Autumn de Wilde turns her lens on Elliott Smith (new contest)

Insound is teaming up again with Fuel/Friends to give away another music prize -- the book Elliott Smith by Autumn de Wilde. This is "a portrait of the beloved and troubled singer/songwriter by those who knew him well. Complementing de Wilde's riveting, personal images are ephemera, handwritten lyrics, and revealing talks with Smith's inner circle, many speaking here for the first time. Also included are a foreword by Beck Hansen and Chris Walla, and a live CD of unreleased solo acoustic performances."

Autumn de Wilde also did the video for Elliott's "Son of Sam": [thx]


Enter to win the book here through December 10th (and even though there is no confirmation page after you submit your name, I am assured it is working). Looks pretty sweet; I've been listening to a lot of mopey Elliott Smith lately. The book is part of Insound's Holiday Gift Guide.

Angeles (live on KCRW) - Elliott Smith
Trouble (Cat Stevens cover) - Elliott Smith

New contest :: Calexico's moustache hat poster

Insound is partnering with Fuel/Friends to offer a sweet limited-edition Calexico poster designed by the fearsome Jason Munn of Small Stakes in San Francisco. If you are a fan of the burnished southwestern wilderness in Calexico's music, moustaches, or excellent poster design, this is the contest for you. Enter to win here, and the lucky reader will be announced next Tuesday.

There's a whole series of posters and hoodies Munn's designed for artists like The Hold Steady, The National, Okkervil River and Grizzly Bear. It's part of the Insound 20 project to benefit 826NYC, and I like the clean and direct graphic punch of the entire collection.


Some of my favorite Calexico sounds:
Always On My Mind - Calexico with Iron & Wine (live on NPR)
Banderilla - Calexico (from the Sprout soundtrack)
Two Silver Trees - Calexico (from the newest release, Carried To Dust)

Good luck!

"La la laaa laaa" :: Yael Naim live session / contest for Aspen show

The lovely French-Tunisian-Israeli songstress Yael Naim (ah, yes -- from that commercial ... aaand now you're singing it all day) stopped in at the Frontstage Studios in France at the beginning of this year for an absolutely charming, lighthearted set of acoustic tunes. I've been enjoying the casual ukelele vibe of her performance all day. There's some singing in French and a Britney Spears cover, so yeah -- take a listen.

YAEL NAIM, LIVE IN PARIS
January 2008
New Soul
Paris
Find Us
Lonely
Toxic (Britney Spears cover)


NEW CONTEST: Yael is currently on tour, swinging through the Belly Up in Aspen on Sunday, October 19th. Colorado peeps, would you like to go? I've got a pair of tickets. Leave me a comment, maybe say something nice. It's still random winners but still you can always say something nice.


[audio via deaf indie elephants]

Okay, so who wants to go to New Orleans for the Voodoo Music Experience?

Me! I want to go explore New Orleans and see some bands like R.E.M., Nine Inch Nails, Jessica Lea Mayfield, Old 97s, Thievery Corporation, Mars Volta, Ghostland Observatory, and Sharon Jones with her sassy Dap Kings.

The Voodoo Music Experience takes over New Orleans on October 24-25-26th. Fuel/Friends has a pair of tickets to the festival to give to one of you guys because we love you. Please note, transportation no es includio. So get yourself to N'awlins and I'll help you rock. Leave me a comment and tell me something interesting (oh, and how to contact you) and we'll do a random drawing next Monday morning.

Don't know how you do the voodoo that you do, as some wise sage once said.


PS On the contest tip: Two of you still need to claim your Brian Wilson prizes (kouzie and Jamoo, I'm talkin to you).

Another new contest :: Delta Spirit/Dr. Dog on Saturday in Denver

Here's a quicklike last-minute contest for a show in Denver this weekend, since the last one went over so well. On Saturday night, Philadelphia's Dr. Dog is playing the illustrious Hi-Dive with the sunshiney sounds of San Diego's Delta Spirit, and I've got a pair of tickets to give away.

People, Delta Spirit has put out one of my favorite albums of the year with their aptly-titled Ode To Sunshine. There's a raw and vital early '60s Rolling Stones rock taste laced through those sweet bluesy piano melodies. Songs like "Strange Vine" and "Parade" flirt with the reverb-laden surf guitar of a thousand Southern California beach parties from summers long faded. There's a yearning and an excitement running through the handclaps and hearty singalong sections of this album that are the domain of the young and the hopeful.

But my favorite description of Delta Spirit might be the one that said they're "the Violent Femmes gone sepia." Although they don't scrape those same depths of streetpunk/outsider yowl that the Femmes always evoke for me, singer Matt Vasquez definitely does let all the ragged edges of his voice bleed in a very real way that keeps the album authentic. This album lovingly revives the sound of vintage America but with a rough-hewn edge, and is absolutely delightful.

Plus -- if we're gonna go on looks, I've always remembered (with a smile) the way that Amrit wrote that Vasquez looks like he unwinds between shows at The Peach Pit.

Trashcan - Delta Spirit


NEW CONTEST -- WINNER GETS:
- One pair of tickets to Delta Spirit & Dr. Dog @ Hi-Dive (Sat. 9/27)
- Delta Spirit's Ode To Sunshine CD
- Copy of RAGGED Magazine (www.raggedmag.com)


To enter, please EMAIL ME with DELTA SPIRIT SHOW as the subject line, and I'll decide on a random winner over my coffee on Saturday morning. Because of the short notice, I'll probably call you to let you know, so please include a phone number if you're cool with that. I promise not to crank call or drunk dial you.

Ode to Sunshine is out now, seeing a wide re-release on Rounder Records, who were wise to snap these guys up.

New contest :: Fujiya and Miyagi's knickerbocker glory

I have no idea what Brighton's Fujiya & Miyagi are enticingly chanting over their sleek electronic beats in this song, the first single from their new album Lightbulbs (out now on Deaf, Dumb & Blind Records). With a sound described as "maybe Serge Gainsbourg with a PhD in electronics backed by David Byrne’s Eno-produced scratchy guitar mixed by MF Doom," this album is effortlessly cool.

FUJIYA & MIYAGI: "KNICKERBOCKER"


If you are confused by the lyrics but dig F&M as much as I do (or want to give em a shot) I have a prize pack for a lucky winner -- one copy of the new album Lightbulbs and a Fujiya & Miyagi tshirt.

Have at it in the comments if you'd like to win.


F&M OCTOBER SHOWS
Oct 22 - MERCURY LOUNGE NEW YORK
Oct 23 - WEBSTER HALL NEW YORK
Oct 24 - PARADISE BOSTON
Oct 25 - BOTTOM LOUNGE CHICAGO
Oct 27 - CHOP SUEY SEATTLE
Oct 28 - THE INDEPENDENT SAN FRANCISCO
Oct 30 - THE TROUBADOUR LOS ANGELES

Side note: Pretty sure he might have gotten that shirt at Target.



OTHER CONTEST UPDATE:
The winners of the Brian Wilson contest are:
Vinyl album - jeremy v.
7" vinyl single - kouzie
CD - Jamoo

All the comments were marvelous and I very much enjoyed being transported for a bit while reading through them all. Winners, please email me with your addresses (although you are all winners in my book).

New contest :: Brian Wilson's Lucky Old Sun (vinyl)

Brian Wilson returned last month with a new album, the sunny citrus-bedecked That Lucky Old Sun. In the 4-star Rolling Stone review, David Fricke refers to the music of Wilson and the Beach Boys as "healing."

I paused over that word and rolled it around several times in my head. I've decided that Fricke's simple summation is one of the best descriptors of Brian Wilson projects that I've ever read, and one of the reasons for Wilson's perennial popularity. The sun-dappled melodies, the luminous harmonies -- I'll never grow tired of letting them wash over me, and never realized before how they do heal a little bit of the brutality of life.

NEW CONTEST:
We've got three sweet prizes to give to three readers:
* One limited-edition 180 gram vinyl copy of the new record
* One 7" vinyl single of "Midnight's Another Day"
* One copy of the new album on CD, for the turntable-less

So if you want to enter, please leave me a comment specifying which of the three you'd want (vinyl, 45 single, or CD), and I'd love to hear about your favorite moment in a Beach Boys/Brian Wilson song. Contest will end Wednesday.

In the meantime, you can stream the album here, and be sure to watch the lovely video of Brian's appearance on the fabulous Black Cab Sessions in London (with all five of his band members wedged in there with him!). Listen to how lovely those acoustic harmonies sound whilst zipping around the streets of foggy Londontown:

That Lucky Old Sun (Black Cab Sessions) - Brian Wilson


My favorite collection of Beach Boys songs is still probably the unvarnished purity of those 1967 rehearsals that Justin posted a few years back. The stripped arrangements let their voices shine in a near-celestial way.

CONTEST: Cloud Cult totally wants to party with you at Monolith like the VIP rockstar you are

The denizens of Colorado and surrounding states are gearing up this weekend for the second annual Monolith Festival. The party kicks off Friday night with a headlining show from indie chamber-pop collective Cloud Cult, along with Young Coyotes and The Dutchess and The Duke.

Because they love you, Cloud Cult has given Fuel/Friends one VIP pass to the entire Monolith weekend for a lucky reader to win!

So this VIP pass gets ya:
- into both days of the fest
- premium reserved soundboard seating
- VIP Parking in Red Rocks upper North parking lot
- access to Monolith VIP Lounge w/ private bar
- Monolith 2008 limited edition CD sampler & poster
- access to Exclusive VIP Afterparty 9/13/08 at Red Rocks with special performances from The Hood Internet, Passion Pit, White Williams, Candy Coated Killahz, Boyhollow, and Jackola
- limited edition Monolith Eco-Tote Bag from Trek Light Gear
- unlimited use of the Oxygen Bar in the Red Rocks Underground (weak out-of-towners!)


Cloud Cult has been making sweepingly gorgeous, thoughtfully incisive music since 1995, and their most recent album Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-partying Through Tornadoes) is out now on Earthology Records. The winner of the contest will also get a copy of the album. Seeing them Friday will be my first experience face-to-face with the group (I missed their second-stage headlining set at Monolith last year for reasons we don't remember).

What do I have to look forward to? "[A band of six] waving their stringed instruments about while wailing in unison in support of the lead singer. Songs that give you goosebumps, and shows that make you happy to be alive and breathing air and listening to music that is played with the same kind of passion that it was written with."

Okay, yes. I'm in. I also hear that they paint live artwork on stage at their shows, shaped by the music, and that's just beautiful.

Everybody Here Is A Cloud - Cloud Cult


TO ENTER THE VIP PASS CONTEST: EMAIL ME WITH "MONOLITH/CLOUD CULT" IN THE SUBJECT HEADER. I will pick one random winner from all entries received by Thursday at 9pm. You may also want to include your phone number in the email.

Please note -- obviously if you want to win this you have to either be in the general Colorado area or be able to get yourself here by Friday (or Saturday morning). The pass will get you into all the festivities starting Friday night at the Bluebird. The contest will end in t-minus 24 hours.

Cloud Cult will also play tomorrow (Thursday, 9/11) at 11:30am for 600 kids at Cerebral Palsy of Colorado during the Monolith Festival Reforestation Project, then at the Aggie in Fort Collins tomorrow night. Aaaand they're also on Carson Daly tomorrow if you are sitting at home.

* Final caveat: Cloud Cult may not actually want to party with you, per se, but the part about you being a VIP rockstar is totally true.


[top photo credit Scott West, live photo credit Laurie Scavo]

Last night :: The Faint and the sweaty, sweaty kids at the Ogden Theatre

Last night at The Faint was a hot show in every sense of the word. It was frenzied and frantic, all sweaty moshing all-ages and pulsing, pounding, electronic/new-wave indie rock. I needed that.


All my pictures are up on Facebook, shot tentatively on my handy dandy new Canon Rebel XTi, a humblingly-tremendous early birthday present from my family. Watch out! I plan on having fun with this thing.

I Disappear - The Faint

CONTEST UPDATE: The new album also came out yesterday, and the randomly selected winner of The Faint vinyl contest is Josh -- Josh, let me know where to have it sent!

The Faint fasciinate (and you can win the vinyl)

[they brought back the Soul Coughing guy from retirement!]

On August 5th, Nebraska dance-punk band The Faint will return with a new self-released album, Fasciinatiion (on their own blank.wav label). They'll be kicking off a tour in support of it, and I'm looking forward to catching them towards the opening end at Denver's Ogden Theatre on Tuesday night, for what is sure to be a rad show.

I've not seen The Faint in concert before but friends who've gone cite the live action as simultaneously a huge amount of fun with perhaps a thread of dark fear running through it (stay out of the daylight!). This is not a bad combination, but hopefully the ratio of fun to fear will be proportionately higher than that time I saw Marilyn Manson in 1995 at now-defunct Edge nightclub in Palo Alto -- still scarred from that one. Anyways . . . I woefully digress.


NEW CONTEST! Thanks to the folks at blank.wav, I have one double gatefold 180-gram vinyl of the new album Fasciinatiion to give away to one lucky winner. Please leave a comment if you'd like to win -- and if you've seen 'em live, tell me what I have in store for me. Posed to death!

Fasciinatiion Track List:
1) Get Seduced
2) The Geeks Were Right
3) Machine in the Ghost
4) Fulcrum and Lever
5) Psycho
6) Mirror Error
7) I Treat You Wrong
8) Forever Growing Centipedes
9) Fish in a Womb
10) A Battle Hymn for Children

The Geeks Were Right - The Faint


And the tour starts tomorrow night, rocking Des Moines:

THE FAINT TOUR DATES
July 27 Des Moines, IA - Peoples Court
July 28 Sioux Falls, SD - Ramkota Annex
July 29 Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre
July 30 Salt Lake City, UT - In the Venue
July 31 Boise, ID - Big Easy Boise
Aug 01 Vancouver, British Columbia - Commodore
Aug 02 Seattle, WA - Showbox at the Market
Aug 03 Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom
Aug 04 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
Aug 05 San Francisco, CA - Grand Ballroom
Aug 07 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre
Aug 08 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre
Aug 09 San Diego, CA - Soma
Aug 11 Austin, TX - La Zona Rosa
Aug 12 Dallas, TX - Palladium
Aug 14 Atlanta, GA - Variety Playhouse
Aug 15 Carrboro, NC - Cats Cradle
Aug 16 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
Aug 17 Philadelphia, PA - Trocadero
Aug 18 New York, NY - Terminal 5
Aug 20 Worcester, MA - Palladium
Aug 21 Toronto, Ontario - Opera House
Aug 22 Chicago, IL - Vic Theatre
Aug 23 Omaha, NE - Sokol Auditorium

Hold Steady contest winners

The Hold Steady's new album Stay Positive is out today on Vagrant Records, and the randomly-selected winners of the contest are as follows:

STAY POSITIVE CD
Cousin Walt
The Blot
Ryan

STAY POSITIVE VINYL
Benjamin K.
Miles in Denver (hi neighbor!)

If you are a winner, please let me know where to have the good folks at Vagrant send your musical winnings. Thanks for all the amazing entries; what a breathtaking lyrical pool we have to select from.

The Hold Steady / Stay Positive: "Let's clutch and kiss and sing and shake, tonight let's try to levitate"

"Back then it was beautiful
The boys were sweet and musical
The laser lights looked mystical
. . . Messed up still felt magical"

The more I listen to The Hold Steady, the more I think they might have what it takes to save rock & roll from crushing heartlessness, unoriginal pallor, and detached apathy. You might have noticed that people tend to fall diametrically on one side or the other of the Hold Steady spectrum. My friend Barber once described lead singer Craig Finn as "a crazy inebriated prophet, ear tuned to the roar, shouting out real-life scripture over the ocean of noise of society or a really loud bar band." Yet I have other friends who violently object to the whole concept whenever I broach it. The Hold Steady must be something you either get --and get hard-- or don't. On this new album especially, I find it difficult to understand the latter.

On their fourth studio album Stay Positive (which drops in physical form July 15th) these five guys from Minneapolis stretch their songwriting out down new roads, and as always everything feels pretty epic and massive. Pressed up against gorgeously grand and subversively hopeful songs, Finn weaves complex stories of lust and confusion, of cutting and car crashes, of oracles and angels.

You can get an accurate impression of the feelings contained on Stay Positive from the cover and superb inner album art. Despite the muddy ground and the nauseatingly yellow sky with all the color bled out, there is always the potential for something exciting to happen tonight, for some urgency to swoop down and make you feel alive for forty-five minutes. The feeling of continuity that connects all of the Hold Steady's albums is present here, through serial characters like Holly --who has been in the hospital, shaky but still trying to shake it, and now the girl who won't say hi to him-- and also through recurrent themes that perennially crop up to make a Hold Steady song what it is. The landscape is desolate, but the kids in the songs still yearn.

Stay Positive is also their album of bleeding and miracles -- a fitting dichotomy for a band that plumbs both the gritty violent parts of our psyche as well as the redemption. On one of the album's strongest tracks, Finn calls a girl named Sapphire (who possesses some hallucinogenic visionary abilities) and begs, "I know you said don't call until I'm clean . . . but I'm not drunk, I'm cut. I'm gushing blood, and I need someone to come and pick me up." I find something in the desperation of how Finn wrenches and pleads out that line that reverberates throughout the album. There's talk of crucifixion, visions, and miracles, and later he sings "Don't mention bloodshed, don't tell them it hurts, don't say we saw angels, they'll take us straight to the church." Make no mistake, this is an album of the mud and the blood and the beer, but along with that comes some old-fashioned revival-style hallelujah.

Musically, Stay Positive is as richly dense as anything they've done. I always find a sort of deliverance in the crashing piano cadences and expansive guitar solos of the Hold Steady, even as the lyrics detail another sad night, another desperate move. J Mascis guests stars (playing banjo on "Both Crosses"), as do Ben Nichols of Lucero and Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers (on backing vocals in a few songs). This is an album I am obviously enjoying immensely through the throes of this sweltering summer.

LISTEN: Sequestered In Memphis & Lord I'm Discouraged (stream)


NEW CONTEST: Thanks to the good folks at Vagrant, I have Hold Steady largess to scatter upon ye lucky masses like manna from the heavens.

Three lucky winners will win the Stay Positive CD (with the 3 bonus tracks on it, I think) and two of you will be spinning the black circle with the vinyl LP. The vinyl is 160 gram (black color), gatefold, and will feature one bonus track “Ask Her For The Adderall.”

Please leave me a comment indicating which format you are entering for, and since there are so many good ones to choose from, let's talk about favorite Hold Steady lyrics.


Walk away with these lines from the new album -- they leave you with that ache:

"Girls didn't seem so difficult
Boys didn't seem so typical
It was all warm and white and wonderful
We were all invincible

We were wasps with new wings
Now we're bugs in the jar
We were hot soft and pure
Now we're scratched up in scars."




POSTSCRIPT OF OLD CONTEST BUSINESS: The Joe Strummer prize pack garnered some of the very best comments yet left on Fuel/Friends. From lighting Joe's cigarette (a tale I verified with the cool commenter - oh, to have a lighter just when Joe Strummer fumbles for one outside a Vegas hotel) to talking to him backstage, wracked with nervous anticipation, you gotta go read all the great tales. Because I'm soft, I went with a randomly-selected winner: James from Brooklyn. Congrats! Let me know where to send it.

The future is unwritten (I think he might have been our only decent teacher)

“No one struggled more manfully with the gap between the myth and the reality of being a spokesman for your generation than Joe Strummer. Were it not for the Clash, punk would have been just a sneer, a safety pin and a pair of bondage trousers. Instead, the incendiary lyrics of the Clash inspired 1,000 more bands on both sides of the Atlantic to spring up and challenge their elders – and the man that we all looked to was Joe Strummer.”

– Billy Bragg eulogy to Joe Strummer, Dec. 23, 2002


The 2007 documentary by English filmmaker Julien Temple on the life of Clash frontman Joe Strummer will be released to DVD on July 8th. In The Future Is Unwritten, Temple (who knew Strummer for 30+ years) follows the path from his formative years in groups like The 101ers, to "the only band that mattered," and then into his solo career and the legacy he left at his untimely death.

Keys To Your Heart - The 101ers (early Joe Strummer band)

NEW CONTEST: Fuel/Friends has a package deal of the DVD and the CD soundtrack to give away to one of y'all. Leave me a comment telling me something you love about Joe Strummer -- a lyric, a story, a song, a quote, you pick. One winner will be randomly selected in a week.

TRAILER:

More Videos

This cover isn't on the soundtrack, but . . . I love it:

Redemption Song - Joe Strummer & Johnny Cash

Also, thanks to Cara for bringing this on my radar. Do jet over to Scatter o Light to check out the cool Bono/Strummer song she has, one of the last songs Joe worked on before his death.


WRAP-UP: Speaking of contests, we've got this old business: the Brushfire Record vinyl sampler winners are readers Scott Orr and frankie dartz. Please provide me your mailing addresses and I'll get these babies in the mail with a smiley little note just for you.

Neil Halstead and a new vinyl giveway from Brushfire Records

British musician Neil Halstead has produced some lovely, starry-night music in his years of tunes; with Slowdive, with Mojave 3, and solo. The first time I probably heard him was on a surf movie soundtrack, or something that conjures up a sparkling ocean in my mind. It's gorgeous, melancholy, sleepwalking music with a strong support of melody holding it up from slogging around in the dreamland.

This song is the first listen from his forthcoming Oh! Mighty Engine album (out July 29th on Brushfire). He sings, "I just want to live somewhere where the air is sweet and clear," and this sounds like it will be the perfect accompaniment when he does get there.

Paint A Face - Neil Halstead



This song is also the lead-off track on the newest contest item I have for your winning: Brushfire has supplied me with two 12" vinyl samplers left from the festivities of Record Store Day. It features eight songs from their artist roster --

12" TRACKLISTING
Neil Halstead - Paint A Face
Mason Jennings - Something About Your Love
Jack Johnson - What You Thought You Need
Matt Costa - Never Looking Back
Money Mark - Summer Blue
G. Love and Special Sauce - Crumble (from the new album Superhero Brother, out yesterday)
Zach Gill (of ALO) - Beautiful Reason (from unreleased new album Stuff, out July 29)
Christians In Black - Rogue Wave

Not a bad selection, there. I've got two to give away, leave me a comment if you would like to be entered for one of 'em. You can also buy the vinyl here if you don't win it. Neil Halstead will be the opening act for labelmate Jack Johnson in August from Toronto to Salt Lake, and then will be announcing a West Coast headlining tour soon.

Contest winner updates: Monolith and Indy

I had so many intriguing options to choose from in my contest to give away two Monolith weekend passes. To differentiate the contest entries from the rest of my emails I get in a day, I asked folks to consider using the title, "Hey Heather, I Want To Buy You A Beer At Monolith." I got those, and more.

There were the offers to buy me a beer, buy me several beers, buy me an unspecified mind-altering substance, buy me an overpriced hot dog, and do a kegstand. The latter two may be better suited for other venues, but we can try. The randomly-selected winners of the Monolith passes are Cass (from Wyoming!) and Jill (from Austin, TX!). Thanks to all who played, and I sincerely hope all the entrants will still come to the fest -- and make good on their promises to me. It should be a fantastic weekend.

ALSO, the Indiana Jones soundtrack contest winner is Pete, with his citation of the excellent quote, "It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage." Sigh.

Indiana wants me

I was up late last night after watching the Rockies sadly best the Giants at Coors Field in Denver (that bottom of the sixth was a bitch). So if I weren't already working on a growing sleep deficit from this weekend, I'd be seriously considering going to the theaters at midnight tomorrow to see the new Indiana Jones (actually, I still might). I've been awaiting this new installment -- I adore everything about those movies, and have even forgiven the Temple of Doom for scaring the bejesus out of me at a sleepover when I was 9 or 10. Ripping a guy's beating heart out of his chest cavity may frighten children. Good to know.

Ever since the previews for the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull started airing, I've pretty much been walking around humming this when I need to feel especially victorious. If I had a personal theme song, this would kind of be in the running because then I'd feel awesome all the time.

CONTEST: The soundtrack for the movie is released today, featuring an original score composed by Academy Award winner John Williams. Fuel/Friends has one copy to give away if movie soundtracks are your thing, or if you just have a crush on Harrison Ford. Leave me a comment about some element of one of the Indiana Jones movies that you wanna write a comment about -- a quote, a moment, the time when that dude literally melts and turns into dust because of God's wrath, etc. etc. You choose.

And since I have no mp3 from the soundtrack, this song works very very well. A girl can dream.

Indiana Wants Me - R. Dean Taylor


PS - I so just added him as a friend on MySpace

New Monolith acts announced and a new contest :: Win a weekend pass to the festival!

News this fine Monday morning from the craggy hills of Red Rocks -- the 2008 Monolith Festival just added twenty-two hot new acts to an already airtight lineup.

New Monolith additions include:
Atmosphere, Hercules and Love Affair, Foals, Does it Offend You, Yeah? Port O’Brien, Pomegranates, Colour Revolt, KaiserCartel, Candy Coated Killahz, Jukebox the Ghost, American Bang, The Chain Gang of 1974, Joshua Novak, Erin Ivey, The Wheel, Paperbird, Noah Harris, Lynsey Smith, Scratch Track, David Moore, LoveLikeFire, and Dave Beegle.

Add these to the complete listing that will now be rockin the 'Rado on September 13th and 14th.

Now each of us Hot Freaks partner blogs is getting a chance to give away some passes to the festival, in addition to our work in helping curate the lineup! So I've got a new contest that starts today and runs for ONE WEEK (til May 26).

Two lucky Fuel/Friends readers will each win a weekend pass for the Monolith 2008 Festival (a $110 value)! To enter, you must do a little clickety-click research and find out what the original purchase price of the Red Rocks land cost the city of Denver back in 1927.

EMAIL ME your answer with a subject line of "Hey Heather, I Wanna Buy You A Beer At Monolith" (or something to that effect, that'd be grand). Don't leave it in the comments, please, or you'll wreck the whole illustrious trivia vision.

I'll pick two readers randomly from all the correct answers received. For those that won't get the passes (but you're all winners in my book), tickets are onsale now.

One band added to the lineup today is Sub Pop-signed Oxford art school dropouts the Foals, who we've mentioned before because they get us movin. One of the Monolith organizers DJ Hot To Death (I call him Fecher) worked up a special remix of the Foals song "Electric Bloom" in honor of the occasion today. The world premiere:

Electric Bloom (Hot To Death remix) - The Foals

Contest updates: U2/Africa winner, and a new one for the ladies with Tristan Prettyman

Thanks to everyone who submitted a story about Africa, U2 --or even Bonalmost-- for the contest to win the In The Name of Love CD of U2 covers by African musicians.

Boyhowdy's story was an early favorite (make your wife read that, boyhowdy!) and so many of you shared great tales of the ways U2 has been present at different memorable moments in your life. However the winner is Russell, because of the way I loved this paragraph he wrote about seeing U2 in 1980:

"There was real glory in an Edge solo - a dazzling scattering of light and energy that detonated dreams. Exhilaration. Running from that concert in the rain to catch a late night train remains vivid and gleaming: music mattered, life mattered. Everything was potentially magical."

Russell, thanks, and let me know where to send the winnings. Enjoy.


NEW CONTEST: Tristan Prettyman is a musician from the San Diego area with a lovely sunrise homespun voice, and an approachable acoustic sound that I dig.

She's designed a cool music-oriented tank top for the ladies, picturing the chord breakdown of her song "Hello" (the title track of her album, out this week). Stream the tune on her MySpace, and please leave me a comment if you'd like to win the shirt (via Elwood Clothing). The folks running the contest would like entrants to leave an email address to opt-in for Tristan Prettyman news in the future, but it's up to you.


LISTEN: Here's a cover Tristan did of French-Israeli artist Yael Naim's "New Soul" - that catchy ditty from the MacBook Air ad.

You'll be "la la la"ing all day long.

New Soul (Yael Naim cover) - Tristan Prettyman

Also, you can stream the full album here, and her single "Madly" is the free iTunes download of the week.

Bono gives props to Africa; Africa returns the favor

I was fascinated with this concept album when I first read about it: Twelve artists and musical groups from all parts of Africa gather together to cover U2 songs with traditional African instrumentation, percussion, and even languages. In many cases, the songs are completely restructured into something you can feel rising from the ground up, the beats thumping into your deepest hollows.

In The Name of Love: Africa Celebrates U2 features artists like Angelique Kidjo (previous post), Les Nubians, Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, and an oddly affecting cover of "Love Is Blindness" by Angola's Waldemar Bastos. Mali bluesman Ali Farka Touré's son Vieux contributes a rich cover of "Bullet The Blue Sky" with the spoken bridge segment done in his native language. The songs are really different than how you're used to hearing them. If you love U2 as I do, sometimes it takes a minute to get past the shock. But there's a beautiful spirit and soul shining through this amazing collection.

The album is released tomorrow through the good folks at Shout! Factory, and all proceeds will benefit the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Stream samples of all the songs here.

And you know -- I think that this is how the type of love that Bono originally sings about is supposed to sound; like a well rising, voices joining together.

Pride (In The Name of Love) - Soweto Gospel Choir



NEW CONTEST! One winner will get a copy of In The Name Of Love: Africa Celebrates U2 just by leaving me a comment with either a good U2 story, a good Africa story, or both. I'll pick a winner and send the booty on its merry way.

PS - I checked, and I ain't got a Monday Music Roundup in me.
Not today.

Winner of the About A Son DVD

Congrats to Brian R. who was just randomly selected as the winner of the Kurt Cobain DVD About A Son.

It took me just a few weeks to remember about this one, but my benign neglect translates into good timing because the film was just released on DVD yesterday.

You can view a cool multimedia e-card here.