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Jason Tate

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I’m hoping that we can convince about 200 more of you to become supporters in the next few months, which will put us in a position that we will have full independence to operate this website for the foreseeable future. This will let me be able to focus more on content and bringing in new writers and voices, and continue to improve the forum experience and platform for everyone.

MxPx Launch Kickstarter for New Album

MxPx
Jason Tate

MxPx have launched a Kickstarter to help record their new album:

With this money, the bulk of it is going to be spent on prep and marketing. We intend to self release this record all around the world, not just North America, and to do that, we’re gonna need to advertise. We also have costs of hiring an engineer to record and mix our record, as well as the costs in fulfilling the perks in this here campaign.

This is the first time the band is working in the same place on an album since the Panic sessions. I’ve heard very good things about the batch of songs they’re working on.

Brian Fallon Talks With Dying Scene

Jason Tate

Brian Fallon sat down to talk with Dying Scene:

The problems we have in America right now are giant problems that are not easily fixed. But one thing I am behind is the people that are saying things about mental health and about talking. You know, you’re not a spoiled brat if you’re in a band to say “hey, my band got really famous and I’m not sure how to handle that and it’s kinda messing with my personal life and I’m developing anxiety disorders and depression. It’s not what I thought it was going to be.” You’re not being a whiny brat. What you’re doing is mismanaging your emotions. Or maybe – maybe – you have something wrong inside that it took this to come out. I probably had issues with anxiety my whole life and didn’t know it until the catalyst of the band getting huge.

Spotify Is Killing Song Titles

Jason Tate

Michael Tauberg, writing on Medium:

With the death of record stores, radio, and to a lesser extent, iTunes, the unit of music delivered to customers has shrunk. From the album, to the song, to now, the stream, music has been disentangled from it’s larger context. As such, we would expect that the names of albums and songs are uncorrelated to their musical success. One way to measure this is the number of unique words in a song title. Although there does appear to be an art to naming a hit song (or say book), the longer tail of music means more random song titles chosen by artists instead of record executives.

An interesting dive into music data.

Brian Fallon Is Just Getting Comfortable

Brian Fallon
Jason Tate

Lauren O’Neill, writing at Noisey, sits down with Brian Fallon:

He was conscious, he seems keen to say, of the expectation that weighs on an artist making their second album: “When you do a second record, you have to sort of firm up what you’re gonna do. You’ve gotta be like, ‘Am I doing this kind of music? Or am I doing this kind of music?’” He explains further: “The first record that people do, you get a little leeway. You get like, ‘Oh! He tried some weird stuff, that’s cool.’ But then with the next one they’ve expected you to figure it out.”

How Losing Religion Saved Underoath

Underoath
Jason Tate

Underoath sat down with Revolver to talk about their upcoming album:

“One of the best things we ever did was when we agreed not to be a Christian band anymore,” Chamberlain tells Revolver. “And when we made this record the [phrase], ‘that’s not Underoath enough,’ was not allowed to be said because those two things fucking ruined our band in the first place.”

Looking at Wonder Years B-Sides

Jason Tate

Thomas Nassiff dives into The Wonder Years b-sides over on his blog:

This list is for little more than my own amusement, but I hope that some TWY fan out there takes a look at this and stumbles upon an Actual B-Side or Bonus Track that they never knew existed, and they turn out to love it. The fun thing, too, about Rare Songs, is that they aren’t just for die-hard fans anymore. Back in The Olde Days, you could only find these tracks if you were super-concerned with tracking down every shred of a band’s catalog; the Internet has made it much easier to find this stuff now, to the point where seeing any of these songs played at a Wonder Years show, regardless of when they were released, will usually result in most of the crowd being able to sing along.

Metallica Up to Number Two on the Charts

Jason Tate

Metallica’s Hardwired… To Self-Destruct hits number two on the charts this week:

At No. 2 on the new Billboard 200, Metallica’s Hardwired… To Self-Destruct roars 42-2 with 65,000 units (up 413 percent), of which 63,000 were in traditional album sales (up 480 percent). The former No. 1 set zooms back up the list following sales generated from a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer for the next U.S./Canadian leg of the band’s WorldWired Tour.

Mike D of the Beastie Boys Featured in Vulture

Beastie Boys
Jason Tate

David Marchese, writing for Vulture:

The filters are still there, though. They’re just different. When I was 15, getting into the Clash exposed me to reggae. I’d see that they covered a song by Junior Murvin or that they had a single produced by Lee Perry and dig from there. My younger son does the same thing but in newer ways. He comes home from school in Bali and starts to make a song using his laptop, and he’s looking up what samples Kanye used and that opens the door for him to dig. The tools he has are immediate. He’s not having to go out. It’s so different from how I did it.