You have a few more hours to win tickets to ipickmynose presents show, the Wooden Birds at the Rickshaw Stop this Sunday. The contest ends at noon.

To enter to win a pair of tickets to this show, email contest [at] ipickmynose [dot] com by 11:59am Friday May 29 with “Wooden Birds” in the subject line. The winner will be chosen at random from all that email in. I’ll email the winners this afternoon.

The Wooden Birds – False Alarm (mp3)

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Song obsessions are those songs that we listen to on repeat. I noticed that my obsessions are often a week long. I also thought that other people might have similar obsessions. I’ve collected a panel of a few like-minded individuals and gotten their “song obsessions of the week.” Quite often it’s easy to explain why the song is good; it’s much hard to explain why we’re obsessed. Maybe you’ll become obsessed with one of these.

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Adrian (me):
David Ruffin – Anything You Ask For (mp3) (buy)

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Wintersleep – Weighty Ghost (mp3) (buy)

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I had a funny week of music listening. Almost none for four days while helping a friend with preparations for his wedding and then a few days driving around alone with six CDs, including two past mixtapes each with one of these songs on it and two more random mixes, each with one of these on it. Beautiful, foggy vistas and these songs sort of went together for whatever reason and I found myself hitting repeat on these past song obsessions.

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Keith:
Margot & the Nuclear So Sos – Bookworm (mp3) (buy)

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Ever come across a song you find obsesso-worthy, then find out it’s by an artist you had previously dismissed as dreck? That’s the case with this live track by Margot & the Nuclear So & So’s. It’s tough enough getting past the terrible name, but their studio albums seem to smother whatever flavor they might have under a whole bottle of caramel topping. After hearing this crisply engaging performance I even went back to sample the original and could find none its inherent charms. Hopefully they’ll ditch the desire to be the next Animal Collective and stop drowning their sound.

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Funny, all of the songs this week are repeats. How about that?

Posted every Thursday, On Sale Soon is a weekly series of the tickets going on sale that weekend.

Where to get tickets: The Independent, Great American Music Hall, Slim’s, Fillmore, Shoreline, and other Livenation venues, the Warfield. Another Planet booked venues like Greek Theatre @ Berkeley, Palace of Fine Arts, etc. Bimbo’s.

On sale now/ Thursday May 28:
7/28 Future Of The Left @ the Bottom of the Hill
7/29 Magnolia Electric Company, The Donkeys @ Bottom of the Hill

8/21 Set Your Goals, Four Year Strong @ Slim’s

On sale Friday May 29:
6/22 Grizzly Bear @ the Fillmore

7/27 Lacuna Coil, Kill Hannah, Seventh Void, Dommin @ Slim’s

8/1 The Script, Angel Taylor @ Great American
8/15 Beto Cuevas @ Slim’s

10/14 the Charlatans UK @ Bimbo’s

On sale Saturday May 30:
7/13 Tori Amos @ Paramount Theater

8/23 the Clutch @ the Warfield

On sale Sunday May 31:
7/16 Azure Ray @ Great American
7/16 A-Trak, Rye Rye @ the Independent
7/20, 7/21 Indigo Girls @ the Fillmore
7/22 Clutch, Baroness, Lionize @ the Grand Ballroom
7/23 De La Soul @ the Fillmore
7/24 The New Deal @ The Independent
7/24, 7/25 Rebirth Brass Band, Hackensaw Boys (7/24), Extra Action Marching Band (7/25) @ Great American
7/30 Freddie McGregor, Laden and Chino @ the Independent
7/30, 7/31 Gomez @ the Fillmore

8/1 Colin Hay @ The Independent
8/3 Reel Big Fish and The English Beat, The Supervillains @ the Grand Ballroom
8/8 Acoustic Alchemy @ Bimbo’s

9/5 The Tubes @ Great American
9/7 Davy Knowles & Back Door Slam @ Slim’s
9/12 Southern Culture on the Skids, Los Straitjackets @ Slim’s
9/15, 9/16 Bad Brains, Trouble Andrew @ Slim’s

On sale Monday June 1:
10/12 Mono @ Great American

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Double check all information as venues and promoters often change on-sale times and days up until the last minute.

show poster by Random Found Objects

A reminder that ipickmynose presents the the Wooden Birds (myspace) show at the Rickshaw Stop this Sunday at 8pm. As you may have learned from my post about the band, they’re the new band of Andrew Kenny of American Analog Set. It also has member of Ola Podrida and Lymbyc Systym in it. If the two shows of theirs that I saw at SxSW are indication, this will be a really good one. They have a new album, Magnolia which is out now.

The Wooden Birds – False Alarm (mp3)

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Here’s the info you need to know for the show:

5/31 the Wooden Birds, the Old-Fashioned Way, Goh Nakamura @ Rickshaw Stop, 8pm, $10 (advance)/$12 (door), a/a

Buy tickets for the show. I have three pairs of tickets to give away. To enter to win a pair of tickets to this show, email contest [at] ipickmynose [dot] com by 11:59am Friday May 29 with “Wooden Birds” in the subject line. The winner will be chosen at random from all that email in. I’ll email the winners Friday afternoon. Get those emails in now! It’s easy!

Wooden Birds at SxSW

I recently had a chance to interview Andrew Kenny of the band by email while they were in tour in Europe. We talked about past San Francisco shows, Magnolia being Kenny’s ‘best effort to date’, and who really is the nicest guy in indie rock.

Adrian Bischoff of ipickmynose: How’s the tour going? Between Europe, East Coast and SxSW, you’ve got a handful of shows under your belt as the Wooden Birds. Do you have any favorites so far?

Andrew Kenny of the Wooden Birds: Our first shows were at SXSW so this is a good time to be a Wooden Bird. Every show, I can feel the band getting better and more confident. The Mercury in New York, and Union Hall in Brooklyn were both stand outs. I really liked Leipzig, Germany although most everyone in our crew thought Zagreb, Croatia was our best show in Europe. Madrid was a lot of fun too. I think we’ll wait until after the US tour to pick our favorites though. Lawrence, KS, I’m talking to YOU. Bring it on.

AB: It’s been a few years since you last played San Francisco, a packed and sweaty show at the Bottom of the Hill during AmAnSet’s last tour. What are you looking forward to about playing San Francisco again? Do you have any favorite stories from past San Francisco shows?

Read the rest of this entry »

Even if your tastes match really well, the hit rate for a friend’s ‘hey, check out this band/ mp3′ is never particularly good; it may be ‘yeah, that’s pretty good.’ And the ‘holy crap, this is incredible!’ hits are even rarer.

When my friend introduced me to P:ano via a Salon article[1], the latter was certainly my reaction. Out of Vancouver, BC, P:ano was two bedroom recordists, Nick Krgovich and Larissa Loyva, playing all manner of instruments to make up a delicate, beautifully orchestrated chamber pop sound.

“All of November, Most of October” was the song that my friend introduced me to. From the ringing sounds and bells at the beginning, one doesn’t immediately know what to make of it, but once the lilting fingerpicked guitar and voice come in, I, at least, was pretty sold. The beautiful cello and violin later in the song just heighten the experience.

For a second song to highlight, I didn’t know what pick. They’re all so good. There’s the sprawling, seven and a half minute “Billions and Billions” that almost approaches post-rock. There’s the slowly developing rainy-summer-night-in-a-song of “Be Flat”. There’s the simple and great piano+drums of “Tut Tut” that oddly but brilliantly borrows from Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back”.

But in the end, I wanted to pick the song that made me thing of posting about this band: “C’est Hi”. Glacially slow, it feels like sitting in a rocking chair and chatting with a friend while cars rush past in the distance. You feel like it could be faster, but you don’t really car–I like this speed.

P:ano – All of November, Most of October (mp3)

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P:ano – C’est Hi (mp3)

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I’ve listened to P:ano’s subsequent releases and while there’s some good stuff on them, none of them approach the consistent and brilliant debut. When It’s Dark And It’s Summer is available from Amazon.

[1] This was written, incidentally, by someone who later was a fellow DJ at KZSU. Small world.

“Hey, you’re doing a great show tonight.” I’ve never had such a call on my radio show cause such panic, before or since, even if it was momentary.

One of the easiest ways to get staffing hours at KZSU–required for doing a show–was to review CDs. Overworked and without lots of time, I tended to maximize on efficiency on these, often picking and reviewing EPs, because reviews of any release, no matter the length got the same staffing hours. Sometimes I’d find great stuff in random reviews–Jens Lekman’s first album, for instance–but most of it was decent but forgettable.

When I reviewed Detachment Kit’s As If You Weren’t Cold, I didn’t forget it. One track immediately caught my attention particularly–I played it on my show right away. This was about two in the morning at the time–I was doing the Thursday midnight-3am slot that quarter. I did a mic break and the whole time, the song was still running through my head–the repetitive echoing guitar, the plaintive voice, the way the he goes up instead of down on “b-line this token toward some revenue” (whatever that means). So, thinking no one was listening at such an hour, I cued it up and played it again. I wanted to hear it again.

Then the phone rang. It was another DJ calling to compliment my show. Though he didn’t call me on it, I knew he’d caught me.

Detachment Kit – Ricochet (mp3)

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This remains the only song I’ve played twice in a row on the radio in almost seven years on the air.

I can’t seem to find where you can buy the EP version, but a slightly different version appears on Of This Blood, available from amazon.

Song obsessions are those songs that we listen to on repeat. I noticed that my obsessions are often a week long. I also thought that other people might have similar obsessions. I’ve collected a panel of a few like-minded individuals and gotten their “song obsessions of the week.” Quite often it’s easy to explain why the song is good; it’s much hard to explain why we’re obsessed. Maybe you’ll become obsessed with one of these.

–

Adrian (me):
mk ultra – the Dream is Over (mp3) (free mp3s or buy the CD)

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Iron & Wine – Waitin’ for Superman (mp3) (buy)

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I didn’t have any ridiculously obsessive songs this week, but a couple stood out from the pack.

John Vanderslice reminded me earlier in the week that you can get the entire mk ultra catalog for free. I got stuck on this one. It a lot of ways, it’s classic Vanderslice: disonance mixed with a incredibly melodic and catchy chorus.

I was reviewing the Around the Well for KZSU this weekend and when this song came on, it really struck me how much I’ve always loved it. When you hear it, it’s absurd to think that I could forget for a minute how great it is.

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Keith:
Pop Levi – Love You Straight (mp3) (buy)

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So I’m trying to whittle down my 60,000 song mp3 collection for a transfer to a portable device. I’m still questioning the wisdom of this move, especially as I’ve spent the last three days painstakingly going through every song and am on artist name Po right now. But theoretically by the end of the week my random shuffles will get a heck of a lot better. So here’s the song I’m on as sweet Adrian’s note popped in the inbox. No need to ask if it’s a keeper or not!

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Natalie:
White Rabbits – Percussion Gun (mp3) (buy)

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I finally got around to listening to this single this week, right before the album came out on Tuesday. It’s got Britt Daniel’s production written all over it, which is never a bad thing.

How are you? Are you doing well?

By the time you read this, I’ll probably be on a plane. I’ll be traveling over the next 10 days. I have posts for you–don’t you worry!–but I may be slow on responding to emails/ comments.

Thursday Tuesdsay night, to mark the release of Romanian Names local indie icon John Vanderslice (myspace) played at the Rickshaw Stop[1] with the Morning Benders (myspace) [2].

The Morning Benders were up first. They played some of their older songs, like “Damnit Anna”, but the night seemed to be a time to try out new songs that will be on their next album, Big Echo (which lead singer Chris Chu later told me he had just gotten the mixes back for). As always, the Benders put on a good show, playing a fun set of tunes with plenty of energy.

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But even with a good set from the Morning Benders, the night was John Vanderslice’s. Sporting his new five piece band for the first time in SF[3], they played what I later told people was a ‘pretty kick ass’ set.

I’ve seen JV as a two-piece, three-piece, four-piece and thirty-piece, but never in this incarnation. The result was a sound that worked really well. With a second guitarist along with keyboards, drums and bass, the sound was fuller and there were more opportunities for melody lines in the instruments. Jason Slota also joined the band on a few of the songs, playing vibraphone and other percussion. I think this may have been one of my favorite Vanderslice live sounds in the many times I’ve seen him.

The set started with the drummer playing alone on stage. JV and the rest joined him slightly afterward. After a few moments, they launched fully into ‘When It Hits My Blood’. After a few songs, the band left the stage and Slota joined Vanderslice on stage for a beautiful version of “Dead Slate Pacific”, one of my favorite JV songs. Slota stayed on the stage and the rest of the band returned. The set was filled with some new songs–around five or six, including one off of Moon Colony Bloodbath–but it also included a lot of material from Cellar Door and Pixel Revolt, as well as a few from other albums. As I was discussing with a friend after the show, both of those albums have heavy bearing on my mind even if I don’t listen to them constantly right now.

All in all a great show.

I wanted to add a couple of auxiliary things here. First, with the sort of day I had yesterday, hectic, leaving me frazzled, I was not thinking I’d have a great time. I thought I might be too distracted. But I had a great time. It’s not every show that can transcend personal circumstances and get you into it, but this one did. Secondly, after the second, Vanderslice had the club play Paul’s Boutique for a “dance party”. People didn’t really dance, but people stayed around and talked and laughed and had a good time. Both Vanderslice and the Morning Benders were chatting with fans and in general can both be credited with fostering a sense of community.

[1] I applaud the Rickshaw Stop for their relatively recent move of hosting (some) all ages shows.

[2] Can I say again how much I love two band bills?

[3] Though I couldn’t make his set at Amoeba on Monday. It’s possible that they all played there.

Posted every Thursday, On Sale Soon is a weekly series of the tickets going on sale that weekend.

Where to get tickets: The Independent, Great American Music Hall, Slim’s, Fillmore, Shoreline, and other Livenation venues, the Warfield. Another Planet booked venues like Greek Theatre @ Berkeley, Palace of Fine Arts, etc. Bimbo’s.

On sale now/ Thursday May 21:
6/13 Fuga!, La Colectiva @ Slim’s
6/16 Gene Ween (Solo) @ The Independent

7/7 Dirty Projectors, What’s Up? @ The Independent
7/9 Surprise Me Mr. Davis @ The Independent

On sale Friday May 22:
7/23 Poison The Well, Madball, Vision of Disorder and Bane @ the Grand

On sale Saturday May 23:
8/23 The Cult @ the Warfield

On sale Sunday May 24:
7/11 Luce, The Gun & Doll Show, Pollux @ Great American
7/13 Wolves in the Throne Room, Minsk @ Slim’s
7/15 The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band,Tiny Television, Four Year Bender @ Great American
7/18 Arc Angels @ Slim’s
7/21 August Burns Red, Bless the Fall, Enter Shikari, Iwrestlesabearonce @ Slim’s
7/28 Mekons @ Great American

8/7 Stomacher, Via Coma @ Slim’s
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Not a lot of shows on sale this week because of the holiday weekend.

Double check all information as venues and promoters often change on-sale times and days up until the last minute.