R.I.P. Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous

It is always sad to see one of your favorite musicians pass away. It is even harder when they commit suicide.

Singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mark Linkous has committed suicide, his publicist confirmed to Rolling Stone last night. Sparklehorse released four albums during their time together, he also produced Daniel Johnston's album Fear Yourself. Last year he collaborated for Danger Mouse and created one of my favorite albums of 2009 called Dark Night Of The Soul. The good news on this album, EMI Records has settled their lawsuit against Danger Mouse and the album will have an official release later this year.

“It is with great sadness that we share the news that our dear friend and family member, Mark Linkous, took his own life today,” reads a statement from his family. “We are thankful for his time with us and will hold him forever in our hearts. May his journey be peaceful, happy and free. There’s a heaven and there’s a star for you.”

Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse “Revenge (featuring Wayne Coyne)”


If you ever feel like the way out is to kill yourself, there is help out there. Call the suicide hotlines. They do help! It is the first step and the biggest step you can take.

National Suicide Hotlines
Toll-Free / 24 hours a day / 7 days a week
1-800-SUICIDE 1-800-273-TALK
1-800-784-2433 1-800-273-8255

Information on suicide prevention.

People grieve in different ways. For me, I like to celebrate the their life. Mark was an incredible musician and brought me happiness when listening to his music. Even though his lyrics can be dark in nature, his music always brought an emotional response, whether it be good or bad.

Sparklehorse "It's A Wonderful Life"

From the album It's a Wonderful Life. Video directed by the Quay Brothers. Produced and mixed by Mark Linkous. Lyrics by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. Mark plays drums, guitar, optigan, backwards midget voice, and sampler. Adrian Utley plays kitty cat guitar and fuzzy ending bass. Tom Waits sings and plays big seed pod, metal things, and train.

Sparklehorse "Maggie May"

Sparklehorse "Covered In Hugs"

Sparklehorse "See The Light"

Funny or Die's SNL Presidential Reunion

Take a famous Hollywood director = Ron Howard

Take a bunch of famous comedians who've lampooned the presidents on Saturday Night Live = Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Dana Carvey, Darrell Hammond, Will Ferrell and Fred Armisen

Mix it all up with one comedian who lampooned a president in his Living Colour days = Jim Carrey

Funny or Die has done it again with another fun video. The common thread for all these people getting together is the Main Street Brigade. Here is something about the MSB from their website.

For centuries, in cities across the US, the fire brigades have been groups of civilians who rush to respond in emergencies, protecting lives and property. Sometimes professionals, and often just responsible neighbors, they have been willing to act, and stick their necks out, for the benefit of their communities.

Today, we all know family members, friends, and co-workers whose lives has been detrimentally affected, if not completely devastated, by the dramatic downturn in our economy. Our communities have been damaged by layoffs, foreclosures. We all know people whose incomes are being eaten up by sudden increases in interest rates on their credit cards. While the arsonists escape on their corporate jets, we are inhaling the smoke.

The Main Street Brigade is a rapid response team, nationwide, that can be activated to protect our communities against just this kind of devastation.

Right now, we are ALL vulnerable to the big banks, CEOs and Wall Street institutions whose irresponsibility and risky behavior caused this economic crisis. Our vulnerability is being increased by the fact that when our government proposes an agency with sound measures to protect our interests, the arsonists are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into lobbying and advertising to prevent that protection from being implemented.

Today, our work is to support the formation of the Consumer Financial Protection act, and protect our families and communities.

As we go forward, their will be other actions we can do.

Here are the three videos, the first is the main skit, the second and third are behind the scene footage. With all these great comedians, you know the backstage area will be rip with humor.

Funny or Die's Presidential Reunion from Will Ferrell

President's Reunion Behind the Scenes - watch more funny videos

Dana Carvey Dream Sequence: A Presidential Reunion Extended Scene from Dana Carvey

OK Go - Does It Again - Amazing New Video

Back in the good old days of MTV, when videos were being played, as a performer, if you had a great video, it would propel you forward on the charts. Now days with MTV just another cable channel, getting noticed takes a little extra effort if you're an unknown band.

OK Go did this with there breakthrough video for "Here It Goes Again" choreographed on treadmills.

Each new song from each new album, OK Go looks for ways to one up themselves. The art of one-take videos has never been pushed further than by this band. When they created the video for the song, "This Too Shall Pass" the record label decided that no one could embed the video on blogs or websites. This was the reason the band became viral, was we as bloggers could embed this amazing videos and comment on them on our own sites. The backlash was felt, the greedy record label never gave in, so the band made a new video. It is free to embed and it was sponsored by State Farm.

Now I'm sure people will be up in arms about a State Farm truck being pushed to start off the video, but come on. These incredible pieces of work don't come free. Someone has to pay for it. I'm sure the people upset about there being a sponsor in the video, wouldn't have contributed to the making of it.

So here is the new amazing video for "This Too Shall Pass." Below this video is a four part series on how they made the video.

Making of Part One

Making of Part Two

Making of Part Three

Making of Part Four


Here is the original video that their record company doesn't want you to embed into your blog. So, don't tell anyone. Thanks :)

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

Happy Hollows - How Did I Miss This Band?

Sarah Negahdari, Charlie Mahoney and Chris Hernandez make up the band The Happy Hollows. A band that makes me wish I had known about them in 2009. I'm going to have to create a new list of my favorite music I didn't know about in 2009.

This three piece indie-rock band from Los Angeles that play fast and irreverent noise-pop. The group is fronted by Sarah and holding down the rhythm, Charlie on bass and Chris Hernandez on drums. The L.A. Times has described their sound as a “pugilistic mix of stinging guitars, turbulent rhythms, and shouted vocals” that “alternates between childlike experimentation and ferocious firestorm.”

Here is the song off of the album, Spells, called "High Wire"


The music video from The Happy Hollows for the song "Death to Vivek Kemp" was created by Ben Hoste (www.benjaminhoste.com). Below the video he made is a making of the video. See how Ben's 2000 sheets of paper made this fun video.




One of my all-time favorite songs growing up was by an Australian group called The Church. I had the opportunity to see them live at The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis back in the 80's. They filmed a video during this concert for the song "Reptile." I still watch the video hoping I can pick myself out in the crowd. Maybe I need to find the old concert ticket to see where I was actually sitting. I can remember they did the song multiple times during the concert to get enough video roll to make the final cut.

It is amazing how a song, when hearing it for the first time in a few years can bring back a bunch of memories that I had forgotten about. Thanks to Sarah's incredible voice, The Happy Hollows really have made the song, "Under The Milky Way" a favorite of mine all over again!

In case you wanted to see the video by The Church that you may or may not see me in, here you go.

Miles Kurosky's video for "Dog In The Burning Building"

You may not know the musician Miles Kurosky, but you may know his former band he was in. Beulah called it quits about six years ago. Since then, he got married, had shoulder surgery and was hospitalized with kidney troubles.

Coming out on March 8th with be his first solo record by the man behind the band Beulah. More than two dozen friends joined him in making this 10 track album called The Desert Of Shallow Effects.

He is currently preparing for a tour and he recently blogged about people asking him if he'll be doing Beulah songs or not. Head on over to his website and join in the discussion of what Beulah song you would like to hear on the upcoming tour.

www.mileskurosky.com

Here is the official music video for Miles Kurosky's "Dog in the Burning Building" (created by Fran and Will Krause) off The Desert of Shallow Effects, out 3/9/10 on Majordomo Records.

2009 Music In Review - #1

One thing is constant from the first time I was exposed to Neko Case by my friend Eric, is that the cliché of so and so could sing the phone book and I’d buy it. Well, Neko Case is that one artist that I would buy it the day it came out.

The album was recorded partly in a barn that was filled with old abandoned pianos that Neko found on craigslist. The barn sits on her property in Vermont which adds a sense of isolation that runs throughout the album. Not all of the songs have that solidarity sound, but turn into big and scary songs as they collide with her observations on relationships.

Middle Cyclone is one of the best albums by one of the most talented ladies in the business today. Looking back at the album cover, it shows Neko Case, leading the charge into battle for me and my favorite albums of 2009. Her voice is amazing and she is at the top of her game.


"This Tornado Loves You" is found on my favorite album of 2009 by Neko Case.


Here is the video for the track, "People Got A Lotta Nerve."

2009 Music In Review - #2

Have you seen the Avett Brothers live? You need to do yourself a favor and make trek to their hugely energetic bouncefest. I’ve never witnessed a band who are so in touch with their audience and their audience so in touch with them. You would think all this great live energy would be tough to make its way to the album. Somehow they keep pulling it off. I And Love And You is by far the most polished album to date and best they’ve done.

This sixth album continues one of the biggest grassroots stories of last decade. Self-promoting shows, eventually signing with a local North Carolina label prior to making it to the big leagues with Sony Records. Add the legendary producer, Rick Rubin, you have a band that the mainstream audience now getting a taste of what this trio from the Carolina’s can do.

Every instrument sounds perfectly placed, and that's a shame because the Avetts got more mileage out of their rough edges than most bands this decade. Buffing away their rough edges and rowdy quirks, Rubin establishes a mood of intense pensiveness even on the first song, when they announce they're getting no sleep till Brooklyn.

Avett Brothers with the song, "Tin Man" off of my second favorite album of 2009.

Here is the video for "I And Love And You."

2009 Music In Review - #3

The Hazards of Love is a full-fledged rock-opera about a woman named Margaret; her shape-shifting lover, William; a grouchy forest Queen; and a coolly sociopathic rapscallion known only as “The Rake”.

It is, in other words, the album that the Decemberists have always wanted to make.
A rock-opera, and is as unabashedly committed to the form as its more famous predecessors like Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway or David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and like those albums, the details of the story here are somewhat unimportant, painted in broad strokes and more based on character and mood than it is on specific plot points.

The music here is as strong as anything that the band has ever done, though the album is distinctly different than their others—sparser, perhaps, in timbre and in instrumentation, but more varied in style.

But listening to The Hazards of Love is thrilling, both because of the music itself and because the album was such a gamble from the first. Improbable as it seems, they pull it off. But if anyone could, you'd expect it to be the Decemberists.

"The Wanting Comes In Waves" by The Decemberists off of my third favorite album of 2009.

Here is a live version of "The Rack Song" from the TV Show, Later Live With Jools Holland on November 17th, 2009.

2009 Music In Review - #4

Emily Haines’ heart is beating like a hammer and so is Metric’s fourth full-length album, Fantasies. So cohesive and deliberate is this album from start to finish, it seems like a record that, by design, made itself.

The band met in the woods outside Seattle to work on acoustic songs. Those of you who have seen Metric’s supercharged live shows know those songs wouldn’t stay acoustic for long, however.

What will really bring listeners back to this album, though, is the music, which is the most consistently sustaining energy the band has ever created.

This isn’t the breakthrough album that nobody expected. This is precisely the album everyone was waiting for from Metric, a culmination of all their strengths and a slicing off of the fat that may have slowed them down in the past.

Here the song, "Help, I'm Alive" by The Metric off of my number four favorite album or 2009.

Official Music Video for "Gimme Sympathy", from the album Fantasies, directed by Frank Borin.

2009 Music In Review - #5

The obvious points of comparison for Monsters of Folk—the first group outing for Matt "M" Ward, Jim James of My Morning Jacket, and Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis of Bright Eyes—are to the Traveling Wilburys and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. But Monsters of Folk is a more sonically diverse album than those comparisons might suggest.

The album gives its would-be supergroup opportunity to showcase the full breadth of their individual influences. That works in the band's favor, as it keeps Monsters from succumbing to the dreary monotony and self-importance that sink so many contemporary folk records.

It's also a credit to the talents of each man that no one steals the spotlight. With all four players clearly bringing out the best in each other.

From the number five album in 2009, here is Monsters Of Folk with "Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.)

Here is the video for the song, "The Right Place."