MSN Music Blog: The Insider: Music

Vending Paradise

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 17:47:52 GMT

I met with a Paper Engineer today. Artist (and Paper Engineer) Helen Friel has designed and handmade these beautiful boxes to house the first two releases on mine and John’s cassette label: Paradise Vendors. These boxes really are things of beauty, limited to 35 per release. Each release is a different colour box and tape.
See Helen’s space here: http://helenfriel.blogspot.com/ and while you’re there check out her two pieces exploring the the murder rate and causes of death in sunday night television over the last twenty years. Amazing.
We’ve been plotting the advent of Paradise Vendors for way too long and at last, upon collecting the tape boxes, the first release is imminent. Each release is a fifteen minute tape, two bands per release, each with seven and a half minutes to do with as they wish.
The first release is a green box with a small die cut triangle revealing the yellow tape inside and features Hand Jobs (Brooklyn, NY) and Talbot Tagora (Seattle, WA) with a GG Allin insert.
The second release (which will be out in the same week) is a pink box with a small die-cut octagon revealing a white tape featuring Temperatures (UK) and Paper Legs (New York) with a JT Leroy insert.
These will be out in July. I’ll keep you posted. Don’t fret. Go find your walkman.

www.myspace.com/paradisevendorsinc

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Liars, Deerhunter, nearly High Places

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:42:43 GMT

You’d think I was chasing the tail of Brooklyn’s High Places. Or I’m eating their dust. Or something. I keep missing them. Narrowly. Came close at Café Otto (behind the Dalston Mcdonalds) a few weeks back. Then they played with Telepathe, all sold out, we biked up too late and could only view the action through the big glass front of Café Otto and as if responding to a giant muted TV, we backed away, found cold Modelos in a Kingsland Road Off Licence and settled for street drinking with our friends. It was sweet. Was summertime.
Anyway now I’m all last minute and headed for Liars and Deerhunter @ Koko, Camden. High Places open at early-o-clock. Miss them. Again. Natch.
Deerhunter drench me. Layer upon beautiful layer. I’m drowning, not waving, smiling as I go down.
Last saw Deerhunter in NYC and then Bradford (singer/main dude/Atlas Sound) could barely stand up and was flouting and flirting with smoking laws, sparking up and mouthing off and in turn getting cute and nostalgic. He was pretty much blubbing. And that, then, was great. But tonight he is total control.
I welcome every jangling tier. It’s a soak. Each tidal layer rinsing my senses good. One, two, three chording guitars foaming with Bradford’s layer-vocal while bass softly bolts through it all and drums simply weave on that. I ache for more songs I know from ‘Cryptograms’ but am soothed by a band so-on-form, sending out new songs into a crowd so porous and hungry for more.
Seen Liars so many times now. And they still kill. Angus rocks the English public school blazer and tie. Liars are one of those bands bold enough to make sharp turns after each record they make. Seeing them at this stage in their shape-shifting life then is pleasure. They flash a spectrum at you as they mess with oldies, refresh recenties and suggest with newies. They close out by tugging at our hearts with a scruffy-beautiful ‘The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack’ and just as we’re melting in to the floor from that they quickly run back on stage and rage out with ‘Plaster Casts of Everything’ and beat the life back in to us.
And walking home, dodging comedians, I’m thinking: really we’re always chasing High Places.
Right?

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Male Bonding

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:04:59 GMT

Male Bonding, a new band, we played our second show for Sexbeat @ Macbeth, Old Street. It was with the amazing PENS (we played our first show with PENS, we want to play all our shows with PENS). Electricity in our Homes played also.
Male Bonding is Robin, John and me. We’re compact. We can take our show anywhere, in a cab. We take a cab and get so deep in to a conversation about the Monochrome Scene that we stare at the Macbeth and drive on right past it. That’s funny.
I like the Macbeth it’s open till 4am. That’s lethal.
PENS open. In bows. It’s Power tonight. Electricity in our Souls. Switching up and up and up, a triple sense threat from the stage. All duties are switched: drums, vocals, casios, guitars. All drums are stand up. It constantly moves and charges. It is dizzying pop music. I love it. I love it. Monochromes blush.
Male Bonding: we group tight on stage and we chop out our 5 plus one songs (plus one is an un-hep secret).
Show goes off. Something like this: youtube clip
I don’t know what to say about my own things. Matt Flag said “Gig of the year” and that, my friends, is holy patronage for me. The only review I ever want.
Electricity in our Homes ice it out, music and shirts tucked in to their pants. Their own cool-school.

Etcetera.

And we squeeze out of the Macbeth, re-compact and charge in to the morning.

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Sleeping States Instore @ Flashback Records

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 15:47:27 GMT

‘Instores’ can be peculiar. I’ve played a few myself and I’ve been in the twitching audience for a few…usually something jarring about plying your intensity in to the unforgiving commercial glare of a record shop.
Flipped all that on its head on Friday. Set up an instore for Sleeping States @ Flashback Records, Islington. It was amazing. Really.
Was a loaded instore. Sleeping States is leaving the big city for a slightly smaller city way west. So it was a farewell party to a firmly established London family. It was also Markland’s (Markland is Sleeping States) first ever solo show. So pretty poignant. And just to amp up the emotionals even more, it’s Markland’s birthday. So here we are, up to our ears in an emotion-wringing triple whammy.
And it couldn’t have gone off better.
The shop was packed out; bulging out on to the street and the reverence and hushed appreciation of the crowd was solid vibe. So beautiful. Markland adapting some familiar songs but wrangling with old tunes and freshening us with songs he’d never attempted before. We all hung on to every word, every tape click and banking delays. And we all nearly cried our eyes out at the last song introduced thus: “this song is about leaving”.
Ok, okay the “we” is more “me”. But I bit my quivering lip and held off that foggy feeling in my eyelids.
Wow.
Anyway, it was nothing but special. And then we spilled out in to the Mucky Pup, where I won the indie darts and lost the indie pool and we all tried to hold on to as much of Markland’s fading London time as possible. Till the early hours.
But it’s all good. New start. New Sleeping States EP (on Bella Union) preceding a new Sleeping States album…and who/what will be the new live band? There are rumours of desire for multiple guitarists. Watch your dusty legend Mr. Glenn Branca.

And as for the Flashback instore. It was the first one at the shop, and in that sense a trial. And it was a pure success. And hanging at an independent record shop after-hours on a Friday night, drinking cold beer, buying Liquid Liquid reissues…well that’s good times right there.
And cued by this very cool first-time event…there will be future instores at Flashback. Regular.
And why not?
Summer looks so much hotter for it.

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Sleeping States on MSN

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:57:08 GMT

It wasn't me.
I just blog here. I just bang my head in to the keyboard and press 'publish'. From struck keys I offer convoluting sentences, roly-polying paragraphs. Here I rave, I despair. Mostly I document. Clutching at fast memories of things I see-hear-feel. i try to nail it all on to a fast moving background.
I run a record label. I talk about it a little here.
I released an album by Sleeping States, I raved on that.
I just blog here.
MSN video has just posted up three songs by Sleeping States (taken from the MTV "Spanking New Sessions").
Lookie:
Rivers : http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-gb&vid=6d1f25cb-409e-45f4-b189-cad284d6ee43
The Sleeping States or Who Has Been Rocking my Dream Boat: http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-GB&brand=&vid=6320ddba-5a81-457c-a99e-7562854478de
The Next Step: http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-GB&brand=&vid=106a52b3-1374-4387-9234-726e5db814f6

I have no sway in the life-loving decisions made at MSN.
I just blog here.

So it's nice to see Sleeping States crop up @ MSN video. You bet I'm gonna blog on that.

And while we are here at Sleeping States (by default) I'm gonna talk it up some more:
Sleeping States is relocating. Leaving the capital. Sleeping States is essentially Markland Starkie, with amazing live help along the journey. And this relocation (to another British city) sees a natural, but quite emotional end, to the London version of Sleeping States. The Sleeping States we know and love has seen Caroline Banks (Seafood / Caz Mechanic) on drums, who passed the sticks on to Robin Silas Christian (Bullet Union / Tropics / Male Bonding) and the longest serving figure in the Sleeping States family, and with a burgeoning progressing band of his own (Beacons) is Craig Gell.
It's just gonna be so weird from now on.
But it's good. That's what change is...it's good. I'm excited for a new Sleeping States, a new album, a new band. Keep an eye out for an EP forthcoming on Bella Union.
I saw the last 'London line up' Sleeping States show last week at White Heat @ Madame Jo Jo's, Soho. It was immense. Markland stacked himself in to the drum set at the end. And that's it (for now). With a lump in my throat, I bike home in the rain, got a puncture, and walked several miles in thunder and lightning, that intensified as I got nearer to my home. I could only laugh. Rain would have rudely rinsed my tears away anyhow.

Sleeping States hasn't left London yet.
And there is one more chance to see him off.
Markland is giving (for the first time) a solo Sleeping States 'instore' performance @ Flashback Records, 50 Essex Rd, London N1 8LR on Friday 13th June from 7pm.
It will be special.
And then the after party is at the legendary (see previous posts) Mucky Pup right around the corner.
Shots will fly.

Happysad.

Oh yeah, here's unexpected patronage:
Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol name checks Sleeping States: http://www.snowpatrol.com/band/

Funny, right?

What next? Bill Gates declares his love for Foot Village?

I'd blog the hell out that one.

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www.videothing.com

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:04:08 GMT

With clunky words I trampled all over a London show (AIDS Wolf / The Rebel / Bromancer) here: http://musicbizinsider.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!894E9884C15D34B5!415.entry

Well the whole thing got un-clunked, bundled together and thrown up in the power form of video, here: http://www.videothing.com

that's more like it.

video thing / word thing.

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I'm Rich

Fri, 30 May 2008 10:23:15 GMT

There’s a lot of finger crossing and a lot of lip biting running a small non-budget record label. But it really pays. It pays out big. Financially it’s a hole. Not that kinda payout, not dollar-pound. It’s bigger pay.
My fingers were crossed when I asked the artist Robert Beatty to do the sleeve art for the next TOME release: split 7” Family Battle Snake / Birds of Delay. Robert was totally the choice of both bands, who respect his work both as artist and musician (Robert plays in Hair Police / Three Legged Race).
So when I e-plounder in, struggling to type with crossed fingers, requesting his creative services along with the inevitable “obviously there’s not really any money…blah…etc…” it’s life affirming when he, with mutual respect for work of the bands and with progressive-abounding ethic says he is 100 percent down with doing this. That’s the payout right there. As a label, these are the inspiring moments, when you hamfistedly glue all this together, and it’s a richness you feel when you have a reaching hand in amongst all this fizzing energy.
I fizz.
It’s the possibilities that thrill. The working with new people. The IDEA. The messages that dissolve geography and bring us head to head. Headbanging idea. Knotting art and putting it out there.
Robert is gonna make new work for this release, after hearing the music.
I’m psyched.
Pure wealth.
I feel beyond rich.
Now,
how
the
hell
am
I
going
to
pay
the
pressing
plant?

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I saw Sparks!

Thu, 29 May 2008 12:24:14 GMT

I saw Sparks!

Real life Sparks. Handshakes, uncomfortable silences the lot. I’ll get back to this, because before that AIDS Wolf were in my house. AIDS Wolf are from Montreal, and are on a crushingly testing European tour right now, they’ve come a long way and we got to keep their spirits spiky while they roar through London.
My friend Michael is over from Los Angeles. He runs an awesome website: www.videothing.com
Check it. He nets the choicest bands as they trip through L.A. and chops it all up, while it’s still hot, with bezerk q & a, and throws it up on videothing.
Michael is in town to make a video for some band, but he’s got some grace, due to a singers bust leg or something. So we party. And we impulsively launch “Videothing UK”. He shoots the AIDS Wolf show with The Rebel and Bromancer @ Catch 22, London.
Bromancer are fierce. Steve shouts and strikes deep into his minimal drumkit. Pure rage. Another guy wrap bass drone and delay and bump all over it. It smears. And somewhere out front is a man with a mic, ripping his tshirt up to some heaven, folding vocals over vocals. It’s a little fury thing and it breaks your sweat.
The Rebel aka Ben Waller (Country Teasers) has tied a hand-painted banner across the front of the stage. And what spills out over and under that banner blows my mind like a leaf. Ben, head down, furrowed in to guitar, Alistair ploughing bass (check out his art exhibition currently at the ICA) and Sophie firing drums. It all strangulates, captivates. Raw play. Strips you open and you’re in or you’re out. To this, I’m so in. This is wronged romantix…riding on collapsing, but lifting, music and hanging on to every word that is spelling out your low life.
AIDS Wolf (“The Canadian Rush”) up next and twist faces and bodies in to fired up shapes. AIDS Wolf have coax-ability, they pull you in to them, right in, close, and you wide-smile and beckon the shards that stab on to you. You dance among shards and sick colour explodes all over you. You jolt and bounce with it. You breathe it, it nicks your pulse and it’s over too quick.

I saw Sparks!
I got to choose my night, my album playback. (see previous post) I chose ‘Number one in Heaven’. (produced by Giorgio Moroder and it’s kinda Sparks do disco. But not. But it’s so awesome!). I take Michael videothing. My treat. It’s rammed in here. Totally sold out. We shove up front. It’s hard. No yield in here. We get pretty close. And Sparks are here, and the reverence in the room is astounding. Slightly scary. Oh man, they’re so good. Whipping up the perfect amount of camp and rocking out these pseudo-disco classix out to us. The visuals are awful, which is of course genius. The most genius thing is that this album was released in 1979 and they have never been able to perform most of these songs live. Thirty years later, technology allows this to happen. And it really happens. ‘Beat the Clock’ and ‘Number one song in heaven’ are both epic and amazing. Each night they have been closing with an obscure b-side. Tonight they finish with a wonky disco song that they wrote for an artist called “Nicole” way back then. It’s called “Dancing is Dangerous” and it’s a perfect end to a perfectly odd night. Except it don’t end there, we have backstage passes and there we are drinking Sparks’ beer and standing in cold cement corridors with them. As baffled as they are. They just seem so sweet and it’s those around them that seem freakish as the surrounding talk stilts and the introductions clatter clumsily and echo into the corridors. It’s all good.
I saw Sparks!
I met Sparks.
I biked home in the cold rain.
I got a cold.
I’m still ill.
I saw Sparks!

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Sparks v Pissed Jeans v Ex Models v No Age v Life

Fri, 23 May 2008 12:53:19 GMT

I met Sparks. Yep. Sparks. And quite frankly I’m shocked at the looks and hums of indifference I’m getting from my so-called friends. Everyone knows Sparks, right?
It’s SPARKS! (see pic below...please!)
So when I say I ‘met Sparks’, I actually met two guys from the live band…and not the two guys. But these guys are really sweet. To explain what you should already know: Sparks are in town playing all twenty-one of their recorded albums in twenty one nights. All at Islington Academy. And so after meeting these lovely L.A. guys in the record shop, I get to choose my night/my album. I have to choose carefully, those of you that are familiar with Sparks, know that there is some serious stinkers in that twenty one. I’ve already missed ‘Kimono’ so I chose ‘Number one song in Heaven’ It’s this Sunday and I will write about it here. You can’t wait.
Before I got all dizzy with the prospect of an avant-weirdo-POP-experience, the last few days have been a blurring whirl of bands and heart partying.

Pissed Jeans are immense. Something about the skewed chemistry in this band that just blows me apart from the first second on stage. Up there, they’re in there own existence, everything bounces off them. Tonight, at the Old Blue Last (Pissed Jeans evaporate the location, they could be playing in the Foxtons Estate Agents next door and maintain the instensity and keep the party up) everything is going wrong. But it doesn’t, Pissed Jeans just has it’s own command and keeps everything happening. Drummer gashes his hand open, bad. Keeps playing, his drumsticks are blood-varnished bright red. Seriously. Second last song the kick drum breaks. Lesser bands would, at that point, cap the set with a quick hand across the throat gesture and go bitch about the show at the merch table. Nope, Pissed Jeans go to big trouble to get the support band’s drums (surfed to the stage from the back of the sold out room), (the support band is Tropics, they blast it tonight, hot and tight from a million London shows in one fast week, guitar malfunctions don’t corrupt in the slightest)…Pissed Jeans set up the new kit and play-hammer home the last two songs. Blood is in the air. Drummer is sent over the crowd and swings from the lights. You need to live to see this band live. Make that happen. Please.

To another Sub Pop band that is keeping me insane.
No Age played the Tufnell Park Dome with Ex Models. I’ve been waiting for this. Ex Models kill me.
Where Pissed Jeans take on a different dimension on stage rather than on record. No Age are my headphone band. And tonight is tough on the crowd for all bands (Soiled Mattress & the Springs open). The sound here sucks. The Dome is a big room with an even bigger stage and a tiny P.A.
Ex Models suffer most. Kid Million’s drums are soggy. If you have seen Kid Millions play, you will know that this is NOT the case. But his giving his all up there, and it comes to us on the floor, through farting speakers, in mud. And the trademark altruistic guitar dynamics are squashed down in to the floor. It’s boggy in here. I push as far forward as I can, and I can feel the magic that I know is there. I can buzz of the amps and kit. But it’s tough tonight.
For No Age it doesn’t matter. It’s party. Stage duly invaded. I’ve listened to both ‘Weirdo Rippers’ and ‘Nouns’ so much that Dean and Randy could kazoo the set to me, and I’d still beam. I love it tonight. But what’s with the beer spraying trend kids? Buck that trend right now, it’s just sticky.

Got to go, just got an email from Sparks.
For real.
You’re jealous.
I know.

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SPRING BREAK!!!!!!!

Thu, 15 May 2008 11:58:10 GMT

Big Sun blazes up London, makes it a different place. Wrenches a big smile out of the city-busy frown. It’s a great view from the bike.
Okay, so it’s gloomy today, gentle chill and grey. Whatever, I still got sun in my mind and I’m looking back over the last few red hot days and if that was my summer then it was a good one. Also what’s not to be happy about – The Dennis Wilson ‘Pacific Ocean Blue + extras (eat ‘em up)’ reissue is almost exactly one month away. That is summer right there, waiting to happen.

New band: Male Bonding. We played our first show. R.A.G.E. – a house party in Maidstone, Kent. We played with the amazing PENS. We just want to tour with PENS forever, house shows only. We will play your house.
Pulling in to Maidstone with the weirdest commuters/neanderthals I have ever shared a train with (what were those noises?) there’s people everywhere, Madonna is in Maidstone, the Kooks, Cribs probably, I don’t know, that’s a BBC big buck event, that’s a Madonna lifeline, that’s not THE party. This is the party, this Maidstone front room.
It’s the best.
Party is total “Spring Break”. There’s a trampoline in the garden, there’s a grad vibe happening. So good. Amelia, Steph and Helen are PENS, they are throwing this thing. PENS switch guitar, drums, casios, microphones so quick you just dizzy out. A whirlwind you can only whoop in to. You’re insane if you don’t move to it. Party winners.
Before PENS, Male Bonding played our four songs. It was really sweet. ATP felt a million miles away. It’s spurned us to do this thing, get a bunch of songs on, get with fun.

The party was fun. I don’t care what you say, we sang every word to ‘The Middle’ by Jimmy Eat World. And do you know what the song of the night was? Level 42 ‘Running in the Family’. For reals. I don’t care, you weren’t there. It was amazing.
Serious!
Spring Break!!

I’m so good on trampoline. I get some serious air. I nearly never came back down.

Back in London. In city heat, Tropics play New Cross. I’ve only seen Tropics once before, that was a barfly show so I can’t count that one. If you’ve been to a Barfly venue, you probably get what I mean.
Anyway, so tonight they were great. Slam-tight. It’s at the Amersham Arms, New Cross. Small pub vibe (did I really see a poster for FAUST @ the Amersham???). Tropics are on it. Matt Flag commands it on bass up front, in the middle. Jodie plays and sings so hard you lose your own breath. Dan powers cool energy back through pedals and quick guitar from the other side of stage and Robin draws everything in to his drumset and sends it out to us in beautiful dancing heart attack beat.
Great job. They are so ready for those Pissed Jeans shows.

The Mae Shi are in Town. So is Michelle (PRE’s USA booking agent and close friend). We’re got the Americans on our town now.
We go watch/hang with Mae Shi at Kings College show. They’re great. Good crowd that Mae Shi ends up inside with parachute aloft and distributing their instruments to the people. The after show is on the top floor and nobody cares for the after show, but the view is amazing. It’s all London, Big Ben/H.O.P far right, spanning London Eye, St. Pauls, Tate Mod to Tower Bridge far left. We’re all like: “Look American people, look. There’s London for you”.

And then I walk out in to that London and I wish I had my bike as I wait for ages on London’s time, for the London night bus.

Spring Break!

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Tour Extensions

Fri, 09 May 2008 12:22:01 GMT

Blog Backlog / Recapping / Oh I added some photos to my last post / So:
Tour extensions. We came off tour and on to some UK shows. So it feels like the tour only just wrapped. Now I can look back and try and scoop some word-worth up on to here. So it goes:

Jetlag busting and all happy with familiar equipment, our own equipment. Amp hugging. Play Luminaire, Kilburn, with L.A. hotcakes HEALTH. HEALTH is a machine right now, sixty-odd dates in the US, flying in to forty-odd dates in Europe. Lifers. And they just get better and better with every scorched performance. And it’s great that London sells out the Luminaire tonight to feel it. We open, and we’re all tight off-tour. Drives me mad, touring, drives me mad in that it takes a few shows to get good and you get good and it’s over. So I’m actually grateful for these three London shows, because we can be all good. Skeletons & the Kings of all Cities play Brooklyn wig out. Smoothcore. Nice, nice people.

A little rest/work/shipping TOME orders and we’re plugging in again. At the ICA. We play the opening of the new ICA show: ‘Nought to Sixty’. It’s a six month exhibition of sixty emerging UK artists. Definitely worth checking out. Lucky Dragons were supposed to play tonight, but got stuck in L.A. flying from Japan. John Wiese steps up and steps in.
Our show is amazing. London artist Giles Round provides amazing visuals for our set. Really works. And this big room is packed. Props to Richard Birkett, ICA curator, for setting this up. Was party.

From contemporary art gallery, to Turkish restaurant in one quick day. We’re called up last minute to play a tiny Stoke Newington show with New York’s Talibam! (also John Macedo of Queen of Swords & KKKK). It’s the bodrum café, and it’s tiny. And it’s so good. We play in pitch black, mic share, play off our amps, play tight-fright. Feels good. Props to Bill Kouligas for setting up an awesome show and to Luke Younger for playing insane music all night. Wow, the moussaka was SO good. Go eat there, and if there is rumblings and feedback creeping up from below, go eat that up too.
And that’s it, no more shows for a while. We have half an album to write. And then we have a whole album to record. We’re excited for it, excited to twist something different out of what we have created. Got to move in swerves. Got to keep moving.

Somehow I am also deep in practice with my new band: Male Bonding. Our first show this sat. House party. Regular party band.
Play/Play/Play

To play is to play.
I guess.

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Yes San Francisco Yes Sacramento

Sun, 04 May 2008 12:53:14 GMT

San Francisco grabs me. Something bout SF. It’s stunning approach. Over bay, Golden Gate Bridge, it’s warm, green, hilly. Instant feel. Tonight we play Bottom of the Hill with XBXRX. Tempo No Tempo open and they are a birthday party. All ages show, so it’s packed and it’s all party hats on stage, and I feel like we’re crashing.
XBXRX crash in.
I’ve so been looking forward to this. XBXRX is Vice Cooler (Hawnay Troof ) who is probably the busiest and definitely the kindest dude in the underworld (he more than took care of us in Oakland few days earlier) and Weasel Walter, who is weird legend in his own right and an equally busy-music-maniac and Steve Touchstone (Snowsuit).
XBXRX kill me tonight. I think they are amazing. They are having a bad show. Apparently. I think it rules. Sharp-shard clean guitars, like wrestling barbed wire. Weasel nail gunning, bolting drums all through. Vice the amazing frontman. Camp command. So good. I feel a little dumb when I tell Vice how amazing I thought it was, they clearly had a off-show. Those guys dissect it for ages in the dressing room after. I had a good XBXRX show.
Tonight the Mae-Pre changeover is seamless. Supergrooop style out. Show rocks. I lose my shoes. John loses his shoes. Eat the best Mexican food in all of America. End up in a big apartment playing pool with Dr. Dre and Jimmy Eat World and Kelly Clarkson and two “retarded” cats. Beautiful morning lounge-out in SF. Love these streets.

Last show. Sacramento. Mae-PRE have a radio show @ KFJC 897 FM. Warm campus. Clean. We record a live session. It’s pretty cool. It’s a filmed CCTV style. Mae Shi join in. Mae Shi tell us to turn it down live on air. We handover, Mae Shi buzz. After John PRE & Jacob Shi interview = dead air criminals.
We arrive at a house in Sacramento. The house is the venue. Witchdome. People are hanging around, on bikes and skateboards. We check out the basement and walk across train tracks in warm twilight. This place is amazing. I’ve walked in to a John Hughes film.
Back at the house: SUCKS open. Sucks feature members of the now defunct Hot Girls Cool Guys, who are incredible and were massive to us when we were getting PRE together. We’re in awe of these kids. Sucks hit and spiral in front of us. Brandon pulses and writhes with the snaking, spilling tangle of drum, guitar, amp-ache. It’s total destruction. Sucks suck sonik. Sucks rules.
We play next. This show is utterly incredible. I am actually pinned to my amp. It goes off. Basement is rammed and insane. I cut my head. Pleausure cut. This is the ultimate. House show, everyone going crazy. Perfect tour closer.
Mae Shi get two songs in and the Cops shut it all down. So good. This is how I imagined America. This is dreamy. Soon as the cops clear, Matt and Akiko have slung two tshirts over the back of the trailer, held in place by beer bottles and are selling a ton of merch.
That’s it. Tour over. Pretty incredible. Love the west coast. West coast peoples are so UP. West coast peoples are so down with it. The roads are long, long, long but the towns are kind reward. And we are richer for the people we now know. Friends forever.
Deep breath, trucker coffee, and we drive all through the night, truck lights in confusing distances like spaceships. Slightly crazy we pull up to Los Angeles as the sun rises. It’s special. In the hot heat we play basketball at Mae Shi mansions, with downtown L.A. skyline ahead and that Hollywood sign and its hills behind us and that very same day we are in London and it’s raining, it’s cold, it’s dark and it’s lunchtime. It’s heavy.

Time to sleep weird sleeps before we reunite with HEALTH and play London.

Wired.

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Seattle, Portland almost London

Fri, 02 May 2008 16:19:01 GMT

Ok, I’m back in the UK now. Not only am I back in the UK but I just played a show with a band from L.A. who we just played a couple of shows with in L.A. and now they are in London and so are we and we are playing a show…in London. See how music eradicates time, distance, geography…it is other. Where am I? I’m here and I need to wrap up the US tour report to give myself some sense of location and to bring us up to date with the HEALTH/Skeletons/PRE show last night. I’ll get there eventually. Here goes:

Seattle. Feeling the grunge excitement in the van. Mae Shi have a radio session so PRE escapes by foot to explore Seattle. Why hasn’t someone set up a grunge sightseeing tour? Have they? We would have bought tickets. We found the Crocodile. Notorious grunge venue / hang out. It’s closed down. Vacant spot, dust on the clean Seattle streets. We swerve tourist hell and slip in to a punk record shop: Singles Going Steady. Pick up some vinyl we can’t afford.
The show is at the Vera Project, an all ages venue which has the peculiar slant (allegedly) of being part of a youth community centre (resembles a college campus) set up by the one, the only, Mr. Bill Gates. Apparently he pumped two million in to this centre. Well it is money well spent. There is not enough all ages shows, and centres for people to screen print, to drink coke and to create.
Anyway, I have been so excited to see Talbot Tagora. We like them so much we actually forced them on to the bill. And they are amazing. Serious. Ani, amazing on drums, flanked by Mark and Chris. Sonically stunning. Vocals buried so deep in the enveloping timbre, so deep it sucks you inside the sound and you are in it, with them. Ani, totally non-plussed and incredible on drums. An indifference that is mind blowingly endearing. I needed to see this band so much. They gave us a tour CD, an album and 7” and it’s all I am going to listen to for ever.
Midwife sweep the floor and nail feet with sax and virtuo-guitar wrestling.
Past Lives is the new band featuring Nathan of Blood Brothers. More song based than BB but I love Nathan’s vocals. I’m in to this. I feel like I’m on my own. I dig it. Nathan is Hannah (Gossip)’s twin. It’s weird because tomorrow we are staying with Hannah in Portland. Family.
We play good. Then the mics break and Akiko breaks, and mics are flung in all directions. Tantrumcore. Amazing. The Mae Shi kill tonight, it’s a fairly light and parachute celebration.
We party all night at the house of Talbot Tagora. I sing too much Prince, too loudly. And the house erupts to Smashing Pumpkins ‘1979’. AMAZING. Seattle love in.

Portland. East End Club.
Been a lot of band bonding in the super van and tonight we decide to merge sets.
Idea being we sneak on to the end of Mae Shi’s set and jam on last riff and take over and PRE is in the house. Seamless. Would have been if my bass amp didn’t die on me. Jam is mega extended and when we get me working we rip out a storming set and Portland is mental. Brace Paine of Gossip, tugging at my keychain throughout the show and screaming for us to “retun to London” and bringing houmous and brocolli on to the stage. Pitchfork took photos: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/50305-photos-the-mae-shi-pre-panther-portland-or-042608
Panther is amazing. Just amazing. Just he and drummer and tapes and guitar. Stunning. Visceral and you want to hang with this music for ever. Me and Matt PRE are max-revved as Panther closes with a cover of Can’s ‘Vitamin C’. Matts favourite song, a killer bassline. We’re bassists all about the bass.
We stay with our friend Hannah from The Gossip and Hannah introduced me to my new favourite thing, I am totally obsessed: Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show Great Job. Watch and weep. We sleep for roughly one hour and drive a million hour/miles to San Francisco.

I got to break this up. For your eyes. Next post will bring us from San Francisco to Sacramento to Los Angeles to Kilburn, London. Hold tight.

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Olympia: Indie heaven and haven

Thu, 01 May 2008 13:57:56 GMT

Ok. PRE US tour. Pick it up. We left Chico, CA and it’s marshmallow gunk in the sunrise dust and make out for Olympia, Washington. I needed the scale of a small city like Olympia. And as indie tourist I am basking in the heritage here.
Walking by the anti-abortion protestors trying to find some breakfast, I suck in the air. It’s cool air. Seems quiet and alive here.
We play Voyeur, a tiny back room that rocks out. Rachel Carns (The Need / King Cobra / Twin) booked the show.
Midwife open. Good skronk-out / freak out / wack out / saxxxing / hurt.
Show for me is a flip. First three songs I hate it and I want to die, I don’t know why, but fourth song in and the whole thing transforms. The room erupts and I don’t want to stop playing. West coast crowds (north and south) are so in to it. Blows me away.
Joey Casio closes out the show, and I dance.
The lovely Joey Casio put us up at the Red House.
Red house is legendary. A punk house opeariting since 1990s. An open community house that has breathed in and out multitudes of transient creation. If you’re interested in this, check out the short documenatry on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gBcxR8NPUw.
Also, Red House is featured heavily in Abby Bank’s recent book ‘Punk House’. Get it.
Luckily the creative history and the optimistic vibrancy of the place outweighs your compulsion to push a hoover around and clean the bathroom.
The next morning, sitting out on the porch steps, I’m in awe as Joey points out the K Records HQ, directly opposite. An old Jewish church hall it also houses the Dub Narcotic studio. K Records has a massive influence on my interest in music, and has, in someway, by default, informed a lot of my choices about music. Also, it has had a trickle down effect on the ideas I have about my own label. The Tome Records logo is my secret nod to K. So I feel like I’m on a school trip at some religious institution, the only difference is that I want to be here. The sun is out on the steps of the Red House and looking over and beyond K Records, I’m happy.
We drive out past Sleater Kinney Road. Snap snap. We plaid up for Seattle.

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