Daily Loaf

Ritz Ybor’s website boasts a capacity of 1,150 for its concert hall. I would call that a conservative estimate for Brand New and Thrice as I politely pushed through the throng of mostly teenage girls clogging the stairways leading to the pit. All the ”Excuse Me’s” I could muster made no difference when I bumped a girl’s flip-flopped foot and received a flat, condescending “Ow” in reply. Here’s a novel idea — don’t wear flip-flops to rock concerts and don’t stop in the middle of a stairway to watch a band. Unless you’ll permit the rest of us to pee on you instead of pushing through to the facilities.

Following a false start, Thrice (pictured right, all photos by Mike Wilson) hit the stage around eight and overcame some early technical problems to deliver a ten-song set of competent, mostly mid-tempo post-rock with intermittent lite-hardcore breakdowns. Guitarist Teppei Teranishi’s backup vocals created some pleasant harmonies with frontman Dustin Kensrue’s otherwise bland leads. Thrice didn’t perform as if very excited, and aside from a pinch of hardcore fans singing every word they elicited little more than head-bobbing from the crowd. It took a cover of “Helter Skelter” — a song that pre-dates the birth of every bandmember and most of the audience — to finally evoke some movement. “Silhouette” off their major label debut, The Artist In The Ambulance, received the best fan reaction, and enough people caught onto the “We are beggars, all” chant from their new LP’s title-track as Thrice finally forged a connection before ending their set. I heard more than a few Thrice supporters object the lack of ‘hits.’

Thankfully, Brand New (pictured below) left little room for similar complaints. (Setlists for both bands after the jump!) Read the rest of this entry »

As someone whose formative years were profoundly influenced by The Beatles, I just assumed that their music was so indelibly etched in my consciousness that I would never hear it in a new way. The songs — all of them, or nearly — had taken on such a mythic quality that spinning them every so often and letting their magnificence wash over me would do just fine. (Pictured: The Beatles circa 1967, (c) Apple Corps Ltd 2009.)

Then on 9.09.09 came the remastered catalogue — 22 years after the initial CD issue — and an opportunity for a new perspective. I was sorely tempted to plunk down the 200-some bucks for the boxed set, but ultimately found the purchase a bit too dear, so I’ve vowed to scrimp and save and acquire as many of the 14 individual CDs as I can.

Which titles to start with is a source of great debate among Beatles devotees, but for me it was easy: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Revolver. (Pepper wins as my favorite in a photo finish.) I was excited, of course, about the chance to hear “Getting Better,” “And Your Bird Can Sing,” “Lovely Rita,” “She Said She Said,” “Good Morning Good Morning,” “Tomorrow Never Knows” et al in crisp new sonic dimensions that took an elite group of engineers four years to accomplish.

But I didn’t expect a revelation. Read the rest of this entry »

Capitol/EMI has done little with the Beatles’ music since 1987, when it first re-released the foursome’s catalog and did little to ensure the sound quality stood up to the transfer from vinyl to disc; 2004’s The Capitol Albums, Vol. 1 and the soundtrack to Cirque de Soleil’s Love revealed just how good the Beatles’ songs could sound when given the right treatment.

This Wednesday, September 9, 2009 (9-9-09) is an important date for Fab Four fans – The Beatles: Rock Band hits the racks along with long-awaited, much-anticipated digitally-remastered versions of all of the Beatles’ studio albums. This re-release encompasses Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night, Beatles for Sale, Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album, Abbey Road, Let It Be, Yellow Submarine as well as Magical Mystery Tour and Past Masters Vol. I and II packaged as a single collection. Each album features the songs and artwork as they were originally released in the U.K. and come with expanded booklets of rare photos and original and newly-inked liner notes. For a limited time, each of the 14 albums will also be “embedded” with a brief documentary about its making. There are all kinds of other tasty bonuses that I won’t go into here, but I will tell share some info with you about some special events being held all over town in honor of the re-release. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

Steps to becoming greener: Reducing your waste, reusing and recycling: Joshua Poll gives some useful tips for ways to start reducing, reusing, and recycling things you thought you could just throw away.

Genetically engineering cows that will produce less methane, reducing greenhouse gases: Geneticists in Canada are trying to engineer a cow that produces less methane, resulting in less greenhouse gases, reports Brian Roberts.
Read the rest of this entry »

This morning I came across an amazing article by Alex Pasternack on Treehugger that was accompanied by the Michael Jackson music video ”Earth Song”. Another extraordinary aspect to Michael’s passions.

Pasternak states in the article,

“Michael Jackson was famous for his socially-conscious music, but ‘Earth Song’, his big, bold environmental call-to-arms, is often overlooked. Still, by sheer dint of his reach, the song might have made Jackson (who bears no relation to U.S. EPA chief Lisa Jackson) a kind of super-sized Al Gore, a decade before An Inconvenient Truth.

‘Earth Song’ is indisputably the most popular green-themed tune ever. It remains Jackson’s best-selling song in the U.K. (yes, bigger than “Thriller” or “Billie Jean”), and beat out the Beatles’ first single in 25 years for the top spot on the British charts. But the song, and its lavish globe-trotting video, barely registered in the U.S.”
Read the rest of this entry »