name game

a show for you:

Wednesday April 2, 2008
Make Out Room, SF
Cairo Gang.....Family Trea....Painted Cakes


Family Trea is a project by dear Arvel Hernandez (pictured above, mid new years eve slur), and some other folks. They used to perform under the name BowerBird, but it turned out there is another band named Bowerbirds (who are kinda bigtime), and the doubling of a band name is just about the biggest band faux pas there is. You don't touch another dude's chick, and you don't touch another band's name. got it?

Painted Cakes is a solo project by Elias Reitz (pictured above, mid golden afternoon birthday celebration for frank...notice a sly martin gluing together both of these social events), however I've heard that he is not going to be slaying the percussion as he is best known (with Bright Black Morning Light, Gojogo, and Triangle), but playing guitar and orchestrating some exciting guest musicians.

and I don't know much about Cairo Gang except that it's the project of Emmett Kelly, who is known as a great guitarist, and is affiliated with Will Oldham (who's been making some guest appearances these days since he's based out of the the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts for a bit...so perhaps you'll get a chance to invite the Palace Prince along for an after show taco).

all this talk of bands and band names makes me want to do a quick inventory of all the bands I've been in. Each name represents so much of my impressions of what bands should be.

4th grade
-Powerline (solo, acoustic, instrumental, Heavy Metal act, inspired by Metallica and Sabbath)
-Outlaws of Metal (a hypothetical band with several members who agreed to start learning how to play instruments just for the sake of rock...we decided on the name in gym class after the gym teacher called us outlaws for sitting far away from the rest of the class. no joke.)

5th grade
-Trendy (second solo project. I started listening to "Alternative" music like Dinosaur Jr...my first experiences with irony and trying to weird)

8th grade
-N.A.D.S. (a real band with real members, Nate/Andy/Dave/Sloane, that had a bit of a ska, punk flavor...we even played a show at our friend Steve's birthday party at his father's church...we had the whole place chanting "Go NADS! Go NADS!")

9th grade
-Lunar Vaporizer (here's where the electronica movement kicks in...Orbital, Aphex Twin, Juno Reactor. i played drum machine through effect pedals while my friend Nate played "the computer". it was nerdy.)
-Atomic Week (this one was a big deal...this where the Tortoise style improv indie jam kicked in hard. This the band in which Andrew Connors and I became BFFs. we played through the rest of high school and even recorded some albums (Atomic Emissions 1 and 2). Actually, there was another band in the world named Atomic Week that somehow heard a recording of ours, which was a big deal, pre-Myspace, and they actually said we were better than them, and offered the name to us. True band chivalry.)

11th grade
-Get Caught (our friends jam band that I played drums in...a disaster)
-One Notch Looser (same band, one month into it)

College
-Stop Plate Tectonics (kind of like Atomic Week with better record collections and singing. the band where Max Goldberg and I became BFFs. This project featured our friend Ben Goldwasser who is currently getting famous with his band MGMT)
-untitled (a brief Hip Hop project...it found me)
-Eagle Eyes (a three piece art rock, rock opera project. the first time Frank and I played music together, along with our dear friend Jonah.)
-Gold (Frank and my next project, now becoming BFFs, more angular, more rowdy, if Erase Erata were boys. featuring Andrew VanWyngarden also of MGMT, now also totally famous)
-Snowblink (a second Hip Hop project)

Beyond grades
-Number Name (with Gibson from Lobot)
-Brothers (me and Max being two tall skinny dark haired jewish hunks)
-Circles (Martin Salata's project)
-Snowblink (oh daniela and her hip hop)
-Ship (at times also expressed as Manoeuvre and Yoga Lazer)

was that interesting for anyone but me? It kinda blows my mind how much BAND has been in my life. Hopefully when it comes time to name my child I'll be able to draw on all of this experience (Outlaw Wilson?).