I first discovered Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds when I was in my early teens. Watching Teletunes, a 2-hour block of alternative videos that aired at 10:00 PM every Sunday night, worlds of musical and artistic creativity were opened to me. “The Singer” was the first Nick Cave video I saw – a strange raven-haired crooner framed against a red backdrop, earnestly paying tribute to one of his predecessors. This Johnny Cash cover features yearning strings and a guitar line that serves as an ellipsis between verses. He embodied the ecstasy and loneliness of being a storyteller. I was … Continue reading Artist Spotlight – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (Part I)

Martin Denny could be described a lot of ways. An ethnomusicological pastiche artist. An embarrassing cultural imperialist. The logical conclusion of “tiki culture.” A watered-down jazz performer. A creator of overcooked elevator music. The soundtrack to every Shag print ever made. Denny was a piano player who had little fame and a few gigs in other people’s bands before he formed his own group. Their genre was generally called “exotica,” whose meaning I’m sure you can figure out, and which Les Baxter inaugurated with 1951’s Ritual of the Savage. Picture a bunch of white Americans picking up instruments from Polynesia, South … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Martin Denny – Jimmy Buffett for the Mad Men Set

One rainy night in 1994, I went with my saxophone teacher to Tower Records and bought two CDs: Don’t Try This at Home, by Michael Brecker, who I covered in my last Artist Spotlight ; and Blue Train, by John Coltrane. At the time, I was a high school band dork trying to take my musicianship to the next level, whatever that means. Checking out some professionals was supposed to help with that. I don’t remember if I put the CDs on in the car or waited until I got home, and I don’t remember which one I listened to first. Both were great, … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: John Coltrane

Sorry LMFAO, you might have been Party Rockin in 2011, but Andrew WK was the one that started the party. Welcome to Artist Spotlight – Andrew WK. A lot of music and new artists I hear about nowadays is thanks to my Uncle Maynard. Thanks to our conversations, he got me hooked on Queens of the Stone Age and Andrew WK and a whole bunch of other artists too numerous to name. In 2001, driving with my uncle, he played Andrew WK’s I Get Wet, turned up the volume, and the rest is history. Biography  From Heather Phares/MTV – Not … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Andrew WK

Disclaimer: This is my first artist spotlight (it’s also the first thread I’ve ever posted). I don’t often read the other artist spotlights, because my musical tastes (mostly 70s guitar rock – shocking, I know) don’t align well with the average AV Clubber/Avocadoan, so I don’t really know if this is what folks are looking for in an artist spotlight. If it is, great. If not, downvote me or upvote me with prejudice or something. Just please don’t hit me, regardless of how much I deserve it. What would eventually become Blue Öyster Cult began as Soft White Underbelly in … Continue reading Artist Spotlight – Blue Öyster Cult

When I start this you’re gonna wonder what on earth it has to do with Vampire Weekend. It’s connected, I promise! I grew up a Jehovah’s Witness, and I was a true believer: I tried to convert my friends and would cry when I couldn’t because I knew they wouldn’t be in “paradise on earth” with me, I would feel guilty if I got the national anthem stuck in my head because it was “worldly”, and I planned on getting baptized. When I was 14, I became an atheist in two of the most cliche ways imaginable: I read some … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Vampire Weekend

Hold on, that is not Mark Oliver Everett! There are some musical acts that get buy on being adorable. Just super cutesy, even when they sing something naughty…actually, particularly when they sing something naughty. Teehee. Then there are those who come across like deranged clowns who would probably do really really bad things to you while giggling maniacally. And then there is EeL, who is so sweet that a hug from her could dissolve your bones. And she WILL hug you. The background information on EeL is incredibly sparse. She worked in computers…maybe computer games…she is Japanese…and that is pretty … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: EeL

Artist Spotlight courtesy of Callipygian Pigeon A month ago, Dikachu posted a thread about concerts you would see if you had a time machine. Wussy’s first concert didn’t make my cut because I still have a hard time imagining it could be good: In the thereabouts of 2001, Chuck Cleaver was performing a solo show in his hometown of Cincinnati. His band, Ass Ponys, was on hiatus but not quite officially dissolved. They had gotten a small amount of mainstream recognition for maybe the most 90s music video ever to play on MTV, though “Earth to Grandma” wasn’t as weird … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Wussy

Artist Spotlight courtesy of Pucky Fear is one of the most powerful emotions in not only the human experience but in virtually all animals. Fear can paralyze and fear can drive you insane. One of the most general fears in the world is that of the unknown; we as children hate the darkness because we can’t be sure of what lurks within. It’s even scarier when the unknown is masked to deliberately obfuscate its humanity. This is what makes some art so intentionally disturbing, when the human element is stripped away. You could imagine it having burbled up from the … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Tool – Musical Bête Noire Makes Good (A Reflection in Six Parts)

Artist Spotlight courtesy of The Prighlofone So it’s unlikely I’m the best person to do a full-on biography of Tonedeff. I have this anxiety that all I’ll do is basically rehash his Wikipedia page, although I have used it as a helpful source whenever I forgot something important (see below) and not be able to shed light on who he is – after all, I’m not his biographer, merely a fan. And it’s been a long time since I wrote about music like this, so I have some rust to get rid of. Tonedeff is a rapper/singer/producer/pianist who has been … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Tonedeff

Michael Brecker was the Great Jazz Saxophonist of the 1990s and 2000s. (Sorry, Branford.) His stylistic and harmonic innovations have been studied by musicians for years, and the Internet is full of videos demonstrating how to replicate his sound, or featuring transcriptions of his most influential works. That “influential” tag almost doomed him to being one of those musicians whose fanbase consists mostly of other musicians—say, a Jaco Pastorius of the sax. It did not help that he played jazz, which is now little more than the withered stump of a limb amputated from the body of popular music decades … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Michael Brecker

I have noticed there isn’t many Avocadians from Central Europe, so I figured I will help you a bit with a musical coverage from beyond the pond. So without further introduction, this is a Polish band BOKKA: I chose the live version on purpose, as if to mimic the way I got to know this band. I had no idea who these artists are, I simply stumbled upon them during one of the Czech festivals a year ago. And I got blown away. Atmosphere is simply the biggest selling point of this band. Their singer comes to stage, approaches a keyboard … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: BOKKA

Good afternoon/morning/evening. I’d like to talk about one of the first cool bands I got into, and got into ,at least at first , because they were cool Look at them in that video. Dean Garcia just looking both insouciant and rocky, Toni Halliday with eyes that could persuade a priest to kick in a stained glass window. I was 14 when ‘Horror Head’ came out and I wanted to be That. I bought my first issue of ‘Select’ music magazine because they were on the cover and then read it religiously for years. I bought the Horror Head EP on vinyl … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Curve

Below is a collection of phrases used by reviewers to describe Eleni Mandell and her music: “quirky Los Angeles torch singer” New Yorker, 3-5-09 “exudes a nocturnal, beat-poet, wry, avant-garde veneer” – AllMusic, 2002 “mellifluous chanteuse voice” – American Songwriter, 1-30-14 “BEST ROCK/POP SONGWRITER/COMPOSER [tie]: Eleni Mandell, Elliott Smith” – LA Weekly Music Awards, 2003 “Pinning one label onto Eleni is not easy and would not really help anyone.” – Exclaim.ca, 2-28-01 Her first record, 1998’s Wishbone, was produced by Jon Brion and Brian Kehew, before Fiona Apple priced them out of the indie market. It may wear Mandell’s Tom Waits influence … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Eleni Mandell

I first heard Band of Horses when watching, of all things, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. The movie, which is actually relatively charming by the way (and cowritten by one of the best modern YA writers, David Levithan), uses the song Our Swords. I instantly fell deeply in love with the band and with Ben Bridwell’s unique, clear voice. The music itself fits right into the indie rock/southern rock genre, with songs ranging from melancholy and mournful to twangy and rollicking. A unique feature of the band for me is that there is one song on every album of theirs … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Band of Horses – The General Specific As to Why Band of Horses is So Great

Yeah, that’s right. You get a second Artist Spotlight today. I was gong to push this back to tomorrow, but it was way too much work to re-edit this in preparation to post it so it is not an absolute mess. If I don’t have the patience to do that now, I definitely will not have the patience to do it tomorrow. I am not much of a metal guy. I can enjoy individual metal songs here and there from various subgenres, but nothing that I would listen to unless prompted every so often. Most of the metal-like acts that … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Boris – …why always Boris?

Electro swing traces its origins back to the 1990s, with bands like Doop and Jurassic 5 experimenting with swing in hip hop, house and EDM. It wasn’t until the late 00’s that the sound began to truly become its own genre. Caravan Palace’s appearance on the scene in 2007 in France at their first festival, the Django Reinhardt Jazz Festival began to cement the sound of electro swing from an experiment to a style. Arnaud Vial, Charles Delaporte and Hugues Payen began as a trio with a passion for swing, playing guitar, double bass and violin respectively. It’s rumored that … Continue reading Artist Spotlight: Caravan Palace – This New Music Really Swings