Timeless: Better Than Best

I'm sitting here with S Foye after V Scully practice listening to vinyls, drinking PBR, and talking shit. He put on Daydream Nation. What a record that is! I told him I was never able to really get in to any other Sonic Youth records, but Daydream Nation was an exception.

As we discussed this opinion of mine we quickly realized why this was. Some would argue that it's their best record, but "best" is a very flimsy and inaccurate modifier. I would argue that Daydream Nation is their timeless record. It simultaneously works as an artifact of the time it was released and an album that sounds perfectly at home nearly 25 years later. Very few albums pull this off. With no false modesty intended, I doubt I will ever be in a band that makes a record of this caliber. But that's ok. I'm not discouraged by this. Often the pursuit of making such a record is what makes making records worthwhile. And who knows, maybe someday something I've done will be a timeless classic to someone else!

New Member Wednesday: Kim H Joins Kissing Cousins!

As seems to be the trend so far this year in everyone's favorite all girl band Kissing Cousins, they have a new member (R.I.P. Kara and Melissa). Her name is Kim. Let's get to know her shall we?

1. Congrats on being a cousin! Growing up who was the extended family member you would have most likely smooched in the socially unacceptable way?

If I had to choose, I would have smooched my cousin, Josh. Let me do some family tree math. He was my grandfather's brother's daughter's son haha. So, I think that would make him my third cousin? Maybe it's because I grew up in a small town in TX, maybe it's because he loved Nirvana, or maybe it's just because he was a total babe! What can I say, our blood is good blood.

2. Contrary to most members of KC who learned to play their instruments specifically for the band, you've obviously played bass before. Tell us a bit about your other musical projects, current and past.

Well, in addition to playing bass for Kissing Cousins, I also play bass and sing back up vocals in Future Ghost. We have been playing for a little over a year now. We are currently a three piece (a.k.a. a Kim sandwich between two slices of Brandon.) For those of you who know us, you'll understand that delicious joke, and for those of you who don't - a little research never hurt anyone. Before taking up the bass, I played guitar for 10 years. I was in a couple of bands in Texas quite a while ago (Wisteria, The Keepsies, and Infinite Transmission Project), but had given it up until Brandon Tomas asked me to join Future Ghost. And THANK GOD! I can't imagine what it would be like not to play in a band; which of course is another reason I agreed to play with the Cousins. Not only am I a fan of the songs and adore the girls involved, but I love playing 100%.

3. I've noticed you smile a lot while performing. I thought musicians were supposed to be sad and tortured. What gives?

Spend a little more time with me and you'll notice I smile most of the time. Plus, I laugh at just about everything hahaha. See? I thought playing was supposed to be fun! Hence, the smiling. So, you better get used to seeing my grill. I rarely feel tortured when I'm playing; except during the summer at Downtown Rehearsal. When it's boiling hot, my bangs are stuck to my forehead, and I'm sweating in places I didn't know could sweat - that's when I feel tortured. Nothing a cold beer can't cure though, right?

4. I try to give everyone I interview a forum to do a little trash talking. If you feel like it, why don't you rant about someone or something without getting too specific. Trust me, you'll feel better.

I've never been one to gossip, but I'm getting better at it working for a company who doesn't necessarily value or acknowledge the hard work of its employees. Being taken advantage of and denied raises or promotion leaves no motivation to meet the head of company's expectations. Unfortunately, it's not in me to do poorly. I work hard no matter the circumstance, therefore I am often left feeling abused and unappreciated. Not to mention, I get paid dick-fifty for my efforts. Yeah yeah, poor me. Hahaha.

5. Everyone's dying to know, but are too polite to ask: do you and your boyfriend have any synchronized dance videos of the two of you? If so, I'd love to post it here...

Why is everyone so shy in asking this?! Of course we have a synchronized dance video of the two of us. We like to call it "The Horizontal Hustle." I'm just kidding. It's a shame that Tim and I do not have a synchronized dance video, however, I'd like to share a link for his band's (OK Go) new video for "This Too Shall Pass" that went live on Monday. It features an extensive Rube Goldberg project that was built over the last few months in a warehouse in Echo Park. Enjoy!

You can meet Kim live and in person at either of these upcoming Kissing Cousins Shows:

Monday March 8th @ Alex's Bar in Long Beach w/ David Bazan

Wednesday March 10th @ Silver Lake Lounge with Agent Ribbons

New Music Tuesday: Vanaprasta

I've had a musical crush on these boys for a while, and finally we have their first release to listen to and obsess over. Forming The Shapes was released today on iTunes and the like. It's a three song teaser of what's the come, which rumor has it is a full length record called Healthy Geometry. Good names!! Where were you when I was trying to name the new Summer Darling record?

Come on out with us and celebrate the release of Forming The Shapes tomorrow at Spaceland! Vanaprasta, who are an unsinkable juggernaut of energy and expression live, will be packing the house so come early. I'm excited, you should be too.

Below I've posted the slow burner "Color Of Sin" which Heather tells me is the single from the EP. She's pretty good at pickin' 'em so enjoy!!

We Are Cool With Playing This For You: The Summer Darling Listening Party

Last night we hosted a listening party for our new record at our place for a few of the people who so graciously donated their time and skills so that we could make the best record possible. It was a fantastically encouraging and warm spirited evening filled with laughter, scotch, hummus, and red bull?.

Before we got started, someone asked me if I was nervous. I asked them why would I be? Apparently, being in a room full of close friends and associates and sitting there while they listen to your music is a scary thing. Being a generally anxious dude, I must admit to feeling a little perplexed at why I wasn't bothered by this proposition. If anyone should be nervous, it's me!

I realized two things in that moment of reflection. One is that I am good at letting things go when it's time to let them go. I can be anxious all day before a show or the night before I get on a plane, but when the moment comes to step on stage or to walk into the cabin, I don't hesitate. In the same way, now that the record is done, I'm no longer playing the game in my head of what I could've or should've done differently. It's time to release it into the world and let other people appropriate it for themselves. And who better to start with than these friends and colleagues? We could release a pile of dog shit on them, and because they are our friends they would probably find something to like about it, even if it was just the shear audacity of us releasing a steaming pile of poo for a record.

Which brings me to my other realization. I must be proud of our record to not feel an ounce of self consciousness. I know we didn't make a shitty album. In fact we made quite a good one. We will be leaking a track soon on our various social networking sites, so you, my good reader, will not be far behind.

Summer Darling comes out on Origami Vinyl Tuesday July 6th.

You can catch us at the 826LA Benefit show this Saturday afternoon at the Echoplex. We have a limited 10 dollar donation ticket list if you go here and purchase before Saturday using the discount code "summerdarling10list". We play at 1pm.

Show Preview: LA Underground Presents: Silian Rail w/ Summer Darling, Powerdove, and Timonium Tonight!

These kids from San Francisco remind me of a mix between Don Caballero and American Football, but with a ton of youthful energy. They have all the chops to be an exciting instrumental band, so I am really looking forward to playing with them tonight at Pehrspace. Judging by some You Tube footage I perused, it's going to be a dynamic show! We play at 10pm, Silian Rail follows us at 10:45pm.

Also performing: Powerdove 9pm Timonium 11:30pm

Pehrspace is located at 325 Glendale Blvd in Echo Park just past Pho Siam in a small strip mall. Shows are all ages, BYOB, with a 5 dollar cover. Hope to see you there!!!

When Should You Rename Your Band?

I read an interesting article in this week's print issue of Brand X. For those who don't know what that is, it's the weekly culture mag that used to be Metromix until LA Times took it over and re-branded it, pun intended. Anywho, the article focused on local band The Afternoons and their decision to rename themselves Shadow Shadow Shade after discovering a Welsh band also called The Afternoons.

A couple years back, Summer Darling began receiving Myspace friend requests with odd messages attached saying they had heard us on NPR. To my knowledge, we had never been on NPR at that point, so I did some investigating and found out there was another band from California called The Summer Darlings. I wrote them an email to figure out what their intentions were. According to their response, The Summer Darlings are a transgender folk project that rarely plays shows and have little to no interest in being widely recognized on the national stage. I checked them out, they seemed legit in their claim, so I agreed with them to live and let live.

However, Steve Scott of the Afternoons/Shadow Shadow Shade brings up a good point in the article. The internet has made every band more than a national band; it's made us all international. So with the plethora of bands out there, some of whom are bound to share the same name, when do you decide it's time to change it? The Afternoons changed it because of conflicting Google search results. I decided to put this to the test today. I started with Myspace searches. If you search for Summer Darling, we are the only band that comes up, but if you search for The Summer Darlings, then they are the only band that comes up.

So I did a Google search. If you search Summer Darling on Google every hit with the exception of one that comes up is related to us. The one exception is this broad's Myspace page whose name appears to actually be Summer Darling. So I'm satisfied that we didn't change our name or make too huge a stink about The Summer Darlings. However Shadow Shadow Shade have a very valid point, too. The Welsh Afternoons must be on a similar trajectory to success as the US Afternoons, making it an even bigger imperative that someone needed to change. Two bands with the exact same name inherently causes confusion.

Heather's other band Kissing Cousins shares their name with a turntable downtempo dude named Chris from Ohio and a bluegrass 2 step group from England, so I did the Google search test with them. The results were far more mixed. Apparently there's a movie coming out called Kissing Cousins, plus a variety of wikipedia entries on cousins hooking up, a medical journal that says third cousins have the best likelihood of conception and fertility, and a number of image results with people with seventies hair doos kissing. Apparently the 1970s were the golden era of hooking up with your cousin. But the only band Kissing Cousins that came up was Heather's, and they came up second right behind the film.

I figured this confusion was due more to the nature of the words in the band name than the actual band name itself. So just for shits and giggles, I googled the band Spoon. I assumed with such a mundane one word name the results would be scattered as all hell. Nope. They were the only thing that came up!!! I'm not sure what all this quasi research means, other than to say that now more than ever, the uniqueness of your band name matters. Unless you're called Spoon.

You can Catch Shadow Shadow Shade at the Echo on Friday March 5th.

Something Out Of Everything

I was speaking to someone recently about music. This person isn't a musician and they couldn't get their head around how a song takes shape. To them, writing a song was building something out of nothing. I tried to explain to them that it wasn't building something out of nothing. First of all, the something that inspires music is all around us, from our day to day experiences to the hundred million songs we've already heard in our lifetime. All of these things are the sparks that ignite the creative flame, the molecules that collide to cause the big bang of songwriting.

Second, sound is infinite. That's a theory that I heard once that I really liked. I don't know if it's true, and frankly, I don't care all that much. The theory goes that once a note is played, two divergent things happen. The sound vibration that we are hearing never disappears, much like the idea that energy is never created nor destroyed; the sound merely diminishes at an exponential rate infinitely. The other thing that happens is that a sound once made morphs into something new; the metaphysical thing that cannot be scientifically expressed. The sound becomes an idea that is reinterpreted by the ear that hears it.

Lastly, I read somewhere that the smallest known sub atomic particle looks like a sound wave, meaning that at the very core of everything is sound, or the evidence that sound was once there. I told me friend that it can be more accurately said that they couldn't understand how musicians build something out of everything. I was reminded of this conversation because last night Dan and I had a writing session at his place in Long Beach that didn't yield any specific results (i.e. no song was born). It made me smile when I thought that sometimes building something out of everything can be just as impossible as building something out of nothing.

You can catch us playing shit we've already built this Friday night at Pehrspace, 10pm. The show is All Ages and BYOB. Hope to see you all there!