Friday, January 29, 2010
The grizzled bros of My Morning Jacket will play Koka Booth Amphitheatre in Cary April 30 with The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, after a tour-anchoring stop in New Orleans for Jazzfest. MMJ frontman Jim James (Yim Yames?) recently recorded two tracks for PHJB's new album, PRESERVATION: An Album To Benefit Preservation Hall & The Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program. The nine-show run starts in Alabama and ends two weeks later in Ohio.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Beach music and the Carolina Shag dance phenom still carry a lot of weight in North Carolina. It was evidenced when Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, an avid shag dancer, established Beach Music Day in 2004, coinciding with a concert celebration in Downtown Raleigh.
Now, UNC Women's Basketball coach Sylvia Hatchell has invited shaggers to perform their footwork in front of the halftime crowd in Friday's game against Clemson.
Hatchell is a member of the Eno Shag Club, and an old friend of beach & oldies DJ Charlie Brown, one of the primary voices for the scene from the mid-60s in Raleigh, now on WPCM 920 AM in Burlington, and in syndication “On the Beach with Charlie Brown.”
So, this Friday at halftime in the newly-renovated Carmichael arena, dancers from Burlington, Eno, Bass Lake, and Chatham shag clubs will perform an exhibition. Look for some junior shaggers, too, some vying for national level competition.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Pastor Paul Adefarasin of House on the Rock church led The Experience, and Lagos, Nigeria certainly shook the night of December 4. Lasting from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., the fourth annual interdenominational gospel concert drew over 450,000 people. Local guitarist and minister Will McFarlane traveled over the Atlantic to be one of the many. McFarlane has spent the past decade in the area, but he spent years before backing up Bonnie Raitt and as part of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section.
Even with his solid résumé, McFarlane was surprised to be invited to the concert. “They called me out of nowhere, just a week in advance. I drove to Washington, D.C, to get my visa in a day, which was a miracle in itself.” He was recruited into a band that was half Nigerian and half American, including the likes of Phil Driscoll and Chester Thompson. With a little bit of time to practice, the group tackled the stage for an hour, starting around 1 in the morning. “The approach in Nigeria was just grab a hold and hang on. [laughter]” So what's it like to play in front of almost half a million people? “It changes your body chemistry. [laughter] I mean, you could only see about the first quarter of a million. People were jumping and moving. It was just unbelievable.”
Thursday, January 14, 2010
It seems 2009 was largely a regrouping one for Raleigh six-piece Annuals: Such Fun, the band’s second album and first for major-label imprint Canvasback Music, was released in 2008 to mixed reviews and comparatively low sales. According to Nielsen Soundscan, Such Fun sold only 7,341 copies, compared to their debut’s 17,999. And Canvasback was cooling on Annuals’ former blog-buzz property, even as the band was working on new material back in Raleigh.
“We found out that our deal with Canvasback was getting messed up over the summer,” says Annuals bassist Mike Robinson. “So, we decided, ‘Let’s do an EP and have it out in November.’”
And they mostly hit their mark: The upcoming five-track EP, Sweet Sister, due now on March 23, has been mostly finished since October. That same month, though, Canvasback announced that it would be inking a deal with Atlantic Records at the end of its three-year contract with Columbia. So the EP, like the band, didn’t have a home. Ace Fu, who issued Annuals’ 2006 debut, Be He Me, to much acclaim and strong indie sales, contemplated releasing the EP, though the label hadn’t released anything new since 2007. That didn’t happen, and Robinson didn’t want to issue Sweet Sister on his own Terpsikhore imprint because he didn’t think the label—essentially staffed by himself—had the proper resources to devote to it when Annuals were touring.
So Banter Media, a new label run by Matt Halverson, formerly an Ace Fu intern, offered help. Annuals are the fifth band on the startup’s roster.
Robinson says, “It’ll be really different, for sure, but it seems everything we do is on a different record label, so why not? It’s exciting to have a fresh start on a modest-sized label that can still do good work.”
Robinson feels good about the work the band did on this EP, too, something that wasn’t always the case with the second album, the sarcastically titled Such Fun. It often took frontman Adam Baker out of his comfort zone—which is to say, late nights with pedals and gear, and long hours of fussing over mixes and adding quirks and textures to songs. The band recorded much of Such Fun in Asheville’s grand Echo Mountain studio, with high-dollar producer Jacquire King.
“Adam never seemed satisfied about it because he never got to put on his finishing touches, the weird stuff that a lot of people like,” says Robinson. “This is Adam, though. He’s back into being in full control of things. He reassumed his role on how everything goes, and I think these songs are much more of a return to the weirdness and quirkiness on the first album.”
Sweet Sister was recorded at Terpsikhore’s studios in Raleigh and at Flying Tiger Sound with B.J. Burton. Ian Schreier, who also worked on Such Fun, mixed the music at Osceola Recording Studios. The EP ends with “Flesh and Blood,” a Johnny Cash cover that Annuals originally cut for Hear Here: The Triangle, the great Terpsikhore compilation of local tunes released last year. It was first scrapped from the collection because the band hadn’t gained the proper permissions.
Meanwhile, whispers have been floating through Raleigh that Anna Spence, the band’s keyboardist, was leaving the band. After all, she sat out a tour late last year, originally booked to promote the ultimately delayed Sweet Sister. Robinson says there’s nothing to those rumors aside from a tour that simply conflicted with Spence’s college schedule.
“Anna’s still in the band. She had to finish up college, and she’s now done,” Robinson says. “We’re hoping to get back on the horse this year pretty quickly.”
Cary Moskovitz of the Haw River Rounders just announced the band is playing at the Blue Bayou in Hillsborough tonight at 8:30.
According to Moskovitz, the band will collect money to donate to Partners in Health, which has an office in Haiti and has been providing medical and food aid for the last 10 years.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
WKNC Double Barrel Benefit: No. VII is smaller, but focused and looking forward
N.C. State's student-run radio station, WKNC 88.1 FM, announced the lineup for its seventh annual Double Barrel Benefit this morning: The vintage pop of Max Indian will headline the first night of the two-show weekend on Friday, Feb. 5, with The Light Pines, Veelee and Bellafea in the opening slots. Ex-Chapel Hill, current-Nashville album rock enthusiasts Roman Candle headline Saturday, Feb. 6, with The Tender Fruit, Midtown Dickens and Spider Bags opening.
This year's Double Barrel represents a logical and somewhat necessary shift for the station, away from some of the bigger names that have headlined or opened in recent years—Birds of Avalon, Bowerbirds, Polvo, The Old Ceremony, Annuals, The Mountain Goats, Megafaun—and toward the Triangle's rich crop of young but hitherto less nationally prominent acts. After all, Double Barrel has only presented six bands more than once in its seven-year run, so the pool is somewhat constricted.
But, Roman Candle excepted, what this lineup might lack in history it makes up for with plans and promise: Led by the yearning Southern warble of Christy Smith, The Tender Fruit, for instance, is currently cutting an LP with Megafaun's Phil Cook. Veelee's only get one self-released, three-song EP to its name, but the duo's intricate, winding miniatures offer plenty of intrigue, and they're set to record more this year. Same for The Light Pines, the doppelganger of The Love Language: Led by Josh Pope and backed by his fellow Love Language members, The Pines debuted with an ecstatic, engaging show in Portland, Ore., late last year for Musicfest Northwest. This will be their full-on local premiere. And they sometimes share members with Max Indian, who, like The Light Pines, are part of a Chapel Hill band network called Drughorse. And, as I said here, look for big things from that gangly collective in 2010.
So, yeah, no "stars" this year, but plenty of reasons to listen—and for cheap, too: Tickets are $7-$9 for each night, and the music starts at 9 p.m.
Following Michael Jackson’s death in June 2009, BET aired a show called Michael Jackson: 10 Things You Didn't Know. In it, The Roots drummer Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson made viewers privy to some comical trivia about the history of the King of
Pop’s song “Bad." According to ?uestlove, “Bad” was originally slated to be a duet that featured another member of music royalty—Prince. Prince declined the offer. Apparently, the opening line—“your butt is mine”—wasn’t too appealing to Prince. At a dinner, Prince told Mike, “You ain’t singing this line to me, and I sure ain’t singing this line to you.” Shortly thereafter, “Bad” was MJ's No. 1 hit.
Unfortunately, that’s about the extent of my Prince knowledge. I'm on MJ's team. But thanks to Rapper Big Pooh’s The Purple Tape project, I'm able to brush-up on some Prince history. Produced entirely by Detroit’s Black Milk, The Purple Tape (available here, at the big guy's Bandcamp) captures Pooh rapping above Black Milk’s reinterpretation of close to a dozen of Prince’s most famed hits. Several months ago, Black Milk released this instrumental, Prince-inspired project, Music From The Color Purple, but with his blessings and permission, Rapper Big Pooh decided to make an album out of it. Pooh has been steadily releasing scrimmage projects like this, in anticipation for his next official LP, Dirty Pretty Things. This just happens to be his most outstanding, creative tease yet. For a short making-of documentary on the tape, see HOJTV.
Raekwon the Chef was due at Lincoln Theatre Thursday, Jan. 14, while American Idol ex Elliott Yamin was expected at Cat's Cradle on the same date. They've both canceled their appearances. No reason has been given for the missed gigs, but if you've seen Up in the Air, perhaps Raekwon is Vera Farmiga to Yamin's George Clooney? Scandalous.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Cat's Cradle announced two big bookings this afternoon: The Carrboro club presents the mighty harpist Joanna Newsom at Carolina Theatre Thursday, March 25, just ahead of her appearance at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn. A little more than a month later, Beach House and Washed Out will play the Cradle itself, on May 1. These announcements suggest being patted lightly on the face by tiny, soft kitten paws.
I'm a physicist (just like Dr. Hansen) and this article is overloaded with misinformation and biases. It is an advertisement …
by John Droz on Duke professor Orrin Pilkey takes on the deniers in Global Climate Change: A Primer (Reading)
thanks for the article i heard boundaries on an nyu radio station in new jersey and i loved it man! …
by Peter Talarico on My Dad is Dead bids a redemptive farewell (Music Feature)