Night Gallery was the follow-up show to the Twilight Zone and featured Rod Serling in an art gallery unveiling paintings that depicted the story ahead. I only know about it because it is parodied in a Halloween episode of The Simpsons. I don’t think it was as popular in the UK; over here we are all about Michael Aspel. Read more »
Davila 666 are a Puerto Rican Boy Band on Drugs
Menudo were the biggest boy band in Puerto Rico for a long time. They had the same scattergun membership policy as the Sugababes, although rather than internal spats, most members left when their voices broke at one point. Ricky Martin (yes, THE Ricky Martin) was a member at one point too. Like most boy bands, they were also rubbish, but on drugs they might have sounded great. Davila 666 reckon they sound like “Menudo on drugs” and they’re a gnarly garage punk band.
ALL THE GOLDEN GRRRLS
First there was Veronica Falls – who, if you remember, had absolutely nothing to do with Kirstie Alley – and now there’s Golden Grrrls, who, as far as we can tell, have nothing to do with Bea Arthur. What is it about hazy indie-pop bands who bury their glory under a mountain of fuzz and split their time between worshiping C86 and worshiping second-rate American sitcoms? You could at least call your band Friends or M.A.S.H. Read more »
DON’T GET PREGNANT
Being pregnant doesn’t sound much fun. You get huge, everything hurts, it’s hard to walk upstairs and you can’t drink gin. I don’t want to even go into the whole giving birth thing, because that seems like a real struggle. However, Pregnant is a pretty good band name. Read more »
Call for Night Control
To me, Night Control sounds like the name of a slightly lame superhero whose aim would be to control the nightlife of a city and whose special power would be the ability to turn people sober. He’d halve teenage pregnancy and drink-driving deaths, but he’d be really fucking unpopular and every time he arrived everyone would turn down their music. Thankfully he doesn’t exist; something much funner does. Read more »
Watch those Sharp Ends
Calgary, Alberta is a generally pretty cold city I know little about apart from that it hosted the Winter Olympics when Jamaica entered; and I only know that because Cool Runnings was my favourite film when i was a kid (I still think it’s great. And, interestingly, pint-sized gambling football substitute Michael Owen claims it’s the only film he’s ever seen). There’s something in this cold, bleak environment that must inspire dark, post-punk bands. I guess having to wear big coats and seeing steam come out of your mouth must make everyone feel a little more like Ian Curtis. Read more »
TOTALLY HEAVY HAWAII
So, if you weren’t really bored of hearing about Wavves, you’d probably be wondering what Nathan Williams was doing before all the hype, backlash, stage breakdowns and fights with Black Lips that followed. Well, he was playing in a pretty good “tropical psych-folk trio” called Fantastic Magic and he dressed like like he played in Devendra Banhart’s backing band. They played a bunch of shows, released a CD-R, a tape and a 7″, and then split up. So what happened to the other members of the group? Well, two of them, specifically Matthew and Sundar, became Heavy Hawaii. Read more »
OOH HEAVEN IS A BAND ON EARTH
Is it sad to want to spend eternity in a bar? I can’t help but imagine heaven to be a really cool joint where Lester Bangs, Karl Marx and Shakespeare shoot the shit on velvet stools over free beers poured by Ted Danson or Barbara Windsor. This may not be the most thrilling vision of Shangri-La, but it’s more exciting than angels in white robes sitting on fluffy clouds and spinning Joanna Newsome records. Read more »
Sea lions inspire the Sea Lions
Sea lions are awesome and not just for the fact that they are really good at dancing, have tusks and are killer surfers. These tusked Pinnipeds are also righteous music warriors who once tried to fuck up the Jonas Brothes and have inspired the kids of sea lion hotspot Oxnard, California to put down the guns and pick up the C86. Read more »
Weed Diamond sees the sun where there’s none
When I think of Denver, Colorado, I think of lumberjack shirts, the Rocky Mountains and John Denver (though he was born in Roswell). One thing I certainly didn’t expect was that it would inspire the kind of sunstroke sounds that have come from Denver resident Tim Perry under his fucking awful moniker Weed Diamond. It’s great that you smoke loads of dope and everything, but unless you’re Afro Man, you look like a dick telling everyone. Fortunately the music’s fucking great.
