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Living Sisters’ New “How Are You Doing” Video Directed By Michel Gondry

[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 6, 2011 by admin in Music

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

If The Living Sisters’ voices sound familiar, it may be because one third of them are provided by Inara George of The Bird and the Bee.

I’ve said this before, but I wish I had more time to listen to all the amazing new indy music  that’s been flooding the market the last few years. Then it wouldn’t take a torrent of links flooding the web talking about a new Michael Gondry music video (see below) to get me to notice a cool band like The Living Sisters. I hadn’t heard of them until yesterday, but like most anyone with ears would be, I was immediately struck by their uniquely witty harmonies. They sort of reminded me of The Roches (who, unlike The Living Sisters, are sisters), not because of their sound, but because of the quirky vibe. And The Living Sisters’ voicing sounded familiar too, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. And then it hit me. Well, it didn’t actually hit me – I had to read this LA Weekly piece from last year to learn – that the reason that something about the voices sounded so familiar was because exactly one third of them were being provided by Inara George of The Bird and The Bee, who we touched on a few weeks ago. I guess on top of needing to listen to more stuff, I should follow up better on the stuff I already am listening to as well. So I don’t have much more to say about The Living Sisters, because until I finish downloading the album Love To Live from Amazon in a few minutes, I’ve only heard previews and watched some YouTube clips. I included a live one below, which proves pretty effectively that Inara George doesn’t need the autotune that seems so pervasive in The Bird and the Bee recordings. These ladies have amazing voices. Or maybe an amazing voice; at times the similarity of their timbre makes them sound like one person singing along with a Theremin…

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Yeah Yeah Yeah. The Beatles Are On iTunes

[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 18, 2010 by admin in Music

Thursday, November 18th, 2010

The long and winding road to digital music sales for the Beatles began with one Apple, and ends with another.


The word is that the day before yesterday, after a decade long wait, the Beatles catalog finally became available on iTunes. Should we care? Well, Todd Martens of the LA Times has some reasons why we shouldn’t. Personally, you won’t see me rushing to download a bunch of Beatles songs for a price 30% higher than anything else on iTunes. But I’m not trying to persuade anyone one way or the other; I prefer you think for yourself. Except you may have noticed I’m playing a little game of trying to sprinkle Beatles song titles into what I’m saying, because I’ll make money if you follow the links and buy something. After a few sentences, you’d think I’d be getting better at it, but clearly I’m not. So I will stop now. But that silliness I just engaged in is an example of something you might want to ponder. Releasing this material on iTunes really means only one thing. Revenue. And for whom? Certainly not the two Beatles that many would agree were the cool ones. And certainly not Michael Jackson, who owned half of the publishing rights. No, in my opinion, this is the big lumbering thud of the money tree of the old music industry falling. It’s ironic to ponder that without the business model that devoured the Beatles’ profits as artists and fueled the decades of legal wrangling over them, the Beatles would probably not have even existed, let alone become the legend that they now are. And then, you wouldn’t be able to buy every song over and over and over in endless re-re-releases including absurdities like a $299 Apple-shaped USB stick. Which, for the record, is probably better than a $149 Box Set that doesn’t come with a box. It’s a little sad, and at the same time rather telling that the Beatles are always touted as sacred icons of popular music, and then immediately pimped out in a different (often less-than superb) format. At one point I had every one of their LP’s in my vinyl collection. That overlapped with owning cassettes of a few releases, and later various CD’s. I don’t think I’ll be buying any of these songs yet again on iTunes, but I want you to. Because then I can make money like everyone else who isn’t the original artist. And feel good knowing that the estates of three pop legends get some more loot to pay off the lawyers, and that the executives at both Apple companies can make more money. And when I make that money, I can support a new indy act that sells direct. Ironic, isn’t it?

Joan Wasser’s Band Joan as Police Woman

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on November 7, 2010 by admin in Music

Sunday, November 7th, 2010

I’m glad talented violinist Joan Wasser took the instrument off her chin to demonstrate what a magically brilliant songwriter and singer she is.

The only thing stranger than the fact that I hadn’t heard of Joan Wasser and her band Joan as Police Woman until the other day is the fact that I feel like I’ve known her and her music for years. Or maybe the latter is not really so strange, considering the fact that after her tune Start of My Heart (video below) literally made me cry the first time I heard it, I immediately bought her 2008 release To Survive, and in the 48 hours since, have listened to it like, four times. And in between listens, have read about her career and listened to or watched anything by her that I can find. But even if I hadn’t so instantly fallen in love with her work, there’s an intimate intensity and emotional depth to most of it that would have eventually had the same effect. One imagines that some of the incredible depth and “realness” of her expression is informed by the loss of her partner Jeff Buckley back in the 90′s, and more recently her mother (the inspiration for the title track of “To Survive”) but her talent as an arranger and songwriter is remarkable in itself. Listening to her work one is slowly struck by its subtly. I say “slowly”, because her impeccable arrangements allow horns, backing vocals and other instrumentation to weave through the tunes so effortlessly that one barely notices their coming and going until repeated listens. It’s almost hard to believe that she is – as she implies at one point in this interview – an “ear musician”, saying that music theory “is just like math to me“. Although Wasser only has a few solo releases as a songwriter and vocalist, her resumé as a violinist extends back to the 1990′s and includes work with the likes of Lou Reed, Sheryl Crow, Sparklehorse, Elton John, David Sylvian, the Scissor Sisters, Antony and the Johnsons, Joseph Arthur, and Rufus Wainwright. I love that ex-Fishbone member Chris Dowd apparently praised her as a “soulful mothafucka” in the liner notes of a Seedy Arkhestra release. It’s that kind of reference that makes me hope Wasser finds the broader recognition that she deserves without a major label deal; I don’t think they’d know what to do with her! While her music has a mature honesty that is easily understood, there’s an intense beauty and strength in her face, her persona, and her work that defies definition, and would almost certainly be diluted and destroyed by the pop music packaging process. In spite of the fact that so far I’ve only picked up her 2008 release, I’m looking forward to her upcoming 2011 release “The Deep Field” (see clip below). Partly because the title references a place where galaxies are born, and partly because at this rate I will have listened to everything she’s done a couple hundred times by then. Read the rest of this entry »

Best Coast’s Crazy For You & Surfer Blood’s Astro Coast

[ 2 Comments ]Posted on August 13, 2010 by admin in Music

Friday, August 13th, 2010

Help us out with a late summer playlist. So far all we’ve got is some Best Coast and some Surfer Blood.

You know how hearing a simple pop song can instantly transport you to another time and place, and evoke all the feelings associated with it? Today I was sitting at an outdoor cafe in the sweltering humid 90 degree weather where I live, and was suddenly teleported to the crisp and tragically moody monochromatic autumn reality that hearing California Dreamin’ inflicts upon me. Which reminded me that probably the only thing I like about living in a part of the US that has seasons (dear God please help me get out of here before winter!) is the brief periods of moodiness that are inevitable first when you realize summer is ending, then later when everything starts literally dying, and then not too long after that when the deadly cold and passionless midwestern dread sets in. And to be clear, these “brief periods” I’m referring to last about three days, and then I otherwise really should be on medication. So I decided I need a late summer playlist to help ease the pain of the impending gloom. One of the first picks was easy. Best Coast’s Crazy for You from last month is a perfect beach pop backdrop for August with its mix of upbeat pop and moody, sixties-tinged, reverb-drenched teen ennui. It for some reason made me think of relistening to Surfer Blood’s Astro Coast, which made no sonic sense to me back in January when I first heard it, but suddenly does on a sweltering summer day. With all the guitars, reverb, and harmonies, both bands have a weird sort of Strokes meets Animal Collective meets Beach House kind of thing going on. Clips below. Any suggestions to keep a playlist going? Read the rest of this entry »

VODO: A Cool New Idea For Distributing & Funding Independent Film

[ Comments Off ]Posted on July 5, 2010 by admin in Popular Media

Monday, July 5th, 2010

Watch out Hollywood. The future is arriving.

I have a number of friends who derive their livelihood from the mainstream, Hollywood-centric film industry, so if you find me dead in a ditch soon, it may be because of some of the things I’m about to say. In much the same way that record labels created their own demise a decade ago by desperately trying to hold on to a juicy business model that let them charge twenty bucks for a twenty minute CD (by doing things like suing customers and artists alike), the floundering and litigation-addicted film industry has been doing much the same thing for a while. They’ve used lawsuits, melodramatic anti-piracy clips, and distorted claims about how piracy has stolen billions in wages and thousands of jobs from Hollywood. Even the US General Accounting Office has called their bluff. So while it may have taken a few years for the indy music scene to evolve into the hodgepodge of profitable distribution channels that it is today, in the end we have more great music – and at a better price – than we’ve had in decades. And it seems that price is at most a dollar a song. So watch out Hollywood. Your days of multimillion dollar productions are numbered. And your demise will be at the hands of clever ventures like VODO, an ingenious new funding and distribution plan that coordinates the world’s largest torrent trackers to distribute artists’ films, and then facilitates funding them. You get a high-quality and original viewing experience for free, the artist gets massive distribution and a source of revenue based on perceived value, because you pay as much as you feel like paying, if anything at all. VODO has also partnered with MOFILM for a contest with over $100,000 in prizes. VODO’s currently highlighted project is a “hard sci-fi” series called Pioneer One. The series pilot cost just $6,000, which was raised through the micro-funding platform Kickstarter. Pioneer One was produced by the same team that created Vodo’s biggest success to date, a film called Lionshare. Having watched both Lionshare and the Pioneer One pilot, I have a lot of enthusiasm for where this could go. In spite of some occasionally wobbly acting, writing, or production in both projects, the material is largely pretty solid, and VODO has many other films to explore. All for whatever you feel like paying for them. Check out the trailers for Lionshare and Pioneer One below. Read the rest of this entry »

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