January 2012
2 posts
December 2011
3 posts
Love love love tumblr’s long reads tag. #neverbored
If you’re looking for something to pass the time between your coffee break and happy hour today, you could do a lot worse than this excellent article on this excellent album (my favorite from The Replacements).
I don’t have much to say about the record that isn’t covered (more skillfully) here, but I will say that I saw them play on campus at UC Davis in 1989, and the four of them had clearly...
November 2011
1 post
Do you like the Neil Finn? Especially the loose, saucy solo Neil Finn? If so, hang a Do Not Disturb sign on your door for the next hour and check this playlist out. A couple of very considerate show attendees (thanks andromedadropcloth and abermudes!) captured quality video and audio of Neil’s 4/5/11 show at the El Rey Theater in L.A. and then uploaded it all to YouTube – sweet!
All of it is...
October 2011
4 posts
Morning came early today, courtesy of another almost-4.0 earthquake on the Hayward Fault (a mile from my house, and this was the 5th quake in less than a week. Whoa.).
Fortunately, this morning’s breakfast music choice made almost as much of an impression. For your pleasure, allow me to present…Little Dragon.
I’m pretty late on coming around to these guys, mostly because I first heard of...
I was talking to someone yesterday about what he called “foundational music”, the music that you’re listening to at that point in your life where you start to figure out what music actually, is, and what it means to you (usually around 8th or 9th grade, I think – though maybe you’re one of those precocious kids with older siblings who was listening to the Clash, or Ministry, or the Strokes when...
dailyfunfact asked: Any relation to the Bruce Springsteen song?
Just testing the old blog plumbing here, folks. But please enjoy this photo, which I look for every excuse I can find to post.
September 2011
1 post
Been digging this video the last couple of days…
Dog lovers, be sure to stay ’til the end!
August 2011
3 posts
From this month’s issue of TapeOp:
“What people want from music is to be able to exist vicariously through the artist’s visions”
- Michael Beinhorn, Producer (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden [Superunknown{!}], etc.)
True? Not true? Kinda true? True even for Rihanna fans (who really want to give people permission to stand under their umbrellas)? Discuss!
7 tags
July 2011
4 posts
listening to "Smith Westerns - Still New" →
Love the way this jangle-pop song keeps turning into All The Young Dudes for 5 seconds at a time.
listening to "Prince - Uptown" →
@radionowhere: “Black, white, Puerto Rican / everybody just a-freakin’ . Amen.”
“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”
– Joseph Chilton Pearce (via robot-heart)
fred-wilson:
The Seeker - The Raconteurs ft Pete...
June 2011
2 posts
I was listening to an old Lyle Lovett album, The Road To Ensenada, the other day, and was struck by the first line of the title track. As I always am. To me, “As I lay sick and broken / Viva Mexico”, is just one of the greatest first lines ever. There’s so much packed into those eight words that you could almost call the song done and pack it up then and there.
That got me thinking about the...
May 2011
3 posts
Wow – this is just great. In case you haven’t heard of this band, tUnE-yArDs is essentially the nom de rock of Merrill Garbus, who originated this killer, original project in her proverbial bedroom.
The unusual instrumentation (floor tom, duct-taped ukulele, multiple looping pedals) and obvious African influences in her music are garnering the most attention, but I’m most impressed with her...
If you’re one of those music fans who hears a favorite song and says to yourself, “Damn, what a great song…how did they do that?”, you’re really going to dig this video on the making of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass”.
Even if you don’t like the song too much (it’s not one of my favorites), the producers/narrators do a really good job of delivering an accessible lay explanation of what took the track...
listening to "Television - See No Evil" →
It’s a momentous day…I’m finally getting around to listening to Marquee Moon! #waayytoolatetobecool
April 2011
9 posts
listening to "Smith Westerns - Still New" →
Smith Westerns for bfast this morning. Like T-Rex taking over The Sundays. Like it!
How To Steal Like An Artist (And 9 Other Things... →
listening to "Chris Whitley - Kick the Stones" →
This record sounds excellent with coffee, LOUD, today. Try it!
I‘ll keep this short and sweet:
Spring has arrived here in the Northern Hemisphere
We’re all excited about it
We’ve got a new song for you!
Spring (From The Secondhand World) is a track that was recorded for the Under Strange Skies EP, but I thought it might be nice to wait until Spring actually showed up to release it.
You can play the song by clicking that gray play button just below. If...
“It’s about inspiration, not imitation. I call it the Kim Gordon Effect–when you...”
– emily haines (via mysweetheartthedrunkk)
March 2011
1 post
listening to "Adele - Rolling In the Deep" →
Whoa. If you’ve been avoiding Adele just because she’s so hot right now, don’t. Great record!
I miss looking at music. This whole internet thing, where you can listen to pretty much any song that’s ever been recorded five seconds after you think of it, is pretty great, but there’s something that you lose when you can’t check out cover art, or look over the lyrics while you listen to a song, or read the liner notes to find out who the steel guitar player was and where the album was...
February 2011
3 posts
listening to "Radio Nowhere - The Captain →
Stowaways, insanity, desertion and shanghaied sailors - whew! That’s a lot of action for one song.
listening to "robyn - Dancing On My Own" →
@radionowhere: “Was planning on skipping the grammys, as usual, but then I learned my girl Robyn is up for best dance record. Sweet!”
A few people have contacted me lately with some variation on the question “um, where the hell have you been since last summer?”
Well, “in the studio”, is the first part of the answer, as usual, but here’s the punchline: “finishing up a new record!”
Yep, Radio Nowhere is putting the absolute final touches on a new 3-song EP, which will be released very soon. As soon as I can finalize the artwork,...
December 2010
1 post
That’s a pretty short list, I know, but this track must be pretty close to the top.
The record that this comes from (It’s eight songs – is that a Mini LP? Maxi EP? PP?) has probably had more play at Radio Nowhere HQ than anything else this year. Weird, eh? It’s been that kind of year…
This in-studio clip reveals the secret behind Robyn and Diplo’s Scandinavian dancehall mastery: an SSL board...
October 2010
1 post
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us...”
– Ira Glass (via Rabbit Write’s interview on Gala Darling)
September 2010
1 post
Mike Doughty on Anti-Anti-Touring →
hipsterdiet:
1. Play solo, or duo, and sound amazing that way. Not easy, but bands eat money. You need to tour cheap, but your show still has to be tremendous.
2. Write songs. Noise jams are lovely, but your favorite artists who toured for a long long time wrote songs (and lots of the great noise artists did, too). If you have a long life playing shows, your crowd will, alas, grow up. Kids...
August 2010
1 post
1 tag
July 2010
3 posts
“Eventually, Ms. Hill chose to lose the P.R. specialist, ditch the e-mail list...”
– Trial and Error with AdWords and S.E.O. - You’re the Boss Blog - NYTimes.com (via brooksjordan)
Metric's Daytrotter Session →
seaninsound:
Sweet. (via legalfreemusic)
If you’re a guitar player, and a reader (I realize the two don’t always go hand-in-hand) you probably know that making lists of “the best guitarists EVER” is almost as important a part of guitar culture as learning the riff to “Whole Lotta Love”. It sometimes feels like bloggers and magazine writers are making lists of their favorite top guitarist lists.
Okay, this LA Times article is...
June 2010
1 post
May 2010
2 posts
Long time, no blog, I know. That’s because I’ve been hanging out in the studio, trying to make sure that there’s something worth blogging about.
To that effect, I’m getting close to finishing the final version of “Spring” – you might recall that I posted a demo for that track last year. At the time, it had a harmonica solo, which I dug. Not sure that’s still the best choice of instrument for...
Brought a camera into the studio while we were tracking drum fills for the next single. It didn’t go quite the way I’d planned it, but we had a good time.
March 2010
2 posts
If you’re looking for some cool new music to round out your week, give a few of these tracks a spin. I’ve been enjoying them all week. The Dead Weather track is a fantastic Gary Numan cover (which has been helping me discover that Gary Numan is actually pretty good – who knew?). The Holly Miranda song is one of those slow growers: I can’t figure out why I like it, but I’ve played it about 11 times...
Don’t do anything this guy wouldn’t do.