Tag: Music
New Travel Book: ‘Led Zeppelin Crashed Here’
by Jim Benning | 07.25.07 | 2:47 PM ET
Full title: “Led Zeppelin Crashed Here: The Rock and Roll Landmarks of North America”
Author: Chris Epting, author of numerous pop-culture guidebooks, including Elvis Presley Passed Here: Even More Locations of America’s Pop Culture Landmarks
Released: May 1, 2007
Travel genre: Quirky guidebook
Territory covered: North America, including the New York City buildings featured on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Physical Graffiti.”
Promo copy: “Pop culture historian Chris Epting takes you on a journey across North America to the exact locations where rock and roll history was made. Epting has compiled nearly 600 rock and roll landmarks, combining historical information with trivia, photos, and backstage lore, all with the enthusiasm of a true rock and roll devotee. No other book delivers such an extensive list of rock and roll landmarks—from beginnings (the site where Elvis got his first guitar), to endings (the hotel where Janis Joplin died), and everything in between.”
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Yahoo! BuzzIn Krakow, Jewish Culture has Become Hipster Culture
by Terry Ward | 07.16.07 | 4:03 PM ET
In June, more than 20,000 people descended on Krakow, Poland for the city’s annual Jewish Festival—complete with Hasidic dance performances, Hebrew calligraphy lessons and klezmer music galore. But perhaps the most interesting thing about the gathering was that very few of the festival-goers were Jewish. Jewish culture is gradually making a comeback in Eastern Europe. And in Krakow, it seems, it has become downright trendy.
Antarctic Scientist-Rockers Nunatak to Perform at Live Earth
by Jim Benning | 07.06.07 | 1:15 PM ET
As Rolling Stone points out, the house band of the British Antarctic Survey is—literally—the coolest band lined up to play tomorrow’s Live Earth concerts “for a climate in crisis.” They’re gettings loads of press. “By day,” reports NPR, “the band members research evolutionary biology and climate change. By night, they are the house band at Rothera Research Station on Adelaide Island, located near the middle of the Antarctic peninsula that stretches toward Chile.”
Seven Wonders of the Shrinking Planet
by Jim Benning, Michael Yessis | 07.06.07 | 12:04 PM ET
Jim Benning and Michael Yessis unveil World Hum's seven wonders: places, things and people that embody ways the planet is shrinking and cultures are colliding
Lou Reed’s ‘Berlin’: Do His Songs Still Resonate in the City That Inspired Them?
by Michael Yessis | 07.03.07 | 10:22 AM ET
In 1973 Lou Reed recorded Berlin, an album inspired by the German city that Rolling Stone called “one of the gloomiest records ever made—slow, druggy and heavily orchestrated.” At the time, the Wall cut through Berlin and the city struggled with a heroin epidemic among teens. “In other words, it was not a happy place, although it was certainly an interesting one—Berlin, in that era, had become a mecca for some of the most creative heads in rock music,” Time’s Stephanie Kirchner writes in an intriguing “Postcard from Berlin” on the magazine’s Web site.
The Critics: ‘Chasing the Rising Sun’
by Jim Benning | 06.22.07 | 7:19 AM ET
The Los Angeles Times has a review of Chasing the Rising Sun, writer Ted Anthony’s account of his quest to find the origins of the classic folk song, “House of the Rising Sun.” It’s a quest, in part, to learn where and what The House in question was: Brothel? Gambling house? Prison? In addition to being a book about music and history, it’s also about travel.
Rocking Diplomacy: Fulbright-mtvU Fellowships
by Julia Ross | 06.14.07 | 3:01 PM ET
As someone just finishing up a Fulbright grant in Taiwan, I’m convinced one-to-one international exchange will do a lot more for the United States’ image abroad than some of the highly-spun messaging we’ve heard out of Washington. So I was pleased to see the U.S. State Department push the Fulbright program into the 21st century with four new grants to study global music culture, awarded in collaboration with mtvU, MTV’s 24-7 campus network. It’s a partnership about as unlikely as, say, Condi Rice joining the cast of “The Real World,” but it just might help give sagging U.S. public diplomacy efforts a shot in the arm.
Bookstore Tourism’s Portzline Jams With the Rock Bottom Remainders
by Michael Yessis | 06.06.07 | 10:44 AM ET
We learned a lot about Bookstore Tourism founder Larry Portzline in our Q&A. We didn’t learn, though, that he rocks. At BookExpo in New York last week, Portzline jammed with Dave Barry, Frank McCourt, Amy Tan and the many other literary all-stars in the band the Rock Bottom Remainders. “It was truly bizarre and amazing,” he wrote me in an e-mail. “Plus it was surprising to hear how well these guys play. In strictly bar-band terms, they’re actually good!”
Rolling Stone Picks Best 25 Road Trip Songs Ever
by Michael Yessis | 05.23.07 | 12:30 PM ET
“Route 66” didn’t crack the list, so feel free to not take it seriously. Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” topped the 25 picks, with Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” and AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” rounding out the top three.
Yo-Yo Ma on Travel and the ‘Silk Road Project’
by Michael Yessis | 05.17.07 | 11:15 AM ET
R.I.P. (and Aloha) Don Ho
by Jim Benning | 04.16.07 | 11:21 AM ET
Legendary performer Don Ho has died of heart failure at the age of 76. Ho was a cultural ambassador and icon, bringing the sound of Hawaii to the world and performing for countless visitors to Waikiki over more than four decades. The Honolulu Advertiser has put together a nice tribute with photos, music clips and a place to post memories and comments about Ho’s life. A typical entry: “My husband and I have seen Don every year for the last 38 years…Don Ho was Hawaii and the spirit of Aloha he created throughout his career will never die.”
Paleo: 365 Days on the Road, 365 Songs
by Michael Yessis | 04.12.07 | 7:39 AM ET
David Andrew Strackany, aka Paleo, has spent the last year traveling around the U.S. and writing songs—one every day since April 16, 2006. Pop Candy’s Whitney Matheson says “the tunes are actually good,” and she interviewed him in her latest podcast. After almost a year on the road, Paleo tells her, he still finds traveling exhilarating. To listen for yourself how the road has treated Paleo and inspired his songs, visit his website. Every song he wrote during the course of the project is online.
Visiting Bob Marley’s Jamaica and ‘the Government Yard in Trench Town’
by Jim Benning | 03.02.07 | 4:05 PM ET
Trench Town, the tough Kingston neighborhood made famous in Bob Marley’s No Woman, No Cry, got some love from the New York Times today. Tens of thousands of visitors are expected in the Caribbean during the next two months for the Cricket World Cup, and Marley’s old neighborhood is one place that could see an increase in visitors. “In Trench Town, where street gangs battle over turf and where people live in shacks about the size of the garages at the glorious homes in the hills, expectations for the cricket tournament are high,” the Times reports. “Community leaders will have tour guides at the ready to take visitors around a neighborhood they say has a proud past.”
Caught in a Czech Funk
by David Farley | 02.21.07 | 5:57 AM ET
Photo courtesy of Czech Tourism. All David Farley wanted from the tourist information office in the tiny town of Nove Hrady was directions to the train station. Then he asked the young clerk a seemingly innocuous question: Was that funk booming from the speakers?
Valentine’s Day Comes to Ghana
by Jim Benning | 02.14.07 | 4:45 PM ET
Why is the holiday taking off in the African nation? In part, one cultural anthropologist told USA Today, because “radio airplay of love songs by Celine Dion, Bryan Adams, Lionel Richie and others is year-round and has fed the idea that Valentine’s Day is for sweethearts.” It’s tangential, but that reminds us of the intriguing Lionel Richie-Libya connection.
The Highs and Lows of Traveling on iTunes
by Jim Benning | 02.13.07 | 6:35 PM ET
From Abbey Road to Arctic Monkeys: Mapping England’s Pop Music Heritage
by Michael Yessis | 02.08.07 | 9:20 AM ET
Judging from this Google image search and this Flickr cluster, not too many music fans visiting England haven’t walked in the footsteps of John, Paul, George and Ringo across Abbey Road. But England, of course, has a rich music heritage beyond the Beatles, and the country’s tourism agency wants to show it off. VisitBritain just released a map—and a sweet Web site—with more than 200 destinations associated with famous musicians. “For decades the done thing has been to bury Britain’s rock heritage rather than praise it,” writes Jeevan Vasagar in the Guardian. “Two of the country’s most famous music venues—the Cavern Club in Liverpool and Manchester’s Hacienda—ended their lives under a wrecking ball. But the era of official neglect is over.”
Music Cruises: Still a Trend
by Michael Yessis | 02.06.07 | 8:42 AM ET
In 2005, as we noted, the San Francisco Chronicle called music cruises a trend, asking, “[H]ow long will it be before a Holland America ship hosts Burning Man?” In 2006, we pointed out that Rolling Stone called the Jam Cruise with Les Claypool, Bela Fleck and Umphrey’s McGee a hot ticket. Now, in 2007, AP reports—imagine this—a rise in floating festivals. However, they’re still not a major force in the cruise industry. “It’s still on a small scale because chartering a ship takes a lot of moxie and money,” Jay Shapiro, owner of Five Star Travel in Fort Lauderdale and a member of the Cruise Lines International Association, told the AP. “You have to have a big name to get top dollar for tickets and draw people.”
Inside the UK’s Best Chip Shops With Badly Drawn Boy
by Michael Yessis | 02.06.07 | 8:05 AM ET
I’ve got a soft spot for Badly Drawn Boy, aka Damon Gough, and it’s not only because my wife and I saw him perform in San Francisco during our first date. Badly Drawn Boy, like the subject of our latest Q-and-A, Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, is a musician with a healthy appreciation for food. But here’s the twist: Where Kapranos wrote a book about his gastronomic adventures while on tour, this month Badly Drawn Boy will be take his act on the road to some chip shops around the UK. How can you not love that?
Alex Kapranos: ‘Sound Bites’ and Savory Food
by Frank Bures | 02.06.07 | 7:51 AM ET
Franz Ferdinand's singer has eaten mole in Mexico, mussels in Brussels and fishbrain bread in Finland. He talks to Frank Bures about his new book and his culinary adventures on the road.