Metric - Youth Without Youth

New Metric song, Youth Without Youth from the forthcoming Synthetica (dropping June 12).

The Walkmen - Heaven

The Walkmen have been making fine music for longer than you have been tweeting. The Walkmen were ignored for no good reason by Scruffy for far too long (perhaps because he had to scrimp and save for eons just to buy a cheap Walkman knock-off in the bustling metropolis of Fargo). The Walkmen have a new album called Heaven which will be released May 29 in North America. The Walkmen have allowed us to hear two new tunes from the album, Heaven and Heartbreaker. The Walkmen may have created my favourite new song in Heaven, with a vaguely MeltWithYou drum pattern and a warm early-R.E.M guitar and bass feel.

Record Store Day 2012

Well, another year has come and gone and I'm sad to say I did not get to my favourite record stores today. I did, however, play my almost-two-year-old some of his Fisher Price imitation vinyl. Record Store Day seems to get bigger every time, it seems like every artist wants to get in the action, which is cool. According to Rolling Stone magaine, record sales went up 36% lst year. Would you believe the vinyl version of The Beatles - Abbey Road sold 41,000 copies last year? How about Fleet foxes selling 29,700, or Radiohead selling 20,800?

Iggy Pop - Reminiscence from Record Store Day on Vimeo.

Joey Ramone - Rock 'N Roll Is The Answer from Record Store Day on Vimeo.

Red Vienna - Low Lights, Blood Letter

Vancouver's Red Vienna isn't one of those artists that put out a new tune every five minutes (Hello, Robert Pollard!), so when something new comes around, it's not a tossed-off snippet, it's a song worth your time. The band's one some people have been watching becuase it's interesting to see what happens to promising, ambitious music-makers in today's music biz climate. Do major labels in Canada still sign artists before they have had some kind of hit? Is there an indie label that's a good fit for a band like Red Vienna?

I don't think there are lot of music artists in Canada making a good living simply doing their thing. Red Vienna doesn't have any big gimmicks to grab attention that I know of, but they make accessible tunes, often melodic with an edge, and they don't sound like many others. Just listen to the first 60 seconds of Low Lights below, I think you'll agree that Red Vienna is the bee's knees.

















Red Vienna on facebook - http://www.facebook.com/redvienna

Red Vienna on Bandcamp - http://redvienna.bandcamp.com/

Red Vienna on Twitter - https://twitter.com/#!/Red_Vienna

Red Vienna on iTunes - http://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/red-vienna-ep/id372070688

Dio! Holy Diver, Ride the Tiger?!

LOOK OUT! I was at a Jets game the other day and heard Dio's Holy Diver. I heard Ronnie James Dio singing what sounded like:

Ride the tiger
You can see his stripes but you know he's clean
Oh don't you see what I mean

I think those may be the most amazing and perplexing lyrics ever created by man. No, I don't think I can see what you mean, Mr. Dio. Can anyone explain those gems? Also, Wikipedia tells me that "Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the song was placed on the list of post-9/11 inappropriate titles distributed by Clear Channel". Huh? Why? Is it because when Dio shrieks "Look out!" you can tell he really means it?







How about Pat Boone doing Holy Diver with Dio on back-up vocals?



There are some, er, interesting covers of Holy Diver out there, like this one or those below. LOOK OUT!





Hey, leave a comment below, it tastes great AND is less filling.

R.E.M. - A Late Appreciation Pt. 2

Imagine my surprise yesterday. After starting this way-after-the-fact appreciation of a band that broke up a while ago, I see that another guy has written his own series of written tributes. And his are much wordier, more serious, and more fitting for a great band. Oh well.

At any rate, one of the reasons R.E.M. ws important to me is that they were my gateway band. Remember, when they first started, hair metal was the rock standard. Bands like Scorpions, Motley Crue, and Ratt ruled the airwaves, at least in my town on rock radio, and that's what I listened to and liked. Well, okay, I never enjoyed Motley Crue, their vocalist wss terrible, but I still kinda like Ratt - Round and Round is awesome(And hey, I think I'm going to post next about Dio!).

Anyhow, R.E.M. was definitely one of the bands that I read about in CREEM that led me off the garden path. I read about this band from Athens with a mumbly singer, heard S. Central Rain, and was hooked. This led to searching out multiple artists -such as Wire, Let's Active, Robyn Hitchcock, Billy Bragg, Television, Minor Threat, The Byrds, Drivin' 'n' Cryin', and so on - heck, even listening to old Aerosmith. When I talked to Stipe and Mills, I expressed my surprise that they would cover Toys in the Attic, and they consequently expressed their surprise that I would find that cover unexpected. At any rate, my appetite for hair metal, hard rock or whatever you call it dwindled after I met R.E.M.