Item No. 1: Okkervil River are playing Lollapalooza? How did I miss that?
Item No. 2: It was grand to finally catch Airborne Toxic Event -- you may remember that we wrote about them in October 2006 (!!!) -- at Piano's the other night. Those kids sure put on a hell of a show -- tight, sharp and fun. Look for a new album later this year -- the new songs blow the band's first efforts out of the water (not that those were terrible, mind you -- see below for the video for the chipper shaft track "Does This Mean You're Moving On?") -- especially the epic "Sometime Around Midnight." (Hear it on their MySpace page.) Someone get these guys on a tour with The National, stat.
Item No. 4: Our dear Bellmer Dolls play their last show of the summer @ Lit on June 28 with Foreign Islands and Chinese Stars. (Wait, how can that be the last show of the summer when it's actually the first show of the summer?) Well, that means we won't have a reason to enthuse about them for a few months at least, so you'd best come out and brave the skeeviness of Lit. Worth it! Mostly!
Item No. 5: Baby Dee plays the lovely new West Village venue Le Poission Rouge June 25. If you don't go to any other show we recommend, please go to this one. I guarantee you won't regret it...
Item No. 6: Au revoir to Florent, the official favorite Manhattan eatery of The Rich Girls are Weeping, which closes on June 29 after 23 years in business in the Meatpacking District. Thanks especially to Darinka Chase, Vestal "Like a Virgin" McIntyre (a/k/a The OTHER Pinkie), Coffy, Mrs. Pierce and all the charming busboys whose names we never caught. Oh! And those two drunk Frenchmen we met outside No. 69 Gansevoort Street late one night who implored us to join them for postprandial dancing the Cock! And of course, Florent Morellet himself! We'll miss you all something terrible.
I've become so jaded these days about going to shows. If a band doesn't, well, destroy me with their live set, I'm just so not interested. And that doesn't mean that the band in question has to consist of a bunch of crabby, hollerin' loud-ass dudes, mind you. But it uh, kind of helps.
Which brings me to WOMAN. (Yes, that's all caps. Perhaps you should imagine me yelling every time you read their name in this post. It's really too bad I can't record a little mp3 of that, actually.)
Anyway, we'd been trying to catch a WOMAN set for like, 6 months. (No, really!) We kept missing them for no particular reason, much like how, not surprisingly, we're missing M83 tonight -- I've been trying to see him for like, what, 5 years? It was the usual round of excuses: We were either late getting to venues, or broke (we aren't actually rich, you know!), or out of town, or just plain old and tired.
And honestly, I'm the kind of person who avoids going out on Fridays before holiday weekends, but the promise of Portland's Magick Daggers, our dear Bellmer Dolls and the elusive WOMAN was too much to pass up. Besides, it was at Union Pool, which we can get to via the bus. (BTW, we were recently informed that we are "totally gangsta" for taking the bus in fancy dresses and furs and stupid shoes. Um, damn, it feels good to be a gansgta?)
But I digress.
Now, I wish I could say that I was totally pleased with the Magick Daggers' set -- the first half was absolutely brilliant, Jessy Montaigne (x-Subtonix) really, really kills on bass and Maximilian Avila (x-Get Hustle, Antioch Arrow) is equally wicked on drums. The problem is, Montaigne's vocals are just kind of okay, and it's really only interesting when she's caterwauling and wailing on her bass in a way that lonely metalhead boys in suburban basements only dream of ever pulling off (and would uh, probably cream their jeans to see this fierce dervish of a woman actually doing so). Less interesting, though, is when Montaigne tries to bring the dark cabaret; without that deliciously phallic bass in her hands, she is lost onstage, and resorts to the kind of girly vamping that's uncomfortable-making and rather dull to watch. The fierce momentum that carried the first half of the set just kind of fizzled from a bang to a whimper.
Thank goodness, then, for WOMAN. The best recommendation I can give: I turned to Pinkie at some point during the set, with an insane grin plastered on my face and hollered "WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE LOVE THIS!?!?" "Because they're stupid and have no souls," she astutely replied.
We have a tendency, it's true, to kind of crush out on loud, squally swampy blues bands with tight rhythm sections (check!) and dudes who holler (they have two, even!) -- I'm sure this is surprising to no one at this point. But the thing about WOMAN is that ... well, for all the dark and dangerous poses, they're just balls out wicked and fun. (Though, I guess that part when Skeleton Boy threw his bass, with the pickguard covered in blood, across the stage at the end of the set was kind of dangerous...) Anyway, frankly, after the spring I've had, I needed a good time, and WOMAN delivered.
Oh, okay -- look, sometimes a little embedded video is the best way to show you what I'm talking about -- this is from a show @ Cake Shop at the tail end of last year, via punkcast.com.
The less we say about the plagued-with-technical-difficulties set from the Bellmers, the better. They did, indeed, actually finish the set -- but it was kind of like that time you sort of didn't memorize that recitation for 9th grade English class and you spent all of gym cramming in the outfield, but everything fell apart during lunch, and by the time it was your turn to go in 5th period, you just kind of collapsed -- but you still managed to pull it off anyway. Or maybe that was just me.
That being said, we have no doubt that things will be better this Friday when the Bellmers bring together the best of the Charleston shows -- Preacher and the Knife and Cosmicide (Josh & Brandon of Secret Machines) [ed. from Pinkie - we never said we could spell] -- for the Neighbor of the Beast (6/6/8 -- get it?) show at the CSV Theater, 107 Suffolk (yeah, the building that looks like ... a school). I have no idea what I'm going to wear, as the weather reports promise nasty, humid heat -- but hey, our trainee Ms. Churchill, who's recently back from the UK and is doing well on her Eno regimen (she's stuck on Warm Jets right now), will be joining us -- always a good thing.
Sunday we'll be at the dreadful MHOW where FrictionNYC presents These New Puritans (who we discussed recently on the Tumblr), School of Seven Bells (which is, oddly enough, the new project from Benjamin Curtis, formerly of Secret Machines, and the Dehaza twins, formerly of On! Air! Library!) and Effi Briest (yay!) -- looking forward to that, even if not too thrilled about the venue, or the fact that it's on a Sunday night. But I guess we'll live.
Oh, hello! I owe a review of the Bellmer Dolls/WOMAN/Magick Daggers show a few weeks back (OMG, do I ever have to go to Union Pool on a Friday night on a holiday weekend again? Please promise me I don't.) -- and a reminder of a few things that are coming up in the next week or so. I promise, I'll post that tomorrow. I swear.
In the meantime, we're a bunch of crabby grumpuses over here at Castle Rich Girls tonight, which meant that there was only one thing to do -- pop in disc two of the super-obsessively wonderful Roxy Music 2-dvd set The Thrill Of It All: A Visual History 1972 - 1982. We'd watched the first disc about a month or so ago, but tonight we needed some broken hearted Bryan Ferry to make us feel better. Or something.
Make no mistake about it, I'm pretty sure that Roxy Music is my favorite band of all time, and the 1978-1980 years are my absolute favorite, if mostly for Andy MacKay's amazing mullet and special pointy sideburns. And possibly all the leather suiting. And sharkskin. And the sweater with the saxophone on it.
Anyway, smack in the middle of the disc is the band's cover of John Lennon's "Jealous Guy." I turned to Pinkie and declared, "I believe this is one of the best songs ever written." Which is odd to say, really, because it's actually quite chilling when you stop and think about it -- a man's jealousy can be a terrifying thing sometimes. But Lennon's unapologetic apology is just so ... painfully real, which is why I imagine so many dudes have subsequently covered it (nearly 100, according to Wikipedia). I love the original, I love Roxy's version, I love Donny Hathaway's version. And I'd completely forgotten about the Deftones cover -- thx, Wikipedia!
It's also odd to think about the fact that when Roxy covered the song after Lennon's murder, they were accused of cashing on tragedy -- when in reality, it fits in quite well with the band's other songs at the time. Ferry was still clearly smarting from his split from Jerry Hall -- something he didn't artistically bury until the video for "Avalon," really. (Which I've also included for your viewing pleasure because it's so very lovely.)
John Lennon -- Jealous Guy
Donny Hathaway -- Jealous Guy
Roxy Music -- Jealous Guy
Roxy Music -- Avalon
See, now we're in a better mood, yay! Hope you are, too.
The Rich Girls Are Weeping is curated by super best friends Cindy Hotpoint & Pinkie Von Bloom. (And yes, they took the name from the Brian Eno song "Cindy Tells Me.") They formerly lived in Austin, Texas but are now based in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
Almost all of the content contained herein is dependent the vagaries of your hostess' weird tastes and whatever they're really into these days. As such, The Rich Girls Are Weeping does not focus as strongly on flavor-of-the-instant acts as some mp3 blogs; however, if you are in a band or with artist or label management and would like to send promotional materials to Cindy and Pinkie, drop an email to elegantfaker AT gmail DOT com. (NB: We receive a lot of email -- please don't fret if we don't get back with you right away! Urgent messages & mashnotes can be directed to cindy.hotpoint AT gmail DOT com)
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(photo courtesy of the airborne toxic event mi espacio)
