Lots of musicians tweet — but all that Twitters is not gold.
That’s why you’ll want to check out SPIN.com every Friday to see whose tweets we’re reading this week — then update your TweetDeck! (Obligatory Self-Promotion: …while you’re at it, be sure to follow @SPINmagazine!)
This week’s winners:
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- Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard
- @Gibbstack
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Why You Should Follow: Gibbard’s wife – She & Him cutie-pie Zooey Deschanel – is a voracious tweeter, and it looks like she finally convinced him to join in on the fun. His first tweet: “Sorry I’m late, guys. I was mistakenly ‘tweeding’ over at some site called ‘twidder’ for the last 13 months.” Since then, he’s become a truly interesting follow, posting links to articles, sharing songs, tweet-flirting with Zooey, and discussing music (“scientifically speaking, ‘you can never hold back spring’ by tom waits is the most beautiful song every written. it’s SCIENCE, people…”) and sports (“i’m tired of baseball pundits talking about who needs to ‘step up’ in 2011 #playedoutsportscliches”). He writes about his love for opening old LPs (“it feels like opening a time capsule. it smells good, too”), his dream of someday mastering the knuckleball, and his complicated feelings about the Byrds and the Beatles (he isn’t sure which band is better), and occasionally answers questions from fans and gives little hints about Death Cab’s upcoming album, Codes and Keys, and the accompanying U.S. tour. Keep an eye out as May 31 approaches – that’s when the new album is scheduled to drop!
Best Tweet of the Week: “the shirt i just put on smells exactly like the gum that came in topps baseball cards when i was a kid. i feel both nostalgia and confusion.”
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- Neko Case
- @nekocase
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Why You Should Follow: This folk-rock singer-songwriter – and New Pornographers vocalist – is a must-follow for music nerds. She tweets about her beloved Dano bass, her pick for “foxiest drummer of all time” (Black Sabbath’s Bill Ward, thanks to his “Viking braids”), her dogs’ reactions to new songs she writes, and those times when she just needs to listen to some “crass, sexist guitar rock.” She posts every couple of minutes or hours, even though her friends make fun of her for it. In fact, Jon Wurster from the Mountain Goats and stand-up comedian Todd Barry (her “Twitter mentors”) recently took her out for a steak dinner and told her she tweeted too much! As she put it (on Twitter, of course), “They were kidding. But kind of not really. It’s twitter. Only the strong survive…” If that’s the case, she’s doing pretty well for herself – she may overwhelm your TweetDeck at times, but you’ll find yourself wanting to re-tweet nearly everything she says.
Best Tweet of the Week: “If you say you don’t like Jane’s Addiction you’re just kinda being a dick on purpose.”
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- No Joy’s Laura Lloyd
- @lauralloyd
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Why You Should Follow: L.A./Montreal-based shoegaze duo No Joy just finished a set of U.S. tour dates opening for Best Coast and Wavves, and while they were sad to part ways, at least they have the memories. Guitarist Laura Lloyd documented every crazy, booze-and-weed-fueled moment of the tour on Twitter, posting Twitpics of Bethany Cosentino getting “iced”, Ali Koehler downing beers at alcohol-free venues, and Wavves buying rounds of champagne at hotel bars, along with other instances of backstage and after-party mayhem. Now that she and bandmate Jasmine White-Gluz are headed off to Europe on their own, all sorts of new adventures await – and it seems like things are off to a good start. Just before a flight to London, she tweeted, “This flight is going to be our own white-girl version of Soul Plane, but with more valium and less weed. Heathrow bound.” Once there, she asked fans to come hang out with her and Jasmine at the Hoxton Bar and Kitchen and “tell [her] what day it is.” Look out for many more Twitpics, random thoughts (“What are the origins of bubble letters? Did they exist in ancient Rome?”), and funny stories from the road!
Best Tweet of the Week: “96 Dino Jr. songs + 72 Husker Du songs onto mom’s ipod, ready for tour pt 2.”
