oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Feb 13, 2007 21:20:14 GMT -5
"Song for Clay" is MY SONG OF THE MOMENT. I played it about 30 times last week.
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Post by joker on Feb 14, 2007 14:24:09 GMT -5
First-week sales according to the HITS thread: -- 19 BLOC PARTY VICE ATLANTIC 35,346 -- WEEKEND IN THE CITY And the Billboard Top 200 results are in: "Bloc Party sees its second album, "A Weekend in the City," debut at No. 12 on The Billboard 200 with 48,000 units. The U.K. band's last effort, "Silent Alarm," topped out at No. 114 in 2005."I like these #'s better.
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Post by joker on Feb 14, 2007 14:26:17 GMT -5
"Song for Clay" is MY SONG OF THE MOMENT. I played it about 30 times last week. Yeah, it's an awesome song. It's one of my early favorites on the album, for sure.
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Post by joker on Feb 14, 2007 14:40:36 GMT -5
As for their current single:
"The new album's single, "I Still Remember," climbs 35-32 on the Alternative/Modern Rock chart in its fourth week on the tally. Only five monitored radio stations aired the song more than 20 times last week -- KUCD Honolulu; KJEE Santa Barbara, Calif.; WEQX Albany, N.Y.; XTRA San Diego; and KNXX Baton Rouge, La.
I believe that makes "I Still Remember" their biggest Alternative hit.
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Feb 14, 2007 15:36:58 GMT -5
#12! 48k sold! Awesome
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Post by joker on Feb 15, 2007 14:52:21 GMT -5
Watch Bloc Party's recent concert in Bristol here.
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Feb 15, 2007 18:19:12 GMT -5
I wish I could see them live, but their concert is being hosted in Crime Central (near the Bronx!)
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juhn
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Post by juhn on Feb 19, 2007 8:12:05 GMT -5
Leto's best role = Requiem for a DreamAlthough, Ellen Burstyn outshone everyone as his pill-popping mother. Tragic, memorable performance. Well I came here to talk about Bloc Party, but I can't resist responding to a post about my favorite movie OF. ALL. TIME. I thought Jennifer Connelly did a better job than Jared Leto in that movie too. Anyway, have listened to "A Weekend In The City" in full. It's an OK album, but nothing has dislodged "So Here We Are" as my #1 favorite Bloc Party track, although "Hunting For Witches" and "SXRT" comes... not even close. But they're the two best tracks on the album. Saw the video for The Prayer. Kinda boring.
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Post by joker on Feb 19, 2007 14:06:46 GMT -5
www.stereogum.com/archives/004646.htmlBloc Party Changed On StageNo, we don't mean that Kele switched outfits mid-set. We mean that British kids sure like throwing shit at the bands they go to see. Two songs into a gig last night at the Music Hall in Aberdeen, Bloc Party were attacked by coins. A poster to aberdeen-music.com said (via Gigwise):
Their set was only 2 songs in when it happened. They came back on after ten minutes and finished the set. It was a pretty good gig in the end, but aside from a couple of songs they didn't look like they were having fun and the coin throwing incident made the rest of the gig feel a bit akward (sic).
Nothing kills the mood like a 20p coin to the head. Nothing says "you've changed" to a band more symbolically than pelting 'em with pence. How rude!
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Post by jaxxalude on Feb 19, 2007 21:41:15 GMT -5
Whaddaya know! Art-school pansy boys are rock 'n' roll as can be after all!
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Post by jaxxalude on Feb 21, 2007 18:37:16 GMT -5
Guardian's Music BlogWhy Bloc Party are conquering AmericaTim JonzeFebruary 21, 2007 08:57 AM Liam Gallagher once observed they looked like a team on University Challenge, whereas older brother Noel suggested that it was only a matter of time before they were back working in their dads' gardening centres (whilst he was off playing Red Rocks Amphitheatre, naturally). Yet this week Bloc Party looked like a band who could pull of something that Oasis never truly managed to do - break America. Their second album, A Weekend in the City, entered the US Billboard chart at Number 12,112 places higher than their debut, Silent Alarm managed. Whilst it's true that Oasis did score higher chart positions (Be Here Now reached number two, debunking the myth that America hated Oasis), the US never fell at their feet in the way they were supposed to. So why do I think Bloc Party might be able to conquer America? On paper it sounds highly unlikely - four shy, slightly nerdy outsiders who subscribe to an extremely indie manifesto. If Oasis weren't in it for the big slog, then you can hardly imagine Kele Okereke hitting the shock-jock circuit and flogging his tracks to Pepsi. But then, you'd probably never bet on their new LP making the charts either. Brave and challenging as it may be, it's hardly commercial fodder. In fact, to these ears, it features only one truly big hitting pop song (that being I Still Remember, the first single released in the US). More implausible still, it's a concept record about a weekend spent getting hammered in Hoxton - not exactly a subject your average Ohio resident can get excited about. The reason I think Bloc Party might have a chance of breaking the US is that they're one of the few British bands who still deal with emotion. Songs about lost love, teenage angst and being an eternal outsider. Sounds familiar? Emo is big business over in the States, thanks to Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance and Panic! At The Disco all dragging it out of its formulaic straitjacket. And Bloc Party, with their ripped jeans, hoodies and fondness for holding hands on photo shoots are exactly that. Like it or not, they're a living, breathing soundtrack to the OC - a unique, across-the-pond take on emo, rather than a lame Brit copy. Think about the other British bands who've had success over the pond. Weirdly, it's not the ones who shout the loudest (Robbie, Oasis et al), but the more sensitive acts such as Belle And Sebastian, Coldplay and Morrissey (an emo icon, no less). Ten years down the line, and Noel may well be playing Red Rocks. But he might not be all that happy about the band he's supporting.
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Post by areyoureadytojump on Feb 21, 2007 19:05:20 GMT -5
Week 2:
2 VRCS 12 68 BLOC PARTY WEEKEND IN THE CITY 16,100 -66% 47,726 64,101
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Post by joker on Feb 21, 2007 19:38:47 GMT -5
Not an unexpected drop, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. ;)
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Feb 21, 2007 20:38:07 GMT -5
Wow, HITS fucked up on that one.
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Post by joker on Feb 22, 2007 13:18:23 GMT -5
www.nme.com/news/bloc-party/26616Bloc Party - 'We're doing Reading'Band also to play T In The Park and GlastonburyBloc Party have confirmed themselves for three of the summer's major festivals. The band will play the Carling Weekend: Reading And Leeds Festivals, T In The Park and Glastonbury. Speaking to BBC 6Music, bassist Gordon Moakes revealed the band's plans for the summer, saying "I don't know which ones have been announced from which ones haven't, but I know we're playing T In The Park. I think we're playing Reading Festival and Glastonbury, so I think we'll be ever-present over the summer."
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Post by jaxxalude on Feb 22, 2007 17:56:06 GMT -5
POPMATTERSBloc PartyA Weekend in the City(Vice) US release date: 6 February 2007 UK release date: 5 February 2007by Mike SchillerPopMatters Multimedia EditorWould it be unfair to blame Jacknife Lee for this? I should explain: The recipients of Jacknife Lee’s two highest-profile production jobs thus far have been Snow Patrol and U2—both of Snow Patrol’s big hit albums ( Final Straw and Eyes Open) were produced by Lee, and his involvement on U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb won the producer a Grammy. Lee was even the man tapped to remaster the entire U2 backcatalogue for release on iTunes. As such, it only makes sense that he would bring many of the same tricks and the same sensibility that he brought to those bands along with him on his stint at producing Bloc Party for its latest album, A Weekend in the City. The problem is, Bloc Party is not Snow Patrol. Bloc Party is not U2. Bloc Party made its name on Silent Alarm as a little-band-that-could type that gets by as much on pure, unbridled energy as it does on any sort of strength in its songwriting. Snow Patrol and U2, for all of the differences between the two bands, get by on anthemic gestures and soaring vocal turns. Without going into which band is better than who, the production approach needs to completely change when you’re going from a band that writes anthems to a band that writes white-hot fireballs. Lee did not adapt. Or, perhaps, Bloc Party chose to adapt to him, in the hunt for greater exposure and an expanded audience. Either way, the result is a band that is playing to its greatest weaknesses, never managing to prove that those weaknesses will ever be overcome. At the forefront in every sense is vocalist Kele Okereke, the face of the band, a face that bleats and grunts as much as it actually sings. And that’s fine, as long as it’s what the songs and the music call for—his unique, distinctive, and pleasingly untrained voice was perfect for Silent Alarm, a setting more suited to raw emotion than any sort of musicality. A Weekend in the City, however, has moments like the verse of “The Prayer”, an atonal mess of flat singing and multitracking in a song that also happens to have what might be the most beautiful chorus Bloc Party has ever written—if anything else in the song could have gotten off the ground, it would be an unforgettable classic. As it is, it’s fairly torturous hearing such a wonderful refrain surrounded by such a mess. Lee has done everything in his power, actually, to turn Okereke into a distinctive vocalist: he’s added “ahhhh” vocals to the background ("Sunday"), he’s tracked a second Okereke an octave below himself for an entire song to add strength to a particularly poor turn ("Where is Home?"), he even throws a flange on him for a second or two at a time ("Waiting for the 7.18"). The problem is, the tricks disguise nothing. They sound like tricks. And then there’s the anthemic stuff. Not everything should be an anthem. Words like “After sex / The bitter taste / Been fooled again / The search continues” should not be the repeated coda at the end of a building, fairly triumphant song. Unless the triumph is meant to be the acceptance, these are small words from a humbled man, not big thoughts from the enlightened as the music makes them sound. “Let’s drive to Brighton on the weekend” is not suitable chorus fodder when that chorus is going to be sung ten times in a row with the exact same melody. It’s as if every single song was written with the idea that it might just be the statement that defines the band for the rest of its career, and there’s simply no need for that—there’s room on an album for small stuff, too. Lee does manage to make this a clean-sounding album, I’ll give him that. His electronic flourishes on songs like “Hunting for Witches” and “Where is Home?” are welcome, and “On” is a love song that highlights everything wonderful about this band—the energy, the cryptic lyrics that point in the direction of literal meaning but never quite get there, the humility that is required of bands with somewhere to be. The beautifully subtle screeching strings flying over the top don’t hurt, either. Moments and songs like those are why I’m willing to give Bloc Party a mulligan for this one. A Weekend in the City is the type of album made by bands that aren’t quite sure where to go for their second statement to the world, after a first statement that’s received with almost universal acclaim. As such, a producer is brought in, to help guide them and mold them into a hit-making machine. Unfortunately, Jacknife Lee was the wrong producer choice, and the direction in which Bloc Party has traveled is entirely unsuited to its strengths—rather than transcending the band’s downfalls, Lee has amplified them. For now, Bloc Party should either play to its strengths or spend more time on the improvement of its deficiencies. As it is, for all its attempted grandeur, A Weekend in the City is little more than a stepping stone. RATING:
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Post by joker on Mar 7, 2007 18:54:47 GMT -5
4 VRCS 68 83 122 BLOC PARTY WEEKEND IN THE CITY 6,565 -35 10,134 80,800
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Mar 7, 2007 19:02:09 GMT -5
It's flopping & it's a damn shame. It's an excellent album.
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Post by jaxxalude on Mar 7, 2007 19:12:52 GMT -5
It's flopping & it's a damn shame. It's an excellent album. GUARDIANKele Okereke regrets signing to Vice labelThe Bloc Party frontman is 'filled with dread' by the hipster music-and-magazines company's brandPaul MacInnes Monday March 5, 2007What is a "nasty vortex"? And how does one distinguish it from a pleasant one? These and other questions have been provoked by leading urban thinker Kele Okereke, the Bloc Party frontman, after he decided to have a teensy pop at Vice, his record label in the States and phonic arm of the trendy mag that's too cool for you. "That's one of the things that I most regret about our history," the singer said in a recent interview. "I wish I'd voiced my concerns at the time, articulated them more clearly. "The people that we work with are lovely, and they're a separate company from the magazine, but Vice the brand just fills me with dread, really. It's a real kind of nasty vortex, where any decency and general compassion to other people has just been completely obliterated. "I don't know if the magazine is still like that, but it certainly was very much so back then." Sources close to a branch of American Apparel can assure Okereke that the magazine is the same as ever, but that the Dos and Don'ts feature continues to be funny. Bloc Party are on Wichita Recordings in the UK, so it doesn't really matter.
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Post by joker on Mar 8, 2007 19:53:29 GMT -5
Yeah, the sales here are disappointing, despite having a moderate Alternative hit (hovering around #25). At most, the album probably has a few more weeks on the chart unless their next single catches on or something happens to trigger a boost. Too bad, I like most of the songs.
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Post by joker on Mar 8, 2007 20:02:00 GMT -5
Bloc Party Weaves Dystopian Nightmares on Silent FollowupBy Michael Alan Goldbergwww.seattleweekly.com/2007-03-07/music/bloc-party-weaves-dystopian-nightmares-on-silent-followup.phpBloc Party's terrific 2005 debut, Silent Alarm, celebrated the now: twitchy guitars and madcap rhythms inside pithy, spartan tunes that hit like your stimulant of choice, urging you to move, not think. Sure, frontman Kele Okereke was yelping obliquely about Dubya and the war, but the quartet's chief command was to dance, damn the consequences. Two years later, their even-better follow-up, A Weekend in the City—comparably sweeping, slower, structurally fatter, and markedly more ruminative and cynical—faces the music, and things are not pretty (even if its sonics frequently are). The party's not quite over, but the sun is rising, shining enough light to see that lives, and the city in which they're being lived (in this case, London), are edging toward ruin. Reached by phone at his home in England, on the eve of a U.S. tour that launches here in Seattle, Bloc Party bassist Gordon Moakes is initially coy about his band's evolution in sound and mood. "I would just get lost in each song, and get stuck in with playing things, rather than really thinking about, you know, 'What are we trying to do?'" he says of the making of Weekend. Soon, though, he's a little more forthcoming. "I don't know if this is fair to say, but I definitely think with the first Franz Ferdinand record that the week it came out, it just made so much sense, and then a year later it just didn't seem to work so well for me. The sound was very hip-sounding for its time, but not necessarily timeless. We wanted to make a record that would stand the test of time." Career longevity and artistic relevance obviously being a goal of the entire band—which also includes guitarist Russell Lissack and drummer Matt Tong—Moakes and company were keenly aware of the choices made by some of their "angular Brit-rock" peers in the wake of similar early success, and the results. Franz Ferdinand stayed the course and made a second album that sounded much like their first; it did moderately well, but now that band feels like yesterday's news. The Futureheads, meanwhile, shifted gears with last year's ambitious, excellent News and Tributes, which was all but ignored in the U.S. Bloc Party followed the riskier path of the latter, and it paid off: Weekend entered the Billboard album charts at No. 12; the highest Silent Alarm ever reached was No. 114. Marketing and promotion aside, the album's wider appeal from a musical perspective isn't hard to understand. At the heart of five-minute opener "Song for Clay (Disappear Here)" is one of the band's choppy, propulsive, loud guitar parts, but it's introduced by haunted keyboards and Okereke's plaintive, tenor-to-falsetto-and-back croon, and is frequently subjugated by elegant arpeggios and cooing vocal harmonies. Similarly, "Waiting for the 7.18" makes room for some manic guitar work, but mostly it's the big, stately strums of the U2 variety. And a later track like "Sunday" pretty much epitomizes the disc's second half: Decelerated, lushly layered, and anthemic, its ringing six-strings, subtle electronics, and inviting melody evoke Coldplay more than Gang of Four. Says Moakes, "We just figured that there'd be a lot going on. But instead of stripping stuff out, this time we allowed all those things to sit alongside each other and hoped for the best." Okereke's lyrics, however, dwell on the worst, and his grim take on London as a dystopian nightmare—crumbling under the weight of racism, soul-destroying capitalism, terrorism, drug abuse, and general malaise—is rendered that much more acute when fixed to such a sublime aural setting. For the singer, vampires abound, whether it's the city that "sucks the joy right out of me" ("Song for Clay") or cocaine's bite, which ultimately creates "a flatness bleaker than the one it replaced" ("On"). In "Hunting for Witches," he rips into media and government fearmongering in the wake of the 2005 London bus bombings; in "Uniform," he mocks a society lulled into apathy ("Drink to forget your blues on the weekend/Think about more things to buy"); and in the scathing "Where Is Home?"—about the racially motivated 2006 murder of British teenager Christopher Alaneme, whose parents hail from Nigeria—Okereke (also of Nigerian descent) laments that "In every headline we are reminded/That this is not home for us." Though his words are sometimes times-specific, Okereke's visions of London aren't much different from Johnny Rotten's three decades ago, or even Charles Dickens' a century before that. "I guess things don't change massively in cities from generation to generation," Moakes notes. "The fashions change and the drugs change, buildings go up and some come down...but I'm sure the backdrop will always be fairly easy to identify with. On the whole, I think it's one of those records that will hold up pretty well." He pauses and laughs. "Hopefully, so will we."
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Mar 8, 2007 20:20:21 GMT -5
On a broader scale, the album is a tremendous success as a statement piece. Musically, it's solid, not breathtaking. It's a case of the final impact being more important than the sum of its parts. Most of these reviews that are middling are failing to see the bigger picture, but that's okay. Their job is to review the music. In a socio-literary sense, it's nearly flawless as a lyrical and conceptual project. The same way that technique can be quite irrelevant to modern art, the implications of this album are infinitely more important than the technical and creative merits of the music itself. I don't really care if people don't see that, because I don't expect them to. I do see these qualities, and that's why I like this album better than the debut.
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Post by jaxxalude on Mar 8, 2007 20:30:19 GMT -5
On a broader scale, the album is a tremendous success as a statement piece. Musically, it's solid, not breathtaking. It's a case of the final impact being more important than the sum of its parts. Most of these reviews that are middling are failing to see the bigger picture, but that's okay. Their job is to review the music. In a socio-literary sense, it's nearly flawless as a lyrical and conceptual project. The same way that technique can be quite irrelevant to modern art, the implications of this album are infinitely more important than the technical and creative merits of the music itself. I don't really care if people don't see that, because I don't expect them to. I do see these qualities, and that's why I like this album better than the debut. Quite an OTT statement you're making, no?...
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Mar 8, 2007 22:06:40 GMT -5
Yeah, I guess you're right. I was just bullshitting to pass the time. I actually hate the album and everything it attempts to accomplish.
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Post by jaxxalude on Mar 9, 2007 14:46:18 GMT -5
I was trying really hard for you to take the bait, but alas. You know, my only bone of contention is here: Most of these reviews that are middling are failing to see the bigger picture, but that's okay. (...) I don't really care if people don't see that, because I don't expect them to. (...) I do see these qualities I'm not saying it was your intention, but you have to agree that phrases like these may come off as pretentious, not to say arrogant. But that's OK. See, I'm (still) guilty of that myself sometimes. And believe me when I tell you that I get all the wrath for it and then some. ;) As for the rest, it's your opinion. The End.
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Post by joker on Mar 9, 2007 14:47:07 GMT -5
seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/2003608284_blocparty09.htmlBy Patrick MacDonaldAll is not merry in old London town. At least not in the 21st-century London depicted in "A Weekend in the City," the new, sophomore album from Bloc Party. In the songs of frontman Kele Okereke, the city is a violent, racist place with corrupt cops and judges, and bored, aimless youth who get their kicks through violence. Okereke has a unique point of view. He's black and gay, which means he's a target for a double-whammy of prejudice. So his view, while trenchant, may be a bit skewed. "East London is a vampire, it sucks the joy right out of me," he sings in "Song for Clay (Disappear Here)," the disc's first cut. In "Uniform," he observes that young people in malls all look the same, "wearing their masks of cool and indifference." In the latest fads, they look like "commerce dressed up as rebellion." "In every headline we are reminded that this is not home for us," he laments in "Where Is Home?," a song based on two brutal street murders, of a black youth and a gay man, the latter captured by one of the attackers on his cell-phone video camera, and shown over and over on British TV. Not surprisingly, "A Weekend in the City" has created a lot of talk and interest in England, and is a big hit there. Bloc Party hopes to create the same kind of buzz, and sales, with its first big headlining tour in America, which starts Sunday at the Paramount. But conquering America is going to be tough. Not only are Bloc Party's songs Brit-centric, they're somewhat cerebral and heavy-going. And while the lyrics are challenging, the music is not. It's an instantly recognizable amalgam of British rock styles, from Bowie and Morrissey to Joy Division and the Cure, up to current chart-toppers Kaiser Chiefs. The real test, of course, will be Bloc Party's live show, which is said to be fun, danceable and much less morose than Okereke's downer lyrics.
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Mar 9, 2007 16:06:32 GMT -5
I was trying really hard for you to take the bait, but alas. You know, my only bone of contention is here: Most of these reviews that are middling are failing to see the bigger picture, but that's okay. (...) I don't really care if people don't see that, because I don't expect them to. (...) I do see these qualities I'm not saying it was your intention, but you have to agree that phrases like these may come off as pretentious, not to say arrogant. But that's OK. See, I'm (still) guilty of that myself sometimes. And believe me when I tell you that I get all the wrath for it and then some. ;) As for the rest, it's your opinion. The End. I was in a horrible mood when I wrote that. I tend to produce extreme statements when I'm feeling tempermental. It probably did come off as arrogant, but sometimes it's hard not to feel like everyone else is missing the point of...just about everything. I stand by my statements, but had I written them at this moment, I might have favored a less histrionic tone. And as for me taking the bait...you can try to trap me, Ricardo - everyone tries to - but I'm more evasive than Jandek!
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Damage
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Post by Damage on Mar 11, 2007 14:29:11 GMT -5
I'm starting to like them.
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Post by joker on Mar 12, 2007 20:13:02 GMT -5
Bloc Party kicks off its world tour with a bashBloc Party began its world tour Sunday night at the Paramount with a dynamic and energetic set that pulled equally from both albums. The common denominator to any Bloc Party song is the tension between the dueling guitars that repeatedly pit drone against jag. Meanwhile, the rhythm section, often siding with the steely twang of the lead guitar, augments the bouncing energy with a variety of hard-hitting and cheerful chops. More...
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Post by joker on Mar 13, 2007 17:20:25 GMT -5
Despite weak supporting acts, Bloc Party solid in tour openerIn Britain, there's a new rock sensation every other week. And sometimes, they're more than just a flash in the pan. Kele Okereke, lead singer of Bloc Party, has what it takes to have a lasting career. And his band was much more impressive in person that it is on its recordings. Opening its first major American tour Sunday night at the Paramount, Bloc Party did its homeland proud. In the great English rock tradition, the four-man band was tight and powerful, the sound was first rate and the show was flashy and professional. Cont'd
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