From the 'Net: Tim Tebow's Exciting Press Conference

Tim Tebow, the former Denver Broncos quarterback, has been in the news a lot recently. The football sensation that captured our nation with sheer jubilation, Tebow was recently ousted from the Mile-High City, who signed Peyton Manning. Manning had previously been under contract with the Indianapolis Colts, with whom he twice attended and once won the Superbowl. These, I imagine, are exciting times for football fans. Having been recently signed to the New York Jets (the Jets?),Tim Tebow himself is excited. So excited, in fact, at a recent press conference discussing his relationship with the aforementioned Jets of New York he managed to utter "excite" in a great deal of tenses and variations a total of 44 times. The video is below:

Review: "Beak & Claw" by s/s/s

Beak & Claw was released March 20,2012 by Anticon Records

Many of you may have been as shocked as I was when, a little over two weeks ago, the blogosphere lit up with news that Sufjan Stevens, the master composer who has brought us opuses like the timeless Illinois and and neoclassical symphony The BQE, was working on a hip-hop record. Beak & Claw is a four song EP which sees Stevens collaborating with Chicago's avant-garde rapper Serengeti and Denver's Son Lux, whose production style defies classification but lies somewhere between trip hop and ambient electronica. The first single "Museum Day", which was available to stream when the EP was announced, was exactly as out-there as one would expect. The song opens with Sufjan crooning some kind of bizarre, autotuned new age poetry ("Make it right, make it right, energy") and slows to a sparse drumbeat layered with spacey synthesizers and Serengeti drops some stream-of-consciousness rhymes before the song builds back up to its hooky chorus, the psychedelic insanity of which would make Wayne Coyne jealous.

Two Raleigh, NC Festivals Add New Venues

Photo courtesy of progressenergycenter.com

The burgeoning metropolis of Raleigh, NC is already gearing up for the 3rd Annual Hopscotch Music Festival this September (check out our extensive past coverage here). For those of you unfamiliar with the event, the aptly named Hopscotch Festival takes place across over a dozen different venues in downtown Raleigh, all within reasonable walking distance of each other, consisting of a large outdoor stage in City Plaza and an assortment of bars, clubs, and theaters of all shapes and sizes. Back in November, a mere two month after 2011's stellar weekend, the folks at Hopscotch announced that they would be adding the main gallery of Raleigh's Contemporary Art Museum as their fifteenth performance venue, indicating that the festival was continuing to build on the expansive growth that it made after between 2010 and 2011. It turns out that was only the beginning.

In Brief: Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival, Spring 2012

Photo courtesy of The Bottom String.

Recently, Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance released a scintillating taste of what is sure to be an EXCELLENT lineup for their Spring Festival, to be held April 19th-22nd. Featuring returning favorites and some fresh blood, there's no way to complain about this preliminary list. Myxem favorites Driftwood are returning, as well as Midtown Dickens, Mandolin Orange and Holy Ghost Tent Revival. After stunning the entirety of our staff at Hopscotch, seeing Bombadil make it onto the lineup was a delightful surprise. Having been recently introduced to Curtis Eller's banjo-based roots-ragtime, seeing his name pop up was both unexpected and certainly a good reason to dig further into his catalog.

The preliminary lineup announcement is after the jump AND on Shakori Hills' website