Rocket Sue
Hey everyone. It’s me again, Nathalia. I’m here to fill you in on the stuff we covered today on our radio show.
Today we started off the show with “Mess of Me” by Switchfoot Explore.
Switchfoot is the San Diego band full of Christian rock surfer dudes who have bailed on the major label system. They are work as indies with their own recording studio.
Their seventh album will be out on November 10th. It’s called “Hello Hurricane”. And it sounds like this.
It’s the first of four albums that came out of one long set of recording sessions. That’s what you can do when you have your own studio.
We know the title of the second one—it’ll be called “Vice Versas”—but beyond that, it gets a little foggy.
Time for the news.
ExploreMusic TOP 5 MUSIC NEWS Countdown
5) Tell Us You Know Jack and Win!
Last chance to get in on our Jack Johnson guitar giveaway. We have an autographed guitar. This is all part of the release of his new live CD and DVD, “Jack Johnson En Concert”. Alan watched this last night on his home theatre system. Sounds awesome.
It’s really easy to enter. Just follow ExploreMusic on Twitter and tweet us your favourite Jack Johnson song. The draw is tomorrow.
4) U2 and YouTube Conspiracies
The analytics are slowly coming in from YouTube’s U2 experiment on Sunday night/Monday morning. There were 96,000 people in The Rose Bowl and another 7 million watching online. One stat Alan saw says that the show was seen by people in 16 countries. That seems low.
Meanwhile, U2 says 97,000 fans were at the show and that there were 10 million streams in 188 countries. Believe who you want.
Google, who owns YouTube, hasn’t said much yet—which is surprising. One thing is for sure, though: they collected a lot of user data—and data on servers and bandwidth.
Alan’s heard from insiders that Google was shocked by the demand for both the actual show and the repeats. If you haven’t seen his three-part blog on what he thinks was the real story behind this concert, check it out these links:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
3) It’s Music In A Box
Still with Google, they announced something called their “Music OneBox” yesterday. It’s a music search and download service built in conjunction with MySpace and LaLa. Search for a band or song in Google and you’ll get a link to an audio player and a way to buy the results. You’ll also get a list of related and similar-sounding songs, so there’s a chance to discover new music.
That’s fine, but check this out. Type in a line or two from some lyrics and the search will come back with the song in that same player.
There’s more, too. Meanwhile, OneBox will be rolled out over the next couple of days.
If you’re working at Apple and iTunes, you’re watching this very closely.
2) The Internet Turns 40
Still with tech, you may have already heard that today is the internet’s 40th birthday. It was at 10:30PM pacific time on October 29, 1969, that the first host-to-host message was sent. A computer science boffin at UCLA named Leonard Kleinrock sent an email. Blame him for your overflowing inbox with spam, spam, spam, spam and email and spam, not to mention your Crackberry addiction.
Meanwhile, Alan’s written a blog on the “11 Ways The Internet Has Ruined Music”.
Did you know that 82% of Canadians now have access to the internet? And it all started 40 years ago today.
1) Rock Hall Benefit Attracts Big Names
There is a major two-day event in New York this weekend. It’s a benefit for the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. Lots of big names involved: U2, Springsteen—and Metallica.
5 SONGS YOU GOTTA HEAR TODAY:
Let’s go through today’s “five songs” list—five tracks you gotta hear today if you’re gonna be smarter and cooler about music than all your friends.
“Rocket Sue” by L’Avventura
L’Avventura is from San Francisco. You spell their name with two “v’s”. The principles actually met in London where they were busking at King’s Cross tube station. They moved to San Franscico about four years ago where they started cranking out songs by the dozen. Literally by the dozen.
A 2009 album called “Your Star Was Shining” contains this song about a Canadian radio DJ called “Rocket Sue”. You should give it a listen.
We have no idea if there’s really such a person as Rocket Sue. If there is, let us know, okay?
“Wonderlust King” by Gogol Bordello
The second song on our list is from Gogol Bordello, the gypsy-punk band led by Eugene Hutz. Awesome live show. Cross a really good Ukranian wedding band with The Arcade Fire, turn the craziness up to 11 and you have an idea of what happens.
There’s a new DVD featuring radio sessions, bonus tracks and some live performances. Really, really cool and fun stuff. The place to start is a song called “Wonderlust King”.
“Death To All But Metal” by Steel Panther
Speaking of turning things up to 11, Alan’s been writing blogs about Steel Panther for a while. And before you listen to anything, please understand that it’s a joke. It’s a well-crafted, carefully choreographed joke. The only time to get worried is when you run into fans who don’t realize it’s a joke.
Steel Panther takes all that was glorious and bad and overblown about 80s hair metal and takes it about 100 yards further down the field. What do you say about a band who writes a song about groupies called “Thar She Blows”?
The album is called “Death To All But Metal”. Do not watch or listen at work.
“Try This At Home” by Frank Turner
Snapping your head back the other way, we have Frank Turner. He’s English and would probably be hauled up on stage at a Gogol Bordello show. Think supercharged Billy Bragg with a dash of Pogues. You’ll know it the moment you hear a song called “Try This At Home”.
“Now I’m Feeling Zombified” by Alien Sex Fiend
And finally, more music for Halloween. Vampires are hot this year, but so are zombies—which is why you need a 1990 song from Alien Sex Fiend called “Now I’m Feeling Zombified”.
ExploreMusic TRIVIA:
Ill Scarlett has a fourth full album called “1UP!”. They came in to talk about it. But first, our usual question. Their bass player John Doherty is the son of a member of a very famous 60s hippy band. What’s the connection?
His father was Denny Doherty, a founding member of The Mamas and The Papas.
“California Dreamin’,” “Monday, Monday,” “I Saw Her Again”. That was dad singing with John Phillips, Michelle Phillips and Mama Cass.
ExploreMusic Feature Item: Ill Scarlett
The new Ill Scarlett album is called “1UP!” And after the heavy production of the last album, this one brings Ill Scarlett back to basics. Will and Alex came in to talk.
The first single from “1UP!” is called “Take It For Granted”.
ExploreMusic Playlist: The songs featured on the radio show today were:
“Mess of Me” by Switchfoot
"Enter Sandman" by Metallica
“Rocket Sue” by L’Avventura
“Take It For Granted” by Ill Scarlett
That's it for today. I'm outta here. See you tomorrow.
Nathalia
Questions? Comments? Email me @ nathalia@exploremusic.com