Zola Jesus – In Your Nature (David Lynch Remix)

Zola Jesus is ordinarly not a fan of remixes, but when you have an opportunity to let director David Lynch reinterpret your work, how could one pass up the chance?

I enjoy this song, because it’s different than anything out there currently in pop music. It’s dark, forebodding and sultry all at the same time.

1. Holiday by Miami Horror
For a band called Miami Horror, there’s really nothing scary about them. This track gets me out of bed in the morning.

2. Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains [Damien Taylor Remix]) by Arcade Fire
Sometimes I honestly think that a remix is better than the original. This is one of those times.

3. A Little Too Young by Sunday Lane (She’s an Oklahoma Native)
She’s one of my favorite artists to come from Oklahoma.

4. Heaven by Emeli Sande
I would literally marry her voice. Unfortunately, that’s not legal yet.

5. Shuffle by Bombay Bicycle Club
Try not dancing when listening to this song. I dare you.

6. Amor Fati by Washed Out
This is one of the best songs to work to on a rainy day, and we’ve had plenty of those lately.

7. I Belong in Your Arms by Chairlift
Chairlift is stuck in the 1980s and I love every minute of it.

8. Hang With Me by Robyn
This song continues to be my favorite pop song.

9. 1901 by Phoenix
This song never gets old. Ever. I’ve been obsessed with it for a year now.

10. L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N. by Noah and the Whale
This is just a song hipsters and mainstream music lovers both seem to love a lot.

“Me and Mia” from Shake the Sheets (2004)
One of my favorite things about the song is how it starts off slow then speeds up the tempo once it reaches the chorus. I find “Me and Mia” to be Ted Leo’s most irresistibly catchy song in his entire catalog.

“Bottled In Cork” from the Brutualist Bricks (2010)
“Bottled In Cork” was my favorite song for 2010. What I like about Leo’s songwriting is not only he is very descriptive with his words, but he manages to tell a story in his songs as well. Most of Ted Leo’s songs often have political overtone to them. “Bottled In Cork” is no exception.

“Hearts of Oak” from Hearts of Oak (2003)
Shawn Davis said since the first time he heard “Hearts of Oak” it’s always been his favorite Ted Leo song.
“I hear a lot of The Clash in this, which happens to be my favorite band,” Davis said. “Also, it’s just plain catchy – you can’t hear this and not want to dance. You just can’t. Great tune, great lyrics. It’s very inspiring.”

Stillwater’s Other Lives apparently impressed Mates of State when they opened for the group during a show in Norman this past spring.

Other Lives is set to open nine shows for the San Francisco native Mates of State, starting with a show in Columbus, Ohio in October.

For a full list of shows with Mates of State, click here.

Those shows will come after the band plays six shows with Indie Folker Bon Iver in September.

Other Lives released its second album, Tamer Animals, on May 10 and so far has drawn positive reviews from music sites Pitchfork and Paste Magazine.

Plus, the band made perhaps one of the greatest music videos in the history of music videos that take place in space… (Probably only edged out by Michael Jackson’s Scream video. You just can’t beat Pong in space.)

Main Entrance on First Day

This was my first time to attend the Bonnaroo Festival; My first time to report for NewsOk;  and my first time to write a first person piece.  The festival also helped me find the perfect story to launch my personal blog, Green Life Girl, an Eco concious blog.  Most of the interviews I did for my story and blog were done while waiting for the next band to hit the stage.  This made the wait time go by much quicker and helped me get to know the group around me.

The days were hot and dusty but the bands were full of energy and excitement.  My favorite acts were The Strokes by far but closely followed by Florence and the Machine and Arcade Fire.  Other than music there were some really exciting, funny and weird experiences had at the festival.  I love being a journalist because it may be the only career in which you can listen to your favorite musicians and say you’re working.

Looking for something awesome to do on a Tuesday night?

Then gallop on over to the Conservatory tonight and catch Horse Thief  open up for J Roddy Walston & The Business.
Horse Thief is made up of students from the Academy of Contemporary Music of The University of Central Oklahoma. Originally from Denton, Texas, Horse Thief then moved to OKC to attend ACM @ UCO and has since been playing around the state as well as SXSW and Norman Music Fest (Where they were unceremoniously kicked off stage by a terrible venue operator).Plus, their song Warrior is awesome!

http://horsethiefrock.bandcamp.com/track/warrior

Go see Horse Thief tonight at the Conservatory, doors open at 6 p.m. and the cover is $12.

Why on Earth would I want to spend a weekend of my winter break in Enid?

This was my first thought when I read Nathan Poppe’s email to me asking if I had any desire to help film a documentary about a band from Enid called Black Canyon.

But… being the sucker I am, I went along with Mr. Poppe and my friends Brian Blackstock, Zach Gray and Matt Carney to meet Jack Morrise and Jordan Herrera of Black Canyon who had recently finished an ep of seven songs that documented a civil war romance.

Flash forward six months and we are now just hours away from the premiere of the documentary, which will show tonight as part of the deadCenter film festival. (start time of 6 p.m. at the IAO Gallery if you’re interested!)

If you had told me while I was freezing my fanny off filming in the backwoods of Enid that this little, on a whim project would have made it to what is now being called one of the 20 Coolest Film Festivals by Movie Maker Magazine, I probably would have hit you upside the head with Black Canyon’s banjo.

I don’t expect people to be blown away by our movie, we shot the thing in 24 hours and in seven different locals of “scenic” Enid. But I hope you take away from the movie the amount of fun we had filming it and the dedication of all the filmmakers and especially Nathan Poppe, who spent the following three months editing the 40-minute, folk-rock-doc together.

Oklahoma music is filled with some of the best, most talented and wonderfully interesting people around and I’m grateful to have just a little slice in documenting them.

Black Canyon\’s Crossroads For the Restless

-Adam Kemp

Murphy, right with LCD synth player Gavin Russom

Regardless, there were plenty such people at the Palladium Ballroom in Dallas, Texas Wednesday night who were more concerned with whom they were with than the band they’d shelled out $40 each to see. Funny lyric changes to “Pow Pow” and an amazing one-man, two-part conversation during “Losing My Edge” went largely unnoticed by the crowd, which was energetic enough, dancing and fist-pumping most of the night.

“Us v. Them” kicked the show off expertly with it’s “the time has come to PLAY” lyrics and call and response audience part, forcing patrons to start moving with it’s dance-funk, cowbell solo and intricate working parts. The hotly-debated new release “Drunk Girls” immediately followed, to a criminally underwhelmed reaction. Nancy Whang deserved an ovation for supplying the roughly 400 backing “DRUNK GIRLS” lines dutifully, if a bit annoyed.

Murphy playfully altered the talky lyrics to “Pow Pow” to suit the domestic audience. “We have a black president and you do not, except you do, because we’re all from the same place,” he said in a sort of casual disco-command. A wobbly “Daft Punk is Playing At My House” probably got the loudest and most intense crowd reaction of the night, as Murphy again got playful, hooking the audience in with his “oooohwOOOO-HOOOOyeeeeeah” chorus calls.

And then he turned sarcastic. After finishing “Daft Punk”, Murphy turned the sarcasm knob to 11, laughing about the old microphone that wasn’t working. “It’s old and weird, like meeeEEEEEE,” he sang, practically giddy before reaching into his most self-aware. “You’re breaking the fourth wall!”

Murphy managed to turn down the snark for one of the decade’s most endearing and beautiful songs (by anybody), “All My Friends”. At his most poignant, crowd members were nearly in tears at the line “I wouldn’t trade one stupid decision for another five years of life”. The rushing finish was purely cathartic after building up on the nostalgia of young adult life shared with others at shows, parties, bars and intimate conversation.

“I Can Change” followed beautifully, with Murphy delivering the best vocal performance of the night as he ached over the paradox of suiting a lover’s needs. It was a surprisingly delicate touch for the band that played “Daft Punk is Playing at My House” two songs earlier.

The first set was debut album-heavy and ended with a rush through the well-received “Tribulations” (featuring a David Stone guitar solo fit for The Strokes), the fastest, punkiest number in the surprisingly-excellent “Movement” and the predictably fun finisher “Yeah”. By its end, it broke down into primal screaming backed by wild synths.

After a short break the band returned for the touching ballad “Someone Great”, Murphy appearing onstage just in time to sing his heart out about how your world lacks meaning or feeling when somebody so close to you dies. It’s a choker of a song, but that sentiment was quickly dissuaded by the self-aware hilarity of “Losing My Edge”. Murphy carried a one-man conversation, staggering as drummer Pat Mahoney snapped behind him, filling the brief gaps with snares. “I hear you and your band have bought a sequencer–oh yeah? That’s cool,” he stated and then responded in a meek party-conversation voice.

“New York I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down” was a bit lost on the Texas crowd, but rocked nonetheless. When it finally broke down, Whang emerged singing the chorus from Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind”, backed by Murphy. It was a brilliant casting decision memorializing the concert as one few will soon forget.

For pictures, check out Nathan Poppe’s work below.

Us v. Them
Drunk Girls
Get Innocuous
Yr City’s A Sucker
Pow Pow
Daft Punk is Playing at My House
All My Friends
I Can Change
Tribulations
Movement
Yeah

Someone Great
Losing My Edge
MEDLEY: New York I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down/Empire State of Mind (Jay-Z cover)

–Carney

That’s because the South’s best and longest-running songwriting duo Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley had rolled into town with the other four members of Drive-By Truckers (all of whom were also clad in brown leather boots and pearl-snap ranch-hand shirts) and a stable of guitars in tow.

Their live catalogue plunges deep into the mid-1990s with eight studio records, though they’ve made their living and reputation on the road. With three singers (Hood, Cooley and bassist Shonna Tucker for that female touch) and just as many guitars, it wasn’t any surprise that the set was long. The Truckers kicked off at 9:30 and played well past 11:30 with a single interruption for encore.

“After the Scene Dies” set the tone for the night as a loud fist-pumper, one of the eight songs they played from their most recent record, The Big To-Do. Said tone was both loud and driven by soaring guitar play between the talented Cooley, Hood and quality third man John Neff, though they broke the monopoly up nicely by interspersing Tucker’s songs in with tracks from 2008′s omnivorous Brighter Than Creation’s Dark.

Tucker shined early in the set with “(It’s Gonna Be) I Told You So” and later dazzled in front of flashing lights and crashing drums on “Home Field Advantage”, one of the evening’s best. The band’s live chops and tendencies are well-honed; they appeared to be playing without a setlist, simply agreeing on the next song as they finished each one.

One was “The Wig He Made Her Wear”, one of the least subtle and most disturbing songs –it concerns the self-defense murder of a pervert preacher by his wife– in recent memory. Most disturbing though was the crowd’s reaction, which could only be described as extremely supportive, likely because of the song’s addictive swaying guitar rhythms and Hood’s emphatic singing. It was the best-received song of the evening.

After a short break around 11 p.m. they returned to play three Lynyrd Skynyrd homages but that just wasn’t enough. After “A Ghost To Most”, Hood delivered a brief sermon about the value of “persistence, persistence, persistence” which he said resulted in getting to open for Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, the band he and Cooley had named their first band (Breakdown) after more than 25 years ago. It was a testament as powerful and moving as “Let There Be Rock”, the final song in the set.

–Carney

Artwork by Nathan Poppe

 

This story ran in the June 9 issue of Look@OKC.

Tulsa native Jack Roberts watched in amazement as a potential coffee shop hire awkwardly turned a job interview into a World’s Strongest Man contest.

Roberts’  interviewee flexed his biceps to answer a question about character growth.

This interview was confusing and inspiring, but nonetheless it sparked Roberts’ writing process for “The Rock ’n’ Roll Dreams of Duncan Christopher.” After three years of writing, Roberts migrated from West Hollywood back to Tulsa with his friend and “Duncan” director Justin Monroe to make a movie several muscles influenced.

Instead of staying in Los Angeles, Roberts and Monroe followed their ears in 2008 to Oklahoma in order to film a rock opus about karaoke stars.

And this gives me chills.

Not only because the film premieres in OKC this week at deadCenter but also because it gives another concrete reason to believe in Oklahoma. I’ve always heard musicians talking about the magnetic nature of Oklahoma music. For some cosmic reason musicians are attracted here, but no one actually says why. Bands like the Flaming Lips and Hanson stick close to home and suggest there¹s a draw to Oklahoma, but I didn¹t physically feel it until “Oklahoma!” saved my life a couple of weeks ago.

My friend Kenzie and I sat in a hole-in-the-wall karaoke bar named Cookie’s, which contains “performers” who look like they’ve recently escaped from the “Karaoke Revolution” video games. As Kenzie and I sang back up for ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,² we weren¹t greeted with applause. It was something more muscular.

I froze in my chair while an inebriated twentysomething threatened to go outside to fight us because he figured our singing was mocking another karaoke patron. I knew he wasn’t messing around because he was beefy and was wearing an Affliction T-shirt.

Kenzie defended our love of song and dance in “Oklahoma!”

After many minutes of yelling, he understood and left. I unfroze and thanked two things.

A brave Kenzie and the fact that Oklahoma music can soothe the savage beast.

I think I’ll stick around too.

Shows to see and not to see…

June 12: “The Rock ’n’ Roll Dreams of Duncan Christopher” makes its Oklahoma premiere. Besides karaoke, the film features music from Colourmusic, Sherree Chamberlain and Mason Remel. Be there.

@ Kerr Auditorium
123 Robert S Kerr

June 13: Groovefest’s lineup includes Penny Hill, The Panda Resistance and atie dye station opening three hours before anyone is scheduled to play. Groovy indeed.

@ Andrews Park
201 W Daws, Norman

June 19: Oklahoma musician and filmmaker Mickey Reese has made eight films in the past two years. His latest movie, “Country Singer,” looks to be best yet.Plus Ali Harter will perform at this premiere. It’s a win.

@ The Opolis
113 N Crawford, Norman

June 22: Should I drop $60 for the cheap seats at the Michael Buble concert or should I listen to him on repeat at The Olive Garden? I hate tough decisions

@ BOK Center
200 S Denver, Tulsa

-Poppe