They always said it sounded like a “Sesame Street” song

I love Feist and this is the perfect medium for her.

The Kickstand

The Kickstand is a community oriented bike shop, venue and thrift store. If you have not heard about it — it’s about time.

The quirky warehouse mainly functions as a charitable means for bike repair and bike repair education, but also houses a thrift shop and stage area, which help raise funds for The Kickstand’s main project. The place was started late last year by Ani Previc.

As a venue, The Kickstand has a great deal of charm. The lack of air conditioning and disheveled pieces of bicycles add to the charm. On the walls hang local artwork for sale. Painted bicycles and Christmas lights also decorate the red interior. The people are nice and everything is in the name of DIY bike repair. The only downside is its distance from campus.

It is a gigantic building, but can be difficult to find. The most helpful directions come from Glypher, creator of Gainesvillebands.com, who backs The Kickstand as a committee member. He has a picture of the area on his news forum.

The Alligator has done two pieces on The Kickstand. The first is a multimedia article that has pictures of the interior under construction and is narrated by Vyki Englert. In the piece, Chelsea Carnes is quoted as stressing the importance of the venue aspect of The Kickstand.

The other Alligator article can be read by clicking here.

Back in May, my own band opened for a show at the Kickstand. It was a great time. My girlfriend came down from Tallahassee to witness. My newspaper editor and her friends also came. A modest slew of others too (including a roommate). The atmosphere was relaxed (despite my own anxiety before any live performance) and we were told to start whenever we felt comfortable.

Jon Crocker played after us. His set was very intimate, full of personal anecdotes and jokes that interrupted his songs. Everyone sat around him in a style reminiscent of elementary story time. A dog hopped around the crowd and interrupted many musical moments.

The seemingly awkward highschool band, Max’s Birthday played after Crocker. Their piano driven indie music was amusing. Here is a picture of what the stage looked like with them on it.

The last band to play was the Muse/Radiohead-esque Dead Songwriters. A very talented group of musicians who originated from Ocala.

The night was blisteringy hot. The night was authentic.

A list of upcoming Kickstand shows can be found here. I strongly urge you to support the shows.

I earnestly hope the place becomes big — it deserves to. The many volunteers backing the project have big hearts and great ambitions for the place.

The Kickstand has both a MySpace and a website. Check them out and go to their shows. Learn how to get your bike fixed if necissary. If you do not have a bike, let them help you build one.

Lillian’s Jam Nights

I wish more people would go to Lillian’s Music Store on Mondays for their open mic nights. I myself, am a culprit of not going often enough. The last time I was there was was back in March; a “new, fresh and seemingly disjointed band” called Bandits were playing there for their first show. Previous to that, the last time I set foot in Lillian’s was somewhere in 2006 for my own band’s first show.

I have fond memories of playing at Lillians; rocking out in front of a small group of 40-something-year-old regulars and about three friends who stuck around on a Monday night. There is nothing to make you more humble.

The dynamics and location of the place create a strange vibe. The last time I was there, a man from a club next door called the music, “some country music there.” Tim and Terry’s is more of the hot spot for open mic nights and general jamming, but I think Lillian’s would be much more fun, with better sound, if people would give it a chance.

It is a great place to see bands get a shaky start.

The tradition goes: before anyone can start playing, the house band must open. It is an amusing quirk to the bar. Their songs rarely change and are predominately bluesy covers of popular songs from before 1976. The drummer and co-coordinator (maybe owner), looks like a gentlemanly gremlin. He sings on the songs that work best with his country tinged voice, songs like “Sitting on The Dock of the Bay.” The guitarist seems droopy and sad, but plays some mean licks. He sings lead on most of the other songs. The bassist, meanwhile, stands corpse stiff with a constant deer in the headlights look on his face. I find him to be hilariously archetypal of a rock bassist. Only his fingers seem to move. Overall, I find them to be a blast: a hoot if you will.

But that is just my two cents. Here is their MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/lilliansmusicstore

Go out and judge for yourself. It does not cost a dime. Keep me company in that strange, strange, wonderful venue.

Action Research Show #24 on June 13

I went to the show not knowing what to expect. Supposedly, even veterans of Action Research shows do not know what to expect.

Both Action Research, headed by Andrew Chadwick, and Alternative SubSouth, a similar movement headed by Chris Miller, have been gaining steady popularity as an alternative to the “guitar hegemony” of Gainesville music.

An article I wrote in “The Alligator” describes Action Research.  Here, I wanted to further describe my experience in detail and paint a picture of what the show was like.

I was initially going to use samples of the bands that I recorded on my cellphone, but after being notified of the YouTube videos available, have inserted them where appropriate.

Hal McGee performed first at Action Research #24, playing synthesizer as part of a duet with trumpet player, Jay Peele. McGee has been described by Miller as the “Bo Diddley” of experiential music.

Royallen was next. His music was described on the promotional posters as “records and tapes on a play date.” The description is quite accurate. He is a solo act, switching between a record player and a tape player, both which blast out children’s songs, books on tape and other assortments of sound clips. One of his machines broke at the end of the show and he frustratingly threw it down, ending his performance on a happy hoe down.

In the same dimly lit back room as Royallen, Kane Pour under the performance name, Pospullen, looped his guitar, bass and synthesizer into beautiful symphonies. He was one of my favorite live performances of the night. It was a like a cartoon, one-man band on psychedelics.

Andrew Barranca, under the name GayBomb, was probably the best known performer at Action Research #24. In his performance he used two Califone Magnetic Card Readers: devices originally intended to help children read. Sitting on the floor and using his spidery limbs, Barranca frenziedly swiped cards through the machines in order to play prerecorded samples of piercing distortion and thunderous wailing. The sound was akin to urban myths of what Satan would sound like communicating through a Led Zeppelin record played backwards.

Dave Armitage, a UF graduate student who performed under the name, No Limit Cycle, gave one of the most intense performances of the night. The whole thing sounded like a soundtrack from a suspense thriller. His voice echoed into a vocoder and he switched between tweaking knobs on foot pedals, clicking mysterious icons on his computer and playing heavy metal riffs on his untuned guitar.

Later, sitting on an old pew and a couple of chairs, Glockenshock, a glockenspiel quartet, played their hand-held mallet instruments in synchronized patterns. It reminded me of the simplistic band class exercises in third grade.

Towards the end of the night, prowling through the audience on ten gallon buckets, spreading yarn and eventually spasming on the concrete floor, was the dance duo known as Triscults.

All together, there were ten performances at Action Research #24, with two collaborations – and most importantly, it ended at a reasonable time. The show was like a sample disc of all the experiential bands in the area. I wish more shows would follow their example.

I am very disappointed that I missed their July 12 show, as I was not only looking forward to it, but desperately wanted to prove that I did not only attend the other show in order to write a story. The concept of the last show was interesting in that it pitted Action Research against Electronic SubSouth in a semi-collaborative match up. A great idea and great combination.

Visit Action Research and see their upcoming shows at: http://www.myspace.com/actionresearch.

Action Researchness = Weirdness = More words that end in “ness”

I suppose I will mention my last article.

It came out well — to say the least. That last part was unnecessary.

Anyways, it was an interesting process. I discovered a new stereotype: experimental musicians are even more awkward than “normal” musicians. Imagine that.

I interviewed a lot more people than were in the story, but maybe the extra bodies were unnecessary.

There is an interesting documentary about the Action Research movement, which I will put here (as well as a link to the story).

Action Research story

That is it for the night. I started too late. Vague promises of more later.