Nicole Kita, making tangible gestures (keith), 2008. Linoleum print and chine colle on paper.
While it is up for debate that The Motion Sick is high art, will be exhibiting our latest CD "the truth will catch you, just wait..." (and the artwork of Tanit Sakakini) at the Museum School's annual holiday sale, InsideOut. The show features work (over 4000 pieces!) by students, faculty, alumni, staff (that's me), as well as affiliated artists, and is the largest public art sale in New England. Half of all proceeds go towards student scholarships and aid, so in addition to having the opportunity to view and buy some excellent contemporary art, your purchases will be helping poor art students go to school!
The show opens on November 19th at 12pm with a reception from 5-8 and continues through November 23rd.
We're a featured artist on Reverbnation this week! This means you may see us plastered all over Facebook plugins and stuff like that. Rock!
I know I've said it before, but I am really digging using Reverbnation. It has a lot of great features and integrates really well with other sites via widgets. You can actually listen to all of our music on there and we're using them for our mailing list now. They even split ad revenue with artists (50/50)!
Our lack of effort or interest in participating in online voting has led to our inevitable elimination from the Pick the Band competition. I am declaring officially today that from now on, we just plain don't participate in online voting.
You heard it here first!
As you start making your protest signs to wave outside the Vampire Weekend/Black Kids show, I invite you once more to enjoy Patrick's message about why you should vote for us...
This Friday, 11/21, The Motion Sick is taking part in the International Pop Overthrow. We'll be playing with a great set of local acts in a festival-style form: THE INTERNATIONAL POP OVERTHROW FESTIVAL 2008 (http://www.internationalpopoverthrow.com/) 8:30 - Henning Ohlenbusch (of School For The Dead) 9:00 - Salvatore Baglio 9:30 - The Motion Sick 10:00 - John Powhida International Airport 10:30 - Fireking 11:00 - The Doom Buggies 11:30 - 1.4.5. 21+ / $10
This old Kids in the Hall video was recently forwarded to me and I've completely forgotten how brilliant that show was and why I should've watched it more when I had cable. Plus, as the bass player of The Motion Sick, it is the best self-depreciating depiction of bass players, ever.
Here is a random sample of folks who have posted youtube videos of themselves playing our song "30 Lives" on some form of Dance Dance Revolution. The videos just mostly show the screen, but the first guy sings along a bit and as such, wins the award for my favorite of the videos out there thus far.
Cloud Cult really owned the night with their gang vocals, onstage painting, and unsettlingly positive-vibed songs. Here's some video of their performance:
Exit Clov was super fun with their beautiful double female twin vocals and absolutely intense and impressive drumming! Definitely feels like art-school lyrics, but in a good way and you really just can't go wrong with twin-sister leads. Here are a few videos:
For the finale of my 3-day tribute to Television, I was able to see Richard Lloyd at CHURCH where he is currently on the road supporting his current record The Radiant Monkey under the moniker of: RICHARD LLOYD & THE SUFI-MONKEY. Armed with his vintage 60's Strat, the band is made up of Richard, Billy Ficca (also from Television) and bassist Keith Harshtel. The set was a mixture of songs from Richard's previous output, the current record, selections from his upcoming Jimi Hendrix cover record and surprisingly, two television tunes (Friction and Elevation).
Richard is well known to be an interesting person, here are some quotes from an recent interview with T. Ballard Lesemann from the Charlston City Paper, giving some thoughts on Television's place in music history:
"Television wore torn T-shirts and stuff," says Lloyd of the band's early days in Manhattan's Bowery neighborhood. "To me, we were like runaways who joined the circus. Finding a place like CBGB's and building it up was like hosting a four-year New Year's Eve party. We were more or less the house band.
We wanted to be like the Beatles playing in Hamburg."
--
"Television was completely different," remembers Lloyd. "The guitars were like a jigsaw puzzle."
--
"Punk rock nowadays is a Ponzi scheme," scoffs Lloyd. "Half the country under the age of 24 are in bands — and they all think they've got a chance. They all have MySpace, my-face, my-ass websites. You really gotta love poverty to be a musician, because your chances of making it are slim. The chances of making it into the pantheon of historical developments in music ... you have a better chance of hitting the state lotto."
--
I'm looking forward to Richard's upcoming release of Hendrix covers since his approach is very organic and refreshingly, he's not trying to sound exactly like Hendrix (which I feel most musicians who cover Hendrix do). Instead, it appeared (through the performances) the he's trying to capture the spirit of Hendrix, which, made me revisit Are You Experienced and Axis Bold as Love (which I haven't listened to in a long time).
At this time, I can only assume (in order to fulfill my fantasies) that Doro herself runs her myspace page and made the request after realizing what fine and wonderful pop rock tunes The Motion Sick likes to play. As such, I officially provide an open invitation for Doro to collaborate with The Motion Sick to create what would likely be forever after known as the greatest music of all time.
Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy, that's what! At last, after 13 years, 14 studios, (most likely) millions of dollars, and certainly countless personnel changes, the world will see the "bands" (what I had assumed to be mythical) 6th record.
Here's a Rolling Stone review of the record, and despite the anticipation, it received 4 stars.
Also, if you've been hankering for a free Dr. Pepper, Axl and Dr. Pepper are keeping their promise!
Cloud Cult (http://www.cloudcult.com/) is a crazy indie rock band from Minneapolis. They tour in a biodisel van, maintain strict environmental practices, and paint live on stage. Their latest album Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes) is pretty amazingly awesome. This Thursday, I plan to watch them rock The Middle East Downstairs:
I can't say we're lucky enough to be in it this month, but I've been reading SPIN every month since they started posting a free digital version (http://digital.spin.com/spin/) and I have to say there is some really great stuff in it this month. I've been generally impressed with the types of bands they've been covering dating back to when we appeared a few times in SPIN Magazine and other SPIN-related things:[1][2][3][4][5][6]
The magazine is really different from the SPIN that I read as a wee boy in the '90s.
Anyway, this month includes some really great articles including: - a heated interview with Lou Reed - a great article about copycat song recordings selling on iTunes - a great piece by Michael Azerrad about music critic death threats (sort of)
Last night, we had the pleasure of opening for The Cult of Point Break Society's performance of Television's "Marquee Moon" (and assorted related tunes). It was pretty friggin' awesome! I liked a lot of the performances much better than I like the record. I have to go back and listen with my newly acquired ears for the material. They are doing the show again tonight and if last night was any indication, they are going to knock it out of the park again.
We also had the pleasure of playing with Varsity Drag, featuring Ben Deily, who was in the Lemonheads during their early (and awesome years - though I do like the later stuff too). It was great to hear another branch of pop from those days.
Here's one video of them:
Anyway, it was a very awesome night. Check the COPBS's show out tonight for more awesomeness and new openers!
This is just my opinion and it has nothing to do with the band, but I am pretty disgusted. Massachusetts did well on its ballot initiatives in the way of progress, but what is wrong with some of you other states?
Shame on you Arizona, Arkansas, California, and Florida. Maybe next time around you can ban women from leaving the kitchen, blacks from voting, and non-Christians from holding office you bigoted pieces of garbage. Discrimination is not acceptable. I don't care what you think, it's just absolutely not. Fifty years from now, your children will suffer the shame of your actions. Just as the very concept of slavery and segregation are deplorable now, it will almost be unbelievable that at one time, the people of your states had the absurdly backwards idea that the rights of people should be limited because of sexual orientation. It will be laughable that anyone was ever primitive enough to think that. Absolutely ridiculous. Go start your own country that isn't based on the idea that "...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
I guess that's just some old, wrinkled piece of paper anyway...
I've been saying this to people all day, but Megan McArdle (who has a great blog) puts it best:
"This is a strange election in another way--it's not really close, but people are watching it as if it is. In 1996, my office had to use a point spread, and post a hefty premium, to get people interested in betting on the Clinton-Dole matchup. We've all known for a while that Obama was going to win, wistful dreams notwithstanding. But everyone's watching as if this were the seventh game of a tied world series."
8:30 Henning Ohlenbusch
(of School For The Dead)
9:00 Salvatore Baglio
9:30 The Motion Sick
10:00 John Powhida International Airport
10:30 Fireking
11:00 The Doom Buggies
11:30 1.4.5.
