Joan Jett is the ultimate leather-clad, punk-rock icon. Her early hits were instrumental to the evolution of punk rock, and especially to its crossover into mainstream music. After over 25 years in the business, this bad ass composer is still rocking out with her band, The Blackhearts. I got a chance to talk with Jett about their latest album, Sinner, while she was out on the road with the Warped Tour.
I’ve had more Moby in my life in the past two weeks than I seemingly have in years. It started with a trip to the musician’s Destroyed photo show at the Kopeikin Gallery in Culver City. A collection of large format audience shots taken from the stage, each print captured the sweaty, ecstatic and sometimes confused (or perhaps just high) expressions of concert goers under a kaleidoscope of lighting. The almost fish eye effect to each photo gave the prints a surreal aesthetic. As we carefully studied each giant print, my friend and I developed a very fun game called, “Where is this audience from?” As usual, the Americans seemed to be the easiest to spot.
Moby, part deux came courtesy of Peter Hook’s show at the El Rey. Performing with his band Peter Hook and the Light, the former Joy Division and New Order bassist tackled the entire Unknown Pleasures album with aplomb. Joy Division are truly one of the rare holy grails in music, a band everyone tries to sound like but few can truly do justice to. I’ll be honest, my expectations going into the show weren’t exactly high and thankfully, they were far exceeded.
I may have interviewed The Residents the other day, but one can never be sure. I spoke to Hardy Fox who is a founding member of The Cryptic Corporation, a company created in 1976 to help the band. He may or may not be a member of The Residents, but the people of earth will never know. One thing we do know is that the Residents have always broken new ground and continue to do the same in the 21st century with podcasting. You can now purchase The Residents serial radio drama, called River of Crime, on CD.
This Sunday (September 11th) our special in-studio guests will be singer/songwriter Daniel Ahearn, who’ll be premiering some brand new tracks on the show, and Alexia Rodriguez of the Arizona-based band Eyes Set To Kill, who have just released a new album, White Lotus.
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I’ve covered a good deal of up-and-coming bands in this column, some of my recent favorites being Talkative, Forest Park, and The Woolen Men. This week, I’m happy to throw support behind one of the most promising new bands I’ve heard in the Portland scene this year – Youth.
A new band with only a few tracks available, Youth have cultivated a sound that draws from the best in surf, lo-fi, and chill-wave to play a brand of northwest beach pop that is as familiar as it is surprisingly fresh.
Plus, Youth is hopefully getting ready to tour with Wild Ones and, yet again another band I’ve talked about, Typhoon. With any luck and a bit of hard work, you’ll start to see Youth in more and more places.
“I was sober for this one.”
– Chi Cheng of the Deftones
It was truly an honor to get to talk with Chi Cheng of the Deftones. I have been a fan of theirs for many years. The Deftones may be hanging out with the kids on the Family Values Tour, but that hasn’t made them any less awesome.
