Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The Vinyl District Takeover | Tereu Tereu Vinyl & Ticket Giveaway


By now I'm certain you've noticed the pattern—if we've got a blog takeover, we've got a contest running in tandem with it, and this week we're certainly not breaking from any of those well worn (and much loved) devices.

In celebration of their Phoenix-like return from departing members and the ensuing uncertainties, Tereu Tereu hit the road for a 9-date mini-tour revamped and refreshed with a new rhythm section and a brand new vinyl pressing of last year's "All That Keeps Us Together" (...no irony there of course.)

The band doesn't play the DC area just yet, but that's not stopping us from offering tickets for any of the dates on the upcoming tour. Check out the list of live dates and the cities the band will hit below and let us know where you want to check them out in the comments to this post.

Tereu Tereu will play:

7/26 - Fredericksburg, VA (Chidester House)
7/27 - Richmond, VA (The Camel)

7/28 - Charlottesville, VA (Tea Bazaar w/ Drink Up Buttercup)

7/29 - Roanoke, VA (The Bazaar)

7/30 - Cincinnati, OH (Northside Tavern w/ Enlou and Sacred Spirits)

7/31 - Fort Wayne, IN (Dash In w/ Darkroom and Metavari)
8/1 - Chicago, IL (Beat Kitchen)

8/2 - Detroit, MI (PJ's Lagerhouse)

8/3 - Pittsburgh, PA (Ed's)




We'll have two winners for this contest—a grand prize winner will receive a pair of tickets to any one date on the tour of his or her choosing and a vinyl copy of "All That Keeps Us Together" and one runner up will receive a vinyl copy of "All That Keeps Us Together."

Again, shoot us a note in the comments to this post with the city in which you'd like to see the band and y'know...make it stand out from the others. We'll choose the most compelling comments this Friday (7/23) at 5PM. And remember to leave us a contact email address - important!

Tereu Tereu - Beyond The Coast (Mp3)
Tereu Tereu - Cage Was Right (Mp3)
Tereu Tereu - Neal Cassady (Mp3)
Authorized for download!


The Vinyl District Takeover | Tereu Tereu


My Life Summed Up In Seven Inches | These days I might pick up an old Motown single or something by The Rolling Stones now and then, but oddly enough, my prime years for buying 45s were in late high school and early college (when I had my cheap record player rigged up through a series of converters to play through the shitty computer speakers in my tiny dorm room). Because of that, I've got a lot of '90s emo records that I don't listen to anymore. Don't get me wrong, I still put on Nothing Feels Good now and then, but that old Texas Is The Reason / Promise Ring split doesn't really hold up for me at this point. Neither does that first Rainer Maria single, even though I do still pop on some of Rainer Maria's later stuff now and then (especially that Atlantic EP, which for some reason was never pressed on vinyl).

So what 45s do hold up? Well, this one comes down to a battle between my early childhood and my teenage self. I still have a single by Ray Stevens called The Streak that I used to listen to as a kid on one of those fisher price record players. It's funny in a stupid but clean way that reminds me of my youth, and if I heard it for the first time today, I'm not sure how I'd feel about it.


However, the best 45 from my teenage years, I still really enjoy listening to. It's an EP called Firecracker by the band Unwed Sailor. It was their first (and best) release, and it features David Bazan (Pedro The Lion) on drums. David Bazan—the melancholic singer/songwriter—is surprisingly one of my favorite drummers, and I think I even sampled the drums on this song to make some kind of beat while I was in college (unlike Brendan's MPC skills, it was definitely not gangsta).


My life came somewhat full circle when Unwed Sailor actually played in my living room a few years back, and I got to drink whiskey with Johnathan Ford. Oddly enough, after so many years of playing house shows in post-rock obscurity, it looks like Unwed Sailor is going on tour with Owl City in the late Fall... here's hoping some young kid winds up with an Unwed Sailor EP and falls in love with it too.
—Ryan Little


In Autobiographical Order:



The Promise Ring - E. Texas Ave (from their split with Texas Is The Reason) (Mp3)
Unwed Sailor - Ruby's Wishes (from Firecracker) (Mp3)

TVD's Twitter Music Monday for 7/19/10


#musicmonday is predictably trending hard on Twitter as I type this, on Monday night, because it’s Monday, and “monday” is in the hashtag and all. But you know what else is trending? #oldpeoplenames. I love this. Can we talk about this instead of music? Why is no one named Gladys anymore???

Also, in true Twitter spirit, no one who is using this hashtag seems to fully understand it. Amy? Come on. That is not an old person name. Dolores, Gaylord, Agatha, and Wilmer are. Tweeps clearly need to waste more time at work looking up baby name trends since the 1880s using ridiculously cool live-updating graphs. Not that I do this. To find cat names. What? Let’s talk about music!

I would like to put on my Old Auntie Myrtle bonnet for this column, and talk about #musicmonday etiquette. (Disclaimer: The following harshly worded mandates reflect my own preferences, and may not be actual Twitter best practices.)

Rule 1: #musicmonday more. When I joined Twitter, so many moons ago (er, 3?), the Music Monday tradition was all about sharing new music with friends. Now, every week, the Twitter transcripts are overrun with scalpers using #musicmonday to hawk tickets to concerts. I can’t remember the last time I saw a #musicmonday suggestion in my own Twitter feed. I miss them. I learned things from those Tweets. Y'all have good taste—sock it to me.

Rule 1a: Experiment. Make up new alternative music-related hashtags. Let’s get #punkrockfriday off the ground, yes? I’m partial to #rainydaypowerpop, too, although I’m pretty sure I’m the only person on the planet who has ever used that hashtag. Take it! Make it your own! Give it the life that I cannot!

When you’re giving life to all these hashtags, remember Rule #2: Please include a link. Preferably a shortened link. I am lazy, and I assume 99.9% of Twitter users are also lazy. A tweet like “OMG cannot stop listening to the new Mark Ronson single! #musicmonday” is frustrating, because then I have to laboriously highlight alllllllll the relevant words, copppppppy them, mouse allllllllll the way over to my Google search bar, passsssste them, and scan through alllllll the results before I get to hear the music you so graciously recommended.

It’s important to include the link, but (Rule #3), it’s equally important to explain what you’re linking to. Unless you’re trying for a #musicmonday Rickroll. (Rule #4: Never Rickroll.) If I see a tweet in the middle of the work day that reads “OMG #musicmonday blast from the past!! [link],” I will be grumpy for hours if I click and get ambushed by the Spice Girls. Include the artist and song name. No one actually likes internet surprises. (Except for this one.)

So, all you Blanches, Ednas, Lelands, and Clarences, you are now empowered to give new life to a dying hashtag. Give me music to listen to! But do it properly. According to me.

Role #mmodel: “YouCanAnswerNow: Where can i read high school musical the manga? #MusicMonday #comics http://www.linkati.com/q/index.php?i=207291” Wow, now I sort of want to know, too.

My #musicmonday pick: An oldie, in honor of all those names—Otis Williams and The Charms’ Hearts Made of Stone. I love this song so much, and maybe I should have named my cat Otis.