Serve Your Drinks on Rock Albums
Like your drinks served on the rocks? How about on rock albums? Husband and wife team INOUDID’s Attic are purging their old record collection by repurposing album covers into coasters and LPs into bowls. Before you vinyl fanatics start having panic attacks, let me reassure you that I am sympathetic to your cause (see related [...]
Musicians Go “Blue in the Face” Fighting Climate Change
We’re increasingly understanding that the environmental movement is not just about hugging trees and saving the whales, it’s about people too. That’s why musicians like Fatboy Slim, Jarvis Cocker, VV Brown, and Little Boots are lending their faces – painted blue – to Oxfam’s “Blue in the Face” campaign.
The new campaign urges world leaders attending [...]
Kickoff Summer With a Solio Solar Charger
Summer’s officially here! And the sunshine it brings with it means good news for outdoor concerts, backyard dance parties, and powering up your iPod or iPhone with a free source of energy.
Solio may look like a prop from the latest Star Trek movie, but it’s actually a solar-powered charger. Spread out the blades to expose [...]
Paul McCartney Launches Meat Free Monday
It’s Paul McCartney’s 67th birthday! And what Paul wants most is not for us to sing “(na na na na na na) you say it’s your birthday,” but to show our support for his newest endeavor, Meat Free Monday, which officially launched this week.
Paul, a longtime vegetarian and advocate for the ethical treatment of animals, [...]
Ben Sollee's Bike Ride to Bonnaroo
Although this year’s merrymaking has now officially come to a close, I wanted to bid farewell to Bonnaroo 2009 with an interesting story about one musician’s 330 mile journey to the festival…on a bike…with cello and 60 lbs of equipment in tow.
His name is Ben Sollee, and in an effort to reduce his carbon footprint [...]
Toy Instruments Reincarnated as Giraffes and Cowboys and Cats (Oh My!)
Artist Cat Bishop has set quite the goal for herself: to create 1,000 pieces of what she terms “assemblage art.” Cat scours flea markets and thrift stores for materials, which range from kitchenware to cameras to clocks. Characters – human, animal, and even robot – emerge from cleverly mixing and matching objects.
From an interview with [...]
Bonnaroo Gets Even Greener This Year
I am looking at the schedule for Bonnaroo and lamenting just a ‘lil bit that I’m glued to this computer rather than enjoying the likes of MGMT, Band of Horses, Elvis Perkins in Dearland… Shall I go on? Of Montreal, Neko Case, Okkervil River…
Besides boasting an amazing lineup, the four-day festival – which runs from [...]
First Act Makes First-Rate Bamboo Guitars
Bamboo. It’s not just for cutting boards anymore. Seems like everything these days is made from this fast-growing, renewable plant – even guitars!
First Act’s Bambusa guitar is the first and only bamboo guitar, and it’s arguably the greenest option if you’re in the market for a new instrument (besides buying second-hand, of course). Specifically, the [...]
Phish and Fans are “Traveling Light”
My brother’s been raving on Phacebook about how phantastic the Phish show was at Phenway last week. Okay, this whole “ph” thing is getting annoying. I’ll stop now while I’m ahead. ..
Anyway, I heard some phabulous, errr… fabulous, things about Phish’s latest greening efforts for their summer tour and decided to check it out. And [...]
Piano Hair Sticks & More
If you’ve ever taken a peek inside a piano, you were no doubt impressed by how complicated an instrument it is. All those strings and tuning pins and dampers and hammers… In fact, your average piano has over 10,000 moving parts. No wonder these things are so big!
When properly maintained, pianos can last decades. But [...]
