FREE HOLIDAY SINGLE: Every year around this time of year our Hoboken friend Saint Brian Musikoff; who is the bass player in Stuyvesant, a cartoonist, and a bartender releases a track for the world to hum and sing. This year’s tune was recorded as part of the New Jersey classic and 27th annual Jon Solomon 25HR Holiday Marathon Show on WPRB in Princeton. Listen live to the program Christmas Eve at 5:00 pm ET until Christmas day at 6:00 pm EST.
“A Can of Simoniz” is a great swirling thistly tune complete with slay bells, some polished indie-tude mistletoe sung by Renée LoBue and backed by Daniel Darragh( Risk/Reward) on Drums, Tom Beaujour(True Love) on the guitar and the bass playing of Saint MusiKoff. Far from that recycled holiday fruit-cake but just as tasty looking to our ear holes.
As a bonus to inspire some holiday high stepping cheer, if you contribute any amount for the track, Mr. Musikoff will help Saint John Houlihan of Queen’s feed those in need via his Let’s Start With A Sandwich go fund me campaign which has been running for the past 2 years. Yes that is right, delicious sandwiches will be delivered to the homeless as he travels in New York to feed some hungry unsuspecting folks. $6,300 has been raised to date from donations which is 100% pure sandwich money for this actionable cause at gofundme.com/startwithasandwich
Singles: Here’s the latest melancholy pop single from NJ’s NADA SURF hitting us just right on the heartstrings with “Believe You’re Mine” from their coming record called You Know Who You Are to be released March 2016. The lyrics are right out of twitter crush timeline romance and fall right in line in that spot you love and care about in the better parts of alternative rock makers. Co-produced by our good vibes pal and squirrel master knob twister Mr. Tom Beaujour at his studio the Nuthouse Recording in Hoboken NJ. This is Mathew Caws’s 7th Nada Surf record with the boys and includes the additional guitar strumming of Mr. Doug Gillard who has been touring with them for the past few years.
Ira Elliot their drummer described including Doug as as a full fledged member as fulfilling their destiny to become The Pretenders of their generation.
He went on to mention:
It also features the legendary Joe McGinty (Psychedelic Furs, Ramones, Ronnie Spector, Losers Lounge, Sid Gold’s Request Room) on keyboards, the equally legendary Ken Stringfellow (Posies, Big Star) gave us some angelic walls of sighing harmonies (as on the single below) to say nothing of the incredible Martin Wenk (Calexico) who supplied some of his signature horn arrangements. We’re very lucky to have such talented friends at our disposal
Tonight on Friday the fucking 13th, 2015 at Asbury Park Yaht Club, New York’s indie rock band Dead Stars rock the jersey shore with the sneakergazing and well groomed Overlake.
ALBUM REVIEW: Dead Stars – Slumber
Here is a cassette/digital release that is equal parts malt liquor guitar distortion grind alla J-Mascis and melodic rock vocals akin to jets to brazil. So as far as classic rock fans go you could throw in Dave Grohl there as an audible influence too by his long hairs but without the idiocratic persona. Maybe I also like it because it’s a strong 90’s nod to his upstate band called Tugboat Annie or even teenage fanclub. Many good reasons but this record stands on it’s own and is the good shit so you should support them on bandcamp.
Dead Stars ‘Someone Else’ Old Flame Records
OK,enough of my bullshit. Give this some love so your mom can see what you are doing facebook today
VIDEOS OF THE DAY: From the guys in Mache have a web series called cabin tapes with band and singer song writer performances by Victoria Reed, Christopher Watson, Wil Farr (Hurrah A Bolt Of Light) and Sarah Aili. All good stuff. I’m out of steam or I would write more about this but you should know the artists are all really talented and I’m happy they shared this project with RS. Enjoy, sit-back and chill, spark a joint and pass it around.
Chris Watson – “Something about the dark that gives you light”
Fuck music. Fuck writing. Fuck caring. Fuck this shit. There I feel better.
The last record I purchased recently was the new Publicist UK album and it really is a fine piece of vinyl. Also I noticed a post by @michaelazerrad that Sub Pop founder Bruce Pavitt’s is making a site/app called www.8stem.com that allows everyone to remix music. This might be the future and they are seeking beta-testers. Since I am a super geek at heart I am now awaiting my access info to be able to peer into the future for at least a minute. It’s a fleeting effort but I’m gonna try.
I recently I let my eMusic credit card lapse after 15 years supporting them and not really feeling inspired to re-up due to some austerity like cut-backs (about $2,100 in downloads at least) that mostly went to labels and bands. I love some of the varied music I have discovered there old and new but a lot of new music is not very inspired. Has the same old non melody, canned sounds and devoid of hooks. It’s a lot of work to make original music – a constant complaint around here. Don’t just publish and release the first song you write. The labor part is gone. Although I am all for inspired song making like Daniel Johnston he is anomaly. Which was/is one of the review stalker number one missions still I think is to help point out and find these nuggets.
1) Listen and bubble up the good stuff
2) Talk about it nicely except for a couple instances like when we let a crappy review of Vomitface spatter on our pages. Can’t apologize to those guys enough. Even though I try to be diplomatic. Sometimes we fail even when we think something is derivative even if it has heart then it’s good. It’s a hard balance because everytime my random players kicks on one of their songs. I’m like this – fuck! Their new one rocks weird and bendy C tuned to make your stomach rumble, its jacked as if Mike Patten puked in his workout cloths wrangling out the beast of melody. You are welcome.
3) Point out music that has passion, artful, weird and or political.
4) Highlight the killer stuff in the nj music scene in particular. Which is was/is a huge aspirational task unto itself. There is so much to cover and if you feel you want to write just let me know. Give me a reason to believe again. I rarely get takers and I think it’s because it’s a “ME” generation thing and I give huge kudos to James at CoolDad Music for digging in so well and caring about so many musicians.
5) If it’s a hit and we hear it. We feature when bandwith allows. Which brings me to my last point. I have not had a lot of time. Life has been a roller coaster of my own design. So give me a reason to believe and it shall be. Post your best song that presents your band in the comments. Let’s see what others think go take a chance and click a link. I ignore about 95% of the emails i get because it’s just email nightmare. Don’t be offended. Send me a CD or piece of vinyl and let me know in the subject line. Getting back to touching and feeling your art and music in my hands is something I will appreciate and it will help you stand out in giant fucking fat glut of mediocre.
VIDEOS: First-up is a new video from Kurt Vile Directed by Daniel Henry via Matador Records on his coming album b’lieve i’m goin down”. This long hair really reminds me of my old friend Dizzy from Nude Swirl.
KURT VILE – “PRETTY PIMPING”
KITTY FINER – GIRLS IN THE GARAGE
Please meet Kitty Finer, who is the daughter of Jem Finer, founding member of The Pogues. This video ‘Girls in the Garage’ was directed by The Raincoat’s Gina Birch from Kitty’s EP Lobby Star. This tune has a nice Ethiopian feel in the beat and mariachi brass with a bunch of ladies getting jiggy in jumpers in a garage. The lead track on the EP is classic alt rock and really good song writing if you dig the feelies and solo Joe Strummer you will like her guitar and banjo jangle. Same campfire style of song writing and story telling. Follow her on TwitterBandcamp
Introducing multi-instrumentalist Ray Goren talking about his new EP ‘Songs For You’ – out 8/21 via Jay Vee Records and produced by the Grammy Award-winning producer Steve Jordan who does a nice introduction of this new blues guy. Did we mention he is only 15 years old and has already performed with B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Bonnie Raitt? No ok. He’s smooth man.
PODCASTS: Little Records archives the best of ’80s underground rock and the early days of ’90s indie rock into exceptionally thoughtful and curated playlists that it’s our go-to listening. I almost wish they would chat in-between sets but they just jam one great song after another relentlessly for the shear love of spinning great music. Half the tunes I admit I never heard until them because honestly in the late 70’s 80’s 90’s there was just too much great original music to keep up with it and is a full time job to listen. Thankfully these Baltimore based guys have done this job and only taken them 30+ years to create this ongoing themed archive that deep dives into a bunch of shows about the different music scene that offered so much american culture with all sorts of fun sets. Can’t recommend enough for a proper music lesson in what today’s bands are doing completely fucking wrong so just sign-up to their mixcloud stream right now. Don’t question my authority in this matter they take great care each and every show. Plus not to mention my lazy ass does not to get up and visit the stax. I just click play and they are already two steps ahead of me. Enjoy this service.
Podcast 045. Sub Pop Singles Club
One of the more genius moves for Sub Pop in its early days was the creation of the Sub Pop Singles Club, in which subscribers received a new, limited-edition seven-inch once a month via the postal service. READ ON AND LISTEN.
Totally like this so your mom see’s what good taste you have in music.
TODAY: Bandcamp HQ announced that they will be rolling out an important transactional change and improvements to the way they collect money from music fans and will be adding payment options. Rather than user payments for digital transactions going from the fan directly to the Bandcamp account holder the payments will be processed by them internally first and then paid out to the account within 24 hours, instead of instantly like they currently are in real time, with the added bummer of a caveat that higher-value transactions may take a bit longer to arrive. So looks like Bandcamp will be playing with your money and making interest with these “improvements” in order to become a music bank. They claim the revenue share will not be changing, which is one of the upsides and users will continue to receive payments via the only existing option which is users/musician PayPal account. Although I personally would prefer they give the option to pay my bank directly if possible and cut out Paypal all together and maybe that is the longer term goal for bigger labels and business minded folks because all adds up if you consider that music fans have paid artist $115 million, and 3.2 million in the last 30 days alone!
Music fans have paid artists $115 million, and $3.2 million in the last 30 days alone!
Bandcamp says they are taking over the processing and payout for digital transactions in order to lay the groundwork for several new and exciting upcoming improvements which may include:
Accepting more payment options (bigger bank issues involve new transaction fees)
Offering of gift cards (new transaction fees to consider and production costs)
The streamlining the checkout flow (especially when purchasing items from multiple artists e.g. different user paypal accounts)
Bandcamp also notes that as part of their change they will be updating their current Terms of Use and will be announcing the fine print regarding above shortly. The only upside is that because they are adding the big credits cards (potentially) this will allow more users who want to become bandcamp music fans but don’t have a paypal account.
What would really be transformational in their roadmap is if they could monetize their streaming and all of the embedded music players with a fairer payout for independent artists. If independent services like mixcloud did shared monetization it could be a game changer like YouTube figured out however soundcloud may be poised to do this better. The race is on.
THE MONEY GO ROUND – VELVET SKY
ENJOY THE LATEST FROM THE LITTLE RECORDS MUSIC PODCAST – EPISODE #86 GIMME INDIE ROCK!
ALBUM REVIEWS: OK meet Maurice O’Connor who is originally from Dublin, Ireland and his project Sample Answer. I was prepared to not like this but it grew on me quickly. Here’s a track from his Good Boy EP. Folkish yes but more americana urban beats that make this a fresh take on where hip hop should be. More than likely a hybrid of what is going on in music from a worldly perspective in my humble opinion. The vocals are sincere and not somebody who you are going to find pretending to be some giant pop-start on America’s Got Talent any time soon. Here’s to hoping he puts a good band together and we get a chance to check these jams live. I like the slide guitars on “proud” reminds me of the Afghan Whigs and I wonder if he ever heard of them? These tunes have soul man.
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