does anyone remember the roots picnic?

I do somewhat. Dayna and I went to that shit a week ago but kept it a big lazy secret until now.

I'll set the stage. It was a billion degrees and a couple thousand drunk and sweaty people were all crammed on a glorified parking lot called Festival Pier in Philly on the smelly ol' banks of the Delaware. We got there late, missing The Cool Kids, Deerhoof, and probably a few other hip acts that ?uestlove loves, but we got in free through my domestic connects so we weren't sweating the sweaty (mid-day) part of the schedule.

Santogold didn't play because of a "scheduling issue" so she and the Roots played a surprise show at the TLA the night before, but only after the Air Guitar Championship wrapped up. The performance we saw was outdoors and the sound was iffy but they put on a great show, as they always seem to do in Philly (notably better than their 45 minutes at Rock the Bells on Randall's Island in NYC last summer). They ran through their usual grab bag of old hits, one of their patented we-can-play-any-hit-from-any-genre-and-make-it-as-good-if-not-better-than-the-original medley, as well as a bunch of cuts off their new Rising Down LP (which we've decided is good but nowhere near a classic, due to its reliance on boring and repetitive refrains).

After the Roots we caught Diplo and his Mad Decent crew spinning and spitting in the air-conditioned blow-up tent while Gnarls Barkley set up. Being somewhat fascinated by Diplo, I much enjoyed his set and was disappointed when Cee-Lo, Danger Mouse, and company finally came on. In regards to the Round Mound of Sound (see video below), before the show we were somewhat perplexed by their headliner status, as we couldn't imagine anyone thinking of Gnarls Barkley as their favorite band. A good portion of the fans stayed after the Roots to see about them, but the crowd (including us) began to peter out after a few songs, as Gnarls wasn't doing much to prove our skepticism wrong.

It was time to eat a popsicle and go home, so there is not much more to tell. Except this one last piece of advice. Now, granted, I am completely biased. But, if you are making a bucket list of musical acts to witness before you end it all, I would humbly recommend these two events:

1. Bruce Springsteen in an indoor arena in either Philadelphia, New Jersey, or New York.

2. The Roots, indoors in Philadelphia.

Both of those happen at least once a year because Bruce and ?uesto cannot not be on tour. So get to it!

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ok, ok, alright. ok.

So school is over and our burgeoning blogocrew has been busy settling into its summering ways.

And because of this the blog has begun to feel a little stagnant. I can't speak for everyone, but I know there have been a few causes for my own relative silence.

NUMBER ONE May 12th brought about the last episode of the radio show which Fran and I host, and with it went one of my main impetusi (that should be the plural of impetus) for hunting down new music, which usually consists of scouring the same gaggle of music blogs which are like this one but update much more often. That's not to say I feel no impetus to search out said music independent of the radio show's demands, but after months of running through that exhausting gamut week after week it's nice to be able to chill for a sec. Just the fifteen minutes I spent today catching up on the HRO posts I'd missed was enough to leave me in need of a nap and a good square meal.

NUMBER TWO I'm not going to any sexy fucking music festivals this summer because festivals suck and you're going to end up disappointed anyway because they're not worth the money and festivals always end up being less sploogerific than the sum of their splooge-tastic line-up parts and I don't want to hear about which ones everyone's going to so don't bother telling me. That said, I am going to the Roots Picnic but only because a) they decided to call it a picnic and not a festival and picnics have an infinitely better connotation in my mind than festivals and b) because Dan's getting me in +1.

NUMBER THREE The Islands album is pretty good but it's not great and I already clogged about them and I'm afraid of turning into a pogger that only Molly-flogs about KanYe, Islands, the Roots, and Vampire Weekend. Go listen for yourself or let Pitchfork tell you where it should be filed in your personal Dewey Decimal library of indie rock.

Enough about me. Here are three wonderful songs that I have been bumping these pasts weeks.

Television - Venus (buy)
Toumast - Kit Ayittma (buy)
Chairmen of the Board - Give Me Just a Little More Time (buy or just check out the album cover) Continue reading...

roots/fall out boy collabo leaked

(tixgirl)

The Roots ft. Patrick Stump - "Birthday Girl"

Rising Down, the new album from the The Roots won't be released until April 29th but three songs from it have already leaked. The first two, "Get Busy" and "75 Bars," were leaked ("prereleased"?) on OkayPlayer.com by the band, along with videos for both songs. Today, a third, much less legit (in more ways than one) leak occurred. "Birthday Girl" features Patrick Stump, the lead singer of Fall Out Boy, on the chorus, and can already be heard all around the internets.

According to the OkayPlayer message boards, the song first hit the net on a fan-made YouTube montage of Mr. Stump. As for the song itself: the chorus by Stump is very creepy, corny, and catchy, and Black Thought's verses are as good as ever. I have a feeling it'll prove to be a poor man's "The Seed 2.0," which enjoyed international hit status following the 2002 release of Phrenology but became annoying to many a Roots fan from its subsequent over-airplay. The difference, though, is Cody Chestnut >> some guy from Fall Out Boy.

UPDATE: OkayPlayer is reporting that The Roots have dropped "Birthday Girl" from the album. Guess we won't have to worry about over-airplay anymore.
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