Fricke’s Picks: The Octopus Project, “Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs 1913-1938? and Roy Wood

Happy Machine Music Machines don’t make music — people do. And going by the bright action-packed gurgle, bam and squeak of their third album, the Octopus Project — a mostly instrumental analog-electronics dance band from Austin, Texas — are smart pop scientists and total party animals, like Stereolab with happy feet. And a stopwatch — the thirteen songs on Hello, Avalanche (Peek-A-Boo) are all tightly composed bundles of synthesized whoop and circus-calliope cheer, dotted with throaty Duane Eddy-treble guitar and powered by prancing-elephant drumming. The closest thing here to conventional club-remix electronica is the thumping near-techno of “MMAJ.” But for all of the willful yesterday in the Octopus Project’s discothèque blend of Switched-On Bach and Kraftwerk’s Autobahn, there is a delightful, disciplined modernism in the album’s brisk parade of hooks and the songs’ densely layered brevity. Compared to the purple-surf rock of “Bees Bein’ Strugglin’ ” and the mermaid-choir effect of Yvonne Lambert’s theremin in “I Saw the Bright Shinies,” the Prodigy are so 1997. Apocalypse Then American folk and blues were, in the early twentieth century, more than entertainment. They were broadcasting. Long before there was a Fox News, country pickers the Skillet Lickers, the balladeer Blind Alfred Reed, the slide guitarist and yodeler Cliff Carlisle and the prewar blues legend Charlie Patton were the “We Report, You Decide” network of their day: adapting the terrible things that happened to good people in real life — floods, murders, train wrecks, disease, crop failures — into lyrical bulletins, waltz tunes and moral hymns that long outlived the headlines and police reports that inspired them. People Take Warning! Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs 1913-1938 (Tompkins Square) is nothing but that bad mojo made poetic. You already know some of these tales, in electrified form — Kansas

Published: 2007-11-24 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Fricke's Picks

Fall Out Boy Holding Off Before Starting Next LP, Wu-Tang Move Release Date, The Verve Unleash Lengthy Demo

Despite having an “album’s worth of material” ready to go, Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump doesn’t anticipate the band will start work on the follow-up to the only-nine-month-old Infinity On High any time soon. Discussing the musical direction of the material, Stump manages to say “experimenting with piano phases like Steve Reich” and “it’s probably just gonna be a pop record” in the same paragraph. Stump also recently shot a guest spot on NBC’s unkillable crime drama Law & Order, which will air next February. The reunited Verve have released their first new music in over a decade in the form of a fourteen-minute demo. The experimental track, dubbed “The Thaw Session,” is available as a free download that you can get here. Mobb Deep’s Prodigy isn’t going to jail quietly. The rapper, who earlier this month accepted a three-and-a-half year prison sentence in a plea bargain for gun possession, told G-Unit Radio that police officers once asked him set up 50 Cent by planting evidence in 50’s car. Family crisis averted: The Wu-Tang Clan have pushed the release date of their new album The 8 Diagrams back one week so it wouldn’t compete with angry Ghostface Killah’s own album The Big Dough Rehab on December 4th. The news comes straight from the RZA’s mouth, and he’s smart. The Live Nation feeding frenzy continues. One week after securing every Madonna movement for a modest reported $120 million, the concert promoter is now making a bid for Signatures Network, which holds the right to license and market over 125 artists, including Bruce Springsteen, U2 and Kanye West.

Published: 2007-10-22 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Afternoon News Roundup

Bright Eyes: Recapping Conor Oberst’s Wild Seven Nights At New York’s Town Hall

Photo Credit: looserecords.com Last week Bright Eyes played seven shows in a row at New York’s famed Town Hall. The performances were billed as guest-star studded spectacles — music’s favorite prodigy all grown up and onstage with a huge band and a slew of bold names – and they didn’t disappoint. During the first show (Saturday, May 26th) Lou Reed showed up. Conor and the other twelve or so people currently playing in his band (including the inimitable former drummer from Sleater-Kinney Janet Weiss) were dressed like excitable brides in various shades of white. Reed wore black and joined the band for two songs, “Waiting For My Man” and “Dirty Blvd.” Over the course of the following six nights Oberst was joined onstage by a slew of other guests including Ben Kweller, Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis and her boyfriend, singer/actor Jonathan Rice, Norah Jones and her band The Little Willies, Nick Zinner and Ben Gibbard, Ron Sexsmith and Britt Daniel. All this starpower came in addition to Conor’s opening act, the extremely impressive Gillian Welch and her man David Rawlings, and Oberst’s girlfriend and fellow Saddle Creek affiliate Maria Taylor, all of whom joined Bright Eyes onstage to lend their particular talent (haunting old school bluegrass vocals if you’re Gillian Welch, tambourine playing if you’re Maria Taylor) to various songs. Though there are a couple of noteworthy bands on Saddle Creek - the Omaha-based label Oberst helped found – its his music that defines the label, and the scene that gave birth to it. At twenty-seven, the guy is clearly tired of shouldering that burden alone and is trying to get away from images of himself as prophet/troubadour, even though that’s exactly what he is. Oberst has made longtime Bright Eyes collaborators Nate Wolcott and Mike Mogis official members of the band, and he’s gotten busy surrounding himself with other super-talented people likely to

Published: 2007-06-04 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: General

The School of Rock

The Plot: Dewey Finn (Black) gets fired from his rock band and faces mounting debt and depression. He takes a job as a 4th grade substitute teacher at an uptight private school where his hijinx have a powerful effect on his students, including 9-year-old guitar prodigy Yuki, who could help Dewey win a battle of the bands competition - a contest that could solve his financial problems and put him back in the spotlight.

Published: 2003-10-03 Provider: IMDB - International Movie Database Keywords: Jack Black