Fancy Space People

Back on May 2nd, Jeremy Smears and I had the good sense to drive out to the Undisclosed Location to check out Fancy Space People. The band, which hails from Los Angeles, boasts the delightful Nora Keyes on vocals and the infamous Don Bolles (Germs) on guitar. The band sounded like a cross between Curved Air meets early Roxy Music with a dash of Slapp Happy, but the vocal stylings of Nora made this group have a sound all their own. The band was tight, Don amazed us with his sweet back-up vocals and awesome outer space guitar licks. We want to try and get them back up here to SF! We’ll keep you posted. Check out the killer track Spectacle Electric Crystalline posted on their myspace page!

myspace.com/fancyspacepeople

This week its a band out of Houston, TX called Wicked Poseur. How can they be World Famous in SF?? Well, for starters there’s this guy in town who not only released their first 7 but will walk it to your house (http://romanmealsf.blogspot.com/2008/06/wicked-poseur-7.html) and secondly they invited Hard Place down to Houston so the two bands could show that town how it is done. I went with them and we had a blast!!

One day we had a pool party at the hotel and Wicked Poseur mastermind, Arthur Bates, got a little… uh, sea sick. When he showed up to play the show later that evening he was still looking a bit green but when he stepped behind the microphone and switched on the backing tracks he found his sea legs and the color returned to his face.

see the rest of the photos here

Along with his cohort, these two pluck poison darts from their guitar strings, filled wiith something they call “Shampoo #2″; it’ll “get the shit out of your hair” and turn you into a rabid fan screaming for more after every song, we sure were. Thank the stars for those backing tracks, providing the blips, the bleeps, the new wave fuzzy keyboard melodies, the danceable beats you wish more of the current crop of psyched out weirdos were investigating and which kept these two from taking us too far out into the outer reaches of the paranoid psyched out sprawl of the Houston night, otherwise we might not have returned to tell you about it!

Why aren’t more bands coming out and grabbing you by the neck like this?? For that, they are our myspace of the week!

http://www.myspace.com/wickedposeur

When I was in Tennessee, visiting, my mom and I were totally grooving to Sta Prest and I’ve been meaning to make them the myspace of the week since. And so now they are.

Looking like the B52s, sounding like the Au Pairs by way of New Zealand (that organ!) as played by Stephen Pastel, these guys and gals had records on Outpunk Records and Kill Rock Stars. They were totally at the front of the queercore scene which, as i remember it (being that i was a totally faggy teenager), was a big deal and is probably why they have a Wikipedia entry from which I am now going to gratuitously quote:

The band first made its appearance on the queercore record label Outpunk Records, on its compilation Outpunk Dance Party. Soon afterwards they released their first EP, Vespa Sex, also on Outpunk. Like other bands influenced by the nascent Riot Grrrl scene in Olympia, Washington, New York No Wave, and European post-punk, core members of Sta-Prest (Aloofah, Dudley Manlove, and Professor Swish) adopted pseudonyms, swapped instruments between songs, and practiced a consensus-based approach to song composition. A revolving membership included Tetley, Twi Tybat, Clutch-y-Spun, and Scout.

In 1997. the band appeared in performance in the seminal documentary film She’s Real, Worse Than Queer by Lucy Thane.

In 2002, Aloofah, a.k.a. Iraya Robles and Dudley Manlove, a.k.a. Gary Fembot, appeared in Maximum Rocknroll’s “Queer Punk” issue, featured in a discussion with other queer-identified musicians Martin Sorrondeguy of both Los Crudos and Limp Wrist and Aaron Detroit of The Little Deaths.

The coolest thing about this band though is that, unlike many of their peers, they still actually sound pretty good today which is why they’re the myspace of the week. Check it out!

http://www.myspace.com/staprest

I think this is our first myspace of the week since the move and its a good one: Nobunny. There are have action figures!

Here’s a live version of that song!

Check out the upcoming SF show with So Cow, photobooth, and The Passionistas

http://www.myspace.com/nobunnylovesyou.

This week the Nothing People are our myspace page of the week. I picked up their first seven inch, Problems, at a show sometime last year and then promptly forgot about it. I found it a few months ago and it rules. I’ve seen some of that stuff compared to Chrome which I kinda hear, but it sounds more like Chrome if covered by Sonic Youth (which isn’t a bad thing, I think SYs cover of Crime’s Hotwire My Heart is fantastic). The other seven inches aren’t as claustrophobic or alien and have more of a seventies avant rock feel to them (there’s a Roxy Music cover on one of them).

Check their song “Army of Ideal” right here: http://www.myspace.com/nothingpeople

You can see them this Friday:

4/25 @ The Hemlock

Nothing People
Mayyors
Sic Alps
Crash Normal (all the way from France garage/psych/fall-esqe/weirdness)

EZ JEWCE is our myspace of the week. My friend Julia is in this and she never lets me know when they’re playing because she’s afraid of ending up in our esteemed publication. I would like to see them so I am going to have to get proactive by putting them on the blog before I see them. PLS TO BE ON GUESTLIST NOW? THX.

From what I understand EZ JEWCE was started as a pretext to wear costumes, drink, and name their band EZ JEWCE. It turns out they actually really enjoy making an extreme amount of cut up noise with their turntables. Sounds kinda like Wobbly to me even though I can’t find evidence to corroborate that. I like inexplicable reference points. Check the video!

http://www.myspace.com/ezjewce

I’ve been missing the myspace of the week feature, so I’m bringing it back. This week its Nero’s Day At Disneyland. Yes, I know I already gushed about this, but I’m bummed because I can’t make the International Noise Conference this Thursday at 21 Grand (!!!) where he’ll be performing. Somebody go for me please, you will enjoy it!

http://www.myspace.com/nerosdayatdisneyland

Our myspace of the week is Danyol, artist and member of carletta sue kay and woman of color, because this pretty much sums up my thoughts on IBR. And for finally giving Kenny Rogers the lesbian makeover he desperately needed.

So my band dad, Kelley Stoltz, has been pretty absent due to his successful career. He was on the home page of MySpace for, like, three days. That’s crazy! He got like a billion plays obviously. If you watch TV you’ve probably heard his jam Birdies Singing on some commercial – I can’t really remember what the ad was about even though I’ve seen it, like, five times. He’s touring the world with his new record, CIRCULAR SOUNDS, that’s out on Sub Pop Records. It’s really good, DUH, so go buy it. Here is the video for his first single:

Kelley Stoltz – Your Reverie

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Directed by M. Moorton

Its so hard to remember that goth was supposed to be kinda fun, what with all these crusty hot topic goths on the street.

But it is supposed to be fun! So this week’s myspace of the week is The Vaguelies! And these guys have brains, or at least they eat them.

http://www.myspace.com/thevaguelies