And the winner is......

Exciting news from our friends at Bacchanal. On April 15th, they’re teaming up with CU Records to hold a battle of the bands competition in order to select the opening act for this year’s spring concert. You have until midnight on March 18th to submit a recorded track, or arrange to audition live. The only stipulation is that at least half of the band members have to be Columbia students. All the details are here. You could be these guys! Happy music making!

Disco via Wikimedia

Late-breaking news for music fans: Talib Kweli will be part of this year’s Bacchanal. A tipster noted earlier today that his website listed a show at Columbia on April 18th, and Bacchanal board members confirmed this evening that the MC will be one of the artists. No word was forthcoming, though, on who the other artist or artists might be.

UPDATE (1:20 AM): Spectacle reports that the other half of the bill is Morningside’s own Vampire Weekend. However, Bacchanal organizers refused to confirm the story, telling Bwog that “Spec posted without receiving confirmation from the Bacchanal Concert Committee, which could pose problems for security and clauses in the contract.”

UPDATE (1:35 AM): According to a Bacchanal representative, the Vampire Weekend announcement was only supposed to occur two weeks prior to the event, as there are security concerns about non-students flooding the campus. Bacchanal is, of course, contractually obligated to respect that two-week maximum, which is why Bacchanal refused to confirm to the Spectator. 

UPDATE (12:10 PM): The post has been taken down, but the headline still shows up on Spec‘s homepage.

(N.B.: Bwog’s received permission from Bacchanal to report this information.)

- JCD, KER & JNW

Do like music and stuff? Well if you do, you’re in luck cause this week CMJ Music Marathon returns to NYC.  The marathon features over 1,000 bands almost all with peculiar names.

Columbians probably have a slightly distorted perspective on the difficulty of making it in today’s music world due to the providential success of musicians like the guys from Vampire Weekend and Chromeo, AKA Associate Professor David Macklovitch.

But for roughly 1,100 lucky, relatively talented up-and-comers, this week offers a beacon of hope.  Starting today, October 21st, the CMJ Music Marathon returns to New York City for its 28th Season and will host hundreds of concerts all over the city featuring names you definitely know (or should know) and names you definitely don’t. The concert series will run through Saturday, but if you’re interested in seeing the bigger names you’d better plan on going out sooner than the weekend.

The week’s highlights and some of Bwog’s faves include:

Read more…

Did you know that this very University is the chosen educational institution of many famous people besides Vampire Weekend? It’s true!

The New York Daily News and one Perez Hilton-reading commenter (who is probably glad commenting is anonymous) are reporting that ex-model Christy Turlington is enrolled at Columbia to study maternal and child health. 

Plus, Stanford alum Chelsea Clinton is receiving a master’s in public health policy.

It’s time for our exciting first look at NSOP 2008! Seems as if this year’s festivities will not include the traditional Orientation Concert on the Steps. You’ll recall that last year Clipse performed with the World Famous Vampire Weekend. 

A Columbia Concerts insider explained that it’s “not entirely clear” why there’s no concert, only that “we’re trying to put all of our eggs into the Bacchanal Concert basket, I guess.” He also promises that the Spring Concert will be huge.

The lineup for Barnard Radio’s annual outdoor BBQ and concert has been announced in an email from Milano Chowkwanyun, the Co-Promotions Director of WBAR. The show will take place on Friday, April 25th (on Barnard’s lawn, Nexus be damned) and will feature the following: 

Wizards of the Coast

Bear

Food Will Win the War

Liturgy

Thee Yetis

Les Sans Culottes

MegaFaun

Tickley Feather

Crystal Stilts

Cause Co-Motion

Awesome Color

Skaters

Videohippos

Japanther

Plus, the titillating promise of a “special guest.” Ampire-vay Eekend-way?

Eschewing their own tradition of booking hip hop acts for spring, Columbia Concerts has booked awesome Brooklyn-based indie rockers Grizzly Bear and awesome Brooklyn-based indie rockers The National for this year’s Spring Concert.

An anonymous source also informs Bwog that this year’s Spring Concert will also differ from last year’s because it’s going to be indoors and tickets are going to cost a completely reasonable and completely worth it $5 fee.

A month after GQ featured Vampire Weekend, once again a Columbia alum is profiled in the men’s mag. This time, it’s blonde blogger and prospective first-daughter Meghan McCain, CC ’07.

It’s an odd interview, as even the writer—who happens to be the deputy online editor at The New Republic—admits. Initially, McCain treats the readers to an insider’s look at her refrigerator, revealing two types of beer and twelve cups of Jell-O. The conversation then turns to her time at Columbia (“I loved it!”) to her film and television recommendations: “It’s a bisexual-dating show!” McCain says of A Shot of Love with Tila Tequila. “It’s hilarious!”

Talk soon turns to politics, as that is (ostensibly, at least) the reason she’s being profiled in the first place. Meghan on Obama: “I think universally women find him attractive. Whatever.” Meghan on the early days of her father’s campaign: “Over the summer, it was like we were uncool.” 

Anyway, you can read the entire profile for yourself if you’re interested in what type of guys Meghan is into and not into.  (Hint: bad boys who wear Converse sneakers and investment bankers, respectively.)

For careful listeners, the best soundtrack on campus is the rotation of Vampire Weekend, Radiohead and other indie darlings at Cafe 212. Bwog cultural correspondent Merrell Hambleton sits down with the man behind the mix.

I find Café 212 manager Robert Bell working to hang up two small bulletin boards. “I’m actually doing something with the music,” he says. “The music” he’s referring to is precisely the reason for our meeting—Bell, tall with longish brown hair, dark framed glasses, and a neatly trimmed chinstrap, has earned a reputation in his year at Columbia for playing some non-traditional Muzak. In fact, its not Muzak at all, it’s actually, well, good. If you’re haunted by memories of 212′s old soundtrack, you’ll likely be pleased to hear the likes of Radiohead, Cat Power or the of-late-ubiquitous Vampire Weekend while you wait in the sandwich line.

So what prompted Bell to buck the trend of non-descript instrumental world music and hit-or-miss pop (read: Ferris Booth)? The Virginia native moved to New York (Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, to be specific) in 2004, where he first “got excited by working with food” while working at an Au Bon Pain branch.  But chain stores don’t offer a whole lot of flexibility. According to Bell, “One thing that really bothered me… was they had this Frank Sinatra thing going on. They had it very carefully orchestrated, so in Hong Kong they had an Au Bon Pain that was also playing Frank Sinatra at 8 AM.”

Read more…

Columbia is more than just “Upper West Side Soweto.” Chromeo’s performance at Bowery Ballroom Monday night showed off the cheekier side of Ivy League music.

Despite the recent flurry of hype surrounding Vampire Weekend, they are not the only Columbia-related band selling out Bowery Ballroom. Chromeo anyone? A French grad student and T.A. by day, David Macklovitch has amassed a number of glowing CULPA reviews. However, he also doubles as Dave 1, and along with bandmate P-Thugg, the duo is known as the (somewhat ironic) electrofunk group Chromeo.

Making the night family affair, Dave 1’s little brother, A-Trak DJed between sets. Spinning mash-ups from Dirty South Dance ensured the crowd never had to stop dancing. Opener Kid Sister bemoaned her current cold and lack of health insurance, perhaps as a reference to the upcoming elections. Though her bumping and grinding masked any symptoms of illness, and her sequined beret and flashy nails also helped. Vivacious and brash, but not overtly sexual, Kid Sister is a b-boy’s wet dream. Read more…

    Last night, a Columbia band called The Stolen Cars played a show at the Lower East Side bar Fontana’s. Bwog ventured 45 minutes south-east to catch them play with five other bands as part of a larger battle of the bands-type competition. The all-Columbia, all-Beta Theta Pi band is composed of John Luna (SEAS ’08),  Matt Pruznick (CC ’09), Taylor Eichenseer (SEAS ’09), and Danny Ferarro (CC ’09).

    They specialize in catchy alt-rock, and Luna’s idiosyncratic and poppy vocals engender comparisons to Something Corporate. The Stolen Cars played a handful of songs, the best of which was “Home Run”, a crescendoing homage to ska that features a clever mix of electric guitar (Luna played both electric and acoustic at the show) and electric piano. The band ended with “Abbey and Audrey”—at which point, Matt Pruznick had removed his shirt that helpfully read “Matt”—a favorite among the growing group of CU students in the crowd, many of who started singing along. 

    The Stolen Cars were followed by a band called Cocaine, the members of which resembled a terrifying cross-pollination  between Don Johnson circa 1989 and Perez Hilton (see documentation at left). The lead singer began throwing baby powder at the audience, at which point Bwog left. Later that night, The Stolen Cars were announced as the winners of the competition and they were invited to play again in the next round of the contest.

           – JNW