About a year ago I was woken up from my sleep by a gorgeous song coming through from the TV. MTV2’s Subterranean was on, and bleary eyed I watched the screen waiting for the artist and song to appear. I looked over and my boyfriend had done the same thing. The song was so gorgeous that it woke both of us up and we needed to know who it was so we could hear it over and over again. Well, that song was “Exodus Damage” by John Vanderslice and moments later, we were the proud owners of his album Pixel Revolt.

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Leave it to Brooklyn Vegan to throw the best show in town tonight. John Vanderslice with Anne Clark, Takka Takka, Bell. Plus comedy from people like Will Franken! After last night’s Vanderslice show, I can promise you that It’ll be amazing.

Buzzgrinder has another great episode of Scene Points up featuring Thieves & Liars, Oh, 30 Seconds to Mars, and Ludo.

Junk-Mag has the new Ladytron song up.

VBS.tvVice TV has a baby Walrus on the Cute Show! Still no word on who stole his bukket!

OMGOMGOMGOMGOGMOGMOGMGO OASIS ARE PLAYING A SHOW IN NORTH AMERICA AGAIN! Tickets to the show in Seattle go on sale tomorrow. This better not be an April Fools joke!

REM are going to be on NBC’s Today show. Read more about it on ProductshopNYC.

Miss Modernage is sort of a genius. Today, she shows correlation between the number of current sweater auctions on Ebay vs the number of blog posts about vampire weekend. The results are remarkable.

Stereogum has their Enjoyed: A Tribute to Bjork’s Post up! It’s a compilation of covers available for free download!

Dlisted has reports on the new Amy Winehouse album.

Our friend Katherine Hulit managed to get into the sold out Simian Mobile Disco show at the Museum of Natural History’s Hayen Planitarium, so we naturally asked her to tell us how it was:

Going to a show at a museum is not always as awesome as you think its gonna be. Sure in your head it sounds amazing. When I got invited to go see Simian Mobile Disco at the Natural History Museum planetarium my head pretty much exploded. Not only am I a huge fan of S.M.D. but I am also a huge fan of the natural history museums and planetariums and other awesome shit. Basically it couldn’t be more perfect…. IN MY MIND, reality is a whole nother story.

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Researchers find song recorded before Edison’s phonograph, and it’s a french song called “Au Clair de la Lune”. You can hear it at International Herald Tribune. The B-side, “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” by Thomas Edison, is available here.

New Kooks video, “Always Where I Need to Be,” is up on their myspace page.

PlayRadioPlay!’s “I Am a Pirate You Are a Princess” is song of the day on NYLONmag.

The Liars are in a Timex Commercial (via Stereogum).

I really hope there will be metal detectors at the Black N Blue Bowl, featuring Gorilla Biscuits , Civ, Agnostic Front, Madball and others. (Link via Productshopnyc

TheModernAge.org has a Futureheads giveaway! We love imports!

A surprisingly adorable cameo by Jessica Alba on iBeatYou singing “Nine In the Afternoon by Panic! At the Disco.

No Rock of Love for Rikki Rocket, except for maybe in Prison (link via dlisted).

Blender has the most disturbing SXSW recap video over on their site, courtesy of the always kooky InnerPartySystem.

Apparently, Pete Wentz is not sexy. Try telling that to my little cousins.

Almack’s Dance Hall contributor, Samantha Moore, got her mind blown at the Crystal Castles show the other night. Thankfully, she was still able to turn in this review:

I wasn’t planning on going to see Crystal Castles last night. In my head I was telling myself that I had to work at 8 am, and I had school after that, and I had gotten 2 hours of sleep the night before. But being the NME slave that I am and being the NME darlings that they are, I just. couldn’t. help it. I had only heard a few of their songs before, but their live show was supposed to be incredible, so I couldn’t resist the urge to find out what the hype was all about.

more after the jump. Read more »

New Annuals MP3 for the song “Sore” over at Stereogum.

Stolen Transmission has an acoustic performance of “Bleary Eyed” from 2006 on YouTube (link)

REM premiers new album on iLike (via Arjanwrites.

Mexicans are giving emo kids something to cry about (not Morrissey related) over at BrooklynVegan.

Buzzgrinder has a contest where you get to win a spot on tour with Becoming the Archetype.

Dlisted is outraged by Kristy Lee Cook’s never ending quest for Idol Status.

Meanwhile, Kathy Cacace over at Junk-Mag.com gives her Idol play-by-play.

SPIN.com has a review of last night’s Felice Brother’s show in Denver.

RCRDLBL.com has free legal download of Weird Science’s remix of Metro Station’s “Control.”

The Sequence is looking for a new singer over at Absolutepunk.net.

The folks at BestWeekEver have some good news and bad news about the BestTourEver.

ProductShopNYC has some sort of Strokes update via Albert Hammond Jr.

The thing I love about this blog is that it makes me go out to see bands I probably wouldnt normally think to see. Your Vegas is one of them, and Ludo is another. I probably never would’ve left my cozy apartment on a freezing night to see a rock show. God, another band playing apathetically for a bunch of bored scenesters… not how I want to spend my night.

So when I arrived at the venue and my name wasn’t on the list, I took it as kismet. But being the dedicated blogger that I am, I stood outside in the cold with my ear to the door (literally, i stood at outside with my ear to the door keeping notes). I heard the singer (i think, i couldnt see him) of Ludo say “If you’re existing and in this room, clap your hands!” and what sounded like a stadium started clapping enthusiastically, before a member shouted “I cant wait to make that my avatar.”

As I stood in the cold, one of my favorite security guards came out saying to a friend “Yo, this is a hot show tonight, yo I don’t think I can hear anymore!”

How I got inside and videos after the jump
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When we saw that Le Loup was playing at Union Hall, we knew that our friend Joe McCaffrey, from Nightmare of You, would be at the show. So we asked him to review the show for us! Here’s Joe’s Review:

Disclaimer*** This is a completely biased review. I hardly ever go
to shows unless I am either already a fan of the music or am somehow
affiliated with the organization. It is a very rare occasion such as
this that I find myself writing about the experience. I haven’t
payed respect to the exigencies of objective writing since college
and I don’t plan on rekindling that relationship anytime soon. With
that said…

More of the review after the jump:
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When I got a text from my brother Lawrence telling me that he was at the Ravonette’s show in Hoboken, I instantly wrote back saying “send me a review!” Because: 1. he’s a great writer. 2. he was there. 3. I figured he could use another girl to add to his stable of female bffs that are also in bands, and the Ravonettes have two!

Here’s his hilarious review under the cut:

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Almack’s Dance Hall Contributing writer, Samantha Moore, went to see the Crib’s last night and survived… barely. Here’s her report:

The Cribs hold a very special place in my heart. They were the first band I ever saw live way back when I was just a wee Catholic schoolgirl. They were opening for Franz Ferdinand and Death Cab For Cutie in May 2006. This was a period in my life when I had just recently started down the road to musical obsession and this concert was sort of like my induction to the British Indie Fan Club. To this day, they remain one of the only bands I have seen live and instantly fallen in love with without ever having heard any of their music. Last night when I saw them at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, it was like the experience I had two years ago, but like times a million.

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I’m saying this in the nicest way possible: Watching Great Northern makes me want to shoot myself in the head and end everything right there and have them as the last thing I hear. I don’t get it. I think that their songs are just so fucking moving that I can’t handle it sometimes and become dizzy with emotion. It’s kind of like how I feel whenever I see Interpol or Sigur Ros live. But unlike those two bands, GN are still small enough that I was able to stand up against the stage.
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7pm is not a very rock’n'roll time in NYC for a band to play. People are either still in their offices, slaving away at the grindstone and hating life just before their daily commute home. You will have a really hard time convincing the Ting Tings of this. I rolled up to the Mercury Lounge at 7pm expecting to stroll right in, figuring that anyone who was there for the show was already inside, but there was a line half way down the block of hip looking adults who looked like they bailed out of work early to check out the next big thing out of the UK this week.
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There’s this dude JP who works with us who has been claiming he’s a good writer. And since we’re talking about live shows here, he told me that he wrote a story on absurd tour rider items and asked if I would read it. So I gave him a few minutes of my precious time, read it yesterday and actually LOL’ed. I figured I’ve give him a shot. Here it goes:

Tour Riders: The Good, The Bad, and The Ridiculous

The physical and mental rigors of touring certainly can take their toll on any artist or band. Knowing full well the demands that touring can bring, tour and production managers do all in their power to make life easier for performers. Artists generally have the ability to dictate specific requests for everything from particular drinks to dressing room sizes while on tour. While many of these requests can seem perfectly ordinary, others can range from the embarrassing to ultra specific, and, sometimes, down-right ridiculous.

Read the absurdity after the jump…

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A year or two ago I saw Lily Allen get on stage at the Hiro Ballroom for her first ever New York City performance. How I got those tickets is beyond me, but I was there! It was like her coronation into our American hearts, and her debutant ball all in one. Last night’s Duffy performance wasn’t much different.

The teeny tiny 19-year-old soulful singer took the stage like a woman twice her stature and twice her age. Confidence spewing out and looking like she walked out of a photoshoot from the 60s (or at least a photoshoot doubling as Broadway’s Kristin Chenoweth). She should be called Duffy Springfield.
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Our friend Joanna went to see PRP! at the venue formerally known as Irving Plaza. Here’s her review:

I reached the venue, Fillmore at Irving Plaza, right before PlayRadioPlay’s set with my boyfriend. As I got our passes we headed to the balcony to see better. The entire floor was packed- and well the balcony wasn’t too much better.

I crammed into the very small VIP area so I could actually see the amount of people there and the stage, as I scanned the floor as the band was setting up I noticed there wasn’t one age group or type of person. It ranged from 15 year olds with their mothers to pushing 30’s men and women- This may have been the fact that the Spill Canvas and Yellowcard were up after PlayRadioPlay.

As soon as PRP hit the stage people pushed to the front- cameras and cell phones ready. Cheers from the crowd as they started with loco commotion a fast hard hitting track with catchy lyrics, he also played more familiar songs for the crowd, I am a Pirate You are a Princess. People were now singing along, they also played one of my favorites “Elephants As Big As Whales”. Dan Hunter’s voice seems to become very clear as the track begins with him and his acoustic guitar, then towards the end of the song the drums and keys come in to a great build up. Though fans were attentative not many were dancing along, though cameras and phones were continually up in the air.

They ended the set with the single “Madi Don’t Leave” this track seemed to get the most reaction from the crowd, a little more singing and dancing. All and all in a great show - one of the biggest I have seen them play yet.