WFMU Fest in Williamsburg this weekend

Just when music festival season seems to be winding down, here comes the inaugural WFMU Music Fest! Three nights of live music at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Friday's lineup in particular promises to be something great.

So, OK, I'm a little sad that the station won't be broadcasting live. But don't be surprised if highlights don't start popping up on the airwaves soon. For those like me who are a little far away to attend, here's a consolation prize of sorts: The Akron/Family set from All Tomorrow's Parties is now available for download. So, once again, thank you, WFMU, for all you do.

TV Ghost - "Atomic Rain" live:


Here's the lineup, from WFMU's Beware of the Blog:

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1st (doors 8PM, $20 advance or door)
Faust
Cold Cave
Aluk Todolo

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2nd (doors 8PM, $12 advance/$15 door)
Pissed Jeans
TV Ghost
VeeDee
Guinea Worms

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3rd (doors 8PM, $20 advance or door)
Teenage Jesus and the Jerks
Sightings
Drunkdriver
Talk Normal

Bike naked for the Flaming Lips

I came across this on BikePortland.org recently. It's yet another reason why I need to get my lazy ingrate ass in gear and hightail it back out West:

Naked bikers needed for Flaming Lips music video to be shot in Portland next week

If you're fortunate enough to be in the area, head on out to Mt. Tabor tomorrow and get naked for art! What are you waiting for, hippie?

The new Flaming Lips album drops next month...

Yo La Tengo live at the 930 Club

Yo La Tengo is one of my favorite bands, and while it doesn't look like I'll wind up stranded on a desert island anytime soon, I'm thinking I should keep a few of their CDs on me at all times just in case. Wouldn't want to be unprepared in the event of an emergency. YLT put on a truly incredible show last week, kicking off the proceedings with the darkly psychedelic Here to Fall off their newest album (and second full-length release of the year) Popular Songs. They also threw in a few aptly-chosen semi-obscure covers as per usual, revealing their encyclopedic knowledge of rock music and giving the show a D.C. theme: Black Flag, Half Japanese, and former All-American Reagan-era live-from-the-Capitol Fourth of July faves the Beach Boys. My knowledge of Black Flag and the Beach Boys is rather limited, I have to admit, but I discovered Half Japanese during my sophomore year in college, when a girl I was semi-pursuing made me a cassette copy of Shimmy Disc's 20th Anniversary of the Summer of Love compilation, complete with handmade tape cover. We never did get together, but I found out about an entire music scene thanks to that tape. So, it kind of worked out.

The audience was...well, not quite what I expected. What I expected was the same type of crowd that enthusiastically turns out for the band's Hanukkah shows at Maxwell's every year. In other words, a large enthusiastic crowd full of punk rock intellectuals, sub-hipsters, and Jewish music nerds, liberally sprinkled with overweight middle aged guys seemingly cloned from the DNA of The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy.

What I found was a large crowd that seemed to be composed primarily of the young and well-heeled. At one point, I was surrounded by couples being "romantic" with one another (i.e., making out like crazy) and for a while, it seemed like everyone was under the collective delusion that they were at a Chris Isaac concert. Towards the end, two young ladies hopped onstage, much to the band's reluctance, and did an extremely cringe-worthy dance. This occurred during a slow, ponderous, achingly melancholy number. Immediately after the song ended, the band's Hebrew-tatted roadie (whose look I was finding more and more worthy of emulating as the night wore on) politely ushered them offstage. But I shouldn't be too hard on the audience. After all, they succeeded in bringing the band out for two long encores. And the band really shined, feeding off of the crowd's energy. You can--and should--download the entire concert on NPR's All Songs Considered.

Yo La Tengo - Here to Fall

Rediscovering Kerouac with Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard

Photo Credit: Autumn De Wilde

I missed the Son Volt show this past Tuesday (and, incidentally, I'm missing Matt and Kim tonight...further indication of how my week is going) so I'm fairly certain that I missed the opportunity to hear Jay Farrar play what is now my favorite Jay Farrar song. "San Francisco" is from the forthcoming soundtrack, to be released next month, of the documentary One Fast Move or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur. Farrar teamed up with Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie to write and perform the songs. There's a great article about the making of over on Paste Magazine's website.

Excerpting and adapting Kerouac's text and setting it to music is a much more difficult task than it seems, being as it's one long stream-of-conscious narrative, but if the two songs they've posted on the site are any indication, wow--who'd have thought they could pull it off so well? Kerouac's vibrant and haunting prose really comes through. This may very well turn out to be Farrar's most vital work since Uncle Tupelo. I'm almost obsessively curious to hear how the adaptation of Kerouac's poem "Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur" that closes the book turned out.

Tracklist:

1. California Zephyr
2. Low Life Kingdom
3. City And Sur (Willamine)
4. All In One
5. Breath Our Iodine
6. These Roads Don’t Move
7. Big Sur
8. One Fast Move Or I’m Gone
9. Final Horrors
10. Sea Engines
11. The Void
12. San Francisco

Jay Farrar and Benjamin Gibbard Tour Dates:

10/23: El Rey Theatre – Los Angeles, CA
10/24: Bimbo’s 365 Club – San Francisco, CA
10/26: Lincoln Hall – Chicago, IL
10/28: Webster Hall – New York, NY

Deadline extended - The Billboard & PDN Ultimate Music Moment Photography Contest

For those of you still thinking about entering, the deadline has been extended until September 18, 2009. You can enter the competition here. And while you're at it, check out last year's gallery of winners.

Chairlift live at the Black Cat

Caroline Polachek of the Brooklyn-based electro-pop band Chairlift performing at the Black Cat backstage, September 7, 2009. Chairlift has been touring relentlessly, and they'll actually be back in D.C. to play the 930 Club on September 27. I decided to take the opportunity to see them perform in a smaller, more intimate setting this past Labor Day. They put on an incredible, high-energy show. But the highlight of the night for me was opening act John Maus. His performance was like outsider art, in the best possible sense of the term. He's a philosophy instructor at the University of Hawaii-Manoa when he's not doing this:

Maus also took the stage with Chairlift, playing backup keyboards (less awkward than it sounds), rounding out the band and giving them an even fuller sound.

A couple of songs, via his record label, Upset the Rhythm:
John Maus - Just Wait Til Next year
John Maus - Don't Be A Body