The Bowery Presents

Music Hall of Williamsburg upcoming shows

WFMU Fest

Pissed Jeans

TV Ghost / VeeDee / Guinea Worms

Venue:
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Date:
Fri 10/02
Notes:
18+
Doors: 8:00 PM / Show: 9:00 PM
$12 advance / $15 day of show
Tickets
WFMU
WFMU, the premiere independent/freeform radio station, is producing and
curating a three day festival at the Music Hall of Williamsburg from Thursday,
Friday and Saturday October 1-3.

WFMU Fest comes on the heels of a busy year of live events the station was
involved with in 2008 for its 50th Anniversary that included shows with Sonic
Youth, the Feelies, the Ex, Getatchew Mekuria, Mahmoud Ahmed, Alemayehu Eshete,
Wire, Times New Viking. It also was involved with simulcasting some non-WFMU

events including 2008's All Tomorrows Parties Festival (and will be
broadcasting 2009's from September 11-13) in the Catskills, as well as a huge
portion of the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona, Spain this past May. The
station has also curated two 14-band events at Austin's SXSW festival in 2008
and 2009, and its Free Music Archive hosted a party in April with the OhSees,
Excepter and others. These shows will not be broadcast over the air/net.

WFMU is a listener-sponsored, freeform radio station operating out of Jersey

City, NJ and broadcasting at 91.1 fm (NYC, Metro NJ), 90.1 (Hudson Valley,
Catskills, Western NJ, Eastern Pennsylvania) and online at wfmu.org. Through

the years it has become very influential to a wide spectrum of music lovers,

and radio listeners looking for programming off the grid of traditional
college, commercial and even satellite radio. WFMU was listed as as #1 station
in the USA by Rolling Stone critics for 4 consecutive years, subject of a New
York Times magazine feature and assorted documentaries, and has gotten
accolades from the WIRE, John Peel, Pitchfork, Matt Groening, Patton Oswalt,

Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, Conan O'Brien and other luminaries. Its format covers
anything from home cassettes,
noise, old country, rockabilly, electroacoustic, experimental, electronic,
metal, out-jazz, krautrock, schlock, hip-hop, collage, garage, and pop from all
decades. Live in-studio performances have hosted
Senegalese rappers, Japanese black metal bands, Tuvan psychedelic rock
groups, Brit folk legends, indie rock darlings, and played about 2000 other
genres they can't even begin to list. They've taken adventurous strides into

the world of webstreaming, podcasting and archiving, its Beware of the Blog
(blog.wfmu.org) ranks high in the realm of heavily-trafficked music blogs, and
last year started a Free Music Archive (freemusicarchive.org) which has served
as an outlet for artists and labels to make music available to the public for download.
Pissed Jeans
official website
myspace
King of Jeans. The title of Pissed Jeans’ third album and second for Sub Pop conjures their essence perfectly—-masters of the mundane, beasts of the banal, high priests of the humdrum. These four, white, male high school graduates hardly look further than their own appendages for artistic inspiration, content to execute their own brand of brash and heavy punk music in the Joe Carducci-approved standard rock formation of guitar, bass, drums and vocals. From simple minds and simple fabrics comes this King of Jeans, perhaps also a slight nod to the variety of Pissed Jeans-inspired groups that have crawled up since 2007’s Hope for Men. After all, there can be only one.

If 2005’s Shallow was Pissed Jeans coping with moving out of their parents’ homes, and 2007’s Hope for Men their initial reaction to the mechanical lifestyle of a wage-earner, King of Jeans is their formal and uneasy acceptance of adulthood. The age gap between the members of Pissed Jeans and high school girls is no longer something to be overlooked—-they hoped for men, and sometimes you get what you wish for. Backs get sore easier and stay sore longer, record collections have reached their breaking point or have been sold entirely, and procreating is becoming a more pressing issue. What are you supposed to do when you are unable to break out of the standard, middle-class American life cycle that you never really wanted but don’t have the energy to subvert? When you are forced to understand that it’s all madness but know fully well that someone will have to take care of our aging parents? Well, Pissed Jeans went ahead and made one hell of a rock record. Working with renowned producer Alex Newport (who holds a Fudge Tunnel pedigree and has worked with such luminaries as At the Drive-In, The Locust and Sepultura), Pissed Jeans have pushed further into the raw, minimal core of heavy rock music with King of Jeans.

Less frequent are the extended noise passages that made Hope for Men so frightening, replaced with a buffet of riffs capable of feeding Tad for a month. Opener “False Jesii Part 2” (feel free to Google part 1) is classic Pissed Jeans with its circular, fuzz-soaked riff, pounding rhythm section and unwound vocals, a call to arms against the social lifestyle while admitting that yeah, they could still partake if they wanted. “Half Idiot” calls to mind vintage Birthday Party with its rumbling groove and splayed guitar. “Dream Smotherer,” “Lip Ring” and “Dominate Yourself” carry the same massive weight found in previous cuts like “Secret Admirer” and “I’m Sick,” pummeling the listener at a variety of speeds while tackling such issues as office life and the unrequited love of women steeped in ostensibly dumber subcultures. And then there’s the Sabbath-built self-defeat of “Spent” and simple plea of “Request for Masseuse,” played as if the loving hands of Blue Cheer’s Randy Holden were guiding the session. And this is coming from a band who, while writing this record, spent more time with the first three Danzig albums than most Fiend Club members.

It’s also worth noting that this is the first record that bassist Randy Huth has played on, he of both Drag City recording artists Pearls & Brass and Randall of Nazareth. A close friend of guitarist Bradley Fry and singer Matt Korvette since high school, his full-time Jeans status has helped to complete Pissed Jeans’ take on the cumulative efforts of all heavy guitar-based music of the past four decades. Drummer Sean McGuinness appreciates the random packets of opium he shares at band practice, too.

So here it is: King of Jeans. Expect to see these Jeans on the road for a good part of 2009 and 2010, as previous shows have paired them with acts as oddly fitting as Om, Black Dice, Flipper, Boris, Harvey Milk, Mudhoney, and hell, they even played with Sage Francis once. When that long hairy arm starts for your face, I recommend you take a good bite.

—Brian Duane, 2009
TV Ghost
myspace
From In the Red who's just issued their debut album:
"Lafayette, Indiana, creepers TV Ghost-- a band who ushers in a vile and
squalid new disposition to ugly art punk and carves out a black hole of
pestilence that will delight its sufferers to no end. If one can swim through
the murky grime long enough to let one's frazzled senses adjust, it's clear how
effectively TV Ghost incorporates the licentious nuances of The Cramps'
earliest scuzz, no wave's cacophony, and Suicide's terrifying throb alongside
cavernous bellows from the depths of the third layer of hell."
VeeDee
myspace
Chicago punkoid swagger with copious forays into psychedelic scuzz-fuzz realms,
joyfully bad trips to canoodle with the brain receptors most welcoming to the
Stooges, Mudhoney, Misfits, Electric Eels, Original Sins.
Guinea Worms
myspace
Victim of Time: "The Columbus Ohio, Guinea Worms have been kicking around the
fuzz bucket for a whopping decade now under the reptilian wing of Will Foster,
but you'd never tell from their catalog which you could probably count on 4
fingers--CDRs included. Recently releasing their Box of Records 7" single on

Columbus Discount Records, the accolades are rightfully raining down, as their
mix of slightly sluggish 60s-style slingers smash directly into more urgent
sounds of post-punk, and will stick in your gut like a parasitic worm."
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