Devo! at the Fonda

“If you like Devo you’re either and 80′s punk or a scientist,” said a man to my friend as she purchased a diet coke. We didn’t fit in to either category. It’s weird going to a show in Los Angeles and not seeing many people you know. (I mean, we call it ‘the bubble’ for a reason). At this show I only saw two people. Naturally I decided to really get in to it. I put on my energy dome and danced my butt off. Never thought I’d get to see “Whip It” performed live. I can not die with a Devo show under my belt. With the way Mark Mothersbaugh jumps around the stage it seems he hasn’t aged at all…well except, there’s probably a reason why he’s only performing full albums with an average of twelve songs rather than full concerts. It’s alright, he’s still magical.

Vice 15th Anniversary Party: Los Angeles

Our friends at FYF are helping to put on the Vice Magazine 15th Anniversary Party. There’s free booze, sweet bands, and DJ’s…enough said. Come join in on the fun and wear your best 90′s garb!

Computer Bagel 7″

I always wonder what Lambo will do next. Now we know: he’ll make a 7″! Check out the casual hit: Computer Bagel.

Playlist: Fall of Date

It’s that time of year again. Halloween has passed, the nights are getting colder, people start getting depressed that winter is coming (or the 50 degree weather we know as “winter” here in Los Angeles). Here’s some mood setting music to play when you cuddle up with that special winter lover or in your bed alone being sad. “Summer of Hate” is over. We call this: “Fall of Date.”

Fall of Date

This Week in Los Angeles

 

November 5 The Growlers Live @ St. Rocke in Hermosa Beach $5 9 PM

The Growlers: I’m Kind of Obsessed.

Wow, this hasn’t happened to me in a while.  By “this” I mean being unable to take a record off my record player.  The record is The Growlers’ “Are You in or Out.”  I try to listen to other things, I really do but for some reason I find myself going back to old faithful.

I saw this band for the first time at The bootleg Theatre, a wooden warehouse somewhere near Medusa Lounge, somewhere in Los Angeles.  As the band began to play I saw the entire audience twisting their bodies before them.  Lead singer, Brooks Nielson has a draw much like Jim Morrisson and Ian Curtis.  I thought the audience was going to rip their clothes of and come together in one big orgy.  In fact, I would not have been disgusted by or opposed to this.

CMJ 2009: Home is Where Your Friends Are

New Yorkers can make you feel really bad about living in Los Angeles.  There’s always this push-and-pull tension about which city is better.  Trust me, I spent a few days with some New York folk in Los Angeles just before flying to New York City for CMJ.  “You’re flying out for that?  That’s why I left New York this week!”  “LA traffic is the worst.”  “You guys waste so much gas!”  “It sucks you have to drive everywhere, how do you get drunk?”  “How come Los Angeles people make you feel weird for drinking in the afternoon?”  “They don’t even serve alcohol in strip clubs here?!”  Most of all—there is always the tension of who has the better music scene.  While Brooklyn has come out with some strong contenders in the scene battle I feel confident saying no other city has as unique a sound as what is currently coming out of Los Angeles.  This is what we set out to prove with the KXLU 88.9/Manimal Vinyl/This is Tightrope 2009 CMJ showcase.

The Los Angeles gods were certainly trying to keep me in Southern California as long as possible (or maybe my own irresponsibility was a factor).  After the woman helping me at Virgin America told me I couldn’t print my tickets because I was three days late for my flight, I suddenly did not feel quite as excited for my New York excursion.  I’d been running in to some bad luck lately beginning with a chipped front tooth.  Somewhere in the middle a railing was ripped from our neighbors cement steps by a drunk aquaintance at a party we’d thrown.  The bad luck did not end with the flight mishap but rather a bout with bronchitis.  I’d had a cough for two weeks straight but of course in New York it kicked in more-so than it had before.  I finally decided to get it treated when I began couging so hard I couldn’t breathe.  After one night in New York and zero showcases witnessed—I had to go to Boston (my original home) to see a doctor.  It was rather fitting the bout began at Manimal fest and ended at the Manimal showcase, as did the bad luck (I hope).

It would be unfair not to inform you that I had a strong hand in putting on this showcase.  If I did not inform you of this, I could not explain how this showcase changed my life.  I do not mean this in a corny way, though “life changing” usually comes off as corny.  I will tell you the short version of how it changed my life in the corniest way possible though, to keep things interesting.

I began a marketing company, This is Tightrope with my five closest friends.  We worked only with bands we were extremely passionate about and did it purely for the love of music.  A dear friend at KXLU suggested we speak to Paul Beahan of Manimal Vinyl about teaming up for a CMJ showcase.  From our first text, I knew he would be a magical human.  Paul quickly became a dear friend.  He quickly claimed me as part of the “Manimal family.”  Suddenly I found myself surrounded by more magical people, people who were making some of the best music I’d heard.  Many of these people I am now honored to call my friends.

I’ve always struggled with the concept of “home.”  Growing up, Boston never felt like “home.”  I don’t think Los Angeles truly felt like home until I became involved with Manimal.

Walking off the L train at Bedford ave, I nearly tripped on the mass of fixed gear bicycles waiting for their owners outside the train station.  Nothing says “welcome to Brooklyn” like a rainbow assortment of fixies.  As I stepped in to Cameo Gallery for the CMJ showcase that had been several months, countless hours of stress, and even a few tears in the making, I felt at home in Brooklyn.  It wasn’t because I felt I should move there or that I felt comfortable in the city, it was because of the faces I saw.  There in Brooklyn was the same Manimal family I’d left in Los Angeles.

“These are the bands we get to see every week in Los Angeles, we’re privileged to get to share this with you in New York,” said Eddie Chacon of The Polyamorous Affair.

Really, New York was privileged to experience it.

Kill Kill Kill lead singer, Eric Stiner committed a cardinal New York sin by removing his shoes before their set.  I could see the skeptical looks on Brooklynites’ faces but as the band faded from tuning their instruments to a performance charged with energy and distorted instrumentals—black socks never seemed so right.  Los Angels—1.  Brooklyn—0.

Nima Kazerouni , the brain child behind Long Beach based So Many Wizards, paralleled Kill Kill Kill’s energy.  Though we were taken from distorted yells to distorted love songs there seemed to be a direct link within the music allowing the bands to flow easily from one to the next.  I can’t explain exactly what this “Southern California sound” is but it has never felt more distinct than when taken to the opposite coast.  This was clear with the stellar So Many Wizards performance.

Even Los Angeles ex-patriots, EXITMUSIC did not lose their West Coast aura upon moving to Brooklyn.  The duo was angelic beneath the large white ceiling hanging.  The performance, filled with dreamy melodies and the creative use of a violin bow against a guitar made me wish they would move back to Los Angeles so I could see them often again.  Los Angeles—1.  Brooklyn—1.

At least we’ve still got VoicesVoices.—the much buzzed about female duo that mix noises on sound machines like adorable mad scientists.  The girls never fail to surprise new audiences with their talent, shotgunning instruments and creating sounds the world has never heard before but is certainly ready to experience.

The Polyamorous Affair brought a much needed—yet unexpected twist to the showcase.  Their Russian themed dance jams bring to mind the likes of Boney M. (the should-have-been disco super group of the seventies).  These two have a talent for creating irresistible pop songs.  Finally, the Brooklyn hipster elite unfolded their arms and joined to Los Angelenos in a dance party.

If there was one artist that seemed to belong in Brooklyn it was certainly Corridor with his dark melodies driven by several string instruments, all of which he plays himself.  With intricate finger work that gives the songs a middle eastern feel at times, he left the crowd in awe and haunted by his talent.

 

Of course every showcase needs a hype band and from the gentle sways of the speechless crowd, I’d say Warpaint lived up to it.  Fresh from tour with School of Seven Bells, the three-piece girl group (plus new drummer, Quinn of Corridor) harmonized there way in to the stone-cold hearts

Deer Tick: Enjoy Every Sandwich.

People often wonder how a 23-year old from Providence, Rhode Island can write such profound country-influenced songs.  Maybe it’s because John McCauley III, Deer Tick’s front man and main song writer didn’t find his “calling” until hearing Hank Williams Sr. Maybe it’s because he was a depressed eighteen-year-old, living in a cold apartment in New England who drank to stay warm, resulting in the songs on “War Elephant” and, more recently “Born on Flag Day.”  Sure, both records have the classic country themes of heartbreak, drinking, and more heartbreak and drinking.  Of course, no one can actually call it country since the band is young and the songwriter is from New England.  In talking to McCauley during his journey across historic Route 66, I found that at heart, Deer Tick is meant to be a traveling band and country is just traveling music–whether traveling from Brooklyn to Providence or Sante Fe to Lubbock, they can’t stay in one place for too long.  Let’s cross out the labels they’ve been stamped with: freak-folk, alt-country, indie rock, and the like.  Let the music (and McCauley, himself) do the talking.

Where are you guys right now?

John McCauley III: We’re somewhere in New Mexico, heading for Lubbock [Texas].

How’s the tour going so far?

JM:  It’s special.  I don’t know if it’s special in a good way or a bad way, but it’s special.

What’s special about it?

JM:  I think it’s been like a tragic comedy of a tour.  I don’t know how to really describe it.  It’s a romantic tragic comedy.  I guess it’s just the boozing’ and the good times and the hanging’ with old friends and the really long annoying drives and the shitty food.  I think it’s making us all go crazy.

It seems like you’re playing untraditional venues on this tour.  I noticed you’re skipping over LA and going to Joshua Tree, do you feel venues like Pappy & Harriet’s are more fitting for your music?

JM:  I don’t know, I feel like maybe this tour wasn’t meant to be.  We based it on these festivals that we’re playing so those are priority.  Everything else is just wherever we could get a show.

How has the response been to the new album?  Or would you even still consider “Born on Flag Day a New Album”?

JM:  Hell no.  That is old news.

So you don’t feel any different response from the audience now that the record has been released?

JM:  No matter what’s out we always get ahead of ourselves with our live shows anyway.  We’re playing a lot of unreleased material.  It’s exciting for us.  We play some of the songs in our live set but I don’t want to get too bored with the album.  We’ve been playing mostly stuff off “Flag Day,” I guess right now.

I know you guys don’t consider it new anymore, but probably some readers still consider it new…

JM:  Hell yeah, it’s still a baby of an album.

What are some of your favorite songs to play live off of it?

JM:  The first half of the record is really fun to play live.  As for the second half, it’s fun to do “Friday Xiii” whenever we have Liz [Isenberg, guest vocalist and musician in her own right] but she’s not on this tour so we’re not gonna be playing that one.

Everyone is always talking about this interview you did with Brian Williams from MSNBC for his BriTunes webisode band interviews.

JM:  Yeah, it’s annoying.

I figured that.  The interview looked kind of uncomfortable.  I think you shocked him at the end when you said, “My life will change when a girl calls me and says ‘John, I’m pregnant.’”

JM:  That was actually right at the beginning of the interview, it really broke the ice.  Whoever edited that thing did a really horrible job.  They decided to pick the most uncomfortable and boring parts of it for the video.  We sat down and talked to him like real people for about a half hour and it was really fun.  I don’t know who put that thing together but there’s definitely some more interesting and more comfortable things that went on in that room.

What do you wish they had put in the video?

JM:  Nothing in particular, it just looks so awkward.  I guess the whole idea of us getting together with Brian Williams is kind of awkward anyways.  He’s actually a really nice guy.  He’s a big music fan.  It was pretty cool to get to hang out with him.

I know you guys are from Rhode Island.  I’m a New Englander as well.  When I was in high school all I saw was emo or hardcore kids.

JM:  Really?  I missed that.

Well I heard you had some involvement in the New England noise and experimental scene, which I must have missed.

JM:  Well, I guess I was involved in it.  I went to all the shows or whatever.  I think a lot of the qualities in our [Deer Tick’s] live show are just feeding off of the qualities that I witnessed as a young kid at these noise shows and shit.  I wasn’t really part of the scene, I was part of the audience.  I was in a band that played a few shows at unconventional warehouse venues but it just wasn’t my calling.

So did it take you until you were eighteen to find your calling?  That’s what your bio sites as when you really fell in love with music—when you heard the Hank Williams sr. record, “Gold.”

JM:  No.  I was really in to it, though.  Aside from playing music and being in bands, I was really a songwriter.  Hank introduced me to the whole song-writing universe.

What was the first song you ever wrote?

I wrote this really, really shitty song when I was like ten.  It was an all inclusive holiday song.  It was like ‘Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy Kwanza,’ dumb ass song.  I can’t remember how it went.  I remember a couple years ago, finding this notebook from when I was ten, and being so embarrassed by everything that I wrote.  I tore out every page.

What was the first song you wrote that you were actually proud of and was not a holiday song?

JM:  I don’t think I’ve ever taken that much pride in what I’ve written.  I don’t know why.  I guess compared to my all-inclusive happy holidays song, I’m way more proud of the Deer Tick stuff.

Unfortunately, there’s also already a holiday song that is an all inclusive holiday song.  We used to sing it in chorus.  Have you ever heard that song?

JM:  At this point in my life, I try to stay as far away from holiday music as possible.

Understandable.  Do you still live in Brooklyn?

JM:  Hell no.

You got out of there?

JM:  Yeah, I got out of that place.

What prompted you to leave?

JM:  I didn’t really spend much time there between the band and our shows.  It just felt like a waste of time and energy trying to live there.  I made the drive back and forth between Providence and Brooklyn so many times that I got so sick of it and knew it was definitely time to leave.  I never felt like a New Yorker when I was there.

Why do you think living there for such a short time caused people to lump you in with the Brooklyn indie scene?  Your music is so different from the other stuff coming out of there.

JM:  It’s just because we’re young and we play small venues.  I have absolutely no indie rock sensibility, whatsoever.  I like Rock N’ Roll, I like folk, I like country music, I like blues and I like Nirvana.  I think it’s pretty stupid to call us an indie rock band.  I guess that’s what we are in a sense but it’s not what we look like.

Often times indie rock is what people call something they can’t categorize.

JM:  I mean, I guess you can call Husker Du indie rock, essentially that’s what they were, a rock band that was on an indie label.  Until they got picked up by a major.  That’s the funny thing, a lot of “indie rock” bands are on majors.  I don’t really know what the fuck indie rock is.

I don’t think anyone does.  How would you describe your band in non-musical terms?

JM:  I’d call it ‘one euphoric night with a gnarly-ass hangover.’

I know you’re only 23, what happened in your life to make the lyrics you write wise beyond your years?

JM:  I mean, you could over-analyze the shit out of it.  Where I’m coming from, I really believe that anybody could do it.  You look at ugly shit and you try to find something beautiful in it.  I guess that’s what I try to do.  With songwriting, I don’t aspire to anything.  I wait it out until the song comes to me, I don’t try to force anything.  I don’t think I’m wise beyond my years, I think I’m just patient with my song writing.

I know for the first record, “War Elephant,” you said it was more of a collection of songs you’d been playing for quite some time.  What about “Born on Flag Day”?  Were those songs collected over time or did you just sit down for a month and write music?

JM:  I’ve never conceptualized a record or thought, ‘oh this song would go well with this one.’  Some of the songs on “Flag Day” are actually older than the songs that ended up on “War Elephant.”  It just came down to what I wanted to record and what I had time to record.  That tradition [of using songs accumulated over the years] will be continuing for the third record but for the fourth record we’ll be fresh out of old material.  We’ve been trying to work on a bunch of new songs over the past few months.  The fourth record will be really cool because it will be adults playing adult songs, not adults playing kid songs.  I’m definitely not as angry anymore.  My new songs are more light-hearted but are really sharp.  There’s a dark sense of humor to it.  We’ve been listening to a lot of 70’s and 80’s albums.  It’s like that Tom Petty lyric, ‘let’s roll another joint.’  You’ve gotta loosen up a bit before writing that sad, dark, masterpiece.

So there’s no reason why your songs were sad and dark?  Was that just where you were in life?

JM:  There is [a reason].  I was depressed, I was doing a lot of drugs, I was obsessed with this girl that didn’t like me, I didn’t have heat in my apartment.  You know how cold a New England winter is.  Everything just seemed really bleak and kind of meaningless.  I wrote from that state of mind for a long time.

Did you use music as your therapy or a way to wallow in that feeling?

JM:  I think it was just my only option.  It could do anything.  It could make me more happy or more sad.  It could be self-help or self-deprecation.  Music can be all of that and it was all of that.  Music for me now is just a really enjoyable thing based on where I’m at with life.

Did you find it more enjoyable once your band came full circle and you got the other members?  Once it wasn’t just you anymore?

JM:  For sure.  It’s a lot more fun just having that chemistry that comes with the band.  You get in to trouble, you have all these stories to talk about.  Music kind of became good times with this incarnation of the band.

Has your writing process changed since adding the band?  Do you guys write songs together now?

JM:  We try to write songs together.  Some of it is fruitful.  Some of it doesn’t go anywhere.  With the band I think our biggest focus isn’t how the songs are written but how they’re presented.

Anything you’d like to leave readers with before we close the interview?

JM:  I’d like to quote the late, great Warren Zevon and say, “enjoy every sandwich.”  Oh yeah, and we’re on historic Route 66.  You can open the interview with,  “I spoke with John McCauley as he drove on historic Route 66.” (Laughs).

That may end up as the closer instead.

Mannequin Men: This Ain’t the Black Lips!

How is it that some bands end up with significant recognition and some don’t?  Well Chicago’s Mannequin Men have been around for a while (six years to be exact), and while they get compared to The Black Lips in almost every review of their band, they do not piss in each other’s mouths during their shows.  This band is gaining recognition through their passion for Rock N’ Roll and high-energy shows that get crowds moving.  I got to sit down with the band at a recent show at The Echo and clear up some rumors of why they are considered “a party band,” among other rumors.

Disclaimer: Though at the beginning of the interview I warned, “don’t say anything you’ll regret from this point on,” AJ and Johnny of Davila 666 gave their input during the interview as well.  The bit about the bands killing someone in San Diego is completely false and sarcastic.

How did you get the reputation of being a “party band”?

Kevin Richard-Well our friends drink a lot and get crazy.

So it’s not you guys that party, it’s your friends?

Kevin Richard-Well no, it’s us too.

Miles Raymer-I think a simple and honest answer to that is we put fun on a higher priority than most other bands.  We have a blast playing on stage together.  I mean, we have a blast practicing together with no audience.  Once you get us in front of people, we try to bring a fun vibe with it.

Do you think it’s also from playing with bands like The Black Lips?   Every time I hear band comparisons with you guys, you get compared to The Black Lips.

Miles Raymer-I think we kind of co-exist with them.  We were around for a couple years before we even heard them and we have a similar wild live experience.

Kevin Richard-Plus, I mean no one has any fucking taste so they don’t understand what bands sound like.  We don’t technically sound like The Black Lips but people are like ‘oh you have guitars?  You wear tight pants?  You must sound like The Black Lips.’  I don’t get it.  (Points to AJ and Johnny of Davila 666) I mean, you guys always get that you’re like the Puerto Rican Black Lips.

AJ (Davila 666)-Fuck that!  Even The Black Lips said that, they were like ‘man, you guys sound just like us.’

Kevin Richard-Well, it’s said once and then no one else wants to do any fucking research or actually listen to shit.

Miles Raymer-If you go on stage and you’re not just standing there dead still, concentrating on your important art, if you jump around a little bit, and sweat a little bit then they’re like ‘Oh!  You’re like The Black Lips!’  We’re not pissing in each other’s mouths.  First time I saw The Black Lips I was like ‘man, you sound like us.’  That was my first reaction but, I love them, they’re great.

Speaking of The Black Lips, I saw footage of their Tijuana show on youtube and it was pretty wild.  Pants were off.  You guys recently played there, what happened at your Tijuana show?

Kevin Richard-It was a little more chilled out than that.  Except for the people who were fucking in the bathroom.

How did you find out about that?

Miles Raymer-Someone walked in on them apparently, this guy Fernando that we were hanging out with.

Kevin Richard-I would say that the after party rivaled that [Black Lips] show.

What happened there?

Kevin Richard-Three floors of booze, iced beer, cool view, it was fun.  They were some of the sweetest people we ever met.  Just partying until the sun came up.  Us gringos were ready for bed once we saw the sun coming up but they were just still going.

Miles Raymer-We got like three hours of sleep.  But it was cool, the place we played at was cool.  We all thought we were going to play at someplace in the donkey show district and play to a bunch of kids that drove down from San Diego.  We ended up playing up in the hills.  It was this crazy place that this old hippie dude has been building out of recycled materials.  It’s rickety and he’s totally improving.  There’s this giant indoor section with a stage and then this outdoor patio with a balcony.  He’s totally making it up as he goes along, probably figuring out how to nail things together as he goes along.  It was super cool.  There were a couple kids that drove down from San Diego but mostly we played to townies.  The vibe there was way better than I expected it to be.

AJ (Davila 666)-Kevin was Puerto Rican that night.

Kevin Richard-Oh yeah, I played with Davila that night.  That was fun.

Johnny (Davila 666)-Yeah, I couldn’t make it.  I lost my passport.

How did you lose your passport?

Johnny-It got stolen in Phoenix.

Miles Raymer-Yeah, we’ve had two van break-ins on this tour.

Kevin Richard-Well, he’s going to play in Mannequin Men tonight.  We’ll call him Gringo Johnny.

AJ-No, Puerto Rican Johnny.

Johnny-No, I’m Phoenix Johnny now.

So besides van break-ins and swapping band mates, what other crazy things happened on this tour?

AJ-Don’t ask.

Don’t ask?  I have to, it’s my job.  I’ve got to know.

AJ-You can’t handle it.

I can handle it, even though I’m a girl, I’ve seen a lot of crazy shit.

AJ-You know what the craziest shit was that we’ve done on this tour?  Stealing refills from every 7-11.  That’s how we roll.

Kevin Richard- Well I think that kid we jumped in San Diego might have died.  That was a pretty fucked up fight.  That was kind of fucked up.

Miles Raymer-It was fucked up when you kept hitting him with that rock.

Seth Bohn- Hey guys, remember she said not to say anything we’d regret?

Kevin Richard-That wasn’t the situation at all, he was talking shit.

AJ-And then Kevin did coke off of the guy after he was dead!

When I walked in to this I could tell you were the type of guys that would do something like that.

Seth Bohn-Yeah, we’re pretty much ice cold killers.

So then…nothing crazy has happened?

Miles Raymer- I will say that Ventura knows how to party in a way that we did not expect.  For a Monday night in Ventura, that was crazy.

Kevin Richard- They were totally giving energy right back.  They were more pumped about us playing than we were and usually we’re pretty amped about our band.  They were right there with us.

Miles Raymer- It’s a bummer sometimes to be throwing out a lot of energy and to have the kids sit there like they’re too cool for school sucks.  These kids were going nuts.  There was slam dancing going on, mosh pits happening, people were going pretty crazy.  It was a blast.  You tend to find when you play places outside of big cities you get a lot more energy.  We just played basically a garage in the back of a glass company in Marietta to fifteen high school kids.  When you play a show like that, everyone is there to see your band and they come up and tell you how much they love your band.  Then you’ll play a show of two hundred people and not a single person will tell you they liked your band.  It makes those small shows feel that much more worth it.

What are the shows like in Chicago?

Miles Raymer- Well, I feel like Chicago isn’t as jaded as LA or New York.

Kevin Richard- Chicago has the tightest music scene.  It’s so closely knit, plenty of places to play.  It’s not one of those places that’s really spread out or has so many places that no one cares about the shows.

Since you guys get a ton of comparisons to other bands like The Black Lips and Television, how would you describe your music completely non-musically?  For example, it sounds like a Unicorn jumping over the moon.

Kevin Richard- I think like a caterpillar tractor.

Why?

Kevin Richard- That’s what Gary Panter said, we’re just going to go with him.

Miles Raymer- Gary Panter is an old school 80’s artist and he did the artwork for our last record.  He lives in New York and he’s the nicest old dude ever.  When we asked him to do the artwork for our record he said ‘it sounds very caterpillary tractory to me.’

Kevin Richard- He’s like sixty years old and hung out until two in the morning at the shitiest bar in New York.

Seth Bohn- No, but we’re just a bunch of Midwestern dudes who grew up in the suburbs and moved to the city playing Rock N’ Roll.