Do they know it’s Record Store Day?

Spinster.

History: “The original idea for Record Store Day was conceived by Chris Brown, and was founded in 2007 by Eric Levin, Michael Kurtz, Carrie Colliton, Amy Dorfman, Don Van Cleave and Brian Poehner as a celebration of the unique culture surrounding over 700 independently owned record stores in the USA, and hundreds of similar stores internationally.

This is the one day that all of the independently owned record stores come together with artists to celebrate the art of music. Special vinyl and CD releases and various promotional products are made exclusively for the day and hundreds of artists in the United States and in various countries across the globe make special appearances and performances. Festivities include performances, cook-outs, body painting, meet & greets with artists, parades, djs spinning records and on and on. Metallica officially kicked off Record Store Day at Rasputin Music in San Francisco on April 19, 2008 and Record Store Day is now celebrated the third Saturday every April.” – From recordstoreday.com

A note: “A Record Store Day participating store is defined as a physical retailer whose product line consists of at least 50% music retail, whose company is not publicly traded and whose ownership is at least 70% located in the state of operation. (In other words, we’re dealing with real, live, physical, indie record stores—not online retailers or corporate behemoths).”  – From recordstoreday.com

• More about Record Store Day on Wikipedia.

Rad, non? A list on Canadian record stores that are participating can be found here. In Montreal, the participating stores are:

• Phonopolis (5403a ave du Parc)
• Sound Central (4486 Coloniale Ave.)
• Aux 33 Tours (1379 Mont-Royal Est)
• Beatnik (3770 St-Denis)
• Le Pick Up (169 Pine avenue east)
• Boutique L’Oblique (4333 Rivard St.)

Sound Central will be having a mega sale today plus an in-store show with the bands Dead Wife and The Slobs at 3pm. You should check it out! They especially deserve some support after having their ceiling cave in on them a little while back.

If you’re looking to get your hands on the Carta Marina vinyl, the list of stores are right here for ya (locations include Montreal, Toronto, Kingston, Peterborough and London). If you’re not able to visit one these rad establishments, you can order it on-line or purchase through iTunes.

Here’s a wee video about Brian’s Record Option on Princess street in Kingston, where they sell Carta Marina and a million other records. It’s quite the place and Brian is a lovely man who originally hails from Montreal. When we dropped by last time we were in town, he regaled us with his hometown memories!

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How to look like an ocean, et plus.

Alexander McQueen, Oct. 06

Suggestions over on Sugar on My Tongue (thanks to Jess!)…cuz we have a nautically themed rekkid, of course.

Do the Sunken Mountain: thanks to TrendWhore for updating our myspace page!

Bounty.

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ONE WHOLE YEAR

* Apologies to ER for accidentally cutting her off at the end of the video! AG*

Yay, we made it! Nightwood has completed the year long 52 Pick Up challenge (or dare!) to make a video each week, and man, did it turn out differently than we’d expected: lots of videos about our pets, sewing sessions and timelapses of the recording of Carta Marina, which we later used for The Bright Girls of Summer music video!

• Video Highlight #1: Our first video is of a songwriting session for Play the Dishes / Wash the Guitar, which was recorded for the record a few months later. Crazy!
• Video Highlight #2: Our thirteenth video was a video about our nutty, mid-week, pre-recording, inspiration-quest road trip to Rochester for a Marnie Stern show!
• Video Highlight #3: Our twenty-third video was a time-lapse of a promo-CD-assembling-and-pizza-party!

Have a look at our fun mess of videos right here. Sure we missed a few weeks every now and then. Doesn’t matter! Thanks to Dayna McLeod for running the project! If anyone else wants to give this a go, we highly encourage you to do so- it was super fun.

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like an open book

Band practice still life!

Last night, we practiced music and worked on some new songs. Super fun! In the photo above, you can check out our set-up (not the equipment and gear variety): a tall wooden stool with beer on it, a note book or two (Erin’s is the one that is open, Amber’s is closed) and guitar picks.

Guess what? We’re playing a couple of shows with les boys of Murder Ford Monument this month! It’s nice to play with Montreal bands in other cities and that’s what we’re gonna do Thursday April 1st in Toronto at The Boat (158 Augusta Avenue). The other awesome bands on the bill are  Winnipeg’s The Details and Toronto’s own brave/deeds. Super excited about this show! Facebook event is here. There may also be a second show in Ontario next weekend…so stay tuned!

Here’s a poster our super talented friend Mitz (of Mavo infamy) made for our shows with Murder For Monument…We thank him! Love his stuff…Have you seen his tumblr blog Mitz in the City?

Mike holding up Carta Marina!

From our Tumblr:

• This is a photo of Mike holding up the Carta Marina vinyl! We took the photo to help make our myspace page more appealing, but the clunky HTML isn’t easy to work with. So, for now, we’ll settle for what we’ve got. Band Camp looks pretty rad but myspace is the standard when it comes to communicating with other bands, venues and the like so it’s a bit of a necessary evil.

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Study period: Observe and Review

Love the udone hair, jean shorts, braided belt, tights, 90s undershirt/plaid combo and fringe.

We wish all the Montrealers (and everyone else) going to SXSW a great time!

• Observe – great SWstern vibe above.
• Review – available below from TopUpYourSoundBox (France):

“Une façon de chanter qui vient d’un autre temps, une attitude sexy, un petit côté Stoner et des airs de PJ Harvey c’est le mélange réussi que présente le trio canadien Nightwood sur leur dernier album Carta Marina (…) En une phrase, Carta Marina est vraiment mon plaisir et ma surprise de Février/Mars.” Read more.

Randomly selected SWstern looking production still from Psycho, care of NerdBoyfriend

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I hope we shall have many sweet little concerts together.

• “…I am delighted to find myself in such a circle, I hope we shall have many sweet little concerts together. I think, Miss Woodhouse, you and I must establish a musical club and have regular weekly meetings at your house or ours. Will not it be a good plan? If we exert ourselves, I think we shall not be long in want of allies. Something of that nature would be particularly desirable for me as an inducement to keep me in practice; for married women, you know- there is a sad story against them, in general. They are but too apt to give up music.”

– Mrs. Elton to Emma Woodhouse in Emma (1816) by Jane Austen, found in Women in Music: An Anthology of Source Readings from the Middle Ages to the Present, edited by Carol Neuls-Yates

Folks,

There is a contest over on Meet You At the Show where you can win tickets to our upcoming March 7th show with Green Go and Sandman Viper Command, as well as records from each band including Nightwood’s Carta Marina. Not bad, huh? Contest details are available right here.

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Rebel girl, you are the queen of my world

Kathleen Hanna in Bikini Kill

Hey there, here’s a quick refresher about why it’s important to remember that your politics are worth fighting for, archiving and talking about: a recent interview with Kathleen Hanna over on GritTV on the eve of her “papers” (zines, correspondence, etc) being donated to NYU.  Kathleen Hanna was a member of the band Bikini Kill and later of Le Tigre, among other projects as well as an active member in the founding of riot girl. Did y’all know that Erin and Amber were involved with the late 90s revival of Riot Grrl in Montreal? True story. Maybe we’ll post pictures sometime.

Also, check out the newly forming Bikini Kill archive which is collecting reflections and stories about the band!

While you’re feeling good and inspired, do head on over to Shameless Magazine and suggest a Canadian lady for their Shameless Women series...We hear that they’re looking for suggestions! Both Amber and Erin have been featured on this rad blog!

One more thing: have a listen to CHUO radio’s Do You Hear What I Hear radio show from December 2009. The show features a discussion about Nightwood and they plays three songs from our latest record Carta Marina. Also included in the episode are our buds The Balconies!

Photo of Jacquie from The Balconies in -30 degree weather by Alex Cairncross

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Melting quickly for Dolly Mixture et plus

Dolly Mixture

We have cool friends. Take Lara of Lalouka Design, for example. She unearthed the awesome early 80s band Dolly Mixture and shared them with all of us on her new website. What a dame! Here’s what she said about the group:

• “At first when I heard them and saw their photo I assumed they were a current indie band performing in a post-punk, new wave style, but no, they were actually formed in the late 70s and were together until the mid 80s. There’s also a really strong 60s girl group vibe to their music which makes it really fun to dance around to in your bedroom, preferably in your underwear. With song titles like He’s so Frisky, Miss Candy Twist, and Why Are You Such a Hit with the Boys, Jane?, how can you go wrong?” Read more here.

Pssst….We did a last minute (of course) video using live concert footage of Dolly Mixture for the year-long, weekly video project 52 Pick-Up that we’re a part of. The title is a nod to Bruce Baillie‘s film Valentin De Las Sierras (1967) and V-Day. Um, check it out if you’d like.

>>>>> Exciting stuff: there is an interview with Nightwood over on Quick Before it Melts! Check out our worldly wisdom right here. QBITM featured a lovely album review of Carta Marina last week and we certainly appreciate all of the support. Thanks to Jim for being awesome!

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a madras shirt rather than a woolly checkered plaid

Photo by Amber Ann Dawkins for Guttersnipe

Two things to share today with y’all! First is a fine set of photos by Amber Ann Dawkins for the west coast-based entertainment magazine called Guttersnipe. Enjoy! The pics were snapped at our January show at Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern.

The other bit of nice for ya is this album review over on Quick Before It Melts, another web-based magazine, this time out of the Niagara region of Ontario. Here’s an excerpt:

• “The first few times through, I didn’t have the benefit of track names, but once I did some digging around I could put a name to the songs that drew me in, like “Johnny” (track 3), that reminded me of a scrappier, punkier Throwing Muses.  Their songs are airtight and, like the sweetly swaggering “Sunken Mountains” (track 4) proves, they’re no one-trick pony.  You’d do yourself a great injustice be just listening to one or two tracks before making up your mind about Nightwood, because just when you think you have them figured out, the next song comes on and it’s not what you expected to hear.  The influences may be of a DIY punk stripe, but these influences cross and intersect like lines in a madras shirt rather than a woolly checkered plaid.” (More here)

We’ve also recently completed an interview for QBiM, so do keep your eyes peeled for that as well.

Happy Wednesday!

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We’re back: Tour diary + MTL show tonight!

MBMG light it up!

Darlings,

I think we won the fight. However, the last battle will go down this evening at Divan Orange, so do come on out and decide for yourselves! At the Break of Don will be playing as well and may take sides.

The tour was fun as well as a success! We were quite busy and didn’t have an opportunity to follow through on our promise to blog while we were away, so we do apologize for that. We did, however, tweet our pants off. More posts in the future to be sure!

Suggested reading/press:

• http://www.emorageimagazine.com/musique/N/nightwood
• http://www.singinglamb.ca/2010/01/13/review-nightwood-carta-marina/
• http://meetyouattheshow.com/main/2010/01/nightwood-vs-modernboys-moderngirls-the-tour/
• http://www.wornjournal.com/html/crushing-on-nightwood/
• http://lonelyvagabond.com/wpmu/2010/01/20/nightwood-the-horseshoe/

Overall impressions of the tour: Best weather you could ask for in January, awesomely enthusiastic and supportive crowds! Thanks for all of the doors opened and floors slept upon. Listened to tons of music, ate loads of homemade granola bars, drank lots of beer and whiskey shots and coffee, ingested mainly vegetarian meals involving eggs. Too many Matthew McConaughey impressions and Harry Potter accents (ex: “Je’emy, thas’ absolutely bri’iant, absolutley bri’iant”) and crazy amounts of laughing and not too many arguments!

Guelph: Pre-show walkabouts and beers, jukebox hangout at the venue, shit talking with MBMG, met lovely young men who let us sleep at their house as well as play Beatles Rock Band, had to rescue the bad boys of MBMG at 4:30am post brush with the po-po, but you know. We’re good for that.

Windsor: Amber’s motherhonking birthday! Whiskey shots and then post-show clubbing! OK that part was lame, but hanging with Frank at Phog pre-show and learning about his top secret menu plans for the future was awesome. Superb venue! Also, a lovely and enthusiastic crowd who kept lowballing Amber’s age. Perfect: 19 yrs old 4eva LOL! Played with Michou, who are lovely chaps! Nicole let us crash on her floor- thank you!!

London: Plyed at the legendary CTO with The Whipping Wind! Pre-show cock drawings/graffiti in the green room (check out our Rain Bone sometime) and shared interview with MBMG- how terribly unpleasant and awkward. The Oh! Collective also rules! Post-show lakeside sleepover chez Erin B. and Andy’s- waking up to an ice-lidded lake and jutting shore line ice was spectacular, as were the pancakes with blueberries.

Kingston: Pre-show NFL and Golden Globes watching while devouring free and awesome meal at The Mansion (the burgers and perogies there are the best!). YGK/Terry were in the house and Jeremy divulged the challenges of traveling with femme ladies to a sympathetic ear. After party complete with Cherry Chapstick on the stereo, bongs and massage table. What?

Ottawa: Afternoon press/blogger gig for the Canteen/Bands Undone series. Played three stripped-down songs and answered loads of questions on camera. Photos can be found here and here and the video will be posted soon right here. Sleepover at the D&C Love Factory complete with movies, wine and laughter!

Toronto: Preshow noodles + overheard talk between old boy msuic industry types. Fun set at the Horseshoe! MBMG heckled and Jacquie from The Balconies requested the removal of our clothes, which was a wish we did not grant. Sleep over at The Balconies mansion post show! Also, our records now available at Criminal Records and Rotate This!

Lovely weather!

The bean salad accident.

GPS!

Erin, post-driving, pre-show!

Life-giving coffee!

Birthday breakfast sandwich!

Apollo 11 in Guelph

New direction for the band discovered!

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