Better late than never, right? Here's what I played with Bob and Tony a couple of weekends ago. Bob showed up after his work, right before my second set, and played a batch of stunning obscurities — records I don't think I'd heard before, but which were all perfect. Polynesian music, country I think, surf, whatever else. Didn't know how to follow but luckily there was a wedding party there, so even though Bob and Tony probably had the better sets, my pop-oriented picks seemed to be "crowd"-pleasers. Too loud? Maybe.
Cheerfully turning your local Belgian beer bar into a space worthy of earplugs:
Bob Nastanovich and I had the great honor of ringing in the New Year this year for the fourth straight time here in Des Moines. Usually we do it at my favorite local music venue, Vaudeville Mews, but this year we did it a couple of doors up at the Lift, a bar with a rotating selection of works on the wall by local artists. Here's what my notes tell me we played, with a Spotify playlist (when the tracks were available on Spotify, that is... which was a lot less often than you might think!).
A few favorites from Bob's selection: Roberta Flack's Leonard Cohen cover "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye," current British garage-punks' shout-along "I Wanna Get Out of Here But I Can't Take You Anywhere," and Richmond, Virginia-based second-wave ska band the Good Guys' protest song aimed at the then-Secretary of the Interior, "(The Ballad of) James Watt," with its endlessly quotable line, "Stop James Watt / If you wanna keep the trees you got."
Thank you so much to Amedeo for having us, to John and Clint for getting us set up and putting up with us at their bar, to Dustin for making the Lift idea happen, and to all of our friends who made it out on a cold night that's famously terrible for being on the road. We always have a blast and hope you did, too!
Locals-made-good the Seed of Something held the triumphant release party for their proper debut album, English, which I am biased about but would recommend to just about anybody who likes precocious garage-rock hullabaloo, on Saturday night at Vaudeville Mews. I was lucky enough to catch a bit of their first set before DJing outside at the PBR Bar, and I'm pretty sure they played all of the new ones except for "Fire." I've had the record for a while thanks to their Indiegogo campaign, so I played that one during my own set. I also played a whole weird mix of stuff: For some reason I started reaching for the universal, slam-dunk dancefloor songs pretty early, and I was a little leery of one of my turntables because a speaker problem was causing feedback if I played it too loud, so by the end of the night pretty much every other song it felt like I was finding myself falling back on something from an LP I'd already played. I guess I should bring another crate? Or something? Anyway, thank you to everybody who kept dancing waaay too late, and thanks to Ladd for booking me, and thanks to Joe and Derek and T.J. for getting me all set up, and thanks to Tony and Sami for bringing the Lydia Loveless seven-inch, and thanks probably especially to Brian for letting me talk him into driving me home with my gear; you all are running rings around this little downtown.
What I played is below, with a Spotify approximation that probably leaves out all the best stuff because it always does:
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