Hey, I have to extend the Win Brett Dennen's DVD/CD and T-Shirt because I got a few late entries. The final cut-off date is now 3/15/2008 and your chances of winning are basically 1 out of 14. These odds are really good. Much better than the state's lottery.
Also, I love Dereks' comment about Russian orphan boys so much that I've decided to mention it here, since many of you probably missed it the first time around. They were in response to Steklovata.
| Dereks wrote:
Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 6:31 AM
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[this is good] Oh-ho-ho-ho))))))
Well, since I Russian is literally my second native language (Ukraine is fully bilingual), I can tell you a lot.
Basically, I don't know who exactly discovered them, but on the Runet, they became something like a big meme. Like Tay Zonday's Chocolate Rain.
You know, in general they are nothing special at all. They band is just another example of "Ласковый Май" (Laskoviy May / Gentle May) trend that exploded at the down of the USSR era. Laskoviy May was purely commercial project. One producer created a band of orphan boys with very tearful luscious glossy lyrics. In general it was a normal success of another pop-band. But since all the boys were of pre-pubertal age, all of them had almost similar high voices. You just needed another boy under the age of 12 with basic musical skills and he would sound indistinguishable from the original "Laskoviy Maj". Thus by the end of the 80's there were literally dozens of same bands of orphan boys performing all over Russia. Sometimes they even went under the same names.
So Steklovata is part of that "orphan-band" movement, which still sometimes emerges in small province cities. But their feature, that turned them into a meme is their name. Steklovata in Russian means "glass wool". As you see, it's nothing sweet and glossy in that title. Moreover, they have a song, which goes under the same title. The lyrics in translation are something like that:
It's all your own fault, you're thorny like glass wool, glass wool, glass wool, our love turned to be evil, 'cause you're like glass wool.
Also they are using some elements of low-class language, criminal slang, which also promoted them to their success (in terms of becoming a meme, of course).
I love reading about music that I know nothing about - so this is the kind of stuff I really love hearing about.
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04/08/08 Great American Music SF, CA
04/10/08 The Aladdin Portland, Oregon 04/11/08 The Triple Door Seattle, WA 04/13/08 The Paradise Boston, MA 04/14/08 Bowery Ballroom New York 04/16/08 World Cafe Live Philadelphia,PA 04/18/08 The Birchmere Washington DC |
I was also recently invited to join IODA. I think the website is private or invite-only currently because it's still in Beta, but it should be interesting to see this takes off.
The idea behind this seems to be for promoting music to influential webmasters and bloggers. They have the usual artist biography and some of them offer 1 or 2 MP3 for download.
Unfortunately, discovering new music is hard for me because there are a lot of artists to shift through. Plus, not all the bands offers sample music, so you literally have no idea what they sound like. Fortunately, there is a check box that will only display artists with sample music (but you do limit your selections of bands).
They do have some "featured" artists that seems to be popular with all the members using the website. Such as Bauhaus (did you know they were still around? and not dead?) and Robots in Disguise.
Anyway, one of the artists I was told to check out is a pretty young woman called China Forbes. The only song that was available was "Everybody Needs Somebody", which actually pretty good. It sort of has that country twang, but that's not a reason to not check out this catchy song.
Upon checking her out some more, I found out that she's the singer of Pink Martini, who recently put out Hey Eugene! and appeared on the Jools Holland show in 2007.
'78 is her second solo album, and judging from that one song, I think her album is going to do very well with her core Pink Martini audience.
You can find out more about her on myspace and her official website.
PS, my new theme for album reviews will be bands on tour. I'm working on the other three artists, but you can head over to ♫ew music for the latest three.
03/08/2008 23:30:34
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