Yearly Archives: 2003

Steve Miller writes us a sad story from Northampton England of British Sea Power putting on a great show but the crowd putting on a great big nothing.

Sadly, this lack of audience involvement continues for the headline band as well. It?s been a few years since I?ve been to a gig in my hometown and we?re known for being miserable sods, but this is extraordinary. Situated in the middle of the floor, I expect to get pushed out of the way when the band come on and the pogoing starts. It doesn?t. For most of the set there are three people jumping up and down, for a couple of songs towards the end they?re joined by three others. It?s pathetic.
(full review)

There’s a few photos mixed inside the review too, so be sure to make with the clicky.

Today is the day MP3.com goes offline.

Are American Idol singers the musical equivalent of a goldfish? As soon as it dies, flush it down the toilet and make way for the next.

Season one American Idol runner-up Justin Guarini is among the missing. The Pennsylvania native was dropped from his record label, RCA, after his self-titled debut album landed at Number 20 on the Billboard 200 album chart selling a mere 54,000 copies. While 54,000 may seem like a fair amount of albums, it pales in comparison to Kelly Clarkson’s first week sales of 297,000 copies of her album Thankful, or Clay Aiken’s first week slaes of a whopping 613,000 copies of Measure Of A Man. (full story)

I hate everything about American Idol, but being dropped for selling 54,000 albums is an indicator of how record labels are treating these disposable pop stars. Sell big or make way for the season 3 winners.

eBay.com has what you want, sucka. Check it out: 44 page notebook of handwritten lyrics by Tori Amos from back in the day. Bidding is around $400 now, but man, that’s a great gift for a super-fan.

[via waxy]

This project is still in the works, so don’t go buying your tickets just yet.

From Neil Gaiman himself, from his Journal:

Question: Mr. Gaiman, i read that you had Stephin Merritt make some music for you or that you collaborated on something. Did you, and if so what was the project?

Answer: We did. It’s the CORALINE audio — it contains the Gothic Archies song “You are Not My Mother and I Want to Go Home”, background music by Stephin, and Stephin’s own recording of the Coraline Rat Song. You can hear a lot of it if you poke around over in the Coraline area of mousecircus.com.

We’re talking about doing a stage adaptation of Coraline, for which Stephen would make songs and music and so on…

You can buy the audio version here or the paperback version there. Like a dork, I own both.

The Guts of a New Machine: The New York Times dismantes an iPod to get to the center of what makes it so appealing to the world.

While most of my CD collection leans towards independent music, I can’t deny my love for Linkin Park. This band is light years ahead of all the competition in the modern rock game, taking elements of hip hop and rock and reinventing the genre. I’ll have more to say about this band in a future post, but thought I’d share some info on their upcoming tour.

16-Jan Washington DC
17-Jan Boston
18-Jan New York
20-Jan Philadelphia
21-Jan Cleveland
23-Jan Montreal
24-Jan Toronto
25-Jan Columbus
27-Jan Detroit
29-Jan Chicago
30-Jan Madison
31-Jan Minneapolis

And, these cities will have confirmed dates in the next couple of weeks:

Colorado Springs, CO / Los Angeles, CA / Salt Lake City, UT / Vancouver, BC / Portland, OR / Tacoma, WA / San Jose, CA / San Diego, CA / Sacramento, CA / Las Vegas, NV / Oklahoma City, OK / Dallas, TX / San Antonio, TX / Houston, TX / Little Rock, AK / Greensboro, NC / Atlanta, GA / Jacksonville, FL / Tampa/St. Petersburg, FL / Ft. Lauderdale, FL

PS: The band is playing in Columbus on my birthday. Moo hoo ha ha.

This morning I wrapped up my extended visit to NJ for the holidays. We got into the car around 6AM and headed toward’s Newark Airport. We were halfway through Newark when a van ran into the back of our van at a stop light. No injuries, minor car damage. I guess the guy who hit us wasn’t paying attention and just ran into us without looking.

I thought it was an appropriate “And dont let the door hit you on the way out” message from NJ to me as I went back to Columbus, OH. Ah well.

Wait a second, is this a personal blog or a music blog? WTF?

Two Cow Garage tour 370 days a year, so if you’ve not seen them live yet I’d say it’s your fault.

Anyway, here’s an update on the band:

We’re happy as hell to announce that we will begin recording our next record in early March at The Echo Lab outside of Denton, Texas.

We’re even more happy to announce that the next record will be produced by Brent Best (Slobberbone) and engineered by Matt Pence (Cento-Matic, South San Gabriel).

The record is tentatively scheduled for release late summer/early fall 2004. Unless another label steps in and wishes otherwise, the record will be released by Shelterhouse Records (meaning released by ourselves).

Recently, we finished what we hope is the first of many tours with Grand Champeen (Austin, TX). We urge y’all to run out or click your way to www.grandchampeen.com and purchase their record, and find your way to a show. They are what is good and wonderful with the REAL state of rock n’ roll in America.

UPCOMING SHOWS

Dec. 3rd @ Dan’s Silverleaf (Denton, TX) w/ BRENT BEST
Dec. 4th @ Room 710 (Austin, TX) w/ GRAND CHAMPEEN
Dec. 5th @ Casbeer’s (San Antonio, TX) w/ BRENT BEST
Dec. 6th @ Sons of Hermann Hall (Dallas, TX) w/ THE DERAILERS
Dec. 7th @ Club DaDa (Dallas, TX) w/ BRENT BEST
Dec. 9th @ Rudyard’s (Houston, TX)
Dec. 10th @ Frederick’s Music Lounge (St. Louis, MO)
Dec. 11th @ Blue Room (Osage Beach, MO)
Dec. 12th @ Underground City Tavern (Sringfield, IL)
Dec. 13th @ High Beck (Columbus, OH) w/ SILO THE HUSKIE
Dec. 20th @ Guitar Town Christmas Party at Berkely Cafe
Dec. 27th @ Little Brother’s (Columbus, OH)