Check out today’s Soundcheck Smackdown on cellphones at concerts, featuring pop music critic Thor Christensen of the Dallas Morning News and Eliot Van Buskirk of Wired.com’s “Listening Post.”
Thor and several listeners pointed out the poor quality of many images and sounds captured at live concerts. Ray from Greenpoint sent an email — and a picture […]
I don’t know what kind of trouble I’m getting myself into by admitting this, but here goes: I used to download songs from LimeWire. A lot of them. No, seriously: if I revealed the actual amount of songs I grabbed, it would make your hard drive blush.
I spent the glory days of the compact disc—that […]
John Lennon’s lyrics for Give Peace a Chance are to go under the hammer at an auction at Christie’s this summer. The lyrics were handed to comedy writer Gail Renard, who was then 16, at Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Montreal “bed-in” in 1969, along with other mementoes.
Click on the images below to view the […]
Check out a slide show from Soundcheck’s trip to Austin for South by Southwest!
Friday night was my last night of SXSW. I’d seen a great collection of bands: Crystal Castles, Santogold, MGMT, Land of Talk, and Cloud Cult. And with 10 minutes before my rendezvous with my Austin fixer, Vic, and his trusty van, I ducked into Bourbon Rocks for one last band. The place was crowded, but […]
Minneapolis outfit Cloud Cult has an excellent new album out April 8, although you can download “Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes)” on their web site. They played at the Red Eyed Fly on Friday. Their stage set up: drums, guitar, cello, violin, and a painter. Yes, a painter works throughout the entire set. (But […]
I split mid-way through Crystal Castles’ set and head over to Stubb’s, quite likely the largest official outdoor venue at SXSW. It’s where R.E.M. played on Wednesday night. Onstage is an artist who seems poised for big things: Santogold. The Brooklyn-based artist came up as a songwriter/producer for Sony and also fronted her own punk […]
I first heard about Crystal Castles when Soundcheck did a segment on the Underage Festival, an under-19-only outdoor concert held in London last year. What their performance at the event, and you’ll get an idea of the frenzy this group tends to incite. Their set at Emo’s main stage Friday night starts minus singer/fistpumper […]
Bands at SXSW cram in as many performances as possible over the course of just a few days. For young bands, it can be extremely taxing. The English band The Duke Spirit has been touring like crazy, so it’s understandable that singer Liela Moss (below) and her voice were a bit tuckered out. The group […]
Scott Hutchison of Glasgow, Scotland’s Frightened Rabbit, at Emo’s Annex during a day party performance. He remarked that, at 1:45 in the afternoon, it still felt like morning to him. I knew exactly what he was talking about.