Month: January 2009

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GUEST EDITOR

From The Desk Of A.C. Newman: Gordon Lightfoot

“There are maybe 10 or 12 things I could teach you,” sings Carl “A.C.” Newman on his new solo album, Get Guilty (Matador). “After that, well, you’re on your own.” This week, MAGNET lets the New Pornographers frontman steer our website toward 10 or 12 of his own favorite things in music, film, literature and life.

Read our verdict on the orchestral-pop case of Get Guilty and a Q&A deposition with Newman here.

Newman: I went on iTunes and started downloading songs by Gordon Lightfoot. I couldn’t remember how they went, but I knew that I liked them. He had an album called Endless Wire in the ’70s, and a song on that record called “Daylight Katy” is, I think, the greatest thing he’s ever done. He was one of Dylan’s favorite songwriters, which is pretty high praise. He’s Canadian; I have to throw in some Canadian content. There’s a very proud tradition of Canadian songwriters. If you throw in Gordon Lightfoot with Joni Mitchell and Neil Young and Leonard Cohen, that’s a pretty powerful collection.

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NEWS

Blue Note Records Turns 70

coltraine300bBlue Note Records—the label that cut its teeth in the ’50s and ’60s with crucial albums by such jazz stalwarts as Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, John Coltrane (pictured), Horace Silver, Art Blakey, Bud Powell, Jimmy Smith, Grant Green, Wayne Shorter, Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock, Jackie McLean and Ornette Coleman—celebrates its 70th anniversary this year. Founded by Alfred Lion, Blue Note was the most prolific of the five independent jazz labels from the ’50s—a short list that included East Coast imprints Prestige and Atlantic as well as California-based Contemporary and Pacific Jazz. Although it occasionally dabbled in New Thing-style free jazz by Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Bobby Hutcherson, Sam Rivers and Andrew Hill, Blue Note was best known for the distinctive hard-bop sound of its ensembles, which frequently featured lineups with tenor sax, trumpet, piano, bass and drums. To mark the milestone year, the Blue Note 7, featuring tenor saxman Ravi Coltrane (son of John), has hit the bricks for 50 U.S. dates and just released Mosaic: A Celebration Of Blue Note Records, which contains updated versions of eight of the label’s classic tracks.

John Coltrane’s “Blue Train” from 1957’s Blue Train:

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NEWS

What’s On Deck For Steve Wynn

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Erstwhile Miracle 3 frontman Steve Wynn is a first-ballot MAGNET hall of famer: Check out our 2001 interview of Wynn conducted by acclaimed novelist George Pelecanos (who went on to be a writer/producer for HBO series The Wire). Wynn—who helmed seminal Paisley Underground band the Dream Syndicate—teamed up last year with Minus 5/Young Fresh Fellows mastermind Scott McCaughey (along with Peter Buck and Wynn’s wife, drummer Linda Pitmon) to create the Baseball Project, whose Volume 1: Frozen Ropes And Dying Quails was a stellar homage to the national pastime and quickly became a staple around the office. Given our affection for all things Wynn, we got in touch with the prolific singer/songwriter to update us on his activities for 2009, which, thankfully, include another Baseball Project record. In addition to Up There: Home Recordings 2000-2007, a mail-order compilation of demos and other rarities that will be available later this year, here’s what Wynn (“I’m still behind Robert Pollard’s pace, but I’m only on my second cup of coffee this morning”) has going.

“Bring The Magic” from Steve Wynn And The Dragon Bridge Orchestra’s Live In Brussels:

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GUEST EDITOR

From The Desk Of A.C. Newman: Roberto Bolaño

carlnewmanpresscrop41“There are maybe 10 or 12 things I could teach you,” sings Carl “A.C.” Newman on his new solo album, Get Guilty (Matador). “After that, well, you’re on your own.” This week, MAGNET lets the New Pornographers frontman steer our website toward 10 or 12 of his own favorite things in music, film, literature and life.

Read our verdict on the orchestral-pop case of Get Guilty and a Q&A deposition with Newman here.

bolano245Newman: Roberto Bolaño died in 2003, but he’s become quite a hot author in the past couple years. Last year, his book from 1999, The Savage Detectives, was translated and published. His final book is a 900-page opus called 2666, and I’m about two-thirds of the way through it. In the worlds he creates, it seems that art and murder are often tied up together. It’s hard to describe, but his writing is dark and very beautifully written. He’s Chilean but spent most of his life in Mexico. I’ve been drawn to Latin-American writers recently; I don’t know why. A lot of people give Latin America credit for magical realism—Gabriel García Márquez being the most popular example—so that’s a somewhat common element of it, but Bolaño doesn’t really work in there. I can’t really tell you what links Latin American writers. It’s like when I was into R.E.M. as a teenager. I tried to find music like theirs by listening to the other bands from Athens, Ga. I found out Bolaño was a huge fan of Julio Cortázar, so I read him and that leads to other people like Carlos Fuentes, which leads to Juan Rulfo which leads to José Donoso and so on.

The New Yorker profiled Bolaño in 2007; read it here.

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15 IN PHILLY

15 In Philly: The Friggs

Spend 15 years in Philadelphia and you’ll figure out that things in MAGNET’s native city aren’t always sunny or bursting with brotherly love. But underneath the tough exterior are some pretty sweet sounds. In honor of our anniversary, we pay tribute to our hometown scene.

friggs

When the Friggs burst onto the Philly scene in 1991 with their debut single, a charmingly sloppy cover of the Troggs’ 1970 lust-charged “Come Now,” the all-girl quartet was still six months shy of its first show.

“Shake” from Today Is Tomorrow’s Yesterday:

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