sparkrobot

I put the camera over my head and took one crappy photo of Les Savy Fav. Too bad, this was one of the bands I was really looking forward to seeing. Unfortunately, I hate crowds of drunken jerk offs more than I care to grin and bear it. Onward to King Cobra to see The Heavy Hearts.

The Dodos are a three piece from San Francisco with a refreshing approach to song craft. Slide guitars in alternate tunings, live loop sampling, foot tapping tambourine on an unconventional drum setup, trombones, trumpets, vibraphones… even a whipped garbage can as an auxiliary percussive addition. At one point, as the band stomped along, the entire live room at Neumo’s was bobbing to the beat. The floor was a boat in the ocean rocking up and down in perfect four over four. I found it an incommunicable experience — more of a moment. Sometimes live music is more about just “being there”. This was one of those moments. Outside in the beer garden, I chatted with a guy who intended to tape The Dodos’ block party set with his mini disc player. I hope he finds this post, because I’d really like to hear that.

There was a mostly unused mic stand right in front of me I wish I could have moved, because some of these shots would have been brilliant… Check out the photo gallery of The Dodos. A side note for anyone who might be interested, I took these photos at 4000 ISO with the Nikon D300. Yes, 4000.

On arrival at the Capitol Hill Block Party Friday night I quickly realized it was going to be quite a bit bigger than I expected. The block was packed tight and it was difficult to move around. I didn’t have it in me to try to fight the crowd for good photo vantage and I only had a 17-55… Ultimately, I headed over to Neumo’s where I caught Thee Emergency performing an inspired set of retro, soulful garage rock from a decent position stage right. Check out the photo gallery of Thee Emergency at Neumo’s.

The weird thing is, I had Who Do You Love? running through my head just this morning as I was thinking about the reissue Bo Diddley model Gretsch I contemplated purchasing from Guitar Maniacs a couple of years back.

More at the Seattle Times.

There are more photos over here.

I picked up The Breeders‘ new record Mountain Battles over the weekend. My favorite song so far is “It’s The Love” on side B. A bonus: there’s a Vaughn Oliver designed booklet on the inside. The printing is stunning.

Also just got a documentary on Beulah from the Netflix, A Good Band is Easy to Kill.

A good weekend? Maybe. But then again, I have to file my fucking tax return. So, maybe not.

I guess this is what I’ve been listening to. The reason I guess is, this doesn’t include what happens in the car and it’s hard to audioscrobble vinyl. For what it’s worth:

1		American Music Club	26
2		Blue Skies For Black Hearts	23
3		The Apples in Stereo	19
4		The American Analog Set	13
4		The Young Fresh Fellows	13
4		Superdrag	13
7		Alex Chilton	12
7		Beirut	12
9		Islands	11
10		Willie Nelson	10

So… Internets, what are you listening to? I’m all ears.

I ventured out last Friday to catch a couple of bands. Peter Parker and Dept of Energy played live at The Comet Tavern. The Comet is a cool venue to see shows. The bands play live on the floor, but it’s dark as shit in there, making photography difficult. The Globes opened the show, but I didn’t have the Nikon tuned in to get any shots of them. I posted some photos of Peter Parker and Dept of Energy from the show to the Live Rock Photos gallery. Enjoy. Or not. I’ve also posted them to Flickr.

Last.fm is setting music free. As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website.

Something we’ve wanted for years—for people who visit Last.fm to be able to play any track for free—is now possible. With the support of the folks behind EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner—and the artists they work with—plus thousands of independent artists and labels, we’ve made the biggest legal collection of music available to play online for free, the way we believe it should be.

Of course, the major labels are all name-dropped, but the real big deal here is:

We will be paying artists directly… If you make music, you can sign up to participate for free.

Stated simply, they’re employing a shared advertising revenue model to pay contributors; both the label type and the artist type.

Today we’re redesigning the music economy.

For reals.

Here’s a link to my profile on Last.fm, if you see some stuff you like, participate.

Read the original post:
Last.fm – the Blog · Free the Music

I ventured up to Seattle last Saturday to check out Tacoma’s own The Fucking Eagles (photos) opening up a show with Denmark’s Power Solo (photos) for Jon Spencer’s (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) new project, Heavy Trash (photos).

As always, it’s always reverent to hear completely anomalous questions from Seattle people about drive-bys, meth and aroma. Some of my photos are featured on the Seattle Indie Pop Rock blog, Three Imaginary Girls in a full review of the show from heather b.