Over at our food blog, Gustavo Arellano (perhaps you've heard of him) rather amusingly skewered the many more unfortunate choices in our recent "Best of OC" readers' poll: Starbucks for best coffee, Chipotle for best burrito. Not so insightful or adventurous, you see, kind of the equivalent of giving Titanic "best movie about a boat sinking" or scrambled "best way to prepare an egg." Yawn.
Of course, there were reader picks for music and culture categories, as well. But unlike Gustavo, we're more than willing to give our readers benefit of the doubt--these are highly subjective matters, after all, and we're no more experts than anyone else is, except we're more likely to be at local shows struggling desperately to look cool.
It's OK. We've all had those moments. You're reading Heard Mentality at home, work, or risking your life by checking it on your cell phone in traffic (safety first, please, but we appreciate your dedication). You start thinking "yeah, reading what Albert says is great, but if there were only a way I could hear his rich baritone deliver these wonderful, wonderful words!" Well, you'll have a chance to fulfill those deep-seated desires, sort of, by hearing me on KUCI today, where I'll be on (most of) the locals-only Press Pass Music show, hosted by friend of the blog Ashley Eliot. It's from noon to 2 p.m., and please do give us a call and request some Orange County tunes at (949) UCI-KUCI. We're going to play some BLOK, who are performing tomorrow at the Lucky Owl, that much is guaranteed. Everything else, less so. (Exciting! Right?)
This week in Local's Only, I was fortunate to get the low down on I&I, a group of legit up-and-comers in the OC rap game. In the article that you may or may not have read (those on the latter category click HERE. ) I reference a little bit of their music video for the song "Listen Up", a formidable anthem for fans of our steadfast underground hip hop scene. In this video though, the group (consisting of emcees Irawnik and Insanity as well as DJ Kamoflage) are spending some time above ground in SanTana on Harbor Blvd. and Fifth St. rapping their hearts out. Watching the video, you can't help but wonder how many outtakes consisted of cars honking at them or the cops rolling up. Either way, it's definitely worth a look. Try not to get offended at all the dudes flipping you off.
Don't forget, these guys are opening up for E-40 tonight at The Galaxy Theater in Santa Ana. More info HERE.
Yep, I'm OC Weekly's man at BlizzCon, the annual two-day convention for Irvine-based computer gaming giant Blizzard Entertainment. It's at the Anaheim Convention Center. I've got some lovely memories of Blizzard's real-time strategy games, but you'll hear more of that with the coverage. For now, I'm here to say:
1. Follow the BlizzCon action on OC Weekly's Twitter. 2. Check out that video up there! It's a taste of the fun to come. Actually, I was probably more psyched before I saw it. But still, pretty funny if you love World of Warcraft, I imagine. Kind of like the "Barbie Girl" of massively multiplayer roleplaying games. And that maiden in the blue? A Chapman alum.
Plus: Ozzy Osbourne will be playing! I will be geeking out over Starcraft 2! Stay tuned!
So my visit to New York tomorrow won't be nearly as cool as this video, but it'll give you an idea of what sorts of things I'll be doing there. I've never been to NYC, so needless to say, I'm fired up. See ya in a week.
Yep, you can say goodbye to the old Heard Mentality blog banner--what with its raucous silhouette person dance party--and hello to the new one, up at the top of the page, with an adorable little orange wearing adorable headphones. (Is it creepy to call a piece of fruit "adorable"? Probably, right?)
Those aren't the only changes to the blog here, as you've surely, hopefully noticed by now.
Maybe you noticed I didn't blog last week. Or maybe you didn't. OK, you probably didn't. Anyway, I hit the road and spent the week in Portland, Ore., a city I hope to call home one day.
The trip was amazing -- tons of killer vegan food, the weather was nice and the beer flowed all day and all night. But perhaps the coolest part of the vacation was the fact that I "discovered" Amy Winehouse.
Yes folks, three years after she became a household name, I finally heard Back to Black and guess what? It's pretty effing good.
In all fairness, my girlfriend has been into the record since it came out, but I've heard only bits and pieces of it through my bathroom door (she listens to it in the shower, like, all the time).
You've got to love the refreshing straight-forwardness that comes with calling your event a "thing." Like the North Park Music Thing, a music and media conference next weekend at the Lafayette Hotel & Suites in San Diego. There's an opening night concert Friday, August 7 at the Casbah, headlined by fairly supergroup Midnight Rivals (featuring, among others, members of Rocket From the Crypt and Louis XIV), two days of workshops and panels on August 8 and 9, and a street festival that Sunday including the Night Marchers, pictured, Avi Buffalo, Black Heart Procession and the "yes, they still exist!" Presidents of the United States of America. Only $25 for everything.
Why is this relevant to Orange County? Well, one of the workshops features a very special (yes, feel free to interpret "special" in any dersive of juvenile way you would like) guest. Description after the jump!
Ok, I admit, the idea of a new band t-shirt isn't all that exciting. I mean, I'm sure something like this happens every hour of the day. But this one is different. For me, anyway.
Last night I was running along the bike path in Long Beach when I saw Hirax frontman Katon DePena and his wife Anne. We exchanged waves, but didn't stop because as all of us knew, when a person is running, you don't interrupt.
You still with me? Good. So about an hour later I'm at the local Ralphs when a long-haired dude walks in wearing a...(wait for it, wait for it) HIRAX T-SHIRT!!!
Then I get home and I get this email from Katon saying there's a new Hirax shirt available by clicking here. You gotta admit, that's too many random instances for me not to report on this.
From 1993 to 1995 MTV aired a sketch comedy show called The State, which launched the careers of future comic superstars--er, stars--Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, David Wain (the three awesome dudes from Stella) and Reno 911's Thomas Lennon, Ben Garant and Kerri Kenney. (Not to mention Ken Marino, from Veronica Mars and Party Down and a bunch of other stuff. And Joe Lo Truglio, who's now on Reno 911 and had that great cameo in Superbad. And Michael Patrick Jann, who directed Drop Dead Gorgeous. And Todd Holoubek and Kevin Allison, who haven't done so much, or, at all since.)
For me and many other people my age, it was a huge influence on what type of stuff I find funny. Essentially, it's my favorite show ever. And now it's finally on DVD, after years of of rumor, innuendo and release dates that were later scrapped. Given the many false starts and like, 14 years or dreaming about such a day (even though I admittedly didn't know what a DVD was in 1995), I said I wouldn't believe it until I held the DVD in my hand, even though a firm July 14 release date was announced a few weeks ago.
My biggest media hero is Howard Stern. There are many valuable lessons one can take from him, but probably the biggest is simply how honest he is with his audience. In the old days of radio, the rule of thumb was that even if the building was on fire while you were on air, you would never let anyone listening know--you would just plow forward and keep acting like everything is fine. Stern, of course, changed all that. If something fell down in the studio and made a weird noise on-air, he would acknowledge it and explain what was going on and why it happened, often leading to hilarious digressions. Which is why I'm not ashamed to share this story, although by rights I probably should be.
They don't publish the Warped Tour set times in advance. You have to find out who's playing when where by checking out this inflatable, pictured, when you get there. I guess I sort of understand why: they want people there when the doors open, and they want to give the bands playing earlier in the day a fair shot. That's fine.
I was on the treadmill last night when Rocket from the Crypt's "Summer Survivor" came on the ol' iPod. It's an upbeat ditty that appears to be about people taking over San Diego beaches. Some of my favorite lines include "wet t-shirt/in piss/sun block/with shit I don't care," "bougeouis vikings/dead by noon" and "tastes filling/less great/fake tits/as bait."
Anyway, the tune got me thinking that summer is officially here. Each year around this time, I go through a few rituals that usually announce the season, but for some reason, it hadn't dawned on me until last night.
For starters, I've been working on my tan. Duh. Instead of being transparently pale, now I'm just averagely white.
Secondly, my musical taste has shifted. Gone is the spring's cool jazz, hip-hop and Elvis (spring is the re-birth and there's no better way to be re-born than the King) and its its place is lots of the Beach Boys (all eras, not just the surf stuff), early Marvin Gaye (I've never heard anyone else say this, but early Marvin Gaye is the soundtrack to the summer) and plenty of KKJZ's blues shows on the weekends when I'm in my garden drinking beer and playing in the dirt.
Finally, and this has nothing to do with music, but I've been seeing lots of females wearing less and less. Each time I see one, I wonder what the hell I'm doing with a girlfriend. Then I know it's summer.
iPhone battery was dead, so no blurry far away photos this time. Sadface.
There's no doubt that I'm at Detroit Bar a lot, and that I've seen the acts that played there last night--Yellow Red Sparks (pictured), Stacy Clark and the New Limb--plenty of times. So how could I possibly keep such an experience fresh? Why, by bringing my mother along, of course.
Attention people of Earth: this is big. The official Twitter companion to this very fine blog has changed names, from the old and busted /heardmentality to the new hotness /OCWeeklyMusic.
Why the change? Essentially, concern that the Heard Mentality brand name might not (gasp!) be as strong as we all might hope, so people might be pretty confused when they hear they're getting followed by whatever the eff "heardmentality" is, and not wanting to follow such an admittedly vague commodity. So we've decided to fully embrace the OC Weekly name, while adding the crucial word "music" to really tie it all together. Ahhh. Goes down smooth.
You really should be following our Twitter, by the way. Find out what's happening on the blog--without even checking the blog! Also hear other hot hot news tidbits, chat with me (the most exciting part of all, natch) and follow along as we tweet from shows all over town, not to mention all the glorious, glorious live concert TwitPics. Cable news networks have been talking about Twitter non-stop recently in regards to the protests in Iran, do you really want to be less hip than Wolf Blitzer? Come on.
How's it going? I heard you guys just now on KUCI's beloved Press Pass Music radio program. Good stuff! One thing, though. I noticed you took issue with this week's Locals Only column, which featured your band. Specifically, my referring to new band members Grace Faith Peters and Ray Gun Pacini as "gents"--the perceived problem being that Grace is a female, and "gent" is a term typically reserved for males (short for "gentleman," natch).
Here's the thing, though. There's nothing about the word "gent" that specifically implies "gentleman." Realistically speaking, it's short for "gentle." It could just as easily mean "gentlewoman"! It's a sad commentary on our deep-seated societal bias that we're predispositioned to think "gentleman" when we hear "gent." Clearly, I was just doing my part to help heal that particularly vexing issue. I envisioned no gender assignment when writing that word!
Also, I always use terms that are traditionally considered to be "masculine" as gender-neutral. If I were to walk up to a group of female friends, I would very likely say "sup, guys?" or "hey, dudes?" It's just my way of stripping away some of the age-old sexism that poisons our languge. Like the words "actress" or, even worse, "comedienne." Hate those.
I feel like I should make something clear: I don't hate Taylor Hicks. I don't know how that rumor got started. I was probably more of a Katharine McPhee fan that season of American Idol, sure, but I thought it was actually kind of cool, at least from a novelty standpoint, when he won.
And sure, I made some jokes about his upcoming appearance at the Wal-Mart in Orange, but it wasn't really about him, it was more the inherent oddity of a relatively recent winner of one of the biggest television competitions in history appearing in the middle of the afternoon, on a weekday, at a Wal-Mart in Orange. If it was one of my favorite artists, I'd think it was funny (and sad. Very, very sad). Still, apparently my words offended some Taylor Hicks fans. Such as:
I was a huge 311 fan when I was younger. They were one of the first bands I ever really loved. They were definitely, I believe, the first band t-shirt I owned. I can still rattle off full verses of songs from their first couple albums (Music and Grassroots, represent, y'all!). "I'm taking it to the bridge and it's a different country, I'm bringing with me the people I know deep down are funky." Who could say what that means, but it's ingrained into my consciousness.
At some point I realized that liking 311 was most assuredly not "cool" and I (eventually) moved on. But it's not like there isn't some palpable twinge of nostalgia when I tell you that they're coming to town on July 12 at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, along with Ziggy Marley and the Expendables. It's the "Unity Tour 2009," and if I had to guess, I bet most of the uniting that day will be over jazz cigarettes. On sale this Saturday at 10 a.m., and I'm having a dickens of a time finding prices, but 311 fans tend to be pretty loyal, so why sweat the details?
Apatow-comedy parallel alert! By my age, most rock-lovin' dudes who grew up in Southern California are able to sit around -- maybe at a beach bonfire, maybe around a Lake Forest hookah set-up, or maybe over a steaming bag of Pedro's Tacos -- and swap tales of how "experienced" they are with the Coachella music festival. As previous Heard Mentality posts by Albert and Ryan indicate, most of these stories seem to involve weed, awkward sleeping situations, heat stroke, parking lots, bathrooms and/or Jack White.
Either that, or it's: "Seriously, [Bjork/Portishead/Radiohead/The Pixies/Daft Punk/Jack Johnson (JK on the last one)] at Coachella may have been the best [##] minutes of my life."
In situations like these, I sit silent. Somehow, while I've lived in Orange County pretty much my whole life, I've never made the trek up to Indio to see the fuss. Not that I didn't want to. I've got a few stories of my own -- about how Coachella ambitions were quashed by incidents large and small, plus a healthy dose of laziness.
But this year: I'm gonna do it. Saturday, at least. I'll be there. Yet, strangely, I'm not spending too much time wondering what it's going to be like. My mental image of this festival is pretty clear.
There's sand. There's heat. There are crowds. There's stench. There are tents. There is amazing music. There are famous people. There are porta-potties.
What am I not anticipating? What are the things at Coachella that people don't tend to blab about afterward? If you've got advice for n00bs (beyond the sunscreen warnings), leave a comment.
There's a new artist collective in Long Beach called Roll Up. It's comprised of six people who are throwing their intial bash tomorrow night. How do I know this, you ask? Well, I am one of the six.
In full disclosure, my duties in Roll Up are very limited. Consider me sort of like someone who has limited access to the key to the vault, but can't open it without some higher up official watching over my shoulder. Basically, I've helped write some of the copy for their site, but I didn't have anything to do with booking any of the acts or, well, anything else for that matter. I would have, but I got sick in a way that really sucked and this prevented me from having a larger role.
But that doesn't mean I can't tell you, the great readers of Heard Mentality, about said event. So without further ado, here's the flyer. Come by and say hi.
I've been to one Coachella and that was in 2003. Although the motive behind the hellacious trek from Long Beach to Indio was to see the first Stooges gig in nearly three decades, I ended up witnessing something way cooler than a shirtless Iggy.
Elephants.
You heard me. I saw a train of circus elephants walking in unison across the empty field behind an area where White Stripes fans were watching their beloved duo fight through sound issues that stemmed from an unforgiving desert wind.
Coachella was hyped as some special gathering where all sorts of free-spirited mumbo jumbo supposedly takes place, but a freakin' elephant parade? This was too much.
At first I was scared. I wondered what in the hell elephants were doing at a festival and took deep breaths to counter the overwhelming sense of impending doom. But after counting seven of them and realizing that the thousands of people in attendance weren't rushing for the exits, I calmed down and, for the first time all day, got really into the Coachella vibe, man.
It's not every day that a parade of elephants crosses your path (unless you work at a circus) and the sea of people, animal caravan, beautiful music and perfect desert night was not something I could keep to myself. This tingly feeling of being at one with nature needed to be shared with my girlfriend. Unfortunately, she was way more interested in Jack and Meg White than I was, but fuck the White Stripes. There were goddamn elephants!
I turned around, tapped her on the shoulder and shrugged my head left to indicate that something of epic proportion was going down. Of the countless shows I'd been to at that point in my life, nothing amounted to this. Nothing. For a brief moment, Coachella was Woodstock, Utopia and Babylon rolled into one. There was no war, no poverty, no life-threatening diseases; just bliss. But when I once again looked left, the elephants were gone.
Then I realized there weren't any elephants. It was the weed talking.
Like the Ghetto Boys, my mind was playing tricks on me.
I was by no means a marijuana novice by the time I hit the Empire Polo Club. In fact, if getting stoned was the National Basketball Association, I was a legitimate Hall of Fame candidate. But even I had to admit that I got too stoned that day.
Oh, and the Stooges? They ruled. Then we went home.
OK, sure, it may only be because their Twitter accounts are set to automatically follow people that mention them, and the Beastie Boys Twitter actually has only ever been updated once, but still. It's something!
We're Tweeting over here, and be sure to check it out. Not only does it update automatically when this blog gets updated (or, uh, some time relatively quickly after it is), I also do live updates from shows around town. And you can always Tweet @ us if you have a question. Fun, fun stuff! Plus, we'll be updating like crazy (along with this blog) during Coachella next weekend.
Sure, Twitter has more outages than the heydays of MySpace (and Tweets have been disappearing like Marty McFly accidentally nearly erasing himself from existence), but at least the failwhale is pretty adorable. OC Weekly proper has a Twitter account, too. Yay for trendy social media!
I got my taxes done yesterday. After paying $1,300 last year, this year I should feel lucky getting away with somewhere near the $700 mark. Of course, it cost me $400, so I guess I still lose.
And just like last year, I got real angry thinking about how hard I work and how much the government comes and steals my life's savings away. So it's back to the poor house for me.
But I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. Shit, George Harrison was ranting about this decades before my parents met.
Ok, not really. But he is a musician and he's playing Saturday.
His name is Darrin Thaves and he's a flutist. Let me go on record right now as saying this: If you have to live within earshot of a professional musician who not only practices all day, but gives lessons in their spare time, make it a flute player. Seriously, it's like heaven above, which is ironic because he lives upstairs.
My girlfriend (sorry ladies) and I often talk about how screwed we'd be if we shared walls with John Bonham or Slash, but the flute's another ballgame. Every blue moon Thaves asks if his playing bothers us and trust me, if it did, we'd tell him. But it doesn't. It's actually really nice and I tend to miss it when he's out of town.
So anyway, according to his bio, Thaves "has held the position of Principal Flute with the Northwest Sinfonietta and the
Pacific Chamber Soloists, as well as the position of Second Flute in
the Tacoma Symphony Orchestra. He has also been a featured soloist with
both the Northwest Sinfonietta and the Tacoma Youth Symphony. He is the
Co-Director and Founder of the NW Flute Collegium, and serves as a
flute coach for the Evergreen Music Festival. He has also served as
director of the Pacific Flute Ensemble and as Flute Specialist for the
Tacoma Youth Symphony Association." He also serves on the applied flute faculty at Cal State Long Beach, whatever that means.
Saturday's show includes works by Bohuslav Martinu, Paul Schoenfield and Paul Taffanel. I'll be there and so should you. If anyone reading this decides to attend, come say hi. I'll be the guy who looks like he shouldn't be at a flute gig.
Come to think of it, Thaves isn't the only pro I've lived next to. Years ago I shared a bedroom wall with Reel Big Fish's Scott Klopfenstein (when he wasn't on tour, which was like four days a year), but Thaves is pretty damn talented in his own right and worthy of some attention.
The performance is at the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music at CSULB. 8 p.m. $10.
I hate saying anyone is my favorite and/or the best local band because inevitably I will leave someone out, which makes me seem like a jerk. I do enough of that already, so I'll just say that Long Beach's On Blast are near the top of that list.
The quartet plays tomorrow night at the Continental Room in Fullerton. I've had a copy of their as-yet unreleased record for a few months now and I think it's great. Even better is seeing them live because they've got some mighty fine-looking fans and that can never hurt.
On Blast plays atmospheric tunes that combine the best parts of Depeche Mode, Stax-esque funk and hip-hop beats. On paper, that shouldn't make sense, but somehow it works for them.
For live shows, On Blast uses a drum machine while three of the members switch instruments like they're playing musical chairs. I've seen lots of other bands do this and it doesn't take long before you can tell which player is better than the other on a particular instrument, but On Blast doesn't miss a beat when they shake things up. And singer Josh Brown just smoothly interjects himself into the songs like a snake crawling through a field right before it pounces on its prey. Pretty cool if ya ask me.
Click here if you want to know more about On Blast. It's a pretty killer read if I do say so myself.
Part two of "Cleaning out Ryan's musical closet" is a major score for Jawbreaker fans. I, myself, love this band almost as much as I love anything on this Earth, but it's time for a new home.
I have one copy of Dear You (the Geffen version, not the Blackball re-release) still in the shrink wrap. It's got a sticker on the front that says "Featuring: Save Your Generation Accident Prone" and one of those band name sticker things on the top.
Next is a promo copy of Dear You. No sleeve or cover, but the disc says "Advance CD" and there's a mini-bio and track listing on the back.
Finally, a promo copy of the "Fireman" single. No cover. Just a disc.
I about shit my pants when I found all these. I wish I could tell you where I found them, but that part of my memory is nothing but a memory. I thought about selling these at Amoeba, but I'd rather give someone the opportunity to get these before some lame-ass record store clerk gives me $.25 for all three.
And yes, by selling these, somewhere inside, the 19-year-old version of me just died.
Name a price and they are yours. And I'll let you in on a little secret: I really want to get rid of these, so the first person has a pretty good chance of getting these, regardless of how low you go.
I'm way behind the times when it comes to technology. Hell, I just got a cell phone six months ago and that was because my dad -- who works for a company that will not be named -- gave me one. But it's 2009 and I gotta get up to date on what the kids are doing. Hence, I got an external hard drive to store some records that I like but don't have the chance to listen to.
The good news is, my loss is your gain as I am getting rid of some good shit. What good shit, you ask? This good shit.
American Idol, a show a small number of you may have a passing familiarity with, returns tonight (8 p.m., Fox) with a sure-to-be-scintillating two hour eighth season premiere. Of course, the first few weeks are always just auditions, so if you're one of those people who only like to watch bad folks fail spectacularly (like say, this guy), then this is definitely the time to tune in.
The first round of televised auditions are from Phoenix (home of season six winner Jordin Sparks; check out a totally awesome article I wrote about that here), which is sort of weird for me. Not only is that where I'm from, this is also the first year in a while that AI has started and I'm not doing TV coverage of any sort as part of my job. I can only imagine the great night that I would have in front of me sitting at home and watching all this on TV! And writing about it! Sigh. Instead I'll just go out and see music instead. But if I'm lucky, maybe someone from around here will end up as one of the finalists! And I can write about that! Oh, that'd be great. Almost as cool as that interview I did with the kid that won the "Grease" reality show two years ago.
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