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19 Sep 2009 15:27

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Music: Ah, vintage 2002. Our Saturday Mixtape takes a swig or two.

  • 1. Back in our noise-addled 2002 minds, Idlewild’s “You Held the World In Your Arms” was that explosion of R.E.M.-esque bombast that should have been huge in the U.S., but instead remained on the fringes.
    2. Consider this a placeholder for both the Roots and Cody ChestnuTT, who both released killer albums in 2002. (Lala, sadly doesn’t have ChestnuTT’s only album thus far, “The Headphone Masterpiece.”) A lot’s changed since this song came out – The Roots are on Jimmy Fallon, and ChestnuTT is … somewhere. Where did you go, man?
    3. When everyone was going gaga over Interpol (we didn’t get the hype), we were putting The Notwist’s “Neon Golden” on repeat. A slice of IDM+pop, “Pilot” is the German band’s best song.
    4. It wouldn’t be 2002 if we didn’t give due credit to Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” so here we are, giving it. They haven’t been as weird as “Radio Cure” since, but it was weird enough to get everyone to pay attention.
    5. Iron & Wine’s success was a starting point for 21st-century indie folk. The fact that Sam Beam’s been improving ever since doesn’t negate the fact that he wrote the template with songs like “Upward Over the Mountain.”source

17 Sep 2009 21:43

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Music, Tech: iTunes should pay for the sam …

  • … ple, too, the music industry says. It doesn’t matter if 30-second samples are promotional AND fair use. The music industry wants Apple to pay performance fees. They say they’re not trying to gouge, though. “People think we’re making a fortune off the Web, but it’s a tiny amount,” says Songwriters’ Guild of America president Rick Carnes. “We need multiple revenue streams or this isn’t going to work.” Critics say that Apple’s getting picked on by these groups, who they accuse of double-dipping. source

15 Sep 2009 20:57

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Music: They Might be Noble Gases: TMBG goes periodic table

  • This, my friends, is how we keep nerds off the street: We have them come up with music designed to teach kids cool things. The two Johns are now safe from danger.source

14 Sep 2009 12:59

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Music: A really old lady held back the kinda-old Beatles from the U.K. No. 1

  • 92 age of WWII-era entertainer (and chart-topper) Vera Lynn source

12 Sep 2009 16:11

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Music: Saturday Mixtape: Os Mutantes, or why Brazilian music freaking rocks



Welcome back, insanely progressive Brazilian musical icons. We wanted to commemorate Os Mutantes' first album in 33 years, Haih Or Amortecedor, by looking back a little at music of their homeland. Warning: Four of these five songs are in Portuguese, but rule anyway.
  • 1. The females in the Tropicalia movement, including Os Mutantes’ Rita Lee (later a famous solo artist in her own right) and Gal Costa, had this wonderful way of blending their voices into the productions around them perfectly. On Costa’s “Lost in the Paradise,” there’s just as much quiet storm-style R&B as traditional Brazilian elements.
    2. “Telcar” is Os Mutantes’ first single from the new album. What’s surprising about it is that even though it clearly has modern, non-experimental production values (and only features one member of the original band), it still feels of another era in the best way possible.
    3. Caetano Veloso is one of Brazillian music’s greatest songwriters with a reach starting with Tropicalia and far into Brazilian popular music. He’s written hundreds of Brazilian standards, including “Soy Loco Por Tí, América.”
    4. The English lyrics to “Chuckberry Fields Forever,” a Gilberto Gil song performed by late-70s Brazilian supergroup Doces Barbaros, tell of how rock had a permanent impact on traditional Brazilian music. The music acts as evidence.
    5. Despite the fact that that this is a Giberto Gil/Caetano Veloso ditty, “Bat Macumba” is likely more known to American audiences for the Os Mutantes version, which played centerpiece to the band’s 1999 David Byrne compilation and is one of the band’s best-known songs. It loses little in Gil’s version.source

05 Sep 2009 16:08

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Music: Our Saturday Mixtape decade-in-review continues with 2001’s best

  • 1. Rufus Wainwright came out of the gate strong, and maybe lost a little steam after the second album, but “Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk” definitely isn’t the point where he lost the plot.
    2. Quiet wasn’t the new loud, but the sorta-movement created a couple of pretty solid bands between Kings of Convenience and Turin Brakes, whose “Emergency 72” holds up well considering its current lack of musical context.
    3. Britt Daniel of Spoon made a compelling argument for “The Fitted Shirt,” a style that’s evolved from the days of “ma’am and yes sir” to the style of choice for the male on the prowl. In the process, he made a very compelling argument for Spoon.
    4. It’s interesting how a band known for its guitar-shredding, the White Stripes, first hit mainstream consciousness with “Hotel Yorba,” a three-chord acoustic guitar ditty. No worry; they’d quickly become one of the decade’s biggest bands.
    5. Two years after Dntel’s “This is the Dream of Evan and Chan” came out, the ideas of this song were further explored with the uber-popular (and woefully neglected) Postal Service. And it’s obvious why. Jimmy Tamborello’s glitches and Ben Gibbard’s vocals made perhaps the best argument ever for indie-plus-IDM.source

02 Sep 2009 11:09

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01 Sep 2009 10:28

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Music: Jay-Z: Huge Grizzly Bear fan. Who’da thunk it?

  • The thing I want to say to everyone – I hope this happens because it will push rap, it will push hip-hop to go even further – what the indie-rock movement is doing right now is very inspiring. It felt like us in the beginning.
  • Jay-Z • Regarding Grizzly Bear specifically (he was recently spotted at a show with Beyonce) and indie rock in general, and how what they’re doing inspires rap. He says that if they can break really big (well, Grizzly Bear did go top-ten on the Billboards earlier this year) “it will force hip-hop to fight to make better music.” • source

28 Aug 2009 20:20

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28 Aug 2009 18:25

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Music: Noel leaves Oasis. We’re sure he’s gonna look back in anger.

  • It’s with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight. People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer. Apologies to all the people who bought tickets for the shows in Paris, Konstanz and Milan.
  • Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher • On quitting the band his songwriting made famous. Holy crap. This is a big deal. Oasis holds a special, drunken fighting-with-siblings place in our hearts. We’ll miss them greatly. (Rejected headlines: “Oasis doesn’t live forever”; “Liam wasn’t Noel’s Wonderwall after all”; “Oasis explodes like a champagne supernova in the sky”) • source