here we come, walking down the street

with dj duo the obsessive compulsive & dj business tag teamin' with dj ? (no, not of the mysterians. sorry, still haven't found a name).

when the bullet hits the bone

dear friends,

1. favorite videos from childhood, part one

‘cause loving videos means never having to say you’re sorry, I would like to present this favorite. weirdly enough, I wasn’t familiar with golden earring’s radar love until recently but I can tell you this video was IT for me when I was a child. there’s dancing! guns! catchy singalong chorus! leg revealing lady outfits! (look, I was a pervy kid) in short, everything a young d could hope for. enjoy! & don’t be a hatah. ‘cause if you are, be warned, there’s worse to come…

twilight zone/golden earring



2. choosing songs to play at beg yr pardon #3 this thursday, 6.29

yes, there’s a lot going that night. stolen transmission looks funtastic*. earfarm presents will land like that awesome p-funk spaceship at sin-e & rock your growing ears with the likes of the secret life of sofia & the isles. & then there’s us, the beg yr pardon quartet taking over club midway with some old favorites, some new favorites, more tinalicious brownies & something that could potentially burst into flames right in yo’ face.

I am, of course, referring to my dj-ing debut (still no dj name) in the latter part of that evening which will be a tag team debut no less since the formidable dj business will be there to volley. GULP! think of it this way, if this tag team dj-ing were a copa mundial match, it would be something like trinidad vs brazil & I’m trinidad. & they didn't even play each other! (& yes, I am a total world cup fanatic. I am latin american, I was programmed at birth to become a sweet & tender futbol hooligan every four years.)

anywho, I already told travis that I am aiming for the people pleasing old familiars. with that in mind, if you’d like to request anything that you might wanna hear once you’ve had a few & are feelin’ sassy, NOW is the time to do it ‘cause that night, I will probably be drunk & nervous & will have completely forgotten the english language. send your requests to the comments field. I promise to try my best to squeeze said selections into the mix.

3. repeating myself, because I can. repeat myself. repeat myself. see?

j got me one of those song a day desk calendars & today’s song is robert wyatt’s cover of chic’s at last I am free**. back when I used to have time to write long examinations of why I liked stuff, ah those were heady days, I wrote this. read it if you never got to the first time, there’s sentences!

love, d

video to seek: twilight zone/golden earring

artist to seek (redux): robert wyatt

*I think ultragrrrl is aces. because anyone who seems to have such a glamorous, action packed tastemakin’ life but somehow manages to wax rhapsodic about getting drawn into john vanderslice videos at 3am & is also goofy enough to post photos of their cat on the toilet (scroll down) is my kind of person.

**I also wrote about a gorgeous cover of this cover (is that meta?) here. I love myself, word.

A whiskey grin that always got him to the door but never got him in

Or Avoiding charges of nepotism and is it even nepotism if you're not related...?

Dear friends,

It's true, I've been having a moral quandary for months now about saying anything about The Unsacred Hearts and in particular, my favorite song on their In Defense of Fort Useless cd because I sometimes perform with them (sporting giant hair, racooned eyes and doing an approximation of Tina Turner's Proud Mary dance with my co-Hardtogette, Miss Stephanie T.) Also, I've been to some of their houses and partaken in their hooch. And argued about who the best singer/drummer that ever lived is. And other sundry things of import.

For the sake of this bit, let's pretend that this isn't so. Let's pretend that I know nothing about these people. I've never seen them before and going by their cd photo, I'm shocked that they don't look like the radically different mental picture I had in my head based on sound alone. I guess I expected drunken hipsters in tight red pants. Which isn't bad, I'm sure the red pant clad bizarro world version of The Unsacred Hearts are cool. I just probably wouldn't drink with them. These guys though, the ones in the picture...these guys I would drink with.

So yes, my favorite song on In Defense of Fort Useless...that would be the scorchah that is Somewhere Deep in NYC which I've been hearing on repeat in my head as a great big slice of steamy city soundtrack since the first time I heard it's distinctive drum stomp/stick tap/bass clang opening at a Hearts show some time ago. I got that panicked, head rushed feeling I get when I hear a song for the first time that I know I'll love forever.

Ooh boy does it sound like summer in Noo Yawk. There's so much frustration and heat in the opening moments of the song that when Dave Heart's guitar cuts in sharply with a ping! followed by attack. After the previous sparseness, that sound causes an involuntary jump. You get this perfect music-as-mirror sense of someone in a room, caged and miserable, sweat pouring into their eyes, ready to drink or die. But that's nothing compared to the next moment, when right before the chorus, a catchy, rock-dance-inspiring riff enters, gets stuck in your head and won't leave. It's just riff, perfect drum response, riff, perfect drum response, chorus. And while the verses are excellent and the guitar solo is tasty, the song is OWNED by that riff. Even as the tune reaches its coda and that riff evaporates and becomes a relentless avalanche of downstroke; its still there. Even as the two singers repeat the weirdly hopeful-despite-the-lyric-sounding lines about cold winds blowing, rising higher and higher in harmony, there it is. Still reverberating.

One thing about vocalist Joe Willie. While he is a top notch lyricist with a knack for pairing inverted rock 'n' roll cliches with luminous poetry, he is also fantastically marble mouthed on the fast numbers. And yet, in a number like Somewhere Deep in NYC, there's nothing wrong with that incoherence. In fact, I kinda love it. Especially right before that king riff comes back and Joe Willie is braying what should be (consults lyric sheet) "No redemption in sight/minimum wage scraping shit off the floors/night after night after night after night...." and really, every time it plays, I only hear "Yammer yammer yammer yammer yammer NAAAA AFFA NAAA, AFFA NAAA, AFFA NAAAA, AFFA NEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAA" and I totally understand the feeling implied.

Somewhere Deep in NYC/The Unsacred Hearts (mp3)

Photo by Punam Bean

The whole album has classic cuts, including the stately clearing through the trees beauty of Bless This Bus, the ragged trombone-assisted Tom Waits crawl of Will You Be Coming Back to Me? and the brief but plague-catchy paean to the dodo of the skies, Visions of the Concorde.

If you don't have this album, spend the $7 and buy it here.

Befriend The Unsacred Hearts on My Space.

Love, D

Self-made millionaires

...Or my longest post EVER

Dear friends,

1. Where I self-medicate

There's a serious insect situation in my house. Argh! To make myself feel better, I would like to post this video. Because poppy psychedelia pleases me.



2. Where I babble and truncate

Tuesday night's Beg Yr Pardon party, the semiconcious recap, in mini-bite form:

- Get to the venue early. Bob the soundman doesn't know who I am, stares at me blankly when I say "Hey!" When he doesn't reply, I do that high school move of pretending I hadn't said anything and set about unloading my Tina-given bag of stuff.

- The uber-sadness continues when I realize that I have no idea what to do with the streamers and I can't blow up a balloon to save my life. Sigh. Clearly, I didn't have a childhood.

- Joe from Planes For Spaces shows up, along with the ladies of Telenovela Star. Talking to bands. I can do that. I think.

- Fast forwarding to show time, Telenovela Star are on and they are wailing. I however, am at the door. I run downstairs to hear one song, watch Hanna T-Star coo and then yell her gorgeous red-haired head off through A Plum. When Maggie T-Star joins her on the vocals at the end I feel a perceptible crowd shimmer of "oooo" then run back upstairs to take more money. I try to smile at the arrivals but I still manage to make people uneasy. It must be my teeth.

- Gabe from Takka Takka catches me doing an absurd one foot by cashbox, one foot to bar move and politely offers to go order for me. I later discover, after meeting the other half of Takka Takka, that they are quite possibly the nicest NYC band ever. Which means they might have to jello wrestle El Jezel for the title. That would be awesome.

- Catch some of Planes For Spaces, they wail and stomp through their desert doomscapes with confidence.

- Run upstairs, meet Higgins, it's like meeting Santa. 'Cept more psychedelic.

- Go outside to smoke furiously, did not tell Mr. Earfarm that Mrs. Earfarm is the best smelling lady in the L.E.S. because that would sound wicked creepy*.

- Run downstairs, see Takka Takka rip it up. Love the organ intro to We Feel Safer At Night. A few songs later, Gabe, clearly not content to just be a singer, keyboardist and guitarist, unleashes the harmonica! Yay!

- Free beer! Uh...free CAFFEINATED beer. Uh oh!

- Higgins. Are. The. (High pitched) shiiiiizzzz. The solo in Drop Off was so good and as much as I like the recorded version, it didn't have that winding, perfectly measured slice of guitar goodness or for that matter, the effect of Brian Higgins' immaculately tasteful yet powerful drumming right in yo' face. Afterwards, through most of the set, I thought stupidly over and over, I LOVE guitarmony so much. It's true. that's how J got me to like Queen. When two guitars start harmonizing with each other, my head swims in pleasure. I know, I know. There ain't no way to hide the goofy.

- Go here for some photos, go here for coherence

3. Where I pimp da music and next show

Unsacred Hearts drummer and SB Big Cheese Travis H aka DJ Business will be kindly filling in for Jenny P aka DJ J-Pi ** as my tag team dj partner*** on the later part of the night on Thursday, June 29 aka the next Beg Yr Pardon at Club Midway (night change! venue change!) I will play the dance favorites and he will play the quality sounds that make those that subscribe to British music magazines go "Aaah yeah" Yes, I'm one of those too. Be sure to get there early to hear the fabulous Obsessive Compulsive AKA DJs Justin and Dot from the Crackers United crew. Also, bands! More on those next week.

Love, D

* Instead, I decided to tell them that on Thursday. I thought it might be less creepy post-pony.

** She has scored herself a fancypants job on the beach. congratulations Jenny P.!

*** I have no DJ name yet, though J's joking (I hope) suggestion of DJ Beeyotch is being seriously considered.

that's the house that they live in

dear friends,

some kind of mystery bug decided j & I were extra yummy & kept us up all night by attacking us. not a mosquito, didn't hear buzzing. not bedbugs, the bites are rather large. possibly spiders? which should be an ep title or at least a b-side.

tonight is beg yr pardon #2 at the delancey. tina's brownies are baked, the $5 bbq will be sizzling (until 9 that is, so watch the time!) & the free beer will flow from 11:30 to 12:30. travis harrison aka dj business will be spinning, said my my. will he drop nobody beats the biz at some point? I hope so!

the line-up (for band mp3's, please visit the beg yr pardon website)

1. first up is telenovela star, a power trio in the vein of mid to late 90s lady rock a la throwing muses. you remember those days, if you were a girl you were so psyched because it was something that YOU might be able to do, & if you were a guy, you found yourself thinking: "girls playing guitars. look good. sound nice. drool." or something like it.

but lest you think that telenovela star are some kind of nostalgic throwback thanks to this lazy reference point, keep in mind that singer/guitarist maggie t-star's vocals, coolly levelheaded whispered threats/self-reproachments, are paired with a biting guitar style that sounds nothing like her singing. & since usually with singer/guitarists it's the aural equivalent of dogs & their owners in that they resemble one another, I'm curious to see how this fantastic duality works live. go check out a plum on their my space page.

2. planes for spaces is essentially one man, joe, & his windy, tumbleweed strewn compositions which are like riding a car through the desert with a brilliant but terribly damaged friend. you never know where the story is going to go or whether or not you'll get to your destination, so you quiet down & let the gun club gone slowcore vibe take over. ragged, sad, spiraling beauty floating over a barren landscape.

3. first things first, takka takka are sadly not named after foosball (in chile, we say "taca taca") but they still manage to sound as fun & warm as an afternoon game with your friends. in many ways their simple & evocative we feel safer at night is also a car ride song. 'cept this time, the singer is the narrator & the narrator is you writing out the voiceover to your life as you pass the sleeping houses & dark green yards. the hum of the organ is the road you travel on & the conversation in your head says you'll be carried through the day & the night, & you'll be feeling alright. pop songs as lovely company can do no wrong in my book.

4. higgins songs make me smile all silly. I love, love, love beatle-esque sounds but too often the bands peddling those wares are selling the cheap stuff, all surface similarity, no songs underneath. this is not the case with this group. I've never seen them live so expect to find one maniacally grinning idiot in the corner.

so what do you say? see you tonight!

love, d

bands to go see live tonight: telenovela star, planes for spaces, takka takka, higgins

BEG YR PARDON #2

With DJ Business.

Spare Me Over 'Til Another Year

Wandering around a record store a few years ago, I found myself browsing though the Americana section and came upon An Untamed Sense of Control, one of the Smithsonian Folkways collections of Roscoe Holcomb recordings. I had never heard of Holcomb before - in fact I didn't know anything at all about Appalachian folk (or "old-time music", if you prefer). It was pretty much just the photograph on the cover that convinced me to buy the album, but the first two tracks ("Swano River" and "Across the Rocky Mountain") turned made me a devoted fan.

For whatever reason, I never made much of an effort to explore the genre very much, but I recently had the good fortune to come upon a couple of tracks by Dock Boggs. Boggs, while he shares the "high, lonesome sound" so often associated with Holcomb, is generally thought to be more accessable. Holcomb's catterwail, admittedly, can get a little shrill. But I go for that kind of thing.

In any case, Dock Boggs' originally recorded a number of songs in the 20s and early 30s, then spent a number years away from music before being rediscovered in the 60s, when he also put out quite a lot of material through Folkways. Included are a number of traditional songs such as "Sugar Baby," which Holcomb also performed as "I Ain't Got No Sugar Baby Now," or "Little Black Train," also played by Woody Guthrie.* Boggs' instrumentation rarely goes beyond vocals and banjo, but in part it's the sparseness of these performances that make them timeless. These are mostly songs about love and death - similar to music from any time and place, probably - but what grants artists like Holcomb and Boggs a special kind of grace is that they don't seem to need to talk about either of these themes in terms of grand universals. Emotions ring clearly enough in the particlar stories told in these songs, so that grand declarations seem unnecessary. It's just good, old music. Plain and simple.

The 1960 documentary That High Lonesome Sound, which focuses on Holcomb, is also well worth watching if you get the chance. I have a copy on DVD if any locals are interested.

Recommended tracks: Dock Boggs/Little Black Train, Oh Death, Danville Girl, Country Blues. Roscoe Holcomb/Swano River, Across the Rocky Mountain, I Ain't Got No Sugar Baby Now, I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow**.

*On Folkways' High Lonesome Sound, Holcomb also performs "In The Pines," which Leadbelly played under the name "Where Did You Sleep Last Night," a song that Nirvana covered during their Unplugged performance.

**Click here to listen to Holcomb's acapella version of "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow," the centerpiece to the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack.

this is a desperate moment (REVISED)

or how d's brain is so addled she can't quite differentiate 6.15 from 6.22, my apologies to tiger city & anyone who was psyched to see them tonight...

dear friends,

1. I am in love with this band. for those who read my posts, you'll know I don't usually hype like an NME journalist but seriously, I liked them so much on first listen, I had to contact them immediately & find out if they could possibly play beg yr pardon sometime because I'll be missing their show tonight NEXT week at the annex (see #2*) & I must see them LIVE, tout de suite!

I'm not a maaaaad dance rock fiend or anything but I'm no hatah. my one issue is that sometimes the same-ness of the movement gets to me. then again, variations of gang of four's to hell with poverty are way better than variations of creed & whatever crap song they wrote, so I take it with a smile & wiggle. now, tiger city may be dance rock but there's a little something extra about their songs that makes them hard to label as such. true, they have the shake it sound down cold but they also add all sorts of bright splashes of color to the compositions; unusual guitar lines, ambient breakdowns or a great vocal hook. two standouts are mountain pass, which has a fantastically catchy overlapping vocal coda & timecard, which lures you in beat first, then makes you press repeat over & over again just so you can hear the tidy, sometimes dissonant guitar interplay on the choruses. then you dance like a fool. & listen to it again. & again. befriend tiger city on my space. & go see 'em tonight NEXT thursday & tell me how much you we're feeling it, 'cause I know you will.

2. tonight draculazombieusa east coast annex returns to jump around, jump around etc... only this time, founding father will s aka "the mad scientist" will also be there to teach the franchise a thing or two about how NOT to ruin his songs. it's at sin-e & we go on at MIDNIGHT so if you're inclined towards the nightlife, feel like dancing, or are curious to see what happens when will hears what the east coast annex have done to his songs, come out & play-yay.

love, d

band to seek: tiger city

songs to seek: timecard/tiger city, mountain pass/tiger city (available on my space)

* I will miss next week's show since I will probably be making an appearance with the unsacred hearts. argh!

I only wanted 2 be some kind of friend

dear friends,

a little light on the music this week. been busy hunting bands & trying to convince them I'm not mentally ill but a genuine BYP emissary. harder than you'd think!

1. went to the brooklyn botanic gardens last weekend rather late in the day, since the monkey & I are often tardy & discovered that besides being beautiful, serene, verdant, etc..., the place is crawling with BUNNIES! that's right, fluffy & hoppity, little white tails & all. j suggested that perhaps they brought a few in for ambience & things just got out of control, as they are wont to do with rabbits.

the baby ones are maaad slow, so if you're looking to nab one, head on out to the greens.

2. finished haruki murakami's* underground, an oral history account of the sarin gas attacks on the tokyo subways in 1995. spent most of the weekend bumming people out at parties with all I learned from the book. I was told that the standard visual was me chatting & a semi-circle of folks looking disturbed & queasy. I am a party winner!

you should read it. the one on one interviews with the various survivors reveal a great deal about japanese society as a whole. that reminds me...there's a movie called eureka by filmmaker shinji aoyama that was inspired by that event. the film itself deals with the aftermath of a random, traumatic incident (in this case, a bus hijacking) on the survivors. I've been trying to find this film forever. if anyone owns a bootleg...let me know!

3. I wrote this thing up about prince rogers nelson last week when blogger was malfunctioning & lost it all. this is the short version: june 7 was the man's birthday. & while this lilliputian dynamo did not celebrate it, don't mean you can't (albeit, belatedly)

purple rain (live)



while my guitar gently weeps (yes, that is tom petty & jeff lynne. in a true "wait for it, wait for it" moment, prince, resplendent in red fedora & matching shirt, comes in at the end & RIPS it up on the final solo)



what can I say? I heart prince.

love, d

* I've been on a murakami kick ever since j made me read the wind up bird chronicle. apparently tunng has a song called the wind up bird...I wonder if there is any connection? anywho, I thought it might be interesting to make "a book mix"...perhaps a project for the soft communication mix exchange?

other prince songs to seek: delirious, computer blue, take me with u, the cross, sign 'o' the times, starfish & coffee, sometimes it snows in april, alphabet st, when u were mine, if I was your girlfriend, when doves cry, I could never take the place of your man, soft & wet, gett off, hot thing

still don't believe it

dear friends,

ever since low lustre sent me an add friend request on my space* & I fell in love with their song dancing blind, I've been prattling on & on about them like a cardy wearing retiree. I tried to secure them for beg yr pardon (unfortunately, our dates didn't work, boo hoo!), I babbled about 'em here on soft communication, & I directed everyone I knew to their my space page via mass email. I was a little excited, to say the least.

you know about my inability to post mp3s right? well, luckily for all of us, bows + arrows does & is way more articulate than I could ever be about why you should check out this band in this post. go plunder & keep an eye out for low lustre's upcoming nyc dates!

love, d

song to seek (take 2): dancing blind

* basically, I am on my space to be friends with bands. I don't know if not approving them for friendship until I've listened to all their songs makes me more or less of an asshole.

in the night the fires burning bright

dear friends,

I wrote a long wrap-up post on wednesday about the beg yr pardon party at the delancey on tuesday night. BUT thanks to blogger & my brain, it vanished. I have tried my best to reconstruct it albeit in a fragmentary, rambling sorta way.

- arriving at delancey was greeted by festive fancy prom night decor concept & banner provided by phina. mmm, hello brownies!

(inner dialogue, post brownie scarf, entitled "sense vs whatever":

a: CHOCOLATE IS BAD FOR YOU!
b: I know. shut up.
a: you'll regret it later...
b: no, I won't. leave me alone. go get a vodka red bull or something.
a: okay, but only if it's light on the booze. remember the excedrin we have to take later.
b: okay, okay. geez.

etc...)

(the above parenthetical shouldn't scare you. I was an only child, latchkey toting & apartment-bound. this type of disconnect happens. or so I have read.)

- assuring an agitated woman at the door that there was definitely NO JAZZ CONCERT GOING ON DOWNSTAIRS no matter what she "heard" or what the "flyer" (?!?) promised.

- momad aka el madmo starting things off with their classic rock guitar meets grand ole opry lady harmonies meets anime superhero antics. I gotta hand it to them. drummer aside, el madmo & maddie madmo kept their pris from blade runner outfits on all night & somehow managed not to get violated by the entire male population of the delancey. like daryl hannah, they must know how to kickbox.

- seeing horatio sanz standing by the door. what the...?

- kickstart & their sweaty rock & roll spectacle of veins a'bulgin', fake blood sporting pogo induction. I should clarify that I don't pogo but kickstart makes me. I should also clarify that while I like to butcher the english language, I do have a college education. & yes, I chose my school 'cause it had no math requirement. what of it?

- the bratty girl punk of lowell's fenwick. smokin' in the girls room fun.

- going upstairs & seeing horatio sanz sitting at the bar surrounded by attractive women. what the...? the sequel.

- NOT running up to sanz & punching him in the face &/or screaming "CHILE POWER!"

- the indie dance rock awesomeness of up the empire. love, love, love those drums. I'm gonna have to steal the monkey's copy of their cd.

- showing 1/2 of takka takka*, who are to play the next BYP party, that I'm the sort of person that a) sneaks up on attractive ladies & slaps their behinds, b) quasi-stalks comedy performers of chilean descent, c) calls successful musicians "cocksuckers" to their face if they're rude to my boyfriend regardless of whether their ep was the only thing I listened to for months & d) can keep mum regarding secret shows UNLESS it's the fall, in which case, I will tell everyone I've ever met in MY ENTIRE LIFE that mark e. smith's playing at my house, my house.

in short, muy profesional, me!

- the mind & sax blowing power of cholo. was that a morphine cover I heard? or had my brain finally caved in?

- hearing closer by nine inch nails (courtesy of dj rob holmes.) doing the robot. realizing that another girl was also doing the robot across the room. feeling silly & sheepish as a result. but not enough to stop actually doing it.

- discovering that someone had lifted my ipod from my time out ny bag which I had stupidly, stupidly left unattended by the free red velvet cupcakes. yes, someone thought that the scratched up little monkey jr given to me by j, clad in a white leather case with a "D" on it specially made for me by tina, was free as well. my little gadget with all my mix playlists that don't correspond to itunes. with all my 10,000-something songs. including those by teena marie & the monks & plasticina mosh. o person who found it/took it/whatever, my ipod is sickly & needs to come back to me. I am not rich, I have no savings account, but I will offer a cash reward. please return? contact me through soft communication. all is forgiven.

if anyone was at BYP & somehow came across this item, or heard of someone who did, please, please, please write me!

- afterwards, finally getting home & thinking about our next BYP show. hmmm...time to get to work.

you will be there, yes? june 20? good.

love, d

PS special M.V.A.M. (most valuable audience member) awards go to kristie song corporation & marts emma la reina for coming early, going to another engagement, & then returning for more. you ladies are fantabulous!

* if the other half of takka takka are as charming & funny as those two, I may become their deadhead, eh takkahead.

** other fine moments in dj-ing: matt earfarm rocking the absolutely 6.6.06 (the 0 is silent) appropriate iron maiden selection, number of the beast. read his BYP wrap-up here. dj mojo playing obstacle 1 by interpol which always makes me howl in appreciation every time that paul banks does the falsetto "she puts the weeeiiiight" at the end. repeat til fade.

that's a bit fancy

dear friends,

1. rather than the much anticipated anniversary weekend of bliss with my monito, I spent most of it crying for my mommy or mami as we say down in the real south. I do not joke. my moms held my hand as I whimpered, clammy & bed-bound.

that's right, I'm between spinal medications & between the migraines & the uh...inability to hold down food (classy, eh?) there wasn't much I could attend/listen to/write about. though I will say that watching the footballer's wives marathon on sunday made me feel much better*. my apologies to all & sundry for my incapacimatation (new word alert!)

2. today is 6.6.(0)6. which means many things, the most important being that it is the premiere of beg yr pardon #1. look out for tina (the fetching short-haired brunette), bryan (the tall, curly haired guy with the slightly open-mouthed expression wielding a camera) or phil (the tall, blue-eyed guy with a slightly perturbed expression) or me (the short, glasses wearing, ethnically vague looking frump in black hoodie). say hi. I promise not to hit you or call you names.

the bill tonight (for mp3 links please visit the beg yr pardon site):

momad - I know nothing about this band 'cept that they are NOT a) a matmos cover band, b) some dude with a peter gabriel fetish or c) mo' matching drapes playing an acoustic set. unfortunately, there is no my space or website, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed & hoping it's not a rap/metal hybrid.

kickstart - I saw kickstart open up for the unsacred hearts at the delancey & they impressed me with their energetic, gravel voiced, bluesy-woozy update on the clash sound. I hear their new album is gonna be hot stuff indeed & I can't wait to hear it.

fenwick - from mass who sound like the kind of punk rock music that would be made if that hot spanish chick in grease who did the handkerchief thing at the drag race decided to start a band. & yes, I know if you've never seen grease you won't know what I'm talking about. which means you need to see grease. DUH.

up the empire - saw these fellas at an always excellent crackers united party at rothko. good-natured, cascading pop songs that aren't about rainbow regurgitating cougars. or are they? an impressive live show that will get you happily nodding your head like a boozy bobble (sp?) doll.

cholo - thanks to constant scheduling conflicts I have been unable to see cholo but tonight's my chance! yay! I'm excited not only because co-singer felipe cholo (the george jezel principle: first name followed by your band's name equals your rock name) is another latino in the indie rock scene (I tell you, it's like unicorns out there) but because I'm a big fan of their girl/boy pop ditty, american candy, & if they haven't moved waaay past it, I might get to see it live.

merry swankster is one of my daily reads & they were nice enough to give us a shout-out here**. I don't know what they mean about eccentric though...is it tina's free red velvet cupcakes? bryan's hair? my love of ponies***?

heart on a stick, another daily read, also gives byp a wave. part of me thinks blackmail might be involved. which is illegal. & eh...ill-advised as a promotional tool. but what do I know about promotion? all I do is chirp loudly like cardinal until people cave in. it's a skill I learned from...the vatican. did I mention, my head hurts & I can't think straight?

see you tonight!

love, d

* OH. MY. GOD. footballer's wives is ridi-cuh-lous! I really need to write a whole post dedicated to the sheer insanity of it. sample dialogue from win at all costs tanya turner, a woman who puts whitening cream on a newborn so she can pass the half-indian infant as her own, & then later opines (frown, stubbing out of cigarette) "it all sounds a bit racialist to me," to the real mother boasting about her (switched!) baby's pale skin. confused? you should be. b-a-n-a-n-a-s, I tell you & right up my trashy entertainment alley.

** they write that the fantabulous takka takka (an upcoming byp band) has a 6 degrees of man in gray connection?!? I had no idea, as I explained to the lovely gabe takka takka, my love of foosball led me to them. I'll explain this when I post about their next show.

*** speaking of ponies, I love how the identity of the father of this cute little shetland is awesomely obvious.

Hell Awaits

In honor of today, the metalest of all days, I'd like to turn your attention to this.

And I'd like to tell a little story about the last time I saw Slayer. (Yep, I've seen them more than once. They rule.) It was about a year and a half ago, Roseland Ballroom. The majority of those in attendance were male. Hirsute, denim and leather-clad males. By the time the (awesome) show ended, they were also sweaty, dirty, drunk and bloody. And they all poured out onto 52nd Street at the same time as a very different group of people. The people who had just seen Hairspray: The Musical, which was playing across the street. Seeing the two crowds converge (one with fists in the air, letting out big whoops and yelling "Fucking SLAAAYER!", the other humming, well, whatever songs they sang in Hairspray. Maybe they were doing the Madison? I don't know.) was one of the best culture clashes I've ever seen.

BEG YR PARDON #1

My kind's your kind

Dear friends,

1. It is June 1st 2006 which means I must prattle on about bittersweet good news via someone else's train

When Contributor Bryan informed his public that Rocket From the Tombs was reuniting and playing shows, I was simultaneously excited and saddened because my favorite of the RFTT boys, Peter Laughner, is no more and him not singing Ain't it Fun well...just ain't fun. Even when The Dead Boys do it (and I like their version - see last post below) it lacks the nihilistic quality that Laughner brought to the song. The Dead Boys not nihilistic enough? Yeah, yeah, I know. But those boys...they're trying, you see. And Laughner...he doesn't try, he just does. Which is why his boozy, foggy ferociousness has nothing to do with looking bad ass (which is admittedly important in ye olde rock 'n' roll) and everything to do with this is the only thing I can do without failing and yet, I still fail. Watch me fail. Splat.

For a beautiful piece on Laughner, his artistry and eventual demise go find Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung by Lester Bangs and read Bang's remembrance of his fallen friend.

As for recorded output, good freakin' luck. I've been trying to get this for years. The only person I know who owns it is Contributor Jared and his copy is covered in tzatziki sauce or something. The standout for me on the album is definitely Laughner's gorgeously ragged, saxophoned?/violined? (honestly, I can't even tell, it sounds like it was recorded into tin cans) version of Richard Thompson's Cavalry Cross. Laughner doesn't try to do it like the hebridian pagan hallucination original. Instead he gives us his own unique American translation. Cavalry Cross is like Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes in song form in that it explores what happens when creativity makes everything in your life take second place to what you need to fuel your art, namely DRAAAMA! Either in emotional or pharmaceutical form. Laughner wants to make this painfully clear in his rendition. You can almost picture him pirouetting onto the train tracks as he unfurls the great winding solo that closes the song.

I should clarify that this is not about being a ghoulish admirer of self-destruction - if it were I would be able to listen to the copy of Down in Albion I got for X-mas. It's about admiring an honesty that's not pretty but demands your attention.

2. It is June 1st 2006 which means there are zombies

Draculazombieusa, East Coast Annex is gonna jog in place and croon at a zombie movie fundraiser TONIGHT at The Delancey. Tickets are $8. We go on at 11PM and it will be like a gym workout only with more ladies in short black skirts doing the robot.

3. It is June 1st 2006 which means we tried but there was nothing we could do

Several years ago today, myself & The Monkey (previously known as the Bat*) agreed to be "more than friends" and did the most absurd, awesome, sweet romantic comedy stumble into coupledom that I've ever witnessed, let alone participated in. For that we have several things to blame, some of which are: Radiohead tickets we didn't get (which is a theme as it turns out), a look right in the eye over eggs, Contributors Tina & Alex for their silent witnessing, Teenage Snake** rehearsal and a solid guarantee. In the time I've been with him, I have discovered that my boy is made of crackers, (to paraphrase another) someone who encourages the eating of ice cream, quite the closet comedian (SHARK!), an excellent traveling partner in music dorkitude (Day trip to Liverpool? Why not!?!) and owner of quite an impressive power move. In the time he's spent with me he's discovered that I meow when hungry, sing along to everything, lose my metrocard, keys and brain daily, harbor not so secret fantasies of chloroforming him and taking him to Paris and enjoy making out like a teenager to the song below just like every other enamored fool.



I'm so glad we threw caution to the wind, mon ami. I could go on and on about how you're so great and I love you. I reserve a weekend of your time in the near future for proper celebration. Pick the city and I promise, no chloroform.

Love, D

* A high school nickname. No, I don't get it either. Bats suck noisily at fruit, hang upside down, have frantic two second coupling and emit high pitched squeaks. Luckily, there's none of that at my house. Okay, fine. Sometimes there's squeaking but usually that's me, in response to cute baby animal programming.

** Teenage Snake is the make believe band I sing with when trashed. Hey! My friends are musicians. Don't front, you'd do the same if you were surrounded by talent.