Holy hell, this is harrowing. This past weekend, Delorean, an electronic-pop act from Barcelona, performed at the Mexican installment of the Mutek Festival and on Monday morning, they were still at their Mexico City hotel when an emergency call came in, urging them to vacate the premises due to a shootout. They complied—and were taken hostage.
Indie films have become the lost children of Hollywood in recent years. Author Edward Jay Epstein explains why Hollywood is abandoning the indie movie business in favor of merchandisable CGI spectacles like Avatar.
Bucking the latest Hollywood fad, hunky indie film star Mark Ruffalo carried his own luggage after he landed in Toronto. The Brothers Bloom star is in town for the annual film festival and felt that carrying his own luggage was the normal thing to do. Ruffalo said, "It's my stuff. It's my wife's stuff. So, why make some driver carry it? It wasn't his decision to pack fourteen different outfits. It was my stylist's decision. Actually, come to think of it, she should be the one carrying all this stuff."
Hillary Clinton aide Howard Wolfson is now a regular contributor to Fox News, but in his heart of hearts, he'd like to be a contributing editor at Spin. As we've mentioned, he regularly sends out indie-heavy playlists of what he's listening to to friends, fellow flacks, and journalists. And we finally found his 2004 end-of-year list! Complete with blurbs! Wolfson's top ten, and other assored bits of music criticism from the be-sweatered communications consultant, after the jump.
Stephen Bower, the A&R and marketing director of Vanguard Records, writes in regarding our earlier post on Vanguard artist Greg Laswell, the "indie" (according to the WSJ) musician who has a slew of corporate promotional deals. "As for Greg's indie cred, I've never been entirely sure what that means exactly, but for what its worth he made the entire new record in a garage, in 3 weeks, on a shoestring budget, and with a collection of pawnshop guitars, banjos, and noisemakers that would probably set you back $500 combined," says Bower. Noted! His full rumination on Laswell, indie-ness, and how all your favorite bands are forced to do corporate shit these days, after the jump.
Dude, it is so refreshing to listen to "indie" musicians because "indie" musicians are "independent" from corporate control. Ha. We should pretty much eradicate the word "indie," which has become a total, depressing farce. In order to sell a single freaking song in today's environment, musicians must rush around bootlicking every monster corporation of any type willing to give away some airplay and free promotion. It's only a matter of time before Lockheed Martin is making bombs that play Pearl Jam songs on the way down. Witness what one single up-and-coming "indie" singer named Greg Laswell subjected himself to in the quest for publicity:
New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones is concerned that all the indie kids don't try to sound like black people anymore. He went to an Arcade Fire show and was totally bored! Do they even have a rhythm section? It's all shouting and French horns, isn't it? "But, in the past few years," says Sasha, "I've spent too many evenings at indie concerts waiting in vain for vigor, for rhythm, for a musical effect that could justify all the preciousness." Ok so he didn't he get there in time for LCD Soundsystem then? [New Yorker]
Baudrillard, R.I.P., yada, yada. This Gulf War may or may not be taking place, but the kids there still need some entertainment. Unfortunately, high-profile acts aren't as keen to maybe get their faux-hawks beheaded as were the USO stars of the the Bob Hope era. What's a Fallujah venue-booker for the Defense Department's "Armed Forces Entertainment" (AFE) to do? According to the Journal Weekend Edition's John Jugensen, take advantage of the scruffy ambitions of all those unknown bands on the AOL and Pod players:
In a story that features no dateline, the Post tells of a panel called "Indie Night School: Lawyer Edition," held at the standard Lower East Side venue for such a bizarrely titled gathering, Pianos. Tom Sean, a 26-year-old member of the Black Spoons, introduced the speakers, noting that the entertainment lawyers were "also TOTALLY COOL! Because even lawyers are indie."
