Sunday, March 21, 2010

Killer Moon




I can go on and on about these guys. I feel privileged and fortunate to have them as friends. They are here because they are also musicians of note. We all met at work when the social walls between our various functions, and shifts finally were starting to erode. When I started there the rivalries between the three shifts and numerous departments at La Salle/Bank of America were fierce. Second Shift was lazy, First Shift were divas, Third Shift did all the heavy lifting. People were trained in Third. People in Balancing seldom associated with us in the front lines receiving the bags of checks. Yes, some departments at the bank ran 24/7. I was in 3rd shift where I met Jesse and Amaris, two thirds of Killer Moon.

We were all misfits that just found ourselves in a job Talking Heads would ask "How did you get there?" We all had our own singular relationship with music. I was the old goth...still am. They were...are ambitious and talented musicians in need to perform what was inside. I started to hang with Jesse after work. We smoked and listened to music, or he would play what he wrote and I was fascinated as to how effortlessly gifted he was. His music was not current nor common. His music sounded older than he was. What he had to express I believed had massive subcultural potential. On top of that I liked what I heard. We would hang out until the morning sun made us too sleepy. When you work the grave-yard shift the morning sun tells your internal clock "lights out" with some authority. In fighting this authority I found some really good friends before they became this awesome and to me and iconic original band.

Before this band, I did not like a lot of instrumental psychedelic, heavy anything. I needed a voice to hook me. But a voice you can hear from each instrument in Killer Moon's arsenal. You know how a really good score to a movie can both keep you engaged in the action of the film as well as having it's own gravitational pull? Each song is like a story with characters and things, consequential things happen to or are done by these characters. There's conflict to encounter and resolve. It's heavy psychedelic music that keeps you engaged and hanging on every note like a movie capturing attention. In the absence of actors, a great story for them to play out and all the great visuals that come with an epic film, you have Alex on drums, Jesse on lead guitar and Amaris on bass telling you a different story with each song. You can almost write a different scene or story with each song of Killer Moon. Some tracks seem harnessed from the energy of "God Of War". It's only recently that
Jesse's lead guitar gets you familiar with this theme, a series of riffs you become familiar with and fond of and just as that happens he takes off and enter Amaris on bass. With minimal movement she holds together what Jesse establishes while flexing the muscle that is the bass guitar. Stoic she seems in the face of the storm she is part of creating. Alex the travel weathered drummer has this massive cardio. He keeps up with Jesse with intensity, power and speed. Even when he slows down he retains this urgency. Killer Moon is not the product of one singular instrument. There are moments when the lead guitar ebbs into the shadows you see the engine under the hood, the drums and the bass. Killer Moon is also the product of the cultures the members represent. Alex and Jesse are both Mexican-American. Amaris is Puerto Rican. In a way they are misfits of those cultures because they went head first and screaming into producing rock music instead of more... expected channels. Amaris can't even stand reggeton music. Killer Moon therefore can appeal to fans of rock-en-espanol. They are Rock and they are Latino.
Zig

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Moritat





I even forgot when I did this....I think Sunday. I go to Quenchers on Western and Fullerton. This band named Moritat was playing. Quenchers has seen a lot of good bands. The kind that you end up seeing in larger more well known venues. I don't know Quenchers that well, but it seems that anyone can play there, fertile ground for a fan base. Moritat have this female singer and so I go, with modest expectations. Her name is Venus and she plays the keys. I can start this whole thing from the beginning from the moment I got ready and all that bullshit, or perhaps it's best that I forgot that part and only remember being truly impressed with this band Moritat. They had demo CDs out for free. Seeing them perform and listening to them on CD are actually different experiences. They have performed at least one other time, but I could not go. I do want to see them again. The demo CD has just three songs, and I don't know which ones they played that night. I just know that I'm glad I went and I'm glad there was some thing to take home and listen.
The first song Yellow House just sneaks up on you. It's casual jazzy piano and Ms Venus eventually win you over in the stretch. It's not fast...... It's not so pretty and operatic like Kristeen Young, or dark and serious like Aleks and The Drummer. There is a serenity to this band, specifically from that first song that is not in Aleks or KY. Yellow House is a cool chill out song. I'm at a loss to describe the voice of Venus, other than to say I like it. I wish I had lyrics to read. It would help in describing the voice. All I have to describe the voice is the fucking voice. When I use words like serene, calm, casual I'm not saying boring. Kenny G is absolutely boring. Moritat is not. There is a drive to this song, you know, a tension. The keyboard reminds me of the theme song of The Peanuts. It has that subtle catchiness. I am a fan of Moritat.
Zig

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Puerto Muerto's last show





It was one of Empty Bottle's Free Mondays when Puerto Muerto performed their last concert. It feels so different when you know that is so. You ask as you watch, which of these new songs will only see this one live performance. Which old songs have seen their last? Which will you not ever see, but only hear in your car, or ipod. Live performances matter, more so when they are the last one. So I soaked up Christa Meyer belting out "San Pedro" with her mezzo soprano voice. This only time to see "Song of the Moon", and "Tamar". This dying breath was to promote the Drumming For Pistols CD. It was a Free Monday at the Empty Bottle. It's like before there was ever recorded music, this live show was awesome, but all too fleeting. So I took pictures and video with that urgency to preserve the moment. When I put the camera down it was for the same reason. Some things you wanna see just with your own eyes. And Christa was just bouncing all over the stage with that first song. She has this really peculiar way of dancing, and some songs just bring it out. I don't think it's a deliberate thing, it's just what comes out of her naturally from the gut. The gut does not think of display, it just does, and she dances that way and I love it.
I only have a fraction of their collection, but enough to believe that there is iconic stuff in every thing they produce. There is something I like in everything I got from them. The music ages with you, because it comes in already sounding old and wise and you just catch up. Their stuff is hard to describe for me. There is country there, but not in the way you think. There is rock there....but not in the way you think. It's like old frontier sounding country, truck driving country....Johnny Cash country. They once did their own soundtrack for the movie "Texas Chainsaw Massacre". I would argue that the rest of their music is for a Faulkner novel. Dark, intense, tragic, but balanced with that Nick Cave coolness. Their style of darkness is timeless because they are not immediate and obvious. I guess thats really why I put Puerto Muerto in the same company as Faulkner. They cast a similar shadow for me. And so "Tamar" from Drumming For Pistols sounds crazy dark and sexy like dancing to Joy Division. There is something about a band that can make you like a song about a dad molesting his child (at least that is what I believe I heard them say), even as you wince at the tragedy of the subject. Bad writing can sound gratuitous and cheap, a juvenile display of depth. Bad writing decays fast. There is no such thing here, only good consistent songwriting, with a mature approach to their dark subject matter. In the live shows I've been to, they were not dressed like rock stars. That elusive subcultural appeal comes to them without effort or overt display. It's under the plain midwestern surface. There was nothing in their clothes that projected "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", not even a plain black Bauhaus shirt. But once you know it's there you always see it. For those that do have that Bauhaus shirt, I think I can sell you this band. The pictures I put up will be of when they did this festival in the summer of 2009 in Logan Square I believe, and of that one free Monday.