NorCal Music News from the Indie Crowd

Here's a music blog for ya!

The start of summer has finally arrived with sun shining into your bedroom window. While sitting with a nice, cold Hefeiwzen in your hand, do you start to worry... " What record do I put on to keep me in this effen awesome mood?"

No worries! Here's a mini list I've compiled of the best bands to listen to in the blow-up pool in the backyard! (Note: or on the way to that rafting trip you just organized....)

Lizzzzzzen:

Thee Oh Sees - "I was Denied" off Warm Slime on In the Red Records released May 11th

Fresh and Onlys - "No Second Guessing" off Grey-Eyed Girls

Gories - "Yaya Baby" off Complete Bandin' Sessions

Lightning Bolt - "Assassins" off Wonderful Rainbow

Ariel Pink - "Alisa" off House Arrest

Gun Club - " Sex Beat" off Fire of Love

Eat Skull - "Heaven's Stranger" off Wild and Inside

Music RagNag!

Last month, The German Measles, The Beets, and Ganglians played at Sol Collective in Sacramento. This show was the last Ganglians show in Northern California until they got back from their Europe tour starting in md-May. The bands all played and after crashed out after the show at the Funcastle.

The next morning local filmer, Sean of TerrorEyes showed up to try and get the bands to allow him to film them. We set up their gear and recording equiptment in the backyard and had the band play two songs as sean filmed them.

Right after the second song, the cops showed up, but luckily we got all the sound and footage! Make sure to check on terroreyes.tv to see the video.

Also, last month, Zach Hill, drummer for Hella and a million other bands, left for the ATP festival in England. Headliners of the show were: Iggy Pop and the Stooges, The Residents, Joanna Newsom, James Chance and the Contortions, etc. Zach did not play solo this time, but with the highly acclaimed Japanese noise band BOREDOMS.

Update: check Zach's latest video story, Green Bricks; released a few weeks ago.

Word,

~~ picketfence

Written and Submitted to RAFTWETblog.com

Ganglians Top Bands & Music

Here's some year end lists we made, we really put a lot of thought into these, you should really check some of this music out. .... Anyways, here's some things for now while i get some other stuff together.

Ryan (Ganglians)

Ganglians Top 10 albums of 2009 (In no order)

1. Mayyors: Deads EP
2. Eat Skull: Wild and Inside
3. Grass Widow: S/T
4. The Hospitals: Hairdryer Peace

5. John Maus: Love is Real (2007, but felt like it materialized now)

6. Nite Jewel: Good Evening
7. The Beets: Spit on the Face of People Who Don't Want to Be Cool.
8. Kurt Vile: Constant Hitmaker
9. The Intelligence: Fake Surfers
10. The Mayfair Set: Young One

The Intelligence Video - Dating Cops

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ryan of Ganglians Top 10 Songs Listened to in 2009. (not necessarily from this year)

1. "The Bublight"- Joe Meek
I've been listening to this song at least weekly for years. I'm an
extreme sucker for slide guitar and when its doubled then tripled
towards the end with a Hawaiian slide guitar it's too much, the dams
break in my head and my soul overflows, lapping up on the dark shores
of islands across the sea of time.

2, "The Samba"- Vichy Water
I live with these guys and girls, they also have another great band
they're all in called Ggreen who i would have included on here to if
their record had been released yet. Vichy water has some of the
catchiest guitar/bass ensloughts and they churn em out like it aint no
thing. And everyone can sing/shout along. "Rip a strip!"

3. "Lulu's Lips"- Grass Widow
Some of the best girl group harmonies to come out in years. Very nice
people to and a very concise, tight group of musicians.

4. "Look At Merri" - Rain Parade
This song MUST be listened to on vinyl over loud speakers. Very
pyschedelic, warm, and encompossing; like an ethereal down comforter.

5. "Iceblink Luck"- Cocteau Twins
Coooo~cooo~ softly in my ear.

6. "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore"- The Walker Brothers
"Emptiness is a cloak you wear" Scott Walker croons before said cloak
opens and dispells all the sadness with a chorus so heartbreakingly
genuine and questionably hopeful that you're reminded of every time you saw the
light at the end of the tunnel.

7. "Scan the Floor for Food"- The Hospitals
The whole Hairdryer Peace album is one big razor edged nightmare of a
dream (psychotic, paranoid, in a constant state of confusion, things
flying at you from every angle) but when it all slows down to a
simmering boil towards the end this song reminds you of all the good
times you had getting there, thinking you're insane all the way trying
to hold on to what reality once was. We're lucky enough to have Adam
recording the next Ganglians 7", he's a true mastermind with tape
machines and we couldn't be more terrified.

8. "Tonight Again"- Twinkeyz
When I first heard this band not too long ago I couldn't believe they
weren't an early influence of ours. They have all the same aesthetics;
aliens, mystery, cartoons, space, outcasts; only 30 years earlier.
Donnie Jupiter is now a comic book artist and animator after some
really tragic events. And the kicker is they're also from Sacramento!
It may be too late but it's time this band gets the attention it
deserves.

9. "We Are Too Young"- Reading Rainbow
This band makes there own amazing art to match their amazing anthemic
songs, and they have a beautiful home with antique furniture, where as
all my friends can't remember to take out their garbage and pizza
boxes.

10. "Tenebrae"- John Maus
An epic, masonic masterpiece that manages to erect the massive
hallowed halls of the intergalactic gods of space and time right in
the mind's eye. Best listened to barreling down a country road on a
starry night clutching Aliester Crowley's Book Of Lies.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5 Things remembered off the top of our heads from 2009

1. Toronto, and Treasure Cove in Montreal: Oh, Canada: You were so
cool, even after we ended up having to come back from the border and
get an hour of sleep in the entry way of the venue before being woken
by an irate landlord after an hour of sleep. Gravy fries and sleeping
in the amanita woods was something else to.
2. SMMR BMMR and Woodsist/ Captured Tracks Festivals: It was kinda
like summer camp for bands.
3. Peaking on the peak of Bell Rock in Sedona, AZ: We made sure to
find the strongest vortex point in this new age town in the red rock
canyons of Arizona for our trip and the whole process of climbing up
this steeply sloped spiral mountain with twisted trees, alien
monuments, and epic views was resplendent with metaphors and strange
things i still can't manage to explain.

4. Kyle Ganglian getting lost in San Francisco while our friends in
the Hospitals drove around in a taxi and blew on whistles trying to
find him. We found him the next morning at a hotel after getting
mugged at 7 a.m. just in time for him to go to work.

5. Recording with Andy Morin: I don't know if Monster Head Room would
have been finished without him. He put up with every one of our idiot
ideas and helped us make something we were really proud of.

Thank you Ryan for this Post!

Special thanks to Ryan Grubbs from the Ganglians for this A-List of bands and music!
(got the tunes in my head now... rafting down the river...smiles at the club kids...)