Over the course of writing about the controversial pop chanteuse Lana Del Rey for this week’s Reader I listened to her song “Video Games” so many times I couldn’t even ballpark a figure, but suffice it to say that repeat spins of that one track constituted most of my music listening for several days. I learned it on guitar and practiced it enough times to come up with what I feel is a fairly decent solo acoustic version. For about a week afterward I had “Video Games” on constant rotation in my head whenever I wasn’t around other music. Whatever it is I’m writing about I tend to listen to obsessively, but this is outside even the normal range of what I consider obsessive listening. The fever, as it were, has since broke, but I’m still not totally burnt out on it, which impresses me even more. Good song.
In the new issue Peter Margasak takes on a recording I haven’t heard yet but which sounds a little less accessible than Lana Del Rey: a tribute to 19th-century Norwegian composer and violin virtuoso Ole Bull from violinist Nils Okland and keyboardist Sigbjorn Apeland. This week’s Three Beats has a short profile on local jazz saxophonist Nick Mazzarella, plus info on this weekend’s Backyard Film & Music Fest and Saturday’s “Pig, Swig and Record Dig” at Schubas. Gossip Wolf offers a couple of ways to help Chamber Strings front man and person-in-need-of-open-heart-surgery Kevin Junior, as well as the dish on new recordings by Mike Kinsella, Mike Weis, and My Gold Mask. We’ve also got a writeup on the unexpectedly well-curated Cultivate Festival put together by “corporate burrito slingers” Chipotle. And in Soundboard, Reader writers preview upcoming performances by Grouper, Girls, Ty Segall, Peaking Lights, Arch Enemy, the Mekons, and more.