Odds & ends

It's been a long time since I compiled one of these odds and ends posts, but there were several little things today that caught my eye:

۞ Brian Deck is on board to produce the new Counting Crows record, according to Adam:

March 16, 2007 12:53am
Berkeley, CA

Rehearsals have been going really well the past few days. I'm pretty excited about the 2nd half of this record. I really dig the producer we've chosen. His name's Brian Deck. He produced "The Moon and Antarctica" for Modest Mouse, "Our Endless Numbered Days" for Iron and Wine, "The Animal Years" for Josh Ritter, and this album I love by the Fruit Bats called "Mouthfuls". We're getting really cool weird twisted folksy sounds.


۞ Paul McCartney is set to release a new album this summer, the inaugural release for new Starbucks label.

I drink Starbucks. I love McCartney. But why does this just feel so dirty and somehow depressing?

۞ Mason Jennings has a new blog post that starts with the sentence, "Did you ever just get so high that you wrote on your arm never to smoke weed again? Me neither." It goes on to discuss music he likes and life in general lately for him, but opening sentences don't get much more engaging than that one.


۞ I truly love the new Hold Steady video for "Stuck Between Stations." That is a dang fine song, and since I haven't caught them live yet, I've never seen it performed, seen the way they jolt out their music.

Incidentally, I think their piano player may actually be Oliver, Kat's husband from Miami Ink. Rock the 'stache, dude.



۞ SPIN tries to deconstruct the method behind Ryan Adams' crazy, internet-facilitated, musical-diarrhea madness.

۞ Pete Yorn's cousin/merch man/video whiz Maxx updates Pete's MySpace friends with setlists and excellent pictures from the road. The most recent post has a haiku to match each photograph, and is a must-read. I laughed out loud at a few:

sid is funnier
when he's not wearing his clothes
but someone else's

simon is undead
he will eat your flesh
even from the stage

۞ SXSW. Most of the SXSW coverage from my fellow bloggers seems like drinking out of a firehose, and I am not able to fully absorb all of it yet (although I am trying). This, however, was one show that I had read about and found video for -- very cool. Pete Townshend was at the fest to speak at a panel and joined British buzz band The Fratellis for a cool little cover of The Who's "The Seeker":

And the best picture that I've seen so far from SXSW was taken by my friend Brian H., who has been regularly updating me with more pics and details than you can shake a stick at (thanks!). I don't know the story behind this shot, but I thought it was cool how it speaks to the environment of total musical domination in Austin these past few days:

Rock 'n roll.