Archive for October, 2008
Arena = Todd Rundgren + Guitars Guitars Guitars!
Author: Jeff Boule
The story behind the album Arena is simply a tale born out of situational necessity. You die-hard Rundgren fans remember a couple of years ago (around the time the movie CARS came out) Todd had replaced Ric Ocasek in The New Cars (the ‘New’ being added in light of the minority percentage of returning members, only Elliot Easton and Greg Hawkes returned). Also joining Easton and Hawkes were Utopia and long-time Rundgren bassist and vocalist Kasim Sulton alongside drummer for The Tubes, Jefferson Starship and also a long-time Rundgren band member Prairie Prince. During the New Cars tour, the tour bus was in an accident and Easton fell from an upper bunk and broke his shoulder/collar bone. The tour was cut short, the cross-promotion with the Pixar movie was cancelled, and Rundgren found himself with nothing to do for a summer. Not wanting to waste a prime touring season, Rundgren spoke with Tony Levin band and long-time Rundgren guitarist Jesse Gress who contacted Levin and recruited him along with Levin Band drummer Jerry Marotta to do a two guitars bass and drums tour. Less expensive than touring with Midi and keyboards, etc.
Seeing as how he was going to be touring with a guitar-oriented band, not only did he have to limit his repertoire to guitar based or guitar-oriented or guitar adaptable songs, he also had to rearrange some keyboard-oriented standards for guitar.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
read comments (4)MGMT- The New Era of Psychedelic Pop
Author: Shira Karsen
MGMT (previously known as) The Management, have been around since 2002 when Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, two neo-hippies from Wesleyan University, decided to form a band— but only recently have they been put on the indie rock radar.
Nick Cave and the Good Show
Author: Lydia Pudzianowski
Technically, it’s still Sunday, making it my designated blog day here at prex.com. Good start, I know.
A little while ago, I found out that Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were playing the Electric Factory on October 7th. While I’m from Bucks County, I go to school in Pittsburgh, and Nick is one of my favorites. Long story short, I flew home for 24 hours to catch this show and then turned around and came back.
Worth it? Yes. Hell yes. Read the rest of this entry »
Why Our Jazz Magazines are Bad– And Bad for Jazz
Author: Anthony Medici
First, full disclosure: I subscribe to both Jazz Times (JT) and Down Beat (DB) (I liked it better when it was “downbeat”) and have for quite a few years. I also have a subscription to Signal to Noise (STN), and until, recently, Cadence. But this has been the year of my discontent with both JT and DB, or, more precisely, this has been the year that my dissatisfaction with JT and DB has creached critical mass, for these two mainstays of the jazz scene are both bad– and bad for jazz. Read the rest of this entry »
They were the soundtrack to my 18 year old life
Author: Gary Cope
I remember going into a local record shop in Cypress, California called Bionic Records. I worked up the street and would stop in there each Friday with my paycheck in my pocket. I needed to pay rent and buy food, but I also needed to buy new music. Read the rest of this entry »
FASTER THAN FATE: Pandora’s BOX
Author: Leigh Silbernagel
This band has shown consistently strong song writing skills, as well as ample stage presence. Drawing forces from punk-hardcore-alternative, the result is a unique and innovative sound, remarkable and unforgettable. Despite time and distance, one can not forget the sounds of Faster than Fate.
Steel Train
Author: Shira Karsen
In the basement of some suburban house in Princeton, New Jersey, four lanky and teen angsty men formed a band. Yes, this does seem incredibly cliché, but Steel Train, a band that easily defies every my-life-sucks-basement-band faux-pas is worth spending time listening to. Their quirky beats and melodramatic harmonies are reflective of their lead singer Jack Antonoff’s story, in which he fell into a deep depression after his sister died, his cousin died in Iraq and he broke up with his long-term girlfriend.
Their sound is like The Killers meets Ben Folds, if they were married and had the psychedelic folk of Joan Jett and the morbid lyrics of death cab as their in laws. Cutting, blatant lyrics from Antoff’s personal experiences are contradicted by electrifying piano pop and upbeat vocals.
Their latest album, Trampoline, which debuted in December of 2007, is like a therapy session strung over tunes of instrumental funk and jaunty anger. The first song “I feel weird” starts off telling his basic story: “ When I was 18/ everything was alive/ then the planes hit the towers/ then she died/ then he died/ a part of me disappeared/ six feet in the ground…./ a fire burns and it’s mine/.
In “Kill monsters in the rain,” lyrics like “together we can/ together we’ll kill monsters in the rain” harmonize over Ben Folds-esque keyboard’s. And the fun 80’s intro reminiscent of journey in “Alone On the Sea,” give this album it’s lighter side— the therapy sessions where time has passed and they’ve found something else to talk about.
This band should without a doubt be on our watch list. They were on tour this past summer, playing with O.A.R, performing at Bonarro in June and Lollapalooza in August, and are now performing all over the U.S.
Anthony Hamilton: The Point of It all
Author: Leigh Silbernagel
anthony hamitlon/The Point of It All/ So So Def/ Zombra Label Group
The six-time Grammy-nominated R&B-soul balladeer croons a melodic picture of life using straightforward lyrics as his mellifluous paintbrush on his junior effort The Point of It All: “Talking about relationships again… everything from making love to building love; having arguments, just life!”
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Mind
Author: Anthony Medici
As William Congreve (not Shakespeare) once famously said, “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast” (not beast, although now so often misquoted as to form a standard quote in itself), but it seems rather powerless to cure the sick– at least in my case, as I spent the week suffering from a nasty illness that left me time to listen but not much inclination to do so. I usually suffer, as I suspect most music lovers do, from a perceived lack of time to enjoy their favorite music. It’s one of life’s cruel ironies illnes gives one the time to listen but takes away one’s capacity to enjoy it. I suppose music can often be a power for healing and would love to hear from those who have experienced that power.
Jazz- Live! The Duke Ellington Jazz festival
Author: Anthony Medici
I love my records and my CDs, and you can find me holed up with them for hours, but whenever I can I get out and listen to live performances, particularly jazz, I do so. Pickings have been somewhat slim this summer here in Our Nation’s Capital (you know, the place politicians love to hate, or pretend to hate), and so, I have had little to blog about. However, last week provided an embarrassment of riches, thanks to the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, presented at various venues around the Capital, with a big outdoor festival on Sunday at the Sylvan Theater on the Mall, near the Washington Monument. The weather was perfect, and the music ran from the very fine to the sublime.
Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. Enough said from Byrne/Eno.
Author: Jeff Boule
It seems that life is so high pressure these days. Economic crisis, housing crisis, Middle East crisis, everything in crisis. Sometimes you need something to bring your stress level down. The new album from David Byrne and Brian Eno is something that can keep your toes tapping while reducing heart rate and blood pressure levels. But the music is far too lively to be as coma inducing as some of the earlier Eno ambient albums. But it is far more cerebral than Talking Heads.
Come Backstage at Princeton Record Exchange
Author: Brett
Have you ever wondered what goes on behind those mysterious doors at Princeton Record Exchange? In our new web videos, we give you a sneak peek into the behind-the-scenes workings of our store, and a whole lot more!