Yao Xiao is a familiar site everywhere from pillowfight flashmobs to the ultra-posh Ace Hotel. A rising young illustrator, Yao captures New York life (whether street life or night life) with a lightening fast pen. In our interview below, we talk about the Chinese art scene, style, and hiding in the corners at parties.
Of all the things that are great about this world we live in, pizza, beer and live music are pretty high up on the list. So naturally we had a hard time staying away from Home Slice Pizza during SXSW, where the kegs flowed freely and a veritable cavalcade of doughy, cheesy goodness kept rolling through the plush artist area across from the stage. We also got to chat with John Dragonetti and Blake Hazard of the Submarines after their set, who are equally awesome and thankfully contain far fewer calories than the other aforementioned great things.
John and Blake have been writing songs together for just over ten years now. They’ve also been together together for the same stretch of time, which makes the songs that they write together all sorts of revealing and relatable and wonderful. The title of their latest album is Love Notes/Letter Bombs, which is tongue in cheek wordplay that can be appreciated by anyone who’s been together together with anyone or anything for even half that time. It’s also a near perfect piece of work that uses a little red wagon of sonically rich, melodic pop to transport a load of emotional highs and lows that you can only get from songwriters like Lyle Lovett and Robert Smith. (Stream the entire album here.) The Subs are officially on tour in North America—check the bottom of the post for tour dates—and they officially photograph really well.
S.O.S. we need help….
“Now this is what Detroit’s all about! People coming together to help each other, not luxury cars and Eminem,” shouted Jason Navarro, as The Suicide Machines took the stage.
Saturday night resurrected the ska-core legends as they headlined a sold out benefit show for 29 year old Drew Podgorski. Everyone knows Drew as a staple of the Detroit punk community and an all around solid dude. Last December, a rare stroke left him partially paralyzed and buried beneath medical bills.
Phoenix, AZ (April 8, 2011) — Last night, over 1100 locals packed into The Venue Scottsdale to support some of Phoenix’s top DJ’s competing at Red Bull Thre3Style. The unique format highlighted the eight DJs’ raw talent and passion as they performed to impress the judges and a very vocal and lively crowd. After a long deliberation by the three judges, M2 was named the winner. Coming in second place was Astonish, and in a close third was Circle. M2 is one step closer to making it to the National Finals in Las Vegas as he now has an opportunity to be one of three West Coast qualifying DJs vying for the two open regional spots. The winning DJ from Las Vegas will earn a position to compete at the International Finals in Vancouver, B.C.
Damn, too many this week… Paul Simon returns to the grandiosity of Graceland 25 years later… the other big drop would be Foo Fighters and their Wasting Light…Meat Puppets are still going strong after 30 or so years with Lollipop… Alison Krauss recoups after her successful pairing with Plant and flies solo again in Paper Airplane…and Thursday returns with No Devolucion, whatever that means.
The Apache Relay – American Nomad
Elbow - Build A Rocket Boys! [CD release]
Joan As Police Woman - The Deep Field [CD release]
letlive. - Fake History
Holy Ghost! Holy Ghost! – self titled
k.d. Lang - k.d. Lang And The Siss Boom Bang: Sing It Loud
Rebirth Brass Band - Rebirth Of New Orleans
Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane
Bell X1 - Bloodless Coup
Jessie J - Who You Are
TV On The Radio - Nine Types Of Light
Agnes Obel - Philharmonics
Emilie Simon - The Big Machine
He Is We - My Forever
Vivian Girls - Share The Joy
Thursday - No Devolucion
Foo Fighters - Wasting Light
Atmosphere - The Family Sign
Wild Palm - Until Spring
Crystal Stilts - In Love With Oblivion
The Feelies - Here Before
Paul Simon - So Beautiful Or So What
Meat Puppets - Lollipop
Low - C’mon
Sonny And The Sunsets - Hit After Hit
La Luz De Jesus recently hosted the 14th installment of Everything but the Kitschen Sync – a mammoth group art exhibit with no theme, that showcased over 225 pieces from over 100 artists.
Take a good look at the man pictured above. His name is Lucas Ordoñez and he’s a race car driver — who has competed in 24-hour endurance races at Spa, Dubai and Silverstone among others. But why should Lucas be of any significance to you? Because his career as a globetrotting race car driver could’ve been yours.
No, seriously.
Three years ago, Lucas was just an ordinary guy from Spain trying to figure out what to do with his life. Enrolled in an MBA program, Lucas happened to be into video games — sports titles, first-person shooters, platforms and car games. Little did he know a game in the latter category would change his entire life.
I arrived at the Wiltern Theater in Hollywood last Wednesday night ready to hear songs. Not the pieced together menageries so prevalent in pop music today, but Songs with a capital “S”. The kind that are so solid you could chop down a tree with them. The kind that both Pete Yorn and Ben Kweller have been critically lauded for writing. I am not always completely stoked about the shows I am asked to cover- this night, however, I was primed and ready for a great musical experience.
The Go Team is a six-member band from Brighton, England with a sound that is uniquely created through a mixture of samples and live instrumentation. Their style is so eclectic that even the most steadfast of music publications have had difficulty attempting to explain their sound, let alone ‘genre-ize’ them. Stabs at describing The Go Team’s groundbreaking music have included phrases such as: Sonic Youth-style guitars, garage rock, double Dutch chants, old school hip-hop beats, police show themes, Bollywood soundtracks, and schoolyard pop.
The band’s vocalist, Ninja, gave me a ring from her UK hotel room to discuss the current release “Rolling Blackouts,” as well as important topics like why pregnant Barbie dolls entertain her and how traveling to Russia with an afro can be quite a complicated feat:
T-minus 1 week and counting (crazy I know). As the festival draws near, you’ve probably started pulling together your essentials; sunscreen, sun hat, spirit hood, etc., but what is arguably the most important pre-festival preparation (often neglected) is the drive time mixtape. That’s right, the road to Coachella is long and it requires a very special mixtape. A mixtape so powerful that it gets your juices flowing faster than your high school basketball pregame (Mamma Said Knock You Out, Straight Outa Compton) mix did. A mixtape so invigorating that it has you walk on to the fields of indio like Aaron Rodgers in superbowl XLII. Ok, I’ve made my point. You need a super sexy mix tape dammit and I’m gonna tell you where to get it.