I think that's a good way of letting people hear it before blogs tell them what to think of it. The speed at which people pass judgment has accelerated to keep up with the technology — it's like you need to form an opinion in ten seconds.
That's the deadening of one's soul in response to art or music. Some bands react against that with the only thing they can: the idea that you need to shock someone to make them pay attention. Is shock value effective in the long term? When Bob Dylan went electric, people were shocked. But your audience makes up what "shock- ing" is — it's not shocking if it makes sense to you.
If you're going to paint your face and go out with underwear over your head, it's gotta mean something. With MySpace and YouTube, bands can get their songs out to the public more easily, but they also have far more competition. Overall, do you think those sites hurt or help bands like yours? It's like an online business card for bands. This is why I tell people the only way to approach our I'm very determined to get to come out the way I like.
And everything starts tasting really, really good. A lot of new bands get popular online before they have time to develop their live shows. Backlash seems to be a direct result of that disconnect: People who love the album get disappointed by the tour. What would it take for that to happen? All we need is distribu- tion. Then you don't even get into dis- cussions of "indie" versus "major. But no one has yet. What about fronting you a lot of money? John Cage discovered the prepared piano [a piano that's converted into a percus- sive instrument by placing objects on or between the strings, hammers, or dampers] because he was supposed to have a percussion ensemble in a space where there wasn't enough room, so he had to convert his piano into a prepared piano to cover the percussive parts.
It's those types of innovations that I admire. You could have millions of dollars, but million-dollar shit is still shit. How does their work figure into yours? I heard he killed himself by jumping off a bridge and waving to everyone on the way down. What comes off to me in some of Berryman's work is that there's a cer- tain sense of desperation in any artist who is trying to do something honest.
The idea behind all of this — the same idea behind the name Clap Your Hands Say Yeah — is to balance out what is serious with what is not serious, to take life not seriously at all and utterly seriously at the same time. You'll drive yourself crazy if you don't find that balance.
That's interesting because the album's last song, "Five Easy Pieces," seems to be about your strug- gle to determine whether you still take this process seriously, whether making art is still meaningful to you. And the final line is "Give up, give up, give up, give up. To me, it's the illusion of happiness that causes discontent. What makes you unhappy about being in a band?
Going out on the road is totally exhausting. I've been working on this children's album because some years ago I got really sick, and I decided it would be a good idea to stay home and work on the piano; and it just turned out that the songs I was working on had a childlike attitude. Then I remembered that I used to get sick on my birthday every year because I've never been good with people paying attention to me.
I understand why I have to go out on the road, and I appreciate everyone for coming out to see us, but I just get uncomfortable. You'd rather write music by yourself? And everybody else knows that. I've heard that you aren't often in the studio at the same time as your bandmates. I do a lot of it: I write the skeleton of the song, the guys figure out parts for their primary instru- ments, and they try those parts out, and I'll make a decision as to whether those parts stay.
Everyone is free to bring ideas, but everyone understands that I'm the one who makes the final decision. But I pick people to work with by virtue of the fact that they have certain strengths — and I can't play every instrument myself. It's a tricky thing to talk about. If I'm honest, I might be insulting without meaning to be. Everybody's con- tribution is very worthy of credit, but we don't function like a lot of other bands. Even if no one likes this album, I'm sure we could get that money together again to make another one.
What makes me think I wouldn't be happier giving up the road to work a day job and record on my own? Completing albums the way I see fit — that's the only version of success I know. Kaiser Chiefs are not one of those bands. As post-Strokes garage-rockers Parva, the five Yorkshiremen — Wilson, drummer Nick Hodgson, guitarist Andrew "Whitey" White, bassist Simon Rix, and keyboardist Nick "Peanut" Baines — were dropped from their label before their first album could be released. So they licked their wounds and reinvented themselves.
And I'm just a cock in a band. You don't have to do everything, when we first started out, we were like whores. We'd do anything. Anything you regret? I think that's hilarious.
Have you gotten used to the spoils of success? We travel on [budget airline] easyJet, and we get average hotels. Our tour manager told me the other day that he deliber- ately didn't turn us into children. And because of that, because we're from Yorkshire, because we're friends, we haven't become knobheads. Is it harder to write about doing well? They don't have to be descriptions of what's been happening. It could be a load of old nonsense.
Look at Pink Floyd. It doesn't all make sense, does it? Because of Parva, Employment was your make-and-break record, so is this the h'rst- ever second album to have less pressure than the debut? On Andrew Whita: Belstaff coat, Leui's jeans. On Rkky Wilson: Aquascutum coat. Converse sneakers. Because we were sawy and signed to a small label [B-Unique in the U.
Give us a call when it's done. It's easy if the singer is also the guitarist and the songwriter, because he just goes, "Hey, guys, follow me!
You can't do that if you're on the drums. It's a bit shit. Have you got another one? I like that one and I'm the leader of the band. We got rid of all of the gimmicks. Gimmicks are what you do when you're a support band and you want to be massive.
You're the soundtrack to buying beer. Are you still trying to win people over, or are big, catchy choruses just what you enjoy writing? When Simon Rix grumbles about some chorus, I have to go, "Right, see you tomorrow.
Come back. It'll be better. Everyone in our band likes big choruses. With two years of tours and festival dates, it seems like you've hardly been away since the last album. Is it crucial to maintain that kind of momentum? So the only people who knew were the people in that city. You can't stop the radio from playing your songs. We actually did want to get out of people's hair a bit, in the U.
We wanted to lay low in America. Not be everywhere. Green Day need a chance, don't they? So many Britpop hopefuls have shriveled from neg- lect in the U. What does it take to succeed there? Good for them. And also we care about our own sanity and people we like seeing. If someone said you had to spend nine months in the Far East, you'd say no.
Someone said when we were last there, "Have I heard of your band? Have you got a video out? But, y'know, we live in a visual age, and that's why we're all so handsome. And he said, "The Food Fighters? Do you think the prevalence of blogs and mes- sage boards makes life easier for a new band?
Bands have been coming through a lot more in the last few years. We paid [our advance] back in the first week. Is it a good time for music?
Look at the Libertines, right? If they were any good, they'd still be together and they'd be doing something progressive, but they're not, and they never were. They say that they're influenced by the Clash and they just sounded like the Clash. A bit. There's a thousand bands in Britain that are inspired by the Libertines, who were uninspiring.
So music's not as good, but there's more of it. One of your new songs is called "Everything's Average Nowadays. There's interesting things happening in the underground, but when you turn the telly on and see the latest celebrity-doing- something-out-of-the-ordinary program or the latest pop-star program, it kind of gets you down. But you're still interested in the mainstream rather than the underground.
It's a good struggle, because it keeps it interesting. We're interested in having songs on the radio and having massive amounts of fans, but we also hate the mainstream. But we wouldn't be underground, because we wouldn't feel happy about not fulfilling our poten- tial as song-makers. You can only be underground if you're a bit shit. So would you say that the Velvet Underground were a bit shit? They're the ultimate "a bit shit" band. How far do your ambitions extend? I don't know.
We'll see. I don't want to be U2-size. It makes me feel claustrophobic if I imagine that our band would ever be as big as U2. That's what the Killers want. We thought that would be unachievable and amazing. So maybe the Killers will fall apart because they want it too much. HODGSON: We're completely convinced we've done the best album we can, and we want to do all the press and all the gigs because it deserves it.
But there was a point when we hadn't written any of these songs, when we thought, "If it finished tomorrow, we could honestly say we've surpassed every ambition we've ever had. Everything else is a bonus. It doesn't matter. It's like when someone says you've got six months to live and that was two years ago. A curious music fan with a keen eye might have identified him as James Mercer of the Shins, the jangly indie-rock band whose song "New Slang" fig- ures prominently in one of the movie's pivotal moments.
But Mercer, who was seeing the film for the first time, was relieved no one did. As a teenager, he says, he was so shy he'd hide in the closet when strangers came to the door.
It wasn't until his mids that he came out of his shell. Now, at 36, he's relaxing on a leather chair in a lounge at a trendy New York City hotel, sipping a scotch and soda and talking about the Shins' third album, Wincing the Night Away.
Mercer writes and sings all of the Shins' songs, so he's become accustomed to doing interviews. But onstage he stands to the side of key- boardist and class clown Martin Crandall, who does most of the talking. That changed with Garden State, the whimsical yet emotionally potent comedy-drama directed by Zach Braff. In one of the film's early scenes, Natalie Portman's oddball-with-a-heart-of-gold tells Braff s disaf- fected antihero that a Shins song "vdll change your life.
Thanks to the unexpected exposure, the Shins' two albums went on to sell more than twice what they had before the movie's release. Almost overnight, the Shins became indie-rock icons, plus estabUshed enough that everyone knew they were cool. Even before the Garden State blossoming, the Shins had revitalized their leg- endary label, Seattle's Sub Pop Records, which had stumbled after its grunge- filled glory years of the late '80s and early '90s, when Nirvana and Mudhoney made their first rumblings there.
Aside from Nirvana's debut album. Bleach, and the Postal Service's Give Up, the two Shins albums have become the best-selling releases in the label's history. Anticipation for a new Shins album has been building for more than a year. Wincing the Night Away, once set for last summer, slid to the fall before its January 23 release was confirmed. In he went through a painful breakup.
A home Mercer bought in Portland in turned out to be adjacent to a crack house, and when police raided his neighbors, the deal- ers assumed Mercer had fingered them. They threatened him, broke into his place, and stole the master tapes for Inverted World.
Popular, whether he liked it or not. COM oi. It's something that's difficult to deal with. Fuck, I didn't behave properly about certain things. Now that's weird. But I had to learn! I didn't have a. Lines of lyrics, he says, come to him "when I'm in that state of trying to go to sleep.
But now there are these little pop gems. It's a great feeling. But Mercer decorates many of them with sampled synths and a sonic fuzz reminis- cent of the Jesus and Mary Chain.
As he worked on the album, Mercer was listen- ing to the beat-driven British group the Beta Band and thinking about how they might approach things. To help with arrangements, he brought in Joe Chiccarelli, a producer and engineer who has worked with Beck and Counting Crows.
We tried a lot of stuff: weird parts, song structures, different beats. He wanted to get inside the songs a lot more. Mercer had avoided outside producers, for fear they would impose their taste on him. Offstage as well, Crandall is the resident comedian, at one point delivering an impromptu parody of emo lyrics. Hernandez is the raconteur; Sandoval, the quiet one.
They all met in Albuquerque, New Mexico, they're all in their 30s, and they've all worked enough dead-end jobs not to take their success for granted. Mercer says he admires Shields' "avant-garde" approach to pop. When it's mentioned there will be a big Xbox media party in Manhattan in a few days, they ask excitedly if they'll be able to get in. After a little prompting, Hernandez offers some less PG-rated stories, like one about a trip to London, when the Shins ended up at a bar with the Strokes, who swept them into a late-night hotel-room party boasting champagne, celebrities, and a guy in bed with two women.
So he walks around until he found an open door. The imaginary Sandalvandez an amalgam of the Shins' names gets blamed for everything. The boozy hijinks and easy camaraderie don't. He grew up in Albuquerque, but his father's job as a nuclear munitions officer in the Air Force sent his family to Germany and England for a few years each. Mercer says his father was shy but was still able to sing in a country band while overseas. When Mercer was ten or so, his dad's band performed at Oktoberfest in Munich.
At the time. Mercer couldn't imagine ever doing anything like it himself. When Mercer was 15, his family moved to the U. Socially isolated, he'd go straight home from school, listen to the Smiths or the Cure in his room, and wonder what it was like to be in a band. Soon, he took up piano. And when he moved back to New Mexico a year later, he remembers being stunned that his friends were still mainlining hair metal.
After a couple of years at the University of New Mexico, Mercer took a series of odd jobs he operated carnival rides and worked in a factory, where a cruel boss WWW.
In he started the Shins as a side prqjea with Sandoval, then brought in Crandall after Flake broke up. Poneman signed the band in after seeing them perform in San Francisco. The crowd applauds the band's yet-to- be-released songs enthusiastically, in part because they're familiar. An early copy of Wincing has found its way onto the Internet, much to Sub Pop's chagrin.
It's hardly surprising that Wincing has been eagerly awaited by college radio DJs, who tend to favor the kind of elliptical lyrics and fi'agmented melodies the Shins have perfected. What's interesting, though, is how popular the Shins have become outside the cloistered world of indie rock.
While the first two Shins albums found their audience gradually, for Wincing the Night Away, Sub Pop is thinking bigger: The label is shipping between , and , copies, more than five times it has for any other release. It also shelled out for a relatively big-budget video for "Phantom Limb," and Mercer has just returned from a two-week promo stint in Europe.
Five years ago the label could not have done any of that, Poneman says. When it was founded in , Sub Pop epitomized the artist-friendly and indie-minded labels that sprouted in alt rock's heyday. In , when the label's cachet had peaked, Poneman and cofounder, Bruce Pavitt, sold 49 percent of the company to the Warner Music Group. They hoped to expand. But Pavitt soon left, and with corporate budgets came corporate problems — overstaffing, turf wars, and, eventually, debt.
Energized by the success of Inverted World, the present incarnation of Sub Pop, Poneman says, "grew up with the Shins. As it did in the pre-Warner days. Sub Pop once again budgets for lean times and, according to Poneman, can break even selling fewer than 10, copies of a release — a fraction of what a major label would need. For years, majors had a virtual ItKk on commercial radio and an efficient distribu- tion system most indies couldn't match. But radio isn't nearly as important for alt-rock albums, and the Alterna- tive Distribution Alliance ADA , a company 95 percent- owned by Warner Music — Sub Pop owns the other 5 percent — has become expert at getting indie albums into big stores.
Mercer is eager, and perhaps a little nervous, to hear how Wincing will be received. As he has learned, more success often brings more pressure. When Mercer — who is now married, with a baby on the way — found himself becoming some- thing of a star, he says, "It messed with me because I was suddenly gening sexual attention — from people I had known for a long time. We have this thing, you should love someone for who they are — who they really are — but who am I? Here, Dance Dance Revolution is more like it.
Crandall and Sandoval lose themselves in Gears of War, as Mercer and Hernandez sample the bar's top- shelf tequila. When an Xbox executive walks by, the Shins introduce them- selves, compliment him on some games, and generally act the way polite music fans probably act around them.
He seems slightly bemused that a popular rock band is so excited to meet him. As the party winds down, Crandall and Sandoval retreat to a corner to squeeze in a few more rounds with the hard-core gamers. And Mercer heads off to another party with Hernandez, looking, tonight at least, like he isn't shy at all.
Now this former child star has made it his life's work to bring respect to the music he loves. Here's the story of a man named Robbie This evening itiarks day five of Los Angeles' day festival, spread out over nine venues around town. No bloggers snapping photos with their cell phones. No hotties in leotards clamoring to get backstage. There isn't really a backstage. And the only boobs you're likely to see at this sausage party belong to the middle-aged rocker dude in the XL leather vest sans shirt, waiting to do his minute set.
You see, IPO is a music fest celebrating power pop. And power pop — that ring- ing, often melancholic, always melodic music inspired by the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Who Pete Townshend is credited with coining the term in a interview , and later the Raspberries, Big Star, and Cheap Trick — is suffering from an image problem.
Power pop is not seen as goofily ironic, like yacht rock; that's because the sound is usually earnest, shy, horny, and sweet. And, as fans of the genre will repeatedly tell you, it's totally misunderstood.
Power pop is even derided by bands purportedly playing it or are at least cat- egorized as such on Amazon and iHines. Or maybe that's the third Amstel Light talking. COM ho in here likes air hockey? Unfortunately, the only buzz in this place tonight is coming from the beer fridge behind the bar.
Guess what? He's the patron saint of the festival, a multi-instrumentalist superstar who holds the unofficial record of playing in more bands than any other musician — power pop or otherwise — in the L. At 's IPO, he was a ringer in 17 groups, 12 of which he'd never met before. Instead, the show was soon canceled, and Rist is most famous for being one of television's premier shark-jumping characters. That Cousin Oliver would be a polarizing character? I came in second. It's about them.
Not long after, he starred in a Saturday morning sitcom called Big John, Little John, which lasted just one season. But Rist is not going to let power pop go out like that.
After stepping away from IPO for three years "That last year 1 played in 17 different bands. What was 1 going to do after that, set myself on fire? If there isn't anything new under the sun in the last century, there is even less new under the sun now.
Nii metal? Done," he says, slamming his bottle on the bar top. Power pop. Between heavy metal and Kurt Cobain, you had the Posies and Jellyfish. I've waited ten years for it to come back and I'm not going to stand by and watch it pass me by again. I'm not going to wake up and be 50 and have missed my chance again. Friends and fans believe Rist may be power pop's last hope. Most records by actors suck.
True Hollywood Story though he was No. His rise to fame wasn't particularly sordid. That was the movie where I drank for the first time, and that was the movie I first smoked pot with some camera guy. Amps, guitars, drum kits, mics, and cords cover every inch of the converted loft apartment that used to house sailboats. Rist actu- ally owns a house and a condo nearby, but these days he typically sleeps on the Boathouse floor, close to his instruments and recording equipment. As Rist will almost enjoy telling you, he's broke.
Just how broke, he won't say, but when he offers to buy a round at a bar one night, he shuffles through several credit cards before handing one over to the bartender and saying warily, "Try that one. Yet Rist is still renowned in the voice-over world. A few years ago he auditioned for a commercial whose script called for a "Robbie Rist-type" read: WWW. He didn't get tlie job. Tliere are days when he can barely afford gas for his beat-up white van and considers it splurging to buy a pair of drumsriclcs.
Dinner this evening was two ears of microwaved corn on the cob. While we wait for his two bandmates from Nice Guy Eddie, one of four groups he'll be playing with at IPO this year, Rist pours cheap red wine into plastic party cups. It's got to. Pay me enough money and I will put on that monkey suit and throw poo at the audience.
In , Rist produced his first movie, Stump the Band, a low-budget horror flick. It has yet to find a distributor. Rist admits he has a hard time saying no and tends to spread himself thin. You do something and people say, 'You're amazing! Fest intentions clockwise from top left ; Rist hams it up while backing Butch Young; Squiddo dress to impress. You liked that? Is that making you happy? What can I do to do that again? He attended public school, but claims he never developed proper social skills.
With a sister who was nine years older and no kids to play with in his suburban neighborhood, he listened to music. In , when Rist was 14, his piano teacher took him to LA. I'll try that album.
Power pop, he says, appealed to his adolescent melancholy. When asked if he has groupies, his eyes bulge In embarrassment. COM Cl school grad named Cheyenne, whom he met when she was 16 and he Initially a Ninja Turtles fan, Cheyenne reached out after discovering an album by one of his earlier bands, and an e-mail courtship ensued.
And then it, you know, evolved over time. I'll always love him," she tells me, dreamy-eyed over a cup of green tea while in town visiting Rist during the festival. It's Peter Pan music for the boy who doesn't want to ;. That was when his high school friend Tony Perkins, of cult act Martin Luther Lennon, launched a local monthly party called Bubblegum Crisis. Bubblegum Crisis evolved into a biweekly event, and then expanded into an annual power-pop festival called Poptopia.
We used to joke about how you could probably find more people familiar with the elephant-sex scene than with the L. That hasn't changed. Some say it's because Bash has launched so many IPOs across the country and one in Liverpool, England , he's diluted the brand. Others say it's just the life cycle of a scene. There were more than bands eager to be a part of IPO's lineup. The Joint is adjacent to a Starbucks and is the kind of dive that doesn't hnvo toilet paper or a working lock on the women's bathroom, but charges six bucks for a beer.
Not that anyone needs to use the women's bathroom. There are a handful of female acts at IPO, but for the most part, the crowd for every show is nearly identical: pasty white guys between 35 and 50, in Rist's uniform of band T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers.
It's Sunday — Rist's big day. He's got three gigs spread out over the course of eight hours, starting at in the afternoon. In this sleepy, predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, it must sound like a rocking party is going on beyond the heavy doors of the Joint. But inside, IPO is a subdued affair. The bar- tender eats Chinese takeout, while Adam Marsland, the former frontman of Cockeyed Ghost, huddles in the corner playing cards with his ex-bandmates while a patron dozes in a nearby booth, blissfully oblivious to the high decibels.
Rist scurries in at 1 , orders a beer, and heads backstage. He is playing with Jeff Caudill, a 3S-year-oId former punk rocker, now a movie-poster designer. It may be Caudill's band, but as the quintet takes the stage, Rist's child actor reflexes kick in and he hijacks the show before a single note is played. All of it gets a laugh. With a wicked laugh, Buettner tosses her bra toward the horde of guys gathering around her. But a whole other show is going on at the bar, where an all-star power-pop reunion is in full swing, with Rist at its center.
Nipper Sea Turtle, a zaftig blonde who is one of the scene's staples, envelopes Rist, smearing sparkly makeup on his cheek. Nearby, Wondermints' Darian Sahanaja now with Brian Wilson's band makes his way through the crowd, while Derrick Anderson of the Andersons stops by to say hello. Rist is suddenly, uncharacteristically opti- mistic. But if it doesn't, then 20 years from now, some year-old is going to find all these bands, all this music, and hit the motherlode.
It's gonna be like the Buena Vista Social Club. Makes you wonder where it all went wrong. I blame Peter Frampton. They eventually morphed into the much more successful— but not nearly as interesting— Semisonic. His new album, Cosmkandy, is jaw-droppingty great. Buy it. Trust me. If you don't tear up by the last verse of 'Cinna Ling,' you ain't human.
The Bangles' Michael Steele was their bassist. I hope someone still has the tapes. Now this is a team! When these great people work with Samsung to help our communities. By teaming up with Magic. Boomer, Joe. Arnold, Bon Jovi. Wayne and Dan. To find out how you can help, visit www. The Four Seasons of Hope.
Because no one should ever go without. At the time, he probably would've settled for a side stage at Warped Tour. Or a van without transmission problems. Like the thousands of other fledgling punk acts who get together each year out of sheer boredom, Wentz's band seemed destined for the small time; Maybe they'd limp through a U. Yet Fall Out Boy have sold 2.
In the past six years he has undeniably adopted the mind-set of someone who absolutely wants to take over the world, setting off countless message-board debates in the process. The search algorithm handles phrases and strings of words quite well, so for example if you want words that are related to lol and rofl you can type in lol rofl and it should give you a pile of related slang terms.
Or you might try boyfriend or girlfriend to get words that can mean either one of these e. Please also note that due to the nature of the internet and especially UD , there will often be many terrible and offensive terms in the results.
There is still lots of work to be done to get this slang thesaurus to give consistently good results, but I think it's at the stage where it could be useful to people, which is why I released it. Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source code that was used in this project: krisk , HubSpot , and mongodb.
Finally, you might like to check out the growing collection of curated slang words for different topics over at Slangpedia. Please note that Urban Thesaurus uses third party scripts such as Google Analytics and advertisements which use cookies. Rosa , Apr 25, My english is still not the best and stuff, somethings are very hard to discrible. Thoughts are piece of cake but actions auwwww, tough one Kay that was my little reactback. I'm sorta dying right now. Ramble atack, kay with a bit of luck I'll update tomorrow.
Not that that sais much to you because I have no idea what time it is Boy that sounds long Shun the nonbelievers, shunnn. But anyway love yor story and cant wait for more. But I'm probablhy going to read the next chapter in next week cause I'm too busy to get drukj this weekend Love you and write more when you can, but remember it's always way better to hang out with your friends and get drunk than to write slash stories Sorry with the random shit!
Now I'm off to try to get sober for few hours and then start again Hi Nuky, Looking forward to the update!! I did see The Cell, I love mental thrillers.
Spider sounds so interesting. I'll have to check that out. Way looking forward to Bob update.
0コメント