Category Archives: Bloggers

Writing from our regular staff writers.

A Musical Revue Review

Posted on by
Reply

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

Historigon: Justinuary 2006

Posted on by
1

Historigon

During This Month in History…

  • 2001 AD: Arizona state senator Arnold Schumaker (L) sends polaroids of expensive toys to underprivileged children in his district.
  • 1986 AD: A live-action manger scene burns down in Czechoslovakia, killing all participants.
  • 1983 AD: The first successful artificial appendix is inserted into Gary Clarkson.
  • 1969 AD: While exploring the surface of the Moon, astronaut Alan Bean finds a rock that resembles his primary school teacher Mrs. Belcher.
  • 1964 AD: Italy changes government.
  • 1943 AD: Airman Eric Jones paints a picture of a pretty dame on the nose of a B-17 Flying Fortress.
  • 1832 AD: Future president Martin Van Buren, after celebrating his birthday, vomits in a spittoon.
  • 1793AD: Marie Antoinette, in the few seconds of life afforded her head after its separation from the body, wonders if heaven will have delicious cakes.
  • 1653 AD: A group of Spanish settlers decide to play a game of pins using Olmec head statues and some old canoes.
  • 1588 AD: Pedro the Navigator informs his captain that the seas ahead appear stormy. Captain Menendez assures him that God will protect the Armada from storms. Later both their corpses wash up near Brighton.
  • 1402 AD: Kim Il-Sung, after inventing a time machine, arrives and promptly invents water skiing.
  • 1301 AD: Geoffe the Slopper of Stuttgart looks up and sees a comet.
  • 1282 AD: Friar Marcus makes a mistake while illuminating a manuscript, suggesting to future generations that he liked rutabagas very much.
  • 1202 AD: While sacking Constantinople, Martin of Tours finds a vase that he thinks his wife might like.
  • 738 AD: The Nanzhao kingdom sets up a strict code of state-mandated, individually-unique hair styles for its citizens.
  • 605 AD: Chinese Emperor Yang-ti orders the construction of a massive canal to link major rivers with the capital of Luoyang. Later that night he sneezes five times in a row, beating his previous record of three consecutive sneezes.
  • 439 AD: Axum resident Derdana asks if maybe they can’t have a few less stele around as they block out the fine Ethiopian sunshine. An unhappy neighbour later mixes goat dung in with Derdana’s stew.
  • 423 AD: A young Attila, later known as The Hun, gives his brother Bleda one of the first known wedgies after Bleda, in an amazing turn of cultural precocity tries wearing underpants.
  • 135 AD: Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan arrive at Simon Bar Kokhba’s hideout near the Dead Sea. They describe the situation as “totally un-station.”
  • 21 AD: Sauren the Parthian uses several captured Roman helmets to impress some girls. That night he sires Artabana.
  • 74 BC: Trandovix the Gaul wanders to present-day Gibraltar in search of a good tankard.
  • 712 BC: Numa Pompilius notices a member of his court has slipped an association of drinkers into his proposal for the creation of guilds in Rome.
  • 905 BC: Otonga and his friend eat a pig.
  • 1003 BC: The Olmecs create giant stone heads in mockery of disgraced citizens for use in playing a Meso-American version of pins.
  • 3281 BC: Adresh of Chaldea trades seventy loaves, two goats and an Abyssinian slave man to Ushot of Uruk for seven ounces of silver and two mares.
  • 6.701 BC: Erath the Scout finds a village where they teach him the secret of pottery.
  • 32.801 BC: After spending seven months in the freezing cold, Uguski and his clan begin to regret following that mammoth herd across what would one day be called the Bering Land Bridge.
  • 91,002 BC: While examining the community’s Large Bone with Notches in It, Ogoff laments that things were better back in the old days.

The March of Progress: Justinuary 2006

Posted on by
Reply

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.”