There seems to be a sudden increase in really really good bands in the UK. Everyone seems to have knocked the quality up a notch in the last year and frequently it's the local support band that comes out of a gig smelling of roses.
Of course, it's still equally hard for them to make any impression on the world in any way that would allow their names to crop up on international forums like this.
So I guess come to the UK and go to loads of shitty little toilet gigs for a month, because we sure as hell can't afford a $4000 work visa to come to you!

tmidgett wrote:I just bought my first 'new release' in maybe 9mos the other day.

Only it came out in 2004.

I heard this song on the radio, and I thought, shit, that's good. And I waited until the DJ told me that it was the Sonnets.

Eventually, I got around to buying the record with this song.

The record is called Mystery Girl, and the song is called "The Sea."

Turns out they are from Chicago, and they have been from Chicago for 14yrs!! Ha ha! This is almost as old as Silkworm!

yes, i know this band. i know vee, the lead guy. chuck of club foot is a former member as well. just caught their show at double door last month and thoroughly enjoyed it. you can check out vee's musical stylings with live band karaoke as well. he's a member of the karaoke dokies.

scott wrote:I assumed Four-Tet is like Quatre-Tete, a really stupid band name making a play on the word "forehead". Kinda like Cabeza Fria was doing back in the 90's with "head cold".

scott, i believe it's "cold head" not "head cold." i recall mita from the band saying it was a play on "cold beer." although, i don't know a thing about spanish so i'm not 100% on that.

nevertheless, who are you to judge bands who use a play on words as their name? ...you played in a band called fakir! (yep, i'm back and i'm all fired up!!)

Yes, music sucks now. It reached it's pinnacle with Paula Abdul's "cold hearted snake" song. If you don't like it, take it up with Jesus.

dipshit jigaboo wrote:Yes, music sucks now. It reached it's pinnacle with Paula Abdul's "cold hearted snake" song. If you don't like it, take it up with Jesus.

I might get the last part of that on a shirt!

dipshit jigaboo wrote:"cold hearted snake"

...and this part on my trousers.

Here's my experience:

Younger people tend to know more about lots of new music, because so many of their social cues are lined up around it. It's gives them a common language, shared experience and a quick way to cluster towards others who like similar things. In that type of environment, it's easy to find out about new things because it's so much of what people are paying attention to.

As people get older, they begin to spend their time in different ways. Their (usually smaller) social network is not so intently focused on music, and many of the functions that music served in their social network are now served by something else. Finding out about new music becomes harder for people when they are the only one in their social network to do so.

So as you get older, you have to work harder to find out about new things. The best resource I've found for this is the [url=http:///www.aquariusrecords.org]Aquarius Records[/url] mailing list. Sign up for this and read it through every two weeks. Listen to sound clips of stuff that interests you. And then buy from them. The people who run it are knowledgable, friendly and very enthusiastic about a wide, wide variety of things coming out.

I probably buy 50 records a year from them. 3/4 of these I've never heard of before. 1/2 the records I get end up being really, really good. So that's 18 records every year that I get that I would not have known about otherwise that are really good.

And none of them are the Arcade Fire or the Fiery Furnaces. Really, you can do better than that.

= Justin

May I just say this to anyone in the UK - http://www.chinchillaweb.co.uk is the site for the annual Chinchillafest. It's rammed with great bands and should perk the enthusiasm of even the most cynical among us (i.e. me, DRC, Lisa)

honeyisfunny wrote:May I just say this to anyone in the UK - http://www.chinchillaweb.co.uk is the site for the annual Chinchillafest. It's rammed with great bands and should perk the enthusiasm of even the most cynical among us (i.e. me, DRC, Lisa)

quite..ooh i am rather excited!

and to people in the uk again, there is this 'upmarket/more foreign' version...

http://www.capsule.org.uk/Coming_Up/139.aspx

Just heard a couple songs off the new "Just a Fire" record. I should be getting my copy in a couple of days.
A really great band that nobody cares about.