When was the last time you got really lost in the groove at a reggae show? For me, it's been years, but that sad lack was more than made up for when I went to see Mr. Brown at the Flamingo Cantina Friday night. Bad reggae can be a horror, but the fellows in Mr. Brown laid it down so smooth I danced all night, only pausing to visit with my pal Sarah from Denton. Check out their next show, you won't be disappointed.
On www.weracketeer.com, we've got a lot of content that's updated regularly: news, blogs, lyrics and videos. All that's a lot to keep track of, especially if you only get the updates by visiting the site whenever you think of it.
That's where RSS comes in.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it's a way to subscribe to a website so that new updates are sent directly to you, rather than forcing you to go visit the site.
If you use Internet Explorer 7, there's an RSS reader built right in. If you have a Google account, (whether you have Gmail or if you use any other Google stuff), you can use Google Reader, which is pretty much the best RSS reader out there.
The way it works is you click on the little orange RSS button (in Internet Explorer 7 it's on the menu bar, on Firefox and other browsers it's next to the address of the website.) and choose how you want to subscribe.
Then you just start up your reader and you can instantly see if anything's been updated. On most readers there's a way to share and email items to friends, and in the best cases you can read the whole blog post or news entry right in the reader.
The reason I'm mentioning this is that we've updated our site so it's got a single unified feed for all of our updated content. Subscribe to our unified feed and you'll get all the blogs, news, lyrics and videos as soon as we post them.
RSS works great with most blogs, newspapers and news sites, as well as sites like YouTube and Livejournal. Enjoy!
Isaac
There has been a movie made about Austrian dancepop superstar Falco. Both Reed and I studied German when we were younger, and I wore out the grooves on my copy of "Falco 3", his classic album with "Rock Me Amdeus" and "Vienna Calling" on it.
In high school we had a hot German student teacher who took us line-by-line through the lyrics of "Jeanny", from the same album, a song spoken/sung from the point of view of a maniac who's in love with a girl and (presumably) kidnaps and kills her.
The trailer is badass whether you know German or not. Mine is too rusty to understand the dialogue, but the music is just perfect.
They announced the lineup of music for SXSW.
Here's what I'm interested in seeing:
Belleville Outfit
The Donnas
Human Giant
Ice Cube
Lykke Li
Los Campesinos
Lucy and the Popsonics
MQN
Johnette Napolitano
Nancy
Dolly Parton
The Raveonettes
The only two I'm really dying to see are The Donnas and Lykke Li. I missed The Donnas when they came last year but they're awesome and they rock.
And Lykke Li is an adorable popstress from Sweden. Her song "Little Bit" is one of my favorite tunes lately.
Isaac
If you missed out on the magical web music phenomenon that was Yacht Rock, go check it out and be amazed and impressed by how hilarious and awesome music mockumentary can be.
If you already understand the power of smooooooooooth music, then check out this special episode where Yacht Rock turns it up to eleven!
Color version of the image from our latest flier.
I'm usually too poor and pretending to be too cool to get excited about touring band shows, but They Might Be Giants has me feeling like a kid again in anticipation of their March 5th show at Stubbs in Austin.
I bought tickets for me and Isaac (Happy Texas Independence Day Isaac!) already, and so should you. We must all gather together and bask in the warm glow of the Johns who rock.
Speaking of bands I loved in high school, The Reivers are having a reunion show coming up next weekend at The Parish. I'm hoping hoping to get tickets to see that with a couple of old pals. Their albums Pop Beloved, Saturday, and Translate Slowly have been on my fav list for over a decade.
Check them out. You'll like 'em too, I betcha.
~reed
The consistent work enhanced my act. I learned a lesson: it was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the circumstances. Performing in so many varied situations made every predicament manageable, from Toronto, where I performed next to an active salad bar, to the well-paying but soul-killing Playboy Clubs, where I was almost but not quite able to go over. But as I continued to work, my material grew; I came up with odd little gags such as "How many people have never raised their hands before?"
