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Now Playing November 2008

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

First, best e-mail I got last week (a haiku-ish reply). From my friend Philip Price of Winterpills, who've been on this list before: sorry. election time got crazy. i had volunteered. what a time. i drank too much. then my hard drive crashed and i temporarily lost everything. but i found it. [...] A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

Gentrification in Brooklyn: Turn the Page.

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

By Martin Bisi The explosion of energy I saw on Brooklyn's streets after the Obama win, recedes into the background. And I feel I'm looking at an economic and social playing field that is now undeniably different. The financial crisis has brought a shift in the dynamics of how the neighborhoods will change in the coming years. And I do believe neighborhoods like everything else, occupy the 4th dimension of time, so their identity exists in the context of history and change. The result of the election also has brought about a massive shift, in the mental realm - how 2.5 million residents see their connection with the rest of the continent. That these two forces would occur simultaneously, almost gives a sense of cosmic synchronicity - paradigm shifts occur at break points.Compared to the near spiritual feelings about Obama's election, the downsizing of the economy in Brooklyn is the yang, to Obama's yin. I live across the street from an empty lot that has been the anticipated location

You Say Recession, I Say Opportunity

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Perhaps I'm in denial. Yesterday while hearing "Stormy Weather" on Marketplace (yet again), I actually stuck my fingers in my ears and sang, "La La La La La Laahhhhhhhh! There's plenty of money and plenty of people who want to give it to ME!" Yep. I really did. Oh, I'm not completely delusional. I've got a 401(k is for KILLJOY). But just think. NO ONE ever hits a home run thinking "I suck" [...] A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

SINGLES AGAIN / Chuck Eddy

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Chuck Eddy dusts off his old vinyl and scratches his head. We all win. Greetings, BLURT readers. This column's theme is fairly simple: Basically, I sort alphabetic ally through my shelves for dusty old 7-inch vinyl indie singles from acts that aren't household names, and try to figure out why I wound up keeping them in the first place. This is the 8th installment (first two appeared at Idolator.) *** INDIAN JEWELRY "In Love With Loving"/"Lost My Sight" (On/On Switch, 2005) The modestly plain-brown-paper-colored cardboard picture sleeve depicts two apparent humans with ichthyosaurus skulls where their heads should be, but joined Siamese-twin-like at the heart. Notes typed on a 6 1/2" x 5 1/2" piece of paper inside follow screwed-up 16th Century French theories about conjoined twins ("too tight a womb, tight clothes, and the manner in which a woman sat while pregnant") with by more up-to-date screwed-up Italian theories about demonic possession.

King Khan

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Episode Drei KING KHAN and KING LOUIE let decadence reign! Berlin bad boy, MTV darling and consummate crowd-pleaser King Khan recently ripped through the US on the maiden American voyage of his explosive soul revue, King Khan & The Shrines. After 10 years completely destroying the European continent, The Shrines are now being dutifully delivered to an American audience via Vice Records. The 10-piece band played clubs from east to west coast, the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago, and McCarren Pool, Southstreet Seaport and Andrew WK’s new nightclub in New York—early high caliber exposure due to the muscle behind the Vice machine. Like a hypnotist conjuring the sexual electricity slumbering deep within, King Khan can bring a crowd collectively to its knees. Think Stax and Specialty records, Volt and Veejay, Wilson Pickett, Sam Cooke, James Brown, and even Jon Spencer—King Khan has got the predatory magnetism to bend an audience

Letters from the Road: Colin Devlin

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Guest post this week from Irish singer-songwriter and one of the nicest musicians I know, Colin Devlin of the Devlins. Look for his solo project A Democracy of One out 2009 (yay!). Dear Kate, i'm really not sure what to write in this guest blog, there seems to be too many people writing so much crap on the internet i'm not sure if anything i have to say is going to improve this situation! the election, the war in Iraq, the economy [...] A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

Sonic Reducer

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Sonic Reducer: The Fertile Crescent of the 90s. Sonic Reducer returns to the fertile crescent of the late 80s - early 00s, probing for sonic caviar. Again, the disclaimer: I had a small thing to do w/the Whirlees record and did some work about 100 years ago with with The Oblivion Seekers. What can I say? Good is good.Morning 40 Federation, Trick Nasty (2002, self-released): if there's a better drunk-funk band anywhere in the world, I want to know about it. These New Orleans gutter snipes drag R&B, funk, blues and Crescent City music hall booze-alongs into the garage, dose them with near-fatal amounts of liquor, and let them stumble back into the streets. A 365 day a year drunk-punk rent party, the 40s really do put most other garage bands out to pasture with the utter purity of their trash. Their almost militant indifference to the norms of society (work, food, clothes, other people) pretty much puts them on their own little island in the Mississippi River: the i

In Short October 2008

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

First things first. THANK YOU for your feedback regarding The Daily Dose. Please do keep it coming because we can only achieve world domination together. I'm totally serious. That said, our winner is (through random selection) [...] A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

The Psychedelic Artist's Guide to Psychedelic Analysis

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Who knew that when I moved to Saugerties, New York (think Big Pink) a few years ago that my next-door neighbor would be founding psychedelic art legend Isaac Abrams? Far out. And miraculously, close by. Just in the converted antique auction house loft adjacent to ours. Yes, I’ve borrowed sugar[...] A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

OBAMA IN XBOXLAND

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

It’s just another day for you and me and hope and change in Burnout Paradise—but who invited Obama into that fantasy? By Randy Harward Perhaps by now you’ve seen GigaOm.com’s report that the Barack Obama campaign purchased in-game advertising on the Xbox 360 racing game Burnout Paradise (Electronic Arts). The billboard says, “Early Voting Has Begun” which, as GigaOm points out, is possibly “his subtle way of trying to get [gamers] off the couch.” Hey, with Somebody’s efforts to disenfranchise voters and flat-out steal elections, and the Rovian motivation of fearful bigoted evangelical voters, it’s worth a shot. Gamers are an increasingly substantial portion of the population. And to speak generally—and risk sounding like Bill O’Reilly when he called The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’s viewers “stoned slackers”—many of them probably prefer

Feedback

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Likely, you've occasionally wondered what exactly it is we do here at Outlandos Music (other than blog). The easy answer is that we've been plotting and scheming to remedy a lot of the stuff you hear me bitching and moaning about each week. Actually, the plotting and scheming was over ages ago [...] A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentati on of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

Running on Empty

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

On Friday, September 19th, 2008, there was no gasoline to be found in most parts of Nashville Tennessee. The gas pumps sat eerily abandoned, their nozzles shrouded with plastic bags. The few stations that did have gas, including the Exxon across the street from our hotel, were surrounded by lines of panicked motorists that stretched for blocks. Home of the Brave. I walked over to the station. There was a news van out front. Police and station staff were directing traffic to and from the pumps and explaining to people that they couldn't just turn in because the line started three blocks to the south. I was a bit uneasy, because we were to play in Harrodsburg Kentucky the following night and I wasn't sure how widespread the gas shortage had become. I had noticed in the preceding days that some stations in both Athens Georgia and Chattanooga were out of regular. Was the whole South out of gas? I called an acquaintance in Bowling Green who said that if I could

SEEING GREEN

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

SEEING GREEN By Gabe Dixon For me it all starts by trying to stay conscious of how my habits impact the environment. A few years ago, I ran into an old friend at the YMCA. That friend, Stephen Moseley, and his colleague Sam Davidson had just started an organization called Cool People Care which focused on the little things that busy people can do to lead socially and environmentally reponsible lives (a.k.a. "Save the World"). Their philosophy is that "there's no such thing as not enough time." The idea appealed to me, so I checked out their website and signed up for their daily "5 Minutes Of Caring" emails: 99-word articles that offer practical tips and motivation on how to make a positive impact each and every day. These e-mails are a great daily reminder that help keep me focused. The band has since worked with Cool People Care by contributing the exclusive song "New Day Revolution" to their book of the same name, and by performing at th

Now Playing October 2008

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Here's what's been keeping me company as of late: Lizzie Grant, Gramma SparkalerTrailerHeaven [sic]. Who is this girl? Un-freaking-believable. Don't let the bad graphics scare you away [...] A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

WASTELAND BAIT & TACKLE / James McMurtry

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

HAGLER VS. SUGAR RAY, BIDEN VS. PALIN Don't give her any more room to dance. Near as I can glean from YouTube, The Marvin Hagler/Sugar Ray Leonard fight took place on April 6th, 1987. No one I knew at that time could believe the outcome. It was supposed to be a bloodbath. Leonard was supposed to do the bleeding. Hagler had over fifty KO's under his Middle Weight belt. Leonard, a pumped up Welter Weight, had twenty three. Somehow, Leonard won on points. A couple of months later, June nineteenth, or Juneteenth , as they say in Texas, anniversary of the day in 1865 that the Texas slaves were finally told they were free, I was hanging out backstage at the Navasota Blues Festival . My lady friend, at that time, was a real good interviewer and had secured an interview with Johnny Clyde Copeland, the headliner at that festival. She and I constituted two of the four white people in attendance. Navasota is a black town in a b

Year Long Disaster

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

"Dude, Have You Been to Berlin Yet?!"Episode Zwei YEAR LONG DISASTERWhat do Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Mick Taylor, Malcom and Angus Young, Dee Dee Ramone, Phil Lynott and Johnny Thunders have in common? Ax innovators, all, but that's not where I'm going here. Ask any boy or girl and they'll tell you right away: damage and charm. When it comes to rock and roll, we can lock step behind a tight riff, player sight unseen. But to burn our interest even brighter, visual hints of damage and charm are required. Daniel Davies, descended from the stellar Sixties lineage of the brothers Davies of The Kinks, and at only twenty-six years of age, can already riff heavy, rip a solo, and groove live with the unselfconscious command of his collective musical forefathers. In support of their debut album on Volcom Records, Year Long Disaster—with Brad Hargreaves on drums and Rich Mullins on bass—has toured the US several times

SINGLES AGAIN / Chuck Eddy

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Chuck Eddy dusts off his old vinyl and scratches his head. We all win. Greetings, BLURT readers. This column's theme is fairly simple: Basically, I sort alphabetic ally through my shelves for dusty old 7-inch vinyl indie singles from acts that aren't household names, and try to figure out why I wound up keeping them in the first place. This is the 7th installment (first two appeared at Idolator.) *** GOOPS "One Kiss Left"/"Build Me Up Buttercup" (Blackout!, 1994) The picture sleeve's front cover looks like some kinda Big Daddy Roth Garbage Pail Kid Wacky Pack, with four cartoon band members (three crazy guys, one hot girl) racing along in their flaming monster truck with the license plate "KILL," brandishing baseball bats and barbecue forks, chasing a squirrel so scared its feet have turned into wheels. Back cover has the band all naked (with naughty bits peeking out) on a polka-dot couch, puking and slavering as a gigantic furry roden

Letters from the Road: Karl Mullen

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Guest post this week from one of my closest pals, musician, painter, fashionista, and all-around wickedly wonderful guy, Karl Mullen: Dear Kate, Thanks for the request to be a guest blogger. This is my first .... though back in the late 70's early 80's as an illegal alien I played in the punk band Carsickness under the nom de guerre ‘Joe Bloggs'. But that was old schooling blogging,....... ‘banging and shouting like a kid gone wrong' ....remember Patrik Fitzgerald? I had his record which was LP size so we used play it at 33 speed until some sober [...] A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compellin

CUT THROUGH THE NOISE: Don't Read This

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Perhaps it's inherently American, this idea that you CAN have it your way, an innate sense of entitlement --- even arrogance --- that, on the one hand, has its merits (the very foundation of our constitution, for example). A preemptory bumption perpetuated by Democracy. Capitalism. The American Dream. Liberal Arts degrees. Starbucks, among other things. So that on the other hand, it's this very country-born hubris/desire which induces the most insipid sort of denial, known to induce fabricated reworkings of reality from weapons of mass destruction to bedtime [...] A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

I Hate New Music

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Folks, I'm slackin' on you this week. Truth be told, I'm neck-deep in writing a business model and let's just say that crunching numbers: not my favorite. So instead of the usual musings, I'll be following my own