June 30th, 2009

Fake Problems, Kiss Kiss

June 30th, 2009

Interview: Adam Franklin

British singer-guitarist Adam Franklin is perhaps best known for fronting the propulsive ’90s U.K. guitar-rock juggernaut Swervedriver, which reunited last year for a brief U.S. summer tour that swung through the TLA. Franklin’s been involved in myriad musical projects over the past decade-plus, from Magnetic Morning (the band he shares with Interpol drummer Sam Fogarino) to the Robin Proper-Sheppard-fronted indie-rock collective Sophia to Franklin’s own Toshack Highway and a solo career under his own name, with backing band Bolts of Melody. That latter outfit comes to the Troc on Wednesday night (opening for the Church) behind the recently released gem Spent Bullets, which finds Franklin and company exploring thick, melodically compelling psych-pop with loads of guitar atmospherics and elegant, ethereal passages. We caught up with Franklin over the phone today as his tour van rumbled toward Philadelphia.

You’ve played Philly lots of times — any particular memories stand out?
Well, I suppose there was one time playing at the Khyber Pass when I was just doin’ a little run up and down the east coast on the Amtrak, you know, doing these little solo shows, and I remember playing the Khyber Pass and then I had to catch the last train back to New York and somebody said, “Well, if you need a cab there’s this certain guy in a pink Cadillac…” or something. And eventually he pulled up and I could see him out the window as I was playing, and I sorta rounded up the set and said, “Well, my ride is here,” and I packed up my guitar really fast and got in the cab. And I thought that was quite a good way to exit the show, you know?

Nice!
I guess the other thing that sticks out, I guess the Troc was where…actually, two things happened at the Troc. We toured with Soundgarden, and we finished our set and we all sat next to the drum riser during their set, and there was one song in their set where Chris Cornell kinda does an acoustic thing and at the end, Matt Cameron, the drummer, just does this little kinda roll, and that’s the end of the song. So I was sitting next to them and I said, “You know what, I think even I could play that drum part,” and Matt said, “Yeah man, you should do it, you should do it,” and him and Ben Shepherd sort of pushed me up to the drums, and actually I did do that roll to finish off the song. So technically I can say that I have actually played drums live on stage with Soundgarden.

That’s pretty cool. What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you in Philly? Any calamities?
Well the massive calamity was I guess a couple years later Swervedriver played with the Smashing Pumpkins and I think that was also the Trocadero, and before the show we were sitting around, I guess the Pumpkins were soundchecking, and we were having a beer and smoking a cigarette and Jez, our drummer, smoked a cigarette and he was putting it out in the ashtray and the ashtray exploded and his hand was pretty badly injured.

June 30th, 2009

R.I.P. Vibe Magazine

Geez…first Farrah and Michael, now Vibe magazine.

Here’s the full statement from Vibe Media CEO Steve Aaron:

Dear VIBE Team:

It is with a heavy heart that I share some tough news, VMG is closing down effective today, June 30th.

It’s been an 16 incredible years since VIBE’s inception. There are very few magazines with the richness of history and breadth of talented visionaries who created the powerful lens in which VIBE viewed and shaped urban music and culture.

Ever since I first set foot in this courageous company, I’ve regarded myself as incredibly fortunate to be be involved with this remarkable brand and group of individuals whose performance has never been nothing short of outstanding. We finished 2008 in an improved position versus the prior year, and accomplished so much, including:

* Editorial Awards
* Editorial transformation into content dept
* New Ad accounts being broken
* The Most Mag Launch
* Award winning re-design
* Profitable digital operation
* VIBE.com growth and improvements and programs such as Best Rapper Ever, #1 Stan, etc
* Mobile VIBE launch
* Micro-site development Mostmag.com to start off.
* V Sessions
* Improved PR coverage

Unfortunately, over the last several months, a confluence of events has obviously posed VMG to exceedingly serious challenges.

* The collapse of the capital markets has impacted us greatly. Over the past several months, we have actively pursued investment resources while working intensively with our bank to find a solution. But the deal market right now remains very poor and at the end of the day, the lack of investment resources to restructure the huge debt on our small company has made this outcome become a reality.
* The print advertising collapse hit VIBE hard, especially as key ad categories like automotive and fashion, which represented the bulk of our top 10 advertisers, have stopped advertising or gone out of business. It’s also unfortunate that in a recession many companies reduce the multi-cultural campaigns. These facts, coupled with the continuing decline of the music industry not to mention the newsstand wholesaler consolidation in early 2009 all negatively impacted our business in a significant way.
* The relentless economic situation has depressed our growth initiatives on the digital front. To be clear, VMG has made significant improvement in this part of our business, but not at the accelerated pace required to offset the devastating effects of the most severe recession in our lifetime and the accompanying print losses.

I want to thank you all for your hard work and commitment, and for all of the adventures along the way. I’ll miss this place a lot, but I’ll miss you all and the magic you create.

Vibe will be remembered as a shockingly brilliant content company that everyone can be proud of and I look forward with great excitement to all of future endeavors you all pursue.

With great affection and respect –

Steve Aaron

former CEO of VIBE Media Group

June 30th, 2009

Jens Lekman Has Swine Flu

Much-adored Swedish indie-popster Jens Lekman hasn’t been ’round these parts lately — not since a (fantastic) show at First Unitarian Church at the tail-end of 2007 — and perhaps that’s an okay thing, as it turns out he’s contracted the contagious and hysteria-causing H1N1 virus, otherwise known as swine flu. According to Lekman’s blog, he contracted the illness while touring in South America earlier this month:

I picked home one last souvenir from South America, it’s called the H1N1 virus. Wrongfully known as the Swineflue.

I was crossing the Atlantic when things started getting really bad, the fever was hallucinogenic and shaking me like a leaf and I grabbed the sleeve of the Air France steward. “I’m not feeling well, I should see a doctor” I said and the reply came as a brilliant mix of death anxiety and french rudeness: “Uh, yes… Terminal D… go there maybe… when we land”. After that the stewards and stewardesses took long detours. A ring of empty seats formed around me. Peoples eyes were kind but determined, they read “Poor you, I really wish you all the best but if you come near me or my kid I will have to stab you with this plastic fork”. I got up and went to the bathroom where I fainted.

Now I’m in quarantine for ten days. I can see the summer through my window and it’s just perfect. Summer is always best through a window.

We certainly wish Lekman a speedy recovery, as we’d love to see him come back to Philly — sans communicable diseases (sorry, fella, nothing personal) — sometime soon.

June 30th, 2009

Interview: Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo

Nearly 30 years in and Sonic Youth continues to do it, and do it well. The quintet’s new album, The Eternal, easily ranks as one of their finest, and if you’ve seen them live in recent years, you know that they’re far from tiring of what they do. SY comes to town on Thursday; we caught up yesterday afternoon over the phone with guitarist Lee Ranaldo:

How are you? Feeling all right?
Yeah I’m doing good. We’re just getting underway — last night was the first night where we pretty much tried to play almost every song from the new record in the set, and we’re gettin’ there, we’re definitely gettin’ there on everything.

Are you feeling good about the way the new songs translate onto the stage?
Yeah, you know, we’re still kinda feeling our way into that, but yeah, so far I’m really really liking what’s going on with them.

So you’re playing the whole new record at the Philly show?
Pretty much. I mean, that’s usually our way when we’ve got a new record. We’re excited about playing the new stuff, the stuff that we’ve just written.

What’s been your take on the reaction to the record, as far as from the critics or the fans?
In terms of, do we look at the reviews and whatnot?

Yeah.
Of course we do, and we’ve been very pleased to see that it’s been pretty positive so far, which is great for us.

Have you always been interested in the feedback, the way your art is received?
You know what, we’ve always been interested to see what people have been writing about us. It’s never in the regard of…it doesn’t ever sway what we do, but you put work out there and you have an idea what your purpose is or what the meaning of it is or however you wanna say it, and it’s oftentimes very different from the way somebody on the outside looks at it. So for us it’s always interesting just to see how other people interpret this stuff that we’ve thought one way about. All of a sudden you get another perspective. A good critic, or a good interpretation of a work, can open your eyes to stuff you didn’t even see yourself. So that’s always interesting. And I think we read the negative reviews with at least as much interest as the positive reviews, just to see what people are making of it. It’s always interesting to dabble in it.

I guess that ties into a sorta long-standing philosophical debate about which is more important: The artist’s vision, or the way the art is interpreted by the audience…
Well, you know, from the perspective of the artist — me being the artist — we have to remain true to our vision. We’re certainly not trying to tailor what we do to anyone’s expectations or desires or, you know, impressions of what Sonic Youth is or should be. We just gotta go with what we think is the best thing to do, even if it is on occasion not the most popular decision, or a decision some people find baffling or unintelligible or whatever it is. We just gotta go ahead and follow all of our hearts with it.

June 30th, 2009

Auto-Tune Inventor Spotlighted On WHYY Tonight

If you tune in (har har) to NOVA ScienceNOW tonight at 9 p.m. on Channel 12 WHYY-TV, you’ll see a segment on Dr. Andy Hildebrand, who in 1996 invented Auto-Tune — the pitch-correcting software that helped resurrect Cher’s career, made T-Pain a(n annoying-as-hell) superstar, ably assisted Kanye in his hitmaking, and has become a crutch for countless vocalists across all genres, as this recent Time magazine article made clear:

“It usually ends up just like plastic surgery,” says a Grammy-winning recording engineer. “You haul out Auto-Tune to make one thing better, but then it’s very hard to resist the temptation to spruce up the whole vocal, give everything a little nip-tuck.” Like plastic surgery, he adds, more people have had it than you think. “Let’s just say I’ve had Auto-Tune save vocals on everything from Britney Spears to Bollywood cast albums. And every singer now presumes that you’ll just run their voice through the box.”

Of course, a lot of people believe Auto-Tune is the devil-scourge of the music industry. Even Jay-Z just issued a sonic fatwa called “D.O.A. (Death of Autotune)”:

So what does Dr. Hildebrand think of this whole brouhaha? There’s a fascinating interview with him just published over at the Seattle Times. An excerpt:

I write about pop music, and there’s some noise about this Jay-Z song, “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune).” Do you really think there’s a significant backlash against that outward use of Auto-Tune in pop music?
Well, whenever something happens, part of the population likes it and part of the population doesn’t like it. That’s just the way the world works. Sometimes people are vocal about it. Someone asked me at one point in time if I thought that Auto-Tune was evil. I said, “Well, my wife wears make-up. Is that evil?” And yeah, in some circles that is evil. But in most circles, it’s not.

Yesterday, I posted on my Facebook profile “I’m interviewing the inventor of Auto-Tune tomorrow” and the only comments on my update were people saying, “Can you ask him why he ruined music?” I forget what the other ones were, but they were similar.
I just give people a tool. I don’t tell them how to use it.

I think some people did some stuff that some people are getting tired of hearing.
That’s not me. I didn’t do it. I’m innocent!

I guess people are just really attached to what they consider natural talent.
It’s as if I’d invented the automobile and was blamed for people causing car crashes. It just doesn’t fit.

June 30th, 2009

Happy Birthday, Mike Tyson

You’re 43 today. Thanks for all the craziness thus far, and for providing our own DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince with enough material for a hit (man, I haven’t listened to this song in damn near 20 years):

Iron Mike’s found his way into a few hip-hop videos over the years; this is probably the best one: