Recently in music Category
There is a new market for alternative radio in Philadelphia. Except that it's not really new.
Josh T Landow from Yrock on XPN (worked for Y100, and started Y100rocks.com along with WDRE alum Jim McGuinn before WXPN picked it up) was laid off due to budget cuts from WXPN along with a bunch of either people. YRock is losing its airtime on WXPN but will stay online and WXPN, of course, gets to keep YRockonxpn.org (which is pretty shitty that you'll lay off the guy who started YRock yet keep it going if you ask me, but I guess that's business - I'm cancelling my monthly donation to WXPN for this one).
You can't hold down Josh T Landow, however. He's already started a new station, Y-Not Radio, that keeps the spirit of Y100 and WDRE, with a major focus on the Philly music scene. I listened all morning yesterday and it's pretty awesome.
Requests can me made on Y-Not Radio's Twitter page.
Concert pianist Lang Lang performs Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" on an iPad using the Magic Piano app during his first encore at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco earlier this week. Completely insane! [via technically incorrect]
Woodstock? The Last Waltz? "Mere aperitifs," according to Colin Fleming at Salon. He said check out recently-released T.A.M.I. Show featuring Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys, James Brown, and The Rolling Stones.
I'm still partial to The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.
Check it out... a new Doves song with accompanying vid just released on their youtube page.
Also they are coming out with a greatest hits.
Rock for Kids, an organization that raises money to help provide music lessons for underprivileged children, was inspired to pay tribute to the king of pop and in tandem to help to raise money for the organization. ImissyouMJ.com is a collective photo memorial that includes 10,000 photo plots available for purchase; the plots come together to form a mosaic of MJ's famous white glove. A $25 donation allows you to submit your own photo into the mosaic and receive a copy of this poster once the squares have been filled. Proceeds go to Rock for Kids and the poster itself will be presented to the Jackson family as a tribute.
Les Paul, the man who made the sound of rock 'n roll possible, died today at the age of 94.
He will be missed.
If you are a Nirvana fan, this might disappoint you. Or maybe not. Either way, it's always interesting to see how formulaic music can be.
As I previously mentioned in the past, I am an avid reader of Monitor Mix, the NPR music blog of Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein. Last week, after asking readers to justify their love for a favorite band, she decided to learn as much about Phish in one week after being inspired by a reader's comments.
She has 10 total updates documenting her journey. Below is Update #9, the night she organized a Portland, Oregon Phishhead get together.
Oh, and for the record, I am not a Phish fan, but I do know a lot of their songs and appreciate them for what they are...a great band that will stand the test of time. And Bounce Around the Room is awesome.
Monitor Mix Meets Portland Phish Heads from Carrie Brownstein on Vimeo.
With his a new venture called Polyphonic, Radiohead manager Brian Message, who worked with the band as they released their most recent album, In Rainbows, online for free, is looking to "invest ... in new and rising artists who are not signed to record deals and then help them create their own direct links to audiences over the Internet."
Metric, a band who decided to not sign onto a label and release their most recent album Fantasies themselves, has been greatly served going the solo route. (Note the article does not specify if Metric was involved with Polyphonic.)
On a personal note Metric is very much worth checking out. In addition so too is lead singer Emily Haines' solo work with a group dubbed Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton and on top of that Broken Soical Scene, a Canadian supergroup if you will who site 23 members, also claims Emily and Metric guitarist James Shaw as members along with Leslie Feist, members of Stars and hoards of other bands, and for my money is the best of the three.
The first single off of Pearl Jam's upcoming record, The Fixer, was released to radio stations today. You can listen to it on their MySpace page. Pearl Jam's ninth studio album, Backspacer, will drop on September 20th.
I dig the new tune, but then again I am very biased. To me, it sounds like a modern version of The Who.
