Rest in peace, Polaroid.

(Many more after the jump.)

Continue reading "This Party Never Happened" »

Last night’s Pharmacy CD release show at Healthy Times Fun Club felt like a grandiose event, as opposed to a small concert held in a grungy warehouse space. Because of the popularity of the bands and high attendance projection, the Fun Clubbers used paper tickets for entry to the show in hopes of keeping things from overflowing. I hadn’t been to a Pharmacy show in a long time, but easily recognized the throng of loving high schoolers who flock to all of their shows. Local wunderkind, Ben Funkhouser and his posse were there, and dressed to the nines. He wore the anticipation on his face from ear to ear as he told me about how the show was like a holiday for him. He told me about how he’d been at the last two Pharmacy release shows, and would most definitely be at their next. Every time I see that kid I wish a little bit of his enthusiasm would rub off of him and jump in to me.

Anyways, it wasn’t too long after I got there that The Flexx took to starting their mess of a set. If there’s one thing you can say about these dudes, it’s that they always give it their all. Last night was no different. While they may have been at a disadvantage, being the first band to play a show always sucks, they still managed to get some kids moving that seemed to be holding back some energy for the ape shit storm that would inevitably be The Pharmacy’s set.

Next up was Talbot Tagora. Chris Ando and Mark Greshowak have been making music together for quite some time. Through name and line-up changes over the years, I think they have founded something special with what they’re doing now, because they are a band that is very hard to pin-point their specific sound. Nothing about their songs is straight forward as they spiral in and out of hypnotizing guitar drone and explosive rock out sessions. Just when you start to get comfortable in your seat, they rip you out of it and spit on your face. My friends, last night the saliva was flying! The band craftily built the intensity of their set, bringing it to a peak with drummer Ani Ricci’s rolling intro to the song “Morning Secrets”. Between Ando repeating “I was wondering, where you’re going”, the guitars buzzing all over each other, and calm and collected Ricci, who glides over her drumset, rather than pounding on it, the song definitely stood out from the rest. Talbot Tagora get better every time I see them. Coming from a band that’s comprised of kids in their late teens and early twenties, I’d say that’s pretty telling about the big things that might be in store for them. If you’re going to The Stranger’s Young Ones (which should have been all ages) you should consider their set a must see.

Okay, okay. So I didn’t get to stay for the rest of the show. I missed The Pleaureboaters. I missed The Pharmacy. But! I did buy “Choose Yr Own Adventure”, their new album, and on first glance, it looks beautiful! The art, the record, everything, it’s awesome looking. I’ll have to listen to it a little bit more, and get back to you, but what I’ve listened to is so far, so good. Just having listened to it once through, I would suggest a song that I can see being in video games or movies someday, “Little Toys On A Shelf”. If you were there last night, do you have any cool stories or memories to share about the later sets of the night? Did you get punched in the face? Chip a tooth on a microphone? God, I wish I could have stayed!

While walking to and from the nearby Safeway on Roosevelt and 75th (you know, the one that RIAA works at), I couldn’t help but notice a band practicing in the auto shop just across the street on Roosevelt. When I think “band” and “auto shop,” I think either ZZ Top covers or that 90210 spin-off TV series The Heights, but this group skewed younger and artier. From what I saw through the big window, either this was a two-piece with the guitarist working some loops on pedals, or a third guy was tinkering with synthesizers behind a stack of mufflers. Either way, from the outside, all I could hear was a basic 4/4 drumbeat and the sounds of an orca wailing over it. The girlfriend wanted me to run back over and interview ‘em (she, the thoughtful one, even made me a sign that said “I’m With The Stranger, Can We Talk?”). I voted against such an interruption, assuming the chat would go like this:

“Why are you practicing here?”
“I work here [OR] This is my dad’s/uncle’s shop.”
“Great.”
“We’re on MySpace.”
“That’s great.”

Anyway, if you’re that band, you should play in the auto shop on a daily basis. Makes the Fontina cheese run that much more interesting.

Stoners, as a people, are not generally known for innovation. Their behavior is habitual, often highly derivative of what other stoners have been doing for decades. Stoner rock has generally followed down the same path - re-imagining the highlights of what previous stoner rock bands have already discovered. Occasionally, a band is able to pick and choose all the right pieces from the music of their past to create a final product that surpasses its origins: it seems Saviours have achieved this in only their second album. Into Abaddon may not be particularly innovative, but it is a remarkable amalgamation of everything great its genre has put forth since its inception. They have looked omnisciently at the intersection between classic rock and metal and chosen all the best bits.

There are obvious bands that Saviours will draw comparisons to: Black Sabbath, early Metallica, Motorhead. These bands create a familiar base for what the band is attempting, but none of them are all encompassing. Saviours have succeeded where most similar bands fail, figuring out how to properly represent their influences without sacrificing originality. Their songwriting shows impeccable taste in their choices of riffs, solos, and breakdowns. Nothing is out of place. The crowning moment, “Firewake Angel,” is a thousand page epic quest unfurled in six short minutes, with a lead guitar line that tells a better story than any narrative could.

A friend asked what Into Abaddon sounded like, and I told him it was like riding your trusty steed into the evil fortress. When I purchased the LP the next day I was elated to find that the illustration inside the gatefold was of the band members, in full armor, riding their horses into a castle of skulls. Saviours are doing everything I could hope from a rock band. Into Abaddon is a soundtrack to all my stoned fantasies.

Tonight @ El Corazon, with Fu Manchu and ASG. 9:00. $15.

Every day at 3 pm I post a random MP3 from The Stranger’s Bands Pages. It may or may not be good. That’s for you to decide.

Today’s song: “Shoes” by the Little Penguins.

Do you have a Bands Page? Click here to get one.

Contributed to the Stranger Flickr Pool by xo Lauren.

You can get your photos on Line Out too, you know. Just take your camera when you go out (to shows or bars or parties) and then upload ‘em to the Stranger’s Flickr Pool! When appropriate, remember to tag your shots “music.”

_{Feral Children}

Feral Children, Holy Ghost Revival, the Pharmacy
(Music) Two shows in one night—you can do it, old man. First, at the High Dive, Feral Children and Holy Ghost Revival play early sets for live broadcast on KEXP’s Audioasis. Go and thrash to Feral Children’s strident noise—it sounds like Isaac Brock’s angsty little brother—then follow Holy Ghost’s glam-rock revival to the Comet where they’ll perform again to help the Pharmacy celebrate the release of their new album. (High Dive, 513 N 36th St, 632-0212. 6 pm, $7, 21+; Comet Tavern, 922 E Pike St, 323-9853. 9 pm, $6, 21+.) Megan Seling

Sound Off! Finals: the Nextdoor Neighbors, New Faces, Man Down Medic
(EMP Sky Church) For the past three Saturdays, underage bands have played before a panel of judges, being scored in categories like how innovative their sound is and how competent their playing is. The band with the highest score each night has advanced to tonight’s Sound Off! finals to compete for a grand prize that includes a gig at Bumbershoot and a bunch of free shit like guitars and studio time. Tonight’s the night the month-long battle comes to an end. The Nextdoor Neighbors, a cute and simple pop act made up of two girls from Olympia; New Faces, a lush and gentle pop-rock outfit; and Man Down Medic will face the judges one last time, playing the best 45-minute set they can muster. When it’s all over, one band will join the ranks of past Sound Off! champs like Mon Frere and the Lonely Forest. Of course, losing isn’t so bad, either—past losers include Idiot Pilot and Schoolyard Heroes, and they’re doing okay for themselves. MEGAN SELING

Photo by Kyle Johnson

Also tonight, the first of March, there are a few shows featuring bands from the local label Don’t Stop Believin’, which I profiled in this week’s paper. Megan Birdsall, the woman who runs the label (and who’s pictured above), is a genuine fan of music who’s putting out some really great albums. The new Pharmacy record, Choose Your Own Adventure, is on DSB, as is the Pleasureboaters’ debut, and stuff from Yes, Oh Yes, Team Gina, and the Terrordactyls. I’m a big fan of the work she’s done.

Tonight, the Pharmacy celebrate the release of their new album at the Comet with Holy Ghost Revival, Wild Orchid Children, and Das Llamas (see above). At the Vera Project tonight, Team Gina plays with the Trucks and Scream Club. And finally, DSB’s newest addition Tacocat are playing at the Wildrose with Forever.

Don’t Stop Believin’ is taking over the city. Click here to read all about it.

The show ended just hours ago and I’m exhausted. My ears are still ringing, this headcold I’ve caught is quickly getting worse, and I can’t sleep—the only thing keeping me sane is the happiness I experienced earlier this evening at Healthy Times Fun Club for the Pharmacy’s CD release show with Pleasureboaters, Talbot Tagora, and the Flexx.

Goddamn, that was a fantastic show—the best I’ve been to in a long while. A review will be up later, after I sleep, along with tons of awesome photos (speaking of, if you went, don’t forget to upload your own shots into the Stranger Flickr Pool).

For now, though, here are a couple videos that don’t sound perfect, but do show what an awesome time was had during Pleasureboaters and the Pharmacy’s set. There’s crowd surfing, group sing-a-longs, lots of kids dancing, drumset deconstruction, and more craziness—watch to see.

Pleasureboaters

The Pharmacy

The Pharmacy play again Saturday night at the Comet with Holy Ghost Revival, Wild Orchid Children, and Das Llamas.

This is the first installment of the Fleet Foxes tour diary, which will be appearing here on Line Out a few times a week while the new Sub Pop signees take their first jaunt across the country. All words belong to the band (Even the ed notes), and sadly there are not photos this time around, but hopefully there will be some in the future. Be sure to check back for more of their adventures.

Hello friends, my name’s Robin Pecknold and I am writing this tour missive from inside our giant white touring van, somewhere on the road between San Francisco and Los Angeles, it’s hot as Hades, and I’m gonna fill you in on all we’ve been up to for the past few days on this inaugural tour of ours. Huzzah!

We’ve been gone since Tuesday afternoon, but we’ve only played one show so far - at the Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco last night. We got a late start on the drive - we were going to leave on Monday, but that was the day that our EP came back from the manufacturers and the shirts came back from Luckyhorse, in addition to the million other things you apparently have to do to get ready to be homeless for two months - and yet I still forgot a toothbrush. Oh well. So we bade our loved ones farewell on Tuesday, crammed all of our stuff into the van in a game of ur-Tetris, and started the long hard slog to San Francisco.

I can’t describe how beautiful the drives have been. It’s such a freeing feeling being out in the open country, there’s even still some feeling of discovery when happening upon [There is a big yellow plane cropdusting out the left window right now - ed.] weird hills or fields full of cows or reaching the top of a pass, California feels so monumentally huge and we’re only even seeing the thin sliver surrounding the Interstates!!!! So much out there to see and it’s all so beautiful. At sunset on the first day of driving, I was laying on the back bench, looking out the opposite window, listening to this great band I found at Wall of Sound called Habibiyya, and the substance of the scenery (some mountain range far in the distance behind a wide grass plain) congealed with the music and it felt like we were in Morocco or the Serengeti, a completely transportive effect that’s one of the things that’s so great about music. I love that it can take you places like a good book can.

Anyway, so we stopped in Redding and met up with the fellows from Grand Archives who have this favorite lodge they dig staying in, that has this crazy anomalous bar - it’s just your typical travel motel type place but the bar is like the old Cha Cha or something, “Ventura Highway” by America was playing on the stereo. I always feel like I’m being used when I sing along to the “alligator lizards in the air” line. That line is egregious and as soon as I’m done singing along I just feel dirty, like they’ve manipulated me into acts I’m not comfortable with. We’ll be playing with GrarChives tonight in LA and tomorrow night in San Diego, I’m really looking forward to it as they are all the sweetest, and the more hometown feelings around the better.

Once we came into San Francisco (after more blockbuster high budget scenery along the way and then seeing the incredible city itself) we went into do this thing called Daytrotter, where they record you playing songs all live together and then put it on their very nice and well art directed and curated website. I’ve listened to a few of these in my day and they always sound awesome, but our entire band experience at the moment to be almost cinematic in it’s strangeness that it was tough for me to “get into the moment” while we were playing the songs, it didn’t help that it was the first time we’d played music on the tour and we were definitely rusty from a lack of practice before leaving…. still, the Daytrotter dudes were the sweetest most awesome guys ever and seemed to feel ok about how we did. They gave us a nice gift bag and we headed to our hotel (again saying hello to our Grand Archives companions) to ruminate on the strangeness of being asked to participate in things that have always felt like objects from another world. San Francisco bros came down and hung out for a while and we checked our pages [less nerdy terminology for “surfing the internet” - ed.]. The bathroom at the hotel was the size of my girlfriends’ apartment.

Yesterday we woke up and headed to Haight Ashbury to pay our respects to the lost dreams of the past and to browse the vaguely hippie related souvenir shops. We were in the neighborhood to film this thing for a site called La Blogotheque where they film a band in a strange spot playing songs - bros Throw Me the Statue and Tiny Vipers have imbibed in the past. When we were scouting for a location, I was wandering around the neighborhood and found this crazy old fairly dilapidated gymnasium. The doors were unlocked and inside, all the lights were out, it seemed half abandoned, and the main light source was a couple broken windows that were sending shafts of light onto the middle of this gigantic basketball court. It was crazy serendipity, the echo in the building was incredible, I can’t guarantee we performed ok but it will at least look and sound cool. That was another surreal Alice in Wonderland moment, through the fuckin rabbit hole into this weird world of internet music insider-land that we never in a million years thought we’d be a part of. Weird weird times, friends.

Continue reading "Fleet Foxes Tour Diary Part 1: Beautiful Drives, Recording for Daytrotter, and Paying Respects to Haight Ashbury" »

…and there were hundreds of people there and Book of Black Earth and 3 Inches of Blood were both awesome and fun (Toxic Holocaust not so much—repetitive thrash doesn’t do much for me).

The Shirley Temple and Roy Rogers I had had the perfect ratio of soda to grenadine (next time just remember to throw a cherry or two in there, bartender) and the sound was really, really loud, but super clear. It sounded good from everywhere I stood during the evening—upstairs, downstairs, in front, in back.

Also, I love that you can see the stage from anywhere you stand along the balcony rail, even if you’re stuck behind a couple people. There are no hanging monitors that block the view, no poles or walls. There are plenty of great sightlines on the floor too. The main bar is downstairs and it can get a little crowded there with those weird booths from the future being right in the way of where the lines form, but there’s another bar upstairs to keep lines at a minimum. And thankfully, all the dark edges of most steps are well-lit or lined with a strip of neon so you don’t fall, unlike that fucking step in Chop Suey that has made me look stupid more than once.

One thing that’s weird: The stairs are carpeted. While it feels good to have that padding on the feet after standing for a couple hours, at the same time you just know that carpet is going to be the grossest thing in the city in less than a month.

As for the bands who played, Book of Black Earth were evil—demonic vocals growling over keyboards scarier than the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland (you know, when I was a kid and thought that it was still pretty scary). Joe, the dummer, kept spitting in the air while banging out the spine of their thrash metal anthems. Between songs he’d reach out and catch the wad of saliva in his hand. It was so gross but weirdly mesmerizing. My boyfriend maintains that he spit so high at one point, that it stuck to the ceiling that was no less than 15 feet above his head. I don’t believe it.

Having not seen them since Bumbershoot 2006, I had forgotten how much fun 3 Inches of Blood are to watch. They’re totally captivating—plenty of headbanging, lots of possessed yarling backing up the main falsetto metal vocals. It’s fantasy metal at it’s finest with songs about robots from the future named Wykydtron, and murdering metal naysayers. Dudes in the crowd were going nuts—spirit fingers during guitar solos, raising the goblet of rock during breakdowns, TONS of air guitar. It’s been a while since I had that much fun watching a crowd at a rock show.

King Cobra’s Grand Opening weekend continues through Sunday. Tonight is Neutralboy, Android Hero, Rain City Shwillers, and Bucklin. Emeralds, Neon Nights, and the Valkyries (heard on this week’s Setlist!) play tomorrow. And it all wraps up Sunday with Visqueen and Quadrillion.

They have shows with the Abodox, Thee Sgt. Major III (who I fell in like with at the first weekly Sunday Bloody Sunset), Patrol, Iceage Cobra, the Whore Moans, the Pharmacy, and the Pleasureboaters coming up too. You can get all the info you need at the club’s MySpace.

Welcome to the Hill, King Cobra. Just don’t forget my cherry next time.

Like get right now, when it decided to start singing “Pickin’ Boogers” for no reason at all.

“Go up your nose and pick a winner!”

Ah Biz, you have some gems.

This uncelebrated special day we only have once every four years? This day that’s not usually on the calendar? Which means, in a sense, it doesn’t exist? Which means, whatever you do today/tonight, in a sense, never really happened? It kinda makes you feel like you can do anything, including anything you might not normally get away with, doesn’t it?

I just learned from Wikipedia that today is also called bissextile day. To celebrate, I’m going to put on my “FAGGOT” tie, go to Comeback tonight, and lose my shit.

Option #1:

Mahjongg at Vera Project
Mahjongg shows are a glorious mess—on the band’s last visit to Seattle, they crowded the Rendezvous’s small stage with spray-painted computer towers and television monitors—and their music is every bit as bizarre, a chaotic mix of dance punk, electro funk, Afro pop, and militaristic noise. Their latest album, Kontpab, captures the energetic mayhem, cryptic patterns, and tense movements of their live shows. Calvin Johnson and So Many Dynamos open. (Vera Project, Seattle Center, 956-8372. 7:30 pm, $8, all ages.)
by Eric Grandy

Option #2:

Sole, Telephone Jim Jesus, No-Fi Soul Rebellion
(Nectar) From the more confounding corners of Anticon’s post-hiphop, freak-folk universe comes Sole and the Skyrider Band. Sole (born Tim Holland) began as a NY-centric, would-be battle rapper, releasing a debut called Mad Skillz and Unpaid Billz at age 16. In 1998, he founded the Anticon label along with Pedestrian and stopped spelling his plurals with z’s. Recently, Holland has fleshed out Sole’s solo productions with a live band, assembled by drummer/producer Bud Berning, aka Skyrider. On Sole and the Skyrider Band, Holland’s breathless rants are backed by Balkan brass disappearing into dub echoes, live drumming mixed with record scratches and warped samples, and electric guitars trading melodies with violins. At its most bombastic, the album flirts with rap-rock cliché, but Sole’s brooding is too densely abstract and Skyrider Band’s tracks too finessed to fall into that trap. ERIC GRANDY

Option #3:

Sly Lothario, Library Science
(ToST) Let’s begin by pointing out that the second album by the local band Library Science, The Chancellor (2007), is far superior to their first, High Life Honey (2004). Why is this the case? The first, which is not terrible, lacks the confidence and fullness of sound that is found on every track of the second effort. The Chancellor is a bold record; the timidity on High Life Honey is here completely expunged and we get a record that has an indie-rock sensibility that’s not hindered or worried but extravagantly expressed by the dub. Now, every dub is ground in one of the two founders of the form: Lee “Scratch” Perry or King Tubby. Alter Echo, a dub producer based in Portland, has, for example, his ground in King Tubby, which is a more technical approach. Library Science’s dub has its base in Lee “Scratch” Perry, which is a more experimental approach. No instrument or sound or mood is a foreigner to Library Science’s experiments. They will test anything in the dub, and on The Chancellor these tests frequently have spectacular results. CHARLES MUDEDE

Another reason to go to Option #1: So Many Dynamos are opening.

Their music is like Q and Not U with Midwest roots. They’re full of angst, but they’re not aggressive. They’re a dance band with heavy synth, but they’re ultimately a rock band. They’ve got catchy choruses that beg to be sung in unison by a huge crowd. The singer has thick-rimmed glasses, sings about girls and science, but somehow doesn’t come off like a complete nerd. And their name, if you didn’t already know, is a palindrome. (And you thought TacocaT was impressive.)

This is happening too:

The Hands celebrate the release of their new album at Neumo’s
The Kindness Kind play with Hungry Pines at Cafe Venus/Mars Bar

WFMU, the realest (coolest, awesomest, sweetest, tightest) radio station in the country, is doing their annual fund-drive right now. They only have one a year because they are fucking REAL, hear me?

Anyhow, part of their fund-drive tradition is an in-studio performance from Yo La Tengo, but not just any in-studio—Yo La is taking requests:

We’ve been blessed with the annual ritual since 1996: each WFMU marathon our good New Jersey neighbors (give or take a New Yorker or two) Yo La Tengo have graciously dragged their gear down to our studios and helped us raise cash by attempting to play requested covers for real live pledgers. Any request. Were they ever afraid of falling on their faces by not knowing the chords to “Rock the Boat” or “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”? Hell no.

I think Line Out should choose a song to submit. Since I was planning to pledge anyway, I’ll just act as your superdelegate.

Which song should Yo La Tengo play for Line Out?

Of course, feel free to throw superior suggestions in the comments. Poll closes Sunday at 5, when the show starts.

UPDATE: I added Justin Timberlake’s “My Love” to the poll because I decided I would really like them to play that.

Phantom Slasher - Blow Me Slow 12”
————————————————————-
This week I want to recommend checking out Phantom Slasher’s new 12” re-edit single Blow Me Slow. Over the past few year’s, Phantom Slasher, who are better know as Dan Tyler and Conrad McDonnell of the Idjut Boys, have released many great records including 2006 ground breaking release Gruble. This new 12” single see’s these two new school disconauts take on and rearrange Hot R.S.’s 1977 Slow Blow and Barrabas’s 1972 loft classic, Woman. This often, tongue-and-cheek aliase, tends to have fun with rearranging the track titles, as they do here with “Blow Me Slow”, followed by “Woman”. Both are exceptional re-edits that can work nicely together in a mix with other nicely ‘mangled’ disco cuts. I also find that most of Phantom Slasher’s records, as do all the Noid Recordings are generally limited and move very fast, so if you enjoy Phantom Slasher edits as much as I do, I would recommend picking up this 12” very quickly. Overall, it’s another nice addition to the amazing Noid collection.

Phantom Slasher - Woman (Sample Clip)
Buy Record

Setlist is back after a couple weeks of vacation! We’ve missed you, I hope you’ve missed us.

This weekend is absolutely nuts-o for live shows, and Ari Spool and I highlight some of the very best via song. Here’s the playlist:

The Hands “Lies Lies Lies”
Wormwood “The Endless Search for Food”
Grand Hallway “Napoleon’s Left Show”
Tv. Coahran “Kite Flyers”
The Valkyries “Scream for More”
Feral Children “Baby Joseph Stalin”
Awesome “Are You Aware”
Coco Coca “Continents and Oceans”

We also talk King Cobra’s Grand Opening weekend, Wormwood breaking up, the Tv. Coahran’s new record, and the upcoming Music Directory/Young Ones extravaganza!

Click to listen.

It’s free! It’ll stream straight to your computer, so you don’t need to download anything fancy or weird. All you have to do is click, sit back, and enjoy. You can even keep doing other stuff while you listen, like fill out TPS reports or something.

There are tales in rock lore so brilliantly absurd that I’m willing to accept them as fact despite their improbability—life is simply more rich and interesting when they are regarded as true.

Case in point: an acquaintance of mine had a great story about going to see Ted Nugent back in the ‘80s. The night started with a curtain drawn across the stage. Suddenly, the house lights dimmed and the sound of the Nuge’s blistering guitar leads blared out of the PA. The crowd erupted into applause. The curtains pulled back and the Nuge ran out from behind the enormous drum riser, still demonstrating his extensive fret board awareness while the rest of the band prepared to kick in on the downbeat of the first song (I hope it was “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang”). At the crucial moment, he leapt from the drum riser and attempted a flip that, ideally, would plant him center stage right on the first chord. Instead, the Nuge miscalculated his trajectory and landed with an amplified crunch in a crumpled heap, both legs broken. The curtains quickly drew back and the one-chord-deep concert was over.

Did this really happen? Probably not. I’ve scoured the Internet looking for confirmation, hoping that it’s true, all to no avail. But regardless, in my mind it is a historical fact. The world is a better place that way.

The recently reunited straight edge hardcore band Earth Crisis share more with ol’ Teddy than just an outspoken stance against drugs and alcohol; they also have one of those classic rumored live incidents that may or not be true. Earth Crisis is best known for the title track off their 1993 EP, “Firestorm.” It’s no small wonder that they have also chosen that song as the name of their current reunion tour (appearing at Studio7 on March 9th). The song rocks. Even fifteen years and countless beers later, I can’t help but love “Firestorm.” Lyrically, it’s the ultimate straight edge anthem, a rally cry to purge drug dealers from inner-city ghettos. Musically, it’s genius. At least 95% of the song is just palm-muted E power chords. If it winds up on Guitar Hero, it will be the easiest song to beat EVER.

This combination of militancy and mosh-tastic songwriting managed to carry Earth Crisis to the top of the mid-to-late ‘90s straight edge scene despite the fact that all their subsequent recordings were, in my opinion, god-awful. And while Earth Crisis shows were laden with documented reports of violence and controversy, my favorite story regarding one of the band’s performances has never been confirmed.

The rumor has Earth Crisis playing some club in Salt Lake City several years after the Firestorm EP came out. Bear in mind that this was the ‘90s, when the SLC straight edge scene was notoriously violent and considered the primary gang presence in Utah. The band, no doubt road-weary and thoroughly sick of playing their “hits”, played through a set of new material. Several songs into the set, the audience began calling out for “Firestorm.” The band ignored their wishes. Between every song, the call came: “Play ‘Firestorm’!”

The band finally had enough. “We’re not playing ‘Firestorm’ tonight,” stated vocalist Karl Buechner. There was a pause, then someone in the crowd yelled out: “Play ‘Firestorm’ or we’ll beat the shit out of you.” The band, familiar with Salt Lake’s violent reputation, conceded. The crowd went crazy. At the completion of the song, a voice yelled out “play it again.” The band refused. “Play it again or we’ll beat the shit out of you.” And thus Earth Crisis found their set list rendered null and void as the audience bullied them into playing Firestorm over and over again. Like the Nuge’s broken legs, there doesn’t appear to be any resources available to lend credibility to the rumors, but I just pretend they’re true anyway.

The clip below shows Earth Crisis, in all their glory, performing “Firestorm” at their final concert. Judging from the audience response, I’d say the probability of the SLC story being accurate is quite high.

Every day at 3 pm I post a random MP3 from The Stranger’s Bands Pages. It may or may not be good. That’s for you to decide.

Today’s song: “Yak Attack” by Choo Choo Will Destroy You.

Do you have a Bands Page? Click here to get one.

What the hell, it’s Friday, so you get two Young Ones today: booksmart popsters Throw Me the Statue and techno wrecking machine Truckasaras.

Throw Me the Statue’s debut, Moonbeams, is a stellar record, one that has grown on me with every listen since it’s original release on the band’s Baskerville Hill label (it was recently rereleased via Secretly Canadian). Of its many great songs, my current and long-standing favorite is, by far, “About To Walk” (performed above on a Washington State Ferry for La Blogotheque).

Youtube videos have so far failed to do justice to the steel-crushing electro power of Truckasauras, but the above image gives you some idea of what to expect: Hulkamania, Gameboy beeps and drum machine beats, American flag capes, nerds going pretty much buckwild. Not pictured: copious amounts of whiskey and beer.

Throw Me the Statue and Truckasauras perform as part the Young Ones showcase on Thurs, March 6th at Neumo’s and Sole Repair, a benefit for Real Change, $5 suggested donation, 21+

From the band’s blog:

After over a decade together - after moving across the country together - and after five years as our current lineup - we recently decided together to bring Wormwood’s duration to a close.

Wormwood has reached its fulfillment, achieving more than any of us had ever imagined for from the beginning… Two full-length albums, a slew of 7”s, a DIY array of self-released “tour editions,” (including a cassette tape version, circa 1997!), a dozen intense/hilarious/occasionally downright bizarre US and West Coast tours; and hundreds of shows, playing with some of the coolest bands we could have ever hoped to play with.

…Through it all, we strived as a band to maintain our integrity, and to balance the seriousness/sorrowfulness of our music with good humor and good will.

They play the Funhouse tonight with Birushanah (Japan), Drain the Sky (CA), and Evangelist. Their final show will be in Portland tomorrow night at the Ash St. Saloon.

Ah, now there is some real hardcore fashion…no mohawks, no tattoos, no studded belts…just jeans and tee shirts.

Die Kreuzen, c.’83-ish…

It was killer. 3 Inches of Blood totally slayed, Book of Black Earth rocked so hard they broke a snare, and the crowd screamed, headbanged, moshed, and threw the devil horns up at everything. A review to come in a little bit (I’m busy, okay?) but here are Kelly O’s photos from the evening.

Do you have some of your own? Upload ‘em to the Stranger’s Flickr Pool!

Sasha Frere-Jones new piece in this week’s New Yorker about Amy Winehouse is pretty good.

As with most of his writing, he does get some thing right. Like this:

I bought Winehouse’s first album, “Frank,” in 2004 at a Heathrow Airport music kiosk. I listened to it on the plane home and dropped it in a garbage can on the way to baggage claim.

and this last bit at the end (which I think is particularly funny/true):

One effective summing up of her style can be seen in a YouTube video of her performing the album’s title track, labelled “Amy Winehouse performing drunk or high. Your guess!” It may be neither—it is Winehouse’s signature, and if she can detach it from the past and keep writing songs like “Rehab” there will be nothing surprising about having her around for a long time. Other than having her around.

But he also makes some stomach turning comparisons, for example:

The singing style heard on “Frank” started years ago—Lauryn Hill, the dopey singer-songwriter Jewel, and Joni Mitchell are all glossed in this approach—and has filtered down through singers like Nelly Furtado, Winehouse, and a currently rising star, Sia.

Excuse me. I don’t want to come off all Christopher Frizzelle or nuthin’, but Joni Mitchell deserves more respect and credit than this jab. Comparing Jewel, Hill, Furtado and Sia to Mitchell. Uh-uh. Them’s is fighting words, bitch.

Further he goes on to compare Sharon Jones and Winehouse’s live performances with the same band, The Dap-Kings. I am one of those folks who think Jones is actually kinda boring and too retro. I prefer Winehouses very modern slap in the face kind of homage to Jones’ pastiche. So I suppose it’s just a matter of taste.

But I can’t help but make a connection to the fact that Jones is a black singer singing black music, and SF-J finds no offense in her “re-creations”. But Winehouse, being white, nearly becomes “minstrelsy”, and is only saved by her garbled marble-mouthed singing style.

His description:

Listen to the mid-tempo shuffle “You Know I’m No Good” and hear how she elongates and deforms the word “worst.” Is she channelling a little-known blues singer? Is she hammered?

And the caption I assume he wrote for the accompanying photograph of Winehouse on a bed with a ciggie hanging out of her mouth?

Winehouse’s voice can sound like aural blackface, but her range and variety resist definition. Photograph by Harry Benson.

I guess I’d just like to read an intelligent piece by SF-J that didn’t in some way entangle his own garbled and marble-mouthed views on race into his critiques. Is it even possible?

Seen at: King Cobra’s Grand Opening with Three Inches of Blood, Book of Black Earth, Toxic Holocaust, Plaster

Why are you moshing so hard?

‘Cuz I love metal!

What is your favorite kind of cake?

German chocolate.

Which is sweeter, metal or German chocolate?

Metal.

The last song of their set from last night’s King Cobra grand opening (about which we have much, much more to tell you).

Reintroducing the man who helped inna city British blacks understand the language of inna city British whites, Smiley Culture.

He breaks it down like this:

Cockney’s not a Language it is only a slang
And was originated inna England
The first place it was used was over East London
It was respect for the different style pronunciation
But it wasn’t really used by any and any man
Me say strictly con-man also the villain
But through me full up of lyrics and education
Right here now you a go get a little translation

Cockney have name like Terry, Arfur and Del Boy
We have name like Winston, Lloyd and Leroy
We bawl out YOW! While cockneys say OI!
What cockney call a Jack’s we call a Blue Bwoy
Say cockney have mates while we have spar
Cockney live in a drum while we live in a yard
Say we nyam while cockney gwt capture
Cockney say guv’nor. We say Big Bout here
In a de Cockney Translation!
In a de Cockney Translation!

Stage6 was started by DivX as a high quality video site where users could upload and download large files. As a result it became a haven for videos of live shows - a few weeks ago I posted links to an amazing Joanna Newsom set and a Seattle Sleeping People performance. DivX have announced that they will be pulling the plug.

Here is the explanation for the site’s collapse:

As Stage6 grew quickly and dramatically (accompanied by an explosion of other sites delivering high-quality video), it became clear that operating the service as a part of the larger DivX business no longer made sense. We couldn’t continue to run Stage6 and focus on our broader strategy to make it possible for anyone to enjoy high-quality video on any device. So, in July of last year we announced that we were kicking off an effort to explore strategic alternatives for Stage6, which is a fancy way of saying we decided we would either have to sell it, spin it out into a private company or shut it down.

I won’t (and can’t, really) go into too much detail on those first two options other than to say that we tried really hard to find a way to keep Stage6 alive, either as its own private entity or by selling it to another company. Ultimately neither of those two scenarios was possible, and we made the hard decision to turn the lights off and cease operation of the service.

There are were scores of amazing videos on the site, all downloadable, and they’re only going to be available until next Thursday. Get ‘em while you can. now they’re gone. Damn.

Tonight, Dan Kennedy is reading from his book Rock On at the Sunset Tavern at 7 pm. It’s free. He’s a pretty funny guy; he writes for McSweeney’s, and his memoir is about working in the dessicated husk of the corporate rock and roll industry.

Here’s book critic Christopher Sabatini’s review of Rock On:

If you’re thinking that it’s at least 35 years too late for a book about the death of rock by corporate hands, you’re right. It should come as a surprise to no one that the office jobs behind the commodification of popular music stand in stark contradiction to the ethos that very music is ostensibly pushing. Yet dramatizing this surprise is exactly the tack that Dan Kennedy takes in Rock On: An Office Power Ballad. Kennedy accepts a job in the promotions department of Atlantic Records and expects he is entering the black-and-white pictures in the album sleeves of his youth. He thinks he will be walking among the Stones and Zeppelin. What he gets is the Donnas and the Darkness. And even then it is the former doing public-service announcements, the latter at a board meeting.

All of which is to say I feel like I should not like this book as much as I do; it is unnecessary, not to mention easy to the point of cruelty, to mock a corporate giant’s signed talent. It is Kennedy’s voice that pulls it off. He has convincing innocence and expectation, the genuine elation of someone who has struggled through shit jobs for an entire early adulthood and believes he has finally found something real. Whether Kennedy’s innocence is a pose ceases to matter. What we get is a year-and-a-half behind-the-scenes assignment: a humor writer going undercover to show us that this really is as bad as we think it probably is, a bunch of oblivious and overpaid suits surrounded by the recurring question of how has this come to be.

The question quickly becomes irrelevant. One of the two triumphant points of the book is that corporate rock is dying from the terminal wound inflicted by downloadable music, and that it clearly had it coming. Live by the rock, etc. The dinosaur that stomped all over your youth is dying a slow and painful death and Kennedy is there to laugh at it. The other triumphant moment this book captures comes from an extracurricular Iggy Pop show, where the wiry old punk focuses his bile at the VIP seats: “Betcha wish you weren’t fat! Jump down here you fat fucks! I dare you to jump!”

I’ve heard that word describe music for a long time, but never really investigated what the hell it meant.

I know that in the 70, a time when major record labels would release double album compilations of their latest artist and potential hit songs, Warner Brothers released a double album called SCHLAGERS! I just assumed the title had something to do with the singer-songwriter/proto-fm rock that was on the album which included artist like Joni MItchell, Petula Clark, Gordon Lightfoot, Herbie Hancock, Arlo Guthrie, Randy Newman….

But then I’ve also heard it describe pop music that comes from European countries that is slightly based on folk songs or vaudville styles, and western (English language) pop music translated into whatever countries original language. An example would be an Everly Brothers song translated into Finnish.

The biggest champion of this style in the past, before turning to crazy metal bands and transexual dance music, was the ever-poular Eurovision Song Contest, in which European countries vie for the prize by presenting a song that A: represents its country by being in an official language of that country, and B: sung live.

There are English language Schlagers, I believe, that have been hits in the UK. One huge hit-making schlager machine was, of course, ABBA. There songs like, “Thank You For THe Music” and “Fernando”, based on old stage song styles in the former and folk songs in the later, were huge hits world wide.

But here’s a couple of other interesting schlager songs of note.

Brotherhood Of Man had their first hit “United We Stand” in the UK and US in 1970, but really hit the big time with their Eurovision winner of 1976, “Save Your Kisses For Me”. I believe this may be the ultimate british schlager.

Here they are with their choreography, bell-bottoms, “winks” and everything performing the song on the Eurovision broadcast that year.

The last line is nearly so sachrine as to give you a tooth-ache!

And then there’s Kelly Marie, who I’ve written about before, before she went disco and pop in the late 70’s and 80’s her show-tune style of belting out crap lyrics over vaudvillian pop tropes. Here’s one of her big hits “Who’s That Lady With My Man”.

Once again, crap-tastic choreography, AND the killer last line, which adds the twist-of-the-knife aspect to the song.

Also notice the use of clarinet (kind of klezmer-ish)in the verses and the traditional folk-song, sing-song chorus, which would be incredibly easy for anyone in another country to learn. Hence these songs being huge hits in other European countries.

So there you go, in case you ever wondered what the term Schlager meant.

And just in case you want to impress your friends with your crap taste in music….

Brotherhood Of Man - Save Your Kisses For Me
Kelly Marie - Who’s That Lady With My Man

PS. Kelly Marie has a really amazing, extensive website!

PPS. I love these songs (I know, sad.)

By mattoly.

Mixing pop and politics - Blur drummer bids for Parliament seat

Not as cool as A Silver Mt. Zion on the Lost commercial - Heroes soundtrack to feature indie all-stars

How about giving me an hour of my Thursday evening back? - American Idol announces televised fundraiser

RIP Mike Smith - Singer of Dave Clark 5 dies at 64

Amy Winehouse: Not In Trouble - Singer cleared of allegations

Sepultura sucked after Chaos AD - Brazilian thrash drummer peddles cell phones and bad music

From many of my posts, it’s not hard to notice that Dimitri From Paris is one of my favorite new school disco producers/deejays. With some of his amazing mix compilations like Disco Forever, The Kings of Disco, A Night At The Playboy Mansion, Defected in the House of Love, and his most recent Cocktail Disco, Dimitri tends develop his mixes and edits around some of the rarest and most delightful disco gems. One of the re-edits that I can’t seem to get enough of is his 2004 edit of Goody Goody’s 1978 classic “It Looks Like Love”. This edit found it’s way as part of Rapster Records’ mix compilation The Kings Of Disco which was compiled by both Dimitri and known house/disco producer and deejay Joey Negro. The original track was written by disco legend Vincent Montana, Jr. who is responsible for being the centerpiece and producer surrounding classic projects like The Salsoul Orchestra and Montana, as well as being a one-time member of MFSB. Overall this is another classic re-edit from Dimitri, who successfully captures and re-crafts a rare disco gem and re-introduces it to a new generation.

Goody Goody - It Looks Like Love (Dim’s Compiled Edit)

An Outbound As In

There is an intersection. A maroon Buick LeSabre with a cracked windshield pulls to a stoplight. A man named Herman crosses the street in front of the car. He has a cane for no reason. Count Chocula is Herman’s favorite breakfast cereal, he never learned to swim, and he has a phobia of ice sculptures, especially when in the shape of swans.

As Herman passes the LeSabre, he hears Miles Davis’ “Black Satin” playing on the car’s stereo. The earth tilts. On another side of the world a music student in Seville, Spain charts notes to the same Miles Davis piece. A mailman knocks on her door with a package. In the mailman’s teeth she sees the keys of the piano she learned to play on. Chipped identically. The package is from a cello player who won’t leave her alone. The third vase he’s given her this week.

The collection of vases on the music student’s 5th floor sill makes her uneasy so she throws them out the window. She sits on the sill and looks off toward a Ferris wheel in an amusement park nearby. Vases crash, calliope stirs “Black Satin” notes around her head, and the spinning carnival ride churns a peristalsis of the scene. It’s late afternoon. From the view, she traces lengthening shadows into the sunset they latch onto. She doesn’t even like the piano anymore, schooling ruined it. Marine biology is what she really wanted to study - undersea life, starfish, sharks, tiburones.

On the Ferris wheel, car nineteen, a little shit of a boy named Esto has eaten too much cotton candy. He vomits, and it splatters past the hand of a nun in car three below. Exiting the ride, the sister looks to the ground and sees the face of Jesus Christ in the puddle of the boy’s pink throw up. News of the sighting spreads quickly. The cement spot is soon a massive center of worship and the destination of holy migration. Esto becomes a relic. He is quoted in the paper as saying, “I could tell it was something special when it was coming up.” There are mouse pads, coffee cups, and napkin sets displaying the quote in multiple languages. Cotton candy is served. Car nineteen is bronzed. You can get a picture of yourself sitting next to a life size cardboard cut-out of Esto. A real must have. And if you listen closely enough there, Miles Davis can be heard, playing away. Tilting the Earth.

I wound up at the Comet to start a surprisingly busy Wednesday night, where local post-emo’sters Beestings were releasing their new album, Where It Goes. I’d been asked to go by friends and, having only heard a total of three minutes of their stuff on MySpace, decided to give it a shot. Beestings’ heavy-handed slow-mo-emo didn’t exactly win me over (set a quota on the use of “heart” in the lyrics, sheez). But the mom in the crowd—it’s no CD release without at least one older woman in a sweater, don’tcha know—was among the decent number of folks nodding their heads to the quartet’s slow, whiny heartbreak songs, and at the very least, Beestings took Grandy’s year-ago complaints about showmanship to heart. And their lead guitarist was pretty good…….at playing rhythm/bass lines. Too bad this ability often got buried in the band’s dependence on quiet-LOUD compositions.

Then my friends decided to bolt—presumably to lay in a hot bathtub while saying the word “heart” over and over and over—so I drove to Fremont and arrived in time for Velella Velella at the Nectar. Completely different scene, of course; V2’s gotten ample press for its acceptably danceable live shows, and last night’s attracted a surprising near-capacity Wednesday crowd. The scene was best summed up by the final song, when the song’s repeat requests for everyone to “get on up” resulted in this girl hopping the stage, grabbing a shaker and singing along quite well—dressed for the part, no less.

While I found myself nodding along throughout, one song mid-set amplified my ambivalence about the band. The track started out with an unnecessarily over-amped drumbeat playing on their iPod, and even though the band built a great mess of live melody around the track, it wasn’t until the iPod beat dropped out and the band began banging, clanging and beating their own implements that the song really came to life. The pre-produced drumbeats might’ve been easier to stomach if they’d come from a laptop with a nice sound card, if not a full-fledged drum machine. Upgrade, dammit, or at least hire the blonde.

While I’m at it, can I talk about the indie-rock line dance? You know, when lines form two-to-four deep in the front of a concert crowd, stare up at the band, and do the safe, boring, side-to-side dance? Seemingly in unison? V2 attracts ‘em like nobody else, and they make me feel like I’m in the middle of Beck’s “Where It’s At” video. Guh. I wish people would make up their minds—either lose your shit and dance, or hang in the back with me and the other boring wallflowers. Pick a side!

“It’s Bigger Than Hiphop- The Truth Behind The Evergreen Uprising”

“We have spent well over 150 hours, interviewing various eyewitnesses, faculty, administration, and students, as well as collecting and editing over 20 hours of footage,” says (director) Andrew Rutherford, who directed and edited the video for Hip Hop Congress, “We are confident in the quality, content, and accuracy of this film, and hope that it clears up misconceptions and misinformation about what happened that night.”

“We offer the results of our inquiry not only as community media producers and advocates of Hip Hop culture, but also as supporters of the movement towards universal restorative justice and proactive restitution,” says Julie Chang Schulman, Northwest Regional Director for Hip Hop Congress, and author of the video’s script, “we were concerned with what seemed to be the omission of the Olympia Police Department’s role in this incident. If the objective is accountability and preserving the safety of this community, this should be just as important a part of the investigative process as finding those responsible for damages, especially given the preexisting tension between OPD and the Evergreen community.”

The National President and Executive Director, Shamako Noble, will be speaking at an event aimed at the Evergreen student community this Friday, February 29th, at 3:00pm, in Lecture Hall 1 at Evergreen State College. Hip Hop Congress will also be screening “It’s Bigger than Hip Hop: The Truth Behind the Evergreen Uprising” for the student body at that time.

For more information email juliec@hiphopcongress.com

Every day at 3 pm I post a random MP3 from The Stranger’s Bands Pages. It may or may not be good. That’s for you to decide.

Today’s song: “Me to You is You to Me” by House on a Hill.

Do you have a Bands Page? Click here to get one.

I just spent five minutes on hold, on the phone, with a certain theater in a certain city trying to get tickets for my beloved to see a big old fashioned Broadway Show. (Please, when you say those last two words make Jazz Hands and say it in a stage whisper.)

While on hold, I started to hear two women bantering. I couldn’t quite make any sense out of what they were saying. I knew what I was listening to came from a Broadway Show (please feel free to follow the above instructions again), but I didn’t know which.

I eventually figured out it was from the show, Wicked.

It was totally annoying. How much sing-talking the characters had to do to get to the “song”. A full minute until the words “Defying Gravity” were sung. Then this, I dunno, power ballade started. Holy fucking douche nozzle. That felt like the longest five minutes of my life.

It sounded like they had to really stretch to get the song to fit into the musical. It was so generic sounding and, well, boring.

This is the kind of song and exposition I HATE in musicals.

Will I ever get that five minutes back?

Will you?

Should be pretty interesting:

Advance tickets are on sale at Neumo’s ($5 will get you into both clubs). Sole Repair, if you didn’t know, is behind Quinn’s which is right across from Neumo’s (kitty corner to the Comet).

Visit thestranger.com/youngones for more information.

There is life after the Sub Pop divorce - Constantines head out on tour but aren’t ready to make things awkward in Seattle

Hooray for media consolidation! - Ticketmaster and Cablevision to acquire 49% of AEG Live

Sorry, indie record stores - Apple is now the #2 music retailer in the U.S.

Perhaps an Itunes-only release would be wiser - Non-profit to release benefit CD to cover Evergreen riot damage costs

Not quite We Are The World - New York Philharmonic perform in North Korea

Someone needs a voice coach to perfect their yarling - Alice In Chains biopic in the works

You might remember Casey Foubert from the article I wrote on Eastside music last month (if you didn’t know about him already). In-between touring the world with Sufjan and Richard Swift and engineering records he has his own instrumental compositions called Law of the Least Effort. Performing with him last night was a spread of impressive musicians – fellow Sufjan drummer James McAlister, former Crystal Skulls bassist Yuuki Matthews, Josh Ottum on guitar, and trumpeter CJ Camerieri who plays with Sufjan and Rufus Wainwright. The set was eclectic – tunes ranging from blues rock to hints of fusion jazz to Herb Alpert. Though the group had only learned and practiced the songs over the last two weeks the set was phenomenal. These are some of the finest musicians in Seattle, whether they’re backing national acts or jamming out as a bar band. I wished their set was longer than the 25 minutes they played.

Law of the Least Effort shows are few and far between. This show only happened because they had been asked to open by the percussionist of Slavic Soul Party, whom they met in Brooklyn working on Sufjan’s “BQE” project. SSP kicked off their tour in Seattle to an impressively full Tractor crowd. Slavic Soul Party are no independent rock band, and they’re not your average bar band (though they do have a residency at a bar in Brooklyn) - they are a nine-piece marching band playing gypsy funk. As soon as the band starts up the whole vibe of the bar changes, gets… Slavic. There are a row of women in the front holding hands and doing a line dance. When singer Eva Salina Primack comes out do so some vocals the women know all the words. The band is having a great time on stage; they take turns coming up to the front to nail solos. Honestly, this kind of music doesn’t do much for me, but the band is talented and everyone is having fun in the crowd, so no shit need be talked. I stick around for a handful of songs, enough to hear them transition in and out of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” before I’ve had my fill. I guess my soul is hardly Slavic. I go to Moe Bar and sing karaoke Hall and Oates.

photos by Anne Murphy

Searching for a synthesizer can be trying. There are so many different types and models and price ranges. Wading through the specs, tech talk, and vernacular sometimes makes the synth quest un-fun.

What are the best ways to find a synthesizer? How do you make sure you get the right one, at the right price?

Jeffrey is a man who is looking for a synth. He’s become a bit overwhelmed with the techie aspects of the search. We spoke:

How’s the search for your synth? Have you decided which one you’re going to get?
Jeffrey: I don’t know, I can’t cut through all the gearhead hype and talk.

Don’t get down, young synth quester. There is a synthesizer out there for you. When in doubt, go Casio, yo. You’re looking at Casio’s, right?
I’m looking at the MicroKorg which has an arpeggiator, a vocoder, etc, but NO drums.

And the Alesis Micron, which has arpeggiator, vocoder AND drums. For the most part they seem to be the cheapest and give the most bang for your buck.

These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. I mean, so which one are you leaning toward?
Well, they both have vocoders and arpeggiators, but the Micron has a sequencer and drum sounds. The MicroKorg has a little bit better sound, but no sequencer or drums. So I don’t know.

Dan Rapport, from Blue Scholars’ band and