Farrokhtala, Saye
Record Shopping With
Issue #31
Bloc Party
By Liz Schroeter
Published: March 1st, 2007 | 12:00am
What do you do when your band has canceled its entire U.S. tour and is stuck in New York City, your drummer is in the hospital, and your guitarist has flown home to London? For Kele Okereke and Gordon Moakes, the answer is simple: Go record shopping!
In mid-November 2006, Bloc Party was just getting started on a major U.S. tour when its drummer Matt Tong had to be hospitalized for a collapsed lung. With its tour subsequently cancelled, guitarist Russell Lissack flew home, leaving Okereke and Moakes to enjoy the spoils of shopping with Venus Zine in NYC while Tong recovered.
We decided to take advantage of the going-out-of-business sale at Tower Records’ massive store in lower Manhattan and browse the 30%-off bins for any leftovers. Okereke, the band’s frontman, showed up late because his cab hit a bicyclist. Not too late, though, because as soon as he saw the biker wasn’t injured, the cab driver sped off. Ah, New York.
Okereke said it had been a while since he shopped for albums in a record store. These days it’s all about iTunes and downloading singles. “I’ll just spend all day downloading the Magnolia soundtrack,” he said, adding that he has been downloading soundtracks and film scores, such as Grease, Grease 2, and The Sound of Music. When not listening to film scores, he’s been listening to Sam Cooke and Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.
Bassist Gordon Moakes’ tastes are decidedly different than his bandmate’s. A big fan of the Deftones, Broken Social Scene, and the Arcade Fire, on this shopping trip, he selected albums from Young People, Beecher, and The Bronx. While we’re in the B-section, I noticed there are no more Bloc Party discs on the racks — hopefully a good sign.
“Kele, look, Plain White T’s,” Moakes said, holding up a CD from the band that had just been slated to replace Bloc Party on the remainder of its U.S. tour with Panic at the Disco. I asked how they were feeling about this turn of events. “The good thing is Matt’s OK,” he said. When asked what Tong might like as a get-well gift, Moakes said he’s mostly into sludge rock — the Melvins, Dead Meadow, and Dinosaur Jr. But what Moakes hoped to find was, hilariously, a British hip-hop group called Collapsed Lung.
Okereke loaded himself up with CDs by Robyn, Devo, Björk, Fucking Champs, and Be Your Own Pet. He was pawing through the reggae section when Fergie’s “London Bridge” started playing. “She’s horrible,” he said, but moments later, he started singing along. Okereke finally narrowed down his picks to make room for some compilations: Armenian Lullabies, Wedding Music of Bulgaria, and a reggae compilation called Riddim Driven. Unable to decide, Okereke said he’d pony up his own cash when the Venus Zine allowance of $50 ran dry. The cashier noticed Okereke’s accent and said his own mum is from Manchester. “What’s the name of that last song?” Okereke asked him. Turns out it was still Fergie, a song called “First Class.” How much do you want to bet he downloaded it from iTunes the next day?
After the blowout shopping experience, we headed across the street to Other Music, where you can find just that — the kind of other music Tower doesn’t carry — to purchase Joanna Newsom’s Ys and to thumb through the zine rack. With our shopping done and no show to play, the guys headed out, Moakes to meet up with his wife, Okereke to see Emily Haines perform across town, and everyone with some new music to pass the time until they come back to make some of their own.
KELE OKEREKE’S PICKS:
Devo, Devo 2.0, $11.96
Various, Riddim Driven — Red Bull & Guinness, $10.70
Various, Thracian Rhapsody — The New Wedding Music of Bulgaria Revisited, $11.96
Hasmik Harutyunyan with the Shoghaken Ensemble, Armenian Lullabies, $11.33
Joanna Newsom, Ys, $13.99
GORDEN MOAKES’ PICKS:
Les Savy Fav, 3/5, $9.44
Beecher, This Elegy, His Autopsy, $8.81
TOTAL: $78.19
Comments
Please login to be able to comment on this article.
more