COMPETITION - Lucinda Williams

It's competition here on About The Music. We have a SIGNED copy of the brand new deluxe edition of Lucinda Williams' Grammy winning Car Wheels On A Gravel Road.


I said a while ago that I thought it should be included in the 10 best alt-country albums of all time and the deluxe edition is even better.

It features the original album remastered and sounding crisper than ever, in addition, 3 songs have been found and added as bonus tracks - "Down The Big Road Blues", "(We Are So) Out Of Touch" - the first version later rerecorded with a different arrangement for the `Essence' album and "Still I Long For Your Kiss" - the Tony Brown produced version that was on `The Horse Whisperer' soundtrack.

Disc 2 features a previously unreleased concert from July, 1998, recorded by WXPN Radio - found and remastered.

Disc: 1
1. Right In Time
2. Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
3. 2 Kool 2 Be 4 Gotten
4. Drunken Angel
5. Concrete And Barbed Wire
6. Lake Charles
7. Can't Let Go
8. I Lost It
9. Metal Firecracker
10. Greenville
See all 16 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2
1. Pineola
2. Something About What Happens When We Talk
3. Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
4. Metal Firecracker
5. Right In Time
6. Drunken Angel
7. Greenville
8. Still I Long For Your Kiss
9. 2 Kool 2 Be 4 Gotten
10. Can't Let Go
See all 13 tracks on this disc

Amazon reviews it thus, giving 5 stars:
This 1998 Grammy-winning release--Lucinda Williams's popular breakthrough--certainly merits the double-disc "deluxe edition" treatment. And it's hard to find significant fault with anything here: the remastered version of the original album, the second-disc live performance from that year featuring guitarists Kenny Vaughn and Bo Ramsey, and the smattering of outtakes (highlighted by a slower, sadder version of "Out of Touch" than the one Williams ended up releasing). Yet the set misses a glorious opportunity to document one of the more laborious (and notorious) recording projects, one that saw Williams switch cities, studios, and producers three times before she was satisfied with the results. And while the results confirm her judgment, fans would likely find it fascinating to hear a lot more takes from the original Austin sessions (featuring accordion master Flaco Jimenez and keyboardist Ian McLagan) or outtakes from the Nashville sessions with producer Steve Earle, before Williams overhauled the project in Los Angeles with Springsteen keyboardist Roy Bittan. Such a set could have put a revelatory spotlight on the creative process that resulted in an album widely regarded as Williams's masterpiece; instead, this release is more like souvenir snapshots. --Don McLeese

TO WIN all you have to do is leave a comment on this blog with your email address and why you think you deserve a signed copy of Car Wheels On a Gravel Road. Good luck!

Paolo Nutini news

PAOLO NUTINI

takes over NBC today

Performing "New Shoes"

on both

THE TODAY SHOW

8:30 AM EST and LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN 12:30AM EST

Debut album THESE STREETS in stores Tomorrow - Tuesday 1/30!

www.paolonutini.com

www.myspace.com/paolonutini

Weird

I just discovered that if you have sticky fingers and you mis-spell the URL for this website, you can get sent to the

MEGA SITE OF BIBLE STUDIES AND INFORMATION whose address is http://aboutthemusic.blogpot.com , instead of blogspot.com

How strange, why would any Bible study website chose a name linked to a music blog? Hmm.

THE VIEW ARE ON FIRE!!

Dundee Scotland's The View has hit the ground running. Their first single, "Wasted Little DJs" has just been released on iTunes with an added bonus. If you purchase the single you also receive a special seven-minute View documentary.

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=212052370&s=143441

Check out their MySpace page to stream Hats Off To The Buskers - the whole album! It's only up for a limited amount of time, so be sure to check it out now.www.myspace.com/dryburgh

Hats Off To The Buskers will be released in the US on March 13th on 1965 Records/Columbia Records. It just debuted at number 2 on iTunes in the UK!

New Bright Eyes MP3

Bright Eyes: Tourist Trap MP3 Download here

The Shins interview

I was at a Ryan Adams gig a few years ago I was standing waiting for the show to begin and got chatting to a Berkely student beside me. He was really into the same music and I asked him what he was getting into lately. "The Shins" he replied, "you just have to get your hands on Oh Inverted Road". I wrote it down in my notebook and duly purchased it. I've been hooked to the band since.


Ahead of the release of their (very good) new album, Wincing the Night Away Pitchfork have bagged an interview with the wonderful Albuquerque, New Mexico indie boys.

There's very little one can say about the Shins that hasn't already been said, and even less that warrants being said at all. Peel back the layers of hyperbole, hype, and backlash, and the Shins are simply an unassuming and excellent formalist indie pop band. In anticipation of its third Sub Pop full-length, Wincing the Night Away, we spoke with frontman James Mercer about the band's new album and their growing popularity.

READ ON HERE

DOWNLOAD: Phantom Limb MP3

Paolo Nutini info

how's this for media hype? The album released USA Jan 30.

Listen to your coffee for a fix

Well , almost.

But here's a neat idea. We all know about brainwaves right? That they change depending to what we're doing? For instance, the brainwaves of a sleeping person are vastly different than the brainwaves of someone wide awake. When the brain is given a stimulus, through the ears, eyes or other senses, it emits an electrical charge in response, called a Cortical Evoked Response. These electrical responses travel throughout the brain to become what you "see and hear". This activity can be measured using sensitive electrodes attached to the scalp.

So where am I going with all this? Well what if you could create the buzz you get from a cup of coffee, just by listening to a sound?

That's exactly what Anabubula.com has done. They've made a 20 minute stimulating mp3 to give you energy. Download Squad gave it a listen and said "The sound file sounds like a nature tape (birds chirping, etc) mixed with what seems like random noise at a very slowly escalating pitch. I was surprised how much it affected me; a couple of times I found myself actually becoming anxious, before realizing that I was simply being manipulated (by my own doing) by a sound file. Crazy, eh?" I'm downloading it now so I can work all night!

If you want to try, download here.

Retro about the music

Another logo!

How about this, another logo. This time from the wonderful music afficiando, Arron Walthall. He described it as a logo 'for a retro music blog'. I think it's great. Are there any more contenders and I'll rustle out a prize.

New logo

Thanks to Terence for this. He's designed a great, but rather ego-centric, logo. What do you think? If you want to try your hand we could create a competition.

Terence has an interesting website called My Community In A Box, or myCIAB.com
It's a Web 2.0 social networking, site so you can organise your community of friends, share photos, messages, get your calender together and everything. check it out.

New Young Love video

Young Love - Find a New Way

A little bit dancy, quity poppy, definately catchy and definately 2007. "Find A New Way," directed by Josh Mond and produced by Borderline Films.

Picasso Heather

Heather in the style of Picasso.

I made a picture of Heather in the style of Picasso. You try one yourself at www.mrpicassohead.com What do you think?

span>

CROWDED HOUSE - FAREWELL TO THE WORLD

(Parlophone)

Reviewer: Andrew Williamson



Ten years ago this month Crowded House played one last gig before they bid farewell to the world outside Sydney Opera House. Since then Tim Finn has gone solo and last year, Paul Hester the drummer and heart of the band hanged himself in a Melbourne park. But for one night, the band gave the world a final glimpse of everything great about the band.

Charged with the emotional intensity of a long goodbye between the band and 120,000 fans from all over the world packed into the stadium, the album opens, like every live album should with a huge swell of crowd noise. It then launches into a 24 song set featuring all of their hits including 'Weather With You', the breakthrough 1987 smash, 'Don't Dream It's Over' and 'Fall At Your Feet'.


Given their live reputation it is surprising that this is the band's first live CD. It is a great reproduction of a band going out with a bang. There's probably little to make new converts, but for the faithful it's an essential purchase.


For fans of: The Byrds, Tim Finn, Split Enz

Download: 'Weather With You','Distant Sun'

Rating:

Polly Toynbee fights back!

After the Guardian article about secular fundamentalists on Saturday
Polly Toynbee, one of the leaders of the movement, gets the knives out. In an editorial today she writes,

"The recent Guardian ICM poll showed 63% are non-believers, with 82% regarding religion as the cause of division. Fighting back on these pages, Tobias Jones intemperately called secularists totalitarian dictators pretending to be tolerant. However, secularists are not threatening to deny services to the religious: it is they who want to discriminate. Keeping the public sphere free of dogmas is not a denial of the right of anyone to act as they please - so long as they don't harm others."

You can read the rest of the article here.

Free software

Free Disk Cleaner

A nifty little tool for cleaning up your hard disk is available free today from Giveaway of the Day. I've just downloaded it, and you have until midnight to get it for free.

Everyday Giveaway of the Day does what it says: gives away software for free. For one day only. It's worth checking daily, I've got some neat applications from there.

New Jesse Malin album

New Jesse Malin Album - Glitter In The Gutter


I'm a big fan of Jesse Malin, since his release of The Fine Art of Self Destruction and had the please of interviewing him prior to the release of his second album, The Heat.


Jesse Malin ‘Glitter In The Gutter’

Jesse has just finished recording his third record titled Glitter In The Gutter, to be released Jan/Feb 2007 on One Little Indian Records. This album follows his two previous critically acclaimed releases: 2004's The Heat, and 2002's The Fine Art of Self Destruction. Glitter In The Gutter was recorded in various studios over the summer in Millbrook, New York; North Hollywood, CA; and in Jesse's native borough of Queens, New York. Guests on the album include Chris Shifflett of the Foo Fighters, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, long time pal Ryan Adams and special vocal performance by Bruce Springsteen as well as members of Jesse's own touring and recording band "The Heat." Many of the songs on the new album were written on electric guitar in Jesse's basement rehearsal studio in New York City over the past year. This rock album will include an intimate acoustic version of The Replacements' "Bastards of Young".

Tour dates

January tour confirmed



Sat Jan 20 Birmingham Barfly (087090 70999)

Sun Jan 21 Dublin Whelans ()

Mon Jan 22 Glasgow King Tuts (0870169 0100)

Tues Jan 23 Newcastle Academy 2 (0870 7712000)

Wed Jan 24 Liverpool Barfly (087090 70999)

Thurs Jan 25 London Islington Bar Academy (0870 7712000)

London and Glasgow- £10, Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle £8.50

Secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians

Secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians

Fascinating piece in the Guardian today. I read it on the train today on my way back to Cardiff from Bath, where I had a marvellous meal with my brother cooked for us by his friend Alison.

The article talks about the rise in the religion haters, the liberal secular fundamentalists, spearheaded by their champion, Richard Dawkins. Worth a read.

There's an aspiring totalitarianism in Britain which is brilliantly disguised. It's disguised because the would-be dictators - and there are many of them - all pretend to be more tolerant than thou. They hide alongside the anti-racists, the anti-homophobes and anti-sexists. But what they are really against is something very different. They - call them secular fundamentalists - are anti-God, and what they really want is the eradication of religion, and all believers, from the face of the earth.

In recent years these unpleasant people have had a strategy of exploiting Britain's innate politeness. They realised that for a decade overly sensitive souls (normally called the PC brigade) had bent over backwards to avoid giving offence. Trying not to give offence was, despite the excesses, a noble courtesy.

READ ON HERE

Game over animation

Game over

My friend Terence got a cam corder for Christmas and was making some animations, I was telling him about a great one I found on You Tube called game over. Using kitchen objects he recreated classic arcade games like Pac Man and space invaders, complete with sound effects. It's so good you just have to watch it.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)

I'm still on holiday. Yesterday Paul came around and we played a bit of draughts and I introduced him to a classic game called TWIXT. You can actually play it online here if you want to discover it. While we played we listened to the Legacy Edition of The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Anyway, after all this we filled our pot of tea and sat back to watch a film Paul had chosen from the library, he chose a little known classic, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.

Paul sold it to me as, "you know, a buddy movie". A what movie? Doherty (Eastwood), an ex con / bank robber is by fate, recklessly aided by Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges) helping Doherty make a sharp exit from his former criminal associates (played by G Kennedy & G Busey). All four characters are forced to overlook their pasts and differences, we see a transformation and are strung a long a brilliant story of classic-buddies-plotting-to-beat-the-impossible-odds. Michael Cimino (Director) immediately throws the story and the characters into quick pace. He litters the film with good looking sets, sweet colour and oddly placed obstacles - for instance, a deranged hick driving by with a boot full of white rabbits.

Amazon describes it thus: Jeff Bridges actually corralled an Oscar nomination for his spirited, oddball performance in this genre crime story, directed by first-timer Michael Cimino who (a short two films later) would bring down a studio with Heaven's Gate. Clint Eastwood plays a bank robber par excellence with a flair for explosives who is being hunted by his former partners, who think he has their loot from their last job. Bridges is his eager apprentice and sidekick, who helps him escape; when Eastwood finally makes peace with his hunters, Bridges convinces them to try a daring robbery--but things inevitably go awry. The relationship between Eastwood and Bridges is both funny and touching in this, one of Eastwood's better post-Dirty Harry efforts.

Anyway as Paul said, "I think you can tell I loved it by the number of times I said that was great". It's fun, laugh-out-loud funny, and enjoyable. I'd reccomend it.

2006 blogging

2006 blogging

With all this new template business I'd somehow deleted my sitemeter. That's now fixed and tracking hits, hence December stopped counting visits from the 19th, but thanks to everyone who has come here. If you've come back again, thanks awfully and tell your friends.