This is a curious band to say the least. They have had their debut album The Airborne Toxic Event by The Airborne Toxic Event (often referred to as TATE, by themselves and fans) out for over a year, first signing with the uber indie label Majordomo Records and then with Island Records.
The band is made up of Mikel Jollett (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Steven Chen (guitar, keyboards), Noah Harmon (bass), Daren Taylor (drums) and Anna Bulbrook (viola, keyboards, tambourine, backing vocals). Their name is a reference to “White Noise” by Don DeLillo, something a lot of the background info about the band likes to make known. Personally, I have this book, along with “Great Jones Street” that I bought honestly, because I was in love with a girl named Jones and it looked cool and I was in college and need a foil to hanging out at coffee shops trying to look suave and get laid.
The Airborne Toxic Event - Mikel Jollett, Steven Chen, Noah Harmon, Daren Taylor and Anna Bulbrook
This story, the band’s growth is totally made for Hollywood, but not by Hollywood. It is a rags to riches story and a lot of the things we gain, often do not make up for those we lose.
Over the past year TATE has lost the indie label faster than an Acworth, GA’s prom dress after the dance. Their self-titled album has slowly seeped through the radio, the internet, youtube, everything. How did this happen?
Mikel Jollett founded the band after one hell of a week. In one week his mother fell ill with pancreatic cancer, then he was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, and then the relationship he was in fell apart. While his mother was in recovery, Jollett found himself playing the guitar and writing songs to help him cope.
Like we used to call it in college, Mikel was on the skids.
Mikel Jolett: 4.17.09 - Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival
I was stumbling a couple of weeks ago through, Billboard Heatseekers and something stood out.
Here was this band, one that was left for dead early in 2008 and I found them still on the list, which brings the total to 50 weeks, even being #1 last week and #5 this week. Now Billboard doesn’t mean everything, but it is a pretty solid indication of what people with disposable income think and that people are actually buying your album.
Heatseekers tends to be a chart for bands on the up and up and from a band that was labeled as harshly and most dissed, insulting, rude, pot-shot “oopsie” reviews I have ever seen, by the reputable Pitchfork Magazine, hell by pretty much any magazine and mind I did time writing for Flagpole Magazine in the mid 90s. The thing is TATE isn’t just on Heatseekers, they are charting well on Rock and the Billboard 200 for a solid 25 weeks at pretty high up numbers, for a debut album that Pitchfork said,
“And while it’s understandable that a debut should owe such enormous debts, what really rankles is the unrelenting entitlement that assumes cred via sonic proximity– it’s the musical equivalent of showing up to a bar with a bad fake ID and throwing a hissy-fit when you get carded.”
Well, maybe they have a reason to feel entitled. They have 2,158,762 MySpace views and about 2 million songs played on that same page. die band they are almost no longer indie.
The Pitchfork article didn’t just diss the band, they insulted the entire city of Los Angeles for having no indie band that inspired. They gave the guys from Los Feliz (a suburb of L.A.) a 1.6 and said in closing,
“Congrats, Pitchfork reader– the Airborne Toxic Event thinks you’re a demographic.”
TATE took the high road, wrote a rebuttal to this review and did it the right way, no trash talking back and forth, just stating their point and more importantly focusing on what matters – music, not media. TATE kept playing. They kept building their audience and showed this guy how to eat a @$@$ sandwich, by becoming one of the hottest band’s in not just L.A. or the US, but the world (see below their 2009 world tour and how many shows are already sold out).
The Toxic Airborne Event - Pre-label signing late '07
So to put things in perspective, what a difference a year makes eh? Local L.A. radio stations started picking up “Sometime Around Midnight”, even though the band was still unsigned. They clearly had a hunch. Kids were clearly liking what they heard and calling in to have it played. Someone knew talent, before the media – heavens to Betsy- in fact lots of people did.
A story I read about the band that I am fond of goes something like this:
On March 10, 2009 U2 played some of their favorite songs on a radio program hosted by Shirley Manson of Garbage. Bass player Adam Clayton chose “Sometime Around Midnight” as his choice, commenting that he felt he would be listening to their album the rest of the year.
If you are down with Shirley Manson and Adam Clayton it goes to show you the critics are not always right, genres aren’t always needed and with digital and interactive technology more and more people get to decide, what goes on. For the first time in many years, this country is once again resembling a democracy, at least as far as entertainment goes.
The Airborne Toxic Event @ Henry Fonda Theater, 6/7/07 (c) Sung
If you had to ask me lead singer Mikel Jollett sounds a bit like Joseph Arthur, Pete Yorn. He has that story telling howl that a lot of the industrial cities in the Midwest and East Coast have produced over the years. However, since they are a band there is certainly that Keane or The Fray element to them, who knows for sure as honestly I like to believe that every artist is trying to be themselves and be as original as possible at the end of the day.
I just know that if this is the worry, the distraught about the L.A. sound, then like the Who said, “The Kids are Alright”.
Love them, hate them, you decide, but I think they proved a lot of people wrong and did it the right way with hard work, care for the music and for the fans. Please visit them at their website and the myspace page listed above.
Below also are some tracks to listen to, to familiarize yourself with the band. If you decide you like any of these, you can download our remastered 320 bitrate configurations free of charge via our music hosting domain, no advertisements or sign-ups, just a Riddled Phantasms Magazine giveaway. Also there are several videos for you to watch as well, some quite rare, all in high resolution or 1080 HD.
We sincerely hope you enjoy all of these extras.
Wishing Well
Does This Mean You’re Moving On?
Sometime Around Midnight
Something New
Innocence
To download click:
**HERE**
The Airborne Toxic Event – Video Collection
For a full list of Tour Dates see below:
The Airborne Toxic Event – Tour Dates – Worldwide
US:
Fri Jul 31 – Hartford, CT – Webster Theatre - BUY TIX
Sat Aug 1 – Boston, MA City Hall Plaza – FNX Best Music Poll – FREE SHOW
Sun Aug 2 – Providence, RI – McFaddens – BRU Radio Show - BUY TIX
Tue Aug 4 – Cleveland, OH – House Of Blues - BUY TIX
Wed Aug 5 – Cincinnati, OH – Mad Hatter - BUY TIX
Fri Aug 7 – Del Mar, CA – Del Mar Racetrack - BUY TIX
Sun Aug 9 – Chicago, IL – Lollapalooza - BUY TIX
Europe:
Fri Aug 14 – Gampel, Switzerland – OpenAir Gampel BUY TIX
Sat Aug 15 – Leicester, UK – Summer Sundae - BUY TIX
Wed Aug 19 – Munich, Germany – 59:1 - BUY TIX
Thu Aug 20 – Vienna, Austria – Frequency Festival - BUY TIX
Fri Aug 21 – Hasselt, Belgium – Pukkelpop Festival - BUY TIX
Sat Aug 22 – Biddinghuizen, Netherlands – Lowlands Festival - BUY TIX
Mon Aug 24 – Cologne (Köln), Germany – Gebäude 9 - BUY TIX
Tue Aug 25 – Berlin, Germany – Frannz - BUY TIX
Wed Aug 26 – Hamburg, Germany – Knust - BUY TIX
Fri Aug 28 – Reading, UK – Reading Festival - BUY TIX
Sun Aug 30 – Leeds, UK – Leeds Festival - BUY TIX
New Zealand:
Thu Sep 3 – Auckland, New Zealand – The Kings Arms - BUY TIX
Australia:
Sat Sep 5 – North Perth, Australia – Rosemount Hotel - BUY TIX
Wed Sep 9 – Melbourne, Australia – East Brunswick Hotel - BUY TIX
Thu Sep 10 – Brisbane, Australia – The Zoo - BUY TIX
Fri Sep 11 – Sydney, Australia – Oxford Art Factory - BUY TIX
Sat Sep 12 – Gosford, Australia – Coaster Festival - BUY TIX
North American Fall Tour:
Thu Sep 17 – Pomona, CA – The Fox Theatre - BUY TIX
Sun Sep 20 – Tempe, AZ – Tempe Beach Park – Arizona Fall Frenzy - BUY TIX
Tue Sep 22 – Salt Lake City, UT – In The Venue – Co-Headline with Arctic Moneys - BUY TIX
Wed Sep 23 – Denver, CO – Ogden Theater – Co-Headline with Arctic Moneys - BUY TIX
Thu Sep 24 – Boulder, CO – Boulder Theatre - BUY TIX
Fri Sep 25 – Omaha, NB – The Slowdown - BUY TIX
Sat Sep 26 – Des Moines, IA – People’s Court - BUY TIX
Mon Sep 28 – Lawrence, KS – Granada - BUY TIX
Tue Sep 29 – Tulsa, OK – Cain’s - BUY TIX
Wed Sep 30 – Dallas, TX – House Of Blues - BUY TIX
Thu Oct 1 – Houston, TX – House Of Blues - BUY TIX
Sat Oct 3 – Austin, TX – Zilker Park – Austin City Limits - BUY TIX
Tue Oct 6 – St. Petersburg, FL – State Theatre - BUY TIX
Wed Oct 7 – Atlanta, GA – Variety Loft - BUY TIX
Thu Oct 8 – Columbia, SC – Headliners - BUY TIX
Fri Oct 9 – Norfolk, VA – Norva - BUY TIX
Sat Oct 10 – Philadelphia, PA – Trocadero - BUY TIX
Mon Oct 12 – Washington, DC – 930 Club - BUY TIX
Tue Oct 13 – Boston, MA – House Of Blues - BUY TIX
Thu Oct 15 – New York, NY – Webster Hall - BUY TIX
Fri Oct 16 – New York, NY – Webster Hall - BUY TIX (PRE-SALE STARTS TOMORROW – JULY 22)
Sat Oct 17 – Albany, NY – Northern Lights - BUY TIX
Sun Oct 18 – Montreal, QC – Le Tulipe - BUY TIX
Mon Oct 19 – Toronto, ON – Phoenix - BUY TIX
Wed Oct 21 – Columbus, OH – Newport Music Hall - BUY TIX
Thu Oct 22 – Detroit MI – Crofoot - BUY TIX
Sat Oct 24 – Minneapolis, MN – Fine Line - BUY TIX
Wed Oct 28 – Vancouver, BC – Commodore - BUY TIX
Thu Oct 29 – Seattle, WA – Showbox Market - BUY TIX
Fri Oct 30 – Boise, ID – Knitting Factory - BUY TIX
Sat Oct 31 – Portland, OR – Roseland - BUY TIX
Mon Nov 2 – San Francisco, CA – Fillmore - BUY TIX
European Fall Tour:
Fri Nov 6 – London, UK – Shepherds Bush Empire - BUY TIX
Sat Nov 7 – Birmingham, UK – Academy - BUY TIX
Sun Nov 8 – Bristol, UK – Anson Rooms - BUY TIX
Tue Nov 10 – Glasgow, SCO – ABC - BUY TIX
Wed Nov 11 – Dublin, IRE – Olympia - BUY TIX
Thu Nov 12 – Manchester, UK – Ritz - BUY TIX
Sat Nov 14 – Oxford, UK – Academy - BUY TIX
(Mainland Europe will be announced soon)
Fri Dec 4 – Los Angeles, CA – Walt Disney Concert Hall (PRE-SALE STARTS AUGUST 19)
Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown Los Angeles on December 4th.
The Los Angeles Philharmonic Presents:
The Airborne Toxic Event
Friday, December 4, 2009
Walt Disney Concert Hall
With special Guests The Calder Quartet
The band goes on to discuss this event, the only show in L.A. on this tour on their website here, something they are very excited about and should. They are finally getting their due and you can also find the dates listed above as well as additional information.
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