The National to curate Grateful Dead compilation

In news that (NorthernHeads is reporting) that Pitchfork is reporting pulled from Spinner Canada: The National is working on a new compilation record (similar to their Dark Was The Night albums benefiting AIDS research) of Grateful Dead covers.  Solicited involvement is coming forward from New Weird American groups like Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes.  Also minimalist avant garde composer Steven Reich is involved, who is an old chum of Dead bassist Phil Lesh from his earliest days as a classical trumpet player, composer and early producer of Electronic music. Regrettably Devendorf is also quoted as saying "we're also trying to think of unusual [acts]. (Electronic-douche-scream-prats) Crystal Castles would be awesome." 


The National's bassist Scott Devendorf who is 'shadow curating the record' is quoted as saying "we're just figuring that out right now. Matt Berninger has got to sing it, so we're thinking a Phil song, 'Box of Rain' or 'Unbroken Chain,' something like that," he says. "For us, the frontrunner right now is 'Box of Rain' I think, but we'll see."  Despite being the only true musical equal to Jerry Garcia in the Grateful Dead, Lesh sings a limited number of songs in their catalogue owing to his distinct voice- of those Unbroken Chain which re-emerged in the last years of Garcia's life is a rabid fan favourite both for it's rarity and the depths it's improvisations often plumb.

NorthernHeads announce end to hiatus (again)

After a brief publishing hiatus since February 22nd, 2011 until the present (April 28, 2011) NorthernHeads is back with its mandate to highlight performance based artists, various forms of improvisational and electronic music, and the culture of sidemen.

This is NorthernHeads second hiatus having first graced the internet as a proto-blog at the url (now cybersquatted) northernheads dot com.  Archived versions of this satirical site deeply invested in Canadian and American improvisational music culture can be viewed at this link using the Wayback Machine cache made by Archive.org.  NorthernHeads original publishing run (after a period as a beta test site to domain proper) ran from May 14, 2001 to March 25, 2003.