So the Mates of State played at the Glasshouse the other day. As I sped at 93 mph down the I-10 to arrive in time for the second band, I thought about how ridiculous it was that the Black Kids and Mates of State were co-headlining this tour. Ignore the fact that that the MoS craft infinitely more complex and catchy songs with just a keyboard and drum set than the Black Kids could ever hope to string together with their full band and dual keyboards, the Mates have been around for years, while the Black Kids are fresh out o’ the womb of indie rock culture. I guess lyrics as compelling as ‘I’m not going to teach your boyfriend how to dance with you.’ get you equal sized font on the bill as the friggin’ Mates of State.

But, I digress. The Black Kids just so happened to be opening that night so I only missed a song or two of theirs and none of the main act. Crisis averted.

And hype aside, I must admit, they were pretty fun. Everyone was hopping (dancing?) around in pure awkward joy. Then after a painfully long set change, husband and wife, Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner, took the stage. They played some slower jams off Re-Arrange Us and Bring It Back to begin. It was great to see how ethereal the band sounded with violin and cello, as I hadn’t seen them live since 2004 (opening for Taking Back Sunday of all things). The crowd really exploded though when they played HaHa; Kori existentially exclaiming ‘I can’t tell what kind of life I’ve led today.’ The band came to the realization that Team Boo was their best album about midway through the set when Jason quipped, ‘I guess we found the right era.’ after playing a few songs off that disc. Here’s a video of them playing Fluke off Team Boo.

So all in all, it was a great show. Thanks to KSCR for the free ticket. P.S. The crowds at shows around this town are becoming increasingly more unbearable. To see what I mean, check out this site: http://lookatthisfuckinghipster.tumblr.com/

I spent last weekend at a music festival in Whitecliffs, the legendary valley farm 100 km outside of Christchurch, New Zealand. I~Nation’s line up featured the best kiwi talent in Jungle, Funk, Soul & Breaks, and Dubstep. Tiki Live was the mind blowing headliner, but I was struck most by Ladi6, one of Aotearoa’s premier hip-hop artists. Ladi6 (Karoline Tamati) is one of the most casually stunning and rhythmic performers I’ve ever seen on stage. Her smooth deep vocals keep your mind in a trance and your body moving with a spicy beat.
After much anticipation, on October 27th 2008 Ladi6 released her debut solo album “Time Is Not Much.” In wake of the successful album release tour, Ladi6 has earned herself the title of New Zealand’s leading “soulstress and our Queen of hip-hop,” (nzmusic.com/forum). Pay your respects at www.ladi6.com.

Peace and Love,

Trojan abroad

The crowd at a Modest Mouse show is similar to the type of people you’d see in a Denny’s at 3 am. You’ve got kids far too young to be out that late, teens trying desperately to be cool and look fashionable, the Denny’s staff who eternally look pissed off and, of course, the drunkards. Last Tuesday’s (2/24) Modest Mouse show (really more of a concert but it just breaks my heart to think of them as a band that plays ‘concerts’) was no different besides, perhaps, a few more drunkards.

Isaac Brock kept his talking to a minimum, which was nice seeing as how he’s an incredible prick. When he did talk between songs he made fun of some guys Smiths shirt. That was better than the last time I saw them, at least, where he told the whole crowd to fuck off before playing “Float On,” which, happily enough didn’t make the setlist this time around. The song selection consisted of a handful of songs off Good News, The Moon and Antartica, and The Lonesome Crowded West along with a few from We Were Dead and This Is A Long Drive and a relic from Everywhere and His Nasty Parlor Tricks.

The highlight of the night was easily “Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset.” To hear Brock shout the lines, “You were looking kind of anxious in your cross armed stance, like a bad tempered prom queen at a homecoming dance.” to a room of thousands of cross armed Hollywood hipsters was the most blissful irony of my life. I was sure to put my hands in my pockets for that part.

“Dance Hall” off Good News For People Who Love Bad News.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5Gd7mGB0_k

(Photo via pfunkjazz)

Club Nokia really lived up to its name tonight, bringing the dance party in with Greyboy All Stars, George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, and a guest appearance by Sly Stone (affectionately introduced as Sly Mother F**king Stone). I’m not talking about a bit of toe-tapping or hip swaying; I’m talking about couples freak dancing, middle-aged men in suits harlem shaking, and synchronized fist pumping more brutal than what goes on at a Metallica concert.

If there is any question after seeing the photo above, let me make it clear: George Clinton has still got it. There were at least a dozen people on stage including some original Funkadelic members — my favorite being this gentleman. Sure, there were some technical difficulties (probably due to the massive wattage required by all the people on stage), but the crowd was compensated with a fascinating improvisational number including an extended version of “Get Off Your Ass and Jam” and Lil Jon’s “Get Low”. I could not tell who was having more fun: us or them. In either case, the energy was infectious. Sly Stone came out, recited a poem and everyone went wild with a collaborative performance of “Thank You”.

There were plenty of different people to please that night. One older fan asked me, “What do YOU know about George Clinton? What do YOU know about P-Funk?” …and admittedly, I was not even born when he was in his prime. But I looked around me at all the faces in the crowd - young, old, ethnic, white, female, male, suited, literally blue collar - and everyone seemed to be having a great time. If you weren’t there, then no worries. G.C. and the P.F. have plans to release new material in 2009 and most likely will bring the party back.

(I should also mention the opener Greyboy All Stars. The San Diego six-piece was very reminiscent of The Meters, playing fresh bluesy funk. If you think you grew up in the wrong era and want to hear something more than a cover band, I would highly recommend them.)

(Other Lives in Chicago. Photo from Flickr via Robert Loerzel)

Yesterday, KSCR brought in Other Lives from Stillwater, Oklahoma to our studios for a live set, a little guest DJing, and an interview. The ultra-charming, super nice five piece rocked our tiny, yellow Studio B with authentic folk. (I’ll try uploading an MP3 later) The show at the Echo with What Made Milwaukee Famous for the Little Ones CD release party, complete with balloon animals and cotton candy, was ultra fun as well! The three bands play again tonight at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa.

Make sure you listen to our Live Show every Friday at 2pm!

I was surprised and touched by the number of men scattered amongst the still predominately female crowd at Ground Zero, silenced and awed as they stared up at the stage where the lovely speaker gestured at the screen as cheery, colorful slides sped by. Dressed chic in all black, with black lustrous fur and incomparable thick, black rubber skin. She was a Guerilla Girl, appearing at USC in her full badass regalia of head to toe black and the iconic rubber gorilla mask. As she turned her head to address the audience, we could see flashes of glittering red from behind the cut out eyeholes; either wicked glasses frames, or the flames of her ardor for activism burning in her eyes. Whichever, just seeing one of the founding Guerilla Girls on the stage was one of the coolest things I’ve gotten to do at USC, or, y’know, ever.

The Guerrilla Girls are a band of female activists who work through art and anonymity to protest the under representation of women and/or minorities in the art world, Hollywood and politics. Through posters, billboards and biting wit they’ve been working since 1985 to redress wrongs and be “the conscience of the art world.” The anonymity is key; all members assume the name of dead female artists, and never appear without their masks. When asked how they settled on this particular persona, she answered: “We decided to be anonymous from the beginning… you couldn’t hate what we were doing because you hated us. Then we realized we needed an identity. One of our early members was a terrible speller, and during one of our meetings she was doodling GO-rilla girls the animal as opposed to GUE-rilla girls the freedom fighters… it confounds expectations and pushes people’s buttons.”

She entered the room after the lights were turned off and the bar closed the curtain to business, and broke the ice by handing out bananas on the way to the stage. The presentation then started with a PowerPoint talk covering the history of the Guerilla Girls activism, a sort of lite intro into what they were all about. It covered them from the beginning, when they were a small band of outsiders and renegades in New York, going out late at night to plaster the city with posters and stickers to the present, with their posters hanging in the TATE permanent collection, and shows at contemporary galleries around the world from Shanghai back to New York again.

Not that the recent somewhat ironic embrace from the art world has dulled their acerbic commentary any. At the recent opening of the Eli Broad gallery at LACMA, the Guerilla Girls protested the under-representation of women artists and artists of color at a tax supported museum, whose mission is purportedly to “educate a culturally diverse population.” When the curator of the Broad collection claimed that Cindy Sherman has forty-nine pieces on display, the Guerrilla Girls responded with another letter, pointing out that there were only four female artists out of thirty, and one black artist out of thirty. These numbers don’t coordinate with the number of women artists, and of artists in minority groups just in the Los Angeles area. It runs into the problem of museums, as elucidated in the Guerilla Girls activity book, as “places where rich people put their stuff.”

http://www.guerrillagirls.com/posters/dearestelibroad.shtml

Not that they are limited to the art world; they have pointed out similar failings in the Hollywood system, and especially recently in the problems of government. My favorite is the “estrogen bomb” a poster and billboard campaign to bomb the various houses of government with estrogen pills to chill them out. They approach everything with a sense of humor; “communication is really important to us… if you don’t have a sense of humor we cannot speak to you.”

It was in that swinging sense of humor that she ended the presentation by getting a guy into skirt. There’s a cool story behind it, of course: the New York Times published an article and accompanying photo entitled “Arnold Glimcher and his Art World All Stars;” all of which were white men. The Guerrilla Girls did a responding poster entitle Hormone Imbalance Melanin Deficiency, catching the attention of Village Voice art critic Betsy Hass. Hass called Glimcher to ask him about his collection, and the skit was a re-enactment of the transcript of that telephone conversation. The guy from the audience was called up to play Hass; the Guerrilla Girl took on the role of Glimcher. It was both funny and disturbing, especially Glimcher’s lines—“we only represent artists who fit into our program,” and the suggestion that they continue the conversation “maybe over lunch.”

For the Guerilla Girls, it’s not a matter of men versus women, but of enlightened human rights and equality for all, and for not settling for tokenism. Their verve and jocularity were refreshing and inspiring, especially in the recent political and social climate, which considers the battle for equal rights basically won, and demonizes feminism. And their attraction isn’t an isolated phenomenon. They apparently receive tons of mail, especially in response to one of their earlier posters “Advantages of Being a Woman Artist” from female artists, most of which tend to be musicians, saying that this is the story of their lives.

By the end of the talk, the general excitement was such that the news that the Guerilla Girls weren’t looking for any new members, that in fact they preferred to stay small, and so didn’t solicit members in any way cast a tangible pall of disappointment over much of the room. She advised us to “find your own crazy way to be an activist… Speak out against what you think is wrong. The art world is a very f*cked up place.” She ended with this call for more activism, with undertones of addressing the type who make up the USC community especially–young people with all the advantages of education. The most important thing is to be active; after all “you wouldn’t be paying attention to a woman wandering around in a gorilla mask if it wasn’t attached to a body of work.”

Rumor has it that during Sigur Ros performances, the sheer overwhelming beauty of their pieces cause grown men to shed all traits of masculinity and suddenly break down and cry. I wasn’t sure how valid this statement was or where it originated from, but I can assure you that when I bought my ticket, I was expecting a good cry to be a part of the experience. With this knowledge in the back of my mind I went into this concert with a box of Kleenex and extremely high expectations.

Having arrived to the show about a bit late, I missed most of the opening act, Parachutes, another Icelandic band that played that kind of dreamy ambiance pop very similar to Sigur Ros. There were several occasions however, when they sounded a little too similar (not that sounding like Sigur Ros is ever a bad thing). Unfortunately, I can’t really say much about this band, but everything I heard for those ten or so minutes sounded very promising. I’d say to definitely give them a shot on recording. After this brief taste of Icelandic magic, my anticipation had only grown. I held my box of Kleenex closely, ready for Sigur Ros. (more…)

     The L.A. native rapper known as “Bambu” describes himself as “a dad, a comrade, an organizer, an artist, a worker, a fan, a soldier, a thinker, a do-er and a fighter until death.”

     In a world where the hip hop chart-toppers continue to sell a superficial story of ”riches and bitches,” it really can be a struggle for artists of politically conscious hip hop like Bambu to get their voices heard. But on Saturday night at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood, he rocked the stage reflecting on all of these aspects of his life while still maintaining a groove that kept the audience jumping.

His latest album, The Exchange, dropped on Sept. 11, and is available online through his Myspace - (see bottom).

This is Bambu’s “I Scream,” off of I Scream Bars for the Children:

     The show also included performances by a local duo called U-N-I, featuring one MC from Los Angeles, and one from Seattle. They were recently nominated by MTV as an L.A. Breakout Artist. They gave an enthusiastic and goofy performance, with the highlight being their song “Beautiful Day,” off of Fried Chicken and Watermelon, which is great to see live, but also has an awesome music video:

     The show also featured a Seattle MC-DJ duo called Common Market. Unfortunately, they were unable to perform due to an equipment malfunction. This group is also well worth checking out for those interested in music that promotes a well-crafted and empowering message.

This is “Trouble Is,” off their new album, Tobacco Road, released in January:

Overall, the show was well worth its cost ($10), in spite of the equipment malfunctions. The Knitting Factory is a cool little venue to check out for future shows, featuring lots of local up-and-coming artists. Their schedule is available online.

Bambu

Common Market

U-N-I