Let's pretend we're bunny rabbits...

So yeah, I haven't posted for a while, I guess partly because I went to see The Shins, and they were so awful that I was like "I have to change the name of my blog!"  I've decided not to, cause well I can't think of a better name! I've also been busy making music with my new band Cosines, why not take a listen to one of our songs? (shameless plug over).

Anyway, what has prompted me to blog this time? Well in Gossip Girl this week in between the double crossing, Blair and Dan getting it on in an elevator, William Baldwin being angsty, Serena pouting, Nate looking broody and a bit confused, good old "Indie Rock Dad" Rufus went to see The Magnetic Fields. I laughed solidly for 20 seconds when Lily proclaimed that he couldn't miss going to see them to go to an Upper East Side party, cause he had been looking forward to seeing them so much.  I hope he enjoyed the show, I saw them at ATP and they were so awesome. Check out their tour blog it is very funny (and where the lovely photo on the left came from). They're playing in London at The Royal Festival Hall later on this month, there could be tickets left if you hurry!

Ahh Gossip Girl, it may be an absolutely dreadful program, but they really do do good with the inane teenage drama and indie references that I feel compelled to watch it, hell they even played Veronica Falls at the end of this episode!

I can't find the video online of them name checking The Magnetic Fields but I found this video instead, hmmm Chuck and Nate?



And yeah that new Veronica Falls tune is pretty awesome too, check out the video below.



Veronica Falls are playing Indietracks this year (a festival that I help organise), we've just confirmed The Vaselines to headline one of the nights, I AM SO EXCITED!!! There are loads of other awesome bands playing this year too including Allo Darlin', Go Sailor, Girls Names, Orca Team and The Language of Flowers, you may as well get your ticket now right?

Hope you have a fun Easter weekend!
Alicexx

Actor out of work (a premonition for the Gossip Girls at the end of this season?)

It's always ace to see one of your favourite bands on telly isn't it? So yes was a welcome surprise to see the lovely St Vincent on Gossip Girl last week! Check it out below if you missed it...

Isn't Gossip Girl ridiculous at the moment?! Though I loved the Nate/Elizabeth Hurley story line and whoo, what an evil prince we have here! Hopefully there'll be another 90's band cameo like when Sonic Youth were on, though it looks like they keep throwing whatever they get at the program so it's only a matter of time. BTW have you heard Taylor Momsen's band?

Other faves at the moment...

New Girl - Love her or hate her, lovely Zooey has definitely become a force to be reckoned with, what with her awesome performance on Saturday Night Live last week (Kristen Wiig's Bjork was particularly entertaining) and her pretty awesome website for girls Hello Giggles and of course New Girl. I think my favourite bit was seeing Zooey and Lizzie Caplan having a crochet night together (hey, I'm an indie girl that's crafty, ok?) and them attempting to play Eye of the Tiger on the bells, I love that song!

Hart of Dixie - We all love Wade right? And the mayor's really weird "sexy" face he pulls when chatting up the ladies, see the photo to my left for an example. We don't have Thanksgiving in the UK, but I'd rather have Planksgiving any day, arrr!!!

Parks and Recreation - Go team Knope! Really enjoyed Martin Starr's cameo the other week, I know how much you all like animated gifs, so here's one celebrating the moment.

Martin Starr has been rapping recently with a band called Common Rotation, they're playing LA tomorrow so go see them if you live there (I dunno who reads this though maybe you could live in LA and read this in time, let me know how it is if you go eh?). They do a rap that samples "Rich Girl by Hall and Oates, how awesome is that?! I'm not sure what the rest of the stuff is like, all the music on the website is country music, well there's not enough rap/country cross over out there is there?

Coming up...
I'm super looking forward to seeing Girls when it comes out, it's produced by Judd Apatow and stars Lena Dunham, and is basically Sex in the City for more normal 20 somethings. And even better Betty Ann Baker (the mum from Freaks and Geeks) is in it! I think I've watched this trailer so many times now, it basically is a more exciting version of my life, April can't come soon enough, enjoy...

And I just bought tickets to see Zack Braff's new West End Play All New People, so looking forward to seeing it, I hope he mentions The Shins in it!

I'm going to try and post more regularly on here from now on, cause I've forgotten about it, probably cause I've been watching too much TV and yes making music with my new band Cosines. Put the 14th April in yr diary, we are playing our first show, crikey! We should hopefully be supporting my dear friends Still Flyin' when they come over in May too, they were played not once but twice on The Office the other week in the pool party episode, yey for them! More information when I have it, now I've got something to plug again I can update the blog!

Hope you're all having an awesome 2012 and got your "operation stay Olympics free" strategy in motion! I will tell you all about mine another time.
See ya
Alicexx


Last but not least, you know how much we like Feist at this blog, I stumbled across this today, how many times does she sing the work "counting"?

On a ferris wheel looking out on Coney Island

Firstly, I'm so sorry for being rubbish and not updating this website for ages. And yes I also apologise for apologising, it is some kinda cliche to begin a blog post by apologising for not posting. I've been busy trying to find a job and then also working for very little money. I guess I'm technically unemployed but I think I've had the least amount of spare time I've ever had, even when I was working! My band The Loves have been playing some shows, we went to Spain which an insane awesome party, and also to Nottingham which wasn't such an insane party, just involved a lot of shouting about 'Withnail and I' and watching "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia".

Of course as ever, I've found the time to watch all my favourite telly programs, though am slightly disappointed with the lack of indie music references, what is going on in the world? I guess it's still early days though, Gossip Girl had a slightly pointless Robyn appearance (and Rachel Zoe got covered in chocolate! Yess!) and I'm sure it's only a matter of time until they wheel out another 90's indierock star soon. Why can't The Walking Dead have a popstar in it like The Stand did, so that he can batter a zombie with a flying v and then sing a song over their bloody corpse? Instead we have to listen to Egg from This Life's bad bad southern accent? (I like the program though, apart from the accent...) Have I not been watching the right tv programs? Or are people not interested in minor indie celebrities any more?

I did see two really cool documentaries though which you should try and see if you get the chance. The first is the awesome "Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields" which is a total must for fans of The Magnetic Fields, the film tells the story of the band in a very fitting manner, aswell of having lots of funny little interviews and some hilarious photos of Stephin Merritt and Claudia Gonson looking very 80s goth! It's touring the world at the mo, become a fan on the old Facebook to find out when it's next in yr city. After watching the film, I stood next to Stephin (too indie to say anything to him apart from a squeeky "hi" and that was after three glasses of wine) and listened to him have a good grump about someone's baby in the bar, I feel like I've had the Merritt experience now!



And I also saw a cool documentary about Le Tigre at Ladyfest Ten just before MEN (JD Samson's new band!) headlined the Saturday night. The film documents the bands last tour and is mainly on the road footage and live shots, there are some funny bits like when they met Slipknot! Check out the Le Tigre blog for details of screening and whatnot

Oh yeah, you may remember a while back I talked about Chris Packham quoting The Smiths on Springwatch? Well he only went and did it again in 2010 by name dropping Cure song titles, man he's so indie! Check out this interview with him, where he talks about his love of the Mary Chain and Cocteau Twins and his collection of 2000 punk vinyl singles.

There's also this playlist (and moody aging indie boy photo) on his website. Who thought this guy from The Really Wild Show was that cool?(apart from Snow Patrol, of course)


If he didn't have such bad hair maybe I'd fancy him.

I really enjoyed season 2 of Bored To Death, I LOVE Jason Schwartzman (go short people!) and would like to have a hug from Zak Galifianakis. It was the season finale last week, and they ended the series with this awesome song by Yo La Tengo I've had it in my head all week, I found this lovely live version of the song so you can too! Watch enjoy!
Until next time, which I promise will be sooner
Alicexx

Are we having fun yet?

Happy new year readers!
Hope you had a fun night last night, mine was spent giggling and dancing to 90s chart classics in Stoke Newington before marvelling at Myleen Class' freaky face whilst she introducing the fireworks on the telly. I'm so glad I wasn't in that crowd, they looked so bloody miserable!

OK, here's my pick of the best of 2009 telly and films, yep I probably missed loads...
Best TV program - Party Down
In brief a comedy program about a catering company staffed by out of work actors, writers and comedians who don't seem to do any work and cause chaos at every event they work at. It's total cringe comedy but I don't think I've laughed so hard in ages.
With a creative team including Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas, Paul "hottie" Rudd and TV's Fred Savage (?!) there was always high expectations. There are also loads of familiar faces including Freaks and Geeks Martin Starr, pretty much everyone from Veronica Mars (including an awesome cameo from Kristin Bell in the last episode of the series) and George Takei!

I also unashamed loved Series 3 of Californication (Kathleen Turner's character Sue Collini was probably the scariest thing I saw on TV last year!), Greek, Ugly Betty, Curb Your Enthusiasm and John Safran's Race Relations.

I am also enjoying the current series of Glee but I can't stand the singing (if I wanted to watch X Factor I'd watch it alright?!) it has reminded me of the merits of Journey though and Jane Lynch is amazing as ever.

Best Films
Of course it would be Whip It if they weren't taking ages getting around to releasing it in the UK, they still haven't scheduled it yet, god dammit! So I guess it'd have to be

Paper Heart, Where The Wild Things Are, Funny People



Best indie rock cameo
I guess this has to be Sonic Youth on Gossip Girl, which I mentioned in the first post.

What did I miss?

And finally, nothing cheers me up more than hearing one of my favourite indiepop bands played on the telly. Yep tonight's Gavin and Stacey featured a tiny snippet of Comet Gain's classic 'You Can Hide Your Love Forever', watch the episode again here on iPlayer. Don't stay watching though as you'll have to listen to Florence and The Machine whilst Gavin talks about his balls, yelp! They have no class on this program...

EDIT - I have since been informed that fellow Fortuna Pop-sters The Lucksmiths were also played later on in the episode (shows how much attention I was paying!). This episode was brought to you by the letters F and P...


Hope you are all well and your teenies (is that what we call this decade?) are awesome!
Alicexx

XOXO - Stocking fillers

See here for the Musical Supervisor at Gossip Girls' Holiday Gift Guide. I love that the only thing she says about Jane Birkin is that she has Hermes bag named after her!

Check out the other videos for Leighton Meesters' pop video and other videos about music on Gossip Girl, good stuff.

First post

One of the many things that make me smile about a good movie is when the character pops out a line about a certain indie band, when they're wearing a band tee shirt, when there's good music and even better when an indie band makes a rare cameo appearance. It makes me smile and it makes me feel like the movie maker gets my lil indie gal world and we have a bond over a shared love of indie rock (even if they may have put the reference in for marketing means, I maybe indie but I aint no fool!).

In brief this is a blog to amuse and celebrate the random indie references that appear in our favourite films and TV series. I will also look to rate movies and TV programs in terms of their indieness and indie music references by awarding them cardigan (the indie-est of apparel) points for five categories giving the film a final indie rating out of 25.

The five categories are...

1. Dialogue - points will be given for band mentions in dialogue and the more bizarre references will of course get max points, eg. Young Marble Giants, Slint (oh how I did spit out my tea when I saw that) and of course countless others being dropped into conversation in Gilmore Girls. The infamous triple whammy of The Shins/Death Cab/Bright Eyes in the Chrismukka episode of The O.C.

2. Music Paraphanalia - eg. posters,tee shirts, records in record shops, who can forget the Ladybug Transistor/Of Montreal poster in High Fidelity? Or the lovely Seth Rogen wearing a Sonic Youth tee shirt in 40 Year Old Virgin. Points again go for the most obscure band.
Incidentally I actually booked a show for those two bands a few years ago and pretty much the first thing I said to them when they turned up for sound check was "it's just like the poster in high fidelity",see I maybe a dork but I have booked shows for bands that are totally cool, but then I go and blow it by behaving like a dork in front of them...

3. Band cameos - the obscurer the better, and if the band acts in the movie/film even better. I'm sure we were all watching with bemusement when Kim Gordon acted as the afficiate for Rufus and Lily's wedding on Gossip Girl, and also the common band playing in bar trick eg the bait shop, The Bronze, the Karaoke bar in Veronica Mars have all provided endless entertainment all round.

4. Soundtrack - how indie is the soundtrack? sometimes a film can be totally indie but not have any references to it, eg Lost In Translation (Jesus and Mary Chain, Kevin Shields), But I'm A Cheerleader (Dressy Bessy! April March!)...

5. General indieness - eg. cute girls wearing cute indiegirl dresses, boys with side partings in skinny ties and cardigan, cool vintage furniture, kooky cinematography, holding hands, cuteseyness


So I end my first post with links to a couple of videos of one of my favourite recent cameos, of course it's the lovely
Kim Gordon marrying Rufus and Lily and Sonic Youth performing afterwards
BTW, "I Don't Really Know Who is Sonic Youth, But They Seems Old School..." is one of my favourite quotes of the week.

See you soon for my first reviews of my favourite summer indie flicks 500 Days of Summer and Adventureland.

Alicexx