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.
getting ready for acoustic stuff on kevin and bean, KROQ…~x
Look familiar? If not, maybe you missed the band on an earlier visit—the day their album “Swoon” premiered, when they brought our Embedded crew along, played “Panic Switch” acoustic, and talked about how much KROQ—and morning drive time DJs Kevin & Bean—shaped their own taste in music.
We’ve got a bunch of Beyond Embedded posts penned by our amazing intern Chanelle for you to backread. Here’s something you could watch while you dig deep to learn more about Silversun Pickups‘ and K’naan’s influences and inspirations: the actual show!
Please enjoy Current Music Presents: Embedded with Silversun Pickups, K’naan and Arcade Fire, as just aired on Current TV. (Hint: we have a really nice full-screen player you can click in the lower right corner.)
The Kevin and Bean Show debuted on New Year’s Eve in 1989. Radio DJs Kevin Ryder and Gene “Bean” Baxter hosted the annual countdown of the year’s best songs on the Los Angeles alternative rock station, KROQ, and within their first year on became known as one of the wildest shows on Los Angeles radio.
On June 13, 1990, the show aired a fake murder confession during their call-in segment “Confess Your Crime.” The false story inspired mainstream media attention and an investigation led by the LAPD. After ten months, the radio DJs finally ‘fessed up, and their hoax prompted the FCC to threaten to take KROQ off the air in addition to the Los Angeles sheriff’s office demanding just over $12,000 to make up for wasted time and effort. Kevin and Bean were suspended from the air for six days without pay and ordered to perform 149 days of community service. Although they’re not the first radio personalities to stir up on-air scandal, the murder hoax also definitely boosted KROQ ratings up until the reveal and set the stage for what kind of show listeners were getting.
Neither host talks about the incident since apologizing publicly these days, but it’s been rumored that the incident helped to inspire the movie Power 98 with Eric Roberts, and The Kevin and Bean show has continued to create outrageous content in the years since “Confess Your Crime.” None of these endeavors have managed to warrant coverage in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries the way the first one did, but listeners have still tuned in for twenty years of laughs and radio appearances from their favorite artists. Starting in May 2009, Westwood One announced that the show would be aired nationwide to replace The Adam Carolla Show, increasing the reach of their antics several times over.
UPDATE: Watch the Silversun Pickups stop by KROQ to play The Kevin and Bean Show, on Embedded.
Born in 1973, K’naan has talked about being able to remember his birthplace, Mogadishu, Somalia, both in times of relative peace and after civil war began in 1991. As an ongoing conflict, what began as insurrections against the regime of Siad Barre has lead to major devastation. The war has destabilized Somalia and seen the breakdown of its government, now unable to control rebel forces. Still, despite the 300,000–400,000 lives taken as of 2009, many believe the situation hardly gets the kind of attention it deserves from other countries that might be able to help.
Although his family moved to New York and then Canada to escape the conflict, K’naan has stayed very active in regards to Somalia. He first became acquainted with English through hip-hop records by people like Rakim and Nas. His love affair with hip-hop began very young, and eventually K’naan dropped out of school to pursue a career in music. Telling the story of his home is a major reason for why he rhymes, the success of which has helped to spread his words even beyond the musical realm to speaking in morepoliticalforums and even hoping to write an opinion piece for the New York Times.
“The people of Somalia just do not have a voice,” K’naan has said to NPR. “They are to me the most forgotten people in the world.”
UPDATE: Check K’naan’s Tour Stop on Embedded (at 1:01) to hear him talk about where he’s from and championing Somalia.
Rasputin Music is one of Berkley’s biggest independent record stores. It contends with Amoeba Records, another privately-owned music store that only has three locations throughout California, but in 2008, it was Rasputin Music (albeit their San Francisco location) that kicked off the very first Record Store Day event with Metallica appearing at for in-store.
Record Store Day is a relatively new international day. Managed by Eric Levin, Michael Kurtz, Scott Register, and Carrie Colliton, it’s meant to celebrate independent record stores, the culture surrounding them, and then encourage their continued patronage. Cities across the world participate by having a whole slew of stores invite your favorite bands to play, hosting cook-outs, DJs, and distributing specially made CDs and vinyl, just to name a few.
Local radio stations often come out to broadcast the festivities too. For the second annual event, San Francisco’s alternative rock station Live 105 (KITS 105.3 FM) showed up to broadcast the Silversun Pickups’ set.
UPDATE: Watch the Silversun Pickups play an acoustic set for Record Store Day at Rasputin Music, on Embedded.
Hip-hop records and sampling have gone hand-in-hand for years. Where to draw from for good hip-hop beats varies from the popular to the esoteric. For his song “ABC,” K’naan explains that he combined those two elements to create something fresh.
Mulatu Astatke and his Ethopian Quintet released Afro-Latin Soul in the 1960s. He’s famous for really embracing Ethiopia’s musical style and integrating it into all type of projects, and his career has seen him work with a variety of notable jazz artists, including Duke Ellington, after first studying in New York, London, and Boston (as the first African to attended Berklee College of Music). Surprisingly, any association Astatke has with more recent mainstream music and media is still pretty new to this decade. A number of Mulatu’s songs appeared on the soundtrack to the 2005 Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers, and K’naan’s music has injected a little of Ethiopian style into hip-hop.
Chubb Rock’s “Treat ‘Em Right” from his album The One exists on the opposite side of the spectrum. It’s a mainstream hip-hop song. The track reached #1 on Billboard’s “Top Rap Singles” chart in 1991, along with two other radio releases from the same album, “The Chubbster” and “Just The Two Of Us.” Unlike Astatke, Chubb Rock didn’t come from an especially musical background. In fact, he claimed that he was a pre-med student at Brown University, but he dropped out to pursue his hip-hop career.
It’s a testament to the idea that something that works for sampling can really comes from anywhere. Different producers and beat-makers have a lot to say about how to sample and choosing which kinds of sounds to sample. One of the bigger hip-hop artists and producers right now, 9th Wonder, sat down with Soul Culture TV to talk about how he works and why he thinks producers don’t always get the credit they might deserve.
Another example of indie record stores trying to stay afloat, Fat Beats has a Los Angeles location, a New York headquarters, and then its own record label. Fatabeats.com also serves as an independent online retailer, connected to the company, but not representative of the retail stores. Their specialty is hip-hop. They carry everything from the mainstream to local-level artists, as well as their merchandise (t-shirts, posters, dvd, etc).
Established July 1994, it used to be a vinyl-only store in New York, but Fat Beats has since expanded without ever abandoning their roots. They’re also one of the many establishments worldwide that participate in the Record Store Day celebration.
UPDATE: Watch as K’naan stops at Fat Beats LA to pick out some of his favorite albums, on Embedded.
When playing Pomona’s The Glass House, the Silversun Pickups talk about creating a set list and the importance of song order on an album versus song order for a show. Setting up the flow is something that many people have even called an art, breaking down the methods and noting which techniques work better than others. Many artists take album and live show sequencing just as seriously, from indie rock acts to hip-hop heavy-hitters like Jay-Z. In addition to his own records, Jay-Z has sequenced albums for other artists, and he believes that the key to achieving the right flow between a collection of songs depends on finding the narrative arc within them.
Translating what’s been recorded to a live show though can be a different story. Sometimes artists do play an album all the way through live, in track order, but more often than that, of course, artists like to mix it up. If an artist also has multiple albums, the challenge becomes intermingling all those works, and as common as that is, it’s not always easy to coordinate.
That’s how people like Tom Jackson have made a living being a “live show producer.” Taylor Swift and others have come to him to learn how to make the most out of live settings by teaching them how to read and feed on audience reaction, and he has tips for up-and-comers:
Then again, if an artist doesn’t want to shell out money to that guy, they could always try the Last.fm approach.
UPDATE: Silversun Pickups try to create the perfect setlist for their performance at The Glass House, on Embedded.
For their album Swoon, Brian Aubert may have wanted a strings section that was reminiscent of horror films, but horror movie scores and compositions aren’t classically known for their string arrangements. Until 1927, studios had stock music play along with horror and slasher films, like any other silent features. The introduction of sound inspired some more creativity, leading studios to borrow from well-known orchestral pieces to play alongside their movies, and then finally, in 1935, Universal hired James Whale to work on The Bride of Frankenstein. It became the first of the genre to ever get its own serious and unique score.
The quirky style Whale started, which included the use of the theremin, prevailed through the 1950s. When British Hammer films gained a lot of attention, they also made atonality common among horror soundtracks, but string arrangements owe much of their popularity to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.
Starting in the 1970s, horror movie scores began incorporating an increasing number of electronic instruments. Horror filmmakers like Rob Zombie have also done a lot to associate metal with high-energy fright throughout the 90s and early 2000s, culminating in recent work, where composers have taken to blending all of the influences. One great example comes not from a straight horror flick, but instead, 2008’s The Dark Knight. Hans Zimmer uses an eerie and painful electric cello glissando to define The Joker in two notes.
UPDATE: Christopher Guanlao talks more about Silversun’s string ideas for Swoon in this Embedded Outtake.
