. Here's my early picks: (disclaimer: most are total guesses, but I'm usually pretty good at guess even when I have not seen a lot of the movies nominated)
Friday, February 07, 2003
After a long time of wanting it, and after we had to move to Kalamazoo, I finally had a cable service that offered IFC (the Independent Film Channel) and the Sundance Channel. Along with those 2 channels we have a ton of other in our digital cable package. When I didn't have these channels I remember skimming over TV listings and seeing many movies and documentaries that I wish I could see, and because I didn't have these channels and was too lazy and cheap to hunt them down I would just forget about them and watch what mainstream Hollywood had to offer. I've had these channels since June, but with only a limited amount of time per day and with having a job, wife, kid, computer, xbox, reality TV, DVDs, and magazines to suck what awake time I had - I had neglected the fact that I have these channels that regularly show excellent independent and foreign and some very interested documentaries. If I remember I sometimes glance at the monthly schedules online and see that there are quite a few things I would like to watch and some things I should watch to expand my knowledge on movies (influential foreign and indie movies) and people/cultures (docs.) But, of course, I usually forget their on and end up doing something else. I have been lucky to watch a few and tape a few for later viewing. I taped Dark Days which intend on watching very soon. This movie is a doc about homeless people living in the subway tunnels in NYC. I've heard many good things about it, plus it was scored by DJ Shadow. I nice original website has been taken down, but check out the link at the title to learn more about this cool doc. I've watched Human Traffic - which is like a Welsh Trainspotting (I'm Tommy by the way), revolving around club drugs and regular 20-somethings who like to lose it on the weekends. It was pretty good. I saw The Filth and the Fury, the definitive Sex Pistols doc, this was excellent and I reviewed this movie in one of my first posts on this site. This past week I saw Rhyme and Reason which is a great doc consisting of mainly interviews with rap stars detailing the start and progression of rap and hip hop culture. It's a bit dated now, but has some excellent interviews with Method Man (who mostly boasts), a young Nas, Ice-T, and many, many others. Rza's is on there quite a bit. From his raps, interviews and articles he just seems as the most intelligent rapper out there. I read a great very short article he wrote about his and Ghostface Killah's trip to Africa. It was about how good people have it here, but people over there are just happier then people here. I think I read it in the new Source. I've taped and been watching Groove, which is kind of like Human Traffic in that it deals with club culture, but it really just is about a rave and the people who go to this specific one. It's pretty interesting so far. Definitely a pro-rave, pro-ecstasy movie. I saw the Recruit this week and I thought it was a good movie, but can't Al Pacino play a different character and one who does not have to have a diatribe at the end of the movie, ala The Devil's Advocate. Fox announces 3rd season of Temptation Island - the guiltiest of all guiltypleasures. I'm thinking about getting my own site and domain, that way I would be able to share a few mp3s and pictures. Maybe I could have some streaming media on there to allow readers to hear some music they might not have heard yet. Hosting plans are pretty cheap nowadays, I could have a website up for a year about $20. Wednesday, February 05, 2003
I got my new issue of Rolling Stone in last night, it had a few interesting looking articles which I have yet to read, but I did skim over a few. The interview with Tom Morello mentioned his excellent Axis of Justice web site and mentioned that it had a Farwell to Joe Strummer. It's an amazing article that really puts into nice words the influence Joe and the Clash had. (After listening to the Clash for the first time, Tom started to write political songs.) There are many really nice statements that Joe had made in the past that really show you how full of integrity the man was. Read the tribute and find out what an amazing man Joe was. On other Rage Against the Machine news, I was listening to the Lamaq show on Radio 1 last night and he was interviewing DJ Shadow. Josh mentioned that he is currently about to enter the studio with Zack De La Rocha, He said that he is just working on 4 songs and that Zack has been working with El-P and Trent Reznor. I think this might be my 'most eagerly awaited' CD. I hope we see a release date this year, because I've been hearing about it since Rage broke up a few years ago! On his excellent website, Josh (DJ Shadow) has a little blurb in his journal about downloading music and how it's hurting artist like himself, El-P and others. I can see where he is coming from because I'm sure a huge percentage of his fans are internet savvy and have the access to download and burn his latest CDs. I think it's important to support smaller artist by actually buying their CDs. The internet is a great way to hear and download pre-releases, hard to find bsides and remixes, and live tracks, but we (including myself) should really actually buy the CDs of artist that we really like and actually deserve our hard earned dollars.
Some other sites of interest: JoBlo's Movie Emporium - has a lot of interesting things about movies and in the news section quite a few promo pics from studios of their upcoming releases. Also check out the movie scripts they have available, this is always interesting to read since one can see what the writers original vision was before the studios came in and sanitized them more the general public. Scripts M. Night's Shayalaman's "Signs", early drafts from Kevin Andrew Walker for "Se7en", and James Cameron's "Spiderman". New layout on the official site for Massive Attack. As my daughter would say "Nice." Coldplay cover the Flaming Lips and Justin Timberlake's "Like I Love You" in Oklahoma. I wish I was seeing them again on this tour, sounds like they are playing a small number of new songs. I fear it's going to be a couple years before we get a new Coldplay CD. I wish bands would go back to releasing a CD every year or year and a half. |
I checked out a car show in Toronto over the weekend. Generally I'm not really a car guy, but I saw some really cool cars. The 
Found a great online radio station that I can actually listen to at work. It's 
The next issue of 
