Oceans Never Listen (Free subscription) | 22/11/2009
Joel and Ethan Coen do many things extremely well. But the one thing they do to almost perfection is never waste a frame. So they prove once again in their latest film A Serious Man . This strong and direct film is pitch perfect. Each scene has a reason to exist and is neither too short nor too long. There is such care in each frame of each scene that to watch a Coen Brothers film is an entirely pure...
WNEW: Where Rock Lives (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
To honor WNEW's legendary Firecracker 500, every day we are highlighting the music that populated the 1991 and 1996 lists, with classic videos, live performances and little-known facts about the songs and how they came to be... The Smothers Brothers...
AMERICAN DIGEST (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
BACKSTAGE: A Preface to a Prologue In response to yesterday's note about the publication of Let It Bleed: The Rolling Stones, Altamont, and the End of the Sixties a friend and alphablogger whose judgement I respect writes to ask that I write more about what I saw moving through the 60s like some long-haired WASP Zelig. To recapitulate a remark from yesterday, it's a popular thing to say that "If...
News Scotsman (Free subscription) | 17/11/2009
Directors: Ethan and Joel CoenRunning time: 105 minutes***THOSE aesthetic wiseacres the Coen brothers seem to have been inspired by their roots for their latest movie. A Serious Man is set in 1967 Minnesota – a time and place that echoes ADVERTISEMENTJoel and Ethan's teenage years as sons of Jewish academics. But you don't know the Coens if you were expecting a warm memoir.Odd, cerebral and sometimes...
Phawker (Free subscription) | 16/11/2009
ROCK SNOB ENCYCLOPEDIA: Spence, Skip: Like Syd Barrett, Spence was a crazy diamond who reached for the secret too soon. After wandering in and out of grace in the late ’60s, he spent the next 30 years howling at the moon in a trailer park oblivion of welfare and disease, until his death in the [...]
The Clue Batting Cage (Free subscription) | 16/11/2009
This is a music related post. One thing Alinsky warns against is over-reach and setting off a counter-revolution to your own revolution. Maybe we're fortunate that the kinds of people who are attracted to progressivivsm tend to be childishly impatient... dare I say, demanding . It's no secret among those who know me that some of my favorite rock music comes from the late 1960's and early 1970's ...
homegame (Free subscription) | 14/11/2009
Some time back, before the market value of their target audience's homes fell by 70 percent of so, concert promoters assembled a few 18-wheelers full of $50 bills and visited a few formerly well-known musicians. Their proposition was simple: A Jefferson Airplane reunion tour. The idea was promptly rejected by Grace Slick with the immortal words, "What could be more pathetic than a bunch of old...
Largehearted Boy (Free subscription) | 14/11/2009
Today's free and legal mp3 downloads: Alejandro Escovedo: 2009-07-12, Santa Monica [mp3,ogg,flac] "Dear Head on the Wall" [mp3] other Alejandro Escovedo posts at Largehearted Boy Billy Corgan: 2009-11-08, Los Angeles [mp3,ogg,flac] "Plastic Fantastic Lover (Jefferson Airplane cover)" [mp3] other Billy...
Some Velvet Blog (Free subscription) | 14/11/2009
You may have read about the next installment of Beck's Record Club - taking on the odd & obscure classic album Oar by Skip Spence and recruting help from Wilco, Feist and Jamie Lidell to do it. Spence, for those of you unfamiliar with him, was a founding member of Moby Grape and one time drummer for Jefferson Airplane. He often gets lumped in to the small group of mysterious, puzzling, creative...
prefixmag (Free subscription) | 13/11/2009
The third installment of Beck's Record Club project begins today, as video of Beck, Wilco, Feist and Jamie Lidell covering Skip Spence's "Little Hands" has hit Beck's website. For those not aware of obscure Californian psych-rockers, Skip Spence, who was often called the American Syd Barrett, was a member of Moby Grape and Jefferson Airplane, and recorded one solo album, 1969's Oar . Spence...
Stereogum (Free subscription) | 13/11/2009
When not collaborating with Charlotte Gainsbourg on IRM , Beck continues adding covers collections to his Record Club. His (and MGMT and Devendra Banhart's) go at Songs Of Leonard Cohen included mixed results. We have higher hopes for his take on Skip Spence's gorgeous 1969 solo album Oar -- we've heard Hansen cover the Jefferson Airplane/Moby Grape player's " Halo Of Gold " in the past...
Consequence of Sound (Free subscription) | 13/11/2009
The type of news you couldn't make up if you tried.
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 12/11/2009
There are plenty of trippy movie scenes – but watching them sober makes you feel like the designated driver in a roomful of drunks Thirty-six years ago, I dropped a tab of LSD. It was OK, but I never felt the urge to do it again, and never thought much about it – until the other day, when I was watching Taking Woodstock. To the sound of Love's The Red Telephone, Ang Lee serves up an acid...
Lessons of Darkness (Free subscription) | 12/11/2009
The title of the Coen Bros.’ A Serious Man is both ironic and not, as the filmmaking duo’s latest is a borderline-farce about a 1967 Midwestern Jewish family’s disintegration that slowly reveals layers of ever-graver fatalism. Of a thematic piece...
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