Roughly a week ago myself and my officemate @moneyries heard what I believed was the song Half Light II (No Celebration) off the Arcade Fire’s new album The Suburbs. And we loved it. I was bounces around the office going “move to the city, come back home, move to another city” and no one knew what I was so jovial about, and I didn’t really care. To hear it, go to VC guy’s Fred Wilson’s radio station FredWilson.fm and check out track 11.
Earlier this week, NPR launched a stream of AF’s new album The Suburbs, much to my chagrin that tune was not part of the album’s stream, but a different version was. To sample that version, allow me to present the Arcade Fire performing it live two nights ago at Madison Square Garden.
It’s highly evident that this is the real Half Light II (No Celebration). The remarkable thing to me is that each version could be the best song on The Suburbs.
Well, we’ve tried everything we could think of to figure out what exactly that other song is. We shazam’d. We Googled “Move to the city, come back home, move to another city.” We tweeted, clearly. To no avail.
Any suggestions? Anyone in the know? This is new territory to me – liking a song and not knowing what’s it called. Hell, it might not even be Arcade Fire after all, though it sounds like them. It’s kind of driving me nuts.
(Photo: Spin)
T.O. is taking his pageantry to Cincinnati. Ochocinco and him are already acting foolish together on Twitter.
Big deal. Did you see the music video for Dancing Pigeons’ song Ritalin? Boy, oh, boy, it’s good.
Dancing Pigeons – Ritalin from Blink on Vimeo.
via Laughing Squid
Over the past two weeks, USA soccer became all-consuming to me and I’m still reeling from that loss on Saturday. I can’t bring myself to post about sports right now. I tried. I found a hilarious picture of Diego Maradona celebrating Argentina’s win over Mexico yesterday, and all I could muster was: Looks like you got some gum on your sideline wingtip there, brother.
With that said and in the interest of pushing down that post about Donovan’s goal against Algeria from Friday, check out some videos from this past weekend’s Afro-Punk Festival at Commodore Barry Park in Brooklyn, NY.
So much better than Lugo. Scu Scu Scutaro
He could jump another few percentage points if the Collins original became his walk-up music.
Scutaro has been more than tolerable on the whole (.285 BA, leads the team in at-bats, second in hits) and on a tear recently (.485 BA in his last ten games). If you don’t agree, then you don’t know the Red Sox unremarkable shortstop history of recent times.
This past week, I haven’t exactly been on a live music hot streak.
On Tuesday, the news came down that The Eagles and Phish are headlining Austin City Limits (Here’s a message for the crack geniuses who made that decision). I’ll never buy tickets to a festival when the line-up is site unseen ever again.
On Thursday, I went to see Pearl Jam at Madison Square Garden, and it was just OK. Then – and this is where non-Pearl Jam nerds can just scroll down and watch the video with Ben Bridwell – I saw the set-list for the show at MSG the following night.
Here are the set-lists from the two shows:
Thursday night:
1. Sometimes
2. Breakerfall
3. Last Exit
4. Animal
5. The Fixer
6. Severed Hand
7. Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town
8. I Am Mine
9. Comatose
10. Force of Nature
11. Even Flow
12. Low Light
13. Down
14. I Got Id
15. Army Reserve
16. Insignificance
17. Unthought Known
18. Do The Evolution
Encore:
20. The End
21. Lukin
22. Just Breathe
23. You Are
24. Love, Reign O’er Me (The Who cover)
25. State Of Love And Trust
26. Once
27. Porch
Encore 2:
29. Jeremy
30. Leash
31. Mankind
32. Crazy Mary (Victoria Williams cover)
33. I Believe In Miracles (Ramones cover)
34. Alive
35. Indifference
Friday night:
1. Corduroy
2. Hail Hail
3. Do The Evolution
4. World Wide Suicide
5. Got Some
6. Breath
7. Nothingman
8. I’m Open
9. Unthought Known
10. Grievance
11. Amongst The Waves
12. Present Tense
13. Not For You
14. Push Me, Pull Me
15. Rats
16. Daughter
17. The Fixer
18. Why Go
Encore:
2. The End
3. Just Breathe
4. Lukin
5. Black, Red, Yellow
6. Sweet Lew
7. Given To Fly
8. Spin The Black Circle
9. Rearviewmirror
Encore 2:
2. Wasted Reprise
3. Better Man
4. Black
5. The Real Me (The Who cover)
6. Hunger Strike (Temple of the Dog cover) (with Ben Bridwell)
7. Alive
8. Kick Out The Jams (MC5 cover)
9. Yellow Ledbetter with Star Spangled Banner guitar solo
My girlfriend and I made the decision to go Thursday night for a number of reasons, not the least of which was to see Black Keys over Band of Horses. Eddie mumbled a shout out to Dan Auerbach at one point – pittance compared to this:
Don’t get me wrong, Thursday had some highlights (Reigh O’er Me through Porch), but the set-list as a whole is just pale in comparison. I should’t even be complaining considering that I was at this show in 2008. At $90 a ticket to sit in the 400 level, I reserve the right to sulk a little.
Maybe my timing will be better next tour. I leave you with a quality video of Breath that someone took on Friday:
H/T to Ryan Hudson (Editor, SB Nation) for finding this deep link on the Red Sox website that lists their walk-up music. He especially likes Dice-K taking the mound to Fabolous. Personally, I don’t think it’s gets any better than Jeremy Hermida coming out to N2Deep’s “Back to the Hotel.”
Four different tracks. Artists and titles unknown.
They actually let him get away with that.
Is this something that’s universally listed on every team’s website? It should be. I did some not-great research, and could only find a listing of the 2008 Detroit Tigers entrance music. However, a coworker of mine who was at the Yankee game last night at least confirms that a certain captain comes out to this song…
And yes, here’s N2Deep with “Back to the Hotel”
If you’re like me – meaning you don’t like Justice and don’t pay attention to them, even though they look really cool – you had never heard of French director Romain Gavras until this morning’s agitating M.I.A. video release. Now, if you’re like me, you not going to forget his name for sometime.
To be honest, I’m not sure I can name a single music video director other than Hype Williams. It takes a lot to make a lasting impression in that medium (copious overuse of fisheye lenses, etc.). Today, Gavras proved that blowing off a young ginger’s head is one way to do that – can I use ginger colloquially still or is that offensive? And what do the South Park creators think about this? This clip is a conversation starter.
If you want to avoid asking boorish questions like that, here are some more of Gavras’ videos to help get acquainted with his style – I think they call this verite. Or he might just like shooting close-ups of people looking angry.
In descending order of most violent…
Whitney Matheson (Pop Candy) picked up on this first earlier. I commend her.
SPIN Magazine did Rock N’ Roll fans a solid, and put every issue from their back catalog – dating back to the first issue in May, 1985 that featured Madonna on the cover – on Google Books.
At some point I’m going to go way down the rabbit hole with this. Chuck Klosterman features, here I come. In the meantime, check out ten covers from what I think we can all agree was the golden age of SPIN – the 1990s.
Tuesday night, I went to my first Trey Anastasio concert at Terminal 5 in NYC (conveniently located on 11th Ave near all the bad nudie bars. Woohoo!). For those of you who do not know who Trey is, he is the lead singer of Phish. For those of you who do know who he is, below is the set list:
Trey Anastasio & Classic TAB
February 16, 2010
Terminal 5
New York, NY
Set One: Shine, Cayman Review, Push On ‘Til the Day, Alaska, Mozambique, Gotta Jibboo, All That Almost Was, Drifting, Liquid Time, The Birdwatcher, Night Speaks to a Woman, Tuesday, Brian and Robert*, Strange Design*, Sample in a Jar*, Chalkdust Torture*, Wilson*
Set Two: Sand, Alive Again, Last Tube> Show of Life, Sultans of Swing, Ether Sunday, Black Dog
Encore: Magilla, First Tube
* – Trey Solo Acoustic
Now, I am not a huge Trey fan. I like some of his music, he’s a phenomenal guitar player, and it was an excuse to drink beer and hang with my buddies on a Tuesday night (I sincerely hope I have not offended any Phish Heads reading this by saying that). Here is what I learned:
1) I will get the sophomoric, frat-boy comments out of the way first: We saw one woman we deemed attractive. Moving on…
2) Several of the songs Trey and Classic TAB played? They originally wrote ‘em and they were later adopted by Phish, prompting one buddy to say “HA! Phish is like a glorified cover band!” (again, Phish Heads, he is a big Trey fan. He was kidding. Please no hippie voodoo on us).
3) The concert started at 8:30 and lasted (minus a short break in the middle) until midnight. Set two was 70 minutes alone. However, the energy was high the entire time and it’s hard not to get excited when there’s a second-set ending cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog”:
4) Trey ended the show with “First Tube,” the first song he wrote with Classic TAB. Enjoy this jam-tastic bit from 10/25/08:
Trey with Classic Tab – \”First Tube\”
5) Finally, the concert was a blast (if you get a chance to check the band out, after one concert I suggest you do so) but there was a TINY part of me that was hoping we’d get a surprise guest…like this one:
