Grand Archives—formerly just Archives—will join Modest Mouse on their upcoming US tour, beginning with their April 15th show at the Paramount. This will be their second show ever. Congratulations, guys.

As Ari already said, there's a shitload of stuff happening this weekend. But incase that just isn't enough for ya, there's even more to be had in this week's Setlist.

Hear music from 1-2-1-2, Shorthand for Epic, Iceage Cobra, and Burdfur is Green Feathers, and a whole lot more. Okay, maybe just four or five more. Still, that's enough.

Click to listen.

Word on the street is that kids are already lined up outside the Vera Project for tonight's sure-to-sell-out Lightning Bolt show. Doors don't open for nearly four hours. 150 tickets will be available at the door. Better go get in line if you don't already have your tickets...

(And, a couple notes from the Vera: If you do have your ticket, you still need to bring $1 for a membership card unless you already have one. And, you can't buy a ticket at the door to give to someone later, you just pay to get in and get your stamp, so you have to actually be there.)

It seems like, as tour season starts revving up, there are always those nights where EVERYTHING IS GOING ON. They happen randomly, with no warning. Why is April 6th one of them? I don't know. Anyhow, here's my rundown of what looks good tonight (and tomorrow night, for good measure).

TONIGHT
Robyn Hitchcock w/ Sean Nelson and Johanna Kunin @ the Croc
The Robot Ate Me w/ Dennis Driscoll, Run Chico Run, and aheartlesssolution @ Atlas
Free (your ass) Hip Hop Fridays @ the Baltic Room (I've been wanting to check this out for a while. Anyone been?)
Andrew W.K., Flosstradamus, and Pretty Titty @ Sing Sing at Chop Suey (Eric's all over this)
Holy Ghost Revival, the Pharmacy, Tulsa, and Shellshag @ the Comet (rumor is that there will be free drink tickets)
SunTzu Sound and Kid Hops @ Electric Avenue at CHAC Lower Level
The Hacks and the Snakebites @ the Funhouse
Coconut Coolouts & Ursula & the ONONOs @ the first Pho Bang! in two years at Chop Suey
JJ & Mofro @ Neumos (I actually don't care, but Zwickel does)
Lightning Bolt w/ Bug Sized Mind, A Pack of Wolves, Teeth and Hair, and Shearing Pinx @ Vera (again, Grandy)

TOMORROW
The Blakes, the Willowz, and Shim @ the Sunset
Iceage Cobra w/ No More Stereo @ Atlas
Triumph of Lethargy blah blah w/ Feral Children, A Gun That Shoots Knives, and 1-2-1-2 @ the Comet (Eric on Feral Children and Triumph of Lethargy, 1-2-1-2's Band Page)
Fitz of Depression w/ Steel Tigers of Death @ the Funhouse
Winning, Twin, Origami, Devin & Robin @ the S.S. Marie Antoinette
John Vanderslice & St. Vincent @ the Triple Door
The Cops, the Whore Moans, the Hands, Shake Some Action @ the High Dive
The Lights, the Snacks, the Transport Assembly @ Jules Maes

WHAT THE MOTHER FUCK?

Sometimes living in Seattle sucks really hard because you have to make so many goddamn choices. It makes me want to swear.

Tell me what I should go to!

Last Night's edition of Laguna Bitch, the hilariously named drag revue at the hilariously decorated Club Lagoon was the perfect warm-up for tonight's Pho Bang at not-at-all-funny El Corazon. Portland's Sissy Boys ruled the show last night, with a hard-to-follow but entertaining routine about an apocalyptic post-Iraq America or some shit. Or some shit!—one act squeezed frighteningly realistic fake feces all over his face for a climax. Another number turned Justin Timberlake's "Sexyback" into an ode to bulimia (sample lyric: "I'm sipping ipecac/you anorexics don't know how to act")—hilarious!

That's gonna be hard to top, but tonight's Pho Bang, featuring Jackie Hell and Ursula Android (pictured above) might just do it. There's going to be a musical number from Disney's Beauty & the Beast, a performance by the Coconut Coolouts, Ursula's new Yoko-tastic band the Ononos, and the Seattle debut of Portland's cosmic freak dance troupe, Fleshtone. Check out this video for Fleshtone's "GFM" as remixed by Audiodregs bit-wizard Copy :

And here's what Kelly O has to say about tonight's shenanigans:

PHO BANG!, FLESHTONE, DJ BABY J, THE COCONUT COOLOUTS, URSULA & THE ONONOS (El Corazón, late) Aye carumba! The first Pho Bang! in almost TWO years! There's that old saying that you can never get enough of a good thing. Bullshit—back when the Bang was every week, it WAS almost too much—I think I almost killed myself going each and every Thursday (Friday morning Bang-overs, yow!). The night was so freakishly out-of-control, so consistently and absolutely fun—the filthy fantastic drag, the live music, the drunken Baby J dance party at the end—truly unlike any other night this sleepy town has ever known. This edition promises to be especially koo-koo-crazy, because there'll be filmmakers in the house—Ursula Android and Jackie Hell start filming a feature-length film next month, and tonight's attendees can get on the list to be extras. Pho Bang! is a magical mess that only happens a couple times a year. Don't miss this one. KELLY O

Highlights so far:

Rapping over Mylo, which mixes into Yes. Simian Mobile Disco mixing into The Romantics (once again with new raps). Gaz Nevada!

Brilliant! Party record of the summer has just been released!

King - Love & Pride

This is totally one of my favorite songs of the '80's. My pick for BSE (TW)! But no one here listens to me....

Please enjoy this video:

Then if you wish, use this handy link to download the brilliant (and long out of print - thankyou!) 12" version! (Including the amazing 2 minute drum solo by Tim Burgess which opens the mix!)

You're welcome.

I was talking to a friend at Sunday's Calla show and asked him what he was excited about seeing next. His eyes got big and he asked, "Do you know Lightning Bolt?" I replied in the negative, and he spent the next five minutes giving me the quick tutorial on the duo (former RISD students, noise-rock consisting of a bassist and drummer, strong aversion to playing on actual stages). They play the Vera Project tonight, and I can't think of the last time I've been this excited about seeing a band I've never heard. Here's a video of the madness yet to be experienced.

Today we’re talking room sounds with Gary Reynolds from Electrokitty Studio and Jonathan Plum from London Bridge.

This is usually a Thursday post, next week it will back on Thursday.

** Gary and Jon will be monitoring this, so if you have any questions, ask away.

When dealing with room sounds, Trigonometry is involved. Be not afraid. Proceed, crank, and yield the rock that is within you.

They speak of modes. Room modes are the result of standing waves and sound being reflected back off the walls and interfering with the original travelling wave. At certain frequencies, there will be some points in the room where the waveforms will add to produce a node or loud spot, and others where cancellation occurs to produce an antinode.

Gary says:

The dimensions of any room are going to accentuate or cut out certain frequencies. Better sounding rooms have fewer modes. Every room has it’s decay time too.

When dealing with room sounds, there is reflection, absorption, and diffusion.

Reflection is what happens when the sound bounces off the wall. Parallel walls are bad. In square rooms, the soundwaves bounce back and forth and make your recording sound like shit. You want unparallel walls and surfaces. Splaying the walls is what it’s called when you make them unparallel.

Absorption helps deaden the sound and keep your frequencies from going crazy. Studio foam and compressed fiberglass are other things that absorb. You can use bass traps for low end.

Diffusion is a brick wall. Diffusion disperses or scatters the sound and makes for even sound distribution. Anything with hard uneven surfaces.

Living rooms can be great places to record. Windows are good, they give sound and frequencies a place to escape. But at home, in the living room, you have to deal with neighbors. Also, there are ambulances going by or jets flying over that could mess with your recording. So people go into the basement, with square walls and no windows - not an acoustical friendly place to be.

Continue reading "Room Sounds - Avoid the Node" »

Evenings as beautiful as yesterday's demand outdoor strolling, so a friend and I headed down from the Hill to Pioneer Square for the monthly art walk. We were late to most of the galleries-- all the freebies were snatched up, natch--but we did arrive in time to catch the Orkestar Zirkonium parading down First Avenue. The band is a 12-piece (maybe more) ad-hoc collection of horns and drums, like a klezmer ensemble at a Gypsy high school football game halftime show, and they played Pied Piper to a motley assortment of teenaged mimes in whiteface, drunk punks drinking tallboys of Ranier, and dreadlocked hippies dancing with loose-limbed swirls, not to mention a slew of regular folks just along for the ride. It was a totally unexpected blast of free-for-all musical frenzy, perfectly attunded to the balmy night air.

Peeling off from the pack, my friends and I ended up in the nearby New Orleans Creole Restaurant on First and Cherry, drawn by the sound of more brass. A band had just finished as we walked in and the place was packed with tourists and families. It seemed like an ordinary ho-hum Thursday night crowd. Ten minutes after we sat down, though, the music started up again and suddenly the creaky wooden floorboards were inundated with dancers--a pack of young and unbelievably talented couples doing the Lindy and the Charleston like pros, busting complex steps and going full-bore aerobic with a rare degree of skill. These kids were damn good and obviously well-practiced and the band--the classy Ham Carson Quartet--played just the right brand of ragtime jazz to juice 'em up. After a few songs and a few beers the room became a Prohibition-era speakeasy, warm and dimly lit, humid with sweat and booze and bent notes from a hot trombone.

After the band wound down we spoke to a few of the dancers. Some were heading off to another swing session at a Russian social hall; others had early work days and were going home. Thursday nights at the Creole joint are a regular thing, worth checking out for the music and the dancing, if not the pretty-alright menu.

This swing underground is unusual and fascinating, though, because anyone will tell you that revival died a timely death ten years ago. But these kids were no dilettantes and had some serious moves, ones they ply all over the city at different dance nights, clubs, and ballrooms like the Century. They also spoke in hushed tones about "Blues Parties," impromptu house parties where couples get scandalously intimate on dark living room dancefloors to small jazz combos. Gotta love a thriving, dedicated subculture.

And you gotta love a random Thursday in Pioneer Square that turns up not one but two.

It’s kind of a no-brainer in the best song ever department, but my first entry for Best Song Ever (This Week) is the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows”. It could be because I’ve been rapturously caught up in the first season DVDs of HBO’s “Big Love”, which uses said song as it’s theme, but really my relationship with the Beach Boys runs way deeper than that. Let’s see:

Episode 1 - I’m seven or eight years old, my mom and dad are divorced, but my mom, my sister, and I still make the occasional trip down to Sacramento to visit my family on my dad’s side. On these trips, our aural input is a steady diet of Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Bryan Adams, and the Beach Boys (I have this suspicion that my mom set her musical tastes just by raiding the “B” section of a record store one day). My mom always liked the poppy surf-and-cars Beach Boys stuff, not the late-period loony Brian Wilson business, so it was mostly greatest hits cassettes, “409”, “Everybody’s Surfin’”, stuff like that. But every once in a while I must’ve heard “In My Room” and “God Only Knows” and “Wouldn’t It be Nice”, slightly heavier Beach Boys material, because it's all burned into my brain on a pre-conscious level.

Episode 2 – It’s the Puyallup fair, early 90s, and my mom has taken my sister and I to see Mike Love’s “Beach Boys”, a Brian Wilson-free travesty of Hawaiian shirts, “California Girls”, and John “Uncle Jesse” Stamos on drums. I’d like to say that my pre-teen self inherently knew what a sham I was seeing, but I think I was just genuinely excited about seeing someone from the TV.

Episode 3 – I’m 22, just returned from my obligatory post-collegiate backpack around Europe, and working the graveyard donut-frying shift at Top Pot Donuts on Summit. One of my coworkers there is Adam Miller from the Chromatics, and I quickly learn that one of the downsides of working with an aspiring musical genius is suffering through their highly refined record collection. Along with the Fall and Syd Barrett, Miller liked to play Brian Wilson’s “Smile” (this was before it was reissued, if anyone’s tallying cool points). I never went through a revelatory Pet Sounds phase, but I knew about crazy-ass Brian Wilson from an A&E biography in which he wades into the ocean only after getting a note from his psychiatrist saying that it would be ok. Wilson, of the Beach Boys, was afraid of the ocean, you see. Anyway, I had pretty much zero context for “Smile” and just filed it alongside Sid Barret and Mark E Smith as genius music that I just didn’t enjoy while working a deep fryer at 3am.

Which pretty much brings us to this week’s “Big Love” binge. I’m still not the kind of person who rants about Wilson’s musical genius, although I acknowledge it, and I still mostly think of the Beach Boys as childhood car-ride music. But damn if “God Only Knows” isn’t the best song ever. The production is amazing—the echoing horse trots, the ghostly strings and accordion, the vaguely psychedelic breakdown at the 1:05 minute mark, the rising drum rolls of the song’s crescendo, and, of course, those perfect vocal harmonies. Lyrically, it’s both a tentative love song and an existential lament for love and life’s inevitable fade into the unknown. It’s a must for any morbidly anxious romantic, such as myself, and it's the Best Song Ever (This Week).

This week in metal we have Seattle’s own Hell Promise. They have a release called “Aim for Hell” out on RocketStar Records.

They toured with Himsa and had some of their songs on FUEL TV, an extreme sports channel.

Brian Johnson - vox and guitar, Nate Baker - bass, Frank Barrera - drums, and Jeremy McAllister - more guitar.

Skulls, check. Trucks, check. Cigarette smoking, check. A weird looking house, check. Skeletal straitjacket blood screeching vocals, check. Gunshot sound when you click things on their website, check.

This kind of stuff always scares the shit out me. These guys aren’t singing about flowers or sunshine.

Here is the video for their song, "New Black Death".

Gosh, how exciting! I just received word from a K Records rep that one of the best side projects ever, the Halo Benders, is busy writing songs right now to record a new album soon! They are playing Sunday and Monday in Boise, where they are presumably trying out the new songs. If you are close, you should definitely go, and I wish I could (anyone up for a Sunday road trip?). There are rumors of them playing more shows soon, though, so let's cross our fingers.

I love the Halo Benders a lot, because when Doug Martsch and Calvin Johnson get together, they complement each other perfectly. I'll wax more poetic about them next week.

I can do the history of Mr. Fox no better justice then to direct you to a great website here. There you'll learn about how the band was originally put together by husband and wife Bob and Carole Pegg, and what ultimately led to their demise (most notably the lack of easily toured rock instrumentation).

But I do find the two albums by Mr. Fox, Join Us In Our Game and The Gipsy to be essential to all fans of that crazy vein of British folk that had a tinge of psychedelia.

Join Us in particular is so unpolished that on first listen it can seem absolutely ametuerish. Carole Pegg's violin is nearly over the edge in its jarring, rough sound, and the cello work of Andrew Massey sounds at times like he's taking a pneumatic drill to the instrument. Not a waver of vibrato is used in any string instrument on this album. It can be a little unsettling in how straightforward it all sounds, like listening to a band that just learned a new song, but don't quite have the balls to perform it yet.

But it's a really genuine sound, akin to traveling musicians who have no formal training but can't help to play so stridently because of their love of the music.

From reading the little history of the band, this seems to be exactly the effect they were going for on the first album. The instrumentation is odd--no guitars!--filled with bowed strings and wind instruments like oboes and penny whistles. There's the odd melodeon and organ thrown in for good use too. Maybe that sounds like a poor man's Cheiftans, but that's really not the case(foremost because the songs are English and not Irish). The songs for the most part stay on the positive side and rarely delve into murdered girls and dead lovers, often the trademark of British folk.

All that and Join Us still seems to pull together and work.

By their second album, the husband/wife team weren't getting along as well and other changes included more traditional instrumentation (read: guitars). Musically it's more adventerous, with long dirges and choral arrangements.

I love both, but you really need to be introduced to Mr. Fox when they were still getting along with each other and the music they put out was fresh, exciting, and for how old it sounded, new.

Samples, as per usual, at my blog, here.

Two album's I've been listening to lately, both from Kompakt, both minimal in form but sonically lush, both in heavy competition for my listening time:

The Field - From Here We Go Sublime

The first chance I had to give this album a good listen was on the drive back from Vancouver BC after a long night of raving to Ed Banger's disto-disco head wreckers. Short on sleep, running late, and sublimely hungover, this record was the perfect balm.

The Field's soft synths, delicately treated vocals, and ambling structures recall Orbital at times, but the looping guitars and nodding downbeats of "A Paw In My Face" are something else entirely. It's an easy album to get lest in. The Field's tracks are repetitive and lulling—rhythms ripple and tones wash up, and though the songs are deep, there's little breaking their flat, oceanic surfaces.

Gui Boratto - Chromophobia

Unlike the Field, Gui Boratto does not trade in hazy tones and distant beats. His restrained beats and pinging, detuned synths are sharp and clear. There's more negative space in his compositions than in the Field's, too, and less synth padding. Boratto manages to align and realign his spare elements in constantly shifting patterns, ranging from humid funk ("Shebang" and "Chromophobia") to twitchy techno ("Mr Decay", "Gate 7") to a little Orbital ambience of his own on "The Blessing".

This isn't an album I would suggest for hangovers. It's too kinetic and too demanding to work as a soothing background. This album is for the drive to the club, maybe the club itself.

In an effort to wash away that itchy sonic residue that Amy Winehouse and Charlotte Church left in my ears, I have been listening to/watching this on repeat:

I can't explain it either, but I think it's working.

At a meeting this morning of the city council’s neighborhoods committee, club owners and music-industry reps spent an hour airing their concerns about Mayor Nickels’s controversial nightlife legislation, and offering their own suggestions about how the city should regulate problem clubs without adversely impacting nightlife in the city.

Read the full story over on Slog.

The Social Ghost Society is a couple of kids (mostly Vera kids, which is how I know them--I sit on the board of Vera) who run excellent shows at Artworks and sometimes in other venues. They also run Artworks' Ursa Minor buy/barter/ask nicely store, whose profits they are using to buy a PA for the space. They are amazing people who are working really hard to make their own community vibrant, and they are doing an excellent job.

So here's the news with them:

First of all, due to a snafu, the show they are putting on at Artworks this week was incorrectly listed in the calendar as being at the S.S. Marie Antoinette. NOT TRUE! Here is the show, along with the blurb we wrote about it:

4-11-07

Jesus Makes the Shotgun Sound

the Holy Curtain

(and guests)

Live | 8 pm, all ages

One of the forefront bands in a tremendously tight-knit and fertile young scene centered in L.A. County’s Inland Empire, Jesus Makes the Shotgun Sound make music that exists on the perpetual frontier of maximum rock epicness. Hosting three guitarists and vocals from nearly all members, JMTSS emit the impression of one hulking musical organism, adept at both Morricone/OK Computer–style grandeur and the sort of skin-crawling psychedelic undercurrents that only the City of Angels can produce. Tourmates and fellow I.E. scenemakers Holy Curtain cut a more arch row. They deliver rhythmically palpitating art punk overlayed with a deeply wine-stained, Nick Cave–esque sensibility. A tiny capsule of what their vibrant, growing scene has to offer, these dudes should bring the drama in spades. SAM MICKENS

Also, there are two bands made up of Social Ghost Society members, and they are both very good.
Paper Whale is three little hippie girls making folk music that is much more happy and fun than your average downer business.
Talbot Tagora are Unwound redux with a bitchin' drummer and abounding dissonance.
Check 'em out!

Reviewing the new CocoRosie album The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn for next week's issue and wishing the whole thing lived up to the promise of "Rainbowarriors." The song is ethereal fairy-funk goth-hop that sounds like an enchanted rave under a toadstool. The album sort of slips into meandering atmospherics after that, either boldly or blandly, depending on your mood.

So underground it's not even available on YouTube, only this lower-budget knockoff. Still pretty damn funny though.

A.M.Y.W.I.N.E.H.O.U.S.E.

A.N.D.

C.H.A.R.L.O.T.T.E.C.H.U.R.C.H.

S.I.N.G.

B.E.A.T.I.T.

Holy shit! That was terrible!

Just received this email:

Can you tell me if there is anything going on tomorrow on the anniversary of Layne's passing. There has to be something and I sure would like to be there. LAYNE LIVES WITHIN!!!

Not that I know of, but I am not omnipotent (despite my best efforts). Is there anything going on the anniversary of the death of the poor man's Kurt Cobain?

Tomorrow at 9:30 am at City Hall is the the Neighborhoods and Economic Development Committee hearing about the Mayor's Nightlife Proposal. Go down and support all the headz that want to make sure that unfair ordinances are not placed to discourage nightlife!

If you need/want more information, check out the Nightlife Music Association's website.

Yes, Band of the Week 1-2-1-2 is all about the sleaze and the sex and making people dance.

"But we don’t wanna be like every other dance band," says keyboardist Mason Dyer. "We wanna keep it a little more interesting." To that effect, Dyer and drummer Andrew Frank and bassist Christo Orozco switch instruments mid-set, throwing off their routine and adding a dose of unpredictability to their Rapture-inspired dance rock. "I love fucking four-on-the-floor disco beats--I can't get enough. We have that. We try to be weird enough with that beat behind it."

The band's been together for about seven months, playing mostly house parties and lofts, but they're picking up momentum as we speak. This weekend they've got a slot at the Comet opening for Triumph of Lethargy; next week they're at 1412 Gallery; in May the play Easy Street After Hours.

"They want us to get an EP together to sell in the store, so it's forcing us to step it up," Dyer says. "All we have is our demo but nothing packaged professionally. But we're planning to have the EP by May."

The few tracks available on 1-2-1-2's band page pulse with the dance beats Dyer says he loves so much, rippled with electro bass lines and cranked up tight and wiry with a swoosh of psychedelic keyboard flourish. It's the kind of stuff that just might make you wanna get up, get loose, and feel good about being bad.

"Our whole thing is trying to have that dirty sleaziness," Dyer says. "We're just sexy anyway."

I've never been exactly sure what that line meant. In fact, many of Billy Corgan's lyrics have always sort of evaded me. Still, Siamese Dream was one of my favorite records in high school.

It starts out bright and loud with "Cherub Rock," which really does sound like a rock song written by chubby little diaper-wearing angels wielding some killer shredding skills. "Quiet" gets a little heavier and I love that demanding and chirpy guitar sound that hits about ten seconds after the minute mark. Gets me a little goosebumpy, especially when the spiraling guitar in the chorus echoes its urgency. And the building bass that segues into the guitar solo? Fergedaboudit.

The wicked guitar in "Geek USA," and the crunchiness of "Hummer"... so good. And "Today" was, is, and always will be the perfect song for sunny days.

My favorite track, though (which won't be surprising to people who know me and know that I'm really a pathetic emo kid at heart), is "Mayonaise." It just kills me.

No more promise no more sorrow
No longer will I follow
Can anybody hear me
I just want to be me
When I can, I will
Try to understand
That when I can, I will

I feel like a melancholy teenager every time I hear it. No matter where I am or what I'm doing, for that five and a half minutes, with Billy's breathless crooning, my mind transports back to the days when I had a crush on that kid named Josh in my art class who always drew really dumb cartoons of skater dudes getting stoned. He was a sweet kid; he never knew I existed.

"Spaceboy" is the only song that never really did a lot for me (though I love the title), but maybe I was still in a "Mayonaise" daze whenever it came on, and unable to really appreciate it?

Even so, every track on Siamese Dream has its place—it's an admirable combination of aggression and melody (just like adolescence itself) and I really wish Billy Corgan never lost his mind and started writing bad poetry, because the world (and all the LiveJournal generation teenagers being forced to find comfort in crap like Fall Out Boy) could use more songs like these in their lives.

The idea of a new Smashing Pumpkins album, though (being released on July 7th) makes me nervous. I've yet to hear any of the new material, but with Jimmy saying that it "comes from a place so pure it will burn the lies off the very souls of those who try to discount it," I can't help but cringe a little bit.

Rat City Rollergirls do not F around. They hit hard, fall hard, and get after fast action. Elbows connect with teeth. You will be entertained.

Season 3 is upon us. Bout 2 was at Hanger 27, Magnuson Park:

I know what your thinking. "Is this some christian rock band?

No, not really, but I was as mistaken as you at first. Christian imagery is all over the first release by the British vocal folk-pop trio, Prelude. From songs titled, simply, God, to vague and odd christian-esque sounding ideas like the opening to the song Beauty Of The World which talks of Ceasar running through fields like the wind blowing the lace on a young girls breasts. (?)

More akin to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, (had Young the soft voice of a blonde Californian girl) then the other famous folk trio of the day, Peter, Paul and Mary, their records were released on the Dawn label in the UK. A label that was trying to compete with the likes of Vertigo for all things slightly prog and folky. There's no prog here at all. In fact everytime I put on this album I'm transported right to the sunny beach at sunset in southern California.

Which is odd, because Prelude came from Britain. Husband and wife Brian and Irene Hume joined with Ian Vardy in 1973 to release this solid album of tunes which includes Prelude's only American Top 40 hit, a cover of Neil Young's After The Gold Rush.

If the lyrics are a little odd and confusing, all is forgiven after listening to the short little gems which are strewn across both sides of the album. The arrangements are simle with a little drums and electric bass added at times, but for the most part it's a really simple and beautiful little gem. I play this one for friends at home all the time and Prelude still get the response they got 30 years ago, "Wow, this is great!... Who is it? ...From the UK?... No way. Wow."

Enjoy some nice samples at my blog.

Local lo-fi electronic hulkamania trio Truckasaurus is crushing cars and eating monster trucks all over Pitchfork today, thanks to some serious love from the site's month-in-techno guy, Philip Sherburne. In his column, he chooses to write up the Seattle act instead of recapping Miami's Winter Music Conference, if that gives you any idea how enthusiastic he is about them. This is huge! Sherburne writes:

I have seen the future of techno, and it is Truckasaurus.

Cheap, fast, and out of control, it's perfect for basement parties, though, and techno is desperately in need of more of those.

Big up the Truck!

If you have any fondness at all for the late, lamented Waaaaaaah! Records, you should go here. Every record ever released on Waaaaaaah! is now available, for free. There's a lot of twee, jangly stuff, it's true, but if you, like myself and Waaaaaaah!'s founder, have an inexplicable fondness for Scottish girls singing lead vocals, you'll probably find something to love.
Also: there's an anthology album that covers songs from The Sound of Music, most of which are pretty interesting.
Also: turns out, I really like typing Waaaaaaah! Who knew?
(Via Indie mp3.)

Wu-Tang, Lupe, Devendra, Gogol Bordello--the Bumbershoot lineup looks pretty sweet so far. But I'm totally geeking out about the Avett Brothers. With a huge summer tour that includes appearances at Coachella and now Bumbershoot, the North Carolina trio is set to pop in a major way. After seeing them several times over the last couple years, I can tell you this: their Bill Monroe-meets-the-Violent-Femmes stage show is one of the best out there right now.

Their third full-length, Emotionalism, is set for May 15 release. Check out a track on their MySpace page.

You will be reading more about the boys here in the coming months.

From the Bumbershoot Bumberfan Club List:

The Shins, Wu-Tang Clan, Panic! At The Disco, Crowded House, Lupe Fiasco, Steve Earle, DeVotchKa, Devendra Banhart, Gogol Bordello, Kill Hannah, Norma Jean, Plain White T's, The Gourds, Lyrics Born, Roky Erickson & The Explosives, The Holmes Brothers, The Avett Brothers, Yungchen Lhamo, Allison Moorer, Magnolia Electric Company, The Aggrolites

!!!!!!!!!! WU TANG CLAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

According to the Associated Press, Keith Richards has recently admitted to snorting his cremated father.

"He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared," he said. "... It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."

I will now leave you with your vomit, and this terrifying picture of what happens to you if you snort your own dad.

Looks like all my predictions for this sanitary pop singer are coming true. . .

Girls’ Night Out Comes to the Everett Events Center
Mother’s Day in Everett Never Sounded So Good
Fergie
Hilary Duff
Lily Allen
Katharine McPhee
guest
$35-$45 ($106 meet and greet tickets available)
May 13th, 7 pm

Thanks to Line Out reader J.D. for this tip: Apparently New Balance has designed a shoe inspired by Joy Division's first album.

Record:

Shoe (via Hypebeast):

Weird? Yeah, a little weird.

Everyone's favorite post-Propaghandi indie folk punk country band, the Weakerthans, are hitting the studio to record their first record in nearly five years, due out in the fall. The band is recording the currently untitled album in the "quiet, tranquil surroundings of Winnipeg" ("One Great City") with its "slaughterhouses, industrial sites, and sub-degree temperatures" as well in Toronto. I'm excited.

Their last record, Reconstruction Site is probably my least favorite Weakerthans record, but that's not saying much, and it has more to do with where I was at when it came out than with the quality of the record itself. It's a winningly ambitious album, containing a touching triptych song cycle about a dying relative, as well as a song written from the perspective of John K Samson's cat and a last-call ode to Antarctic explorer Shackleton.

The only reason it's not my favorite Weakerthans record is because Fallow and Left and Leaving hit me at the perfect post-collegiate, deflated anarchist moment in my life for me to get caught up in Samson's romantic, politically-informed lyricism. I literally hung my Evergreen diploma on my first shitty Seattle apartment's bathroom wall, as per Samson's manifesto, "Confessions of a Futon Revolutionist". I think I lost that diploma in some move or other, but I still have a home-taped cassette of Left and Leaving around here somewhere.

At their best, on the aforementioned tracks and ones like the elevating "Watermark", the New Order biting "Wellington's Wednesdays", and ballad "My Favorite Chords", the Weakerthans are transcendentally sappy, pairing Samson's soft-spoken poetry with tumbling power chords or weepy steel guitar as fits the mood. Solid mixtape gold.

Reconstruction Site was little older, and perhaps a little more uneven than either of the previous Weakerthans records, but it's still a fantastic album, and it resonates with me more as time goes by. A new record from the Weakerthans is great news.

Another totally random, totally classic song unearthed during my Justify Your Pod interrogation by Megan is the Sesame Street soul-funk number "The Skin I'm In."

This one you gotta hear. The song is sung by Sesame Street's original black Muppet, Roosevelt Franklin, voiced by Matt Robinson, who played Gordon on the show. It's a black pride anthem, wholly positive and totally funky, the kind of music I'd want my kids listening to.

"The Skin I'm In" comes from the 1974 LP My Name Is Roosevelt Franklin, in which the badasss little Muppet counts to ten, recites the alphabet, and extols the virtues of sharing and nonviolence--"don't tell me to hurt someone who never did hurt me or you"--all in a perfectly enunciated yet wickedly jive voice.

It all sounds kitschy and quaint until you check out the killer bass lines, swinging horn parts, and well-crafted songwriting throughout the album. This stuff is truly inspired and has real musical merit. You've never heard the ABCs sung with so much soul.

I first heard Roosevelt Franklin back in college, after a good friend found the record at a Goodwill in Eugene. We rocked "The Skin I'm In" like the fine rare groove track it is. Amazingly, ten years after the fact and separated by a thousand miles, she and I both discovered the entire album available for download at the exact same time this past weekend. Pretty freakin' cosmic, or as Roosevelt would say, "We musta co-operated!"

Keith Christmas' career really took off when he was chosen by friend David Bowie to play guitar and sing back-up on Bowie's first big single, Space Oddity. Through the following years Christmas would work some some of the top producers and arrangers in the British folk scene.

Brighter Day was Keith's 4th album and the second on Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Manticore label. Greg Lake and Pete Sinfield produced so as you can imagine some of the tracks veer away from traditional folk styles and into a little more Prog-ish territory.

I think the most surprising element on this album is the bold and funky horn section on the opening track! Let's just face it and say Keith does not have the greatest voice in folk music. In fact sometimes it strays to whining, much like Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band. But there's something about this track that uses those strong horns and pushes forward the frustration int the lyrics:

The politicians throw up their hands in dismay

"The people don't believe a word we say"

Come the next Election it's just like a game

Where they lie and they bullshit without any shame.

Strong stuff backed by an impressivly strong brass section. (And might I add, quite pertinent to today!)

One song, left off the American issue of the album was a strong denouncement of religion. In it's place was added a sweet version of The Temptations classic, My Girl. (Possibly in a nod to Manticore's U.S. distributor, Motown.) The second track on the album, Foothills has some of Greg Lake's proggy production values with the addition of moog and electric piano. I find it quite effective.

I guess it's not for all fans of British folk music, though, because the album has been called "fake" by some, and "trying to be too 'jazzy'" by others. I think with hind-sight though this album should be seen as the highly creative effort by one of folks least domineering singer-songwriters.

It works for me.

Check it out at my blog here!

Two great local singer/songwriters, Dashel Schueler and White Nights, will be performing tonight at Pagliacci's Broadway location at nine. That's a pretty good free show, especially because I am totally into White Nights right now.

I also love pizza.

Say hello to Lil Mama:

I am quite taken with this song right now, thanks Keenan!

That was the original title of the Flaming Lips song to be included on the upcoming Spiderman 3 soundtrack, though a press release sent out today amends it to "The Supreme Being Teaches Spider-Man How To Be In Love."

Looks like the third installment of the super-successful (and pretty badass, it must be said) Spider-Man film series is going all Zach Braff. Check out the track listing:

1. Snow Patrol — “Signal Fire”
2. The Killers — “Move Away”
3. Yeah Yeah Yeahs — “Sealings”
4. Wolfmother — “Pleased To Meet You”
5. The Walkmen — “Red River”
6. Black Mountain — “Stay Free”
7. The Flaming Lips — “The Supreme Being Teaches Spider-Man How To Be In Love”
8. Simon Dawes — “Scared Of Myself”
9. Chubby Checker — “The Twist”
10. Rogue Wave — “Sightlines”
11. Coconut Records — “Summer Day”
12. Jet — “Falling Star”
13. Sounds Under Radio — “Portrait of A Summer Thief”
14. Wyos — “A Letter To St. Jude”
15. The Oohlas — “Small Parts”

With a few exceptions (why oh why Jet?) that's a pretty solid, varied roster. Chubby Checker and Black Mountain finally come together!

As Grandy commented, the black Spiderman suit is "kinda emo," so it makes some sense that director Sam Raimi went the indie route. I wonder what's in his iPod. Or better yet, Peter Parker's.

Spiderman 3 is out May 4.

One of the more random songs Seling extracted from my music collection during our Justify Your Pod session was the lost classic "Basketball Jones."

I remember seeing a cartoon for "Basketball Jones" when I was a wee lad; through the miracle of Napster I found an MP3 online back around 2000 and discovered the song was by Cheech & Chong. Through the uber-miracle of YouTube, I've finally found the cartoon.

Turns out it's even better than I remember: a campy, hand-drawn blaxsploitation sendup from the mid-'70s, voiced by Cheech and/or Chong, with mufuggin George Harrison playing guitar and Billy Preston on keys (!). Apparently it was featured in the Peter Sellers movie Being There, which I've seen, but don't remember including any cartoon segments. The song-story is a campy gospel-like anthem about a boy named Tyrone Shoelaces and his all-consuming basketball addiction that eventually takes over the whole world. Cameos include Chick Hearn and Bill Russel (sorta).

"I need help, ladies and gentlemens! I need someone to set a pick for me at the freethrow line of life!"

Sing it!

Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter twice packed the open halls of Ballard’s Tractor. Sold out Saturday and an early show last night. It was an April Fools Full Moon Sunday with melodies that could tame a wolf.

Would you admit to liking this man's music?

Jonathan Zwickel does. In fact, he thinks Jon Spencer is a "groovy demonic Elvis." What else did I find in Zwickel's otherwise bulletproof music collection? Well there's some Tom Jones, Belle & Sebastian, Sufjan Stevens, and Cheech and Chong, which all leads him to admit to crushing on Gwen Stefani (sorta) and crying (again, sorta), and watching a lot of Sesame Street (for realz).

Click to listen and learn more about Zwickel and his music habits than you could ever care to.

I missed the real drama at Neumo's last night, arriving only in time to catch the last song and a half of Daughters' problematic opening set. In an eerie repetition of Saturday night's shenanigans, Daughters set was cut short when the band left the stage to protest the ejection of some crowd-surfing fans.* According to a friend, when crowd surfers were escorted out the side door, the Daughters' frontman told the crowd not to worry, they'd get back in through another door. Security corrected him, saying that crowd-surfers wouldn't be readmitted, and the band left the stage, saying, "If they're out, we're out."

While the band was offstage, security shut down the main floor bars and removed the barrier that had been separating the all-ages section of the floor from the rest of the club (another friend tells me that kids were attempting to crowd-surf over. the barrier and into the bar section). The band eventually got back onstage and played two more songs to a now totally all-ages floor.

So things were a little tense as the Locust set up, already wearing their famous bug suits, to the tunes of Hall & Oates' "private Eyes" (confidential to the two dudes clapping along in the crowd: I love you guys). Their stage setup includes a backdrop of art from their recent release, New Erections, drums pushed front and center, and a massive modular synthesizer array. At other Locust shows I've been to, there's been an atmosphere of insider joking, with the crowd heckling the band and Justin Pearson scathing the hecklers one better, hardcore kids laughing at themselves and each other, but tonight things seemed almost dour. This was a serious Locust show.

Part of the punch-line of those old shows might've been the Locust's ridiculously short (and ridiculously long-titled) songs being played in ridiculously short sets (an older fan joked that tonight's $12 advance ticket price would run you about a dollar a minute for the headliners). But tonight, the Locust played for just short of 50 minutes, an epic marathon by their old standards.

Some of their recent work includes spacey, synth-heavy instrumental interludes, but their old formula of blast beats, screaming, and ritalin riffing still form the backbone of their set. So the Locust haven't changed that much, and their music hasn't really grown up with me.

The Locust have never aimed to make enjoyable music, per se. You don't listen to them while cleaning your apartment or taking a long drive, you listen to them on blast with your bedroom door slammed to let your parents know how much they don't get you. You go to their show and wear their shirt to let the other kids know how much you get it. I have to wonder what percentage of their audience actually enjoys them and what part just enjoys what liking the Locust says about them.

Chris Ott has written about the disappearing social functions of punk and indie rock more eloquently than I could, but I wonder if there's not still a certain amount of self-creation and delineation (us vs them) going on when kids profess allegiance to music that's just not enjoyable at face value. Now that anyone can download anything, and you don't have to go the intimidating record store, it doesn't mean anything to like that "indie" band that actually sounds pleasant (Arcade Fire, et al), but maybe it still means something to like one that sounds like a war zone. If listening to music no longer says who you are, maybe listening (or professing to listen) to noise still can.

*Apparently, Saturday night's Man Man fiasco was a misunderstanding. The band wasn't upset about crowd-surfers, but in fact pissed off because someone's literal sister had been ejected from the backstage entry due to some miscommunication.

Five years ago this week, The Stranger and the city's all-ages music supporters were in the midst of a long (but ultimately victorious) battle against the Teen Dance Ordinance, the Long Winters' The Worst You Can Do Is Harm was the best-selling Northwest record at local record stores, and Unwound played the Theater Off Jackson.

Even more notably, though, The Stranger didn't have a music editor.

From our March 28, 2002 issue:

In late February, Jeff DeRoche announced that he was leaving The Stranger in mid-March. A short time after this announcement, Jennifer Maerz, our new music editor, was hired. But there was a problem: Maerz could not start until the end of March. In a word, there was a gap--an empty space between the outgoing editor and the incoming editor.

It was John F. Kennedy who once explained that the Chinese character for the word "crisis" also represents the word "opportunity." As The Stranger's books editor, I have decided to utilize this presidential wisdom, and turn a negative into a positive by filling this week's unattended music section with reviews of books about music. The reviews are written by our music critics (a contingent of the staff I was surprised could actually read), and so ultimately revolve around the problems of music journalism. Or, to put it another way, the music writers are writing about writers who write about music. --Charles Mudede

So now, instead of watching those Journey videos on YouTube for the 200th time, spend your Monday morning revisiting what happened to The Stranger's music section five years ago when then-books-editor Charles Mudede was left to man the ship before Jennifer Maerz swooped in to save the day:

Love Hurts: An Interview with Everett True by Jeff DeRoche.

Revelations: Mason Betha Is a Better Rapper than Ma$e by Brian Goedde.

California Screaming: L.A. Punk Redux by Nate Lippens.

American Cash: Reading the Ring of Fire by Kathleen Wilson.

Basement shows tend to unleash our spirit animals.

I am going to blow you away. I don't give a fuck about your brother, either, I'll blow his ass away after I blow your ass away, motherfucker. That's the theme of our third week of tour. From Chatanooga to New York, we got our assholes rocked by a jumble of crazy folks, crazy shows, and crazy parties. Chattanooga, Tennessee, much to our surprise, was filled with sympathetic scum who were out to party on a Tuesday night—apparently getting fucked up during the week is what the South is into. You can't get trashed every night when you're on tour--your body just won't put up with drinking 27 beers a night, bong rips, and seven hour drives everyday. Your shit will break. Luckily, we are able to get the occasional fifth of whiskey to split before we play, and Chatanooga was one of those nights.

Chatanooga knows how to party.

By the time we went on, we'd already played intense games of Frisbee, drawn marker masks on our faces, and told some local friends that we were going to blow their asses away if they didn't get us drunk later (by this time that was already a moot point). Somehow after the show we ended up at some crazy Southern Sparks and Thin Lizzy-fueled punk rock porch party that raged on until the wee hours of the AM. You know you're in a town you'll remember and love when an awesome topless dreadlocked hippy chick with her floppy pancakes hanging out who won't stop telling you "I'm a dyke, I eat pussy" wakes you up by blaring Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak while trying to figure out if she should kill her dog and eat it.

Continue reading "On the Road in a Mystery Zone: The Trashies Tour Diary, Week Three" »

The Seattle Nightlife Music Association is asking everyone to come out on Thursday to City Hall at 9:30 to lobby against the proposed nightlife legislation.

The City Council's Economic Development and Neighborhoods Committee is holding another briefing on the Mayor's proposed Nightlife legislation on April 5th, 9:30 am at the City Hall Council Chambers (600 - 4th Avenue). We need every person who can to attend this briefing and offer testimony expressing your personal concerns with the legislation. If you go out to bars, nightclubs, or to see live music, you need to come support. It important to just show up, just write an email, etc. Every person counts.

Our message to city hall is simple - let's better enforce the laws we currently have on the books now to address issues of noise, litter and other community concerns. There is no need for new cumbersome, oppressive regulations that threaten existing businesses and potential new businesses when the city isn't enforcing the laws they already have. We support the creation of an advisory board to help resolve disputes between neighbors and business owners and develop ways to help professionalize the nightlife industry. If you can't attend the meeting, please email the members of the city council.

Take that!

WHAT.

And the first single, "Earth Intruders," will be available for digital download April 9—a week from today. The cover posted yesterday is likely CD2 of the two-part single formatting.

What did you expect: stilettos and an asymmetrical club top from Forever 21? Shame on you! She told Pitchfork's Brandon Stosuy:

"It's sort of trying to put out some good vibes for the little princesses out there. There are actually other things than losing a glass slipper. I mean, part of it was having a little daughter and realizing, what are we telling girls? All these books out there about finding your prince. All these little girls, all they want to do is be pretty and find their prince, and I'm like, what happened to feminism here?"

And about the photoshoot itself:

"I also wanted to have some sort of shaman sort of voodoo thing, to get rid of a lot of tension. But in a happy way, not as a destructive thing, more like a celebration."[…]

[…]"It was a magical atmosphere in the photo shoot. It was kind of fun, because it wasn't about me, it was about this sort of spirit of-- like a woman who is kind of...into rave, no I'm just kidding. Like, a sort of celebration of that ancient, but at the same time kind of neon."

In case you missed the news yesterday, here's a 15-second sample of the actual song (with vocals).

UPDATE: There is no word on how these photos actually fit into the various release formats. The Exploding Earth Bigfoot cover may, in fact, be the limited edition/digipack release with the interior containing photos of the shaman/crochet Björk, each with her wielding flames that spell out the separate letters in V-O-L-T-A. The standard release of the album may only feature the Volcano Head (upper right) and no orange French door package, as this seems to be more in keeping with her close-up portrait-style covers of the past.

The first installment of the new gayish dance night Bang Bang at the Baltic Room was pretty much a raging success--packed, hopping, sweaty, friendly, drunken. A blur, really.

The only thing: Those go go dancers that were promised? Um, not so much. Oh, sure, there were go go dancers, all go-go-ing it up, but Bang Bang, you promised us go go dancers in these five specific roles: Bear, Twink, Buff Dude, Sailor Type, and Emo Boy in a Black Hoodie. What did you give us? Guy in His Underwear, Guy in His Underwear, Guy in His Underwear, Guy in His Underwear, and Guy in His Underwear. Occasionally a cowboy hat or a pair of suspenders was involved. Why'd you have to go and let us down like that? Why couldn't you just go all the way? So Seattle of you.

On Friday, we here at Line Out got the tech department to build a poll gadget so that, on Sunday morning, everyone could come on here and vote for Bear, Twink, Buff Dude, Sailor Type, or Emo Boy in a Black Hoodie. Then I came home last night and canceled the poll since there really was no difference between your go go dancers, and therefore no point in a poll.

The way to make it up to us? Go EXTRA wild with go go types next time. Put some effort into it. Think of good ones... Space Needle Elevator Operator... Twice Sold Tales Shopper... The Pope... Iraqi Insurgent... Man Who's Been Hit By a Car...

DO IT.

Tonight at War Room: Slow Ride, a laid back night that features, according to a trusted source, "the best goddamn FM rock from the ’70s and ’80s."

I went to check it out last Sunday night and five minutes after we arrived a group of Cornish dance students and teachers--including everybody's favorite 80s girl dance duo, Fankick!--walked in and took over. It was like being in the middle of the "Hot Lunch Jam" scene from Fame. The spirit of Debbie Allen was definitely in the house. Here's hoping Slow Ride's Solid Gold Dancers turn up again tonight.

The Locust
(LOUD, HECTIC, COSTUME-HEAVY MUSIC) Of all the bands to rise out of the fertile San Diego hardcore scene, none have had anywhere near the longevity or bizarre widespread appeal of the Locust. Bizarre, because the Locust make fast, loud, difficult music. But unlike the many hardcore bands that stagnate in a hermetic world of increasingly fast riffs, predictably chugging rhythmic breakdowns, and macho bullshit, the Locust are uncontainable experimentalists and constantly mutating musicians. Despite their roots in hardcore, the Locust more accurately belong amidst avante garde sound and noise pioneers such as John Zorn and Boredoms. Their live shows are hectic, costume-heavy, often short, and punctuated by some of the snappiest banter/heckler retorts in punk rock. With Daughters, Cattle Decapitation. (Neumo's, 925 E Pike Street, 709-9467, 7 pm, $12/$15, all-ages, bar w/ID.) ERIC GRANDY

Leslie & the Lys
(Musical Performance Art) After bursting into humanity's consciousness as that chick on the internet with all the gem sweaters, artist Leslie Hall got busy with her true calling: rocking the fucking mic. Citing L'Trimm and Apple's GarageBand as key influences, Leslie & the Lys create a honky hiphop hoedown you won't forget. (Think Dina Martina as a rap act, with an actual vagina.) With Scream Club and Team Gina. (El Corazón, 109 Eastlake Ave E, 381-3094. 10 pm, $8, 21+.) DAVID SCHMADER

Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter
(Musical) With its husky androgyny and deeply resonant, hard-won soul, Jesse Sykes's voice calls to mind a more rockin' Nina Simone. The connection is especially evident in the sultry, hushed ballads on Sykes's latest album, which she is celebrating with a pair of shows this weekend. Her wounded-but-empowered persona shines when she's under the spotlight, buoyed along by her band like a dry leaf in the wind. (Tractor Tavern, 5213 Ballard Ave NW, 789-3599. 7 pm, $10, 21+.) JONATHAN ZWICKEL

No April Fool's joke here, just some Jawbreaker love for the first of the month.

"Jinx Removing" from May of ’96.

"

I hope you all remembered to say "rabbit, rabbit" this morning...

Take five Tom-Waits-worshipping carnival barkers, dress them in Wimbleton whites, and strand them with a barrel of hooch in the brig of a rickety pirate ship and what would eventually emerge, pasty and gravel-voiced and a tad touched in the head, is Man Man.

The Philly fivepiece played to an enthusiastic crowd at Neumo's on Saturday night, doing for Zappa what Chow Nasty does for the Stones and the Go! Team does for Dilla: pop-ifying the sonic template and shout-chanting on top. It became apparent early on that every song in their repertoire would sound similar, which at first was disappointing but became surreally hypnotizing halfway through.

Or it would've if Man Man didn't walk offstage mid-set in protest of a fan being tossed out of the venue. A half-strength mosh pit had broken out at the front of the stage, dudes physically flailing and connipping in much the same way as the band was sonically. A crowd surfer went up, then down, then up again, then was brought down by a security guard. "They're throwing me out!" he crowed as the bouncer dragged him towards the back. It was clearly a long-haired male.

At almost the exact same time the band stopped their momentum to get frank with the crowd. "We don't usually banter," said lead mustache Honus Honus, "but this is kinda fucked up. They just threw out our friend Tracy."

The band made it clear Tracy was a "sister" and incited the crowd to chant her name, deride Neumo's, cheer, boo, etc. Security didn't budge. "Do you want to show to continue?" Honus asked the crowd. The chanting carried on as the band, clearly frustrated, put down their instruments and walked offstage. It was a strange extended moment, nobody sure who Tracy was or why she got thrown out or if she was the crowd surfer who was visibly rejected from the place and also visibly a he.

Eventually Man Man returned to the stage to chants of "Neumo's sucks!" It was a bad situation all around--said one bandmember (Sergei Sogay, perhaps? Chang Wang?) into the mic, "Needless to say, we're never playing this place again." Ouch. A bit melodramatic, especially considering nobody in the crowd knew what the hell was going on.

"Let's channel this energy!" Honus implored and without hesitating Man Man dove right back into their lysergic Vaudeville theatrics.

Astoundingly, given the nonsensical unintelligibility of their lyrics, people were singing along to songs from last year's Six Demon Bag. The crowd was only momentarily deflated; it lit up as the band pulled out sax and trumpet and plastic bugles and bounced and trounced within the zooted spunk-rock sideshow they created. Musically, it was dynamic and heavy if not too deep or meaningful, a sort of Dada inspired spectacle that was fun to be a part of, just as long as they didn't stop the music to acknowlege reality.

Björk's first single, "Earth Intruders," will be available download this month, but you can get a first listen on Rhino Records' ringtone site. And ta-dah—the real cover of the single:

Whatever you do, don't believe the news on Bjork.com today; they sort of have a history with April Fools jokes. They claim this year that this is actual album cover:

And everyone's supposed to laugh along and s