FABCHANNEL

My new favorite find is Fabchannel, a website from Amsterdam chock full of complete live concert videos, over 800 from many different indie artists, including Spoon, Bright Eyes, The Frames, Frank Black (doing a cover of Tom Waits' "Black Rider", even), Damien Rice, The Black Keys, and many more.

After watching some of this Andrew Bird show from the past year, now I KNOW I have to see him in concert.



My Playlist:

FRIDAY NIGHT VIDEOS: SMASHING PUMPKINS "TARANTULA"

This video is amazing. It was created by the winner of a Smashing Pumpkins website "Green Screen Challenge", Levi Ahmu, and it's better than most professional music videos I've seen in the past couple of years.



Now THAT'S a video. Simply stunning.

UNDERRATED: APB

I'm not sure how to describe the band APB.

This tight rhythmic trio didn't really fit in with the punk or synth bands of the day, and weren't pop enough to get MTV airplay, so let's just call them "post-punk" with a little funky bass thrown in. Though they hailed from Scotland, they became almost exclusively a greater New York City area cult favorite in the mid 80s, due to heavy radio airplay of their singles in dance clubs and on Long Island's famous 92.7 WLIR. A compilation of their singles was released in 1985 entitled Something To Believe In, and after a good run their popularity probably peaked around 1986 with this show, one of several they headlined at the Ritz in Manhattan.



Ahh, 80s concerts. I couldn't help but watch the kid who dances on stage and yells into the mic near the end of the song, as I regularly rocked that same outfit (acid washed jeans/denim jacket/t-shirt). I actually never saw them play live, and they had called it quits by 1990 having made only 2 albums. I still have my vinyl copy of their singles collection, and recently began to wonder what had happened to them and why their CDs were out of print. As it turns out, not only was the album given a 20th anniversary re-release in 2006, but the band actually reunited after being broken up for 17 years to play a few area shows (and even recorded a third album).



You won't find them on any cheesy "80s new wave" compilation albums or cutesy retro movie soundtracks, and I kind of like that. They were a very underrated band of pecularly local interest (they probably don't have as many fans back in their native Scotland as they do here), so it's interesting to see them back playing again after all this time. I wonder if they can be hired to play at high school reunions . . .

APB - Official Site
APB "What Kind Of Girl?" - Live At The Ritz, NYC, 1986 [YouTube]

CONTROL - JOY DIVISION MOVIE

I want to check out the movie Control, directed by black & white loving über-photographer Anton Corbijn, which opens sometime this month. It's the story of Ian Curtis and Joy Division, and it looks quite interesting. One thing I can guarantee: there will be no happy Hollywood ending. Here's a clip of them live at the BBC show "The Wedge" from 1979.



Now that I watch that, I doubt the movie could match that 3½ minute clip. Interesting note: this clip is bookended by John Cooper Clarke reading the lyrics to his song "Evidently Chickentown" (which was used by David Fucking Chase during the final season of "The Sopranos".)