Photo courtesy of Carolyn Sloss
Just this past Saturday, the biopic I Saw the Light was presented at the Belcourt Theatre. The movie follows the life of famed country music star Hank Williams from his marriage to his first wife Audrey through his untimely death in the back of his car on his way to perform in Canton, OH. Given the iconic status Hank Williams occupies in the realm of country music it is no surprise that I Saw the Light was screened here, in the home of country.
It’s taken a while for this post to come to fruition but it’s finally here. After struggling to find Ben’s email address and then communicating online from different sides of the Pacific Ocean, I’ve ultimately compiled sufficient information to write this article. Keep reading to find out more about Ben Fensterheim’s show “But Why?”
The south is strange and everyone’s always known it. Maybe that’s why some of the best music has always bubbled up from it. People have their own ways of dealing with things, which isn’t exclusive to the south of course, but southern people don’t like change, as the cliché goes. As music generally does, southern music takes on a lot of the characteristics of the environment it’s created in. Think of the twang of old country, the sparse emptiness that can stand in for anything from countryside desolation to sheer heartbreak. Screwed and chopped rap, pitched to the point where every lazy bass rattle thumps with its own measured certainty. The unabashed euphoria of D4L, of New Orleans bounce music, of Soulja Boy and the great tradition of the barbecue. There’s a reason NYC rappers shunned melody in rap for so long while Future and Young Thug practically warbled their way into other dimensions. The south is aware of its strangeness, and it doesn’t make amends of concessions for it.
The title says it all – we are hosting a ticket giveaway for the Bo Burnham show at the War Memorial Auditorium on Monday, October 19! This is right after…
On Thursday afternoon we were graced by a lovely in-studio performance with Australian folk duo, Oh Pep! Bringing a sweet Aussie attitude and an affinity for fried avocado tacos to the WRVU airwaves, Olivia Hally and Pepita Emmerichs talked their upcoming album, adventures touring and their three, foot-stomping shows at Nashville’s Americana Festival. They broke down their carefully woven tracks and instead used just a guitar and fiddle/violin.
Lattes, candles, lotions and liquor—as soon as the leaves begin to change, store shelves are mercilessly spiced with the flavors of fall, and we’re all hit with the pumpkin plague, ready or not. To help make the farewell to summer less jarring, I’ve created a playlist packed with autumn aesthetics that is certain to lull you into apple-cider serenity for the next three months—or at least the next 89 minutes.
In a twitter blur, the world became aware of an approaching collaborative album between Future and Drake, two rappers who have been collectively running this year. Now, it’s important to note the considerable difference in each rapper’s dominance this year. Future has put in a decidedly inhuman season of being literally the best rapper today whose not named Jeffrey Williams. Seriously if you don’t know by now, you need to listen to the canon (56 Nights, DS2, Beast Mode, Monster). Drake has also been doing well in his own lane, releasing an album (IYRTITL), questionably silencing ghostwriter allegations, and a few songs and remixes here and there. I’m going to come clean though, I haven’t paid much attention to Drake of late, simply because Future and Young Thug exist. But, regardless, Drake, well he’s out here.
Just kidding, technically it’s not fall until Wednesday. It’s pretty darn close though.
So here’s the deal: in October of last year Taylor Swift released her most recent album, 1989. It was a runaway success, selling the greatest number of albums in its first week since The Eminem Show released in 2002 according to MTV. Swift has since gone on an incredibly successful tour which will be swinging by Nashville on the 25th. I’d remind all Taylor Swift fans to buy tickets, but let’s face it-at this point they’re over $200 and you probably should have picked them up months ago. However, I’m not here to write about Swift’s upcoming show. Instead, I want to talk about the recent 1989 cover craze.
Winners of WRVU’s 2014 Album of the Year Contest, rap duo Run the Jewels has been no stranger to critical acclaim since the release of Run the Jewels 2 last year. Killer Mike and El-P have not dropped any new material since then, but are set to release a remix album sometime in September. Meow the Jewels, the idiosyncratic remix of Run the Jewels 2 fans have been waiting months to listen to, will feature the duo rapping their lyrics over cat noises. Just this week, Run the Jewels gave a little sneak-peak into the album with “Oh My Darling Don’t Meow”, a play on “Oh My Darling Don’t Cry”.
Maybe you’ve had the pleasure of knowing Bradley Wheaton. You might be aware that he’s a junior in Arts & Sciences, studying Sociology. What you may not know is that Bradley is the creator and host of WRVU’s show Without Vocals. If you haven’t tuned in yet, get yourself in the mood by imagining this:
You’re driving alone through west Texas, heating lightning in the distance. 300 miles of nothing…somewhere between despair and unseen beauty, an epic expression of soul.
Now, Bradley’s job is to provide a soundtrack for your lonely voyage – and he knows exactly how.
Although I had heard of Best Coast prior to coming to college, ironically, it wasn’t until I left the west coast that I started to listen to them. Whether it was an actual appreciation for their music or just the nostalgia I felt about my Southern California hometown that piqued my interest, I do not know. Best Coast is technically a duo between lead singer/guitarist Bethany Cosentino and guitarist Bobb Bruno with a few other band members brought in seemingly just for touring. Formed in Los Angeles in 2009, almost every other song they make is an ode to the stereotypical Southern California lifestyle.
Fall is almost here and we have nearly been in school for a month. As we come to terms with all this change, the staff writers here at WRVU have decided to give one last ode to the albums we were jamming to on those bygone summer nights. In case you missed it, here are some albums we had our turn to enjoy and would now like to share with you.
At 3pm yesterday, I turned in the final assignment of my college career. Partially to celebrate and partially to distract myself from the terror of facing the adult world, I headed over to Exit/In with my friend Sparling to see Smallpools rock the joint. My sister loves the band and had turned me on to their music, so making her jealous was another great reason to go to the show.
We arrived at 7:30 to find the half-full floor dominated by people without the over-21 hand stamps. Any illusion I had of being able to escape feeling old vanished immediately. Pitying the venue for what promised to be a slow night of alcohol sales, I grabbed a Shiner Bock and snagged a spot in the crowd just behind a couple of girls taking selfies. Naturally, Sparling and I photobombed as many as we could.
If you’re up for seemingly no reason at all at 3AM or any approximate time, you probably should be listening to Oakland rap duo Main Attrakionz. If it’s 3AM (or around that time) and you’ve already made the necessary and vital steps of queuing up some Main Attrakionz tracks, you should especially give attention to the Main Attrakionz tracks that feature them rapping over looped-out masterpiece beats from Bay Area production duo Friendzone. If you’ve made all these steps then why not make the easy effort and commit to listening to only Main Attrakionz and Friendzone for the rest of your natural life?
As the school years comes to an end and finals begin to ramp up, it’s natural to think about everything other than academic responsibilities at hand. Naturally, it’s a time to dwell on memories, friendships, and, of course, our time here at WRVU. For me, this last blog post has got me thinking. While it’s incredibly sad I’ll be missing all my WRVU goings on for the next eight months, I’m beyond amazed at all the new stuff that’s been released in 2015.
As an ode to WRVU and this semester, I’ll be highlighting my ten favorite tunes of the semester, starting from the bottom (because Drake). If you happen to like electronica, check out some of the dopest of beats from early 2015 below.
“TIDAL for all.” That’s the slogan for Jay Z’s new high-fidelity music streaming service, Tidal. But with a $19.99 a month service fee, it probably isn’t for everyone, especially those…
Since the dawn of the digital age, the music industry has succumb to a new form of shoplifting – online piracy. While pirating music is not a new concept along with the Internet, downloading music without paying for it is occurring at a much greater magnitude than the pre-internet days. As an Economics major, I wonder how much this phenomenon affects the music industry. So I ask the question: Should you really be torrenting?
Even though I like to pretend I’m a music aficionado, let’s face it: I seriously have no idea what’s going on when it comes to titling remixes. Sure, I have every song in my iTunes library labeled to a tee. I take care to list who’s featured on a track, who produced it, what label it’s on (if any), and most importantly, what the artist labeled the track. As a result of this OCD tendency combined with my love for all things electronica, my music catalog is brimming with words like “refix,” “original mix,” and “flip.” Despite this need for classifying these songs with various descriptors, I have no clue what most of these words actually mean. I’m sure many of you guys are in the same boat. So, after a few days of digging on Reddit and a few Google searches, let’s see if it’s possible to clear up some of this jargon.
One of the primary differences between tracks is length. Each different length has a different name. In a sense, every song in its purest form is an original mix, but some songs come in multiple versions. Although it seems intuitive, it’s still helpful to clarify that original mix denotes the first complete mix by the original artist. Simply put, it’s a song by an artist with no other changes; it can be of any length. If an artist prefers the track to be longer, he or she will produce an extended mix. In the extended mix, the track usually includes a longer intro and outro and is longer than the original mix. This type of mix is how the original artist imagines a song without time constraints — usually too long for radio. The last type of mix in this temporal category is the radio edit. In the radio edit, expletives are taken out and the length of the track is cut between 3 and 5 minutes in length (but usually closest to the three minute mark). Intros and outros that may bore radio listeners and take up valuable advertisement time are cut down.
Just last week, pop star Taylor Swift bought up two new websites: TaylorSwift.porn and TaylorSwift.adult. I doubt it will surprise many of you to hear that neither of these sites will be utilized for their implied purpose. Instead, this is another instance of “domain squatting”, where an individual purchases a domain name either with the intent to profit off of a large amount of ads placed on a legitimate-sounding domain, or in this instance to prevent others from having the domain title. With Swift’s high degree of visibility, it was probably a good PR move. Not all celebrities have been that lucky, however.
Upon finding out that Tame Impala had released a new single for their upcoming album (whose name remains unknown), I just had to jump at the chance to see them (again) on their new tour. A friend asked me, how did you know about Tame Impala so early on? I thought about it for a little bit until the light bulb went off on my head. My answer was: Modular People.
As many of you may already be aware, a landmark decision was made this past Tuesday when artists Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams lost a lawsuit to the estate of Marvin Gaye regarding copyright infringement. According to the verdict of the case, the hit song “Blurred Lines” was too similar to Marvin Gaye’s 1977 hit “Got to Give it Up”. Thicke and Williams have been told to pay $7.3 million dollars in damages to Gaye’s estate. Right now, their lawyers have gone on the record to say that they are appealing this decision. Their appeal will be predominately based on the fact that jurors were instructed by the judge to only compare the sheet music between the two songs, a comparison that Thicke and William’s legal team believes does not encompass the true feel of both songs.
Here’s a mashup of the two songs in case you need some reference for comparison: