Visions of the Unexcused

episode 24 - The Summer Begins

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE

There consistently seems to be something special about the first few weeks after Memorial Day. I understand it's supposed to be the official beginning of summer and all, I get that, however it seems to possess something a bit more then that. Maybe even teetering on the edge of magical...

So I urge you to please enjoy the freshly minted trees that are in bloom now, and maybe take a second to breathe it all in, because from looking around, these are some mighty good times to be alive.

--------------------------

In other related Visions news, I should have the audio player on the upper right finalized very shortly with all episodes, newest to oldest. Hope to see a lot of you around this summer, cheers.

*****
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a) have iTunes installed
b) have it open
c) click the above link
d) listen to good music
*****

episode 23 - DJ Mint Pillow

Thursday - 03/19/09

Friday - 03/20/09

Saturday - 03/21/09

Sunday - 03/22/09

CLICK HERE FOR ALL PHOTOS

 

My SXSW adventure started off on a little bit of a sour note the night before I left. For those of you who know me know that I have a mortal fear of flying, and of course while watching ‘Lost’ on Wednesday night they opened with a 10 minute high impact intense plane crash scene. Not awesome. I numbed my senses with Dale’s to ease the pain, however my packing was impacted with that, and I now have no charger for my Dell (among other things) so it must be used with extreme caution and tact. Damn you MacBookPro for breaking.

The flight’s were pretty uneventful and upon landing in Austin we were greeted with 80 degree weather and a lot of anticipation, and nothing thus far has been let down. This city is just amazing, and vibe that surrounds during the blur of what this long weekend will become is a great one. We picked up our badges after checking into the Radisson and then went off to explore the glory of Sixth Street. Sixth Street is what Bourbon Street would look like if it was filled with music freaks instead of frat boys. It’s amazing, and people are definitely dressed to impressed, and the line between performer and participant is so blurred corrective lenses wouldn’t even help.

We grabbed some amazing Texas BBQ at Stubbs and then walked around a bit and people watched, as we prepared for the night of music ahead. We ended up going to Rusty Spurs at 8:30pm and caught the end of local Josh Tatum’s set which was a mix of jock rock and southern hospitality. Dude could throw down on the guitar though, and his energy was high. Next up was the reason we were there, A Classic Education.

This six piece from Italy has been played on a few podcasts and I was stoked to be able to see them play live. Their sound seems passionately intelligent, and they put on a great show. They played some compelling new songs along with a cover of a French 60’s song and also a song inspired by a Croatian island. Good stuff, and expect to hear more from these guys, they’re too good to be ignored.

Next up was Sgt. Dunbar & the Hobo Band with their twisted blend of circus box car folk rock. This Albany group is just plain fun, and they seem more like family then band mates. All along while listening to them on my iPod I thought they employed the use of a theroman in their songs, but all along it was a saw….wow. They switched instruments from banjo, saw, horn, guitar, etc at an incestual pace and ended with a sweet sit down sing along.

After some shenanigans with local Texans on Sixth Street we caught Asteroid Galaxy of iTunes commercial fame, but don’t let the overplay of that song fool you, this band is funky as hell, and the female lead singer is a siren up on stage. Very captivating. There was some slight sound trouble but they plowed through and won the crowd over.

From there we went over to Emo’s to see Boston’s very own Passion Pit which for us was the most hyped show of the night. We had to wait in line even with our badges and once in were not disappointed. The lead singer’s possessive voice was captivating and the Roland’s they used with disco beat drums swooned the crowd over and had the whole place jumping, screaming, and dancing. Looking back at my notes I wrote, “12:13am – had to wait in line but there’s a great vibe in here, these guys are hotter then a pistol right now, go boston.”

Don’t know if I keep up the updates like this, but I have 3+ days left of nights like this left, but if following me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/digital_derek) you can get my real time updates. What I will say is this, if you have heard anything negative about SXSW don’t believe the hype, it’s amazing, and trust me, you wish you were here if you’re not. Endless music, amazing food, and good people, count me in. More later. Huzzah.

High Fidelity is the obvious inspiration for this episode, and it poses one of my top five favorite music questions of all time.

What are the best opening track songs of all time?

It’s almost an impossible question to answer, and because of this, it’s one I didn’t try to answer fully. This episode is the shortest podcast yet for Visions of the Unexcused, and for good reason. I wanted this podcast to not appear any more forced then it already may be. Mixing together numerous first tracks was a little more challenging then I expected. But it always is isn’t it?

Consider these eight songs some of my finalists, but certainly not THE finalists. Some notable songs that are finalists, but didn’t make the cut for one reason or another are (in no order):

- Gimme Shelter
- Box of Rain
- Space Oddity
- Bring Da Ruckus
- Summer Babe
- Like a Rolling Stone
- Toy in the Attic
- Liquid Swords
- All Along the Watchtower
- Whole Lotta Love

As you can see the list can span all over the place from all sorts of time periods. In the eight songs I selected I’ve managed to represent the 60’s - 70’s - 80’s - 90’s & 00’s which I think seems about right. I didn’t bend the genre in the cast too much for cohesive sake. We start of fairly aggressive, however I tried to pull it back some, to have it end on somewhat of a whisper.

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

This is pure genius, absolutely hilarious.

Justin Vernon performs at the Wilbur Theater last night. Click here for more pics.

Bon Iver performed at the Wilbur Theater last night and it was an enjoyable show despite my location. I didn’t realize that my seats were general admission and this left me standing in the back of the theater which was, well, a little cramped. The view wasn’t that bad once you found a steady seam to watch the action through, however there was an overhang just above my head that seemed to compromise the sound a bit. I found this a little odd since I was standing right next to soundboard, and the overall sound did seem a little too aggressive given the nature of Bon Iver’s music. It was almost as if the gain was turned a little too far to the right, however, overall the sound wasn’t too bad; it was just questionable at times. This was my first time seeing a show at the Wilbur Theater, and I obviously wasn’t too thrilled with the set-up from my vantage point, but I’m sure seeing a show with actual seats will be needed for me to get a proper assessment on the venue.

Aside from my initial disappointment in my physical location, I was thoroughly pleased with the performance of Justin Vernon and his band mates. I was really curious to see how “For Emma, Forever Ago” would translate when on the stage, and the arrangements they chose were both surprising and refreshing. For example. they used three drums, one guitar, and all their voices when performing “Skinny Love” which I never would have predicted (and is viewable below).

All four musicians switched their instruments on almost every song, and their four part harmonies treaded in a beautifully confident manner. The haunting voice of Vernon was ever the focal point and is the true driver of all his songs. There’s a certain calming feel to his voice that really can pull you in, and I’d dare say his voice live is better then on record. The times when he’d step back just far enough away from the microphone made his wailing voice that much more heartbreaking and gorgeous.

I’ll be interested to see where Bon Iver progresses now that they’re critically acclaimed along with a rather strong following. You can only pull the whole, “I’m depressed and going to lock myself in a cabin for three months and make a hit record” card once, so we’ll see if Bon Iver becomes more of a band or solo effort in the New Year. What surprised me a bit was how charming and funny Vernon was on stage. He seemed confident enough to do his thing, but humble enough to not take any of it for granted. At one point during the show you found him lamenting on how his dream of making music for a living was being realized.

I picked up their new EP (available only on vinyl until 01/19/09) and it’s only their second record since “For Emma, Forever Ago”. I’ll have a review on their new songs in a day or two. They played all of them, and in the end that’d be my biggest complaint, their lack of a true catalog. The new songs were good though, and on “Baby’s” you saw Vernon on keys for the only time during the night.

For those of you curious on what Bon Iver's live shows like, please see the below performance a couple days ahead of mine on the David Letterman Show.

CLICK HERE to subscribe to podcast, be sure to have iTunes installed

As this strange year of 2008 creeps to a close, I leave you with one final podcast for the year. For the twenty-first episode I’ll be playing 21 songs from the 21 best albums of 2008, starting at number 21 and ending at numero uno. There’s something creepy about being a slave to music, you learn this innate need to constantly create lists, and this list is every music junkies high.

The podcast is the longest yet in VOE history, and it was a damn hard one to make. Just to cut down to 21 albums became a wrenching decision. Then the rules I set forth had to be followed to the best of my ability:

• The album had to be an LP not EP
• The album had to be released in 2008 (self release does not count if released 2 months prior to 2008)
• No matter what no Deerhoof was allowed to the party. I know I’m supposed to like “Offend Maggie”, but it only offended me. This almost made the cut a few times because I felt like it was supposed to, but lets face it, this album is a puddle of horse piss.
• Once an album is committed to number in Photoshop it was then unable to move in or out of the list.
• If you release your album in December it's a bad move, you’ll never make any lists, especially mine.
• It doesn’t matter if it didn’t dawn on me that Black Mountain actually released “Into The Future” in January 2008, all other numbers were already committed to Photoshop. Seriously though, this would have EASILY been top three for me, if not better. Love it. Buy It. Live it. But yeah...I forgot about it until it was too late, shit.

The best part of these lists is that you as the listener are never going to completely agree, but you may be surprised, or best yet, you may hear something new. Either way, it should be plenty fun.

So cheers to 2008, cheers to President Elect Obama, cheers to you, & cheers to yours.

You do have to listen to the podcast to see who made the grade, but to see who missed the cut, look no further then below.

Honorable Mentions:

• The National - The Virginia E.P.
• The Magnetic Fields - Distortion
• Sun Kill Moon - April
• TV On The Radio - Dear Science
• Nada Surf - Lucky
• Clark - Turning Dragon
•  Drive-By Truckers - Brighter Than Creations Dark
• No Age - Nouns
• Iron Elbows - Words

Well here we are, celebrating the one-year anniversary of the internet version of Visions of the Unexcused, and what a fun year it’s been. To commemorate this special day I’ve put something a little different together for your listening, er, visual AND listening pleasure.

I’ve turned Visions regular audio podcast into a video podcast, and I’m hopefully showing you what a real V.J.’s can be like. It’s basically what MTV would look like if I took over, and if they actually played music. The effect of everything has a very viral feel to it because all the videos on here I’ve ripped off the internet.

I think it works in the podcast’s favor though, it gives it a gritty homemade quality that’s hard to duplicate. It’s almost like a VHS mix tape passed down among friends. Here you’ll see some all-time best performance’s, all-time last performances, and great videos mixed with the Visions of the Unexcused twist you’ve come to be accustomed to. The bands presented here aren’t too shabby either.

This past year Visions of the Unexcused has served as more of a therapy for me then anything. V.O.E. originated at my college radio station, 90.9 WONY, and I used to tape all of my shows played there. Of course the biggest fan of these show’s and tape’s was none other then my Mother. She would wear those magnetic tapes thin, and all of a sudden she’d start having conversations with me about bands like Yo La Tengo and the Soft Boys. Unreal. and beyond cool.

Her love of life never ceased to amaze me, and three months before I started up Visions of the Unexcused again, she passed away due to cancer. It was, and still is at times, a very dark time for me. Her passing hit me hard, and I found a phenomenal amount of strength and solace (as always) in music, and specifically with the process of putting these podcasts together. Her mark is throughout every episode with song choices and thoughts. She most certainly wouldn’t have liked all the songs (specifically the one’s with swear words), but either way she would have been the biggest fan of the ‘cast, that’s for sure.

So here’s to her, here’s to you, and here’s to the magic of music. I know she’s listening/watching somewhere, and I’m honored that you feel compelled to do the same. Thanks for having fun with me, and I’ll be seeing you around.

Happy Birthday, Visions of the Unexcused.

Peace & Love.

DJ Digital-Derek

Vinyl Visions. (Visions of the Unexcused Illustration)

CLICK HERE to subscribe to podcast, be sure to have iTunes installed

Good things come to those who wait right? Write.

This has been my longest hiatus since starting back up Visions of the Unexcused. And you may ask yourself. "Is it a coincidence that this coincides with the pennant push and baseball playoffs?" I don't think so, but it must have been something that kept me at bay. Either way, here we are, and contrary to unpopular belief, Our visions are still unexcused, and we're going no where. The podcast turns one year old come November, and with that I have a "live" and "acoustic" show in the mix. There's also the time machine that will be episode 0 and is sure to be an artifact.

Stay tuned for those future casts, in the meantime we have episode 19. A little bit of old, a little bit of new. All wrapped in a two sided bundle of joy. So drop that needle, never mind the hay, and start that stack jack.

2009 SXSW Photos

Thursday - 03/19/09

Friday - 03/20/09

Saturday - 03/21/09

Sunday - 03/22/09

SXSW - 03/19/09 Re-Cap & Photos

CLICK HERE FOR ALL PHOTOS

 

My SXSW adventure started off on a little bit of a sour note the night before I left. For those of you who know me know that I have a mortal fear of flying, and of course while watching ‘Lost’ on Wednesday night they opened with a 10 minute high impact intense plane crash scene. Not awesome. I numbed my senses with Dale’s to ease the pain, however my packing was impacted with that, and I now have no charger for my Dell (among other things) so it must be used with extreme caution and tact. Damn you MacBookPro for breaking.

The flight’s were pretty uneventful and upon landing in Austin we were greeted with 80 degree weather and a lot of anticipation, and nothing thus far has been let down. This city is just amazing, and vibe that surrounds during the blur of what this long weekend will become is a great one. We picked up our badges after checking into the Radisson and then went off to explore the glory of Sixth Street. Sixth Street is what Bourbon Street would look like if it was filled with music freaks instead of frat boys. It’s amazing, and people are definitely dressed to impressed, and the line between performer and participant is so blurred corrective lenses wouldn’t even help.

We grabbed some amazing Texas BBQ at Stubbs and then walked around a bit and people watched, as we prepared for the night of music ahead. We ended up going to Rusty Spurs at 8:30pm and caught the end of local Josh Tatum’s set which was a mix of jock rock and southern hospitality. Dude could throw down on the guitar though, and his energy was high. Next up was the reason we were there, A Classic Education.

This six piece from Italy has been played on a few podcasts and I was stoked to be able to see them play live. Their sound seems passionately intelligent, and they put on a great show. They played some compelling new songs along with a cover of a French 60’s song and also a song inspired by a Croatian island. Good stuff, and expect to hear more from these guys, they’re too good to be ignored.

Next up was Sgt. Dunbar & the Hobo Band with their twisted blend of circus box car folk rock. This Albany group is just plain fun, and they seem more like family then band mates. All along while listening to them on my iPod I thought they employed the use of a theroman in their songs, but all along it was a saw….wow. They switched instruments from banjo, saw, horn, guitar, etc at an incestual pace and ended with a sweet sit down sing along.

After some shenanigans with local Texans on Sixth Street we caught Asteroid Galaxy of iTunes commercial fame, but don’t let the overplay of that song fool you, this band is funky as hell, and the female lead singer is a siren up on stage. Very captivating. There was some slight sound trouble but they plowed through and won the crowd over.

From there we went over to Emo’s to see Boston’s very own Passion Pit which for us was the most hyped show of the night. We had to wait in line even with our badges and once in were not disappointed. The lead singer’s possessive voice was captivating and the Roland’s they used with disco beat drums swooned the crowd over and had the whole place jumping, screaming, and dancing. Looking back at my notes I wrote, “12:13am – had to wait in line but there’s a great vibe in here, these guys are hotter then a pistol right now, go boston.”

Don’t know if I keep up the updates like this, but I have 3+ days left of nights like this left, but if following me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/digital_derek) you can get my real time updates. What I will say is this, if you have heard anything negative about SXSW don’t believe the hype, it’s amazing, and trust me, you wish you were here if you’re not. Endless music, amazing food, and good people, count me in. More later. Huzzah.

episode 22 - Track One, Side One

High Fidelity is the obvious inspiration for this episode, and it poses one of my top five favorite music questions of all time.

What are the best opening track songs of all time?

It’s almost an impossible question to answer, and because of this, it’s one I didn’t try to answer fully. This episode is the shortest podcast yet for Visions of the Unexcused, and for good reason. I wanted this podcast to not appear any more forced then it already may be. Mixing together numerous first tracks was a little more challenging then I expected. But it always is isn’t it?

Consider these eight songs some of my finalists, but certainly not THE finalists. Some notable songs that are finalists, but didn’t make the cut for one reason or another are (in no order):

- Gimme Shelter
- Box of Rain
- Space Oddity
- Bring Da Ruckus
- Summer Babe
- Like a Rolling Stone
- Toy in the Attic
- Liquid Swords
- All Along the Watchtower
- Whole Lotta Love

As you can see the list can span all over the place from all sorts of time periods. In the eight songs I selected I’ve managed to represent the 60’s - 70’s - 80’s - 90’s & 00’s which I think seems about right. I didn’t bend the genre in the cast too much for cohesive sake. We start of fairly aggressive, however I tried to pull it back some, to have it end on somewhat of a whisper.

Apple Unveils "New" MacBook Wheel

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

This is pure genius, absolutely hilarious.

Bon Iver - Wilbur Theater: Live Show Review

Justin Vernon performs at the Wilbur Theater last night. Click here for more pics.

Bon Iver performed at the Wilbur Theater last night and it was an enjoyable show despite my location. I didn’t realize that my seats were general admission and this left me standing in the back of the theater which was, well, a little cramped. The view wasn’t that bad once you found a steady seam to watch the action through, however there was an overhang just above my head that seemed to compromise the sound a bit. I found this a little odd since I was standing right next to soundboard, and the overall sound did seem a little too aggressive given the nature of Bon Iver’s music. It was almost as if the gain was turned a little too far to the right, however, overall the sound wasn’t too bad; it was just questionable at times. This was my first time seeing a show at the Wilbur Theater, and I obviously wasn’t too thrilled with the set-up from my vantage point, but I’m sure seeing a show with actual seats will be needed for me to get a proper assessment on the venue.

Aside from my initial disappointment in my physical location, I was thoroughly pleased with the performance of Justin Vernon and his band mates. I was really curious to see how “For Emma, Forever Ago” would translate when on the stage, and the arrangements they chose were both surprising and refreshing. For example. they used three drums, one guitar, and all their voices when performing “Skinny Love” which I never would have predicted (and is viewable below).

All four musicians switched their instruments on almost every song, and their four part harmonies treaded in a beautifully confident manner. The haunting voice of Vernon was ever the focal point and is the true driver of all his songs. There’s a certain calming feel to his voice that really can pull you in, and I’d dare say his voice live is better then on record. The times when he’d step back just far enough away from the microphone made his wailing voice that much more heartbreaking and gorgeous.

I’ll be interested to see where Bon Iver progresses now that they’re critically acclaimed along with a rather strong following. You can only pull the whole, “I’m depressed and going to lock myself in a cabin for three months and make a hit record” card once, so we’ll see if Bon Iver becomes more of a band or solo effort in the New Year. What surprised me a bit was how charming and funny Vernon was on stage. He seemed confident enough to do his thing, but humble enough to not take any of it for granted. At one point during the show you found him lamenting on how his dream of making music for a living was being realized.

I picked up their new EP (available only on vinyl until 01/19/09) and it’s only their second record since “For Emma, Forever Ago”. I’ll have a review on their new songs in a day or two. They played all of them, and in the end that’d be my biggest complaint, their lack of a true catalog. The new songs were good though, and on “Baby’s” you saw Vernon on keys for the only time during the night.

For those of you curious on what Bon Iver's live shows like, please see the below performance a couple days ahead of mine on the David Letterman Show.

See you on the other side of the year - Episode 21 the Best of 2008

CLICK HERE to subscribe to podcast, be sure to have iTunes installed

As this strange year of 2008 creeps to a close, I leave you with one final podcast for the year. For the twenty-first episode I’ll be playing 21 songs from the 21 best albums of 2008, starting at number 21 and ending at numero uno. There’s something creepy about being a slave to music, you learn this innate need to constantly create lists, and this list is every music junkies high.

The podcast is the longest yet in VOE history, and it was a damn hard one to make. Just to cut down to 21 albums became a wrenching decision. Then the rules I set forth had to be followed to the best of my ability:

• The album had to be an LP not EP
• The album had to be released in 2008 (self release does not count if released 2 months prior to 2008)
• No matter what no Deerhoof was allowed to the party. I know I’m supposed to like “Offend Maggie”, but it only offended me. This almost made the cut a few times because I felt like it was supposed to, but lets face it, this album is a puddle of horse piss.
• Once an album is committed to number in Photoshop it was then unable to move in or out of the list.
• If you release your album in December it's a bad move, you’ll never make any lists, especially mine.
• It doesn’t matter if it didn’t dawn on me that Black Mountain actually released “Into The Future” in January 2008, all other numbers were already committed to Photoshop. Seriously though, this would have EASILY been top three for me, if not better. Love it. Buy It. Live it. But yeah...I forgot about it until it was too late, shit.

The best part of these lists is that you as the listener are never going to completely agree, but you may be surprised, or best yet, you may hear something new. Either way, it should be plenty fun.

So cheers to 2008, cheers to President Elect Obama, cheers to you, & cheers to yours.

You do have to listen to the podcast to see who made the grade, but to see who missed the cut, look no further then below.

Honorable Mentions:

• The National - The Virginia E.P.
• The Magnetic Fields - Distortion
• Sun Kill Moon - April
• TV On The Radio - Dear Science
• Nada Surf - Lucky
• Clark - Turning Dragon
•  Drive-By Truckers - Brighter Than Creations Dark
• No Age - Nouns
• Iron Elbows - Words

episode 20 - happy birthday visions of the unexcused (i got you a video)

Well here we are, celebrating the one-year anniversary of the internet version of Visions of the Unexcused, and what a fun year it’s been. To commemorate this special day I’ve put something a little different together for your listening, er, visual AND listening pleasure.

I’ve turned Visions regular audio podcast into a video podcast, and I’m hopefully showing you what a real V.J.’s can be like. It’s basically what MTV would look like if I took over, and if they actually played music. The effect of everything has a very viral feel to it because all the videos on here I’ve ripped off the internet.

I think it works in the podcast’s favor though, it gives it a gritty homemade quality that’s hard to duplicate. It’s almost like a VHS mix tape passed down among friends. Here you’ll see some all-time best performance’s, all-time last performances, and great videos mixed with the Visions of the Unexcused twist you’ve come to be accustomed to. The bands presented here aren’t too shabby either.

This past year Visions of the Unexcused has served as more of a therapy for me then anything. V.O.E. originated at my college radio station, 90.9 WONY, and I used to tape all of my shows played there. Of course the biggest fan of these show’s and tape’s was none other then my Mother. She would wear those magnetic tapes thin, and all of a sudden she’d start having conversations with me about bands like Yo La Tengo and the Soft Boys. Unreal. and beyond cool.

Her love of life never ceased to amaze me, and three months before I started up Visions of the Unexcused again, she passed away due to cancer. It was, and still is at times, a very dark time for me. Her passing hit me hard, and I found a phenomenal amount of strength and solace (as always) in music, and specifically with the process of putting these podcasts together. Her mark is throughout every episode with song choices and thoughts. She most certainly wouldn’t have liked all the songs (specifically the one’s with swear words), but either way she would have been the biggest fan of the ‘cast, that’s for sure.

So here’s to her, here’s to you, and here’s to the magic of music. I know she’s listening/watching somewhere, and I’m honored that you feel compelled to do the same. Thanks for having fun with me, and I’ll be seeing you around.

Happy Birthday, Visions of the Unexcused.

Peace & Love.

DJ Digital-Derek

episode 19 - not gone, not forgotten

Vinyl Visions. (Visions of the Unexcused Illustration)

CLICK HERE to subscribe to podcast, be sure to have iTunes installed

Good things come to those who wait right? Write.

This has been my longest hiatus since starting back up Visions of the Unexcused. And you may ask yourself. "Is it a coincidence that this coincides with the pennant push and baseball playoffs?" I don't think so, but it must have been something that kept me at bay. Either way, here we are, and contrary to unpopular belief, Our visions are still unexcused, and we're going no where. The podcast turns one year old come November, and with that I have a "live" and "acoustic" show in the mix. There's also the time machine that will be episode 0 and is sure to be an artifact.

Stay tuned for those future casts, in the meantime we have episode 19. A little bit of old, a little bit of new. All wrapped in a two sided bundle of joy. So drop that needle, never mind the hay, and start that stack jack.