
If you were at said Exit/In show, then first of all, welcome to Nashville Cream. Perhaps your "Hoobastank" Google Alert brought you here? And second of all, if you think you might have seen television personality and towering, mustachioed celebrity psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw there, you are correct. But no, he isn't just a Hoobastank fan. McGraw's son Jordan is Stars in Stereo's guitarist. Anyway, Stars in Stereo is (surprise!) a compressed, chuggy, MOR sort of alterna-pop-rock outfit (hear a handful of their tunes after the jump ... yowzer) that sometimes covers NIN's "Closer." A Google search of "Dr. Phil" and "Stars in Stereo" turns up all sorts of junk, including this pretty brutal comment on an Absolute Punk thread:
This is what happens when your parents tell you that you "can do anything you want". Jordan McGraw is using his dad's (Dr. Phil) money to buy his dream. Kind of a slap in the face to all the bands who put in the elbow grease. They out of nowhere are touring in a bus opening up for The Used, kind of raises a lot of questions.
Ouch. We can indeed confirm that McGraw the Younger sleeps in a bunk on a bus. When reached for comment regarding Dr. Phil's presence at Exit/In last night, Exit employee Jesse Baker had this to say: "Discovering he wasn't simply a huge Hoobastank fan was a bummer."
Show promoter Jesse Baker tells the Scene that, over the course of the evening, Sartain’s booking agent could not contact the singer and expressed that his management was at a loss too. Two days later, Baker says, he still hasn’t heard a word from the Sartain camp explaining, apologizing, or updating him on the artist’s outright stand up, which forced him to refund about 15 patrons’ $8-$10 admission fee and turn away others at the door.
Saturday night’s End appearance was to be Sartain’s first after canceling an eight-date string of shows, citing a family emergency.
So, anyone heard from Dan? If so, is he safe and sound? If not, should we be worried?
Remarkably, Preds post-game traffic and light rain didn’t deter my lazy ass from hitting up Cheap Time’s record release show at The Zombie Shop on Friday night. More of you should have followed suit. Really.
Regrettably, I made a relatively late arrival and missed Ranch Ghost’s first-out-of-the-gate set. Now, here are a couple things you non-attendees missed: D. Watusi turning in their seemingly weekly local performance of rockin’, rambunctious freakbeat revivalism for a smallish but invigorated crowd of from-thrift-store-clad brown baggers. That was cool. ‘Twas then followed by a punishing, distortion-and-haunting-facial-contortion-laden set from Detroit garage-psych luminary Tim Vulgar’s (Clone Defects, Human Eyes) Timmy’s Organism. And then Cheap Time slayed all in attendance by playing Wallpaper Music in its entirety, hardly once ever stopping between tracks to take a breath as they enraptured and deafened all with their deft musical approximation of The Sex Pistols gone psychedelic.
You also missed your chance to gawk Aziz Ansari, who turned up after doing his stand-up thing at TPAC.
As confirmed by both Ke$ha and Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne's tweets, the band and the singer are collaborating on at least one track — here's a clip of K$ laying down some vox. Anyway, there was apparently no sleeping and plenty of recording, and perhaps we'll all come away from this damn thing with a psych-glam-glitter-pop-rock track for the ages. Or at least something to wash down Ke$ha's Dylan cover. 2012: the year of the collaboration! And for more Ke$ha-related Nashville crossover, have a look at a clip of Ke-dollarsign-ha shaving her head while listening to The Black Keys after the jump. If that's the sort of thing you're into.
So I went to the infamous Springwater Supper Club and Lounge on Saturday night to check out Memphians Cheap Time along with Chicago's Mannequin Men and locals D. Watusi and King Karl. (King Karl is Cy Barkley's new outfit, by the way, and it's definitely less punk rock and more melodic indie rock than most of Cy's stuff. Think Pixies and Dino Jr. rather than the usual Ramones and Misfits influence.) Anyway, Ke$ha was there, and while that doesn't have too much to do with anything — and while we know it certainly wasn't the first time Ke$ha was spotted at Springwater — it's always entertaining to see an international pop star (who has a bunch of awards from MTV and NME and Billboard and stuff) being carded in a place like Springwater.
But someone else who happened to be in attendance was former Scene/Cream intern Rodrigo Avendano (he's also the frontman for Bows and Arrows). Rodrigo told me he recently stumbled across some footage of those now-beloved indie-rock stars and elder statesmen of the Pitchfork set, Animal Collective, playing at the supper club back in June of 2001. Above you'll see what is technically a rendition of "Essplode," and after the jump you'll find footage of A.C. playing "Lablakely Dress." It's a lot of erratic playing and caterwauling from Panda Bear, Avey Tare and Geologist in a performance that some might deem difficult — or at least mildly uncomfortable — to watch. As a friend put it, "If I'd seen that show, I probably would have thought Animal Collective sucks." Anyway, hip things happen at Springwater at least once a decade. Thanks to Rodrigo for letting us know about the videos. Enjoy!(?)
Well. So. Twenty-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears is, of course, known for her fine work on Nickelodeon's All That and Zoey 101, as well as ... hmmm. Isn't there something else she's known for? I'm drawing a blank. Oh right! She's known for her original country tunes. At least, she is as of this month. As this Fair & Balanced article reports, Spears played a set at The Rutledge on Nov. 7 to a crowd that included her parents, Pam Tillis and, as far as we know, no one named Britney. Spears the younger also apparently reappeared onstage last night, this time at Puckett's. Puckett's sent a press release:
Britney Spears' little sister, Jamie Lynn, gave a surprise mini-concert at Puckett's in Nashville Monday night. She played several original country songs during her set.Spears, who has been living in Nashville for the past two years, has been rumored to be working on a country album. "The girl can sing!" said one attendee. "The Crowd was really into it and there was a great atmosphere in here tonight."
"One attendee" could not be reached for further comment. Also, when the words "has been rumored to be" appear in a press release, our brains basically convert that to "is," right? I mean, if she's not working on a country album in Nashville, then why does her website have that Google Maps thing going on? Anyway, see also: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jessica Simpson. Puckett's was also kind enough to send along some photos from last night's performance, so click on through to the other side if that's something you want to see.
Faith in Christ does not flush toilets, at least not for Danny Gokey. According to a Facebook status update posted last night by an unnamed employee of an unnamed, upscale tea store — a tea-tery, if you will — in the Green Hills Mall, bespectacled contemporary Christian country singer and eighth season American Idol third place finalist, Danny Gokey, had an epic fail in the common courtesy department when he neglected to flush a store toilet after relieving himself yesterday. A screen cap of said update appears above. The names of the innocent have been blacked out, but the name of the accused remains.
In a sneak peek of the forthcoming issue of Parade Magazine, Babygirl Tay-Tay — that’s what I like to call her — reveals that she recently pulled a reverse-stalk on a young fan here in Nashville.
“I was driving near the mall and I saw this girl with my tour T-shirt on. She was probably 11. I made a U-turn and tried to follow her—I really had to do some maneuvering. I found her in a video-game store and just kind of walked up to her and said, ‘Oh, hi. I wanted to meet you.’ She had no idea what to say for about three minutes. Then her mom walked over, burst into tears, and proceeded to tell me that they’d driven all the way from Austin, Texas, just to see where I was discovered.”
So, for starters, she was likely driving by Green Hills, right? Which would probably make the video-game store in question GameStop on Glen Echo, no? I bought my niece some newfangled, animal-related Wii game there last Christmas. But in reading that quote, did anyone else think to themselves, “Oh, she was totally trying to bust that little girl for bootlegged merch”? We all know Ms. Swift doesn’t like it when perps wear false Taylor/Fearless gear — and rightfully so. I’ll bet she was all, “Nice try, punk! That tour shirt isn’t a licensed … oh, wait. It’s legit. All right. Carry on.”
We kid because we love.
This weekend, R.E.M. manager Burtis Downs took to the band's official site to confirm what we've been hearing around town, which is that they have, in fact, been working on a new album here:
Band finishing work on the record in Nashville. All going well, songs sounding great; the band, ably assisted by Jacknife and team, in the homestretch of making what sounds to me like a great R.E.M. record. And between New Orleans, Berlin, and Nashville, you would be hard-pressed to find three more musical and [inspiring] places in which to work. Having Anton Corbijn in town was pretty special as it has been a while since any of us has seen Mills, Stipe, and Buck through Anton's eyes and lens. And Nashville provided some pretty characterful backdrops.
Guessing from the photos posted, I'd say they had dinner at Margot one night. I heard Michael Stipe was in the audience at Saturday night's Pixies show at The Ryman, but didn't see him. If you want to see Stipe playing pocket chaos noise and leading handclaps, check out this in-studio video of the new R.E.M. album in progress.
(HT: Spinner.)
"Sorta feel like I just looked behind the curtain of the Wizard of Oz finding out that Pitchfork isn’t some robot. Kinda feel inspired. Like me and my bros can start an organic indie music site, and eventually rise to prominence and ‘control the fucking scene’ while ‘rolling around in piles of cash.’ Might cancel my plans to start a chillwave buzzband and opt to build a blogspot."
Sounds like Carles is, once again, 'feeling it all around.' [Via Washed Out bro.]
In any case, the Time piece is perhaps more intriguing because, of all the record store co-owners in the country, the writer chose to interview Nashville's very own Doyle Davis of the venerable Grimey's. Perched alongside quotes from Beach House's Victoria Legrand and Atlanta rapper Big Boi, Davis briefly riffs on the correlation between a high Pitchfork rating and the interest Grimey's receives in the record that was lavished with praise. Following last week's Tennessean story on Nashville's healthy record store sales, in which Davis figured prominently, August has been a solid month in Grimey's PR department.