Burn To Shine: Indie Bands for Posterity, Coolness
Cool article on Listening Post today about a DVD project called Burn To Shine. You know how America has this thing about smashing down anything resembling history and promptly replacing it with a parking lot, a Walmart, or a cookie-cutter single family home? (God forbid we end up like Europe and actually have some culture.) Turns out, indie musicians aren't too keen on that idea. Hence, Burn To Shine. The idea is simple - gather a group of bands from the city in which the doomed historical house/establishment resides, tape a show there, permanently preserve the memory of this place in the annals of... whatever and give the damnation of these places a killer funeral soundtrack.
So far, 3 DVDs have been released in this series - Washington D.C. (with Ted Leo & Bob Mould), Chicago (with Shellac & Wilco), and Portland (pictured above, with The Decemberists & The Shins). Episodes are also in the works for Seattle (with Ben Gibbard & Blue Scholars) and Louisville (with Will Oldham).
