This is the longest break I have ever taken from this thing! And I didn't mean to- it was just the combination of the Movable Type switch-over and my February pledge to be less extravagant in my internet time.
There are some things you should know. I live in a punk house, and even if there are sometimes beer cans in the bathroom and moldy dishes in the kitchen, it is the cleanest punk house you will ever meet! Because we clean our bathroom nearly every weekend and you will never find mushrooms growing out of OUR bathtub.
We live in this house, and sometimes people play music there, and we have been doing it since July at this point. And now people ask
us if they can play, and maybe they will ask if their friends can play, too. This is how we have met the nicest folks, and the music they play is so under-the-radar, under-the-radar to a level I hadn't really even thought of before. They aren't even on the smallest of record labels, they are releasing their own cds and tapes and records (usually tapes and records). They are touring by Greyhound and in pedophile vans they bought on craigslist and making their own t-shirts out of Goodwill finds and Sharpies. They play in living rooms and coffee shops and are messy, sloppy, sweet, remind me of everything I have believed that music can + should be. They show up at our door, our introductions are awkward, we talk about our respective cities and take them out for ice cream and discover that at 17 we all loved the same bands and all we want to do is move out to the woods and grow vegetables.
And the best bands are the ones that surprise you! because you know nothing about them, you don't know what to expect. There's only a few people sticking around, because there are other shows to go to that friends are playing at or whatever, so maybe only ten people are actually going to witness what comes next, this tiny band made of a teacher and a guy who works in the produce section and a lady who smiles so much when she drums- to see them when they explode in a dreamy punk rock mess all over our living room.
This is the first song they played last night. I think. Or maybe
not. But by the end, everyone was singing 'i almost died in Korea!'
and if you were watching closely, you might have noticed that the ghost
of (not-dead) Jonathan Richman inhabited our living room in the form of a tall electrified elementary-school teacher named Adrian.
The light-fixture was broken back in November at a party when Nic was on someone's shoulders and his head collided with it. The window shattered in October after the sweatiest drunkest of dance parties. So there wasn't much left to break when Adrian Teacher put down his guitar and somehow ended up crowd-surfing through our house, and Amanda just kept grinning so wide as she banged the drums that I grinned right back the whole time.
He yelped and jittered and shook the neck of his guitar like a live thing. Sometimes rock and roll sounds as fresh and surprising as it did when I was 15! And now I have to stop listening to the album so I don't wear out the grooves, but it is so hard because all I want is to just keep flipping it over and over.
There is more about them
here.
