zed equals zee

Growing up in the pre-Internet world, I was fortunate enough to have a decent independent indie-and-alternative radio station in Toronto, as well as a much cooler older sister who listened to CBC’s Brave New Waves and exposed me to new stuff. Then I moved to Boston, just as music was starting to migrate to the Internet, and I pretty much stopped listening to radio (with the exception of WMBR, of course). As I was preparing to relocate to Seattle, the radio station KEXP kept coming up, mostly in sentences to the effect of, “You’ll want to listen to KEXP.” So I switched my stereo over to 90.3 FM, and set it to turn on in the morning.

As I was lying bleary-eyed in bed, I gradually realized that I was familiar with the song that’s playing, an instrumental. Even more gradually, it dawned on me that it’s Holy Fuck. Holy Fuck! On the radio!

This Friday morning alone, they played The Hold Steady, Hot Chip, The Hidden Cameras, and both Oasis and Pulp, plus great older alternative artists like James, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and the Dead Milkmen. And, of course, a whole slew of new bands I’d never heard of. Fortunately, KEXP also maintains an amazingly detailed playlist, updated in real time.

Sadly, however, there is a significant downside to my newfound love of KEXP – since it’s replaced NPR as my morning auditory stimulation, I’m probably going to be significantly less well-informed this year.

KEXP 90.3 Seattle (streaming links in top left corner)

The video for the second single, “Impatience,” from We Are Scientists’ sophomore album, Brain Thrust Mastery, was just released. And it features one of the band members as a werewolf. Like pretty much everything else WAS do, it’s an entertaining mix of funny, geeky and strange (check out the ‘Advice‘ section of their blog for more of this characteristic blend). We Are Scientists are busy, busy guys – they just finished an East Coast tour. Next up is two weeks of festivals in the UK and Europe (including Reading and Pukkelpop), then they are spending most of September supporting REM in Europe, and then they return to the US for a cross-country tour with Kings of Leon, playing Seattle on October 20, 2008.

More We Are Scientists: website myspace allmusic

I think that the BBC Olympics title sequence video, created by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett (better known as the brains behind Gorillaz) is probably my favourite bit of promo for the Olympics ever.

[via Neil Gaiman’s Journal]

zed equals zee is still settling into its Seattle headquarters, so just a quick post to tide you over. Courtesy of the Guardian, an illustrated list of the top ten uniforms in rock. Unsurprisingly, Devo (above) tops the list.

NME reports the results of a study that states that one-fifth of Brits are frustrated musicians and fantasize about giving up trading their jobs for one in the music industry, including something like 10% of doctors.  I guess if you already have a lucrative, stable, societally-approved career, it’s pretty much inevitable that you would dream of changing to one that Neko Case describes thusly, “Playing in an independent rock band will eventually make you equal parts truck driver, gladiator, and mule.” These stats also go a long way to explaining the massive success of Rock Band.

Previously: For Those Who Tried to Rock

Driving across Washington State, I saw road signs for a number of places that I realized I recognized mostly because they are the hometowns of indie and alternative bands. So in honour of zedequalszee’s relocation to Seattle, a brief quiz – match the band with the hometown.

Bands:

1. The Dandy Warhols
2. Death Cab for Cutie
3. Modest Mouse
4. Nirvana
5. Sleater-Kinney

Hometowns:

1. Aberdeen, WA
2. Bellingham, WA
3. Issaquah, WA
4. Olympia, WA
5. Portland, OR

Bonus question: What band (pictured above) is named after the Washington State Department of Transportation phone number for reporting HOV lane violations?

Answers: (select to read) Dandy Warhols – Portland; Death Cab for Cutie – Bellingham; Modest Mouse – Issaquah; Nirvana – Aberdeen; Sleater-Kinney – Olympia; 764-HERO.

Following up on their (presumably successful) compilation of Radiohead covers, Rapster Records corraled a dozen electronic artists to create their own versions of David Bowie songs and released Life Beyond Mars: Bowie Covered. As a lifelong Bowie fan and someone who loves electronic music and covers, I feel like I personify the target demographic for this album (and I did, in fact, buy the CD). Sadly, however, I found the song quality to be rather uneven. As might be expected, given the genre, the song choices are heavy on Bowie’s Berlin years, and the standout track is definitely Matthew Dear’s cover of “Sound & Vision.” Most artists chose  lesser-known Bowie songs, rather than hit singles – understandable, really, as who’d want to take on the challenge of reinterpreting a beloved masterpiece? – but the The Thing took a different approach. Their ‘cover’ of “Life on Mars” has nothing discernibly in common with the original besides its title. I’m going to politely describe its style as ‘experimental,’ including sounds like rusted metal-on-metal creaks and squeaky balloons. I’d suggest the version below instead.

MP3: David Bowie and Arcade Fire – Life on Mars (live)

Life Beyond Mars: website amazon

Here at zed equals zee, we’re big fans of education. As musicians go, Queen guitarist Brian May pretty much has everyone beat – after setting his doctoral work in astrophysics aside to concentrate on music full-time, he returned to his dissertation some 30 years later, received his PhD, and is now Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University (the photo above is of him at his investiture). We’ve already talked about the Bon Savants, whose lead singer, Thom Moran – as everybody knows – worked as a rocket scientist at MIT, although I don’t know what his academic background is (they are playing at the Middle East Upstairs on Wednesday, July 9th, so you could probably ask him). There are also a couple of artists that I can think of who are actively balancing academic and musical careers.  Another z=z fave, The Franklin Kite, features a frontman who did a PhD in astrophysics at MIT, and is now doing postdoctoral research at that university up the river. Even more notably, the lead singer of Bad Religion, Greg Graffin, not only has a PhD in zoology from Cornell, but he teaches at UCLA – apparently, he is on the timetable to teach Life Science 1 in the upcoming winter quarter (January 2009), after which the band will return to the studio.

Know any other scientist/academic/musicians that I missed? Tell us about them in the comments!

MP3: Bad Religion – Let Them Eat War

[embedded YouTube video; if you can’t see it, click here]

A slightly-belated celebration of the Fourth of July, via some nice folks from the mother country.