News and Notes (that aren’t quite Nashville) – Mid December edition

Must. Restart. Computer.  So, here we go again with some not necessarily Nashville news about EMA, WU LYF, The National with Bon Iver and Phish, ?uestlove gets his hand slapped, Pete Sandoval plays some amazing drums, and Lou Reed disses on Nashville to save himself from Lulu.

EMA has more tour dates announced in support of her debut album, Past Life Martyred Saints for March of 2012… alas, no Nashville date.  You will have to head up to Chicago if you want to catch a date on this little tour.  You can read more about that here, and you can check out the track “Angelo” below.

[soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/souterraintransmissions/ema-angelo”]

WU LYF’s debut release Go Tell Fire To The Mountain was one of my favorites of 2011, and they are continuing to tour the world with limited dates for big markets in North America.  You can check out the dates here, and note that there are nice slots in there for a Coachella appearance.  I wonder if we can make that happen for Bonnaroo too.  While you ponder that, you can check out their video for “We Bros” below.

[youtube_sc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaZ4voI4zA4?rel=0&hd=1&w=640&h=360]

The National have been very busy lately.  There has been news of Phish frontman Trey Anastasio working with them on some sort of secret collaboration.  They just dropped a couple of new songs recently on Q (a Canadian Broadcast Channel show), where they also performed with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver.  Click here to listen to the new tracks “Rylan” and “I Need My Girl”, and you can check out the video of them performing “Vanderlyle Cry Baby Geeks” with Justin Vernon below.

[youtube_sc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIY3duxQvIc?rel=0&hd=1&w=640&h=360]

?uestlove finally felt the fall out from his welcoming Michelle Bachmann to Jimmy Fallon’s late night show with the song “Lyin’ Ass Bitch” (look under the Sleigh Bells video in that link).  Well, I guess NBC put the muzzle on him, and he is now running all of his songs by management before guests are introduced.  Of course, with the stink that was raised over this one, he is probably lucky to still have a job.  I’m not giving him any stink though… I thought it was kinda funny.

Pete Sandoval is a bad ass.  A video dropped last week of the Morbid Angel drummer playing along to Mozart’s 25th Symphony.  Check it out below.  Dude’s amazing.

[youtube_sc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp06cxs-vJM?rel=0&hd=1&w=640&h=360]

Lou Reed dissing on Nashville.  In his rebuttal to all of the negative press about his recent Lulu collaboration with Metallica, Lou decided to diss on Nashville.  Here’s the quote from the article that you can read here.

“I think this thing needs a champion. This is for people who are literate. This isn’t ‘I cry in my beer ’cause you fucked him and ran your truck through my bar.’ You can write 30 of those and move to Nashville. These words — every time I see them I get thrilled because it does it to me. It may do it to no one else, I don’t care. I can’t try any harder. I can’t do any better. And my heart was pure and my soul was pure, too. I went in there to make music with the best guys I could find. And we did.”

Hey Lou, I think Home Depot is running a holiday special on shovels.  You should run out and grab a few, because you are digging your hole deeper and deeper.