Looking for a little musical intrigue in your life? Love the idea of one album telling an entire story, start to finish? Can't get enough of magical curses and queens of forests? Than I have the album for you!
The Decemberists new album, Hazards of Love, is all that and so much more. They recently played Bonnaroo where a member of my group got to see them perform the album live and it was, in his words, one of the best musical moments of his life. Being as he's had some pretty awesome musical moments I decided maybe I'd better check this thing out. And have been doing nothing but listening to it, non-stop, any moment I can for the past two weeks.
The quick and dirty version is a young maiden falls in love with an enchanted man (Fawn by day/Man by night) whose mother happens to be the pretty all demanding queen of the forest. Mom obviously doesn't want son to run away with this woman so she sends The Rake to kidnap her (and pretty brutally attack her from what it sounds like). Enchanted man goes after his true love anyway, saves her, and then the two of them die together in a raging river. It's pretty damn awesome. There is a great song by song explanation (much wordier and more cleverly written than my own quick synopsis) located here. Which to be honest really helped me understand the whole thing, just scroll down a bit and the explanation starts.
And if you find you love this as much as me, and you have some free time and money (and you live in or near Chicago), they are coming to town. They are scheduled for a Friday night gig at Lollapalooza, which for $80 you can get a Friday day pass and check them out. I contemplated this and almost did it but then discovered, like many of the bands, they are playing a Thursday night gig at The Metro for much cheaper ($35). Of course I got my ticket as soon as they went on sale.
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Monday, June 29, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
More random Bonnaroo items
Most annoying moment:
Friday morning at 5 a.m. a neighbor camper decided to start advertising bloody mary's for sale. He did this by yelling "Bloody Mary!" over and over and over. For 3 hours.
Nicest Strangers:
A fellow camper overheard that my book/map/schedule that they handed out upon entering the grounds got trashed in the rain on Thursday. He found they had an extra and gave it to me.
Many people throughout the weekend got me high (or offered). Never when I was with one of the boys of course, but whenever I was on my own I found plenty of offers.
Weirdest attraction:
Late at night there was a carnival/circus show. Almost impossible to explain but it included an under-miked announcer, random acts including fire hulahooping, a man in a helmet pushing a lawnmower in a circle, and an interpretive dance with human puppets. Also large metal sculputres that belched fire into the sky. Sadly I was not high for this one.
Funniest overheard at Bonnaroo moment:
"This shit is crazy!" Overheard by a random stranger at the back of the late night carnival attraction. It was funny because it rang out over the announcer (who no one could hear anyway) and broke the weird hypnotic silence we were all sitting in.
Funniest non-bonnaroo quote:
"And Marty doesn't count" Said by me to my brother late Sunday night. Only makes sense to us.
Most Unneccesary food item:
Water. Not that water was unneccessary. Water is very important. It was just that since we spent all day in Centeroo I just filled up my bottle there and not at the tent.
On a side note I have 3 large containers of Ice Mountain water if anyone needs it.
Friday morning at 5 a.m. a neighbor camper decided to start advertising bloody mary's for sale. He did this by yelling "Bloody Mary!" over and over and over. For 3 hours.
Nicest Strangers:
A fellow camper overheard that my book/map/schedule that they handed out upon entering the grounds got trashed in the rain on Thursday. He found they had an extra and gave it to me.
Many people throughout the weekend got me high (or offered). Never when I was with one of the boys of course, but whenever I was on my own I found plenty of offers.
Weirdest attraction:
Late at night there was a carnival/circus show. Almost impossible to explain but it included an under-miked announcer, random acts including fire hulahooping, a man in a helmet pushing a lawnmower in a circle, and an interpretive dance with human puppets. Also large metal sculputres that belched fire into the sky. Sadly I was not high for this one.
Funniest overheard at Bonnaroo moment:
"This shit is crazy!" Overheard by a random stranger at the back of the late night carnival attraction. It was funny because it rang out over the announcer (who no one could hear anyway) and broke the weird hypnotic silence we were all sitting in.
Funniest non-bonnaroo quote:
"And Marty doesn't count" Said by me to my brother late Sunday night. Only makes sense to us.
Most Unneccesary food item:
Water. Not that water was unneccessary. Water is very important. It was just that since we spent all day in Centeroo I just filled up my bottle there and not at the tent.
On a side note I have 3 large containers of Ice Mountain water if anyone needs it.
Adventures in Bonnaroo land
(Thought I published this last night, whoops! Will finish later)
4 pillows, 3 camping chairs, 2 tents and 1 broken cell phone later I have returned home from Bonnaroo. It was an amazingly awesome experience and if you ever have $250 extra dollars (plus transportation, gas, food, and beer money) laying around combined with the ability to take a 5 day vacation, I highly, highly recommend it. I saw part or all of 20+ bands in 4 days and it was fucking fantastic, though pretty exhausting at the same time. So for anyone interested, here's the breakdown. Word to the wise, this will probably be stupidly long since my blog window is so narrow (and a hell of a lot happened). Sorry.
Wednesday night: Me, my brother and my boyfriend (here on out referred to as "the boy") hit the road in our upgraded 2009 Silverado around 11 o'clock at night. We had initially rented a full size vehicle (a Nissan something or other is what they would of given us) but due to the joys of renting from urban Enterprise locations they neglected to actually have the car on site when we showed up for our reservation. Options were to be driven up to another lot for our full size car or take the quad cab truck at the same price. We went with the truck. The plan was to drive through the night to hit Manchester, TN around 7 am. Brother (who is a bartender and used to working nights) would take the first shift and wake me up when he started to fall asleep and I would lead us in. I crashed out in the back, unable to sleep, while he drove through what ended up being torrential downpours all through Indiana at half our intended speed. We ended up hitting the entrance line around 9:30ish instead.
Thursday: Then came the 4 hour, idle slowly, use the "park" gear often, and drink beer section of the drive. People would get out, roam around, throw Frisbees, all while we slowly inched our way to the coveted farm land. As we were getting ready to roll in it started raining again making for a pretty damp and rushed tent pitching party later on. The gates to get in took awhile because they search every car for glass (no glass at all is allowed, which turns out to be a pretty damn smart idea after all the shoes I saw lost throughout the weekend) and drugs. We of course made it through a-okay. Orange flags and volunteers led us to our parking spot which is also your campsite and we raced through claiming our territory. Not much that we wanted to see was happening Thursday and we were all pretty exhausted so since the rain had let up we decided to just wander in to the music area and get a feel for the place. The boy had one band he wanted to catch at 7 so we had plenty of time. The walk from our campsite to the actual music festival grounds was quite a hike. We ended up being pretty much at the back of the whole camping area (if I can scan a copy of the map at some point I will try and show you where).
..............................
Okay as I'm typing in this format I'm realizing this is going to take forever but I don't really want to start over so I'm switching how I present this weekend.
First Music - some of these I saw the entire show, some I just hung out for a few moments, and some I basically could only hear since I was so far back.
Thursday: MURS
Friday: Gomez, Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, Ani DiFranco, Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Phish, Public Enemy, Girl Talk
Saturday: Bon Iver, Of Montreal, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, NIN, Yeasayer, moe, Ben Harper (those last four I really only saw between 5-15 minutes of each, it was the end of the night and I was freaking beat)
Sunday: Erykah Badu, Snoop Dogg, Phish
Favorite musical moments: Watching Bruce come on stage at the end of the first half of the Sunday night set of Phish and play Mustang Sally and Glory Days with Trey and the band. Ani DiFranco (always, always wonderful), seeing Justin rock the fucking house with Bon Iver (I used to hang out camping with that guy, it was weird to see so many screaming fans for him!) and watching 40,000 white kids clap off beat to Snoop.
Biggest let downs: Missing half of Grace Potter wandering around trying to find brother and boy. Dragging my dancing ass out of Phish to find out Public Enemy basically played the same concert as when I saw them at Pitchfork last summer ("For the second to last time ever we're going to play It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in it's entirety!")
How I worked it: Basically I would hang out around camp till the first band I wanted to see started then hike down to Centeroo (the music area of the farm) and stay there all damn day (longest was Friday, went in at noon for Gomez and got back to tent around 4 am). This led to not a lot of beer drinking because I found it expensive and unnecessary to drink $6 Budweiser's all day. In the end this was probably a good thing since because of that I actually remember most of the weekend.
Lost and Found and other broken items: I only got lost once. Friday night I was on my own (we mostly all split up all weekend) and as stated previously had been out since around noon. I was hoping to catch Girl Talk for awhile as my last set of the night but by 3:15 a.m. I was done (they were supposed to start at 2:15 but didn't get going till about 3). I tried to head back the way I thought my camp was and ended up wandering around for close to an hour. Luckily I didn't get too freaked out about it which is pretty damn big for me who often can panic when lost in the dark in a field in a foreign state.
My phone was in my back pocket all day Thursday and when a late night major thunderstorm caught me out and about I think it finally gave up on me. Friday morning when I went to open it it was obviously water logged (the screen was all kinds of fucked up) so I took it apart in an attempt to dry it and left it alone. Tried it again on Monday and it was a no go. I now have a replacement phone being shipped to hopefully arrive in 2 days or so. Yay for insurance I guess.
General Atmosphere: The place was filled with stoned out kids as you probably already imagined. In the beginning I felt a bit old (and a lot sober) but I got over it pretty quick. For the most part everyone was pretty passive (when you're that high trying to fight is not even conceivable) and with only beer being sold inside Centeroo it kept things low key.
.....................
Yikes lightning is flashing around me in my apartment so I'm going to jump off this ancient beast I claim is a computer. I'll try and come back later and finish it off!
4 pillows, 3 camping chairs, 2 tents and 1 broken cell phone later I have returned home from Bonnaroo. It was an amazingly awesome experience and if you ever have $250 extra dollars (plus transportation, gas, food, and beer money) laying around combined with the ability to take a 5 day vacation, I highly, highly recommend it. I saw part or all of 20+ bands in 4 days and it was fucking fantastic, though pretty exhausting at the same time. So for anyone interested, here's the breakdown. Word to the wise, this will probably be stupidly long since my blog window is so narrow (and a hell of a lot happened). Sorry.
Wednesday night: Me, my brother and my boyfriend (here on out referred to as "the boy") hit the road in our upgraded 2009 Silverado around 11 o'clock at night. We had initially rented a full size vehicle (a Nissan something or other is what they would of given us) but due to the joys of renting from urban Enterprise locations they neglected to actually have the car on site when we showed up for our reservation. Options were to be driven up to another lot for our full size car or take the quad cab truck at the same price. We went with the truck. The plan was to drive through the night to hit Manchester, TN around 7 am. Brother (who is a bartender and used to working nights) would take the first shift and wake me up when he started to fall asleep and I would lead us in. I crashed out in the back, unable to sleep, while he drove through what ended up being torrential downpours all through Indiana at half our intended speed. We ended up hitting the entrance line around 9:30ish instead.
Thursday: Then came the 4 hour, idle slowly, use the "park" gear often, and drink beer section of the drive. People would get out, roam around, throw Frisbees, all while we slowly inched our way to the coveted farm land. As we were getting ready to roll in it started raining again making for a pretty damp and rushed tent pitching party later on. The gates to get in took awhile because they search every car for glass (no glass at all is allowed, which turns out to be a pretty damn smart idea after all the shoes I saw lost throughout the weekend) and drugs. We of course made it through a-okay. Orange flags and volunteers led us to our parking spot which is also your campsite and we raced through claiming our territory. Not much that we wanted to see was happening Thursday and we were all pretty exhausted so since the rain had let up we decided to just wander in to the music area and get a feel for the place. The boy had one band he wanted to catch at 7 so we had plenty of time. The walk from our campsite to the actual music festival grounds was quite a hike. We ended up being pretty much at the back of the whole camping area (if I can scan a copy of the map at some point I will try and show you where).
..............................
Okay as I'm typing in this format I'm realizing this is going to take forever but I don't really want to start over so I'm switching how I present this weekend.
First Music - some of these I saw the entire show, some I just hung out for a few moments, and some I basically could only hear since I was so far back.
Thursday: MURS
Friday: Gomez, Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, Ani DiFranco, Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Phish, Public Enemy, Girl Talk
Saturday: Bon Iver, Of Montreal, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, NIN, Yeasayer, moe, Ben Harper (those last four I really only saw between 5-15 minutes of each, it was the end of the night and I was freaking beat)
Sunday: Erykah Badu, Snoop Dogg, Phish
Favorite musical moments: Watching Bruce come on stage at the end of the first half of the Sunday night set of Phish and play Mustang Sally and Glory Days with Trey and the band. Ani DiFranco (always, always wonderful), seeing Justin rock the fucking house with Bon Iver (I used to hang out camping with that guy, it was weird to see so many screaming fans for him!) and watching 40,000 white kids clap off beat to Snoop.
Biggest let downs: Missing half of Grace Potter wandering around trying to find brother and boy. Dragging my dancing ass out of Phish to find out Public Enemy basically played the same concert as when I saw them at Pitchfork last summer ("For the second to last time ever we're going to play It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in it's entirety!")
How I worked it: Basically I would hang out around camp till the first band I wanted to see started then hike down to Centeroo (the music area of the farm) and stay there all damn day (longest was Friday, went in at noon for Gomez and got back to tent around 4 am). This led to not a lot of beer drinking because I found it expensive and unnecessary to drink $6 Budweiser's all day. In the end this was probably a good thing since because of that I actually remember most of the weekend.
Lost and Found and other broken items: I only got lost once. Friday night I was on my own (we mostly all split up all weekend) and as stated previously had been out since around noon. I was hoping to catch Girl Talk for awhile as my last set of the night but by 3:15 a.m. I was done (they were supposed to start at 2:15 but didn't get going till about 3). I tried to head back the way I thought my camp was and ended up wandering around for close to an hour. Luckily I didn't get too freaked out about it which is pretty damn big for me who often can panic when lost in the dark in a field in a foreign state.
My phone was in my back pocket all day Thursday and when a late night major thunderstorm caught me out and about I think it finally gave up on me. Friday morning when I went to open it it was obviously water logged (the screen was all kinds of fucked up) so I took it apart in an attempt to dry it and left it alone. Tried it again on Monday and it was a no go. I now have a replacement phone being shipped to hopefully arrive in 2 days or so. Yay for insurance I guess.
General Atmosphere: The place was filled with stoned out kids as you probably already imagined. In the beginning I felt a bit old (and a lot sober) but I got over it pretty quick. For the most part everyone was pretty passive (when you're that high trying to fight is not even conceivable) and with only beer being sold inside Centeroo it kept things low key.
.....................
Yikes lightning is flashing around me in my apartment so I'm going to jump off this ancient beast I claim is a computer. I'll try and come back later and finish it off!
Friday, February 27, 2009
Trust me, it's worth the 7 minutes
I just discovered Wil Wheaton's blog, WWdN: In Exile, and I'm loving it. And I'm loving that I found it from a tweet from Neil Gaiman on Twitter. Ah, technology how I love thee. I've been surfing back through some of Wil's posts and had come across this, hit play and then kept reading. It's beautiful. Hit play and sit back and just listen. Her name is Zoe Keating and this is her website.
Taken directly from Mr. Wheaton himself.....
"See that MacBook next to her? She uses that to sample herself several times to build a rhythm, and then she plays over it, like a one-woman string quartet. Or quintet. Or awesometet. I didn't realize this the first time I heard her; I just thought her music was haunting and beautiful, but once I knew what she was doing, I was awestruck. In fact, knowing how she does it, I defy you to listen to it again and keep your jaw off the floor."
Taken directly from Mr. Wheaton himself.....
"See that MacBook next to her? She uses that to sample herself several times to build a rhythm, and then she plays over it, like a one-woman string quartet. Or quintet. Or awesometet. I didn't realize this the first time I heard her; I just thought her music was haunting and beautiful, but once I knew what she was doing, I was awestruck. In fact, knowing how she does it, I defy you to listen to it again and keep your jaw off the floor."
Monday, February 9, 2009
Bonnaroo
Bonnaroo is a 4 day music festival that takes place in Manchester, TN in the beginning of June. It's a camping thing with over 700 acres of land to spread out on. It's huge. And I'm going.
I've never been to one of these things before but after seeing this years line up I couldn't pass it up. The boy and the brother are also going and who knows who else will jump on board before June reaches us. You can check out the full website here, but I wanted to copy in the names of the bands announced to give a better idea of why I decided to spend a ridiculous amount of money to participate.
Oh, and by the way, this means I will be seeing The Boss twice in one month. Life, at least musically speaking, is all good.
The Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival 2009 Lineup:
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Phish (2 Shows)
Beastie Boys
Nine Inch Nails
David Byrne
Wilco
Al Green
Snoop Dogg
Elvis Costello Solo
Erykah Badu
Paul Oakenfold
Ben Harper and Relentless7
The Mars Volta
TV on the Radio
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Gov’t Mule
Andrew Bird
Band Of Horses
Merle Haggard
MGMT
moe.
The Decemberists
Girl Talk
Bon Iver
Béla Fleck & Toumani Diabate
Rodrigo y Gabriela
Galactic
The Del McCoury Bandof Montreal
Allen Toussaint
Coheed and Cambria
Booker T & the DBTs
David Grisman Quintet
Lucinda Williams
Animal Collective
Gomez
Neko Case
Down
Jenny Lewis
Santogold
Robert Earl Keen
Citizen Cope
Femi Kuti and the Positive Force
The Ting Tings
Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
Kaki King
Grizzly Bear
King Sunny Adé
Okkervil River
St. Vincent
Zac Brown Band
Raphael Saadiq
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Crystal Castles
Tift Merritt
Brett Dennen
Mike Farris and the Roseland Rhythm Revue
Toubab Krewe
People Under the Stairs
Alejandro Escovedo
Vieux Farka Touré
Elvis Perkins In Dearland
Cherryholmes
Yeasayer
Todd Snider
Chairlift
Portugal. The Man.
The SteelDrivers
Midnite
The Knux
The Low Anthem
Delta Spirit
A.A. Bondy
The Lovell Sisters
Alberta Cross
MORE ARTISTS TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON!
I've never been to one of these things before but after seeing this years line up I couldn't pass it up. The boy and the brother are also going and who knows who else will jump on board before June reaches us. You can check out the full website here, but I wanted to copy in the names of the bands announced to give a better idea of why I decided to spend a ridiculous amount of money to participate.
Oh, and by the way, this means I will be seeing The Boss twice in one month. Life, at least musically speaking, is all good.
The Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival 2009 Lineup:
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Phish (2 Shows)
Beastie Boys
Nine Inch Nails
David Byrne
Wilco
Al Green
Snoop Dogg
Elvis Costello Solo
Erykah Badu
Paul Oakenfold
Ben Harper and Relentless7
The Mars Volta
TV on the Radio
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Gov’t Mule
Andrew Bird
Band Of Horses
Merle Haggard
MGMT
moe.
The Decemberists
Girl Talk
Bon Iver
Béla Fleck & Toumani Diabate
Rodrigo y Gabriela
Galactic
The Del McCoury Bandof Montreal
Allen Toussaint
Coheed and Cambria
Booker T & the DBTs
David Grisman Quintet
Lucinda Williams
Animal Collective
Gomez
Neko Case
Down
Jenny Lewis
Santogold
Robert Earl Keen
Citizen Cope
Femi Kuti and the Positive Force
The Ting Tings
Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
Kaki King
Grizzly Bear
King Sunny Adé
Okkervil River
St. Vincent
Zac Brown Band
Raphael Saadiq
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Crystal Castles
Tift Merritt
Brett Dennen
Mike Farris and the Roseland Rhythm Revue
Toubab Krewe
People Under the Stairs
Alejandro Escovedo
Vieux Farka Touré
Elvis Perkins In Dearland
Cherryholmes
Yeasayer
Todd Snider
Chairlift
Portugal. The Man.
The SteelDrivers
Midnite
The Knux
The Low Anthem
Delta Spirit
A.A. Bondy
The Lovell Sisters
Alberta Cross
MORE ARTISTS TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON!
Friday, January 2, 2009
The Good
Just bought tickets to The Good show. If you are in Chicago and are free January 10th you should too. http://www.martyrstickets.musictoday.com/Martyrs/calendar.aspx.
Hope you are having a good start to your 2009 wherever you are. I'm headed out to see Slumdog Millionaire.
Cheers.
Hope you are having a good start to your 2009 wherever you are. I'm headed out to see Slumdog Millionaire.
Cheers.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Apple Marketing team should get an award
I'm cheating with today's post. I started blogging again in MySpace figuring it would give me another space to express a different tone and today I'm just cutting and pasting the same damn thing over to JJ's World. I know it's lame and I'm sorry. I promise to be more original in the future. But for now, here it is...
So I have a confession to make. I am a sucker for an Apple commercial. Specifically the ones with music. These are usually the ones for one of the many i-pod like gadgets they keep trying to convince me I need. And while I haven't yet succumbed to their advertising and purchased a new player (though I really wanted the Touch for awhile) I have downloaded 5 of the damn songs. I've even created a playlist on my iPod so I can find them whenever I want.
So far it consists of One, Two, Three Four by Feist; Music is my Hot Hot Sex by CSS; New Soul by Yael Naim; and Shut up and Let Me Go by The Ting Tings. And last night the list became five when I downloaded Bruises by Chairlift.
Really the folks in their marketing department should get a medal.
So I have a confession to make. I am a sucker for an Apple commercial. Specifically the ones with music. These are usually the ones for one of the many i-pod like gadgets they keep trying to convince me I need. And while I haven't yet succumbed to their advertising and purchased a new player (though I really wanted the Touch for awhile) I have downloaded 5 of the damn songs. I've even created a playlist on my iPod so I can find them whenever I want.
So far it consists of One, Two, Three Four by Feist; Music is my Hot Hot Sex by CSS; New Soul by Yael Naim; and Shut up and Let Me Go by The Ting Tings. And last night the list became five when I downloaded Bruises by Chairlift.
Really the folks in their marketing department should get a medal.
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