Friday, January 28, 2011

'David Gergen: On Further Review' with Ryan's Smashing Life



It's almost over! Well, not really. Unfortunately, winter lasts far too long in Michigan, and for me, it's a dreadful four months of snow, freezing temperatures, and worst of all, soggy pant legs. Spending most of the day indoors, it makes for perfect comfort to snuggle up on the couch with some hot chocolate and relax with great music.
Nick Parker, of Ryan's Smashing Life, recently reviewed David Gergen's The Nearer it was... The Farther it Became and found himself reliving his warm Long Beach days.

"His voice, like Beck’s Mutations, is the warm evenings I spent in Long Beach. His mix of processed drum-synths and acoustic guitars is that confusing sense of being somewhere made up of familiar elements put together in unusual ways."..."In fact, the album lets me feel refreshed and excited by new musical directions. If you are from LA, I’m sure you’ll be impressed by Gergen’s music. If you are from further afield, you can enjoy it all the more, like taking a musical vacation, not exactly to foreign lands, but to new parts of your own."

Click Here to Read More..

Love, Animals, and Revival with The Handsome Family

Image courtesy of LA Record
There's something quirky and cool about Rennie Sparks of The Handsome Family. It’s not every day that you hear of a person writing frivolous ransom notes or aspiring to own a donkey. It's rather exhilarating, not just because of her quirkiness, but also because of her appreciation and understanding of the smallest, but yet so prominent objects and concepts in life. With Sparks, things have a deeper meaning and it goes to show in her L.A. Record interview with Daiana Feuer.

Check out the full interview here.
Click Here to Read More..

Absolute Punk Interviews David Gergen


Photo by: Michelle Fontaine
With influences like Wilco, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and The Rolling Stones, David Gergen talks about his music and answers random questions with AbsolutePunk.

Why should people listen to your band?
They should listen if they want music that has a lot going on underneath the surface. Lyrically and musically, I try and create original pieces of work that force the listener to pay attention. I don't view my music as easily digestible pop candy, it's deeper and more thought provoking. So, for people that like that, I welcome you into my world.

If you could tour with any bands, past or present, who would they be and why?
I think as far as a good fit for touring together I would pick someone similar to my vibe, probably Wilco, maybe Arcade Fire. I would love to play with Johnny Cash but that won't happen until we meet in the afterlife.

What is something that most fans don't know about you?
That I am into cooking. I love to cook... Thai, Italian, French. I am fascinated by food the same way as I am music. It's never ending and there are certain basic rules that you need to understand before you can break down the door and go in a new direction, so I love that it requires a lot of practice and can't be faked.

What do you like to do in your spare time?
Cook, hike, travel, take a long drive somewhere random....hang with animals. I do love movies too.
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GLG Fresh Mp3 Friday: Golden Globes

Congratulations to Ricky Gervais for winning the award for Rudest Golden Globes Host.
Courtesy of Robert Downey Jr., his performance was best summarized as "hugely mean-spirited" with "mildly sinister undertones." Despite this year's short-comings, Gervais did snag a Golden Globe Award in 2004 for Best Actor in a TV Series Comedy for his role as "David Brent" in the BBC hit The Office. If it were up to us, we would nominate Gervais in the "Entertainer of the Year" category.

On behalf of GLG, I am hosting the Green Globes...and the Green Light Globe nominees are:


Most likely to be touring in a town near you:

Genre: Americana/Roots Music/Alernative
For fans of: Emmy Lou Harris, Patty Griffin, Jenny Lewis




Genre: Indie/Rock/Pop
For fans of: Ben Kweller, Wilco (Summerteeth Era)








Facebook: Also the most entertaining Facebook










Neutral Uke Hotel
Genre: Indie Rock/Cover Song
For fans of: Neutral Milk Hotel





Most Influential:
Genre: Folk/Americana
For fans of: You should already be their fan!







Best Music Video:
Lawrence & Leigh
Genre: Folk/Experimental/Indie Rock
For fans of: Joanna Newsom, Dirty Projectors, Fleet Foxes
Facebook







Genre: Alternative/Indie/Rock
For fans of: Metric, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bloc Party
Video: "He Was a Fly"







Most Original:










Break Through Artist:
Seafarer
Genre: Indie/Folk/Experimental
For fans of: Sonic Youth, Fugazi, Pavement







Leopold and His Fiction
Genre: Garage Folk
For fans of: The Black Keys, Kings of Leon, Heartless Bastards




Most likely to find their song sticking in your head:
Genre: Alternative/Rock
For fans of: Silversun Pickups




John Shipe
Genre: Acoustic/Indie/Rock
For fans of: Josh Ritter, Jonathan Rice and Elvis Costello
Facebook





Baby Teardrops
Genre: Grunge/Pop/Rock






Listen and download tracks from these artists for free:
GlG Fresh MP3 Friday 1-28-11 by greenlightgo
To our fans, please feel free to post any of the approved songs on your blog or tweet to your friends. Check out our list of clients and available mp3s here: greenlightgopublicity.com. If you're not on our email list to receive these directly and want to be, please send an email over to info@glgpub.com.
Click Here to Read More..

High Five! from Enjoy Your Pumas' Josh Benoit

Guitarist Josh Benoit was kind enough to toss up a High Five! before hitting the stage with Enjoy Your Pumas for their Commonality CD release party at Winnipeg's Park Theatre on Sunday, January 30th. These are a few things he loves:

1) Oil of Oregano
For sinus colds... or spaghetti.














2) Louie
Written and created by the stand-up comedian Louis C.K., Louie is a show on the FX channel that makes observations about being a divorced, middle-aged, overweight father of two girls. I don't necessarily relate to Louie, but I think he's funny.










3) Four Tet's There Is Love In You
This album is a great instrumental, electro-pop album. Put it on in the background, put it on in the foreground, just don't put it on a curling iron burn. Unfortunately, it does nothing for burns.














4) Mexico
Not only is Mexico a beautiful, warm place, but it's also the number one vacation destination for Monarch butterflies! I wish I were there now.











5) Spike Jonze
When Spike Jonze is not controlling the body of John Malkovich with the mind of John Cusack, he's busy throwing paint and shooting confetti at the folks from LCD Soundsystem under the pretense of a "music video." Spike is a zany director and he seems like an alright dude.










To celebrate the end of the nine to five, a Green Light Go staff member or artist will leave you with their short list of favorite things, better known as the High Five!

This week's High Five! is brought to you by: Josh Benoit

Click Here to Read More..

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Enjoy Your Pumas Release Video for “He Was A Fly”

Enjoy Your Pumas show off their personalities in their new music video for “He Was a Fly”. The playful video is filled with dreamy images, beautiful lighting and a cool retro feel. It shows the band on a journey toward a house where they find an idyllic place to play. The track can be found on Enjoy Your Pumas’ debut LP Commonality.

The video was directed by Steven Schwartz, who recently made headlines with his heart-warming and award-winning Christmas short “Santa Stops By”. Josh Benoit, Enjoy Your Pumas’ guitar player, who will graduate from film school this semester, produced “He Was a Fly”, which was filmed on two days about a month apart.

Click Here to Read More..

Friday, January 21, 2011

Daytrotter Session with Seafarer


Courtesy of Daytrotter. Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
 I have fallen in love with Seafarer. Their music is a mosaic of genres – rock, folk, psych, pop – that meshes perfectly to create such a riveting sound. Patrick Grzelewski, lead vocalist of the Chicago band, delivers the poetic lyrics in a gritty and almost raw fashion. This is a style I can dig. We can all relate to that feeling and need to shout out loud and by joining in with Grzelewski, you can do just that.

Recently releasing their EP Hidden Places on Jan. 18, Seafarer stopped in for a Daytrotter session to record four tracks. We highly recommend downloading the free mp3's from the session if you know what's good for you.

FREE Chicago shows:
Jan. 23rd at The Whistler
Jan. 28th at Empty Bottle Click Here to Read More..

High Five! from John Shipe

There are five things that can snap John Shipe out of a songwriting dry spell...






































































To celebrate the end of the nine to five, a Green Light Go staff member or artist will leave you with their short list of favorite things, better known as the High Five!

This week's High Five! is brought to you by: John Shipe
Click Here to Read More..

Cowboy and Indian Head West

Cowboy and Indian - Ledbellies (Hurt My Pride) from William Cabral on Vimeo.

West Coast music fans are soon going to have the chance to check out one of the most talked about new bands on the Austin music scene when Cowboy & Indian ride out for a 20-date tour, including dates at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

The rootsy trio began when Jazz Mills (T-Bird and the Breaks) got together with Jesse Plemons to write their first song. The collaboration took off and before long the pair was drawing major buzz at SXSW. Daniel James (frontman of SF based "Leopold and His Fiction") soon joined the band to complete the trio.

“We came together out of nowhere and were immediately inspired by one another,” Mills said. The band immediately put that inspiration to work, by recording their first song, “Hurt My Pride.” With Daniel in San Francisco and Jazz and Jesse in Austin, the bulk of the song was written over the phone. Yet when it came time to record, the chemistry was obvious to all. “We tracked the song as soon as we arrived in San Francisco,” James said, “and did it from the ground up, recording in living rooms, bedrooms and closets.”

The band is currently working its first full-length album, produced by James and due out this spring. They recently recorded a video of "Hurt My Pride” (featured on Baybridged.com) while on their cross-country tour, using playful footage captured in Chicago and on the banks of Lake Michigan. The band’s song “Trouble Tracks” was recently featured in an episode of the NBC hit series Parenthood.

Click Here to Read More..

Baby Teardrops to Release X Is For Love April 12th

It’s all about attitude and NYC rockers, Baby Teardrops, have it in spades. Like the burst of energy that comes from colliding particles, Matthew Dunehoo (vocals, guitar), Megan Thomas (bass) and Gerry White (drums) derive their sound from clash and collision of distinct personalities. The result is full of driving, propulsive rhythm and hypnotic mantras. The collection of the trio’s exothermic synergy can be found on X is for Love, which comes out April 12th.

“I demanded a band and Gerry and Megan came down the pipe direct from God and the Devil,” says front man and songwriter, Matthew Dunehoo. In March 2010, the band reunited after fate seemed to will it so. They’re not wasting the chance either, recording X is for Love with Erik Schuiten at Yessian Music in Manhattan. Dunehoo says of the title, “It felt right. When cartoon humans and animals are depicted as dead, they have Xs over their eyes, yet ‘X’ stands for ‘KISS’ as in XOXO. X marks the spot, the heart, the g-spot, the buried treasure, the pressure point, the line to sign.” All of these elements are to be found on the album, the joyous and beautiful crashing into the difficult and painful with a collection of songs that sound like that of a grunged out New Pornographers if they met The Pixies.

Baby Teardrops’ streamlined sound allows for Dunehoo’s lyrics to stand center stage. “I like the idea of taking a simple idea, something that exists whether we care about it or not, and glorifying it,” he says. “And more than that, I love language and the magical power language possesses to cut through and open up and be foul and sexy. The possibilities are endless.” On “Banged in the Heart,” he takes the feeling of being so deeply affected that you just have to shout and translates it into the repeated phrase “banged in the heart,” a perfect description of heart-exploding emotion. This, at the core, is what Baby Teardrops is all about. "This band operates by one rule: Bang others in the heart as you would like to be banged in the heart.”

X is for Love

Track Listing

1. ME Where
2. Smooth Sailing Ahead
3. I Don’t Wanna Go Home (I Wanna Go Home)
4. Flag of Inner Revolution
5. Lucky 7
6. Still Singing The Same Songs
7. Banged In The Heart
8. Let It Roll
9. Fight While You Are On The Run
10. Think It Look It Act It Become It

Click Here to Read More..

Win CDs from The Decemberists and GLG's own David Gergen and Seafarer at Spinner

It's a wonderful week for us at GLG! This week Spinner is offering a prize pack of CDs from bands like The Decemberists, Klaxons, and our very own, David Gergen and Seafarer. The contest ends at 5 p.m. TODAY, so hurry up and enter! If you miss out, don't worry, you can still hear the full CD's from Gergen and Seafarer in Spinner's Full CD Listening Party until this Sunday.

To enter:
Follow @Spinner on Twitter and retweet this contest announcement or "Like" Spinner's Facebook page and send an e-mail to spinnergiveaways@aol.com.

List of CDs:
Audio Bullys, 'Higher Than the Eiffel'
Gregg Allman, 'Low Country Blues'
Braids, 'Native Speaker'
David Gergen, 'The Nearer It Was... The Farther It Became'
Eulogies, 'Tear the Fences Down'
Klaxons, 'Surfing the Void (Deluxe Edition)'
Oh No Oh My, 'People Problems'
Seafarer, 'Hiding Places'
Social Distortion, 'Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes'
Tennis, 'Cape Dory'
The Decemberists, 'The King Is Dead'
Triumph of Lethargy Skinned Alive to Death, 'Some Of Us Are in This Together'
Two Door Cinema Club, 'Remixes EP'
Delorean, 'The Unfazed' Click Here to Read More..

GLG Fresh Mp3 Friday: The Roots of Indie Music


Martin Luther King Day takes America back to one of the civil rights pioneers. Similarly, GLG would like to take you back to the roots of indie music by featuring free Mp3 downloads of our favorite indie tracks for the week.

The class of musicians known as “Indie” are pioneers as they are independent from major commercial record labels. For the most part, they do their own recordings, publishing and performances.

Traveling back into the 1960s, bands like “Velvet Underground,” who did everything on their own, can be considered a real “indie” band. Indie music emerged with songs inspired by peace, love and anti-war thoughts. The recipe for Indie Music: half cup of pop, mixed with a bit of rock and roll, and a hint of R&B.

The 1970s experimented with the originality of music. Garage bands grew in the 1980s, as “alternative music” grew. The 90s seemed to reshape its traditions of originality as they signed onto major record labels and became “a missing link between modern music.” In the late 1990s, indie music went back to basics, returning to the core values of indie music’s roots.

David Gergen, From The Nearer it was…The Farther it Became
Release Date: January 18, 2011
"Love Blues"
“The Streets I’m Walkin’”
Genre: Electroacoustic/Alternative/Indie
For fans of: Nick Drake, Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen
Bio/hi-res photos

David Gergen- Love Blues by greenlightgo
David Gergen- The Streets I'm Walkin' by greenlightgo


Gwyneth & Monko, From Gwyneth & Monko
Release Date: February 15, 2011
"Get in the Sun"
Genre: Americana/Roots Music/Alternative
For fans of: Emmy Lou Harris, Patty Griffin, Jenny Lewis
Bio/hi-res photos
Gwyneth & Monko- Get in the Sun by greenlightgo


The Handsome Family, From Honey Moon
Now on Tour
"Just Like Tom Thumbs Blues"
“Family Drinking Beer on the Roof”
Genre: Folk/Americana
For fans of: You should already be their fan!
Bio/hi-res photos
The Handsome Family Just Like Tom Thumbs Blues by greenlightgo
The Handsome Family Drinking Beer On The Roof by greenlightgo


John Shipe, From Villain
Release Date: February 1, 2011
"Love Belongs to Everyone"
Genre: Acoustic/Indie/Rock
For fans of: Josh Ritter, Jonathan Rice and Elvis Costello
Bio/hi-res photos
John Shipe- Love Belongs to Everyone by greenlightgo


Neutral Uke Hotel (Neutral Milk Hotel Cover)
"Holland 1945"
“King of Carrot Flowers pt.1”
Genre: Indie Rock/Cover Song
For fans of: Neutral Milk Hotel
Bio/hi-res photos
Neutral Uke Hotel- Holland 1945 by greenlightgo
Neutral Uke Hotel-King of Carrot Flowers Pt 1 by greenlightgo

Listen to all the tracks here:
GLG Fresh Mp3: 1/20/11 by greenlightgo
To our fans, please feel free to post any of the approved songs on your blog or tweet to your friends. Check out our list of clients and available mp3s here: greenlightgopublicity.com. If you're not on our email list to receive these directly and want to be, please send an email over to info@glgpub.com.
Sources: http://www.indieupdate.com/indie-music-blog/history-of-indie-music/
Click Here to Read More..