The Thrust Felt 'Round The World

On the season-two finale of NBC's The Voice on Tuesday night, millions of viewers across America tuned in to see who would be crowned the next up-and-coming vocalist of our time. More >>

Whether you're into Top 40 or you think all of those songs are cheesy and overproduced, there's a new pop-rocker on the scene who's worth your attention. 

Andy Grammer is more than just a blue-eyed songbird with a charming smile and catchy hooks. And he's definitely not the guy who depends on a producer to Auto-Tune his mistakes. He's actually a talented singer who rose to fame much later in life than most pop stars today, even though he can sing teeny boppers like Justin Bieber out of the water.

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​Happy news recently came in regarding the blog you are now reading: County Grind has been named a finalist in the Best Music Blog category at the 2011 AltWeekly Awards.

This is especially exciting because it's our first year of eligibility for really any sort of honor since splitting off from Miami New Times' Crossfade last year. Many thanks to our gifted writers and photographers who have helped keep the blog vibrant and fiercely local.

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​"California, look what you've done to me," Billy Corgan sings on "Owata," a new song from the forthcoming Teargarden by Kaleidyscope. If you're curious about what the title means, get to the first chorus of this upbeat acoustic guitar and synthesizer number.

As for what the Golden State has done to Corgan, look to our sister blog, LA Weekly's West Coast Sound. They have an exclusive lock on this song, one of 44(!) from the Teargarden collection, for the next 24 hours.

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Marilyn Manson will dictate his life story to this woman.

​The first authorized biography of Marilyn Manson is coming! Local fans of the Spooky Kids -- as well as local members of the Spooky Kids -- are in for some tasty nuggets as ex-LA Weekly's Erin Broadley has been hired to document all things Brian Warner officially. Of course, there are legions of cranky Manson fans who will be devastated that they weren't chosen.

According to Gustavo Turner's blow-by-blow of this development, this arrangement grew out of frenemy-ship between the rocker and the writer because of the Manson-related dirty deeds revealed in her story about Buddyhead's Travis Keller. Things eventually calmed down.
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The ultimate yearly toast to the douchebags.

​For sentimental and professional reasons, the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop poll of rock critics (who may or may not be able to name every member of New Edition from memory) is a personal favorite. Anyone who is surprised that Kanye West was a dominant force in said poll is probably equally surprised that Ke$ha is not -- albeit she has her day within a "Hipness" metric that counts ballots only from folks who voted for singles. Now you know why I really love P&J: The endless statistics make this the fantasy football of music lists.

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​Our sister paper Seattle Weekly has a fascinating exploration of powerhouse indie label Sub Pop as it considers what is often misleadingly called "pulling a Radiohead" and giving away all of its music for free (if you pony up for a Superfuzz Bigmuff T or a God's Balls beer koozie). Kurt Cobain would probably approve, and so would experiential-based music entrepreneur/Devo drummer Josh Freese.

In a nutshell, this has already been going on for a while -- vinyl copies of albums sold by numerous indies have included download codes. Artists including HEALTH and OK Go have already started experimenting with the "T-shirt gateway to music," but no one took it quite as far as Mos Def's The Ecstatic last year, which was actually released as a shirt. Plus, there are plenty of people who would probably wear this shirt who never need to hear another Fleet Foxes song.

Pitchfork Music Festival 2010 Recap from MPLS.TV on Vimeo.

Our lovely sister paper Minneapolis' City Pages presents a charming video snapshot of this past weekend's Pitchfork Festival, which was held in Chicago's Union Park. Interspersed between interviews with Pitchfork head honcho Ryan Schreiber, comedian Michael Showalter, Neon Indian, Best Coast, South Florida bros Thomas Fekete and Brian Black from Surfer Blood (and Weird Wives) look genuinely wide-eyed and slack-jawed to be there and express further excitement to see Pavement... and Big Boi. And the screed about our jealous rage was deleted.

Showing that the coverage wasn't entirely slanted toward indie rock, the Daddy Fat Sacks half of Outkast himself also makes an appearance in the clip, but the crowning moment has got to be Wu-Tang Clan staple and the genius behind several successful solo albums: Raekwon. After extolling the virtues of the fest ("sprinkle a little bit of that hardcore with that rock 'n' roll"), a guy who often raps about naked women cooking drugs enjoys one of the obvious spoils of summer, a bomb pop. 

I Will Be reluctant to answer questions about my past

​Every week, we gather some interesting stuff from our sister Village Voice Media publications' music sections. Just for kicks. Here's last week's entry.

Owl City has a song called "Hello Seattle" and Seattle Weekly likes that fact.

The story behind Sonny Smith's 100 Records, an exhibit of fake album covers, resides in the SF Weekly.

LA Weekly's Chris Martins does a strong bit of investigative reporting in his profile of Dum Dum Girls frontwoman Dee Dee, AKA ex-Grand Ole Party's Kristin Gundred.

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Donald Glover's flow is serious, so stop laughing at his jokes

​Every week, we gather some interesting stuff from our sister Village Voice Media publications' music sections. Just for kicks. Here's last week's entry.

An in-depth look back at N.W.A. frontman Eazy E resides in Phoenix New Times.

SF Weekly goes deep with indie darlings of the moment the Morning Benders and Washed Out, the glo-fi equivalent.

Great titling (Arkansas Bo Is The Best Unemployed Rapper In Dallas), and Ted Leo reflects on his prolific career in the Dallas Observer:

"Being able to step off that hamster wheel where you can't really see what's up around the bend but only what's coming at you fast, it helped me get a little bit of perspective about the whole thing, the whole thing meaning the last 20 years of my life," Leo says. "I think, in a weird way, it opened up the songwriting for a little bit more of just me using my voice and not maybe feeling like I had to say something."

In City Pages, Trip Shakespeare gets the band back together.

Village Voice went to Mexico for the MtyMx fest, Community scene-stealer Donald Glover is also just a rapper, Edd Hurt recalls his 1981 conversation with now-departed Alex Chilton, and Dan Weiss has a spot-on line about the XX:

The big white "X" on black that comprises their album cover (title: xx) is the sort of cult branding that evokes a mass of NIN T-shirts, and their goth-friendly haircuts would be happy to comply if only the group didn't pledge allegiance to Aaliyah and Ma$e first.

Plus, shopping with Gang Gang Dance's Lizzi Bougatsos!