Author Archives: Jeremy Rosen

A Musical Revue Review

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music review

Serena-Maneesh, Dirty On Purpose, Bardo Lake, and Woven Hand

Greenpoint, Brooklyn – At the behest of a friend, I headed out to the Warsaw in the Polish National home to check out Serena-Maneesh. They were the last act of the night, reasingly drew my attention throughout the show. That and, even as a heterosexual male, New Bass Player was the evocation of rail-thin, modern hotness. While playing beautifully, he worked the crowd admirably. I’m surprised no woman in the audience was overcome with faintness. WhileI had mixed responses to Serena-Maneesh, there’s definite growth potential and I look forward to more from them as they mature.

A pleasant surprise was Brooklyn quartet Dirty On Purpose, who preceded Serena-Maneesh. Members DJ Bourdreau, Joe Jurewicz, George Wilson, and Doug Marvin were joined in their performance by Ann Brewster (from Sea Ray) on cello and a young slip of a girl named Holly on backup vocals. While certainly of interest to a much-castigated and moody trendnik set, Dirty On Purpose is a fun, heavily-melodic act worth seeing.

I’m happy that the Dirty boys have a nice give-andtake between the genders in their live set, and will be adding them to my listening repertoire of bands such as Yellowish, Elysian Fields, and Stars. The song they’re promoting heavily on the internet right now is “No Radio” and the live version is far beyond the recorded one. Covers are usually a crowd favourite, but their fast-paced, lazy-vocals rendition of Real Life’s “Send Me an Angel” didn’t seem to send the audience into much of a tizzy. Still, the crowd was bopping its way through the rest of the eight song set.

Nevertheless, their version of “Send Me an Angel” is worth bootlegging, especially Holly’s wonderful melisma towards the end of the tune. While Ann Brewster’s cello couldn’t be heard on this song due to a mix of interfering tones from the bass and a lack of throughput on the PA, she was an integral addition to the other songs in the set, something the rest of the band very much appreciated.

bands

Reviewlets:

Woven Hand
Woven Hand is David Eugene Edwards playing acoustic, electric, mandolin and sampler. A very powerful male voice, his work on this project is unimpressive. Parts of some songs would have a place in television shows such as Deadwood or Jeremiah, but his reliance on drones made from vocal and string samples and much-too-lengthy stretches of pedal tones make for an uninteresting live performance.

Bardo Pond
Michael Gibbons, John Gibbons, Isobel Sollenberger, Clint Takeda, and Ed Farnsworth give me glimpses of what should be my type of music, but never get there. The noise aesthetic is controversial, but can be enjoyable. This was not such an instance. Singer Isobel has an attractive voice, but needs to get her diaphragm in gear to provide the power her Morrison-like vocals hint at. Some moments of great rhythm, guitar passages reminiscent of Meat Puppets, but keyboards which mainly sound like seagulls on barge day and prolonged sonic laziness made me pray that this Keith Jarrett show without the musicality would end soon.

For More Information on These Musical Acts, Feel Free to Research Them on Your Local Interconnected Network of Computers. See the Uniform Resource Locator Codes Below.

Serena-Maneesh

Dirty on Purpose

Bardo Pond

Woven Hand

The March of Progress: Justinuary 2006

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Mammals and Muffins

Monrovia, MV – Researchers at Magic Muffin’s Research Campus have been working diligently in the service of muffin sortation. For the past year, Dr. Edward Jacobs and his team spent the majority of their time working to train various creatures in muffin separation in an effort to make the manufacturing and shipping processes more efficient. Surprisingly, they have found very little success with snakes.

“Snakes have been used for some time in microchip manufacturing,” says Jacobs, “but their sortational aptitude there does not seem to translate to muffins or virtually any other consumer package good.”

During the course of our interview with Dr. Jacobs, we passed through the test subject living quarters where we saw many dogs, old world monkeys, several ungulates and, surprisingly, a sloth.

“The sloth is actually fairly good with blueberry and poppy seed,” said Dr. Kelly Jacobs, Edward Jacobs’ daughter and assistant. She later told us that the sloth was “just a bit slow,” but she did not want to hurt his feelings by saying so in front of him.

Dr. Jacobs’ (the elder) prize animal is a schnauzer named Murray, who has received high grades in all the major muffin sorting axes including chocolate, chocolate chip, double-fudge chocolate, and bran. Dr. Jacobs (the younger) also sees promise in Hoody, a four year old Thompson’s gazelle who has proven quite skillful in some preliminary cupcake tests.

“Dad gave me some research time on my own and I wanted to see if maybe Hoody didn’t have some abilities outside of the corn muffin-oat muffin continuum,” explains Jacobs.

She points out that the major differences between cupcakes and muffins are frosting and size. Larger cupcakes are often mistaken for muffins, so the research team often includes a few in the muffin testing.

Javier McClintock, Vice President of Human and Animal Resources, says that once the results of the testing are reported in February, Magic Muffin will make a determination about which animals to put on the factory floor. Should the report be favorable, a test program will begin in their extra-national production facility located in international waters to avoid legal entanglements and taxation.

“After that,” says McClintock, “we plan to roll out schnauzer and gazelle sortation teams in
all of our muffin production facilities by quarter 3 of 2007.”

Election Tsunami

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Platha Elections

Pylon, PL– Platha State Union Steward-Premier Alexander Botchy appeared triumphant as he stood in the parking lot of the Platha State Union Building in Downtown Pylon. Flanked by recently appointed Governor Alexander Osten and Communications Commandant Dmetri Treskeshuvya-Schodtiv, and surrounded by distinguished and heavily-armed members of the Platha State Union Precautionary Brigade, Steward-Premier Botchy led a hastily assembled crowd in a hearty rendition of the unofficial State Anthem, Hell on Wheels, before announcing the official election results.

While reporters and citizens not approved by members of the Political Conclave were barred from documenting or recording the announcement, my translator from the Ministry of Historical Document Distribution provided a transcript and press release stating:

The People of Platha have once again wisely chosen to allow the Platha State Union to govern them. This is a day of great victory for Platha and a day of humiliating defeat for the Enemy Party, who received not one vote. What a wondrous and historic day for the institution of democracy and for the people of Platha.

As a result of this new election the Platha State Union retained an overwhelming majority of 100% in the four member Council of Control, the eight member House of Progress Determination, the twelve-member State Senate and the eighteen-member People’s Committee for Authorization. Currently, the ballots and elections are under the control of the three members of the Committee for Leadership, a sub-committee of State Union’s Council for Perpetuation of Progress. In their next session, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear the cases American Freedom Party vs. Platha State Union and Free America Party vs. Alexander Reich. In both cases plaintiffs claimed the Platha State Union has engaged in unfair and illegal election practices.

Officially sanctioned ballots in Platha only carry candidates from the Platha State Union or the Evil Enemy Party, a strange fact since the Evil Enemy Party appears to have no members and has never put up a candidate for any office. Further, issue and candidate advertising during the election cycle is restricted to segments approved by PTV, a television and radio station owned by the Platha State Union. PTV is the only broadcast medium available within state bounds, enforced by signal jamming equipment located on the periphery of the state. The titles of some such advertising include “Platha State Union and the Glory of Beets,” “Ideology and You: The Platha State Union,” and “The Evil Enemy Party Destroys Commerce, Souls, and Babies in the Service of the Great Capitalist Menace Next Door Bent on Control of the Proletariat for Its Own Nefarious Devices.” Neighboring state governors have complained about many of the broadcasts, which demonize and dehumanize their citizens.

Alexander Osten

Others have charged that Platha has denied the right to vote to many of its citizens through the practice of having only a single State-wide polling precinct open for fifteen minutes per year. An additional lawsuit is planned by the ACLU to challenge the Committee for Leadership’s decision to satisfy these complaints by installing the state-wide precinct within a dirigible instructed to land randomly throughout the state over the course of ten hours.

Despite the difficulties Plathans might face in choosing their representatives in the state’s quadricameral legislature, the ordinary people I was allowed to speak with: a high-tech computer man, an award winning author and novelist, and a conductor of a fast, efficient new train network; read from cards about how much they believe in Platha’s flourishing democracy.

“We believe in democracy, and nothing is brings freedom than tireless work of Platha State Union” read one young woman. “Never would I choose to leaving such a land of prosperity, freedom and accomplishment. I vote for progress provided by fair and just wisdom of Platha State Union.”