2007 Top 10 Lists: Gary, Steve and Jeffrey from Big Dipper!

We'll be releasing a 3-disc Big Dipper retrospective in March and the band will be re-forming for some shows in April! Check out an mp3 of She's Fetching!

Gary Waleik's Top 10(s):

Top Ten LP's I've rediscovered now that I've reconnected my turntable:

1) Here Come the Warm Jets - Brian Eno
2) A Different Kind of Tension - Buzzcocks
3) Ringo - Ringo Starr
4) Volume, Contrast, Brilliance - The Monochrome Set
5) Aphrodesia - Jackie Gleason
6) Chairs Missing - Wire
7) June 1, 1974 - Kevin Ayers
8) A Nice Pair - Pink Floyd
9) Lolita Nation - Game Theory
10) You Broke My Heart in Seventeen Places - Tracy Ullman


Top Ten Wax Cylinders I've Rediscovered Now That I've Repaired
the Victrola:

1) Man Will Never Walk on the Moon - Grumpy Gus and His Nattering
Naysayers
2) Prohibition is Next to Godliness - The Idle Rich Christian
Women's Abstinence League Choir
3) The Depression is Good for People Like You and Me - Bootstrap
Bob and the Blue Collar Self-Haters
4) I Foresee a Time Fifty Years Hence When a Band Called Guided
By Voices Emerges from Dayton, Ohio - Honolulu Slim
5) Lye Soap Blues - The Yonkers Boys Choir
6) Gee, Ain't Mississippi Swell? - The Hudson Bay Chorus
7) Young, Loud and Snotty - Dead Boys
8) A Tribute to Lightnin' Hopkins - Lawrence Welk and His
Orchestra
9) The Hanukkah Variations - Richard Wagner
10) You're A Grand Old Flag - Theodore Roosevelt and the Fifty
Ninth United States Congress Glee Club

Steve Michener's Top 10 Music Business deaths in 2007:

1)Lee Hazlewood....What can you say? He discovered
Duane Eddy and gave Nancy Sinatra a career. One of the
greats.
2)Luciano Pavarotti....Quick, name the other two
tenors!
3)Porter Waggoner....Leaving this world with a
satisfied mind.
4)Denny Doherty....Mamas and Papas singer AND Canadian
citizen. We all should accomplish so much in one
lifetime.
5)Max Roach....one of the greatest drummers of all
time.
6)Boots Randolph.....Composed and played 'Yakety Sax',
the theme song to Benny Hill. If there were a god it
would have been Benny who got the brain hemmorrhage.
7)Robert Goulet....I'll give him a pass on his lame
music career since he was Wheezy the penguin in Toy
Story 2.
8)Bobby 'Boris' Pickett....Born in Somerville,MA, he
wrote 'Monster Mash' in 30 minutes and spent the rest
of his life cashing BMI checks.
9)Don Ho....Brought Hawaiian music to the mainstream
with nary a slack key guitar in sight. Not one of the
greats.
10)Hilly Kristal....Owner of CBGBs where I spent some
of the best nights of my musical life.

Jeffrey Oliphant's Top 10 Fun Things from 2007:

1) ELO - Time
2) Fountains Of Wayne - Utopia Parkway
3) Brian Adams - Greatest Hits
4) Smart Money.com
5) Nikki Sixx- Heroin Diaries
6) The Future For Investors - Jeremy J Siegel
7) Yahoo Fantasy Sports
8) Michael Savage Radio Show
9) Moon Bats
10) Connells - Ring

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2007 Top 10 Lists: Jeremy Gara

Jeremy Gara from Arcade Fire chimes in with his Top 10 of 2007:

1. Ryan Adams – Easy Tiger
2. Susanna Wallumrod – Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos
2. Blonde Redhead – 23
2. Radiohead – In Rainbows
2. Supersilent – 8
2. Colleen – Les Ondes Silencieuses
2. The Luyas – Faker Death
2. Nels Cline Singers – Draw Breath
2. PJ Harvey – White Chalk
2. Sunn 0))) – Oracle
3. The Dillinger Escape Plan – Ire Works (I haven’t bought this yet, but I know it’ll hit the top ten when I do…)
3. Jay Reatard – Blood Visions (last year, but I was late finding it.)

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2007 Top 10 Lists: Caribou

Caribou (aka Dan Snaith) made his Merge debut in 2007 with his stunning new album Andorra, which means he gets his first shot at a Merge Year End Top 10 list. Here's Dan's rookie card...


1. Panda Bear - Person Pitch
2. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
3. Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid - Tongues
4. Battles - Mirrored
5. Ariel Pink - Scared Famous
6. No Age - Weirdo Rippers
7. Fridge – The Sun
8. Junior Boys – Dead Horse EP
9. Koushik – Out My Window (not yet released but much enjoyed)
10. Born Ruffians – Red, Yellow and Blue (not yet released but much enjoyed)


Look for Caribou to be back in North America for another round of tour dates in early 2008.

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2007 Top 10 Lists: Britt Daniel

Britt Daniel of Spoon shares his 10 favorite albums of 2007:

Handsome Furs - Plague Park
Bright Eyes - Cassadaga
Feist - The Reminder
John Vanderslice - Emerald City
LCD SoundSystem - Sound of Silver
The Clientele - God Save the Clientele
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
Low - Drums and Guns
Interpol - Our Love To Admire

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2007 Top 10 Lists: Tracyanne & Carey of Camera Obscura

We kick off our 2007 Year-end lists with Tracyanne Campbell and Carey Lander of Camera Obscura!

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Tracyanne's Top 10:

As usual the majority of the music I've bought hasn't been contemporary.
Here's a list of the best
of contemporary I have managed to buy and enjoy in no particular order:

1.John Rauhouse - Steal Guitar Heart Attack
My boyfriend got me into this. The sound of his guitar makes me melt. John's
guitar that is...
2.Taken By Trees - Open Field
Simply beautiful and fragile. A fantastic debut.
3. Jens Lekman - Night Falls over Kortedala
The ingredients he uses to season his songs are a wonderful mystery to me.
This album makes me greedily want more and more and more from Jens Lekman.
4.The Kings of Leon - Because of the Times
What can I say? A Good old fashioned rock band with great tunes.
My highlight is 'Fans'.
5.Rilo Kiley - Under the Blacklight
I love the 80's vibe. It's very good to dance to which is important.
6.Feist - Reminder
I recently saw her perform in Glasgow and it was the most enjoyable show
I've been to in years. She makes me want to go home and practice playing guitar.
7.The Clientele - God Save the Clientele
'The Queen of Seville' makes tears pop out of me every time.
8.Rufus Wainwright - Release the Stars
Genius!
9.Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
This was released in the UK in 2006 but I had to put it in. I'll never tire
of 'Rehab'.
10. Richard Hawley - Lady's Bridge
Hopelessly devoted...


Carey's Top 10:

1. Richard Hawley - Lady's Bridge
2. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
3. Rufus Wainwright - Release the Stars.
4. Bright Eyes - Cassadaga
5. Loney Dear - Loney Dear, Loney Noir
6. Taken By Trees - Open Field
7. The Clientele - God Save The Clientele
8. Innocence Mission - We walked in Song
9. Rilo Kiley - Under the Blacklight
10. The Shins - Wincing the Night Away

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Karaoke at the Holiday Party!

Spott & Paul singing "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" at the Merge Holiday Party!

While the spirit of the holidays is in the air, don't forget to keep checking our EBAY PAGE for new charity auctions! We just put up a great Destroyer poster signed by the man himself, Dan Bejar. Also, a White Whale prize pack for all you Matt Suggs / Rob Pope enthusiasts out there!

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Caribou does the Take Away Show!

#76.1 - Caribou - She's the One
Uploaded by lablogotheque

Dan Snaith & crew were filmed on the streets of Paris performing a few songs from their incredible album, Andorra.

Caribou on the Take Away Show - She's the One and Sundialing directed by Vincent Moon!

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Occupational Hazard

Yes, we share an office. No, we didn't plan this.

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Brian Turner's take on The Clean in New York!

(Photo via Andrew Gardner)

WFMU's wonderful music and program director, Brian Turner, attended the four recent shows by The Clean in New York.

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Bottom line: only a band as great as the Clean could get me in an airless, hot, basement room for three nights straight (and over to Hoboken for another). For years, this band on record has embodied everything that is good in music and live their power is a whole other amazing deal. For every wave of musical/stylistic fetishism that has swamped popular and underground culture: krauty this and that, 60's evocations, loose 80s Rough Tradeisms, all have been natural/inherent throughout with Mssrs. Kilgour, Kilgour and Scott. They absorb and filter it all, and it comes out as organic/natural as possible yet distinctively stamped. In fact, call me nutty but the night before the Cake Shop shows I ran into David and Robert at the Tinariwen in-store at Other Music, and listening to the Clean the next night I'll be damned if I didn't hear the whole psychedelic electrified Tuareg sounds happening in David's axewielding as well, but you know it's *always* been in there all along.

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The Clean can seamlessly drift from gentle pop song into obtuse musical sketchery into titanic jam without so much as a blink of forcedness. Where "Point That Thing" was a bulldozer the 1st night, it didn't quite levitate as much on night 2 (in fact, David was cracking Robert up by throwing the song's intro figure into the middle several times). But when the moment hits, it's not always in the place it's "supposed" to be. They can swell up in songs that they may have played straightforward the night before; Hamish takes his motorik drumming up to another gear, Robert locks in, David takes off and totally utilizes his twin ampage to literally make a wall of guitar. The next night some songs were completely 180 opposite, but the openness to allow songs to flow as the moment dictates and that's another reason I love the Clean and all it stands for.

The three nights at Cake Shop brought varied set lists, certainly including the classics. While tunes like "Tally Ho" and "Beatnik" got the audience especially happy (not to mention the nearly-in-tears openers Times New Viking alongside the stage Saturday jubilant upon hearing their organ employed when the Clean's crapped out) there was lots of Vehicle stuff ("Big Cat" night 1!), "Oddity", a great assortment of Hamish-sung tunes (closing with "Safe in the Rain" often) and relatively newer tunes that sounded awesome. Night 2 even saw a wiry version of the VU's "I Can't Stand It" and you can't help but realize what a rich, solid, body of music this band has created since the early days. They certainly ain't as prolific as, say, the Fall, but like them, they delivered throughout the timeline and they are equally worthy of the endurance-times-quality medal without fail. Though, we were a bit worried about David on night 3 who looked ready to drop from the lack of oxygen down in the cave that is the Cake Shop. But there was some backup as a feisty-looking, middle finger extending Richard Davies (Cardinal/Moles) came out and slung axe and guested on vox for "Getting Older".

Great venue to see them though, totally gave the vibe of watching your fave band in an inclusive party room atmosphere; a few nights later at Maxwell's they fronted another packed but more manageable room of Yo La Tengo Hannukah show fans. I walked in late, only to see three people on stage who looked like Primal Scream thus cursing myself thinking I bought a ticket for the wrong night. On closer inspection, it was the Clean, in wigs. David in an Emo Phillips style, Hamish looking like Brian May behind the drums, and Robert somewhat sporting the Joyce DeWitt look. David also was in some kind of character, and one with Tourettes at that; grumbling between-song obscenities left and right to Hamish ("stop fucking playing fucking jazz drums"), Robert ("play the fucking organ better"), his guitar ("I'm not fucking tuning this fucking thing") and the audience ("fucking New Jersey") who may have been somewhat puzzled. Missed the finale of the Yo La set to get a bus back to the city, but understand encore was Clean-inclusive and offered up the Dovers-via-Pop Art Toasters cover of "What Am I Gonna Do." Hope we see a US return soon.

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Robert Pollard - Do the Collage

Michael Imperioli's Studio Dante hosted a showing of original Robert Pollard collages last weekend.

Spin.com was there, and Time Out NY asked Bob a few questions about the event. Also, Fantagraphics has just announced a coffee-table book due in June 2008 - TOWN OF MIRRORS: THE REASSEMBLED IMAGERY OF ROBERT POLLARD - a collection of Robert Pollard's artwork and lyrics.

We'll post more details as they arise, but don't forget the two new Robert Pollard records we released in October when you are making those all-important top 10 lists!

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VOTE FOR MELODY DAY ON MTV!

Voting for Caribou's "Melody Day" video happens this week!! You have until Friday at 11:59AM to get your vote in for "Melody Day" to be added to MTVU's "Freshmen" rotation! VOTE HERE! If you haven't seen the video yet, click here to catch it!

- Lindsey K.

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Merge Charity Auction & Holiday Sale continues!

I know, I know, it's the holiday season and the need for gift ideas is dire. We feel your pain! Don't forget our massive Holiday sale in the Merge Store AND the Charity Auctions still going on at our ebay seller's page!

New Arcade Fire poster & Broken West drum head auctions started today!!

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KROQ webcast live Spoon show!

Spoon will be playing the KROQ "Almost Acoustic" Christmas show on December 9 at the Gibson Amphitheatre. Click here for a direct link to a live webcast of the whole event including the Spoon show! For tickets and other information visit kroq.com.

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All Songs Considered can't wait until January!

Get a sneak peak at the forthcoming January 2008 Radar Bros. release, Auditorium, courtesy of the All Songs Considered podcast!

Listen here!

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Kelly Rosebud does Standup!

(Photo credit: Valerie {at} fremin.net courtesy of Sonic Itch Music *Sorry not to have given full props immediately!)

Kelly Crisp aka Kelly Rosebuds will be doing a mini stand-up tour beginning at Comix in NYC on Thursday, December 6th! Find more information and other opportunities to see Kelly make you laugh here! Also, The Rosebuds announced two shows in January!

Time is running out on the Rosebuds prize pack auction! Get your bids in on our seller's page for a good cause! The Shout Out Louds prize pack is still available, and we just added a signed Spoon poster and signed Dinosaur Jr. poster!

Thanks for your generous support of our auctions so far!

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