In a beautiful and fair world I would be able to get off work on Friday and make my way over to Exit Art for this, but unfortunately Satan has my soul in a mason jar. Ah well, just because I’m fucked doesn’t mean all you guys can’t boogie down.
Here are the killer details:
Dance hard or die trying folks. It’s gonna be a blast.
My new chap book “Ghosts” is officially out courtesy of Bent Boy Books (sf) and haunting the world. You can get it by following this link.
Here’s what the publisher said, “Ghosts maps the world’s of Lindasy Lohan, Marissa Nadler, Winona Ryder and Antony Heggarty against the online bar reviews of Yelp and the gritty ennui of gay life in the not so new millenium.” Continue reading
I first blogged about Soft Spot right at the beginning of their incarnation as a two piece. At that point in time they were still Sarah Kinlaw accompanied by Bryan Keller. That’s not the case anymore.
Soft Spot has emerged from those early stages is a fully formed band, with Bryan and Sarah equally involved in the creative process, a richer and more encompassing sound. An energy has also evolved that is constantly brewing and yet continually exuberant at the same time. With their debut album being self released in a few days and a tour of the Eastern United States almost upon them it is time for your attention.
They have also just released their first video to the song “Half a House” one of the highlights of their new album. It was directed Ryan Dickie with art direction by Molly Gottschalk.
For those of you who don’t read Pitchforkmedia religiously and for those of you who don’t go to see bands play in New York City on a regular basis the name Todd P may mean very little to you. Todd P is essentially the premiere DIY music event organizer in New York City and one of the bigger events coordinates of his kind in the country. Though he’s done great things for the music community of New York City and has gone out of his way to get all ages of folks into his shows, some people find it hard to forgive his love/hate taste for bands, a trait that elevates some okay (or not so okay) bands to godly indie heights and neglects other great music artists entirely.
While I am sometimes hit and miss with Todd P’s choices of indie music champions, I can’t get angry at someone for promoting what they like and not promoting what they don’t, even if we differ in opinion. It is hard for me to get my panties in a twist over someone who has put on some of the better music shows I’ve seen since moving to New York and I have more than a handful of memories I’m happy to have that I wouldn’t, were it not for Todd P. His blog is consistently updated and friendly in it’s anonymous layout and he continues to find unique and interesting, if sometimes unnecessarily half hazard spaces to put on live performances, adding a level of uniqueness to what could otherwise be just another indie show. His constant commitment to making live music a special event is perhaps my favorite thing about the way Todd P works and it is also why I look forward to the event he just announced so eagerly.
For the past four years Todd has put on free showcases in Austin during the week of SXSW as a free all ages alternative to the hopelessly expensive and sprawling official festivities, often offering some of the best up and coming bands to be playing the festival officially. This year, he has announced something different, a split from Austin and it’s impersonal feeling festivities and an establishment of a three day festival of his own planning called MtyMx. It’s taking place south of the Texas border in Monterrey Mexico. It’s three days long, at an abandoned drive in movie theater, it only costs 30 dollars, almost 80 bands are playing and most of us will be sleeping in tents and having dirty hipster sex for seventy two hours straight. If this doesn’t sound like a good time to you, you most likely shouldn’t be reading this blog.
The line up so far is reproduced here after the jump
The Poetic Research Bureau presents…
A Valentine Gift from
Ariana Reines & Jon Leon
Sunday, February 14, 2010 at 4:00pm
@ The Poetic Research Bureau
3706 San Fernando Blvd
Glendale, CA 91206
Doors open at 4:00pm
Reading starts at 4:30pm
$5 donation requested
Ariana Reines is the author of The Cow (Alberta Prize, FenceBooks: 2006), Coeur de Lion (Mal-O-Mar: 2007), Mercury (forthcoming, FenceBooks: 2011), and the play “Telephone”, commissioned by The Foundry Theatre and mounted in February 2009, with two Obies. Her full-length translations include My Heart Laid Bare by Charles Baudelaire, (Mal-O-Mar: 2009) and The Little Black Book of Grisélidis Réal by Jean-Luc Hennig, (Semiotext(e): 2009). She was Virginia C. Holloway Lecturer in Poetry at UC Berkeley in Spring 2009.
Jon Leon is a Los Angeles-based poet and novellaist. His books include Right Now the Music and the Life Rule (Hathaway, 2006), Hit Wave (Kitchen Press, 2008), Alexandra (Cosa Nostra Editions, 2008), and The Hot Tub w/ Dan Hoy’s Glory Hole (mal-o-mar editions, 2009). He is an occasional contributor to Art in America.
I got no investments and no money either, and I really am feeling the anxiety… will the recession ever end…
