Today has to be an Odds and Sods post because my last 3 have been about Record Store Day, and a fourth would've been too much.
- A few quick thoughts about Record Store Day- it was the best yet, and seeing our record stores modestly crowded made my heart sing. Also, The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends is for my money the best RSD exclusive release yet. I felt an unbearable lightness of being just snatching my copy out of the bin, but to get home and see and hold the handmade albums and inspect the hand etched notes on the albums themselves... I genuinely felt and feel the love that went into making them for Flaming Lips fans. And the music on them is fantastic and perfectly sequenced to create a whole and coherent work that actually makes it a significant Flaming Lips album and a contender for one of my albums of the year.
- The same cannot be said for Animal Collective's Transverse Temporal Gyrus RSD exclusive. It's.... uh.... interesting, and it comes with a great diagram/flow chart that sort of communicates what their Guggenheim Museum installation was about, but it's certainly not a follow up to their last proper release Fall Be Kind or anything that's going into heavy rotation.
- As for the rest of my RSD swag: The Black Angels single was swell (nifty retro packaging plus intriguing signals about future Black Angels sounds), the Grace Potter & The Nocturnals at the Legendary Sun Studio cd was nice but not earthshaking, and that Mynah Birds single featuring Rick James and Neil Young circa 1966 was a revelation- sunny California rock mixed with Motown harmonies and soulfully fronted by an explosive young Rick James... yeah music history missed out on that one when circumstances scotched it's release (see VH-1's Rick James: Behind The Music).
- The Black Keys were profiled on CBS Sunday Morning, and it was a mighty nice piece. Not only am I partial to their music, but these dudes are all right. Far from being wankers, they are Rust Belt salt of the earth... like us, perhaps explaining our area's rapidly growing affinity for the Keys (the Town Ballroom one year, Artpark the next). And I don't want to hear about how they've gotten "too popular" after 10 years of work, or "sold out." I'm tired of hearing that wanky shit. In addition to offending my blue collar ethos let's face it, everybody but Radiohead (and R.E.M.) has sold out and allowed their music to be used in commercials. The Flaming Lips. M83. Sigur Ros. The New Pornographers. GRIZZLY BEAR. Etcetera etcetera. They all did it, they all had to do it (because the MTV's and VH1's suck), so let's get over it. Now are the Black Keys overexposed? Now that could be a different story.
- I read this article yesterday in the Guardian about Manchester's (UK) late 80's music scene and I thought of you Buffalo because of our growing electronic music scene, and because I always think about Buffalo when I think about Manchester... being that they're both faded, industrial cities in the north of their respective countries, although Manchester isn't as faded as it used to be, offering possible lesson for our fair city.
- And now a word about health and well being (because we love you here at buffaBLOG): be sure to dress warmly and appropriately when heading out to tonight's Cults and tomorrow's Death Cab For Cutie and Portugal. The Man shows. The Buffalo concert scene is heating up (ST Vincent! M83!) while Buffalo's weather is concurrently going bonkers, and now is not the time to get sick. Be sure to take your vitamins and eat your vegetables!
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