Photos: 2009 Treasure Island Music Festival – Day 2
October 21, 2009
The Flaming Lips
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Kurt Vile, Wooden Shjips, Young Prisms @ Hemlock Wednesday
October 20, 2009
Tomorrow night, Kurt Vile (Philadelphia), Wooden Shjips, and Young Prisms play the Hemlock Tavern (9pm, $10).
Kurt Vile creates a previously undiscovered thin line between Springsteenesque rock and bedroom psych-pop. The member of War on Drugs turned solo with Constant Hitmaker and continues to garner attention with his Matador debut, Childish Prodigy, out earlier this month.
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Kurt Vile – “Hunchback”
Opening the show is SF lo-fi psych-pop band Young Prisms, whose first EP was released this month by Mexican Summer for digital download and on a 12″. They’ll be playing the label’s CMJ showcase, and were recently named a “must-hear artist” by SPIN.
Young%20Prisims%20-%20Weekends%20and%20Treehouses.mp3
Young Prisms – “Weekends and Treehouses”
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Still Flyin’ (Podcast #186)
October 20, 2009
Stream the episode:
This week, our podcast spotlights Still Flyin’, the dozen-plus member San Francisco band who released their debut full length, Never Gonna Touch The Ground, earlier this year. The group is led by singer/songwriter Sean Rawls, who first made his mark in Athens bands Masters of the Hemisphere and Je Suis France. Formed after Rawls moved to SF, Still Flyin’ was originally supposed to be jokey reggae-leaning band. While that pitch may have led fourteen of his musically-talented friends to show up at the first practice, the group’s big, fun melodies probably play a bigger part in keeping the collective interested five years later. That and the band’s notoriously fun live shows, of course, where the on-stage party helps create an atmosphere that’s tough to resist.
Still Flyin’s live performances have won kudos from folks as varied as Architecture in Helsinki, Jens Lekman and Okkervil River’s Will Sheff. Members of Architecture in Helsinki mixed Never Gonna Touch The Ground, which was recorded by Papercuts’ Jason Quever. It’s to the credit of everyone involved in the full length’s recording that none of the contributions (lots of horns, percussion and vocals) get buried in the mix. Instead, the group’s freewheeling pop soars throughout. We’re excited to hear that the band’s been working on new material, and eagerly await the next opportunity to see them bring the house down.
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Photos: 2009 Treasure Island Music Festival – Day 1
October 20, 2009
MGMT
Girl Talk
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Man/Miracle preps The Shape of Things
October 19, 2009
hotsprawl.mp3
Man/Miracle – “Hot Sprawl” (from The Shape of Things)
Frenetic indie rockers Man/Miracle ready their debut full length The Shape of Things, which comes out on November 1st. They’ve been working on the album for a year, recording with Eli Crews at New, Improved Recording and at a number of other locations around the Bay and in the band’s birthplace of Santa Cruz. “Hot Sprawl” sounds great, and I’m excited to check out the rest of this CD.
Man/Miracle’s official CD release show is November 14th at the LoBot Gallery, and they’re also playing at the Rickshaw Stop (on 11/5), and Santa Cruz’s The Crepe Place (on 11/12).
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Treasure Island Music Festival Live Blog – Day 2
October 18, 2009
8:56:17 AM: (CC) After one heck of a day yesterday we return for Part 2! Today we will have bloggers John Shea (JS) and Joe Hayes (JH) joining us!
10:47:09 AM: (CC) And we also can’t forget about Brian Davidson (BD) who will be joining all of the editors and writers as well. T minus 74 min. to go.
11:38:17 AM: Line for the bus to get to the island is long, bring your hoodies http://yfrog.com/7h95308013j
11:42:24 AM: (JS) Show is sold out, careful with those scalpers ladies and gents http://yfrog.com/166z5j
11:45:01 AM: (BD) A little nippy but no matter, happy to be here! Youth is in full effect
12:00:16 PM: (NB) Bay Areans Sleepy Sun commence day two, funny, because the sun is just starting to wake up!
12:29:52 PM: (JS) And so it begins, Sleepy Sun. Crowd already quite large, especially for this time of day http://yfrog.com/1369mj
Sleepy Sun @ The Bridge Stage:
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Sade Sundays: Variations on a Religious Experience
October 18, 2009
Part 1
By: Michael Tapscott
Sade Sunday’s sat cold with a lingering spirit, an unnamed and undefined amorphous blob that cried out, “you have a commitment here fellows!†So, I met with Josh, on a Wednesday, in his bedroom. As we rotated seats between his couch and his bed to play tracks of our own choosing that the other person could care less about, I thought to myself, “this shall not do.â€
Josh and I met in Indiana University, our musical sophistication lies in those backwaters where we weaned each other on and off the new indie torrents and enjoyed the wellspring of musical activity in our own backyard: Secretly Canadian, Jagjaguwar, the Impossible Shapes, Justin Vollmar, John Wilkes Booze, Elephant Micah, Drekka and Songs: Ohia. Seeing this sort of damn-the-torpedoes-art happening around us as young men was a revelation. But like Sade Sunday’s wandering ghost, Bloomington’s first wave became its last wave. SC/Jag hit the big time, some bands broke up, artists turned to increasingly more personal works to become less “public†artists, some folks left, and of course, most significantly for Josh and I, we left.
The artistic culmination of this time period for me rests in the various ambiguities of Indianapolis’ Marmoset, who continue to fade away despite Neil Young’s best advice. Marmoset is a travesty and train wreck of a band and one of Secretly Canadian’s earliest signees and the deliverer of Indiana’s one true masterpiece with Record in Red. That album came out in 2001 and the band stood poised to be great, able to storm the castle of Guided by Voices for the scepter of Midwest psychedelic pop. The band was fronted by Jorma Whittiker, a beautiful and unsightly man, a Syd Barrett for Indiana, the kind of a guy who will steal your last dollar and make you smile about it.
Marmoset was all potential and no payoff in the end though, as Jorma would write later a glorious millstone around his and all of Indiana’s neck. Tea Tornado, Marmoset’s second record since its comeback after a seven-year layoff, finds the band existing well beyond its born on date. Jorma’s writing can still light fires (witness “Gretchen†or “You, Blueberry Muffinâ€), but his presence here seems as a favor to the other band members and Tea Tornado’s very existence seems as a goodwill gift to the band’s former glory. Similar waters that Josh and I bathe in as we now veer perilously close to an existence as the Bay Bridged good-deed-for-the-month from our former pose of brilliant disappointment. I would much rather be the brilliant disappointment.
Marmoset_-_You_Blueberry_Muffin.mp3
Marmoset – “You, Blueberry Muffin”
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Treasure Island Music Festival Live Blog – Day 1
October 17, 2009
8:36:23 AM: (CC) Today we have several staff covering the festival for you – Meghan Logue (ML), Jake Butler (JB), and editors Christian, Ben, and Nicole
8:37:33 AM: (CC) We will also have photos, videos, and more being updated to the site as it happens at the festival – so stay tuned!
10:59:54 AM: ML: so stoked for day one!! Looking forward to girl talk and MSTRKRFT among others!
11:04:03 AM: (JB) listening to some Living Legends getting amped for Murs. Rumor is we might see some guest spots from Grouch, Eli, and the gang
12:24:52 PM: (BVH) Limousines starting the day. “Very Busy People” getting the growing crowd moving.
12:26:41 PM: (CC) Added bonus this year: video screen is back on the main stage.
1:00:04 PM: (CC). Cupcake cars definitely driving through the crowd.
Crowd for Crown City Rockers
