Great Lake Swimmers :: Ongiara

Ongiara is the third full-length album from the Canadian trio, Great Lake Swimmers. Great Lake Swimmers may very well be my favorite band right now, indie-folk at it's pinnacle. Hauntingly melodic and lyrically amazing. They mixed a bit more of an alt. country sound into this album, complimenting Tony Dekker's folkish style nicely. Owen Pallett of Arcade Fire and Final Fantasy contributes the string arrangements along with a handful of other Canadian musicians. If you'll notice, their sound is very "reverby" (I guess you could call it that), that is because they record all their album in big open spaces, giving it a really resonate and somewhat choral sound. This album was recorded in an old theater in London, Ontario.
Here are some samples for you to enjoy, Changing Colours is my favorite song right now.
Ongiara is available on iTunes.
Great Lake Swimmers - Changing Colours
Great Lake Swimmers - Your Rocky Spine

These are great.

Condoleezza Rice To Voyage East

Happy 30th Anniversary Star Wars.

Today, May 25th, 2007 marks the 30th Anniversary of the release date of the very first Star Wars film (Episode IV). As most of you know, Star Wars has been a huge fascination of mine my whole life. In my youth, my bedroom was tattooed with all things Star Wars and I watched at least one of the films weekly for years and years. During the move (you remember - next to the Sandpeople), I found a bunch of sketchbooks from my younger years and they are filled with X-Wings and Yodas. I can think of at least half a dozen college and high school papers written around the ideals and culture implications associated with Star Wars. Without a doubt the most important film (film series) of a generation, maybe ever -- it influenced the growth of imaginations and creativity of an entire nerd generation and has continued to do so ever since.

There is a rumor that Lucas is going to announce the plans of a new Star Wars film today - but I haven't heard for sure if that is true. I am thinking this may be the first part of a much bigger nerd conspiracy, so I am a tad bit skeptic. Since the beginning, Lucas had been planning to do a third trilogy telling the story of Leia and Han's kids (the next generation of Jedis) and the tragic fall of Luke to the Dark Side. After Episode III, Lucas announced that he was not going to go through with making the final trilogy... but maybe he has changed his mind.

To all my Star Wars buddies past and present (you know who you are) - Happy Anniversary.

Star Wars culture greatness...


can't forget about this guy...

Rodrigo y Gabriela :: Tamacun

Rodrigo y Gabriela are two talented guitarists from Mexico who live in Dublin... which is where they have gained their popularity. Their first album was released in the US last year and it's a whole lot of fun.

Feist :: The Reminder

Broken Social Scene darling Leslie Feist has recently released her highly-awaited sophomore effort, "The Reminder". Her vocals, as always, are incredibly sweet and melodic and production on this album is fantastic. There is a lot of genre mixing going on in here, making for some really interesting, catchy tunes. Definitely one for everyone to own. I really enjoy "Sea Lion Woman" and "My Moon My Man" which you can check out below. In fact "My Moon My Man" has potential to be a pop hit, we will see. Hopefully we'll see a new Stars album soon as well.
Fiest - My Moon My Man

Rush :: YYZ>2112>Tom Sawyer

The gods of nerd rock at their very best. Oh my... I love YYZ! I found a couple clips, but chose this one because it shows them in all their 80's Rush awesomeness! Look at Neil go! They are in Dallas in August - I will be there.

Neil Young :: Live at the BBC, 1971

This is the opening song "Out On The Weekend" from a taping of Neil Young at the BBC Studios in 1971, which is right around the time Harvest came out. I caught this program a while back on BBC America, and it's incredibly good. Here is another song from the show "Man Needs A Maid"... beautiful.
By the way, everyday this week I am going to post a cool musical performance from YouTube that you might not have seen before... so stay tuned.

Victor Wooten :: Norwegian Wood

This is pretty impressive, but not as impressive as Victor's garb - it's tough to pull off a cycling jersey on stage... especially when it is covered with comic book characters.

ACL Festival 2007

Today the lineup for this summer's ACL Festival was released and it looks pretty epic. In fact, I would say that for my personal taste, it's the best lineup ever. Going to make for a fun festival - the best thing: no beat down big billings (i.e. Tom Petty, Van Morrison, Oasis). The main big bills this year: Bjork, Arcade Fire, Wilco, The White Stripes, MMJ, Bloc Party(!), and the only beating - Bob Dylan. There are also a bunch of other standouts I saw including: Midlake, Ghostland Observatory, Blonde Redhead, Spoon, The Decemberists, Regina Spektor, Andrew Bird, Clap Your Hands, Andrew Bird, Bela Fleck, Rodrigo y Garbriela, Peter, Bjorn and John, Lucinda Williams, Asleep at the Wheel, Amy Winehouse, Amos Lee, Yo La Tengo and LCD Soundsystem. Maybe this year I will go ahead and buy tix early. Here is a link to the lineup:: ACL Festival Lineup.
There are a lot of nice options here, but I know that I will probably only check out a few of the bands - it's much better to have a good spot at three good shows than runnning around all day trying to see every band you want in each timeslot. We were talking last year about maybe setting up camp at a smaller stage and just watch a bunch of random bands all day, sounds like a good plan to me.

"I've been David Brent, you've been the best."

Good thing Robocop was in the building.

This could make for a very long Rangers season.

If there were ever a day to bring back LAZER and the awesome track, M.F.F.L., it would be today. We've got our backs against the wall tonight, and there is way too much baseball season left. I am not counting the Mavs out just yet. I think they will pull it together tonight... and there's a small chance they will get the win in Oakland, and then rally back home for game 7. I encourage you to download the track, burn it, and crank it up for the commute home.
LAZER - M.F.F.L.
Here's a shot of CRT-2000 from LAZER.