iamserio.us

What a great night for instrumental rock. I mean, how often do you get to see three amazing instrumental bands all play in one night? Last night at The Nectar Lounge in Fremont, Caspian, You.May.Die.In.The.Desert and Joy Wants Eternity all played to a crowd of about 30 people and everyone who was there really wanted to be there. It wasn’t like there were people at the bar who didn’t really care about the music… everyone there really wanted to hear these bands play and they were ready to pay attention.

Actually, Caspian wasn’t officially on this bill. They had a lot of trouble booking a venue in Seattle and had even taken the date off of their myspace tourdates because there wasn’t anywhere for them to play. I’m very thankful that You.May.Die.In.The.Desert let them play the show because Caspian puts on a really really awesome show. The new songs are epic and amazing. I’m so excited for the album to drop in February.

The guys in Caspian were so nice too. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to have a member of a band ask me “Can we put this recording on The Archive?” That he even knew about archive.org made me smile and that he wanted the recording to go on the site made me grin even more. How awesome is that?

You.May.Die.In.The.Desert impressed the hell out of me too. I think they are a perfect example of how different instrumental rock can sound when you really try to break out of the box. All three of these guys are amazingly good at their instruments and they use those skills to craft Don Caballero-esque songs that sound like you’re hearing them in that transitory state between waking and sleeping. I fully expect these guys to blow up the scene and get the recognition (and record contract) they deserve.

Caspian – 2006-10-15 Nectar Lounge – Seattle, WA
Download: caspian2006-10-15.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: caspian2006-10-15sample.mp3

You.May.Die.In.The.Desert – 2006-10-15 Nectar Lounge – Seattle, WA
Download: ymditd2006-10-15.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: ymditd2006-10-15sample.mp3

Joy Wants Eternity – 2006-10-15 Nectar Lounge – Seattle, WA
Download: jwe2006-10-15.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: jwe2006-10-15sample.mp3

Snarl is a framework that can be used by any application to display popups (ala Toaster, Miranda, etc.) Instead of every app making its own popups, Snarl provides a central platform.

Always bring your second recording device. Always.

If I had brought my JB3 to the show last night I could have easily gotten a soundboard feed and this was one show where that would have been very helpful. The Sunset Tavern is a bar and people will pay the seven dollar cover charge to go there and talk while all the bands play. Color me confused because I don’t understand this practice. Why these people refuse to go to a bar where there isn’t a cover charge escapes me completely.

That said, I love Math & Physics Club so goddamn much. This is the type of pop music that should be made forever and ever without pause. Charles’ vocals remind me heavily of Jason Korzen (Barcelona, Sprites) but with that soft sheen that you get from singers like Stuart Murdoch (Belle & Sebastian). It really is something quite soothing and beautiful. Too bad the drunk crowd was too loud for anyone to hear anything. The beginning of the set was very hard to hear but it got better near the middle when people either quieted down or left. I really wish I had brought my JB3. So angry.

Boat 2006-10-14 Sunset Tavern – Seattle, WA
Download: boat2006-10-14.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: boat2006-10-14sample.mp3

Math & Physics Club 2006-10-14 Sunset Tavern – Seattle, WA
Download: mapc2006-10-14.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: mapc2006-10-14sample.mp3

It’s funny how The Blood Brothers keep getting older but still truck on making music. I guess the funny part about it is as they age and progress in musical maturity, their audience seems to remain trapped in a perpetual state of puberty. See, that’s what I love about Blood Brothers fans: I keep getting older, they stay the same age.

I guess that’s one of the pitfalls of making the style of music that they do; whiny, eccentric, spazztic rock that no sane 20-something would care to bounce around to at a concert. No, us mature folk like to stand at the bar and blithely sip our Manhattans. To tell the truth, I honestly don’t know why no one ever “grows up” with The Blood Brothers. Well, no one but me it seems.

The Blood Brothers played to a fairly packed house of teens at The Old Firehouse in Redmond last night. The crowd was obnoxious and annoying and everything that an all-ages show at The Firehouse should be: full of awkwardly dressed, half-formed, young adults. In all honesty, I go to Blood Brothers shows just to get a quick dose of what horrible fashion some teens are trying to pass off as acceptable. Seriously, next time I’m taking a camera.

Mikaela’s Fiend opened to an unenthused crowd. I don’t think the kids were too keen on being entertained by their peers so they didn’t respond much to Donnie’s between-song banter (which was compounded by the fact that it was hard to understand the winded drummer). The set was fast, unforgiving and vicious. This is why this band will go far. They just don’t quit.

The Blood Brothers took the stage at about 9:00. God bless all-ages shows for starting and ending so early. The band does what they always do and I love them for it. Jordan holds the side of his head like the microphone gives him a migraine. Johnny shakes his head violently in between vocal spews as if it gives him a sickness he has to forcibly remove. Mark destroys the drums in a way that convinces you he really wants them to break. Morgan gracefully handles his bass and keys quietly. Cody brings the jams. It’s The Blood Brothers. There isn’t anything to say that they haven’t said the dozens of times I’ve seen them in the past, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop going to their shows and buying their albums.

Mikaela’s Fiend – 2006-10-13 The Old Firehouse – Redmond, WA
Download: mf2006-10-13.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: mf2006-10-13sample.mp3

The Blood Brothers – 2006-10-13 The Old Firehouse – Redmond, WA
Download: bbrothers2006-10-13.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: bbrothers2006-10-13sample.mp3

This app lets you use Pandora without having to keep a browser window open. Works with Last.fm too. Nice.

Most of the time stealthing for me isn’t about going undetected. It’s about not making a huge production out of the whole thing. Seems like if you walk in with a bag of gear and a tripod then venue staff assumes you’re trying to do something professional (i.e. worth making money off of) but if you’re just running some lapel mics into a handheld recorder then they think it’s just a hobby.

The soundguy at The Crocodile Cafe is sort of a douche. The two times I’ve taped there, he’s given me grief about not having written explicit permission to tape from all of the bands (not just the headliner). This time, since I only wanted to tape one of the bands playing, I rolled in with my small setup and taped. I didn’t really try to hide the fact that I was taping since there was only about ten people there to see Zombi anyway, but I stood in the back and leaned against a halfwall by myself and taped away. No one gave me any crap about it.

So anyway, Zombi played at The Croc last night. They were opening for a band called Supersystem whom I’ve heard of but never actually heard. If I was open-taping I would have stuck around but the battery on the Microtrack sucks and I didn’t think it would hold out for another full set.

The recording turned out pretty damn great. I stood about ten feet from the left stack so I was pretty close. The only thing that mars the recording is the fact that the drummer sort of lost control during Night Rhythms. There is about a minute or so of drumming where he’s not really on the beat at all. Oh well, it’s a really long song.

Zombi – 2006-10-03 Crocodile Cafe – Seattle, WA
Download: zombi2006-10-03.at943.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: zombi2006-10-03sample.mp3

Here is an unrecorded song from my now de-FUNKED band Hunk Parade.

The entire contents of the zine I made this week could have been poured into this website. How boring would that have been. Now I have something tangible. 47 somethings, actually. It was supposed to be 50 but there was one instance of me flipping out and tearing a zine into pieces and two more instances of me screwing up enough to throw away the one I was working on.

The zine is called Wish you were here. I made the contents entirely in notepad.exe which was probably a terrible idea considering notepad has no formatting options whatsoever. Its saving grace is that it prints in monospaced font so I could (not so) easily make a half-page design (two pages per each side of an 8.5×11 sheet of paper).

The cover is heavy cardstock that I bought in bulk at the store months ago for a different project. Each cover has a Polaroid picture attached to the front, on to which I fed through an old typewriter and printed the title of the zine. I had to buy a long-arm stapler so that I could bind the zine down the middle with two staples.

Each copy has a CDR in the back which relates to one of the entries. I fed the paper cases through the typewriter as well so that I could print the zine title on them.

All told, I probably spent almost two hundred dollars making these things. Between the Polaroid film, the stapler, the copies at Kinkos, the typewriter, the paper CD cases and the CDRs… it got sort of expensive. Oh well. If I wanted to recoup expenses I’d probably have to charge about four dollars a piece for them but I don’t really care about all that.

I’m not sure how I’m going to distribute it yet. I was thinking of dropping some of them off at Sonic Boom Records in Ballard and Fremont and maybe seeing if the news stand next to the Fremont location would consign the zine (just to see what kind of interest there is this sort of thing in Seattle). If you think you want one, email me with your name and address and I’ll send you one.

And if you just want to look at it and don’t want to deal with me mailing you a copy, then here you go:

Wish You Were Here Issue #01: wishyouwerehere-01.zip
Wish You Were Here Audio CD: wishyouwerehere-01-audio.zip

I’ll definitely do more issues of this zine. It was fun to make and I like it a lot more than a blog. It’s like a magazine that I have full control over which is very exciting for me. I plan to schedule some interviews with bands and maybe do some record and concert reviews for the next issue. I have some ideas for the design and since the next one won’t require Polaroids (nor will I have to buy the stapler or typewriter again), it will cost a lot less.

This was a pretty great show. A band I’d seen before redeemed themselves, a band I’d never heard but heard good things about impressed me, and a band I’d never heard of at all made a damn good showing.

Nachmystium is a black/thrash metal band that I’d never heard of before in my life. The vocals are evil sounding and the drumming is non-stop. The lead singer looks like Josh Homme cross-bred with Dave Mustaine and he has a voice like a demon. There was epic hair swinging and growling and grunting. Color me impressed as hell.

Daughters is a band that I’d heard about a lot from the Internet Kids but I never got a chance to really listen to. I liked a few songs on their Myspace page but couldn’t find their albums online or in stores (thought I didn’t look too hard) so I just went to the show hoping they’d impress me and they did. The lead guitarist played some of the most intriguing angular riffs I’d ever heard and so damn fast too. Also: the lead singer reminds me of pre-fat Meatloaf.

I saw Pelican back in June and they didn’t impress me then. This time around they rocked some new jams that I really liked so I would probably go see them again. I think it hurt them last time playing after Mono. This time, playing after Daughters, they had a better mood set up for them and the audience wasn’t as subdued.

All in all, a good show. If you know Nachmystium or Daughters song titles, then post them in the comments after you listen to the sets because I’m at a loss for the setlists.

Nachmystium – 2006-09-30 Neumo’s – Seattle, WA
Download: nachmystium2006-09-30.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: nachmystium2006-09-30sample.mp3

Daughters – 2006-09-30 Neumo’s – Seattle, WA
Download: daughters2006-09-30.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: daughters2006-09-30sample.mp3

Pelican – 2006-09-30 Neumo’s – Seattle, WA
Download: pelican2006-09-30.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: pelican2006-09-30sample.mp3