Win a hot axe for to shred with courtesy of the Bravery!!!

Do you want to rock as hard as the Bravery? Even if you think you can’t— it’s good to want things! But maybe if you could win a really cool guitar that’s been played by Sam Endicott from the Bravery, it would be like that movie where Lil Bow Wow finds Michael Jordan’s shoes and with them he becomes an amazing basketball player and then at the end he learns he doesn’t even really need the shoes at all. Learn the “Rock Out” dance to be entered to win an Epiphone SG Special played by Sam Endicott of the Bravery! That’s seriously a nice guitar (dude, Jerry Garcia used to play the Gibson SG).

To celebrate LADY GAGA’S forthcoming confessional album FAME MONSTER, SuperDance asks: When have you been your most tragically fabulous?

Share your best/worst moments of drama and exhibition by posting on our Facebook wall — right here! Best entries will be selected to win a copy of FAME MONSTER as well as live on forever in our SuperDance Hall of Infamy. (Accompanying pictures or video are strongly encouraged.)

This is the Very Best Blog Post of 2009

Oh no. Here we go again. It’s time for everyone and their mother to start making their best of 2009 lists. I really don’t know how people do it. I have trouble remembering what I ate for breakfast, much less what my favorite albums were that came out this past year.  It certainly doesn’t help that I spent half of 2009 catching up on the best music I had missed from 2008.  It’s hard to keep up with all the good music that comes out! Whenever I am pressured into making a “Top Ten” list for myself, it is basically a compilation of other top ten lists that I found around the internet. I can’t remember what came out in the past year, so I find a few other lists, pick the albums that I really liked from their lists and apply it to my own. It ends up being wholly unsatisfying and I feel like a fraud.

To make matters worse this is 2009, the end of a decade. I’m supposed to remember the best albums of the past ten years? If you blind folded me and put on two albums from my collection and asked me which one was released in 1994 and which one in 2003, I’d probably shrug my shoulders. Unless you played the Spin Doctors. Then I’d have a fighting chance of getting it right.

That’s why I like making Picks of the Week; it’s pretty much the limit of what I can remember listening to. So I am making a vow: I will not give in to the pressure. I will buck the trend, be my own man and not make a best of 2009 list. But when we get to the middle of December and I post a Top Ten list of 2009 with Morrissey’s Years of Refusal at the top, don’t call me a hypocrite. Just remember that I am a very, very weak man.

-DJ Bears!

Pick of the Week: No Static - Bottin

If you are anything like me you probably spent most of last month in dark theaters watching B Grade Italian Horror films. If you’re also like me you’ve always wished someone would combine the on-screen chills with the 1970s rhythm of an European discotheque. Each time I dreamed this combo up, I assumed I had eaten too many movie theater hot dogs before bed because who in the world was going to make this music?

Imagine my shock when I stumbled across Bottin’s album Horror Disco. My two loves were now one: dancing like an idiot and scary movies. While my favorite is the fantastically over the top “Disco for the Devil,” most will probably gravitate towards lead single “No Static.”  Now that horror movies and disco have teamed, what other unthinkable combos could be next? Hair metal and children’s cartoons? Prog-rock and commercial jingles? My mind is reeling from the possibilities. And if this really catches on, maybe I’ll gel up my hair, get a fake tan going and get out and see what I’ve been missing at some of these trendy nightclubs.

-DJ Bears!

Be There or Be Square: John Paul Keith and the One Four Fives

This past week I went to see Lucero play at the Echoplex. While their Southern Springsteen flavored rock was great, I was really blown away by their opener: John Paul Keith and the One Four Fives. John Paul Keith et al hail from Memphis, TN and they jumped onstage and tore it up. They may not be breaking new ground with their rockabilly and British invasion infused sound, but their energy, enthusiasm and technical prowess carried the day.

I was a little surprised to be honest. John Paul Keith looks like Andy Dick if he were a member of The Who, but man, could his fingers fly. JPK looks like one of those guys who between the ages of 15 and 25 locked himself in a bedroom practicing scales all day and it has paid off for him. Definitely give a listen to “Pure Cane Sugar,” or their cover of “Come On, Let’s Go”. They’ll be on the road for the next few weeks, so if you want to get out and have a good time seeing a band that’s also having a good time, check them out.

-DJ Bears!

So, Yeah!

To celebrate the launch this week on the Facebook Super Dance application of our “rockstar81” channel (which consists vaguely of what folks in suits term “modern rock”) we’ve included songs by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, from Brooklyn, NY. We think these kids might go someplace.

As if the games themselves and their attendant flirty social activity weren’t addictive enough, we’ve got more reasons for you to return next week. You will hear jams from awesome marquee acts knock boots with (actually) obscure younguns that we’re pretty sure you’ll enjoy — like, 93% sure you’ll enjoy them.

If you don‘t like them, by all means let us know — we really appreciate feedback of any kind. And we’re not just saying that, either. Write us on the Facebook page for Super Dance or leave a comment on this here blog or call up Dionne Warwick and send us a psychic message!

—DJ Yeti

(Maybe You Can) WIN A WEEZER SNUGGIE!!!

The rock band Weezer has always been ground-breaking. They also have demonstrated damn good taste from the get-go. And unlike most “funny” (or worse yet, “intelligent”) rock bands, they’re ironic, but not so obviously that they might as well be skywriters. For instance, take a look at the Spike Jonze-directed video for “Buddy Holly,” the second song off their self-titled debut album.

The song is cute, it was produced by Ric Ocasek of the Cars so it sounds awesome, and the video by then-obscure Jonze is one of the only times it’s ever been a good idea to take current footage and mix it with old stuff to make up something new. It helps that they were working with something as nostalgic and silly as the TV show Happy Days, and that the effect was done so well it seemed flawless.

Fast forward to the future in the past, and you get to today, which is the present. Bespectacled lead band dude Rivers Cuomo has gone and went to an Ivy League college, and the band’s music is as good as ever. Take a listen to Raditude and find out for yourself. In keeping with their avant garde leanings, the group has gone and partnered with the single most important invention in our time.

That’s right — they’ve got their own, signature Snuggie! One supposes that Weezer-branded SlapChops are next. You can win one from us, along with a copy of their new album, Raditude! To enter, simply become a fan of Super Dance on Facebook — and while you’re at it, have a dance to the first single from Raditude, “If You Are Wondering If I Want You To (I Want You To),” or the smattering of other fine Weezer and similarly buoyant tunes on our Buzzthrill playlist in Super Dance.

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

When told that we’d have the opportunity to include some new and excellent songs from the album Sunshower by the NYC-based band Jupiter One, I was naturally psyched. I like how diverse their music is, and hope their current tour with Regina Spektor brings them oodles more adoring fans.

But my eyes quickly glazed over with a visit from that familiar demon, nostalgia. What sparked such spaciness? The group’s name. You see, I am not so old that I remember the moon landing itself. But when I was a kid in the 1970s, everyone wanted to be an astronaut. I was one for Halloween, and I had the most amazing helmet. It wasn’t comfortable, but it looked so friggin cool; I believe I wore it three years in a row.

By fourth grade, in 1977, I’d lost hope to ever actually be an astronaut. But I definitely hoped to be a scientist some day. Turns out that my fourth grade idea of science was a lot closer to art or alchemy, and my lack of talent in the math department scuttled this desire not long afterward. But I was a devourer of any information on space, and had my own telescope that I bought with chore money.

NASA launched two space probes in 1977, Voyager One and Voyager Two. I was obsessed with reading about it and owned a book all about the project. A special metallic LP was included in each, the infamous Voyager Golden Record, outfitted with ninety minutes of music from the world, including Beethoven and Chuck Berry. A special player was stuck in there alongside it, though presumably alien races who intercept the craft could just throw it on their own interstellar hi-fi’s.

The anonymous blogger Celestial Monochord writes that Carl Sagan, who  compiled the Voyager Record and had become a PhD around 1960 at the height of the folk revival, was clearly influenced by the global aesthetic of the Folkways label with this record. The ethnographer Alan Lomax served as an adviser to the thing. Recommendations of his wound up on the record, such as John Cohen’s 1964 recording of a young Peruvian woman’s wedding song. Dude, sorry for going off on a tangent like this.

As a record nerd and a former space dork, I love the fact that this two of a kind record is hurtling ever deeper into space, out beyond the solar system. And maybe if some species hears it before they encounter us in person, they can see that we’re not all that bad — hell, we invented rock and roll!

This playlist was a lot of fun to compile. We’ve got multiple jams by Jupiter One, as well as fresh, outer-space-loving cuts by the likes of Fake Blood and the Fresh And Onlys. Hope you like!

—DJ Yeti