Now that the weather has begun to really cool down it looks like we’re at everyone’s favorite time of the year: the time when every single person in the entire world is sick. Despite my best efforts to eat my fruits and veggies, wash my hands regularly and not to touch anything in a public restroom, my finely tuned machine succumbed this past week. As I laid in bed coughing my guts up, I was left to terrify myself with thoughts of mutating strains of swine flu or bronchial pneumonia lurking in my lungs.

That’s why I thank God for Nico. Without my mother there to pity me and bring me chicken soup, only Nico’s icy voice soothed my throat. No song is better than “Janitor of Lunacy” at capturing the fatalistic fantasy of succumbing to some unknown illness while your loved ones sob over your death before making a miraculous “Tom Sawyer”-esque (The book. Not the song.) return to life.

Drugs have never done much to heighten my musical experiences, but listening to Nico while on cold medicine really let me touch the notes. By the time I was feeling better I thought I was a Chelsea Girl.

So next time you start getting the sniffles, don’t bother calling a doctor. Just grab some Kleenex, chicken noodle soup and reach for your Nico albums and you’ll be back on your feet in no time. I mean, it’s not like you have health insurance anyways.

-DJ Bears!

Pick of the Week: Tranz-Kunt-Inental

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Last week, Passion Pit came to Los Angeles, selling out the Henry Fonda Theatre. While I’m sure I don’t need to extol the virtues of Passion Pit to any of you readers, I would be committing a crime if I didn’t pass along the newest band that sent shivers down my spine.

That band would be Tranz-Kunt-Inental. They are made up of four men dressed in suits and a rotating series of drag queens that front them.They are campy, funny, and they rock all the way down their bones. They are also the greatest cover band you’ll ever see. If seeing them is even possible. They played their first ever show in LA, went to San Diego the next day and have since disappeared. They don’t even have a website or MySpace to hunt them down. In fact, the only fan video I’ve been able to track down is here.

The crowd was questioning at first, but quickly caught on as they blasted their way through covers of “Thriller”, “Pokerface”, “Hit Me Baby One More Time” as well as a Devo tune and Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” After most songs, one queen would give way for another, but the excitement and energy never wavered. Perhaps their show was a quick one-off, but I hope not. If you see the Tranz-Kunt-Inental coming to your town, I would recommend you cancel your other plans and get out to see them.

—DJ Bears!

All Blissed Out

I’ve been revisiting this record from eleven years ago called Wave Field by Portugese musician Rafael Toral. It’s very warm ambient drone music really informed by the rock and roll music. It sounds good either as background chirpy-chirp stuff or as fully immersive loud heaviness.

Resounding frequencies overlap and gyrate, wiggling their way inside your body. The notes, tones, and clusters of guitar-induced and effects-generated notes reverberate amongst each other. Wave Field is an astonishing work, a drone fan’s dream — everything you wanted from Fripp & Eno’s No Pussyfooting and Spacemen 3’s Dreamweapon and very nearly got: full, dynamic layers of blissful, amp-moaning pleasure-noise that ebbs and flows like the sea.

—DJ Yeti

I Hate Ryan Gosling

Ryan Gosling is a jerk. Seriously. First, he was born beautiful. Then he goes and stars in The Notebook making every woman on earth fall in love with him. Naturally, he becomes a darling of the critics after starring in Half Nelson. And as if that weren’t bad enough, he set his sights on world domination with the release of the self-titled debut LP from his band Dead Man’s Bones. To ensure that he would have the undying admiration of indie rock/horror nerds he wrote a pop album chock full of werewolf hearts and ghost ships, abetted by the creepy voices of children.

Hey Ryan, aren’t you happy enough making awesome movies? Don’t you think you should give some other people a chance? At least other actors turned musicians like Keanu Reeves and Kevin Bacon have the decency to write shitty songs. But no. Gosling had to write the insanely catchy “My Body is a Zombie For You” or the unsettling “In the Room Where You Sleep.” And he did it just to rub it in our faces. At the very least he could have had some extremely drunken rant captured by TMZ, but by all accounts he’s also a pretty nice guy. Guess he’s nicer than me, right?

The gauntlet’s been thrown though, Mr. Gosling, the line drawn. I swear to God, if he starts blogging, I’m just gonna have to challenge him to a duel.

-DJ Bears!

The Devil Makes Americana Exciting!

The Devil Makes Three came to Amoeba Records earlier this week to perform a free live set and I was left in awe. The band came out a little after seven, then played a set of blistering blues and bluegrass tunes about drinking, demons, and wild women. The band is covered in tattoos and they infuse their brand of Americana with the energy of a punk gig. The crowd loved it and were the most excited I have ever seen at an in-store show.

The highlights of the evening were their rockabilly version of “Cheap Reward” by Elvis Costello and the steel guitar shred fest that is “Aces and Twos.” The Amoeba show is a kick-off for their national tour in support of their latest LP Do Wrong Right. It’s only fitting that they’ll be playing all the major American cities as well as cities I didn’t know existed like Bozeman, Montana.

I left the show having learned quite a bit. Like, it’s so passe to be in a punk rock band, and if you really want to give a big “F you!” to your parents, start a band with a banjo, stand up bass and harmonies on top of harmonies.

-DJ Bears!

New Loudness Tuesday!!!

So, it’s the second day of the work week which means that we have just added three new tunes to the playlist. This week we have killer new tracks from three great indie rock-type acts:

Portland, OR-based thinking person’s dance-pop act The Blow, who were aided and abetted once upon a time by Jona from YACHT; The Lights, a group from Seattle who have now morphed into the awesome Love Tan; and finally a wonderful early ’90s gem from my favot\rite American shoegaze act of all time, the very underrated Swirlies.

Songs for Shlocktober

October is finally here! And that means scary movies, mischief nights and listening to the same three pop songs on repeat. I don’t know how it happened, but in the last 25 years there hasn’t been a new song added to the fearsome party trio that is “Time Warp,” “Ghostbusters,” and “Thriller.” Nick Cave couldn’t do it, Michael Jackson didn’t strike gold with “Ghosts” and I doubt Ryan Gosling’s awesomely scary band Dead Man’s Bones will have enough crossover appeal.

With that said, here are the four pop stars with enough balls and a big enough audience to write the next big Halloween jam.

1. Lady Gaga
No surprise here. She’s already shocking enough, and if you saw her performance at the VMAs you know she’s got a flair for the dramatic. All she has to do is write a song about ghosts, pop on another robotic woman outfit and the thing practically sells itself.

2. Miley Cyrus
I know my last post was about Miley, but she has the best chance of actually recording a Halloween song. She’s practically releasing novelty songs already. Pride and Prejudice has been zombified, so why not the Disney pop princess?

3. Morrissey
Okay, perhaps his audience isn’t big enough any longer, but it’s time to change that. The British love him, Hispanics love him, and so do mopey scene kids. If the Mozzer applied those golden pipes to a campy horror song, he would probably solve America’s economy.

4. The White Stripes
Jack White has done everything else, so why not turn to horror songs? (His mustache is already creepy enough.) Nothing would scream Halloween more than Jack White shredding on his guitar while zombies slowly lurched to garage-blues bombast.

If any of these songs come to pass, it will be the best gift the Great Pumpkin ever gave me.

—DJ Bears!

An Interview With HOCKEY

Hockey, a band whose name was the result of a joke, recently released their debut LP, Mind Chaos, through Capitol Records. Based in Portland, OR, their sound has been compared more often to New York and London based new wave bands than their northwestern counterparts. Mind Chaos is an album with slinky guitars, ’80s synths, and huge dance beats, but attempts to have more soul than your standard dance fare.

But it all might not have happened. Ben Grubin and Jeremy Reynolds found each other while attending the University of Redlands and formed Hockey as a duo with a drum machine. They were signed to Columbia — but between producers trying to change their sound, and lacking a full line-up, the band left the label and moved to Oregon. Once there, they added guitarist Brian White and drummer Anthony Stassi.

I recently spoke with Brian while he was relaxing in New York before kicking off their North American tour.

Q: You’re heading up to Wisconsin next. What does a band do in a place like Wisconsin?

BW: I’ve actually never been to Wisconsin. It’s the middle of nowhere, but it’s really not. We travel a lot, so it’s always changing. But I’ll be getting a Packers cheese hat up there.

Q: You just finished up your English leg? How was that?

BW: We just came in from our first headlining tour. We were in Dublin, and Scotland and ended up in a small city in France called Rennes. We had some great opening bands. There was this one guy from Detroit, Deastro, and this band from the UK, Little Comets. Really good time, really good bands and I hope we can play with them again.

Q: Any crazy stories from the road or is it just a go to sleep, wake up, play a show?

BW: There is a lot of routine of playing shows, of trying to stay healthy. But there were definitely some forgettable nights. On the good nights when we play a good show, they  kind of go that way. But we’re a very over critical band and that doesn’t really lead to partying after a show. It’s tough enough just to maintain yourself over a tour.

Q: Have you noticed a difference between an American audience and an English audience?

BW: Really, the main difference is we have had so much exposure over there. We’ve had a lot of radio play and that jumpstarted the tour. The fans are more intense because they’ve heard more of us.

Q: Has England become a second home to you?

BW: London is out my league. It’s crazy. I don’t want to call it home. Spokane, WA is about the furthest thing from London, so…

Q: What was the band you and Anthony were in before joining Hockey?

BW: It was a band called Seaweed Jack. You won’t find anything about Seaweed Jack. It’s sort of a sunken ship.

Q: The band has had some label problems in the past. Can you tell me a little about that?

BW: Again, that was Ben and Jeremy in college. They had a small development deal with Columbia. Didn’t really like what was being done in the studio. It didn’t work. As a duo, they also couldn’t perform the songs. They decided they needed a band.

Q: With the recording of this album, how did you look to avoid the problems that happened in the past?

BW: We are a band that does everything on its own. Never want to blame anyone else. It’s like writing a paper, you don’t want someone else’s name on it. The labels try to help, but sometimes they don’t. And bands sometimes don’t know what they want. So, we want to do everything on our own.

Q: To fail and succeed on your own?

BW: Yeah. At times it is overwhelmingly tedious and stressful.

Q: How do you guys write the music?

BW: Ben, the singer, is the leading man on the album. He writes the songs, brings them in and we arrange them and build it together. Ben played a lot of the instruments on the album as well.

Q: What is your approach to the live show? Do you try to recreate the album or do something different?

BW: The album is so lo-fi. It’s not over the top glamorous. It’s not a usual major label album. It’s not supersonic hi-fi. That’s just how we recorded it. So the live show is the same songs, the same parts, though we just added a touring keyboardist [Ryan Dolliver].We try and make the show more powerful, more vibrant, louder. More dynamic. We don’t try to blow people’s faces though.

—DJ Bears!

Sherburne’s Kitchen Sink Mixer

Holy moley, Philip Sherburne’s mix for the Krakow-based Unsound Festival — which starts next week — is phenomenal. You might think it’d be easy to throw a jillion different genres together to create something that’s interesting, but it’s hard as hell, really. Believe me, I’ve tried and failed more than I’d care to admit (then again my DJ moniker used to be Trainwreck).

Sherburne is a celebrated writer and DJ. His blog is informative as hell, very well-written, and a great place to find out about things weeks before they wind up everywhere else. Anyway, back to the mix — I can’t think of the last time I’ve heard ambient, metal, contemporary classical, dubstep, folk and techno go so well together.

If we had trust funds we’d totally be at this fest — but we don’t so we’ll just be at home scratching our underwears and watching Mad Men on TV like everyone else.

—DJ Yeti

If you never checked our ‘Happy Snacks’ playlist featuring A-Trak, check it out in the game today. If you have already checked it out, you can of course still check it out. I guess what I’m saying is that… you should check it out! But maybe you aren’t so into fun, or grooviness, or sexiness? In which case you should come back tomorrow for our Mormon Tabernacle Choir playlist… Psyche!

Pick of the Week: 1, 2, 3, Partyy! by Mission of Burma

Finally, I’ve found my personal party jam of 2009. And it’s even one that I can be proud of. Before Mission of Burma released “1, 2, 3, Partyy!”, it was looking like Miley’s “Party in the USA” was going to be it. And it’s hard to maintain my street cred when I use a Miley song to get jazzed up.

The best part of “1, 2, 3, Partyy” though? The instructions! For a person with crippling social anxiety, it is always refreshing when the lyrics tell me how to behave. I haven’t had a song like this since “Lean Back.” (How’s that for topical music journalism?) Just like Fat Joe’s hit, Mission of Burma gives me a song with lyrics that I can actually follow. With lyrics like, “One/Don’t talk to anyone/ Two/Drink only when drunken too/Three/Plan out your drinks and go out and drink your wine.” I can do that. Finally I’ll be able to go out without committing any of those social faux pas. To be fair though, I have no idea what is actually said at the end of the third rule, so I have still have a little bit of apprehension. Best case scenario, I’ve got a game plan for the next time I head out. And at the very least I’ve got a song to blare from my car without being at embarrassed while sitting at red lights.

And in the end, I think I deserve some credit for working both Miley Cyrus and Fat Joe into a post about Mission of Burma. Just saying.

—DJ Bears!