Elvis Costello e música do seu novo disco no Bandejão 104.7

Vitória, 25 de agosto.

Mais um dia de música boa no Bandejão. O programa de hoje, apresentado por Raphael De Angeli, tocou pedidos pro INDIGESTO, homenageou aniversariantes e é claro lançou música nova na programação: novidades de gente das antigas (Elvis Costello), de uma banda de rock independente de Chicago (Wilco) e de mais uma revelação da música brasileira (Bluebell). E não podemos deixar de esquecer do Bandejão INDIGESTO – hoje a pedida foi rabo de cavalo, cérebro de ovelha e rins de elefante. Delícia né?! Se liga na playlist:

1 Bloco

Pato Fu – Sobre o Tempo /// 38 velinhas pra ela!

Lisa Ono – Eu Você

Mariana Aydar – Menino das Laranjeiras

BlueBell – What’s On /// revelação que já teve elogios de pessoas como Marisa Monte e Fernando Meirelles. Mais informações dela no Depredando o Orelhão

Goo Goo Dolls – Iris

Oasis – Songbird

Wayne Shorter – Footprints (BG) /// Aniversário desse grande saxofonista norte-americano, o Mr. Groove, que hoje faz 76 anos.

2 Bloco

Belle e Sebastian – White Collar Boy

Elvis Costello – Complicated Shadows

Ola Podrida – Jordanna

Wilco – Sunny Felling

Kings of Leon – California Waiting

The Fratellis – Got Ma Nuts From a Hippy

Blink 182 – Dammit

3 Bloco

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Stadium Arcadium

The Gits – Precious Blood

Nirvana – Drain You

Raul Seixas – O Dia em que a Terra Parou

Foo Fighters – Monkey Wrench

Kiss – Psycho Circus

4 Bloco – INDIGEEEEEESTO

Kreator no Indigesto de hoje!

Korn – It´s On!

Rammstein – Feuer Frei

Kreator – Radical Resistence

Arch Enemy – The First Deadly Sin

KEXP has a stack of tickets to give away to THE GITS documentary, which opens at NWFF on July 4 (perhaps you’ve seen the cover of the Seattle Weekly?). Read their blog for entry details and to watch the trailer.
And by the way, it sounds like they really liked the movie:

A documentary made by first time filmmaker Kerry O’Kane, The Gits is a sizzling, tight-as-a-drum, transcendent study of a woman’s incredible creativity, her insanely tragic death, and the way both have haunted and inspired so many for years afterwards. That woman is Mia Zapata, and you will never forget her after seeing the movie O’Kane spent more than a decade creating for her and her band, The Gits. [full review in their blog]

El 7 de julio se cumplen 15 años del asesinato de Mia Zapata, la vocalista del grupo de Seattle, The Gits. Ese día y varias otras fechas del mes, se estará proyectando en algunos teatros de Estados Unidos el documental que lleva el mismo nombre que el grupo y fue dirigido por Kerri O’Kane. “The Gits” fue realizado en 2005 y hasta ahora sólo se pasaron algunos fragmentos en el Seattle International Film Festival y el SXSW.

Trailer

Mia Zapata fue violada y asesinada cuando caminaba hacia su casa, entre las 2 y 3 de la mañana, después de visitar una amiga, que insistió para que se tomara un taxi pero no la convenció. Tenía 27 años. El autor del crimen, Jesús Mezquia, cubano de 49 años, fue descubierto recién una década después por un estudio de ADN y condenado a 37 años de prisión.

Jesús Mezquia – Foto: Ken Lambert, The Seattle Times

El día que se leyó la sentencia se pasó el video que pueden ver abajo y el fiscal solicitó que se le diera a Mezquia una condena más larga de lo normal y pidió que los presentes que estuvieran de acuerdo levantaran la mano.

Foto: The Seattle Times

Video que se pasó el día de la sentencia

Links:

Sitio web del grupo The Gits

Página del documental The Gits

this is the story of a great american rock and roll band. cut tragically short.

Am I really old enough to have one of those? It is kind of early, but I am sure compounded by the fact that I have yet to complete my first year of the empty nest.

It started inadvertantly as these things are wont to do. I was watching this movie. It is a sad movie, but I was more compelled by the era, that it was a time I clearly remembered and it seemed like ancient history. It made me reflect in a way I haven’t, seeing my young adult life in parts, sections, compartments, as I turn to a future full of possibility.

While the movie is about people slightly older than me, while had I heard of the Gits would most likely not have been a fan. I was into Las Negresses Verte, Zydeco, Hungarian Folk Music for the most part, oh of course I owned a lot of what sub-pop published too. Socially, I was pretty much on my own in re: music, although Magisco kept me company. I saw Mudhoney, Mary’s Danish, were they grunge? I don’t even know. My boyfriend was in probably what would have been classified as a grunge band, I just thought they were unbelievably awful, which of course is awkward.

I remember being late to one of his shows, Molly and I had gone to study for an art history exam, then decided to study at a bar with a pool table. He was confused, why was I so late. “Oh the time change still has me turned around” I burped. “That was three months ago!” he wasn’t buying it. I couldn’t stand his band really though, so repetitive, no complexity, no structure and the lyrics were sophmoric even though we were juniors. I couldn’t exactly say that.

He lived in a house, like the one they describe in the Gits movie, we called it Hellhaus. I hated it, I found it dirty, loud and discordant. I didn’t wear flannel shirts and got a fair amount of grief for being a bit prissy. Which I am not, I just preferred really short dresses with long stockings that came up to almost the hem, and I didn’t pick my nose at the dinner table.

At my house, my roommates and I hosted things like strawberries and cream parties where we would engrave invitations, literally, ourselves and serve —-strawberries and cream, we weren’t kidding.

Still, I was part of the zeitgeist of my generation, which was very much related to the world of the Gits.

I found myself agitated and jealous a bit while watching the movie, because like the participants in the movie, a bomb went off in our small insulated world. A cluster suicide. They got to talk about it though, acknowledge it.
Our response was to never talk about it, ever. I mean how do you navigate something like that? My world was populated by creative introverts, we rejected drama. How do you awknowledge something so devastating without being dramatic? We confused drama with theater though.

We should have allowed ourselves, there was a lot of weird, really weird too tender weirdness surrounding that time period. I also remember a lot of not crying, suicide is a special kind of death. I didn’t cry for a long time, not until I had to visit my university on an unrelated matter years later.

There was a large wake, one of the only times I have ever had whiskey, I remember my band-boy with tears in his eyes telling me he hated himself, and asking me if I thought we as a group were doomed. I said “No” He asked why not, I laughed, “because we are not that special”

The day after the wake, I dertemined that I would turn my back on all those people. I would get in my car and drive away and never to speak to anyone again. Problem was my car, an old 60’s relic, broke down before I had driven two miles. I walked into a cigar bar to have a beer and call band-boy to bail me out, he came and someone had broken into my car.

“Well they left my copy of Emerson” at least I commented as I picked up “Self-Sufficiency and Other Essays” . “Obviously, they already read it” he retorted.

I did make it out of that world though. I did jump into a pool with a lot of overly ambitious busy-with-themselves people who looked toward the future and did my usual patch work over the past. I had plenty of practice pretending that truama didn’t exist by that time.

Years later at a wine country fete, I was enjoying myself immensely, ( I don’t know if I have mentioned but being a guest at a dinner party is my greatest talent) talking to a new acquaintance. She and I were very close to the same age, had been in some of the same places. She started connecting dots, “So you must have known Bxxxx Mxxx”

“Yes” was all I could say.

“Oh I am sorrry” she knew I was uncomfortable. You know what I did? I lit up a cigarette, right there inbetween the main course and the greens. Unless you have been to the same kind of party, you have no idea what a faux-pas that is. I didn’t give a fuck though.

By this time we had the whole table’s attention. “Are you smoking because I brought BXXXX up?” she asked.

“No” I lied, you know I have always thought of myself as a clever liar, not so sure anymore. “I grew-up with her” dinner guest continued. By this time the host was looking at me concerned, “What is going on?”

“Nothing” , I smiled and turned back to dinner guest, “I will talk to you about this, not now though, this isn’t dinner conversation”

“Okay” she answered, then added, “The kids of the hippies sure didn’t have an easy time of it did we?”

I ashed my cigarette and said nothing, I don’t think I had to though, as I was shaking.

This blog needs a pick-me-up that I can’t provide at the moment – I just feel a bit too serious. Luckily Travis was kind enough to volunteer to step in with  some music-related commentary!

***************************************************

It’s finally the weekend! Since I know we all need something to ease the tension from this past week, here is a list of five bands that are not only important to feminism but rock much harder than most groups!

1. L7 : This all-female Los Angeles punk group released some great albums, especially 1992’s Bricks Are Heavy, which includes what is their most well-known song, “Pretend We’re Dead”, along with several other fantastic songs such as their attack on war in “Wargasm” and their derisive attack on society’s expectations for females in “Diet Pill”. L7 also formed Rock for Choice, a group formed to “mobilize the music community to protect abortion rights and women’s health clinics.”

2. The Gits: A sadly overlooked band, The Gits were a punk rock group fronted by the charismatic Mia Zapata, who has without a doubt one of the most incredible voices in rock and roll. After the devastating rape and murder of Zapata, her friends in the music industry banded together to create Home Alive, a “Seattle based anti-violence project that offers affordable self defense classes, provides public education and awareness, and leads local community organizing efforts,” that “encourages everyone to recognize their entitlement to the basic human right to live free from violence and hate.”

3. The Pastels: One of the most beautiful (and obscure) bands in the world, The Pastels have recorded so many remarkable albums such as their debut Up for a Bit With The Pastels and the near flawless Mobile Safari. The Pastels, made up of guitarist/vocalist Stephen Pastel, bassist/vocalist Aggi Wright, and drummer/vocalist Katrina Mitchell “were important for introducing a lot of the gender-interactive tendencies that would play such an important role in the indie scene in the ‘90s.”

4. Shonen Knife: Osaka, Japan’s all-female Shonen Knife began with three women in 1981; according to Michael Azerrad’s book Our Band Could Be Your Life, Naoko Yamano (guitar/vocals), Atsuko Yamano (drums), and Michie Nakatani (bass/vocals) had to “keep their band a secret from their families and employers, since it was considered unseemly in Japan for women to play rock music. Perhaps because of that repression, Shonen Knife’s music radiated a joyful sense of release.” Today Shonen Knife, comprising of Naoko Yamano along with drummer Etsuko Nakanishi and new bassist Ritsuko Taneda, still performs and rocks much harder than your favorite bands.

5. The Raincoats: Formed in 1977 by guitarist/vocalist Ana de Silva and bassist/vocalist Gina Birch, The Raincoats were one of the first all-female groups in the punk scene; their eponymous first album “razed away punk’s heaving machismo and boy’s-own bluster, subverting a stylistic orthodoxy with the most unusual instrumentation.” Although the Raincoats were “not the most famous, or most acclaimed, of London’s late-’70s post-punk milieu, [they] may be said scene’s best band,” as their quirky instrumentation and all-female presence in a male-dominated scene went on to undoubtedly influence many female rock groups such as Bikini Kill and Hole. 

I hope you take the time to listen to these bands and, if luck should have it, you’ll fall in love with their music as I have!

So both of yesterday’s posts were pretty abstract and obtuse, so today i wanted to post a little something for everybody. It’s one of the coolest pop slanted albums i’ve heard in a long time it’s called “Love Back By Force” by the Tronics. The name Tronics might ring a bell for all the Messthetics enthusiasts out there or any nerds of British DIY for that matter. If I tried (and I have) to imagine what it would sound like if the Troggs did stripped down bedroom recordings of the Television Personalities i’d imagine it would come out sounding something like “Love Backed By Force.” There are other, more left field influences on this album, too but those just add to the charm. This album comes very highly recommended.

Long Live Ziro Baby!

Hear – Crush On You

Download – Tronics “Love Backed By Force”

Last night, as a part of the Decibelle Festival, I saw a screening of The Gits; the new documentary about Mia Zapata and the Gits that was released earlier this year.

I was both inspired and saddened.

Zapata and The Gits were relatively new to me and as I had only seen them in the Doug Prad documentary Hype! for their two minute mention.

But as I watched the Gits film last night and really became immersed in the live footage, I slipped into one of my “wish I was there” moments, thinking about how cool it would have been to be in the crowd or at one of the house shows The Gits would often do at the Rat House.

If you’re new to The Gits, the film does a great job of introducing The Gits and telling their inspiring rise and formation in the early 90’s Seattle scene, and then the tragic story of Zapata’s rape, murder and how the long unsolved murder case was eventually solved ten years later.

You can check out more on the movie’s web site and learn about the film when my full Decibelle story review runs on Ink19 with producer and director comments gleened from the post-screening Q& A.

and now…some Live Exhaust updates…

It’s been a busy last two weeks with festivals and shows so, though it’s been a bit quiet at LE the last few days, you can look forward to some new insights and future experiments this week.

So how have your shows been going? Notice anything lately?

Kerri O’Kane (dir.)
The Gits ••••
Liberation Entertainment 

I discovered The Gits by chance, totally unaware of their story, and immediately fell in love. Raw, melodic punk, fronted by a woman who sounded like the lovechild of Joan Jett and Bessie Smith, I hadn’t heard anything like them. Ever. A little research later, I realised they were more than just an amazing band, they are a chapter in musical history.

Kerri O’Kane’s bittersweet film is one of the most important documentaries of the last decade, a no-frills, down to earth record of a band that changed the world for many people. The Gits were on the cusp of mainstream success, after years of support and loyalty from the Seattle underground, but it was an acknowledgment suffered rather then enjoyed. On July 7th 1993, frontwoman and poet Mia Zapata was raped and murdered by an unknown assailant. The bittersweet beauty of O’Kane’s film is that it is a journey of grief, tragedy and justice. When O’Kane began the project, the crime was an unsolved mystery. As filming commenced, the case was kept alive by an extended community of family, fans and fellow musicians, who raised money for legal fees and campaigned to keep the crime in the media spotlight. Released on the 15th anniversary of Mia’s death, the film documents not only the devastating loss of such a beautiful, talented being, but also the discovery and conviction of her killer over a decade later.

It would have been very easy for O’Kane to rely upon the tragedy of Mia’s horrific death for artistic purposes, using her as a Messianic punk rock saint and relying on tearjerk tactics to make an impact. Instead, she has honoured history by maintaining Zapata’s memory through plain truth and honest filmmaking. A treasure for fans, the documentary is made up of early video footage and artwork, in-depth lyrical discussions, and an abundance of frank interviews from Zapata’s family and friends, the surviving trio of Gits, and fellow musicians such as Joan Jett, Kathleen Hanna and members of 7 Year Bitch. From the bands’ beginnings living in the affectionately named Rat House, a communal building where local punk bands lived like one big family, to their growing fame and dedicated following both at home in Sub Pop Seattle and in Europe, ‘The Gits’ is not a weepy ode, but a celebration of the band as a whole and the legacy they have left.

O’Kane has captured The Gits for what they were: true, free-spirited punks, neither posing nor imitating but living life and creating beautiful music. While Mia’s death is addressed and confronted, it is not anger or grief that pervades the film but rather the poignant and lasting effect she had on everyone around her. O’Kane has immortalised her not as a tragic, female victim but as an example of how wonderful humans can be. ‘The Gits’ is not just a film for fans, it should be mandatory viewing for everyone old enough to work a DVD player; a poignant, sincere reminder that life, music and love are positive, powerful gifts that should be celebrated and honoured every day.

Charlotte Richardson Andrews
US release date: 07/07/08; UK release unconfirmed

Watch the trailer…

We are happy to announce we are able to extend the run of THE GITS to include Friday, Sunday, and Monday (July 11, 13, 14) at 7 and 9pm. The film will now play daily at 7 and 9pm through July 14, with no shows on Saturday July 12.

The GITS Movie
July 4 – 10, 2008
The Pioneer Theater
http://www.twoboots.com/pioneer

From the website:

Rumored to have been descended from Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, the incredibly magnetic frontwoman had a powerful, soulful voice that belied her inherent shyness and distinguished The Gits from other punk bands of that day.

This riveting documentary is part musical history and part murder mystery, brimming with rare performance footage dating from their Antioch College days through their subsequent move to Seattle just before the world’s ears suddenly tuned into the emerging northwest music scene. The Gits would become an integral and influential part of the milieu if largely unsung in comparison to fellow Seattle bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden. But just as they were about to make it big, the band was dealt a mighty blow with the sudden, violent loss of their friend and band member whose lyrics eerily foreshadowed events to come.

Mia’s murder became a rallying point for Seattle music scene, as the investigation ripped through the community with devastating results, leaving many female musicians feeling momentarily disempowered before turning their insecurity into anger and into a statement that would resonate with women the world over. A celebration of Mia’s life as well as a comprehensive testament to the band’s greatness as a whole. The film’s interviews reflect the enormous respect and love Mia’s peers had for her, and also the sadness over her absence that still haunts them today.

I’m going to go see it. Maybe I’ll see you there.