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: Truman Capote’s “American Geisha,” Holly Golightly.
In his fantastic new book Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever, Rolling Stone critic Will Hermes writes about Talking Heads’ first performance at CBGB on June 5, 1975: “[T]he band sounded like a cross between the Modern Lovers and Television minus the latter’s guitar sparks: strangulated vocals, rudimentary bass lines, and martial little-drummer-boy beats that hinted at soul music. [David] Byrne had just turned twenty-three; Tina [Weymouth] and Chris [Frantz] were twenty-four.”
If Hermes’ description piques your interest, then you’ll definitely want to check out the video below. NPR has posted a clip of Talking Heads playing “Psycho Killer” at CBGB later that year, from the new DVD documentary Chronology. The footage, preceded by Seymour Stein’s reminiscences of the band’s early days, is fantastic. Most fascinating of all is seeing Byrne before he’d figured out his twitchy, electric frontman schtick. Read More »
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: American Psycho‘s über-fit antihero, Patrick Bateman.
It’s a while since we’ve put up a post that elicited as much reader hostility as our recent piece about much-loved music videos that aren’t, um, quite as good as we remember them being. In particular, our suggestion that David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” look kinda dated these days went down like a lead balloon, with several commenters daring us to tell the world what videos we do think have held up over the years. We’re always up for a challenge, so we’ve gone back through our videotape collection to pick out ten clips that use technology and/or ideas that might be called obsolete, but still look pretty great to our eyes. Your comments are, as ever, read with interest. But be nice.
Did you know that punk music is a subgenre of New Wave? Or that, after the Sex Pistols bit the dust, the Clash were the only punk band left standing? Did you realize that “the punks didn’t catch on in America,” or that they had something to do with the deadly stampede at a Who concert? Don’t worry — those aren’t facts. But they were reported on 20/20 back in 1979, when the long-running TV newsmagazine decided to profile it. Hey, if you sit through the first three-and-a-half minutes of misinformation, you get to watch a whole minute of the Talking Heads performing “Psycho Killer”!
Welcome back to Retro Recommendations. This week’s guest contributor is Josh Madell, co-founder of New York City’s Other Music, and he’s got a set of listening suggestions for you based on the new Here We Go Magic release, Pigeons. “The second full-length from Luke Temple’s Here We Go Magic is the first that he has recorded with his five-piece touring band (the debut was home-recorded and multi-tracked all by his lonesome),” explains Madell. “As such, it’s not surprising that there is more immediacy, energy and groove on Pigeons, and these proggy, psychedelic indie-pop songs float by buoyed not just by Temple’s hooky, bell-clear vocal melodies, but also great ensemble playing.”
1. Our premature nomination for song of the summer: Auto Tuned Wolves. [via BuzzFeed]
2. Speaking of, what do you make of this new “tweens pretending to be wolves” trend? Creeptastic. [via HRO]
3. It’s a Talking Heads indie rock cover showdown between MGMT, Arcade Fire, and Kyp Malone. [via 24Bit]
4. A memo to bros traveling to Australia: you now have to declare your porn when you go through customs. [via AP]
5. Watch the entire series of Lost acted out by cats in just one minute. [via Vulture]
6. Do they do naked Fridays at your office? [via Daily Intel]
7. Killer asparagus. It’s real, and it’s deadly. [via Gawker]
8. Fifty vintage lunchboxes that we would have lusted over in elementary school. [via notcot]
9. Things we wish were real: The Baby-sitters Club & Zombies. [via The Daily What]
10. Is this the summer music festival lineup to end all summer music festival lineups? [via]
According to the LA Times, Michael Jackson’s This Is It isn’t performing like a concert film. In the six days it has been in theaters, the doc has already grossed over $100 million worldwide, with its biggest numbers happening overseas. While concert movies’ ticket sales usually drop off after fans hit up the opening night, This Is It grossed more on Sunday than it did on any day since it debuted.
Perhaps this will lead more acts — other than Miley Cyrus and the JoBros — to reinvigorate the genre with theatrical releases. Animal Collective? The Dirty Projectors? Imagine if the Flaming Lips UFOs At The Zoo had gotten a run at the local cineplex. After the jump, five classics we think all concert films should take their cues from.
. “The second full-length from Luke Temple’s Here We Go Magic is the first that he has recorded with his five-piece touring band (the debut was home-recorded and multi-tracked all by his lonesome),” explains Madell. “As such, it’s not surprising that there is more immediacy, energy and groove on Pigeons, and these proggy, psychedelic indie-pop songs float by buoyed not just by Temple’s hooky, bell-clear vocal melodies, but also great ensemble playing.”
