Last night I caught a really fun concert being put on by the Sound symposium organization. It featured Justin Haynes (who is the most skilled ukulele player I have ever seen), Bill Brennan on melodica, Jean Martin on suitcase with brushes and show stopper Ryan Driver playing a steel street sweeper bristle with a box and a contact mic as a bass. This was truly something, the fact that he could articulate the notes so well with such a tiny piece of steel and the fact he could make it sound so much like a stand-up bass was crazy. But in advantage to just mimicking an acoustic bass sound he could get all the crazy buzzed out farty noises you'd expect from a contact mic'ed steel sprig. Funtimes. The set started with just the three piece of Justin, Ryan and Jean.
And in the second sert Bill Brennan joined in.
The Sound Symposium is one of the most interesting events this city has. To find out more about it go to soundsymposium.com
Thursday night I was itching to go out so I went to watch my friend (and drummer's) band Kill Popoff play down at CBTG's. They were kinda annoyed about having to play last and when their time did come they got experimental with the stage set up and ended up putting the drums on the floor in front of the stage facing the stage. Weirdly enough it seemed to work really well! it gave the band more room to thrash around, bands always play better when you can look the drummer in the eye, the drums certainly didn't get buried in the mix this time and it gave me an interesting angle to film them. It was a really good set, Devon Milley is a riff machine. I'm the only guitarist in my band but I'm the shittiest guitarist of the three of us. Of course it's no fun to play in a band with musicians who aren't better then you. Anyway, here are my two favorite Kill Popoff songs, this time you will notice no more lo-fi 8 bit crap audio, but new fancy schmancy sound provided by my new toy Edirol sound recorder thingy. I moving up in the world of videographing.
Well I was feeling better this weekend having just gotten over a vicious flu (not swine apparently). I decided to break my reclusive streak and take in some tunes. I saw that The Kettle Black was back in town and my head was still a flutter with some vivid memories I have of seeing his set from two years ago, I decided to go down with my (girlfriends) camera and with a new portable Edirol sound recording gadget (also my girlfriends) I was eager to try out. So as a result the videos I took have much improved sound (after I took the time to sync it up to the video) but the picture quality remains the same brutal pixelated mess it has always been. The Kettle Black is without a doubt the most intense solo performer I've ever come across. He is a one man band who fills the stage with dozens of fancy toys and fills venues with blistering cascades of pure pink noise.
There was a large group of us who went to see him at Distortion on Friday but he was unfortunately put at the end of a six band bill with some badly miss-matched acts and some just plain bad acts that I won't get into. Since he has so much gear and theatrical props involved in his set and since he has no one else to help him set up The Kettle Black didn't get to start his set until 3:15AM! this is after the steel gate is locked and nobody else can get into the bar. So there was just a very sparse crowd of enthusiasts left in the room cheering him on, but did he let this this get him down? hell no! he played one of the most ferocious sets I've seen in a long damn while.
I decided to come check out his set the next day at The Ship, this time opening for "The Gramercy Riffs" and "The Pathological Lovers". The hipster quota of the bar was way off the charts, I spent the night counting Keffiyeh scarves (only four so it wasn't so bad) and the faces of really uninterested people in horrible eyewear. This wasn't really the right crowd for The Kettle Black, but it was stil a good set. I hadn't really had a chance to check out the much hyped "Gramercy Riffs" before Saturday and by the tight packed throng of people gathered by the stage while they played it was pretty clear who the crowd had come for. So did The Gramercy Riffs live up to the hype?? no not really.. I really can't give them a ringing endorsement, but this isn't to say they were terrible. In comparison to the rest of The Nordic Beat, Mercy the Sexton, Texas Chainsaw pool of bands the Riffs have derived from, The Riffs are welcome breath of tolerableness. I actually really liked most of the songs Mara sings lead on and Lee Hanlon isn't without his charm. While there were 3 or 4 songs in their set I can declare as pretty darn good, the rest of the material suffered from some supremely uninteresting lyrics and tempos that plod along way too slow for a band like this. ughh.. I'm being a bitch on my blog and I should stop before I go to far. Here is a new song of their's I filmed called "Hold my Hand" and while it doesn't sound like Hootie and Blowfish or The Beatles, it does have a passing resemblance to Roy Orbison at the end with the classic break down style.
The Pathological Lovers were on next and as previously blogged, I have total chubby for Jody Richardson's voice. This was there third show in three days and they were in a very special drunken mode throughout the night. Much silliness ensued. This video had to be cut short due to 10 minute limits unfortunately. Anyway, it was nice weekend despite the large leather clad man standing way too close to me while I filmed and the table full of overpriced cupcakes tempting me with their delightfully decorated frostings, even though I totally despise the charity they were going for. Look, I don't care how many monkeys you have to torture or murder, if it means my mom won't get cancer go for it. Kill as many monkeys as you want.
Lately this blog has turned ugly and started becoming a meager self-promotional soapbox instead of the insipid scenester rag I intended it to be. I will rectify this as soon as I feel undiseased enough to go outside and actually watch shows again. This flu I've had the last week and a bit has been ridiculous. In the meantime I'm gonna shove a big pile of Internet egotism and sales pitches at you all. I seem to have a problem obsessive compulsive disorder (a fairly common one nowadays) with creating profiles on new music sharing and social networking sites. I got the Myspace, other Myspace, Reverbnation, Garageband, Ilike, CBC Radio 3, Sonicbids, CLLCT, AMP Live, Facebook, Terminus 1525, RPM Challenge not to mention Tubemogul, Youtube,Vimeo, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Google, Saatchi and Flickr profiles (notice not twitter, that shit is worse then BRAINAIDS). Why does a man need so many profiles? Fucked if I know, But now I gotta new one at Bandcamp.com. Bandcamp is a bit different from the other ones in that I can properly sell things there and control how it looks and is presented to the public. I have both the "Sex Lives of The Paralyzed" and "The Pervert" albums uploaded there and both can be streamed in their entirety from the website. For downloading the songs people have the choice of either download the 128 kbs mp3 files of the songs for free or paying a small fee and downloading the song or album in whatever higher quality format they prefer. The thing I like about Bandcamp is that if anybody buys something from me there it goes directly to me and I see it instantly, not a month or two or three down the road like dealing with Amazon or shitty ol' Itunes. Dealing with those companies is a pain in the ass and it's not like they do anything to actually help promote me or sell my music. Fuck em'. So for the time being I want everybody who would like to support me to go to my Bandcamp profile and buy songs from there. They are cheaper for one, and better quality then the third party shit. Anyways, Cheers. Here's the Bandcamp widget thingy for streaming my album. have a good one. I might step outside if it's not too rainy .
