For those of you who do not know, I am a student at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. One of the scariest things about coming to college in a town that is essentially a forest is the lack of shows (or at least the difficulty of getting to Poughkeepsie to take the train so I can get to the city so I can go to a show so I can crash on a friend's floor, etc) that take place up here. Because of this, I'll take whatever live music I can get and so I found myself in a tiny building on campus waiting for the Bard equivalent of hometown heroes, a band called The Easy Tease. I was a little skeptical at first, not least because the band consists of one drum, one piano, one banjo, and one trombone.

This extremely unusual foursome put on a hell of show. They had the entire hall jumping up and down, exhibiting a unity that I have found to be rare at shows, even when the audience is all of one mind. Sometimes the reminded me of Modest Mouse, other times of something different entirely. In honor of that show, and in honor of me starting actual college on Monday, here are three songs by The Easy Tease. PLEASE PLEASE check them out, and please order the CD. You won't be disappointed.

• The Easy Tease - Crickets in DC

• The Easy Tease - Father's Sonata

• The Easy Tease - The Gravity

natalie portman's shaved head - sophisticated side ponytail from thatgo on Vimeo.

JESUS CHRIST ON A CRUTCH. This is undoubtedly an amazing music video. I think I've watched it upwards of forty times in the past few weeks. They also seriously rock live in concert too.

I love how you can see the Getty Images watermark on Shamu... classic.

• .mov: Natalie Portman's Shaved Head - Sophisticated Side Ponytail
  

Since I have arrived in Annandale-on-Hudson, I have discovered that I have a much greater taste for folk music than I had originally imagined. Most of what I have been listening to is M. Ward and Bob Dylan (one only needs to look at my Last.fm stats to prove that), but as a result of my new obsession with the form, I have discovered that, horror upon horrors....

I like Bright Eyes. Or, perhaps, just Conor Oberst.

When did this happen? More importantly, how did this happen? When did I turn into one of the people I hated when I was a freshmen in high school?

And then I realised: I hated myself freshmen year of high school.

The moral of the story? High school is stupid. Conor Oberst is awesome.

The song I'm going to post is a live performance of Landlocked Blues that I've been pretty much constantly since I heard it almost an hour ago. It's almost a perfect folk song. Everything is exactly where it should be, the cracks in his voice, the lonely voice of his guitar, perfectly political lyrics mixed with the sexual ones, just as they should be. This is good music, this is good tunes.

Why did I ever hate Conor Oberst.

Oh. Right. "This Is The First Day of My Life"

• Conor Oberst - "Landlocked Blues" (live)

Special thanks to I Am Fuel, You Are Friends for the mp3. Check her out if you want the whole set.

I love how Justice has begun referring to themselves as Just-eece. I don't know if it's still there, but if you go to the Ed Banger Records Comp Vol. 3 in iTunes, Justice's name is listed as Just-ice. Seriously.
And what's the purpose of this short rant, you ask? Um. Well... i wish i was french.
But since that probably won't happen anytime soon, here's some of my favorite remixes and re-cuts of some Just-eece tracks.

*Warning: Some of these might sound like icky techno to you.

• mp3: Justice - D.A.N.C.E. (Blake Miller is Ruthless vs. Sickboy Edit)
(Has an epic climax)
• mp3: Justice - D.A.N.C.E. (Plus Move Pirate Remix)
(Jumps back and forth a lot, like it has A.D.D.)
• mp3: Justice - Find a Sexy Way to D.A.N.C.E. (Justice vs. DFA 1979 vs. Shiny Toy Guns vs. Boys Noize vs. Young Love)
(Just plain ridiculous. Seems like something Girl Talk would come up with.)
• mp3: Justice - Genesis (Chewy Chocolate Cookies Remix)
(Who doesn't like chewy chocolate cookies?)
• mp3: Justice - Tthhee Ppaarrttyy (LA Riots Remix)
(Jumps back and forth like it can't decide whether to stay in drive or reverse)
• mp3: Justice - Valentine (Vega Remix)
(Valentine is probably the least remixed of all the tracks on †, which is a shame, since it's one of my favorite off the album.)
• mp3: Justice - DVNO (Justice Remix)
(Justice remix themselves)
• mp3: Justice - DVNO (Sunshine Brothers Remix)
(Smoothed out, and more low tech remix of DVNO. Its fun to see the song taken in such a different direction.)
• mp3: Justice - D.A.N.C.E. (Alan Braxe & Fred Falke Remix)
(Not as good as you'll hope it'll be, but essential. I mean, would Justice even exist if it weren't for these two guys?)
• mp3: Justice - Phantom II (Boys Noize Unreleased Turbine)
  (REALLY AWESOME. Should be played loud.)
  

...we'd get this little gem:

• MP3: Soko - I Will Never Love You More
  

Hooray! The blog is almost up and running. Since Blogger's updated their html codecs to xhtml, it has become kinda a bitch for me to customize the template. Like seriously. I've spent the better half of an hour trying to change the title of the blog to a customized image. But no matter what I do, it just won't budge. What the hell.
But anyway...
I've been to a lotta shows lately. :) 2 days of Pitchfork, 3 days of Lollapalooza, and as of last night, Natalie Portman's Shaved Head. And all of them rocked. I might post summaries of them a bit later. But for right now, here's some songs I've been diggin lately.

• mp3: Del Tha Funkee Homosapien - Mistadobalina
• mp3: Walter Meego - Forever
  
• mp3: The Kills - Superstition
• mp3: Jose Gonzalez - Teardrop (Massive Attack Cover)
  

Hello, world.

This blog is part of a grand music sharing experiment, the kind of thing that two friends do when they go of to college and they don't really want to lose the free exchange of music that existed before one left for Annandale-on-Hudson, NY and the other for Boston. So, if it seems a little like Will and I are having a conversation with ourselves, rather than a more 'traditional' blogging style, that's because it's, well, true.

So, hello world. Welcome to the grand music experiment that is As The Table Turns. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

We'll get some music for you soon.

For now, I'm just going to go back to listening to a The National bootleg and staring at my ceiling.