Or “new” within the last few months, at least. I haven’t really posted a non-biz thing since SXSW so I guess basically I wanted to write about some new things I’ve been getting excited about over the last couple of months. It is going to be too long. Cool?? Cool.

So there has been one TV show and one movie over the last little while that I have been totally losing it over. I mean really, I can barely hold it together how excited I am about these things. It’s weird.

The TV show is PARTY DOWN.

OMG. You guys. Do you know about this show?? If you’ve talked to me in the last couple weeks you probably do. I haven’t been this excited about a TV show since Pushing Daisies. I tell everybody to know I watch it, and then they do, and thank me. Go watch it. You will thank me. Here are some reasons why:

a) the team behind it. really just “Paul Rudd” should tell you all you need to know, but also Rob Thomas (not the Matchbox 20 guy but the guy behind Veronica Mars, which I’ve been told might actually be great) and 2 other dudes (John Enbom and Dan Etheridge, also of VM) have apparently formed a production team called “tree” which is I guess is an acronym of their last names. Tree’s little tag at the end of the show changes every episode which I think is pretty funny. Like you know how “it’s always sunny in philadelphia”s end thing, with the picture of the guys and the voiceover of some backwards-masked sounding thing, changes every season? Maybe you don’t know that, I guess I am seriously a dvd geek. but anyway I’ve never seen a series where this changed every single show, and at the one on the last episode, I actually laughed out loud. Weird. OK I digress, this isn’t a great opening argument… Anyway also, speaking of “it’s always sunny,” and good things, Fred Savage directed half the episodes of the first season of Party Down. A+.

b) the writing is EXCELLENT. The jokes are hilarious and original. It’s a tiny bit reminiscent of shows like The Office, in that it’s a workplace comedy centered around a loveable insane loser boss played by a charismatic actor in his (hopefully) breakout role, but it is NOT shot as a mockumentary and I think that really helps its cause; things are fully scripted and seem really tight. So more like Arrested Development and Flight of the Conchords (without music) in that sense. And the characters are complex!! Amazingly so for a 10-episode first series actually. If they were one-dimensional, this show would be much less interesting, but instead they often act in the opposite way you’d expect from cartoony versions of characters who’d fit their general descriptions. Also their relationships with each other are complex! So that is really cool. They all interact with each other in very specific ways that have a lot of depth and warmth. I love the Kyle/Constance relationship. And the Henry/Ron relationship. Which brings me to:

c) the cast. They are absolutely incredible. Almost everybody from this show – from the main characters to the one-episode-each guest stars – comes from one (or more) of three camps/previously awesome teams (either as a main player, or at least has had some bit parts): The State (can’t-fail winners; I just pre-ordered the dvd coming out in july!), Team Apatow (almost always yes), and Veronica Mars (which I guess I’ll be watching soon). THEY INCLUDE:

Ken “as a god damned goof” Marino as Ron “soup’r crackers is the fastest growing non-poultry non-coffee franchise in all of southern california” Donald,

a former screw-up who is trying to get his life on track as team leader of Party Down Catering with aspirations to run a crappy chain restaurant. He’s fanatical about his job, and at first you think he’s gonna be the stereotypical taskmaster boss, yet he still manages to constantly fail in surprising and hilarious ways.

Adam “a cappella sweet child of mine” Scott as Henry “are we having fun yet?!” Pollard,

a failed actor stuck with an awful commercial catchphrase who returns to Party Down after 8 years trying to “make it”. He’s cynical about his life yet somehow still endearing. For some reason I identify with his character best just like I did with Jim/Tim of The Office, like I usually think of him as the main character even though like Steve Carrell/Ricky Gervais, Ken Marino is really the “star”. I like my life and also I am not a dude so I have yet to figure out why this is, so I guess maybe we are set up by the writing to do so.

Lizzy “jason segel’s other freaks&geeks girlfriend” Caplan as Casey “let’s go rub our parts together” Klein,

Henry’s love interest in a relationship that is played out in a really interesting way that really holds your attention even though they get together right away and avoid that will-they-won’t-they sitcom junk. Also it takes up a very small percentage of each episode so it really leaves you hanging on wanting more. She’s a struggling comedienne who keeps missing out on her big break while dealing with her soon-to-be ex husband.

Martin “i think bill’s drunk” Starr as Roman “i’m into hard sci-fi” De Beers,

a nerdy wannabe screenwriter who takes some things way too seriously and has some of the best lines on the show (“I don’t know, a squid? There are other options…”) He’s also got a crush on Casey, with whom he imagines he has a chance.

Ryan “i guess he was on veronica mars” Hansen as Kyle “so you’re in the overall handsome business” Bradway,

Martin Starr’s foil who loves to jab him as a shallow pretty-boy with a shit-eating grin who enjoys the most success of any on the crew in getting roles as an actor, mostly by sleeping with people.

Jane “i’m a mole, george” Lynch as Constance “why do you have a picture of joan rivers” Carmell,

an aging former actress who had a few crappy background-player parts, the experience of which she draws upon to act as Kyle’s mentor.

And Jennifer “from the christopher guest movies along with jane lynch” Coolidge as Bobbie “usually when i’m in nature i drop a cap” St. Brown, Constance’s roommate and Jane Lynch’s replacement for the last 2 episodes. She was great but I’d love to see them both together; I wonder if Jane Lynch is gone for good now that Glee is looking so great? (Ugh why can’t I find a screenshot of Jennifer Coolidge’s character?? I’ve been googling for like half an hour!)

Did you like how I quoted/referenced my favorite projects of each actor and sweet lines from each character? Probably not, I bet that looks confusing.

d) the guest stars. The show is about a catering company, so it makes sense that each episode is set at a different party that they work, so there’s always something interesting going on in the setting. And thus a new slew of guests in each one. Rob Corddry shows up, as do Ed Begley Jr, Sulu (George Takei), and Jo Lo Truglio. Dr. Ken Jeong has a recurring role as Ken Marino’s boss. My favorites are JK Simmons as a foul-mouthed movie exec throwing his bratty daughter’s Sweet 16 on a boat, and Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars/Sarah Marshall) as an uptight and more-successful leader of a competing catering company.

And lastly e) the whole show is on Netflix Instant Watch. AKA The Best Idea The Internet Has Had Yet. If you don’t have Netflix I’m sure it is elsewhere on the internet too, which is where you’re gonna have to find it, because it airs (aired actually, last week was the last episode of the season) on Starz and who in the world actually has Starz?

I think that’s probably about enough on this show. I could spend hours talking your ear off about it but really you just need to go watch it before I ruin it. If you’re interested in further reading, though, I’d recommend this surprisingly funny Vanity Fair interview with Adam Scott (or maybe Vanity Fair is always funny?), this interview with Martin Starr, this one with Rob Thomas, and this videogum post I’m ashamed I didn’t beat to the online-posting punch, since they apparently dragged their heels for so long even to watch the show.

Okay. There is some other new TV I’ve been enjoying, by the way. I have a night job that makes me watch TV constantly now so I actually have real legitimate opinions on a lot of it I’d otherwise never have heard of, but usually I still have to go out of my way for the good stuff. So I thought Cupid was great, and it’s a real bummer it got canceled; that was somehow also helmed by Rob Thomas, and starred another State friend (at least he was in The Ten), Bobby Cannavale. Along with Endless Mike Hellstrom!! And Amanda Peet’s best friend Elisa from Jack & Jill. Ha. Fine, I used to watch the WB. Didn’t you?? Anyway apparently this was a sometimes word-for-word remake of an earlier short-lived series that starred Jeremy Piven. I don’t really know anything about that so I’ve got no basis for comparison, but I liked this one.

Delocated was also really great, and Parks and Recreation (aka what my friend Brian calls “the rebranding of The Office”) will probably be better next season (I’m really rooting for it!)…I also liked Kath & Kim so I’m sorry that one got canceled too, although those who have seen the Australian version have strong opinions to the contrary. I’m into Eastbound and Down although I’m not sure I think doing that thing about being as offensive as possible on TV, “pushing the boundaries” or whatever is really that exciting this late in the cultural game, and also shows about rednecks almost always annoy me, but I do like how dark it is. Sit Down, Shut Up, although involving about 80% of the Arrested Development crew AND Will Forte and Kristen Chenoweth, somehow sucked, so I’m sorry it got canceled after 4 episodes, but not that sorry. Time to focus on the AD movie now you guys.

As for movies: I saw Rudo y Cursi and sort of half-assedly attended a Tribeca Q&A with Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal (swoon into a faint) and the director Carlos Cuaron (whose brother teamed up with Guillermo del Toro AND Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu to produce the film – WHOA those guys are ALL friends?!? EVERY Mexican filmmaker and actor I like worked on this movie?!). I thought the movie was very good although some people seem to think it lacked enough depth for what that excellent team should be capable of. That might be true; I was busy trying not to faint so I didn’t notice. Even though Gael had stupid cheetah hair for over half the movie, and Diego had a ridiculous moustache throughout the whole thing, it was pretty hard for me to get past how nice they are to look at. What a girl, right.

(umm, see?)

They also really did have interesting and intelligent things to say about the state of filmmaking in that Q&A though, I wonder if there’s a transcript. If I remember correctly I was especially impressed with Diego Luna’s thoughts, which was cool since Gael seems to be more the American indie sweetheart for a lot of “us”. I think I love them equally. As if it matters. Oh also, Gael’s character Cursi’s music video for an interpretation of “I Want You To Want Me” was AMAZING.

Also I Love You, Man and Observe and Report were both pretty funny, although not knock-me-over funny like I was hoping they would be. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s up with The Hangover and Funny People and maybe possibly Year One though.

But the BEST movie I’ve seen this year by far is ADVENTURELAND.

Have you guys seen this movie?? After this videogum post about an early trailer, I was not that excited. But as it turns out, that trailer completely misrepresents this movie, including basically every gross gag or ‘adult’ joke from the whole thing packed into a minute and a half. In fact it contains some stuff that didn’t even make it into the final cut that I saw, TWICE, in the theater. The rest of the movie is a thoughtful, warm, intelligent portrayal of a group of friends in the summer after college, working a crappy job at an amusement park apparently based on one on Long Island but actually shot at Kennywood near Pittsburgh, which I’ve been to as a kid and my friend Caleb used to for real work at. I went with Caleb and his wife Casey to best enhance the viewing experience. It worked.

Anyway. Much like with Party Down, the writing in this movie is superb. It’s incredibly funny – I was laughing constantly throughout the whole thing – but it’s also got a real emotional core. Basically it just felt profoundly “real” to me in a way that’s rare to encounter, especially in films lately. I guess this is mostly due to the subject matter – haven’t you had a crappy summer job like this, too? Where you’re stuck doing stupid menial tasks, with a group of people you don’t even necessarily like but who basically become your surrogate family, and maybe you come away with a huge romantic crush and grow up a little? I think most of “us” have (do you like this “us” that I’m developing?). But beyond that, how well this movie came together is also a credit to how well-developed the characters are, how spot-on the dialogue is and also how well it’s acted. Jesse Eisenberg RULES as the lead character James. I loved him in Squid and the Whale, he was definitely the best part of the otherwise-depressing Roger Dodger (in fact he does a really hilarious walking tour of NYC in that DVD’s bonus features…uhhh sorry) – basically what I’m saying is I was a fan of Jesse Eisenberg before. But now I am like a SUPER FAN. I totally want to marry the guy. He is perfect in Adventureland. He is ready to go for lead roles from here on out, attention Hollywood (or non-Hollywood please). His mannerisms are recognizable from his earlier work but his face is more mature here than it was before (well duh, he’s older), you can see he is all grown up. After the movie, Caleb called him “the serious Michael Cera”; I’ve since seen him called “the Jewish Michael Cera” (specifically in this review which I otherwise 100% agree with). I’m not sure how far either of those qualifiers really go but I certainly agree that his style is of a similar ilk, although he’s older so really George Michael is some version of him (the suburban southern Cali Jesse Eisenberg?) and not the other way around.

As for the rest of the cast, they were all perfect too. Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are hilarious as the managers of the park. Are those two dating? If not maybe they should be, they make such a good team. Also Kristen Stewart (of Twilight I guess? which confuses slashfilm) was GREAT as James’ love interest (NOT a manic pixie dream girl, in fact just the opposite). Matt Bush was really funny as a minor character named “Frigo”; I hadn’t heard of him before (although he was on one episode each of Scrubs and Veronica Mars – it all comes around!) but I kept wondering if he was Jorma from Lonely Island/SNL. He was not. Okay and the biggest shocker: Ryan Reynolds was also great! Whuuut. He played his role perfectly, delivered a few funny lines very well, and did not suck at all! Is he the next Seann William Scott? I am not sure if I can handle this. OH AND, MARTIN STARR was the bomb as Joel, a buddy who gets rejected by a girl for being Jewish (which is funny since in Knocked Up he gets picked on for NOT being Jewish)…I also, by the way, recently watched for the first time and promptly purchased Knocked Up, and also bought and started re-watching Freaks and Geeks. I did not mean to do this, but there is so much Martin Starr in my life right now. He is going to start showing up in my dreams or something. I feel weird about it.

One little thing I think is really cool about this movie is that the actors are actually playing characters who are relatively close to their real age. I’m so used to seeing twentysomething actors playing high school students that for a minute when the main characters go out drinking or something, I automatically think “yeah okay, how did they get into that bar? Movies are so unrealistic about this stuff” – and then I remember that they are actually playing recent college grads. It’s refreshing! Good job writing+casting that, you guys.

The music in the movie is spot on, too. I’ve been listening to the soundtrack a lot. It’s heavy on Lou Reed, as are the references to him in the movie. Oh yeah the movie is set in the 80s. I think it’s maybe semi-autobiographical about writer-director Greg Mottola, who also directed Superbad and a few episodes each of Arrested Development and Undeclared. I like you Greg Mottola.

Okay I think that’s all I have to say about this. Like I said I saw this movie twice and I am still not over it. I wish I could buy it on DVD right now so I could watch it every day. There’s about one movie every year that I get just crazy fanatical about, last year it was The Fall – this year it is Adventureland. Accept it.

I think I had some other stuff to talk about but this is getting WAY too long. Oh yeah real quick, music!:

Did you guys hear that Merge compilation they put out recently? Non-Merge artists covering some Merge favorites to celebrate 20 years for the label. The whole thing is REALLY good, but my favorite is surprisingly not the Mountain Goats’ East River Pipe cover – it’s The National and St. Vincent covering Crooked Fingers’ “Sleep All Summer”. I like the original, but I like this version MUCH more. “I would change for you but babe that doesn’t mean I’m gonna be a better man.” wow. I listen to it seriously every day, often two or three times in a row. I can’t believe I’m not sick of it yet. It is that good. When Annie Clark starts her verse-piece that goes “There must be a better way to pull a whole apart/To keep a world from caving in/Another way to while away from you, frozen and blue”, I get chills all over. Every time. Like two months into this. What is going on? So I guess even though it’s a cover, this is pretty much definitely my favorite song of the year.

I also really loved Casiotone for the Painfully Alone’s Vs Children. It took me WAY too long to get it done, but I even finally reviewed it for the Tripwire. So check that out if you haven’t gotten enough of reading things by now. What’s up there is pretty much what I meant to say; a little bit of the sense was edited weirdly I think by the removal of some paragraph breaks (an editor TOOK OUT line breaks between thoughts? Whuut), and my intro isn’t as strong as I meant for it to be because a chunk was taken out although I understand why and do think that was largely for the best (just wish I got the chance to rewrite myself a little). Anyway that’s how it always goes when things get edited. The Tripwire is much better about that kind of thing than other sites I’ve written for.

Alright you guys. That is enough. I’m not sure why I wrote all this, I’m sure you did not read it, but somehow it feels nice to have out there anyway. Blogging!

Whew!

So here’s another TOTALLY SWEET record I’m working for LIFT I’ve neglected to blab about on here yet. It’s cause I’ve been too busy blabbing about it on the phones! But the internet deserves to know too, I suppose. Don Diablo went for adds 2 weeks ago and it’s awesome!

DON DIABLO

LIFE IS A FESTIVAL

Ministry of Sound

This record is CLASSY. My second Ministry of Sound release (after Dizzee Rascal) is absolutely the most accessible, the most radio-friendly and just generally likeable thing I’ve yet handled at LIFT. Dude knows what is up. I’ve been rockin this thing on my ipod for a while now and I can’t stop playing a few of the tracks…”Music Is My Life” and “Get On The Floor” are especially my jams. Can’t wait for the rest of the world to really get into this along with me!

We slammed onto #2 most added on RPM in the add week, but just missed hitting the charts last week for some weird reason. Let’s fix that now!!

Contact me with feedback or download/hard copy/station ID/interview requests!

contact info for this project:

jenn@promolift.com

718.238.0234

http://www.promolift.com/lift_main.html

http://www.myspace.com/dondiablo

STREAM:

Hey!! Here’s another thing I’ve been working for a little while, threw it up on the ‘current projects’ page but haven’t mentioned on here. I still can’t believe I landed this project – Deadmau5 is a superstar at electronic radio!! Dude has been called, not unjustly, the best electro/house DJ currently working.

DEADMAU5

AT PLAY

Play Records

This record is “10 Full-Length DJ Friendly Unmixed Tracks”, which means it wasn’t designed to be an “album” although it could certainly play like one. What it was designed for was for each track, which has been separated into its contingent parts and laid out in an audible line, to be then chopped up and re-mixed by live DJs. SUCH A COOL IDEA.

If you’re a hardcore Deadmau5 fan you might recognize several of these songs in different forms; if you’ve only heard Random Album Title, you’ll only recognize one of them. Pretty much all are winners.

This record has been KILLING IT on the charts. We hit #3 on the RPM adds list (on 4/6) and have quickly climbed up to #15 on the RPM Top 40 last week. But I think we can do better!! I truly believe this is the best, coolest, most well-known name, most quality music, that I have worked thus far; plus it’s 10 tracks rather than the EPs I’ve otherwise been working. AND he’s Canadian which gives you Can-Con-ers even more of a boost to show him love. There’s no downside! We can totally hit Top 10 this week, you guys. LET’S DO THIS!

Contact me with feedback or download/hard copy requests!

contact info for this project:

jenn@promolift.com

718.238.0234

http://www.promolift.com/lift_main.html

http://www.myspace.com/deadmau5

STREAM!: (look what I can do!!)

yessssssssssssssssssssssssss!

Whoops!! I’ve been home for a week and I still haven’t really posted anything about SXSW.

I had such a good time this year!! This was my third consecutive trip to what a friend once semi-suicidally dubbed “Myspace meets Spring Break,” and it’s hard to compare the three years since my situation was wildly different each time – going from college radio music director, to stressfully employed while simultaneously managing a band with shows there, to basically just representing myself and a few other non-stressful entities with weirdly not a single one of my bands playing so pretty much all I had to do was hang out and soak it in. Clearly, I am not complaining at the position I find myself in these days.

It was a great week to see friends…with the choices I’ve made in my life (college far away from home, studying abroad, music industry), I’ve ended up with a fantastic network of truly awesome people I consider myself close to, most of whom unfortunately do not live anywhere near my zip code. So this is one of the few times a year where I get to see any of them, and suddenly they’re (almost) all there all together!! It’s crazy. I got to spend more time this year with my A+ Winner of a college friend Ryan Miller, who deserves ice cream cakes for eternity (the nicest gift I could think of) along with his cousins for their hospitality in sharing their home with me. Plus there were of course the dozens of loveable real-life mugs presented by you sweet music directors and other artist/photographer/promoter friends I speak to so often but see so rarely.

(there’s Ryan throwing some darts for Team Polka Dot. We almost won!!)

Okay here’s where I start posting some things that are gonna flare up some google alerts. I saw so many good bands!! A pretty good percentage of the photos I took went up on the tripwire last week (pics of friends are going to strike the Facebook any second now, man I’m slow)…but here were my highlights!

Themselves – doseone and jel KILLED it at the bay area show, @beauty bar on Thursday afternoon. Some other band that was going on later even cancelled so they got to keep going and play a full, spectacular set. Oh man you guys. I could have watched ONLY Adam Drucker perform all day every day for the entire week and not been bored. I dragged Laura from WWHR along and she seemed pretty impressed with me for being cool enough to be into these dudes.

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – the only band I saw three times. The first was the best, at the k recs showcase @ beauty bar weds night – zac pennington from the parenthetical girls (who also played a great set earlier, complete with Marry/”the F word”/”push off a cliff” game stage banter) AND nick krgovich from no kids both came out and guested. omg. He played 5 songs I recognized and the rest all newer, but the older ones included ‘bobby malone moves home’ and ‘I love you creedence’ so I was happy. Sarah Cass and my friend Valerie from college were along for that one.

(that’s from a later show @ Ms. Bea’s, but my best of Owen+Nick)

No Kids – that aforementioned Nick Krgovich has a damn sexy voice. This was a band I’ve been intending and attempting to see for like a year and a half, so this was a long-awaited success. Dude stands surprisingly still while performing, looking much more passive than I would have expected from the latent energy that’s always bubbling through the music. It was great anyway, and I was glad to have Chris from Radio UTD and his friends Rudy and Christine with me to experience it. Also I saw Nick and Julia (the girl on keys below) at a bunch of other shows and at one I introduced myself and said I was a huge fan. It was embarrassing.

Polka Dot Dot Dot-beautiful pastoral harmonies, employing a singing saw and a banjo but more often than not sticking to glorious a capella with foot-stomp and knee-slap percussion. I am so proud to call these Olympia sweethearts my friends! You should ask me sometime about how I first met Jordan, it is one of my better stories. Anyway he is currently running a radio campaign for PDDD’s EXCELLENT record “Love Letter From New Zealand” through Bicycle Records, so if you are a college radio programmer you should seriously get on that. Here is Jordan looking incredibly dapper at a late-night Todd P acoustic jam

And here he is with Colleen and Onyx, collectively ruling at a really great two-day-long house party sponsored by People in a Position To Know Recordings and The Olympia All Ages Project, where I was gallantly accompanied by Jenny, her friend Lydia, Joel and a slew of Mikes.

Yoni Wolf – anyone who knows me these days already knows that whenever this guy crosses my path, he’s going to overshadow anything else I do that day (or week, or month, or year). The frontman of WHY? played a few solo sets, just him on a piano playing stripped-down songs, and when I missed the first one at Terrorbird’s monster day party, I rushed out of the K/tomlab/asthmatic kitty showcase Weds night to pay another $10 to squeeze into anticon.’s showcase at the crowded little room in the Mohawk. It was totally worth it. I got to catch a few Dosh tracks, which were great although I wish I could have seen the stage (Dosh is another musician I’ve been intending/trying to see for years), and then Yoni played “These Few Presidents” and an entire rest of the set of new songs off the forthcoming September new WHY? album. I have NO IDEA how I am going to handle waiting that long. I remembered a couple of the songs from a similar performance he did at the Knitting Factory at an incredible NYC anticon. show in December, so that was cool to hear those again. Anyway basically I freaked out for about half an hour and then it was over. I still couldn’t really see so I didn’t really get any pictures, but here is one that is hilariously embarrassing i-can’t-belive-i-did-that-and-now-i’m-posting-it of me to have taken, of yoni standing with nick and julia from no kids and todd p at ms bea’s watching (Angel) Deradoorian. HA:

Pomegranates – my old buddies are always a favorite, but Tuesday’s performance at the art disaster party @ beauty bar was especially great – the matching jumpsuits and audience-participatory tambourine solos really turned the sxsw kickoff crowd on. I overheard so many people around me that I didn’t know, commenting on how good it was. Plus it was a nice place to run into friends old and new, like my buddies from Pirate!, Erin Chandler who hooked me up with my Tripwire gig before moving on to Dangerbird, and Shiv from WOXY who is such a cute friend/fan of the Poms!

Still Flyin – a supergroup comprised (at least sometimes) of members of international pop groups like love is all, architecture in helsinki, and the ladybug transistor (they also list marky monnone from the lucksmiths and jens lekman as ‘occasional jammers’ on their website)…I saw these guys perform a year (or two? I can’t believe I’ve been in NYC almost two years) ago in Brooklyn. I liked it then, but it was an entirely different experience from this time – what I remembered was a surprisingly jammy band, reggae influence on its sleeve; this week what I saw was a sweet pop group that made more sense considering its members, with claps and chants and singalongs in addition to one reggae-ish jam I remembered from before. Later in the week I met a couple members and they were totally nice. I made Joey from the Pomegranates come along with me after a failed attempt to catch more than 10 seconds of Pete and the Pirates, and he was so psyched.

New Villager-the only band I had heard absolutely nothing about before and walked away super excited about. Reminded me a bit of tv on the radio, performed by 2 guys with synths and bass. Ryan came along and he seemed way into it too, we were both telling friends about them the rest of the week. Album coming soon on the quickly-proving-to-be-excellent twosyllable records, who put on the sweet party at Scholz Garten where I also caught Women and Evangelicals. Also I randomly realized a few songs into the set that although I had never met him or even seen him play before, I’ve been to the guy on the left’s house (basement/loft) in Brooklyn where I saw Phosphorescent and Deer Tick play once. Weird right?? Well I thought so.

BONUS: here is Zach (of twosyllable) surveying his party handiwork like the mogul he clearly deserves to be:

Fishboy-thermals meets mountain goats from denton, tx. HOW COULD YOU LOSE. Plus any friend of the terrordactyls is a friend of mine (I made them write that into an official law, they can’t take it back now). Also Fishboy has a song about a member of Still Flyin’ hating his guts, it’s the first song right now at their myspace. HA. At that fun Olympia house party:

Wild Moccasins – cute boy/girl folky pop stuff from Houston…some new buddies/new favorites. I made Ryan and his cousin Katherine join me for this one…put on at some kind of a school and peddling vegan wares, and check out those stage dressings! Further enforcing the terrordactyls friend law mentioned above.

Gasoline Heart – these guys are old buddies from Orlando…like I’ve known them longer than anybody else mentioned in this whole post (except MAYBE Ryan and Valerie), weird. I was a fan of the band that some of them were in called The Kick that broke up in like 2004. I wrote a review of their record that came out in 2006. They have a line about “New York and LA” that’s always given me a little twinge of maybe feeling like a sell-out for moving to Brooklyn. I hadn’t seen them in over a year, so I didn’t know what to expect, but it was a little bit like coming home again, revisiting one of my former selves, watching them play and hanging a little after the set. Also they played a show put on by that anti-suicide charity “To Write Love On Her Arms” with yet another old friend, a twangy singer-songwriter named Josh Moore who used to play in a North Carolina band called Classic Case. I love Josh Moore too. Anyway Gasoline Heart is working on a new record for P is for Panda, look out for it!

WHEW okay, so that was the highlights of what I saw, and mostly even who I saw them with and where. Did you like how a bunch of them tied together?? You are so bored!!! In case you’re not bored enough, though, here is a complete list of the not-pictured bands I saw, in order of when I saw them, even if it was only half a song or from-the-parking-lot-behind-the-stage for some of them….all were respectable-to-great, it really was a solid year for music down there:

fight bite, shunda k, franki chan, pains of being pure at heart, vivian girls, pete and the pirates, the beets, josh moore, desolation wildernessx2, dosh, parenthetical girls, women, evangelicals, best friends foreverx2, todd p late nite acoustic jam (too many bands for too short a time to count), golden boots, the muggabears, bearsuit, deradoorian, marnie stern, health, mae shi w kid static, natalie portman’s shaved head, tara jane o’neil, mirah, busdriver, wavves, no age, the intelligence, kurt vile.

Time to start resting up for CMJ!!

YESSS!

Good one, you guys! I knew we could do this. Hidden People totally made the charts last week!! Here’s what it looked like:

That’s right, #189! Not bad for a totally self-released, 5-song EP, from a brand new band. I’m feeling awesome. Credit is due of course to Hidden People for ruling at making songs, and also to you guys at college radio for ruling at making charts. HIGH FIVES ALL AROUND!!! If it moves up this week, I don’t even know how I will be able to handle my excitement. Chuck (the bass player) was way psyched to hear the news when he got back from a trip to England this week! Nice ‘welcome home’ gift, right??

I just got back myself from a fantastic week in Austin at SXSW and I’ve got an RPM record going for adds from LIFT this week, but that info is going to have to wait while we bask in the happy glory of our Hidden People (and I maybe take a several-year-long nap)!!!

<3<3<3