Written by K.B. on June 23rd, 2009
I am not much of a radio listener (besides NPR), but somehow found myself listening to one of the local rock radio stations today and had a weird realization… they are still mostly playing the same songs that they played in the 90s!
I’ve known this, but it’s almost 2010 and they are still playing songs they played in ‘89 – ‘00, the major difference is that most of those songs were new at that time. Has there really been nothing worthwhile that has been released for the radio-alterna-rock demographic? Is the new music so bad that, beyond its pop shelf-life of a few months after a song is released, they only play old music? Wow… that’s a shame. I know that not everyone wants wimpy “indierock” on the radio, but there has to be something that’s geared more for that audience that doesn’t suck completely, hasn’t there?
Meanwhile, R&B radio has the opposite problem of playing the same 7 – 15 new songs over and over. I think it’s high time for some sort of compromise between these types of playlists. Then again, since most people have mp3 players, it may be that rock radio is targeting the older listeners who grew up with radio and aren’t so hip to the changes in technology. At the same time R & B radio targets the younger audience by playing the same new songs over and over. Nevermind… I just figured it out. Shrewd move conglomerate owned radio stations, well played.
-K.B.
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Tags: '90s, Radio
Written by K.B. on June 2nd, 2009
Today marks the official release of a new album by my friends The Seldon Plan. The album is called Lost And Found And Lost, available from The Beechfields Record Label. I’ve had it for a couple weeks now, and I really like it. That’s my honest opinion, not just me saying it for people that I know, I liked this band when I heard them before I even knew we were located in the same area (oh, the glories of the interweb). The new album is a little different from the last ones, but I can say that it still leaves me with the same good feelings that I had when I first heard them years ago.
Check out The Seldon Plan if you have a spare minute.
-K.B.
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Tags: Lost And Found And Lost, The Beechfields Record Label, The Seldon Plan
Written by K.B. on May 20th, 2009
Most of the guitar tracks for the next album have been finished. We’ll be recording drums for it next. I spent most of the day in Mobtown Studios, today, working on recording drums, bass, vocals, and stomping and handclaps for A Cat Called Cricket. It was fun. We’ve been planning to make a 7″ single, but the songs may be a bit too long, so it might just become a short EP.
Speaking of Mobtown, last thursday, my pals Tiger Hill played a micro-show there and they played a cover of my song A Melody For Melanie. You can hear it along with the rest of the performance here. It’s interesting to hear Ganesh from Tiger Hill sing that song because I started writing it while the two of us were in a band called The Soft Pyramids, but the band broke up before I finished writing the song, so it became a song for The Up Set and found its way onto the EP.
-K.B.
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Tags: A Cat Called Cricket, a melody for melanie, mobtown studios, recording, Tiger Hill
Written by K.B. on May 5th, 2009
Thanks to everyone who came out to the show on Saturday, and thanks to Gunwife Gone for inviting us to play. We had a blast.
Recording of our album has officially started. Day one has been successful, we have guitar track for most of the songs now. I thought up a new title for a song too, so that’s one more in the bag as far as titles go. Tomorrow is guitar day two, and maybe vocals? We’ll see.
-K.B.
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Tags: recording
Written by K.B. on April 28th, 2009
It has been around 90 degrees and up here in Baltimore, and I’m not sure how I feel about the temperatures jumping up so quickly. It’s too humid.
We have a free show this Saturday evening at the Wind-Up space in Baltimore with Gunwife Gone and Ellen Cherry. It’s the Cd release show for Gunwife Gone. It will also be a big night because there will be a screening of the short film For Us, made by my friend Chris Smith (who plays bass in The Up Set) and members of Gunwife Gone are in the film.
In other news, recording starts next Tuesday!
-K.B.
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Tags: recording, shows, weather
Written by K.B. on April 21st, 2009
I’ve been trying to schedule some time to start recording this album. At this point, it looks like we’ll start the second week of May and then try to end as soon as we can before the end of May. We’ll be recording with my buddy Alex, who is in my other band A Cat Called Cricket. I’ve narrowed it down to 9 songs that I want to record, which means that there will be at least 8 songs on this album depending on how I feel about one particular instrumental after we give it a shot. This also means that I need to pick some actual titles for a few of these songs. That’s the hard part for me, haha. I think I over think my song titles a little bit. I’ve also started a list of possible album titles that I’ll pick from when the time gets closer, but there’s one title that I think I like a bit more than the others.
-K.B.
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Tags: A Cat Called Cricket, recording
Written by K.B. on April 18th, 2009
Now that The Up Set has a blog, not only will you get the usual (but more frequent) updates, you also get … other random things! Run on sentences! Ramblings about current events! Lots of music talk! For example, how awesome is that new Superchunk Leaves in the Gutter EP?! I really like it. Haha.
Plans are being made to record an album really, really, soon. In May, actually. We also have a show coming up around then too. More on that later.
-K.B.
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Tags: recording, site changes, superchunk
Written by K.B. on April 18th, 2009
So, I decided to start a blog on this here site in hopes of using it more often. I’m still messing around with how it looks.
-K.B.
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Tags: site changes
