Best of YouTube - May '07

Ted Leo on The Human Giant 24 hr special
Ted's amplifier comes unplugged at one point during "Me and Mia". It's a great moment in live television - not to be missed.


Beirut [with Final Fantasy and other members of the Arcade Fire]: "The Gulag Orkestar"
Beirut and Final Fantasy performed Sunday, May 6th at New York's Bowery Ballroom and, not surprisingly, the bloggerati and seemingly every other indie musician in NYC was out for the show. As Brooklyn Vegan described it: "Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett) played first. Beirut came out to play with Final Fantasy for one song. Beirut played second. Final Fantasy played with Beirut for about half of their set. Four members of the Arcade Fire, Final Fantasy, and even more musicians who I didn't recognize, came out to play a song with Beirut during the encore. Sufjan Stevens, members of the National and Grizzly Bear were in the audience." [Pitchfork / Brooklyn Vegan]

Same performance (a little easier on the ears):

Clark and Michael: The Series - Preview
Internerd comedy series written and directed by-- and co-starring Michael Cera (George Michael from Arrested Development) with Clark Duke (Check IMDB if you care). The series debuted May 23rd on clarkandmichael.com it's pretty funny, but they definitely have room to grow. Some really great people are involved with the project (David Cross, Martin Starr, Tony Hale, Andy Richter, John Francis Daley, Patton Oswalt, Joe Lo Truglio), so I'm looking forward to see how this series progresses for these guys.

Last.fm bought by CBS

Last.fm founders (Left to right: Martin Stiksel, Felix Miller, Richard Jones)

It's official, Last.FM was just sold for $280million to CBS.

BBC article: Music site Last.fm bought by CBS

Handsome Furs - Denied!

The duo of Handsome Furs is comprised of Montreal residents Dan Boeckner (Wolf Parade) and his fiancé Alexei Perry. They were supposed to be on a short stint in the U.S. this week supporting there Sub Pop debut, Plague Park. This included a gig Friday night at TT's in Cambridge, MA -- BUT United States Customs kept those freedom-haters in Canada. Really.

What I'm getting at here is that you can just forget about throwing any red paint on Alexi this weekend. Aww, bummer- but hey, I'm sure there'll be other opportunities to act like an asshole to Canadian musicians soon enough.

I like these songs a lot. Maybe you will hate them and tell me all about it.

MP3: Handsome Furs: What We Had [from the Plague Park LP, out now]
MP3: Handsome Furs: Dead + Rural [from the Plague Park LP, out now]

Website: Handsome Furs
Website: Wolf Parade
Label: Sub Pop Records

P.S. If you're reading this and listening to the MP3s - please leave a comment, I'd love to hear from you.
Also- I have mad LOVE for Canada.

Fabriclive.33 Spank Rock

“The thing is, we fuck around a lot, all the time...and I think a big part of the aesthetic of our performances and how we roll, as far as making the party, is debauchery and fun. And if something's sloppy, you kind of own that a little bit, you know? So we just sort of carried that over into the fabric mix, we thought maybe it would be good to have a little bit of humour in it. And there's some other stuff - we did a lot of recording, we made a lot of sound effects. For example, there sounds on there that sound like bombs dropping, which we made by mic'ing the sound of us picking up amplifiers and dropping them. There's little stuff in there that took a while to make, and yeah...there's some stuff in there you gotta check for. It was really fun to make.” - Spank Rock

Stop wasting your time. Buy Fabriclive.33 right away.

MP3: Fabriclive.33 Spank Rock: Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above (CSS)

Trey Told 'Em: Cheer It On [remix]

I've been sitting on this for a few weeks now. Not sure why I waited to post this. Shit's hotter than a set of twin babies. Trey Told 'Em is Gregg of Girl Talk and Frank of Hearts of Darknesses. Download this track NOW- you will not be sorry.

MP3: Tokyo Police Club: Cheer It On (Trey Told 'Em remix)

Also, now that he's a "full time music man" -- Here is a list of non-music plans that Girl Talk's Gregg Gillis has in mind for summer 2007 [straight from his MySpace blog]:

• play basketball all the time
• sun tan
• walk around shirtless
• eat ice cream outdoors
• get a season pass to Sand Castle water park
• check out the Genesis reunion show
• eat at Peppi's and Village Pizza a ton
• watch movies
• do push-ups
• get to some some beaches
• Pirates games

Unreal. Homeboy is such a baller.

HELLMETS.ORG

Gordon Riker and Kelly Wallace both were killed in automobile accidents while riding their bikes through the streets of Boston (*Gordon was wearing a helmet when he was hit). These two individuals had their entire lives ahead of them and this organization is trying to help prevent more of Boston's youth from dying in senseless accidents.

Helping Everyone Live Longer (HELL) is raising money to purchase and distribute free helmets to anyone who wants one. In the meantime, if you would like to purchase a helmet at cost, please contact Kerry Simon at Proletariat. They will only set you back $18-$25 and could save your life.

Go here: HELLMETS.ORG and please pass this along.

Protect those brains and ride safe, babies!
xxo

LCD Soundsystem + YACHT 5/11/07

Before Friday night I had never seen LCD Soundsystem live and really had no idea what to expect. Listening to DFA co-founder James Murphy's studio jammms I had always wondered how they would translate to a live performance. I'm happy to report that the entire performance was off the wall (with the exception of ending a dance-punk show with a ballad- odd choice). The audience danced start to finish- Mr. Murphy had them in the palm of his hand while the rest of the band backed him up with an incredible wall of sound. Touring with James was keyboardist Nancy Whang and drummer/Mr. Rosso lookalike Pat Mahoney with Phillip Skarich on bass and Hot Chip’s Al Doyle on guitar.

Quote of the evening: "Hey you guys down there dancing, and banging into each other [James to dudes slam-dancing in the audience]- take a look to your left and to your right; if you don't see a girl within three feet of you, you're dancing wrong." (or something to that effect)

Unfortunately this electro-dance-punk shindig was held at the Avalon. This meant that it would be an early show so that those a-holes could get all of us cleared out of there by 10PM- only to refill it with the sites and smells of the Jerseyesque club crowd; blow-out hairdos, alcoholic Red Bull drinks, and most likely way too much cologne. If I'm sounding bitter it's because as a result of this "no fun" policy that Avalon has, show-opener, YACHT (electro-pop project of the Blow’s Jona Bechtolt) went on at 7PM!! Needless to say, we missed this part of the evening.

Video I shot at the show:




Video footage that YACHT/Jona threw together from the LCD tour:


Website: LCD Soundsystem
Stream: LCD Soundsystem: "All My Friends"

Website: YACHT: Maker of Fine Grunge Musics & Hugs.
MP3: YACHT: "See a Penny (Pick It Up)"

Arcade Fire 5/10/06

Right now I'm listening to the set that Arcade Fire played at TT the Bears Place [Cambridge, MA - 11/12/04] which you can find AND download for your listening enjoyment here: Bradley's Almanac

John and I just saw Arcade Fire the other night at the Orpheum Theater in Boston and it was easily one of the best live performances that I've seen in a very long. (I can only imagine how incredible it must've been to be at the TT's show back in 2004.) They played with so much enthusiasm and had a really fantastic stage set-up with about a dozen live feed cameras, 6 small projection screens, and they were projecting onto the velvet curtain behind them as well. Very fucking cool and completely worth every penny. The only thing that I found annoying about the show [besides how unbelievably hot it was inside the theater] was that the audience felt the need to clap along with almost EVERY song that Arcade Fire played. Normally I like clapping along with a band, but it made it difficult to hear the band a lot of the time, and these people were clapping along with songs which required 0% audience participation. A little annoying, but still nice be with a crowd that was exited about the band that they payed to see. (If you were there, and you were a constant-clapper, no offense!)

Video that John shot from where we were sitting [balcony seats]:

Video from MUCH better seats:

Here's a link to a good photo set from the show that I found on Flickr. Which were actually taken by Brad from the above mentioned blog, Bradley's Almanac: bradsearles