The Grouch: "Artsy" Video
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The Living Legends: "Down for Nothin'"
The Living Legends crew is a family of independent hip-hop creators. From primary earth bases in Los Angeles and Oakland, the Legends extend worldwide and beyond. It all started with BFAP (now known as Sunspot Jonz) and PSC (Luckyiam), who laid claim to the name of Mystik Journeymen in the early 1990s. By '94 they were locally legendary for throwing Underground Survivors shows, houseparty style at their loft - 4001 San Leandro Street in East Oakland. That's where the Grouch hooked up with the Journeymen in 1995, just before they took off on their renowned first European tour. Around the same time in the southern part of the state, Mid-city Los Angeles to be exact, 3 Melancholy Gypsys (Murs, Scarub & Eligh) were part of the almost mythic Log Cabin crew going back to 1993. Log Cabin later broke up and the Gypsys wandered separately. As it turned out, the 3 would cross paths again in the Bay Area and became Living Legends. Aesop came to Oakland from Fresno, Arata from Osaka, and Bicasso from various points, East, West and elsewhere... In 1999 the Legends shifted their center of gravity to Los Angeles, but their presence has definitely not diminished in Oakland and the Bay. You know it makes no difference where they stay because the universe revolves around them anyway. Over the years, the Journeymen and the Legends have rocked Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada numerous times, plus they've toured the USA, north and south, east coast, west coast and beyond ... In the years since the Legends have continued releasing solo and crew projects and now have a catalog of over 50 full-length albums and numerous singles. All in all, this crew of motivated do-it-yourselfers has sold over 200,000 albums collectively. The latest crew album "Creative Differences" has turned in to their best selling album to date, (with Soundscan numbers just under 23,000 so far) and continues to sell. Other recent releases are from CMA (Grouch & Luckyiam), Scarub, and Sunspot Jonz. New projects by Eligh, 3MG, Bicasso and Aesop are expected in 2005. March 8, 2005, will see the release of the Legends highly anticipated new album "Classic," a project the crew got together to record earlier this year. That was the first time in recent memory all 8 members were together with the purpose of recording a new project and what came out of those sessions is definitely their strongest material yet. Expect to see them spring 2005 coming to a city near you on tour promoting the new project. The group has no plans to let up, they're only turning up the fire, see if you can keep up. Legends Baby!!!!
The 404 448: Where we somehow fit Family of the Year in our studio
They said it couldn't be done, but we managed to fit an entire Family in our 12x 12-foot studio; and besides, The 404 Podcast has never been that great at following orders. Today's episode welcomes Vanessa, Joe, Sebastian, James, Christina, and Brent from the band Family of the Year, who submit themselves to a chat about their new EP Where's the Sun, new music marketing 2.0, Bogie Ogretrons, which band member has the longest legs, and what it's like to share a shower with six other people in a tiny RV touring across the country.
Lenny Kravitz: "I'll Be Waiting"
In the 18 years that have transpired since Lenny Kravitz first entered the public consciousness, much has happened in the world of music. Yet, through it all, Lenny Kravitz, has persevered, flourishing as one of the great rock musicians of our time. He proves exactly why with his eighth studio album, It Is Time For A Love Revolution, a thunderous and elegant rock 'n roll call-to-arms, due out in February 2008.
Corrosion of Conformity: "Stone Breaker"
We really try hard to be true to what our hearts tell us to do," says New Orleans-bred Pepper Keenan, guitarist and songwriter for the band. "We do what we feel and we don't want to get caught up in any '90s-style production bullshit, 'cause when we look back at what we've done we want it to sound timeless. So many bands are gonna laugh at themselves in ten years. We don't want that." COC has been hurtling towards a "timeless" rock sound since their humble-but-turbulent beginning as a hardcore band way back in 1982. Back then, the band -- guitarist Woody Weatherman, bassist Mike Dean and drummer Reed Mullin (Keenan didn't join until 1990) -- searched desperately for a voice, an identifiable way to vent the spleen that has continued to haunt them through a full six records: 1983's vociferous Eye For An Eye, '85's phlegmatic rant Animosity, '87's drop D-tuned barrage Technocracy, '91's awesome, menacing Blind, and the album that serves as WISEBLOOD's most direct sonic ancestor: '94's breakthrough platter, Deliverance. "We began carving our niche with Deliverance," says Keenan with a hint of the South in his voice. "Now that we have that niche we should stay in it. I often wonder what makes good bands take sudden left turns. Why would you work hard to develop a sound and then just abandon it? It makes no sense." "We've always tried to make albums that have highs and lows and midpoints," says Keenan, "records that you can listen to from beginning to end. We've got no interest in ramming ten songs in the same key down your throat.
Zion I & The Grouch feat. Mistah FAB: "Hit Em"
New Zion I & The Grouch Music Video for Hit 'Em ft. Mistah FAB. The first single from the new collaboration album titled "Heroes in the City of Dope." Directed by Victor Solomon and produced and edited by Justin Lomax & James Locke of On-Point Productions.
'The Overture' is inspired by the life of musician Luang Pradit Pairoh, whose mastery at playing an instrument called the ranard-ek made him a legend in the world of classical Thai music.
Sunday's Best: "Don't Let It Fade"
"There?s a fine line between stick-to-it-tiveness and self-delusion," quips Sunday?s Best drummer/producer Tom Ackerman, "and right now I think we?re happily confused as to where we stand." Seated next to lead singer/guitarist Ed Reyes, who smiles, Ackerman continues in the tone usually reserved for the telling of embarrassing childhood anecdotes, "we have endured a seriously tough winter: a horrible fall tour, the departure of a founding member and primary songwriter, the changing of booking agents, the quitting of our manager/lawyer, as well as my personal troubles of divorce and rehab. Most bands probably would have quit." A great deal of "Behind the Music" style antics have transpired in the last nine months for the Los Angeles-based quartet, despite their somewhat typical beginnings. Sunday?s Best formed in 1997 when Reyes met guitarist (and then drummer) Ian Moreno while working at KXLU, Los Angeles? seminal college radio station. Sunday?s Best first signed with crank! records and released the Where You Are Now EP, and hit the road. Then they signed to Polyvinyl Records and released their first full length, Poised to Break, in October of 2000. After a great run at college radio and some key high profile shows in New York, the band limped home from their 6 week Fall tour and then seemed to implode. Shortly after arriving home from tour, the booking agent and the band parted ways, the manager stopped calling, and Ackerman checked into rehab and his wife filed for divorce. To top everything off, before Ackerman could complete his rehab stay, Pedro Benito, a primary songwriter and founding member, resigned. The days ahead seemed pretty dark. "I thought I was going to be arrested any minute for forging prescriptions," explained Ackerman, "between that and the dissolve of my five year relationship/marriage, band matters seemed relatively distant in my overall perspective." And yet, in the months that followed, when things seemed the bleakest, the true character of the band was revealed. Reyes took over the business aspects of the band and switched to guitar, James Tweedy was added to play bass, and the band got back to doing what all good bands do: writing music. And with the help of a new booking agent Mike Kelly, the band has been playing West Coast dates since late February (with Dashboard Confessional, the Weakerthans, Cursive, the Juliana Theory). The band is about halfway through writing songs for the follow-up to Poised to Break, and has plans to record in the winter and tour in the fall. Reyes caps off the interview with his own thoughts of the bands resolve, "we just kind of stripped everything down and started having fun again. It?s not really all that epic if you consider we just did what friends usually do when the shit hits the fan: we stuck together.
Chin Up Chin Up: "We Should Have Never Lived Like We Were Skyscrapers"
Look beyond the steely skyscrapers jutting into Chicago's grey sky, past the potholed streets and shadowed alleys, and you might be able to find something beautiful in this scuffed-up metropolis. Something like a cornflower pushing through a cracked sidewalk, struggling its way toward sunshine. Or the sun glinting off choppy lake waves at dusk. Or the sounds of Chin Up Chin Up, whose disarmingly resonant debut album "We Should Have Never Lived Like We Were Skyscrapers" is ready to carry you through autumn and beyond. Recorded by John Congleton (90 Day Men, The Roots, The Paper Chase) at Electrical Audio and Soma studios throughout July, "We Should Have Never Lived Like We Were Skyscrapers" proves that sentimental pop songs don't have to be cloying or trite. Meticulously layered with solid drums, keyboards, and warm guitar, these ten songs will wrap themselves around your mind and stay there all day. The band's history reaches back to 2001, when Jeremy Bolen and Nathan Snydacker formed Chin Up Chin Up (think optimism and perseverance, not exercise). The two guitarists were joined shortly thereafter by percussionist Chris Dye and bassist Chris Saathoff. In January 2002, the band released a self-titled EP, which inspired MOJO's call for readers to "meet your new favourite Chicago art-pop band." Later joined by keyboard player Greg Sharp, Chin Up Chin Up toured extensively, playing shows with the likes of the Appleseed Cast, the Mercury Program, Pedro the Lion, the American Analog Set, Broken Social Scene, Smog, and Pinback.
Some people express themselves through their clothes, others through their desktop. WindowBlinds offers themes for XP and Vista, with customizations galore.
Here's what little we do know about Milemarker: They consider themselves a collective as opposed to a band. To boot, they are alternately known as the Milemarker Collective, the Milemarker People's Liberation Army, or the Milemarker Entertainment and Reprogramming Consulate. All of the band's members and ex-members bear identical tattoos of a multi-headed Hydra branded with the inscription "Cut off one head and another three shall grow in its place." And, umm, apparently their live show has inspired more than one case of self-immolation. Okay. Whatever the case, Milemarker have executed three albums for the cause; the last of which - an angular and future-rhythmic venture called Frigid Forms Sell for the D.C.-based Lovitt Records - was as inspiring a rock record as any of the classic revolution songs. And let's face it: records carrying a forward-thinking musical intuition and an atypical approach to political lyricism just don't come along like this every day. Milemarker's first release full length for Jade Tree, Anaesthetic, ignites further speculation on their high profile ambiguity before lending credence to anarchist author Emma Goldman and the subversive mantra she coined several years ago: "It's not my revolution if you can't dance to it."
