MP3 Of The Day No. 18 – Sunny Day Real Estate ‘Seven’

Today’s MP3 of the day is the band Biffy Clyro wanted to be when they first started out; Sunny Day Real Estate are the shit, they are signed to Sub Pop and are playing a show over here in London in April.

MP3 Of The Day No.17 – Cap’n Jazz ‘Little League’

The Early November, Brand New, Sparrows, At The Drive-In, Weezer, Suny Day Real Estate, Glassjaw, the entire early Big Scary Monsters label roster and pretty much every other emo band around all have Cap’n Jazz to thank.

Creating a sound that has defined many a year for young adults, Chicago’s Cap’n Jazz were one of the first (and best) emo bands. They only record one full length (that is fucking hard to find at a reasonable price on vinyl) back in 1995 titled ‘Burritos, Inspiration Point, Fork Balloon Sports, Cards In The Spokes, Automatic Biographies, Kites, Kung Fu, Trophies, Banana Peels We’ve Slipped On and Egg Shells We’ve Tippy Toed Over‘ along with a handful of 7″ and appearances on comps. They split up soon after the release of their first record.

Quite simply one of the most influential bands of the past 25 years.

They reformed this month to play a little low key show that wasn’t even billed as a Cap’n Jazz show. Please play here this year. What they went onto after this short lived band is fucking great too.

The REAL Vampire Weekend review at New Slang

Kingston Upon Themes: a quaint suburban London town west of the centre of the city. Not much happens there, you’ve got the University, the college and a respectable town centre. Why then would band of the moment Vampire Weekend even consider coming down to play the Hippadrome, a quasar looking club just off the centre of this student based settlement? Reasons being to play the well respected New Slang club night put on by the local record store Banquet Records.

A show originally billed as a headline show for now support act and local boys Good Shoes, somehow the club night got the guys to play during a busy week of press and special one-off shows which ended in the band playing Rough Trade East on the Friday night.

Word had been spreading around the club that the band wouldn’t be on till 11 o’clock… various pieces of press to do, a show outside playing to bewildered ice skaters and a radio session all in one day. A show that could easily have been sold out ten-times over finally had their men at just shy of 11:45PM to a fanfare of DJ Kool’s ‘Let me Clear My Throat’ that led to the sombre tones of ‘White Sky’s’ subtle keyboard nature. By this time security had started standing on various bars and the merchandise desk with the stances of President Obama’s henchmen to see if the rowdy crowd were on their best behaviour.

A high-spirited Ezra and co seemed to be enjoying the special club show – surely these guys hadn’t played a venue the size of the Hippadrome since the release of their critically acclaimed self-titled album back in 2008? Conversing in an incredibly self confident way, “It’s been a very busy week for us, we have a new record out, here’s a new one… if you now it sing along… if you don’t then keep doing what your doing” to the never ending sea of heads colliding together with arms stretched to the point where you can’t bring them down. Strolling into the never ending bass-line of recent come-back single ‘Cousins’ to a cheer not far from the one the one we would hear soon after when the band played their ever TV montage loving ‘A-Punk’. When the first note of that riff was hit, intoxicated strangers linked arm-in-arm and bellowed out at the top of their lungs the next notes via the medium of drunken chanting. In a way it was quite cringe worthy, the song has passed its credibility and become another song to add to the list of drunken riff chant’s (see ‘Take Me out’ and ‘Don’t look back into the sun’ to name a few).

With a few surprises on the way, the inclusion of mid track listed debut cuts ‘I stand corrected’ and ‘Campus’, there was very little from new album ‘Contra’. Closing on the up-lifting piano heavy ‘Walcott’, it had been a compelling night – I doubt it was that much of a change in the set list to other night’s, but just seeing a band of their size in such an odd and undersized venue was really the appeal.

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This is the review that Fake DIY put up

It’s just as good as Paper Toss

Now, one of – if the best thing about the iPhone is the abundance of apps you can download to your little rectangle hand held miniature comp – that rings people. We’ve all got facebook, twitter apps and the greatest game ever Paper Toss, but there are apps that actually really help you out a fucking load. Like the tube map of London and the train times one (I don’t have it… it costs £4 or something).

Who remembers the ‘ol Vice Guide To Travel dvd? (You can pick it up from Urban Outfitters in their sale at the mo). It’s a pretty sick DVD that tells you about some of the coolest and also most fucked up cities and countries around the world. Vice have a pretty good knowledge when it comes to travel guides, so they’ve joined forces with the big cheeses over at Nike to create the new app True City. It’s a FREE (oh yes) guide to six European city’s, including London telling you places to go from people who know where to go. The app “unlocks access to city insiders’ views of sport, life and culture in six of Europe’s most innovative cities”. So if your pub closes at 11 and you wanna keep drinking, open the app and it will tell you where your nearest late-night watering hole is. If your feeling in a bit of an arty mood and you wanna go to an exhibition, it’ll tell you where to go… pretty sick really, I’ve got it… 😉

The cities are: London, Berlin, Paris, Milan, Amsterdam and Barcelona.

You can download the app now. Head over to the Truce City site to see a video of how it works and some more info.

Cover Of The Day No.4 – The Beatles ‘To Know Her Is To Love Her’

Today a track that was released over 50 years ago.

Written by the crazed but genius producer Phil Spector and preformed with his first vocal group The Teddy Bears, this version of To Know Her Is To Love Her is off of The Beatles Live At The BBC record. With George on lead vocals, the lad’s put together a beautiful take on the late 50’s heart-achingly hit.

Here is the original To Know Him Is To Love Him with vocalist of the Teddy Bears Annette Kleinbard on lead.

As the years went on and both Spector and The Beatles became archetypal in their fields, it would be John who would befriend Spector with the producer working on a number of his solo efforts after working together on The Beatles Let It Be Album.

MP3 Of The Day No.16 – Grizzly Bear ‘Two Weeks’

MP3 Of The Day No.15 – His Clancyness ‘Mistify The Ocean’

Clicking around this afternoon I found an incredible new song by His Clancyness. Having played shows with the great Banjo Or Freakout in London last year, this song see’s Mr Clancyness doing some interesting things.

Swirling reverbed guitars with harmonious lyrical content creates something of beauty for a blue skied, grass frosted day.

Super Bowl Halftime No Show

So some child abuse protesters in the States want The Who off of the Super Bowl 44 Halftime show on the 4th February. Well it’s not so much the whole band… just their big nosed guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend. I for one will be pretty fucked off if they don’t play, it’s one of the reasons (not the main, please Green Bay get to the Superbowl) Andy and I will be staying up past out bedtimes to watch the show.

Now, one of the best parts about Super Bowl Sunday is the artists/bands who preform. We’ve had Janet Jackson’s’ tit come out to play with Justin Timberlake, Mick and Keith swaggering around trying not to put their hips out, Macca doing what he does best, Tom Petty miming, Springsteen being boring like always and the best one of the best decade… Prince.

Taken from the gaurdian website:

“The Who [are] a great band. Pete Townshend is the only issue here,” wrote Child Abuse Watch founder Evin Daly in an open letter to the National Football League commissioner. Townshend was charged by British police in 2003, four years after he used his credit card to access a Texas-based child pornography website. He pleaded guilty, claiming he had been revisiting childhood memories of sexual assault as research for his autobiography. Townshend received a police caution, but was cleared on charges of possession of indecent pictures, as no images had been kept on his computer. Townshend’s nameremained on the UK sex offenders’ register for five years.

“Inviting Townsend to play is a blatant disregard to the values of American families and a slap in the face to victims of child sexual abuse,” wrote Daly. The same sentiment was expressed in a letter by another US group, Protect Our Children, which wrote to the US department of immigration and Florida’s attorney general, asking them to reject Townshend’s visa. “We acknowledge he was not convicted, but he was on [the UK] sex offenders’ list,” wrote Protect Our Children president Kevin Gillick. “In the United States, you’re on a sex offenders’ list for life.”

Prince Halftime show from Super Bowl XLI 2006

MP3 Of The Day no.14 – The Walkmen ‘In The New Year’

nice topical MP3 of the day today.

Happy new year too