"The hurting never ends like birthdays and old friends"

Red House Painters
"Medicine Bottle" [Live at Black Cat, Washington, DC. 11.29.96]
from the 1992 album, Down Colorful Hill

I bought the album when I was recording in D.C. in 2000 and listened to it every night on my headphones. It was the first time I had ever heard anything of its sort. The erie spaciousness, lengthy tracks, and nonconventional quiet mix still stands out to me to this day. Here it is live.

The New Age Steppers

The New Age Steppers
S/T
Statik Records [1981]

If the mention of satisfying grooves and relaxing hooks found within this spacey dub project doesn't catch your fancy, maybe hearing that this Staik Records release (Echo and The Bunnymen, The Sound, The Chameleons) features members of Rip, RIg & Panic, The Pop Group, and The Slits with do it for you. This is one of the more recent records I've stumbled upon that captured my attention and emotions like an erie nostalgia for something I'm just beginning to form history with.

A Great Run: Alex Chilton 1950-2010

The world lost yet another great yesterday. Alex Chilton, the young front man of the sixties rock group The Box Tops, who later went on to play with power pop sensations Big Star, died of a heart attack yesterday. Chilton had teamed up with dozens of respectable artists over the past several decades and also had a very influential, and impressive solo career. He was fifty-nine years old.

MTV 120 Minutes (1985) promotion for Feudalist Tarts LP on Bigtime Records.

Alex Chilton in The Box Tops performing "The Letter" on Upbeat (1967)

BLACK GOLD

When some great friends got together and talked about about the future, it went something like this...



We are currently preparing to open our doors at 461 Court Street in Carroll Gardens, Brookyln. Please contact me with any questions/comments/requests/etc. Thanks for all your support thus far.

Baltimore musician performs "Ohio"

Dan Deacon
"Ohio" and interview
NBC Morning Show

Mark Mothersbaugh meets Atom from Atom and his Package on live television.



"I try to write music that I think if like really cool six year olds got together and had this stuff and they were like let's write the most awesome music ever this is hopefully what I hope they would could up with"

Pretty genius. Props: Dan. **Also check out the "Drinking Out Of Cups" video.

The Sirs - She Gets Me High

The Sirs
She Gets Me High 7"
Devildance Records [2010]
DDW2-002

This record could have been called "see the forest for the trees", because that idiom essentially spells out my refection on the place we were all in during the time we wrote the songs. Things were confusing for us as friends who had recently lost a great friend and band mate and also watched the vast chain reaction of negative events and further losses that occurred following the initial trauma.

The record isn't especially complex on the surface, but the emotions and situations that drove us to make these songs were very complex. My lyrics were the rawest, most real form of expression that I could bring myself to face. Times were so surreal and intense, that the brevity of my explanations were synonymous to that of a two-word description of an epic dream.

The songs to me, were about escapism and denial. They were also about the long drawn out chaos that came with self-destructive lovers. Some of which were affected by the events of the time, and both sets of whom could only stand one another in dishonest, impure forms. The songs did and do not promote any kind of abuse on chemicals or on others, but rather they attempt to capture the truthful nature of the nightmares that life presented us with at that time.

The record might only be four tracks, but it's one of the only tangible pieces of evidence that remain from the whirlwind we once weathered together.

This 7" will be available on Devildance Records by the end of the month. The album is currently available for download on itunes and CD Baby