Good Quote

To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it." - Kurt Vonnegut

Pur-dee thangs that I like

Stuff here...

The Dana West on flickr

remember

Audiogalaxy Featured Bands Archiveby Will Robinson Sheff 08-08-2002 ... by Will Robinson Sheff 07-12-2002, World, Electronica. The soundtrack to the feature documentary film-essay, ...
www.audiogalaxy.com/pages/feature_archive.php3?offset=5&limit=5&dept=5 - 21k - Cached - Similar pages -

Here is a way to get happy

http://www.faceculture.nl/artist.php?id=191

video from that thing

http://www.viddler.com/explore/Mediabistro/videos/234/

The incestiuous hoarde that worships the Velvet Underground:

http://www.americanbookcongress.org/members/profile_view_all.php

Pitchfork TV: Okkervil River: Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe

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Okkervil River open their set on our NY rooftop with a glacial version of a fan favorite as the Empire State Building looms behind. But the real kicker is the lively, uptempo "Okkervil River Song", closing in five-part harmony and drenched in sunlight.

http://pitchfork.tv/dont-look-down/okkervil-river/

Dirty freaken Hot

http://pro.corbis.com/search/searchFrame.aspx

check this blog too...

http://therumpus.net/

can't lose found

http://www.foundmagazine.com/

they are going to parties and chit

http://therumpus.net/newyorkevent3.htm


When: February 5, 7pm

Where: Crash Mansion, 199 Bowery, www.crashmansion.com/

Price: $20



Christina Lee, La Lutta NMC, and TheRumpus.net invite you to the launch party for TheRumpus.net featuring:



Music by Will Sheff from Okkervil River, Timothy Bracy of The Mendoza Line and Beth Wawerna of Bird Of Youth



Comedy by: Kristen Schaal of Flight of the Conchords and Michael Showalter from Comedy Central's Stella



Readings from authors: James Frey, Andrew Sean Greer, and Jonathan Ames

and Post It Note Reviews by This American Life's Starlee Kine and Davy Rothbart



Hosted by Stephen Elliott, editor TheRumpus.net



Purchase Advance Tickets Here: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/53589



Media inquiries contact Stephen Elliott at Stephen@therumpus.net



TheRumpus.net is a new online magazine, focusing on Books, Music, Movies, Art, Sex, Politics, and Other.



Updated ten to fifteen times a day, TheRumpus.net provides original reviews of books, music, and film, interviews with culture mavens like Malcolm Gladwell, James Frey, Bucky Sinister, Al Franken, T Cooper, and Tristan Taormino, as well as original essays by Steve Almond, Robin Romm, Michelle Tea, and others, and blogs by Rick Moody, Bitchy Jones, and Jerry Stahl.

Will prays for a million dollars

Okkervil River to Release "Pop Lie" Single

Photo by Eirik Lande

Okkervil River will release their deconstructive car-radio jam "Pop Lie" as a single on Jagjaguwar on April 21.


On its two B-side tracks (one "Pop Life" revamp and one orphaned song from the Stand Ins sessions), frontman Will Sheff lets the rest of the band take a coffee break and plays all the instruments himself.

Tracklist:

01 Pop Lie
02 Millionaire
03 Pop Lie (One Man Band Version)

Video: Okkervil River: Don't Look Down [Pitchfork.tv]
Posted by Tom Breihan on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 5:30pm

An artistically Bleak House

Slean and Upperton show their sinister, peculiar & psychotic sides
By Andrew Horan


(l-r:) Sarah Slean and Louise Upperton


When Bleak House kicks off its two and a half week run at Spin Gallery, it will be the first time Sarah Slean has displayed more than one piece of art publicly.

Canada’s reigning queen of baroque pop succinctly summed up her feelings about this in an email interview, calling it “wonderful”.

Slean recently followed in the footsteps of fellow Canadian chanteuse Feist and relocated to France to start work on the follow-up to her 2004 album Day One, as well as a second book of poetry. Her first, Ravens, also hit shelves in 2004.

Bleak Housewill also feature art by her longtime friend Louise Upperton, the art director for record label Arts & Crafts. Slean wrote that it dawned on them that it would make sense to have their first exhibit together.

The exhibition takes its name from the Charles Dickens novel and fits perfectly with the mood of art that will be on display according to Slean.

“We thought Bleak House worked as a unifying title because of its dark mood and a Victorian connection to the Dickens novel,” she wrote. “My pieces were created in a remote Northern cabin while fighting to save my enthusiasm for life.”

“So, there are themes of rebirth, search and struggle through surreal landscapes, the resulting unearthed nightmares etc., a psyche in transition.”

The pieces she will be displaying were created during the four-month period she spent at an isolated cabin in the wilderness north of Ottawa in the summer 2003. She discovered a thrift store in the basement of a local church and became enamoured with the illustrations from children’s books available for a mere five to ten cents each.

The influence of these pieces can be seen in the artwork she has posted on her website (www.sarahslean.com). There’s a sense of innocence lost in her art. The paintings she created during that time marked the beginning of a new style and “started an avalanche of work.”

“I am partial to the very first ones because they remind me of feeling excited again about creating. That euphoria you get when your heart speeds faster than your brain and it all flows out,” she wrote.

The gallery space will be divided in half with Slean’s art hanging on one wall and Upperton’s on the other. One could say this is a literal divide between Upperton’s dark and grim work and Slean’s seemingly bright and cheerful art. While the darkness in her work is less overt, she felt there are similarities between her art and Upperton’s.

Although their styles may differ, they are both admirers of Tim Burton, Edward Gorey, Edgar Allen Poe and share many other influences.

“We both deal with dark elements like fate or violence or death, but my works are sort of behind a Disney clown mask and Louise's are in full, black, ghostly wonder,” Slean wrote.

Slean recently took her art public after James Baird, the owner of the James Baird Gallery in Newfoundland, told her "if it isn't in a gallery, it's your storage problem."

“I love that,” she wrote. “He's right. You have to create and let go or you become stuck as an artist, you literally start building a fortress around yourself. I've always liked the clean pipes analogy. And I was afraid to exhibit, so that told me, it was probably something I should do.”

Creating art shares certain parallels with writing music according to Slean. She wrote they are both ways of taking ideas and emotions and presenting them to the senses.

“I see music and feel music on a visual level sometimes,” she wrote. “Music is very time-based, and essentially invisible. Art is space-based and makes NO noise whatsoever, in fact, stands blankly before the viewer with only itself as an object/image to negotiate with, it doesn't change or flow through.”

“Often, language is inadequate at achieving the instinctual, visceral understanding to those ideas/emotions that both art and music can provoke.”

Bleak House runs February 3-19 at Spin Gallery (1100 Queen St. W, 2nd floor). A portion of the proceeds from the exhibition will go towards the Royal Conservatory of Music’s “Community School Outreach” program. For more info visit Spin Gallery’s website - http://www.spingallery.ca

Courtesy image

Pitchfork.tv: Okkervil River: Interview Part 2

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http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/node/148314
Pitchfork.tv: Okkervil River: Interview Part 2
Part 2 of Jessica Suarez's sit-down with Okkervil River is up today (here's Part 1), and here Will Sheff expounds on whether The Stand Ins is a darker album than its predecessor, why bad behavior from artists is overlooked, and the fear of dying alone as a forgotten rock'n'roller.

New Shearwater album

The Daily Texan

Shearwater’s new album ready to take flight
John Meller

Daily Texan Staff

Print this article
Share this article Published: Friday, January 30, 2009

Updated: Friday, January 30, 2009

Shearwater, fronted by former UT student Jonathan Meiburg, toured with Coldplay in July.
In the past two years, dynamic rock group Shearwater has been steadily building a following on the national scene. The band started in Austin in 1999 and has been a local favorite for years.

In 2008, Shearwater released its fifth album, Rook, to much critical acclaim, toured the U.S. and Europe and even opened a few dates for some band called Coldplay.

Shearwater’s shows here are always highly anticipated, and tonight’s performance at the Mohawk is no different. The Daily Texan spoke with Shearwater frontman and songwriter Jonathan Meiburg about a new record, ornithology and touring with Coldplay.

The Daily Texan: You studied ornithology at UT, correct? Do you continue to do any ornithological work?

Jonathan Meiburg: I actually studied geography, but what I studied for my thesis was a species of bird that lives in the Falklands and in Tierra del Fuego, the Striated Caracara. I try to keep tabs on the work that’s being done on that particular species and also go to a meeting of other people who are interested in birds and bird research every few weeks here in town. I’ll be giving a talk about the sort of birds that bird belongs to at the Texas Ornithological Society meeting in Austin in April, so there’s an actual scientific thing I’m going to do [laughs].

DT: How did Shearwater get started?

JM: Shearwater started not too long after I moved here as a sort of project I just did for fun. I didn’t actually expect to ever actually play any shows as Shearwater. I met Okkervil River at their second or third show, and the singer from Okkervil and I decided we’d like to write some songs together and we might make a tape one afternoon on a four-track. When that turned in to Shearwater, and we made an actual album out of it, we liked the record and so it just kind of snowballed from there and kept growing. Your first album is like your high school picture [laughs]. I feel like the last two records for Shearwater have really been our first full-fledged albums that I’m really proud of and happy with.

DT: Could you tell me a bit about the upcoming record?

JM: I wish I knew more about it to tell you! We’re working on about 20 different songs right now, some of which will make it all the way to being real songs, and others will be just sort of thrown by the wayside as we go.

DT: What was touring with Coldplay like?

JM: [laughs] It was ridiculous. It was wonderful. The audiences were — it was strange, they were enormous, but they weren’t unimaginably enormous. It wasn’t like there were people stretching way out of sight. You could see everybody when you were playing these things, but it was strange to think you were playing in front of more people than had ever bought one of your records.

DT: Did Coldplay’s audience respond well to your music?

JM: They didn’t boo [laughs]. Actually, they did respond well. We got some good cheers out of them, and they were attentive while we were playing for the most part, or they were, you know, sending text messages. The thing is, in a situation like that, it really doesn’t matter if the audience is talking. You’re so much louder than they are, and you’re way up high on this big stage, so it’s not like playing at Emo’s where there’s some jerk talking by the bar that’s ruining everybody’s show.

Comments
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John Meller

Daily Texan Staff

Print this article
Share this article Published: Friday, January 30, 2009

Updated: Friday, January 30, 2009


Courtesy of Shearwater

Shearwater, fronted by former UT student Jonathan Meiburg, toured with Coldplay in July.
In the past two years, dynamic rock group Shearwater has been steadily building a following on the national scene. The band started in Austin in 1999 and has been a local favorite for years.

In 2008, Shearwater released its fifth album, Rook, to much critical acclaim, toured the U.S. and Europe and even opened a few dates for some band called Coldplay.

Shearwater’s shows here are always highly anticipated, and tonight’s performance at the Mohawk is no different. The Daily Texan spoke with Shearwater frontman and songwriter Jonathan Meiburg about a new record, ornithology and touring with Coldplay.

The Daily Texan: You studied ornithology at UT, correct? Do you continue to do any ornithological work?

Jonathan Meiburg: I actually studied geography, but what I studied for my thesis was a species of bird that lives in the Falklands and in Tierra del Fuego, the Striated Caracara. I try to keep tabs on the work that’s being done on that particular species and also go to a meeting of other people who are interested in birds and bird research every few weeks here in town. I’ll be giving a talk about the sort of birds that bird belongs to at the Texas Ornithological Society meeting in Austin in April, so there’s an actual scientific thing I’m going to do [laughs].

DT: How did Shearwater get started?

JM: Shearwater started not too long after I moved here as a sort of project I just did for fun. I didn’t actually expect to ever actually play any shows as Shearwater. I met Okkervil River at their second or third show, and the singer from Okkervil and I decided we’d like to write some songs together and we might make a tape one afternoon on a four-track. When that turned in to Shearwater, and we made an actual album out of it, we liked the record and so it just kind of snowballed from there and kept growing. Your first album is like your high school picture [laughs]. I feel like the last two records for Shearwater have really been our first full-fledged albums that I’m really proud of and happy with.

DT: Could you tell me a bit about the upcoming record?

JM: I wish I knew more about it to tell you! We’re working on about 20 different songs right now, some of which will make it all the way to being real songs, and others will be just sort of thrown by the wayside as we go.

DT: What was touring with Coldplay like?

JM: [laughs] It was ridiculous. It was wonderful. The audiences were — it was strange, they were enormous, but they weren’t unimaginably enormous. It wasn’t like there were people stretching way out of sight. You could see everybody when you were playing these things, but it was strange to think you were playing in front of more people than had ever bought one of your records.

DT: Did Coldplay’s audience respond well to your music?

JM: They didn’t boo [laughs]. Actually, they did respond well. We got some good cheers out of them, and they were attentive while we were playing for the most part, or they were, you know, sending text messages. The thing is, in a situation like that, it really doesn’t matter if the audience is talking. You’re so much louder than they are, and you’re way up high on this big stage, so it’s not like playing at Emo’s where there’s some jerk talking by the bar that’s ruining everybody’s show.

Comments
Be the first to comment on this article!