Hindustan Times
As I write this (and roughly a week before you read it), the mother of all music festivals is underway at Austin, Texas. It’s the South by South-West festival, commonly referred to as SXSW, and has been on for the past 23 years. In 1994, in addition to music, SXSW included film and interactive media conferences and has now become an important fixture on the world’s film festival circuit. But it is the music that is at the core of SXSW and what really excites me about this annual festival that happens in March. Read more
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
Loading ...Posted by Sanjoy Narayan on Saturday, March 27, 2010 at 7:36 pm
Filed under Download Central · Tagged 100 Days, 100 Nights, BlueDisguise Records, Bob Dylan, Britt Daniel, Dark Eyes, David Greenwald, Dirty Projectors, Download Central, Free Energy, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Gimme Fiction, Holy Fuck, I Learned the Hard Way, Jim Eno, Latin, Local 638, menwhopause, Message to Garcia, National Public Radio, NPR, Rachel Flotard, Rawkblog, Sanjoy Narayan, Sharon Jones, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, South by South-West festival, Spoon, SXSW, Tom Ridge, Transference, Twitter, Visqueen, When The Saints Go Marching In
Years back when I used to complain about friends not returning my vinyls, cassettes or CDs, my father used to tell me about how in the 1950s, a friend of his would simply carry empty sacks once a year to the homes of people he’d lent books to in order to recover them. “I have come to take back all the books you have borrowed and never returned,” used to be his oft-used line. There were other, more unreliable, ways of recovering books once lent. My father himself would browse the roadside second-hand book stalls in Calcutta and often find copies of books that he had “lost” turn up there, complete with his name written on the title pages. Of course, he’d have to recover them for a price! Read more
(3 votes, average: 4 out of 5) Loading ...Posted by Sanjoy Narayan on Saturday, March 20, 2010 at 6:22 pm
Filed under Download Central · Tagged 4:13 Dream, Alice in Wonderland, and If You’re Feeling Sinister (1996), Belle & Sebastian, Bloodflowers, Boys Don’t Cry, Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Disintegration, Download Central, Elbo.ws, Faith, Fold Your Hands Child, Gonjasufi, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (1987), Mixed Up, Pornography, Robert Smith, Sanjoy Narayan, South By South West, Sumach Ecks, SXSW, The Boy With The Arab Strap, The Cure, The Head On The Door (1985), The Life Pursuit (2006), Tigermilk, Tim Burton, Twitter, You Walk Like a Peasant
In January I’d written how I couldn’t wait for the new album from Frightened Rabbit, the Scottish rockers whom I rate as one of the finest bands on the scene now. Well, The Winter of Mixed Drinks is out now and, as I write this (a week before you’re going to be reading it), it’s been rotating on my playlist for the past four days. Read more
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5) Loading ...Posted by Sanjoy Narayan on Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 7:24 pm
Filed under Download Central · Tagged Brian Jackson, Carrie Brownstein, Dan Bejar, Destroyer, do I wait?/ Do I dive?/The sea has seen my like before though it’s my first/ And perhaps last time, Download Central, Fetus, Franco Battiato, Frightened Rabbit, From South Africa to South Carolina, Gil Scott-Heron, Gordon Skene, Grant Hutchison, I’m New Here, Johannesburg, Let Me See Your ID, Monitor Mix, NPR, On Coming From a Broken Home, Sanjoy Narayan, Save The Children, Scott Hutchison, Sing The Greys, Sleater-Kinney, Streethawk, Swim Until You Can’t See Land, The Midnight Organ Fight, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, Twitter, Up to my knees now, “Black Bob Dylan”
There are some bands that divide rock music fans into two unambiguous groups. One group that knows all that is worth (and even not worth) knowing about them; and, the other that hasn’t even heard of them. I can think of a few bands that are like that. Take Joy Division. These British harbingers of post-punk melancholic music were a band that was nipped in the bud (1976-80) when frontman Ian Curtis killed himself but their influence was huge. Yet, they’re a band that either you’ve heard and adore and know everything about (including how bad Control, the 2007 biopic on Curtis, was) or you’ve never even heard of them.
(3 votes, average: 4 out of 5) Loading ...Posted by Sanjoy Narayan on Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Filed under Download Central · Tagged argus48, Bob Nastovich, Chuck Klosterman, Clinging To A Scheme, Control, Cut Your Hair, Download Central, Greatest. Indie-est. Band. Ever., Ian Curtis, Joy Division, Lady Gaga, Mark Ibod, Massive Attack, Pavement, Radio Dept., Sanjoy Narayan, Scott Kannberg, She & Him, Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe, Stephen Malkmus, Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks, Steve West, The New Pornographers, The Vinyl & Vodka podcast, Twitter, Your Hands
