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Monday, October 6, 2008  12:05 am 

Interior decoration

DJ Rick is so totally DJing at our collective wedding.

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So I left this tune on the record player while I was shaving and when I came back to my bedroom it was all fucking trashed, even the paint stripped off the walls, sweet baby Jesus playing chess with Alejandro Jodorowsky on the top of that mountain whence the prophets came bearing stones with cryptic rules, I beheld my face in the shattered mirror and wild eyes stared back at me, blood streaming from emaciated cheeks down the ridge of a trembling chin precipitating into a white t-shirt that had become something else, now, this is what Sexy Prison shall do to your room if you let them, so yeah, press play at your own risk. They skate gracefully over a valley of distorted grimaces and broken bones waving Chromes’s amphetaminic banner, enter Filth Flarn Filth and be confronted by a streamlined version of Bosch’s apocalypse inhabited by no wave cyborgs, minimal wave pinheads and the odd melodic little red riding hook with razorblade implants under her fingernails. Don’t turn your back on her, she is a merciless bitch.

Believe me.

Sexy Prison- Without Us Some Guys Would Starve

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So I left this tune on the record player while pondering in the kitchen about the potential cracking of some eggs to concoct the proverbial omelette, when I came back into my bedroom fretful under the black wings of a metaphysical bat I found it in total Beirut styles, walls obliterated as if commander fuck you had sat in front of his map and drawn a red X straight in my space, turning it into gleaming target for howitzers, mortars and the odd wasp stuka buzzing straight outta hell. An abstract hell beheld through fractured walls which is Mayyors’ very own in Megan’s LOLZ, barren expanses under a millenial night of an alien colour, tundras littered with the brittle corpses of collosi whose bones and tusks are recycled into spears, pikes and clubs by misshapen beasts waging a brutal party that feeds upon itself like eviscerated sharks in turbulent waters, turbo-accelerated blitzkrieg, Electric Eels on fast forward forever, rotor shredder styles which remind us of Coachwhips’ eternal genius, harsh times never got better than this.

Mayyors- Airplanes


labels >> Mayyors, Sexy Prison, xxjfg


 


10 Comments on “Interior decoration”

  1. SSSS

    Monday, October 6, 2008   9:47 am

    GOD BLESS YOU.

  2. 20jazzfunkgreats

    Monday, October 6, 2008   9:55 am

    I fear there’s no such thing as God in this noisy mess, sir!

  3. SSSS

    Monday, October 6, 2008   10:10 am

    He’s on a bongo in the back of the hall.

  4. DJ Rick

    Monday, October 6, 2008   8:00 pm

    Gentlemen, thank you for spotlighting two of Sacramento and Davis, California’s best and most partyhardy bands ever. But I’ll have you know that the last time I DJ’d a wedding, something of a race riot broke out.

    Y’see, at Freeform KDVS 90.3 FM (the radio station where Art for Spastics airs terrestrially in Northern California), we’ve rented out mobile DJ services for years. I used to be in charge of the accounts, contracting, and marketing the services. Wedding receptions and state employee holiday parties were the bread ‘n butter of our business.

    I DJ’d a wedding reception in Sacramento’s beautiful Grand Ballroom. The couple were fairly hip for a coupla yuppies…totally unlike most of the groom’s rednecky family and the bride’s very traditional Mexican-American family. Plenty of cowboy hats and cowboy boots and big belt buckles on both sides of the new family. But that’s where the commonalities ended, I guess.

    When the bride got too tipsy, one of the groom’s boys yelled out “slut!”, and perhaps also a disdainful epithet for Mexicans. Within seconds, several of the macho men from both families locked horns, and out came a few knives even! A big panic ensued to the sounds of “Shoot That Poison Arrow” by ABC (a special request by the groom!).

    Your readers are probably smart enough to recognize this, but just in case, I should mention that Sexy Prison and the Mayyors share a lead-singer. Both are incredible experiences in live performance especially.

    The primary sound architect of the Mayyors is the guitarist Chris Woodhouse. He’s most recognized for his production credits which include the latest Oh Sees material, the best songs on “Nightlife” by Erase Errata, and the first three A Frames albums. But I especially recommend his previous bands to you. I’m certain that you would all love his late-90s band called Karate Party. The definitive document of them is still in print….the “Black Helicopter” LP on S-S Records. You will hear in its grooves a very important chapter of the genesis of the current state of “weirdpunk” or “glue wave” or “shitgaze” or whatever you wanna call this current zeitgeist.

  5. 20jazzfunkgreats

    Monday, October 6, 2008   8:10 pm

    Tracking down the Karate Party right now, might use some excerpts from this wonderful comment in a future post about them, if this is fine by you.

    Every Art for Spastics is a wedding of awesomeness in any case, and the ensuing riots fill us with joy.

    Thanks so much Rick, you rule!

    J

  6. bobo

    Monday, October 6, 2008   11:28 pm

    brilliant stuff as per usual.

  7. DJ Rick

    Monday, October 6, 2008   11:29 pm

    When you find the Karate Party to your liking, feel free to pilfer any part of that comment. And here’s some more…

    Karate Party only played eight or nine live shows in the late 90s. “Black Helicopter” was originally released on the S-S precursor label–Moo-La-La Records–with half as many songs on a 7″ limited to 300 copies. It was a great little record tarnished a bit by the poor mastering of the tightly packed grooves. (The 12″ version expands the same songs onto a side A and backs it with some choice unreleased cuts. And few costs if any were spared to make it sound great.)

    John (who sings for the Mayyors and Sexy Prison) and I would really get up for these Karate Party shows. That was a drop-everything proposition for us.

    One such show was at The Loft, which was the a little room behind the bookstore where the Moo-La-La man himself worked. The Loft was band practice space and a budget recording studio at night, the scene of weekly live shows especially on Mondays throughout the 90s, and by day, it was once a volunteer-run punk record store, zine library, and meeting room. There was even a bike-loan “library” for a while in case you needed free wheels to get around Sacto’s downtown/Midtown grid area. Really cool sorta scene HQ kinda place. When shows happened there, you might be able to squeeze about 70-80 people in there, but it would be incredibly swampy.

    There was a band from Seattle called Bend Sinister that came down on tour and played the Loft with Karate Party. The previous night, the Seattle boys got their first taste of Karate Party when they visited KDVS studios. S-S Records co-founder Sakura spun the 7″ for them: “This is the band you’re playing with tomorrow.” They dug it, but they were hardly prepared for what they witnessed the next night.

    If memory serves, this was maybe the third or fourth Karate Party live show since the release of the 7″. The “hit song” on the 7″ was called “Pressure”, and it was the one that everyone would request on the radio and call for at the shows, but Woodhouse never wanted to play it live because reportedly, the song was about some bad blood over a soured relationship. Still, as the beer continued to flow at the shows, people would try scratching harder and harder at that wound, yelling for “Pressure” louder and louder. On this particular night, Woodhouse caved to the pressure and unleashed the song on us.

    Karate Party was already a band that played with a lotta ferocity, but this version of “Pressure” was off-the-charts bonkers. Sped up almost 50%, guitar chords like daggers, vocal chords afire…and then the whole show ended abruptly with Woodhouse kicking over his drums and grabbing the hi-hat stand for some indiscriminate jousting. He poked the hi-hat stand forward and made a bee-line for the back of the room. The front rows scattered, but stupid me in the middle of the room didn’t register what was happening quickly enough. I thought that the hi-hat perforated my right pectoral muscle. There was some blood, but mostly just a horrible bruise that lingered for a few weeks. Woodhouse dropped the stand and continued to the back wall where he made a dent that’s still there today.

    After the panic subsided, I looked over toward the door and saw the members of Bend Sinister looking totally flabbergasted, but intensely curious. Apparently, that moment was so impactful on them that they bought out the remainder of the pressing of the Karate Party 7″ (probably 150 or so) and took them home to sell or give to friends, thus spreading Karate Party’s legend beyond this small incestuous scene in Sacramento. Bend Sinister also broke and rekindled as the A Frames, and the sight and sounds of Karate Party imparted heavily on their ideals. Hence, the first few A Frames records were recorded at The Loft with Woodhouse, and the next few were recorded up in Seattle with Woodhouse. And every limb of the A Frames family tree of bands also bears the touch of Woodhouse whether he was involved in the recording or not. Another highlight of this is the “Intelligence vs. Karate Party” side of the Intelligence/Coachwhips split 7″.

  8. Mark Williams

    Thursday, October 9, 2008   2:23 pm

    I was waiting for someone to finally blog about the Karate Party, and even more so that new Mayyors 7″ - you were top of my list and you didn’t disappoint. Mind you, why’d you cut off the “Intro” portion to Airplane?

  9. 20jazzfunkgreats

    Thursday, October 9, 2008   9:46 pm

    Hey Mark,

    It’s actually a different tune!

    And yes, it’s totally awesome…

    Glad to make everyone happy…

  10. Melissa Miserable

    Tuesday, November 18, 2008   12:47 am

    Dear DJ Rick,

    Thank you for writing out that story — it’s simply amazing. I remember you telling it to Craig and I at the Budget Rock - but alas, my attention span sucked due to lack of sleep. Hence, the impact of your story didn’t register until now, reading it with my reading eyes. In forever hella thanks!

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