Crickets Chirping

Musical equipment I’m selling on Craigslist:

Piccolo Snare

Stage Fright-Proof Guitar (It has magical powers)

Bongos

Acoustic Bass

8 String Bass

Blue Kickball Mic

Bass Pod XT

Guitar Stands

All prices OBO.

Chris recommended Menomena to me when I told him that I really dig Deerhoof. I have to say it was a great recommendation.

That brings me to the video for their song, Cough Coughing (above). It reminds me of the kinds of things I see in my dreams. When I tried to describe the video to Craig over breakfast, I had to stop several times because I was laughing so hard I cried.

The video is directed by Jonnie Ross, who has done a number of commercials for MTV2 and this video for Belle and Sebastian’s “The Blues are Still Blue”.

Menomena are playing tomorrow night at The Parish Room.

via Information Aesthetics:

This music video follows a guy’s hand as he draws a mural using one continuous line. The pan-out at the end shows the entire piece. The song is nice too. Video by Dan Lowe.

Kinda reminds me of Hitchhiker’s Choice:

I had lunch with Craig and Ava this afternoon at Curra’s, and one of the topics discussed was Roth IRAs. I found it funny that they’re liquid in the sense that you can invest in whatever stocks you want, but they’re illiquid in the sense that if you try to take money out before you retire the guvmnet takes like 140% of it in taxes or some shit. That reminded me of colloids- they act like liquids when you put something into them slowly, but if you try to take something out quickly they solidify and resist.

Here’s a video I made of cornstarch and water, in a plate on an amp connected to my synthesizer. I added some drops of food coloring to show how the particles flow. The amp was actually playing a single note from the synth; the music is tracked separately.

The songs (“Orange Peel” and “Roundabouts on the Wrong Bus Routes” “Between You and Me the Sky isn’t Blue, it’s Green”) are a couple I’ve had laying around for a while and they seemed to fit the movement of the colloid. I can’t convince other people to play my songs so I play all the instruments.

I wrote a web scraper for the sxsw music site using scRUBYt and posted some of the results to Swivel:

By state:

and By City:

Last night I saw Don Caballero and Peelander-Z. Don Cab is a three piece with a guitarist who uses a looping pedal to add more sound. Their music is complex rhythmically altough some of their songs sound like they’re snapped together like legos (to borrow a simile from Shawn). Overall I really liked what they played. Which is funny since the last time I heard them was in my friend’s picup truck when he gave me a ride home from high school. Guess I should have given them another listen.

Peelander-Z, in case you haven’t heard of them, is like watching power rangers on crack. Their instruments match the red, yellow and blue costumes they wear onstage. The music is punk peppered with spastic gibberish (“Mad Tiger!!!!”) and they spend about half the show running around in the audience or surfing the crowd. Later in the show, the bassist hauled a suitcase out and opened it on stage to reveal a bunch of pots, pans, pet food bowls and drum sticks. I watched from the stairwell above as people from the audience grabbed them and started beating them together. Next thing I knew, everybody was on stage. The band members ceded control of the their instruments to random willing participants from the audience who (to my suprise) kept the song going as the band member set up bowling pins on the ground. The show ended with the singer (now dressed in a large bowling pin costume) crashing into them from a running start across the bar.

Wednesday night I saw Panda Band (They sucked. I’ll say no more.) and Holy Fuck. I missed Holy Fuck last year so I was happy to see them this time around. They sound great on the album but I was curious as to how they could pull off the live drummer/bassist thing with everything else being sequenced/arp’d. I was impressed, although I wasn’t close enough to the stage to see much of what was going on. Holy Fuck should not be confused with Fucked Up, who played last night and are also from Toronto (what the fuck is up with Toronto bands with Fuck in the name?)

While I waited around the house before going to see Of Montreal last night I drew this:

Speaking of Of Montreal, nobody seems to know (or want to tell me) what the CCAA Booty Patrol is. I saw some people at the show wearing hoodies that said “CCAA Booty Patrol” on the back, but when I asked if I could buy one the t-shirt guy said, “Sorry- staff only.” I asked him what it meant and every body at the t-shirt booth chimed in, “Nobody knows. That’s the $64,000 question.”

I mean, I’m not one to go on a booty patrol of any kind, and I suppose I shouldn’t endorse the CCAA without know what it is, but it think about it- just sounds funny.

Somebody made a cafepress page for CCAA Booty Patrol shirts, but it’s gone now. Thanks to the magic of google cache, here it is (as it was).

Here’s an interesting analysis of the lyrics to Labyrinthian Pomp (where the “CCAA Booty Patrol” reference came from). If Kevin Barnes didn’t intend to build the puzzle they’re trying to unravel, it’s a pretty remarkable set of coincidences. The human mind is a pattern matching machine, and we tend to look for meaning where there often is none. I know I do, at least.

I watched the first Burn to Shine DVD last night. I took notes (I’m taking notes while I watch TV a lot lately. I should probably keep a TV Notebook on the coffee table for convenience.)

I first heard about this DVD series back when my friend Shawn interviewed Brendan Canty for Space City Rock, but didn’t think of it again until I saw it amongst the documentaries at I Love Video. In short, the series (of which DC is the first) is recordings of local bands playing in houses that are about to be demolished. I don’t know what they’re trying to say with the demolished house thing. On the one hand, it’s fuckin’ punk rock to demolish shit, but on the other they could be saying that the music goes in cycles just like our living spaces. The surroundings and sounds we currently find ourselves in- they’re all temporary despite the design and intent of the creators. Music can protect us from the emotional elements- tragedy, heartbreak and so on, just like a house provides shelter from the weather. But both are destined to be torn down, replaced by something better suited to the new occupants.

Or not.

What I wrote down while watching the DVD:

Q and Not U: MicroKORG! (One of the lists I’d like to make is of bands that use the MicroKORG.)

Medications: Is that the guy from Faraquet? (I checked the internets after I finished watching the DVD: it is the guy from faraquet).

Garland of Hours: Is Music Man the only brand of bass guitar sold in DC? It’s hard to rock out on piano because the player is sitting down.

French Toast: It’s hard to rock out on a drum machine because the drummer doesn’t exist.

Ted Leo: Amazing. If you ever get a chance to see this guy live, do it.

Weird War: Is that the guy from Nation of Ulysses The Makeup? And he’s wearing a pink triangle? No. Way. (Check out this NPR piece from him where he explains how Electroclash and the recent Psychadelic Folk revival are fraternal twins, midwifed by Alan Greenspan’s real estate boom, born without acoustic drums into spaces without garages, spaces un-owned by their occupants.) Turns out there’s a guy from Golden and another guy from Trans Am in this band. I should check out more of their stuff.

The Evens: Is she playing drums with the handles of the sticks? She’s better looking than I imagined.

Whoever is After the Evens: This guy is very pop-folksy. He sounds like he might be the guy who writes all those Incubus songs. That’s not an insult, by the way. I think a lot of shitty pop musicians try to make up for their lack of greatness by buying some off real musicans. Like when Pink did that Beck song for that Charlie’s Angels movie. (Oh shit, I just looked up the Burn to Shine credits and that’s Bob Mould. hehehehehe.)

I recommend this DVD. There are lots of nice close ups of people playing, which I enjoy. It’s all very crisp and clear. Just the bands playing live in a house that’s about to be demolished.

I look forward to watching vol. 2 and 3 (Chicago and Portland). Even though they came out two years ago. I’m slow like that.

And what’s up with Austin? Can we get a Burn to Shine DVD made here? We’ve got plenty of bands and plenty of houses to demolish.

“Schizophrenia” as sung by The Young@Heart Chorus.

Sonic Youth. Heh. Pretty soon Kim and Thurston will be right up there with the rest of the octogenarians.