// Category Archive for: Music

Best Of 2013: Chris Butler of The Waitresses

Photo © Marianne P. Smith

Music: The Front Bottoms, Talon of the Hawk on Bar-None. I used to hope that if was young and in an indie band, that I/we would be like The Replacements. Now, I hope I’d be like these guys. Smart, fast, funny, real.

Food: Jose’s Real Cuban, Bradenton FL. My brother saw a segment on this place on Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives. Too few seats, too many flies for the germophobes. . . order the picadillo and shut up, Clean Freak. 8799 Cortez Rd W, Bradenton, FL 34210, (941) 795-4898

Worst Food: I’m avoiding the Cult of Kale. I don’t care if it’s good for me; it tastes like old socks.

Best Ironic “I Am Old” Moment: The closing block party for Maxwell’s in Hoboken. End of an era, so many good times, blah blah blah, getting old sucks. http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2013/07/maxwells_goes_out_with_a_block_party_bash.html

Personal Magical On-Stage Moment: Winning the Rosendale, NY Gong Show by playing spoons to an a capella version of “My Generation.” Really. I got a trophy and everything.

Movies: 20 Feet From Stardom. Everything else was shit. I had to take my son to so he could keep up with his peers.

Gear: Fender Squier “J. Mascis” Jazzmaster. First new guitar I’ve ever bought. Got it for a trip to London for a one-off gig, thinking if it got smashed by the airline I wouldn’t mind. If this had happened, I would have bawled like a bee-stung baby. A great guitar.

Best Found YouTube Clip: The Kinks in Paris 1965. Wonderful fuckin’ band. Watch before it gets pulled.

Best Roadside Attraction Discovery: The Museum of Jurassic Technology (thank you, Elaine Sokoloff). Key to my heart? Nothing beats a joke idea taken too far. 9341 Venice Blvd, Culver City, CA 90232 (310) 836-6131.

Best Live Show: 15-60-75 (The Numbers Band) record release party and reunion show, The Kent Stage, 11/9/13. Still the baddest band in the land.

Just Desserts: The Complete Waitresses was released by Omnivore Recordings on September 24.

Best Of 2013: Singer/Songwriter Lewis Watson

Photo © Alex Brown

Television:
Breaking Bad
Homeland

Music:
Chance the Rapper, Acid Rap
The 1975, The 1975
Half Moon Run, Dark Eyes
Matt Corby, Resolution EP

I’ve read a lot of the Sherlock Holmes books this year and started—finally—my vinyl collection.

Lewis Watson‘s latest EP, Some Songs With Some Friends, was released December 16 via Warner Music.

Best Of 2013: Paul Casey

2013 was a good year for my interests. Some of the greatest video games I have experienced all came in a bunch. R&B continued its resurgence with both new and legendary musicians, making this year one of the greatest in nearly a decade for human music. Rap has also reached a more interesting place than it has been in a long time with much of the dull-minded aversion to being smooth and beautiful wiped away. Now if you want to hit a nice melody on the chorus you can do it without the fear that you will be removed from the big-cock-I’m-in-a-street gang-and-will-literally-murder-you-and-your-family club. Even when it was aggressive or violent, this year it was from the Miike Takashi School of Creative Perversion.

On the television too, I had a wonderful time with the most original American show in the last decade ending its run on top. Yes, Eastbound & Down (probably) ended Kenny Power’s story as fearlessly as it began. This was not a big movie year for me and while I am sure there are a bunch that I will love when I get around to seeing them—Blue Jasmine, The Counsellor—nothing I have seen this year warrants a recommendation.

Games
Music: Albums
Music: Singles
Television
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Best Of 2013: Melissa Bratcher

I could strictly do a Top Ten list from the albums I’ve reviewed, but surely you’ve read all of those reviews and logged them away in a notebook with “Cool Music—Top Secret” written on the front of it and will later take that notebook to the record store (or computer; that’s okay, too) and buy things and be happy about the choices you’ve made in life.

So instead, I have a different list of things that made me happy to be a human this year, in no actual order.

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Best of 2013: Reed Mathis of Tea Leaf Green

The best concert I saw this year was Iron & Wine at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN in November. Unreal!

Favorite albums of 2013:
Iron & Wine, Ghost on Ghost
Wayne Shorter Quartet, Without a Net
Volcano Choir, Repave
Portugal. The Man, Evil Friends
Elvis Costello & The Roots, Wise Up Ghost
Neko Case, The Worse Things Get. . .
Maria Bamford, Ask Me About My New God!
Page McConnell, Unsung Cities and Movies Never Made
Nathan Moore, Hippy Fiasco Rides Again
James Blake, Overgrown
Atoms for Peace, Amok

Tea Leaf Green‘s latest album, In The Wake, was released on May 14 through Greenhouse Records and Thirty Tigers.

Best of 2013: Singer/Songwriter Willie Nile

Richard Thompson, Electric
James Maddock, Another Life
The Waterboys, Appointment With Mr. Yeats
Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale, Buddy and Jim
The Wallflowers, Glad All Over
Garland Jeffreys, Guts For Love
Del-Lords, Elvis Club
Tegan & Sara, Closer Remixed
Patricia Vonne, Rattle My Cage
Israel Nash, Rain Plans
The Bongos, Numbers With Wings/Beat Hotel

Willie Nile’s latest album, American Ride, was released June 25 from Loud & Proud Records.

Best Music Of 2013: Jeffery X Martin

This is the year I rediscovered electronic music, and not in a Skrillex sort of way, but more like how I felt when I heard Kraftwerk for the first time. Some music veterans came back in new iterations and released some of the best music of their careers. Then, a guy you’ve never heard of recorded an album based on a movie and I felt my brain explode.

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Music Review: Melvins, Tres Cabrones

By Less Lee Moore

Unless you’re a hardcore Melvins fan, you probably didn’t realize that not only have they been around since the ’80s, they’re also one of the more insanely prolific bands of the last few decades, with dozens of albums (including live albums), EPs, and singles, not to mention their many appearances on various compilation and tribute albums, plus near-constant touring. They not only put to bed that tired old chestnut about bands from the ’80s being terrible, they proceed to stay up all night afterwards, getting shit done.

Tres Cabrones, which loosely translates to “Three Fuckers,” is their latest album, but a cohesive long-player it is not. It’s an assemblage of songs previously released on vinyl singles and EPs, a couple of new tracks, and covers of traditional folk songs (yes). If that sounds like a bit of a mess to you, you’d be right, but it’s still quite good. The album does have one unifying thread that also pushes it into “must hear” territory. All the songs include King Buzzo, Dale Crover, and original drummer Mike Dillard (with Crover on bass).

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Waxing Nostalgic: The Best Holiday Songs of the 1980s (and one from the 1970s)

By Jeffery X Martin

Just for a moment, let’s pretend there’s no such thing as the War on Christmas (grow up, people; there’s no such thing as a War on Christmas). No politics, no rigamarole, just happy people, coming together to celebrate . . . I don’t know . . . winter? Can we all live with that? Here’s some music from the 1980s that will help you joyously celebrate whatever Solstice-oriented birthday party of cultures and Temple dedications that you and your family deem fit. Or maybe don’t celebrate anything. I ain’t your momma.

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Best Of 2013: Danny R. Phillips

This is the best/worst time of the year for me. I love year-end lists but I hate compiling them. It is a masochist thing for me: I stress on it, torture myself, then as soon as it is done, I want to change it. I’m never satisfied. For the record, all included here may or not be from 2013. My list contains things I’ve re-discovered throughout the year. It happens. Enough of the bullshit: here it is in no particular order (with exceptions for favorites).

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