Friday Flashbacks: Dashboard Confessional

I know this is not posted on Friday but the post is meant all the same.

Recently I was looking up songs to listen to online. I sometimes have what my roommate Chanel and I call "song A.D.D" where one does not know what song to play and changes it partway through each song. With other six thousand songs on my computer I get this frequently. If this is not happening I am getting stuck on one song or band and listening to them repeatedly. I wanted to change this.

I had come upon Dashboard Confessional in my search and had fond memories of listening to their music in my early teen years. They are a band fronted by singer-songwriter Chris Carrabba from Boca Raton, Florida. They started in 1999 and have released six albums since. They have had one live album and five EP's.

The song I had found by them was "Stolen." In my search Internet users said it was a good love song. Interestingly enough I was going through some love song mix tapes a friend had made recently. I had not heard this song from them as I my listening to them declined after high school. But I enjoyed it nonetheless. What songs I knew fondly were "Hands Down", "Rapid Hope Loss", and "Vindicated"; the last one mostly known from it's inclusion in the Spider-Man 2 Soundtrack.

The chorus to the song "Stolen" goes, "You have stolen my heart." I can see what Internet users deemed this a love song. Chanel agreed. "Some of their songs could be love songs. A lot of songs in their genre of music is about love," she said.

They are an emo, acoustic, and alternative rock band. A lot of bands that formed around the time of Dashboard Confessional had songs in the same vein. The Get Up Kids, Jimmy Eat World, and Midtown, are just a few of them.

Watching the video for "Stolen" I did not understand it the first time through. It took one more watching of the video to get it and that was fine with me as I enjoy listening to the song. The video definitely represents the song well. Below you can see the video to hear the song and see the imagery the band put alongside it.

(c) 2006 Dashboard Confessional/Vagrant Records

I do not know what is next for this band. Their first album The Swiss Army Romance was re-released last November as a deluxe edition and Chris Carrabba planned to go on a solo tour playing the album in its entirety in support of it.

Now that I have regained interest in this band maybe their music will come into rotation more on my iTunes. Maybe they will be the thing to save me from "song A.D.D" or they will just become one of those repeated artists for a short period of time. "Stolen" already is becoming that. For now I may just listen to more of their discography and search other bands I have forgotten about since my high school days.

Musicfest NW

Many cities across the United States have annual music festivals. Coachella, Lollapalooza, Bumbershoot, South By Southwest (SXSW), Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, Cornerstone Festival, and Bamboozle, just to name a few. Well those are a lot of the main ones.

Another festival that happens in the United States is Musicfest NW (MFNW). It happens every year in September in Portland, Ore. As Portland's largest and most successful festival, it happens at eighteen different venues in Portland including downtown at Pioneer Courthouse Square, occurring over four days. It has become the third largest indoor music festival in the United States attracting over 150 bands each year. It was rated one of the "50 Authentic American Experiences of 2009" by Time Magazine.

“The Northwest has always been on the cutting edge when it comes to music, and here’s your chance to find out why.”—Time.com

The festival is put on by the Willamette Week, Portland's alt-weekly newspaper. It started in 1995 as a joint venture between Willamette Week and Mark Zusman and Richard Meekek, who both own Willamette Week. Up until 2001 it was called North by Northwest but was renamed MFNW when Willamette Week took it over.

In it's tenth year as MusicFest NW, Pioneer Courthouse Square became the festival's first outdoor venue. In 2010 the two main acts to play at Pioneer Courthouse Square were The Decemberists and The National. In 2009, one of the acts I saw was The Get Up Kids who played with Portugal The Man at Roseland Theater.

Currently MFNW is accepting applications at their website for musicians and bands to play at this year's festival.

Here are the eighteen venues of MFNW.


View Musicfest NW Concert Venues in a larger map

Update: Satryicon LLC closed down in October of 2010.

UP's Battle of the Bands 2011

Last Friday, April 1, was University of Portland's Battle of the Bands at The Anchor. It was put on by the Haggerty and Tyson RA's benefiting The Holy Cross Mission Center. Voting was done by students donating money into boxes labeled with each artist's name. The artists with the most donated money in their box won Battle of the Bands and a hundred dollar Best Buy gift card. I attended the event and even did some voting of my own. In the end, a familiar face to this blog, Sam Wemgan, won the "battle."

I shot videos of the performances and compiled them into a recap video. From the artists you hear, who do you think should have won?

For more videos of the event see From The Ground Down's YouTube channel.

Profile: Daytrotter.com

Website name: Daytrotter
Origin: Rock Island, Illinois
Founded: 2006

Daytrotter describes itself as: "The source for new music discovery and free MP3 downloads from the best emerging bands."

Daytrotter is a website where bands and musicians will come into their studio, The Horseshack, in Rock Island, Ill. and record live versions of their songs. They record four songs by a band everyday, releasing twenty-eight songs each week, most of them for free download. Some of their recordings are not located at The Horseshack but at music festivals South by Southwest, in Austin, Texas and Pop Montreal in Montreal, QC, Canada.

These recordings are live in-studio. The recording process is analog and there no editing or overdubbing on the songs. Each song is performed with the instruments a band has at the time and how they are on the particular day they come in for a session. It is an honest representation of the artist during the session.

The website was started by Sean Moeller, from Davenport, Ill., who writes the accompanying writings to each Daytrotter Session. The other people who make up Daytrotter are Mike Gentry, from Moline, Ill., Johnnie Cluney, from the quad cities, the Daytrotter Illustrator, and Phil Pracht, from Davenport, Ill.

Part of Daytrotter's "about" section is what inspired the description of this blog. It says, "We are not giving you songs from someone you love’s record album, thereby stealing from someone you love. We’re giving you exclusive, re-worked, alternate versions of old songs and unreleased tracks by some of your favorite bands and by a lot of your next favorite bands."

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Not many people have heard of Daytrotter but it is a wonderful website. But Daytrotter is not the only site promoting new music or a new way to showcase music. I sent out a message through my Facebook to my friends looking for new music sites they enjoy.

Emily Linstrand: http://stereogum.com/
"I like the content it has. I can find interesting info about a lot of the bands I like. Plus, the Listomania section is fun."

Shayla Behling: "There are two! I love Stereomood because it's like pandora, only organized for what I need it for. The Music Maze is awesome as well and especially good for finding new artists."