One of the guys who created this very funny video (Ben Sinclair) just emailed the link to us and said they recorded it on the same day as the outdoor Grizzly Bear show in Williamsburg this summer. I was there, but I didn’t hear any scuttlebutt about a suave naked dancing man running around the streets. If I had, I would have asked, “What in the hell is HumboldtBlue doing in Brooklyn?”
(No, I didn’t see Beyonce or Jay-Z either, but I did shake Chucky Schumer’s hand.)
As my lovely wife Chris and I were headed to Sunday’s Williamsburg Waterfront concert we took a detour through the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Feast and were lucky enough to catch the dance of the Giglio. Even better, we got to catch the Giglio meeting “la barca” (“the boat”) at the intersection of Havemeyer and 8th (video below the fold). I’ll let the chairman of the festival explain:
The Giglio [weight: 3+ tons—KK] is a statue on top of about a 65- or 70-foot tower decorated to look like a lily, and the statue on top is St. Paulinus. The Giglio is made up of a steel and aluminum frame, and it’s in three or four sections that are hoisted into place with a crane. The face of the Giglio, which is the lily, is made out of papier- maché and wood and cardboard tied to the frame ... and the face of the statue is painted. So the statue of Paulinus sits at the very top of the lily tower, and on the base is a 10-piece band that plays music (and the guys in the band like to eat - they’re pretty heavy!) and the Giglio “dances” to that music when lifted.
So why do neighborhood men risk throwing out their backs to hoist it?
Well, it’s a reenactment of the ritual that took place. Roughly about 100-130 guys pick up the statue, and the statue is lifted several times through the afternoon, and we dance through the streets to the music. And then, of course, the boat [another 3 tons, requiring another 100 men] is lifted at the same time, which signifies St. Paulinus coming back to Nola, and the Giglio is the lily meeting him. And the boat and the Giglio are lifted together a few times during the festival and come together. The dancing of the Giglio happens three different times during the 11-day festival, beginning today.
I really enjoyed the two-man electro-boom box band Javelin last night at the FREEwilliamsburg Northside Festival showcase. They put on a fun, energetic show. Unsurprisingly, they’ve also released cool lil’ homemade videos as well. Check ‘em out below. Short and sweet. All in all, it was a great event. Job well done by our good pals over at FW.
Stumbled upon this amazing talent last night in Williamsburg, Brooklyn at the soon-to-close Black Betty. Adron had a bass player and a guy playing a massive marimba backing her up and it was a hell of a show. Most people at Black Betty’s were there for the Brazilian music dance party that followed her, but she blew everyone away. If Adron doesn’t break out, human beings completely suck. It’s just that simple.
You can check out Adron’s music at her official site and MySpace. If you like what you’ve heard, you can grab her album from iTunes here.
Nyle is a senior at NYU and in this one-take, feel-good live music video (replete with strings, horns and a piano) he covers Lil Wayne’s “Let the Beat Build” (with new lyrics). Buzzfeed, where I found this, wrote, “Everything about this is awesome.” It’s pretty hard for me to argue with that because Nyle had me with the line: “I don’t need no sample/Got a girl with the banjo.” And he does.
Because I’m a major player in the music industry, the folks from $99 Music Videos emailed me a few days ago to let me know that one of my favorite local bands La Strada were debuting a music video for their joyous ‘n’ infectious anthem “The Sun Song.” I’ve been a fan of La Strada since I quite literally stumbled upon them playing in the bowels of the NYC subway system back in April of ‘07 (shoddy mobile phone video here). Their first official recording, a self-titled CD that includes this tune and the equally skull-sticking “Mama,” is coming out on Ernest Jenning records in a few days. If you’re a New Yorker, they’ve also got a record release party coming up on March 5th.
Goddamn, I love that song. Just a perfect musical accompaniment to this crisp, sunny Brooklyn day.
MORE: You can watch a larger version of the video here and see how it was made for $99 here.
UPDATE: If you’ve got a local band you’d like to plug, feel free to do so in the comments. Love to check out what you folks have brewin’ in your hometowns.
CORRECTION: The Williamsburg Obama fundraiser is TOMORROW NIGHT, Saturday the 6th. I apologize for any confusion.
Don’t like what you saw for the last three days? Cleanse your palette with this video and make a donation. And if you’re an NYC resident, TOMORROW NIGHT’S Obama fundraiser in Williamsburg (featuring one of my favorite new bands La Strada) is worth checking out. I’ll be there, so if you plan on attending, drop me a line at kevin—at—rumproast.com (or use the contact link in the top right sidebar) so we can say “howdy” and stuff.
Not for the headliner Flogging Molly, who I know nothing about, but for O’Death, one of the best live bands working the Rotten Apple these days. Punk-rock-fueled Appalachian roots-billy stomp. You need it. Trust me.
O’Death’s David Rogers-Berry, one of the most entertaining drummers you will ever see.
Although typically classified as an indie rock band, due to their having been on an indie rock label (Kill Rock Stars) for the entirety of their career, the mercurial and unconventional nature of Deerhoof’s music makes genre identification difficult, and perhaps inappropriate. But several recurring features can be said to constitute Deerhoof’s distinctive sound: unassuming vocal delivery set against hyper-expressive instrumental playing; an elastic approach to group dynamics and rhythm more akin to the rubato of classical music performance practice than rock; odd yet highly memorable melodies; harmonic sophistication and dissonance; disjointed, condensed, asymmetrical and otherwise unconventional song structures; raw and at times strident sound surfaces; improvisation; and general creative restlessness.
I saw Deerhoof last night over at Celebrate Brooklyn and, good cripes, were they stellar. They’ve added a fourth member, guitarist Ed Rogriguez, and the interplay between him and John Dieterich definitely kicked things up a notch compared to the show I saw last summer (ed: whoops, it was two summers ago). Lead singer/bassist Satomi Matsuzaki was as adorable and captivating as ever and, man, Deerhoof’s founding member Greg Saunier is just a flat-out amazing drummer. Possibly the best working the indie rock circuit these days. What he accomplished on stage last night with just a bass drum, snare and cymbal was inconceivable. They’re not really touring right now, but If they play near you anytime soon, make sure you go.
Here’s a great 9-minute doc about Deerhoof that includes concert footage with the band’s current lineup. Check it out:
MORE: Too funny. Last night I announced to some friends and my wife Chris that I had developed a man crush on Saunier after watching him play. It looks like I wasn’t alone:
...and though ive been a fan of Deerhoof as a collective force i also have an established man/crush [ on the basis of musical skill, silly ] on drummer Greg Saunier.
I’m going to check out Medeski, Martin & Wood and Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog at Celebrate Brooklyn in Prospect Park tonight, so I got a hold of MM&W’s latest release Let’s Go Everywhere and was surprised to find out that it was children’s album. I’m a selfish, childless bastard, so that wasn’t what I wanted or needed, but the good news is that it’s a damn fine children’s album and something every parent of youngish thingees who reads this blog should look into snatching up. You can listen to four of the tracks at their MySpace page and I highly recommend you start with the FUNky “Where’s the Music?”, which just may be the best kids song ever (I can’t stop listening to it) and will surely worm its way onto my next mix CD.
MORE: You can download two MP3’s from the album, including “Where’s the Music?”, from here.
Oh, yeah, today is my birthday. I just pulled this image off of my dig cam and figured it was perfect. Please do something nice today and pretend that you’re me while you’re doing it.
THE GIVEAWAY IS OVER! THANKS TO ALL WHO PARTICIPATED.
Folks, as promised last week, I have a pair of tickets to give away for the I’m From Barcelona & Thao Nguyen show this Thursday May 1st at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple (317 Clermont Ave, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, NY). I’ve heard and read really great things about I’m From Barcelona’s live show and I can tell you from personal experience that the Masonic Temple is an extremely cool place to catch a show.
If you’d like to enter to win a pair of tix, simply send me an email to “tips (-at-) rumproast.com” (or click on the “Tips” email link in the top right sidebar), write “Barcelona” in the subject and your full name in the body of the email before midnight tonight (4/29 ET). I’ll randomly select a winner and contact you via email if you’ve won.
This giveaway is courtesy of the fine folks at Boost Mobile.
In addition, tickets are still available at TicketWeb as well and you get a free six-month (23 issue) New York magazine subscription with purchase.
Peek below the fold for a few more Barcelona videos and one really cool claymation video from Thao Nguyen…
“Faith Healer” from Big Dipper’s Boo-Boo, quite possibly the best EP ever released
Thank god I thumbed through the latest Time Out New York this morning or I wouldn’t have known that two of my favorite indie pop bands of the 80’s, Big Dipper & Great Plains, are playing tonight at Southpaw in Park Slope. Boston’s Big Dipper released their first three exceptionally solid pop masterpieces in the late 80’s on the legendary (and long-gone) Homestead Records label and Merge Records was recently kind enough to re-release all of that out-of-print material and a slew of great bonus material on an insanely cheap 3-disc box set called Supercluster: The Big Dipper Anthology. Columbus, OH’s Great Plains were under-appreciated fractured pop masters, churning out smart n’ snarky clingers like “Letter to a Fanzine” (chorus: “Why do punk rock guys go out with new wave girls?”), “Dick Clark” and “Martin Luther King/Martin Luther Drinking”. Old 3C’s wonderful 2-CD retrospective Length of Growth 1981-89 is unfortunately out-of-print and fetches $99 or more online, but you can obtain a CD-R version of it from the label and apparently MP3 downloads are still available via eMusic and iTunes.
ATTENTION NYC MUSIC FANS: Might as well shoehorn this in here ... Rumproast will be giving away a pair of tix for the May 1st show featuring I’m From Barcelona & Thao Nguyen at the Masonic Temple in Brooklyn in the very near future. If you want to go (or know someone who does), keep an eye on this blog for details.
A bitter Sir Elton John thinks America’s sexism may be sinking his friend Hillary Rodham Clinton.
John, a knighted British subject, said that gender discrimination is behind Clinton’s problems in the polls as he addressed 5,000 Clinton supporters at Radio City Musical Hall last night in an event that raised $2.5 million for the cash-strapped campaign.
“I never cease to be amazed by the misogynistic attitudes of some people in this country,” said John, wearing a spangled black evening coat over a vermilion silk shirt. “I say to hell with them. ... I love you, Hillary, I’ll always be there for you.”
