Live in Cleveland/Giving It All Away (5)

(Details for the give-away are at the bottom of the post!)

Last night Drew and I headed up to the Grog Shop to catch Best Coast with Male Bonding and local CLE band, Clovers. We had seen Best Coast once before, last April at the Sco, and you could tell that the BC hype machine had been working overtime since then. The tickets for this show cost about twice and much and there were maybe twice as many people there.

This show has some good moments and bad moments. I really enjoyed Clovers' opening set. I had seen them once or twice before at the Happy Dog & they grow on my every time. Their lo-fi surf pop sound was a great fit for Best Coast & the crowd seemed to really enjoy their performance. You can listen to some songs & see upcoming tour dates on their MySpace (Clevelanders -- Clovers will be playing this weekend for Ingenuity Fest & they also have a show in October at the aforementioned Happy Dog.)

Male Bonding really surprised me. I feel like I've been seeing their album cover all over the place, but I never really bothered to check them out. But after last night, you can consider me a convert. Male Bonding blend elements of hardcore and pop & there's almost nothing I like better than punk songs with infectious melodies. Their full-length, Nothing Hurts, is out now on Sub Pop. You can stream tracks from Nothing Hurts on their MySpace.

Best Coast was great -- they played pretty much every single song off their debut LP, Crazy for You (out now onMexican Summer.) The band was just is spirited as they were the last time Drew and I saw them & though they fucked up a few songs, Bethany Cosentino was candid in her stage banter & used those fuck ups as a way to engage with the audience. There was sort of a dark moment where someone in the audience shouted, "Where's Snacks?" (referring to Cosentino's cat) -- she replied, "Back in California," and you could just tell that she did not want to have this conversation and was probably sick of people corralling her into talking about her cat all the time because it's "quirky" or whatever. Things got ugly when the same heckler shouted, "I heard he had a medical condition," and Cosentino replied, "Yeah, he does." People in the audience started cracking jokes about her "sick" cat and she snapped and shouted, "It's not fucking funny, he gets seizures!" (The audience responded to this with a chorus of "My ______ (mom, brother, dog, etc.) gets seizures!" and "Epilepsy! EPILEPSY!!!")

Over the last few months, as Best Coast has become increasingly more popular/visible and this narrative of Bethany "cat lover" Cosentino has continued to grow, I've heard a lot of criticism about Cosentino's lyrics and the way she's focused both her songs and her public persona around cats, weed, and her boyfriend. Everyone says that it's naive or tame or cloying or whatever, but last night reminded me of just how risky it is to sincerely be who you are in a public forum. So you're not afraid to tell the whole world that you love your cat, Snacks? Great, people who don't know you will get drunk and make fun of you because your cat gets seizures.

Give-Away Details

The give-away is closed! Congrats to Miranda! So, as a give-away, I have a souvenir from last night: It's a Best Coast button, 2" in diameter featuring the bear from the California state flag. If you want one, just leave a comment here with the title of your favorite Best Coast song. (I understand that OpenID hasn't been working for everyone, unfortunately because of the volume of spam comments I sometimes get, I do have to have them moderated. If you're unable to post here, feel free to post elsewhere (on your own blog, tumblr, twitter, wherever) -- just e-mail me at heysideponytail@gmail.com with a link to your post.)) As always if you post a link to SP elsewhere, you'll get an extra number when I run the random number generator. I'll leave comments open until midnight on Sunday! This is open to everyone, not just US residents.

Live in Oberlin (Last Night)

Last night was a rough one. Drew and I drove out to Oberlin to see Girls and Dum Dum Girls at the Sco, an on-campus venue in Oberlin's student union. I was really looking forward to the show -- we had seen Girls twice before (once in Portland opening for the Pains of Being Pure at Heart and once in Cleveland opening for Los Campesinons!), but we had never seen a show where they were headlining. We had also heard that they had added a keyboard player to their line up, so I was interested in hearing how that changed their sound. I was also super stoked to see Dum Dum Girls. I've been listening to them a lot over the last six months or so but had never had the chance to see them live until last night.

The opening act, Leisure, sounded like something my mom would listen to while making Sunday brunch.* The lead singer landed somewhere in between Robert Smith & the dude from Spandeau Ballet & they were heavy on keyboards and jangly guitars, which are things I normally like a lot, but for some reason they just weren't doing it for me last night. Maybe I am just destined to hate on opening bands? I hope not. The crowd was very thin during this portion of the show, but as their set started to wind down, the venue began to get really crowded.

Dum Dum Girls were great -- they started off slow with their cover of "Play With Fire" from the Jail La La 7" & then proceeded to pretty much play all the hits. I was especially happy to hear "Catholicked" and "Yours Alone." I had it in the back of my head that it would be nice to hear "Ship of Love," but they didn't play that one. The band was fantastic though. They sounded great, they played a great set, they seemed really nice, etc. I loved their Silvertone guitars Towards the end of their set (maybe the last two songs?) the crowd started to get weirdly aggressive, though (really crushing in towards the stage, moshing, etc.)

Girls played a fantastic 13 song set that included the bulk of the tracks from their debut LP, Album. Their stage presence was right on & it was just fun to watch them play. Honestly, they get better and better every time we see them. Unfortunately, I started to have a really hard time with the crowd during their performance. Everyone was packed in super tight, a lot of people were being unreasonably aggressive, & people who weren't moshing were talking super loud and playing with their iPhones and Backberries. I'm not a huge fan of having to ward off unwarranted physical contact and I had to do that a lot last night. It was like some weird exercise in fighting off my inherently punk instinct to spit on people who invade my personal space at a show.**

It's hard, because I really don't want to make this about the crowd -- I feel like these experiences should ultimately be about the music & both Girls and Dum Dum Girls played an amazing show to an awful audience last night, which is admirable, but also terrible because, seriously, I think people who take the risk of putting themselves out there in such a public way should at least be treated with respect. (Also, can people not repeatedly scream out requests? Or is this a thing that has to happen? I feel old and crotchety for having these complaints, but I would really rather listen to a band play through their set without each song being punctuated by some dude shrieking, "Play ___!!!" but maybe that is just me.)

In fact, I think a big part of it is just me. On the way home Drew and I were talking about how we both staunchly situate ourselves within the "No Fun" camp. I mean, I hated college kids back when I was one and working full-time in higher education hasn't done a whole lot to facilitate a change of heart. So, being packed in with like 300 college kids is basically one of my worst possible nightmares. On top of that, I am secretly a 15 year-old sanctimonious straight-edger who has an unreasonably short fuse for the ways that people are prone to heckling bands and encroaching on other people's personal space while wasted.

Also on the way home, I was talking with Drew re: my thoughts on Japandroids (who we saw on Tuesday night) and the idea of "dude bands" drawing a particular audience which results in a particular atmosphere at their shows. I think if you were to compare Japandroids to Girls, while both are all-male ensembles, most people would walk away with the conclusion that Japandroids are a dude band and Girls aren't, and while the Japandroids show certainly attracted a large number of straight-up bros, the Girls show attracted an extreme number of the even more insidious "hipster bros," the majority of whom didn't seem to have any concern for making sure their actions reflected a desire for everyone at the show to both have a good time and also feel safe. At the Japandroids show, I was near a group of bros who were very friendly and very courteous, and also took the time to talk to the people around them (mainly petite girls who had elbowed their way up front so that they could actually see the band), saying "Hey, I really love this band and am probably going to get really into it, but if I get too close to you or if I bump into you or anything like that, let me know so that I can back off." It would have been SUPER COOL if some of the dudes at last night's show had shown similar concerns instead of assuming that they could grind all over me.

Anyway, Dum Dum Girls have their first full length out on Sub Pop (you can read my thoughts on that here & Girls are still riding high on their LP Album which came out on True Panther Sounds. They're still touring & if they're coming anywhere near you, you should definitely, definitely catch them. Don't let my crabbing stop you!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the keyboard player is a good addition for Girls.

* In case you are wondering: My mom's typical Sunday brunch music includes stuff like Weekend, if that helps you piece their sound together.
** An exercise I had limited success with.

Giving It All Away!

I ran Random.org's "true random number generator" this morning & the winner is commenter #8, Brittany! At first I thought that I should generate another number because how truly random could it be if it picked someone I actually know, but then I realized that with only 11 commenters (the majority of whom I know either in real life or on some corner of the internet), it would actually be a lot weirder for the winner to be someone I didn't know. Anyway, thanks to everyone who commented! I will for sure be checking out your music recs and there will be more give-aways in the future!

Hey pals, how are you doing? I'll be honest, I'm in an exceptionally good mood. Last night's show (Prisoners, Good Touch Bad Touch, Psychedelic Horseshit, and Strange Boys) was a lot of fun (even though Drew and I didn't get home until 3AM, which is WAY TOO LATE if you ask me.) It's sunny and unseasonably warm out and I'm off work for the next couple of days. On top of that, my Sub Pop copy of I Will Be, the new Dum Dum Girls LP came in the mail today, along with a free copy of the "Jail La La" 7". Since I already had a copy of the "Jail La La" single, I figured I might as well give this one away. "Jail La La" is Dum Dum Girls' first single on Sub Pop & the b-side is a cover of "Play With Fire" by the Rolling Stones.

So here's the deal: If you're interested in perhaps receiving this in the mail, comment on this entry by midnight (Eastern Standard Time) on Sunday, April 4th with a couple of your current favorite songs and/or bands. On Monday morning, I'll use a random number generator to pick the winner!

Because of the cost of shipping, this first giveaway will be open to US residents only. Future ones might open up to overseas shipping, we'll see how things go. In case you were wondering, the 7" comes with a download code for mp3s of both songs.

In case you can't remember how "Jail La La" goes, or if you've just never heard it before, have a video!

First Impressions: Dum Dum Girls

So, I ordered two copies of the debut full-length LP from Dum Dum Girls -- one from HoZac and one from Sub Pop. My HoZac copy came in the mail this morning & I'm listening to it now! If you're not familiar with Dum Dum Girls, they have a really wonderful sound heavily influenced by sixties Phil Spector-style pop. Heavy on echoing vocals and layered guitars, they describe their sound as "blissed out buzzsaw" and I can't think of a better way to describe it. Some AllMusic keywords for Dum Dum Girls that make me happy: freewheeling, rowdy, swaggering, bright, ramshackle.

I Will Be is 11 tracks long, 10 originals and one Sonny & Cher cover ("Baby Don't Go.") HoZac put out two presses, 200 on an orangey-gold vinyl and 800 on black. I managed to snag a gold one, it looks lovely! The HoZac edition also sports a slightly different cover than the Sub Pop release. Both use the same photo of Dee Dee's mom, but the HoZac cover is black & white with no text & the Sub Pop cover is a color photo with the album title and band name in the upper right hand corner.

The album opener, "It Only Takes One Night" is great, but I really preferred the second track, "Bhang Bhang, I'm A Burnout" (this is something that I definitely foresee putting on a lot of mixes.) "Jail La La," the first single from the album is also on side A & holds up really well. I loved the "Jail La La" single when it came out earlier this year and listened to it so much that I was worried I might be sick of it by the time I heard the album. Fortunately, that's definitely not the case. The closing track on the A side, "Rest Of Our Lives," is a beautiful slow one. Generally speaking, I'm not crazy about slow songs, but this one is really nice & rounds out the first side perfectly.

"Yours Alone," the first track on the B side is a fantastic fast-paced song about playground love that made an appearance on a previously released 12". "Blank Girl," a slower duet with Brandon Welchez follows. Weirdly, the album's title track, "I Will Be," strikes me as being totally forgettable -- maybe I'll feel differently upon future listens? I'm similarly underwhelmed by the following number, "Lines Her Eyes" -- though that one's growing on me even as I write this sentence. I do like "Everybody's Out" quite a bit & the album's closing track, a cover of

To my knowledge, HoZac doesn't have any more copies of I Will Be on colored vinyl, but they still have some on black. You can order I Will Be from HoZac here.

You can also get I Will Be from Sub Pop, who is still accepting pre-orders. If you order before March 30th (this coming Tuesday), you'll get a CD-R with 5 previously released "rare" Dum Dum Girls tracks ("rare" is in quotes only because chances are you could easily find these tracks online.) To pre-order, go here

Dum Dum Girls are currently on tour with Girls! Drew and I are catching them next week & I'm pretty stoked. It will be our third time seeing Girls, but I've never seen Dum Dum Girls before & am pretty pumped about it.

You can sample some Dum Dum Girls tracks & peruse tour date on their MySpace page. Dum Dum Girls also have a sparsely updated blog here.

Some good news: If you missed out on Blissed Out, the Dum Dum Girls cassette collecting out of print recordings recently released by Art Fag, they've done a second run of tapes & you can get one here for $10.