I Have Seen That Guy Before

I am sure you have seen these on tv. They are super catchy. They are actually pretty well crafted pop jingles. They aren't quite as memorable as Paul from the Diamond center, but that's just because it doesn't have a group of women straining under the weight of their totalitarian boss while, "I'm A Credit Man" plays.

The reason I bring up the Diamond center commercials is because I got sidetracked and those were the most memorably horrible commercials from my youth. The reason I bring up the free credit report commercials is because I recognized the singer. If you have downloaded any of our indie mixes you might just have him on your ipod as well. When I first saw the commercial I thought hey that looks like...nah...that would be super random. Wasn't I just talking to that guy at a merch table? It must just be someone who looks like him.

My curiosity got the better of me after repeated viewings and a simple google search revealed that he was in fact who I thought he was. The singer in those commercials is Daniel Zott...one half of Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. In the commercials it is his band called the Victorious Secrets. Apparently there was a contest to find a new band for the commercials and they won. Other blogs have commented on how funny it is that Dale's album is called, "It's A Corporate World." That blog doesn't fault him though, you can't really. They do say that their publicist denied that it was him, which was funny. I don't think anyone is mad, because I doubt Dale's sales are filling up his bank account and with the residuals from these commercials that will probably be less of a concern. Now he can focus on his own projects and hopefully be financially stable. I am past the stage of being angry at people selling out, because like David Cross discussed here, you can't buy a house on hipster credibility.

Holiday Booty

Isn't holly poisonous?  I know it's spiky.  Figgy pudding sounds horrible

That title should up the page views huh? It's holiday time, I can tell because my co-worker is playing Christmas music non-stop, yeaahhh!!! What the fuck is figgy pudding and why would you come to my doorstep and demand some?  Just because you sing your demands doesn't make them any less demanding.  Let me try, and see if you like it.  "Now bring me your youngest daughter and a bottle of beeeer."  *Runs at the sound of sirens*  This music must stop.  I'm warning you lady subjecting me to this nonsense is like poking a bear in a cage, I am liable to...ask you to please refrain from such activity post haste. Maybe more like poking a very civilized well mannered bear in a cage, but a bear no less!! *adjusts monocle*  Either way, y'all gon make me lose my mind. How many of you muttered "up in here, up in here" to yourself? How many of you are now growling and speeding through the Arizona desert with suspended licenses?

The main reason for this post was because of the amazing online store that Boingboing featured the other day. Das Programm only features products designed by Dieter Rams, who is pretty much a god when it comes to design. His record player is my profile pic on this blog and I have pined for his stuff for years.  His work is displayed in the New York Museum of Modern Art and is also currently on exhibit at the SFMOMA.  So he is kind of a big deal.  I have no idea how these guys are able to stock an online store with his stuff, since they are literally museum pieces.  But I can tell you that I go and look at the SK5 almost every day and hope that someone else buys it so that I can stop obsessing and thinking that I may be able to obtain it.  Gaaah, can't stop drooling.

Dieter Rams, Braun SK5 (Snow White's Coffin) $1022.32

Braun RT 20 $1179.60

Braun G 11 $940.00

Braun Atelier 3 $940.00-$1570

Braun AB 22 Black and White $125

Braun ABW 30 $235-$393

Perhaps some more reasonable options for your loved ones after the jump...although if you really loved them you would get them the items above. Just saying.  *Clears space for record player*

Ten Bon Iver covers, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. Album release and a bonus throwback Cee-Lo video

Bon Iver's new album is out in the wild now and I have heard good things.  I saw that the album artwork or promotional artwork was by a guy I am a huge fan of, Gregory Euclide. Excellent choice in art, Euclide had a few pieces in a group show at White Walls in San Francisco a couple years back and I was all sorts of drooly over them.  Since then he has continued to make excellent work and put on some super solid solo shows.

Stereogum has been kind enough to provide you all with Bon Iver's "Ten best" cover songs, available for free downnload right here.

The songs up for grabs include:

1. The Outfield- Your Love

2. Peter Gabriel- Come Talk To Me

3. John Prine/Chain of Sorrow- Bruised Orange

4. Feist- The Park

5. Vashti Bunyan- Train Song

6. Tom Petty- Crawling Back To You

7. Kathleen Edwards- Mercury

8. Okkervil- Blue Tulip

9. Red Hayes a& Jack Rhodes- A Satisfied Mind

10. Annie Lennox- Why

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.'s full album, "It's A Corporate World" just dropped the other day.  It includes all of the songs off of the Stereofat favorite, "The Horsepower EP" plus some other great tracks.  I think we should support them.  You can get their new album, "It's A Corporate World" on amazon right here.  A word about the album release from the boys themselves can be found here.


Maybe it was his judging gig on, "The Voice" or the fact that I tend to think of him fondly every now and then, but for some reason this Cee-lo video has been playing in  my head lately.  Do you guys remember when this first dropped?  He has always been so batshit crazy...and AWESOME!!!

Indie Mix 10

Back from the swamplands and the ample supply of fried things in New Orleans, I come bearing gifts.  Here is an out of order mix.  Meaning this is Indie Mix 10, but the last one I posted was Indie mix 7.  No real reason to rush this one to the forefront.  I will post 8 and 9 at some point.  I was just listening to this one and thought some other people might want to hear it as well.

It is heavily stacked in the favor of covers.  I counted a total of 11 covers but I may have missed one or two.  There are three covers by the Morning Benders from their all cover album, "Bedroom Covers."  They take on Fleetwood Mac, Roy Orbison, and the Cardigans, known for their hit from the, "Romeo and Juliet," soundtrack, "Lovefool."  There are 4 Harry Nilsson covers, one is actually a cover of a cover.  Harry had big success with his version of, "Everybody's Talkin" which was originally a Fred Neil song.  On this mix Luna takes a turn at it.  There is also an Adele cover, a Beach House cover, and M Ward does two covers, one song by the Everley Brothers and one by Pete Townshend."  Grab the mix here and/or hit the jump for the whole tracklist.

Indie Mix 6

Jim Houser- Piles

To the left is a great piece by the amazing Jim Houser.  He has such a nice aesthetic.  Great muted, subdued color palette, with concise striking design sensibilities.  He  does amazing work and I have been a fan for a long time, just thought I would share his skill for the uninitiated.  Now on to the music.

The saying goes, every actor wants to be a rock star and every rock star wants to be an actor.  It makes sense, most actors grow up doing all of that drama geek sort of stuff.  High school musicals and the like.  Though the saying may be true, few actors are able to cross back and forth between the two worlds successfully.  This new mix has two actors that make music that I actually enjoy listening to.  One is Jason Schwartzman and his band Coconut records, they made their first appearance on the last mix.  The other is Baby goose himself, Ryan Gosling *swoon* and his friend Zach Shields, with their project called, Dead Man's Bones.  Baby Goose, songs about zombies, kids choirs!!!  Ahhh it's too much indie to handle.  *Rocks back and forth waiting for a stoplight on a fixie*  Tracklist and download link behind the jump.

Make It Whistle

I hope everyone had a magical Christmas.  I come bearing belated goodies for everyone. 

I enjoy me some whistling.  I saw a pbs special on dogs and the Shepard had a crazy number of different whistles to communicate with the dog.  He even had a whistle that meant turn back you missed one of the sheep.  It made me realize that my fondness for whistling may perhaps just be a sub-human primitive response to past animalistic instincts.  I also just saw something on tv and the gang on the show used a whistle to notify the other members of their position when separated in the dark.  Crazy, anyway I guess I still like whistling, it's the caveman in me.

Advertisers know this as well.  There was two commercials in a row and they both had whistling.  The first one came on and I thought wow that's a coincidence I am making a whistling mix.  Then the second one came on and I realized the advertisers had my number.  So I immediately bought some Gerber Baby food and a Subaru Legacy.  You won this round corporate consumption.  Your sweet whistle was like a Siren's song.  It's like that number 23 movie where once you notice it, it seems to be everywhere.  Not sure why that was a bad thing, because I never saw the movie and it's just a number but that's ok, you freak the fuck out about it Jim Carey.

So to celebrate this addiction I made a mix of songs that all feature whistling.  During my "research" (shout out to google) I found that many people feel the same way and were way ahead of me in terms of compiling lists and asking questions like what is more gimmicky whistling or children's choirs?  Most of them had similar songs, so I had to research even further (scroll down farther) and try and find some less famous whistling songs. 


I also googled whistling to find a picture for this post and the dude above came up.  Apparently it's a still from a documentary about a whistling competition in North Carolina.  Sounds like a scenario for a Christopher Guest film.  I am kind of interested in seeing it now.  Especially since it's called, "Pucker Up: The Fine Art of Whistling." 

Download the mix behind the jump.

Upcoming Shows

Some of the shows from this post are still valid.  A small amount of new ones are listed below.

December

Sunday December 5th, the entire Hiero crew will be at the Oakland Metro Opera House. Tickets are $20 presale, and doors open at 8. I have never heard of the Oakland Metro Opera House, but I have heard of Hiero, might be worth checking out if you are in the East Bay.

January

The Budos Band is playing the Independent on Saturday, January 15th.  Tickets are $20, grab them here.  Doors open at 8:30.  This should be a great show.  These guys are solid and if you are a fan of the Dap Kings, that throwback, soul, retro awesomeness and horns, then I recommend that you go to this.

February

The Decemberists and Mountain Man will be at the Fox theater on Valentine's day.  That date would be Monday, February 14th.  Tickets are $37.50 and can be found here.  I have yammered on about Mountain Man before, so I feel comfortable saying this will be a good show.

Beach House will be at the Fillmore on Friday, February 18th.  Tickets are $32.25 including service charges and can be purchased here.  The show starts at 9:00.  Maybe this time I won't be as freaked out when I see that the singer is a female, I seriously thought it was an indie dude with a beard on lead vocals until I saw them the last time they came to town.  I still don't really believe it.
 
March

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. and Tapes N' Tapes are coming to the Bottom of The Hill on Friday March 11th.  Tickets are $16 and available here.  It's a later show with doors opening at 10:00 pm.  I am really into these guys at the moment.  Their Horsepower EP is four songs of greatness that I keep talking about, and I was actually just looking to see if they were coming to town the other day.  My search came up with only a couple of stops in NY and DC, so it was a nice surprise to find this posting in my general venue search.

Indie Mix 5

I don't know if you know this but I am quite an arty fucker, I think that's the technical term.  I spend my weekends strolling into galleries, sometimes people's personal properties and simply say, "I'll take it, wrap it up"  Then I usually clap twice and continue to inspect things in your house.  So with that being said I will try and meld my love of art and my love of music by pelvic thrusting a piece of art at you before exposing you to the nicely packaged morsel of musical goodies I have hidden at the end of this entry.  The piece to the left is titled, "Put Another One On," and it's by Pam Wishbow.  Peruse her Etsy here. 

A new indie mix can be located behind the jump if you are so inclined

Indie Mix 4

At one point there was a new hip hop mix up that didn't suck.  We got in trouble for that one and it was removed, that kind of sucked.  I blame T.I. for snitching on us to try and reduce his own prison sentence.


 

What did I tell you about licking things you find on the ground Clifford?

I have been spending some time in the studio, formulating a diss track in retaliation.  All I have so far are comments about Tiny and how he could do much better.  Which isn't really an attack on him so much as a statement of my disappointment in his life choices.  The hook is, "Class it up Clifford, eww she gross" repeat four times...it's still a work in progress.


If anyone missed the hip hop mix and would like to "discuss" their disappointment about that, they can send us an email at stereofattenings@gmail.com. 

But that's all in the past.  This post is about an indie mix.  Join me behind the jump.