I don’t know why I didn’t post about Will from BRIDEZ first solo outing before the show. I guess thats just how we do it around here sometimes. Sorry Will!
Because I am kinda juvenile, I was disappointed to hear that there was no band called Butt Milk Shake but that, in fact, it was two bands Butt and Milk Shake. You can’t always get what you want I guess, being a child I’m still learning that.
Anyway, Will assembled a five piece band and turned out a set of fully arranged pop songs from what was supposedly just a bedroom recording projec for the occasiont. There’s a nice writeup of this shindig over on the guardian’s music blog http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/music/2008/10/ivy_makes_us_itch_for_more.html where you can learn that a) The Li Po is a pit but everybody loves it anyway b) Will’s backing band was basically members of Girls and the The Passionistas c) this show was fun and d) somebody is either backed by bank or spends a little too much time in an upscale grocery store because they think of presets in terms of overused adjectives for white wine. Just sayin.
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.
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!
Hard Place have been out there making a mess of things! Makeup stains on the sheets, beer on the floor, vomit in the pool, glitter everywhere — it must mean they’ve rolled through town. The band have been taking their new album, Get Your Hopes Up, out into the Wildness of LA, flirting with disaster on its busiest corners, down the tranny lined avenues of San Francisco leading to Club Feral, and deep into the heart of Texas with Wicked Poseur on a journey to find out just who, exactly, this JR guy was.
Doesn’t that look like a hoot?? Here’s a few of our favorite album and live reviews so far:
“This is the kind of album you put on full blast in the car” — review in the LA Record
“this LA/SF glitchy disco tinged glam throwback act is pretty close to their debut EP from ‘04. Think The Cars meets CSS or Bonde do Rolê” review in Now Hear This
“Of course I know it’s supposed to be tongue in cheek but to pull that off requires some wit and Hard Place displayed none though they clearly seemed to think they possessed it in spades.” — Clearly this guy didn’t notice Freddy rolled out of a minivan in flip flops and rocked the party. OUCH!!! live review from the Houston Free Press
And don’t worry you guys! Hard Place are recalculating their route even as we speak to hit more towns across the US this fall!
Have you seen the headlines??? “BELGIAN GOVERNMENT FALLS…not many hurt”. Could Belgium be coming to an end? Those of you in the know must suspect it has something to do with Mon Cousin Belge’s new album, Quelle Horreur and their most recent show at Thee Parkside.
Emile has started to find his way back into the hearts, imaginations, and deepest fears of his American public and attention is starting to focus on this Belgian and his band of San Francisco back alley players. They’ve been heard mingling with other San Francisco talent in a recent Bay Bridgedpodcast, the San Francisco Bay Guardian pointed them out as one of the highlights of San Francisco’s world renowned pride festivities, and gay.com somehow got the idea that Emile would be a good spokes person for the gays:
“Are you involved with any LGBT community organizations in San Francisco? Which ones? What do you like about those groups?”
“I spend a great deal of your American dollars on cocktails. Is that what you mean?”
The paparazzi and press were out in force for this momentous occasion, the first show by Mon Cousin Belge since Emile found his way back into the US. Did you see?
Also, be sure to keep your calendar clear for Wednesday August 27th, MCB returns to the stage at Cafe du Nord for their record release party with Girls, BRIDEZ, and The Passionistas. The night will be nothing short of World Famous.
These aren’t my favorite photos but I took ‘em and I posted ‘em to flickr so I guess now you gotta look at ‘em.
I was all aboutThe Fresh & Onlys before I saw them. Then I saw ‘em. I dunno if all the reverb impaired my senses or if it was some kind of triggered memory from the last time I was at the Rickshaw Stop, but when they all burst into dance for the end number I decided I might not need to follow them too closely.
Sic Alps weren’t extra good like I thought they were going to be, but they were extra lovable. As tempers flared over equipment failures they endeared themselves to me with every smashed guitar, defective cord thrown into the audince, knocked over microphone, and breath of fresh air grabbed outside. When the equiment cooperated though, all right!
Singer was last and good enough. All of the advanced press was accurate — lots of US Maple moves were copped. The last song was the best. I remember thinking the word pummeling. Thats a trick US Maple never pulled off and probably why I thought it was the best of the bunch.
I think maybe this should be filed under World Famous in LA given that Anavan is a totally LA affair. If you’re not familliar, imagine you started an ESG inspired dance band but you were weened on nineties post punk/post hardcore weirdness (well, Anavan were on GSL). Also you’re really taken with that whole nu rave scene going on (or do I mean ravesploitation). Throw in some football helmets fitted with mics for a good electro aesthetic and you’ve got Anavan. I swear!
Anyway, last month they visited TransAm — speaking of, its that time again. TransAm is this saturday with Ex-Boyfriends — and pretty much brought the house down. Maybe those helmets were more literal than I thought, it was like they were running plays out of their retard football playbook: running around, rolling on the floor, and feeling up the boys in the audience. Oh, and playing their hearts out.
I had a great time at the show, but I’m getting less mileage out of the tour EP. It has more to do with being over the ESG sound after the great post punk boom of the early 2000’s than anything to do with the EP proper. I’m not overly familiar with Anavan’s past albums, but this EP does feel like the band is sniffing around for a new trail to follow. I like the new wave explorations of ‘Not Sure’ the best, but I’m going to put up a song called ‘Traumatology’ as I think it sounds the most representative. Look and listen!
I’ve seen a lot of people bemoaning the state of SXSW. Its not as fun as it used to be. Its too crowded. The corporate sponsorships are too intrusive. And, worst of all, the music isn’t that great. Well, ok. Its true. SXSW is way too big for its britches. I mean, this really isn’t surprising. The festival is now old enough to drink, and twenty one year olds are troublesome when they decide to party.
Having never been before, I was overwhelmed by many of the festival’s growing pains. From the desperate search for a hotel room, to the lines for shows, to the lines for after parties, to the bouncers who guarded the brightly colored wristbands that you needed to get into VIP shows (which, once you got into you couldn’t figure out what the fuss was about). Its a bit much to go through just to see a few bands. Except that bands are so promotion crazed they’re after as many shows as possible in four days. I heard some bands had show counts in the double digits. Its like sport fucking for bands! I noticed a lot of shows seemed to be under-attended, so in the end I’m not sure this strategy is really paying off.
Also, there’s the joy of being in Texas. I know, I know, Austin is different but maybe the rest of Texas floods in for the festival to throw beer bottles at you for wearing white pants, or to hang out of their pickup trucks to scream at you that they (correctly) think that you’re a faggot, or cosy up to you on the dance floor to try and chew (literally!) their way into your heart. But the real nail in the coffin for the festival was when the interactive section was added. The geeks are making their desperate grab for cool, and thats usually when you know its time to move on.
All of that aside, we still managed to have a blast. The trick is to go to the ‘unoffical’ events and bypass all the above silliness. These were much more laid back, friendly, and sonically interesting. I wrote a ton about The Smell/Deathbomb Arc showcase already but another fun showcase we hit up was the Social Registry/Cake Shop showcase which is pretty cool if you like some scuzzy modern psych (which I do). Speaking of, I was totally enjoyed Knyfe Hyts, one of the scuzziest, ugliest sounding bands. And they’ve got a look to match. Check out “Smoke The Milk” on their myspace page, it was seriously hypnotic live. Pictures!
Monday Night Smile is the best. Totally the best! I love going out on Mondays, its like Presidents Day. And this Monday was extra cool because The Interchangeable Hearts, Citadelle, and Lumerians played and The Vortex Room did the visuals. I got some neat photos this time maybe you should go look at them!
First was Interchangeable Hearts and I heard somebody bagging on the band before they started. I was totally surprised because almost everybody I’ve talked to recently says you shouldn’t bag on local bands because they have it hard enough. Anyway, based on what I heard I thought I wouldn’t like this band. And, their brand of pop (like, an indie rock Carly Simon) isn’t my favorite, but I liked this girl’s voice and her keyboard playing. I shall be keeping an eye out. And word on the street is they have a record release show in April at the The Hotel Utah.
Next was Citadelle. Everybody was there to see them. They were on tour, or actually it seems like they’ve just moved here. They are obviously plugged into some scene I don’t know the first thing about as I had never heard of them. They played a sort of heavy seventies psych that was (… sigh, is still) super popular and people cared like it was 2001 and this were Comets on Fire (if it were 2001 I think I’d be saying they were better than Comets on Fire). That means I thought they were really good for what they did, I’m just not feeling the heavy seventies in my light thirties.
Last was Lumerians. I thought the performance was pretty good. They play a psych drone fuzzfest kinda thing, but with some sonic youth (or some other song based group) worship thrown in. I could have done without the hissy fit they were throwing over the persistent feedback issues they were having. Obviously that is frustrating, but did it really detract from the music they were playing? Not as much as they might have thought. Which is maybe a problem — whats going on under all that fuzz? I’ll have to check out the music on the myspace.
Based from what I saw though, I might describe them as “What if Wooden Shjips were as awesome as everybody says they are?”. And thats not so bad.
Well, Raccoons seem to be all the rage. Atleast with the folks involved with Mushrooms International’s upcoming festival: they’re on the latest edition of cobain in a coma and Myles seems to like them. Or their boners, I can’t tell. I mean, who doesn’t like boners? Anyway, I’m going to stroke the raccoon boner some more, here’s some photos from their show with girls:
