Results tagged “cds”

How did the Juno soundtrack gig come about? Well, Ellen Page told Jason Reitman that she thought Juno would listen to The Moldy Peaches. He downloaded a song and loved it. He then asked for my solo CDs and decided that was the sound he wanted for the film.

With many people trying to keep up that perennial New Year's resolution to lose weight/work out/get in shape, they're hitting their computers (or CDs!) to create the perfect soundtracks for their workouts. The other day, the NY Times chatted with a number of experts - physicians, life coaches, workout music producers - to figure out what makes a good work out song.

Salt & Samovar are a Brooklyn band that sound more like they're just visiting here from Upstate...or a Coen brothers film. Their live shows are described as "pentecostal revival-like performances that evoke the musical and spiritual heirlooms of a cherished American past." A simpler and simply transporting sound that'll have you pining for the past. Come check out their revival-rock this Friday at Mercury Lounge -- get your tickets here.

A poignant week for LAist as they lose their trusted and amazing editor Tony Pierce to the LA Times, but what a blast his last week was. He shared his 25 Favorite CDs of 2007 and wrote a great review of just a good movie, No Country For Old Men. At UCLA, thousands of students celebrated the end of their quarter by running around campus in their undies (lots of photos in a two-part photo essay, one, two). That wasn't the only photo essay either: Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy friends and Star Trek actors all joined in at the Writers Strike and KROQ's Almost Acoustic Christmas brought two nights of amazing bands that included Avenged Sevenfold, Linkin Park (Part I), Modest Mouse, Muse, Spoon and The Killers (Part II). Not only is L.A. a great music town, it has just been named the best city for bookish types. For those who are looking for something a little more active, American Gladiators are back (yes!) and if that's not enough, how about a Christmas gift of action and adventure?

1) Features about the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes, in anticipation of this year's Radio City Christmas Spectacular. The NY Times looks how performances from the 1930s and 1940s inspired this year's show while Newsday notes on the technology being used. Both focus on the amazing synchronized dancing. 2) Starbucks has decorated its stores with Christmas decorations and has started to use Christmas/holiday themed cups. Cajun Boy in the City also counts Josh Grobin...

Jonny Greenwood was named the BBC’s composer-in-residence in 2004; during this time he debuted "Popcorn Superhet Receiver", a twenty-minute work for string orchestra inspired, in part, by the phenomenon of white noise and Penderecki’s "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima". Tickets are on sale for a two-night performance of the composition at The Church of St. John the Apostle in January as part of The Wordless Music Series; works by John Adams and Gavin Bryars will also be performed.

Ira Glass is the brains, heart and larynx behind the wildly popular program This American Life; each show employs a theatrical, multiple-act structure to carve strange slices of life out of a unique thematic pie. The show began almost 12 years ago as a Chicago public radio program but has since mutated into an Emmy-nominated TV series on Showtime – a leap that prompted Glass and his team to relocate to New York City, bringing the radio version in tow. But Glass still keeps one foot in Chicago; he’s compiled a new book whose proceeds benefit 826CHI, the free writing program open to all students in Chicago. He’ll be appearing at Town Hall Monday night with Susan Orlean, Malcolm Gladwell and Chuck Klosterman, who have each contributed to the book, called The New Kings of Nonfiction. (Tickets cost $30; all proceeds benefit 826CHI.)

Earlier this year bootleg DVDs became even more illegal in New York, and now there's a new way "the man" is cracking down on the bootleggers: with puppies! Metro reports that:

“Dogs are used to sniff out bodies, bombs and drugs,” said Malcolm, who’s now the chief of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association of America. “We just needed to see if they could be trained to smell the unique chemicals in DVDs. Lo and behold, they can.”

Earlier this month ASCAP was making headlines with their lawsuit against some of New York's (and the nation's) venues. To clear things up on how the company works, and why they do what they do, we asked the senior vice president of licensing and the director of general licensing some questions.

You may know Peter Yarrow best by his first name. He was part of the '60s folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary. The group launched their career at The Bitter End in Greenwich Village in 1961 and went strong for nine years.

A look at some noteworthy television this week:

Back in 2005, the MTA imposed new rules and fines for a variety of subway offenses, such as a $50 fine for putting your foot on a seat or platform bench. Or a $100 fine for wearing skates. One of the rules included was a $75 fine for walking or riding between subway cars because the MTA wanted to make sure riders weren't exposed to dangers of riding/walking between cars, emergencies or smelly people or crowded cars be damned.

The Brazilian street artists have landed, and we're tracking their every move as they get ready to launch Ruas de Sao Paulo: A Survey of Brazilian Street Art at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery this Saturday. Here’s an account of the movements of Boleta, Fefê, Highraff, Kboco, Onesto, Speto, Titi Freak, and Zezão.

- Nice shot.

I actually grew up in Dune Acres, which is a suburb of Chesterton. Chesterton is the sort of place that didn't have a McDonalds until I was in high school. It was a very boring place. We would ride our bikes six miles to go to the Dairy Queen. It was all right. It's a unique place in that northwest Indiana is a convergence of Midwest farm life and the steel mill rust belt. The steel mills of Gary, which is ethnically diverse and Indiana, which is very white bread.

Bradford Reed is the inventor and probably the only player of the pencilina, an instrument that he describes as "an electric ten-stringed collision of the hammer dulcimer, slide guitar, koto and fretless bass with six pickups of varied types" and looks something like a surf board caught up in a fishing net. He has played with King Missile, the Blue Man Group band and has composed for film and animation. He has appeared on MTV, Sound FX and the Tonight Show, as well as on the streets of New York.

LAist has so much fun this week! They go to E3, where they overhear the timeless remark "Man, this is where nerdy girls get laid." Is that a promise? They also give us this week's best CDs and make us realize that LA is the best place to use Zillow.

The last vestige of 1970s SoHo is about to disappear: Rocks in Your Head, the record store on Prince Street, is closing after twenty-eight years of business. Manhattan's loss is Brooklyn's gain: the store is moving to North 5th and Roebling Street in Williamsburg. The Villager reports:

The September 11th emergency response tapes were released today downtown. For $13, any accredited reporter could pick up a set of CDs containing 130 edited messages. The recordings were excerpted, because the city decided that they didn't want to release recordings of any voices they couldn't identify. More than twenty callers were identified, and those two-way conversations were also released this week. All of the city newspapers are busy preparing transcripts, which we'll link to as they are published online. The Times is the first to publish, with a dozen or so messages. Here's one:

Last night we headed up to Washington Square Park to catch the beginning of Phil Klein's Unsilent Night procession. It was amazing-- a few hundred people showed up with boomboxes, and more were given out-- then everyone switched on the tapes and CDs at the same time and started to march. The ambient noise was beautiful but really hard to describe, so a bunch of us recorded some video:

Gothamist can't imagine that being a high school basketball coach is all that easy, but does it mean you should be spanking your 16 year old players? By laying them across the lap? Oof. Drew Sanders pleaded guilty yesterday to "forcible touching" and will be placed on the sex offender list. Sanders lives in New Sprinville, Staten Island, and was accused to making the players strip off their shorts and underwear to be spanked either with his hand or with a ping-pong paddle at Susan Wagner High School and the Jewish Community Center in Staten Island. Sanders will get six years probation.

You'd think that being a tourist from Baltimore, you'd be able to get away from shootings, but on Saturday, a woman visiting from Charm City was shot during a botched robbery. A group of men were trying to steal DVDs and CDs from a vendor at 1204 Broadway, around 29th Street, a building full of vendors; Newsday reported that two men argued with the vendor about the movie selection, in order to distract him while others could steal CDs. The vendor called 911, but then the robbers beat him up as the argument moved outside and then they tried shoot him, shooting 25 year-old Sheria Guster of Baltimore instead. Guster had been on a Flatiron shopping tour, and ended up going to St. Vincent's Hospital for her single bullet wound. She was released from the hospital yesterday. While reports say that Guster was alert and even smiled when an ambulance took her, another person on her tour said, "It turned out to be a terrible shopping day," which is a Lennie Briscoe-ism if we ever heard one; thank goodness Guster is all right. At any rate, two men were charged in connection to the crime yesterday, but the police are still awaiting ballistics results.

After reports of a raid, it turns out that employees at the Mondo Kim's on St. Mark's were arrested for making illegal CDs and DVDs in a back room. The police took "hundreds" of illegally made discs during the afternoon raid, and charging five workers with trademark counterfeiting. The NY Post says that some "record-industry executives joined cops outside the store and helped point out what police said were the 'mixes of a variety of hip-hop songs and compilations the employees were selling.'" Hear that? If you're a record store employee, do not make any mix tapes...especially not at work. And Gothamist thought we were being "bad" by buying DVDs and CDs before their official release date at Kim's.

Carrie McLaren,
Editor, Stay Free!

Bobby Short, the irrepressible entertainer who sang and played the standards at the Cafe Carlyle, died at age 80 yesterday from leukemia. While Gothamist never got to see him perform in person, we always equated him with a beautiful, serene and, yes, very Woody Allen version of New York where people would just sit and listen to wonderful renditions of the old standards. The NY Times' Stephen Holden wrote in an appreciation:

At the keyboard, Mr. Short refined his own personal brand of stride piano. Vigorous and sophisticated but devoid of fuss and frills, it was as distinctive as his voice, to which it was inextricably wedded. Over the years, his sound evolved from that of a caroling choirboy into a huskier baritone whose timbre varied from fogbound to clear, depending on the night and sometimes on the moment. As his voice acquired deeper shades and rougher textures, he made adroit, expressive use of each new facet.

Darci Ratliff, Kittenpants

Sara Dobbs, Actress/Singing Waitress

Ray Castoldi & Mark Lee, Music Directors At Madison Square Garden

Kevin So, Musician