The News Review:
- The wizard of rock
- Worcester Telegram & Gazette News
- Lovebox Weekender Festival Featuring Jamie Lidell Hot Chip Gullemots…
- Rock’s landmark Lollapalooza is 15
- Moore the merrier
- Coming up from the ‘Basement’: Lincoln-Sudbury grads taking…
- The vinyl frontier
The wizard of rock
Times nline – Jul 22, 2006
“You’ll have to excuse me for a moment” says Rubin in his soft even voice. “I have to do music. ” He is dressed in white and returns to a vast sofa – also white – on which he and a companion face the room’s centrepiece: Rubin’s hi-fi. Two speakers encased in solid wood stand more than 5ft tall. The speaker cable is the width of a petrol-pump lead. Rubin fiddles with a MacBook and sends an MP3 to the stereo. Rubin’s companion an engineer stands by to take notes on his BlackBerry… “I would perform all over New York at parties” he explains. “I devoted all of my time to it. ” Next he got into punk rock wearing sunglasses to school and starting a band the Pricks. At New York University he formed another Hose who would punk up Hot Chocolate’s You Sexy Thing. He began hanging out in rap clubs in the Bronx and Harlem a remarkable thing at the time considering his background and colour. Although Rubin judged rap to be “the black punk rock” he was disappointed that the rawness he heard from DJs was never replicated on record. Aged 20 he borrowed $5000 from his parents and produced his first single: T La Rock & Jazzy Jay’s It’s Yours.
Worcester Telegram & Gazette News
Worcester Telegram – Worcester Telegram – Jul 22, 2006
That’s when they formed their punk-pop band Harry and the Potters and started setting their Pottermania to music. Their first show for an audience of six took place in their backyard. But they eventually took on cult status playing in libraries bookstores and even at a Portland doughnut shop. The band which plays a free concert at the Tacoma Public Library on Tuesday features original songs about themes and characters from the Harry Potter books. This summer they’re on a cross-country tour.
Lovebox Weekender Festival Featuring Jamie Lidell Hot Chip Gullemots…
PopMatters – Jul 22, 2006
They’re a riot a tsunami of accordions fiddles and high-kicking dancing girls. Frontman Eugene Hutz spends as much time in the crowd as he does on stage driving the audience into a frenzy. Hutz sings a song extolling the virtues of punk rock and the crowd go even wilder. Within half a song I’ve made it to the Faith tent where Chicagoan techno don Theo Parrish is DJ-ing. There’s something magical about the way Parrish loops and builds the music he plays so I’m surprised to find the tent half empty. I’m told the crowd left after the soundman was forced to turn the sound — and worse for Parrish fans the bass — down.
Rock’s landmark Lollapalooza is 15
Seattle Times – Jul 22, 2006
It happens to everyone: Some cultural moment makes you “feel old. ” For Generation X now in their 30s and 40s this is one of those times. Beneath the buzz for next month’s Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago lurks the jarring realization that the first one was 15 years ago. Really? Fifteen?” asked Kristen Palmer 32 of New York City who braved the mosh pit as a teen at the show in northern Virginia outside Washington D. “Are you sure?”Yep… “That moment in the early 1990s was where alternative or independent rock started” said Steve Waksman assistant professor of music and American studies at Smith College in Northampton Mass. It had its own set of values Waksman said — experimenting with sounds and words rejecting the music-business establishment. The first Lollapalooza mixed rock with rap with punk with funk with industrial. Today rap and rock artists routinely collaborate. But the concept was a baby when rapper Ice-T and Body Count his accompanying heavy-metal band took the Lollapalooza stage and belted out “Cop Killer. ” They would release it on an album the following year sparking a national furor. (Ice-T now plays a cop on TV’s “Law & rder: Special Victims Unit.
Moore the merrier
Sydney Morning Herald – Jul 22, 2006
And Gilmore Girls supposedlytakes place in an area that we actually live in the New Englandarea of the north-east though it’s shot in Hollywood on a backlot. As far from Hollywood as possible Moore still regularly playsin experimental noise groups in tiny clubs and galleries and isdisappointed that the tight schedule for the band’s Australian tourprevents him doing something similar in Sydney. Given most of theband have families and aren’t exactly young punks do they reallywant to or need to tour any more?”We don’t really sell that many records; we do most of ourbusiness as a live band” Moore says. “Plus I think we allgenerally enjoy playing live. I go to see bands all the time andnot necessarily because I want to hear the music but because I wantto be witness to the performance. I go to see a lot of things butmost of what I see is really subterranean to the mainstream. I’mnot really interested in clap-your-hands-above-your-headrock’n'roll bands I’m not really interested in much that you cansee on TV or [anything that is] middle-of-the-road ortraditional… Which isall very fine. We never really set out to win any popularitycontests” Moore says. “But we’ve always had complete interest inpop music melodic music. I find it more interesting to move awayfrom the vanguard of extrapolated experimental noise music whenit’s such a popular musical style right now. I think it’s moreinteresting for us to not delve into that right now but to do moredirect compact sonic pop records. “I always thought popular culture was sort of really there foravant-garde people to use in their work. Warhol always did that.
Coming up from the ‘Basement’: Lincoln-Sudbury grads taking…
Milford Daily News – Jul 22, 2006
Nearly a decade after its mid-90s commercial heyday the infectious horn-driven sound that launched bands like Reel Big Fish No Doubt and Boston’s own Mighty Mighty Bosstones to multi-platinum status couldn’t be more out of the national mainstream. Despite that cultural exile it’s a handicap that has managed to elude The Stolen Records the Sudbury-based quintet who in only a few short years has seen their pop- and punk-inflected ska make considerable inroads throughout the region. Formed in 2004 the same year all five members graduated from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School the band will release its second full length CD “Basement Songs” at The Middle East in Cambridge on Friday. Recorded in a home studio over the last year the album wears the influence of a numerous ska touchstones most noticeably the amped-up skank of peration Ivy and the dub-inspired synth touches of Lee “Scratch” Perry… Nearly a decade after its mid-90s commercial heyday the infectious horn-driven sound that launched bands like Reel Big Fish No Doubt and Boston’s own Mighty Mighty Bosstones to multi-platinum status couldn’t be more out of the national mainstream. Despite that cultural exile it’s a handicap that has managed to elude The Stolen Records the Sudbury-based quintet who in only a few short years has seen their pop- and punk-inflected ska make considerable inroads throughout the region. Formed in 2004 the same year all five members graduated from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School the band will release its second full length CD “Basement Songs” at The Middle East in Cambridge on Friday. Recorded in a home studio over the last year the album wears the influence of a numerous ska touchstones most noticeably the amped-up skank of peration Ivy and the dub-inspired synth touches of Lee “Scratch” Perry. According to keyboardist Casey Gruttadauria the album’s wide-open sonic palette is a testament to the band’s convenient neutrality within the ska community. Since the band isn’t directly tied to any of the genre’s subcultures like older rooted two-tone or rock steady or more modern pop-punk the group can write and arrange without much restraint.
The vinyl frontier
guardian.co.uk – Jul 22, 2006
Universal – the largest record company in the world – has offered myself and Saint Etienne buddy Pete Wiggs our own reissue label Eclipse. The roots of Eclipse are deep beneath a Croydon record shop called Beano’s which claims to be the biggest second-hand record shop in the world. In 1976 The Beach Boys’ 20 Golden Greats was released and it hit me that music from a previous era was somewhat better than the pre-punk abominations clogging up the charts. Beano’s seemed to have any obscurity I heard on the radio – Aaron Neville’s Tell It Like It Is Keith West’s n A Saturday. ther people would walk out disappointed: the rockers who wanted Cast Iron Arm by Peanuts Wilson or shifty longhairs asking for Growers f Mushroom by Leafhound. Clearly these records were the acme. I had to know more.