"Gravity" hails from the recent Gift Horse album.

By Blurt Staff

Very stoked to present a brand new video from one of our fave bands, Stephen Kellogg & the Sixers, whose adventurous recent album Gift Horse (Vanguard) prompted one of our writers to enthuse in a review, "With a band that is always evolving, change is certainly a good thing for them.  They show that they aren't afraid to try new things and that is what good musicians do.  Kellogg's lyrics can be uplifting to heartbreaking but are always honest and candid.  He says what he feels and that speaks to listeners.  If you can feel, not just hear, an artist's music, that is true art, and that is what Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers are." Catch the band on tour through the end of the year - dates are listed below.

The tune is called "Gravity" and the Stephanie Keane-directed clip is given a unique animation treatment you'll dig:

Stephen Kellogg: "'Gravity' is about not being afraid of the future and embracing what is real: your family, your friendships, a good laugh. Like everyone, I worry about - health, money, failure, you name it...and I wanted a song that would feel like a celebration of the things in life that overcome fear and worry. The stuff you'll remember when it's all said and done."

Director, Stephanie Keane: "Knowing that Stephen Kellogg & The Sixers wanted an animated music video I could not help but think of them as characters living out the song, "Gravity." There is so much heart in the lyrics, I felt the band's natural state -that backstage feel- was key to the concept. They helped by collecting personal videos that I edited to the music and then rotoscoped, letting the fantasy of animation and reality of these handpicked memories intertwine.  Nearly 1,500 hand drawings went into making "Gravity" come to life." 

Tour Dates:

11/30/2011            Lawrence, KS - Bottleneck 

12/01/2011            Boulder, CO - Fox Theater 

12/02/2011            Denver, CO - Bluebird Theater 

12/03/2011            Salt Lake, UT - State Room

12/04/2011            Boise, ID - The Reef 

12/06/2011            Seattle, WA - Tractor Tavern

12/07/2011            Portland, OR - Doug Fir Lounge

12/08/2011            San Francisco, CA - Slim's

12/09/2011            Los Angeles, CA - Key Club

12/10/2011            San Diego, CA - Winston's

12/13/2011            Dallas, TX - HOB Cambridge

12/14/2011            Austin, TX - The Parish

12/15/2011            San Antonio, TX - White Rabbit

12/16/2011            Houston, TX - The Capitol

12/26-27/2011            Annapolis, MD - Ram's Head Tavern

12/28/2011            Richmond, VA - Capital Ale House

12/29/2011            Wilmington, NC - Brooklyn Arts Center at St. Andrews

12/30/2011            Duluth, GA - The Red Clay Theatre

12/31/2011            Santa Rosa Beach, FL - Seaside Amphitheater

1/15/2012            Uncasville, CT - Mohegan Sun Casino - Wolf Den

More funk, jazz, hip-hop and soul than you can shake a peppermill at...

By Blurt staff

New Orleans stompers Galactic have set Feb. 21 - Mardi Gras Day - for the release of their next album, Carnivale Electricos (Anti-). It will be accompanied by an extensive US tour that will run Feb. 17 through April 1, and beyond. Full itinerary, below.

NOLA guests on the record span several generations and styles from Neville brothers Cyril and Ivan, to rappers Mannie Fresh and Mystikal (making one of his first recordings since being released from prison); from Big Chief Juan Pardo, one of the youngest Mardi Gras Indians, to the KIPP Renaissance High School Band, one of the city's most riotous marching bands.

Check out the new track "Hey Na Na":

Hey Na Na feat. David Shaw (of the Revivalists) and Maggie Koerner by Galacticfunk

 
Brazilian influences on the album are similarly diverse including a cover of the Sergio Mendes Carnivale classic "Magalenha" and Galactic's new composition, "Guero Bounce," which pairs Brazilian rhythms with a New Orleans Bounce beat. "Julou," named for the band's own off-the-grid Mardi Gras parade, is inspired by another popular Carnivale melody, while " O Côco da Galinha" features rising Rio samba star Moyseis Marques.

Meanwhile, on the tour Corey Glover (Living Colour) and Corey Henry (Rebirth Brass Band) will join the group as special guest vocalists, while openers on the tour will include Orgone and the Soul Rebels.  

'Carnivale Elctricos' Tracklisting:
1. Ha Di Ka (feat. Big Chief Juan Pardo and the Golden Comanche)
2. Hey Na Na (feat. David Shaw from The Revivalists and Maggie Koerner)
3. Magalenha (feat. Casa Samba)
4. Voyage Ton Flag
5. Out in the Street (feat. Cyril and Ivan Neville)
6. JuLou
7. Move Fast (feat. Mystikal and Mannie Fresh)
8. Karate (feat. KIPP Renaissance High School Marching Band)
9. Guero Bounce
10. Carnival Time (feat. Al "Carnival Time" Johnson)
11. Attack
12. O Côco da Galinha (feat. Moyseis Marques)
13. Ash Wednesday Sunrise

 
Galactic US Tour Dates:
Feb 17 - Soul Kitchen - Mobile, AL
Feb 23 - 9:30 Club - Washington, DC
Feb 24 - Union Transfer - Philadelphia, PA
Feb 25 - Terminal 5 - New York, NY
Feb 26 - House of Blues - Boston, MA
Feb 28 - The Westcott Theatre - Syracuse, NY
Feb 29 - Mr. Small's Theatre - Pittsburgh, PA
Mar 01 - Beachland Ballroom - Cleveland, OH
Mar 02 - Park West - Chicago, IL
Mar 03 - Cabooze - Minneapolis, MN
Mar 04 - The Vogue Theatre - Indianapolis, IN
Mar 14 - The Pageant - St. Louis, MO
Mar 15 - Liberty Hall - Lawrence, KS
Mar 16-17 - Ogden Theatre - Denver, CO (2 nights)
Mar 18 - Belly Up - Aspen, CO
Mar 20 - Knotty Pine - Victor, ID
Mar 21 - The Wilma Theatre - Missoula, MT
Mar 22 - Domino Ballroom - Bend, OR
Mar 23 - Showbox Sodo - Seattle, WA
Mar 24 - Crystal Ballroom - Portland, OR
Mar 25 - The Crystal Bay Club - Crystal Bay, NV
Mar 27 - Moe's Alley - Santa Cruz, CA
Mar 28 - Belly Up Tavern - Solana Beach, CA
Mar 29 - El Rey Theatre - Los Angeles, CA
Mar 30-31 - The Fillmore - San Francisco, CA (2 nights)
Apr 01 - Hard Rock Cafe - Las Vegas, NV
Apr 18 - Mercy Lounge - Nashville, TN
Apr 19 - Variety Playhouse - Atlanta, GA
Apr 20 - Minglewood Hall - Memphis, TN
Jul 26 - FloydFest - Floyd, VA

Five songer, recorded live to tape, is a gift to fans - wait'll you hear the killer Triffids song, too, it'll bring tears to your eyes.

By Blurt Staff

We admit it, we are huge Okkervil River fans and have been since our humble beginnings as Harp magazine. Will Sheff & Co. consistently find ways to thrill and charm us, and that stretches all the way back to their humble beginnings in Austin circa 1998. Indeed, it's pretty likely that their latest album, I Am Very Far, is destined for high placement on our best-albums-of-the-year list for 2011.

Just to bolster their status among the converted, the band has a new covers EP just out titled Golden Opportunities 2, the followup of sorts to 2007's covers collection The Golden Opportunities Mixtape. It's free for download at the band's website right here. And it's the total package - MP3s, a jpeg of the cover, plus PDFs for front and back artwork that you can print out after you've burned the tunes to disc. Sweet!

By the way, our editor wanted to add, "Any band that will cover a Triffids song has a place waiting for them in Heaven as far as I'm concerned!"

Tracklisting:

01 It is So Nice to Get Stoned [Ted Lucas cover]
02 U.F.O. [Jim Sullivan cover]
03 One Soul Less on Your Fiery List [the Triffids cover]
04 Plan D [Bill Fay cover]
05 Dry Bones [Traditional]

Fan commits to following us on Twitter; mayhem ensues.

By The Editors

Call it a slick marketing ploy or simply an instance of perfect timing, but following a closely-watched (term used loosely...) and no doubt hotly contested (Tw1tters The Cat , for one, wanted to be the pick) contest, Chicago's Brad Elvis is BLURT's 4,000^th Twitter follower. No doubt having followed our progress on Twitter as we neared that milestone number, Brad pounced - like Tw1tters did, but with fingers, not paws - when we announced we would award "fabulous prizes" to our 4,000^th follower.

Brad, sharp eyed BLURT readers may recall, is also a founding member and the "four-handed" drummer for The Handcuffs, who we recently profiled on the site. Hey, he obviously had a vested interest in subscribing to our Twitter feed! He also informed us that he is nearing his own milestone - his 4,000^th gig, which includes a long musical career with the Handcuffs and other outfits (among them, The Romantics). That's Brad above, pictured with band vocalist Chloe Orwell, "the designated blonde" of the duo. Yep.

Brad, you rock, your band rocks, and your gifts are en route to Chicago where they will be delivered personally by 8 nubile BLURT interns all in various stages of undress. Please, return them - the interns, not the gifts - intact. Meanwhile, we'll see the rest of you folks when we hit 5,000 at our Twitter feed...

Now you can be even more annoying than your neighbor.

By Blurt Tech Staff

We get lots of useless press releases around here and try as we may, it's just impossible to stop the flow. So we go with it sometimes... which is the case at hand. We have no doubt that zillions of people will be taking advantage of this new app, but let the record show that if BLURT ever receives a phone call that betrays any semblance of Auto-Tune... hey, we have your phone number, and it's easy to block it, haw haw! So don't try to "surprise or amuse" us.

Read the full press release below. It is, in a word, impressive.

***

World's First Real-Time Auto-Tune Vocal Effect Now Available for iPhone: Auto-Tune Phone App Transforms Your Phone Calls Into a Personalized Pop Song

MONTREAL, Canada - December 1, 2011 - NewHula.com Inc. and Antares Audio Technologies today announced the availability of Auto-Tune Phone for iOS devices. Auto-Tune Phone is the first app to provide users with the iconic Auto-Tune Vocal effect during a live phone call to any phone or phone number in North America.

With Auto-Tune Phone you simply dial a phone number within the app to get the genuine Auto-Tune effect for both callers or just yourself in real time. You can also record yourself or a call and post it to Facebook or Twitter.

Auto-Tune gained world-wide recognition as the tool of choice for what has become one of the signature vocal effects of our time. Used by many artists in the pop, R&B and hip-hop communities, Auto-Tune has become an industry standard musicians and producers. Auto-Tune Phone now allows anyone to create and share their recordings.

Features

- Surprise and amuse your friends with Auto-Tune phone calls

- Tune only yourself or both parties on the call

- Record your calls and share on Facebook and Twitter

- Hone your Auto-Tune skills in the free practice area

- Call any phone number anywhere in North America

Pricing and Availability

Auto-Tune Phone is available immediately for iOS devices through the App Store at the discounted price of $1.99 for a limited time (regular price: $2.99). Thirty minutes of free calling time are included. Versions for Android and Nokia Symbian devices will be available soon.

For regular Auto-Tune Phone updates follow us at www.twitter.com/AutoTunePhone, become a Fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Auto-Tune-Phone/ or visit www.autotunephone.com.

Antares Audio Technologies

Antares Audio Technologies is the worldwide leader in the development of unique vocal processing tools. Having revolutionized vocal production with the ground-breaking Auto-Tune pitch correction technology, Antares is committed to providing producers, engineers, sound designers and musicians with powerful, innovative, easy-to-use tools for enhancing and manipulating the human voice. Antares Audio Technologies is located at 231 Technology Circle, Scotts Valley, CA 95066. For more information visit www.antarestech.com

NewHula.com Inc.

NewHula.com Inc. is a mobile app development company located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The managing partners at NewHula.com Inc. draw on a combined total of over 50 years experience in the fields of Telephony, Telecommunications, Networking and Software Development. NewHula now specializes in the development of challenging native mobile apps that include telephony, VoIP and remote server components. NewHula.com Inc. is currently privately funded. NewHula.com Inc. is located at 9740 Trans Canada Hwy. St. Laurent, Quebec, Canada, H4S 1V9.

Companion piece to today's "The Story of Giant Sand's Chore Of Enchantment" feature - consult Britain's Sa-Wa-Ro website for even more in-depth discographical details.

BY HOWE GELB (as told to Fred Mills)

Giant Sandworms: Giant Sandworms EP (1980, Boneless)
It's really a bad sounding record. I'm totally embarrassed by this whole sort of David Byrne style of singing that I was latching onto. It was 1980, and in Tucson, that kind of erratic crap was big. But at the time it was a process of elimination, getting rid of the .38 Special and stuff. Rainer and I had started Giant Sandworms and got the two other guys [David Seger, Billy Sed] and it became a four-headed beast.

Giant Sand: Valley Of Rain (1985, Enigma)
'Desert rock'... that was an accident of geographics. I like the contrast: 'valley of rain,' there in the desert with no water, but that one time of year -- the summer monsoons -- when things seem to pour. First records are always so important because you have all this 'stuff.' That took 28 years to make; it was recorded in '84. But the next one only took eight months to a year! The greatest compliment is that if you can still put it on and it's not embarrassing, it has good sounds, and the energy still comes through - how many years after the fact, sixteen?

The Band of Blacky Ranchette: The Band Of Blacky Ranchette (1985, New Rose, France)
Dan Stuart's girlfriend had moved out to L.A. and was going to put together a real country-punk record. [The Don't Shoot compilation featuring John Doe, Divine Horsemen, the Giant Sand side project Blacky Ranchette and various members of Green On Red and the Long Ryders, on Zippo, 1986.] She turned us on to this studio and we went out there and did this in a day and a half for 400 dollars. This French guy offered me a thousand dollars for it and that's what began the formula: to record for half of whatever the front money was gonna be and split up the difference. I took Rainer out there and did his Barefoot Rock album the same way! At any rate, Rainer had quit Giant Sandworms but I had wanted to get back playing with him. I had started doing this thing with Van Christian, but he eventually wanted to do his thing with Naked Prey, so I got Rainer and this great, straight-ahead rhythm section. This was in '84. I moved out to L.A., and the first night out there, I had the tapes of both Blacky and Valley Of Rain in the van and I had a feeling it was gonna get ripped off so I'd taken everything out of the van but I forgot the tapes! We had the pre-mix and the rough-mix of each session, and we got back and sure enough, they'd ripped off the van -- they'd somehow stolen one reel of each, leaving me with the rough mix of Blacky and the pre-mix masters of Valley Of Rain. Those tapes became the two albums. The next day we went down to this ghetto area and suddenly Scott Garber [G.S. bassist] goes, "Did you see the shit that guy was wearing?" And it was a Giant Sandworms shirt that he must have stolen.

Band of Blacky Ranchette: Ballad Of A Thin Line Man (1986, Enigma) and Heartland (1986, Zippo, England)
These came out the same day. Thin Line was recorded in L.A. and Heartland was done in Venice and in Reno. At that time, back in the '80s, I was so free that I wanted to have five or six different bands all playing different music. Then when I started getting acclaim for any one of them, I started to feel the weight of each, and it began to make less sense to go off starting something new. Why not just do Giant Sand since they know this name now, so with the following record I just combined both.

Giant Sand: Storm (1988, What Goes On)
We've got Paula [Paula Jean Brown, ex-Go Gos, and Gelb's first wife] on bass -- she was pregnant there -- and Neil Harry on pedal steel. It made sense just to combine the attitudes, of the country stuff as well, and just call it Giant Sand. I was trying to get Tom [Tom Larkins, drummer, now with Jonathan Richman] to play with brushes then.

Giant Sand: The Love Songs and Long Stem Rant (1988 and 1989, Homestead)
This is when John came in. We were living in the same building, which is how we met him, and when we went down to record Love Songs he was playing in the Insect Surfers and was really, really good in that. He only had 45 minutes so we hurried through the songs, sometimes playing faster than normal so we could get them done! Paula and I were living in Hollywood and had just had our baby, Patsy; she'd had a hit with "Mad About You" with Belinda Carlisle and that was paying our bills. I was barely making anything and had to get side jobs. I was trying to get this job at RCA working the phones. At that time Paula and I weren't getting along, Chris Cacavas who's on the album was going off to do his solo thing, and in the meantime Craig Marks at Homestead was setting up this tour, and I asked John if he wanted to go on the road. It came down to whether or not the RCA job came through; I was gonna piss off Homestead and say, "That's it, I'm gonna get a steady gig and not make records!" If that job didn't come through I was gonna hit the road.

      That Friday it didn't, and by the weekend we were on a plane. Craig picks us up, bought us a $2000 '81 Honda Accord with his credit card, bought me that amp [points at amplifier in the room], and that was our tour support. We would show up everywhere as a two-piece five minutes before we were supposed to play and they'd give us hell because they were expecting a band! But they'd see how little gear we had and the soundmen loved us -- I just said, "Make it sound like Hendrix!" It was great; that was some of the happiest times. It was on that tour that we first went to South By Southwest and we met this guy Dusty Wakeman and his partner Michael Dumas. They invited us up to this little place near Joshua Tree where they were gonna build a studio. When we got there they hadn't gotten it finished, so our friend Eric Westfall, who has worked with us on most of our records, dragged an eight-track up there to that barn [pictured on the sleeve]. It was after that when Dusty called me and said he needed a caretaker to live there, in one of the four little cabins nearby. It was very, very remote and I loved it. I was fresh from a divorce, and I'd had enough of Hollywood.

Giant Sand: Giant Sandwich (1989, Homestead); Giant Songs: The Best Of Giant Sand (1989, Demon); Giant Songs Two (1995, Demon)
Sandwich was an excuse to put out some unreleased stuff and some remixes. The others are "sort of" best of's, not chronological in order. With compilations it's all about flavor; anything that has to do with lists on paper is probably the last thing you should do.


The Band Of Blacky Ranchette: Sage Advice (1990, Demon, UK; reissued 1993, Restless)
I had the notion to drive back to Tucson and hang out. So I thought I would record while I was there. I didn't have any songs at the time for it, so I wrote a few on the drive down from Rimrock. Not so hard when you're alone on a 7 hour drive in a '66 'cuda. You kind of need that sort of exercise to eat a few miles. And in that car, you felt every one of them. It was fun finding folks to record, some of the same people that did the first 2 Blacky records. Rainer of course,  Neil Harry on steel, Tom Larkins [now with Jonathan Richman] on drums, Bridget Keating on violin... Later when I got back to California, I added Lucinda Williams to one of the tracks for a duet thing.

Giant Sand: Swerve (1990, Amazing Black Sand)
That was also written up in Joshua Tree. There are a lot of people on it [Steve Wynn, Chris Cacavas, Mark Walton, Falling James, Juliana Hatfield, Poi Dog Pondering, etc.] because while we were on the two-piece tour we met Poi Dog Pondering and another band whose singer I became totally enamored of. That was Juliana Hatfield and the Blake Babies. We recorded some in Boston and she came in, then again later in L.A. when she had come into town to do something with Susanna Hoffs. And Steve had become a friend, met him in Europe, and it was fun just to come in and cut something fast. Falling James was nothing but great. I had put it out in Europe, which is where I got the financing to have it done, and then I put it out in the States myself. (Later, Restless picked it up.) It was a cottage industry we had in our one-room cabin. Me and John would do it and would answer the phones as "Big Julie." That was great. Big Julie would talk about the band like we were assholes! The reason the records have a Tucson address on them is because I hadn't stayed in one place for more than two years so having that mail drop seemed as good an address as any.

Howe Gelb: Dreaded Brown Recluse (solo album, 1991, Houses In Motion, Germany; reissued '93, Restless)
I ended up hating the art on that, stupid pink-purple cover. Part of the problem with dealing with Europe and get things done quick. When Restless picked it up I was able to do the cover better. Ultimately a solo record was only an excuse not to do a Giant Sand record because we'd been putting them out every six to eight months and they were saying, "Please, can you wait longer between releases!" It could just as well be a Giant Sand record. By then we had Joey... John's on there, Paula, Rainer, Victoria Williams...

Giant Sand: Ramp (1992, Amazing Black Sand; reissued '92 on Restless)
I was splitting my time between New Mexico and Rimrock, near Joshua Tree. Victoria and Pappy [Allen} are both on there.  Eric Westfall was engineering and producing our records, and he would get the keys to the studio that would allow us to sneak in and do an all-night session. We'd have maybe 24 hours, a day or two, to get these things done. On used tape for 50 bucks. So a few years before Eric took me to meet Victoria; he'd met her and had fallen in love with her, but she'd fallen in love with Peter Case. A couple of years later I drove my Barracuda down to McCabe's in Hollywood where Steve Wynn was doing a gig and had asked me to come down. Pappy had a bar in Rimrock and I'd been helping him do stuff, fix his urinals, and I invited him to go with me and sing. When we got there the first person we saw was Victoria, and I said if she ever wanted to come out and all that...
   A mutual friend of ours recommended Joey to us. The idea of finding someone who could play -- and had! -- an upright bass was part of the job description. It was time to expand the format even more, and he didn't seem to mind at all the hide and seek turns the songs would take. This would really take its toll on bass players. Drive them nuts! But Joe hung in there real well. He was the first bass player we ever had that never complained when we didn't rehearse. He enjoyed the game of us trying to lose each other. John and I had this telepathy thing going, and then Joey, of course, was allowed in the triangle. He figured it out.

Giant Sand: Center Of The Universe (1992, Restless)
I think that's the best one. The songs are short, a lot of them are realized. The sounds aren't great but I like 'em because they aren't great. There are no deep tones on that record, for example. I had gotten into this method of working. Most of the distortion is done with an acoustic guitar. With the pickup on it, I got one of these pedals with an A-B switch so I could throw it to the amp when I wanted to. In effect it allowed me to get the recordings done even faster because I didn't have to overdub two guitars. I'd be playing acoustic, step on the pedal, kick in the distortion, then turn it off and come back down to acoustic.

Giant Sand: Purge & Slouch (1993, Restless)
We had a good relationship with Restless; I think they used us to attract other bands but that was okay. We had a verbal deal, nothing on paper, but they claimed we owed them another record when they knew we were gonna sign to Imago. But I liked the idea and wanted to make a Metal Machine Music record like Lou Reed. They got nervous with that: "But wasn't that a 'fuck-you' from Lou to RCA?" "Yeah, but I'm gonna have fun with it! I just wanted to walk in with no ideas and see what happens." And that became Purge & Slouch with Al Perry, Rainer, all those other guitarists.

Giant Sand: Stromausfall (1993, Return To Sender, Germany)
Limited edition, outtakes from Purge & Slouch, recorded at Harvey Moltz's in Tucson, kept acoustical. That will probably be rereleased in our bootleg series. Bonus tracks, and I might take one or two that bugged me off of that.

Giant Sand: Glum (1994, Imago)
All these records were done in a few days; Center might have been a week. That record, it's a major label record, and we had four weeks total time put in. You can hear the difference in the sounds. The low end is just beautiful, and John was totally possessed. We were in New Orleans and I'd never heard him play drums as magnificently.  That was the record that we learned about editing. Trina Shoemaker did the editing and she would chop the songs to make them more concise, and Malcolm [Burn, producer] would tell us how John Lennon would edit here and here, how War would jam for a half hour and make a 3 ½ minute song. What I'd done previously was just leave the song long, or make these really, really weird edits. Which I loved! I've got this cassette of the pre-edit rough mixes for the album. I've also got these outtakes with Lisa Germano, who was going out with Malcolm. She ended up sitting in on three songs that didn't make it onto the record. The idea is to re-release that in the bootleg series as the hissy cassette mixes and then throw on the Lisa Germano tracks too.

Giant Sand: Goods And Services (Brake Out/Enemy), Backyard Barbecue Broadcast (Koch), Volume One Official Bootleg Series (Epiphany) (all 1995)
Each one is made up from DATs; none involved us going into the studio to do a new record. They're all one-offs. Goods came out in Germany; I've wondered if I should release that in the states. The guys who did it recorded us live, mostly in Europe, both as a three-piece in Europe and as a six-piece [Gelb, Burns and Convertino, plus Paula Jean Brown on bass, Bill Elm on steel and Mike Semple on guitar]. They remixed it, and I could add remixes and one or two extra tracks. Barbecue, I let Nick Hill, of WMFU-FM, put it together. It was recorded at WMFU in '94 and '95 and it was his puppy. And the bootleg thing, it had some outtakes from Barbecue and Goods, some bits and pieces that we wanted to take and make a semi-ambient sounding album. The first track is a live show in New York with Cris Kirkwood -- which nobody knows, because I opted for the luxury of not putting any credits on there.

OP8: Slush (1997, Thirsty Ear)
The Lisa Germano sessions. Something smoother, almost like the sound of when we play in the lobby of Hotel Congress here on Friday nights. That's really the only studio Giant Sand between Glum and Chore -- and it's not really Giant Sand, it's OP8. We had actually started working on some of the songs that would become Chore, and about that same time we started working on The Inner Flame [Rainer Ptacek tribute/benefit album that Gelb and Robert Plant spearheaded]. Then Lisa came to town.

Howe Gelb: Hisser (solo album, 1998, V2)
A different methodology. Culminating crap in the living room, just acoustic guitar and piano, and friends who drop by. It wasn't like going in and working. A friend of mine who lives out in the desert had a big reel-to-reel in storage and he came over and set up this huge four-track and a couple of big mikes, some old tube pre-amps, literally right here in the living room.

Howe Gelb: Upside-Down Home (solo album, 1999, Ow Om)
That was just a quick CD-R release I made, mostly outtakes from Hisser. It's when I was first beginning to stand on my feet again, go out and play some shows, see what's out there, if anybody gives a shit, whatever. I made up a few with cheap covers. Maybe only 20 or 30 copies altogether. And I ended up using a few of the tracks for the European edition of Hisser, but I dunno, that was probably long enough!

Giant Sand: Chore Of Enchantment (2000, Thrill Jockey)
I couldn't be happier. The beauty, I guess, of working on it for so long was that I got to consider it and say, "No, we don't need that..." or, "Yeah, it'd be good to use this..." I got to live with it for a long time -- which we never get to! And the other thing was that I wanted to make it more concise.
        We had gotten to the point where we were playing 2 1/2 hour, 3 hour sets, then that wasn't appealing any more. I felt we were wasting people's lives: it's better to be a pharmacist and dole out the proper dosage, so we then were doing 45 minute sets that were really good instead. And I thought for the actual studio records I wanted it to be thick enough for those who have waited for so long, but short enough so it doesn't become too exhausting. So I thought, "I've gotta keep it under an hour," which is why it's 59 minutes and 59 seconds.

Giant Sand: The Rock Opera Years (2000, Ow Om)
It's the second volume in the Bootleg Series, available on the website and at live shows. It's a companion piece to Chore; four songs are the same titles but very different versions. "Dusted (In Tucson)", for example, was recorded the same day in '96 we did "The Inner Flame" for the Rainer tribute. I added a little electric, some steel, some pump organ. "Punishing Sun (In Tucson)" is a relentless pulse of dance fever compared with the acoustic, almost solo ballad on Chore. Also included is the title track "Chore Of Enchantment" that isn't on Chore at all. Evan Dando sang on a couple tracks when he'd come out for a visit. Victoria Williams did the same when we went to visit her, and then ended up doing "Music Arcade," a  Neil Young cover up there. All this stuff was done just prior to beginning the deal with V2, and this is how the record would have been if we'd never signed to V2.

The storied songwriter drops in on the Occupy Anchorage encampment...

By Blurt Staff

"I think Occupy is different," muses Texas rocker/songwriter James McMurtry, in his latest "Wasteland Bait & Tackle" BLURT blog, explaining that while he's a veteran of protests past (No Nukes in the ‘70s; the Iraq war several years ago), something about the Occupy Wall Street movement has the tinge of uniqueness. McMurtry happened to visit some of the protestors at the Occupy Anchorage encampment recently while on a solo tour to Alaska, and the sight of them camping out in sub-zero weather in the snow confirmed to him that they were acting out of pure conviction.

Click over to McMurtry's blog, and then consider your own convictions. As he puts it himself, "I'm pretty sure the guys in Anchorage weren't out there for the fun of it. They seemed to feel that they needed to be there, that they had no choice. It's common feeling and common conviction that makes a movement. And it seems that more and more of us feel that we have no choice."

Track comes from forthcoming album, due next February.

Sharon Van Etten's new album (Tramp, out Feb. 7 on Jagjaguwar) showcases an artist in full control of her powers, and "Serpents" blares Tramp's articulated vision. Listen to the track here for an advance glimpse of the album:

MP3: "Serpents"

With venomous strength, Sharon's singing and lyrics attack self-doubt and insecurity, when one feels the initial pangs of a relationship turning away from beauty towards rot. She's backed by a supporting cast of The National's Aaron Dessner (slide guitar, bass) and Bryce Dessner (ebo guitar), The Walkmen's Matt Barrick (drums), Doveman's Thomas Bartlett (keys), and Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner (vocals). "Serpents" offers only an inkling of the glorious Tramp, an

Proceeds of benefit concert go to help children return to their music studies.

On November 20 at 7pm at Largo in West Hollywood, CA, The Section Quartet hosted "A Concert to Benefit School Music Revival". Co-MC'ing the show were comedienne Margaret Cho and singer/songwriter Grant-Lee Phillips.  Artists initially scheduled to perform were Sam Phillips, Van Dyke Parks, Linda Perry, mike watt, Lisa Germano, Wendy & Lisa, Matt Sharp, Jenny O and Grey DeLisle who were joined by Ken Andrews and Kellii Scott (of the band Failure), Vivian Campbell (of Def Leppard) and Murry Hammond (of Old 97s), with more guests to be announced.  

Pictured above are Cho and Phillips performing together at the event. (Photo by Chris Cuttriss.)

All the artists performed in collaboration with The Section Quartet who acted as "house band,"  making for an evening of unique and unforgettable musical moments.  In addition, journalist and co-founding editor of BoingBoing.com Xeni Jardin spoke about her recent trip to Japan to report on the ongoing nuclear crisis for PBS' News Hour program. Eric Gorfain of The Section Quartet will be traveling to Japan to hand deliver 100% of the concert's proceeds to Mr. Naoyuki Seo of the School Music Revival foundation in Tokyo.

The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in the Fukushima region of Japan decimated the immediate area and created an ongoing nuclear disaster; the images of the disaster beamed around the world in real time shocked and horrified all. As a musician who has spent much of the last 21 years repeatedly visiting and making music in Japan, as well living there for a four year stretch, Gorfain, wanted to help in some way, large or small.  Then, Gorfain discovered that composer Ryuichi Sakamoto had co-founded School Music Revival, an organization devoted to repairing or replacing school instruments damaged or lost in the disaster.  

"While human life was lost in incomprehensible numbers, lives are being put back together, and music plays a large role in mending the mind, as well as the body, so I wanted to help the children of the region get back to ‘normal' life with their music studies as quickly as possible", says Gorfain.

More details:  http://www.schoolmusicrevival.org/purpose_eng.html

The visual brains behind the classic rock film Tommy.

By Fred Mills

Ken Russell, the maverick, frequently over-the-top British director behind the film version of The Who's Tommy as well as the Franz Liszt biopic Lisztomania (which featured a Who vocalist Roger Daltrey in the lead role), passed away yesterday, Nov. 27 at the age of 84. According to media sources he had experienced a series of strokes prior to his death.

Russell's heyday was the ‘70s, with Tommy emblematic for his flamboyant style and in your face visuals (can anyone ever forget the Ann-Margret baked beans scene, or Tina Turner's quivering face and body in her Acid Queen guise). Among his other films were 1969's Women In Love, 1971's The Devils and 1980's Altered States.

[Photo via Wikimedia Commons, by DiVicenzo (2008)