The idea: trek America to prove that rock ‘n’ roll is far from dead – that it’s in face alive and thriving in every corner of our country. Producer Steve LaBate (Senior Contributing Writer at Paste Magazine) and director Scott Sloan (1-900-Fantasy, Inside Jones) have put together a completely unique idea completely with an extremely grueling schedule for their first documentary. They recently confirmed Of Montreal, The Whigs, RATT, comedian Eugene Mirman, Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Charlie Louvin, and more.

The filmmakers will be traveling 13,000 miles in 40 days – hitting cities from New York to Los Angeles and everywhere in between. During that time, they’ll watch and interview 40 different rock bands in 40 different venues in 40 different nights in 40 different cities. It’s an ambitious, aggressive, and potentially (but not intentionally) suicidal idea – all stemming from their deep and unabiding love of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

They’ll watch a different rock show every night (from high-school garage bands and indie upstarts to green-M&M- and large-bread-demanding arena rockers), cranking out a documentary and accompanying book about their adventure to prove just how much relevance and life is left in this 50-plus-year-old genre.

The film is a state of the union on the American Rock n’ Roll scene. And, at its core, 40 Nights of motherfucking Rock & Roll is about piling into a van for days on end, striking out into the heart of this mixed-up country and grabbing hold of your very own piece of the time-honored American tradition of self discovery through wandering; Lewis & Clark on expedition, Huck & Jim atop a river raft, Kerouac sucking down wine spodeeodee in a box car or careening across the twisting miles of asphalt with Neal Cassady at the wheel.

It’s about the road as a vehicle for transcendence, as some spirit-swallowing rain-slick obsidian snake devouring your psyche and spitting it back up renewed, reborn. It’s about chasing a dream and not giving a fuck about the naysayers, cranking it to 11 and letting it ride.

Here are all the dates in case you can show up and be a part of the film being made!

5/1 – Albany, NY
5/2 – Mutemath & comedian Eugene Mirman @Meadowlands Sports Complex/Bamboozle fest – East Rutherford, NJ
5/3 – Shout Out Louds @First Unitarian Church – Philadelphia, PA
5/4 – Spree Wilson (location tbd) – New York, NY
5/5 – Boston, MA
5/6 – RATT @Ram’s Head Live – Baltimore, MD
5/7 – Charlotte, NC
5/8 – The Moaners @The Nightlight – Chapel Hill, NC
5/9 – Midnight show w/Future Islands, Reptar, Bubbly Mommy Gun @SS – Athens, GA
5/10 – Tendaberry @Thomas’ house – Atlanta, GA
5/11 – Charlie Louvin (location tbd), Shotgun Lover (location tbd) – Nashville, TN
5/12 – St. Louis, MO
5/13 – Summerfest Battle of the Bands Finals @Club Garibaldi – Milwaukee, WI
5/14 – Torche @Congress Theatre – Chicago, IL
5/15 – Those Darlins @Nelsonville Music Festival – Nelsonville, OH
5/16 – Rev. Horton Heat @Beachland Ballroom – Cleveland, OH
5/17 – Detroit, MI
5/18 – Madison, WI
5/19 – Minneapolis, MN
5/20 – Capgun Coup (location tbd) – Omaha, NE
5/21 – Kansas City, MO
5/22 – Fayetteville, AR
5/23 – Tulsa, OK
5/24 – Of Montreal @Granada Theatre – Dallas, TX
5/25 – Centro-Matic’s Will Johnson (location tbd) – Austin, TX
5/26 – Denton, TX
5/27 – Wichita, KS
5/28 – Ümlaüt @Road 34 Bike Bar – Fort Collins, CO
5/29 – Billings, MT
5/30 – Spokane, WA
5/31 – Drive-By Truckers @Sasquatch! – George, WA
6/1 – Seattle, WA
6/2 – Ketchum, ID
6/3 – Salt Lake City, UT
6/4 – Young Dubliners @The Sands Casino/Eurofest – Reno, NV
6/5 – San Fransisco, CA
6/6 – Subhumans @Echo – Los Angeles, CA
6/7 – Las Vegas, NV
6/8 – Albuquerque, NM
6/9 – Josiah Wolf @Hi-Dive – Denver, CO

Vital Links
Tumblr:
http://40nights.tumblr.com/

Follow the crazy ride as it happens via Twitter:
http://twitter.com/40NightsORock

Tags: 40 Nights of Rock & Roll, different cities, documentary, mutemath, Of Montreal, PASTE magazine, Reverend Horton Heat, tour dates

Tags: Bigfoot, Glitch Mob, sightings, SoCal, Southern California

Electronica pioneers Orbital are set to play a series of dates in the US in 2010, appeasing a long-standing craving for more of their particular brand of infectious (and we really mean that – think “I Wish I Had Duck Feet” from their 1994 release Snivilization) chillout room shenanigans. Between 1989 and 2004, Orbital released a string of addictive, eclectic singles including Chime, Style, Belfast, The Box and Satan. Many became evergreen club anthems. Some even became Top Three hits culminating in a seven-album career that included collabs with Goldfrapp, and composer Angelo Badalamenti.

Since releasing their swansong Orbital opus The Blue Album and disbanding in 2004, both Hartnoll brothers have ventured into new musical territory. Paul took a more orchestral direction with his 2007 solo album The Ideal Condition, while Phil launched his short-lived collaboration project Long Range and carved a thriving career as a DJ. But they never closed the door on Orbital, and demand remains high for their fabled live shows. Always leaving room for improvisation on stage, unlike many electronic acts, Paul and Phil are world-class experts at building up large crowds into a frenzy of excitement. Their offstage manner may be deadpan and low-key, but their live performances are orgies of sensory overload and revved-up euphoria.


“Audience reaction is part of the process,” Paul explains, “It really becomes like a friendly football match between you and the crowd. That was always one of our strong points – and for people to say that about an electronic band is a real honour, because it’s the one genre of music that’s normally crap live. We’ve got 15 years of active service, making songs,” Paul says. “If you boil that down to a 90-minute festival set you should get something thoroughly good from beginning to end. Let’s put some fun back into it.”

Even though their contemporaries The Orb has been seen every so often (we are sorry we missed their two night stint at the Disney Concert Hall in LA a few years back) getting Orbital back into the mix makes it feel a little more like the dawning electronica scene from 1990 and that is a really good thing.

Orbital US dates:

• Saturday Friday, April 16 – San Francisco – Warfield Theatre – 10:15 tentative set time
• Sunday, April 18th – Indio, CA – Coachella

Tags: Angelo Badalamenti, chillout rooms, Coachella 2010, electro, electronica, Goldfrapp, Snivilization, The Orb, Ultra Festival, US tour dates, Warfield Theater

There’s a moment in the 2008 documentary Man On Wire when Philippe Petit — the French street performer who improbably accessed the rooftops of the World Trade Center’s twin towers in 1974 to perform an illegal an wire walk between the two structures — describes removing his clothing and methodically splaying his limbs about in hopes of finding an arrow — the arrow — that his confederate had shot from the neighboring tower rooftop in the dark of night, to which was tied the monofilament line that ultimately bore the cable upon which Petit would perform his feat of daring some hours later.

Finally coming to find the arrow after feeling something brush against his naked thigh, Petit discovers it perfectly yet precariously perched upon a rail at the tower’s precipice, so vulnerable that even slightest breath of wind could send it tumbling 110 stories below, and with it — Petit’s dream.

That image — of an instrument impossibly defying the natural order of things, balancing against disaster, created for pain and yet intended to deliver beauty, is the first thing that struck my head upon learning late last night of the death of Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous.

While I can tell you I am an ardent fan of Sparklehorse, I’ve never read an interview with Linkous, never viewed their Wikipedia page and truly, until last evening, didn’t even know the whole tale of his previously successful suicide attempt, resuscitation and ensuing surgeries.  I’d long ago learned that the more dear an artist is to me, the less known about them, the better, so frequent the disappointment has been any time I’ve met or discovered too much about someone whose creations had acquired some kind of deeper meaning in my world.  Truth be told, if I were alive in the time of Schopenhauer, Hesse or Schiele, I would have avoided them with haste lest running the chance of ruining part of myself by being exposed to their assholisms (the same cannot be said for Nick Cave).  Even so, I owned a vague notion that Linkous was in pain and was challenged by his own existence, and therefore wasn’t wholly surprised by the news of his death.

Though I was an early adapter upon the release of 1995′s Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, the music of Sparklehorse never became so meaningful to me as it has in the few years since Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain came out.  Inside that record slept a Rosetta Stone which, once discovered, allowed me to access parts of  other Sparklehorse albums previously insignificant to me.  Perhaps it was in my getting older that every failed relationship stung slightly more, given the eventuality of the hourglass our lives are set against, and therefore I was learning a truer meaning of mortality, but somewhere between the near-simultaneous losses of a great love, a great friend and a parent, the warbling voice, obscured lyricism and oftentimes discordant tapestry that defined Sparklehorse suddenly felt a lot more like life to me than anything the gay buccaneers in Coldplay could ever vomit out.  Even the beloved Radiohead (the British Wilco) and Wilco (the American Radiohead) started to feel more artful than truthful when measured in the context of my life.  It didn’t really seem like spiders singing in the salty breeze or the pointless snide remarks of hammerhead sharks were meant to mean anything; however, looking in your face for a thousand years because it’s like a civil war of pain and of cheer certainly seemed like it might.

Many a night out of mine has begun with air-raid screenings of “Someday I will Treat You Good” and/or “Mountains” while just as many have languished to an end with” Sad And Beautiful World” and “Don’t Take My Sunshine Away” (and vice versa).  I pushed my ears to damage this summer after listening to a bootleg copy of Dark Night of the Soul endlessly, and just 48 hours ago, right around the time Mark Linkous composed what would be his final message to this world, “Shade And Honey” spilled from my girlfriend’s tiny computer speakers after I thumbed through her laptop for just the right song as we roused ourselves from bed and dressed in a room heavy with the cologne of our lovemaking.

It’s perhaps fitting, given the equine imagery that is pervasive in Linkous’ lyrics, to describe experiencing Sparklehorse as not wholly unlike viewing the birth of a foal — an arresting, grotesque display that ends in something awkward and beautiful.  While that might not resonate with everyone as a revelation, it certainly seems more truthful than the short-attention-span, black-and-white consumerist orgy that Miley Cyrus and Jonas Brothers insist we should inhabit instead.  It’s therefore no coincidence the music of Sparklehorse has found its way into misunderstood, below-the-radar indie films such as The King and Laurel Canyon; in both, Sparklehorse songs are covered by characters who are undergoing something of an awakening with no easy remedy against their otherwise storybook backdrops.  It’s not so much that Sparklehorse is a alternative for the mainstream as much as it is a soundtrack for those in the minority who are struggling to acknowledge that everything might not be alright, but that in and of itself is in fact ok.

Perhaps therein lies a lesson that Linkous was too close to experience for himself.  Though only his family and loved ones will truly know, it seems that whatever his pain, whatever his displacement, every moment he spent searching and creating was a victorious acknowledgement of life.  That there are no more Mark Linkous compositions forthcoming to baptize our days would be disheartening if he hadn’t already blessed us with so much.  Still, for the sake of all the sunlight and starlight I’ve burned listening to Linkous’ music, Sparklehorse will ever be in my mind a cloudburst of radiant if uneven watercolors, undefined by the final action of one man.

In the silver morning hollow
trembling and getting old
smelling burnt oil of heaven
about ten years, too big to hold

Truffle Jones filed this report from the set of Hardcastle and McCormick: The Movie.

Tags: Dark Night Of The Soul, Don't Take My Sunshine Away, Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain, Hesse, Laurel Canyon, Man on Wire, Mark Linkous, Mountain, Sad And Beautiful World, Schiele, Schopenhauer, Shade And Honey, Someday I will Treat You Good, Sparklehorse, suicide, The King, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot

Perhaps selling out major venues from coast to coast by word of mouth, or playing festivals from Lollapalooza to Red Rocks is a sign that your electro-freak mashup outfit is doing well, but probably not as much as being endorsed by the Queen of avant electro herself; Bjork was spotted at one of their recent shows at The Roxy in Los Angeles.

Making their SXSW debut, The Glitch Mob are set to play 3 Austin events before heading over to key slots at this year’s Coachella and Winter Music Conference gatherings. And this May, they embark on their first full nationwide tour in support of The Glitch Mob’s debut album release Drink the Sea (due May 25 on the band’s own Glass Air label). Following years of triumphant official remixes for the likes of TV On The Radio and Ed Banger— The Glitch Mob and its members even held the top two spots on XLR8R’s “50 Best MP3s of 2008” over the likes of Hercules and Love Affair and the Kills—and solo releases on tastemaker labels like Planet Mu, Drink The Sea represents a musical sea change for the band. Across the album, the trio of producer/ instrumentalists Justin Boreta, Ed Ma, and Josh Mayer artfully craft new, futuristic sounds that take influence from numerous genres, but land in none. Then again, flipping the script comes as no surprise for the group XLR8R says are best known for both “tearing up dancefloors and confusing the hell out of anyone trying to put a label on their music.”

To get a sense of what all the fuss is about, download Glitch Mob’s latest remix of TV On the Radio’s “Red Dress”:

Download TV On the Radio’s “Red Dress (Glitch Mob Remix)”

Visit The Glitch Mob at Myspace

America, you have been warned…

Tags: bjork, download mp3, electro, free music, indie music, Lollapalooza, Red Rocks, the glitch mob, The Roxy