As we get into the slow time of year for new records, it gets harder to do a show of all new music. Last night will probably be the last show for a few weeks that doesn’t feel aged…at least relative to what I try to put together. Last night was great though, definitely a good feel to the show. I felt completely on with my mic breaks and the music I was playing. There were also a few callers and requests (that I couldn’t honor).

I’m always conflicted about playing reissues on the show. It’s not technically new music, but it is kind of a new release in a way. When it’s a band that I really like or that was really important to the music scene, I tend to side with playing it. So being able to throw some Sunny Day Real Estate on was nice…even though the reissue came out about three months ago, it just finally made it into rotation at the station. That’s old for The Playlist, but I couldn’t resist playing something from it.

The new Spoon single is great! I’m seriously looking forward to the new album next year. For a while before Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, it felt like they had dropped off, but that album brought them back in a big way for me. It was one of my top albums of 2007 so I’m interested to see what they do now.

Next week will by my Top 10 of 2009 countdown show. I’ve got my list all decided and ready to go. I just need to pick out the songs that I want to play from each one.

Source: 90.3 The Core

Last night’s edition of the Playlist turned out really well. It was my first show back in our normal studio in the Livingston Student Center after six months in a temporary studio at Yorba Lounge. It felt nice to be back in there. There was definitely a lot more energy to last night’s show because of it. Maybe it was just excitement to be back or maybe it was something else. I don’t know.

I got a ton of calls, IMs, and requests last night which was awesome–maybe the source of all that energy? That’s where The Shins and the two Coconut Records tracks (though, I’d play two Coconut Records songs any day and be happy about it) came from. And it was awesome to finally have the new Cloak/Dagger album in the studio so I could play it, but I still haven’t gotten to listen to the whole thing yet. Besides that, I was also excited to play Hell by Tegan And Sara again. I like that song a lot! The rest of the album is hit or miss, there are a couple good songs, but Hell is awesome.

Source: 90.3 The Core

I saw this on the way to work today. Not only does the company name, Peeping Tom’s Window Cleaning, make me feel a little bit like they might not be professionals, but they slap it on that old ass minivan to really hammer home the perv-on-wheels vibe. There is absolutely no way that Tom is going to be cleaning your windows with his pants on. Good luck with that.

I couldn’t resist posting it to failblog.org. Please vote for it!

I wasn’t expecting too much from last night’s show, I missed last week and didn’t really feel like being there. When I started picking out my music, I felt like I was struggling to find enough to put a show together with. I pulled out barely enough albums to fill an hour and figured I was screwed. But somehow, everything really came together nicely. I’m not sure how it happened, but the music flowed amazingly from one song into the other and my mic breaks were right on target. It was a nice little surprise.

Source: 90.3 The Core

Look at this shirt from woot. It’s got everything! There’s really nothing left to ask for. I think it mat slightly edge out Threadless’s This Is How The World Will End shirt. Maybe.

Just as the name would have you believe, Fantastic Mr. Fox is indeed fantastic (could I have started off anymore cliché?) We don’t get too many stop-motion films anymore, which is a shame, but this one completely makes up for that. The visuals in this film are simply awesome. They’re quirky as hell and different from other stop-motion films, but provide a welcome addition to the movie rather than taking away from it. Definitely retro on purpose without being snobbish…if that makes sense at all. The dialog is very calm without a lot of tonal differentiation and the humor is very dry, but this is what makes the movie so great and also makes a perfect roll for George Clooney. And this film would not have worked at all any other way.

I actually never read the children’s book when I was a child–which now that I think about it, is a little weird–so I can’t really compare to that or speak for how it holds up to my childhood memories of the story, but there’s a lot to like here. Recommended.

Rating: A-

When a band says that they’re going to do a tour for an album and play the whole thing, it’s something that can go either way. When the Pixies decided to do this for Doolittle, I was skeptical. Jimmy Eat World did an alright job with Clarity while Alkaline Trio played entirely too long after finishing up with Goddamnit. However, the Pixies did it right. Oh so very right.

The Pixies didn’t walk right out on stage and throw Debaser at us, they started off with an abridged version of the French film Un Chien Andalou–which Frank Black credits as being very influential to him–played on an LED backdrop netting-like screen that was also used all set long to play various videos behind them. They walked out at the end of the video and started with a couple of b-sides before getting into Doolittle, which was accompanied by a couple jokes from Kim between songs. When they were done with Doolittle, they followed up with two encores. The first was a couple more b-sides including a second version of “Wave Of Mutilation” (making for a double dose), but the second treated us to a few non-Doolittle tracks including “Where Is My Mind?” and “Gigantic.” It was everything I could have asked for.

Even though the band took an obnoxiously long time to come out for the second encore, they kept the set to a very reasonable length. The point of the tour was Doolittle and they kept it that way. That is something I can respect. They also chose to give us a much heavier dose of Joey’s guitar to strip some of the polish away from the songs. The end result was loud, raw, and awesome.

The setlist and a few pictures that I snapped from my phone are below and you can also check out reviews from BrooklynVegan and Deaf Left Ear.

Main set
Dancing The Manta Ray
Weird At My School
Bailey’s Walk
Manta Ray
Debaser
Tame
Wave of Mutilation
I Bleed
Here Comes Your Man
Dead
Monkey Gone to Heaven
Mr. Grieves
Crackity Jones
La La Love You
No. 13 Baby
There Goes My Gun
Hey
Silver
Gouge Away

Encore 1
Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)
Into the White

Encore 2
Isla De Encanta
some of Vamos
Nimrod’s Son
Where is My Mind?
Gigantic

Yet again, a CGI movie has proven just how much of a little kid I am. It doesn’t quite touch anything by Pixar or Dreamworks, but Planet 51 is still awesome. While there is plenty of adult humor to go around, Planet 51 is definitely geared more to kid audiences than to the entire general public like Pixar and Dreamworks tend to be.

The movie was fun and witty enough with a ton of pop culture references for all ages, but my favorite part of Planet 51 is the concept of a human being the scary alien on another planet. It’s a fun idea and a neat twist on a classic idea…even if it is executed in the most cliché and expected of ways. Almost like E.T. in reverse. As for the animation itself, it was good, but not great. I loved the visual design, but Ilion Animation Studios is light years away from what Pixar achieves in the level of detail. I’m not the kind of person that needs all the snazzy effects and whatnot, but that’s kind of the added bonus you get from Pixar and Dreamworks.

As much fun as I had with this movie, I wouldn’t say that it’s a must see, but if you’re looking for something to see, check it out and don’t worry about the crappy rating.

Rating: B-

I felt a little off my game for last night’s radio show, but I think it came together alright even though there were a couple wrong button presses. I got to play The Lawrence Arms again and I was able to play a song by The Drums for my co-worker who as been talking about them nonstop for the past couple of weeks. I want to find some time to spend with the Castanets and Kitty, Daisy, And Lewis records though. The songs that I played were awesome, but I haven’t had time to listen to the rest yet.

Source: 90.3 The Core

I actually got this shirt a couple weeks ago from Tee Fury, but I’ve been kind of lazy about posting it. It’s a pretty decent one though. I also have another coming from Woot that may be one of the best zombie shirts ever. It really covers all your bases. I’ll make sure to post that one as soon as I get. But besides these two, I’m really trying to cut back my t-shirt buying. It’s not even totally a money thing as it is that I’m running out of places to store them and I’m on about a two to three month long rotation now.

I know it’s been a little while since my last update, but there hasn’t been too much to write about. I didn’t do my radio show last week and the only movie I’ve watched is How To Lose Friends And Alienate People with Simon Pegg–the only real reason I had interest in it. I have literally nothing to say about it except for how overrated Megan Fox is. The movie wasn’t great and it wasn’t bad. It just was. I also started writing a short entry about a pink urinal that I used last week and how the urinal is one of the manliest objects to exist since by definition is for men only and woman physically can’t use it properly. But then I got lazy and didn’t really finish it.

Oh well, I’m doing my show tonight, so I’ll post the playlist tomorrow and, this weekend, I’m going to try to see Men Who Stare At Goats, Planet 51, or Pirate Radio. I’ll post about whatever I get to see.

See ya then!

I was going to hold off on seeing Paranormal Activity until it came out on DVD, but I’ve been reading a few reviews about it saying that the only way to see it is on the big screen and not to even bother when it comes out on DVD. So I decided I’d go check it out. First off, I have to agree with that statement, you need to see this on the big screen. It just won’t be the same at home.

With so many other great documentary style horror movies (The Last Broadcast, Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, Diary Of The Dead, etc) in the last tenish years, I wasn’t really sure that there was room for another, but there is. Ghost/haunting/whatever movies aren’t usually that interesting to me, but I liked this one a lot. It stayed interesting without getting too ridiculous. My only real complaint with it was the last couple seconds. I think they could have been left out for a better ending.

Rating: B

Overall, last night’s radio show didn’t really come together as well as I would have liked, but, at the least, I was able to play a lot of music that I was really excited to spin. New stuff from The Lawrence Arms–seriously Buttsweat and Tears is such a great 7″–, Cheap Girls, Flight Of The Conchords, Coconut Records, Frank Turner, and They Might Be Giants. Along with Monsters of Folk and some of the other stuff I’ve been playing over the past few weeks, there is a lot going on right now from some more well known, at least in the indie scene, bands. It’d be awesome if every week could be like this.

So musically, I really loved last night’s show and I think I had my mic breaks mostly where I wanted them, but I slipped up a bit on my segues between songs. I guess it happens. Oh well.

Source: 90.3 The Core

Also, I wanted to post Frank Turner’s new video for Poetry of the Dead because he looks kind of like a cleaned up Brian Graber and I support that. Not the cleaned up part, but the Brian Graber part.

Here are a few new shirts I’ve picked up in the last couple of weeks. The first one, I got at the Threadless store in Chicago. You can’t really tell much in the picture, but it’s a guy on top of a car surrounded by zombies. I don’t even know how many zombie related shirts I have at this point. And the third one, I got at the Lawrence Arms 10th anniversary show.

We tried to have our cat wear a fake bloody finger around her neck for our Halloween party, but it didn’t really pan out so well.

I had another great show last night and I had a lot of fun doing it. Nice mix of music and a bit more diverse than usual. I’ve been saying that a lot recently, but it’s true!

I’ve been listening to the new albums by Frank Turner and World’s Greatest Ghosts a bit and I have to go ahead and recommend both of them. Frank Turner is becoming one of my favorite British acts and World’s Greatest Ghosts sounds a lot like a mix of The Paper Chase and Jukebox The Ghost. Check them out.

Source: 90.3 The Core

I wanted to get something up about the show sooner, but I haven’t had a chance. I’m going to completely ignore the openers and get to the point, The Lawrence Arms are one of the best bands playing right now. An hour and forty-five minutes was a long time for a punk band to play, but I’m going to be honest, I could have done a lot more. A LOT MORE. Hell, they could have played the set twice and I would have been giddy as hell about it.

The band came out on stage with a nice rockstarry entrance, but after that, it was clear that they were just three dudes having one of the best nights of their collective life. You could tell that they couldn’t take themselves too seriously if they tried. They tore through thirty songs with enough talking to break it up a bit and engage the audience, but never enough for you to want them to shut up. I’ve never seen a band get through that many songs that quickly. They were on a mission.

They played songs from all over their catalog, just like they promised they would. They kept things slightly more to the last couple records, but I’m not complaining about that. They played some stuff that they don’t play often, like A Wishful Puppeteer–they had only played this once before–and left out only a couple other songs I would have liked to hear. I’m starting to accept that I’ll never get to see them play Drunk Mouth Kitchen Smile.

They even had Neil sing a song. According to Brendan, Turnstiles is the best Lawrence Arms song “for your money” and I have to agree, in recent months, it has shot right up to the top of my list.

This was a fun set and seeing this band in Chicago was amazing. I love these guys. This was show number 1000 for them and I swear, the next 1000 better be made up of at least 1001 on the East Coast.

Here’s a list of the songs they played. It’s not in order, but you get the idea…

• An Evening of Extraordinary Circumstance
• The North Side of the L&L and Any Number of Crappy Apartments
• Uptown Free Radio
• Smokestacks
• 16 Hours
• Turnstiles
• Light Breathing
• 106 South
• Nebraska
• Quincentuple Your Money
• 100 Resolutions
• Hey, What Time is “Pensacola: Wings of Gold” On, Anyway?
• Your Gravest Words
• Boatless Booze Cruise
• Brickwall Views
• Presenting: The Dancing Machine
• Necrotism: Decanting the Insalubrious
• Intransit
• Raw and Searing Flesh
• On With The Show
• Alert The Audience
• Chapter 13: The Hero Appears
• The Ramblin’ Boys of Pleasure
• A Wishful Puppeteer
• The Disaster March
• Cut it Up
• Great Lakes/Great Escapes
  
• Recovering the Opposable Thumb
• Are You There, Margaret? It’s Me, God
• Lose Your Illusion 1
• Like a Record Player

PS: Chicago really is the best city ever. Every time I go there, I love it more and more. Friendly people, amazing food, awesome vibe, tons of great music.

I went to see The Gaslight Anthem, Murder By Death, and The Loved Ones in Philly last night at the Trocadero. It was an all around great show.

The Loved Ones played what was probably the best set I’ve ever seen them play. I can’t really describe why it was so great, but they just felt really on and didn’t talk too much compared to other times that I’ve seen them. Their set list was well chosen and leaning way more to the Keep Your Heart side of things than Build & Burn, which works out great for me since I think Keep Your Heart is a much better record.

Murder By Death was slightly worse than the last time I saw them, but that was also about five years ago. They played well and sounded good, but I think I miss them being a five piece. Having a dedicated keyboardist made them able to keep more of their recorded sound when playing live. Sarah did a great job switching between cello and keyboards, but it wasn’t quite the same. The last time I saw them was before their last two albums came out so they had fewer songs to play. This gave them time to rock out and jam a little more. I’m not into jam bands, but I love when bands that I like just jam out for a little bit during some of the instrumental parts of songs. It adds something extra to the live set that you don’t get from a record. This is something that they seemed to do a lot in the past and it was one of my favorite things about seeing them, but now with all the extra songs that they have, there is a lot less time to do it. Still, they sounded great and picked a good selection of songs to play. I think they covered everything that I wanted to hear.

And then there was Gaslight Anthem. They sounded amazing and were tight as hell with a great stage presence. It may have been the tightest that I’ve ever seen them play out of the six or seven times that I’ve seen them. But the selection of songs that they played was a bit disappointing. The ‘59 Sound is a really great record, one of the best to come out in 2008. However, it lost a lot over the last year for me. Most of my interest in it waned. Sink Or Swim has stuck with me though. That’s what I wanted to hear. I didn’t expect a lot, but the entire first half of their set was from The ‘59 Sound. By the end, we only got a couple Sink Or Swim songs in total. I guess normally it would be expected to hear only a few songs from a band’s first album…if they have more than two, but with only two of them, it’d be nice it at least a third of the set was from the first album. Oh well. At least everything they played sounded great.

Even accepting the fact that I’ll never get to hear them play much from Sink Or Swim again, I don’t know that I’ll ever want to see them live again. I’m not sure how to describe it, but they felt very rock starry last night. It was a little too much. They stopped feeling like this band from New Brunswick that used to play basement shows and the Court Tavern to small crowds and more like a band that has their eyes set on stages set in front of thousands and thousands of people. It wasn’t to the point where it was terribly upsetting and bothersome and a lot of it was subtle, but it was enough that I feel as though my love for them will start to decline if I keep on seeing them.

Last night was also the first time that I’ve been to the Troc in about seven years. I’ve generally avoided it as I was never a fan of the place and I was reminded 100% of this last night. The sound is terrible. It might be the worst sounding venue I’ve ever been to. Ugh.

Last night was another fantastic show. Almost perfect all around. Great music, great segues, and the phone was ringing off the hook. Not even just the phone, but the instant messages too. So much so that it was almost stressful trying to keep up. I was actually sweating because of it.

I found out last night that our station streams perfectly fine over an iPhone just by going to www.thecore.fm and clicking to listen. I’m assuming this will work on any other smartphone too, I guess I never thought about it before.

Apparently, we’re supposed to get a Nor’easter this weekend so that’s going to put a damper on my Field of Terror plans, but I’m still excited to see Gaslight Anthem, Murder By Death, and The Loved Ones on Sunday in Philly. And it seems that there are still tickets for the Monday night show as well. You may want to check that out. Either way, expect a full report next week.

Anyway, here’s what I played…

Source: 90.3 The Core

Last night’s show got off to a bit of a late start, but I still managed to fit in most of what I wanted. Other than that, it was was a relatively average show. Nothing of note to mention.

Source: 90.3 The Core

I think everyone liked Whip It more than I did. I mean, I liked it a lot, but everyone that I’ve heard talk about it loved it. The movie was entertaining and I actually didn’t find Jimmy Fallon to be annoying which was unexpected, but there wasn’t really anything about it that grabbed me like I wanted it to. I feel like for a movie about roller derby with Ellen Page and all the other people that are in this, I want a little more.

Ellen Page is awesome and I love her, but I feel like sometimes that innocent little girl, deer in the headlights look she normally pulls off so well doesn’t always fit. In Whip It, it only felt appropriate about half the time. The look felt overused and Bliss (Ellen Page) seemed like she was more confident than her face was showing in a lot of scenes. I don’t think the problem was Ellen Page so much as it was Drew Barrymore’s directing. Okay fine, I just don’t want to fault Ellen Page. Deal with it.

I don’t know, I really don’t have much else to say about this one.

Rating: B

PS: Andrew Wilson should change his name to Beef Surpreme in real life because that’s all I see when I see him.