Nonogirl Radio

Blake is back!

I've spent a week in my new home and now that my Jawbreaker poster is up, it feels more like home.

And at the same time, a buzz has been spreading through the internet about Blake Schwarzenbach's new band, Thorns of Life! There are a couple videos on youtube from a Brooklyn houseparty. Can't wait until they tour!

My Bloody Valentine storms into SF

I lucked out my first year in college and shared a dorm room with a Filipina shoe gazer. Stylishly adorned in the colors of a true mod-ster, black and white, she refused to leave the room without make-up. She pinned up posters of Ride, Lush, and the Jesus and Mary Chain. And she took me to my first general admission show: Wonderstuff.

My Bloody Valentine's reunion show in San Francisco took me back to these early years of my musical development. While the decibel level had my clothes and body parts vibrating like a cell phone, I danced like it was 1991.

And the folks present took me back to those days as well. I ran into someone I made out with in high school, my first college boyfriend, a boyfriend from my early days in San Francisco!

But MBV wasn't enough. I wanted to hear a mix tape of this soundtrack with Teenage Fanclub, Chapterhouse, JAMC, Ride, and Lush. And it would have been nice to run into that college dormmate. I'm sure that if she lives in SF, she was in the house.

Sunny Skies Make Me Sing

It's skirt weather in San Francisco and I felt like singing. It's the first time in a while that I skipped rather than walked with a tune in my head. And which tune? "Showboat Angel"

Have a listen and tell me if it doesn't put a skip in YOUR step.

The Sea and Cake – Showboat Angel

Joel on the Grammys

My friend Joel Rose is a great producer and although he lives in Philadelphia now, I'm always delighted when I hear one of his stories on NPR. He always has great hooks like this one on the Grammys.

This story is about how out of touch the Grammys are from quality music.

Hearing Voices: Movement Soul

In prepping for a panel I'm moderating about the state of activism today, I found an old wish list item: Movement Soul, a collection of live recordings from the civil rights movement.

Unfortunately, it's no longer available for sale, but I did find an amazing documentary that integrates the voices and music from the peak of the movement produced by Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices.

I plan to play a clip from this along with some of my archival tape from Mark Izu, Miya Masaoka, and Bill Sorro on Tuesday as I ask how music integrates with the movement today.

(On a side note, this morning NPR devoted a whole 13 minutes to a segment on gospel music and its importance to the Civil Rights Movement!)

 

Joe Strummer - The Future is Unwritten

Before I took off for a vacation in Hawaii, I squeezed in an evening of alternative media and punk rock.

The Future is Unwritten brought perfect closure to the Bill Sorro project I'd been working on for the past seven months. RJ's video on Bill screened two nights before. One of the challenges he faced included a large quantity of talking heads on tape with little b-roll.

Julien Temple, the director of the Strummer documentary, spiced up the interviews by shooting them in front of camp fires. Bono in front of a campfire in Ireland, Strummers old bandmates in front of a campfire in England. RJ had an idea to do this with the theme of the dinner table. Bill and Huli's dinner table has a distinct green table cloth. RJ wanted to film each interview at a dinner table with the same table cloth, but we didn't think of this in time.

While this film goes in deeper to Strummer's psychology, I liked Westway to the World, the documentary on the band, much better.

Another Loss

Word traveled via the internet. This was in a myspace comment

Oct 21 2007 6:01 PM                                     

the following was posted by a friend of lance's on his personal page. this is very sad:

i'm so sorry to say, Lance Hahn passed away earlier this afternoon. he had been in a coma since collapsing at dialysis on friday, october 12th.

as far as the doctors can tell, this collapse was due to a sudden, drastic drop in blood pressure, which in turn was probably caused by a recurrence of the infection he had had in september combined with the stress of dialysis. he received immediate cpr from medical professionals at the dialysis center, but as it took fifteen or twenty minutes to resuscitate him, he suffered neurological damage from lack of oxygen to the brain, leaving him in a coma from which he never returned.

                                                                         As for me, I'll remember the "End rockstar idolatry. Worship your girlfriend" sticker on his guitar, how he seemed to cover the streets of the Mission District, and how he wore long shorts no matter what the weather.

When I was new to San Francisco and the music community, he always made me feel welcomed. In fact, I think one of my first interviews EVER was with him for an article I did for Rice Paper when J Church was on tour in Pomona with Unwound.

Once again, I wonder how things might have been different with health insurance...

Top 5 Records

Well, I guess I'll be injecting a few personal posts here if they relate to music, media, or the arts.

A music list I'm on challenged members to name the five most influential albums on our lives. Here's mine:

1. B-52s--Wild Planet
   My childhood friend, Erica, was always a step ahead musically. She introduced me to this record when I was just 7 and I think it opened my taste to music that is fringe and alternative, but still poppy. It's party music. It's passionate. And it taught me where a woman's "pineapple" is.
2. The Go-Gos--Beauty and the Beat
   My cool cousin bought this for me when I was 8, but she said, "You have to listen to the whole record, not just two songs (meaning the hits). I'm glad I had female rock role models from early on.
3. The Smiths--The Queen is Dead
   "There is a Light" is probably what got me to buy this record and it sucked me in to everything Smiths. I went to a ski trip in Mammoth after I bought the record and although I knew the cabin wouldn't have a record player, I still brought it so that I could study the lyrics and liner notes!
4. Operation Ivy--Energy
   A co-worker at Disneyland let me borrow this tape while we were in the bathroom cleaning closet. I loved the high energy, the politics, and the commitment to building a punk community
5. Jawbreaker--24 Hour Revenge Therapy
   I heard parts of this record at a house party while I was at UCSC and they quickly became my favorite band.

So what's on YOUR  list?

Jawbreaker Documentary

Because I missed out on catching the Dinosaur Jr. show on Sunday, I popped on my prized Jawbreaker video--live at Gilman in 1987. I'll be parting with it for a bit so that Jawbreaker's drummer, Adam Pfahler, can make a digital copy of it for the upcoming Jawbreaker documentary.

Since I caught the Jawbreaker fever late (1995), the video allows me to catch songs they'd stopped playing by the time I saw them play live like Busy and With or Without U2.

They announce that it's their last show for a year or so because band members need to "return to college," and they still called themselves a band from Los Angeles!

One of the best moments happens at the end of their set when Gilman staff defend the no stage diving rule because a parent was suing the club for her son's injury while punk rock boys complain that it's cutting in to their fun. Clearly this was before the days where the debates were over who "sold out."

Labor Notes: Song of the Month

Lately I've been concerned with the limits of my concrete knowledge of how our world works, politically. So I've been searching out websites to create my own little e-university of leftist politics. One of these sites is Labor Notes that "has been the voice of union activists who want to "put the movement back in the labor movement" since 1979."

I've always been drawn to music that captures the spirit of political movement and expresses the resilience of people's struggles. So I'm even more happy to see that Labor Notes features a song of the month, which acknowledges the role that music and culture plays in movement building!

They have quite a collection, so if you're ever in need of political music, check out this site!