funny how theres been a lot more talk about music on this blog lately and i have been suspiciously absent. I was also planning on meeting up with oso and abogado in dc, but again i was nowhere to be seen. why oso puts up with me, i’ll never guess…such worthy grounds for divorce, i know.

i am following oso’s trend (and new requirement) that the titles of all posts be obscure lyrics from good bands. let me give you a little rundown on what music has been happening to me lately.

it all started on a cold friday night on March 11th, when Kid Nixon, Joelle Graboise and I went down to Crash Mansion for their weekly free friday night shows with open bar from 10 -11pm. if you’ve ever been to these you agree that the mafia is involved somehow, someway. i wish i could elaborate… anyway, the three Vias were all helping ourselves to the open bar, with two to four drinks sitting in front of us on the table. yes we’re just that cheap. the open bar came and went, and so did bands. most of them were from out of town and most of them sucked. the night was getting late and our disinterest grew with each band that took to that nice- big- comfy stage. we began to sink further and further into those plush-leather-couches that put us about 4 feet from the stage. joelle’s brother was in town along with his fiance and the “bucket of PBR” they ordered sat on the table filled with melted ice and 2 cans…some stranger straggled by and eyed the bucket and asked Joelle if he could have one. Joelle gave him a Via Violenta demo. the blurry eyed stranger looked at it and said “oh i can have one but i got to take this cd? thanks” as he walked away. Thats a common reaction to Via Violenta that I have noticed, people get offended when you try to share it with them. and that was typical of Joelle to give out a demo with every interaction he has with people. anyway

we waited until the last band which was a brooklyn band called Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. “oh i’ve seen these guys’ name around” i told Kid Nixon…”What?” he couldnt hear me. The band took the stage and I remember thinking there was a lot of them. Then they began to play and it hit me. I turned to Nixon with a smile, he smiled and nodded, we looked to Joelle, he was scanning the crowd for girls. classic Joelle. The band kept playing, .these guys did not sound like the other bands from the night. Alec Ounsworth, the singer, obviously listened to too much Dylan (yes that is possible) with his voice nasal and cracked. he took dancing lessons from the Talking Heads videos he mustve seen on mtv growing up as a kid (MTV used to play music videos)….and the Violent Femmes gave Alec courage. I turned around to look at the audience’s reaction; miraculously the crowd was reborn, 3 – 4 times the crowd of the bands before. the keyboardist/guitarist bounced around which made the crowd bounce around. it was fun. he was singing about satan. Me, Rajeev, Kid Nixon and Big Freddie, went to go see them a couple months later at the Southstreet Sea Port. They were uninspired, the sound quality sucked. outdoor shows are hard for sound. david byrne was there. he was there alone and had a bike helmet clipped to his square backpack. he was eating mozzarella sticks. i walked up to him and said hello. he licked his thumbs.

“oh i love the Talking Heads song that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah covers,” I said.
“Which song is a cover?” David Byrne asked.
“Oh you know, all of them!” I high fived him and walked away.

Many months later and the P-bomb dropped was dropped. Things would never be the same. I got a hold of their album. it did not have the immediate impact their live show did…i was unimpressed and mildly annoyed. Around the same time i started hearing a song on college radio called Abel by another Brooklyn band called The National. the singing sounded like Frank Black.vI checked out the rest of their album, and i took to it immediately even though that was the only song that sounded like Frank Black. I then began to read about a girl named Leslie Feist and i checked out her album. The first two songs and I could not stop thinking about how I had not heard of something so gorgeous before. It might have been because the album had not been officially released yet. how i got a copy i’ll never know. anyway, this post isnt about feist, because this one was.

So i burned a cd with Feist, Clap Your Hands, and The National. Couldnt stop listening to Feist, usually skipped over Clap Your Hands, and listened to The National. Soon I read that The National are going on tour. i had to buy tickets because i loved the album. i found out the opening band was called Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Cool, I can check them both out again. Oh, Feist is also playing at the Knitting Factory too. coincedence?? probably.

Kid Nixon and I went to The National show. Clap Your Hands rocked. The National were uninteresting. I stopped listening to the National album and fell for the Clap Your Hands record. The moral of this story? Abortion is a woman’s right to choose.