Just a reminder for everyone who’s interested in watching Troy rap: the first batch of 1,500 (per show) Spring Weekend tickets go on sale tomorrow morning (4/4) at 8 a.m. at the Brown Marketplace section of BSA’s website. If you miss the first round, you will have another chance to snag one of 1,500 additional tickets for each show at 8 a.m. on Thursday (4/5). Then, next Tuesday (4/10), BCA will be selling any remaning tickets, plus 2,500 outdoor only tickets for both concerts. Tickets are going for $17 each. Sound complex? Of course it does — it wouldn’t be Spring Weekend ticket purchasing otherwise.

Hide your kids, hide your wife.

Andrew Rose Gregory is perhaps best known as being one-fourth of the polycephalic pop culture cyborg that is the Gregory Brothers — the family behind Auto-Tune the News, the Double Rainbow Song and the Bed Intruder Song. In short, after Dick Cheney and Keanu Reeves, he’s one of the last people you’d expect to have a (semi-) secret career as a navel-gazing singer-songwriter.

But he does. His newest effort, “Song of Songs,” is a contemporary take on the Old Testament’s song of songs of Solomon. The album, which features the voice of sister-in-law Sarah Gregory, The Color Red Band and input from Sufjan Stevens, is a many-layered, pastoral breath of blue-eyed soul without a hint of irony.

Gregory will play at the Graduate Lounge Saturday, Nov. 12 at 9:30 p.m. The Herald spoke with him about the television pilot he’s filming for Comedy Central, Katie Couric and harpsichords.

So what’s the story behind Auto-Tune the News?
All four of us we for a long time had wanted to be able to watch the news but we found that whenever we did it we’d fall asleep, it was so boring. So we realized if we were able to dance while we were watching the news, we wouldn’t fall asleep … If we added a baseline and a beat and a poppin’ Dr. Luke melody we wouldn’t fall asleep. I mean, I’ve never heard of anyone fall asleep while they were dancing. And it worked! Evan and Michael [Gregory] have degrees in music theory so they do a lot of stuff on the music end … we try to incorporate a lot of complex, interesting musical elements into the videos.  [Read more →]

Dubstep. Any relatively hip college student has heard about the genre, and anybody who listens to the Top 40 has most likely heard it in action. But do these casual witnesses to the second British invasion really know what dubstep is? One thing is for certain, it’s not a ‘hella cool dubstep drop, bro’ in a Britney Spears tune. Telegraph music writer Gervaise de Wilde put it best when he asserted “[dubstep] amalgamates disparate elements of UK’s urban sounds and cultures into an innovative whole.” While this soundbite was a perfectly accurate description of the genre in 2006, it has devolved evolved as it broke out of its rigid 140 bpm structure and started to incorporate elements of house, hip hop and even reggaeton. In fact, the word dubstep has been misused so heavily in the past few years that it is currently a perfectly acceptable word to describe any kind of music that utilizes gut-wrenching bass synthesizers and incorporates some sort of break beat.

So here’s the question: Is Philadelphia-based Starkey, who is set to perform on Lincoln Field this Saturday, a quintessential dubstep producer/DJ? Probably not. While he has roots in the purest, darkest UK dubstep (see his appearance on genre proponent Mary Ann Hobbs’s show above), he’s managed to create incredible work within the larger genre of ‘bass music’ in the past few years. Bass music, if you’re wondering, is an umbrella genre within electronic dance music that has been making waves in the scene thanks to Diplo’s Mad Decent, NYC label Trouble & Bass and a fantastic crew of producers on London-based Night Slugs, as well as hundreds of up and coming producers in the US and Europe. If you’re into dancing while low-frequency sounds at unruly decibel levels penetrate your stomach lining, you’ll like Starkey. If your idea of a good time is ‘getting chay with Kenny,’ you may consider going to Duke  not be part of Starkey’s target audience. Four essential tunes to get you acquainted with Starkey’s music and more jokes about country music after the jump.

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The Brown Concert Agency sent out a press release this afternoon announcing Starkey and (7th place finishers in the BlogDH poll) Real Estate will be performing at this year’s Fall Concert.  The concert will take place on September 24th, ideally on Lincoln Field (with the RISD Auditorium serving as Meehan Auditorium). Tickets will be free.99 and available on the BCA’s website on Monday, Sept. 19th.  For the full press release and the answer to the inevitable question “who the fuck are these people?” click through!

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Coachella: the only thing California has going for it these days / Coachella.com

A few weeks ago, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival announced its extensive lineup. The annual event generally drives east coast undergrads to curse their empty bank account, beg their parents for money and, after the begging fails, ever so briefly wish they had attended a Claremont College. This year’s lineup is of particular interest to Brown students, because Coachella happens to coincide with our beloved Spring Weekend (April 15-17). What does this mean for us? The festival, notable for filling its stages with great headliners in addition to “lower profile” artists, has swiped up a significant proportion of the hippest and most desirable acts in the business. While megastars like Kanye West and Kings of Leon are no surprise, Coachella has also jumped on recent fads such as “weird rap” (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All and Lil’ B) and “live”-electronic-stage-extravaganzas (Bloody Beetroots, Magnetic Man and Crystal Castles). See some artists Coachella didn’t get its filthy paws on after the jump. [Read more →]

Fall in Providence — Anne Simons / BlogDailyHerald

Family Weekend 2010 is almost upon us. Fall is in the air, the sun will be shining (almost the whole weekend), and kids and parents alike may be wondering how to negotiate the social ritual that is Family Weekend. Well, don’t worry. BlogDaily Herald is here to help. Look for our posts over the next few days to get you ready for the weekend.

We’re only talking about a few of the University’s many events for this weekend, but you can see the University’s (partial) list of the events for yourself.

Follow after the jump for our take.
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