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Archive for October, 2014|Monthly archive page

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Little Big Town Debuts New Song With Help From the Roots

In Uncategorized on October 31, 2014 at 3:18 pm

Little Big Town may have wished they could “Stay All Night” when they visited Jimmy Fallon and performed on the Tonight Show this week, but they certainly made an impression with the time they had. The group, whose newest record, Pain Killer, debuted this week at Number Three on the country albums chart, was joined by Tonight Show house band the Roots for a beefed-up version of album highlight “Stay All Night.” The performance included what may be a first for country music on TV: a tuba!

The unexpected is par for Little Big Town’s course, however, especially when it comes to working with their Pain Killer producer, Jay Joyce.

“Jay brings wildness,” Karen Fairchild recently told Rolling Stone Country of the man who has also helmed acclaimed albums by Eric Church and the Wallflowers. “He’s such a creative guy and he likes to see if we can pull one over on ourselves again: Can we do it better than we did last time? He’s always up for the chase. But he’s very confident. He thinks of things you’d never think of.”

“He’s like a rock & roll guru, a Zen punk rocker,” added Phillip Sweet.

The Tonight Show appearance caps off a memorable October for the quartet, who have been together for 15 years. In addition to the release of Pain Killer, Little Big Town recently became the newest act inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, welcomed by longtime Opry cast members Vince Gill and Little Jimmy Dickens. 

“My mother started listening to it as a kid,” the group’s Kimberly Schlapman said of the 89-year-old radio show. “We listened to it growing up at our house. Then when we came to town, I came to the Opry a few times and sat out in the audience and just dreamed, ‘I wonder what it feels like to be invited to be an Opry member.’ I’ve played that through my head so many times across the years. Now we finally know.”

The group’s first-ever public performance (other than in record-label conference rooms in pusuit of a recording deal) took place during a Grand Ole Opry show.

“That was the same day we signed our record deal,” says the group’s fourth member, Jimi Westbrook, whose blistering rock vocal is another highlight of the Tonight Show‘s “Stay All Night.”

Little Big Town’s Pain Killer Tour, featuring opening acts Brett Eldredge and Brothers Osborne, kicks off Friday, November 8th, in Youngstown, Ohio.

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Cowboy Ballads & Country Rockers: Garth Brooks Previews New LP

In Uncategorized on October 31, 2014 at 2:34 pm

Earlier this morning, while fans logged onto GhostTunes to hear free, 60-second clips of the 14 songs from Garth Brooks’ forthcoming Man Against Machine, the singer hosted a more in-depth listening session at the headquarters of his new record label, Sony Music Nashville. 

The setting — a renovated chapel that Sony currently uses as a listening room — was formal enough, but Brooks kept things casual, taking the stage/pulpit in blue jeans, sneakers, baseball cap and an oversized Nashville Predators sweatshirt. He got serious when it came to the music, though, visibly choking up during a live, acoustic performance of “Mom” — a ballad he described as “a conversation that goes on between God and this unborn baby who’s about to go down to Earth” — and allowing the playback of several other songs, including “Send ‘Em Down the Road” and the flag-waving “All-American Kid,” to move him to tears. 

Throughout the 90-minute event, he dished out plenty of praise for Nashville’s songwriting community, whose members wrote the bulk of the album. Wynn Varble received the most shout-outs, with Brooks — who only co-wrote three of Man Against Machine‘s 14 songs, a significant drop from his previous records — emphasizing the fact that he’s not just the singer of these tunes, but a serious fan, as well. 

“The songwriters of today are way above the songwriters of the Nineties,” he claimed, admitting that he “didn’t trust [his] pen” in the face of such strong competition. “These kids are sharp. They blew me away.”

Other album highlights included the closing track, “Tacoma,” a bluesy, old-school R&B tune cut from the same cloth as Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” and “Midnight Train,” a minor-key anthem driven forward by the sound of a very different Sledge: session percussionist (and longtime Garth collaborator) Milton Sledge. Brooks credited his bandmates, including Sledge, guitarist Ryan Sutton and pianist Bobby Wood, for filling Man Against Machine‘s tracks with loose, natural and organic performances — rare things in the world of slick, major-label country music. 

“We didn’t use any click tracks,” Brook said of the recording process, “but there are loops on this record — and they breathe. I’ve never heard a loop breathe before.”

Before wrapping up the listening session and heading north to prep for this weekend’s concerts in Lexington, Kentucky, Brooks also reminded everyone that Man Against Machine — originally intended to be a double album — will be quickly followed by another album, much of it compiled from the 15-plus songs that were recorded for Man Against Machine and ultimately axed from the final tracklist. Expect songs from that album to start hitting the radio in Fall 2015, with the full record arriving the following year. 

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Hear Nas’ J Dilla–Sampling New Song ‘The Season’

In Uncategorized on October 31, 2014 at 12:44 pm

Earlier this week, Nas crashed a Run the Jewels listening party to play fans his latest single, “The Season.” Now the rapper has shared the smoothly soulful song online, making it available to stream below and download.

After months of promoting the 20th anniversary edition of his breakthrough debut, Illmatic, and the documentary, Time Is Illmatic, Nas has been spending his time crafting his next record with producers Timbaland, Swizz Beats and No I.D. The rapper has yet to announce a release date for the album.

Midway into “The Season,” which may or may not appear on the LP, the track finds the rapper bragging, “Hands in the air, the season of Nasir,” as well as “This soulful sample complements my rhyme so well,” which draws attention to the work of deceased producer J Dilla. The brassy sample, which owes a debt to Seventies singers like Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes, originally appeared as the 65-second song “Gobstopper” on Donuts, the last record to come out in Dilla’s lifetime. He died in 2006 at age 32 after a long battle with lupus, three days after the album’s release.

In related news, Dilla’s mother released 40 previously unreleased beats in a collection titled The King of Beats (Ma Dukes Yancey Collector’s Edition Box Set), over the summer. “This project came about by a lot of soul-searching and meditation as to what can I do now that my son has so many bootleg projects out by unknown artists without my approval,” the producer’s mother, Maureen “Ma Dukes” Yancey, told Rolling Stone in June. “Now that I’m out of mourning and full of insight and feeling my son’s energy radiate around me, I wanted to do something different but iconic; something that people would preserve and relish for a lifetime that spoke quality.”

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Chart Report: Florida Georgia Line Remain Number One, Jason Aldean in Second Slot

In Uncategorized on October 31, 2014 at 12:07 pm

The country charts received a shot of Pain Killer this week as Little Big Town’s sixth studio release becomes the quartet’s fourth to reach the Top Ten on Billboard‘s Country Albums chart. Debuting at Number Three and led by the group’s Top Ten hit “Day Drinking,” Pain Killer sold 42,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That amount is less than half of the 113,000 copies their previous album, Tornado, sold in its debut week in 2012, earning them their second chart-topping disc. That album, however, was buoyed by mega success of their single “Pontoon.” The group had also debuted at the top spot on the country survey with their 2010 LP The Reason Why.

While first-week sales of the album may have been soft, the group’s approach to making the Pain Killer album had them walking the fine line between material that generates country radio airplay and what fuels their own sense of creative expression.

“We couldn’t determine our song selection based on, ‘Well, we can’t do that because that probably won’t work on radio,” the band’s Phillip Sweet recently told Rolling Stone Country. “That confines you.”

“It’s a lot more fun to be popular,” added group member Karen Fairchild. “But it’s super fun to be popular and respected. It’s fun to have voicemails on your phone from your peers in the business saying, ‘I can’t wait for this album to come out.’ Or ‘that inspired me.’ So I want to believe that it can all happen. And outside of our format is the example. Look at Adele. Who would have thought a piano ballad would be on the radio and sell 20 million records worldwide?”

Pain Killer was kept from the Number One spot by a couple of powerhouse releases: Florida Georgia Line’s Anything Goes, which holds the penthouse position for a second week, and Jason Aldean’s Old Boots, New Dirt, which digs in at Number Two for a second week.

On the plus side for the foursome, “Day Drinking” becomes the newest Grand Ole Opry members’ latest Top Ten hit on the Hot Country Songs chart, as the tune climbs to Number Seven. Jason Aldean logs his 14th week at Number One on that chart with “Burnin’ It Down,” keeping Sam Hunt’s breakthrough hit “Leave the Night On” in the runner-up spot but moving up one position.

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Carrie Underwood Reveals Songs on Double Disc ‘Greatest Hits’

In Uncategorized on October 31, 2014 at 11:34 am

Carrie Underwood wraps up 10 spectacularly successful years in one neat little package with the December 9th release of Greatest Hits: Decade #1. The 25-track collection will features four tracks in never-before-released renditions and also includes two new songs, “Little Toy Guns” (penned by the singer with Chris DeStefano and Hillary Lindsey) and “Something in the Water,” which is already a Top Ten hit for the superstar entertainer. See the complete track listing below.

The 2005 American Idol champ, Underwood has earned 18 Number One singles (half of which she co-wrote) and sold in excess of 64 million records globally. A two-time ACM Entertainer of the Year (and the first female artist so honored), Underwood joined the Grand Ole Opry in 2008. Her four albums have been streamed more than 800 million times worldwide. In 2013, she starred as Maria von Trapp in NBC’s The Sound of Music Live!

A three-time CMA nominee this year, Underwood will return to co-host the awards ceremony with Brad Paisley for the seventh time when the show airs live from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena this Wednesday, November 5th at 8 p.m. ET.  

Greatest Hits: Decade #1 will be available for digital pre-orders beginning Tuesday, November 4th.

Here is the complete track list:

Disc One
1. “Something in the Water”
2. “Little Toy Guns”
3. “Inside Your Heaven”
4. “Jesus, Take the Wheel”
5. “Don’t Forget to Remember Me”
6. “Before He Cheats”
7. “Wasted”
8. “So Small”
9. “All-American Girl”
10. “Last Name”
11. “Just a Dream”
12. “I Told You So” (feat. Randy Travis)

Disc Two
1. “Cowboy Casanova”
2. “Temporary Home”
3. “Undo It”
4. “Mama’s Song”
5. “Remind Me” (duet with Brad Paisley)
6. “Good Girl”
7. “Blown Away”
8. “Two Black Cadillacs”
9. “See You Again”
10. “How Great Thou Art” (with Vince Gill) [Live from ACM Presents: Girls’ Night Out]*
11. “So Small” (writing session worktape 1/24/07)*
12. “Last Name” (writing session worktape 1/22/07)*
13. “Mama’s Song” (writing session worktape 2/5/09)*
* (Never-before-released version)

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Bob Dylan Releasing New Album ‘Shadows in the Night’ In 2015

In Uncategorized on October 31, 2014 at 10:50 am

Bob Dylan’s upcoming covers disc Shadows In The Night is officially slated for a 2015 release, according to an ad inserted into advance copies of Dylan’s new The Basement Tapes Complete box set. News of the LP first came in May when Dylan posted a cover of Frank Sinatra’s 1945 hit “Full Moon and Empty Arms.” “The track is definitely from a forthcoming album due later on this year,” a spokesperson for Dylan told Rolling Stone at the time – though the timeline has obviously shifted since then.

It’s unclear what other songs will be on the collection, though this week Dylan began ending his live set with “Stay With Me,” a track that Sinatra turned into a hit in 1964. Shadows In The Night will be Dylan’s first release since 2012’s Tempest and his first non-Christmas covers disc since 1993’s World Gone Wrong.

Dylan resumed his Never Ending Tour earlier this month. He’s doing multiple nights at theaters across North America, though his set list rarely changes. The vast majority of the songs comes from his recent albums. “She Belongs To Me” is the only track of the night he performs from his 1960s catalog and “Tangled Up In Blue” and “Simple Twist of Fate” are the only other songs he plays that came out before 1997. He hasn’t played played so few songs from the first decade of his career since his gospel shows of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The tour wraps up December 3rd at New York’s Beacon Theater.

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Florida Georgia Line Channel ‘Office Space’ for Wild ‘Sun Daze’ Video

In Uncategorized on October 31, 2014 at 10:50 am

If only Tyler Hubbard said, “BK, I believe you have my stapler.” Florida Georgia Line pay homage to Office Space in the video for new single “Sun Daze.” Opening with Hubbard and Brian Kelley dressed in their nerdy Milton Waddams best, the clip casts the duo as cubicle dwellers in an antiseptic office. Cue the wavy day-dream sequence and the guys are transported to an outrageous pool party, where people in plushie costumes and animal masks straight out of Eyes Wide Shut push the decadence meter into the red. (The highlight, though, are Hubbard and Kelley’s dogs, who steal the final scene of the clip.)

“Sun Daze,” the second single from Florida Georgia Line’s Number One album Anything Goes — it remains in the top spot on the Billboard country albums chart for a second week —is a bright jam to chilling with Haggard tunes, Bacardi and games of flip cup.

“That’s a song that we wrote on the last weekend of the Nelly tour, the summer series we did. It feels huge and we were pumped up when we wrote it,” Hubbard told Rolling Stone Country earlier this summer. “It’s a feel-good song, but it’s out of the box and it never seems to get old.”

Florida Georgia Line will launch their Anything Goes Tour on January 15th in Toledo, Ohio. Today, they perform in Jacksonville, Florida, as part of a massive tailgate party prior to the annual Florida vs. Georgia football game. FGL is also set to perform at the CMA Awards this Wednesday in Nashville, where they are nominated for Vocal Duo of the Year.

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Watch an Epic ‘Ghostbusters’ Audio-Visual EDM Remix

In Uncategorized on October 31, 2014 at 10:49 am

It’s been 30 years since the paranormal comedy Ghostbusters first possessed the big screen – and to celebrate, audio-visual crew Eclectic Method have paid tribute to that classic film with a jittery remix. Jonny Wilson gives the original theme song a distorted electronic facelift, blending fragments of synths, programmed beats and snippets of dialogue from the film itself. On the visual side, cast members like Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver and Dan Aykroyd all make appearances – along with some of their demonic and ghostly nemeses. Check out the mash-up above, just in time for Halloween – but remember not to “cross the streams.” 

“It’s Halloween, and it’s been 30 years since Ghostbusters was released, so I’m hitting two bats with one pumpkin with this Ghostbusters remix,” Wilson writes in the clip’s description. “Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd’s classic gets the rewind…..streams are crossed, Zuul prepares us for the coming of Gozer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow man appears in all his guises.”

Eclectic Method – formed in London by Wilson, Geoff Gamlen and Ian Edgar back in 2001 – have created similar remixes for other films, filmmakers (Wes Anderson), individual actors (Murray) and other random topics (“Orgasm Dubstep”). But one of their most popular clips is the inventive Wolf of Wall Street “Chest Thump Mix” they posted earlier this year. That video builds a loop of Matthew McConaughey performing his “money chant” into a electro-blues-pop workout, layering in cocaine snorts, awkward Jonah Hill dance moves and Leonardo DiCaprio shouting obscenities like a maniac. 

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Silent Screams: Rob Zombie’s Top 5 Silent Horror Movies

In Uncategorized on October 31, 2014 at 10:49 am

As a director, Rob Zombie makes horror films that are as loud as his music — dark, grungy, old-school grindhouse movies full of screaming women and buzzing chainsaws. As a fan, however, his taste often runs toward the silent horror of the 1920s: “What I love about these films is they’re so far removed from what movies are now,” the former White Zombie singer explains. “I mean, they were never silent because there was always live musical accompaniment, but they feel like such a different experience when you watch them.”

If funded, Zombie’s next film, 31, will tell the story of five people who are kidnapped in the five days leading up to Halloween. While waiting to see if the project comes to fruition (the drive ends tonight), the director got on the phone to discuss some of these films, picking his five favorites and explaining why they remain so captivating.

1. Nosferatu (1922)
“There’s something so hypnotic about silent movies and Nosferatu especially. And I just think Max Schreck and Bela Lugosi are the two greatest vampires ever on screen.”

2. The Unknown (1927)
“I got to see this one at the Silent Movie Theater in L.A., and there was this old man playing the organ along to it; he was about 95 years old and had actually played live organ to it when the movie was released in 1927. So it was just pretty mind-boggling to see this guy who was playing the organ for silent movies when he was 13 years old, and he was still doing it. I asked him afterwards, ‘Was there a certain score that you would always play?’ And he said, ‘No, I would make up something different every time I watched it.’ It’s so much more than a movie — it’s like you’re getting a once-in-a-lifetime concert at the same time.”

 3. West of Zanzibar (1928)
“West of Zanzibar is just mind blowing. The movies back then, the plotlines are so sinister, because the Hays Code hadn’t come into effect yet to ruin movies by trying to clean them up. The things that are going on in these movies are so diabolical and strange.”

4. Phantom of the Opera (1925)
“I’ve seen this with the full orchestra at the Disney Concert Hall and it was just mind-blowing. There are movies now where it doesn’t matter how spectacular they make something, you sit there going, ‘OK, that’s two actors on a green screen, and then a bunch of technicians built that stuff later on a computer. Who cares?’ But when you watch something like Phantom of the Opera with this giant opera house with the chandelier falling and the catacombs, you’re like, this all was built by live humans. If there’s 1,000 extras, there’s actually 1,000 people on set that day.”

5. London After Midnight (1927)
“I’ve never seen it, because it’s the great lost film of all time. It was somehow destroyed, but Tod Browning later remade it as a movie called Mark of the Vampire with Bela Lugosi. I can’t believe that it’s lost; the movie industry was so new that they figured, ‘Ah, we already showed it. Who the hell is ever going to watch this again?’ It’s not even an obscure movie — it was made by a major director at the time with Hollywood’s biggest star, Lon Chaney. But still, ‘Eh, whatever, let’s melt it down for the silver.’ It’s just one of those films where you see the picture and go, ‘God, if there were ever one movie I wish I could see, this would be it.'”

Reporting by Josephine Yurcaba

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See Flying Lotus’ Horrifically NSFW ‘Ready Err Not’ Video

In Uncategorized on October 31, 2014 at 10:49 am

The second that Flying Lotus announced that his upcoming record would be titled You’re Dead!, his fans should have expected something grotesque for Halloween. Fittingly, the experimental electronic/hip-hop artist has delivered an animated video for the track “Ready Err Not,” which premiered on Adult Swim, that splits the difference between a Francis Bacon painting and Terry Gilliam’s gnarly Monty Python cartoons.

Over the course of the impressionistic track’s three-minute runtime (incidentally, it runs less than two minutes on You’re Dead!), the clip begins with a shot of a deformed-looking man beheading the producer. And from there, the video only becomes grosser: Eyeballs sprout spider legs, babies eat intestines and there are scenes of decapitated heads floating in a bloody bathtub. But, since it all looks avant-garde, it comes off a bit more unsettling than shocking. The clip’s director, British animator David Firth, first pulled off that effect with his popular Salad Fingers series of web shorts.

Earlier this year, Flying Lotus told Rolling Stone that, at first, the album title You’re Dead! was a joke, but that he eventually decided it would be a good common thread to write around for what would be a jazz-influenced album. “I wanted to say, ‘OK, you’re dead. Now what?'” he said with a laugh. “Or songs about death – [bassist] Thundercat and myself just started writing a bunch of stuff that started fitting into that world. And not all of it sounded like hard bop after a while.”

The album features guest appearances by Herbie Hancock, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar. In September, he shared the track that features Lamar, “Never Catch Me,” which found the rapper working his way around Zappa-esque soundscapes. “The funny part is, though, that he wanted to keep that shit for his album,” Flying Lotus told Rolling Stone. “When I first sent him the track, he was trying to convince me to give it to him. Like, ‘Nah, man, I need that.'”

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