Here’s a nice southern double shot to the head following this weekend’s weather-inspired laziness: Graham’s Filthybird opening up for Athens, GA.-based Futurebirds Tuesday at Kingsin Raleigh.
Athens’ whiskey-soaked Futurebirds offer lazy harmonies layered over lush feedback and pedal steel–recalling Harvest-era Neil Young. That said, Filthybird’s Renee Mendoza’s aching vocals alone are reason enough to show up. Complimented by husband/guitarist Brian Haran, Mendoza’s voice floats over the rhythm section, creating a delightful haunt that’s been entrancing local music denizens for a couple of years now. The band’s appearance at November’s Troika music festival in Durham has continued to show a band that’s in fine form.
There’s a 3-day weekend on the horizon, and TVD NYC is kicking it off the best way possible: We’re going to tell you about a mesmerizing folk band you can go see at Pianos tomorrow, and then we’re going to give you a chance to win their brand new and beautifully crafted 7-inch.
The Kopecky Familyband teamed up with friends and Seattle locals Ivan & Alyosha and released a hand-assembled split 7” vinyl earlier this month. The Kopecky Family Band contributes the song “Animal” to the two-track release. The artwork was designed in-house by Kelsey Kopecky, and the vinyl was lovingly packed and assembled at Kopecky Headquarters. You can check out the beautiful package below. The 7-inch will be available for purchase tomorrow at Piano’s, or you can win it here by leaving a comment with “Your Top 3 Reasons Why You Love The Kopecky Family Band.”
Why hello, and welcome to TVD Asbury Park! This is Angie Sugrim, your resident Punk-Rock-West-Indian-Wide-Eyed-Cheshire-Cat-Smiled-Frontwoman-journalist extraordinare, and I’m here to bring the sparkle of the Alternative Rock jewel that is Asbury Park to you lovely folks on the other side of the screen.
When I’m not breaking strings on my guitar or falling off of my skateboard, you can usually find me carousing around with my fellow AP roustabouts—the artists and musicians that have been quietly building their own brand of reality in our fair city. To those of you who may be skeptical of the indie rock cred of our City By The Sea as of late, I say don’t you worry about a thing. I’ve no doubt that you’ll find yourself passing out and waking up with me faster than you can say Bruce Springsteen! Want to find a Sub Pop Afghan Whigs 7” from 1990? Ever stand next to Mike Ness of Social D while he orders a cup of coffee? Maybe wave hello to Nicole Atkins as she walks to her favorite record store? Or perhaps stop and chat with Pete Steinkopf of The Bouncing Souls as he rides his bike down the boardwalk? Yeah, that’s how we roll here in AP. Didn’t know that, did you?
And speaking of The Nicest Guy In Rock, The Pete, I thought I’d kick off TVD AP with a little story on The Bouncing Souls, who hit Asbury Park’s Stone Pony four nights in a row last week. Formed in 1989 in New Brunswick, NJ, these guys have lived through it all—playing to empty halls early on, having their tour van burst into flames (while they were IN it), major label romance, indie label love (the guys founded, own and operate their current label, Chunksaah) losing a member, gaining a member—all of the trials and tribulations that anyone who has ever tried their hand at being in a working rock band has been through. Managed by the extraordinarily intelligent and savvy Kate Hiltz, as in their song “Kate Is Great”, the guys have been on an upward swing for decades now.
The power punk foursome has always been and will always be fronted by the charismatic and goofy Greg Attonito. Friends and fans of Greg know the frontman is perennially equipped with an ear to ear grin. He bobs through live performances with a—well, with a bouncing stroll. Drummer Michael McDermott wails away in pristine metronome fashion, and together with the precise plugging of bassist Bryan Kienlen, he forms one half of a commanding anchor of a rhythm section that’s about as tight as it gets. And last but never least, the illustrious Mr. Pete Steinkopf always plays that guitar just like he’s a-ringin’ a bell—I’m surprised the thing doesn’t catch on fire, honestly.
There’s some excellent shows here in the Triangle this weekend, with perhaps hottest on that list being the triple bill of Floating Action, Schooner and The Tomahawks tonight at Kings in Raleigh. If you’re on the fence or still looking for something to do after the sun sets on this gorgeous 75-degree day, The Tomahawks’ Nick Jaeger gives five reasons to make your presence known at Kings:
1 – The new Floating Action record and Seth Kauffman’s general bad assness.
2 – Schooner’s 5 piece line up and Reid Johnson’s sultry smooth croon .
It’s been a busy week in Nashville with a ton of announcements about what’s in store for us this spring.
First off, Happy Dre Day! It’s Dr. Dre’s birthday today and even if you aren’t a fan you must respect how the influence of this man has changed the face of popular culture forever. Head over to The Groove in East Nashville tonight from 6-9 to celebrate Dre Day with friends, forties and fun (i.e. giveaways!).
Vanderbilt’s Rites of Spring announced their lineup yesterday. This year they’ve nabbed The National, Matt & Kim, Sara Bareilles, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros and, in the spirit of always outdoing themselves on the hip hop/rap tip, Vandy has Kid Cudi & Public Enemy on bill. If that’s not badass I don’t know what is. Tickets will go on sale Thursday, February 24th, 2011 at 10 am CST at all Ticketmaster locations. Prices start at $45 for a single day pass (and don’t forget to save up a little extra to give to the demons at ticketmaster)
Tomorrow, February 19th, Grimey’s is hosting an in-store with Over The Rhine (a day before their performance at 3rd & Lindsley) to celebrate their new album, The Long Surrender. The in-store starts at 5pm but you might want to get their early because the Girl Scouts will be at the shop from 3-6pm selling cookies!!!
The first round of Mercy Lounge & BMI’s Road to Bonnaroo has been announced. Road to Bonnaroo is a battle of the bands type competition that will send one Nashville band to Bonnaroo to perform for the masses. It’s going to be on Monday, February 28th and will feature (in no particular order) Evan P. Donohue, Courtney Jaye, Chancellor Warhol, Majestico, Heartbeater, Kink Ador, The Kicks & Tyler Byant. Click the link above for audio and video for each of the bands in round one and make sure you get to Mercy Lounge early on 28th to ensure your eligibility to vote for who you think should be headed to Manchester in June.
Lastly, in Record Store Day 2011 news, the amazing Numero Group has announce their contribution to the festivities. They will be releasing a collection called Local Customs: Pressed at Boddie. Last year Numero acquired Boddie Record Company and they have been combing the archives of Cleveland gospel, soul, funk, boogie, rock, garage, folk, and all manner of abandoned master tapes to bring you the best of their bounty. They will be pressing 1000 copies of the album on vinyl & CD and 300 on cassette to be released on Record Store Day, April 16th, 2011. In addition to this Numero Group will also be setting up a “flash” record shop on Milwaukee Ave in Chicago with some extremely limited goodies for you. Check out the details at Numero Group’s website.
Happy Friday Vinyl Lovers! I’ll see you next week as I gear up to set sail on the Bruise Cruise!
Free Music– Carnival season kicks off with a bang this weekend in the form of parades. Saturday night is the 25th installment of the Krewe du Vieux parade with over a dozen brass bands providing the entertainment. For prime viewing, stay out of the FrenchQuarter.
A parade of another sort happens Saturday morning at 11 AM with a jazz funeral second line send off for the late great PoppaNeutrino. It starts at Armstrong Park and proceeds through the French Quarter before winding up on the bank of the mighty Mississippi with a Viking-style service.
Friday night, check out the Radiators at the Maple Leaf Bar. There are only three shows left at the iconic uptown club for the iconic New Orleans “funky rock” band (that’s how they were billed at the House of Blues back in the day).
There’s more freemusic Saturday afternoon at the Louisiana Music Factory. Beginning at 2 PM with the Parishioners, followed by IvorieSpectacle featuring SeguenonKone, and concluding with the PanoramaBrassBand at 4 PM.
If you weren’t one of the lucky 500 non-krewe members who got tickets to the Krewe du Vieux Do, there are still lots of musical options. Stay in the Carnival mood and check out the DirtyDozenBrassBand at Tipitina’s or KermitRuffins and the BBQ Swingers at the BlueNile.
So how do you go about getting someone to hear you above the glut? Not the cursory iTunes “audition” style listen; the “REAL” listen … you know, where you actually glimpse into the artist’s soul and hopefully get to spend a bit of time off from being you, and be the artist for awhile?
If you ask Gomez’s Ben Ottewell or listen to his latest solo record, Shapes and Shadows, he gives many reasons to listen, because you will find many reasons to let the next one play. One of the main being that it’s fun guessing which direction he is going to go. And for each new direction, chalk up another reason. Starting with:
“Shadows” is a sonic journey that starts off way down there and ends up way up here! And all along the trip, it’s not easy to miss a beat of his message, due mostly to the uncluttered production that points to the pathway. But it’s really Ben who keeps your focus, with a voice quality that at times faintly echoes an early Neil Young. With no distractions pulling your ear off of his above-unique character, he moves confidently down the not so worn path, showing that he knows where this safari is leading; at least you think he does. Ottewell also has the gift of being able to paint some very complex musical scenery, containing a back-drop of unexpected color. End result: it’s a no brainer, given an engaging song, this artist clicks. As we move to other titles, his warm and oddly fetching voice provides a security for the listener, warming the soul while he may becomes daring and even a bit icy at times.
“Lightbulbs” As this piece wakes from a dream, it’s melody instantly demands an ear. The instrumental combination alone composes a denseness in the chorus which, when all stirred together, forms a big, rockin’ multi-colored wall. What? That was almost 5 minutes? It felt like 45 seconds, to me. An ethereal trip you will love. MUST play it again.
Mastering—transferring a recording to its final physical format—is literally the last artistic piece of a long process and one TVD is delving into over the coming months from a variety of angles with Scott Hull, mastering engineer and the owner of world-class and world-famous Masterdisk studios in New York City
Scott will be presenting a master class in mastering, from the fundamentals to the final product, as we count down to Record Store Day 2011 when a select few of you will be given the opportunity to win a personal tour of the record mastering process at Masterdisk.
Onward to Week #5—with sound samples!
What is the RIAA curve? | The Recording Industry Association of America developed a standard playback equalization curve and required that all LP records and record players manufactured conform to this standard.
You have probably noticed that you cannot take the audio plugs from your turntable and plug them into an ordinary line input connection on your preamp. Well, you can, but it sounds horrible. The line input connections, designed for tape machines and CD players, do not have the RIAA curve. Every phono pre-amp must have this playback equalization built into it. Since most of you are probably not audio engineers, I’ll try to describe this curve by explaining why it was used.
If you were to cut an ordinary audio source (without the RIAA EQ) into a lacquer at a reasonably hot level you would notice two things. First the bass frequencies, with their long wavelengths, are so big and loud that they cause the grove to make really large squiggles. So large in fact that it would be hard for a cartridge to playback the squiggles. These very large cut grooves would take up a huge amount of space on the disk and limit your playing time to only a few minutes on a 12″ LP side.
The second thing you would notice is that records are noisy. Yeah I know, you already know that. But I mean a vinyl record is REALLY noisy. That audio source played back without the EQ would be mostly scratchy noise and clicks like you’ve heard from an Edison cylinder. The only way the LP works to make pleasing realistic music is for the audio to be pre-EQ’d so that the bass is reduced dramatically, by 20dB, and the treble is increased dramatically, also by 20dB. The original music returns when the opposite EQ is applied by the phono preamp.
See the picture above — this is the playback curve when the bass is boosted back up 20dB and the high frequencies are rolled off. The reduction in bass helps us get the 20 plus minutes per side and the exaggerated treble works as a very effective noise reduction. You see, the audio had it’s treble boosted before it was cut. Then surface noise from the vinyl was introduced on playback. When played back through the complementary filter, the hi end is cut and the surface noise is reduced but the audio returns to it’s original frequency response. Like magic. The resulting bass response of the LP was better than a 78 too – by a lot. And the noise floor was improved.
So that’s why an equalization curve was developed, and why the RIAA standardized it. For more info on this standard see here.
But even that’s not the end of the story. The big treble boost puts extreme stress on the cutting amplifiers; so much so that specially built circuit breakers need to be inline at all times to avoid damaging the (very expensive) cutter head. This high frequency emphasis also causes bright instruments like cymbals and vocals to distort if cut without care.
Listen to this quick before and after. It’s a sample of a track by the artist Danni (produced by Nik Fairclough).
These quick samples of music are first played normally, and then with the RIAA EQ applied. You will immediately notice the almost painfully shrill top end and dramatic loss of bass from the RIAA filter. It was never intended that the end user ever hear the RIAA encoded signal — a good thing, because it sounds terrible. This example illustrates just how much the music has to be pre-emphasized to effectively reduce the surface noise of the disk.
That’s it for my crash course on the vinyl groove and the RIAA curve. On to more aspects of vinyl next week!
Scott Hull is a mastering engineer and the owner of Masterdisk (founded in 1973) in New York City. In his 25-plus year career, Scott has mastered records for Sting, Bob Dylan, Steely Dan, Os Mutantes, John Zorn, Uncle Tupelo, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings and hundreds more. Visit Masterdisk online or on Facebook.
I once met Jeremy Sole a few months after I moved to Los Angeles in an old converted theater turned community center. It was 2004 and I was staking out a little neighborhood called Leimert Park—an Emerald City of sorts plotted along Crenshaw Boulevard. Sole, who was emceeing a show inside turned the old playhouse into a percussive, ass-shaking revue that was an outright nod to the Nigerian legend Fela Anikulapo Kuti.
Sole is a white guy from Chicago who has prodigious knowledge of black music. I know this because his musical vocabulary is robust with beats derived from the likes of Cymande, Bill Withers and Marvin Gaye, to name a few. He’s a resident DJ at Zanzibar in Santa Monica where he heats up the floor Thursday nights with funk influences from around the world.
Afrofunké, Sole’s Thursday show, is an incantation of Third world rhythms. Fela, one of DJ’s influences, didn’t just make music for self-satisfaction, royalties or other reasons musicians make music. His music asserted an inherent problem that plagued his people and his nation—the lack of democracy. Fela’s long gone but Sole is ushering the beats continuously on the dance floor and on the airwaves.
Los Angeles is a lucky town to have Afrobeat—the formal name of Fela’s music—as a subculture. Afrobeat transcends any specific race or creed. And DJ Jeremy Sole Thursdays night shows have sealed rifts between black, white, yellow and brown. Imagine a time in the not-too-distant future where “black music” artists will be categorized with Def Leppard and Of Montreal. It’s not far-fetched. Jeremy gets it.
The International Folk Alliance conference is an annual event that draws together music industry professionals from throughout the world to share ideas, network, and celebrate traditional music and dance. It is an event of celebration, education, and entertainment. Held over five days, the Conference includes:
Over 2000 registered attendees
Over 50 workshops, panel discussions, and peer group meetings that address critical issues relating to presenting, promoting, and preserving folk and traditional music and dance.
100+ industry exhibitors
Special events, such as the Folk Music & Business Awards, Lifetime Achievement Awards, networking receptions, official Performance Alley and private showcase performances, feature shows, exhibit hall, block booking sessions, Memphis Tours, community outreach concerts, etc.
200 official juried performances (Performance Alley)
Instrumental band Glorie was formed in Memphis, TN in the spring of 2009 by Jason Paxton, former frontman of The Satyrs, after an eight-year hiatus from playing music.
Jason was joined by Jonathan Kirkscey (cellist with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra who has composed arrangements for and performed live with Jay Reatard, Cat Power, and Al Green) Andy Saunders, Jeff Hulett (member of Makeshift Music label-mates Snowglobe and Jeffrey James & the Haul) and Rob Brimhall.
The band started as a desire to create more substantive, engaging instrumental music with a strong focus on melody. Their music blends acoustic, electric, and electronic sounds and draws inspiration from many genres including rock and instrumental hip-hop. Texturally, the instrumentation is diverse as their backgrounds, including layers of strings, synthesizer, guitar, piano, and vibraphone to create an entrancing thick wall of sound with a cinematic quality. The majority of 2010 was spent recording Glorie’s debut self-titled record, which is due out May 17 on Makeshift Music.
What is the role of vinyl LP in current acts in the marketplace today? The purpose of this panel is to explain and show in depth the role of vinyl in the music marketplace. Panelists will discuss vinyl as the most important tangible music medium. Following explanations of why any band or artist should produce vinyl and which acts are more likely to benefit and why they will benefit from pressing vinyl, they will walk the artist through the process of production including options for customizations; including coloring, cutting, time expectancy, pricing, self-marketing, and selling at the independent retail level.
The explanation of the edge that vinyl has over any other music medium in the marketplace today as well as the pros of producing vinyl in an mp3 dominated music medium era will be addressed. This panel should be open for questions and discussion because the subject is depending on the artist themselves and how they choose to market their music.
