Maybe you like to watch TV from the comfort of your couch. Maybe you like to watch TV from the comfort of your couch with your laptop. Either way, we’ve got you covered.
Current TV is re-airing Embedded, a six-part music special that gives you intimate, exclusive access to artists, and here at the blog we’re packing in everything you need to know about each section of each show into one handy post—including each part of the episode itself. On this special hour-long episode, Mos Def takes us on an all access seven-day tour of Japan while he performs his new album “The Ecstatic” to packed venues in Tokyo and Osaka.
In part 1, Mos Def explores Tokyo’s fashionable Harajuku district and buys a spiky blue jacket that baffles his crew. Plus Mos discovers why so many people in Japan wear surgical masks and learns there’s no way a black in Japan being followed by a camera crew can fly under the radar.
Go beyond Embedded with our behind-the-scenes blog posts that dig deeper into Mos Def’s influences and inspirations:
Today we’ll begin re-airing the first season of Embedded, kicking off with the hour-long special that follows superstar MC Mos Def as he tours Japan. Mos has been a busy man since then. Here’s the highlight reel:
+ After releasing his fourth studio album “The Ecstatic” this summer, Mos has stayed crazy busy in the studio, working on collaboration projects all over the place. One of the latest (and most hyped) is the Black Keys hip-hop project BlakRoc. The Keys and Dame Dash recruited some of hip hop’s most legendary MCs to participate in this project, including RZA, Raekwon, Jim Jones, and of course Mos Def. The full album will be released (appropriately) on Black Friday, but several tracks have already leaked, including this one, “Aint’ Nothing Like You (Hoochie Coo),” which features Mos himself:
The Keys also documented their experience recording the album in weekly webisodes, which can be found on their website and YouTube. Mos’s recording experience is documented over weeks 1 and 2.
+ In OTHER collaboration news, after meeting at Dame Dash’s new creative space DD172 (which features recording studios, TV studios, an art gallery and more), Mos has teamed up with Jay Electronica and Curren$y on a new project, tentatively called Center Edge Territory. The trio recorded six songs together at DD172, and plans for a full album are currently in the works. See Curren$y talk about the chance meeting and collaboration in this clip from MTV News:
+ But music isn’t the only thing taking up Mos’s time these days. The former Emmy and Golden Globe-nominee has plans to continue his much-lauded acting career, with several diverse projects in the works. He will be appearing alongside Anthony Anderson in the screen adaptation of Mama Black Widow, as well as with William H. Macy and Steve Buscemi in the Macy-directed drama Keep Coming Back. Both films are currently in production, with plans to release next year.
Until then, get your Mos Def fix on Current! Tune into the re-air of the Japanese tour special tonight at 11/10c to see Mos as he tours around the country on the bullet train, attends a sumo match and Japanese baseball game, and chows down at Japan’s aptly named franchise chain MOS Burger. Get a full schedule here. And get more about Mos Def at Current.com here.
2. Jacob London – Made up of two excellent electronic dance producers in their own right – Hanssen and Pezzner, Jacob London is an irreverent duo from Seattle who have been known to shout into the ass of an electric sock monkey at their live sets. Down some Pike Brewery’s Kilt Lifter before, during and after for full effect.
3. Foscil – Made up of members of Seattle’s Truckasauras and an additional horn/woodwind player, Foscil fuses layers of electronic bounce with progressive jazz and hip-hop grit for some aural spacecake. Watch for their next album “Residential” to drop in December. Their sound is timeless and therefore can be enjoyed with Elysian Brewing Company’s Immortal IPA.
Ed. note: I didn’t even ask Barry to do this in conjunction with our segment on the Decemberists home-brewing beer, but it seems appropriate to include here:
Frank Iero, who plays guitar for My Chemical Romance, spent some of the band’s break recording and then touring with Leathermouth (Epitaph Records), his much harder-core “vehicle for unfiltered ranting,” as the editor of Alternative Press calls it in a letter accompanying the band’s cover story in the new issue.
But it turns out that one of Iero’s angry songs, “I Am Going To Kill The President Of The United States Of America” — written about George W. Bush, inspired by anti-America rallies he saw while on tour with the band in Europe — was taken very seriously and quite literally by the Secret Service:
“The government comes to your house, searches everything and talks to your wife for hours,” says Iero, adjusting the sleeves on his hoodie. “Then you have to get a real expensive attorney to keep you out of prison for five years. I had a long talk with the gentlemen of the Secret Service. [It was the] straight-up dark suits, sunglasses, Men In Black-vibe–I thought they were going to do the mind-erase thing [like in the movie].
Last night I watched the premiere of a new show on Fuse, “On the Record.” I hadn’t actually realized until I tuned in that it is a straight-up interview show, with Touré simply grilling the musician of the week, a few cuts to various video footage, and they’re done.
For all that we complain about the content on MTV or VH1 or Fuse (on this blog, on twitter, in whole videos designed to mock such things), the fact is everyone at Current Music is first and foremost a music fan, and what we want more than anything in the world is to be able to watch amazing content that digs a little deeper, goes a little further in asking all the questions that are, in essence: “Hey so-and-so, how are you so awesome?” It’s just that so rarely these days do we get to see something like that that we didn’t make ourselves. We have no problem saying something is great when it’s great.
Here’s the thing about “On the Record,” or at least the first installment, in which Touré interviewed Lady Gaga for a half-hour (or, as he put it on Twitter, for 60 minutes cut down to 22). It was amazing. It was SO GOOD. I LOVED IT. And not just because I respect Gaga and what she’s doing to put some higher-level thought into club bangers. Touré’s a great journalist—he’s penned many great long pieces for Rolling Stone, he was the only person MTV dragged out for its Michael Jackson day-of-death coverage who actually knew what he was talking about—and he did Gaga the honor of taking her seriously long enough to get an insanely compelling, can’t-look-away, no-honey-I’m-not-hungry-yet-hold-on-I’m-watching interview.
So I twittered about it, saying as much as you can in 140 characters about how something’s rocked your socks. Then I asked if it was going to be online (so that I could write a post like this and link/embed for you to watch right now).
This morning I found this message in my at replies:
@fusetv: @current_music glad you tuned in last night for @ladygaga! As of now the show will not be online, but we’ll be airing it again.
So now, I’m sorry Fuse TV—who just won my heart back after the inanity of an episode of “The Pop Show” made me want to stab myself—now I have to go all Grumbine on you. WHAT? ARE YOU SERIOUS?
Sure, there are a few video clips on the page for this show. All it does is give you a little taste of what you’re NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO WATCH ANYWHERE ELSE.
Don’t get me wrong—I understand about “driving tune-in,” something that gets discussed all the time at Current. People who watch TV and the advertisers selling to them and the cable companies that cater to them are what pay the bills at a cable network.
But people who watch your programming cannot be reduced to bodies on couches in front of flat-screens. They’re people who want to talk about your shows, who want to share them with their friends, who want to put it on their iPods to watch again and again because they find it just that damn inspiring. I was kind of inspired by that Gaga interview, I won’t lie. But what do I do about it? Send my friends this 45-second clip and hope they’re somewhere they can program their DVR to tune in at 4:30 for the repeat?
Did that work? Are you running home at lunch to set your TiVo?
Fuse, I’m almost sorry to make such an example of you, because you’re hardly the only network to cheat their audience so blatantly. But this was a damn good show, one you should be proud of making as widely available as possible. And instead it was like one of the monsters in Gaga’s songs, eating my heart and then my brain. Ow.
(It’s not easy, and it takes time/energy/money/etc., but everything made by Current Music is on current.com/music, and almost always also on YouTube, Hulu and iTunes. Any restrictions on that comes from the owners of music rights, not us. It’s not an accident or an after-the-fact add-on: to us content should go as far and wide as we can send it.)
MF Doom is at it again. The underground emcee managed to aggravate a whole room of fans on Saturday by billing a fake show at LA’s GrandStar Jazz Club. After standing around through opening acts and DJs, fans began to suspect that something wasn’t right when someone assumed to be Doom took the stage and then didn’t even take the mic. Boos erupted, and some of the commotion was even caught on tape by upset concert-goers.
Take a look at some fan footage from the venue and decide on the situation yourself:
Mischief has always been a large part of Doom’s persona. There were a few other live fake-outs in 2007, one of the most notable being the possible imposter at the Pitchfork Music Festival this year.
In March, Doom told Rolling Stone that the hijinks are a deliberate part of his persona:
“Everything that we do is villain style,” Doom says. “Everybody has the right to get it or not get it. Once I throw it out, it’s there for interpretation. It might’ve seemed like it didn’t go well, but how do we know that wasn’t just pre-orchestrated so that we’re talking about it now? I tell you one thing: People are asking more now for live shows and I’m charging more, so it must’ve worked somewhere.”
Is his music worth the hassle, or should Doom stop biting the hand that feeds him? Take a look at Current’s Embedded with Mos Def, where he talks about why the mask and villain concept are ingenious to him.
Deep down in this Los Angeles Times story about the Recording Academy (aka the Grammys) NOT changing its eligibility to allow Lady Gaga a possible nomination as Best New Artist is some clarification on that category—and a surprising-slash-intriguing nugget.
There is a chance that veteran artists, as well as those who released records in 2008, will be nominated. Rock acts MGMT, the Ting Tings and the Silversun Pickups are all on the ballots for the 2010 ceremony. Los Angeles’ Silversun Pickups have their sophomore effort in “Swoon,” released this year on Dangerbird Records, and MGMT and the Ting Tings are still promoting albums that were released in 2008.
The best new artist field is generally one of the most debated of the Grammy categories. Recording Academy rules define the parameters this way: “A new artist is defined as any performing artist who releases, during the eligibility year, the recording that first establishes the public identity of that artist as a performer.”
There’s no question this was Silversun’s breakout year, or (to our ears) that “Swoon” is Grammy-worthy. And it’s clear the Academy has been aiming for a cooler, hipper audience (and that can’t mean only the Jonas Brothers, right?).
Nominations will be announced December 2 as part of a live concert special. Get more news, music and videos with Silversun Pickups at Current.com.
Check out this clip from December 2007 (cleverly retitled by someone—not me—post-Idol), in which he talks about getting glammed up for a high-fashion soiree at an LA nightclub. (While you’re spotting random reality show stars, don’t miss Project Runway winner Christian Siriano in a couple of shots.)
2. Lambert auditioned for Idol because he was tripping his face off on ’shrooms at Burning Man.
”I realized that we all have our own power, and that whatever I wanted to do, I had to make happen,” he tells Rolling Stone.
All things considered, I’d say his drug-inspired gamble has paid off pretty well. Can you say the same for your Playa epiphanies?
Instead of just talking about how Bowie is the be-all end-all of glam-rock and inspiration to hipster bands everywhere, Lambert has pushed the idea of androgynous queer dance rock to a new (and far less ambiguous) level.
See, for example, his extremely cheeky, campy album cover:
Now, I hate medleys with a fiery passion—pick a goddamned song and sing it all the way through, people!—but I appreciate a man who sings not one but three Bowie songs on a nationwide tour targeting mainstream American TV audiences and their kids.
4. He liked the American Music Awards just about as much as you did.
(Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Lambert’s debut album, “For Your Entertainment,” comes out today.
When I was a kid, I used to watch music video channels for hours at a time and record my favorite ones onto VHS so that I could have my very own video mixtape. Music videos are primarily viral now, so I turn online for all the newest and most interesting ways bands and other musicians pair their records with visuals.
Here are some fresh finds:
The Golden Filter, “Thunderbird”
Warren Wright directed the music video for The Golden Filter’s newest single. The electronic duo used to be known as Lismore, but then have since dumped that name and those poppier songs for harder beats and cultish imagery.
Jonathan Boulet, “A Community Service Announcement”
There are two things about this video that really get me: the way the digital deconstruction is noticeable but also isn’t completely overpowering and the fact that the song is sort of deceptively upbeat. I thought that the entire video was going to be about faceless guys running through the woods in some kind of youthful romp reminiscent of a scene out of “Where The Wild Things Are,” but then… it wasn’t.
Jonathan Boulet is a new artist, hailing from Sydney, whose album drops December 4th, and if this is him putting his best foot forward, then I can’t to see what he does next with both his music and his visual aesthetic.
Vampire Weekend, “Cousins”
I’m not one of those people who feels like Vampire Weekend saved modern music. They’re alright. Where they do tend to go above and beyond for me is in making music videos that are unique to them and entertaining even when they’re somewhat nonsensical. Vampire Weekend plus director Garth Jennings is such an appropriate match-up.
Noisettes, “Every Now And Then”
Unlike the others, this video came out at the beginning of the month and is actually the third single from Noisettes’ album “Wild Young Hearts.” It’s probably their most compelling video for me, though, containing an elegance that matches the vintage, pseudo-lo-fi sound of the single. Frontwoman Shingai Shoniwa is gorgeous, and I love everything she does here, the ending packing an emotional twist that still manages not to tip the scales so far that the whole video falls right into melodrama.
OK GO, “WTF?”
Once upon a time, OK GO had some brief MTV fame, but I’ve seen less of them on mainstream television ever since the novelty of their treadmill video (an early internet viral hit) wore off. Still, they’re always trying to come up with things that are new and wacky enough to fit them. The video for the lead single “WTF?” from their upcoming album, “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”, features the band’s members going a little crazy with color and a blur tool, celebrating the band’s penchant for bright backgrounds and also Photoshop.
Seeing shows in Los Angeles can sometimes be a bummer, for two reasons:
1) In big cities (especially entertainment-focused places like LA), there’s always some performance happening, so no one feels unique.
2) Trendy people never feel obligated to applaud anyway.
Even before their debut album, “Aim and Ignite,” officially released in August, fun. had begun to catch a lot of blog buzz, which doesn’t always bode well, because it could mean that a lot of fashionable and cool twenty-somethings will show up and be too dedicated to posing and wearing sunglasses indoors to figure out if it’s possible to clap with drinks in their hands. It does, however, also make it that much more rewarding when all the pieces seem to come together and both the band and the audience are actually feeding off of one another’s energy.
Somehow, fun. hit the jackpot.
The success might have something to do with a pretty fortuitous combination of good timing and real stage skills. They had a Friday night show and a sold out crowd who had all had a couple months to learn the lyrics and were ready to chant them right back at the band as they played. It helped—it really helped—that everyone in this band played well. While fun. have only three official band members, they’re touring with six people to help recreate the songs live. Each song had the fullness it needs to really affect listeners, the instruments played with enough precision that each song sounded like the record but with a certain live, open flare. Nate Ruess also had impressive vocal control, not shying away from any notes that were higher or more difficult and therefore not cheating listeners out of all the musical money-shots.
(fun. playing “Be Calm” live at The Troubadour, November 13, 2009)
The band jumped right into performance without hesitation, uncaring about whether or not the crowd was prepared. With an album that’s largely successful because of how much excitement the band has managed to inject into a handful of songs, playing an equally exciting show seemed like it would could either be easy or fall so flat that it was impossible to recover.
Because each of its core members comes from other bands (Nate Ruess used to be the frontman for The Format; Jake Antonof and Andrew Dost are from Steel Train and Anathallo respectively) “Aim and Ignite” is made up of music veterans. Starting their set with “At Least I’m Not As Sad (As I Used To Be)” caught the audience off guard, but then the energy didn’t die. They made the transition to a live show seem effortless, keeping energy at the highest levels, supporting each song with familiar and charming banter, and avoiding pretension despite being a talked-about band who decided to include random punctuation in their name. This band earns its moniker just as much live as with the album, and if they can get big city, Friday night cool kids to dance and sing, then they’ve got to be on to something special.
