Just want a girl as cool as Kim Deal

From Rolling Stone:

When Rock Daily spoke with Breeders leader and Pixies bassist Kim Deal recently about the Breeders’ April 8th album Mountain Battles, Deal didn’t shy away from talk of a new Pixies record: She says there won’t be one (with her on bass, at least). “Helll no,” she says. “Because I don’t want to.”

Her reasoning? She’s a music fan who doesn’t want to hear new albums from bands she enjoyed years ago. “I heard the last Rolling Stones record was good,” she explains. “The thing is, I don’t even care if it’s the best thing they’ve ever done, I just wouldn’t listen to it. And it’s not anything that they’re doing wrong. As a listener, I don’t want to hear about it. I like the Stones at this period of time that I like them, and that’s why I like them. Maybe I’m an elitist, but I don’t feel like I am.” Deal adds that on some level, she thinks Pixies leader Charles Thompson (a.k.a. Frank Black) doesn’t really want to make a new studio album either. “I was kind of waiting for Charles and [guitarist Joey Santiago] to get together and do demos and they never did.”

Her reluctance to record with her first band doesn’t mean she didn’t get a kick out of their 2004 reunion tour — or that she wouldn’t do it again. “I enjoy doing the tours,” she says, musing on the number of groups who attempted similar reconciliations in the wake of Pixies’ extremely successful trek. “It worked for us because we didn’t have to fit into the black leather pants and do the high kicks. Because we never had black leather pants and we never did high kicks. We were overweight and ugly then, and we’re overweight and ugly now, so it really wasn’t a stretch. Nobody looked at us and thought, ‘Oh, their youthy dew has gone.’ Other than their hair, that’s about it.”

But Deal did undergo a significant change before Pixies’ reunion: she stopped drinking. In fact, work on Mountain Battles began even before she entered rehab in 2002. When she emerged, she was nervous about writing clean. “That was a really scary thing, because I thought everybody who gets sober begins to suck,” she says. Rehab, however, was a necessity because she’d been doing drugs since age thirteen. “Somebody said this and I recognized myself: I wasn’t a musician with some drugs in the room, I was a drug addict with some musical gear in the room.” After a tumultuous stint at 2002’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festival (”I thought I was going to fucking die there. I had really bad shakes, and I was drinking so much”), Deal scheduled herself a trip to rehab over Christmas.

She was subsequently totally sober and healthy on the 2004 Pixies tour, and made the decision to rejoin the band with a clear head. “Me and Joe agreed, okay, what we’ll do is we’ll just get into a practice space and try it,” she says. “And if it sounds stupid or it feels stupid, we won’t do it. Charles was touring a record, so me and Joe and [drummer] David [Lovering] got into a rehearsal space out in L.A. I drove out there in my Volvo, we used the Breeders’ rehearsal space, and it was the three of us, and it sounded exactly the same as it did. Exactly. For better or worse. Me and Joe were like, is this good in that we’re so good we can sound like ourselves, or is this bad in that we haven’t grown one inch musically?”


If only all musicians could be so honest and unpretentious. And totally awesome.

"We were overweight and ugly then, and we’re overweight and ugly now, so it really wasn’t a stretch. Nobody looked at us and thought, ‘Oh, their youthy dew has gone.'"

Classic.

New Mixtape

Track list and link to come shortly, when I'm sure the mix is sufficiently unpretentious. Be on the lookout.

Musings on the Superbowl

Well, It's the day after the big game.

I'm riding a hangover that would kill most carbon-based lifeforms and nursing a heart shattered by the emotional curb-stomp that was the Patriot's unprecidented and epic failure.

Oh how the gods have forsaken us, Patriots fans, and doomed us to weeks of badgering by the mouth-breathers wearing Giants jerseys who at this very moment bark at the moon in praise of their egregious and dishonorable victory.

Carl's Pleased, Though.

But really. That game sucked from start to finish. At no point did the patriots ever get any momentum, and frankly they looked in no way as professional or skilled as their rivals.

But let us remember that the Superbowl is not all about Football. Who could forget the hilariously phallic light display before the Tom Petty concert?

New Mixtape:

Track List:

1.) Green Grass of Tunnel - Múm
2.) It's Personal - The Radio Dept
3.) Precious - Minipop
4.) Lover's Spit - Broken Social Scene
5.) The Stroll - Duplomacy
6.) Ghostship - Menomena
7.) Telling Me (Acoustic Demo) - Halloween, Alaska
8.) Seven States Across - J. Tillman
9.) Going Away - M. Ward
10.) Grandfather's Nursery - Pulp
11.) Day After Tomorrow - Tom Waits
12.) Fake Empire - The National
13.) Omaha - Tapes 'n Tapes
14.) The Soldier - Toy Fight
15.) Claxxons Lament (frog eyes) - Wolf Parade


Download it here: (80MB)

Last.Fm is now streaming full songs and albums... FO FREE

You might notice on the left hand side of the window here, I have posted my Last.FM playlist for all to enjoy. I do this not only as an avenue to share new music with you, but also to advertize one of the best music-related sites on the web. Last.FM brilliantly reccomends songs and albums to you by examining a list of your favorite artists and the music you play though iTunes. However, you were never allowed to search for a specific song and play it online. Instead, you were merely presented with a list of songs which played through automatically.

As of yesterday however, they have upped their ante, allowing their users to listen to songs in the Last.FM library for free. Here is the text from the official Last.FM Blog:


As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website.

Something we’ve wanted for years—for people who visit Last.fm to be able to play any track for free—is now possible. With the support of the folks behind EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner—and the artists they work with—plus thousands of independent artists and labels, we’ve made the biggest legal collection of music available to play online for free, the way we believe it should be.

Full-length tracks are now available in the US, UK, and Germany, and we’re hard at work broadening our coverage into other countries. During this initial public beta period, each track can be played up to 3 times for free before a notice appears telling you about our upcoming subscription service. The soon-to-be announced subscription service will give you unlimited plays and some other useful things. We’re also working on bringing full-length tracks to the desktop client and beyond.

Free full-length tracks are obviously great news for listeners, but also great for artists and labels, who get paid every time someone streams a song. Music on Last.fm is perpetually monetized. This is good because artists get paid based on how popular a song is with their fans, instead of a fixed amount.


Sign up for Last.FM here

Enjoy this:

Track Listing:

1.) Forts - The Boggs
2.) Lights And Music - Cut Copy
3.) Faze - Bondage Fairies
4.) I Get Around - Dragonette
5.) Bounce That - Girl Talk
6.) Lost Time (Pictureplane Remix) - HEALTH
7.) The Next Collarbone - Dr. Dre (feat. Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg) vs Fujiya & Miyagi [DJ ABX]
8.) Knife [Girl Talk Remix] - Grizzly Bear
9.) Everyday I'm Ghosthustlin' - Rick Ross vs Ghosthustler [DJ ABX]
10.) Poppin' Bottles Of Soup - Birdman (feat. Lil Wayne) vs Tunng [DJ ABX]
11.) Crambodia feat Ghostface Killah - Plastic Little
12.) Heartbeats - The Knife
13.) Seventeen Years - Ratatat
14.) Sweet Talk - Spank Rock

Download it Here. (68 MB)

Black Cab Sessions: One Song. One Take. One Cab

"A CHALLENGE HAS BEEN LAID DOWN. FORGET CHART POSITIONS, FORGET TICKET SALES, OR BRAND-EXTENDING TOILETRIES OR MYSPACE FRIENDS OR ANY OTHER MEASURE OF SUCCESS. FROM HERE ON IN, IT'S ALL ABOUT HOW WELL YOU CAN ROCK THE BACK OF A CAB."

BBC RADIO 1 ONLINE


The Idea is simple. Get various artists to play a song in one of London's ubiquitous black cabs, and record it. Check out this clip of one of my faves St. Vincent performing Dig A Pony on a tiny Marshall amp.

P.S. It's almost criminal how adorable this woman is.



Check the rest of the videos at blackcabsessions.com.