This is the first of, if things go as I envision, an ongoing series of band profiles. I’m not able to get out to shows too often right now, but there are many bands I really like and want to talk about. Some I hear of through various means (including those from the Boston area), and maybe a few will stumble upon my humble blog and send me stuff, ’cause I’m lonely and I like when people email me out of the blue like that. I begin with a Fresno, California-based band called Rademacher.
Embrace your pain; use it to create art. Ok, so I embraced my pain, and I created… something. The song is called “Yay Coachella!”, and it’s sung to Weezer’s “Troublemaker”, which WFNX has played, I think, about 500,000 times to date. Once would have been enough. In fact, once would have been too much. We put together this video for their contest to win a trip to the wonderful Coachella music festival out in Indio, California, April 17-19. A partial list of bands I would love, love, love to see: The Airborne Toxic Event, Leonard Cohen, The Cure, Conor Oberst, Franz Ferdinand, Morrissey, Silversun Pickups, The Hold Steady, We Are Scientists, Band of Horses, Bob Mould, Fleet Foxes, Glasvegas, Henry Rollins, M.I.A., TV on the Radio, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Lykke Li, My Bloody Valentine, Okkervil River, Public Enemy, The Orb, Throbbing Gristle (good heavens, Throbbing Gristle??), X, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. All except for Franz and TATE I’ve never seen before, and I’ve never been to a music festival like this (save for maybe one or two low-key things in Connecticut, back in the late ’70s). Wish us luck! (I really need a vacation…)
Yes, I got myself off my little island again to see a show, and I’m really glad I did. I’d never been inside Toad for any considerable length of time… nice place! Cozy, rather shaped like a shoebox with the “stage” at the far end, and a slightly raised area off to the right when you first walk in. Tables on the right, bar on the left, narrow walkway down the middle, and there you have it! A cool place for live music, but definitely get there early if the band(s) playing are popular at all. Otherwise, you might have to wait outside for a bit until someone squeezes out so you can squeeze in (I’m guessing about 100 maximum capacity, if that).
Once again, I’m posting this after the show has already aired. Such has been my state of mind lately, and as I felt pummeled by the previous night’s work shift, I listened to the show while lying in bed, staring numbly up at the ceiling. But it was a wonderful broadcast, and I was reminded of a lot of things that I know but somehow still stupidly forget when life gets a bit too challenging.
These bands made me wistfully sentimental of the ’80s, but not being what I’ll call a music scholar, this was purely an emotional response. White Lies brought to mind bands I really liked – Echo and the Bunnymen, Joy Division/New Order, The Cure. Friendly Fires’ territory I’m less familiar with. While not opposed to European-style dance music (or even, in some cases, what was once called “house music” and “dub” but I’m pretty certain isn’t anymore), I know nothing of this genre or the multi-splintered sub-genres this mutated into throughout the late ’80s up until now. So I figured I’d better do a little research so I didn’t feel like a complete idiot.
I’ve been terribly remiss in announcing my buddy Victor’s wonderful Expanding Awareness shows on WZBC 90.3 FM (Boston College Radio). He presents interviews (with audience callers) every Saturday morning from 10-11am, on paranormal, holistic heath, environmental and sometimes animal rights topics. Before which he plays really good ambient, world, and New Age music (from 7am – 10am). He also has an astrology report for the week ahead from Dietrich Pessin at 9:30.
I’m about to announce a show that already aired, which may sound rather stupid, but happily WZBC is now streaming them for the past two weeks. So you can listen to his shows after the fact (as well as other shows on WZBC).
Here are some bands who are not at SXSW. Instead, they’re playing at various clubs around the Boston area. I have to work tonight, so I can’t even go out and see ’em perform, say hello, buy their stuff, and show my support. But what I can do is write up brief profiles and give links so you can learn more about them. So that’s what I’m doing.
So with a title like that, this is either about Barack Obama, or it’s a compendium of all those self-help books from the 1970s, right? Well… no. Or maybe yes, but in a way that is filtered through the warped mind and understandings of someone who was brought up amidst the rantings of child psychologists, people trying to “find themselves” and “better themselves”, and then the media onslaught kicked into overdrive in the 1990s with the introduction of Internet For The Poor Huddled Masses. I’d never been a happy person. No, that’s wrong. Let me rephrase it. I’d always found it excruciatingly difficult to be a happy person. Some people just flow through life. I writhed and scraped and twisted and clutched.
Ironically now, I find myself the happy one, or at least the hopeful one, bookended by two very important people in my life – my best friend, and my dad – who are burdened by their own sense of truth and weighted down by what they see to be immovable realities in their lives. I feel the heaviness in their vocal tones and inflections, as I bounce exuberantly towards them in our conversations and am walloped in the head with a brick wall. The i-Ching, of which I am sometimes a reluctant student, teaches that in all our life situations and relationships, there are times to advance and times to retreat. Not to give up, mind you, but more a thoughtful and knowing “waiting it out”.
My muse visited me this morning, in the guise of a Mockingbird spreading his wings and peering up at me on my porch as I was doing my sun salutations, as if to say “winter is nearly over, and I’m ready to fly — how about you?” A chill in the air still and patches of ice on the ground, but Spring bubbling underneath as a whispered promise. First Robin also, as a harbinger and scavenger, investigating under the Blue Spruce for bits of food. Scurrying and then stopping as if to catch the last words of something that was just said by a soul only they can see; a presence only they can feel. I’m dumb to it mostly, but every now and then, in a fleeting glimmer of a sparkling gem, I catch it. And I am able to share that moment with the bird, for perhaps a second or a millisecond, before I’m shut out again and left to admire from afar, with a sense of wonderment and awe.
Better late than never. Work obligations, the oppressive cold bearing down, and all that. But last Sunday, a distant and rapidly fading memory now, I braved the elements (snowy, windy and cold as they were) to see three really great L.A. bands at T.T. The Bear’s Place in Cambridge. And as I so often am at these times that finally inspire me to get my ass off my small island and down from the North Shore into the city, I was cold, lonely and bereft of inspiration, desperately in need of an indie band live music fix. These guys really delivered for me.
