We’ll be playing a handful of tunes on the ole acoustic – including a few Taiwanese songs from a forthcoming album by The Sounds of Domestic Living (more on that down the road). One of them just may include this little ditty we played last year:

For peeple who live in LA and want to go, tickets are available online here. You can also contact Ben Ling at bling@tacl.org or Ed Chen at ed.chen@tacl.org if you have any questions. Would love to see you there : )

7pm Saturday, August 7
Cafe Pinot
700 West 5th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90071-2026

so here goes, just in case you missed these entertaining NY Times and Pitchfork articles a couple months ago, one of which led MIA to angrily tweet the columnist’s personal phone number… It’s like 5th grade all over again, yay! and all of this over a silly article about whether musicians and artists are “out of line” when they start to talk politics. But who am I to call this silly? I live for this kind of crap : )

Apparently columnist Lynn Hirschberg of the NY Times penned a disparaging column in May in which she pointed out Maya’s hypocrisy and lack of coherence when talking about the political violence in her home country of Sri Lanka. Throughout the column, Hirschberg intersperses Maya’s typical “I’m-such-a-badass, I’m-in-alliance-with-the-Tamil-Tigers-terrorist-groups” quotes with descriptions of what she was ordering at some shi-shi restaurant in LA during the interview.

To Hirschberg’s credit, the article was brilliantly written … acutely obnoxious, and a textbook example of “don’t just tell the reader what happened, SHOW them.” She doesn’t so much criticize MIA as simply assemble the pure facts — MIA’s verbatim quotes, the now-famous fancy “truffles-flavored french fries” she was eating while stating, “I kind of want to be an outsider,” and the fact that MIA and her fiance just bought a ginormous estate in LA — and Hirschberg somehow manages to depict MIA as a snot-nosed celeb who’s either an untouchable genius of the global marketing world or else a total hypocritical idiot who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

As cogently written as it was, I hardly agree with Hirschberg’s assessment. It sorta sounds like she had it in for MIA before the interview even began. The NY Times eventually issued a correction to the column, revealing that a couple statements were pieced together out of chronological order and thus taken out of context. And MIA also issued a recording of the interview in which Hirschberg herself “suggested” the ordering of these infamous truffles-flavored French fries. What a biatch Hirschberg was, as it turns out. Now the real question at hand — how do I get my hands on some of these truffles-flavored French fries?

(unfortunately for MIA, a google image search of “truffle-flavored french fries” now pulls up multiple photos of MIA, alongside various glamour shots of fries)

Pitchfork then ran something of a “response piece” on this whole dilly. One quote from the article (see below) rang very true to me and is the main thing I wanted to share here, more than any of this catty bullshit. The quote defends MIA’s right to talk politics in her role as an artist. It sorta echoes what Howard Zinn said in his Artist in Times of War essays (which I posted on a couple months ago).

“After all, people don’t need to be “sophisticated” to be right. People don’t need to be nuanced or thoughtful to say something important. (Sometimes sophistication is a way of keeping people powerless– ignoring anyone who doesn’t speak your diplomatic language.) And people definitely don’t need to be any of those things to release good music. Hirschberg isn’t much interested in the music; in that sense, the piece is like reading breaking news that Public Enemy’s politics may have been– get this– somewhat messy or incoherent. And politics is important, but so are love, sex, religion, and how we treat one another as human beings– all topics we’re often fine with pop musicians acting out in ways that are contradictory, unsubtle, or problematic. We don’t need musicians to be “right” so much as we need them to be resonant– and at least not objectionably wrong.”

Well said, Nitsuh Abebe of Pitchfork.

This is what he’s doing about it, along with a great team of people at Bridge Connections:

On July 29, come to Ebenezers Coffee House for an unplugged acoustic show with The Beanstalk Library‘s Ryan Walker and Melodime‘s Brad Rhodes. Every dollar, dime, and shiny nickel raised will go to help a team of 11 from Bridge Connections, Inc. go to Jinja this summer and help the orphanage build a new drainage system for the boys’ dorm.

So start the weekend early, and on a good turn: delicious coffee, tasty sounds, and that warm feeling that you’ve helped others in a meaningful and tangible way.

Good music and a good cause. What’s not to like?? And even if you can’t make the event, please consider donating (perhaps your $10 admission fee?) to the project via this online donation page.

Ryan Walker & Brad Rhodes
7pm Thursday, July 29, 2010
Ebenezers’ Coffee House
201 F Street NE
Washington, DC 20002
(one block east of Union Station metro)
Facebook Event Link

The track is available for streaming NOW @ myspace.com/thesoundsofdomesticliving

Incidentally, Tuesday, June 8 also happens to be the release date for Bellflur’s latest LP ‘asleep. asleep’!!! Suz and I were privileged to partake in the awesome making of this album at Inner Ear Studio in Virginia (also the site of conception for Exit Clov‘s Memento Mori). You can hear our vocal and stringed contributions on tracks 2, 4-7, 10 and 12 (track listing below!). We also sing a song that the Bellflur boys penned for us — the Last Quarter of the 20th Century Blues.

1. Gasoline Heaven
2. Brief Physics
3. Fits and Starts and Stops
4. We Are on Ghost Ships
5. Insect Politics
6. Last Quarter of the 20th Century
7. Grey Sparkle Finnish Pig
8. Activate Your Cancelled Check
9. We Cab Build You
10. Seven Eight
11. Taking Down Notes for Questions
12. Repris

Photo by Aditya Banerjee (BYT)

Our dj set at the DC Record Fair at Black Cat:

Art of Noise – Dragnet – In No Sense? Nonsense! *
Yeasayer - O.N.E. – Odd Blood #
Men Without Hats – Pop Goes the World %
Nancy Sinatra – Lies – Boots ^
Broken Bells – The High Road (
Dark Night of the Soul – Revenge (feat. Wayne Coin) @
Talking Heads – Girlfriend Is Better – Stop Making Sense !
Kraftwerk – Radioactivity $
Sonic Youth – Incinerate – Rather Ripped +
David Bowie – Fame – Changes One =
Trans Am - Tesco v. Sainsbury – What Day Is It Tonight? >
Sparklehorse – Don’t Take My Sunshine Away – Dreamt For Lightyears In The Belly Of a Mountain <
David Byrne & Brian Eno – My Big Nurse – Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

* Bugged the little hells outta my local record store owners for the Art of Noise‘s “Who’s Afraid of the Art of Noise” but no such luck. Then dug in the bins at Som Records and found this one!! and I proudly presented it to Neal at the counter. what can I say, I’ve got good rummaging skills. This is the record with the Dragnet theme on it

# Great pick. This was Em’s call. She loooooves Yeasayer, and so do I, though I’ll never forgive her for actually “forgetting” to go to a Yeasayer show that she had tickets to. This track is dancey but chill but poppy but hipster but sexy but awesomely nostalgic all at the same time. Does it get any better?

% Grew up with this one. Like candy. Some guy at the fair inquired about this, and when he heard Men Without Hats, he remembered their “Safety Dance” song. He also wished aloud wistfully that we would just put all of these songs on a mix cd already. Yap, he totally said that.

^ Nancy‘s our girl. I love how all her songs are about how some dude wronged her and she’s gonna get back at him. Lies! All Lies! DAMN RIGHT NANCY. This song is catchy as all hell. Sugary girl group background vocals, but her voice is always low and menacing.

( This is one of the newer records we played. When Broken Bells came out, it was sorta like … groan… another collab? For rillz? Danger Mouse … again? but I was knocked flat onto my ass. They sure told me… Danger Mouse and James Mercer did. This first track off of the album is just one of 10 amazing tunes. And I will be seeing them live at 9:30 Club in a few!

@ This record was courtesy of my friend Tom, who managed to get his paws on 1 of only 500 copies of this on vinyl. Once again, this album is an odd collab, this time between Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse & David Lynch. Lynch even sings on some of the tunes, along with celebs like Julian Casablancas, Frank Black, Iggy Pop & Vic Chestnutt. Revenge, the track we picked, has Wayne Coyne crooning on it… exploring the chilling psychological processes of revenge. Check out the cover artwork. Angst. Pain. Hell.

! One of the greatest songs ever by one of the greatest bands in the history of music with one of the best lines ever. “I’ve got a girlfriend with bows in her hair… Nothing is better than that.” We <3 David Byrne. This was a live version from their Stop Making Sense live documentary. Watch the DVD… bizarre and delicious. Major girl crush on bassist Tina Weymouth.

$ Only recently got turned on to Kraftwerk. Took one listen and were sold. It’s like intergalactic sci-fi hypnosis. A shopper even recognized it and later confirmed it with us so he could run back to his friends and do an “I was RIGHT! I told you so.”

+ The problem with Sonic Youth is not just which track to spin, but first which f’in album. Well we didn’t have Daydream Nation nor Experimental Jet Set Trash No Star on vinyl, so we went with the melodic, latter-years “Incinerate” off of Rather Ripped from ’06. Killer tune. “I ripped your heart out from your chest. Replaced it with a grenade blast.”

= The obligatory Bowie. Most of the dj’s seemed to be spinning funk or hip hop, probably punk, so this was our attempt at crossover appeal, thrown in with a lot of glam. This track is sickkk. I now have, not one, but two copies of this record (like a real dj) thanks to my friend David’s spot-on notions of what is an essential record to have in any collection.

>Sorta went through hell trying to find the Trans Am record I wanted. I caught these guys last month at their tour kickoff show… fab. I actually wanted their latest record “Thing,” which shouldn’t have been difficult but no local record store had it… which, like what the fudge, this band is pure homegrown DC. We ended up just picking up a copy of the live album “What Day Is It Tonight?” from Neal at the fair and spinning it. It was a smooth op… and “Tesco vs. Sainsbury” is a killer tune. I might even like the live version better than the studio.

< Moment of silence. Consider this a tribute to the late Mark Linkous. As tragic as his death was this past March, he went out with a bang as far as we’re concerned. This is a beautiful, crackly, charming tune by Sparklehorse. There was also some collaboration with Danger Mouse on this record I think. Thank you Tom once again for a rad vinyl collection.

** Wanted to end the set with Neil Young‘s Helpless, but this one got the job done. This is one of those lovely Sunday afternoon records. I was reeling when I heard it for the first time … it’s so magnificent it makes you drunk with nostalgia and happiness. Their live show was also probably the best I saw in 2009, and ranks among the best I’ve ever seen. Leave it to David Byrne to ensure an immaculate and mesmerizing production – a ragtag army of dancers in white, the choreography was disjointed, puppet-like. Everything was just magical and dream-like, and of course… Byrne at the center of it all.

So there you have it. It was a crazy day… Biggie thanks again to Jon from The Vinyl District (they will never shut him down, not while we’re alive!) and Kevin from DC Soul Recordings.

Em and I basically rushed from the Silver Spring craft fair and sat bitchin’ + spittin’ in 16th Street traffic on our way to Black Cat. It was really pretty comical in retrospect. Since we got there a few minutes past our start time, Em just pulled up in front of the club, and we were like “QUICK!!!” and I bolted in with my crate of records while she found parking. Couldn’t quite “bolt,” though, since it was so heavy, so I just lumbered up up the stairs and arrived at the side of the stage, completely out of breath. It occurred to me, as I internally flipped out, that I hadn’t worked with, let alone looked at, a turntable interface in prolly 8 to 10 years… Thankfully Kevin provided a crash course and I was off and running.

Em finally arrived a little into the second song… never been so happy to see my twin sister haha. She just slapped me on the butt and got to work. Em picked out the next record and organized it on the drum riser behind us, while I set the needle for the next tune. And it did take 4 hands. This 4-hand wizardry must have amused Kevin … called us a couple o’ mad scientists at the table. Oh ok I get it. It’s cuz we’re asian right? Can’t we be “ill” or “sick” or whatnot? We kid J Maybe next time. Thanks to friends who came out to hear us.

(Note the above killer artwork by Daryle Maciocha)

When Jon from The Vinyl District first asked about our availability, I was like yeah! … but can I ipod dj? heehee. No dice. He said: “Well seeing as it’s a RECORD fair … what are you, living in the Stone Ages??” Anyway, cool by me, so long as you know we’re just no beat matchers. Have tried before on our brother’s turntables back in the day. But it’s all good… crossfade that shit. One song to another. Em and I should be able to handle that – we’ll have 4 scary skinny skeleton hands (also dexterous and skillful, if you go by Asian stereotypes) to work with, so no excuses for non-smooth transitions.

(B/W photos by Matt Dunn, Wash. City Paper)

In the meantime, must say we’ve never been so grateful for buddies with vinyl fetishes who’ve placed their collections at our disposal. We have a rather sweet collection ourselves but not quite to the point where we could pluck a classic out of thin air and know we will have it. I’ve budgeted to get some new records that we plan to play though. It’s forced me to become something of a pest to my local record dealers, but it’s fun asking them to rummage through their warehouses for titles I’m looking for … goes to the heart of our nerdy, archivist, librarian tendencies

Many thanks ahead to the kool triumvirate who have been behind all of these record fairs recently – DC Soul Recordings, Som Records and The Vinyl District. And in case you were so precocious as to notice, yes the Handmade Mart is the same exact day, so yes we will be bolting from Silver Spring to the Black Cat for an hour or two. You’re invited to stop by both events! They are guaranteed to be fun as hell.

Psst.. while you’re at it, you’re also invited to the next Exit Clov show this Saturday at the Bellflur Warehouse in Rockville. Fun times guaranteed!

“There’s this song by one of my favorite bands that has the lyric: ‘Like the African girl in the parking garage always said, if God is the healer let’s give him this ordinary day even though we didn’t always get our way.’

And I’ve been thinking about that a lot – the writers I don’t think they’re Christian but I think there’s a lot of truth in this. … You could say if God is the shepherd, if God is the leader, if God is the host. … Because really if I had my own way all the time, my life would probably be a mess. I’m upset with God about this particular thing, but I can sort of look at the big picture and say you know if I got my way most times I wouldn’t be in the place that I am today. I wouldn’t be the person I am today.”

It was an Easter sermon, and she was talking about joy and hope in the midst of angst. The tragedy of Christ’s death and yet the promise of resurrection. The pain of losing something or not getting something you’ve wanted so badly all your life and the overwhelming joy of finally letting go of it already, submitting with great humility and faith to something that is far greater and more sublime than we could ever wrap our little human brains around.

Sabrina’s sermon was based on Psalm 23, a famous psalm and one you often hear at a funeral. It’s funny that Ellen should send this Easter sermon now because this week was the anniversary of our dad’s passing, and it gave me a good chance to really think of him and remember him.

Psalm 23:

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your road and your staff they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

She also had another quote from Theo Geyser that I thought was amazing too about the coexistence of joy and suffering:

“So it is with Easter, what we proclaim is life in spite of death, life in the teeth of death. The appropriate facial expression is eyebrows raised in wonder, not a forced smile which dares not admit the ongoing reality of chaos and pain.” – Theo Geyser

And finally, a quote from Rev. Glenn Hoburg (Grace Presbyterian Church) this past Sunday, quoting none other than the illustrious Rufus Wainwright:

All humans realize they are loved when witnessing the dawn: Early morning is the triumph of good over evil. Absolved by light we decide to go on.

Isn’t that grand? Rufus is playing at Strathmore this summer.

A lot of these new designs are paper collages, which are my favorite of my dad’s artwork. We’ll also have some of the new designs on the 11″x14″ prints, and some on little frosted charm necklaces.

This year’s Handmade Mart will be sweet redemption for the Holiday Stroll we did in December where the snow rained on our parade – we were miserable, standing in our booth in 2-3 inches of ice cold slushy water for 6-7 hours! Wouldn’t have missed it for anything though

We made a stop-motion imoM commercial for the holiday fair, but it was somewhat for naught at the time. Here it is again:

Did I mention this fair will be a blast? The weather’s supposed to be decent. There will be a stage for live music courtesy of Rock’n'Romp. And the fair is put on by none other than Kim Dorn and Debbie Lee, known for their awesome magic behind the Crafty Bastards and Fenton Street Market/RocknRomp events.

We’ll be sharing the booth with our dear friend Christine of Maganda Designs. Psst check out her awesome and totally bizarre Granny Square Project. This is quite possibly why she is so loveable. Also, Christine and I have been taking turns doing some blogging from the Handmade Mart site!

Feel free to check out our imoM Etsy shop, though it doesn’t yet have the new designs available. It will be very soon though.

If you have free time this week, go see “Exit Through The Gift Shop” at E Street. Well worth the 87 minutes. The film synopsis was rather cryptic, which made me equal parts intrigued and mildly irritated — a big name behind a film doesn’t necessarily translate into awesome filmage, especially where the director isn’t even known first and foremost for filmmaking.

(Such may have been the case, for instance, with the much-hyped Animal Collective film ODDSAC, which I waffled about seeing for a ridiculous amount of time. I had free tickets and the trailer had some enticing vampiric gothy-ness, but I also suspected it would just be a psychedelic mishmash of cool but otherwise meaningless visuals… in other words overkill on the artsy fartsy. If you’ve seen it, I’d love to hear what you thought).

But in this case, the director was Banksy, the notoriously elusive street artist whose subversive work has pretty much become iconic worldwide. And seeing as I am a humongo mongo mongo-ass Blur fan, this was enough to intrigue me (see Banksy’s ubiquitous cover art for the Think Tank record).

Here’s some of his peace-provoking pieces:

And this:

And lots of other street art in very public, and sometimes very societally sensitive places… ahem, such as the wall at the West Bank in Israel and Palestine.

Well after seeing this film, I could see why it was hard not to provide a cryptic synopsis. It was one of those baffling art-within-art-within-art type deals where the film transcends “documentary” (ie, a collection of pure facts) and morphs, before your very eyes, into art itself.

Through the first half of the film, I was duped into thinking this was going to be a relatively straight-ahead, humdrum (albeit fascinating) documentary of the underground subculture of graffiti artists. Basically, an average joe (Thierry Guetta, a Frenchman who immigrated to LA) is obsessed with the enigmatic, faceless Banksy and makes it his life goal to track him down. He succeeds and he even befriends Banksy, gaining his trust and shadows him at night as goes out to create his illicit street art. What’s more, he films Banksy … hence the documentary we are now watching.

But of course it couldn’t be that simple. Everything takes an abrupt turn about mid-way and you watch as Banksy essentially puppeteers a real-life situation into a work of art in itself, the same way he’s so good at finding that simple twist on a very mundane object and using it to reveal some painful and darkly humorous irony about our culture. The genius of it all is that the story literally becomes a real-life incarnation of some of the core messages in Banksy and Shepard Fairey‘s artwork about the power of perception in our society, and the danger in this, given that perception can be so easily fabricated and manipulated … through art, of all things. The film included Shepard Fairey, Borf, Space Invader and some other well-known graffiti artists. And Rhys Ifans, who apparently used to sing in Super Furry Animals, narrates the whole thing, at one point referring to street art as “the biggest counter-cultural movement since punk.”

Shepard Fairey’s famous Obey Giant campaign:

Parts of the film were pretty hilarious and entertaining, but it’s a good question who gets the last laugh in this film. It’s Banksy’s film, though, and he comes across as a rather amazing mastermind… whether those two facts are correlated is up to the viewer to decide. Banksy’s pretty darn rad regardless. And we still don’t know what he looks like. Just that he has a British accent and looks cool in a hoodie in the shadow.

PS, if you’re the type to live for those touchy feely discussions about what is art, why is art, what makes art great, is all art great, etc., (all that crap haha, jk I’m one of them!) this documentary will have a bit for you to chew on for days.

Below are some more of Banksy’s works:

In some ways it feels fractured and loose but the spider never loses its legs – bellflur on this album are a collective of people, some of whom sing, some play guitar, bells, drums, strings or horns, some clap, and play Kaoss pads and more guitar, EVERYBODY plays some kind of synth device ( ), and others arguably just make gorgeous noise. And together, they play music called bellflur. See below.

Ok hopefully it’s a little more glamorous than that. But go get this record on June 8. So many of our dear friends are on it in addition to the bellflur kids (Carlos, Tom, Patrick, Hunter, & Dana) – May from Pree, Dan and Fatty from Deleted Scenes, Andy from Honeyboat, Elizabeth Olson from Meredith Bragg, Eamonn (who recorded the song ‘inamorati’ for us) to name a few! They even penned a song for Em & me to sing – track 6 called “Last Quarter of the 20th Century Blues.” The song is pretty and has an electric-ky sort of youthfulness to it. Makes me sad in a very modern-day malaise kind of way.

Finally, Mark Jenkins (of Dance of Days fame), reviewed the record for the WashPost. Here’s a video montage of the earlier part of the making of…:

Stay tuned for a party we’re playing eventually at the Bellflur warehouse, which is a trip… it’s a warehouse space, self-fashioned into a dream clubhouse – Wii games are projected onto the huge white walls, there is a half-pipe somewhere in there, vinyl galore, instruments everywhere, three keyboards in the freaking living room! and secret doorways like in Sherlock Holmes. I think even the Stooges’ Funhouse back in the day wasn’t quite on this level