Mp3s: Ben Gibbard in Somerville, MA
Posted on May 14, 2007 at 10:49 am | No Comments
Ben Gibbard brought his guitar, piano, and a couple touring friends (openers Johnathan Rice and David Bazan) to town last week for the fourth date of his in-progress solo tour. The guys hit the sold-out, 900-seat Somerville Theatre, and I nearly missed it. The morning those tickets went on sale, I happened to be knocked out with a serious flu virus, and by the time I gathered my wits and remembered what day it was, they were long gone. But thanks to a same-day favor from a friend, I fortunately found myself there on Monday, May 7th for all three acoustic sets.
For now, here’s Ben’s entire Somerville performance. He’s been playing a mix of Death Cab For Cutie, Postal Service, and older solo songs, as well as a rotation of covers (we were treated to Donovan, Neil Young, and Nirvana) and the occasional new one. I’m usually hesitant to share up unreleased new songs, but with the ubiquitousness of shaky YouTube videos, I figured maybe it’s better to see some high-ish quality live versions make their way out there. I’ll hopefully be sharing up David Bazan’s set next week…
Live at the Somerville Theatre
in Somerville, Massachusetts
on Monday, May 7th, 2007
01. To Sing For You (Donovan) / Brand New Colony
02. Why You’d Want To Live Here
03. Photobooth
04. We Will Become Silhouettes
05. Title & Registration
06. Crooked Teeth
07. You Remind Me Of Home
08. Casino Blues (new)
09. Passenger Seat
10. Soul Meets Body
11. Thin Ice (new)
12. banter 1
13. Recycled Air
14. banter 2
15. A Lack Of Color
16. banter 3
17. Sound Of Settling
18. Such Great Heights
19. Harvest Moon (Neil Young)
20. 405
21. All Apologies (Nirvana)
22. I Will Follow You Into The Dark
For those keeping score, that’s 3 covers, 10 Death Cab For Cutie songs, 4 Postal Service songs, a couple new solo numbers, and an older solo cut from the split “Home” EP with American Analog Set‘s Andrew Kenny.
Some Gibbard-related links…
His own (not yet finished) solo website, Wikipedia entry, and the main Death Cab For Cutie site. Mp3s: From Ben’s performance a few days later at the 9:30 Club in DC, which was broadcast live on NPR, here are a couple live songs for ya… Ben Gibbbard – Farmer Chords (live)
(another of Ben’s songs from that excellent split EP with Andrew Kenny)Ben Gibbbard – Couches in Alleys (live)
(originally a collaboration with Styrofoam).To hear that entire NPR broadcast, head to this All Songs Considered page
where you can stream it or download one big honkin’ Mp3 file. UPDATE 5/19: Word from NPR is that Ben’s management only wants his set available for a limited time, so they’ve now shared it as part of the ASC podcast, which you can grab by subscribing over here (iTunes podcast link / mp3 link). Knowing that’s their preference, please note that I’ll only be offering up my shared mp3s above for a short time as well.Usually NPR posts the setlists for the shows they share, but for some reason they haven’t for Ben’s. So I’ll do it for you…
Ben Gibbard at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC on May 10th, 2007: To Sing For You, Brand New Colony, Title & Registration, Crooked Teeth, We Will Become Silhouettes, Photobooth, Why You’d Want To Live Here, Passenger Seat, Soul Meets Body, Recycled Air, Farmer Chords, Couches in Alleys, A Lack of Color, Sound of Settling, Such Great Heights, Blacking Out the Friction, All Apologies, I Will Follow You Into The Dark.
And remember, since Ben & the rest of Death Cab have given permission for their material to be shared on the Live Music Archive, you can find a ton of DCFC live shows over there.
Video: Dozens of live Gibbard clips can be found with a YouTube search. Stereogum shared three YouTube vids recorded by msquared64 at the Somerville show, with clips for “All Apologies“, “Thin Ice“, and “Casino Blues“, and Pitchfork shared a bunch of photos as well. The Gibbard/Bazan/Rice train rolls on for just six more dates, with stops in Dallas tonight, Austin, L.A., San Fran, and Portland this week, and two homecoming shows in Seattle on Sunday and Monday. Details on each show are here. Listen to all ‘Nac-hosted tracks on the Hype Machine.
the post-script… If anyone has an issue with these Mp3s being made available, just let me know (my contact info in the ‘nac faq). Live sets recorded with a Sony ECM-719 mic and a Sony MZ-RH10 minidisc, converted to .wav and then edited to 192kbps Mp3s. Files are made available for a limited time, and are not reposted once removed.
Free For All: the new Saturnine album
Posted on May 10, 2007 at 5:29 am | No Comments
It’s with real pleasure that I’m able to play a part in helping Saturnine get their latest and last full-length offering out into the world: “Remembrance of Things Past” is the band’s sixth and final album, and rather than release it through traditional (i.e. physical) means, they’ve decided to share it digitally, and free of charge, under a Creative Commons license. The entire eight-song, forty-five minute album is available for download below, as well as on the Internet Audio Archive and any other blogs who want to join in.
Saturnine circa 1997:
Original guitarist Jennifer Baron, Mike Donofrio, Matt Gallaway, & Jim Harwood
Since their formation in NYC in 1994, Saturnine has always had a literary element to their music, expressed in certain song titles, lyrics, and themes, but “Remembrance of Things Past” takes things a step further: It’s a concept album, based on French writer Marcel Proust’s famed work of the same name (titled in French, “A la Recherche du Temps Perdu”, and also translated as “In Search of Lost Time”), with Saturnine singer Matt Gallaway playing Marcel’s role of the narrator, and vocalist Frances Gibson of seminal Australian band The Cannanes as his lover, Albertine.
Saturnine circa 2000:
Jim Harwood, Mike Donofrio, John Pisani, & Matt Gallaway
Guitarist/vocalist Gallaway, bassist Mike Donofrio (The New Year), guitarist John Pisani (Cookie Galore), and drummer Jim Harwood recorded the music and Matt’s “Marcel” vocals for “RoTP” in May-June 2004 at The Echo Lab in Denton, TX, with Matthew Barnhardt at the studio desk. After continued sonic tweaking, the songs were shipped off to Sydney, Australia, where Gibson added her “Albertine” vocals and sent them on their way back to the band. The mixed and mastered results are what is shared here. While the band is now geographically dispersed, and are viewing this as their final release, they’re not ruling out a certain alignment of stars that would allow them to play these songs in front of an audience someday. It was originally conceived as a rock opera, after all, so some kind of eventual staging would bring it full circle…
“Remembrance of Things Past”
Released on Victoria Land Records in 2007 under an
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Creative Commons License
01. “Marcel Remembers The Summer He Met Albertine”
02. “Later, At A Bar”
03. “Albertine”
04. “Marcel Remembers He Tried To Stop His Obsession For Albertine”
05. “I Can’t Shake Her From My Mind”
06. “Some Months Later, At A Club In New York City,
Marcel Sees Albertine Dancing With Another Girl
(With Whom He Suspects She Is Having An Affair)
And Leaves, Jealous And Upset”
07. “Later, On A Walk Together”
08. “Later, Albertine Alone At The Apartment”
Download all eight 192kbps Mp3s
as one 58MB zip file
Download higher quality versions of each song at
the Internet Music Archive
Here’s a list of all five of Saturnine’s previous discs and their release years, along with an Mp3s of my favorite song from each…
Autoguider
(1994 Dirt Records, released as “Saturnine 60”)
Mp3: “Almost Impossible“
Wreck at Pillar Point
(1995 Dirt Records)
Mp3: “Ground Truth“
Flags for Unknown Territories
(1996 Dirt Records)
Mp3: “Palomar“
Mid the Green Fields
(1998 Victoria Land Records)
Mp3: “The Raven“
American Kestral
(1999 Motorcoat Records)
Mp3: “Old Flowers“
Pleasure of Ruins
(2002 Motorcoat Records)
A final note for my fellow music bloggers: feel free to link to or share these Mp3s however you please…