MOG - The Monolators's Posts

Mini-tour: The Springwater X 2

The Monolators — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 04:31:54 GMT

We were a little concerned on Saturday when we got a message saying our show in Franklin had been cancelled. Luckily, the folks at the Springwater Supper Club in Nashville were nice enough to let us add on to their Saturday night.

So one thing to know about the Springwater is that it's almost a carbon copy of our home venue of Mr. T's Bowl. For every character that hangs at Ts there is his/her counter part at the Springwater. Needless to say, we felt quite at home and made for some good shows.

Saturdays at the Springwater are Rock-a-billy nights. At one point in our Monolator history, we were quite influenced by rock-a-billy so we enjoyed the night. We don'y fit in as well these days as we may have in the past but people were still receptive to our music even if it was a little different from the rest of the night. We saw a great band named Phil Hummer and the Tecumpseh Two. They put on a very dynamic performance. Harry was only playing one drum(snare) and man was he making the most of it. Since I'm a girl drummer, I am naturally interested in other women playing more "manly" instruments and Ray was really ripping it up on the stand-up bass. I thought I had muscles, damn!

So after a very fun Saturday we returned to the Springwater for a second night on Sunday where we played with an excellent band(that we picked out) called Bows and Arrows. Unfortuntely, they are all underage so we had to hang out a lot in the parking lot before the show. They are some very talented youngsters an I'd expect to be hearing more about them in the near future.

---Mary

Mini-tour: Hot Hotlanta

The Monolators — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 08:18:39 GMT

Ok, so as I mentioned in the previous post, it was 99 degrees plus 100% humidity when we arrived in Nashville. When we went to Atlanta it was 102 plus the humidity. The lowest it got last night was 85 degrees. Needless to say, it was a little warm...so we played 14 Degrees and hoped that might help the heat.

We played at the Banana Hammock which is a house that has monthly shin-digs. If the show on Friday is any indication of the Atlanta scene, we were super impressed. All the bands were really great: The N.E.C., Johnny Buffalo,In Heaven(from Delaware), Ex Libris(also Delaware). I had heard about Atlanta house shows but wasn't sure what to expect. Would it live up to the myth? Yes! The place was packed with awesome folks that loved music. Even though there was only smoking outside, almost everyone there would cram inside to watch ALL the bands.

So with all these bodies in the room, 100 degree heat and humidity, needless to say it was a bit warm. I've scene bands in some pretty toasty conditions but I have never seen bands sweat like I did last night. It was not a good night to be a drummer. Ok, let's be honest it wasn't good to do anything other than sit in a chair and sip a cold one. Reguardless of the heat, the bands gave it their all and played awesome sets.

We (heart) the Banana Hammock and we (heart) Atlanta. Bring on the heat!

Mini-tour: Grimey's in Nashville

The Monolators — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 01:32:32 GMT

So far our tour to the Southeast has been amazing. Both shows we've played so far have been awesome! The venues, bands and folks that came out to see us have all been great to us. Hopefully, everyone that came out had as good a time as we've had.

We played our first show at Grimey's Preloved Music about 3 hours after our plane touched down in Nashville. Luckily our equipment could be delivered to the store. Mark Thompson, who rented us our gear, almost had his business get burned down by a fire at the local P.F. Changs but he still managed to get us our stuff. What a pro! So everything ran smoothly despite fires and 99 degree heat with 100% humidity.

Everyone at Grimey's was great. Grimey's is an extremely deadly place for anyone into vinyl. They probably have one of the best selections that I've seen. They are also a great supporter of indie artists and have a lot of space devoted to them. It was very reminiscent of our beloved Seal Level(RIP). We met some really great folks that came down for the show including who conveinced his dad and sister to come along as well to see us. On top of all this, we were given a recording of our performance. I've uploaded the first three songs from the show. Even though you couldn't fly the 2000 some miles ot be here at least you can get a bit of a taste.

Thanks Grimey's! On to Atlanta!

Cobra Lilies (Monolators side project)

The Monolators — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 22:52:47 GMT

I wanted to write a quick post about a side project that Eli and I have started called the Cobra Lilies. Eli plays banjo and sings. I play autoharp and sing in a doll voice. It's our weirder/stranger/wackier group. We just wanted to have an outlet for some songs that we weren't sure really fit into The Monolators. Also, I wanted to play my Autoharp that I got last Christmas.

We have played one show that we didn't tell anyone about because I was scared s*less, but here's a pic from that show. We are having our first official show on Sunday at The Scene in Glendale. We play at 10:30PM. It's FREE.

Here's our Myspace page. http://www.myspace.com/cobralilies

--Mary

Strawberry Roan

The Monolators — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 06:11:48 GMT

So for our second post in FOREVER, we wanted to tellyou about our new music video for our song "Strawberry Roan". We had a really awesome video premiere for it at The Echo with Castledoor, 8-bit and Summer Darling. They all made videos that were totally awesome. You can see them all here. LA-Underground was one of the hosts and did a great job recapping and compiling all the videos together for your viewing pleasure.

Conclusion: Seattle was awesome!

The Monolators — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 05:54:38 GMT

So we haven't posted here FOREVER. After the Olympia show we were a bit down and got off track with posting to our blog. It's all rather ironic because it all ended quite well. We played in Seattle to a wonderful audience that asked for two encores despite the fact that we were already playing a longer set. Damn!(ok, to be fair our set is normally 8 songs so long for us was 10). Here's some awesome pics taken by the Matt from the Northwest Music Blog. We also note that we played with a really cool band called The Upskirts which you should all check out.

Anyway, despite snow, bad teeth and long drives, we had a great time.

Olympia

The Monolators — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 16:37:42 GMT

(Thursday)

I was very much looking forward to Olympia. I'd seen the exit for Sleater-Kinney road off of I-5 the last time we drove through on the way to Seattle and I thought "cool." I knew about Kill Rock Stars and everything, so our first visit to Washington's capitol city was much anticipated.

It was cold that night. It was cold everywhere on the tour, really (except, strangely, for Seattle) but I think I felt coldest in Olympia. We played at this place called Le Voyeur. It's a bar/restaurant with a cinderblock room in the back where bands play. No stage, nobody runs sound: you borrow a mic from the bartender and run it yourself. Well, no problem, we've done that before...no heat, either, and we couldn't really get the door that opens onto the alleyway to close properly, so it was cold in there. Mary played wearing her coat and my nose was running into my mouth while I played guitar, so whenever I sang I kept spitting out little clouds of snot, which I'm sure was charming.

There were some good things about the evening and some bad. The bad things were that although there were only three bands that night, and the first started at 10:30, we didn't get to play until 1:30 AM (shades of The Mustang) and had to blast through our set at top speed and indifferent precision before the whole place closed. There was also...and I know this is going to sound catty, but seriousy, I swear I'm being generous here...there was also an aggressive and extremely messed-up young woman who clearly hadn't brushed her teeth in a long time, decades, possibly, who kept asking Mary if she wanted to make out, which CLEARLY MARY DID NOT WANT TO DO. In fact she asked PRETTY MUCH EVERYBODY in the club if they wanted to make out, and had she been a guy would have been a sleazy and repulsive creep. It was really, really, really hard not to want to pop her in the mouth, except of course for the possibility of coming in contact with the horrendous teeth.

The good was that there was a young woman (a different one, not the teeth one) who stuck it out for the whole night to hear us play, and although I never found out who she was, she was extremely game and enthusiastic and she made our night. If you're there, mystery girl with the knit cap, please contact us, we want to say thanks. Also a very nice and friendly guy named Ian stuck around and bought some merch, which we vastly appreciated, and the folks running the place, Pete and Jackie, let us stay after the place closed to have another drink and chat about baby names for girls. I think we agreed that Josephine is a really great name. That was a very nice way to end the evening, thanks Pete and Jackie!

On a sad note, as I'm writing this I just learned that the great and mighty Mormons, with whom we've played many a show, have lost their drummer and rhythm guitarist and appear to be calling it quits. They had their last show on the 19th, which I'm very sorry to have missed as we were in Seattle that night. I hope that they can put things back together with a new drummer and guitarist, but if that doesn't happen, then godspeed you, gentlemen. You will be missed.

The Towne Lounge ( a love note)

The Monolators — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 10:57:12 GMT

(Wednesday)

I do not mind telling you that I was pretty scared before we went on for our set at The Towne Lounge on Wednesday night. I would even say I was nearly terrified; but everything turned out all right, and in fact we had a lovely night.

After a day of cruising around snowy Portland in our increasingly filthy tour van, we started the evening by meeting some more creotians for beer and popcorn at The Marathon on Burnside: Alex was there, along with George and Lynnae, who were once the keytarist and drummer respectively for hiphop band Lil' Pocketknife in San Francisco. We were going to eat at The Marathon but couldn't: we wanted to play well that night and were too nervous to be hungry (I notice, on looking back at my blog entries, that I spend a lot of time describing the food we eat on this trip. I think this is because there is an unspoken agreement that our normal dietary habits and restrictions are suspended while on tour, and so we get to eat a lot of cool and probably unhealthy food that we wouldn't get otherwise).

So we decided to head on over to the club and set up. The Towne Lounge is a small room built into the side of what I think might be a church or a community center or something like that: it's just a little stage, a bar, and a couple of booths and tables. Still, I gather that it's got a good reputation and there are bands of considerable bigness that play there (I saw a poster for Great Northern and Division Day, among others). Things started getting interesting when we realized that all of the other bands playing that night with us were actually noise bands: completely nontraditional, electronic, experimental, ambient performance groups. Most of the audience (except, I think, for Alex, George, and Lynnae) were there to see the noise bands. And then there was us. This could have been a disaster...imagine, say, a traditional polka band playing in the middle of a free jazz festival. But it wasn't a disaster: we really did get into the other bands, and they were extremely open-minded and accepting of our set, and it ended up being our best show of the tour so far.

There appears to be a small scene of noise bands and audience members around the country, and they all know each other, and participate in each others' performances. The first band of the night, which was actually one guy with a mixer and some electronics, was called Acre. I'm not really smart enough to figure out how he did this, but he played a single piece, which was an electronic tone generated somehow by creating a feedback loop within a series of EQ pedals all hooked together. Then, over the course of the piece, which lasted maybe ten minutes or so, he'd slowly change the settings on his mixer and pedals to add different overtones and harmonies to the original tone. As Mary says, he created a very interesting soundscape and it was physically very nice to listen to: it sort of vibrated in my chest. I liked it.

Then we went on and played what was certainly our best set of the tour yet...thank god we'd practiced the night before, we got to that crucial point where even though we were sometimes confused as to what to do our bodies took over (no thinking, no thinking!) and we could get through without choking. In fact I'd even say that Mary was possessed, she pulverized her drums, completely ferocious. I think I did fine...it was pretty clear I was nervous as my inter-song banter was, as I recall, almost totally incoherent. I was prepared for the possibility that we were going to majorly piss off the noise audience with our very non-noise songs, but no, they seemed completely happy to listen. Clearly they liked "We Fell Dead" the best, and I made sure the fuzz bass was extra fuzzy and spikey. It was vey cute and funny: although it never occured to me to describe ourselves as a 'pop' band, more than one of the members of the other groups came up to us afterwards and said something along the lines of "I haven't listened to much pop music in years but I liked you guys." So we were very happy.

Then after us (thank god we didn't have to follow them) was two bands, Argumentrix and Your Drugs, My Money, who combined their sets and played a single piece together. I would go so far as to say they were unfollowable. I kind of lack the vocabulary to describe what I saw, but, roughly: there were four people kneeling or sitting onstage, and two standing off: all had either microphones or heavily-modified electronic instruments running through complex chains of guitar effects. I saw, among other things, a Barbie doll with some kind of voice chip plugged into the PA system; a violin entirely covered in stickers; what I think was an empty case for blank cd-r's filled with resistors and electronics; a set of cracked cymbals; and little microcassette recorders used with built-in microphones. The various performers either sat quietly, or swayed back and forth on their haunches, or screamed and thrashed about manically while yelling, singing, talking into their microphones, or fiddling with their electronics, and they created a dense wall of clashing noise. But: it was not chaos. There was a structure, and it was clear that the different members were listening to each other and playing off of each other. There were movements (a dense part, a quiet part, a part where a bunch of guys wrestled each other and smashed things), and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that the performance was really like an orchestral piece, just without a conductor. It was pretty much unlike anything I'd seen before and now I'm interested in seeing more. Hilariously, it turned out that Justin, one of the guys in Your Drugs, My Money, actually lives in Northridge and attends CSUN in Mary's department, so it looks like we'll be seeing more of Justin soon.

So it turned out to be a very nice night. Plus the weather warmed up enough in Portland that, thank goodness: the chains could come off. We drove the next day to Olympia on almost dry pavement.

One last thing: on Thursday morning, before we left the city, we went looking for some breakfast. Originally we wanted to go to a French place called Le Pigeon, directly next to our hotel, but it was closed, so we went downtown. And we couldn't find a single sit-down cafe; it was just Thai (which we didn't really want for breakfast) or coffee shops with muffins, but nothing with hot food. After wandering around fruitlessly for a half an hour we broke down and asked the doorman of a swanky hotel for advice, and he directed us to The Bijou on 3rd and Pine, where they had an oyster hash with peppers and lemon that is To. Die. For. Seriously, I was in heaven, if slightly gassy, afterwards. It was worth it! Highly highly recommended.

It’s A Snow Day Today Here in Portland

The Monolators — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 18:59:38 GMT

Eugene to Portland is only 105 or so miles and should have taken one and a half, two hours, tops, but instead took more like four. Those last ten miles were just…grindingly…slow. More on that later.

(Sunday)

So, following our Oakland show, we had a family day in San Francisco and went to The Exploratorium, which was great but a bit overwhelming for some of the parties involved. The Exploratorium, if you haven’t been, is a huge hangar/warehouse structure in an absurdly expensive neighborhood next to The Palace Of Fine Arts, which I gather was an early 20th Century attempt to build some faux-Romanesque ruins to make the city a bit artsy, or something. It's got a dome. Big one. And some columns, and a pond with some ducks: you know, just like the ancients had. And then there's the long, squat Exploratorium, which is a hands-on science museum designed to make kids get interested in science by showing them that if you turn a crank really fast you can make little teensy light bulbs glow. Oh, don't get me wrong, it's a great place, and I loved it dearly as a child, it's just that if you do happen to find an interesting exhibit (maybe a motorized pump demonstrating, say, a fountain of human bile) you only get to fool around with it for a few seconds before a herd of fifty small children descend and it's all over.

We headed over to the Castro for lunch at the very tasty Chow, where we met Dan again and our friend (and fellow ex-Calarts refugee) Mark, who nowadays is a very successful graphic designer: in fact, he helped design this bonkers and amazing website, which is up for an award that you must vote for! We spent our final night in San Francisco in Chinatown, which was mostly closed except, forutnately, for a few restaurants, one of which (whose name completely escapes me...I think we basically chose it at random) fed us on walnut shrimp, huge, fabulous potstickers, peppery beef, and a salted chicken and tofu dish, all excellent. Yum.

It seems as if there's more homeless in San Francisco than Los Angeles, although perhaps it's just that they're in more parts of the city here than in LA, where they're mostly confined to skid row. I find myself in situations where I say, well, should I give my last two bucks to this pregnant lady in Oakland or this legless Vietnam vet on Market? There was this one guy, I’m sorry I didn’t have anything to give him, tall older guy: “I’m freezing here…” Had to tell him no, and he was thanking us all the while…I’m really, really sorry about him…crap.

(Monday)

A travel day, from San Francisco to Eugene. This was pretty uneventful, and long, and mostly boring, except for the going-over-the-mountains part, and although there was some snow on the ground the roads were dry, so the driving was easy. I can’t say the same, though, for:

(Tuesday)

We woke up this morning in Eugene to wet, slushy snow. It looked as if it was going to switch from snow to rain but by the time we got our Dutch Brothers coffee and got back on the freeway it was coming down heavy with big, gloppy flakes. Things cleared up a few miles north of Eugene, and although the roads were wet they were mostly clear, and we thought we were going to luck out: until we were about ten miles outside of Portland, and everything went to the pooper.

The highway department had big signs posted: "Portland Metro Area, chains required for ALL VEHICLES." Now we have chains for the van, which we had never had occasion to use, and suddenly it seemed like a very very good idea to put them on. We sashayed off the freeway into a Target parking lot, bought some gloves, and then I spent the next hour and a half struggling with the chains, which are basically medieval torture devices, employing every profanity I could think of at a very high volume. I admit there was a moment when I did not actually believe the chains would in fact go onto our van's wheels: and one jovially unhelpful passer-by observed something along the lines of "those don't come from 'round here, do they, dude?" (joke's on you, bastard: it says MADE IN OREGON right on the box. Ha ha!) But eventually I got everything fastened on and did a little victory strut just in time for a pair of guys to pass by and point out that I'd put the chains on the rear tires of our van, which was almost certainly front-wheel drive, and therefore accomplished pretty much nothing. I will say on my behalf that it was vastly easier to put the damn things on the second time around than the first.

Driving with chains, though, that kind of limits you to going about 25 miles per hour or so, and those last ten miles into Portland took FOR EVER. But the chains worked: we crawled on by past dozens and dozens of abandoned cars on the side of the road. These didn't seem to be cars that had gotten stuck in the snow, or rendered inoperable: we later learned that when Portland got hit with a very unusual three whole inches of snow that morning, people kind of flipped out and just abandoned their cars on the spot and...fled, I guess? Pa-thetic. We were undaunted, we had CHAINS, dammit.

Portland is strangely quiet this evening. I learned that the whole metro area has just 55 snow plows, and most of those are busy with trying to clear the highways (not very successfully). The roads in town aren't salted or cleared, the city operates on the principle that the sun will come out in a day or so and melt all of the snow away: except that the weather report says this will not happen for quite a while now, and so all of the roads are turning into sheets of packed-down ice. As a result nobody is going to school or work and a lot of businesses are closed down. It was kinda eery and depressing. I think even the strip club down the street from our hotel was closed down.

Fortunately we were lucky enough to be able to practice at a friend's place: this would be Alex, another creotian. He very very generously gave us some desperately-needed practice space and we later met up with him, his girlfriend Theresa, and their friends Rachel and Jeremy at a local watering hole (Bimp's, I think? Something like that) for some equally desperately-needed beer and filled us in on the local housing market and the oddball weather patterns. It was great fun and I'm very glad we're here, even if we are in the midst of the great blizzard of '07. (Theme song of the moment: "Chains Of Love.")

When The Lights Go Down In The City, Whoa whoa whoaaa.

The Monolators — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 18:57:49 GMT

(Prologue)

I'm sitting in...not a railway station, with a ticket for my destination, but rather a hotel in Eugene, Oregon, with a few hours to spare before heading up to Portland, where we have a show tomorrow (Wednesday) night at the Towne Lounge. So, chronologically speaking, we're about halfway through our January tour.

Last week I thought the trip might be over before it began: soon after coming back from Michigan, probably via a bug picked up on an airplane, I found myself huddled on the bathroom floor with a nice bout of the vomits and the trots. Truly, a bathroom is the kindest, most luxurious place to pass the time when so afflicted, and I was extremely reluctant to crawl back to bed when I heard Mary say "um...I need to go to the bathroom." But fortunately I perked up by the time we left on Thursday and we began the tour as planned.

(Thursday)

It was 70 degrees out in Los Angeles when we left. I think we knew, vaguely, that it would be colder the further north we headed, but only in the most abstract sense. Theory became reality, though, when we stopped for gas at the Flying J on the Grapevine and stepped out of the nice warm van into a freezing cloud that had descended onto the mountain. No, none of us owned winter coats, hats, or gloves. Clearly some shopping was in order...I believe that the watchword for this tour is "not prepared."

The rest of the (stupefyingly dull) trip to San Francisco passed without incident, except that I made the mistake of eating three enormous peanut butter cookies in one go and felt vile for the rest of the day.

It now costs $4.00 to cross the Bay Bridge. We stayed at our favorite place in the Tenderloin, the Andrews Hotel (originally opened in 1905 as the"Sultan Turkish Baths") on Post Street, where there is an abundance on tranny hookers (I missed this one, but heard tell of a young man in long purple braids and insanely short-short shorts, with the weather at about fifty degrees or so). We met Mary's old highschool friend Dan for dinner at a diner in the old converted Port of San Francisco building (you can see the sign from the Bridge) and then went to bed at some absurdly early hour...9 pm? I'm still fighting off the trots and I'm tired. Waaahhhhh!

(Friday)

Our first show is actually a daytime show, an in-store at Rasptuin's Records in Berkeley. I don't believe I've been in downtown Berkeley since probably 1990 or so. It looks almost exactly like downtown Ann Arbor, which I wasn't prepared for; I don't know why, but I felt a little let down by this. But anyway: we double-parked in front of Rasputin's and hauled our gear (which is embarrassingly abundant for a two-piece) over the turnstyle into the store. The staff (Bobby and David) were very nice and were kind enough to listen to us play. I think we played well, and now you can buy our cd and a few of our records at Rasputin's.

Matt, of Master/Slave fame, very kindly helped us set up our two Bay-Area shows, and he arrived to play his own set after us on the Rasputin's stage. I was a little surpised to see Matt show up alone, with an acoustic guitar, as I'm used to seeing him with a drummer, an electric guitar, and a fleet of keyboards, but fortunately he has a VERY expressive voice (Mary says "I hear Journey in there") and the songs came across fine. A burnout dude with a busted guitar wandered in and listened with approval to Matt's lyrics about scoring hookers and drugs in The Tenderloin for a few minutes before wandering back out again.

We spent the rest of Friday looking for decently warm clothes (surprisingly difficult, as apparently all of the department stores have switched their inventory to their "spring" lines...despite that it's not going to be spring for months...which strikes me as bizarre and stupid).

(Saturday)

Saturday was our gig at The Stork Club in Oakland with Master/Slave, The Red Voice Choir, and, also from Los Angeles, Shiloe.

The day started off well at the Army/Navy surplus store on Market where I got a lovely and warm Navy peacoat, and then down the road at Marshall's where I found an almost certainly useless (but fantastic) red velvet tuxedo jacket. Now we're prepared!

The Stork Club is your average bar...reminds me a bit of Mr. T's, kinda ratty, although I will say that the speakers on the PA system light up when you sing through them! That's nice. We got to meet Brian, the new drummer for Master/Slave, and it was his first gig with the band: so their full lineup (drums, electric guitar, two keyboards, sequencer, and drum machine) was in force.

The Red Voice Choir, with their fantastically-expensive looking Gretsch guitars, went first, and they were a moody, dark, and very tight band that played (much to our delight) a cover of "This Is Hardcore" by Pulp. Then we went on and played...wellll...not quite as well as the other bands, but not horrendously. And then Shiloe came on and were also moody, dark, a bit gothy, and very very tight, and I certainly wish we could've played as well as they did. Ah well, next time then.

Sadly Master/Slave suffered from technical difficulties through their set, as the Stork Club's PA apparently couldn't handle all of Matt's various synths and drum machines, and you couldn't hear all of their music at any given time, which was too bad. Still: a highlight of the night was definitely meeting Jeremy from creot, who was kind enough to come out to the show and share some of Milwaukee's Finest. Hi Jeremy!

More of this later...we have to pack up. The weather, which was holding out just fine these past few days (fortunately letting us cross the mountains between California and Oregon with dry roads) has suddenly gone against us, and there's a steady, slushy snow coming down this morning. It looks like it'll take a bitg longer to get to Portland...

We are on tour again!

The Monolators — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 07:07:06 GMT

Oh my goodness, so much happened in December that I didn't really get a chance to write about. The highlight was certainly visiting back home in the creepily-snowless Michigan, and going caroling with a large herd of half-British, half-Michigander children whose father repeatedly urged us to sing in a "not so dirge-like" manner. And then after Christmas we went to Detroit to rehearse at The Modern Exchange, courtesy of our dear and awesome friends The Friends Of Dennis Wilson, who will be joining us later in the month for some dates in Las Vegas and at Mr. T's Bowl.

But the more immediate news is that we're going to be taking a little micro-mini tour ourselves up the West Coast this month! Yes indeedy, we're returning to some...er...okay, one familiar haunt from last July (Seattle) and poking our noses into a few places hiterto untouched by Monolator hands. The dates are as follows:

Fri. Jan. 12: In-store at Rasputins, Berkeley (with Master/Slave) Sat. Jan. 13: Stork Club, Oakland (with Master/Slave) Wed. Jan. 17: Towne Lounge, Portland Thu. Jan. 18: Le Voyeur, Olympia Fri. Jan. 19: Lobo Saloon, Seattle Sat. Jan. 27: Bunkhouse Saloon, Las Vegas (with Friends of Dennis Wilson)

That's all...short and (I hope) sweet. It's just the two of us again, Mary and I, and we'd dearly love to see you all at one or the other of the shows. It looks as if we're arriving in the Pacific Northwest just in time for...snow. Great. Well, we've got the chains for the van, I hope we don't have to use 'em.

The doorways are low at Tangier, but who cares

The Monolators — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 22:40:48 GMT

e were extremely delighted and fortunate to play last night at LA Underground's Holiday Extravaganza at Tangier with our friends Sweet Hurt, The Exfriends, and Castledoor--stars, all of 'em, I tell you, stars! Stars! Each turned in a stellar (ha ha!) performance and is destined for great things, I think. We (ie, The Weak Link In The Chain) even managed one of our better sets, despite a great nervousness that caused us to careen through our songs at about nine thousand times normal speed. But even so, it was fine, and if nothing else I got to wear my wonderful new white Elvis-esque mod motorcycle jacket that makes me look like...er, well not like Elvis per se, maybe more like someone who was an extra in The Wild One but got left on the cutting room floor because of being "too not-even-remotely-tough-looking."

First up was Wendy Wang's band, The Sweet Hurt...I've mentioned Wendy before because she's played keyboards with us in the past (and I think she'll be sitting in with us at The Cocaine this Sunday?), but this is her own band, and oh my goodness they're wonderful. I've seen several of her shows in the past and they've been more in the acoustic singer-songwriter vein, and this time she had a rawk band and played a rawk set and it was a revelation. You HAVE to go to their myspace page RIGHT NOW and listen to "Miss Misery.". I'm telling you, this song is a HIT, and Wendy's voice is glorious. There is no reason on earth why The Sweet Hurt shouldn't be absolutely huge, and I think they will be. Yay Sweet Hurt!

Then we played and sweated quite a lot. Andy and Mary were stupendous! I am just glad that I didn't have diarrhea like I did the night before the show, as I was wearing white pants that were kinda see-through. I am happy to report that we (that is, my pants and I) made it through the night okay! Whew!

After us was The Exfriends from San Diego who, um, kinda toasted us, musicality-wise. If you don't know them, they're a kind of indie country punk band, featuring Matt Curreri's superduper sweet-ass amazing songwriting skills (and scarf) and some really really astonishingly tight bandmates who can basically play anything, as far as I can tell. They've got this song that I adore called "Barbara Sands" that...hmmm...isn't up on their myspace page at the moment, but I'm sure it will rotate through if you keep checking back. Again, here is a band with a great, unusual sound (unusual in Silverlake, anyway) that I think will accomplish a great deal in the coming years. Yay Exfriends!

And finally there was Castledoor. They don't really need any plugging from me, as they seem to be doing quite nicely on their own, thank you, but still: here is a band of which one of my friends said "why aren't they playing in front of 500 people?" To which I answer: well, they will be, and quite soon, I think. We're just lucky that we got the chance to play with them now before everything goes crazy. Castledoor knows how to write a catchy pop song and Nate's got a great, expressive voice--where I shout and croak, he actually sings, funny thing about that. Plus they had the genius idea of projecting found 8mm movie film (that's film, not video) on their bass drum head, something that I should've thought of myself but didn't.

Head on over to their myspace page and listen to "Magnetic Forces" to hear what I'm babbling about. Yay Castledoor!

And that was that. Everyone acquitted themselves well, and I only had one real idiot moment where I hit my head on the low load-in door by the side of the stage. Dark club+goofy flailing dork in all white=very obvious moron.

WHOOOOO! One cent on eBay!

The Monolators — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 20:29:22 GMT

I guess we're charging too much for these things then?

What would be really funny is if someone bid this up to like a hundred dollars!

(That someone would not be me, of course.)

Don, The Guppies, and Me

The Monolators — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 18:12:56 GMT

Sorry, this should really be called "Don, The Guppies, and Us," but it sounded more like some kind of idiotic children's book the first way.

A long time ago I had ambitions to become a movie critic. I liked watching movies, so it seemed like a good idea...until I started taking film criticism classes at school and realized I'd make a TERRIBLE critic. I always knew when I liked a movie, but I could never explain why: I'd just sort of stammer, "um, um, yeah, it was...really...good!" And that's not quite enough to fill a 30-page term paper on Nosferatu, unfortunately. So I never did become a Serious Cinema Critic, sad to say, but maybe that's a good thing because I think if I had to watch Battleship Potemkin just ONCE MORE TIME I might have fatally choked on my own bile.

This problem extends a certain amount to bands as well. It's easy for me to say "oh I saw this band the other night, they're really good!" And then someone says "oh what are they like?" and I reply: "they're like...good?"

So you'll have to just trust me and accept that the quintet Guppies, who we played with this past Sunday at The Cocaine, are just, like, really good. Okay okay okay...ummmm...I think they sound a bit post-punk to me, which I always like. And I hear a tiny bit of Syd Barrett in there, too. Very danceable, a bit of phaser on the guitars, which I don't hear much these days. They have some demos on their myspace but they're pretty low-fi, and they told me they're about to record some new material, which I'm very much looking forward to hearing.

And then there was Don. After Guppies played their set Don, owner of Don's Music in Eagle Rock, got up with his guitar and echo box to join them for a second set, which turned out to be one huge 15-minute Interstellar Overdrive extravaganza. I am not exactly sure but I believe Don went by the name of "Freakstick13" for the occasion. Anyway--in another 15 years when I have a long white pompadour I hope I am 1/10 as cool as Don.

Hi Don!

And, apropos of absolutely nothing, I went to visit my old friend Mr. Vending Machine up on campus the other day, and I saw that it had been stocked with Grandma's Cookies (you know, those overpriced, bland-tasting, chemically-deadly soft cookies that come two to a package for a dollar). Specifically it offered "Limited Edition" Grandma's Cookies. How on earth can you have a limited edition cookie? Do they think we're that stupid? Spare me, ye gods! Except...hmmm...they're chocolate cookies spiked with orange M&M's? Well. Okay, I bought them.

Yep, they were bland.

Ellen versus The Shark versus Judee versus Jacques-Henri Lartigue

The Monolators — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 22:32:24 GMT

A little while ago a writer from the OC Weekly named Ellen Griley reviewed (okay, panned) a show put on by one of our favorite Orange County-based bands, The Shark That Ate My Friend. Clearly the show wasn't to her taste: fine, that's fair, I like them, she doesn't.

But then there is her assumption that the members of Shark have lots of money and/or are bankrolled by their parents, who also must have lots of money (none of which is true, according to the band): I believe her words are "oh, the spectacle of being young and rich and idle." And that, really, is what she's getting at: not so much that she doesn't like Shark's music, what she really doesn't like is their families. In fact, that's what the entire article is about: the music is merely referenced in passing.

Well well well. Let me say right now that if I could've made being young, rich, and idle work for me, I would've embraced it like a lover! Two out of three would've been okay too (and pretty? I'd take pretty). But that's beside the point: there's an implied link in Griley's article between lifestyle, social class, and artistic (in)authenticity that's appealing to all of us who are lacking in those departments, but seems kinda dubious to me. So what if someone's dad bought them a $700 keyboard: can they play it?

Forget music for a second, what about someone like photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue, whom everybody just loves to death, myself included? Here's what: he was rich, richer than the golden teats that suckled tender Mammon! He was a genius, and flagrantly idle! And we love him! You see? He overcame the taint of his unfortunate wealth and now he's a patron saint of hipsterdom. What do you say to that, Ms. Griley? Eh? Well?

Okay, let's go back to music. Recently I was introduced to the music of Judee Sill, a 1970's singer-songwriter who put out a handful of lovely LP's and lead a life of fascinating hardship and self-destruction. I don't normally go for this sort of thing, but her music is wonderful and her lyrics fascinating, along with her stories of living as a homeless junkie in a 1959 Cadillac with five other people (how is that even possible?). Despite not being a rocker, she lead the epic rock and roll life before dying of an overdose at 35. That's an incredibly compelling and romantic story, far more appealing than, well, anybody else's that I can think of, but it's also an enormous cliché. And of course critics like Griley would LOVE old Judee Sill, certainly not for her music, but for the glamor of her miserable, tragic, wasted life. Because let's face it: being comfortable and sane just doesn't make good copy.

So. I say to my indolent, spoiled, gold-and-honey sprinkled, leisure-flaunting brethren: rock on, dear children! Someday time shall wash away the stain of your cash, and thy true worth shall be revealed. And, um, until then, could you spare me a few grand or so? I could reeeealllly stand to upgrade my bass amp. THANKS OMG BFF! And buy me a car.

Love, Eli

PS: Some live Judee Sill tracks from a BBC radio performance can be heard for free here, just beneath the picture of the record label.

Last chance to vote...

The Monolators — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 19:31:15 GMT

...in the Youtube music video contest. Normally I think this sort of thing is pretty lame, but the prize for this one is awesome: the winning band gets to play on "Good Morning, America." The very idea of us dressed up as fascist dictators and playing fuzz bass to an unamused Diane Sawyer is just too wonderful to contemplate. So, vote for us, yay:

VOTE VOTE VOTE!!

Voting ends on Friday the 17th. Thank ye.

Our lovely music video

The Monolators — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 00:59:44 GMT

We finally had our video premiere show this past Friday, an event which was supposed to happen back in August and was fraught with all sorts of delays, disasters, complications, and compromises. But happen it finally did, this time at The Airliner in Lincoln Heights. I'm afraid we were running around so much that night that I don't remember too much about the event, except of course that E>K>U>K, The Mormons, and 8-Bit also showed their new videos and that we got the pleasure of playing with not just Andy but also Wendy from The Sweet Hurt on keyboards. I gotta say that I was rather impressed when she showed up a few weeks ago with her keyboard and already knew how to play our entire set all the way through without mistakes. I think she can play every other instrument with equal proficiency as well--I think she can play guitar, drums, bass, umm, oboe maybe? Tuba, grand harp, yodeling choir, that thing that you turn the crank on while the monkey dances, and, oh, I dunno, contrabass ocarina or something. Well maybe not that, but seriously she can play just about anything well. I am jealous, I can barely manage a few chords on the guitar and a smattering of kazoo riffs if the spirit moves me.

For those of you who didn't get a chance to attend, here is the video for "We Fell Dead," directed by the charming and debonair Mr. Locke Webster:

PS--yes, that really is Mary's hair, not a wig, and no, she doesn't usually wear it like that. There's enough Aquanet in there to hold up a comatose rhinocerous.

We Fell Dead

The Monolators — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 23:12:58 GMT

We kept forgeting to post these pictures of our video shoot for "We Fell Dead" but now we have no excuse. We are premiering our video tomorrow nightso it's time to get them up!

Jess, Tasha, Joe, Cody, Toni & Mandy

Row 1: Jeff, Arlena, Alexis, Jade
Row 2: Matt, Dasha, (I'm sorry. I can't find your name. Please email me.),Stephen, Sal

Conner, Cody, Tasha, & Toni

Sal creating Anti-Monolator

Sal getting hauled off by Tony and Andy

Joe & Locke

Joe & Eli
BTW, Joe got his butt touched while filming this.

Demonic Mary

Us in the Oval Office

This was a super fun video! Sorry, we don't have a real good pic of Mandy Freund who played our "anti-Monolator voter". Also, didn't get a real good pic of Jess Kepner who played "stylist" to the dictators. They did a bang-up job though!

If you want to see the finished product, we are showing it tomorrow October 20 at 10PM at The Airliner.

Strawberry Roan: the horse, the cupcake, the video

The Monolators — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 17:17:13 GMT

I am still waiting on some pictures to show all of you our most recent video shoot/exploit...words aren't really enough to describe the experience...but you'll have to bear with me for the time being.

This last Saturday we shot our bits for our third music video, for "Strawberry Roan." Since this was just two days after Penny died I wasn't sure if I was in extactly the right frame of mind to do it, but it turned out to be a good thing: it kept us busy rather than moping around the house.

John Doherty directed this one. He's an ex-student of Mary's, and he's a young dude, so he had a vast and enthusiastic pool of fellow students to draw upon for crew and extras. Do you think anyone our age would be willing to work 14 hours straight on a Saturday running lights and a fog machine? Nope, they'd be asleep, or maybe watching old Gumby reruns. At best. So anyway: my advice for all of you bands wanting music videos is that the optimal age for your cast and crew is right around 17 or so. Just feed them pizza and they keep on going!

It was shot in a cavernous private middle school gymnasium out in Chatsworth. I'm not sure how it happened that John secured this place: it was massive. Just the boy's locker room, where we had to change our costumes, was bigger than our house. Possibly bigger than the White House, I don't know: it was big. I gather this is also where the private middleschool children of Chatsworth put on their various theatrical productions, because there also was a stage the size of Estonia in there, and that's where John shot us performing.

We shot all of our stuff on Saturday. It wouldn't have been too spectacularly interesting to watch: it was 14 hours of Mary and I lip-synching and miming our song in different silly costumes (cowboy, biker, priest, etc.) in front of a greenscreen. I gather the idea is that there will be about 10 versions of us up onstage all at the same time, all playing different instruments. Lotsa dry ice. I almost passed out when I tried to play the alto saxophone while dancing around in heavy biker boots. Mary accidentally smashed our ukulele, Pete Townsend-style. We had over twenty costume and makeup changes that day, with an average of three minutes' time allotted for each one. Many, many thanks to Erica the costume designer and Sonja the makeup artist who helped us through that...I can still feel the sponge used to put on the fake stubble...and I got an amazingly cool cowboy shirt out of the deal, too!

No, REALLY the exciting stuff was on Sunday, when the dancers/extras arrived. There were, on top of the crew of 20, at least 40 dancers involved in this thing--and it was choreographed by a proper choreographer, not just someone saying "okay...um...dance!" which is probably how I would have done it. I wasn't around to witness this (I was out running around buying food for everyone) but my understanding is that there's a 'Beat-It' style dance/fight between dancers dressed as pirates and dancers dressed as ninjas. Plus lots more dry ice (so much so that, in fact, it set off the smoke alarms and the fire department showed up). There was also:

-a breakdancing rabbi (leading to one moment when the director could be heard yelling "Jews! Where are my Jews?!?") -a terrified, crowd-surfing nun -poodle-skirted 1950's girls -dancing priests -dancing bikers (our babysitter Jade is one of these) -ghosts, consisting of people wearing sheets with eyeholes cut out, à la "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" -a lumberjack doing back flips

I'm sure there's also more stuff I'm forgetting. Cripes. I should be getting some pictures back from the lab today or tomorrow, and if any of them turn out I'll post some.

I just have to say that we feel very, very lucky that so many talented and nice people were so enthusiastic and generous with this project. That goes for all our videos: 3 exceptionally cool videos in two years is pretty amazing, I think! John, Locke, Cody: many, many thanks.

Oh yeah: I could hear a lot of discussion among the extras about what a "strawberry roan" actually is. One dancer thought it was "some cupcake flavor." Well no, it's actually a kind of horse. I'm not going to say anything more than that.

Penny

The Monolators — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 03:20:57 GMT

Please raise a glass for our wonderful dog, Penny. She was a very sweet, very tough old girl, but after years of gradually losing mobility from hip displacement she went into a sharp decline starting about two weeks ago and got worse and worse very fast. She was in chronic pain from her hips, and so was on increasingly huge doses of medications to make her comfortable and keep her able to walk-but in turn those meds were destroying her liver and making her really, really sick. We knew she was in trouble when she suddenly stopped being able to go on walks with our other dog (she'd make it to the end of the block and collapse, and I'd have to carry her home-she weighed about 60 pounds), and then on Tuesday she stopped being able to walk at all by herself and was vomiting uncontrollably. She went into the vet's on Wednesday morning and stayed there overnight for observation, and when we went to get her yesterday evening she was so weak and miserable and her prognosis so bad that we accepted the vet's advice and had her euthanized. It was hard to see her go like this--as of two weeks ago she was still her normal self, and it's as if she just sort of fell apart all of the sudden.

Penny was already an old dog when we got her from the pound, and had apparently been through a lot. She wound up in the pound because she was one of the dogs that a woman had "hoarded," as they say--this lady had started out as a rescuer, specializing in pit bulls, but had stopped placing her dogs in homes and started keeping them for herself. By the time animal control caught up with her she had about eighty dogs crammed into a two-bedroom house in Glendale. They were stacked on top of each other in those portable dog carrier things, and (as the lady had skipped town just prior to her arrest) had been left without food or water for four days in the middle of summer, in 100+ temperatures without air conditioning.

We don't know how long Penny had to live in the carrier, or what her life was like before she'd been "rescued" by the hoarder, but it didn't really seem to affect her disposition much. She wasn't skittish or squirrly (although she didn't like to be walked by anyone except Mary or me) and was downright calm and easygoing all of the time. In fact, I didn't even see her at first when we visited the pound, as she was basically the only dog in the whole place who wasn't trying to leap out of its cage and devour us and our other dog. When I finally spotted her she just got up nonchalantly and kinda sidled up to the edge of the cage so I could scratch her through the bars. I knew right then we were taking her home.

It's really, really quiet in the house without her now. She was a real doggy dog--she smelled bad, she farted (a lot), she snored, she groomed her genitals loudly, she would get up multiple times in the middle of the night to go tapping across the living room with her nails, she ate feces. I mean she was disgusting, really. And she was clever: once I was walking her and looked down to see that she had half a sandwich in her mouth-where she got it, I have no idea. On her last good day, last Sunday, when she was still pretty much herself, she stole and ate half a pizza off of a card table when we weren't looking. I was proud of her, and I'm glad she got it.

Goodbye, Penny. I miss you.

(note: I gotta scan her picture. I'll put it up here as soon as I can).

The Rock-It, Hawthorne, with E>K>U>K

The Monolators — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 03:19:40 GMT

Since our video release show was postponed until October, we just had two September shows, which is never really enough for my taste...this one was down in Hawthorne with E>K>U>K. We actually played The Rockit a couple of times about two years back. I remember one of those shows very fondly, there were a whole bunch of older folks (in their 50's and 60's, I think) dancing around drunk to "The Spandex Hitman." At one point--my memory is kind of foggy on this-a largish lady in her 40's started yelling at me from the audience, something like "can I be your girlfriend??" I said, well, let's see what my wife says about that. The lady says back: "I don't see no ring!" I show her my ring. "I don't see no wife!" I point at the drummer. The lady compromises by jumping onstage and go-go dancing next to Mary through the rest of our set. She was awe-inspiring. Ahh, my sweet. Where are you now?

Oh, one thing: it looks as if we're going to be slimming back down to a 2-to-3-piece for the immediate future. Several Big Band Monolators have had to bow out recently for various reasons, and 8-Bit is out on tour, so we're going to be returning to duo status-at least for the Mr. T's show coming up on the 6th. For our video premiere the plan is to play as a foursome, with Andy back on bass and Wendy from The Sweet Hurt on keyboards! But even so--I want to take a moment to thank all of our friends who gave their time, sweat, and cowbell-banging expertise to us over the past few months. You're all wonderful people and we wish you godspeed!

April's last show, and some balloon bass

The Monolators — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 03:17:33 GMT

I should have posted this a week ago...except that I was busy working on my cupcake baking skills (how could I have gotten so far in life without ever having made cupcakes solo?) and was spending time with this amazing book. I made "The Classic Cupcake," with pink vanilla butter cream frosting. It went well except that the frosting turned out too soupy (too much milk) and so we had to add about two full extra cups of powdered sugar before it would 'set' right. And now they are done...mmmmm...so much sugar that it burns going down!

Anyhow, last Friday, the first, was our monthly Mr. T's show, and it was April's last night with the big band, she's moving to Merced. Thanks April, we're going to miss you and George! Oh and it was also Allie's birthday! No Raymond this time, sadly. Apart from that it wasn't too eventful, except that there was a nice big crowd, bigger than we're used to, for sure.

But what I really wanted to tell you about was the band I saw on Sunday night at Mr. T's, Unpoppable. Now this band is a duo, guitar and bass--except that the bass is made out of a balloon. Really. This is a little hard to describe, so take a look at this picture that I stole off of their website:

The bassist in question is named Addi, and that blue balloon is his bass. See, the inflated balloon is kind of the bass's body, the resonator, and the long skinny string-looking thing is a second (deflated) balloon that is somehow attached to the inflated one. It's not tied on, it actually goes straight into the big balloon's body. How? I don't really know. Divine providence? Anyway, the stringy balloon can be stretched and loosened by pulling on it, and that's what Addi plucks to make the bass notes--kind of the same idea as a washtub bass. And, in fact, here he is explaining how it works:

Addi is pretty much a master at knowing exactly how much to stretch the string balloon to get certain notes, and it's hooked up via contact mic to an amplifier. The thing is that this contraption sounds scarily like an upright bass. If you get a chance to see these guys, you must do it for sure. Unpoppable is a spare, kind of jazzy/bluesy, mostly instrumental kind of band, and is a pleasure to watch. When I saw them they performed with an accordianist/cornetist, which added a lot, and Addi brought out a second balloon instrument: a huge balloon attached somehow to one of those big springs that go on the wheels of a car. This was also contact-mic'd, and when he tapped the spring with a mallet it made incredible booming gong sounds through the amp. This reminds me of when I had a contact microphone back in college and would play things like my floor lamp through my amplifier. Awesome, now I have to do that kind of thing again!

Incidentally, Addi is probably best known as a professional balloon hat artist. He travels the world making hats out of balloons for people. Genius? Why yes, I'm fairly certain that this qualifies!

One thing really became clear to me at the Unpoppable show...which is how unqiue Mr. T's is. There really aren't too many places in Los Angeles that would host an all-experimental-instrumental-band night, and have the place pretty much packed. I'm sure Arlo has a lot to do with this. It's amazing, I walk in and Arlo says hi, I see Elizabeth from Smells Like Flan and Andrew from Cat Hair Ensemble hanging out, everybody's having a good time...it feels like home in a way that I've never felt anywhere else. I heart Mr. T's.

Youth & Surveillance

The Monolators — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 03:16:16 GMT

The kids are back from summer break. The student body this year looks like the population of the Hotel Cafe from Sunday night (when I took in Never At Night, Kissing Cousins, and Death House Chaplain) but multipled many times: guys with shaggy beards and girls with long, stringy hair, huge sunglasses, and old sundresses. Well, there are also jocks, fratboys, and dorks, but a lot of those people look like Silverlake as well.

Sorry this is so brief: I'm a bit distracted at the moment by this article. Does the world have to constantly become a worse and worse place to live in?

Coming up: Remember Betaville? I'm trying to nail down an interview with its director. Stay tuned.

Youth & Experience

The Monolators — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 03:14:51 GMT

Sorry about not posting anything for a while, but not much is happening at the moment in the Monolator camp. We were both out of town last weekend at my brother's wedding and Mary is in Alabama until Monday, so no shows or anything for a little bit.

So I'll babble aimlessly about a record I'm listening to at the moment, an awe-inspiringly great comp on Norton Records of mid-sixties garage rock that my brother gave me for my birthday called Friday At The Hideout: Boss Detroit Garage 1964-1967. See, The Hideout was a "teen club" and record label out of Detroit, and basically was a result of the city's post-war white flight phenomenon: while Motown/rhythm and blues happened in the inner city, lots and lots of middle class white kids were stuck out in the suburbs buying Rolling Stones and Byrds records and starting garage bands. Or at least I gather that's what happened.

I dunno if you've heard many of these garage/surf/hot rod-type comps, but they're usually collections of scratchy, ultra-obscure 45 rpm records pressed in tiny numbers by ultra-obscure groups made up of sex-crazed teenagers who later became depressingly old and probably went on to form hideously unlistenable 1970's blues bands (or, in this case, became Bob Seger). There isn't really anything on this comp to match the greatness of, say, Count Five's "Psychotic Reaction," or "Dirty Water" by The Standells, but there are some gems. Probably the most interesting band on the whole disc would be the all-girl Pleaure Seekers whose blatty ode to underage drinking, "What A Way To Die," still seems strangely relevent these days.

The Pleasure Seekers grace the back cover of Friday At The Hideout.

Take a look at the brunette bass player on the left there...does she look a tad familiar to you? No? Look again...hmmmmm...could it be...why yes! It's none other than Suzi Quatro, AKA LEATHER TUSCADERO FROM "HAPPY DAYS!" Yes! You think I'm making this up? I am not. Instead of "What A Way To Die," though, I kind of prefer the b-side (or was it the follow-up? Dunno), "Never Thought You'd Leave Me," with its great keyboard solo and sloppy spoken-word declaration of love over the fadeout: "c'mon baby come on back you know I love you I've always been true I'll knit a yarmulke for you outta my leg hair if you'll just come back to me," stuff like that. I love little spoken-word messages at the end of songs. Fats Waller used to do that, and Lou Reed. And The Pleasure Seekers, apparently. The other great track on here is "Youth And Experience" by Doug Brown And The Omens. This is...well, what the hell is it? Why, it's a get-out-the-youth-vote musical endorsement for then-Republican U.S. Senator Bob Griffin! It musta worked, because Bob won the election and served all the way from 1966 to 1979, all thanks (I assume) to the brave rock and roll efforts of Doug Brown And The Omens, who apparently recognized that Bob had both youth (?) and experience on his side. Seriously, this is the best theme song ANY republican has ever had or ever will have, featuring a wickedly catchy chorus and the deathless refrain "keep Michigan off the floor/ by keeping Bob Griffin as our U.S. Sen-a-tor." Again, you think I am making this up? I am not. Like Doug says, give Bob a call, 'cause he's got an action slate for our action state. Except that by now he's about 83 years old. Bob. It occurs to me how easy it would be to do an updated cover of this song for the Arnold Schwarzenegger gubernatorial campaign. I doubt that Doug Brown would shy from rhyming, for instance, "out the door" with "Ter-min-a-tor," or something like that. And then you could have a line that went "he'll shove his tongue down your throat / so you'd better go out and vote..." etc. etc. I tell you, this stuff just writes itself! There's one more interesting thing about the Friday At The Hideout comp, which is this picture I found in the liner notes: Who is that guy? It's me, isn't it? I mean it certainly looks like me, right? Who is that girl? Why don't I remember this? What's going on?

....um.

Anyway, here's some of the cuts I mentioned...you can buy Friday At The Hideout here.

The Pleasure Seekers -- Never Thought You'd Leave Me Doug Brown And The Omens -- Youth And Experience