Photos :: The Tallest Man on Earth @ The Middle East 4/21/10

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Girlfriends :: Bandwidth TV

A hilarious video with amazingly terrible camera work, which is perfect for Girlfriends. Features the smash off record feel good summer hit slamtaculars like "Government Seizure" and "Cave Kids."

With those glasses, Andy reminds me of Guy from the stellar film "That Thing You Do."

I have no idea what they are eating in the interview.

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Feature :: Breakfast of Champs Records

Syrup slides down the fretboard of a guitar and fills in the crannies of the waffle resting in the acoustic's sound hole. Pancakes are impaled on a high hat, hash browns bounce on a snare drum, and bacon and sausage are lined up along the keys of his synthesizer. Or, at least that's one way of imagining how Breakfast of Champs began.

Jimmy Hughes was smoking a cigarette on the porch of the Whitehuas in Jamaica Plain when he explained that, no, unfortunately BOC isn’t a Kurt Vonnegut reference, they all just really like breakfast. He's in the synth based, acoustic-loop, reggaeton infused Turtle Ambulance and explained it seemed that breakfast time was always when he and his two other cohorts ended up chatting about their music business."We wanted to get serious with our own releases, so the best way to do that was to start our own label," Hughes explains. The other guys are Caleb Johannes of digi-psychonaughts Truman Peyote and Jake Yuhas from the trip beat Bug Eyes (formerly Dropa). The label currently has over ten artists, all of whom are either just their friends or bands they’re into, like the Cleveland based Cloud Nothings.

What makes BOC unique is that none of the recordings are made in a studio. Four tracks, garage band, practice spaces, bedrooms, the artists use whatever they can get their hands on to record. “The whole process from writing to recording is really intimate with the artist,” Hughes said. “From the run of 100 cassettes to the fact that it’s all hand packaged by the artist.” The closest a band got to a studio was when recording the ethereal and cavernous electric guitar vs. banjo trio, Quilt. "We recorded it in a basement with 8 mics and Jake's rig,” Hughes said. “It’s what was appropriate to capture Quilt." Shows always have a good attendance and the bands are gathering quite a following. I was playing a song by Quilt as a realtor was showing my apartment and a potential renter (and complete stranger) stopped to say, "Are you listening to Quilt? I LOVE Quilt!" Hughes explained, "Right now the tours are supporting the label. The merch response is great."

The charm of BOC is that it’s extremely DIY, not because it's trendy, but because it has to be. Despite the fact that pitchfork proclaimed the cassette comeback and even mentioned BOC in the article, the label releases tapes and 7" vinyls, because they're cheap to produce. "The goal is for us just to pay for everybody's releases," Hughes said. "That's where we're at, but we're not really making a return yet. We're working our jobs and just trying to put out records." The base of operations for the label is just the suitcase of records they bring with them to shows. "Other than our website and the things that we put online, the label exists wherever we are," Hughes says. "It's not like there's a storefront...yet."

Upcoming releases from BOC are a Quilt 7”, Ppalmm/Woven Tales split cassette and Total Slacker/Weekends split cassette. And look out for the touring bands all over Boston.

Download the BOC compilation Mozart Park All Stars here.

1 Weekends – Psychedelic Mice
2 Truman Peyote – Numbjob
3 Dropa – Dusty City Organ
4 Turtle Ambulance – Cubierta
5 Semya – Slumtown Bike Ride
6 PPALMM– Acid Cops
7 Cop Magnet – Benched
8 Cloud Nothings– Crying Underwater
9 Philip Seymour Hoffman – everything in my cupboards is moldy
10 EASYBOY – Supercop
11 Milochondria – Quiet Remix
12 Woven Tales – Handful of Fireflies
13 Ming Ming Dance Co.– Seniors
14 Psychedelic Family – Black Horse Knight Rider (Live @ The Wedge)

breakfastofchampsrecords.com

Published in Performer Magazine, May 2010 issue.

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Concert Review :: Cymbals Eat Guitars, Bear in Heaven, Feelance Whales @ The Middle East Downstairs 4/8/10

Coming off their recent hype storm debut Why There Are Mountains, the Middle East Downstairs was host to the carnage of a swarm of floating cymbals taking down some guitars like savannah gazelles in a school cafeteria and having a food fight with them.

Each band seemed to draw their own crowds. An electric guitar balances against a banjo resting on an acoustic guitar like a house of cards in sound, but never even quivers like its going to fall. This image essentially summed up the swooning pop of Freelance Whales. Seeing unconventional instruments like a tin watering can and an antique harmonium in a rock band just added to the giddy that covered the crowd like the soft baby blue fabric of the organ's bellows. The singer of Bear in Heaven proudly remarked that they played for one single person at T.T. the Bear's Place the last time they were in Boston. The band's drone gloom washed with blood red light had you wondering if the guitarist was playing anything at all until you realized how good they were at transforming guitar strings into synth keys.

The members of Cymbals Eat Guitars are all around 21, with a startling first record and already playing packed shows. Their age somehow reasons well with their sound, like it were trapped in an all concrete suburban housing development somewhere in New York. They escaped playing in their parent's all concrete garages with concrete windows and turned the wasteland into a playground, swaying on concrete swings with concrete chains, growing moss where lawns should be and kudzu where power lines used to hang. It's like the lyrics flowing 'Like Blood Does,' "from faucets in pitch black bathrooms during adolescent summoning rituals."

Their experimentation with noise is youthful as well. It was captured in their opener "And the Hazy Sea," which also opens the record. The tempo changes are little surprises that burst from slow nostalgic riff mantras into joyous static, giving an audible form and figure to the word fun. Guitar riffs trade places with sleezy piano that doesn't seem to fit at all yet belongs there more than any other sound in the song. It's like an old joke you heard before that somehow has a new twisted and infinitely clever punchline. An example is that they were selling a 7" with a cover of Elliott Smith's "Ballad of Big Nothing." Just imagining Cymbal Eat Guitar's sound transposing Elliott Smith's is a dizzying thought, and it doesn't disappoint.

It took the lead singer less than a minute to be completely drenched in sweat. His whole body bowed into his ravenous riffs, making noises that didn't seem humanly possible. Coughing a few times, he probably was playing through a cold. He might've explained it at the end of the show, during the only moment he took to address the crowd. However, no one could hear him, because their ears were full of buzzing. The climax of their set was an oppressive and impressive extended noise session of decaying dinosaurs tumbling out of an amplifier during the bridge of "Like Blood Does."

They also played a new song, gloriously confirming a follow up record. Unfortunately, not even their live show gives you any clue why there are mountains.cymbalseatguitars.com

bearinheaven.com

freelancewhales.com

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Interview :: Simon Joyner

Simon Joyner’s songs are stories, streams of consciousness or yarns woven sometimes about the darkest parts of the human experience and so much more, usually forming a tapestry of hope. He’s been an influential figure from Omaha for a long time, affecting acts like Bright Eyes. A lot of people shrug when his name is mentioned, but Joyner kind of likes it that way. Nearly two decades, twelve albums and now a revolutionary touring model and Simon Joyner still has time to be great Dad. He fit in a phone interview after his daughter’s dance recital.

My editor mentioned that your daughter had a recital just before this interview.

Yeah, she had a dancing recital. She goes to this class every Saturday and usually she just gets dropped off, but this was the last one so they had their performance.

Are you in Omaha right now?

Yeah, I’m in Omaha. I’m in between legs of this tour that I’m doing.

The tour is called the “Living Room and Discreet Places Tour,” right?

Yes. The premise is just to play places that are not music venues in the current sense of the word. You know, the “indie rock” clubs and bars. I’m trying to do shows that are in art galleries or workspaces or people’s houses. Places where people are gathering to see music just to see some music.

How did you come up with the idea?

I haven’t toured on my own in probably a decade…has it been a decade? No, (laughs)...I don’t know, probably a long time. I was finding that I had less and less fun performing on the road and I was trying to figure out why I didn’t really enjoy touring.

In Omaha there’s a pretty good house show scene and I would play in people’s attics and basements and living rooms and those shows I always really loved. The connection to the audience is really direct, it’s informal. You’re on the same level with the people that enjoy your music instead of on this elevated platform.

I’ve toured with Bright Eyes and done tours in Europe where I played nice theatres and things like that and I really enjoy some of those larger venue environments. But in your stereotypical rock club it can be terrible. The people who come to see you play, they’re all up front and there could be 50 people who came to see you and they’re watching but the “rock club,” even though it’s called a music venue, it’s really promoting the whole bar side of the establishment while you’re playing. So, right in the back or off to the side or however it happens to be, there’s all this commotion that really makes appreciating a show really difficult and it can be really distracting when you’re playing too.

In those kinds of music venues, more often than not you come away from it not feeling very good about how everything went.

How did you go about finding living rooms to play in?

So when I decided that I wanted to see if I could tour just house shows and art galleries, then that meant that a booking agent wasn’t really what I needed for this kind of tour. Basically I wanted to combine two things. The best kind of show is a small show, but at house shows nobody really pays, or there’s not an obligation to pay. So you can have the best experience artistically, but usually a really poor financial turn out. But the indie rock club shows usually have a good financial turn out, but, you know, the show artistically doesn’t feel so good.

I wanted to combine the two. So, I talked to this friend in Scotland who designed a website for me once before and he and I worked out this idea of creating a website where people can click on something that says they want to host a show in their town or they can click on something that says they want to attend a show in their town. Then I just sent out some facebook and myspace announcements. Team Love put up an article on their webpage that said Simon Joyner wants to play in your living room and click here for details and it took them to this website.

That’s how I booked the whole tour. And I booked three twelve day tours in a month. It was so fast. The response I got as soon as people found out about it, I got just a flood of people offering to host a show.

Are you going to try and keep doing it?

I think so, because I just did this southeast leg and it was great. We had a great time. We played all kinds of interesting unusually places. Half were galleries, then There was a DIY all ages art co-op place, then there were some living rooms and it really just kind of revitalized me as far as performing and going on tour goes. I really enjoyed it. It reminded me of the beginning of my career, before I had released anything. Where we would just hang out at our buddy’s parties and it got late and you’re just passing the guitar around. It has that kind of quality to it.

So you’re on Team Love now. How’s that going?

Oh, it’s going great. They’re really great to work with. They’re old friends of mine anyway. They’ve kind of been bugging me for years to let them put something out so I let them reissue this old record of mine [The Cowardly Traveler Pays His Toll]. When I left Jagjaguar it just made sense to move over to Team Love.

How do you feel about Bright Eyes borrowing the yellow bird symbol for I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning?

That song of mine, ‘Came a Yellow Bird,’ it was a really important song for Conor. He lost somebody in his family and wrote all the songs where he references that song of mine, because he really appreciated that song of mine. He came over, before he recorded the songs and played them for me and asked if it was okay that he referenced my song in these songs of his that he was working on and of course it was not a problem. I was flattered that the song meant so much to him that he kind of pulled out a symbol that he wanted to use, because it had to do with the same kind of message. So, he just thought of it as making sense to reference this symbol. I was flattered. He did a great job writing about a difficult subject and I was glad to be a part of it in that way.

+

How do you feel about people having such profound responses to your music?

You make songs hopefully to communicate and I talk about things that are important to me and it’s good to have that confirmation that I’m getting it right some of the time and that it’s resonating with people. Well, that’s when you know when you’re doing something right artistically.

As for the fact that I’m still underground, that’s where I want to be anyway and it makes it easier to do what I want to do, to not have any pressures and to just live a normal life. For me anyway, I need to live my life in order to have things to write about. If I was always in a bus playing shows and doing the whole career thing, I don’t think I could continue to write about things that anybody cared about. So, for me, this is exactly where I want to be.

The people who do know about my music really follow it and respond to it and so that’s great. So long as I can continue to be able to do what I do. As long as people are willing to put out these records…well, even if people weren’t willing to put them out at this point it’s easy enough to do that I could still put out a record every year or two.

You don’t do it for any reason other than because that’s what I do. It’s my only real artistic outlet. So I’m not looking for anything beyond a venue for doing it.

But I don’t begrudge anybody who runs with it. There’s things that I probably should’ve done if I really wanted to be more well known. But, there’s also limits because of the songs I write and the way that I sing. Things like that. I think I would still be not hugely successful.

In your most recent record Out Into the Snow, there’s a song called ‘Sunday Morning Song for Sara.’ Is it the same Sara in ‘Folk Song for Sara’ on Room Temperature?

All throughout my records I used to use the name Sara as a stand in name when I was writing and wanted to reference the person that I’m talking about in the song, but I didn’t want to use the actual name of a person I knew. That was kind of a reference to the Bob Dylan song ‘Sara.’ It was the archetypal song about the important woman in his life kind of thing. So, I used that name whenever I needed a name to refer to somebody.

All these years later, now I am actually married to someone named Sara and so that was kind of like…it becomes confusing because then people think, ‘oh all these references to Sara are about his wife Sara,’ but only the song on this last record is.

The song title ‘Sunday Morning Song for Sara’ is a reference to ‘Evening Song for Sally.’ It’s a Jerry Jeff Walker song which you should check out for sure. It’s an amazing song. And I was trying to pay homage to that song when I wrote ‘Sunday Morning Song for Sara.’

Does it have anything to do with ‘Folk Song for Sara?’

No, they’re two separate things.

‘Sonny’s Blues,’ referenced in ‘Last Evening on Earth’ is a James Baldwin short story, right?

That’s one of my favorite short stories and there’s an image in the book of Sonny playing the piano in the final scene when the brother or friend, I can’t remember because I haven’t read the story in a long time, is watching him play the piano in this club after dealing with all his problems and everything. There’s an image that I’m trying to reference in that.

There are a lot of references to poems and writers and stories all throughout my songs in the whole catalog. Essentially I’m more of a writer than a musician so that’s always been the part of it that comes first for me is the writing part and the music part is a process. I put a lot of references to things that I like. I always like it when I am listening to music and I catch something and feel like it’s a little gift to me from the person who wrote the song. Like if you’ve read this then you know what this is a reference to and here’s a little present.

The song ‘Last Evening on Earth’ which has the Baldwin reference happens to be named after a book of short stories by Roberto Bolaño called Last Evenings on Earth. I wrote it after a friend in Chile sent me a copy. I had never heard of Bolaño and it was a real revelation. If you haven't read "2666" or "The Savage Detectives", you are in for a hell of a ride. Epic, all-encompassing literature, a lot like Faulkner in that Bolaño comments on our world by creating his own dark, mysterious world with characters that pop up in his other books, as main characters in some and then tangential characters in others. You should check him out. Unfortunately, he died very young so there are only a handful of books and only a few have been translated into English so far.

Team Love reissued a lot of your albums on MP3 for the first time, like Iffy, which was one of your first records right?

I put out a cassette Umbilical Chord, then I put out Room Temperature and then I was going to go on tour. The label that put out Room Temperature was going to charge what I thought was too much for the CD. So I wanted to have something inexpensive to sell when I went on that first tour, or second tour I guess. I went on a tour when Umbilical Chord came out. I wanted to have something kind of cheap to sell. So I put together all these odds and ends, boombox recordings and live recordings and demos and things that didn’t have a place on a collection on a period of years and created that as a kind of touring thing. People really liked it.

How do you feel looking back on your earlier stuff?

Some of it of course I like more than other things. I don’t regret any forays into awfulness, it’s just part of it and you know it’s important to do stuff that’s going to make you wince later. I’m always wary of the person who never did anything that wasn’t great. It’s good to have those skeletons in the closet.

I play stuff from all the records, except for probably Umbilical Chord. I’ll play stuff from Iffy that I like. It’s not so much I don’t like something as I don’t know how to give it a voice anymore. Sometimes I feel like it’s from such a different person that I don’t know how to honestly perform that song and make it legitimate anymore.

What’s next?

I’m writing new songs. Some of the songs that we’re playing on these house tours will be new songs that I’ve been working on that I’m going to record soon. Another record for Team Love. We have about half of the record now.

I’m hoping that this touring model works for me, because I really do prefer the small intimate show. It seems like it’s working so if it keeps working I’ll keep touring this way.

I’m thinking of adding a feature where people in a town where I’ll be playing can volunteer to help promote the show in exchange for free tickets or records or whatever. I have people write me after the southeast leg that I did saying “I didn’t even know you were in town, I totally found out about it after.” So I want to find a way to reach all the people that want to come and see it.

I’m not really sure how to improve on the model. It’s working pretty well, I think it could work even better. If anybody out there has any ideas then they should definitely send them to me.

myspace.com/simonjoyner

Get tickets to shows and buy records here: www.weeblackskelf.co.uk/tour/buy.html

everything you every wanted to know about Simon Joyner: www.weeblackskelf.co.uk/simonjoyner/

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Video :: Christians & Lions - Gimmie Diction

Found this on a DVD at a Whitehaus yard sale. Don't tell Warner Brothers!!

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Photos :: Cymbals Eat Guitars, Bear in Heaven, Feelance Whales @ The Middle East Downstairs 4/8/10

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Album Review :: Greg Mullen - The Hungry Ocean

"Like Dante climbing out of hell, if his guides were Bob Dylan and Bukowski"

Download "Greg Mullen - Ten Thousand Years" (right click, save link as)

The Hungry Ocean has all the charm of a folk singer, kicking stones down a dusty road with a harmonica ‘round his neck and guitar strapped to his back, traveling to play his soulful tunes about everyday things. Yet at times, Greg Mullen’s voice quivers strangely supernatural and the words he sings veil some otherworldly pseudo-apocalyptic occurrence. It’s something like Dante climbing the wrong way out of hell if his guides were Bob Dylan and Bukowski, instead of Virgil. All of it is decorated with a whirlpool of beauteous piano, horns and lovely female harmonies.

The theme of wishing to be a ship and failing to float in a vast, all-consuming ocean is strongly present on the album. There's two bummed out Narwhals on the cover and even the 12" vinyl is cleverly pressed a transparent green. In ‘Ten Thousand Years,’ Mullen sings, “We both had a hard time trying to decide what to be for Halloween. Said, ‘I'll be a ship, you be a flying machine.’” In the same song he also mentions that he’s been dead for ten thousand years.

Mullen’s seemingly unassuming lyrics tend to be paired with some surreal element and there’s some kind of bizarre metamorphosis going on that’s hard to put your finger on. In the opener ‘Pipes that Drain Out to the Sea,’ Mullen sings about laying his body on a pile of leaves, looking at his new reflection and laughing, saying “I thought it would be easy to stop being me.”

The album culminates in ‘Telephone,’ a dirty distorted electric guitar leading the melody to an aquatic Armageddon. In the song, Mullen is on a train that’s filled to capacity and he sings, “there’s flowers around my neck and fire where my hands used to be and all these people around are looking down at their feet pretending not to see what they don’t want to believe in a human being.” When asked about it, even Mullen didn’t seem quite sure. He said he only kind of realized the repeated imagery himself when the record was finished.

In a lot of ways, the album is very much a product of the Whitehaus, the art collective that has incubated its growth. When listening to ‘Goldfish,’ I can picture the fisher price xylophone used in the song sitting on the hoot room floor. When hearing the backing vocals on ‘Internal Combustion,’ I can picture Kate Lee singing away, who also lived at the house and is in the band Gracious Calamity.

Loaded with poignant, ear grabbing lines, The Hungry Ocean is a stomping, spine tingling and soulful journey over and under some choppy waves.

//Jamaica Plain, MA//
//Released on Songs with Homes with endorsement from The Whitehaus Family Record//
//March, 2010//
//Produced by Greg Mullen//
//Recorded and Mixed by Max Raphael//
//Mastered by Brian Charles at Zippah Recordings, Boston, MA//
//Art by Briana Horrigan//

gregmullenmusic.com

myspace.com/welcometothelifeadventure

Published in Performer Magazine, June 2010 issue.

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Concert Review :: Japandroids, Love is All, Girlfriends @ The Middle East Downstairs 3/31/10

Both drummer David Prowse's kit and guitarist Brian King's microphone were tucked into the corners of the Middle East Downstairs. Center stage belonged to the three biggest fender amps known to man, gleaming like a silver event horizon. When the duo took the stage only one thing was certain: something was probably going to spontaneously burst into flames.

King immediately began conjuring fond drunken memories of past Boston shows. Throughout their set, he kept complimenting the place so profusely that you could actually believe he didn't say it in every city.

The concert had a solid line up, opened by the local noise enthusiasts: Girlfriends. The trio's riotously goofy tunes like the live only "Cave Kids of Boston" were a fitting pair with the Droids. The second band, Love is All was a five piece ethereal pop band with some crazy, eerie, tremolo picked guitar and a little saxophone. The female lead in a beige windbreaker and shaking a blue toy maraca when she wasn't jamming on her little Casio keyboard covered with patches of red gig tape.

Even though Japandroids is just drums and guitar, it never got boring. The simplicity works; unburdened, catchy as hell and kept interesting by King's furious melodic guitar playing. He shouted into the red windscreen on his mic, his dangling, moppy hair that was dripping with sweat being blown from his face by a large fan at his feet. When he wasn't singing he thrashed about stage, occasionally jumping up to balance on Prowse's bass drum. Some live tunes like 'The Boys are Leaving Town' had an intensity and vitality that just can't be captured on a recording in a studio.

The Japandroids' sound was refreshingly invigorating and had the crowd doing the only bastardized version of moshing that the Middle East allows, also known as 'pointless pushing.' On 'Young Hearts Spark Fire,' Prowse's backing vocals were joined by a cacophony of the crowd's yelling the "Oh yeah, oh yeah!" that was meant for a large chorus of voices. Towards the end of their set, the band played their only down-tempo song, 'I Quit Girls;' giving the crowd a chance to slow dance. The muted harmonics in that song are some kind of sonic addiction.

The duo's last tune was a McLusky cover, 'To Hell with Good Attentions.' But for everyone at the Middle East Downstairs that night, the song was called, 'To Hell with Every Other City in America, Except for Boston."

japandroids.com

myspace.com/japandroids

myspace.com/loveisall8

girlfriendstheband.com

Photography by Lee Stepien

Published in Performer Magazine, May 2010 issue.

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Festival Review :: Blastfest 3!!!

Anyone who has been to the Whitehaus has probably spent some time staring into the wall collage of knick knacks, toys, broken instruments and other assorted randomness like an ISpy book you read as a kid. Each year on the vernal equinox, all the most interesting sculptures adorning the walls, ceilings and all the spaces in between the haus are dragged from Jamaica Plain to Cambridge in order to decorate the stage and concert hall of the Central Square YMCA. A similar collage of sounds was assembled from the Whitehaus Family Record’s artists and friends, for the all day, 22 band talent showcase that was the third Blastfest.

Bands switched off from the main stage and the corner of the room to streamline set up time of the vastly different acts. In the back, Girlfriends playfully ripped everyone's ears off with the garage insanity of their self-proclaimed already-been-chewed-bubblegum trash pop. After, everyone spun around to watch Greg Mullen melt the main stage with just an acoustic and harmonica. He was dressed in a three piece deep ocean blue suit, matching the aquatic themed tunes of his recent release The Hungry Ocean. Immediately following in the back was the digital psycho-instrumentals of the Concord Ballet Orchestra Players. The spacious dissonance of guitars, bass, drums, and trombone were mashed together with synth-melodies and even a theremin. Then later something completely different would be on the main stage, like the slam poetry of Casey Rocheteau.

There were also tables set up by the Papercut Zine Library. Zine-sters, graphic novelists, even anarchists were selling and handing out a variety of hand-stapled, xeroxed goodies. And if you got hungry, there were two huge jars of peanut-butter and jelly, free for all. The festival also coincided with the release of the vinyl label sampler The Whitehaus Family Record Family Record. Other highlights include a visit from Shai Erlichman's parents during his set, reaffirming the "family" part of the collective's title.

Blastfest was one of the first chances audiences anywhere had to hear the electrified French Cops' catchy, foot stomping songs, like the collective favorite "Miah." In between tunes, lead Morgan Shaker stopped to do a thank you countdown for everyone that helped make the festival possible. He’s the main man behind the fest that assembled all the troops. The group had been up since 5 a.m., delivering multiple carloads of hootenanny to the concert hall. Greg Mullen was also one of the hard working hausers, manning the soundboard and progressively shedding articles of his suit throughout the day.

Another was Greg Beson, filling in on drums for basically every band that needed percussion. For his own set, with the band Manners, he had two drum kits set up. On "Knives," the dual percussion became essential, as they would pound out a single beat and then mute it, causing an overwhelming ruckus one quarter note at a time. Beson mentioned that he was leaving the haus soon to go "skip stones in Maine." Perhaps reflected in the change of the song's lyrics from "I wear a coat of knives, try and hold me," to "I shed my coat of knives so you could hold me."

When the Needy Visions took the stage to end the night, everyone got to their feet and a cloud of people gathered from out of nowhere, dancing and grooving to their silly pop rocks sweetness. During their closing tune, "Number of the Beast," the collective members jumped on stage and attempted to destroy the set, but mostly just ended up goofily dancing.

I wish I could mention every single band that played Blastfest, because they were all amazing. I'll include the whole list below with links. Check 'em out:

Hosted by Simone Beaubien.
1130 – B Law
1200 – Wolf Woolf
1230 – James Lindsey
1 – Girlfriends
130 – Boy without God
2 – Gregory J Mullen
230 – Concord Ballet Orchestra Players
330 – Apollo Sunshine
4 – Shai Erlichman
430 – Casey Rocheteau
5 – The Great Valley
530 – Debbie and the Bullets
6 – French Cops
630 – Ambitious Tugboat
7 – Turtle Ambulance
730 – The Woodrow Wilsons
8 – Duck That
830 – Avi Jacob Rock Band
9 – Manners and the Woolves
930 – Tulsa
10 – Rene
1030 – The Needy Visions

whitehausfamilyrecord.com

Photography by Lee Stepien

Published in Performer Magazine, May 2010 issue.

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PREVIEW: Elliott Smith :: Roman Candle vinyl reissues

Download Elliott Smith - Last Call

Download Elliott Smith - Twilight

Download Elliott Smith - Cecelia/Amanda

Kill Rock Stars is reissuing Elliott Smith's first and last albums on vinyl on April 6th. A remastered version of Roman Candle comes to vinyl for the first time in the U.S. in addition to a reissue of From a Basement on the Hill.

Elliott Smith borrowed a guitar and a four track from a friend and recorded the eight most recent songs that he had written. Most of the recordings are just Elliott and a guitar, sketches at his most primal without revision, before he had a major label to think about writing songs for. Most of the songs didn't even have names. His girlfriend convinced him to send a copy to "Cavity Search Records" and the owner released the recordings just as they were and called it Roman Candle. It had quite a profound effect on Kill Rock Stars founder Slim Moon, who said that he has "never heard music as heartwrenchingly, gut-checkingly honest, intimate and wise - before or since."

The remastering was done by Larry Crane, owner of Jackpot! Studios and an Elliott Smith archivist. He of course received message board heat from crazed fans. Larry explains that the remastering process was minimal, "I felt that a lot of the guitar “squeaks” were jarring and very loud, and that many of the hard consonants and “S” sounds were jarring and scratchy sounding. I felt by reducing these noises that the music would become more inviting and the sound would serve the songs better. When I went to Roger Seibel's SAE Mastering, he proceeded to equalize the tracks a small amount and to make the volume slightly louder. We never tried to make this CD as loud as current, over-limited trends, but just to match the volume of the rest of Elliott’s KRS catalog in a graceful way. Please note that none of this album is “remixed” from the master tapes - it is still composed of the mixes Elliott created himself.” The smoothness of the new tracks is immediately audible, as even the white noise on the tracks is more crisp and clear.

I always liked the album, because it's more eerie than depressing. Elliott's voice is unlike any of his other recordings. And it seems to tell a coherent story throughout of what I can only assume is about Elliott's family, which never really appears in his other songs. For some reason, 'Last Call' has become a fan favorite, so they're offering it as a free download. It actually happens to be my least favorite on the album, compared with startling bio-songs like 'Drive All Over Town' and 'No Name #4.' Kill Rock Stars is also offering an unreleased track 'Cecelia/Amanda' for download and I've included both above, in addition to 'Twilight' from From a Basement on the Hill.

Unfortunately, the 180 gram LP version of Roman Candle is out of stock from Kill Rock Stars, but you can find it on here at insound.com for a few bucks more.

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Photos :: Japandroids, Love Is All, Girlfriends @ The Middle East 3/31/10

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