Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Happy Halloween


haven't seen it in awhile but at the time (i probably didn't actually see it for the first time until it had been out a couple years since in '78 i was only 11) John Carpenter's Halloween ruled the season; we'd rent it and watch it over and over...two high school favorites -- PJ Soles and Jamie Lee Curtis -- together in a movie that really scared the crap outta me at least the first three times i watched it...i mean i'd get scared before anything even happens. my love affair with each lasted through Stripes and Trading Places, respectively. PJ Soles is even better as Riff Randall in Rock N Roll High School of course, another movie i watched a bajillion times. There's an interview with her at Toxic Shock.TV where she's asked who her biggest influence as an actor is and she replies "I think all actors...". Awesome.

Monday, October 30, 2006

Appearing!


here's what i believe to be a complete list of upcoming Portastatic live appearances, hope to see you at some of these concerts:

11.3.06 NYC - The Knitting Factory (part of Merge Night at CMJ) +
11.4.06 NYC - Sound Fix Records in Brooklyn +
11.11.06 Castellon, SPAIN - Tanned Tin Festival +
11.15.06 Baltimore, MD - Sonar (w/Robert Pollard!)
11.17.06 Pittsburgh, PA - Andy Warhol Museum *
11.18.06 Chicago, IL - Schuba's *
11.19.06 Columbus, OH - Carabar (free show!)
11.20.06 Lexington, KY - Mecca (!note this show has been moved from Nashville, where we hope to return soon!)
11.21.06 Greensboro, NC - Flying Anvil (w/Norfolk & Western)

+ = appearing as a duo with Margaret White
* = with Benjy Ferree opening

note the addition of Lexington, KY to the docket!

thanks to JKristian for the lovely pic of Annie Hayden, Jeff, and Aaron from the Maxwell's show.

Saturday, October 28, 2006

The State of Things

played on the radio yesterday, the local NPR affiliate WUNC (91.5 fm) has a show called The State of Things and Portastatic had a segment wherein we got interviewed and played 2.5 songs, in a stripped down fashion -- you can check it out here.

also this week, the Triangle area had a visit from A Professional Writer, John Hodgman. Hodgman read from his book, gently embarassed a few teens and generally had a bookstore basement full of fans rolling in the aisles. His book, Areas of My Expertise, is a fantastic compendium. check it out and also Hodgman's blog on his site!

appearing with Hodgman in that cramped Durham basement was NC native David Rees, who's comic strips entitled Get Your War On are great even if he doesn't draw them himself. I don't think it's because he's lazy.

Friday, October 27, 2006

F#*& Jeff Suppan

i really didn't have a dog in the hunt of this World Series (if i did he'd be asleep at this point) but my slight lean towards Detroit (american league, kinda like leyland, terrible for many years etc) became a full-on Tigermania once i saw the insane, ignorant, holier-than-thou, soft-focus bucket of bullshit that Jeff Suppan (and of course already-known fundy freak Kurt Warner) is carrying for the GOP in an anti-stem-cell research TV ad that's airing.

so i see the Cards won again tonight which blows, i watched the first few innings and when Suppan was at bat, even with men on i was just like "hit him in the head with a pitch" -- what a jackass.

i mean, i know that i probably hate the politics of 90% of these guys but it's not normally in my face so i can ignore it.

anyway, go Tigers, and at some point i still plan on writing that post about how watching American Hardcore and looking at Jackson Pollock's "One, Number 31" are similarly fulfilling experiences.

stuff just keeps coming up, like playing on the radio here tomorrow at noon on 91.5 FM WUNC, the local NPR station...

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

We Got Out Just In Time

that is to say, before we had to play any Halloween-themed shows on tour...it's always a nightmare, and not in a good way. dude in a terrible Clockwork Orange "droog" costume is always way more interested in the "sexy vampire" he's trying to dance with than in the rock and roll music on nights like that. get a DJ. anyway there WAS some kind of Halloween parade in the ATL when we arrived last saturday to play the last show of the tour with Jennifer O'Connor at the Earl but other than that it was a straight up rock and roll night, replete with the mixed feelings of the last night of any tour -- glad we don't have spend another minute in this cold and sodden and ill-lit backstage, sorry not to be playing more songs for some more people and hanging out with the JOC crew. glad to be going home above all usually though. here's what i can piece together of the last night setlist though i can't find it at the moment to be sure:

tonight i'll be staying here with you
sour shores
through with people
cunning latch
you blanks
sweetness and light
oh come down
white wave
spying on the spys
naked pilseners
arthur dove
i wanna know girls

bye bye pride
baby
san andreas
song for a clock

cruised home in a leisurely fashion on sunday after grabbing some good coffee at that place next to criminal records that still has a phonograph on the counter and plays vinyl LP's, pretty cool. thanks to jennifer o'connor and band for doing the tour and for guest-blogging! later...

JO'C Post 2



Hi! This is my 2nd and final post for the Portastatic blog. We had a really amazing time on tour with Mac and the gang. The last night in ATL was really fun Unfortunately, the tour itself went by incredibly fast. Much love to all things Portastatic including you guys reading!
Love Jennifer O'Connor

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Down South

another small but incredibly vocal crowd tonight at the Village Tavern in Mt Pleasant, SC. before the show we had the pleasure of watching an entertaining hockey match between the 'Canes and the Sabres, which unfortunately ended with a 5-4 Sabres win, ugh. regrouped and rocked the joint:

Getting Saved
Sour Shores
Through With People
Sweetness and Light
You Blanks
Autumn Got Dark
Polaroid
In the LInes
Drill Me
Naked Pilseners
San Andreas
I Wanna Know Girls

LIttle Fern (acoustic)
Noisy NIght
Smothered in Hugs


the night before, good times at the Duke Coffeehouse, site of my first hardcore show (featuring the Ugly Americans) way back when....

i don't have the list so this is from memory and therefore suspect:

Sour Shores
Through With People
Angels of Sleep
You Blanks
Sweetness and Light
Oh Come Down
Paratrooper
A Cunning Latch
Cheers and Applause
Arthur Dove
Spying on the Spys
San Andreas

Baby
White Wave
I Wanna Know Girls
Song for a Clock

on to Hotlanta for the last show of the tour...dang that went by fast!

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Screaming at a Wall

good times tonight in DC at the Black Cat "Backstage" which is a nice sized small room. jennifer o sounded awesome in there.

here's our set:

noisy night
sour shores
through w/ people
a cunning latch
you blanks
sweetness and light
naked pilseners
paratrooper
cheers and applause
arthur dove
san andreas
i wanna know girls

bye bye pride
polaroid
white wave
autumn got dark

saw Dante, who owns/runs the joint, and of course used to play drums for Iron Cross, when we got here and i wanted to talk to him about the movie American Hardcore, which matthew and i went to see in nyc the other night...more about that in another post. rocking durham, nc tomorrow....

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

C-town Scarcity

13 people in a room that holds 500 isn't really a recipe for a barnburner of a rock show, but as the old Jim WIlbur rallying cry goes, "you play the show not the crowd"... actually i often think about all the great shows i've seen where i was one of a handful in the audience and the band or artist still totally kicked out the jams, and then you feel like you really got to see something special, as opposed to being one of 600 people sharing the same experience (which can be great as well, just different).

so on a sparse rainy night in charlottesville we still managed to have a good time & it seemed like those in attendance did as well. jennifer o'connor promised that she and her band were going to compose a song onstage, but they didn't so i'll be requesting that they do for the rest of the tour.

we flew without a setlist so i may not remember everything we played but here goes:

a pair of brown eyes
little fern
sour shores
getting saved
you blanks
sweetness and light (i think we had everyone in the audience onstage for this one)
white wave
full of stars
drill me
silver screw
like a pearl
naked pilseners
san andreas
noisy night
smothered in hugs
autumn got dark

spying on the spys (acoustic)

wow, we play a lot of songs when we're not reading them off the setlist. some might say too many.

it was a mercifully early show so afterwards we went out for some more reliably popular entertainment -- the ancient art of karaoke, at a mexican restaurant. highlights: margaret's fierce version of benatar's "shadows of the night" and a local (i'm a big fan of local music) doing a totally sincere and well-sung version of "different drum". lowlights included some guy singing ac/dc's "ride on" in a style more redolant of pearl jam than bon scott, and someone named "wild bill" doing a terrible and incredibly long version of lenny kravitz's version of "american woman". he only knew the first line of the song (which is the title) and after that just said "i can't read..."

on to our nation's capital...

Monday, October 16, 2006

Free in New Haven

played at a place called "BAR" in new haven last night, 5 bands and a free show, we spent much of the evening eating pizza.

noisy night
sour shores
through with people
you blanks
sweetness and light
hey salty
white wave
arthur dove
naked pilseners
san andreas

josephine
i wanna know girls

pretty fun show, & the crowd was attentive and receptive considering we went on at midnight on a sunday, and that most i don't think had ever heard portastatic.

earlier in the day i had the pleasure of seeing Allen Toussaint at Joe's Pub, playing by himself, playing great song after great song, most of which he wrote and exist in your musical consciousness somewhere already, though he also mixed it up with a bunch of cool instrumental pieces, rags i guess you'd call some of them, i'm not sure, which were also great. did a nice version of "mama you've been on my mind" too. i went straight to other music and got the reissue of Southern Nights...we listened to it 3 times on the way to new haven!

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Hoblogging, NJ

thanks to J.O'C. for the guest blogging! nutty crowd in hoboken last night and it ended in a dance party:

bobby jean
sour shores
you know where to find me
you blanks (w/annie hayden)
sweetness and light (w/annie hayden)
oh come down
drill me
silver screw
like a pearl
cheers and applause
clay cakes (request for tony)
arthur dove
noisy night

bye bye pride (annie hayden once again!)
tonight i'll be staying here with you
autumn got dark
i wanna know girls

thanks to annie for helping us out! and to terre t for havin us on the cherry blossom clinic on WFMU.
now we're in new haven, they do know how to make some pizza here.

Guest Blogger Alert

Hello readers of the Portastatic blog! Jennifer O'Connor here. I will be your sporadic guide through the waters of this Portastatic/Jennifer O'Connor tour. We are four dates in so far and it has been a blast. I write to you now from my home in Brooklyn New York. Which is kind of weird because technically we are on tour but we've been coming back each night so far because all of the dates have been pretty close to NYC. And photos will be coming, but not today as I have seemingly lost my camera. But it's a good excuse to go buy a new one!

So, let's recap. Our first night in Philly was, as Mac pointed out in an earlier post, very wet. I mean pouring down rain from the moment we rolled into town until the moment we left. Our respective bands met and hung out in the little room downstairs - this was to be the beginning of a great week, I could tell already. Then we both did some rocking and went about our ways for the night.

Day 2 = Boston - a town I play quite a bit in. New venue for me though - Great Scott. Really cool bar and people running it. Portastatic really killed it on this night I thought. "I Wanna Know Girls" and "Sweetness and Light" solidfy themselves in my mind as set favorites. Jon Langmead, my drummer, gets up and plays this percussive shakery thing of which I forget the name. I want to say Kielbasa or something like the type of meat...but that can't be right, can it?

Also, has anyone mentioned that Portastatic has a coaster set for sale at the shows? Forgive me Mac if this has been discussed already...but these things are amazing! They are four coasters with different photos from the photo shoot for the record artwork and easily the coolest merch item I've ever seen.

Ok, I digress....NYC, Mercury Lounge. SOLD OUT. Amazing show. Great times had by all. Lots of friends. And the best sound of any club I've ever played. Always a pleasure. Mac and I had a nice conversation with K Sanneh about music in commercials and such.

Last night in Hoboken at the legendary Maxwell's. Portastatic was joined onstage by the lovely and talented Merge recording artist Annie Hayden. I was very excited to see this as I am a big fan of her Enemy of Love record. Really lovely set tonight - I was really digging the stripped down songs at the end. It's really cool how on different nights, different aspects of a bands' set will really reach you. So far, that's my favorite thing about touring with other bands. You come to have this really interesting relationship to their material as you hear it played every night. Different things jump out from night to night.

Anyway, tonight we hit New Haven and then down to the South. My next post will have some pictures for sure! Be well and say hi at the shows!
xoxoJO'C

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Merc Blog

last night's show at the mercury lounge here in nyc was the best of the tour so far...GREAT crowd, good times.

jennifer o. is going to be blogging on here about this weekend later on, so for now here's a setlist & we'll see you across the river tonight...

sour shores
getting saved
through with people
angels of sleep
you blanks
in the lines
white wave
cheers and applause
sweetness and light
a cunning latch
polaroid
san andreas
i wanna know girls

like a pearl
smothered in hugs
naked pilseners
baby
song for a clock

Friday, October 13, 2006

Tour Blogging Pt.2 - Boston

Great Scott is a nice room with nice people running it - Camera Obscura had their favorite show of their tour at this place. Unfortunately we had some sound problems onstage (it didn't "sound good") which made it a little tough to feel like we were really nailing it. we still played some songs:

sour shores
truckstop cassettes
through with people
you blanks
polaroid
oh come down
drill me
sweetness and light
like a pearl
spying on the spys
arthur dove
noisy night

bye bye pride
san andreas
i'm not sayin'
i wanna know girls

back at the hotel ended up watching all of "Do The Right Thing" -- i forgot how much i loved that movie, it's so great. the cast is so broad and awesome, including original Sonic Youth drummer Richard Edson!
here's what Roger Ebert had to say about it, and i agree:

"None of these people is perfect. But Lee makes it possible for us to understand their feelings; his empathy is crucial to the film, because if you can't try to understand how the other person feels, you're a captive inside the box of yourself. Thoughtless people have accused Lee over the years of being an angry filmmaker. He has much to be angry about, but I don't find it in his work. The wonder of ``Do the Right Thing'' is that he is so fair. Those who found this film an incitement to violence are saying much about themselves, and nothing useful about the movie. Its predominant emotion is sadness."

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Tour Blogging Pt.1


portastatic is officially on the road and despite possibly the wettest load-in ever last night in Philly (puddles were forming in the back of the van) the first show was good. north star bar is pretty cool, weird to have a balcony right over the stage and a big dropoff to the floor from the stage with no monitors (they're suspended from the balcony) to keep the clumsy from toppling right off, but we avoided any such mishaps and played the following songs:

sour shores
you know where to find me
through with people
you blanks
sweetness and light
angels of sleep
drill me
i'm in love (with arthur dove)
like a pearl
naked pilseners
white wave
i wanna know girls

center of the world (acoustic)
i'm not sayin' (nico cover, though she didn't write it, gordon lightfoot did!)
san andreas
baby
song for a clock

we just arrived in boston, looking forward to the rest of the tour with jennifer o'connor...she mentioned possibly doing some guest blogging here, we'll see if we can talk her into it.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Portastatic, Unleashed


i still can't believe i got talked out of using that as the album title for the new record, but whatever, the wait is over -- Be Still Please is out today! what a relief that even when i discover the typos i missed, the guitar solo i accidentally erased half of, the words i got all wrong -- there's nothing i can do about it now! except replicate those mistakes exactly in our live performances, of course.

also, it's one thing to have a blog, it's another thing altogether to be Atrios, one of the best and one of my favorite political blogs. anyway, much to my surprise Atrios gave Portastatic a shout-out the other day, and today has our Philly show at the North Star tomorrow night on his weekly calendar, right under a Bill Clinton fundraiser (also tomorrow, but in the afternoon so you can do both!) for congressional candidate Lois Murphy.

Atrios also links to link to another blog called Whiskey Fire that has one of the most thoughtful reviews, 5 yrs later, of the Summer of the Shark record that it's ever gotten!

also out there on the internets:
the fine Largehearted boy blog has an item about things i've been reading lately.
and Chromewaves has a review of the Portastatic show at Pop Montreal last week, and i got to meet Frank from Chromewaves when we were on a panel together at the Future of Music Conference...panels can be more fun than they sound like they're going to be!

The Best Ceviche in Lima

no, Portastatic won't be performing in Peru anytime soon, though that would be nice -- please email if you are the cool indie rock promoter in Peru -- but yesterday was my 7th wedding anniversary, and the ceviche restaurant in Lima where we got engaged seems to have been wiped from Peru's collective memory...or at least that % of the Peruvian population with an internet connection...anyway, the place was called Restaurant Heidi, it was a huge bustling tiled place and it felt like an institution, but my possibly more-limited-than-i-thought googling skills turn up NOTHING about this joint, and we just can't believe it's gone, so if any of you world travellers have some information on this fine cevicheria, please bring it.

Friday, October 06, 2006

Montreal Pops / Quotas are bad for music

fun show tonight at La Sala Rossa -- and a lot more people in attendance than at the last portastastic show in montreal, largely due seemingly to those irrepressible kids in Tokyo Police Club, who played right after us. when i say "us" i mean myself, playing most of the set solo, and then Jeremy Gara and Mike Snailhouse (Snailhouse were great btw) joined me as a killer rhythm section for the last three songs and nailed it:

Boy From School
Song For A CLock
You Blanks
Noisy Night
Center of the World
Spying on the Spys
Naked Pilseners
San Andreas
I Wanna Know Girls

back at the hotel, i innocently turned on the music video TV stations, obligated of course to play canadian content for a certain % of the day, and this means that the unsuspecting viewer of music videos, might, at 3 am be ambushed by SNOW the white canadian rapper and his terrible horrible song "Informer"...i really REALLY could have gone the rest of my life without hearing that song again....anyway, here's a great blog post (you knew there would be one) about Snow and his terrible music...

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

I'm Getting Extensions


what i mean to say is the Portastatic tour is getting extended, here are some new dates for November!

Wed 11.15.06 Baltimore, MD Sonar w/ Robert Pollard
Fri 11.17.06 Pittsburgh, PA Andy Warhol Museum
Sat 11.18.06 Chicago, IL Schuba's
Sun 11.19.06 Columbus, OH Carabar
Mon 11.20.06 Nashville, TN The Basement
Tue 11.21.06 Greensboro, NC Flying Anvil w/ Norfolk & Western, Corrina Repp

very excited about playing the Warhol museum, especially after watching the great PBS doc recently, as well as rocking with Pollard and then Norfolk and Western.

James Wilbur will be joining on the bass guitar for this run, though he may have to wrestle the thunderbroom from Aaron Oliva...

(live photo Chris McKay)

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Not Putting Anything Past Anybody

is it possible that GOP waited until now to out Foley as the filthy IM'er that he is to knowingly create a shitstorm big enough to distract people from the fact that we just legalized torture in this country? just sayin'...