Austin-based band raising money for Texas Democrats, including Dem. candidate for Railroad Commissioner.

By Blurt Staff

On October 13, Spoon, with special guest Gary Clark Jr., will perform a “rare intimate one-off date” at Austin’s The Parish to benefit Texas Democrats and the campaign of Mark Thompson, Democratic candidate for the office of Railroad Commissioner. Tickets for the show will go on sale 10 a.m. Central time Thursday, October 2.

No word as to why the office of Railroad Commissioner is so important to the band, but if we had to speculate, it’s ‘cause everybody loves a train.

For more information on tickets, go to Spoontheband.com.

“Conspiracy to Riot” tells the story of Francis’ friend Jared Paul, arrested at RNC.

By Blurt Staff

Like many other Americans, Sage Francis was outraged by the arrest of journalists and protestors at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN earlier this month. He’s dealing with it by releasing the track “Conspiracy to Riot,” available free at www.conspiracytoriot.com.

The song tells the story of Francis’s friend Jared Paul, one of the journalists--including Democracy Now's Amy Goodman--who were arrested during the convention for no clear (read: real) reason except that they voiced dissent. The press release from Francis’s label, Anti-:

Many Americans watched as scores of those who were providing coverage of the RNC were arrested and jailed, notably the arrest of “Democracy Now!” host Amy Goodman and two of her colleagues, which was captured on video and became the YouTube sound byte of the convention for people who weren’t just watching the network’s coverage.  The aggression of the police became personal for Francis when they arrested his friend, journalist Jared Paul.

Francis writes “out of the thousand unjust arrests that will happen this year, why am I focusing on this one in particular? Jared Paul is a fellow Providence poet and musician. We've lived together, toured together, protested together, argued with one another from time to time, and shared many incredible moments over the past 15 years. He is a social worker, a community organizer, a selfless human being and a champion of justice. He'd do the same for me in return. He'd probably do the same for you.”

The song is intended to raise awareness of the fascism that informed these arrests, as well as cash to cover Jared Paul’s legal defense expenses. Visitors to the website can read Paul’s complete story, and make donations. One reason donations are necessary is that the sheer volume of RNC arrests is too much even for the American Civil Liberties Union to cover. Support from friends—including Slug from Atmosphere, who posted Paul’s bail—has been steady, but not quite enough.

But it’s not all about one man. “This has less to do with a friend of mine possibly looking at jail time, and more to do with citizen's rights continually being trampled on,” says Francis. “There are thousands of innocent people in jail right now because of their lack of finances. This is a principle thing as much as it is personal.”

Preach it, brutha Sage.

Check out videos of Jared Paul performing "Get Dead" and the arrest of Amy Goodman:

JARED PAUL PERFORMING "GET DEAD": AMY GOODMAN'S ARREST VIDEO:

Compiled by Blurt Staff

206 digital, satellite and hi-def channels and nothin' on? Not likely. Here are BLURT's top music television picks of the day. The time is followed by the network/cable/satellite channel, then the name of the program and/or featured artist(s). All times are EST. For a comprehensive hour-by-hour listing, go to the VH1 Rock On TV site. Note that for certain channels, shows frequently repeat during the day on or subsequent days.

TIME (EST) / CHANNEL / PROGRAM / ARTIST(S)

7:00 AM ABC: Good Morning America: James Taylor

8:00 AM PBS: Sesame Street: LL Cool J

9:00 AM Syndicated: The Martha Stewart Show: Ludacris

11:00 AM VH1 Classic in Concert: Rush in Rio

1:00 PM RAVE HD: Other Voices: Ray Davies , Candie Payne , Mick Flannery , Glen Hansard , Markéta Irglová

3:00 & 6:00 PM Ovation: The Old, Weird America: Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music w/Nick Cave , Elvis Costello , Beck , Sonic Youth , DJ Spooky , Jarvis Cocker

6:00 PM BET: 106 & Park: T.I. , Robin Thicke , Ludacris

6:00 PM FUSE: Loaded: Rise Against

8:00 PM VH1C: Krush Groove (1985)

9:15 PM IFC: The Henry Rollins Show: Placebo

11:30 PM Comedy Central: The Colbert Report: James Taylor

11:35 PM CBS: The Late Show With David Letterman: The Virgins

11:35 PM NBC: The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Jazmine Sullivan

12:00 AM Great American Country: Opry Live: Keith Urban , Marty Stuart , Carolina Chocolate Drops

12:05 AM ABC: Jimmy Kimmel Live: Rick Springfield

12:37 AM CBS: The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson: Alice Cooper

1:35 AM NBC: Last Call with Carson Daly: Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip

2:00 AM Ovation: The Old, Weird America: Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music w/Nick Cave ,

Elvis Costello , Beck , Sonic Youth , DJ Spooky , Jarvis Cocker

It's always a good news day when Courtney's restless...

By Fred Mills

Courtney Love's at it again. Anyone within 30 paces of MySpace the other day probably felt the earth tremors as La Love posted to her page that she is in need of a maid - specifically, a "non-thieving, non-freaky housekeeper."

The entire message:

"Is anyone [an] insanely clean neat-freak, near Malibu? I need a non-thieving, non-freaky housekeeper. I know this is weird [but] the agencies suck and I'm sick of PIGS who steal, it's as simple as that. So fuck it, why not try MySpace. No superfans please. And it's very good money."

Whoah - the rest of us will remain stuck with our thieving, freaky housekeepers, no doubt, while the folks with the dough, like love, scoop up all the good ‘uns.

In totally unrelated news, one of the most popular Courtney Love news stories (from way back in 2006) currently floating around the Internet bears the headline, "I Took LSD When I Was Four." Apropos of nothing, we think.

[Photo credit: Ben Phen]

Essential documentary traces the history of American music.

By Blurt Staff

Old Weird America, Rani Singh's (director of the Harry Smith Archives) documentary film tracking the history of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music is aired three times today on the Ovation channel as part of Ovation's "American Revolutionaries" series - see BLURT's daily channel guide elsewhere in this news section for the times. It was shown last year on Ovation and also made the rounds of the film festival screening circuit in America and Europe; it initially was available on DVD as part of the Harry Smith Project Revisited 2-CD/2-DVD box set.

The acclaimed film follows the Anthology from its initial compilation of 78 records from rural Americana to its release on Folkways Records in 1952. Instrumental in helping inspire the urban folk revival of the 1960s, the Anthology continues to influence modern music. Testifying to the lasting impact of the Anthology and the remarkable personality of Harry Smith are interviewees Elvis Costello, Beck, Sonic Youth, Beth Orton, Philip Glass, David Johansen, John Cohen and Greil Marcus. Meanwhile, concert footage featuring Beck, Nick Cave, Beth Orton and others brings the music itself to life. (One of the DVDs in the HSPR box went even further, offering complete performances by those artists along with David Johansen, Elvis Costello, Nick Cave, Lou Reed, David Glass, Richard Thompson, Ed Sanders and the Folksmen (!).

We didn't mention it in the CD review, but her album is going to wind up in BLURT's Top 20 this year...

By Fred Mills

New Orleans - by way of Sweden - songbird Theresa Andersson is on the road with her acclaimed Hummingbird, Go! album now through mid-November; on selected dates she'll be joined by her friends and homelanders Ane Brune and Tobias Froberg.

No less an, uhh, authority than your friendly neighborhood BLURT recently gave it a nine-star review, citing the songbird's "undeniable earthiness and primal power" that channels both the polyglot musicality of her adopted hometown (she's lived in the Crescent City since 1990, at the age of 18) and the contemporary, all-over-the-map indiepop sound Sweden. She's a cross between Kate Bush, Feist, Joan Osborne, Duffy and Tori Amos.

Check her MySpace page for more bio info and sound samples.

All the more remarkable: the cinematic-sounding album was recorded almost entirely in her kitchen, with Swedish producer Tobias Froberg helping bring the project to fruition. Her shows have been described as "little masterpieces of functional choreography," which is to say: check out the astounding, much-viewed home video posted below the tour dates if you want to get a sense of where she's coming from. That's a lot of music coming from just one throat, two hands, and a pair of bare feet.

Wait for the moment near the end when she picks up her violin (her main instrument, if you can dig that) - it'll bring tears to your eyes.

Theresa Andersson Tour Dates:

Sep 30 2008    10:45P

            DC9    Washington DC, Washington DC

Oct 2 2008      9:00P

            Howlin' Wolf (NOLA INDIE ROCK FEST DAY 1 w/ The City Life, Big Blue Marble & MOD Dance Party DJs)       New Orleans, Louisiana

Oct 3 2008      7:00P

            Borders Metairie - In store performance         Metairie, Louisiana

Oct 5 2008      5:00P

            Bayfest - Launching Pad Stage          Mobile, Alabama

Oct 9 2008      10:30P

            Sticky Fingerz             Little Rock, Arkansas

Oct 10 2008    10:00P

            Two Stick Sushi          Oxford, Mississippi

Oct 12 2008    8:00P

            The Belcourt Theatre (w/The Everybodyfields)         Nashville, Tennessee

Oct 18 2008    8:00P

            The Grey Eagle (w/Seth Kauffman)   Asheville, North Carolina

Oct 19 2008    8:15P

            Gravity Lounge           Charlottesville, Virginia

Oct 22 2008    9:00P

            Living Room (CMJ SHOWCASE w/Ane Brun, Tobias Froberg & The Real Ones)             New York, New York

Oct 23 2008    8:00P

            Tin Angel (w/ Ane Brun & Tobias Froberg)   Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Oct 24 2008    9:00P

            IOTA Club & Cafe (w/ Ane Brun & Tobias Froberg)            Arlington, Virginia

Oct 25 2008    7:30P

            Attucks Theatre (w/ Ane Brun & Tobias Froberg)     Norfolk, Virginia

Oct 28 2008    8:00P

            The Basement             Nashville, Tennessee

Oct 29 2008    10:45P

            Canal Street Tavern (The Buddha Den Presents)       Dayton, Ohio

Oct 30 2008    9:00P

            Rathskeller Restaurant            Indianapolis, Indiana

Nov 1 2008     7:00P

            Schubas (w/ Ane Brun & Tobias Froberg)      Chicago, Illinois

Nov 6 2008     9:00P

            London Music Club (w/Tobias Froberg)        London, Ontario

Nov 7 2008     8:45P

            El Mocambo (w/ Ane Brun & Tobias Froberg)          Toronto, Ontario

Nov 8 2008     8:00P

            Les Saints (w/Ane Brun & Tobias Froberg)   Montreal, Quebec

Nov 10 2008   10:00P

            Great Scott (w/Ane Brun & Tobias Froberg)             Allston, Massachusetts

Nov 12 2008   9:15P

            Union Hall (w/Ane Brun & Tobias Froberg) Brooklyn, New York

First Macca-Youth project in ten years.

By Blurt Staff

Fresh off his musical trip to Israel where by some accounts he reignited Arab-Israeli tensions and received death threats for his efforts, Paul McCartney now sets his sights on a different type of blaze as he returns in his electronica guise, The Fireman. A duo comprising Macca and producer/Killing Joke member Youth, Fireman issues its first recording in over a decade on Nov. 18 via MPL/ATO. Titled Electric Arguments, the 13-song collection of McCartney compositions is also the first Fireman release to feature vocals.

No word on whether he'll be issuing another nude promotional version of the record or a single this time around like he did before:

Below see the official press release plus tracklisting for the album.

 ***

"Ambient dreams in rainbow arches describe the circles of The Fireman", is how the duo described their music in a rare interview around the release of their last album 'Rushes' in 1998.  Their first album 'Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest', released in 1993, was a solid ambient dance album heavy on electronics.  Around this time the identity of The Fireman was unknown until the press exposed the duo as none other than Paul McCartney and Youth. The now defunct music bible Melody Maker heaped praise on the project, "Paul McCartney has discovered dance music - the results are staggeringly brilliant.  They (The Fireman) take a melody and, with dexterous genre-hopping through ambient, trance and house, evolve a number of breathtaking variations."

Last year The Fireman returned to work again to start work on what would become Electric Arguments, ultimately finding thirteen days and recording a song on each of those days over the course of a little more than a year. The results this time are entirely different from any previous Fireman release.

Earlier this year The Fireman donated a new track, Lifelong Passion (which appears on Electric Arguments) to the charity Adopt-A-Minefield.  This new track marked a directional change for The Fireman, showcasing a more traditional song based sound with vocals, completely unlike anything on the previous two albums.  Speculation increased as a 'studio source' was quoted in The Times of London as describing their new sound 'like Arcade Fire meets Led Zeppelin'.  So what had The Fireman been up to and what does the album sound like?

Electric Arguments is an eclectic and varied album consisting of thirteen tracks, each written and recorded in the space of one day.   McCartney and Youth went into the studio with no master plan or clear direction. Instead they let the project take a life of its own, with the results surprising them as much as anyone.

The record opens with a stylistically diverse trifecta: Nothing Too Much Just Out Of Sight is a classic rock attention grabber followed by a hairpin turn in the form of the acoustic driven Two Magpies and yet another direction with Sing The Changes, a euphoric upbeat song with an undeniable and instantly memorable melody.  Electric Arguments continues in this fashion, each track with an entirely different personality yet all meshing perfectly.  Other standouts include 'Light From Your Lighthouse', 'Sun Is Shining' and 'Dance 'Til We're High', all in keeping with the genre-hopping spirit of the first two Fireman albums and demonstrating Paul McCartney's unending interest in pure musical possibilities.  This is an album set to both surprise and delight the listener.  Made with no record company restraints or a set release date to work to, Electric Arguments is a work of complete artistic and creative freedom.




Track listing:

1)              Nothing Too Much Just Out Of Sight
2)              Two Magpies
3)              Sing The Changes
4)              Traveling Light
5)              Highway
6)              Light From Your Lighthouse
7)              Sun Is Shining
8)              Dance 'Til We're High
9)              Lifelong Passion
10)           Is This Love?
11)           Lovers In A Dream
12)           Universal Here, Everlasting Now
13)           Don't Stop Running

More classic AC/DC riffs than you can shake a Catholic schoolboy's uniform at.

By Fred Mills

Though California's hard-rocking Rhino Bucket typically gets dismissed by indier-than-thou mooks as just a low-rent band of AC/DC wannabes, in truth the group was a breath of fresh air when it first appeared in the late ‘80s at the height of Aquanet-and-spandex metal. Rhino Bucket navigated the perilous alterna-waters of the ‘90s, broke up, got back together, played musical chairs with the lineup, and eventually resurfaced for good in 2006 with the quite-excellent And Then It Got Lucky. Rhino Bucket's got six albums in the discography and plans to release a new disc in 2009. Rhino Bucket 2008: Georg Dolivo (vocals, guitar), Brian "Damage" Forsythe (guitar), Reeve Downes (bass) and Simon Wright (drums).  

You gotta love a band whose guitarist calls himself Damage.

"Blue collar. Black leather. Hard times." - that's how the band describes itself, and hey, if you're not down with a tried-and-true AC/DC kinda riff, then you're probably not even reading this news item in the first place.

So here's a few things you need to do:

First, go to their MySpace page and cue up pretty much any song on the music player, and tell me it don't rock your fucking socks off.

Next, head over to eBay and pick up a coupla their old discs for cheep. Or, if you're actually in the mood to put some coin directly in the band's pocket, buy some tracks from ‘em via download.

Lastly, keep checking the MS page for tour dates - they have couple coming up in November, and word just arrived that for all you forward-looking types, you can start prepping for the first Rock Gone Wild festival next August (Aug. 20-23, 2009) in Algona, Iowa, where the band will be one of the main acts among 50 + slated to perform.

Also headlining: Helix, Junkyard, Dangerous Toys and Saigon Kick. And don't you even try to retroactively lump any of those bands in the cheesemetal category; as with Rhino Bucket, they were the good guys, and it wasn't their fault that grunge came in to kick ‘em off the stage because they were true rock ‘n' roll populists. You think I'm kiddin'?

Tickets will be available to the general public in the coming weeks. To get more info and receive updates, please join www.fevertalk.net. Additionally, Rock Gone Wild fans can receive unprecedented "behind-the-scenes" updates by reading Anatomy of a Festival at www.anatomyofafestival.wordpress.com. This blog promises to chronicle the ups - and downs - of planning a major music event.

Got all that? Good. Now sing along with "One Night Stand" by Rhino Bucket. You'll feel good that you did.

Don't need no sympathy

Don't need no charity

Don't need no helping hand

All I need is a

Rock N' Roll band


Didn't light your fire baby

Didn't tell you lies

Didn't say I wanted you

But you never said goodbye


One more, one night stand

One more, one night stand


Don't see your point of view

Don't see much point in you

Don't like the games you play

All I want to do is get away


Bridge


One more, one night stand

One more, one night stand


I didn't light your fire

I didn't tell you to stay

Didn't say I wanted you

So stay the fuck away

Don't need sympathy

Don't need charity

Just one more

One night stand


One more, just give me one more

One night stand

One more, I just want one more

One night stand


Don't need sympathy

One night stand

Don't need no charity

One night stand

Just give me one more

One night stand


One more, one night stand

One more, one night stand

Two man Ween extravaganza, life without a net, in Chapel Hill in 1992.

By Fred Mills

This ain't your mama's Ween. Or, perhaps more accurately, maybe this WAS your mama's Ween: just Dean and Gene, armed with samples, tapes, guitars and a drum machine, making with the rude, crude live show all by their lonesomes. The personnel:

Gene Ween-Vocals and Guitar

Dean Ween- Vocals and Guitar

Bass and Drums-

Yamaha Digital Audio Tape Deck

Kirk Miller- Live Sound Engineer

 Now Music Video Distributors is set to drop a document of just that. Due Nov. 11, the CD/DVD captures Ween in full, uh, flight live at the Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill, recorded Dec. 9, 1992.

It will also include a bonus DVD containing footage from the same general time frame, filmed in the Netherlands (Vera Groningen 10-31-91), Columbus OH (Staches 3-6-92) and WTSR radio in Trenton, New Jersey (1-10-92).

See below for Dean Ween's liner notes about the Chapel Hill show and a full tracklisting for the DVD.

***

"From our first "real" concert in 1987 until the release of Chocolate and Cheese in 1994 we played concerts as a duo--Aaron on vocals and acoustic guitar and me on electric guitar with the bass and drums played from a cassette deck. Later on we purchased a DAT machine for the backing tracks and this speeded up our show a little. A typical Ween set was no more than an hour long, and we'd play about 24 songs in that amount of time. There was no jamming at all whatsoever. Things are a lot different now. Every night we had to face the crowd pretty much naked, there was nowhere to hide, no room for an off night. We did a lot of talking to the crowd and one another between songs, we pretty much had to. We faced a lot of hostile audiences when we were the opening act on a show. There was a lot to hate about us but we won over a lot of people in the process because of our sheer nerve. A lot of our closest friends feel that Ween live pretty much ended when we switched to a traditional band format with a bass player and drummer; I dunno about that but by the release of Pure Guava our show was no longer interesting to us. We were doing a lot more touring and playing the same songs with no room for improvising had gotten boring for us. Once we started releasing records and touring more as a duo we got a lot better at it, we stopped caring about what the audience thought of us and just focused on having fun onstage. This was when we maximized our brownness. I don't remember too much about this concert other than the fact that we played the Cat's Cradle a lot of times and in a few different locations. Public Enemy had played the club a few nights before and blown up the P.A. and our sound man Kirk Miller was pissed. I thought it was great because Public Enemy are one of my favorite bands of all time and I was just happy to be playing on the same stage. Our touring party consisted of Me, Aaron, and Kirk Miller, our soundman and driver. Once we signed to Elektra we added a tour manager, Paul Monahan, who would stay with us for many years. Anyway, this is pretty typical of what we sounded like on a good night those first few tours."

DVD track list:

1. Captain Fantasy (Vera)

2. You Fucked Up (Vera)

3. Tick (Vera)

4. Boing (Vera)

5. Listen To The Music (WTSR)

6. Don't Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy) (Vera/Staches)

7. Cover It With Gas And Set It On Fire (Vera)

8. Seconds (Vera)

9. Marble Tulip Juicy Tree (Staches)

10. Gladiola Heartbreaker (Vera)

11. Common Bitch (Staches)

12. The Goin' Gets Tough From The Getgo (Vera/WTSR)

13. Reggaejunkiejew (Staches)

14. Old Queen Cole (Vera)

15. Shalom Absalom (WTSR)

16. Don't Laugh (I Love You) (Vera)

17. Mountain Dew (Vera)

Beats out Black Mountain, Stars, Kathleen Edwards and others...

By Fred Mills

As previously announced, Canada's annual Polaris Prize - that country's equivalent of Britain's Mercury Prize - had some strong contenders this year. Whittled down from about 40 deserving artists, this year's finalists were:

• Black Mountain - In The Future
• Plants And Animals - Parc Avenue
• Basia Bulat - Oh, My Darling
• Stars - In Our Bedroom After The War
• Caribou - Andorra
• Shad - The Old Prince
• Kathleen Edwards - Asking For Flowers
• Two Hours Traffic - Little Jabs
• Holy Fuck - LP
• The Weakerthans - Reunion Tour
• 
  

Yesterday an 11-judge panel made its final determination and the winner is to receive $20,000. Previous winners included Patrick Watson and Final Fantasy's Owen Pallett, and for 2008 it is.... Caribou, a/k/a Dan Snaith, whose brilliant Andorra (Merge) was one of the highlights of 2007.

Check out the video below of Patrick Watson announcing the winner on MySpace TV.

Patrick Watson (2007 winner) announces 2008 Polaris Music Prize!