Wilco Cali Run goes on Sale Tomorrow

As if you didn't know that Glenn would kill it in this setting. Wilco is going to play some of the best in California venues including one of my personal favorites; San Francisco's Warfield Theater. The band will also be hitting a fantastic venue in San Diego; Copley Symphony Hall, where I saw many a performance during my Master's studies for the lovely student rush price of 10 beans. The acoustics and setting should be lovely for a little orchestrated pop music. Other venues include the Fox Theater in Oakland and the Hollywood Palladium. Check the band's website.

Vampire Weekend’s California Tour is a Hot Ticket and a Great Show

Vampire Weekend is currently on a California tour to promote their new Album, Contra, due out January 12th here in the states. I caught up with these cats in Long Beach last night and the show was on hit. If you like polished bands that sound like the record then this is your band for sure...

So...Vampire Weekend is one of those bands that is insanely huge on blogs like Pitchfork, the Hype Machine, and magazines like Rolling Stone, etc. Bands always come around that just make journalist get all warm and fuzzy and nothing done by such a band could change that fact once the train leaves the station. Vampire Weekend seems to be one of these bands. They are total music nerds who met at Columbia University and borrow from genres that you don’t know so you think that they are the most original thing you’ve ever heard. Well, to me, this is what its all about. Study up on all kinds of music and know exactly what you are borrowing from where and why you are doing so. Then mix and match them and put your style into it and it becomes your “own thing.” Vampire Weekend has done a good job of mixing genres and their music has enough elements to keep it different from the norm here in the US without ever straying from the fact that they are insanely pop and pop only. So...how are they live? Brilliant. They sound great. Very tight. The drummer, Chris Tomson, has tons of energy and plays with a percussionist’s sense of musicality. (He also came out sporting a 90’s, Chris Webber, Warriors jersey, which basically gave me an instant bias that these guys were tight.) Chris Baio, bass, had solid energy and undeniable groove. The keyboard/guitar man, Rostam Batmanglij, plays the bulk of the ear candy and seems to be musical director. The front man, Ezra Koenig, sings great. He goes for all of the big notes just like the record and plays all of the licks note for note like the record and he dances and woos the girls in the front with his 15-year-old-boy face. Pretty much all you could ask for from a pop band. If you like the first record you’ll love the show and the second record sounds like it’s going to be a little different, but just as good.

RVOW: Elvis Costello’s 1982 Record; Imperial Bedroom

Random Vinyl of the Week is a new installment on the NewbLog. The first record re-visited was Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy, from 1978. This week I am spinning Elvis Costello’s 1982 release, “Imperial Bedroom,” which peaked at #30 in the U.S. charts and hit #6 in the U.K....

In 1982 Elvis Colstello teamed up with Geoff Emerick, engineer from Abbey Road studios and thus veteran of nearly every Beatles session post 1965, to record an album that was marketed with a single word: “Masterpiece?” Many didn’t feel that Imperial Bedroom was a masterpiece right away, but it did receive some great press including great reviews from Rolling Stone, The New Musical Express, and the Village Voice. Costello was starting to act more and more like the Elvis we know today, polite, witty, access-able, and less like the angry stand-offish “punk” who tore through the states with his entourage beating back reporters and photographers (literally) just a few years prior. The album’s peak track is generally considered to be “Man out of Time,” which I admit is the one I cued the needle up to for about two weeks after first buying this LP. “....And In Every Home,” might be my current favorite, however, with the full orchestral scoring of Steve Nieve; complete with brilliant fanfares and string flourishes. This album is a beauty and is also claimed to be the first album where Costello branched into too many genres on one record to capture the full “popular” audience and thus pleased the die-hards and buffs more than the masses. The b-side ballads including “Boy with a Problem,” and “Town Cryer,” certainly contribute to said sentiment and also help round out this effort. The album’s most memorable refrain, however, might belong to the song “Pidgin English,” on which Costello explains that: “There are Ten Commandments of Love.”
Imperial Bedroom definitely represents the era it was made in and certainly sounds more like a “Beatles-esque,” record than any of his previous releases, but it is still distinctly Elvis and possibly a Masterpiece. Most artists would easily boast it as their proudest effort, but Elvis has a few wall-to-wall ear-magic endeavors. It has certainly withstood the test of time- which cannot be said of many records from 1982- listed as number 166 in 2003’s “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time,” by Rolling Stone.