The musi­cal stylings of Math Rock are still alive and kick­ing as I just recently dis­cov­ered this four piece instru­men­tal out­fit known as Sleep­ing Peo­ple. Though they have not seem active in quite some time last tour­ing or releas­ing any music well over one year ago. It seems they lost the rea­son why I found them and that was hav­ing a female gui­tarist in a harder play­ing math rock band. While I was research­ing polyrhythms and other fun aspects of exper­i­men­tal music. Let’s hope we find these guys drink­ing at The Cas­bah soon. We will be there on Sun­day for the Lady Dot­tie Show. Hope­fully they do not check into our retire­ment home soon like Wild Sweet Orange is.

Four.. yes four free shows and T.J. hot­dogs as well… where at you say? You should already know.

The Cas­bah on Ket­tner Blvd. San Diego

So what does Santa do after he is parad­ing around town emp­ty­ing glasses and bot­tles all the while deliv­er­ing gifts to every­one on the naughty list?

He goes to the Cas­bah to rock and and drink Whiskey Sours and Cas­bah Cof­fee. There is one thing San­tas like and that is “free”

Here is the calendar:

* Sun 20 Cas­bah Christ­mas Party — Lady Dot­tie and the Diamonds,The Style­tones
* Wed 23 The Jivewire Before Christ­mas — DJ’s Bart Black­stone, ATARI, El Torito and more
* Thu 24 Exile on Ket­tner Blvd
*Sun 27 The Local 94/9 Presents a FREE show w/ Chil­dren Of Nova,
Ital­ian Japan­ese, West­Fire and Trou­ble In The Wind

So another hot evening with Lady Dot­tie, some­thing good to do on X-mas eve and day, and Tim Pyles with free hot­dogs. This is a win for all Santa’s and every­one on the naughty list.

Due to my insanely eclec­tic sched­ule and my lack of an auto­mo­bile I ended up arriv­ing to the RIMAC arena just at the end of Man­ches­ter Orchestra’s set. Man­ches­ter was two of the five bands that per­formed. Pre­ceded by White Rab­bits (which I was dis­ap­pointed I missed) then fol­lowed by Phoenix, Vam­pire Week­end, and Spoon.

Phoenix Per­form­ing their song “Lasso” off of their album Wolf­gang Amadeus Phoenix

Fin­ish­ing up their set they played their hit sin­gle “1901” and the crowd went wild as did Thomas Mars, lead singer of Phoenix. He stopped the song towards the end and asked the venue to kill the house lights. He then dis­ap­peared and even­tu­ally resur­faced in the mid­dle of the audi­ence with micro­phone and cord in tow and fin­ished an encore of their very ener­getic song. Then he crowd surfed back to the stage. Check the video: “Phoenix crowd surfs”

Up next was Vam­pire Week­end who at first had some tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties. They played some of their already clas­sic songs from their self titled album includ­ing One (Blake’s Got A New Face) / Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa / I Stand Cor­rected. In between they played some of their new songs from the upcom­ing album “Con­tra” which their first sin­gle has a very fun and ener­getic video.

Vam­pire Week­end per­forms their song “Cousins” from the upcom­ing album Contra.

I always ask myself a few ques­tions when I enter the SOMA, home of the most irri­ta­ble staff of the San Diego music scene. One can be, “Why must I get frisked every time I enter this place?”. We are in San Diego, the last time I heard of a per­son get­ting shot was from a police officer. I’ve been to fuck­ing hip hop shows down­town where peo­ple would actu­ally bring some heat and we just waltzed on in with­out a prob­lem. Then the other is, “Why is there so much neg­a­tive energy in this place?” Seriously I feel like I am at the Rock Church.

So after get­ting felt up by some­one who just might of recently got him­self the same treat­ment in prison. Then hav­ing issues at the ticket booth try­ing to get into the place and end­ing up hav­ing to pay for my plus one (they are cash only at the ticket booth, why even have a ticket booth, why can’t the guy who just felt my ass take my money as well?)

These are the rea­sons why kids do not come to local shows in San Diego and even more rea­son why adults do not attend shows at the SOMA.

Eight dol­lars to see four local bands is a bit absurd. If you are wor­ried about mak­ing money maybe you should become a lawyer instead of rent­ing out a shitty ware­house in a strip mall. The beach is still free and so is the show at a cof­fee house or dive bar in a bet­ter part of town. If you want more than thirty peo­ple to show up to a con­cert you can’t be an ass­hole to the entire music scene.

After the usual deba­cle to enter this dark and dingy venue I was off to see New Archaic. A four piece barely legal rock out­fit. Com­plete with messy hair, smooth faces, and shiny new gui­tars they were on stage sound check­ing. When a band is sound check­ing don’t blast the stereo SOMA, come on, seri­ously? After mak­ing sure every­one had heard their quick ren­di­tion of the Black Keys, “Strange Times” they were off to kill the house lights and tell all the scat­tered kids to move up to the stage.

I did not have much of any opin­ion on the first few songs except that they had some fairly solid mod­ern rock med­leys. Maybe I was at the point where I was try­ing to find rea­sons why I should or should not like them. The lead gui­tarist stood out from the rest of the band. He was twist­ing, gyrat­ing, head bang­ing, and jump­ing around his side of the stage all the while with­out miss­ing a beat. The lead singer seemed like he was really forc­ing out the notes and was dis­tract­ing him­self with his gui­tar. The drum­mer was no Neil Peart (but no one is) or this guy (which you prob­a­bly could be) but was con­sis­tent and knew what he was doing back on his throne. I for­got there was a bassist until he stepped out from his dark cor­ner, sorry dude but I think the sound guy was too busy to cue you in. Not your bad at all.

At the end of their set is when they decided to put together the two ingre­di­ents to be suc­cess­ful on a rock and roll stage: heart and soul. The singer and gui­tarist took turns on the key­board which was a nice touch. I’d rather have the gui­tarist stay behind his six string because that is where he was doing the best job and looked the most comfortable. The singer seemed like he finally warmed up and was per­form­ing much bet­ter towards the end.

The finale was by far the best part which involved a small brass ensem­ble. Not a bad way to end the set on a high note. They should def­i­nitely work that angle more because the sax­o­phone is a rel­a­tively unused instru­ment in the spec­trum of rock music and it can be pretty dead sexy at times. For as young as they are they have been play­ing for awhile. These kids have some spirit and should def­i­nitely keep at it (except at bet­ter venues). There is no rea­son to give up what you are doing to go to col­lege and get a job. You’ll prob­a­bly end up switch­ing degrees or hat­ing it any­ways. Then you’ll end up mar­ried and liv­ing out in El Cajon play­ing in a cover band to an audi­ence of Coors light drinkers. You don’t want that now, do you?

It was beau­ti­ful noise. Who knew that drag­ging 35mm film through a Movi­ola film syn­chro­nizer while hav­ing it jury rigged to a home made effects rack would make such a lovely sound. Some­thing between the sound of ambi­ent turntab­lism and a Theremin.

Holy Fuck at Street Scene

It was the first day of Street Scene, with a fresh cool breeze that the ever grow­ing crowd was greatly appre­ci­at­ing. It felt like over a hun­dred degrees on the hot East Vil­lage asphalt just twenty min­utes ear­lier. This breeze brought in the very fes­tive smell that you can only appre­ci­ate and large music events. Basi­cally it is the smell of car­ni­val food com­bined with the dis­tant but ever present smell of marijuana.

I would have to say that see­ing Holy Fuck and Mod­est Mouse was well worth the $65 price tag of Street Scene. The only other notable show was see­ing Chromeo tear it up. It was also cool to find out that the Holy Fuck show had a min­i­mal car­bon foot­print as the stage they played on was Solar Pow­ered. Even if it did have some minor sound prob­lems but the road­ies were all over it. Speak­ing of road­ies, this was one of the few shows I have seen that they actu­ally were rock­ing out to the music. Also this girl roadie had an amaz­ing shirt which read: “Sluts are peo­ple too.”

Check out the videos for: “Lovely Allen” by Holy Fuck and also “Super Inuit“
Also a Free Down­load of the unre­leased track “Jun­gles“
and a remix of Radiohead’s “Nude”

Mod­est Mouse has a fairly new series of EP’s released.

Get Back Loretta

San Diego’s super lov­able Queen + Bea­t­les influ­enced awe­some stoner (except Josh) band is actu­ally up to some good now. Per­haps time in an Ari­zona jail or some amaz­ing yet ter­ri­fy­ing tour sto­ries fea­tured in Kevin (the key­boardist) brother’s new mag­a­zine (called Yes­ter­day Mag­a­zine). They have a new EP out and are work­ing at a stu­dio in the East Vil­lage to work on their upcom­ing album due for release in Jan­u­ary. Speak­ing of Yes­ter­day Mag­a­zine they threw a issue release show at the Ruby Room yes­ter­day to show­case some of the bands they cov­ered in this issue. Basi­cally The Silent Com­edy, Get Back Loretta, and Yes­ter­day Mag­a­zine are all fam­ily both lit­er­ally and figuratively.

This is their first music video that has been around for awhile.

another notable videos: Tour Van Bohemian Rhap­sody + Pringles Song

The Silent Comedy

The Silent Com­edy have found cre­ative ways to help pay for the cost of record­ing an album. Mainly buy throw­ing par­ties and sell­ing stuff (isn’t that the Amer­i­can dream). These folk revival­ists have crafted a unique sound amongst a San Diego music scene full of Queen fanat­ics and bands the use Bea­t­les ref­er­ences to name them­selves. Expect a new album from these guys as soon as they can afford it. But see­ing the turn out at their show and Mus­tache May­hem par­ties, I think they are going to be pretty well off.

Noth­ing like church with whiskey.