Rest Of Virgin Announced

The entire Virgin Festival lineup was revealed this morning. Those who had hoped for some quality acts to balance out the mediocrity of the headliners, kinda sorta maybe got what they wanted.

There were some better acts added, with the stronger day clearly being Sunday the 10th. Highlighted additions by day include:

Saturday: Bloc Party, Cat Power, Chuck Berry, Lupe Fiasco, and Wilco

Sunday: Andrew Bird, The Black Keys, Bob Dylan, Lil Wayne, She and Him, and Chromeo (Nine Inch Nails and Kanye West headlining)

A nice little East Coast roadtrip weekend could be accomplished by catching Radiohead (2 nights), Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, Kings of Leon, The Roots, Girl Talk, and The Black Angels at All Points West up in NYC for Friday and Saturday. Then heading back down to Baltimore on Sunday for the second day of Virgin. In fact, you would be oppositely following Jack Johnson's itinerary, completely avoiding him at both festivals. Bonus.

Free MP3's & Free Show

Daytrotter posted a session today from one of my favorite new bands , White Denim. Go get it. And while you're at it grab the session from Fleet Foxes they posted a week ago. Oh, and The Dodos one they did in February. Gosh that site is awesome.


TPC will be at the Talking Head on Sunday, for free.

Rolling Stone Thinks Baltimore Is Cool

Representatives of Rolling Stone were spotted gallivanting in these here streets last month. Attending an Ecstatic Sunshine and Double Dagger show at Floristree, and eating at the Golden West Cafe; dudes must have dug it, or drank entirely too much Natty Boh.

The magazine has just revealed its "Best of Rock 2008" feature, and awarded Baltimore with best scene. Apparently this means that we are a "hotbed for rap and art rock". In case you're not sure what "hotbed" actually means, the dictionary explains it as:

A glass-covered bed of soil heated with fermenting manure or by electricity, used for the germination of seeds or for protecting tender plants.

Uh, well put. While the article left out some key components, it still managed to namedrop and highlight some of our city's finer elements including David Byrne, Soundgarden, The Talking Head, and Beach House. Articles like this one have surfaced on the online wordwide web of internets for the past year or so, but this "best of" list certainly holds the most confusing company.

In the same piece there are awards for "Best New Michael Jackson", "Best Country Lolita", and...wait for it..."Best Guitar Hero Band". Granted the best country lolita is ridiculosly hot, but WTF is a country lolita? And did I really just use the phrase country lolita 4 times in a paragraph? Yes, yes I did.

Brian Adam Ant

What if I were to tell you I knew of an artist who sounded like an amalgamation of Daniel Johnston, Cass McCombs, and maybe even some Woody Guthrie. Is that something you might be interested in? Well, like Bob, I don't really care either way. Mainly because Brian Adam Ant is pretty frickin' sweet whether or not you like the dudes mentioned above.

Mr. Ant has been rocking out ever since the fourth grade when he was in a band that sang a song about white men in their yellow suits and black men in their purple suits (shameless plug: I was in this band for 3 days and sang Helter Skelter, eventually being rightfully told that I sucked).

Brian recently moved from Bmore to Brooklyn to keep on keepin' on. He played with a few different bands here, the most recent being the Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad. He was the bassist and was labeled "The Pikesville Gynecologist". A seemingly normal name in a band that has "Captain Mediocrity", who is in charge of intimidation and tambourine.

I featured one of his most recent demos on my muxtape and expect more excellent things to come as he continues to write and record up in Brooklyn. You should probably go to Soundgarden and pick up his album Separation Celebration. Here's his video for "I'm So Bored" done by Better Hollywood Productions.

Bmore.tv

Pitchfork revealed its new beta pitchfork.tv this week, and promises that it will fill the void that MTV left when they started filming people yell at each other. In light of p4k's unveiling, I have decided to present you with some visual spectacles of local origin. Some are quite fresh, other's are more weathered favorites.

Yeasayer claims Brooklyn as their home these days, but are originally from these parts. They released this video about a month ago.


Beach House uncovered yet another video from the new record.


The Deathset's album comes out in a few weeks.

Richard Branson Named Some Bands

The third installment of Virgin Festival will be at Pimlico August 9th and 10th. The headliners were announced yesterday. Below I have provided a list that contains detailed and fully informative reviews and reactions of each artist.

Nine Inch Nails: Ok.

Kanye West: Hm.

Stone Temple Pilots: Oh.

Foo Fighters: Eh.

Jack Johnson: The link portrays my thoughts.

Half the bands might make this look like the 1998 HFStival lineup. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, and there’s room for potential I guess. There will be a lot more acts announced, and let’s hope they provoke more thought. If not, I suggest heading up to All Points West instead.