Coolfer digs Kung Fu Records' variation on the Yahoo home page.

Posted by Glenn at 4:47 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

If you can't rile Charlton Heston (Body Count) or President Clinton (Sister Souljah), the best way to get attention is to have an onstage suicide. Hell on Earth, a band nobody should have ever heard of, and its plans prompted the St. Peterburg city council to quickly pass an emergency ordinance that makes it illegal conduct a suicide for commercial or entertainment purposes. The band intends to go ahead with an on-stage suicide this weekend...all for the sake of raising awareness of right-to-die issues.

Note to rock bands: If you want anybody to be able to find your website via Google, don't use a name that is used for a thousand other purposes. That's known as the world's worst marketing ploy.

Posted by Glenn at 11:19 AM | Link | Comment (2)
|Music|

Aparat's Duplex is a fine listen for two reasons. First, in a time when laptop producers are following the trends of Luomo and Metro Area, Duplex proudly wears good ol' glitch on its sleeve. Not that Coolfer doesn't like microhouse, but the occasional album that falls outside of the trend is refreshing. Second, the skittish beats and warm melodies are excellent. In Duplex, skilled programming meets gentle, uneasy ambience in a joyous clutter. This is one of Coolfer's favorites of 2003 thus far.

Posted by Glenn at 12:12 AM | Link
|Heavy Rotation|

Today MusicMatch brings online its a la carte digital download service for PC users. Over 200,000 tracks (which Coolfer doesn't think is all that much) from all five majors and some indies as well. Costs are in line with iTunes' costs: $0.99 per song and $9.99 for most albums, with all the transferability that iTunes users covet. From the press release: "The Musicmatch Downloads service is the best way for people to find, buy and enjoy music that matches their unique tastes," says Dennis Mudd, chairman and CEO. Hey, Dennis, what if Coolfer wants to download the new Donna Regina album, an old Amon Duul record, or the entire Sun Ra catalog? No? Well, crud. Back to Other Music.

Posted by Glenn at 2:04 PM | Link | Comment (3)
|Music Industry|

Coolfer caught the first installment of the PBS series, The Blues, last night. Feel Like Going Home, directed by Martin Scorsese (who is the executive producer of the series), was a fabulous look at the histories of and similarities between Mississippi blues and the music of West Africa. American musician Corey Harris traveled to both locations. Coolfer loves the music of Mali and was happy to see the inclusion of Ali Farka Toure, Habib Koite and Salif Keita.

Posted by Glenn at 4:43 AM | Link
|Music|

Joe Queenan's "Eight Reasons New York Is Better" is a hilarious article in today's New York Times, and it perfectly captures the motivation to live in this dense and often difficult city. (Free registration required.) Sorry, Raleigh-Durham, I'm staying put. Get yourself a Vermeer, already.

Posted by Glenn at 5:08 PM | Link
|New York City|

Coolfer encourages all bloggers and journalists who regularly write about and comment on the music industry to check out the World Intellectual Property Organization's easy-to-read and thorough information on copyright and related rights.

Posted by Glenn at 2:29 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

The Guardian's Observer Music Monthly has an insightful and humorous article by Miranda Sawyer titled "My Life As A Pop Chick." She writes of her career as a pop writer--a female pop writer--and recounts the good interviews (New Order, Bjork) and the bad ones (Jon Bon Jovi). She also explains why men make better rock journalists and women better pop writers ("There's a fact-collecting aspect to the male psyche that is never happier than when listing the B-sides of The Byrds' five UK top 40 hits, in chronological order"). How very true.

Posted by Glenn at 1:37 PM | Link
|Music|

Coolfer is enjoying the animation shorts at Napster. Check out #3 - The Deal.

Posted by Glenn at 3:12 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

- From MUG, visit Louis Armstrong's house in Corona, Queens, starting October 15th.
- Yodit Getahun of Ethiopia was named Miss Tourism of the Globe in Moscow.
- Coolfer is currently loving "Jesus The Mexican Boy" from Iron & Wine's new EP, The Sea & the Rhythm. Download it at Sub Pop's MP3 page. He's returning to NYC's Knitting Factory on October 15th. His last show there was stunning.
- The Strokes upcoming album, Room On Fire, has been bumped to October 21st. Those teases! Watch Conan O'Brien every Tuesday in November--the Strokes will perform a different song each night.

Posted by Glenn at 1:27 PM | Link

For the record, Coolfer pledges not to post about J-Lo and Ben, Britney and Justin, the next Matrix movie, what celebrity Coolfer saw out on the town the previous night, or any reality television shows. Sorry, you'll have to go elsewhere for that stuff.

Posted by Glenn at 11:03 AM | Link | Comment (6)

NME, always the first to a story, reports that a runaway truck hit Smart Studios, the home base of producer and drummer for Garbage, Butch Vig. (The photo was taken by Garbage singer Shirley Manson.) Garbage is currently recording an album and the accident could have been much worse. Said Vig, "If it had been three days earlier, there would have been a band called Paris Texas in the downstairs studio and Garbage would have been upstairs. It would have killed them."

NME points out Nirvana's 1990 Smart Sessions resulted in the album verion of "Polly" (he produced the entire Nevermind album, which was recorded in L.A. in May and June of 1991). L7, Son Volt, Jayhawks, Poster Children, Beck and Smashing Pumpkins have also recorded at Smart.

Posted by Glenn at 1:06 PM | Link
|Music|

Today's New York Times has an article on the 50th birthday of City Lights, San Francisco's legendary bookstore that has been a haven for beats and the counterculture since its opening. Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, its founder, is pictured above.

Good quote from the article: "The most interesting writing now is coming out of third world authors and women," he said. "It takes hunger and passion to create great books."

Posted by Glenn at 10:12 AM | Link
|Books|

Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme and his Desert Sessions side project will soon release their latest album, Volume 9 & 10, via Mike Patton's Ipecac Records. PJ Harvey (pictured) and Dean Wean are among the cast of rotating musicians this time around. Coolfer thinks the album is mighty fine.

Rolling Stone has a nice feature on Homme and the project.

Posted by Glenn at 5:06 AM | Link
|Music|

Today I went back to an article that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 2000. Written by Charles C. Mann, "The Heavenly Jukebox" stands as the best article I've ever read on MP3 and the age of digital music. Reading it three years later offers a different perspective, one bouyed by hindsight and knowledge of legal happenings since its publication, but the "The Heavenly Jukebox" still fascinates me. The historical perspective and philosophical questions raised are extremely relevant in 2003, and will be years from now.

Posted by Glenn at 12:55 AM | Link
|Digital Music|

Find out here.

Posted by Glenn at 2:45 PM | Link
|Music|

Not content with covering dining, shopping and nightlife, Zagat has published a music guide, the Zagat Top 1000 Albums of All Time (read press release). Zagat's content was bolstered by the input of over 10,000 participants (Coolfer was one of the particpants). Categories include Best Album, Most Influential Artist, Top Make-Out Album, Top Work-Out Albums, and Top Songwriters. Sounds kind of corny, frankly. Coolfer didn't spend all that time lobbying for Love, My Bloody Valentine, Autechre, 808 State and Husker Du so they could get left out of a stupid Top Work-Out Album category (Coolfer would have to vote for the Jazzercise LP with instructional booklet his mom owned in the '70s).

Posted by Glenn at 12:12 PM | Link
|Music|

The much maligned trucker hat, now an expensive boutique item and fasion of late-comer celebrities, is no doubt on a downward trend--at least here in New York. Case in point: at last night's Aesop Rock performance at the Virgin Megastore at Union Square, there wasn't a single trucker hat in the entire Def Jux crew. (Aesop, hatless, pictured to the right, compliments of Vanessa's cell phone.) These guys have donned the trucker hat for years, well before Andy Roddick wore one in the US Open. I can't remember seeing El-P on stage or in photo without a trucker hat. Same with Aesop. Coolfer asked label manager Ese about the lack of trucker hats, and he confirmed they were done with them and have moved on to a one-size-fits-all Def Jux baseball cap.

Posted by Glenn at 10:52 AM | Link
|New York City|

Gordon Jump, who played clumsy, affable Arthur "Big Guy" Carlson on WKRP In Cincinatti (one of Coolfer's favorite shows of all time), died yesterday at the age of 71. (Pictured, on the left.)

Coolfer's favorite WKRP episode: "Turkeys Away," the episode in which the Big Guy and Herb threw live turkeys out of a helicopter for a Thanksgiving publicity stunt. (They thought turkeys could fly.)

Look for WKRP info at Sitcomsonline.com or at this WKRP website.

Posted by Glenn at 3:18 PM | Link
|Television|

LA Weekly's Jay Babcock wrote an interesting article about today's young rock bands and their classic rock influences--such the Black Keys, Sondre Lerche, Kings of Leon, and Jet (pictured).

What interested me most was how Babcock outlined a few reasons for the surge in such obscure influences as Love, Gang of Four and Tim Buckly. One is the Internet, a means for a musician to efficiently scour massive amounts of information in search of inspiration. Another is the CD format, which has meant much of rock's forgotten past has been reissued and appreciated by a new generation.

Finally, Babcock quotes a New York Times article (which quotes an Islands Records A&R rep) in explaining why today's younger generation reaches so far into music's past: “For young, middle-class, suburban American kids of above-average intelligence, there hasn’t been any challenging, soulful music for them, ever. It’s all either pop or rap-rock — music with no sensitivity, no intellectual heft.”

Coolfer digs the phrase "intellectual heft."

(Via The Rock And Roll Report.)

Posted by Glenn at 12:32 AM | Link
|Music|