My apologies if you haven't heard from me lately. I took a two week breather, first to celebrate my birthday two weeks ago and to celebrate St. Patrick's Day last weekend (yes, I'm legit Irish-American and then some). However, during my two week break, I got to treat myself to one of the best birthday presents I've ever enjoyed since I got to see DEVO for free at Club Nokia last year, I got to go see Sabrosa Purr, Gliss, and the Magic Wands play a show at the Satellite (formerly Spaceland) in Silverlake on the day after my B-Day. This was my first experience seeing a show at this venue, which is awesome and reminds me of a somewhat larger and more glamorous version of the Barbary in Philly. Also, the best part is that all three of these bands were especially good, plus I'm gonna make up for being behind in posting my weekly video clips by including breakdowns of all three of the bands' performances.
First band was Sabrosa Purr, which had some really sweet and mean, slinky grooves, and sounded (plus resembled) an awful lot like Boss Hog/Royal Trux. The only bummer was that the lead singer in the beginning of the set had a nasty habit of sounding a little like Billy Corgan, but he eventually got over it and they just got better and better into the set. Their new video above for "Fashion Kills" looks especially great and it's really bonus that I got to hear this track live.
The second band to go on was the Danish/Los Angeles-based Gliss, of whom I was especially excited to see, because the last time I had seen them perform was two years ago when I still lived in the Scranton area of Pennsylvania at an "Arts Center" (read: some skeevy autobody garage right next to the Susquahanna River that was BYOB (I brought I huge-ass bottle of Manuschevitz wine when all the other bros and homies brought six packs of PBR and Bud Light), whose concept of "art gallery" was a bunch of buzzsaws painted with tattoo art hung on wood paneled walls that was located in some odd NEPA patchtown). Who knows, perhaps that first show when I saw 'em was a sign that I really would be living in LA like I am now, so it was very special to see Gliss again. Before they went into their set, I saw the band hold shakers of Bac'n Bits, which I initially thought was a joke, but they ended up using them like maracas and the rest of their sent us all blissfully over the cosmos. Gliss has not only has their beautiful new video for "Weight of Love", but they have a new album coming out, they just got to play at SXSW, plus they have their own Youtube channel called GLISSmusic, so they've got lots going on for them. So happy to see these guys again and love that they're doing awesome!
The last band to go on was the incredible Magic Wands, who, like Gliss, got to play SXSW and also have a new album coming out, Aloha Moon. Not only have I met the magical Dexy and Chris, but I first got to see them perform an all-too-brief set at Harvard & Stone in Hollywood in December, but I was very richly rewarded at this show, along with the rest of the audience. Seeing them live was such an amazing rush of energy that I can't even describe and their above video for "Space" is fabulous. In all, it was an amazing night and it was so good to see all my friends who enjoyed this show with me.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Video of the Week: Pleasure-Don't Take the Night Away(60s Proto-New Wave)
For this week's Video of the Week, I decided to go back, since I recently stumbled upon this obscure 60s track on Youtube that totally blew me away (and not just for the amazing, rainbow-colored, Fruit Stripe Gum-like label art). When I first listened to it, I was immediately stunned by how much this sounds like early-80s New Wave, very similar to foofy New Romantic/New Wave act Visage's 1981 club thumper "Fade to Grey" or even most of the Synth-Pop that Ministry did (quite honestly, due to the contractual obligations) when they were on Arista. More recently, it reminds me of a lot of the material that the Chromatics are doing now on Italians Do It Better/Echo Park Records.
Before I discovered this, I thought for the most part, the only 60s Proto-New Wave track I've ever heard was the Balloon Farm's "A Question of Temperature" or most of the synth stuff on many a Moog album, but the production values of this are more unique than that, especially the arpeggiated vocals in the chorus and the tinny, off-track sound of the orchestration at the end. After hearing this track, I tried to seek out as much information as possible on this act, being that they're obviously rather obscure. There seems to be little-to-no information online about them, what we do know according to the Fuzz, Acid, & Flowers blogspot, is that they only put out two 45s in 1969, particularly this one on the legendary Tower label (home of the Standells, the Chocolate Watchband, and especially Pink Floyd's very first album, the legendary "Piper At the Gates of Dawn"), that's obviously the most notable and can be found on the comps Slowly Growing Insane and Psychedelic Unknowns Vol. 11. However, I discovered that somebody mentioned in one of the comments on Youtube for the B-side, the rather standard, Monkees-like "Poor Old Organ Grinder", mentions that vocalist Billy Elder was an engineer at Hollywood Sound Recorders at the time and that this was pretty much his studio creation. Singer Tommy Flanders of the Blues Project (of "No Time Like the Right Time" fame from the first Nuggets comp), was supposed to sing this, but found he couldn't reach certain notes, so Elder sang this track. Interestingly enough, I've found in most cases, some of the more experimental 60s tracks, such as this, were usually the work of studio musicians/engineers/producers, so this doesn't really surprise me. It would also be worth noting that this was probably one of the last singles on Tower(a more youth-oriented subsidiary of Capitol), since the label folded the same year this was released, but overall, this is an amazing track. If you have more information, please feel free to comment and let me know.
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