Who? Nursing Home Discoveries
What? You’ll Sing (demo)
Where/When/Why/How? “You’ll Sing” is a demo I wrote and recorded in the Roof of Bamyan hotel in September of 2011. I didn’t have any recording equipment with me other than my computer, so all the vocals are recorded into the little mic attached to ipod headphones. The rest is made of sequenced samples I made by hitting the bokhari in my room, clapping, and making noises with my mouth. I’m planning to re-record the song for a new EP near the end of February.

Anyway, we convinced the ever-talented Katie Hammon to come down to hang out between episodes of Friday Night Lights; the new series being abused in the household. Enjoy, and stay tuned for more flavor.

B3 Basement Three – Beargrass from David Mark on Vimeo.

You can find more Bear Grass here.

I’m going to be brief with this one, because I feel the music will speak for itself. You’ll either love it or you’ll not be that into it. However, I will say that the 3 times I saw them play were possibly the most influential performances I have witnessed in the last 10 years with very few exceptions. They were introduced to me by one of those exceptions, The Mathematicians, who had played with them on tour and traded a few shows with them over a couple of years (04-06?), they played at the Rexleigh Mill Fest twice and once at Tim Oakley’s apartment next to Dove Studios in Glens Falls. They toured Japan, recorded an album, and then unceremoniously broke up before they could even properly release the album. I was lucky enough to secure an advance copy that I will now share with you.

I was under the impression that the album was never officially made available to the public, my apologies to the band and Ruffian Records – if you are interested you can purchase the album here: ruffianrecords.com

Sentai hailed from Washington, DC and was the brainchild of Collin (last name?), who was joined on drums by Justin (last name?) aka Juice. They had a different bass player at one point, but at the point I first saw them until they broke up Hugh McElroy played bass. I had met Hugh, briefly, after seeing his old band, Black Eyes, play in Ithaca. They were sweet dudes. Last I knew, Collin was playing in the band Buildings and Hugh was running Ruffian Records.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it, the RPM (Record Per Month) challenge is basically a test to see if one can write, record, and produce an album in just a little ole month. Specifically, the month of February.

A few of our bands/acts have tried this in the past, so to get your creative juices going, why don’t you check them out again.

Also, for the month of February, while you’re hard at work on your RPM-album, you can get a free download of We are Jeneric’s first (of three!) RPM challenge album – Hansel and Gretel; Stories from the Stove.

Other B3RPM albums:

Grave Surfers – Necronomican Phenomenon

Matt Ferguson – Colors I Have Heard

Black Licorice Ghosts – Sun, Moon, Sonic Boom

We are Jeneric – In the Parlor with the Moon

Scientific Maps – Hold on Whoever You Are [if anyone has a link to this, let me know]

We are Jeneric – Animals Are People Too

The Hoborchestra – We Live in an Orphanage

There’s a psuedo-official RPM challenge group that allows you broadcast your creation to the world, but it’s pretty loosely organized. You can check it out here.

Who? HELLOFAWAYTODIE
What? I Am Who I Say I Am
Where/When/Why/How? This is an exercise in churning out music, and I’m super pumped on it. freesound.org is one of my favorite websites. It contains free sounds.

The Curfew takes place in a city, which is, presumably, in a country.  And since it’s not happening now, it’s probably the future.  The details are purposely left vague.  What you need to know is that the government no longer tolerates art, music, political discourse, or citizens outdoors after…whatever hour the secret police decide is too late for upstanding citizens to be outdoors.  Minor transgressions are punished with excessive severity.  Many crimes are punished by death immediately, at the scene of the crime.

This is the world in which William, formerly a renowned violinist, has raised Molly, his mute eight year old daughter.  William’s wife Louisa “disappeared” shortly after the crackdown.  Her father was a politician before things got bad.  As a musician, William was forced to change professions.  He is now an epitaphorist.  But the crackdown caused him to change more than his occupation.  A classical musician can be expected to run with an intellectual crowd, but since a crowd of intellectuals would make the government rather uncomfortable, he has cut out his social life.  If he raises any suspicion he will be taken like his wife, leaving Molly without anyone to care for her.

It’s a bleak scenario.  Though the aforementioned occupations have it worse than most, everyone’s life has changed in the world that Ball creates.  It starts bleak and gets worse.  Spoiler alert: this book is a downer.

Though The Curfew is a novel, it reads like a play.  Ball establishes the setting and action as though they were stage directions, and the rest of the content is dialog.  I wouldn’t call this a work of minimalism, but there are very few details used.  We never get a full description of the city, the surroundings, William’s house, or physical descriptions of any of the characters.  The interaction between father and daughter build our connection to them, and the stark contrast between William’s current and former life, despite the fact that they are never really elaborated on, gives us the appropriate sense of despair.  Ball reminds us of the everyday things that we take for granted which could be lost at the hands of government censorship.

The book is broken up into three parts, and the best part is the last, which consists almost entirely of a puppet show, written by Molly and performed by her neighbor, Mr. Gibbons, who also happens to be an expert puppeteer (apparently another occupation lost due to the crackdown).  Here Ball is able to delve into fantasy, and, to some extent, the surreal.  The puppet show reveals more details about William, Louisa, and Molly, than we learn anywhere else in the novel.  It takes place mostly in the past, but it follows Molly up to the present and, possibly, the future.  The ambiguity here is due to Mr. Gibbons’ magic.  To give too much detail here would give away the ending, but suffice it to say that the ending can be interpreted a few different ways.  At first I thought it was one of the darkest books I had ever read.  Upon re-reading the ending, I decided there is hope.  Unfortunately I don’t think there’s anyway to finish the book without feeling devastated.

If you’re not interested in dystopian fiction, you may not like the book.  If you’re looking for a fun, light read, you will certainly not like this book.  Otherwise, you should absolutely read it.  I feel a certain amount of dystopian reading is important.  Ball may not have had any specific target in The Curfew.  There isn’t necessarily one specific nation that I can compare it to.  Instead, I think it’s a warning that the first thing to go when a government cracks down is intelligent discourse and the arts, which are often accompanied by things like rational thought.  In some ways I suppose you could argue that we’ve already lost some of these things.

Another interesting note here is that Ball has perhaps the most cryptic website I’ve ever seen.  I was clicking for minutes before giving up hope that I would learn anything about him.  It may just be weird for the sake of weird, but it at least provides an interesting diversion.

-Roadhouse

Hello again. Did you do something with your hair? You are looking mighty fine. Well, whatever it is, keep doing it. Okay? Oh, me? Nothing new, just interviewing some of capital region’s most fun and musically pro-active people. This week is no different, we travel from the stage and into the radio station to talk with local radio personality Trudy Steier of WCDB fame.

Go on, treat yourself. Sign up to do a 3 2 1 interview with the folks here at B3NSON.Email rnolan1983 at gmail dot com to get the ball rolling. Rolling, Rolling Rolling, come on.

B3: If you could fracture the time space continuum and do it all over again, what would have been the first album you purchased?

TS: I bought my first “album” (I’m using the term kind of loosely here) when I was about twelve or thirteen, so that would have been roughly around the time of the new millennium. Embarrassingly, it was a collection of Irish stepdancing tunes that I used to practice at home during the time (I danced for about six years) and it was not the last one I bought either. I think a bunch of those discs are still sitting around somewhere. What I SHOULD have done was bought “No Strings Attached” by ‘N Sync. That would have been a way better idea.

B3: Oh no! By messing with the time space continuum you have spawned an alternative universe! In this universe you are granted the power of N*Sync. What is the name of your wildly successful pop group and what is your hit single?

TS: Haha. Well, if this was left up to my 12 or 13 year old self I probably would have chosen something lame like ” The Nymphs” (huge Greek mythology nerd) and the single would have been I Don’t Want to be Home-Schooled Anymore Mom. It probably would have included a really bad rap at the end.

B3: Have you ever received an on-air request that turned you on to new music you ended up enjoying?

TS: Hahahahaha NOPE! I have to admit I rarely take requests. Sometimes it’s because I just don’t have the means to play them, but it’s mostly because a) requests just always tend to be bad. I don’t know what it is b) I’m already familiar with the band or the song or c) a lot of my “requests” come in the form of “SUCK IT TROODO!” from my “friends” who tune into the show. Thanks a lot, jerks. [Editor's Note: I once told her to play a song by Yellow Ostrich and she liked it.]

B3: What artist do you think you played the most on-air last year?

TS: WILD FLAG. That band is so awesome. I seriously can’t like or talk about them enough. I’ve been a fan of Carrie Brownstein ever since I first heard Sleater-Kinney and was ecstatic when I heard she was starting a new project. She totally shreds and I like her philosophy on what’s been happening to the indie music scene recently. She says that indie used to be way more subversive and rocked way harder back in the eighties and nineties when people were protesting against the mainstream stuff. Now after all their hard work establishing these awesome labels and different music scenes we’ve repaid them by going to see bands like Best Coast sing about…I don’t know, her cat or something. If I was Carrie Brownstein I would have been like “well screw this noise” and started up a new rock and roll band too.

B3: What is the last album you purchased?

TS: “Our Day in the Sun” by the Parlor. Such a lovely record! Jen and Eric really know how to craft a stunning concept album.

B3: Are there any releases you are looking forward to this year?

TS: Sharon Van Etten has an album coming out in February that I’m pretty pumped for; she has a beautiful voice and her lyrics are straightforward in a way that is very poignant and moving. Should be a good one. I also heard some rumors that The Dirty Projectors are coming out with a new album as well. I don’t know if that’s true but I really hope it is.

B3: Open your ITunes, turn on shuffle and press forward ten times. List the next three songs that play and talk a bit about each and how they ended up in your library.

TS:

1) Siouxie and the Banshees-Swimming Horses from Hyaena. I got into Siouxie and the Banshees a couple of years ago when I was going through my huge Cure phase. I remember finding out that Robert Smith left The Cure to play with them for a while so I figured I’d be into them (I was). I love the wildness of Siouxie’s voice, there’s no one else who sounds like her. I’m sure seeing these guys back in the day was killer!

2) Willy Mason-Our Town from Where the Humans Eat. This is a great song from an absolutely beautiful folk album. I actually kind of forgot about Willy Mason. I wonder what he is doing now?

3) Low-Lust from The Curtain Hits the Cast. I’m pretty sure I’m the only person I know under the age of 35 who listens to Low, but that’s ok. This band does restraint better than any other band I can think of. They’re perfect for this time of year really.

You can catch Trudy’s show 12PM – 2PM Thursdays on WCDB

Who? HEAT
What? Where Is My Baby?
Where/When/Why/How? This is the first song I recorded where I got to play almost everything (with special guest Lester Mulhannen on bass)! I have never played drums in a band before or ever really had to play through an entire song on drums so this was a fantastic challenge and I’m pumped on it. I love loud music with dirty guitars so this was a really fun song to rip through on a Sunday afternoon. This song is dedicated to Lady Music Makers: May you be an awesome summer camp and zine and get more ladies playing music in our capital district. Yeah!!!!

B3 Basement Two – Littlefoot from David Mark on Vimeo.

You have probably never heard of Grand Habit. Probably. The Saratoga natives spent a year or two playing shows around upstate to relatively little fanfare. Not to say they didn’t have followers, or positive press, but it was, at best, sparse. This was sometime around 2004, and after getting their footing locally, they made the trek down to the big city to try their luck. After a year or or so I kind of figured that I would never hear from the brothers again. I had actually forgotten about them until a recently relocated acquaintance of mine mentioned to me that he had gone to see them out in Brooklyn and it seemed like they were becoming “kind-of-a-big-deal”. This is my recollection, anyways. To be fair, in 2005-2007 odds were pretty good that I was drunk. But, from what I’ve heard they ended up doing all right down there, even befriending some members of TV on the Radio. Regardless, they ended up off of my radar after that.

Prior to their move, though, I shared a handful of bills with Josh and John who were both very friendly and surprisingly engaged in what my band was doing despite our colossal sonic differences. They were consistently the odd-band-out on a bill, some of which consisted of 7 or 8 other bands who were always exponentially louder and overstated than they were. The only exception I can think of was an 8 band bill at the Saratoga YMCA that also included a looping Matthew Loiacono (before that was a thing), who was closer in sonic proximity only in relation to everyone else. When they went on things would suddenly get quieter, sure, some people would leave, but most would stop what they were doing and sit down. It was my moment of Zen before getting ready to play. You could look around a room where, moments before, kids had just been flailing in a half-hearted circle pit and just see the audience, now lounging around on the floor, soaking in the eight-oh-eighty sounding drums and allowing the synth pads to wash over them. It became an increasingly welcomed change of pace. I listened to their 4 song demo to fall asleep for an entire year.

Spring of 2007 would be the next time I ran into Josh. It was after BEWARE! had gotten off stage at King’s Tavern and he approached me, very friendly, and it took me a few minutes to remember who he was. Grand Habit had broken up, which to this day, I don’t know why – brothers? He moved back up here and had started a new band with an old high school friend. They were called Charlie Everywhere and he wanted to talk about teaming up for some shows. I probably said something like “sure, sounds good”. And then, if memory serves, we ended the night the way most King’s Tavern nights ended – by kicking most everyone out and then drinking, on the house, for several hours. A couple months later I booked their first show, again at King’s Tavern, and we’d go on to share a bunch of bills with them, and then a few more when they changed their name to Phantogram. Phantogram is a band that you have probably heard of.

In retrospect, their album is a glimpse into a band that was kind of making-it-up-as-they-went. It’s not a fully realized sound – there are some standout tracks and some that miss the mark quite a bit. There are noticeable differences in fidelity and song writing, leading me to suspect that the songs were recorded as they were written, over the course of the bands inception. To be honest, I never bought their full-length. They were charging $15 at the time, which was just too much for a hungry college student to cough up. Thankfully my friend, Kamran, has sent it to me for the purposes of this article (what a great guy!). I’m really glad I have this album now. It has some really great, intense moments, mixed in with all the synthy bliss that indie-musicologists may someday classify as pre-chillwave or post-synthpop. But it also serves as a touchstone for the driving musical force behind our areas most successful band. You can see the hints of what would become Phantogram… not yet quite as dark or sultry, but not too far removed either. It’s weird to say, and maybe a little cliche also, but in retrospect, these guys were really ahead of their time. Even if you disagree, try listening to it before going to bed. I guarantee you’ll have sweet dreams.

I was unable to track down any Grand Habit footage… but this struck me as funny.

Grand Habit was:
Josh Carter
John Carter

Download Grand Habit’s S/T Album

Previously on 518 Mixtape…
Foreward/Rewind
Track 1: Rockets and Blue Lights
Track 2: The Pink Hearse Paparazzi Project
Track 3: Kickstand Love
Track 4: Importante

All stories are subject to discrepancies that are inevitable when trying to remember exactly how things went down many years and hundreds of beers ago. If you have details pertaining to any of these articles, or would like to add supplementary media, music, personal accounts, or anything else, please email ferguson@b3nson.net. Also, if you were once in any of the bands mentioned and would like to include anything, edit anything, or omit anything, please let me know. If you are interested in contributing your own article about a favorite Capital Region band, please contact me. I would love to get more stories and insight!