Photo courtesy of Biz 3 PublicityJUNE 9 THRU JUNE 16
THURSDAY, JUNE 9
MFDoomand DangerMousemight have conquered TheNewYorkTimes,but their combined superpowers are still no match for the mighty Internet, which leaks a track from the mysterious Dangerdoomcollaboration a week ago today. Doom's last two releases (Madvillain with Madlib and MM..Food?)and Danger Mouse's infamous Jay-Z/Beatles GreyAlbumare a strange (and daunting) setup for an even stranger project, apparently now absorbed by the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim: a hip-hop cartoon with a guy named Dangerdoom (an unstoppable masked copyright violator with a fantastic elastic beer belly) that's apparently a stonier American answer to the Gorillaz. Leakee “Mince Meat” is a spacey, simple song that bridges the stylistic gap between Doom rapping about things you can eat and drink (cognac, rum, chicken pot pie) to things you might see in cartoons (Bugs Bunny, Sylvester the Cat). So the world remains eager to hear more, especially with the resources that must have backed up this collaboration: like Doom says, anything they wanted, they took.
So, no, they're not playing. But pretend they are, and leak your own secret tracks in the men's room at the Blue Caf with DJAtrochezat club AudioOne.
FRIDAY, JUNE 10
The original ProjectBlowedalbum avoided the LA-compilation curse—under which this writer still labors; contact cz******@oc******.com if you would like 1 billion unsold copies of a record featuring the Rolling Blackouts' first non-Stone-Temple-Pilots-sponsored studio sessions—and established a benchmark of independent West Coast hip-hop. Ten years later, with the new anniversary 2xLP out now on DeCon/Project Blowed, the new voices match easily with the old—like CustomerService,who wiggle in with the heavyset “Live @ the Blowed” (“I'm a problem/With no solution!”) or Subtitle,who helps rap about uploading JPGs as he waits for his new YoungDangerousHeartLP to come out. That's a real credit to Project Blowed, with its hip-hop that really don't stop—in fact, longtime vets like Aceyaloneand Busdriverdeliver some of the hairiest verses on the comp, over beats that flip from baked to blown-out and back. The celebration tour at the GlassHousegrabs Aceyalone and Busdriver as well as DJDrez,Medusa,HipHopKclan(featuring EllayKhuleand hopefully Pterrodacto),CVE,Customer Service, AbstractRudeand probably more; whatever oxygen-poor part of your brain makes you go to cattle calls like the Hootenanny needs to send you out to this instead. Like the man says: “This is not classical music, so don't be afraid to vibe with it!” Related: Have you looked at Jeff Chang's Can'tStopWon'tStophip-hop history book yet?
ALSO: Take a negative approach to Detroit rock shocktroopers EasyActionat Alex's;BadReligionpicks up Suite VI of their operetta BillyGnosis:IntotheUnknown,so see them feel them touch theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeem at HOB.
SATURDAY, JUNE 11
Wistful bro-folkie (from, like, Costa Mesa, not Muskogee) MattCostadoubles up for shows at the CoachHouseand Long Beach's spectacular TourDesArtistes,which ropes in several blocks of the East Village for Costa, Dramarama(!?!), WaxApples,the Weekly-loves-themGreaterCalifornia,a Boliviandancetroupe,an experimental band called Xn,and best of all, the Soundwalk2005Party-Til-You-Reconsider-The-Effect-Of-Manipulated-Sound-On-Your-Immediate-Environmentbus(repeat: an actual Long Beach Transit Bus evolved into a sound-art installation). Costa is set to remora on to an arena tour with neo-James-Taylor megastar Jack Johnson uncomfortably soon, yet tonight, he is all yours. Contacted at his current job working security for a Seal Beach junkyard, Weeklyfreelancer Rex Reason remembers why he always predicted Costa would get famous: “He hits all the best sonic territory that the Monsters of Folk ran around about 40 years ago, but he manages to do it without too much fey nostalgia or hippy-drippy lyricism, and once in a while brings something like some bad-assed slide guitar to his sound. And if anyone needs a left taillight for a '64 Ford Falcon, let me know.”
AND: The SugarHillGangas part of the Freestyle Explosion tour at the ArrowheadPondwith Miami cheese-machine StevieB(“Party Your Body”) and LisaLisa(sans Cult Jam?) and the CoverGirls(actually Svengali-ed by infamous producers the Latin Rascals, whose mixes we just featured on the brutally neglected RadarOrangeblog). 1998 wakes up from its sugar coma with a lot of brightly colored clothing and songs that rhyme “love” with “above.”
ALSO: DJRockyRock(at Detroit)wins awards, helps kids and collects mechanical royalties from a remix of a Black Eyed Peas song; Kasabian(at the Galaxy)sacrifice their creative integrity to remind us that Primal Scream ruled.
SUNDAY, JUNE 12
Sad when your interview with BrightEyes'ConorOberstdoesn't work out; worse when your interview with Conor Oberst's quasi-employed second cousin living in Queens doesn't work out either. So this is all we got: ITEM! Conor was really moody at family reunions in Iowa during the late 1990s and sort of kept to himself and ITEM! When Conor Oberst made Time magazine (as “Indie Rock's Dark Prince”) in January, certain well-meaning aunts would send copies of the article to certain second cousins—second cousins then so broke they were considering selling homemade CDRs of their own inept blues guitar in the NYC subway with stickers reading “FROM THE SECOND COUSIN OF BRIGHT EYES' CONOR OBERST!” to make beans-and-rice money—and include little notes asking, “So don't you play some kind of music too?” With the Faintas Oberst's digitized backing band at the Grove.
ALSO: Godspeed You Black Sonic Youth with the Antarcticans'guitarkestra at the GlassHouse.
MONDAY, JUNE 13
We are reminded by fed-up fans that Roberto from the NewFidelityneither drinks like a longshoreman, comes from Cleveland nor plays guitar (“Meet a Need,” June 3); instead, he enjoys blank-verse poetry, cultivating bonsai and playing 20-minute slap-bass solos for his lovely wife. At Detroit.
TUESDAY, JUNE 14
New Release Day! So buy something old: the re-reissued SoulDrums,by Bernard“Pretty”Purdie,the dapper drummer who set a standard for funk and soul percussion on this unrelenting '68 LP. Besides session work with James Brown, jazz sax player King Curtis, Louis Armstrong and—contentiously, after an unproved 1993 claim—the Beatles, who supposedly dubbed over Ringo's lackluster tracks, Renaissance man Purdie also scored Lialeh,the porno now known as the “black DeepThroat”(and that sleazy soundtrack is out now on Seattle's excellent Light in the Attic label). SoulDrums'monstrous production and Purdie's ferocious style make for a widely recognized but rarely available classic. Find it if you mind it.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15
The Strokes stole the vocals off the BlueVan'sretro-rock and then the Hives stole their whole career—how many Scandinavian Standells fans can one hemisphere be expected to take? Sad that the Van missed the party, too, since they showed up in such great costumes: this Who/Creation/Animals drag with soft-like-a-vintage-T-shirt vox is so lovingly done that, with worse production, the Blue Van could have maybe faked their way into history, like Texas's Uncalled 4, who convinced collectors they were a punk band from 1979 even though they were really a bunch of fakers from 1985. At HOBwith bad-news hair-wavers HotHotHeat.
ALSO: MeanRedsand WiresOnFirerescue sassy hardcore from the oldies in the Blood Brothers and Das Oath and return it to the classically trained high school kids from whence it came. At ChainReaction.
THURSDAY, JUNE 16
RollingStonecribs everything Chris Ziegler ever wrote for today's article on the Willowz,yet fails to report how the Willowz recently soaked Chris for $200 worth of sushi at an Anaheim Benihana's, claiming, oh, no, don't worry, man, we'll only get appetizers, and then they'd order Alaskan snowball tuna cheeks and four pitchers of Asahi when Chris would get up to use the restroom.
ALSO: InnawayCD release at Detroit;DJJFX(from Anaheim's Beats Vinyl Life store) at AudioOne—what,Audio One rules!—and the forbidden jazz banjo of AlisonBrownat the CoachHouse.
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