This post is part of a new feature we’re doing here at Toolshed, focusing on the work of labels as a whole—call it a Label Awareness Campaign. We’ll be putting these up from time to time for a handy way to explore a variety of projects with one mediapage link here that will zip you over to find lots of mp3 and video assets all in one place. Feel free to hotlink to any of the media you find on each page—we’re happy to host the files.First up, one of my favorite labels, and one I feel is fairly under-represented here in the States—Berlin’s Morr Music. White noise, folk songs, abstract Hip Hop, electronic listening. All picked up by Thomas Morr who founded the label in 1999 and he keeps bringing them again and again to listeners in all corners of the world.

This weekend was such an amazing musical excursion, it deserves a post…I’ll include several iPhone photos, and apologize in advance for the quality. The first Michigan reference isn’t a musical one at all - Michigan beat Michigan State this weekend, which you will only care about if you happened to go to school at one of those schools.

Friday night, fellow Michigander Sufjan Stevens performed his BAM exhibition piece in New York. Wendy came along, and as with most things Sufjan related, we were transfixed by the enormity of his latest undertaking, which includes an audio interpretation of the BQE - the Brooklyn/Queens expressway, familiar to any New Yorker with a car. And damn…let it never be said that Suf doesn’t attend to the visual details. He shot most of the footage for the visuals playing above the stage on a half-height curtain over a space of three days, apparently risking life, limb, and tickets…that, combined with what had to be the world’s coolest internally-lit hula hoops (very nicely tying in the whole “wheel”/automobile motif of the evening), resulted in a truly sensational evening.

The first half of the show was the performance of the symphony he wrote for this event, a mind-blowing cacophony of instruments, from the relative peace of Sufjan on solo piano all the way to crescendos of every instrument in the place creating sonic traffic jams.

The second half of the show was a walk down memory lane, with Sufjan mining his catalogue for hits going back to “Seven Swans”.

Most good indie kids would call that a weekend…but yours truly had plans in mind, and they involve the third Michigan reference, namely, a band that I grew up with in midwest and that was a several-times-daily staple of any radio station I listened to growing up - Van Halen.

At the risk of blowing my indie cred…I am a huge Van Halen fan. When I drive home from New York late at night, one time in ten I’ll be listening to Romeo Delight or some other staple of that era (Unchained is still my favorite, that lead riff never fails to kick you in the gut). I missed these guys as a teenager in Michigan - had tickets and lost them (something similar happened with the Pixies, and seeing them 20 years later was equally sweet) - so I was frothing at the browser to get tickets.

Long story short - I was on the phone at 10a, missed getting tickets which sold out in something like 5 seconds, I got in touch with management and wound up with a pair of seats kinda behind the stage…but it didn’t matter. I went with my friend Lisa, who used to work with the Van Halen camp as a kid, and yes that was us up in the cheap seats singing out all the words along with the other 14,000 folks there.

Eddie looked amazing (and who wouldn’t after several months in the spa), and played…the way he has always played, with a direct connection to some inner muse that few mortals can claim. He was obviously enjoying himself (or faking it *really* well), head-butting his son on bass and spending most of the evening just to the side of the drum-riser playing along with this brother.
David Lee…looked like he belonged there, and he obviously does. The guys delivered.

I spent Sunday planting garlic, with my ears ringing from the two shows the nights before.

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We’re planning some great events this year at CMJ!

We’ve paired up with some of our favorite labels and organizations, as well as with our friends at No Dessert For You; stop by if you’re looking to hear some excellent music and meet the Toolshed crew.

Wednesday, October 17 - Mint Records Showcase @ Knitting Factory, with Bella, Carolyn Mark, and The Awkward Stage
Thursday, October 18 - INMPA/A2IM cocktail mixer @ Hi-Fi *private party*
Friday, October 19 - Ryko Showcase @ The Slipper Room, with Freezepop, Takeover UK, and Matt Duke

See you there!

Hey all, recently Toolshed has been working to reach out to social networks www-wide. With the launch of our iMeem, Virb and Myspace pages we hope to keep music geeks worldwide connected and updated 24.7.365 with mp3’s, videos, artist news and much, much more. The Toolshed YouTube and iFilm channels are fully loaded with new video content from all of our current projects, including updates from past projects, as well as any advance music and video.

We will also be featuring artist pages from time to time on networks such as iMeem, Virb and Myspace where album release info, tour dates, mp3’s and video content will be regularly updated and displayed.

So visit us at:

iMeem
Myspace
iFilm
YouTube

My friend, Rob Reinhart from Acoustic Caté sent me an email today…he came across a recently-posted YouTube documentary that both he and I were in (filmed in 1996 I think). It’s about a guy whose band I used to manage—Frank Allison & the Odd Sox.

I first saw Frank perform in 1988 at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor and I was immediately smitten. He has pop sensibilities and the ability to write timeless, fantastic melodies with quirky and wonderfully playful lyrics that seem more like they are out of a bygone era…like the 20s or 30s (ha-ha). His songs have a sense of humor and touch on the human travails that plague us all from time to time. It is classic, midwestern pop music.

Through all the years I have been involved with music, I don’t think I have ever experienced a songwriter who has meant as much to me as Frank. The documentary chronicles (vaguely) the ups and downs in his quest to “make the big time” but something it doesn’t mention is that Frank, through sheer workman-like gigging and persistance, sold over 25,000 copies of his first record on vinyl (Monkey Business)…this was without a label and without the internet.

Doing what I do now (new media), sometimes I wonder what “might have been” for Frank if the web had been available during his heyday. Tragically, he now has a neurological disorder called spasmodic dysphonia that makes it difficult to sing. Some days it’s possible and other days his voice just won’t work.

I’m going to give him a call later…I’ve been threatening to make some of his music available here for quite a while. In the meantime, here are a couple of my favorites…

Athletic Dan (from the 1989 LP, Monkey Business)

Dishwatcher (from 1991, Hokey Smoke)

Baby’s Behind the Wheel (unreleased demo version)

Workman’s Daughter (unreleased demo version)

Hound Dog (unreleased, and the only song I know that compares falling in love to the symptoms of food poisoning)

I’m pretty excited with our upcoming 2007 projects with Touch & Go Records in Chicago…Ted Leo in March, CocoRosie in April. However, I’m also extremely happy that each week I can relive the performances of the September 2006 25th Anniversary Block Party at the Hideout on the Touch & Go site!

It was an AMAZING 3-day orgy of Touch & Go artists from the two-and-a-half decades TGRec has been rocking.

Check out the introduction segment here on the Touch & Go site.

Each Monday should bring yet another episode featuring the artists who performed.

I walk home from work everyday; currently this is the best context in which I listen to music. I try at work sitting in front of the computer and clicking through programs, but that doesn’t seem to work for there is no dynamic in my office. I live five miles from the office in Chicago, it’s a nice walk, and do some good listening during that hour it takes to get back. I take the park system home because I can’t abide the iPod zombies that occupy the sidewalks oblivious to all those around, but I digress.

The parks I walk through are perfect to this end for they wind through all different aspects of the area between River North and Lakeview. They exist between row houses, mansions, streams; boat clubs, the lake, US 41, all of theses seemingly disparate elements are woven together by the expansive green spaces of Chicago.

The other morning I loaded Nellie McKay’s latest release Pretty Little Head in the trusty SanDisk for the walk home. Remarkably talented, versatile and brilliant can’t begin to describe Nellie McKay.

There You Are in Me is intricate and beautifully composed with a stream of poetry that glides over the top of meticulously placed expressions of piano peeking out from the background much like the pavilions that pop out in Lincoln Park but as the park turns to zoo then to marina, so to does this album move between multiple musical locales. For the range of talent is, however minimally expressed, in a solidly structured sound that juxtaposes perfect the soft of her range by an impassioned fury of sound that is the other. This however is only one song of 23 in this double disc release. There is no single genre in the entirety of this album, through this terrific inconsistency we can see the range of all things Nellie McKay that are possible to come. Long & Lazy River is a song that demonstrates her instrumental versatility in writing as well as her mastered soulful voice from the chorus that within her. Happy Flower is far simpler in it instrumentation, but through simply beautiful layers of vocals rivals the intensity of sound that is The Big One.

My walk through many differing parts was paired perfectly with this album. The more I walk home the more I appreciate my education through all the buildings and parks and how they are organized between each other creating a dialogue. I wasn’t educated in music outside my own personal ambitions, but in appreciated music and styles and talent, I see an education that emerges for the listener from this album. This is album is in itself a class on music appreciation. It isn’t any one set of elements that weave this album together but the shear diversity of its context that in their differences could only be combined by the subtle skill of a talented and presumably well-educated individual. If you can’t find something to like in or about this insanely deep in talent artist then I would say you’re not worthy of music. Nellie McKay has, I believe, given us a tease of numerous albums as well as a growing desire for the continued appreciation of music by the listener, from a diverse and brilliant artist.

Cheers, Brandon