SOPA Blackout Day is in full swing, with Wikipedia, Reddit, BoingBoing, and other Internet giants blacking out entirely and thousands of other sites — including Flavorpill — creatively demonstrating their solidarity. (We hope you agree that censor bars aren’t a great look for us.) There’s also been something of a backlash against the online outpouring of opposition to SOPA and its Senate counterpart PIPA, from the usual suspects in Washington as well as groups like the MPAA, who sent this nasty note about the protests.
But not everyone in the entertainment industry supports SOPA. Stop the Wall, a site that you can also use to make a quick and easy phone call to your senator about the legislation, has posted an open letter to Washington from a group of artists that includes Aziz Ansari, Trent Reznor, The Lonely Island, MGMT, Neil Gaiman, Amanda Palmer, Troma honcho Lloyd Kaufman, and many others. “As creative professionals, we experience copyright infringement on a very personal level,” they write, but they don’t support SOPA because they “have benefited immensely from a free and open Internet.” Read the full letter after the jump, and then, if you haven’t already, get on the phone with your representatives to add your voice to the anti-SOPA chorus.
Last week the Guardian ran an interesting piece about “band collapse syndrome,” the disconcerting phenomenon whereby a band’s hitherto loyal fanbase abandons it in droves. They cited a number of UK acts whose record sales have decline precipitously of late — Glasvegas, Kaiser Chiefs, and Duffy, amongst others. This seems to be something you see more and more these days, which we guess makes sense when you consider it in the context of a general decline in album sales and a public who seem to have a shorter collective attention span than ever. But it’s not a new phenomenon — there have been some pretty spectacular crash-and-burn albums over the years. Some of these have been genuinely terrible, others hamstrung by inter-band wrangling or emotional breakdowns, and others just in the wrong place at the wrong time. We’ve collected 10 of ‘em after the jump.
Things have been going well for Chiddy Bang. The Philadelphia hip-hop duo doesn’t even have a proper album yet, but Chidera “Chiddy” Anamege and Noah “Xaphoon Jones” Beresin have already developed a major following thanks to the success of their mixtapes, which build rap hits on indie-rock skeletons, sampling artists including MGMT, Passion Pit, Sufjan Stevens, and Matt & Kim. Their latest mixtape, Peanut Butter and Swelly, just dropped and is available to download for free; to celebrate its release, Chiddy did nothing less than break the world record for freestyling, rapping for over nine hours straight for MTV. As the duo preps for the release of its long-awaited debut album, Breakfast, we caught up with him for the latest in our interactive video series. Click through and control the questions yourself in our exclusive interview.
Even die hard hipsters have got to grow up sometime. And by ‘grow up’ we mean ‘start listening to boring dinner party music.’ But there is a middle ground — hipster orchestra Jingle Punks, who play surprisingly soothing versions of the indie rock anthems you know and love. As Jingle Punks founder Jared Gutstadt told FreeWilliamsburg, “It’s a simple concept… We took songs from the American Hipster songbook (MGMT, Strokes, White Stripes) and re-imagined them as arrangements for a civilized dinner party for the transitioning adult Hipster. Introducing – The Jingle Punks Hipster Orchestra which is our favorite “hipster approved” songs washed through the Mark Mothersbaugh filter.” Intrigued? Ready to wear a collared shirt over those skinny jeans? Click through to see a few of our favorite videos from the group, and check them out live at the Soho House NYC on June 12.
If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite literary characters might be listening to while they save the world/contemplate existence/get into trouble, or hallucinated a soundtrack to go along with your favorite novels, well, us too. But wonder no more! Here, we sneak a look at the hypothetical iPods of some of literature’s most interesting characters. What would be on the personal playlists of Holden Caulfield or Elizabeth Bennett, Huck Finn or Harry Potter, Tintin or Humbert Humbert? Something revealing, we bet. Or at least something danceable. Read on for a cozy reading soundtrack, character study, or yet another way to emulate your favorite literary hero. This week: Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s ink and paper representation of the quintessential American dream — with a dark side.
Hype is the most polarizing force in today’s music world. The internet has made it incredibly easy for listeners to streamline their new music exposure and stay on top of emerging acts, but hype encourages erratic attention at best from consumers. These days, the ears of the masses are always hungry for the next big thing, an honor often bestowed on the strength of a single song, by blogs, aggregators, viral videos, and sometimes even commercials, rather than real criticism.
Over the years, hype has encouraged the bandwagon to move in many positive directions, but what about when hype fails? After the jump, we unearth some of the bigger misses of the last ten years. Sorry, guys — we haven’t forgotten.
Welcome to the first Flavorpill mixtape of 2011, fresh off the mp3 presses. This week, we’ve got a selection from some dance punk greats, a snippet (or song?) from a forthcoming Madvillain project, and a lovely, moody new track from John Vanderslice, all combined to get you through the first working week of the year. Don’t forget to right click + Save As to download individual tracks or scroll down to the end to get them all at once.
Indie rock and children’s television came together this morning, when The Flaming Lips performed on the ground-breaking Nick Jr. show Yo Gabba Gabba. In its three seasons, the series has featured some surprisingly hip bands. For one of the show’s segments called “The Super Music Friends Show,” bands usually compose a song specifically for the series, in part because the lyrics to their hits may not be appropriate. (Fun fact: The Killers had to be introduced as “Brandon, Ronnie, Mark and Dave.”) To celebrate yet another awesome guest spot — and because even the biggest music fans might have missed them when they aired — we’ve compiled 12 of our favorite performances from the wacky kids show so far.
We know that we’ve prepared you thoroughly for Halloween weekend with costume ideas, mixtapes, and graveyard tours. But what about the dull slog that is the beginning of November? Three weeks and change until Thanksgiving seems like an eternity when you’re picking candy corn our of your teeth and glitter out of your hair. Might we suggest our mixtape this week to warm your bones and soothe you out of your sugar coma? Right click + save as to download the individual tracks, or scroll down to the end to get the whole shebang at once.
Philly duo Chiddy Bang blur the lines between hip-hop and indie rock, sampling MGMT and Sufjan Stevens while working with Pharrell, Q-Tip, and Darwin Deez.
The pair’s debut album is set to hit shelves next year, preceded by this week’s release of the appropriately titled The Preview EP. At eight tracks, it’s almost a full album in itself, and paired with the group’s much buzzed-about Swelly Express mixtape, offers plenty of bangers to hold fans off until the album appears.
