Short List is a Friday variety column featuring 3 of the following: short stories, comments, songs, or other tidbits from the week.
(via http://pitchfork.com/news/36450-sufjan-to-perform-iseven-swansi-at-atp/)
We already know Sufjan Stevens is set to perform at this year's All Tomorrow's Parties New York, taking place this weekend at Kutsher's Country Resort in the Catskills. But now we know he'll play his hushed 2004 LP Seven Swans in its entirety during his set on Saturday, September 12. That's new information straight from ATP's official site.And don't forget, if you can't make it to ATP this weekend, Sufjan has a number of tour dates across North America this fall.
2) Chuck Klosterman Repeats The Beatles
Like most people, I was initially confused by EMI’s decision to release remastered versions of all 13 albums by the Liverpool pop group Beatles, a 1960s band so obscure that their music is not even available on iTunes. The entire proposition seems like a boondoggle. I mean, who is interested in old music? And who would want to listen to anything so inconveniently delivered on massive four-inch metal discs with sharp, dangerous edges? The answer: no one. When the box arrived in the mail, I briefly considered smashing the entire unopened collection with a ball-peen hammer and throwing it into the mouth of a lion. But then, against my better judgment, I arbitrarily decided to give this hippie shit an informal listen. And I gotta admit—I’m impressed. This band was mad prolific.
It is not easy to categorize the Beatles’ music; more than any other group, their sound can be described as “Beatlesque.” It’s akin to a combination of Badfinger, Oasis, Corner Shop, and everyother rock band that’s ever existed. The clandestine power derived from the autonomy of the group’s composition—each Beatle has his own distinct persona, even though their given names are almost impossible to remember. There was John Lennon (the mean one), Paul Stereo version McCartney (the hummus eater), George Harrison (the best dancer), and drummer Ringo Starr (The Cat). Even the most casual consumers will be overwhelmed by the level of invention and the degree of change displayed over their scant eight-year recording career, a span complicated by McCartney’s tragic 1966 death and the 1968 addition of Lennon’s wife Yoko Ono, a woman so beloved by the band that they requested her physical presence in the studio during the making of Let It Be.
For more, continue at http://www.avclub.com/articles/chuck-klosterman-repeats-the-beatles,32560/
3) The Thrill of It All
Nick Hornby used to find record shops scarily intimidating (remember High Fidelity?), but the advent of MP3 blogs has liberated music fans everywhere. Writing exclusively for OMM, the author reveals why ...
My first novel, High Fidelity, was published in 1995, and shortly afterwards, I embarked upon my first American book tour. I took with me a Discman, and 15 or 20 carefully chosen CDs in a wallet, although I bought lots of others while I was there – CDs by bands I'd never heard of, and wouldn't have been able to buy at home, recommended to me by people who came to readings, or by journalists at the end of interviews. There was always a thriving, intimidating independent music store just a short walk from my hotel, in whichever city I was visiting. At signings, people gave me lovingly made compilation tapes, occasionally demo tapes of their bands, or their friends' bands, and sometimes bootleg tapes of shows by artists they thought I'd like. Towards the end of the tour I no longer had room for it all, and I had to leave little piles of cassette boxes next to the waste-bins in my hotel rooms. (I couldn't bear to put them in the bins. I wasn't throwing them away; I was leaving them behind. There was a difference.) If you look at the above picture carefully, and compare it to your average 2009 book tour, you should be able to spot the differences. Even spoken-word recommendations look quaint now.
Back then, the future of music didn't look particularly interesting to me. I don't mean that music itself seemed boring, although I was 38 years old, and I felt like I'd heard a lot of the mid-90s before. I mean that neither I nor anybody else I knew spent any time thinking about how our consumption of music might change. How could it? There wasn't much to it, surely? OK, someone might come up with another format, something that might sweep away the compact disc just as the CD had replaced vinyl. But whatever it was, all you could do was buy it – which meant walking down to Our Price, or a local independent store staffed by people who looked as though they'd rather have their heads stuck inside Thurston Moore's amp than speak to you. I certainly couldn't have imagined writing a novel which is in part about how we relate to music in the 21st century. Like most of us, I believed that this relationship would be a version of the relationship we all knew and loved, with a couple of extra volume knobs on....
For More, continue to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/sep/06/nick-hornby-mp3-record-shops
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