This guy did an interview with Coldplay in their studio….pretty interesting stuff.
Hope you enjoy.
This melody is killer.
The best part of the video is the mandolin player at 1:45. He seems utterly engulfed in whats happeing.
The other day something caught my eye that I thought was pretty crazy. The new Death Cab CD was released on May 9th, and it already had 762 reviews on iTunes. This seemed crazy to me….762 reviews. I’m not on iTunes a ton, but I haven’t ever seen this many reviews for another artist .
So I thought i would post pictures of a few other “big” bands to show what a feet this was. I started with Coldplay, who has 540 reviews for X&Y…. which was released more than 3 years ago.
Then I thought that U2 would be a great one to check out. How to Assemble an Atomic Bomb was one of iTune’s big releases….right? There should be tons of reviews on that one. They have 349. Granted (in my opinion) HTAAAB is not one of U2’s best CD’s…..but it’s still U2.
I kept trucking along, quite intrigued by this - I decided to check out Miley Cyrus. When I went to the Hanna Montana 2 sound track this is what I found.
5,486 reviews. Are you kidding me? 5,486. That’s amazing! I was totally blown away.
Now I realize that reviews don’t equal sales. I’m sure that Coldplay and U2 are doing fine. But it’s pretty amazing that she can generate that type of chatter on the interweb.
I didn’t ever find tickets online. Everything I saw online/craigslist was sold out or way over priced. We were hanging out at my parent’s house, which is only a few miles away from the amphitheater in Charlotte, Friday night. Our night was winding down early, so I thought I might head over to see if I could find a good deal on a ticket. I guess since I came so late all the people with extra tickets were happy to give them away for dirt cheep…. I was able to get a seat under the canopy for $40 less than face value.
It was absolutely the best live show that I’ve ever been to. Totally amazing. The lighting they had for this was crazy….tons of these tubes all over the stage. I took some pictures with my phone but none of them turned out that well. I found someone else’s youtube video from the concert….it shows the lighting off really well.
It was cool to run in to Pat and Ben at the show. Concerts are always more fun when you’re with your friends.
Were any of you there?
I hear that they’re coming back to the states in a few months, so if you missed this one you’ve got another chance….
I just found out a few weeks ago that Radiohead is going to be in
Are any of you Radiohead fans?
Have you seen them live?
The other concert going on this Friday night is Phil Wickham in Portland, Oregon. He’s going to be recording a worship CD that night. I know most of us can’t get all the way out there to see the show live, but you can tune in to his blog during the concert to watch live video of it. His site says that the concert starts at 7:30, which would be 10:30 here on the east coast. Both Phil and Brody will I’m sure have updates on their blogs about the night.
My suggestion is that you get your own little listening parties together for the concert. Turn the music up loud, and sing along…..so you feel like you’re there. It’ll be loads of fun. And I’m sure Phil will appreciate the support.
How cool is this. Have any of you downloaded the song? What do you think?
1. Zach Lind, the drummer for Jimmy Eat World (which is one of the most fantastic Rock and Roll bands of our day), has a blog that is consistently very interesting. He posted some great thoughts yesterday about how we often find our identity in the wrong things… about how we can easily feed our egotism even while doing good things if not for the right reasons. I hope I’m paraphrasing him well. Go check it out yourself here.
2. Enjoyed reading Brody’s Positive Post Tuesday. It’s a really kind post about his wife…who sounds like a cool person. I have been meaning to join in on writing a Positive Post Tuesday myself….I’ll start next week.
3. I golfed in a tournament at this golf course today. The word “tournament” is a very generous term for what my foursome did today….we were 12 over par…..and it was best ball. But that was enough to get us second place in our handicap strata. Sorry no pictures.
1. Coldplay has announced that Violet Hill, the single from their upcoming CD (Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends) will be free for download for one week on their website starting April 29th. Also, you can read about the song list to Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends at Pitchforkmedia.com.
2. All the talks from the Together for the Gospel conference are posted here. I’ve already had a chance to listen to C.J. Mahaney’s message….looking forward to listening to the rest.
3. It must be because we share a Swedish heritage…. I love The Cardigans, Long gone before Daylight. My friend James told me about them a few weeks ago, and then got me this yesterday. Great CD, can’t wait to listen to it more. Thanks James.
This last one is a bit out of focus…but I love all the dust in the air.
Sorry that I haven’t posted my pics from The Myriad show….I left the card reader to my camera at the church….so I’ll have to post them tomorrow. Andrew got a really great shot though….go check out his picture from last night.
I’m not sure if any of you have read the Ben Gibbard article in the current Paste, but it’s incredible. They let him write it himself, and it’s such an interestingly introspective piece. It’s almost weird how honest he is in the article. He says some things about life and love that I think you’ll all find fascinating.
He also writes some cool things about songwriting that I wanted to post here, especially in light of what David Bazan said in Paste last month about songwriting. Here are a few of Gibbard’s quotes:
I’d like to think I’m a far better writer now than I was 10 years ago. When I first started the band, and I began writing in the way that has marked the trajectory of how I go about making music now, I was convinced that my writing was wildly descriptive and very dense and interesting, and people were really going to have to chew on this stuff. But now I’ll play a song like “Bend To Squares” and it’s like, “What the [junk....he used other words...sorry to be so ccm] am I talking about here? This song makes absolutely no sense.” I would just write what I thought were profound, dense lyrics. They may be about something in my head, but they don’t translate to being about anything that anybody could understand just listening.
I decided a handful of years ago that I just want to write songs that you can understand as soon as you put the record on. There’s no need to veil what’s happening in the song the way I used to.
My goal as a songwriter now is to simply write some memorable turns of phrase. The reaction I’d like from every song is “Wow, I listen to this song, and it’s about such-and-such, and there’s this lyric in there that’s just awesome.” At the end of the day that’s what I want.
Isn’t that great stuff? I’m not sure if he and David Bazan are polar opposites, but I do think that Ben is allot more comfortable with his music having a message.
What do ya’ll think?….where would you fall between the two views…..Bazan: don’t push a message…..Gibbard: don’t get in the way of the message?
