The News Review:
- Live Review: Dashboard Confessional Emotes All ver Us
- Sexual ‘Awakening’ puts teenagers’ passions to pop music
- … Boy Feel Like Losers At Radio Fest – News Story | Music…
- The brave new world of user content
- Best Electronic Music of 2006
Live Review: Dashboard Confessional Emotes All ver Us
Rolling Stone – Dec 11, 2006
He is also perhaps the only man in rock music today that can draw endless praise from masses of rabid teenage girls while simultaneously getting the musical K from said ladies’ boyfriends — an achievement on par with Beatles mania. Never was this more evident than during Dashboard’s sold-out show at New York City?s Madison Square Garden Saturday night. Long Island emo dudes Brand New kicked off the evening delivering a lackluster set that didn’t do justice to the band’s formidable pop-punk songs. Rather than correctly executing song lyrics the foursome opted to roll around the stage in faux seizures much to the dismay of fans. ?They were slurring their words? said a devout Brand New fan that traveled three hours from Albany New York to the show.
Sexual ‘Awakening’ puts teenagers’ passions to pop music
USA Today – Dec 11, 2006
As Melchior her precocious suitor Jonathan Groff wields an easy irresistible intensity that made me wonder where this guy was when I was in high school. The tender supporting cast is similarly appealing and convincing. There are a few hams in the bunch; but in the musical numbers — where the characters shake off their 19th-century trappings to romp and stomp with post-punk dynamism — we witness not the preening of Broadway babies but the exuberance of young performers yearning like Wedekind’s adolescents for self-expression. By reveling in that need Spring Awakening offers a trip unlike any other you’re likely to experience this season.
… Boy Feel Like Losers At Radio Fest – News Story | Music…
MTV.com – Dec 11, 2006
Saturday’s show began with the frenzied thrash of Saosin and led into the slotted-way-too-early Wolfmother who served up crowd favorites like “Dimension” “The Joker & the Thief” and “Woman. ” Guitarist and lead singer Andrew Stockdale’s cocksure swagger more than rocked the semi-packed auditorium for a healthy 30 minutes. An impressive one-arm drum assault from (+44) drummer Travis Barker followed paving the way for the more punk-like Fall ut Boy My Chemical Romance and AFI all battling for crowd favorite. That love didn’t seem to do much though for FB bassist Pete Wentz who admitted “We feel like losers. ” But he and the band carried on energetically delivering its new single “This Ain’t a Scene It’s an Arms Race” to the approving audience. When Fall ut Boy’s set ended and the Lazy Susan stage did its 360 it signaled the start of the Black Parade. Serving as grand marshal My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way channeled Freddie Mercury and Billy Corgan — the latter of whom was spotted in the VIP room backstage — in a riveting cinematic performance that teased the audience with a sample of what might be among the most anticipated tours of 2007.
The brave new world of user content
Taipei Times – Dec 11, 2006
Yet those same technologies came to reinforce a different kind of separation: between professional artist and audience. A successful artist needed not only creativity and skill but also access to the tools of production — studios recorders cameras — and outlets for mass distribution. As the music and movie businesses grew they flaunted their economic advantage. They could spend millions of dollars to make and market blockbuster hits to place them in theaters or get them played on radio and MTV. They owned the factories that could press vinyl albums and make the first CDs before the days of the home CD burner and MP3s. Independent types could and did release their own work but they couldn’t match the scale of the established entertainment business. They still are at a disadvantage… But they are gaining. Low-budget recording and the Internet have handed production and distribution back to artists and one-stop collections of user generated content give audiences a chance to find their works. With gatekeepers out of the way it’s possible to realize the do-it-yourself dreams of punk and hip-hop to circle back to the kind of homemade art that existed long before media conglomerates and mass distribution. But that art doesn’t stay close to home. nline it moves breathtakingly fast and far. Folk cultures often work incrementally adding bits of individuality to a well-established tradition with time and memory determining what will last. In the user-generated realm tradition is anything prerecorded and all existing works seem to be there for the taking copyrights aside.
Best Electronic Music of 2006
PopMatters – Dec 11, 2006
Fatboy Slim continues to record interesting music even if it is consistently more low-key than that released during his popular peak but Why Try Harder? didn’t seem like much in the way of a bid for relevancy. Ditto for the Prodigy’s… Conversely there were no real flies on Daft Punk’s Musique 1993-2005—they even threw (some of) the videos onto a bonus disc. But seriously Daft Punk have released all of three albums. If you already have Homework and Discovery well you don’t really need Musique. The Future Sound of London’s.