It just came over the wire that Richard Wright has passed away. The original Pink Floyd keyboard player lost his brief battle with cancer a short time ago. Wright was an original member of Pink Floyd, and other than a brief period of departure in the early 80’s, he remained with the band throughout their history. Rick most recently toured with David Gilmour on his worldwide On An Island tour in 2006-07.
It does not seem too long ago when we recorded MGMT opening for Fiery Furnaces at Music Hall in Williamsburg last December. But in the interim, MGMT has hit big in 2008 — with appearances at Bonnaroo and Glastonbury, and gigs opening for the likes of Radiohead and Beck. The MGMT concert at McCarren Pool in July was a complete packed house.
This morning, MGMT announced two Halloween shows, October 30 at Webster Hall and October 31 at Music Hall of Williamsburg. These shows do not yet appear on the Webster Hall website or Bowery Presents website.
MGMT bulletin: “Both shows are on-sale this Friday and the pre-sale begins this Wednesday at 10:00 am ending at 10:00 pm the same day.”
There is a presale password which I will email to anyone who requests it.
High Places at East Village Radio Fest [photo courtesy of Jonny Leather]
High Places is going on tour for the next month or so, throughout the Midwest and West coast. Tour dates are on their MySpace page. As a tour send-off, ToddP and entertainment4every1.net have put together a special show at Death By Audio tonight with High Places.
Here are the details from Todd’s page:
====> SUNDAY 9/14 @ DEATH BY AUDIO <====
|| HIGH PLACES
|||| Soft Circle
|||||| Matteah Baim ——-> mem Metallic Falcons
[ DEATH BY AUDIO ]
49 S 2nd St btwn Wythe & Kent | Williamsburg, Brooklyn
L-Bedford, JM-Marcy, G-Metropolitan | 8pm | $tba | ALL AGES
— MYSPACE –> http://myspace.com/deathbyaudioshows
This is one not to miss — Matmos is performing at The Stone tonight — two shows at 8 pm and 10 pm. This is an improvisation session, and they will be joined by Zeena Parkins on electric harp for the 10 pm show. When we recorded Matmos in July at LPR, we noted that the electronic wizards continue to amaze in their live shows. We also recorded Zeena at the now-closed Tonic in 2006, in an intense improv set with Bobby Previte and Jamie Saft.
Matmos has given nyctaper permission to record this show, but we are not certain that The Stone permits recording at the venue.
When I saw this pop up on MySpace this morning, I thought it was some kind of gimmick, but apparently its real. Ben Folds Five will reunite for one concert in Chapel Hill, NC to perform the entire Reinhold Messner album start to finish.
MySpace has established a “front to back” series, following the trend of bands to perform complete albums in concert. The premiere concert is going to take place on September 18 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill with BFF. The concert will precede the beginning of Ben Folds US tour, and will also take place a couple of weeks before Hotel Lights performs in NYC.
Tickets for this concert go on sale on September 8.
John Vanderslice announced this morning to his fans that he is returning to NYC in October to perform at the new 92Y Tribeca location on October 18. The concert is part of a series called “18 Nights of Inspiration”.
In other Vanderslice news, John is hard at work on a new album. He announced on his site that he will record the new songs in October at his studio Tiny Telephone. Vanderslice will do a full fledged tour with those songs in 2009, and return to NYC for several dates in March.
nyctaper recorded John when he was last in NYC at Mercury Lounge in March [here].
The final outdoor concert of the RiverToRiver season will feature our old favorites Oneida. The show takes place Friday night (8/29) at the South Street Seaport, and begins at 7 p.m. Oneida should begin their set around 8 p.m., although there is rumored to be a “special guest”, or as the website calls it “one more”. This week we spoke to Kid from Oneida via email to confirm our permission to record this show. Kid has no idea about a special guest or who the “one more” might be.
We have recorded Oneida three times this year — Knitting Factory in February (here), at Market Hotel in March (here), and at The Kitchen in June (still working on the rights to post).
The Antlers continue to work on the anticipated new album Hospice, and today they have offered a completed new track for download [here]. “Two” is a phenomenal song that builds in intensity and features some of the best vocal work we’ve ever hear from Peter.
The first full tour from The Antlers was also announced today and features the following East Coast dates:
10/1/08: Talking Head BALTIMORE, MD
10/2/08: TBA PHILADELPHIA, PA
10/3/08: Garfield Artworks PITTSBURGH, PA
10/4/08: Tower 2012 CLEVELAND, OH w/ Dreadful Yawns, Good Touch Bad Touch
10/5/08: Cafe Bourbon St COLUMBUS, OH w/ Matt Bauer, Time & Temperature
10/6/08: The Cinemat BLOOMINGTON, IN
10/7/08: Northside Tavern CINCINNATI, OH
10/8/08: Skull Alley LOUISVILLE, KY
10/9/08: R3V3RB GREENVILLE, SC
10/10/08: Village Tavern CHARLESTON, SC
10/11/08: TBA CHAPEL HILL, NC
10/13/08: Velvet Lounge WASHINGTON DC
10/15/08: Clementine HARRISONBURG, VA w/ Pattern Is Movement
We hate tired and old rock cliches — the kind of stage antics that you have seen hundreds of times before and which indicate a stunning lack of originality. Band of Thieves and Your Vegas are ruthless purveyors of this kind of cliche on stage and in their pedestrian songs. Unfortunately, the two bands were on a bill back to back on Friday night at Bowery Ballroom and the result was an unbearable exercise in bad taste.
Band of Thieves were inexplicably described by the Village Voice as “classic rock n roll”, which would be true in its most cynical and derivative form. This is a band whose “best” song “Woman” contains such scintillating lyrics as “you’ve been running ’round uptown”. The stage act is about what you would expect, lots of prancing, strutting and chest-thumping. What followed however, was markedly worse.
We have seen hundreds of bands in the last couple of years, and Your Vegas isn’t just the worst band we’ve seen in that time, they are the worst by a wide margin. Your Vegas does deserve some kind of perverse award for employing a strikingly large and perhaps a record number of rock cliches all within their first two minutes of their first song. In terms of sound, Your Vegas used every fiber of their being to mimic U2, but unfortunately it all comes out sounding like Cutting Crew. As we maintained an involuntary painful grimace listening to this set, it because necessary to flee the venue for relief.
The sad part of this evening for us was that we did not even make it to the band who we came to see. Jupiter One play an energetic and inventive post-80s pop and this concert was a release party for their self-titled debut album. We’ll catch them again on a better bill.
We’ve been waiting for this one to arrive in the mail (hint!), but in the meantime, yesterday’s release of the Fiery Furnaces new live album Remember saw the addition of the album’s credits to allmusic. And wouldn’t you know it, there is nyctaper listed by name quite charitably as an “Engineer”.
We also received a major compliment from one of our favorite blogs today. EarFarm posted “A to Z: EAR FARM’s Favorite Music Sites“, and nyctaper is listed as the N entry with a very nice write-up. Thanks EF!
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