art is the new religion

It's Sunday afternoon, I'm doing

It's Sunday afternoon, I'm doing some internet research, and I boot up Real Rhapsody for some music to surf by. I figure "Lite Rock" will do the trick (I can see specific friends of mine rolling their eyes right now), so I enjoy some Seals & Crofts, a little Bread, and then some Alan Parsons Project, which was one of my favorite bands when I was about 5 years old. We know that scent is strongly tied to memory, but I say hearing is too, because a few of my earliest music memories start flooding into my head:

• The poster of Barry Manilow on the back of my bedroom door. "Can't Smile Without You" was my favorite song of his.
• Playing the 45 of "Ring My Bell" over and over on my toy record player
• Singing all the words to Billy Joel's "My Life"
• My brother making up a dance to Diana Ross's "Upside Down"
• Hearing a constant flow of Fleetwood Mac songs coming out of the radio in my mother's car, planting the seed for a lifetime obsession
• Being all about the unicorn and the pegasus (all girls my age will relate to this) and one day deciding that "Time" by the Alan Parsons Project was the perfect magical soundtrack for them

One of my favorite artists, Jonatha Brooke, led me to revisit A.P.P. this year when she covered "Eye in the Sky" on her latest CD "Back in the Circus". Jonatha has an extremely emotive voice, and her cover of the song brought new life to it for me. When it comes to expressive and emotive singing, Alan Parsons is rather lackluster, so I never realized that the "Eye in the Sky" lyrics were so pained and powerful (except for the chorus which makes no sense.)

MP3: Listen to Jonatha Brooke's version of "Eye in the Sky"

Now go buy albums by Jonatha. (Try Jonatha Brooke Live or 10 Cent Wings.)


What are your earliest musical memories? Write some in the comments section. You can be anonymous if you want (I understand these unicorn-Manilow stories can be pretty damning).

Ladies and germs, I present

Ladies and germs, I present to you VON IVA:

I saw this all-female bay area-based band open for Metric last night at Great American Music Hall, and they blew me away. They don't need no stinkin' guitars -- just bass, drums & keys behind the loud, proud blues-gospel-soul vocals of foxy, feral front-woman Jillian Iva. Love the Yeah Yeah Yeah's? Love PJ Harvey? Love your rock to make your heart pound and your shoulders shimmy?

Believe in Von Iva. You heard it here first.

Here's the first edition of

Here's the first edition of my weekly music picks for SFist. I let Jackson the editor pick the title.

What in the sam hill has gotten into Mark McGrath? Sugar Ray always annoyed me, and it's not like he had any credibility to lose, but he's recently crossed over into the aggressively-annoying category for me.

Exhibit A: He's now co-hosting "Extra". That's network television, meaning I sometimes have to accidentally see his smug mug when I'm flipping the channels.

Exhibit B: He's recorded a duet with Shania Twain called "Party For Two". Not only does this song have the evil voodoo production of Mutt Lange (thus defying categorization and being welcome on any and all radio formats), it also has a video featuring the madcap hijinks of Mark and Shania. Those two get totally wacky in the video, swinging from the chandelier, literally.

Sings Shania: "You'll be sexy in your socks!"
Sings Mark: "We could polish the floors!"

I have to go barf now. Head over to Stereogum.com for links to the video (under "shitty video alert"), if you have a strong stomach.

Last night there was an

Last night there was an eerily silent but beautiful lightning storm here in San Francisco. There wasn't any rain or any thunder, just lightning going off like flash bulbs in the night sky. Tonight should be just as much of a spectacle with the lunar eclipse. According to my careful calculations, here are the stats for this evening:

Moonrise: 6:09 pm Moon enters umbra: 6:14 pm Moon enters totality: 7:23 pm Middle of eclipse: 8:04 pm Moon leaves totality: 8:44 pm Moon leaves umbra: 9:53 pm Moon leaves penumbra: 11:02 pm Moonset: 8:06 am

OK fine, those aren't my calculations, I got them by using the Lunar Eclipse Computer, which you can use to calculate optimum viewing times in your neck o' the woods.
I need to get out of the rock I've been living under, because I had no idea Courtney Love was playing the The Fillmore last night until I read a concert review this morning. I saw Courtney live almost exactly a decade ago -- it was November 1, 1994, and Hole was headlining with very underrated opener Veruca Salt. It was the beginning of my sophmore year at UT and I had gotten to Liberty Lunch hours early with my friend Jenny who was also a huge fan of both bands.

When the doors finally opened, we positioned ourselves front and center behind the stage barricades, preparing ourselves to be smushed, overheated and totally impressed. We were enraptured by Veruca Salt's set, our heads turning to and fro as if we were spectators at a tennis match, trying to give equal attention to the sultry rockness of both Nina, stage left, and Louise, stage right.

Then came Hole's set. It was the morning after Halloween, which must have been quite a night for Courtney judging by the crusted body glitter and make-up caked over her face and drug-scarred arms. She was hoarse and hungover and cranky as hell; she could hardly sing but her presence was performance enough. At one point she screamed offstage to someone to get her a shot of whiskey. As I remember it, Jenny turned to me and whispered, "As if she needs one." In a remarkable feat of acoustics, we think Courtney somehow heard the comment from the stage, inspiring her to throw the cup of whiskey onto the audience members in the first few rows.

I escaped to the back of the club before the encore, wherein Courtney engaged in a scantily-clad crowd surfing expedition, then proceeded to berate the audience for groping her, sticking her mic in the faces of Jenny and others in the front row, demanding an explanation for their behavior. She capped off the performance by announcing she'd never play Austin again and storming away.

Maybe my pointless blogging hasn't

Maybe my pointless blogging hasn't been so pointless after all -- Check out my Tiny Telebration writeup on SFist.com.

Last night a few of

Last night a few of us bid Bon Voyage to 'Sef, who's on an NYC-bound Jetblue flight as I write this. His going away party got me all nostalgic for the one I had at Club DeVille back in '99 when I was leaving Austin for NYC. Sniff. We'll miss Sef a lot, but a few of us at the party decided that he has great taste in females and that we'll all just hang out with each other to cope. My goal is to coerce Jen, Melissa and April into a stitch-n-bitch with me.
Listen to snippets of a few songs from The Donnas' new album "Gold Medal" here. What's with snippets, anyway? If you're going to put music up for people to stream, please offer the whole dang song. You can listen to more songs on their website, which is worth checking out for the psychedelic unicorn graphics.
Today's quote:

"Tin-eared graph paper-brained accountants instead of music fans call all the shots at giant record companies now. The lowest common denominator rules. Forget honesty. Forget Creativity. The dumbest by the mostest that's the name of the game" - Jello Biafra

Thanks to The Heavenly States mailing list for sending me this quote. Go see them live, you won't be disappointed.

Did Duff McKagan make a

Did Duff McKagan make a deal with the devil? I remember what Duff looked like back in my grade school Gn'R worshipping days -- he was puffy, pasty, and as incoherent as Bill the Cat. But now, nearly 20 years later, somehow he's magically hot.

<-- then and now -->


For some reason I always get nervous before I have shows, and having two this weekend is making me twice as nervous. Listening to Ted Leo's new album Shake the Sheets on Rhapsody is making me feel a little better. The song "Shake the Sheets" could have been a Phil Collins hit in the '80s, no? I mean that in the best possible way.


My friend Justin linked to this Seventeenth Century Nun's Prayer on his blog -- I clicked through to read it because he never struck me as a religious chap. It's not your typical prayer, it's actually kind of funny. Here's a good excerpt:

"Keep me from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and on every occasion.... With my vast store of wisdom, it seems a pity not to use it all, but You know, Lord, I want a few friends at the end."

Amen to that.

All this time I've been

All this time I've been using DSL to connect to the internet, and in order to have DSL you have to have a phone line. Being one person with two different phone lines is kind of absurd when you think about it; but it's especially absurd when I look at the bill (charges, surcharges, taxes, fees, OY). So in a flash of brilliance, I decide to try broadband, cable internet, whatever you call it. In order to get high-speed internet from Comcast, I have to get cable TV. Up until now, I've prided myself on having plenty of television to watch with just my TV and the giant antenna perched atop it. While I'm already excited to watch the Food Network and find out which half hour MTV devotes to playing videos, my darkest fear is that I will get sucked into spending my Sunday afternoons watching Real World marathons. If you sense this is happening to me, please stage an intervention.
The other day I got an email from Bluford with an mp3 of a song he co-wrote with a girl in Nashville. It's very pop, kind of in the Hilary Duff vein, and it's called "I Like Me". Yet another reason why Blu rules -- he's writing empowering feminist pop songs for teenage girls. While I'm singing Blu's praises, read this funny journal entry he wrote and check out his page of camera phone photos.
Even though I was in New York during the entirety of CMJ, I didn't get to see any music (that's what we get for travelling to Woodstock twice in 3 days). Thanks to KEXP, we can click here to listen to archives of all of the following live in-studio performances:

Adem Arcade Fire Joseph Arthur Bobby Bare Jr. Richard Buckner The Concretes The Decemberists DeVotchKa Nicolai Dunger Sondre Lerche Magnet Radio 4 Radio Nationals Sea Ray Sons and Daughters Sufjan Stevens Ted Leo

Lastly, I have two shows for Little Queen this weekend:

SATURDAY 10/23
Buddha Bazaar
at Ceiba Boutique -- 1364 Haight St
2pm-8pm
FREE ADMISSION

-and-

SUNDAY 10/24
Feria Urbana
at Madrone Lounge - 500 Divisadero @ Fell Street
6-10 P.M.
FREE ADMISSION

Featuring... Bagged by Lea, HMA Designs, Blissen, Fancy JoJo Designs, Toto,
Bella Giorna Jewelry, Natalie Mingura Designs, My Dirty Dishes, Green Tea Baby, CMB Sweets, Little Queen, Saa-Z

At Laurie's house, I saw

At Laurie's house, I saw this picture of a Brussels Griffon wearing a pink doggie sweater & pearls in the Anthropologie catalog, and immediately became obsessed. These are the tiny dogs with normal dog bodies and bizarrely adorable Chewbacca faces. This dog-obsession has happened to me before with French Bulldogs -- usually after I do about a half hour of web research and looking at photos on Dogster, I'm reminded that dogs are a lot of work and I'm probably not yet ready for the commitment. Dogster is great for dog research -- after reading enough owner comments like "humps everything in sight, including thin air" and "DON'T touch my nose!", my obsession begins to wane. But how cute is Murray? And his brother Tango? Check out the smile on Lilly.

What I would give to spend a day with these fatties.
~
Last night I saw a commercial with Ted Nugent urging people to vote, with the slogan "Have it your way", sponsored by Burger King. According to a short news item on Blabbermouth.net:

"All of the spots are unbiased and devoid of political commentary," Burger King said.

Um, is it not crystal clear which candidate is going to get loudmouth, gun-toting maniac Ted Nugent's vote? Other artists included in the BK campaign are P. Diddy, Snoop Dogg, Michelle Branch, and Joel Madden, lead singer of Good Charlotte. Who picked these people? Does Good Charlotte have any fans who are old enough to vote?

The "Amazing Grace: Jeff

The "Amazing Grace: Jeff Buckley" screenings went phenomenally well -- all were sold out, they won an award from the CMJ Film Fest, and the response has been very exciting. Click here to read an article on RollingStone.com. It's still freakin weird to see myself onscreen, but I'm overwhelmingly proud to be a part of such a wonderful film, dedicated to a phenomenal artist who changed my life, and made by two women who have become two of my closest friends. Here's a photo of Laurie, Nyla, Peter and Mary standing in front of Two Boots before the CMJ screening.