Here are all three lengthy video excerpts from this 3+ hour show… Part one includes a few relatively concise tunes from near the beginning of the night. Part two includes the last set of the evening in its entirety: 4 songs, 35 minutes. Part three includes some juicy meat from the middle of the show, featuring the added talents of OZ on the electric stick.
I would say that generally the music gets farther out as you move down the page.
This was beyond a doubt one of the coolest nights of music I’ve ever been involved in. I hope you like it!
Evan Strauss, bass. Scott Keil, drums. 5-Track, guitar and singing. Jym “The Snake” Fahey, harmonica.
Excerpts from the first 2/3 of a single 3.5 hour performance which included guest appearances by Jasper Dickson, Yuliya, Deron Wade, and Oz. Certain guest performances may be viewed elsewhere. “Filmed” by John Boyd, May 23 2009. Thanks to Suzanne and WHERE for hosting this event!!
Songs include: “I Don’t Want To Lose This Moment,” “Galapagos,” others.
Evan Strauss, bass. Scott Keil, drums. 5-Track, guitar and singing. Jym “The Snake” Fahey, harmonica.
This is the final 35-minute / 4-song segment of a single 3.5 hour performance which included guest appearances by Jasper Dickson, Yuliya, Deron Wade, and Oz. Certain guest performances may be viewed elsewhere. “Filmed” by John Boyd, May 23 2009. Thanks to Suzanne and WHERE for hosting this event!!
Songs include: “Trying To Come Back (But They Won’t Let Him),” “Can’t Find The Ocean,” “Blues For Horselover Fat,” and “Exafrical.”
Evan Strauss, bass. Scott Keil, drums. 5-Track, guitar and singing. Jym “The Snake” Fahey, harmonica. Oz, stick.
This set (part of a single 3.5 hour performance which included guest appearances by Jasper Dickson, Yuliya, Deron Wade) features Oz. “Filmed” by John Boyd, May 23 2009. Thanks to Suzanne and WHERE for hosting this event!!
Songs include: “El-Frankian Yuppie Repellent,” “Morning Train,” and “Space Angel.”
…and oh, look, here’s another video from the Breeding Ground at the Tribal Cafe, recorded later that same night (June 3 2009). It’s Greg Franco, Jef Hogan (bass), and Jon Franco (drums), and they’ve been foolish enough to ask me up to jam with them. Here’s the results:
In case it isn’t evident, I had never played these songs before. I do like what we played quite a lot, though - I don’t get to play total freakball on someone else’s tunes nearly often enough! Thanks guys!
And thanks to Volita Pearl for uploading the video - maximum coolness.
This past week, Marc Cantlin (aka The Other Half Of My Brain) has been in town. We have been playing music together since approximately 1992. I get to play music with him about once a year anymore, though that is starting to look like it may happen more often this year at least.
On the day Marc arrived in Los Angeles, we showed up at a jam night called The Breeding Ground which is held on Wednesday nights at the Tribal Cafe in Echo Park. I go there most weeks, if I am not busy elsewhere, and play guitar or bass (or sometimes drums - yikes) with anyone who needs it.
Typically the night is hosted by Jef Hogan and Joe Mullenix, but Joe is in Norway so Marc and I got to play with just about everyone, including John Norwood, Jasper Dickson, Jackie, Yuliya, Rough Church, and a friend of the Rough ones, Volita, who is here from New Zealand.
Greg took video of us playing bass (me) and guitar (Marc) with Volita (and Jon Franco, drums), and here it is:
A couple of new-ish records have been making my life happier this week, and I want to tell you about them.
The one which I think has got the most spins (and the best album title by far) is “Free Your Mind And Win A Pony” by GOLDEN ANIMALS (http://www.myspace.com/goldenanimals). This is one of those weird little records that seems to have fallen through the cracks in the cosmic walls… And when I say “weird little records,” I should add that if I someday manage to make one of those records myself I will die a happy man.
The Golden Animals generate open-tuned desert psych that has a kinship to the first Doors lp, the second Beefheart record (”Strictly Personal”), The Rising Sons (with Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder), and the first album by the 13th Floor Elevators. There are two humans in the band, Tommy Eyes and Linda Beecroft. Tommy covers the guitar work with four semi-hollows that chill on a stand behind him, each in a different tuning. Linda plays the drums like she’s possessed, or dosed, or both.
The record is fine to hang out with, and live they can really pull the energy together…
The other big number on my stereo right now is “Evolutionary Squalor,” by LIQUORBALL. Liquorball includes guitarist Grady Runyan. Grady’s guitar playing makes me very happy. Delays and wah-noise and things that I usually only hear on acid come yammering out of my speakers and fly in small circles around the living room couch, underpinned by a thick bass carpet, clattering drum grooviness, and a flock of saxophones, not to mention a lot of weird electronic noise. Things like this have been done before, and I’ve even done it myself (KAOS NITES, anyone?) but this one is definitive of the form.
If you want one, you have to email the band. But you can’t do that, cos they exist off the web-grid. Another band which includes Grady (The Bad Trips - http://www.thebadtrips.com) provides slightly more information (and another amazing record!!). Check out this blog for more info: NEW LIQUORBALL RECORD
WOODEN SHJIPS “Volume 1″ - which is really great but, being a collection of singles, sort of an odd listen. Side one starts with the adrenaline rush of “Shrinking Moon For You,” which is sort of the reason anyone would want to own this record as the original single is long out-of-print. It doesn’t rip quite as hard on 33 1/3 as I think it must on 45rpm, but what the hell, it sounds great. I play it a lot. LOUD, too.
The middle of side one is very spacey and strange, though not unpleasant, and then there’s another burn-em-up jam at the end.
I played side one over and over for a week or two and then forgot I even owned this record. I just finally discovered side two the other day. It has two tracks. The first one is dominated by a loud and pleasantly piercing lead guitar. I wish for more bass, but I know it doesn’t matter. When I want bass I will go and listen to, oh, LIQUORBALL or OM or something. This record is for what it is, and it is a fine guitar sound that they have delivered, and anyway track two (which goes on for years and could be twice as long without annoying me any) is mixed just the way I like. It sounds like a triceratops that got into the mushroom patch, singing as it stumbles around the brush.
By the way: WOODEN SHJIPS is a DANCE BAND. They say so, anyway… and not only do I believe them, I dance to their record.
This is essentially an album of electric mbira music, cascading and polyrhythmic and full of light and danceable and deeply dense, and in that way it is much like the other discs in the series. Disc 1 was devoted to a band called KONONO 1, and disc two was a compilation which included a terrific DVD. The backstory was that these bands came out of the jungle with their music and found that if they wanted to be heard over the traffic they had to build some amplification. The substance of the music was preserved, but the tones became mangy and electronic. Perfect for a certain kind of taste… and lucky me, I like stuff like that.
Although I believe there is more depth to some of the music on volumes 1 & 2, there is something about this new disc that is making me want to play it again and again. It may be one of those cases where lightness ends up being a virtue - unlike certain Royal Trux records which I love so much but can not bear to hear too often… cos it weighs too much, and I can’t take it.
But maybe not. Maybe this is just some good music at a good time. I’m thinking it might be the point where western music and traditional African music collide, in that a certain element of societal substance is sacrificed for proto-disposable jive listenability. But I could be wrong, and I hope I am, and I hope I still like this disc this much in 20 years.
