Ha! I KNEW it

he scruffy, Cincinnati-bred chroniclers of twenty-something life known as the National will take on that scruffy, Jersey-bred chronicler of blue collar life known as the Boss aka BRUUUUUUCE aka plain old Bruce Springsteen on the B-side of their new single.

The band's cover of Bruce's Nebraska gem "Mansion on the Hill", recorded live at the opening night of last year's New York Guitar Festival, will back the"Apartment Story" single. Beggars Banquet will release "Apartment Story" in the UK on November 5.

-pitchfork

I knew they probably loved springsteen. who doesn't? nice choice of cover...

in addition, here are some fun youtube videos i've found in the last day or two:


Grizzly Bear doing an acapella version of "The Knife"



Broken Social Scene with Dinosaur Jr. at some party. this looks ridiculously hip.

it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive

so the new Bruce Springsteen CD leaked, and thanks to ben berkowitz, I FUCKING HAVE A COPY OF IT! I am listening to it and boy I am already kind of in love with it. Sounds like old Bruce, and i've already heard some tracks that blow the single "Radio Nowhere" out of the water....perhaps a preview coming up soon!

ps- my new favorite musical genre: "lamp rock." this was used to describe Doveman, the band who opened for The National last friday.

we've had a killer mail day at the radio station! we got in copies of :

new Georgie James
new M83
new Good Life
new Two Gallants
new Rogue Wave
extra copy of new Talib Kweli (thanks!)
and humourously, the soundtrack to the new nikki six journals/autobiography, entitled "The Heroin Diaries." cool...

pickin apples, makin' pie

Last night I found myself at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, at the sold-out performance by Brooklyn by way of Cincinnati's own The National. The first and only other time I saw The National play was when they opened for The Arcade Fire at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in Asheville. I had really good seats at that show, in the middle floor section no more than 25 rows back, thanks to the lovely folks at Merge Records. As soon as I sat down, The National came onstage and opened with “Start A War,” the eight track on their new-ish album Boxer. Considering who they were touring with, I assumed they would be playing a similar vein of bleeding heart/gasping for breath/indie-rock-church-revival that Arcade Fire is known for. I was blown away when they started playing, and by the end of the performance I had to reach down and pick my lower jaw off the floor. They far outplayed Arcade Fire that night, and probably made polite, subtle, this-is-kind-of-overrated fun of them a bunch backstage. These guys are six normal looking dudes with scruffy facial hair, loose-fitting clothes, and thrift store button down shirts, playing without any projectors, stage props, or giant church organs to boot. That is to say, these guys let the music they play speak for itself.

After an enjoyable performance by openers Doveman, another Brooklyn band who feature about three members of The National, the band came out onstage and once again opened with the album standout "Start A War," and as I had remembered it from last time, extended it, built it up with more crescendos, and right when you thought each member was about to spontaneously combust from the intensity they were putting forth on such a seemingly calm, harmless song, they stopped, continuing right into "Mistaken For Strangers." Most of the songs on Boxer, lie somewhere in the three minute mark, displaying that solid songwriting is their strength, or as many reviews I’ve read have said, they know how to quit while they’re ahead, almost as if they’re anxious they might fuck up the song if they continue any longer. Thus, many of their songs come to a seemingly abrupt end, sounding rather truncated. They continued right into "Brainy," and from there on out they were unstoppable. Playing a nice mix of old stuff as well, they played nine out of the twelve tracks on Boxer. While I think the record is fantastic, the band sound larger, more epic, and downright more intense when they perform live, an intensity that I wish could have been captured a little bit more in the recording process. While this may simply be the virue of any band's live performance. There's nothing more boring than seeing a band who play their songs so note for note that they may as well be spinning the record onstage while they're signing autographs. That is the exciting part about seeing The National live: the performance transcends your experience with the music, by changing it up a little they give you a new part of themselves to go home with. For five normal looking guys, they leave every ounce of themselves onstage.

It must be truly weird for these guys to be having the success that they’re having. The band consists of two pairs of brothers on the drums, bass, and guitars, all of whom are originally from Cincinnati, OH. Their Midwestern roots from a part of the country that many Americans probably forget even exists, a city whose biggest claim to fame is either Pete Rose or the chili they have, seems to maintain a high level of influence on not only their music, but their attitude as well.

The fact that opening band Doveman, which features two or three members of The National, did a spot on cover of Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” reveals The National’s great sense of history, welcoming the influence of North American music in with open arms. As Josh Neas put it in his review of the album, the music sounds like a journey through decades of American music, combining folk, punk, new wave, indie, and country into one flawless sound. They probably listen to Bruce Springsteen as much as they do Grizzly Bear, and for folks like me who can never settle on any one kind of music to listen to, The National speak volumes in their influences.

From the brit-pop/Modern English sounding “Apartment Story” to the fleeting, stay-up-all-night feel of “Fake Empire,” they played a positively, disgustingly good set throughout. Interestingly enough, some of my favorite songs they did were the ones I didn't know, presumably off of 2005’s Alligator, which I picked up on vinyl at the show. They put forth that rare performance that, even though you know all the songs from beginning to end, leaves you wanting to do nothing the next day but listen to their records, as I am doing right now.

Their touring violinist/keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist dude adds so much to the band, with his violin(maybe it’s a viola?) filling in a lot of the empty space between the guitars, flushing it out and making it sound about 10 times more epic. The National perform like a very modest band who seem quite unsure of themselves, conveying both confidence and overwhelming stage fright at various points through the night. They awkwardly thank the crowd in a very sincere and earnest way. Vocalist Matt Berninger is the anti-lead singer, somehow maintaining a captivating, earnest stage presence while simultaneously looking as though he were trying to crawl inside himself to get away from the thousands of onlooking eyes across the room. They perfectly captured the sense of American anxiety that seemed to fill every member of the sold-out crowd who came to see them play. They don’t need to dress up like chickens or something onstage, nor are they going to write an entire album about how the lead singer’s girlfriend dumped him. Honesty bleeds through their music and Berninger’s fantastic lyrics, leaving you with something to take home, whether it’s a t-shirt, a poster, an LP, or just the feeling that you’ve grown immeasurably by witnessing their set. Maybe all of the above.

Video for "Mistaken For Strangers"


"Fake Empire" live on Letterman



"sometimes you get up and bake a cake or something. sometimes you stay in bed."

CMJ! CMJ!

Friends, the CMJ Music Marathon is upon us, in just a matter of weeks. My duties as Head Music Director have afforded me the opportunity to go to this week-long event with my ticket, airfare, and hotel stay all paid for, because it's a "conference." really, I am just going to be going to several shows every night for free, eating out a lout, walking around the city a bunch, perhaps enjoying some alcoholic beverages, and seeing tons of great music.

They have announced the first few rounds of bands. There are your predictable big acts, such as Spoon, Deerhunter, and other crap like that. Full details on the bands who have been announced thus far can be found at the CMJ Website. I haven't heard of most of the bands they've announced, and most of them are probably awful, but here is a short list of bands I'm particularly stoked on seeing:

Lifetime
Earthless
Torche
M.I.A.
Brother Ali
Matt and Kim


also, Owen, Mates Of State, and others are playing...I haven't updated in a while, I am still contemplating the new Everybody Fields CD, as well as the new album from Ghastly City Sleep, which is really delightful to listen to now, but I can't figure out if it's a huge letdown or not. It's not at all what i was expecting from these ex-members of Majority Rule and City Of Caterpillar, and being one of the most highly anticipated releases of the year for me, I can't say that it's living up to my expectations of it. Sounds a lot like older Radiohead, basically...

reviews of both of these albums are being worked on and will be posted this weekend! so check back then. Until then, enjoy the new Bruce video.

Springsteen Tour Announcement

Tour Dates have been posted for the fall Springsteen tour, his first full tour with the E Street Band since 2003!! I won't post them right here, but you can go to the official Springsteen site for all pertinent tour information. I must say that I am a little dissapointed that this is not a bigger tour than it is. The furthest south he is going is Washington D.C., and with the exception of Giants Stadium, it doesn't look like he is doing any more than one show per city. In addition, it seems there are at least three days off in between each show! Is the E Street Band getting too old for this job? Or does Max Weinberg have to fly back and forth between NYC and each show to film his nightly performance on the Conan O'Brien show? Who knows.

The date I will be attending will most likely be November 11th at the Verizon Center in Washington D.C. I am sure I can make it back to Greensboro the next day before my 2:30 class. I can make a nice weekend home visit out of it...I hope to see all you dixie folks at this performance. Which led me to thinking...

It has never seemed like Springsteen has had much of a presence in the South. As a friend of mine from Alabama once said, he plays "country music for yankees." I suppose that there are some cultural, historical divides that seem to prevent his music from reaching a wider audience in the south. Considering that his lyrics tend to serve as narrative to the working class white factory man, differences in Industry between North and South could also account for Springsteen falling on deaf ears down in this part of the country. The North has always been more industrialized and city-based, while the South was Agriculture-based up until the Civil War. The Post-Civil War south experienced increasing urbanization, in order to modernize in the wake of an economic system that was literally left in ashes at the end of the Civil War. This Rural-Urban migration brought different populations of people together, all of whom migrated to the city in order to find some chance at work and assimilation into industry, since their former ways of self-reliance and sustainability could no longer be obtained. It should also be noted that dependence on the convenience and low price of slave-produced goods that could no longer be obtained obviously gave the American Economic system a huge kick in the ass, both in the South and the North as well. All of this is to say, that the effect of the romanticizing of industrial, working-class, urban lifestyle that we see in Springsteen's lyrics does not seem to translate as well when applied to the American South, which has a unique and vastly different history than the rest of the Country.

The Country music that the South is know for developed out of a rememberance of that slower, older way of life, where as in Springsteen's music seems rooted in the gritty industrial smokestacks of Central New Jersey. Immigrants in the 19th and early 20th century moved south and west to escape this way of life and to find their own land to work. Sometimes American cultural divides can be seen clearly in simple questions like who likes Bruce Springsteen and why? As much as I can tell, his audience tends to consist largely of liberal, working class to middle class white adults (as biographer Dave Marsh has said, you see more black people onstage at Springsteen concerts than you do in the audience) based in the North and Midwest.

I would write more but I need to do homework. I am a f ull time student as well. I may finish this later, but for now, meet Old Gregg:

Radio Show 8/28

here is the playlist for my radio show that aired yesterday at 2 PM:

Artist- Song

Pinback- From Nothing To Nowhere
Animal Collective- Peacebone (new single from the upcoming Strawberry Jam)
Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators-Feeling Free
Sean Na Na- W've Been Here Before
Aesop Rock- None Shall Pass
M.I.A- Jimmy
Endless Mic- Academia
Billy Holiday, Re-Mixed and Reimagined- I Hear Music
Mirah- My Prize
Ryan Adams- Pearls On A String
The everybody fields- Lonely Anywhere
Emily Haines- The Bank
New Buffalo- Cheer Me Up Thank You
Okkervil River- A Girl In Port
Adrian Orange and Her Band- Window
Caribou- Eli
New Young Pony Club- Ice Cream
The National- Brainy
Angels Of Light- Promise Of Water
Maserati- Synchronicity IV
Caleb Caudle- Uncle Benny
Eyvind Kang- i forget
Airiel- Think Tank
Rebuilding The Rights Of Statues- Police
The Bronzed Chorus- War Of Bees

All of the music here is currently in rotation at WQFS. If you have any interest in requesting it, call in at 336-216-2444 and tune your dial to 90.9 FM!

Magic

So last week, Springsteen enthusiasts such as myself finally recieved the long awaited confirmation that Bruce Springsteen had completed a new album with Producer Brendan O'Brien, and, as expected, it was a project with the E Street Band, who have served as his eyes and ears over his 35 year + career. The album is entitled "Magic," and it's supposed to be a return to the high energy rock n' roll of his earlier work with the E Street Band. I don't think Springsteen is capable of making another "The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle," or a "Greetings From Asbury Park." Those albums were so tied to the time and place in which they were written, and though they serve as timeless artifacts of a youthful enthusiasm rarely seen in today's mainstream, Springsteen has obviously grown up too much to make an album like that again. and no one is expecting him to, so it's fine. I can't help but assume his decision to make what manager Jon Landau has already called a "high energy rock album," unlike the adult contemporary feel of 2002's "The Rising," has everything to do with the recent resurgence in focus on the sheer genius of his earlier work, in great part due to the 30th Anniversary reissue of 1975's "Born To Run."

I had always been a basic Springsteen fan, but never realized how fucking incredible he was and is as a songwriter and performer until the 30th anniversary reissue came out. Pitchfork Media gave the release a 10/10, and Rolling Stone named Springsteen as a "Hot Influence" in their "Hot List" of the year or whatever, which doesn't necessarily reflect anything, but it certainly didn't hurt in making Springsteen hip again, or making it okay for all the closet Springsteen fans to come out of those dark, dark corners of the listening room. In many ways, the musical climate in which Springsteen found his popularity skyrocket is much like the way it is now. When "Born To Run" came out, a vast majority of important American musicians of the time had either choked on their own vomit, taken an extended vacation from recording, or were holed up in the backroom of the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, doing tons of coke with The Band. Today's generation is busy wondering where our Nirvana is, and the Music Industry isn't exactly making that process any easier. It is only logical that Springsteen's popularity would find a new home in a new generation of young listeners, in a period of such musical uncertainty.

Artists such as The Hold Steady and Jason Anderson, who take obvious, direct influence from the 1970's Springsteen catalogue, have also been enjoying immense success in the last year, particularly The Hold Steady, who made just about every Best Of list with their last album "Boys and Girls in America." Listening to "The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle" makes it gravely apparent that this album is probably the biggest influence on the resurgence of 70's wear-your-heart-on-your-sleeve rock n' roll highlighted by bands like The Hold Steady, and particularly apparent in vocalist Craig Finn's lyrical content, structure, and vocal stylings.

The influence of this earlier work became apparent when in late April, a tribute to Springsteen benefit concert for music education in New York City schools was arranged at Carnegie Hall. The finale of a Springsteen cameo/performance of the classic "Rosalita(Come Out Tonight)" with the entire fucking cast of performers(which included Jesse Malin, Badly Drawn Boy, Steve Earle, Josh Ritter, Holmes Brothers, etc.) where anyone onstage was invited to take one of the many verses featured in the song, provided evidence of Springsteen's continuing, vibrant influence on today's crop of young musicians teetering on the edge of mainstream success/indie credibility.



Several books have been written on Springsteen, regarding his lyrics, relationship to his obsessive fans, his portrayal of the American dream, etc., so I will stop here, but I am definitely excited to hear Springsteen try and re-visit his earlier days on E Street. While "The Rising" served its purpose of providing us with a portrait of American life in the post 9/11 political climate (and with politics the way they are these days, that album already seems outdated and no longer relevant), and "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions" gave new life to classic American folk songs, his last truly great album was 1987's "Tunnel Of Love." "Born In The U.S.A" was his last try at straight up rock n' roll. I am nervous about how this album will turn out, but I do have high hopes.

anyway, here is the cover of the album, and with that i leave you.



links to some stories/interviews about "Magic":Rolling Stone Album Details

Interview with Brendan O'Brien

-andywqfs@gmail.com

feedback highly encouraged!!!!!