Meet Jethro Cave - Fashion Model; Crooner's Kid

He's Nick Cave's boy:

As a special request model for young design label Arnsdorf + Karaaslan, Jethro was clearly there to ooze cutting-edge attitude.

And let us tell you, attitude the boy has in bucketloads.

The minute the kid got wind that we intended to run his image and his name, he was on the blower having a serious whinge.

The fact that he doesn't want to live in the shadows of his father is probably fair enough.

But then again, parading up and down a catwalk is perhaps not the best way to avoid attention.

Either way, you've got to admire his guts. It's not everyday we get calls from unhappy subjects demanding financial compensation.

PJ Harvey shows up... to play bass

It was hard to take your eyes off singer-guitarist Moris Tepper as he hulked around the small stage and conjured a mighty noise with his two backing musicians at the El Cid club in Silver Lake on Saturday. But the audience's attention was also fixed on Tepper's bass player — Polly Jean Harvey, a.k.a. PJ Harvey. fullstory

Moris Tepper's website

Jerry A discusses Tom Pig, Poison Idea

via Williamette Week

OK, Poison Idea isn't breaking up, but Pig Champion is dead. We think.

[PUNK] For the past month, rumor and tragedy have surrounded local hardcore punk institution Poison Idea. A show at Sabala's at Mount Tabor on Jan. 9 was billed as the group's last show but ended up being postponed due to a purported lack of practice. Word had it that vocalist Jerry A., a group founder and its backbone, was moving to New York and the band was splitting up. Amid this uncertainty came the news of the passing of Tom Roberts, known to Poison Idea fans as Pig Champion. As the group's guitarist, Roberts became as famous for his obesity and alcohol-driven antics as for his downstroke-heavy crunch guitar sound. WW got ahold of Jerry A. to discuss his bandmate's passing and quiet the rumor mill. JASON SIMMS.

WW: So Poison Idea is finished.

Jerry A.: [Laughs] No, we're still going on. We have a new record that's coming out. We have a European distributor, but we don't have an American distributor right now, and I went to New York for a while to talk to some labels. It kind of got blown out of proportion. Everyone was saying I was leaving, but I'm not leaving.

What about Tom?

He's had kidney problems for a while. When we went to Japan last year, we just did it without Tom because he was too sick to travel. We just played as a four-piece, so we can do it.

Why was Jan. 9 billed as your last show?

That was [Jason] Sabala trying to get people to come to the show. When I went to New York, we didn't get to practice, but there was no reason to think we were breaking up. Like I said, we have a new album coming out.

What's it called?

Believe it or not, it's called Last Will and Testament. It was called that before [Tom's death]. The sheet inside the record is written like a funeral page. We didn't plan it to be like that, but it's already being pressed.

Would Tom have thought was funny?

Oh definitely; he named it. We all threw out a few names, and he came up with that one and we all liked it. That's the cool thing about Poison Idea: the sense of humor. We don't take too many things too seriously. But, I've been thinking, maybe he knew something we didn't.

Demme Covets a Sufjan Film

Johnathan Demme has a new concert film out this month with Neil Young and several in the can but talks about what he wants to do in the future:

There are more Demme performance films on the way. Besides a nonmusical documentary about New Orleans residents hit hardest by Katrina - which he began shooting last month - the director's wish list includes Fats Domino and acclaimed songwriter Sufjan Stevens. Of the latter, he says: "I want to collaborate with that guy. He's going to be acknowledged before too long as one of the great American composer-performers."

I don't normally do these things but...

The Hornivore Random Brutal Sex Master (RBSMm) Don't ever marry, you're The Hornivore. Roaming, sexual, subhuman. The Hornivores (you) are some of the most screwed up and naughty beings in the Universe. And their numbers are growing, mostly due to skipped or misused contraception. You care not. There's one thing you want, one sole need. Half manly, half bestial, you act on instinct, and animal charisma smoothes the way. It's unlikely Your exact opposite: The Slow Dancer Deliberate Gentle Love Dreamer you're driven by much other than your own selfish, orgasmic requirements. Your appearance and personality have evolved for the hunt. Ass beckons, you oblige. For the record, you can happily bang all personality types, however your match percentages might be low with the kinder, more sensible people of the world, purely because they all wish to avoid you. Good luck to them. "One day, the villagers came with torches to the house. In the smoldering ashes, stray dogs looked for cooked flesh." AVOID: The Priss, The Sonnet CONSIDER: Half-Cocked, Genghis Khunt Link: The 32-Type Dating Test by OkCupid - Free Online Dating. My profile name: blublond44

Michael Hurley prose cum interview

Found on the furious.com website - Mike Hurley writes almost elegiacly about his life as a younger man (bonus: Hurley album cover discography):::

I wandered in NYC and hung out in the village. I was interested in Beatniks because they didn't have to go to school and got to drink wine and they were cool. After awhile, of course, I began to see through all this and went back on the rural route where I lived in a tepee in our own hipster campground. We called it the Cook Camp. I had this girlfriend I'd met in Greenwich Village when we were working for the same music agent and promoter, the African American Peter Outlaw. My girlfriend, I called her Pasta. When winter came about we rented a small house in Lambertville, New Jersey for $25.00 per month. Pasta got a job as a waitress in The New Hope Diner, a steel joint. I bought a 1951 Plymouth station wagon and picked apples in a Bucks County orchard. In my '51 Plymouth I'd go and pick up Pasta when she got off work in the middle of the night. She'd be dressed in her white waitress dress. Neither of us had any idea of how beautiful we were. We didn't know that they should have been making a movie about us, but at the time they didn't know either. We drew practically no attention at all. Except every once in awhile some weirdo would hit on Pasta. But she was so tough and savage that she would teach them to leave her alone. We smoked cigarettes. I have no idea what we would be talking about as we drove by the highway side (4), but I believe she loved me like a woman who wants to have babies would. Her white waitress dress had a small red polyester bib in the front. She wore red lipstick. Her hair was black.

We saved up a bunch of money and went to Mexico in that damn '51 Plymo. We weren't sure if the Plymo would really last out the trip or not, but one day when we were driving past Buddy Williams diner on highway 202 I noticed how confident it seemed at 35 mph. I mentioned this to Pasta and she agreed; "Yeah we could go all the way to Mexico in this if we just go 35 mph!!" and this proved to be the truth. The rig went to Mexico all through the Sierra Madres, Durango to Mazatlan, and back up through Texas and up to Cleveland where Pasta was from and back to Bucks County where she went back to work at the New Hope Diner. We went and found another cheap rental. An apartment built in a barn in Lahaska, Pennsylvania near highway 202. Bucks County was filling up with freaks who wanted to party all the time and pick the blues like Mississippi John Hurt and Lightnin' Hopkins. So this did not deter my wishes too much. That winter we moved to Philadelphia and rented a small apartment for $25.00 per month. There Daffodil, our first child, a girl, was born. Then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts where she hatched out two more rugrats, boys, we named them Jordan and Colorado. By this time, of course, I began to grow weary of Pasta's surly and unremitting ways, so I went up to Vermont and began to study auto mechanics. She took the kids and drove to California in another '51 Plymo I gave her. This one was in much better shape, allowing her to achieve speeds of 55 to 65 mph just like regular folks.

This weeks FE releases

Forced Exposure is like the exotic courtesan who always has some strange thing hidden in her dresser for you.... Go to the main site to see their new releases. Here's some highlights from their update this week:



BELONG: October Language CD (CRPK 031CD) 13.00
"Belong are a duo from New Orleans that follow in the tradition of fuzzed-out folks like My Bloody Valentine, Flying Saucer Attack, and Spacemen 3. Yet if you asked Belong about their sources of inspiration they would say contemporary composer William Basinski or Fennesz. Their debut CD October Language encapsulates their hometown of New Orleans, at once bathed in sunlight and color, yet dripping in sweat, decay and a rich sadness. A collection of ambient melody-suffused pieces that can either put you at ease or scare the crap out of you(depending on how loud you listen to it), sadly October Language might be the only record you'll hear from New Orleans this year."

(VMCS note: If anyone could have pulled off the Sufjan States trick and still have many more years of music making ahead of them, it would have been Jandek... course I guess it would be easy if all you did was improvise everything, bang a guitar and howl - whoops, that's Pennsylvania...)



JANDEK: Khartoum Variations CD (COR 0782) 7.00
44th Jandek album, the 1st in 2006. A riveting, stark cover features a man in black standing in front of a castle. Bent, acoustic guitar grapples with signature fractured howls of later releases. Best song title: "In A Chair I Stare".


KYRGYZ: Kyrgyz CD (DIGI 020CD) 11.00
"Kyrgyz is a name that will be unfamiliar to most, but the band's members read like an all-star team of Bay Area improvisers. This quartet consists of Tom Carter (Charalambides), Loren Chasse (The Blithe Sons, Thuja, etc), Christine Boepple (Skygreen Leopards Skyband), and Robert Horton (Broken Mask, Infinite Article, etc). Kyrgyz's debut album is 60 minutes of droned-out bliss. With its roots firmly planted in trance-inducing soil, the six songs here stretch their branches toward the sun. When four artists of this calibre come together in a single setting, the expectations are high. There is tension to spare. But Kyrgyz is such a perfect blend of all their talents that it never implodes beneath the pressure. Horton is the hand that guides this mix of heavy, hypnotic drones, a thicket of acoustic scrawl, and even free jazz skronk. Each sound is carefully chosen and blended together magically. There are equal elements of Charalambides and Jewelled Antler throughout Kyrgyz, but again it is Horton that upsets the balance to create something completely new. In the end, this is nothing short of brilliant."



FAITHFULL, MARIANNE: Come My Way CD (LR 104CD) 17.00
"In 1965 Marianne Faithful released two debut albums simultaneously, a self-titled pop album and an album called Come My Way comprised somewhat unexpectedly of folk tunes. While the first album generally reaffirmed her persona as she-devil and soulless poster child of that hedonistic generation, the latter gave listeners a fleeting glimpse of a hidden darker side, perhaps an unintentional foretelling of those black days that would soon follow. This reissue, available briefly in the UK and Japan, features four bonus tracks: her classic 1969 single 'Sister Morphine,' released prior to the Rolling Stones' version, the 1964 B-side 'Blowin' in the Wind,' 'Et Maintenant,' from a 1965 EP and the 1966 B-side 'That's Right Baby'."



LONGET, CLAUDINE: Colours CD (LR 105CD) 17.00
"Although probably best known for her implication in the 1976 shooting death of her boyfriend Olympic skier Spider Sabich, this sexy French chanteuse / overall swingin' chick released a string of sophisticated pop albums in the late sixties while married to long forgotten Vegas crooner / TV star Andy Williams. Claudine's albums have long been cult favorites among fans of the genre and Colours, Longet's fourth album, originally released in 1969 by A&M, is probably also her best. Featuring breathy versions of songs by Donovan, The Everly Brothers, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles, Gordon Lightfoot, and Randy Newman."



IMPRACTICAL COCKPIT: To Be Treated CD (LOAD 079CD) 13.00
"Diaspora tribesmen from the swamp stricken parishes of New Orleans laid this doubly effective soul stroke to tape before the waters rose. The sounds they get burrow to the heart of the matter with reverb tanked slo-mo and urban howl forming a durable disc of genuine interactive musicality. A keeper and a grower. This is the band's umpteenth record and they really stretch out on this record and unfurl. You can hear their patented brand of lethargo Flipper-isms as if from a tunnel down. Also coming through is some noontime yodeling the Kirkwood's perfected on Meat Puppets II, slowed to a chug. Definitely on their own musical plane to be reckoned with."



GASTR DEL SOL: The Harp Factory On Lake Street CD (TOE 019CD) 13.50
"Is 90s nostalgia underway yet? If not, this reissue may be just the thing to get it started. In 1994, Chicago is the fountainhead for a bona-fide Scene, in which bands are giving timbre and texture priority over riffs and power chords. To the chagrin of many, the press will label it all 'post-rock.' It's the definitive movement of the decade, and front and center are Gastr Del Sol, comprised of David Grubbs (previously: Squirrel Bait, Bastro) and Jim O'Rourke (subsequently: Wilco, Sonic Youth). Some of their city-mates may shift more units; Gastr, with a relentless drive for reinvention, shift the boundaries of where a band can go. Avant punk, atonal song-styling, musique concrète, delicate piano-guitar interplay, raw electronics and modernist chamber music -- all are fair terrain, traversed with subtlety and finesse. Behind the obligatory horn-rims, Grubbs and O'Rourke have 'vision.' A dozen years later, this overdue reissue of 1994's The Harp Factory on Lake Street EP provides the missing piece in Gastr's otherwise available discography. To hear it again is a treat. It's their notorious 'big band' record, and the ten-piece ensemble is a veritable All-Star team of mid-90s Chicagoans, including members of Tortoise, Sea and Cake, Shellac, Dazzling Killmen, Brise Glace and the Vandermark 5; through studio maneuvering courtesy O'Rourke and engineer John McEntire, they blossom into a small-sized orchestra. Remarkably confident in the use of space and dissonance, Harp Factory also emphasizes the conceptual 'scrape', the friction between nuance and noise, that plays such a prominent role in Gastr's subsequent Upgrade and Afterlife LP. Familiar signposts are still in sight -- O'Rourke's compositional skills, Grubbs' associative, absurdist musings -- but this is definitely their boldest outing. It's a record full of blissful confoundment, one that aptly vivifies the spirit of an era. Gastr del Sol may have lasted a brief five years, but they are to the 1990s what the Magic Band, This Heat and Sonic Youth were to their respective decades: intrepid trailblazers through the backwoods of sound."



LADIES, THE: They Mean Us CD (TRR 095CD) 13.50
"After delaying the inevitable for over half a decade, the west coast's most versatile indie rock everyman (Rob Crow, Pinback) and the world's most left-of-everything drummer (Zach Hill, one-half of the outlandish noise duo Hella and drummer for Deftones side-project Team Sleep) have joined forces to unite the disparate worlds of noise and pop as The Ladies on the stunningly addictive and efficient They Mean Us. More adventurous than Pinback, and more accessible than Hella, The Ladies prove to be the best of both worlds. It's even better than the ideal album you've been making up in your head for the last half decade or so."

Christgau Swallows Trynin's Spunk "Lickety-Split"

The Doddering Dean reviews Jennifer's new book/pseudo-memoir - says it's one of the best "biz book[s]" and ranks with Azzerad's "unneccesarily male" focused book. I'll say he's a still the same old PC twat for that especially as he follows it up with a throw-away "sort of" slag on The Donnas - at any rate, he genuinely made me interested in a book I didn't know existed, so we'll give him a pass today:

Trynin's Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be did for me what Cockamamie never did until I read her book—grabbed and held. Scanning a page before filing it away, I kept going for 15, then went back to the beginning and swallowed the thing lickety-split. Just as it helped that I once heard "My Boyfriend's Back" in a Bronx garage, it helped that I recognized some of Trynin's dramatis personae—especially "Lola," a&r goddess Karin Berg. But I've read enough biz books to be certain this is one of the best. It describes the evil mystery of recoupability more clearly than Steve Albini himself, and makes an ideal companion to Michael Azerrad's unnecessarily male Our Band Could Be Your Life. Trynin's story is no less painful than Azerrad's, but it's less embittered. The dizzying blizzard of the courtship period deflates into the dehumanizing meet-and-greet grind of the promo tour with surreal suddenness, and soon you feel how, in that grrrl-crazy post–Liz Phair time, pressures that had always been hard on guys were even worse for women. Maybe the Donnas screw their male groupies (and maybe not). Trynin thinks about her boyfriend and becomes embroiled in a tortured, sporadic flirtation with her needy bass player—which beats the phone calls where "Head Honcho" tells her to smile more.

Hmmmm...

What do Lyndsay Lohan, Devendra Banhart, Kim Gordon, JC Chasez* and Karen O have in common?


They love them some big floppy hats, baggy wraps and earth tones from Marc Jacobs.


* former NSYNCer

Vintage NYT Review of The Flesh Eaters

A free "from the archive" article from 1982. Robert Palmer writes about Chris D and the then incranation of the Flesh Eaters...:

The subject matter of his songs and their deliberate rhythms are more reminiscent of heavymetal rock than they are of punk, and at the Peppermint Lounge the Flesh Eaters did come off as a particularly intense, particularly severe heavy-metal band.

But heavy-metal bands are usually content to thud and shudder along. They pummel the beat instead of swinging with it. The Flesh Eaters achieve a solid, in-the-pocket swing, even at slow, crunching tempos, and their more upbeat numbers have an infectious, careening wildness about them.

Crap and Slop, 2005: Da Kritiks under Der Dean Sprachen

Village Voice's Pazz and Jop poll has been up, I guess, for awhile but I didn't notice it until now. As usual, Christgau rants about everything but music (global warming is now his big concern... he ought to worry about those heat flashes, I guess). His list is as sorry as his wrinkled, shriveled brain stem.

Anyway, like the Grammys the crappiest crap (Kanye, in this case) floats to the top. Jamie Foxx is also crap and he shares "best single" with Kanye (crapcrapcrapcrap). Although I wouldn't call it crap, Sufjan's album is several rungs below Michigan but his last seems to be an overwhelming favorite (I was overwhelmed by all the overly long string interludes).

Here are some notable ballots that don't include Sufjan or Kanye.

• Howard Wuelfing
• Bob Nedelkoff
• J Poet

Vinge Novel on the Way

amazon

Now if we can get a release date for the next George R. R. Martin, I'll be in bifocal heaven. Speaking of Martin, here's a recent CBC interview.

Fatuous Quote of the Day, Maybe Week...

Well, it's early in the week and so there's always hope the President will eclipse this one...

...via pfork, comes this hopefully tongue-in-cheek whopper from Theodore Leo on the announcement of his signing to Touch and Go records:

"T&G's history is my history, like Lookout!'s history is my history, like [Leo's first label] Gern Blandsten's history is my history -- American Punk Rock, True Believers, the Real Deal," he continued. "In a world that seems hell-bent on driving itself further and faster down the shitter every day, these things remain not just important, but the absolute core of our endeavors."

Definitions of fatuous on the Web:

asinine: devoid of intelligence
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

MacRock Announces First Set of Bands

The little rock in the Hills of Virginny festival that could announces the first trickle of its contracts, two of which I recognize from last year (in bold):

• Owen
• William Elliott Whitmore
• The Snake The Cross The Crown
• Ahleuchatistas
• The Spark
• Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start

A Calliope of Links

Is anyone reading this poor blog? Speak up...

HELP!!!Devendra Banhart is in my dreams!

DAS KLIP: I had a dream in which Devendra Banhart (the weird singer/songwriter) is pleading with a suicide bomber (who is about to go blow up something or somebody) to change his mind. And once he changes the deranged zealot's point of view, he (Devendra) immediately sympathizes with the frustration (mostly aimed at George W. Bush) that could make someone long for such exaggerated revenge...

Man, I'm looking forward to the new Man Man, man.

Not all the songs are that serious. In fact, the brief, frenzied "Young Einstein on the Beach", with its "Get it / Get it / Get it / Got it" chant, is about nothing more earth-shaking than... Furbies?! "So, it's Christmas time, the mothers are at the toy stores, rushing to get the Cabbage Patch dolls, rushing to get the Furbies, rushing to get the hot toy for their sons or daughters," explained Powell. "And then on the other side, you've got the hunters who have got to get these middle age mammas. So at the tail end, you've got that duh-duh-duh-duh. Those are hunters out collecting mammas. They're out popping arrows in these mommies who are buying the hot toys. So it could be young Einstein on the beach thinking about all these heavy thoughts."

Dead Heart Bloom's Beatles meets Flaming Lips music get the NPR treatment. Figures.

Fuck Mission of Burma. Radio Birdmen have a new 'un comin - first original material since, um, 1978.

From the Dear God Do Ya Think So? Dept., Mick Jagger blathers on after being censored during his Stupor Bowl "performance".... I would have just preferred ABC turning their sound off and kicking up some White Stripes but that's probably just me:

Before the show, Jagger said: “I think the Stones have moved closer to American mainstream culture and I think America has changed since we first came here. Hopefully, both of us still have our core values intact.”

Tricia Romano hands the indie rock world to us on a platter, head severed and laced with acid:

As for the presenters, well, you probably wouldn't have recognized any of them, either. It didn't help that the host, comedian Aziz Ansari, didn't enunciate their names well. They nearly all sported the look favored by college professors and indie rockers—beards, messy hair, corduroy jackets with velvet elbow patches, and black horn-rimmed eyeglasses. Each time a presenter came up, the photographers in the pit sounded like a bunch of owls. "Who? Whoooo? Who?" When the dude with the big hair from TV on the Radio (Kyp Malone) arrived onstage, I nearly fainted because finally I recognized someone! (The Voice's own Nick Sylvester was a presenter, but I was only able to spot him because he wore a red hat.) The bigger artists being honored, like those two guys you indie types consider heartthrobs, Conor Oberst (a/k/a Bright Eyes) and Sufjan Stevens (otherwise known as Pasty McDreamy and Less-Pasty McDreamy), unfortunately weren't on hand.

80's Alternative meets Classic Rock. Guess who is touring with the Sadies ("Who? Whoooo? Who?") in Canada?

The band were recording a live album, with Steve Albini at the helm, so they had to be at their best. But on stage is where Dallas and Travis Good, Sean Dean and Mike Belitsky have always shone the brightest, and that was certainly the case on Saturday night.

The performance began with a run-through of Sadies favourites, including "Rat Creek," "16 Mile Creek" and "Lay Down Your Arms," with Blue Rodeo's Bob Egan adding some tasteful steel guitar. It became a family affair when Bruce, Brian, Larry (The Good Brothers) and Margaret Good joined the siblings for a stirring rendition of the gospel classic "Higher Power" that had fans singing along joyously. The older generation was further represented when The Band's Garth Hudson took side stage to play piano and accordion.

There's a Farmer in the Dell. His name is Steve Jobs and he's got a big weed whacker called Ipod. story

MILESTONE: Creative Commons dot Org has passed the 200,000 mark in terms of numbers of MP3s indexed.

This week's new shit list via FE and AQ

Following come from Forced Exposure and Aquarius Records and are what I deem to be of interest. You can go to their website and check it out yourself. Most of the words come from the record company's website (Aquarius writes their own reviews, FE generally just reprints whatever the record companies send them).


via ForcedExposure.com



BLUE CHEER: New Improved! LP (AK 99016LP) 13.50
Akarma's all-time vinyl bestsellers now on 120 gram standard black vinyl. "Here, bassist Dick Peterson and drummer Paul Whalley present two distinctly different Blue Cheers. Side two works much better. It is 14 minutes and 43 seconds of three Randy Holden originals. 'Peace of Mind' is great, a lilting hard rock riff, and a refinement of the blistering Blue Cheer sound that launched them into the consciousness of the public. Although both sides of this album were produced by Milan Melvin, Dot recording artists Burns Kellogg on piano and organ, and Bruce Stephens on guitars, sandblocks, and tortoise shell, cannot help Peterson lift the basement tape vibe of side one to a place where it can compete with Holden's contributions on the second side. 'Fruit & Icebergs' is heavy psychedelia. Black Sabbath's 'Rat Salad' meets San Francisco's Big Brother & the Holding Company without Janis Joplin. The final track, 'Honey Butter Lover,' is a cute acoustic piece with more spirit than anything on side one, which makes this a real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde album of Blue Cheer in transition." --All Music Guide

(Editor's Note: if you like 6 Organs of Admittance)



MOUNTAINS: Sewn CD (APE 019CD) 12.00
"Apestaartje co-founders Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp follow up their critically-acclaimed self-titled debut as Mountains with this second offering of slowly evolving sound. Recorded over several lengthy excursions outside the confines of the city in upstate New York and Connecticut, Sewn invokes a sense of ease and delicate precision. A beautiful combination of clean crisp texture and warm pulsating harmony that shows a group developing and expanding their sound with an extreme attention to detail that reflects new layers in each melody and texture. Eight tracks that combine live instrumentation (guitar, piano, accordion, harmonica etc..), binaural field recordings and resonant electronic processing to create a wide range of electro-acoustic experience. From the folkish acoustic guitar of 'Sewn Two' and 'Bay,' to the densely layered organic din of 'Hundred Acre' and the psychedelic minimalism of 'Sheets', Sewn shows a group as equally invested in melody as it is in experimentation. Music for listening."



AHLEUCHATISTAS: What You Will CD (RUNE 221CD) 13.00
"Formed in February, 2003, Ahleuchatistas are a guitar/bass/drums trio from Asheville, NC whose music is a cutting cultural critique and a joyous musical experience. Their sound is as stripped down as it can be -- they use no effects whatsoever -- and they combine elements of punk rock, post-electronic, progressive rock mathrock, fusion, and minimalism. They have released two acclaimed records, but What You Will is their first release with significant distribution. They have gained a significant reputation very quickly for their powerful and precise live shows. The band's name comes from a Charlie Parker song called 'Ah-Leu-Cha' and from the '-tistas' part of 'Zapatistas,' who are an indigenous people's movement in Southern Mexico."




FALL, THE: Room to Live 2LP (EAR 40041LP) 26.00
"Released in September 1982, just months after the classic Hex Enduction Hour, the ever-iconoclastic Smith created Room To Live as a kind of 'fake-left' to fans and critics expecting a repeat performance. Just as the stench of success was beginning to drift in the band's direction, Room served to clear the air and send the faint-hearted running in the other direction. Now featuring an entire album of bonus tracks."



MOBY GRAPE: Crosstalk: The Best of Moby Grape CD (SONY 12418CD) 12.00
Originally issued in 2003; Sony's Moby Grape 2CD in the US (Vintage is no longer in print, so this Eurpean "best of" is your best option (outside of the vaguely distributed San Francisco Sound albums). This CD features 23 tracks, roughly broken up between the first 4 albums. "The five members of Moby Grape were not cut from the same cloth. Jerry Miller, Bob Mosley, Peter Lewis, Skip Spence and Don Stevenson came together in San Francisco in the summer of 1966 from fairly different walks of life... But the five of them had one very important thing in common: all of them could write, sing and play superbly. And thus the beauty of Moby Grape: good stuff, only more than usual. A three-pronged guitar attack via Miller, Spence and Lewis, vocals from all corners, most memorably rom the scarily soulful Mosley and the earnestly sweet-voiced Lewis, and with all those singers -- harmonies few bands have ever matched... Moby Grape were there, they made records like no one else, and in the annals of American rock n' roll, there will never ever be any band like them again." --Dave DiMartino, from linernotes

The following come from AquariusRecords.org

ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI Pedestrian Pop Hits (Latitudes 5) (Southern) cd 11.98
It took some of us a while to come around to the mad, maddening, drug addled defect pop world of Ariel Pink. We were convinced it was all an act, a put on, but it soon became apparent that Mr. Ariel Pink is indeed INSANE, and his music suddenly became less of a complicated art project and more a tantalizing glimpse inside the mind of a seriously fucked up musical madman. Pedestrian Pop Hits is 15 minutes of freaked out, psychedelic effects laden, dementedly catchy otherworldly pop. This is definitely not pop for the faint of heart, this is twisted and dark, like pop from an alternate dimension, where pop song hooks are chopped up and flung to the ground and stomped on in wild musical temper tantrums, rhythms careen wildly from in time to not even remotely toe tappable, sweet guitar melodies get dunked chorus first into deep vats of jabbering lyrical nonsense and blooping burping synthesizers, the whole thing run through forty delay pedals and broadcast through the speaker on a passing ice cream man's truck. Somehow, with all this damage and what-the-fuck going on, these songs (or this song) manages to sound pretty lush, and impossibly catchy. Imagine Brian Eno on Mescaline or listening to AM radio after a full frontal lobotomy. Wow! A testament to the mad genius of Ariel Pink for sure.
Comes packaged in a super intricate hand screened die cut fold over sleeve with a full color insert. Each copy hand stamped and numbered. Limited to 1000 copies worldwide, 500 of which made it to the United States, about 50 of which made it here. So you know what that means!

SQUIRREL BAIT s/t (Dexter's Cigar / Drag City) cd 13.98
We ranted and raved about the mighty Bastro a few lists back, and almost as if planned, both records by the band that would become Bastro get re-pressed not a few months later
We're talking about Squirrel Bait, post punk, pre math rock, a dense mix of massive hooks, a twin guitar attack and raw vocals which manged to be not punk enough for the hardcore kids but too fast and fucked up for the indie rockers resulting in Squirrel Bait being, overlooked andÔTOTALLY UNDERRATED.
The pride of Louisville, Kentucky, these guys were LITERALLY just kids when they started this sonic bombast. A bit thrashy perhaps for power pop purists (boo!), these boys wrote the book on post-hardcore for sure. Good enough (or better than, depending on who you ask) to be as influential as Husker Du or the Replacements, but more genuine in their attack as they were young bucks making an unholy racket well beyond their years. Squirrel Bait's debut is a wild and loud messy mix of pop and punk, but this ain't no 'pop punk', this is just a furious blast of mathy, heavy, catchy, hooky, thrashy, sloppy rock and roll. Later folks would call this post-hardcore, post punk, stuff like that, but the truth is, Squirrel Bait were making music that while similar to other groups at the time, was taking chances, and making sounds and writing songs like no one had heard before. It's still fiery and furious and in your face, but amidst all that youthful exuberance, were the bits and pieces that would define a whole generation of post rockers. It's no coincidence that members of Squirrel Bait would go on to play in Slint, Bastro, Gastr Del Sol and The For Carnation.
Even to this day, this record sizzles and crackles and sounds as original and innovative as the day it was released!

SQUIRREL BAIT Skag Heaven (Dexter's Cigar / Drag City) cd 14.9
We ranted and raved about the mighty Bastro a few lists back, and almost as if planned, both records by the band that would become Bastro get re-pressed not a few months later
We're talking about Squirrel Bait, post punk, pre math rock, a dense mix of massiveÔhooks, a twin guitar attack and raw vocals which manged to be not punk enough for the hardcore kids but too fast and fucked up for the indie rockers resulting in Squirrel Bait being, overlooked andÔTOTALLY UNDERRATED.
The pride of Louisville, Kentucky, these guys were LITERALLY just kids when they started this sonic bombast. A bit thrashy perhaps for power pop purists (boo!), these boys wrote the book on post-hardcore for sure. Good enough (or better than, depending on who you ask) to be as influential
SB's second and final release clocks in at under 30 minutes, but even more than their debut, Skag Heaven packs the future of indie rock and the blueprint for post rock right there in that half hour. This band explodes and offers up song after song dense with strange melodies and furious rocking, delicate arrangements and hooks galore. These guys accomplished more in this half hour than most bands do in their entire careers. They may have been POST hardcore, but the hardcore spirit meant you didn't need a 80 minute double album to say your piece, short and sharp, and pretty darn near perfect. Maybe more twin-guitar buzz this time around, more refined songwriting (without giving up the innovation OR the aggression),Ôsome of the best drumming EVER, and vocals that show real angst and depth without devolving into that indie sad boy whine. All this andÔstill not one member legally old enough to purchase alcohol!

(EDITORS NOTE - that's me speaking Vinyl Mine - Leviathan is the only black metal band you need to follow):

LEVIATHAN Verrater (tUMULt) 2cd 15.98
By now, pretty much every blackmetalhead who hasn't been lost in a grim and frostbitten forest for the last 5 years is well aware, and most likely a huge fan of the mighty Leviathan, which is just one man, Wrest, who along with likeminded outifts Xasthur, Draugar, Crebain and a handful of others have managed to reinvent and reinvigorate black metal in the last few years, while turning California into a land as grim and as black as the Norwegian clime that spawned the genre. But there was a time, when Leviathan hadn't released any proper records at all, outside of a handful of cassettes and home made cd-r's. This double disc collects the best bits from all of those releases and was the first glimpse many folks would get of the blackness that would come to define modern USBM. This is the second and FINAL pressing of this essential slab of black metal, limited to 666 copies (of course). Once these are gone, it's back to eBay on bloodied knees for you! Here's what we had to say about Verrater the first time around (with some minor updates and adjustments):
Those of you who live in San Francisco may have seen or even bought some of the many self released casettes by the mysterious one man black metal band called Leviathan. Or some of you may have seen Andee or Allan sporting their Leviathan shirts, or you may have even seen Wrest, the man behind Leviathan lurking around AQ...regardless, Leviathan is the latest and certainly one of the greatest of the Bay Area black metal bands (Ludicra, Sangre Amado, Crebain, Draugar and the godlike Weakling [both also on tUMULt], etc...) who seem to exist in some sort of vacuum here while elsewhere, band after unoriginal band keep getting signed to huge labels and hyped to death even though most of them suck.
For this release Andee and Wrest went through the 13 full length Leviathan cassettes/cd-r's (as of the release of Verrater that number had leapt to 15!) Leviathan had recorded since 1998 to compile a good overview. But they couldn't whittle it down enough so one disc became two, with the first disc being the newer stuff, and disc two being the older, raw-er material.
Verrater is pure, primitive, cult, home recorded evil. Two discs, twenty two tracks, one hundred and forty three minutes of buzzing, howling, pummelling, black metal. Think Burzum, Darkthrone, Immortal, that sort of thing, but with all sorts of weird twists and sonic surprises. Yes, Leviathan is grimmer than grim metal that the frost & forest lords of Norway should bow down to, but it's also pure expression unfettered by genre restraints, although informed and inspired by them. Like Weakling, Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra, Caacrinolas, Ludicra, Potentiam, Enslaved, and some other AQ-championed black metal acts, this is not just one for fans of black metal only! It's dark, weird, noisy, disturbing art embodying one man's vision that should be heard by anyone into avantgarde, experimental, psychically and physically powerful rock music. From blasting howling fury to moody ambient blackness to off kilter weirdness to droning riffery to soul crushing heaviness. What's truly remarkable is that one man, playing all the instruments himself, and recording at home, can evoke such strong emotions and invoke such musical demons. Original, evil, hateful, misanthropic, bizarre and truly black metal.

CASIOTONE FOR THE PAINFULLY ALONE Young Shields (Tomlab) cd ep 6.98
Hot on the heels of the split 7" Casiotone For The Painfully Alone did with Fox Pause comes another short'n'sweet C.F.T.P.A. release (this one's available on 2-song vinyl and 4-song cd)... And just in time for Valentine's Day, no less! This one man band (aka Owen Ashworth) seems to have a bottomless heart-shaped box of schoolboy lo-fi pop-tronic bonbons. On the first two tunes of this cd (the two that make up the 7" version), his trademark rudimentarily programmed drumbeats and perky Casiotone keyboard melodies once again make us muse as to whether or not Ashworth and Stephin Merritt might be long lost brothers. That said, in more ways that one, the standout track is definitely the somber finale on the cd version. An alternate version of his song "The Subway Home", its plucked cello strings bring to mind the final droplets of rain that fall from leaves after a stormy night. Moody loveliness.

DURRETT, LIZ The Mezzanine (Warm) cd 14.98
Dare we say that on her newest album, Liz Durrett out 'Cat Power's Chan Marshall? Now, we're by no means taking anything away from Ms Durrett nor are we suggesting that she's a copycat. No, it's just that this album inhabits a very similar territory as, say, the beloved Cat Power album Moon Pix. The reference is a total compliment. she's a great songwriter and a captivating performer in her own right. Oh yeah, and she doesn't sounds anything like her Uncle Vic (Chesnutt) neither! Whew, hope that clears things up and gets us out of any pickles. This is her second full length and it is so absolutely lovely -- a fantastic follow-up to her debut, Husk. Durrett shares her dreamy secrets in hushed pastel tones and delicately lilting folksy phrases. You'll have no choice but to linger a while (or at least for the 37 minute playing time) on this Mezzanine!


SHIT AND SHINE Ladybird (Latitudes 1) (Southern) cd 11.98
These Latitudes cds have beeen a bitch to get. Thanks to everyone for beeing so patient. They are super limited and only a handful even make it to the states, and of that handful we have to fight tooth and nail to get enough to list. We only now managed to get 20 copies of the inaugural Latitudes dics, number ONE, from the UK's Shit And Shine, a gore soaked, bloody nosed, sweat stained knee to the groin. Multiple drummers, lots of guitars, a toy keyboard and one mighty riff. Think prime era Butthole Surfers, add some Stooges stomp and some Hawkwind spaciness, an unstoppable wall of crushing churning psychedelic crunch, thick sludgy basslines, fuzzy filthy guitars, grunted shouted vocals, all in a druggy swirl of effects, random noises and full on brain frying weirdness. A glorious forty minute pummelling.
Comes packaged in a super intricate hand screened die cut fold over sleeve with a full color insert. Each copy hand stamped and numbered. Limited to 1000 copies worldwide, 500 of which made it to the United States, only 20 of which made it here. So you know what that means!

The Flesh Eaters confirmed for ATP

Back-up band is basically X + The Blasters ...

line-up here

Those Damn Kids Today Department

Cross-referenced to Yet Another Sign of the Apocalypse Deparment

Between wristband checks, there was plenty of time for the sport shoe fanatics, who call themselves sneakerheads, to sit on the cold, soggy sidewalk in the rain and ponder what it all means.

"These shoes tell you who you are,'' said Christina Chow, a junior at Thurgood Marshall High School in San Francisco, who was wearing wristband 34. "They express your personality. They speak up for you, without words. They say you're hip, that you're not a follower.''

"That's right,'' said her pal Anthony PeÃta of San Francisco, who was wearing wristband 27.

Prospective buyer Wilson Woo (wristband No. 13) said he owns 300 pairs of shoes, many of them Air Jordans, and has only worn 100 of them.

read the sad story of our latest lost generation here

Tom Pig Champion of Poison Idea RIP

CSTB has the sad news...