I recently discovered that live show taper extraordinaire Sloan Simpson has a blog, Southern Shelter, where he posts mp3 versions of his recordings (some video too). If there's a show of any consequence in Athens, GA, you can bet that Sloan is there with his rig, and he's garnered a reputation in the trading community for making some of the cleanest, warmest and best-sounding recordings around. Check out his blog for live shows by Athens stalwarts like Drive-By Truckers, Of Montreal, Elf Power, Vic Chesnutt and my old pal David Barbe, as well as sets by up-and-comers like The Summer Hymns and Now It's Overhead. My personal favorite: an October 5, 2006 show at the 40 Watt by Dave Marr that amounted more or less to a reunion of the late, great Star Room Boys. That is pure country bliss, friends.
The podcast at Salon's Audiofile this week is an interesting chat with too-nice-and-adorable-for-her-own-good Norah Jones, whose brand new record, Not Too Late, is the first one on which had a hand in writing every song. She's not offended by the term "background music," she'll have you know, because she listens to Tom Waits while she putters around the house.UPDATE: Norah talks to Jon Pareles of the New York Times as well.
The hugely-anticipated record by a certain 6-member band from Canada that a lot of the kids seem to be fond of has leaked onto the Internets, in its entirety, 2 months before it's release date. I'm just sayin'.
The new show streaming this week at Wolfgang's Vault -- which is still going strong notwithstanding a massive lawsuit filed by Led Zeppelin, The Doors and some other classic rock acts -- is Blondie at The Paradise Theatre in Boston on November 4, 1978. Decent enough, I guess, but not nearly as good as this one.
Finally, who can possibly resist pimping their iTunes set-up with a free plug-in, iConcertCalendar, that scans the artists in your library and generates a calendar of their upcoming shows in your area, complete with links to venue and opening act info. Works on both the Mac OSX and Windows versions of iTunes. How sweet is that? And did I mention it's FREE? (Via Stereogum)All that, and not a single mention of Wilco or Jeff Twee-- ah, crap.
