Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein bought the new novel by the wonderful writer Lorrie Moore, A Gate At The Stairs, and found a surprise inside that had nothing to do with its twisty plot: Her former band Sleater-Kinney was name-checked on page 27. (I devoured the book over the course of this weekend—Moore has been one of my favorite writers for years, and this book was long in the making—and since it just came out I don’t want to give away any spoilers. But if you’ve read it and want to discuss you should e-mail me!) [Monitor Mix] More »
Weezer debuted a couple of new songs at concerts in Korea over the weekend, and oh man are they just craptastic enough to be tailor-made for “ironic” videos featuring Internet personalities! (One, called “The Girl Got Hot,” even opens with the line “I went to a party last Saturday night,” thus paving the way for Lita Ford to play Keyboard Cat’s cougar-tastic mom in the attendant clip.) I’ll place the videos of the two performances after the jump and avail from further comment, except to note that Carrie Brownstein, formerly of Sleater-Kinney and attempted Phish fandom, pretty much summed up what bugs me about Viral Internet-Era Weezer thusly: “I don’t know if Weezer hates its fans or just the (apparently) stifling concept of sincerity, but you should listen to these two new songs if you weren’t already convinced of Weezer’s contempt for music.” Yeah, pretty much. To the tunes! More »
Jam-band titans Phish have announced details for their Halloween festival: It’ll take place at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif. (home of Coachella), and it will feature eight sets by the band over the course of three days. Three-day passes cost $199, and go on sale Monday at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET). If you’re unfamiliar with the band but thinking about taking a breather in the desert this October, you might want to check out Carrie Brownstein’s week-long examination of Phish and its fans. [Phish / Monitor Mix] More »
VH1 is rebooting its “Divas” franchise, a ladycentric spectacular that has been on the shelf since 2005. (Perhaps the channel has run out of rappers willing to show up for its Hip Hop Honors telecasts–after all, once you’ve acknowledged the deep influence of Naughty by Nature, who else can you turn to?) The network ran a “Divas” special every year from 1998-2005, and it apparently needed to wait for the world’s supply of divas to recharge. While the network floated names like Lily Allen and Adele to fill out the new show, I’d like to think we could help stuff the suggestion box with some even better choices. More »
During the Bush administration, everyone seemed to agree: there were no protest songs. Or, at least, no good ones. At any rate, it definitely wasn’t like the ’60s. In her latest blog post for NPR, Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein provides a welcome correction to this idea, noting both how many protest songs there were and how widespread the perception was that releasing a protest song was a bad idea. But even if there were protest songs, surely they didn’t have the same effect as in the ’60s, right?
Former Sleater-Kinney guitarist/vocalist Carrie Brownstein blogs at NPR, and her latest post has a fully cleared MP3 mix that has tracks by the likes of Pylon and Wire, and is appended with a note: “This mix was supposed to have the Grateful Dead on it, whose music I really love, but they refused… More »
Ex-Sleater-Kinneyan (and let’s not forget about Excuse 17, either!) Carrie Brownstein once got so full of airport-loading-zone rage, she dared an eighty-year-old man wearing a leg cast to get out of his car and punch her. Hey, it happens to the best of us, right? I mean, uh… More »
Some collected YouTubage of the late, lamented Sleater-Kinney, although I’d argue that this compilation of clips and live videos from the band is missing the heartbreaking video for “Jumpers,” which was one of the standout tracks on last year’s superb The Woods. More »
Some collected YouTubage of the late, lamented Sleater-Kinney, although I’d argue that this compilation of clips and live videos from the band is missing the heartbreaking video for “Jumpers,” which was one of the standout tracks on last year’s superb The Woods. More »
