I somehow stumbled across this video for AlunaGeorge's Your Drums, Your Love and I'm so glad I did. Next up, Diamond Rings loses control with his new video for Runaway Love. Finally, Wild Nothing's little piece of Paradise feat. Michelle Williams.
Alicia Keys' Girl on Fire quite the anthem. Well done.
This was one of most beautiful Fall evenings in recent memory. I couldn't think of any better want to spend it than listening to live music at The Barking Spider Tavern. I rounded up some friends and we hit the Marta Pacek show… All investigations pointed to her being a perfect match for this location/weather. It looked like I wasn't the only one who thought so, because there were people there than I was expecting. As we all sat and watched, the gorgeous weather pouring through the open doors behind me, eventually drew me to the outside picnic table. One by one we discreetly slipped out and had an amazing time.
Marta? Well, she was OK. Her voice (at least on this night) wasn't quite worth full attention in a small venue, but it did compliment a gorgeous Fall evening outside the Barking Spider Tavern with great friends. Probably what was meant to happen anyway.
I didn't know much about Nouvelle Vague, except that they were French and could craft a pretty sweet pop song. Just coming off a work trip and a cold, I wasn't really in the mood for a show on this night, but a friend had a free ticket and I was itching to get out to a show. I wasn't planning on staying late, but these guys didn't make it hard to leave. That sounded harsher than it probably should have. Essentially Nouvelle Vague is definitely interesting to watch, half performance art and half cover band. Not my ideal mix.
Heartless Bastards take on the Wizard of Oz on Marathon. I have mentioned how much I love these guys? Next is the fancy-pants video for Cloud Nothings' Fall In. Finally it's Lord Huron's Time to Run.
Bonus, a surprisingly NSFW video for Magic Chords by Sharon Van Etten.
So as exciting as the Hey Rosetta! / 1,2,3 show looks tomorrow night at the Beachland Tavern, a few of us will be going to see Marta Pacek at the Barking Spider (8pm). Having missed the previous Jenn Rawlings & Basho Parks show there last Monday (heard it was GREAT), I don't want to miss another chance for a great show there. Marta Pacek is Australian with a folksy, singer/songwriter sound. Check her out:
This show is really tempting. I randomly discovered Pittsburgh's 1,2,3 and have seen them open for Yellow Ostrich at the Beachland (they were also at Ingenuity if you caught them there). A great sound… I love this song.
So their return pushed me to check out the band they're opening for, Hey Rosetta! which seem to have quite a successful music career (at least in Canada). They're supposed to have a great live show too. In other words, for $8/1$10, this show in the Tavern will totally be worth it.
I first read this piece from Pandora on the payment out to artists listened to on Pandora. Seems nice… until I read the Lefsetz Letter follow up. What do you think?
Pandora: Pandora and Artist Payments
"It's hard to look at these numbers and not see that internet radio presents an incredible opportunity to build a better future for artists. Not only is it bringing tens of millions of listeners back to music, across hundreds of genres, but it is also enabling musicians to earn a living. It's also hard to look at these numbers, knowing Pandora accounts for just 6.5% of radio listening in the U.S., and not come away thinking something is wrong.
Pandora was founded on the principle of supporting artists and we're proud to pay performance fees. We think artists could and should ultimately earn even more. But all of this revenue is coming from a single company. A predatory licensing fee orchestrated over ten years ago by the RIAA and their lobbyists in Washington has devastated internet radio. Few now deem it worthy of major investment, including most notably, virtually every major broadcaster. After spending years building an audience, the original three largest webcasters (AOL, Yahoo! LaunchCast and MSN) fled the business after the last rate hike
was imposed. This is not a recipe for a sustainable industry. It is a destructive stranglehold that is putting at risk a much larger reward for musicians everywhere."
(Continued... Pandora: Pandora and Artist Payments)
Lefsetz Letter » Blog Archive » More Pandora
"Tim Westergren is not running a music service, but a religion. He expects his flock to follow him blindly, leaving their minds behind, all with the goal of lining his pockets.
He owns stock worth double digit millions, yet he’s complaining the company’s getting screwed. Who does this resonate with? Certainly not artists or listeners.
And now in this latest blog post he raves about how much obscure artists are making on his service so he can rationalize paying them less. Huh?
What he’s saying is if you let me pay less, the sphere will grow and you’ll make tons more money! Never mind that this is anathema to Pandora’s shareholders. You can only listen to one radio station at one time, whether terrestrial, satellite or Internet, people only have so many hours in a day, where are all these listening hours gonna come from? It’s kind of like the Internet. If I’m surfing all night, I can’t watch television. Hell, I oftentimes can’t even listen to music! Market share is everything, and Tim Westergren seems to be saying here that he’s willing to give up some of his. This is like Lucian Grainge giving away Parlophone if the European Commission would just approve the EMI merger… How duplicitous can you get?"
(Continued... Lefsetz Letter » Blog Archive » More Pandora)
Getting over a cold. :-( Diamond Rugs NSFW video for Blue Mountains… great track. Next up is Pojke (a Sin Fang pseudonym) with a video for She Moves Through the Air. Finally a captivating video by Panama for It's Not Over.
And the bonus this week is a disturbing video by Grizzly Bear (who's new album is pretty good!).
Meshell's last album was so stunning and gorgeous, I was very excited to see what she could do with Nina Simone's work. She's carried that same smokey & sexy treatment to this album as well. Check it out! eMusic.com review below…
Meshell Ndegeocello, Pour Une Âme Souveraine: A Dedication to Nina Simone
Meshell Ndegeocello paying tribute to the late Nina Simone makes perfect sense. Both battled to establish themselves on their own inconvenient terms: A pair of iconoclastic black female musicians, strong-willed but sensitive, disdainful of genre boundaries, and soulful to the core. It also makes sense that one of the ways Pour Une Âme Souveraine (translated as ‘For A Sovereign Soul’) would honor Simone is by often confounding expectations in its song choices and treatments. The hallowed Leonard Cohen ballad, ‘Suzanne’ becomes a brisk shuffle. With guest artist Toshi Reagon on board, the somber standard, ‘House of the Rising Sun’ is transformed into a blistering rock rave-up. Simone’s own memorable versions were more conventional, but she’d hardly be one to argue the adventure."
(Continued... Meshell Ndegeocello, Pour Une Âme Souveraine: A Dedication to Nina Simone | eMusic News & Features)
Diamond Rings' Free Dimensional will be out on Oct. 22nd. Listen to it here first.
