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=> GENERAL DISCUSSION => Topic started by: sonickteam2 on July 17, 2007, 04:21:00 pm
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Seems like this show has been taking forever to get here. and figures that 1 week before it happens, they announce a DC show so i am sure no ones coming up for it.
i am though, and i am pretty psyched. yup.
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If I were in Baltimore tonight, I'd see the Twilight Sad :)
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I'll be there
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Originally posted by paul3mac:
I'll be there
well look for the tall guy with the goatee who'll be with an even taller guy with a crazy afro and cowboy boots!
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Originally posted by le sonick:
well look for the tall guy with the goatee who'll be with an even taller guy with a crazy afro and cowboy boots!
Well now I wanna go. :D
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voxtrot kicked ass, same as they did at black cat.
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Originally posted by paul3mac:
I'll be there
Well, I lied. Busy week/early morning and three openers on a Tuesday night... around 7 last night my fiancee and I decided not to go.
How was it? And what time did Voxtrot go on? Really wanted to see Two If By Sea as well... oh well sometimes just not in the cards.
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If I was in Baltimore I too would have seen The Twilight Sad instead since I'll see Voxtrot at Siren. Instead caught Dirty on Purpose and part of The Besnard Lakes show, then ran over to DC9 for Scissors for Lefty. BUT - for those of you who didn't drive to Baltimore last night, Voxtrot return Oct 6th to the Black Cat...
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Originally posted by cool_beanies:
BUT - for those of you who didn't drive to Baltimore last night, Voxtrot return Oct 6th to the Black Cat...
you know what i dont get...it seems that so often i go to DC for a show then mere moments after the show, they announce a Baltimore gig.
but when a band plays in Baltimore first, they announce the DC gig days BEFORE the Baltimore show.
what gives???
Anyway. Voxtrot was great, all of their songs come over perfectly live. :) the singer guy totally carries them but they all play well and arent boring on stage.
in my opinion, they should be WAY bigger than they are.
oh, and after chatting it up with the dudes (easy to do at a Baltimroe show!) Voxtrot doesnt mean anything its just some made up word....i know, it was stumping me too!
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lesonick, did he raise his hands repeatedly while singing? ;)
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Originally posted by wanderlust featuring j. marshmallow:
lesonick, did he raise his hands repeatedly while singing? ;)
haha, yes! i thought he was trying to "raise the roof!"
<img src="http://qsysue.tagplazen.org/shows/voxtrot/11-01-06/DSCF7399.jpg" alt=" - " />
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Originally posted by wanderlust featuring j. marshmallow:
If I were in Baltimore tonight, I'd see the Twilight Sad :)
did anyone see twilight sad last night? and if so, how were they?
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quit hijacking my Voxtrot thread with your crappy scottish folk band shite.
boo hiss on the Twilight Sad. boo on em.
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LOL. sorry sonick, but since everyone else was already mentioning them, figured id ask. i was thinking i could start a new SP thread and instead ask about twilight sad :) everyone loves pumpkin threads and keeps readingresponding to them.
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Originally posted by xneverwherex:
LOL. sorry sonick, but since everyone else was already mentioning them, figured id ask. i was thinking i could start a new SP thread and instead ask about twilight sad :) everyone loves pumpkin threads and keeps readingresponding to them.
ha! no its ok. i think every thread ever started on here has a comment unrelated to topic at hand in the first 10 posts.
it does always seem that baltimore either has 2 shows in one night, or none. pretty lame if you ask me.
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When their album first came out, I saw it in the $2 bin and gave it a listen. Color me unimpressed. I put it back and let someone else have it. Subsequently, I read a bunch of rave reviews...don't see what the critics see in them.
Originally posted by le sonick:
quit hijacking my Voxtrot thread with your crappy scottish folk band shite.
boo hiss on the Twilight Sad. boo on em.
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Originally posted by Charlie Nakatestes,Japanese Golfer:
When their album first came out, I saw it in the $2 bin and gave it a listen. Color me unimpressed. I put it back and let someone else have it. Subsequently, I read a bunch of rave reviews...don't see what the critics see in them.
Originally posted by le sonick:
quit hijacking my Voxtrot thread with your crappy scottish folk band shite.
boo hiss on the Twilight Sad. boo on em.
[/b]
which band? wait. probably both.
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Internet killed the radio star (http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/bal-to.voxtrot17jul17,0,4956690.story?coll=bal-features-headlines)
Voxtrot, which recently released a new album, and the bloggers who used to rave about it are no longer clicking
By Stephen Kiehl
Sun reporter
July 17, 2007
A funny thing happened to Voxtrot on the way to pop music stardom: The Internet moved on.
A year ago, the rock group from Austin, Texas, was the darling of music bloggers everywhere. One site described its music as verging "on the Platonic ideal of indie pop." Another praised its "distinctive, muscular sound," and comparisons to great rockers (Elvis Costello, the Smiths) ensued.
But the experience of Voxtrot this year has proven that what the Internet gives, the Internet can take away. Internet love is fleeting and fickle. Fans must be nurtured and cared for. Or else they can turn on you with all the viciousness of a cliched pop song heartbreaker.
The same bloggers who fawned over Voxtrot last year are no longer so hot to, um, trot. The band's new album, released in May, was met with yawns at best.
MerrySwankster.com dismissed one of the new songs as "safe but completely forgettable" and said, "The quality of Voxtrot's output has been steadily decreasing as well, and at an alarming rate." And the pre-eminent music review site, Pitchfork Media, called the album "awkward" and "frustrating," and rated it a middling 5.9 out of 10.
Call it a mutual breakup. A few months ago, on his own blog, Voxtrot lead singer Ramesh Srivastava let loose a tirade against music bloggers, saying they destroyed artists without thought and blamed the Internet for creating a disposable culture in which art is not valued.
"The internet is a very dark place to be," he wrote. Addressing bloggers, he said, "You may think that you deserve to download an album at no cost, store it in your iPod, pass your particular judgement, and then immediately dispose of it or hype it at will, but you actually don't deserve that."
But Srivastava says the album is not one that you get immediately, and he has urged listeners to spend some time with the music, to get to know it before writing it off. It's unlike Voxtrot's earlier music, released on three short EPs and rich with hooks, melodies and sharp lyrics - in other words, perfect for immediate gratification.
As the band moves in a new direction, Srivastava hopes his young fans will be patient. He's not optimistic. He says when he was a teenager, he would buy albums at a record store and really labor over them because he had spent his money. Nowadays, he says, teenagers have no such investment.
"People in the 18 to 19 range don't understand why you would ever pay for music," Srivastava said in a phone interview with The Sun. "The younger generation has never lived in that world. It's not like they're doing something intentional to degrade music. ... But everybody wants to download and everybody wants to be a music critic."
The Voxtrot singer may be the world's oldest 23-year-old rocker. He rails against online banking, online grocery shopping and Netflix, all of which he believes isolates people. "When you do something really basic like go to the grocery store, you have to have human interaction," he says. "If you live in a world of instant gratification, it's easy to forget the stuff that's really important."
To Srivastava's rant against the Internet, bloggers reply that the Web has led to a great democratization of music, and especially music criticism. It used to be that Rolling Stone's five-star rating system offered the definitive word on an album. No longer does anyone speak with such authority. Instead, thousands of smaller voices can be heard, and music fans reach consensus on their own.
"You don't have to depend on your local record store to promote some obscure band from across the country," said Keith O'Brien, co-editor of Merry Swankster. "The nature of the environment today is that people are finding out about music all the time."
He says people have always been fickle about music; the only difference is that now those opinions are preserved online. His site, which was created in late 2004 and streams whole songs, gets about 8,000 hits a week. It also includes this disclaimer: "Buy the music if you like it. Buy from local music stores, if you can."
An early backer of Voxtrot was Charles Olney, the debate coach at Dartmouth College who writes the blog Heartache with Hard Work in his spare time. "For a month or two last summer," Olney says of Voxtrot, "everyone everywhere was talking about them."
He said the band's new album hasn't generated much excitement because it's not that good. But Olney, 25, also admits to being guilty of one of Srivastava's charges: He doesn't spend as much time with a single album as he used to.
"Now there's so much out there that I feel silly listening to the same thing repeatedly," he said. "There's only a certain amount of time I can listen to music in a day."
Even Srivastava acknowledges that the quick-hit Internet culture he rails against has infected him as well. "I often find that, when presented with so much music," he says, "I tend to have a very disposable attitude towards anything that doesn't set me on fire in the first five seconds, as it is instantly forgotten."
He just hopes people don't treat his music that way. After Voxtrot's initial EPs generated such buzz last year, the band signed a recording contract with Beggars Group USA, which is trying to get the band beyond the blog world.
"I'm completely thankful for every listener we've gained through the Internet, and those are some the best people I've ever met," Srivastava said. "But I would like us to develop the band to where that's not the thing we depend on."
stephen.kiehl@baltsun.com