Thursday, January 1, 2009

Feliz Ano Nuevo!

We are back!

After a long blogging hiatus (where did the time go?), in which we've been working hard creating the next Ear Candle Radio playlist, making the holidays happen, and replacing both a computer and a DVD player (thankfully we got great deals for both on Craigslist), we are gearing up for new activities and will be brimming with new bloggy goodness for you all.

In the meantime, here's a couple things to entertain you:

The Horribles' drummer got in touch recently and was interested in buying copies of our footage of his old band, so Davis made a new, improved edit of their set in two parts. Check it out here and here. Keep in mind that this is a one-camera shoot, mostly shot by me in the middle of a mosh pit, so don't be surprised to see a few shaky moments. But aren't these kids adorable?

(Soon to come: our edit of the latest installment of Oakland's Illuminated Corridor, a wild experimental multimedia free-for-all staged in various public spaces in Oaktown. This latest edit captures the beautiful chaos of these events, and we look forward to sharing it with you.)

The second Experimental Bunnies album, Biology And Physics, is busy being processed by our distributor, and we'll let you know when you can download your own. I have to say I'm pretty proud of this one; in my less humble moments I've been known to tell people, "this is the greatest instrumental album of all time!", which may be stretching it just a little, but really, it's very, very good.

The next musical task is to focus on more new material by the Blame, starting with our upcoming single, "Tropical Fish", a song salvaged from the scrapped sessions for Meri St. Mary, who suddenly decided our little label just wasn't good enough for her because we actually wanted her to sign a contract. (Not to mention telling other people that we aren't trustworthy and our recordings are poor quality; hiring a big entertainment lawyer to try to strong-arm us into destroying the tapes, which of course we refused to do and he promptly backed down; plus she walked off with a few possessions of ours that we may never see again...the thanks we get for helping an old friend back into the spotlight. Bleahhh...) So we're taking the music we made for her song, finishing it ourselves, and putting it out as a cover version by the Blame! We will not be thwarted by petty nonsense! And it is an excellent (and excellently recorded) song (we wouldn't be doing this otherwise) that only becomes more poignant after our experience. We'll let y'all know when it's done!

Not to be forgotten: We've gotten a lot of responses to our live shoot of Matthew Grasso and the Nada Brahma Music Ensemble performing "Papamagama". Here's all three parts:

Papamagama, Part 1
Papamagama, Part 2
Papamagama, Part 3

If these are loading too slowly for your computer, visit our You Tube site, where we have fistfuls of video treats for you.

One of my favorite things recently: Celine Keller, who some of you may remember for her artwork on the first two Content Providers albums and more recently is responsible, along with her partner Paula, for the very creative and productive NENA TV, has a brilliant new blog called KrustelKram, which compiles some incredible video clips from all over. Recently, Celine and Paula found this fantastic BBC documentary on Brazilian music that provides lots of great footage and insight into the fascinating history of the Tropicalia movement. Interesting how the military dictatorship was far less threatened by the doctrinaire leftist opposition than by wild hippies like Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, who the local Marxists, in their short-sighted People's Front Of Judea fashion, hated almost as much as the oppressive government itself. Another example of why one of our slogans at Ear Candle Productions is: CULTURE TRUMPS POLITICS!

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