oh see this

thee oh sees at sxsw

and if you don't like that you're wrong.

nashville mixtapes 101

wrvu is in a weird limbo zone for the next couple weeks and it doesn't look like the summer schedules will be fleshed out until after may 11. any avid listener has probably noticed that the robot is already on a lot more.

as for me, i've signed up for a 2 hour set this sunday, may 4 from 8-10pm cst (this is the time slot i badly want, so hopefully it'll stick!). i won't be able to do a show the week after that because i plan on seeing DeVotchKa on sunday, may 11 at mercy after a much-needed vacation. all of which means that after this next show i shouldn't have to do any more of these "tune in on this day at this time" posts.

anyway, from now on (unless i substitute) the shows will be structured with a mix tape the first hour and awesome new stuff from the station's collection the second hour. basically, i have to play an hour of rotation since i'm the new kid on the block. luckily, wrvu has a kick ass music director and the tunes will be good for sure.

so dust off your tape recorder and cancel your sunday night plans. this week nashville mixtapes is taking another trip to the 60's for some stomping good northern soul. more on that later...

solo debut playlist

tonight's show was basically put together as a before-and-after look at punk rock. most of the first set was protopunk (with the exception of the la's) and the second set was modern music influenced by the earlier guys. of course, it all starts with the blues. here are the goods:

Show Intro
Block of Ice - Thee Oh Sees

Set 1
Boom Boom – John Lee Hooker
San Francisco Nights – The Animals
Thru The Rythm – 13th Floor Elevators
All Day And All Of The Night – The Kinks
Ben Franklin's Almanac – The Cryan Shames
She’s The One – Dr. Spec’s Optical Illusion
Gloria – Van Morrison
Psychotic Reaction – The Count Five
Dirty Water – The Standells
Ain’t It Hard – The Electric Prunes
1969 – The Stooges
Failure – The La’s
Are You Gonna Be There (At The Love In) – The Chocolate Watchband
Leaving Here – The [British] Birds
Hey Joe – The Leaves
Lies – The Knickerbockers
She Lied – The Six Pents
Liar Liar – The Castaways
Why – The Durty Wurds
No Good Woman – Trees
She Took My Oldsmobile – The Romancers

Set 2
I Can’t Sleep – The La’s
Love Bomb – Grinderman
Maria Stacks – Thee Oh Sees
10 A.M. Automatic – The Black Keys
Bells (With Tremelo & Distortion) – Sic Alps
Tick Tick Boom – The Hives
Two Times – The Blakes
That Girl Suicide – The Brian Jonestown Massacre
Six Barrel Shotgun – Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Call In The Calvary – The Shys
Snake In The Grass – Thomas Function
Stranger – The Black Lips
Ghost In The Trees – Thee Oh Sees
Peanut Butter And Paranoia Jam – Thomas Function
Vacuum Boots – The Brian Jonestown Massacre
Blush – The Raveonettes

my apologies to everybody who called with requests. i promise to do better next time.

spoiler

thee oh sees are officially my new favorite band. their new album "the master's bedroom is worth spending a night in" is a great representation of what pyschedelic garage rock should be. dirty, reverb heavy, and immediate stuff. buy it on their myspace page or, better yet, go to grimey's and see if they have it.

i'll be playing some of their music tonight, but i thought i'd put up a few tracks here too. i can't seem to figure out how to post my mp3's the way i want, so project playlist will have to do for now:

or...

listen to nashville mixtapes on your way to:

A
Youth Culture & Arts Center
Benefit Featuring

Turncoats
Rock Paper Scissors
Kelly Kerr & The Distractions

Saturday, April 26, 2008
Tall Grass, 25 N Public Sq, Murfreesboro
8pm, $5, ALL-AGES

Come check out the first show at their new space on the Murfreesboro downtown square.

garage spectacular!

where can you find the cryan shames, dr. spec's optical illusion, the count five, the six pents, thee oh sees, sic alps, the chocolate watchband, thomas function, the kinks, the electric prunes, the blakes, the leaves, the dirty wurds and tons more on one radio show?


you can find them all on 91.1fm nashville this saturday night as i sub for dj jazzy jesse on "these are the breaks" from 6-8pm. i'll be playing a 2 hour garage rock block to celebrate springtime and my entry into the wrvu family.

it'll be music for your first 2008 visit to bobbie's dairy dip. it'll be your spring cleaning mix tape. it'll be you're going-out-on-a-first-date soundtrack. AND "the claire" claire may be in the studio with me as a special guest, but you won't know unless you tune in, turn it up, and rip the knob off. so to speak.


look out for the full set list live on wrvu.org or here after the show.

com lag

there might not be a debut show tomorrow night after all. i'll definitely be hosting april 26 from 6-8pm, but there's some confusion right now about tomorrow night. ah, well... i AM going to see

and

in less than 3 weeks, so who am i to be in a foul mood about anything?

uh huh

the training is over, the tests are taken, the results are in, and i'm officially part of the wrvu family! as a community member i understandably get the last of any available time slots that vandy students don't take. since most of them are back home for the summer, nashville mixtapes should get a solid 2 hours from may through august.

as with anything else worth the effort, i must work up the ladder to a full 2 hour show devoted to my collection and your weekly mix tapes. so this summer, the first hour of each week will be whatever i want to play and the second hour will be my favorites from wrvu's collection. in the fall that second hour reduces to 30 minutes and so on until nashville mixtapes is a full-fledged specialty show.


until i know this summer's schedule, i'll be substituting for other dj's here and there. this saturday i take over from 6pm-8pm and that means i can play whatever i like. so tune in your radios or come by nashvillemixtapes.com to hear my debut solo show live and any time next week.

mix fun

bbc 6 just introduced a little online sound mixer that has already proven to be worth at least ten minutes of my time. it's fun for people like me who get a kick out of looping beats but don't have any idea what kind of real music software to get. you can send your finished songs to other folks, which is kind of cool.

but bbc 6 really needs to change their tag line. "closer to the music that matters" sounds vaguely self-deprecating if you ask me.

nude ambition

well, it looks like radiohead's anti-marketing marketing strategy is working pretty damn well. "nude" is now their second best charting single ever (barely second to you-know-what) and it's due in large part to their nude remix website which has generated some seriously good mixes. i'm listening to the holy fuck mix for the second time right now and the hipster runoff mix was pretty funny.

anyway, i wanted to make my own today so i stopped by their site. it turns out that to participate you have to buy the single and all the various components via an itunes link. pretty clever way to sell a single, huh? still, 6 bucks is a bargain to have access to unlimited personalized versions of a song.

p in p

portishead released a taped performance on their website this evening featuring 7 new songs. they've been touring a little bit in europe and it looks like this was recorded in their tour rehearsal space. imagine a souped-up version of radiohead's thumbs down and you kind of get the idea. or you can just watch some of it and get a better idea:

coffee break rawk

two more

and with these final two reviews, i'm done with my required programming for this semester at vanderbilt (i did get to pick these out):

South - You Are Here - Yam Recordings
Very few South songs grab your attention the first time around. There was their “breakout single" Paint The Silence for which they are best known, but virtually the entire remaining output by the band has been not nearly as radio friendly. You Are Here follows that trend. South have made another record with a group of songs better heard as a whole than on their own, which is why no 1 track really stands out as a favorite. tracks 1, 2, and 7 offer the best examples of the kind of British popular music South produces. Track 13 is a great song in its own right, however it ends at 3:16 and a bonus track picks up at 6:26 with a spacey backmask introduction before it swells into a beautiful song that represents the best 2 minutes of the entire album.

Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid - Polydor
Elbow 101: The pop music Elbow make always offers layers you can never catch on a first or even a twentieth listen. The lyrics are always engaging and offer emotion without being trite. The good-natured humor they bring to the table defies their music’s reputation as occasionally gloomy. And they always put out top-notch, well-crafted work. Bearing all that in mind, The Seldom Seen Kid doesn’t disappoint at all. It’s hard to pick out favorites from such a great album, but track 3 (driving and elegant love song), track 4 (bar-fight rock), track 5 (flamenco), track 7 (slow-mo industrial), and track 10 (uplifting and hopeful) are all more than worthy of airplay and are so stylistically different that you shouldn’t have trouble finding something to like.

a public service

i've had to review a fistful of albums for the station and thought i'd post those reviews here. i didn't choose these cd's because i've been too busy to go into the station during regular office hours, so i panned a couple:

Bell X1 - The Syndicate - YepRoc
Carrying on the great Irish tradition of naming bands after U.S. military aircraft, Bell X1 originally formed with Damien Rice on vocals before he went solo. Now Damien-free, the band lives on. The music can be a little vanilla, but if you like sweeping arena-ready music and/or heartfelt acoustic ballads (think Travis, Coldplay, The Frames, etc.) then you should be happy with any of the safe-for-airplay tracks. track 3 hails from the O.C. Soundtrack.

Sera Cahoone - Only As The Day Is Long - Sub Pop
Only As The Day Is Long makes you wish Music Row would get off its ass and quit selling out before it’s too late. Sure, Nashville gets some great singer/songwriters, but there was a time when someone like Sera Cahoone (former Band Of Horses drummer) would have moved here in an instant to make records. Enter Sub Pop. The Seattle label put this album out and it’s a terrific part of the alt-country / neo-folk movement that has been building for years in such faraway places as Nebraska, Chicago, Minnesota, New York, etc. Most of the album is slower tempo fare with a familiar Lucinda Williams-esque burn to tracks 7 and 9. From beginning to end this is a great album.

Plants And Animals - Parc Avenue - Secret City Records
Parc Avenue starts out by scaring you into thinking it may not offer anything new. Track 1 sounds like a Coldplay song for the first 30 seconds. But it quickly swells into a grand chorus reminiscent of The Polyphonic Spree and before you know it the song slows back down. As goes most of this album. Montreal’s Plants and Animals put a few very good songs on Parc Avenue with plenty of twists that work. Unfortunately, around track 8 the songs take a turn for the worse and fall squarely into jam band territory.

These United States - A Picture Of The Three Of Us At The Gate... - Self-Released
These United States are hard to pin down. There are definite influences of Daniel Johnston and Andrew Bird in the vocals. Some of their guitar work has hints of old Mississippi blues types like Robert Johnson and gospel sounds weave throughout the album, but it’s impossible to pigeonhole this group into any one sound – which is a good thing. Make no mistake about it, this is an indie band with a focus on quiet beauty. Sometimes the lyrics are a bit too wordy, but that’s a small price to pay to hear an interesting and pleasant record.

Yoav - Charmed & Strange - Verve Forecast
Sonically, this album sounds fantastic with percussive acoustic guitar, middle-eastern strings, and catchy melodies, but it falls short on lyrics and substance. It’s hard to get past corny phrases like “can i have another hit of adrenaline?” and “i turn around and breathe you in”. A nod to The Pixies on track 11 is a nice touch, but you’re still left feeling that if you didn’t understand English this might be a pretty good record. Yoav gained fame by touring with Tori Amos and has often been compared to her. You can also hear bits of Nine Inch Nails beats on this album. Unfortunately, Top 40 style lyrics and shallow themes cripple Charmed & Strange from being an inspiring or unique album.

Lightspeed Champion - Falling Off The Lavender Bridge - Domino Recording
This is the first solo effort by ex-Test Icicle member Devonte Hynes and it's a significant departure from his former work. Recorded in Nebraska with producer Mike Mogis from Bright Eyes, Falling Off The Lavender Bridge features many of the same instrumental elements found on Bright Eyes albums (steel guitar, violin, etc.) and, as a result, sounds more alt-country than indie post-punk. Disappointingly, the album comes off as contrived far too often and some of the best tracks aren’t fit for airplay.

Headlights - Some Racing, Some Stopping - Polyvinyl
Headlights’ latest effort is more pop than punk and they execute it with great acumen. There are obvious nods to Death Cab For Cutie and Stars, but this album does have its own sound. Sweet 60’s bubblegum vocals and Beach Boys telecaster hints are sprinkled throughout this lush indie album and even if you’ve heard this kind of Pitchfork crap before, Some Racing, Some Stopping deserves a chance. Yes, every track is worth a listen and no, I’ve never heard of Headlights before this.

Head Of Femur - Great Plains - Greyday Records
Head of Femur’s sophomore effort is a decent example of modern prog-indie rock. There are musical references to the likes of Menomena - but the melodies are not quite as catchy, the hooks not quite as evident, and the beats aren’t really there. Still, it is a worthwhile listen if for no other reason than because it can keep you engaged. On the whole, Great Plains changes tempo and/or instrumentation and/or time signature every minute or so which works often, but sometimes seems a little too forced.

and today's video:

hurry up and wait

well, the waiting game has begun prematurely. this saturday was supposed to be my big-blowout-last-training-show show, but for reasons beyond my control i won't be there.

...i'll give you a minute to get over that horrible empty feeling...

so while i hold my breath in anticipation for the final training exam results and show schedules, i'll post some mixtapes here over the next couple weeks.

today's offering (parental guidance strongly suggested) rocks my face off. just click on the first song to start the mix:


and here's another rad video: