Fuck Yeah Fest Releases Full Line Up, New Activities

Its almost August and that means summer is starting to wind down for alot of those collegiates out there. There must be someone out there willing to defend our summer days. In this case its an area. That’s right its time for the fifth annual Fuck Yeah Fest in Echo Park. Spend your August 30th and 31st walking between the festival’s three stages at the Echo, EchoPlex and Jensen Rec Center enjoying the staggering lineup and activites including a scavenger hunt and taco eating contest.  Full line-up after the jump

Jay Reatard Anounces Next Single in Series, Tours (kinda)

Jay Reatard has apparently never heard that story about the Tortoise and the Hare. It was only a week ago that the garage-punk released his last effort from his Matador singles series and he’s already announced the next.

Reatard’s fifth release in the series contains three brand new tracks: “Trapped Here,” “Hiding Hole” and “DOA.” If you’re lucky enough to nab one of these ultra limited babies you can be enjoying the single as soon as August 19th. A fan of limited engagements, Reatard also has a few upcoming dates. Tour info and single mp3 after the jump

TV on the Radio Release Dear Science Tracklist, Expand Tour

It’s really happening. Dear Science is on its way. TV on the Radio have been slowly doling out info about their follow up to Return to Cookie Mountain and had promised a few upcoming dates, but now we have the full tracklist and a much expanded set of tour dates.

Dear Science will be released September 23 on Interscope in the U.S. while 4AD will be bringing it to our foreign brethren September 22.

Dear Science Tracklist
01 Halfway Home
02 Crying
03 Dancing Choose
04 Stork & Owl
05 Golden Age
06 Family Tree
07 Red Dress
08 Love Dog
09 Shout Me Out
10 DLZ
11 Lover’s Day

TVOTR tourdates

September
5 Portland, Or – Roseland
6 Seattle, WA – Showbox
12 Boise, ID – Big Easy
13 Salt Lake City, UT – In The Venue
14 Morrison, CO – Red Rocks (Monolith Festival)
19 San Diego, CA – Street Scene
20 San Francisco, CA – Treasure Island Festival

October
10 Philadelphia, PA – Electric Factory
11 Providence, RI – Lupo’s
13 Boston, MA – Wilbur Theatre
14 Brooklyn, NY – Masonic Temple
15 Brooklyn, NY – Masonic Temple
18 Cincinnati, OH – Bogart’s
19 Indianopolis, IN – Vogue Theatre
20 Minneapolis, MN – First Ave.
21 Minneapolis, MN – First Ave.
22 Chicago, IL – Riviera
24 New Orleans, – LA Voodoo Festival
25 Atlanta, Ga – Tabernacle
26 Knoxville, TN – Bijou Theatre
28 Dallas, TX – Lakewood Theatre
30 Austin, TX – Stubb’s
31 Oklahoma City, CA – Diamond Ballroom

November
6 Los Angeles, CA – Wiltern
8 San Diego, CA – 4th and B

(originally written for Filter Magazine)

Two Quarters For Your Thoughts?

I took this straight off of Urban Prankster because well I didn’t come by any of this information on my own and I’d have nothing new to add. I think this is just too cool to pass up though as this would have to be the most fun business to run/the most interactive art I could think of. This is the good type of interaction, not like that other thing I wrote about earlier.

anywho, words by Charlie Todd.

“Jake Bronstein recently bought a toy vending machine off the Internet. He filled the toy capsules with ideas of fun things to do and started placing the machine in various spots around New York. For 50 cents you get the original toy, an idea, and a map to guide you to the location for your idea. Each capsule also contains a quarter, refunding half of your purchase price (the machine wouldn’t let him charge less than 50 cents.)”

Mildly Amusing, 50 Cent and Taco Bell

Major corporations are crafty (remember that Minor Threat x Nike fiasco? Actually that case was more like lazy and retarded) Well now it seems that corporate America has set its sights on another bastion of artistic credibility.

50 Cent is suing Taco Bell for using his name, image, etc to sell products during their “why pay more” advertising campaign. I find the whole situation to be pretty funny because for one I’ve never seen any of the ads and can’t find them online so the marketing campaign seems pretty unsuccessful considering how much time i waste looking at random stuff on the ol’ internet. It appears that things really got cooking (if they ever actually did) when the news media picked up the story (again unnoticed by yours truly.) In fact, the only pages I can find are reports that Curtis is suing Taco Bell for 4 Million bucks for hurting his reputation. Which of course brings us to the real (kind of) funny.

Stones Throw Makes Store, Cleans Out Basement

This kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and would set up shop outside my friend Taylor’s house and we’d sell any toys/random crap we could find which pissed off our parents to no end. More recently, and more applicably i suppose, I made an ebay account and went around my house with a crazed look in my eye trying to find anything i didn’t need that was small enough to ship easily. Something like this probably happened over at stones throw a little while ago as they just added some pretty sweet stuff to their store.

Sure there are the ultra hip Parra made shirts

but mostly its about the joints over there. There’s now a CD Version of Madlib’s Saturday Morning Remixes out which I can’t comment on because I haven’t ever heard it.

Things get more exciting with the release of Sniper Elite and Murder Goons which are two tracks recorded by Dilla with Doom and Ghostface separately that were intended to be mixed together for Donuts. The EP contains each track separated and then the combined version. I actually ended up having to buy these tracks on the spot and I gotta say I already kind of love them. I think Doom is a pretty over-rated mc whose verses can sound a little forced, but the beat really complements his style. The volume of those cymbals in the back, the retro sounding intro, and those held notes make it seem like Doom has the room for a lazy verse but the spastic moments in the guitar give Dooms delivery a sense of urgency like he’s getting tripped up by how much he wants to spit out his words. Then there’s Ghostface, who always sounds like he’s going to get tripped up these days for the same reason. This is more of the same for Ghost but its on a beat that’s perfect for him. It sounds kind of like a bank heist car chase in the 70’s. These tracks just remind me of why every artist wanted to work with Dilla, not only was he going to have the best beats, he was going to have the best beats for them.

The super big fanboy news however is the release of the “Madvillainy 2″ box. Apparently this is what happens when Madlib has time to kill on a plane. The box will include the 25 track reworking of the original, a “One Beer” 7″, a cassette of the original Madvillain demo, a tee, and a comic book continuation of the All Caps video, oh and a dope box “wrapped in a silver like a mask” This thing looks absolutely crazy (which is mirrored in the 125 dollar price tag) and you can check out all the gear here. Oh and they promise that there’s still stuff going on with the new Madvillain too but it doesn’t sound too promising. If you really are losing sleep over that thing you might actually considering trying to hold yourself over with one of these bad boys.

here’s an mp3 for boulder holder (originally money folder) that came with the announcement

**edit** Stones Throw has now made the album available for download for 10 bucks

The Go! Team Launches “Free Digital Stuff” Site

Been trying to get your hands on that “Get It Together” seven inch The Go! Team put out back in the day? Got a craving for some remixes? Your in luck. The sextet launched their Free Digital Stuff site Monday and should be continuing to update it. As of the launch the site contains clips of music for fan remixes, the band’s first EP, “Get It Together”, and a number of remixes done by The Go! Team (of Jim Noir ’s “Key of C” and Polyphonic Spree’s “Soldier Girl”) and to them (by Hot Chip, Simian Mobile and more)

All said its a pretty good haul and a nice unexpected treat.

The Go! Team will be packing a few U.S. dates in between their trips overseas

30 Jul First Avenue (w/ CSS) Minneapolis, Minnesota
31 Jul Turner Hall (w/ CSS) Milwaukee, Wisconsin
01 Aug Lollapalooza Festival Chicago, Illinois
02 Aug Magic Stick, Detroit, Michigan
04 Aug MEG stage / Osheaga Festival, Montreal, Canada
05 Aug Phoenix (w/ CSS) Toronto, Ontario
07 Aug Trocadero (w/ CSS) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
08 Aug All Points West Festival, Liberty Island, New York
09 Aug The Roxy (w/ CSS) Boston, Massachusetts
10 Aug 2008 Virgin Mobile Festival, Baltimore, Maryland

Lackthereof, “Your Anchor” drops tomorrow

There have been some technical problems here at the Stereocache offices (read our parents’ house) so we’re a little late on this one, but better late than never I say. Especially with a record like this. Lackthereof is the brainchild of Menomena drummer Danny Seim which predates that band by a decent interval (beginning in ‘97). Your Anchor (Barsuk Records) will be Seim’s ninth release under the the nom de rock, the first six of which were distributed freely to personal friends before Filmguerrero put out Christian the Christian (2004) and My Haunted (2008). I say nom de rock because, for all the stuff going on in these tracks, Lackthereof is actually just Seim who plays every instrument on the album and recorded it in his Portland, Or basement.

Videogames Are the New Record Stores

Since Stereocache’s birth in the not so distant past I have seen a dramatic spike in the coverage of Rock Band and Guitar Hero news on music blogs and periodicals that I respect. It is becoming clear that these two games have come to be viewed as a part of the music machine out there while I would still consider them to sit squarely within the confines of a tech or gaming realm. I suppose this is really just symptomatic of a larger trend that has emerged over the last few years, what with the relationship of record label and sports game soundtracks etc etc. (a few weeks back I heard the guy from Activision? responsible for putting those together interviewed on Indie 103 here in L.A.) I have tried to avoid commenting on these games because I really didn’t see how this news was relevant for a music site to be announcing. It all seemed like a pretty transparent grab at views because of the huge popularity of these franchises. That is, until I heard this little tidbit.

“During the week in June when Mötley Crüe released “Saints of Los Angeles,” the first single from its new album, the song sold 14,000 copies on iTunes and 48,000 on Rock Band through Microsoft’s Xbox Live network.”

Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog

I’ve got to hand it to Joss Whedon, (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly) this is a pretty interesting marketing technique. Apparently Whedon enlisted the help of some friends during the writer’s strike to create a super hero villain musical. Dr. Horrible is a three act play in miniature and each act will be debuted a day or two apart over the course of a week at the end of which they will be taken down. Then there will be a comic released and the play will be available for download or on dvd. I understand the idea of creating a sense of urgency around it but all of these releases should probably be pretty close together. It seems to me that something like this would require a flurry of promotion. I’d be curious to gauge the level of buzz around this.

Anyways this week is the aforementioned week. Acts I & II are already up here and act III debuts on the 19th, the vids say goodbye at the end of the 20th.

On to the actual play. The story follows Neil Patrick Harris as fledgling supervillain Dr. Horrible as he tries to get his ticket to the big time by joining an evil alliance. Piling on the trouble for Dr. Horrible, he inadvertently introduced his arch nemesis to his altruistic crush an they’ve begone dating. We’ve all been there. The musical is a quirky production (as I would assume a supervillain musical would have to be) from the characters to the musical numbers to the narrative devices. I really like the character ideas here from the legendary villain bad horse (who speaks through singing cowboys) and a best friend whose power is to make things moist. In my opinion the musical numbers are pretty much a novelty that just serve to make the play seem quirkier and grab a little more notice. I’m sure this is not how the musical aspect was intended though I’m pretty sure Joss Whedon just really likes making musicals (remember Whedon’s musical Buffy?) Because of its truncated length, there’s not alot of time to establish exactly what’s going on all the time. The musical numbers could be meant solve this problem but mostly its the blog aspect of the play that makes the difference. I haven’t really seen the idea of a video blog mined for this type of characterization and plot summary in a fictional work before but it’s a great idea. I mean, the Real World has been doing this for at least a decade and a half. I’d say this is definitely worth watching.