Easy Music Guides

Producer Amon Tobin is bringing back his wildly successful ISAM Live show, an immense audio and visual performance, this year with some slightly new looks. Along with more tour dates, the avant-garde producer is also set to release a box set with seven CDs and two DVDs filled with rare and unreleased footage from last year’s concerts. Check out this clip of Tobin’s ethereal and haunting “Lost and Found” from ISAM Live, complete with a stunning light show. Of the track Tobin says, “Well, it’s a small voice in a big open space. Lost yes, lost oh yes. In the end comfortable being there, wherever that is. The end.” 

Of the song’s technical aspects he added, “The vocals are my own, gender-modified and morphing into strings from time to time. Only invented instruments and made-up vocalists feature in the song. All built virtually one way or another using computers and such.”

Article source: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/premiere-amon-tobin-lost-and-found-20120518

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John Mellencamp may have made his name cutting heartland hits like “Jack and Diane” and “Pink Houses,” but he also turns to painting to express himself. “It’s my hobby,” Mellencamp tells Rolling Stone on Thursday at a gallery reception in Nashville, where Nothing Like I Planned: The Art of John Mellencamp — a 49-painting, four-decade-spanning exhibition of his brushwork — runs through June 10th at the Tennessee State Museum.

The themes of populism, social injustice, small-town struggle and fractured relationships that reappear in the singer-songwriter’s sprawling discography are, not surprisingly, also spread across his canvases. “I write about the human condition, I paint about the human condition,” he says. Many of Mellencamp’s somewhat surrealist works are autobiographical, depicting his children, past wives and past selves. Some are pensive character portraits depicting defeated party-goers, marginalized farmers and depressed musicians, while other pieces are harsher, more visually chaotic commentaries on racism, Hurricane Katrina, the fatal plight of smokers, censorship and religion. The work is dark and difficult – far removed from the Indiana dive bars where young, wide-eyed Jacks and Dianes still dance the night away.

The title of the exhibit, Mellencamp explains, was meant to reflect the creative process of his painting. “I’m always surprised,” he says. “I always have a vague notion of what I think it’s gonna be, and so many times it doesn’t turn out anything like I thought it would.” Lyrical imagery in songs doesn’t develop so easily for him: “You can’t just throw any ol’ words on there and think it’s gonna work,” he explains.

Painting has also become a way for Mellencamp to avoid stereotype; as he sang in his 1989 hit “Pop Singer,” chart success comes with artistic pitfalls. “Pop music has always been necessary,” he says, “but I ran into problems; I had too many hit records.  You can have too many hit records. It’s not a very nice path to go down. You have a hit, you have a hit, you have a hit and then it’s like, all of the sudden, that’s all people think that you’re good for.” His artwork has proven more modest. “[I] write a song and then, generally, I’ve gotta take it to the next step of puttin’ a band with it, recording it — there’s a lot of people involved in that process,” he notes. “In this process, it’s just me.”

As Mellencamp’s handlers, family members, friends and current flame Meg Ryan mill about the gallery, the famously mercurial musician declines to address the crowd and makes a hasty exit. As he jokes before departing, “Everyone seems to like me better when I’m painting. I don’t know why.”

Article source: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/john-mellencamp-i-write-about-the-human-condition-i-paint-about-the-human-condition-20120518

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Donna Summer, the singer known to her fans as the Queen of Disco, died on Thursday at the age of 63. Summer, along with the producer Giorgio Moroder, was at the forefront of the disco movement in the Seventies, expanding and transforming dance music by mutating strains of RB, funk and electronic music.

Though Summer and Moroder gave the world groundbreaking hits like “I Feel Love” and “Love to Love You Baby,” they weren’t alone in creating timeless disco music. Our question for you this week is: What is the best disco song of all time?

You can vote here in the comments, on facebook.com/rollingstone or on Twitter using the #weekendrock hashtag.

Article source: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/weekend-rock-question-what-is-the-best-disco-song-of-all-time-20120518

Brooklyn-based electro-pop group St. Lucia recently performed a sunny version of their catchy track “Closer Than This” at the Spotify House in Austin. They recall of the show, “We’ve done a couple of acoustic recordings but not in front of an audience, so this was quite nerve-wracking.” The smaller, more intimate setting of the Spotify House allowed the band to “have the whole soundscape of somebody’s voice and all of those voices together as one unit,” they say.

Article source: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/st-lucia-perform-closer-than-this-at-spotify-house-20120518

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“I’d like to make a suggestion to President Obama, ” Tom Morello bellowed to the capacity crowd gathered for the National Nurses United rally at Chicago’s Daley Plaza on Friday afternoon. “If he doesn’t have the courage to close Guantanamo Bay, how about he takes some of those Wall Street criminals? Throw them in there, lock the door, throw away the key and blast Rage Against the Machine 24 hours a day!”

As he has previously done at several Occupy Wall Street rallies, Morello played a short set of protest anthems under the guise of his alter ego, the Nightwatchman. The crowd consisted largely of Occupy Chicago supporters and nurses wearing red scrubs and green “Robin Hood” hats, in a nod to the Robin Hood tax that would essentially tax financial institutions a minimal percentage for transactions. The rally was originally supposed to coincide with the G8 summit in Chicago this week, but it was rescheduled around this weekend’s NATO conference after the summit was moved to Camp David.

Morello opened with “One Man Revolution,” the title track off the Nightwatchman’s 2007 debut LP. Clutching his guitar emblazoned with the words “Whatever It Takes,” he told the crowd how proud he was of the nurses’ resilience when Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, had temporarily plugged the plug on the rally. “They looked the mayor dead in the eye and they said, in the words of the old 1990 spiritual, ‘Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!’” Morello exclaimed.

Following a rendition of his appropriately-titled “Union Song” – during which he praised “the union men and women standing strong” and slipped in the line, “like the nurses in Chicago” – Morello invited fellow Chicagoan and Rise Against lead singer Tim McIlrath onstage for a searing rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”

The rally was just the start to Morello’s busy weekend in Chicago; in addition to the Nurses rally, he’ll play the Woody Guthrie centennial celebration on Saturday and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Against the War rally the following day. Backstage before Friday’s performance, Morello deemed his first event a success, if only for that fact that it happened at all.

“Our victory is that we’re standing here today,” Morello told Rolling Stone, although he expressed disappointment over the relocation of the G8 summit. “They ran away like little lambs because they were afraid of the reception that Chicago was going to give them. Who else is not welcome in Chicago? NATO. They had to call in the National Guard and bus in police from three adjoining states to protect their conference from the people of Chicago.”

Gregg Alexander, frontman of the New Radicals, was also on hand to show his support for the non-profit group Health Gap. He told Rolling Stone that he sees the Robin Hood tax as a solution to the country’s current economic crisis. “The Robin Hood Tax can be the crucial and only pivotal change that will not only be a Band-Aid, but something that causes systemic change,” Alexander said. “My message to the artistic community would be, ‘Don’t pay attention to Band-Aids. Let’s not do things that look like Gap commercials for trendy PSAs. Let’s make Wall Street and the corrupt monsters live up to their word.’”

After a crowd-participatory version of “This Land Is Your Land,” Morello invited the masses to join him onstage for “World Wide Rebel Songs.” But when security temporarily prevented the audience from joining him, Morello had one final biting set of instructions: “Everything has been going so smoothly up until now,” he said. “So let those fucking people up here, or there’s gonna be a problem!”

Article source: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/tom-morello-gets-fired-up-at-chicago-nurses-rally-20120518

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Click to listen to El-P’s album ‘Cancer4Cure’

Constantly progressing and unapologetically ambitious, Brooklyn indie-rap icon El-P has returned with Cancer for Cure, his first solo hip-hop album in five years. Since then, the underground rap world that anointed El-P has dissipated, replaced by an anything-goes broadband landscape of endless independent mixtapes and material. But El-P’s sound is hardly irrelevant; his menacing production and complex, katana-sharp flow slice deeper than ever on C4C.

Standout track “Oh Hail No” features fiery, ear-blasting guest verses from emcees Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire and Danny Brown, while lead single “The Full Retard” is a brutalizing banger that obliterates everything in its path. C4C also features guest spots from Interpol’s Paul Banks and Islands frontman Nick Diamonds, with the latter recently appearing onstage with El-P on the Late Show with David Letterman.

“I just kind of do what’s around, what’s natural. I really don’t believe in going too far out of your way to hunt down somebody to do a song,” revealed El-P in a recent Rolling Stone interview, regarding the more unusual collaborations on his new album. “Everybody on the record is somebody that I’ve had in my head or that I’ve had in my life that’s been helping me in the way that I think about music.”

Cancer for Cure is out May 22nd on Fat Possum.

Article source: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/album-premiere-el-p-cancer-for-cure-20120518

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Click to listen to the Afghan Whigs’ ‘See and Don’t See’

The recently reunited Afghan Whigs have returned with their first new recording in over five years: a cover of “See and Don’t See,” originally recorded in 1970 by Marie “Queenie” Lyons. The track gets a haunting rework by the Ohio alt-rockers, who strip down the bouncy funk of the original into a sparse, chilling acoustic guitar track capped by frontman Greg Dulli’s powerful vocals.

The Afghan Whigs haven’t released any new recordings since 2006, and they originally split in 2001. Dulli recently told Rolling Stone, “Playing something I had frankly forgotten about was completely like rediscovering the songs.” 

“See and Don’t See” is available as a free download at the band’s official site.

Article source: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/song-premiere-the-afghan-whigs-see-and-dont-see-20120518

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It certainly was a great night in Harlem on Thursday, as producer Quincy Jones and a cast of blues, jazz and RB greats gathered to raise funds and awareness for artists who have fallen into financial despair. “We don’t just dedicate this song to the ones who’ve passed on,” Bono said during his performance of “Angel of Harlem.” “Tonight we’re thinking of the ones who are still with us.”

The annual event was a benefit to support the Jazz Foundation of America, a non-profit group that helps thousands with medical care, housing and providing a safety net to musicians who spent their lives on the road without a retirement plan.

The gala, dubbed A Great Night in Harlem, took place as many learned that disco queen Donna Summer had passed away. The news made an impression on the event, which pays tribute to the talented artists who have passed on in the past year. “She’s a legend,” Quincy Jones told reporters about Summer outside the Apollo after the performance. “She had a big heart, a big mind and a big soul.”

Earlier, Jones stood on the Apollo stage and ran through a few memories before telling an anecdote about meeting Pope John Paul II with Bono. He then brought the lead singer of U2 on stage to perform “Angel of Harlem,” in perhaps the most appropriate of venues.

“I feel like I should take my shoes off,” Bono said, as the backing of a full horn section compelled him to dance.

In a stunning gold dress and her signature kinky hair, Macy Gray paid tribute to Etta James with a sultry version of “At Last.” The Swell Season’s Glen Hansard practically stormed the stage to perform a song in honor of the late Levon Helm. Clad in a purple suit, Dr. John held court over a methodical and soulful version of the old spiritual “Motherless Child.”

There was even some comic relief from former Saturday Night Live star Darrell Hammond, who did an impressive Al Sharpton impersonation. But it was a surprise appearance by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog that added a correct dose of awkward humor for the majority-white crowd in the historic Harlem theater.

“If these walls could talk,” Triumph said, “they would wonder what the hell all these rich Jews are doing inside them.”

David Johansen played the perfect jester as he rekindled his Buster Poindexter days. With a three-piece suit and a top hat, Johansen joyfully performed Cab Calloway’s “Kickin’ the Gong Around.”

The foundation also showcased work they have done in places like New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. At the opening of the show the house lights went up, illuminating the entire theater. The Treme Brass Band and Rebirth Brass Band both marched down the aisles blaring “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The horns were all-encompassing. For a few minutes, all their joys and sorrows were ours as well.

Article source: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bono-dr-john-help-raise-money-for-destitute-musicians-20120518

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Van Halen have abruptly postponed all tour dates after their June 26th show in New Orleans with no explanation.

The band yanked more than 30 long-planned dates, including shows in Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Salt Lake City and El Paso. Local promoters United Concerts and AEG issued statements regarding some postponed shows to local media, including the Salt Lake Tribune and Las Cruces Sun-News, but no details have been offered yet about rescheduled dates or refunds.

Nearly all of the tour is promoted by Live Nation, whose reps wouldn’t comment. The band’s rep also had no comment. A source with knowledge of the tour tells Rolling Stone that Van Halen’s members “hate each other.” Adds the source, “The band is arguing like mad. They are fighting.” 

News of the postponed tour dates surprised several arena reps, who are featuring upcoming Van Halen shows prominently on their websites. “You want to know the absolute fuckin’ truth? I have no fuckin’ idea,” another concert-business source with knowledge of the tour tells Rolling Stone.

“It’s selling pretty good – I don’t know why they would say it’s being canceled,” says a source at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, where the band was supposed to perform on July 7th.

Several of the non-canceled dates have nearly sold out, including this Saturday’s show in Minneapolis and June 20th in Dallas. “We’re selling really well,” says Jack Larson, vice president and general manager of the Xcel Energy Center. “We’re looking forward to it.”

After decades of touring with Sammy Hagar (and, for a brief period in the late 1990s, Gary Cherone), Van Halen reunited with David Lee Roth for a 2007 tour and hit the road again with him in February. The band released its first new album with Roth, “A Different Kind of Truth,” earlier that month. It sold 187,000 copies in its debut week and hit Number Two.

Article source: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/van-halen-postpone-summer-tour-dates-20120517

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Just two days ago, Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward announced that he would not participate in the group’s three upcoming reunion gigs with an incredibly detailed, 1,504-word letter. Today, the rest of the group responded with a mere 54 words. Their statement reads, in full:

We have decided not to make any detailed comment on Bill’s latest statement. There are two sides to every story. We have been working hard at rehearsals making excellent progress after Tony’s treatments and we have engaged a substitute drummer for the forthcoming shows. See you at Download.

–Black Sabbath, 5/17/12

It’s unclear who will perform in Ward’s place. In the past, Faith No More’s Mike Bordin has substituted when Ward was unavailable. Vinny Appice replaced Bill Ward in Black Sabbath in the 1980s and played with the group this decade under the moniker Heaven and Hell; however, in a recent interview with the Great Southern Brainfart, he said that nobody has contacted him about the gig. “If Black Sabbath is going to do a reunion, Bill should be there,” he said. “I guess the whole problem with this thing was money. It’s a shame to see that. I don’t know what the hell’s going to happen. If they end up doing it with another drummer, it’ll be the second best thing, since the fans still obviously want to hear those classic songs.”

Black Sabbath (at least 75 percent of them) will play their first gig since 2005 this Saturday at the O2 Academy Birmingham in their hometown of Birmingham, England. On June 10th, they’ll play the Download Festival in Derby, England and then do one more show on August 3rd at Lollapalooza in Chicago. The remaining dates of their summer tour were cancelled so that Tony Iommi can continue to receive treatment for lymphoma. 

Article source: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/black-sabbath-vow-to-continue-without-drummer-bill-ward-20120517