Here at THE VINYL DISTRICTwe're good consumers. All Mp3's are posted to promote and give exposure to the music and are linked for a limited time. Please download to preview, then head promptly to your local vinyl vendor (or - OK, CD store too) and fork over your hard earned cash. You'll appreciate the piece of mind.
Got something you think we should be listening to or reading? thevinyldistrict (at) gmail.com
In addition to The Subs swag left behind by Blake and John for you guys, they've aslo assembled your Parting Shots for the week. Because they're givers.
I admit I was a little late getting into TVD HQ this morning. We were up late last night hammering together details for the DC Record Fair and reviewing the final poster art, so I was unable to see The Submarines, Blake and John, off as we wind down their big blog takeover week.
They had tidied up the office quite nicely and tossed out all the pizza boxes and empty bottles which is always appreciated. And they’ve left a little something behind for TVD readers and Subs fans.
We’ve got a great litho, a portion of which is shown below, and a rare, unreleased remix CD of their second record ‘Honeysuckle Weeks’ for three of you who pipe up to claim the set in the comments to this post. We’ll give ya a week and leave us some contact info too, ok?
Track listing for the remix CD: 1940 (AmpLive Remix), You, Me & The Bourgeoisie (Tonetiger Remix), Brightest Hour (Morgan Page Remix), Submarines Symphonika (Ra Ra Riot Remix), You, Me & the Bourgeoisie (Alaska In Winter Remix), Submarine Symphonika (Wallpaper Remix), Brightest Hour (Free the Robots Remix), Xavia (Stryofoam Remix), 1940 (Sub's Section Quartet Mix)
"In the run-up to our free show at The Fridge this Saturday (1/16) and to our first album release, 'Soft Power' next month, The Vinyl District has asked us to do something a little different.
Some of you may have taken part in our boombox performance in October...in short, we wrote a piece of music called 'Cakeblood' and bounced each track onto a different cassette tape, over 30 in all. Each of those were placed in one of the provided boomboxes.
We did a countdown, pressed play at the same time, and walked around the city as the piece played in (relative) synchronicity. The Vinyl District has requested that we do something similar that readers could try at home or in their office. So we've put together a short piece called 'The Last Place You Look'.
It's a little over 4 minutes long and only contains 4 distinct parts. All you need is a few computers with internet connection and the ability to download and play sound from each of them. So when your boss is out to lunch, you and three coworkers in neighboring cubicles can fill the office with an unexpected musical interlude.
It's very easy. Each person should download one of the 4 links below, load in iTunes, and press pause when it's at the beginning. Designate a member of your group to do a countdown and, on 'Go', everyone clicks play. Remember, if your computer is not playing music right away, fret not. Not every track starts right out of the gate.
Any one of you who can prove you pulled this off—at work, or at home, or at Tryst, even - YouTube video or what have you—will get an autographed copy of the debut CD and a shit ton of bragging rights. (The show is free, after all.)
You have 'til Friday and we needn't say it but, ...'em—make it great.
This year, restored audio recordings and a number of short films made by Alan Lomax in Haiti in 1936 have been made available in the amazing box set, "Alan Lomax in Haiti." Here is a beautiful sacred song, called 'Gede Nibo, yo fè rayi mwen' from Volume 7, sung by Francilia, who worked for Lomax, and whom he recorded singing many traditional tunes.
While I'd love to devote this post to the music of Haiti and the Caribbean (including more contemporary artists) in tribute to those effected by this tragic event, I'm no expert and would be making a pretty amateur attempt. Thus...I'll now return to Subs-love-records blogging...
We, The Submarines, reside in a sleepy pocket of Northeast Los Angeles, in close proximity to many fine independently owned record-selling establishments, including these two lovely ones: Origami Vinyl is a shop and label in the heart of Echo Park, near our beloved venue, The Echo.
Territory Barbeque and Records is a hybrid BBQ restaurant and vinyl shop in Virgil Village in Silverlake, and has one of the grooviest looking bright-green storefronts around.
Another great vinyl-oriented establishment in the Echo Park area is the revamped former Ranchero bar, El Prado, which boasts 'beer, snacks and records' and is very pretty, indeed, with albums stacked up above the mirrored bar:
To close this post, I'd like to mention an album which came out the other day called 1%: the Music, Volume 1, which includes a Submarines song called, 'The Tide.' 1% is a non-profit which works to support environmental programs. We're really happy for them that this compilation has reached the iTunes alternative top ten this week.
And finally, here are a few things I'm rocking out to this week whilst running (training for the Boston Marathon in April):
The Brian Jonestown Massacreis back and set to release their tenth studio album, Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? on February 23rd. The 13-track album was recorded throughout 2009 in Iceland and Berlin and features Spaceman 3 legend Will Carruthers on bass, vocalist Unnur Andrea Einarsdottir and a variety of international musicians contributing textures not previously heard on a BJM album. It is to be released on bandleader Anton Newcombe’s own label, “a recordings LTD”, distributed though Red Eye.
The album marks the return of guitarist/vocalist Matt Hollywood, an original member/co-founder of the band who helped write some of the BJM’s classic material from their early albums (Strung Out In Heaven, Their Satanic Majesties Second Request, Take It From The Man, Spacegirl & Other Oddities, Give It Back) as well as penning the infamous dig at the Dandy Warhols, “Not If You Were The Last Dandy on Earth”.
If you want to go to a rock show and be home in time to watch Leno (wait… what time is Leno on?!) Julian Casablancas is your man.
The Strokes frontman, 31 year-old Julian Casablancas, dropped by the 9:30 club last night (Tues) to play his entire first first solo LP, ‘Phrazes for the Young’ to a sold-out show consisting mainly of mid-twenties Baltimorians. The entire LP (including the bonus track) is a only 43 minutes long and even by throwing in a new song and a Strokes cover (I’ll Try Anything Once) the show was over by 10:30pm.
Despite the brevity, however, Casablancas was able to bring his cigarette-raspy, super-sexy and unmistakable Strokes voice to the legendary club along with his new-found 70’s analog synth sound. When writing for The Strokes, Casablancas has mentioned that he’s always written songs first on the keyboard then translated these into guitar tunes whereas with ‘Phrazes’, it seems he never made it to the guitar (which, by no means, is a bad thing).
Julian was quite the funny-man, cracking jokes and singing improvised DC jingles while his drummers kick-drum was fixed. Mr. C even jumped into the crowd several times to the delight of many a young professional who got to touch the legendary icon. The show, although super short, was fantastic indeed.
As you probably know, the Strokes album “Is This It” was named the number one album of the entire decade by NME magazine! Quite the achievement. Although the band has not officially broken up they have been ‘on-hiatus’ since their third album, ‘First Impressions of Earth’ in 2006. Based on several interviews it seems the possibility of a fourth album remains…
Apparently Julian was rockin a way-cool 80’s-esque leather jacket too… but unfortunately I was too fricken short to see!
The Vinyl District is excited to announce that for the second year running, we've been named the Official Blog for Record Store Day 2010. We'll be the first to break news as the bands and labels line up unique releases for RSD2010 and we'll have the inside line on the day's events happening around the country (and around the globe) which we'll bring to you.
"Record Store Day is happy to be working with The Vinyl District again this year. Last year we released almost 100 unique vinyl releases just for Record Store Day and look forward to making some exciting announcements with The Vinyl District in the coming weeks and months. Look for the debut vinyl release from Broken Bells (featuring Brian Burton – aka Danger Mouse and the Shins’ James Mercer) in your local record store in the next couple of weeks," Michael Kurtz, the co-founder of Record Store Day wrote to us last week.
In addition to being the breaking RSD2010 news source as we were last year, The Vinyl District will once more be counting down to the event on April 17, 2010 with TENstraight weeks of vinyl giveaways, so keep checking back each week for a chance to take some vinyl home.
In the planning stage at the moment is something pretty huge for the evening of Record Store Day here in DC that we're not at liberty discuss at the moment. (Big benefit concert. *cough* Big venue. *cough* DC's best bands. *cough*) But you heard nuthin'.
All of us here TVD HQ are thrilled to be working with the Record Store Day team for another year. Be certain to check out the official site and to pop back our way for all of the the up to the minute RSD2010 info as we march toward the event on April 17, 2010—the one day that all of the independently owned record stores come together with artists to celebrate the art of music.
It's Day #3 of The Submarines' Vinyl District Blog Takeover and John's pulled some tracks that are right up our collective alley:
Tonight I went over to our friend, Jebin Bruni's house. We met Jebin while touring with Aimee Mann last year and he's a super talented keyboardist who's also played with Fiona Apple and Liz Phair. So, when I walked in to his studio the first thing I saw was this!
(Aside from being an analog synthesizer buff, Jebin's also a big vinyl collector.)
Before we lived in Los Angeles, we lived in Boston. I moved there after high school overseas and it's where I started my first "real" bands, worked in coffee shops and eventually ended up slinging packages as a bike messenger. One of the first bands in Boston that I fell in love with was Galaxie 500. They're first single, "Tugboat/King of Spain", was released on a label called Aurora Records, which was started by a fellow named Marc Alghini. Marc also released a 45 that I really liked by a band called Ed's Redeeming Qualities.
...A couple of years ago The Subs recorded a version of "Tugboat".
The Teardrop Explodes. One of my favorite bands. "Soft Enough for You" is a track off of a gate-fold 7" that is apparently the last thing released using the band name. One of my favorite Julian Cope quotes: When asked if the Teardrop Explodes would ever get back together, he said: "Would you ever return to having your mother wipe your asshole?"
So, it's our first 'First Date' for 2010 and appropriately enough, with ...The Hussy. (Here's to poetic justice.)
The Madison, WI band will see their split 7" (with The Zygoteens) released tomorrow, January 14th, on Big Action Records and will be doing four release shows in Madison, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Appleton.
...and they'll send you one if you impress us sufficiently in the comments to this post. No foolin'. Whatcha got?
We chatted with guitarist Robert Wegner in advance of the 7" release:
We at the Hussy dig vinyl for a number of reasons, most notably the fact that it’s the perfect format for a simple band like the Hussy. We’re into short burst of punk energy, and what better format than the 7 inch? It’s the perfect length for us. A CD is way too long. We need the warmth and the crackles of the vinyl to fill in the missing bass frequencies, and we need the grit of a blasting stylus to fill out the sound even more.
But we also don’t bow down at the throne of a piece of vinyl or it’s perceived perfection of audio reproduction; we just think it’s a format that works for this band, much in the same way the CD is a perfect format for the countless pop-tart singers that clog the modern day radio waves. They sound clean and pristine on CD just like at their arena concerts - and we sound dirty and raw, just like at our hole-in-the-wall dive shows. Vinyl offers us that opportunity: to get the sound to the listener as if they’re in the middle of an overblown Hussy set.
Think you deserve to be front and center Thursday night? Olivia's given TVD a pair of tickets to offer the individual who pleads their case and hits the right note in the comments to this post. Give us something we can sing along with, ok?
You've got 'til Thursday morning so get at us with some contact info!
It's Day #2 of The Submarines' Vinyl District Takeover and Blake's rifling through her record collection with ya:
As I write, lines from our work-in-progress third album drift into the house through the open windows. John is messing around with some new software in the studio/garage, and something I sang the other day about lying and surprising each other is playing over and over.
We've been working on the album in bits and pieces through the Fall and now the Winter. I'm filling notebooks with lyrics, but haven't yet fit most of them to particular songs. John's been creating instrumental tracks, beats, anything he finds interesting and new for us, and we've sung melodies in "la's" over them. It sounds really exciting. (I suppose saying it sounds 'exciting,' is sort of like a menu which describes a sauce as 'delicious,' with no other distinguishing characteristics...but, you know what I mean.).
I just came inside from making this little mp3 with John from an old 78 of Billie Holiday's, "The Very Thought of You." John gave me a beautiful old phonograph, a Columbia Graphophone, for my birthday a couple of years ago. This is one of the nicest 78s we've collected.
Most of the others are cheapies from the flea markets—Tahitian recordings, Hawaiian guitar music, strange old jazz tunes with naughty lyrics. It's a little rough actually listening to them because they're quite harsh. The phrase 'put a sock in it,' comes from muffling the cone of the phonograph, which we usually do. But, it's fascinating to think you're hearing these recordings just as people did back when the records were pressed—there's a real connection to that time period, in the decades before the technology evolved to give the players a richer sound.
While we were mic'ing it up, Johnny got the idea to record us trying to play one of his old scratched-up 45's (The Beatles' "Rain") on the phonograph. Doing this is totally not recommended: it'll blow your eardrums and ruin your record - and possibly your phonograph - all at once. But it's kind of a funny experiment:
As it turns out, I've been wrecking vinyl for quite a long time. I grew up in an all-vinyl no-tv household, and dancing around to records was one of our favorite past-times—the needle skipped across the vinyl as we jumped, and there was no time to put the things back in the proper sleeves between song inspirations.
But, somehow my parent's collection survived this poor treatment, and I grew up listening to some amazing albums. Nearly all of the records were from the time before me and my brothers were born—great 60s and 70s classics. There was Antonio Carlos Jobim, Stan Getz with Astrud Gilberto, Rickie Lee Jones, Joni Mitchell, Zeppelin, Bob Marley—and some great musicals, like West Side Story (lots of needle-hopping jumping-around to that one). Among those classics was a particular favorite of both mine and my mom's, "Les Eaux de Mars," by Georges Moustaki. It's a cover of a beautiful Jobim song, translated into French by the French-Greek Moustaki. I played it over and over in my mom's painting studio, singing along in Franglais. I find it slightly shmaltzy now, but it's still genius.
This version of "Aguas de Marco," with Elis Regina and Tom Jobim, is so sweet and awesomely 70's:
I just stumbled upon a clip of Moustaki playing for a rapt Edith Piaf (who did a version of his 'Milord'). It's fascinating to watch one musician listening to another. She's sort of squirming, but into it:
As an unabashed Francophile, this French music discovery easily led me down the internet rabbit-hole to some interviews with one of my absolute favorite bands, Phoenix. They are very French, indeed, and I find them endlessly charming. What this last fact has to do with vinyl, I'm not entirely sure. But, I think they're brilliant, and their latest album looks very pretty in it's proper dimensions: a vinyl sleeve! Over and out.
The Submarines’ ‘Honeysuckle Weeks’ pulled off one of those rare feats here at TVD HQ back in ‘08. A CD copy (egad!) was mailed to us by the label and quietly found its way wending though our collective psyche with its sunny, bubbly tunesmithery...and stayed there for quite a while as we basked in its glow.
While we await its follow-up, Blake Hazard and John Dragonetti, the duo that is The Subs, will be hanging around our office all week delving into their back pages and cuddling up with our turntable as we turn TVD over to them.
It’s The Submarines’ Vinyl District this week. We just work here.
John’s up first today:
I know this blog is about vinyl, but.... As a kid growing up in Dubai in the 70's and 80's, there weren't many options for buying records in the early days. Some of the older kids would bring back vinyl from the States, but I hadn't quite reached the age where it really mattered to me.
However, there was no shortage of cassettes, mostly pirated in places like the Phillipines or Lebanon. You could walk in to a "tape shop", spend 100 dirhams (about 30 bucks) and leave with twenty-five albums. And it didn't matter if ten of them sucked. The tapes were stacked floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall and the selection was mostly tacky British and American chart pop. But, there was a surprising assortment of punk, new wave, reggae and—funny enough—Southern rock from the States. Tons of Bollywood soundtracks, too. It really was a candy store. Of plastic.
One band that was huge in Dubai—and superstars in almost every part of the world except the America—was Boney M. I think I must have been in fourth or fifth grade. Suffice it to say, I fucking LOVED the song, "Daddy Cool."
This video is awesome, too. Pretty saucey stuff for a kid....but a radical disco track.
Then... everything changed when I saw this:
It was all about the blood. Which then led to this:
Bon Scott's voice freaked me out, but, with a cover like that it didn't matter. They were my no. 2 for at least a year.
My obsession with KISS led to my first purchase of vinyl. I had no idea who they were. Didn't know how many records they had released, or if they were even still together. (We usually got our pop culture several years after the fact, and Kojak re-runs dubbed in Arabic were a personal favorite.) In any case, my dad had to go to Hong Kong for business at that time, and I made him promise that he would buy me a KISS record.
Matt Morris sent TVD a video he filmed for us while dropping off his debut release 'When Everything Breaks Open' at the local record shop he likes to call home. Matt's signed to Justin Timberlake's label Tennman Records and Justin produced the album with Charlie Sexton, the legendary Austin, TX native and Bob Dylan axe man.
"This is a short video I made for my favorite independent record store, Twist n' Shout (based in Denver, CO). They carry a ton of hard to find albums and truly support local artists. So support your local indie record store everyone!"
Allow me to date myself (...which I ..uh, did for years, frankly.)
Back in '85 when I came to Washington the drinking age was a Wild West 18. This was long before many of the clubs we think of as DC staples. Before The Black Cat, or Velvet Lounge, or any of the bars on U Street and way before anything but a hold up was going down on H Street.
There was the 9:30 in its original spot on F Street, NW, DC Space nearby, and Poseurs in Georgetown on M Street right before the Key Bridge. And if you were like me and loathe to embrace much of the ridiculousness found on college campuses (AU for me) you might just find yourself working at the college radio station with more kindred spirits. Then DJing 'college nights' at the aforementioned Poseurs, which then morphs into a steady DJ gig at Poseurs.
And you'd never get paid for these Poseurs sets either, just free drinks. So needless to say, sets would start out real strong and descend into chaos as the night progressed. I did love me some Bartles & Jaymes.
And if you, like me, have the mold and mildew on you and can recall the mold and mildew of Poseurs in all of its punky new wave goth glory, many of the records you owned, the records I was playing, have fared less well over the years. I cannot tell you how many copies of this or that Cure or Souixsie record I've repurchased and repurchased over the years. Some literally became coasters on more memorable evenings.
Which, by the way of a sweet, sweet segway, gives me great pleasure to introduce TVD readers to Vinyl 180 who are outdoing themselves in refreshing those 'well loved' LPs in your record collection.
Allow me to quote the informative press release: "The Vinyl 180 label produces new vinyl editions of classic 80’s post-punk albums, remastered from original analogue tapes and pressed onto 180g heavyweight vinyl to capture the warmth and depth of sound that currently only vinyl can offer... just as they were meant to be heard. All releases are packaged in deluxe gatefold sleeves on heavyweight cardboard stock...
In 2009, Vinyl 180 has been working with 4AD and Beggars Banquet labels, producing new super high quality versions of albums from Cocteau Twins, The Cult and Dead Can Dance. Upcoming exclusive releases for Vinyl 180 feature titles from Bauhaus and Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard.
There’s a new addition to the Bauhaus catalogue, This Is For When, a live document of the band's concert at Hammersmith Palais - 9th November 1981. This is a brand new release and is available initially as a limited edition of 2,000 copies pressed onto two 180g vinyl LPs and housed in two heavyweight card sleeves wrapped in a printed transparent PVC wallet. Remastered and remixed from the original analogue tapes, this unique pressing features the whole live show, capturing the band at their incendiary best..."
And because we like you all so very much, Vinyl 180 has given TVD a beautiful, pristine copy of Dead Can Dance's self titled debut to give away. It comes in an expanded form which also includes the follow up EP 'Garden of the Arcane Delights' in a 2-LP, 180 gram edition that dutifully and lovingly reproduces the original packaging on heavyweight stock.
We'd love to put it into the hands of anyone who can recall Poseurs or a venue of similar stature...but I'm realistic. Tell us tales from the garden of your youthful delights in the comments section to this post and the one that reeks most of clove cigarettes and incense will take home the Dead Can Dance reissue.
We'll close this one out a week from today (1/14) by noon. Get at us before then — with contact info!
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