CD

Aquatic on Coast Community Radio in Astoria, Oregon

A nice follow-up to my recent visit to Astoria with Polly Moller and Company.

A track from my CD Aquatic may be played on Coast Community Radio in Astoria this morning (10am to noon, PDT). This a folk program, which should be interesting. It is hosted by Carol Newman, who was very supportive of our visit and also hosts the “Arts: Live and Local” program, where Polly and our host Paul Hoskin had a chance to discuss our music and our show.

Coast Community Radio streams live online, for those who may want to check out this program as well as their other locally produced programs.

UPDATE: My track Open and Shut Case appeared on the program, you can here a clip of it here. There was an interesting segue into Paul Hipp’s “I am the Decider”, a great parody of Bush, Cheney et al. based on the Beatles’ “I am the Walrus” (Koo-koo-ka-choo). I got a nice mention of the piece and the album, along with reminder of our Polly Moller and Company show and the AVA music series; and “Death and the Maiden” (PM&C) was played as well.

CD Review: br'er Of Shemales and Kissaboos

Readers might remember the band br'er and lead Benjamin Schurr from the infamous CatSynth Tatoo. Well, br'er is out with their first album, Of Shemales and Kissaboos.

br'er not surprisingly includes a lot of synthesizer work, combined with songwriting, “art rock”, and an interesting collection of instruments. Schurr and Christian Mirande together provide an assortment of synthesizers, noise sources, toy instruments, and such on top of a more traditional “band” of voice, guitar, keyboard, bass and drums.

The music ranges from very soft ballads to something akin to techno-industrial. Perhaps most iconic for me is the track “I'm sorry mom”, which I believe used to be featured on br'er's myspace. It opens with simple 3/4 strumming and voice, and quickly grows to include dissonant piano strings and more. A lot of pieces follow a similar idea, moving between art-rock song and experimental electronic work. The next track “Rory snake handler” also features a lot of splicing between disparate elements (e.g., song and dissonant piano), I'm guessing it is not indended to be played live. Most of the tracks, however, do sound quite doable live, which should make for some interesting shows as they tour.

The tracks following “I'm sorry mom”, continue to build up more and more electronic and noise elements, while returning for stretches to the “song” format. Ultimately, it is a collection of real songs, as sung by Schurr. But I find myself focusing on the piano and the electronics most. There is a lot of what I would consider “traditional avant-guard piano”, as well as sound-synthesis exploration, of the sorts I might use in my own performances or recordings. This is especially true in the later tracks from “Lapin” onward. It almost feels like they arranged in increasing order of electronic noise and beat/pattern content, which is as good an organizing principle as any. But to their credit, they provide a more chaotic or absurdist, and somewhat quiet, turn at the end.

Of Shemales And Kissaboos is available now from Beat is Murder Records. You can hear audio samples from from the album at Beat Is Murder's myspace as well as br'er.

Discuss on the CatSynth music forum.

San Francisco May 13 Part 1: Highways, Mothers Day, Music and Art

I definitely needed to get out of town today. A change of scenery and activity was in order, plus Santa Cruz becomes a complete tourist trap on sunny weekends like this. So north to the city we rode…Of course, before leaving, I called my mom in New York, and got the change to wish both her and my grandmother a Happy Mothers Day. I hope you all had an opportunity to do the same.

Our main routes into San Francisco are highways 1 and 280, which together form the Junipero Serra Freeway upon entry into the city. This is an amazingly scenic freeway, traversing the largely undeveloped valleys along the San Andreas fault south of San Francisco. 280 splits off to the right to become the Southern Freeway, as illustrated in the map below (pay no attention to the “official” names that no one actually uses).

Usually we take the 280/Southern Freeway route, which crosses highway 101 and empties out in downtown. This time, we stuck with highway 1, which continues north as the Junipero Serra for a few meters before becoming 19th Avenue in the Sunset distrcit. Big mistake. We got stuck in traffic all the way to Golden Gate park. Interestingly, the highway 1 freeway was originally supposed to continue all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. The stub of the highway 1 freeway and US 101 / Golden Gate Freeway (Doyle Drive) does in fact exist, but is disconnected from the highways in the south of the city:

But they have nothing to do with today’s story. Instead we left highway 1 at Golden Gate Park and headed to the Haight district, home of the Haight/Ashbury neighborhood of 1960s fame, and more recently of Amoeba Music, San Francisco. Amoeba is one of the best brick-and-mortar music retailers left, at least here in California, and they do carry and extensive experimental-music selection. I was there to make sure that my CD Aquatic was part of it. Such is the life of the independent recording musician, I have to physically bring my CD to the stores and get them to take a copy or two. Amboeba did accept it, though there terms are, well, the are what they are.

We also paid a visit to Streetlight Records in the Castro district. I have sold a few CDs at Streetlight Records in Santa Cruz, so why not in San Francisco as well? They took a couple of CDs on the same consignment terms as the Santa Cruz store, which unfortunately reminds me I need to check in with the local shop and see how things are going. While in general these things work out OK, it is the sort of chore that makes me think about signing up with a small indie a label (or a small indie label bigger than my own). Of course, that has its drawbacks as well, not the least of which is being able to do things like the current CD benefit for TeaCup’s family.

In addition to trying to peddle my own music, I always take the opportunity in SF to see other people’s art. Galleries are mostly closed on Sunday, but I did have a few exhibitions I wanted to see at the SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art[/url]. The two main exhibitions were a juxtaposition of works by Pablo Picasso with those of American artists inspired by his work – I had actually seen this exhibition in New York last year – and a retrospective of American artist Brice Marden (who is still very much alive). My critiques the exhibitions there deserve a separate article, which I will probably post tomorrow. The other galleries will probably have to wait until June for another visit…


Again, we usually exit the city at the Sixth Street terminus of 280, but because we were coming from Streetlight in the Castro, we ended up using the 101 / Central Freeway ramp at Market Street and Octavia Blvd. This stub of a freeway used to continue north of Market as the Central Freeway until Oak and Fell Streets heading towards Golden Gate Park. Indeed, all the freeways, except for I-80 to the Bay Bridge all seem to empty out onto city streets.

The tiny bit that remains of the Central Freeway (the section north of Market was recently demolished and converted into Octavia Blvd, see this article at SFGate) was originally designed to connect up to the Golden Gate Freeway (also highway 101) shown in a previous illustration. This, along with the highway 1 freeway (Juniperro Serra extension / Park Presidio Freeway) and the now defunct highway 480 (Embarcadero Freeway) were all supposed to connect to the Golden Gate bridge, but all were cancelled in the 1950s/1960s due to opposition. You can see some of the early plans for San Francisco’s freeway system at California Highways and kurumi. At least one connection between the south, the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate would have been good, but there really isn’t any way to do that without a nasty tearing apart of neighborhoods along the lines of the Cross Bronx Expressway in New York (one of the freeways in the previously blogged Bruckner Interchange, it just keeps coming back). To bring things back to Mothers Day, my mother grew up in one of the neighborhoods in the central Bronx that was rent asunder by the construction of the Cross Bronx.

Teacup's race against time, and CD sales to benefit his family.

Our little friend Teacup isn't doing very well, and Megan says it's a race against time. He continues to receive surgeries to combat his gangrene infection, but now he has been diagnosed with the parasite Hemobartonekka Felis, which essentially destroys red blood cells. He received a blood transfusion, and now is attempting to recover from that in addition to his infection and surgeries. He is but a shadow of his former handsome self.

You can read more about Teacup's struggles, and the efforts being made to save him, and all the warm thoughts from other humans and cats being sent his way.

We also continue to send him our thoughts and hope he recovers. A sad truth, however, is that whatever happens, there will be huge vet bills for Megan and the rest of TeaCup's family. Several auctions are helping to raise money for his bills. You can find out more at the Cat Blogopshere, where you can also donate directly.

We are also going to donate all proceeds from CD sales during the month of May, so please do consider helping out if you enjoy both new music and animal companions. This will cover both direct sales and sales via CDBaby. Unfortunately, we cannot include digital download sales, it just is too complicated to manage. Click on the CD cover to the left for more info (I will update the page tonight with benefit info).