Tag Archives: music

live review: volifonix, excellent gentlemen, & just people – doug fir – 8/11/11

Posted on by
Reply

You guys. I haven’t seen a live show in months. Months! I will be the first to admit that I have been No Fun and sometimes a Party Pooper. I’m not sure what got me into that rut, besides awesome video games. Seriously, Fallout: New Vegas has taken away a lot of my time. Plus I was kind of broke, from buying so many video games. While I do occasionally feel slightly bad for not leaving my computer chair some days, I really don’t regret buying video games or playing them with joy. I love video games. But that’s a blog post for another day.

My girlfriend’s cousin Peter is in a band called Just People, and he was arguably somewhat instrumental1 in getting her to stay in Eugene, OR, rather than flying off to Hawaii and never being heard from again. Peter is about to move up to Portland, and the rest of the band is already here, so whenever they play a Portland venue, we go, because they’re genuinely a good band, and Peter is an excellent guitar player, and their shows are always fun and lively.

Last night we made the trek to the Doug Fir to see these three bands play. I hadn’t been to the Doug Fir in a long time. Their burgers are still delicious. Their bartenders still take forever to acknowledge your existence. That mannequin in the window still freaks me out.
The venue wasn’t especially packed the entire night, which is a shame because Portland, for god’s sake, you need to go and enjoy this kind of music. No more Horse Feathers. No more twangy jangly Appalachian music. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of going to see a show and getting four dudes with huge beards, and one woman playing quarter notes on a violin, like before the show they gave her a goddamn lobotomy or something. It’s ridiculous. It’s time to embrace the funk. It’s time to, as Technotronic said back in 1989, “pump up the jam.” And thankfully, that’s what happened last night.

First band up was Volifonix, a quintet from Eugene playing a jambandesque funk mix that was immediately enjoyable. The lead singer reminded me of a jammier version of Electric Six (minus the humor). They also had elements of early Living Colour in their sound, which is always a plus in my book. Also their bass player, Elijah, was pretty knocked out, but really, he kind of has to be, considering that genre of music demands a strong rhythm section.

Anyway, they blasted through a great set, really set the bar high for the entertainment for the night. The highlight, of course, was when their saxophone player, Tomo Tsurumi, hailing from Japan, performed some awesome Japanese rap over a song called, I believe, “Wow Wow Wow Wow.” A woman I can only assume was his mother was in the audience, dressed, for reals, in what looked like a traditional Japanese kimono, and just looking happy as a god damn clam watching her son take the stage. I loved it. I lover her maybe more than the song itself, to be honest. It was sentimental, okay? So Tomo, thank you for that, and kanpai!

After Volifonix was my unexpected highlight for the show: Excellent Gentlemen. I must admit, up front, that I am a huge Stevie Wonder fan, as well as all the funk music I’ve gotten my grubby paws onto. So when Excellent Gentlemen began playing (I had no idea what I was about to listen to), I was blown away. They wear their influences on their sleeve – Stevie, of course, and some modern day Cee Lo as well2, and generally any funk band that uses a talk box (Roger Troutman, for example). They blew the roof off the place, to be honest. They were tight, they were confident, and their music was perfectly composed and excellently performed. And their drummer looked like he was a line cook at a restaurant. I just have to say that. Kind of off topic, I know, but never before have I seen anyone, much less a drummer for a band, and immediately thought, “That guy looks like a line cook!” I don’t know. It was the black baseball cap coupled with his shirt. He looked like a line cook! It was uncanny.

I would like to go off on a tangent for a bit. If you haven’t signed up for Spotify yet, please do so. It’s amazing, and even more importantly, you can listen to all the bands from this review there! It’s a hell of a lot easier to do this than to try and find their music to steal online. Look, I’ve stolen a lot of music online in my day, and that’s because there was no outlet to listen to music before I bought it. Spotify solves this. You can listen to an album and not feel too bad because there are some ads (or you pay a fee to remove the ads) and at least the band gets some of the profit. Not a lot, I know, but some.

Obviously, the best way to support a band is to see them live, and/or buy their merch, especially if their merch is self-released. The more money that goes straight to the artist, the better, I say. But at least with Spotify, you’re not outright stealing music from the internets. The internets is bringing you music! It’s saying, “Hey, here’s some music for you to listen to. Yeah, there’s some ads, and yeah, they are some of the most annoying ads you’ll ever hear, with some of the worst music you’ve ever heard, but at least you’re not a dirty thief, right?”

Alright, back to the topic at hand. Just People! I’ve seen them play a couple of times now and they always impress me. They’ve got a great following and really lively, engaging jamband music, without being too jambandy. You know what I’m talking about. I’m not a huge fan of the jamband scene, so I get leery at listening to those kinds of bands, especially ones I’ve never heard of before, but JP puts on a great show, and they defy the jamband stereotype by having strong lyrics and tight songs. Very upbeat and powerful. I was worried that, after the awesome performance from Excellent Gentlemen, maybe they wouldn’t be able to compete, but they did, and then some. Not that music is a competition, except maybe a friendly competition, wherein all candidates try to out-funk each other3.

And that was it! A really stellar night. This company called AudioGlobe was streaming the show for free on their website, and making copies of the show for people who wanted to pay five bucks. So I now have a live set of Excellent Gentlemen from that night. Pretty sweet!

  1. Is that a pun? Oh lord. ↩
  2. Of course, Cee Lo wears his influences on his sleeve as well… ↩
  3. Don’t confuse this with the hipster version of “out-funking,” which is when they compete to see who smells the worst. ↩

stealing is the best form of flattery? i’m ron burgundy?

Posted on by
Reply

I can’t really prove it, I guess, but I was alterted by Andrew over at Artists House Music that three major record labels are banding together to start a tuition-paid music service for college students — the exact thing that I said they should do a month ago.

Should I sue?  I’ve always wanted to sue someone for something, especially something vague like “intellectual property.”

The idea was proposed by Jim Griffin, a “digital music strategist”, i.e. a guy who gets paid to do what a bunch of us do for free (lucky bugger).  He came up with a similar idea in March to add a fee to internet service bills.  Perhaps one day he was browsing the internets and came across a Tweet or link to my article at AHM and said, “Stupendous!  I will steal his idea.”  I doubt it.  It seemed like he pounced on the Tennessee bill thing in the same way I did.

Jim Griffin, if you are out there, tell me if I am the muse to your idea!

(On a side note, I apologize for my lack of posts recently.  I just started working at my new job and thus have no time to be bored and thing about stuff to write about.)

m83 & other things

Posted on by
Reply

I saw School of Seven Bells & M83 at the Doug Fir last night.  It was a great show.  You can read a review of it here: review!

Trifecta is a blog that I’m trying to get my friends to write for, that’s about art, food and sports.  So far no one has written anything besides me and Charlie.  Hopefully this will change soon…

Tomorrow is — Decemberists!  And capture the flag!  And Buffy rehearsal.  Gah, long day indeed.

I had a good Thanksgiving, thanks in part to my wonderful friends Maarvi and Paul, who kept me from spending the day all alone.  Actually, if Paul hadn’t given me the ticket to M83 I would’ve gone to Astoria with my brother and his wife, but eh, it all works out in the end.

chrimmis vs. christmas (and why you should download my christmas album!)

Posted on by
Reply

I wrote up a WP page for my Christmas album, which is totally free and can and should be downloaded by everyone because it’s just a really good album, not one of those stuffy Christmas cover albums.

But as I was writing the page I thought, “Gee, Josh, not everyone is Christian.  Some people might not want to download your album because it’s about Jesus and stuff.”

I don’t usually think about this because I myself am not a Christian — I’m a pretty laid back agnostic, if anything.  In the long run I don’t care if there’s a God because his existence does not change the fundamentals of morality and how we should utilize our lives.  I will stop talking about that now, cause I could write a whole other post about my feelings on objective morality.

Instead, I will offer up my separate, seemingly cutesy term for Christmas — Chrimmis.  I started saying Chrimmis years ago, for no real reason other than my family (esp. my father) is big on malopropisms and so we’re always substituting one word for another (e.g. “horse pistol” for “hospital” and so on), and so it seemed natural to say Chrimmis instead of Christmas.  But it ultimately has a separate meaning for me as well.

Christmas is a religious holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.

Chrimmis is a secular holiday celebrating the spirit of family by giving presents and/or generally hanging out with the ones you love.

Some will say, “But Christmas is about family too!” and I would agree.  But it’s more about Jesus.  And while I think that Jesus was an a-okay dude (had some nice stuff to teach people that unfortunately got twisted by fanaticals into slaughter, rape, pillage, and general mayhem), I think that Christmas leaves out all the other religions of the world, and thus the other people of the world, which is awful.

So, instead, I celebrate Chrimmis.  The term “Chrimmis” makes me think of my six-year-old self, waking up before dawn on Christmas Day, sitting by the pile of presents under the tree, waiting for my parents to wake up so that I can open them (the presents, not my parents).  The term “Christmas” however makes me think of old people singing dull hymns in church.  Not the place I want to be.

Anyway, I just thought I’d put that out there.  I understand that most of the songs on my album are Jesus-specific, but they’re also just songs.  Good ones, too.  So no matter what religion you may be, I hope you’ll download it and at least take a listen.

I also didn’t want to step on any toes with this post, so I apologize if you feel offended at all.  Generally I like offending people, but not with this one.  :)

the twelve ep project

Posted on by
7

I have, at this point, about thirty to forty songs that have been unreleased and generally not heard by anyone except FAWMers and 50/90ers (and some songs that haven’t been heard by anyone!).  So I thought that next year, 2009, I would come up with a year-long project, which I call the Twelve EP Project.  It’s not about selling EPs so much as it is coming up with a solid tracklist for a new album, which is why I need your help.

Here’s my plan.  On the third day of every month, I will release a new EP with three songs on it (three on three, if you will — a vague basketball reference perhaps?).  The EP will be free to stream, but if you would like to buy a high quality MP3 copy for yourself, it will cost about two bucks or so.  Nothing extravagant.  There will be official album art, done by myself and friends of mine, I hope, and that will all come with the album should you choose to buy it (maybe with some other goodies too, I haven’t decided).

But here’s the cool part.  I will also have a poll with each EP, which simply asks, Which song do you like the most?  You, the listener, get to choose your favorite song out of the three!  The idea being that by the end of the year, I will have twelve songs that you, the listener, really enjoy.  From that I will create a full-length album, and this one will be Official, meaning, iTunes/AmazonMP3 placement, actual physical CDs, maybe even a bit of touring.  The whole nine yards.

It effectively gives me a year to construct an album — with your help!  It’s a lot like Jonathan Coulton’s “Thing A Week” idea, really.  I guess I’m blatantly stealing it for my own good.

So!  January 3rd will be the first release.  Mark your calendars!  Tell your friends.  Construct a robot that travels the countryside!  Make a hot air balloon.  Purchase space on your local newspaper!  Throw things at people!  Do other things!