this must be the place....goin strong , yeah baby!!!

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

ESCAPES 2014

FBOOK EVENT PAGE:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1427669520805245/ I love you all

Escapes is going down this year.  I am in full on rock promoter mode.  i get up in the morning, smoke some herb, make breakfast, life weights, shower, and get involved deep in email land.  its fun to talk to all these super cool ppl in awesome bands.  theres other stuff too.  I cant wait for this to go down in real life.  Plz RSVP and help spread the word if you can.

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Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Party Girl // XXXPRSNXXX // Party Plants // Horne + Holt @ MoHA 2/8/14

This was a really fun bill to play, and I think a very interesting bill as well. It came together as 2 bills being mashed together, but i think if you look at it from an obtuse angle the common punk thread runs straight thru. I dont know how I am even defining punk for myself these days, other than to say seemingly arbitrarily. pretty much whatever i say is punk is punk, hahaha.

XXXPRSNXXX ("expressions") was from New Orleans.  That makes them punk right there, practically.  I had seen 2 of their members play in different bands, Dark Dark Dark and The Back Pockets, who I am getting confused with other good band from Atlanta (the other band im thinking of, im sure theyve played bills together). I think the lead singer painted my face during Escapes one year when she was with Back Pockets. Very battle hardened musicians, and they were doing some funky shit -- the guy from Dark Dark Dark was playing a pattern on a foot organ the same time he was playing i think electric banjo, and the drummer had a lot of pad things and electronic looping things he could do, but his style was mainly the thing that stood out --- kinda hard for me to put my finger on it, but he definitely had his own style, his own patterns and stuff. It kinda reminded me of Smashing Pumpkins, in terms of heaviness, or Trent Reznor, but very musical, a light touch at times.  They had a bitchin smoke machine strobe light combo going and there were a lot of electronics.  They were playing as a 3 piece most the set and then a guy joined them at the end with a moog like synthesizer, with a lot of non keyboard knobs, and maybe a patch bay.

All the first 3 bands got to set up during load in, across the venue, and then Party Girl played on the stage to close the night out.  Party Plants played second and we set up behind the semi-portable L shaped bar, with the mics coming over the front of the bar.  All the musicians stood basically in between that and the crux of where the stage met the wall, and then we set all the amps up on the stage, and boosted on these other speaker cabinets.  I busted out my Sunn bass rig for this show, and both the guitar amps we used were of decent enough size for the space.  Charlie was offset so that his drum kit could be heard without being obstructed by the audience from one side and by the band as well from the other side of the bar.  We got a lot of nice compliments after the show.....it was our biggest crowd yet, and it felt like we naturally rose to the occasion, so thats a good feeling.  Also we debuted 4 new songs, The Grey, Hipster Stew, Voyeur, and Who Forgot to Pay the Electric Bill, so that always makes the band feel a posi-nervous energy that I think is the kind of thing that is fun to translate to an audience.

It was my first time seeing Party Girl.....my buddy had played their record off his computer for me, and I knew a few of them from The Carrots and other bands.  I danced the whole time....a lot of it reminded me of Gary Newman at times.  I was expecting it to remind me of Blondie, I guess it did a little.  Towards the end it wasnt really reminding me of anything, it was just fun.  The lead guitar was painted so it was glow in the dark green.  I like that song "Romeo" it got stuck in my head.  It was cool to see Trotter rock the bass.  

Horne + Holt was awesome to open the show, they were the ones who originally it was their show.  Jonathan left his like ten thousand dollar amp set up on top of a cabinet about 1 foot wide and 6 feet tall, and i almost bumped into it during our set, i was like wtf is this even doing here still?!?  he would have hated me forever if something had happened to that gear I know it !  I had seen the Horne + Holt duo before, but it had been a while.....Randall Holt is a cool musician straddling the line of punk and classical/experimental, and he also used electronics...I think what he was playing was a cello, I guess it might have been a stand up bass, but pretty sure it was a cello.  I had a good angle on him for part of his set and he really has some serious bow precision, cool stuff.  




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Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Party Plants EP release @ Beerland 1/23/14 // Spiked Punch in Argentina!!

Yo! We released our tape, the Party Plants EP. It was a rush getting it together, not in the sense that we rushed it, but we really set out to do a lot from the get-go and we were just in power mode getting it done with deadlines 'n stuff. superstitious about momentum with bands, superstitious about energy....we played our first show in September, and we put out a tape by January! Pretty good! Its a 4 track tape, we did tracking on 11 tracks, so we have a lot in the can already, we just need to have a couple fun overdub / mixing days. The plan is to record a few more songs that we already have written the 2nd half of March, when its kinda a dead time in town as far as taking shows, because everyone is hung over from sxsw still. We will prob be around 16 tracks total at that point and make an LP out of it, goody goody~~!! ....A lot of hard work and a sprinkling of stress, and i think it led to a great success! Special props to Courtney for helping us with the artwork, she knows graphic design, yall! It was engineered by none other than Paul Millar, base band tracking at Flabby Road and then with overdubs and mixing done at Paul's house aka Bug Sound. THE SHOW: The show itself was on an ice day at Beerland! It was freezing! Everyone was worried about driving, i think there were something like over 150 accidents that night. One of those classic cool beerland shows where its cold outside so everyone stays inside the club, mostly. The bill was set for Party Plants // Big Bill // Naked Pictures // Hamburger Kisses // Spiked Punch, and it ended up going down Party Plants // Big Bill // Hamburger Kisses // Naked Pictures // EMHU/S.P. solo. My solo set was fun, just me and a barstool and an acoustic guitar killing some time for the show to go on. I could hear my country bass voice come out a couple times, it was fun to do with monitors, what a feeling of crazy power! ha. Naked Pictures killed it, I didnt realize Lewis is mostly the singer in that band, he is also mostly the singer in Rattlesnake Milk which Chavez plays guitar on (whereas Chavez plays drums in Naked Pictures). Those guys just have an amazing creative output. I saw some video of Rattlesnake Milk from when they played in Lubbock, and man they really put on a show, that bar was feeling it. It was one of those shows that I have the minority opinion on are "good shows to play", that they some how help you long term. I like shows where , hey theres a date and a place and here are the bands and whatever happens happens. Hey it iced out that show, thats what happened. We prob would have had a huge crowd, but as it was it worked out....the ppl there are like our best friends thanks for playing yall!!! Hamburger Kisses I should mention is a new band from the guys who do the band Fellows. It was really awesome to get to play a show with them, it just sucked about the weather because I would have loved to get to play for their crowd some. Naked Pictures probably played best on the night...i know at least i wasnt drinking and to play at 1 AM after not drinking all night, lets just say I played a lot better 2 nights later when we played a show for Willard's birthday. -------------- In other news Spiked Punch - Chill out and Eat a Mango is seeing re-release in Argentina! There will be a bonus track on it, I cant wait to have one mailed to me and post pictures.

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