Tag Archives for Boris

C and D: Two fellas reason together about some new records (Arthur No. 22/May 2006)

Originally published in Arthur No. 22 (May 2006)

C and D: Two fellas reason together about some new records

D: We have some severe time and space restrictions today because there’s 25 records to examine and I only brought four beers.
C: [disbelieving] I told you all week.
D: Yes, well. We’ll have to be efficient and precise, like the German defense.
C: Always with the soccer metaphors when he’s supposed to bring the beer.
D: [looks at stack of CDs] Hmm, I like this pitch. [smiles broadly, uncaps a Foster’s] Come on man! It’s time for kickoff.

MARVIN GAYE
The Real Thing: In Performance, 1964-1981 DVD
(Hip-O/Motown/etc)
D: Marvin Gaye, the sweetpeacelovevibetenormaster of all time.
C: Sometimes things really are essential, and this nine-dollar DVD is one of those times. Or things. Anyways, the reason I’ve been watching this all week long is pretty obvious. There’s nobody like Marvin, no one even close; it’s a blessing just to watch him lip synch.
D: [grabs DVD case] Give me that. Especially when it’s Marvin duetting with Tammi Terrell at something called “Swinging Sounds of Expo 67,” singing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” in a futuristic phone booth under a plastic dome with a people mover going by in the background.
C: Look at those Dentyne smiles. It’s like a commerical for some future utopia where they are the fertility king and queen.
D: [thoughtfully] A world where you’re not afraid to have a baby
C: Hey, you’ll like this: the a capella option lets you hear Marvin singing in the shower.
D: No it doesn’t.
C: Okay it’s actually just isolated studio tracks. Beautiful. He really can make you swoon with just a voice and a snapped finger. That’s all he needed.
D: Very efficient.
C: “War is not the answer/for only love can conquer hate… we’ve go to find a way/to get some understanding here today”—man, if you sing that today, you’re called a master of the obvious, and yet maybe it’s only a lovesinger who can bring the super-commentary that lasts. He reminds us there’s better things to do with our time.
D: [musing] Lovers and poets make the best peace advocates.
C: This is footage from the film Save the Children—
D: —which should be released on DVD immediately—
C: —which includes live renditions of “What’s Going On/What’s Happening Brother” from a 1972 concert where they did the whole album, and you get Marvin at the piano and the legendary James Jamerson on bass guitar.
D: [sipping beer] Unbelievable. Total butterland.
C: Total ethnographic film of Black America in the early ‘70s: broken windowed skylines and gang grafitti, soul food joints and black pride bookstores, men in dashikis, women in flares and kids in corduroys with spaghetti on their faces, street basketball and barbecue, balloons and checker pants and sweaters.
D: Excellent fashion!
C: He sings like his voice is a horn—and his voice actually has the grain of one. So amazing. Plus there’s multiple appearances on the Dinah Shore show—[notices puzzled D]—that was an afternoon TV show for bored housewives back in the ‘70s.
D: That was the time before they started making all the women work all the time too, in addition to the men. What happened?
C: [ignoring] He talks about What’s Goin On: “I don’t recall much about making it. I feel it was very personal, very divine. I don’t hardly remember writing the songs, it was like I was in some sort of other dimension when we did it, so I know it was a very spiritual.” We could spend weeks talking about everything on here: the polyester jumpsuit future-Chic-soul-P-funk—
D: Somewhere The Juan Maclean is crying.
C: —about getting down on the moon with floor fog that is the promotional video for “A Funky Space Reincarnation”— “COME ON BABY, let’s go peace loving and check out this new smoke/Naw this thing I got, it ain’t classified as dope/Smoke I got from Venus/Have had it all week, it’s getting old/come on and try this new thing with me baby….”
D: This song is my new national anthem.
C: And your new wardrobe, if the world is lucky.

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C & D bicker about new records (Arthur No. 17/July 2005)

Originally published in Arthur No. 17/July 2005

C: We meet again.
D: Indeed. [goes to fridge, returns with chilled brownie]
C: Okay? We are ready to begin. D, I wish you clarity.
D: Yes. Focus pocus.

Kool Keith
Global Enlightenment Part 1 DVD
(MVD)
C: I thought this was gonna be Keith being oh-so-weird but actually it’s him being clever… He’s talking philosophy.
D: He’s talking seltzer water.
C: He’s talking about theft, it’s a favorite subject of his. And this is about how he dealt with that: by doing something that is unstealable. Listen to what he’s saying…
Kool Keith on screen, talking about what he keeps in his refrigerator: “I learnt that people like to steal your sodas. Seltzer water, people don’t like it. You could send a big jug of seltzer water around, and nobody would touch it… But people taking my Hawaiian Punches, people drinking all my Tropicana. That happened for weeks, and months. I really learned that seltzer water keeps people away. It’s like a twist: I really don’t like it myself, but I like it because people don’t like it. You have to do it that way. But you have to learn how to like it, like it’s so good to you: it’s SO GOOD to have a glass of seltzer water.”
C: That’s the way I’ve felt about Keith’s last, uh, five records. They’re hard to like! But now I gotta listen to them again, because they were hard to like on purpose!
D [musing]: Hmm. I have to admit I did not even hear those records.
C: Keith is brilliant even when he’s talking about being weird as a conceptual survival strategy. This is funny: watching Keith on Tour. It’s a sustained critique of status-obsessed modern hip-hop. So, he’s supposed to be showing how large he’s living, that’s what hip-hop stars do on their DVDs. But here he’s living in a hotel, he’s eating at Popeye’s. He’s got no hot women on his wing so he follows one around buys her some shorts. He hangs out with music stars friends, that is, the streetbusking guitarist. He has trouble finding liquor. The whole thing is done straight….
D: Even straighter than the Turbonegro film.
C: Which is saying a lot, when you think about it.
Kool Keith on screen, walking through Manhattan’s streets: “I’m always touring, even when I’m walking…. Am I above the streets? I am above the streets at my mentality level. Everybody now raps behind the microphone and a couple of bodyguards and they say they’re the streets. You see a lot of rappers, they walk around with a lot of people with ‘em, with headsets? Their reality is not even reality. It’s a fantasy. I don’t sit in an SUV, doing my documentary, ride around and talk about ‘I was in the streets, I live the street, I am the streets.’ You mean you ride through the streets. Ha. You know what I’m saying?”
C: He’s goofing like Sun Ra. Everything has at least two and a half meanings.
D: Thirty-five minutes of new stoner comedy-philosophy.

Little Freddie King
You Don’t Know What I Know
(Fat Possum)
D: [looking at cover, reading the album title] “You don’t know what I know?” I have a feeling he knows the same thing Kool Keith knows. Which it is I do not but I am trying to know.
C: It’s obviously a Fat Possum production.
D: Which means it’s thick enough to eat with a fork.
C: Raw John Lee Hooker feel, without sheen or Clapton cameos.
D: John Lee Hooker would never have a song called “Crack Head Joe.”
C: It’s about time someone paid tribute to a crackhead.

Blowfly
Fahrenheit 69
(Alternative Tentacles)
C: Blowfly is an old R & B songwriter dude who’s been running the crude parody game for 75 years. Wears a cape and mask to protect his secret identity. Totally classic if you’re in a certain mood.
D: We have to give him some major credit to the cover picture, which is a takeoff on the Bad Brains’ first album cover, only Blowfly is doing a urine lighting strike on the Capitol building.
C: Blowfly has to be experienced live, he’s a comedian provocateur goofball. (You can see why he’s on Jello Biafra’s label now.) I saw him opening for the Pixies and Soul Asylum once at a half-empty Universal Amphitheatre, and I know this is damning by faint praise Blowfly blewflied them off the stage. And get this: his ENTIRE band was wearing GIANT…RAINBOW….AFROS!!!!
D: [looks at sleeve picture of Blowfly with his middle fingers extended] I like his fingernails more than his new record.
C: To update George Clinton: Smell my fingernail.

A Band of Bees
Free the Bees
(Astralwerks)
C: There are songs on here that are as good as the originals they’re styled after– whether it’s the Zombies, or the ballads, the Afrobeat stuff. The writing is great, the spirit is there, the production is definitely there, but… Could it be that they are the men who know too much? With the internet and Mojo every phase of Western pop music is now available to kids, and it’s all presented with this sexy, dramatic gosh-wow. What does that mean for young smart musicians? Are they perhaps over-educated in music history?
D: Maybe you are an over-educated listener!
C: Could be true. I’m sure if I was 12, I’d listen to this one record all summer. But back then, you did listen to only one record all summer because that’s the most that you could get your hands on. You had just enough money saved up to buy a new record. Do kids even do that anymore, listen to one record for a whole summer? This one record, with all its styles and the sheer rich quality of the writing and playing, would keep me going. But now…
D: Now you are becoming an old man. Which is sad for you, because for me this is wonderful stuff. It’s not just vintage décor, the innards are top-notch too. And as my good friend Gertrude Stein said, A good song is a good song is a good song.

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Arthur Radio Transmission #16 w/ Spectre Group

This week on Arthur Radio we invited the Spectre Event Horizon Group to create an original and undoubtedly mind-expanding segment for the show (you may otherwise know them on the Arthur blog as secret santa, purveyors of obscure and highly relevant technological, biological and environmental information of this day and age). Here’s a description of their first audio documentary contribution, straight from Spectre themselves:

Spectre begins its experiment with radio by getting a tutorial from Albie Tabackman, an inventor + osteopathic physician who – among many other cool projects – has got a customized electric delorean up on blocks in his backyard. He’s also our friend Max Fenton’s dad, who joins us as well: lately Albie’s been working with stirling engines, and today they both kindly help us understand how it is stirling engines work and why we should each have one under our kitchen sink. Or don’t you want your own personal emission-free power plant?

More on stirling engines from the Spectre vault: http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/the-stirling-age/


Stream: [audio:http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Arthur-Radio-Transmission-16-w-Spectre-Group-5-2-2010.mp3%5D

Download: Arthur Radio Transmission 16 w/ Spectre Group 5-2-2010

This week’s playlist…
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Boris does the Splits

Have you ever seen Boris live? Dudes cart around a huge effing gong with ’em, and as I recall from their Arthur Nights performance, they only bang on it like once or twice but when they do: Whoa boy! Just WHAM and it’s all shimmering through the air until it fades back into the wall of guitar buzzing. Anyway, they’ve got two new splits out right about now. The first, with one of Boyd Deveraux’s favorite bands, Miami-based sludge metallers Torche (click here to go read “Riffs on Ice,” our interview with the doom-metal-loving hockey great) is called Chapter Ahead Being Fake and it’s got one song from each band. They’re both minor works and a bit “meh” but far from stinkers. It’s out on Daymare Recordings.

The other split out now is a winning head-scratcher: It’s called Golden Dance Classics and it’s with a band we’d never heard of called 9dw. A quick-read of their MySpace reveals them to be a “hip Japanese combo” that does a kind of techno-jazz fusion thing that’s all manic high-hats and funky keyboards versus spaced-out keyboards. Makes us think of all those modern Japanese modal jazz guys that we could never really get into. But all that is beside the point: The two Boris songs here are totes amazing. The first is a long thing with a drum machine, keyboard squiggles and guitar lines keening around as the band kind of yelps and moans prettily. The second song is a wall-of-guitar fuzz builder with pleasantly melancholy vocals that build together into a total anthem. RAAAAH BORIS! You can find links to get this one with it’s trippy cover art and everything at the 9dw M’Space and the Boris M’Space.

Riffs on Ice: Toronto Maple Leafs' center Boyd Devereaux on adding more heaviness to the soundtrack at your local hockey rink.

Toronto Maple Leafs’ center and Elevation label honcho Boyd Devereaux talks to Jay Somerset about adding more heaviness to the soundtrack at your local hockey rink.

71798511DS015_Sens_Leafs.jp

Professional hockey players can usually be to divided into two groups when it comes to music: There’s the good ol’ boys, usually from small-town Canada, who pump Toby Keith in their Sirius-installed Ford F150 pickups; and then there’s the classic rawkers who never tire of the arena anthems that spark to life between referee whistles—“Get Ready for This” by 2 Unlimited, Europe’s “The Final Countdown” and, unfortunately, Glenn Frey’s “The Heat is On.”

And then there’s Boyd Devereaux: “Slow-motion, epic sounds get me going—the heavier, the better,” says Devereaux, 30, a clean-cut father of two who, after 10 years in the National Hockey League, has played more than 600 games, scored 61 goals and made 107 assists for teams including the Edmonton Oilers, Phoenix Coyotes, Detroit Red Wings—where he helped win the Stanley Cup, in 2002—and, most recently, the Toronto Maple Leafs. “Last season, I was pumping Boris a lot, especially right before a game, on my way to the rink.”

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ARTHUR NIGHTS (2006)

Poster by Maya Hayuk.

(Late booking, not on poster: KYP MALONE (TV on the Radio) solo set)

INS & OUTS ALL NIGHT * ALSO CHECK OUT CLIFTON’S CAFETERIA FOR AFFORDABLE AMERICAN FOOD FARE AND A DECOR THAT WILL GIVE YOU A CONTACT HIGH — OPEN ONLY TIL 9PM *

GOOD AFFORDABLE FOOD TOO, RECORDS AND BEAUTIFUL HANDMADE CLOTHES PLUS MORE ON THE FOURTH FLOOR

THURSDAY, OCT. 19, 2006 [stage/schedule is lost, sorry!]

DEVENDRA BANHART
a special performance to close the current cycle

BERT JANSCH
first US visit in 8 years from the ex-Pentangle musician–a guitar hero to Neil Young, Jimmy Page, Johnny Marr and countless others–his new album just got 5 stars from Mojo magazine

ESPERS
gorgeous psychedelic folk-rock from Philly co-ed ensemble

JACKIE BEAT
singing spirit guide to Silver Lake scene queens

BELONG
ambient post-My Bloody Valentine fog-throb duo from New Orleans, spotlit in Arthur 23

BUFFALO KILLERS
lumbering, melodic rock ‘n’ roll from Cincinnati bros featuring former members of Thee Shams

YELLOW SWANS
psychedelic Bay Area agitnoise peacegrunt duo

GROUPER
Bay Area neo-ambient noiselady — ‘some of the most ethereal and powerfully heavy-lidden sounds this side of Brian Eno and Arvo Part’ says Mojo

AXOLOTL
San Francisco drone/noisefella

PLUS:
DJ sets by Dublab rats, Brian Turner (WFMU) and The Numero Group

FRIDAY, OCT. 20

7:20 MAIN HALL

AWESOME COLOR

awesome garage-mantra rock in a Stooges/Spacemen 3 ancestor worship mode

7:30 FIFTH FLOOR

SEAN SMITH

Berkeley-based fingerpicking acoustic guitarist in the great John Fahey-Robbie Basho tradition, part of the Imaginational Anthem tour 

8:05 MAIN HALL

THE HOWLING HEX

He was a prime mover in Pussy Galore and Royal Trux… a brilliant solo career and now his latest project, The Howling Hex… guitarist/genius Neil Hagerty in harmolodic prog-jazz-rock-whatsit flight 

8:15 FIFTH FLOOR

CHRISTINA CARTER

Texan matriarch of the current avant-folk-psych scene, and member of Charlambides, in solo guitar and voice set, part of the Imaginational Anthem tour

8:55 MAIN HALL

HEARTLESS BASTARDS

walloping Ohio rock trio led by wailer/guitarist Erika Wennerstrom–second album just out on Fat Possum

9:05 FIFTH FLOOR

FORTUNE’S FLESH

features ex-Starvations members; “Cockroach’s larvae stage of death doo-wop”

9:45 FIFTH FLOOR

TALL FIRS

mellowside trio on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace record label

9:55 MAIN HALL

BE YOUR OWN PET

Nashville teenage action-punk quartet led by firecracker vocalist Jemina Pearl

10:30 FIFTH FLOOR

SHAWN DAVID MCMILLEN

“Soporific, glazed” (sez ‘The Wire’) Texas psych, part of the Imaginational Anthem tour

10:50 MAIN HALL

TAV FALCO & THE UNAPPROACHABLE PANTHER BURNS

Charlie Feathers, Alex Chilton, Rural Burnside and more…The truly legendary ‘Dorian Gray of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ from Memphis–admired by rock n roll luminaries like Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce, The Cramps and The Black Keys–in his first L.A. appearance in a decade!

11:15 FIFTH FLOOR

CHARALAMBIDES

beyond-rare L.A. perf by co-ed twin-guitar psych/dream duo on the brilliant Kranky label

12midnight MAIN HALL

BORIS

Japanese doom/rock/blissout superpower trio in performance ahead of the Halloween release of their devastating new album-length collaboration with dronekings Sunn0))) 

Saturday October 21

4:00-on FOURTH FLOOR

SCHOOLHOUSE DROP-INS: “Visit the geodesic tent as the 9 Sundown Schoolhouse residents present projects to partake in, forums for engagement, acts of interaction, thoughts for collective inquiry and general happenings.”

4:20 MAIN HALL

RESIDUAL ECHOES

Stomping West Coast high-energy rock attack unit who blew us away at loast year’s ArthurFest.

5:10 MAIN HALL

FUTURE PIGEON

galactic dance-dub heroism from local ensemble 

5:30 FIFTH FLOOR

WOODEN WAND

mercurial, provocative, prolific folk-rock dude in a solo turn 

6:10 MAIN HALL

WATTS PROPHETS

righteous word jazz elders 

6:25 FIFTH FLOOR

NVH/BEN CHASNY

noize proj from Comets on Fire’s echoplexist/drummer Noel Von Harmonson and guitarist Ben Chasny

7:10 MAIN HALL

MONEY MARK

always imaginative keyboardist/music man–best known for co-writing work with Beastie Boys 

7:10 FIFTH FLOOR

MIA DOI TODD

L.A. singer/instrumentalist on guitar, vocals and harmonium

8:05 FIFTH FLOOR

RUTHANN FRIEDMAN

Folk singer-songwriter, a real child of the ‘60s canyon scene, introduced at Big Sur Folk Festival in 1967 by Joni Mitchell –She wrote “Windy” and so much more–now returning to live performance at age 62!–she lived the ’60s and she remembers it 

8:10 MAIN HALL

SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE

apocalyptic free-mind guitar & voice from Ben Chasny 

8:55 FIFTH FLOOR

MICHAEL HURLEY & JOSEPHINE FOSTER

Hurley is a legendary mellow bard with a hint of wry 

Josephine – you gotta hear this woman sing! “She’s a genius” – Joanna Newsom

9:10 MAIN HALL

WHITE MAGIC

long-awaited return of Mira Bilotte’s NYC-based unclassifiable folk band, new album out next month; this perf will feature Dirty Three drummer Jim White!

10:10 MAIN HALL

OM

return of Bay Area metal trance/mind expander duo who laid peacewaste at this spring’s ArthurBall

11:00 FIFTH FLOOR

LIVING SISTERS

joyous acoustic trio featuring Inara George, Eleni Mandell & Becky Stark (Lavender Diamond), with special guest VAN DYKE PARKS 

11:20 MAIN HALL

SUN RA ARKESTRA

11-piece Arkestra still going deep, now led by the great Marshall Allen 

~12:30am MAIN HALL

NUMERO GROUP DANCE PARTY

“Misplaced soul/funk hits” dance party DJed by the 20th-century pop archaelogists of THE NUMERO GROUP label from Chicago… They’ll be spinning throughout the day, with special sets before and following the Sun Ra Arkestra….

Sunday, Oct 22 

4:40pm in the Main Hall

SSM

John Szymanski, David Shettler and Marty Morris –rawk n roll from Deeetroit on the Alive label

5:30pm on the Fifth Floor

C.B. BRAND

local cosmic California country rock

5:30pm in the Main Hall

THE NICE BOYS

grade-AAA glam rock from Birdman recording artists

6:15pm on the Fifth Floor

THE COLOSSAL YES

Comets on Fire’s Utrillo’s brilliant piano pop proj 

6:20pm in the Main Hall

THE SHARP EASE

Paloma Parfrey-led liberation rockers featured in current issue of Arthur 

7:05pm on the Fifth Floor

CHUCK DUKOWSKI SEXTET

L.A.’s own… featuring Ms. Lora Norton – Vocals, Mr. Chuck Dukowski – Bass (Black Flag), Mr. Lynn Johnston on Horns, Mr. Milo Gonzalez – Guitar, Mr. Tony Tornay – Drums (Fatso Jetson)

7:10pm in the Main Hall

ARCHIE BRONSON OUTFIT

sharply shaped rock music from new English four-piece

7:55pm on the Fifth Floor

EFFI BRIEST

all-female experimental/noise combo

8:05pm in the Main Hall

KYP MALONE

extremely rare solo set from the TV on the Radio singer-guitarist–he’s flying in from the Darfur benefit show in Philadelphia

8:55pm on the Fifth Floor

OCRILIM

solo electric guitar hotwork set from prog-metal-avant maestro Mick Barr 

9:15pm in the Main Hall

THE FIERY FURNACES

justly acclaimed thrill-a-minute brother-and-sister-led clever combo, gifted with pop sense, improvisational chops and conceptual ambition

10:45pm in the Main Hall

COMETS ON FIRE

Quite possibly Earth’s greatest living rock ‘n’ roll band–see present issue of Arthur for more details

DJ sets by Dublab rats and Brian Turner (WFMU)