If you're a fan of Therefore I Am, they have a contest posted on their website in which you could win some really fucking awesome shit. Seriously, this is a ton of crazy stuff. You'll get an Xbox 360, their latest CD, a limited edition T-shirt and hoodie, some posters, and a bunch of one of a kind band memorabilia that includes some no longer used gear, personal photos, old flyers/posters/promotional CDs. You will also get two tickets to any upcoming Therefore I Am show, and the band will take you out for pizza. And the whole thing is packed inside an old suitcase they actually used on tour to transport gear.
This contest is so baller because each of those things separately would be something really cool to win, but this contest gives you multiple chances to win all of it. And this isn't a really huge band where a whole bunch of kids will sign up for the contest so you know if you do sign up, your odds are probably pretty decent. All you have to do is any one or combination of the following: post a link to the band's full album stream on Facebook, post the same link on Twitter, change your default picture on MySpace to one provided by the band, and add one of their songs to your profile player. Each time you do one of these things, you are entered in the contest. This means that you could be entered up to four times.
Go to the band's website for instructions and an entry form. I'd wish you good luck, but I want to win myself. Actually, I shouldn't even be posting this here and decreasing my chances, but it helps the band and that's really important because this band works really effing hard.
They will draw a winner on January 11, and 5 runners up will get a free copy of their CD.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Best album artwork of 2009
Alright, I have a lot of great albums I want to write about for a lot of different reasons, but I think I'm gonna get the kind of "just for fun" categories out of the way before I head on to best song, best album, band of the year, etc. In the age of illegal downloading and the iTunes store, I feel like we don't really pay as much attention to the art of the album anymore. Which is really too bad, because there is some really great art out there on albums in 2009. So here are my nominees and winner of the Best Album Artwork of 2009 category:
1. Set Your Goals, This Will Be the Death of Us
2. Say Anything, Say Anything
This is a page from the inside of the booklet:
3. The winner is... Infected Mushroom, The Legend of the Black Shawarma
The cover art is so badass. It's a bunch of mythical creatures lining up to be served a magical shawarma sandwich.
Click on this image to see the craziness full-sized.
1. Set Your Goals, This Will Be the Death of Us
2. Say Anything, Say Anything
This is a page from the inside of the booklet:
3. The winner is... Infected Mushroom, The Legend of the Black Shawarma
The cover art is so badass. It's a bunch of mythical creatures lining up to be served a magical shawarma sandwich.
Click on this image to see the craziness full-sized.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Biggest disappointment album of 2009
Don't you hate it when you get really pumped for a new album to come out and it either totally blows, it's a bunch of the same old boring thing, or they change their style to the point where it's not enjoyable for you anymore? Here are three albums that did that for me in 2009.
1. VersaEmerge - VersaEmerge EP. I first listened to this band randomly on their MySpace in summer of 2008. The music on their Perceptions EP was very interesting and the girl could seriously effing sing. I loved every one of the songs I listened to and I watched hella YouTube videos of her and the guitar player doing a bunch of acoustic versions of their songs. I couldn't get enough. When I heard that they were coming out with a new EP in 2009, I naturally got excited. When I heard the first track, "Past Praying For," I wasn't that impressed. That specific song has since grown on me, but when I heard the rest of the EP, I was even more disappointed. The music became a lot poppier. Gone were the interesting and intricate guitar leads and atmospheric style that pulled me in. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing for a band to make changes to their style as they grow. But to me, Perceptions sounds much more mature and shows a greater level of skill at their instruments. Not only that, but before I felt that Versa were a band that could share a stage with bands like Therefore I Am, or the Receiving End of Sirens if they were still a band, or maybe even Moving Mountains, or Chiodos or Circa Survive or Saosin. But now they fit in perfectly sharing stages with bands like Boys Like Girls, Cobra Starship, the Maine - bands that cater to what seems to me to be a pretty narrow core audience of 12 year old girls. VersaEmerge has the talent to do way better than that, to make intelligent and challenging music and to be damn good at it. They're currently writing a full-length, and I probably shouldn't really get my hopes up, but I will anyway because the acoustic versions of the new songs kill so far.
311 - Uplifter. 311 is a great rock band. They are one of my favorite straight up rock bands, actually. I've seen them live and they were great. They pull together so many different styles to create something that to me never gets old. So understandably, I was anticipating the release of Uplifter, only to listen to the whole album on Grooveshark and be totally bored the whole time. And now they can forget about me paying $40 to see them play a set with mostly boring songs and two or three of my favorite hits.
The winner: Atreyu - Congregation of the Damned. Any longtime Atreyu fan knows that they were one of the front runners during the rise of metalcore back in the early to mid-2000s. Suicide Notes and Butterfly Kisses is a great first album. The Curse rocked really hard. You could bang your head to it and sing along to the catchy clean vocals, and the singing, screaming, and musicianship had gotten better. A Deathgrip on Yesterday was never as great as I had hoped it would be, but I can't say it was a disappointment either, it just wasn't better than or even as good as The Curse. And it was way too heavy on the "we love 80s hair metal" shtick. Then Lead Sails Paper Anchor came out, and I had heard the single, which was sick. I guess I thought the single indicated a sick album, which should have been the logical progression. But this is where I was wrong. I don't even know what they were trying to do with that album, but it definitely wasn't Atreyu. When I heard the first single from Congregation of the Damned, it sounded crazy. I thought, as well as many of their fans according to message boards, that the old Atreyu was back. The band that pulled us in and made us fans was back, and seeing as until Lead Sails Paper Anchor was released Atreyu was my top favorite band, I was understandably fucking pumped. To my dismay, Congregation of the Damned is filled with more "we love 80s hair metal" and this weird sort of layering of the clean vocals that makes it sound really over done and just corny to me. I can't listen to most of the songs on that album and not cringe with embarassment. I guess I should have never gotten my hopes up, but for me this band is like an ex that you love that keeps showing up in your life, and you want to finally have a healthy good relationship with this person, so each time you go back to them and they make the same old mistakes. Anyone ever experienced that? Maybe it's just me. That's probably too much information and that is my signal that it's time to stop writing now.
1. VersaEmerge - VersaEmerge EP. I first listened to this band randomly on their MySpace in summer of 2008. The music on their Perceptions EP was very interesting and the girl could seriously effing sing. I loved every one of the songs I listened to and I watched hella YouTube videos of her and the guitar player doing a bunch of acoustic versions of their songs. I couldn't get enough. When I heard that they were coming out with a new EP in 2009, I naturally got excited. When I heard the first track, "Past Praying For," I wasn't that impressed. That specific song has since grown on me, but when I heard the rest of the EP, I was even more disappointed. The music became a lot poppier. Gone were the interesting and intricate guitar leads and atmospheric style that pulled me in. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing for a band to make changes to their style as they grow. But to me, Perceptions sounds much more mature and shows a greater level of skill at their instruments. Not only that, but before I felt that Versa were a band that could share a stage with bands like Therefore I Am, or the Receiving End of Sirens if they were still a band, or maybe even Moving Mountains, or Chiodos or Circa Survive or Saosin. But now they fit in perfectly sharing stages with bands like Boys Like Girls, Cobra Starship, the Maine - bands that cater to what seems to me to be a pretty narrow core audience of 12 year old girls. VersaEmerge has the talent to do way better than that, to make intelligent and challenging music and to be damn good at it. They're currently writing a full-length, and I probably shouldn't really get my hopes up, but I will anyway because the acoustic versions of the new songs kill so far.
311 - Uplifter. 311 is a great rock band. They are one of my favorite straight up rock bands, actually. I've seen them live and they were great. They pull together so many different styles to create something that to me never gets old. So understandably, I was anticipating the release of Uplifter, only to listen to the whole album on Grooveshark and be totally bored the whole time. And now they can forget about me paying $40 to see them play a set with mostly boring songs and two or three of my favorite hits.
The winner: Atreyu - Congregation of the Damned. Any longtime Atreyu fan knows that they were one of the front runners during the rise of metalcore back in the early to mid-2000s. Suicide Notes and Butterfly Kisses is a great first album. The Curse rocked really hard. You could bang your head to it and sing along to the catchy clean vocals, and the singing, screaming, and musicianship had gotten better. A Deathgrip on Yesterday was never as great as I had hoped it would be, but I can't say it was a disappointment either, it just wasn't better than or even as good as The Curse. And it was way too heavy on the "we love 80s hair metal" shtick. Then Lead Sails Paper Anchor came out, and I had heard the single, which was sick. I guess I thought the single indicated a sick album, which should have been the logical progression. But this is where I was wrong. I don't even know what they were trying to do with that album, but it definitely wasn't Atreyu. When I heard the first single from Congregation of the Damned, it sounded crazy. I thought, as well as many of their fans according to message boards, that the old Atreyu was back. The band that pulled us in and made us fans was back, and seeing as until Lead Sails Paper Anchor was released Atreyu was my top favorite band, I was understandably fucking pumped. To my dismay, Congregation of the Damned is filled with more "we love 80s hair metal" and this weird sort of layering of the clean vocals that makes it sound really over done and just corny to me. I can't listen to most of the songs on that album and not cringe with embarassment. I guess I should have never gotten my hopes up, but for me this band is like an ex that you love that keeps showing up in your life, and you want to finally have a healthy good relationship with this person, so each time you go back to them and they make the same old mistakes. Anyone ever experienced that? Maybe it's just me. That's probably too much information and that is my signal that it's time to stop writing now.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Worst music trend of 2009
Since we are nearing the end of 2009, a simultaneously amazing and crappy year for music, I decided to start a "Superlatives of 2009" type series. These are not just local bands, but a few local bands are included in some of the upcoming posts. In each post, I'll give a few nominees for a category with a little explanation, and the ultimate winner. Agree? Disagree? Let me know.
Alright, as I said above, 2009 was a a really crappy year for music. Some of the most horrible trends started cropping up and becoming like quickly spreading viral infections throughout their own specific scenes. The following four nominees come from different scenes, and it's really hard to pick a winner but by the end of this post, maybe I will have come up with one.
Worst Music Trend of 2009
1. AutoTune: There is a such thing as good hip-hop and R&B. It's not really what I'm into, but I can concede when something is really fucking good. Anything that has AutoTune on it I GUARANTEE is not good. In 2009, all of a sudden everywhere you went every song had T-Pain in it, who we all know sounds like shit without AutoTune, otherwise he would appear in a song without it sometime. Except he doesn't. Evidence of the shittiness... "All The Above," "Blame It," "I'm On A Boat." Can you tell any of these songs apart? I'm guessing the answer is no. AutoTune and T-Pain are just gimmicks for untalented people who want to get popular and famous fast and easy.
2. That first one leads me to... Crunkcore, dancecore, crabcore, pop/dance shit that for some reason Warped Tour kids like. I'm talking about bands like BrokeNCYDE. 3OH!3. Millionaires. Attack Attack! Their exclamation point, not mine. Fuckin' Family Force 5. See, it's like this. "Let's water down actual respectable genres of music and add the most ridiculous elements to it, the farthest thing away from metal, hardcore, or punk possible. We can wear tight jeans and have our hair fall in our eyes and all the kids who won't admit to their friends that they like T-Pain will eat it right up because they don't know any better. Of course Warped Tour, which once had a lot of awesome bands (like Blink-182, the Offspring, NOFX, the Bouncing Souls, etc.) will become a joke, but hey, why should we care? We're selling ridiculous neon T-shirts and the kids know our name!" Crunkcore, dancecore, crabcore, etc. are just gimmicks for untalented people who want to get popular and famous fast and easy.
3. Electronic-tinged Indie Clones. Seriously, I feel like every time I turn on the radio to an alternative station, an army of hipsters is coming after me. Bearded, tight flannel shirt + beanie + thick framed glasses + Converse-wearing zombies. My issue here is this. Some of these bands are actually good. MGMT has a good song here and there. Passion Pit has one. Phoenix's "1901" is very catchy and I can take it in small doses. I like that song by Metric... "Help I'm Alive" is the name, I think. But when I turn on WFNX in the car or while I'm doing homework and I hear them pay "Kids" and then "The Reeling" and then "1901" and then "Help I'm Alive" and then "Kids" and then "The Reeling" and then "1901" and then "Help I'm Alive"... Then go to a ten minute commercial break and then do it all over again... I can't handle it. I just cannot handle it. There is other good alternative music out right now that people can appreciate. The radio waves are not solely made for the hipster, and WFNX used to be a badass rock station. Damn.
Alright we're down to the 4th nominee. And the one that I think is the winner...
4. Taylor Swift. Her lyrics are so effing corny. That thing about Juliet? What the hell is that?? Also, she may sound decent on the radio, but watch her perform sometime. Even with all of the high tech expensive sound equipment, even with the choice to put effects on her voice while singing live, she just is not a good vocalist. The girl cannot sing. Seriously, I could sing better than her and trust me I do not have a good voice at all. I'm sure you're thinking, she doesn't seem as heinous as the rest of these people. But the thing is, with AutoTune, you can pretty easily choose to ignore the scene that you hear a lot of that in. Same thing with all the pop-core crap. Just don't pick up Alternative Press magazine, no problem. Tired of hearing the same hipster indie songs over and over again? Turn off the radio. But with T-Swift, you CANNOT GET THE HELL AWAY FROM HER. Pick up any magazine, she's in an ad or there's an article. Turn on the TV and she's in commercials and appearing on every television show that wants her. She's all over iTunes and the Amazon mp3 site. Seriously, go live in a cave in the middle of the most remote forest in Canada. No problem, she'll just start haunting your dreams. She's getting multiple American Music Awards and nominated for something like at least 5 Grammys! And she can't even sing. And the thing is in some scenes, not being able to sing is acceptable, it's part of the charm of the music. But not with pop music, or with country music. Well, okay. With country music. But not with pop music! Taylor Swift is just a gimmick of an untalented person that people like because it's easy to like pop music AND SHE WILL NOT GO AWAY!
Congratulations, Taylor Swift, on another award easily won: you are the Worst Music Trend of 2009! At least you can say you deserved this one!
Cue Kanye West... "Yo, Taylor, I'm happy for you, and I'mma let you finish, but I AM THE WORST THING TO HAPPEN TO MUSIC OF ALL TIME! OF ALL TIME!!!"
Cut to commercial.
Alright, as I said above, 2009 was a a really crappy year for music. Some of the most horrible trends started cropping up and becoming like quickly spreading viral infections throughout their own specific scenes. The following four nominees come from different scenes, and it's really hard to pick a winner but by the end of this post, maybe I will have come up with one.
Worst Music Trend of 2009
1. AutoTune: There is a such thing as good hip-hop and R&B. It's not really what I'm into, but I can concede when something is really fucking good. Anything that has AutoTune on it I GUARANTEE is not good. In 2009, all of a sudden everywhere you went every song had T-Pain in it, who we all know sounds like shit without AutoTune, otherwise he would appear in a song without it sometime. Except he doesn't. Evidence of the shittiness... "All The Above," "Blame It," "I'm On A Boat." Can you tell any of these songs apart? I'm guessing the answer is no. AutoTune and T-Pain are just gimmicks for untalented people who want to get popular and famous fast and easy.
2. That first one leads me to... Crunkcore, dancecore, crabcore, pop/dance shit that for some reason Warped Tour kids like. I'm talking about bands like BrokeNCYDE. 3OH!3. Millionaires. Attack Attack! Their exclamation point, not mine. Fuckin' Family Force 5. See, it's like this. "Let's water down actual respectable genres of music and add the most ridiculous elements to it, the farthest thing away from metal, hardcore, or punk possible. We can wear tight jeans and have our hair fall in our eyes and all the kids who won't admit to their friends that they like T-Pain will eat it right up because they don't know any better. Of course Warped Tour, which once had a lot of awesome bands (like Blink-182, the Offspring, NOFX, the Bouncing Souls, etc.) will become a joke, but hey, why should we care? We're selling ridiculous neon T-shirts and the kids know our name!" Crunkcore, dancecore, crabcore, etc. are just gimmicks for untalented people who want to get popular and famous fast and easy.
3. Electronic-tinged Indie Clones. Seriously, I feel like every time I turn on the radio to an alternative station, an army of hipsters is coming after me. Bearded, tight flannel shirt + beanie + thick framed glasses + Converse-wearing zombies. My issue here is this. Some of these bands are actually good. MGMT has a good song here and there. Passion Pit has one. Phoenix's "1901" is very catchy and I can take it in small doses. I like that song by Metric... "Help I'm Alive" is the name, I think. But when I turn on WFNX in the car or while I'm doing homework and I hear them pay "Kids" and then "The Reeling" and then "1901" and then "Help I'm Alive" and then "Kids" and then "The Reeling" and then "1901" and then "Help I'm Alive"... Then go to a ten minute commercial break and then do it all over again... I can't handle it. I just cannot handle it. There is other good alternative music out right now that people can appreciate. The radio waves are not solely made for the hipster, and WFNX used to be a badass rock station. Damn.
Alright we're down to the 4th nominee. And the one that I think is the winner...
4. Taylor Swift. Her lyrics are so effing corny. That thing about Juliet? What the hell is that?? Also, she may sound decent on the radio, but watch her perform sometime. Even with all of the high tech expensive sound equipment, even with the choice to put effects on her voice while singing live, she just is not a good vocalist. The girl cannot sing. Seriously, I could sing better than her and trust me I do not have a good voice at all. I'm sure you're thinking, she doesn't seem as heinous as the rest of these people. But the thing is, with AutoTune, you can pretty easily choose to ignore the scene that you hear a lot of that in. Same thing with all the pop-core crap. Just don't pick up Alternative Press magazine, no problem. Tired of hearing the same hipster indie songs over and over again? Turn off the radio. But with T-Swift, you CANNOT GET THE HELL AWAY FROM HER. Pick up any magazine, she's in an ad or there's an article. Turn on the TV and she's in commercials and appearing on every television show that wants her. She's all over iTunes and the Amazon mp3 site. Seriously, go live in a cave in the middle of the most remote forest in Canada. No problem, she'll just start haunting your dreams. She's getting multiple American Music Awards and nominated for something like at least 5 Grammys! And she can't even sing. And the thing is in some scenes, not being able to sing is acceptable, it's part of the charm of the music. But not with pop music, or with country music. Well, okay. With country music. But not with pop music! Taylor Swift is just a gimmick of an untalented person that people like because it's easy to like pop music AND SHE WILL NOT GO AWAY!
Congratulations, Taylor Swift, on another award easily won: you are the Worst Music Trend of 2009! At least you can say you deserved this one!
Cue Kanye West... "Yo, Taylor, I'm happy for you, and I'mma let you finish, but I AM THE WORST THING TO HAPPEN TO MUSIC OF ALL TIME! OF ALL TIME!!!"
Cut to commercial.
Wow, it's been forever...
Okay so first of all, I don't think anyone reads this blog anyway, so I don't even know why I'm apologizing for not writing in a long time. But, I'm sorry.
Alright, so here are a couple of cool things going on for MA artists:
First order of business is the This Is New England Tour. This tour has to be sick with three staple bands of the hardcore/punk/pop-punk sort of Alternative Press-type scene in Boston. Vanna is headlining, taking Therefore I Am and A Loss For Words with them. I'm not a huge Vanna fan, but to see TIA and AL4W would undoubtedly be crazy. Check them out Lupo's in Providence on December 19 or the Waterfront Tavern in Holyoke on December 20.
The Providence show will also feature a decently cool MA band as an opener, called Auburn. They're sort of Norma Jean-esque with some melodic clean vocals thrown in once in a great while. However, the Providence show will also feature Scare Don't Fear. If you thought Papa Roach and Linkin Park were bad mixing rap with nu-metal to create "rapcore" or whatever we were calling it back then, then let me just say mixing rap with hardcore metal is more than one hundred times worse. Seriously, I would rather listen to every Limp Bizkit album in succession than listen to all of the songs on Scare Don't Fear's MySpace. And that is a Providence band. We don't mix rap and hardcore in MA. If Scare Don't Fear didn't turn you off of going to that show, it's $15 to get in at the door. I might show my face there, but I'm not sure.
In other news, here's some stuff about me... So I won an Ultimate Access Pass from LiveNation to the House of Blues Boston. That means in 2010 I can get into all the shows I want at HOB Boston for free. With a friend. Sick, right? So in less than a month I will be going to an average of at least two shows a month, so you will see lots of concert reviews and photos here, which should liven things up a bit.
And last of all, follow me on Twitter. I can't put a little icon to click on right now because I have Leechblock on Firefox and I have Twitter blocked until 10 PM. Supposed to make me more produtive. Yeah, right. Later tonight if I remember I'll put up a link to my Twitter so anyone who reads this can follow me if they so choose.
www.twitter.com/jencarroll87
Alright, so here are a couple of cool things going on for MA artists:
First order of business is the This Is New England Tour. This tour has to be sick with three staple bands of the hardcore/punk/pop-punk sort of Alternative Press-type scene in Boston. Vanna is headlining, taking Therefore I Am and A Loss For Words with them. I'm not a huge Vanna fan, but to see TIA and AL4W would undoubtedly be crazy. Check them out Lupo's in Providence on December 19 or the Waterfront Tavern in Holyoke on December 20.
The Providence show will also feature a decently cool MA band as an opener, called Auburn. They're sort of Norma Jean-esque with some melodic clean vocals thrown in once in a great while. However, the Providence show will also feature Scare Don't Fear. If you thought Papa Roach and Linkin Park were bad mixing rap with nu-metal to create "rapcore" or whatever we were calling it back then, then let me just say mixing rap with hardcore metal is more than one hundred times worse. Seriously, I would rather listen to every Limp Bizkit album in succession than listen to all of the songs on Scare Don't Fear's MySpace. And that is a Providence band. We don't mix rap and hardcore in MA. If Scare Don't Fear didn't turn you off of going to that show, it's $15 to get in at the door. I might show my face there, but I'm not sure.
In other news, here's some stuff about me... So I won an Ultimate Access Pass from LiveNation to the House of Blues Boston. That means in 2010 I can get into all the shows I want at HOB Boston for free. With a friend. Sick, right? So in less than a month I will be going to an average of at least two shows a month, so you will see lots of concert reviews and photos here, which should liven things up a bit.
And last of all, follow me on Twitter. I can't put a little icon to click on right now because I have Leechblock on Firefox and I have Twitter blocked until 10 PM. Supposed to make me more produtive. Yeah, right. Later tonight if I remember I'll put up a link to my Twitter so anyone who reads this can follow me if they so choose.
www.twitter.com/jencarroll87
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