No Program Notes

I have pulled a fun, uptempo set of modern jazz swing that would make Lex Luther smile and tap his toes to the music. Because it's fun to mix things up a bit, I have tossed in a bit of jazz from John Coltraine, Wes Montgomery, Zoot Sims and other, but the majority of the set is from newer bands like Caravan Palance, Gogol Bordello and Tape Five. There won't be any program notes - and no quizzes either. Hope to see you at The Velvet tonight from 5 to 7 PM SLT.

Rebounding soundwaves, aboundingly cathartic.

Monday comes again, with concerns over a too-short weekend and another long "To Do" list for the week ahead.

Near the top of the list: "Monday antidote - -
Get YoYo's ya-yas out at The Velvet"

Come over and get yours out too!


Another kitchen-sink assortment of tunes for you tonight, geared to entertain as we all visit and review our Mondays together. 7-9pm, SLT - - see you there!

Hang the DJ

Hi, Velveteens and Velveteers. My name is Marx and I'm a new DJ at the Velvet! I've been DJing in Second Life since 2008. I began at a (now-defunct) all-male revue called Lounge of Dreams, playing a weekend set of mostly-alternative 80s music. I grew up around so many styles of music that my influences are a bit schizophrenic, but I think that is probably a familiar sentiment among most Velvet DJs.

I presently have Sundays from 7-9pm, and what I do will vary from week to week. But I will always, always, always play what I like and I hope you'll like what I play, too.

See you there!

Ginger moves tohttp://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2075132516875641440#allposts Sundays!

Hey y'all!

Well Saturday's weren't working out for me, so Maht has switched me over to Sundays!

Today is my first Sunday set warming up for Maht. I'm feeling mellow this Sunday, so I'll be playing some good Sunday Chillville type stuff.

Music from Young Empires, Lower Dens, Ocean City Defender, and lot's more. Like..29 more to be exact.

So some check out my new and improved time! 1:00pm SLT

See y'all at the Velvet!!

~Ginger

"You never think of it, but the truth may turn out to be sad"

Today I'm simply sharing two songs off the self-titled album from the Paris-based project Tristesse Contemporaine, since I'm terribly stoked about discovering it. Just listening to it makes so happy, wanting to get a glass of exquisite wine and to brush up on my cutting-edge contemporary French theory. Ultra-cool. Brilliantly, radiantly cool.

Interestingly, the album also features the song called "Hell is Other People," which is of course something the good ol' existentialist Sartre famously said. Which makes me think of what someone I know so incredibly well noted about two other thinkers, one of whom is known as a kind of proto-existentialist: "For Nietzsche, society is *the problem*. For Adorno, society is not *the problem*. This society is *the problem*." Just couldn't agree more.

Tristesse Contemporaine - "51 Ways To Leave Your Lover"

Tristesse contemporaine - "Daytime Nighttime"

Animals and Wood.

This week marks the start of summer as celebrated in Northern Europe, with today being the start of the Beltane ceremonies in the Celtic/Gaelic countries, which is marked in Scotland and Ireland by various ceremonies which culminate in the full moon festivities next weekend when the forces of nature are summoned as we crown the May Queen, and kill the old King. There are variations on this theme all over Europe..
Tonight is the Fire Festival in Edinburgh in which skyclad body painted celebrants do lots of dancing and carousing around fires.
I shall make my own dedications with a set devised to untether the conscious mind from it's restraints to reunite with the elements. It will be trippy!

Song o' the Week

NOT just cause somebody likes to shoot 'em, either. :P

Nostalgia

 My dad was a banjo picker. He played and sang for a local band that performed at barn dances around the neighboring counties. Growing up, I loved those cold winter nights when we were snowed in and the power was out because it was nearly a guarantee that Dad would get out his banjo and play for a few hours. Mostly he played a mix of Swedish folk songs, traditional ballads and bluegrass. He gave me a lifelong love of banjo. Not just me, my nephew came to love the banjo so much he began making his own. I was listening to some bluegrass this weekend and thought I might pull together a set of favorites. My set is tonight - Monday the 23rd from 5 to 7 PM SLT. I know bluegrass and banjo is not the usual fare, but great music is great music.

Velvety fun, flying fast and dense

Another Monday Night YoYo set at The Velvet this evening!

As usual I have no set theme - - I just like to dig out chunks of fun & interesting music, 

and cast them all about in a musical hodgepodge for your enjoyment.

Please come by, say hello and we'll see what sticks!

7 - 9pm, SLT

See you there!

Saturday Switcheroo, YoYo for Nu.

Saturday aft, 1 - 3pm slt - -

Just for this week and  just for fun,
DJ YoYo fills in for Nuala at
The Velvet.
- - Then she'll be back in her spot next week!

Eclectic tunes and big fun,
see you there!

(same stuff, different day)

Psychoraptus

I am excited about Mallory's David Lynch inspired set, I have been way too busy with reality lately and need some deep surrealism and dark hearted beauty to lift me into that liminal zone know as The Velvet.
I will be playing a set before Mall, it will be absurd in it's juxtapositions and so unhip, so unfeasibly anti cool and so tragically lost in some anomalous state where "indie" never happened that it is the future, disguised as the past, masquerading as now...

Black Lodgick (c)

Join me tomorrow, 5-7slt, for a David Lynch set, when I will play my favorite tracks from his films, along with entrancing witch house homages to the unique vision of this director. Expect noir sensibilities, haunting soundscapes, and traces of ever-so-delightful 60s kitsch.



A great 8-minute-long song, memorable in its harrowing, slow-burning feel, I probably won’t play, but you never know!

Kanjena will go on a surreal, unmistakably trippy venture before me, at 3-5slt, so pay a visit to the fun, quirky, but also occasionally nightmarish world of surrealism with us; the world as enigmatic and powerful as the unconscious itself.

Must-See Cinema

I generally don’t like musicals. But I just saw one that I highly recommend for anyone who cares about pop culture and pop music (and, perhaps, US-Soviet relations since the advent of the Cold War).

It’s called “Hipsters,” and for some reason it took three years to make it to U.S. shores after it won the 2009 award for best movie in Russia. The hipsters in question are young men and women living in the grey, lifeless repression of 1955 Moscow. They are mostly cut off from Western influences, but able to commandeer precious black-market jazz recordings (mostly from Eastern Europe) and—get this—copy them onto old, discarded, plastic X-ray plates for purposes of disseminating the music and feeding a lively but dangerous underground scene.

After seeing the movie, I did a bit of research and found a fascinating online paper called “The Historical Development of Soviet Rock Music,” by Trey Drake of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who offered a bit of historical perspective on this street use of technology.

“(E)nterprising young people with technical skills learned to duplicate records with a converted phonograph that would ‘press’ a record using a very unusual material for this purpose: discarded x-ray plates,” Drake wrote. “This material was both plentiful and cheap, and millions of duplications of Western and Soviet groups were made and distributed by an underground roentgenizdat, or x-ray press, which is akin to the samizdat that was the notorious tradition of self-publication among banned writers in the USSR. According to rock historian Troitsky, the one-sided x-ray disks cost about one to one and a half rubles each on the black market, and lasted only a few months, as opposed to around five rubles for a two-sided vinyl disk. By the late ‘50s, the officials knew about the roentgenizdat, and made it illegal in 1958. Officials took action to break up the largest ring in 1959, sending the leaders to prison, beginning an organization by the Komsomol of ‘music patrols’ that later undertook to curtail illegal music activity all over the country.”

I don’t want to leave the impression that this is a movie about the ‘roentgenizdat,’ which is only portrayed as a component of the larger underground music scene in mid-1950s Moscow. It’s really a movie about brave young men and women who were willing to risk prison time to assert their independence and individuality in a repressive culture.

They wore loud, colorful clothing to stand apart from the monochrome masses and they were bold and magnificently cool. But they didn’t really know. They were basically guessing at the nature of the Western culture to which they imagined they were linked. Not to give anything away, but toward the end one of their numbers who has an opportunity to spend time in the U.S. returns to report that in fact there were no hipsters in the U.S.—which is received as crushing news.

But which, in the end, reveals how hip—and how courageous--these kids really were.

(Moby Tenenbaum spins 7-9 Fridays at The Velvet.)

NASHVILLE FILM FESTIVAL 2012 MIXTAPE SAMPLER

x 3

A Bit of Boogaloo

In the mood for some happy dance music that will put you in a good mood? I am going to be playing a fun set of mambo, samba and boogaloo starting at 5:00 until 7:00 tonight at The Velvet. Most, though not all, the songs will feature the New York Latino sound that brings us Celia Cruz, Ray Baretto and Bobby Valentin.

DJ Skips tonight!

9pm.

Saturday At the Velvet, 1-3 PM

I am still wiping my eyes and blowing my nose after watching that video Lolo posted. Thank you for picking out my next book, Lolo – Sacks’ Musicophilia has been sitting on my shelf.

I can’t promise my set today will heal you, but then again, who knows? I know putting it together was good for me, so I’m looking forward to sharing it with you.

Highlights: Some gypsies, some Byrds and early British rock/psychedelia, just a little more 70’s R&B (because I can’t resist Shuggie Otis), some roots rock-n-roll including the original version of “Susie Q”. In the category of recent releases: more Alcest and Cate le Bon because I love them; Bears; Damien Jurado. I would have included something from Of Montreal’s new album, but – oops! – I was seduced by a track off their previous one. So new Of Montreal is for next week (and whoever gets there first).

See you at The Velvet, 1-3 today!

To make up for my slip, here is a track from Paralytic Stalks, new from Of Montreal:

Money--and its Discontents

Like millions of other Americans, I'm sweating the approach of Tax Day next week. So I'm planning to do a related set 7-9 this Friday. Tunes about money, not having enough money, work, avoiding work, serving The Man, and sticking it to The Man.

On a related note, I feel oddly duty-bound to report that after three years of DJ'ing in SL and collecting tips and giving away almost as much--almost--as I've taken in, my personal account has cracked the 100,000-linden threshold. (Then again, I live under bridges and some of you know how I dress.) So I'm feeling a bit like a one-percenter and am entertaining suggestions on investment opportunities. If you have ideas, perhaps we could talk about it Friday night whilst I spin tunes about financial hardship.

(Moby Tenenbaum spins 7-9 Fridays at The Velvet.)

Tuesday Night Tracks

Back after a brief hiatus, I'm going to be spinning some new and old favorites as well
as a few random tracks sprinkled in.  Blogging is not one of my greatest strengths, and quite frankly I hate it (don't tell Maht), so bear with me.


Tonight: King Tuff, Raincoats, Harlem, Sebadoh, Cults, Thieves Like Us, Smog, Yuck...


I'm also going to be spinning a track from a close personal RL friend's new album...it's not even out yet, and it's a somewhat raw version, but I'm sure you won't mind a listen?


Also, don't forget, the Velvet Spring Photo Contest deadline is this Sunday, the 15th. Make sure you get your votes in!


And now,  a picture of Carl Sagan. How can you say no to that??

New DJ: Oscar the Cat

This is Oscar overseeing his set at The Velvet.

I had to stop leaving my iPod in the speaker dock because my cat would not leave it alone. A music lover, he would head butt and push his nose on the touch wheel and flip forward from one song to the next until he found a song he likes and then sit by the speaker, listening to it play. And then start all over again. What made it entertaining is that he has such strong musical likes and dislikes. I left a Ben Webster playlist queued up and he did nothing but fast forward as he found nothing he liked. I enjoy his musical choices most of the time. After all, I did put the music on the iPod, but frankly no music is wonderful when it comes on abruptly at 4:00 or 5:00, so he lost his iPod privileges.

However, just for fun and because I know he will like it, I decided to make a set with some of his favorite songs and artists. It will probably be the most cohesive set I ever play because he has a narrower range of music likes than I do - or perhaps I took the iPod away too soon for him to have a chance to branch out. I hope you can come by The Velvet tonight from 5 to 7 and get a taste of Oscar's musical choices.

Rainy Daze and Mondays and David Shire's film score

Back to work again - - ? Feh, so be it.

But my perfect antidote to Monday is to roll into The Velvet and DJ for you all.

So that's what I'll do. See you there around 7 (SLT) - - you'll already be there enjoying Cajsa's set, right?

Oh! - - And if you run into Lolo, tell her I plan on filling her last minute request that I didn't have time to get to towards the end of my set last Monday night. She may have not even been serious (who can tell?), but I thought it would have fit in perfectly. 

Maybe it'll work tonight, let's find out together.

Just in case any of you miss it, allow me to spoil the surprise with the video link below...

Time to wake up, velveteers!

DJ Skips 9PM

Banana

Kevin Ayers is England's hidden superstar, a long limbed velvet voiced psychedelic crooner who consistently rejected fame and financial success for the easier pursuits of fine wine and sunshine.
I am glad he isn't mega famous, he is like a special bottle of wine to keep in a cool cellar and then open on a happy day with very good company.

Celebrating Kate

Theo Bleckmann, grammy-winning uber-cool jazz tenor, last month put out an album consisting entirely of Kate Bush covers. I’ll be featuring a track from this album, plus a couple of Kate Bush tracks for good measure, one from recent(ish) years, one from an early album.

Other than this, there’s no theme. There will be a bunch of (mainly British) rock roots plus a smattering of newer things, including a track from a new album by the French metal band, Alcest. I can only describe Alcest as what would happen if at the gates of heaven you were handed a banged up guitar and a wicked set of pedals, and sent off to play in the celestial metal band. The music is serenely beautiful and at the same time has a thick enough layer of screaming notes to cry out every moment of earthly existence. I like ‘em.

Come listen. It’s more fun with you.

A Piano Unplayed No More

It's not often that a news story can bring me to tears - and certainly not tears of joy, but that happened when I read the news of Aung San Suu Kyi's electoral landslide victory in the elections in Burma yesterday. This does not mean the end of the military dictatorship or the end of struggle, but it is a sign of an awakening spirit of freedom and hope. Her two decades of imprisonment/house arrest once inspired Damien Rice to write a song in her honor called Unplayed Piano.



Her victory inspired me to scrap my playlist for tonight's 5 to 7 PM set and prepare a new one full of songs of liberation. The focus will be on music of the world from the Sami protesting Norwegian oppression of their ethnic group to South Africans singing for freedom from apartheid and from Chilean's combatting Pinochet through music to Iraqi's demanding an end to war and back to the United States where the struggle for justice continues. There's a rich tradition of music as protest throughout the world, music that is great on its own merit, but also serves to make a better world.

Let's Get More Excited About More Music!

I for one am very excited about another opportunity to dee-jay for you all on a Monday night at
The Velvet!
(even if I don't yet know quite what I'll be playing for you)

My set tonight runs from 7-9pm, SLT.

It'll be eclectic.
It'll bring the pretty, the fun, and the stuff that makes you wanna smile and dance around, too.

I look forward to seeing you there!

I'm back!

9pm.   Sunday.  April 1st.