Volume 1
Even after contributing thousands of features and reviews to zines
like Long Island Entertainment, Under The Volcano
and The Jersey Beat over the last six years, there have
been countless stories of interest that I never had the chance
to write about. After all, if there were tens of thousands
albums released in 2003 -- beyond all the worthwhile movies, videos,
books and action games – how could one ever expect to sum
everything going on in the matter of 10,000 words? Or even
20,000 words? It seems impossible to me, at least, but the
purpose of this monthly column will be to fill you, the reader,
in on some of the happenings that I do feel to be worth your time.
From concise reviews and mentions of upcoming releases, to news
about some other things you’re not quite yet familiar with,
I’ll be aiming to keep you informed yet with enough room
to seek other viewpoints. This is for the folks that lack
the time to check a dozen entertainment-oriented websites on a
daily basis, and instead would like to hear recommendations from
a media-obsessed New Yorker:
…From The Island
After years of being plagued as the land of the cover band, Long
Island is finally getting a favorable reputation in the music
business. Brand New signed a
seven-figure deal with Dreamworks last Fall, Taking
Back Sunday has sold hundreds of thousands of albums on
a major-indie and From Autumn To Ashes
became the first band of its kind of Vagrant
Records. Heck, it’s the music of The
Reunion Show you hear as the theme to MTV’s TRL
program. But as of late, some other area acts have been
heading into the van and onto the radar. Bayside
is yet another L.I. signing for Victory Records and The
Goodwill have stayed on the road since their stint on The
Warped Tour, while As Tall As Lions
and Anterrabae are both readying up
releases for Triple Crown Records (former home of the aforementioned
Brand New). All-female hip-hop trio Northern
State might be collaborating with ?uestlove
(The Roots, Jay-Z,
Common) on their debut for Sony, while
Straylight Run – containing former members of Taking
Back Sunday and Breaking Pangaea –
has sold out two headlining tours without a full-length CD to
show for. On The Might Of Princes
and Dearly Departed have both done
some touring to trumpet recent for-label albums, while The
Kites spent their holiday break recording in Los Angeles.
Yet there’s many more where those came from!
…From The Labels
It’s no secret that this isn’t a great time for the
music industry with all of the major labels now being owned by
the same three companies. Unfortunately, some genuine folks
on the lower-levels are being hurt as well. Suburban
Home Records is an example of the latter with $20,000 of
slowness-related debt currently looking to shut it down, according
to its founder Virgil Dickerson.
As a company that’s put out music for the likes of Planes
Mistaken For Stars, Adventures Of
Jet and Asian Man Records founder Mike
Park, in addition to distributing labels like Negative
Progression, Double Zero and
Law Of Inertia, it would be a shame
to lose this great company – contributions are being accepted
through the label’s website…The
Arena Rock Recording Company, as known to many for putting
out music by Luna, Harvey
Danger and Calla, will be moving
out west in 2004 with label co-founder Greg
Glover looking towards office space in Portland, Oregon.
This should not affect the long-delayed Get Saved album
from ARRCO’s Pilot To Gunner…Congratulations
should be extended by all to the Rykodisc
label, from the way I see it. While most labels would simply
live in the past if they had the catalogues of Frank
Zappa and Big Star, the Boston-based
establishment is now celebrating its 20th year of existence with
charting discs from Josh Rouse, The
Misfits and The Joe Jackson Band.
Also on-tap for future releases are Butch
Walker and Fastball.
…From The Hype Machine
Speaking of Butch Walker, Midtown
just did some recording with him in Atlanta. I would expect
the results of such to be ultra-poppy and full of self-indulgent
guitar solos. Also in the rock-stars-who-assist-dropped-recording-artists
category is System Of A Down guitarist
and songwriter Daron Malakian, who
is at the helm of latest from Amen
– the third label deal overall for Casey
Chaos. Thursday frontman
Geoff Rickly has also assisted the
likes of My Chemical Romance and Murder
By Death; the former which signed to Warner
Bros. with the latter currently being drooled over by a
lot of A&R folks despite a recent morale-dampening robbery
that stripped the band of most of its gear and personal possessions…Something
that will certainly have a lot of the industry’s attention
will be The Pixies reunion at the
upcoming Coachella Festival.
I wish some of that attention would be pulled away and given to
the fact that The Descendents are back together; although touring
is not currently in the cards for Milo.
Same with the rumored-to-be-happening reforming of Letters
To Cleo – why aren’t people caring?
…From The Stage
After receiving quite a few press releases trumpeting The
Unicorns as the next big thing, I decided to catch the
Canadian trio’s outing at Park Slope, Brooklyn’s Southpaw.
Possibly the most packed standing-room show I’ve ever been
to, you could tell that most of the people there were attending
due to the hype – after all, this was the band’s first
U.S. tour. While I’m not sure if they are “the
best band in the world” as Spike Jonze
proclaims in one of said press releases, this is an original and
entertaining group. Somewhere in-between Hot
Hot Heat, The Flaming Lips
and performance-art at points, the show alternated between rock,
humor and the avant-garde. Instrument-changing and genre-hopping
were rounded out by a mid-set Kylie Minogue
cover and a memorable rendition of “Inoculate The Innocuous”…By
contrast, Fresno, California’s Bel
& The Dragon – whom I caught at The Knitting
Factory with As Tall As Lions and Pilot Round
The Sun – played one pop-rock anthem after another.
The band’s Superplane-meets-Death
Cab For Cutie sound is a winning one, and will hopefully
stay put on the full-length album the quartet is currently recording…Wisconsin’s
The Response and Minnesota’s
Somerset may not have been playing
to a packed house at Siberia in Midtown Manhattan, but the during-song-wall-climbing
of the former’s bassist, Mikey Blanchard,
and the latter’s powerhouse, high-maintenance drumming of
the surname-less Claudio both left
an impression on all there. These two bands made the now-self-satirizing
“emo” genre interesting, memorable and addictive.
…From The Screen
While not a large town on Long Island, Bellmore is the subject
of a recent punk rock-centered documentary titled Bellmore:
The Unscene. Often-funny as band members contradict
one another’s stories, Hi-Tide Pictures writer Frank
Fusco and producer Jim Muscarella
have themselves a very worthwhile movie about bands like Rat
Bastard, Agnostic Front and
The Eggplant Queens…I’ve
never been into nu-metal, or whatever the Ozzfest followers
listen to, but Dope has taken a very
creative approach with its new album. $13 not only gets
you the 13 songs of Group Therapy, but each track has
an accompanying music video within the Enhanced CD feature.
Talk about value…As great as 2004 is looking to be, according
to articles in Newsday and The New York Post,
by 2005 there will be new episodes of the Seth
MacFarlane-created Family Guy series on Fox and/or
The Cartoon Network. Apparently, revitalized interest in
such came from the Rupert Murdoch-owned network after sales of
last year’s DVD sets toppled over the one million mark.
If there’s a lesson to be learned from that, it’s
that a show’s cancellation doesn’t always spell out
the end…While not every cable carrier includes The Game
Show Network, you can be expecting some new programming that’ll
be as captivating as a car-wreck. The producers of The
Surreal Life have announced the current-development of a
show called Extreme Dodgeball. Yes, Extreme
Dodgeball. I don’t know if you’re also
picturing the Nintendo game Super Dodge Ball as you read
this, but if you are, then I think you’ll know why I’m
excited…Though DVD’s about bands generally aren’t
worth watching more than once, I’ve encountered two that
are. The Aquabats may be a footnote
to most in the evolution of Blink-182
drummer Travis Barker, but the group’s
Serious Awesomeness is a two-disc set that chronicles
the band’s rise to cult-status with assorted video clips
that accompany a full concert. The other? Weezer’s
last two albums may not have been the gems that the first
two were, but Video Capture Device is expected to be
out around the time of the double-CD re-release of what’s
affectionately referred to as The Blue Album –
which I’m guessing will be out before Rivers
Cuomo and crew finish their fifth album with the legendary
Rick Rubin.
…From The Stereo
Fans of Mike Viola and his Candy
Butchers shouldn’t be disappointed with the power-pop
of Hang On Mike. More to-the-point and hook-heavy
than the preceding Play With Your Head album, the band
has already landed on Late Night With Conan O’Brien
in support of the disc; Figgs fans
ought to be relieved to that Pete Donnelly’s
fret-work is still on-board…While The
Mr. T Experience (MTX) is not rocking out as much on Yesterday
Rules as it had on Love Is Dead or Alcatraz, word
is that the Bay Area trio’s live show remains in tact.
They’ll be out with Manplanet,
whose live show is worth the price of admission alone, this month
and next. The space-themed, guitar-themed, pop-loving Minneapolis
band is to Tron as The Darkness
is, wait, nevermind…A band that thanks Manplanet in their
How Can You Move? disc is West Virginia’s The
Emergency, and their power-trio interpretation of power-pop
sounds more like Cheap Trick than
Cheap Trick does nowadays. And that’s a good thing…Although
not generally a fan of soul, I am intrigued by the forthcoming
Ricky Fante album as it really is modernized Motown –
it’s definitely a good thing when there’s a well-selling
R&B album that features live instruments.
…From The Studio
Though Let Go had only been put out in the U.S. this
past February, Nada Surf is currently
back in the studio working on its fourth full-length. Word
is that Death Cab For Cutie’s Chris
Walla will be contributing to some of the sessions…Superdrag
frontman John Davis, whose first solo
gig was as an opening for Nada Surf, currently has more than two-dozen
songs written for his solo debut. “Me And My Girl,”
a finished track featuring the songwriter on all instruments --
save for tambourine -- is posted at www.superdrag.com. Former
Superdrag bassist Sam Powers, who
recently filled in on bass duties for Guided
By Voices, also has a solo album in the works, intending
on such to be completed by the end of this month…The
People completed its album with Peter
Katis (Interpol, Clem
Snide) at Connecticut’s Tarquin
Studios. The disc will be out on Astralwerks
in the coming months, although the band will be undergoing a name
change before then. Suggestions are still being taken…Although
tremendous slashings had been done to the roster of Dreamworks
after its purchase by Interscope, New Jersey’s Rye
Coalition is still part of it and making a record with
the Grammy-winning team of Dave Grohl
and Nick Raskulinecz. It will
be interesting to see what straight-up rock guys will do with
a band that likes its music complex yet witty…Following
last year’s Cardiact EP, Murfeesboro, Tennessee’s
Imaginary Baseball League is reportedly
finishing up a self-produced full-length release. Touring
will likely resume in March with dates alongside Come
Down.
And speaking of life one month from now, if you have news to report
for the March edition of Moving In Stereo, press releases and
all other correspondence for Darren should be sent to ASellOut@aol.com.
© 2004 – Column used with permission from Darren Paltrowitz.
All right reserved.
