Bumbershoot’s re-evaluated strategy of booking acts has payed off in a big way this year as they throw us a number of brilliant indie up and comers (my personal favorite new band, Purity Ring graces the lineup) as well as some great mid-tier talent (Broken Social Scene) and even a few Legends (Daryl Hall & John Oates)

Tickets are onsale now, $35 for a day pass and $90 for the weekend. Expect a recommended acts blog to follow soon. Check the full list below

Daryl Hall & John Oates / Wiz Khalifa / Ray La Montagne & the Pariah Dogs / Broken Social Scene / The Presidents of the United States of America / Macklemore & Ryan Lewis / The Kills / The Reverend Horton Heat / Minus the Bear / Fitz and The Tantrums / Butthole Surfers / Mavis Staples / Carbon Leaf / Little Dragon / Leon Russell / Toro Y Moi / Over the Rhine / Anti-Flag / Phantogram / Grant Lee Buffalo / Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue / Urge Overkill / STRFKR / Das Racist / Shabazz Palaces / The Lonely Forest / Warpaint / Vetiver / Jessica Lea Mayfield / Dam-Funk / NoMeansNo / Charles Bradley / Atari Teenage Riot / Vusi Mahlasela / MarchFourth Marching Band / Vendetta Red / Sharon Van Etten / Brite Futures / Tennis / Dennis Coffey / Thee Oh Sees / EyeHateGod / Nortec Collective Presents: Bostich + Fussible / Väsen / Head Like a Kite / YACHT / Greensky Bluegrass / Mad Rad / Quadron / The Jim Jones Revue / Ian Moore & the Lossy Coils / Champagne Champagne / Grand Hallway / You Am I / Astronautalis / Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside / School of Seven Bells / PS I Love You / Joe Pug and the Hundred Mile Band / Davila 666 / My Goodness / AgesandAges / Wayne Horvitz / LAKE / Yuni in Taxco / Kore Ionz / Campfire OK / Meklit Hadero / Craft Spells / Beat Connection / Sol / Purity Ring / Whalebones / Caleb Klauder Country Band / Truckasaurus / Valient Thorr / Jayme Stone: Room of Wonders / Pickwick / Allen Stone / Scribes / Massy Ferguson / Tycho / Wagons / Shelby Earl / Red Fang / Ravenna Woods / Free the Robots / Ivan & Alyosha / Witchburn / Kaylee Cole / Nice Nice / Kris Orlowski & The Passenger String Quartet / Emancipator / Lemolo / Splatinum / Legendary Oaks / Com Truise / HTRK / The Horde and The Harem / Lusine / Gail Pettis Quartet / Kasey Anderson and The Honkies / Tomten / Pezzner / 214 / Lawnchair Generals / WD4D / Shigeto / Ill Cosby / The Sight Below / The Great Mundane / Natasha Kmeto / DJ Introcut / DJ Nordic Soul

As a kid if you ever played with toys, there’s a chance that Hot Wheels were part of your collection of “smash-these-together” play things. It’s amazing how as we grow into adults, sometimes the things we loved as children become our lives – like when young Opie Prime grew up to be a Transformer… Tanner Faust must have grown up with some sweet HotWheels sets, because he just built a giant replica ramp and set a world record jumping a rally truck:

:E GregR

During the Foo Fighters’ two hour Sasquatch set on Friday, Dave took a minute to explain how everyone in the band found their best flannel shirt for their WA concert experience… everyone but Taylor… At least it was super cold and they could have multi purpose for their fun little stunt.

Check out some videos that my buddy Pete took from way up close to the stage:

Best Of You

Walk:

Bridge Burning

:E GregR

Actor Colin Hanks (Mad Men, Orange County, Dexter) is helping to produce a documentary about the rise and fall of the legendary Tower Records. They just need a little bit of your help to get it done.

The projects Kickstart page reads:

The Tower Records story is about a man, his company and the unprecedented economic and cultural impact it had on the music industry and people around the world. Tower Records begins with the man who created it… Russ Solomon.

From an early age, Solomon had a special love of music, a dynamic personality and the inventiveness of a crafty entrepreneur. His first job was sweeping floors in his father’s drug store, located in the Tower Theater building, in the sleepy northern California town of Sacramento. Still a teenager, Solomon had the idea to sell discarded record singles from the counter-top jukeboxes for 5 cents a piece. His father gave him a shelf in the back of the drug store and this became the training ground for Russ Solomon, the young man, who would one day create a Billion dollar a year music empire.

Here’ the trailer:

More from Kickstart:

As you can tell, we are looking to finish the production on our documentary film. So far we have pooled resources and some initial seed money to get the project off the ground. We are approaching this as a passion project, and as such are dedicated to making this film as cost effective as we can. In other words, we are trying to do this grassroots.

This will be a long process that will involve lots of time and energy but one that we are very passionate about. Our goal is for this to be a communal process, so please be a part of it! And please pass this along to friends and family, post it on your blog, twitter and Facebook pages…help us get the word out!

Here’s the Facebook link

Here’s the Twitter Feed

Modest Mouse returned to the NW on Sunday night for an epic main-stage performance that capped off Day 3 of this years Sasquatch festival.

During the show we got treated to 2 new songs (which you can hear below)

Are these some of the batch of songs that band recently recorded with Big Boi from Outkast?
Is there a new Modest Mouse record coming this year?

Right now there are more questions than answers, however these songs are more than enough to hold us over until more info is available.

“Poison”

“Lampshades On Fire”

Day four of Sasquatch is Day 3 of Coachella X 2. I realize that’s a lot of math, but really it’s just too much. Waking up in your tent smelling like god knows what, your pores clogged from dust, your liver soar from hours upon hours of daytime drinking (and don’t forget how you rallied in after the show too). It’s almost to the point where it’s a bit of a drag, because no matter how excited you are for the acts of the day, it all sort of feels like a big race to the finish. A “how soon can i get home and sleep in my own bed” sort of feeling.

That said, day 4 started awesomely with Wavves taking the mainstage on time (amazingly) at 11:30am and pumping out a bunch of laidback surfrock to a small but devoted crowd of early risers (though it’s not like sleeping in at that place is exactly an easy task. Our neighbors never even went to sleep that night, and I now know every lyric to Nelly’s “It’s getting hot in here” by heart) The sun peaking it’s head out early, for another warm day at The Gorge.

Then of course it was a bolt over to the Bigfoot stage to catch the end of Givers set, which let it be known, while the stages are fairly close together, the walk up the side of the main lawn is quite steep. Like, hopefully you’ve been doing your treadmill runs on some sort of incline because yeah, you’re gonna be winded. Givers were great though, very much in the same vein as Edward Sharpe or Mumford and Sons, with an abundance of energy and stage presence. The uplifting tracks were a perfect way to start the day for some as the crowd streamed in and stopped by the stage to have a listen.

The real party kicked off a little later back at the mainstage when Chromeo came out and played to the biggest waterless hipster pool party you’ve ever seen. Seriously, it was ridiculous, shark floatees, monkey floatees, beach balls, tank tops, hipster neon hats in abundance, it looked like 15,000 people had shown up for MTV spring break but instead just got to get their dance on to the 80’s throwback that is Chromeo’s sound. Ironically enough it started to rain around the time Surf bands Best Coast and Surfer Blood took their respective stages but the crowd soldiered on, ponchos and all.

Now we get to the douchebaggary that was Skrillex’s dj set in the banana shack. Never in my life have i seen so many frat boy douchebags poorly dancing in the same place at one time. Dubstep may be just about the worst thing that’s happened. As my friend Lauren so eloquently put it “this is why other countries hate us.” Don’t get me wrong, Sonny spun a great high energy set, but trying to be around that group of people was just unbearable.

The Highlight of the day however was certainly headliner Wilco who graced us with a two hour set back dropped by an epic lightning storm. A setlist litered with songs from the seminal Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, amidst classics like “Impossible Germany” the band could not have sounded more perfect and in better spirits. Frontman Jeff Tweedy joked “we didn’t practice a whole lot for this show…didn’t want to put in all that effort just to have the apocalypse happen”. His witty banter brought great balance to many of the melancholy tracks they played to one of the smallest headlining crowds I’d seen at The Gorge. If you don’t already, i implore you to listen to Wilco, they’re amzing, fantastic, just almost indescribably pleasant and an unimaginably prime way to end the weekend before that bitch of a 2.5 hour drive home. (seriously that drive is awful when you start it at midnight).

Until Next Year…..

-Bryce

Today is the official release day for “Ukulele Songs”, the 2nd full length solo record from PJ frontman Eddie Vedder.

If you haven’t had a chance to hear this gorgeous record you can stream the whole thing right here

Check out the latest video (just released today) for “Can’t Keep”

It’s been a big week for Death Cab for Cutie. After an amazing headlining performance at Sasquatch on Saturday the band releases it’s new record “Codes & Keys” TODAY!!!

As part of the lead-up to record release the guys stopped by VH1 to tape an episode of “Storytellers” which aired on Friday night.

It was a great chance to learn more about the band, these songs and the process the 4 of them go through when writing music. A nice opportunity to peel back the curtain for a bit.

Last week we got sneak peeks of “You Are a Tourist” and “Title & Registration”
Here’s highights from the rest of the show

“Cath”

“Codes & Keys”

“I Will Follow You Into The Dark”

“Crooked Teeth”

Check out every song from the show over at COS right now

Just announced!!

Will this make Coachella bigger & better? Or will it ruin the beloved festival by making it less special?

We’re excited to announce Coachella 2012 will be held over TWO WEEKENDS.

In an effort to try and accommodate everyone who wants to experience the festival, COACHELLA 2012 will be two separate events, held over two consecutive weekends. We will attempt to produce two identical festival weekends. That means same lineup, same art, same place, different people.

We know many of you were unable to attend this year’s festival because passes sold out much sooner than anticipated. We were truly surprised by the overwhelming response and remain honored by your passion and enthusiasm. We also know some of you purchased through non legitimate sources and were inconvenienced, gouged or totally scammed. We hope that these changes will give everyone the opportunity to purchase directly from Coachella.com.

Passes go on sale beginning this Friday, June 3rd, 2011, at 10am PST until the following Friday June 10th, 2011, at 10pm PST. This advance sale will be the only opportunity to take advantage of the Coachella Payment Plan. Passes will be available through a payment plan of 10% down and 8 equal monthly payments OR by payment in full. The price of three-day passes remains at $269 plus fees for the sixth consecutive year.

Coachella Weekend 1 – April 13-15, 2012 | Coachella Weekend 2 – April 20-22, 2012

We were already super excited when director David Fincher & NIN’s Trent Reznor (on the heels of winning an Academy Award for their work on The Social Network) announced that they would be collaborating on the music for Ficher’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”

The highly anticpated American adapation of the best selling book is out this Christmas and stars Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Robin Wright, Christopher Plummer and Stellan Skarsgård

What’s even more excited about the score is that it was just revealed that Reznor has paired up with the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O for a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”

Check out the trailer here:

The trailer looks bootlegged and we assumed it would be taken down at any moment….however, it seems to be a clever marketing ploy by the studio explained here

Reznor, who is working with collaborator Atticus Ross (who also worked on The Social Network) has said that there will be less of an electronic influence on this score and more of a focus on strings:

“We started recording things in a different way that was all based on performance — nothing programmed,”

“That would be my limited skills with stringed instruments… We’d process them in a way that really gave it an interesting, organic feel that felt like something we’ve never done before.”