Sunday, October 1st, 2006

CONTEST – Barsuk Prize Pack

Finally – a contest that’s NOT giving away concert tickets. But it is related to a local show… this Wednesday, a Barsuk Records roadshow will roll into Lee’s Palace with a bill featuring The Long Winters, What Made Milwaukee Famous and Menomena. This will be preceded by Harvey Danger at Lee’s Tuesday night and Viva Voce there on October 17.

But to the point – courtesy of Outside Music, I’ve got three Barsuk prize packs to give away. They’ll consist of the latest CDs from The Long Winters (Putting The Days To Bed), What Made Milwaukee Famous (Trying To Never Catch Up) and Viva Voce (Get Yr Blood Sucked Out), as well as a Barsuk sampler. All three albums are very solid and I bet that sampler is no slouch, either.

To enter, leave a post in the comments detailing your close, personal relationship with a Barsuk record. Doesn’t have to be true, just entertaining – tell me about the time a copy of We Have The Facts And Are Voting Yes saved you from a pack of wolves in the Canadian tundra. Whatever. I will choose the best three as winners unless they’re all equally (un)inspired – then I’ll just choose randomly. But be sure to use your proper email address because that’s how I’ll be contacting the winners. CONTEST NOW CLOSED.

Have fun. Contest closes midnight, October 7th. That’s this Saturday. Go to it.

MP3: The Long Winters – “Pushover”
MP3: What Made Milwaukee Famous – “iDecide”
MP3: Viva Voce – “We Do Not Fuck Around”

By : Frank Yang at 9:17 am
Category: Uncategorized
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  1. Jeff Macklin says:

    Once, while enjoying a camping trip to Algonquin Park, we were travelling across Tom Thompson Lake, me and krista in one canoe, and chris and jackie in the other.

    Though not a large lake, it was a windy day, and making headway was a labour. As we approached midway across, dark clouds came up, quickly erasing the sunny skies which we had enjoyed up to now.

    A small speckling of rain hit, as we increased our efforts and made it to the portage to Canoe Lake in near record time. We managed the portage and headed out onto the lake, toward the south, where a warm bowl of soup and a piece of pie awaited us at the Portage Store.

    The rain, and wind picked up as we made our way south, and by the time we hit the docks at the Portage Store, we and our packs were drenched to say the least.

    We wrung our cloths out, and pulled the gear and boats onto land. With wallet in hand, we headed out of the rain, inside to the restaurant where lovely smells from the kitchen hit us. We were starved. Two weeks out in the park, eating dried foods and bland soups will do that to you.

    As we sat at the table and placed our order, music, sweet music played over the sound system.

    It was DeathCab’s Transatlanticism, and it’s track The Sound Of Settling. Oh, was a sweet sound, which i have missed while being out on the portage trail. I missed the music, and my daily blogs (Chromewaves especially). I was reeling in the strong tone of the song, while i enjoyed one of the most amazing bowls of tomato soup and pecan pie.

    Once back in the car, i tracked up the album, and we listened to it all the way back to our home in Peterborough.

    Thank god for the music of Barsuk Records.

    Jeff Macklin

  2. palpable says:

    Couldn’t go for uninspiring fiction, so I’ll just prop up Barsuk via my love for Rilo.

    Zeros and ones.

    I still listen to Rilo Kiley’s Take Offs and Landings quite a bit. It is just part of their catalog that continues to make my playlists.

    Science vs. Romance is one that I think about a lot – test sites, crash sites – it all seems very relevant today with the current state of affairs. I also relate to the lines about "used to believe in a lot more – now I just see straight ahead". "Markers in our life’, loneliness – Jenny is so introspective and it is both a sad song and one of moving on, even though the longing is there. The zeros and ones reference is also so reflective of today – music, computers … we’re not robots. I listen to this song a lot driving across the southern Canadian tundra. Er, I guess I mean moraines.

    Nada Surf and They Might Be Giants are my other Barsuk picks – Death Cab still hasn’t taken over my WinAmp very much.

  3. Jeff Macklin says:

    this ain’t no fiction…do you have any idea how good, good music sounds when you’ve been away from it for two weeks? Don’t get me wrong, i love being in the wilderness, but returning to real food and music is equally as pleasurable.

    death cab by a landslide…rockin my world since 2003/

    jeff

  4. palpable says:

    It wasn’t a slam Jeff, I was referring to Frank’s words. I’ve portaged in past Canoe Lake myself so I can understand your story.

  5. thomaus says:

    All true here.
    The upcoming Long Winters show is a bummer for me because I had previously bought a ticket for Beriut on the same night. Now, I’ve seen Long Winters twice, so it seems that I should stick with Beriut — you know, the new & different thing.
    But I really like Long Winters. And it’s been a long while since I’ve seen them.
    The last time I saw them opening for The Decemberists. I chatted with John Roderick and Eric Corson afterward, and them that they were one of the few bands my kids would sing along to their record (Shapes, Stupid and Cinnamon). So I did the fan thing and got them to sign the liner notes to When I Pretend to Fall, and also bought the first record (unfortunately, that one wasn’t much of a hit with the girls).
    So, the dilemma is which show to attend? Just a few more days to decide.

  6. Saturn says:

    Go check out Menomena. They definitely are one of the best bands to come out of Portland in a long time.

  7. Kevin says:

    Can’t resist the opportunity to proclaim my love for Nada Surf – "Let Go."

    Here’s the story: It’s 2002 or so, and things weren’t at their all-time best for me. I’d moved around a little bit and lost touch with some friends, so I didn’t have much of social life. What little I had consisted largely of my roommate at the time and his college buddies. They were all a good few years younger than me — nice guys, all, but we were in different places.

    Still, I’d tag along with them some nights when they went out. They’d be in the living room at our apartment, finishing their beers, playing Eminem’s "Drug Ballad" or some such to get fired up. And yes, back when Mark Wahlberg was Marky Mark, that was how we made the party start – it’s a great song – but I needed something else.

    So I snuck off to my room under the pretense of grabbing my wallet or something, cued up "Let Go," and blared "Killian’s Red." That sad boozy hopefulness just nailed it for me — "I almost love this town when you’re by my side" — and gave me the strength to get out there among the youngsters and keep looking for my boozy indie princess.

    Of course I never found her. Instead, I found awesomely normal love with someone who was actually sweet and kind, rather than dramatic and sour – but that song still gives me that weird beery longing, and it probably always will. Thanks Barsuk!

  8. Pete says:

    When I first started to get into more "indie" music, I found this strange little group on the late, lamented epitonic.com (please do not venture there, for it is a mess now, after a complete failure of a redesign). They were called This Busy Monster, and one song in particular intrigued me: Loup-Garou. This was a song that used banjo (long before Sufjan came on the scene!), clarinets, violins, a veritable orchestra of non-rocknroll instruments to put together an ominous story about…whatever a loup-garou is (I’m not Canadian and I don’t speak French, so bear with me).
    So I listened to this song on the work computer roughly 78 times before decided, "Hey, I need to find out what a loup-garou is." Four hours of compulsive googling later, well, I guess I now know what a loup-garou is, and also have some scary stories to tell around the campfire. And I also know how to disenchant it, draw blood! Any band that has a song about a French-Canadian werewolf is pretty good in my book. So I ordered the album (Fireworks) and it’s still in the rotation to this day. It also introduced me to the under-appreciated treasure trove of great artists on the Barsuk roster.
    Somehow, someway, the legend of loup-garou has led to me having the complete works of John Vanderslice. Thank you loup-garou.
    Also, the British post-punk band Crispy Ambulance has a song called loupgarou on their Scissorgun album. That information has proved useful in my life, ohhh, zero times so far. Now I have loup-garou on the brain again. Ugh.

  9. Craig says:

    I ordered the Long Winters’ <i>When I Pretend to Fall</i> from Insound in 2003. I didn’t actually listen to music at that point in the life – I was a racquetball court floor installer in Lafeyette, Georgia and was expirementing with a playing surface made entirely of CD jewel boxes. The effect on the spin of the ball would have revolutionized the game as we know it. Alas, the CD I was shipped had a cracked spine, and since the packaging was white and not the standard dark grey, it was completely unacceptable for the task at hand.

    I mentioned by disappointment to a friend, who happened to have this magical machine designed to hold the shiny little disc inside the jewel box, which I had always thought was some sort of shipping ballast or something. Not only did the disc fit in this strangle little machine, it actually spun the thing around until music came out! Well, I had never heard of recorded music being played away from a computer, iPod, or player piano, so I immediately sat down and was entranced. In fact, "Blue Diamonds" inspired me to put aside my racquetball court designs and do something useful, like graduate school. I went on and created the gallium nitride light emitting diode, although I later found out that someone else had invented one fifteen years earlier. Now I’m a well adjusted, unproductive (still in grad school after all) member of society, and I owe it all to John Roderick. I think.