saint frinatra update

from estimable trumpeter, raconteur, and bon vivant brian sharp:

Ahhhhh, that summer solstice upon us and once again it's time for an update - we are about to embark upon Saint Frinatra's Sweatacular '08 - Get It While It's Hot! I hope this finds everyone well, prosperous and enjoying their Memorial Day.

We are still doing JAZZ CHURCH every Sunday at Fred's from 5-8 and the response has been resounding: "This taint your everyday saint!" A good time for all at one of Fort Worth's stalwarts - it's the postage stamp of permanence in that construction zone. Come celebrate the sacrament of the flatted seventh and the diminished ninth with us.

We have ended our twice weekly gigs at DUCE after a year and a half, and we wish to thank Tim and Emily Love for their support and commitment. We thoroughly enjoyed our residence at DUCE and wish the new owners best wishes.

We are currently performing at TEN and Lambert's, and we would like our fans of local music to come out and support our new gigs: The Blue Grotto and The Flying Saucer. As always, we've got to get the party started and parlay this into a weekly gig, so your interest is crucial.

The Blue Grotto June 12 & 26 Thursday 10pm - 2am
The Flying Saucer June 1 Sunday 8:30pm - 11:30pm
The Flying Saucer July 24 Thursday 9:30pm - 1:30 am

The band site is updated with ALL NEW LIVE MP3s available for DL and a Google Calendar that you can sync your Blackberry device, your mobile phone, iCal, or Outlook.

I don't use MySpace much as I prefer to build my own websites, but just in case that is your easiest access:
Personal: http://www.myspace.com/saint_frinatra
Band: http://www.myspace.com/saintfrinatra

vagabonds art auction @ gallery 414 this saturday

an art auction to benefit paschal high school's vagabond players will be held at gallery 414 (414 templeton street, one block east of university drive, just north of 5th street) this saturday, may 31st, from 7-10pm. the group is raising funds to pay for transportation to this year's fringe festival in edinburgh, scotland, where they've been invited to perform. among the 25 featured artists are ken o'toole, nick prendergast, jesse sierra hernandez, carol ivey, loli kantor, christopher blay, rene west, mark penland, kate mcdougal, james watkins, and velton hayworth. the $10 admission includes drinks, light refreshments, and music by shuttle.

mo' lips

on kind of a flaming lips kick after watching bradley beesley's documentary and the vids on terry valderas' blog. one terry didn't include was thisun, for a song my youngest dtr used to like to sing.

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and i just like the kid in thisun.

next week

we're going to the fairmount on wednesday night so kat can shoot pics of carey wolff, who's the featured performer for their songwriter showcase and open mic night.

then friday night we're going to lola's for the darth vato cd release/ph7/me-thinks show.

ADDENDUM: oops, duh, carey's not playing the fairmount until the following wednesday, june 4th. so there. and we'll definitely be at jesse's berfday party on the 31st.

carl pack table

pussyhouse propaganda created this tabletop for lola's saloon. thanks to calvin for the pic.

poetschke on improvisation pt. 5

another installment from karl poetschke:

prt. 5

when improvising with an audience present ,it is important to remember that they too are a contributing presence in the music. many times improv groups will forget this fact and sink too far into their own world and alienate the listeners. this will inevitably drive them away. the listener plays a role in the overall energy in the space that the band borrows from in order to create. here are some ways to coax the listeners into the music and redirect their energy into the music.

eye contact.

look at your people. hold eye contact with some of them. scan the audience while playing and respond to their emotional state in how and what you play. this refers back to a point i made in part 1. become aware of the overall emotional state of the audience and use it to follow the music into new directions. this will create a positive feedback loop between the performers and the audience and you will find that the energy will begin to multiply within this loop and the music will grow with it. this requires, as stated before, that you don't let your mind get cluttered with too many irrelevant thoughts and you are using your "guts" literally feeling, reaching out from your "one point" or your center of gravity located just below the naval.

this is a very powerful place to direct your awareness. in order to achieve this, sometimes i would wear a cloth belt tied around my one point. the contact between it and my skin would help remind me to place my awareness there instead of in my head.

a way to coax the listener into the music is playing softly. make them have to listen in order to hear you. sometimes i would only play no louder than the background noise in the venue. in other words i would let the space direct my volume. as long as i could hear the glasses clinking, people talking or any other noise, then i was allowing it to inspire my improvisation. after you have invited the "space noise" into the music, then you can take it higher.

also it is important to remember that music with dynamics is always more interesting to listen too then something that is always loud or always soft. in a group that is centered around drums, bass and guitar, it is the drummer who has the most control over dynamics... if everyone is listening together.

fearless freaks

watched the flaming lips doco the fearless freaks last night (thanks, calvin!) and besides the fact that the lips have been cited as an influence on hasslehorse, i can see how the story of their growing-up-together through music in a backwater town would have resonance for the haltom city-riverside crew.

the specials

what goes better with hot, sticky north texas heat 'n' humidity than english ska from 1980 with japanese subtitles?



that was so good, let's have another. when i came back to fort worth from colorado in the spring of 1980, i owned two cassettes: the debut albums by the pretenders and the specials. i listened to them both incessantly. this stuff still sounds pretty good to me. i understand that horace panter a.k.a. sir horace gentleman, the bassplayer, has written a book.

dennis gonzalez on "now's the time"

here's the first of a six-part radio show about dennis gonzalez from ottawa's ckcu-fm. thanks to aaron gonzalez for the link.

"of course i love you"

from katboy's pfffft! archive: later on in the set, when we notice that all of the people are gone, and you can _hear_ all of us collectively losing our balls while playing, which is funny in itself, but this is, by consensus, a favorite example of how it sounds when what we're doing _works_. real "hollow bone" stuff.

louis armstrong's collages

who knew that the first great jazz soloist was also a visual artist? wfmu, that's who. (as always, click on the images to make 'em big.)

vote for we

from stoogeaphilia:

That's right, kids...the li'l STOOGEBAND is nominated for "best cover/tribute band" in the FW Weekly music awards thingy. We feel this is a fitting end to a year in which we were responsible for the first noise complaint at the Chat Room, and made a speaker catch on fire at the FW Burrito Project benefit at Fred's.

But not only that...Ray's band the mighty ME-THINKS is nominated for "best hard rock," Jon's band THE GREAT TYRANT is nominated for "best heavy metal," Matt and Sir Steffin's band PABLO & THE HEMPHILL 7 is nominated for "best live band," and Matt and Ken's band PFFFFT! (not PFFFT! like it says in the paper...long story; ask Matt) is nominated for "best avant-garde/experimental," as is Matt's _other_ band THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.

But wait, there's more...Matt's OTHER other band, GOODWIN, is nominated for "rock album of the year," "song of the year." _and_ "artist of the year." And Matt himself is nominated for MVP. So there.

So vote for us...vote for them...but above all, vote for Matt.

Matt Hembree. The people's choice. Your _only_ choice.

a gross undercarriage of justice

i haven't seen the ballot yet, but there's a rumor that PFFFFT! has been nominated for a fw weekly music award. not sure which one, and it's kinda moot anyway -- after all, who'd vote for us? not the ppl we ran out of the chat room last sunday! (all bullshit aside, we did have a nice well-received third set, and the recording of the first one i've heard on katboy's archive doesn't sound half bad, either. if i do say so myself.)

me-thinks on youtube!

it's the infamous "bandy-busts-his-head" version of "texas gigalo." special guest appearance by steedo from shotgun messenger.

greg ginn @ the moon this thursday, 5.22.2008

two bands featuring the man who arguably started the whole d.i.y. amerindie thang as leader of (sorry steve) black flag and founder of sst records will be at the moon this thursday, leading two different instrumental outfits (albeit ones that share some personnel). jambang sounds less like the grateful dead than any self-identified "jam band" of which i'm personally aware -- in fact, to these feedback-scorched ears, they come across more like, um, krautrock meets the raveonettes meets neil young or something, and apparently they also have some kind of freaky-ass visual accompaniment a la sub oslo. the texas corrugators (or "greg ginn & the taylor texas corrugators," to give them their full name) have a very beefheartian take on what purports to be western swing. kudos to steve steward for bringing this p*nk originator's latest musical brouhaha to the fort. just don't ask him to play "nervous breakdown" or "my war."

on the other hand...

...two upful pieces from sunday's star-t: one on the renewal of the old seminary south mall, and another on an exhibit of photos by homeless veterans.

now swim back

one of jesse sierra hernandez's most powerful politically-themed works, inspahrd by the anti-immigrant legislation in farmer's branch, is now viewable on the artist's blog. (click on the image to make it big.) particularly timely in light of the election of the anti-immigrant movement's leader as mayor of that burg.

PFFFF(F)T! @ the chat room, 5.18.2008

we cleared the fucking room last night. _twice_. but then we came back and redeemed ourselves. wish we'd had a soundman 'cos william bryan massey III was there when we started the first time and it woulda been nice to have had him flow some verse over the jams. oh well. ray liberio was _the only human being in the house_ for the second set. (by the end of the first set, all that was left in the room besides us was the bartenders.)

tony chapman scored a nice chet atkins gretsch that's a beautiful piece of wood but a feedback monster. maybe it was the opening blasts of feedback that scared the folks off. dude told me later that all the ppl on the patio liked our shit, it was just too loud. strange, because i'd swear we were louder the week before. hembree tried hanging his microphone from a rafter this time. we'll see how the recording turned out.

in between sets, tony told me stories about ghostcar bandleader (and long-distance remote control spiritual advisor for this project) karl poetschke and drank his beer out of a shot glass. clay stinnett painted a drum head for wyatt adams from the burning hotels, then had to listen while wyatt gave him shit about the pentagram on his t-shirt. we talked about the impossibility of getting girls via playing free improv. clay said it'd been working for him for years, but i pointed out that he was young and cute.

like the black dog (r.i.p.), the chat room doesn't seem to come to life until midnight. maybe that's why every band i ever saw play there (with the exception of cadillac fraf) sat around waiting until 11:30 before they started. matt said tony and i are playing more washes of sound and less notey, rhythmic thangs and i allowed that maybe we're learning how to play with each other. we sounded punkier and angrier than the first two times -- clay's been on a nirvana kick, and we were talking about melvins and hip-hop on breaks.

a few minutes into the third set, eric harris (ex-yeti) showed up and plugged in his shit. i've been trying to get him out to jam for over two years. matt said it was like a warm fuzzy wave of sound emanating from eric's side of the stage (or floor or whatevah). he played some beautiful melodic stuff. hope he comes out to jam with us again. next time will be 6.29.2008, the day after my b-day, with jeremy hull subbing for matt while hembree's in tennessee.

berfdays

the first guy i ever idolized is 63 today. while he's stepped on his dick as often as anybody has over the years, it's no exaggeration to say that if i'd never seen his band's picture in some scholastic magazines newspaper they gave out when i was in 6th grade and gotten _obsessed_, i would be a different person than i am now, and therefore i owe him. big. watch him starting around 1:50 into this vid: both self-parodying and totally great.



and jeffrey hyman from forest hills, queens, would have been 57 today. it breaks my heart to think that three of these guys are no longer living.