Day 4 into physical and mental collapse

I haven't quite collected my thoughts into anything resembling a clear picture, or diagnosis... What can be said is that decently sized crowds gathered for four nights in a row...at the Majestic complex...for a parade of perfomances from more than 70 bands...

More pictures and more thoughts on the way...

In the meantime...

Here are a few shots from the GOLD Music and Arts Festival...,

Great Ceasar's Ghost, was it hot yesterday!

~

Friendly Foes

Javelins

Daniel Zott

Zoos of Berlin

Day 3 into Day 4

The patio (upstairs at the Magic Stick) was sufficiently populated, throughout the afternoon. Which was heartening, considering the day got started just an hour past high noon. Bodies packed into those stabbing metal chairs and leaned back with the cozy toe tapping grin of a lazy summer's day...

The electro glam goth pop of Sex Ghost started things off, Leif Erikson brought in the much needed hip/hop element, Sik-Sik Nation offered their stately live show's blend of psyche and blusey-hard rock, Mick Bassett & The Marthas (pictured) showed us some of their sunnier, summertime ballads, (things always feel happier in the major chords) and Aran Ruth brought the meditative synth-swoons.

Then 8 'oclock hit...

From there, everything blurred...for many of us. I had grand plans to get a walk in, between that hour or so before the next band went on, but wound up staying...just as many did. After nearly three full days, and all that loungey-bonding we all went through on the breezy-sunny deck, the Majestic was starting to get that club house vibe.

Then Jesus Chainsaw Massacre went on and we all kinda woke back up...Provacative, nosiy, obnoxious, (Suicide meets Andy Kaufman in his girl-wrestling era)...presenting us a skit that only people following Eat This City would actually understand, even if the toga of Metro-Times being ripped off was still funny to anyone passing through the bar. Leif Erikson would join on vocals, with Sik Sik Nation on guiar and an inevitable drum circle.

...it wasn't even 10 o'clock yet.

I,Crime killed it. They always do. ...Damn. Always good to see New Grenada. Burgeoning surf rockers DevilFish are getting tighter. The Pizazz were also sturdy...(is their record out yet?)

Mike Milo was on photo detail for Silverghost and F'ke Blood (photos on the way).

Meanwhile, across town, a heartening crowd, rather large considering all the shit that was going on, gathered at the Northern Lights for the release of Canadian Dew by Scarlet Oaks (on Bellyache Records). Review here.

Today - at Awesome Fest

Woodman's on the lanes at 9:30pm / Computer Perfection will follow them, at 10 pm in the bar / Marco Polio & The New Vaccines will be upstairs along with Lee Marvin Computer Arm, City Center and Deastro.

Also today - GOLD (in Rochester)

with The Hard Lessons, Zoos of Berlin and Millions of Brazilians - plus at least 10 other bands, fire jugglers, rock walls and lots of art!

Day 2 into Day 3

Sometimes the narrative of blogs can be disorienting – for example, if I’m to post an essay that references a prior post, those of you just joining us would have to first scroll down beyond this screed and catch up, before I start off with an opening sentence like…

Now, what does feel a bit more open to us…at least a bit more welcoming to this still malleable lump of younger, millennial day jobbers, is something like the Fucking Awesome Fest, which wrapped it’s second full night, yesterday, and continues today (starting at 1pm) at the Majestic complex. (DC Favs include: Mick Bassett & The Marthas, Silverghost, and I, Crime) ((pictured top to bottom))

I’m in no hurry to get overly reflective yet, because we’re not even halfway through. As of now, I feel like the question shouldn’t be whether this acts as (yet another) jumpstart, or propulsion to a scene that is often at the heights of boiling over and out from under the lid, or whether this causes a mass eureka/kumbaya of unity that links all of these bands (more than 60 of them locals) and forges a new age of love, togetherness and potential community activism…, well, no, none of that for now…, the only question for now, should be…why stress about all that shit? Why be uptight at all? Why be self-conscious? Why be judgmental?

I don’t know. As one bounces around from body to body, with each new greeting feeling like speed dating, Hey-how’s-it-going-what’s-new-oh-cool-which-band-are-you-going-to-see-next-okay-cool-see-you-around—I was reminded that I’ve been trying to start a book. A book. Of course. Something that would dissect our generation from numerous angles. The over caffeinated, over thinker that I am…, I’m starting to dissect that idea…dissecting the idea of dissecting...

I think some of us are so obsessed with defining our generation, our culture, our impact, and what this…this, at the Majestic, this gathering of bands, these friendships, this spastic crossfire of sounds inside a dying city, what this means!? Maybe its because we are the post-everything generation – that we are drowning in reflection: people looking back to the Beats, looking back to Dylan, our parents looking back to classic cruising cars, our 80’s children-selves looking back fondly on the memories of Michael Jackson videos and John Hughes films, our music-nerd-selves looking back on the days of grunge, and early indie/rock, our incorrigibly self-conscious-selves looking back on the older scene of Detroit and then knee-jerk-ingly shitting on this new one…

We are inundated with looking back, or comparing what is now to what was then…

Post modern. Post everything. Let’s try to be post-future. Let’s stop worrying about what it means, and let it happen…
Shrug it off. Shoot the shit. Bang your head. Walk around. Meet new people. Find new bands.

Fucking Awesome…

Last nite showed a lot of great energy from the bands, and an increased energy from the crowds (now that it was Friday, and not a “school night” like the kick-off). Picture-splurge on the way! (Monday)

Today’s line up at the Majestic complex kicks off at 1pm.

Meanwhile, up in Rochester, at the Factory (on Main Street), Child Bite, Charlie Slick and Allan James & The Cold Wave are playing…

Scarlet Oaks plays the Northern Lights Lounge for their CD Release. And The Rue Moor Counts play the Lager House for their 7” release.

Stay cool. Hold out hope.





(I, Crime photo: Cybelle Codish)
(Mick / Marthas photo: Mike Milo)
(Silverghost photo: Trever Long)

(I, Crime - 9:30 pm, Magic Stick)
(Mick Bassett/Marthas - 6:20 pm, Patio)
(Silverghost - 11:10 pm, Majestic Cafe)

Schedule

Today and Tomorrow (only) - Sleeping Bear National Park has free admission...if you feel the need to get away

The sun was softly poking its golden rays through the leafy branches that shaded ornate cluster of graves and headstones.

Rolling along the paved pathway snaking through the cemetery grounds, careening, almost jovially with its accentuated bounces, was a neon orange truck, hauling six large blue plastic port-a-potties, finding a shortcut to the corner of 12 Mile and Woodward.

Only something so uniquely heinous as the gathering known as the Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise, could create such a sight…

And so, here we are, the 15^th annual gathering of t-shirt vendors, beer drinkers, radio station DJs, helicopters, port-a-potties, and the veritable shutdown of more than eight miles worth of the most widely utilized avenue in the metro area.

Every year, each side of the argument grows in volume, be it the majority-baby-boomers who not only support it, but enter their cars in it, or support their other baby-boomer friends with cars in it, versus the usually majority younger crowd (or also to be noted, older seniors but,) the young’uns who didn’t live through the glorified era in-focus (essentially ’60-’75) and are, thank you very much-trying to be a little bit more green conscious than our parents who not only failed to realize the error of crowding the streets with these gas guzzling smoke belching CO2 emitters for the last 40 years, they now have an event for an honorary reenactment of said “cruising.”

But another beef from the young ones would be, that this event, somewhere around its third or fourth year and onward, began to feel so corporate. And the baby-boomers seem to be so acquiescent to said corporate-ness. The zooming planes with advertisements, the DJs hawking contests, the perverse info-tainment from local news who want to push people to their web sites so they can “click on” their advertisers who have bought space online, it’s all to choked and claustrophobic.

If it just felt more open, freer, cleaner, in some way. Or, if it just felt less uptight. Not drugs and free love in the street, but…shit, not all this tight-collared balloon and sno-cone and exhaust, roaring lunacy. If it were something closer to a Carnival of sorts, (but, admittedly, with cars as still the focus) or something closer to the groovy community-focused vibes of a Dally in the Alley (poster below), or even better, if it felt more like a Woodstock, then maybe the young ones would be down for this… But it just feels like a private block party for the over 40 crowd…Funny that our parents, when they were our age, warned not to trust the over 40 demographic…and now, what does it feel like, from our perspective, now that they are over 40. But then, it seems they have continually succeeded to be the ‘have cake and eat it too’ generation.

And I say this all, as being someone who enjoyed the first two cruises. Because it actually felt like something fun, like a nod to the past, like a recreation of that laid back American Graffiti vibe and a cheer to American manufacturing and ingenuity, and nice old guys with their delicately buffed cars.

Now, it’s just a mess.

It’s now 40 years since Woodstock. A sometimes-overlooked aspect of its momentousness, is that it only happened once.

Well…heh…I guess, technically three times…but then again, if we touch on the ’94 and ’99 Stocks, then we’re back to the corporateness…and more port-a-potties in the cemetery.

Sheesh.

the edge...and the ones who have gone over (Awesome Fest tonight, tomorrow and Sunday

It hit me, bluntly, at the end of the Rogue Satellite's set, as I stumbled slightly into the gutter of the bowling lanes that led to the stage, the catchy chorus over danceable rhythms prophesied, "We're gonna feel like shit to-morrow..."

www.majesticdetroit.com/awesome/

And, so I do..., and so, that was a sturdy set by the duo, as were many of the sets last nite, the opening ceremonies for the Fucking Awesome Fest. Some of us still had to work oppressively early this morning, which meant any who embraced last night's festivities too recklessly, will be feeling worn and weak through the day today...

In my first 25 minutes of being there, I heard eight songs from four different bands...

What do you think so far?
And how are you this morning?

And still...the show goes on tonight...

Thunderbirds Are Now headline the Magic Stick at 1pm, ahead of Juiceboxxx
Lightning Love will close out the Cafe (which had notably good sound last nite, particularly for Wildcating), with Office rootin' around the former restaurant-space a little earlier.
Pop Project, Javelins, Human Reunion (Dayton OH) and the Mahonies can also be caught in the Garden Bowl (bounced between the bar and the lanes). One only hopes the madness of the Mahonies can be framed out on the somewhat outrageous musical setting of the lanes...

But whatever works...

take care

GOLD Music/Art Festival in Rochester ( 8-14 - 8-16)

The Factory’s First Year:

Photos: Jerry Wald

“You guys are crazy.”

Shane and Jerry erupt in knowing laughter. We hear that a lot, they say. The two accidental entrepreneurs have had a busy year. They’re the founders and managers of The Factory, an all-ages music venue and art space tucked into downtown Rochester. Renovated and redecorated from scratch, between day jobs and college, the guys—Shane Ford and Jerry Wald, longtime friends from Eisenhower High School (from around Shelby Township), opened the doors in August of 2008, with a charming nonchalance, opening arms to the metro community.

“The place itself is odd,” said Wald, a freelance photographer whose upstairs studio helps him produce live projection blitzes of performing bands. “When you walk in, you think, ‘this shouldn’t be here.’”

Down Mainstreet Alley, the three-floor space faces the alley, the flip

side of Tower Pizza. There’s plenty of hangout space downstairs, with the cavernous-yet-intimate space upstairs, holding about 80 people.

Through the year, shows ran all weekend, starting at 9pm, all ages, no smoking, modest cover – a place to hang out and discover music and art. This summer, show’s have been every night. The duo are aided by a dedicated team, volunteering their time just the same, with their respective girlfriends, Shane’s brother Jesse and his wife, soundguys Brad and Andrew and whoever else is around.

This weekend, with three consecutive concerts, the GOLD Music and Arts festival celebrates one full year. “It snowballed,” said Wald. “Yeah,” agrees Ford, “we went to City Council meetings to ask if we could hold it (outside).” Thus, the baby-boom-aged “lawyers, accounts, doctors” on the board finally made the acquaintance of Rochester’s sparkplug of youth, art and community. “It was like the Factory, within two months, grew up 20 years,” said Ford. The city enthusiastically embraced it and gave them space on E. Third and Water.

“Everywhere you turn, there’ll be fire over here, a band over there, put-put golf over there,” exclaims Ford, “hopefully a rock-wall.” On Sunday, the Festival’s final day transplants to a parking lot, where there will be a fire juggler, face painting, put-put-golf, 10+ tents featuring DIY artist/merchants.

“We wanted to pull Rochester, Oakland County, and really the whole Metro community in,” said Ford, acknowledging the line ups assurance to already draw dedicated show-goers and music fans. Ford said there’s something for everybody.

Bands on Sunday’s outdoor stage: Millions of Brazilians (above, pictured), The Hard Lessons, Zoos of Berlin, The Friendly Foes, Javelins, The Summer Pledge, The Ferdy Mayne, Nightwatcher, Sik-Sik Nation, The Crooks, The Singles and Daniel Zott. Friday night, back indoors at the Factory, features The Alaya Conscious, Lay of the Cid; No, Really! I, The Envy; Seraphim, Bahamut – and Saturday, it’s Allan James & The Cold Wave, Charlie Slick, Child Bite and Grand Dad Crunk.

On Friday and Saturday, doors open at 7pm. Sunday, at 11am, The School of Rock opens things up, with music, art and activities running all day. Also contributing: Board 2 Death Skate Shop, Scion, Rochester Lions, Monster Energy Drink and sponsors 323 East and The Crofoot (more participants, info and contact info: goldmusicfest.com)

Ford and Wald said the Factory is just where they’d imagine it to be – with a year free from “incidents,” complete with amicable, supportive cruise-by’s from the five-O. Next, they’re opening up a clothing store and art/performance space, a stone’s throw from the alley. This second Factory incarnation will function as clothing boutique, for local DIY and world-wide designers, plus a more mature atmosphere for bi-monthly performances.

More info: myspace.com/goldmusicfest; www.myspace.com/thefactoryrochester

Interview: Scarlet Oaks (CD Release, Aug 15, Northern Lights Lounge)

Canadian Dew EP - (on Bellyache)

Release show with Four Hour Friends and Misty Lyn & The Big Beautiful - (photos: Marvin Shaouni)



“Detroit is super rural…almost. It’s like the biggest-small-town you’ll ever see. It’s so incestuous and small, yet…huge. It’s this planned urban city, with all this grit and concrete, but then, with sort of a rustic, rural nature to it.”

Steve McCauley pauses. “Maybe our music sounds a little bit like Detroit looks.”


~Interview: Scarlet Oaks~

http://www.myspace.com/scarletoaks


McCauley is singer/guitarist/harmonica-ist and songwriter for local quartet Scarlet Oaks. We let that last bit of late afternoon coffee tinged philosophic conjecturing linger for a moment, brought on by my asking him about the unambiguous country twang stitched into the rough rock fabric of their pop ballads.

Scarlet Oaks formed as 2006 became 2007, with drummer/singer Noelle Lothamer joining McCauley and his brother, bassist Pat. Since that fateful winter, the band has recorded and released an EP (Innocence Isn’t Easy), weathered the hindrance of line up rotations (which saw, among a handful of players, brother Pat move on) and to finally settle in December of 2008 with bassist Joe Lavis and guitarist James Anthony.

McCauley returns to their sound-as-the-city comparison. “It’s very unpretentious,” then, with a blunted chuckle under his breath as he singles out his sound against the city, “I would hope,” then continues, “but then, also, it’s like gritty nastiness mixed with… ‘Oh, there’s a pheasant, just walking down the street! How beautiful?’”

The images were painting set close to blending the romanticized beauty and meditative calm of the rural clashed with the hunched shoulder hustling and honked horn whirl of the urban – otherwise crudely defined, and, in Scarlet Oaks case, almost perversely simplified, as a blend of country and rock.

“It’s almost like two worlds just colliding,” says McCauley. “I guess that describes where I work, and where I live…”

Location coats the conversation.

We cover where he works, painting and restoring houses in Ann Arbor, where U-of-M students clash with mellowed liberal baby-boomers, and where he lives, Woodbridge, which he refers to as “the most gentrified” area of Detroit.

Location is also the first and strongest distinction McCauley notes, when regarding their latest EP, Canadian Dew. “I wrote a lot of (these songs) while traveling. (The title track)’s based off a road trip I was on, through the west coast/pacific northwest, through British Columbia. That’s about love-gone-wrong. Going on a road trip is a good way to figure out if you’re love is gonna work…”

“Location is such an important part (of the EP). Even just being here. ‘Snow in Michigan’ was written on one of those, just, horrible February days.” The song references, as well as love, life and location, the wayward blizzard-to-melt schedule of the Mitten freeze that often leads to brown, car sloshed slush.

McCauley played with his brother in Fifth Period Fever (with Stephen Palmer of Back In Spades), a self-described “hard-rock thing” that, towards its end in 2006, had the McCauley’s starting to slip in a bit of a country thing.

In late 06, FPF dissolved into just the brother duo. With a show booked that November, they tried out a number of new drummers, finally fitting with Lothamer who had, then, just left Troy Gregory & The Stepsisters (and whose resume also included Outrageous Cherry and The Alphabet).

“We all grew up on that blue collar rock n roll,” said McCauley, name dropping usual suspects like MC5 and Stooges. “And Bob Seger, though, unfortunately, my parents were listening to all the wrong Bob Seger records. But…just gritty rock n roll. I was always into punk rock, like Negative Approach, and a lot of Michigan, Chicago and mid-western punk bands.”

“We never wanted to be a country band.”

~



Innocence Isn’t Easy (on Bellyache Records) had toe-tapping rhythms, easy-rockin strums with hazy, wafting wails of pedal-steel and sunny guitar tones that wobbled and whined in that playful, distinctively western-sounding manner.

But McCauley admits, you hear “country” and “…it turns people off. Being a country band, that never really was the idea, that’s just what we were listening to…” What they were listening to, included obvious points like Dylan and Young, Hank Williams and, for McCauley, rockabilly/country singer Johnny Horton (also known for location ballads). But on top of all that country were soul and R&B influences like Otis Redding, and punk shreds like X and bands who “lay it on the line” like Patti Smith.

“It’s mostly about just writing good songs, that’s the first priority.” For McCauley, who started out in high school bands on drums in the mid-90’s, and for Lothamer, whose playing in rock bands for a dozen years, McCauley concluded that they were beyond the “noisy rock band” thing and “trying to piss off our parents” and, with Scarlet Oaks, focused on songwriting, as well as adding a bit more of a quaintness and stateliness, with “folk, old rock n roll, old country, old soul.”

The founding trio started recording Innocence Isn’t Easy about two months after forming. “Frustrating” sums it up easily. It took six months – hindered by re-recordings and line up shifts. Guitarist Mike Munerantz moved “to the woods of Northern Wisconsin,” while bassist Ian Williamson started raising a child.

“Our band has always been on the cusp of breaking up,” McCauley casually quips. “Noelle’s always been there, we’ve always been on the same page. We sound like a band now, because the line up is gelling. In the past, we never had a chance to.”

Joe Lavis and James Anthony are the completing components – both joining in time to record Canadian Dew, which, as opposed to six months of self-recording, took just two days (with Jim Diamond), almost entirely live (at Ghetto Recorders). “Joe is such a solid bass player, he’s so tasteful. And James is one of the best guitar players I know.” The album sees a release show, Aug 15, on Bellyache Records.

Dew’s six songs had been written for a while – since Innocence took so long, ideas for melodies and lyrics were leaping through McCauley and Lothamer (the latter penning the waltzy ballad “Next Town”).

The sounds of Dew are warmer, fuller, with a shift towards a more upbeat vibe; boisterous guitar jangles and running rhythms under soothing vocal duets pairing McCauley’s slight rasp with Lothamer’s timorous coo. Innocence’s melancholy-tinged gothic Americana survives in Dew’s title track, while a fresher, more rock-heavy twang stomps its way through on fun freewheelers like “Old Lazy River” and “Scarlet Oaks,” (the latter not-necessarily being a band theme song, but McCauley’s ode to his brother and band co-founder.)

The intimacy of a swaying ballad like “Next Town” is immediate, and paints a swooning portrait of posited love between a humble country lady and a bustling city boy – perhaps aptly addressing our unpacking of Scarlet Oaks’ sound – the city boys (and girl) who have a reverence, a love, for the uncluttered quiet and old-fashioned style of those flatlands out in the mid-west, but still succeed in finding a beauty worth fighting for in the smoke-swathed corridors of their urban jungle.

Written by Lothamer, “Next Town” opens McCauley’s mental closet door and a glut of items come tumbling out. That he hopes Lothamer starts bringing more of her songs to the band and how he loves hearing her voice upfront. How he wants to do more duets with her, even if he’s self-conscious of sounding cheesy like some Tammy-Wynette-n-George-Jones thing. He talks about making the waltz of “Next Town” work with a full band, and considerations of trying to find consistency of sound, about spending more time together as a quartet to find that consistency, about planning tours, getting out on the road and heeding the advice of his old friends from the band Big Chief, “Never tour Wayne County.”

So yes. All of that. Spending time together, finding a sound and finding a road map for an upcoming tour.

But, on top of that – collecting the songs that McCauley already has written, for the next record – a guaranteed full length. “I have ideas,” said McCauley. “Not necessarily more production, no string section or anything, but doing more variety, trying to record in different spots with different people.”

“I don’t really know, half the time, what I think about our music,” he surmises, tying back to our opening conversation. “My lady is an artist, and I’m always asking her to describe it, ‘What does that mean?’ But then, she asks me the same thing about our songs. ‘I don’t know, sometimes it means something, sometimes it just sounds good.’”

~

August 15 - Northern Lights Lounge - w/Four Hour Friends and Misty Lyn & The Big Beautiful

DetroitStock

Busy buzzings all around...the port-a-potties are being bussed in, the vendors are dusting their shelves, the roads are getting hotter and the bands are lugging gear into vans only to have their access to the stage hindered by the throngs of bustling bodies - the air is thick with humidity and body odor and beer and smoke and feedback...

It's either 40 years ago, and it's Woodstock - or it's this upcoming weekend, in the Metro area..., what could be one of the most daunting weekends we've ever faced, in terms of entertainment option - and huddled populace

Down the list....

The Fucking Awesome Fest - inside/throughout the Majestic Theatre complex - 80 bands! Thursday Aug 13 - through - Sunday Aug 16
info - http://majesticdetroit.com/awesome/ (for line up + info about the scavenger hunt!)

~



The Re-scheduled Stolen Media (film and music) Festival - featuring The Electric Lions, Silverghost, Bride Stripped Bare and Los Minstrels Del Diablo. - (last Saturday was rained out - Theatre Bizarre will repeat the Saturday show, on Fri Aug 14)
info: www.myspace.com/theatrebizarre

~

GOLD Music & Arts Festival - at the Factory in Rochester

2 nights of Free concerts - Friday Aug 14 and Aug 15 - and an all day festival in downtown Rochester (with 10+ bands) on Aug 16

more info: myspace.com/goldmusicfest

~

There's also Scarlet Oaks at Northern Lights Lounge (Aug 15)




and The Rue Moor Counts at the Lager House (Aug 15)




and then also, though I'm not sure I need to mention it - there's the mess of babyboomers with buffed and belching cars, clogging up the main drag of transportation...reliving the bygone days of their 20's, whilst the actual days of other people's 20's, (those whom are actually in their 20's) have to stand on the side line and let the nostalgia and consumerism orgy precede.

That's all happening between now and Sunday...

get some sleep these quiet few days...we're about to take the plunge!

~

p.s.,

Skygreen Leopards + Outrageous Cherry + The Decks - tomorrow night (Aug 11) at Small's in Hamtramck!

Interview: Dungen

Adventures on the Wheels of Metal
Dungen

I misunderstand Gustav, at first, and not because English is his second language. The Swedish-born leader of Dungen, (doon-yen), is known in the states for trouncing pscyhedelia and trippy space rock - so I’m thrown off when he says that he’s been spending his summer practicing on the turntables.

Indeed, the multifaceted Gustav Ejstes, who also composes, arranges, produces and sings, often has influences such as Mad Lib and Aphex Twin go unheralded by those of us swooned by his staggering blend of metal and classical, guitars with flutes and violins. To hear the splendorous guitar wails of band mate Reine Fiske, one would easily, and lazily conjure Hendrix or whatever sort of guitar-deity.

"Their melodies are amazing," he says after name-dropping both DJ/producers. "(Aphex Twin) is turntable music, but he has an extreme ear for melodies. (Both) have a tone language"
Indeed, and there’s your connection. Tones. Any listen to Dungen, on record or live, and your head swims with the haunting and hypnotic tones they’ve sutured into the rhythm heavy, pedal-scraped folk/rock.

Ejstes said after spending the winter producing a fellow Swedish artists forthcoming album, he is considering utilizing someone else’s technician skills on the next, or would-be-5th, Dungen album - whenever that day comes.

Through their first three records, Ejstes played all the instruments, arranged, recorded and mixed. Though at times scorched with a bit of lo-fi, certainly not lacking in power through presentation. But still, Ejstes said, "I’m getting a little tired of the do-it-yourself, mess-up world."

Silverghost ( 8-8 at Theatre Bizarre and Saturday 8-15 in Majestic Cafe for Fucking Awesome Fest)

www.myspace.com/silverghostmusic

The Place To Start: Silverghost
Photo: Trever Long

Silverghost aren’t the first band I’ve heard say, “…we’re just having fun right now.”

It may be a defense mechanism meant to keep ones cool in the face of rising popularity, a back-to-earth mantra. Actually, all these fun shows just “makes us want to work harder,” singer/guitarist Deleano Acevedo said.

Singer/guitarist Marcie Bolan said, “It’s fun experimenting thus far. I think we’ve figured out what we want to do sound-wise, but it’s fun to add new things, or take away things.”

The duo started as a quartet (with drum and bass) in the last summer days of 2007 – eventually refashioning into a duo (with sequencer and synth) in the fertile-freeze of winter 2008. As 2008 became 2009, the band started playing more out of state shows, in Los Angeles and Chicago and released both a 7” and an EP. They opened for the Handsome Furs, and recently the Datsuns.

In July, they headlined a stage at CityFest; a romp of a rock show to a sea of undulating bodies, joined by Joey Mazzola (from Detroit Cobras) on guitar and Tiffany Gazic on vocals. Ben Luckett (from The Readies) provided live drums that night and has since, sort-of joined as a performing member.

With infectious romantic/new-wave pop ditties like “So Lost Now,” heavenly wafted melodies, wresting guitar grinds and steady clacked dance beats, attendance at Silverghost shows is not only growing, but increasingly grooving. “I get really excited to see people dancing to the songs that I wrote,” said Bolan, whose tenure with rockers like Von Bondies often meant receptions of head-banging or light-to-moderate-moshing, at best. “This I feel is more satisfying.”

The band’s currently recording demos and hope to enter the studio soon.

“There’s a lot of layering going on,” said Acevedo. “A fuller sound, but all over the board, from straight forward rock to weird psychedelic, shoegaze/folk.”

As stated, the band’s up for anything, embracing the fun. When Luckett came for a writing session, Bolan capriciously enticed, “Just come up with some drumbeats and Deleano will play like, a scary keyboard part and I'll come in with some Gang of Four kinda gutiar thing and then we'll go from there.”

Expect a full length later this year. As well as more touring and more dancing.

Myspace.com/silverghostmusic

Aug 8 at Theatre Bizarre

August 15th at Fucking Awesome Fest (11:15 pm in the Majestic Cafe)
info

Jay Reatard - Watch Me Fall (Matador)

"Wounded"

"It Ain't Gonna Save Me"
(from Watch Me Fall)



Everyone sees something different in Jay Reatard. On a gut level, with his bushy head-banger mane, broad shoulders and aloof squint, he fits the archetypal locker kicking, pot-pocketed bully. Or, you may look at his new album cover—reddish eyes, blue tint, foresty background, black cloak – and think he’s vying to be an extra in the next mind-numbing Twilight sequel.


At first I thought Jay Reatard was a punk rocker. The cover of 2006’s Blood Visions had his bare body doused in blood and the simple-grinded propeller guitar style shunted screams of how "easy" it is "when your friends are dead." Then I thought he had a latent metal-head sheen judged by the howling vocals and the ferocious guitars. Then, I thought he was possibly into new-wave and post-punk when I connected the similarity of his high yowled vocals to the chilly affectation of a Gary Numan (ala Tubeway Army).


Now I think he’s all about the pop. And I, like many should, finally realize the futility of finding absolutes in the rock-rooted music of this Memphis born singer/songwriter. As many turns his sound has seemed to take since the boost of attention that fell upon him in 2006, Reatard (born Jay Lindsey), fluctuated through just as much, if not more, styles since he started recording in 1998. Lindsey was most notably spurred by the aggression and grime of fellow Memphisers, the Oblivians, then got into electro-pulsed noise-punk, which made his singles collection in 2008 feel a left turn when the melodies grew buoyant and the harmonies shined through. Now we have an insuppressible pop delicacy like "I’m Watching You," with its parasitically-stuck-in-your-head-hooks and tumbling drums. If we’re shuffle through our genre card catalog trying to pin something on this sound, be it the veiled sunny-doo-wop leanings of a Ramones, or the caustic garage scuff soul of a Sonics, or the parallels to contemporaries like Black Lips, then you hear a song like "Before I Got Caught," with its exploding, reeling riffs, nigh-neurotic/self-deprecating vocal delivery, and apocalyptic/yet-spirited drum march and tell me you don’t hear a bit o’ early Costello in there! But then…, I’m reaching again.


At its heart its pristine pop/punk, but with subtle nuances like no-wave-fuck-all guitar shred, clackety drum-breaks, and neck-sliding bass grooves leaving distinctive marks. Noise, fuzz and feedback all linger in the corners like a cloaked villains plotting against the pop, either in building atmosphere ("Nothing Now") or screeching its way out in grimaced death-knells, adding needed freak-frying to the trouncing rickety-rocking hooks of "Can’t Do It Anymore."


As opposed to Matador records heralding him the savior of an-already-long-fought-movement, (tacitly, "the underground," or of the lo-fi-punks, or whatever) – let’s agree that Reatard is the result of a naturally indefinable and boundless musical generation and that he makes beautifully crafted pop songs, often rewardingly dashed with an identifiable, cathartic roughness in sound and shape. The strutting guitar riffs, the head-bobbing hooks, mixed in with the haunting vocal aura and the spurted screams (from voice and guitar) are enough to make this the doggedly-spun hit of the summer. That much is clear – set aside completely from all the signed-to-a-major-label rigamraole. Because lyrically, the stress of, for once, making an album "for a label" has shown on the nonchalantly iconoclastic "punk" rocker so used to comfortably churning out singles. He sings of a "Man of Steel" becoming weak, or, most tellingly, one song titled "Can’t Do It Anymore." "I see myself up in the sky / people around me, hoping I don’t die…surrounded by people that want to watch me fall…" And, adding later, "I don’t want to be this way."


Reatard should relax. The magic of his aural blend is its inherent charm. It’s easy for many to fall in love with it upon initial listening – especially true for the top-of-his-game feel of Fall. Hence, none of us really want to see him fall, and we’re all pretty confident that, even if this (this, being the work of Fall) is not how he wants to be – then, damn it man, go ahead and veer left again. We followed you this far…

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