Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Firewater’ Category

Letters to Cleo (Underground Arts, Philadelphia, PA, November 14, 2018)

Posted in 10 Things I Hate About You, American Hi-Fi, Boston Phoenix, Care Bears, Cheap Trick, Doc McStuffins, Firewater, Generation O!, Happy Birthday, Josie and the Pussycats, Letters to Cleo, Melrose Place, Miley Cyrus, Nick Lowe, Philadelphia, PA, Scooby Doo, Underground Arts, WFNX 101.7 FM--Boston, MA on November 14, 2018| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: November 14, 2018] Letters to Cleo

When Letters to Cleo first put out Aurora Gory Alice back in 1993  I was really excited about them.  They were punky and fast but they were poppy and intriguing.  The chorus of “Here & Now” is somehow really catchy and impossible to sing.  I lived in Boston, they were based in Boston.  They were getting much buzz in the Boston Phoenix and on WFNX (“Here & Now” was inescapable–it was even used on Melrose Place).  And their name was weird and mentioned my childhood dog (Cleo).  I also thought their album title was funny so I bought a copy on Cherry Disc records (one of dozens of CDs I bought on an indie label only to later find out the major label pressing aided like five more songs and a gold chain or something).

Their second album had an even weirder name Wholesale Meats and Fish but was equally as strong, if not stronger.  Their third album was the amazing Go!–it added so much depth to their songwriting and was really just fantastic.

Then they appeared in 1999’s movie 10 Things I Hate About You.  They had songs on the soundtrack and were filmed playing “I Want You To Want Me” over the closing credits.

Wikipedia says that “the band then recorded 13 new original songs for the Kids’ WB cartoon, Generation O!, which aired from 2000 to 2001″ and which I’ve never heard of.

Then they broke up. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Maxwell Eaton III–The Flying Beaver Brothers and The Evil Penguin Plan (2012)

Posted in Adventure, Beastie Boys, Children's Books, Contests, Deedle Deedle Dees, Environmentalism, Firewater, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Maxwell Eaton III, NoMeansNo, Short Books, Superchunk, Surfing, Trout Fishing in America, Wee Hairy Beasties on November 11, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SPARE THE ROCK, SPOIL THE CHILD PODCAST (2005-present).

Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child started as a small radio show in Massachusetts and is now syndicated to whomever wants it.

In browsing their playlists, I see a wonderful selection of tunes for kids (and adults).  There is a definite They Might Be Giants connection (I gather they did the theme song).  But in between bands like Deedle Deedle Dees, Trout Fishing in America and Wee Hairy Beasties, they also play Superchunk (“Hyper Enough”), NoMeansNo (“Joy”) The Beastie Boys (“Intergalactic”) and Firewater (!) (“Ponzi’s Revenge).  These are songs that any kid would love and the fit in very well with some of the more energetic music featured in the rest of the show.

You can see their blog site here.  You can listen to the archives (and subscribe) here.

[READ: November 5, 2012] The Flying Beaver Brothers and The Evil Penguin Plan 

I stumbled upon this book at the library.  I’m always looking for books for the kids, and this graphic novel seemed great for Clark to read before bed.  It turned out that Sarah really liked it and so did Tabitha and now so did I.

Maxwell Eaton III has written several different children’s books, like The Adventures of Max and Pinky which we loved, and Two Dumb Ducks, which was okay.  But we loved The Flying Beaver Brothers.  The brothers are Ace and Bub.  Ace loves adventure!  (The opening sequence is awesome!).  You can see his surfboard by the door and everything.  Bub, on the other hand, would much rather simply nap.  But it is time for the annual island surfing contest and Ace stands a good chance of winning, that is, if the huge beaver, Bruce, doesn’t get in their way (he wouldn’t be plotting something nefarious would he?). (more…)

Read Full Post »

Camilla Gibb–“The Principles of Exile” (The Walrus, July/August 2007)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Books about writers, Camilla Gibb, Canadian Content, Fears, Firewater, KEXP 90.3 FM--Seattle, WA, Letters to Cleo, Religion, Short Story, The Walrus, Violence, Yuck! on May 29, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: FIREWATER-Performance from KEXP, July 3, 2008 (2008).

I loved Firewater when their first two albums came out and I even saw them once open for Letters for Cleo (a great show by both bands).  Then I more or less lost touch with them.  And it turns out that lead Firewater dude Tod A. had been out of the country for a while.

The interview (and concert) with them details his distaste for the Bush administration and his decision to get the hell out of the country for a while.  So he spent three years traveling around India, Turkey, Pakistan and then returned with this album.  I wasn’t aware of any of that, or even that they had a new album out in 2008.

Firewater had a very cool (and reasonably original) sound when they came out back in 1996.  They had a middle eastern vibe even back then which they blended nicely with theatrical pomp and a whole lot of punk.  They threw everything together into a rollicking good time (even if the lyrics were very dark indeed).

The 2008 album The Golden Hour seems a bit more upbeat (touring the world did him good) although it hasn’t changed the overall style of the music.  This live set includes several new musicians for Firewater, and their array of skills (and instruments) is great.  But the most surprising thing to me is how friendly and jovial Tod A. is.  As I said, I knew the band as being kind of angry, so hearing him be fun (and inviting the KEXP volunteers to sing gloriously chaotic backing vocals on “Beirut”) is really cool.

In total the band does four songs: “Hey Clown,” “Electric City,” “6:45,” and “Borneo.”  I think the biggest surprise for me is how short the songs are.  Not punk short, but more like pop song length.  And super catchy as well.

It’s a welcome return to a great band.  Although I see they haven’t released anything else since 2008.

[READ: April 4, 2011] “The Principles of Exile”

This was a fascinating and very sad story which had multiple layers and went in many unexpected directions.  It was really great.

As the story opens, Manny is sent to get some “special” cheese from a shop.  The cheese is called halloumi, and the best kind is made in a bucket behind their counter.  He is sent for this cheese because his mother is making a special dinner.

The dinner is in honor of Monsieur Sarkis’s new book.  There was a fatwa leveled against Sarkis for his previous book.  And that previous book (naturally) went on to be a best seller.  Well, Manny’s father had the publishing rights to the book (normally his publishing house was on the verge of bankruptcy, so a huge best seller was a big deal for them).  They didn’t even mind the fatwa.

Until it started to affect them personally. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Dave Eggers & Deb Olin Unferth & Sarah Manguso–One Hundred and Forty-Five Stories in a Small Box (2007)

Posted in Cop Shoot Cop, Dave Eggers, David Ouimet, Deb Olin Unferth, Firewater, Flash Fiction, Foetus, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), McSweeney's, Meta, Motherhead Bug, Sarah Manguso, Short Books, Short Story, Swans on November 28, 2007| Leave a Comment »

145.jpgSOUNDTRACK: MOTHERHEAD BUG-Zambodia (1993).

zam.jpgMotherhead Bug is the creation of David Ouimet. David was my boss at Tower Records way back when. He has been in some other influential NYC bands like Swans and Cop Shoot Cop, and he’s worked with Foetus as well. He has since moved on to bigger and better things, including doing wonderfully creepy illustrations for YA books (like Cat in Glass and Double-Dare to Be Scared).

David was a founding member of Cop Shoot Cop, and then left to do other things. What I find most interesting about Zambodia is that it sounds fairly comparable to the band Firewater, a band that was created by Tod A, one of the other founders of Cop Shoot Cop. No idea if there was something in their collective water but it’s interetsing that they both pursued this bizarre hybrid of punk/industrial/klezmer/gypsy/circus rock.

If you know Firewater (and you should, they’re very good), Motherhead Bug would be something like a slightly more indie version of them (if you can imagine that). The unconventional aspects of the songs are more to the fore, and the instrumentataion is a little more peculiar. This is probably due to the fact that Ouimet is a trombonist and samplist (is that what you call a sampler player?). It is clear that his love of the horn section and freedom of samples allowed his creativity to run amock.

Ouimet’s vocals work in a gravelley context similar to Tom Waits, but less drunken-bluesman and more gothic spooky storyteller. The whole shebang sounds something like a Kurt Weillian nightmare. And yet, there is a great deal of humor involved. Having said all that, for all of its unconventiality, the songs are pretty standard verse chorus verse, 4 minutes long. It’s just what he does within those limits is pretty outlandish!

For a genre that has so many tentacles, Motherhead Bug fills a fun niche of industrial carnival music. If you like a chaotic noisy band, and you’re interested in unconventional instrumentation, then check out Motherhead Bug.

Hi David.

[READ: November 20, 2007] One Hundred and Forty-five Stories in a Small Box.

The format of these books is three books in a small box. Each book is a volume of short short stories or flash fiction. The books themselves are also small in size: slightly smaller than a mass paperback. So, when I say that a story is a page long, it is in fact, about a typical paragraph length. One of the tropes of the flash fiction movement is that you try and write a fully realized story in as short a space as possible. It is amazing how complete many of these stories turn out to be. Even though they are devoid of most of the trappings of a conventional story, they often convey a full range of emotion, and even some details. According to the Wikipedia entry, most flash-fiction pieces are between 250 and 1,000 words long. This should all give a sense for what’s in the box. (more…)

Read Full Post »