OiNK Gets Boinked

In other news, torrent site OiNK is yet another fatality in the War on Information. The invite-only site, which had about 180,000 members was pretty kickass for getting you things before they existed, but the British techie who ran it and the Amsterdam servers that housed its info are now in the hands of the police. That's what you guys get for kicking Tender Button out of your little clubhouse.

Slowly we creep back to the dark ages when you actually had to wait for an album to be released in order to hear it. The horror, the horror.

Itha-Go-Go, Anyone? Matt+Kim

There are so many things I should be working on right this very minute but I wanted to babble about some shows for a little bit, since last week was a pretty good one for shows. Last Tuesday, a lady friend and I hiked up to Cornell's Risley Hall for the latest Fanclub offering. I was pretty psyched thinking the show was in Tammany, a little coffeespace with a proper stage and such where in Fanclub days of old we caught Portland IDMers Badger King and Bobby Birdman, but for reasons which passeth understanding, the show was in Risley's dining hall, which lady friend informs me is a reproduction of a dining hall at Oxford. Very Harry Potter, without the pointy hats. Muddy accoustics and no stage, but about seventysome kids packed up at the front.

Titus Andronicus started off the night with a pretty straight-up Clash homage. I believe the case has been made elsewhere, if you're going to steal, steal from the best. Mostly London Calling-era sound, letting my mind drift off to the copy of the Joe Strummer bio I'm waiting to borrow from Mr. Excitement. The fact I was more interested in thinking about reading about the Clash than paying attention to the band was more my fault than theirs.

The next band up was the unfortunately named Midnight Prayers (who we thought for a while was called Midnight Cruise. Not much better). A couple songs in I got to thinking how neat it is when new possibilities pop up on the menu of what kind of band you can be. These guys started off sounding a little like Deer Tick or O'Death: pseudo-old-timey ramshackle playing with high nasally vocals, a sound which is kind of popular with the kids these days. Not much new until they ripped into a garage cover of The McCoys' "Hang On, Sloopy" (the official rock song of the state of Ohio, apparently). Let it be known that I heart me some sixties pop, especially songs that seem irredeemably silly in retrospect, so these guys set the hook in my heart with this one, but the garage translation was a perfect way to combat some of the silliness in the original. From there on out, it was garage all the way, up to and sort of including a slightly draggy cover of the second half of "Shout!". Err...unless you can play wicked fast and have a pretty firm grasp on your loud/soft dynamics, this one's best to be avoided.

On the plus side, let's cast a vote right now for sixties garage pop and Phil Spector girl groups to be the next big thing. It makes sense! Interpol gets into Joy Division and Television and bam, a whole bunch of bands go Ian Curtis. Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands evoke the spirit of the Talking Heads and whoosh, bunch of Talking Heads bands. My Morning Jacket attempts to redeem southern rock and we get the Black Mountain family of bands. Time has come to move a little further back. The Black Lips have the garage sound knocked down but even cooler is the girl group sound, not of the Pipettes but of Grizzly Bear. Recommended three in a row: "Knife" by Griz, "Putty in Your Hands" by the Shirelles, "Veni Vidi Vici" by the Black Lips. Oh, and also, more bands need to include baritone sax.

(At some point I'll figure out/remember how to put songs up here, I really will.)

Matt+Kim finished out the show and they were just cuter than two little hamsters driving a toy car! Giggling in a skeleton teeshirt as he stood up on his chair to see the audience, Matt was like an amphetemine-fueled QVC host, telling the audience how EXCITED they were to get the OPPORTUNITY to play here, and how AMAZING it all was. I know I sound snarky, but in fact it was pretty goddam adorable. Oh, and also they played music. M+K sound like a more muscular Mates of State (who are equally adorable, substituting googly for giggly), with hints of the aforementioned Portland IDM sound. They let the audience surround them, to the chagrin of the sound guys and the kids were pretty boppy into it, lot of cheery pogoing, sweaty undergrads, crowd-surfing opening band.

Which brings me to the main point here. In addition for a call to garage rock, I think the time has come for Ithaca's answer to Chic-a-Go-Go. All we need is a room, a bouncy band, a bunch of the kids and a couple cameras. Oh, and a slot on public access. Come on, who's in?

Stupid Bloody Tuesday

Continuing with the new musics! Hooray for the return of our espresso machine!

Dirty Projectors- "Rise Above" With a couple more listens, this one could well replace Animal Collective as my favorite album of the week. Not as frantic, obviously, but just as complex and far more fleshed out than previous albums by the Projectors. They've grown into a rock band, and it kind of rocks. Sometimes a band just needs to get in touch with their muse, and it turns out for these guys that muse was Henry Rollins.

The Go! Team- I've already forgotten what this album is called. Their first one was loaded with hooks, every other song was a pop hit. This one feels slick, slippery. I hope I'll get back to listen through it again, but chances are strong I won't.

Black Lips- "Good Bad Not Evil"- One of those bands who's just good at what they're doing. The Black Lips won't change anybody's life like hearing the Sonics for the first time, and this album is not all that different from previous efforts, but it plugs along like a late model Honda Civic. Straight garage, solid driving music.

St. Vincent- "Marry Me". No. Wispy, meandering. I actually forgot I had it on.

Shout Out Louds- "Our Ill Wills" Holy Swedish! Shiny pop from Scandinavia, The SOLs are like candy. Lyrics that indicate English is only their second language and melodies that prove pop music is their native tongue. Listened through it twice today, grinning vapidly. I like me some vapid grinning.

Know what else I like? Posters by Laura Brothers!

I can't remember if I'm US or UK, but this should be a big ol' throwdown. Which I also like.

Treat Me Like You Did the Night Before

The writing of this post is going to stretch over the next few hours as I wade through today's shipment of tomorrow's music. The folks at Matador were nice enough to sneak me advances of the upcoming Devendra Banhart and Cave Singers albums, but there are more immediate concerns at hand as I whip out the ol' exacto knife and quietly slice into this week's new releases, starting with-

Animal Collective- "Strawberry Jam" They sound more like Panda Bear's band than ever, which is a good thing. Not as spacious as "Person Pitch" but with hints of that spaciness and the whooping and yelping one expects from an Animal Collective effort. This is the one I've been looking forward to and have studiously avoided listening to advance tracks. Feels like "Feels" a little in its overall consistency, none of the dizzying highs paired with almost staggering lulls of "Sung Tongs". I think they might have resurrected Vincent Price for the mildly "Thriller"esque voice over on "Winter Wonderland", paired up with Panda's looping high vocals. If all of this week's stuff is this good (one imagines it couldn't be), I'll be a happy little store-jockey.

Various Artists- "Wattstax" I've heard most of these recordings before, but it's nice they've been given the deluxe treatment. Sound quality is great, better than I've ever heard and the packaging is lovely, sharp, crisp, iconic. Plus it's four hours of music, which is an assload of Stax. Makes a nice counterpoint to their 50th anniversary collection, painting a deeper, less broad picture of the label in 1972. I especially appreciate the inclusion of Jesse Jackson's intro to the festival and bits of Richard Pryor's stand-up, which flesh out the festival as being about more than just music.

Kanye West- "Graduation" Conversely, the packaging for the new Kanye sucks. Unless you like semi-retarded looking anime bears. Which maybe you do. "You can be my black Kate Moss tonight"? Actually, that's some pretty clever stuff, but to quote Tom Petty, I don't hear a single. And man, that voice modulation crap that Cher invented bugs the hell out of me, which is not to knock Cher or any of her scientific advancements. Did you know she invented the fishnet stocking? Okay, we all know I don't have anything halfway intelligent to say about hiphop, so on to...

50 Cent- "Curtis" Wait, this is hiphop too. I think I'm rooting for 50 in the sales battle, just cause I don't imagine Kanye would quit the busines over such a minor thing. Maybe there will be a tie? 50's definitely got the allstars on his side, but the album feels disjointed and anyway, Steve Gollnick could probably get Timbaland to record a track with him at this point. That'd be hot, I'd buy that.

More to come later...

Body Kinesthetic Politic

Two fold purpose here. One is to pull out the paddles, rub them together and shock this blog back to life. The other is to do a post mortem on last weekend's dance party, a success in many ways thanks largely to my DJing counterparts, but also kind of a new development in what we've been doing this whole time.

To start then, a brief history. The dance parties pre-dated me as something called the Revolutionary Dance Party. The idea was a small, early party on a Friday or Saturday night, concentrated entirely on dancing and then spilling out into the town at large, with a group of people wound up physically and mentally, yes, but even more important (it seemed to me at least) grounded in their own bodies, aware of them as instruments of activity and joy. The individual body is the most basic unit of the state and when the body is viewed in this way, a locus of joy, the impact on the state will be positive. When the body is viewed as a locus of pain, of punishment or restriction (as is the case at the state level currently), the body and the state will always be in opposition, the state inflicting itself on the body rather than the body, or a collection of joyful bodies, restructuring the state into a network of interactions based in joy, pleasure, fulfillment.

This both is and is not as sexy as it sounds.

Revolutionary in goal, the RDP was famously fascist in execution. The rules were as follows:
1. Everyone must dance.
2. No one cannot dance.
3. Everyone must bring music to share*.
4. Everyone must bring a dance move to share.
5. Everyone must dance.

*In a strict RDP, the music had to be in a physical format, that is to say that iPods were frowned upon.

Because these events were small, intentional communities, the rules were easy enough to enforce: anyone who chose not to participate was asked to leave. The result was fluid and dynamic: it had no maker, no singular originator.

Contrast this with the auteur school of DJing: a singular virtuoso DJ (or series of DJs) exerting total control on a dance environment. This, of course, is the standard club model and can be downright amazing. Again, there is at least the auspice of an intentional community, since people who go to a dance club must do so at least on the pretense of dancing. But once in the environment, the myriad desires of the community members fall at odds to one another: people who came to dance are pestered by people who came to hook up, crowded by people who came to passively observe. At the same time, the DJ holds ultimate sway over the environment, and the crowd is at the whim of his personality. One DJ may favor feats of mixing, overlapping and blending over danceability or (as is more often the case) may fall back on prescripted sets that are entirely disconnected with the audience, relying on time-tested hits or (worse!) nostalgia and (worst!) imagined nostalgia to keep a crowd barely moving.

When we began doing dance parties in public, we faced an immediate problem. By nature of being public, the strict rules that held together RDPs could not be enforced (although we did have a little Dance Gestapo to gently encourage people to dance or else), but we had no inclination to have just another dance club setting. We wanted a Dance Party, dammit. With Dancing! So we tried the dialectic model. Benefits are obvious, I think: you winnow down your audience til you once again have a more or less intentional community. People would only come to, say, a Bowie vs. the Talking Heads dance party for one or a combination of three reasons:

1. They like Bowie.
2. They like the Heads.
3. They want to dance.

You have the added advantage of a certain level of partisanship, such that even people who aren't dancing at any given moment will more than likely be involved in the music through debate, a debate echoed by the back and forth of the music.

Also, you have the back and forth of the music: the DJs must be responsive to one another and, in an effort to make a case for their band of choice, must be responsive to the crowd's reactions. A crowd that dances hardest to rock-era Bowie is going to get more rock-era Bowie (and more rocking Heads songs), while a crowd that responds to the heavy polyrhythmic Heads tunes is going to get more of the same from the Heads, and an emotionally shattered Bowie DJ.

Part of the reason, I think, that we started with and have returned to the Cure vs. the Smiths is that there you've got two bands with whom people have a deep emotional, often personal memory, which, unlike an encyclopaedic knowledge of 80s pop stored in the cortex, is often written directly onto the body, deep down in neural passages formed in the vital and emotionally active teenage years. Note how this is diametrically opposed to nostalgia: it's not a pining for a time past, it's a visceral experience of an aspect of that time, of a different aspect of one's emotional being. Which is why the people really into it, many of them excellent dancers, tend to dance exactly the way they would at age 16 at the Smiths vs. Cure parties.

Finally, we expanded into what we had last week: the open source model. Let me stress that part: it's intended to be fully open source in that any one of the people DJing is fully replaceable, given that their replacement is equally impassioned about the music they intend to play. The open source way allows for maximum fluidity, maximum responsiveness to the crowd and, like the original RDP, a creation with no creator, an event that creates, fuels and sustains itself, that shapes its body out of its evolving self. The first time we tried it, I think we (and thus the event) was caught up in silly ideas of one-upping each other, with certain songs brought out for shock/kitsch value, but this time we had a real challenge. People began dancing at 9:30 and a mistake could kill momentum, cause the entire thing to collapse.

This is not entirely true after a point. Momentum can sustain itself through at least one dud. Isn't that right, Miami?

But this time, something really amazing happened. A community in place, intentionality built itself. Confirmed non-dancers danced, the "audience" in the spectator sense, found itself devoured, shaped into the body of the dancing crowd. Intentionality conquers apathy and the body kinesthetic rules over all!

Big successes: All of My Friends by LCD Soundsystem, for all eight minutes (credit to Luke), Balkan Beat Box, novel and unstoppable (credit to Jason) and the Passenger, bouncy, familiar and imbued with the creepy, beautiful energy of being swept along by a larger current (credit again to Jason).

Downpoints: the afterparty. Not because it was a bad afterparty, it was actually quite nice. But the afterparties are almost always a downpoint, even if they don't involve my ass gettting handcuffed. Because the only suitable follow-ups to a successful dance party of this type are as follows:

1. More dancing (why does this never happen, by the way?)
2. Making out*
3. Smashing the state into a million shiny pieces (why does this never happen either?)

*I sincerely hope many dancers are opting for this rather than the afterparties. Making out is (or at least should be) the final choosing of joy over the state.

Next month we go back to Vs. for a bit, give ourselves a little bit of structure, scratch the ol' dialectic itch. As far as this little blog goes, I have every intention of keeping it going this time out. I've got some album review/previews drafted, some thoughts on the comeback albums of indie bands and whether it's axiologically different from/better than yet another Who comeback and, umm...much much more!

How Easily We Are Flattered...

Someone actually asked at Trivia Night if I published playlists. Which made me blush, naturally. And as I'm typing this, someone else asked the same thing. Since some quirk of iTunes leads to only 5 out of 40 songs being available if I publish the list on the iTunes store thingie, I'm putting it up here and will try to do so every week if I'm feeling frisky.

Paint's Peeling- Rilo Kiley
Try- Michael Penn
Bring on the Dancing Horses- Echo & the Bunnymen
Retrieval of You- Minus 5
Eye of Fatima- Camper van Beethoven
A House is Not a Motel- Yo La Tengo
The Hardest Button to Button- White Stripes
Happy Jack- The Who
Who Taught You to Live Like That?- Sloan
Pablo Picasso- The Modern Lovers
Dashboard- Modest Mouse
Who Do You Love- Ted Leo/Pharmacists
Suffer for Fashion- Of Montreal
Hot Burrito #2- Flying Burrito Brothers
Close to Me- The Cure
Because You're Frightened- Magazine
Dance Steps- The Natural History
Folsom Prison Blues- Johnny Cash
Someone Great- LCD Soundsystem
Road- House of Love
6'1"- Liz Phair
Friend of Mine- The National
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space- Spiritualized
Beanbag Chair- Yo La Tengo
Fiery Crash- Andrew Bird
Older Guys- Flying Burrito Brothers
Happily Ever After- The Rosebuds
Torn & Frayed- Rolling Stones
Fire Island, AK- Long Winters
The Well and the Lighthouse- The Arcade Fire
Sex and Dying in High Society- X
Mama Wolf- Devendra Banhart

Hope that helps. If there's a question about a particular song, post it in the comments and I'll try to elucidate. Which is like ElimiDate, only more helpful.

Rocktober

Hey we're in the papers again. Check out this supernice article in the Daily Sun. I actually don't sound like a total twit!

Ithaca, Independent Rock City

Goodness me, but the new Hold Steady album is pretty rockin. I think they've actually gone more E Street than the last album. You all understand I mean that in the best way possible, right?

This Wednesday, we've got a show at the store which I will unfortunately be unable to attend. Paul Buchholz will be playing with Tim Hazen. It should be nice, I'm sad that I'll be stuck slingin' drinks. After that, it's a couple weeks til our next show, which is Barn Burning from Providence. They're heartbreakers, those kids.

The always impressive Mr. G, who survived a weekend that would have killed lesser men and still managed to wail through Little Black Egg on the Commons and slug back chardonnay after the band stopped and the man upstairs wept on us a bit, is currently on his way to the shop with 2000 copies of Chapter and Verse. Soon, very soon we will spread it across the northeast like some beautiful trembling virus. Being a simple and physically oriented lad, there's a high level of anticipation tied into holding the album (or ten boxes of the album) in my hands.

New Outrageous Cherry album sounds like Bernadette by the Four Tops for exactly six seconds, then briefly sounds like Come Up and See Me (Make Me Smile) by Suzi Quatro.

Oh, and if you like tweakers (you know you do!), check out this out. I'm still not exactly clear on what Insound is offering here, but watching Devendra and J.D. is always entertaining.

Save the Album

Return to Shelf Life: Z

As many of you already know, launching the good ship record store involved the total looting of my CD collection. And vinyl collection. Total. Every time I look at my shelves, I've been getting that Old Mother Hubbard feeling.

We have a remedy! (we have?)

So I've started giving myself an allowance of one CD per week. And being, well, slightly off in my thinking, I decided I would start from the end of the alphabet and work backwards, picking out one album for each letter. Which brings us to our first account of my slowly restocking shelves:

Odessey and Oracle by the Zombies

A couple weekends ago I was attacked by Zombies on the Commons. It was a wonderful way to end an evening, swarmed by attractive people in hideous makeup, mauled and gently gnawed on. I think Odessey and Oracle is probably an awful way to end an evening. I can't imagine listening to this album and then wanting to go to bed. It does make for a brilliant start to the day, sunny piano and seventy-three part harmonies with your morning coffee.

We are all concerned with the future, for that is where we will spend most of our time.

Partly I wanted to put this list up so people could find it and read it. Partly I wanted to put this list up because I've been carrying it around in my pocket and I'm afraid I'll lose it. But here is what the musical future looks like in Ithaca. Must say, it looks pretty darn good.

Friday September 22: The Old Sweethearts with Jairo van Lunteren and Amanda Lynn Perkins
at No Radio Records, 7pm
Saturday September 23: Steve Gollnick and friends
at the Rongo
Saturday September 23: The Mountain Goats with Christine Fellows
at Becker House on Cornell Campus
Saturday September 23: The Trachtenberg Family Slide Show
at Castaways
Saturday September 23: Missing Marcus
at the Haunt
Thursday September 28: The Gunshy with Idatel and Andrew Bryant
at No Radio Records, 7pm
Thursday September 28: Umphrey's McGee
at the State Theater
Friday September 29: Yellow Swans with Grouper
on Cornell Campus, somewhere
Saturday September 30: Hubcap
at the Chapter House
Saturday September 30: Crow Greenspun and the TalktoMes
at the Haunt
Saturday September 30: Old Crow Medicine Show
at the State Theater
Saturday September 30: Dufus
at the ABC Cafe
Sunday October 1: Hubcap
on the Commons for Apple Harvest Festival
Sunday October 1: Robert Cray Band
at the State Theater
Wednesday October 4: Paul Buccholz with Tim Hazen
at No Radio Records, 7pm
Saturday October 7: Richard Buckner with the Atomic Forces
at Castaways
Thursday October 12: Small Sails
at Cornell Cinema
Friday October 13: Missing Marcus with the Splendors, 6 Fingers, Another Day Late
at the Haunt
Saturday October 14: Tilly and the Wall
on Cornell Campus
Thursday October 19: Barn Burning with Candy Floss
at No Radio Records
Saturday October 21: Art Brut with Tokyo Police Club and the Bloodsugars
on Cornell Campus
Saturday October 21: Jennie Stearns and the Fire Choir
at Felicia's
Saturday October 21: Steve Gollnick CD Release Party
at the Chapter House

And that's just the start! After that, there's still Deer Tick, Jana Hunter, Girl Talk, Casper and the Cookies and !!! More to come, but right now I'm done typing and must do a little boppity-bop dance to the new Hidden Cameras album. It's semiotastic!

A Time of Great Flux/A Return to Normalcy

Hello kids, if any of you remain out there reading. Last time I wrote on here, the record store was "starting to look like a record store". Now it actually IS a record store. I know because I sold some people some records, just a few minutes ago. So I'm restarting this mess here. With announcements, no less. BIg announcements for the moment include our writeup in the Ithaca, which is Ithaca College's campus paper. Sure, they got the address wrong, but only by a block or so.

Second announcement is that you need to get yourself to a record store next Tuesday. New Yo La Tengo, TV on the Radio, the Rapture, the Black Keys, Richard Buckner, Junior Boys, Xiu Xiu and something else I can't remember. Mastodon? Just saying, yeah, get in here and get something.

Third announcement is that the Gunshy will be playing an evening instore performance on Thursday September 28th, along with Idatel (the hardest working band in Ithaca) and Andrew Bryant. Donations towards gas money for the bands would be greatly appreciated.

Lastly, because I'm a bit self-obsessive, here's the playlist from Korova last night. In the near future, these will be posted in some sort of listenable form, but I've got to learn some technology first. This was a so-called 70s night, and you'll notice I mostly stayed within my mandate.

1. Cosmic Dancer- T. Rex
2. You Make Me So Very Happy- Alton Ellis
3. Straight to Hell- The Clash
4. Because You're Frightened- Magazine
5. 10:15 Saturday Night- The Cure
6. Fan Club- The Damned
7. O My Soul- Big Star
8. (I Thought) You Wanted To Know- The dbs
9. Roadrunner- The Modern Lovers
10. X Offender- Blondie
11. Surrender- Cheap Trick
12. Are Friends Electric?- Gary Numan
13. Making Plans for Nigel- XTC
14. King's Lead Hat- Brian Eno
15. Contort Yourself- James Chance and the Contortions
16. Whoo! Allright-Yeah...Uh...-The Rapture
17. Optimo- Liquid Liquid
18. We Can Work It Out- Stevie Wonder
19. Hit It and Quit It- Funkadelic
20. You Said A Bad Word- Joe Tex
21. Sexx Laws- Beck
22. Look Back in Anger- David Bowie
23. Eton Rifles- The Jam
24. The World's a Mess, It's In My Kiss- X
25. Shot Down- The Sonics
26. Philosophy- Them
27. Teenage Kicks- The Undertones
28. Two Little Hitlers- Elvis Costello
29. See No Evil- Television
30. Stand By Me, Yeah- Sloan
31. Not Great Men- Gang of Four
32. Till Victory- Patti Smith Group
33. Digital- Joy Division
34. Do the Strand- Roxy Music
35. Do It Clean- Echo and the Bunnymen
36. No Growing (Exegesis)- Olivia Tremor Control
37. Miss O'Dell- George Harrison
38. Tenth Avenue Freeze Out- Bruce Springsteen
39. Who Is He (And What Is He to You)- Bill Withers
40. The Great Curve- Talking Heads
41. Pretty Girls- Joe Jackson
42. Cindy Tells Me- Brian Eno
43. Laughing- The Guess Who
44. Judy is a Punk- The Ramones
45. So Lonely- The Police
46. The Magnificent Seven- The Clash
47. Strange Brew- Cream
48. Your Time is Gonna Come- Led Zeppelin
49. Long as I Can See the Light- Creedence Clearwater Revival
50. Angel- Jimi Hendrix
51. Ballrooms of Mars- T. Rex
52. After Hours- The Velvet Underground

Try it at home!

And All the Sudden, It Looks...

...like a goddam record store. Shelves are in an arrangement. Walls are in tact. It's dirty as all get out, but I tell you what, it's going to be a record store pretty darned soon.

New cds are being delivered tomorrow, including, I think, my stuff from iTown. Or is is I-Town? Has Apple so violently appled my brain that now whenever I see apple, I assume it's apple?

And the sign is coming on Saturday! That's right, what was once a myspace icon will soon be TWELVE FEET ACROSS!!!

Along with about a thousand radio tower logo stickers.

My dad's coming out on Saturday as well, although he will not be twelve feet across. He is pretty tall. He and my youngest brother are going to put their shoulders to the wheel. I won't say which wheel.

Opinion question of the day. I have a bright, almost tarheel blue paint that I used for some of the trim around the windows. I'm thinking of using it to paint the back wall. I think a bold-colored wall at the end of a long room (particularly if the room is done in lighter and darker shades of the same color and has openings into other colored rooms) makes a nice visual focus when one enters. Plus it would create a situation where the storefront would be the color of the sign's background and the back wall would be roughly the color of the sign's font. Plus it would mean I wouldn't have to go back to Sherwin Williams for the hundredth time. Some people disagree and are voting for a more neutral color or a very pale blue.

Given that you have only vague ideas what I'm talking about, what do you guys think? I'll need opinions by tomorrow round noon.

You've Been in the House Too Long, She Said: Dance Party Returns!

Hello Ithacans! Oh, my lovelies, I had such plans for this summer. This was to be The Summer of Rock! It was going to rock through June and July, til we all got August wondering, "Could this rock anymore?" And then it was going to continue rocking!

Instead, here at the offices of No Radio Records (soon to be relocating from out of my livingroom and into the larger world), it has been the Summer of Crushing Heat and the Summer of Inhaling Fumes. Which still makes it better than 2001, which was the Summer of My German Soldier. That summer was no fun at all. But terribly punctual.

But no more! In the interests of
1. Charity
2. Shameless Self Promotion
3. Rocking

we at No Radio are proud to announce....

DANCE PARTY
round whatever the christ round it would be if we hadn't gone so long without a dance party that I forgot what the last one was
The Smiths vs. The Cure
Saturday August 12th
at the Chantiloft
(above and ever-so-slightly beyond the Chanticleer)
staring at 9pm and going til I kick you deadbeats out of the inevitable afterparty at my house.

Luke (DJ Luke Fenchel) Fenchel and myself return to our Dance Partying roots with the original Chantiloft match up. Last time, my Morrissey respect barely edged out Luke's teenage-girlish love of Robert Smith and all things B-side. Since then, Luke has been repeating the mantra "Just Like Heaven is a great song, Just Like Heaven is a great song" with monkish dedication, while I've gotten in touch with my inner Morrissey on a karaoke stage in Chicago (I've been telling people for years I had a little celibate British man inside me, but most of them thought that was a metaphor). So this time out it's anybody's game. Not that we're competing or anything.

More importantly, all proceeds will benefit Ride for Life, which, in case you don't know it, is a fundraising event for STAP, a thoroughly fantastic group of folks who do HIV counseling and outreach across the Southern Tier.

Come early so you can hear stuff like A Forest and Rubber Ring. Bring friends so you can reel around the fountain and do that little Love Cats dance you do that's so durn cute. Forward this message to other folks who like goodness and dancing and other such things (those of you with listserv access would earn a special special place in my heart).

Please do come, it's been so long since we've seen you in all your finery.

Faster than Fast Update...

Hey folks. Sorry for the downtime. As mentioned before, sometimes it's a drag to spend all day doing things only to come home and write about having done them. Usually, after a whole day of the doin' stuff, it's time to drink.

But here's the situational update.

I am currently in my living room with a couple thousand used cds, all of which need to be entered into a database to be cross-referenced with the outgoing orders for new cds. Cause let's face it, we only need one copy of Wowee Zowee to start up, and if I've already got a used one, I don't need to drop money on a new one. So that's what I come home to every night. Data entry.

On site, the wall has been removed and the joint compound is drying. Once that's sanded, the last bit of painting can get done. The bathroom, back hall and front of the store have all been painted by myself and my team of experts. Luke and Shaianne, that is.

The shelving units are built and sanded, but they need to be finished. I think I've probably talked a bit about how the building material works, but what it comes down to is that they all need to be slathered in oil-based polyeurythane, which smells bloody awful. It's on my list of things to do today, but I'm mildly dreading it.

Magazine and sundry orders will be going in later this week and I may order the new stock as soon as Wednesday. The sign is being made and should get here by the end of the week, or next Monday at the latest. The thing that's worrying me right now is that the price gun I bought off eBay apparently has to be shipped from Hong Kong (price gun capital of the world, it seems) and might not get here in time. It was pretty cheap, but new ones are a little pricy. Might be a last minute buy.

Question for peoples regarding filing. I've heard two suggestions on this. One is to have no genres, all music filed in alphabetical order. This makes things easy to find and prevents the use of the term "Urban" to describe "Music Made By Black People Not Using Guitars". The other suggestion was a sort of hypergenre-ization, where things would be broken down into categories like "Post-Punk", "Twee" and "East Coast Hip-Hop". This sounds like it might be a fun project for me and Amy, and it does have the benefit of introducing stuff to people by association (e.g. "I love Matthew Sweet, but who is this Big Star band filed next to him in "Power Pop"), but does introduce problems. Like do you put the first two Wilco albums under Alt Country and the others under Krautrock?

Let me know what you think.

Late Introduction...

So I nearly forgot to introduce Amy. Amy is the first No Radio employee and new participant here on the blog. Please treat her with the same slightly condescending tolerance you offer me.

little fish big pond

Hello there
I called upon an old friend for some advice in reference to punk and she said to check out Ian Mackaye's label Dischord Records. Oh and I like the Germs and the Wipers and Wire. Also another label of interest...The Social Registry housing such bands as Blood on the Wall and Gang Gang Dance among others.
Ok well bye for a bit

Let My Burden Be

Abandoning my post for a couple days to soak up the hipsterism at the Pitchfork Festival. It should be condescenderific! Laying aside my differences with the vintage teeshirt set, it'll be nice to see some decent live music, and to slip from the sweet smothering embrace of the Ithaca summer.

I had kind of expected the cash register to show up in the mail today, but no dice. Going to swing by Staples and see if I can acquire a price gun, with which I will fire prices at innocent bystanders.

Talk to y'all Tuesday.

The Combination of Doing and Writing About Doing

If I were a smarter man, I'd have pictures for you. Alas.

Sorry there's been no action on ye ol' weblog, but that should not be taken to mean that I am sitting around on my couch. Although right now, I'm sitting around on my couch. And a lot of the work I've been doing involves sitting around on my couch.

The prototype shelving unit has been built and unbuilt. It is the type of thing you can build and unbuild very easily if you have special powers. Powers like a power drill. It's about four feet across and will hold around 450 cds. After a fair amount of hemming and hawing we've decided to seal it with polyeurethane rather than paint it. The stuff it's built out of, MDF, is like superdense cardboard and, like cardboard, will soak up any sort of moisture that gets near it.

Speaking of moisture, let's talk water staining! Yup, the ceilings need a little bit of love. The landlord has assured me that all those leaks have been fixed (somehow magically without disturbing the ceiling they were leaking onto), but a whole bunch of panels need to be cut and replaced.

Also, No Radio Records has its very first employee! Photog and fellow Gimme-vet Amy Pennington will be grinning at you from behind the counter on opening day, while I run around screaming.

Yesterday I managed to score a Bunn Pouromatic restaurant-style coffee brewer and an old dresser we'll be converting into an espresso counter, both on the cheap. All the purchasing for the coffee end of things is more or less done at this point, and the cash register should be on its way to my place even as we speak. Mostly what we still have to buy includes the stereo system, paint and cleaning supplies.

Painting starts next week. Who's in?

Learning the Hip Hop Music

Back on the waiting tip. Tick tock tick tock. On the plus side, we've got two shows lined up for in the store. Idatel will be playing in August and the Gunshy will be playing in September. Not sure on the logistics just yet.

This weekend, while many of you do a little spinning hippie dance out at GrassRoots, I will be trying my hardest to absorb massive amounts of hip hop. Dead Prez, Blackstar and Madlib are first on the queue.

Knocked down Touch and Go, K Recs, Jade Tree and Kill Rock Stars yesterday, but there are always more labels to get through.

Do You Realize?

Are you folks all aware of the sheer bulk of music that's out there? Did you know there are over twenty releases just by Black Flag? That's not even including whatever Henry Rollins is doing right now (I bet he's sitting at home staring lovingly at his muscles). And Zappa? The last four pages of the Rykodisc catalog are ALL Zappa albums, and who the hell needs the Japanese import version of Sheik Yerbouti anyways?

As stated last time, I'm slowly working my way through distributor catalogs. On the advice of Brian at Galaxy Music, I am limiting myself to about half an hour sittings. It's like driving through the Great Plains, your eyes just go all fuzzy and a little voice starts saying, "Yes, you will need all the Minutemen albums...you can't have a record store without them..."

So far I've waded through Merge, Matador, SST, Sub Pop, Rykodisc and Nonesuch. 4AD, Kill Rock Stars and Saddle Creek are on the docket for this afternoon. Input is greatly appreciated, especially in the fields of punk and hiphop, where I am completely ignorant.

Signs and Portends

Well, I'm back up and running on the computer of the esteemed Mr. Livingston while my own darling is shipped off to Appletown. But I wanted to update you all on the state of things.

At least some of the waiting referred to in the previous post (and the Tom Petty song) has ended. The final design for the sign is completed (you're looking at it) and thanks to Sarah's exemplary efforts at ladder-holding, the sign has been measured and sent to print. Which I guess means more waiting.

Also finished this weekend were the designs for the shelving units. Joel assures me that once they are cut, they'll be easy enough for a monkey to assemble. A monkey with a power drill, anyway. We loaded ten very heavy sheets of Medium Density Fiberboard out to his shop in Lansing yesterday in the blistering heat. MDF is kind of like superpacked cardboard, about an inch thick and cut into 4'x8' sheets. We're estimating it's going to take at least twenty sheets to build all the units. The first prototype is being built some time this week. Which I guess means more waiting.

But oh let me tell you about my new hobby. On Friday I set up distributor accounts with three companies, so I now have access to three fairly daunting wholesale catalogs. To give you an idea, the smallest of the three companies carries 22,622 items. Yesterday I picked out everything I wanted from Merge Records. Today I'm going to work my way through Matador. But here's your chance, folks. What albums do you absolutely need to see in No Radio Records. Sound off.