Month: May 2015

Come and join us in celebrating the publication of our 104th 33 1/3 volume on Devo’s Freedom of Choice (as well as the 35th anniversary of the album) at a Comedy Tribute to Devo this Thursday, May 28th, at Littlefield in Brooklyn!  The event will be hosted by Jake Fogelnest, and feature Dave Hill, Sara Benincasa, Liam McEneaney, Joe Garden, and special surprise guests for a night of standup, stories and music. Be sure to pick up a copy of Evie‘s book while you’re there, and enjoy the show!  

Come and celebrate the publication of our 105th 33 1/3 volume on the Dead Kennedys’ Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables by Michael Stewart Foley this Wednesday May 27th at Moe’s Books in Berkeley! The event will begin at 7:30PM. Be sure to pick up a copy of the book, and as a precursor to the book launch, check out Mike’s blog posts about archival research into the punk scene from our recent Dead Kennedys Week!

To celebrate yesterday’s release of our 104th 33 1/3 on  Freedom of Choice, we’re pleased to bring you the fifth and final installment of Devo week by author Evie Nagy! Whenever anyone asks me what I think is the biggest misconception about Devo, I say the general public’s passing perception of the band as a one-hit wonder, the novelty act with the funny hats who sang “Whip It.” Not only do they have enduring fans to the ends of the earth, but they’ve had an important, lasting influence on two…

To celebrate today’s release of our 104th 33 1/3 on  Freedom of Choice, we’re pleased to bring you the fourth installment of Devo week by author Evie Nagy! So here we are, today is release day for Devo’s Freedom of Choice (along with 33 1/3s Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Brothers by Andrew Schartmann, and Dead Kennedys’ Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables by Michael Stewart Foley). Now anyone with a mind to read it can, and can publicly say or write anything or nothing about it. After the stress eating, this…

To celebrate the upcoming release of our 104th 33 1/3 on  Freedom of Choice, we’re pleased to bring you the third installment of Devo week by author Evie Nagy! Even in the 20 year gap between Devo’s most recent two albums (1990’s Smooth Noodle Maps and 2010’s Something For Everybody), the band reunited periodically to tour or record one-offs. There’s always been a sense that Devo could be done for good at any moment, but there’s always something that brings them back together. When guitarist/keyboardist/engineer Robert “Bob 2” Casale passed…

To celebrate the upcoming release of our 104th 33 1/3 on  Freedom of Choice, we’re pleased to bring you the second installment of Devo week by author Evie Nagy! A critical plot point in the story of the runaway success of Devo’s May 1980 third album Freedom of Choice has to do with one of its early failures. Album opener and first single “Girl U Want” was supposed to be the hit, the song that broke on radio and put Devo on the mainstream map. It recalled the drive of…

To celebrate the upcoming release of our 104th 33 1/3 on  Freedom of Choice, we’re pleased to bring you the very first installment of Devo week by author Evie Nagy! In May 2014, I went to L.A. to spend the morning at Mutato Muzika with Devo co-founder Mark Mothersbaugh, and the evening at dinner with Devo’s other co-founder Jerry Casale. My book on Freedom of Choice was due in three months, and my second child was due a month after that. I had hundreds of pages of research and interviews…

To celebrate the upcoming release of our 106th 33 1/3 on  Super Mario Bros., we’re pleased to bring you the fifth and final installment of Koji Kondo week by author Andrew Schartmann!  Who doesn’t love a Mario-themed party trick? And who doesn’t want to be the one performing that trick? The problem, of course, is that many of us who dream of wowing our friends with a ditty at the keyboard aren’t exactly modern-day Rachmaninovs. But fret not! Today’s your lucky day. I’m going to teach those of you with…

To celebrate the upcoming release of our 106th 33 1/3 on  Super Mario Bros., we’re pleased to bring you the fourth installment of Koji Kondo week by author Andrew Schartmann! Read an excerpt from the Chapter “Overworlds and Underworlds” below! In contrast to a rhythm that plods along with dogged metronomic consistency, Kondo’s “Overworld” theme instills in us a strong desire to move. Yet as we saw, this movement is anything but stable; it’s actually quite erratic. So while the music’s major-mode and dance-like character embody the optimism and excitement…

To celebrate the upcoming release of our 106th 33 1/3 on  Super Mario Bros., we’re pleased to bring you the third installment of Koji Kondo week by author Andrew Schartmann!  Most game music enthusiasts would agree that Koji Kondo has a knack for composing memorable tunes. Driven by this consensus, countless articles focus on the melodic aspect of Kondo’s art. Few, however, note his skill when it comes to writing ambient music—those colorful washes of sound that enhance the on-screen atmosphere without the help of a memorable tune. Bowser’s Castle…