Please join us on Friday as we kick off the start to our first tour. This is sure to be a psych/folk/rock blowout, with the Wolf on hand, as well as members of No Neck Blues Band and Major Stars, and various up-and-coming folk/psych/experimental acts. Anybody who's seen the Wolf in action knows that boredom is not in his vocabulary, and neither is it at 611:
Friday, April 14
611 Florida Ave NW WDC
8pm, $5 suggested donation
http://www.claviusproductions.org call 202-360-9739 for info
BYOB!
Kohoutek (kicking off our first tour!)
Little Howlin' Wolf (the real Chicago blues)
Tall Firs (folk/psych on Ecstatic Peace, from NYC)
La Otracina (NYC psych/improv)
Pigeons (mem. of Sea Donkeys)
Life Partners (Boston, mem. of Major Stars, on Twisted Village)
Pepi Ginsberg (solo folk from Philly)
and Keith & Catfish (from NNCK/Suntanama)
Kohoutek http://claviusproductions.alkem.org/kohoutek/ Improvised psych with noise tendencies and abstraction. Sonic explorations in any combination of drums, percussion, guitar, bass, laptop, homemade electronics, field recordings, chord organ, and household appliances.
"...we were stoked to get our mitts on this self-released CD-R of smoke-blowing, heavy noise-inflected psychdrone. There's two tracks on hand, both instrumentals, with a total half hour running time: the opener, "The Burning Sea", starts off by invoking some gorgeous, bleary psychedelic noodling and skittery improv percussion with vaporous Middle Eastern melodies and twinkling chimes in the background, then slowly builds into a pulsating acid drone rock mantra akin to Skullflower hijacking Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold", throbbing single-note bass and muscular drumming laying down a limestone foundation for burning feedback-soaked guitar action to get down in an ocean of reverb. The second track, "Four More Years", is a swarm of helicopter electronics and rapid-fire improv drumming, a crackling free noise jam shooting sparks onto basement walls, sleigh bells and snakey bass drones squirming through a blizzard of buzzing cables and oscillating tones and noisy skree. These jams are righteous drone/improv/noise workouts, can't wait to hear more from Kohoutek. There's definitely much to like here for fans of Skullflower, Can, Acid Mothers Temple, etc. Comes packaged in an exquisitely handpainted/screened wallet, with the CD-R itself blasted with spraypaint." (Crucial Blast)
Little Howlin Wolf (James Pobiega) has been cutting insane slabs of vinyl since the late '70s. In recent years, with the help of Twig Harper and others, his vast body of work has gained notoriety and acceptance. With a repertoire of well over 100 songs and various approaches, no two Wolf sets are ever the same. Somewhere akin to Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits, Jandek, John Lee Hooker, and Albert Ayler but nothing like any of them, the Wolf is truly in a class of his own, and if you let him, he'll school ya!
http://white-rose.net/mystere12.html james pobiega lives on the southwest outskirts of chicago, where he has spent a great deal of time playing as a street musician. his aliases include little howlin' wolf, deacon blue, buccaneer bob and shadow drifter. he described himself as a musicologist. he has an extensive list of credits, including street theater and his long career as a do-it-yourself musician.
if you are fortunate enough to meet him and spend some time listening, he will proudly share with you accounts of other adventures... as a bounty hunter, scuba diving instructor, activist with the solidarity movement, secret agent, even working in character as a children's entertainer in pirate guise. famous names are sprinkled thru the conversation, mentioned as both friends (mr. t) and those who have derived inspiration from his activities (steely dan).
during the time i spent with him, he was kind enough to share several of his recordings, some released, some unreleased. he also had a huge quantity of documentation of his career, including clippings from newspapers, magazines, cartoons, man on the street interviews, pictures of him playing in europe.
he has primarily worked within the blues & freeform jazz idioms, but is very open to other influences...cajun, voodoo, pirates included. his recordings are hard to come by, and are much sought by collectors. the one lp i have, the cool truth, is a melange of styles: drums with chants in tongues i cannot recognize, multi-tracked blues songs that seem to threaten to fly apart, but hold together somehow, growling buccaneer-speak and channeled new orleans spirits. i have to mention the hand-painted & lettered cover as well, becuase it reflects the quality and personality of the music in the grooves perfectly.
hopefully, james pobiega's work will become more available in the next year or so, as the destijl label is set to release shadow drifter lp, and there is hope that his live performances with nautical almanac will become available at some point.
Tall Firs http://tallfirs.org/ http://www.myspace.com/tallfirs New York City underground electric folk: Melancholic hocus pocus reminiscent of Leonard Cohen or Jackson C. Frank transitions into open-tuning workouts of despair and beauty like Mississippi John Hurt throwing down with Wire. Covers of '60s rock classics and weirdo country tunage stripped to the barest basics shovel coal onto the charred remains.
"Beard-less contemporary rock at it's best." â?? Alan Licht
La Otracina http://vorg.net/csr/artistslaotracina.htm LA OTRACINA is a trip...
................................. through watermelon atmospheres......
................and...............................
.........................a diagonal eclipse of magical lemon wedges
current creators of La Otracina music are:
Adam Kriney - drums
Matt Lavallee - electric guitar/synthesizer
Dave Wnorowski - electric bass/farfisa
"Primal guitar/drums/chord organ/vibes duo blow-out led by percussionist Adam Kriney and released on his own private press label, Colour Sounds Recordings, whose recent form situates them squarely in the post-ESP Disk tradition. Moves from sense-blasting noise to single-note guitar wrestling from Tyler Nolan that conjures the benign forms of Sonny Sharrock and Tisziji Munoz in a conflation of prog, acid and free/modal moves. Third press of 47 copies. Recommended. Great uniform label feel to Colour Sounds Recordings thatâ??s guaranteed to make you covet the set, with all sleeves and inserts printed on textured card. In years to come youâ??ll poke yourself for missing them." (David Keenan, Volcanic Tongue)
Life Partners (aka Crystal Cock Over Canada)
"There are some stories where every girl has a movie star face and a dirty book body. There are some stories where every guy can be God if he has the balls to stand there with 30 friends and strut around. The lives of the Life Partners are as lurid and unwitting as their music is gaudy and crude. Two boys, one blond and one brunette, went on a road trip to Texas with 250 dollars all in ones. They listened to the same Marty Robbins record over and over all the way across the state. They saw a pig get shot. They visited a hall covered in mirrors and commemorating the fame of Oral Roberts. By the time they came home they knew their American experience had made them partners for life, so they called themselves the Life Partners. The first thing they decided to do was start a fake band that would pass its recordings off as improvisations by 1970s Jamaican teen punks whose dads all worked at an army base. They recruited a girl who was obsessed with classical pianist Glenn Gould and wanted the brunette to marry her. Then they met a fantastic Canadian metal guitarist who was also the champ of his roller-hockey team, even though his dream was to play ice-hockey. The boys asked him to play drums, and the band was complete. An instant hit among the happening music scenesters around town, they play in the basements, the record stores, the abandoned warehouses, and the dive bars all over Boston. Their fans include dope-fiends who sell stolen VCRs out of the backs of cars, record collectors with restraining orders against then, art-school dropouts with misgivings about hygiene, and more. The Life Partners now have a record which conjures the ghosts of James Chance, the Collins Kids, and the Electric Eels, but ultimately sounds not quite like anyone else."
Pepi Ginberg http://www.myspace.com/pepiginsberg "After hearing Pepi Ginsberg's songs I can say, with conviction, that a true poet is among us. Culling from the vast histories of blues and folk music, with a bent for experimentation, Pepi takes her knowledge of language and carves a picture of reality that is nuanced and profound, born of abstraction, yet delivered in a way that any can know it. Sharp, decisive and wise beyond her years, Ginsberg moves freely between the world she has created and the world we live in, maintaining a vision that guides our understanding. Her words satiate while her voice emanates from within, conjuring the spirits of jazz and blues singers from decades past, with a strength and beauty that nails you to your seat. Pepi Ginsberg's songs demand us to hear them, speaking with a fresh tongue, truths of this generation." (Gregory Best)
