Because sometimes you just want friends to tell you about cool things… the Brew House team offers up its weekly mix of author-supported goodness.
Grammy Performance: Taylor Swift
Am I endorsing Taylor Swift? Well, sort of. Is this a tepid recommendation of someone who already gets way too much pub? Probably. Did I still enjoy Taylor’s live rendition of her hit song “Mean” at the Grammys? Well, yes. I couldn’t help it. And my Twitter feed seemed to agree.
Every Monday morning. Music so good… it must be shared.
This week: “Think Long” — Mates of State, from the album, Bring it Back
From this past week: The quasi-Lawrence duo will be playing Middle of the Map Fest this April in Kansas City.
Because sometimes you just want friends to tell you about cool things… the Brew House team offers up its weekly mix of author-supported goodness.
Live music performances: Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
I must admit: I rarely watch late-night television. I can’t remember the last time I watched Leno or Letterman, and my samplings of Jimmy Fallon have mostly been limited to some viral highlights — like the time he went full Neil Young and performed “Whip My Hair” with Bruce Springsteen. Thing is, I don’t think this is changing, either. And, yet, I’m still an all-time sucker for a solid live-music performance. And on Thursday, someone pointed out that Fallon’s NBC website archives all the performances into an easy playlist.*
The title of this post may be the most bizarre thing I’ve ever written. No, really. Paul Rudd. Kansas City’s Paul Rudd. French commercial. Super Nintendo*. Wait, what?
*The best part: I once owned F-Zero, the futuristic racing game Rudd is playing at the beginning of the commercial.
I actually interweaved my way to this commercial through a Twitter link about Jack Black appearing in an old Atari commercial. Meh. But then there was Rudd, sitting on the side of the webpage, clutching a controller with a funny grin on his face. And, well, once you’ve seen Paul Rudd in a French commercial for Super Nintendo, you just can’t go back.
It was a dark Friday night, a long drive home from a high school basketball game on the outskirts of Kansas City, and I began to fiddle with the radio. It’s strange. In Kansas City, the radio formats change so often, with so much predictability (and yet, no creativity), that sometimes it’s hard to figure out what station is playing what.
Wait? Is that a top-40 station now? Wait, classic rock? Another one? Aren’t there like six of those? And must they all have “Bad to the Bone” in rotation at all times?
One of the latest to change — a station called 99.7 The Point — purports to play “Today’s Best Music.” This is, of course, a pretty vague description. And considering the station was playing “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” a few minutes ago, it’s not even really all that accurate. And yet, there’s one thing that doesn’t change in Kansas City radio: the country stations.
Last week, I went to a wonderful Calvin Harris concert at a club in Dallas called Zouk. As pretentious establishments are wont to do, Zouk* decided to create artificial demand for its resources by forcing consumers to wait in a line even though it was actually empty inside. Economists refer to this particular manipulation of the free market as douchebaggery. Continue reading
Every Monday morning. Music so good… it must be shared.
This week: “Simple Song” — The Shins, from the album, Port of Morrow.
Somewhere along the line, as the years stacked up, the Shins became one of those bands that “just went away.” The Shins’ last album — Wincing the Night Away — came out in January of 2007 (really, five years ago), with the first single (“Phantom Limb”) finding its way online two months before that. James Mercer, bearded frontman of the Portland outfit, has stayed busy, of course. He collaborated with Danger Mouse on the side project, “Broken Bells”, and you may have seen him pop up for a predictable cameo on the first season of Portlandia.
But finally, on Jan. 9, the band released “Simple Song,” the first single off its new album, Port of Morrow, to be released in March. The band has been idle for five years. And the lineup, save Mercer, has totally turned over. But “Simple Song” still sounds like what you’d expect a Shins single to sound like. And this, I think, is a good thing.
Because sometimes you just want friends to tell you about cool things… the Brew House team offers up its weekly mix of author-supported goodness.
Food: Doritos with Green Salsa
Putting together random food combinations comes with a negative connotation. If you think whip cream is good with chocolate chip cookies, you sound fat. Just about any combo can have this effect – think adding bacon to anything. But random food combos are also delicious – think adding bacon to anything.
“Have you ever entered an empty stadium? Try It.” – Eduardo Galeano from Soccer In Sun and Shadow
*****
The woman working at the ticket office tells me I can come in, opening the one door from the inside that isn’t barred shut. “There won’t be any lights on,” she says.
I walk into Texas Hall, a place I’d never heard of until perhaps two or three days earlier when my editor assigned me the job of writing about UT-Arlington’s new arena, known as the College Park Center. It is replacing Texas Hall had been UT-Arlington’s home since 1965. It is a theater, not a gym, but the basketball team has played there, on center stage, on a portable basketball court. The team performed where Louie Armstrong played jazz, where Jerry Seinfeld joked, where Ludacris rapped. Continue reading
Every Monday morning. Music so good… it must be shared.
This week: “The Show Must Not Go On” — Harvey Danger
So I remember this one time, freshman year of high school, I was riding shotgun in a senior’s car, feeling old and cool, and the song “Flagpole Sitta” started blaring out of the CD player. “I wanna publish ‘zines… And rage against machines…” I can’t ever remember listening to another Harvey Danger song. Don’t think I even searched for any. But that song, to me at least, still says high school, those couple years when Napster was just firing up — and the kids in my neighborhood still cruised 103rd street, from Nall to Nieman. (Maybe they still do.) I thought of this story the other day when I found out Harvey Danger had broken up. But first, the band, apparently, released this song on their website for free — a sort-of final goodbye for a group that most had forgotten. Pretty cool way to go.
The Brew House 