Tag: music

starring that 1 guy as a scruffy, scruffy bass player. how shocking

As a one hundred percent fantastic welcome back celebration, Duncan‘s using his night at the weekly secret film school to present…

THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT
a movie so good that it was introduced to me as a way to get into my pants.
(Just typing that in caps sets the music off in my head)

“Space travel has become a dirty way of life dominated by derelicts, grease monkeys, and hard-boiled interplanetary traders such as Samuel Curtis. Written, directed and starring Cory McAbee of the legendary cult band The Billy Nayer Show, this sci-fi, musical-western uses flinty black and white photography, rugged Lo-Fi sets and the spirit of the final frontier. We follow Curtis on his Homeric journey to provide the all-female planet of Venus with a suitable male, while pursued by and enigmatic killer, Professor Hess. The film features music by The Billy Nayer Show and some of the most original rock ‘n’ roll scenes ever committed to film.”

Tuesday, December 9, doors at 7:30, Vancouver Film School, 400 W. Hastings Street


facebook event page

An open letter to history

From today’s Saul Williams newsletter:

“Dear History,
For too long have I pondered your meaning, memorized dates of battles, years of servitude, decades of injustice, named eras after movements, mourned the extinction of species, cursed founding fathers, worn vintage suits and cloaked myself with references of your hold on me.

I have walked through museums wondering how it is that greatness had lived and died all before my time. Parts of me feared becoming great because it seemed to include a price of death and a postmortem glory that my memory could never resurrect. I’ve stared at paintings dying to catch glimpses of the painter, closed my eyes to listen to songs that drunken ghosts dance to, and all the while I’ve fought to FREE the present to BECOME.

In 1995, I stood with poets in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, barking metaphors at the new moon of the summer solstice wedging words into it’s craters, sewing seeds through nightly wind.

In 1996, I forced the ocean back with words, fathered planets, climbed pyramids, and began to decipher the sirens song to conjure the dream-filled Children of the Night.

In 1997, I stood with prisoners in our nations capitol bending bars with the power of thought as wordsmiths served sentences and Hip Hop diddy-dandified itself: stealing golden calves from the Old Testament to smuggle into the lavish crib of Pontius Pilate for it’s birthday party

In 1998, I swallowed fear and sun-danced on film reels, projecting a me that had not been into a me that ever shall be.

And HERE I stand, ten years the difference and witness to changing hands.

Dear History,
I beat you. I stand a generator of generations bearing witness to a world that we are holding accountable for past actions. Me and my friends, we’re changing our diets, re-inventing marriage, check-mating capitalism, re-defining ethics, replacing cruelty with compassion, and have sworn not to re-elect the sins of the father.

We are casting our votes for so much more than a lesser of evils, but for change, and greater insight, for wisdom out of the mouths of babes, for races that bleed into ONE.

Dear History,
You are behind us and we are no longer looking back. We are standing on the threshold of new times, new days, new worlds, and charging forward without battle cry or trumpet, while cynicism, apathy, and cowardice take their place beside you, behind us.

Dear History,
We no longer believe in you. We have invested our our thoughts and dreams into the present moment and opportunity to shift our reality into one that does not resemble your dog-eared books.

We stand on the shoulders of those who have dared to dream and on the necks of those who have wasted their time and ours proclaiming a past past its prime.

Dear History,
Blitz! It’s my turn now. You can have your mounds of flesh, leather boots, cannons and sabers, nooses and guillotines, warships and fighter planes, trails of tears and blood, genocides, dungeons and dragons, ghost stories and fairy tales……….

Come on guys! Help me out! ~ Saul”

Write Your Own Letter To History

when this is done, I’m going home (thank you interscope records)

Actual lyrics from a song I’m testing today for work:

The Chorus: “But you feel so clean. Well she craves affection, so I use protection, and I know she loves me, she loves everybody.”

The First Verse: “You’re just a little girl now, you’re just a girl who misses her dad, and all the toys that she had, thought I could make you older, thought I could keep you out of harm, but now you’re caught in my arms.”

The Second Verse: “Now that we’ve made it this far, now that we’ve made a mess in the car, you ought to give it a rest.”

He then repeats the chorus about her feeling clean, but using a condom because he doesn’t want a filthy, filthy STD off the adoring yet slutty jail-bait he’s using as a Kleenex, because he knows she must have something besides love for him tucked away in that little girl skirt, no matter that the last iteration of the chorus doesn’t repeat the line, “she loves everybody” as a nod to her clubbed to death child-like innocence. End scene.

The cover of the album is a black custom condom wrapper.

thos wacky airship kids, whatever will they think of next

So this fellow I know, Robert, has this goth band, right, called Abney Park, and they dress up in distressed leather and wear goggles and pretty much represent all sorts of things that are good about Steampunk. Now, and this is where it gets good, Robert has done so well with this niche of a band that they were hired as the entertainment on the maiden voyage of the new commercial Zeppelin that is about to be launched in San Fransisco. All of this is very cool, very net chic, and very, very fun, but my favourite part of this particular gig so far, (as he tells me this is not the best thing, “not just yet, but I have a plan.”) is from the SF Chronicle article:

Please note, as well, that in the article, they describe Steampunk as “Jules Verne meets the Victorian Age”! Memory refresher: Jules Verne, 1828 – 1905. Victorian Age, 1837 – 1901.

some known attendees: andrew, sara, me, david, mike levens, mike elliott, beth, ed, ryan


Amanda Palmer
Amanda Palmer and Zoë Keating play Vancouver

Wednesday, Dec 10
8:00pm – 11:30pm
Richards On Richards
(1036 Richards Street)
Tickets available through Ticketmaster and Zulu Records for $12 +tax.



Zoë Keating

Seattle: what I’m doing this weekend, a partial list

ANACHROTECHNOFETISHISM: artifacts by pioneers of american steampunk.

“Long before the age of the internet, and well before the cold efficiency of the assembly line, existed fantastic and terrible machines, run on hope, sweat, and steam.
It was a time in which form and function lived in sin, and everyman was a revolutionary.

We are 13 American artists united by broad geography and narrow aesthetic.

Marrying narrative and nostalgia to design and technology, we imagine the triumphs of the past overriding the failures of the present to create from the ruins and detritus a dazzling future-perfect.“


From Eliza,

“Starring me and twelve other retropostapocalypticians, including Molly Porkshanks and Jake von Slatt, this show will feature insane amounts of designer teas and chocolates, a full set of my fine art prints, and a half-dozen original oil paintings that I have never shown in public, including Shine, Rustbutton Brass, the City, Afterglow, Twilight in the Roachfields (What I Did On My Summer Vacation), and most ridiculous of all, the Vacuum Traffic Controller: a 40 x 66″ collossus that I hope will dominate the room with his deep, slightly furrowed gaze.”

September 12 – October 3, 2008
Opening Reception: September 12 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM
SUITE 100 GALLERY: 2222 2nd Ave Suite 100, Seattle, WA 98121 (206) 956.3900

::..::

She also has a second show opening this weekend in Seattle, a solo affair launching on Saturday the 13th at Lighthouse Roasters, (400 North 43rd Street), from 4pm – 7pm. “The flagship painting, an original oil on a 24 x 24″ circular board, is the Cardiographer: dark, slick, and glowing, a portrait of a ghost-muse spinning a pulse out from ectoplasm. Co-stars include brand new (as of yesterday) 12 x 12″ Flee, a silvered landscape with robot on the lam; the ever-popular Bat Smax, an extremely adorable collaboration with my partner in rape-and-pillage, Jhonen Vasquez; the complete set of original sketches for the Bee Commission (monsters, demons, and vespid whores); and a full host of fine art prints, including many that won’t be shown at the steampunk show because they simply are not steampunk. And of course, refreshments will be served. Which is really the only reason to show up to an art opening in the first place.”

And, at my gentle nudging, it’s been decided that after her coffeehouse show, we’re all going to saunter over to Toren’s The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets concert at The Funhouse, (206 5th Ave N), where they’ll be calling up non-euclidean demons with BLOODHAG, (“Our mission is to spread the gospel of Edu-Core. Bang The Head That Does Not Read. Everyone Smarter Than Everyone Else. Use Heavy Metal music to promote literacy and vice versa. General Info: BloodHag play really short Heavy Metal songs about Science Fiction authors.”) and The Keeper, (“D&Dish wizard rock. Our EP is called Twenty Sided DIE!.”). Angel is a good friend of Jake, from BLOODHAG, and she warns us, “be prepared to be pelted with Sci fi books!”

thank you interscope, for having a download error

Working with pre-release music has unexpected bonuses.

Right now, as work, I have to listen all the way through the new TV On The Radio album, Dear Science, which is set to release on September 23rd. So far, it’s rocking my existential thigh-high socks. It is addictive, it is smooth, it is a nice, sweet new direction, less thrashing rock and more sexy, sultry groove. Not as blow-your-head off as Young Liars back in 2003 or their follow-up, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, but still effective. Possibly a little more desperate, a little more heart-broken. I’m going to have it on heavy rotation. I’m not even all the way through and already I’m developing favourites: Stork and Owl, a snatching, heavy-bodied track, and Golden Age, similar to Cookie Mountain, but a little more mature, a little more firmly packed, with a killer chorus.

They’re playing here September 7th at the 7 Commodore Ballroom. I’ve already seen them twice, but now I really want to go.

Your web zen for today

HATEBEAK

The only death metal grindcore band with an avian vocalist.


Their MySpace features such songs as “Beak of Putrefaction”, “God of Empty Nest”, and “Feral Parot” (sic). For the record, the Congo African Grey parrot is named Waldo, and I really can’t stop laughing. For extra points, they’re from Victoria. Power to the locals! Weirdly, here’s a really good interview with them.

found thanks to andrew.
—

Also, as a bonus, an equally fantastic headline: Dog-cloner denies she was Mormon sex kidnapper Joyce McKinney.