BY JONATHAN VALANIA In the beginning, there was the Birthday Party. And it was good. Rock ‘n’ roll as sonic aneurysm: screeching, cataclysmic and cruel. The Birthday Party was scary. Not in the silly Count Chocula way of the Goths who would follow in its steps, but, like, Exorcist scary. Danger was the Birthday Party’s business, and in the early ‘80s, business was good. Nick Cave was the human cannonball at the microphone, the band would light the fuse and run for cover. When the audience demanded blood, Cave could open up and bleed with the best of them. […]
BECK: Ramona
BECK HEADLINES SUNDAY NIGHT OF THE XPONENTIAL FEST
BEING THERE: Slasher Flicks @ Johnny Brenda’s
Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ Arriving at the spooky little dimly-lit venue that is Johnny Brenda’s last night, I definitely felt like I was in the right place to hear Avey Tare’s Slasher Flick’s play a set. I got there around the time doors opened, which is basically when the major dweebs with too much free time arrive for these affairs. It was pretty empty except for a few other people, so I had time to check the place out. The mini-skeletons hanging along the bar provoked the kleptomaniac in me, while the broken photo booth in the back left […]
Win Tix To See Ryan Adams @ XPoNential Fest
Artwork by ENCORE Ryan Adams is one of those love him or hate him artists. I go back and forth. Sure, he’s an inveterate attention whore, a piss-poor editor of his own creativity and a drama queen man-child too in love with his own legend. But when the planets do align, and The Fates allow it, he is also a top-shelf singer-songwriter in the grand tradition of the great denim bards of Laurel Canyon. His last album, 2011’s Ashes & Fire is one of those occasions (a new LP, 1984 drops in September). It is not, as the growing consensus […]
BEING THERE: Veruca Salt @ The TLA
Photo by PETE TROSHAK In the mid-1990s, Veruca Salt released two well-received albums of post-Breeders girlie grunge-pop before a 1998 cat fight between co-lead singers/guitarists Nina Gordon and Louise Post [pictured, above] caused Gordon to abandon ship and the original lineup to dissolve. Post recruited new members and carried on under the Veruca Salt banner, releasing a few albums that failed to capture original lineup’s magic while Gordon embarked on a solo career that included one successful album and undoubtedly the greatest N.W.A. cover ever. Ten plus years later, Post and Gordon reconnected via email and buried their hatchets, paving […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
RADIO TIMES Knitting, the ukulele, Wes Anderson movies, cats, Zooey Deschanel, J.D. Salinger, and Vampire Weekend – all are a part of the so-called “twee” aesthetic that quietly permeates today’s pop culture landscape. Today, we take a look at how all things precious, precocious, and affectedly cute, have gone from uncool to mainstream. Our guest is MARC SPITZ, author of the recently-published book on the topic, Twee: The Gentle Revolution in Music, Books, Television, Fashion and Film. We’ll also get the origin of the word “twee” itself from English-language expert, AMMON SHEA, author of Reading the OED: One Man, […]
Win Tix To See Beck @ The XPoNential Fest
PAPER MAGAZINE: We were shooting Beck [for the cover of our 1996 music issue] and he had been very picky. He wanted Ellen Von Unwerth to shoot it and his team was just very high maintenance about the whole experience. And at that time in our history we were very much not into having a celebrity make requests like that. We resented it. If someone even suggested a photographer who they wanted to shoot them, we were outraged. Now we realize that, of course, that’s totally normal and happens a lot. So we had the photographer Dah-Len shoot him, […]
THERE WILL BE BLOOD: Talking About Cats, Drugs & Slasher Flicks w/ Animal Collective’s Avey Tare
BY MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ It is fitting that my interview with Animal Collective’s Avey Tare (a.k.a. Dave Portner) would begin with me talking about my first drug experience — namely trying pot for the first time and listening to AC’s Strawberry Jam and finally understanding what the word ‘transcendental’ means. I was hooked and there would be no turning back. Turns out marijuana is just a gateway drug to Animal Collective, a far more potent hallucinogen. The good news is that unlike marijuana, Animal Collective is still legal. Since 2000, Portner has been a very reliable dealer, doling out […]
THE MAVERICK: Jim Rockford Had A Dream
[via NEW YORK DAILY NEWS] WASHINGTON POST: When actor James Garner decided to help organize and attend the March on Washington in 1963, he wasn’t just listening to his conscience. He and other actors who attended may have been embarkingon Hollywood’s first large-scale political act since the days of McCarthyism and Hollywood’s anti-Communist blacklist.After years of viewing the government with suspicion, many felt emboldened to participate, joining forces with black actors such as Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee and Diahann Carroll. Garner and other celebrities in attendance, including Paul Newman and Marlon Brando, openly defied J. Edgar Hoover and the Federal Bureau of […]
EXCLUSIVE: Q&A With Neutral Milk’s Jeff Mangum
BY JONATHAN VALANIA In 1998, Neutral Milk Hotel released an album of hallucinatory folk-rock called In The Aeroplane Over The Sea that is, it can be said without fear of exaggeration, nothing short of a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Like Pet Sounds or My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless or Love’s Forever Changes, it is lightning caught in a bottle, one of those rare perfect albums that come along maybe once a decade. Or once a lifetime. In 1999, Jeff Mangum — Neutral Milk’s singer, songwriter and primary guitarist — disappeared from public life without explanation, declining all entreaties to […]
SIDEWALKING: When The Saints Go Marching In
Dixieland practice, 33rd & Hamilton 10:51 a.m. by DAVE BROWN
SPOON: Do You
RELATED: “Not to get super heady about a music video concept,” Hiro says, “but I’m really interested in a pocket moment that takes place in a doomsday world.” In the case of this video, that means Britt Daniel, the lead singer of Spoon, is cruising in a vintage Plymouth wagon through a very lackadaisical Sunset Drive kind of vibe, and it just so happens that the buildings are on fire behind him. Which is actually kind of what Los Angeles feels like sometimes anyway, metaphorically, Hiro concedes. “Hey, once you own the chaos of the apocalypse,” he says, “there’s a […]
BEING THERE: Cheers Elephant @ Union Transfer
Photo by NOAH SILVESTRY I have seen Cheers Elephant do their thing on stage twice now, and I can say for sure that these Philly natives bring more fun and light to a roomful of people than any other band I’ve seen in my 17 years on Earth. Their relocation to L.A. was nothing short of a tragedy to their Philly fan base. It was with a heavy heart that I wrote the following about their “Farewell For Now, Philadelphia” show back in November of 2013: Between [frontman Derek] Kryzwicki bouncing around and doing the running-man and drummer Robert Kingsly, […]