Music, musings and miscellanea

I know the music industry is quickly going down the tubes, but you’d think someone would step in figure out a way to monetize MTV and MuchMusic’s massive archives of interviews and performances. Or maybe I’m just searching for something I lost years ago (ie: my youth).

Like my previous posts a couple weeks back, I found this old concert on YouTube with little trouble. There are lots of live Nirvana boots floating around, but this has good quality picture and sound and it’s from the In Utero tour that featured former Germs and future Foo Fighter guitarist Pat Smear with the band.

The show took place on December 13, 1993 and MTV aired it on New Year’s Eve. There’s a new boot of the show floating around called Feels Like the First Time with a bunch of other live-to-air stuff tacked on the end.

Last year, Dundas, ON rockers the Dirty Nil dropped the pretty rad single “Fuckin’ Up Young” backed by the equally awesome “Verona Lung.”

Now, after impressing with appearances at Canadian Music Week and NXNE,  the boys are back with a new 4-track summer mixtape, which they’re offering up for free via their Bandcamp page.

The mixtape includes the aforementioned “Fuckin’ Up Young,” for which they shot a video which you can watch below. It also includes three new tracks.

In the press release for the mix, the band blame “drinking, playing shows, shooting guns, blowing shit up, breaking limbs, recording, skating, fireworks, drinking, eating french fries, forgetting things, movies, fighting each other, rock n roll, going to shows, and drinking” as the reasons behind the long gap between releases. Seems reasonable to me.

The mix is only available until Monday, September 24, after which it will “be gone forever.” The band’s next seven-inch drops the next day, September 25.

The band leave us with the parting words: “Remember to play the songs as LOUD as humanly possible!” Natch.

This review originally appeared at Exclaim.ca

Second time around, Vancouver, BC duo Japandroids come out swinging, creating a record that’s harder, better, faster and stronger than their excellent debut, 2009′s Post Nothing.

Anyone expecting sweeping changes to the duo’s sound – big anthems filtered through Hüsker Dü’s New Day Rising - will be disappointed, as the record lives up to its title, delivering pedal to the metal rock throughout its eight tracks. However, they’d also be missing the point – one listen to barnstorming first single “The House that Heaven Built” and it’s clear that Japandroids aren’t interested in crafting artful soundscapes. Rather, they focus on walls of guitar and big sing-alongs.

A return to the Hive Creative Labs, with producer Jesse Gander, ensures that the band’s second record won’t stray too far from their first, but their songwriting has improved. Where Brian King used to rely on repeated mantras to get his lyrical ideas across,Celebration Rock sees the singer/guitarist fleshing out his notions, as he does on “Younger Us,” which first appeared as part of the act’s seven-inch series back in 2010.

Bookended by crackling fireworks,Celebration Rock is Japandroids’ declaration that they’re here for a good time. Let’s hope they’re here for a long time as well.

I totally just stole this from the fine folks over at the Broken Speaker (who in turn got it from a Music Nova Scotia employee’s Twitter feed), but this really sums up what we’ve got to deal with up here in Canada when it comes to air travel. I think we can all sympathize with PEI’s Paper Lions on this one.