Ali Elabbady (Background Noise Crew, Egypto Knuckles)

1.  Lady GaGa “Born This Way”
2.  Lupe Fiasco “LASERS”
3.  Owl City “All Things Bright & Beautiful”
4.  Taylor Swift
*Pretty much all her career in general is overhyped nonsense
5.  Justin Bieber
*And his respective fans who belittle his current love interest (and haters alike) with empty twitter death threats.  Get a proper education and a proper music education as well.

Jon Behm

1 Cuty Copy       Zonoscope

I love Cut Copy generally, but I couldn’t stand this record

2 Foo Fighters

God the Foo Fighters are terrible

3 Fleet Foxes    Helplessness Blues

Not a terrible album but also not great by any means

4 Odd Future

These guys really have some talent but the hype has gotten way ahead of them

5 90′s referencing fashion/art/music.

Pop culture nostalgia keeps getting closer and closer to us – pretty soon we’ll be ironically embracing things that only happened a matter of weeks ago

Josh

1.Odd Future

Who would have guessed that decent beats slathered with immature, intolerant and ignorant teenage angst would be considered so edgy and worthy of our attention?  The group’s popularity is probably more of an indictment of society and our ability to glorify a teenager singing about rape than Tyler, the Creator being an awful person.  Of course he will keep going, he is nineteen and getting attention for acting up in class, so why would he stop when each stupid thing he says/does gets him more attention?  /rant

2.Dom

For some reason, their glitzy pop music just rubs me the wrong way.  Kind of like a more annoying MGMT, which in my eyes is analogous to saying a country is a more oppressive place than North Korea.  Not a good thing. At least they haven’t gotten to be as ubiquitous as the MGMT, so they are easier to avoid.

3.CSS

I really liked their debut album (well, at least two songs), but it all went downhill after seeing them live last year.  I made the mistake again this year and it seems with each new song they release they find a way to get further away from “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above.”  Can a sophomore slump last an entire career?

4.Everyone from my list at the end of last year still annoy me.

Jeremy Hovda

1.Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

The Starbucks crowd and the Pitchfork crowd have embraced this one in equal measure, which means that it should sell around 2 million copies.  And while it will no doubt provide a soothing soundtrack for many a suburban mom driving their Escalade to yogalates, it doesn’t do it for me.  With this album, Robin Pecknold has edged out Kanye West for the honor of worst lyricist in the business.  Unique as a snowflake indeed.

2.Death Cab for Cutie – Codes and Keys

On paper, I should be Death Cab’s biggest fan.  I fit their demographic to a T, yet somehow, there are few sounds more irritating to my ears than the music of Ben Gibbard.

3.The Decembrists – The King is Dead

One sound more irritating than music of Ben Gibbard is that of that of Colin Meloy.  It doesn’t help that he looks like that guy in the Arby’s commercials who sings “It’s good mood food.”

4.NKOTBSB – NKOTBSB

Do the New Kids really need Backstreet in order to kick ass and sell out stadiums?  I don’t think so.  Drop the BSB, and you have the reunion of the decade.

Kyle (Solace)

Foster The People
Odd Future
EMA
Frank Ocean
Two Door Cinema Club

This song does not, in fact, hit like a rock.  Or even a feather. CSS have fallen pretty far since their breakthrough jams “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above” and “Music is My Hot, Hot Sex” dropped a few years back on their self titled debut LP. It now seems like they wouldn’t know an interesting idea if it hit them in the face, and after seeing them live twice, I can say their show is about as boring as their new material. Normally I wouldn’t even post a song like this, but as I listened to this song, I thought about how interesting it would be to play it for 1991 Bobby Gillespie, the awesome dude who had “played drums” in Jesus and Mary Chain and was fronting the powerhouse, drug guzzling, world conquering, Screamadelica era Primal Scream. Through the haze of MDMA, I bet he would agree that this sucks pretty bad and wonder what the hell he is doing adding his raspy howl to this dud of a track.

Hits Me Like A Rock (Featuring Bobby Gillespie) by cooperativemusicuk. Uploaded with Scup
 

It is difficult to tell what is actually going on in this video but according to the Music Photographers Facebook group, Arcade Fire’s Win Butler punched and cursed out a music photographer at the band’s 4/13 performance in Phoenix’s Comerica Theater.  My first reaction to this was a knee-jerk music photographer solidarity anger – but it quickly passed into the realization that the photographer likely had it coming.  It appears that the photographer was shooting from an area in front of the stage that Butler wanted to use for his “play the guitar to the crowd” routine.  Yeah, maybe Butler was being a little precious with his “spot” but the photographer probably should have moved. It’s this kind of music photographer buffoonery that results in tighter restrictions on photography which is a big negative for the rest of us.  From the video you can’t even really tell if Butler hits the guy or just gives him the finger (the altercation starts around 5:35).  Anyway, if you are a music photographer and wanted to shoot Arcade Fire it will probably now be harder for you.

– Jon Behm

Link to the video

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There is moments when I get songs to preview and I think to myself, “This song has a good chance of being popular, but I hate it.” “Climbing Up Walls” by Australia’sStrange Talk is most defiently one of those songs. Using the skittish electronic waves of easy to digest melodies that have boosted bands like Phoenix to mainstream adulation, Strange Talk go straight for the jugular with their crisp production and in your face synth flourishes. Too bad it feels about as genuine and authentic as the Olive Garden.  The band does get credit for doing something that isn’t an easy task…making bands like Phoenix, Yeasayer and Passion Pit

Climbing Walls by Strange Talk

-Josh

Myspace

58/100

Melted Toys are a band that isn’t afraid of making some pretty pop music.  The music on their debut 12”, Washed and Dried, could easily be described as “dream pop,” with lush melodies and subdued rhythms creating a smooth mix over the records seven tracks.  While this genre is something I usually buy into, Washed and Dried seems to forget that “dream pop” doesn’t mean that you can put your listener to sleep, which is what the record did to me.

The record, put out by the great east coast label Underwater Peoples, is chilled out to the max.  When it takes until song six (of seven) to feel a pulse, you run the risk of losing the listener.  Even that track, “Performs,” would not be considered upbeat by any stretch of the imagination. The tracks glide along like pristine molasse, not ever finding that focus that pulls together an album.  “Wild Waves” sounds like it has the potential to be a great track, but that it was recorded in the haze of the morning, before the band had formalized their ideas.  The title track is a half paced journey through simple, uneventful synth flourishes and droning repetitiveness.  This is coming from someone who loves Krautrock and all things Eno, so it isn’t as though I was disposed to minimalistic electronics and repetition.

I know others will chide me for missing the forest for the trees in calling this album too “chilled out.”  I can get on board with albums that are driven by low bpm’s, but they have to make up the lack of energy with creative ideas and more visceral tension.  Washed and Dried feels amorphous and lacking in detail.  The holes missing are too crucial to be left to the imagination, the open space too wide for the listener to be expected to keep pace. 

Melted Toys- Portal

      -Josh

22/100

If I were to give a grade on the chance that a certain album would strike a nerve with a larger audience, a bet on success if you will, I could easily multiple my score above by four.  For better or for worse, my score isn’t a prediction, but a reflection on whether I think a album is something that is worthwhile and original, basically something I would be able to recommend to a friend.  Under those guidelines, the trite, hollow and downright tedious debut EP Sun Bronzed Greek Gods by Dom gets a score about as low as I can give for a band that writes and records their own music and isn’t a)trying to be Nickleback or b)was conceived on a reality show.   I have a strong hunch many people will disagree with me.

The EP feels like a band that got together and skipped even pretending that they wanted to make good music and went straight for being “the biggest band in the world.”  The type of band, like the Killers, who reference U2 not for their actually decent earlier work, but for their business acumen of their later, “we will sell anything to anyone in hopes of becoming billionaires” material.  When you readily admit to wanting to be the “Madonna of Garage Rock,” no matter how much you are trying to be ironic, when the material sounds like Sun Bronzed Greek Gods, you can’t help but be perceived as a band who, while not having achieved anything, have already have sold out.   Like MGMT, there will be a temptation (and probably an acquiescing) of mainstream critical opinion that these guys are doing something unique or original, but I couldn’t disagree more.  Sun Bronzed Greek Gods, from the breezy pop of album opener “Jesus” to the cheesy album closer “I Wonder,” is the trial balloon from a band that use the “indie” label and the American Apparel group-think to move forward what is essentially a business plan to get famous.  In a time when there are so many bands great bands toiling away unrecognized, the fact that it seems easy to predict that this drivel is going to blow up is both depressing and frustrating.

The EP, mercifully, is only seven songs long, but with tracks like the radio baiting single “Living in America,” I had trouble making it through the 3 times I listened to it for this review.  Maybe I am wrong and the band won’t be this year’s MGMT, but it sure seems like the sound/look/style are all in place for it to happen, especially after MGMT released an album that wasn’t what the Spin/Rolling Stone crowd was looking for.  Above and beyond whether the group makes a dent in the public consciousness, Sun Bronzed Greek Gods feels like a hollow stab at creating something “unique” and every step of the way the songs fall flat on their face. I am wildly supportive of weird, left field pop music, but when it feels so calculated, pretentious and thought out as Dom does, I just can’t get on board.

Dom- Living in America

-Josh

Photo from mtv.com

“Rock” band Kings of Leon’s tour bus caught on fire today outside of London’s O2 Arena (see full story here).  Noone was injured, but after this and the famed Pigeon poop incident it seems more and more likely that there are divine forces at work at stopping the band’s incessant touring/recording.  Perhaps nature is attempting to right the wrong that is Kings of Leon.  If the band is soon swept away in a typhoon of locusts then perhaps we will have our answer.

     — Jon Behm

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While the Hiero crew may be living legends in some hip hop circles, the group’s new concentration on Hieroglyphics-based retail over creating music has to be raising a few eyebrows.  The crew just announced it’s first action figure, not to mention the Goldcoin Capsule Collection (toys), paintings, as well as apparel.  What won’t be appearing in the latest Hiero collection: A culturally relevant crew album. While Del Tha Funkee Homosapien has a solo joint coming out yet this year, the rest of the Hiero crew seems content to sit back and chill from 2003 til’ obscurity.

     — Jon Behm

Hieroglyphics:          Site

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“Bars have bands to bring in customers.”

Chris Robin Cox

It has recently become quite a phenomenon on Craigs List for musicians to rant in the “musicians” section about the evils of the music empire, bitch about various venues that routinely bilk musicians out of respectful pay, and just vent about the life of a musician in general.  There are always the musicians who think that they know “the nature of the business” better than anyone else, and they are usually the ones who are the most accepting of the ridiculous policies of today’s club owners and promoters.  And as usual, these same people are very often some of the youngest ones in the business; the graduates of today’s increasingly “music business” centered music schools.

Recently, when I was reading through a post entitled “The nature of the business” this ranter said what I have heard so much in recent years: “Bars have bands to bring in customers.”  An immediate “no shit, Sherlock” came into my head.  Sure, it is a basic truism that bars have now relegated bands to being machines to draw customers, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept it as logical or sensible.  When you go back through history and consider how the live music business has changed, just in the past 20+ years, you quickly realize that the live music business has been sliding down a muddy hill for quite some time.  Not long ago at all really, there was a time when we were hired to play a club and were not treated as inferior to the bartenders, doormen, and sound engineers.  We consulted with the owner/promoter/manager of the establishment to strike a deal that included a wage that was not embarrassing.  It was common that the management would take the lead in marketing and promoting the venue AND the bands that played there, with the expectation that the place would bring in a respectable number of people.  The band would negotiate a guarantee, usually to play the entire night or at least two sets, under the agreement that the band would rock the house; that they would keep the people there, drinking, eating, and hanging out until the wee hours.

I remember one of the first good gigs I had as a musician.  I was 17 years old, playing with a blues/funk band in the Bay Area of Northern California, and I still remember the distinct words the bar owner said to the band leader: “I’ll get people here, don’t worry about that.  You just rock the house and keep em’ drinking all night.”  That was in 1988, and we got paid $500.  We played three long sets, practically bleeding out the last set of the night.  We worked damn hard for our money, no question.  Today, nobody, particularly here in the Twin Cities, is going to be paid a wage like that unless they can “guarantee a draw of at least 150 people.”  I can’t tell you how many times I have heard that come out of the mouth of the booking agent, usually a musician.

The point here is simple folks.  Just like the door guy, the bartenders, the waiters, and the sound guy, we got paid a reasonable wage for our labor.  And we got paid because we were good, not because we were the reason the damn bar had any business at all.  In fact, we were a relatively new band on the scene, and nobody even knew who we were.  The club owner just happened to think we were really good and could develop a nice following there at his club, bringing him more customers over the long haul.  The club owner packed the house, and of course a bunch of our own friends and family came to the show too.  I played there a dozen more times over the years, with all types of bands, and all of them were good.

That place is dead now, because some Yuppie bought it in the early 90′s and operated it like they operate bars here in the Twin Cities now, deciding to put all the weight of the night on the bands and their ability to bring in the clientele that the bar needs in order to bring in a profit.  And still, the bartender, the door guy, the sound guy, and the waiters all get their regular pay for their regular labor.  Only now, the bands don’t make a dime unless they prove to be miracle workers by bringing in a packed house to a bar that has usually done NOTHING to promote the night.  Add to that the fabled 4-band bills, where people are supposed to pay a door charge to see their friend’s band for all of 30 minutes or so, and it’s virtually guaranteed the night will be a failure for the artists, even if the bar does bring in a profit.

What I am talking about here is the demise of the respect for musician labor in this country.  When a carpenter gets hired and paid more than another carpenter, it’s usually because that carpenter is more skilled, faster, and more efficient than one that charges less.  He is hired to frame a house.  He frames a house beautifully, accurately, and efficiently, so he is compensated more for his labor, and is most likely not overcharging his customers either.  A musician, particularly one hired to entertain, should be no different.  A club hires a band to “keep the people there” by performing a rockin’ set or sets, and in return he/she is compensated for their labor.  Just because musicians love what they do and would not rather do anything else, does not in any way mean that they should be treated, or better yet that their labor should be treated, with any less dignity than any other laborer.

When payment for the labor of live music is left to the fickle and constantly varying tastes of the average Joe walking down the street, both the venue and the performer stand to make less.  When payment for the labor of live music comes as a result of the relationship between club owner and band, with the club (and the band, in a partnership) bringing in the people, and the band entertaining the people, everyone makes not necessarily more money, but more stable money.  Business 101, folks.  Ask a local musician whether they want to make a stable amount every time they play or have no guarantee and depend on the weather working in their favor.  I think you know the answer.

Note to venues: WHEN YOU DEPEND UPON THE MUSICIANS TO NOT ONLY ENTERTAIN YOUR CLIENTELE, BUT ACTUALLY PROVIDE YOU WITH THE CLIENTELE, WITH THE ONLY MONEY THEY MAKE COMING DIRECTLY FROM THOSE WHOM THEY BROUGHT TO YOUR CLUB, YOU ARE ENGAGING IN WHAT IS COMMONLY KNOWN AS A PYRAMID SCHEME.  You are one step away from Amway.  The musician stands to make nothing at all – effectively paying out of pocket a significant chunk of change – if the club does nothing to populate itself with customers.  The club is often in the same boat, only the club has done NOTHING to combat the reality of not having a stable clientèle, while the band has still rocked and kicked ass in many cases; done their job magnificently even, only to be told at the end of the night, “you didn’t make your draw.”  Who wins in this situation?

I’ll tell you who wins:  FREE MARKET CAPITALSM.  And who loses?  Your labor and the labor of the artists.  The only people who win are the people that for some reason the club feels are more important than everyone else, the door guy, the sound guy, the bar tender.  Good for them!  Somehow, they have negotiated themselves a respectable deal, where their labor is supported under every circumstance.

As long as we operate under the assumption that “BARS HAVE BANDS TO BRING IN CUSTOMERS”, developing bands will never EVER be properly paid.

So, we are left with two options: One, only very popular bands with big draws can play any clubs if they expect to be guaranteed a decent wage.  Two, we go back to the more efficient paymaster relationship where the venue is the paymaster for the band, and the band is a contracted employee, if only for a night, of the venue.  The job of the band, being to entertain whomever enters that establishment.  In that case, who wins? THE GOOD BAND WINS.  THE BAND THAT BLOWS PEOPLE AWAY THE MOST.  But here’s the thing:  The club wins too.  Why?  Because if the club is responsible for packing the house, the people who come just to see the band are icing on the cake, and all bands market their shows to their friends, family, and in most unfortunate cases, their coworkers.  And, because the club has put the energy and commitment into creating a scene that people want to come to, the fickle average Joe is paying $5 at the door not just to see a band, but to be a part of the scene, with a good soundtrack!  Perhaps it’s time for us to start disclosing to the customers how much the band is making.

One thing is certain – It’s time for us, as musician labororers, to stand up for ourselves.  We can always play just to play, or play a show just to play a show.  We can do that in basements, warehouses, parks, schools, or whatever.  If we are playing in establishments where we are essentially being hired, we need to have the courage to ask for what we think we are worth, and we need to make it clear that we are not marketing firms, poster distribution houses, and promoters; we are artists, laboring.  And for our labor we expect payment, in some form that is respectable.  We can have discussions about what “respectable” means, but let’s at least agree that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ARE MUSICIANS AND BANDS TO FORFEIT PAYMENT FOR THEIR LABOR.  Let’s change “bars have bands to bring in customers” to “bars hire bands to entertain customers.”

Chris Robin Cox is the trombonist with local political hip hop/rock/jazz band Junkyard Empire, an organizer, and freelance writer living Saint Paul, Minnesota.  His work has been published in Political Affairs Magazine, the Dissident Voice, Escape from America Magazine, and featured in Censored 2005.  He is currently working on his first novel.  Connect with him digitally:

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/chrisrobincox
Twitter @ChrisRobinCox
Blog http://www.radical-trombonist.blogspot.com

In today’s completely non-essential but entertaining tidbit of Katy Perry news, the young “artist” apparently tells all about her family’s religious background in an upcoming Rolling Stone interview.  My favorite Perry quotes:

 ”"Speaking in tongues is as normal to me as ‘Pass the salt..’ It’s a secret, direct prayer language to God.”

and

“”I wasn’t able to say I was lucky because my mother would rather us say that we were blessed, and she also didn’t like that lucky sounded like Lucifer.” 

So, “Lucky” = Lucifer.  Posing (mostly) naked in a video, songs called “Ur So Gay” and collaborating with Snoop Dogg =  apparently cool in god’s book.   Wouldn’t it be awesome though if Perry “spoke in tongues” on one of her songs though?

Read the CNN exerpt here.

I have a love/hate relationship with Fools Gold and Local Natives, meaning I love Fools Gold and hate Local Natives.  So needless to say I approached Lewis Pesacov’s (Fools Gold) remix of a Local Natives track with mixed feelings.  I was suprised to hear pretty much all vestiges of both bands’ sounds stripped away though in what amounts to a pretty run-of-the-mill club anthem that features Oakland rapper Aristotle Pop a Bottle.  I can’t say that the remix is worse than the original, since I didn’t care for the original much to begin with. 

     — Jon Behm

Local Natives – Wide Eyes (Fools Gold Remix)

Local Natives:          Myspace

Fools Gold:          Myspace