|
Each winter and spring Record Hospital puts on 'orgies:' large blocks of music sharing a
common artist or theme.
This season's orgies include the following:Genius + Love = Yo La Tengo Sat. 1/3/09 10pm-12am Sun. 1/4/09 12am-11am Mon. 1/5/09 12am-6am Tues. 1/6/09 12am-5am (for a total of twenty-four hours) Few indie rock bands can boast the eclectic variety, technical proficiency, or longevity of Hoboken, New Jersey's Yo La Tengo. Spanish for the outfielder's cry of "I've got it!" Yo La Tengo has spent over twenty-three years and fifteen albums making some of the most electrifying and genre-bending music of their time, fully exploring the realms of feedback-heavy noise rock, shiny bedroom pop, folk, shoegaze, rockabilly, and breathy electronica. They have backed and collaborated with artists as diverse as Stephen Malkmus, Ray Davies, the Kilgour brothers, Yoko Ono, Lois Maffeo, Jonathan Richman, the Lyres, Pere Ubu's David Thomas, and Half-Japanese's Jad Fair. They are especially known for their encyclopaedic wealth of cover songs—exemplified by 1990's stellar covers record Fakebook—and for never playing the same setlist twice. Their live shows are famously lengthy, often including multiple encores and three or four obscure covers. Fronted by Ira Kaplan, his wife, drummer Georgia Hubley, and bassist of seventeen years James McNew, Yo La Tengo has made a career out of experimentation within the pop song format, steering the direction of U.S. indie rock for more than two decades and delivering songs that are sometimes gorgeous, sometimes blistering, sometimes heartbreaking and always exciting. Tune in this season on the eve of their 25th anniversary to hear the groundbreaking genius of one of America's rock treasures.
Pronounced "Toll-Tarr", Tjolgtjar's gloriously weird one-man basement black metal is the creation of The Reverend JR Preston, an old school metalhead from the bowels of Illinois who has created his own transcendental cult called "Tjolgtjar". Since 1996, The Rev has been recording and releasing a constant stream of demos under the Tjolgtjar name, rocking a stumbling mix of raw basement black metal, primitive thrash, and drunken 70's rock, loaded with all sorts of crazy psychedelic sounds, freaked out acid rock guitar leads, haunted house organs, and some of the weirdest, most bizarre vocals ever. (A reviewer for a zine in Malaysia a few years back wrote that the Reverend had a vocal style like "an evil Donald Duck," a comparison that the Reverend explicitly approves of. ) Many of his recordings were allegedly composed in trance state entirely in the language of the spirit, "Tjolgtjarium code," with lyrical themes dealing with time and space travel, drug use, Satan, radio transmissions from the future, drifting through timeless light, demons that are corrupting wormholes, the world never ending, using dark magic for the benefit of all mankind, and so forth. The Tjolgtjar orgy explores the Reverend's work in all of his twisted projects, including Blood Cult, MMFHL ("Magical Man From Happy Land"), Enbilulugugal, Bloodwoods, Raw Hatred, Burning Blood, and the 8-bit "NES Black Metal" project Xexyz. Download the interview of the Reverend here.
It was the dawn of the 90s, and dinosaurs of punk ruled the world. The flame of hardcore was slowly fading. And as the 90s began to look dismal for all things furious, Slap-a-Ham Records stepped in to fill the void. Founded by Spazz bassist Chris Dodge, the records on Slap-a-Ham were faster, louder, and meaner than anything that had come before, injecting velocity and distorted bass into records at ear and brain blowing rates. The San Francisco label became flagship of the meteoric rise of a strand of hardcore so intense that it was descriptively titled “power violence.” The alumni of Slap-a-Ham include not only the godfathers of power violence like Man Is the Bastard and Infest, but a some of the most daring bands in rock music, including the sludge experiments of the Melvins and Japan’s frenetic Melt Banana. Slap-a-Ham eventually folded, along with the movement that inspired it, but before it was done it had given a skull-splitting blow to rock music, uniting bands across the globe in the pursuit of pure brutality. Download the Chris Dodge interview here.
This inauguration day, WHRB'S Record Hospital will usher in the new President by creating a punk rock tribute to our nation's highest office. Sampling from bands that have taken inspiration from past presidents, we'll take you chronologically through our nation's humble beginnings, starting with George Moshington; tracing our way through the years with bands such as the Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, Dead Kennedys, and Reagan Youth; and appropriately summing things up with a split by the bands B.U.S.H. and Dick Cheney. Join WHRB as we prepare ourselves for change-- whatever that means.
Corin Tucker began making music after seeing a Bratmobile show. As part of the Pacific Northwest's riot grrrl scene, she and Tracy Sawyer made up Heavens to Betsy, based out of Olympia, Washington. After Heavens to Betsy broke up, she briefly teamed up with Becca Albee to form Heartless Martin. The duo released one EP before Tucker joined with Albee's Excuse 17 bandmate Carrie Brownstein to start Sleater-Kinney. She also started a side project called Cadallaca. After eleven years and seven albums, Sleater-Kinney went on hiatus in 2006. Throughout her career, Corin Tucker addressed feminism and issues of sexuality, influencing women in the punk and indie scenes.
In past years we've done | |
