Posted: 10/13/2006, 5:23 pm
i liked fight off your demons. a lot more.
Random Name wrote:Okay, its offical, everyone stop looking! The worlds worst music video has finally been made!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AZxUtZ2ZgI
Johnny Marr, a Modest Mouse all right
The Smiths co-founder is truly with the indie rockers, as announced. His debut has no frills
By Eric Ducker, Special to The Times
It was hard to believe it was actually going to happen, but there he was. On the far left of the Avalon's stage in Hollywood on Sunday stood guitarist Johnny Marr, the co-founder and co-visionary behind the miserably romantic British rock group the Smiths, four microphones down from Isaac Brock, the talented frontman of Modest Mouse who has come to embody the American indie-rock dirtbag.
Several months ago, Brock announced that Marr was not only working on the band's forthcoming album, "We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank," but that he'd also actually joined the group.
Sunday night's show (the first performance in a mini tour that includes four concerts around L.A.) was the first time Marr played publicly with Modest Mouse, but Brock didn't make a big deal of it. He didn't introduce him, any of his other bandmates or himself. In fact, Brock barely directly addressed the crowd — early on he thanked fans for coming, later he promised he wouldn't play any of the songs they were requesting.
The addition of Marr is the latest unexpected development in the unexpected career path of Modest Mouse. Though the band became one of indie rock's biggest draws in the '90s with its desperate punk Americana, it wasn't until 2004 that the group had its first bona fide hit with "Float On." That came 10 years into Mouse's recording career and appeared on the group's second major-label release, "Good News for People Who Love Bad News." "Float On" was shuffled into the middle of Sunday night's show, camouflaged by a conga intro from percussionist Joe Plummer, as part of a set that drew heavily from "Good News" and featured six new songs, including "Invisible in Your Car" and "We've Got Everything."
It wasn't until the third number of the night that Marr made himself known, handling backing vocals on "Paper Thin Walls" from 2000's "The Moon and Antarctica." On the following new track, "Fire It Up," he took lead guitar duties for the first time and even stepped up to sing the bridge by himself.
With his hair tousled into place and wearing a tight thrift store T-shirt from "Fort Jackson, South Carolina," Marr almost looked as if he was still wearing his "Pacific Northwest rocker" Halloween costume, which is to say he fit right in with the band.
During the premiere of "Missed the Boat," which combined the rootsy stomp of the Band with the hazy atmospherics of My Bloody Valentine, the worlds of Marr and Modest Mouse crossed explicitly for the first time.
The band ended the night with "Dramamine," one of its earliest and best songs. With such lyrics as "Feeling spaced breathin' out Listerine / I'd said that I'd said what I'd tell ya / And that's you've killed the better part of me," Brock demonstrated his abilities to be unapologetically, unrelentingly honest in his songwriting and, with his vocal phrasing, to deliver damnations as if they were praise. These also are talents of Morrissey, Marr's ex-partner in the Smiths, so perhaps this new partnership isn't that unexpected at all.
The Sugarcubes reunite
Bjork's former band celebrate 'Birthday'
Influential Icelandic Eighties indie band The Sugarcubes are to reunite.
The band that featured Bjork as singer are to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of their classic debut single 'Birthday'.
The Sugarcubes will play a one-off date in Reykjavik on November 17. It will be the first time they have been on stage in 14 years.
According to a statement on Bjork.com: "All profit from the concert goes back into Smekkleysa SM, who continue to work on a non-profit basis for the future betterment of Icelandic music and artists."
Vocalist and trumpet player Einar Orn told Pitchfork : "We were talking about (the fact) that it was twenty years (since) the band and the company were formed, and we were sort of thinking that (since) we'd missed the actual birthday of the company (June 8, 1986), the next birthday was the birthday of (the group's first single) 'Birthday'.
"We said, 'Okay, let's celebrate that,' and everybody was game and we decided to go for it."
The Sugarcubes were the first big band to emerge from Iceland when they released 'Birthday' in the UK in 1987, followed by their seminal debut album, 1988's 'Life's Too Good'.
The band's are also remembered for 1992's 'Hit', after which they disbanded. In 1993 singer Bjork released her breakthrough solo album 'Debut', an NME writers' album of the year.
Last week Canadian songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk told 'Performing Songwriter' magazine that she will never again work withLavigne saying she will "cross the ethical line and no one says anything. That's why I'll never work with her again. I sent her a song two years ago called 'Contagious,' and I just saw the track listing to this album, and there's a song called 'Contagious' on it-and my name's not on it.'
xjsb125 wrote:I decided to catch up on the new Linkin Park single and video. My first thoughts were "holy shit this is Linkin Park's 'Gravity.'" Just to reinforce my suspicions, I checked their message board. Fans are butchering them already. I also thought the video was unoriginal, and uninspired. Everyone seems to have pieced together a video with a bunch of stock footage of random events and images, and these guys show up late with another. In fact, one clip I remember directly from the video Nine Inch Nails uses on the video screen for Right Where It Belongs. I'll have to hear the album to decide whether they have sank themselves or not. I would have expected Rick Ruben to bring the absolute best out of them. Maybe producers aren't the devil after all?