After last night, I now look forward to special Scented Vinyl holiday shows. The Halloween show with Soapbox Prophets was great…so when Christopher the Conquered proposed doing a special Christmas session, I was really excited!
I was especially excited when I got a sense of how much Christopher was looking forward to doing the show. He showed up with his Christmas tree from home, complete with an owl on top!! Also armed with a stocking full of candy canes, Chris really set out to make the audience a part of the show (more on that later).
Another cool thing that Christopher brought up to me, was to play our favorite records of 2007 for the vinyl portion of the show. We weren’t sure how many records we could come up with from 2007, but as it turned out every record we played was put out this year! The only album I was lacking was The Nationals “Boxer” one of my top 5 of 2007. The rest we had ready to share…
Here is some of the play list in no particular order…
Bright Eyes – Cassadaga Shout Out Louds – Our Ill Wills The Go Team! – Proof of Youth Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew - Spirit If… Okkervil River – The Stage Names Kings of Leon – Because of the Times Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – Living With The Living Panda Bear – Person Pitch Andrew Bird – Armchair Apocrypha Animal Collective – Strawberry Jams Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
We even had to leave out some of our favorite ’07 albums, like The White Stripes “Icky Thump, Iron & Wine’s latest and one of my personal favorites Grinderman’s self-titled release. This has been such a wonderful year for music, really one of my favorites in recent memory. What made it especially nice for me; was how some labels started releasing music on vinyl with mp3 downloads in the albums…proving that physical music does still have a place in this industry.
Chris Ford aka Christopher the Conquered is also the drummer in Stuck With Arthur. He released an album with them in May entitled “Solstice” and also a solo album that is completely different then his work with the band “I Guess That’s What We’re Dying For”. He recorded and released the album all by himself, and gave it away for free song by song on his website www.christophertheconquered.com We talk all about the new album and his work as a solo artist compared to that with his band in the interview, which can be downloaded right now. We also talk about the direction Stuck With Arthur is heading, and the decision to put his music out for free.
After the interview Christopher played a set of his own music, followed by a very special set of Christmas favorites. This is when he played an active role in getting to the audience, by walking around singing with his accordion and passing candy canes to everyone, he even did a special Christmas serenade to a lucky couple of fans. The night was truly magical.
You can relive the magic now, by downloading some of the songs!
