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May 30, 2005
Pour Out A Little Windjammer
Since I've already reminisced for a spell about local bar/club history, I feel the need to mention that it was exactly three years ago tonight that one of Chapel Hill's greatest drinking establishments served up its final round of tasty beverages. Yeah, Pyewacket was a pretty nice restaurant in the minds of many Chapel Hillians, but for me and my friends it was simply the best bar in town. Sure, Henry's and Hell were/are fine places to hang out, but on a pleasant spring or summer evening, nothing really beat sitting outside on the Pyewacket patio with a Planter's Punch or a Windjammer while watching West Franklin Street and shooting the shit.
Pyewacket's final night was somewhat of a bittersweet blowout. Both the bar area and patio were uncharacteristically packed with standing people, many of them loyal customers and former employees who had heard that the 'Wacket would be closing after 25 years of being in business. Longtime bartenders Marc Formato and Breta Stroud were mixing up drinks with whatever ingredients hadn't already been used up. Later in the evening I tried to order a Bossa Nova (Myer's rum, Galliano, apricot brandy, and pineapple juice), but the Galliano had already run out by that point. So for my last-ever Pyewacket drink I ordered a Raspberry Tea (vodka, gin, light rum, lemon juice, Triple Sec, and Chambord). Ever the amazing hostess, Breta generously made me a pint-sized version of the cocktail using my newly purchased commemorative Pyewacket pint glass. The super-sized Raspberry Tea definitely packed a bit of a wallop! A nice one to go out on...
Cheers to you, Pyewacket! Thanks for all the memories...
6/01/05 UPDATE: Before Pyewacket closed I took a Pyewacket Drink Menu as a souvenir of the place. The original really ought to go to a museum someday, but until that happens, here's a scan of my favorite section, the "Specialty Drinks" list that includes all of the drinks mentioned above and a whole bunch more.
Posted by Tim at 08:10 PM | Comments (5)
May 27, 2005
But I'm So Fast When I Blow Past
Supergenius beatmaker Just Blaze sewed up my "best audio surgeon of 2004" award when he sliced a melodramatic piano riff from the title cut of Supertramp's Crime of The Century, implanted it with a massive bass-thump heartbeat, administered several doses of adrenaline, and handed the screaming patient over to Fabolous. Earlier in his rap career, Mr. F-A-B-O-L-O-U-S seemed to enjoy few things more than simply spelling out his own name, but this time around, Fabolous rose to the occasion and opted for a 1-2-3-4 counting workout that nicely pumped up an oddly sparse chorus of drum fills.
The resulting hit was "Breathe". And yeah, this is semi-old news 'cause the song came out well over 6 months ago. Only recently, however, did I come to the realization that not only was "Breathe" one of the best bangers of 2004, it's actually one of the greatest jogging songs I've ever heard. That 85 BPM tempo is a really good pace-setter, and those winded count-offs, constant "Breathe!" exhortations, and speed-boasting lyrics help motivate me to jog along at such a brisk pace that I actually do start imagining that "dudes are wheezin' behind me". I'm probably veering dangerously close to Chariots of Fire territory here, but while listening to "Breathe" several times during the course of my jog this past Monday evening, I managed to cut two whole minutes off of my previous route record. And then on Tuesday evening I squeezed in a few more listens while slicing yet another minute off of Monday's time. Perhaps I'm actually just improving or getting faster or whatever, but listening to "Breathe" really does seem to have a noticeable effect on my running pace. I just hope I don't get completely sick of the song anytime soon!
Or at least not until after June 11th, when I'm going to be running in the 9th Annual NC Triangle Race for the Cure. I've run in a couple of loosely organized Chapel Hill "5K"s over the last 8 months, but this will be my first-ever officially sanctioned race that measures exactly 5 kilometers. I think I heard that this is the biggest 5K in all of North Carolina so I'm expecting a race full of hardcore running geeks, the sort of people that worry a lot more about the number of net carbs in a Powerbar than the motivational value of a Fabolous song. In any case, it should be an interesting experience and I'm looking forward to seeing how I do in a real race scenario.
More importantly, though, the race is a huge fundraiser for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. I can't actually claim to have any close friends or family whose lives have been impacted by breast cancer, but I'm guessing that this might not always be the case in the future, unfortunately. So since I'm already participating in this event, I decided to go ahead and set up a fundraising page with a modest goal of $250.00. If you feel like sponsoring my participation in this race and helping me reach my fundraising goal, please make an online contribution here. Any contribution, no matter how small or large, would be greatly appreciated!
Posted by Tim at 10:26 PM | Comments (0)
May 25, 2005
Miami Bass Will Eat Itself
The Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats compilation on Germany's Essay Recordings is easily of the best CDs I've purchased all year. I should've suspected that this was going to be the case as soon as I saw the CD cover art....but that's probably a little beside the point. If you haven't heard about (or better yet, heard) the intoxicating dancefloor madness that is "Rio baile funk", you can read Douglas Wolk's short article from a December 2004 issue of the Village Voice and/or this Stylus Magazine review of the aforementioned compilation. Or if you need a napkin-sized executive summary, let's just say that Rio baile funk/favela booty bass/funk carioca/whatchamacallit is sort of like a 21st-century Brazilian twist on 80s electro and Miami bass, with lots of energetic Portuguese rapping thrown into the crazy raw-sounding mix.
One of the absolute wildest tracks on Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats is De Falla's "Popozuda Rock'n'Roll", a pretty hilarious and incredible song that almost sounds like a Brazilian rap group attempting to do a Miami bass version of the riff-heavy theme to Beverly Hills 90210. I like this song so much that not only have I made it a regular part of my recent DJ sets, but I got inspired to work out a blend between "Popozuda Rock'n'Roll" and one of its much older and far more commercially successful cousins from the opposite side of the extended Miami bass family tree. Yes, I'm talking about that undeniable party anthem "C'Mon N' Ride It (The Train)" by Quad City DJ's. In semi-accordance with today's prevailing naming standards of "<geographical region> <musical subgenre>", I am calling this mix "Quad City Baile Funk". You can download an MP3 of the mix here:
Quad City Baile Funk (4.78 MB)
Call it a mash-up if you absolutely must, but I actually mixed this one in real time and just recorded the results. I finally got my new external Audigy2 NX soundcard/soundsystem hooked up between my laptop and my mixer, so I'm hoping that this will be the first of many "mini-mixes" that I record and post online with some sort of regularity. A DJ Twombly mixtape will be coming out later this year, but until that happens, you can check out this blog and/or the podcast feed for periodic blends or random mixes or mini-sets that may or may not make it onto a final plastic CD product with which I am perfectly satisfied. My programmer posse out there may or may not recognize this as nothing more than a DJ-ing/mixtape-releasing version of the "Release Early, Release Often" model. In any case, it's making a lot of sense to me at the moment so I'm going to give it a shot...'cause the music world is movin' fast and the internet is goin' nuts and even something as new as a "Still Tippin'"/"P's and Q's" mix just isn't sounding nearly as fresh as I thought it did two months ago. So stay tuned for some variation of that and/or a bunch of M.I.A. mixes that I've been working on.
Posted by Tim at 11:57 PM | Comments (4)
May 14, 2005
A Chapel Hill Staple
Graduation weekend is always a pretty wild time here in Chapel Hill, but this year seems like it's going to be a little more memorable than usual. I know a few cool folks at WXYC who will be receiving their undergraduate diplomas tomorrow, The IronDog will be getting that Master's Degree in City and Regional Planning, and a sizable chunk of my crazy SILS crew will be awarded with Master's Degrees in Library Science. But while I tip my hat to all of those folks, I gotta save my biggest "congradulatory" shout-out for one of my favorite Chapel Hillians ever, my friend Jay Murray. I think Jay actually started going to UNC back when Bush the Elder was in office, and even he himself recently joked about how he had probably set "some kind of Van Wilder record for years in grad school". But Jay successfully defended his doctoral dissertation last fall and he's finally getting his PhD tomorrow. Dr. Murray, I tip my mortarboard-less cap in your direction!
In celebration of Jay's graduation (and anyone else's), 401 Pritchard will be hosting what might be their earliest-ever "afterparty" tomorrow afternoon at 3pm. Misty Touch and I will be tag-teaming on the turntables out on the front porch, and later on in the evening Bellafea may or may not be rocking out for a while. Should be a great time assuming that we get some cooperation from noise permits and the weather.
"School's Out" by Alice Cooper is a no-brainer for a graduation party, but the other record that I'll definitely be throwing in the crate for tomorrow is the "How Hard is That?" 12-inch by MC Paul Barman. Local scene scholars may remember that Barman lived in Chapel Hill for a short stint before his rap career started to take off. His 2002 LP Paullelujah! even has a couple of MF Doom-produced tracks ("Anarchist Bookstore, Pt. 1" and "Anarchist Bookstore, Pt. 2") inspired by Internationalist Books. While in Chapel Hill, Barman lived at 401 Pritchard for a short period...and let's just say that Barman and Murray didn't always get along so well. That isn't so notable or unusual in itself, but unlike the typical trifles that most of us have argued about with our housemates at one point or another, Barman's beefs with Murray wound up being immortalized on wax via "Housemate Troubles", the B-side to Barman's 2000 single "How Hard is That?". For some reason the "Housemate Troubles" MP3 is still up on the Matador Records web site, so if you haven't heard it, you can download it here:
MC Paul Barman - "Housemate Troubles" (2.42 MB)
However clever some of those carefully constructed rhymes may be, a lot of the song's lyrics are pretty wack. I mean, c'mon..."you watch Friends while we are friends"?!? Yikes. Barman did manage to set off one admittedly funny firebomb, though:
I make rap masterpieces. You can't complete your crap master's thesis?
Barman's "rap masterpieces" boast wasn't even the only factually inaccurate part of that couplet, though. For the record, Jay had long finished his master's degree by that point and was working on his doctoral paper. When "Housemate Troubles" first came out in 2000, I encouraged Jay to call Barman's bluff on the "You're too lazy to write a rebuttal" assertion by recording some sort of response track, perhaps a Chapel Hill version of "Jack The Ripper". Jay said that the world really didn't need to hear him rap, so instead he wrote "An Open Letter To Paul Barman" and sent it to me for publication in an online issue of Tuba Frenzy that I was considering putting together. Tuba Frenzy as a webzine never really happened, and then the whole Barman moment had more or less passed. But now that Jay is finally getting his PhD and completely vanquishing the infamous "thesis" jab, I thought I might as well make good on my promise from many years ago and finally publish the "Open Letter To Paul Barman" that Jay wrote in late 2000.
Congrats again to Dr. Murray, truly "a Chapel Hill staple" and a way nicer guy than whomever it was Barman was rapping about on "Housemate Troubles". Perhaps in lieu of embarrassing Jay with the full version of the song tomorrow afternoon, I'll just rock the instrumental and let the Doc read the text of his diploma over the top of that beat.
Posted by Tim at 01:02 PM | Comments (8)
May 11, 2005
Smokin' Joe's
Spurred on by some early 90s nostalgia in the comments section of my last post, I've decided to continue revisiting the stranger musical moments of the ramshackle three-storied edifice located at 157 East Rosemary Street in downtown Chapel Hill. Starting with the extremely short-lived Smokin' Joe's, a rock club that was located in the basement of that run-down building, in the exact same space that Hell has occupied for these last 8 years. I'm pretty sure that Smokin' Joe's started having shows in October 1993. The 206 W. Franklin Street incarnation of the Cat's Cradle had shut its doors in May 1993, and while the relatively new Local 506 had started bringing in some amazing shows courtesy of the adventurous musical inclinations and booking talents of one Randy Bullock, there was still this general vibe around town that Chapel Hill was in desperate need of another larger venue where both touring acts and local bands could play. Enter Smokin' Joe's. I don't know who owned the place, it might've even been the same people who owned Troll's, the fratty bar that previously occupied the space. But as I recall the club was booked by Kelley Cox - founder of Moist Records (aka Moist/Baited Breath), the idea man behind 1992's much-ballyhooed "Big Record Stardom Convention", and a one-time Poindexter Records clerk. Cox knew a lot of bands/label/industry people and had good taste to boot. My concert-date memory isn't nearly what it used to be, but I was able to reconstruct a partial Smokin' Joe's schedule from some listings in old issues of Trash and Stay Free! and a bunch of scrawlings in my old Carolina Week By Week:
Thu. 10/14/93 - Beatless
Fri. 10/15/93 - Small 23, Crowsdell, Orangestone
Sat. 10/16/93 - Blue Green Gods, Vineland, Shiny Beast
Sun. 10/17/93 - King Kong, Bicycle Face
Sun. 10/31/93 - Rodan (reportedly w/ special guests Lulu Spagoo!)
Tue. 11/02/93 - What Peggy Wants, Truck Stop Love
Fri. 11/05/93 - Orifice, Queen Sarah Saturday
Sat. 11/06/93 - Half Japanese, Family Dollar Pharoahs
Tue. 11/09/93 - Picasso Trigger, Slug, J. Church
Wed. 11/10/93 - Voodoo Birds
Thu. 11/11/93 - Jack O'Nuts, Capsize 7
Fri. 11/12/93 - No Safety, God Plow
Sat. 11/13/93 - Small 23, Mousetrap, Sunbrain
Tue. 11/16/93 - Lud, Greensect, Channel
Wed. 11/17/93 - White Buffalo, Post
Thu. 11/18/93 - Grifters
Thu. 12/02/93 - Blue Green Gods, New Radiant Storm King
Fri. 12/03/93 - Chew Toy, Raymond Brake, New Radiant Storm King
Fri. 12/17/93 - Analogue
I can't vouch for the completeness or accuracy of most of these lineups...bands could've been dropped or added from some of these bills, and a few shows might've been cancelled. I missed the Louisville heavyweights on the schedule (Kink Kong, Rodan) but I remember going to the Half-Japanese/Family Dollar Pharoahs show (really great), the Grifters (pretty much my favorite non-local band in 1993), and the Small/Crowsdell show.
As I recall, the bands played in the far back corner of the club - the area diametrically opposite from the main door/stairwell, not the less-visible corners where Hell's foosball and air hockey tables live. And in case anyone was wondering how Hell's men's room got to be the luxurious suite that it currently is, just check out the "His" section of Stay Free! #5's "Local Restroom Reviews". Not a lot has changed.
I'm not exactly sure why Smokin' Joes stopped having shows but I daresay it probably had a lot to do with the fact that the Cat's Cradle reopened at its current Carrboro location on November 29, 1993. That first night was a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion/Jesus Lizard/Brickbat show and the new Cradle was understandably packed. My Kentucky connection tells me that Kelley Cox moved to Louisville at some point in 1994 and probably still lives there. If anyone out there has any corrections or additions or memories to contribute to this somewhat hazy history of Smokin' Joe's, please make a comment.
Next up: Transmissions 001 invades Bub O'Malley's...
Posted by Tim at 10:25 PM | Comments (12)
May 08, 2005
Wetlands Dancehall
Ron Liberti designed and screenprinted this poster for the Kerbloki dance party that I DJed a week and a half ago at Wetlands Dancehall. This coming Saturday night, Ron's own band The Ghost of Rock will be playing at Wetlands on a bill with Greg Barbera's new punk rock trio The Chest Pains. I'll have to ask Ron if he remembers performing at this exact same Treehouse/Wetlands space a very long time ago during one of its earlier pre-Cheap Shots incarnations: a sports bar called Rosey's Good Times. During the summer of 1992, WXYC started sponsoring some cheap live shows at Rosey's, and I remember there being a Pipe/Archers of Loaf show there at some point. I didn't make it to that show or the even odder-for-a-sports-bar bill of Smog and Royal Trux (oops!), but I did manage to catch Shrimp Boat when they played an ill-timed Rosey's gig during the middle of the 1992 World Series. Shrimp Boat captain Sam Prekop is actually coming back to town on Thursday June 9th. I'm sure the Carrboro Artscenter will be a fine venue for him and Archer Prewitt, but it's almost too bad that Prekop isn't playing Wetlands Dancehall, since I'm sure that this time around he could get it specified in his rider that no Braves/Blue Jays games could be broadcast during his performance.
Lately I've been thinking a lot about Chapel Hill/Carrboro's live music clubs/venues and how they've changed over the years. When I first started loading my records into Wetlands Dancehall for that Kerbloki dance party, I looked over to the right half of the club and was very surprised to see a freshly constructed stage completely surrounding the DJ booth. It was at that moment that I finally started thinking of Wetlands Dancehall not just as "The Treehouse with a new name" but as a completely new venue capable of hosting a whole new lineup of rock shows, live performances, DJ nights, etc. Making even a partial transition to "live music club" is obviously not going to be an easy task, but one thing Wetlands Dancehall has going for it is the fact that it can hold a ton of people.
Perhaps more importantly, the place has a good downtown Chapel Hill location. Ever since the Lizard and Snake Cafe closed up in 1998, the vast majority of cool live music shows in town have taken place in either Carrboro (Cat's Cradle, Go!) or the very-close-to-Carrboro edges of West Franklin and West Rosemary (Local 506, Nightlight, The Cave). As a proud resident of Carrboro, this is totally cool by me and convenient to boot. But I can't help thinking what a shame it is that the East Franklin stretch of downtown Chapel Hill (the part of downtown that is closest to the UNC campus) can't seem to get any more interesting or happening than it is. During my freshman and sophomore years at UNC, I lived all the way across campus in Morrison Dorm but I still wound up walking to Cat's Cradle shows all the time....'cause back then, the Cradle was located at 206 W. Franklin, currently the site of Buffalo Wild Wings. That incarnation of the Cradle shut down in May 1993. When Frank Heath reopened his club at its current Carrboro location in late November of 1993, the geographical center of Chapel Hill's live music scene was almost a mile west of where it used to be. Which may not seem like much unless you're a student living on campus without any sort of automobile at your disposal.
Luckily for campus dorm-dwellers, the live music scene seems to be slowly creeping back downtown. I think it's kind of interesting that for probably the first time since the Lizard and Snake closed in 1998, "underground"-type local bands are playing at downtown locations like Wetlands Dancehall and The Library. I shouldn't saddle Wetlands Dancehall with too many expectations or more significance than it deserves, but I'd really like to see the place succeed in its new and more interesting post-Treehouse incarnation. The folks that work there are awesome and the place seems to have a lot of possibilities given its location and vast square footage. And with Hell down below it's got a great companion bar with which to trade patrons back and forth. If I had the ear of one of those urban planners working on Chapel Hill's downtown redevelopment projects, I'd suggest that they find a way to support venues like Wetlands Dancehall and stop pinning all of their revenue-generating hopes on mall-type stores like Rugby and Sephora. Such a strategy seems to have worked quite well for Carrboro over the last decade.
On a less serious note, am I the only one who thinks that "Wetlands Dancehall" almost sounds like it could be the name of a ridiculously narrow micro-genre a la "sino-grime" or "Rio baile funk" or "Swedish glitch" or whatever? Like, you know, there's all the new dancehall riddims coming out of Jamaica, and then there's this new weirder wetlands dancehall shit that people in the Florida Everglades are starting to make...
Posted by Tim at 11:11 PM | Comments (9)
May 01, 2005
Prefuse 73 live at Local 506
When I was joking about how Prefuse 73 and Battles were going to have to fit all of that gear into the back corners of 506 last night, I didn't even realize that Prefuse would be coming with the full rhythm section and the periodic double-drummer attack! Awesome. It's always a treat to hear a great drummer pound out hip-hop beats live. I forgot to ask who that gentleman was....so if anybody out there knows, please say his name.
Battles brought the heat as usual. On paper they originally seemed to be a bit of an odd choice to open for Prefuse 73, but after the night was all over it seemed to make a lot of sense. Battles' rhythmic noise-rock has a lot of really nice looped-out Steve Reich-y repetition in it, and Prefuse 73's instrumental machine-funk and deconstructed hip-hop aren't quite so abstract-sounding when anchored by the full force of live bass and drums. I'm a little surprised that Ty Braxton never joined Prefuse onstage for one of those Surrounded by Silence collabos, but maybe there just wasn't enough room up there...
Posted by Tim at 03:49 PM | Comments (0)