Missing links

In a couple of hours, I'm headed west with Laal in search of the Boognish. I wish everyone a wonderful Labor Day weekend. I leave you with some links to recent Time Out pieces that I'm happy with:

*As you can see above, I attended last week's Heaven and Hell (a.k.a. Black Sabbath 2.0) show and spent a few minutes standing less than ten feet from Tony Iommi. It was magical. More pics and a review here.

*Central Market, the new Tyondai Braxton solo album that comes out in a few weeks, is really awesome. I interviewed Mr. Braxton and wrote a profile of him in advance of the Warp20 celebration going down this weekend in NYC.

*Sadly I didn't make it out to one of the Nine Inch Nails shows. I did however write a longish preview of the run. It was interesting to think about how much I'd adored NIN in high school, and how unlikely it was that Trent Reznor had managed to keep people interested for so long.

*The new Mount Eerie album is very creepy and cool. Here's my review.

*On the TONY music blog, the Volume, we have a weekly video series featuring in-office performances by local artists. Some recent ones I've really enjoyed: Wild Yaks, Marcus Strickland Trio, Sharon Van Etten, Mike Watt (!) and Shilpa Ray. You can view the full archive here.

*****

Lastly, how insanely cool is all this Michael McDonald business? From pop-cultural punchline in The 40-Year-Old Virgin to oracle of the shifting zeitgeist in just a few short years!

"When I was with the Doobies, the style of music was that we all went over the falls with chord progressions, trying to make things as complex and interconnected as possible. The punk movement swung towards being as primitive as possible, but now it’s back to where these guys are good musicians. I never thought that would come back around, but it has.”

Boy has it ever. "Cannibal Resource" on Letterman anyone? Prog is back in the mainstream where it belongs! [Used to have a YouTube link here, but they yanked the vid.]

And for something completely different, check out a brutal new Ted Kennedy-themed Blouse jam here. Joe from STATS guests on guitar.