Black Swan Songs

As tempting as it is to purchase the vinyl 12″ remix singles that Radiohead has been releasing this summer, BlackSwanSongs is going to wait until October 10 when we’ll be able to stream all of them on Spotify. (The collected remixes will be released as TKOL RMX 1234567 on October 10 in the UK and on October 11 in North America.)

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Francis Ford Coppola pays the bills with his day-job: making wine. Photo via Grazia Magazine

In a recent interview, auteur film director Francis Ford Coppola alludes to a future where the  intersection of art and commerce resembles our past more than it does the present.

Interviewer Ariston Anderson asked, “How does an aspiring artist bridge the gap between distribution and commerce?”

We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.

This idea of Metallica or some rock n’ roll singer being rich, that’s not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to  make money?
- Francis Ford Coppola

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Although Weezer’s last 3 or so records have been big, silly pop radio affairs, the first 2 albums - Weezer (The Blue Album) and Pinkerton – are legendary. And frontman Rivers Cuomo – Harvard grad – has always been very smart concerning his good taste.

Recently Cuomo took the time to remind us all about how good his taste is by having his band learn a near note-for-note cover of Radiohead’s epic from OK Computer, the now-classic Paranoid Android.

Cover bands with poor chops the world-over are weeping.

…meaning Adult Contemporary.

We love Death Cab for Cutie at BlackSwanSongs.com. Probably seen them play live about 8-10 times. Following their history for so long is how we’ve noticed their fandom and marketing move from indie rockers, to teens during their The O.C. plot point days, to Adult Contemporary radio format-listening VH1 Storytellers viewers.

And for y’all aging hipsters who will be at home attending to newborns and young children this evening, tune in to VH1 at 10 p.m. central time zone.

And don’t get it twisted. We realize that Death Cab are aging into adults quite gracefully. After all, we can’t all rock-out with the verve of adolescence well into our 60s like The Rolling Stones.

An old photographer trick: show the tiny baby hand or foot next to a full-sized person.

Since fellow Austinite auteur Terrance Malick doesn’t do press, Brad Pitt is making the interview circles at Cannes this week. The old grey lady posted some insightful audio clips of Pitt answering questions about what it was like to work with Malick…and what the film means.

A few friends worked on this film. Everything I’ve heard and seen of TREE OF LIFE reveals Malick in his finest form. Looking forward to watching this autobiographical meditation.

Ep. 212: May 6, 2011 – Overtime (extra footage from last night’s show which appears on HBO.com)

Episode 212 last night was the first time that Maher used the entire hour on one topic: President Obama’s targeted take-down of Osama Bin Laden. Maher uses comedy to reveal truths that the majority of Americans would rather not hear and don’t want to know.

Knowledge is power…and Maher’s Richard Pryor-meets-the Smother’s Brothers brand of humor paved the way for both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Maher deserves a lot more credit than he receives. Last night he even rolled tape from one of his previous shows where guest CNN’s Christiane Amanpour revealed that Bin Laden was living in a mansion in Pakistan more than 2 years ago.

A great report – created by one of Austin’s only African American TV reporters, Shelton Green – about why Bob “the mayor of 6th street” Woody really closed a few of his businesses during the Texas Relays weekend.

On the new RACE and the Relays Facebook page created by Victory Grill owner Clifford Gillard, someone noted how this issue might receive more attention if all of the black athletes on the UT football and basketball team decided they no longer felt welcome in Austin. The city would likely accelerate discussions concerning race relations and gentrification mighty, mighty quick.

I’m so thankful that Green reported this story because the great majority of Austin media outlets ignored the hard questions about race relations in Austin. And the hypocrisy of why a business owner would board up and close up bars on one of 6th street’s busiest weekends of the year when African American families, college students and teens travel from all over Texas and North America to visit “the live music capital of the world.”

Ironically you can interpret that headline several different ways in regards to BlackSwanSongs.com.

We had some down time this weekend. The new WordPress 3.1 install didn’t sit pretty with my servers…until today.

Anyways, your favorite writer that spends more time playing music than writing – that would be me for the uninitiated – is back up in it.

Probably the third interpretation of Down for A Day includes the fact that I was so sick during South by Southwest Music Conference, I only purposefully got to see 2 bands play: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Kanye West (and friends).

You can read my Kanye review in the Austin American-Statesman.

And I shot a little video of the Pains… instore at Waterloo Records. You can check that below:

Thurston Moore mid-solo!, originally uploaded by Black Swan Songs.

As we go through the BlackSwanSongs archives, we keep finding little gems hidden in the dark corners.

Hopefully these rediscovered gems – like this photo of Thurston Moore – and many short stories will shape themselves into a book prior to the year’s end.

Link to Sen. Yee’s petition

Join BlackSwanSongs.com in signing the petition started by California state senator Leland Yee calling for companies like Domino’s Pizza to stop advertising on the radio show of the ignorance-mongering pill addict, Rush Limbaugh.

The shock jock recently mockingly disrespected all Asian people by ignorantly imitating the President of China.

Editor’s note: See the comments section for a response from Domino’s Pizza.