Video: JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart"

Chicago soulsters JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound cover Wilco's "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," live in the studio of KDHX. I like how they throw in a little bit of "Theologians" before the breakdown. Nice touch.

JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound: iTunes, Amazon, MySpace.

We're so old we're getting to the point where we don't even like celebrating our birthday anymore. But GLONO has been around since February 6, 2001. Time to bust out that old picture of the birthday cake from our party at Beat Kitchen in 2004...

We'd like to thank everybody who's stopped by to read an article, download an mp3, watch a video, post a comment, or start some shit on the message boards. The interactivity is what makes it fun. On that note we'd also like to thank all the people who've re-tweeted our stuff, posted things to Facebook and all those other social sites that have decentralized online interaction.

Previous birthdays:
• 2002: Happy Birthday to Glorious Noise!
• 2003 :Terrible Twos: Happy Birthday to Us!
• 2004: Happy Birthday! Three is a Magic Number!
• 2005: Glorious Noise is Four Years Old
• 2006 (belated): The Black and Orange Ball: GLONO's Fifth Birthday Party
• 2007: Happy Sixth Birthday to Glorious Noise
• 2008: And if the Devil is Six: GLONO is Seven!
• 2009: Glorious Noise Turns Eight Years Old Today; Eight Years Ago: It started with emails...

Enter a contest to win a Glorious Noise T-shirt below...

Continue reading "Glorious Noise Is Nine Years Old" »

Video: Spoon - "Written in Reverse"

From Transference, out now on Merge.

Spoon: iTunes, Amazon, Insound, wiki

Via Pitchfork: TV.

Continue reading "New Spoon video: Written in Reverse" »

Video: Record Club: Skip Spence "Dixie Peach Promenade"

Another one from Beck's latest "Record Club" project where he and his musical pals are covering Skip Spence's Oar (previously). This one has Tweedy on vocals.

Beck: iTunes, Amazon, Insound, wiki

Wilco: iTunes, Amazon, Insound, wiki

Skip Spence: iTunes, Amazon, Insound, wiki

Nico - Desertshore (Reprise)

You'll all be grateful that Nico's third and most ambitious album, Desertshore, clocks in at a mere twenty-nine minutes...but maybe for different reasons. For some, the lack of variety within its grooves and the fact that Nico's voice is a challenging instrument mean those twenty-nine minutes cannot come soon enough. For others, the material is hauntingly dark and the short running time is all that a sane person can probably take. In fact, if it were any darker, the record would need to be shipped with a suicide-prevention number. Just in case.

Nico pairs up with Velvet Underground alum John Cale once again on what may be the most challenging post-Velvet offering ever made by a former member. You'd have to remove Metal Machine Music on sheer principle to get that distinction, but Cale does a stand-up job by removing everything out of the mix, save for his occasional piano jabs outlining the drone of Nico's harmonium and her Germanic monotone.

Continue reading "Lost Classic: Nico - Desertshore" »

Lady Antebellum's 'Need You Now' Hits No. 1 On Billboard 200:

1. Lady Antebellum - "Need You Now" - 481,000 (debut)
2. "Hope for Haiti Now" - 143,000 (down 16%)
3. Lady Gaga - "The Fame" - 68,000 (up 10%)
4. Susan Boyle - "I Dreamed a Dream" - 59,000 (down 31%)
5. Barry Manilow - "The Greatest Love Songs of All Time" - 57,000 (debut)
6. Michael Jackson - "This Is It" - 55,000 (up 136%)
7. Corinne Bailey Rae - "The Sea" - 53,000 (debut)
8. "Grammy Nominees 2010" - 45,000 (down 7%)
9. Celtic Woman - "Songs From the Heart" - 42,000 (debut)
10. Black Eyed Peas - "The E.N.D." - 40,000 (up 14%)

Continue reading "Sales: Country Crossovers Sell" »

Paste magazine asks the musical question, Is Indie Dead? It's well worth reading, although the first page—with all its Nietzsche references and comparing "indie" to "God"—is a bit of a struggle...especially with our collective "tl;dr" attitude. But there are lots of insightful comments from folks like Kill Rock Stars founder Slim Moon, Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein, Sebadoh's Lou Barlow, and the actual guy who put Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" in that 2000 VW commercial.

Michael Azzerad, author of Our Band Could Be Your Life, breaks it down:

"The term 'indie' originally referred to labels which had no connection whatsoever to the major labels," Azerrad says. "That used to be a meaningful distinction, because the underground wanted nothing to do with corporate America. Obviously, things have changed." What's changed is this: In addition to direct relationships like Sub Pop's with Warner, most of the labels now widely considered to be "indie" powerhouses—like Domino, Merge and Matador—are distributed by the Alternative Distribution Alliance, majority-owned by Warner. This means that acts like Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, St. Vincent, Spoon, Arcade Fire and others noted as the seminal "indie" acts of our time are not actually "indie" at all. (Even Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the eponymous label founded by the band that became famous in 2005 for having no label, is distributed by the ADA.) Azerrad distinguishes these artists as part of a broader genre of "indie rock," defined as a "genre which takes as its antecedents the truly indie rock of preceding generations," he says. "It has nothing to do with the fiscal status of the label on which it is released. It should really be called 'indie-influenced rock.'" The designation "indie" he reserves for artists making music on labels that remain wholly independent.

These days, most people don't make that same distinction, perhaps because they don't share Azerrad's interest in semantics or his knowledge of history.

That's hardcore. Maybe too hardcore. I agree with Brownstein who thinks that "the artistic and business decisions of the Matadors and the Sub Pops speak for themselves." I'd throw Merge into there too, regardless who distributes their records. At least as long as they're not more than 49% owned by a major label...right?

Tomato, tomahto. Indie, schmindie. Does it even matter? As long as the music is good, does anybody even care? Short anwer: yes.

Continue reading "What is Indie? And is it dead?" »

NPR is streaming 'Heligoland' by Massive Attack through February 9.

And AOL/Spinner is streaming the following new releases through Sunday, February 7:

• The Soft Pack, 'The Soft Pack' (Kemado; MP3; MP3)
• Four Tet, 'There Is Love In You' (Domino)
• Album Leaf, 'A Chorus of Storytellers' (Sub Pop; MP3)
• Martha and the Muffins, 'Delicate' (Muffin Music; MP3)

More streams after the jump, and as always, let us know if you hear anything good!

Continue reading "Album Streams: Soft Pack, Four Tet, more" »

Below are the things we've posted to Twitter recently. In reverse chronological order, just like Twitter... We're reposting 196 tweets this time with a total of 109 links to stuff that (mostly) didn't end up on GLONO.

Also included in this round are Phil's comments on shows in Portland including the Maldives, Black Whales, the Jay Farrar/Ben Gibbard show he later reviewed, and the Motels! And my comments on "American Idol" and Conan O'Brien's final "Tonight Show" that featured Neil Young and a group cover of "Freebird." Oh, and lots of bitchy re-tweets from people who actually bothered to watch the Grammys.

# Do it! RT @slicingeyeballs: Book publisher to #morrissey: Please, please, please let me get what I want: your memoirs. http://ow.ly/12JHF about 11 hours ago

# Only as amazing as the songs and performances. RT @adamficek: How amazing would it be to record the next babyshambles album In Russia? about 11 hours ago

# Hey @rustyrockets word of advice, don't wear boots with tapered pants. There's a reason we have a "boot cut" option: http://ow.ly/12LWa about 13 hours ago

# Interesting. RT @iancr: Subscriptions are the New BLACK. (why Facebook, Google, & Apple will own your wallet by 2015): http://awe.sm/50MBA about 15 hours ago

Lots more after the jump, and you might consider following us on Twitter if you want to keep up with this stuff as it happens...

Continue reading "Twitter Roundup #9" »

I do a mean Klaus Meine.

It's true. Ask one of my co-workers (the ones over thirty, that is) and they'll tell you how they've heard me yell—in my best World Wide Live voice—"Do you see the microphones in the air? Do you see them?! We are doing a live recording here toniiiggghhttt!"

Because there's nothing funnier than hearing a thin-haired German dude trying to work up a crowd in broken English.

But as much as I think Klaus Meine sounds funny, as much as some of the band's lyrics are funny, as offensive as some of their album covers are, and as awful as their 1989 smash "Wind Of Change" truly is, I will stand behind the Scorpions and defend their awesomeness without a hint of irony.

And to hear that they will be calling it a day disappoints me.

Continue reading "Can't Live Without You: A Farewell To The Scorpions" »

As most people know, John Lennon was gunned down in New York City on December 8, 1980 by Mark David Chapman, a loner from Hawaii with a Holden Caulfield complex and an intense drive to make a mark. What many don't know is that earlier that day Lennon had signed a handful of autographs for fans, including the album cover of his latest release Double Fantasy.

Letter of Note is a cool little blog dedicated to highlighting "correspondence deserving of a wider audience," where they publish personal letters of note. Today they have a letter from one of the autographer seekers from that day to a collector wondering about the value of an item signed by John Lennon on the day of his murder. To say anything more would give away the surprise but check it out.

A clue on who the letter writer is after the jump...

Continue reading "John Lennon Signed My Album Day He Was Killed: What's It Worth?" »

One of the reasons we here at GLONO love Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings is their relentless attention to detail as they strive to recreate the late-60s soul sound—and, of course, how successful they are in that pursuit. From the arrangements to the instrumentation to the recording techniques, a Dap Kings record is a performance art piece in itself.

But what is sound without image? Applying the same sort of focus on the packaging of their material completes the overall effect. For a glimpse of just how far they go to recreate the look and feel of the records that inspired them in the first place, check out this behind-the-scenes report of the photo shoot for their upcoming LP, I Learned the Hard Way (out April 2010).

Money quote:

We used the back yard of the studio and the adjacent fire escape to make a photo that was in keeping with the look and feel of urban group shot covers that were seen a lot in the late 60's and early 70's (The Impressions 'This is My Country', The Supremes 'Love Child', etc.) We went with the square format Hasselblad with negative film to get the same look and feel from the period.

Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings: iTunes, Amazon, Insound, wiki