I was going to do a review of the Twin Crystals show in Oakland last week but it was such a surreal disaster I’m not even sure if it there’s a point.

What a horribly organized show! I showed up with Legs at ten o’clock to a class room with some confused looking people in it. No instruments, amps, or anything remotely resembling a show in sight. Legs blurts out “Is this a joke” and the people laughed and said maybe. We started talking to one of the confused guys who turned out to be
in Ghost Echoes and he said he didn’t really know what was going on but that he’d read in a blog somewhere that they were playing this show.

Awesome. So we went away for a bit and came back to find the same room packed with young kids devoutly watching some other kids playing some seriously precious Juno-core. Signs on the wall pointed to the members “Guitar 1″ & “Guitar 2″ and another pointing to the amp reading “Magic Box”. Before each song each of them introduce themselves with a different phrase. “I am the sparrow” and “I am the wind”. For a minute I thought maybe I had Alzheimer’s and didn’t realize I was actually at Cafe Grattitude. Some drunk young gay is tossing Tecates around. What? I keep hoping one of the beers will smack somebody in the head and cause some damage at this prosaic rock love in. Don’t these kids know there’s a war on?? “I am Iraq” and “I am a home made road side bomb”. Don’t these kids know there’s an economic crisis? “I am your college fund” and “I am your parents portfolio”.

We step outside because its getting old. But, magically, it kind of got so bad it got good. Most of the people there to see Twin Crystals/Sucks/Ghost Echoes are annoyed and I wish this band was doing this to make people angry. I like bands that are so bad on purpose its hilarious, like the Zip Code Rapists or like California Lightning this one time I saw them when they were really stoned and played a set consisting of them alternating Mustang Sally and Happy Birthday for thirty minutes. But this wasn’t that funny and it went on for a really really long time.

Legs gets severely irritated and asks me to take her home.

I get back at 12:30 (I missed Sucks) but was just in time for Twin Crystals who, if you haven’t listened to our imeem thing, sound a lot like The Units if that band had been made up of mentally unstable teenagers who went off of their meds. Here, listen to this song that kind of captures their need for meds but not really the synth punk part:

Download it! Twin Crystals – Careful

Anyway, they were so rad for the ten minutes they got to play before the cops showed up and shut the thing down. The cop was totally annoying too… he told the Tecate gay he was going to fine him because he could smell marijuana. Huh? I hope that kid wasn’t dumb enough to be intimidated by that.

(edit 10/18/08) THIS SHOW HAS BEEN CANCELED!!!

Ghost Echoes I think might be one of the nicest bands out there because they hung out all night, lent equipment, and didn’t even get to play. The word on the internet and from Twin Crystals is that they are totally loud and totally awesome. They are playing this weekend at The Mansion with Ganglians who the Art for Spastics guy said on some mailing list are the best pop band in Sacramento (and that you should ignore their myspace recordings which sound like the shins or something, ugh!). You should totally go (we are!)

10/18/2008 @ The Mansion
1547 Revere Ave 8PM
Ghost Echoes
Protect Me
Dance Card
Ganglians
World Wide Computer God

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.

Here’s some photos:

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 about The 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.

On the for real, what is going on? I saw BRIDEZ and Brian Glaze a few nights ago at SMiLE. I do not know what it is, but I really think that guy’s album cover should look like a guns and roses album cover or some other pop metal kinda thing. I thought it sounded like Bruce Springsteen though or some other kind of ‘melodic rock’ thing. I know, lame kinda but, still, I liked this! I noticed a lot of Birdman Records people in the audience, you know because of the connection(s) with The Cuts. At one point I said to my friend “I think everbody in the audience is on Birdman” and she leaned forward and asked some guy if he had a record on Birdman and he did! Also, Brian Glaze fell on me at this show. I don’t know how he managed it, but he went tumbling off of that four inch stage and right into me. WORLD FAMOUS CURSE?

BRIDEZ were great as always and they didn’t spill anybodies drinks but their own!

The last time I wrote about Lumerians I described them as “What if Wooden Shjips were as awesome as everybody says they are?”. Thats a pretty big what if becuase people are crazy about Wooden Shjips (for example, supposedly the “Dance, California” seven inch fetches $200 on ebay. What, seriously? I should dig out my copy!).

Well I’ve heard Lumerians debut and, yes. Yes they are that good. The EP delievers thirty minutes of organ driven drone/pop with more than a healthy dose of Krautrock worship thrown in. They’ve got that Neu! thing going on, maybe not the exact beat but the kind of beat that makes you feel like you’re on a train endlessly heading towards the horizon. But with the way they have the organ pushed to the front on “Corkscrew Trepanation” I don’t think we’re headed towards the horizon, its a journey to the center of your mind. Although, truth be told after this first song, you’re not being driven so much any more but allowed to drift through whatever space it is the band has managed to get you into, especially on “Triskaideka” and “Turquoise Towers”. The other highlight of the EP is Organ Grinder. The song delves into Opal territory, not because the song has a femal vocalist, but because this song manages that understated, laid back, yet still unsettled feeling trick that Opal always managed.

Live all this droning and drifting could get old, but the show last saturday at The Complex was great. They’ve added a bongo player and luckily for us he does’t play like an asshole. Actually, he elevates what was already a really solid rhythm section. It turns out these guys pulled a total first date maneuver and didn’t put everything they’ve got to offer out on display on that EP. Luckily its a much more pleasant surprise than finding out your new infatuation likes to wear a diaper. Around halfway through the set the songs start opening up into these nice melodic Sonic Youth like noise pop numbers. It might simply be the contrast between the heavier early stuff but, shockingly, these SY moments sound really good and not totally done to death by a horde of unimaginative fans (and you thought SY was played out).

After, I heard somebody saying these guys could stand to get more in your face — they spend most of the set taunting you, building to that balls out moment but they always keep it in their pants. I dunno, I can appreciate a guy who can keep it in his pants. Lumerians play this Wednesday, you decide:

Wednesday May 21st
@ The Uptown, 1928 Telegraph Ave. Oakland
The Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound
Lumerians
Janina Angel Bath
DJ Duke of Windsor
Visuals by Cosmic Hex