Thursday, August 28, 2008

Radiohead Live Webcast Tonight

As of 6:45 PDT: nothing yet at Dead Air Space.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Trackmarks: Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Don't Forget Me" Live @ Canvas Club (14 APR 06)

[Flickr]

This track's greatness lies in it's the simple construction. The foundation of a 4-note bass riff and the endless possibilities of John Frusciante's talent. It is also marks one of those all-to-rare moments where Kiedis' lyrics aren't in conflict with Frusciante's guitarwork, rather the two are in perfect harmony. On the album it is overshadowed by the catchy flash of "Zephyr Song", the grower "Tear", the album's pinnacle "Venice Queen" and the singles "By The Way" and "Can't Stop", the latter which has evolved into the staple opener of the Chili Peppers' live experience. Yet live, "Don't Forget Me" continues to grow in leaps and bounds 6 years after the physical release of By The Way (which marked the complete return to form of Frusciante); it is different every night. And because of it's minimalist structure and the man behind the wheel it holds the rarest of possibilities: infinity.

MP3: Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Don't Forget Me" (Live @ Canvas Club)

The Insound 20

The limit of my arithmetic:
T-shirts with the name of your favorite band > T-shirts with no logo > Fake, vintage T-shirts > T-shirts with a corporate identity. The National, The Decemberists, The Thermals & more.

Introducing the Insound 20!
Pre-Order today!
Orders ship mid-August.
Limited edition t-shirts, shirts and hoodies designed exclusively for Insound by Jason Munn of the Small Stakes. (Posters will sell out fast!) *Posters are signed and hand-numbered. Shirts and hoodies are printed on American Apparel products.

New P B & J September 23rd

Seaside Rock's tracklisting:

1. "Inland Empire"
2. "Say Something (Mukiya)"
3. "Favour of the Season"
4. "Next Stop Bjursele"
5. "School of Kraut"
6. "Erik’s Fishing Trip"
7. "Needles and Pills"
8. "Norrlands Riviera"
9. "Barcelona"
10. "At the Seaside"

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Stream New TV on the Radio

An epic first track from the album, Dear Science (dropping on September 23rd), titled "Golden Age". The love affair continues: [www.TVontheRadio.com].

TV On The Radio's fall tour dates:

Sep 5 - Roseland | Portland, Oregon
Sep 6 - Showbox | Seattle, Washington
Sep 7 - Commodore | Vancouver, British Columbia
Sep 9 - MacEwan | Ballroom Calgary, Alberta
Sep 10 - Starlite | Room Edmonton, Alberta
Sep 12 - Big Easy | Boise, Idaho
Sep 13 - In the Venue | Salt Lake City, Utah
Sep 14 - Red Rocks Amphitheater | Morrison, Colorado
Sep 19 - Street Scene | San Diego, California
Sep 20 - Treasure Island | San Francisco, California
Oct 10 - Electric Factory | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Oct 11 - Lupo's | Providence, Rhode Island
Oct 13 - Wilbur Theatre | Boston, Massachusetts
Oct 14 - Masonic Temple | Brooklyn, New York
Oct 15 - Masonic Temple | Brooklyn, New York
Oct 18 - Bogarts | Cincinnati, Ohio
Oct 19 - Vogue Theatre | Indianapolis, Indiana
Oct 20 - First Ave | Minneapolis, Minnesota
Oct 21 - First Ave | Minneapolis, Minnesota
Oct 22 - Riviera | Chicago, Illinois
Oct 24 - Voodoo Festival | New Orleans, Louisiana
Oct 25 - Tabernacle | Atlanta, Georgia
Oct 26 - Bijou Theatre | Knoxville, Tennessee
Oct 28 - Lakewood Theatre | Dallas, Texas
Oct 30 - Stubb's | Austin, Texas
Oct 31 - Diamond Ballroom | Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Nov 6 - Wiltern | Los Angeles, California
Nov 8 - 4th and B | San Diego, California

Monday, August 18, 2008

New Bloc Party Album Out This Thursday

It's bold, for sure, but I wish I could be more excited about this. "Mercury" is not a very good song and, unfortunately, it's on the tracklist. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. The album is called Intimacy and the physical release is out on October 28th.

01. Ares
02. Mercury
03. Halo
04. Biko
05. Trojan Horse
06. Signs
07. One Month Off
08. Zephyrus
09. Better Than Heaven
10. Ion Square

[Pre-order]

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Cloud Cult Fall Tour

Cloud Cult has scheduled a few fall dates. I missed them the last couple times there were in NYC so I'm really looking forward to this one.

Nov. 11 - New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom (tickets)
Nov. 13 - Boston, MA - Middle East (tickets)
Nov. 14 - Bethlehem, PA - Lehigh University

Thursday, August 14, 2008

All Points Brutal

Another letter from the front, in our on-going concert series/war correspondence with Dr. Thomas Beckett, Esq. As usual, political correctness is checked at the door. Enjoy:

Dear Metro Distortion and Friends,

I need to vent about the brutality that occurred at the 1st Annual All Points West Festival this past weekend at Liberty State Park in New Jersey. From the constant stream of emails I received about the festival from the APW Crew, this was shaping up to be a promising event. Two nights of Radiohead back to back! That was enough for me to lay down 566 bones for two tickets to the festival. It started out swimmingly. A romantic $30 a ticket ferry ride with my girlfriend around Manhattan, through the new fugazi waterfalls on the East River (mechanical waterfalls? what the fuck is going on?), cruising by Lady Liberty and Ellis Island.

We enter the festival, present our tickets, they barely check us for any narcotics or foreign objects and we do what any good concert-goer does...we head for the alcohol retailer. There is a long line in order for them to SCAN your IDs...but I say to myself that this will be okay. As we get closer, I realize that this is a beer tent...I hate fuckin beer tents. But being a veteran of Coachella, I calm down and realize that any fairly resourceful individual can get through a festival with beer tents. We get to the front of the line and some fat bastard (who probably smashes 16 Mickeys in order to get a buzz slashes my entire hand with a dark purple sharpee. Then some dude scans my ID and states with a firm voice, "There is a five beer maximum, I say again, a five beer maximum and you can only drink in the 3 designated beer tents!" He then proceeds to snap a neon yellow wristband on my right wrist that has five tabs on it marked 1 through 5. I was stunned.

They shuffled us into the heavily guarded beer tent. I felt like they were Germans guiding me into the showers of....I digress. Not only were the beer tents fenced in, but they had a second fence with a green tarp around it so you could not see out into the festival and god forbid some poor innocent child should look in to see people drinking beer...at a festival! As one could imagine, the tents were packed with circular lines to receive your ration of alcohol. To top it all, they charge $9 a drink. They also positioned the 3 tents between the 3 stages, therefore we can all enjoy the entwined noise of CSS and Andrew Bird in the distant distance.

Gentlemen, what the fuck is going on here? What country did we come back to? What country are we living in? Now, do I need a good amount of alcohol to enjoy a show? Not necessarily. But does a baseball player need a glove to play the game? Does a business executive need a cup of coffee to get through his morning? Does a porn star need a fluffer to get through a scene? Not necessarily. BUT IT SURE AS SHIT HELPS!

Whatever happened to sex, drugs and rock 'n roll? At a minimum sex, drugs and rock 'n roll for the average Joe was missionary style with his wife, 10 beers, and Rod Stewart...at a minimum. You take beer away from us...then what's next? YOU ARE FORCING ME TO DO DRUGS!

The following day at the festival, I turned my girlfriend into a mule. Let's call her Nancy Botwin. Nancy went through security with tiny bottles of rum in every place non-abusive, but on this day they search everywhere and take 8 aeroplane style bottles of rum off her. We were forced to go back to the beer tent. I get my 5 tab wristband and head inside, but I am stopped by a security guard that tells me..."Sorry, the tent is full." Seriously! So with my neon-tabbed arm I give him the middle finger and tell him that this whole thing is fascist and left the line in protest.

So, there you have it. Two nights of Radiohead...dead sober. Radiohead was flawless though. The only band in the world that can play every song off their latest album, two nights in a row and people were still in a frenzy. They did a good job of mixing up the oldies on back to back nights. The second night they played "The Bends," which I thought was a treat for people who suffered through both nights of a brutal festival. "Jigsaw" and "Arpeggi" will be staples for years to come...great songs live. I cannot think of another headlining band that could possibly drag me back to this communist festival. Ben Harper played the following night. I didn't go. Honestly, what would have been the point.

Last night I was relaying this story to a friend of mine, Tennessee Dust, over a couple of late night cocktails. When I cracked open a new freshie, I spilled some beer on my left hand that still had remnants of the purple sharpee marks. I went to the sink to wash my hand off and after five nights, the purple mark finely came completely off. It wasn't the soap and water. It was the alcohol.

Yours,

Thomas Beckett

"GHT...There's no T without the GH"

Friday, August 08, 2008

Eddie Vedder @ NJPAC, 8/7/08



[my phone pics]

I had to remind myself on several occasions to blink. I didn't want to miss anything and I didn't want the night to end. After striking out twice for the NY shows, Newark and the 10c came through for me. 7th row orchestra. I read somewhere that these shows feel like a conversation in Eddie's living room and it's true, from the Q&A to the stories behind some of the songs. There are too many things to recap but one of the more memorable moments was listening to Eddie explain the origin of "Yellow Ledbetter" and then, curiously, he actually cut himself off after he seemed to get a little choked up. He also debuted a new song that he claimed to have written at 5 a.m. that morning, after a long night of boozing. During "Hard Sun," I turned around to see Tim Robbins with a big Andy Dufresne smile on his face rocking out with the rest of us . Last night, he was the second coolest guy in the building...

Set 1:
"Walking the Cow" (Daniel Johnson)
"Trouble" (Cat Stevens)
"Don't Be Shy" (Cat Stevens)
"Around the Bend"
"I Am Mine"
"Dead Man Walking"
"Sometimes"
"I'm Open"
"Man of the Hour"
"Unthought Known" (new)
"Driftin'"
"Masters of War" (Bob Dylan)
"Setting Forth"
"No Ceiling"
"Guaranteed"
"Far Behind"
"Rise"
"Small Town"
"Goodbye (You're True)"
"Soon Forget"
"Forever Young" (Bob Dylan)
"Porch"

Encore 1:
"Society" (w/ Liam Finn)
"Throw Your Arms Around Me" (w/ Liam Finn) (Hunters and Collectors)
(Q/A)
"Growin' Up"
"Lukin"
"Let My Love Open the Door"
"Arc"

Encore 2:
"Hard Sun" (w/ Liam Finn)

Image of last night's setlist (although it changed during the show)

[skyeriverwinter]

Thursday, August 07, 2008

The End of Wolfmother

This is unfortunate. Perhaps it's another classic case of a band growing up too fast in a music biz craving $$ but we'll look back fondly on the good times with Wolfmother, in the early days of Metro D in '06.

[NF's interview]
[Wolfmother @ Northsix - where it all started for Metro D]

UPDATE: Apparently the Wolfmother name lives on.
[More]

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

The National @ Central Park Summerstage, 8/4/08

[Random phone pic taken during Yeasayer]

I was there at 6:30 on the dot to catch Plants and Animals. Given their recorded output, I really expected more than 3 people on stage. I'm addicted to Parc Avenue right now and their live performance was further confirmation that this band has a solid future ahead of them. Yeasayer looked very comfortable in a large capacity setting although I still want to catch them in a smaller venue to get the true vibe from their set. I love how the songs from their album take on an entirely new life on stage. They also played two new songs, the first of which sounded incredible. The second one, unfortunately, didn't quite work. As for The National, the horns are always a nice addition to their live shows but I missed the violin presence from Padma (Doveman filled in admirably on keys) . "Virginia" was a nice surprise and I'm hoping they start pulling out a few more b-sides. For as many times as I've seen The National (I think I've lost count), I don't think they'll ever top this year's show at BAM but I've yet to be leave a show disappointed and last night was no exception. One additional note, the amazing artwork behind the stage (in the photo above) was done specifically for The National, for this show.

Setlist:
Brainy
Secret Meeting
Baby We'll Be Fine
Slow Show
Squalor Victoria
You've Done It Again, Virginia
Abel
The Geese Of Beverly Road
Ada
All The Wine
Daughters Of The SoHo Riots
Apartment Story
Green Gloves
Mistaken For Strangers
Fake Empire
---------------
Start A War
Karen
Mr. November
About Today

Friday, August 01, 2008

The Mars Volta to Headline Detour

[L.A. Weekly's Detour]

Adios

[Jim Rogash/Getty Images]

The mercurial Yankee-slayer. The perennial .300/30+/100+ guy. The mp3 sunglasses, piss breaks in the Monstah, baserunning for dummies, walking out groundballs, slide-tripping over the sprinkler to tie Game 1 of the World Series guy. I've defended the madness for 8 years now. I'm going to miss him. I'm really going to miss that first note: Yankee-slayer (.321 BA, 1.029 OPS, 55 HRs, 163 RBIs in 200 games against the Spanks). We're going to find out soon how good Papi really is now that Predator isn't coming to bat after him. You don't replace a bat like his. You can't. 2004 and 2007 don't happen without him. And we might have just kissed a shot at '08 goodbye. Manny's the only Red Sox player (current/former) to be featured in one of my Christmas cards, and, at that, the only Red Sox player I've ever met on the street. He is one of the greatest hitters ever. You simply don't replace guys like him. You just move on.