Story Archives of 'Music'

The Indie Blog Curse

By Virginia Prescott on Thursday, November 5, 2009.

Twenty-three-year old Nathan Williams has had a stressful year. The singer and guitarist records under the name Wavves. And in the past eleven months or so, he’s seen the kind of rise and fall that provided the arc of the “behind the music” series for years: gritty-beginnings, rocketing rise, drug-induced crash and burn ending in rehab, Holiday Inn lounge circuit, or reality show.

At first, music blogs and established rock magazines alike embraced Wavves’ lo-fi, punk aesthetic, and hundreds of people showed up at his very first show. Nathan was on top of the world. But at Spain's Primavera music festival in May, things took a drastic tumble. He was disjointed, he couldn’t play worth a lick, and angry fans hurled bottles and shoes at him. The blogs documented his self-destructive episode, and reader responses turned rancid.

Washington Post pop music critic Chris Richards has seen the same backlash happen to bands like Vampire Weekend and Black Kids, and hip-hop performers like Charles Hamilton. Richards believes that as music blogs take up a bigger role in promoting and distributing the newest bands, more aspiring young stars will be thrust into the spotlight well before they’re ready. Chris Richards joins us from the studios at the Washington Post.

The Washington Post: Indie-Rock Success So Sudden, It Actually Hurts

(Photo by The Accent via Flickr/Creative Commons)

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Echo Locations: Karda Estra

By John Diliberto on Thursday, November 5, 2009.

Karda Estra is the recording persona of English composer Richard Wileman. Wileman started out as a rocker but veered into composing classical works for chamber ensembles and electric guitar. His imagery tends toward the gothic and his music to the dramatic.

John Diliberto talked to him about his sound as part of the "Echolocation" series.

Here's What's Awesome: Double Guitar Solos, Dating Rescues

By Brady Carlson on Sunday, November 1, 2009.

I think Here's What's Awesome needs a catchphrase - something as catchy as Gomer Pyle's "Sha-zam!" but as down to earth as Daniel Schorr's "This is Daniel Schorr." Let's think on this as we explore another week of awesome links:

And next, three people and a piccolo
Two Brazilian musicians prove that a) you don't need two guitars to play a guitar duet, and b) you don't need to "beatbox" or sing about robots to become an internet musical sensation!

Rena Jones: The Diva of Ambient Cello

By John Diliberto on Wednesday, October 28, 2009.

There are plenty of electronic cellists who loop their own music, but Rena Jones is one of the few who also orchestrates her own electronica arrangements. She creates intricate patterns of rhythms, glitches and ambient moods.

2009: The Year That Hip-Hop Died?

By Virginia Prescott on Tuesday, October 27, 2009.

Thirty years ago, three guys from Englewood, New Jersey took the instrumental track from Chic’s disco hit “Good Times,” added some rhymes and before you could say, “You don’t stop,” The Sugarhill Gang was climbing the charts with “Rapper’s Delight.”

It was the song that introduced hip-hop to America’s pop music charts. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five followed days later with “Superrappin” and street corner hip-hop was on its way to becoming a Top 40 mainstay. The late eighties brought NWA and gangsta rap from big names like Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and later Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent.

The golden age of hip-hop is fading, or that’s the read from The New Yorker’s pop music critic Sasha Frere-Jones. He says that the electronic sounds of techno and club music are replacing the bluesy swing that once fueled the genre. Don’t ditch your gold chains just yet. Sasha has an artist or two up his sleeve that he says are bringing back the old school sound.

The New Yorker: Wrapping Up

indieWIRE: Is hip-hop really dead? Or just resting?

(Photo by id-iom via Flickr/Creative Commons)

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Here's What's Awesome: The Internet Sings, and Remakes Star Wars

By Brady Carlson on Sunday, October 25, 2009.

Virginia Prescott sings!

Support for Here's What's Awesome comes from the Here's What's Awesome Foundation, helping awesome links help you, since 2008. On the web at... well, right here.

So what song is it y'all want to type in and have a computer sing?

Dante's Inferno Meets Bazooka Joe at Boston Book Festival

By Virginia Prescott on Thursday, October 22, 2009.

The first ever Boston Book Festival kicks off on Saturday. It’s a star-studded affair, with a keynote address by Orhan Pamuk. Authors Richard Russo, Anita Diamant and Dennis Lehane are among the literary world attractions. As is, inexplicably, Hollywood actress Alicia Silverstone. Venues are all near Copley Square and they are all free.

One panel caught our eye. It’s called And Now for Something Completely Different, and it’s running a little under the radar.

One of the speakers is cartoonist R. Sikoryak, and he’s the only comic artist on the bill. His new collection Masterpiece Comics delivers adaptations of literary classics, such as Crime and Punishment rendered in Bob Kane-era Batman style, or Charlie Brown as a cockroach in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. R. Sikoryak joins us with more on Masterpiece Comics.

And if you’re interested in comics history, there’s an exhibit opening Saturday at Keene State College that’ll catch your eye. It’s called "Out of Sequence: Underrepresented Voices in American Comics" and it’s showing at the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery. The works range from early newspaper strips to digital internet comics, and feature work by minority and women artists.

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Greil Marcus Takes on America

By Virginia Prescott on Thursday, October 22, 2009.

America had a name long before it had a culture. Amerige, the land of Americus, was tagged in 1507 when a poet and a cartographer pieced together a map of the Mundus Novus, including the vast land that Amerigo Vespucci stumbled upon on his way to the indies. It was America’s first invention: itself.

That creation begins A New Literary History of America edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors. It’s a collection of pivotal ideas, influential writings and eurkea! moments that shaped a nation. We get Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the invention of the blues. The Declaration of Independence and Linda Lovelace.

The anthology takes up films, speeches, love letters, country songs, paintings, comic strips, supreme court decisions, and rock n’roll. All made in America and all looked at with fresh eyes in two hundred essays commissioned and written for this book. Co-editor Greil Marcus, joins us from New York to tell us more about A New Literary History of America.

The Harvard Crimson: New American Lit. Vol. Sparks Debate

Los Angeles Times: 'A New Literary History of America' by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors

(Photo by Josh Kellogg via Flickr/Creative Commons)

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Brian Blade: Out From Behind the Drum Kit

By Virginia Prescott on Wednesday, October 21, 2009.

Brian Blade has come a long way from the Zion Baptist Church in Shreveport, Louisiana where his father was a pastor. Brian and his brother came up playing music. Then Brian went on to study in New Orleans and it wasn’t long before the talented young drummer was playing with Ellis Marsalis and Joshua Redman.

Brian Blade has recorded with Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Daniel Lanois, and Emmylou Harris. Brian has also played with Bill Frisell and he’s a long time member of the Wayne Shorter Quartet, who he’ll be playing with in Boston this weekend.

Since 1998, Brian Blade has been stretching out his sound, composing and recording with Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band. Now on Mama Rosa, his fourth solo album, Brian stepped out from behind the drums to play guitar and sing. Brian Blade joins us on the line from Los Angeles to tell us about his long road from, or maybe back to, Shreveport and Mama Rosa.

Jazz 40 Fest at New England Conservatory

(Photo by bruno bollaert via Flickr/Creative Commons)

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Annalivia

By Kate McNally on Sunday, October 11, 2009.

Now a fixture of Boston's acoustic scene, Annalivia drops by the studios to talk with Kate and play a few songs.

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