June 2011
100 posts
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Album Review: The Lonely Wild's Dead End
The Lonely Wild
Dead End
Track Listing
Dead End
Hail
Out of My Mind
Poor Fools
Right Side of the Road
Personnel
Andrew Carroll – lead vocals, guitar
Ryan Ross – keys, bass, trumpet, backing vocals
Jessi Williams – backing vocals, percussions, keys
Andrew Schneider – guitar, percussion
Edward Cerecedes – drums, percussions
As many of us know life can frequently be bittersweet –...
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WatchThe video Is Tropical’s latest song “The Greeks” seems to be perfect for a long day of being a cubicle commando or if you’re a sadist: somehow there’s something adorable about tykes committing acts of cartoon violence. Remember y’all this one is NSFW but it’s fucking hilarious.
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Thank You, White Mystery! →
I wanted to send a special thank you on the blog to both Alex and Francis White of White Mystery for using the photo you’ll see on the link and shouting my photos of their Death by Audio set and you’ll see a review of that set forthcoming.
May 2011
77 posts
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The Black and White Project: Day 64: May 30, 2011
It’s not uncommon to come across musicians of all stripes in the subway system, and in fact, the MTA does encourage musicians to play in their Underground series. Now, this particular Chinese gentleman I’ve come across every day for the last week or so at my subway station.
The last batch of photos are of random graffiti I saw on the uptown platform of the Second Avenue subway...
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Joe Fletcher and the Wrong Reasons and the Devil...
Joe Fletcher and the Wrong Reasons, and The Devil Makes Three
Maxwell’s
May 18, 2011
It was a rather humid and rainy Wednesday night when I went to Maxwell’s out in Hoboken to catch the Providence, Rhode Island-based, Joe Fletcher and Wrong Reasons open for the Brattleboro, Vermont-based act, The Devil Makes Three, whose impressive, latest album Do Wrong Right has become a part of my regular...
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The Black and White Project: Day 63: May 29, 2011
Memorial Day weekend means lots of BBQ. My mom had fixed some ribs and corn on the cob and it was pretty damn good.
At the Chambers Street A,C and E subway station, there are several art installations — one of them including random sets of eyes placed throughout the station. On a certain level, it’s kind of creepy because it suggests that eyes are you on all the time, no matter...
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The Black and White Project: Day 62: May 28, 2011
In the immediate aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, it became a regular sight to see hundreds, sometimes thousands of missing posters just about anywhere you can find them: subway stations, lampposts, community boards, and any public space you can think of across Manhattan. I used to see them in the West 4th Street subway station that stretched from one end of the station to the other,...
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Echo and the Bunnymen at Irving Plaza 5/13/11
Echo and the Bunnymen
Irving Plaza
May 13, 2011
“Nothing ever last forever,” Ian McCulloch sings on “Nothing Lasts Forever,” and although we’ve all heard that sentiment countless times in songs and folk wisdom to the point that it sounds terribly clichéd. But in hearing McCulloch’s wise, bluesy, gravelly voice, strangely reminiscent of the great Howlin’ Wolf and then comparing it to the elegant...
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The Black and White Project: Day 61: May 27, 2011
1:20 AM: After catching French Horn Rebellion make a crowd dance and sweat at the Glasslands Gallery (more on that much later on), I had to get back to Queens as I had work in roughly 8 and a half hours. Sure, we were leaving early for the holiday and all, and yeah it was likely that after 1:00PM most people would be goofing off in anticipation of their long weekend but I had wanted to get to try...
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It’s a holiday weekend, bitches! And that...
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The Black and White Project: Day 60: May 26, 2011
The third and final day of Book Expo America is most often a very slow-going and very quiet day. Most of the major business wraps up around lunch and afterward everyone starts to packing up to return home until next year — and with the holiday weekend, you can kind of feel the itchiness of those who wanted to start their long weekend. There wasn’t much in the way of giveaways but...
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Elisapie's Album Launch Show at the Living Room
So check out this lil flyer for the very lovely Inuit/French-Canadian singer Elisapie’s album release show on June 8th at the Living Room. I’ve heard tracks from this album and she has an ethereal, haunting voice. And in the mean time, be on the lookout for a review of that upcoming show here.
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A Great Shoutout of the Blog
I was recently introduced to a very lovely and very talented blogger by the name of Natalie Hamingson through my buddy Abdul Ismail, and Ms. Hamingson gave me and my blog a shoutout in her recent review of Denise Barbarita and the Morning Papers’ recent set at the Bitter End. She’s very talented and y’all should check the blog post out and show some love:
...
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The Black and White Project: Day 59: May 25, 2011
On the Javits Center convention floor for the second of the three days of this year’s Book Expo America, the big publishing industry conference. The first day or so you wind up walking around the gigantic floor space, checking out which companies are there, trying to find old coworkers and friends and trying to score giveaways. Every BEA, McGraw-Hill gives away these gigantic red tote bags...
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BNLX at Rock Shop 5/21/11
Last Saturday, I caught the Minneapolis-based act BNLX play a set at one of Brooklyn’s (relatively) newest venues, Rock Shop, in Park Slope, Brooklyn. And I had two immediate thoughts come to mind — I was surprised by how small the Rock Shop’s performance space actually was and I was a little surprised to see that BNLX live is essentially Ed Ackerson on vocals and guitar, Ashely...
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The Black and White Project: Day 58: May 24, 2011
Part of today’s Black and White Project comes from spending time at the big publishing industry convention, Book Expo America.
Two adorable mascots hugging for the camera. I passed by them on at least three different occasions and each time I kept saying to myself, “damn, those things are cute.”
A book industry person chatting with Florence Henderson during a meet and greet...
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Maceo Parker at Pier 1, Brooklyn Bridge Park --...
Maceo Parker
Pier 1, Brooklyn Bridge Park – Celebrate Brooklyn
May 12, 2011
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of catching the legendary saxophonist, and one of the few living links between James Brown and Parliament Funkadelic, Maceo Parker perform with his band behind one of the city’s most stunning backdrops just below the Brooklyn Promenade with a fantastic view of lower Manhattan, the...
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New York Mets vs. New York Yankees 5/22/11
An old high school friend had 4 tickets in section 206 for Sunday afternoon’s interleague battle between the New York Mets and the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium and he invited me, along with his junior high school buddy and his uncle.
With the Mets having a lead going into the 7th inning, I was beginning to wonder if I had some kind of new Yankee Stadium jinx. For some reason...
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The Black and White Project: Day 57: May 23, 2011
This ad for energy strips with the New York Knicks’ Amar’e Stoudamire is by far the one of the most disturbing ads I’ve seen so far. Everything about it just seems wrong to me but it certainly puts the brand name into some folks consciousness — through fright.
Ai Wewei, the Chinese dissident and sculptor designed these sculptures based on the...
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The Black and White Project: Day 55 and Day 56:...
For the first time of this project, I’m actually combining two days worth of photos for a blog post. It’s been a busy weekend of shows and interleague baseball. So enjoy these posts from the Black and White Project.
BNLX during a sound check at Rock Shop in Brooklyn.
Graffiti right above the urinal at Rock Shop. I honestly don’t know what that’s supposed to be but it...
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The Black and White Project: Day 54: May 20, 2011
A Romeo Y Julieta cigar. I wound up smoking this while covering a show at the super seedy and super underground music venue, Death by Audio in Williamsburg.
This mural was one of the strangest, and perhaps most disturbing one I saw at Death by Audio. It was so odd that I had to take a photo of it for people to actually see how fucking weird it actually is.
The lead singer of Home Blitz,...
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The Black and White Project: Day 53: May 19, 2011
I had a conversation with a couple of folks on Twitter and the subject of religious lunatics came up in relation to the lunatics telling everyone that the end of world will occur on May 21st. One of my followers mentioned seeing some of the old time proselytizers in Herald Square which was a surprise to me — but then it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen the regular preachers...
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The Black and White Project: Day 52: May 18, 2011
Almost all of the photos for Day 52 of the Black and White Project revolve around catching the fantastic Joe Fletcher and the Wrong Reasons and The Devil Makes Three at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, NJ. (Yes, they’ll be a blog post about that show with some utterly fantastic photos a bit later on. Hell, I know I owe you guys photos and a post on Maceo Parker, too. I’ll be playing catch...
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Album Review: Mayer Hawthorne's Impressions -- The...
Mayer Hawthorne
Impressions – The Covers EP
Stones Throw Records
Track Listing
Work to Do
Don’t Turn the Lights On
You’ve Got the Makings of a Lover
Fantasy Girl
Little Person
Mr. Blue Sky
Raised in the Detroit suburb of Ann Arbor, Michigan, 29 year old singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist, Mayer Hawthorne grew up with a devoted appreciation and...
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The Black and White Project: Day 51: May 17, 2011
After getting caught in a torrential downpour — this seems to be my luck — I was running a few minutes late to the office. Thankfully, the M train I got on at Woodhaven Blvd. was rerouted along the 8th Avenue E line, which meant that instead of normally walking the 2 blocks from Rockefeller Center, I’d walk maybe a block from the 49th Street and 8th Avenue entrance of the 50th...
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Frog Holler at The Rodeo Bar 4/29/11
Frog Holler
The Rodeo Bar
Friday April 29, 2011
A couple of weeks ago, I had stopped by the Rodeo Bar, over in the Murray Hill/Midtown East to catch the Bucks County, Pennsylvania-based sextet Frog Holler. Arriving early to get a good seat for the photos you’ll see below, I wound up chatting with a bunch of people and somehow being cajoled into taking photos with a rowdy group of very pretty...
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Somehow, this particular track, “Don’t...
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The Black and White Project: Day 50: May 16, 2011
With the weather being unusually dank and crappy, it was honestly a bit difficult to want to wander around with a camera to take photos of anything. So these few pictures were more along the lines of wanting to stay inside and not wanting to be outside much anyway.
A self portrait during my lunch break. Yeah, I’ve been looking quite scruffy lately but a few hours later I wound up getting...
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I kind of dig Digitalism’s latest single...
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WatchJust in time for when the weather is starting to get nice — excluding the last few days here in NYC —rapper Iron Solomon recently released a video for his single with my man Gordon Voidwell called “Spring Fever.” Certainly, all of you cubicle warriors out there will probably understand the sentiment in the song.
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WatchCreep just recently released this beautifully shot and very odd video for their latest single “You” featuring Nina Sky.
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The Black and White Project: Day 49: May 15, 2011
While running a couple of quick errands on a Sunday afternoon, I took these random photos as part of the Black and White Project.
For these photos and the photos of the project up to today’s date check out the Flickr set here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yankee32879/sets/72157626259696549/
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The Black and White Project: Day 48: May 14, 2011
So with Day 48 of the Black and White project, I decided to take random photos on my way to the Long Island village of Sea Cliff to visit Tanya who’s still healing from her surgery — she’s actually healing very quickly and is already trying to get back to her normal routine of things even if it’s a little bit too quick. These photos were taken on my way to her place.
...
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I really dig the Album Leaf’s syrupy and...
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Album Review: La Strada's In Motion
La Strada
In Motion
Ernest Jenning Record Company
Release Date: May 3, 2011
Track Listing
1. In Motion
2. Grow, Grow, Grow
3. Round and Round
4. You Might as Well
Personnel
Daniel Baer – violin
James Craft – accordion, guitar, synthesizer and lead vocals
Isaiah Gage – cello
Ted Lattis – bass, guitar and backing vocals
Brady Miller – drums
Devon Press – guitar, bass and...
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The Black and White Project: Day 47: May 13, 2011
I got an invite to catch Echo and the Bunnymen at Irving Plaza — more on that later — and these photos all came about while running errands in Union Square, which has become one of my favorite parts of town because of the wildly interesting things you can come across. At moments, it’s reminiscent of the old New York with its array of chess playing hustlers, weirdos, religious...
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The Roots at Studio Square 5/4/11
A couple of weeks before the show, my friend J came across a gigantic poster which read “The Roots Live at Studio Square 5/4/11” as she was running an errand in Astoria. And she sent me a photo message of the poster with a caption that read “Holy crap, look at what I found out!’
As soon as I saw the message, my immediate response was “Oh shit, son! We need to...
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The Black and White Project: Day 46: May 12, 2011
So day 46 of the Black and White Project involved some random photos taken in and around my beloved city before Maceo Parker’s set at Pier 1 in Brooklyn.
At the 49th Street N,Q and R station some wiseguys have decided to write the word “moustache” in place of an actual mustache and in a shape of a mustache. I had taken a photo of another ad much like this but for some reason,...
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Breakthru Radio Contest
So check out this out y’all: the good folks at BreakThruRadio are running a Facebook contest for the next month in which winners will receive iPod Nanos and the Grand Prize winner will receive an iPad 2. What you need to do is pretty simple: if you want to be a contestant, you must share any piece of Breakthru Radio content from their Facebook fan page and tag it with @BreakThruRadio.
You...
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The Black and White Project: Day 45: May 11, 2011
With the 45th day of my Black and White Project, I wandered a bit around the near vicinity of my Times Square office with the hopes of catching something kind of interesting, that was also not completely touristy. So the result of today’s part of the Black and White project are below:
A gushing fountain at Rockefeller Center. Interestingly enough, this fountain is near where SNY would...
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