Posts in category: Music

Music 04/15/2008

I Went to see NOFX & Backstage Passport

I went to see NOFX last night at the Knitting Factory where they premiered their new show Backstage Passport and then played a full-set. The TV show was good, and it gives you a good idea of what it’s like behind the scenes of putting together a punk rock show (sometimes unsuccessfully) in dangerous Third World countries like Columbia and Peru.

There was a lot of cursing in in the show, and since it’s made for FUSE.TV, they bleeped out all the bad words, which was kind of a bummer because I like to hear how people talk in the real world, and the bleep sounds got in the way. All and all, the TV show was good, funny, and entertaining, and I’m really looking forward to seeing the rest of the episodes, but the highlight of the night for me was definitely the concert part.

NOFX always puts on a great show, even if they fuck up the songs, which happens a lot. They played probably 20 songs, which were mostly requests from the audience, and it definitely wasn’t the best set list I’ve seen them play (they played some of their less popular songs, less popular because they’re not good), but seeing a NOFX show is as much about the entertainment factor for me as it is about the actual music, and these guys are always funny and entertaining. There was a lot of audience participation, with fans being allowed to jump up on stage and sing in place of Fat Mike whenever they wanted to (thanks to the Knitting Factory for the friendly and lax security). The biggest bummer was that they didn’t play The Decline, which the whole audience wanted. One guy even jumped up on stage and tried to give them an extra $20 to play the song, but they wouldn’t. But still, overall, it was another great show put on by the best punk band in the world.

Here’s the info again for the FUSE.TV show that premiere’s TONIGHT. Be sure to check it out.

• Show: NOFX: Backstage Passport
• Premiere: Tuesday, April 15 at 10pm ET
• Episodes: 8 Episodes Show
• length: 30 minutes
• Channel: DirecTV 339 / EchoStar 158;cable subscribers, local listing

NOFX on Fuel.TV

Music 03/24/2008

More NOFX Ass-Kissing

Ok, I just watched all of the videos on the Fuse.tv mini-site for the new NOFX Show, and it got me really excited!

So I decided to post this old NOFX video for the song Stickin’ in my Eye from the site that you’ve probably never seen.

Overall, I'm gonna give it 5 out of 5 drops.    

Music 03/24/2008

NOFX: Backstage Passport

We already told you about NOFX Backstage Passport, and now Fuse.tv has launched a new promotional site for the upcoming show that includes a few episode previews and video interviews with each band member.

NOFX: Backstage Passport is an 8 part docu-series, that chronicles the band’s recent world tour of Singapore, Peru, Israel, South Africa, Turkey, Korea, and it premieres on Tuesday, April 15 @ 10 PM ET on Fuse.

We’ll make sure to remind you again.

[ thanks to Aaron @ DX street for the heads up ]

NOFX on FUSE.tv

Music 03/21/2008

Start of the New Revolution

I would never recommend downloading a shitload of free music, but if I were going to, I might start here if I were you…

start of a new revolution

Music 03/20/2008

NIN - Ghosts I-IV = $$$ + :-) for Trent Reznor

We told you about the new NIN album that Trent Reznor self-released about 2 weeks ago. Well it looks like Trent’s experiment worked. He made $1,619,420 the first week (and none of that goes to a record company).

The album, released on March 2nd in a multitude of different formats at nin.com, “immediately sold out” of its run of 2,500 “Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition” versions (complete with vinyl, deluxe packaging and a Reznor autograph), with a $300 price tag.

In all, 781,917 transactions were made for the album, with people either downloading a quarter of the album for free, downloading the entire album for $5, purchasing a physical copy for $10 or getting the non-ultra-deluxe limited edition version for $75.

Unlike Radiohead, who have still not released the total numbers and dollar figures from their In Rainbows experiment, Reznor likely revealed his first-week stats as a way to show fellow artists in the same weight class how successful they can be without the help of a major label. We’re sure Reznor and Thom Yorke will have a nice laugh about all this if they do in fact headline Lollapalooza. Ghosts I-IV is still available for download on NIN’s site, with double-CD sets due in stores on April 8th.

[ via ]

NIN

Music 03/19/2008

Smashing Pumpkins - Superchrist

The Smashing Pumpkins used to be my favorite band, but after their first 2 albums, it all went downhill for me. They started getting commercially popular, it got too poppy and self-indulgent, and Billy’s voice just wore on me (especially live). Then they broke up.

So now they’re back (except for James Iha it looks like) and this is they’re new video. The pre-release buzz is that this album is going to be like Gish, the first (and best) album. So I was kind of excited, but this video and song is kind of a letdown for me. Actually, the video sucks, and some parts of the song are really good. It definitely has the raw guitar like the first album (I never thought Billy got enough credit as a guitar player), and Jimmy Chamberlins distinctive drum sound is still there, and still great, but then Billy starts singing, and the song really goes nowhere. To me it actually sounds more like the Smashing Pumpkins playing a new a Queens of the Stone Age song.

Maybe it will grow on me, it’s like 7 minutes long, so I’ve only sat through it twice so far, but so far… eh.

What do you guys think?

Music 03/07/2008

NOFX: Backstage Pass

My favorite band of all time has an 8 episode show coming up on FUSE.TV. It’s still a month away, so I’ll remind you to set your TIVO’s again on April 14th, but for now, here’s the VERY EXCITING info:

• Show: NOFX: Backstage Passport
• Premiere: Tuesday, April 15 at 10pm ET
• Episodes: 8 Episodes Show
• length: 30 minutes
• Channel: DirecTV 339 / EchoStar 158;cable subscribers, local listing

From their website:
AROUND THE WORLD WITH “NOFX: BACKSTAGE PASSPORT”
So we got the bright idea to take two camera dudes on this sketchy tour we booked in order to make a documentary. We went to Singapore, Peru, Israel, South Africa, Turkey, Korea; you get the idea…countries where maybe punk music isn’t too popular. After a few weeks we realized there’s way too much semi-interesting, sorta funny, kind of embarrassing stuff going on. How are we gonna fit all this on a DVD? So we thought maybe TV? Nah, that’s never gonna happen—we’re not nearly as funny as Travis Barker. But we made a little trailer anyhow and showed it to some of our friends at Fuse. They loved it and showed it to some of their bosses. Their bosses didn’t get it at all and told us they would call. We knew what that meant, so it was back to the DVD idea. We kept the camera dudes on tour with us for the next year and some pretty cool stuff happened. Well…not cool for us, but cool for the DVD. Stuff like not getting paid, cops shutting down shows, Muslims getting pissed at us, Jews getting pissed at us, scoring the wrong drugs, getting beat up by Japanese women in latex, getting beat up by a Russian man in a pointy hat and basically having a super great time. We finished the tour in South Africa and came home. We figured we might as well show it to the Fuse people again. (We showed it to HBO too, and they told us that maybe if we were U2 they would consider it…diss.) By this time Fuse had hired new people and the new folks loved it.. They said they wanted to make it into a documentary series. Coolage! We signed the papers and now we have a TV show. After months and months of editing and fighting amongst ourselves, we have 8 episodes of a show, but after you account for commercials it’s only about the length of a really long movie. Think Titanic meets Spinal Tap. NOFX never had a video on MTV, but now we have a documentary on television. Weird how things work out. Anyhow, it comes out in April sometime. My neighbors are never going to speak to me again.

NOFX

Music 03/05/2008

The Evens

I’m a HUGE Fugazi fan. I think they’re one of the most under-appreciated bands ever, and they’re probably #3 on my list of all-time favorites, so I’m embarrassed to say that I just found out about The Evens. They’re the newest band that Fugazi (and Minor Threat) frontman Ian Mackaye is a part of.

The music is way mellow, but it still has the completely original sounding arrangements that Fugazi was famous for. The band is just Ian and a girl named Amy Farina who plays drums and sings (like the White Stripes, without sounding at all like the White Stripes), and the songs are pretty lo-fi with just drums and Ian playing baritone acoustic guitar.

So, if you were a fan of Fugazi (and you’ve been living under a rock like I apparently have) you should definitely check out some of their songs on their “unofficial” Myspace page, let me know what you think.

The Evens Myspace