Candy Hotpants loves you, dear readers! I had this amusing idea during my morning commute, that I would start a parody blog -- of myself ("Candy Hotpants Saves Indie Rock!"), in which I planned to make fish stories out of my experiences in "The Scene," but that seemed, you know, a bit excessive. Ha! So, instead, a giant entry, just for you.

Kiki and Herb, who we posted about a while back, have a new show, Kiki and Herb: Alive on Broadway, running through through September 10 at the Helen Hayes Theater. The Times has a predictably wacky 'multimedia slideshow' with Kiki, which gave me a good laugh this morning...

Obviously, the best scandale of late in the Texas indie scene is the kerfuffle over the Denton 'noise' scene. Things get pretty catty in the comments in this entry over at great DFW-area music blog We Shot JR -- fun, fun, fun!

It's a teeny-tiny world, ain't it? Toronto's marvelous (even if Pitchfork found 'em tiresome) Tin Bangs, who we literally found randomly one day surfing the Internets, are playing a show tonight in NYC at the Annex with TRGAW pals The Hourly Radio. Talk about a perfect bill -- too bad we can't be there. However, if you can make it, you should totally go. Here's a few from both bands, from the TRGAW archives:

Tin Bangs -- He's So Pretty
Tin Bangs -- The Skinny
The Hourly Radio -- First Love Is Forever
The Hourly Radio -- Lost + Found
The Hourly Radio -- Crime Does Pay

And hey, remember Lifter Puller, the precursor to the favorite band of dude rock critics everywhere, The Hold Steady? Well, former LFTR PLLR-ite and faboo photographer Dan Monick's new band Sex Eyes plays their first show at the The Fuck Yeah Fest 3 (curated by Keith Morris of Black Flag and Circle Jerks and Sean Carlson) in LA's Echo Park neighborhood this weekend. The entire bill is mad good, for that matter -- we want a full report if you go, okay? (Oh, and if you're interested in historical artifacts, there's a whole buncha LFTR PLLR mp3s available attached to this interview with Craig Finn. And have you seen the cover of the new Hold Steady record, Boys and Girls in America? Love it -- can't wait to hear it, where is our promo, Vagrant? Seriously.)

Moving along: As ever, our bi-weekly gig at the Chain Drive was too, too fun. As is the established pattern, the first band (Sheboygan) was serviceable, the second band (Girl in a Coma) kicked serious ass, and the last band (The Dirty Hearts) started out well, but all that potential wore thin as they trundled through an over-long set.

Pinkie just sent this over for me to paste in -- she's so much more eloquent than I am about these kinds of things:

So we were there, at the Chain Drive, which is like the TRGAW-collective favoritest place in the whole world. (There's a rad leather daddy local membership badge in the DJ booth, which would have been quite a prize for any straight girl DJing there, but we were ladies and left it so that its proper owner could claim it.) And in the midst of planning our all-Roxy Music-all-the-time miniset, SA-town's Girl in a Coma took the stage and started setting up. Candy Cindy and I, being curmudgeonly individuals who have logged countless hours at rockshows -- and in my case, countless hours in Women's Studies courses -- were prepared for Girl in a Coma to totally suck. I say that, even knowing that the very statement is loaded with a host of baggage with various labels like "feminism," "rock'n'roll is a boys' club," "anti-feminist," etc., but the fact remains that relying on baggage or lack thereof when evaluating bands comprised of women has created a huge performative crutch. Girl bands are expected to suck and often do because they spend their entire existence battling the fact that they're expected to suck instead of just rocking the fuck out with no regrets and playing like they mean it instead of playing like they're aware they're being evaluated. The exceptions are rare, and even the bands that fall into the trap (thus not being the exceptions) are sometimes still quite good: e.g. The Organ. But, as I was saying, we were in the midst of all-Roxy-all-the-time with the addition of a little Britt D vs. Carlos D accompanied by our own squealing over the cover of Bryan Ferry's The Bride Stripped Bare -- and about to experience Ferry's warblings on love being the proverbial drug -- when we were shown exactly how chick bands can NOT suck. Remember the first time you heard PJ Harvey back in 1992? How Harvey spit those first words: "Oh my lover / Don't you know that it's all right?" and you felt the bitty hair rise on the back of your neck because you knew that Polly Harvey was a plain-looking (then) young woman with a Fender Twin, a voice to match Nick Cave's, and you knew that she was angry at a man instead of men in general and that she knew where to put the blame? Remember that one time on 120 Minutes when Kim Gordon stopped by to visit Dave Kendall and brought her young friend Courtney Love and played clips from Hole's Pretty on the Inside -- long, long before the Kurt Cobain drama -- and you hadn't heard anything like that since the first time you'd heard Kat Bjelland bellow with that roar that makes nu-metal vocalists feel like they're wearing Bjelland's panties. Or maybe since your first brush with Kristin Hirsch's and Tanya Donnelly's creepy harmonies when you were up late listening to college radio? That's what happened at the Chain Drive last night when Nina Diaz started to sing. I just paint the pictures here. I'll let Cindy bring the facts.

Honestly, I couldn't have said it better myself. The ladies of Girl in a Coma are going on a mini-tour of Texas later this month -- check their MySpace page for deets and sample tracks, since I was a goober and left their CD in my dj crate and don't have anything to post...

Furthermore, our setlist, for interested parties: Johnny Cash -- Get Rhythm // The Satisfactions -- Daddy, You Gotta Let Him In // The Josie Cotton Band -- Johnny Are You Queer // The Waitresses -- I Know What Boys Like // The Jets -- Crush On You // Lene Lovich -- New Toy // The Judy's -- Guyana Punch // B-52's -- Legal Tender // The Stranglers -- Duchess // Spoon -- Jonathan Fisk // Placebo -- Black Eyed // The Mountain Goats -- Palmcorder Yajna

Book of Love -- Boy // Keith -- Mona Lisa's Child (Alan Braxe and Fred Falke extended mix) // Roxy Music -- Same Old Scene // Interpol -- Slow Hands (Britt Daniel Remix)

Elton Mortello -- Jet Boy Jet Girl // The Format -- Time Bomb // Scissor Sisters -- I Don't Feel Like Dancin' // Nicky Click -- Don't Call Me Baby (Remix) // Sheila E. -- The Glamourous Life

Heart -- Barracuda // The Hold Steady -- You Gotta Dance (With Who You Came With) // The Pipettes -- I Like A Boy In Uniform (School Uniform) // Patsy Cline -- Wayward Wind // Petula Clark -- Un jeune homme bien // Loretta Lynn -- Daydreams About Night Things // Bette Midler -- Higher & Higher // Sarah Vaughn -- What The World Needs Now Is Love // Nina Simone -- Nobody // The National -- All The Wine

According to The Times, we're pretty set for fall fashion: layers, layers, layers and natural eyebrows. Well, um, that was easy.

And, so sue us for being on the hype bandwagon, but A Sunny Day In Glasgow is too good to pass up, really. We heard about 'em from the always au courant Fluxblog, and for that we are most grateful to Mr. Perpetua. Ben Daniels writes the songs and plays all the instruments; his sisters Robin and Lauren provide the ethereal, far-away vocals. The best way to describe this band is to say that they make the kind of dreampop that sounds like a lost demo tape some little band sent in to 4ad sometime between 1987 and 1991 -- which is about the highest praise possible, really.

A Sunny Day In Glasgow -- A Mundane Phone Call To Jack Parsons
A Sunny Day In Glasgow -- C'mon

And one more for good measure, because we love you:

The Rapture -- Get Myself Into It (Serge Santiago Re-Edit) (please correct the filename when you download it.)