Shows: They Might Be Giants

TMBG@The Vogue 05/30/2013

They Might Be Giants will be playing The Vogue in Indianapolis on May 30th 2013.

After two kids albums, They Might Be Giants return to making music intended for gorps with their new album Nanobots released just this year. "They" are John Flansburgh and John Linnell and formed in Lincoln, Massachusetts in 1982. Their 15 studio albums have sold four million copies - not bad for an alternative band whose large following wasn't made on Top 40 radio and MTV. The bands name comes from a chapter in Don Quixote where the hero mistakenly believed that windmills were actually evil giants.

The band broke out of brainy obscurity in 1988 with the album Lincoln and their first hit song "Ana Ng". Their next album, Flood released in 1992, featured two hits. "Particle Man" and "Build A Birdhouse In Your Soul" both were featured in children's programming and commercial broadcasts due to the innate humor and unflinching good nature of the melodies that didn't wander into saccharine meaninglessness but instead created a kind of uplifting release from the repetitive and the mundane. This last bit was something that both kids and adults could enjoy.

After winning two Grammy Awards for scoring and song-writing for television, the band released a fresh and vastly entertaining double album reviewed here at Blog Foot called The Else. Today they are embarking on a new world tour in support of their new album Nanobots. They will also be appearing at the beautiful Madison Theatre in Cincinnati, Ohio on March 3rd 2013.

References:

• They Might Be Giants , Official Site
• Wikipedia, TMBG
• The Vogue, They Might Be Giants Tickets
• Rolling Stone, Nanobots

Deep Cuts: Rock

Moon Duo formed in San Francisco in 2009 by Wooden Shijps guitarist Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada, Moon Duo’s first two critically acclaimed EPs, Killing Time (2009) and Escape (2010), fused the futuristic pylon hum and transistor reverb of Suicide or Silver Apples with the heat-haze fuzz of American rock ‘n’ roll in Mazes (2011) has their best album to date in the forthcoming Circles (2012) due out in October from Sacred Bones Records.

The band is an original conglomeration of retro psychedelia and modern alt rock. Fans of Air, Psychic Ills, Black Angels, Sebadoh and Beck will find something appealing and extremely fascinating in Moon Duo.

Moon Duo - I Can See

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References:

• Moon Duo, Official Site
• SPIN Magazine, Kaleidoscopic Circles

Screen Shots: Wilco@TinyDesk

Jeff Tweedy and Wilco perform in NYC for NPR's Tiny Desk unplugged sessions.

Wilco, naming itself in Chicago in 1994 after the aviation acronym for "Will Comply", is an American alternative rock band based in Chicago who released The Whole Love on September 27th 2011 - a follow-up to their unexpectedly brilliant Wilco (The Album) which placed band leader Jeff Teedy into a class of commercially and critically successful artists such as Arlo Guthrie, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Thom Yorke, Scott Weiland and Kurt Cobain. In other words: pretty damn good company to be in.

Wilco is currently on a year long world concert tour that brought them to Louisville's 3-day Forecastle Fest on Sunday July 15th, in Chicago for the Hideout Block Party September 15th and in Columbia, Missouri for Live on Ninth Street before heading into the West Coast portion of the tour in Oregon and California.


References:

• NPR, Wilco @ Tiny Desk
• Wilco, Home
• Wikipedia, Wilco
• Forecastle Fest, Line-Up/Acts

Shows: Heartless Bastard@The Murat

Ohio natives Heartless Bastards will be playing in Indy in Friday September 7th 2012.

The Heartless Bastards, who are coming to the Old National Center (aka The Egyptian Room at The Murat) for First Friday Food Truck Fest in Indy on Friday September 7th 2012. They are a power trio whose members include singer, guitarist, and principal songwriter Erika Wennerstrom and her brother who were raised by a single mom in Dayton, Ohio.

Wennerstrom discovered her interest in music at a young age, but she always preferred writing her own songs as opposed to singing Disney tunes in school productions. Wennerstrom dropped out of her Catholic high school her senior year, and began concentrating more on music. After a few years of working dead-end jobs in Dayton, Wennerstrom moved to Cincinnati, where she met bassist Mike Lamping, who was working at his family's janitorial supply company.

Wennerstrom and Lamping began performing around town as the Heartless Bastards, and quickly added drummer and pizza delivery man Kevin Vaughn to the lineup. The band began to tour, its music rooted in and heavily influenced by garage punk (MC5), indie rock (At the Drive-In), soul (Otis Redding), roots rock (Neil Young), and blues (Leadbelly). The Heartless Bastards eventually were signed to Fat Possum Records, which released both the band's 2005 debut, Stairs and Elevators, and it's break through follow-up album All This Time, a year later, continuing with The Mountain in 2009. Arrow, the group's new album was released on February 2012 and is an incredibly strong album.

The Heartless Bastards will also be appearing at the Headliners in Louisville on September 8th and in Downtown Dayton at the Revival Music Festival September 9th.

References:

• Heartless Bastards, Official Site
• Ticket Fly, TICKETS

Off The Shelf: There Is No Authority But Yourself

Dutch film maker Alexander Oey examines the history of punk rock social phenomenon Crass.

Punk rock. The unflinching unofficial religion of a sea of disenfranchised, socially and geographically isolated kids and cranks in Western culture.

Made in England by bands like the Sex Pistols and The Exploited then commercially perfected in America, Punk rock is a lot like that Angry Kid From high school. The odd one in the corner. That Kid who, each day, scribbled lyrics into his beat up binder. The one who consistently got D's and worked a night job. The same one who secretly carried a red-flecked pipe wrench in his back pocket like some kind of hidden talisman to ward off gangs of crack fiends and packs of ultra macho jocks who dictated what was Right and Wrong behavior.

Yet, instead of resigning himself to a meaningless life he picked up his beat up binder and screamed out to the world, waving a guitar instead of pipe wrench, that The Kid wasn't taking it anymore and that his audience didn't have to either.

This is a good introduction to Crass. An English punk rock act who railed against corrupt authority figures, institutionalized racism, mindless violence, out-of-touch splinter cells w/in government, smothering social anxiety and the ever present pressure to conform to an impossible ideal - an ideal that only existed on celluloid or in the dancing scanlines of television.


Core Crass members performing live in the early 80's Pete Wright, Steve Ignorant and Andy "N.A" Palmer.

Crass, formed in 1977 from of a group of edgy artists and actors, promoted Anarchism as a political ideology to combat corruption. Crass went on to form the base of a resistance movement against exploitative English policies and popularized the Anarcho-Punk movement of punk subculture by advocating real and direct action in social arenas as varied as political protest, animal rights, personal accountability and environmentalism.

Crass utilized and advocated a DIY punk ethic approach by producing sound collages, graphics, anti-Nuke pamphlets, solid albums and films that remain nearly unique in Western culture outside of Medieval monasteries and the utmost levels of Higher Education.


Promotional material typical of Crass who advocated positive and lasting social change.

Alexander Oey's rockumentary of Crass, There is No Authority But Yourself, was premiered at the Raindance Film Festival at the Piccadilly Circus, London Trocadero in October 2006 and part of the Official Selection film program at the Flipside Film Festival in May 2008.


References:

• Wikipedia, Crass
• Wikipedia, There Is No Authority But Yourself
• Wikipedia, Steve Ignorant
• Amazon, There Is No Authority But Yourself (2006)
• Punk Rocker UK, Crass Profile
• Southen Records, Crass Merch!