Thursday, March 27, 2008

Duffy official US video premiere for 'Mercy'

If you haven't checked out Duffy you're missing out. This retro-soul sensation has a FANTASTIC voice like you wouldn't believe.

Well she's in the US now and taking it by storm. She's charmed NYC after her SXSW showcase. Watch the official US video.

"Mercy" Video:
http://www.musicmedialink.com/a?t=e2002

Watch Duffy's official US video.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

R.E.M.'S NEW ALBUM, ACCELERATE, PREMIERES WORLDWIDE EXCLUSIVELY VIA iLIKE

iLike to Host Its First-Ever Worldwide Listening Party

March 24, 2008 -- Warner Bros. Records' R.E.M. and leading social music discovery service iLike announced today that Accelerate, the best-selling rock band's 14th studio album, will stream in its entirety exclusively on iLike and its syndicates beginning March 24th. A first for the company, the iLike Worldwide Listening Party will continue through March 26th, six days before the album's North American release on April 1st, 2008. Additionally, R.E.M. will record an exclusive video message introducing and discussing the album that will be available via iLike for distribution across the Web.

"Collaborating with iLike, and debuting Accelerate across the Web is in keeping with the spirit and immediacy of the album." says the band's frontman Michael Stipe. "We wanted to do something superfast and super real. Music, art, and pop culture are about right now, and nothing else matters. Accelerate is our turbo-charged response to the times we live in."

In addition to being available on iLike's website (www.ilike.com), the iLike Worldwide Accelerate Listening Party and exclusive R.E.M. video message will debut through the iLike Sidebar desktop plugin for iTunes and Windows Media Player (www.iLike.com/download), as well as across the Web via iLike's leading applications on Facebook, Bebo, hi5, and for the iPhone. R.E.M. have already been using the iLike Universal Artist Dashboard(TM) to post content, reaching their fans across multiple syndication channels via iLike's "Post Once, Publish Everywhere" platform. The album will also be available for pre-order via iLike's retail links to iTunes and Amazon.com.

"With 11 songs clocking in at just 34 minutes, Accelerate is intense and relevant, with songs inspired by the WTO riots in Seattle, the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and other topical themes," said Ali Partovi, CEO of iLike. "We are honored to play a role in helping R.E.M. introduce this album to their fans across the Web. This is our first-ever Worldwide Listening Party and R.E.M. has set a very high bar."

In many ways, Accelerate marks a break from R.E.M.'s recent albums, 1998's Up, 2001's Reveal, and 2004's Around The Sun -- all finely crafted works exploring the textures and possibilities of the recording studio. Accelerate ties together the band's entire canon as part of the vision for the new album turning old dreams into a new reality.

To listen to R.E.M's Accelerate and watch the band's exclusive video message, please visit: www.iLike.com/R.E.M. To learn more about iLike's multimedia blogging tools and other free services for artists, please visit: www.iLike.com/forartists.

Friday, March 21, 2008

CD Review: Karine Polwart

Karine Polwart - This Earthly Spell
(Hegri Music)



Polwart has spent the last year picking up BBC Radio 2 Folk awards for Best Album and Best Original Song (twice). As well as giving birth to her first child she's just released her second album. Clearly not one for sitting around then.

The awards are deserved. From the beautiful cascading opening harmonies of "The Good Years" the album just gets better. Lyrics and melodies are rooted in the Scottish Borders where she lives and grew up. She doesn't write in an oblique style that can mean anything and nothing but includes songs about AIDS and nuclear weapons; all the time with perfect melodies. If you're going to buy one folk album this year, you could do a lot worse than this.

For fans of: Sinead O'Connor, Alistair Roberts
Download: The Good Years; Sorry; Painted White
Rating: 7/10

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Jesse Malin - On Your Sleeve CD Review

JESSE MALIN - ON YOUR SLEEVE
(ONE LITTLE INDIAN)



Jesse Malin is a great singer-songwriter. His first album, The Fine Art of Self Destruction, recorded with the help of Ryan Adams propelled him into the limelight and remains a classic today.

This, his fourth studio album, recorded in 7 days, features 14 covers ranging from Tom Waits and Neil Young to Paul Simon and Lou Reed's ("Walk On the Wild Side"). He has deliberatly chosen a range of melodies different to his own design as a lesson in versatility. It sounds like it was a lot of fun to make but unless you are a diehard fan there's not a lot of reason to buy this. Having said that the songs are well chosen, the band are good and his cover of "Everybody's Talkin" is really great.

For fans of: Any of the original artists
Download: Me and Julio down by the school yard, Walk on the Wild Side
Rating: 7/10

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

new R.E.M. video - free download

"Living Well is the Best Revenge" kicks off R.E.M.'s storming new album Accelerate with a rousing combination or churning guitars and lyrical ire, with the kind of high and low harmonies that make it so defiantly a R.E.M. Tune.



iTunes has the video for you here and it's free.

R.E.M. - "Living Well Is The Best Revenge" (Vincent Moon Version)

Home is the most important place in the world



This photo is an old one and you've probably already seen it. But it passed me by and it is a wonderful picture, perhaps now that Ian Paisely has stepped down it is worth looking at the wonderful culmination of his career. Sitting on a red sofa with McGuinness, both sharing the same home.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Lá Fhéile Pádraig

Lá Fhéile Pádraig

Happy St Patrick's Day. It's the one day I get to use my St. Patrick's day joke.

Q: What did St Patrick say to the snakes as he was driving them out of Ireland?

A: You all right in the back there lads?

Perhaps you have to hear it.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

The Atheist Delusion

Secular fundamentalists have it all wrong, argues John Gray today in the Guardian.

Opposition to religion occupies the high ground, intellectually and morally,' wrote Martin Amis recently. Over the past few years, leading writers and thinkers have published bestselling tracts against God.



An atmosphere of moral panic surrounds religion. Viewed not so long ago as a relic of superstition whose role in society was steadily declining, it is now demonised as the cause of many of the world's worst evils. As a result, there has been a sudden explosion in the literature of proselytising atheism. A few years ago, it was difficult to persuade commercial publishers even to think of bringing out books on religion. Today, tracts against religion can be enormous money-spinners, with Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great selling in the hundreds of thousands. For the first time in generations, scientists and philosophers, high-profile novelists and journalists are debating whether religion has a future. The intellectual traffic is not all one-way. There have been counterblasts for believers, such as The Dawkins Delusion? by the British theologian Alister McGrath and The Secular Age by the Canadian Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor. On the whole, however, the anti-God squad has dominated the sales charts, and it is worth asking why.

Dawkins's "memetic theory of religion" is a classic example of the nonsense that is spawned when Darwinian thinking is applied outside its proper sphere.

Contemporary opponents of religion display a marked lack of interest in the historical record of atheist regimes.
.

READ ON

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Whiskeytown - Strangers Alamanac deluxe!!

WHISKEYTOWN ‘STRANGERS ALMANAC – DELUXE EDITION’

This is a wonderful records. If you're a Ryan Adams fan it's a must have, and it's just about to get better. (or they want more money so they're putting a couple of live tracks on and re-releasing).

2cds released March 31 Whiskeytown, the highly acclaimed band which launched the careers of four-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter-guitarist Ryan Adams as well as that of fiddler-singer-songwriter Caitlin Cary and singer-songwriter-guitarist Phil Wandscher will have its 1997 major label debut, Strangers Almanac re-released in a deluxe, 2-CD edition on March 31.

Disc one is the original album plus five previously unreleased live public radio performances. 17 of the 19 recordings on the second disc were previously unreleased recordings and are from the pre-production sessions for Strangers Almanac.

Friday, March 07, 2008

Duffy US album and appearances

DUFFY SINGLE "MERCY" 4th WEEK AT #1 IN UK WITH THE
BIGGEST WEEKLY AUDIENCE OF ANY RECORD IN UK THIS YEAR AT 77 MILLION.

ROCKFERRY DEBUT ALBUM IN-STORE IN UK SHIPPING OVER PLATINUM IN 1ST WEEK!
U.S. RELEASE SET FOR MAY 13th ON NEW MERCURY RECORDS LABEL

(March 5, 2008 - New York, NY) Young Welsh singer Duffy, whose debut album ROCKFERRY arrived in stores today in the UK only (already platinum), has captivated the nation with her current single "Mercy" now in its third week at #1 in the UK national chart. Amazingly, this was based on download sales only (which rose 33% in week two) as the physical single wasn't issued there until last week. The song is also #1 on the airplay chart for the fourth week running and #1 on both Radio 1 and Radio 2 netting the biggest weekly audience of any record in the UK so far this year with spins with an audience of 77 million.

Catch her:

March 14: SXSW Conference, Austin, TX - Mercury Showcase @ The Parish (2-5:00 p.m.), with Duffy, Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong, George Stanford, and Sparky's Flaw

* March 14: SXSW Conference, Austin, TX - Fader Party 7pm. (Guest list for entry)

* March 15: SXSW Conference, Austin, TX - Official Duffy Showcase @ Stubb's (SXSW Badges for Entry)

* March 17: New York, NY - Hiro Ballroom (performance)

* April 27: Indio, CA - Coachella Festival.

A Fine Frenzy - book club

Alison Sudol of A Fine Frenzy is a fan of books, and she wants to see what her fans are reading.

AFF fans can log on to the Buzznet group and submit their list of favorite books and keep an eye out to see what other fans are reading too!

Here's Alison's list of favorite books. See how your list matches up to hers!

THE FOUNTAINHEAD
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL
GONE WITH THE WIND
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
1984
CATCHER IN THE RYE
THE HOBBIT
FAHRENHEIT 451
THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA
BRIDGET JONES' DIARY
JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL
ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
ROMEO AND JULIET
THE ODYSSEY
HARRY POTTER
ATLAS SHRUGGED
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
MANSFIELD PARK

http://www.afinefrenzy.com
http://www.myspace.com/afinefrenzy

A Fine Frenzy - book club

Alison Sudol of A Fine Frenzy is a fan of books, and she wants to see what her fans are reading.

AFF fans can log on to the Buzznet group and submit their list of favorite books and keep an eye out to see what other fans are reading too!

Here's Alison's list of favorite books. See how your list matches up to hers!

THE FOUNTAINHEAD
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL
GONE WITH THE WIND
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
1984
CATCHER IN THE RYE
THE HOBBIT
FAHRENHEIT 451
THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA
BRIDGET JONES' DIARY
JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL
ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
ROMEO AND JULIET
THE ODYSSEY
HARRY POTTER
ATLAS SHRUGGED
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
MANSFIELD PARK

http://www.afinefrenzy.com
http://www.myspace.com/afinefrenzy

Tristan Prettyman (again!)

At the risk of getting boring, here is more Prettyman (did you know she's a former Roxy model?).

I can't get enough of her voice and the New Soul song is excellent.

Well her video for "Madly" premiered on Artist Direct! The video features pro skater, Jesse Fritsch as the male lead.

Jeff Tweedy in the New York Times

Jeff Tweedy, the lead singer and songwriter in Wilco, writes today in the New York Times about his ongoing struggle with headaches and his battle against addiction to prescription painkillers.

Shaking It Off

By Jeff Tweedy

Jeff Tweedy is primarily known as the lyricist, lead singer and guitarist of Wilco, one of America’s most popular and critically successful rock bands. He is also a lifelong migraine sufferer whose headaches were for decades compounded by bouts of depression and panic disorder.
In 2004, Tweedy suffered a collapse and entered a rehabilitation clinic in Chicago to treat his conditions and a resulting addiction to prescription painkillers. In Tweedy’s estimation, his new found ability to treat and manage his depression and panic has helped him to remain migraine-free for the past four years. In a conversation this month, Tweedy spoke about how migraines and mood disorders impacted his childhood, his musical career and his creative and personal life.

Boy Meets Pain

I honestly do not remember a time in my life when I did not have headaches, and know what they were and know they were called migraines. My mother was a migraine sufferer, and my sister is as well. Now, if I was having legitimate migraines or I just called every headache a migraine because my mother had them, I don’t know for sure, but, like I said, I don’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t having them.

READ THE REST HERE

Thursday, March 06, 2008

New Soul Macbook Air song MP3

Ok folks listen up. Remember we just talked about the wonderful Tristan Prettyman? And remember the wonderful song on the Macbook Air commercial? 

Well, she sang that tune and here it is to download:




Saturday, March 01, 2008

Tristan Prettyman

it seems like girls with strong voices are in right now, like Duffy (co-incidently, check out the Mercury music showcase at SXSW for her first US performance).

Check out Tristan Prettyman, she writes these beautiful little acoustic pop songs to back her tremendous voice. It's not like KT Tunstall and those, her song structure is more interesting. She also has a great falsetto. Anyway, check out a track below, what do you have to lose?

"Hello (Acoustic)" by Tristan Prettyman

MySpace:
February 15, 2008 — New York, NY — Singer-songwriter and guitarist Tristan Prettyman has started her tour along with G. Love & Special Sauce in support of her new album entitled Hello. The album will be released April 15, 2008, on Virgin Records and is an appealing portrait of this freewheeling San Diego, CA, native as she narrates stories about her life, loves, and heartbreaks. “I really wanted the album to be a reflection of me,” Prettyman says. “If someone were to say, ‘Tell me about yourself,’ I would just hand them a copy of Hello and say, ‘Here, this is everything you need to know.’”

Now with Hello, Prettyman says she’s “stepped it up a notch,” chalking up the artistic leap between twentythree and Hello to the confidence that comes from incessant touring (“we were able to record pretty much everything live because I had toured for so long”) and just the passage of time. “I have grown so much in the last two years,” she says. “I’ve gone through so many changes and I think the album definitely reflects that. It's more grown-up, and it just feels legit. I’ve never been more excited about anything in my life as I am with this record. It is so me.” [Tristan’s songs are] “salted with a bluesy defiance and her own throaty whisper, making these crank-up-the-volume choruses on songs like “Madly” all the tastier.” – Marie Claire.

Prettyman will be debuting her new single “Madly” on Last Call with Carson Daly March 18, and appearing on the May cover of Foam Magazine.

TOUR DATES:

G. LOVE & SPECIAL SAUCE TOUR:
Feb 15 Los Angeles, CA House of Blues
Feb 16 Los Angeles, CA House of Blues
Feb 17 Flagstaff, AZ Orpheum Theatre
Feb 19 San Francisco, CA PRESS DAY (no show)
Feb 21 Houston, TX Warehouse
Feb 22 Dallas, TX House of Blues
Feb 23 Austin, TX Stubb’s BBQ
Feb 26 New Orleans, LA House of Blues
Feb 27 Tuscaloosa, AL Jupiter
Feb 28 Nashville, TN City Hall
Feb 29 Charlotte, NC Amos’ Southend
March 1 Washington, DC party - venue tba (not with G Love)
Mar 4 Boone, NC Legends
Mar 5 Columbia, SC Headliners
Mar 6 Athens, GA Georgia Theater

HEADLINE TOUR:
March 19 Solana Beach, CA Belly Up Tavern
March 20 Los Angeles, CA Roxy Theatre
March 21 San Juan Capistrano, CA Coach House
March 22 San Francisco, CA Café du Nord
March 24 Portland, OR Doug Fir Lounge
March 25 Seattle, WA Chop Suey
March 28 Denver, CO Bluebird Theater
March 29 Aspen, CO Belly Up Tavern
March 30 Boulder, CO Fox Theatre
April 1 Ames, IA Maintenance Shop
April 3 Minneapolis, MN Varsity Theater
April 4 Chicago, IL Back Porch Stage @ House Of Blues
April 5 Cleveland, OH House Of Blues - Cambridge Room
April 7 Ann Arbor, MI The Ark
April 9 Boston, MA Paradise Rock Club
April 10 New York, NY Blender Theatre @ Gramercy
April 11 Philadelphia, PA World Café Live
April 12 Arlington, VA IOTA Club & Café
April 15 Nashville, TN 3rd & Lindsley
April 17 Orlando, FL The Social
April 18 Jacksonville, FL Jack Rabbits
April 19 Decatur, GA Eddie's Attic
April 20 Decatur, GA Eddie's Attic
April 22 Birmingham, AL WorkPlay Theater
April 24 New Orleans, LA The Parish
April 25 Houston, TX Meridien Small Room
April 26 Austin, TX Stubb's Indoors
April 27 Dallas, TX House Of Blues - Cambridge Room