Filed under: music
often at concerts, i used to wonder about the music playing in the venue before and in-between bands. i recall being an impressionable youth and hearing something mind-blowing and trying to figure who it is? sometimes you go up to the guy at the front-of-house soundboard and he’s all like “dunno.”
so yes, sometimes it’s the headliner’s choice of tunes, sometimes the venue plays stuff. sometimes there’s a dj. well if you’ve come to a pete yorn show of late, the music you heard was picked by me, max of all trades. i thought that on this blog it would be cool to sporadically share some of the lesser known tunes from the preshow/postshow mixes that one might have heard pumping through a huge PA somewhere in america (or maybe australia).
blackblack is a los angeles trio i have seen a few times. friends of friends. they are: diva dompe (bass and vocals) lola dompe (drums) and clark schädelkopf (guitar). they’ve opened for bands like bauhaus and deerhoof. i would classify their sound as being somewhere between those two bands, actually: playful and eccentric, but simultaeously doomy. they’ve had one release in japan, which combined their two (self released, distributed and scribbled upon) e.p.s , which you can and should buy at their shows. “clark” leads another band you’ve probably heard of, but blackblack is not a “side project.” they very much exist in their own universe. i had never heard their music when i first went to see them, and this song was the one that really blew me away. it’s a cover of a song by the misfits, but it really reinvents the original and casts it in a whole new light.
on tour with pete yorn, the first song to play at the end of the set was “bonnie and clyde” by serge gainsbourg and then this came next.
BLACKBLACK “SKULLS” (by Misfits)
(myspace)
two days ago i chipped my front tooth. it’s not bad… you can’t really see it, but it feels jagged nonetheless. also disconcerting: the massive nosebleed i have right now… typing with one hand, the other one is holding up a huge ball of tissue.
i am falling apart. not really.
THINGS I LIKE TODAY:
1. i just returned from seeing the Charles Burnett film Killer of Sheep. i remember having seen a clip of it in some film class in college and thinking that it looked crazy. it has been restored and rereleased in limited engagements. for me it was one of those experiences where you have to kind of let go… “this is a different kind of movie, i have to just give in to its pace and its tone and let it take me wherever it wants to go,” i say to myself in less eloquent half-thoughts. some people have trouble doing that. i felt the same about Inland Empire and The New World. the narrative of the film demands that you change your viewing style. sometimes if you can give in to a demanding film like these ones, you can find the reward. i can’t say that i loved the Burnett picture, but it had a really unique tone and some highly memorable moments, both funny and disturbing. i wanted to write a post about this great dinah washington song used a few times in the movie, but somebody else beat me to it. so check that out.
2. THESE BANDS
you get a friend request from some band and you’re like, “ugh.” and you either deny them or accept them. some people don’t even listen. i give a cursory few seconds listen, but if i’m not down, i reject. am i a dick? maybe. well sometimes you get a friend request from some band an you’re like, “ugh.” and then you glance at the page and realize you know them. they were a few years below you in college and they used to be in a different band whose name you can’t remember and this is a few of those same guys playing with a few other guys whose names sound familiar, but you don’t really know them all that well. so they have a new name and a few new members and you’re looking at their page but there isn’t any music up yet. just some pictures. maybe one hastily recorded demo. so you accept the request. and you forget about them. then one day you happen to check their page and they’ve posted some songs. and you listen. you hear the post-punk/new wave influence and say think that there are plenty of post-punl/new wave bands out there. but you like what you hear. you really like what you hear. and you kinda wish that this band existed when you went to school there. so you could go to their shows and dance like ian curtis would.
BABEWATCH “CITIES FOR SALE”
(myspace)
years back i was visiting some family in chicago and wandered into reckless records on broadway. they always seemed to have a boatload of new releases i had never heard of. i saw a cd hanging up in their staff picks section and there was a little review that someone there had written. i don’t recall what it said, but something convinced me to take a leap of faith and buy something i hadn’t heard and knew nothing about. this was before the day of the mp3 blog and the bittorrent and the itunes 30-second preview. so i bought the cd, put it on, and loved every minute of it. it would be the last thing the band put out. they soon broke up and that was that.
the band was boas, the record was called “mansion” (in fact, the band used to be called mansion, then changed their name to boas. hence a sticker on the cellophane that said boas and liner notes that just said mansion). no photos of the band anywhere on the disc. chicago band. now defunct. if anyone knows what happened to them, or if the members are in any other bands, leave a comment.
or maybe don’t say anything.
i like the mystery.
BOAS “THE LAST ZOO HOUSE BAND”(buy)
Filed under: music
hello and welcome to my little corner of the internets.
if you didn’t already know, i’ve been keeping a tour blog during my adventures with Mr. Pete Yorn, but now we’re off the road and i decided it would be worthwile to keep chugging along with my own web presence.
it is april 16, 2007 and in one week i am moving into a new place in a neighborhood that i really like. things is heck of crazy between the impending move and various projects i’ve got going on (film, music, film, regaining sanity). i’m actually procrastinating right now by writing this, but…. well, what else is new.
i’m in that crazy mode of de-cluttering, where you dig into the depths of a drawer and find the oldest, weirdest things. like why do i have three different “Yo MTV Raps” Fab Five Freddy cards? and should i recycle them or try to sell them on ebay (eh…. more work)? these are the big questions right now.
THINGS I LIKE TODAY:
1. iConcertCal
brought to my attention by Heather Browne. it’s the ultimate application for the live music/itunes obsessive. I’m looking into my future and seeing… more rock shows.
2. virb.com
the “myspace killer.” well, not quite yet. nobody’s on the damn thing. but it has a lot of potential. i’m kind of obsessed with their virbTunes thingy where it tells everybody what you’ve been listening to and then if any of those bands has a page on virb, a link pops up. handy.
3. these songs
JAY REATARD “MY SHADOW”(buy/myspace)
ramones + buzzcocks + memphis + a little blood = i’m obsessed
and, on the other end of the spectrum…
MAGGIE CHEUNG/DAVID ROBACK“DOWN IN THE LIGHT”
(buy)
this is from the Olivier Assayas film “Clean.” the song is written and produced by Roback, founding member-dude of the great Mazzy Star (he was also in Rain Parade). in the film, Maggie Cheung plays the junkie widow of a rock star trying to start over, get clean and make some music of her own. she sings this song in the film and i found it to be pretty haunting, especially the slide guitar.
To The Maxx 