Hot Summer Car Jamz: Super Nostalgia Edition!

I think the beginning of summer makes me nostalgic; I totally had the urge to listen to Liz Phair today. I always get a little sad too, realizing that the days will get shorter for the next six months. Whip-Smart got thousands of plays in my car's tape deck, back in the day. Before the mp3 revolution, people had that connection to music; you'd buy something, and that would be it, you better like it, cause it's gonna be a week before you have disposable income again. You looked for reasons to like it. There were plenty of albums I didn't really dig, but I committed to giving them 3 or 4 listens, because dammit, I bought it! And you know what? Sometimes, you'd catch something on that third listen and the album would end up in permanent rotation. Nowadays, it's the opposite, you look for a reason to hit the skip button; to go ahead and find the next thing. It's hard, cause a lot of the music I love didn't instantly grab me. I really think that most people will like an album if A. they culturally identify with it, and B. they are familiar with it. These days, I need to actively decide to get into something and then see how it plays out. It works for me, but it's not the same.

One thing that kinda sucks about living in NYC is that you don't spend any time in people's cars. I know it sounds weird, but there's an intimacy factor; it's probably as close as you get to someone until you get into their bedroom, if you ever get that far. A lot of the music that really sticks with me, and would guess most of you too, has a strong person/place/time connection. In a car, you instantly had person/place association. Whenever I hear "Only in Dreams," I'm baked out of my mind in the back of Chet's police issued Crown Vic with four other kids, parked down by a lake where no one would bother us. Whenever I hear "Mayonnaise," I'm cruising around with Meg in the middle of the night, feeling lost and hopeless, but also feeling like we belonged; if not to the world as a whole, but at least to each other. Whenever I hear "Marquee Moon," I know it's exactly as long as it took me to drive from the giant Victorian house I split with six other people across from the JCA in Amherst, to Rachel's two bedroom apartment on Randolph Place in Northampton, provided it was late at night and there was no traffic on Route 9.

Slothrust CMJ Interview Action Spectacular

  Hello everyone. I hope you had a nice pre-CMJ week. Honestly, I never really know what to expect from festivals. There's always something disappointing that seemed like a lock. There's also something unexpected that turns out to be epic. Concerning the job of a promoter/booking agent/whatever the hell I am, a wise man once told me, "Whenever everything's going right, something's still going wrong." Anyway, despite the randomness and uncertainty of the business, there are some bands you can really go all in on, and Slothrust (Sloth-Rust. Once they get incredibly famous, we'll start Slow Thrust: Brooklyn's premiere Slothrust shoegaze cover band) is one of them. We're super pumped to have them for HBR CMJ Showcase #2 on 10/19 at Matchless. I had a little Gchat with Leah and Kyle (guit/vox and bass, respectively). Here is the transcript:


Hearts Bleed Radio: So, are you guys all from Boston?

Leah: No. Will and I are but Kyle is from New Jersey. We all met at school in Yonkers.

HBR: How did you guys find your sound? Was it like, something you were aiming for? Or did it just kinda come together?

Leah: I think it just came together.

Kyle: They had this band going before I joined, and we still play a few songs from that period, however we did change them up.

Leah: We all played in blues bands in college so that was a big influence, but I feel like recently when people come see us play live, the blues isn't the first thing that comes to mind.

HBR: Yeah, but as soon as you mention blues, you can really hear it, I think.

Leah: :)

Kyle: I agree that our sound came together on its own. We sort of developed it while working on new songs that Leah had written, and eventually we sort of figured out what our sound is, and went with it.

Leah and Kyle rock the fuck out.

HBR: Did you grow up playing the blues first and foremost?

Leah: I think we try to run with the blues mentality in terms of letting there be room for improv and leaving it all on the stage.

Kyle: I grew up playing a lot of metal and jazz. Blues came more into my life in college.