Taped in July at The Musicians Workshop in Asheville, NC.

By Blurt Staff

Steel pan jam maestro Jonathan Scales, along with the members of his band the Jonathan Scales Fourchestra, talked with Erin Scholze of the Lingua Musica. Scales outlines his intriguing path to his instrument, discusses his recent album Character Farm & Other Short Stories (which features guest appearances form Jeff Coffin, Yonrico Scott, Kofi Burbridge and Casey Driessen), and more.Don't miss the exclusive performance clips in the video; the virtuosic Scales band is undoubtedly one of those outfits that has to be seen in concert to be fully believed. Daniel Judson filmed and edited this video. (Hey, what about those ukuleles!)

Scales' official website has plenty of additional info, music and videos for you to check out.

The videotaped conversation marks the latest in the ongoing Lingua Musica Interviews series and we're looking forward to many more in the very near future. (Previous installments have included Rosanne Cash, Railroad Earth, Clouds of Greer, Paper Tiger, Secret B-sides, Dex Romweber, Dubtribe, Dehlia Low, Ryan Montbleau, Brian McGee, Jon Dee Graham, David LaMotte, and more.) BLURT is a proud co-sponsor of Lingua Musica. Please visit the LinguaMusicaAlive.com website, and meanwhile, check out the video.

What if they gave a breakup and nobody cared?

By Perez Mills

Far be it from us to dispense advice to professional musicians; they're perfectly capable of fucking up and deep-sixing their careers by themselves and don't need any assistance from the peanut gallery. It does occur, however, that airing one's dirty laundry - and being pissy about it, to boot - under the guise of serving the fanbase is not the most salutary means by which to conduct oneself. It's transparently disingenuous, at best, and possibly smacks of blatant hubris. I mean, c'mon; the line about chemotherapy (see below) is enough to make even this jaded ol' cynic-critic's jaw drop.

In case you haven't heard: beloved (by some) heartland rockers the BoDeans have split up in the wake of some sort of spat between founders Sam Llanas and Kurt Neumann - who ARE, for all intents and purposes, The BoDeans. Undeterred, however, Neumann will apparently soldier on under the name BoDeans, and he's gonna make darn sure that everyone knows that he's not at fault here.

But don't believe us -the statement below was posted at the BoDeans' Facebook page. Make of it what you will. Maybe it will all turn out to be a belated April Fool's joke, or possibly something like that death hoax that The Dwarves pulled on Sub Pop years ago. Whatevs. Take it away, Kurt.

When Sam failed to show up at last week's promotional events in Colorado, we had to make quick decisions. Do we play? Do we leave? We decided it was best to try to do what we had gone there to do-to put on the best show we could. Once I knew he'd actually quit the band, I spent many sleepless nights, thinking. Is this it? Can I reconcile myself with this being the end of BoDeans? I thought about the fans. The people who'd danced at their weddings to 'Good Things' and 'If It Makes You'. The people who have credited this music with helping them get through chemotherapy. I realized then that BoDeans is not about me and Sam. It's about the music and the fans and the connection. I will go on with BoDeans because of that. I know there are some who won't agree with it, and I understand. Change is hard-for all of us. But for those of you that want to come out and see us play, we will be there. -Kurt Neumann

"TLASILA are what punk bands always proposed but never lived up to." - Thurston Moore, 2011

By Blurt Staff

Long-running experimental art/punk rockers To Live and Shave in L.A. is callig it quits after nearly two decades of terrorizing the underground (not to mention pissing off the hipster elite as often as possible). To that end, Tom Smith & Co. are delivering their final opus, The Cortège, this fall. Smith, Ben Wolcott, and Rat Bastard will be joined by an array of colorful characters including Don Fleming and Anderew W.K.. Let take a look at some bullet points, shall we?

*The Cortège is the closing installment to two decades of remarkable albums and riveting live performances. It's produced by Don Fleming and features liner notes from Ray Brassier.

*This collective of legendary music-makers has been around since the early 1990's when they crossed paths in the early Miami Beach punk/noise/experimental scene. The TLASILA collective for the new album includes Ben Wolcott (oscillator and treatments), Rat Bastard (violin), Tom Smith (lead vocals), Misty Martinez (lead vocal on "Flattering Circles of Hell," backing vocals, saxophone), Andrew W.K. (backing vocals), Nondor Nevai (backing vocals), Cherie Lily (backing vocals), Mark Morgan (guitar), Chris Grier (guitar), Don Fleming (guitar), Dimthingshine (percussion and voice), Mark Shellhaas (percussion), Kelly Jamison (percussion), Graham Moore (synth modules), Gaybomb (magnetic card readers), Patrick Spurlock (electronics).

*Don Fleming: "We recorded The Cortège at the Sonic Youth studio in Hoboken in 2007. There were sixteen musicians and we wanted to avoid the enormous cluster-fuck of everyone performing at once. Rat Bastard cleverly devised a system to record each song with only four musicians, plus Tom Smith singing. More players were added as it fit each song. We wanted the musicians to be reactive to Tom's lyrics and melodies and not overwhelm his performance. I knew how personal the lyrics were to Tom and that guided the tracking and my mixing. Ultimately, I wanted to let his words tell the story."

*Ray Brassier: "The Cortège is a heroically significant rock record in an era when rock has become terminally insignificant."

*Tom Smith: "My son, only in his early 20s, was dodging oblivion in Iraq; my father - always a portentous, begrudgingly waggish hulk - grew progressively gaunt as he succumbed to cancer and dementia; and, through Bush's odious machinations, America was befouled, perhaps irredeemably so. The Cortège was a gut response."

*Chris Grier: "There was nothing like TLASILA, and I can't see how there will be anything like it in the future. Tom Smith, Rat Bastard and Ben Wolcott leave us with an extensive oeuvre that illustrates their intellectual rigor, their wicked humor, and their fearless approach. Their smarts were obvious, but they were also total badasses. And it all came out in the art. The body of work doesn't merely stand out, it gives off the sort of coruscating blast you get when you dunk a highway flare into a bucket of kerosene." 

New album arrives September 27...


By Blurt Staff


Sorry, the intern got the headline wrong - it actually should read, "Bjork Unveils New Album Cover." The ever-provocative artist tweeted the image yesterday.


Biophilia is due out Sept. 27 on Nonesuch/One Little Indian.

The most beloved all-girl band from the Golden Age of Punk & New Wave blitzes San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium on August 16.

By Jud Cost

"'What a drag it is getting old.' And yet, here we are," chirped Go-Go's lead singer Belinda Carlisle, quoting a line from their sandpaper-tough cover of the pill-popping Rolling Stones classic "Mother's Little Helper" to an excited full house at San Francisco's storied Fillmore Auditorium.

On the 30th anniversary of Beauty And The Beat, the radiant debut album by the Go-Go's, all five originals - Carlisle, guitarists Charlotte Caffey and Jane Wiedlin, bassist/guitarist Kathy Valentine and drummer Gina Shock - have reunited to show their fans they've still got the beat. To be honest, having seen the girls three times back in their 1980-82 heyday, they sounded better than ever tonight. Plus, it was a chance to feel like you were 21 or 31 (or 11) again for just an hour and 15 minutes. The crowd seized the opportunity like a pit bull shaking a rag doll.

The Go-Go's kicked off a fun-filled evening with "Vacation," whose endless-summer boundaries seemed as welcome as that feeling a teenager had when June rolled around. Ninety days seemed like forever back then. Oddly enough, this show coincided with the opening of school in many Bay Area locales, right in the middle of August. A few Caffey-coiffed moms with their pre-teen daughters in tow were playing a dangerous game, allowing the kids out on a school night. Maybe they could justify the Fillmore show to school officials as a hands-on history lesson, showing the sprouts the headlands of feminist rock 'n' roll. After all, without the Go-Go's trailblazing efforts (and those of Patti Smith), the early-'90s blitz of the Riot Grrrl phenomenon that included Sleater-Kinney, Bikini Kill and the Breeders, might never have happened.

"We have our own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame now," said a snow-white thatched Wiedlin, reminiscing briefly about how the Go-Go's assembled in Hollywood from far-flung ports to start life anew as a punk band at famed L.A. basement club The Masque in 1978.  They cranked out "three chords and a cloud of dust" number "Fun With Ropes" just to prove it. But it was "This Town" that more accurately portrayed life on the Go-Go ("This town is our town, it is so glamorous/Bet you'd live here if you could and be one of us.") Its lyrics somehow blended a generous, egalitarian ethic with just a dusting of well earned "nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah."

A brilliant cover of "Cool Jerk," a 1966 smash by Detroit R&B outfit the Capitols, let the crowd swing its arms in an intentionally awkward fashion while a couple of scruffy Go-Go Boys flanked the band with the same kind of flailing moves. The biggest crowd response, of course, came from Go-Go's smashes "We Got The Beat," and "Skidmarks On My Heart," a cautionary tale about a grease-monkey boyfriend who spends too much time working on his car ("You're burning rubber like my heart"). The android-like "Automatic" may have inspired the similarly mechanical "Walk Like An Egyptian," the 1986 national smash by fellow Angelenas the Bangles.

The expanded CD reissue of Beauty And The Beat (Capitol/I.R.S.) sports a second disc full of live gems, including a ripsnorting version of "London Boys," a brisk instrumental medley ("Surfing And Spying'"/"Beatnik Beach") and a spine-tingling reading of the Shangri-Las' "(Remember) Walking In The Sand" with the girls soon abandoning the ultra-dramatic pace of the original to break ranks and go for broke.

A pair of sharp solo numbers by Carlisle ("Mad About You") and Wiedlin ("Cool Places," cut with the Mael brothers from Sparks) were a perfect fit tonight with the full-band material. Like a BLT sandwich, the Go-Go's sound has never been a mystery, just an excellent mix of basic elements. Add a solid base of Duane Eddy/James Bond soundtrack big-guitar moves, a few well chosen New Wave minor chords and a marvelously harmonic vocal blend to a stringent, Tinseltown band-admissions standard with extra points awarded for the "cutie pie" factor - exactly what the brand new MTV landscape needed 30 years ago - and you had a band that seemed like  it might go on forever.

Looking like they'd aged only 10 or 12 years in the interim, the Go-Go's, if they want to be, are one solid new album away from being a permanent fixture on the concert landscape for the next decade, at least. Scratch that. They don't even need the new album. But it would be nice.

Krautrock alert!

By Blurt Staff

October will see a rare US solo tour by the legendary Hans-Joachim Roedelius, plus a new collaboration from him, an album called 'Stunden (billed as Roedelius Schneider, featuring Stefan Schneider of Kreidler and To Rococo Rot). It arrives Oct. 25 on Bureau B. For the American tour, which starts Oct. 1 at ATP in Asbury Park and wraps at the end of the month at the annual MoogFest in Asheville, NC, Roedelius will have as opening act XAMBUCA, aka Chandra Shukla and Jason Scott Furr (from Asheville)

 The mastermind behind many electronic music projects over the last 35 years, Roedelius founded the seminal bands Kluster (with Dieter Moebius and Conrad Schnitzler - who recently passed away) and Harmonia (with Moebius and Michael Rother) and recorded the albums Zuckerzeit (Cluster, 1974) and Deluxe (Harmonia, 1975), which are considered blueprints for today's electronica. In the late 70s he also worked with Brian Eno.

Kluster morphed into Cluster and ran through 1981, getting back together at various points again starting in 1989. Most recently the group has been calling itself Qluster, which just released the album Fragen - we'll have a BLURT review for that shortly.

Tour Dates:

Oct 1. - Roedelius with Simeon of Silver Apples as 'Silver Qluster' at All Tomorrow's Parties Asbury Park, NJ

Oct. 2 - Roedelius / XAMBUCA / PAK Big Band at Littlefield Performance + Art Space Brooklyn, NYC, NY

Oct. 4 - Roedelius / XAMBUCA at the Thunderbird Cafe Pittsburgh, PA

Oct. 5 - Roedelius / XAMBUCA / Head Molt, visuals by VJ Megan McKissack at Strange Matter, Richmond, VA

Oct. 7 - Roedelius / XAMBUCA and The Drunks of MAMA / DJ Chris Ballard at The Grey Eagle, Asheville, NC

Oct. 8 - Roedelius / XAMBUCA at The Eyedrum, Atlanta, GA

Oct 9 - Roedelius / XAMBUCA at The Pilot Light, Knoxville, TN

Oct 12 - Roedelius / XAMBUCA at Velvet Lounge, Washington D.C.

Oct 13 - Roedelius / XAMBUCA at M. Room, Philadelphia, PA

Oct. 15 - Roedelius / XAMBUCA at 1000 Pulses, Woodcliff Lake, NJ

Oct. 17 - Roedelius / XAMBUCA at The Garrison, Toronto, Ontario CANADA

Oct. 20 - Roedelius / XAMBUCA at The Mockbee, Cincinatti, OH

Oct. 23 - Roedelius / XAMBUCA at Mt. Tabor Theater, Portland, OR

Oct 26 - Roedelius / XAMBUCA and The Monks of DADA at Cafe Du Nord, San Francisco, CA

Oct. 27 - Roedelius / XAMBUCA at The Echo, Los Angeles, CA

Oct. 28 - Roedelius / Lunzproject w/ Tim Story at Moogfest, Asheville, NN

Oct. 29 - Roedelius / Lunzproject w/ Tim Story at Moogfest, Asheville, NC

Oct. 30 - Roedelius / Lunzproject w/ Tim Story at Moogfest, Asheville, NC

Delightfully eclectic artist makes his bow for Mush.

By Blurt Staff

Pregnant - aka Daniel Trudeau - returns after a short hiatus, with his first full-length for the esteemed Mush label. Titled Life Hard: I Try and due in stores on Sept. 6, the album consists of fourteen stuttery pop songs encompassing beautiful instrumentation, glitchy beats, and singer-songwriter-producer Trudeau's decidedly unique, Neil Young-esque voice.

MP3: "Letter To A Friend"

Pregnant - Letter To A Friend by MushRecords

Written and recorded during a time of impending fatherhood and the start of his family, the album radiates opposing emotions. Songs feel heartwarming yet drip in a sense of isolation, as the artist's vocals and storytelling are counterbalanced with experimental production and glitch-pop beats. Living life in the remote Sierra Nevada Foothills of Northern California makes a mark on every aspect of the music, art, and direction of the album and permeates the eclectic Pregnant sound. Local musician Raleigh Moncrieff lent his hand to the recording process, and a number of other Northern California artists and musicians including Zac Nelson, Art Echternacht and Zack Pangborn contributed music or provided art for the release.

You can check out an advance stream of the album, and stay tuned for tour dates.

Probably not going to do the "ballsac" trick this time around, however...

By Blurt Staff

David Yow - the notoriously unhinged frontman for The Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid - brings a new art collection, "Glass Gas Mask," to Fuse Gallery on Aug. 24 (running through Sept. 21) for his first solo New York City exhibit. The opening reception is Aug. 24 from 7 to 10 p.m. with Yow in attendance. (Fuse is at 93 2^nd Avenue in NYC, www.fusegallerynyc.com)

Yow recently returned to the art world after leaving design behind to pursue music post-college.  He participated in his first group show in Spring of 2010 and has since taken part in worldwide exhibits as well as several Los Angeles solo shows.

View more images from the Fuse exhibit right here. Or check out Yow's art at his website.

ABOUT GLASS GAS MASK: "Working both digitally and by hand, artist and musician David Yow produces a body of work that has a keen compositional sensibility often combined with a dark sense of humor.  He utilizes design elements of line, texture, and shape in conjunction with found images and objects to enhance, alter and create graphically bold imagery with an edge.  In his digital works, Yow delineates images to exaggerate an emotion to absurdity; and in the paintings, he integrates acrylic, collage, charcoal, pencil, spit, hair, crayon, wood, etc. to craft a deviant somewhat biomorphic creation, that is, or was, living - whatever it is, is very difficult to discern."

Preview from new album arriving in October.

By Blurt Staff

Here's the first look behind the scenes at the recording of MURS new album Love & Rockets, Volume 1: The Transformation, dropping October 11 (DD172/BluRoc). The album was recorded at Camp BluRoc, the upstate New York mansion owned by DD172 head Dame Dash, seen in the video with L&R Vol. 1 producer Ski Beatz as well as MURS' fellow labelmates Da$h and Sean O'Connell (all will be appearing on the upcoming Hip Hop & Love Tour, also featuring Tabi Bonney and McKenzie Eddy, which runs from September 27 to November 26.

Taped August 2 at the Diana Wortham Theatre in Asheville, NC.

By Blurt Staff

Famed singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash talked with Barbie Angell of the Lingua Musica crew about her 2010 memoir Composed (just out in paperback, hence the current book tour), upcoming Essential career overview on Sony, how her dad's childhood home is becoming a monument, and how great Twitter, the "cafe society", is for finding new friends and old friends alike. Jackson Stahl filmed and edited this video

Rosanne Cash's official website: http://www.rosannecash.com/

The videotaped conversation marks the latest in the ongoing Lingua Musica Interviews series and we're looking forward to many more in the very near future. (Previous installments have included Railroad Earth, Clouds of Greer, Paper Tiger, Secret B-sides, Dex Romweber, Dubtribe, Dehlia Low, Ryan Montbleau, Brian McGee, Jon Dee Graham, David LaMotte, and more.) BLURT is a proud co-sponsor of Lingua Musica. Please visit the LinguaMusicaAlive.com website, and meanwhile, check out the video.