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June 8, 2007
Shorties
Singer-songwriter Leslie Feist talks to the Washington Post.
"I don't think I ever imagined it was music that was going to match my dreams to my pay! I would have had no indication from the 10 years of working previous to this that I was ever going to make a cent playing music -- I was only going to spend money and lose money doing it!"
The LHB Hallelujah the Hills contest ends Tuesday, submit your favorite band name derived from a song title to win both a Hallelujah the Hills and Stairs CD.
Singer-songwriter Richard Thompson talks to the Denver Post about his live performance.
"Basically, you'll be hearing things from the previous five decades of my career," Thompson said. There's a pause. "Gosh, I can't believe I said that."
Stylus lists the top ten songs with flute.
The Chicago Tribune lists the city's 10 best bookstores.
Stylus interviews Dungen guitarist Reine Fiske.
Hold Steady guitarist Tad Kubler talks to Bend Weekly.
"We don't have as much material as Guided By Voices," Kubler said. "But there is a lot of booze involved and it's always a good time. I also like that GBV was very inclusive of everyone. That's certainly a philosophy we try to take from them."
Rolling Stone asks two musicians and a comedian how they think the Sopranos will end.
Architecture in Helsinki's Cameron Bird talks to Vancouver's Georgia Straight about the band's upcoming album, Places Like This..
"With this record, we wanted to focus on being a band, and make a record in a spontaneous, to-the-point manner," says Bird. "We didn't dilly-dally about and spend a week deciding the best bass sound. We just wanted to make something super-immediate."
Guardian readers recommend songs about rallying cries.
Singer-songwriter Barbara Manning talks to the SF Gate about her box set, Super Scissors.
"My very first reaction was, 'Why make a box set of something you can get used at Amoeba?'" Manning said of Thomas' plans for Super Scissors. I'm always really hesitant to jump onto Pat's ideas at first, but then I always end up really grateful. I didn't think a box set was something you do for someone who's alive. But at the same time I'm delighted. I always feel that when you put something out, it's like a lottery ticket, and just maybe having it in one more place could be that place that will help make it break through somehow. Who knows if now, having 1,000 more Barbara Manning discs out there, one of them will fall into the lap of a movie director or something?"
Emily Haines talks to the Guardian.
Haines refers proudly to the fact that Daniel Handler, better known as Lemony Snicket, has said Metric are the band all 14-year-old girls ought to be listening to. It is a responsibility, she says, but one she accepts readily. Indeed, with songs such as Patriarch on a Bicycle and Glass Ceiling, Haines has established herself as a feminist songwriter. Her new record includes a song named A Maid Needs a Maid. Is this, one wonders, a direct retort to her fellow countryman Neil Young's A Man Needs a Maid? "I can see there would be a feminist reading of that song. But it wasn't really intended that way. I'm a huge Neil Young fan, but growing up I never understood that song, I didn't know what he meant. Whaddyawant? Someone who cleans up after you?" She folds her pale features into a frown. "And when I was writing this record, I realised I had that exact feeling, as a result of touring and other things, where my ability to connect with somebody actually came down to being a very functional approach to love and companionship."
Time's readers interview author Ian McEwan.
Glide lists the ten best bands to play the defunct H.O.R.D.E. tour.
Slate recaps author Cormac McCarthy's appearance on Oprah.
Oprah played an embarrassing short film inspired by the novel (about a father-son trek through the post-apocalypse) that even featured shots of singed pages of its text—a sight that called to mind the elementary-school assignment in which you reproduce the, like, Magna Carta on typing paper and steep the sheet in tea and have your mom take a kitchen match to its edges. Then the proper interview began. It proved to be absurd, of course, but not quite so much as one might hope.
Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels wonder what kind of food romance authors would be.
Kathleen Woodiwiss: Chinese American food. Sometimes it hits the spot, but too often it panders to what people *think* Chinese food should be, so it’s way too salty, way too greasy, and WHY IN THE SHIT IS SOY SAUCE IN EVERYTHING? Just because it’s Chinese food doesn’t mean you slather soy sauce on all of it, you goddamn infidels.
The Book Standard reports that test-prep publisher Kaplan is teaming up with manga publisher TOKYOPOP to create a manga series to help students study vocabulary for their SAT and ACT tests.
Janeane Garafalo talks "random roles" with the A.V. Club.
AVC: Speaking of The Kids In The Hall, what happened to your role in Brain Candy?
JG: Oh, I love Brain Candy! I was a girl who tries to seduce Kevin McDonald's character. I was only there one night, during a heat wave in Toronto, and I was so flattered to be asked to participate in anything at all to do with Kids In The Hall. To this day, I don't understand why they were so nice to do that, to fly me out there and put me up in Toronto. I did a couple of scenes that never made it in—except you can see me on a monitor in the party scene. I was disappointed, of course, because anybody would want to be part of a Kids In The Hall project. Which I wasn't once it was released.
Lavender magazine interviews cartoonist Joan Hilty.
You have a background in independent and mainstream comic books. How much does that background help in comic strips? Could Bitter Girl work as a comic book?
It could, but my first love is comic strips. I followed them long before I followed comic books. I may bitch a lot about the limitations of the strip format, but I really love the challenge. And I spend enough time on comic books in my day job; for my own work, I like a change of pace. Bitter Girl will get collected into a book format in 2007, though. I’m working on the details now.
Minnesota Public Radio's the Current features live, in-studio performances by Albert Hammond Jr. and the Sound Team.
Curious Inkling features a variety of t-shirts imprinted with the likeness and/or quotes of author Kurt Vonnegut.
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