Save the Date: Wednesday, September 2nd @ Spaceland

Wednesday, September 2nd at Spaceland Division Day celebrates the release of their new record which I've not heard, but the consensus seems to be that it is quite good. At any rate, Division Day is always worth your time. Pay $10 now or $25 next year.

LoveLikeFire @ Spaceland 05-19-08

As added incentive, let me mention that San Francisco's LoveLikeFire, a band which I have considerable admiration for, is the first opener.

I last saw LoveLikeFire about fifteen months ago at the Mezzanine Owls residency. I was very impressed, noting: "Usually in your dreampop / shoegaze / psych rock groups there's a dynamic where no particular band member stands-out; everything meshes together into a single wall of sonic wash. But each of the members of LoveLikeFire felt like four very clearly defined pillars of the same shimmery-fog obscured temple."

I still stand by that observation. It is also true of their recorded material where the shoegaze aspects are less apparent, at least compared to the live show. I'd also add that there is some grungy crunch and janglepop found in their sound. But what I really remember about that show is how much it felt like a theatre-sized venue performance. LoveLikeFire was a really well-polished act then, they can only be better now, and if you've felt burned by lackluster performances at Spaceland lately (which seems to be a trend) then this would be a cure for what ails ya.

LoveLikeFire's new album Tear Ourselves Away will be released in the UK on September 14th on Heist or Hit Records. The album is being supported by a week-long West Coast jaunt before a blistering two-week UK tour. Singer Ann Yu talks about each track on the record here.

Collected Thoughts 08-30-09

• "Favorite Thing" is one of the most delightfully reckless Replacements songs.
  

• Smoke from the California fires crept into Echo Park this morning. It's eerie.
  

• It's hard for me not to tweet every thought I have that will eventually make it into the next Nerd's Eye View. Sigh, sign of the times.

• I am reasonably certain that my feature article on Leslie and the Badgers for Radio Free Silverlake will run on Friday, September 4th.
  

• HORROR OF HORRORS. Kill them with fire!

• Mythical creature Venn diagram. I like how the narwhal is used both for its fins and its horns.

• I may have been overly optimistic at placing the Colts at 12-4. They'll be healthier this year. I think they'll be more athletic, if a hair less talented (missing Harrison, obviously.) Indy went 12-4 last year and that was with Manning coming off injury. Considering the above, I initially thought 12-4 was a moderate stance.
  
  I also think the defense will be better in terms of players and scheme, but what I didn't consider was the new defensive coordinator. I know it was merely preseason and five starters were out, but Indy's defense looked terribly coached against the Lions yesterday.
  
  There's also the problem of left offensive tackle. It looked much, much better yesterday but I'm still worried about an older Peyton Manning getting sacked more often. The good news is that the new receivers and backup tight-ends are great. The running game is much, much better. Addai looks strong and Donald Brown, the Colt's first round draft pick, is going to be a star.
  
  The offense will be more productive than last year but I'm afraid the run defense issues and special teams weakness have not been properly addressed. We'll see... September 13th!

• Richard Nixon is my favorite US president. Who else has been so true to their caricature? His successes (China, for example) cannot be denied and yet he has probably damaged the United States more than any other man from the oval office, especially when you consider how his lieutenants went on to serve in think tanks and future administrations Reagan and Bush 43. I will never tire from learning about Nixon.
  

• When I was a sophomore in high school I took an outstanding critical thinking class at my public high school. Mrs. Gilbert's class turned me onto Nietzsche, Elie Wiesel, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and Joseph Conrad. That class probably shaped me more than any other I've ever taken.
  
  The most important lesson I ever learned was in the mock election we did. I was the campaign manager for a friend of mine. Our rival was a Jewish student who used the hipness of being a young Jewish man as the angle of his campaign, all in good fun.
  
  I want to preface the rest of this by saying that Indianapolis has a Jewish community center. The culture of Judaism you can find in NYC or LA is entirely absent. I don't think most kids even understood it beyond "Well, they have the same morals as Christians but they don't celebrate Christmas. And Jesus was a Jew." I did not grasp the cultural sensitivities of Judaism the way I grasped the cultural sensitives of African-Americans. (I went to mostly African-American schools growing up.)
  
  Anyways, my candidate and I really wanted to win. My candidate was also a non-practicing half-Jew (his mother, I think) and we used this fact to argue "Hey! That guy can't just own the market on being Jewish! We're Jew, too!"
  
  You can see where this is going. The campaigning escalated and escalated. For everyone, I think, it was all in good fun, but I also think it became harmful. We were certainly, to some degree, consciously emulating the real-world political behavior. A lot of it was unconscious.
  
  In retrospect, some of the things I devised for our campaign were anti-Semitic. Nothing like caricatures of hooked noses, just sketchy language and the ilk. It was really, really easy to do and really, really easy to try to defend as "fair game politics". And while I certainly understood the historical oppression of the Jewish people (Night was the first book we read in that class, for godsake!) having grown-up in Indianapolis, I didn't have any knowledge of the culture, the people, their importance... nothing. (This has obviously since changed.)
  
  To me that guy was my political enemy and his Jewishness was just an identity tag. It didn't have real meaning to me outside of being a playing piece in a political chess match.
  
  This was the lesson we were intended to learn.
  
  When I hear Glenn Beck be himself, when I see a sea of white folks screaming at town hall meetings, or when I hear Representatives from rural states sympathize with the birther movement, I think back to the lesson I learned in Mrs. Gilbert's critical thinking class.
  

Something to Do This Weekend

Friday, 08-28-09

Go to The Echo to see Ted Leo & Pharmacists.


Saturday 08-29-09

For this one you have to contact one of the bands (or LA-Underground) and get on the list. Just like in the movies! Expect it to run late, as Silver Factory Studios shows oft do.



Sunday 08-30-09

Go to The Smell to see Ted Leo & Pharmacists. (12pm)

Collected Thoughts 08-27-09

• Derek Jordan is the king of individuality. (!) I get tons of bad and awkward press contacts but rare is one so worthy of disseminating for your enjoyment.

• I am revisiting the entire Steve Earle catlogue. Some of it is tough going. Everything before and just after Copperhead Road really pales in comparisson.
  

• I can't bring myself to stream the new No Age EP. I refuse to register with a website so that I can be marketed to. It's repulsive.
  
  I'll simply buy the EP without ever having heard it once it is released. That'll show 'em!

• Rock Insider has the Part Time Punks Fest lineup. Last year's festival was the best thing I have ever done for my music knowledge. Just buy a ticket.
  

• Man, the "new" "bougie" Echo Park Vons is a definite improvement upon my life. I don't care what kind of class warrior nonsense (or thinly veiled racism) some neighborhoodies might proclaim, a grocery store with fresh deli meat > a grocery store without fresh deli meat. That's a goddamned truism.
  

• The company that contracts me has a meeting at 11am on Satuday, right in the middle of the Colts preseason game where the starters actually play most the game. Fortunately I'll be watching it five minutes from the meeting location, but this is still unacceptable.

• AFC East - Pats (13-3)
  AFC North - Steelers
  AFC South - Colts (12-4)
  AFC West - Chargers
  AFC W/C - Titans, Texans
  
  NFC East - Cowboys
  NFC North - Packers (12-4 or better)
  NFC South - Falcons
  NFC West - 49ers (9-7, gimp division)
  NFC W/C - Giants, Vikings

• About that model suing the anonymous blogger: I think Google should be compelled to give the names of anonymous people when court-orded to do so. I don't think calling someone a skank on the internet is grounds of such a court order. (Also, I had just assumed the anonymous blogger was some bored 15 year old male. But of course it was a jealous female accquaintance.)
  

• Come with me if you want to live.

• GoTards of the Future!
  

• Further proof that primate biology (if not all earthly biology) is supremely flexible and outright hackable.

• I'm a liberal and half my family aren't just Democrats, but active Democrats, many whom have worked in the party, so Ted Kennedy's death touched me considerably. Besides whatever sort of ghastly thing he did in his past, his public life and career directly advanced social causes I hold deep to my heart and his political behavior was much more earnest (and preferable) to Obama's lame "bipartisan" cowering or the religious right's insane frothing. Kennedy could swear on his life to protect abortion and then go right to work on a bipartisan education bill later in the day. Obama could never be so explicit in his convictions.
  
  Generally pundits in the press, even the worst ones, are gracious enough to keep their mouths shut if not say a few kind words when a rival political figure dies. (Did anybody slam Bob Novak for outing a CIA agent while be was being put into the ground?)
  
  But Ted Kennedy undoubtedly did a ghastly thing. This time around it seems like more writers and pundits are openly questioning whether Kennedy should be remembered in a positive light. Part of that is because what he did was so terrible. But I also attribute part of it to the fact that the Kennedy family, more than most politicians, unified the political culture in Washington with the celebrity culture of the mass media. Every time I read or hear a critic bring-up Chappaquiddick, be it a left wing feminist or a right wing idealogue, I feel like Ted Kennedy is getting the celebrity treatment. To everyone other than her family, the Mary Jo Kopechne tragedy is a tabloid story more than anything else.
  

Something to Do 08-27-09

This movie is the shit. (What Peckinpah flick isn't?) And When You Awake knows their stuff. File under "Recession Buster Date Night".

Vaudeville on 10 Minutes with Andrew and JJ

Last week Vaudeville went on the always-entertaining 10 Minutes With Andrew and JJ to crack wise and play four songs off their new album Devils Knocking.

You can (and should) listen to the two shows they recorded here and here.

Collected Thoughts 08-25-09

• Mere Mortals, a highly under-appreciated LA-based rock outfit, have a killer new website. There's also a new album in the works (the stuff I've heard is rad) and I understand there a Japan tour in store this fall. I'm sure the Mimi Star blogging will be hilarious.

• I thought Pitchfork's review of Fol Chen's record was pretty fair. I myself didn't love the record, mostly because I prefer the grittier, rockier live show... but I thought P4K would like the album better.
  
  Alternately: "A 6.9? Couldn't they at least give it a firm 7.0? Fucking Pitchfork hates Los Angeles!"

• In case I don't get to it myself, Web In Front is absolutely right, the new Manhattan Murder Mystery EP is a wonderful little gift.
  

• Your new favorite band, as explained by a flow chart.

• This should have been the last-ever Hipster Runoff post.
  

• Ann Powers' exploration of what the Beatles videogame means to music is terrific. (No surprise there, Powers is always terrific.)
  
  That said, I've always found an inherent contradiction that "rockism" can be attributed to later-day the Beatles catalog. After all, the "brooding in the studio with headphones" thing is also the domain of hip-hop instrumental track and contemporary pop music producers.
  
  I find the "rockist vs. poptimist" debate limiting. I think "rockism" is correct to a certain degree, though I tend to strongly disagree with the racial connotations that come with being a rockist. I also think the poptimists' insistence on the importance of female girl groups is absolutely correct. But in general, the "brooding" rock music is more thoughtful and wanting pop music to be equally intellectual just because one wishes their personal preference to go toe-to-toe doesn't make it so; when something is disposable, it is disposable.

• Speaking of pop music... "Roundball Rock," the old NBA on NBC theme, written and arranged by John Tesh, is one of the 20th century's greatest pieces of music.
  
  (Skip to 1:16 if you want to get to the point)

• Segue and Proclamation: En Vogue was the greatest pop act of the 1990s.
  
  I love En Vogue in this Salt N Pepa video. Look how they take the era's parallel alternative rock clothing style, urbanize it, and turn it on its head:
  

• More pop music... Mariah Carey was never hotter than the "Dreamlover" video. Watching that video makes my dick feel like it is 11 years old again.
  

• UH, WAT.

• Pee-Wee Herman is coming to The Fonda and I'm going. "Beavis, this is the greatest day of our lives."
  

• Someone had a Gundam Wing themed wedding. HORRIBLE.

• Gamers. *sigh*

• Classic Internets: The Nicholas Cage Japanese Pachinko ad reel:

• The Singularity is Near!

• Cyberpunkarific.

• Cyperpunkarific Pt 2.
  

Nerd's Eye View: Ted Leo & The Pharmacists

I've been trying to be less of a "blogger" and more of a "writer," which has meant spending less time posting on CGT and more time working on my short stories, poems, and scripts. I've also taken-up monthly writing gigs at Web In Front and Radio Free Silverlake.

More on RFS later, but my first Nerd's Eye View for Web In Front went up today. The premise behind NEV is to offer a CGT-styled "Collected Thoughts" type post on one national artist who is coming through town, ideally one who has been around for a while. The first Nerd's Eye View is on Ted Leo and The Pharmacists.


"How big of a geek is Ted Leo? His old band, Chisel, wrote a song called “Beta Ray Bill,” named for the alien Korbinite whose mind was transferred into cybernetic spacebeast’s flesh husk and who briefly assumed the power of Thor’s mighty hammer Mjolnir in the Marvel Comics universe."

READ THE REST AT WEB IN FRONT!

Something to Do

Tonight at The Echo Correatown celebrates the release of their new record Spark. Burn. Fade. Angela Correa's voice goes with wine at midnight on a Monday as well as it compliments coffee on a lazy Sunday. Spark. Burn. Fade. is one of the best releases out of Los Angeles in 2009 so far and easily the slow-churner of the year.

Come to the show tonight and buy the record. (And buy me a beer, because GenCon broke the bank.)

Broadcast Delay - GenCon bound!

I'm off to GenCon tomorrow morning, early. I'd wanted to do another Collected Thoughts post before then, but alas. Expect no regular postings until next week. I'll be behind on emails, etc too.

Web In Front will be borrowing my Mobile Blogging Unit for the week so I won't be blogging from the con this year. (I'll do a post when I get back.) Ready your genital mutilation pornography to spam Web In Front with should he break my baby.

The good news is that I'll be Twittering the balls off GenCon. Follow that Twitter feed. Follow it to salvation.

Something to Do

Local Natives at Spaceland are a no-brainer all month.

Tonight's openers include Red Cortez, Rademacher, and Swim Party.

Collected Thoughts 08-07-09

• Little Radio Summer Camp is coming back.
  
  What's that, you say? You know the scenes in Billy Madison where Sandler and his asshole friends sit around all day, drink beer, and do stupid shit? It's like that with awesome bands playing. Seriously, all of your manchild dreams can come true.

• The Henry Clay People (who should be playing their set at Lollapalooza right as I write this) were on Spin Magazine Online.
  
  
• Mikel Jollett wrote a nice tribute to William Garvey.
  

• Kid Static plead for Pitchfork to review the new Yea Big + Kid Static LP during Signals' performance at the Pitchfork Music Festival, and it worked. That's a fair review, but I like it better than a 7.2.

• I like this BOAT song.

• The Parson Redheads were on Dirty Laundry.

• An Aquarium Drunkard reposted my all-time favorite AD post. DOWNLOAD THIS AND LISTEN TO IT.
  

• I watched Broadcast News last week. William Hurt and Albert Brooks are both great, but the ending is just awful and the film has far too many "What's a girl to do?!" moments. There was some serious 1980's patriarchy going on in there, even as Holly Hunter's character was supposed to represent an independent professional woman who could run with the boys.

• REGARDING FOOTBALL. All readers of the CGT blog and Twitter feed who do not especially care for football are hereby inducted and baptized into The Indianapolis Colts Nation. I'm deadly serious about this. Start calling yourselves Colts fans. Here's your primer.
  
  From now on you hate: The New England Patriots, Tennessee Titans, San Diego Chargers, and Pittsburgh Steelers. You shall tolerate the Baltimore Ravens, Denver Broncos, and Houston Texans as a thoroughbred champion dog tolerates its fleas.
  

• Crappy Taxidermy FTL.

• Cyberpunkarific: Grow new teeth.

• Cyberpunkarific II: Soon for about $8k you can have a temporary personal orbiting communications satellite.

• Cyberpunkarific III: Augmented Reality (AR) is coming.

• THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR:

• Make no mistake, The Higgs-Boson is traveling back to our present to prevent its own discovery.
  

• In India, they grow bridges. Crazy!
  

• Horror of horrors. KILL IT WITH FIRE.

• Horror of Horrors II:

• These days Disney is in the business of de-balling elephants in Africa.

• Costumed freaks, ugh.
  

• This must be fake:

• Walmart is trying to rip-off the Girl Scouts. That's one of those "real news stories that sound like an article from The Onion".
  

• The health insurance reform battle in game theory terms.

• That Obama-Joker "controversy". Certainly the poster was culturally tone death. 1) Putting the black president in white face? Really? and 2) the Joker was an anarchist, the diametric opposite of big government socialism. That said, it's hard to feign outrage. I went to an anti-Bush protest rally on Hollywood Blvd. once and saw far, far, far, worse.
  

The Henry Clay People on Laundromatinee

The Henry Clay People Laundromatinee Session (Indianapolis, IN) 03-01-09

The Henry Clay People Laundromatinee Session was recorded on Sunday, March 1st and was taped at a salon in the Broad Ripple neighborhood of Indianapolis, IN, not two blocks from where I went to high school. I was touring blogging with the band at the time and have vivid memories of the performance.

These performances were recorded in the middle of a string of excellent shows that had followed a week of very bad luck. The Airborne Toxic Event had canceled a bunch of tour dates and the status of the tour for HCP was in question. But Minneapolis was a killer show, Chicago was strong, and later in the evening after recording this session The Henry Clay People would decimate a receptive crowd in Columbus, OH.

I think the Laundromat session turned-out great. The Replacements influence on The HCP can really be heard in these versions of "End of an Empire" and "Digital Kid," no doubt in part because the band had visited the house on the cover of Let It Be the day before.

Here are some photos I took of the recording session:









Watch The Henry Clay People Laundromat Session Here.


The Henry Clay People on Tour

08/07/09 - Lollapalooza - Chicago, Illinois
08/10/09 - Replay Lounge - Lawrence, Kansas
08/11/09 - Larimer Lounge - Denver, Colorado
08/14/09 - The Echoplex - Los Angeles, California
09/17/09 - The Fox Theater - Pomona, California
09/24/09 - Boulder Theater - Boulder, Colorado
09/25/09 - Slowdown - Omaha, Nebraska
09/26/09 - Peoples Court - Des Moines, Iowa
09/28/09 - Granada Theater - Lawrence, Kansas
09/29/09 - Cain’s Ballroom 2nd Stage - Tulsa, Oklahoma
09/30/09 - House of Blues - Dallas, Texas
10/01/09 - House of Blues - - Houston, Texas
10/03/09 - Austin City Limits - Austin, Texas
10/06/09 - State Theatre - St. Petersburg, Florida
10/07/09 - Variety Playhouse - Atlanta, Georgia
10/08/09 - Headliners Live - Columbia, South Carolina
10/09/09 - The NorVa - Norfolk, Virginia
10/10/09 - The Trocadero Theatre - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
10/12/09 - 9:30 Club - Washington DC
10/13/09 - House of Blues - Boston, Massachusetts
10/15/09 - Webster Hall - New York, New York
10/16/09 - Webster Hall - New York, New York
10/17/09 - Northern Lights - Clifton Park, New Jersey
10/18/09 - LaTulipe - Montreal, Quebec
10/19/09 - Phoenix Concert Theatre - Toronto, Ontario
10/21/09 - Newport Music Hall - Columbus, Ohio
10/22/09 - Crofoot Ballroom - Pontiac, Michigan
10/24/09 - Fine Line Music Cafe - Minneapolis, Minnesota
10/28/09 - Commodore Ballroom - Vancouver, British Columbia
10/29/09 - The Showbox @ the Market - Seattle, Washington
10/30/09 - Knitting Factory Concert House - Boise, Idaho
10/31/09 - Roseland Theatre - Portland, Oregon
11/02/09 - The Fillmore - San Francisco, California

FYF Fest date announced, tickets on sale today...

I'm a bad music nerd and have never made it to Fuck Yeah Fest. My recollection is that it has over-lapped GenCon in years past. Not this time, the throwdown goes down on Saturday, September 5th. LA's premier underground noise extravaganza has been renamed FYF Fest (Fuck Yeah Fest Fest?) and moved to the Los Angeles Historic State Park. A portion of the proceeds will go towards helping to preserve 100 state parks that The Governator has decided to close.

The bill has lots of great Fuck Yeah standbys, but most exciting for me is a chance to see The Thermals, a band I am tragically late in falling in love with.

BUY YOUR TICKETS NOW.



The Lineup Thus Far (Copied from Rock Insider, props JAX! CGT favorites are emboldened.)

The Black Lips
Lightning Bolt
Tim & Eric
Lucero
Converge
F* Up
The Thermals
No Age
Matt Skiba from Alkaline Trio
Glass Candy

Japanther
Times New Viking
Darker My Love
Carbonas
Peanut Butter Wolf
Crystal Antlers
AA Bondy
Mika Miko
Har Mar Superstar

Nobunny
Telepathe
Cold Cave
The Strange Boys
Katie Stelmanis
Dios
NinjaSonik
Kurt Vile
Eat Skull
Avi Buffalo
+ More to be artists and comedians to be announced

Collected Thoughts 08-01-09

• GenCon is in a week and a half. Here are last year's blogged offerings. I won't go as in-depth this year; the blogging was a bit distracting from the gaming. I think the Tweets will be gold, though.

Ugh.

• The Henry Clay People finally started using that Twitter account.

• Bronson cracked my shit-up with this line: "the remarkably proficient music... drips with irony, and I suspect that whether you cringe depends entirely on how much you embraced the ’70s the first three times around."

• I still think this Silver Daggers song from a couple years ago is as good as noisepunk gets.

• The Colts will be just fine. The first pre-season games are this month! My buddy just got a 50-inch 1080p flatscreen TV and we're pitching-in for Season Ticket. I am so ready for football.

• Apparently Michael Jackson and Stan Lee were friendly with each other, and Michael wanted to make Spider-Man.
  

• A Boy and His Blob is being remade.

• Office 2010: The Movie

• Here is a rogue's gallery of unholy creatures that walk the earth. KILL THEM WITH FIRE.

• See, the Russians know what to do with monsters.
  

• This will never leave your brain:

(thx @kidstatic)