Indie Rock Cafe - Indie alternative rock music

Coachella Festival To Be Webcasted for All Three Days - 4/27 - 4/30

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Organizers of Coachella, the popular annual music festival in the desert east of San Diego, have synced up with a large telephone company to provide live, continuous webcast from Coachella Central featuring some of the most talented and popular artists in indie and alternative music.

Coachella has become in recent years the indie rock scene's answer to Lollapoloza, and indie fans come from across the globe to attend the festival.

Three-day passes for this year's event sold out in a matter of days and single day passes for the weekend sold out almost as quickly. Camp site passes are also sold out, but of course, there are many tickets still for sale on eBay.

For all of the indie rock fans who cannot make it to the festival, the webcast should help fill in some of the gap, even though it is nothing like being there - of course.

Let's just hope that the technicians and other folks have the server load capacity to allow tens of thousands, maybe hundreds, of thousand of fans around the world hear great indie and alternative artists like:

The Arcade Fire

Rage Against The Machine

Bjork

Arctic Monkeys

Interpol

Sonic Youth

Red Hot Chilli Peppers

The Kooks

Tapes n Tapes

!!!

Rufus Wainwright

Air

Blonde Redhead

New Pornographers

The Decemberists

See the entire line-up of artists scheduled to play at Coachella

While some fans, like me, would like Coachella to lighten up a little more like the Burning Man festival, it seems unlikely to happen.

In fact, there is a direct contradiction of course with the idealism of what indie music should be and the fact the Coachella is a very capitalistic, corporate sponsored and highly secured event.

The latter being the most annoying to fans nowadays, but since the Woodstock reunion disaster in 1998, 9/11 and the Virginia Tech shootings, fans who already have their tickets to Coachella (they are still also available on eBay, but of course, you'll pay more), their campsite passes or area accommodations (there are basically no motel or hotel rooms available for the festival weekend in the area with a few exceptions of rooms going for $500 and up a night at two and three-star accommodations).

Labels: ATT Coachella Webcast, Best Alternative Bands, Best Indie Artists, Coachella Music Festival, Coachella Tickets, Coachella Webcast, Indie Rock Events, Indie Rock Music Festivals, Music Festivals

by IRC @ 8:22 AM

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Blur's Drummer Dave Rowntree Announces Candidacy for Labour Party, Video Interview

Monday, April 09, 2007

Dave Rowntree, the drummer for the long-time UK indie revivalist group Blur, told The UK Independent that he plans to run for his local council as a Labour candidate in Marylebone.

"I've been a long-standing member of the Labour party and active in local politics for a while," Rowntree said. (See video below)

"I'm a Westminster resident and in my experience of living here, it all looks lovely - there are hanging baskets everywhere - but you only need to scratch beneath the surface and see that there's a lot of deprivation and a lot of inequality around. I think someone needs to do something about it."

Despite his notoriety, Rowntree will have to campaign hard for the position because the Marylebone ward is traditionally conservative.

One fan - Lovelyrita - wrote on the band's official message board: "I'm sure Damon [Damon Albarn, songwriter/founding member and singer] has always known Dave's labour convictions, so I don't think that can be a problem between them.

The problem for us, though is that if Dave is elected, well, I don't think it's very appropiated [sic] for a politician to play music in a band... even if that band is Blur. That's my opinion, at least. So, let's hope he doesn't get elected... sorry, Dave."

Labels: Best Indie Artists, Blur, Blur Drummer, Blur Music, Classic Indie, Dave Rowntree, Music and Politics

by IRC @ 3:22 PM

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Arctic Monkeys Live Show on BBC Radio 1 April 16

The red-hot indie rock outfit, Arctic Monkeys, are not melting polar caps but they are gaining gaggles of new fans around the world.

Next week, the Arctic Monkeys will perform on Radio 1's Live Lounge on Monday, April 16 at 10 a.m. (London time; so 3 a.m. PST).

Later that day, at 1pm, Radio 1 deejay Zane Lowe will present the Arctic Monkeys' London Astoria show and a band interview.

If you miss out, chances are the programs will be re-run or archived, but no guarantees.

Stay tuned to IRC for more information and updates by subscribing to the IRC feed.

Arctic Monkey Links:

- Arctic Monkey Win Two Brit Awards
- Arctic Monkeys Edged Out By The Killers for MTV Award
- Arctic Monkeys Official homepage

Labels: Arctic Monkeys, Arctic Monkeys Interview, Arctic Monkeys Live, Arctic Monkeys Show, BBC Music, Indie Rock Interviews, Radio One, The Arctic Monkeys

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Shortlist Music Prize Longlist Nominees Include Beck, Belle and Sebastian, Cat Power, Neil Young, Tom Waits, The Stills and Wolfmother

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

The Shortlist Organization will release their official "shortlist" of nominees for the sixth annual Shortlist Music Prize in a couple of weeks, narrowing the "longlist" of 61 albums of 2006 down to the Top Ten.

The Shortlist Music Prize is considered one of the highest honors in the independent and alternative rock music profession. Last year's winner, Sufjan Stevens, has taken the music world by storm, releasing one compilation of amazing music after another.

Stevens' 2005 album Illinoise is full of soft melodies, inspirational spurts of engery, lyrical intrigue and is easily one of the classic albums of the past decade.

Earlier this month, TSO released the long list of 61 nominees featuring a compendium of the best indie and alternative music of the past year, including artists such as like Snow Patrol, Arcade Fire, Mates of State, Band of Horses, The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, and many more. (See below for the complete list)

The 61 nominees were selected by a panel of nine indie rock artists and journalists, including Sufjan Stevens, Franz Ferdinand, Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol, Wayne Coyne of Flaming Lips, Ronnie Vannucci of The Killers, members of Panic at the Disco, Reverend Moose, editor-in-chief of CMJ New Music Report, and a Rolling Stone magazine rock critic.

To qualify for nomination artists' albums must be released in the U.S. in the past year and not have sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide. Panelists are also looking for artists who embrace and push the envelope of the indie rock spirit of "creative and adventurous" music.

"This year's listmakers have created a streetwise playlist of state-of-the art rock, dance and hip hop," Shortlist creative director Greg Spotts said.

Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody told Top40-Charts.com that this year's Long List "looks like my own iPod." He says the melancholy "Begin to Hope" by Regina Spektor is "a gorgeous record which is simple and devastating in equal measure."

Lightbody also elegantly describes two of his favorite artists - both IRC Featured Artists - praising North Carolina's Band of Horses' Everything All the Time as "sublime, blissed out elegance" and Beirut's Gulag Orskestar as "sweeping swooning carnival" of songs, and the couple duo Mates of States Bring It Back as "twisted, warped pop."

Subscribe to this feed and watch for the Top Ten, and ultimately a full profile of the winner. The winner will be announced sometime in May.

The 61 nominees include artists from 45 different record labels and ten countries as selected by Sufjan Stevens (and based on his taste in music, you might want to check out some of these albums if you haven't already):

Against Me - Americans Abroad Live in London
And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead - So Divided

Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock & Roll
Band of Horses – Everything All the Time
Beck - The Information
Beirut – Gulag Orskestar
Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit
Bonnie Prince Billy - The Letting Go
Cat Power – The Greatest
Country Teasers - The Empire Strikes Back
CSS - Cansei de Ser Sexy
Cursive - Happy Hollow
Dabrye - Two/Three
Danielson - Ships
Dead Heart Bloom - Dead Heart Bloom
Editors - The Back Room
Field Music – Field Music
Forgive Durden - Wonderland
Girl Talk - Night Ripper
Hot Chip - The Warning
Howling Bells - Howling Bells
Jeremy Enigk - World Waits
Joanna Newsom - Ys
Kidd Jordan, Hamid Drake + William Parker – Palm of Soul
Kimya Dawson - Remember that I Love You
Liars - Drum's Not Dead
Love is All - Nine Times That Same Song
Lupe Fiasco - Food & Liquor
Mates of State - Bring It Back
Matmos - The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast
Mew - And the Glass Hand Kites
Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther
Mohair - Small Talk
Mute Math - Mutemath
Neil Young – Living With War
OOIOO - Taiga
Peeping Tom - Peeping Tom
Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers
Regina Spektor - Begin to Hope
Roots - Game Theory
Secret Machines - Ten Silver Drops
Serena Maneesh - Serena Maneesh
Skream - Skream
Spank Rock - YoYoYoYoYo
Teddybears - Soft Machine
The Blow - Paper Television
The Bronx - The Bronx
The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
The Gossip – Standing In the Way of Control
The Hush Sound – Like Vines
The Knife -

Silent Shout
The Stills - Without Feathers
The Strokes – First Impression of Earth
The Velvet Teen – Cum Laude
The Weepies - Say I am You
Tom Waits - Orphans
TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
Vaux - Beyond Virtue Beyond Vice
We Are Scientists – With Love and Squalor
Wolfmother - Wolfmother
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Show Your Bones

Labels: Band of Horses, Franz Ferdinand, Gary Lightbody, Indie Music Awards, Mates of State, Panic at the Disco, Ronnie Vannucci, Shortlist Music Prize, Snow Patrol, Sufjan Stevens, The Killers, Wayne Coyne