Hotel Lights August 19, 2008 Mercury Lounge – Flac and MP3 Downloads

August 23, 2008
By

Darren Jessee has found his own voice — and it is melodic, melancholy, poignant and ultimately hopeful. Eight years after the premature demise of one of the 1990’s greatest alt-pop bands, it has become abundantly clear which member of Ben Folds Five was responsible for the serious and profound songs (i.e. “Brick”), and the intricate vocal harmonies. With Hotel Lights brand new CD Firecracker People, former BFF drummer/songwriter/vocalist Darren Jessee has produced an album of rich melodies, sweet harmonies, and lyrics that speak of the difficulties in finding your own voice. When Jessee sings in “Your Choice” of having “spent years keeping part of yourself down”, its as if Firecracker People is both his coming out party and his long-awaited triumph.

On Tuesday night, Hotel Lights celebrated the release of Firecracker People with a set at Mercury Lounge. The live version of the band is tight and faithful to the recorded songs, and Darren is clearly the focus. He conducts himself with modesty and humor on stage, but when the music begins the songs are voiced with precision and confidence. We expect to see much more of Hotel Lights in the future and expect that the new CD will see many spins in our deck.

This concert was recorded from our standard location at the Mercury Lounge, slightly in front of the board and to the right. This is a recording of fine clarity and the cardioid microphones and the height of the microphone pole avoided much of the moderate chatter in the back of the room. Enjoy!

Direct download of MP3 files (HERE)

Download the Complete show in FLAC [HERE].

Hotel Lights
2008-08-19
Mercury Lounge
New York, NY USA

Digital Master Recording
Recorded from Front of Board

Neumann KM-150’s > Monster Cable > Apogee Mini-Me > digital coax > M-Audio Microtrack 24/96 > 24bit 48kHz wav > Soundforge 8.0 (level adjustments, downsample) > CD Wave 1.75 > Flac Frontend (level 7) > flac

Many thanks to Darren for permission to record and Bar/None for the invite.

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper
2008-08-23

Setlist:
[Total time 43:54]
01 [introduction]
02 Blue Always Finds Me
03 Dream State Flying
04 Down
05 Chemical Clouds
06 Flicker in My Eye
07 Amelia Bright
08 Firecracker People
09 Nobody Let You Down
10 Marvelous Truth
11 Norina

If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Hotel Lights, visit their website, visit their MySpace page, and purchase their new CD Firecracker People at the Bar/None Records Website [HERE].

Rock Cliche Overload – Band of Thieves and Your Vegas at Bowery Ballroom August 22, 2008

August 22, 2008
By

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.

Some Neat nyctaper Kudos

August 20, 2008
By

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!

Best Friends Forever August 19, 2008 The Tank – Flac and MP3 Downloads

August 20, 2008
By


[photo credit]

We generally trust ToddP’s recommendations with bands. So when he sent out a glowing email about the Minneapolis band Best Friends Forever and their first two NYC concerts tonight and tomorrow, we made our best effort to catch this band, despite our previous engagement. We arrived at The Tank several songs into their set, and set up as quickly as possible. We managed to catch the final 20 minutes of the Best Friends Forever set, which was about two-thirds of its total length.

What became quite apparent when we took time to watch the band was that besides the obvious infectious pop songs, Best Friends Forever are also quite excellent musicians. Bri sings and plays both keys and guitar fluently while Joe keeps a frenetic beat. We were particularly impressed with Jess’s fret work on the bass, which is displayed quite prominently on the last track.

We recorded from the rear area of the room, which was only about 30 feet from the stage. The sound quality in this room was quite good and the recording is a very nice capture of this excellent band. Enjoy!

Best Friends Forever perform again tonight (8/20) at Death By Audio — catch them before they go back home!

Direct download of MP3 files (HERE)

Download the Partial Recording in FLAC [HERE].

Best Friends Forever
2008-08-19 The Tank
New York, NY USA

Digital Master Audience Recording
Recorded from 30 Feet

Neumann KM-150’s (AK-50 Hypercardiod Capsules) > Monster XLR Cables Apogee Minime >digital coaxial > M-Audio Microtrack > 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge 8.0 (set fades, leveladjustments, dither, downsample) > CD Wave 1.95 (tracking) > Flac Frontend (level 7, align sector boundaries) > flac

Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper
2008-08-19

Setlist:
[total time 17:24]
Partial Set
06 Tracks

If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Best Friends Forever, visit their MySpace page, and purchase their official releases at the Plan-It-X Records Website [HERE].

Dead Confederate – New Album Details and Two NYC Dates

August 19, 2008
By

Dead Confederate have a new album, and today they announced the details:
Wrecking Ball will be released on September 16, 2008, with the following track list:
1. Heavy Petting
2. The Rat
3. Goner
4. It Was A Rose
5. Yer’ Circus
6. All The Angels
7. Start Me Laughing
8. The News Underneath
9. Flesh Colored Canvas
10. Wrecking Ball

nyctaper readers may recall that we recorded Dead Confederate at Piano’s in May, a performance at which they performed five of the tracks listed above. As we indicated in May, the strength of these songs bodes well for the quality of the new CD.

Dead Confederate will return to NYC for two dates this Fall as below:
Oct 09 2008 8:00 Mercury Lounge NYC
Oct 10 2008 11:00 Union Hall Brooklyn

Drive-By Truckers and The Hold Steady to Tour Together

August 18, 2008
By


[photo credit]

This was just officially announced a few minutes ago. The rumors of a co-tour are true, and tour dates are now posted. Drive-By Truckers and The Hold Steady will be doing a co-headlining tour from October 30 through November 25. The NYC dates are November 6 and November 7 at Terminal 5.

The pre-sale for this tour begins on Tuesday (tomorrow) August 19 at 10 a.m. There is no public on-sale date listed yet, and in fact this tour information is neither on The Hold Steady page, nor on the Terminal 5 listings yet.

As our readers are aware we recorded Drive-By Truckers in March (at Terminal 5), and The Hold Steady last September, so we expect to be capturing both of these sets.

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