Rocktober 2013 - First Announcement

As I speculated last May, Junip have picked up an Atlanta date to coincide with their Austin City Limits set in October, and will be playing Terminal West on October 7 (Rocktober, baby!).  I've already got my ticket, even though I have no idea what's going on in that video.

It's still very early, but the Rocktober lineup for 2013 is already looking pretty strong, with the following dates:

September 30 - Local Natives, Masquerade

October 1 - Boy, Terminal West

October 2 - Fidlar, Drunken Unicorn
October 3 - Those Darlins, The Earl

October 4 - Aimee Mann, Variety Playhouse

October 5 - Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Terminal West

October 7 - Junip, Terminal West

October 8 - Wavves & King Tuff, Masquerade

October 10 - Menomena & The Helio Sequence, Terminal West

October 11 - Mount Kimbie, The Loft
October 13 - Von Grey, Terminal West

October 15 - Noah and the Whale & LP, Variety Playhouse

October 16 - Hanni El Khatib, The Earl

October 17 - Atlas Genius & Family of the Year, Center Stage

October 21 - The Moondoggies, The Earl

October 24 - Neko Case, Buckhead Theater

October 26 - Neutral Milk Hotel, Tabernacle

October 27 - Delorean, Masquerade

October 28 - Crystal Stilts, The Earl 

Of course, more dates are still forthcoming (529 hasn't posted any October shows yet), but even if nothing more is announced, this is already shaping up to be the best Rocktober yet.

Kisses at The Drunken Unicorn, Atlanta, July 25, 2013

Last night, LA's Kisses headlined a very satisfying show at The Drunken Unicorn, but the real revelation of the evening was the terrific set by a new (to me at least) band, Atlanta's Palace Wolves.

Palace Wolves were formed last year by songwriters Ryan Pace (guitars, keys, vocals) and Shannon Small (guitars, keys, vocals), along with Matt Katis (keys, programming).  Last May, they released their first EP, simply called 12 for the year they started.  I don't know how many gigs they've played prior to last night (their web site indicates they've played at least 5 sets before, all at the Unicorn), but if they continue to perform the way they did, word of mouth should quickly propel them to the upper echelons of the local music scene, if not onto the national stage. 

Here's standout song The Desert from 12, which ably demonstrates the band's skills:

You can stream the entire EP at their Soundcloud page, or download the individual songs.

Sealions' singer Joey Patino even gave them a special shout out during his set, much more than the usual "How about that opener, huh?"  I can't recall his exact words, but he expressed his own sincere pleasure at hearing Palace Wolves great set.

Not that Sealions didn't themselves deliver a terrific follow-up set.  We've seen Sealions a couple times before, back in October 2010 opening up for Metric at The Tabernacle and in March 2012 at The Goat Farm for the Atlanta Film Festival's Sound + Vision event ("Dude-I-Was-There!" video below).  As usual, last night they performed a satisfyingly loud set of slightly psychedelic guitar rock with touches of dream pop.

The headliners were LA's Kisses.

Kisses are Jesse Kivel and Zinzi Edmundson, and to say that their sound is anything less than sunny, happy, and delightfully summery would miss the mark.  These guys would make Cayucas sound introverted and mopey by comparison.

Naturally, the entire audience was up and dancing throughout the set, or at the very least swaying in place, and one particularly exuberant couple at the front of the stage set the tone for the rest of us, and even got Zinzi dancing along up on stage. Meanwhile, Jesse projected an extremely likable and engaging stage persona, and I don't think there was a person in the audience who wasn't won over well before the end of their set.

This was the band's first East Cast tour and first time playing in Atlanta, and they weren't sure what to expect.  Jesse asked for the air conditioning to be turned down, a rare request for a Southern California band in Georgia and one you'll never hear at the sweaty Masquerade or even The Earl.  They also weren't sure how they'd be received, so they played their usual encore song to close their set, and then were a little nonplussed when they were called back for an encore and had nothing else prepared. They managed to come up with something, though, a relatively longer song that nicely built up to a hip-shaking finale.  

So, three good sets by three good bands, and the discovery of one new band worth getting enthusiastic about.  Not bad for a Thursday night.

Today Is July 25

Today is July 25 and it's the last birthday of this sixth decade of my existence.  In recognition of my birth 59 years ago in Mineola, New York and of an early childhood of idyllic summer weekends spent on Fire Island, and since this blog started with the music of Thurston Moore, I wanted to share the following written by Moore last July 25:

Today is July 25 and it's my birthday. I'm 54. This song is called Frank O'Hara Hit. And it's by this band I started called Chelsea Light Moving. Right now we're whipping around Europe playing some summer love-cry gigs. I wanted to release this song by the end of July because it's a meditation on that month through history in events that define a lot of what mytho-romanticizes my heart, both broken and blessed at the moment. 

On July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band delivered to rock n' roll the dissident soul of folk music and poetry. For many it was already a viable meeting but Dylan set it on fire for the world to see. And he was famously cursed and booed by the gatekeepers of old ways wariness. The song he sang was Phantom Engineer (later titled It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry). 

On July 24, 1966, the NYC poet Frank O'Hara was struck by a dune buggy while hanging out on Fire Island, and died the next day. O'Hara knew poetry in all it's formalist glory and like John Cage's ear to music liberated it for writers for an unending time. In his essay Personism: A Manifesto (published in Leroi Jones' Yugen magazine in 1961) he writes, "I don't ... like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep'...As for measure and other technical apparatus, that's just common sense: if you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There's nothing metaphysical about it." 

On July 26, 1943, Mick Jagger was born in Dartford, Kent, England and would become the 20th century's erotic pinup for the unsafety of teeny bop girls everywhere preaching the gospel soaked blues of African-American music that their parents were most likely frightened to death of. His skill in getting it and keeping it together and continuing to honor the magic that rocks the fuck out when Howlin' Wolf hit the mic is what inspires every tantalizing facet of real rock n' roll. 

On July 29, 1966, our hero Bobby Dylan crashed his motorbike while taking it for a spin in Woodstock He had just recorded three lightning rod LPs (Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde), a book of writing (Tarantula) and was taking a breather between a just finished nine month world tour (where he was facing audiences half pissed at his "Judas!" betrayal of folk purity) and readying for sixty-four American gigs booked by money hog Albert Grossman. He was amphetamine skinny and breathing high-octane annunciation. He returned to us a man in control of his image and he provocatively crushed celebrity underfoot like a shitty Marlboro. 

Let us kiss our lovers gently in July as the lathered sunrays of August take us into contemplation and a sweet trust to a future we will always fight for. In rock n roll, soul, tenderness and piety. 

Thurston Moore,
Commune di Santo Stefano di Sessanio, Italy
July 25, 2012

CocoRosie

I've already bought my tickets to CocoRosie's November 5 show at Variety Playhouse.  This is a band I've been wanting to see ever since Lemonade from 2010's Grey Oceans, a song which still inexplicably brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it.

In related news, Low have announced that they've cancelled their September 6 show at Atlanta's Terminal West for undisclosed reasons.  I wasn't planning on going as I will be out of town that day seeing Dan Deacon and Animal Collective in Portland's beautiful Pioneer Courthouse Square, followed by Wooden Indian Burial Ground and Unknown Mortal Orchestra at the club Branx and a late-night set by Prefuse 73 at Holocene, so suck it, Low.  

Seriously, I would have gone to Low otherwise, and it's a shame they're dropping Atlanta (Nashville, too) from their tour.

Fanfarlo

So you didn't download the Fanfarlo song, did you?  Your loss. But to take away a little of the sting, here's a video of Myth of Myself.