The hangover is over (hah!)

What inspired me to end with such a terrible hangover?

The answer is Summercase festival.

Friday afternoon, that's when everything starts. It's 7:30 pm and Edwyn Collins is performing. Seems like a classy concert, but I can't really recognize the band, until they play this:



You should hear this song sung by Spanish people making "ee oo hh i" fuck. How to explain?




Later a fresh beer and Grinderman. Yes, you're right. Nick Cave with some weird musical project which I guess I couldn't understand. I know (because I play in a band) that playing can be very evasive. But hey, there's people in front of the stage. From what I've heard, Nick doesn't know how to compose, but did "compose" all the songs by himself. To me it was like "I want to sing this song like this, and it will sound better if you make nyaon-nyaon and you start beating your maracas against the crash while I play some notes whenever I want"

Luckily I didn't like them. I left during the fourth song to another stage, where Blondie was going to perform half an hour later. So really close, in the 4th line, there they were. Debbie Harry was looking amazing. With a black and white striped dress, a strass short jacket (more like sleeves) with holes and some amazing shoes. I can't believe she's 63.



Listen to this while you read:



Chicken skin So yeah. I wanted to see them performing forever and it was worth it completely. I can't say they played all the hits because they have so many, but every song they played was a great. It was breathtaking to hear the 40000 persons there shouting "atomic" or making the "uhu wohooo" of heart of glass.

In a moment of craziness she threw her shoes to the people. How diva!

When Blondie ended we started to run to see Interpol in the other scenario.

I love Interpol. It's the typical band that I would hate because indie kills my ears, but they are special to me. I especially enjoy the way they play with guitars and bass. The voice melody to me is irrelevant, but I'm in love with the guitar games.

It was an intense concert, but the problem is that they're not "fun" to see, and it became a bit repetitive in the end.

But they deserve a video, of course they do (it's short, but the one that sounds better)



Interpol was over and we went for more beers. Drinking beers and listening to Maxïmo Park while waiting for the Verve.

I remembered the Verve's singer as a hot guy. But oh!!! (wet panties) Again, the concert was good technically, but they forgot about the audience. In a fest like that, people can die with such quantity of almost depressed or incredibly involved with the music people.

But still songs like this made my eyes shine:



Tomorrow a review for the CRAZY Saturday

Debbie, I wanna grow like you. And of course you can hate me for my musical likes and dislikes

MUAH!!

Last Saturday, I attended a massive all-day concert down by Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal. With a dry heat hovering around 75 degrees, the weather was freakishly perfect for New York, and the wind blew in just the right direction so the gonorrhea-ridden inlet rippled with shiny waves, emitting barely any of its usual stench. It got me thinking about the almighty summer mixtape, and I began plotting what songs to burn on CDs to take on vacation with me later this month. The experimental metal scene I profiled last month is full of innovation, but even dark, tortured souls like myself have moms who invite them to the beach once in a while. In these situations, a soundtrack of irregular crashes won’t do, but that doesn’t mean you have have to listen to shitty radio. The following tracks are summery without being stupid, hence they are going in my mix. What's going in yours?

High Places-“New Grace”

All tropical tinkling, sweet vocals, and muffled, pitch-shifted steel pan drums, this song will make you feel like you’re dancing the congo deep at the bottom of a haunted lake on the mythical Caribbean island in The Tempest. The lyrics, which tumble like pretty pebbles from singer Mary Pearson’s mouth, are just evocative enough to spark your imagination without dictating exactly what to picture:

Instead of dank dark night it's all light and warm hues/
The nighttime puts on diff'rent clothes and she takes off her shoes/
She looks so much nicer familiar and softer in December greens and blues/
I can't imagine how we made it through those months of crushing gloom.

That last line resonates on days when the slushy, miserable two thirds of the year seem as far away as can be. Turn up the bass, or better yet, see them live, and you’ll find the sunny highs balanced out by thumping drum hits that will make you want to do a happy booty shake.

CSS-“Left Behind”



By the time the sun sets on the all-day party, you will most likely have had a few. Let’s say hypothetically you see your ex and start dwelling on how much you hate his stupid pretty face, pretentious tone of voice, and the fact that he found a new lover before you, without even trying. When this happens, you must immediately find a club that has angsty '80’s dance tunes, strong drinks, and equal parts girls, gays, and guys you can make out with. With drum machines, synthesizers, and a deadpan reference to “a suitcase in Helsinki full of things I wanna set on fire,” this song is both a campy portrayal of, and suitable soundtrack for, just such a scenario:

I’m gonna jump onto the table and dance my ass off til I die/
And then I’ll hopefully forget you, and quit those nightmares I’ve been having every night…

Some think the Brazilian dance rockers are veering more towards '90s alt-rock than new wave, and that would be ok with me, but this song is pure '80s throwback in the vein of Pat Benatar, so I guess I’ll have to wait for their forthcoming album, Donkey, to see whether this holds true for the other songs.

Vivian Girls-“Tell the World”

This track is a perfect mixture of ‘60s pop, surf, garage, and shoegaze-y reverb. The three female voices harmonize to create an effect similar to The Mamas and the Papas’ "California Dreamin’", proving once again that not all New York bands play ear splitting noise or radio-ready dance rock (not that there’s anything wrong with those). The peppy bass and drum lines are loud in the mix, adding punk energy in much the same way as the Black Lips; neither band is overtly punk, but can get a crowd raging nonetheless. You can sway along to this one without messing up your hair, though if you see them live, be advised that they’re playing faster and louder these days and you might sweat a little. I’d play this constantly by my pool, if I had a pool, and do that dance where it looks like you're swimming in my yellow polka dot bikini. (Does that dance have a name?)


The Death Set-“Negative Thinking”

Remember how much shit I talked about “paper-thin party songs” last month? Perhaps I was too harsh in my judgments. I spent some time at a recent Death Set show sweating balls and jumping around like a crazy chick, and if anyone there read my column, they totes would have called me out. With a beat that grows in volume but not complexity, constantly intensifying distorted guitar lines, bouncy synths taken straight from A-ha and a singalong refrain, "Negative Thinking" makes you want to rock out harder with each second that passes.

Ninjasonik-The Mix #3

This downloads as one track, but is actually composed of many. The hip hop "mixtape," for the uninitiated, was conceived as a way for artists to circulate their constantly evolving jams quickly through the underground. These mixes are still viewed as bootlegs by the RIAA, as they often contain unauthorized samples, but fuck that noise. Mixtapes are about deconstructing and rapping over hot shit as soon as it drops, and I’m pretty sure of the samples Ninjasonik used are from consenting parties; tour buddies Team Robespierre and the Death Set appear remixed frequently. The whole thing is over an hour long, basically an album unto itself, but here are some highlights:

It’s a picture party and I’m ready to leave it

In which Jah Jah, a.k.a. the Reverend McFly, calls out lame Manhattan parties like the late Misshapes for being full of “hipsters lookin’ way too stiff” and girls who wear "slutty clothes they bought with their parents' money," but who are not actually down to fuck, and who pose for pictures before "bumping coke up their noses," which they also bought with their parents’ money (the coke, but maybe the noses too).

I love art school girls

In which Jah travels back to Brooklyn from the island to express his love of girls who make ‘zines and paint pictures:

You’re very abstract…We should collaborate…Do you stretch your own canvas? Maybe you could teach me sometime...And then get a coffee, but not from Starbucks. We should go to that really danky shop, you know on the corner of…

The fun he pokes towards artistes is gentler, because he knows we’re all a little silly here in North Brooklyn, including guys who rap about how tight their pants are (Ninjasonik's Tight Pants EP came out on Chief Records this month), and anyway, at the end of the day what really matters about a girl is not how pretentious her art is, but whether she will suck your dick from the back.

From Brooklyn to England, we get the dancefloor jumpin’

In which Jah shows us that, in addition to shouting, “I’m a tight pants wearin’ ass nigga!” in a bad ass way and rocking said tight pants, he can actually rap as well, and engages in the time honored tradition of talking shit about how he's a better rapper than everyone else. He may not be “the new O.D.B.” like he fronts, but we love him just the same.

She and Him-“Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”



Unlike most “music” made by actors, the songs on She and Him’s debut album, Volume One, are all addictively good, and not even in a “guilty pleasure” type of way. This one is no exception: a confection of June Carter-era country, '60s girl group harmonies, descending choruses of “aahs” and “ba bas,” and hooks galore, it’s a perfect vehicle for Zooey Deschanel’s perky, quirky voice. The song’s weird video undercuts all the cheesiness nicely: donning various cute outfits, the heartbreakingly adorable Zooey grins and skips through shootings, stabbings, and a downright Vaudevillian death that leaves her lying in a pool of cartoon blood as vultures close in. Girly lyrics like "Why don’t you sit right down and stay a while/We like the same things and I like your style" are simultaneously modern and classic. The icing on the cake? Deschanel wrote most of the music herself. Girl power!

Abe Vigoda-"Dead City Waste Wilderness"

Denizens of Los Angeles D.I.Y. hot spot The Smell, these tropicali-punksters do a cool take on world pop that is considerably more likeable than that of certain other collegiate, world music-pillaging, Paul Simon-loving bands. Yes, this track has a rollicking tribal beat and steel pan drums, but you get the idea that their hearts are in the right place with it. With a less polished vocal style, fuzzier production, and more room given over to noise and chaos reminiscent of an actual Caribbean island, these kids make music you can enjoy even if you've never owned anything from Louis Vuitton. Would my old pals Vampire Weekend ever write a song called "Dead City Waste Wilderness"? I think not. Then again, I'd be a big liar if I said I wasn't bringing Vampire Weekend to the beach as well. They don't get their own entry because I'm assuming they're already in all of your mixes, and also because I'm tired. I guess this would be as good a time as any to reveal that I'll be passing through the Afro-pop capital of the world on the way to my destination, and will quite literally "get out" of Cape Cod, via ferry, at night. Glass houses, etc. I can't wait.

Stories about the RIAA bullying music fans are so ubiquitous it's nearly becoming white noise. The association has been trying to kill ants with a hammer; when the blow strikes true, it's devastating, but even as you squash a couple here or there, there's an entire Internet's worth of ant colony hanging out underground.

But that’s about the artists who've been "discovered." One thing people don't focus on when the RIAA goes on the rampage is, well, who CAN we download, listen to, and maybe even share without fear of the grand hammer falling on our heads?

One genre of music that's doing just fine without the support of major labels is comedic music. American society hasn't really embraced funny music, allowing "Weird Al" Yankovic to squirm his way into the mainstream only after decades of work. But these days, musicians don't need labels and, using the Internet as their platform, their options are limitless.

One of the hottest funny musicians is Jonathan Coulton, who got attention with his "Thing a Week" podcast, where he released a song a week, coming up with gems such as "Code Monkey" – the anthem for diligent, lonely engineers, and "Skullcrusher Mountain" – the love song from an evil mastermind to his intended. He put a business model around his podcast, making the most recent songs available for free, but if you wanted archives you had to pay a small amount for each. Coulton also is a fan of the Creative Commons license, a way to distribute and share digital content online without losing your copyright.

The comedy musicians – The Great Luke Ski, Rob Balder, Worm Quartet, Tom Smith and Sudden Death - who created The Funny Music Project (FuMP) asked Coulton if they could steal his business model, and then began releasing two songs per week by their members and some guest bands. Again, the most recent songs are free, then available for a small fee, then available on a CD.

Tom Rockwell of the comedy rap group Sudden Death (a favorite on 38-year funny music aficionado Dr. Demento’s show for the past several years, with songs like “Cellular Degeneration” about cell phones that can do everything but make a phone call), a founding member of the FuMP, says the site will be launching a video section too and will solicit fan-made videos. Unlike the RIAA (which Sudden Death released a song about: "Take Back The Music"), Rockwell loves the sharing aspect of the Internet. "When people share [music] with friends, they're making us a new fan," he said.

Grant Baciocco, the frontman of the comedy band Throwing Toasters, agrees. The band gives away ZIP files of entire albums and recordings of live shows, inviting people to pay what they think the music is worth. Also, Baciocco is enjoying the alternative exposure YouTube gets him, as many people have found him through his videos. He actually invites fan video associated with his projects. While he does release albums, he says that the evolving standard is not to wait until an album is done before releasing: "The days of doing full albums are over. Now when you have a song you release it online."

This concept may make the RIAA scream with out rage, but let’s face it – geeks blaze the trail in technology; we were first online, we were first to buy the gadgets, and, as comedy musicians are almost always geeks, they will be the first to try out new things online to get listeners and build a fanbase.

The band Beatnik Turtle created waves in 2007 with The Song of the Day, releasing 365 songs through the year, getting the band thousands of new fans. They proudly proclaimed “quantity over quality”, knowing that some of their songs would be gems, an other would, well, not be. Beatnik Turtle member Randy Chertkow, co-author of upcoming book The Indie Band Survival Guide, says the music industry has changed considerably simply due to MP3s. "As soon as you divorce something from a physical object, it loses value," he said. "MP3s are becoming the preferred format, and therefore not as valuable [as CDs] to the listener. So you have to figure out how to make money giving it away."

But how does one get noticed online? Funny music is not the only genre making waves online: Jody Whitesides, an indie rock musician and the first artist to appear on iTunes who wasn't signed with a label, says it's harder now to get listeners than it was a decade ago. An indie musician has to do something new that will grab attention. "You can't just put music out on the web and hope," he said. He stresses that performance and know-how still matter a great deal.

MySpace, considered THE place to be for musicians to reach new fans, is something that the artists have a love-hate relationship with, although at this point emotions tend to run to hate. Baciocco calls it, "The bane of my existence" and Whitesides thinks it's more trouble than it's worth. Twitter, the 140-character microblogging site, is becoming a more fun and less stressful way to reach fans, (used, incidentally, by Baciocco, Whitesides, Beatnik Turtle's Jason Feehan, and Rockwell, who says, "There are words missing from the language to describe Twitter"). Each artist uses the site to connect with fans, announce shows, and just let people know what’s going on. Some get detailed about their lives, some don’t.

Beatnik Turtle, Coulton, and thousands of other bands also use Myxer, a free site that lets indie bands and other content providers create ringtones and deliver other content to users' cell phones. By accessing a unique code for the band on everything from a website to physical posters, fans can listen to the music from their phone and learn about the band immediately whether online or not.

The thing about the comedic bands – and many indie artists - is that they are not just sitting back. In addition to their music careers, they continue to work on their exposure online. Whitesides wants to bring social networking to his site, creating a Jody Whitesides network that allows his fans to meet, experience his music, and everything they can do on MySpace or Facebook, only on his web real estate. Baciocco thinks UStream, the live video streaming site, has a lot of promise for the future; as wifi becomes more readily available he likes the idea of streaming live shows and other performances, connecting with fans via Twitter or the chat in Ustream, making the show more dynamic.

In his book, Chertkow covers many aspects of surviving as in independent musician in the 21st century. But his number one piece of advice? "Lose the mentality that you must be discovered. You have to take responsibility of every aspect of being a musician. Take ownership of your entire music career."

I know there are tons of bands, both funny and not, that I didn’t cover here. If you want to discover some excellent funny music like Possible Oscar, The Gothsicles, and Carla Ulbrich, visit The Funny Music Project, or listen to Rockwell’s podcast, Manic Mondays, where he showcases funny music weekly. If you want a good resource for indie rock, Jody Whitesides has a blog, The Single of the Day where he gives exposure to other bands.

Mur Lafferty is an unapologetic geek, podcaster and author. Find out more about her and her projects at www.Murverse.com, and check out her first novel, Playing For Keeps, released via Swarm Press on August 25.

My memories of the several years I've attended the Vans Warped Tour are as foggy as the next person's, though there are a few that perforate the haze, still clear and shiny in all their awkward glory as if it were yesterday. I worked the tour in 2004 as a photographer, on assignment with
the Vandals to promote their album Hollywood Potato Chip. God only knows why, but as I stepped onto the tour bus I swung my camera bag into a plastic champagne glass, dousing their PlayStation with Mimosa. I can still feel Joe Escalante's penetrating stare. Second to shitting on the tour bus, this is as bad as it gets.

But somehow I survived, nailed the photo shoot and, save dodging a Frisbee from guitarist Warren Fitzgerald later that afternoon, made it out alive. I also traded some videographer my socks for a Pabst Blue Ribbon, but that's another story. It was, after all, just another day on the Warped Tour and these kinds of stories are nothing compared to those of the bands themselves.

"It wasn’t a bus, it was a transportable dance party," Tom DeLonge (ex-Blink 182, Angels & Airwaves) says about some of his fondest Warped memories. The year was 1997 and Blink 182 was crashing on founder Kevin Lyman's tour bus. "It was disco in the back and my bed was one of 23 bunks and I was like on the bottom floor next to everyone’s smelly shoes."

Tom continues, "I remember this kid we just picked up on the Warped Tour, or Kevin did, just out of nowhere. A cool kid, very much a stray, and he stayed on the bus. I remember at the time, Mark [Hoppus] from Blink jumped into his bunk naked -- on him -- and he was screaming for him to get off. He had to spit in Mark’s face [laughs] to get Mark off him. And that’s what I always think about the Warped Tour, it's full of great circus acts."

Mere days before the 2008 Warped Tour kicked off on June 20th in California, I met with DeLonge and some of the other circus acts at the Guitar Center in Hollywood for a special edition of the Guitar Center Sessions -- an educational program designed to encourage discussion amongst musicians and allow fans to seek career-fostering advice from the bands they look up to and admire.

Alongside DeLonge, the Guitar Center Sessions Warped panel included founder Kevin Lyman, Brett Gurewitz (Bad Religion, Epitaph Records founder), Philip Sneed (Story of the Year), Max Bemis (Say Anything), and Joe Escalante.

Back in the green room before the panel begins, neither a Mimosa nor Playstation in sight, Joe Escalante and I are chatting about what brought the Vandals back to the Warped Tour after several years absence. "To play the main stage at the Warped Tour, to me, is the pinnacle of punk rock," he insists. "Go beyond that and you're in some other business. But in the business of punk rock, Kevin has made it so this is the pinnacle. We’re just proud to be there and we feel lucky to come back again."

This year marks the Warped Tour's 14th summer bringing punk rock to kids across America, making it the longest running tour of its kind... ever.

Talking more with DeLonge and Kevin Lyman, I ask Lyman how the years have changed things for the tour and whether or not we can expect any more shenanigans on his bus à la Mark Hoppus' now infamous nude attack.

"My tour bus doesn’t quite break out as much," Lyman smiles. "I used to be a peer to everyone and we used to all hang out and get crazy, but now it's like I'm either a mentor or a disciplinarian in a lot of ways. Now it's more like band guys want to come and hang out under the tent, drink PBR, or play poker. But it usually doesn’t digress into trying to jump a BMX over a picnic table."

I thank the guys for their time and let them get ready for the panel, due to start any minute. I can already hear the swarm of fans talking excitedly in the makeshift auditorium outside the green room door.

As the band members make their way towards the stage, the crowd erupts, and my ears are met with a deafening roar. It becomes clear that the Warped Tour is far from slowing (or quieting) down anytime soon. I think back to what DeLonge had told me just moments before, "The Warped Tour will never go away. It will just get better and better."

For more information on Guitar Center Sessions go here, and for the latest on the Warped Tour go here.

Also, check out pics from the panel below.


Brett Gurewitz (Bad Religion, Epitaph Records founder)


Tom DeLonge (Ex-Blink 182, Angels & Airwaves)


Tom DeLonge and Joe Escalante (The Vandals, Kung Fu Records founder)


Tom DeLonge, Joe Escalante, Brett Gurewitz


Kevin Lyman (founder of the Warped Tour), Max Bemis (Say Anything), Philip Sneed (Story of the Year)

Photos courtesy of Girlie Action and Guitar Center Sessions.

Something is afoot in the dank D.I.Y. venues of New York. It seems like almost overnight, the stupid-happy, rainbow-colored, Sesame Street-themed, keyboard party punk thing is dying down and being replaced by its exact opposite. This new experimental stuff is tough to categorize, but much of it incorporates some kind of metal influence, either in sound or spirit. Metal at its best, as you know, is neither stupid, nor simple, nor happy, but dark, evil, and really tough to play. For this reason, it lacks the ironic delivery that’s upped the obnoxious factor of many Brooklyn musicians; who in their right mind is going to practice their finger work ten hours a day to play music they consider a joke? Not this guy.

As Hunter from Liturgy points out in his blog, metal thrives on contradictions. Black metal has its roots in ancient pagan myth, but looks forward to the ultimate dismantling of society. Avant-garde metal adds an extra layer of modernism (or is it postmodernism?) with its indexical experiments in form; this music has essentially zero one-to-one correspondence with the world, but exists as self-reflexive thought: music about music about music. This hall of mirrors can be fucking scary to enter, but also rewarding, so crawl down the hole of my subjective memory and maybe you’ll find something to love.

Thursday 6/12 @ Death by Audio

Liturgy



This one-man band is the solo project of Hunter Hunt-Hendrix of The Birthday Boyz. (Full disclosure: Hunter is my friend. Try not to confuse us for one another). You can read the theories behind the music in his philosophy blog, but basically, a liturgy can be any manner of ritualized public prayer, and Hunt-Hendrix takes that theme and runs with it. The songs are constructed from looped sounds that, taken separately, are simple enough, but quickly build into something dense enough to make your head spin. The music has range; he’s trying out a new idea in each song. In one piece, he systematically piles one guitar line on top of another until the density reaches critical mass to tip a flood of barely-human screams from his vocal chords. Another juxtaposes time signatures against each other with mathematical precision. I tried to discern the underlying numbers, but after a while realized I was probably counting wrong anyway and just let it wash over me; the tension between these two ways of listening are issues that crop up often. In another song, Hunt-Hendrix puts the guitar away and bravely uses only his voice to create layers of chants that weave together until they’re a deafening swarm, reminding me of the postmodern vocal tapestries of György Ligeti.

Liturgy is one of a small group of exciting metal deconstruction projects that have been doing all kinds of cool things lately, and it’s a shame Ben Ratliff of The New York Times couldn’t get to the last big show in time to include him in this feature and prevent some chick on a porn site from scooping him on the next transcendental black metal sensation.

Extra Life



This is great music for anyone who, like me, will always be a goth at heart, but whose tastes have broadened somewhat since she last laid on the floor of her parents’ house crying to NIN (shut up). They draw from all over the musical map to create songs that fluctuate in a weird, clever way. A single song can sound simultaneously like an Elizabethan madrigal with its lilting vocals, free jazz with its syncopated crashes, and death rock with its relentless beat and ominous violin. The songs go from creepily quiet to frighteningly loud in a way reminiscent of Xiu Xiu, except vocalist Charlie Looker has more versatility and sweetness to his voice than Jamie Stewart, especially when obsessively repeating lines like “I can only sing one thing, one thing/every dream is the same dream, same dream.” Each song creates an open-ended narrative for Looker’s voice to wander through, traversing a bipolar spectrum of moods ranging from happy-ish, to pissed off, to stone-cold dispassionate, to utterly insane. Sometimes he sounds a bit like Maynard James Keenan, in a good way.

Little Women



This is some serious avant-garde shit. I wasn’t sure I’d be into their “noise-jazz” but as soon as I heard them at a house show a couple weeks ago, I was hooked. Not because they’re catchy, but because I needed to take some time with the music if I was going to try to wrap my feeble brain around it. This band combines instruments that don’t normally go together, namely two blasting saxophones (Darius Jones and Travis Laplante), Jason Nazary’s erratic drumming, and Ben Greenberg’s sweet custom guitar, which spits out complicated melody lines with the distinctness and harsh timbre of speed metal. I saw folks attempting to nod along, but the most fitting movement you could probably do to it is that little kid spazz-dance where you move every body part haphazardly as if engaged in a seizure. Unfortunately, nobody did this.

All the reviews I’ve read of this group refer to them as “terrifying,” “horrifically complex”, “throttling” and many other synonyms for “unpleasant.” I think what these folks are reacting to, more than the sheer force of noise, is the music’s unfamiliarity. Like many modern composers, they’ve broken away from the practice of following the human body’s natural rhythms and scales to create a visceral, almost uncanny discomfort in the listener that’s different from the feelings inspired by equally raucous but simpler modes, like punk and hardcore. I’m reminded of a study Dr. Susan Wagner did on the effects of music on dogs, which found jazz and complex classical music created more disturbance in the animals than a simple, harmony-less, major piece in 4/4. The same thing is going on here, except we have worse hearing than dogs and are less likely to leak pee when distressed. To attempt to follow each note and be-bop/no wave sax bleat causes serious sensory overload.

Fortunately for Little Women, the human world is populated with a small number of weirdos who enjoy this experience. The fear is made manifest when their set ends with both saxophonists down on the ground conjuring otherworldly roars from their instruments that sound alternately like dying dinosaurs, sexually enraged monsters, and the unseen rumbling terror from Mark Danielewski’s terrifying novel, House of Leaves. The first time I saw them, they turned out all the lights for this part, and I almost shat my onesie. Don’t bring your kids.

Bloody Panda



The most straightforward metal act of the night. After all the craziness preceding them it was nice to get a little break from active listening, but I was exhausted by this point, and their normal time signatures, pounding drums and drony, stretched out riffs made me lean sleepily against the wall. They get extra points for spooky executioner costumes, a powerful female vocalist, and a name that describes them perfectly, preparing fans to experience the devil’s music sung by an adorably insane Asian female. I’d like to see them again when I’m feeling more awake.

Friday 6/13 @ Death by Audio:

Best Fwends

This band stuck out like a sore thumb (ok, technically it was only half the band that night, but whatever). From the cutesy name to the electronic tracks with lyrics like “What’re you doing in my car?/What’re you doing in my car?” the whole thing made me feel like I’d eaten one too many Vegan Treats donuts. The kids were all jumping moistly up and down like they were at a Dan Deacon show, but it was way too hot for me to waste any of my precious fluids doing that. I still respect some folks in the genre, like Deacon, for their facility with sampled sound and getting crowds happy, but when something becomes a trend, most of its hangers-on inevitably suck, and this was made even more apparent when juxtaposed with Pterodactyl’s epic greatness. I think I’d like Best Fwends better at outdoor venue McCarren Pool; the shows there are more about hanging out than listening to music, and if I get hot and bored, there’s a water slide(!)

Pterodactyl


Photo by Nate Dorr

I should mention that this show was a zombie party in honor of Friday the 13th, and that’s why everyone looked so scary. Pterodactyl seems to sound different each time I hear them, and Calamity agrees with me, so I must be right. Much like an actual pterodactyl, their tunes this time were heavy, carnivorous, and awesome. Some guy was running around squirting everyone with a water gun to cool them off, which was nice until I caught a blast straight to the face. Semi-blind from tears and melted makeup, I swayed back and forth and tried to fine-tune my listening in the absence of distracting visuals. The high pitched vocals and occasional harmonies make for more accessible noise rock, and by the end of the set everyone was thrashing around regardless of how sweaty and gross they already were (it was approximately one million degrees in there).


Photo by Nate Dorr

Saturday 6/14 @ Monkeytown:

Ocrilim

This dude’s set took one aspect of metal, the almighty solo, and stretched it into a twenty minute finger workout. As impressed as I was with his endurance, virtuosity, and ability to remember so very many notes, I can’t say I exactly enjoyed it. Luckily, Monkeytown is oddly comfortable for a place that throws shows like this, and I sank further into the couch as I enjoyed the AC, sipped a cool beverage, and munched some veggie paté on a baguette. Does this mean I'm getting old and bourgeois? Whatever, man. Someday, when I am frail and wealthy, I’ll be extra glad there’s at least one place where I can hear interesting music without endangering my physical happiness. And the paté was delicious, so fuck you. Added bonus: you can sit on the toilet seats!

Zs



I know most of these bands are hard to describe, but this one takes the cake. At present, it’s a three-piece consisting of Sam Hillmer, Ian Antonio, and Ben Greenberg (the same Ben from Little Women). Out of all the bands I saw this past weekend, I think Zs is the most likely to end up in the curriculum of a Western music class; though they’re a part of the Brooklyn rock scene, they have more in common with modernist composers like John Cage and Phillip Glass. Shifting time signatures, invented scales, and long, oddly structured pieces give them an academic feel, but I don’t want to imply that they're at all stuffy. These are still dirty Brooklyn kids after all, and they attacked their composition with an energy not usually found in the halls of academia. Howard Stern just spent a week hating on them after somehow getting his dirty hands on their last album, so I expect that they’re about to get a lot more famous. I think Robin secretly liked them, and I will not be surprised if she follows through on her joking promise to use Zs for the intro to her news segments.

So there you have it: all types of weird shit to blow your fucking mind. Move over, Matt and Kim. It's nothing personal. Your paper-thin party songs might beat cold, lifeless indie rock, but there's a little guy named scissors headed your way, and we all know what he's made of.

There is a shit ton of good music out right now. If I didn’t have a job to go to, I would sit in my room all day reading blogs, acquiring new tunes, and doing the Elaine dance with my headphones on. In the future, all work will be done by robots, jet packs will take care of any necessary locomotion, and my dream will be a glorious reality. Until then, I will continue staying up too late so I can hunt down (harr harr) everything that’s aurally awesome, then listen to it to keep from falling asleep during those loathsome daytime hours. I’ve made a list of new music I’ve been enjoying in the hopes that you, the Internet, will enjoy it too.

Man Man
Rabbit Habits

Ever wonder what it would sound like if Tom Waits got his heart broken, drank a bottle of whiskey, hijacked a vaudeville brass band at knifepoint, then got in a rumble with Frank Zappa and some gypsies in the basement of a dirty, West Philly punk house? Though nothing in this world is as crazy as that (thank goodness), this album comes close. With horn flourishes, accordion, fiddle, crashing percussion, and xylophones that will make you picture skeletons dancing, this album walks a fine line between artistry and kitsch, but lead singer Honus Honus’ emotional authenticity keeps it from teetering over the edge. Whether he’s mourning his own romantic misfortunes (the frantic “Ballad of Butter Beans”), calling out a femme fatale headed for an early grave (the jazzy, slow-building “Hey Jackie”), or expressing his less savory desires (on “Top Drawer” he rasps, “People claim I’m possessed by the devil/But mama, I know I’m possessed by your daughter”), his imperfect voice both croons and snags; he is equal parts evil ringmaster and sad, lonely spectator. Though they sometimes veer into cheesy Tim Burton territory, the group choruses are thankfully closer to a chain gang than a gothic kick line most of the time. Some of the best moments come when all that camp is juxtaposed with darker sentiments; “You strut like a stallion/but you fuck like a mule” would probably make your girlfriend cry if you said it to her, but Honus sells it as downright festive. The group’s excellent live show is louder than the album but just as tight; a participatory melodrama led by maniacs in white outfits and war paint. Go see it.

Portishead
Third

I understand if you are skeptical about listening to this for fear of having a '90s relapse. I was much affected by their spooky/sexy music back in the day; I didn’t even think to touch myself until I started listening to Dummy, and then before I knew it, funny-strange (not funny ha-ha) things were happening to me like breasts, pimples and the perverse urge to see a penis. That was horrible enough at the time -- God forbid I should be forced to re-live it via a mid-late-90s, trip-hop revival. Why not call Tricky and have a reunion tour while we’re at it?

Good news: the band hasn’t been living in a time capsule for the last 11 years. Darker, heavier, and with far different timbres, the only recognizable elements are Beth Gibbons’ expressive, quavery voice and a general commitment to innovation. The samples that once formed the basis for their sound have mostly been eschewed in favor of live instruments, drum machines, and bizarre synths. The excellent “Machine Gun” is true to its title in a chilly, Krautrock way, and “Nylon Smile” delivers with a tensely stretched arrangement of plunky drums, guitar, and electronic squeaks. The brutal cymbals and low, menacing keys on “Plastic” sound downright dissonant, as does Gibbons’ voice at times, giving me hope that this album will be more resistant than the last to being co-opted by Hollywood as a backing track against which strippers in movies make their sexy establishing shots.

Gibbons uses her full range this time around, sounding alternately angelic, demonic, frightening and frightened. Sometimes her voice fades into the mix as if just another instrument, like with her computer enhanced performance in “The Rip”. Conversely, when she’s marooned in a capella territory, you feel like it’s your heart and not hers she’s liquefied and poured into your ear. But the most important question of all is, is Portishead still baby making music? Maybe, if you’re weird. Try it and report back.

No Age
Nouns

This album rules so hard. It’s loud and fast like punk, and the band's live shows are certainly mosh-inspiring, but there’s something else going on here. Fuzzy distortion jams on opener “Miner” hint at Sonic Youth’s experimentalism, while “Teen Creeps”, with its poppy opening chords, manages to be both catchy and complex. “Things I Did When I Was Dead” is a great exercise in counterpoint, with its off-key sampled bleep mimicking that of a (slightly janky) EKG machine while effects on the vocals make them sound like they’re coming from six feet under and sunny guitar chords jangle away obliviously. And that's only the beginning! This is definitely an album that rewards repeat listens.

I saw these guys twice in the same day at SXSW, first at the Pitchfork day party, then around 3 a.m. at a giant party on a bridge where everyone was hopped up on something, and both times were equally insane. These guys know how to bring it. I also just found out they’re vegans, which makes me like them even more. Someday I will have them over for dinner and feed their faces with tofu until they are too bloated to run around cheerfully destroying things, as the songs on this record would seem to demand.

Black Mountain
In the Future

Burn this for your dad! From the Zeppelin-tinged opener “Stormy High” to the disaffected, Pink Floyd-esque “Tyrants”, to the witchy psychedelic “Wucan”, to the Sabbath-y stoner-metal jam “Evil Ways”, this album takes a tour through the best of rock-and-roll history. Do you miss the spooky keyboard lines of the Doors? How about the sexy wailing of Robert Plant? It’s all there in one convenient package. One might be tempted to cut out the middleman and just listen to Zeppelin, but there are some scattered elements to distinguish In the Future from the past. In the tracks on which she sings, Amber Webber’s creepy vocals sound decidedly modern (think Feist possessed by Cthulu), and the sound effects on some songs veer a little towards sounding like a Nintendo game. There is also something to be said for the power of time and place; you can’t go see Zeppelin tear up a basement in Brooklyn, now can you? Smoke a bowl, let the sounds wash over you, and chillax about whether it’s original.

The Kills
Midnight Boom

This is the record to play when you’re blow drying your bangs stick straight and pouting into the mirror in an effort to convince yourself that yes, you actually are that fucking cool. Then, if you’re anything like me, you catch a glimpse of yourself shaking your be-pantied derriere and remember you’re a dork. The perfectly sparse opener “U.R.a. Fever” is a constellation of sampled telephone sounds, handclaps, bluesy his-and-hers vocals, and teen rebellion assertions like “We are a fever/We ain’t born typical.” Most of the songs rely on a similar formula of simple lyrics, chilled out vocals, well-placed electronic sounds, and catchy choruses. Some songs go beyond that, though, like “Last Day of Magic”, which builds in a more intricate way that recalls Of Montreal’s “The Past is a Grotesque Animal”. Some of the lyrics border on inane (“he’s the alphabet pony”? O RLY?) but if this bothers you, you can ignore them and pretend they’re nonsense syllables.

Some naysayers hold it against singer Alison “VV” Mossheart that she used to be a chubby teenager in a Florida pop punk band, and now she’s a thin twenty-something in an indie-blues-electro-whatever band who thinks she’s English. These people are just jealous. Maybe next she’ll be a sexually mature thirty-something in an acid jazz band with an affinity for Brazil, and she would rock then, too. Haters can go cry into an issue of Star on the elliptical trainer.

All right, porn friends, now it’s your turn. What’s been making your ears happy lately?

It's no secret that Trent Reznor is awesome. He's brought industrial music to the forefront and given the dark side of ourselves a kickass soundtrack. Pretty Hate Machine, The Downward Spiral, The Fragile, With Teeth, Year Zero, Ghosts I-IV, and now, we have The Slip, the newest, and might I add, free album.

That's right, this one's on Trent:

That's the word from the website. How fucking cool is that? A whole goddamn new album, free to download. All the major music outlets are buzzing with the news. And rightfully so. Not only is NIN one of the biggest musical acts ever (side note: they turn 20 next year), but ever since leaving Interscope, his former label, Trent has gone through a sort of Renaissance in terms of musical output. Back in March, he dropped Ghosts on us, an incredible instrumental album that, when released online, crashed the servers due to the immense traffic it generated. I shuffled into work the next morning a zombie because I stayed up all night waiting on my download. And just a couple weeks ago, we were treated to a free download of the single "Discipline" and a cryptic message that said "Two weeks." Naturally, fans were up in arms about this. Two weeks till what? More tour dates? Another album? God help me, the suspense is unbearable!!! And so, at midnight PDT May 5th (actually, just a little after, I noticed), Trent gave us "The Slip," an inspired and very danceable effort.

From the site:

This one, like 'Ghosts' before it, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike agreement, and of course, you can remix it if you so choose. Hell, after you download it, you'll get a page where you can email three of your friends a download link. Spread it all around, share it with everyone. Get a listen here. And how much money does TR stand to make? We won't know till the physical sales numbers are released. All I can say is that he must be very confident in making up that money in other ways. He made over a million dollars easy in the week after 'Ghosts' was released, just through online sales.

Here's the tracklisting:

Yeah, it's short, but it's great. I'll leave the discussion of its merits in SG's very own NIN group (join if you haven't). What I'm excited for are the setlists for the upcoming tour. With all this new music, are the shows gonna be 3 hours long? Not that it would bother me, but it may prove a logistical nightmare for the band and crew. Speaking of touring, go register with nin.com if you'd like to get presale tix. It's a new system they're using, and here's their logic:

Once again, check the performance page for the show dates/times/locations and presale info.

While I, like others, lament the decline of traditional record stores and the physical media they provide (there's just something about actually holding an album), I do embrace the new path that NIN and others (i.e. Radiohead) are blazing with digital downloads, and the subsequent closer, more direct relationship with fans that normally would be blocked by the record labels. The times change and we must change with them. For some opinions on this brave new world we are entering, check out David Byrne and Thom Yorke in Wired Magazine.

Does your town suck? Are you bored as hell? Got a band but no place to play? Or maybe you live in a city where the only venues to see live music are greedy, stuck-up clubs that make local bands pay-to-play and hate you for being poor and/or under 21 (you dirty little criminal). Through exhaustive research, I have compiled a list of tips to help you and your clever, creative friends build your very own D.I.Y. scene using only a second-hand P.A., your dad's guitar, some punk rock chutzpah, and several un-bent paperclips. 



I asked my friend Todd Patrick, better known as Todd P, to advise me on how it's done. He's been putting together shows since high school, and at 32, knows a thing or two about doing it yourself. After throwing events in Austin, Texas during college and then running an all-ages club in Portland, Oregon for a few years, he made his way to New York and single-handedly built an energetic, eclectic scene in the crumbling neighborhoods of North Brooklyn. Through a combination of charisma and reliability, Todd can make people open their ears and give his weird line-ups a chance. Or, as an anonymous denizen of the scene put it, "He could put his name on a polka party and people would show up."




The crowd at one of Todd P's shows (photo courtesy of Impose Magazine)

Patrick is at an all-ages punk show in New Brunswick, New Jersey when I call him on the phone. This might come as a surprise considering that, as one of the premiere curators in the Brooklyn underground scene, he's known for his impeccable, avant-garde taste. He'd never book a straight-up pop punk, ska, emo, or hardcore band. And yet there he is, rocking out to those very genres alongside the kids. "It's a rowdy, awesome rock and roll show," he shouts above the noise.

Patrick respects the people who make fun happen, regardless of whether their tastes align with his. "Local shows are the last vestige of real, straightforward community art for middle class people in this country," he tells me. "Everything else is controlled by an industry…music is the last one where people can literally put a band together, start playing, and the community votes with their feet and their dollar to see who they endorse and that is who the industry has to pick from. There's no other form in this country that's like that anymore.”


Deerhunter at Market Hotel (photo courtesy of Impose Magazine)

His desire to make this community mojo happen is sincere, and it shows. The myth that Brooklyn's avant-rockers are too cool to dance is shattered as soon as you step inside one of his sweaty, raucous warehouse operations. People get all up in your shit, in a good way. It's a visceral respite from the cold, corporate city in which we must all behave in order to make a living. Patrick has presented a laundry list of great musicians over the years: Aa, Deerhunter, Xiu Xiu, the Dirty Projectors, Dan Deacon, YACHT, and High Places are just a few bands who have graced his stages and subsequently gained increasing recognition, thanks in part to him. "That makes it fun," he says with no small amount of pride. "You have an impact on your community, spotlighting people you think have talent and helping make certain people rise…that's how you improve the national culture." A culture which, let's be honest, is in need of some serious rehabilitation at the moment. 



You need to put in a goodly amount of time before you can go about improving the national culture, but the good news is that anyone can do it. "It does not involve anything you can go to school for," Patrick says. So here it is, a list of advice gleaned from the master for building a happening D.I.Y. anti-empire from nothing.



Locate a Location



This can initially be tricky. Luckily, you are tricky too. Drive around looking for un-used spaces, investigating anything that looks promising. Warehouses, backyards, basements, and empty lots can all be put to good use. All you need is electricity, or barring that, make it an acoustic show. Find out who (if anyone) owns the space you fancy, and be persistent. Todd P's first show was in an abandoned lounge above a coffee shop in Austin: "I asked the owner, and he said no. I asked manager, and she gave me the keys." And once you've put on a few good events, he says, "the offers come out of the woodwork." A house here, a rooftop there, and before you know it you're drowning in rock love. This is especially helpful if you need to move a show at the last minute for whatever reason.



Find Talented Talent



It might make sense to have your friends' bands play; scenes are all about friendship, right? That all depends if you want your shows to actually be good. If you're into your friends' tunes, by all means give them a shot. But don't be afraid to cast a wide net in search of that perfectly bizarre band to play your party. Patrick recommends "random MySpace checks; search for bands who sound like bands you already like, or check out their friend lists.” Also, get to concerts on time and “see who opens for your favorites…those are people you can probably get.” He continues, "Put your heart and soul into it…stuff you find interesting, and sooner or later touring bands are calling. You do a good job, people appreciate it. Learn by trying."



Matt and Kim get happy in a temporary warehouse space (photo courtesy of Impose Magazine).

Broaden Your Taste



No one is going to stop you from booking the 1,000th Black Flag clone your high school has produced, but for a bit of artistic freshness, look to Todd P's shows as an example. There's no obvious commonality between the bands he picks; in a single night, you might hear the curious, tinkling loops of High Places, the incantatory ghost punk of These Are Powers, and the pounding electro-metal of Genghis Tron. None of these bands sound like each other, but none of them sound like anything you've heard before, either. "You can be really great at what you do," says Patrick, "but if it doesn't strike my ear as fresh, I don't care about it. If it's a new idea, I usually like it. I'm easily bored." If nobody likes your oddball choices, they can throw their own damn shows. Some bands take warming up to, but assuming your selections are intelligent, people will come around. "There's a lot of bands that a few years ago would have been too weird for people to appreciate who are getting big now," says Patrick with the joy of a man vindicated. In time, the world will catch up with your genius. 



Don't fight the law, 'cause the law will win

When I ask how to deal with the cops, he says it’s simple, really: "Don’t attract them." Choose an out of the way place where either the neighbors are chill with parties, or there are no neighbors. This is harder in big cities where everyone lives on top of each other, but even New York still has under-used or abandoned sites. Of the last 400 shows he’s thrown, Patrick says maybe seven have been shut down. Use your common sense to determine where people should not be allowed to go. “Make sure your patrons aren’t destroying the neighborhood. Don’t drink in the street, piss, etc. The kind of stuff you wouldn’t wanna see in your front yard.” And don’t be afraid to get in their faces about it; a few assholes should not be allowed to ruin everyone’s good time. If the cops do show up, be polite. Arguing with them won’t get you anywhere but jail, and wouldn’t you rather go to an after party at someone’s house than jail?



Keep it all-ages

“It’s classic discrimination to say someone who the government calls an adult isn’t allowed to see music because it’s wrapped up in alcohol,” Patrick says, pointing out a logical inconsistency that’s become the norm. There’s beer everywhere at baseball games, and that’s ok, “but if you’re watching shows, someone bad’s gonna get you.” Though it may be a slight added hassle to worry about having minors present, it kind of defeats the point if you don’t let them in. “Rock is youth culture, it always has been. To exclude under-21 pretty much kills off the scene.” And giving kids things to do is constructive to the community. “They take away the right to congregate, kids turn to things that are worse than drinking or going to a rock show.” Think back on all the dumb shit you did as a teenager that got you in trouble. Don’t you wish you’d been too busy rocking out to stick those fireworks in the cat’s butt?

Don't rape wallets

“Places seem to bleed money,” says Patrick. “I think you should make shows cheap, and keep them quality.” Try to keep the cover charge under $10. If you keep a low overhead, you should be able to pay the bands a decent amount after covering the cost of your crappy PA rental. “The majority should go to the bands, because that’s why people pay to see shows.” Take only a celebratory pittance for yourself. You’re in this for love. “It’s not good for grassroots culture” to exclude poor ass college students and other people who can’t afford high ticket prices. If you want piles of money, become an i-banker or open a horrible club that charges eight dollars for a Budweiser, and see how much fun you have.


No Age fucks up Silent Barn (photo courtesy of Impose Magazine).

Don't write off NYC

Despite lawmakers’ best efforts, New York still has one of the most exciting scenes of anywhere. It only took me a few stops on my recent tour to realize there’s no place quite like Brooklyn in terms of energy, turn out, and general joie de vivre. Sayeth Todd Patrick: “There are amazing musicians here, a lot of really good vibes. People are hungry for new things. They love to absorb and enjoy art forms of all kinds. Everyone is interested in culture.” This benefits promoters and musicians alike. “If you are talented and you’re putting your stuff out,” Patrick says, “you will find some level of success in New York. You can be an awesome person in small towns and find nobody to care. If you are good in New York, you’re a national band.” Suck it up, get a job, find a place, work to party.



Don't write off East Buttfuck, USA, either

If you are stuck somewhere that’s not New York or any other place with a thriving scene (L.A., Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, Austin, Portland…the list goes on), chances are you are still in high school (if not, perhaps it’s time to move out; it’s nice to be able to have sexy time without worrying your mom will hear.) But even if your local culture is legally dead, you can still attract talent. Don’t be afraid to ask bands from nearby cities to come out; you’ve got the mystique of the unknown on your side. Your shitty town is an exotic adventure in the countryside to them; they will come “because it sounds interesting.” And a town that was previously a cultural wasteland will appreciate you much more for your efforts. “You can really make an impact,” says Patrick. “I won’t say it’s easy, but it’s something anyone is capable of…and people will respond because there’s so little shit of any consequence happening in America.”



Have fun!


There’s no need to be a perfectionist. "If it doesn't work out, it's just a rock show,” Patrick reminds me. “No one's gonna die if you can't hear the vocals. Ultimately, the stakes aren't that high. Everything's got a learning curve.” So grab your friends, make some fliers, and see how far you can take it. You’ve got nothing to lose but your crushing suburban ennui.



Dan Deacon at Todd P's birthday show (photo courtesy of Impose Magazine).


A rare snap of the man himself (photo courtesy of Impose Magazine).

Maynard James Keenan doesn't do many interviews. But when he does, one thing is certain: it is never your run of the mill chit chat. Last October, SuicideGirls hopped a plane to the Tool frontman's Arizona vineyard and got some amazing insights into winemaking, his creative process, and his latest multimedia, multi-personality project, Puscifer. More recently, last week Maynard stopped by SGHQ for some lively conversation about Puscifer's newest album, V is for Viagra: the Vagina Remixes, out today, April 29th.

"I, personally, have only done Viagra once," Maynard revealed. "I took a half a tab and it did nothing. Later that night I took the other half and it did nothing. By the time it actually kicked in I was actually at the airport going through security. Not a fun situation."

With V is for Viagra, Maynard wanted to "abandon the idea of the songs being finite" and enlisted an array of musicians to tackle the remixes including Paul Barker (Ministry), Lustmord, Michael Patterson, Aaron Turner (Isis), Danny Lohner (Nine Inch Nails), and Dave Ogilvie (Skinny Puppy), among others. With titles like "Desert Porn Mix", "Disco Viagra Mix", "Guns for Hire Mix", and "Dirty Robot Mix", the resulting tracks are as varied and unique as the minds that created them.

James and Chloe Suicide sat down with Maynard at SGHQ where he answered a few questions about the remixes, Puscifer's touring plans, and the new "DoZo" music video, which confirms that dildos do in fact make excellent weapons.

Watch the hilarity ensue and check out Puscifer's YouTube for a special, alternate version...


Dozo Music Video, directed by Meats Meier.

Los Angeles International Airport... en route to SXSW... I sit on the floor of the terminal, waiting to board, hoodie pulled over my eyes to avoid the wait-at-the-gate small talk, when over the loud speaker comes the nasal whine of an airport attendant, "Last boarding call for passenger Vince Vaughn... Vince Vaughn this is your last boarding call for flight [redacted] [redacted] departing to [redacted] [redacted]..." I peer up through a tangle of my hair to catch Vince Vaughn himself, within seconds, come barreling out of a bar... hauling ass down the walkway towards his gate. And I think he has the right idea; I should be in that bar, preparing for this monster music festival that is going to hit me like a tsunami the minute I land in Austin, Texas.

But that was three weeks ago now, and the SXSW 2008 Music Festival has wrapped and left town. Packed into four non-stop days were 1,580 bands, hundreds of panel discussions, and what felt like a million bloggers scouring the city and leaving no beer-stained flyer unturned. What started in 1987 as a who's who of up and coming artists has transformed into perhaps the largest, annual music festival and media gathering this side of Rick Rubin's living room.

Ahem, so let's get started. This year I decided to liven things up a bit and forgo the pen and notepad for something with more of a pulse, per se. So, armed with a video camera and handy SG mic that doubled as a baton if needed, I took to the guitar pick-strewn streets to chat up some talent. There were the bands that stole my heart, and the bands that stole my cabs. There were SGs I couldn't wait to meet, ex-lovers I couldn't wait to avoid and, by the end of each night, a hotel bed I couldn't wait to throw myself in. My partner in crime, Hunter, filled you all in last week with her recap of the week's events, so now some SGTV video footage to round out this year's music week coverage.



First up, Hunter landed a curbside interview outside of Spiro's with metal band Black Tide to chat about SXSW babes, their debut album Light From Above and what it was like getting kicked off Ozzfest for being underage.



That night, I made camp at the Definitive Jux showcase at the Scoot Inn and talked with label head and hip-hop artist EL-P about signing Dizzee Rascal and Del the Funky Homosapien. I also sat down with Del himself to chat about his new album, The 11th Hour, and being one of what he calls, "the nephews of funk."



Later, Hunter covered some distance as she talked to UK imports British Sea Power, new Austin local Ladyfingers and LA's Barrio Tiger about SXSW survival tips.



I also tracked down John Reis (Rocket from the Crypt, Drive Like Jehu) to talk about his new band, The Night Marchers, before they took the stage at a Vice party.



On our last night in Austin, we partied with SuicideGirls Selket, Illyria, Zak and Sheila at the Indie 103.1 FM showcase (home of SG Radio) at the Cedar St. Courtyard, where the station had been broadcasting live all week.



Zak and Sheila talked to band Io Echo and got the scoop on their upcoming collaboration with She Wants Revenge, while Selket met up with The Airborne Toxic Event backstage to talk about their recent success and playing SXSW for the first time.

It has always been frustrating for me to read new CD reviews … What are the critics saying about ____? The more important questions have always seemed to be Who are these critics and Why should I be interested in their value judgments?

So much of modern culture revolves around codifying, describing, and categorizing art products, arguing for the supremacy of one product, one CD, one painting over the other. We send our opinions into battle as logical concepts with Kant smiling in his grave over our ambiguous taste; we too smile – smiles of silent contentment about knowing the truth, understanding the right answer, possessing good taste, having a better appreciation of the artistic facts than the man next door.

It’s unavoidable, really, both the observation and experience of these phenomena, but today let us appreciate the fact that we will not have to do this with the new Nine Inch Nails material. I won’t tell you that the songs are good or that the songs are bad, that NIN has improved over time or has become rubbish. I won’t write that way because Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts doesn’t ask to be critiqued in such a manner.

Nine Inch Nails, oh, Nine Inch Nails. We’ve seen you practically establish the industrial rock genre. We’ve been wowed by your live performances. We watched as you won multiple Grammy Awards. And, now, seven studio albums later, we’ve witnessed you really and truly probe the creative process. And that very idea is what this article focuses on: the artistic process entailed in producing Ghosts, NIN’s latest work. And, reader, you will soon understand why… why this thematic focus is practically necessitated.



The material was released on March 2nd via NIN.com. That website has also recently announced some dates for an extensive tour that begins in July and will be promoting the new tracks.

These songs. How were they made; how did they come about? Well, Trent Reznor has released several audio clips of him discussing that very process. The tracks certainly weren’t intended or anticipated; they just happened. “Much to our surprise,” Reznor says, “we ended up with thirty-six tracks.” Thirty-six tracks. Thirty-six tracks in ten weeks. TR had given himself a ten week timeframe within which to create, essentially, anything. One song might have come out, or one hundred. With the time period as the only structured preconception, Reznor was free to create. Free to do as he pleased. And a significant portion of this freedom is attributed to being without a record label, as he states, “I wouldn’t have been as comfortable trying to pull [this] off on a major label…something I wanted to do…that felt exciting and different and kind of fun.” This album is the band’s first that has not been released by Interscope since 1989’s Pretty Hate Machine. Without limitations imposed by a label, TR was able to avoid the effort of funneling his music into a pop song mold.

The freedom involved in the composition process, which engendered songs that may likewise be described as free, went something like this… Reznor would sit down and picture a visual image; he would conjure up some vision and then attempt to create it with sound. The end results, he says, “[are] basically soundtracks to daydreams” that formed as he “just pictured something in [his] head.” This idea is similar to European classical program music that intended to suggest extra-musical ideas, images in the mind of the listener by musically representing a scene, image or mood.

The new Nine Inch Nails songs weren’t created in an effort to fulfill some externally imposed expectations; they were made out of pure spontaneity and enjoyment of the creative process. To me, this is an example of subverting the contemporary cultural machinery that has been established for distributing popular music. Reznor’s is a process that very much reminds me of Jacques Attali – the French economist and scholar – and his hope for saving music from the harrowing grips of capitalism wherein all art becomes interchangeable and of equal value.

In his book, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, Attali theorizes that the trend of promoting bad music that merely fits a certain popular image can only truly be obstructed when “the musician plays primarily for himself, outside any operationality, spectacle, or accumulation of value…[when] music extricates itself from codes and emerges as activity that is end in itself and creates its own code with each work.” And so we hear Trent Reznor similarly discuss abandoning major record labels and creating music for the pure pleasure of the endeavor, describing his experimentation with “different sounds and textures and feelings” as “the most fun [he’s] had in the studio in a long time.”

To make Ghosts, yes, Trent Reznor was free from a label and its prescriptions, but he also worked to liberate himself from his own mind. What he wanted to do was to make a record without using “the editorial brain.” He “never switched that brain on” and, instead, just let his “ideas turn into whatever they turn[ed] into.” He wasn’t critiquing every idea or painstakingly writing out melodies note-by-note; he was simply letting the music effortlessly arise from within him. Again, Reznor impresses me with his discussion of the creative process and reminds me of another theoretical dialogue. In the cross-section between psychology and Buddhism, there is a concept called flow.

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly wrote a book describing this idea wherein to truly and intimately experience life, we must engage in activities that we are able to lose ourselves in. The theory explains that, whether it be sex or painting or physics calculations, fully engaging ourselves in activities allows for the most valuable and meaningful experiences in life. These are the endeavors that we devote ourselves to without concern of anything else, that we use to distract ourselves from the humdrum progression of daily routine, that we look up from after an hour thinking that only a minute has passed… And this is exactly what Trent Reznor seems to have done in the creation of Ghosts. He says, “If I didn’t think about it…music just started to flow out…effortless, sort of formless.” TR lost himself in the process of creation, not overanalyzing the sounds that he was creating, and ended up with a concept album that gives credence to the marksman’s idea that if you focus too much on a rifle target, you won’t hit the bull’s eye; instead, you have to let go and lose yourself in experience.

The thirty-six songs created in this manner are all without titles, merely numbered tracks. This was a purposeful choice by Reznor so that the names wouldn’t taint a listener’s response to the music. Instead, he wants you listen to the songs as if you were on a journey, imaging scenes as the music carries you to someplace else. Though TR had specific images in his head as he created the tracks, he wants listeners to summon their own scenes to accompany the music. In fact, Reznor is calling for submissions to a Nine Inch Nails film festival.

And that kind of creative exploration is what this album is really about…at both the level of production and at the level of listening. So, I’m not going to end this article with a summary of the motifs or the sounds of the styles of the new tracks, I’m going to have to leave those judgments up to you. NIN.com has tracks available to download and purchase, in addition to various CD and limited edition sets. There is also a streaming player here.

The Ghosts tracks really seem to be ghosts – amorphous, nameless, formless entities asking only to be defined by the imagination of the observer. And that observer is you.

Fatality secretly knows that I Ghosts 6 is actually the best track. Obviously and objectively so.

As I write this, I’m sitting in an RV somewhere between Atlanta, GA and Tallahasse, Florida. I’m hung over, coughing my lungs out, mildly disoriented, menaced by each Georgia police car that passes, and caked in three days’ worth of my own filth. I’m sleeping as much as the bumpy road will allow and surviving on junk food from gas stations. I couldn’t be happier.

This year’s South by Southwest Music Festival, which ended five days ago, nearly did me in. It nearly did everyone in; that’s its job, which it seems to get better at every year. However, unlike most people, I did not take my battle wounds home to nurse on Sunday, but motored off to cover a house show in Little Rock…then Springfield, Missouri, then St. Louis, then Knoxville, and tomorrow, Tampa. I’m traveling with Impose Magazine, writing daily updates for the website, and helping make a DVD with our partner/sponsor Viva Radio. Austin is miles behind us now. Amid the calm discipline of ten-hour car rides spent typing, napping, and staring out the window, it’s hard to believe such a festival even happened. I saw how many bands? Walked how many miles? Drank how many beers? Impossible! But true.

No matter how hard we busted our asses, Erin Broadley and I did not see close to everything we wanted to; there were simply not enough of us or enough hours in the day. To try to give an accurate list of precisely who had the most buzz, best performance, or highest percentage of dancing audience members would just be silly. The best thing I can do is account, as accurately as possible, the most interesting sights and sounds that entered my own particular sensory organs, for better or for worse. Here is my short list:

Ponytail



Freshmen of the eclectic Baltimore scene, this band has mainlined into the pure, childlike pleasure of noisemaking. But unlike the animal squeals of some dumb toddler, the noises they make are actually fun to listen to. Though I’ve seen them several times, their energetic art punk never gets old. From a packed show at the Market Hotel in Brooklyn to the somewhat sparsely attended showcase I saw them play in Austin, each performance I’ve seen of theirs has been fully lived in. Improvisational sections keep everyone on their toes, and no song sounds exactly the same twice in a row. At the same time, they maintain enough structure and rhythm so one can boogie and sway along for the duration of each meandering composition. When I saw them on Saturday, singer Molly Seigel jumped up and down in a trance as if trying to raise spirits from the depths of the Earth with her nonsense incantations, screeches, and yelps. They get even cooler when you find out that they started as a class assignment in art school wherein teacher-selected groups had to start a band together. They had so much fun they decided to stick with it, and I’m glad they did.



O’death

I felt a little guilty seeing them in Austin when I can see them any time back home, but the truth is I saw approximately 234,987 bands there and O’death was still one of my favorites. A fuller description of their raucous goth-country-punk can be found in my last column, but suffice it to say that I’ve seen them a million times and will probably have to see them a million more times before I get sick of them. Video footage of me bro-ing down with them can be seen in Erin’s forthcoming video reel.

Vivian Girls


Photo Courtesy of Impose Magazine

Another New York band; I swear I am not doing this on purpose. These chicks stood out from the gaggle of groups playing Todd P’s outdoor shows at Ms. Beas with their super cool lo-fi garage rock. They reminded me of early ‘90s riot grrl bands like Bratmobile, only more adept at/concerned with solid pop structure. Also more reverb-y. Tinges of surf rock conjured up images of girls in ‘50s style bikinis, tiki parties, and summertime concerts in friends' basements. If you dislike these things, you obviously hate fun, so you probably shouldn’t bother with Vivian Girls. Band trivia: their name is taken from characters appearing in the work of outsider artist Henry Darger who are actually girls with penises!

Though they didn’t get a full heading in this list, I have to mention Mika Miko, another great band in the riot-grrl-ish genre. They rocked Emo’s and made me dance despite my horrible Sparks-induced headache. Look them up and love them.

The Apes


Photo Courtesy of Impose Magazine

I caught them at the garishly lit American Apparel store of all places, where they rocked out amid brightly colored, unkindly cut clothing. This band has been around for a long time but I think they’ve really got something with their current singer: his power and range helps them sound like soul, punk, electro, and psychedelic all at once. My snobby ex-boyfriend got mad at me when I compared him to Jimmy Urine because Mindless Self Indulgence is not a hip underground band, but a favorite of the stripes-and-suburbs Hot Topic set. Sorry hipsters, but this guy’s menacing falsetto sounds a lot like Urine and that’s not a bad thing. Creepy organs and electronic drum sounds that drop in and out like very erratic stones add the same tingly, what-will-bitchslap-my-ears-next vibe that MSI has without being too heavy handed about it. My advice: stop worrying about what genre the Apes are and enjoy them.

The Airborne Toxic Event



I should start this off by noting that Erin is pretty good friends with this band. She had been talking big about them all week, and I was all, “Oh yeah? I’d like aural proof of your big talk.” Proof came during the Indie 103.1 FM (home of Suicidegirls Radio) showcase Saturday night, where I also got to sit down for a second and hang with local SGs Selket, Illyria, and Zak. To be honest, I was a tad nonplussed at the prospect of taking in a whole showcase worth of “indie rock,” which seems to have grown a bit boring and stagnant as of late. I’m talking about it as a genre/aesthetic, not a business model. I mean, how many times can you clone the Strokes before the copies of copies grow as dim as Doug Number Four in 1996 hit film Multiplicity? But the Airborne Toxic Event won me over with their mega-tight performance and skilled songwriting. It also didn’t hurt that their name is from one of my favorite books of all time.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that there are several music critics in this band; their songs show a command of pop structure borne of years of dissecting what gives a song that extra oomph. Great arrangements kept things moving with well-placed synths, violin, and crescendos. It seemed like every few minutes, most instruments would drop out and the crowd would gasp at yet another heart-stopping moment. This might have made me feel manipulated had they not sold it with emotional authenticity. Though he’s no young sprout, the lead singer seemed to have that man-child vulnerability that makes for a great rock front man. He mumbled his thanks between songs, and as he rasped emphatic lines like “when your friends say what is it/you look like you’ve seen a ghost” and “you just have to see her/you know that she’ll break you in two” he convinced me he meant it. I danced like a 16-year-old who’d just lost her virginity. At a Cure concert. In the ‘80s.

Parties thrown by Vice Magazine


Dark Meat rocks

Recipe for a damn fine late night throw down: one part hotties, two parts people I know and/or like, one part accessibility to downtown (getting a cab in Austin at 2am is hard), then throw in one psychedeltic party orchestra and the faintest soupçon of lame people (for mocking). The folks at Vice work hard because they want you to enjoy yourself to death. But don't touch the smorgasbord of free Sparks, or the monster with eyes in its hands will eat your head (see below).

Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse

If you are vegan/vegetarian and looking for a cheap, tasty and filling brunch/lunch in Austin, look no further. It’s a little off the beaten path, but everything good is. I chilled here for a bit and caught up with my old friend Adam, aka Ladyfingers while chowing down on tofu rancheros, hash browns, and some bangin’ ginger-honey lemonade. Perfection.

Walking

Walking did not much impress me at South by this year. In fact, I would have to say that walking downright sucked. I am used to New York where things are easy to get to, and if my feet start to feel like they're falling off, I can hop on the subway. A combination of heat, drunkenness, and dehydration made walking suck even worse. Two thumbs down. Next year I’m renting a pony or something.

Sparks

She is a fickle mistress. First I was riding high on a seemingly endless reserve of drunken energy, then next thing I knew I was hunched over with a pounding headache hating everyone and wanting to go home. All the way home, like to my mom’s house in Connecticut. I know it’s tempting when you’re offered delicious drugs in a can, but if you mess with Sparks and don't want it to mess with you right back, heed my advice: only drink one, and hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. This stuff is worse for you than ecstasy and cocaine combined. Ask me how I know sometime.

Drunk bitches everywhere

When the bars let out at 2 a.m., you’d best mind the drunk bitches, because they are everywhere. I thought there were a lot of drunk bitches in Brooklyn; I was wrong. We’re talking sprawled on the hoods of cars, puking in the gutter, skirts above their heads, shrieking, crying, hot messes wherever you are trying to walk. The guys weren’t much better, but I’m not as afraid for their safety. Seriously ladies of Austin/South by: take better care of yourselves. I worry.

That’s really just a slice of what I encountered this year. Erin was there to take video evidence of the mayhem, so if you can’t get enough SXSW coverage or are lazy enough to have scrolled through this entire column in search of visuals, the reel is coming soon. Don't worry, I'm not cross with you. Would you care for some Sparks?

Deep in Greenpoint, Brooklyn--amid crumbling warehouses, ancient Polish bread factories, punk rock dives and luxury high rises--O'death is recording an album. Much like the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, the album is a mish-mosh of various eras, including some widely thought to be long gone. But unlike in Greenpoint, the eras on this album coexist peacefully, in so far as a crazy country-punk album can be peaceful. O’death is also much more fun to dance to than Greenpoint, and has 100% fewer underground oil spills, unless you count the metaphorical ones in their hearts. And those (probably) won’t give you cancer.

I make the trip up to Greenpoint to meet the band at their studio, and they sit down to talk over Yeunglings at the end of the first day of a grueling recording schedule. Though everyone is exhausted, they have a lot to say, and their excitement over what they are creating is palpable. A six-piece, self-described “gothic/country/punk” band, O’death is tricky to categorize. Their name might conjure up the tongue-in-cheek spookiness of Bauhaus, or, further down the food chain, their questionable '90s-era progeny which you might hear blaring from a Hot Topic on the way from Yankee Candle to Cinnabon. But we must not forget that before Manson or Murphy there was Faulker, and more importantly, people who had to eat possums to survive. The Southern Gothic aesthetic loomed large in Appalachian folk music long before it was a named, self-conscious idea; it was simply life, in all its messy, painful, comic, tragic glory. It’s that same dark spirit that inspires these six New Yorkers to make music that is both a tribute to the greats of blues and bluegrass like Doc Boggs and Charlie Patton, and a brand new thing in the world.

“The thing that struck me about this music,” says drummer David Rogers-Berry, “was that this is punk rock. It’s so aggressive raw and dirty, it’s really like life and death, heavy shit.”

Though he’s speaking metaphorically, he makes it literal by providing the loud, fast percussion that helps transform the band’s raucous live shows into something decidedly modern. David is a madman on stage; with gas cans, chains, and lots of elbow grease, he goes a long way towards fulfilling the band’s promise of punk rock.

Besides kicking ass through sheer decibel level, their shows embody punk ideals by being accessible to as many listeners as possible. Both folk/roots music and punk rock have been described as “the music of the people,” folk making this explicit in its very name, so it makes sense that the two would mesh well in sound and spirit. Despite the band’s rising popularity and bookings at large venues like the Bowery Ballroom, they favor house parties where “the people just want to sweat and jump around and get in some dingy basement and have a good time.” And lately, it seems like the balance of shoegazing cool kids and crazed music fans has been tipping towards the latter.

Case in point: the last O’death show I attended was at an unheated punk house in a not-yet-gentrified section of Bushwick and managed to draw well-dressed indie rockers, unwashed bike punks, bespectacled geeks, a few lonely goths, and some people whose retro outfits appeared to be some sort of attempt at living in the 1920s (do they come up with new subcultures while I’m sleeping? I will call them “dapper-core”). There was nary a fan too cool to rock out at least a little, and when the power went out, the rhythm section didn’t stop, but percussed maniacally to chants of “e-lec-tricity!” until it came back on.

The ability to bring so many types together in a place as cliquish as Brooklyn strikes me as remarkable, but the band sees it as a natural byproduct of the way they operate. “We’ve never really cared about genre or anything as specific as that,” bassist Jesse Newman shrugs. “People like it for what it is, so we appeal to a bunch of different ideas from a bunch of different subcultures.”

One idea that interests many of these groups is what singer Greg Jamie describes as “little p politics…the implicit politics of life.” Through myth and character, he explains, he explores his own psyche and how humans relate to the world. For example, the foot-stomper “Lean-to” is on its surface a song about "rejecting society" and living in a lean-to in the woods, something most of us Starbucks-drinking, iTunes-downloading city folk have never done. But in a broader sense, Greg says, it’s about saying, “I am so sick of all this shit,” even if you only say it to yourself. What balding, midtown middle manager has not occasionally looked out the window and wondered with a sigh of existential ennui what it would be like to wander into the woods, live off nature’s bounty and grow a gnarly beard? Maybe not all of them, but forgetting for a second that most of us would probably be eaten by bears, it’s a fantasy to which many can relate.

All of this fantastical imagining has drawn predictable fire from critics quick to dismiss anything that draws too much attention to itself via "excessive" sincerity or suspected subcultural affiliation. Even in positive reviews, it is almost as if the critics are fighting some weird schizophrenic battle between the part of them that’s indoctrinated to hate anything that’s not in their canon of safe sounds, and the part that feels things viscerally, the part that makes them need to hear music in the first place. For example, Pitchforkian William Bowers wrote of their last album, Head Home that, “The more genial tracks…are lived-in and powerful enough to help the listener forgive the anachronisms.” The whole review is an exercise in backhanded compliments.

David is mildly annoyed by this prevalent safety-seeking impulse: “Right now in the indie rock scene it’s very acceptable to sound exactly like your influences,” he says, “and audiences are eating it up, too. It’s like ‘Oh, I love Paul Simon’s Graceland, so Vampire Weekend is right up my alley.’” “People are also strongly encouraged to write very boring melodies,” observes multi-instrumentalist Gabe Darling, “it’s like, if you put too many really interesting rhythms into a vocal melody it gets out of style.” Singer Greg Jamie’s demented screech certainly falls into that category. “You’re really exposing yourself,” he admits of committing fully to a vocal part. I decide that most of these doctrinaire critics were probably picked on as children.

Luckily for O’death, the eclectic groups of people who flail about madly at their shows don’t care what the critics think, or at least what they think about O’death. Like many bands who play the New York underground circuit, they are too weird to really be categorized as anything other than “interesting,” and their colleagues are not the retro-costumed, spot-on stylized rockabilly groups, but fellow oddballs like The Dirty Projectors and Aa. “Most of the bands are a lot of the same bullshit,” David says, “but it so happens that maybe a third of them are really pushing themselves and doing different things.”

This band is pushing itself in more ways than one. They are slated to finish recording their new album in less than two weeks, then they head down to Austin to play an insane number of showcases at South by Southwest, often three a day. After that, they’re tearing around the country until the end of April, bringing their hard-hitting sing-along hootenannies to the masses. This breakneck triathlon will no doubt take a lot out of them, but as a band that lives for playing live, they’ll be in their element. “Music has become a spiritual outlet for us,” David says, “a chance to connect with people, something transcendent.” Get ready to join the congregation, America.



The band's tour schedule can be viewed here.

American Idol said goodbye to four of its contestants Thursday night: Colton Berry, Garrett Haley, Joanne Borgella and Amy Davis.

I’ve been watching American Idol since the beginning, and even auditioned for Season 3 in Atlanta. And even it is merely a matter of luck when it comes to picking the top 24, it’s still entertaining to see who can handle the pressure of performing for 33 million viewers.

The word is this year’s Season 7 has the best talent yet, but it’s hard to believe after watching the hideous performance of 17-year-old Peter Frampton—oh, I mean Garrett Haley (see below). “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” was a boring song choice, and Randy emphasized that he “didn’t do anything with” the song. The best comment was from Simon, who mentioned the boy’s paleness, saying that it looked as if he’d been locked up in his bedroom for a month. I just get the creeps when I look at the kid. Throughout the whole performance, I couldn’t stop staring at his faux-stache.

18-year-old Colton Berry made the not-so-wise choice to tell the world that from certain angles he looks like Ellen DeGeneres. I’m fairly sure that statement couldn’t have helped him get any votes. The musical theatre enthusiast sang “Suspicious Minds” and had Simon saying that he had no relevance in the recording industry.

25-year-old Amy Davis is beautiful and even Paula admitted that the camera loves her. But her agonizing performance of “Where the Boys Are” had me cringing the entire time. Joanne Borgella’s performance was just as bad.

So, who are my favorites? Right now, I have my eye on Jason Castro. He was the only performer who actually played an instrument, and as a musician, I am thankful that American Idol is finally allowing contestants to do this.

I also really dig Amanda Overmyer and her Janis Joplin-esque voice. This woman seems truly genuine to me and it doesn’t appear as though she’s trying to be anyone but herself. I’m also supporting Carly Smithson, another “rocker” chick on the show. Plus, she’s got a half-sleeve, so it doesn’t get much better than that.

What did you think of the first week’s performances? Did the American people send home the right people?



Uber-creepy Garrett



Oooh, baby I love your way...

And here's my girl Amanda Overmyer...

On February 12th, I wrote the following news story:

"I’ve never been a big fan of Yoko Ono. Though had you previously asked me to justify this opinion, I would have been at a loss. It was a view bequeathed to me by my father and his frequent voicing of what bitch he thought she was. But now I’ve been given some concrete evidence: she is suing Lennon.

Yes, she is suing Lennon, Lennon Murphy, the SG model and musician. Lennon is her real name, but Yoko Ono seems to think that the performer is “intentionally exploiting the name and confusing people by using it.” Lennon was, in fact, named after John Lennon and has been performing with that name since the age of 14.

Lennon claims that Yoko Ono has been aware of her name and its usage since 2000, when a lawyer at Arista Records presented the widow with the information. In 2003, Lennon trademarked the name with the United States Patent and Trademark office, and everything seemed to be copasetic. Fast-forward to now – two days before the statute of limitations on the trademark was to expire – the same lawyer has brought forward a suit against Lennon Murphy for use of the name. She is being accused of misleadingly representing herself, causing confusing in the marketplace, and tarnishing John Lennon’s name.

Lennon has posted an open letter on her website and Myspace page, from which the following is an excerpt:

And I agree. So here’s to supporting Lennon, a fellow Suicide Girl, against the incomprehensible greed of Yoko Ono. Yoko Ono, the woman whose February 2007 remix album is entitled Yes, I’m a Witch.

And, for the record, we're not alone - even Julian Lennon has voiced his support.




Fatality is just glad that Lennon is the SG and not Yoko Ono. *shudder*"

Since then, however, forthcoming information has necessitated a reworking of that story. On February 14, a reaction letter from Yoko Ono was distributed. In this letter, Yoko claims that the previous claims of a suit against Lennon Murphy are untrue.

It will be interesting to see how this all pans out as the feverish frenzy from the previous reporting simmers down...we can disentangle the relative distribution between misunderstanding, publicity intents, poor journalism, fulfillment of expectations and desires, misapprehension of the law, and all of the other factors that can combine to create such a headline. The truth seems a bit obscured right now, but if any additional news or commentaries from the two women arise, I will be sure to further update the story.

Fatality has edited.

We huffed the skies into our mouths/We saw the ocean and drank it down/Cause we were giants, or maybe birds/We slept with lions, tucked into their fur. -- Les Savy Fav

It’s 2:30 a.m., New Year’s Day 2008. Tim Harrington--lead singer of recently reunited Brooklyn indie rock powerhouse Les Savy Fav--is trying out to be a Suicide Girl. He lifts up his shirt to reveal his ample bosom and shoots the camera a coquettish look.

“That’s one set, I’m gonna do another set later.”

I’m trying to keep it together. My questions -- nervously typed up a few hours, several plastic cups of champagne, cans of Sparks, and swigs of box wine earlier -- lie crumpled on the greenroom table. My only saving grace is a fat blue line of Adderall I stumbled upon at a friend of a friend’s house party, ten ‘til midnight, when I went to pee and found myself surrounded by air-chewing frat boys snapping, “Do you want some or not?” It gave me just enough presence of mind to run and grab bassist Syd Butler when I saw him outside the venue and explain that the Bowery Ballroom’s security goon was guarding the door with the illogical single-mindedness of Cerberus. But now this focus feels out of place in a room full of rockers jolly from drink. I sip slowly from a bottle of Stoli and start things off with a fairly tame question:

“What was it like coming back after the hiatus? Was there ever any question that you would?”

“Not really,” Tim answers while taking off his pants, “I like to think of it like we broke up with you guys, the world. It was getting a little codependent, and we decided we needed a little breather, a time out… just wanted to be friends.”

His answer parallels, perhaps a little too well, the breakup-referencing title of the band’s new album, Let’s Stay Friends. He stretches out the metaphor, pants in hand:

“You know, you kinda can’t talk to each other for a little while when that first happens, otherwise it’s weird. It’s like, we want all the emotional closeness without any of the physical closeness, so we had a clean break and now we’re—” He stops, looks at the camera, then puts his pants back on, announcing, “This is my second set.”

I ask what it’s like to get back in the studio after such a long break. Tim starts to answer, but producer Chris Zane interrupts.

“It was miserable mate, let’s not even lie about it,” he says, slurring a bit. “If it wasn’t for me, the whole thing would’ve been a complete disaster. They wanted to cut ‘What Would Wolves Do’, and I put it back on the album. They’re foolish band members.”

“Who wanted to cut that song?” I ask, “It’s one of my favorites.”

“Everyone but me and Syd,” says Chris, shaking his head, “I’m just gonna say it right now, me and Syd were genius, everyone else, foolish. Rubbish, rubbish, everyone else, rubbish. Chris brilliant, everyone else, rubbish.”

I ask a follow-up question, directed at everyone, about the songwriting process, but Chris is on a roll. He's not even in the band, but I can tell he wishes he were from the way he hogs the spotlight.

“It was terrible! It was absolutely… horrendous process. Don’t let them fool you, fuck the press, the process was completely--” he pauses, perhaps searching for a synonym for rubbish--“rubbish.”

“Chris is extremely difficult to manage,” Tim sighs, then grabs my laptop and does this:




I start ignoring Chris Zane despite being seated right next to him.

“What do you guys do for fun here in New York?” I ask Tim.

“We like to eat food,” he says, “good food!” and I believe him. In a world of slouching, heroin-chic front men reveling in the melodrama of shirtlessness, Tim is a refreshing anomaly; he doesn’t take himself too seriously, and he eats. He’s also extremely comfortable with his body. He doesn’t see what the big deal is about bodies in general: when asked his opinion on SuicideGirls.com, he says, “People’s bodies, big whoop, everyone’s all freaked out about it. Boobs. Boobs. Boobs. I think it’s natural.”

I think he’s more excited about his own modeling efforts than he lets on; I ask him to tell me some tour stories, and he coyly tells the story of what just happened.

“We were at this concert, and it was like, uh… I did a set. Got five hundred bucks. I showed my butt beaver. I showed my rear beaver.”

He’s not ashamed of this, and removes his top once more to prove it.

“That’s my third set. I have three sets—one set here, one set here, and one set down here…like a pig has three sets.”


© 2008 Calamity

I flash back to the day before, when I told some friends I was going to meet Tim Harrington.

“Don’t get too excited,” one of them said, “I’ve met him and he’s really quite normal.”

That may be the case most of the time, but there’s no reckoning with what the pre-show New Year’s party and a roomful of eyes have released in him. I’m along for the ride now.




note: While helping Tim blow up balloons to create a festive atmosphere earlier, I was struck directly in the eye by one of the little fucks.

Refreshed by my virtual head crushing, I ask the group about their New Year’s resolutions. Tim snaps back to attention; I can tell he’s thought about how he might answer this question.

“In 2008 Les Savy Fav plan to meet or exceed modest expectations.”

Words to live by.

Suddenly, everyone is talking at once. Tim's wrapping himself in silver paper, and their manager Simon is going on a tirade about how “you should never eat seafood on a Sunday.” No one’s paying attention to me but Chris, who complements my tights/shorts combo profusely, touching my leg to better illustrate which garment he’s discussing. Backing away, I tell him they’re my party shorts: I don’t flash anyone if I need to sit down, and the whole operation’s fairly tricky to get off.


© 2008 Calamity

It’s after three when Calamity (who has been manning the camera) and I leave the green room to stand at the edge of the stage, and the second show of the evening begins.

Les Savy Fav are a relentless rock-and-roll fun machine. Tim emerges still wrapped in shiny paper, and despite their 3 a.m. crazies, the band never misses a beat. The songs off Let’s Stay Friends are even better live than on the album. What some take for a reigning in of the band’s boundless energy is really a fuller exploration of their range; they hit eleven a whole lot harder when they’re not screaming up there all the time.

The chorus to “Patty Lee” invites us on a drunken sing-a-long:

Patty Lee, turn the lights on please, there’s something I don’t understand/Patty Lee turn the lights on please, this party’s gotten out of hand!

The raucous garage-rock strains of “The Equestrian” make us freak out like the pink haired six-year-old in the video. We do this until we are hoarse, sweaty, and covered in our drinks.

“Where are you going now?”

The show’s over and Simon wants to know. I’ve no idea. We go back to the green room but everyone’s cleared out and it’s just Calamity and me among untouched hummus and pita, Coronas, Red Stripes, bottles of tequila and scary plastic masks. We help ourselves to some of the refuse.


© 2008 Calamity

How we get home on the subway is anyone’s guess, but I awaken eight hours later to a world of pain and the image that caps off this journey in my mind: a wrinkled American flag inhaling and exhaling sweetly on the couch, my Calamity’s red hair spilling out one end, little feet poking out the other. Instead of puking my soul out, I sigh, turn over and go back to sleep.


© 2008 Calamity

For those who want to see more of this hot mess, the whole video can be viewed here.

Line.

This seemingly simple, one syllable word is capable of eliciting such a variety of reactions. Drug users’ hearts sing and soar, palpitating with excitement. Mathematicians might share a Euclidean insight. Actors are likely to rehearse and recite. But, today, to Radiohead fans in East London a line means one very good thing: a secret Radiohead show! And thus, like drug users, their hearts are likely to sing and soar.

At 1900 GMT, Radiohead will play a show at the Rough Trade East shop on Brick Lane. A secret show, yes. So secret, in fact, that even the staff of the shop did not know they would be hosting such an event. So, today, music lovers will line up on Brick Lane and wait and wait and wait, hoping for a chance to see Thom Yorke and crew.

The show will feature songs from Radiohead’s latest album, In Rainbows. While diehard fans have had a variety of reactions to the release – from absolute adoration to lamenting its purportedly more formulaic approach – the album has met praise from some particularly “big” sources. For instance, In Rainbows was named #1 Album of the Year by Billboard’s Critics Choice 2007 and #2 Album of the Year by Time Magazine.

The tracks were released for download in October 2007, but only in the first week of January 2008 did the physical version of the CD become available for purchase. Of course, this release meant that purchasers would be paying a set price for the music, rather than the original listener-dictated value of the downloads. This fact also meant that the album went to the top of the UK charts during the first week of the new year - particularly noteworthy in light of the previous "success" (i.e. large number of downloads) of the online version.

It was previously reported that most downloaders paid nothing for the album. This fact, however, is not particularly attributed to having motivated Radiohead to proceed with a physical release.

The musician said that an internet only release would have been insanity. Additionally interesting is the fact that the album is being distributed by XL Recordings – the first independent release for the band after a sixteen year relationship with EMI. Regarding this matter, Yorke grieved the major labels' inability to cater to the fans alongside their excessive profit cuts.

So, there you have it. Some recent Radiohead news. And in case any of you don’t see this until you get back from the show, be sure to fill us in.

Fatality only listened to three Radiohead songs while writing this article. She switched it up, she swears.

Since I have yet to see an overview of the music of 2007 on SG, I thought I’d share my top ten albums of the year.



10. Beirut – The Flying Club Cup

22-year-old bandleader Zach Condon found Paris as his muse for this album. The album takes off after a wail of horns into “Nantes,” in which Condon sings mournfully, “Well it's been a long time/long time now/since I've seen you smile/and I'll gamble away my fright... and in a year, a year or so/this will slip into the sea...” Condon’s instrumentation is joined wonderfully with an orchestra of violins, arranged by Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett.

Favorite Tracks: “Nantes” and “Un Dernier Verre (Pour la Route)”



9. KT Tunstall – Drastic Fantastic

Tunstall’s music is what I like to call the thinking-person’s kind of pop. Her lyrics are full of meaning and her melodies are complex. Similar to her debut album, Eye to the Telescope, her second release is structured the same way. The beginning of the album is more rock-inspired, but it slows down toward the end into a few lovely ballads. Tunstall doesn’t keep the same bluesy quality she had with her first album, but turns to a more edgy-rock sound.

Favorite Tracks: “White Bird” and “Someday Soon”



8. Amy Winehouse – Back to Black

This woman was all over the tabloids in 2007 and many seem to get a good laugh out of her antics, but the girl sure can sing. This album is filled with the sounds of 1960s soul music. It’s evident that the woman has some great stories to tell, with the album beginning with the song “Rehab” and ending with “Addicted.” She knows how to grab people's attention, that's for sure.

Favorite Tracks: “You Know I’m No Good”



7. Spoon- Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

It doesn’t matter that this album has one of the goofiest titles ever—Spoon has every reason to be confident enough to give the album whatever ridiculous name they wish. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is one of the trio’s finest records and just good ‘ole fashioned rock ‘n roll.

Favorite Tracks: “Don’t Make Me a Target”



6. Iron & Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog

Sam Beam is trying new things—and he’s doing it wonderfully. He has managed to find different worlds of music with this album and incorporated a much fuller sound than his previous albums. Fortunately, his warm melodies and harmonies are not lost.

Favorite Tracks: “House by the Sea” and “Carousel”



5. The Shins – Wincing the Night Away

The Shins third release is clearly their transition from pop music that you’d listen to at home to rock music that you’d want to hear live. Although they have not lost their pop hooks that make their songs so catchy, there seems to be more confidence coming from Mercer, along with a harder sound. I wouldn’t call this their best album, but it’s definitely leading up to something great.

Favorite Tracks: “Sea Legs” and “Phantom Limb”



4. PJ Harvey – White Chalk
My previous news article gave a short review of PJ Harvey’s newest album. “White Chalk” places you in another world. The voice she uses on this album, which she calls her “church voice,” is a voice she has never used on any of her previous albums, and I enjoyed every second of it.

Favorite Tracks: “When Under Ether” and “To Talk to You”



3. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
Every time I hear Arcade Fire, it blows my mind. Neon Bible is the kind of album that can give the gift of self-discovery to anyone who listens to it, so I’m not going to even bother to describe the feelings it gave me while I listened to it.

Favorite Tracks: “Keep the Car Running” and “Neon Bible”



2. Radiohead – In Rainbows
Radiohead continues to prove themselves with this masterpiece of abstract and stimulating songs. I found something new that I loved about this album every time I listened to it. This is the prettiest Radiohead I’ve ever heard.

Favorite Tracks: “Faust Arp” and “Videotape”



1. Feist – The Reminder

This woman was in more commercials than the Noid. If her name doesn’t sound familiar, this song probably will.



Her ever-present appearances in commercials are entirely understandable because her music is phenomenal. In fact, her newest release, “The Reminder,” is the album I listened to the most in 2007. Although this album is more subtle and ballad-heavy than her others, I loved the unexpected melodies of the songs. And I just plain love the woman—she’s a goddess.


Favorite Tracks: “I Feel it All” and “1234”



There you have it--Elsie’s favorite albums of 2007. What were yours?

Happy Holidays boys and girls! This is one of those good news-bad news columns. I’m spending a lot of time on the road doing free seminars and helping out bands in person where I can. The book is doing very well (thank you to all those who purchased it and for those of you who haven’t, the best deal in town is still Amazon). But unfortunately, today, as I put pen to paper I’m saddened to tell you this is my last column.

As has become a tradition with this column, I’ve already lied to you in the first 200 words. I’m not putting pen to paper, I’m sitting here sipping a red bull listening to my China Dub Soundsystem album dictating this to my assistant Katie. This last year has been terrific. I met some great people, both at and through the SG office and through this column. Anyone getting ready ask me for some free advice, you can always catch me on MySpace, through the Tour:Smart website, or send me a message to my SG Page.

Get out there and do something mother fuckers!

Peace, Love, and Respect,


MarteeeeeeeeeeeeeeN

I was first introduced to Sri Lankan/English hip hop artist, visual disruptor, politico, and all-around sexy force of nature M.I.A. in March of 2005, when a friend much hipper than I to cutting edge jams included "Galang" on a birthday mix CD she made for me. I was bowled over. Not because I'd never heard anything similar-sounding; though the song certainly combines sounds in a brilliant and catchy way, hip hop has been biting South Asia's musical style for years, while UK dance beats and Caribbean reggae and reggaeton have been known to mingle freely. It was two things, really, that caught my attention. First, the personality behind the song; unlike the Diddys of the world, she was someone I could relate to. Like me, she was a young girl venturing out into the big scary world with only her attitude to protect her. She'd been given a lot of advice -- "suck a dick'll help you/don't let em get to you" -- and was now spitting it back out in a parody of her own situation. She had a cool bravado without being ridiculous, and she kept asses shaking with an infectious chorus about "blazing a blaze". In short, she was A Girl I'd Smoke A Blunt With.

The second thing I loved was that South Asia -- long a victim to the West's aforementioned biting, musical and otherwise -- was finally biting back, with her as its representative, its voice.

A lot has happened since then. Fast forward to 2007 and there have been world tours, underground hits, visa problems, a rising popularity in the blogosphere, a somewhat public breakup with boyfriend and collaborator Diplo, and a whole lot of defending herself against those who would deny her credit for her work because they just can't deal with the idea of a gorgeous Sri Lankan woman being the mastermind behind such brilliant, dirty, political tracks that alternately tempt and smack you like a bomb wrapped in candy.

And now, this: M.I.A.'s critically acclaimed latest release, Kala, has somehow made it to the top of Rolling Stone's disgustingly formulaic "Top Albums of 2007" list, beating out perennial old people favorite Bruce Springsteen for the number one spot. I can just hear Jann Wenner's voice in my head going, "Hey, Brooklyn kids. Yeah, you in the skinny jeans! I just want to make sure you know that we are down with the youth culture of today. We pay attention to all you weird blog people, and we even included some artists who are not white as fuck! Also, I think it might complement your hip, indie rock lifestyle if you smoked. Can I interest you in some Camel cigarettes?"

What does this mean for Maya Arulpragasam? Probably not too much. The experimental, global, take-no-prisoners vibe of Kala despite its being associated with such mainstream influences as Timbaland and Interscope proves that she's going to keep on doing what she does best, with or without your approval. However, for pop culture at large, it can only be beneficial to have a quality, boundary-pushing artist/positive female role model on MTV... even though they keep fucking her over with censorship and the like. On the flipside, each time big media does something obnoxious to her and she posts emphatically in her MySpace blog about it, it draws attention to the everyday censorship that most of us take for granted.

So crunk yourself up, have an M.I.A. dance party, and get psyched that for once, an artist who's hit the big time is still playing by her own rules.

Paper Planes, gunshot sounds in tact:


Nasty beats and brutal politics: agit-pop confection Sunshowers


Bollywood take-off Jimmy:


When you contract Bird Flu, you dance until you die: