Lyrics Born and Cut Chemist Tour

While this isn’t really new news as this was announced back in August, I thought it was worth mentioning as I’ve ordered tickets for it. The always entertaining Lyrics Born is on another leg of what appears to be three years of touring for Later That Day and the complimentary Same !@#$ Different Day. This time with Cut Chemist in tow. Last year LB toured with a full band reproducing the mix on the albums. I have an e-mail into LB’s agent to see if he will be touring with a band this time, or– hopefully– using Cut Chemist on the decks. Cut Chemist– formerly of Jurassic 5 and Ozomatli– is touring in support of his first album The Audience’s Listening, which in some respects should have been the album his partner in Brainfreeze crime DJ Shadow released recently instead of the very mixed bag that Outsider is.

My wife is a huge fan of the two Lyrics Born albums so we will be catching the show in Minneapolis at the Foundation. This location was the Rogue back in the day and one of the great clubs in Minneapolis. It closed in the late 90’s and abandoned for a long time. It was revived last year as the swanky Level. In July it was rechristened Foundation.

Also appearing on some of the dates is Pigeon John, who was signed to Quannum by Lyrics Born. His new album and his first on Quannum Pigeon John and His Summertime Pool Party was released recently. I haven’t had a chance to hear it, but I really liked his previous album Pigeon John Is Dating Your Sister.

19 October 2006
8:00PM
Los Angeles, CA
El Rey Theatre
$20.00
$20.00
http://www.theelrey.com
323-936-6400
5515 Wilshire Blvd.
Featured with Cut Chemist and Pigeon John

22 October 2006
8:00PM
Portland, OR
Crystal Ballroom
$20.00
$20.00
http://www.danceonair.com
503-225-0047
1332 Burnside Avenue
featured w/ Cut Chemist and Pigeon John

24 October 2006
9:00PM
Vancouver, BC
Richards on Richards
$25.00
$25.00
http://www.richardsonrichards.com
604-687-6794
1036 Richards St.
Featured with Cut Chemist and Pigeon John

25 October 2006
8:00PM
Seattle, WA
Neumos
$18.00
$20.00
http://www.neumos.com
206-709-9467
925 E Pike St.
Appearing with Pigeon John and Cut Chemist

26 October 2006
7:00PM
Boise, ID
Big Easy Concert House
$17.00
$19.00
http://bigeasyconcerts.com
208-367-1212
416 South 9th Street
Appearing with Cut Chemist

27 October 2006
8:00PM
Park City, UT
Suede
$18.00
$20.00
http://www.suedepc.com/
tickets@suedepc.com
435-658-COOL
1612 Ute. Blvd.
Get a FREE ride to and from Suede in the Suede Shuttle. Just call 435-640-8488 and they will come and pick you up!
Appearing with Cut Chemist and Pigeon John

28 October 2006
8:00PM
Aspen, CO
Belly Up
$25.00
$25.00
http://www.bellyupaspen.com
steve@bellyupaspen.com
970-544-8089 x5
450 South Glena
Appearing with Cut Chemist and Pigeon John

29 October 2006
8:00PM
Boulder, CO
Fox Theatre
$20.00
$22.50
http://www.foxtheatre.com/
(303) 443-3399
1135 13th Street
Ages: All Ages
Appearing with Cut Chemist and Pigeon John

2 November 2006
10:00PM
Minneapolis, MN
Foundation Nightclub
$15.00
$18.00
http://www.foundationmpls.com
mariesa@foundationmpls.com
612.532.0795
10 South 5th Street
Appearing with Cut Chemist and Pigeon John

3 November 2006
8:00PM
Milwaukee, WI
Eagles Club
$18.00
$18.00
2401 West Wisconsin Avenue
Ages: all ages
Appearing with Cut Chemist

4 November 2006
9:00PM
Chicago, IL
The Abbey Pub
$20.00
$20.00
http://www.abbeypub.com
773-478-4408
3420 West Grace
Ages: 18 and over

5 November 2006
9:00PM
Detroit, MI
Magic Stick
$15.00
$15.00
http://www.majesticdetroit.com/stick.asp
greg@majesticdetroit.com
313-833-9700 x200
4140 Woodward Avenue
Ages: all ages
Appearing with Cut Chemist

6 November 2006
8:00PM
Toronto, ON
Fox Theatre
$19.50
$19.50
http://foxtheatre.com
416-323-1896
410 Sherbourne
Ages: all ages
Appearing with Cut Chemist and Pigeon John

9 November 2006
9:00PM
Cambridge, MA
Middle East
$18.00
$20.00
http://www.mideastclub.com
617-864-3278
480 Massachusetts Avenue
Ages: all ages
Appearing with Cut Chemist

10 November 2006
7:00PM
New York, NY
Webster Hall
$20.00
$22.00
http://www.bowerypresents.com
212-260-4700
125 East 11th Street
Ages: all ages
Appearing with Cut Chemist

11 November 2006
9:00PM
Philadelphia, PA
Theater of Living Arts
$18.00
$18.00
http://www.theateroflivingarts.net
212-922-1011
334 South Street
Ages: all ages
Appearing with Cut Chemist

First of the Neil Young Archives Releases Announced – Live at the Fillmore East 1970

From Billboard, Neil Young is releasing the first of the long awaited Archives releases. On November 14th recordings from the shelved live album with Crazy Horse from performances at the New York City venue March 6-7, 1970 when the late Danny Whitten was a member of the band. Something interesting I found out while looking into the details of this release is the fact that Miles Davis opened for Neil Young and Crazy Horse on one (or both) of the 3/7 show. This is captured on Live at the Fillmore East (March 7, 1970): It’s About Time.

Fillmore will be available as a CD and also a CD and DVD edition with a high-resolution mix as well as handwritten lyrics and photos from the show. According to Bad News Beat, a Neil Young news aggrigator, the track listing will be

– Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
– Winterlong
– Down By The River
– Wonderin’
– Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown
– Cowgirl In The Sand

The version of “Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown” is the same version that was included on Neil’s 1975 album Tonight’s The Night, the which explores the the pain of the deaths of Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry.

I have two bootlegs that include the recordings from these shows, one is called Blankness on The Genuine Pig Records and has seven tracks, and says that it is from 3/6/70. It is a clean recording if a bit thin-sounding. The other bootleg is called Everybody Knows on an unidentified label. This one has slightly better sound, but includes the LA Forum tracks that were part of the CSNY Four-Way Street mixed in with the other tracks. I guess the disappointing part of this new official release is that it is only six tracks! Based on what we know so far, the six tracks could be from any of the four shows on the two days (early show and late show for both days). The release looks like my Blankness boot minus “Cinnamon Girl” for some reason.

Archie Bronson Outfit – Derdang Derdang (review)

Derdang DerdangAlthough the onomatopoeiacally named album Derdang Derdang from The Archie Bronson Outfit is their second album, I hadn’t heard of them before listening to this album. According to the Domino website they were discovered by Domino label head Lawrence Bell in a pub he frequents. Domino’s website describes Archie Bronson Oufit as being one of the most unique and brilliantly out-of-step British bands in years.

I guess that pretty much sums it up for me, too. I’m tempted to draw comparisons, but really come up empty handed. The album is consistent in its sparse feverish gallop. As many reviewers point out, it has a Nuggets feel– the Sixties garage psychedelic sound. I read that the band locked themselves in a flat in south London for weeks straight and wrote this album and flew to Nashville to record it with Jacquire King who evidently produced Tom Waits and The Kings of Leon and I think you can hear that in this record. A clostrophobic sense of urgency colors the canvas of this album. This makes the album both entertaining in an edgy way and sometimes a bit cloying. In some ways this album reminds me of Talking Heads ’77 and “Psycho Killer.” The stripped down and angular approach feels similar to me. This album has as much in common with the post-Punk/pre New Wave artists like Jonathan Richman, Talking Heads, and Television as it does with 60’s psych bands like The Monks.

I agree with the sentiment that The Archie Bronson Outfit are in a way have their own sound and are out-of-step with many of the acts that are popular today. Really, though, how many more Sufjan, Will Oldham, and Animal Collective sound-alikes do we need? I think this band is one to watch.

Dart For My Sweetheart

Playbsides.com Introduces Swag!

Look appealing to the opposite sex! I have had a cafepress store for a while and made a shirt that I wear frequently proudly proclaiming that it’s time to play b-sides. That shirt is the really expensive black one ($20!). I decided to make some white ones available and officially announce the store. As you can see by the picture, it utilizes the full version of my blog page header including the “hidden” records.

Visit the Play B-sides Swag Store!

Lindsey Buckingham News – New Album and Tour

Lindsey Buckingham’s website is streaming a preview of five tracks from his new album Under The Skin which is first his official solo album since 1992’s Out of the Cradle due out October 3rd. Here is the tracklisting for Under The Skin:

1. Not Too Late

2. Show You How

3. Under The Skin

4. I Am Waiting

5. It Was You

6. Try For The Sun

7. Cast Away Dreams

8. Shut Us Down

9. Down on Rodeo

10. Someone’s Gotta Change Your Mind

11. Juniper

Under the Skin includes three tracks from Gift of Screws that Lindsey aborted in favor of Fleetwood Mac’s 2003 album Say You Will. Say You Will also benefited from his work in turn by getting a number of tracks from Gift of Screws. Under the Skin also includes the track “Shut Us Down” which was used in the soundtrack to the movie Elizabethtown. If you have heard the Gift of Screws tracks, then there are really only four new songs, here. Not that I’m complaining, however. I welcome any new release from Lindsey whether it is solo or as Fleetwood Mac.

At one point there was a leaked copy of what was purported to be the final version of Gift of Screws out on the Internet. This was a lossless copy of the CD that evidently was submitted to the label. Here is the tracklist with my annotation of where each song was released:

1. Someone’s Gotta Change Your Mind (Under the Skin)

2. Miranda (Say You Will)

3. Steal Your Heart Away (Best Buy presents Fleetwood Mac Tour ’97 2 CD set you could get with a coupon during the Dance Tour)

4. Red Rover (Say You Will)

5. She Smiled Sweetly (unreleased)

6. Come (Say You Will)

7. Down On Rodeo (Under The Skin)

8. Gotta Get Away (unreleased)

9. Try For The Sun (Under The Skin)

10. Shuffle Riff (updated 11/8/08: becomes “Wait For you” on 2008 Gift of Screws)

11. Murrow (Say You Will)

12. Gift of Screws (updated 11/8/08: Title track on 2008 Gift of Screws)

13. Bleed To Love Her (The Dance as a live track)

14. Twist of Fate (updated 11/8/08: Becomes “The Right Place to Fade” on 2008 Gift of Screws)

15. Go Insane (this was a live version of the song from Go Insane)

16. Say Goodbye (Say You Will)

17. The Singer Not The Song (unreleased)

The songs that aren’t released, yet are really good ones. I’d be interested to see if he will use them as b-sides or bonus tracks in the future.

He has also announced tour dates starting in October. If you pre-order his CD from Ticketmaster you can get pre-sale tickets for upcoming shows, which might be worth doing.

10/06/06 8:30PM Variety Playhouse – Atlanta, GA
10/07/06 8:00PM Ryman Auditorium – Nashville, TN
10/09/06 8:30PM State Theatre – Falls Church, VA
10/10/06 8:00PM Town Hall – New York, NY
10/13/06 7:30PM Orpheum Theatre – Boston – Boston, MA
10/14/06 9:00PM Foxwoods Casino – Mashantucket, CT
10/15/06 9:00PM The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa Event Center – Atlantic City, NJ
10/17/06 8:00PM The Pabst Theater – Milwaukee, WI
10/20/06 TBA Lakewood Civic Auditorium – Lakewood, OH
10/22/06 TBA Emerald Theatre – Mt. Clemens, MI
10/24/06 7:30PM Park West – Chicago, IL
11/01/06 8:00AM Celebrity Theatre – Phoenix, AZ
11/02/06 8:00PM Viejas Casino – Alpine, CA
11/03/06 8:00PM The Grove of Anaheim – Anaheim, CA
11/06/06 8:00PM Palace of Fine Arts – San Francisco, CA
11/10/06 TBA The Wiltern LG – Los Angeles, CA

Lindsey has a myspace page, too.

Trip to Philly / Spaceboy Music Closing

I was in Philadelphia last week for business and managed to take a rare trip downtown. It seems that although I’m in the Philly area frequently for work, I don’t seem to venture outside of King of Prussia enough. So, last week between the thunderstorms I went downtown with a couple of guys from work. I wanted to do some record shopping. We really wanted to see some live music, but there wasn’t much going on that we wanted to see.

I have been downtown a dozen times or so since 2002 for varying reasons– mostly to find some place to eat other than the restarants that are part of the King of Prussia Mall area. I’ve only been record shopping one other time and that was two or three years ago. My method for going downtown involves locating South Street and just parking some place and walking around. So, that was the method we used this time. We found a pretty cheap parking area off South around 4th Street for about $7 for the whole night. It was after 7PM by the time we got down there so we decided to hit some record shops before finding some place to eat.

The first place we stopped was Noise Pollution (619 South 4th Street). This is a typical small used record store with a good stock of vinyl and a particularly good selection of 45’s. On this trip I was looking for rare Calexico singles or vinyl, rare Tortoise singles or vinyl. That is really the approach that I recommend when you don’t have time to scour a store. I found a 12″ of Calexico’s Black Heart EP for $15, but that was more than I wanted to pay for it consideing the condition of the cover. This is still in print, anyway. The price sticker said it had been in their bins for a couple of years. The guy behind the counter was pretty helpful, but spent most of his time on the phone. One noteworthy thing I saw was a cardboard box near the front door full of VHS tapes that appeared to have live concerts or appearances taped from TV. I saw a Neil Young tape that looked pretty cool, but I wondered if they were dubs of another tape, which might have made the quality questionable. Somewhere around my house is a tape of Neil Young appearances from three Farm Aids, a couple of SNL appearances, MTV Music Awards with Pearl Jam doing Rockin’ in the Free World, and the live performance of “Philadelphia” from the Academy Awards.

The next place we went was Repo Records (538 South Street), which we saw online and looked promising and they have a basement dedicated to vinyl. We were very disappointed to find that the downstairs was closed temporarily. So, I flipped through the little bit of vinyl they had and we headed for Spaceboy Music up the street.

Spaceboy Music (704 South Street) is one of the stores I visted when I was shopping down here last time. I was impressed by it’s selection of music. Unfortunately, this time they are having a 20% off all inventory going out of business sale. Most of their vinyl was stacked in cardboard boxes in the middle of the room and was pretty well picked over. They still had a very good CD selection available and it looked like they had just received an order from one of their distributers judging by the pile of new CD’s behind the counter. I found a couple of interesting things in vinyl. One item was an REM fanclub 7″ of “Ghost Reindeer in the Sky” b/w the Gershwin classic “Summertime.” This was the Christmas single from 1990. They wanted $29 list, but that was more than I wanted to spend on that. I also found an opened “Freeze” 2 LP from DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist. Unfortunately, it was used and had quite a bit of surface scratches on it.

I hit the CD’s and found three CD’s I wanted. The first find was a promo for the re-release of the two Manitoba albums under the new Caribou moniker: Start Breaking My Heart and Up In Flames. The official releases are 2 CD affairs and the second disc includes singles and remixes released around the same time as the original albums. This is a single disc sampler of the four CDs. It’s pretty cool, and makes me want to go get those releases. $6.40.

The next CD I got was in their “discount used” section in the middle of the store. That section didn’t have much, but I picked up Thrill Jockey band Town and Country’s 2003 release 5. I hadn’t heard anything from Town and Country, so I picked that up. Upon first listen it is very mellow atmospheric acoustic music similar to some of Tortoise’s music, or a little like Pullman. $3.99

I also picked up Eleventh Dream Day’s new CD Zeroes and Ones. I had a chance to hear this at Tower Records in Chicago at one of their listening stations. This is also on Thrill Jockey, and includes Tortoise bass player Doug McCombs. I like this album, it reminds me of pre-Grunge period bands in the late 80’s early 90’s. Sounds a little like Sonic Youth.

While we were walking around we saw a couple of other record stores that seem interesting. One I want to visit next, and when I have some time is The Philadelphia Record Exchange. They seem to have a huge vinyl selection.

After Spaceboy, we ate at a wonderful Italian restaurant called La Fourno Trattoria. They have fantastic Pizzas.

So, it’s sad to see yet another music store going out of business. I’m not sure what is going to help these stores stick around. I think that used CD’s and vinyl is part of the equasion. There is more mark up in a used CD or record than there is in new, so that helps, I think. Earlier this year, Des Moines lost one of the big indie record stores in Iowa known as Peeples Music after 30 years in business. In an article in the Des Moines Register, owner Mike Enloe stated that he needed 25 customers per day just to keep the doors open. The value of an independent record retailer is hopefully the knowledge that the typically passionate people who work there have. A lot of the important purchases I have made over the years came from the advice of a trusted employee of one of these stores.