Archives for category: indie

I still haven’t shaken my bad habit of including snarky tracks in my mixtapes.  For example, a killer Poison hit might provide a smirking counterpoint to a bone crushing Coalesce track, or the theme to the A-Team could lighten the mood after some Slint mathiness.

I was just thinking of updating my Muxtape page (finally) and how great it would be to include You’re the Best Around from the OG Karate Kid (by the way, check out this karate monkey — this song is such a versatile soundtrack!).

Unfortunately, when I tried to login to my Muxtape page, this is what I found.

Muxtape’s strengths were its simplicity — both in its aesthetics and its ease of use. However, what I enjoyed most was strolling through the diverse array of music its community hosted. Muxtape acted as a sort of cassette mixtape 2.0:

A physical cassette tape in your hands has such an insistent aesthetic; just holding one makes you want to find a tape player to fulfill its destiny. My goal with Muxtape’s design was to translate some of that tactility into the digital world, to build a context around the music that gave it a little extra spark of life and made the holder anxious to listen.

After lengthy talks with the RIAA and major record labels Muxtape — in its original incarnation — no longer exists.  Apparently, they’re reorganizing with a focus on bands, but it kind of seems like this ship has sailed.

Sigh.

So long, Muxtape — we hardly got to know each other.

…So asks the Gap (Product) Red campaign.

While there has been plenty of skepticism about the effectiveness of such movements, I believe there is something positive about at least attempting to make a difference. I might be a little bit skeptical of massive corporations attempting to cash in on our better instincts, but here are a couple of smaller organizations who are raising funds for worthy causes through the sales of t-shirts.

Rosa Loves

The sales of each of their shirts goes to meet the specific needs of real people in local communities around the world. For example, they raised money to buy a new walker for Glenda in West Augustine and a boat for Made in Indonesia. Currently, you could provide scholarships for kids in Bangladesh or college students from the village of Yalalag in Mexico.

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Yellow Bird Project

The Yellow Bird Project embodies what I love about the indie rock ethos — a community coming together to give back. Artists like Stars, The National and Wolf Parade design shirts and direct proceeds to causes closes to their hearts, including well-known organizations like Amnesty International and Greenpeace, along with smaller groups such as Art for Change and Safe Space.

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JustOne

Charles Lee is a founding member of JustOne, a grassroots nonprofit raising awareness about extreme global poverty and “provoking compassionate ideas and intelligent giving in order to provide sustainable relief.”  Support the cause by picking up one of these stylish One Voice to End Slavery shirts.

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Shirts for a Cure

Fans of the Warped Tour set can also support a worthy cause through shirts:  “The Syrentha J. Savio endowment (SSE) was established by punk-rock photographer Mark Beemer in 2002.  SSE provides financial assistanct to underprivileged women who cannot afford expensive breast cancer medicine and therapy.” 

And for free!

Indie heroes, +/- (with their clever domain hack website address), have a new album coming out soon.  +/- make good, honest indie rock (which is a breath of fresh air in today’s hypercommercialized, schock-rock, screamy/weepy scene).  You can listen to (and download!) their new song, Snowblind over at Stereogum.

Perhaps signaling a new musical direction, Kanye West is streaming his new song, Love Lockdown over at his blog.  Can’t say I’m the biggest hip hop fan (my tastes tend to be kind of stuck in the 90s… A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Guru, etc… which probably explains why I like The Cool Kids so much), but I really like Kanye’s work.

And, just for good measure, you can find a new Deerhoof track, Offend Maggie, at My Old Kentucky Blog.  As always, expect the eclectic from Deerhoof.  After listening to it, I kind of feel like riverdancing.  Go figure.

Some of my favorite music comes from the late 80s/early 90s. The whole DC/Dischord movement was highly influential not only for the music, but for the ethic (see an article I wrote with Jason Evans over at the Ecclesia Collective site, What Would Ian Do?).

Indie labels like Merge (current home of Arcade Fire), Caulfield, Simple Machines, Gravity and Touch and Go documented regional scenes from far-flung places across the country — allowing a land-locked Michigander kid, like myself, to be connected in some way to places like Chapel Hill and San Diego in the pre-internet Stone Ages.

For my birthday, I just purchased an old album by seminal Louisville powerhouse Rodan. After all these years, it still sounds amazing! And, I finally picked up that Sonic Youth shirt I’ve had my eye on! Happy mid-90s indie rock birthday to me, indeed!

At the end of August, one of my favorite noise-rock bands from back in the day will be playing in SD — the mighty Polvo has reunited for a short summer tour. While I would like to catch this show, it does make me wonder about all of the reunion shows that are happening.

Coachella has practically become a “Name That Reunion” event [h/t: Brooklyn Vegan for compiling a nice list of Coachella reunions shows here]; the “Don’t Look Back” series from All Tomorrow’s Parties has bands performing entire albums of vintage material. When does one cross the line from nostalgia into blatantly cashing in? And does the Spinal Tap performance from Live Earth count as part of this trend?

At the risk of simply turning headsparks* into a Jason Evans quote machine, I am feeling the resonance of these words more & more these days:

Ironic to some possibly, punk rock kept my spirituality alive over the years

I’m feeling church a lot more like an indie band driving a beater van for a short tour of neighboring states rather than some A&R guy looking to sign the next big thing for some pyrotechnic arena blowout (if that makes any sense at all).

I think I’m just glad that Jason went with me to see Jaguar Love recently. Despite my wife’s merciless teasing over my giddiness at seeing shows with Jason, it’s so much more fun to catch a show with a friend. While we could have done without some of the borderline Black Crowesish organ breakdowns, it did my heart good to relax, watch the show and then hang out for a bit with J.