Tampa Calling

Black Lips — those who made a press campaign out of their near-arrest in India — came to town in March and played a sweaty packed show at Orpheum (here’s Snider’s feature, here’s the REAX review).

The latest press-generating tactic the Lips are enjoying is a collaboration with Wu Tang’s GZA. (That’s the foursome below with a badass looking GZA. Or maybe his bad-assness is mere confusion, like, “Who are these guys again and what real benefit am I getting from playing with them?)

Check out the release and “Drop I Hold” MP3 after the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

After eight years, I’m still trying to find my identity in the Tampa Bay area. I’ve got the “you’ve got to drive everywhere all the time if you want to have any fun and be a part of anything” vibe down, but there’s something missing in my overall music-making and living experiences in St. Petersburg. The latest rash of confused feelings came to me Saturday night, when I found a review of my band Blast & the Detergents CD in the April issue of MAXIMUMROCKNROLL.

A great, short and earnest review, I was as giddy as a little 12-year-old whose parents finally let him get a cotton candy. This nationally distributed, punk-as-fuck, San Francisco-based ‘zine spent the time listening to and reviewing my CD. They even chose my hand-drawn album art to be displayed for eternity in the review section of their April 2009.

But wait, there’s more!

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Black Lips play Orpheum in Ybor City next Thursday, March 26. Here’s my feature/interview with the band:

“I want other bands like us to become as successful as we are so they can stay as shitty as we are,” says Jared Swilley, bass player for Black Lips, talking on a cell phone as the band rolls out of Omaha in a van.
So why is Swilley standing up for shitty music? You have to understand his definition of such: music that comes from a raw, unfiltered place, that’s not recorded using the latest computer technology, that doesn’t concern itself with whether the vocals and guitars are exactly in tune or the rhythms are perfectly in time.

“I like the human side of music,” he says. “I love imperfections and mistakes. Otherwise the cyborgs win. Look at ‘Louie Louie.’ It was No. 1 hit [actually a No. 2 in 1963] and it was sloppy and had the biggest vocal flub.”

“Louie Louie” would be a fair reference point for the music of Black Lips, an Atlanta quartet that’s been together since the early part of this decade. It sounds like the stuff made in basements and garages by self-taught kids in the 1960s, recorded off-the-cuff with lots of reverb and little regard for squeaky-clean sonics. Black Lips have dubbed their music “flower punk.”

“When me and [guitarist] Cole [Alexander] were pretending to be in a band early on, we listened to The Germs and they couldn’t play their instruments at all,” Swilley says. “When we really started playing guitar, we emulated Link Wray. He had these guitar riffs that were cool and tough and easy to play. We were into the punk stuff, but we were always into the ’60s stuff.”

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And Then There Were None, Who Speaks for Planet Earth? (Tooth & Nail)

Black Lips, 200 Million Thousand (Vice)

Joe Bonamassa, The Ballad of John Henry (Premier Artists)

The Bran Flakes, I Have Hands (Illegal Art)

J.J. Cale, Roll On (Rounder)

Company of Thieves, Ordinary Riches (Wind-up)

Chris Isaak, Mr. Lucky (Reprise Records)

K’Naan, Troubadour (A&M/Octone)

Lamb of God, Wrath (Epic/Sony)

Van Morrison, Astral Weeks Live At the Hollywood Bowl

Various Artists, War Child presents Heroes (Astralwerks)

Steve Wilson, Insurgents (Kscope)

Xiu Xiu, You Can’t Hear Me (DVD)

Pitchfork recently ran a comprehensive guide to releases coming up in 2009. I’ve scaled it down to the highlights (no box sets, re-issues, vinyl, 7″ or overseas releases) and added a few as well. Click here to see Pitchfork’s complete guide.

JANUARY

06
*The Brighton Port Authority, I Think We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat (Southern Fried)
Glasvegas, Glasvegas (Columbia)
The Gourds, Haymaker! (Yep Roc)

13
Late of the Pier, Fantasy Black Channel (Astralwerks)
Lymbyc System, Carved by Glaciers (Magic Bullet)
My Dear Disco, Dancethink (Dancethink)
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Greatest Hits (Columbia Wal-Mart exclusive)
This Will Destroy You & Lymbyc System, Field Studies (Magic Bullet)
*Derek Trucks Band, Already Free (Sony Legacy)

20
*Andrew Bird, Noble Beast (Fat Possum)
*Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino)
Antony and the Johnsons, The Crying Light (Secretly Canadian)
*Bon Iver, Blood Bank EP (Jagjaguwar)
Calexico, Live From Austin, TX (New West DVD)
John Frusciante, The Empyrean (Adrenaline Music)
Ice-T, Live in Montreux 1995 (MVD DVD)
Matt and Kim, Grand (FADER)
*The Modern Skirts, All of Us in Our Night (Modern Skirts Recordings)
A.C. Newman, Get Guilty (Matador)
Ben Nichols, The Last Pale Light in the West (The Rebel Group)
Or, The Whale, Light Poles and Pines (Seany)
Public Enemy, Revolverlution Tour 2003 (MVD DVD)
*Squarepusher, Numbers Lucent EP (Warp)
*Umphrey’s McGee, Mantis (Sci Fidelity)

27
*The Bird and the Bee, Ray Guns Are Not the Future (Blue Note)
Brian Wilson, That Lucky Old Sun (Capitol DVD)
Circlesquare, Songs About Dancing and Drugs (!K7)
*Cotton Jones, Paranoid Cocoon (Suicide Squeeze)
*Dan Deacon/Adventure, Split 12″ (Carpark)
*Franz Ferdinand, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand (Domino/Epic)
Hot Chip With Robert Wyatt and Geese EP (Astralwerks)
Kylie Minogue, Boombox: The Remix Album (Parlophone)
of Montreal, Jon Brion Remix EP (Polyvinyl)
Owen, (the ep) (Polyvinyl)
Rush, Retrospective 3 (Atlantic CD/DVD)
*RZA, Afro Samurai: The Resurrection (Wu Music Group)
Duncan Sheik, Whisper House (Victor)
Bruce Springsteen, Working on a Dream (Columbia)
*The Sway Machinery, Hidden Melodies Revealed (JDub) Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend, I am practicing restraint and missing not one but two awesome Florida festivals in favor of plunging my backed-up toilet of duties. Three if you count RibFest — but despite the fact that I could walk to it from my house, the lineup is so unappealing I can’t even manage to drum-up excitement over all that mouth-watering barbeque all in one place. But I digress.

Tonight marks the start of the Anti-Pop Music Festival in downtown Orlando, a four-day celebration of alternative indie music. This evening’s schedule is ripe with the possibility of greatness. Singer/songwriter/former Soul Coughing force-of-nature Mike Doughty and Cali singer/songwriter Matt Costa headline a show at Plaza Theatre, goodtime tongue-in-cheek rockers Black Lips perform over at The Social, and sweet-voiced acousti-folkman Jay Brannan makes tender melodies at the Gibson Showroom. Other weekend highlights that haven’t or aren’t already making stops in Tampa include Los Angeles rap artist Murs, Brooklyn electro-pop all-girrl threesome Au Revoir Simone (pictured, photo by Imma Varandela), and Mississippi bluesman Ben Prestage. Sun Kil Moon and Red House Painters frontman Mark Kozelek plays a solo set as well.

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