This is Gramma’s Boyfriend (best band name ever, right?!) The lead singer is Haley Bonar, who in my opinion is the coolest fucking chick in the Twin Cities area, possibly the nation. I’ve never seen her live solo or with Gramma’s Boyfriend because I’ve been hustlin, busy or broke. But I have seen a lot of her videos online and talked about her drunk with girlfriends. Consensus: this bitch can ROCK. “I Have This Feeling” sounds like a song right out of Clueless during the scene where Cher is throwin shade at all the gross high school boys. The music video for the song is also super fun. A+.
Her vocal style is amazing, her dancing is the shit and the music is fucking awesome. But not only is she kicking ass in her side-project punk/new wave jam Gramma’s Boyfriend, she’s released a ton of music solo as Haley Bonar. I haven’t listened as much to her solo music yet as I was first introduced to her in GB, but I’ve seen a few performances online and they are solid af too. There’s a lot of electricity in this woman. I like how she’s weird. It’s so fucking rad. Definitely an inspirational woman in the local music scene. HB + Gramma’s Boyfriend are must sees in Minneapolis. “I NEED TO SEE GRAMMA’S BOYFRIEND LIVE” should be the only thing you’re thinking this summer. Plus maybe “I should get laid by a hot and respectful individual.” New summer goals y’all.
Check out Gramma’s Boyfriend’s live video performance of “We R Ctrl” below. It’s insanely cool.
Also take a listen to her solo tunes here. Totally totally totally worth it. Luv her!!!
Har Mar Superstar is a local Minneapolis craycrayawesome performer who has been around the block a few times. He now lives in Brooklyn AND is touring + promoting his new album “Bye Bye 17” like a madman. I just started getting into him from seeing him at my internship’s launch party at the end of March. He showed up after 3 AM at the Sound Gallery and played an impromptu set with who I’m assuming was his band from his show earlier that night. Or they were his really talented friends. Anyways, I LOVE his new single. It’s soulful, really well produced and a refreshing new retro sound to hear on the radio. The video just dropped and it’s got a lil soulful style to it as well. CHECK HIM OUT FO REAL.
NOW Toronto (a magazine and online cultural publication) is doing this really, really cool project called 50:50. It consists of 50 bands in Toronto covering 50 tracks from Toronto’s greatest albums. It is an insanely great project to celebrate music born out of an amazingly musical city. Not only do new, up and coming bands gets exposure on a grander stage than the usual local hangouts, but accomplished stars get honored with covers of their hits. Plus, fans of music get reworked version of their fave songs. It’s a win-win-win. (Someone in Minneapolis should set this up for us ASAP!)
The video above is of The Autumn Stones covering Feist‘s “One Evening”. It’s a really cool horn-infused cover of her song that you would love to hear in a small jazz club, preferably drinking wine with someone who can pull off wearing a fedora. Dreams! Plus The Autumn Stones are cute dudes with probable Canadian accents ready to woo you with smooth tunes and whatever pickup lines are hot in Toronto. Rad.
Check out all the videos so far including covers of Drake, Barenaked Ladies and Neil Young, and check back for upcoming covers of my personal faves from Canada-Peaches and Crystal Castles! (There are bruises all over my legs still from the Minneapolis Crystal Castles show last week. I spent 30 minutes in the mosh pit. Awesome show!)
And just for fun here is Feist performing “One Evening” live:
This girl Nika aka Zola Jesus went to high school in Wisconsin with some of my friends in college. This video is rad as fuck. It’s not that often that I gravitate towards the local-ish music scene with actual intrigue, since I am obsessed with pop/electronic/experimental music (the two most popular genres in Minneapolis music scene are hip-hop and 4-piece rock/jam/indie rock bands). Also fuck yeah for a woman makin’ it big from around here. The mpls rock music scene is over-saturated with a lot of dudes who think they deserve the world for owning an instrument. Ew.
I feel very proud of her because this is really cool and unique work done with style. A lot of my issues with the local rock bands who are trying to make it bigger is their lack of style, or lack of good style. People like to see new things, enter new territories when it comes to music and new stars. Zola Jesus is definitely that person around these Minnesconsin parts.
I really, so much do not like people that wear these hats. They are bitchy. And don’t wear lipstain!
Unfortunately I’ve seen waaaaaay too many jam bands (for work I swear! There are a surprising disappointing amount of them EVERYWHERE. Thankfully these communities keep to themselves because drugs). Granted said jam bands are definitely playing and dressing for a certain sub-culture who love acid, but making it bigger is going to be verrrrry difficult if they aren’t doing anything new or fresh that will catch the attention of people outside of their target audience. Not to say there can’t be era-inspired music around- on the contrary. But it seems that many of these bands are missing out on the “inspired” part, i.e. take something old, give it your fresh new spin, and see what happens.
Bonus: I really liked this video of Zola Jesus shopping at Amoeba and going through records that she loves.
If you can imagine what Barbie would be listening to in her lumped out jeep, it would be this album (which gives Barbie a lot of cool cred but let’s face it, bitch was fierce).
I AM OBSESSED WITH “Prima Donna” by Marina and the Diamonds. It is the most beautiful pop song that is SO POP that I’ve heard in a very long time. Pop music has definitely taken a more electro/dubby route in recent years. Which I don’t really have an opinion on right now because I haven’t had coffee yet. I also realize I’m about a fucking DECADE late hopping on the Marina train. Whatevs, I work through pop stars on my own time bc I Am Not A Robot.
My newfound Marina love began when I finally burned a new CD for my car after months of listening to weird mixes and Taylor Swift’s “Red”.
(It’s really fun to discover new favorite music in your car, especially if you live in a big city. Traffic is kind of like an album anyways. It gets slow, you get stuck behind big trucks and you’re outraged, or you’re driving super fast on the highway and blasting anthems.)
Anyways, my favorite tracks from Marina’s Electra Heart are hard to pick because I’ve only been obsessively listening to the album for 3 days (granted the first day and a half was spent with “Prima Donna” on repeat and feeling invincible). BUT early favorites are: Teen Idle, Radioactive, Sex Yeah, Valley of the Dolls, and Bubblegum Bitch.
Pop music and escapism vs. reality
I love Marina’s take on pop music. Electra Heart is one of the most poetic pieces of pop I’ve ever listened to recently. Not because she’s trying to sound poetic, but because that is the way she writes and the art that she wanted to make. If Marina truly wanted to be a “pop star” in the traditional sense that we know them to be, she’d have worked with Max Martin and adopted some sort of British Ke$ha persona. However it’s easy for many people/audiences to forget that pop stars and pop music don’t have to come out of a machine: they can come from the heart too.
What’s refreshing about independent/artistic journeys like Marina’s into pop music is you get the lyrical depth that is absent from mainstream pop/dance music. Sometimes it’s great to yell “Mazel Tov!” “Tonight!” or “Dance!” when you want to be enveloped in the total escapism pop music gives you. Shallow pop music lyrics have a purpose, because ain’t nobody want to contemplate their shitty relationship or societal woes on a Friday night dancefloor. But when it comes time to feel again, you can say hello to Marina or Lana Del Rey, where you too can contemplate love and life like a normal, suffering human being.
Marina’s Tunes
Check out her soundcloud here because it’s got a lot of songs and remixes up. But I like her originals better than most of the remixes up on her page, except this Passion Pit remix of “I Am Not A Robot”.
First of all, New Order is one of my favorite and most influential bands of all time. I’m an electro-pop artist (Dennis) and a DJ, and “Bizarre Love Triangle” is one of my favorite songs of all time. ALL TIME. This song is fucking beautiful. This band is fucking beautiful. BUT.
As an an electronic artist myself, it is incredibly difficult to translate the emotion and excitement of electronic music into a live performance setting. As I watched New Order perform one of my fave songs on Jimmy Kimmel Live, I was completely underwhelmed and saddened due to the lack of electronic musical stage translation.
I think the lead singer, Bernard Summer, was great vocally; he sounded just like the record did nearly 30 years ago. However, the guy standing in the back of stage perhaps playing a drum machine is the reason this performance wasn’t as good as it could have been. Plus these people are old now. There is something so hard about watching old rock bands perform. I really hate to say it and even admit it to you and myself because these bands are idyllic. But their bodies have grown old. So much of being an alluring artist is a sexual appeal of some sort. Their spirit has changed too. Not worse or better, but different, which naturally causes their performance art to change.
(But then again you can watch modern day Stevie Nicks perform and she still has the passion necessary to keep an audience interested. It’s all a crapshoot.)
I’m not sure how many live DJ sets any of you readers (thank you for reading, i heart you so much) have ever been to. But they are fucking BO-RING. This has nothing to do with the fact that many DJs are SUPER talented DJs and know how to mix some insane, genius-level beats. It has to do with live show translation: it is simply not exciting as an audience member to watch anyone push buttons. (Exception: DJs mixing and pressing buttons for a dance room setting. As openers for other bands DJs tend to always run stale because nobody is drunk and dancing to openers, especially if the set is lacking visual excitement)
This is where electronic bands get into trouble. A drum machine is awesome, but you can’t FEEL a drum machine like you can feel a live drum kit. It gives the audience a mandatory heart beat to the pulse of your music that can’t be recreated through speakers.
Demands of the Modern Audience
Having been to a ton of shows throughout my life and most recently in the Minneapolis area, stage performance is a big part of why many shows are so underwhelming. Where is the creative lighting? Projectors of slideshows put together by the band to represent their aesthetic and therefore their performance art? Anything to keep the audience intrigued?
I don’t know if many artists have gotten the memo, but consumers/audiences are demanding as fuck in this modern age. They want all their senses taken care of. Being a musician isn’t just about making music anymore. You’ve got to give the audience something good to look at, something to feel, something to be, something to strive for.
Why do you think pop stars dress so wild? That’s how they get attention. Being successful is about how much attention you’re getting. Good, bad; it doesn’t matter. And if that means you have to wear a piece of shit on your face so all the blogs are linking back to poor style choice *AND* your song, so be it. That’s how you get famous. That’s the world we live in now, and it’s not changing anytime soon.
Consumers want to be sold a lifestyle (Ke$ha, The Strokes, Lil Wayne, LMFAO etc.), and if your band- new or old- isn’t able to sell that, then sorry! That’s why you see so many pop stars and celebrities selling fragrances or clothing lines (not to mention the fact that music doesn’t make nearly the kind of money it used to): it’s all about the lifestyle brand. Buy this and be like this person. Buy this and you will be accepted by this group of society. Maybe it sucks, but whatever. That’s life. That’s entertainment. A lot of things suck more than pop artists slingin’ perfume. Its the most cliché shit ever, but LEARN THE FUCKING GAME ALREADY. *drops keyboard and walks off stage*
One of my favorite bands of all-time (probably my favorite but commitment is frightening) Rilo Kiley is releasing an archival collection of songs amazingly called Rkives. When news first broke of their new release, I and everyone else who keeps a close and hopeful eye on Jenny Lewis and the gang were wishing for a new record, despite quotes by lil rascal Blake Sennet that the band had broken up. I hadn’t experienced a musical break up of this sort since I heard on the radio, in the back of my moms Dodge Caravan, that Geri had left the Spice Girls. (I still remember laying down and crying in the backseat so my brother couldn’t tease me as much!)
With the release of Rkives, us megafans get an amazing rarities and a sort of documental view into the history of Rilo Kiley. Despite having all of their records now, I became aware of Rilo Kiley when they released their 3rd studio album More Adventurous. It was a holy shit musical, soul-reaching moment in life. I was 16, had just gotten my driver’s license (after 3 failed attempts but that’s another story) and was going through the general malaise involved in being 16. But there was something about this album, and the words that came out of Jenny’s mouth that I connected with. Sort of an “oh well, that’s life” attitude about most things. I’m not sure if it shaped a part of who I was or if I was attracted to the album because of who I was. Either way, it spoke to me.
Here is the official video for a song off of their new compilation titled “Let Me Back In”. I love seeing the old footage of them touring. Dolly Parton even makes a cameo! If you want, you can pre-order Rkives here!
Justin Timberlake is such a great performer. Everyone likes him so much. I’m just so proud of him for getting out of the rut it is to be in a defunct boy band. I mean, look at all the other boy bands of his era and before. Justin is the only really successful one with music, seeing as JC Chasez, with his holy-shit VOICE, kinda fucked his career over by writing/choosing terrible fucking songs.
I don’t even know what the fuck the boys of 98 Degrees are up to, and who cares. Nick Lachey just recorded some lullabys bc he had a kid with former MTV VJ Vanessa Manilo (who are his adult fans lol?! Seems like a decent chap but blegh, boring). And no one in the Backstreet Boys had any kind of a majorly successful solo career seeing as they are on tour with NKOTB and maybe some other people. THAT IS 10 MEN WHO SING. What a weird backstage probably.
Anyways, JT is awesome. I love his artistic self-worth (not putting out an album just because he could) and his dedication to performing, whether it’s on a stage singing or in his movie career. He’s a true performer and artist who is dedicated to authenticity, which is something you don’t see as much on the mainstream stage. Maybe his dedication to authentic music stems from his teens and early twenties in a boy band where everything was chosen for him by a bunch of gross, overweight suits in a tall, scary building somewhere.
JT, WE LOVE YOU. I can’t wait to see the rest of his Justin Timberweek performances on Jimmy Fallon. I’m holding out for “Like I Love You” cuz I really want him to do the dance from it. And bring back the stage from his first solo MTV performance in 2002. EEEEEP!! 2013 is so ballin’. It’s like 2003 all over again.
Like any good Britney fan, I was worried when I read this morning that she had dyed her hair brown. If anyone remembers 2006/2007 correctly, you’ll know that brit brit dyed her hair dark brown circa the recording of “Blackout” (best B album ever) and set off her very public mental breakdown surrounded by episodes of umbrella bashing, a shaved head, and a couple of trips to rehab. It still almost brings a tear to my eye.
To my great relief, this time around it doesn’t seem like B has dyed her hair brown as any kind of mental health statement. It’s a good color for her skin tone, her dress is really great actually, and there appears to be life in her eyes. This is awesome. Yay Britney!
She is also busy-ish working on what she calls “Blackout 2.0”. Maybe she’s channeling her past insanity/genius to make the best Britney album EVER. Here’s hoping!
Britney Spears’ “Gimme More”
May the lord bless her precious little heart. And her dancing!!!!
2PF 