This weekend’s Austin City Limits festival gets the AT&T Blueroom Webcast treatment starting on Friday at 12:45PM EDT. Click here for the full schedule that includes Vampire Weekend, Drive-By Truckers, Blues Traveler and The Raconteurs. It’s rare that AT&T gets most of the big names at a festie to sign on, but they’ve done a stellar job this time around.
While we’re waiting for Friday, here’s some links to enjoy…
Music Snobbery gets a first look at Montclair’s Wellmont Theater
Finally, four major labels have made a deal with SanDisk to start manufacturing microSD memory cards featuring an album at 320kbps and with no DRM. Will this new format catch on? We’d be surprised.
Some Dude hipped me to the setlist from the first show of David Byrne’s tour and it looks incredibly nasty. Nice to see that he’s playing the classics…
David Byrne
September 16, 2008
Zoellner Center (Lehigh University)
Bethlehem, PA
Strange Overtones, I Zimbra, One Fine Day, Help Me Somebody, Houses in Motion, Lost and Found, My Big Hands (Fall Through the Cracks), Heaven, Home, My Big Nurse, Crosseyed & Painless, Life Is Long, Once in a Lifetime, Life During Wartime, I Feel My Stuff
Encore: Take Me to the River, The Great Curve, Everything that Happens Will Happen Today
Whenever a big gig comes to Philadelphia you can count on WXPN to let us all join in the fun. WXPN will simulcast this evening’s My Morning Jacket show directly from the Festival Pier around 7:30PM. I know what I’m doing tonight.
Let’s take a look at what we missed this week…
Jambase talks to Apollo Sunshine about Shall Noise Upon
Finally, we’ve got another example of why Akon fucking sucks. During a performance in Guyana, the rapper took a swing at a female fan. Classy shit, buddy.
Do you have those friends that you email all the time but never actually speak with? That seems to be the relationship between Brian Eno and David Byrne as they worked on their first collaboration in 31 years, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, without physically talking to each other very much.
Eno would work on the music for the album in London and send the tracks over to Byrne in New York City, where the former lead singer of the Talking Heads added lyrics and his vocals. The two old friends finally got together a few weeks to discuss a final round of tweaks, and today we can enjoy the fruits of their labor.
For now, you can purchase Everything That Happens Will Happen Today exclusively through the album’s website as 320kbps DRM-free MP3s for $8.99. The album’s also available in a number of digital and physical formats, including a limited edition Deluxe Package designed by Stefan Sagmeister. All formats can be downloaded immediately and physical CDs will be shipped in the Fall. David Byrne kicks off his tour in support of the album, sans Eno, on September 16 in Bethlehem, PA.
Between attending the Newport Folk Festival, posting Chad’s articles from the Vibes and following the action at Lollapalooza it’s taken me a while to get up and running today. But never fear, this week’s Monday’s Hors d’Oeuvres is here.
Before we start delving into festival news, here’s some other heady linkage:
When former Talking Heads front man David Byrne isn’t busying biking around town, blogging or sitting in with Paul Simon he’s been hard at work on his lastest project - Playing The Building - a 9,000 square foot interactive site at the Battery Maritime Building near South Ferry in Lower Manhattan.
Visitors to the installation are literally invited to “play on retrofitted antique organ, that vibrate, strike, and blow across the building’s elements, triggering unique harmonics and producing finely tuned sounds.” The Village Voice sat down with Byrne to discuss the unique project that will be open until mid-August.
Finally, when the compact disc first hit the market in late 1982 it quickly became the format of choice over the large, clunky vinyl record. Well let’s flash forward some 20+ years later. With CD sales plummeting more and more people are turning to the warmer and more inviting sound of vinyl. The format is having a big time resurgence, and it’s not just big among the hipster set anymore.
In just a few short hours Mountain Jam kicks off what should be the first rain-free festival in the history of the event. (Jinx!) If you can’t make it up to Hunter Mountain you can still join in on the fun in one of three ways: Sirius will be simulcasting a performance each night, Rich Lieberman will be blogging live from the site and iClips will be broadcasting most of the sets starting at 12:45 this afternoon.
Let’s take another gander at the stories not big enough for a whole post, but you need to check out anyways since it’s Friday and you ain’t got shit to do:
When you’ve got as many bands playing on as many stages as they’ve got at this year’s Bonnaroo there are sure to be some conflicts. Some of the doozies revealed in the just released schedule for ‘Roo ‘08 include 2 Super Jams vs. MMJ vs. tDB vs. Tiesto late night on Friday and B.B. King vs. Ben Folds vs. Zappa Plays Zappa vs. Levon vs. Iron & Wine vs. Little Feat on Saturday afternoon.
Are there any conflicts that particularly piss you off? Let us know by leaving a comment below. We’ve got a few other stories to tell you about this morning:
David Byrne drank too much and fell off of his bike
Rolling Stone selects Sam Champion as May’s Breaking Artist of the Month
The Joker of Coventry fame, rediscovers his love for STS9
The Raconteurs, Justice and Vampire Weekend lead the charge of the indie brigade at SF’s Treasure Island Music Festival in September
Phil Collins and the Genesis boys discuss Peter Gabriel and their live DVD
Radiohead tops TRRTS!’ list of the current Top 50 Muxtape Bands
Will the Smashing Pumpkins play their 20th Anniversary gigs in Chicago?
Finally, our fluffing hearts were filled with joy to see that Trey Anastasio, the former lead singer of Phish, was sentenced to three years on probation Wednesday after a felony guilty plea he entered last year was vacated in Washington County Court. Big Red graduates from the Washington County Drug Treatment Court on June 18, after passing all of the drug tests thrown at him over the past 17 months.
I know we missed our usually Monday morning link dump, so don’t hold it against us that Hors D’Oeuvres are a day late - but everyone loves leftovers though right? So let’s kick the week off and even we’ll throw in few extra stories…
Coachella’s attendance was down by 30,000 people, while Stagecoach doubled its audience from last year
Finally, around this time last year we were wondering about the whereabouts of one Michael Gordon. Well after ol’ Gordo’s name started to pop up on several festie lineups we started to wonder about just what Catcus has up his sleeve when he hits the stage this summer. Turns out the former Phish bass player has a new album that will hit stores on August 5th called The Green Sparrow. Former bandmates Trey Anastasio and Page McConnell make guest spots.
There has been lots of buzz about The Replacements lately thanks to Rhino’s new reissues of the band’s first four discs. Wes Orshoski recently interviewed both singer Paul Westerberg and bassist Tommy Stinson for a revealing Billboard magazine profile. Among other things, Westerberg and Stinson discuss how close they came to reuniting for festival season.
Both former members of the ‘Mats seem open to the idea of a reunion, if the timing and circumstances are right. That’s a big switch from the past when the guys were 100% opposed to any possible reunion. So I’m saying there’s a chance.
There’s also a chance we’ll dump a shit load of links on you:
Seattle’s Fleet Foxes have quickly become the royalty of a sub-sub genre
Van Halen returned to the stage at golfer Tiger Woods’ Tiger Jam XI
As always Uncle Neddy keeps you up to date on the shows of the week
Finally, most people thought Tom Petty was crazy for reforming Mudcrutch after nearly 35 years. But after reading the excellent Mudcrutch profile in the New York Times, Petty’s decision makes more sense. Sometimes artists need to be challenged, and you can’t find a bigger challenge than reforming your original band.
