i entered the beginning lyrics of “blue monday” and amazingly, it started with that song. just try it. its super cool.

jt.r, my friendly neighborhood activist [though i never see him nor do i reside in the same vicinity as he], breaks down the whole GET-UP strike that is going to occur in a few short hours.

there’s been hardly an ounce of talk about this in the local media, and that’s strange for a city that is ruled by the whims of the unions, for better or worse.

the bigger lovers, featured in today’s issue of the onion.

jim greer, one-time GBV member and now… contributing scriptwriter for dirty dancing 2?

franz ferdinand “take me out” (domino records)

[i was blindly introduced to it while listening to KEXP one afternoon at work and mistook it as a natural history song – if you must know]

their press kit states, “we make music for girls to dance to.” to shamefully steal a line, is that it?

i honestly thought with the advent of movements like ladyfest [i was an organizer for the philly one] and the amount of incredible magazines such as venus, bust, bitch, heeb, etc… you get where im going with this.

anyway. if this was 1994, id get sassy on you and write “franz ferdinand make the boy noise” [which really was the best description of helium ever] but i guess in a contemporary context they’re really making “the girl noise”: sharp but meaty drumbeats, angular guitar lines and a bass line that keeps it moving along.

its not the music that bugs me. im even slightly envious of some of those bass lines. ill remember to steal them for my next band practice.

what’s worrisome is the underlying message: if you’re not going to make some sort of grand statement with your music [or whatever kind of art you make] – then its completely OK to just make music for girls.

not too long ago, say 2 or 3 years back, you could mix dance with your politics. bands like le tigre were the frontrunners of the new sound. listen to their first album and dont lie to me – you wanted to smash the state dressed in legwarmers and cut-up t-shirts.

so what happened? why is the pleasure principle separated out again, and treated as the primary focus?

i guess i was wrong, and perhaps chuck klosterman was right. teenage girls are the new boys. [read his book: sex drugs and coca puffs]

pitchfork’s only news story yesterday announces the beach boy’s unheard album, smile, will be finally released this year. jesse jarnow discusses why its happening, and why we should be happy.

OK, maybe not.

unlike last year, i decided to forgo a sponsorship from a local newspaper. there’s something icky about being identified with simply just one paper. especially in philly, where that can make you more enemies than friends.

however, rock lotto did get some nice press. from the philadelphia weekly:

File Rock Lotto in the category of things you wish you’d thought of first. Based on a ridiculously simple premise, Lotto randomly divides 32 musicians into groups of four, which are then required to write a 15-minute set of original material. A couple months later everybody reconvenes to see how good (or terribly bad) the experiment has been. (As far as the “rock” part goes, that’s up to the musicians.) There’s only one rule for participants: They must have previous experience playing a musical instrument. The first Rock Lotto was held at James Madison University in 1997 and was brought to Philly last year by Plain Parade’s Maria Tessa Sciarrino, with great success. Here’s hoping this year’s bunch of musical masterminds can rock just as hard. (Julie Gerstein)

and from the city paper:

Local music key party

Recently, Maria Tessa Sciarrino popped in a CD from Philly’s first Rock Lotto and was pleasantly surprised. The makeshift bands — groups of four local musicians matched up at random — were actually, you know, good. So the initial intoxication she felt almost a year ago on the Khyber stage was not merely an in-the-moment thing. “Hell, they’re a lot better than some local bands that have been around for years,” she says. This was more than enough reason to do it again.

Here’s the deal with Rock Lotto, in case you don’t know. People who can play instruments show up at Doc Watson’s tonight with five-dollar bills in their hands. Their names are pulled out of a metaphorical hat in fours. There. A band is made. These strangers practice for weeks to get ready for their 15 minutes on the Rock Lotto stage. Winner gets money.

“There was an underlying fear that all of the bands could have dropped out,” Sciarrino says of the original Lotto. “But they didn’t. Only one did. They also could have royally sucked. But they didn’t. An audience could have not shown up. But they came, in droves. What we got were outstanding performances and complete support. For a moment, Philly really felt like the city of brotherly love.”

Last year’s winner, Buddy (Dave Frank, Joey Muncie, Sam Henderson, Jason Schmidt), actually played a couple of real shows. “Which is what made me realize the judges picked the true winner,” says Sciarrino.

And what does she want out of this edition?

“Can we supersize it? The maximum we can get is 32, and only 24 signed up last year. I want more women to play. I want people who play weird and unusual instruments. More, more, more. Given the success of the first one, it shouldn’t be too hard to sway the masses, right?” (Patrick Rapa)

i thought it might be fun, as the organizer [and now, a participant — but ill get to that] to keep a small journal describing my experiences with rock lotto.

what can expect to gain from this? eh, probably not much except that i tend to worry a lot and perhaps some juicy power struggles. for me, its a way to recount the events and keep some notes on how things were done. for future rock lottos.

why did i start doing this?
for years ive heard many of my friends urge me to join a band, start one of my own, etc., because they thought i was a talented musician. [if by talent you mean “cluelessly banging away on a guitar”, then yeah, im stravinsky.]

i did, and still do, have a fear about my inadequacies as a musician, largely chalked up to the fact that to this day, i still dont know how to read notes. this played into my inability to find people because i always thought they would be embarrassed to play with me, or too good to want to play with someone as inexperienced as myself.

this was one of the primary reasons that drew me to the idea of organizing a rock lotto [of which i heard about through various folks]. instead of seeking out people and having it be a complete disappointment for either party involved, what if they were forced together by chance? it was too reality-television-esque to ignore.

you can factor in attempting to bridge the numerous socio-musical cliques here. with the way things are in philadelphia [just read the rest of this site!], its hard enough to get more than people’s friends out to events, let alone search for compatible people to play with.

the first rock lotto was an amazing and exhausting experience for me. i did not think through a lot of the organizational elements, combined with the fact that i had just started booking doc watsons, made it tough to get things done just right. but like a good movie, everything came together in the end and the experience / support / response was so overwhelmingly positive that i wanted to do it again this year. and every year.