[Live MP3s] Chisel Live in Vermont 1994
Posted on January 10, 2005 at 1:04 pm | No Comments
The first Burlingtonitus Fest took place in April, 1994 up in Burlington, Vermont, and we were lucky enough to have Chisel (Ted Leo, Chris Norborg, John Dugan, and, um, Poof Dog) in the lineup.
I’m slightly hesitant to let this set out into the world, only because the recording comes from on old vhs tape, originally funneled through the single microphone of a crappy videocamera, and by today’s standards sounds pretty freakin’ rough. The guys were also unveiling new songs, so the set was a bit loose at times. That said, I think the good outweighs the sketchy, and it’s worth hearing for Chisel fans and Ted followers. Plus, hey, there’s a Jam cover. So here it is, warts and all…
Chisel
live at Burlingtonitus I
April 16th, 1994 at 242 Main
Burlington, Vermont
[ download set as one .zip file ]
01. My First Resume
02. Sunburn
03. Bliss
04. Waffle House
05. Little Gidding
06. Chiefs
07. Start! (Jam cover)
08. 1 in 10
09. 3 O’Clock High
News of Mary Timony‘s next album & tour should be appearing any day now (“early 2005” was the last word), so in the meantime, grab a couple of unreleased mp3s over at her site. And stop by Poison Moon, the ultra-complete Mary T. fansite.
Speaking of fansites, More Cowbell has started up a place called Us Kids Know for fans of The Arcade Fire. (courtesy chromewaves)
I’ve been trapped in the house by a nasty flu for going-on four days now, finally dragging myself into work against my better judgement. I used the downtime not only to finish up Half-Life 2, but to dive deep into Podcasting, figuring out the best application for downloading (so far, it’s DopplerRadio, no question), and seeing what’s out there for good, solid Podcasts. So far, lots of noise, not enough signal.
But I was very happy to discover that Brainwashed has their own Podcast. Hosted by Jon Whitney, there’s a bunch of good music to be found in there. I’ll also have to take some time to listen to the few Boston-area Podcasts listed over at Boston Online.
If you’ve been Podcast-shy, it’s easier than you think to get up to speed. Just download Doppler, find some Podcast addresses, and plug ’em into it. Audio files will be downloaded to your machine (and synced up to your iPod or other audio device) when you specify. Simple.
I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a weekly Podcast, an hour-long chunk of music & assorted randomness, maybe even tied into ExploitBoston!, spotlighting Boston bands and touring bands coming to town. Or maybe just stuff I like. Like I have the freetime, though. Hmmm. Sooz, we should chat again. 🙂
So the long-rumored, makes-me-nervous Ian Curtis biopic is full speed ahead. And it’s in very good hands. From World in Motion:
“Celebrated rock photographer Anton Corbijn � most renowned for his work with U2 – has been confirmed as the director of the movie. It is his first time as a film director. Deborah Curtis, the widow of Ian Curtis, and former Factory Records boss Anthony Wilson will both have executive producer roles on the film.
The film�s working title is �Control� and is based on Deborah Curtis� touching book account of Ian�s life �Touching From A Distance�. A film documenting Curtis� life had been planned for a number of years, but Curtis� family had never been happy with the proposals until now.”
I’ve always loved Corbijn’s eye, so I have no doubt it’ll look great, and he’ll also have something to prove if he’s hoping for a career in directing, being his first film and all. With Curtis’ widow involved, I’m pretty optimistic about the story, too. Fingers are crossed.
Y’know, of all the shocking and heart-punching images that have come out of the tsunami disaster, none showed me the true impact more than this one. Go there, then click the ‘After’ button at the top. Absolutely insane.
Steve Williams (guitarist for My First Days On Junk, Magic Is Gone, Colin Clary & the Magogs) has published his first book, “Fight For Your Frequency“, 144 pages of collected poetry. The description…
“26-year-old introverted shoegazer with no self esteem seeks the best girl in the world. Must have own headphones.
Fight For Your Frequency is more than just a volume of poetry. It’s a cautious love letter, shy and introspective. And even though the topics of reflection are often written about (love, self-doubt, getting the girl) Steven Williams attacks these subjects in his own thoughtfully unpretentious way. From a cross-country trip with a girl with wind blown hair to springtime Sunday evenings, you’ll fell like you’re in the middle of a pretty song that you never want to end.”
You can buy it from Barnes & Noble here, Amazon here, or direct from the publisher here.
Big-time parental congratulations are in order for John & Audrey, who welcomed little Evelyn Demers Cahill into the world just one week ago, on January 3rd. Mom, baby, and dad are all well, and getting used to, as John put it, “sleepless, poopy nights”. As Sailor says, that’s rockin’ good news.
Heads up: I’ll be doing some serious housecleaning here on the ‘Nac in the next couple weeks, removing a ton of pictures and audio files, so it may be your last chance to download many of the mp3s listed here and here. If you miss out on something, I’ll still be trading for live & rare discs over here.
And, lastly, a big happy birthday shout-out to my mom, the she who begat the me. If all the traffic to this place disappeared, I know she’d still be the last one reading.
Oh Five
Posted on January 4, 2005 at 3:33 pm | No Comments
So 2004 certainly smacked us around on the way out the door, with a punch to the gut of a presidential election, then a kick to the axis with the South Asian / East African nightmare. The after-effects of those two far-different disasters will be felt for years…
But this is a brand new one (the WB would call it ‘fresh’), so we move on, the hopeful making resolutions. Nothing really changes when the calendar does, just perception, maybe we get some extra motivation. Things come into focus, other things fade for awhile. I’m using it to get myself more organized, to tackle little projects too-long ignored, to dig into details while looking at the larger picture of my life. Taking stock. I feel like this could be a year of both small accomplishments and major changes for me. We’ll see what I have to say here in another 360-ish days.
Neil Gaiman eloquently expressed his New Year’s wishes for all back in 2001, and he shares them again this year:
“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t to forget make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.“
I’m still working on my year-end lists… but it’s not like there’s a lack of other ones for you to read, right? The so-called ‘blog explosion’ of 2004 has insured that. I’ve read so many like-minded ones that my own are feeling all the more redundant… but in the end I pull them together for myself, to read years down the road. So I’ll get ’em done.
In the meantime, there’s all this stuff…
So sad to hear this morning that the “father of the graphic novel”, Will Eisner, has passed away. In his late eighties and still working. Read the full story at Newsarama. What more can you say about a man that had the comics industry awards named after him while he was still alive? Read Neil Gaiman’s words on the man here. A true legend has left us.
Boston-based band The Information are set to release their first full-lengther “Mistakes We Knew We Were Making” later this month, and they’ve got a couple songs up on their website for preview action. If you signed up for their mailing list last month, you got a link to a third one, “I Lose Control“, but even if you missed out, a link to it should be up with their site’s imminent relaunch. Keep an eye out.
Rumor has it that the new Wedding Present disc, “Take Fountain“, has leaked to certain file-sharing networks (wow, it’s so good). Regardless, I’ll be outside the record store on February 14th, the morning that sucker’s released… and if I had my way, it’d be declared a holiday. Well, one we get off from work, at least.
I appreciate the irony of a pile of Gedge-penned songs appearing in stores on Valentine’s Day. Very few can capture relationship-related disappointment better than that man.
Speaking of the Weddoes, the BBC has posted video of their performance at last month’s Keep It Peel tribute to dearly departed DJ John Peel, at which they played “Dare“, “The Queen of Outer Space“, and “What Have I Said Now?“. You can also check out video from Damon Albarn & Graham Coxon while you’re there. Aces. Hopefully more (PJ Harvey, Belle & Sebastian) will follow.
TV and Tech-heads are all abuzz with the news yesterday that, after a year of waiting, TiVoToGo has at last been released. It allows us TiVo users to archive recorded shows onto our comupters. Or, rather, it will allow us to do that once our TiVo gets updated with the new software. But who knows when that will be?
Just before I heard the news, I was trying to figure out how the hell I was gonna record and save the entire Red Sox World Series Winter that started last night on NESN. Every game from the 1975 World Series against the Reds (I was only 6 years old, so I’m so psyched to see it all), every game from the 1986 Mets series (not sure I want to relive that one), and then all 11 games from last year’s defeat of the Yankees and the Cards. No way I can fit all those onto my TiVo, so on Sunday I was thinking “…if only TiVoToGo was ready.” 12 hours later and whaddya know? Woulda been nice if they’d waited until their subscriber’s machines were auto-updated before announcing it, though, or even until the record-to-DVD function was ready.
So I signed up for the “priority upgrade” on one of our machines. Curious to see if that actually works.
One of my long-overdue little projects is actually already finished. This past weekend I spent a bunch of time revamping and updating my live & rare cd trade list. It’d been a couple years (!) since I’d added everything I’ve accumulated, and I even went so far as to identify a whole bunch of missing tracklists. Took longer than I’d hoped, and it feels pretty damn good to have it outta the way.
While I was pulling those tracklists together, this came in very handy. Dates and tracklistings for just about every Peel Session since 1992. I hesitate to look through the whole thing… then it’ll just give me more things I need to track down.
Field Mice resissues, you say? Sign me up for one of each, please. I’ve got probably half the songs that’re compiled on those three discs, but it’s just not enough. And while we’re on the subject of Mr. Wratten, I’m loving the due-next-week Trembling Blue Stars disc.
Comic book aficionados take note: Hovy’s got a new blog, and it’s called Trade Whore. If you don’t know what he means by “Trade” (hint: he doesn’t mean ‘swap’), then you may not be interested. But ya never know.
A mild shock for those who know me (and who understand how little I know about the NFL): My fantasy football team, the Boston Blitzers, actually won my league’s Superbowl this past Sunday. I crushed the NYC-based City Slickers for the championship, and took special satisfaction in beating the Texas Hillbillies earlier on.
I certainly didn’t expect this, especially after losing the first four games of the year… I’m actually in the thing just so I don’t feel left out when my extended family talks about it (my sister, my dad, Amie, my brother-in-law, and his family are all in it, too). The fact that my team won it all just baffles me. And shows that it might all be kinda random.
And how did Amie’s Allston City Rockers do? Well, she won $25 for… the lowest point total of the season. And she actually won the first four games of the year. Like I said… I’m not sure there’s a whole lotta actual skill involved. I’m just kinda glad the winnings are coming to our house.
I’ll end this post with some major congratulations to good friends…
Little Holly arrived on this earth one week ago last night, straight into the open arms of Matt & Mary, her proud parents. Friends (and stalk-ish strangers) can check out her progress over at the Daddypad. Amie and I got to meet the little peanut on New Year’s Eve, and she’s even cuter in person than she is in pics…
I sure hope she digs those Elizabeth Mitchell albums. Or that they at least put her to sleep.
In other notable congratulatory news… we were lucky enough to attend the wedding of our pals Tom & Katie on New Year’s Day. Such a great time, a perfect way to start off the year, among their smiling friends & family. Even without the make-your-own-sundae bar (so good!), it still woulda rocked.
There’ve never been two people more meant to be together. Congrats, you two.
You may have noticed I set myself up on Flickr. All the cool photo-taking kids are doing it, right? I’ll probably be putting most of my digital pics up there, although I wish the free accounts allowed more sets… $60 a year is kinda pricey. I still gotta decide if I’m going to update my own neglected photo pages. Another project added to the list.
(hey, if you tried to email me at all this morning, try again… my regular non-gmail email, and this site, were brought down by an MCI outage. s’all better now.)