April 28, 2008

Today's Hotness: Drop Nineteens, The Elevator Drops

Drop Nineteens -- Delaware
>> The spoken-word bit in M83's swirling joy of a new single "Graveyard Girl" continues to remind us of a similar (but better) spoken-word section in the middle of Drop Nineteens' peerless droner "Kick The Tragedy," the dramatic centerpiece to the Boston quintet's amazing and out-of-print 1992 Caroline Records release Delaware. Feast your ears below; the bit we're talking about comes about five-and-a-half minutes in. M83's Saturdays=Youth came out earlier this month and the French act will tour selected North American markets between May 20 and June 7. At no point do we expect M83 will play any Drop Nineteens tracks, although that would be awesome. Particularly "Ease It Halen" [thanks for the copy edit, Good Doctor]. For those not familiar with Drop Nineteens, the chimp rock survivors-turned-shoegaze matinee idols-turned Pixies worshipers issued two records and two EPs between 1992 and 1994 before disbanding. Folks with a yen for more can likely track down BBC sessions and even the very, very good Mayfield demos if they look around long enough.

Drop Nineteens -- "Kick The Tragedy" -- Delaware
[right click and save as]
[buy -- for a stiff premium -- Delaware from MusicStack here]

>> Something that has been lost in the shuffle here in the last couple of weeks is a brief notice from the mysteriously there-and-then-not-there, possibly re-animated Boston power pop trio The Elevator Drops. According to a MySpace bulletin, the band had accidentally been selling at ITunes since Christmas the demo mixes for the recently issued fourth full-length OK Commuter instead of the finished recordings. The problem has since been rectified, and the band quips that anyone who mistakenly received the demos now are in possession of a collector's item. Those who mistakenly received the demo mixes are invited to write The Elevator Drops at the band's MySpace garage in order to receive satisfaction in the form of a password to a secret site that contains the correct version. The trio has yet to tour in support of OK Commuter, but we certainly look forward to seeing The Elevator Drops live when they do.

>> We've spent a substantial amount of our leisure time recently exploring the possibilities of ditching ITunes in favor of MediaMonkey as we look toward what software we will install on our new machine once it arrives. MediaMonkey -- recommended to us by the boundlessly wise Mr. Pixelnated -- does a lot of things, but one of those things that will have substantial amount of application for us is the ability to transcode files on the fly (such as the Drop Nineteens track above, incidentally). As we've bemoaned in our suddenly weekly Muxtape posts, we ripped a lot of our music to AAC files when we purchased our first laptop of the modern era in 2003. That's become more and more problematic in situations where MP3s are required. So there. Check out MediaMonkey yourself at the link supra if you are as much of a contrarian as we are.

2 comments:

keith said...

*heart* Drop Nineteens! So weird that Delaware is commanding such a high price - I would have thought I'd find it in a dollar bin and that I would have to rescue and gift it to someone.

Anonymous said...

Though not like Burma or 'Hoods, D19s are right alongside these bands in the pantheon of Boston rock. The tune is "Ease It Halen" by the way.