Radblaster vs. the Mojo Wire and Other Old Noise

One of the many great things about making music with Adam, Bryn, and Kevin again, as Radblaster, is being able to go back and play some sick versions of selected Mojo Wire classics. Of course, Bryn and I did this frequently in Honey White, but only with the songs that we wrote. It would have been wrong and dumb to attempt "Key West Tapwater" or "Long Black Leather Boots" without Adam, but now we can do those very tunes.

One of the many great things about Bandcamp is that it allows me the opportunity to foist all this stuff upon the universe once we record it. Since Radblaster only has so many originals, I thought I'd put some of the Mojo covers up too. They were too much fun to keep to ourselves. I also thought our seven rabid fans might like to compare the latest versions to the originals, just for S&Gs, so here they are:

Key West Tapwater is my favorite Adam song. It was the kickoff track on the third Mojo Wire demo album back in 1999, a sunny little slice of surf-noir. Radblaster rocks it a bit more, not unlike the latter-day Mojo lineup of 2001. The cover is first (from Wall of Sound in Anaheim, 4/10/11), original version second:




Long Black Leather Boots was the meanest Mojo Wire blues tune in the set back in 1997. We recorded a blistering version of it for our first demo album the same year, and it lurked deep in Mojo Wire live show sets until the band fell apart in 2001. The new version here is from a December 2010 rehearsal at Adam's house in San Clemente. The original version follows it:




Blue Lantern Cove was originally recorded solo by Adam in 1999 or 2000. We tacked it on the end of the final Mojo Wire odds-and-sods CD in 2001, but it always deserved better than that. Radblaster plays it as a full band, complete with "Pulp Fiction"-style mellow menace. The new version is also from Adam's on 12/18/10; the original follows:




We initially played several other Mojo tunes in our first few rehearsals of 2010—"Fatal Flaws," "One Last Hallelujah," "Margarita," and more—but once we got them out of our system, new Radblaster originals and some other unique covers showed up. It's nice to have the old stuff ready, though. Just in case.

Honey White/Neuro Farm Rehearsal Audio, 12/27/11

So, as usual these days for Roland/rehearsal recordings, I've been a total slacker as far as getting them together and making them presentable. This time, the victim was the joint Honey White-Neuro Farm jam session we had right after Christmas in Santa Barbara. It mostly involved Bill and I backing up Brian (vocals, guitar) and Rebekah (vocals, violin), acting as their rhythm section and playing whatever they needed us to.



That amounted to many more Neuro Farm songs than Honey White songs, but who's counting? Especially considering that we 1) were minus Bryn and I had a slight cold (and therefore in no position to sing), and 2) it was fun to basically invent rhythm parts on the spot for all the Neuro songs.



On top of that, Brian taught us to play another Neil Young song. We sort of turned "On the Beach" into a combination of Honey White's "Sweet Oblivion" (i.e. a long, twelve-bar-ish jam) and the sounds from side 2 of Camper Van Beethoven's classic 1989 album "Key Lime Pie" (stark, violin-fronted folk-rock). We also took a jammy stab at Phantogram's "When I'm Small" and several Honey White songs—but of the latter only "One Last Hallelujah" came anywhere near close to presentable.



The overall vibe was mellow, surreal, and slightly dark—though never cold—with occasional bright bursts of light and color. In a very general sense, that describes Brian's music to me, both in Honey White and what he makes with Rebekah in the Neuro Farm. We played about thirty songs over two days, but my picks are all from the second day (Dec. 27):



Setlist: Dreams - DC Dead - Violin Jam 1 - On The Beach - Invisible - One Thousand Years - Perfect Blue - Happy - Bubble - One Last Hallelujah - When I'm Small - All I Have - Violin Jam 2

Quick note about the "violin jams" - I didn't know if they had titles, so I didn't give them any, but to me the first one sounds very Camper Van Beethoven, and the second a dead ringer for "Desire"-era Dylan, like "One More Cup of Coffee." Very cool.



This was the second year in a row that we reconvened, in some form, to make music at the gallery after Christmas. Sounds like a holiday tradition to me. It was great to see Brian again and meet Rebekah for the first time. They make a great musical team and cute couple and we wish them all the best. Billy and Marika were their usual honorable and generous selves, too.

And then there was cruising through Santa Barbara for lunch with Brian at the wheel, blasting Rammstein all over upper State Street. You've never experienced S.B. until you've done the German Metal version of it. Yikes.

Honey White, Radblaster, & the Neuro Farm Snubbed in Best-of-2011 Lists

Predictably, taste-making music blogs and pompous critics of all stripes failed to recognize the low-fi, shambolic genius of my two bands' digital-only E.P. releases in 2011. Obviously, they're all short-sighted fools and hopeless wankers. The proof is in the data, my friends:



Well...maybe not—they DO both start with versions of the same song, of course—but all those people are still unbelievably stupid for ignoring Brian's new Neuro Farm project, who released their own digital-only debut album this year as well (and yes, it shares one of its songs with Honey White too):


On the other hand, our collective 14-year streak of zero nominations has yet to be broken. So...yeah.

Yet Another "30 Songs" Info Dump

The crazy train rolls on. Here's the 11th to 15th posts in my Dubious Ventures blog series:

11 - The Peak of My Career: Sloppy Ironic Titles Won't Save You 10.9.11
12 - Sweet Oblivion: Enhanced by Extended Epic Endings 10.14.11
13 - Famous Last Words: Gimme Two Chords, and Get Two Melodies 10.23.11
14 - Island Fever: Epic Minimalism and Other Contradictions 10.30.11
15 - The Lightning Rod: From Alpha to Omega with a Boss DD3 11.5.11

Read the whole series in reverse-chrono order here.

More "30 Songs" Wisdom

"Wisdom" being a relative term, of course. Here's the 6th to 10th posts in my Dubious Ventures blog series:

6 - Blacking Out: Bad Trips, Freaky Times, and No Catchy Chorus 9.4.11
7 - Hold Still: Too Much "Sabine Women," Not Enough "Guernica" 9.10.11
8 - Winner Take All: Desperate Driven Delusional Dreamer Ditty 9.18.11
9 - Water Into Wine: Jesus Complexes, Disney Films, and Other Gateway Drugs 9.26.11
10 - One Last Hallelujah: Blood of Ice, Brain of Mud, Liver of Steel 9.30.11

Read the whole series in reverse-chrono order here.

New Series: "30 Songs" on Dubious Ventures

I've started up a new series at the Dubious Ventures blog, called "30 Songs," about my song lyrics from 1996-2011. Inspirations, observations, etc.—all with accompanying audio/visual stimulants. The first four entries went something like this:

Introduction to "30 Songs" 7.25.11
1 - Fatal Flaws: In The Beginning Was The Riff 7.29.11
2 - Mercy Rule: Chugging Candy-Coated Castor Oil 8.7.11
3 - Dilemma by Design: Disjointed Down-Tuned Decision-Making 8.14.11
4 - The Shivering Sand: Neo-Victorian Surf-Noir Love Letters 8.21.11
5 - Pisces Lullabye: How to Use and Misuse Your Empathetic Impulses 8.28.11

Neuro Farm Debut "Blissful Isolation" on Band Camp

So we recently told you all about Brian's new sonic adventures with Rebekah Feng in the Neuro Farm - well, now they've posted their debut recording "Blissful Isolation" on Band Camp.

Go get it. It's rad. My favorites so far are "Bubble" and "Dreams" (the latter of which Brian taught Honey White to play; listen to it here).

Ten YEARS Man! ("You're On Your Own" Edition)

The Mojo Wire's final album. Click on the link below for a big fat essay. Listen to some audio below that.
The History Mix: Things Fall Apart

When rock bands destroy themselves on record, it's usually a group effort. The Beatles bickered like babies on Let It Be. The Eagles slouched into the sunset on The Long Run. The Police drove each other crazy making Synchronicity. Some musical self-immolations, however, are the result of one band member's driven, monomaniacal fixation on Finishing The Project At Any Cost. Elvis Costello did it to the Attractions on Blood And Chocolate, and David Lowery did it to Camper Van Beethoven on Key Lime Pie. On a much smaller and, probably justifiably ignored scale, Keir DuBois did it to The Mojo Wire during the making of You're On Your Own, a slab of vintage indie-rock that would prove to be their final album. More...

Play this album (with 5 bonus tracks!):

Ten YEARS Man: Giovannis Edition

Ten years ago tonight, the Mojo Wire played Giovanni's Pizza in Isla Vista, for the first and only time. It was our second-to-last show and probably our best show. Sadly, the existing recording doesn't do it justice, since ye olde Tascam 4-track crapped out immediately and we only got good signals from the vocals, bass, and drums. However it was a typically scattershot, beer-soaked show, so maybe I'm not remembering things properly. Honey White played three Gios shows of their own, but the Mojos were the groundbreakers here. Clearly, it was the first stepping stone to certain world stardom and glorious adulation.

The Neuro Farm is Coming For Your Delicious Brains

As many of you know, Honey White guitarist Brian Wolff has been PhD-ing it in Washington DC since the 2007/08 school year. When not plumbing the mysteries of human neuroscience, Brian has been playing guitar and singing in a new indie-psychedelic duo called the Neuro Farm that he formed with singer-violinist Rebekah Feng.

He had been sending us teasers of their tunes throughout 2010, most notably the epic "Bubble" featured in my "new songs" post here. Bryn, Bill, Marika and I got to put a Honey White spin on their song "Dreams" when HW reconvened in November and December.

Well, now Brian's telling us that "we're getting close to finishing a short album, and I'm so excited about crossing the 30-minutes-of-music threshold," and he sent us a link to some tunes. They're pretty rad:

The Neuro Farm on MySpace