BBtv presents this week's Friday "Unicorn Chaser" -- the goofy truth behind Xeni and BBtv's UK music correspondent Russell Porter's reports from the SF Outside Lands music festival. Summer concert season is long gone, and the gaffer tape that once spelled "Boing Boing tv" on our tour bus has long since faded, along with our concert sunburns. So we figure it's safe to reveal how much dorking out took place between story tapings and band sessions. Besotted joyrides on stolen Segways, the snatching of sunglasses from complete strangers, and improvised pickup lines like "I'm the drummer from Radiohead. Really." Russell? You really are "special." We love you, man, and we miss "working" with you.
BBtv Reports from the 2008 Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival:
Imagine Breakstra hanging with Cinematic Orchestra, or DJ Shadow teaming up with Elvin Jones and you're close to the sound of Nostalgia 77. A dark and stormy clash of breaks n' beats, moody bass lines, and cosmic jazz. Also includes the heavyweight cover of The White Stripes' "7 Nation Army". Hard to resist whether you're a hip-hop head, music lover, or jazz freak. For fans of Bonobo, Quantic, Cinematic Orchestra, Radio Citizen, Portishead, Polar Bear, Poets Of Rhythm, and Sleepwalker.
In today's episode of Boing Boing tv, our UK-based music correspondent Russell Porter interviews Adele, who describes her sound as "heartbroken soul." Adele's new album "19" was nominated for a Mercury Prize (think: Grammys, sort of, for the UK), and Russell caught up with her at the awards show backstage. Adele will be the musical guest on the October 18 edition of Saturday Night Live! The video for her song "Chasing Pavement" excerpted in today's BBtv was directed by Matthew Cullen.
Toots and the Maytals are true reggae legends (more: Wikipedia, MySpace). Founder Toots Hibbert is credited with coining the word "reggae" in the band's 1968 single, "Do the Raggay." They've had more number one hit songs in Jamaica than any recording artist ever, and received a Grammy for Best Reggae Album of the Year in 2005.
I joined BBtv's London-based music correspondent Russell Porter for a visit on the venerable Mister Toots' tour bus after an amazing set at Outside Lands, and we sat down with him for a conversation about the history of reggae, and what Toots thinks about contemporary hip-hop and dancehall -- and where his legacy leads. The generous vanity intro he did for BBtv is a thing of beauty, we can all die happy now.
Sponsor Note: This episode, and other BBtv music features this month, are sponsored by the Crowdfire live music social media project. You can find images, video, and audio about the band featured in today's show at Crowdfire -- here's the search link for fan-uploads related to Toots and the Maytals.
When Led Zeppelin founder Robert Plant teamed up with Nashville mama Allison Krauss, critics compared the musical collaboration to a hookup between King Kong and Bambi. But their album "Raising Sand," produced by T-Bone Burnett, earned the odd duo widespread raves.
Boing Boing tv's London music correspondent Russell Porter caught up with Plant and Krauss backstage at the Mercury Prize, an annual award for the best album from the UK or Ireland.
Boing Boing tv is wrapping up the work week with a music feature on Broken Social Scene, a Canadian indie rock music collective with about 20 members. Like a giant litter of hipster kittens! Together, they create a sound best described as Baroque Pop. Each musician contributes their own unique style into an fusion of rhythm and ambience.
They’ve won two Juno Awards (sort of like Canada’s Grammys) for Alternative Album of the Year. BBtv's UK-based music correspondent Russell Porter caught up with Brendan Canning, one of the band’s founding members, at the Outside Lands festival in San Francisco.
Note: this episode, and other BBtv music features this month, are sponsored by the Crowdfire live music social media project. You can find images, video, and audio about the band featured in today's show at Crowdfire -- here's the search link for fan-uploads related to Broken Social Scene.
( Sponsor note: Crowdfire is sponsoring this series of music features on BBtv, and you can find crowdsourced snapshots, audio, and video about this band at crowdfire.net. )
In his "best albums of 2007" review, Paul Morley of Observer Music Magazine described the band's work as "tough as it is gentle, as ancient as it is modern, and as coldly desolate as it is achingly intimate. They might not end up being the best-selling British all-girl group of all time, but they're well on their way to being the most charismatic and imaginative."
Today on Boing Boing tv, our UK-based music correspondent Russell Porter sits down with legendary rock band manager Andy Gould for a chat about crazy, historic rocknroll hijinks he's witnessed in his decades in the biz. We caught up with Gould at the Outside Lands Music and Arts festival, near the Crowdfire tent.
Gould is presently the manager for Primus, Morrissey, and other acts; past and present clients include Linkin Park, Lionel Ritchie, Rob Zombie, Pantera, Kool and the Gang, Damien Marley. Together with Irving Azoff, he manages Guns and Roses. He explains that he was there during the early days of "fur coat and cricket bat," band managers, tough guys who "walked around with suitcases full of hundreds of thousands of dollars when the band walked offstage."
"What's really really great now is that the record companies have gone out of business," he says -- why would a music manager be dancing on the labels' graves? And how is a pilfered pre-release MP3 like a box of Chicken McNuggets? Watch and learn, grasshoppers.
BBtv's UK music correspondent Russell Porter interviews British modern "post-jazz" groupPortico Quartet about the eclectic influences behind their sound -- and how it felt to be nominated for this year's Mercury Prize. Here are previous BBtv episodes with music features from Russell. Listen to Portico Quartet at Last.fm, and you can pick up their new album Knee Deep in the North Sea (just released a few weeks ago!) on iTunes or Amazon.
"Britain is overflowing with new ideas and imagination, especially when it comes to music," says our UK-based music correspondent Russell Porter in today's BBtv episode. Russell is reporting in from the 2008 edition of the Nationwide Mercury Prize, where up-and-coming artists get a chance at instastardom, alongside established headliners like Radiohead or Coldplay. After a brief introduction to the history of this prize (about 3:00 minutes in), Russell introduces us today to the alt-folksy sounds of 19-year-old British singer-songwriterLaura Marling.
Below, a beautiful animated video for the song she performs live during our BBtv ep -- "Ghosts," directed by James Copeman. The song appears on Marling's newly released "Alas I Cannot Swim." Her album is offered in a really cool box set with original artwork.
BBtv presents a performance and interview with Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, purveyors of cut-up street talk and fine electro-glitch-funk. Their new album, Angles, was just released in the United States, and our UK music correspondent Russell Porter digs in.
The duo consists of Dan Stephens and David Meads, both of whom are natives of Stanford-le-Hope in Essex, England. Their band's name -- "Scroobius Pip" -- is an intentional botch of the Edward Lear poem, The Scroobious Pip.
The second half of today's episode (at about 7:00 in, after the midroll ad, and the stuff about Pip's lip tat) is the music video for Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip's "A Letter from God to Man," directed by Steve Glashier of NTSH. The song is constructed around a short, sweet Radiohead sample (PlanetTelex) from the 1995 album, The Bends. The still you see in the flash embed above is from this music video.
BBtv's London-based music correspondent Russell Porter brings us a performance and interview from the Rumble Strips (website | MySpace | Wikipedia). They're currently on tour throughout the USA, and they're named after a UK-English term for the "small, continuous lines of bumps along the edge of a road." Their music is described as " Soul / Regional Mexican / Powerpop;" a fine, rockin' way to close out a short Labor Day work week. Previous BBtv music features with Russell Porter are here.
"Britain is overflowing with new ideas and imagination, especially when it comes to music," says our UK-based music correspondent 
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