This was listed over at BoingBoing today, but I will list it here to second my support for this great site, LP Cover Lover. It’s really a shame that cd’s came along and destroyed the art form that was the LP Cover. As a young musician and designer I always wanted to design album covers, but just missed the LP age, and alas I only had the opportunity to design some punk rock 7″ covers. You can waste quite a bit of time on this site going through their archives, and discover some real gems.
LP Cover Lover- Mourning the loss of an art form
August 11, 2008
Etherbomb Muxtape Update!
August 6, 2008
I found this great folder of music my amigo Jason Willis had tossed my way a while back. It has old odd funk, soul, rock, and other just plain interesting stuff. I put together a muxtape list featuring some of my favorite cuts so far.
update:
*MUXTAPE WAS SHUT DOWN BY THE RIAA* you bogus morons!…that was a great site for discovering music, and a lot of fun. You could not even download music there. Damn those people just don’t understand do they?
check it out yo! Etherbomb Muxtape Funky
Cars and Trains
August 5, 2008
Last week Colt Vista played a Tuesday night gig at one of our most favored local Portland music venues Someday Lounge. The show was well attended for a Tuesday night, and we really played a great show, it was to steal a quote from our drummer Ryan “super fun times”. The reasons we like Someday Lounge so much are quite simple, professional soundguy (he’ll give you a great recording of the show for $20), good soundsystem, free beer chilled in the back room, and great food. The additional perk is the live streaming feed that actually works, so friends and family in far away places can view your show (they even archive them).
After we played we were treated to a live performance from local Portland one man band Cars and Trains. Cars and Trains is constructed and fronted solely by musician/designer Tom Filepp standing behind a large enviable collection of electronics and musical instruments. I spoke a bit with Tom before the show and we conversed a bit about writing performing with Ableton Live and how it is really opening doors for musicians. Tom later sent me a copy of his latest release titled “Rusty String” which you can purchase here.
His live performance was very interesting to watch as he takes a loop and overdub approach building his layered songs and switching to other parts using live. I have wrestled with this approach a bit myself, as I feel it tends to take you away from the interaction with the audience, and while it is interesting for a musician such as myself to watch, I think the general audience member might need more…I’ve tried adding extra visual accompaniment in some of my projects, but that opens another can of worms…not to mention the time you need to create visuals that don’t come off as just being distracting from the music. Tom breaks it up a bit by adding other instruments to the mix nicely, it’s most impressive when he steps away and picks up a trumpet, or violin etc. and starts playing along with the constructs. He did one song that featured song great vocal overdubbing, creating a nice human textural element.
The CD recording of Rusty String is really where Tom shines I think. He does an amazing job of crafting a CD that uses a variety of electronics and still maintains an organic feel to it. He plays all sorts of instruments, and uses Live’s effects and sequencing abilities (Tom corrected me, he uses Logic to record, Live only as a performance instrument) to construct and manipulate the parts. The music itself is an excellent blend of folk and electronica, and while I feel it’s easy to have this come off as cheesy, Tom manages to combine them together into music that feels naturally seated in itself. Check out Cars and Trains on the Circle into Square record label. Here is my favorite cut off the Rusty String recording…
Cars and Trains- …and all of us, as well
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Babe, I’m going to leave you
July 31, 2008
Don’t ask how I stumbled upon this video. It isn’t a bad cover of Joan Baez/Led Zeppelin’s tune (more Led Zeppelin’s version than Joan’s original), but there is something just not quite right.
Eastwood Airline Town & Country Guitar
July 29, 2008
If you are not familiar with myrareguitars.com today is your lucky day. My pal Jason turned me on to them years ago, and they have grown and grown releasing all these amazingly cool looking retro guitars at really reasonable prices. I was cruising the site today and came across this awesome “Country” guitar, which just looks really classic to me. They have also release a snappy little lapsteel which you can’t beat for $400! Bass players don’t fret (nyuck nyuck) check out this super cool EEB bass that comes in a fretless version.
Project Bluebird- I Am
July 25, 2008
Many moons ago there was a band in Tucson Arizona named appropriately Barely Bi-Pedal. The band was a loose conglomeration of musicians which revolved around Tucson misfits James Jordan and John Mount. During it’s heyday in the late 80’s and early 90’s I was involved in the project, playing bass, recording the band on 4 track, and adding lo-fi experimental noise effects. It was a great free time, and I remember it fondly. The band was completely free of any restrictive structure, and everyone could write songs or do whatever they wanted basically. The result was a string of really interesting cassette only releases that are pretty much the stuff of legend, and have inspired some rather fanatical devotion. The music was somewhat country/folksy, with a somewhat drug assisted psychedelia. So many great musicians were in that band it’s hard to remember them all, but at it’s core it always seemed somewhat like the Velvet Underground with Nancy Pontious cast in the role of Nico.
Fast forward 20 some odd years and Nancy has been busy with her own musical endeaver titled Project Bluebird. Nancy has waged her own personal war and peace with various illnesses, and the drugs that go along with that a large part of her life, but she continues to churn out her own unique art and music. She works with many different musicians (many of them named Eric), and in homage to the old sound of Barely Bi-Pedal, imperfect and low-fi, I added a bunch of loose instrumentation to this lovely spacey song of hers entitled “I Am”. Check out Project Bluebird and some of the other people Nancy makes music with.
Project Bluebird-I Am
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Project Bluebird- Myspace Site
Project Bluebird- Last.fm Site
Mari Kimura vs. the robot guitar
July 22, 2008
Well actually it is more like the robot guitar is dancing and singing along to Mari’s performance. She has created a patch for the cycling ‘74 software Max MSP which is responding to the different pitch in her performance. The software then sends commands to her robotic partner resulting in this beautiful performance. Mari is also known for her physics defying subharmonics.
Mari Kimura- Official website
Mary’s Party! 4th of July Portland blockbuster
July 6, 2008
So I’ve added a section “Portland Bands” to list some of the great bands I’ve been seeing here since moving. Portland has a number of different thriving music scenes currently, as well as lots of great places to see bands. 4th of July we (Lana Rebel and the Broken Promises) played a really fun house party (Mary’s Annual 4th Party) There were a number of other great bands on the bill, but the one that made the biggest impression on me was Lord Master. When they were setting up it was hard to tell what to expect…a double stack of vintage National amps! Well to keep it short I’ll just say that they play a mixed bag of smart ironic rock fused with some really great metal guitar riffs, topped off with fun snarky lyrics ( a metal song about a bodybuilder etc). All in all really great stuff. Other highlights were the Birds of War, fronted by a couple of Portland veterans James Curley and Dylan Reilly whom I knew from way back in the days of punk rock in Tucson AZ. The Birds ripped through an admirable set of vintage punk rock which would appeal to fans of Black Flag or The Minutemen…the real stuff. Dylan was pleased to report his dad has finally realized that he is indeed an excellent bass player after seeing the performance. In between these bands were Thee Headliners…who are just too damn good. They had the drunken revelers all torqued up into a sweaty frenzy that culminated oddly enough into a sweaty shirtless man jam…I snapped a camera phone picture of this display featuring none other than apple of our gal Lana’s eye Kevin Mayfield banging his tambourine and singing along during a Creedence cover of Proud Mary.
Bow before your LORD MASTER!- Myspace site
THEE Headliners- Myspace site
Lana Rebel- Official Site
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum NW tour
Just caught the Sleepytime show here in Portland at Dante’s last night…and it was pretty damn impressive. They are a band firing on all cylinders at this point with enough material to pull from to put on a good 2 hours of really strong music. Most impressive moments for me included the new (to me) instrument created by Dan Rathbun, I don’t know which one it was from the list on their site
The Slide-piano Log, the Percussion Guitar, the Electric Pancreas, the Vatican, & the Pedal-action Wiggler; or rare: Autoharp, Glockenspiel, Toy Piano, & Viking Rowboat.
I’m going to harbor a guess it was the Pedal Action Wiggler? It looks like a bow attached to a hi-hat stand and it sounds somewhat like a didgeridoo as he pumps the hi-hat pedal, flooding the world with a monstrous bass tone. There was an entertaining number about the “Last Human Being” which i believe may have replaced the theatrical “Cockroach” number which was a personal favorite from the past. I greatly enjoyed the “Old Grey Heron”, a song written by Dan and introduced in a humorous manner as a song he had written for his father after he passed away, except he hasn’t passed away yet, and he continues to live on at the ripe old age of 88. You still have a few chances to catch this monster of a band as they finish their NW tour down the coast.
Upcoming-
# Eugene, OR WOW Hall W/ Mute Socialite
July 07, 2008
# Brookdale, CA Brookdale Lodge w/ Jason Webley , Edmund Welles
July 08, 2008
# Los Angeles, CA the Troubadour w/ Jason Webley , Edmund Welles
July 09, 2008
(Live Show)
# San Francisco, CA Great American Music Hall w/ Jason Webley , Edmund Welles
July 10, 2008
(Live Show)
Official Website- Sleepytime Gorilla Museum