I’m not as entranced by Night Work as I am by their debut and Ta-Dah but there are definitely some catchy songs, many of which they played last night at Terminal 5. Metromix replied to my Fourquare check-in tweet with a link to some photos from the evening. This was a great thing since my camera battery had died!

Click here on on the image below to see the photos:

Metromix NY Photos of Scissor Sisters at Terminal 5

Videos of Scissor Sisters at Terminal 5:

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Now money is involved.

source: Slate.com

The shareholders (for both Target and Best Buy–they gave $100k to the same politician–have official spoken, as reported by Change.org:

Last night, three socially responsible investment firms — Walden Asset Management, Trillium Asset Management Corporation, and Calvert Asset Management Company — issued a press release saying that shareholders of both Target and Best Buy are introducing resolutions to address the controversial donation that both companies made to support a vehemently anti-gay candidate, Tom Emmer, in Minnesota.

Read the full story.

source: Boycott Target Facebook Page

I haven’t spent too much time thinking about Target recently until I saw the double-decker tourist buses here in New York promoting the opening of their new East Harlem store. That will be a fun day. Let’s hope for the company’s sake they do something about their hateful CEO before that store opens.

This is very unfortunate for the thousands of Target employees who do not support their corporation’s political ways. And for those of you who think that Target was gay-friendly before this debacle—with its sexy, cutsy gay marketing—are wrong. I recently read that Target’s Anti-Gay Political Donations Are Not Actually New: A History Lesson.

I was also shocked to read (on Forbes) what conservative Charlie Weaver referred to what gays and lesbians are doing (with the boycott):

Charlie Weaver, a leader of a political organization supporting a conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota, said the pressure from gays and liberal organizations on Target amounts to “thuggery.”

Thuggery? Really?

Okay, here’s the definition of Thuggery:

violent or brutal acts as of thugs

Now here is what was said by Bradley Dean of Christian Rock group “You Can Run but You Can’t Hide”:

“Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America. This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do, because these people are livid about enforcing their laws. They know homosexuality is an abomination.”

Uh… Charlie, do you want to rethink the use of the word “THUGGERY” and who it applies to?

On a positive note, I’m pleased to say that there is a lot being done in support of the protest virally including the Boycott Target Until They Cease Funding Anti-Gay Politics Facebook Page.

They’ve posted some great information including:

• CEO Gregg Steinhafel‘s direct number is 612.696.6234
• Boycott e-mail address: target.boycott@gmail.com
• Contact phone number for Customer Relations: 612-696-3400
• Contact e-mail for Customer Relations: target.communications@target.com

Also, someone started a “Cute Things I didn’t Buy at Target” Facebook Group.

What Can You Do (other than Boycott Target)?

• Sign the Petition to Tell Target (and Best Buy) they can’t get away with this
• Share this blog post and the petition on Facebook
• LIKE the Boycott Target Facebook Page
• Make the video “Target Ain’t People” (below) go viral by sharing it with everyone you know

Watch and Share “Target Ain’t People”:

(I’m sure Depeche Mode Would Agree)

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The rumor is that Gaga tweeted this video out herself!

The video is great. My favorite lines are:

Just a week
vacation and I know where I would be
Party in New Delhi
With our outsourced I.T.

Stop callin’, stop callin’,
I don’t wanna work any more
Passive aggressive micro managing manwhore
Stop callin’, stop callin’,
I don’t wanna troubleshoot for
The customers who bought online from our web store.

<

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And he’s calling it “Operation Noah’s Ark”. Here’s the full story on the ChEnected blog I manage.

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Singles Streaming Everywhere

LaLa.com allowed us to play an album for free for the first time and then we had a chance to buy a Web-only album for a cheap price or .mp3 files at prices competitive with Amazon. Sadly, Apple bought LaLa (R.I.P. LaLa) and we’re left with sites like Rdio and Rhapsody that charge $5 for the privilege that LaLa gave us for free. Let’s see what Apple does with LaLa (if anything) or if the much-hyped British Spotify ever comes to the U.S.

The Album Preview

Once Apple shuttered LaLa, I turned to my tried and true KCRW for inspiration and discovered on their site, The Album Preview. I’m sure this has been happening for a while and I just didn’t know about it. But I do now and I love it. Every week, KCRW adds a new album to their Album Preview page. You can listen to the featured album in its entirety for at least a week, and often for up to a month. There are usually at least 3 or 4 available to listen to at any given time.

I was waiting for my pre-order of the Arcade Fire album The Suburbs and the day before the album was to arrive in my inbox, my friend in London sent me a link to NPR’s Music site and guess what? The album was streaming in its entirety so I was able to listen to it the day before I got it. “We Used to Wait”. That’s the title of one of the songs on The Suburbs and ironically about simpler times when we used to write letters and when we actually did wait for the release date of an album before hearing it. Well, no more. NPR.org/music is a great source for listening to albums in their entirety.

A friend of mine questioned why these sources are streaming entire albums and how this is ‘destroying the music industry’ and hurting artists. I would argue that the music industry has been destroyed for years and it was their inability to keep up with changing times that led them to their current dire situation, i.e. Apple leading the way in music sales. Artists are a different story. Sure, they been affected by people not paying for music but some (like Lily Allen, etc.) have used the Internet to get where they are today.

And many other people under the age of 30 may ask the question: “What is an album?” For those of you who ask this question, please disregard everything preceding this sentence and everything after.

I’m one of those people (eh.. over 30) who still listens to albums. I happen to think that getting your album previewed on a site as well known as NPR is a boon to future sales. Sure, a listener can go to the extra trouble of recording the preview, but most won’t. And if they like it, and have it stuck in their head later, they’ll probably buy it.

So, let’s take a vote:

Do you know of any good sources for Album Previews? Let me know in the comments.

Here’s an album that I listened to in a preview that I may not have otherwise. It’s Ray LaMontagne’s God Willin’ and The Creek Don’t Rise. It’s NOT my usual thing but it’s an excellent album, especially (in my opinion) after the first song.

Arcade Fire at Madison Square Garden Performing "No Cars Go"

The light and video show worked artfully with the performance, complementing it rather than upstaging it. All this provided a great backdrop for the Terry Gilliam directed live broadcast on Youtube, which I was able to catch as it repeated after the show. The AF songs that worked best at MSG were definitely those that are often larger than the albums they’re on, among them “Rebellion (Lies)“, “Wake Up”, “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”, and “We Used the Wait” from the newly released The Suburbs. The band performed songs from all three albums, although it seemed to be slightly more weighted toward Funeral and The Suburbs.

Arcade Fire Performing on August 5 at Madison Square Garden

I mentioned our going to the Arcade Fire show at Madison Square Garden to a number of people and I was surprised by how many people hadn’t heard of them before. It supports the understanding that their growth to MSG performance status has truly been organic rather than designed. Arcade Fire are an amazing band who I hope continue to make music for long into the future, or at least until I move to the suburbs.

Photo Slideshow of Arcade Fire’s August 5th Performance at Madison Square Garden

The Arcade Fire Set List for August 5th at Madison Square Garden (Via: Brooklyn Vegan)

Ready to Start

Neighborhood #2 (Laika)

No Cars Go

Haiti

Empty Room

The Suburbs

Crown of Love

Rococo

Intervention

We Used to Wait

Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)

Rebellion (Lies)

Month of May

Keep the Car Running

Encore:

Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)

Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

Wake Up

Here are a few video highlights of AF’s fantastic performance:

Here’s a Cool Pre-Show Video that Features the Band and Webcast Director Terry Gilliam

To create buzz for the show and their new album The Suburbs, Arcade Fire asked fans to share their images of their suburbs. Here’s a Flickr photo gallery of these photos, some of them quite good.

The Suburbs Photo Gallery

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Pre-order the album here.

Vote on your favorite album cover FURTHER BELOW (see the covers and back covers here) but if you hover your mouse just below, you’ll see all the album covers flipping by your eyes FAST.

Here’s the info on seeing Arcade Fire on Youtube:

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The group’s ‘ministry’ is headed by Bradlee Dean. Here’s a bit of his hate spewing via The Minnesota Independent:

“Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America,” Dean said on YCR’s May 15 radio show on AM 1280 the Patriot. “This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do, because these people are livid about enforcing their laws. They know homosexuality is an abomination.”

“If America won’t enforce the laws, God will raise up a foreign enemy to do just that,” Dean continued. “That is what you are seeing in America.”

Read the full story on The Minnesota Independent. Here, you can listen to this “christian” hate monger say these words for yourself.

SFist does a good job of explaining the connection to Target:

Well, Bradlee’s ministry received money and support from Tom Emmer, an anti-gay Minnesota Republican running for Governor. And Tom Emmer’s campaign got a boost from Minnesota Forward, a PAC running TV ads on his behalf. And Minnesota Forward got $150,000 — which amounts to about a third of all of their donations — from Target.

What’s so sad was that Target was supposed to be the cool discount retailer than gay people loved. And we thought they loved us too? They’re marketing was savvy. This ad certainly markets to both families and “family”. Well, it seems that Target practices false advertising. I found out about this story from Change.org, who are encouraging people to e-mail Target and demand that they stop supporting politicians who affiliate themselves with hate groups. Sign the petition to get Target to stop. I’m sure there are plenty of gay employees at Target and plenty of people who fully support gay rights. But it just takes one person in a decision making role to not properly vet the Political Action Committees they support. Why do companies support these PACS anyway?

Sign the Petition to Stop Target:

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“Then when you vote against me
from the capital in DC
can’t you see that you create
a world of hate”

School of Seven Bells (SVIIB) is a trio comprised of twins Claudia and Alejandra Dehaza (formerly of On!Air!Library!) and Benjamin Curtis (formerly of Secret Machines). Their debut album Alpinisms was a huge indie success and Half Asleep was by far the signature track. I was captivated from the moment I heard it but I tend to be a sucker for their successful formula of Harmonies by Twin Sisters + Cool Guitarist.

Disconnect from Desire catapults you head first into its largess with “Windstorm”, said to be reminiscent of U2 whose Edge is rumored to be quite taken by the trio. Personally, I don’t hear U2 in “Windstorm” but it’s a great track. If you’ve never listened to SVIIB before, it’s the harmonies sung by the sisters that immediately draw you in. They’re a focal point of most of the songs on the album, including the powerful “Dust Devil”, where the sisters sing “I know you …” repeatedly amidst a powerful backdrop of pulsating drums, beats, and quirky synths that build to a crescendo and then gracefully place the listener front and center in the face of my favorite track on the album, “ILU”. “I want you to know that… I loved you,” sings Alejandra as the background sound that engulfs her takes on an a undulating and beautiful warp, paying homage to My Bloody Valentine circa “Soon“.

Yes,  shoe-gazing giants MBV and M83 certainly seem to influence the general feel of SVIIB and in particular, Disconnect from Desire.

But I’m also continually reminded of one my favorite 80′s artists that I haven’t seen SVIIB compared to much. That would be the Cocteau Twins. Although the Dehaza twins’ voices are disimilar to that of Elizabeth Frazier, it’s more what they do with harmonies and sound that conjures up pleasant memories of being captivated by  ”Heaven or Las Vegas” or “Four Calendar Cafe“. It’s the mood they create.

Perhaps it’s an interest in mysticism that accounts for the sigil (symbol representing magical powers) that adorns the cover of Disconnect from Desire. So far, it’s working…

Click to hear the Featured Tracks:

“I L U“

“Babelonia“

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