Friday Free-Style

Bonnaroo’s “Big Announcement” this week was that Widespread Panic is replacing The Allman Brothers and doing their 43rd headlining spot at the ‘roo. They also added Les Claypool, Charli 2na, Super Drag, What Made Milwaukee Famous, Adele, Grand Ole Party, and The Postelles. Other than WSP, those are some decent additions, but I’m way more excited about the acts they added to the Cafe/nightclub, including Dead Confederate, Colour Revolt, De Novo Dahl, Phonograph, Bear In Heaven, Howlin Rain, and Royal Bangs, all of which are acts that I am interested in checking out. I’ll be doing a piece on all the lesser know ‘roo acts very soon.

Pecanne Log had the extened trailer to We Fun up, so check it:

Pitchfork Fest added Spoon, The Dodos, and Les Savy Fav. That is turning out to rather sweet line-up.

You can download a reversed version of the new Gnarls Barkley album for free here.

The RIAA spent $2.8 million dollars lobbying the government in 2007. Honestly, I would have expected that to be much higher.

Click here to read the entire post…

Pitchfork Music Festival: Day 1

We got to the park about a half an hour before the gates opened and found a pretty long line. The gates didn’t end up opening until about 5:30pm, but as soon as they did, you could see kids going through the gate and then running as fast as they could to go get a close spot. The security checkpoint at the entrance was very slack and the entire line probably got through the gate in 1o minutes. We decided to setup close at the stage for GZA and Sonic Youth, and got a really good spot. I did a little exploring and was very impressed with the music shop area and the $1 beverages. We listened to Slint do Spiderland from far away and it was hard to hear most of it, but what I could hear sounded good (We also listened to them sound check a lot of it while waiting outside in line). Shortly afterwards, The GZA and his entourage took the stage we were at and did what i believe was most of Liquid Swords. Unfortunately, none of the real Wu-Tang members showed up as The Genius explained he was skipping a Wu-Tang Clan show in Amsterdam to be here, but Cappadonna and the other guys with him i didn’t recognize did a good job backing him up.

After that it was time for Sonic Youth to do Daydream Nation. As soon as the show began, the crowd went nuts, and not necessarily in a good way. There were so many people pushing and trying to get up front and it was so tightly packed that the entire show would be a battle of endurance and will to survive. I don’t know if it had to do with the amount of young kids, or the low priced tickets allowed too many scrubs in, or maybe just the ultra-hipster pitchfork crowd, but it was pretty annoying to me (I’ve decided to coin a new term for these douche bags with no concert etiquette; Hipsters going through puberty I will now refer to as “Pubesters”). On the flip side though, that was the best Sonic Youth show I have ever seen. They did Daydream Nation so well, and added to and improved almost every song, all I could keep thinking was, there is no other band in the world that could play an album they wrote almost 20 years before and make it so amazing to listen to and seem so relevant. They jammed out parts of each song and every single one blew my mind. After doing the album, they came out with Mark Ibold of Pavement and played three songs from Rather Ripped as the encore. Listening to “Incinerate”, “Reena”, and “Jams Run Free” in the context of just listening to Daydream Nation pretty much solidified in my mind that Sonic Youth is probably the greatest band to exist in the history of electric guitar music on every level with the exception of maybe The Beatles. I know that may seem a little too much to say, but there is no band ever that has been able to exist 25 years without breaking up, and been able to write some of the best albums and put on some of the best shows of the time that far into their career. These guys are just pure musicians that have never let anything keep them from making the best music of several generations and Pitchfork and most of the acts there would probably never even exist without them. We finished the night off drinking pitchers of Ohmpark’s favourite beer, Fat Tire, and it would be a perfect end to an amazing day in the Windy City.

Albums I Love: Liquid Swords

Yesterday Pitchfork announced that in addition to Sonic Youth perfroming Daydream Nation at Pitchfork Fest, Slint will be doing their Spiderland and the GZA will be doing Liquid Swords. I’m a Big Wu-tang Clan fan and this is an amazing hip-hop album. The entire clan shows up for this, like most of the ’90s solo Wu-Tang stuff, and I’m curious as to how many of the clan will be backing “The Genius” for this special show. If you’re not familiar with this record, it is a must have so check it out:

Cold World:

I Gotcha Back:

You need to get to Chicago in July:

Friday, July 13:

Sonic Youth perform Daydream Nation
GZA/Genius performs Liquid Swords
Slint perform Spiderland

Saturday, July 14:

Cat Power and Dirty Delta Blues (w/members of Dirty Three, the Delta 72 & JSBX)
Clipse
Iron and Wine
Girl Talk
Grizzly Bear
Battles
Fujiya & Miyagi
Oxford Collapse
Dan Deacon
Beach House
Professor Murder
Ken Vandermark’s Powerhouse Sound

Sunday, July 15:

New Pornographers
Stephen Malkmus
De La Soul
Of Montreal
Jamie Lidell
Menomena
Klaxons
The Ponys
Deerhunter
Craig Taborn’s Junk Magic

Tickets are on sale now at Ticketweb. Three-day passes cost $50, Friday night costs $15, Saturday and Sunday individual passes cost $25, and a Saturday/Sunday pass costs $35.

Rock The Bells: Rage Against The Machine, Wu-Tang Clan, more…

Tickets Go On Sale this Saturday at 10am. That’s a helluva hip-hip line-up

Video Of The Day: Ghostface Killah

Rage Against The Machine Adds Tourdates, Play With Wu-tang!

Just read this:


RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE & THE WU-TANG CLAN
SET TO “ROCK THE BELLS”

First it was the reunion of the Wu-Tang Clan in 2004. Then it was A Tribe Called Quest later that year. Now, ROCK THE BELLS will make history againas Rage Against The Machine announces their plans to perform three exclusive engagements with the critically acclaimed world-class hip-hop festival this summer. The epic line-up will see Rage Against The Machine join Wu-Tang Clan for two dates on the west coast (August 11–NOS Events Center, San Bernardino, CA, August 18–venue TBA, San Francisco) and for Rock The Bells’ inaugural venture into New York City (July 28– Randall’s Island) for their only scheduled appearance on the eastern seaboard this year. The Wu-Tang Clan will support the release of their forthcoming album 8 Diagrams.

Rock The Bells, presented by Guerilla Union since 2003, has established itself as a world-class hip-hop platform by hosting legendary performances by NAS, A Tribe Called Quest, Lauryn Hill, Blackstarr (Talib Kweli and Mos Def), Cuban Linx, De La Soul, Busta Rhymes, Cypress Hill and Jurassic 5 as well as reuniting Wu-Tang for their last performance with ODB in 2004. This year, the festival will keep in its tradition and showcase the very best the genre has to offer.

“It’s definitely our fans’ dream billing. It’s a tremendous honor to have Rage Against The Machine and Wu-Tang Clan perform together,” states event organizer Chang Weisberg of Guerilla Union. “I can’t wait to announce the rest of the line-up for Rock the Bells. It’s incredibly important to put some shine on quality Hip Hop. The opportunity to galvanize the social and political consciousness of these groups is undeniable.”

The complete line-up will be announced March 26th and tickets will go on-sale March 31st at 10:00am. For complete details and updates, log onto www.guerillaunion.com,

Tical!!!