It's not very often you go into a show blind and leave wowed but that what my reaction to seeing West Palm Beach, Florida's Surfer Blood last night at Bruar Falls. I think I was expecting a slightly poppier take on the shambolic noise skuzz that blows through smaller Williamsburg venues these days. But, despite reverbed vocals and echo guitars effects that would sometimes seize and glitch like an episode of Tim & Eric, Surfer Blood make accomplished, hook-filled indie rock with clever arrangements and great harmonies, as performed by four guys who can actually, you know, play. You hear so little music like this anymore from new bands -- Seattle's BOAT come to mind -- that is this catchy, skilled but not polished. It's not going to change your life or anything (yes, they do sound a little like the Shins), but it'll have you humming and awaiting the next time they come through town. I only wish I'd known about their first NYC show so I could've seen them more than once.
Big ups to Rachel for basically forcing me to go to the show. I owe you a Coke. Surfer Blood's debut, Astro Coast, is out soon the above MP3s are from it. It's real good. I also put a song on today's Summer Fridays mix so check that out. They play Philadelphia tonight before heading back to Florida, and then the Midwest in September. The band told me they'll be back in NYC for CMJ in October. All tour dates and some video from last night after the jump.
So this is, I think, going to be the penultimate Summer Fridays mix for 2009. I know it's sad. Only one more. But on the bright side... still one more! A lot more new stuff this week, including such states as Florida, California, Indiana and Brooklyn. I'm pretty sure Brooklyn is a state, I live here. This week's cover is courtesy SB reader (and graphic designer/illustrator) Olivia Todd who delivered some swell mixed media. That's three excellent covers in a row. Here's where I would normally beg for submissions for art, but I've got the last one covered, thanks. Aren't you sad you didn't write in? Also, you know the drill: this is an actual mix, the songs segue together, so putting this on shuffle would be a bad thing.
Tracklist: 1. Billy Nicholls - Would You Believe?
2. Car-Sick Cars - Zhong Man Hai
3. Moose - Don't Bring Me Down
4. Holiday Shores - Bradley Bear
5. Love Tractor - Venice
6. The Bats - Never Said Goodbye
7. The Fresh & Onlys - Grey Eyed Girl
8. Miracle Legion - All for the Best
9. Robyn Hitchcock - I Watch the Cars
10. Surfer Blood - Floating Vibes
11. Sugarplastic - Talk Back
12. The Zombies - These Friends of Mine
13. Brown Recluse - Night Train
14. The Jazz Butcher - Rain
15. The Babies - Meet Me in the City
16. Sic Alps - L.Mansion
17. Fire - My Father's Name Was Dad
18. Blue Jungle - Here We Go Again
19. Marmoset - Strawbery Shortcakes
20. The Postmarks - No One Said This Would Be Easy
Have a great weekend! "Liner Notes" after the jump.
We may be running out of Summer (not that the thermometer is currently any indication) but I'm not running out of songs. That said, I'm pretty sure this mix features the least new music of any of this season's sets, but I've tried to put in a little of every decade. A lot of Scandinavia on this one too, that would be lily-white without them anyway. That said, I think this one is really strong in that if you like the first song, you're gonna like the whole thing. Cover art is by my friend Kelly who recently left NYC to go to grad school for landscape architecture at UVA. The cover is based on "a project from landscape summer school. it's the summer solstice sunrise over some mexican heather grass in charlottesville." It's one of the best Summer Fridays covers yet, I think. If you think you can do better, I'm gonna do these mixes through the end of Summer proper, so get in touch. In the meantime, I'll remind you that these songs segue together so no shuffle!
1. The Pernice Brothers - Working Girls
2. The Mary Onettes - Puzzles
3. Jens Lekman - Maple Leaves
4. Ride - Making Judy Smile
5. The Woodentops - Travelling Man
6. The Wannadies - Friends
7. Cast - Alright
8. The Byrds - So You Want to Be a Rock & Roll Star
9. The Grapes of Wrath - Do You Want to Tell Me?
10. The The - Slow Emotion Replay
11. Sondre Lerche - I Cannot Let You Go
12. Prefab Sprout - Appetite
13. The Left Banke - I've Got Something on My Mind
14. Pale Saints - Colours and Shapes
15. New Pornographers - Laws Have Changed
16. Superheroes - What's Going On?
17. The Stone Roses - What the World is Waiting For
18. Eggstone - Waiting for the Bell
This week's is another that wildly swings from genre to genre but I think it works. Dig the pro artwork this week, from my friend Greg who is an illustrator and toy designer. Clearly my mixes have always had a K-Tel vibe about them, and I like the way he worked the numbering into it subtly. Very clever! He wrote the text too, or at least copied from Wikipedia, and you can read it clearly in the hi-res cover that's included in the download. There did seem to be a sentence missing: "No shuffling!"
1. Lovvers - OCD Go Go Girls 2. The Cribs - You Were Always the One 3. Horace Andy - Sky Larking 4. Big Audio Dynamite - Sambadrome 5. Simian Mobile Disco - Bad Blood (feat Alexis Taylor) 6. The Walker Brothers - If I Promise 7. The Apartments - The Shyest Time 8. Easterhouse - Whistling in the Dark 9. Grass Widow - To Where 10. [ingenting] - Halleluja! 11. Beach Fossils - Vacation 12. Brilliant Colors - Should I Tell You? 13. Trashcan Sinatras - Hayfever 14. Generationals - Nobody Could Change Your Mind 15. A Place to Bury Strangers - Exploding Head 16. Gorky's Zygotic Monkey - Meyhu Aros Tan Haf 17. Fluffy Lumber - Cruisers 18. Luna - Lost in Space 19. BOAT - Name Tossers
I've got a stack of new CDs on my kitchen table that remain unlistened-to, because all I seem to be able to play is Setting the Paces, the new album by Seattle's BOAT. I became a superfan when they played Cake Shop and Union Hall last summer, so I knew I was gonna like the new album, but I didn't know I was going to like it this much. Self-depricating indie rock of the mid-'90s variety where the song, not the attitude, is king. Giant hooks, lyrics that are funny without being novelty (and have just enough of the crying-on-the-inside clown thing going on too), and production that is neither slick nor low fi. This is how it's done, and I've no doubt this will find its way into my Best of 2009 list. The album doesn't come out till October 30 (I know!) but the band have given the world two tasters from the album: MP3: BOAT - We've Been Friends Since 1989 MP3: BOAT - Prince of Tacoma While you're waiting, maybe you should pick up the other two BOAT albums, both of which are great.
BOAT will be touring for Setting the Paces and are tenatively going to be in the NYC area mid-November. Toby at Finest Kiss saw them play last Friday, so read his report which contains an MP3 of "Name Tossers," maybe my favorite song from the new album.
The band was entirely of the ad-hoc, pickup variety and there was no rehearsal, apart from the sound-check. Nobody, including the people onstage, knew what to expect. And yet, former Chameleon singer Mark Burgess' performance at The Bell House was kind of awesome; or as someone else said to me, "accidentally epic."
I'm a pretty big Chameleons fan. I count their three original albums as some of my favorites of the '80s and I own more than my fair share of BBC Sessions, live rehearsals, etc. I went to all the band's shows when they reformed in 2002, nights that I thought I'd never see. The band broke up shortly after that and I figured that was the last we'd hear. But that all changed when Burgess came to America to hang out with a new flame he'd been corresponding with. He thought he might play an acoustic show or two while here, but upon hearing Burgess was in the States, musicians came out of the woodwork offering to be his backing band. And those folks showed up at the Bell House and winged it, though both drummer Duncan Arsenault and guitarist Roger Lavallee played Burgess' show in Boston a couple weeks ago and are both in Curtain Society together. The Boston show was a little rough, from what I could tell via YouTube clips, as was this one at times, but everyone was amazed at how well it all worked. "Welcome to 'A Night of a Thousand Bassists,'" Burgess joked as he took the stage before launching into a trio of songs from 1986's Strange Times: "Swamp Thing," "Mad Jack" and "Tears," all of which featured Versus singer Richard Balyut on bass. Burgess was only slightly exaggerating, as Balyut was the first of four bassists that night. "Swamp Thing" is one of the Chameleons more complex songs and at times I thought it might all fall apart, but they held it together. Richard Balyut's brother, Ed, also played bass for two songs ("Up the Down Escalator" and "Paradiso"). The other bassists were Gerard Hammill (who I recognized from Other Music) and Frankie Deserto who probably did the best of the four and played for almost half the set. He was singing along to nearly every songs and later wrote on Twitter, one of the greatest nights on my life to play bass on second skin.'' A guy named Shawn played second guitar as well as keyboards. Oh, and Jack Rabid played drums on "Tears." How could I forget?
The night got better as everyone onstage got more relaxed and the 200 or so attendees got more into it. Chameleons never had the biggest fanbase, but the might have one of the more dedicated ones. I think one of the things that draws people into the Chameleons is Burgess' big heart and positive vibe. Some lump the Chameleons in with '80s goth, and while the band's cover art and sound sometimes leaned that way, they were also capable of soaring pop full of hope. A good example of which was "Childhood," which Burgess said the Chameleons rarely played live but this adhoc band knocked out of the park. Burgess said the band picked the setlist, and if he messed up any of the lyrics I didn't really notice. There were a couple times where Burgess went off the map, but the band managed to follow his lead pretty well. We got a 15 song set covering most of the hits and a few surprises like "Childhood," "Paradiso" and "Perfume Garden." The lights came up and everyone was smiling. I went up to Bell House talent booker Skippy after the show and we were both like "It shouldn't have been that great." But it was. At the end of the show, Burgess brought everyone who played that night back on stage to thank them:
SETLIST: Swamp Thing | Mad Jack | Tears | Perfume Garden | Childhood | Nostalgia | The Fan & the Bellows | Up the Down Escalator | Paradiso | Less Than Human | Second Skin | Soul in Isolation | ENCORE: Don't Fall | In Shreds | Splitting in Two
Opening was local band Blacklist whose delayed guitars clearly owe more than a little to The Chameleons. And the Comsat Angels, Bolshoi and Death Cult. Yes it's pure pastiche, but they do it really really well and the songs are good. So few modern bands get the goth influences right, I gotta give them props. Their debut album, Midnight Of The Century, sounds good really loud. There weren't that many people at the Bell House when they went on, and a big room like that is hard to play in such circumstances but they held their own.
My friend McGregor who does the blog Chocolate Bobka is putting on his first-ever "Bobka Presents" show, which is happening tonight at Union Hall. It's a record release party for local band Forest Fire's new album, Survival, which is being put out by Catbird Records (a division of Catbird Seat blog, lots of cronyism here eh?). There are few other blogs whose opinions I trust across-the-board, but the Bobka is one of them. This should be a great show. And apparently he's made cookies. MP3: Forest Fire - Fortune Teller
Number nine in our summer series was an attempt not to sound kitchen sink-y, with a definite point of view: light, airy, fun. Hopefully I pulled that off. For the cover art this week, my friend Kirstie Shanley let me use (and crop) this photo of Chicago's Windy City Rubber Ducky Derby. The original photo is here. Hope you enjoy this one, which features three songs you could call "hip hop." I'm only slightly out of my element here. Have a good weekend...and no shuffling!
1. Jon Astley - Jane's Getting Serious
2. The Big Pink - Dominos
3. De La Soul - A Roller Skating Jam Named "Saturdays"
4. General Public - Where's the Line?
5. Almond Marzipan - Summer Love
6. Princeton - Calypso Gold
7. Javelin - Tell Me, What Will It Be?
8. Steely Dan - Peg
9. Tahiti 80 - Heartbeat
10. JJ - Things Will Never Be The Same Again
11. Estelle - 1980
12. The Baja Marimba Band - Flyin' High
13. Stereolab - Captain Easychord
14. Saint Etienne - Goodnight Jack
15. The Experimental Pop Band - Dead Sea
16. Spearmint - A Week Away
17. Speech Debelle -Spinnin'
John Hughes died of a heart attack today while on a morning walk in Manhattan. He was 59. As someone who grew up in the ''80s, his films are pretty much ingrained in my teenage memories. I've seen Sixteen Candles more times than any other film (probably upwards of 100), and Ferris Bueller's Day Off isn't far behind that. He directed less than you may remember -- though he wrote the scripts for Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful, they were both helmed by journeyman Howard Deutch -- and hadn't been behind the camera since 1991's forgettable Curly Sue., After mega-success writing Beethoven and Home Alone, he mainly scripted a lot of shmaltzy kid movies (dare I even bring up Baby's Day Out?) when not working as a script doctor. And the last ten years, he's been mainly known as a recluse. (Sound familiar?) But Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (and Planes, Trains & Automobiles) are among the most quotable movies of the '80s.As much as the lines of dialogue remain in my repertoire, John Hughes movies shaped my musical taste. Not just the soundtracks. I remember tracking down Cabaret Voltaire because Ferris had a poster of them in his room, and similarly I bought Easterhouse's Contenders after seeing a poster for it in Eric Stoltz's room in Some Kind of Wonderful. The Ferris Bueller's Day Off soundtrack struck a chord partly because they never released a soundtrack for it -- though they were originally going to. If you watch the credits of the film, it says "Soundtrack available from Hughes Music/MCA." I can't tell you how many times I went to the mall record store in the summer and fall of 1986 asking about the soundtrack. I finally gave up and decided I'd compile my own. Songs like "Twist and Shout" and "Danke Shoen," or even Sigue Sigue Sputnik's "Love Missile F1-11" and Yello's "Oh Yeah" weren't to hard to track down, but the but bulk of music used was on the rare side. "March of the Swivelheads," the instrumental version of the English Beat's "Rotating Head," was only ever released as the b-side to the "Too Nice to Talk To" 12." Similarly, the Dream Academy's vocal version of "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" was findable, but no so much the instrumental version used in the film. And then there was The Flowerpot Men's "Beat City" and Blue Room's "I'm Afraid," which were recorded specifically for the film and were only ever released as opposite sides of a 7" distributed solely to members of the John Hughes fan club. I was not a member. Any time I went into a record store, I would seek these out, and I found almost all of them but those Flowerpot Men and Blue Room songs eluded me. I think the Flowerpot Men's (not the '60s group of the same name) only official release was a Peel Session, and Blue Room's only other released song was on the Pretty in Pink soundtrack. But then in 1999, Napster happened and I thought "hmm, maybe I can find them there" and 20 seconds later my 13-year quest to complete the Ferris Bueller soundtrack was done. At the time I thought, "now what?"
I always figured Rhino or Shout Factory would do a soundtrack I always meant to do a post on this, and certainly now seems like the time. I've since acquired that John Hughes Fanclub 7" (thanks, Erich!) but have never found a real copy of the Dream Academy "Please Please Please" instrumental. But I did get an mp3, so here are all the "rare" songs from Ferris Bueller OST. You can dig up the Beatles, Yello and Wayne Newton on your own. MP3: The Flowerpot Men - Beat City
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