2010 in concerts

I’ve had a pretty amazing run. I started this year unemployed and adrift and have ended the year one incredibly blessed young lady. (ish. ladyish.) I've been lucky enough to have amazing adventures, listen to some fantastic music, get a new job and apartment, and generally raise the shenaniganry bar pretty high. In addition to SXSW, Sasquatch, and Austin City Limits festivals here are the shows I saw this year. Thanks to my favorite people in the world for dancing with me like a crazy person, going camping with a bottle of Woodford, driving through deserts, and taking me on repeated trips to Taco Deli. I seriously have the best friends ever. And Dowks- our bet is still on for 2011.

In No Particular Order:

Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears
Stars
Phoenix
Musical Autobiography Sketchfest
Matt Nathanson
Fun.
Wheezer/ The Limousines
The National
Mumford & Sons
Arcade Fire at the Greek
Arcade Fire in Big Sur
Robyn
Ratatat/ DOM
Mat Pond Pa
Fools gold
Broken Social Scene
Miike Snow
The Very Best
The xx
The National
Vampire weekend
Passion pit
Minus the Bear
Kid Cudi
Freelance Whales
LCD Soundsystem
Dirty Projectors
The Heavy
MGMT
Massive attack
Deadmau5
Temper trap
She & Him
Drive-By Truckers
Chiddy bang
Washed out
Uffie
Best Coast
Nicky Jean
Cool Kids
The Black Keys
The Strokes
Beach House
Girls
Spoon
Mayer Hawthorne
Broken Bells
Dan Black
Mat and Kim
M.I.A.
Muse
Flaming lips
Pete Yorn
The Morning Benders
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
Band of Horses
Cage the Elephant
Talib Kweli

and yes. I'm ridiculous.

Start To Move

And now some music to send the year off right. Having music that strikes that balance of getting people in the mood to dance before dropping them deep into the world of David Guetta is always a fun challenge at parties. Unless its preTurkey cocktail hour with Alli, Weis, and Dowks. Then you just throw on GirlTalk and call it good. But without the assist from our friends Jack, Bullit, and Jameson, here is a couple tracks to transition your night into the dance phase. Happy New Year and cheers to my favorite house dance partiers, drink inventors and coffee-table jiggers

Note: also works well as music to try and recap the night before with friends on the couch. Funny that.

Shell Games

Unlike the illustrious Dowks, I didn't celebrate anything until yesterday and spend most of the 25th drinking whiskey with the grands and working on a puzzle. However, the one day weather delay on Christmas worked out swimmingly for me, with Santa bringing the most epic present ever. So I'm packing a bag for Maui, and to offset any seething jealousy coming from Dowks general direction, here is a new and free download from Bright Eyes. Its apropos cos its called Shell Games and I'm headed to the beach....

Bright Eyes - Shell Games by Pretty Much Amazing

A Christmas to Remember

If the pain of the headache is proportional to the fun had last night (culminating this afternoon), then I had one heck of a time at G & J's Christmas party.  Perhaps free musiks will help to dull the pain.

Enter, The Fall, the newest Gorillaz installment after Plastic Beach earlier this year.  Check it out here, and sign up for the mailing list to get access.  It's one of the first albums to be recorded and mixed entirely on the iPad.  Damon Albarn used 20 different apps (below) to mix and record the album over the 32 day span between their Montreal and Vancouver tour stops - so no studio work here,  but that doesn't seem to impact the quality...

Gorillaz - Detroit by Wewanttobeyoung

If you're a fancy shmantzy iPad owner and mixologist, and want to try stuff like this yourself, this is the list of apps they used to create the tracks:

Speak It! / SoundyThingie / Mugician / Solo Synth / Synth / Funk Box / Gliss / AmpliTube / Xenon / iElectribe / BS-16i / M3000 HD / Cleartune / iOrgel HD / Olsynth / StudioMiniXI / BassLine / Harmonizer / Dub Siren Pro / Moog Filatron

My Oh My!!

Seattle sports teams and I have had a tempestuous past.  The Seahawks were cool until, needing a scapegoat for their disappointing loss in Super Bowl, their ENTIRE fanbase took a personal vendetta against my Steelers.  So yeah, make the playoffs with a losing record this year, see if I care.  Go Black & Yellow!

On the other hand, the only "real" professional team to win a national championship for Seattle, The Sonics, bailed on Seattle for the Midwest.  This has left Key Arena largely empty for the past several years, although our WNBA team, the Storm, have recently done rather well for themselves there.

Then there are the Mariners.  Although they have been mis-rib since I've come to town in 2005, managing only one winning season, still falling short of making the playoffs (69-93, 78-84, 88-74, 61-101, 85-77, 61-101), I've still had some amazing times at Mariners games with the besties.  I love it when their eyes glaze over as they transport themselves back to a better time - 1995, when Griffey was young (which did not, unfortunately, preclude him from being hurt) the Mariners were the talk of the town and Dave Niehaus was electrically, emphatically and emotionally describing the games to a rapt Seattle audience.  

Unfortunately those days are over, and Dave Niehaus recently passed away, marking a sad day for a lot of my own close friends, and a morose nail in the coffin for that era of Mariner baseball.  Thankfully, another local Seattle-ite, hip-hop artist Ben Haggerty, aka Macklemore, teamed up with Ryan Lewis to release a tribute song to the announcing legend.  I heard it and couldn't help but feel like it's fitting.  Brother, Dirty Curty, Timbo, Yoshida, Drewseph (edit: and Jascha) and to all the Seattle Mariner and Niehaus fans...this post is for you.

Merry Christmas a day early from the Dowkstar...

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis - My Oh My by Siegs

Lullabies and Love Songs

The first time I heard Nicki Minaj's 'Right Thru Me' I had to do a double take. I really dug the song but it kind of freaked me out that she was rapping over the song El Captain used to blast to get me to go to sleep. I often get nervous when pop songs sample already superb musical works, and switching up my go to lullaby song seemed mildly sacrilegious. To her credit- the song is growing on me, but it won't ever eclipse the badassness that is Joe Satriani. Compare below! (oh and the Nicki Minaj track is a free download....)

Nicki Minaj - Right Thru Me by Pretty Much Amazing

Joe Satriani - Always with me, Always with you by TaffyLafaguz

TRON with Tron

Ok, just got back from seeing TRON with the Tronnonator herself.  We went to the threeD IMAX show, which left me with just 3 words.

Ah. May. Zing.

Yeah, sure, it's cheezy at times.  Yeah, sure, not all the acting is great.  But, how can you turn down a perfectly CGI'd young Jeff Bridges?!  The bike scenes are also tres cool, and make me realize I can't wait for the springtime when it will at last be time for me to get a bike of my own!

Thennnnnn there's the soundtrack.  Daft Punk did a great job - the whole thing is sick.  The two even make an appearance as DJs in the movie (in a pretty sweet sky club on top of the Grid).  If you're planning on being silly and missing the movie, don't be daft and miss the badass beats.  Synopsis is one of my favs

05 Daft Punk - Synopsis by tdubb

Tribute to Friends

I remember back in college, we played a game where we had to rank certain items in order of importance.  If you really know me, it comes as no surprise that "Friends" topped my list.  I am constantly reminded of why this is, whether it's playing late night Halo at Google, hitting up caverns at exclusive Napa wineries, a night out in Seattle, chilling on a Christmas tree lit porch, a slopeside cabin in Crested Butte or even just heading back to the Valley for some good R&R, I have amazeball friends.

While frontman Ryan Tedder intended the song All the Right Moves as a personal diss - they got their break via connections with Timbaland, unlike all the "cool-ass" bands that had to really "work" for it - every time I hear it, I can't help but think about how I am the one with friends in all the right places.  I'm totally ok with getting in on my friend's benefits and hopefully sharing some of my own!

So here's to conquering the world (or just reliving Leo's The Beach), and having plenty of peeps to enjoy it with...

Bah Humbug.

So Christmas is the only time of year I'm guaranteed that all my family will be in one place together. Except this year. Europe decided some snow was grounding flights for the next week and now my TBS is stuck until the 26th. Needless to say, I'm not amused, but am fully prepared to not acknowledge the holiday until my family is all together to celebrate it properly. Until then, I've put a moratorium on the super cool indie Christmas mix I was putting together and will force you to listen to the melancholy and wintery stylings of Sigur Ros instead. So happy Winter Solstice and we can talk about the holiday when I get Tres back.

Sabali

I'm a little obsessed with Amadou and Miriam and apparently they are releasing a remix album next month. I can't find this anywhere else, so go click through to Stereogum's very awesome premiere of Miike Snow's remix of Sabali to enjoy a little warm sunshine on this particularly gloomy day. If this sounds like your kind of thing, go listen to all of The Very Best that Dowks and I constantly talk about.

Something To Roll To

I've been digging Kisses EP for a while and something about this song's hook always makes me laugh. ('I would like to take you out for a nice steak dinner' is pretty funny to a lifelong vegetarian) Regardless of the silly chorus, this song is high on my list of dancing in the car on the way to Napa muzak.

Firecracker This

I'm a solid six months late to this party. But this promo for the Madison Square Garden show is just fun to watch so don't stress it k?

Untitled from Arcade Fire on Vimeo.

I might have had a small musical overdose in the last week. I'm currently recovering from the overwhelming influx of new muzak I have been lucky enough to receive but am putting together a mix for my most beloved as part of their Christmas present. Until then, the lovely and talented Leslietron shared this FastCompany info-graphic and I have been spending way to much time checking it out at work. I promise to clean up my act and come back with shiny new music once I've completed all ten steps.

Via: FastCompany

The Dowks Thanksgiving Mix of Amazeballs

I finally got a mix back from the disreputable Dowks after years of sending him an increasingly questionable collection of mixes (starting with an O.G. mix tape made about the time this photo was taken) I'm picking my top three that I didn't already know about (as hard as it for me not to pick Freelance Whales and M83...) and hoping he won't kill me for posting a photo of him before he could shave. Thanks for all the shenaniganry JD!

1. Lay Lady Lay - Magnet and Gemma Hayes

I really hate the original version of this song. I don't know why. I just do. This one is brilliant and getting added to my Sundays collection of music I listen to when I'm baking, reading, and basically enjoying the last moments of my weekends. Thanks for turning a song I hate into something I really dig guys!

2. Pretty Lights- Drift Away

I've read a ton of references to this awesome DJ, and according to my research, he has even been at some of the shows I've attended over the years and yet somehow he has totally escaped my music library until now. After listening to this song repeatedly, I'm about to remedy this shortcoming posthaste.

3. Baths- Animal

This track is the penultimate electropop groove that I've been obsessing over the last couple months. I can throw this into my Gold Panda, Animal Collective, Caribou three-ring circus and I know it will play nicely with the other DJ types. Bonus points for being from the Bay Areal local label Anticon.

Honorable Mention: Alexander's track 'Truth'. While I knew about the Edward Sharpe side project, I didn't expect how much I would dig this.

The Kids Are Disco Dancing

Time is a funny thing. Sometimes it feels like it speeds right by, and other times its amazing how far away things seem. I've always used music as a way to measure time, both specific moments in history (like a cover of 'Friday I'm in Love' by Aqualung, or Jamie Lidell's 'Multiply') and as a barometer of how my musical taste has evolved over the years. Nothing drew that in such sharp relief like Thanksgiving weekend did, when a friend who used to only listen to Jay-Z as far as I'm concerned, excitedly asked me about the Limousine song that popped up on my playlist.

Which gets me to the point of this post. The Limousines opened for Weezer's Time Machine tour on Tuesday, and Matty was awesome enough to let me come to the Pinkerton show with him. Weezer played one song from every album starting at Hurley and working their way back, finishing the night by playing the entire Pinkerton album end to end. The last time I saw Weezer, I was a freshman in college, still figuring out who I was and what I wanted to be. Rocking out on Tuesday, I realized that I still have no idea about either, but I know I've listened to some awesome music with some incredible friends and I'm really okay with not knowing the rest of it.

Internet Killed The Video Star by TheLimousines