I recently reported that monkeys like Metallica. In continuing animal-music news, it turns out that Barry White puts sharks in the mood for love.

Workers at a London aquarium played Barry White for a reluctant zebra shark named Zorro, and it was so effective, Zorro’s violent and amorous overtures to other sharks apparently disturbed some visitors.

Read More “Sharks Like Soul Music” »

Todd Rundgren, you may be surprised to learn, doesn’t own a cell phone.

This fact might be unremarkable, except that an embrace of new technologies is the only unifier of this pop eccentric’s winding, four-decade career. As a prolific recording artist and producer, Rundgren was an early adapter of the synthesizer, and one of the first to realize its pop-music possibilities. On his mid-’70s solo albums and with his prog outfit Utopia, he pushed the limits of how much music an LP could hold. His Dali-loving 1981 video for “Time Heals” was the first to employ computer graphics; several of his mid-’90s albums were CD-ROMs; and he was an innovator of the internet as a music-distribution tool.

“I’m kind of selective about the technology I adapt for my lifestyle,” Rundgren said in a phone interview last week (he borrowed a friend’s). He was in Cleveland, rehearsing for his current tour, on which he’s reproducing in full his 1973 magnum opus A Wizard, A True Star. Rundgren and his band will perform the album at the Music Center at Strathmore on Thursday night.

Read More “The Anti-Formalist: A Q&A With Todd Rundgren” »

Whining about invisible haters has become an empty cliche but when Insane Clown Posse calls themselves “the most hated band” it’s hard to argue. On a critical level ICP might genuinely be the most loathed musical act of our generation. I don’t even think Tom Breihan likes them. Which is odd because they’ve always struck me as simply inoffensive and serviceable rock-rappers who found an incredibly loyal audience and catered directly to them. There’s no fault in that, really. But self proclaimed smart people hate them in the purest sense of the world. This is mostly because they and their very loyal fans are guilty of being poor and wearing face paint and building a community and all those other anti-intellectual and unironic fun things that bands used to do with/for their fans BPF*. Basically they are the Kiss of today, it’s just that the demographic that is willing to buy into that type of world has narrowed dramatically. I blame the internet.

ICP’s tenth studio album, Bang! Pow! Boom!** dropped on Tuesday and it warranted further investigation for a couple reasons. One, their recent festival turned internet meme The Gathering of the Juggalos seemed like the greatest place on earth, despite ill informed derision from certain poverty demonizing stuff white people like type elitists. (If drinking cheap soda and listening to is Scarface is wrong then I don’t want to be right.) But, perhaps more interesting than that was the wikipedia claim that Violent J “listened to music by the psychedelic rock band Gong for inspiration” while making this album. Which means he has better taste in music than Jay-Z.

Hit the jump for some quick thoughts on my first ICP full length. Woop woop! Read More “Posse On Clownway: ICP Reviewed” »

If you want to mellow out a monkey, play him some Metallica.

That’s the surprising result of a new study by Charles Snowdon, a
University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology professor. The researchers played clips of music— including Metallica’s
“Of Wolf and Man,” Nine Inch Nails’, “The Fragile,” Tool’s “The
Grudge,” and Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”—for cotton-top tamarins.

Read More “Study Finds Metal Soothes Monkeys” »

“We’re trying to have fun right now and not make it too serious,” Travis “Cobruhhh” Jackson, the drummer of D.C.’s noisiest party punkers The Points said yesterday, discussing the pitfalls of long-distance rock ‘n’ roll — Jackson moved to Blacksburg, Va., not long ago, and his bandmate, guitarist and singer George “Geo” White, now lives in Chicago. The geographic disruption may mean more planning, fewer shows, and less spontaneity, but to hear Jackson tell it, the band’s hard-partying (and, more centrally, hard-drinking) ethos remains the same.

The Points dropped a new seven-inch single this week on Jackson’s own Windian Records (City Paper’s own Aaron Leitko recently reviewed the six-minute song “Shout” for Pitchfork), and Geo and Cobruhhh are celebrating tomorrow night at DC9. After the jump, my condensed interview with Jackson.

Read More ““We’re Alcoholics”: A Quick Q&A With The Points” »

What’s more American than air guitar?

Nothing, apparently. On entering the 9:30 Club on Friday, it wasn’t immediately clear whether the venue was hosting the U.S. Air Guitar Championship or a political convention. Bunting hung from the balcony, “God Bless America” and other patriotic standards blasted from the PA, and a cache of red-white-and-blue balloons cascaded from the rafters as the event began.

It was an election, of sorts. Some of the competitors even had delegations–most noticeably Sanjar the Destroyer, whose supporters wore white-and-black tees reading “STD: Sexually Transmitted Destruction”; and hometown favorite The Shred (i.e. Lance Kasten), the 47-year-old construction worker whose ankle-breaking plunge from atop an amp stack at last year’s finals aptly summed up the straight-faced absurdity of this new American pastime.

Read More “Air America: U.S. Air Guitar Championships @ 9:30 Club” »

The one-room Adamson Gallery looks and smells crisp, clean. Like fresh ink and paper, or new money. It’s 6:30 p.m., and I’ve just slipped in with a party of three after fumbling the keypad/intercom system downstairs. This group claims the corner next to the bar, in front of the windows and the binder explaining the exhibit.

I arrived on time, which of course means early, in hopes of interviewing Director Laurie Adamson or her husband, go-to printmaker David, before the place got too crowded. I turn down sparkling water, champagne, and mojitos, and instead do laps around the exhibit until they arrive at 7 p.m.

Laurie had responded to my request for an interview with her husband, David, the curator of Lou Reed’s photography show at the Adamson Gallery, with an invite to a private reception and the implication of face time with the founder of the Velvet Underground.

In retrospect, I should have stopped at the curator Q&A, because a little part of me died when I finally met my high school hero.

Read More “Falling Out of Love With Lou Reed” »

Not only is Dethklok getting its own video game, but Brendan Small’s once-imaginary band has somehow managed to arrange a 7-week tour with Mastodon, the most popular metal act to come out of Atlanta and Metallica’s current tour opener. Mastodon’s Crack the Skye hit the streets in March of this year, and Dethklok’s Dethalbum II drops Sept. 8.

High on Fire and Converge will open the 34 shows–one of which will be at GMU’s Patriot Center on Oct. 31.

Electronic Arts is sponsoring the tour (which is sort of odd if you consider the new Dethklok video game is a Konami product), thus every concert will have console stations where audience members can try out Brutal Legend, EA’s new video game featuring voiceover work by Jack Black.

More deets after the jump.
Read More “Dethklok and Mastodon Touring 34 Cities” »

Last week All Songs Considered invited its listeners to vote for their favorite tracks and albums of the year (s0 far).

The results?

“In the end, Animal Collective edged out every other artist for both Best Album and Best Song. Artists like Grizzly Bear, The Decemberists and Neko Case weren’t far behind. One thing was clear: that 2009 has been one of the strongest years for new music in recent memory.”

MP3 tracks accompany the list for Best Songs of 2009 (so far), in case you’re not up to speed with what’s cool.

Read More “NPR Names the Best Music of the Year (so far), Why Music Magazines Are Dying” »

I spent much of the last two years writing movie reviews, and I had just one ethical guideline for my morning press screenings: Don’t take the food. So how should I have reacted when Tobacco, the frontman the costumed, dancing hype man of the acid-caked post-rockers Black Moth Super Rainbow shoved a stick of warm string cheese into my hand last night at the Rock & Roll Hotel?

It turns out the Pittsburgh quintet—more performance art than post-rock, really—thrives on blowing up expectations. The venue (quite full for a Sunday) seemed primed for something more studied—understandable, given that on record Black Moth Super Rainbow’s verve and heavy use of Vocoder can suggest something out of the Battles playbook, with all the attendant influences. Live, though, the group was dancier, pithier, and freakier, as much flower-child bliss-out as art-school iconoclasm. Not just once was I compelled to abdicate my journalistic distance.

Read More “Hot Freaks: Black Moth Super Rainbow @ Rock & Roll Hotel” »