This week: Amanda Shires, Fiery Furnaces Tickets, and I'm going crazy.

Sorry I've been somewhat absent this week, but it's been one of those weeks of all the bad kinds of mania:

1) My wallet was stolen this weekend.  The thief spent forty dollars at Krystal and thirty dollars at Dollar General.  Things that I would not do with a stolen credit card: by forty tiny hamburgers.

2) I requested a new voter registration card so I could vote early (for Obama!) today, and they sent my mother a new voter registration card instead.  Thanks, Tennessee government!  Job well done!

3) I slept three and a half hours Monday night in preparation for a test on Tuesday afternoon, then received an email saying the test was cancelled, then received an email saying the test wasn't cancelled, then failed the test.

4) It took seven days for the transcript I requested to make the journey from one building on campus to another building on campus where I could pick it up.  I'm really curious as to what it did with its six-day vacation.

But all those things aside, it's almost the weekend, and there's a lot worth getting excited about.

Upcoming on the show tomorrow, I'll be giving away two guest list passes to the Fiery Furnaces show on 2/6 at 

Exit/In, because in all the madness of last weekend I forgot that I actually had four spots to give away.  So all of last week's callers, you're still in luck!  Tune in this week for a second chance.  

More importantly, this week kicks off the killer lineup of guests I've got coming into the station this spring.  If you were in the crowd of hipsters and cowboys and bros (Lucero fans are so damn weird) who caught Cory Branan and Ben Nichols at the Mercy last fall (and GOD if you weren't, you missed out), you may remember the denim-skirted, cowgirl-booted brunette onstage with the boys, all but stealing the show.  That woman is the extremely talented Amanda Shires.  You might know her as Pearl from the Thrift Store Cowboys, who she still plays with, but in 2005 she took her fiddle-playing solo with Being Brave, and she's been playing a bunch of shows with A Band of Men lately around town.  Tomorrow night she plays my favorite East Nashville haunt, the Foobar, and she'll be coming into the radioshow around 4:30 tomorrow, so tune in for a preview.  Amanda's been playing since she was a kid, and she's got that pure southern atmosphere about her that carries over into her songs, honest and classic in that realm of true southern country that's best heard with a few drinks and a few friends.  It'll be perfect for Foobar, which loves its ear-blowing rock and roll shows but has been begging for something a little more refined.  Plus, no cover!  So come by, have a few drinks, say hello, meet Amanda (you'll fall in love.  I promise.), and I'll see you there.  Show starts at 8pm.  

Listen to songs at Amanda's website.

First and Foremost:

It seems my music host has exceeded his bandwidth (reliable much?) so if anyone has suggestions for music hosting sites that are reputable, I'd appreciate it.  In the meantime, I'm going to do what digging I can, try to keep up the (music-less) posting, and do my damnest to get the music back up there.  Bear with me!

Playlist, 1/25

Thanks to everyone who tuned in yesterday!  My trainee Anna did an excellent job on her first show, and you guy will be hearing a lot more from her, so I hope you liked the picks.  I've hosted as many songs as I can, they're all right-click save-as or alt-click on Macs.  

Also, thanks so much to all of you who made it out to The End last night, and to the bands for playing for us.  I had a fabulous time.  Thanks to everyone who chatted with me at the merch table, danced around and sweated with me, let me buy you a beer.  Thanks for putting up with my slightly drunken band introductions (for the record, I didn't know I would be doing that until I was onstage...).  It was a fantastic night, and I met (and re-met) some really terrific people that I'm  hoping to see again soon.  

1. Caribou, "Cherrybomb" from Nelab

2. The Books, "Be Good To Them Always" from Lost and Safe

3. Shipwreck, "Walk in the Woods" from Rabbit in the Kitchen With a New Dress On

4. Happy Birthday Amy, "Bait" from EP

5. Andrew Bird, "Darkmatter" from Armchair Apocrypha

6. Cory Branan, "Miss Ferguson" from The Hell You Say

7. Velcro Stars, "Hiroshima's Revenge" from Hiroshima's Revenge

8. Neutral Milk Hotel, "Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone" from On Avery Island

9.  Modest Mouse, "Baby Blue Sedan" from Building Nothing Out of Something

10. Emma Wallace, "Exceed My Expectations" from A Reason to Stay Up All Night

11. Happy Birthday Amy, "Mystery Scars" from EP

12. The Owls, "Peppermint Patty" from Daughters and Suns

13. Frightened Rabbit, "Go-Go Girls" from Sing the Greys 

14. Kings of Leon, "Fans" from Because of the Times

15. Menomena, "Wet and Rusting" from Friend and Foe (R)

16. Chromeo, "Call Me Up" from Fancy Footwork

17. Daft Punk, "Face to Face" from Discovery

18. Makeup & Vanity Set, "This Is It" from Charles Park

19. Justice, "Waters of Nazareth" from [cross]

20. Ratatat, "Wildcat" from Classics

21. Junior Boys, "Double Shadow" from So This Is Goodbye

22. Four Tet, "As Serious As Your Life" from Rounds

23. Mstrkrft, "Neon Knights" from The Looks

24. Simian Mobile Disco, "I Believe" from Attack Decay Sustain Release

Lylas returns from the undead! Also, tune in tomorrow!

!!! 

Nashville lovelies Lylas, who I had all but given up on, have been covertly recording a record to be released this year, entitled Do You Believe in Blood?  New songs are up on their myspace, and they're playing a show (the first Nashville one in how long?) next month with Evangelicals and Headlights over at The End.  (February 17th!  Be there!)

I've had a soft spot for these boys ever since they came on my show back when it was just a baby, charmed me, I kinda sorta fell in love, and then they sealed the deal by dedicating "The Virgin Annie" to me at a couple of shows.  Plus, I run into Luke everywhere I go in Nashville, and Kyle every time I leave Nashville.  Our paths are intertwined.  

2006's Lessons for Lovers was a dark merry-go-round of whimsy and morbidity, skeletons in smocked dresses and poets drunk on poison and moonshine.  The cover art says it all:  four full-skirted, coloring-book dancers, twirling circles around their decapitated partners.  Just when Kyle starts to creep into the realm of the sweet, he reminds you that Lylas is not here to write you a love song.  At least, not the one you're thinking of.  My one complaint:  at a cool thirty-five minutes, sixteen songs, six of which are two minutes or under, Lessons never really reads like an album, but more like a collection.  The non-filler songs are delightful in their own right, whether the sinister "No Seance for Sweetheart", the eerie, orchestral "Teenage Phantasm", or of course, my favorite, the dreamer's ballad, "The Virgin Annie."

This next album offers a chance for the Lylas boys to step up to the plate and make the complete album their music's been calling for.  Do away with the thirty-second interludes.  Don't worry about themes.  Tell us the whole story, the poignant bits and pieces that have been building up.  Unveil!

The boys are also looking for a label to release this album, so if you're a label sort or know some label sorts, shoot an email their way or my way and I can pass it along.

Below are two songs from last time they came in the station, one of which looks to become the title track for this year's album!  I'm gonna try to get them in again this spring if possible.  (Also, look to the right for all the currently in-the-works in-stations coming up--Amanda Shires, Amy LaVere, Nite Nite, Meemaw, Caitlin Rose, more to come!)  Enjoy!

LYLAS on Antennas to Heaven:

"Do You Believe in Blood?"

"My Sleepwalking Summer"

Also, tune in tomorrow for lots of excitement:

-Wilco ticket giveaways!  (see below)

-Fiery Furnace ticket giveaways!  (see below)

-meet my trainee Anna, who is almost definitely cooler than I am.

-listen to all the sweet music you can hear tomorrow night at The End!

Last week was also one of the first weeks ever that I've been able to fulfill all my requests, so I'm gonna try to keep at up!  321-ROCK, 422-ROCK, 615 area code, wrvuradio on AIM.  See you there.

Velcro Stars, Makeup & Vanity Set, Happy Birthday Amy!: Where are you going to be on Friday Night?

As I've been saying again and again, we've got a show coming up on Friday that's going to be an excellent chance for all you Nashvillians to catch a slew of local bands that you may or may not have had the chance to see yet, all with quite different esthetics.  Read below to see the treats we've got in store for you.

In addition to the music, don't forget I'll be giving away a pair of tickets to the totally sold-out Wilco show at the Ryman on 3/2.  TOTALLY SOLD OUT.  Read the post below for the details, but you've gotta call into the radioshow this Friday (4-6pm) or be one of the first twenty people at the End that night to get your name entered!  We'll be doing the same thing for the Fiery Furnaces show, which, while not sold out, is going to be a great one.

Plus, I'll be dancing.  And sometimes when I get all dancy, I start buying strangers drinks.  No promises.  But it happens.

And now, the music.....

*In my quest to get music together for this show I had the pleasure to meet the entire Happy Birthday Amy crew (who confessed that they're fans of the radioshow, which is terrific) in the crowded mess of Cafe Coco, where they charmed me entirely and I got ahold of their latest EP, a bouncy, jumpy ball of piano-wit wailed by Amy Smith (of The Protomen & Jared Micah & Hats) bowed by her husband Dillon (of The Ascent of Everest, Noir Test, & Jared Micah & Hats) and banged by Miles Cramer (of...well okay, he doesn't have any side projects, give him a break).  Spiraling cymbal crashes and boundless energy.  Delightful.

HBA: "Bait", "Mystery Scars" 

**Out of Murfreesboro, Velcro Stars are playful, nostalgic, heartfelt, sometimes haunting.  A sound that is undoubtedly youthful, but not without skill.  These songs are from Hiroshima's Revenge, the latest full-length, out on our very own Grand Palace Records.  The title track is sweeping, basic rhythms overcome by the energy of chins up, fists up, eyes to the sky.  

VS: "Hiroshima's Revenge", "Another Winter"

Makeup & Vanity Set boomed into my life when he opened for The Protomen (see the connections being drawn? no?  see above.) at The End.  Complete dance-electro mixes, all vocal-less, techno influence best played in a dark basement packed with beer and sweat.  (Okay, I'm biased, but I've seen him play in such a setting and my dance moves have never been so inspired.)  His shows are always full of energy, done mostly on the spot, mixed by Matthew Pusti donning a ski mask and helped along by "MTV, crack cocaine, and JC Penney catalogs", along with whatever friends he's got on hand.

M&VS: "No One Gets Out Alive", "This Is It"

Bonus: Makep & Vanity Set take on The Protomen--"Vengeance?"

*Photo by Jonathan Kingsbury Photography

**Photo by Laura Leigh Smith, www.acebangup.com 

You're blowing my mind, internet.

Apparently I have international readers.  Which (I hope) means maybe I have international listeners to the radioshow.  Maybe?

So hey, who are you, strangers?*  Where are you from?  How did you stumble upon this little site?  Have you heard the radioshow?  Would you like to hear the radioshow?  What music do you like?  Do you have a band?  Would you like to start a band?  I know a few people who play instruments.  I could get you talking. 

It's lonely on this side of the line.  As a WRVU DJ  you very rarely actually know who your listeners are, or if they exist, or if there are six of you or six hundred of you.  We love it when the phones ring.  We're not allowed to say that on air.

This is the great thing about having a blog to go along with the radioshow.  I can curse!  I can tell you to call in!  I can say GO TO THIS SHOW IT'S GOING TO BE SO GOOD without getting kicked off the station!

*(Please don't feel you need to be international to answer these questions.  I like nearly all strangers.  It's true.)

Black Before Red

I have to say thanks to Austin (and Matt McCarroll) once again for throwing my way what promises to become one of my favorite albums of the year, although it's really a 2006 release that never made much of a ripple here in Nashville.  That unto itself is a complete tragedy.  Belgrave to King's Circle is a string-picking, hand-clapping, electric acoustic meld of music that starts marking itself into your lazy mornings, your busy afternoons, your dancing evenings.  Music that becomes a part of your year.  Music that stays with you.  "Underneath Gold" kicks it off with a Broken Social Scene "Stars and Sons"-esque energy, the kind of dance music you're not sure you should be dancing to.  "Matagorda" is a crooning, piano-driven ballad, flowing into "Our Last Summer", a quick two minutes of echoing guitar riffs and Beach Boys refrains.  You'll have to pick up the album to catch that one, as well as the quirky, soaring "Bosa Nova #7", my personal favorite.  And you should be picking up the album.  Instead of a thriller borne of the fickle energy of debuts, Belgrave promises bigger and better things to come.  I've only one complaint: at a quick 33 minutes, I've got the whole thing memorized already.  When's the next one, boys?

Black Before Red:

"Underneath Gold"

"Matagorda"

"Goddess in Trauma"

"Teenage America"

Playlist, 1/18

Thanks to everybody who tuned in yesterday and for all the excellent requests!  If you missed it, here's what you need to know:

My show will be from 4-6pm on Fridays this semester, so tune in a little earlier next week!

Next week I'll be taking names to give away a pair of tickets to the (sold-out) Wilco show, and a pair of guest passes to the Fiery Furnaces show.  To win those, you need to do one of two things:

1) Call in during my show AND come to the WRVU Benefit that night

2) Be one of the first twenty-five people at the WRVU Benefit that night

Keep in mind, the Fiery Furnaces show is 21+, so please don't try to win tickets if you're not 21.  Good luck getting in  underage to the Mercy, their doormen are mindreaders.  I believe the Wilco show is all ages.

Either of those things will get you on the list to win tickets, and I'll be giving them away during the show that night!  The WRVU Benefit happens at The End, at 9pm, with Velcro Stars, Makeup & Vanity Set, Happy Birthday Amy, and Another Side of Bob Jasmin.  It's only five bucks & profits go to the radiostation, so  you've no excuse to be staying hom on Friday night.  I'll do a full preview post in a few days, but in the meantime, mark your calendars.

Here's this week's show.  Enjoy!  All songs are right-click save as or alt-click on Macs.  Sorry I can't host every single one of them, but I'm sure some will show up again.  Also, (R) means it was a request.

1. Múm, "There Is a Number of Small Things"

2. Rock Plaza Central, "When We Go, How We Go (Part I)"

3. The Dodos, "Nerds"

4.  Luna, "Ihop"

5.  Ferraby Lionheart, "Small Planet" (R)

6.  Kings of Convenience, "I'd Rather Dance With You"

7.  Mary Epworth and the Jubilee Band, "The Saddle Song"

8.  Once and Future Kings, "I Must Be in a Womb" (R)

9.  Magnetic Fields, "California Girls"

10.  Yo La Tengo, "Stockholm Syndrome"

11.  Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, "Baltimore"

12.  Frightened Rabbit, "Behave!"

13.  Emma Wallace, "A Reason to Stay Up All Night"

14.  Imogen Heap, "Hide & Seek" (R)

15.  Watery Graves of Portland, "Ce que je vais faire plus tard"

16.  Midlake, "Roscoe" (R)

17.  Ruby Isle, "Aly, Walk With Me" (cover)

18.  Meat Puppets, "Paradise"

19.  Makeup and Vanity Set, "Vengeance?"

20.  Black Before Red, "Underneath Gold"

21.  Shipwreck, "Devils"

22.  Ween, "Blue Balloon" (R)

23.  Rock Plaza Central, "When We Go, How We Go (Part II)"

24.  Luna, "City Kitty"

25.  Lylas, "Star of the Family Portrait"

26.  We Will Build, "Pandaemonium"

Minimix: Something about a deserted island and your only five bands

First and foremost:

Tune in to the show tomorrow from 5-6pm for your weekly indie salvation.  It's 91.1 FM for locals, wrvu.org for anyone else.  The realplayer is kind of squeamish, so if she doesn't work, give her a few tries.  And give me a call at 322-ROCK or 421-ROCK (ROCK = 7625) if you want to hear something, or IM me at wrvuradio or annieweisner during the show and harass me and keep me company.  

Tonight at the Yo La Tengo show (yeah, more to come on that tomorrow, but it was great so thanks again to the stranger who made sure I got my ticket on time) I remembered being asked a lot of ridiculous music-limiting questions in high school to the tune of "If you were stuck on a deserted island / were the last person on earth / got locked in a cellar and could only listen to three albums / ten songs / five bands, what would they be?"

The album and song limitations I still have a hard time with, but I've mostly got my five bands sorted out and solidified.  I return to the ones that have stuck it out with me, that have reemerged at crucial points in my youth, 

So since you probably already own a bit of music by the following five bands (and if you don't, you should reassess your life and see if there's an ache of unfulfillment, since clearly you've been missing out) I'm going to try to give you a song by each that you  may not already have your hands on.  Enjoy:

To the left is me, around age sixteen, in Dragon Park, with something like fruit-rollups stuck to my head.  Charming.

1) Built to Spill, "Girl" (from The Normal Years)

Itty bitty newborn Built to Spill gets a little stripped down and teenage in a way they won't really ever return to.  There is in fact no percussion of any sort in this entire song.  The Normal Years is also notable since the original version of "Car" appears on this album after showing up on There's Nothing Wrong With Love and claiming its spot as potentially my favorite song ever.  

2) Yo La Tengo, "Upside-Down"

From 1992's May I Sing With Me, which I in fact do not own, but I grabbed this single at an outdoor Grimeys sale when I was seventeen or so, little knowing the gem I had in my hands.  What fool would not bring YLT on a deserted island with them?

3) Luna, "City Kitty" (from Pup Tent)

Classic dark sexy Luna.  Pup Tent has become a recent favorite of mine after grabbing a used copy for five bucks and having nothing but a CD player from the early nineties hooked up through an adaptor in the cassette deck of my car for five weeks.  It restarts every time you hit a bump, so it's good the beginning of the album's so damn good.  But really, this song proves, in case you had any doubt in your mind, that Luna do in fact know how to break it down.

4) Cinerama, "Tie Me Up" (from Torino)

So my Cinerama catalogue is not that impressive, but since every one of David Gedge's songs is about sex, I went for one that was excessively so.  Do not play this track for your children.  Do play this track for your girlfriend.  Follow it with "Lollobrigida".  You won't even need roses and candles.  David Gedge--best wingman ever.  "Anything that you want to do, I'll do it."

5) The Who, "We're Not Gonna Take It (Alternate Version)" (from Tommy)

Six minutes of somewhat reshaped goodness from the rock opera that I thought I was so cool to know about.  I bought cassettes of The Who in high school because they were ungodly cheap and I was the only person around who still had a cassette deck, and my copy of Tommy got an upgrade a few Christmases ago to the brand new DELUXE edition.  I still kind of think disc two of the deluxe edition is kind of a stretch.  Some of the alternate versions are little more than longer, instrumental takes on the originals, so unless you're a die-hard, its probably not worth the extra cash.  

BONUS!

Luna, "Ihop" (from Pup Tent)

I was only going to give you "Kitty City", but I just really need you all to revel in the first fifty-three seconds of this song with me.  

We Will Build: In celebration of mania

We Will Build stumbled into my life sometime during my first month as a DJ, at my request for some good talk-break music to keep the energy going between sets.  It's a grave misstep, however, to suggest that We Will Build is in any way background music--they're far too manically energized to remain the backdrop.

We Will Build is joy and bright lights, dancing in fields and drunk stargazing.  They're saturated with blips and bleeps and glitches-turned to drumbeats, the earthy crunch of cymbals and the aquatic echo of timpany.  Their latest album, This Is Necessary, draws them away from the sheer brightness of their first (called just Untitled Collection on the site), throwing in more loops and whorls and what can really only be called a breakdown.  It's suited to the kind of dancing that's really  more flailing limbs, out of breath, explosive expressions of youth.

In the age where every afterthought has a blog post, there's precious little to be found online about We Will Build.  You can check out their website to download their full catalog of music, including Liphe Sonuds, an improvisational album sans any sort of instrument in the conventional sense of the word, and stocked instead with captured sounds via a gritty tape recorder.  Other than that and a few dead YouTube videos, there's really not much to be read.  I'm somewhat charmed by We Will Build's seeming lack of concern about whether the world at large has any idea what they're doing with themselves.  Their news feed hasn't been updated since August, and the only sign of life is the erratic comments on their Yellbox that hint at a new album to come soon.  They could live down the street or across the world.  They could have six new albums ready to come out or have not touched an instrument since this summer.  I've no idea.

It just goes to show: don't judge a band by its Wikipedia page.

We Will Build, "Pandaemonium"

We Will Build, "Dirk" 

We Will Build, "Out These Doors Inside"