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Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Wodlinger out as ME TV head
The president and CEO of ME Television, Austin’s 24-hour music video and live concert network, has resigned, and a former Dell Inc. executive will serve as the interim head of the network.
Connie Wodlinger , who founded ME (for “Music and Entertainment”) Television in 2005, “has some other businesses that she wanted to focus on,” said Kevin Kettler , a former chief technology officer at Dell who will be the interim CEO. Wodlinger could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Kettler, who has been ME-TV’s lead investor, said he has firsthand knowledge of the company’s workings.
As for day-to-day programming, there won’t be a change in what viewers will see, he said.
However, Kettler said, anytime that a company goes through a leadership change, there is a re-evaluation of its operations.
“Certainly, music will be our main focus for all things that we do. But there might be some opportunity to showcase some other things in the Austin region as we look forward,” he said.
The search for a new CEO will begin shortly, Kettler said, and the network also plans to conduct a second round of raising money from private investors.
The company also will set up an external advisory board with the goal of finding people who can help “move the business forward” and promote both the network and the Austin music scene, Kettler said.
Almost one year ago, ME-TV laid off all but a small number of employees. At the time, Wodlinger said, “a skeleton staff will keep the station on-air while we pursue viable options to continue.”
Without giving specifics, Kettler said the network has not returned to pre-layoff levels but said that he would like to add staff.
“You always want to be in a growth business,” he said.
ME-TV airs programming from various musical genres on Time Warner Cable Channel 15. The City of Austin awarded Austin Music Partners the contract to run Channel 15 in 2004. The network was relaunched in October 2005 as ME Television.
Brad Stein , chairman of the Austin Music Commission, described ME-TV’s programming as “very professional” but said the network has yet to expand its audience.
Part of the network’s eight-year contract with the city calls for ME-TV to partner with enough providers to reach 2.5 million people by 2012, Stein said.
According to a network news release, ME-TV programming is broadcast to more than 400,000 cable subscribers.
Stein also said the network has been slow to adjust to the Internet and new forms of reaching viewers, such as online social networks.
But Kettler has a “deft touch for technology, so I think the future of the station will depend on how you merge music and entertainment with technology, and he seems like a good person to take it to the next step, which is essential for its success,” Stein said.
ME-TV has filmed all of its programs in high-definition and has more than 60 hours of content ready to distribute, officials said. That means the station could broadcast in HD; it could also sell content to another station, Kettler said.
Kettler said viewers will see a transformation of the station’s Web site, with more capabilities such as streaming full-motion video on demand.
“We’re excited about it,” he said, adding that the station will be announcing partnerships in the coming weeks.
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Surprise! It’s Ben Kweller
Cook’s “Let the Light In,” produced by Alejandro Escovedo, is scheduled for release next year.
Stick around for an inside show with Sleeping in the Aviary.
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Live review: Dave Matthews Band at Austin City Limits studio
Dave Matthews plays the guitar during the concert of his Dave Matthews Band July 11 at the Optimus Alive music festival in Lisbon, Portugal. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)
On the day the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame designated the Austin City Limits studio as a historical site, the venerable program hosted one of the most popular acts of the last 15 years, likely expecting the Dave Matthews Band to put a musical exclamation point on the big day.
While punctuated at times with exceptional playing, the show seemed to act more as an ellipsis … teasing fans with tastes of their rollicking past throughout a set of relatively homogeneous new songs.
The Dave Matthews Band made a national name for itself in the mid-’90s with crisp, melodic songs that featured evocative songwriting, jazz instrumentation and extended jamming. The group from Virginia straddled musical worlds, attracting eclectic fans of improvisational groups such as the Grateful Dead and Phish while remaining commercially palatable enough to inspire thousands of high school kids and college co-eds to attend the band’s shows in droves.
In the early years, Matthews served as a proxy for his fans — finding his way in the world, celebrating life’s endless possibilities, expressing individuality and swimming in the beauty and ache of the world — offering up his discoveries for the fans to share in as their own.
In the years since the early successes of “Remember Two Things” and “Under the Table,” as their collective star rose, however, it seems Matthews’ musical ambitions have lagged.
While the band certainly still hits the right notes and is as tight as ever, the content and delivery feel more processed. The poetry seems to have waned from the live lyrics, giving way to simplistic observations and self-seriousness, and the man who once gave voice to the collective concerns of a fan base staring adulthood in the face became adult contemporary pabulum with a danceable beat. Such are the “perils” of adulthood and success. Most musicians should be so fortunate.
The ACL Festival co-headliner-to-be opened its set Monday night by stuffing the tamely ironic “Funny the Way It Is,” a song that feels perfectly suited for a twilight festival set, into the crammed studio, as the crowd, which did not have the luxury of seats, struggled with the notion of actually dancing.
Call him the musical Wooderson of “Dazed and Confused” — he gets older and the girls stay the same age — but Matthews still knows how to make the ladies swoon, as evidenced by their cat-call responses to his lines “But I love the way you love me, baby” in “Spaceman.” Maybe the girls grow older, too, they just continue to fall for the same lines. Lucky guy.
“Spaceman,” with its guitar-fueled devil-may-care Lothario vibe offered compelling evidence that Matthews has probably done more to fuel would-be “American Idols” a la Kris Allen and boost acoustic guitar sales than any musician of the past 15 years. Not to mention the amount of money it has earned him and his bandmates.
The “love-song of sorts,” as Matthew described it, “Squirm,” showcased Matthews’ immediately recognizable vocal style, as he descended from growl to whisper, shoving lyrics into a tight space before exploding like a bearded jack-in-the-box to the extreme delight of the hollering fans.
His boyish, rapscallion charm never lurking too far beneath the surface, Matthews improvised a bit about the joys of playing outside, under the stars with the city’s skyline in the back, an inside joke played at the expense of those at home who may be under the delusion ‘ACL’ is taped al fresco.
Continuing with the set stuffed with a majority of tunes from the recently released “Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King,” Jeff Coffin’s delicate soprano sax sounds punctuated the mystical aspects of “Lying in the Hands of God,” a song that had the plastic feel of commodified spirituality. The song did offer the chance for the band’s first full-on jam, highlighting the freakish drumming of Carter Beauford, whom I am not ready to declare has only four limbs. As they have throughout their history, the band does an excellent job of giving each of the players space to shine, communicating through subtle nods and inflections.
Here it should be noted that one of the great products of DMB’s popularity is how the band has made better listeners out of many of its fans. I would argue that many devotees over the years first came to appreciate the art of the solo, in particular that of horns, strings and percussion, by way of listening to DMB. In fact, I imagine the band was my rickety on-ramp to John Coltrane and Miles Davis in 1993.
With “Why I Am,” Matthews gave a nod to deceased sax man Leroi Moore, when introducing the song he said began initially as a chaotic cacophony before developing into a wonderful vehicle this night for the shredding of guitar virtuoso Tim Reynolds.
Halfway through the set that would feature almost all of the group’s new material, the band finally gave some old diehards what they had come to see, as they launched into “Jimi Thing,” a song from the band’s break-out “Under the Table and Dreaming,” that was spiced by Coffin’s sax and trumpet player Rashawn Ross trading lines. The raucous throwback allowed the band to fully stretch out, where they are at their best, and for the first time of the evening give the studio the feel of a small club, with older and younger fans alike bobbing and swaying.
It would be one of the few times when everyone in the room seemed equally invested in the band that they had come to love at different times throughout the winding career of arguably the world’s longest-running college party band.
Matthews seemed intent on giving a platform to his newer tunes on this night, but he is not unaware or unappreciative of the fans of his older work. While he seemed reluctant to go back to his formative musical years, as a departure from the night’s intended set list (which I acquired), the band’s final encore of the 16-song set was “Two Step,” off the 1994 live EP “Recently.” Not coincidentally, it was also the song requested on a handmade sign held by a girl in the front row.
If only the whole night had contained the energy and passion of the song which ended it. Alas … musicians change … often becoming something less than what we once thought and hoped they were.
Dave Matthews Band at Austin City Limits studio, 08.10.09 (setlist)
- “Funny the Way it Is”
- “Spaceman”
- “Squirm”
- “Lying in the Hands of God”
- “Alligator Pie”
- “Gravedigger”
- “Why I Am”
- “Seven”
- “Jimi Thing”
- “Shake Me Like a Monkey”
- “Sister”
- “You and Me”
- “Time Bomb”
- “Ants Marching”
- E: “Whiskey, Rye Whiskey”
- E: “Two Step”
Fans cheer for the Dave Matthews Band during a show Monday night at the “Austin City Limits” studio (Kelly West AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
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Live review: Method Man & Redman w/ Ghostface Killah at Emo’s
In honor of the Wu-Tang Clan’s obsessions with numerology and their still-staggeringly excellent debut album “Return to the 36th Chamber,” here are 36 sentences about Method Man and Redman’s Sunday night show at Emo’s.1. Mercy, was it hot in there.
2. Emo’s when it’s sold out is hot enough. Emo’s when it’s sold out when it’s over 100 degrees during the day is….intense
3. Nevertheless, everyone seemed to be surviving nicely.
4. A calm crowd as well. No fights, no tension, everyone at the show to, well, relive the glorious days of mid-1990s hip-hop.
5. To that end, everyone screams good and loud when Ghostface takes the stage. And about 10 seconds later, here’s the first complaint to the soundman. It’s a hip-hop tradition!
6. Ghostface is probably the best pure M.C. still standing from the Clan. Most could only muster one classic solo album and a half-decent follow up. Ghost keeps making stellar album after stellar album.
7. Crowd goes nuts for “Ice cream.” (The song, not the food.)
8. Then they go nuts for “Be Easy.” Great song, that; a 21st century classic from Ghost.
9. Or rather, one verse and chorus. Gonna be that kinda night, bits of songs here and there, a career skipped around. It’s a hip-hop tradition!
10. For a crew that had trouble all being in the same room at the same time, I’ve never seen Ghost be anything less that a total pro.
11. (That reminds me of a comment a pal made about seeing a photo of all nine hard-to-corral Wu-Tang MCs in Rolling Stone: “I felt like I was seeing a lost photo of Robert Johnson or something.”
12. It does look like the heat is getting to him a bit.
13. Ghost will never be known as the fittest Wu-Tang member. He’s somewhere in fitness between the Hollywood star Method Man and Raekwon, who looks these days as if he comes by his nickname “the Chef” honestly.
14. “Y’all are my Duracell tonight,” Ghost says. It tough to get the crowd going when it’s this oppressive out. Seriously thinking about throwing my shirt away rather than try to wash it.
15. Then some rhymes from “Supreme Clientele,” his 2000 classic, the album that made him making him the first Wu-Tang solo artists to drop two great solo albums in a row.
16. “Who has the Iron Man CD?” Crowd yells.
17. “Who has the Fishscale CD?” Crowd yells.
18. Dude, we have all your records.
19. Credit must be given to these guys for not passing out.
20. Verses from “Triumph,” “C.R.E.A.M.” and “Run!” set the crowd alight. Then a Michael Jackson tribute via sample array.
21. Hey, it’s Method Man and/or Redman’s bus, about 15 minutes before they are supposed to go on. Oddly, a blue cloud did not emerge from the door.
22. Ghost will always eat because the man will always be able to write.
23. Ghost will always eat because the man signs autographs in the corner and hangs out outside talking to fans. It’s the oldest business model in the world and it still works.
24. Method Man and Redman bound out. Redman’s cowboy hat/camouflage sleeveless shirt combination is next level.
25. “How Bout Dat?” from the new album “Blackout 2” slays. This beat is a monster, total 90s sample-packed thunder
26. Meth’s charisma is still utterly hypnotic.
27. Any hip-hop fan that tells you they don’t have a crush (or the hetero-normative equivalent) on the man is LYING TO YOU.
28. Utterly kinetic performer, leaping around the stage, hurling himself into the crowd.
29. Note to rappers: THIS IS HOW YOU PUT ON A SHOW. PLEASE TAKE NOTES.
30. “We’re gonna take it back to 1992,” Red says.
31. Which is what everyone is here to do.
32. Redman rocking “Time 4 Sum Aksion” is like the Stones’ busting out “Satisfaction.” Nobody is mad at it.
33. Following it with “M.E.T.H.O.D. Man” is like the Who busting out “My Generation.” In more ways than one.
34. “Bring the Pain” follows.
35. Crowd officially bonkers.
36. It pretty well stays that way.
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Gerard Cosloy’s house burned to the ground this morning
Matador Records co-owner Gerard Cosloy was the owner and resident of the nearly 100-year-old home on Lindell Avenue that burned to the ground early this morning.
Cosloy sounded shaken but calm this morning. “There are a lot of people who have a lot less than I do who deal with a lot worse, but this is pretty bad,” he said.
Indeed, the house and its contents are a total loss.
Dog lovers should know that yes, his dogs survived.
“They were very heroic, in fact,” Cosloy said.
“Everyone has been really great calling with places to stay and work out of,” he added. Cosloy worked out of his home.
Matador recently signed Austin band Harlem. Cosloy also runs the often mind-blowing sports blog Can’t Stop the Bleeding and plays in the band Air Traffic Controllers. (Big-ups to Cosloy for joking about his loss here.)
While Austin Music Source is very thankful Cosloy is alive, AMS can’t lie to you: We poured one out this morning for his stellar record collection, a collection that is now one large plastic lump.
To paraphrase more than one guy on ESPN, we’re all day-to-day, huh?
