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A Penguin Taught Me French

I am happy and excited to announce that the Weakerthans are in the studio now! Finally five years after their critically acclaimed record 'Reconstruction Site' was released they will be releasing yet another this fall! Thank goodness!

Shake Your Money Maker!

If you think your milkshake brings all the boys to the yard....well....then you're wrong! Danceband is comprised of several band members all with alias' and a bump in their rump. They began in Minneapolis not too long ago and became Minneapolis superstars in a matter of months. If I remember correctly they had a write up in Minneapolis' Pulse magazine prior to their first real show and that alone brought out a crowd. Over the past year this dance, dance fantasy team has managed to get the most uptight of indie kids dancing and moving like they were made for ass shaking and it's totally amazing. With lyrics like, "this is how we dance when we're dead", and songs such as "Clap Your Hands" a crowd can't help but interact because if you don't then you just can't hang on the dance floor. A few months back I had that glaring realization. I went to the Varsity Theater for the Girl Talk/Danceband show excited and ready, I brought a few people along with me, one of which I knew was NOT going to even wiggle a toe; he was no dancer. After five or so minutes of anxious aniticipation Danceband took the stage, and i mean TOOK the stage as they always do. Immediately the entire room was going at it without repress, as I looked back there was my friend standing as still as a dead man when the "Slide" song came on. I laughed out loud a bit because the show was sold out, room packed to the brim, and this song in particular has a choreographed dance to it that everyone and their mom knows. It's repeatedly my 90's prom dance scene dream! If you can imagine a can of sardines trying to dance....if they were all dancing they'd move in unison because they didn't have a choice. Ha! He was moving and from where I was standing it looked like he was sliding eventhough I know it was against his will. I loved it and it just made me love Danceband more than I already did.
Now they're blowing up and beginning to play a good number of high profile events.
This Saturday, April 28th they will be doing an invite only event at an undisclosed location and you have to RSVP to get the directions. So do it! $10 and free beer. And please leave your non-dancing friends at home!

Wish List

It's not often that I listen to a band for the first time and wish that I owned a record label so that I could snag that band, sign them and make them huge but SXSW this past March proved me wrong.
Before the conference I took preparation to another level and decided to make the SXSW website my new favorite home. I spent days listening to every band that was on the bill for this years indie fest and took notes on which ones I liked and then made our itinerary according to that. One of the top bands on my list was Sissy Wish from Norway. Our intern contacted Sissy Wish's manager to let them know that we'd be at the show. Now of course the first night of SXSW is always a debacle of sorts; you get into Austin, get your badges, get to your hotel to primp and then try try try to hit all the shows and meetings that were on the schedule for that night all the while fighting traffic and ignoring phone calls and text messages that just might throw you off. We always bite off more than we can chew on the first evening, and the entire week for that matter. On our agenda for that evening was X-Wife, Black Moth Super Rainbow, the Eenie Meenie Records Showcase, Oppenheimer, Trances Arc, HarMar Superstar, Pink Nasty, hanging with our Money Mark friend and last but not least Sissy Wish. All of which we actually managed to do! Now Buffalo Billiards is one of my most secretly coveted venues in Austin despite their heinous rules and regs. The bottom floor is well, billiards but upstairs is this ginormous ballroom accentuated by a gorgeous bar that sits dead center. This is where Sissy Wish was playing. We got there a smidge late because that's how we roll but once we walked in we were so pleasantly surprised, the lead singer Siri had that stage and the crowd captivated.
There were people dancing and staring and even Rollingstone Senior Editor David Fricke was there and enjoying the set. Sissy Wish is America's answer to pop music, their melodies are poppier than God but because the music is so well thought out and not made in the cookie cutter pop box of this country it's just fantastic. Something that both 14 year olds and music snobs alike could sink their teeth into. And Siri, the center of this band was very Bjork meets Karen O but with more umph and sweetness.
After seeing them I was baffled, why wasn't this band signed in the United States?
The following day we met up with Sissy Wish and their fab manager Tonje and got the whole story. First off, this is their first time ever playing outside of Norway! Now this bands is no small beans in Norway, in fact Sissy Wish's lead lady in February of 2005 was awarded a Norwegian Grammy (Spellemannsprisen) in the category of ”best female artist” and has had the honor of releasing three of the most critically acclaimed records in Norway. Goodness.

They are in the process of trying to get over to the United States and boy will you be lucky when they do!
Sissy Wish has recently released her 3rd album, "Beauties Never Die", on Sony BMG in Norway this past March.
www.sissywish.com
www.myspace.com/sissywish

Clap Your Hands Say Your Time is Up!

If you’re a music nerd you’ve probably spent a lot of time over the past year or so either loathing CYHSY or loving them, there’s really no middle ground. It’s funny because I’ve found that even though they have achieved fame and popularity without a record label backing them at all that some still see CYHSY as a band that has “sold out”. I mean this band did what every band wants to do, they got famous without giving up a lick of their artistic integrity, they got big and still called all the shots themselves. I say good for them, they have a success story like no other. Their first self-titled record was pretty damn good; dancey, groovy, maybe even a bit of childish romance thrown into the mix that the world just loved despite the common opinion that lead singer Alec Ounsworth may have perhaps at one time or another swallowed Thom Yorke.
CYHSY has toured so much and have managed to sell out every show with the exception of a handful and now they feel it’s time to release another album, ‘Some Loud Thunder’. This newness is most definitely a departure from their previous work, it seems a bit to me that they may have thought a little too hard about these songs and consciously tried to make each and every one sound different and original; they took out the pop aspect of their tunes and have turned them into the indie noise that Pitchfork loves so much.


When I listened to the new record I was prepared to dance but I didn’t. I’m not saying that it’s terrible but instead of making an album as good as their first, one that was good enough to just sit and listen to, they made an album that you’d put on as background music. The song that I believe they have named the single, ‘Love Song No. 7’ is dark and pessimistic almost as if front man Alec Ounsworth had some sort of sad heart break or life lesson while he was working on it. Gah!
I hope that it doesn’t turn out like Weezer’s second album, Pinkerton. You know the album that Rivers spilled his guts into writing about his lost loves and lesbian lovers only to watch it fail miserably. That was actually my fave Weezer album, perhaps even the only good one they ever released.
‘Some Loud Thunder’ will be released on January 30th, pick it up and decide for yourself if nothing else it’ll make a good conversation piece and you may even earn a tinge of indie rock cred.

Ouija Boards & Pompadours

I’ve always thought of myself as a bit of a skeptic, so maybe ghosts, spirits, unsettled energy of the dead etc. exist but has it ever been proven?
I guess I don’t really know what to believe even after the experience that I had the other night with just a slab of cardboard, a shot glass, and six other folks. I’m not sure where the idea originated but my friend Dylan and I had decided that we were going to make a Ouija Board in order to see if the house that he lives in is haunted.
The house was built in 1908 for a General and was later used as a whorehouse of sorts, so one would have to assume that at least a hand full of people have died in that house in the past 99 years right? Well we were bound and determined to find out, I mean who needs historical records and such when you can just contact the old tenants yourself, even the dead ones.
Now a proper, I guess what would be called a seance, should never have too many people because you don’t want to scare the invisible roommates away. There are a few other rules that must be followed for example the table that the Ouija Board is on must be wood, all jewelry must be removed from the participants hands, there can be no more than two sources of light in the room and candles are preferable, you must have one person ready with a pen and paper to record the letters as the spirit spells words out, and most importantly everyone participating has to come to the experience with a clear, positive, and open mind, bringing negativity to the table will only bring negative spirits, you get back what you put out so be nice and respectful.
As for your main tools; homemade Ouija Boards are always better than the Milton Bradley version, all you need is a piece of cardboard with the alphabet, 0-9, yes, no, and goodbye written on it and be sure that the letters are big enough for the shot glass which will act as the planchette to cover only one letter at a time so it’s easier to read. And yes a shot glass or other glass item with a see through bottom on it will work. Once you have these things you’re ready, oh a bottle of wine is always nice too, at least we thought so.
Now my friend Bari and I had done this together once before and the thing was sliding all over the board as fast as it possibly could. Bari and I are certain that we in some way or another were birthed from the same womb, we’re yin and yang and that is the best combo for Ouija Boarding so we were first up. We began by holding hands (left over right) and saying a quick prayer just for good measure, and you always end the Ouija Boarding time with a quick prayer as well just to clear the air. Oh, and also it’s important to remember that if the spirit that is talking to you becomes mean or scary you have to put the glass you’re using straight to “goodbye” to avoid anything scary or unwanted. Ok, so yes Bari and I began and it took a bit for it to move until it just started rocking all over the place and telling us things about our friend Dylan who was sitting in the room with us. Everyone got a stab at it and everyone did have something happen. At one point when Bari and I were Boarding it told me that my Grandma was ill, which I was aware of, and told me that she loved me and it even gave me her initials which no one in the room knew. I ended up having to call my Grandma after that to make sure that she was alright. Crazy huh? There’s more!
The last time Bari and I went we “contacted” a woman named Ana who said that she had lived in the house in 1908 and occupied the room that Dylan now lived in. She said that she liked the music that Dylan’s band made and that she was going to watch over him while he was on tour which he leaves for in two or so weeks. At one point we tried to ask her her last name and all we kept getting was M-C-M. What’s scary is that the next day Dylan called his landlord to get the real dish on who lived there and it turns out that in 1908 when the house was built there was an Ana McMillan that lived there. Holy buckets!
The overall night was not at all scary which surprised me, in fact we ended the evening with a group field trip to Village Wok for a little late night grub and we even got to take the 15 passenger band that Dylan’s band the Corpse Show Creeps call home while on the road. (www.myspace.com/corpseshowcreeps)
It looked a little bit like this:



Someone very important to me and who I trust very much once said that Ouija Boards do work but only because the energy that our body exudes moves the mystifying oracle (shot glass). That seems like a more logical explanation to me but it’s fun to play along with the whole spooks thing sometimes and who really knows right? It could be all true, or an explanation closer to the truth could be that we try to find meaning in any words, letters, or numbers that we possibly can.
Try it yourself:


Say you got the letters and numbers in this order: A, L, W, Y, Z, 0, 2

Can you find meaning in this? Perhaps, “always, 2002?” Maybe in 2002 you were in a relationship with someone that you’re still in love with or it’s possible that this was the year that you met your sweetie or even the person you married. Could it be that someone close to you passed away in 2002? Any significant change that occurred in 2002 would be magnified a billion times in order to fit.
So that’s my take on the whole Ouija Board business, prove me wrong, make a believer out of me, until then I’ll remain a skeptic and all the believers will remain kooks to me.
Ouija Boards were introduced to America in 1890 as a novelty item, a board game and somehow we’ve managed to morph a game into reality. Even popular bands have placed Ouija Boards in high regards for example Cheap Trick claims that they asked a Ouija Board what their bands should be called and it said “CHEAP TRICK”.
Idiot Ouija Board! Uh Na Na Na Na!

The Science Fair Ain't Got Shit on B.R.A.M.: Once Upon a Pocket Protector

Have you ever been seduced by someone and felt as though there was nothing that you could possibly do to say no?
Okay, now have you heard the band B.R.A.M. from Los Angeles? This bands music is positively intoxicating, you’ll feel it in every bone in your body. B.R.A.M. is comprised of members from several other bands that would be recognizable to the general music listener, for example the keyboard player plays with bands such as Mike Doughty as well. The music is fantastic and now you know why.
They haven’t quite recorded a full length record yet and from what I understand the only place their music can be found is on myspace (www.myspace.com/wearebram), AND you can download all four songs!
The song ‘1 Last Dance’, caught me off guard a bit, the first time I listened to it I was completely enthralled by the smart sounding synth and then I had to stop and play the song again. The second time around I realized that I felt like I was being seduced by a character from ‘Revenge of the Nerds’, the only difference between how the movie ends and how the song ends is that by the end of the song I was ready to let that nerd hit second base with me. It’s such a sexy song and the lead singer, Bram’s voice gives this little ditty a dainty and thoughtful yet hormone driven quality at the same time.
The tune that I immediately fell in love with was ‘Messages’, it has some of the same qualities as ‘1 Last Dance’, but different almost more mature and the keys really make the song special and force you to bob your head against your will.
I think that the moral of the story is that this is a band that you’ll have to be careful of, it’s one that I think could turn out as a heartthrobesque band based on my knowledge of the members and the blatant yet ever so soft sexuality of each song. Although I have yet to see the band live it seems that there isn’t a way in hell it wouldn’t be any less than an amazing show. They don’t play out nearly as much as they should but if ever in the L.A. area definitely check them out.
www.myspace.com/wearebram