Ryan Adams And The Cardinals To Play The Fillmore In August

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For the first time since 2004, Ryan Adams will be back in San Franciso and playing at The Fillmore. He and The Cardinals will be taking a break from supporting Oasis, and will be playing San Francisco's hallowed venue on Saturday August 23rd. Frankly, we here at H.A.D. are psyched to see Ryan back in one of our favorite rooms in the city. We're hoping that a solid dose of rock n' roll history will perhaps knock him out of the Cardinals comfort zone. Tickets go on-sale Sunday at 10 AM.

Bjork Tribute Comes To Union Square

These creative folk took it up on themselves to pull of a bit of a dance tribute to the Spike Jonez video for "It's Oh So Quiet". Entertaining, to say the least.

Spoon Live Video

As we get closer every day to Spoon's three night residency at the Fillmore, we get progressively more psyched. The band is clearly kicking ass on the road: we've been keeping an eye on the utubez, and we thought we'd hit you with these highlights: one is an awesomely fuzzed-out, noise-laden version of the track "Finer Feelings" from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. The other is a partial clip of the band positively killing (in a good way, folks) the Stones' "Rocks Off", complete with live horns! Enjoy.

Islands Coming To Bimbo's Next Week

Islands is the post-Unicorns project of musician Nick Thorburn. The band has always gotten good press, but we had been hesitant after seeing the Unicorns self destruct on stage at the Middle East in a haze of drunkenness about five years ago. Well, sometimes you have to look past the prior transgressions, and give a band credit for what's going on now, rather than then. This is one of those times.

After hearing continuous good things about the band and its records, we picked up the new Islands disk In Arms Way. We're glad we did: We like it, quite a bit. It has the charm and weirdness of the Unicorns, but executed with more control and more attention to detail. Thorburn's off-kilter vocals are still resident, but the instrumentation is more of its own melodic entity, and less of a rhythmic noise accompaniment. In a word, it seems to have vision that was lacking in the past.

Given this, we were glad to see that the band will be making up a cancelled April date at Bimbo's next Monday. We'll be there. Tickets are still available.

mp3: Islands - Creeper

Port O'Brien Returning To SF On July 11th

After truly loving their triumphant CD release show at the Rickshaw Stop a few weeks back, we're excited to see that Port O'Brien will be returning to the city for a date at the Cafe Du Nord on July 11th. Tickets are on-sale now.

An Arts And Crafts Update

Here at H.A.D., we're pretty much whores for anything that comes our way from the Arts and Crafts camp. Things being what they are, here are a couple of news bites from our friends in Canada:

• P4TV has the debut of a new Kevin Drew video for "Safety Bricks", off of the first Broken Social Scene Presents... disc. Check the stream below.
  
• The second disc in the series has apparently been leaked prior to its July 22nd street date, in unmastered form. This has led Brendan Canning to offer it up for sale in digital form.
• While reading about item 2, we noticed that Feist and Constantines covered the classic "Islands In The Stream". Check it out below, go pay for it if you like it.

This summer Broken Social Scene will be at the Outside Lands Festival, while Feist will be headlining at the Greek Theaterin Berkeley.

mp3: Constantines and Feist - Islands In The Stream (Yousendit, click through)

Video Of David Byrne's Latest

When we read about David Byrne's latest art experiment a few weeks back in the New York Times, we were seriously thinking we might have to journey to the opposite coast for some first hand experience. Thankfully, P4TV decided to do a feature on the installation, so now we West Coasters can see and hear it for ourselves without the pesky flight time! Stream the video below...

My Morning Jacket Presale Tomorrow At 10 AM

The previously mentioned My Morning Jacket show at the Greek Theater will be having a pre-sale tomorrow morning at 10 AM. You can get to the presale by clicking here. The password is "evil".

In case you missed it before, click the link below for the band's latest (which we love), "Evil Urges".

mp3: My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges

Update: You can stream the whole album from myspace... (thanks to Brooklyn Vegan)

stream: My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges (album)

The Death Of The Import, Sort Of

There was a time, before internets and torrents, before forums and iTunes, when "imports" were the holy grail of record collectors everywhere. A generic term that encompassed any recording made outside of the US, "imports" represented everything from bootlegs, to singles, to alternate album versions. In many cases, it was the only way to get certain live tracks or B-Sides. These days, however, imports are largely a thing of the past. Most of those rare tracks can be had a la carte on music services like iTunes, and even the ones that can't are usually readily available in fan forums, blogs, or file sharing networks.

That being what it was, we were kind of saddened to be heading to Japan in a import-free world. The last time we were abroad was in 2000, and then there was still a need to grab the latest and greatest imports. The Pogues were out of print in the US, and Bowie was releasing singles with exclusive B-Sides in Europe. With our hopes quashed, we drearily decided that browsing Tower Japan might still yield some fruits, and we're happy to say it did. We got two CD's that not only have made us happy, but as we peeled open those funky Japanese CD bags, we realized that the import may have a little life in it yet. Here's what we snagged:

Jason Falkner - I'm Okay, You're Okay: Falkner is one of those artists who we consistently love, and who never seems to get the recognition he deserves. He's been a session man for everyone from Air to Beck to Paul McCartney. He was formerly the guitarist for Jellyfish, as well as The Grays. But more importantly, he's released a number of fantastic solo records over the past ten years. This one is his latest, and despite being out in Japan for over a year, it is nowhere to be found anywhere else in the world market. We had hemmed and hawed about buying it on Amazon for months, but the import price seemed ridiculous. When we saw it in Japan, we knew it was time. 7 years in the making, the record is fantastic, and worth the wait. It is the perfect extension of Falkner's explicitly crafted power pop that we love so much. We have no idea when the US release will be, but for now you can stream some of the tunes on Falkner's myspace page.

Happy End - Kazemachi Roman: Okay, we admit it, just like you, we heard of this band because of the Lost In Translation soundtrack. That being said, the one tune wasn't enough for us. We wanted more, and we tried to find it in the US. Still, even at Amoeba, no dice. So, as we headed for Japan, we kept our eyes open. We were rewarded with the awesome "mini LP" packaging that the Japanese seem to have developed a fetish for: tiny CD-size recreations of the original album art right down to the annoying plastic sleeve for the LP. The record is great, and hard to describe. It has elements of the Allman Brothers, as well as a definite head-nod to psychedlica. We're still absorbing it, but it's nice to snag a record that is from a completely different slice of the musical pie.

Nick Cave Weirdness

So, last week when we posted about the Nick Cave on-sale, there were two shows listed and the on-sale was June 1st. Now, oddly, the on-sale has changed to June 22nd, and the second show has disappeared. We have no idea what happened. Maybe it was a preview of what is to be if the first show sells out? Anyway, it now appears as though the 22nd is the date to get your Nick Cave goodness...

(Photo courtesy of Marco Annunziata)