Wishing David Bowie a Happy Birthday today. Thanking him for his latest artistic contribution, a brand new single and accompanying video (Directed by Tony Oursler), “Where Are We Now?”.
It was leaked very nonchalant on the InterWeb this morning.
The new single is available on iTunes in 119 countries.
David Bowie will also be releasing a new album on March 12, 2013 titled The Next Day. The album is timed to coincide with the major retrospective exhibition coming to the Victoria & Albert Museum on 23 March, featuring handwritten lyrics, original costumes, fashion, photography, film, music videos, set designs and Bowie’s own instruments.
You can pre-order The Next Day on iTunes in one of two editions, Standard 14 tracks or Deluxe, 17 tracks
The Next Day
Dirty Boys
The Stars (Are Out Tonight)
Love Is Lost
Where Are We Now?
Valentine’s Day
If You Can See Me
I’d Rather Be High
Boss of Me
Dancing Out In Space
How Does the Grass Grow?
(You Will) Set the World On Fire
You Feel So Lonely You Could Die
Heat
So She (Bonus Track)
I’ll Take You There (Bonus Track)
Plan (Bonus Track)
David Bowie has relaunched his Website, http://davidbowie.com, which features some exciting new content. Golden Years
Take a journey over to the just launched Jerry Garcia Web site . You’ll find it more than a long strange trip its been
The Jerry Garcia Web site accomplishes two main objectives on behalf of its visitors, 1) Rich content about Jerry Garcia’s life, friends and accomplishments, 2) A creative, engaging shopping experience.
The site is designed by Third Door, Inc. I am surprised to learn how many popular music artist sites have been designed by Third Door’s David Maier. David’s choice of tools as a graphics and Web designer map to the Web software I plan to become more skilled in using in 2013 and beyond. The site was constructed with WordPress for content management, Adobe PhotoShop for images and Adobe Dreamweaver for HTML/HTML5 coding.
The Web site has a product tie-in promotion with the first release from the newly launched Garcia Live series which features a recording from the historic Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey on March 1, 1980.
My first assessment of the jerrygarcia.com Web site is based upon the following viewpoint/criteria.
Fan Viewpoint
Shopping Experience – A+
The Jerry Garcia Store is a standout section. It is tightly coupled with the Garcia official merchandise offered through their exclusive arrangement with MusicToday for ordering/fulfillment. Products were easy to view with the Zoom feature available for closer articulation.
Fan level information – B+
The Timeline section has 97 posts but lacks an evolutionary dated timeline for context and correlation (suggestion…). The content offers in depth reading and visual images that drive the reading experience well.
My favorite image is the black and white photograph of Jerry Garcia playing the pedal steel guitar. The Bio is nicely summarized. I would have liked to have seen a Web link to Wikipedia or another more substantive biography about Jerry.
The News section is very initial with just 4 posts. But it is only Day 1 for the site .
Multimedia content – A+
The Music, Artwork and Video sections meld together in cohesive fashion. The Music section offers a cover art jump point to a second page with music vendors, song listings and just the right level of social network icons for now.
The Artwork area is a gem and it is a good first level representation of an evolving Gallery area. I suggest an Amazon link on this page to the coffee table book, Jerry Garcia: The Collected Artwork for visitors (I just love leafing through that book!)
The Video section knocked me out. The highlight for me was Jerry Garcia’s 70th Birthday. I was unable to watch Move Me Brightly on TRIStudios this past August. I am pumped to see the 17:47 video highlight featured on the Video page.
Technology Viewpoint
Usability – A
The Web site fully leverages responsive design and WordPress content management effortlessly. The images are compelling and never oversized or stretched. Navigation is straight forward and relaxing. It represents a landscape book with a menu as table of contents off to the left side, unobtrusive but accessible.
Design- A+
The page design varies between various postings or single Photoshop images of Jerry that are warm testimonies of him.
Responsive design is available throughout the Web site, which makes this a technology appealing visual, audio, video experience.
I have anticipated the Jerry Garcia Web site for sometime now and I wasn’t disappointed one iota!
Great work team! I look forward to the content evolution from here on out.
We saw the David Byrne and St. Vincent (Annie Clark) Love This Giant Tour Wednesday evening 9/26/12 at the beautifully restored Beacon Theatre in New York City.
Photography By Pablo Frisk
The concert far exceeded our expectations. David Byrne and St. Vincent were accompanied by an eight piece brass band with a drummer and an electronics player. The concert is visually enhanced by shaded lighting in turn accented by the choreography of Annie-B Parson (Big Dance Theater). She re-imagined the band as a dance troupe; thus, along the horns, Byrne and Clark became just two more members of the night’s dance company
Photograph by Catalina Kulczar, Copyright 2012
The dance troupe kicked the festivities off with Love This Giant‘s initial track “Who“. We were quickly engaged by that infectious beat tightly coupled with the sensory lyrics.
The two-hour concert (which includes two encores) offers David Byrne & St. Vincent band songs, the much clamored for David Byrne/Talking Heads songs, and the hauntingly brilliant St. Vincent songs. The counter balance of this song mix captivates the listener as does the ever-moving musicians. The fluid motion of 12 people on stage is never boring or repetitive. Ever since David Byrne worked with Twyla Tharp on Catherine’s Wheel his live concerts incorporate dance and choreography. We fell in love with this idiom when we saw the first leg of the Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno Tourin 2008. It became our avowed aim to see David Byrne live again and this is what motivated us to attend the Love This Giant Tour.
There were several moments during the concert that exhibited great fun juxtaposed with just the right techno experimentation One such highlight was the Star Wars like dueling light saber technique that David and Annie performed sharing the waves of the theremin on “Northern Lights”.
Photograph by Catalina Kulczar, Copyright 2012
David Byrne has a great stage presence and I love his flippant, intellectual nature. He had us laughing when he spoke about how he catalogs his music recordings, fiction and non-fiction.
It was difficult to isolate which of the Love This Giant recordinglive performances was my favorite. I’ve narrowed it down to ”I Am An Ape”, “Lazarus”, and “Outside of Space and Time”.
The night would have not been complete without the Talking Heads, “Burning Down The House”.
We left this concert more amazed than ever by David Byrne. We gained a new appreciation for the music and guitarmanship of St. Vincent. We won’t think of brass band music as we did before, one-dimensional, it now has a new, vibrant multi-dimension in our psyche. Thank you David Byrne, Annie Clark and the band, what a phenomenal evening of multimedia techno romp.
I’ve decided that my next major discography buy will be to own the Frank Zappa discography. The first phase of this initiative is to acquire the 56 recordings being reissued by the Zappa Family Trust and Universal Music Enterprises this year. After some deliberation about format (vinyl versus audio CD vs digital loss less codec) I have made the decision to pursue audio CDs. Portability won out.
I appreciate that Zappa Records and Universal will release 12 reissue albums a month in chronological order between August and the end of the year. This gives some breathing room and the chance to spread the cost. I a liken buying Zappa recordings like sipping fine wine slowly. Enjoying the essence of the music, not rushing the experience.
I gained tremendous insight from the two years it took me to find and buy the entire Santana discography on CD (40+ recordings at that time). I garnered a respect for four decades of Santana’s musical evolution. I wasn’t a professional music blogger in the years 2002-2004. Now I have an established music blog where I can document and share the Zappa music experience with those who follow my blog (1,200 strong at this juncture….) and with other music fans on the Web. I relish the excitement of discovery collecting, listening and learning more about Frank Zappa. I will have to create a Frank Zappa menu choice to organize the research and the findings.
My understanding is that Spotify will be offering the Zappa Records recordings beginning in October (I haven’t seen this officially stated by the Zappa Family Trust but I am hopeful this digital option will come to pass.) This way I can listen to certain recordings ahead purchasing them.
When I minored in music at the University of New Haven in 1972 the first term paper I wrote was about Frank Zappa. Much of that paper was based upon the book, No Commercial Potentialby David Walley. I view the Zappa collection initiative as another focused educational research effort.
I started the collection (or recollecting more accurately) today with Frank Zappa/The Mothers of Invention Freak Out. It is designated official release #1 right on the CD label itself. The music came flowing back to me as I smiled and reflected on the origin of Zappa and The Mothers of Invention working with Tom Wilson on their début double album.
I love when jigsaw puzzles come together. Love This Giant, the artistic collaboration of David Byrne and St. Vincent reveals its visual identity with the music video of the song, “Who”.
I was informed in an e-mail today that my Love This Giant pre-order will ship this Friday, September 7th. Cool beans.
NPR is streaming a first listen of Love This Giant here.
The David Byrne & St, Vincent concert is three weeks away from tonight at The Beacon Theatre, our anticipation continues to build for this event.
The video trailer for Steven Wilson‘s Get All You Deserve, a high-definition 4 disc (blu-ray, dvd, 2cd) audio-visual set that becomes available on September 24th, 2012. The limited deluxe edition is packaged in a DVD sized hard-back 40 page book. Pre-order here: https://www.burningshed.com/store/stevenwilson/collection/65/
Keeping the home fires burning until Love This Giant drops on September 11, 2012. We literally can’t wait to see David Byrne and St. Vincent perform live at The Beacon Theatre on September 26, 2012.
I love my hobby within my main music hobby, rock poster art collecting. I just renewed my membership with The Rock Poster Society based in San Francisco, California. They sent me a cool t-shirt based on this poster by EMEK for renewing
It is my sincere wish to visit San Francisco with Rosemary in the near future. We’ve developed some very nice friendships there and would love to visit with our west coast friends someday I’d love to include a Rock Poster Society Event in those travels
Speaking of Rock Poster Society Events that is the purpose of my music blog post today. Tomorrow The Rock Poster Society (TRPS) will hold the rock poster art event of the summer! TRPS is teaming up with the Academy of Art University to present Rock Art By the Bay on Saturday August 18, 2012 at the Cannery near San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. The show will run from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Admission: FREE
The Milford Oyster Festival main stage artist this year at the event is Kansas, the heartland rock band of the late 70′s.
A common question asked about aged bands is who is still in the band from the original group. It just so happens that three of the original Kansas band members still perform together. They are Phil Eheart (drums), Steve Walsh (keyboards and lead vocals), and Rich Williams (guitar).
I sold a lot of their vinyl when I ran the record department at Caldor in 1978 and 1979, especially their double live LP, Two for the Show. It will be nice to have them in the neighborhood on Saturday afternoon
Take a journey over to the just launched 
