Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Nada Surf
Every time I read an article about the decline of the record industry, I’m struck by one fact: The peak year for album sales in the history of the recording industry was 1999. It’s not surprising if you recall that 1999 was the year that Napster came online and started the whole file-sharing craze that devastated the industry. But it is surprising if you think that 1999 was a year when nothing much was going on, musically speaking, at the major record labels. The whole second half of the ’90s were like that, really. When a major label signed an interesting band in those days, the label almost invariably treated it like a one-hit wonder.
That’s pretty much what happened to Nada Surf after the New York band’s song “Popular” became a hit in the summer of ’96. I like to think of “Popular” as the missing link between Suicidal Tendencies’ “Institutionalized” and the Hold Steady — it was a soft-verse, loud-chorus alt-rock song in the tradition of the Pixies and Nirvana, but one where the vocalist didn’t sing so much as rant. It was a weird song, but irresistible in its way. Elektra Records made money from it and then showed no interest in the rest of Nada Surf’s songs (which are almost always more melodic than “Popular”).
Nada Surf has sort of wandered the wilderness ever since. But in that wilderness, they slowly gathered a new audience through touring and online networks and got their songs in movies and TV shows — all the stuff bands do in the post-major-label age. Nada Surf is still going strong. Elektra Records is a shadow of its former self.
Past Event
Nada Surf
- Monday, May 24, 2010, 9 p.m.
- Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Avenue, Solana Beach
- $20 - $22
Here's something you might be interested in.
Nada Surf
Nada Surf
Every time I read an article about the decline of the record industry, I’m struck by one fact: The peak year for album sales in the history of the recording industry was 1999. It’s not surprising if you recall that 1999 was the year that Napster came online and started the whole file-sharing craze that devastated the industry. But it is surprising if you think that 1999 was a year when nothing much was going on, musically speaking, at the major record labels. The whole second half of the ’90s were like that, really. When a major label signed an interesting band in those days, the label almost invariably treated it like a one-hit wonder.
That’s pretty much what happened to Nada Surf after the New York band’s song “Popular” became a hit in the summer of ’96. I like to think of “Popular” as the missing link between Suicidal Tendencies’ “Institutionalized” and the Hold Steady — it was a soft-verse, loud-chorus alt-rock song in the tradition of the Pixies and Nirvana, but one where the vocalist didn’t sing so much as rant. It was a weird song, but irresistible in its way. Elektra Records made money from it and then showed no interest in the rest of Nada Surf’s songs (which are almost always more melodic than “Popular”).
Nada Surf has sort of wandered the wilderness ever since. But in that wilderness, they slowly gathered a new audience through touring and online networks and got their songs in movies and TV shows — all the stuff bands do in the post-major-label age. Nada Surf is still going strong. Elektra Records is a shadow of its former self.
Past Event
Nada Surf
- Monday, May 24, 2010, 9 p.m.
- Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Avenue, Solana Beach
- $20 - $22