You are browsing the archives of 2009 June.

It is extremely difficult to stomach that tough, nailbiter of a loss by the United States to Brazil just now - even tougher because the US executed just about as perfect a first half of football as you can hope for, only to be overwhelmed by the Brazilian assault in the second half. Luis Fabiano’s [...]

The NBA Draft is tonight, meaning a couple things - barring some LeBron James for Kobe Bryant trade, this is the last time you’ll hear me talk about basketball until around October. It also means that this is one of my favorite sports days of the whole year, with the NBA Draft being actually exciting, [...]

This past weekend The Picador played host to Bill Callahan—the artist formerly known as both Smog and (Smog). Callahan put on a wonderful show relying heavily on material from his critically lauded new record Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle. Mission Freak friend Soheil Rezayazdi nabbed two sweet performances.
The first is a spare rendition [...]

Not sure when exactly this track dropped, but I just stumbled across what’s being called the first single from the upcoming Clipse record Til the Casket Drops (due out who-the-fuck-knows-when in 2009). It is, to be honest, not the way to start the weekend, with brothers Pusha T and Malice sounding bored, lazy, and lacking [...]

There’s so much to say about Deer Tick’s John McCauley: his voice channels the ghosts of the best country singers, the soul of the best rock n’ rollers, and the charm of the best leading men. His Deer Tick project has steadily been turning heads with the release of last year’s War Elephant, an album [...]

It is the pinnacle of sports season right now. The French Open, my favorite tennis Grand Slam, just wrapped up with Roger Federer probably cementing his legacy as tennis’ all-time greatest. The Stanley Cup Finals are headed for the ultimate - game 7 between Pittsburgh and Detroit, in what has been an exciting (I’ll not [...]

A little late on this post, but June has inexplicably been off the chain for music performances, with more coming up. It’s hard to top some of the reunion shows coming up, but we’re particularly excited for the return of Toronto’s Rock Plaza Central, who previously rocked a Mission Creek birthday bash in September and [...]

If we here at Mission Freak were going to have a “release of the week,” it would shamelessly have to be this, or less shamelessly and just plain admiringly this, but we don’t. And besides, you ought to already have your finger on the pulse of those two records. What you might have missed is [...]

‘Round here we can get a bit full of ourselves, but I don’t think it’s any stretch to say that the Porno Galactica stuff on KRUI last night was pretty freakin’ awesome. You heard tracks four and five—”Sea Beast Released” and “Spills and Thrills” respectively—off the duo’s debut full-length Romance in the Modern World out [...]

It’s a busy night on Corn-Fed Music this evening. Not only am I  rolling out some brand new tunes from Portland via Fairfield, IA beatmasters Porno Galactica but I also have Iowa City’s most vitriolic alt-country rocker Matthew Grimm in studio to play some songs and chat.
Grimm’s got a new-ish record out, The Ghost of [...]