Kohoutek at West Nile, Brooklyn – 11/10/2006
Shrimp Ducks
Bishops at Large at Tonic, New York – 10/27/2006
Blues Control at Goodbye Blue Monday, 9/19/2006
Close Shave
Some Random Cellphone Pictures on a Saturday Afternoon
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Author Archives: othersideoflife
On the Day After Victory, More Depressing Obituaries
Neither of these are breaking news, but that’s not what matters anyway. I thought I’d write a post to acknowledge two terrible, self-inflicted deaths by two interesting artists – both of which, while gigantic bummers, may be somehow something to learn from.
Jason DiEmilio of the Azusa Plane recently took his life, apparently spurred by recent health problems. Though I wasn’t really familiar with the Azusa Plane while Jason was more active, they were definitely a name both easily recognizable and widely respected. It really sucks that his death is spurring me to finally stop being lazy and check out his music, and I certainly mean no disrespect in that sense. I wish I could’ve gotten it together sooner, but more importantly I wish that Jason — who I think I met once, not really sure — had been able to live free of pain.
A different sort of pain, but nonetheless a very, very real pain, caused Malachi Ritscher to take his own life in Chicago this past weekend. I can’t say I knew Malachi, really, but I used to see him at pretty much every good show I went to in Chicago from 1998 to 2002, and while I was puzzled at first by “that guy with the DAT machine and the mics,” his presence came to be one I enjoyed, and I admired him from a distance. I also admired a number of his recordings from those shows. Reading his self-penned obituary (linked above), it’s clear that he was a brilliant person, and I’m not sure — though I respect his choice — that the world is a better place without him. In fact, I think — despite the Democrats’ win yesterday and today’s resignation of Donald Rumsfeld — that we are definitely worse off without him.
One of the musicians he recorded, Dave Rempis of the Vandermark Five, posted information about a memorial gathering this weekend in Chicago on the chi-improv mailing list:
Elastic will be hosting a memorial gathering for Malachi Ritscher this
Sunday, November 12th, from 5-8 pm. For those of you knew Malachi, and
perhaps those of you who didn’t, please feel free to come and share some
memories, and trade some thoughts on his life and death.Elastic is at:
2830 N. Milwaukee Ave.
2nd floorIf you have anything that you’d like to bring (photos, etc.) that has some
relevance to Malachi’s life, please do. We’d like to display some of these
items for everyone to share in.
I do hope that Jason and Malachi are at peace, wherever they may be now. Or even if they’re nowhere, that’s fine too. Their final actions in no way obscure what they gave us while they were alive.
UPDATE: Some really good follow-up pieces on Malachi Ritscher have run in the Milwaukee Sentinal-Journal and in Pitchfork.
BURNED OUT? Not Yet Anyways – Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O., Have You Seen the Other Side of the Sky? (Ace Fu) CD
So sorry that I haven’t updated in ages, been super-busy and super-procrastinatin’. Lots of stuff in the pipeline, though, that I should have finished soon – most of it intended for publication in the latest issue of Swingset.. Will let you know when they’re ready. In the meantime, there’s this AMT takedown in this week’s Baltimore City Paper:
Messiness, overindulgence, repetition, and amateurishness are often fine ingredients for great music; some of the most memorable albums of the past 50-odd years have been great combinations of all four. Think of Tony Conrad and Faust’s 1972 magnum opus Outside the Dream Syndicate – a fantastic and fascinating tour de force of mind-numbing drone set to a stomping beat so simple that it resembles nothing so much as the human heart. A more contemporary version of such stupid greatness might be Dread by Michigan’s Wolf Eyes, a mix of terror and bad chemicals so traumatically creepy that it sits on a plane higher than most attempts at “dark” music. (That it was made by three fairly normal goofballs doesn’t hurt.)
Yet these four qualities can just as easily collapse on themselves in combination and make for an awesomely bad time…
For some reason, WordPress is acting weird and won’t let me post the rest of the review, which is too bad as the second paragraph is where the takedown occurs. So check out the link, and watch ’em run off the rails.
R.I.P. Larissa Strickland
Read this morning on the internets that Larissa Strickland (far left), guitarist of the Laughing Hyenas and L-Seven (not the L.A. all-chick band) has died. Such a huge bummer, she was an amazingly awesome and staggeringly good guitarist. Enjoyed seeing the Hyenas multiple times as a teenager, and was lucky to party (not too hardy) with them once, and John Brannon gave me a free t-shirt (that I still have) as a keepsake.
UPDATE: Corey Rusk of Touch and Go has released a statement. Sad reading.
The Weird Weeds, Weird Feelings (Sounds Are Active) CD
The best dreams are the bad ones, the ones that unsettle you to the point where you start to believe that what happened in those dreams might have actually taken place. And sometimes the best music is that which evokes the same feelings as those unsettling dreams. The Weird Weeds, a young rock trio from Austin, Texas, are quite skilled at inducing that, well, weirdness and dis-ease. The group’s second album, Weird Feelings, takes a stark, darker approach than its self-released debut, appropriately beginning with the minute-long “Bad Dreams.” It segues into the title track, which is augmented by a seven-person chorus singing, “You feel so alive,” in a dizzying, rapturous swell.
Weeds leader Nick Hennies’ subtle percussions mesh perfectly with Sandy Ewen’s and Aaron Russell’s unified-yet-meandering guitars, and Ewen and Hennies harmonize beautifully, as well as sing solo. Most strikingly, Ewen’s and Russell’s melodies and countermelodies combine into an almost music-box sound, evoking childhood memories of lullabies played through the windup backs of overloved plush toys. The sound of the Weird Weeds is simultaneously haunting and beautiful, and by penultimate song “Cold Medicine”–wherein Hennies and Ewen languidly chant, “Go to sleep, go to sleep”–the somnambulant sensation that the weird dream just might really be happening is complete.
There:
And Everywhere:
Friday, September 15th @ The Cake Shop
152 Ludlow, NYC
The Dirty Projectors
The Weird Weeds
Nat Baldwin
Swan Island
Buy Weird Feelings from Sounds Are Active.
I Really Wish I Could’ve Been in Chicago…
More Touch and Go 25th Anniversary Fest pictures here, and more to come. Jealous!
R.I.P. Dewey Redman
Missed this bit of bad news from earlier in the week: Dewey Redman has died – obit from the New York Times:
Dewey Redman, an expansive and poetic tenor saxophonist and bandleader who had been at the aesthetic frontiers of jazz since the 1960’s, died on Saturday in Brooklyn. He was 75 and lived in Brooklyn.
The cause was liver failure, said Velibor Pedevski, his brother-in-law.
Walter Redman was born and grew up in Fort Worth. He started off on clarinet at 13, playing in a church band. Not long after, he met Ornette Coleman when they both played in the high school marching band. Their friendship would become one of the crucial links in his life.
Dinosaur Jr.’s Equipment Stolen
In the more-shitty-news department, this just came in via teh internets:
Listed below is a list of gear that was stolen out of the Dinosaur Jr trailer last night (Tuesday 8.29.06) outside of their hotel in Long Island City, NY. We would appreciate spreading the word and passing this list around in hopes of recovering their gear. Feel free to send this list to any and all band, tour and production managers, guitar freaks, touring personnel, venues, musicians and or thieves that you think could help us.
If anyone has any information about this gear, please call Brian Schwartz at 303.998.0001 or Bart Dahl at 212.777.0922. Thanks
Guitars:
1959 Fender Jazzmaster SN.. 38927.
-decal coming off. cracked headstock at top near low E peg. color black with purple/bluish sparkle coming through. adonized pick guard gold metal. tuneomatic bridge gold, tuning pegs gold.1961-3 Fender Jazzmaster SN.. 62012.
-purple sparkle, black pickup covers. headstock repaired, a whole new piece of wood was glued on for the top part of the headstock under the tuners and up a 1/2 , along the whole top of the headstock. gold tuneomatic bridge, gold tuners1964-5 Fender Jazzmaster SN.. L21581.
-orange, white pearl pickguard, stickers we’re all over it, original tuners.Fender Purple Jazzmaster new SN.. R074329.
-purple sparkle with matching headstock gold adonized guard tuneomatic bridge.Rory Gallagher Stratocaster new SN.. R25507.
-has a big gold grover tuning peg on low ERickenbacker 197? Fireglo Bass SN.. 4001.
-checker-board binding.B.C. Rich Warlock Bass SN.. 4242413
Custom pedal board with custom audio electronics RS-10 foot controller, Teese RNC2 wah pedal, boss stage tuner, mute box, and cables.
Cymbals:
[1] Paiste 20″ 2002 medium
[1] Paiste 20″ giant beat
[1] Paiste 20″ 2002 crash
[2] Paiste 19″ 2002 crash
[2] Paiste 15″ 2002 sound edge top hi-hats
[1] 15″ 2002 sound edge bottom hi-hatsOne Black backpack with Sony headphones, tools, etc.
I was all set to write a review of their awesome show last night at Warsaw with Mouthus and Blood on the Wall (I may still), but this definitely puts a damper on the proceedings.
R.I.P. James Tenney
Kyle Gann’s blog is reporting that James Tenney has died:
The great James Tenney died last night [actually, the night before, August 24]. Word went around a few weeks ago that his old lung cancer had returned after a long remission of many years. He was a great teacher, great drinker, great companion, and an interestingly odd personality. As a composer he was a kind of hard-core conceptualist driven by theoretical curiosity. As a result his music could be awfully dry at times, but in about half of it or more the conceptualism transformed in kind of an amazing alchemy to an extreme sensuousness, lovely, slow sound-metamorphoses that you just couldn’t believe.
If you’re not familiar with his work, you might want to check out this interview, courtesy of “milton parker” over at I Love Music. Lots of stuff to download is over there as well.
MAGIK MARKERS/MONOTRACT/MOUTHUS/PANOPTICON EYELIDS at the Hook, 8/5/2006
My ridiculously over-booked social schedule (no, really!) has me running all over town, and at no time was that more evident than last weekend, when I managed to make it from the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center (to see “Not a Photograph: The Mission of Burma Story”) at 6, up to Harlem to walk my friends’ dog by 8, and then out to Red Hook to catch this show. Thankfully, a car was involved, otherwise that’d be way too long on the subway.
Montreal noise-rock quartet Panopticon Eyelids kicked off the show, and unfortunately I don’t have any crappy cellphone camera shots of them. But they were quite the debonair Quebec’ers, singing such things as “AARON’S BALLS!” really really loudly. Really good in a AmRep-meets-now style. Mouthus followed, and in their inimitable way, they smoked. I have to admit, despite loving them a ton (and thinking they’re swell guys to boot), they can sometimes not deliver live. This was not an issue Saturday, and might’ve been one of the better Mouthus shows I’ve seen – though not as good as the show I did with them at the Palace that like nobody came to.
I first saw Monotract way back when in Chicago when they were on tour with Russ Waterhouse and a very young Joel St. Germain, and they’ve definitely changed a bit since then, adding more electronics to their sound. Honestly, I wasn’t too into them before, but Saturday’s show really brought out the best, even though they had some technical equipment issues. Their new album, XPRMNTL LVRS (I’ll be reviewing this soon for City Paper), has some strangely weird pop moments on it, and I think I like that side of the ‘Tract more and more.
Magik Markers are, in a word, unfuckwithable (if that’s a word).
Seriously I cannot think of another group of people who manage to walk into any live situation and just completely own it in the way they do. Not in the “fantastic performer” sense, because yeah I guess “anyone” can do this (which is the complaint of the common dumbass – no your five year-old can’t paint better than Picasso, either), but there’s something about their mind-melding musical ways that just transcends the “noise” thing. Pete and Elisa are just amazing, no matter who they play with (this time it was with Greg Weeks Steve Gunn, I think – I’m not up on my noisicians much any more), and this show was no exception.
And on one last note: props to Tony Rettman for playin’ fruity tunes!
The Other Side of Life 