Our friends at the Granada were nice enough to hook us up with three pairs of tickets to tonight's Isis/Pelican/Tombs show, and since the show IS in fact tonight, and we don't have much time to do this, we're going to give these tickets away to the first three people who email weshotjrtix@yahoo.com with "Isis" as the subject line and their full name in the body. We'll try to update this post right away to let you know when the contest is over, but in case we can't, we'll tell you that we posted it at 135 PM to give you some idea whether you still have a shot. Good luck!
Mrs Cheeks and I managed to make the trip down to Austin over the weekend to see Japan's Ghost play at the Mohawk. Though I've been a huge fan of their music since this record came out 13 years ago I have never been able to catch one of their shows, so to say that I was pretty jazzed about going would be a tremendous understatement.
I wasn't quite sure what to expect from a band that, over the course of eight wildly eclectic albums, has probably included close to twenty members (there is no way that I'm going to look at all the albums and get the exact count). They played as the six piece that recorded last year's In Stormy Nights album, including the inimitable Michio Kurihara on guitar, who has also played with the likes of White Heaven and Boris. Overall it was a rock oriented set with a few forays into free-form improv that drew equally from all of the band's records. It was nice to see electrified versions of old 'classics' like 'Orange Sunshine,' 'Sun is Tangging,' and 'Marrakech,' among others. The only real issue that I had was the fact that the show was originally supposed to be outside, but due to weather was moved indoors. There were too many people for such a small space, forcing us to see a few songs from the bar area before making it into the room that the band was actually playing in.
I'm not sure why they didn't play locally. Following a brief tour in 2004 in support of their well received Hypnotic Underground album, the band vowed not to return to the States until then President George W. Bush was out of office. I personally believe that dislike for a country's head of state is a pretty shitty reason to deprive your fans of a chance to see you play, especially when most of them share the same opinion about the guy. Maybe they didn't want to play in Dallas because old W resides here now, who knows?
The album showcased this week for NNMT was their first for Drag City, and fourth overall. Lama Rabi Rabi is probably the most balanced of all the albums, with the group's rock, folk and drone/meditative sides all displayed fairly equally.
Ghost's back catalog is getting increasingly harder to find in it's physical form, so I thought I'd be a nice guy and include the tracks from their two 1995 7 inches, Moungod Air Cave (live) b/w Guru in the Echo (live) and Holy High b/w Filament, released on The Now Sound and Holy Mountain respectively.
The folks at Rubber Gloves were nice enough to hook us up with a pair of tickets to Harvey Milk's performance next Monday, May 25th with the Great Tyrant and Hawk vs. Dove. If you want to win them, just email weshotjrtix@yahoo.com any time between now and Thursday at noon. Please include your full name in the body of the email and make "Harvey Milk" the subject. Good luck, rockers!
After quite a hectic weekend for many of us here at WSJR HQ, tonight is kinda like down time for us.... aren't we allowed to not care about your local music scene for one day please? Anyway, we expect to have a couple different things for you this week including an album review, some ticket giveaways, and a couple other surprises... including the biggest surprise of all, which would be us actually publishing all the stuff we're planning on. We'll see how it goes. I don't know how I can compete with DL's mean spirited weekender from last Friday, so I'll just list a couple things going on tonight and promise that the rest of the week will be waaaaaay better:
THU: Ponytail/True Widow/Fight Bite (The Cavern) THU: The Thermals (The Loft) FRI: Dub Assembly with Appleblim of Skull Disco/Mundo/Royal Highnuss/Tomb (Green Elephant) FRI: The Numerators/Red Faced Laughgter/Eat Avery's Bones/Fungi Girls/Montezuma (Majestic Dwelling of Doom) FRI: Florene/Hotel Hotel/Salesman/Phantasies (Rubber Gloves) SAT: Etc. Etc. and WSJR Present-- Riot Warehouse Party with Keith P/Damaged Goods/Gallery Cat/Blake Ward/Justin Bell/DJ Select (1800 Lear St., Dallas) SAT: Octopus Project/This Will Destroy You/UME (Granada) SUN: Fungi Girls/Rival Gang/Rocket For Ethiopia/Scoff/Lady K (1649 W. Henderson St., Cleburne) SUN: Zoroaster/Mouth of the Architect/H...N (Club Dada)
We're kind of having a crisis here at WSJR today. I thought SR was going to do this and he thought I was going to. Honestly neither of us is really in a position to be writing a bunch of event descriptions, as we will both be out of DFW this weekend. To save time, I am going to write in the my true defensive voice, which is what I always intended when I started writing for this thing. Please check out the 715 Panhandle write-up by Daniel Zeigler and Payton Green below as well.-DL
FRIDAY
Fergus and Geronimo | Schwa (Bunker Hill) What do you have against this show? Is it that you don't like the Motown influence mixed in with your poppy indie punk? Seriously, what is your problem? Is it that your band has never had a single label solicit it for demos even though you've been playing music for fourteen years? While, they've had a hundred labels solicit them, and for all I know they have never even had band practice, and may not even exist. Is that your deal?
Is your problem with this show that there's a DJ performing? Does that totally fuck with your HxCx world? Sucks, man. Maybe he'll play a Liquid Liquid song in there somewhere. Would that help? You seriously should just get over it and go to this show.
Metal Rouge | Anvil Salute | Shortwave Death System | Aaron Gonzalez, Nevada Hill, Sarah Alexander (Firehouse Gallery, Ft. Worth) Why can't people just accept that not everyone that performs music is going to "write songs?" What the fuck is wrong with people? Why do old people like Jackson Pollock and treat him the way people used to treat Norman Rockwell, yet when it comes to music, they hear something remotely atonal, "treated," or unplanned and they freak out? Why are young people in DFW like old people everywhere else? I mean Shortwave Death System's manipulation of radio frequencies with various effects is just more interesting than a bluegrass duo, sorry. Does that make me an asshole? Aaron Gonzalez just happens to be one of the greatest bass players that you'll ever hear locally, Nevada Hill one of the most versatile and interesting guitarists, and Sarah Alexander one of the greatest and versatile and interesting vocalists. So hearing them play together will be a privilege. Why don't you check this out instead of scouring for drink specials?
Fischerspooner (Granada) You probably hate this band because they're "not really a band." You probably just chalk them up to being performance art. They probably pissed you off when they covered that Wire song. Maybe it's time to see if they have accidentally turned into a real band, as so often happens with groups that form out of high-concept origins and intent.
Johnny Moog | Hawatha | Ty City | Prince William | Yeahdef (Rubber Gloves) Well, maybe you don't like hip-hop shows, and that's why you're going to avoid this. Or is it because whenever the local media covers hip-hop, they always start calling things "fresh" and "dope," even though they would never call St. Vincent "fresh" or "dope," and they come off looking like totally embarrassing, racially clumsy morons? If that's the case I don't blame you. But look, if you let that turn you off, I'm afraid you might be missing the best rapper in Dallas (Hawatha). I'm totally into the Dallas sound; I like the menacing repetition of the keyboard parts, and I think it's great that there is so much local rap on 97.9, The Beat. That is an anomaly like no other in Dallas and I think it's great even though being a blind local music supporter is something I detest. But all that aside, I think that Hawatha is a talent that's beyond being a hometown hero. I think he's much bigger than that.
Sabre | Florene | TBA (Muscle Beach, 4PM) You probably don't want to see this show because Florene is so different from most groups playing houses in Denton this weekend. They're too instrumental, too ambient, too expansive or too "nuanced." Okay, maybe it's because that one dude in Florene used to wear a mask and that's too pretentious for you. You can accept Dylan painting his face before a performance, or John Lennon hanging urine-filled condoms in his house, but you're going to avoid this show because this kid likes to wear a mask. How boring are you?
Bleach Boys | Uptown Bums | Koji Kondo | Teenage Cool Kids | Angry Businessmen (715 Panhandle) People were always really annoyed at me for championing Angry Businessmen so much. I got shit for giving their cassette five stars, and I may be wrong about this, but I believe it was the only five star rating that WSJR has ever given. So that kind of makes the Angry Businessmen cassette as pivotal a moment in music reviews as when Source gave "Illmatic" "five mics." They are just one of those bands that are so completely realized that it's as if they fell out of the sky, with perfect lyrics, sound, artwork, everything. I'll admit that I'm generally a sucker for extremely skeletal, bass-drum-vocal bands, and I always enjoyed the clarity in the group's music; a clarity informed by surf, soul, and melody steering them away from total blast-beat territory, while imbuing them with a sense of humor and groove not often found in hardcore trios.
Koji Kondo was a little easier for people to swallow when they were around, as they were more traditional as far as their setup goes. They wrote unbelievably brief, stuttering, blasts of prog-punk where the technique of having the guitars, bass, vocals, and drums all simultaneously mimicking each other made the songs seem even more complex than they really were. Lead vocalist Tyler Tons is a vastly underrated talent as far as lyricists go, something that's easy to overlook when he is barreling through the first three rows of spectators.
It was also heavily speculated that I attacked a particular Good Records clerk when he allegedly gave the band an incorrect spiel on local music consignment policy, in order to generate sales and publicity for the band. Look, there's just no way I'm that diabolical, trust me. I'm not a damn genius, despite what your mom thinks.
Record Hop | The Great Tyrant | Hawk Vs. Dove (Lola's Sixth) Oh, you don't like Record Hop because you hate the 90's and you hate records made in actual studios. What a shitty little 21 year old you are. You can't stand the fact that they make CD's and not cassettes or limited edition colored vinyl released on obscure West Coast labels. That doesn't mean they're "not good" or "don't rock." Get over yourself.
The Great Tyrant presents a challenge for you, due to their lack of guitar. I understand. That makes you sound like Chuck Berry complaining about "modern jazz" like fifty fucking years ago. Time to grow up and evolve a little, okay? Oh, their songs are too long? I'm sorry. God forbid you have to listen or concentrate on something more complex than a ringtone or a gif. Daron Beck's voice is too "gothy?" Fine. Go listen to Deerhunter then, you fucking lightweight.
Fuck You Pay Me/One & One Is Three (Fallout Lounge)
SUNDAY
Collick | Big Blow | Wiccans (818 Hickory St.) So you're too cool to go to this show because the dudes in Wiccans are in every other band, yeah it's annoying, duh. But maybe some of their more art punk and garage rock tendencies are put on hold, and this is straight hardcore. Maybe you can get behind that.
Chain and the Gang | Hive Dwellers (Calvin Johnson) | Shiny Around the Edges (Hailey's) Just because Ian Svenonius' philosophy is usually better than his music, that doesn't mean his music isn't generally pretty good, and that he's not a really great, unique performer. Veronica Ortuño from Finally Punk/The Carrots and Karl Blau having been involved in this project may make this seem like it's a way too hip street gang that formed in the Pacific Northwest, but I'm still sure that this show is very much worth your time. Especially if you consider that Calvin Johnson's Hive Dwellers are also playing, though Johnson is definitely a better pick up artist than he is a singer, I still love his voice. TV On the Radio (House of Blues) I'm too tired and pressed for time to defensively preview TV On The Radio, but I will say that the best thing they've ever done is having one of their members produce that terrific album of Tom Waits covers by Scarlett Johansson.
a final word on 715 panhandle (by daniel zeigler and payton green)
DANIEL ZEIGLER (Teenage Cool Kids/Hoop Dreamz/Big Blow/715 Founding Resident)
Jesus. Three years of this shit? I had no idea that our little house would turn into what it is. I never expected more than 20 people to ever come to a show, and I NEVER thought it would evolve into one of the longer running, more consistent show houses in Denton. We started this just to have a place to have our friends play, and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I guess we keep making more friends, haha.
The first show I realized that we were doing something really unique was the Daniel Striped Tiger show a couple of summers ago. It was the first time a band I REALLY liked played the house. I didn't know how it would turn out, but it ended up being extremely positive. Everyone there was pumped and DST said it was one of the best shows they'd played on tour. It was awesome.
Once we had the Meneguar | Nouns Group | TCK show, I sort of realized that this place was so much more than we had ever hoped. It still blows my mind that every show we have here is positive, the bands always have a good time, touring bands always get fed and paid, and nothing really bad has happened. It's such a positive place to have shows. I would love to play a place like this every night of tour.
I really hope the Denton DIY scene stays as strong as it has been for the last couple of years. It consistently surprises me how almost all the people that come to shows actually give a shit about the music, regardless of genre or band. The DIY community is growing so much that people are trying to bastardize it, commercialize off of it, but it seems that everyone in this scene has their heads in the right place and is really coming together to do something beautiful.
I'm really going to miss this place, but just like any other house that has had awesome shows in the past, something new will sprout up, and it will probably end up being even better than 715 was. The momentum all the bands in Denton has created is pretty incredible, and I have no doubt that something huge is going to come out of it. Every band in Denton that tours is doing extremely well. Bands are having much better shows here than in Austin, people are starting to notice.
To anyone that is thinking of starting a venue out of their house: Fucking do it! Sure it's occasionally hard, and sometimes it's a hassle, but the payoff is so rewarding. Helping this entity grow is like watching your kid grow up. From seeing 12 of my friends at a show, to seeing 100 people I don't know in my yard is such an amazing feeling. We need this, RGRS just doesn't cut it. We need another 715. We need another Secret Headquarters. Someone has to want to do this, but even more than that, someone HAS to do this. Let's go.
-Daniel Z
PAYTON GREEN (Wax Museums/Wiccans/Back Stabbath)
What do I say about a place where I’ve seen Human Eye, Sex/Vid, Thomas Function, Psychedelic Horseshit, Abe Vigoda, Lover!, Total Abuse, the Marked Men, Holy Shit!, Chronic Seizure and countless others? I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say about a place that has very possibly been the most important locale of my adult life thus far. I guess I can start from the beginning. When 715 Panhandle first started doing shows I was living at Xtreme Dudes Manor, and I remember being pretty excited that there was another house venue in town. I guess that was during the house show boom in 2006/2007 when there were a ton of places to play, so I probably took it more for granted than I should have. I definitely didn’t forsee the importance of the place.
I missed a lot of the early period so I unfortunately can’t offer a lot of commentary there, but the first show I actually made it out to I was very late for, and I missed most of it. I was there to catch Teenage Cool Kids for the first time and just barely made it. The set was I think Kyle’s first and one of Bill’s last. Andrew Savage has been one of my best friends for years and I’d known Daniel Zeigler for about the same amount of time but less well (at that point). They were as different a band from what they are now as the house is different from what it was then. This was back when shows were so small and tame that there was still furniture in the room and it didn’t get destroyed at all! It’s kind of crazy to think about now.
I definitely had a number of fun times there that summer. I didn’t actually play a show there until October of 2007. We (Wax Museums) had booked a series of shows for touring bands at J&J’s. The day of the first of these shows, the bands showed up to what was then my favorite place for shows in Denton, only to be told that there would be no more ‘loud’ or ‘punk’ shows allowed. We talked our way into having that show and moved the others to Secret Headquarters. That, as we all know, didn’t last too long. After having booked a fairly big show with three touring bands for late October we had NOWHERE to host it. I called Andrew and he talked it over with the guys and our asses were saved.
That show was, I think, the first completely out of control happening at the house. Wax Museums played to what was then our best hometown reception ever, followed by Party Garbage. People got pretty warmed up during their set. Then Chronic Seizure played and things went INSANE. A totally full room of people running around, chanting about and chugging on boxes of wine. It was the first time I’d seen anything like that in a house in Denton without any serious damage happening. Teenage Cool Kids played next and their set that night was the first time I’d ever seen a ton of people just totally eat it up. Kids singing along, crowd-surfing, the whole bit that’s the standard for their home-turf sets now. I remember standing at the back of the room and looking over at Josh from Thomas Function, one of the leading figures of the “BOX OF WINE!” sensation earlier in the night, and realizing their set was going to be a mess. They tried their hardest to play but Josh was definitely way too far gone to hold it together. At one point Jason from Wax Museums was so drunk that he requested a song they’d already played, and Josh was so drunk that he didn’t realized they’d already played it. It was still definitely one of my favorite disastrous sets of all time.
After that things just kept going strong. I’ve seen so many of my favorite shows of the last couple of years there. I crashed there for a couple of weeks when I had nowhere else to live. I’ve spent countless hours drinking beers and playing video games, or just sitting around and talking. There are very few things that I ever do in life that I haven’t done there at least once. People can detract from the place while it exists and probably will continue to detract from the memory when it’s gone in a couple of weeks. The fact of the matter is that four of the most incredible guys I’ve ever known have consistenly given up their living space and peace of mind for years to let their friends and a lot of total strangers have the time of their lives. Maybe some people just don’t get it, and that’s fine. All I know is that myself and those who DO get it are going to have a very hard time leaving Saturday night with a dry eye.
Vega | Keith P | Females (The Lounge) Vega will have a special tour-only EP available tonight, and I would like to get my hands on it just to see if I agree with the Pitchfork review that discussed the track, "No Reasons" as the "season's first real attempt at beach-party boogie." Well, a couple things: 1. Last time I checked, there was no beach in Austin. 2. Why do music reviewers treat dance music in seasonal terms, like this song is the audio equivalent of Banana Republic's summer line? This track could have had its origins in dead-of-winter central Texas, give me a break with this shit.
Anyways, I'm glad to see current Vega and ex-Ghosthustler front-man Alan Palomo continuing to do good work in the face of a disappointment that would have probably ruined similarly young, yet less determined artists. I especially enjoyed seeing Alan perform live and haven't yet had the opportunity with his current group. Hopefully I will tonight. Also performing is Females and Keith P, who may be the best dressed man in Dallas. That reminds me of a classic SR joke where he introduced a local musician with, "Ladies and gentlemen, the worst dressed man at SXSW." As much you think I'm a jerk, I'm going to spare this poor guy.
Amos Lee | Dana Falconberry (The Granada) Dana Falconberry put on a wonderful performance at the Dust Congress house back in March, and it was good to see that a small lineup change didn't hurt her knack for putting on a nearly flawless show.
Boz Scaggs (Bass Performance Hall) Didn't realize Boz Scaggs had Dallas (and more specifically, Plano!) roots until today. That's actually not surprising at all considering that Scaggs' work embodies everything sleazy and bluesy about 70's rock radio. Dallas is a proven training ground for such illicit bro blues activity. I had a hard time finding the most embarrassing album cover of his, but I'm pretty sure I nailed it. I mean, check that shit out. Here's a close runner up.
As we mentioned earlier in the week, this Saturday's show at 715 Panhandle, which will be a part of the Denton DIY community's second annual Phat Camp weekend, will be the final event at the widely respected house venue, and whether you've been there dozens of times or never in your life, we highly recommend joining in the festivities and bidding farewell to a wonderful place.
Over the past couple of years, 715 Panhandle has truly been one of the best places to see a show in the metro area, with its rare combination of typically stellar booking, a friendly, relaxed atmosphere, all ages admission, and free or extremely inexpensive covers (not to mention BYOB, of course). This set of characteristics not only led to Panhandle hosting well regarded touring acts such as Blues Control, Kimya Dawson, Woods, Meneguar, Sex Vid, Total Abuse, Thomas Function, Psychedelic Horseshit, and others, but it also created the kind of environment where anyone in Denton could go to see stellar local acts such as Koji Kondo, Marked Men, Angry Businessmen, Wax Museums, Bad Sports, Teenage Cool Kids and more (a couple of whom will be reuniting for Saturday's show) in a welcoming environment that seemed to be relatively free of pretension, hardcore orthodoxy and negativity on almost any level.
Hopefully we'll have a little more on Panhandle for you later this week, but for now we thought we'd share the Phat Camp schedule with you and encourage you to check out 715 Panhandle one last time. The place truly embodied the spirit of DIY done right :
----------------------------- MAY 15 FRIDAY
4PM PRE PARADE KEG PARTY @ 715 Panhandle ***BEER ***PARADE PREP ***BAKED GOODS ***OFFICIAL PHAT CAMP T SHIRTS ***ALL DONATIONS GO TO 715 REPAIRS
7PM- PHAT CAMP OPENING PARADE, starts at 715 Panhandle, ends at Bunker Hill
9PM- BUNKER HILL DANCE PARTY (ft. DJ SCHWA, Fergus & Geronimo)
------------------------------ MAY 16 SATURDAY
8AM- YARD SALE @ 715 Panhandle
1PM- RECORD SWAP/FACE PAINT @ TIME BANDITS ***BRING YOUR RECORDS TO TRADE OR SELL
4PM- LUAU @ MUSCLE BEACH w | Florene Sabra + more TBA ***GET TROPICAL
9PM- 715 Panhandle LAST SHOW! w | Green Day Dookie Bleach Boys Uptown Bums Koji Kondo (reunion) Angry Businessmen (reunion) Teenage Cool Kids ***ALL DONATIONS GO TO 715 PANHANDLE REPAIRS!
------------------------------ MAY 17- SUNDAY
1PM- PHAT CAMP OLYMPICS @ McKenna Park
5PM- CHILLI COOKOFF @ 1827 Scripture
9PM- 818 Hickory St. Show Green Day "Dookie" Cover band Embolization Sodomorhea, Collick Big Blow Wiccans MOVIE AFTERWARD "Heavyweights" (1994) CLOSING BIKE RIDE AFTER THAT
Wow. Hell of a Mavericks game last night, and even though I could easily go into why the series should be tied 2-2 and how we should be super excited about it and are instead just watching a team prolong the inevitable.... I won't. I'll just say excellent game overall, great performance from Dirk, oh... and to quote some anonymous commentator of the DMN Mavs Blog, "fuck KMART and his busted ass Momma." Let's add his dumb ass tattoo to the mix too, shall we? Shows (and more on our calendar)
Elvis Perkins in Dearland (Good Records) This free in-store begins at 730 PM. Elvis Perkins might have one of the saddest personal stories I've ever heard, considering that his mother died in September 11th and his father, actor Anthony Perkins, died of AIDS. That's about as brutal as it gets. Perkins' music consists of standard issue "folk rock" for the most part, but it's pretty well done for what it is, even though much of it ventures a tad too close to the NPR Dad Rock side of the spectrum. I'm not a dad, but sometimes I do like to chill out in sweatpants or whatever in my living room and listen to music, and if I didn't own any Bob Dylan, Nick Drake, Neil Young or Crosby Stills and Nash records, then I might think about listening to this. Well actually, that's probably not true because I'd rather listen to similar, superior contemporaries such as Wooden Wand and Skygreen Leopards, but I was just trying to say that it really isn't too bad, and the band will be giving away tickets to their not free show at House Of Blues later this evening as well. And oh yeah, I don't own fucking sweatpants, either, ok?
When I was growing up, for reasons that are still unclear to me, I had and almost instinctive hatred for the saxophone in rock music. Maybe radio and MTV were to blame, shoving the sax saturated tunes of the Boss and Bob Seger down everybody's throats, or maybe it was that dude from the Lost Boys. It was probably a bit of both. Surly I would have gotten over my disdain for this instrument much more quickly had I heard this record at a younger age.
Blomington, Indiana's MX-80 Sound (later shortened to MX-80) utilizes the sax to near perfection throughout Out of the Tunnel, their second album and their first to be released on the Residents' Ralph Records. It's refreshing to hear a punk/metal/art/noise group from this era use the instrument to complement the rest of the group's playing as opposed to the obnoxious, up front squall that was prevalent in some of their comtemporaries like the Contortions and 8 Eyed Spy.
I'm not going to waste too much time telling you about my incredible weekend,* other than to say that I really enjoyed the experience of visiting Public Trust, Road Agent, and the last official And/Or show, all in a 24 hour period. Chad Hopper's video work came as a nice surprise, and I always love it when artists have CD's, DVD's etc. for sale when you just can't justify splurging to the tune of 800 bucks and up for a piece. Though you should, if you can. Speaking of money and art, there is a really insightful interview with Paul Slocum on KERA's Art And Seek Blog.
I was a little stunned today when I heard that Saturday marks the last 715 Panhandle show, which is a shame, but probably necessary and completely understandable. Anyways, onto the completely amazing It List:
Sun Club (Hailey's) Featuring DJ's Fur, Teamwork, and Sid Spinoza.
*My weekend was, in fact, not incredible. I actually hate it when reviewers and critics try to act like they had their mind blown, when you can be 99% sure that they had the same typically shitty weekend that you did.
