THE GIVEAWAY IS OVER! THANKS TO ALL WHO PARTICIPATED.
Folks, as promised last week, I have a pair of tickets to give away for the I’m From Barcelona & Thao Nguyen show this Thursday May 1st at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple (317 Clermont Ave, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, NY). I’ve heard and read really great things about I’m From Barcelona’s live show and I can tell you from personal experience that the Masonic Temple is an extremely cool place to catch a show.
If you’d like to enter to win a pair of tix, simply send me an email to “tips (-at-) rumproast.com” (or click on the “Tips” email link in the top right sidebar), write “Barcelona” in the subject and your full name in the body of the email before midnight tonight (4/29 ET). I’ll randomly select a winner and contact you via email if you’ve won.
This giveaway is courtesy of the fine folks at Boost Mobile.
In addition, tickets are still available at TicketWeb as well and you get a free six-month (23 issue) New York magazine subscription with purchase.
Peek below the fold for a few more Barcelona videos and one really cool claymation video from Thao Nguyen…
Sorry for the lack of blogging. I took a huge and tragic spill on a hill I had no business skateboarding down back when I was in college and, as a result, I occasionally throw my back out, so I’ve been laid out flat for the past two days. Here’s a quickee post for you to enjoy and then I’m going to crawl back on the couch.
Guitarist extraordinaire Gary Lucas hosted a “Beefheart Night” back on April 9th at the Knitting Factory here in NYC. Gary played with his fantastic all-instrumental Captain Beefheart cover band Fast ‘N’ Bulbous (their CD Pork Chop Blue Around the Rind is highly recommended) and several fans and friends of Don Van Vliet spoke in between the band’s two sets. David Lynch sent in a cool little video of himself reading ”Pena," too. The highlight was a surprise appearance by the legendary Robyn Hitchcock at the tail end of the evening, who performed three songs with Lucas accompanying him on the steel guitar. A few weeks ago I uploaded my video of them doing “Sure ‘Nuff ‘N’ Yes I Do” to YouTube and yesterday Lucas contacted me to let me know that both he and Hitchock really enjoyed seeing it, so I uploaded their version of “China Pig” today (unfortunately, I didn’t record their last song “Click Clack"). Enjoy.
“Faith Healer” from Big Dipper’s Boo-Boo, quite possibly the best EP ever released
Thank god I thumbed through the latest Time Out New York this morning or I wouldn’t have known that two of my favorite indie pop bands of the 80’s, Big Dipper & Great Plains, are playing tonight at Southpaw in Park Slope. Boston’s Big Dipper released their first three exceptionally solid pop masterpieces in the late 80’s on the legendary (and long-gone) Homestead Records label and Merge Records was recently kind enough to re-release all of that out-of-print material and a slew of great bonus material on an insanely cheap 3-disc box set called Supercluster: The Big Dipper Anthology. Columbus, OH’s Great Plains were under-appreciated fractured pop masters, churning out smart n’ snarky clingers like “Letter to a Fanzine” (chorus: “Why do punk rock guys go out with new wave girls?"), “Dick Clark” and “Martin Luther King/Martin Luther Drinking”. Old 3C’s wonderful 2-CD retrospective Length of Growth 1981-89 is unfortunately out-of-print and fetches $99 or more online, but you can obtain a CD-R version of it from the label and apparently MP3 downloads are still available via eMusic and iTunes.
ATTENTION NYC MUSIC FANS: Might as well shoehorn this in here ... Rumproast will be giving away a pair of tix for the May 1st show featuring I’m From Barcelona & Thao Nguyen at the Masonic Temple in Brooklyn in the very near future. If you want to go (or know someone who does), keep an eye on this blog for details.
I know I’m easy, but the fact that this video by the Carolina Chocolate Drops already has 37,000 views on YouTube gives me new faith in humanity. These guys are playing Celebrate Brooklyn on June 26th with the Dixie Hummingbirds. I’ll be there.
Tomorrow Rhino Records will finally release remastered and expanded deluxe editions of the Replacement’s first four Twin/Tone releases: Stink, Hootenany, Let it Be and, my personal favorite, Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash. I still think only one rock band has put out four better studio releases in a row and that’s the Rolling Stones (Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St.). Feel free to point out how completely wrong I am about that in the comments.
