May 2008 - Antigravity Magazine

Transcription

vol.5 no.7 may ‘08
your new orleans music and culture alternative
ANTENNA INN
MAKES THE JUMP
ALSO: MONDO BIZARRO I FLIGHT
JAZZFEST PHOTOS BY ZACK SMITH
THE BREEDERS I SAINTS DRAFT WRAP
www.antigravitymagazine.com
FREE!
PHOTO BY MANTARAY PHOTOGRAPHY
ON THE COVER:
Antenna Inn_page 18
This nine-piece is like nothing from Popeye’s.
FEATURES:
Mondo Bizarro_page 14
Who’s got the balls to prank Ballzack?
JazzFest Photo Wrap_page 16
Zack Smith tells the story of JazzFest’s first weekend.
COLUMNS:
ANTI-News_page 4
Some of the news that’s fit to print
The Rock & Roll Confessional_page 5
Iron and Wine moves Marty.
Live New Orleans_page 6
Songe reviews French Quarter Fest and more...
Music_page 22
Burn the Scene_page 7
AuraLee goes to Athens and N.O. Punks is back.
Saint Nick_page 8
The story of the Saints’ ‘08 Draft.
Guidance Counseling_page 9
Albums by: Animal Collective, The Dodos, Foals,
The Fuck Buttons, Gnarls Barkley, Hurray For
The Riff Raff, Man Man, Nick Cave and The Bad
Seeds, Nine Inch Nails, Plants & Animals.
Our guest advice-givers sets you straight.
EVENTS:
Sound Advice_page 10
Listings_page 26
Legalese from AG.
The Goods_page 11
Miss Malaprop gets trashy.
FEATURE REVIEW:
Previews of Japanther, X and Detroit Cobras,
Noizefest and The Sword.
COMICS:
Illustrations_page 31
The Breeders’ Mountain Battles.
Qomix, How To Be Happy, The K Chronicles,
The Perry Bible Fellowship, Load.
REVIEWS:
NEXT MONTH:
Climb the Mountain_page 23
Comics_page 25
Life Sucks.
It’s AG’s 4-year anniversary as we take a look
back at our very first issue and plan our anniversary party at Handsome Willy’s! Stay tuned!
your new orleans music and culture alternative
“Flight”
soars from
the couch
_page 12
Photo, From Left: Ashley Sparks, Mondo Bizarro’s Nick Slie, Lisa Shattuck
STAFF
Publisher/Editor-in-Chief:
Leo McGovern
[email protected]
Associate Editors:
Dan Fox
[email protected]
Marty Garner
[email protected]
Contributing Writers:
Andrew Bizer
[email protected]
Julia Botero
[email protected]
Bryan Funck
[email protected]
Dan Mitchell
[email protected]
AuraLee Petzko
[email protected]
Sara Pic
[email protected]
Mike Rodgers
[email protected]
Nicholas Simmons
[email protected]
Jason Songe
[email protected]
J.W. Spitalny
[email protected]
Mallory Whitfield
[email protected]
Alex Woodward
[email protected]
Ad Sales:
[email protected]
504-881-7508
Intern/Copy Editor:
Kathleen McCann
[email protected]
Cover and Inside Cover Photos: Zack Smith
We like stuff! Send it to:
111 South Alexander St.
New Orleans, La. 70119
ANTIGRAVITY is a free publication
released monthly (around the 1st, like
a gub’ment check) in New Orleans
and Baton Rouge, as well as online.
INTRO
letter from your editor
A
s I write this, it’s the tail end of an exciting end-of-April weekend
that featured the first weekend of JazzFest, games 3 and 4 of the
Hornets series vs. the Dallas Mavericks and the one thing between
the Super Bowl and September that whets my football appetite, the NFL
Draft. Add to that the process of wrapping things up on this exciting May
issue and, for me at least, you get a bit of a hangover.
I skipped JazzFest’s first weekend (though I am sorry I missed both
Ozomatli with original MC Chali 2na and Billy Joel) and instead watched
Hornets/Mavs Game 3 (we got hosed by the refs, in my opinion) and
prepared for the Draft’s Saturday edition. (For those interested, Draft-fare
included Cajun and green pepper sausage, beef and pork ribs, homemade
macaroni and cheese and enough strawberry Abita to take a bath in.) On
Sunday I nursed the aforementioned hangover while putting this issue
together, watching the third through seventh rounds of the Draft and getting
ready for Hornets/Mavs Game 4.
Now that you’re all caught up on my weekend, I’ll catch you up on this issue. We have another awesome photo by Zack Smith on
the cover, this time of local nine-piece Antenna Inn. If you think photography’s fun, try getting nine people’s schedules to sync up for a
photo shoot. Jason Songe interviews Inn drummer Eric Rogers, and this band certainly has some big ideas for things in New Orleans and
it’ll be interesting to watch them be implemented. We also have Dan Fox interviewing the guys from Mondo Bizarro and covering a new
play they’re pitching in with, “Flight.” Oh, did I mention that we have a photo wrap of JazzFest week 1, also by Zack? And if you say,
“Well, that’s not enough,” I’ll say, “But we also have a ton of reviews, all the columns you’ve come to love, and some awesome comics
too.” If that’s not enough, I don’t know what is.
Get ready for next month, as we celebrate our four (4!) years in New Orleans. We’re going to do a party over at Handsome Willy’s,
so get your calendars in shape while you’ve got a chance. I hear we might have some Guitar Hero action. And beer. —Leo McGovern,
Publisher/Editor-In-Chief
COLUMN
anti-news and views
NOTABLE UPCOMING SHOWS
6/05: Matt Costa, Delta Spirit, House Of Blues
6/08: Ladytron, Datarock, House Of Blues
6/14: Good Guys Album Release Party, One Eyed Jacks
6/16: Mudhoney, Birds of Avalon, One Eyed Jacks
6/19: The Roots, House Of Blues
6/26: Islands, Chelsea’s Cafe
7/05: King Khan, the Shrines, One Eyed Jacks
7/18: Club of the Sons, Circle Bar
7/26: Huey Lewis and The News, Spanish Plaza
10/25, 10/26: Voodoo Music Experience
11/17: Trans Am, New Orleans Arena
ANTIGRAVITY is a publication
of ANTIGRAVITY, INC.
KEITH KNIGHT LAUNCHES “KNIGHT LIFE” ON MAY 5
A long-time fixture on AG’s comics page, The K Chronicles’ Keith
Knight debuts as a daily cartoonist on May 5th, when United Media launches Knight Life. The move shouldn’t have an effect on either Chronicles or Knight’s other weekly strip, (th)ink. Congratulate
Keith over at kchronicles.com and read Knight Life at comics.com.
RESOURCES:
A READER CHIMES IN ON PHOTOGRAPHER FRANK RELLE
From Stacey Kmetyk (NYC-NOLA), via e-mail:
Homepage:
www.antigravitymagazine.com
MySpace:
www.myspace.com/
antigravitymagazine
I am writing to you about an extraordinary show I saw over the weekend
which I feel deserves to be seen by a wider audience. Perhaps that might
begin with you seeing it—I know you will feel as strongly about it as I do
upon viewing it.
The artist is Frank Relle, a photographer I am certain you know of. I am
acquainted with Frank by virtue of having bought a few of his photographs
of New Orleans houses at night. This past weekend he had a show at the
New Orleans Photo Alliance Gallery on St. Mary St. It was very low key,
and he seemed to almost discourage me from attending. I actually found out
about it in an unrelated email.
You may or may not know that when Frank travels to photograph the
houses at night, these days he travels with a police escort. I assume that the
experience is what gave him the impetus for this series of photographs.
Each photograph in this exhibit is of the scene of a murder. There is
no graphic evidence, there are no overt signs of violence in any of the images—just regular places, empty and quiet. His photographs manage to
capture locales where horror and sadness occurred with such care and grace
and dignity. The captions accompanying each image are sparse descriptions, offering the barest of information about the victim and sometimes the
suspect. Along with the images, Frank has included brief statistics relating
to murder rates, crime, and education in New Orleans. He also adds quotations from writers and other representatives of our social conscious.
It’s a very thoughtful, important little show. I urge you to get over there
and see it. I thought perhaps you could give it the kind of coverage where it
04_antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative
might end up being shown again in a more accessible, more public venue. I
think it’s a show that many people should see before each image is removed
and dispersed (I believe they all sold).
It should be noted that former AG-editor and current Filter
managing editor Patrick Strange contributed writing to a series of
Relle’s photographs that featured shotgun houses, a run of which
appears in the most recent issue of Constance.
THE GRAY GHOST STRIKES MOJO COFFEESHOP
In an e-mail received on 4/25, Michael Dingler from NOLA Rising told us about a N.O. CityBusiness article on the Gray Ghost:
As most know, The Gray Ghost is the one who is responsible for my legal
problems at this time. Last week, he went on a rampage and verbally attacked an employee of Mojo Coffee House at 1500 Magazine Street. The employee is a girl in her twenties named Alicia and is no threat to Fred Radtke.
City Business is the first to release the story by writer Richard Webster that
exposes the behavior that many of us in the uptown and St. Claude business
communities have grown accustomed to as normal from the Gray Ghost.
What the article doesn’t mention is the exactness of the tone that Mr. Radtke
took with Alicia, most likely because of the readership doesn’t really want to
read the filth that came from his mouth. His exact words to Alicia, as told personally to me by Alicia, was “Fuck you, you stupid bitch.” I also sought out
the owner of Mojo after I caught wind of this story and he had told me that
the place where Mr. Radtke had painted had actually been a color matching
attempt by the owner of the building to cover graffiti from many months ago.
Thus, they had done their part, tried to color match the area and painted over
it, though it wasn’t apparently to Mr. Radtke’s liking.
Many of you may not know that I have spent a lot of time doing community journalism on and off through my life. Most recently I have put my
efforts into NPN The Trumpet, but have put it temporarily on hold as I
strengthen my body of artwork. However, many of you that I am sending
this link to are still active and I kindly request that you read the following
link, draw your own conclusions, maybe get a little more back story from
the players involved, and do something with this story. Expand upon it and
report it in each your several mediums of journalism. I have the deepest pity
for Mr. Radtke in his dying cause and his behavior has consistently become
more controversial, derogatory, and seemingly angry. For him to disrespect
a working mother in front of her customers on a beautiful day is clearly
unacceptable in the NEW New Orleans...
http://www.neworleanscitybusiness.com/viewFeature.
cfm?recid=1053
Thank you for reading thus far, please repost the story for all who need
to know.
COLUMN
music
THE ROCK & ROLL
CONFESSIONAL
CALIFONING IT IN
by marty garner [email protected]
I
recently spent a week or so in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at the Calvin College Festival of
Faith and Writing. Calvin is a Reformed Christian school that prides itself on thoughtful
engagement of the arts from a Christian perspective, as well as open-mindedness in such matters. In keeping with their long-standing tradition of inviting artists not of the Christian tradition
to appear and speak at the Festival, Calvin this year invited Iron and Wine to play in their gorgeous Fine Arts Center at the conclusion of the Festival, and Iron and Wine principal Sam Beam
allowed a Calvin student to interview him in (of all places) the school chapel, where he at first
appeared to be stoned, but it was readily apparent that he was, more than anything, nervous.
And why shouldn’t he have been? There he was, bearded and brown-shirted like a monk in
front of a floor-to-ceiling organ, answering questions both about the creative process and the
role of biblical imagery in his work. For the most part, Beam’s responses, both in the words
he said as well as the timbre of his voice, mimicked his recordings as Iron and Wine: he was
soft-spoken and humble in politely refusing to reveal much about his personal life and made
careful consideration to not step on toes while remaining honest (“I hope this doesn’t offend
anybody,” he said at one point, “but I’m not a Christian.”). It was interesting to see him in
such a setting, though, without a guitar to hide behind and three hundred ears ready to listen to
stories (prodded out of the ever-respectful Beam by the interviewer) about recently being asked
by Wheaton College, another Christian school, to not curse during a performance. This question came twenty minutes after Beam referred to himself as a “badass,” to the delight of those
gathered. Beam alternated in his words between tension and calm, but his deadpan delivery
was only occasionally pocked with a Georgian drawl or emotional rise. I, for one, was hoping
that he’d at least drop a “y’all” in there somewhere, in the interest of keeping things lively.
That night, junk-country band Califone preceded Iron and Wine on the FAC stage, performing intricate and experimental folkisms to a (literally, I suppose) rapt audience. There was a sense
of hanging in time as the group crescendoed and decrescendoed, effortlessly mixing atonal guitar solos with pedal steel guitar and handclaps from a MacBook located next to the drummer.
The set was a mystical affair, replete with starts, stops, beauty, noise, grace, despair; meandering
through a thousand points of light and dark. After having held the crowd to their hearts for an
hour, the band downshifted and ended with a long, quiet jam that only barely moved; percussionist Ben Massarella tinkling bits of metal like he was in Wilco, guitarists Jim Becker and Tim
Rutili trading arrhythmic non-riffs with such gentle force that I began to wonder whether their
amps were still miked. To be honest, the genteel jam was very, very boring, but it was paradoxically impossible to turn away from. And just when it began to appear that Califone was going
to blow all of the capital they had worked for in the past hour by essentially forgetting that there
were warm bodies in the seats in front of them, Rutili leaned into the microphone and wheezed
the opening lines to an ancient Baptist hymn: “I am a pilgrim, and a stranger, travelling through
this wearisome land.” No chairs creaked; no shoes scuffed the auditorium floor. Then, just as
quietly as he’d begun, Rutili laid his guitar on the stage floor and Califone exited stage right as the
once-seated crowd granted a rare (for Calvin) standing ovation.
Califone’s show could only have ended with the recitation of those two lines. There are probably no other words in the musical traditions within which the group work that better evoke
what their set meant. I don’t know if Rutili is a Christian or not, but, if he’s not, it was genius to
say—say, as in to confess and profess—those lines to a crowd that would be collectively waking
up early for church the next morning. In two lines, Rutili summed up not only the wandering
“otherness” of the band’s music, but of the experience of trying to communicate and identify
with a group of people to which you do not belong. It’s tiring, and anyone who’s awake will tell
you that if you care to listen. It perhaps explains Sam Beam’s nerves as he sat under the gaze of
resurrection eyes that afternoon in the chapel, trying to communicate in a way he wasn’t totally
comfortable with to a group of people who, he may have rightly feared, may not have been totally
comfortable with him. By invoking a hymn, Rutili attempted to draw his church-going audience
to himself; by calling himself a pilgrim, he made his stance clear, a psalmic confession.
Art is about the relationship between the artist and his or her audience. A good artist should
make the effort to communicate true to his or her own vision, and a good audience should be
willing to have the respect for the artist’s individual worth to at least attempt to engage on those
terms. If art is about our trying to communicate what it means to be human and alive, we should
hope for ears to hear and eyes to see and understand the work around us. It should be no surprise
that we take such delight in art that communicates well; in a very real and literal way, it’s like
spending time with a close friend. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Califone’s set was
a magical experience because the people in the audience self-identify as Christian and are thus
inherently concerned with other people, because to do so would be to patronize both sides, Christian and non-Christian alike. But what the audience (prepped by a week of speeches from writers
both of the faith and not) and the students (taught over and again to appreciate art as a genuine
and honest form of loving one’s neighbor) and the band (attempting to create a unique, original,
and beautiful thought, which is a strangely rare commodity these days) achieved together was
something I think all of this was supposed to look like before we decided that the best music was
the sounds of our own voices and that the best films play exclusively in our mirrors.
In other words, it was a holy communion of the highest order, in some ways on par with
any trip to the altar rail. It shifted boring show after boring show into an inarguable logic;
one of those strange moments of grace that glides like an expert bobsledder’s icy groove, at
once wild and completely tamed.
05
antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative_
COLUMN
local music
LIVE NEW ORLEANS
SONGE REMEMBERS THE ‘90S
by jason songe [email protected]
HEY, REMEMBER THE ‘90S?
Maybe because I’ve wanted my rock a little fluffy and innocent as of late, I got back into
Semisonic’s Feeling Strangely Fine. The 1998 album produced “Closing Time,” a fine
pop song that’s still hard to listen to because it was so overplayed. Could you imagine a
song like that getting played on today’s rock radio? They’d probably throw some weights
around Dan Wilson’s neck, put product in his hair, make him lift weights, and force
him to grow facial hair. “Singing in My Sleep” is a love letter to the mix tape, a song
that makes me not feel so crazy for putting so much time and love into my own. When
the album came out, I was in the middle of a three year relationship, so “Made to Last”
wouldn’t have resonated when I first heard it, but I remember at some point attaching
post-relationship peace to this lyric: “I hope you last a long, long time.” “Secret Smile”
celebrates the treasures of intimacy, while “DND” is a straight up love-makin’ jam.
Man, the slinky synthesizer gets me every time.
You might remember The Verve Pipe’s “The Freshmen,” if not by name, then definitely by ear. Talk about overplayed. The band made a mini comeback with 2001’s
Underneath. The album’s not very good, but it sounds fairly relevant thanks to the production of Fountains of Wayne songwriter Adam Schlesinger. “Only Words” is the best
song on the album.
I was reading Pitchfork today, and some pissant was talking shit about Stone Temple
Pilots. They were (and apparently are) a good band whose only sin was their first album,
which was misogynistic and an approximation of what was currently popular in rock.
Their best album is 1996’s Tiny Music. Check out “Adhesive” for wow factor. I mean, it’s
got a fuckin’ trumpet solo! What a dickhead. That’s why I’m reading The Onion’s A.V.
Club (they’re less exclusive) more and more and Pitchfork less and less.
RANDOM THOUGHTS
Look out for Washboard Chaz’s new band, Washboard Rodeo, a Western swing band
with Matt Rhody on violin, Dr. Jimbo Walsh on acoustic bass, Matt Johnson on guitar, and Neti Vaan, when she’s around...Not since Belle and Sebastian’s “Your Cover’s
Blown” have I been so entranced with a song. How wacky and brash is Black Francis’
new song, “The Seus?” Is it really about Theseus? I’d provide a link to it, but there’s no
YouTube for it, yet. It’s on Francis’ new EP, Svn Fingers. Frank Black has earned people
calling him Black Francis again...Sudoku is addictive. Have you all played this? It’s a
numbers game and the best way to prove to my Dad that I can do something right when
it comes to math. Watch the hours fly by...This month I saw the coolest movie, Salt
Dreams, wherein JT Nesbitt and a his team from New Orleans take a formerly Katrinamuddied Lincoln to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to race for a land speed record.
Heartwarming, just heartwarming. JT is a hero. Fuckin’ A, man. Fuckin’ A...Doesn’t
Jonathan Richman sound like he’s always about to break into a Christopher Walken
impression? Or sometimes, at least?...Mastodon would be better off with less of a prog
drummer—can you imagine if Dave Grohl was behind the kit?...”Great Big No” by The
Lemonheads is such a great song...The New Pornographers drummer is pretty sublime...Gas is $3.79 at Shell?! Godspeed, all you touring bands...In an article on R.E.M.
in SPIN, Michael Azerrad works hyperbole about their new album into the “comeback”
angle because, well, drama sells. If Azerrad said REM’s last album was their only bad
one in the last twenty-five years (which is the truth), well, that’s not as interesting as saying they went off track the last ten years, and hey, they’re back, and this is the album you
really need to buy! How can anyone say “Reveal” or “Up” aren’t good albums? So what
if they didn’t sound like classic REM? Berry leaving the band allowed them to evolve...I
had regular coffee for the first time in a while a week ago. I normally get a cappuccino or
an iced mocha. Damn, coffee is awesome! I got all excited about doing work. I thought
I was one of these people that could get up and at ‘em without coffee, but maybe I could
have been so much more productive all this time...
BLIND MELON AND EVERCLEAR—THE HOWLIN’ WOLF—APRIL 17TH
I walked in, and it was fairly full in The Wolf. Blind Melon had started playing fifteen
minutes earlier (when they opened with “Galaxie.” ‘doh!), and they continued for ninety
more minutes before they called it quits. Someone told me they played so long to punish
Everclear for having such a long soundcheck. It was apparent why they reached a certain
level of success. Their band is tight and talented. I didn’t hear one song I recognized,
but it didn’t matter. They rocked, knowing when to jam out psychedelic and when to
pull it in tight and explode. The singer who’s taken over for Shannon Hoon was a spot
on mimic, which meant that he had an amazing voice. I hate to say this, but it seemed
like he had a better voice than Hoon. That guy was not fuckin’ around. He was there to
blow everyone away, while also during a song break giving props to Hoon and asking
the crowd’s forgiveness for taking Hoon’s place. When Everclear came on, it was late,
and I was tiring. I enjoyed “Father of Mine,” but by song four, I was already annoyed
by their post-second album material. I checked the setlist at the soundboard, and sure
Continued on Page 33...
COLUMN
local music
BURN THE SCENE
BETTY CROCKER, PUNK ROCKER
by auralee petzko [email protected]
I
t’s been busy here lately, but I’ve still managed to find time for fun things. I went to
the Strawberry Festival in Ponchatoula a few weekends back, marking the third anniversary of me living in this fine city, and returned with a sunburn (my second of the
year!) and a flat of strawberries. Local produce, as a rule, is excellent and the strawberries
here are no exception. Already I’ve made enough jam to last me the rest of the year and
there’s still almost half of a flat left. We’re entering into one of my favorite times of the
year, those halcyon days before the humidity makes breathing difficult and the mosquitoes
start swatting back at you. Enjoy it while it lasts, in a week or so it will be so oppressively
hot and we’ll all be wishing for it to be December again.
We Need to Talk road tripped out to Athens, Georgia last weekend for a friend’s birthday show and, while we all had a fantastic time, I have to say that my high point was arriving in Athens after the 8-hour-plus car trip to find the cheeseburger-shaped birthday cake
(long story, don’t ask) I had baked for my friend had also arrived unscathed and in one
piece. This was a big deal, as a decent amount of time and effort (and some cursing and a
couple of tears) went into the creation of this food-shaped, uh, food and I would be damned
if I had to watch all of that hard work be lost on an abrupt turn or too-quick stop, smudging
the hamburger bun frosting or breaking the graham cracker cheese slices. I also credit the
Tupperware cake caddy that housed this epicurean creation for preventing any unfortunate
accidents. Definitely one of the best kitchen-related investments I’ve ever made, and I say
this being the proud owner of both a stick blender and an electric juicer.
But since this is not a column about culinary exploits (though in thinking on it, how
awesome would that be?) but rather about
music and culture, why not stick to the topics at hand? While at the show in Athens, I
was subject to a decent amount of awkward
conversation with more than a few people,
some of them in a slightly-less-than-sober
state. I am absolutely terrible at making
small talk, especially with people I’ve never
met before, which is why I tend to hug the
walls at engagements like this and stick to
my Shirley Temple and mind my own business. But despite my precautions, fate threw
me for a loop last weekend as the inadvertent, inebriated new friend I made in Athens
not only had just returned from a vacation
to New Orleans, he was also a fan and avid
reader of ANTIGRAVITY! Imagine my surprise when I found myself five hundred miles
away from home, talking to someone about
eating crawfish at the Cafe Du Monde (like
I said, he was drunk) and going to shows at
Checkpoint Charlie’s. For once, I actually had something to talk about! Namely, how I
don’t eat crawfish (not ever, no way, no how) and how bar shows are bad news because
I always get home so late from them and I can barely function on eight hours of sleep,
let alone anything less than that. Overall, it was a decent weekend; my friends there are
great, I got to miss work, the birthday cake was well received, we didn’t sound too bad
when we played, and it’s nice to see scenes in other places besides the one that you’re
used to.
In local news, the N.O. Punks website has returned after a two-year hiatus and is already
shaping up to be a decent resource for New Orleans independent music. A reincarnation of
the first N.O. Punks web site, which was in operation between 2004 and 2006, N.O. Punks
is an excellent place to find news updates on all sorts of local bands, not just hardcore or
punk rock. The site is impressively comprehensive and is updated multiple times a week
with news stories, interviews with local musicians, videos of local bands, and notices for
upcoming shows. Anyone who has any sort of information on New Orleans-related independent music is encouraged to submit it to the site. There’s also a link on the main page
to a Flickr site dedicated to photography from New Orleans DIY shows; recent postings
include Capitol Offense, The Converts, The Switchblade Combs, The Pests, Acts of Sedition, and a bunch more. The site has been online for less than a month and already there
are more than thirty postings, with much more to come. I’m hoping that N.O. Punks, since
it encompasses a broader spectrum of local music, will encourage more people to check out
bands and become more involved.
Summer show season is starting up and I’m looking forward to sweating along with
some excellent bands. Japanther is coming back on May 16th and will be playing The Big
Top with the Pharmacy and local sweeties Rougarou. On the 17th, there’s going to be a
huge all-day fest sort of thing going on at Handsome Willy’s with Fatter Than Albert,
Black Belt, A Living Soundtrack, and a whole slew of others [see pg. 15]. And Kakistocracy is going to be in Baton Rouge on the 19th with Straightjacket Nation (from Australia!) and Jude Fawley. As always, check noladiy.org and now nopunks.blogspot.com for
more info!
Photo by Kitty Hill
07
COLUMN
sports
SAINT NICK
SAINTS ‘08 DRAFT REVIEWED
by nicholas simmons [email protected]
S
aints subplots were flying just before NFL Draft 2008, where the team was scheduled to pick
no.10 overall. We knew the Saints’ two biggest needs (Defensive Tackle and Cornerback), and
pretty much the 1st-round-caliber talents the team was interested in, both of whom the Saints
would have to trade up for: USC DT Sedrick Ellis and a player New Orleans coveted most of all,
LSU DT Glenn Dorsey. If a trade couldn’t be made, the speculation was that the Bengals, picking
immediately before the Saints, would take Ellis and the Saints would be left to take an excellent LB,
USC’s Keith Rivers. Other rumors swirled: would the Saints trade their second round pick (no.40
overall) to the Giants for TE Jeremy Shockey? Would they trade with the Eagles for starting CB Lito
Sheppard, made available after Philly signed Asante Samuel but who wants a new, big contract?
Local station WDSU reported the Saints were interested in moving all the way up to the no.2
pick (in a trade with the Rams that would’ve given starting LT Jammal Brown to St. Louis) to
grab Dorsey, but that didn’t materialize. It was also strongly rumored that either the Rams or the
Falcons, who owned the third pick, would snatch Dorsey. When the Rams instead chose DE
Chris Long and Atlanta instead took their QB of the future, Matt Ryan, the Dorsey-lovers caught
a fever. Then, the Raiders took RB Darren McFadden at no.4 and the Saints made their move, trying to trade with the Kansas City Chiefs. Except the Chiefs’ brass wanted not only the no.10 pick,
but also the no.40 pick and a first round pick in 2009, and the Saints wisely decided to hold off and
turn their attention to Ellis. Now, with New England (already with Pro Bowl defensive linemen
Vince Wilfork and Richard Seymour) picking at no.7, the Saints traded up, giving up their third
round pick and swapping positions in the fifth. It was a much cheaper trade and one that gave the
Saints a much-needed dominant DT that can both stop the run with his big frame and rush the QB
with unusual quickness, with the added bonus that his coach is already familiar with him—new
Saints line coach Ed Orgeron recruited Ellis to USC.
Ellis should already be penciled in as a starter next to massive DT Hollis Thomas, and with the
rest of the Saints’ ’07 line back, he allows the team to create a much more fluid rotation and the
luxury of having four pass rushers on the field on obvious passing downs (it’s been theorized that
the signing of Jaguars DE Bobby McCray allows a rushing line of McCray, DEs Charles Grant
and Will Smith and a DT that now would be Ellis).
After the trade for Ellis, the next biggest rumor came in focus: the prospect of Shockey, the New
York TE who sat out the latter part of the season and the team’s playoff and Super Bowl run with
a broken leg, coming to New Orleans to reunite with Sean Payton, who was the Giants’ offensive
coordinator during Shockey’s rookie year in 2000. As of Saturday morning, talks with the Giants had
been on, off, on and off again. The Saints ultimately were willing to part with their second round pick
(though there were reports of Saints insiders wanting to give up no more than a third, but that was impossible after that pick was traded to New England in the Ellis trade), but New York wanted more and
the Saints stood their ground, as well they should have. The no.40 pick is a very high pick to give up for
an eight-year veteran who’s battled leg injuries, is said to not only welcome but has all but demanded a
trade, and is rumored to not be wanted by some New York teammates who believe the Giants offensive
actually improved after he left the lineup. Before the draft, word was the Giants wanted Saints S Roman
Harper, a rising star on our defense, and New Orleans refused. After talks stalled on Friday, the thinking was the trade would happen while the Saints were on the clock at no.40, when the Giants would
realize the Saints wouldn’t budge and they needed to deal their disgruntled player. Instead it was both
teams who held their ground and again the Saints did well in not giving up too much for a player at a
position they have options at—after all, last year’s TEs all are back for ’08 (Eric Johnson, Billy Miller
and Mark Campbell) and while Shockey would’ve been a welcome addition to our offense because
of his run-blocking skills, he was still a bit of a risk and was borderline worth the no.2 pick offered. The
pick was instead used on Indiana CB Tracy Porter, who grew up in Port Allen, La.
Porter will come in and provides some insurance in case Mike McKenzie doesn’t immediately
return from last year’s late-season knee injury and immediately competes with recent acquisition
Aaron Glenn and incumbent backup Jason Craft for a primary backup spot and gives our defense
depth behind Randall Gay, Jason David and Usama Young.
Whatever you think about the first day of the Saints’ draft, you have to admit that they filled
their needs while not giving up a king’s ransom to get the players they wanted. The Lito Sheppard
trade never panned out and the Shockey trade remains a slim possibility, so perhaps the run of
offseason acquisitions hasn’t ended yet.
The Saints picked developmental prospects on the draft’s second day, where they were left with
two fifth round selections and one each in the sixth and seventh. They first traded the 7th rounder
to the Lions to move up in the 5th, where they picked N. Carolina State DT DeMario Pressley,
then they chose Nebraska OT/G Carl Nicks with their second pick in the 5th. In the 6th they found
a potential kicker of the future in Wisconsin’s Taylor Mehlhaff before trading their ’09 6th rounder to the Packers to return to this year’s 7th round to grab Michigan WR Adrian Arrington.
Mehlhaff will compete with incumbent K Martin Gramatica and perhaps make the team as a
kickoff specialist. It wouldn’t be the first time the Saints carried two kickers, so it won’t be a surprise if Melhaff impresses during the preseason and makes the roster. The Saints have a good track
record with grooming offensive lineman, so Nicks is at the least a practice squad prospect, as is
Arrington. Those two dropped in the draft due to off the field incidents, but as with Ellis the Saints
had extra information as TE coach Terry Malone had a hand in recruiting Arrington and Payton
is friends with Nicks’ college coach, Bill Callahan.
Overall, the Saints added a couple of key components to their roster in Ellis and Porter and
potential future starters on the second day. This year’s NFL Draft was certainly fun to watch, but
we’ll have to wait until at least the end of the ’08 season before giving it any kind of grade. It definitely gets us primed for the preseason, though, and I can’t wait until August, when we can watch
this team start to come together.
COLUMN
advice
GUIDANCE
COUNSELING
WHO’S GOT PROBLEMS?
this month’s counselor: imagine “the” band
W
hile so many lead singers hide behind
the volume of their fellow bandmates
or, worse, languish away on Craig’s
List searching hopelessly for the talent to back
their rise to fame, Egos Personos’ Imagine “the”
Band waits for no one and hides behind nothing.
His onstage spectacle will either make you a believer or a hater in seconds, but either way it’s a
performance you have to respect. Bounding out
(alone) in his wet suit, training shoes and headphones, he belts out original songs (his hit being
the undeniable “Buick”) as well as covers like the Bee Gees’ “Staying Alive” and the air-vocalist classic “Born to be Wild.” Nor does he shy away from any genre, seamlessly switching
from the country song “Look Both Ways (Before you Cross My Heart)” to the power-violence
of “Knife Fight” and “Mean Face.” We here at AG believe that his fearless and physical approach to music and his hypnosis skills make him this month’s perfect choice for some mental
healing. So without further ado: “Hailing from Hollywood.... Florida, excited to be in [your
hometown’s alternative media publication], here he is, Imagine! “The!” Baaaaaand!!!!!!!
My girlfriend has a big problem with me playing video games all the time. I usually don’t play that
much, but she doesn’t even approve when I play two or three nights a week. I’ve tried to tell her that it’s
not any different from going to the bar for a few hours and having “guy talk,” but she won’t budge—
pretty soon it’s going to be the XBox or her.
—Andrew D.
Either there’s something wrong with her vagina, or there’s something wrong with you. I, for
one, would much rather be having a good time with my lady in the sack than sitting on my
ass in front of a video game, any day; but maybe that’s just me. I like having sex and showing folks a good time, that’s what I learned when I started my Inspir-a-thons with the Mass
Hypnosis Revival Center of Toltimach. We at the MHRC strive to elevate on many different
levels; we’re teaching Racoons how to shoot handguns and Alligators how to operate Amish
computers. There’s a lot of work to do, and YOU need to do it! So stop acting like a damn
cog and BE the whole fucking sprocket, shaft and ENGINE!
I’ve been feeling this religious “pull” for a while now and it’s starting to freak me out. When I drive by
churches and temples and stuff, I want to go in them and pray, or kneel or do whatever it is that’s going
on. I come from a pretty relaxed family when it comes to that stuff (Presbyterian, if it matters) and of
course I think that religious nuts and right-wingers and those kinds of people are idiots... but still there’s
something to this whole religion thing that is keeping me up at night, for real. What should I do without
feeling like I’m going down some weird, bad road?
—Jimmy C.
Well, it sounds more like you need a membership to AAA for that road trip you’re talking
about, but if they can’t help, then maybe you should seek guidance through the same people
I get my mental guidance from; The Church of Natural Cause, because everything is natural,
human made is natural, because humans are natural. Everything starts from something of
this earth, even plastic. Robots are natural because humans made robots; but who will stop
the robots? Can we honestly say that robot made robots will be natural? Yes. They will be
the next natural inhabitants of this earth; what’s left of it naturally. So give now to the Clear
Vision Foundation to help support my candidacy for president in 2020. E.P. in 2020 “I have
a Clear Vision for America’s Future!”©
My brother is a dick, no doubt about it. He’s twenty-five, I’m twenty-three, and we both go to Tulane.
Every week we go to ‘80s night and as soon as I find a sweet girl and make a move, he swoops in and
one-ups me. It got to the point where I started going without him, but he shows up anyway and finds me.
I even tried getting him kicked out, but that didn’t even work--he still picked up my girl on his way out! I
know ‘80s night is a deep pool, but he’s benefiting from all my hard work. Should I kneecap him?
—Caleb H.
Well this is easy; get your ear to the ground and find out who’s packin’; and by packin’ I
mean who’s carrying around an STD of some type, hopefully something that will last a life
time like Herpes so he’ll always remember this lesson. You pick up on this girl, he moves in
and POW he’ll never mess with your ladies again. If he tries to move in, simply introduce
him; “so and so, this is my brother______;” and in a whisper to her ear; “he got a real bad
case of herpes last year, nasty story I’ll tell you all about it later.” You’re covered.
Continued on Page 33...
NEED SOME ADVICE? SEND YOUR PROBLEMS TO:
[email protected]
09
COLUMN
legalese
SOUND ADVICE
PATRIOTIC TRADEMARKS
by andrew bizer [email protected]
Dear Andrew,
I read that the New England Patriots tried to trademark the phrase, “19-0 The
Perfect Season” even though they lost in the Super Bowl. How could they do this
when they didn’t go 19-0. They went 18-1!
Thanks,
Glenn G.
Glenn,
For those readers who do not follow the NFL, here’s a little background to Glenn’s
question: In the history of the NFL, only one team has achieved perfection by
winning all their games, including the Super Bowl. That team was the 1972 Miami
Dolphins. Last season, the New England Patriots seemed destined to win all of their
games as well (even though they were caught by the league for cheating, but that’s
another story for another day). On January 17, just before they played in the game
that would propel them into the Super Bowl, the New England Patriots filed an
“intent to use” trademark application with the United States Patent and Trademark
Office for the phrases “19-0” and “19-0: The Perfect Season.” However, the Patriots,
in one of the greatest upsets in NFL history, lost the Super Bowl to local boy Eli
Manning and the New York Giants.
A trademark is a word, logo, or design used by a manufacturer to identify its goods
and to distinguish its goods from the goods of others. The U.S. government protects
trademarks to protect consumers from being tricked into buying the wrong product. If
you like the New Orleans Saints and want to buy a Scott Fujita jersey, you can trust
that the one you buy is a quality jersey because it will contain the trademarked logos
of the New Orleans Saints, the NFL, and Reebok. You don’t want to buy a knockoff
jersey that is made of substandard materials that will wear out in a few weeks. The
trademarked logos let the consumer know that they are buying a quality product.
Because the whole idea behind trademark law is to protect consumers from being
confused about the source of a product, it makes sense that you cannot trademark a
name or phrase that you are not already using. However you can reserve a name or
slogan that you intend to use. So before the Patriots completed their “perfect” season,
they filed an “intent to use” trademark. This type of trademark application allows
the applicant to basically call “dibs” on a mark. The intent to use application lets the
applicant go through the entire trademark process while they are preparing to use
the trademark.
An intent to use application is valuable because it allows an applicant to know if
its proposed trademark would be approved by the U.S. Patent Office before investing
any money in a future product. For instance, Coca Cola might want to introduce
a new sports drink, but, before they spend millions of dollars promoting their new
drink, they’d like to know if the U.S. Patent Office would approve the name that
they choose. It would be a real nightmare for Coke if they spent a ton of money
promoting a product that the U.S. Patent Office later deemed to be an infringement
of another previously registered mark. Instead, Coke would file the intent to use
application and wait to see if it would be approved. Once it is approved, Coke could
then introduce the product and file a second form stating that they are using the mark
in commerce.
That’s what the Patriots did. They told the U.S. Patent Office that they intended
to use the phrases “19-0” and “19-0 The Perfect Season.” However, even if the U.S.
Patent Office approves their intent to use application, they will not have exclusive
rights to those phrases because they have not used them in commerce. And since it is
highly unlikely they will go 19-0 this year, they will probably never use those phrases
in commerce and will probably never be granted full trademark protection for “19-0”
and “19-0 The Perfect Season.”
Andrew Bizer, Esq. is an attorney admitted to practice in Louisiana and New York. He is the
founding member of the Bizer Law Firm, L.L.C. He previously served as the Manager of Legal
and Business Affairs at EMI Music Publishing and has worked in the legal department at both
Matador and Universal/Motown Records. This column is to be used as a reference tool. The
answers given to these questions are short and are not intended to constitute full and complete
legal advice. The answers given here do not constitute an attorney/client relationship. Mr.
Bizer is not your attorney. But if you want him to be your attorney, feel free to contact him
at [email protected]. Or, just email him a question and he’ll answer it in next month’s
ANTIGRAVITY.
NEED SOME SOUND ADVICE? SEND YOUR QUESTIONS TO:
[email protected]
COLUMN
fashion
THE GOODS
THE EXPANSION OF
TRASHY DIVA
by miss malaprop [email protected]
A note from MissMalaprop: in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I did work at
Trashy Diva for about a year and a half, until a new job stole me away. That said, it’s been my
favorite store for years, ever since I shopped for vintage at the Decatur Street location back in the
day. I’ve always admired Candice for her keen design sense and her savvy mind for business. I
think Trashy Diva is a local business that we’re going to continue to see big things from in the
years to come.
M
any New Orleanians are already familiar with locally-owned boutique Trashy
Diva. After all, the store has been around
for over a decade and boasts three locations, with a
dress shop and lingerie store in the French Quarter
(at 829 and 831 Chartres Street, respectively) and
an Uptown location at 2048 Magazine Street. What
many may not be familiar with, however, is the
story of how this uniquely New Orleans business
has grown under the watchful hand of owner and
designer Candice Gwinn and expanded into a company that has been featured in national press such
as Lucky and Elle magazines and sold in boutiques
around the world. I chatted with Candice to find out
more about how Trashy Diva has developed over
the years.
Miss Malaprop: Tell us a little about how the store began.
Candice Gwinn: Trashy Diva began on November 5, 1996 as a vintage clothing only
shop at 304 Decatur Street across from the House of Blues. It was a tiny shop filled with
items given by friends or purchased from the meager $5,000.00 of my college money
that was blown thrift shopping across the South. Mainly the vibe was thrift 70’s and a bit
punk rock with one of a kind items that I would hand sew. Thanks to the booming interest in vintage clothing the shop made a profit from day one. It all took a turn for the better around late 1997 when a wonderful vintage dealer’s collection was purchased from a
cool lady in Nashville. Everything in her collection was a bit older and a bit nicer than
anything previously found in the shop. Her items dated back to the Victorian era with
loads of 30’s and 40’s. After this I really strived to up the quality of the goods at Trashy
Diva and we then carried more fine vintage as well. As it became more expensive to
acquire and sell high quality vintage around 1999, I launched the Trashy Diva clothing
line. It began from a two-style test collection (silk charmeuse -black and champagne- 30s
style bias gown and a late 20s style coat). It was a slow transition, but more and more
styles and prints were added each season until the new clothing took over the shop and
won over our vintage loving customers. It wasn’t until around 2003 that any attempt
was made to sell the clothing line to anyone else. I’m not sure that I’ve yet made a serious attempt to market the line. It has just taken off mostly by word of mouth.
MM: How has Katrina changed business for you?
CG: Katrina really just put everything on hold for me. One major change was that I bought
out my former business partner’s share and became sole owner of the business. Also, every
year since opening in 1996 the sales had pretty dramatically increased. That is until 2005.
We were on track for a record year, and then I was just lucky to still have a physical shop
and undamaged merchandise to return to. Trashy Diva reopened in early-October 2005
and we’ve been working hard ever since. Much of the Trashy Diva clothing line was
scratched for the 2005-2006 seasons to save on funds and open a new lingerie boutique in
the French Quarter. I believe 2008 will finally top our pre-Katrina sales and put us back on
track for the future. This will be the first year since 2005 that we’ve actually produced a full
line of Trashy Diva clothing including a significant amount of new designs.
MM: What are your goals for the future?
CG: This year the goals are to really get the Trashy Diva by Candice Gwinn line out
there so it is easier to find in other cities. I’ve been working in a variety of fabrics for
upcoming collections (mostly cottons & rayons, with of course some of the fine silks) so
that the clothing line is more accessible to a variety of boutique types. Maybe opening
Trashy Diva boutiques in other cities where we aren’t well represented (Austin, Atlanta,
and others have been tossed around the office). One of the really big upcoming projects
is that we are working with Re-Mix shoes (out of LA) and some other great labels to
open a shoe boutique attached to our 2048 Magazine Street location. We’re getting lots
of styles in over the summer and we look forward to being fully stocked by August/
September. This won’t be just your average shoe shop, but carefully selected styles and
brands that were previously not available in New Orleans and that compliment our
upcoming looks.
You can find the full Trashy Diva line in the New Orleans boutiques or check it out
online at www.trashydiva.com.
FOR MORE MISS MALAPROP, GO TO:
11
FEATURE
theater
TURBULENT THEATER: FLIGHT HAS ALL
THE RIGHT STUFF
interview by dan fox [email protected]
Photo, From Left: Ashley Sparks, Lisa Shattuck
photo by zack smith
[email protected]
FEATURE
theater
T
he things that take us off the ground are
given about as much thought as glorified appliances these days. We jam our
asses into the seats and close our eyes,
wanting only to arrive in one piece. Airports feel
about as religious as Greyhound stations and we
all sing the blues about baggage restrictions and
the TSA. What used to be considered a miracle,
a feather in our collective cap—human-engineered flight—has been forgotten. The adventure
is over, the space race complete; now we just try
and avoid falling sky garbage. And tucked away
somewhere under a sleek metal shell, the mechanics of our own design hum along with the
smug satisfaction that come with decades of improvement and innovation as we tune it all out
right along with the in-flight safety procedures.
Nick Slie: His name is Frederico.
JB: I name my set pieces and I introduce them as characters; and I like them to be treated as characters and
worked with in that way, and not just something you impose yourself on. They’re usually machines [with] some
kinetic part that requires a collaboration between the performer that I made and the performer that’s come to the
show. I also think of them as environments or worlds (I
started as an installation artist). I almost never do my
work on a stage; there’s never any curtain that separates
it. Sometimes you’re seated, sometimes you’re moving
around. I want the characters and the audience to inhabit
the same world. I try to make it so it’s not stiff and make
the environment provoke very strong emotions more
than any other theater you might see.
AG: Do you ever feel that by working in theater you’re
an endangered species? America is such a movie culture and we’re all kind of ADD at this point. Is your
approach a reaction to that?
JH: Picking up on what Jeff is saying, in terms of emotion:
there was a pretty strong break that happened around the
1930s and 1940s where theater, which had been pretty
unified, divided into two camps: one emotion-based, one
orgasmic aspect of it—not that there’s anything wrong
with that!
AG: You don’t go to great lengths to hide the wires or
rigging behind your contraptions. What’s the thought
behind that?
JB: I’m fascinated with the mechanics of things. When I’m
on an airplane I like sitting over the wing; I like watching
the flaps move, the hydraulic cylinders that move them,
that kind of thing. When I see that, I kind of understand
what’s happening a little bit. In performances—it’s not a
magic show. I don’t want people to be caught up in how
something’s working, because it’s more magical for me
and I think for the audience when they see how something works right away. In Flight, they have ropes on the
wings and I purposefully made them white so you really
see them. I could’ve made them black, but I want them
to really see what was happening. When you get away
from being concerned about how something happens,
that’s when the real magic happens.
AG: Van Halen’s famous “brown M&Ms” rider clause
was really a way for them to gauge how safe the rigging
for their show was going to be. What are the brown
M&M’s for Flight?
The sculptures-come-alive performance piece Flight
(co-produced by ArtSpot Productions and Mondo Bizarro) aims to rip away that shell and expose and explore
every greasy cog and gear taking us somewhere far away.
Conceived by artist Jeff Becker, Flight is a return to the
early days of the space age, when we stood cowering under the shadow of these gravity-defying devices like so
many monkeys under a black obelisk. Equal parts fear,
fascination, imagination and reverence, Flight promises
to be as intricate and commanding as a jet engine with a
host of performers, musicians, writers and video artists
contributing to the work. ANTIGRAVITY spoke with
Becker, as well as co-director J Hammons and performer
Nick Slie, about the piece, as well as a little theater history and the empathy of airplane mechanics. We’ll be
cruising at about 1,600 words; feel free to leave your
seat.
“I name my set pieces and I introduce
them as characters; and I like them to be
treated as characters and worked with
in that way, and not just something you
impose yourself on.” —Jeff Becker
ANTIGRAVITY: What’s the genesis of Flight? How
did it come about?
Jeff Becker: I’ve had this lifelong interest in flight and flying, like a lot of people. I grew up in Washington, D.C.
where the Air & Space Museum is; we went on a lot of
field trips there. They had this film called To Fly!... My
first flight was probably when I was twelve or thirteen,
so I had never really experienced it except for that film.
As I got older and started making performance work, I
still had this fascination. After Katrina, I started to think
about flight as it related to “taking flight” or “fleeing”
and the dualities of flight as a means of rescue and safety
and a means of delivering destruction.
AG: Do you feel like there’s much fertile ground left in
the Katrina experience, as it relates to art?
JB: I don’t want it to be a piece about Katrina, and I
don’t think it is. However, you are the sum of your experiences and that was a huge, profound experience for all
of us that are collaborating on this piece—in many different ways—so it’s going to filter into it... I think there will
always be fertile ground, it’s just a matter of finding it.
J Hammons:
It’s a hard parallel to draw, but we
haven’t had our Angels in America yet. And it’s got to be
out there. Unfortunately, there were many, many, many
bad theatric pieces about AIDS until Angels in America
came. But to reiterate, it’s not a Katrina piece; it just happened to be the catalyst to get it rolling.
AG: Usually it seems like a performance is based on
characters, with the set developing around them. In the
case of Flight, however, it’s the opposite: you had the
idea for the set pieces and the performance unfolded
from that. How do you create an emotional core with
that approach?
JB: For one thing, I try hard not to use the word “set,”
because that implies exactly what you’re talking about.
JH: It does have a name—
action-based. And the emotion-based lent itself very well
to film and television, so that style became pervasive on
TV and film. And then theater seemed to get this complex about itself and imitated the thing that it created, so
it reduced itself to emotions and small psychological dramas. Whereas the other aspect, which has been going on
since the dawn of time, is action-based. The thing that’s
critical about Jeff’s pieces—he’s right to not call them
sets because that implies they’re very static. But they
move; Frederico moves a hell of a lot: there’s flapping
wings, it spins, it tilts... So it’s not necessarily a reaction
to things as much as trying to get back to the fundamentals of what theater should be: live performance, action
and interaction with the audience and not... where the
audience is programmed like they’re watching TV. You
can’t do that with these pieces.
AG: What’s the difference between Flight and something like Cirque du Soleil?
JB: Budget! No, I love Cirque du Soleil and I’ve seen a
lot of their shows, but I think it’s very different. They’re
circus-based and spectacle-based... As artists you tend to
make the kind of work you like to see. I don’t watch television and the movies I tend to like are theatrical-based.
No Country for Old Men I enjoyed a lot because it was just
about the relationship between the people. I see movies
with lots of special effects that don’t dazzle me as much
as a great theater piece. I would say that we are based
in theater and more of an intimate type of setting than
Cirque Du Soleil.
JH: I was in a dance company that’s similar to those that
are spectacle-based, and the difference is those spectacle-based things are like an awesome one night stand.
“Oh my god that was great,” but then you’re on to the
next thing where it really feels more intimate and part
of a relationship. And even if it does last one evening it
has the arc of a relationship instead of just the spectacle,
JB: I have a really good answer for that. One of our performers was on the flying couch and I was underneath
with wrenches and stuff and she’s like “What’s wrong?
What are you doing?” She was really nervous. I said,
“Look, you fly on airplanes all the time. There are people
working the mechanics around you, fixing things. They
don’t know you and they don’t care about you and you
trust them. I care about you and I love you and nothing’s
going to happen to you.” I’m really, really conscious
about that. I used to perform, and I was less conscious
when it was me, but when it’s somebody else I’m really
looking at everything, inspecting everything. Anything
that’s in my control I will make sure it’s safe.
AG: It says on your advertisement that you’re offering a discount ticket price for artists. How does one go
about proving themselves at the door?
JH: Bring your CV.
JB: Yeah, we have paper and pencil; you can draw us a
picture.
NS: We take you by your word. I don’t know anyone in
New Orleans who has their artist card. Maybe we should
make some of those.
Thursday, May 15th
Flight, Presented by Mondo Bizarro and ArtSpot
Productions, Opens, St. Mark’s Community Center
(1130 North Rampart), $15 ($10 for Artists,
Students and Seniors)
For ticket information and reservations, please call
ArtSpot Productions at (504) 826-7783 or Mondo
Bizarro at (225) 571-2929.
For more info on Flight, ArtSpot or Mondo Bizarro,
go to: www.artspotproductions.org and www.
mondobizarro.org.
13
FEATURE
culture
IT’S A MONDO BIZARRO, WE JUST LIVE IN IT
interview by dan fox [email protected]
photo by zack smith
N
ick Slie is the man of a thousand faces, recognizable
only due to an intense pair of eyes that glare out from
under an ever-changing facade. Part businessman, part
actor, part anarchist, he shifts seamlessly through them
all with terrifying agility. Together with Bruce France and Beau
Harrison, Slie created Mondo Bizarro after the three spent time at
LSU studying performance art. Since its inception, Mondo Bizarro
has ruthlessly infiltrated a wide range of artistic mediums, upsetting them one after the other until all that remains is a beautiful,
thoughtful mess. From last year’s sobering production of Catching
Him in Pieces, in which Slie embodied the spirit of troubled poet Everett Maddoxm to MCing the Dirty Coast fashion show this past
March, Mondo Bizarro keeps proving over and over again that
they’re a force to be reckoned with onstage and off. ANTIGRAVITY spoke with Slie and France one evening as they rehearsed for
Flight, a piece they are co-producing with ArtSpot Productions,
about some old war stories, the current state of New Orleans theater, and why Ballzack should watch his back.
ANTIGRAVITY: What was the Baton Rouge experience like for you?
BF: I hated Baton Rouge when I first got there and I didn’t really know anybody, but
we worked in this black box theater where we would experiment with ideas and put
them into our bodies. We were doing nine performances as class work every semester.
NS: We worked with these really amazing artists who happened to be teachers. Usually, you find really bad artists who become teachers, but this was not the case. Any of
these teachers could’ve been working in any professional theater or film throughout the
country. We were getting pushed. So, Baton Rouge actually became this really amazing experience because of this performance studies program—not a theater program. It
was this little black box in Coates Hall where we were taking courses in performance
art and film and media.
BF: The theater program going on across campus—they would say, “Oh, the acting
that goes on in the black box is not very good.” But the shows that we were doing were
completely out of the box.
NS: We got credit for burning a rebel flag on campus for a performance.
AG: How’d that go over?
NS: It didn’t go over too good.
BF: We were screaming at everybody to come check it out, and this one guy was in
the front of the line and he was like “Are we gonna let them do this? What are we
gonna do? Oh God!”
NS: Basically, the football players were upset because of the purple and gold confederate
flags, and the student council and the whole school was not going to reprimand people for
using confederate flags, so we said, “Fuck it, we’ll burn one.” So we called some people
out and we burned it. It was on the cover of the paper and sparked a little controversy, but
the point is that somehow we were getting credit for that kind of thing. Our teachers were
like “You want to go do theater, that’s ten percent of what you can do with this stuff.”
AG: What made you decide to start Mondo Bizarro?
NS: New Orleans is this place where you are afforded a really great opportunity to
create work. It’s not like your work gets seen here or you become some famous... whoever you become. I feel like it can be a real insular place, but in terms of what we were
doing we knew we needed time and space and that’s two things we have a lot of here.
So if you hustle you can make a lot of work and that was definitely a draw. The plan
was loose. Initially, we wanted to purchase and open an event space: that’s where we
thought we could be most effective. And after a year of looking at leases and meeting
with landlords and figuring out insurance we just needed to get back to making art.
AG: Mondo Bizarro is so aggressive and rock and roll, but you also have this
sound infrastructure. One minute you’re writing grants, the next you’re in full karate gear and heckling Ballzack at one of his shows. How bad do those two things
clash with each other?
NS: The straight answer is: the administrative stuff takes away from the creation of the
work, straight up and down, no doubt about it. One of the biggest dangers about being
in New Orleans is the creative class has this plethora of ideas and nobody knows shit
about how to do anything with them. It happens all the time. That is one of the things
I was turned off by getting here. In the last two years we’ve opened up an office and we
realized that you have to keep office hours and you have to show up to work, because
[email protected]
we’re trying to create this situation where we can do this for ourselves and do it alone. And that
doesn’t just happen by making theater. You’re not making money off the theater productions
or the film productions. Grants are one part of what we do, but we’re looking into some earned
income situations—
BF: Robbing banks—
NS: Including robbing banks, and shaking all the change out of Ballzack’s pockets every time
we see him.
AG: Where does Mondo Bizarro fit in to the theater scene in New Orleans? How are you
received among the different cultural circles?
NS: The theater scene here in New Orleans is very traditional. There’s some cabaret; there’s
musical theater that’s very popular; there are straight plays at a lot of venues... Maybe our
name is known, but our work isn’t as accepted in that scene because people don’t call it theater:
they automatically call it performance art. It’s that “other thing.” When we were performing at
DramaRama, I was standing on this suitcase where everybody was walking in. I had my eyes
closed and my arms up and some woman with this thick Westbank accent passed by and said
“Hey, I told ya, this is the performance awt.” People don’t know the language we speak, don’t
have an interest in learning it, really, and so they approach it that way and I understand that.
Our peers are musicians, visual artists, filmmakers—that’s our audience.
AG: Talk about your infiltration of the music scene here.
NS: It started with the Ballzack pranks. I was immediately attracted to him because he understands theater.
BF: Zack [Smith] told me if we were musicians we’d be The Bally Who.
NS: We’re attracted to the folks who have an interest in the theater and the spectacle of the
event and not just the music.
BF: And those types of events are more exciting for me. When you’re going to see a Ballzack
show and all of a sudden the giant squid comes running out and people are drinking and carousing—that’s a much more exciting place to be than sitting down quietly in a chair while
someone plays out a living room drama.
AG: How do you get a Ballzack type of crowd excited about theater?
NS: Two things. One, you can’t approach it as a “One-and-done.” New Orleans is so small
that you have to create a reputation for your work. When people come see a piece, they know
that they’re going to leave with an experience. It’s about creating that relationship. The other
thing is that when they come see your work they know they’re not going to see the same thing
you did last time, which gets boring for audiences...
The other thing about New Orleans right now is, the twenty-five dollar ticket is perpetuating
a class system. Who has twenty-five dollars to go see theater that you’ve never seen before and
you have no idea if it’s going to be good? It’s just not fair in this city right now to be saying that
our work is deserving of an audience who can pay twenty-five dollars. When you go to those
shows a lot of times you start to see an audience that doesn’t look like your peers; it doesn’t
look like New Orleans. The onus is on our community. What are you doing to wake people
up? Why should I go see a piece of your theater? Being challenged to answer that is really good.
Sometimes when a grant application says, “How do you connect with your audience?” I go,
“Shit...” because you’re so busy doing all what you’re doing that you don’t take time to answer
those questions like “What are we doing to shake people up?”
For more info on Mondo Bizarro, go to:
www.mondobizarro.org
FEATURE
music
JAZZFEST WEEK 1: WET, WILD, AND ONE
FUNKY EXPERIENCE
photos by zack smith [email protected]
This Page: Jon Michael (Theresa Anderssen
group), Big 9 SAPC, Brian Coogan
FEATURE
music
This Page: Midnight Disturbers Wet Set,
Barbara Lynn, Kevin O’Day, Al Green
17
FEATURE
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ANTENNA INN: DOING WHAT IT TAKES
TO MAKE THE NOLA MUSIC SCENE WORK
interview by jason songe [email protected]
photos by zack smith [email protected]
A
fter a year and a few months at it, nine-piece local band Antenna Inn’s sleek, smart and superbly constructed suites of jazzy prog rock are starting to draw a large crowd. They’ve been headlining shows more
frequently and are about to release their solid new album, Do/Work, with a party at Tipitina’s. Their’s is
the sound of a band working through ideas together for the first time, as they realize their talent and range.
As good as Do/Work is, you get the feeling that their next album is going be the one—it’s going to be crazy.
For now, though, Do/Work and its highlights: the angelic and Beach Boys-ish back-up vocals and the jazz dirge breakdown at the end of “Ernest Borgnine,” the high frequency bass and bright keyboard on “Ink,” the disorienting horns on
“Stockholm Syndrome,” and the swingin’ verses in “Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition.” Though the choruses
are pretty catchy, there’s something sublime about each song’s instrumental stretches. The lyrics are dark, anxious, and
purging, sometimes malevolent and sometimes self-help-like: “If you’re looking for love, stop, because you will never be
happy, even when you are. You will always be lonely...c’mon, people, fall back out of love. Call your mother. Mothers,
call your sons.” There’s also a rolling confidence throughout the band—one that could easily be perceived as arrogant,
except that confidence is tempered with a clear love of not only New Orleans and its rock scene but the city’s traditional
music, as well as a want, almost a need, to create a unifying force that makes it all more successful.
ANTIGRAVITY recently sat down with drummer Eric Rogers and talked about Do/Work, the band’s fan base, and his
good, old-fashioned sibling interaction with brother Ryan.
Special Thanks to the Music Shed for allowing
us to use their space for this photo shoot.
Photo, From Left to Right: Top: Cory Schultz,
Chris Guccione, Joe Bourgeois, Ryan Rogers,
Blandon Helgason; Front: Sam Craft, Michael
Girardot, Eric Rogers, Stephen MacDonald.
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ANTIGRAVITY: When I saw the band for the first time
it seemed like you all came out of nowhere, yet were
fully formed and already on your second album. When
did the band form, and whose idea was it?
ER: Antenna Inn was around years ago and actually broke
up a year and a half before Katrina. It was me, my brother
Ryan Rogers, Blandon Helgason (who’s still in the band),
and Matthew Glynn from Silent Cinema. We didn’t know
anything about booking shows. We didn’t know anything
about the scene. We were just kind of getting into it. We
were a cover band before that, but we started writing our
own stuff. Eventually Joe Bourgeois, who’s now our bass
player, joined and Matt would just sing. When the band
broke up, we weren’t going to get back together—my
brother and I weren’t getting along. Right before Katrina, I
was playing with Brian Adler and we were doing this dual
drumming bullshit. It was really fun. As a drummer—have
you ever tried playing with another drummer in the same
room? It’s awesome.
AG: It’s great [Laughs].
ER: You’d think it would be, “It’s my chance to solo,” but
it was awesome. We just fed off each other. Cory (Schultz) had just bought a Fender Rhodes, so he came to the
practice room. Bourgeois came up there to jam with his
bass, and we started forming these tunes that would become modern Antenna Inn songs. My brother even came
up a couple times but nothing ever really got set. Then
we evacuated to Lafayette and putting the project together
was the last thing on my mind. When I moved back, we
bought a vibraphone, and it became me, Ryan, Blandon,
Joe, Cory, and then I called Sam (Craft) after Matt didn’t
want to do it anymore, since I was in Glasgow. Cory was
playing trumpet. It was cool, but I wanted to do the double
drumming thing, so I kind of went behind everyone’s back
and I think that’s what we want to do in the future. We
want to bring this scene together. You have so many great
bands right now—you have The City Life, Metronome
The City, The Bally Who, A Living Soundtrack, Rotary
Downs. If I’m leaving anyone out, I’m sorry. You have
some great bands that have recently put out great records
or soon will. We need to start this coalition, this band of
bands. Among all the bands, we have so many resources.
If we pooled the resources and got everyone involved, we
could start something really creative—the next Saddle
Creek Records. To some extent, it’s still every man for
himself, and that’s the worst situation.
AG: I enjoy how college bands naturally support each
other, because they’re in that natural college community, even if they don’t sound the same. So, how do we
engender this in the older rock bands?
ER: One of our first gigs as the new Antenna Inn was at
The Howlin’ Wolf with Fay Wray and Metronome The
City. We were kind of a middle ground in that show. You
can’t force a pop band to play a punk rock show. Or vice
versa. Or have a heavily experimental band like Metronome The City, where you don’t even know what time
signature they’re playing most of the time, which I love.
I love watching them and being as confused as fuck. And
they’re all really super cool dudes.
AG: Really super nice.
ER: Yeah, they’re the most easygoing band offstage, and
then they get onstage and it’s the most crazy shit you’ve
ever heard. They’re one of my favorite bands around.
Anyway, back to your question. Let the audience make
the decision. The Long Tail is a good example. It’s an article, and now it’s a book, and basically it says, “Instead
of releasing just the hits, release everything, and make the
audience make the decision.” Like when you buy a record
AG: [Laughs]
ER: ...and some cheesy classical music playing in the background. “The Four Seasons” by Vivaldi, or something. I
think it might still be on YouTube.
AG: How did you develop your sound? Was it a direction you were going for or was it organic?
ER: I don’t think it was necessarily a direction we were
going for. One thing we stipulated when we got back together was, “Okay, we want to be accessible, but we’re
not going to let that hold us back from writing whatever
we want.” We said, “We have all these instruments,” and
we started writing these tunes before we had horns in the
band. We found what moved us and we went there. We
love so many different styles of music. We love Steely
Dan, Tortoise, Aloha, Tristessa, and a lot of instrumental
fusion bands like Mercury Program, too. We took all that
and we said, “Those guys have done that already. Let’s do
something new and create the band New Orleans has been
waiting for.” Steely Dan on PCP is the last thing I heard.
AG: Seems like you went down a different road than
most college bands. Your band seems like less of an approximation of famous bands than other college bands
you find.
ER: The thing with us is…half of us are in college. Blandon’s almost done, and after this semester Chris and I will
be the only ones in college.
AG: So, why am I grouping you all with the college
bands (because even though half of the band may not be
in college, they still associate and pull from the college
or recently post-college set)?
ER: Because we have that City Life, Glasgow, Fay Wraytype of fan base as well. When we played the Blue Nile,
they called us a couple weeks before the show and said,
“By the way, it’s going to be 21+ now.” We said, “We
“I think people who like Rebirth (Brass Band) and people
who like indie rock will go to Antenna Inn shows. We want
to bring this scene together.”
and called Chris to drum with me, and it came together
organically.
AG: Did you know how to play the vibraphone before
the band?
ER: Not at all. I’d never even taken piano lessons. I just
learned on the fly. Now it’s my second instrument. I knew
a little bit about the piano, as did everyone in the band.
That’s what makes writing songs in this band so easy—
because everybody plays either the piano or guitar, and
you can write a lot easier with nine motherfuckers. On
the surface it would look like, “Nine people? How do you
guys function?” But it works. My brother’s the main songwriter. He’ll come up with the initial ideas, and it just goes
from there.
AG: You must be pretty open to each other’s ideas for it
to be able to work.
ER: Absolutely. Lately, we started recording some tunes,
and Stephen and Michael from Fay Wray—they came in
late, after the seven piece show you saw at One Eyed Jacks,
our first show, with Rotary Downs—and we decided to
get them in full time so we could do whatever we wanted.
That was the whole goal. No boundaries. Live and on the
record, and on the record it’s even more because Sam is
talking about doing some strings—it could get crazy.
AG: So, if Cory wants to play guitar you have someone,
Michael, who can play trumpet. You have someone who
can do anything.
ER: Touring’s going to be a bitch.
AG: [Laughs]
ER: We know we have something really special to offer,
something this scene has never seen. We have something
that is going bring this scene together. You’re always competing with the Rebirth Brass Band, and with Antenna Inn
I think people who like Rebirth and people who like indie
rock will go to Antenna Inn shows. It brings it all together,
on iTunes, it says, “If you like this band, you’ll like this
band.” Continuing down the line, you’re going to find
some obscure stuff that you never thought you would have
liked. If I’m going to see band A and band B is opening
up, and I’ve never really heard of them or cared to check
out their music, but I see band B and say, “Wow, band B
is really good. I had no idea.” Even if traditionally I don’t
like band B or their type of music, I might go check them
out again and buy their record...
AG: And you might find another band...
ER: Exactly. Like, I didn’t specifically go to see the band
that opened up for Baroness [Young Widows], but I enjoyed them even more than Baroness. Like that. You give
the audience the choice or the chance to experience more
music. Instead of playing with the same bands or playing
by yourself.
AG: You have to trust the audience to have wide taste.
ER: Older bands are going to see how well it’s working
for the younger bands and follow suit, or I don’t know,
jump on the bandwagon early. What do you think they
should do?
AG: What you said. Don’t preach to the choir. Don’t be
afraid to get a band on your bill that doesn’t sound like
you. If they’re good, why not?
ER: Awhile back, USAD and Glasgow played together.
USAD is a metal band and Glasgow’s a Brit pop band, or
whatever you want to call it, but people enjoyed the fuck
out of that show. Plus, we were making fun of each other.
It was hilarious. The audience had a great time, and that’s
all they’re going to remember.
AG: Was that the one with the video challenges, where
Sam was wearing an ascot, and USAD was shirtless and
talking like wrestlers?
ER: Yeah. Sam just ripped ‘em a new asshole. He had a
fake cat in front of a fireplace...
booked an 18+ show, and that’s what we’re going to
have.” We said, “How ‘bout this: we charge $5 under 21
and over 21 is free.” We still made a ton of money that
night. We packed the place. There were 350 people in
there. It’s insane.
AG: I didn’t know you had that kind of draw.
ER: I didn’t either. We played that first show on January
12, 2007, and I told everybody, “Give us a year and we’ll
be headlining.” And it happened. We played The Blue
Nile a year to the day after that. Not only did we headline,
we brought a shitload of people.
AG: Since you’re using the repeating patterns on the vibraphone, it seems like it’d be obvious if you all screwed
up, but you don’t.
ER: Every band screws up live. I saw The Mars Volta, and
they screwed up a ton.
AG: It seems like that whoever’s playing the vibraphone
is playing it slower than you would a guitar, and the
notes mean more. Everyone’s ears are up.
ER: People are captivated by the vibraphone, especially
when there are two of us on it at the same time.
AG: I don’t know why I’m amazed when someone gets
on the vibraphone and is able to pull off a melody without screwing up.
ER: It’s basically a piano with drumsticks. The bars are
bigger. It’s probably the most fun I’ve had on an instrument. When Blandon bought that thing, we told him we
were going to all put up for it, but no one has yet. He’s in
credit card debt for that thing. It’s so cool. I can finally
learn how to play piano but still play percussion. Chris is
probably the most talented vibraphonist in the band, but
he plays it the least. Cory took the vibraphonist and ran
with it. Cory is our vibraphonist. If Cory wanted to play
the harp, he probably could. He could pick up any instrument and figure it out in a couple minutes.
19
FEATURE
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“We said, ‘Let’s do something new and create
the band New Orleans has been waiting for.’”
Photo, from Left to Right: Back: Blandon Helgason, Chris Guccione, Stephen MacDonald,
Michael Girardot, Joe Bourgeois, Eric Rogers,
Ryan Rogers. Front: Sam Craft, Cory Schultz
FEATURE
music
AG: Do you ever think it’s self-indulgent what you’re doing? Is that a worry?
ER: That’s a good question. Yes and no, I guess. Sometimes we’re playing and thinking,
“Wow, this sounds awesome,” but other people are going to like it, too. I don’t think
it’s ever self-indulgent. We write music we want to hear, but also music that everyone
wants to hear. At least I hope everyone wants to hear us. That’s our goal. We want to
break the mold between people that rigidly go to see certain bands. Fuck that. Go see
local music. What’s up with this Grey Ghost guy, tearing down fliers and painting over
fliers? Get a life, dude. I don’t know who he is. I’ve seen his picture. He probably has no
soul, at least not a musical one. Go out and enjoy yourself and have a gin and tonic and
sit down and watch a rock and roll band. Stop being a dumb ass. Tell me this—about
the self-indulgence question...
AG: I don’t think it’s self-indulgent, personally.
ER: Has anybody said that? I want to know.
AG: No. It’s just—you know—two drummers, two keyboardists, two vibraphonists.
Some people could say it’s self-indulgent. I wasn’t trying to imply it’s been said. I
just wanted to know if it’s ever crossed your mind.
ER: Definitely. Is this going overboard? I don’t think we ever do anything for the sake
of having an extra instrument. If we have a double vibraphone part, it was written that
way. Ryan Rogers is the main songwriter. Without Ryan Rogers, Antenna Inn wouldn’t
exist. I love my brother. I just don’t like him.
AG: Is it an Oasis, Black Crowes kind of thing, where you’ve got this inescapable
acrimony because you’re brothers in a band?
ER: Yeah. I’ve been in two bands with brothers: Antenna Inn and Glasgow. There are
always sibling rivalries. There’s always younger brother or older brother envy. “I need to
be the center of attention.” “No, I need to be the center of attention.” From the moment
Ryan and I were ideas in our parents heads—I remember when we were younger—I’m
about three years younger than him—I always got fucked over by Ryan. As soon as I
got older, I started fucking him over. I remember when we were younger and I didn’t
have teeth yet. Ryan was eating cheese puffs, and he put a bunch of them in my mouth.
I couldn’t even chew them or swallow them. My mom came downstairs—I was like that
for a good twenty or thirty minutes, and Ryan was chillin’, like nothing was happening.
My mom’s like, “What’s wrong with Eric?” Ryan’s like, “I don’t know.”
AG: [Laughs]
ER: That’s the epitome of my brother. At the end of the day, the sibling rivalry and how
much we argue doesn’t matter—we write killer tunes together, and that’s what brings us
together. We both have a lot of respect for each other as musicians and people.
AG: Was there a point where you had to say to Sam, “Hey, we need to make Antenna Inn a priority over Glasgow”?
ER: No. Glasgow has been on a hiatus for a while. We did that Throwback show at
Republic, but we didn’t really have any new material. When Sam’s not doing Antenna
Inn, he’s writing for Glasgow. Glasgow will officially come back. It’s a volcano ready
to erupt. Sam just wrote an eleven song Glasgow record and we’ll probably record this
summer. I’ve heard some of the tunes, and it’s going to be awesome. That’s his main
focus, but as long as Antenna Inn is doing their thing, he’s on board, and you have to be.
You need all nine members to function properly. People might disagree with that, but I
think without all nine you wouldn’t have the same band.
Saturday, May 10th
Antenna Inn Do/Work Release Party, Tipitina’s (Uptown)
501 Napoleon Ave., (504) 895-8477, www.tipitinas.com
For more info on Antenna Inn, go to:
www.myspace.com/antennainn
21
FEATURE REVIEW
music
The Breeders
Mountain Battles
(4AD)
“It isn’t about every song being
some genius home run. Music is
more eclectic than that. Records
are more eclectic than that.
That’s why “Wild Honey Pie”
is on the “White Album.” —Charles Thompson
M
ountain Battles is the Breeders’ White Album. Maybe
I’m supposed to woo you more, suggest and insinuate with all kinds of flowery descriptions of what this album sounds like (and don’t worry, it’s coming), but there
it is, my big, wet, sloppy kiss to you and also to this record,
which has made my ears born again. It’s the kind of album that shatters the critic’s system of stars, grades and
whatever ruler is put up to the latest offerings, but there
you have them up above there. The otherwise venerable
Onion A.V. Club, for example, gives Mountain Battles a C+.
calling it “shapeless.” Are we beyond the point of no return where albums have to be a string of easily digestible
hits, served up one right after the other? Maybe Mountain
Battles’ spectrum is so wide ranging it’s hard for those with
impaired senses (like music critics) to understand, even
though the Breeders lay it out quite simply on the first two
tracks. Opener “Overglazed” is an ethereal echo, an easy
refrain shout-sung over swooping guitar riffs and an excitable drum track. The follow-up, “Bang On,” then counters as a lo-fi, staticy hopscotch tune with lyrics that seem
deliberately unfinished, though the otherwise vivid insert
artwork (by Pixies veteran Vaughan Oliver) leaves them
out. The third track, “Night of Joy,” finds us in the dead
center and is the sweetest black hole lullaby you could possibly lose yourself in. The title, alas, does not reference (in
any discernible way) the low-rent strip club in Confederacy
of Dunces, though it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the spacey
Darlene humming this to herself as she practices her “routine.”
It feels like New Orleans haunts this album, if only from
afar. The weirdest moments on Mountain Battles happen
in the perplexing but enjoyable “Istanbul,” where spooky
organ stabs and abstract call-and-response vocals summon
the same kind of sonic mysteries that get cooked up late
night at the Spellcaster Lodge. When you sing like the Deal
twins, you can get away with practically anything and they
prove it over and over again, especially on their cover of
the Spanish ballad, “Regalame Esta Noche,” which the
Breeders perform without a trace of irony or any of their
abrasive texture.
A lot of Mountain Battles happens in twos (easy enough
with twins at the helm) and “Here No More,” follows up
on the delivery of “Regalame...” as a simple country-folk
tune. Kim Deal has shown her penchant for country music before (Pod’s “Fortunately Gone” and Last Splash’s
“Drivin’ on 9”) but “Here No More” reaches the farthest
into the past and pulls a long-lost hymn into this millennium. The wake up call of “No Way” ends the music history
lesson and recalls the swagger of “Cannonball” without
all the bells and whistles of that song, as if it were stripped
down to its stoner-jam roots and recorded on a cassette
four-track.
The range of this album is reflected in the collection of
engineers and studios that the Breeders used, from Steve
Albini in Chicago to Stagg Street in Los Angeles to the
Deal’s hometown of Dayton, Ohio to just “The Basement,” (where ever that is) with NOLA’s own Ben Mum-
phrey engineering. The Breeders are peculiar in their information, simultaneously crediting each engineer (including
assistants!) and studio but keeping us guessing at which
song was recorded where. The heavy hitting drums and
steely gargle of the bass in “Walk it Off” seem like obvious
Albini staples but the lack of specifics suggests it stays in
the family. Either that or it’s just another way the Breeders
like to leave their business unfinished, giving us all something to wonder about.
Mountain Battles is global in its reach (lyrics in German
and Spanish) and national in its production (spanning from
Chicago to Los Angeles) but the Deals’ hearts are clearly in
Dayton, where they chose to have their release party—at a
VFW hall of all places. (The footage can be found at breedersdigest.net.) The Breeders, joined only by a small camera crew and a few friends, enjoy their newest album as it
plays (vinyl, of course) through a home stereo set up on a
folding melamine table. The video, which spans the length
of the album (played in sequence), explores every angle of
the hall, from the chips, soda and humble party decorations to the portraits of soldiers and the trophies of the veterans, to the needle gliding along the top of the record. In
our jaded, irony-drunk culture it’s easy to anticipate some
kind of surprise around the corner, like what is this rock
band, complete with well-publicized demons, going to do
at this outpost of patriotism and war adoration? Kimberley
(so says her duct-tape name tag), upon digging into the
record-shaped cake congratulating the band, simply states,
“When you don’t do drugs, you feel everything!” And
that’s ultimately what this album sounds like: the exploration and fascination within the confines of a space, where
imagination and creativity can make even the most sparse
or barren landscape, in this case the present state of rock
and roll, come alive. And isn’t that what a perfect album is
all about? —Dan Fox
23
REVIEWS
comics
Jessica Abel, Gabe
Soria, Warren Pleece
Life Sucks
(First Second)
V
ampire stories are a dime
a dozen, and it seems
like every variation on the
mythology has been done.
However, Life Sucks seems to
offer a fresh interpretation of
the genre—think Clerks with
vampires and you’re not far off
the mark. Abel, Soria, Pleece and colorist Hilary Sycamore
serve up a tale of a wage-slave vampire whose eternal unlife is
filled with the same kind of tedium as that of Clerks’ pathetic
protagonist Dante Hicks, right down to the wisecracking,
more cooled-out Randal-style buddy. But, where Dante
only had to face down the possibility of a life lived in crappy
minimum wage-ville, Life Sucks’ protagonist Dave is looking
at an eternity. That twist, along with some really strong and
believable relationship elements, like a domineering “older
brother” and a girl of Dave’s dreams, makes Life Sucks a
compelling read.
In short, Life Sucks is about Dave, a vampire who night
manages The Last Stop convenience store at the behest of
its owner, Lord Radu Arisztidescu, who also happens to be
his sire. Dave doesn’t like being a vampire, refuses to kill for
blood, and gets by on blood bank contributions from one
of Radu’s business buddies and fellow vampires. His unlife
consists of watching Mexican soap operas with his human
roommate and dealing with the lackluster attitude of fellow
wage-slave vampire Jerome and his surfer jerk “older brother”
of a vampire Wes, which becomes especially harrowing when
he starts competing with Wes over Rosa, a beautiful goth girl
he’s been dreaming of for a long time.
Warren Pleece has never looked better than he does here.
The style is constricted, almost always featuring more than
five or six panels on the page, but that works to Pleece’s
benefit as he’s better at the smaller storytelling moments than
the flashy ones. In fact, the splash pages in Life Sucks tend to
be the weaker moments, as they don’t really have enough
visual punch to earn a whole page. But the moment-tomoment storytelling, the character bits that define the story,
are beautiful, and remind me in a lot of ways of the work of
Cliff Chiang. Hilary Sycamore’s colors should also be singled
out, especially the work on the dusk colors used in Dave’s
frantic rush home when he has his “meet cute” with Rosa
and the bright, fluorescent-lit vibe that comes off the Last Stop
scenes.
There are elements of familiarity in Life Sucks, but most have
a new twist to them. At this point, everyone’s seen the stories
about the vampire who doesn’t eat people and gets by on blood
banks. But Soria and Abel create an entire underlying vampire
economy and offer up an unusual human blood substitute for
Dave at about the mid-story point. The frustrating tedium
of wage-slave jobs and bizarre, demanding bosses has been
covered ad infinitum in the indie comics scene, but a boss who
hired you by turning you into a vampire and abuses the sire/
sired relationship to enforce six-night-a-week closing shifts?
A delicious twist on both the traditional vampire relationship
and the traditional boss-employee relationship.
The same familiar yet new vibe can be found in the central
relationship of the book. The Dave-Rosa relationship is a
familiar one. Guy is too shy to ask out girl, becomes friends
with the girl as she dates a jerk, finally learns the truth and then
turns to the friend for the romance that the readers have been
hoping would turn out. Except, of course, that Rosa’s vampire
fixation and Wes and Dave’s vampirism puts a particularly
interesting spin on the last chapter of the relationship. Life
Sucks is fairly light in tone, but the finale of the book gets into
pretty dark territory, and Dave’s inability to assert himself as a
vampire or as a person ultimately costs him quite a bit.
In terms of relationships and characters, Life Sucks honestly
doesn’t have a lot new to offer. However, it does offer a series
of solid fundamentals, so you’ve got characters who are either
interesting or likeable and, on occasion, both. Dave gets the
most development because his one-dimensional character
definition would be a wuss who doesn’t deserve happiness,
but since we’re seeing the underlying reasons behind it we
still wind up rooting for him. Some of the best characters in
the books are the ones who aren’t defined much beyond their
comedic role, including Jerome and Radu, who is likeable
even though his role is mostly to make Dave’s life miserable. A
funny phonetic accent, his comically exaggerated attachment
to his store and his weird mentor yet slave-driver relationship
with Dave make Radu a great supporting cast member.
The real strength of Life Sucks is in the little glimpses of
vampire society that Abel and Soria give us. A network of
vampires who straddle the line between old world European
vampire stereotypes and modern corporate raiders and use
their vampire spawn to man their stores is just a fantastic and
strange idea, and Abel and Soria have probably done the right
thing by making it the backdrop instead of the gimmick. There’s
every sense that the creators have considered every aspect of
this unusual vampire society, but rather than trying to create
a story about that, they overlaid a classic romance/comingof-age type story on top of this unusual background, and the
result is a strong plot and characters as well as something new
and interesting. —Randy Lander
Saturday, May 3rd
Gabe Soria signs Life Sucks on Free Comic Book Day
More Fun Comics, 8200 Oak St., (504) 865-1800,
www.myspace.com/mfcnola
For more info on Gabe Soria and Life Sucks, go to:
www.firstsecondbooks.com
25
REVIEWS
music
Earth
The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull
(Southern Lord)
L
ast month we ran Mike
Rodgers’
review
of
Earth’s recent release The
Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull. We mistakenly gave the album three stars instead
of the five Mike intended. If you missed the review, you can
read it online at antigravitymagazine.com.
Animal Collective
Water Curses (EP)
(Domino)
P
icking up where the
dense digistry of last
fall’s Strawberry Jam left off,
Water Curses finds America’s
favorite animals tracking an
uncharacteristically spare, wild territory. While the tracks,
which were recorded during the sessions for Strawberry Jam,
retain the frenetic programming and glitchy percussion of
their mother record, the songs themselves are more stripped
and organic; rather than rely on the chain-link of samplers
and synth, the group returns to the layered guitar and
vocal form that was the site of their early success without
abandoning the lessons they learned on Strawberry Jam.
Opener “Water Curses” recalls the giddy folk of Feels’
“Grass,” with its “Chopsticks”-inspired piano lines, calypso
percussion, and buzzsaw acoustic guitars. “Street Flash”
is a sub-seven minute shape drone typical of drummer
Panda Bear’s work on Jam, an ethereal chant of clipped and
effected vocals whose trance-inducing beauty is broken by
Avey Tare’s screams. AC has always been fascinated by the
possibitlies of the human voice, from Panda’s stacks of vocal
harmonies to Avey Tare’s throat-shredders (both are present
in “Street Flash”), but they are at their most interesting when
using their voices unconventionally. The caramel organs of
the track are punctuated by a loop of a woman’s screaming
that eventually becomes more percussive than alarming
alongside snipped moments of speech from band members,
and Panda’s rubber-banded whisperings shifting across the
mix.
The most winning of the four tracks, though, is “Cobwebs,”
which finds Tare singing (!) over a canned 808 beat, a
percussive jet engine and carefully wrangled organ squeaks;
Tare is searching for an end-time answer here as he and Panda
declare that they’re “not going underground” while a tabla
gulps along nervous and eventually gives way to shimmering
guitars and a chorus of Panda Bears exulting “Cobwebs!” It’s
a tender, even soulful song from a group who have built their
considerable reputation upon a bed of rattle and hum. “Seal
Man Man
Eyeing” closes the record with watery vocals, stereotypically
Rabbit Habits
“pretty” piano runs, and vocal crescendos. What could be
(Anti-)
trite in the hands of another group, or in any other context,
instead feels at home on Water Curses.
Animal Collective’s exploration of the relationship between
the organic and the technological have powered some of
pon
reflection,
it’s
their most successful work (Feels’ “The Purple Bottle” and
become apparent to me
most of Strawberry Jam come to mind). Here, perhaps, they
that the inherent negation in
have found the balance that they have been searching for:
the band’s name—‘Man Man’
a balance between what they have been provided with and
as abjuration of humanistic
what the future may hold. —Marty Garner
proclivity—acts as a veil of sorts, behind which the band finds
freedom in elusion through swaggering absurdity and clannish
concordance. Their first two records reflect this sentiment—
Nick Cave & The
their sound has always fallen deep in left-field while the live
Bad Seeds
show, complete with complimentary white uniforms, war
Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!
paint and a penchant for energetic ludicrousness, lent itself to
(Anti-)
Man Man being perceived as a homogenous and oftentimes
interchangeable troupe of circus freaks. In order to break the selfconstructed mold and inherent restraints therein, the reasonable
ig, Lazarus Dig!!! finds step for a band in this position would be to release a record of a
Nick Cave, the fifty-year- more intimate and immediate nature, which is precisely what
old master poet of rock’s dark, Man Man do on Rabbit Habits. The album’s very name suggests
vile, brutal and sexual under- something much more intrinsically human, fucking like rabbits,
belly, spewing lasciviously vicious tales of sin and redemp- than the band has attempted in the past. However, this does not
tion with the help of the equally impressive and menacing mean long-standing enthusiasts will be disappointed, because
Bad Seeds, better than anyone in rock today. The album is a on Rabbit Habits they do not lose any impulsion from previous
scorcher from start to finish, opening with the title track—a albums and their Waits-cum-Beefheart fuckery remains in tact.
story of Larry, a post-modern Jesus-like resurrect, reveling in Rabbit Habits is simply a more mature, concise and especially
material excesses and women of today’s major American cit- personal record, lyrically in particular, with lead singer and
ies before attaining fame, forsaking his dreams, breaching the ringleader Honus Honus oozing literary eloquence without
lunatic fringe and ultimately dying—and ending with the mas- sacrificing his junkyard growl. This is exhibited perfectly on
terwork “More News From Nowhere.” On “More News,” the horn and xylophone-led “Big Trouble” with the gem, “You
The drone of Willis’ viola and the muted restraint of Mick look bodacious / In that guillotine.” Whether it be upbeat
Harvey’s guitar give way to a wry, cyclic verbiage on the stag- carnival stomps, opener “Mister Jung Stuffed” and the frantic
nation and paranoia associated with, at least in Cave’s mind, cacophony of “Hurly/Burly” or flapper ballads “Whalebones”
everyday American life; a veritable nowhere-land where and the title track, Man Man sound totally at home and in
“everything you do today / tomorrow is obsolete.” Cave’s control of the music. “Poor Jackie,” an eight minute-plus
superior poetics fall in with the three authors mentioned on waltz that floats along and consistently picks up steam before
the album (Bukowski, Berryman and Hemingway): confron- ultimately descending into Ubu-like disharmony, spins a story
tational in nature with dark shades of violence and sexuality of desperation, murder and godlessness which proves to be one
and delivered with a chilly, detached, hyper-intelligent, all- of the album’s definite highlights. Man Man’s success on Rabbit
knowing unaffectedness. Lazarus presents an American world Habits coalesces into a rocking sound imbued with countless
with no hope, one where men get lost “in the weeping forests instruments and personalities to boot, resulting in their best
of le vulva” before becoming sick on drugs and guns; a world offering to date. —Dan Mitchell
of “endless abstractions” which in turn lead to the skirting of
Foals
responsibility; a “banal and jejune” existence in which men
turn to God for answers, only to find that God is dead or,
Antidotes
(Sub Pop/Transgressive)
worse yet, that God doesn’t care. Musically, the album is as
aggressive and penetrating as Cave’s sardonics, providing an
impossibly complex web of instrumental interplay, enlivening the songs with straight-ahead rock (“Today’s Lesson,”
uch buzz has been
“Albert Goes West” and “Lie Down Here [& Be My Girl]”),
generated over the
paranoid, buzzing lurches (“Night of the Lotus Eaters” and
Foals,
Britain’s newest five
“Hold On To Yourself”), and contemplative ballads (“Moonpiece post-punk darlings, and
land” and “Jesus of the Moon”). Nick Cave is the irrefutable
their angular brand of rock, a
anti-hero of rock ‘n roll and Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! is an absolute
supposed
potpourri
of
math-rock
and Afro-beat with a dash
masterpiece. —Dan Mitchell
U
D
M
MUSIC REVIEWS SPONSORED BY THE OFFICIAL RECORD STORE OF ANTIGRAVITY
REVIEWS
music
of techno. The band has made a point to express discontent
with the tedium of Western music and the confinements of
4/4 time, dropping Steve Reich, Public Image, Ltd., and
obscure German techno in their list of influences while
claiming a desire to separate themselves from the rest of
the recent indie dance-rock scene. However, Antidotes,
their debut, renders aforementioned signifiers ultimately
contrived, with a sound firmly rooted in the current British
indie scene and possessing few moments of reprieve for
the listener, coming across like a slightly more upbeat Bloc
Party or less-inspired Rapture. The best songs on Antidote
incorporate horns (via the Brooklyn group Antibalas) that
become enmeshed in the music and provide a holistic
sound, such as on the opener “The French Open,” the
first single “Cassius” and best of the bunch, “Balloons,”
which succeeds in locking in on a catchy linear rhythm
while curiously remaining steadfastly grounded in 4/4.
But on tracks such as “Heavy Water” and “Tron,” the
Foals cannot be saved through the incorporation of the
Antibalas; generative music of the likes of Reich or Eno,
obvious icons of the Foals, should only be attempted with
attention to minute detail, lest one risk sounding amateurish
and pallid. The Foals seem to lose themselves in their icons’
sonic experimentations while not paying enough mind
to their own music and the end result of their recordings.
The band rejected Dave Sitek’s production because of his
dissonance-drenched affections, which shows a semblance
of self-awareness/integrity, but it still feels like the Foals
are stretched thin on Antidotes and all too self-aware; check
out the pompous silliness of “Space,” one minute of silence.
The foundations have been set on Antidotes, however shaky,
and now it is up to the Foals to step up and deliver on their
proclamations. —Dan Mitchell
Hurray For The
Riff Raff
It Don’t Mean I Don’t
Love You
(Independent)
E
very once and a while,
a debut album appears
so fully-realized you think to
yourself, “Where the hell did this come from? How come I
never heard of these guys before?” Hurray for the Riff Raff’s
It Don’t Mean I Don’t Love You is that kind of an album.
Hurray for the Riff Raff is led by singer and banjoist Alynda Lee, and her ability to craft a gorgeous melody is what
drives the record. It’s tough to get songs like “Lenore” and
“Here it Comes” out of your head. “The Junebug Waltz”
and “Baby Blue” are hauntingly beautiful. Lyrically, Lee’s
not reinventing the wheel in songs that are mostly about love
and relationships. However, when she sings in “Bricks,”
“We stand tall/ together like towers/ well, together like
towers/ we fall, we fall, we fall,” you just want to cry. Like
Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, Lee’s songs are deceptively simple but extremely powerful.
And like Neutral Milk Hotel, the songs just wouldn’t be
the same without the contributions of the rest of the group.
Why Are We Building Such A Big Ship? leader Walt McClements adds valuable colors and counter-melodies on
accordion, violin, and toy piano. Shae Freeman’s musical
saw and Aurora Nealand’s woodwinds appear on only a
handful of songs, but when they do they stand out from the
already bursting arrangements. Aubrey Freeman plays a
variety of stringed instruments, including double-bass and
pedal steel, but it’s his role as the producer and engineer of
the record where he shines the most. The full instrumentation never gets muddy or so busy it distracts the listener
from the beauty of Lee’s songs.
Perhaps the most important instrument on the record is
Lee’s voice. It is strong, clear, and completely unaffected.
It Don’t Mean I Don’t Love You is an excellent first effort by
Hurray for the Riff Raff and it will be interesting to see
where this talented band goes from here. —Paul Crusoe
Plants and Animals
Gnarls Barkley
(Secret City)
(Downtown)
Parc Avenue
L
adies and gentlemen, by
now you should be familiar with the fruit of Montreal’s scene: Islands, Godspeed You! Black Emperor,
the mighty Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade, et al. But you don’t
know Montreal. No, until now the scene has lacked a unifying voice, a sound to call its own. Ladies and gentlemen, it
is my pleasure to introduce you to Plants and Animals.
Parc Avenue is named for the street in Montreal’s hip Mile
End neighborhood, where Warren Spicer, Matthew Woodley,
and Nicolas Basque live and spent the last three years working
on what would become this album. The fruits of those three
years is like a trip up Parc Avenue to the apex of Mont Royal
itself, the city below resplendent in the view. It’s quite a task, to
be sure, as are the group’s attempts to shift from fellow Canadian Neil Young freak-jams to Toronto indie pop to feathery guitar jams. Traditional verse-chorus-verse song structures quickly
fade to slanted style bends; opener “Bye Bye Bye” blends My
Morning Jacket, Coldplay, and Queen comfortably.
And I mean comfortably. Despite Plants and Animals’
ambition (three tracks here run near the seven-minute
mark), they never seem to be in over their heads, whether
settling into sweater grooves on “Good Friend” or wahjamming over Broken Social Scene throwaways on “Feedback in the Field.” Even when the guitars are at their most
dissonant, Parc Avenue never comes across as anything more
than three guys playing in their apartment on a Saturday afternoon with the windows open, bangin’ out jams and grinning in between runs to the “poutine” shop. This is what
makes Parc Avenue a winner. It’s ambitious without being
annoying, boundary-pushing without alienating the listener. It stays far enough on Devendra Banhart’s side of freak
to avoid being boring, but it never gives us more than we
can handle. It is, at the end of the day, a pop record, despite
what lengthy tracks, the presence of a gospel choir, and a
chorus of Québécois-accented cheerleaders may tell you.
There are the obvious great tracks here—the aforementioned “Good Friend;” the spiky guitar, fiddle, and piano
jam of “Faerie Dance;” the snaky post-rock of “Keep it
Real”—but the sleeper here is the poncho-folk “Early in the
Morning.” While the other tracks are more than happy to
raise their fringed leather sleeves to the sky and wail, the
band shows a taste and restraint the belies its member’s
ages, coming across as a mix between recent Wilco and
Déjà Vu-era Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young with their soft
hand-drumming and quiet guitar runs.
Of course, Parc Avenue is not a perfect record. “Keep It
Real”’s long fade-out should have been the end of the album, but the group instead tacks on a seven-minute jam
on what sounds like a sitar and a chorus of guitars. It’s an
alienating ending to a record that, up to this point, had been
intimate. Hippie culture is big in Montreal—anyone who
has seen les tam-tams in the Parc on a Sunday afternoon can
attest to that—but “Guru” keeps its bare feet too deep in
Bonnaroo territory and feels largely out of place here.
It’s a small matter, though. There’s love to spare on Parc
Avenue, whether via overt messaging (“A New Kind of
Love”) or the obvious love that the group has for its musical
heritage. They manage to tackle Dave Matthews-style soul
without sounding ironic and North American indie pop without sounding pretentious. But the real love here, the love that
makes Parc Avenue the kind of record that refuses to be tossed
into the black hole of the CD tower, is the love that the group
has for Montreal itself. Parc Avenue has the city’s name written all over it, from the bilingual title to the picture of Parc
Mont Royal on the cover, but its honesty means that it could
have been written anywhere at any time. It is paradoxically
trapped forever at home while at the same time being so wellmade as to be completely free of its constraints. In that way,
Plants and Animals become Montreal’s true ambassadors to
the world of music. —Marty Garner
The Odd Couple
G
anrls Barkley’s debut
record had two big
things going for it: “Crazy”
was the kind of amazing
song that caught the world
at just the right time and propelled the group to stardom,
and the music they made came from nowhere, taking listeners by surprise with its mix of ‘60s soul and modern eccentricities. Unfortunately, their follow up, The Odd Couple, has neither of those edges and must instead rely upon
its bare merits. The record is more consistent than their
first; there aren’t any obvious rush jobs or weird, almost
throwaway, cuts. Conversely, there aren’t any standouts
either—lead single “Run (I’m A Natural Disaster),” with
its seizure-inducing video and skittering psych-soul backdrop, is a strong track but it fails to capture the magic of
previous singles. Another mark against the album is its
overarching gloom, with most tracks weaving a thread
or two of inner turmoil through even the brightest pop
production. These knocks shouldn’t deter you from listening to the record, though, because it still has two big
things going for it: Cee-Lo’s voice is just as expressive
and powerful as ever, delivering both off-the-cuff insanity and heartfelt emotion through his raspy croon, and
Danger Mouse’s production is still delightfully on point,
pulling together strains of afro-beat, Motown, and New
Wave weirdness into a still original-sounding musical
mutant. I guess what it boils down to is The Odd Couple
is an overall better record than their first, but the ravages
of repetition, the loss of the element of surprise and the
dearth of dialed-up-to-11 moments of pure bliss hurt the
album’s lasting appeal. —Mike Rodgers
The Dodos
Visiter
(French Kiss)
S
ounding both familiar
and original on your first
album is a tricky feat. Most
of the time a band sways too
far on the tightrope, ending
up sounding like a retread instead of something fresh.
The Dodos mostly avoid that pitfall, though comparisons
have to be made. Visiter calls to mind nothing if not early
Animal Collective; the childlike, psychedelic folk is unmistakably reminiscent, but The Dodos are more sober
and focused by far. They dip their feet into weirdness, but
the songs never lose themselves in it. “Red and Purple”
skitters along on almost mechanical percussion, but the
simple melody and sweet voice stay in the spotlight. This
ends up being Visiter’s strongest asset, the excursions into
strange musical ideas add flavor and diversity to what
could have been just another guitar-based indie album.
“Fools” is a clicking, speeding train carrying a haunting chorus, its beauty dotted with bouts of shouting and
acoustic crescendos, while “Paint the Rust” is an echoing
jumble of tribal drumming, jangling chords and breaks
that sound almost akin to garage blues. It’s the expansive sounding “Jodi” that stands as the center point of
the record, with its almost off rhythm snare fills, Western
guitar picking and power rock chorus doing in one song
what most bands can’t accomplish in three. It’s in these
moments of pure experimental pop bliss that all comparisons to other more established bands fall to the wayside
and all that’s left is the realization that Visiter is quite
satisfying all on its own merits. —Mike Rodgers
27
EVENTS
NEW ORLEANS
NEW ORLEANS (Cont.)
45 Tchoup, 4529 Tchoupitoulas (504) 891-9066
Melvin’s, 2112 St. Claude Ave.
Alamo Underground, 1547 Crete St., (217)
419-0547, http://myspace.com/the_alamo
The A.R.K./Iron Rail Book Collective/
MVC, 9800 Westbank Expressway, (504) 2342331, www.themvc.net
Plan B, 511 Marigny, (504) 944-0366
Neutral Ground Coffee House, 5110 Danneel
St., (504) 891-3381, www.neutralground.org
Barrister’s Art Gallery, 2331 St. Claude Ave.
Nowe Miasto, 223 Jane Pl., (504) 821-6721
The Big Top, 1638 Clio St., (504) 569-2700,
www.3ringcircusproductions.com
Ogden Museum, 925 Camp St., (504) 539-9600
The Blue Nile, 534 Frenchmen St., (504) 948-2583
One Eyed Jacks, 615 Toulouse St., (504) 5698361, www.oneeyedjacks.net
Broadmoor House, 4127 Walmsley, (504)
821-2434
Outer Banks, 2401 Palmyra (at S. Tonti), (504)
628-5976, www.myspace.com/outerbanksmidcity
Cafe Brasil, 2100 Chartres St., (504) 947-9386
Republic, 828 S. Peters St., (504) 528-8282,
www.republicnola.com
Carrollton Station, 8140 Willow St., (504)
865-9190, www.carrolltonstation.com
Checkpoint Charlie’s, 501 Esplanade Ave.,
(504) 947-0979
Chickie Wah Wah, 2828 Canal Street (504)
304-4714, www.chickiewahwah.com
Circle Bar, 1032 St. Charles Ave., (504) 5882616, www.circlebar.net
Club 300, 300 Decatur Street, www.
neworleansjazzbistro.com
Coach’s Haus, 616 N. Solomon
The Country Club, 634 Louisa St., (504) 9450742, www.countryclubneworleans.com
d.b.a., 618 Frenchmen St., (504) 942-373, www.
drinkgoodstuff.com/no
Der Rathskeller (Tulane’s Campus),
McAlister Dr., http://wtul.fm
Dragon’s Den, 435 Esplanade Ave., http://
myspace.com/dragonsdennola
Eldon’s House, 3055 Royal Street,
[email protected]
Rusty Nail, 1100 Constance Street (504) 5255515, www.therustynail.org/
Saturn Bar, 3067 St. Claude Ave., www.
myspace.com/saturnbar
Side Arm Gallery, 1122 St. Roch Ave., (504)
218-8379, www.sidearmgallery.org
Southport Hall, 200 Monticello Ave., (504)
835-2903, www.newsouthport.com
The Spellcaster Lodge, 3052 St. Claude
Avenue, www.quintonandmisspussycat.com/
tourdates.html
St. Roch Taverne, 1200 St. Roch Ave., (504)
945-0194
Tarantula Arms, 209 Decatur Street (504)
525-5525, www.myspace.com/tarantulaarms
Tipitina’s, (Uptown) 501 Napoleon Ave.,
(504) 895-8477 (Downtown) 233 N. Peters,
www.tipitinas.com
The Zeitgeist, 2940 Canal St., (504) 827-5858,
www.zeitgeistinc.net
Ernie K-Doe’s Mother-in-Law Lounge,
1500 N. Claiborne Ave.
METAIRIE
Fair Grinds Coffee House, 3133 Ponce de
Leon, (504) 913-9072, www.fairgrinds.com
Airline Lion’s Home, 3110 Division St.
Fuel Coffee House, 4807 Magazine St. (504)
895-5757
The Bar, 3224 Edenborn
Goldmine Saloon, 701 Dauphine St., (504)
586-0745, www.goldminesaloon.net
Badabing’s, 3515 Hessmer, (504) 454-1120
Hammerhead’s, 1300 N Causeway Blvd, (504)
834-6474
The Green Space, 2831 Marais Street (504)
945-0240, www.thegreenproject.org
The High Ground, 3612 Hessmer
Ave., Metairie, (504) 525-0377, www.
thehighgroundvenue.com
Handsome Willy’s, 218 S. Robertson St., (504)
525-0377, http://handsomewillys.com
Keystone’s Lounge, 3408 28th Street, www.
myspace.com/keystoneslounge
Hi-Ho Lounge, 2239 St. Claude Ave. (504)
945-4446, www.myspace.com/hiholounge
Stitches, 3941 Houma Blvd., www.myspace.
com/stitchesbar
Hot Iron Press Plant, 1420 Kentucky Ave.,
[email protected]
House Of Blues / The Parish, 225 Decatur,
(504)310-4999, www.hob.com/neworleans
The Howlin’ Wolf, 907 S. Peters, (504) 522WOLF, www.thehowlinwolf.com
BATON ROUGE
Carlotta Street, 3207 Carlotta St.,
[email protected]
The Caterie, 3617 Perkins Rd., www.thecaterie.com
Kajun’s Pub, 2256 St. Claude Avenue (504)
947-3735, www.myspace.com/kajunspub
Chelsea’s Café, 2857 Perkins Rd., (225) 3873679, www.chelseascafe.com
Kim’s 940, 940 Elysian Fields, (504) 844-4888
Dragonfly’s, 124 West Chimes
The Kingpin, 1307 Lyons St., (504) 891-2373
The Darkroom, 10450 Florida Blvd., (225) 2741111, www.darkroombatonrouge.com
Le Bon Temps Roule, 4801 Magazine St.,
(504) 895-8117
Le Chat Noir, 715 St. Charles Ave., (504) 5815812, www.cabaretlechatnoir.com
Government St., 3864 Government St., www.
myspace.com/rcpzine
Junkyard House, 3299 Ivanhoe St.
Lyceum Central, 618 City Park Ave., (410)
523-4182, http://lyceumproject.com
North Gate Tavern, 136 W. Chimes St.
(225)346-6784, www.northgatetavern.com
Lyon’s Club, 2920 Arlington St.
Red Star Bar, 222 Laurel St., (225) 346-8454,
www.redstarbar.com
Mama’s Blues, 616 N. Rampart St., (504) 453-9290
Maple Leaf, 8316 Oak St., (504) 866-9359
Marlene’s Place, 3715 Tchoupitoulas, (504)
897-3415, www.myspace.com/marlenesplace
McKeown’s Books, 4737 Tchoupitoulas, (504)
895-1954, http://mckeownsbooks.net
Rotolos, 1125 Bob Pettit Blvd. (225) 761-1999,
www.myspace.com/rotolosallages
The Spanish Moon, 1109 Highland Rd., (225)
383-MOON, www.thespanishmoon.com
The Varsity, 3353 Highland Rd., (225)383-7018,
www.varsitytheatre.com
Thursday, 5/1
007, The Big Top
101 Runners Mardi Gras Indians, Hi-Ho
Lounge, 10pm
Backbeat Foundation, Hypersoul and CEG
Presents: Big Sam’s Funky Nation, Bonerama,
Tipitina’s (French Quarter), 10pm, $20
Chris Boone, Uncle Sammy, Tarantula
Arms, 10pm
Dash Rip Rock, the Rosewood Thieves,
Circle Bar
Dax Riggs, Chelsea’s Café, 10pm
DJ Logic, Maple Leaf, 10pm
Eliot Cohen’s Cosmic Sweat Society,
Dragon’s Den (Upstairs), 8pm
Global Noize, Russell Batiste w/ Erick
Krasno, Leo Nocentelli and Very Special
Phriends, Howlin’ Wolf, 9pm, $30
Greyboy All-Stars, House Of Blues, 1am
Herringbone Orchestra, Domino Sound
Record Shack, 6:30pm, FREE
Hue Blanc’s Joyless Ones, Pink Reason,
Michael Zink’s Nuggets, Saturn Bar, 10pm
The Iguanas, Chickie Wah Wah
Illuminasti Trio, d.b.a., 8pm, $10
Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, d.b.a.
JFJO, d.b.a., Midnight, $10
Johnny Sketch & the Dirty Notes, Theresa
Andersson, Blue Nile
Marcia Ball, The Parish @ House Of Blues
Nappy Boy Presents: the T-Pain and Family
Playlist Tour w/ Sophia Fresh, Jay Lyriq
and Tay Dizm, House Of Blues
The Rosewood Thieves, Circle Bar
Sam Bush, Tipitina’s, 9pm, $20
Simon Lott, Dragon’s Den (Upstairs), 10pm
Slewfoot and Friends, Checkpoint Charlie’s,
10pm
Soulive, Lettuce, Ivan Neville, Republic,
9pm, $25
Trombone Shorty w/ Special Guests,
Tipitina’s, 2am, $20
Friday, 5/2
3 Now 4 w/ Stanton Moore, Hi-Ho Lounge,
10pm
Bayou Rendezvous f/ the New Orleans
All-Stars, Papa Grows Funk, Porter Batiste
Stoltz, Vinyl, Eric McFadden Trio &
Outformation, Howlin’ Wolf, 8pm, $26
Big Sam’s Funky Nation, The Dynamites,
Blue Nile
Bluerunners, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Bonde do Role, The Death Set, Spanish
Moon, 10pm
Bonerama, Jon Cleary and the Absolute
Monster Gentlemen, Mid-City Lanes
Buddy Guy, Back Door Slam, House Of Blues
The Danny Burns Defectors, Checkpoint
Charlie’s, 7pm
Darby Jams, Checkpoint Charlie’s, 1am
Dax Riggs, One Eyed Jacks, 7pm
Ford Fest, The Big Top, 9:30pm
Galactic, Tipitina’s, 2am, $25
George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic,
Republic, 9pm, $35
Happy Talk Band, The Bad Off, Saturn Bar,
10pm
Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes, Maple Leaf
Lettuce, Tipitina’s (French Quarter)
Lost Bayou Ramblers, d.b.a., Midnight, $10
Marcia Ball, The Parish @ House Of Blues
Marco Benevento Album Release Party w/
Reed Mathis, Matt Chamberlain, One Eyed
Jacks, 10pm, $17
Mike Dillon’s Go Go Jungle, Dead Kenny
Gs, Dragon’s Den (Upstairs), 10pm
Miles and Minutes, Magna Carta,
Duesenberg, Keystone’s Lounge
The New Mastersounds, The Parish @ House
Of Blues (Late Night Show)
Pinettes Brass Band, Domino Sound Record
Shack, 6:30pm, FREE
The Plowboys, Circle Bar
The Radiators, Tipitina’s, 9pm, $25
Ross Halen and the Hellbenders, Checkpoint
Charlie’s, 9pm
Umprey’s McGee, House Of Blues (Late Night
Show)
Zydepunks, d.b.a., 8pm, $10
Saturday, 5/3
Backbeat Foundation, Hypersoul and CEG
Presents: Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Tipitina’s
(French Quarter), 10pm, $25
Big Blue Marble, Arbor Vitae, Circle Bar,
10pm
Black Rose Band, Circle Bar, 2am
Bonerama, d.b.a., Midnight, $20
The Bush Hogs, Walz Louis, Saturn Bar,
10pm
Clockwork Elvis, Reverend Spooky
LaStrange and Her Billion-Dollar Baby
Dolls, Hi-Ho Lounge, 10pm
Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Tipitina’s (French
Quarter)
DJ Logic, Blue Nile
DJ Tom Harvey’s Birthday Bash, Dragon’s
Den (Downstairs), 10pm, $5
Ford Fest, The Big Top, 9:30pm
The Funky Meters and the Derek Trucks
Band, Big Sams Funky Nation & Special
Guests, Howlin’ Wolf, 9pm, $45
Garage a Trois, One Eyed Jacks, 8pm
Gravity A, Dragon’s Den (Upstairs), 10pm
The Greyboy All-Stars, Tipitina’s, 2am, $35
Hairy Apes BMX, Mike Dillon’s GoGo
Jungle, Le Bon Temps Roule
James Singleton String Quartet, Zeitgeist,
8:30pm, $10
Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster,
Maple Leaf
Little Freddie King, d.b.a., 8pm, $10
Lupe Fiasco, House Of Blues
Kid Koala, Preservation Hall
M.I.A., ?uestlove, King Britt, Holy Fuck,
Bingo! Preservation Hall Jazz Band, 619
Frenchmen St., 6pm (Doors), 10pm (Show), $25
Michael Franti and Spearhead, Tipitina’s,
9pm, $33
Morning 40 Federation, One Eyed Jacks,
Midnight
Rebirth Brass Band, Trombone Shorty &
Orleans Ave., The Parish @ House Of Blues
Ruby Rendrag w/ Suki Kuehn, Tarantula
Arms, 10pm
Toubab Krewe, Blue Nile
Umphrey’s McGee, House Of Blues (Late
Night Show)
The Unnaturals, The Bills, Full Gospel Gun
Show, Checkpoint Charlie’s, 10pm, FREE
Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship?,
Domino Sound Record Shack, 6:30pm, FREE
Sunday, 5/4
007, Hi-Ho Lounge, 10pm
DJ Quickie Mart w/ Bionik Brown, Know
One, Icon the Mic King, Circle Bar
Eliot Cohen’s Cosmic Sweat Society,
Eric Lindell, One Eyed Jacks, 10pm, $15
Gal Holiday & the Honky Tonk Revue,
Mike Darby Jam, Checkpoint Charlie’s, 8pm
Garage-A-Trois, d.b.a., $20
Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk, Tipitina’s
Keb’ Mo’, the subdudes, Jon Cleary, House
Of Blues
Krewe of Zigaboo f/ Zigaboo Modeliste,
Rebirth Brass Band, Howlin’ Wolf, Midnight, $15
The Lee Boys, Toubab Krewe, The Parish @
EVENTS
Saturday, 5/3
Wednesday, 5/7
Chris Scheurich, Circle Bar
Mike Ness and His Band, Jesse Dayton,
House Of Blues
Walter Wolfman Washington, d.b.a., 10pm, $5
Thursday, 5/8
NoizeFest, f/ Rob Cambre, Quintron,
Paint with Music, Star of Kaos, Vargr
Wulf, Ray Bong, Cheller (Helen
Gillet, Pinkysqueak, Professor Pink,
Microshards, Loid, C-Ba$, Ratty
Scurvics, Doctor Wheelie, DJ Proppabear
DJ Rusty Lazer MC Shellshock, Big
Baby, I, Octopus, Brown Stripes,
Wilderness Pangs, Dave Hyman & Lucas
Davenport, Clint Maedgen, Elliott
Terral, 609 Lesseps St., 11am
L
ate NoizeFest founder Keith Moore—
also known as Deacon Johnson, son
of the legendary Deacon John—wanted
to showcase electronic talent in New Orleans while giving Jazzfest crowds something to blow their minds other than food
and beverage prices. After Moore passed
last year, fellow Marigny musician Michael Patrick Welch picked up the slack,
and by turning his Bywater backyard into
a sea of noise-making gadgets, the annual
fest turns an otherwise ubiquitous weekend into an escape to a musical (or not)
circus. The result is much less of a performance than it is an interactive, hands-on
sound experiment. From Quintron’s future funk to Ratty Scurvics’ fuzz parade,
the daylong event needs the “z” to differentiate itself from anything less. Other
players include noise jammer Ray Bong
and session machine Rob Cambre, but attendees are encouraged to participate or at
least bring something noisy to add to the
insanity. And don’t bother with earplugs,
embrace the tinnitus. —Alex Woodward;
Photo: Quintron
House Of Blues
Linnzi Zaorski, d.b.a., 5pm
Morning 40 Federation, One Eyed Jacks, 1am, $15
Panorama Jazz Band, Domino Sound Record
Shack, 6:30pm, FREE
Simon Lott, Dragon’s Den (Upstairs), 10pm, $5
Sonny Landreth, Tab Benoit, Mid-City Lanes
Tin Men, d.b.a., 8pm, $10
Toubab Krewe, The Lee Boys, The Parish @
House Of Blues
Monday, 5/5
007 Album Release, d.b.a., 11pm, $5
B-97 Presents: Colbie Caillat, Trevor Hall,
House Of Blues
Chappy, d.b.a., 7pm
The Fens, Liquorboxx, Checkpoint Charlie’s, 7pm
Tuesday, 5/6
Burning Castles, Circle Bar
Candlebox, Centerpunch, House Of Blues
Dimestore Troubadours, My Graveyard
Jaw, Dragon’s Den (Upstairs), 10pm
Johnny Vidacovich Trio f/ Mike Dillon and
JJ Jungle, d.b.a., 10pm
Johnny Woodstock and The Cosmic Oasis,
Dragon’s Den (Downstairs), 10pm
The Whigs, What Made Milwaukee
Famous, The Dead Trees, One Eyed Jacks
7 by 17: Steve Masakowski and Phil Degruy
Duo, Saturn Bar, 10:30pm
Bill Malchow, Alex McMurray and the GoCup All-Stars, d.b.a., 7pm
Brett Dennen, Mason Jennings, Missy
Higgins, House Of Blues
Arms, 10pm
Country Fried, d.b.a., 11pm, $5
Damn Hippies, Checkpoint Charlie’s, 9pm
Doomsday Device, Kid Midi, Circle Bar
Kid Million, Dragon’s Den (Upstairs), 10pm
Friday, 5/9
Baak Gwai, JustinBailey, Spanish Moon, 10pm
Buckle, Kid Red, Checkpoint Charlie’s, 7pm
Bustout Burlesque, House Of Blues, 7:30,
10pm
The Buttons DJ the Uber Bang Party,
Circle Bar
Ingrid Lucia, d.b.a., 6pm
John Mooney, d.b.a., 10pm, $10
Langhorne Slim, Happy Talk Band, One
Eyed Jacks, 10pm
Lovehog, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Touching the Absolute, Morning Sky,
Joshua Sun, Sustenance, Howlin’ Wolf
Throwback: A Hip-Hop Jam w/ Soul
Sister, Dave Soul, Charlie V, Dragon’s Den
(Upstairs), 10pm
White Bitch w/ Returned To No, Hi-Ho
Lounge, 10pm
Settly
Saturday, 5/10
Antenna Inn Album Release Party,
Tipitina’s
Apocalyptica, The Parish @ House Of Blues
Below C-Level Presents: Fanu, Dragon’s
Den, 10pm
Big Easy Rollergirls Benefit w/ Suplecs,
Manwitch, One Eyed Jacks, 10pm
Billy Currington, House Of Blues
Dana Abbott, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Domenic, Cymblem, Checkpoint Charlie’s, 7pm
Doomsday Device, Mad Trucker, Jampire,
Hi-Ho Lounge, 10pm
John Boutte, d.b.a., 7pm
OTRA, d.b.a., 11pm, $5
Sunday, 5/11
Andy J. Forest Birthday Bash, d.b.a., 10pm
Crescent City Craft Market by the New
Orleans Craft Mafia, The Big Top, 2pm
Fleur de Tease, One Eyed Jacks
Lions, Circle Bar
Mother’s Day Extravaganza w/ The Way,
Hi-Ho Lounge, 10pm
Reverend Spooky LaStrange and Her
Billion-Dollar Baby Dolls, Tarantula Arms,
10pm
Sunday Gospel Brunch f/ The Zion
Harmonizers, House Of Blues, 10am,
12:30pm
Monday, 5/12
Mindless Self Indulgence, The Birthday
Massacre, Combichrist, House Of Blues
St. Louis Slim, d.b.a., 10pm
Available on itunes
Louisiana Music Factory
The Mushroom
or order online at
www.settly.com
© 2007 More Recordings
www.myspace.com/settly
Now available on itunes. Zoom’s “Sleepy Ted comes back to this World”
29
EVENTS
Friday, 5/16
Tuesday, 5/13
The Cave Singers, Spanish Moon, 10pm
The Fall of Troy, The Dear Hunter, Foxy
Shazam, Tera Melos, High Ground, 7pm,
$14
Johnny Woodstock, Dragon’s Den
Oh No Not Stereo, Hi-Ho Lounge, 10pm
Penumbra, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Rex Gregory Chamber Ensemble, Dragon’s
Den (Upstairs), 10pm
Supersuckers, House Of Blues
Theresa Storch, Checkpoint Charlie’s, 7pm
Wednesday, 5/14
The Physics of Meaning, Circle Bar
Under Pressure, Invasion, We Need To
Talk, Hi-Ho Lounge, 10pm
Walter Wolfman Washington, d.b.a., 10pm
Thursday, 5/15
Ben Steadman, The Fens, Checkpoint
Charlie’s, 9pm
Arms, 10pm
d.b.a., 11pm, $5
Mr. Gnome, The Self-Help Tapes, Circle
Bar
Friday, 5/16
Capitol Offense, Checkpoint Charlie’s, 9pm
DJ Soul Sister’s Right On ‘80s Dance
Party w/ The Booty Patrol Dancers, One
Eyed Jacks
Dough Stackin’ All-Stars, Dragon’s Den
(Downstairs), 10pm
Hot Club of New Orleans, d.b.a., 6pm
Japanther, The Pharmacy, Rougarou, The
Big Top, 7pm, $5
Lil’ Mo Presents: D-1, Floopy Head, Hi-Ho
Lounge, 10pm
Shadow Gallery, Dragon’s Den (Upstairs), 10pm
Sophisticats & Sophistikittens, d.b.a., 10pm, $5
Stephen Marley, House Of Blues
White Colla Crimes, Secret Annexe, Circle
Bar
Japanther, The Pharmacy, Rougarou,
The Big Top, 7pm, $5
J
apanther’s Challenge, their ode to the
dirt and grime of hometown Brooklyn, actually plays more like a love letter
to New Orleans than anything else. The
duo’s ghettoblaster punk rock hits home
as they sing “rise above the smoke and
debris” over heavy, distorted bass and
drums and cassette tape loops chiming in
with Casiotone melodies and occasional
blaxploitation sample. Their simple pop
songs are blown out of proportion, turning into giant “whoa oh” punk rock
sing-alongs. While touring several times
throughout post-Katrina New Orleans
in 2006 and 2007, the band released two
albums, collaborated with a performance
artist, were featured in the New York Times
and Rolling Stone. But they treat New Orleans like a second home, if only for using
it as a venue for their dance party. Fellow
Brooklynites The Pharmacy, a three-piece
garage pop join the band, as well as local, finger-picking good punks Rougarou.
—Alex Woodward
Monday, 5/19
The Fens, Checkpoint Charlie’s, 10pm
Washboard Chaz Blues Trio, d.b.a., 10pm
Saturday, 5/17
Chef Menteur, Metronome the City, Circle
Bar, 10pm
Damn Hippies, Checkpoint Charlie’s, 6pm
Free Jazz, Brah!, Dragon’s Den (Upstairs),
10pm
Friend Fest f/ Fatter Than Albert, Black
Belt, Meadow Flow, Emergence, A Living
Soundtrack, White Colla Crimes, Smiley
With a Knife, Handsome Willy’s
Good Enough For Good Times, d.b.a.,
11pm, $5
The Northern State, Spanish Moon, 10pm
Rosie Ledet, One Eyed Jacks, 9pm
Statuary Triangle, MC Shellshock, Arajay,
DJ Dentistry, Hi-Ho Lounge, 10pm
Tribute to the Godfather of Soul f/ Bootsy
Collins and more, House Of Blues
Sunday, 5/18
Good Luck, Attack the Gas Station, Shark
Whale, Dragon’s Den, 7pm, $5
The Nerostotles, Circle Bar
Schatzy, d.b.a., 10pm
She Wants Revenge, Be Your Own Pet,
The Virgins, Switches, House Of Blues
Test Patterns (ala Gito Gito Hustler), Hi-Ho
Lounge, 10pm
Tuesday, 5/20
Cohen and the Ghost, Field Day, Circle Bar
Johnny Vidacovich Duo f/ Brian Coogan,
d.b.a., 10pm
Ladyhawk, Neva Dinova, Spanish Moon, 10pm
Ruby Rendrag w/ Suki Kuehn, Tarantula
Arms, 10pm
Simon Lott, Martin Krusche, Helen Gillet,
Wednesday, 5/21
OneRepublic, Matt Wertz, Dave Barnes,
House Of Blues
Running With Scissors Presents: Reform
School Girls, One Eyed Jacks, 9pm
Walter Wolfman Washington, d.b.a., 10pm, $5
Washboard Rodeo, Circle Bar
Thursday, 5/22
Brian Coogan, Helen Gillet, Justin Peake
Trio, BOX-3, Hi-Ho Lounge, 10:30pm
Arms, 10pm
Earl Can Bird, Les Poissons Rouges, Circle
Bar
Forever the Sickest Kids, Metro Station,
The Maine, Danger Radio, The Cab, The
Parish @ House Of Blues
EVENTS
Murder Junkies, Capitol Offense, Dragon’s
Den (Upstairs), 10pm, $7
Smitty, d.b.a., 11pm
Sunday Girl, The Fens, Checkpoint Charlie’s,
7pm
Wednesday, 5/28
The Sword, Torche, Spanish Moon, 7pm
Walter Wolfman Washington, d.b.a., 10pm,
$5
Wednesday, 5/28
Friday, 5/23
The Bingo! Show, Spanish Moon, 10pm
The Blend, Dragon’s Den (Downstairs),
7:30pm
Echo Fail, Southdown, Checkpoint Charlie’s,
8pm
Fleur de Tease Fundraiser, One Eyed Jacks,
10pm
Ingrid Lucia, d.b.a., 6pm
Half-A-Million Strangers, Saturn Bar, 10pm
The Junior League, The Lower Broads,
Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Lovehog, Burning Castles, Venus Chain, HiHo Lounge, 10pm
Papa Grows Funk, d.b.a., 10pm, $10
Rain Or Shine Benefit, Dragon’s Den
(Upstairs), 10pm
Soul Rebels, Howlin’ Wolf
Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship?,
Circle Bar
Yellow’s Birthday Party, Dragon’s Den
(Downstairs), 10pm
Saturday, 5/24
Clinic, Spanish Moon, 10pm
Darfur Fest w/ Good Day For An Airstrike,
Mad-E Ruthless, A Living Soundtrack,
Further Reasoning, Venus Chain, The Big
Top, 5pm
DJ Mayhem, Dragon’s Den (Upstairs), 10pm
Groovesect, d.b.a., 10pm, $5
Pallbearers’ Punk Blowout, Hi-Ho Lounge,
10pm
Richie Rocker Album Release Party w/
Miles to Minutes, Sum of None, Howlin’
Wolf
Rik Slave and the Phantoms, One Eyed Jacks,
10pm
Ross Halen and the Hellbenders, The Blend,
Checkpoint Charlie’s, 7pm
Type O Negative, 3 Inches of Blood, The
Destro, House Of Blues
Sunday, 5/25
Ben Steadman, Checkpoint Charlie’s, 8pm
The Fens, Circle Bar
Marc Stone Band, d.b.a., 10pm
Reverend Spooky LaStrange and Her BillionDollar Baby Dolls, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Tim Green, David Torkanowsky, Rick
Trolsen, Doug Garrison, Hi-Ho Lounge,
10:30pm
Monday, 5/26
Jaheim, House Of Blues
Magna Porta, Circle Bar
Slewfoot and Friends, Checkpoint Charlie’s,
9pm
Tuesday, 5/27
Bad Ash, Pallbearers, Sticky Bandits,
Flyleaf, Rev Theory, House Of Blues
imaginelAM, Circle Bar
Johnny Woodstock and The Cosmic Oasis,
Maria y El Sol, Hi-Ho Lounge, 10pm
Penumbra, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Subtle f/ Dose One and JEL, Spanish Moon,
10pm
Friday, 5/30
5/28: The Sword, Torche,
Spanish Moon, 7pm
5/30: The Sword, Torche, Stinking
Lizaveta, Haarp, One Eyed Jacks
T
he Sword has been called stoner
metal, doom metal, classic metal,
sludge metal, even hipster metal, and
maybe all of those adjectives are apt, but
more than anything the Sword has been
winning people to their side by grooving
like few bands of any genre. What’s more,
they’re smart enough to know that you
don’t have to play at breakneck speeds
to be a heavy band, that locking step
into a groove and bashing away gets the
heads nodding and keeps those eyelids
at half-mast. The thick balance between
guitarists J.D. Cronise and Kyle Shutt’s
riffage, Bryan Richie’s chunky bass and
Trivett Wingo’s splashy—almost jazzy—
drumming creates a sound that drives
without ever running the risk of crashing.
In other words, the Sword is a metal
band with taste. There’s none of the
angst and immaturity, double kick-drums
and Cookie Monster vocals associated
with most of their contemporaries; it’s
a mature, crafted sound, and when the
guitars do begin to squeal, you know
that the Sword has earned the right to
shred. When Cronise and Shutt begin to
flex their twin leads, they come across
more Thin Lizzy swagger than virtuoso
wankery. It’s power. —Marty Garner,
Photo by J. Thompson
Thursday, 5/29
CC Adcock, Lil’ Buck Sinegal, d.b.a., 11pm,
$5
Arms, 10pm
Free Jazz Braugh, Hi-Ho Lounge, 10pm
Greg Ginn, The Taylor Texas Corrugators,
Jambang, Dragon’s Den (Upstairs), 10pm
Isabella, Black Belt, Circle Bar
Murder By Death, Chelsea’s Café, 10pm
Friday, 5/30
A Living Soundtrack, Dragon’s Den
(Downstairs), 10pm
Black Rose Band, Haarp, Circle Bar
Five Finger Death Punch, Echelon,
Destined to Fall, House Of Blues
31
EVENTS
Happy Talk Band, Hairy Mountain, Saturn
Bar, 10pm
Hot Club of New Orleans, d.b.a., 6pm
Matt Russell Presents: Apeshits, The
Buttons, Hi-Ho Lounge, 10pm
NEEDTOBREATHE, The Parish @ House
Of Blues
Rebirth Brass Band 25th Anniversary
Celebration, Howlin’ Wolf
Rotary Downs, d.b.a., 10pm, $5
Smiley With a Knife, A Living Soundtrack,
Magic Legs, White Horse Tabernacle,
Dragon’s Den, 10pm, $5
Soul Rebels, Dragon’s Den (Upstairs), 10pm
The Sword, Torche, Stinking Lizaveta,
Haarp, One Eyed Jacks
Tiger Piss, Checkpoint Charlie’s, 10pm
Saturday, 5/31
Corey Henry & The Young Fellas, d.b.a.,
11pm, $5
The Devil and the Sea, Spickle, Megazilla,
Banks Street Bar, 10pm
DJ Rootz, Dragon’s Den (Upstairs), 10pm
Elysium, Grayskull, Parabellum, Parium,
Circle Bar
Hex Windham, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
In Tomorrow’s Shadow, AggroFate,
Through What Was, Channel of Release,
Keystone’s Lounge, 10pm, $6
Kommunity FK, Ex Voto, Kali Yuga, HiHo Lounge, 10pm
Rebirth Brass Band 25th Anniversary
Celebration, Howlin’ Wolf
Snowden, Colour Revolt, One Eyed Jacks,
10pm
Truth Universal, Grass Roots, Dragon’s Den
(Downstairs), 10pm
Saturday, 5/31
DANCE NIGHTS/
WEEKLIES
Saturday, 5/10
Defend
New
Orleans
Presents:
ActionActionReaction, Circle Bar
Mod Dance Party, Red Star Bar, 10pm, $5
Saturday, 5/17
Jock Se Bloque, Saturn Bar, 10pm
Saturday, 5/24
Mod Dance Party, Saturn Bar, 10pm
Mondays
Beans and Blue Grass, Hi-Ho Lounge, 8pm
Dick Darby’s World Hip-Hop Night,
Musicians’ Open Mic, Tarantula Arms, 9pm
Open Turntables w/ DJ Proppa Bear,
Service Industry Night, Dragon’s Den
Tuesdays
Acoustic Open Mic w/ Jim Smith,
Funk n a Movie, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Ivan’s Open Mic, Rusty Nail, 8pm
Wednesdays
DJ T-Roy Presents: Dancehall Classics,
Dragon’s Den, $5
Kenny Holiday and the Rolling Blackouts,
Tequila Wednesday w/ Mike Darby,
Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Thursdays
The Bombshelter w/ DJ Bomshell Boogie,
Dragon’s Den (Upstairs)
DJ Kemistry, Republic, 11pm
DJ Proppa Bear Presents: Bassbin Safari,
Dragon’s Den (Downstairs)
Fast Times ‘80s Dance Night, One Eyed
Jacks
Punk Night, Tarantula Arms 10pm
Velcro Indie Dance Party, Spanish Moon
Fridays
X, Detroit Cobras, House Of Blues
F
or the first time since their 2006
tour in support of Rollins Band,
X reunites, this time with all original
members for their 13x31 Anniversary
tour. Forerunners of the LA first-wave
punk scene in the mid/late ‘70s, X
has established themselves in the annals of not just punk rock history but
of rock and roll history. So much so
that their debut album, appropriately
titled Los Angeles, was inducted into
Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Albums of
the ‘80s and 500 Greatest Albums of
All Time. Slithering into New Orleans
and leaving a trail of cigarette butts and
debauchery are The Detroit Cobras.
Fresh off their summer headlining tour
that promoted their latest album on
Bloodshot Records, Tied and True, the
Cobras join X as an opening act for this
school of rock. —Gavin Atilano
Electro-City w/ DJ Izzy Ezzo, Tarantula
Arms, 1am
Friday Night Music Camp, The Big Top,
5pm, 5/9: The ISL Music Department f/ Davis
Rogan, Michael Skinkus, Ben Schenck, 5/23:
Bill Summers and Orquestra Yoruba AfroAmerica
N.O.madic Belly Dancers, Dragon’s Den
(Upstairs), 9pm
Soul Movement w/ Brice Nice, Dragon’s
Den (Downstairs), 10pm
Throwback, Republic, 11pm; 5/9 w/ John
Michael
Saturdays
DJ Damion Yancy, Republic, 11pm
DJ Rock-A-Dread, Tarantula
11:45pm
Arms,
Sundays
DJ Lingerie, Circle Bar
The Other Planets, Dragon’s Den (Upstairs)
[Begins 5/11]
Reggae Sunday w/ DJ Real, Tarantula
Arms
EVENTS
COMEDY
Sunday, 5/18
Spackle McCrackle’s Good God Damn
Show, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Friday, 5/23
Combat Zone Comedians f/ Caroline
Picard, Olivia Arrington, Wild Bill Dykes,
Slade Ham, Sam Demaris, The Parish @
House Of Blues
Tuesdays
Open Mic Comedy Night, Howlin’ Wolf, 7pm, $5
Thursdays
Make Ovis, Not War, La Nuit Theater,
9:30pm, $5
Fridays
God’s Been Drinking: Cutting Edge Improv,
La Nuit Theatre, 8:30pm, $10
Open Mic Stand-Up, La Nuit Theatre, 10pm, $5
Saturdays
ComedySportz: All-Ages Comedy Show,
La Nuit Theatre, 7pm, $10
Improv Jam, La Nuit Theatre, 10pm, $5
FILM SCREENINGS
Wednesday, 5/14
Peep Show Series: “Abel Raises Cain,” The
Big Top, 7:30pm
THEATRE
Fridays/Saturdays
“Beautiful Bastards,” La Nuit Theater (2301
Soniat), $20; 5/2 (w/ musical performance by
Paul Sanchez), 8pm; 5/3, 9pm; 5/9, 8:30pm;
5/16, 8:30pm; 5/17, 9pm; 5/23, 8:30pm; 5/24,
9pm; 5/30, 8:30pm
Guidance Counseling, Continued from Page 9...
I kind of fucked up. I was hanging out with some
friends at a bar and in the middle of a story I was telling, dropped an “N” bomb (I was quoting someone
else, actually— a very Michael Scott/Larry David
kind of moment). So now, that bell is rung and I can’t
help but feel like a hood-wearing bastard fuck every
time I walk in, and it’s a bar in my neighborhood that
I go to a lot. What can I do to redeem myself?
I’m glad you brought this subject up and
I’ve been meaning to talk about this for
a while now. Being a southerner myself, I
struggle with similar problems and the first
step is to realize that once a bell is rung, you
just have to let it ring; If I may quote the
late great Donna Summer, may she rest in
peace: “You can Ring my Bell,” It may not
be “Christmas after all,” but “knock three
times if you want me,” “Come on baby let
me know”…then get some confidence; you
know you & if you can’t save face; then save
your liver. Get a life and go to a bookstore
instead of a bar room, start a hobby, learn a
trade; something that involves tools. If these
“people” that you are so worried about ever
give you grief, then, and only then, can you
get up off the floor and say: “Hey you uptight asshole! I live in America! You got a
problem with that; then you got a problem
with Bald Eagles and BALD EAGLES EAT
BABIES!!!!!!
Live New Orleans, Continued from Page 6...
enough, they weren’t going to play something I knew until “Everything to Everyone” and “So Much for The Afterglow.”
I didn’t have it in me to wade through
the muck for those two songs. But Blind
Melon...
FRENCH QUARTER FEST—APRIL
11TH, 12TH, AND 13TH
The main reason I went out to the river,
besides the food (jambalaya from Barreca’s!), was The Tin Men. Thankfully,
they shied away from their slower, ballady, bluesy songs for their hour-and-fifteen-minute set. Someone told me the
festival extended the sets this year, making it more difficult for groups to get on
the schedule. This seems right, but it’s
still hearsay. The Tin Men won the crowd
over little by little with their occasionally
funny lyrics and obvious joie de vivre. No
disrespect to Chaz, who’s awesome, but
Friday was the first Tin Men gig when I
thought, “If these guys had a drummer,
they’d kill.” When they were rockin’ just
on the cusp of overdrive, I wanted overdrive, but without a drummer it’s hard to
get there. Chaz’s song about big feet was
great, but I was really waiting for “Blackbird Special” and “Immigrant Song,” and
sure enough, those were the songs they
closed with. They do “Blackbird Special”
so well, and “Immigrant Song” is just a
gem of joy. How can you not smile when
a washboard, sousaphone, and guitar
band plays Led Zeppelin, especially one
of their most bombastic songs. Alex McMurray took his vocals over the top, and it
was hilariously awesome. He worked that
drama—”VALHALLA, I AM COMING!” I’m surprised his hat didn’t fall off.
On day two, Gal Holiday and The Honky Tonk Revue had to win the crowd over,
and they did. They were tight and sounded
clean and big. They really benefited from
playing every weekend during a big gig like
this. I’m not sure if it was the mix or Gal
herself, but her voice sounded so strong
and confident—like it could have carried
for miles. Kudos. Guess who showed up
to sit in with Little Freddie King? Rockie
Charles. I guess I’ve said it before, but my
hats off to Theresa Andersson for choosing a different artistic direction, the result
possibly being alienation. On Saturday,
she started off her set by playing alone for
five songs, using loops to layer sound upon
sound, violin upon drums upon guitar upon
bass, until she had a full sound. Pretty cool,
but even better were the songs that were a
bit transcendent. I also enjoyed her three
backup singers, The Kitchenettes. Susan
Cowsill was one of them.
I have a thing against cover bands,
but I’ve got to hand it to anyone that not
only picks “Shooting Star” but also pulls
it off. And then segues seamlessly into a
Black Crowes song. The Bucktown AllStars knew their crowd on day three. Van
Broussard was a nice surprise over on
the smaller stage. They say he’s swamp
pop, but it sounds like old school R&B to
me. How cool was it having a three piece
horn section adding push to every song?
My Dad, sitting next to me at 57 years of
age, said Broussard’s music was before
his time. I enjoyed it, though I wish they
would’ve rocked a little more. A lot of medium pace songs.
33
COMICS

May 2008 - Antigravity Magazine

Transcription

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