Ovipositor played the Hemlock Tavern in SF last night, to celebrate the release of Western Medicine, the new album by our friends Generalissimo. The show was great, the Generals killed it, and Cartographer, which featured a special guest General on bass, were awesome as well. I’m on the fence about how we — or, I should say I — performed, but the band’s energy was up, and people in the crowd said it was all good (so I’m probably just being overly self-critical). At any rate, I believe it’s safe to say a good time was had by all.
I took a handful of photos, though I didn’t get any shots of Ovipositor because I can’t play bass and take pictures at the same time. You can click over to the set on Flickr to see these photos all big an’ shit…
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Bay Area emcee DaVinci is from SF’s Fillmore district, he’s a standout among a small crop of artists who are poised to own independent rap music for 2010, and he absolutely murders this beat. Check this out…
This song is from DaVinci’s debut album, The Day The Turf Stood Still, which you can download for free, legitimately, HERE. Highly recommended.
Last fall, Ovipositor hit the road with our friends Generalissimo on a week-long tour up to the Northwest and back. Our first date was in Chico, sort of a warm up show on an off night in a venue that wasn’t necessarily well suited for our whole aesthetic / ethos, with bands that weren’t necessarily well matched with our styles. But whatever, that’s life on tour when you’re not a rock star ― you take what you can get.
One of the bands we played with that night, the headlining act, was an instrumental metal trio (though I hear they’re now a quartet) called Cold Blue Mountain;the show was the release party for their debut eponymous EP. The drummer is an old friend, one of the nicest and smartest guys I know, and one of the most most talented musicians as well, but for whatever reason, I gave the band’s performance ― and the free six-song EP ― a lukewarm review. I seem to remember thinking the music was just okay, but sorta derivative, flavor-of-the-month metal. (And yeah, I’ve rightly been called an asshole on occasion, too.)
I’ve been revisiting Cold Blue Mountain and their EP (produced by Surrogate‘s Chris Keene) quite a bit lately, and I have to say, I really like it. The band is roughly cut from the same musical cloth as bands like Pelican and Isis, but their songs are shorter, simpler, foregoing the epic opuses of heaviness in favor of tighter, more straightforward musical vignettes.
Sure, this stuff isn’t going to change the world, but it’s simple and honest, rooted in crushing waves of riffage with a strong rhythmic backbone and enough songwriting dynamic to keep it engaging. It’s not terribly heady, but it’s not knuckleheaded either, and I think that its instant familiarity and visceral appeal is what I like so much about it.
Frankly, I’ve been feeling lately like I want to be writing and playing simple, heavy music like this. Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to this EP.
Cold Blue Mountain has a page set up over at BandCamp.com, where they’re selling this EP (it’s a pay-what-you-feel-it’s-worth type of situation), but you can listen to the whole thing here, then decide for yourself if you want to go over there and get it…which you should.
Can you walk us through the songwriting and recording process for your solo efforts?
Plug in and go. It’s all very spontaneous. I don’t make demos/scratch tracks, so what you hear is of the moment, but finishing a tune is a long listening process. The tune will always tell you what it needs and what it doesn’t. That’s the hardest aspect of creating shit solo: no one to bounce ideas off of. Gotta make sure you listen to your initial instincts and follow your gut.
A lot of bass players I know (and most I don’t know) would gag to hear me say this, but… I’m not really a big fan of Jaco Pastorius. There is, however, no denying the guy’s status as a bass god. His approach to the instrument and music in general was unique and inspired, his contribution to music and specifically to bass playing was mammoth, and anyone who says otherwise is just fooling themselves, fan or not.
As a loyal Fender Jazz bass player, however, I am interested in Jaco’s famed ’62 Jazz bass, the “Bass of Doom.” A certified pawn shop classic — bought in the early ’70s for $90 and modified like crazy — it was an otherwise average instrument that was elevated to legendary status through some weird mods (like prying the frets out with a butter knife and filling the slots with “plastic wood”), and Jaco’s skill and ability to play the hell out of it. Stolen from Jaco off a park bench in 1986 and lost for over two decades after his untimely demise at the hands of a club bouncer in 1987, the bass popped up in 2007 at a little music store in NYC’s East Village. It’s ownership status remained in legal question (read: a court battle between Pastorius’ family and the music shop owner) until Metallica’s Robert Trujillo donated some effort and a bunch of cash to helping the Pastorius family get it back.
My friend Craig McFarland — a great guy, monster bass player, big Jaco fan, and a friend of Trujillo’s who has actually played the Bass of Doom since Trujillo recently assumed a stewardship of the instrument on behalf of the Pastorius family — posted this link on his Facebook page yesterday, and I had to repost it here. The story, like Jaco, is just too crazy:
And before you ask why I don’t really get down with Jaco, let me just say that I’ve always hated fusion jazz, which is what he’s mostly known for. But this clip of him playing solo — a riff on Hendrix’s “Third Stone from the Sun” with a cool looped rhythm part and some awesome harmonic noise — is just a small example of not only how insane Jaco was a a person (clinically bipolar and a heavy substance abuser), but also what an insanely gifted player he was. So while I don’t necessarily love the guy, I’ll never hate on him either…
Oakland’s staunchest enemies of chaos, Generalissimo, have released the first video off their forthcoming album, Western Medicine: “Thousand Yard Stare.” It also happens to be one of my favorite songs on the record…
As a dad, I’m always looking for creative ways to entertain, delight and teach my daughter. As a metal fan, I don’t have a lot of traditional “morality” hangups about how to do that, as long as no one gets hurt, my daughter learns something, and everything gets cleaned up afterwards.
Enter Hessian Hobbies (I’m about to run down to the craft store for some popsicle sticks):
