the oh so quiet show

From “Panorama.no”:http://www.panorama.no/vis.php?kat=3&did=4876, the list of “Spellemannprisen”:http://www.spellemann.no/ (Norwegian music award) winners:

* Music Video: *Robert Post* – Got None
* Hip hop / R’n’B: *Paperboys* – When Worlds Collide
* Country: *The Respatexans* – Shine On
* Dance Orchestra: *Ole Ivars* – Vi Tar Det Til Manda’n
* Classical: *Leif Ove Andsnes* – Rachmaninov Piano Concertos 1 & 2
* Jazz: *Hans Mathisen* – Quiet Songs
* Electronic: *Alog* – Miniatures
* Open Class (stupid question: what does that category mean?): *Nils Petter Molvær* – ER
* Blues: *Kåre Virud Band* – Ild Og Vann
* Contemporary: *Nils Henrik Asheim* – 19. March 2004
* Child record: *Geirr Lystrup* – Sangen Om Yebo
* Metal: *Audrey Horne* – No Hay Banda
* Male artist: *Robert Post* – Robert Post
* Pop: *Röyksopp* – The Understanding
* Folk music / traditional dance music: *Moldestad / Mjølsnes / Høgemo* – GamaltNymalt
* Female artist: *Ane Brun* – A Temporary Dive
* Rock: *Madrugada* – The Deep End
* Folk: *Vamp* – Siste Stikk
* New artist: *Marthe Valle* – It’s A Bag Of Candy

This is when I fail to understand…words:

* Årets Hederspris: *Terje Rypdal*
* Årets Bransjepris: *Jan Paulsen og Sæmund Fiskvik*
* Årets Spellemann: *Madrugada*

“Granadaddy”:http://www.grandaddylandscape.com/ “broke up”:http://www.nme.com/news/grandaddy/22068. 🙁 I started listening to them a few years ago off a mix CD a friend made me and while I’m far from a zealous fan, I realllllly like em. Their music is fun. And pretty. And comforting. Of course, those adjectives don’t tell you much at all besides that it’s not…heavy metal, unless you think heavy metal is fun, pretty, and comforting. Maybe you do. [shrugs]

At least solo artists can’t break up. BUT THEY CAN DIE! …I’m going to try not to think about that.

Out of every source of information I could have, “Drew”:http://toothpastefordinner.com/ was the one to remind me/every “toothpaste for dinner” addict that “Electric President’s debut album”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000CCZQHI just came out. Yesterday. I mentioned them before but I’ll do it again to BEAT IT INTO YOUR SKULL:

Electric President – Good Morning, Hypocrite

[audio:http://radicalface.com/music/goodmorninghypocrite.mp3]

There are more songs in not-so-convenient flash form at “Morr Music’s record player”:http://morrmusic.com/recordplayer.html. LISTEN TO THEM! They’re good.

…So, I just realized that I should probably describe the music before making you listen to mp3s. But how helpful is that? It’s like describing food; perhaps I could capture the foodie essence somewhat alright with words, but it won’t be anything like actually eating the food. While I can’t feed you food, I can easily give you a link to a song that you can download in a few seconds, unless your internet connection runs at the speed of beans (slow beans).

I’m also lazy.

If anyone’s wondering, I’d describe the music like so: comforting, messy, neat, light, poppy, glitchy, sweet, mellow, airy…or not. Maybe I’m describing a new limited editon Pocky variety. BUT MAYBE NOT! What kind of music do you expect from “two guys with bags-for-heads”:http://radicalface.com/mediac/400_0/media/scarecorws~5.jpg? _Only the best!_

I have almost nothing to post anymore. Crap.

…And I don’t know how many people read this thing, so I have no problem posting RANDOM STUFFF and ANNOYINGLY TYPING ALL IN CAPS because as far as I know, only my sanity is at stake here.

But if you want to go insane, you can watch this SNL skit:

“Young Chuck Norris”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBSpNPzVsMM

I’d say something about it, but I don’t know what to say. It’s a moment of speechless-ness. You’ll either think, “So stupid, it’s funny!” or “So stupid, I want to rip my eyes out for having witnessed such an atrocity and curse God for wasting those few minutes of my life that I will never get out of my head unless I actually rip out brain-meats, which is looking like a pretty good alternative at this point because it’s not like I’ll need the ‘Chuck Norris’ lobe of my brain.”

I’d go with the first sentiment. Not sure what that says about me, but…eh.

I hate this kid.

…I mean. Did he even break a sweat?

Tony Royster Jr. has been playing since he was 3. My mum made me start playing piano when I was 4 and you know what that did? _Noooothing._

“Ticketmaster screwed Kathryn with copyright infringement!”:http://flickr.com/photos/kathryn/88718676/ 🙁 They used “her photo of Colin Meloy”:http://flickr.com/photos/kathryn/57483/ on their Colin Meloy ticket pages. How unsmart.

If I danced like these guys, it wouldn’t be cool, nor even the slightest bit amusing. It would be depressing and perhaps give people the idea that I had brain damage or were missing a few chromosomes because there could be no other reasonable explanation. Alas, I do not dance.

Uh. Umm. “An over-impassioned Jorma treats Death Cab For Cutie to a spastic dance during their SNL rehearsal”:http://thelonelyisland.blogspot.com/2006/01/secret-snl-tape-exposed.html. Wellll, that’s nice. Apparently, the power of Death Cab demands the removable of outerwear. Thankfully, just the top half. I’ve watched it a few times (hey, it’s short), which disturbs me a bit, but it’s funny. Right? Erm. I hope it doesn’t turn into a multi-volume dance tutorial video set… _or do I?_

“Cut Copy’s”:http://www.cutcopy.net/ video for Going Nowhere, which you can watch at “Milieu”:http://milieu.alexyoung.org/?p=172, also features a spastic dancer, this time fully clothed and separated from the band by a wall with a window. I like it. An explanation from the band’s mailing list:

A good friend of ours, the great director Kris Moyes, directed our latest video, Going Nowhere and we think it’s really something special. We didn’t have much time to get it all done so Kris had the idea of doing the entire ideo in one shot so there was no need to edit it afterwards. This seemed simple enough but then he had the even crazier concept of having a guy do an interpretative dance while watching us play on TV. Tricky, since we’ve now got two rooms…totally different and the camera has to ‘go through the TV’.

So, a day after our Homebake Festival appearance…and feeling rather worse for wear…we did the shoot in a converted art gallery in North Sydney. Crew were running around like crazy, it was 33 C outside and the poor cameraman had to wear this huge brace with the camera to be able to run between the two rooms in one clean swoop.

But after 12 hours of shooting and 7 full takes, Kris had his video and the weeks of preparation of putting together the impossible came to an end. We want to thank Kris and the guys for all their efforts and really want to push this video out there to as many people as possible.

You can vote for the video at “MTV 2”:http://www.mtv2europe.com/nmeVote.jhtml. I’m not sure exactly what the voting does, but it can’t be bad.

Puppets can be cute. Or scary. If you were to sit down and casually strum your guitar and sing a nice song, only to be accompanied by animals/random creatures popping out of nowhere, wouldn’t that be a cause for alarm? Or the start of puppet hunting season? I…don’t know. But I can’t help but smile and think, “What the hell?” while watching “Beth Orton’s”:http://bethorton.astralwerks.com/ new video for “Conceived”. Watch, unless you are a puppet-phobe:

* windows high | windows low
* real media high | real media low

The problem is that I can’t even focus on the song due to the fuzzy green thing (like a combination of Oscar and the Cookie Monster) being…there. Its existence throws me off. But the video is amusing and THAT’S ALL I NEED. The world needs more puppet-centered music videos.

Beth will tour North American this spring with opener Willy Mason.

* 3/12 9:30 Club Washington DC
* 3/13 Variety Playhouse Atlanta, GA
* 3/15 SXSW Austin, TX
* 3/19 Gothic Theatre Denver, CO
* 3/20 Club Sound Salt Lake City, UT
* 3/23 House of Blues San Diego
* 3/24 Avalon Hollywood, CA
* 3/25 The Fillmore San Francisco, CA
* 3/27 Wonder Ballroom Portland, OR
* 3/28 The Showbox Seattle, WA
* 3/29 Commodore Ballroom Vancouver, Canada
* 4/1 First Avenue Minneapolis, MN
* 4/2 Barrymore Theatre Madison, WI
* 4/3 Vic Theatre Chicago, IL
* 4/5 The Majestic Theatre Detroit, MI
* 4/6 Carlu Toronto, Canada
* 4/7 Club Soda Montreal, Canada
* 4/8 Avalon Boston, MA
* 4/10 TLA Philadelphia, PA
* 4/11 Webster Hall New York City

I should probably go to the Webster Hall show, buuuuut…I don’t know. I used to listen to her a lot, and then I stopped for some reason.

Magnet will join “Isobel Campbell”:http://www.isobelcampbell.com/ (former member of Belle and Sebastian) as special guest support for the following west coast shows:

MARCH

* 7th – Los Angeles, “Troubadour”:http://www.troubadour.com/
* 8th – San Francisco, “Café DuNord”:http://www.cafedunord.com/
* 9th – Seattle, “Triple Door”:http://www.thetripledoor.net/

More dates are coming!

Compared to the number of male artists/fronted bands I listen to, there’s not much estrogen in my music world. I’m not sure why I’m so picky, but there are just minute differences between “female singer’s voice that I really like” and “I could like this but for some reason I don’t” and other vague ratings I’ve made up and mean nothing to anyone else.

On that note, I like “Lavender Diamond”:http://www.lavenderdiamond.com. One of my friends pointed them out to me; otherwise, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them. Frontwoman Becky Stark is a trained opera singer and it shows in the clarity of her singing. Thankfully, she doesn’t actually sing operatically, or else I’d be scared. I’ve thought up of other descriptions but they all suck, so you may as well just listen to some songs:

Lavender Diamond – You Broke My Heard
Lavender Diamond – Rise In The Springtime

I find her songs sweet and cute. Not sickly cute like “this bunny sticking its tongue out”:http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/2005/12/delicious.html (if you don’t like this photo, don’t even think of telling me…oh _jesus_, it’s heart-stopping cute) but you know…comfortably cute. You can buy “Lavender Diamond’s four-song “Calvary of Light” EP on their “website”:http://www.lavenderdiamond.com for $8 in the US.

And on a totally unrelated note, here’s an interesting post: ” Morningwood vs. We Are Scientists vs. Who Gives a Damn”:http://www.marathonpacks.com/2006/01/morningwood-vs-we-are-scientists-vs.html. [via “Torr”:http://torr.typepad.com/weblog/2006/01/out_in_the_us_o.html] I haven’t looked into Morningwood, but I really like “WAS”:http://wearescientists.com/, an increadibly fast growing…likeness. I was actually kind of sick of them from magazine coverage until I realized, “Wait, I haven’t even listened to their music,” which seemed unfair. Their music may not be groundbreaking, but they’re fun and the band makes me laugh. Radiohead makes me laugh too, but it’s not really in the same way. [cough]

The idea of record companies using blogs as promotional tools does irk me. Although blogging is my way of promoting things, it’s…different. It’s. Um. [drums fingers] Well, I’m not selling my own product, and even when I am trying to sell my own product (although I’ll refrain from telling you what the product is so I don’t look like I’m shilling myself), I don’t market it. (I’d be a horrible bad businessman.) In this blog I’m simply just telling you what I like, which may or may not be a band with a gazillion marketing dollars at its whim. My blogging is extremely egotistical and pointless. …Crap. I have no life. Where was I?

While I haven’t done much research on music blogs, I see blogging in general as being “credible” because it’s done by average people without millions of dollars at our fingertips or influence from advertisers, publishing fairly unedited information on the fly. Too much buzz for anything tends to look bad at some point. Have I ever buzzed? Accidentally? Unknowingly? I don’t mean to buzz. It’s okay if a band is mega-popular with bloggers and the rest of the music-listening public, right? Or. It depends. In no way do I claim to have more music prowess than a non-blogger. I probably have more than someone who doesn’t like music at all, but that’s not saying much.

So…in conclusion, I have no point. Thus is the problem of being your own editor.