Courtney E. Smith
Olly Murs - Heart Skips A Beat ft. Chiddy Bang via Courtney E. Smith.
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BookStalked: Courtney E. Smith
Last fall I covered Courtney’s BookCourt event for the release of her book of music-related essays, Record Collecting for Girls. One of the things I noticed about Courtney was that even though she obviously knew way more about music than most, she never veered off into snobbery. In fact, she even read from her “guilty pleasures” chapter (which includes musings on the Pussycat Dolls). I totally admire Courtney for thriving in the still-mainly-male music industry—not to mention her mad music journalism skills and her ability to help discover/break new bands (Death Cab, Vampire Weekend, Justice). After the jump, Courtney shares some of her book touring tales, which include reading for her grandmother’s bridge club, discussing The Smiths with a cover band member, and feeling really bad for a certain children’s book author.
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So Nicki Minaj’s creative director for her Grammy performance is the women who used to be Lady Gaga’s creative director until they fell out last November, some think over an interview she gave admitting she’d created several of Gaga’s looks directly in homage to the point of ripping off Madonna.
If you were thinking Gaga or Madonna with the weird religious imagery when you saw Minaj at the Grammys, you were right.
Feeling rebloggy. And this is amazing. Linda was an Eastman originally, you know.
Janis Joplin by Linda McCartney
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Still writing this, all week long. Follow. I’m about to start telling really, really, really personal stories.
If The Photo Album is, according to Ben Gibbard, one of their weakest albums (despite pushing the band to a wider audience than ever before) then The Stability EP is, according to me, their weakest EP.
The band had became touring monsters in support of The Photo Album. More than press, interviews, or album sales their reputation was built on their live show. They released The Stability EP after a big tour with the Dismemberment Plan in 2002. Too much time on the road may have warped their sensibilities. The EP is a three-song dirge, ending with “Stability” — a whopping 12 minute track in which nothing much happens. It makes a second appearance, in edited and re-recorded form, at the end of Plans as “The Stable Song.”
I find Death Cab’s recycling of material from EPs to albums (“Song for Kelly Huckabee” on the Forbidden Love EP and We Have the Facts, “Talking Bird” on Narrow Stairs and the demo reprised on The Open Door EP) to be an interesting sort of frugality. During the course of releasing Plans, bassist Nick Harmer mentioned to me how excited the band were to revisit “Stability”/”The Stable Song” so more people would hear it. There is a genuine sense of excitement among the band members about giving songs another look that makes the decision endearing. Put in the context of Plans, it’s not such a bad song.
And sandwiched in the middle of this EP is perhaps the strangest thing you can imagine. A cover of Bjork’s “All Is Full of Love.” Gibbard’s voice on it is so wrong that is might actually be right.
It is hard to think of a reason for this EP existing, other than as a new item to sell at the merch table.
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Coming up: Death Cab for Cutie
Thanks, Michelle!
Next week, we’ll take a look at veteran indie-poppers Death Cab for Cutie, and Courtney Smith will be our guide to do so.
Courtney was a long-time programmer at MTV and is the author of a collection of memoir-ish essays on being a music fan called Record Collecting for Girls. (And she’s on Tumblr as well…)
See you on Monday!
— Hendrik
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Just Pin me something interesting — pass along to a friend on Pinterest if you’ve already gotten yourself a copy.
