…on Beyond Beyond is Beyond, Thursday February 4th at noon eastern, live on East Village Radio.
Fresh from his Guinness World Record for longest live piano performance by any individual (27 hours, 3 minutes and 44 seconds), his piano battle with Andrew WK in New York, and a sold-our run at London’s La Pigalle Club, Paris-based pianist and showman Chilly Gonzales crosses the Atlantic for four “Piano Talk Shows” in New York City in February.
The self-proclaimed “Entertainist” will play every Thursday at Joe’s Pub, finally giving NYC a full-on taste of his futuristic cabaret performance. Each show will feature a guest from Gonzo’s extended musical family, each promising to bring fresh surprises of their own!
Feb 4 w/ guest SIA
Feb 11 w/ guest Andrew WK
Feb 18 w/ guest DJ A-Trak plus surprise guest
Feb 25 w/ guest Princess Superstar
Chilly is currently celebrating two new releases: a spellbinding 7” piano remake of Erol Alkan and Boys Noize’s club banger “Waves” (coupled with a spoken music lesson on the B-side) and his 4-album live Guinness World Record set “The Works” (released through Believe digital). Listen to the “Waves” remake here!
Meanwhile, the Grammy-nominated arranger/producer’s collaborations continue to multiply: he’s co-writing and producing the major-label debut of Thecocknbullkid, co-writing songs with Jarvis Cocker for “Get Him to the Greek” (a Russell Brand rock-movie spoof) and shooting new episodes of his cult web-TV show “SUPERPRODUCER” (presented exclusively with DailyMotion). Watch the hilarious sketch with gay British rapper Dorian (ahem) Gay here.
Best of all, Chilly is currently putting the finishing touches on his new full-length, Ivory Tower, will is expected to be released in the US later this year.
Having already bagged the (also self-proclaimed) title of President of the Berlin Underground, Chilly Gonzales can now add another notch on his belt after successfully challenging Andrew WK to a piano-off at Joe’s Pub in New York last September and premiering his Jarvis Cocker collaboration “Francophobia” at London’s La Pigalle Club in November.
For a taste of the musical mayhem and unique extreme entertainment in store for Chilly’s upcoming New York City shows, check out his piano dual with Andrew WK here (or here).
All Piano Talk Shows will feature PianoVision, a video installation created by Nina Rhode, aka Ninja Pleasure. Reminiscent of a silent movie, PianoVision allows the audience to see a video projection of the piano’s 88 keys, along with the master’s finger work.
So tune in to Beyond Beyond is Beyond on East Village Radio on Thursday at noon eastern-time, and listen to us shoot the shit. I’m bringing a Casiotone keyboard in hopes that Chilly will tickle our ivory fancies a bit!
See ya then…
Cheersy!
Mike
If you watched the Grammys (as I did for some reason), you know that the highlight of the whole event was when Jeff Beck took the stage for the Les Paul ‘How High the Moon’ tribute with an old friend of the Beyond Beyond is Beyond show, Imelda May on vocals. If you missed, dig…
I’m proud to say that this silver-throated Irish rockabilly knockout was on my Beyond Beyond is Beyond show on East Village Radio back in September, so I just thought I’d share the interview again. She and her husband and amazing guitarist, Darrel Higham, also performed an exclusive acoustic tune for us at the end of the interview.
Check out the news piece on the EVR website where there is a link to the interview
OR
Go straight to the interview
I also chose her Love Tattoo album as one of the Best of 2009.
See some of my Imelda pics…
*all photos (c) Mike Newman
Hey there, psych-friendly Beyonderz,
The Entrance Band, the psychedelic rock trio hailing from Los Angeles who recently signed to Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace Records and who I love to play on Beyond Beyond is Beyond, is stopping off on their tour this Saturday, January 30 at Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory…and you can win a pair of tickets right now. Here’s how to enter to win (choose from the following):
a) Email me at beyondbeyondisbeyond (@) gmail (dot) com, with your favorite sandwich in the subject line, OR the preferred method…
b) Twitter a sentence using all the following components: @EVRadio, @BBiB, @theentranceband, and the word ‘fuck’ used politely
Good luck and I hope to see you at the show. Look for me. I’ll be the guy with the face.
Cheers then!
Mike
P.S. >>>> LISTEN LIVE AT NOON TO BBIB on East Village Radio! <<<<
(Dig this…)
So I wanted to post something about a band that I accidentally left off my official ‘Best Albums of 2009′ list. This is San Diego-based (oddly enough) new progressive rock band Astra, and their 2009 album The Weirding is one that I listened to a lot last year. I found this really cool random user-made video for one of Astra’s songs and thought you should check it out. So dig in below. There’s a whole lot of radicity going on…
THEN, if you dig that, listen to the whole album on YouTube. It’s all HERE. Pretty amazing. Then, after you’re blown away by how good it is and surprised at how modern it is, BUY that shit bro. I’m def looking for Astra to head to the East Coast!
Cheers!
As seminal progressive rock band Yes gets ready to head out on the North American road for a tour that will last exactly one month, we get the chance to talk to Yes bassist, Chris Squire, on Thursday on Beyond Beyond is Beyond. So tune in to East Village Radio on January 14th at noon and hear me cower before another one of my idols. Okay not really, but yeah, kinda.
Stuff I wanna talk to him about: current lineup, studio plans, Jon Anderson, Fish Out of Water, XYZ project with Jimmy Page in the early-80s, Benoit David, Oliver Wakeman and what modern music Chris listens to. So let’s see if I have time, or just the memory, to ask him about all these things.
YES FEBRUARY CONCERT DATES
- February 2 Poughkeepsie, New York, Civic Center
- February 4 Concord, New Hampshire Capitol Center for the Arts
- February 5 Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania Penn’s Peak
- February 6 Washington, DC Warner Theater
- February 9 Boston, MA House of Blues
- February 10 Montclair, NJ Wellmont Theater
- February 12 Atlantic City, NJ Tropicana Casino
- February 13-14 New York, NY Town Hall
- February 17 Cleveland, OH House of Blues
- February 18-19 Chicago, IL House of Blues
- February 20 Detroit, MI Motor City Casino
- February 23 Dallas, TX House of Blues
- February 24 Houston, TX House of Blues
- February 25 New Orleans, LA House of Blues
- February 27 Orlando, FL Sea World Orlando
- February 28 Boca Raton, FL Sunset Cove Amphitheatre
UPDATE : Dig the archive of this show.
Hey Beyonderz,
Tune in live to Beyond Beyond is Beyond on East Village Radio at noon on New Year’s Eve, exactly 12 hours before 2010 starts! I’ll be playing some of my ‘Best 0f’s’ from 2009 and a bunch of exclusive live performances of BBiB guests right from the EVR booth. Live stuff from Alberta Cross, Imelda May, The Amazing, The Blakes, Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears, Mother Hips, Life on Earth, y mas!
And 9 hours later, come out to my stoned New Year’s extravaganza at Heathers Bar in the East Village (13th between A & B). $6 suggested donation (NY Times Neediest Cases Fund) gets you a right good time, free Brooklyn Beer from 9 to 10 pm, a chance to win fabulous prizes…and DJ Rudeboy and I provide your song and dance. Here are all the details.
Happy New Year to you all! Cheers, brilliant, right, cheers!
Mike
If you’re in NYC for NYE, come to our throwdown in the East Village… cheap and rockin’ fun to be had by all… $6 suggested donation to NY Times Neediest Cases Fund and FREE Brooklyn Brewery beer from 9 to 10 pm, so get there early!
Back to the Stoned Age event page on FB
Follow BBiB on Twitter whilst yer at it…
*art by Macho Mel
Btw, does Jon’s shirt say something about Beyond Beyond is Beyond?
Tune in to East Village Radio at noon Thursday, Christmas Eve, to get your Xmas Eve started with some nice holiday jams…I’ll be slaving away for you over a hot microphone, like a good Jew!
If you blog, I guess you just gotta do it…so here’s mine. And no, you’re not gonna get a ‘best albums o’ the decade’ list outta me! It was quite hard enough to think back to early ‘09, thank you very much. And yes, albums are still pertinent and will become more and more important as the industry starts its slow digression back to the vinyl days. I’m not Nostradamus and shit, I just know it’s headed that way. It’s what’s the people want…records are just plain sexy! The vinyl is how you’ll listen at home (or inside places) and the mp3s (download card included inside vinyl jacket) will make it portable and shuffle-able.
Another thing to keep in mind, I don’t typically sit around ranking records as I listen to them, so this is a bit of a stretch for me. What I’m presenting here is a list of things I liked in 2009. This includes brand-new shit and also old albums that were re-released during 2009…because I listen to a lot of old music, in case you didn’t know from looking at me. So let’s go through the motions here and get to listing…in no particular order (and I’m not sure how many are going to be listed either until I put them all down, so bear with me). Here we go:
The Entrance Band – s/t : Here’s a great psych album from a new(er) band that’s not afraid of slinky guitar licks. As the mainstream indie-rock world keeps proving to us what their music is NOT, bands like The Entrance Band will do what they do, not concerned with what they are not, but proving that the most interesting thing is what it IS. And what it is is groove, swing, blues, passion, psych, sex and plenty of reverb. On Ecstatic Peace Records.
Well played, Thurston.
The Aliens – Luna : Amazing follow-up to the debut Astronomy for Dogs from 2007 by this Beta Band offshoot. Here are the deets from Wiki: The Aliens are a Scottish band consisting of former Beta Band members Gordon Anderson (aka Lone Pigeon, lead vocals, guitar), John Maclean keyboards, backing vocals) and Robin Jones (drums, backing vocals). They formed in 2005 ( following the split of The Beta Band the previous year, and frontman Gordon Anderson falling ill to “acute psychosis”. Anderson is now out of hospital and has been off medication for some time.
This is what the Beta Band promised to be from their 3 Eps debut, which will always be a classic, but what their other albums never delivered on. They lost sight of their mission or something. Well, The Aliens pick back up where the ‘good’ Beta Band left off. Cheers!
Imelda May – Love Tattoo : Soul rockabilly blues R&B…like in the days when such genres were integrated and made a beautiful noise together. I was lucky enough to be able to interview Imelda May when she was in NYC and got to see her (and her tremendous band) perform live to a packed Piano’s house on a weeknight…Uh-maze-ing! This girl can belt ‘em out. And you need to hear her band play live too. Perfectness…really. Here’s a link to the interview from Beyond Beyond is Beyond 9/24/09.
And here’s a bonus for ya’s. This is an acoustic “Love Tattoo” that Imelda and her husband/guitarist Darrel Higham did exclusively for my BBiB show on East Village Radio…
The Growlers – Are You In or Out? : I love this album. I guess you’d call it fuzzed-out, reverb-drenched, hazy surf-guitar garage rock. Easy breezy shit that I’m looking forward to seeing played live when these Costa Mesa, California bros make it out East – which I just found out will happen at Brooklyn’s Union Pool on Valentine’s Day ‘10. Hopefully my lover will want to go with…
Speaking of lovers, this album is on the great Everloving label.
.
Made in Sweden – Made in England : This re-release from the top-notch Esoteric Recordings label in England, came in just under the ‘09 gun, released on December 22nd, 2009. I have been in love with Esoteric Recordings output ever since I was turned on to them by some MAN reissues that started coming out a couple years ago. Since then, I’ve closely followed Esoteric’s output and even started a segment on my radio show that features Esoteric’s offerings. Well, this is one originally from 1970 that I just very recently received and am now addicted to. And it once again begs the question ‘why are the Swedish so advanced in progressive rock music?’ Why ask why, bros…just dig it. This is superb blues-jazz-prog rock. Long live Esoteric!
White Denim – Fits : Fukkin’ fantastic album! To be lazy, here are a couple quotes that I really like about the album…
“Fits locks in and finds a groove strong enough to hang a hook on” -Pitchfork
“Like Ike and Tina Turner….. White Denim never do anything nice and easy. The bands chopped up punk delirium is effortless sorcery, evoking Talking Heads’ dancing-bones rock, the dervish thrash of the Minutemen and the Strokes’ pneumatic-guitar pop…White Denim is not simple work, but everything you get is nice and rough.”- David Fricke, Rolling Stone
“It kinda makes me wanna screw.” – My wife
Mother Hips – Pacific Dust : The Mother Hips are consistently great and are consistently not recognized enough. Lots of great dual guitar interplay, amazing sunny California harmonies, and tons of hooks all over the place.
Tim Bluhm was in town for a couple Mother Hips NYC gigs and stopped by Beyond Beyond is Beyond this past Spring, long before the new album’s release and played some tunes for us. Here’s one…
Life on Earth! – A Space Water Loop : Like The Amazing who are making their mark right now with a fantastic debut, Life On Earth! is a Dungen offshoot to keep the Dungen players busy and creative while Dungen leader, Gustav takes his time with his muse and his turntablism. Yeah, go figs. Life on Earth! is helmed by Dungen bassist, Mattias Gustavsson and is an excellent collection of Swedish psych-folk music…sung in English.
Again, my theory stands that Swedes have and extra music gene.
Check out this tune Mattias did for us on Beyond Beyond is Beyond at the East Village Radio studio:
Hopewell – Good Good Desperation : These next two albums represent bands that made really good albums which only tell part of the story of how amazing they are as live bands. Tee Pee Records made a great choice stepping out on a limb for Hopewell, which isn’t their traditional fare…but Tee Pee is really starting to release a lot of killer stuff (Weird Owl, The Weight, Spindrift, Night Horse, Imaad Wasif) and is one of the great small creative label forces out there now.
Pick up this album and then get yer ass out to see them live and let them show you their complete power. Good Good Desperation definitely will make you more than curious for the live show…and it’s the kind of album that gives you the feeling that Hopewell is on the verge of creating their masterpiece.
Sleepy Sun – Embrace : So, this is the other band who made a fantastic album, this one on ATP Recordings, that only hints at how great a live band they are. I was lucky enough to see both Sleepy Sun and Hopewell this summer at the super-exclusive, only-for-cool-cats-like-me All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in upstate New York…and quite frankly, both bands blew my fukkin’ head off. In a good way!
Again, another great album that will tease you into coming out to see ‘em live. Don’t miss the chance!
Exmagma – Exmagma 3 : I started doing a segment on my East Village Radio show that features the excellent re-release output of Anthology Recordings this year, because they digitally re-release some of the coolest and rarest psych, vintage rock, folk, freak, prog and other great rock forms. This is one of the coolest that I came across this year. Having already been acquainted with Exmagma’s first two ‘official’ albums, that were certainly more Miles 70s-era improvy sounding with very few vocals. Well, this more jagged-rocky, trippy-vocaled one was made as a double album by the band to follow their first two. Their label said ‘we don’t wanna release a double album’…and so the band shelved it and soon broke up. It was finally released way down the road and now Anthology’s got it on their site, ready for you to download…along with the first two Exmagma albums and singer/guitarist, Andy Goldner’s killer solo album, Infinity. Get Exmagma 3 now if you dig adventurous rock!
Rubblebucket – s/t : This one came out of the blue and landed on my CD player…or iTunes or whatever. I had not been seeking out this kind of music, but it found me, and it strapped me in for a rubble-bumpy ride! Is African music super-cool right now? Is Fela really a Broadway musical right now? Do people really hate hippies? Well, whatever the case…this is an album to be reckoned with. But instead of reckoning with it, listen to it! Yeah, that’s better.
Serious groove, a knock-you-out magic horn section, quirky guitar, odd drum rhythms, trippy dub effects, and an amazing spell-casting female vocal, of course with plenty of ‘verb!
I can’t wait to see ‘em live! This one of was may be the nicest surprise of the year.
Zoos of Berlin – Taxis : This one was actually another great surprise that Sinister Foxy turned me on to. It’s modern, it’s sleek, it’s complex, it’s Steely Dan, it’s Talking Heads, it’s uplifting, it’s fun, it’s serious, and it’s a bunch of other stuff…like REALLY GOOD! Everyone that I played this album for fell in love with it and could compare it to nothing else than any other modern indie bands are doing right now. Truly unique and quirky music made by some serious players who remember what it is to groove.
Detroit guys, btw. They’re still making plenty of good music there. Cars…not so much.
The Beatles – Remastered Catalog : This has to be in there, doesn’t it? Such a perfect job was done on these albums…and the world would’ve collectively cringed if it had been otherwise. This music demands perfection, and the remastering/mixing job that they did is incredible. Who knew that the best music ever made could sound even better?!
I have all the stereo versions, now I may need to geek out and score all the remastered mono albums! Most of the stuff up until Rubber Soul/Revolver are meant to be heard mono anyway.
Btw, is the White Album the best rock album ever made?
Bryan Scary & the Shredding Tears – Mad Valentines : I swear to god, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I almost forgot to add these guys to the list AGAIN this year! And I did the same with their Flight of the Knife album last year! Maybe it’s because they’re so much drastically better than most of the modern bands you hear these days, and maybe it’s because their sound doesn’t seem to quite fit in whatever ‘era’ we’re in right now. But BSST are pure theatrical bubblegum, prog-pop escapist bliss…and you’re missing out on all of that if you don’t know ‘em. So get to know ‘em and come join the party. And don’t miss them live!
Here’s a quick stirpped-down tune that they guys did in our completely un-soundproofed booth at East Village Radio. It’s a delight…
.
Very honorable mentions : Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion (as if you needed to see that one on another list), Real Estate – s/t, Man- s/t (reissue on Esoteric Recordings), Ben Kweller – Changing Horses, BLK JKS – After Robots, The Blakes – Souvenir, La Fleur Fatale – Silent Revolution, Monsters of Folk – s/t, Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound – When Sweet Sleep Returned…
What else am I missing? What are your faves o’ the year? Lemme know below…
What’s up, Be-yonders?
This Thursday, I will be welcoming Esoteric Recordings label manager, Mark Powell to Beyond Beyond is Beyond, as I launch a new segment that will feature the English label’s classic reissue output. From their website:
Welcome to Esoteric Recordings, the home of good music. Established in 2007 and label managed by Mark Powell, Esoteric Recordings is the home of good music, with all releases finely packaged and remastered from the best possible sources to ensure the highest possible audio quality. Our releases cover both catalogue reissues and inspiring new works from artists with a fine history and heritage. Esoteric Recordings is an imprint of the Cherry Red Records group.
Artists on Esoteric’s reissue roster include all these greats and more: Man, Hawkwind, Barclay James Harvest, Made in Sweden, Demon Fuzz, Hatfield and the North, Rare Bird, Camel, Curved Air, Fruup, Earth & Fire, and so much more killer stuff!
So tune in Thursday at noon eastern to East Village Radio and see what Mark and I choose to kick off the new Esoteric segment, PLUS you will certainly get the usual quality allotment of free-range rock & roll that I try to bring you every single gosh-darned week.
on 
…East Village Radio