Posted on May 9th, 2008 by Josh Hathaway
You know, I’ve got to hand it to him. 11 is a Man of Vision and a Man of Ideas. I am a Man of… I’m a guy. That’s about it.
11 flashed another of his brilliant ideas yesterday and we’re set for another whirlwind tour in pursuit of rock and roll glory. So successful was our run to Atlanta to see Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band, we’ve decided to call for an encore. Mellow Mushroom pizza will again be eaten. Grimey’s music store will be visited. Money will be spent, women will be ogled, children will be slapped, buildings will be burned. Ahem, there will be no ogling of any sort. Right, then. Well, the CDs, the pizza, and the glory will still be ours and I reserve the right to slap the shit out of any shithead kid who talks on his cellphone during our quest for rock and roll glory.
We’re going to see Mark Knopfler at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on July 15. Read more »
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Posted on May 9th, 2008 by Josh Hathaway
I’ve been on about it all week and then when it was over it was better than I could have hoped for. Glen Phillips did in fact make his appearance on the B-Sides Concept Album program and he was a really great guest. He was really generous with his time and patient with my Fanboy gushing. Not only that, he was really interesting and engaging as he talked about his albums and experiences.
One of the things I took away from the interview is just how in love with music he is. That might seem obvious, but I don’t get the same sense from every artist I listen to. He seems in love with music and making music. He pulls back the curtains a bit on what it’s like out there and it isn’t all pretty, yet you never get the sense that he would want to be doing anything else with his life. The love and passion for it shines right through.
It was really an amazing experience and one I’ll remember forever. In the meantime, you should all check out his new EP. You can get the disc or the download from his web site.
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Posted on May 8th, 2008 by Josh Hathaway
It’s here! It’s finally here. Glen Phillips will be my guest tonight on the B-Sides Concept Album program. You can tune in and hear it live, tonight at 10 PM Eastern!
I have never been excited before.
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Posted on May 7th, 2008 by Josh Hathaway
I was pretty distracted yesterday, but I did manage to listen to a couple of Glen/Toad CDs in preparation for tomorrow’s interview with him on the BSCA. Man, I’m getting really excited about this.
I also spent some time chronicling a few of the memories associated with Glen/Toad music. It’s like pulling on that loose thread and finding yourself naked. There were a lot more than I thought there were. Thinking about them also opened the door to other people and places I hadn’t thought about in years.
I am so excited about Thursday!
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Posted on May 7th, 2008 by Josh Hathaway
Nothing has clicked for me today. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve listened to today, but none of it has really registered with my mood or state of mind. I hadn’t listened to Toad The Wet Sprocket’s Fear from beginning to end in far too long. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed revisiting Glen Phillips’ Winter Pays for Summer. These are two very good records. They pleased me. Neither was exactly what I was looking for.
I segued from Glen/Toad to the new Black Keys’ record Attack & Release. I listened to it a lot last month when it was released but hadn’t listened to it much since I finished my review of it. I’m enjoying it, especially Song Of The Year contender “So He Won’t Break.” I love the song and the record. This doesn’t have that “X” ingredient either.
11 has made recent references to Garbage and Portishead. Feel free to mock the only straight man in America who goes into a 50,000 seat basketball arena and chants for more synth. The mind boggles- or does it? Boggle strikes me as a terrible verb. See? This is why I can’t find music that clicks with me right now. I’m arguing with myself over verbs. Despite wanting to cut 11 a dirty look, I have to admit I want to listen to the new Portishead record again, so let’s see where that takes us…
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Posted on May 6th, 2008 by Josh Hathaway
I spent some time this afternoon writing about Vertical Horizon being one of the first “us” bands for TheGirlfriendI’veNowMarried and I (I’ve really got to stop with that longwinded way of referring to her), and it’s true. Vertical Horizon was one of the first. Toad the Wet Sprocket was the first.
Picture it: June 1998. I met her at a party hosted by a mutual friend. A few days later we gather once again at said friend’s house, which was a little more than hour from the dorms. I traveled with an arm load of CDs to go to the ATM machine back then, so you can imagine how many I’d have been armed with for a drive of that distance. I clearly remember two of the CDs that made that journey: Garbage’s Version 2.0 and Toad the Wet Sprocket’s Coil. Read more »
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Posted on May 6th, 2008 by Josh Hathaway
All right, we rebound from our brief nostalgia trip and get back to what I’d intended to talk about earlier this morning.
I started today talking about Nine Inch Nails’ instrumental release Ghosts I-IV. Ghosts is the first NIN I ever bought and I bought it because A) it was instrumental and B) I loved the distribution method Trent employed in getting it out there to fans.
If you thought Ghosts was a cool idea for distribution, wait until you see what Trent is doing with his new album The Slip. Two words, boys and girls: fo’ free. That’s right, Trent is giving away his new record. You can download it. Now. Free. Legal. Free. Okay, so I think we all agree it’s pretty fucking cool of him to do this. Better yet is his reason for doing it. “”Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years,” Reznor said in a statement to fans. “This one’s on me.” I love that. “This one’s on me.” That’s impossibly cool. If Trent isn’t careful, he’s going to make me a full-fledged fan. I guess Adam Duritz isn’t the only one who understands how great the internet is for music. Don’t bet against Counting Crows doing something like this should they ever find themselves fully free of their record contract.
Two good friends of the site — Tom Johnson and Dawn Olsen — have written about this. I have to give a big tip o’ the cap to Tom because I read it on his site first and proceeded to out and download the record directly thereafter. Dawn gets mad props, too, because she rules and I’m somewhat afraid of her.
Seriously, though, take Trent up on his offer and download the new record. I’m listening to it now for the first time, and I think I really like it.
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Posted on May 6th, 2008 by Josh Hathaway
Among the odd jobs I held in college was working for an answering service, 3rd shift, weekends. I used to wake tow truck drivers up in the dead of night to get them to go rescue stranded motorists or — and this actually happened more often — impound vehicles of suspected drunk drivers. There were some doctors who were clients, including brain surgeons. Something about an irresponsible college student making dick being responsible for getting message to brain surgeons bothered me.
Anyway, I had this job back around ‘99-00, which means in the pre-iPod days. I didn’t have a laptop and they didn’t have free wi-fi. I had to just… sit there… and wait in case the phone rang. Sometimes my girlfriend — now TheWifeToWhomI’mMarried — would call and keep me company for stretches of the night. Sometimes I’d bring school work, but reading only made me more tired than I already was at 3 or 4 in the morning. Mostly what I did was listen to an alternative rock radio station out of Birmingham and pace the room, trying to stay awake. Read more »
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Posted on May 6th, 2008 by Josh Hathaway
Magic Junk mad scientist Mark Sahm might be on to something here! A few weeks ago, Mark re-considered and re-compiled Nine Inch Nails’ instrumental record Ghosts I-IV into two separate soundtracks to an imaginary movie (best you let him explain it to you). What he did — and it’s brilliant — is spend enough time with it to re-imagine the music as something else. The album, as delivered, is a four-volume set of nine instrumental tracks each. Mark has taken those 36 tracks and created a 17-song playlist and a 19-song playlist and made them cohesive in a different way. This is all the cool in the world.
If you bought the record, you should give Sahm’s soundtracks a spin. If you didn’t, you can download it legally for $5. That’s 36 songs for $5. It’s really a bargain at twice the price. Check it out and listen to Trent’s sequence and then give Sahm’s sequences a whirl. I’m enjoying this album in a whole new way today.
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Posted on May 5th, 2008 by Josh Hathaway
It’s now finally close enough that I can begin the countdown to my interview with Glen Phillips on the B-Sides Concept Album this Thursday. So… if it’s a countdown, why am I starting with Day 1 and working my way up? Great question. The whole concept of whether to count today and the day of has always escaped my grasp a little bit. It’s Monday night. Is Thursday night four days away or is it three? I know it’s counterintuitive to start a countdown by having the days go up instead of down, but I’m counterintuitive so it all makes sense. The important thing: I’m talking to Glen on Thursday and you’re all invited to listen in.
Tonight’s work has centered around two songs: “Duck and Cover” from Glen’s solo record Winter Pays for Summer and “Silo Lullaby,” which is a Toad the Wet Sprocket rarity of sorts. Both are great, great songs and have me buzzing for Sunday.
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