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Bumbershoot, one of Seattle’s fine music festivals, has announced an initial set of bands. Looking good, Washington State, looking good.

So far:

Kanye West • AFI • A Tribe Called Quest • Yellowcard • Atmosphere • Hawthorne Heights • Feist • Shooter Jennings • Mates of State • Of Montreal • Matt Costa • The Blood Brothers • Bettye Lavette • the subdudes • Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk • Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings • Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey • Yerba Buena • The English Beat • Gossip • 3 Inches of Blood • Deerhoof • Laura Veirs • Nouvelle Vague • Breakestra • Jamie Lidell • Vashti Bunyan • Dengue Fever • Metric

[credz]

Just went to the Clear Static/Shiny Toy Guns/Kill Hannah show at The Avalon (formerly The Limelight) in NYC (Monday, April 10). $17 a ticket. $6 for a Bud Light. Coulda been an expensive night if I had had more than one beer.

Tommie Sunshine – who David and I caught at SXSW – was spinning tunes from a mid-level booth when I entered and he also spun tracks between bands. I recognized very few of the songs he was sampling but it sounded good and there were small pockets of younger ladies getting funky fresh to the songs that they obviously knew.

After standing around for over an hour (doors were at 6:30 making me think the show would start around 7 – not the case – it didn’t start until 8:15), the lights finally went down and the first band made their way to the stage.
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I’ve been searching for information on a Cleveland music festival at Blossom ever since it was casually mentioned on the The Flaming Lips website. Luckily, I Rock Cleveland found more details:

Flaming Lips

Death Cab for Cutie

Sonic Youth

the Hold Steady

She Wants Revenge

Secret Machines

Wolfmother

the Go! Team

More acts to be announced.

This nice little event is taking place at Blossom Music Center on Aug 3 at 4:00. Tickets are 19.50 lawn and $35 pavillion and go on sale this Saturday.

I can do without She Wants Revenge, but otherwise it looks like a great bill.

• Donewaiting/San Francisco: The Deal sisters become off-Broadway material
  This Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Amnesia hosts a play called “The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Deal.”
• Donewaiting/LA: Clap Your Hands Live Review
  “Since I went in with my head down, the band exceeded my expectations, especially for the first 30 minutes….”
• Spoon Revving Up For ‘Wild’ New Album
  “According to frontman Britt Daniel, the new Merge set will be released in the first half of 2007 if the foursome finishes recording it by the end of this summer.”

Centro-Matic played Columbus Friday, melting the faces off of everyone in the audience. It was one of the best shows I’ve seen in awhile.

Kim took some great photos of the band as well as touring openers Great Lake Swimmers. Here’s a highlight:

Click here to see the entire gallery.

Eric Metronome has had a prolific career, writing original music as a solo artist and in his band, Tiara. As if that wasn’t enough, in January of 2006 he started a project where he is recording a new cover song every week of the year. That’s 52 for those of you counting at home. Check it out here.

He’s already covered some amazing songs by arists like John Lennon, John Vanderslice, and Smog.

On top of that, there is a podcast feed you can subscribe to so you can automatically download the new song each week.

Whether its going to signal a long-term shift is unclear, but this winters ATP festival is relocating from Pontins to Butlins. Having read the blurb on the ATP website, I’m all for this move, after all, the new location offers : “…Burger King, Pizza Hut, Finnigan’s fish and chips, Sun and Moon, Skyline Café and Yacht Club Dining room. Onsite facilities include a cinema, Splash Water World – a sub-tropical environment that has a huge wave pool, a swimming pool, 3 flumes and also a flume based raft ride.”

Oh, Thurston Moore to curate. Iggy and the Stooges, Sonic Youth both confirmed.

AND A FLUME BASED RAFT RIDE !!!

Bob Miller, former booking agent for Elbo’s in Dayton, OH, wrote about some big problems happening with the club in our message board. If your band has a show booked there, you might want to think twice.

It’s not like I’ve got some foundation of journalistic integrity to preserve, but I guess for the sake of perspective, it’s probably fair for me to admit my general affection for all things Doug Martsch. I mean, let’s face it- I’d probably listen to a recording of him hitting golf balls at the driving range. So count me as one of the many who’ve been anxiously waiting the five years since their last release for some new material. After several days of almost continuous listening to You In Reverse, I’m happy to report that my patience has been well rewarded.

For a band who’s earliest intentions were to be a revolving cast of characters to solely provide the vehicle for Martsch’s songwriting, this, their sixth studio album, seems to be much more about a cohesive group of players working together to find and make their sound. There is a warmth, an almost organic texture, that might make the listener believe they were hearing an analog tape of a live session. The result is a collection of songs that may be more stylistically related to earlier guitar-heavy recordings such as Perfect From Now On, as opposed to the more recent and poppy Ancient Melodies of the Future. Gone is the evidence of slick production and overdubs that were part of Melodies and Keep It Like a Secret.
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Over on our San Francisco music blog, you can read Craig’s account of the annual Noise Pop festival. READ IT OR DIE.