Win a new Brit Box compilation, and listen to the re-formed Verve in Blackpool

New contest! This one tails nicely on the heels of my anglophile’s paradise post last month about the Britpop movement. If you find yourself with some UK-centric leanings in your musical selections, here’s a new box set you might wanna throw down for.

The Brit Box: U.K. Indie, Shoegaze And Brit-Pop Gems Of The Last Millenium is out this week on Rhino Records, collecting 78 songs out of Britain from 1984 to present that celebrate “the essence of cool.”

I have one box set to give away! In rad packaging, you’ll get:

-DISC ONE: 1984-1990. Early modern British influencers like Stones Roses, Happy Mondays, Jesus & Mary Chain, The Smiths, Primal Scream
-DISC TWO: 1990-1993. The hazy shimmer of the shoegaze movement is traced through acts like Ride, My Bloody Valentine, and The Telescopes
-DISC THREE: 1994-1995. Britpop explodes in a crushing supernova. Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Elastica etc.
-DISC FOUR: 1995-present. Where we’re going – Ash, The Verve, Super Furry Animals, Mansun, Placebo and more

The 80-page liner note booklet comes with with interviews, memories and essays from Creation Records founder Alan McGee, seminal producers Stephen Street and Alan Moulder and an assortment of artists. Full tracklist here.

To celebrate the release of this box set, vLES (a “virtual Lower East Side” web community set up by MTV) has some special programming this week. Brett Anderson of Suede will be on MTV’s Subterranean tonight to talk about the Brit Box, and on Monday vLES will have an online “Britpop Round Table” streaming from the Bowery Ballroom with Rob Sheffield from Rolling Stone (who wrote this excellent ‘lil book), Rob Dickinson of Catherine Wheel (who I tragically omitted from my last Britpop post) and John Hagelston from Rhino Records. Check here for a full list of the other Brit-centric programming this week.

So, they offered me one box set to either keep, or for contesting. Do not ever say I don’t love you: leave me a comment to win my promo copy of the Brit Box set!

And to wrap up the last contest before we move it along: Aikin from Licorice Pizza was picked as the random winner of the NYC DVD set. Thanks for all the wonderful stories.

Speaking of awesome music wafting from across the Atlantic, how ’bout that re-formed Verve? They’ve now hit the road, back together in the original lineup, and just completed six shows earlier this month in the UK.

Since the odds of them coming through the U.S. seem to be about the same odds I get on a Stereophonics tour, I have to satisfy myself with reading what folks said about the experience, and trolling YouTube for hazy cellphone video clips. From the moment they first took the stage on Night One in Glasgow, they’ve been playing some seriously rad sets. This vantage point makes me tingle (from the second night in Glasgow):

And listening to this boot from a few nights later at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool does nothing short of give me little frissons of excitement up and down my spine – hear the crowd sing along with Sonnet, or the wild roar that greets Bittersweet Symphony.

THE VERVE
LIVE AT THE EMPRESS BALLROOM
BLACKPOOL NOV 6, 2007
[Thanks to taper: Pete Bullock]

This Is Music
Space and Time
Gravity Grave
Weeping Willow
Life’s An Ocean
Sonnet
Sit And Wonder (new song)
Velvet Morning
Already There
Stormy Clouds
Let The Damage Begin (b-side)
On Your Own
The Rolling People
The Drugs Don’t Work
Bittersweet Symphony
A Man Called Sun
History
Lucky Man
Come On

ZIP: VERVE BLACKPOOL SHOW

And a bit of scene-setting from someone lucky enough to be there:

I was at [the Blackpool show] – arrived just in time to hear ‘Mad Richard’ announce ‘This Is Music’… It was great to finally see the band in their original conception- no extra guitarist, no string section.

What was even more impressive was the fact that so much 1st & 2nd album stuff was on the set…even ON YOUR OWN & MAN CALLED SUN (personal faves). One could argue that a mediocre, crowd satisfying ‘last album’ set would have been enough. But could you really have seen Nick McCabe agreeing to re-form for that kinda live package???!!

Must say [the Empress is] the best venue for this type of gig. Ok the acoustics are not entirely set out for rock bands but the surroundings always make gigs at the Empress very unique. There’s also that ‘outta town’ mentality where a band has purposely avoided the more suitable venues within the vicinity (Manchester Apollo/Uni, Liverpool Uni) and gone with the face of Seasides past ‘Blackpool’-not to mention the sprung floor!…magical!

Overall a grand night had by all…now lets see how the bigger gigs go next year!

Oh, you think you’re so perspicacious

Did I ever tell you that I got an 800 on the verbal part of my SATs? No? Well let me tell you this now: post-college-placement it has absolutely no relevance to normal life (well, okay maybe more relevance than the math section) — except now.

Now I can hone my mad wordsmithery skillz even further using this addictive website called FreeRice.com where you answer vocabulary questions, try to figure out what progressively harder words mean, and each success you have donates ten grains of rice to a hungry person through the United Nations. Pretty cool! But allow me to dispel two myths posited by a friend of mine in regard to this site:

1) He says you need to play all day to feed one person a decent meal. Not true. Will someone please guesstimate how many grains of rice make a hearty bowl next time you’re stir-fryin some dinner and report back to me how much of a dent 10 grains can make? It expands when you cook it.

2) Picking the wrong answer does not, in fact, take rice away from a starving family.

Color me confused, Bob

Right before Austin, Texas singer-songwriter Bob Schneider took the stage in a packed Denver house last night, I was talking to a nice 20-something accountant named Kristen about what we expected from the concert (both of us Bob first-timers). I told her that I didn’t exactly know what was to come because Bob seems to vacillate between two disparate musical extremes.

A friend of mine made me two Bob Schneider mixes last year, one of all his best album tracks (songs like “Come With Me Tonight” [my video], “God Is My Friend”, “I’m Good Now” [my video] and “Big Blue Sea”). The other CD was full of his random outtakes and b-sides, with decidedly a more playful twist. The b-sides mix often wandered into rap territory, silly rhymes, salty language, crowd-singalongs, etc. I was wondering how he was going to integrate the disc one tunes with disc two last night.

The show ended up uncomfortably trying to straddle both types, and I found it to not serve either aim as well as it could. On the one hand Bob has these amazingly compelling, honest, searching tunes of alt-pop perfection, where his strong clear voice fills the room with evocations like “just want to shine as bright as brooklyn on a saturday night / just want to scream until i drown,” and then the very next song is about a mummy (yes, as in spooky dead Halloween mummy) who can’t get no play walkin down the street, and then a tune about (kids, cover your ears) “Tittybangin” and its mass appeal for a variety of practical reasons (heavy flow –yes, he sings that– or not wantin to have a new baby brother). Sure, we chuckled, but the vast incongruity threw me.

So the wacky parts felt like an R-rated Dan Zanes (children’s troubadour). Like maybe the best option would be to bring your 15 year-old kid brother to the show, and he could hold your beer and laugh at the tittybang jokes while you go to the bathroom, and then while the serious and gorgeous songs are playing, he could be amused by the (not lying) girl who ran up next to me, casually said, “Can I just sneak in here? I need to flash Bob” and then proceeded to do so, the full deals right there in his line of sight. The 15 year-old would like that. But the rest of the audience seemed split by the two different shows going on; half there to party, half there to see his music. Bob’s got a lot of talent, I was just unclear where he was going with it all.

He did move me with his “grown-up” songs, if we wanna call them that. He played a tune which I can only find one lone reference to online, but he hit it out of the park last night.

Empty campaign promises

Hey, this was a pretty cool surprise:

Looks like Fuel/Friends has been nominated in the Hey! Nielsen (yes, the TV ratings people) / Billboard.com Best Music Blog Contest which went live Monday. There are a bunch of great blogs listed, many of my faves, and you can vote for more than one [registration required].

So head on over and clickity-click your right to vote if you like!

Don’t bother to pack your bags, or your map

Weezer‘s “Blue Album” has found its way this week from the center console of my car (where I keep a wide assortment of discs forever orphaned from their cases, if they ever had cases) and via random fumble while keeping my eyes on the road, into my CD player. I am pleased to report that this album will forever sound good to my ears. Lately “Holiday” has been on repeat (and may, actually, be a perfect song), but the whole album is a blissfully fuzz-laden slice of 1994 to me.

The Weezer camp has some new projects coming up that are on my radar.

Frontman Rivers Cuomo will be releasing Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo on December 18 via Geffen. On their website, Rivers reports, “This is a CD of my favorite home demos from ’92 to ’07 featuring a lot of never heard before songs, a few covers, a few songs from my unfinished rock musical ‘Songs From The Black Hole’ and my original demo for ‘Buddy Holly’“.

I am very excited about the Rivers solo stuff. Dude is a prolific songwriter, you can’t even keep track of what all he’s written and performed and leaked over the years, unless you have vault-like memory. This’ll give you an idea. All I know is that some of the demos and unreleased stuff that I’ve heard are as good as anything that Weezer actually released, so we should be in for a treat next month.

Then in April, Weezer’s sixth studio album will be coming out, currently untitled and also very hush hush about the content. We know it’s finished, and it’s being mixed, but other than that, we can only conjecture in hushed tones what might lie therein.

To stoke the possibly-dormant fires of your Weezer fever, here’s a handful of demos & miscellany that I’ve unearthed from my iTunes for today’s playlist.

You Gave Your Love To Me Softly (Angus soundtrack)
Lover In The Snow (demo)
Worry Rock (Green Day cover)
The Sister Song
Come To My Pod (Songs From The Black Hole)
Let’s Sew Our Pants Together (Kitchen Tape)
Thief, You’ve Taken All That Was Me (Kitchen Tape)
My Evaline (b-sides)
Mykel and Carli (b-sides)
Jamie (DGC Rarities, Vol. 1)

I also just noticed that Weezer bassist Scott Shriner guest-starred with The Scrantones at, um, The Office Convention. I don’t know about attending any convention for a TV show (as much as I love said TV show) but I’d totally join the Scrantones on a world tour. That is, if Scrantonicity II didn’t want me.

Jump magic jump, Magic dance, magic dance

I watched El Labyrinto Del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth) last night, which made me think of other favorite labyrinths of my past.

The question came to mind: which is scarier?

or?

Magic Dance – David Bowie
As The World Falls Down – David Bowie

NEW CONTEST: So that next time you’re in New York you know what the heck you’re craning your neck at

It’s New York Week next week on the History Channel. That means when you decide to take a break from your relentless rock and roll lifestyle, you’ll have something better to watch than Cash Cab (lovin it like I do) as you sink into your couch.

Since I am feeling fond of all things New York-related lately, I am going to TiVo this action (it starts November 19th). There’s a big contest going on over at their website where you can get whisked off for a 4 day history-themed tour of NYC, including cool stuff like a private tour of The Met, a tour of the Top Of The Rock on the GE Building/”30 Rock”, tickets to Les Mis, a shopping spree at Macy’s, lodging at the Roosevelt, and dinner at Ruby Foo’s, etc. Not bad.

Enter the sweepstakes by Nov 22nd at the History Channel NYC site.

FUEL/FRIENDS CONTEST: I thought we’d also set up a consolation prize pack here since your chances are like a billion-to-one on that biggie trip:

I have one box set of DVDs from the History Channel on Landmarks of New York to give away. It will school you on the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Chrysler Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Empire State Building.

To win this educational diversion, leave me a comment. If you are feeling inspired, please tell me an NYC story. It can be an anecdote or vignette that actually happened to you (like when I saw Vanessa Williams brunching, that was fun). Or tell me a fun music-related tale you heard that took place in New York. Either way; I’ll consider you entered. Leave me a way to get a hold of you if you win, and I’ll pick a victor this weekend.

NEW YORK TUNES, TAKE 2
If This City Never Sleeps – Rosie Thomas
Hard Times In New York Town – Bob Dylan
Chicago New York – Scrabbel
New York City Cops – The Strokes
Chelsea – Counting Crows
Wake Up In New York (with Evan Dando) – Craig Armstrong
New York Girls – Mooney Suzuki
Train Under Water – Bright Eyes
I Guess The Lord Must Be In New York City – Harry Nilsson

Humble blogger makes good for kiddos this Christmas

I love being a part of the exciting medium of blogging, and am always proud of my fellow bloggers when they do something cool related to the actual production of music, like Aquarium Drunkard’s Autumn Tone Record label, and now It’s Hard To Find A Friend‘s Caleb Palma, who has curated an original indie-rock Christmas album called Peace on Earth.

I know, it’s yet a little early for jingle bells, but we gotta get the word out on this — especially since all the proceeds of Caleb’s compilation go towards Toys For Tots (which delivers toys to needy kids on Christmas morning)! How rad is that?

The album is only $7 for high-quality digital download, and features a solid list of bands and musicians, including Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla, American Music Club, Rosie Thomas, Via Audio and many more. The tunes include never-before-released covers, some new original songs, and a couple “non-holiday exclusives to keep the grinches happy.”

This preview mp3 is from The Long Winters, and starts with the scene-setting lyrics: “A studio apartment in a dull part of Seattle, a string of lights suspended by a thumbtack in the drywall…”

Sometimes You Have To Work On Christmas (Sometimes)
- The Long Winters

FULL TRACKLIST: PEACE ON EARTH
1. Prayers & Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers - Shepherd’s Song
2. Quiet Company - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
3. Great Lake Swimmers - Gonna Make it Through This Year
4. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin / Sweetwater Abilene - The Wheels Are Off
5. Chris Walla - Coventry Carol
6. David Karsten Daniels - In The Bleak Midwinter
7. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
8. The Winston Jazz Routine - Through the Snow
9. Via Audio - My Boo
10. The Long Winters - Sometimes You Have to Work on Christmas (Sometimes)
11. TW Walsh - Drop the Bomb
12. Ohtis - American Christians
13. Aaron Robinson - End of the Year
14. The Cotton Jones Basket Ride (Michael Nau of Page France) - White Christmas
15. American Music Club - Please Please
16. Johnny Bertram - Merry Christmas (You Won’t Get What You Want)
17. Rosie Thomas - Christmas Time is Here
18. Sleeptalker - This is Christmas

Stream some other tunes below, and go buy it for the kiddos!

11/12/1997 :: The Honking Seals play the Catalyst

November is a good month for all my uberdork Pearl Jam anniversary celebrating. Ten years ago tonight, I was in my own personal upper echelon of sublime, unbelievable, kept-pinching-myself heaven:

Pearl Jam was in the Bay Area to open for the Rolling Stones and decided to play a secret show at the garden-lovely Catalyst Club (capacity 600) in Santa Cruz, billing themselves as The Honking Seals. In the Fall of 1997, I had just started my freshman year of college. In those early days of the internet, I was on a PJ listserv called Long Road and first heard about the show upon returning back to my Graham Hall dorm room after my 11:45am Wednesday class. I clearly remember feeling my heart splash up into my throat as I read the posting about the rumored show taking place that night. I immediately grabbed my keys, cleared $200 from my meager savings account, and drove over Highway 17 to the club. There was already a day-old line outside when I got there in early afternoon, and it was sheer mayhem with media (I’m so mentioned here) and everyone drawn like moths to the flame of excitement in this fairly laid-back beach town.

I don’t think I have to specify that it was a fantastic show. Seriously – 600 people? How could it not be. I remember feeling shock and disbelief when I actually convinced some apathetic girl that she wanted to part with her ticket. Until that point, I had always felt with certainty that since I was pretty young when the band first formed that I would never get a chance to see them in a small club setting. I really did have to keep pinching myself all night.

The performance was crackling with energy from the band, radiating up from the audience. It was the first PJ show in almost a year, and three tunes from the yet-unreleased Yield were played for the first time that night. “Do The Evolution” peeled the crud off my soul with those blistering guitar riffs while Ed danced this little modster dance. I remember “Wishlist” as being so plaintive and wistful (with different lyrics in that early incarnation), but simple almost like a lullaby, and unlike any other song in their catalog. “Given To Fly” was nothing short of a religious experience when that line “a wave came crashing like a fist to the jaw . . .” broke for the first time, soaring over that tiny hot club.

Plus, November 12 is Neil Young’s birthday, so Ed called “Uncle Neil” on a big cell phone that he had up on stage, and we all sang happy birthday to him. At the end of the night, as I leaned forward from the front of the balcony, Ed wandered over to the side of the stage. He looked up directly at me, and in a moment of what can only be described as sheer suavity, I waved at him. He smiled at me, and waved back.

That was a good night.

Given To Fly (11/12/97 premiere)
Wishlist (11/12/97 premiere)
Do The Evolution (11/12/97 premiere)
Happy Birthday to Neil Young (11/12/97)

[this audio is okay, minus the a-hole talking about 5th grade over Wishlist, etc]

So by the way, tonight I am pretty much the antithesis of my devil-may-care “get me to the show” rockergirl personality from ten years ago; instead of heading up to the Hold Steady in Denver, I am trying to stop a nascent sore throat in its tracks by drowning it in Airborne, orange juice, tea, and those little mini probiotic yogurt shakes. Yeah. Rock on.

Monday Music Roundup

I watched the new Oasis tour documentary Lord Don’t Slow Me Down on Saturday night, and I was thoroughly entertained beyond what I had anticipated. It’s a look at a band that seemed unstoppable in the cocky cocaine madness of ’95-’96 (years which Noel admits he doesn’t remember. At all.) now doing the unthinkable and growing up a bit. Stable girlfriends, kids, and years of living the rock n roll lifestyle seem to have muted the Gallagher brothers just a tad (even though they are still devastatingly funny to watch, and pull off an epically rocking show with the best of ‘em).

LDSMD provides an all-access look at the band on their 10-month world tour for Don’t Believe The Truth in 2005. As a document of those months, the footage underscores both the high of the huge crowds that sing at the top of their lungs to every word — regardless of their native language (pretty tingly-cool when everyone breaks with “Sooooo, Sally can wait….”) but also the monotony of the *same* blessed pickin’ questions from every single interviewer, a thousand times over, and the jet-lag and disorientation and inner workings of living together with the same folks for that long in a bus. I liked the small, quiet insights best: Liam ape-dancing alone in a dressing room when he apparently didn’t know the cameras were taping, the guys playing a rollicking board game of Frustration backstage (and man, I miss the sound of that dice popper from being a kid), the tinkering around on the instruments in a music store somewhere in urban Tokyo on a day off.

The film is mostly shot in iconic-feeling grainy black and white, except for a few notable scenes in hyperbright ’70s-style Technicolor, like a performance of Champagne Supernova, and a shot of Liam leaning back into the sunshine on the back of a skittering speedboat in the Sydney harbor. It’s a visual treat in the arthouse film style. The elusive angles used in filming lend it a weight that made me feel like I was watching an epic lost Beatles doc or something. Which I suppose may be a point. Combined with the second disc of the complete epic Manchester homecoming concert, this is a vastly entertaining look at a seminal rock band still doin what they do so well.

As for the music this week, I finally attacked some of the emails I’ve been meaning to get around to, and found a few ace new tunes to grab our ears:

Pep
Polytechnic
Speaking of guys from Manchester . . . Polytechnic is a feisty Britpop quintet that have been called “one of the most uplifting sounds to have emerged from Manchester in recent years — fashionably angular but also joyously buoyant.” (Rock Sound Magazine). I can catch the comparisons to Supergrass, The Shins, and even CYHSY – they’ve got a fun and unique jangly blend of shimmering vocals lit to a danceable perfection. They have two shows on American soil this week, Wednesday at LA’s Spaceland, and Friday at the Mercury Lounge in NYC. These guys are unsigned but sound to me as if they might not stay that way for long. Down Til Dawn is out now.

Sad Songs
The Pendletons
Not a sad song at all, unless sad songs make you want to scream and yell and dance around a sticky-floored backroads bar to this toe-tapping bit of catharsis. The Pendletons are from Athens, GA and their brand of urgent, catchy tunes share a rawness and a jangle with someone we’ve heard before out of Athens (Peter Buck has been seen at their shows, raising a beer to the lads). Rolling Stone recently said that their new album Oh! Me sounds “like Vampire Weekend on a semester abroad with Arctic Monkeys.” I am all in for that kind of action.

Out of Time
Jason Collett
I saw Broken Social Scenester Jason Collett a few months back at the Bluebird (and he’s back in Denver this week with Feist) and his unique brand of earthy twang and clean beats stole my heart. His newest album is called Here’s To Being Here, and this song sounds to me like a hypothetical moment where the droningly lyrical poet in Bob Dylan joins Apostle of Hustle, with a bit of late-night sexy bluesy swagger to it. The new album is out February 5 on Canadian label Arts & Crafts.

Girls And Boys In Love
The Rumble Strips
So is it just me or does the name of this British band sound exactly like it could be the hip new bikini wax to ask for? That’s awesome. But oh, then I remembered that rumble strips are those divots along the outside of the lane lines designed to jolt awake drivers who doze, so nevermind. These Rumble Strips are from London, and this selection is a lighthearted song that sounds best while driving, reminding me of a super peppy, clap-happy Robert Smith. None of the band’s trademark horns here, but it’s a soundtrack for youthful tomfoolery. They are finishing up some Irish dates, and then hitting the US on tour with the Cold War Kids in just a few cities: DC, Philly, NY, LA, and SF’s Popscene in December. Girls and Weather (two fluctuating topics) is out now.

[photo from Chicago Metro Halloween show, credit]