Live performances by:
11:25pm: Shilpa Ray of Beat The Devil – “NYC’s best front-person” (Time Out), “a powerhouse” (NY Times)
12:20am: Yeasayer – spellbinding, seizure-inducing victors of CMJ
03:00am: Shellshag – spastic, thunderous, unusual, highly entertaining
DJs Michael Leviton (La Laque), rekLES and seanMFNRoberts
Shangri-La
100 Sutton Steet (btw. Nassau and Norman)
Greenpoint, Brooklyn, 11222, map here
21+, $15 with RSVP, $20 without
More Information Here.

As 2007 comes to a close and we begin to reflect on the past and look forward to what’s to come in 2008, one question is sure to linger: what’s with all the beards? The indie music scene, and all of Williamsburg for that matter, has begun to resemble a Widespread Panic show. We blame that dirty hippy Devendra Banhart for starting the trend.
Though we didn’t see as many outstanding releases as we did in 2005, this year was a great year for music. And on the brightside, 2007 was a hell of a lot better than 2006. Generally, we team up with our pals at Rumproast when compiling this list, but our top picks were so different from theirs this year, we decided to go our separate ways. M.I.A. wasn’t on Rumproast’s list, for God’s sake! (Check out Rumproast’s list here. Despite the M.I.A. oversight, it’s actually pretty solid.)
We realize that these “best of” lists have become ubiquitous, but there’s one thing that sets our list apart from the pack. Namely, we’re not pretending to like Radiohead. So without further ado this is FREEwilliamsburg’s Best in Music 2007.

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25. LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
MP3: “All My Friends” from Salad Days Music
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24. Pole – Steingarten
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23. Phosphorescent – Pride
MP3 – “A Picture of Our Torn Up Praise” from Indie Muse
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22. The Cave Singers – Invitation Songs
MP3: “Seeds of Night“, more at Daytrotter
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21. Deerhoof – Friend Opportunity
MP3: “+81” from Culture Bully
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20. Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago
MP3: “Skinny Love” from My Old Kentucky Blog
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19. The Besnard Lakes – Are the Dark Horse
MP3: “Devastation” from Salad Days Music
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18. Papercuts – Can’t Go Back
MP3: “Dear Employee” from My Old Kentucky Blog
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17. Liars – Liars
YouTube: Plaster Casts Of Everything
MP3: “Sailing to Byzntium” from Salad Days Music
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16. Black Lips – Good Bad Not Evil
MP3: “O katrina!” from Salad Days Music
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15. Iron & Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog
MP3: “The Devil Never Sleeps” from Radio KGB
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14. Okkervil River – The Stage Names
MP3: The Leather Canary has a couple here.
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13. Explosions in the Sky – All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone
MP3: Welcome Ghosts
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12. Apples in Stereo – New Magnetic Wonder
MP3: “Energy” [Along with "Paper Planes" this is our favorite single of the year]
YouTube: Energy video
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11. Wu Tang Clan – 8 Diagrams
MP3: “Windmill” from Flux Blog
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10. Various Artists – After Dark
Listen: Other Music is streaming the entire record.
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9. The Field – From Here We Go Sublime
MP3: A Paw In My Face from Red Blondehead (scroll to bottom)
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8. Band of Horses – Cease to Begin
MP3: “No One’s Gonna Love You” from Salad Days Music
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7. Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
MP3: “Impossible Germany” from Said the Gramophone
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6. Panda Bear – Person Pitch
MP3: “Bros” from Salad Days Music
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5. Various Artists – Top Shelf 8/8/88
A great “old skool” hip hop record with a great hoax back-story.
MP3: NY Times has a couple of MP3 clips here.
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4. Jens Lekman – Night Falls Over Kortedala
MP3: The Opposite of Hallelujah
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3. M.I.A.- Kala
YouTube: Paper Planes
MP3: “Paper Planes” from Said the Gramophone
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2. Bowerbirds – Hymns for a Dark Horse
MP3s: Visit Aquarium Drunkard.
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1. Feist – The Reminder
YouTube: 1 2 3 4
MP3: “I Feel It All” from Said the Gramophone
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Honorable Mention:
Ghostface Killah – The Big Doe Rehab, The Sea and Cake – Everything, Blitzen Trapper- Wild Mountain Nation, Beirut – The Flying Club Cup, Chromatics – Night Drive, Les Savy Fav – Let’s Stay Friends, Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam, Vladislav Delay- Whistleblower
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Biggest disappointment: Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
We don’t get it. The genius Sunlandic Twins was critically dismissed. (We loved it.) Meanwhile, people think this mediocre record is the best thing since Cheez Whiz. Maybe that horrible Outback Steakhouse ad spoiled this one for us.
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Nothing But Hype: Dan Deacon – Spiderman of the Rings
Fans will have forgotten about this one by March.
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Perpetually overrated: Radiohead – In Rainbows
How many times can Radiohead release the same record?
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Our Most Anticipated Release in the New Year: Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend
Said the Gramaphone has a track: “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa“. Myspace has a few more streaming tracks too: www.myspace.com/vampireweekend. We’re also looking forward to the new Cat Power covers record.
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Our Favorite Moment In Music in 2007:
Discovering that Lily Allen has a third nipple.
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Our Favorite Music Video of 2007:
Kanye West ‚”Can’t Tell Me Nothing.” It’s simply the best rap video ever shot on a farm starring Will Oldham and Zach Galifianakis.

Evidently there’s an online community in Russia that’s enjoys making bizarre staged phot-ops:

‚”A Cheating Wife: You need to make a photo of a man, ‚”a lover”, hanging outside the real window. The window should be not lower than a 3rd store of a multi-stored building. ‚”A husband” should lean out from another window with a gun, aiming at ‚”the lover”. From yet another window ‚”the cheating wife” should look out in despair.”
‚”The Waiter: A man dressed like a water should crawl out of a refuse chute in some multi-stored building, right from the disposal opening. He should hold a tray with some servings and a towel in another hand”
‚”A Zombie: A man, rolled up in bandages should crawl on his stomach at a pedestrian crossing. He should have a knife sticking out of his back. Another guy should chase him with a working chainsaw”
‚”The Pickles: Make a photo of many jars of pickles. Some of them should have pickled cell-phones. Not less than five cell phones in each jar please”
‚”A Pyramid: You should have a three level pyramid on the photo. The first level is some random truck, the second is a passenger car and some two-wheeled thing on the top of ‚”the pyramid” please.”

See them all here. [Thanks Jeff]

From The Washington Post.

Twenty-one years earlier, in 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.

In addition to wanting to completely abolish welfare, abortion, the I.R.S., and government regulations on big business in regard to the environment, Ron Paul doesn’t believe in evolution. Check the 3 minute mark of this video. As we’ve said all along, Ron Paul is nuts.

Didn’t anyone see Terminator 2? From Washington Post [Thanks John]

Researchers are poised to cross a dramatic barrier: the creation of life forms driven by completely artificial DNA.
Scientists in Maryland have already built the world’s first entirely handcrafted chromosome — a large looping strand of DNA made from scratch in a laboratory, containing all the instructions a microbe needs to live and reproduce.
In the coming year, they hope to transplant it into a cell, where it is expected to “boot itself up,” like software downloaded from the Internet, and cajole the waiting cell to do its bidding. And while the first synthetic chromosome is a plagiarized version of a natural one, others that code for life forms that have never existed before are already under construction. The cobbling together of life from synthetic DNA, scientists and philosophers agree, will be a watershed event, blurring the line between biological and artificial — and forcing a rethinking of what it means for a thing to be alive….
If a synthetic chromosome works the same way, as expected, the first living cells with fully artificial genomes could be growing in dishes by the end of 2008.

More info here. [Thanks Jeff]

Moron of the week
Happy holidays. This season, Fox News encourages us to give the gift that keeps on giving. Torture! From Raw Story

“There are instances where it works. I’ve had it done to me in training,” said Hunt. “It’s torture. It is an extremely dangerous thing. Your system shuts down.”
Asked by Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade if Americans were “better” than resorting to such practices, Hunt said he didn’t think so.
“First of all, I don’t think we are,” he said. “I think if we are, we shouldn’t be. We’re in a war with people who aren’t…good men have to know how to do bad things to do good.”
Hunt, who says that he withstood his own waterboarding experience for a little over a minute and a half, described the practice as as intensely painful, but effective.

And if things go too far, just destroy the tapes.

It’s kinda like the Grey Album, only with Zeppelin tracks. DC-based DJ Doc Rok mixes up Jay-Z’s new album creating a hybrid of American Gangster and classic Zeppelin. Grab the zip here.