NEW YORK — AOL LLC said Tuesday it has hired Shashi Seth from software maker Cooliris Inc. for the position of senior vice president of global advertising.
AOL could certainly use a new advertising strategy. Does anyone actually USE AOL’s services anymore…besides AIM? Ten years ago sure but now my browser is Firefox, my service comes from Verizon, and I search with Google.
Great idea buying AOL, Time Warner. What’s that? Ten years later AOL is a worthless asset?
The White House is pushing back against a profile in the Washington Post of the Obama Administration’s Special Envoy for Sudan, Air Force Major General Scott Gration
Why would that be?
The story states that Gration wants the US to normalize relations with the Sudan, “the only country in the world led by a president indicted for war crimes,” a reference to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
“We would not take a step like that absent significant changes in conditions on the ground,” says a senior administration official.
No kidding. Did you hear that the violence in Darfur is going down but in south Sudan it’s going up? I imagine the mainstream media would rather tell you about Roman Polanski.
The Rifles – “She’s Got Standards” – Live @ Great Scott
Band: Editors
Label: Kitchenware Records
Release: October 12, 2009
1. “In This Light and On This Evening” – 9.4
2. “Bricks and Mortar” – 9.5
3. “Papillon” – 10
4. “You Don’t Know Love” – 9.6
5. “The Big Exit” – 9.5
6. “The Boxer” – 9.8
7. “Like Treasure” – 9.7
8. “Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool” – 9.8
9. “Walk The Fleet Road” – 9.6
Comments: I’ve been anticipating this album in what seems like forever. Editors aren’t my 8th favorite band for shits and giggles! Their brand of post-punk/dark-wave has always struck a chord with me. Things get 20X darker on this album, though. Goodbye sweet melodies and accessible pop guitar riffs, and hello destructive drum patterns and rave-esque forces. Goodbye to the electric guitar (synthesizer/drum only). Immediately, I realize a lyrical theme: Tom seems to question the role of God. In the opening track and then on “Papillon,” Tom says “Darlin…if there really was a God here he would have raised a hand by now.” Is he talking about God being here on earth or God’s presence in general? I guess that’s up to us to decide. The first five tracks are purely robotic, almost dance numbers. “The Boxer” sounds more compatible with Editor’s past work, but fittingly there is a new raw layer of synths. Editors do the same thing that Animal Collective did with Merriweather Post Pavillion and that’s revolutionize a genre. Animal Collective changed the way we look at psychedelic pop. Editors have changed the way we should look at atmospheric modern day post-punk. Only top albums have this quality and that’s what this is…a top album. HOLD ON A SECOND GLEN. I must have been feeling good when I wrote this. It’s awesome, but not that awesome damnit.
Grade: 9.7
Band: Mission of Burma
Label: Matador Records
Release: October 6, 2009
1. “1, 2, 3 Partyy!” – 9.4
2. “Possession” – 8.9
3. “Blunder” – 8.7
4. “Forget Yourself” – 8.8
5. “After the Rain” – 8.2
6. “SSL 83” – 8.4
7. “One Day We Will Live There” – 8.8
8. “So Fuck It” – 9.5
9. “Feed” – 9.0
10. “Good Cheer” – 9.2
11. “Comes Undone” – 9.4
12. “Slow Faucet” – 9.3
Comments: There isn’t much to say about this album. It’s a lot of what Mission of Burma fans love above Mission of Burma. If you don’t love Mission of Burma, you are going to probably write this album off as meh-verage old guy punk rock. There is some really really catchy, drill Sargent drumming and blistering noisy guitar especially in the last five songs.
Grade: 9.0
Dead Air Space:
hi
in the past couple of weeks i’ve been getting a band together for fun to play the eraser stuff live and the new songs etc.. to see if it could work!
here’s a photo.. its me, joey waronker, mauro refosco, flea and nigel godrich.at the beginning of october the 4th and 5th we are going to do a couple of shows at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles.
we don’t really have a name and the set will not be very long cuz ..well …we haven’t got that much material yet!
but come and check it out if you are in the area. we’ve also got locals Lucky Dragons playing.
all the best
Cool.
LA Weekly
The two don’t like each other, apparently so much that when both bands played last month’s FYF Fest in LA, intermediaries feared that fisticuffs might erupt at any moment. The two never crossed paths in LA, though. That changed Saturday night, when both were at Daddy’s Bar in Brooklyn. Someone apparently served someone else a knuckle sandwich.Williams of Wavves, in a MySpace post, describes Swilley as “just looking for a fight at 4 in the morning talking shit to my face and his girlfriend is spitting in the face of all my friends.” Swilley begs to differ, and says a cowardly Williams relied not on his fists but his posse’s: “I’ve never ‘come after’ that kid, it wasn’t four a.m., that wasn’t my girlfriend, no one was spitting, and I didn’t attack him. .. The only thing I did was walk up to him and say ‘You’re that faggot from Wavves and I don’t like you.’ He smiled a bit but didn’t say anything.”
Later in the night Swilley stumbled into Wavves turf, where he “saw their tour manager hanging around with some guys. They started getting all chuckles with me and so I told them I wasn’t gonna have it. After that, Wavves tour manager hit me square in the face with a bottle. Blood started pouring out and six dudes fucking started kicking me until I blacked out.”
How about no violence! Both seem like cool dudes. But wait:
“We’re gonna set up a boxing match between the two kids. We’re getting sponsors now. Jared from The Black Lips told us he’s 100% down to do it and we’re waiting to hear back from Nathan but from what I’ve heard he’s down too. The event itself is gonna be held in Los Angeles, in an actual boxing ring, will be filmed and the winner will not only win a “Buddyhead Title Belt” but he’ll win a large cash prize.”
Keller describes the bill thusly: “Two skinny white dorks with boxing gloves on trying to punch each other.” He also wants them to do a split single on Buddyhead Records: “Diss tracks!”
Swilley has maybe a foot advantage on Williams, who is truly incredibly tiny…Then Swilley just had to be a complete immature asshole:
He’s coming to Atlanta October 3rd and we’re gonna get ugly on him. We’re gonna destroy their van, we’re gonna destroy their faces, we’re gonna get crazy on em’. Nasty style.”
Sioux City Root Beer: No alarms and no surprises with this one. Really traditional. No pre-taste or after-taste. Sweet and smooth. Good on its own merit.
Grade: 9.2
Abita Root Beer: Good…mild…not as sweet. Would go pretty damn well with food. Nothing too crazy about it. Flavorful. A really neutral good tasting root beer.
Grade: 8.9
BBC News sums up a speech by southern Sudan’s leader in their article’s first sentence: “The leader of southern Sudan says the country is at a “historic crossroads”, as it gears up for a national vote and a secession referendum for the south.” The story is buried somewhat in the Africa section. It isn’t mentioned on the front page. Iran dominates the headlines today. Merkel is mentioned on the front page as well. Even the Roman Polanski story is getting more attention.
VOA News interestingly leaves the “historic crossroads” quote out. The lead instead paraphrases: “The President of the semi-autonomous Southern Sudan has reportedly said that there is a real chance the results of the 2011 referendum on the future of South Sudan will lead to secession from the north.” This is the top story in the Africa section and under the African section of the front page.
Bands: Many Mansions, Ganglians, Wavves
Venue: Great Scott (Allston, MA)
Date: Sunday, September 27, 2009
Many Mansions
This band embodies what has become of the psychedelic trance/drum and bass genre. Their set up was different for sure: one man controlling the drum and bass machine, the effects pedals, and singing while the other dude was just on stage to (apparently) play with the visuals on the projector. And the visuals were weird as hell. Some of the images: an African boy running in a field, an African guy nailed to a cross and decaying, trees, a bunch of people moving away from a building, people break dancing, and an African woman doing a dance in the forest. These images did all sorts of crazy things like spin, flip, illuminate, and fade. The visual arts component was better than the music. I felt bored by the music, at least initially. A few of the electronic drum schemes were catchy and maybe one song was actually “good,” but other than that this band just didn’t do too much for me.
Ganglians
The best I can describe Ganglians is proto-Wavves. They played a lot of catchy noise-pop that certainly the crowd was into. There was definitely an element of their music (the bass lines, probably) that really allowed for dancing and grooving. The lead singer was rocking out and everyone in the band looked like they were having a blast. I sensed a lot of Jay Reatard garage-pop, especially in the drumming and singing. There was one number in particular that had a near identical drum part as “Blood Visions.” A song I highly recommend checking out that they played is “Blood on the Sand.” “Hair” had me mistaking this band for the War on Drugs with its active keyboards. Overall, this was a really good second band!
Wavves
After ten minutes of “technical difficulties,” the crowd got a little antsy. Like…maybe Nathan Williams consumed Valium and E before the show and couldn’t figure out which amp to plug his guitar into. Or maybe not since the only amp on stage was a huge Marshall double-stack mammajamma. Safe to say that no public breakdown happened last night. Williams, with his New York Death Adders hat and tee, welcomed the crowd saying “Hi, we’re Wavves” before blasting into “So Bored,” my favorite song! Everyone easily recognized this song because it’s Wavves’ biggest and just started going nuts, singing along, dancing, etc. The next set of seven or eight songs potentially ended with the word “Goth” or “Demon,” I just can’t remember. That’s because there was, at least for me, an unexpected amount of moshing. The first I got hit I was kind of like wtf okay that’s cool. But then I looked behind me and people were getting pushed around like crazy, bumping into each other. So the next twenty minutes turned out to be an awesome re-visitation of old No Age shows, because of both the music (noisy punk) and the crowd response (moshing). The final song they played was “No Hope Kids,” an awesome song to end the show! Pure pop beneath the massive wall of noise. Unfortunately they only played for 30 minutes, but it was a lengthy 30 minutes. After sweating my ass off from all the moshing and losing track of time, it felt like just enough.
Final Comments: Wavves put on a great show and the experience of watching them play was very top notch. Wouldn’t it have been better if I knew a majority of the songs performed? Probably. I didn’t let them bug me and in the end I walked out of Great Scott knowing that I had a shitload of fun. That said, this show is not comparable to some of the best shows I’ve seen. I would give it somewhere in the B+/B range.
Kids Like You & Me (KLYAM) 