Helvetia at the Trocadero, 10/07/06

What would happen if I got my chocolate in Pitchfork’s peanut butter? Probably something like this.

Check out more photos from this show »

credit: draw chavez (i wish i could make something as awesome as this)

Yes yes, welcome to another installment of All Chavez Friday. This is one is uber-special because Better Days Will Haunt You comes out on this Tuesday and boy oh boy, I can’t hardly wait to bust open my piggy bank for it.

That said, you can order Better Days… HERE.

And to keep you full of Chavez, here’s another live set I’m busting out of my archives. This one’s from 1995, back when anyone with a handheld tape recorder could become a bootlegging genius. Audio quality on this one is muffly, though I’m not sure if that’s from the recorder being hidden underneath some dude’s flannel shirt or just from years of being played over and over before a digital transfer. Regardless, this has some pretty funny stage banter about moustaches and stuff.

Chavez at the Middle East, 7/7/95 (.zip file) »

credit: frankie two thumbs

A Friend: http://theedge.bostonherald.com/bookNews/view.bg?articleid=158867

Maria Tessa Sciarrino: i guess XXX shouldnt hold out for that blook deal

Maria Tessa Sciarrino: stereogum, the book

Maria Tessa Sciarrino: baaarf

A Friend: ahhaa

Maria Tessa Sciarrino: her jazz the book would come with 200 blank pages, because i lost interest about 10 pages in

A Friend: ahhaha

Now you know where I stand on this most-pressing issue.

» File Under “Forgot To Mention”: I saw *Erase Errata*, *Mika Miko*, *The Gossip* and *UV Protection* not this past weekend, but the weekend before. UV Protection will delight anyone who’s been wishing for a female Devo/Kraftwerk counterpart replete with a dancer and videos. Seriously awesome stuff. Mika Miko is thrashy like Finally Punk and comes with a singer who screams into a red telephone handset plugged into an XLR cable. They are definitely one of those bands where the record hardly holds up to the live experience, so you know what to do next time they roll into town.

The real treat was seeing Erase Errata. I know that if I mention I’ve never seen them before this tour it will destroy any lingering trace of credibility I have with y’all but whatever, life just works out that way. Every other time they’ve played Philly somethings conflicted with their show. I don’t know if it was just me or Jenny Hoyston’s foray into flannel gear that skewed my view but I swear they sounded like fIREHOSE and/or Minutemen. I know some people are sad that Sara Jaffe’s gone but EE is now this amazing power trio and really, how can you argue with that?

» I saw some awesome newsprint posters for the new Oxford Collapse record this weekend at the Marvelous. You should hunt one down. Sayin’.

Why torment yourself in Hipster Hell? Not only does this present itself as an option, it’s during the daylight hours! I like daylight, and not because its health benefits.

» Why hasn’t anyone told me about National Napping Day before?

Something about a crappy touring punk band, money and Starskream’s manager. It’s seven pages long — most threads on salt never get that way anymore. However, my time and brain cells are precious to me. Read at your own risk.

» NYT has a totally vomit-inducing article on generation x, uh, hipsters who make money off their lifestyle. On the plus side, Plastic Little gets a little love in the aNYthing photo spread.

*Listen:* Plastic Little, “Foil”

» So I’ve been staring at this image of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs from a more recent issue of bUST in my bathroom for a couple weeks now and _only now_ do I realize that one of my former classmates was the photographer for the shoot. so nice to see aliya doing well! check her site for some great photos of TVOTR behind the scenes and whatnot.

» Weekend recap: Dicks / Clockcleaner at the Fire on Friday night, PP’s Bishop Allen / Teeth hoedown on Saturday. Good to see Badmintonstamps representin’ — if anyone has photos from the show, let me know.

oh man, did i mention you could take your photo on a soco bike? check out rick [national eye], josh [fan of friends], rory [mitch fiction, rifle nice], andrew [mitch fiction, ex-dr dog, the teeth's mgr] hanging loose:

you know im doing this out of love.

After Jon’s comment on the previous blog entry, my interest was piqued about this whole SCMX deal. It sounded like it was crashing and burning faster than Lady Sovereign’s meltdown at Silk City, and there’s nothing I love more than a good trainwreck.

The smaller stage that featured local bands was called the Limelight Stage and as I rolled up the A-Sides were playing their set. BTW, am I the only one who hates the way music festivals ghettoize local bands by relegating them to second stage? Yesterday, the A-Sides had more of a crowd than The Legendary Shack Shakers, whose only legendary feat was having a scrawny, pale white guy as their front man bestow us with the glory of going shirtless on stage. The A-Sides played a solid set, light years beyond the rest of the second stage bands on yesterday’s schedule.

De La Soul were up on the main stage and I gotta hand it to these guys — they saw right through the whole point of the festival [music disguised as marketing] but honestly tried to engage the audience with a back-and-forth of heckling and psyching people up. Best part? They were all, “We’re not gonna stand up here and grab our crothes and talk about thuggin’, ’cause we’re old…” So are they rapping about 401(k)’s? Not quite, they’re still throwing down tracks from _3 Feet High…_ and sounding solid.

I have never seen Bob Mould live so I was a bit surprised at how solid his show was and to see Brendan Canty of Fugazi as his drummer. He treated the audience with some old Sugar & Husker Du chestnuts. Good times, only to be brought down by the SoCo promo girls who went up on stage to rally the audience. Unfortunately, their voices sounded like nails on a chalkboard. Pure agony that seemed to last an eternity.

This is the part of my story where things get weird, mainly because Jon’s old lady Nicole handed me her lanyard during the Flaming Lips set. I went backstage [where there is another bar, strangely], ran into some friends and watched the show from the side of the stage. Unfortunately, with the way the Flaming Lips set everything up and the sizeable crowd there, I couldn’t see. So I went around to the front and watched from the audience for a bit. Wayne Coyne floated around in a bubble, which I caught with my real camera before I ran out of film.

I went backstage again where some folks had gotten over the little fence on the side. Much dancing and joy ensued, but it became even more so when the security guards let us go behind the alien elves on stage left. So there I was with confetti flying everywhere while the band played “Do You Realize?” and I couldn’t have been happier. Couples all around here hugging and kissing, someone proposed on stage; the enegry was unreal. I know watching the Flaming Lips is an experience unto itself but being on stage was something entirely else. Hm, I wonder if they laced the confetti…

The final encore was a cover Sabbath’s “War Pigs” and Coyne took it upon himself to get up on the soapbox. This is ultimately what drives me nuts about rock politics — it’s one thing to rant about the infinite sadness in the Middle East, but so extremely misguided on the other hand. Did he bother to pay attention to his surroundings? Any staff member in a position of power was white. The people cleaning up the mess of drunken frat dudes as we were exiting? Black. A year after the ineptitude of Katrina and nothing’s changed in our country, the divide keeps getting larger and larger — so why not use that time to encourage a crowd of 3,000 to be more proactive in their communities? Sigh. Sorry to be a Downer Debbie, but it’s been gnawing at my mind.

Anyway, kudos to De La Soul, Bob Mould and the Flaming Lips for making it a legitimate festival in the end, ’cause that thing could have trainwrecked even further. As we all said yesterday: someone’s getting fired today. And I hope it’s whoever thought up the SoCo girls.

OK, so i’ve got a lot of report on — like dancing _on stage_ with the flaming lips, wayne coyne’s speech, de la soul’s heckling/psyching up, the potential lameness of the day and how it was ultimately defeated by people in alien masks and santa claus outfits. in the meantime, enjoy some quick cameraphone snaps!

Looks like festival frenzy has arrived in Philadelphia! Over the course of the next two weekends, it’ll be time to slather on sublock [highly recommended], forgo clothing that makes us look attractive and revel in the sights of humanity at 100 degrees. Roy Batty might have seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, but I’m willing to wager he’s never been stuck in a humongous swarm of obese, sweaty shirtless men and their annoying girlfriends. Aside from that whole replicant thing, he’s a lucky son of a bitch.

To fill that empty hole, we’re getting not one, but _two_, festivals — WXPN’s All About the Music Festival and the Southern Comfort Music Extravaganza, which is abbreviated to a vowel-free SCMX. That shit might fly with cellphones, but music festivals? I’m not so sure about that.

Perhaps I’m crazy for even attempting to compare these festivals with Intonation, Pitchfork or even All Tomorrow’s Parties, but here’s the thing: look at their schedule, I get a very clear idea of their audience. With our two festivals, it’s a little trickier.

SCMX gives me no clue as to who their target audience could be — I mean, I get it, as indie tastes become more “democratized”, there’s a likely possibility that people are as equally into the Flaming Lips as they are De La Soul, Ozomatli and Bob Mould. But that probably accounts for a small fragment of the population; festivals reach for accessibility. Or is their inclusion a means to mask the scent of a kinda snoozy lineup — who the eff are American Princes? Chris Clouse? I might see one soul patch among the band photos, but I know there’s many more invisible ones. And I have to wonder: what is up with the Flaming Lips playing this, anyway? Why aren’t they playing the way cooler Siren Fest? Somewhere in America, a booking agent is getting fired. [_Note: I'm going based upon what I can find on the internet regarding the lineup. The official website blows and it's tough to find more info._]

Actually, wait, I realized what their demographic is: people who like to drink, as evidenced by this, “Apart from the superstar lineup SCMX will boast the all new SoCo Lime®-Light Lounge, Southern Comfort Hurricane® trailers and bars, and the best local grub.” So, douchebags + a whole lotta booze = total fucking disaster.

On the other side of things, WXPN reflects its listenership — Josh Ritter, Jefferey Gaines and so on. Perhaps, their problem is that they know their crowd too well. It’s all about the music, but not much else. You can see the underpinnings of their attempts to sex up the image: Konono No.1 [hipster record nerds love this shit], New York Dolls [people who never got over glam rock], Jim James [pfork bloggerati represent] and a slew of local bands [BC Camplight, Slo-Mo, Hoots & Hellmouth, etc] so that the under-30 crowd doesn’t feel weird about hanging out in daylight. All this aside, It’s nice to see WXPN stretching their wings out [and not on this front either, they've recently accquired Y100rocks.com] — but seriously, dudes need to bring the rock _on_. There’s potential in this festival for it to be on par with other nationally recognized festivals, rather than copycatting a popular trend.

So, at this point, I bet you’re wondering, “What’s the better deal?” Granted, free is a very nice price. I can’t argue with it. But free has its limitations — specifically in this case, potential drunken douchebaggery — even if there’s three entertaining bands. WXPN looks interesting despite is price [40$ for both days; there is no discounted pass for the entire fest, either]. Just remember this — suburban dads in khaki pants get really mad when you try to squeeze past them in order to get to the front. Play nice.