Now that the Carolina Hurricanes have been eliminated from the NHL playoffs, Merge Records impresario Mac McCaughan has moved on from chronicling the ‘Canes’ efforts to talking about the music that arenas employ to get fans in prime freak-out mode. In 2006, he brought some albums put out by his label down to the Hurricane home base, RBC Center, in hopes of breaking through what he called its “particularly stultifying mix of Top 40 / Classic rock / Emo (? i don’t know what to call some of the songs on there) / Sports Disco,” and it worked, at least a bit; “Punch Me Harder” got played during the 2006 NHL Finals, which–coincidence?–the Hurricanes won. Anyway, McCaughan has provided his own suggested playlist for hockey arenas to the local paper, and man, is it so much better than the nu-metal and snipped bits of Eurodance that I’m used to at my sporting events. A few selections: More »
Mac McCaughan can add “sports blogger” to his resume, which already includes “Merge Records founder” and “member of many awesome bands” as entries: He live-blogged last night’s Game 7 tilt between the Carolina Hurricanes and the Boston Bruins. (Boston sports fans, you’ll probably want to skip this link.) [portastatic] More »
In today’s headline wrapup: DMX isn’t in Celebrity Rehab (yet), Alan McGee is still pissy about ever even liking My Bloody Valentine, Aerosmith play for free in Hawaii, and we are all lazy because of the Internet. More »
… and, by extension, causes me to actually care about his blog for the first time in a while. (Seriously, even those of you who aren’t fans of his other stuff but who do enjoy hypercaffeinated takes on super-distorted indie rock would do well to take 1:27 out of your day and sample the track.) More »
When I got the bright idea to post a bunch of Superchunk videos today (largely because I felt like having an excuse to listen to some Superchunk), I checked the archives and found Jess’ tribute to the act in December, saving myself from some embarrassment at the hands of today’s already testy comment section. Despite Jess stealing a few of the clips I planned to post, I think without question a second tribute to the band is in order, starting with “Precision Auto” above.
