Pet Shop Boys: "Go West" live Video
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Pet Shop Boys: "It's a Sin" live
A documentary and performance at the Savoy Theatre, June 1997, featuring Pet Shop Boys originals and covers of songs by David Bowie, the Village People and Leonard Bernstein. Songs: Yesterday When I Was Mad, Truck Driver and His Mate, Se a Vida e, Hallo Spaceboy, To Step Aside, Go West, The Theatre, It's a Sin/I Will Survive, Discoteca, Can You Forgive Her?, Somewhere, Rent, Being Boring, Left to My Own Devices.
Electric car: victim of hit-and-run?
"Who Killed the Electric Car?" is a documentary set to hit theatres this summer. The film's makers trace the rise and disappearance of electric cars in California. Here's one man who owned General Motors' EV1.
Morrissey: "You Have Killed Me"
Ringleader of the Tormentors is a savagely alive record. Recorded at Forum Music Village in Rome with long-term hero Tony Visconti (who produced favorite records for T-Rex and David Bowie, during their most creative periods of the 60s and 70s), the album positively crackles with fire. It is, for instance, a far more direct and rocking record than Quarry, which aside from Irish Blood, English Heart, was a self-consciously beautiful, and largely symphonic, record.
Panasonic 3D Full HD Home Theatre
Brian Tong takes a look at the Panasonic 3D Full HD Home Theatre at CES 2009.
Philips HTS8100 Ambisound Home Theatre
At CES 2007, we look at the Philips HTS8100 Ambisound Home Theatre, a very sleek and cool theatre system nicknamed the "sound bar." It has Dolby Digital 5.1 virtual surround sound, a subwoofer, and a DVD player.
The Download Music crew highlights its favorite songs and albums from the past year, including releases from Kanye West, Spoon, and Lee Hazlewood. Visit our Best of 2007 page.
A blind, ex-barber working in a china shop falls in love with a woman in search of the perfect mate. The odd couple plan a trip to Niagara Falls where they meet with a series of humorous misadventures.
British Sea Power: "No Lucifer"
Do You Like Rock Music? was made in Montreal, the Czech Republic and Fort Tregantle - a 19th Century fortification in Cornwall, on England?s south-west coast. It was recorded by a band unafraid to embrace the far poles of arts and entertainment. BSP have toured with and been praised by David Bowie, The Flaming Lips, Lou Reed, Radiohead and Jarvis Cocker. But they?ve also been invited to play in celebration of the life and times of Sir John Betjeman, the late UK Poet Laureate, born in 1906. And they?ve played shows with The Copper Family, a clan of Sussex folk singers who?ve been going for two hundred years.
My friend gave me a tarot card reading over the phone one night as I was watching TV with a guitar in my lap. "I've drawn a mountain," she said. "I'm a mountain," I said. So begins a song that became the title track of my new record. Most of these songs have been milling about in my mind for a while now. Some I started writing back when I put down the electric guitar and ding-digga-dinged my way through summer on the back porch. All of them live in the same wide frame and seem to belong together. "I am Aglow," "The Ring," and "I'm a Mountain," are tunes inspired by country music and bluegrass bands, singing for the joy of it, and telling new versions of old stories in song. "The Phoenix" builds on the themes of courage and regeneration and the inspirational "How Deep in the Valley" came from somewhere deep in the hymnbook of my memory. Down low in the picture frame (under a log) is "Salamandre," a children's song written by my friends Kate Fenner and Chris Brown. I am thrilled this modern classic can be part of this collection as it expresses my own love for the magical and precious amphibian and the time-honored relationship between nature and imagination. "Luther's Got the Blues" is my old pal Luther Wright's enduring, scruffy sidewalk lament, and Dolly Parton's "Will He Be Waiting For Me" lives in the world of lost love and yearning that I, too, know something about. I wrote "Goin' Out for an AIDS Vigil," and I am so happy to have my dad singing it with me. He also lends his warm and wise timbre to "Oleander." And finally, casting its glow over the entire record is the new folk song "Escarpment Blues," which tells the story of a current land-use conflict in Southern Ontario on the Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. I grew up on the escarpment on the farm where my family still lives, within a long green corridor prized for its fresh water resources, its endangered species habitats, its prime agricultural soils, and its wetlands and forests. These lands are under serious threat from the aggregate (sand, gravel, and shale) industry. The problem is large multinational companies want to open new quarries on top of the escarpment and extract the rock below these ecosystems, thereby removing and destroying them. So, after writing the song, I got the idea for the "I Love the Escarpment" Tour and set out in June 2005 with some of my best musical mates to hike the escarpment and make music along the way. Julie Fader (vocals, keys), Jason Euringer (vocals, stand-up bass), Spencer Evans (clarinet, accordion), Joey Wright (mandolin, guitar), and I hit the Bruce Trail (the continuous hiking trail that goes from one end of the escarpment to the other) and spent two weeks rock climbing, caving, hiking, and performing in theaters and community halls along Southern Ontario's spine. All proceeds of the tour went to help finance the research and advocacy work of Protecting Escarpment Rural Land (PERL), a volunteer organization I helped form last winter when the new quarry proposal came to light in my old stomping grounds of North Burlington. After a wonderful tour we put away our hiking boots and went into Reaction Studio in Toronto to capture these songs, all wrapped in up our camaraderie. This record was made for everyone, everywhere. Like the smiles we had on our faces when we made it, we hope it spreads far and wide.
Mates of State is the organ and drums, vocal-laden duo of Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel. Formed in the nation's heartland December 1997, their infectious songs and long-standing motto of play anywhere, anytime has earned them a legion of fans from coast to coast and everywhere else in between. After years of playing in countless bands (nearly twenty between the two of them), Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel finally realized the ease of playing with only one other person. Ditching their guitars for just an organ and drum set, the trick now was getting two people to sound like a full band. With the two instruments, they added call and response vocal melodies and harmonies to create a sound unique in its immenseness. An open-mic was scheduled and tensions ran high as they began to question their untraditional arrangement. Afterwards, they realized it didn't matter. Mates of State possibly played six times in Lawrence, Kansas before packing it in and driving to California in August 1998 where the band would release "Leave Me at the Tree" with Fighter D as a split 7" on Omnibus Records. After eight months in the suburbs, the band moved to San Francisco proper and Omnibus released two additional songs, "It's the Law" and "Invitation Inn," as a separate 7". Mates of State spent 1999 touring throughout the West Coast, playing consistently in California and solidifying their position in San Francisco's burgeoning pop scene. In April of 2000, the band chanced upon engineer John Croslin (Beulah, Spoon, Guided By Voices) whose reserved but confident knowledge immediately attracted the band. The same day, Mates of State scheduled studio time. The Croslin sessions resulted in their debut album My Solo Project, 12 tracks of unconventional pop appeal. Instantly, critical acclaim poured forth from fanzines, periodicals, and dailies such as the San Francisco Bay Guardian and New York Times (who included the album in their "10 worthwhile albums you may have missed in 2000"). A Midwest tour with longtime friends Appleseed Cast was quickly put together and followed by yet another string of shows up and down the West Coast. July 2001 saw Mates of State signing with Polyvinyl, and a month later they re-entered the studio to record their second album, this time with engineer Dave Trumfio (Butterglory, Dianogah, Wilco) behind the board. The band closed out the year by landing large tours alongside Beulah and Mars Volta. Their second full-length Our Constant Concern, was released in January 2002 and the tour machine was once again placed in motion. And what a machine it was. Unparalled by any band in Polyvinyl's history, not even Braid could come close to Mates' four national tours, three international tours, and the 200 plus shows they played in support of the album. Mates of State greeted 2003 with two new releases. The first was a split 7" with longtime friends Dear Nora which featured Mates' haunting rendition of Jackson Browne's "These Days." The latter was their next full-length Team Boo which was released September 2003. Now on their third album, the band discovered the perfect studio environment for their unique blend of vintage Yamaha organ, Gretch Round Badge drums, off-kilter harmonies, and the dynamism that holds it all together. The album was recorded and mixed over three weeks at both The Garage and Willie Nelson's Pedernales studios. Manning the knobs were John Croslin (My Solo Project) and Spoon's Jim Eno. Incredibly infectious, Team Boo was immediately embraced by college radio as the band toured with friends Victory at Sea, The Thermals, and Death Cab for Cutie. Mates of State fans have a lot to look forward to in 2004. Another tour is currently in the works that will take the band through the United States, out to Hawaii and up north through Canada. A DVD documentary is in the works. And who knows, another 7" or EP may be down the line.
