My Way News – Mississippi Delta braces for historic flood
My Way News reports: “The bulging Mississippi River rolled into the fertile Mississippi Delta on Tuesday, threatening to wash away stately homes and shotgun shacks, and destroy fields of cotton, rice and corn in a flood of historic proportions.”
My Way News – Fire and rain: Fed scientists point to wild April
My Way News reports: “April was a historic month for wild weather in the United States, and it wasn’t just the killer tornado outbreak that set records, according to scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. April included an odd mix of downpours, droughts and wildfires.”
My Way News – Church burning deepens tumult of Egypt transition
My Way News reports: “Relations between Egypt’s Muslims and Christians degenerated to a new low Sunday after riots overnight left 12 people dead and a church burned, adding to the disorder of the country’s post-revolution transition to democracy.”
Comment: Praying for the church in Egypt.
My Way News – Al-Qaida in Iraq pledges support for al-Zawahri
My Way News reports: “Al-Qaida’s front group in Iraq reaffirmed its support Monday for the terror network’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, a week after U.S. commandos killed Osama bin Laden.”
My Way News – Combat stirs Libya's deadlocked eastern front
My Way News reports: “Rebels battled Moammar Gadhafi’s forces on a deadlocked front line in eastern Libya, and NATO warplanes struck Tripoli early Tuesday in the heaviest bombing of the Libyan capital in weeks.”
My Way News – Yemeni security forces fire on protesters, 3 dead
My Way News reports: “Security forces backed by army units opened fire Sunday on protesters demanding the ouster of Yemen’s longtime president, killing three, an opposition activist said. In all, tens of thousands of protesters mobilized in several cities and towns, according to activists – the latest installment of daily protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh that have been staged for almost three months.”
My Way News – Thousands of Moroccans call for reforms
My Way News reports: “Thousands of Moroccans have demanded political reforms in this Muslim kingdom during an anti-violence march in Marrakech, where 17 people died in a cafe bombing last month. Sunday’s march was the latest by the February 20 movement that regularly mounts pro-democracy protests.”
All artists must hone their craft before they experience large scale acceptance and success. Bob Dylan played in coffee houses for whoever happened to come in for a cup of joe. The Beatles played dank cellars and pubs before they ever wooed a wider audience. Elvis Presley sang in counrty western bars and truck stops prior to being the “King.” In the immortal words of Richard Starkey -”You got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues and you know it don’t come easy.”
Ari Hest grew up surrounded by music. His father wrote jingles for toy commercials and his mother was (and still is) a cantor at a New York Jewish temple. He was raised on music that moved people to action. He was always a good singer with a great range and decent guitar skills.
Hest played the colleges and the Battles of the Bands. Many others did as well. Most have ended in obscurity. It is simply the nature of the music business. It is a difficult creative business where the business part lacks soul and heart and the creative part is all soul and heart.
Just like his father Hest thought he had found that hook which would propel him to musical and financial success. It was a new business model for music in an internet age that he called “52.” Here is how it worked. For the entire year of 2008, he wrote, recorded and released a new song every week and sent them via email to subscribers who paid a one time fee to receive them throughout the year. The, in 2009, he released an album, Twelve Mondays, that collected 12 of the 52 songs selected by his subscribers which he reworked and rerecorded.
Although 52 was somewhat successful it did not propel Hest to financial and musical success. However, writing a new song every week did one very important thing for Hest – it made him hone his craft. He learned lessons in nuance, drama and the emotive nature of music. His songwriting improved. His skill in arrangement grew. An expertise in the use of strings and percussion flourished.
It was his songwriting that improved the most. His first song in 1996, Hest recalls, was about “something involving a made-up girlfriend and a hot-air balloon”. By the end of 2009, his lyrics now swelled with allusion and emotion, and evoked tales with which his audience could relate. Gone were the cotton candy, made-up girlfriends and hot-air balloons. Hest learned to connect with his audience with something worth saying and his audiences began to believe this quirky folk rock balladeer had something worth hearing.
In 2010 Hest went back into the studio and, on March 1, 2011, out came his new album “Sunset Over Hope Street.” The album consists of eleven folk-infused well-orchestrated songs. Each is awash in strings. Violins, cellos, guitars, bass, percussion, drums and keyboards intertwine to create stirring music. It is folk music but with deeper, more involved musicianship.
It is unfortunate that the album is named after what may be the worst effort on the album. The best and most accessible lyrical track is “Business Of America”:
Here is Hest at his most sardonic, critical and poignant. Bob Dylan couldn’t have done any better.
Hest has grown. He has paid his dues. With Sunset Over Hope Street Hest is now poised for large scale acceptance and success. Best of all it is now worth listening to what he has to say.
- Old School
Buy here: Sunset Over Hope Street
One of the funnest things about this mysterious world that we call Ripple is that we don’t always agree with each other. Often times, I’ll look at Pope’s musical discoveries with a look of utter dismay, and Pope will return the favor by addressing my choices with pure boredom. It’s what makes the world revolve. We all like different things. We all dig different sounds. The job of the Ripple is merely to tell you, our waveriders, what each one of us hears in a piece of music and how it gets us off.
Never is this dichotomy between the Pope and I made more clear than with Bang Tango.
I remember years ago when we first discussed these guys, Pope dismissed them completely with a brief wave of his hand, a shrug of his shoulders, and a look that closely approximated an acute onset of food poisoning. I, on the other hand, found them oddly compelling with their massive bass heavy groove, dark glam, and sizzling guitars. In truth, I understand exactly where Pope was coming from, and in many ways it represents the very problems that this LA quintet faced in making it big. Pope was a metalhead. He came from the point of view of Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, even Guns and Roses. When he heard Bang Tango his knee jerk response was, “this ain’t metal.” And it ain’t.
I came from a post punk world where bands like The Cult, Sisters of Mercy, Mission UK, and Specimen ruled my orgasmic listening times. Yet, I’d been a metalhead, trouncing heads to the early NWOBHM terrors of Iron Maiden (Dianno years), Angelwitch, Witchfynde, Saxon, and Motorhead. In Bang Tango I found the perfect mathematical union of two sets. The aggression, riffing and searing leads of metal fused to that pulsating, dark post-punk glam of the early Cult.
And listening to this newly MetalMind re-issued disc, I still do.
Bang Tango never really had a chance to get the respect they deserved. Being part of the LA Sunset Strip scene of the late ’80’s, they were immediately lumped in with the hair metal bands that ruled the streets. And with the dual guitars of Mark Knight and Kyle Stevens and some serious Slash-esque riffing, they immediately did nothing to dispel that association. But they weren’t metal. In singer Joe LeSte they had a shrieker of undefined tone. He could belt out metal, he could scream out a post-punk frenzy. He could harmonize some glam. And in bass player Kyle Kyle and kit pounder Tigg Kelter they had a backing section that really wanted nothing more than to lay down some serious funk. And they all had the look. I mean, The Look, with chiseled cheekbones, dyed hair, and an image taken from The Cult’s Love album.
Funk. Glam. Goth. Metal. That’s Bang Tango.
And I dig it.
And maybe it’s because Bang Tango were so many disparate things that they still sound so fucking good to my ears today. Disclaimer. I’ve had Psycho Cafe in my collection for years and I’d pulled it off the shelves not infrequently, as I have with Dancin’ on Coals, their follow-up. Having said that, to me, Bang Tango have aged much better than most of the Sunset Strip crap that came out in the late eighties. Kyle’s bass thuds and pulses with more unbridled sex than I ever heard before. Joe’s vocals screech and dive and seduce with more passion. And the dual guitars shred with more metal velocity than I ever gave them credit. Basically, this shit is just plain ol’ good glam metal and definitely worth a revisit in 2011.
Psycho Cafe let’s it all out right there on the first number. From the muted guitar, bass, and effect opening of “Attack of Life,” right into that throbbing post-gothic metal riff. Both guitars blaze and steam through this baby. When LeSte comes in, shrieking in full higher octave, we’re in a full on glam blitzkrieg. Some may not dig his voice. Some may call if forced. I dig it. Full on dig it. The song quickly locks into a comfortable groove that I’m sure tore it up live. Then as LeSte drops his voice to a lower register for the kick-ass chorus, I realize who these guys really were. It may sound strange but they were the American Billy Idol, marrying that image, that post punk vitality, that snotty sneer to some beefy metal riffs and serving that whole thing on a steaming platter of funky pop. Maybe a touch of the Cult also. Either way, they were much more Red Hot Chili Peppers than they were Metallica.
“Someone Like You,” is of course the piece de resistance on the album and probably the song the band is best remembered for. With it’s “Sweet Child of Mine” harmonic-laden intro to it’s staggering build up beat, this certainly seemed to be metal at home on the Strip. Then comes that breakdown, Kyle’s massively funky bass and the chugging guitar riff that revs and soars like a charging locomotive. LeSte’s voice is all over the place here, shrieking and wailing like a siren, then bottoming out in Billy Idol baritone. Guitar solos whip in and out like hornets buzzing from a hive under attack. This is truly one of my favorite goth/glam/funk/metal tunes of all time. A hands-over-the-head screamer.
“Wrap My Wings,” seems to settle into a monstrously funky mid-tempo groove that just oozes sex appeal. Again, Stevens and Knight prove that they were vastly under-rated axemen, sizzling their strings with wailing electric solos. Too goth/funk for metal? Too metal for the goth crowd? Probably. That’s probably why the album never broke big. I’d have liked to see these cats play this shit at the infamous London Batcave goth club and see how it would’ve been received. Would they have got it? Would it have been too metal? Did the boys need a club scene all their own? Who knows. All I know is that to this post-punk metalhead, this is some seriously fun stuff.
“Breaking Up a Heart of Stone,” lays it all back on the line, with it’s bass-laden groove. The bridge brings in a touch of pop as the song roars to it’s big chorus hook. I’m sure back in the day, the chicks dug this one cause it rocked and you could move your ass to it. “Shotgun Man,” roars back with a hyped up metal guitar attack, but as always the funk is still there. Percolating under LeSte’s shrieking. Bookending that chunky guitar-burst chorus. Kyle really goes out of his skull on this one, popping and thumping that bass as if he was auditioning for Parliment or the Bar-Kays. Other songs like the chugging “Don’t Stop Now,” the intensely funky “Love Injection” the somber “Just for You,” and the frenzy-neo-metallic-Chili-Peppers funk freak of “Do What Your Told” keep the energy raving and explore all the aspects of this band. In fact, “Do What Your Told” is such an ecstasy burst of fiery alt-funk metal that it’s shocking the song wasn’t bigger.
So where does this leave us? In my mind, Bang Tango were a band that was vastly misunderstood. Lumped in with the hair metal scene, it’s no wonder many metalheads dismissed them. They were too different. Way too different. Perhaps like another lost Sunset Strip casualty, Bang Bang, these cats were simply too many things for people to identify with. They had a unique sound when every band sounded the same. They had a unique look when the others all looked the same.
But it’s this difference that captivates me. Glam, funk, goth, metal. They were a little bit of it all and brewed their swirling fury into an intoxicating beverage that still goes down extremely easy today.
–Racer
buy here: Psycho Cafe
New Releases
Man Man – Life Fantastic
Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact
Thee Oh Sees – Warm Slime
Ducktails- III
Neil Young – Harvest (Remastered Reissues)
Neil Young – S/T (Remastered Reissues)
Houses – All Night
It’s Monday, May 9th and we’ve got a fantastic show(s) for you this evening…
Kicking off our night are two fantastic artists from Philadelphia coming through…BR’ER + SCALLION. Both acts play quirky & somber music reminiscent of sayyyyyy The Magnetic Fields or Tunng or something else. They were sent our way by some kids in Idaho (yeah…I don’t know either?) but we’ve heard nothing but good things! They hit the loft at 6pm.
(sweet tour poster!)
After that sweet start, move on over with us to The Echo patio at 9pm where we will be celebrating the release of the flamboyantly vaudevillian MAN MAN’s new LP “Life Fantastic”, out on Anti-. (Also from Philadelphia…what’s with that?)
(Man Man “Life Fantastic”)
MAN MAN’s latest is another chaotic & careening ride through the same dark waters as their previous records but this time finds them trading some of that energy for darker & moodier moments. The album sounds more focused, no doubt in part as much to the bands growth as it is to Mike Mogis’ production. We’ll be spinning this fantastic album all the way through starting at 10pm. And as always your Origami homies will be spinning fine ass jams for your spank bank from 9pm until 1am.
Also tonight at The Echo, Origami Vinyl presents THE BIXBY KNOLLS as they kick off their May residency. Joined by BOWERY BEASTS & STEVENSON RANCH DAVIDIANS, this is the start of a month sure to be full of some fine power pop & arena rock jams.
Toodles!
It’s probably just me but I still want Lilly Town released as a single, somehow, someway!
from Wikipedia:
“Lilly Town”: The song was planned as the second single of Psychédélices, but “Fifty-Sixty” was released instead. It was later changed to be released as the third single from the album, but the record label decided to end the promotion of the album. However, the song did get a minimum release in Mexico. It was sent to Mexican radio stations in March 2008. It proved to be successful in Mexican radio stations, enetering the chart of the most played songs.
It is “relatable”, it is Alizée singing about things she likes. This format has always had appeal. So many of her early hits were about things that pertained to her. It makes it personal and interesting. Along the lines of Moi… Lolita, J’en ai marre, Lui ou toi, Mon maquis… (I still want to know more about Hey Amigo and Barcelona)
Psychédélices had a song for Juliette (Mademoiselle Juliette), and one for Edie (Fifty-Sixty) now lets release the song as a single for Alizée (Lilly Town).
I truly hope Lilly Town finds its way on to the special album that is being considered. This is my lobby for that hope. There is even enough English with that adorable accent to appeal to the English speaking audience.
Alizée
chocolate mousee
OR
creme brulee
inquiring minds want to know 
