I’ve been scratching my head for weeks now trying to figure out the next feature for the Sub Pop Online Shop and then just yesterday it dawned on me — why not ask Andy K, Head of Sales and Other Stuff, to name his TOP 5 RECORDS in the Sub Pop Shop? I mean, he knows sales. He is sales, for chrissakes! So, without further ado, let’s hear from Andy K, Sales Professional and Lover of Music.
Pissed Jeans—Hope for Men
“This is heavy, killer, and out now. Get it now, twerp.”
Comets on Fire—Avatar
“One word — fucking badass psychedelic acid trip.”
Last seen in action (and very memorable action at that) at our own 20th anniversary festival back in 2008, the fine, furry gentle-dudes of Comets on Fire recently announced that they will be playing some shows in the UK this November, as part of the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival. And now they have, even more recently, announced that they are adding an Oakland date (Nov. 26 at The White Horse Inn)!
With the exception of the glaring lack of a Seattle date (WTF, guys?), this is unequivocally great news. We’re biased, sure. We’ve put out a couple ofComets on Fire records and we’re still totally interested in selling them. But, we have seen this band, some of us a bunch of times, at least one of us on the very night his second son was due to be born, and it’s really impossible to describe, with mere words and the meager skill we seem to be able to muster in their use, just how much fun a Comets on Fire show is. And, right now, there are three more of them. We know you’ll make the right decision here.
All of the bands/artists/comedians participating in our various 20th anniversary revelries have agreed to play for free in the hopes of raising a bunch of money to give to a bunch of worthwhile organizations. Basically, we’re pooling the money we make, dividing it amongst everyone playing and each band/artist/comedian picks a recipient.
Herewith the list of organizations to which these folks have elected to donate their share of the proceeds. And, sometimes, where possible, we’ve included a bit of info about why they picked who they did.
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) is a national voluntary health agency dedicated to curing leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma, and to improving the quality of life of patients and their families.
We are going to donate our portion to the Farm Sanctuary. It is a group that rescues factory farm animals. They educate communities and children on responsible humane farming practices. They help take a little bit of violence away.
We are grateful and pleased to be a part of this event because we are donating the show revenue to help America’s homeless veterans. Far too many of our armed service men and women come back home from duty overseas to a place where people treat them like second-class citizens and give our faithful service men and women the cold shoulder. These people are to be honored and that is why we have chosen to make our donation for this show to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. This organization helps homeless veterans with shelters and social services. They also help drug and alcohol addicted veterans who want help finding an answer to their problems.
[from Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold…] I never learned a classical instrument in school or elsewhere and now I really regret it. I feel like I’m playing catch up now when I could’ve been learning all these things from an early age. Hopefully this money will buy some genius kids some stuff that’ll help them discover what they want to do in life!
The American Red Cross International Response Fund provides immediate relief and long-term support through supplies, technical assistance and other support to help victims of natural disasters and other crises around the world.
Katharine House is located 4 miles south of Banbury and lies on the borders of Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire amidst beautiful gardens where peace and tranquility prevail. The Hospice building was completed in 1991 and today the specialist palliative care services offered include in-patient, day centre, out-patients (medical and lymphoedema), community nurse specialists (Macmillan), and bereavement support. No charge is made to patients or their families for any aspect of care.
Our good friend and Seattle guitar god Tom Price (U-Men, Gas Huffer, Monkeywrench, The Tom Price Desert Classic) has early onset Parkinson’s Disease. We decided to donate Green River’s SP20 winnings to the Northwest Parkinson’s Foundation in his honor.
This is the Defense Fund for the West Memphis 3 – three teenagers convicted of a horrible crime because of the music they listened to and the way they dressed.
Darcy is a friend of ours here in Portland who has been diagnosed with type IV Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. In 2007, she bravely went through chemotherapy and the cancer went into remission, but unfortunately it has recently relapsed. We are very concerned for Darcy and our hearts go out to her, her husband, and her family. If you would like to make a donation to help Darcy out you can go to any Washington Mutual branch and say that you would like to donate to the “Darcy Davidson Cancer Fund.”
Kinski supports First Place, a Seattle-based agency devoted to educating and nurturing children whose families struggle with homelessness. First Place gives kids from grades K through 6 a safe, stable environment to learn and grow, and offers housing and support services that help their families achieve stability. Hope, home and education for every child, one family at a time.
Northwest Film Forum is a Seattle-based, non-profit center for the film arts. Much like Sub Pop does for music, NWFF supports the production of independent film by local artists, and connects that community to its international constituency. NWFF also operates two cinemas on Capitol Hill, screening hundreds of programs year-round, often including music documentaries and commissioning live scores for classic films. Belmondo!!
The Maasai Cultural Foundation is working to document the deeply rooted music of East Africa’s Maasai people, while focusing on health and education projects in the Maasai communities where music is recorded. One such example is our adult education program in Namuncha, Kenya, where over one-hundred rural Maasai men and women are learning to read, write and do arithmetic in a school building funded by the band Low. Visit us at www.maasaiculture.org to learn more about our projects, the Maasai people and hear samples of Maasai music!
826Boston is a wonderful nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6-18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Writing is crucial to the survival of mankind and the propagation of knowledge and commerce. Without proper writing skills you wouldbkgi kallo fa fa wough. See? It’s important. To that end, 826Boston provides free drop-in tutoring, field trips, after-school workshops, in-schools tutoring, and much more —- because without the written word people would constantly forget the Bill of Rights and wipe out civilization.
Our good friend and Seattle guitar god Tom Price (U-Men, Gas Huffer, Monkeywrench, The Tom Price Desert Classic) has early onset Parkinson’s Disease. We decided to donate Mudhoney’s SP20 winnings to the Northwest Parkinson’s Foundation in his honor.
Founded in 1997 by cancer survivor and champion cyclist Lance Armstrong, the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) unites people to fight cancer. This is a good war to fight.
Hope for the Warriors is exactly that: Hope, funds and assistance to Army veterans who aren’t being given much of anything by the VA, the government, or the current administration.
One of our biggest supporters and closest loved ones suffers from MS.
We are proud to donate our charity cash towards a cure for MS, in
honor of those with MS and the people who care about them.
We seriously love animals! Big time! PAWS is awesome! They help out animals that have been abandoned, hurt, and basically screwed over by people – both intentionally and unintentionally. They also try to deal with the problem at its core – not just a band-aid – if you know what I mean. There is a big focus on education and general knowledge sharing.
A big problem with a lot of other animal shelters is that they end up killing a lot of their “guests” because of capacity issues – but PAWS has a “no-kill” policy! They try to find homes for all domesticated animals and return wild ones back to whence they came.
Those who work for this organisation are pretty aws in our opinion and deserve all the money help they can get.
Seaweed supports the great work of the Emergency Food Network. Each charitable dollar is transformed into $12 worth of food for our hungry friends in Tacoma/Pierce County (low-income families, seniors, and the homeless). EFN also operates an organic farm and an orchard which serve as living laboratories for students to learn about sustainable farming practices. It is the only emergency food distribution center in the country to produce and distribute large quantities of organic produce (over 150,000 pound per year!). Seaweed thanks the Emergency Food Network for a job well done.
This charity was chosen because Bks Iyengar has spread the teaching of yoga throughout the world. He, as the chief patron of The Bellur Trust, is now working towards providing the basic amenities to improve the quality of life of the children of Bellur, his birth place.
Record Store Day (RSD) 2010 is this Saturday, April 17th. To get you in the mood we have put together a an embeddable SoundCloud playlist featuring select tracks from the seven different limited edition RSD Sub Pop releases. Be warned, this playlist will only be available until Monday, April 19th! A complete list of releases and in-store performances provided below. Cick here for a list of participating stores.
Sub Pop Record Store Day Playlist
1. The Album Leaf – There Is A Wind (Acoustic)
2. Beach House – The Arrangement
3. CocoRosie – Lemonade
4. Comets on Fire – Dogwood Rust
5. Dum Dum Girls – Pay For Me
6. Happy Birthday – Shampoo
7. Male Bonding – Before It’s Gone
8. Soundgarden – Hunted Down
Here is a full track listing for our limited edition record Store Day releases.
Beach House “Zebra” 12” (sp877)
The “Zebra” 12” features 2 new tracks (“The Arrangement” and “Baby”) and 2 alternate takes on songs from the popular 2010 Teen Dream album (a UK radio edit of “Zebra” and the Cough Syrup remix of “10 Mile Stereo”). Available now: Beach House’s Teen Dream SP845, CD+DVD/2xLP+DVD. (2,750 copies)
Side One:
1. Zebra (UK Radio Edit)
2. The Arrangement
Side Two:
1. Baby
2. 10 Mile Stereo (Cough Syrup Remix)
The Album Leaf “There Is a Wind” 12” (sp878)
The “There Is a Wind” 12” features 2 new tracks (“Landing in Snow” and “Resonations”) and 2 alternate takes on songs from the popular 2010 A Chorus of Storytellers album (an acoustic version of “There Is a Wind” and the Jamuel Saxon sunburnt remix of “Falling from the Sun”). Also available now: The Album Leaf’s A Chorus of Storytellers SP805, CD/2xLP. (2,000 copies)
Side One:
1. There Is a Wind (acoustic)
2. Landing in Snow
Side Two:
1. Resonations
2. Falling from the Sun (Jamuel Saxon sunburnt remix)
Dum Dum Girls / Male Bonding 7” (sp876)
Two brand-new and exclusive tracks for Record Store Day 2010, one each from LA’s Dum Dum Girls and London’s Male Bonding. Both bands have debut albums out this spring on Sub Pop. Also available now: Dum Dum Girls’ I Will Be SP840, CD/LP. Available May 11th: Male Bonding’s Nothing Hurts SP854, CD/LP. (2,250 copies)
Side A: Dum Dum Girls “Pay for Me”
Side AA: Male Bonding “Before It’s Gone”
Happy Birthday 7” (sp874)
Two brand-new and exclusive tracks for Record Store Day 2010 from Kyle “King Tuff” Thomas’ Happy Birthday. Both of these tracks, like those of Happy Birthday’s self-titled March 2010 debut album, were recorded and mixed at Kyle’s home studio. Available March 16th: Happy Birthday’s Happy Birthday SP850 CD/LP. (1,750 copies)
Side A: “Shampoo”
Side B: “Alien”
Soundgarden “Hunted Down” 7” Reissue (sp12a)
This reissue of a Sub Pop classic was arranged specially for Record Store Day. “Hunted Down” was released in June 1987 as the band’s first single and was later available on Screaming Life. This single is pressed on translucent orange vinyl. The original, now a Soundgarden collector’s item, was pressed on blue vinyl. (4,575 copies)
Side A: “Hunted Down”
Side B: “Nothing to Say”
CocoRosie “Lemonade" 7” (sp884)
The A-side to this limited-edition single is an edit of one of the stand-out tracks from the new CocoRosie album Grey Oceans and the B-side is the band’s cover of the Beach Boys’ classic “Surfer Girl.” Grey Oceans, CocoRosie’s Sub Pop debut (and fourth full-length album overall) will be released on May 11, 2010. Watch a ““Smokey Taboo” trailer from Grey Oceans. (1,000 copies)
Side A: “Lemonade”
Side B: “Surfer Girl”
SP20: Casual Nostalgia Fest CD (sp879)
We at Sub Pop Records celebrated our 20th anniversary in 2008 with, among other things, a 2-day music festival July 12th and 13th at Marymoor Park, somewhat unimaginatively called SP20. We’ve collected here some of our favorite performances from the SP20 festival. Sub Pop will be donating all of the profits from the sale of this CD to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. (9,200 copies)
1. Green River: “Leech”
2. Wolf Parade: “Fine Young Cannibals”
3. The Vaselines: “Dying for It”
4. Obits: “Run”
5. Les Thugs: “Dirty White Race”
6. Eric’s Trip: “Smother”
7. Beachwood Sparks: “You Take the Gold”
8. Blitzen Trapper: “Furr”
9. Flight of the Conchords: “Carol Brown”
10. Iron & Wine: “Woman King”
11. Constantines: “Why I Didn’t Like August ‘93”
12. Seaweed “Baggage”
13. Grand Archives: “Dig That Crazy Grave”
14. Low: “Silver Rider”
15. The Helio Sequence: “Lately”
16. Kinski: “The Wives of Artie Shaw”
17. Pissed Jeans: “Caught Licking Leather”
18. Mudhoney: “The Open Mind”
19. Comets on Fire: “Dogwood Rust”
In-Store Performances
Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba at Waterloo Records in Austin
Male Bonding & Dum Dum Girls at Origami Records in Los Angeles
No Age at Sweat Records in Miami
Steve Turner from Mudhoney DJ set at Everyday Music PDX (Burnside) from 12-2 PM
IN HONOR OF THISSPECIALDAY, SUBPOPRECORDSWILLRELEASE A MARVELOUSRANGE OF MUSICPRODUCTS, AVAILABLEONLY IN PARTICIPATINGRECORDSTORES
Record Store Day In-Store Performances by Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba, No Age, Male Bonding & Dum Dum Girls
Originally conceived in 2007 as a celebration of the unique culture surrounding over 700 independently owned record stores in the USA, and hundreds of similar stores internationally, the first Record Store Day took place on April 19, 2008. Now celebrated the third Saturday every April, it’s the one day each year that all of the independently owned record stores come together with artists and labels to celebrate the art of music. We at Sub Pop Records have put together a whole raft of releases (seven in all!) to help entice people into record stores to enjoy the many pleasures offered there. Each destined for future collector’s item status, the Sub Pop Record Store Day 2010 series of releases is sure to appeal to the minor OCD tendencies of every true music enthusiast. To find a participating store, go here.
FOR: RECORDSTOREDAY 2010 FROM: SUBPOP, WITHLOVE
Beach House “Zebra” 12” (sp877)
The “Zebra” 12” features 2 new tracks (“The Arrangement” and “Baby”) and 2 alternate takes on songs from the popular 2010 Teen Dream album (a UK radio edit of “Zebra” and the Cough Syrup remix of “10 Mile Stereo”). Available now: Beach House’s Teen Dream SP845, CD+DVD/2xLP+DVD.
Side One:
1. Zebra (UK Radio Edit)
2. The Arrangement
Side Two:
1. Baby
2. 10 Mile Stereo (Cough Syrup Remix)
The Album Leaf “There Is a Wind” 12” (sp878)
The “There Is a Wind” 12” features 2 new tracks (“Landing in Snow” and “Resonations”) and 2 alternate takes on songs from the popular 2010 A Chorus of Storytellers album (an acoustic version of “There Is a Wind” and the Jamuel Saxon sunburnt remix of “Falling from the Sun”). Also available now: The Album Leaf’s A Chorus of Storytellers SP805, CD/2xLP.
Side One:
1. There Is a Wind (acoustic)
2. Landing in Snow
Side Two:
1. Resonations
2. Falling from the Sun (Jamuel Saxon sunburnt remix)
Dum Dum Girls / Male Bonding 7” (sp876)
Two brand-new and exclusive tracks for Record Store Day 2010, one each from LA’s Dum Dum Girls and London’s Male Bonding. Both bands have debut albums out this spring on Sub Pop. Also available now: Dum Dum Girls’ I Will Be SP840, CD/LP. Available May 11th: Male Bonding’s Nothing Hurts SP854, CD/LP
Side A: Dum Dum Girls “Pay for Me”
Side AA: Male Bonding “Before It’s Gone”
Happy Birthday 7” (sp874)
Two brand-new and exclusive tracks for Record Store Day 2010 from Kyle “King Tuff” Thomas’ Happy Birthday. Both of these tracks, like those of Happy Birthday’s self-titled March 2010 debut album, were recorded and mixed at Kyle’s home studio. Available March 16th: Happy Birthday’s Happy Birthday SP850 CD/LP.
Side A: “Shampoo”
Side B: “Alien”
Soundgarden “Hunted Down” 7” Reissue (sp12a)
This reissue of a Sub Pop classic was arranged specially for Record Store Day. “Hunted Down” was released in June 1987 as the band’s first single and was later available on Screaming Life. This single is pressed on translucent orange vinyl. The original, now a Soundgarden collector’s item, was pressed on blue vinyl.
Side A: “Hunted Down”
Side B: “Nothing to Say”
CocoRosie “Lemonade" 7” (sp884)
The A-side to this limited-edition single is an edit of one of the stand-out tracks from the new CocoRosie album Grey Oceans and the B-side is the band’s cover of the Beach Boys’ classic “Surfer Girl.” Grey Oceans, CocoRosie’s Sub Pop debut (and fourth full-length album overall) will be released on May 11, 2010. Watch a ““Smokey Taboo” trailer from Grey Oceans.
Side A: “Lemonade”
Side B: “Surfer Girl”
SP20: Casual Nostalgia Fest CD (sp879)
We at Sub Pop Records celebrated our 20th anniversary in 2008 with, among other things, a 2-day music festival July 12th and 13th at Marymoor Park, somewhat unimaginatively called SP20. We’ve collected here some of our favorite performances from the SP20 festival. Sub Pop will be donating all of the profits from the sale of this CD to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund
1. Green River: “Leech”
2. Wolf Parade: “Fine Young Cannibals”
3. The Vaselines: “Dying for It”
4. Obits: “Run”
5. Les Thugs: “Dirty White Race”
6. Eric’s Trip: “Smother”
7. Beachwood Sparks: “You Take the Gold”
8. Blitzen Trapper: “Furr”
9. Flight of the Conchords: “Carol Brown”
10. Iron & Wine: “Woman King”
11. Constantines: “Why I Didn’t Like August ‘93”
12. Seaweed “Baggage”
13. Grand Archives: “Dig That Crazy Grave”
14. Low: “Silver Rider”
15. The Helio Sequence: “Lately”
16. Kinski: “The Wives of Artie Shaw”
17. Pissed Jeans: “Caught Licking Leather”
18. Mudhoney: “The Open Mind”
19. Comets on Fire: “Dogwood Rust”
To celebrate the label’s twentieth birthday, Sub Pop will release a series of re-issues starting with Mudhoney’s Superfuzz Bigmuff: Deluxe Edition (which, like their brand new album The Lucky Ones , comes out May 20, 2008), launch a limited run of the Sub Pop Singles Club (more on that soon-ish), and throw a series of over-the-top birthday parties for itself this summer.
Herewith the scoop on these birthday parties:
SP20 Comedy Show – Friday, July 11th at The Moore Theatre
with…
You can also buy tickets for SP20 in person at the Marymoor Park Office between 9am and 4pm, Monday-Friday. You can also phone them at 206-205-3661 or email them at marymoorpark@kingcounty.gov to buy tickets and have them mailed to you. A fee of $8 per ticket supports maintenance and operations of King County Parks. There’s more info about all of this on the Concerts at Marymoor site.
There is also, at this same link info for those interested in carpooling to SP20!
“Tickets for SP20 at The Showbox are available through TicketMaster here!":http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0F0040A5F0BD8392
It’s worth noting that all of the SP20-related events are benefits. “Information on SP20 Beneficiaries is available here!":http://www.subpop.com/channel/news/sp20_who_gets_the_money
