Category Archives: News

By Adam Rath – NY Press

Before it doled out a fiveshots-for-$10 special designed to lure in passing college kids, Continental hosted some of New York’s most infamous punk shows. From 1991 when the club opened until 2006 when the plug was pulled on live music,The Ramones, Agnostic Front and The Cro- Mags were just some of the seminal local bands to take the dive bar’s stage. Fifteen years after opening the club, though, owner Trigger stopped hosting live shows in favor of pulling in a crowd that would pay for its drinks and enable him to keep the doors open. After more than three years of silence—save the sound that one too many Jaeger shots brings out of a New School freshman—Trigger is bringing music back to Continental for a onenight-only show featuring some of the club’s best-loved alumnus. [Read More]

By Jon Pareles – NY Times

Teddy Pendergrass, the Philadelphia soul singer whose husky, potent baritone was one definition of R&B seduction in the 1970s but whose career was transformed in 1982 when he was severely paralyzed in an auto accident, died on Wednesday night in Bryn Mawr, Pa. He was 59. [Read More]

By Jon Pareles – NY Times

MY 21st century started in 1998, when I got a new toy. It was the Diamond Rio PMP300, a flimsy plastic gadget the size of a cigarette pack. PMP stood for Portable Music Player. It had a headphone jack, and it played a recently invented digital file format: MPEG-1 Audio Layer Three, or MP3.

The Rio’s 32 megabytes of storage held a dozen songs at passable fidelity. Its sound was clearly inferior to a portable CD player; its capacity was comparable to a cassette or two. But the beauty of it was that it didn’t need any CD or cassette inserted, just digital files — copies of songs — loaded from a computer, to be changed at whim. They might come from albums people owned or borrowed; they might come, even back then, from strangers online. The Recording Industry Association of America sued to have the PMP300 taken off the market and failed — the prelude to a decade of lawsuits trying to corral online music. [Read More]

By Carol Vogel – NY Times

Those moving advertisements atop taxis generally deliver not-so-subtle messages, like which airlines to fly or movies to see, who makes the sexiest blue jeans or the coolest sunglasses.

High art they most certainly are not.

But for the month of January, Show Media, a Las Vegas company that owns about half the cones adorning New York City’s taxis, has decided to give commerce a rest. Instead, roughly 500 cabs will display a different kind of message: artworks by Shirin Neshat, Alex Katz and Yoko Ono. [Read More]

By Andrew Adam Newman – NY Times

ON Hulu, the popular Web site that streams free television shows and other video, users have proved to be perfectly willing to watch short commercials, and a new site is betting that the same willingness will apply to downloading music.

FreeAllMusic.com, which began a test version for invited users on Dec. 22 and plans to open to the public in January, will allow users to download songs, which may be copied and shared — unencumbered, in other words, by digital rights management restrictions.

In return, instead of paying 99 cents a song as on iTunes, users must first watch a 15- to 30-second advertisement. [Read More]

By Jon Caramanica – NY Times

“TIK TOK,” a zippy and salacious celebration of late nights and mornings-after by a new artist named Ke$ha, has spent the last few weeks zooming toward the top of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Along with “Rapture,” the 1981 hit by Blondie, it’s one of the most successful white-girl rap songs of all time.

Actually, that depends on who you ask.

“TiK ToK” is sung in the chorus and rapped in the verses, enhanced by Auto-Tune in a few places, in keeping with its electro-pop production. There are even a couple of ad-libs by Diddy, and a line that appears to be borrowed from Jermaine Dupri. [Read More]

By Christopher R. Weingarten – The Village Voice

If Spin was right to name “Your Hard Drive” the best album of 2000, we’d like to formally nominate “The Internet” as Most Unforgiving Asshole of the 2000s. As of ’09, bands have an official life span of about nine months dating from the launch of their MySpace pages, thanks to the comically accelerated, DSL-enhanced hype cycle. Faster than you can tweet “Serena Maneesh,” entire genres of music are “discovered” by attention-starved writers; bloggers engage in hilarious slap-fights about who was there first; magazines feel pressured into writing clueless, hackazoid, late-pass trend pieces; bands get elevated to a critical mass of attention they can’t possibly handle; and the phenomenon is promptly abandoned once we find a newer, shinier toy to play with. [Read More]

By Alex Littlefield – Newyork Press

This fall, the 76-year-old artist released Between My Head and the Sky, her first album since 1973, with the Plastic Ono Band, and a release that marked her first time sharing the studio with her son, Sean Lennon. Additionally, 2009 saw Ono drag a pile of awards back to The Dakota, including a Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice Biennale, and the release of the Don’t Stop Me EP. If that wasn’t enough, in recent years, Ono has racked up five number-one dance singles. What were you doing all decade?

Alex Littlefield recently got Ono on the phone to see how she managed to make it through 2009 intact. [Read More]

By Fact Magazine

Poland’s acclaimed experimental music festival Unsound will present its first ever New York edition in 2010. 

Founded in 2003, Unsound’s base is in Krakow; following outpost events in further cities like Minsk, the festival is journeying west on a mission to “forge new links between music genres, between generations and even between artistic practices”.

The festival takes place over ten days, kicking off on Thursday 4 February. The strand of the festival likely to prove most popular is the Andy Warhol program, for which various artists have been invited to provide live soundtracks for Warhol films. On February 5 at the Lincoln Center, nsi. – Berlin-based experimental duo Tobias Freund and Max Loderbauer – will soundtrack Warhol’s Kiss, while none other than Carl Craig plays along to Blow Job. According to Unsound, both these soundtracks will be “analogue synthesizer-driven”. On the following night Groupshow – the band helmed by minimal techno innovator Jan Jelinek – will perform a (gulp) eight-hour long live improvisation to Warhol’s Empire (an unwaveringly static shot of the Empire State Building).  [Read More]

By  Djhistory.com

He’s there each night from ten to closing time, With sights and sounds to help the crowds unwind,

And from the booth each night he blows your mind With his mix and tricks

Forget – for the moment at least – Donna Summer, Silver Convention, Brass Construction, Gloria Gaynor, Bohannon, Love Unlimited – that endless ever-changing, slippery starstream of names shooting through disco heaven. The real stars of the seventies disco boom aren’t on records, they’re spinning them. [Read More]

By BBC News

Abba are to enter the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with four other acts including UK prog-rockers Genesis.

The Stooges, Jimmy Cliff and The Hollies will also be inducted in a ceremony in New York on 15 March.

The performers were chosen from a longlist announced earlier this year, which had included the Red Hot Chili Peppers and rock band Kiss.

It is unlikely that Swedish band Abba, who disbanded in 1983, will stage a reunion performance for the event. [Read More]

By Corey Kilgannon – NY Times

The man in the hooded sweatshirt and cargo pants was not recognizable, but the three letters he was rendering as a 15-foot mural on the wall of a Hell’s Kitchen building certainly were: B.N.E.

This mischievous monogram, posted by marker, spray can, roller and especially stickers, has become part of the landscape of New York and cities worldwide, thrilling graffiti admirers and roiling public officials. Its saturation has provoked one of the more enduring Internet mysteries: What and who is B.N.E.? [Read More]

By Jim Farber – Daily News

In an era ruled by pop and R&B acts, a scrappy rock band just racked up the most downloaded CD of the year.

“Only By The Night” from Kings of Leon has earned the title of top selling digital album of the year so far, according to iTunes, enjoying sales of just under 400,000 units. (Apple doesn’t release exact figures for its downloads, but SoundScan Nielsen does, and the overwhelming majority of those come from iTunes).

Another edgy rock album took the No. 2 spot – the “Twilight” soundtrack – followed by the debut from shock dance queen Lady GaGa at No. 3. Each enjoyed sales in the 330,000 to 350,000 range. (The two works switched positions on SoundScan’s list, which demonstrates the narrow margin between general downloading figures and iTunes’ own). [Read More]

By Patrick Mcgeehan – NewYork Times

At a glance, the far corner of the main floor of J&R Music looks familiar to anybody old enough to have scratched a record by accident. There are cardboard boxes filled with albums by the likes ofMiles Davis and the Beach Boys that could be stacked in any musty attic in America.

But this is no music morgue; it is more like a life-support unit for an entertainment medium that has managed to avoid extinction, despite numerous predictions to the contrary. The bins above the boxes hold new records — freshly pressed albums of classic rock as well as vinyl versions of the latest releases from hip-hop icons like 50 Cent and Diddy and new pop stars like Norah Jones and Lady Gaga. [Read More]

By The Beatles.com

Following the September 9 (9-9-09) debut of The Beatles’ digitally re-mastered catalogue on CD, Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music are pleased to announce the worldwide release of a limited edition of only 30,000 Beatles Stereo USB apples on December 7 (December 8 in North America, December 16 in Japan). [Read More]

By Patrick Fallon – XLR8R

Trip-hop veterans Massive Attack are set to follow up their recent Splitting the Atom EP with the fifth full-length album of their near two-decade career, entitled Heligoland.Coming February 8 from Virgin, the UK production duo’s new record features high-profile vocal work from Blur frontman Damon Albarn, Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star, Martina Topley-Bird, Guy Garvey, and TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe. Current Attack members Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall also collaborated with DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy and Portishead’s Adrian Utley on a few songs throughout Heligoland. The forthcoming album’s release will also be followed by tour dates, to be announced next year, from the seasoned production team both in the UK and the US. [Read More]

By Stephanie Murg – Unbeige

Visionaire is always among the things we’re most thankful for, so what better time to tell you about the new issue? The fifty-seventh edition of the art-meets-fashion triannual brings together images from 365 artists in the format of an electronic 2010 calendar. The works that light up the sleek HD screen were selected by 52 influential figures from the worlds of art, design, fashion, and film. Curators including Zaha Hadid, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Louise Bourgeois, and Rei Kawakubo, chose works by artists from Richard Artschwager toAndrea Zittel. [Read More]

By Andrew Adam Newman – NewYork Times

As physical formats and devices have shrunk, revenues for the audiobook industry have grown, since it is more convenient to listen to an iPod while exercising and commuting than fiddling with CDs. Digital downloads grew to 21 percent of the industry’s total sales in 2008, from 6 percent in 2004, according to the Audiobook Publishers Association.

It is all the more odd, then, that Hachette Audio recently announced that the latest audiobook by David Sedaris, “Live for Your Listening Pleasure,” which features readings before audiences, would be available on the least portable of formats: vinyl. [Read More]

By MOG

If there is one big lesson that hip hop can teach you is that all good things must come to to an end even if your selling millions of records and making millions of dollars in the process. If it isn’t working anymore, it just isn’t working. So in the wake of the whole Beanie Sigel/Jay-Z (now 50 Cent) thing I decided to look up some high profile hip hop endings… and some of them will surprise you… and some of them you’ll probably see coming a mile away. [Read More]

By Rob Harvilla – The VillageVoice

For a new musical with no cartoon-character tie-in, no jukebox of smash pop hits, and no boldface celebrity stars to thrive on Broadway in the waning post-apocalyptic months of 2009, the performances most crucial to success aren’t necessarily given by the folks onstage, or behind it, or regarding it from the luxe front-row seats reserved for patrons and investors. Look instead to the same-day discount TKTS booth—more specifically, the eager, increasingly bundled-up young helpers who lurk nearby to soothe and summarize, cheerfully proselytizing for the daunting list of shows from which you (or your mother, or your grandmother) must choose. If the show can’t sell itself, it’s up to them.[Read More]

By Stephanie Murg – Unbeige

We’ve followed “Stages,” the Nike-sponsored art exhibition to raise awareness and funds for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, from its Los Angeles launch toits Paris debut, and now the show has opened stateside in a dazzling installation at New York’s Deitch Projects. The aim of Stages, named for a term that can describe the progression of cancer or a cycling competition, is nothing short of “uniting the worlds of art, philanthropy, and sport in a unique celebration of human potential” through the newly commissioned works of 23 artists, a diverse bunch that includes Ed Ruscha, Cai Guo-Qiang, Christopher Wool, KAWS,Jules de Balincourt, and Rosson Crow. Armstrong hatched the idea with Nike president and CEO (and fellow art collector) Mark Parker to “offer artists a forum in which to convey the Livestrong ideals and portray what the movement means to them and how they see it changing the world.” [Read More]

By Stephanie Murg – Unbeige

As if you needed another good reason to purchase the fine formulations of Kiehl’s Since 1851, the L’Oreal-owned apothecary brand has launched a limited-edition holiday collection of its famed Creme de Corps that features label artwork by KAWS, the artist also known as Brian Donnelly. Better still, Kiehl’s is donating 100% of its net profits from the sale of the creatively labeled lotion toRxArt, which brings contemporary art to healthcare facilities. [Read More]

By Erin Rosita – Vice Magazine

The Lower East Side of Manhattan is not a fashionable destination. Populated primarily by dive bars, nodding junkies, and boarded-up storefronts, the thought of anything even remotely related to trendiness, fancy clothes, or art happening down here would be pretty hard to believe. In fact, the only reason anyone from another neighborhood would even set foot on the LES in 1994 would be if they were looking for illicit substances, of which there are plenty.  [Read More]

By Joseph Alexiou – Newyork Press

In a town full of skyscrapers, it’s often what’s happening beneath the sidewalk that ends up being the most exciting.  Hidden spaces—thinkSubMercer, the basement of La Esquina or the late, lamented Undochine—are black gold in New York’s over-saturated nightlife scene. A hard-to-find, little-known location with the right music and crowd can become an overnight sensation, and if a group of people just above 14th Street play their cards right, they might have New York’s next one on their hands. [Read More]

By Poe – Freshness Magazine

Under the constant changing glare of neon lights, artist Shepard Fairey and a team of assistants descended upon the world’s most famous intersection, Times Square, last night for a special live art installation.  As a commemoration artwork for the new collaboration apparel between Fairey’s Obey andLevi’s, the artist made quick work out of a temporary wooden wall in front of hundreds of fans and onlookers. [Read More]

By Lincoln Anderson – The Villager

Returning to his old Lower East Side stomping ground, Antonio “Chico” Garcia is back in town for a month and a half to work on some commissioned murals, on everything from peace to the Rat Pack.

On Wednesday, Chico — who recently relocated to Tampa, Fla., to reunite with his family — spray-painted a new graffiti-style mural for the Power of Peace Coalition at Houston St. and Avenue B. Helping him complete the one-day project were his cousin Andres Borrero and William Pentecost, the coalition’s youth activities coordinator. [Read More]

By Amy Linden – The Village Voice

What is it about hip-hop that, inevitably, almost any conversation revolves around dates—around how far back in the day you can claim to go? Is there a culture as proudly obsessed with its past that still publicly and adamantly refuses to get caught up in a pissing match about nostalgia? Even though those pissing matches are inevitable? [Read More]

By Julie Shapiro – Downtown Express

The Brooklyn Banks is a place with no rules except gravity.
The legendary skateboard spot in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge feels like a world unto itself. The graffiti-scrawled brick slopes on the Manhattan side are dotted with broken glass and blowing garbage. Teenagers bound over obstacles, flying through the air after their board, twisting at impossible angles. It all seems very far from the rule of the city.
That’s about to change, as the city plans to close down the skate park as soon as December to use the space for construction staging. The Banks may not reopen until 2014, when the Brooklyn Bridge rehabilitation project is scheduled to finish. Until then, New York will be without one of the world’s top skating spots, and skateboarders will have to find a new place to go. [Read More]

By Andy Beta –The Village Voice

On my way to interview former Village Voice art director (and current New Yorkerphotography critic) Vince Aletti, I happen to pass a poster proclaiming, “Disco Is Back! Now playing at Bloomingdale’s.” This is strangely appropriate, as I’m meeting Aletti for lunch to discuss the publication of his first book, The Disco Files 1973-78: New York’s Underground Week by Week, which, as its title attests, collects five years’ worth of articles he wrote about the burgeoning disco scene as it happened. [Read More]

By Brad Stone – NY Times

Several reports Wednesday indicate that Google is set to roll-out a music service at an event at the iconic Capitol Records building in Hollywood next Wednesday. The service, we’ve confirmed from three people briefed on the details, will offer searchers a better way to find and sample music on Google – much in the same way people can get detailed financial information about a company from Google Finance. [Read More]

By Omar Kholeif – MOG       

In 1999, on the eve of PopMatters’ inception, I was an angst-ridden teenager, who had a tendency for ditching classes only to sit in the toilet reading back issues of Rolling Stone. By the end of the decade, my love for grunge music had sent me searching through expanses that spanned Punk & New Wave to classic rock, gospel, and soul. [Read More]

By Brad Stone – NY Times

SAN FRANCISCO — The idea of selling monthly subscriptions to a vast catalog of online music has met with only limited success. That isn’t stopping a new batch of entrepreneurs from trying to make it work.

The latest and perhaps most surprising entrants to the field are the European entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. In 2001, they created and financed Kazaa, one of the original peer-to-peer file-sharing services that hurt the music industry. The two have created and financed a secretive start-up called Rdio, with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco. [Read More]

By Freshness Magazine

Walk past Marc Jacobs‘ flagship in SoHo or his numerous specialty stores along Bleecker Street and you would think someone has a grudge against the influential fashion designer.  On each of the storefront window is a mysterious tag in drippy paint.  Of course the tagging is all intentional as it marks an upcoming collaboration project between Marc Jacobs and graffiti crew 1134NYC members MINT&SERF (aka MIRF).  More detailed information to come soon… [Read More]

By Vibe Magazine

Instead of waiting for a record label to finance their new album, Public Enemy has an even better idea: Have the fans pay for it. [Read More]

By Douglas Martin – NY Times

Mr. Magic, whose panache and persistence in bringing once-reviled rap to mainstream radio in the 1980s helped pave the way for the breakout of hip-hop culture, died on Friday in Brooklyn. He was 53.

The cause was a heart attack, said Tyrone Williams, his manager and producer. [Read More]

By Ben Sisario – NY Times

It was Wednesday at Downtown 161, and that meant it was Vinylmania day.

Most of the time Downtown 161, a record distributor in Lower Manhattan, is off limits to the public. But once a week it becomes an unusual kind of record store for friends of Vinylmania, a Greenwich Village shop that closed in 2007. Customers run their hands over items in fancy packaging, chat with the seller and brag about their collections — all the typical stuff that grows more endangered every time another store closes. [Read More]

By Fact Magazine

In November 2009 Rizzoli will publish The Velvet Underground: A New York Art, the first ever monograph devoted to a rock band.

Guided and in some ways created by their mentor and collaborator Andy Warhol, The Velvets were artwork as much as artists. They were the first act to explicitly merge pop culture and the fine arts, collapsing the border between “high” and “low” forms of entertainment. It wasn’t just about the music and the lyrics but the way they were presented: the sleeve designs, the performances, the photographs, and everything else besides. A New York Art celebrates the band’s far-reaching, multi-disciplinary creative vision. [Read More]

By Amos Barshad – NewYork Magazine

A Brooklyn label so retro it releases cassettes.

You have not heard the bands distributed by local independent record label Woodsist—home to such acts as Ganglians, Blank Dogs, and Psychedelic Horseshit—in that new iPod commercial. David Bowie and David Byrne have not become backstage fixtures at their shows. Pharrell, to date, has no interest in remixing their music. This is not that kind of Brooklyn-indie-rock success story. [Read More]

By Poe – Freshness Magazine

One point in the not so distant past, Lower East Side was not known for its hipsters’ dive bars nor epicurean’s gathering place.  One point in the not so distant past, Lower East Side was a den of criminals, of social rejects, of those down on their luck.  From its gritty past to the happening present, a photographer was there to documented all – Clinton Patterson, the unofficial historian of this little neighborhood between SoHo and East River. To showcase his extensive portfolio over the past 30 years, ALIFE’s newest venture, ALIFE Presents, along with Kinz + Tillou Fine Art, curated Clayton Patterson: L.E.S. Captured – Photographs, a photo retrospective on the his works and the rapid alterations Lower East Side underwent. [Read More]

By Michael Martin – NY Press

Many Chinese workers who usually depend on the help of a close-knit community are also suffering due to the economy.

Unemployed restaurant deliveryman Jianhua Wang says there’s no help left for him in New York’s Chinatown. Not in this economic climate. “Chinatown is full of compatriots,” he says, “but there are many cheaters.” [Read More]

By Vintage Vinyl News

Devo is back on their original label, Warner Brothers, signing what is being called a worldwide groundbreaking partnership. Warner will handle all parts of the band’s career including recordings, touring, merchandising, web presence, promotion, licensing and endorsements. [Read More]

By Jefferson Siegel – Downtown Express

“This world is but a canvas to our imagination,” wrote Henry David Thoreau. 

An art collective called Lowbrow Society for the Arts put Thoreau’s words into practice when they held an art show aboard rolling mass transit two weeks ago.  
“Move! A Wearable Art Gallery and Celebration on a Subway Train” found more than 100 musicians, artists and other costumed performers packed into the last three cars of a J train to Brooklyn as participants painted, sang, danced and performed acrobatic displays. [Read More]

By Vintage Vinyl News

Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) saluted the best of the year in urban music on Thursday night at Frederick P. Rose Hall in Lincoln Center at its annual Urban Awards.  The big winners were T-Pain and Lil Wayne who shared the Songwriter of the Year and Polow Da Don and Kanye West who both received Producer of the Year.  Song of the Year went to No Air by Erik Griggs, recorded by Jordan Sparks and Chris Brown. [Read More]

Halcyon, a bastion of cultural connoisseurs, based in Dumbo, Brooklyn has spent ten years educating and celebrating their community.  Rooted in DJ culture, halcyon is home to an ever-changing global sampling of street art, urban fashion, alternative literature, transformative technology, unique design and, of course, music, in all it’s forms, from Jazz to Techno.

It’s home to a family of passionate creatives obsessed with the pursuit of quality, open to the insight of collaborators and committed to the advancement of the craft. It’s home to unbridled imagination, uninhibited exploration and unrestrained discovery. Most of all, though, halcyon is simply home to relaxed, unpretentious good times wherein it all comes together… the halcyon experience. [Read More]

By Laura Sydell – NPR

It has been almost 10 years since Napster helped launch a revolution that turned the music industry on its head, allowing file-sharing fans to swap music on the Web. Record labels have blamed this phenomenon for a steep drop in CD sales.

Consider this: In early 2000, ‘N Sync’s No Strings Attached was on top of the Billboard album charts, selling nearly 2.5 million CDs in its first week. Now the bar has been lowered. Last year, it took only 1 million CDs for Lil’ Wayne to reach the top of the charts. [Read More]

By Will Glovinksy – The Villager

*In the hotbed microcosm that is Washington Square Park, it is rare that something changes with little fanfare. But that is what appears to have happened with skateboarders in the park. 

“There has been a significant decrease in skateboarder activity,” Gil Horowitz, leader of the Coalition for a Better Washington Square Park, declared. 

Horowitz, who can see the park from his apartment windows, wants to protect both the new granite benches — appealing targets for trick skaters — and senior-citizen parkgoers, who have complained about aggressive skateboarders who, they say, dart through crowds. Horowitz once described skaters as his group’s number-two concern after drug dealers, but now they seem to have made themselves scarce, at least while the sun shines. [Read More]

By Heidi Patalano – Metro

In mainstream culture, Bob Marley has long been credited as the progenitor of reggae, but before we can even ask, the Jamaican genre’s true father corrects the misconception.

“I’m the inventor of the word reggae,” boasts Frederick Hibbert, better known as Toots, the leader of Toots and the Maytals.

Calling from Kingston, Jamaica, his patois so thick it requires several relistens to the recording of our conversation, he says, “Bob Marley was older than me, but he didn’t create the word reggae.” [Read More]

By Mog

When an artist is on a major label, it can seem like they have to go walkin’ in artistic no-mans-land sometimes, especially when you read reports that the new album you’ve been hearing about and clamoring for is getting shelved. This is what happened in 1999 to Q-Tip’s record Kamaal The Abstract , the intended follow-up to his first solo outing, Amplified. And like most shelved albums, it leaked out there and became one of the famous lost albums. But recently, someone decided it was the time for the album to see the light of day and it is being released on September 15. You should hear it, just to see what all the fuss is about. The album leans more to the jazz/funk end of the spectrum with an almost spoken word vibe. That vibe feels like musical poetry (in that it tries to push you) and just like poetry, its not for everyone. [Read More]

By Fact Magazine

01: DJ MILO / VA

THE WILD BUNCH – STORY OF A SOUNDSYSTEM

(STRUT, 2002)

OK, so this isn’t strictly a Massive Attack album, but if you want to get any real sense of the social and musical context that gave rise to that band, you need to pay it some mind. The Wild Bunch was basically a Bristol soundsystem that came to prominence in the late 80s, tearing up parties in St Pauls and beyond with their infectious, immediate and quietly radical fusion of reggae, hip-hop and soul: a fusion that Massive Attack would take to the next level a few years down the line.

The core members of Wild Bunch were Miles Johnson (AKA DJ Milo, compiler of this 2002 retrospective), Claude Williams (Willy Wee), Nellee Hooper and Grant “Daddy G’ Marshall, soon joined by Andrew ‘Mushroom’ Vowles and Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja. Very much pre-acid house, the parties the Wild Bunch played at and hosted were massively important to Bristol’s creative flowering and laid the foundations for the sound and aesthetic that would later be termed hip-hop. Though ecstasy and other drugs infiltrated the scene, it remained predominantly weed and booze-driven; accordingly, the wide range of music espoused by the soundsystem was united by its dub DNA: from the rolling, bass-heavy house of Mr Fingers’ ‘Can You Feel It’  to the electro-rap chop-up of Man Parrish’s ‘Hip Hop Be Bop’. [Read More]

By Ben Ratliff – NY Times

The crowd thinned out before the last band at Brooklyn Bowl on Thursday night. This made no sense, by normal gig logic, because of course the best band — Cymbals Eat Guitars — came last.

But this wasn’t a normal gig. It was a five-band show of new indie rock sponsored by Insound, the Brooklyn music distributor and online retailer of vinyl albums, T-shirts and other cool things, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary. And it happened at Williamsburg’s newest rock palace: novel and g-g-gorgeous, a place built to satisfy your desires for grass-fed beef and tipsy recreation. If you can stand any more leisure, there’s live music there too. [Read More]