Ohmpark Mixtape #3: My Favourite Songs Of 2007

The best ofs continue. Here are the songs I really dug this year, arranged in what i think is a great flowing hour and a half experience. I did cheat a little bit and included a few tracks from my best 2006 Albums of 2007 list, but these songs will always make me think of this year, so it’ll work. Enjoy:

The Shins : Wincing The Night Away : Sleeping Lessons

Midlake : The Trials Of Van Occupanther : Roscoe

The Cinematic Orchestra : Ma Fleur : To Build A Home

Blonde Redhead : 23 : Spring And by Summer Fall

Earlimart : Mentor Tormentor : Happy Alone

Wilco : Sky Blue Sky : Impossible Germany

Beach House : Beach House : Master of None

Low : Drums And Guns : Breaker

Parade : Answer Me : Booths

Of Montreal : Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? : The Past Is A Grotesque Animal

Deerhunter : Fluorescent Grey : Wash Off

Akron/Family : Love Is Simple : Don’t Be Afraid, You’re Already Dead

Snowden : Anti Anti : Anti Anti


Moorish idols : Moorish Idols : Why Are We Whispering

Phosphorescent : Pride : Wolves

Smashing Pumpkins : Zeigeist : Neverlost

Radiohead : In Rainbows : Reckoner

Marnie Stern : In Advance Of The Broken Arm : Patterns Of A Diamond Ceiling

Video of The Day: Wilco

I’ve got the Wilco performance on Austin City Limits last week DVRed to jam out later but here’s a vid from it with them doing my favourite song from Sky Blue Sky:

Photos: Voodoo Festival 10-28-07 at City Park – New Orleans, LA

Christian Scott

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Good Guys

Quintron and Miss Pussycat

Wilco

Live Review: Voodoo Music Experience

The weekend before Halloween, we went down to New Orleans to catch Voodoo Fest. We arrived downtown early Friday, checked into the bed and breakfast we were staying at, hung out for a second, and headed down to City Park where the fest was located. Since the line-up had been announced, one of the acts I was most excited about seeing was Ghost, whose album from this year, In Stormy Nights, I’ve loved. Unfortunately, when we went to set up to catch them, they weren’t the Japanese noise-rock group Ghost, they were the New Orleans nu-metal, rap-funk group Ghost. We felt like we had just got punked. After that debacle, I went to catch Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and they were ok, but nothing really special.

Next up was Porcupine Tree, who put on a hell of a show jamming out hard. There was a relatively small crowd for this show and even Steven Wilson joked around about no one there knowing who they were. If you still haven’t looked into this band, do it now!

After wandering around the fest for a little while, we caught M.I.A. from afar while we waited for Rage. I was disappointed with her sound live, but hip-hop live almost always leaves me wanting and i was pretty far from the stage, so I won’t hold it against her, but I just don’t think I understand completely why everyone is so into her. Her rap style is so monotone and repetitive. I’ve listened to her new album a few times and I just don’t think she sounds that special.

After that, it was time for the main event, Rage Against The Machine. I had caught them at Phillips Arena back when they were touring for Battle Of Los Angeles and had loved that show so I was very excited to catch them here. They played a little longer than an hour, went through most of the hits, and by the end, I didn’t think it compared to the first time I saw them at all. They were very sloppy and didn’t sound like they were together at all, which is surprising to me since most of them have been playing together in Audioslave. The other main problem was the crowd didn’t really seem to be into them at all. When I caught them before, my favorite part of the show was watching the entire crowd go nuts, and this time it just didn’t seem to inspire that sort of reaction. Overall, though, it was still great seeing them again.

When we got back to our place Friday night, before heading down to Bourbon St. until 5am, we found a note from the woman running the bed and breakfast accusing us of eating her food in the freezer. The next morning, Biggie C woke up first to go through his photos from the day before and the woman came out and started screaming at him about the supposed missing food. After about an hour and a half of drama, the end game was that she was mistaken about the food and since Biggie C didn’t apologize for disagreeing with her about the fact that we didn’t eat the food, she kicked him out of the bed and breakfast. So we then had to waste another hour finding hotel to stay at for the rest of the weekend. The crappy B&B‘s email is hosts@ArtsBandB.com, so we urge all our readers to have some fun with that.

Saturday I didn’t really get to catch much music because of the above fiasco, but i caught a little bit of Ghostland Observatory, Ben Harper, and Spoon, who were all decent but not inspiring.

The best show of the weekend in my opinion was next, The Smashing Pumpkins. While I had some trouble enjoying the Asheville show I had caught over the summer because I didn’t know most of the songs they played, now that i know and love Zeitgeist, they were simply amazing. The almost two-hour set contained very little old-school hit songs you would expect from the typical festival show, but rather put on a compelling display of why the nu-Smashing Pumpkins are phenomenal in their own retro-rock ‘n’ roll way. If you can score a ticket to one of the make-up Atlanta shows this month, do it. For all of the music critic masses that just won’t take the new album seriously, you’re only depriving yourself of some great tunes.

After that, I caught the Tiesto set, who did some pretty good trance, capped by a Tegan And Sara remix that was, for better or worse, stuck in all of our heads for the rest of the weekend.

Sunday I started on the tiny stage to check out Good Guys, I really interesting hybrid of metal and Lounge music. This New Orleans native band came out dressed in Ghostbuster uniforms and were really cool and weird. If you want to hear something unlike anything you’ve heard before, i recommend checking them out.

Next up I checked out Quintron And Miss Pussycat. Despite the fact that Miss Pussycat , Quintron‘s wife, seemed more like a prop than a musician, Quintron tore it up with a really interesting array of instrumentation that apparently he has invented or built. I was way in the back for the show so I didn’t really get to see everything he was using, but I hope to catch this New Orleans act again, maybe at one of their upcoming Mardi Gras shows.

After that I caught the end of the Black Crowes show, and it was better than the first time I saw them at Bonnaroo, which was terrible, but they just aren’t my thing. Common came on next and I thought he put on a really great show, with a full band backing him. After that I caught Wilco to close out the fest and they rocked just as hard as their spectacular Bonnaroo set earlier this year, but I didn’t quite like the song selection as much. There is no denying that Wilco as it is now is a pretty top-notch band and I will go see them every chance I get.

My overall impression of my second Voodoo experience was overwhelmingly positive. I’m a big fan of the two opposing stages going back and forth keeping music constantly going that both Pitchfork Fest and Lollapalooza also employ. The sound systems seemed to have a minimal amount of problems, although I did hear a few. My biggest complaint about the weekend would be the crowd. At the peak times on Friday and Saturday, there were ridiculously long lines for the bathrooms and food and beer outlets, but the Voodoo Fest’s estimates on attendance were over 150,000 people for the weekend, up over 50% from the previous year’s 93,000, so i don’t think they were fully prepared for so many people. Also, the crowd seemed to remind me most of the Music Midtown crowds of a few years ago that don’t exude the same level of respect for their fellow festival goers you expect at hippy fests like Echo Project and Bonnaroo. But for me, those were only minor annoyances that did very little to curb the fun I had this year at Voodoo and I’m looking forward to checking it out again next year.

Torrent Of The Day: Wilco (Summerteeth Demos)



There are some great Wilco torrents floating around the internets right now, and I will bring it to you:

Wilco Summerteeth Demos

cd trade > EAC > flac

01 Shot in the Arm
02 We’re Just Friends
03 I’m Always in Love
04 Candyfloss
05 How to Fight Loneliness
06 Tried & True
07 She’s a Jar
08 Pieholden Suite
09 Nothingsevergonnastandinmywayagain
10 Via Chicago
11 ELT
12 In a Future Age
13 My Darling

Download Lossless Torrent Here

Listen to some tunes:

Wilco : Summerteeth Demos : A Shot In The Arm

Wilco : Summerteeth Demos : How To Fight Loneliness

Wilco : Summerteeth Demos : Via Chicago

Videos Of The Day: Bonnaroo 2007

Check ‘em out:

Wilco:

White Stripes:

Regina Spektor:

More White Stripes:

The Police:



Ben Harper w/ John Paul Jones:

Superjam:

Ratdog:

Torrents Of The Day: Bonnaroo 2007

Just a little more Bonnaroo obsession before I move on:

Tool 2007-06-15 – Bonnaroo Music Festival – What Stage (16-bit) (FLAC)

Tool
What Stage – Bonnaroo Music Festival
Manchester, TN
06/15/2007

Source: Schoeps mk4 (ortf)> kc5> cmc6xt> Edirol R4 (24/96)
Location: FOB, LoC ~15′, 5′ high, 60′ from stage
Transfer: r4> usb> Peak 4.13> xACT (fixed SBE’s and converted to flac)
Taped and Transferred Patrick Moore (pat@taperssection.com)

One Set/Disc One
01 Jambi
02 Stinkfist
03 The Pot
04 46&2
05 Schism
06 Rosetta Stoned
07 Flood
08 Wings For Marie
09 10,000 Days

Disc Two
01 Lateralus*
02 Vicarious
03 Aenema

* w/ Tom Morello

Hot Chip 2007-06-15 Bonnaroo This Tent

Hot Chip
June 15, 2007
Bonnaroo – This Tent
Manchester, TN

Source: Core Sound Binaurals > Battery Box > Nomad Jukebox 3
Transfer: NJB3 > USB > PC > Sony Soundforge 7.0a
Edit: Sony Soundforge 7.0a (Splitting) > FLAC Frontend 1.7.1 etree edition > Tag & Rename

01) First New Song (Title Unknown)
02) Shake A Fist (New Song)
03) And I Was A Boy From School
04) Hold On (New Song)
05) (Just Like We) Breakdown
06) Fourth New Song (Title Unknown)
07) No Fit State
08) The Warning
09) Over And Over
10) Ready For a Fall (New Song)
11) The Beach Party

wilco 2007-06-17 Bonnaroo

Wilco
Bonnaroo
Manchester, TN
June 17, 2007

Source: Beyerdynamic mc930>mini me>mt
Mic config./location: ortf, 7′, fob, dfc
Transfer: mt>wavelab>cdwave>flac
Editing: fades added beginning/end
Recorded and Transferred by Jon Buffington (stirinthesauce@hotmail.com)

2 discs

disc 1

01: You are my face
02: side with the seeds
03: shot in the arm
04: sb sky
05: walken
06: shake it off
07: hummingbird
08: via chicago
09: handshake drugs

disc 2

01: impossible germany
02: war on war
03: IATTBYH
04: ITMWLY
05: jesus, etc
06: spiders
e)
07: late greats
08: HM Drummer

Live Review: Bonnaroo 2007

We took a 16 car envoy from Atlanta to the event. We had some issues keeping everyone together, but at the end of about a 4 hour wait to get in early Thursday afternoon, we somehow managed to get everyone at the same camp. After setting up in Camp Han Solo, we got to drinking pretty hard and exploring the campgrounds before heading to see the music of the night. Upon entering Centeroo, we were held up in an extremely slow moving line to get in through security. The security didn’t really seem to be checking people particularly hard, but they were very slow. Complaints about security would be a theme shared by many people over the weekend, but everyone in our entourage would only be minorly inconvenienced by it. I started out the night checking out the NBA Finals in the Cinema Tent, and then going to see The National. I have to say I thought they were downright awful. We stuck around for about half of it, and it got a big thumbs down from me. Next we watched Dubconscious in the Troo Music Lounge, which was pretty good but not really my bag. The best show of the night we caught would be Rodrigo y Gabriela. Really cool acoustic guitar stuff. On my way back to my camp to do more drinking, I checked out the Yard Dogs Road Show at the Bonna Rouge tent and I thought that was really interesting.

Friday started off with me checking out Tortoise. I thought this was a really solid set from them and enjoyed it a lot, especially them doing Seneca, my favourite tune of theirs, for the encore. This is one of the few sets that have already emerged on the torrents and you can download it here:

Tortoise 2007-06-15 Bonnaroo Music Festival. This Tent. (FLAC)

I stayed at the stage and managed to get front row for Hot Chip. This was one of my favourite shows of the weekend. They did really different renditions of stuff off of The Warning. I’m a big fan of organic dance music, and these guys are on top of that game. Some phlogs:

I briefly checked out the beginning of The Roots and then went to pregame for what would be the best show of the weekend, Tool. Unfortunately for me, I ended up getting too blotto and I blacked out halfway through the already legendary set complete with crazy visuals and a guest appearance jamout with Tom Morello. Hopefully one of the other Ohmpark folks who actually saw the entire thing will do a review for it later this week as I don’t really have much to offer except it blew my mind. After regaining consciousness later on in the night, I went to see DJ Shadow. He was good but was the same exact thing I had seen recently in Atlanta and it seemed to pale in comparison to the Tool show. Plus Lateef The Truthspeaker is horrible and I had to leave when he came on. I caught the STS9 encore before heading back to the campgrounds and staying up until sunrise.

Saturday day seemed to be a ton of mediocre shows for me. I bounced around from Dr. Dog, to The Slip, to Regina Spektor, to Gogol Bordello, to Damien Rice, to Fountains Of Wayne. None of them were bad, but none of them really drew me in. The Warren Haynes interview at the Sonic Stage was pretty cool as you got to listen to him talk about the history of him and the Allman Brothers Band and Gov’t Mule. After all of that though, it was time for Ween. I’ve seen these guys many times and have never really loved them hardcore, but for this show they just brought it, and the crowd for the show was going insane. I would have never expected it at the beginning of the weekend, but I think this ended up being my favourite show of the ‘roo. Saturday night we went to see The Police, like just about every single person at the festival, and it was a bit of a let down for me. I don’t know if maybe my expectations were too high or what, but it just seemed really underwhelming. I’m glad i got to see them, but I definitely wouldn’t go see them again. Late night, I opted to check out Girl Talk over the Flaming Lips extravaganza that most everyone else caught. The Girl Talk show was a great dance party with a stage full of random folks getting down. After that I saw some of the Gov’t Mule set, but my memory is pretty hazy at this point so I don’t have a lot to say about it. Although I did not go see them, the Sasha and Digweed set would be the only late night set of the weekend that would creep into dawn.

On Sunday, we went extremely early to catch the Flight Of The Conchords. The 2 hours sitting in the hot sun were a high price to pay, but I’m glad to have seen these guys. Demetri Martin opened for them in the Comedy Tent. He was ok, but he seemed to be trying out a lot of new stuff, and not all of it was that great. The FOTC took the stage, they did a set consisting of older tunes, a couple off of the first HBO episode, and a few I didn’t recognize. They were good, but it was hard to hear what they were saying at times, and the songs i didn’t already know didn’t seem as good to me as the others. They ended with a version of Albi the Racist Dragon featuring Demetri Martin on harmonica that was pretty cool.

After that i was off to catch the extremely jazzy Ratdog set. Always good stuff. Next up was The Decemberists show. I had been wanting to catch these guys forever and they were impressive. A heavy dose of The Crane Wife plus some other great gems. After that I went to see Wilco, and they did one of the best sets I’ve ever see them do. You can tell now that the nu-Wilco line-up has finally come into their own and they were on fire. If you get a chance to check them out tonight in the ATL, I highly recommend you do so. My final show of the weekend would be the White Stripes, who were good but seemed a little stale to me. They just seem to lacking something and i’m not sure what. Maybe it had to do with the extremely packed crowd and me being so far away, but it didn’t impress me. Check it out for yourself:

The White Stripes 2007-06-17 Bonnaroo Which Stage

Overall, 2007 ranked fairly low among the other years for me personally, but that’s not to say it wasn’t unbelievably awesome, because it always is. I think I’m still coughing up dust. I feel like despite the move away from the Jamband heavy line-ups of the early days, they still don’t have the quantity of this decades best artists that Coachella, Lollapalooza, and Pitchforkfest boast. The biggest change this year would be the absolute clamp down on non-official vendors and the banning of sales of glass pieces. i have to say I do not like this development and I believe it was the final nail in the coffin of this festival being significantly married to the Jamband community. I knew from the first year on that eventually Bonnaroo would either get shut down or get more controlled, and so I do not dismay as much as the Bonnaroo haters out there on the mainstreaming of the fest, but the old days are officially gone. On the bright side, I would not expect Bonnaroo to get much worse in this way and so if this is what Bonnaroo now is, then I have no problem with it and will continue to attend as long as they keep putting together great line-ups, but I’m gonna have to go check out another hippie fest once in a while to get that part of the experience that is almost completely gone at the ‘roo. Here’s some facts and figures from the weekend:

Ornette Coleman suffered a heat stroke while on stage.

One man died this year bringing the alltime Bonnaroo death count to 6.

The Coffee County Sheriffs reported 47 arrests over the weekend.

Bonnaroo grossed an estimated $17 million, breaking it’s own record from last year as the highest grossing festival in the world.

Setlists of the weekend are being compiled here.

Humpday Random Bonnaroo Tracks

Bonnaroo is getting so close and i’m getting pumped up. Check these great tracks and click the picture for more info:

Wilco (Chicago, IL)

Wilco : Impossible Germany

Spoon (Austin, TX)



Spoon : The Ghost Of You Lingers

Aesop Rock (New York, NY)

Aesop Rock : None Shall Pass

Hot Chip (London, UK)

Hot Chip : And I Was A Boy From School

Friday Free-Style

Saturday night we got a great show for you featuring Passer By and From Exile‘s last show before going on tour. It’s absolutely free, and we got some kegs of free beer for you 21+ kids. Come down and witness the spectacle:

Creative Loafing has a great article on the Atlanta scene blowing up. They also apparently just heard Darkside Of The Moon and just discovered Lenny’s.

Interpol will be at Hi-Fi Buys on June 2nd for 99X’s Big Day Out. They don’t like Youtube. Here’s a Youtube video:

Aereogramme are breaking up.

Arcade Fire don’t have a beef with file sharing. That’s probably because no one would know who they were without it.

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails is pissed at his label.

So, I sort of liked the Lily Allen album when I heard it, but I’m really tired of hearing about her in music news and blog sites. If you don’t know anything about it you can find lots of stories here, but I recommend avoiding that. In response to her attention-seeking, annoying behavior, Ohmpark will not mention her for the rest of the year (with the exception of reporting on my heckling of her at Bonnaroo).

Kanye West‘s new album, Graduation, comes out in September.

Word on the street is that there is no more 2Pac material left to make new albums, so we will assume he has finally died.

The new Animal Collective album, Strawberry Jam, comes out in September.

Pink Floyd played at a Syd Barrett memorial concert, but David Gilmour and Roger Waters were never together on stage.

You can stream the new Dungen album, Tio Bitar, here.

The new Nile record, Ithyphallic, is due out in July.

Smashing Pumpkins have finally announced who will be in the band. Here’s the new album cover:

Here’s Wilco on David Letterman:

UNEARTH have parted ways with their drummer.

Cee-lo and Danger Mouse have another Gnarls Barkley album coming out in the fall.

Girl Talk has quit his day job.

Sunset Rubdown‘s new album, Random Spirit Lover, comes out in October.

Snoop Dogg will be on an episode of HBO’s Entourage in July.

Neurosis has new album coming out called Given To The Rising, and you can stream it and watch a short documentary on the making of it here.

Interviews for your reading pleasure:

Bright Eyes will be at The Fox Theatre tonight, so here’s some videos:

Over thirty minute performance on KCRW:

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